Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Author’s Note: Returning to this after 5+ years. I have it all planned out now. 23 chapters. 130-140k words. It's more than half finished and I'm finishing it this summer.

Warning: This contains SLASH and male pregnancy. Please do not ignore those warnings only to give me flames later on. Don't be a dunderhead. 

Here is my disclaimer that I do not own anything Harry Potter related and what follows is merely for entertainment purposes. No money is being made. All credit goes to JK for the wonderful world of Harry Potter that she gifted us with.

And her garbage personality. Shameful.

“You’re right!” Harry said, a rare grin flickering across his face — brief but genuine; the kind that lit up his features in a way that almost distracted from the stubborn pallor clinging to his cheeks. For just a breath, the enthusiasm lifted him above the near-constant nausea and fatigue that had dogged him for weeks like a curse he couldn’t shake.

He swallowed hard, pushing back the familiar burn of bile rising in his throat, and turned toward Hermione. “So, would he have hidden the sword far from Hogsmeade, then? What do you reckon, Ron?”

Silence.

Hermione's brow furrowed with the smallest twitch of confusion, but Harry was already turning his head, scanning the dim interior of the tent. He could have sworn Ron had been here just minutes ago, hunched over maps and muttering suggestions.

“Ron?” he called again, voice hesitant.

But the redhead hadn’t gone anywhere.

He was right there — had been the entire time — lying stiffly on the lower bunk, arms crossed, eyes fixed on the tent ceiling as if he could stare holes through the canvas. He’d been close enough to hear every word, every theory, every moment of breathless speculation. But somehow, impossibly, they’d forgotten he was even there.

And that... that was what did it.

It wasn’t the endless wandering, or the freezing nights, or even the impossible weight of hunting Horcruxes in a world coming apart at the seams. It wasn’t the empty stomach or the bitter taste of failure.

It was this.

Being overlooked. Again.

That small, sour sting in his chest bloomed into something hotter, darker, something that twisted under his skin with quiet fury. It didn’t take much — the Horcrux around his neck barely had to whisper. Just a nudge, a subtle pulse, and the festering resentment that had been lying dormant surged to the surface.

He was always the afterthought. The extra. The one who stood just out of frame, waiting for someone to remember that he, too, was part of this.

“Oh, remembered me, have you?” Ron said coldly, his voice slicing through the air like a thrown blade.

Harry turned sharply toward the bunk. “What?”

Ron snorted. “Suddenly remembered that it’s not just you two?”

He rolled onto his side with deliberate slowness, his expression hardened into something brittle and furious — a scowl so sharp it looked chiseled into his face.

Harry blinked, caught off guard.

“What are you talking about?” he asked, genuinely baffled. His brows knit together, and for a moment he simply stared. He couldn’t trace the thread of Ron’s anger; couldn’t find the thing that had lit the fuse.

And truthfully, he didn’t have the strength to try.

“Forget it,” Ron snapped, though his voice betrayed him — low and tight and edged with something raw. The glint in his eyes said everything his words tried to deny.

“No,” Harry said, his voice rising before he could catch it; tired and fraying at the edges.

“What is your problem?”

The silence after his question throbbed, dense with something unspoken.

Ron barked out a bitter laugh, the kind that didn’t reach his eyes.

“My problem?” he echoed. “I don’t know, Harry. Maybe it’s the fact that I thought — just maybe — you had some kind of plan. Something more than running ourselves ragged chasing shadows and hoping one of them leads us to a Horcrux.”

He sat up abruptly, the movement jerky and stiff. “I’m not exactly having the time of my life in this Merlin-forsaken tent, watching you both play puzzle master while I rot on the sidelines.”

Harry stared at him, stunned — not just by the venom in Ron’s voice, but by what lay beneath it: the frayed edges of someone worn thin. Hurt. Frustration. As if he was the only one experiencing it.

The tension inside the tent tightened, thickening the air until it felt like breathing through cloth. The fire crackled somewhere in the corner, but the cold seemed to press in anyway.

“I thought you knew what you were signing up for!” Harry snapped, his voice cracking louder than he intended — raw, frayed by exhaustion and even less patience.

He pushed back from the chair, trying to stand — but the moment he did, the world tilted sideways. A wave of dizziness hit him like a rogue wave. His hand shot out, catching the edge of the table just in time to keep from collapsing.

His legs shook. His stomach churned. He swallowed hard against the sour taste rising in his throat; two weeks of barely holding anything down catching up with him all at once.

But he powered through, jaw clenched.

“I’ve told you everything, Ron!” Harry growled, forcing the words out even as his body trembled.

“Everything I knew — everything Dumbledore ever told me — I passed on to you. Every lead, every clue, even the ones that made no bloody sense.”

He glared at Ron, eyes blazing despite the sweat beading on his forehead.

“What... did you think I was hiding something? That the moment we left, I’d suddenly pull out a treasure map with everything neatly laid out? Step one do this, step two do that, all the way up to job done?” Harry’s voice cracked with anger.

“Are you really that thick-headed?”

He wasn’t feeling well, hadn’t for days, but now adrenaline surged through him, burning hotter than the feverish fog clouding his head. His hands clenched at the edge of the table as he pushed himself to his feet, legs unsteady. Still, he stood tall, eyes bright with fury. In that moment, there was nothing of James in him. This... this was all Lily: fierce, sharp, unyielding.

“Ron…” Hermione’s voice was quiet, cautious. Both boys heard her, but neither acknowledged it.

“I just thought you had a bloody clue, Harry!” Ron snapped, rising to his feet as well. His face was flushed, jaw clenched. “Hermione and I - we both did!”

“Ron,” Hermione said again, louder this time, her tone sharper. “Take off the locket. You wouldn’t be talking like this if you weren’t wearing it.”

Ron’s hand hovered near the chain, but Harry cut in before anything else could be said.

“Yeah, he would,” Harry said coldly, eyes locked on Ron’s. “And before you say anything, Hermione — don’t act like I haven’t noticed. The whispering? The looks? Ever since we left Grimmauld Place, you two have been talking behind my back.”

Hermione’s lips parted in protest, but no sound came. Ron’s nostrils flared as he stared at Harry, something deep and splintered in his gaze.

The silence that followed was thunderous — thick with things said and unsaid, with the weight of fear, resentment, and too many days spent walking the line between trust and betrayal.

“Harry, we weren’t…”

“Don’t lie!” Ron shouted, rounding on Hermione. “You said it too — you were disappointed. You thought Harry had more to go on than—”

“Not like that, Ron!” Hermione cut in, her voice cracking. “I didn’t mean it like that, Harry.”

She turned to him, eyes glassy, desperate for him to believe her. “I didn’t.”

A heavy silence settled between them, thick as fog and twice as suffocating. Harry stared at her, chest heaving. For a moment, the weight of everything — the shouting, the months on the run, the endless uncertainty — pressed down hard enough to smother the fire in him. The rage gave way to the dull ache of exhaustion, his legs trembling beneath him.

But Ron wasn’t done. His anger had curdled now, distilled into something sharp and cold.

“And it’s not like anything’s getting better,” he muttered. “The sword is just one more impossible thing we have to find... like the Horcruxes weren’t bad enough. And meanwhile, Harry keeps getting sicker and sicker.”

Harry looked up, startled.

“Yeah, don’t think I haven’t noticed,” Ron went on, eyes narrowing. “You sneaking off to throw up when you think no one’s watching. You look like hell. Maybe it’s the stress. Or maybe — just maybe — it’s the guilt. From dragging us along on this mad, half-baked mission without even a real plan.”

“If it’s so bloody miserable,” Harry said, voice low, steady, “then why are you still here?”

It wasn’t a shout. It didn’t need to be.

Ron’s jaw tightened. “I’ve been asking myself that more and more lately.”

That last line landed like a blow.

For a few heartbeats, no one spoke. The tent, which had so long been their place of fragile safety, now felt unbearably small.

“Then go home.” Harry said, his voice on the edge of breaking but still firm. Harry needed both hands to now steady himself on his feet; staring down the first friend he had ever made and the widening chasm between them.

“You know what? That sounds like a brilliant idea - first one in months,” Ron snapped, his voice like a whipcrack in the suffocating quiet of the tent.

Hermione stood frozen between them, her eyes wide, darting from one to the other like she couldn’t quite believe how far this had spiraled — or how fast.

Ron took a step back, but his mouth kept moving, too full of anger to stop. “At least if I go, I’ll actually be able to think about my family without wondering if either of you gives a damn. Not that it matters. Your parents are safely out of the way—”

“That’s enough,” Harry said, low and dangerous.

But Ron didn’t stop. “It’s all right for the two of you, isn’t it? Your parents—”

“My parents are dead!” Harry roared, the cold fury in his voice cutting through the tent like ice.

“And mine could be headed the same way!” Ron shouted right back, eyes blazing. “Or do you not care about that either?”

“Then go!” Harry screamed. The tent shuddered with the force of it. “Go, you supreme git! If that’s how you feel, then just bloody GO!”

His chest was heaving, his skin clammy with sweat. The dizziness was coming back, quick and disorienting, but it was better than the ache building behind his ribs — the heartbreak of watching everything unravel, the sting of knowing this might actually be the end.

Ron turned toward the tent flap, fists clenched, shoulders trembling with rage.

Harry slammed his fist down on the table, sending a tin mug clattering to the floor. The impact jarred up his arm, but he barely noticed.

“Leave the Horcrux,” he said, voice like gravel.

Ron froze. For a long moment, he didn’t look back.

Then he reached up, yanked the chain from around his neck, and tossed it onto the table with a metallic clink.

“You know what your problem is, Harry?” Ron snapped, his voice tight with something raw and splintered. “You can’t stand not being the center of it all. Maybe if you stopped playing the bloody hero all the time, people wouldn’t have to keep sacrificing everything just to stay near you.”

Harry went still. That was it: the final straw.

“Get. Out,” he said, each word like a punch.

Ron didn’t respond to him. He turned to Hermione instead, jaw clenched.

“Well?” he demanded. “What about you?”

Hermione blinked, startled. “What?”

“Are you staying or coming?” he asked, more sharply this time. “You’ve been glued to his side this whole time. So what is it?”

Hermione looked like he’d hit her. Her mouth opened, but it took her a moment to find her voice. When she did, it was barely above a whisper.

“I’m staying,” she said, tears already welling. “We promised we would help Harry. We promised.”

Ron’s expression twisted — hurt, disbelief, something deeper he didn’t dare name.

“Right,” he said, bitterly. “You choose him. Got it.”

He didn’t wait for a reply. He turned on his heel and stormed out of the tent, the flap snapping closed behind him with a whip of cold air.

“Ron!” Hermione cried, chasing after him.

Harry stood frozen in the echo of their fight, the silence afterward somehow louder than the shouting had been.

The adrenaline drained from Harry’s body all at once, leaving him hollow. He sank heavily into his chair, too spent to think, too numb to feel anything with clarity. His limbs trembled with weakness—his head spun. For a moment, he thought he might pass out right then and there.

In the haze, his fingers drifted instinctively toward the locket on the table. They closed around the cold metal — unwelcome, yet strangely familiar. It should have repelled him. Instead, it steadied him.

With slow, deliberate movements, he slipped the chain over his head. The weight settled against his chest, and with it came an unnatural sense of calm. Whether it was the release of finally having it out with Ron, or something far more troubling — like the piece of Voldemort’s soul feeding off his pain — Harry didn’t question it. He couldn’t.

He barely managed to crawl to his bunk, dragging himself across the floor like someone ten times his age. Collapsing facedown, he turned onto his side just as the tent flap rustled open again.

Hermione stepped inside.

Her face was pale, drained of all color, her eyes blank with shock. She stood frozen for a moment before whispering, more to herself than anyone else, “He’s gone…”

Then she crossed the room in a daze and dropped into the nearest chair as if her body could no longer support her.

A beat passed. Then another. And her sobs began — quiet at first, but gaining strength with each breath she couldn’t quite catch.

Harry didn’t move. He couldn’t. The sound of her crying was the last thing he registered before his own exhaustion finally pulled him under, and everything went dark.

---

Hours passed, and morning crept in. Cold, gray, and damp. The air in the tent felt heavy, the kind that clung to your skin and made everything feel slower. Harry blinked against the dull light filtering through the canvas, his vision slowly sharpening as he stirred.

He pushed himself upright — but the moment he did, a wave of fatigue rolled through him. Sleep had come, yes, but it had offered no real rest. Just an empty drift through murky dreams and too many unspoken thoughts.

With a quiet sigh, he sank back down and stared up at the fabric ceiling.

Ron’s words still echoed, raw and jagged in his mind. They’d struck deep — not because they were true, but because some part of him feared they might be. Still, he told himself, none of this was fair. He had been honest with them from the beginning. If anything, he’d tried to talk them out of coming with him. He didn’t want followers. He never had.

He hated the title of “Chosen One.” Hated that people assumed it meant he had answers, a plan, some kind of purpose. All he had ever wanted was to be normal.

If Ron couldn’t see that — if he let his resentment and envy blind him — then maybe he never really understood Harry at all.

Still, the guilt clung to him like damp clothes. Because the truth was, Ron hadn’t said anything Harry hadn’t already thought in the darkest corners of his own mind.

But then, something shifted.

His thoughts were interrupted by the subtle realization that — for the first time in days — his stomach didn’t feel like it was actively revolting. The ever-present nausea had eased, replaced by something bordering on hunger.

Cautiously hopeful, he closed his eyes for a moment and let that small mercy settle in his chest.

The craving hit him suddenly: porridge.

Harry blinked at the thought, momentarily confused by the very notion of hunger; an unfamiliar sensation after weeks of nausea and fatigue. But he wasn’t about to question it. He wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Gathering himself, he sat up slowly and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He paused there, testing his balance. When the tent didn’t spin, he braced his hands against the mattress and pushed off, rising to his feet with cautious determination.

He moved gingerly toward what had become their makeshift eating area, passing Hermione along the way. She was curled in the same chair she’d collapsed into hours earlier, still wrapped in the posture of grief. Her face was pale in the morning light, and the skin beneath her eyes was red and swollen. The sight of her — worn down, hollowed out — was a harsh reminder of everything they’d lost the night before.

Ron was gone.

He hadn’t just left them: he had abandoned them.

Abandoned him. Again.

“Of course he did,” Harry muttered under his breath, the words bitter on his tongue.

This wasn’t a surprise. Not really. Ron always flinched when things got hard. When the pressure built, he cracked.

“It’s not the first time,” Harry said quietly, as he started preparing breakfast. He measured oats and water, pouring them into a small pot and setting it to heat with a flick of his wand. From the magical cold box, he retrieved the last of the milk and added a splash, then a bit of honey — more out of habit than appetite.

As the porridge simmered, Hermione stirred. She moaned softly, her eyes flying open, red-rimmed and disoriented. Her head danced from side to side, scanning the tent as though she half-expected—half-prayed—that the night before had been nothing more than a bad dream.

Harry didn’t speak. He kept his gaze fixed on the bowl in front of him, avoiding her eyes. Because in that moment, the truth settled in him like a stone in his chest:

The Golden Trio, what they had once been, was gone.

Splintered.

And no spell in the world could put them back together.

For the next several minutes, Harry focused mechanically on his oatmeal. He started with small, cautious spoonfuls, chewing slowly and waiting between bites to make sure his stomach wouldn’t revolt. When it didn’t — when, in fact, the warmth settled comfortably in his belly — he began eating more steadily, each bite faster than the last.

Across the tent, Hermione finally moved, shuffling over to the table with stiff, hollow steps. She sank into the chair opposite him, arms crossed tightly over her chest as a shiver ran through her.

“I can’t believe he did that,” she said numbly, her voice barely above a whisper.

Harry didn’t answer. Instead, he slid the second bowl toward her, still steaming. “Eat.”

It was easier than responding. Easier than picking at the wound again.

Silence fell between them once more, thick but not suffocating. Just quiet. Tired. They ate slowly, chewing through their meagre breakfast, each of them lost in thoughts that echoed off the same moment but spiraled in different directions.

When they’d both finished, Hermione stared at the empty bowls for a long time before speaking again.

“You ate.”

Harry gave a small shrug. “’Bout time.”

He finally looked up, meeting her eyes. “Thanks for staying,” he said, the words quiet but sincere. “I’m not sure I could do this without you.”

Hermione’s lips parted, like she was about to speak, but nothing came. After a moment, she just nodded, her expression soft and unreadable.

“I’m sorry,” Harry added, his voice almost inaudible.

She blinked, then shook her head gently. “It’s not your fault,” she said, and for once, they let that be enough.

“Anyway, it’s my turn for the locket,” Hermione said, her voice steady but tired. “We shouldn’t wear it for more than half a day… we can’t afford to let it get to us like that.”

She shifted in her chair and reached across the table, palm up, fingers open.

Harry nodded and instinctively raised both hands to lift the chain over his head. But as his right hand extended toward her to pass it over, something shifted.

Off.

Wrong.

He hesitated, still gripping the chain even as Hermione’s fingers closed gently around the locket, beginning to draw it toward her.

“Sorry,” he muttered, blinking rapidly. He gave his head a slight shake, trying to clear the sudden fog descending over him. “I—I don’t know why I haven’t let go.”

His emerald eyes flicked to the locket, then snapped up to meet hers—widened, startled, frozen.

“I suddenly don’t feel—”

The pain struck without warning.

A sharp gasp tore from his throat as he doubled over, clutching his stomach. His knees buckled, and he collapsed with a thud to the floor, vanishing from Hermione’s sight on the other side of the table.

“Harry!” she cried, already scrambling around to reach him.

He was curled on his side, arms wrapped tight around his midsection, face pale and contorted with agony.

The locket sat forgotten on the table, its chain tangled where it had fallen.

“Hermione…” he gasped, eyes wide and wild, his voice barely a breath.

“It hurts…” he whispered, the words thin and frayed with pain, his body tightening instinctively as he curled into the fetal position.

Hermione dropped to her knees beside him, panic rising like a wave.

“Harry — stay with me — what’s happening?” she begged, reaching for him with trembling hands.

“What’s wrong?” She inquired in a nervous fear as her eyes darted over his body, making sure that whatever was causing him pain wasn’t overtly obvious.

“M-my… stomach…” Harry gasped, teeth clenched against the pain.

It felt like something had detonated inside him: sharp, burning, relentless. He could do nothing but curl tighter into himself, focusing on each shallow breath as if it were the only thing keeping him conscious.

Beside him, Hermione was on her knees, her wand trembling as it swept over him. Her voice cracked with panic.

“I don’t know what I’m looking for!”

She launched into the diagnostic spells she’d drilled into herself over the summer, one after another, her voice growing increasingly desperate with each flick of her wand. The spells shimmered briefly, then faded — useless. Inconclusive. Frustratingly blank.

But now that the worst of the panic was ebbing, Hermione’s mind shifted gears with mechanical precision—snapping into problem-solving mode, even through the fear. She began to run through a mental list of the most likely culprits, categorizing symptoms, testing variables, seeking patterns.

“An ulcer,” she breathed, barely audible — even to herself.

Harry didn’t respond. He was too far inside the pain, too focused on keeping himself from vomiting or blacking out or both. But something about it was changing. Slowly. Almost imperceptibly, the unbearable pressure inside him was starting to… ease. Just slightly, just enough for him to breathe a little deeper.

Hermione cast the spell to check for an ulcer, holding her breath.

Nothing.

“Damn it!” she hissed, frustration flashing across her face as the results vanished into the air. The diagnosis was negative.

She was running out of spells... and ideas.

Just then, as Hermione observed Harry — his breathing gradually evening out, some of the pain easing from his features — an unexpected thought struck her.

“No,” she muttered quickly, shaking her head as if she could physically dislodge the idea before it took root. It was ridiculous. Impossible.

Or… was it?

The seconds ticked by in silence, and the thought refused to leave. The more she considered it, the harder it became to ignore. It was outrageous, yes—wild and improbable—but the longer she sat with it, the more it began to fit. The nausea. The fatigue. The shifting mood. The physical discomfort. All the strange, unexplainable symptoms Harry had been suffering through.

And technically… technically, it was possible.

Rare. Uncommon. Practically unheard of — but not outside the realm of magic.

Her hand trembled as she raised her wand, drawing a small, careful circle just above Harry’s abdomen. She hesitated, heart pounding in her throat. Then, in a whisper that barely reached her own ears, she spoke the incantation:

“Fetus revelio.”

A breath later, a soft, glowing blue mist curled upward from Harry’s stomach, swirling gently in the air.

Hermione gasped, her free hand flying to her mouth.

“Harry,” she said, her voice shaking. “You’re… you’re pregnant.”

I’m sure you can take a wild stab at who the father will be. Sorry not sorry. Yolo.

Chapter Text

Author’s Note: Reviews are appreciated!

Here is my disclaimer that I do not own anything Harry Potter related and what follows is merely for entertainment purposes. No money is being made. All credit goes to JK for the wonderful world of Harry Potter that she gifted us with. - just wish we didn't have to know her.

Harry Potter had faced many threats: dark lords, dragons, dementors, and Dolores Umbridge. But nothing — absolutely nothing — had prepared him for the words that had just left Hermione Granger’s lips.

“Harry, you’re pregnant.”

The sentence hung in the air like a badly cast Levicorpus. Harry blinked. His mouth opened slightly, as if to speak, then closed again. He repeated the action twice more, like a goldfish caught in a particularly distressing aquarium.

“What… but, Hermione – I’m not… I mean, I haven’t… how is this even possible?”

His voice had climbed an octave with every few syllables until it was practically in the range only certain magical bats could understand. He clutched the edge of the table for support as he sat up, his knuckles turning white. The shock numbing the pain.

Hermione, for her part, was wringing her hands, her brow furrowed into the sort of expression she only reserved for last-minute essay deadlines and magical catastrophes. She glanced down, almost as if his stomach might offer an explanation. Her voice was cautious, hesitant, like she was walking barefoot across shattered crystal.

“Well… there are rare magical circumstances. I mean, ancient texts do reference certain… anomalies. It’s possible in theory — very advanced, very obscure magical theory — that with enough residual magic and… extenuating circumstances, a male wizard’s body could adapt to penetration…”

She trailed off. The implication filled the silence like fog.

Harry’s eyes narrowed; the shock not quite erased but slowly transforming into something else: indignation. “Hermione,” he said flatly, “are you implying that I got myself pregnant?”

“I’m not implying anything!” she said quickly, hands raised. “I’m simply saying that magic is… unpredictable. Especially your magic - and the situations you find yourself in only add to that. You’ve survived a killing curse, Harry. You defended yourself against one hundred Dementors – I still have no idea how you managed that Patronus! And then fourth year -”

“That’s true,” Harry sighed, looking to stop Hermione early from recalling every strange and abnormal thing that had happened to him.

He looked down at his stomach, which now seemed more foreign than the time he’d polyjuiced into Gregory Goyle.

Then, gently, he pressed a hand against his lower abdomen. It was subtle, but there... he felt something. A warmth. A strange pull. Something that came from an unknowable place. Not dark. But deeply, impossibly personal.

The brightest witch of her age looked upon Harry’s stunned countenance with her own wonder, speckled in with a mild dash of annoyance at being interrupted mid-regurgitation of facts and knowledge.

But the scene blossoming before her erased those thoughts in their tracks.

Hermione watched, eyes softening. “Harry?”

“It’s real,” he whispered. “There’s really something there.”

She reached for his hands and cradled them within hers over his stomach.

His verdant green eyes turned upwards to her from where she knelt by his side, shinning with just as many emotions as was possible to feel all at once. And impossibly many to be able to name.

They sat in stunned silence for a minute. Harry not even able to entertain any ideas as to how any of this was even remotely possible – magic or no magic; his mind engrossed with the fact that he was, surprisingly, unexpectedly, going to be a dad.

While on a quest to rid the world of a madman. At seventeen.

Hermione, meanwhile, was battling a storm of emotions that threatened to spill over into this moment. Chief among them was the sting of Ron’s departure—the ache of abandonment, the bitterness of betrayal. The wound was still fresh from the night before, raw and unspoken. But even through the haze of hurt, she could acknowledge the strange sort of mercy in his absence now. Because this? This revelation, this impossibility growing in Harry’s life — Ron would not have handled it well. She knew that with bone-deep certainty.

If he hadn’t walked out yesterday, he would have walked out today. Of that, she was sure.

But she couldn’t let herself linger there — not in that shadowy corner of her mind where harder truths were waiting. Truths she had been carefully avoiding. Truths about Ron, and what their relationship had always been teetering on: his jealousy, his insecurity, his constant need to measure himself against the people who loved him. To admit that this ending had always been coming.

And worst of all… to admit that deep down, she wasn’t all that surprised.

Given all that, it was far easier to focus on the second, and more immediate concern. What would they do next?

Normally, Hermione Granger thrived on complex problems. Give her a thousand-year-old monster hiding in the plumbing? She would solve it. A timetable that required bending time itself just to squeeze in every elective? Sorted. Extra credit essays, logic puzzles, daily word games — she welcomed them all like old friends.

But this? This was unprecedented.

An unplanned pregnancy.
In the middle of a war.
While camping in the woods.
Hunting magical fragments of the most evil wizard in history.

And of all things — it was a male pregnancy.
An unexpected, inexplicable, male pregnancy.
Harry Potter’s pregnancy.

Hermione exhaled sharply through her nose, her breath catching on the edge of disbelief. Honestly, she should have known. This was Harry. The rules of reality didn’t seem to apply to him in quite the same way they did for everyone else. If someone was going to get pregnant on a Horcrux hunt, it was always going to be him.

Still, even that small moment of clarity did nothing to soften the sharp, gnawing question clawing at the back of her mind: How in the name of Merlin’s saggiest pants were they supposed to continue destroying Voldemort’s Horcruxes like this?

They were already exhausted. Out of ideas. Running on caffeine, adrenaline, and the fraying edges of friendship.

And now this.

No. She would not unravel. She couldn’t afford to. Her brain had been trained to survive this kind of chaos. Years of magical education, near-death experiences, and a daily regimen of impossible challenges had forged something steel-hard inside her.

“This is just another problem,” she murmured under her breath, voice steadying as she anchored herself in familiarity. “Like any other. Step one: gather all the information. Step two: form a hypothesis. Step three: test it.”

There. She could breathe again.

She folded her hands in her lap, fingers trembling just slightly. Then she turned to face him, gentling her expression.

“Harry,” she said softly, her tone caught somewhere between scholarly inquiry and deep personal concern. “I need you to think. Really think. Is there anything, anything at all, that might explain how this happened? Anything strange? Unusual? Physical? Magical? …Stupid?”

Her voice was calm, carefully measured, but Harry’s reaction was anything but. His entire body tensed as if she’d just aimed a wand at his heart. His eyes widened, pupils dilating in silent alarm, and she could see the telltale shimmer of panic beginning to gather.

Before the silence turned into a chasm between them, she hurried to fill it.

“I’m not judging you,” she said quickly, her voice softening into something soothing, maternal even. “You know I wouldn’t. I just… I need to understand, that’s all. Not because I doubt you either, but because I want to help.”

The air in the tent felt thick with unsaid things.

Harry’s voice, when it came, was thin and sharp-edged. “Honestly, Hermione, I swear—I haven’t done anything. Nothing that would explain… this.” He gestured vaguely toward his middle again, his fingers fluttering like confused birds before falling still.

He looked down again, gaze settling on his stomach like it was the most fascinating thing in the entire world. There was a beat of silence, a strange stillness. Then he slowly raised a hand and touched his abdomen — just barely, the brush of fingers that could have been checking for warmth, for life, for truth.

His shoulders dropped a fraction, and something else crept into his expression — still threaded with anxiety, but now laced with the wonder he had felt right before he had tensed over Hermione’s quest for the truth.

The corner of his mouth twitched slightly. His palm rested more firmly over his belly, like it belonged there.

Hermione tilted her head, watching him carefully. In that moment, she saw a flicker of something vulnerable and radiant pass over his face. Not fear. Not denial. But something like… acceptance.

Maybe even affection.

She had seen Harry in countless emotional states — furious, grieving, brave — but this was different. This was Harry letting himself care. Letting something small and impossible settle quietly into his chest.

Her thoughts, ever analytical, weren’t entirely silenced by the tenderness of the moment. Even as her heart warmed, part of her mind catalogued the facts. Harry had insisted nothing had happened. No romantic encounters. No… opportunities. And yet here they were.

And notably, he hadn’t said that a boy like him couldn't get pregnant. Just that he hadn’t done anything to make it happen.

It wasn’t a lie. But it left a trail of questions in its wake.

Still, Hermione didn’t push; not yet. There were more pressing concerns. And one thing was already unmistakably clear: whoever or whatever had caused this… Harry wasn’t walking away from it.

Not emotionally. Not physically. Not ever.

She knew Harry well enough to know that.

“Bloody hell,” Harry murmured. “I think I like it.”

“Of course you do,” Hermione said with a fond exasperation while sitting beside him. "You carry the world like it’s your responsibility alone. You always have. Plus, if self-sacrifice were a school subject, you’d have an Outstanding.”

Harry’s cheeks flushed pink, the tips of his ears betraying him before his expression did. But when he finally met Hermione’s eyes, there was no use pretending—she could see the faintest smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. That lopsided, sheepish grin of his that always meant: Yeah, okay, fair enough.

He didn’t even bother denying it.

“Do we have a book on this?” he asked instead, and it was so classically Harry—his way of admitting defeat with a sidestep and a grin.

Hermione’s face, bless it, briefly forgot how to be a face. For a moment, it twisted into an expression that seemed physically impossible, like her brain had split into two departments with entirely different reactions. The left half was clearly affronted — how dare he imply that she might not have already consulted the appropriate literature. The right side, however, was frozen in slack-jawed horror, because she hadn’t.

It was a rare event: Hermione Granger being caught off-guard by a missing book.

But the existential panic lasted less than a second. Her expression hardened into one Harry knew all too well: the look she got during exam week, or when there was a particularly elusive footnote that needed chasing across four library annexes and a restricted section. Her hands dove into her beaded mokeskin pouch like a seeker going after the Snitch.

She didn’t even have to say anything. The triumphant gleam in her eye said it all.

“Of course we do,” she declared, producing a hefty tome and holding it aloft like the sword of Gryffindor rising from the Sorting Hat.

Expecto Patronumbilical: A Witch and Wizard’s Guide to Magical Parenthood.

Harry blinked.

The title alone made him want to laugh, cry, and nap for a week.

“You just carry that around?” he asked, quirking a brow. “With the Horcrux maps and the tent and the infinite socks?”

Hermione shrugged with mock-nonchalance. “It was on sale.”

Harry let his head flop dramatically to one side. “Ah yes. The universal justification for every questionable purchase ever made.”

“And it’s not questionable if we end up needing it,” she replied primly, though the pleased little smile on her face betrayed how deeply satisfied she was by this unforeseen validation.

Strangely, it did explain everything. It was so Hermione it hurt.

Harry watched her settle in, flipping through the book with laser focus. Her lips moved silently as she skimmed headings and sections, muttering things like, “No, that’s for twins,” and “Oh, Merlin, that is a thing,” with a mixture of horror and awe.

Fifteen minutes passed in silence, broken only by the rustle of parchment and Hermione’s occasional gasp.

Meanwhile, Harry had drifted back into stillness, his hand unconsciously resting on the faint swell of his belly. It was barely there — just a soft roundness — but he could feel it. Not with magic. Not with certainty. But with something quieter. Something not quite able to be named.

He glanced at Hermione again, her brow furrowed in concentration, and let out a quiet breath.

“You’re really something else,” he murmured, mostly to himself.

“Hmm?” she replied, without looking up.

Harry shook his head fondly. “Nothing. Just… thanks for having a book.”

That earned him a quick, radiant smile. “Always,” she said, and went right back to scanning.

The section wasn’t long — just a few dense, scribbled pages nestled between two faded bookmarks — but by the time Hermione reached the end, she’d flagged several diagnostic spells that looked both promising and, more importantly, safe.

She exhaled slowly, steadying herself.

It was just magic. Just magic with astronomically high emotional stakes.

She lifted her eyes, ready to tell Harry what she had found.

But her voice caught in her throat before it could form words.

Harry was sitting quietly, unaware of her stare. His hands moved in slow, absent circles across his stomach—gentle, reverent, like he was smoothing parchment over a secret too sacred to speak aloud. There was no panic in his expression anymore. No fear. Just a soft, dawning awe — eyes wide, lips parted slightly — as if he was beginning to grasp, in his bones, that this was real.

Hermione’s chest tightened around her heart like a spell pulling taut. Not in fear. Not even worry.

But something quieter.

Something tender. Strange. Beautiful.

He looked... enchanted.

And in that moment, she didn’t see “The Chosen One” or “the boy with the scar” or even the de facto leader of their little rebellion.

She just saw Harry.

And her heart ached in the most peculiar, exquisite way.

This was Harry, through and through: the boy who had fought wars and loss and darkness, and still somehow had the capacity to love deeply, protect fiercely, and hope stubbornly. Whatever had brought them here, she could already see the bond forming. It glowed in his expression, subtle and unshakeable.

“Harry,” she said softly, her voice wrapping around his name like a blanket.

He looked up quickly, eyes bright. His cheeks flushed pink as he caught the knowing glint in hers.

“I, um…” he muttered, adjusting the way he held his hands. “Guess it’s starting to feel… to sink in.”

“It looks like it,” she said, the corner of her mouth twitching up.

Then her tone shifted, becoming a little more businesslike, though still warm.

“I won’t pretend I know what I’m doing,” she admitted. “We’ll need better books, and maybe… an actual Healer who specializes in this sort of thing — but I think I’ve found a few spells that might help us understand more. If you’re up for it.”

Harry nodded, his expression turning more serious. “I trust you, Hermione.”

And he did. Entirely.

“What kind of spells, Hermione?” Harry asked, sitting up straighter. His voice was calm, but there was a nervous undertone, like someone asking for the weather report while watching a tornado brew on the horizon. 

Hermione flipped through the magical text in her lap, pages rustling with academic urgency to show to Harry. “Well, there are a few that should be immediately useful,” she said, brows furrowing in thought. “Nothing too invasive. Just enough to give us some answers.”

Harry nodded once, lips pressed into a thin line. His green eyes, always so open, were now layered with a mix of curiosity and tightly-coiled tension.

“For starters,” Hermione continued, “I want to check the baby’s general health, and see how far along you are. That’s basic enough. But then…” She hesitated, her voice faltering ever so slightly.

Harry caught it. His brow lifted. “What is it?”

Hermione’s eyes met his, wide and careful. “Well,” she said, forcing her voice steady again, “there’s also the matter of finding out who the other parent is.”

Harry blinked. “Oh.” Yes, that would be important.

The simplicity of the word belied the thousand thoughts currently staging a mutiny inside his brain. His eyebrows arched in surprise, and then he scratched awkwardly at the back of his neck.

“There’s a spell for that?” he asked, trying for casual but failing spectacularly. For as bright as Harry was in some areas, he was an absolute dunderhead in others.

Hermione offered him a sympathetic smile. “There is. It’s traditionally used for establishing paternity or maternity in magical custody disputes… but it should still work in a case like this. I hope.”

Harry frowned slightly. “A case like this,” he repeated dryly. “You make it sound like I’m a walking Ministry file.”

“Harry,” she sighed, “I mean it’s magically… very rare. At least, I can’t recall any recent instances of male pregnancies. But I definitely remember one or two documented cases from History of Magic. But yes, there is a spell that can determine parentage. It won’t give us a memory or a full explanation of how it came to be, but it’ll tell us who… contributed.”

That did nothing to soothe the anxiety bubbling beneath Harry’s carefully neutral expression.

“And you think that’ll help us figure out how it happened?”

“It’ll give us a place to start,” Hermione said. “And honestly, it might help you remember something. If anything happened magically… or someone did alter a memory we would at least know where to start…”

Harry exhaled slowly. “Okay. That makes sense.”

His fingers drifted unconsciously to his stomach again. “I just hope it’s not someone ridiculous like Gilderoy Lockhart,” he muttered, half to himself.

Hermione snorted. “Highly unlikely. Then you would definitely be showing signs of memory loss.”

Harry stared at her.

“Oh,” she added quickly, “Right. Bad joke.”

Shaking that thought from his mind, it was now Harry’s turn to approach the situation head on like any true Gryffindor would and just get on with it. Though, his first priority was making sure the baby, his baby, was first and foremost healthy.

“I want to know that the baby is okay, first. That seems like the most important thing.”

Hermione steadied her wand and nodded, before doing another small wave over Harry’s stomach.

“Fetus salutem!” She couldn’t keep all of the emotion out of her voice.

What if the baby was sick or ill?

A few seconds later though and she relaxed.       

“It’s healthy, Harry.”

Hermione’s voice trembled on the edges of relief. A smile — genuine and bright — broke through the worry on her face. Harry let out a breath so long and shaky, it felt like it had been hiding in his chest for weeks.

“Thank Merlin,” he whispered, eyes damp. His hands pressed instinctively tighter over the non-bump of his stomach, cradling it protectively. “I didn’t know how much I needed to hear that until now.”

Hermione didn’t say anything, just offered a quiet nod and flipped the page in her book.

“Okay,” she said after a moment, adjusting her grip on her wand. “Next spell — let’s see how far along you are. This one should be simple.”

Harry nodded. He was still riding the emotional wave from the first spell, but he steadied himself and braced for the next twist in their ever-expanding reality.

Hermione traced her wand in a wide semicircle, then flicked downward with practiced precision. “Fetus tempus!”

A soft golden aura shimmered into existence above Harry’s abdomen, rotating like the hands of a slow, magical clock. Numbers glowed, rearranged themselves, and eventually faded into a singular result.

Hermione squinted, calculating silently.

“You’re… just shy of three months,” she said finally, the answer landing heavily in the space between them. “Which would put conception sometime around your birthday.”

Harry blinked. “Well. That’s one hell of a birthday gift.”

Hermione didn’t laugh. She was watching him closely now, her expression morphing from analytical to piercing. “Harry,” she said slowly, “is there anything about that time that might—”

“No,” he said before she could finish. “I mean, not unless someone wiped my memory, and I highly doubt I’d forget something like — this naturally.” He gestured vaguely at himself again.

Hermione pressed her lips together. “Well, we can explore the memory angle later. But it’s strange. You were either at the Dursley's, still under the protection charm, or already with us at the Burrow.”

“Nothing happened at either place,” Harry said, voice firm. “Unless I got knocked up while being a passenger in Hagrid’s motor bike as we went from one to the other.”

Hermione gave a dry huff. “Unlikely.”

Harry rubbed at his temples, equal parts overwhelmed and sarcastic. “Right, brilliant. What’s next? Gender reveal? Baby names? Picking out paint samples for the nursery room?”

Hermione gave him a look — equal parts amusement and seriously?

He sighed, one hand lifting in surrender. “Alright, alright. Let’s get on with it.”

Then, more quietly, more seriously: “Let’s figure out who the other parent is.”

Hermione nodded, clearing her throat. “Right. Here we go."

She stood up straighter, took a deep breath, and traced two looping figure eights over his stomach. With a final flick upward, her voice rang out:

“Fetus parens revelio!”

A quiet hum filled the tent. From Harry’s abdomen, a tendril of green-gold light unfurled, curling upward like a vine reaching for sunlight. After about a foot, it split in two.

One strand arced to the right, forming a ghostly projection of Harry’s face. He watched it without surprise — after all, one parent was a given. Or they had much bigger problems to contend with.

But then the second tendril began to coalesce.

Harry’s breath caught in his throat.

The air grew heavy, thick, with something darker and more ancient than the magic they’d just invoked.

A second image flickered into existence beside his own.

Pale skin. Cold eyes. High cheekbones. A lipless mouth. And that unmistakable aura of terrible, terrible power.

Hermione staggered back.

“Impossible,” she gasped, voice barely audible.

Harry stared, his entire body numb, as the spectral form solidified in shimmering light beside his own.

“Voldemort…” he whispered, the name falling from his lips like a curse.

The image hovered for a moment, two faces glowing side by side, then dissolved into the air with a final pulse of light.

Silence.

Hermione’s lips parted, but no sound came out. Her brain — brilliant and usually unstoppable — had short-circuited under the sheer absurdity of what they’d just witnessed.

“Do you think it’s a magical glitch?” Harry asked, his voice oddly calm. “Maybe it got confused. Like we were asking it a different question?”

“Harry,” Hermione said weakly, “I don’t think even magic could ever be that confused.”

They stared at each other for a long, breathless moment.

Then — snap.

The sharp crack of a twig outside the tent shattered the silence like glass.

Both of them whirled toward the sound. Shadows flitted beyond the enchanted canvas. Movement. Voices. Spells just beyond the barrier.

“Harry—” Hermione hissed.

“I know.”

Wands drawn, adrenaline replacing disbelief, they rushed into position.

Because apparently discovering Voldemort was your magical co-parent was not the most dramatic thing that would happen that day.

Thanks for reading. Reviews are helpful but not required.

Chapter Text

AN1: I am going to try to shoot for updates every Friday. 

AN2: May 2025 edit. updates every Friday the author said. as if I didn't fall off the face of the Earth for 5 fucking years.

JK owns everything. Including being a TERF

Harry’s breath caught as his eyes locked on the shadows slipping like wraiths across the outside of the enchanted tent. The flickering light from their small magical fire cast long, jagged silhouettes — twisted, misshapen, and entirely too human.

These weren’t friendly visitors. These weren’t lost travelers or even misguided Ministry patrols.

These were hunters.

And they had found their prey.

Hermione’s eyes met his at once. They didn’t speak; there was no need. Neither of them was foolish or sentimental enough to believe, even for a heartbeat, that Ron had come back to them. The boy who had stormed out into the night wasn't likely to return flanked by half-visible wizards and the faint scent of dark magic.

These were Snatchers.

Mercenary witches and wizards, paid in gold and status by Voldemort’s regime to hunt the undesirables: Muggleborns, half-bloods, blood-traitors. People who refused to bow to a blood-drenched version of purity. People like Hermione. People like him.

And unfortunately for the pair the Snatchers had stumbled upon a prize even their darkest dreams couldn’t have conjured: Harry Potter and Hermione Granger. Undesirables Numbers One and Two. The top of the Most Wanted list, gift-wrapped under enchanted canvas and delivered by the very Taboo Curse that few dared invoke.

Harry’s pulse thundered in his ears.

They were outnumbered. Cornered. Exposed.

They had maybe ten seconds and they both knew what time it was: Contingency Plan Number Three.

Hermione acted first. Her wand was aimed faster than most duelists could blink, pointed straight at the table they had eaten at only an hour before.

“Wingardium Leviosa!” she commanded, and her voice didn’t waver.

The table launched into the air, suspended above their heads like an unbalanced umbrella. She jerked her wand left, tilting the wooden slab on its side, then brought her left hand up behind her wand and slammed it forward in a sharp, practiced motion.

The table rocketed toward the tent’s opening and wedged itself like a battering ram in reverse — legs protruding awkwardly through the flap, blocking the entrance just enough to cause chaos for anyone trying to force their way in.

It would buy them five additional seconds. Maybe six.

Harry, meanwhile, had not been idle.

The moment the table launched into the air, he had already whipped his wand toward the Horcrux, the cold weight of the Locket halfway off the table’s edge.

“Accio Locket!” was already trailing from his lips.

The chain snapped up and flew into his outstretched hand like a loyal falcon returning to its perch. The roar of the battle surged around him, but beneath the chaos, a strange warmth bloomed in his stomach — steady, unexpected, almost comforting. Harry, so focused on surviving, barely even recognized it as he whipped his wand again.

“Accio Hermione’s bag!”

The bag — their lifeline — shot across the tent. Harry dropped his wand into his lap just long enough to snatch it mid-air. In one swift, practiced motion, he shoved the Locket and the pregnancy book inside, grabbed his wand again, and whispered an advanced transfiguration spell.

The bag shimmered, contorted, and collapsed into a silver ring; one he slid quickly onto his right hand.

Everything they had, everything they needed;, was now in that ring. Out of sight, out of reach.

Behind him, Hermione had taken cover by the rear corner of the tent, lashing spell after spell toward the front as the first blasts of magic ricocheted through the canvas. The table cracked in two, fragments flying like splinters. The air filled with acrid smoke and the coppery taste of magic at war.

They were outnumbered. Ten to two, by Harry’s count. The spells came fast, from all angles. Curses, jinxes, hexes, more curses. The inside of the tent lit up with flashes of red and orange and blue.

Harry gritted his teeth and tried to ignore the way his stomach twisted—part from fear, part from the persistent nausea that had been with him for weeks. He rose to one knee, wand out, deflecting a hex and returning fire with a wordless burst of golden light.

He took down one. Maybe two.

But then—

“Stupefy!”

The voice was guttural, snarling. Harry turned, wand raised too late.

The red bolt hit him dead in the chest.

Time folded. The floor rose up. And then—nothing.

Hermione screamed as she saw Harry drop.

“Protego Maxima!” she cried, advancing towards him while blocking the incoming barrage. Her shield flared, taking the brunt of two curses, but she kept going. Her eyes darted to Harry’s body — still breathing, thank Merlin — but limp, crumpled on the floor.

She aimed her wand at his head. She knew she wouldn't be able to fight them off; now was all about damage control

“Sting—!”

Pain.

A blast hit her in the side mid-incantation. Her legs gave out. Her breath escaped in a shocked gasp.

Darkness rose.

Fenrir Greyback stood over them both, his filthy boots grinding ash and wood beneath them. He sniffed once, deeply, as if savoring the scent of victory.

“Well, well,” he said, a feral grin spreading like oil across his face. “Ain’t this just bloody poetic?”

He turned toward the others who now stood cautiously around him — Snatchers of every kind, eager and twitching with anticipation.

“You lot know who this is?” he asked, nudging Harry with the toe of his boot.

“Looks like the Potter boy,” one muttered.

“No ‘looks like’ about it,” Greyback said with a chuckle. “That scar’s real enough.”

“And the girl — Granger.”

“Mudblood and Boy Wonder,” Greyback said, licking his lips. “Oh, we’ve hit the jackpot, lads.”

The others began to laugh: hoarse, hungry, disbelieving in their luck.

Greyback raised his arms like a conductor before an orchestra of filth.

“Change of plans,” he drawled. “We ain’t turning this lot in for coins.”

The others stared at him, confused.

“We’re takin’ ‘em straight to Malfoy Manor.”

There was a single, stunned heartbeat of silence. Then , chaos. Jeers erupted, triumphant cheers echoing inside the tent as spells flew like arrows. Thick, glowing ropes snapped through the air, coiling around Harry and Hermione’s limp bodies, binding them with a magic that pulsed darkly with intent. Their wands collected separately.

Greyback crouched beside Harry’s unconscious form, his breath rancid and eager as he sneered, “Don’t worry, Potter. You’ll be seeing the Dark Lord very soon.

He laughed, wild and high-pitched, as the pops of Apparition echoed like firecrackers through the trees.

And then the clearing was silent.

The tent, torn and smoking, stood empty in the late morning sun.

The ring on Harry’s finger still pulsed softly with magic. It hadn't been taken but it soon became silent, waiting.

Harry’s eyes fluttered open, and for one blissful ignorant second, he felt weightless - untethered from memory, pain, or place. That moment passed quickly, almost as fast as Ron could run from responsibility.

The room around him was vast and cold, wrapped in shadowed wood paneling and lit by flickering sconces that cast long, restless silhouettes along the walls. The air was thick — heavy with the stench of old power, rotting spells, and something darker still. A cold, crawling recognition settled over him like fog creeping into bone.

Malfoy Manor. He didn’t need to be told.

And at the far end of the room, wreathed in flame and madness, stood a silhouette that could have belonged to no one else. Even in shadow, even in stillness, he knew the tilt of her head, the glint in her eyes — wide, unhinged, delighted.

Bellatrix Lestrange.

“Bellatrix,” Harry spat, his voice a low snarl of loathing.

He jerked instinctively, trying to launch himself at her, to tear her apart with nothing but rage. But his body refused to obey. His arms were stretched wide, angled above his head, wrists shackled by invisible and magical bonds. His legs were similarly spread, fastened firmly to the cold stone floor.

Panic surged through him like a crashing wave, sharp and breath-stealing, but it receded almost as quickly. Not because the situation was any less dire, but because his mind, honed by too many years of danger, was already threading the facts together. It was instinct; survival. The same reflex that had carried him through graveyards, basilisk dens, and battlefields.

The Snatchers. The ambush. The stunners. The pregnancy.

They’d been caught.

And now they were here. With her.

He scanned the room with mounting dread — and there, not far off, suspended in a similar position, was Hermione. Her head hung forward, a trickle of blood dried on her temple, her eyes slowly blinking open.

Harry's chest tightened at the sight of her. She looked pale and disoriented, but alive. That alone was enough to root him, to steady the whirlwind in his mind.

“Harry?” she whispered, voice small and trembling.

“I’m here,” he answered quietly. His voice, though soft, held an anchor’s weight.

Bellatrix’s voice invaded the tender moment like a blade dipped in poison.

“Oh, how precious,” she purred. “A reunion. Shall I give you two a minute to say your goodbyes?”

She stepped closer, her heeled boots clicking menacingly on the floor. She was dressed in leather — tight, glistening, and unapologetically sinister — the fringes of her cloak dancing like smoke as she twirled her wand through fingers that looked far too elegant for the cruelty they delivered.

Bellatrix Lestrange looked like a portrait of aristocratic decay — a woman born into power and nobility, bathed in madness, and utterly convinced of her divine right to hurt people that were beneath her and her Lord.

“Still hanging around, are we?” she teased with a cruel grin. “How utterly… predictable.”

Harry didn’t flinch. He’d dealt with her before. He knew her love for theatrics, her hunger for fear. But something in him had changed. He wasn’t just Harry Potter anymore. He wasn’t even just the Chosen One.

He was something else now. Something more.

He was a father. Or at least he could be – if they could survive.

At that thought, a strange, steady fire sparked in his chest. Protective. Primal.

Bellatrix cocked her head and smiled, the kind of smile that preceded torment.

“I must admit, I didn’t expect to have such delightful company tonight,” she said, sauntering closer. “The little lion cub and his Mudblood friend. Oh, what stories we’ll make.”

Her wand was vibrating in anticipation. Blood red sparks were shooting out the end.

If there was ever a time for one of his last-minute, brazen, and half-cocked plans to save his ass now was the time.

Time was slipping away like sand through clenched fingers. Every second that passed without a plan was another nail in their proverbial coffin. Harry could feel it—the encroaching doom, the oppressive certainty that survival was rapidly becoming a fantasy.

Escape? That was a pipe dream at best. But delaying death? That, that he could work with.

Harry Potter had never been one to go quietly. He had stood against Voldemort as a child, again as a teenager, and now as a young man tethered by magic in a Death Eater stronghold. He wasn’t ready to die. Not now. Not when there was more than his own life at stake.

Because now he had something that Voldemort couldn’t possibly understand — something apart from himself that wasn’t just worth dying for, but worth surviving for. Living for.

His child.

Their child.

It didn’t matter how absurd it sounded. Whether or not the father was the dark wizard who had killed his parents and tried to murder him countless times was beside the point. The life growing inside him was innocent, fragile, and his.

And he would take on the world to keep that child safe.

With a slow breath, Harry let the fear dissolve and allowed clarity to flood in. He needed a plan. Not one built from emotion, but calculation. Strategy.

It had to be Slytherin-level cunning, and for once, he was more than ready to embrace that side of himself.

If it worked? Brilliant. If not... well, there was always the Gryffindor approach—scream defiance and go out swinging and try and take out as many of those bastards with him.

Or, as a last resort, he could try invoking that ancient magic his mother had once wielded. Love. Protection. Something older than curses and wands. But he had to exhaust every other option first. He didn’t want to cause anyone to feel as abandoned as he once had been, growing up in a forgotten cupboard. But, if that was the only option then so be it.

Harry's eyes flicked open. The plan had taken shape. Time to act.

He tilted his chin up and smirked with cool arrogance — the kind that would stay Bella's wand and buy them time. He hoped.

"Hello, Bella," he said airily, his voice coated in faux sophistication. “Still playing dress-up in Mummy’s wardrobe, are we?”

Bellatrix’s head snapped toward him, curiosity gleaming in her mad eyes. She tilted her head like a predator hearing the rustle of prey in the underbrush.

“Oho,” she purred. “Wittle Potty wants to play.”

Harry smirked wider, though his muscles burned from restraint. He could feel Hermione tense beside him, her wide eyes imploring him to stop, to not provoke the lunatic further. But he gave her a small shake of his head. Trust me.

“I know something you don’t know,” he said, his voice lilting with teasing menace.

Hermione’s expression turned ashen, horrified.

Bellatrix, however, looked delighted.

“Ooooh, a secret?” she cooed. “How delicious. Tell Aunty Bella, little boy. Or shall I carve it from your ribs?”

She stepped closer, wand spinning lazily between her fingers. Harry could see the hunger in her—the itch to inflict pain, to draw screams. But that same hunger also made her reckless. Curious. Open to distraction.

Perfect.

“And what,” she crooned, “does the baby lion think he knows?”

She took another step forward and casually brought her wand to Hermione’s cheek, tracing it with a cruel slowness.

Hermione flinched, and tears began trailing silently down her face. But Harry didn’t flinch. He couldn’t.

“Ah, ah, ah,” he chided, his voice like velvet and venom. “You might want to reconsider. I'm not entirely sure your master would approve.”

Bellatrix blinked, surprised by the confidence in his tone.

“I’m warning you,” Harry continued, calm and calculating. “Touch her again, and the Dark Lord may not be so forgiving.”

Bellatrix let out a shriek of crazy. “You dare speak his name?! His name doesn’t deserve to pass your lips!”

“Yes, yes, Bella,” Harry sighed, “but let’s not pretend we both don’t know how he gets when someone damages what he considers his.”

Her sneer faltered.

Harry saw it then — that flicker in her eyes. Hesitation. Dread.

She thinks I know about the Horcruxes.

He didn’t need to say it aloud. The implication was enough. She knew her master’s secrets were precious. Lethal, even, to those who betrayed them.

Maybe she'd helped him protect one. Like Lucius had. Maybe she’d even seen what happened to Regulus. Whatever it was, the thought alone had her twisted mind stuttering with conflict.

She glided toward him, slowly, her wand now pressed against his cheek. Her eyes bore into his like she could pry the knowledge from his skull.

“What do you know?” she hissed. “What do you know?!”

Harry's lips twitched – his plan was working better than he could have hoped. "Wouldn’t you like to know?"

She snarled and looked moments from unleashing a Crucio when he added, coolly, “He might just kill you for asking.”

She stilled.

Harry held his breath. The tension in the room crackled. He could feel it in his teeth.

That was the line. The threshold.

And he'd just dragged her to the edge of it.

Maybe he had pushed too far. Shit.

For a moment, she did nothing. Then — just as her eyes darkened and she raised her wand with unmistakable intent — a voice sliced through the room.

“Bella.”

It was barely more than a breath, but it rang louder than any shout.

Harry turned his head, swallowing his relief.

There he was.

Lord Voldemort. Somehow, some way, the father of his child. 

He stepped through the far doorway like a shadow given shape, gliding forward, every step soundless and terrifying. The room dropped in temperature. Hermione gave a quiet gasp of horror, while Harry fought to keep his breathing steady.

His plan had just succeeded in staying Bella’s wand from torture, barely, until he came but now that he was here Harry began to doubt his plan.

But the Gryffindor in him quickly swatted that thought away; no, he couldn’t afford to lose sight of what he was trying to do. Of what was at stake.

He gathered himself.

Behind him slithered Nagini, her tongue tasting the air, her eyes fixed on the captives like she was choosing which limb to devour first.

Bellatrix immediately fell to her knees.

“My Lord—”

“I heard,” Voldemort said, voice like glass slicing through silk. “Everything.”

Harry could feel the magic pulsing from him. It was overwhelming, suffocating. It pressed against the room like a fist, daring anyone to breathe without permission.

He approached, eyes locked on Harry, who raised his head high despite the restraints. He had never been one to be pushed into submission.

“The Boy Who Lived,” Voldemort said, almost musingly. “Still playing games.”

Harry smiled thinly.

“Just trying to keep things interesting, Tom.”

Bellatrix flinched, but Voldemort only quirked a brow.

“You seem... different, Harry.”

Harry didn’t blink. “Fatherhood does that to a person.”

Harry quickly glanced downward at his belly and then returned to stare pointedly at the other man.

A silence fell so heavy it nearly broke the floor.

Even Nagini paused in her sampling the aromas of her soon-to-be-dinner.

Bellatrix’s mouth opened, but no sound came. Then suddenly, like a dam bursting, she erupted into shrieking laughter.

“Oh, My Lord! Potter’s gone mad! He thinks... he thinks he’s pregnant! As if magic would bring a bastard of his into this world.”

Lucius chuckled darkly. Narcissa frowned but said nothing; her eyes flicking over the boy’s form with thoughtful curiosity. Her, out of all of them, knew the ways of old magic best.

Voldemort, however, merely regarded Harry with unreadable eyes.

Harry leaned forward as best he could, letting the next words land like thunder.

“How rude, Bella. Is that any way to speak about your Lord’s heir?”

Bellatrix froze.

Voldemort’s eyes flickered — just a hint. But Harry saw it. Doubt. Confusion. A crack.

He drove the point home.

“Congratulations, Tom,” Harry said, voice razor-sharp. “You're going to be a father.”

Reviews are appreciated. Hope that was satisfying. Next chapter will be the fallout from that little announcement. Thanks for reading!

Chapter Text

AN: I don't know why but i really like this chapter. 

JK owns EVERYTHING! Including her inability to win an internet fight against a twelve year old.

Voldemort did not move.

He did not blink. He didn't even breathe.

His red eyes, glowing like coals banked under ash, locked on Harry’s, burning into him. They weren’t merely looking; they were dissecting. Measuring. Analyzing each syllable of Harry’s words like a surgeon pulling apart a patient still awake on the table. He was calculating, probing, sifting through the impossible declaration that had just shattered the equilibrium of the room. No, the world. 

"Congratulations, Tom. You’re going to be a father."

The words echoed still, like a sacrilegious chant inside the ballroom’s decorated but hollow heart.

No triumphant sneer curved the Dark Lord’s lips. No immediate lash of fury cut through the air. No smirk. No derision. Just a stillness more terrifying than rage. It was the stillness of a predator confronted with something it didn’t understand. Something that wasn't the easy target it had expected. Something that could even be threatening to it. 

For once, the emotion that flickered behind those crimson eyes wasn’t fear of defeat, nor of prophecy, nor of death. It was the rare, raw, unspoken horror of complication. A future not written by his hand. A variable he hadn’t accounted for, again. It was not something he could destroy without consequence. He wouldn't, couldn't risk that again.

And then, predictably — like a thunderclap chasing lightning — Bellatrix Lestrange exploded.

“HOW DARE YOU?!”

Her voice was a jagged shriek that lacerated the air, clawing down the columns, vibrating off every gilded surface of Malfoy Manor’s ballroom. A wail of fury and heartbreak and madness intermingled, too sharp to contain.

She surged forward, every inch of her body trembling like a struck tuning fork. Her features contorted, eyes blown wide in disbelief and rabid betrayal. Hair flared wildly around her face, and her wand shot up with such sudden force it was like a lightning strike made flesh — swift, instinctive, undeniable.

“You filthy, lying, disgusting half-blood! YOU DARE?! You dare claim such a thing? That YOU would be chosen? That HE would ever allow YOU to bear his heir?!”

The word... heir... was spit from her mouth as though it burned her throat. A blasphemy. A desecration.

“This, this is mockery! This is sacrilege! You are nothing! NOTHING!” she howled, every syllable twisted with pain.

To her, it wasn’t merely an insult. It was a betrayal of faith. Bellatrix, who had worshipped at Voldemort’s altar with the devotion of a fanatic, who had spent long years suffering in Azkaban - the last of her sanity washed away - could not fathom being passed over. And certainly not for Harry Potter. A Halfblood.

The look on her face was cracked glass — splintering with rage and disbelief, pieces of her insanity sloughing off like wet plaster.

And then she moved.

Her wand was a blur. Her entire body tensed with dark magic so black the air tasted metallic. Her lips curled around an incantation not taught in any school—something crueler than death, more intimate than pain. She didn’t want to just kill Harry.

She wanted to erase him.

Unmake him.

Rip him from time and memory and womb alike.

Hermione’s breath caught, a soundless scream frozen in her throat. She tugged desperately at her own bindings, but they held firm.

Harry barely had time to inhale, to process the madness in Bellatrix’s eyes before—

“Bella.”

One word.

Quiet. Cold. Precise.

And it landed with the impact of a thunderclap.

Voldemort’s voice did not need to rise. It didn’t need to echo. It slithered through the silence like a knife sliding between ribs.

And the effect was immediate - as if it had carried magic too.

Bellatrix halted mid-spell, her wand still lifted, the spell half-born and twitching at the tip like an insect on the verge of flight. Her arm jerked violently as Voldemort’s pale hand shot out and closed around her wrist like steel wrapped in silk.

Her wand sparked uselessly.

Time seemed to fracture.

Her eyes, once gleaming with rage, turned toward her beloved lord, her god; frantic, broken, desperate.

“My Lord!” she gasped. “He lies! He’s poisoned you, he’s trying to take what is yours, what should have been mine!”

But Voldemort did not respond.

He didn’t even look at her.

His gaze remained fixed on Harry.

There was something profoundly wrong in his stillness. Something cold and calculating — his mind churning behind that expressionless mask. Bellatrix may have been screaming beside him, falling to her knees, trembling like a mad priestess who had seen her god bless a rival — but to Voldemort, she may as well have ceased to exist.

Because the impossible was unfolding before his eyes.

And the boy bound in front of him had just upended the world. His world. Again.

Voldemort stepped forward, slow and gliding, the hem of his dark robes whispering against the marble floor like shadow given voice. Every eye in the room followed him, but no one dared to breathe. He moved with that same uncanny grace he always had, but now—there was a different weight in it. Not anger. Not certainty.

Curiosity. Dreadful, lethal curiosity.

Harry, bound still by the enchanted chains that scraped at his skin and burned with lingering magic, watched him approach with rigid tension. His body refused to flinch, but his heart pounded in his throat, matching every beat with the unspoken hope that maybe—maybe—this moment would pass without violence. That the baby would be spared if he could play this right.

Then the wand rose.

Voldemort’s wand.

It hovered for a second—pointed directly at Harry’s stomach. And Harry’s breath caught. His mouth parted, but no words came.

“Fetus revelio,” Voldemort intoned, softly. Almost reverently.

The words were a whisper, but they reverberated with the weight of prophecy.

From the tip of his wand, a tendril of pale, silvery light unspooled — thin and curling like smoke from a dying fire. It drifted through the air toward Harry and wrapped itself gently around his abdomen. A hush fell over the room as the light began to shimmer, intensify, and—suddenly— it coalesced.

There, suspended in midair, was the ghostly silhouette of a fetus.

Small. Fragile. Glowing faintly, like the sun seen through thick fog.

Its limbs curled close to its body, its shape unmistakable. A new life, hovering in limbo.

The silence was no longer merely tense. It had transformed into something sacred. Terrifying in its vulnerability.

Hermione let out a soft, strangled sob. She turned her face away, tears streaming silently as her body trembled with too many emotions at once: fear, wonder, protectiveness, disbelief.

Narcissa clutched her husband’s arm as though anchoring herself to reality. Her lips moved soundlessly, a prayer or a plea or a denial caught between thought and voice.

Lucius looked as if he’d seen the specter of Death himself. His normally composed aristocratic features drained of blood, his hands curling into fists he couldn’t unclench.

Voldemort stared.

And then, softly, like a sharp blade sliding into silk:

“Parens revelio.”

The fetus shimmered. The light around it fractured — then fractured again — before reforming into two glowing streams that spread outward.

To the left: a translucent likeness of Harry’s face.

And to the right—

The unmistakable contours of Lord Voldemort himself.

The moment shattered like a mirror struck by a hammer.

A collective gasp thundered through the room, rippling outward like magical shockwaves. The sconces flared and then dimmed, and the walls themselves seemed to shrink back, as if Malfoy Manor had the good sense to be afraid.

The Dark Lord’s wand didn’t lower. His lips parted slightly. He made no sound, but his stillness was louder than any curse could have been.

This wasn’t fury. It wasn’t outrage. It wasn’t even confusion anymore.

It was realization. It was recognition.

He, Lord Voldemort — Heir of Slytherin, master of death, slayer of families, attempted breaker of prophecy — was, apparently, going to be a father.

The horror of that truth didn’t lie in the child itself, but in everything it represented. Vulnerability. Connection. Legacy. Something beyond control.

Nagini, sensing the shift in her master, hissed low and slow from this side, her coils tightening protectively. She tasted the air with her tongue and watched the unborn image hang before them.

And still, Voldemort said nothing.

Harry felt something cold settle in his chest. It wasn’t dread; not exactly.

It was certainty.

He believes it; understands it, Harry thought, watching Voldemort’s expression transform.

Harry could work with this - he had to, for the child to have any hope for a future at all.

His brows inched slowly towards each other, his plans adapting.

“How is this possible?” Lucius pierced the silence, barely audible, and yet could have been heard from miles away. He looked dazed, his voice brittle. “What kind of sorcery… what spell could possibly—?”

“It’s a lie!” Bellatrix snapped, her voice cracking like brittle bone. She pushed to her feet, trembling with indignation. Her curls were wild, her lips twisted a snarl. “It’s a trick! He’s defiling you, my Lord—mocking you! He wants to poison your bloodline with his filth!”

She turned toward Harry again, rage sparking like wildfire in her eyes. “It’s not real! It can’t be! This… this thing inside him — it’s nothing but a conjuration! A cursed illusion!”

“Silence,” Voldemort murmured.

He still hadn’t moved.

Bellatrix froze mid-breath. Her eyes darted between the glowing image of the fetus and her master’s expression.

“My Lord… please…” she whispered, almost childlike.

He blinked.

Then, suddenly — without flourish, without warning — he moved.

A flick of his wand.

Three spells.

Barely visible. Barely audible.

And then:

Bellatrix crumpled.

Lucius followed.

Narcissa was the last to fall, her knees folding with a rustle of fine robes before her body hit the polished floor.

There was no scream. No protest. Just the soft, dull thud of unconscious bodies collapsing beneath the weight of silence.

Harry’s breath hitched.

He stared at the trio sprawled across the floor.

Then at Voldemort.

And then back at the faintly glowing image of their child.

There were only four left now.

Harry.

Hermione.

Nagini.

And Voldemort.

The Dark Lord finally looked back at Harry.

And in that moment, the world seemed to balance precariously between life and death.

“Explain.”

The word snapped from Voldemort’s mouth like a lash—precise, sharp, and suffocating in its expectation.

It wasn’t shouted though. It didn’t need to be.

It carved through the air with all the menace of a killing curse and settled heavy in Harry’s chest, sinking straight through muscle and bone to wrap icy fingers around his spine.

Harry’s head lifted slowly, as though pushing against the weight of a thousand invisible hands. His throat was raw, voice little more than gravel.

It was now or never.

“I… I don’t know,” he said hoarsely, his tongue thick in his mouth. “I didn’t do this on purpose. I didn’t ask for any of it.”

He drew a shallow breath, then met those scarlet eyes without flinching. “But it’s real.”

The Dark Lord didn’t move. His wand remained poised in the air, but his gaze sharpened, narrowed—scouring every word Harry spoke like a truth-seeking hex.

He was dissecting Harry with his eyes, peeling him open with silence.

“And?” Voldemort asked softly, dangerously. The quiet was worse than rage.

Harry swallowed. His throat bobbed.

He had begun to draw magic into himself, slowly and unbeknownst to anyone else in the room - even himself.

“And I’m going to protect it,” he said. “No matter what.”

A flicker — a twitch of something — passed through the Dark Lord’s eyes. It might have been interest. It might have been something darker. But his next question came like a venom-laced whisper:

“Even if it is mine?”

The pause between them stretched. It was not hesitation. It was preparation.

“Yes,” Harry said. 

Simple. Absolute.

And never had a single syllable carried more weight. The word rang through the air like prophecy.

More magic was being drawn in - from the very center of the Earth; from its core, its heart.

“Yes.” he said again. Stronger now.

Another pause. The room itself seemed to recoil.

“And don’t think for a second,” Harry said next, and this time his voice dropped an octave, sharpened into something edged and unyielding, “that I’ll let you hurt this child.”

The air reacted before Voldemort could.

It thickened. Magic coalesced between the cracks of stone, unseen but alive, humming with the weight of something sacred.

Even the flames in the sconces dimmed, as if they, too, were holding their breath.

Harry stood tall, bound as he was — not because he wasn’t exhausted, but because he refused to bow. He was tethered to this moment only by sheer will and the quiet, burning fury of a protector who had nothing left to give but everything left to lose.

“I don’t care that I’m tied up,” he went on, chin rising. “I don’t care that your wand is pointed at my gut. You could kill me right here and now, and it still wouldn’t change the truth.”

His eyes met Voldemort’s — and this time, they didn’t tremble. They embraced it.

Green against red. Life against death.

“And you remember my mum, don’t you?” Harry asked, softly now, but not gently. “She didn’t have a wand either. Didn’t stop her from bringing you to your knees.”

There was no taunt in the words. Only quiet remembrance, and something older than either of them—something made of blood and sacrifice.

Across the room, Hermione let out a quiet gasp, as though realizing, truly realizing, just how far, just how deep, Harry was willing to go.

But Harry wasn’t finished. The magic wasn't finished.

“I invoke what she did,” he said. “I offer myself in my child’s place.”

His voice shifted, deepened; not in volume, but in gravity. He was no longer just a boy. He was speaking the words of the ancient world, of bonds forged before wands were even carved. Intent laced with magic so pure, so primal, that it came from everywhere and nowhere.

“If you ever raise your wand to this child — if you even think of harming them — then let that same ancient magic that struck you down before strike me first.”

He closed his eyes for a heartbeat. Then opened them again, glowing with the kind of certainty that had nothing to do with logic but everything to do with magic. Intent. Belief. Old as the Earth itself. Older.

“And take you with me.”

For a long, terrible moment, no one breathed.

Not Hermione.

Not Nagini.

Not even Voldemort.

The silence was deafening. It was holy. It was the kind of silence that sits at the edge of universes and decides which one you fall into.

And Voldemort… he blinked.

His wand didn’t lower. But it didn’t rise either.

He stared—long and deep—into Harry’s eyes, and something akin to understanding stirred in the recesses of his fragmented soul. He had mocked this magic once, spat on its power. He’d believed himself above it.

But the ashes of Godric’s Hollow still clung to his memory.

And Harry Potter, for all his youth and weakness and bound limbs and no wand, had just stared death in the face, again, and dared it to blink.

This boy. This child. This vessel of prophecy. This accidental parent of his heir.

This mattered.

Even the Dark Lord could feel it.

Harry’s knees trembled beneath him. His magic was slipping away now, unraveling at the edges like worn thread. He had pushed himself past breaking. Had invoked something heavy that not even Atlas could have held on his back.

But he didn’t break.

He stayed present. He stayed brave.

And Voldemort, after a pause that could have lasted centuries, finally said:

“Very well… Potter.”

His voice was cool, calm. But something had changed. There was a note beneath the syllables — beneath the fury and contempt that blazed, maybe a calculation — that hadn’t been there before.

And with a single, casual flick of his wand their chains vanished.

Hermione wobbled and caught herself against Harry, eyes darting wildly as if trying to determine if this was mercy or just a prelude to more creative torment.

Harry didn’t speak. Didn’t move. He remained upright, barely. Each breath was a shallow echo of the one before, his chest rising and falling with the kind of effort that spoke of exhaustion not just physical, but elemental. Still, he stood. Still, he dared.

Nagini slithered forward, soundless as a thought. Her long, muscular body glided over the withering stones of the manor floor, moving like an extension of the darkness itself. Her yellow eyes fixed on Voldemort first, then slid sideways to regard Harry — then Hermione — with something that wasn’t quite malice.

Curiosity.

She tilted her head, tongue flicking once. Testing. Tasting the shift in the air. There was something new here, something strange and alive. Something sacred—or perhaps something cursed.

Nagini circled them once, slowly and with the deliberate menace of a noose being drawn tight. Her scales whispered against the stone, a hiss without sound, until her head came to rest behind them both, her body coiling just snugly enough to make her presence known.

Neither Harry nor Hermione could move. Not because they were bound anymore — but because they understood, on some primal level, that movement was being… discouraged.

Then Voldemort lifted his wand.

There was no warning. No spoken word. Not even the hum of magical energy.

And in a blink — no lurch, no spin, no crack — they were gone.

It wasn't Apparition.

There was a distinct lack of the usual pulling sensation, the rubber-band snap that yanked the soul sideways. No. This felt more like falling into silence, like being slipped through a crack in the world.

One heartbeat they were in Malfoy Manor. The next—

A clearing. Wild, vast, and seemingly untouched by man or woman.

The sky was open here, not black and oppressive like it had been above the ballroom, but a deep indigo stretched over twisted trees that loomed like watchers. The air smelled of damp earth, old bark, and something more — magic, maybe. Or memory.

Hermione’s hand shot to her mouth. A quiet gasp escaped her, not from fear, but sheer sensory overload; relief at smelling fresh air; of being outside. The scent of soil. The rustle of leaves. The taste of life after suffocating stone.

Her eyes shimmered. Just for a second.

Voldemort turned to Nagini, his long fingers still curled casually around his wand.

“Watch them,” he hissed.

And then, with a sharp crack — he vanished.

Hermione barely had time to process the emptiness he left behind before Nagini acted.

Her coils tightened.

Not painful. But absolute. A firm reminder that the illusion of freedom was just that — an illusion. There was no escaping the serpent’s embrace. Not here.

Nagini’s long body curled once more around them, pinning them gently but with unmistakable strength. Her eyes glittered.

Then she spoke.

“Nagini will ensure the bearer of Master’s youngling… and his companion… do not wander.”

The hiss slid through Harry’s mind like a familiar song warped by wrong notes.

Parseltongue.

Harry blinked slowly. He didn’t respond. He didn’t recoil. He was too tired to do either. But he heard her.

And he understood. A simple nod.

Hermione, however, flinched. The sound alone made her skin crawl — so serpentine, so alien. Her knuckles went white as she clenched Harry’s sleeve, the only thing keeping her grounded. Her breathing stuttered, uneven, but she didn’t scream.

She listened, even if she didn’t understand.

Still, she found some semblance of calm in the quiet, steady rhythm of Harry’s breath beside her.

He wasn’t panicking.

So she wouldn’t either.

And then, just as she opened her mouth — perhaps to speak, perhaps to cry — there was another sound.

Pop.

He was back.

Voldemort reappeared with the kind of sound that shouldn’t have had weight but somehow did. A presence that rippled the very magic in the clearing. Like gravity had returned to the room.

But what mattered was the look on his face.

Not anger. Not amusement.

Calm.

Too calm.

He gave a low, smooth word in Parseltongue, and at once Nagini shifted. Her thick coils unraveled with unsettling grace, the muscular rings sliding back across the grass with reluctant obedience. She didn’t slink away. She lingered, watchful, even as her physical hold loosened.

Freed from her grip, Harry and Hermione swayed. Hermione clutched Harry’s arm tighter to steady herself, her limbs trembling. Harry, for his part, didn’t collapse; though it was clear he was close. His legs locked with stubborn pride, even as his head dipped for a moment.

“Now then,” Voldemort said softly, and the sound was so at odds with everything they’d endured it felt like a mockery of normalcy.

His tone might as well have belonged to a headmaster organizing a school trip.

He lifted his wand, twirled it lazily.

First at Harry. Then at Hermione.

A pulse of crimson light extended from the tip, weaving its way to their chests like threads of silk. It didn’t sting. But it tingled. Like static under the skin, like something primordial rewriting its memory of who they were.

Then, Voldemort turned and waved his wand toward what looked like empty space beyond a ring of gnarled oaks.

There was a red glow, the air shimmered — then disappeared into the void with a soft ripple, like a stone dropping into invisible and smooth water.

Hermione squinted.

“Wards,” she breathed. “He keyed us in.”

Her voice was a whisper of realization, brittle and too-late.

“If you’ll follow me,” Voldemort said dryly, already turning his back to them like this was the most mundane thing in the world.

He didn’t check to see if they obeyed. He didn’t need to.

Nagini slithered behind them without a sound, ensuring that their path led only forward.

They walked.

Cautiously. Hand in hand. Stomachs tight. Eyes wide.

Hermione opened her mouth to speak, but the question caught in her throat when they emerged into a clearing—and saw what awaited them.

It was… Hogwarts.

Except it wasn’t.

It was smaller. More compact. But every line of the silhouette, every turret and window, every stone arch, was unmistakable.

It was Hogwarts in miniature.

And it stopped them both cold.

“Hogwarts?” Harry breathed, barely above a whisper.

Voldemort paused, just for a moment, before speaking.

“No,” he said. “This is my home. My personal place of residence.”

There was something reverent in the way he said it. Not warmth. Not nostalgia. But a kind of possessive pride — like a sculptor admiring a masterpiece carved from his own marrow.

Harry stared at it, his heart twisting into an unnameable knot. It was uncanny — the recreation, the obsession. He thought of how Dumbledore had once spoken about Tom Riddle’s hunger for power and legacy… but this? This was something else.

Voldemort had built himself a home, and he had made it look like the only place he had ever belonged.

It was heartbreaking in a way Harry didn’t want to examine.

“Do the Death Eaters know about this place?” Harry asked before he could stop himself.

Voldemort turned slowly, and the look he gave Harry was the sort of look most people saved for insects that had wandered into their breakfast. And yet… there was no spell. No lash of cruelty.

“No,” he said curtly. “No one but myself and Nagini know of it. No one else can enter. My wards are absolute.”

Then, with a flick of his wand, something appeared on their wrists—thin, black bands that pulsed once and then dimmed.

Harry stared.

“You are now my guests,” Voldemort said with a grin that could cut glass. "Guests that cannot leave this property."

He turned without another word and walked toward the castle, Nagini slinking beside him like a shadow bathed in venom.

Harry and Hermione exchanged a glance—equal parts stunned, terrified, and bewildered— and all they could do was follow.

They passed through the front doors, which swung open soundlessly, and stepped into a familiar hall. Or at least… something close to it.

“This is —” Hermione began, her awe and appreciation for all things magical slipped out before she could contain it. “The precision… it’s incredible. The enchantments, the architecture… the replication alone would take years…”

She trailed off as Voldemort turned his head just slightly.

Harry didn’t comment. He couldn’t. The deeper they walked, the more surreal everything became. It was like walking through a dream made by someone who didn’t know dreams could be wrong. Too perfect. Too clean. A memory turned into a haunted home.

They reached a hallway identical to the one that led to the Gryffindor common room in the real Hogwarts. And sure enough, at the end of the corridor was a door carved with the lion crest.

“These will be your accommodations,” Voldemort said. “Everything you need for the next few months is inside.”

Then, sharply, “Tizzy!”

With a pop, a house-elf appeared—eyes wide, hands trembling as she immediately threw herself to the ground.

“Yes, Master! Tizzy is here for Master!”

“You will care for them,” he said. “Provide what they need. They are not to leave the warded grounds. They are not to contact the outside world. They are to be kept safe. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Master! Tizzy will obey!”

Hermione bristled — S.P.E.W. itched beneath her ribs — but she bit her tongue when Voldemort turned to her.

“And you, Miss Granger…” His voice grew dangerously quiet. “You will be responsible for the health of the baby. My heir. Should harm come to them… or the one carrying them…” His eyes gleamed with deadly finality.

Hermione swallowed. “Understood.”

With that, Voldemort turned, robes sweeping behind him like smoke.

Nagini followed without a sound.

The door closed behind them when they entered.

Inside the room, it was… cozy.

Like Gryffindor Tower.

Red hangings. A crackling fire. A well-stocked shelf of books. Warm lighting. A window that showed a nearby lake. Stairs to where the bedrooms must be.

The calm was unnerving.

“I can’t believe we’re still alive,” Hermione whispered.

Harry just nodded, staring at the dark bracelet around his wrist.

“We’re alive,” he said. “And so is the baby.”

And for now… that was enough.

Reviews are appreciated. Hope that was satisfying. Next chapter will see Harry and Hermione exploring their new (not new?) digs. Oh, and Tom makes an appearance too!

Chapter Text

AN:  Doing a massive rewrite. Edited May 2025

JK owns EVERYTHING! Including being a pile of garbage. A steaming pile of garbage.

They had slept well that first night. Too well given the circumstances.

Harry had awoken to sunlight — real or enchanted, he wasn’t sure — spilling through tall windows, the kind that arched like cathedral glass and filtered morning light through dust and magic. For a moment, he forgot. Let himself believe he was really at Hogwarts. Safe and cared for.

Well, safer.

For a blessed, fleeting second, he lay there in the warmth, his hand resting lightly over the nonexistent swell of his stomach, Hermione breathing quietly in the bed across the room.

It almost felt normal. And that terrified him.

Because sleep had come too easily, like someone had laid it across his shoulders with a soft spell and a cruel smile. The mattress had been absurdly comfortable, the sheets too clean. The pillows had smelled faintly of something floral—lavender or night-blooming something or other —and it was only now, in the process of sitting up, heart pounding, that Harry realized how dangerous that comfort had been.

They weren’t safe – not exactly. They were being held captive – and, suddenly, the past twenty-four hours came back to him in stunning clarity.

He jerked his body upwards, gasping for air as he sat upright.

“It wasn’t a dream, Harry,” came the quiet murmur from the other bed—soft, but certain, like the universe itself had sent her voice to confirm the nightmare.

Harry’s breath caught in his throat.

He turned his head slowly to the left. Hermione sat curled against the headboard, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees like she could make herself smaller, less real. Her bushy hair was braided loosely in a tangled halo around her face.

She looked as shaken as he felt.

The truth of her words hit him then — like a stone to the chest.

It hadn’t been a dream.

He really was pregnant.

And not just pregnant. Pregnant with Voldemort’s child.

He was also, for all intents and purposes, a prisoner. Held not in chains, but in comfort. In Voldemort's home; which look and felt exactly like Hogwarts.

His stomach was still his, but it wasn’t only his anymore.

He shook his head, more in disbelief than denial. “This can’t be real,” he whispered hoarsely.

But even that sounded weak now. Foolish. The rush, the panic, the need to protect his child had willed him through yesterday. But now that they were in serene comfort – it hit harder. Deeper.

Hermione didn’t answer, just watched him with wide, weary eyes.

They didn’t need to say anything more.

Reality had already said enough.

Harry shook his head slowly, as if doing so might shake the truth loose, might break the spell of what had become his life. But reality clung stubbornly to his skin.

“How did you sleep?” he asked instead, his voice still rough from disuse, but quiet, almost tender in the way only shared trauma could make it.

Hermione’s brown eyes met his, soft with exhaustion and something gentler — relief, perhaps, that they were still alive. That they were still together.

“Not bad,” she replied, managing a small but genuine smile. “All things considered…”

There was a beat of silence.

“I’m glad we stayed in the same room,” she added, her voice dropping a fraction, more vulnerable now. “I don’t think I could’ve managed being alone — not even if it was just next door.”

Harry nodded. “Yeah. Same.”

He shifted slightly and mimicked her posture, drawing his knees up and wrapping his arms loosely around them. Not feeling content with that arrangement after settling in, wordlessly, he moved to sit beside her on the other bed, shoulders brushing. The contact was grounding. Steadying. This was better.

“I can hardly believe any of this,” Harry murmured, casting a downward glance toward the soft curve of his lower belly made from his seated position — still mostly flat for now, but impossibly meaningful. “How it’s only been twenty-four hours — or maybe more — I don’t even know anymore since we found out I was…” He trailed off.

“…Pregnant,” he finished in a whisper, the word tasting foreign in his mouth, like it didn’t belong.

“I don’t think that part has really settled for me either,” Hermione admitted, leaning her head against his shoulder. “It’s like… we’ve stepped out of time.”

They sat that way for a few long moments, wrapped in silence that wasn’t quite peaceful, but wasn’t painful either. Just heavy. Real.

Harry’s voice came again, quieter now, the weight of his question nearly dragging it down. “How do you think it happened, Hermione? I mean... how could he be the father? How is that even possible?”

She let out a long breath, her arms wrapping around his left one like she was afraid he might float away.

“To be honest,” she said, “I don’t know. I don’t think he does either. And that’s… maybe the most terrifying part.”

They sat still for a moment, Harry trying to find something in the stillness to anchor himself with. A thought, a sensation, something familiar—and that’s when he realized something.

Something huge.

He blinked, pulling back just slightly from Hermione.

“What is it?” she asked, concern immediately coloring her tone.

Harry lifted his hand slowly to his forehead, fingers brushing along his scar. It was smooth, familiar, but — nothing. No pain. No echo. Not even a faint burn.

“I…” He swallowed, pressing his fingers down more firmly, testing. Still nothing.

“My scar,” he said slowly. “It hasn’t hurt. Not once. Not since—since we got here. Not even when he was standing right in front of me.”

His brows inched together, rising.

“Not in a while, in fact.”

Hermione’s eyes widened. “You’re sure?”

“Yeah,” Harry whispered, awe creeping into his voice. “For the first time in years, I don’t feel him. I don’t feel… anything.”

Hermione sat up straighter, blinking at him like he’d just performed magic. “Harry, that’s… that’s huge.”

“I know.”

And it was. It was a strange, disorienting relief. The ever-present hum of Voldemort in his head—the cold tether that had always buzzed beneath his skin—was gone. It was like finally being able to breathe after years of drowning – and he hadn’t even noticed when it had stopped.

Hermione’s face shifted from shock to thoughtfulness. “Maybe the pregnancy has changed the bond somehow? Maybe… being pregnant disrupted the connection between you two. Or maybe he’s choosing not to—”

“No,” Harry said firmly, shaking his head. “He wouldn’t turn that off. I don’t think he even could – not when we were that close.”

And though neither of them said it aloud, the implication was clear. Whatever his scar had been – it wasn’t anymore.

And that terrified Harry. But it would have to get in line - too many other things had lined up to unravel him.

Hermione saw it, felt it; the fear, his uncertainty, pieces at play that neither of them could figure out in this moment. But there were other things that she could process.

“You were brilliant yesterday, Harry,” Hermione said softly, almost reverently. “I’ll admit, I had no idea how we were going to get out of that. I thought we were dead. Tortured first, of course. But definitely dead.”

Her voice trembled at the end, betraying how close she had come to losing control in those terrible moments. Harry could hear it—how the panic still clung to her words like cobwebs, how the memory of Bellatrix’s rising wand and Voldemort’s silence still haunted her.

“But you…” She shook her head slightly, disbelieving. “You saved us. You played it brilliantly. I mean, at the time I was completely shocked. You were talking to them — her, him — like you weren’t terrified. But you said exactly the right things. I don’t think anyone else could’ve pulled that off.”

A small shiver ran through her, and she leaned her head back, resting it against the velvet-lined headboard with a quiet sigh.

“Thank you, Harry,” she whispered.

Harry drew in a long breath and exhaled through his nose. He lowered his head until his chin came to rest on his knee, curling further into himself as if he could hide from the weight of her gratitude.

“I just…” His voice cracked faintly. “I just couldn’t bear to think of anything happening to the baby, Hermione. I would’ve said anything. Lied, begged, groveled — whatever it took. I didn’t care what he did to me, as long as it wasn’t…” He trailed off.

He turned his head just slightly to see her, his voice lowering again. “Though really, I should be thanking you. And apologizing.”

Hermione blinked in confusion.

“I don’t think I would’ve even realized I was pregnant until much later,” Harry continued. “Not until it was… obvious. When it couldn’t be ignored anymore. When it might have been too late to do anything. But you… you saw it. You helped me see it. You always do.”

He didn’t say what came after that—that he didn’t know how he would’ve survived the weight of that discovery alone. That he might not have survived at all.

Hermione reached for his hand instinctively.

“What do you have to apologize for?” she asked, sitting up straighter and turning to face him fully. Her brows drew together, voice firm with something approaching disbelief. “You haven’t done anything wrong, Harry.”

“I dragged you here,” he said quietly, not meeting her gaze. “You wouldn’t be trapped in Voldemort’s home if it weren’t for me.”

“Harry,” she said gently, but he continued.

“Your life has always been in danger because of me.”

She didn’t deny it.

“True,” she said evenly, and Harry’s head snapped toward her with the unbothered agreement.

“But you always forget,” she went on, her voice strengthening, “that my life would’ve been in danger with or without you. You seem quite determined to carry the weight of the world on your back, but this isn’t all yours to carry. Not everything is because of you. Not everything can be fixed by you.”

She looked at him then—really looked at him, with that fierce, bright gaze of hers that had once stared down full-grown Death Eaters and Ministry officials alike.

“And besides,” she continued, her eyes softening now, “if you want to get technical, I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for you. I seem to remember a very large troll that nearly crushed me first year. I’d be dead if you hadn’t come back for me. You and…” Her voice faltered for a split second, and Harry knew the name she couldn’t say.

She steadied herself. “Everything since then — every moment of my life after that — I owe to you. And I’m grateful, Harry. Even for this.” She placed a hand gently against his chest. “Even now.”

Her hand was warm. Grounding. Real.

Harry’s throat was tight, his vision a little blurry.

He looked away quickly, not trusting himself to speak. Not when her words had cut straight through every wall he’d built around himself—walls made of guilt and shame and fear.

They sat in silence, the kind only forged through years of loyalty and pain and unbreakable friendship – closer than siblings and more intimate than lovers, until Harry’s stomach let out a loud, rebellious growl.

Hermione blinked.

Harry blinked.

Then both of them laughed—sudden, breathless, half-hysterical laughter that cracked the stillness like glass shattering on stone.

The simple meal the elf had brought the night before — some sort of lentil stew and warm bread — had been devoured with barely a word exchanged between them, their exhaustion outweighing any lingering fear or discomfort. Afterward, they had crawled into the too-soft beds and promptly passed out, the kind of sleep that only comes after surviving something traumatic.

That had been over 12 hours ago. Of course they were hungry now.

Harry had barely finished summoning Tizzy when the elf appeared with a loud pop and an impressively large breakfast tray hovering beside her. The aroma alone nearly undid him.

They followed the elf to the small table near the tall window in the common room, which displayed a particularly bright autumn morning. A silent kindness, he supposed. Or maybe Voldemort had a flair for ambiance and attention to detail and finally managed to control the weather. That was an unsettling thought.

The spread was impressive. Warm pastries flaked golden under their fingers, sweet jams shimmered like jewels in tiny pots, and a fruit bowl overflowed with ripe berries and sliced citrus. A matching set of teacups clinked gently as the steam rose between them, fragrant with honey and something floral.

There were eggs and sausage patties too.

Harry wasted no time. He began eating with gusto — so much so that even Hermione, who had started neatly nibbling on a tart, slowed her own pace just to watch him.

“I didn’t realize how starved you really were,” she commented, brows lifting slightly.

“I think I’m eating for two now,” Harry replied dryly, though a flush crept up his neck. He reached for another scone and broke it open to smear it with thick blackberry jam. “And it’s been a while since I wanted to eat like this.”

Hermione gave a small, pleased hum and reached for the teapot. “That’s good, Harry. You need the energy. You look... a bit better this morning.”

Which, considering where they were.

He didn't answer at first, just gave a tired half-smile and chewed. She was right. He felt better. Grounded. Still disoriented, still trapped, but his stomach didn’t feel like it was trying to tie itself in knots.

The silence stretched as they ate, comfortable for a while, until Hermione set down her cup and glanced around the room. Harry caught the subtle shift in her expression — eyes narrowing slightly, scanning corners, measuring.

“You’re thinking,” he said.

“I always am,” she replied, not even trying to deny it.

Harry leaned back and patted his stomach. “So what’s the verdict? Are we allowed to go outside? Or are we supposed to stay cooped up in here like particularly sad little houseplants?”

“Well,” she said thoughtfully, “those bracelets,” she tapped her own obsidian band, “clearly limit our ability to leave the property, but I don’t think he explicitly told us to stay in this room. Just... inside the bounds of the wards.”

Harry looked around the space again. It was familiar, uncomfortably so. The imitation of Gryffindor Tower was nearly perfect, down to the stone fireplace and deep red curtains.

“Do you think he built himself a version of the Slytherin Common Room?” Harry asked after a moment. “Like, somewhere nearby? That’s probably where he sleeps.”

“Or the Headmaster’s office,” Hermione said. “He always did like to pretend he was a god.”

Harry snorted. “A god with a very committed interior design fetish.”

They laughed — quiet, but genuine. It felt good. Wrong, but good.

Then Hermione sat up straighter and, with a quick breath, called out, “Tizzy!”

The elf appeared so fast she might have been waiting outside.

“Yes, miss? What may Tizzy be doing for yous?”

Harry tried not to smile too obviously as he watched the tension war between Hermione’s need for answers and her deeply rooted ethical objections to house-elf servitude.

“Tizzy,” Hermione began carefully, “we were wondering if we’re permitted to leave the room. To explore the rest of the... castle.”

Tizzy blinked once, then nodded vigorously. “Master did not be telling Tizzy that yous must stay in here. Master only be binding yous to the grounds, so Tizzy believes yous is allowed to go wherever you like inside the castle and the gardens.”

The elf turned her head, thoughtful.

“So long as you do not enter through the Gargoyle on the third floor—that is where Master sleeps,” Tizzy said, her voice lowering into something reverent.

Harry and Hermione exchanged a glance. No words. They didn’t need to.

One shared thought passed between them, clear as a spell cast in unison: Voldemort had moved into the Headmaster’s Office.

Of course he had.

Where else would the self-appointed god-king of wizardkind plant his throne but the very heart of Hogwarts' legacy? Where Dumbledore had once sat, where so many of their nightmares and victories had begun and ended — Tom Riddle had claimed it for his own.

Harry let out a breath, somewhere between a scoff and a bitter laugh.

“He always did like symbolism,” he muttered.

Hermione nodded solemnly. “And to erase history, if he could not rewrite it.”

Harry didn’t respond. He simply turned his eyes toward the direction of the spiral staircase they knew must be waiting somewhere in this warped replica of their school.

Only this time, it didn’t come wrapped in the illusion of safety, the pretense of wisdom, or the veiled manipulation masked by the comforting scent of lemon drops and nostalgia.

It led straight to Voldemort; it was much more straightforward in many ways.

The elf glanced curiously between the pair.

“Thank you, Tizzy,” Hermione said, tone polite but strained. “That will be all.”

The elf bowed so low her nose brushed the stone, then vanished with another soft pop.

Harry raised a brow at Hermione. “You didn’t even try to give her a knitted hat.”

She rolled her eyes, but a small smile tugged at her lips. “Don’t tempt me.”

He leaned back in his chair, stretching lazily with a satisfied sigh. “Well. Shall we explore Hogwarts not Hogwarts?”

Hermione reached for one of the leftover tarts and popped it into her mouth with dramatic flair. “Lead the way, O Expectant One.”

And with that, they stood—braver than yesterday, still wary, but curious.

After all, how many chances did one get to tour the private home of the most dangerous wizard alive?

And more importantly, what would they find? Another Horcrux in their possession could only help them at this point and this would be just the place he would have hid it away. Maybe it was even fate that they were here at all.

Harry didn't want to think on that though and quickly pushed it from his mind.

Soon enough, Harry and Hermione stepped out of their room—though calling it "the Gryffindor common room" felt a bit like calling a painting a memory. It was close, eerily so, but not quite right. There was something uncanny in the precision, like a dream where everything looks familiar until you blink.

Still, the imitation had its comforts. The fireplace crackled just like the real one. The portrait hole stood where it should. But Harry, being Harry, didn’t waste time standing around in interior design existentialism when they could be exploring.

He reached out and pushed the portrait open. It creaked slightly on its hinges, but didn’t resist him. No magical alarms blared. No curse exploded in his face. No Voldemort lurking just beyond the threshold.

So, of course, he stepped out first.

Hermione followed cautiously.

They hadn’t made it more than three steps before a low hiss coiled through the corridor like a whispered curse.

“Finally! Nagini has been waiting for you,” came the voice, silken and knowing.

Harry jumped. Hermione, already on edge, gave a soft squeak of alarm and instinctively grabbed his arm. From the shadows to their right, the familiar, sinuous shape of Nagini uncoiled from the darkness — long, glimmering, and entirely too smug.

“Bloody hell,” Harry hissed in Parseltongue, his voice tight. “Are you always this dramatic?”

Nagini flicked her tongue at him, the snake equivalent of a snort.

“Dramatic? Nagini is patient. Master said you would emerge eventually. I thought I might grow moss before you did.”

Harry blinked. “You were waiting in the corner the whole time?”

“Only since dawn. Nagini needed time to digest dinner first.”

Harry couldn’t help it—he let out a huff of reluctant laughter. The mental image of Voldemort’s giant snake lounging outside their portrait hole like an oversized doormat was just too absurd.

Hermione, for her part, was looking at the snake like it was one sudden movement away from turning her into an hors d'oeuvre. She edged closer to Harry and whispered, “What is she saying?”

“She’s… mildly offended we made her wait.” Harry gave a small smile. “Also, possibly hungry again, so let’s try to stay on her good side.”

Nagini slithered closer and reared upwards until her head was nearly level with Harry’s. Her bright, intelligent eyes narrowed with amusement.

“Master has left books in the library. Books about... this situation.” Her gaze slid down toward Harry’s stomach. “You are to read. Learn. Prepare. I am to escort you.”

“Well,” Harry muttered, casting a glance at the black band on his wrist, “can’t say we’ve got better plans.”

As if hearing the unspoken thought, Nagini dipped her head and made to move forward, her body undulating with a quiet, deadly grace. But before she did, she paused.

Without warning, her snout brushed lightly against his stomach.

Harry flinched, startled by the touch and the sudden intimacy of it. Instinctively, both hands flew to his belly, shielding the small life within.

“Oi!” he hissed. “Ask next time.”

Nagini tilted her head in a motion that was far too expressive for a creature without eyebrows.

“Calm, little speaker. Nagini was merely... saying hello. Master’s youngling is... significant. Sacred.”

Harry stared. “Sacred?”

“All Heirs are - or should be,” she added, as if that clarified everything. Then, more softly, almost affectionately: “Nagini will protect the youngling's youngling. And you.”

He blinked, not entirely sure how to respond to that.

“…Right. Thanks?”

Nagini didn’t reply. Instead, she flicked her tongue against his fingers where they hovered protectively, almost like a soft pat. And then she turned and began to slither down the corridor without another word.

Hermione looked like she wanted to ask a thousand questions. Harry just offered her his arm and a quick summary.

“She’s taking us to the library,” he said aloud. “Voldemort apparently left us some light reading. Baby-rearing for Dark Lords, maybe.”

“I think I’d rather read ‘One Thousand and One Ways to Die Horribly,’” Hermione muttered darkly.

“Could be in there too,” Harry agreed, not quite joking.

Still, she took his arm, and together they followed Nagini’s winding path through the castle. The torches flared to life as they passed, and with every corridor that matched their old school, Harry felt that same ache of familiarity war with the wrongness of it all.

When they reached the double doors of the library and stepped inside, even Harry had to admit—this was impressive. They parted and Harry wandered inside.

Books lined every wall, floor to ceiling. Rich woods. Dark lighting. The smell of old parchment and carefully maintained magical wards hung thick in the air. There were desks arranged in neat rows and soft chairs that looked identical to the ones Hermione had made them sit at to revise for exams.

He was pretty sure there was even a Restricted Section.

Harry turned, and then quickly clamped a hand over his mouth.

Hermione was stopped dead in the doorway.

Her eyes were enormous. Her lips parted slightly, like she’d forgotten how to breathe. And Harry could practically hear the music from that old Disney movie Dudley used to watch on repeat—Belle in the Beast’s library, spinning with joy.

“This is…magnificent” Hermione whispered. Overwhelmed.

“Terrifying,” she corrected, walking forward in a trance. “It’s terrifyingly magnificent.”

Harry grinned. “Come on, then. Let’s go learn how to have a baby while in captivity.”

Nagini gave a low, hissing laugh that somehow sounded... fond.

And as bizarre as it all was—snake chaperone and all—Harry couldn’t help but feel just a little more at ease.

Oddly enough, he trusted her.

Rather, he trusted that she would not strike him down. Yet.

Which, considering everything, probably meant he was going mad. But in a world where he was carrying Voldemort’s child, what else was new?

“The books for other speaker and the youngling he carries are over here,” Nagini announced, her long form gliding toward a familiar-looking table nestled between two arched windows. It looked eerily like the very table Hermione had claimed as her own during late nights in the real Hogwarts library. The resemblance made Harry’s skin prickle with something like déjà vu — or perhaps dread dressed in nostalgia.

“Thanksss,” Harry replied on instinct, his Parseltongue curling like warm air through the stacks.

Nagini inclined her head, as if amused, and without another word slithered off between two towering shelves, disappearing with the soft shush of scales on stone. Wherever she was going, it was clear she trusted them not to run. Or maybe she just knew better than to worry. After all, where would they go?

Harry turned to Hermione just in time to see her eyes grow comically wide again.

“Oh my God,” she breathed.

She was already halfway through rifling a stack of thick tomes, titles glinting in embossed gold and silver. They weren’t just books on magical pregnancy—they were hyper-specialized volumes: Males and Magical Gestation: A Rare and Resilient Journey; Warding the Womb: Dark Magic Protection Spells for Expecting Carriers; Heir of Legacy: Raising a Child of Magical Importance.

“This is…” she paused, mouth open as her fingers flipped through the aged pages with reverence and disbelief, “unbelievable.”

Harry didn’t say anything at first. He just leaned against the table and watched her, one arm resting protectively across his middle. It was strange—less than forty-eight hours ago, he'd been scrounging for food in a tent, running from Snatchers, his magic stretched so thin he felt like a frayed wire. And now?

Now he was being handed prenatal care literature in Voldemort’s private library.

Hermione looked up from a particularly detailed diagram of fetal magical core development. Her brow was furrowed, her mouth twitching in disbelief.

“This is all so… weird,” she whispered.

“I mean — first, the castle. Then Nagini. And now this?” She gestured toward the books. “These aren’t some dusty tomes he happened to have lying around. These were chosen, Harry. For you. By him.”

Harry let out a short laugh through his nose. “I know. Creepy, isn’t it?”

“It’s like he’s... invested.”

“That’s a good thing for us at this point.” Harry shrugged. “I mean, he hasn't killed me yet. Or you. That's something.”

“That’s not comforting,” she said, though her voice wavered with a smile. A deeply confused, exhausted smile, but still.

Harry pushed himself upright and crossed to her side, peering at the book she’d been flipping through. “Well,” he said after a moment, “as insane as all of this is, the baby’s got six months to go. That gives us six months of relative safety. And a lot of time to figure things out.”

Hermione tilted her head, giving him a sidelong look. “You’re surprisingly calm about this.”

“I’m not calm,” Harry said honestly. “I’m just... too mentally exhausted to panic right now. And honestly? I’ve lived under stairs, found out I was a wizard from a giant while on a remote island on my eleventh birthday, fought a basilisk, been possessed, hunted, tortured—being treated politely in a magical replica of Hogwarts while reading baby books provided by the Dark Lord? This barely cracks the top five weirdest days of my life.”

Hermione let out a low laugh, covering her mouth with her hand. “Only you, Harry,” she muttered, shaking her head. “Only you could say that and somehow make it sound like a relief.”

He smiled faintly, glancing at the pile of books.

“Well,” he said, settling into a nearby chair, “let’s make the most of our free education, shall we? The least he could do is foot the tuition if I’m carrying his kid.”

Hermione groaned, sitting beside him. “Please don’t put that sentence into the universe ever again.”

Harry leaned back, resting one hand gently over his stomach. His smile softened.

“Too late.”

The next week passed in a rhythm so oddly gentle it felt more like a strange dream than reality—one wrapped in silk and spells, soft around the edges, as though the world outside had been pressed on pause.

Each morning began the same. Harry and Hermione would wake in their shared room, tangled in sheets and sleep-heavy limbs, to the mouthwatering expectation of breakfast that would await them in the common room a floor below. Tizzy always arrived like clockwork after being summoned — cheerful, attentive, and utterly devoted to the welfare of "the youngling" and those caring for it. Her meals were varied and delicious, crafted with the exact nutritional balance needed for Harry’s condition. Hermione had checked.

Harry, much to Hermione’s relief, was no longer struggling with morning sickness. In fact, he’d begun to eat with something nearing gusto—though he always tried to be discreet about it. Hermione noticed anyway. She noticed everything, especially the way he would linger after each meal, fingertips lightly brushing over the small but finally present swell of his abdomen with a kind of reverence he wasn’t quite ready to name.

She never commented on it aloud. But it made something ache in her chest.

After breakfast, they took turns in the bathroom — Tizzy had thoughtfully enchanted the absurdly oversized bathtub for peak comfort, a luxury neither of them had the energy to pretend not to love. Then came dressing: robes in rich, understated tones, always immaculate, always warm, always tailored to perfection. Another quiet concession from Voldemort’s unsettlingly attentive household.

Then came the library.

They spent hours there, nestled among high-backed chairs and golden light filtering through enchanted windows. They read everything: guides on magical pregnancy, physiological development texts, spellwork adaptations for male carriers, protective enchantments, and obscure treatises on magical inheritance.

To Hermione’s surprise, Harry was completely engrossed. And not just when the books were full of diagrams and defensive spells—though he gravitated toward those, too. He read everything with that same furrowed brow and determined set of his jaw. His fingers often traced the margins of pages. Occasionally, he would hum under his breath when something caught his attention—something she hadn’t heard him do since before they had been on the run.

But what truly caught Hermione off guard was the softness that crept into Harry’s features when he thought no one was watching. He’d tilt the book against the table, rest one hand gently on the bump beneath his robe, and his eyes would go distant—somewhere far away, dreaming. It was subtle. Beautiful. And it broke her heart a little more each time.

She knew, without doubt, that Harry would be a good parent. A great parent. But she also knew that fate had never allowed him to keep anything he loved.

And yet… maybe this time. Yes, maybe this time. She would see to that.

They usually stayed in the library through lunch, sharing sandwiches and tart little apples, quietly speculating about everything from magical childcare to whether the baby would inherit Harry’s eyes or Voldemort’s insatiable thirst for knowledge that Hermione would admit quite possibly exceeded her own.

Sometimes, when Hermione was deep in a text, Harry would wander to the shelves with more... questionable tomes. Ones about male fertility rites, magical conception, and arcane wombcraft. The kind of books even the Restricted Section might think twice about stocking. But even those held no answer to the central mystery of how this had all happened. There were theories, of course — most of them terrifying — but no clear origin story.

Still, despite everything, their days passed in peace. Voldemort had not returned. Nor had he sent messages. It was, as if, after turning their world inside out, he had simply stepped offstage and left them in the echoing silence of his twisted Hogwarts replica. Neither Harry nor Hermione dared say it aloud, for fear of summoning him. But with each passing day, it became easier to pretend that this was just… school again. Quiet. Odd. But safer. And more importantly, in Harry's opinion, without classes or Malfoy.

That afternoon, as usual, with the sun low and golden, Harry decided it was time for some fresh air. A stroll by the lake — the not-Hogwarts lake — had become something of a ritual, and today he felt the tug more keenly than usual. The coolness of the late autumn air bit pleasantly at his cheeks, and he wrapped his cloak tighter around himself, fingers fastening the clasp with familiar ease.

The lake, though smaller than the one at Hogwarts proper, was beautiful in its own right. It glittered under the sun, its surface rippling gently. There was even a squid—though far more elegant and less cheeky than the one Harry remembered from school. This one watched him sometimes; its great eye blinking slowly beneath the water, as if it knew.

Hermione walked beside him, arms folded against the breeze – comfortably snug in her own robes. She was quieter than usual, but she always was on these walks. They both were.

Harry stopped at the edge of the water, gazing out across the glimmering surface. He adjusted his cloak again, fingers brushing against his ring as he did so.

The light caught it.

Hermione saw the glint and blinked, startled.

“Oh, Harry,” Hermione breathed, already crossing the short distance to his side.

There was a different kind of urgency in her voice now — not panic, but something that had teeth. Something she’d forgotten until just this moment, and it clearly frightened her to remember it.

“With everything else going on, I completely forgot about…” Her voice trailed off as her eyes darted about the quiet courtyard. She lowered her voice and stepped closer. “I forgot about the… you know.”

Harry blinked at her, confused. “What? Hermione, what is it?”

“The ring,” she whispered, her hand finding his and covering it gently. “You’ve been carrying it around for over a week. It should be my turn.”

Harry followed her gaze down to the slim, silver band nestled innocently on his finger. He blinked again, slower this time.

“I… I forgot I even had it on,” he said softly, almost surprised. “It just… I didn't even feel like anything was off.”

But Hermione didn’t waver. She extended her hand, palm up, brows slightly drawn. “Harry, come on. We agreed to take turns. You’ve had it long enough.”

There was a silence as Harry hesitated—longer than it should’ve been.

He touched the ring. It slid slightly against his skin, warm from his body. He tugged it free, but even in that tiny movement, something in his chest gave a hollow lurch.

He held it in his fingers a moment too long.

Hermione didn't notice. She reached for it, relieved to take on the burden again, and Harry released it — slowly, reluctantly. The moment it left his skin, he felt... wrong. Like something had been removed, not from his body, but from deep within his soul.

Hermione had just slipped it onto her index finger when it happened.

The sound — guttural, raw — tore through the air.

Harry collapsed.

His body folded like wet parchment, arms curled instinctively around his middle, a strangled moan escaping his lips as he hit the ground with a thud.

“Harry!” Hermione screamed, her heart slamming against her ribs. She dropped to her knees, grabbing his shoulders, trying to make sense of what was happening.

“What is it? What’s wrong?!” Her voice rose in pitch, frantic.

“It… hurts…” Harry managed through clenched teeth, his face twisted in agony. He was trembling now, curled tighter, his knuckles white as he clutched at his stomach. Sweat forming at his brow.

And Hermione—

Hermione felt like she was going to be sick.

Her hands skimmed over him, desperate to soothe, to diagnose - wand or no wand - to do anything; but it was the flash of the sun off the silver ring on her finger that made her freeze. The realization struck her with the force of a hex.

“Oh no. Oh no, no, no…”

She wrenched the ring off her finger and jammed it onto one of Harry’s, shoving it down past his knuckle with shaking hands. The effect was immediate.

Harry stilled.

His body unclenched, his breathing slowly returned to something close to normal, and the lines of pain that had carved themselves into his face eased just slightly. He looked dazed — wrecked — but alive and no longer in pain.

Hermione hovered over him, gasping, her own hands trembling now. “It’s the ring,” she whispered, her voice barely audible through the sudden roaring in her ears. “The Horcrux," she mouthed. "You... you have to keep it on you.”

Her heart pounded.

Harry’s eyes met hers.

And something wordless passed between them.

The ring couldn’t leave him. Not because of the soul fragment within — but because of the baby. The baby and the Horcrux were linked in some unnatural, horrific bond, and Harry’s body could no longer function without the cursed object nearby.

If the ring was removed, if the Horcrux was separated...

Harry could die.

Or worse. The baby.

Hermione’s thoughts stuttered into fragments. She looked at him, her best friend, the person she’d shared nearly every breath of her life with since she was eleven. And now she was responsible for protecting not only him but a child—his child—who, for reasons unknown, needed the Horcrux just to survive.

Their lives, already entangled in war and prophecy, had just knotted impossibly tighter.

She opened her mouth to speak, to comfort him, to say something, anything; but her breath caught in her throat.

But it wasn't just the two of them anymore.

Far, far away, high above the courtyard and hidden behind the enchanted window of the Headmaster’s Tower, another pair of eyes had been watching.

Crimson. Patient. Unblinking.

Lord Voldemort returned to sit in his chair, hands steepled, posture still as death.

He couldn’t hear them. Not clearly. But he had seen enough.

He had seen the boy scream. For a moment he had even almost acted, but the quick thinking of the witch made everything quite clear to him.

He had seen the ring change hands.

He had seen Harry writhe on the ground, and then fall still the moment it was returned.

A new piece had just been added to the board.

And the Dark Lord, for all his cold cruelty, felt something very close to amusement flicker behind his red gaze. Behind his anger, his rage.

There was also curiosity.

He would need to decide what to do with this development.

And soon.

I debated on where to end it but that seemed like a good place to me! I know I said reviews are optional but I'm dying to know your thoughts. 

Chapter Text

AN: Massive May 2025 edit. This is a shorter chapter. I will admit that when i started this i was going for crack. I do not know how this ended up being serious, with a plot. 

JK still owns everything last time I checked. Including her bigotry.

Neither Harry nor Hermione felt like doing much that night. Not after the truth they had uncovered: that the baby growing inside Harry’s body needed to remain in close contact with the Horcrux to survive.

Not wanted. Not preferred.

Required.

That single fact had pressed down on both of them like a fresh wave of gravity, as though the air in their cozy, too-perfect prison had thickened again. It didn’t matter how soft the couches were, how warm the firelight glowed against the seemingly worn stone hearth, or how many books lined the shelves nearby. The room, modeled so precisely after the Gryffindor common room, could not disguise the fact that it sat within a fortress belonging to their enemy.

An enemy they had been trying to vanquish by hunting down pieces of his soul.

Harry sat in silence beside the fireplace, his knees pulled close to his chest, a blanket draped over his shoulders like a second skin. The silver ring gleamed faintly on his left index finger, catching the flicker of firelight as he turned his hand absently, again and again. The reflection danced, just like the thoughts he couldn’t stop thinking.

He’d transfigured that ring in a haze of desperation, moments after discovering he was pregnant — and who the other parent was.

Lord Voldemort.

His stomach churned, not from the pregnancy, but from the sheer cosmic absurdity of it. He’d lost count of how many times the Dark Lord had managed to derail his life—his childhood, his friends, his family, his future. And now… now he had somehow taken root inside Harry. The one place no one had ever been able to reach before.

Harry let out a slow breath and lowered his gaze to the band on his finger. It mocked him in its simplicity.

They were in deeper than either of them had imagined.

It wasn’t just the captivity, the constant sense of being watched by unseen eyes in corridors that mimicked home with uncanny precision. It wasn’t just the looming presence of Voldemort, always distant and yet oppressively near. It was this — this unbearable vulnerability.

A Horcrux, exposed and fragile, clinging to Harry’s finger like a ward that refused to let go — because the baby needed it. No spells, no concealment charms, no transfigurations possible. No wand to alter the shape or to tuck it away inside a safer vessel.

And yet, somehow, it was safer on him than anywhere else.

Two young adults, standing on the edge of something vast and unknowable, surrounded by copies of stone walls meant to comfort—but designed instead to cage.

But they weren’t broken. Not yet.

“Here, Harry,” Hermione said gently, stepping close. Her voice was soft, but steady — the same tone she used when they were children and Harry was seconds from unraveling again at being accused of being the Heir of Slytherin. She opened her hand.

Harry stared at the object lying on her palm.

A slender gold chain, unassuming but strong, its surface catching the light in tiny gleams.

His lips parted, but no sound came out at first. Then: “Hermione…” He looked from the chain to her face, eyes wide. “I can’t take that.”

She tilted her head, her expression unreadable.

“It’s Ron’s,” he whispered, like saying the name might summon the ache all over again. “He gave it to you for the wedding. It’s… it’s not mine to take.”

“It’s not about Ron,” Hermione said, quietly but firmly. She took Harry’s hand in hers and pressed the chain into his palm, wrapping his fingers around it like sealing a promise. 

“You’re not taking it,” she murmured. “You’re using it. Because right now, your life and the baby’s life are more important than memories or meanings or anything else.”

“But it meant something to you,” Harry argued weakly, though the chain was already warming against his skin. “It’s from before—when things were still…”

“Harry.” Her voice cut through his sentence, soft but unshakable. “It’s just a chain. You’re my family. That makes it yours.”

He stilled. Swallowed. And nodded.

There was silence for a moment. Then Hermione glanced around, quick and sharp, her instincts flaring. Her pupils dilated like she expected something, someone, to burst through the walls at any second. Harry followed suit, both of them going still, listening.

Nothing.

No rustle of robes. No flicker of dark magic. No hiss from the walls or whisper of command.

The quiet held.

Only then did Harry let out the breath he absolutely realized he’d been holding. Slowly, reverently, he slid the transfigured silver ring from his finger. The Horcrux pulsed faintly — warm and steady. Familiar.

With care, he fed the chain through the ring and looped it around his neck. The metal rested against his chest, just over his heart, protected now beneath his shirt.

It felt…Right.

Not safe but safer. Not exactly comforting. But anchored. Like the tiniest thread had been sewn into place, holding him together in ways no one else could see.

“I’ll keep it close,” he said softly.

“I know you will,” Hermione replied. She offered a small, tired smile. “Now… let’s figure out how to survive until tomorrow.”

And Harry, despite everything, found himself smiling back.

The tension in his shoulders eased slightly, and he closed his hand over the faint outline of the ring beneath the fabric. Not for protection. For comfort.

Eventually, they summoned the elf and Tizzy appeared and brought them a simple meal of roasted vegetables and chicken and soft, buttery rolls, along with a carafe of warm cider that would have steamed in the chilly air outside. They ate in companionable silence, lost in their thoughts, each chewing slowly.

Later, Harry took to the bathroom first. Hermione followed, and by the time she emerged, Harry had already changed into the oversized jumper and flannel bottoms Tizzy had brought earlier in the week. He looked smaller somehow, curled on the far side of their shared dorm, the flicker of firelight casting shadows across his cheekbones.

He was asleep before she even settled into hers. Fast, deep sleep. His chest rose and fell slowly, evenly, as if his body had finally allowed him one small mercy.

Hermione, meanwhile, propped herself against the headboard, her legs stretched out under the covers. An open book lay across her lap—another detailed guide on male pregnancy in magical cases — but the words blurred the longer she stared. She read the same sentence three times and retained none of it.

Her fingers curled around the edges of the pages. Her thumb absently tapped the spine.

Something wasn’t sitting right.

She knew this feeling. It was the same one she’d had before discovering Lupin’s secret in third year, the same one she’d had when she realized Rita Skeeter wasn’t just nosy — she was an Animagus. It was the feeling of a puzzle just missing that one final piece.

Her eyes slid toward Harry.

Peaceful. Pale. Vulnerable.

The chain glinted faintly beneath the edge of his jumper.

She wanted to believe they had found a way to buy time, that the ring beneath his clothing would go unnoticed. But her instincts told her otherwise.

She was missing something.

Eventually, she closed the book and set it aside, letting it rest against her chest like a shield she didn’t know how to wield. The fire had burned low. The walls seemed to creak louder than they had before. Her eyes drifted shut, but her mind refused to follow.

When Hermione woke the next morning, it felt like she hadn’t slept at all. Her body had rested, sure—her limbs no longer heavy with exhaustion—but her mind? Her mind had spent the entire night spinning, drifting between fragments of dreams and lingering threads of anxiety that never quite let go or answers just on the tip of the tongue that never came.

But the sun was streaming in through the enchanted windows, soft and golden, and that meant a new day. Another opportunity. Another fragile, precious chance to learn whatever she could—to prepare for what lay ahead.

She rose slowly, her joints stiff with unrest, and went about her morning routine. The bathroom was warm, the water steady, and the simple comfort of brushing her hair brought a quiet sense of grounding. She would make this day useful. She had to.

When she re-entered the bedroom, Harry was already up, sitting cross-legged in front of their usual breakfast tray, fingers busy tearing a scone into pieces and slathering each half with thick raspberry jam.

“Good morning, Harry,” she said with as much forced cheer as she could muster, slipping into that familiar get-right-down-to-business tone that had carried her through more battles and practical exams than she could count.

“Morn’n Mione,” came his muffled reply through a very large bite of scone.

Hermione shot him a withering look — half-hearted, really — but didn’t bother scolding. His manners had always taken a hit whenever Ron had been around, and despite everything, that influence hadn’t entirely worn off.

Still… her mild irritation softened when she noted the obvious. Gone were the hollow cheeks and nauseated grimaces that had followed them through so many long, uncertain days in the tent. There had been no food issues in over a week, and with it, a small sense of stability. Minus the episode last night.

“How do you feel?” she asked, sliding into the chair beside him and pouring herself a cup of tea.

Harry leaned back, rubbing a hand over his belly. “Slowly starting to feel like my old self again,” he said with a soft sigh, then took another blissful bite.

Hermione raised a brow but didn’t interrupt. Harry swallowed, then added, “You know. Dark Lords interfering with my bodily autonomy. Death threats. Prophecies. The usual.”

He glanced sideways at her with a small, dry smile. “Though, to be fair, I’m not sure how the universe plans to top this one. I mean… I’m pregnant with Voldemort’s kid. What’s next? A wedding invitation? Do we throw a baby shower with dark marks and black confetti? It’d really make a statement in the Daily Prophet.”

He chuckled softly, and for a second, Hermione didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

He wasn’t joking, not really. He was just tired. So, so tired.

And yet… there wasn’t anger in his voice. Not anymore. Just a weary sort of resignation that life would never play fair with him. And that he’d keep getting up anyway.

“At least he’s not actively trying to kill me right now,” Harry muttered, his tone almost conversational. “So… that’s a step in the right direction. I guess.”

Hermione stared at him, watching the subtle shift in his eyes—the way his gaze dropped to his lap, the way his hand drifted downward and gently traced the faint curve of his stomach. The motion was tender, instinctive. Protective.

He didn’t even realize he was doing it.

She blinked back the sudden wetness in her eyes.

A few minutes passed in silence, broken only by the clink of a spoon against porcelain and the soft rustling of leaves outside.

Then Harry’s voice cut through the quiet, lower now. Raw.

“I just want… he or she to be happy, Hermione. To grow up knowing they’re wanted. Loved. Safe.”

He turned to her, and for a moment, he looked so young. So unbearably young.

“I want them to know what love feels like… every single day. I want them to feel something I never did, not really - not until you. I don’t want them to ever question if they matter.”

Hermione’s breath hitched. She reached for her teacup and gripped it hard, fingers trembling slightly.

“If something happens to me…” Harry continued, forcing the words out like they weighed more than he could carry, “if I don’t make it out of here… I need to know they’ll be okay.”

Hermione’s head snapped toward him.

“Harry —”

“I’m going to try, I swear it,” he said quickly, urgently. “I’m going to do everything I can. But if something happens… if he finds out too much, or decides I’m no longer useful—”

He broke off, voice catching. His hand was still over his belly, but now it trembled.

Hermione could barely breathe.

She saw it then—what Lily must have felt. That impossible choice. The desperate willingness to give everything so that your child might have a chance at life. And Harry, her Harry, was walking toward that same crossroads. Had already demonstrated that he was more than willing to bear the burden of it, the cost.

“I think I understand my mum better now,” Harry whispered, his voice thick with emotion. “I never really got it—not until... That… that kind of love. The kind where you’re okay with dying if it means they get to live.”

Tears spilled freely down Hermione’s cheeks.

“I can’t lose them, Hermione,” he said, eyes shining. “Even if I have to go, I just — promise me. Promise me you’ll take care of them. Promise me they’ll be okay.”

She reached for his hands—both of them—and held them tightly in hers.

“I promise,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “With everything I am, Harry. I’ll protect your baby. I’ll love them. And I’ll make sure they know who you were — how much you wanted them.”

Harry blinked rapidly, his throat bobbing, unable to speak.

And then, something shimmered. A flicker of light swirled faintly where their hands were joined, where her vow had taken shape — not just in words, but in magic. It was ancient, old as time itself. A vow made with the full force of the heart. One that would bind and protect and shield.

Hermione gasped. Harry’s eyes widened.

And the room, for one breathless moment, felt full of something holy.

It was as if the baby had heard her promise… and accepted it.

Harry looked down at their joined hands, his voice a whisper of awe.

“Thank you.”

And Hermione — heart full, eyes wet, arms moving to circle around her friend and his child—could only nod.

In that moment, love was stronger than fear. Stronger than fate.

And for the first time in a long time, they felt the barest flicker of hope.

Harry blinked through the blurry veil of his happy tears, clutching Hermione in a hug that said everything about how appreciative he was that she was here, by his side.

“Thanks, Hermione,” he whispered. “I guess this makes you the baby’s Godmother, then?”

Hermione’s eyes widened. Her breath hitched. Again.

Of all the moments she had imagined for such an honor — birthday dinners, weddings, lazy summer afternoons — she had never once envisioned it happening inside the Dark Lord’s lair. And yet, here they were: sitting beside a magnificent view, in a fake Gryffindor common room, planning a future in defiance of everything Voldemort represented.

Life, it seemed, didn’t just work in mysterious ways. It worked in twisted, utterly deranged spirals.

Her lips parted to respond, but before she could find the right words, a squeaky voice piped up from across the room.

“Pardons me, Harrys and Hermiones.”

The two jumped apart like teenagers caught sneaking a kiss under the mistletoe. Hermione’s hand flew to her chest while Harry wiped hurriedly at his eyes with the sleeve of his jumper. Relief quickly settled over their expressions as they turned and saw the small, apologetic figure of Tizzy the house elf wringing her hands near the hearth.

“Tizzy is sorry for startling,” the elf added quickly, her enormous eyes even wider than usual.

“No, no — you’re fine,” Harry said, still wiping his eyes with the back of his wrist. “You just gave us a bit of a fright.”

Hermione offered a nod, though her eyes were still narrowed slightly. “You’ve never appeared uninvited before,” she said, her tone half-curious, half-concerned.

Tizzy blinked, then straightened proudly. “Tizzy is not breaking rules! Tizzy was sent!”

Harry and Hermione exchanged a look, dreading the inevitable explanation.

“Sent?” Harry asked.

The elf bobbed her head. “Yes. By Master. Lord Voldemort is inviting the pair of yous to dine with him this evening. Dinner will be served at precisely eight o’clock.”

There was a pause.

A very, very long pause.

Then:

“…I’m sorry. Could you repeat that?” Hermione asked faintly.

“Master wishes for yous to join him. For dinner,” Tizzy replied cheerily, clearly proud to deliver such an important summons.

Harry opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “Like… like dinner dinner?”

“With forks and food?” he added, sounding just this side of unhinged.

Tizzy gave a definitive nod. “Yes, yes. Master has already begun preparing. Nagini is helping.”

That somehow made it worse.

After another round of stunned silence and two dazed nods, Tizzy popped away, leaving them to stare at each other in mounting panic.

“I… I think I preferred it when he was just ignoring us,” Harry said.

“No arguments here,” Hermione murmured.

Try as they might, there was simply no salvaging the rest of the day. The library held no answers that could calm their nerves, and even the books on magical gestation — usually a reliable distraction — couldn’t hold Harry’s attention. They spent the afternoon in a strange limbo of anticipation, trying not to imagine silver cutlery, dark-robed hosts, or magically poisoned wine.

By the time the hour struck seven fifty-five, Hermione was halfway through what had to be her tenth re-braiding of her hair, and Harry had spent a good portion of the past hour alternately straightening and then wrinkling robes that would not have looked out of place at the Yule Ball.

The knock on the door came as a feminine hiss.

Both of them froze.

“Oh no,” Harry whispered, partially relieved, partially not. “It’s her.”

And sure enough, the door opened to reveal the massive, gliding form of Nagini. She paused dramatically in the doorway, her head cocked to one side as if assessing their readiness.

“You are late,” she said, as exasperated as any snake could.

“It’s five minutes until eight,” Harry replied, narrowing his eyes.

Nagini tilted her head the other way. “Master does not like waiting. Neither do I. Especially not when I could be digesting a wild hare instead of playing escort.”

Hermione, naturally, couldn’t understand the exchange—but judging by Harry’s smirk and the way he shook his head slightly, it had to be at least mildly ridiculous.

“Well,” he muttered, rubbing at his temples as they stepped out into the hallway behind the giant snake, “at least someone around here has dinner plans that involve eating rodents instead of… emotional tension.”

Nagini flicked her tongue in what Harry could only assume was amusement.

“If I were you, I would avoid the soup course – no thick and juicy meat at all,” she hissed, slithering ahead with what could only be described as a sassy wiggle.

Hermione glanced sideways at him. “What did she say?”

“She said… um. To avoid the soup – apparently its vegetarian and that deeply offends her,” Harry said.

Hermione sighed. “I have a feeling that won’t be the weirdest thing I hear tonight.”

And so, side by side, arm in arm, and escorted by a giant magical, and highly venomous python with a flair for dramatics, Harry and Hermione made their way through the mock halls of Hogwarts to dinner with Lord Voldemort.

What could possibly go wrong?

The above was my attempt at a filler chapter, to spread out the heavy emotions. Clearly I suck at that. Oh well, next chapter is when shit. starts. going. down.

Chapter Text

AN: This has definitely been the hardest chapter to write - i am still not completely happy with it but am so sick of staring at these words that it is what it is at this point. It's the pacing of what Tom and Harry were - and where they sort of are at that I had trouble with here combined with what they know and how they know what they know. But I'm rambling, so forget this and enjoy!

Both Hermione and Harry stood frozen just outside the double doors to the Great Hall, the weight of ancient wood and darker expectations pressing against their nerves. The echo of their footsteps had long faded into silence. Only the steady, rhythmic sound of Nagini’s sinuous coils brushing across the stone floor in circles around them reminded them that time had not stopped.

But it certainly felt like it had.

This was it.

Beyond those doors waited the Dark Lord.

Harry inhaled shakily, trying to will some strength back into his knees. Hermione looked ready to either flee or vomit — possibly both; which did not go well with her stunning gown of blue lace accentuated by a velvet bodice that had been laid out for her. And if it hadn’t been for their serpentine chaperone, neither of them might have found the will to move another step forward.

But Nagini had a schedule to keep.

And she was not about to risk disobedience—not when her master had explicitly said, “Dinner. Eight sharp.”

“Master is waiting,” Nagini hissed, stretching herself out along the door’s base with regal impatience. She craned her head back toward Harry, tongue flicking.

“You do not want to keep him waiting. He dislikes lateness.”

“I’m guessing he’s not the type to appreciate fashionably late?” Harry muttered, voice dry.

“If ‘fashionable’ is what you’re aiming for in that wrinkled tunic, I should warn you… he may kill you on aesthetic grounds alone.”

Harry blinked and turned, his lips twitching despite himself. “Did… did you just make a joke?”

Nagini reared up, coiling slightly, her scales glinting in the flickering torchlight.

“I am old, Harry Potter. Not dead.”

Hermione, hearing only Parseltongue hisses, leaned in and whispered, “She’s not about to eat us, is she?”

“No, but she’s insulted my outfit.”

Nagini chuckled — a dry, rattling sound that was half hiss, half purr. “I will ensure you are remembered fondly when you are inevitably incinerated for your poor wardrobe choices.”

Harry gave a theatrical sigh. “Great. Death by fashion. It was only a matter of time.”

“Go,” she instructed at last, pressing her broad snout gently against the doors. They opened with an eerie grace.

And then there was no turning back.

The Great Hall, or rather this distorted reflection of it, opened up before them.

The torches lining the walls burned with a soft amber glow, casting a surreal warmth that was entirely at odds with the mounting chill crawling down Harry’s spine. The enchanted ceiling was absent; instead, the high arches were dark and vast, like a void overhead. There was no House décor, no banners. Just shadow, candlelight, and one long table — a mere quarter of its normal size — set with gleaming plates and even shinier expectations.

“Master is through here,” Nagini announced dutifully, giving them a firm nudge with the coiled strength of her body.

But it wasn’t the doorway — or even the room — that brought them to a breathless halt as they crossed the threshold.

It was him.

They had expected something familiar. The sunken, noseless face. The red, snake-like eyes. The aura of decay and menace. The embodiment of every nightmare they had battled across six years of surviving Hogwarts.

What greeted them instead was… human.

Younger. Healthier. Symmetrical and well proportioned.

And — Harry hated himself for even thinking it — attractive. Devastatingly so. The kind of attractiveness that was completely unfair and made the knees go weak.

The man sitting at the head of the table was tall and muscular and lean, his dark robes tailored with surgical precision to highlight his best features. Which was pretty much everything. His skin, once ashen and corpse-like, now held a subtle glow, and his high cheekbones and sharp jaw were striking rather than skeletal. His eyes were still red—but softer, restrained, as though he had dimmed the furnace of rage that usually burned behind them.

He looked like Tom Riddle a few years out of Hogwarts — if Tom Riddle had taken a spa day and finally gotten over the whole 'murder' phase.

“Nagini is bringing Master’s guests as ordered,”.

The Dark Lord — Tom, Voldemort, whatever name he was dressing himself in tonight — tilted his head in acknowledgment. He did not rise. He simply stared at them, a wry curl of amusement on his lips.

“Sit,” he said.

His voice was warm. Rich. Velvet laced with poison. And it carried the implicit weight of magic so powerful and oppresive it hummed through the air like a whispered threat.

Without speaking, Harry and Hermione walked stiffly to the table. They sat directly across from each other, and, more importantly, at the opposite end from where Voldemort lounged like some grotesquely civilized but so mind-numbingly and stupidly attractive monarch holding court.

The rest of the plates appeared in front of them with a gentle chime. Silver cutlery glimmered. The air smelled faintly of a well-used hearth, cloves, and something unplaceably sweet.

It was all absurd. Horrifying. Surreal.

One subtle glance from the Dark Lord was all it took — Tizzy bowed with a soft pop from where she had been standing dutifully in the corner and dinner began to appear on the long table in a series of quiet, shimmering waves.

“Wees is beginning with French onion soup and fresh-baked bread,” the elf squeaked, voice high and proud, as if announcing a royal decree.

But neither Harry nor Hermione made a move toward their bowls.

Because down the table, seated like sin incarnate, was Tom Riddle. And he was beautiful. Captivating.

Not beautiful in the delicate, effeminate way that sometimes graced the pages of wizarding fashion magazines - the ones that Lavender or Pansy were always getting yelled at for bringing to class. No — this was something darker. Sharper. Classical. Devastatingly lethal and impossible to ignore.

Thick, dark brown hair — slightly tousled, as if he had run his hands through it one too many times—framed a face that looked carved from old magic and arrogance with a straight and aristocratic nose to boot. His lips, far too soft-looking for someone with so much blood on his hands, curled in a knowing smirk.

He looked like the very embodiment of forbidden temptation. Not aged, not haggard — not the monster they had come to expect. No snake-like slits, no waxy pallor, no hissing monstrosity.

This was Tom as he had once been. As he was always meant to be.

And it was unnerving.

Harry couldn’t look away.

He could feel Hermione across from him, stiff and silent, clearly suffering a similar internal crisis. This was not how things were meant to go. This was not how enemies were supposed to look at you across a dinner table. There wasn't even supposed to be a dinner table.

And then, because his brain short-circuited from the overwhelming cognitive dissonance and because he was Harry bloody Potter, he opened his mouth.

“Well,” he said, blinking at the man who had murdered his parents and somehow gotten him pregnant, “you have a nose again.”

It was not his finest hour.

The silence was immediate.

Hermione inhaled like she’d swallowed a Quaffle, then promptly stopped breathing. Her eyes widened to dinner-plate size as she sent a frantic glance toward Harry, her expression screaming: Are you trying to die today? She was mentally preparing his obituary.

Tom — no, Voldemort, because no matter how gorgeous he looked, he was still Voldemort—paused with a glass of red wine lifted halfway to his mouth.

He regarded Harry with a faint amusement, the barest upward quirk of one perfectly sculpted brow. Then, slowly, he leaned back into his chair like a king who had already won the game and was now enjoying the spoils.

His voice, when it came, was smooth and impossibly deep, rich with unspent thunder.

“Your observational skills are second to none, Potter,” he drawled, the ghost of a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Truly, nothing escapes you.”

He sipped the wine. It caught the light like liquid garnet.

“If you must know,” he continued, “this is how I truly look. The other form was… from sacrifice. A consequence of my ambition. A necessary horror from before you were born.”

His eyes lingered on Harry then — not cruel, not mocking, just… studying.

“As for why I look like this now… well. Certain rituals, bonds come with their own kind of… rebalancing.”

That was when Harry’s brain, clearly lagging behind the rest of him, finally caught up to what had just come out of his mouth.

He flushed a vivid scarlet. His ears burned. His eyes darting to his soup bowl in the hopes of finding salvation.

Hermione, bless her, tried to defuse the tension with a graceful reach for her goblet—only to knock a spoon clattering to the floor in a burst of unintended clumsiness. The clatter echoed embarrassingly loud.

Voldemort — Tom — smiled, as if their mortification was wine to him.

“Oh, please,” he said silkily, clearly enjoying himself far too much. “Do relax. You’re not here to be punished. Not tonight.”

Harry didn’t reply, now carefully inspecting the melted cheese of the soup with great interest.

Nagini, coiled in an elegant arc beside the hearth, hissed low in Parseltongue, her tone dry and unmistakably smug.

“You embarrassed yourself impressively, little speaker.”

Harry shot her a glare. “You could’ve stopped me.”

“And miss the show? Never.” Her tail twitched in a serpentine equivalent of a snicker. “But do go on. Dinner hasn’t been this entertaining in decades.”

Of course, Hermione—who had never met a mystery she didn’t want to autopsy — couldn’t let the moment pass without a question. Her analytical mind was spinning at full tilt, and seeing as how the Dark Lord didn’t appear to be in a killing or even light-hexing mood tonight, she figured: in for a Knut, in for a Galleon.

“Excuse me, sir — Lord V-Voldemort…” she began, faltering only slightly on the name. It felt wrong in her mouth, too sharp, too infamous. But oddly, the man — no, the being — at the far end of the table didn’t flinch or sneer.

Instead, he merely lifted one immaculately sculpted brow in silent acknowledgment, a signal to continue.

Hermione swallowed and pressed on, voice steadier now.

“If that’s your true form,” she gestured vaguely toward him — toward the man with cheekbones like blades and eyes that looked carved from the embers of dying stars, “then why did the paternity spell show your other… um—previous… face?”

She didn’t dare say “snakelike” or “inhuman,” though the words danced on the edge of her tongue.

For a heartbeat, the hall went quiet—tense, as if the castle itself was holding its breath.

And then Tom — Voldemort — smiled.

It was not a kind smile. It was a smile that suggested he'd just realized how entertaining this evening could truly be.

"An excellent question, Miss Granger," he said smoothly, his tone velvet-wrapped steel. "And, as it happens, precisely why I’ve summoned you both this evening." His gaze slid to Harry then—slow, deliberate—a look that sparked a shiver down Harry’s spine and somewhere else he would very much prefer to pretend didn’t exist. "After the… revelation," he drawled, eyes lingering, "I found myself with questions of my own."

Harry shifted uncomfortably. “Join the club.”

Tom’s eyes gleamed.

“Indeed. You’ll find I’m rather less murderous when I’m curious.”

“Well,” Harry muttered, spearing a piece of bread with his fork, “there’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear over soup.”

Tom chuckled, low and dark, before continuing. “You see, the spell in question — Parens Revelio — displays the parental forms as they were at the exact moment of conception from the contributing parties. Which normally is all very straightforward. That face, however,” he said, voice hardening slightly, “was the cost of a particular ritual. One that stripped me of many things… including my human guise in exchange for something more permanent, enduring.”

He lifted a glass of red wine and took a slow sip, his expression momentarily pensive, almost nostalgic. Then it vanished, replaced by something colder.

“I regained my ability to shift back into this form only upon my rebirth in the graveyard.” He paused, eyes never leaving Harry. “So, thank you for that.”

Harry stared. “You’re welcome, I guess? Always a pleasure helping someone return from magical purgatory.”

Tom’s lips curled again, and he gave a small nod as if Harry had just played the right move in a long, slow chess game.

“But,” he said, voice turning silk-slick and cutting again, “that spell… the one that revealed your condition, and our connection—would have taken my current visage had I had anything to do with this. And there is only one explanation I can find for why such an impossibility has occurred.”

He leaned forward slightly, just enough for the candlelight to catch the edges of his irises and turn them gold for an instant.

“Tell me. How long,” he asked, “have you known about my Horcruxes?”

The air in the room chilled noticeably.

Hermione let out a rather uncharacteristic squeak while it was Harry’s turn for his eyes to balloon wide enough to rival the dinner plates. Their faces were a cacophony of expressions: shock, horror, denial—and more than a little confusion mixed with a fair amount of dread at where this was going.

“What? We don’t... I mean... what are Horcruxes?” Harry said, his voice pitching upward in what he hoped passed for innocence but sounded more like a guilty twelve-year-old caught in the restricted section after curfew.

It was a valiant effort. A deeply doomed, valiant effort.

Tom didn’t laugh, though the corner of his mouth twitched in a way that suggested he might have, if he hadn’t been so thoroughly unimpressed. So thoroughly on edge that his most guarded secret was not so guarded after all.

“Do not lie to Lord Voldemort,” he said, his voice slow and soft and terrifyingly quiet — like frost creeping in under a door.

Magic spiked through the room like a silent lightning storm. The air shimmered, grew heavy. Oppressive. The pressure of it made Harry’s ears pop. Even the silverware trembled on the table.

“I know that you know,” Tom continued, his crimson gaze flicking between them like a pendulum of doom. “Because how else would this… entire situation have occurred?”

He gestured, vaguely, toward Harry’s stomach.

“Believe me,” he drawled, eyes gleaming, “I would remember if I had bedded the Boy Who Lived sometime in the past few months.”

The sheer confidence with which he said it made it even worse.

Hermione choked. Harry spluttered.

“You — what — excuse me?!” Harry all but yelped, his face going several shades of red Hermione hadn’t known were possible.

Tom tilted his head, the picture of dark amusement. “Unless you’ve discovered a rather unconventional method of conception while escaping me, I suggest we all accept the truth: this was not physical. This was magical. Which means… precisely what I think it means.”

Hermione, now over her initial shriek of disbelief, had gone completely still.

“Shall I explain how such a thing is possible,” Voldemort said, each syllable crisp and venom-laced, “or is this something you already know—or Merlin forbid… planned?”

The air in the Great Hall dipped another ten degrees, as if his words alone could summon frost.

Hermione swallowed against the tightness in her throat, her appetite thoroughly obliterated. The delicate silver spoon beside her untouched soup bowl might as well have been a guillotine. Her hands clenched tightly in her lap to stop from shaking.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Harry curl in on himself, arms wrapping protectively around his midsection — subtle but unmistakable. Even now, in the presence of the man who had brought them to this impossible juncture, his first instinct was to shield the unborn life within him.

“We… don’t know,” Hermione whispered, her voice quiet and raw. “How this happened.”

She felt Harry nod faintly across from her her. It was the truth. Strange as it sounded—stranger still for whom they were saying it to—it was all they had.

A flicker passed over Voldemort’s face. Not anger. Not disbelief. Something else. Something colder.

“I will assume,” he said at last, setting down his spoon with a delicate clink, “that you are intimately familiar with the concept of a Horcrux.”

It wasn’t a question. It was a statement laced with disdain.

Hermione’s heart clenched tighter. She glanced at Harry, who was rigid in his seat, his expression unreadable. Then she gave a single nod.

“Excellent,” Voldemort drawled. “That will make the next portion far less tedious.”

There was fury in his voice, but it was the controlled kind. The kind that burns quietly, that calcifies. The kind you survive only by walking a very, very careful line.

“Would I also be correct in assuming,” he continued, his tone now rich with loathing, “that it was that old, meddlesome fool, Dumbledore, who told you about them?”

Hermione’s nod came slower this time, reluctant, but ultimately undeniable. Her shoulders hunched as if the act alone might deflect whatever was coming next.

“I thought so.” Voldemort leaned back slightly, expression pensive. “I had my suspicions, of course. After the incident with the Chamber of Secrets… Lucius proved far more careless than I had anticipated. I should’ve known Dumbledore would sniff out the truth. The man always had a penchant for involving himself where he was neither wanted nor invited.”

His words dripped with quiet fury, but he didn’t look at them when he said it. His gaze was fixed somewhere in the distance, seeing not the soup bowl in front of him but the blurred outlines of a decades-long grudge.

“Believe me,” he added, almost offhand, “Lucius was punished severely for his indiscretion. A very costly lesson, that one.”

Neither Harry nor Hermione touched their food. The soup before them had gone lukewarm, untouched and unwanted. And yet the Dark Lord took another spoonful from his own, slow and deliberate, as though each bite signaled control—of the meal, of the moment, of them.

Not a single word passed between them until he finished the last drop and set his spoon down with a sound that felt like a gavel.

Then, with a single glance — cool, commanding, devoid of flourish — he said, “Eat.”

There was no wand. No threat. No show of force.

Just a look. And it was enough.

Hermione’s hand hovered over her spoon, her fingers trembling slightly. Harry glanced at her, then back at the bowl, jaw set. He didn’t move to eat, not yet. He couldn’t — not while his pulse still thundered and his skin crawled with the sheer absurdity of the moment.

They were having dinner with Voldemort and he knew that they knew about his Horcruxes.

Harry’s voice broke the silence, low and careful.

“If we didn’t plan this… if none of us meant for it to happen…” He looked up at the man across the table, his green eyes steady, “…what does that mean for the baby?”

A flicker crossed Voldemort’s face again—too fast to catch. But something in his expression softened. Not warmed. Never that. But shifted. Almost like caution and recognition and acceptance before being throughly replaced.

“That,” he said, voice thoughtful and bone-deep, “is what I intend to find out.”

Immediately, under the palpable weight of the Dark Lord’s gaze, both Harry and Hermione ducked their heads and began dutifully spooning their now-tepid soup into their mouths.

It felt surreal. Like something out of a fever dream.

Harry’s fingers trembled slightly around the silver spoon. Each motion required more focus than it should have. He had to physically will his bottom lip not to quiver. Because despite the warmth of the fireplace and the ornate candles flickering gently in their crystal sconces, he was freezing.

And yet, this — this polite nightmare of a meal — was happening.

Across the table, Lord Voldemort took another slow, deliberate sip of wine, watching them as though he were surveying animals in a cage.

“If you had thought,” he said, tone conversational but razor-sharp, “that I intended to kill you for knowing my most guarded secret… you’d have been dealt with already.”

Hermione froze mid-sip. The spoon hovered in front of her mouth.

“But,” Voldemort continued, swirling his wine, “ever since my return to a proper body, I’ve found the appeal of patience… enlightening. In my youth, I may have acted more impetuously. I see now how short-sighted that was.”

He paused, and his crimson eyes flicked directly to Harry.

“But age and circumstance,” he said, voice darkening just slightly, “tend to grant perspective. Not to mention whatever it was you invoked at Malfoy Manor – so eerily similar to what your mother did almost twenty years ago.”

Harry managed—barely—not to flinch. He kept his gaze fixed on his bowl as if it held the answers to all of life’s terrible questions. Somehow, his stomach managed to keep down the mouthful he swallowed, though he doubted it would hold out much longer.

The fact that he was having a civil conversation with the man who had murdered his parents, haunted his nightmares, and now fathered his child—it was beyond comprehension. It was lunacy stitched with silver cutlery that had gold filagree.

“But I digress,” Voldemort said smoothly, placing his wineglass down with a soft clink. “Let us return to the topic at hand.”

There was something dangerous and hungry in the way his eyes glinted — like a cat that had finished playing with its prey but hadn’t yet decided if it would spare it.

“When I first discovered the destruction of my diary Horcrux,” he said, the words cool and detached, “I was… displeased.”

The understatement hit like a thunderclap.

“After all,” he mused, “not only had my enemy uncovered the foundation of my immortality, but a piece of my soul — my essence — was lost forever. Irretrievable.”

Harry swallowed hard, forcing down the panic.

“Yes, Harry,” Voldemort said, finally addressing him directly, his voice silk over glass, “I know it was you. Who else could it have been?”

Harry’s spine locked rigid. He could feel Hermione stiffen across the table.

“But perhaps,” Voldemort said, swirling his wine lazily, “we are even now. I took your parents. Your home. Your innocence. And you — you destroyed a piece of my soul. Balanced, don’t you think?”

Harry said nothing. He didn’t breathe. He didn’t dare. There was nothing “even” about it. And yet he couldn’t voice that without possibly ending their uneasy truce—if that’s what this dinner even was. He had to control his sass better.

“No matter,” Voldemort continued, as if brushing dust off his sleeve. “That diary was my first. I was young. Overzealous. I hadn’t yet perfected the art. And I was careless in protecting it. Careless in whom I trusted it to.”

He spoke as though reminiscing over a discarded school essay, not the murder of a child.

“And by the time I learned of its destruction, years had passed. The deed was done. What could I do?”

The question lingered ominously in the air.

A soft pop announced the arrival of Tizzy, who appeared at the sound of Voldemort’s empty glass meeting the table. With a flick of her fingers, she cleared the soup bowls and filled his goblet anew. Then, with a practiced flourish, she presented the next course.

“For our main,” she chirped, as if none of this was out of the ordinary, “a mushroom risotto with shaved fennel and roasted asparagus, served with seared salmon in lemon butter.”

Hermione’s stomach clenched—not from hunger, but from sheer disorientation. The dish smelled divine. Familiar. Like her mother’s Sunday dinners. But she was seated near Harry, facing Voldemort who sat at the head, who knew their secrets, and still she was expected to eat.

She didn’t move to touch her fork.

Voldemort, on the other hand, took a modest bite, chewed, and then chased it with another sip of wine that he had swilled first. When he licked a drop wine from the corner of his mouth, the red stained his lips for just a second—and Harry’s brain, without permission, supplied an intrusive thought.

For the first time he thought the matching red of the man's eyes beautiful.

Horrified at himself, Harry blinked and looked down at his plate, furiously stabbing a piece of asparagus and hoping the ground would open up and swallow him.

“Last year,” Voldemort said after a pause, “I received irrefutable proof that Dumbledore had discovered my secret.”

He leaned forward slightly, wine forgotten for the moment.

“You see, I have many eyes in many places… and that blackened, cursed hand of his? Only one curse could have done that. One of my own invention, in fact.”

He smiled.

And it was beautiful.

And it was terrifying.

And for Harry… it was starting to make a sick sort of sense.

This wasn’t the face of the snake-like monster who had haunted his childhood. This was the man who had made himself a god. This was Tom Riddle—reborn, refined, and very much still deadly.

And Harry had his child inside him.

“Though it pained me to lose another piece of my soul,” Voldemort said, swirling his wine for improved aroma as though discussing the misfortune of a poor business investment, “I consider the death of Albus Dumbledore a fair exchange.”

He set the glass down with a soft, decisive clink and delicately cut his asparagus into precise quarters. The silver blade of his knife glinted in the candlelight as he paired one piece with a sliver of salmon, lifted it to his mouth, and chewed thoughtfully.

Harry and Hermione remained silent, it was the salmon’s turn now to start getting cold.

“I took immediate steps, of course,” Voldemort went on, “to retrieve and safeguard the remaining Horcruxes. Most are now held here, under wards that not even Death himself could break.”

He looked up, pointedly.

Their faces — tense, pale, frightened — were exactly what he expected. And exactly what he liked to see.

“But,” he said, his voice cooling with a quiet intensity that made the hairs on the back of their necks rise in instinctive warning, “there was one I could not retrieve. One I had hidden long before either of you were born.”

He paused.

“Imagine my surprise,” he continued, “when I discovered it… gone.”

Hermione’s throat tightened. Her fingers clenched beneath the table. She had a sinking suspicion of where this was going, but something didn’t add up. Her eyes darted to Harry, but he was staring at Voldemort with open confusion—and something else. Realization?

“I am not one to gamble,” Voldemort said lightly, “but if I were… I might wager that a certain silver locket once rested against your skin, Harry. Perhaps… around your neck?”

The air left Harry’s lungs in a quiet rush. He hadn’t expected him to know that. He hadn’t expected—

“I — yes,” he admitted, barely above a whisper. “For months. While we were on the run.”

Voldemort’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Ah. I thought so.”

He was calm. Amused, almost.

“Long-term proximity to a Horcrux,” he mused, “can create certain... effects. Possession, as you saw with my diary. Prolonged exposure opens the host. But conception?” He let the word linger like an incantation.

“Rare. Unheard of, even. But not, apparently, impossible. That word apparently means nothing where you are concerned.”

Harry blinked at him.

He heard the words. Understood the logic. But it still didn’t quite make sense. The Horcrux he wore now—the transfigured ring—it still pulsed with dark energy. He could feel it, like a second heartbeat against his skin.

That’s why the baby needed it. That’s why—

“And to think,” Voldemort added, lifting his wine again with a smirk, “of all the known ways to destroy a Horcrux—who would have guessed that unwanted pregnancy would be one.”

Harry’s fork fell from his fingers with a loud clatter.

Hermione paled, the same realization striking her like a thunderbolt. Her voice cracked through the silence.

“It destroys it?” she asked, hoarse. “The Horcrux?”

“Completely and utterly,” Voldemort replied. “The soul fragment... integrates. Becomes something new. It fuses into the embryo. And what’s more —” he turned his gaze onto Harry, who had gone sheet white, “it ceases to be mine.”

Silence. Utter, devastating silence.

“But…” Hermione started, then stopped. She couldn’t help it. Her mind still reached for the edges of the puzzle. To solve it.

“But that can’t be. The Horcrux — Harry’s ring — it’s still active. We can both feel it.”

The moment the words escaped her, she wanted to call them back.

Too late.

Voldemort’s eyes sharpened like drawn blades. His voice dropped to a whisper.

“Show me.”

The room’s warmth bled away as if someone had opened a window to a blizzard. The candles dimmed under the pressure of his presence. Magic, offensive and suffocating, closed in around them like a vice.

Hermione dropped her gaze and froze.

But Harry moved.

“Please,” he said at once, eyes wide. “Don’t take it.”

He rose slowly, fingers trembling as he unfastened the buttons of his dress robes. With great care, he pulled the gold chain free from his neck, revealing the small, transfigured silver ring—the one that had once been a locket stuffed inside a bag, the one containing what remained of a soul that had no right to exist.

“The baby needs it,” Harry said, his voice firming with each word. “I can’t explain why. But it hurts — physically hurts — when I take it off. I think… I think whatever happened, it wasn’t the locket. But the baby… it’s tied to it somehow.”

Voldemort stood now as well, moving like a storm wrapped in deathly elegance. The air around him crackled.

“And you believe this?” he asked, stepping closer, his tone unreadable. “You expect me to let my Horcrux rest around your neck like a keepsake?”

“Yes,” Harry said, lifting his chin, though his hands still shook. “Because if you don’t — if you take it — I think the baby dies.”

Voldemort’s actions faltered as he came to Harry's side.

Not because he doubted Harry’s sincerity.

But because some part of him knew, instinctively, that it was true.

He stared at the ring. At the boy. At where he imagined the slightest swell of his stomach to be.

And for the first time in decades — he hesitated.

The Dark Lord’s long fingers closed around the silver ring, tugging lightly against the chain around Harry’s neck. His touch was precise—careful, almost reverent.

“Please,” Harry whispered again, “for the baby — please let me keep it.”

The plea trembled in his voice, but something stronger held it up — an iron thread woven through desperation.

But before he could lift it free, Harry’s hands snapped forward, clamping over his. And from the moment their skin touched, the world cracked open.

It was like a jolt of raw power had surged from Voldemort’s hands into Harry’s palms, down through his spine and straight into his bones. Every nerve alight. Every breath suspended. It was the Horcrux’s resonance — but not just that. It was deeper. Sharper. Alive.

The gasp that escaped Harry’s lips was matched by a minute flinch in Voldemort’s otherwise impassive expression. Crimson eyes widened — just a fraction — but for someone who had conquered death without blinking, the reaction was seismic.

The ring between them pulsed.

For a split second, Voldemort’s grip loosened; not in hesitation, but in awe.

Harry’s body, already weak from emotional strain and the magical weight of his pregnancy, couldn’t hold him up under the shock. His knees buckled.

But he never hit the ground.

Strong arms caught him before gravity could claim him, steadying him with a fluid grace that should not have belonged to a man once so monstrous - still so deadly. Harry found himself clutched close to the chest of the very being he had been raised to loathe.

Voldemort held him.

Hermione, for her part, was frozen in place — eyes wide, breath caught in her throat. Her brain, the same one that could recite from memory, was simply not equipped to process what she was seeing.

They were all locked in a strange tableau — Harry still trembling in Voldemort’s arms, the Dark Lord frozen in some unknowable tension, and Hermione blinking rapidly as if that might make the scene in front of her return to sanity.

It was Harry who found his voice first.

“For the baby,” he said again, softer now, from where his cheek was pressed against Voldemort's chest, as if the truth itself had finally become weightless. “I don’t know how this happened. But it did. And the baby needs the ring. Please.”

His green eyes — bright, verdant, and unwavering — met Voldemort’s then.

Something passed between them. Not understanding, not yet. But recognition. An acknowledgment of the undeniable magic that pulsed from the tiny life growing in Harry’s belly, the dark, broken magic that lived on in the ring, and whatever protection Harry had previously summoned from the depths of the universe to protect the child from Lord Voldemort.

For all his cruelty and cunning, Voldemort was still a scholar of power. And power never lied.

The truth was in the way Harry shook. The way the ring hummed. The way some unknown and distant chord inside him felt tethered — not just to the Horcrux, but to what had grown from it.

He released the ring. He couldn't chance anything happening to that child or to Harry; not even he - the most powerful wizard ever born - wanted to chance whatever this little wizard, this constant thorn in his side, had summoned from the foundations of magic itself in Malfoy Manor.

Harry sagged in relief, stepping back, but Voldemort’s expression was anything but relaxed. He stared at the ring resting against Harry’s chest with furrowed brows and a rare uncertainty flickering behind his crimson eyes.

“That was the one explanation,” he said slowly, voice low. “If the ring is intact… what then made the child?”

His gaze flicked up to Hermione.

And in that instant, her expression—wide-eyed, mouth open, thoughtful, horrified—betrayed everything.

“You,” he hissed, the air in the room seeming to vanish once more. “You know something.”

Hermione flinched violently, the force of his attention like a slap across the soul.

“You — your face. I saw it. You realized something just before you opened your stupid little mouth.”

“I—I—” she stammered.

“You’re clever,” he said, moving himself and Harry closer to her, eyes gleaming like firelight through wine. “Smarter than I gave you credit for. And you’re going to tell me what you saw—what you know.”

“It was just a theory,” she said quickly, eyes never leaving Voldemort’s. “A thought. I didn’t mean to say anything—”

“What theory?” he pressed, voice a blade now, honed and gleaming. “Speak.”

Hermione swallowed hard. Her mouth opened. She glanced at Harry's confused face.

And the truth was just one breath away.

The Dark Lord withdrew his hands from Harry’s skin with the kind of reluctant finality that came with forcibly severing a tether—one that, against all sense, had started to feel necessary. For a fraction of a second, his fingers hovered, as if mourning the loss of connection. But then he turned, willed his body to move, and began his slow, predatory march around the table.

Harry staggered back half a step, the break in contact so abrupt that it felt like falling into a void. He leaned forward against the table, breath stuttering, skin prickling with the absence of something he hadn’t realized he could grow accustomed to.

Voldemort, now fully composed in that dangerous, regal way of his, strode up to Hermione. Without ceremony, his hands clamped around her shoulders and yanked her forward. Her face was drawn within inches of his, and though she didn’t flinch—didn’t cry out—the sheer force of his presence pressed every breath from her lungs.

The mental intrusion was swift and merciless.

No warning. No finesse.

Voldemort dove into her thoughts with surgical cruelty, skimming years of memory with the speed and clarity of someone used to tearing minds apart. He sifted through spellwork, plans, arguments whispered in the dark, camping trips, near-deaths, the departure of Ron and the discovery of the pregnancy — until finally there it was. A glimmer. A theory half-formed and discarded in panic. A Horcrux. A scar. A soul.

He pulled back.

Hermione collapsed into the chair behind her, gasping, clutching at the table like it was the only solid thing in the room. Her eyes shimmered with unshed tears, but she said nothing. Voldemort hadn’t hurt her—not physically. But she had just looked into the face of a tyrant, and it had stared back with brutal, endless rage.

The Dark Lord turned on his heel and returned to Harry.

The boy had barely straightened before Voldemort’s hand wrapped around his chin, tilting it up.

And again — again — that pulse. That thrumming vibration that lived just beneath the skin, not quite pain and not quite pleasure, surged between them like a memory of something unspoken. Voldemort ignored it this time with the single-mindedness of a man used to subduing even his deepest desires.

His eyes—now fully red, no longer the soft burgundy he had worn like a mask — narrowed as they studied Harry’s face. He lifted his hand and pressed two fingers to the jagged lightning bolt scar.

And then he closed his eyes.

The silence stretched, heavy and dangerous.

Harry stood, completely still, feeling the subtle pull of something vast and deeply personal drawing taut between them. The air seemed to shift — then bend — and Voldemort’s consciousness reached out like a serpent, coiling around the scar.

Only—

Nothing.

There was no resistance because there was no whisper of a connection. No echo of that strange mind-bridge that had haunted them for years. The link was gone.

Voldemort’s eyes flew open.

He stared into Harry’s face, and for the first time in years — perhaps ever — his expression held true, honest shock.

It lasted only a breath before he released Harry abruptly, as though burned.

Harry stumbled backward, catching himself on the chair, heart pounding in his ears.

Voldemort didn’t speak. His mind raced too fast for words.

The connection was gone. The tether — severed.

And worse, he felt it, the way a phantom limb still ached after its loss.

His jaw clenched. With a single, fluid motion, he spun and stalked toward the exit.

“Tizzy!” he barked, not even turning back.

The elf popped into existence with a bow so deep it scraped the stone.

“Make sure they continue to have everything they need,” he ordered, voice flat, unreadable.

And then he was gone. The heavy doors clicked closed behind him.

For a moment, the only sound in the room was the soft clatter of dishes as Tizzy refreshed the table and vanished once more.

Harry finally exhaled.

It came out in jagged bursts, like something vital had just been torn from his chest. He turned to Hermione, his legs barely holding him up.

“What — what just happened?” he asked, voice low and hoarse.

She was already moving toward him, arms wide, ready to catch him if he crumpled. When she wrapped her arms around him, it was the most solid, safe thing he’d felt in days. Minus the strange comfort and belonging he had felt in Tom’s arms. But he was ignoring that. Another lie.

She didn’t speak for a while, not until she felt him steady against her shoulder.

“You had a Horcrux in you, Harry,” she said gently, pulling back just enough to look at him. “All these years. It was in your scar. It had been a passing thought a few days ago, pushed away given everything else.”

Harry blinked. His hand went to his forehead, tracing the shape he had come to think of as a brand, not a home.

And now he knew. He had been a vessel. A container. A cursed boy who had carried the poison of another’s soul since infancy.

And somehow, that curse had given life.

He sank into the nearest chair, numb. The truth landed with slow devastation, like rain soaking through clothes until every inch of him was wet and cold.

That was how. But he still didn’t know why. He had become pregnant because the fragment of Voldemort’s soul — once housed in his scar, a remnant from the night his parents had died — had merged with his own essence. Reconnecting. Creating.

Hermione knelt before him, her hands gripping his tightly.

And still, in the back of his mind, he heard the echo of Voldemort’s voice.

“Make sure they have everything they need.”

Harry couldn’t make sense of it. Not completely. Not yet.

But something had changed between them — subtle, undeniable.

And the most unsettling part was… he wasn’t sure he wanted it to change back.

So, Voldemort likes wine. He probably even has one of those “I love cooking with wine, sometimes I even put it in the food,” napkins that they sell. Yolo, voldie.

On a serious note: I have no idea where I am going with this. I alternate between laughing myself sick and crying uncontrollably.

Chapter Text

AN: Buckle up. Voldie is about to go through something, y’all.

JK – Still owns HP – Still owns that Umbridge was based on looking into a mirror every day.

Voldemort did not run. Dark Lords did not run.

He moved like mist through the cracks of ancient stone — graceful, silent, with a coiled precision that hinted at something far more volatile beneath the surface. His robes, blacker than shadow and unnaturally still, whispered across the cold flagstones like smoke from a dying flame, leaving only unease in his wake.

Each step was calculated, restrained — a deliberate denial of the chaos clawing at the edges of his composure. To quicken his pace would be to admit urgency. To rush would be to show fear.

And he — Lord Voldemort — was above fear.

Even here, in the echoing solitude of his fortress, he would not permit such weakness to take shape. Not in posture. Not in movement. Not even in thought.

Left.

Right.

Left again.

He reached the end of the corridor, where a tall, weathered gargoyle loomed — its expression twisted in eternal disdain. It was a threshold only he could pass. Voldemort pressed his palm to the cold stone, and the creature shuddered beneath his touch, recognizing his magic with a low, reluctant groan. A platform beneath him stirred, ancient gears clicking to life, spiraling him upward on the hidden staircase that led to his private quarters.

They greeted him like a mausoleum welcomes the dead.

The walls were lined with towering shelves, groaning under the weight of tomes bound in cracked leather and human skin — volumes written in tongues long lost to civilization. Blood rites, soul-binding contracts, the blackest of magics — they filled the room like silent sentinels, bearing witness to the legacy of a man who had long since rejected morality and mortality.

Above, a single orb of dull, magical light pulsed faintly from the ceiling, casting shadows that stretched long and thin, slithering across the floor like ghosts of old memories.

He stepped inside.

The door closed behind him with a soft, conclusive click.

Warded. Sealed. Soundproofed. No one could follow him here.

At last, he was alone.

Alone with his thoughts. Alone with his fury. Alone with the growing storm that even he could not derail.

Far from prying eyes. Far from the boy. Far from the child that should not exist.

And that was when it hit him.

The first breath wavered, the second caught. Something inside him cracked — not loudly, not visibly — but like a pressure fracture under the weight of too many contradictions. His body betrayed him: his shoulders stiffened; his fingers twitched at his sides.

He was panicking.

It was barely a sensation he knew how to name, let alone manage. He had faced death. He had unmade it. Written his name into annals of history. But this—this was different. This was unknown. Uncontrollable.

He took a breath. Then another. Not because he needed to; but because he just didn’t know what else to do. It was a desperate reach for order and control.

Inhale. Hold. Exhale.

What he had felt — the moment Harry’s hands touched his — still echoed through his nerves like a lightning strike suspended in his veins. Not pain. Not even magic, not as he understood it, but something else. Something older. Wilder. Whole.

He clenched his jaw, grounding himself in silence.

He could not fall apart. Not now.

If Harry Potter, with his half-formed understanding of the world and maddening penchant for survival, could conjure impossibility into existence — could bend reality through sheer, unrelenting will — then so could he. He was Lord Voldemort. The greatest sorcerer of his age. He would not be unraveled by a touch. Not by the boy. Not by the thought of the child.

His breath became steadier now.

In. Hold. Out.

Bit by bit, the chaos ebbed. The fire in his veins dulled to embers, and the tight band constricting his mind began to loosen. Thoughts — coherent, sharp — returned to him like soldiers falling into line.

Control returned, and with it, clarity.

A pale glow caught his eye.

His gaze drifted toward the far wall, where the Pensieve sat cradled within a hollow of blackened stone, as though his fortress itself had taken shape around it. It hummed faintly, not with urgency, but with quiet inevitability — like it knew.

The air around it felt charged, waiting.

He crossed the room without a sound. His movements were fluid, shadowed. The glow of the basin cast soft silver light across his features, etching deep lines into his beautiful and handsome skin, catching the faint glint in his eyes, adding coolness to the fires raging within.

The surface shimmered, rippling with the sheen of suspended thought — liquid memory, alive and waiting.

Within it, two distinct threads floated, circling each other like twin constellations locked in an eternal orbit — forever tethered, forever in opposition.

Lily Potter’s sacrifice of herself; Harry Potter’s defiance of the natural order.

He had returned to these memories more times than he could count, each time scouring them for a flaw, a weakness, a contradiction. Something he had missed. Each time, the memories had given no more away; had offered no more insight. Quiet in their power, infuriating in their mystery.

Lily’s memory had been maddening enough — a mother’s love, made lethal through sacrifice. No plan. No incantation. Just raw, desperate emotion in the final seconds of her life. Sentimental nonsense he had once called it. She had stood there, unarmed, her back against the crib, putting herself between him and the baby, armed with nothing but a plea to whatever force might be listening: Let him live. Somehow, some way… let him live.

And it had worked.

The Killing Curse — his curse — had faltered. Turned aside. Not because of power, but because of love. A love so fierce, so absolute, that it had left an imprint on magic itself.

He had dismissed it then, in the arrogance of certainty — when he still believed sentiment was a sickness and love a weakness.

He had been wrong.

Disastrously, irrevocably wrong.

But the boy…

The boy was something else entirely. Something far more dangerous.

Because Harry hadn’t just survived love.

He had weaponized it.

Voldemort’s gaze shifted to the second memory — his eyes drawn to it with a magnetism he loathed, a compulsion he could not sever. No matter how many times he had reviewed it, dissected it, tried to unravel its workings, it still held him captive.

Harry’s voice echoed in the memory. Tied up and no where he could go. Exhausted. And yet, unshakably sure. He hadn’t begged for his own life. He hadn’t pleaded for escape. He had asked — no, willed — for protection.

Not for himself. But for the child. Their child.

And magic had answered.

Not just heard. Not just obeyed but created.

It had bent to him. Birthed something impossible from that moment, from that conviction. And not with the bright, thunderous theatrics of wand duels or spellcraft—but through something older, deeper, truer. A resonance beneath the learned rituals of incantation and technique. A frequency woven into the marrow of existence.

This wasn’t magic as it was taught.

It was magic as it had once been — before language, before structure, before the world knew itself as a world. The kind of magic that whispered in the dark before the stars first burned into being.

It had poured from Harry not as a command to be enforced, but as an invocation. A summoning. A truth so profound it demanded reality reshape itself in answer.

His will made manifest.

And the magic had complied.

Not because Harry had power. But because he had certainty.

An unyielding, furious certainty that what he asked for would be.

Voldemort clenched his jaw, the memory still shimmering before him like a wound he could not cauterize. He had spent a lifetime mastering power, hoarding it, manipulating it, reshaping the world by force. But this…

This was not force. It was faith.

Power made absolute. Like that infernal thorn in his side was truly, and utterly convinced that he would succeed before he had even opened his mouth.

The ancient protections Lily had stumbled upon had been laced with love and sacrifice in the face of an hour glass that had five grains of sand remaining. That he could understand, if not respect. But this — this was older.

He hadn’t known such magic still lingered in the bones of the world.

“What are you, Harry Potter?” he whispered to the basin.

The memories offered no reply — only the mirrored truth he could not escape: Lily had died for love while Harry had weaponized it into something else entirely.

And now, somewhere between those two legacies, something new had been born.

Tonight… for the first time, he had not merely seen the truth.

He had felt it.

The child was beyond his reach. Untouchable.

And because Harry carried it — because Harry had willed that protection into existence — he, Lord Voldemort, could not lay a hand upon the child.

Not through spell.
Not through force.
Not even through intent.

It was protected — utterly, irrevocably — by magic that did not answer to law or lineage or legacy.

But to Harry Potter.

To his chaos. His will. His maddening, insufferable belief.

Magic had listened to him as if he were its equal. As if he were something more than mortal.

As if he, the Dark Lord, had become secondary.

Voldemort turned from the Pensieve in a sharp, fluid motion, the long sweep of his robes snapping like a whip behind him. His stride carved through the silence, fast and furious, a predator displaced by something it could neither track nor kill.

He crossed the room in seconds, toward the liquor cabinet that stood in the shadows like a silent confessor — unchanging, unblinking, bearing witness to a moment he would not name as defeat.

The crystal decanter awaited him, gleaming with cold fire in the light of the hearth. Its contents had been enchanted centuries ago to refill itself eternally, a quiet indulgence of those long dead.

The wine inside was the color of spilled rubies.

He yanked the stopper free with a sharp pop, dumped a heavy measure into the goblet, and watched as it clung to the glass, thick and slow like fresh blood.

He downed it in one swallow.

Fitting, he thought grimly. It looked like victory. But tonight, it tasted like failure.

It burned on the way down — not from temperature, but from potency — and he welcomed it. It was pain he could understand, a violence he could control. A cleansing fire that cut through the static in his mind, clearing away the fog of things he refused to name.

He poured another.

This time slower.

Measured. Controlled.

But still… his hands trembled at the edges.

And he hated that.

His fingers twitched, defiant of his will. The tremor was small, but to him, it might as well have been a scream.

He hated that too.

He hated all of this.

Because now... finally... he knew.

One of his Horcruxes — an unknown one, unintended, unmarked — had been living inside Harry Potter all along. Nestled in that lightning-bolt scar. The very place he had once tried to pour death into had become a sanctuary for a piece of his own soul.

Not by plan. Not by design. But by some cruel, cosmic irony.

And yet, the truth now stood clear, sharp as a blade honed on regret.

It was obvious, in hindsight — painfully so. The strange connection between them, the visions, the shared thoughts, the whispers in the dark. He had taken it for tethering, for proximity between hunter and hunted, a symptom of the prophecy. But no, it had been more intimate than that. It had been a presence. His presence.

A part of himself. Lodged in the boy. All this time.

But hindsight was a cruel, useless thing. It offered no comfort, no remedy — only the bitter taste of what should have been seen sooner.

And what truly rattled him now, what made the breath stall in his throat, was this: that Horcrux — as all are only meant to be an anchor; an opening to immortality — had not done its job.

It had died.

It had fused.

It had grown.

It had given life to something, no, someone else.

He had split his soul to become eternal. He had sacrificed his humanity to escape death. He had desecrated ancient laws in pursuit of something greater.

And what had one of them done? It had fathered something heartbreakingly mortal.

The irony was so vast, so grotesquely poetic. And worse still — it now required another of his Horcruxes to survive.

He had torn himself into fragments in pursuit of the infinite. Had carved his soul apart to cheat the natural order, to escape death, to become unshackled from the constraints of mortality.

And in doing so… he had given life to something he could not command. Could not bend. Could not predict.

A child. A life. A future.

He sipped his drink. Swallowed. Breathed in. Breathed out.

It should have calmed him.

It didn’t.

No matter which thread of logic he followed — no matter how many times he circled back through the facts, the memories, the equations etched into every line of magical theory — it always led him to the same inescapable center.

The boy.

Always the boy.

Only… he wasn’t a boy anymore.

Not in power. Not in presence. Not in the weight he now carried inside him.

Not in any measurement that he considered worthy.

Probably never had been if he was being honest.

Harry had been forged in fire and war, tempered by grief, sharpened by resistance. He had survived everything Voldemort had thrown at him — curse, loss, prophecy, death itself — and each time he had returned, stronger. Calmer. Unbroken.

He had grown.

Another sip.

Worse still — unspeakably worse — was the truth Voldemort could not banish, even now, even here, behind wards and solitude and reason.

He had felt something.

Not just magic. Not just the ancient thrum of ritual or soul or consequence.

He had felt a connection.

Something deep and coiling and old — older than prophecy, older than dark magic even. It had slithered into his very marrow the instant Harry touched him. The moment skin met skin.

That Harry’s fingers had closed around his hand — not in defiance, not in desperation, but in pleading for a Horcrux for protection. Not for himself. For the child.

And when their flesh met, it was as if the universe had inhaled. It was not pain. It was not pleasure.

It was completion.

Not the addictive surge of power stolen from a life extinguished. Not the cold triumph of a Horcrux created. But something… terrifyingly clean. Honest. Whole.

It had struck him like a thunderclap, but there was no crackle, no flash to accompany it. It was quieter than that. Deeper. It hummed low in his bones like the song of forgotten magic long buried beneath the ruins of time.

And for a fraction of a second that stretched into eternity, he hadn’t wanted to let go.

Not from lust. Not curiosity. Not even weakness.

But because — in that moment — he had felt whole.

And it repulsed him.

Not because it was wrong, per se. But because it wasn’t. Because it felt like truth. That he had been denying some part of himself. That he was not already perfect.

And Voldemort — Lord Voldemort, master of death, defier of fate — did not know what to do with truth that could not be dominated. Controlled.

Because for the first time since he had split his soul, he was afraid.

Afraid of the magic that now protected a child he had never intended – had no say in making. Afraid of the boy who had always been his foil, his mirror, his undoing. Afraid that something buried in the deepest part of him — something very small, but still alive — did not want to fight it.

Except he would; he would expel that weakness from him as he had all of the others.

He set his drink down, braced his hands on the desk in an attempt to let the wood anchor him.

And still… his skin remembered.

That radiant pulse. That horrifying peace.

He clenched his jaw so tightly he could feel the pressure bloom behind his eyes.

That… whatever it was—he would crush. Eventually. Bury it. Flay it from his psyche if he must.

But not tonight.

He forced a breath through his nose. Then another. He turned from the desk and began to pace, slowly this time, like a general surveying a battlefield.

No more spiraling. He would think. And when his thoughts stopped chasing themselves like snakes eating their own tails, he finally stilled.

Lowered himself into the tall-backed chair behind the desk.

And admitted, openly now, the truth that grated against every instinct he had honed: There was nothing he could do. Not now.

It was an odd taste; sour and very, very unpleasant.

The child was protected — by magic older than his own, by invocation, by Harry Potter's will. And Harry… Harry could not be harmed either. Not by him. Not by design or accident. Not without consequence.

He knew what would happen if he tried. He’d already seen it – experienced it. Felt it.

The recoil of magic that turned backward, inward; the raw, punishing response of some primal law he had no dominion over. The kind of price not even he could pay twice.

Still — there was a path. Narrow. Treacherous. But it was there. He could see it now that he had settled; now that he was in control again; master of his own destiny, of his own fate.

Once the child was born, that protection might wane. But he knew Harry. Knew him intimately now, in ways no prophecy had ever prepared him for. And even if he killed Potter then… the child would rise. Not in grief — but in fury. In purpose. Just as Harry had risen from the ashes of his own orphaned childhood.

He had seen it play out before.

How could he ever hope to triumph over a child born of them—of two impossibilities. One a boy who had defied death since infancy. The other, a man who had refused it entirely.

Such a child would be formidable. Deadly. Above all.

It would have to be.

How could it not be… with him as one parent, and Harry bloody Potter as the other?

Voldemort’s lips pressed into a hard line.

But still—still—he saw a way forward. If he could not destroy it, he could shape it. If he could not dominate it, he could guide it. Not as a father. Never that. But as something colder. Older.

A master.

He was still Lord Voldemort. Still immortal. He had survived everything. He could afford to wait. To plan. To mold. The Diadem and the Cup and Nagini would be protected, and the Locket also, when it was returned; when it was no longer needed.

Yes, the long game had always been his strength. He should never had strayed from it.

And now, it would be his salvation.

He would protect the child. Fine.

Because he had to. Because harming it was not only impossible, but unwise. Because letting it fall into anyone else’s hands was also unthinkable.

Because it was his.

And he could offer… incentives. To his captives, to lay the groundwork for the molding.

He still held their wands. Their freedom. Their future. They were his captives, yes — but there was power in mercy. Influence in control, not only through fear, but through choice.

A returned wand here. A carefully timed act of leniency there. A gesture not of dominance, but of something resembling trust. It would disarm them — especially the girl. She was logical. Strategic. She would see a returned wand as a sign that he was willing to negotiate.

Harry… Harry would be harder. Too intuitive. Too emotional. But even he could be swayed. Given time. Given the right pressure.

He would soften the edges of their imprisonment. Allow comforts. Create routine. Offer just enough dignity to breed confusion.

He would be patient.

He would be cunning.

The way a serpent coils in silence beneath cool stone, waiting not out of mercy — but for the perfect moment to strike.

Yes. He would shape the narrative.

Control the story. His Story.

Let the child be born not in chaos or shame, but beneath his shadow. Under his protection. Not as an accident. Not as a crack in his legacy.

But as his heir.

Let it be born. Let it grow.

Let them believe they were safe.

Let Harry believe he had won something.

Let them live… and then let them end.

Let them die.

Naturally. Neatly. Quietly. Finally.

Problem solved.

Only — his thoughts snagged. Slowed. Caught in a place that didn’t feel like strategy or calculation. A tension he couldn’t name pulled taut across the edges of his mind, like a string stretched too far from a bow that hadn’t yet been loosed.

Because the truth — the unacceptable, inescapable truth — that he had seen in whatever descent into temporary insanity this had been.

What was growing between them… between him and the boy… it wasn’t just a problem anymore.

It had shape now. Weight. Meaning.

He looked down at his hands — long, elegant, and handsome fingers that had crafted destruction and domination with little more than a flick of the wand, sometimes even without it. Hands that Harry had clutched with such desperate reverence… no, not reverence. Need.

That touch had undone something in him.

Or perhaps... revealed something that had always been there.

They had trembled once, these hands. With power. With something dangerously close to longing. Completion.

Disgusting.

In. Out.

He would never allow that again. He would master it. Master himself.

The fire in the hearth crackled, echoing the storm just barely kept at bay within his chest. And yet, outside, the first light of dawn crept in through the tall, arched windows — soft and golden, indifferent to the war of gods and ghosts inside this room.

He was Lord Voldemort; he could conquer all things.

He summoned the decanter, wandless, effortless. Poured himself another.

Voldemort raised his third glass then in silence. Not in triumph. Not yet.

But in resolve.

To the long game.

To patience. Precision. Power.

To the only path left.

His life depended on it.

Pokes Voldie with a stick. RU OKAY? I could have written an entire book on the inner workings of that spiral.

 Would love to know your thoughts!

Chapter Text

AN: Hello again, so this one is a little serious and a lot more silly. I felt like we could all use a bit of a break after the mess that was last chapter. Seriously, Tom, get a therapist.

JK owns Harry Potter, and the fact that her own characters would have disowned her. Hermione would have fucking led the charge.

A week had passed since that night — since the truth had been revealed in a dramatic combination of stolen memories and unexpected touches.

Since Harry and Hermione had uncovered the consequences of a Horcrux never meant to exist. A fragment of soul, unbidden and unknown even to the one from whom it had torn loose. It had lodged itself in Harry’s scar, nestled there like a splinter too deep for even magic to dislodge — surviving, festering, waiting.

Stranger still, by some unfathomable alchemy — or perhaps a divine misstep — it had not merely endured. It had transformed. Merged not with rot or ruin, as one might expect from a soul fragment born of murder, but with something astonishing. Something impossibly tender. It had fused with its host not to corrupt, but to create. Not to destroy, but to grow.

And from that dark, broken shard had emerged something pure. A heartbeat. A child. A beginning.

Within Harry, it had found not merely shelter — but sanctuary. A place of warmth and instinctive protection. A home, both in the physical sense, and in something deeper: a space where it would be nourished, defended, allowed to become.

That first night had been brutal.

Harry and Hermione had barely slept, huddled close in the uneasy stillness of their tower suite. The faux ancient walls creaked as if alive with age and memory, each sound making them flinch; every rush of wind outside felt like the whisper of something dark on its way.

Voldemort — no, Tom — had only parted with a single, clipped instruction directed at the elf: make sure they have everything they need. He hadn’t even looked at them as he said it.

His face had been unreadable, closed off in a way that made Harry’s skin crawl with uncertainty. And then he was gone — leaving behind no answers, no reassurances. Just the echo of his footsteps and a silence that stretched deep into the night.

They had spent hours wondering if he would come back; seek them out in their tower.

If he would change his mind. If the truce was an illusion. If the fragile understanding they had stumbled into would shatter beneath the weight of revelation.

Harry had braced for anger. For punishment. For the moment the game reset and everything was stolen back.

But it never came.

No threats. No demands. No cold reversal.

Just silence. Just stillness.

Because now, there were no secrets left. Tom knew it all — the Horcruxes. The scar. The link. The child growing quietly inside him. The impossible shape of what they were to each other now and the looming uncertainty over where they were headed.

And still, he hadn’t come.

They were alive. Remarkably, inexplicably alive.

Kept here, yes — but not as prisoners in the way they had once imagined it might have played out. They were observed, yes. Watched with care that felt clinical at times, curated at others. But they were not tortured. Not interrogated. Not harmed.

Not killed.

Why?

Harry didn’t know for certain. But he had guesses — complicated, layered things, each one tangled like threads in a knot too complex to unravel cleanly.

He knew that Tom feared destruction. Feared death. That fear had been the axis of his entire existence — the reason he’d torn his soul apart, the reason he’d clung to prophecy like a lifeline, convinced that to survive, he had to destroy the boy who might one day end him.

And yet, in trying to prevent that future, he had only helped it along. Set the pieces in motion, step by ruthless step, until they arrived here.

Was this, then, the power the Dark Lord knows not? The one Dumbledore had spoken of with maddening certainty — summed up in that infuriating, saccharine word: love? For his child, maybe?

Or was it something else entirely?

The ability to carry life — not symbolically, not as a poetic metaphor — but literally. Within flesh that had once been marked for death, within a body that had been made a battlefield and somehow become a cradle.

Harry didn’t know. Not yet.

But the question lingered, like a bell struck deep and clear, its echo weaving through everything that followed. Vibrant. Unshakable. Impossible to ignore.

What he did know was this: the only thing keeping Tom’s fury in check — his cruelty, his magic, his need for control — was the protection Harry had called forth. The protection that had bloomed into existence the moment he had exchanged his own place in this world if it meant he got to keep his child in it. For the time being wrapping them both in the same magic his mother had once used. Sacrificial, binding, potent.

It held. So far.

But Harry could feel the strain behind it. Not just the restraint of power, but something more brittle — more dangerous.

Still, Tom had more issues. A fear of being seen, harry thought. Truly seen. It was a fear Harry understood intimately. Because he had lived with it. Endured it. Survived it.

Tom Riddle had spent a lifetime avoiding his reflections. Splitting them. Burying them in objects, in darkness, in grandeur. But Harry had never had that luxury. From the cupboard under the stairs to the Riddle family graveyard to Sirius’ death and the return of abandonment, he had been forced to confront his demons. Again and again. And when they didn’t kill him, he learned to make peace with them. In the only way that he knew how to: survival.

Maybe that’s what made the difference. Maybe that’s what made Harry dangerous.

Because he had faced what Tom had run from.

Those thoughts did not make sleep easy. Not for Harry. Not now. It was his turn to be cautious, to be hyperaware of every creak in the floorboards and every shadow that shifted too slowly. So when dawn slipped past and breakfast came and went — barely touched, pieces eaten more out of habit than hunger — they decided to retreat. A quiet day in their tower. Even Hermione conceded that one afternoon away from the library was worth it if it meant avoiding him.

And naturally, as if summoned by their effort to pretend peace was possible, Nagini made her arrival known with an irritated hiss just outside the portrait hole that evening.

“I demand entry,” she said, in Parseltongue, coiling up with an offended air. “My Master is dealing with things, and I am bored. Also, someone must rub my stomach; I am still suffering the indignity of Lucius’s ridiculous birds.”

She let that hang dramatically.

Apparently, one (or possibly several) of Malfoy Manor’s infamous albino peacocks had not agreed with her delicate digestion. And now, they were all going to suffer for it.

Nagini had barely left their side since.

In a twist neither Harry nor Hermione had anticipated, the snake had taken it upon herself to “encourage exploration.” Which, in Nagini-speak, meant forcefully herding them out of the tower every morning with dramatic complaints of cabin fever and philosophical monologues about “the vitality of movement for the health of the unborn.”

“She’s quoting the prenatal chapter in Magic, Muscle, and Maternity,” Harry had muttered under his breath several days later, causing Hermione to snicker.

Nagini, of course, had heard him. “I have a master’s degree in slithering superiority,” she said loftily, flicking her tail into his shin.

That was the moment Hermione finally relaxed a little – one she understood what words had been said. Maybe it was the absurdity of the situation — a deadly serpent extoling the benefits of prenatal yoga — or maybe it was the realization that Voldemort hadn’t stormed the tower to eviscerate them yet. Either way, she’d exhaled a breath she had been holding onto for several days.

And then she’d promptly turned all that tension into structure.

“Now that we are no longer on the verge of a stress-induced collapse,” she announced, unfurling a scroll that could rival the Great Hall’s entire first-year roster, “it’s time to resume your magical education.”

Harry blinked at her over a copy of What to Expect When the Unexpected is Expecting You: A Guide to Magical Male Pregnancy.

“Wait, are you serious?”

“You need NEWTS, Harry. And you’re on maternity leave. That gives you time.”

“That's not how — Hermione, I’m — look at this!” He waved the book at her. “You assigned me three chapters on magical placental development!”

“And you passed the quiz I made for it, so stop whining,” she replied without looking up from her notes.

Thankfully, he still hadn’t been given any formal exams, which was a miracle. But Harry had the creeping suspicion that Hermione was just biding her time.

What had truly pushed Harry into reluctant compliance wasn’t Hermione’s relentless reminders. It was a single, offhanded comment — casual, almost gentle — about how he probably didn’t want to become a father and a Hogwarts dropout.

She hadn’t said it to be cruel. Just plainly. Blunt, in that unmistakably Hermione way that always struck harder than any hex.

So he’d nodded, grumbled something vague about “bloody NEWTs,” and begrudgingly agreed to Hermione’s self-assembled curriculum of magical prenatal theory and independent study coursework.

To his own surprise, Harry had started to memorize things. Not just from Hermione’s self-authored pamphlet series — Hermione Granger’s Follow-Along N.E.W.T. Recovery Plan: Condensed but Painful — but from the stack of books Hermione kept near his bedside like a rotating shrine.

He could now list, with a disturbing degree of confidence, the five magical aura tints that signaled fetal distress (ranging from “light shimmer” to the dreaded “opaline flicker”), the benefits and theory of elemental transfiguration (like turning a book into water), and how to brew three different potions to relieve backaches caused by various degrees of uterine expansion.

Sometimes — not often, but sometimes — Harry knew when to pick his battles. And this one wasn’t worth the fight. Not when she was right. Not when her eyes had looked tired and determined in the same breath.

Still, he had negotiated one concession: time in the kitchen. Doing something he actually wanted to do. No essays, no flashcards, no fetal charm diagnostics. Just… baking.

And that was how, on this oddly domestic Sunday morning in mid November, they found themselves in the kitchen.

Or, rather, in Tom Riddle’s idea of a kitchen.

Which, true to form, was impressive, overdesigned, and vaguely intimidating — gleaming white counters with chrome fixtures, charmed to a perfect constant temperature; an enchanted pantry that the elf kept restocked with alarming efficiency; and a suspicious lack of knives, which Harry found both considerate and unnerving. The entire room looked like it had been plucked from a glossy wizarding architecture magazine. Pristine. Clinical. Lacking any signs of life or use.

Harry had taken one look at the sleek, sterile kitchen and promptly declared it in desperate need of flour dust, spilt sugar, and a little chaos.

So that’s what he’d given it.

A week after that surreal dinner, with routines beginning to formally stitch themselves into place, Harry stood in the heart of the kitchen—whisking.

Rhythmically. Methodically. Humming under his breath.

The motion was instinctive now, muscle memory from years of making himself useful at Privet Drive. But here, it was different. Voluntary. A kind of rebellion disguised as domesticity.

The whisk tapped the glass bowl with a steady, even cadence — soft percussion against the hush of the room. Each swirl folded air into the batter, each breath slowed his thoughts.

He had learned to cook out of necessity, not choice. Petunia had demanded it — her idea of class, of superiority, was built on having someone to order around, someone to serve her. She got to pretend she had staff, and he… well. He got to bake.

Out of all the chores she'd assigned him — dusting, scrubbing, mowing — baking had been his favorite. That, and gardening.

There was something sacred in both: crafting something beautiful, something whole, from raw elements. Turning chaos into comfort. Flour into bread. Seeds into roses. A kind of quiet magic he’d known long before Hogwarts had taught him spells.

He used to sneak outside before dawn, while the Dursleys slept, just to tend the beds. He’d dig his fingers into the cold earth, unearthing tiny roots, loosening the soil, creating a place where something might grow — even in a place as sterile as Privet Drive. Even where nothing should have.

And somehow, things did grow. Petunia’s prized roses always outbloomed the neighbors’. She chalked it up to her refined technique, to the hose and the schedule and the special fertilizer. But Harry knew the truth.

He had whispered to the soil. He had cared.

He had wanted something to live.

The whisking slowed. Stopped.

He stared down into the bowl. The flour wasn’t fully mixed in — still streaked across the slick brown batter in uneven clumps — but Harry’s mind was elsewhere.

On roots.

On growth.

On what was now growing inside him.

Hermione, seated at the long kitchen island with her tea steaming beside her, looked up when the sound stopped. Her morning book lay open in front of her: So You’ve Made It to the Hump: Welcome to the Second Trimester of Your Magical Pregnancy.

She had underlined four passages already and annotated two more.

“You stopped,” she said gently.

Harry blinked, still half-lost in memory.

“Yeah,” he said softly. “Just… thinking.”

She tilted her head, her expression open, thoughtful. She didn’t press.

Harry looked down again, gave the whisk a slight shake. The smell of sugar and chocolate wafted up, warm and rich. Anchoring.

“You ever wonder,” he began, voice low, “if things can only grow because we choose to make space for them? Even when everything around them says they shouldn’t?”

Hermione didn’t answer right away. Her gaze flicked to his stomach, then to his face.

“I think… the fact that you’re asking that probably answers it,” she said. “Some things grow because they must. But the rest?” She smiled faintly. “They grow because someone believed they could.”

The silence between them was soft, not heavy.

Then Harry picked up the whisk again, and the kitchen returned to motion. Quiet, steady. A boy and his batter. A witch and her book. A life in the making.

Harry resumed whisking, the bowl tucked close to his stomach as if shielding it from outside interference – and he was. He shifted subtly, using his body to block Tizzy’s persistent attempts to remove it from the counter.

The house elf was practically vibrating with outrage, her oversized eyes twitching toward the batter-streaked bowl as though it were a personal insult. Her master’s charge — the bearer of his heir, no less — doing something so mundane, so elf-like, as cooking? It was unthinkable.

“Master Potter is not being permitted to do my work!” she squeaked, trying to levitate the bowl with a snap of her fingers. Harry calmly tilted his torso, cutting off her line of sight.

He gave Hermione a sidelong glance, a shallow grin, voice softer now. “What do you think I’d be, Hermione?” He whisked slower, more contemplative. “If I wasn’t… me.”

Hermione, halfway through her tea, looked up with a furrowed brow. “You mean if you weren’t Harry Potter?”

He nodded, gesturing with the whisk in a too-quick motion. A splatter of chocolate batter landed on the stone floor several feet away with a faint plop.

“If I’d grown up with my parents. Without him. Without the scar, or the fame, or any of it. Just…” He paused, a wistful sigh slipping through. “Just Harry.”

Before Hermione could answer, a sudden hiss filled the room.

“I will end you, rodent,” came Nagini’s voice, low and dangerous, from the far corner. The enormous serpent was engaged in what could only be described as a territorial standoff, her powerful body coiled and ready to strike.

Opposite her stood Tizzy, wandless and fierce, her tiny fists clenched at her sides.

“Yous be crossing into Tizzy’s kitchen domain!” the elf snapped, darting forward with a flicker of magic to try and clean the chocolate blotch on the floor before Nagini’s lolling tongue could get to it.

Nagini let out a warning rattle, her tongue flicking rapidly. “The hatchling’s food is sacred. Divine. It is meant to be eaten.”

Harry sighed, briefly amused. “They’ve been like this all week,” he said to Hermione under his breath. Ever since the dinner. Neither had been too far way.

Tizzy crossed her arms defiantly. “Master doing mundane things is one thing, Tizzy will not allow an overgrown noodle to clean her kitchen!”

“Noodle?” Nagini recoiled in visible offense.

Hermione bit back a laugh behind her mug. She could only imagine the other side of the conversation. “Well, at least they’re consistent.”

Both Harry and Hermione had nearly doubled over with laughter the first time they’d witnessed it: Nagini, the ancient, fearsome companion of the Dark Lord himself, discovering the euphoric bliss of sugar. Not magic. Not blood. Not power.

Sugar.

She had dragged her enormous length across the kitchen floor with the dazed satisfaction of a snake in a honeyed coma, having found an unguarded treacle tart Tizzy had left cooling near the hearth. Ever since, no confection was safe from her stealthy advances.

Hermione’s lips quirked upward now, the barest ghost of amusement tugging at the corners of her mouth.

“I don’t know, Harry,” she said, her voice gentler than before. “What do you like? I mean… truly?”

The whisk slowed in his hand, the rhythmic motion softening into thoughtful spirals. He never overmixed — baking required patience, finesse, trust. Delicate things fell apart if you rushed them.

He didn’t answer immediately.

“I like Quidditch, of course,” he said after a moment, tone lighter than his eyes. “Flying was the first time I ever felt… free. Like I had control. Like I wasn’t trapped in some cupboard waiting for life to begin.”

Hermione nodded slowly, saying nothing. Letting him speak.

“But…” he added, his voice quieting.

Harry turned just in time to see Nagini’s massive head poised smugly over the smear of chocolate batter she’d licked from the floor, her tongue flicking lazily toward a very indignant house elf.

“I am the greatest that shall ever be,” she proclaimed, tail curling then straightening like a cat stretching in victory.

Tizzy, flushed and fuming, stomped one tiny foot. “Yous being a menace!” she shrieked, her tea dress flapping as she popped ten feet across the kitchen with a loud crack—just in time to block Nagini from slinking toward another fresh dollop of raw batter Harry had tossed into the corner.

“Round two,” Nagini hissed, undeterred, her body gliding forward like a serpent-shaped batter-seeking missile.

“You shall not pass!” Tizzy bellowed, standing sentinel in front of the drop with arms flung wide, her voice somewhere between a battle cry and a banshee’s warning.

Harry chuckled, his grin stretching wide for a moment before it softened — curled inward, contemplative.

He turned back to the mixing bowl.

“You know,” he said, quieter now, “I don’t even know if Quidditch is what I want to do with my life.”

Hermione looked up at that, surprised, at first.

“I mean, I do love it,” Harry went on, dragging the whisk gently along the sides of the bowl, making sure to fold in every last stubborn clump.

“But now,” he added, still not looking up, “I think I held onto it so tightly because maybe, just maybe, it connected me to them. My parents. My dad, especially.”

Behind him, an anguished hiss pierced the soft reverie.

“Noooo!” Nagini wailed, drawing both their attention.

She looked absolutely livid, her gleaming eyes narrowed on the small but determined house elf now brandishing an oversized rolling pin in one hand and a kitchen cloth smudged with chocolate in the other.

Tizzy stood firm, her tea towel dress fluttering with righteous fury. “This kitchen is being Tizzy’s domain!”

Unfazed, Nagini hissed like a cat backed into a corner. “That morsel was mine, and I will have vengeance!”

Harry calmly scooped another spoonful of batter, flinging it across the room into the opposite corner. A peace offering, or perhaps bait.

Hermione sighed, lips twitching despite herself. Trouble, she thought. He always causes trouble.

“Sudden death… best two out of three…” Nagini purred darkly, her long body coiling low, ready to strike.

Tizzy’s eyes narrowed with the unflinching focus of a battlefield general. “Tizzy be teaching you manners if it’s the last thing she does.”

Another sharp pop echoed through the kitchen, and a dozen pots and pans launched themselves into the air like startled birds. Somewhere in the corner, a copper saucepan screamed indignantly as Nagini’s tail swiped across its lid.

From the center of this unfolding chaos — between a twenty-foot serpent with a sugar addiction and a house elf defending the sanctity of her kitchen like it was Gringotts itself — stood Harry. Calmly whisking brownie batter.

And somehow… impossibly… everything felt strangely, absurdly, right.

Hermione let out a long, weary sigh as she rested her forehead in her palm.

Harry James Potter was an absolute menace.

It wasn’t just the chaos. It was the way he lived in it. The way he somehow always brought the world to him and then convinced even the most powerful and quirky of beings—dark familiars and fiercely territorial elves included — to dance around him like planets in his gravity.

He had those two wrapped around his fingers so tightly it was alarming.

As if sensing her thoughts, Harry tilted his head and flashed her a lopsided grin. Charming. Unbothered. Pure trouble.

A menace, Hermione thought again — but hers. Theirs. Everyones.

But the mischief faded from his features as quickly as it had come, softening into something quieter. Thoughtful. A flicker of insight crossed his expression, and with it, something older. Not older in years, but in experience. In grief.

His whisk slowed in the bowl, coming to a rest as he got out the sheet tray with tall sides.

“If I’d grown up with them,” he said slowly, eyes fixed on the mixed batter, “I don’t think I would’ve held onto Quidditch the way I did.”

Hermione sat straighter. The sound of distant bickering between serpent and elf dulled, muffled by the weight of Harry’s words.

“I don’t think I’d need that connection if they’d been there.”

“What-ifs are hard,” she agreed gently, voice low.

Harry nodded. “Yeah.”

A loud crash rang out behind them as Tizzy narrowly dodged a swiping tail, a frying pan launching itself into the air.

“Victory!” Nagini cried, her voice high with triumphant glee. “Nagini reigns supreme!”

Her massive coils twisted into something vaguely serpentine and celebratory — more writhing than dancing, really. But she was clearly thrilled with herself, gliding in small, smug circles.

“I. Am. The. Greatest. Of. All. Time. GOAT!” she declared with no small amount of pride. Humility nowhere in sight.

Tizzy stood there, posture rigid, her expression somewhere between volcanic fury and regal offense. She slowly turned her basilisk-level stare on Harry.

He froze, whisk mid-air.

Hermione, trying very hard not to laugh, murmured, “Don’t make eye contact.”

Too late.

“Yous is being a bad influence on that danger noodle,” Tizzy snapped, wagging a tiny but powerful finger at Harry with all the gravitas of a disciplinary headmistress. Her eyes narrowed even further, if that were possible.

“Oi!” hissed Nagini indignantly, though not at all really bothered. Her glee hadn’t diminished in the slightest. If anything, she looked more pleased with herself than ever.

Tizzy let out a little harrumph, tugged at the hem of her teadress, and announced with finality, “Tizzy has proper rooms to be tending to!” She popped away with an audible crack, leaving behind only an offended swirl of displaced air and the faint scent of cinnamon.

Harry turned back to the counter, only for Nagini to slither closer, her long body winding gracefully around the island until her massive head lifted and rested heavily on the countertop.

Her unblinking eyes were locked on the mixing bowl.

“Can I help you?” Harry asked, trying for patience, the corners of his mouth already twitching into a smile.

“Nagini is merely ensuring the youngling is getting sufficient nutrients,” she said, her tone drenched in faux innocence. “And that there are enough chocolate chips in the batter. For balance.”

Harry muttered under his breath, “Oh yes, because that’s what all healers recommend — copious amounts of sugar.”

Hermione, meanwhile, arched an eyebrow – having improved in reading body language, word usage (when it wasn’t said in Parseltongue), tone, and situational context in an attempt to follow allong when Harry and Nagini lapsed into their sibilant chatter.

“Is that so?”

Nagini tilted her head slightly. “Chocolate is also rich in magnesium and flavonoids. Nagini has done her research.”

“You read now?” Harry asked dryly.

“Nagini listens,” she said, tongue flicking. “Master reads aloud. Sometimes.”

Harry choked back a laugh and reached for the bag of chocolate chips. “Fine. But only a little.”

As he opened the bag and tilted it over the bowl, a sudden screech echoed across the kitchen.

“NOOOO!” Nagini wailed, rearing her head with dramatic offense. “Not the 73 percent! Those are too bitter for the — the youngling! Use the semi-sweet! Or the milk chocolate ones with the caramel centers! Those are better for… development.”

Hermione started laughing. “I’ve completely lost the plot; I have no idea what you two are talking about.”

“You don’t want to,” Harry sighed, but he wasn’t foolish enough to argue. He’d survived Voldemort’s resurrection, but there were some battles not even The Boy Who Lived could win. He swapped bags without protest and dumped in a generous handful of sweeter chips.

“More,” Nagini demanded, tail thumping against the side of the counter like an overgrown, scaly puppy. “More!”

Harry chuckled, shaking his head. “You’re lucky I’m too tired to fight you on this.”

“Oh, Nagini knows,” the serpent preened, clearly smug.

And as the chocolate folded into the batter and Nagini hummed contentedly to herself, Harry couldn’t help but smile—because it was absurd, and chaotic, and deeply ridiculous.

He looked up at Hermione, seeing the mirth in her eyes, laughter on her tongue.

He opened his mouth to complain, “She’s a menace, Hermione. An absolute menace.”

Hermione laughed so hard she cried.

AN: I honestly have no idea where the idea for a sugar-loving snake came from but as I typed it out it was exactly the break in tension I was looking for. YOLO.

Chapter Text

AN: Hello again. Here we go through some important plot points and more sugar!

Fair warning – this is the last chapter before a 2 part mid-season finale. And I mean that. Take comfort where you can and lean into those tender and silly moments.

On a serious note: your reviews mean so much. They make me laugh and think and thank you for taking the time to write them.

JK owns Harry Potter, and the fact that her own characters would have disowned her. Hermione would have fucking led the charge.

The next Sunday unfolded in much the same way as the last — something Nagini proudly declared as her new favorite day of the week.

“Sunday is sacred,” she hissed from her spot by Harry’s side – ready to pounce on any dropped morsel. Her tongue flicking out with satisfied smugness. “Baked offerings. Warmth. Worship. I am finally being treated according to my station.”

Harry snorted.

“I’m growing,” she insisted. “Just like the youngling I require nutrients.”

“You are a menace is what you are,” he replied before relaying her nonsense to Hermione while prepping something different than brownies.

To his surprise, she didn’t refute it; she agreed with it.

“Well,” she said, flipping a page in one of her endless magical books while outlining her N.E.W.T. pamphlet series, “technically, snakes do continue to grow throughout their lives. Slower over time, of course, but it’s not entirely inaccurate.”

Harry blinked, halfway through pouring another small mountain of sugar into the bowl. “Hermione. You can’t just validate her gluttony. She’s going to start expecting dessert courses.”

“She already expects dessert courses,” Hermione said, not looking up from her book. Her tone was resigned, like someone who had tried to fight the war against sugar and had long since accepted defeat. Her dentist parents would be appalled.

Nagini, for her part, had gracefully placed her chin to rest on the edge of the table – as close to the mixing bowl as Harry would allow her to be. Her expression was one of reverent anticipation. She looked like she was awaiting the second coming of Merlin in cake form.

“She’s practically salivating,” Harry muttered, eyeing the snake with deep suspicion as Nagini’s tongue flicked the air with slow, deliberate enthusiasm. “Can snakes even salivate?”

“Technically, yes,” Hermione replied, her finger trailing down the page of the book in her lap. “Though in most reptiles it’s usually a sign of illness—mouth rot, or a respiratory infection. But in her case…” She finally glanced up, arching an eyebrow as Nagini let out a low, anticipatory hiss. “It’s probably just a Pavlovian response.”

Harry and Nagini both blinked. “A what now?” They said in unison.

Hermione sighed, fond and exasperated, the way only she could manage. “Pavlovian. From Pavlov. A Muggle scientist who studied behavioral conditioning. He trained dogs to associate the sound of a bell with food. Eventually, just the sound of the bell would make them salivate — even if there wasn’t any food.”

Harry gave her a long, bemused look. “Right. Of course you know that.”

She smiled faintly and turned another page. “Honestly, Harry. You hang around a murder snake long enough, especially that murder snake, I figured you would at least pick up a little psychology.”

Nagini let out a low, pleased rattle of her coils and slithered an inch closer to the mixing bowl on the counter, where Harry had been whipping together an obscene amount of butter and sugar.

Harry groaned. “We’ve created a monster.”

“She was already a monster,” Hermione said dryly, not looking up from her book. “You just made her a well-fed one.”

Nagini didn’t disagree. Instead, she let out a long, self-satisfied hum, her serpentine body giving a slow, sinuous sway that was almost hypnotic in its rhythm — an elegant, ancient sort of reverence, like some temple priestess offering homage to the gods of butter and sugar. Her tongue flicked once more toward the mixing bowl, as if to taste the buttercream by scent alone.

Harry eyed her warily. “You know you haven’t even eaten it yet, right?”

Nagini didn’t dignify that with a response — only gave a faint, audible sigh in Parseltongue. “If I die, let it be like this,” she intoned with near-religious solemnity. “Drenched in buttercream and fulfilled by purpose.”

Harry groaned, muttering, “Fantastic. She’s rehearsing her eulogy now.”

“Don’t encourage her,” Hermione murmured, flipping a page.

“I’m not!” Harry lied, jabbing his whisk at the bowl. “She’s the one communing with frosting like it’s some sort of sacred rite.”

Nagini flicked her tail with regal indifference. “I was promised cake. I will ascend!”

“Not my fault she’s a two-hundred-pound sugar addict with delusions of grandeur,” Hermione added under her breath, as he turned back to the bowl.

Nagini, perfectly unbothered, continued watching from her perch with the solemn focus of a maître d’ judging a bake-off. Her tongue flicked rhythmically, tasting the air as Harry scraped the buttercream into a piping bag with all the reverence of a potioneer bottling Felix Felicis. At this point, she wasn’t just a snake — she was a twenty-foot-long bakery manager with homicidal tendencies and a pastry obsession.

Later, they ate lunch as usual in the library. Hermione then dragged Harry off for a solid three hours of quiet reading under vaulted windows, while Nagini curled up dramatically in a patch of sun and whispering to herself about what cake and buttercream would taste like together.

Harry paused mid-sentence in his Advanced Potions textbook, brow furrowed. “Do you think snakes can get type two diabetes?”

Hermione looked up slowly, her expression caught somewhere between curiosity and dread.

They exchanged a long, thoughtful silence — both of them clearly considering it. Neither said aloud the darker thought lurking just beneath: whether diabetes could kill a Horcrux.

Because they knew now. They’d done the math. Put the pieces together.

Nagini was a Horcrux. Had to be.

And yet…

Despite her relentless sarcasm, her sugary manipulation campaigns, and that whole unfortunate almost-murdered-Arthur-Weasley incident — Harry had somehow, impossibly, adjusted to her.

More than adjusted. He liked her.

He was, worryingly, fond of her even.

It was a problem. A slithering, dessert-demanding, evil-infused problem.

But not one he could bring himself to solve.

Not yet.

Not when she snored like a cartoon villain and purred like a teakettle at the sight of ganache.

In all honesty, Nagini reminded Harry — absurdly, impossibly — of Mrs. Weasley.

If, of course, Mrs. Weasley had fangs, scales, and an assassination résumé longer than any homework assignment he had ever turned in.

She scolded with gusto. She hovered like a sentient thundercloud. She’d voiced strong, often unsolicited opinions about his posture, diet, and how he should be styling his hair.

At one point, she’d hissed with perfect sincerity:

"If you die, I will reanimate your corpse just so I can hiss at you one last time."

It was... almost sweet.

In a deeply unsettling, morally questionable, probably doomed kind of way.

But somehow — like a mother, a menace, and a middle-aged matriarch all rolled into one enchanted serpent — she cared.

And Harry, despite everything, found comfort in that.

Even if he sometimes suspected she would eat him just to prove a point.

Nagini let out a blissful sigh, long and indulgent, as if she too was listening to Harry’s inner monologue. “Next week, we do macarons.”

Harry didn’t smile. Not even a twitch of the mouth. He wanted to, he should have, but the words caught somewhere behind the walls of a mind that had grown far too quiet. A stillness born not of peace, but of panic — the kind so deep it wore the mask of calm.

Because behind the humor, behind the powdered sugar and the smirking snake with remnants of frosting on her snout from the bowl he had let her lick, there was a question. The kind of question that curled at the edges of thought like smoke and refused to dissipate away.

Nagini was a Horcrux.

And Harry was, is, carrying something born of another. Something forged from soul and accident. A child. A living paradox, whose very existence unraveled every magical law he thought he understood. Or so people told him.

He didn’t want to think about it. Not about her, not about him, and especially not about them.

But it was getting harder to pretend.

Because maybe — Merlin help him — maybe he was beginning to question whether prophesied murder between co-parents was, in fact, detrimental to a child’s development. Maybe, just maybe, that could potentially lead to some complex psychological ramifications.

Hermione’s books had planted those seeds. Guilt. Legacy. Neurodevelopmental trauma. It was all in Chapter Seven.

And now, he couldn’t stop the chain reaction. Couldn’t stop himself from wondering.

What happens if Voldemort doesn’t die?

No — Tom Riddle. Because he wasn’t Voldemort all the time. Not now. Not from where they were seated in their little corner in the library. Not when that impossibly beautiful and dangerous and complex man had caught him, held in in that maddeningly calm way that was somehow more unnerving than rage. Not when their skin had been in contact, when —

No.

Harry’s hands tightened on the edge of his book, white-knuckled.

He wasn’t going to open that box either.

The one tucked in the farthest corner of his mind—stuffed with soft moments, impossible questions, and half-formed hope. The one lined with strange allowances and flecks of unexpected mercy.

The one that whispered: If you let him live — if the child is born into a world where Tom Riddle still walks, if you forge something strange and whole from the wreckage — then what does that make you?

What kind of person carries the Dark Lord’s child and chooses to let him stay?

Harry couldn’t afford to go there.

Not when every memory of his parents bled in, quiet and uninvited, like ink spilled across a page. Not when James’s bark of laughter—rough, boyish, alive—morphed into a ghost's howl in his ears. Not when Lily’s soft lullabies were hollowed out by the absolute silence left behind.

Not when the man who had ended their lives sat just rooms away, maybe wondering the same damn thing: What now?

What was he supposed to do with that?

With the memory of blood on nursery walls and the reality of a child growing inside him—innocent, new, and tethered to the one who had started it all?

Forgiveness didn’t belong in that equation. Neither did vengeance. Both felt too small.

What would he feel, one day, when it was all over — if it ever truly ended — and he hadn’t avenged them?

Not just James and Lily.

But Sirius, whose laugh had been made out of pain and defiance.
Cedric, who had never gotten the chance to grow older.
Neville’s parents, lost and living, broken but breathing.
The Prewetts, the Bones, the Longbottoms.
Even Hedwig, who had never been just a bird.

And then all the names Harry didn’t know — the ones chiseled into stone or whispered in eulogies he hadn’t attended, whose faces blurred in the background of a war he’d never asked to lead.

What kind of son did that make him?

What kind of friend?

What kind of man?

To let Tom Riddle live, to allow the issue — this monstrous, brilliant, insufferable paradox of a man — to continue breathing, scheming, existing... and for what?

For the child. His child. So that the child could grow up knowing that one of their parents had not murdered the other. But then again, what sort of damage was already there; he could do nothing to spare the child from the reality that one of its parents had murdered the other’s mother and father. Had become – or still was – the darkest Dark Lord that had ever been.

Was one worse than the other?

He could feel the spiral gaining speed now. Spinning tighter. A code blue of the soul. Cold dread blooming in his gut like ice in a warm drink — sharp, cracking, spreading.

He needed to stop. To breathe. To focus on the now.

And the now was almost even more absurd.

It was a magical castle, a home that did its best to recreate Hogwarts. It was buttercream and baking. It was Hermione flipping pages and muttering diagnostics in one breath and her plan for their NEWTS in another. It was a Horcrux snake lounging in sunlight and demanding French pastries.

Harry closed his eyes and whispered, mostly to himself, “This can’t be normal.”

But maybe that was the point. Nothing about this was normal.

Nothing about this ever had been.

And yet, for the first time in his life, the war had paused for him.

The question now was: what the hell came next?

Nagini burped softly in the background. “Lavender and honey,” she declared dreamily. “That’s the flavor I want next.”

Harry didn’t answer.

He was too busy holding his breath — afraid that the next one might come with a decision he wasn’t ready to make.

So, for now, denial would suffice.

Harry decided to shelve the looming existential crisis like an overdue library book—firmly in the “future-Harry problem” category. Present-Harry, he reasoned, was being incredibly mature by simply ignoring it altogether. Waiting for more information before making a decision was a adult approach. Wasn’t it?

Besides, tonight he had other plans.

He was in an adventurous mood — restless in the way that usually led to questionable ideas and interesting consequences. And, after some rather dedicated coaxing, he’d managed to convince Hermione to join him in exploring the Slytherin common room — one of the few corners of the castle they hadn’t yet ventured into.

Hermione had never seen it for herself—her only near experience marred by an unfortunate incident involving Polyjuice Potion and a very regrettable cat hair.

One she had made clear that she would not be discussing. Ever.

They strolled through the castle corridors at a leisurely pace that evening, the stone floor echoing faintly beneath their steps. Nagini slithered alongside them, her movements smooth, predatory—except, of course, for the way she kept drooling slightly at the mouth in anticipation of dessert.

“I smell sugar,” she hissed with reverence, tongue flicking. “Sweet, glorious sugar. He bakes ambrosia, this one. I am convinced he was bred for my palate.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “It’s called cake, Nagini. And no, I wasn’t bred for you. I’m not a house elf patisserie.”

“That frosting had texture, Potter,” she replied with a dreamy sigh. “I can’t wait to have more.”

Hermione chuckled quietly, arms folded as she listened to the ongoing hissing negotiation between Harry and the serpent who, unbeknownst to her, had unofficially declared herself to be Harry’s ‘culinary queen.’

“Hoover vacuum is more like it,” Harry mumbled back.

They arrived at the entrance to the Slytherin common room — no password needed, just like the enchanted portrait for Gryffindor Tower. Only here, a serpent etched into polished obsidian silently slithered out of the way at their approach.

The door swung open.

Hermione, despite herself, gasped. “Oh… wow.”

Harry stepped in behind her, eyes wide with nostalgia. “It’s like second year all over again,” he murmured, voice soft with memory.

The common room was bathed in light filtered through the lake. Deep hues of jade and sapphire shimmered across the stone walls, as if the room itself were suspended underwater. The massive windows curved slightly, giving the illusion of being inside some forgotten sunken temple. Fish darted past—silver flashes of movement—and the long, lazy undulation of kelp swayed with the lake’s unseen current.

The furniture was dark walnut, low and elegant, upholstered in impossibly rich, forest-green velvet that glimmered like leaves at dusk. Each piece looked like it had been grown rather than crafted, as if the forest itself had sent offerings to the house of serpents.

Hermione turned in a slow, wide-eyed circle, her boots whispering over the polished stone. “This is… annoyingly gorgeous,” she breathed. “Far more enchanting than what we had in Gryffindor.”

“Obviously,” came Nagini’s smug hiss from across the room. She was already sprawled across a velvet chaise near the tall windows, her sinuous body coiled with queenly satisfaction. The tone was so pitch-perfect that it startled both of them — a flawless impersonation of Severus Snape, right down to the contemptuous drawl whether one could understand Parseltongue or not.

Harry made a show of ignoring her. He had many reasons, most of which involved self-preservation.

Hermione wandered toward the massive windows, gaze sweeping over the murky depths of the great lake outside. “I mean, yes, we had a view,” she said thoughtfully. “Mountains, the Forbidden Forest. Even the lake. But this — this is like seeing the soul of it. The lake’s breath. I wish I’d gotten to experience it while we were still at school.”

Harry moved to stand beside her, his voice quieter, more introspective. “If I’m being honest… I wish I could’ve appreciated it more back then too. Really taken it in. Let myself just be in the moment, but we were looking for clues, anything, that could have led us to the Heir of Slytherin… and look how that turned out,” he said, a hand to his stomach.

Oh, the irony.

Hermione turned to look at him, something soft behind her eyes. She reached for his hand and gave it a light tug, pulling him toward the far end of the room, where Tizzy had set up dinner.

“I think you’re doing that now,” she said simply.

He was trying – but also failing spectacularly.

The modest table was set with a sort of effortless elegance — nothing ostentatious, but undeniably intentional. A deep green runner stretched down its center like a river of forest, catching the warm flicker of floating candles suspended above. A platter of roasted chicken steamed gently, the scent rich with savory depth and just the faintest hint of thyme. Root vegetables glistened beneath a delicate glaze of rosemary butter; their edges browned to caramelized perfection. A woven basket held warm rolls tucked into crisp white linen, and the air was thick with that particular and unique alchemy of yeast and comfort — familiar, mouthwatering, safe. Even the salad looked indulgent: its greens dewy and crisp, drizzled with a vinaigrette so fragrant it made Harry’s mouth water.

It was almost absurd how much it reminded him of a memory that wasn’t his. Something half-formed and out of reach. Something he might have imagined during long nights under the cupboard — when the hunger was so loud it drowned out his own thoughts.

He lingered at the edge of the table for a moment longer, letting the scent wrap around him, before pulling out her chair, before seating himself across from her.

He adjusted his napkin across his lap, eyes scanning the spread again, lips quirking up faintly. “I don’t know how I survived this long without Tizzy. Honestly, I think she’s spoiled me forever.”

Hermione smirked, unfolding her napkin. “The food is unnervingly good. Better than Hogwarts’… and I say that as someone who still feels morally conflicted about enjoying it.”

Harry gave her a look. “Careful, your inner S.P.E.W. founder is showing.”

“She’s always showing,” Hermione replied matter-of-factly. “But even I have to admit — Tizzy is terrifyingly competent. Like if Molly Weasley and Minerva McGonagall had a magical elf prodigy.”

They both laughed, a soft, shared sound.

Plates were passed, steam rising in soft curls as chicken was carved, vegetables arranged, and rolls torn into satisfying halves. For several long minutes, the only sound in the room was the soft clink of silverware, the occasional sigh of culinary contentment—and, of course, Nagini's running commentary.

“I’m not wasting my cake appetite on that stupid chicken,” she grumbled from her perch near the hearth. “Nagini can be patient… delayed gratification… but only barely.”

Hermione ignored her, cutting into a perfectly roasted slice of chicken breast with the efficiency of someone raised on logic and checklists. The skin gave way with a crisp snap, revealing tender white meat beneath, which she speared expertly.

“You know, Harry,” she said between bites, “we’re going to need our wands back at some point. Especially me. Exams won’t study for themselves — and the next trimester comes with a half-dozen magical health assessments I’d rather not try wandless.”

Harry blinked, coming back to the present with a quiet swallow. He had, in fact, thought about their missing wands — but only recently. And even then, vaguely, like remembering something you were supposed to worry about but couldn’t quite summon the energy to. It hadn’t felt urgent. Maybe because the last few days had been filled with books Hermione kept handing him, or thoughts he wasn’t ready to untangle about fatherhood and the shape his life had suddenly taken.

But mostly… he hadn’t noticed the absence of his wand because — for the first time in his life — he didn’t feel like he had to keep glancing over his shoulder. He hadn’t needed it to defend himself with.

It was surreal, really. Living under the same roof as him should’ve been a waking nightmare, not a relief. And yet… it was quieter here than it had ever been at Privet Drive… or Hogwarts. There was no Snape breathing down his neck, no Rita Skeeter articles skewering his every move, no looming prophecy threading its fingers around his throat – well, that he was ignoring. Mostly.

For once, there was space to breathe. And even if it was an illusion, a temporary reprieve wrapped in dark green velvet, Harry clung to it greedily.

His whole body — his magic, his spirit — felt like it had exhaled for the first time in years. Like someone had slipped him eight hours of sleep and told the chaos to wait outside.

And maybe that was why he hadn’t panicked yet. Even as the swelling in his abdomen grew more pronounced, more tangible. As the demands on his body increased with each day, drawing upon his magical core to sustain the strange, borrowed organs that male magical pregnancy required.

According to What to Expect When the Unexpected is Expecting You: A Guide to Magical Male Pregnancy, the magical structures that had formed inside him — temporary but real — would need a steady, increasing supply of magic in order to continue supporting fetal growth. It explained the way his limbs sometimes trembled after too much activity. The way his appetite had shifted. The way he could feel magic tugging away from his core like a current beneath his skin.

“Harry,” Hermione said pointedly, interrupting his thoughts with an arched brow and the amused exasperation of someone who’d been politely ignored for the last two minutes. “Are you listening?”

He blinked, startled, cheeks flushing faintly. “Huh? What — yeah, sorry. I went off on a bit of a… random tangent.”

“You don’t say,” she deadpanned.

“I think it’s called a ‘non sequitur,’ actually,” he offered brightly, then beamed at her like a particularly proud Hermione Jr.

Hermione gave him a fond but long-suffering look over her glass of pumpkin juice. “You’re lucky you’re cute.”

Nagini groaned from the other side of the room. “Nagini is surrounded by fools and salad.”

“But yes,” Harry said, circling back to the topic she’d raised moments earlier, “I’ve been thinking the same thing. Now that I’m officially in the second trimester, there are diagnostic spells we should run—track growth, monitor magical fluctuations, document any anomalies. Just your standard pregnancy procedures.”

She beamed then, pride lighting up her features. She was always up for a good trend analysis.

“Just…” Harry started, pushing his carrots around the plate, not quite meeting her eye.

“…how to go about asking for it,” Hermione finished for him, her tone dry and, whether intentionally or not, eerily reminiscent of Fred and George’s knack for conversational handoffs.

They didn’t need to spell out the unspoken tension. The issue wasn’t the need for the wands.

It was whom they would have to ask.

How did one go about requesting the very thing that made the majority of the population able to do magic from the very man who had once ordered your death? A man who now lived down the hall, who had placed them under comfortable but undeniable captivity? A man who knew they knew about his Horcruxes, had destroyed one even — and had yet to lift a wand in retaliation.

Would asking be seen as overstepping?

Would it violate the strange, unspoken truce that had kept them breathing?

Hermione bit her lip. “I mean… remit or no remit in watching over you, it’s a lot to hope for.”

Harry sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Yeah. ‘Excuse me, Dark Lord, sir, but would you mind terribly if we borrowed the magical instruments you took from us so we can make sure your unintended soul-baby is developing on schedule?’” He paused, wincing at his own words. “Yeah. That sounds like a great way to die.”

Hermione snorted despite herself. “Well… maybe not die,” she said. “But definitely be glared at with those unsettlingly symmetrical brows until we regret ever being born.”

They both laughed, briefly and quietly again, the sound sharp in the stillness.

“I was thinking,” Harry began, glancing sideways at Hermione, “maybe you could send a letter through Tizzy?”

Hermione looked up from her plate, surprised. “Me?”

“Well… yeah,” he said with a small shrug. “Technically, he did say all of this was your job now. And it feels like something you would need — your wand, I mean — if you’re going to keep doing it properly. Especially as I get further along.”

Hermione opened her mouth to object, then paused, clearly turning it over. “Yes… yes, that’s true,” she said a little too quickly, nodding with the stiff enthusiasm of someone who had already thought of it but hoped someone else would volunteer first.

Harry smirked. “Didn’t want to be the one to ask him, huh?”

She breezed right past Harry’s raised eyebrow. “Or... maybe, the smarter route is asking Nagini to bring it up. Or better yet…” Her voice pitched higher, just a little too chipper. “‘Oh, Master,’” she said in a breathy, theatrical imitation, “‘what if something dreadful were to happen to your precious heir and they didn’t have their magic? Wouldn’t it be tragic? But if I, your loyal, elegant, stunningly brilliant familiar, could prevent such a disaster by returning their wands…’”

Harry didn’t even try to hide his eye roll, unimpressed by her shameless attempt at cunning.

Across the room, Nagini let out a loud, exaggerated snore that would have made Uncle Vernon proud. She flopped her head dramatically off to the side of the nearest armchair, tongue flicking once for emphasis.

Harry snorted, shoveling a forkful of roast chicken, buttered carrot, and a torn hunk of roll into his mouth all at once.

“There’s sly,” he mumbled around his bite, “and then there’s embarrassing.”

Hermione huffed, but didn’t disagree.

As he swallowed, Harry didn’t even bother to turn toward the snake pretending to sleep.

“I’ll give you sugar every day for a week,” he said, voice flat, the barest hint of mischief dancing at the corners of his mouth.

The snoring stopped immediately.

One golden eye cracked open.

Nagini’s tongue flicked out, quick and deliberate, as though she could taste the offer hanging in the air — calculating not just the sweetness of the deal, but how far she could stretch it.

"Three weeks," Nagini drawled, her voice slow and slick with amusement — like oil over a blade.

"Two," Harry shot back instantly, his tone firm, practiced, and just the right amount of smug. He didn’t even glance at Hermione, but he could feel her amusement radiating from across the table as she pressed a knuckle to her lips.

Nagini's other eye slid open, gleaming with the cunning of something ancient and dangerous now fully engaged in the art of negotiation about her cherished sugar.

“Two and a half,” she countered, tongue flicking in punctuation. Her coils gave the faintest, anticipatory twitch — predatory and precise.

"Seventeen days, inc —" Harry began, already gearing up for the counter.

"Deeeeeeeeal!" Nagini hissed, cutting him off with the speed and finality of a hex.

"— luding today," Harry finished smoothly, far too pleased with himself, eyes glinting with victory.

There was a beat. A pause. A blink.

Then —

"NOOOOOOO!" Nagini wailed, her body twisting in theatrical agony. "No, no, no! I meant seventeen starting tomorrow! Curse your Gryffindor trickery!"

"You said 'deal,'" Harry reminded mildly, a grin beginning to blossom on his face.

Nagini groaned and slumped dramatically across the floor like a creature freshly cursed. "I was distracted by sugar cravings and your ridiculous hair," she muttered. "This is entrapment."

Harry grinned wider. "And that’s why you never negotiate on an empty stomach."

Nagini blew a raspberry at him.

“Don’t worry,” Harry said, tossing her a sugar cube from beside the tea. “You can start redeeming your dignity tomorrow.”

Harry let out a hiss of laughter at her antics — then again, louder, when reliving the moment with Hermione.

“Thank you, Nagini,” Hermione chuckled, dabbing her mouth with a linen napkin after the kind of delicious meal they were becoming dangerously accustomed to.

A long-suffering mumble that sounded suspiciously like “yeah, yeah” echoed from in front of the fireplace.

Harry wiped the last remnants of vinaigrette from his plate with a final scrap of bread, savoring the sharp tang that lingered. Just as he set his utensils down, Nagini began to stretch — slowly at first, like a cat waking from a nap—then, in one sudden lurch, she surged forward, winding her way over the rugs and floor with increasing urgency until she was practically coiled around their chairs.

“CAKE TIME!” she shrieked — yes, shrieked — in a pitch so precise it momentarily stunned both Harry and Hermione into silence.

Somehow — by some miracle or dark magic — it had exactly the same pitch and resonance of Lavender Brown’s squeal whenever she got her hands on a fresh copy of Witch Weekly.

“Yes, yes,” Harry said with an amused huff, pushing back his chair from the table and calling out, “Tizzy, three slices of cake to start, please — and a refresh of the chamomile tea, milk and sugar, by the couches.”

Nagini shot him a look that could have curdled cream. “‘To start?’” she hissed with offended dignity. “You insult me with your restraint.”

Unbothered, Harry strolled toward the cozy sitting area in front of the fire, the soft light of floating orbs and flickering hearth casting a golden haze around the velvet chairs and plush cushions. Hermione followed; one brow raised at the snake’s theatrical sighs.

They settled in — comfortably, familiarly. The cake appeared with a faint pop, beautifully plated on delicate porcelain. Tizzy, ever efficient, had already anticipated seconds, thirds, and fourths. Nagini wasted no time licking her first plate clean, tongue flicking furiously, and immediately began devouring the replacements without so much as a thank-you.

Meanwhile, Harry took a slow bite of his own and sighed in contentment.

"Alright," Hermione said, settling deeper into the armchair, tucking her feet beneath her as she cradled her mug of tea. "Back to business. Magical theory, remember?"

"Rude," Nagini muttered from her place on the hearthrug, her voice muffled by an unrepentant mouthful of buttercream.

Harry chuckled. "We were talking about ancient magical protections... and then we somehow veered into how environmental conditions influence spellcasting intent, which somehow led to magical genetics—"

"Which," Hermione interjected, giving him a pointed but amused look over the rim of her cup, "is completely your fault, by the way. You're the one who asked what the baby might inherit."

"I just said I was curious," Harry protested, grinning.

"Yes, and in doing so opened an entire branch of magical anthropology," she replied sweetly. "You should get an award for the world’s most casually loaded question."

Nagini snorted. "If this turns into a lecture, I’m going to need more frosting."

Harry lifted his fork, pausing thoughtfully before replying, “In my defense, it’s a valid question. I have every right to try and anticipate how best to support her—or him—or whatever they may want to be - once they’re here.”

It wasn’t about any material concerns for Harry. What mattered was simple and profound: he wanted the baby to be healthy, safe, and wrapped in love even before uttering their first word. To grow up knowing they were cherished beyond measure, free to become whoever they wanted to be — whether that was a ‘he,’ a ‘she,’ or something else entirely.

Finishing the last crumb of his cake, Harry’s hand instinctively rested on his stomach. His mind wandered, imagining the endless possibilities — the quirks, the little habits, the unique spark the baby might have. No matter what, he would love and treasure them all fiercely.

Hermione took a sip of her tea, casually nibbling on her own cake, watching Nagini devour slice after slice with amused eyes. The gigantic serpent’s gluttony gave Harry the quiet he needed to slip deeper into his thoughts, lost in a reverie of hope and uncertainty.

After a few moments, just as the fire began to fade to embers, only to be magically replenished—its flames leaping bright and golden again — Harry turned to her with a sudden seriousness.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said softly, his voice almost a whisper in the quiet room. “Sometimes just before I fall asleep — or lying there the moment after I wake up — though, more often than not, it’s in my dreams. It’s like my mind is trying to put the pieces together as I drift from one dream to the next.”

He paused, gathering his thoughts, then continued, “About my mom, mostly. About what she did for me. That protection she gave — the kind that saved my life, but also came at a cost. It forced me to live with the Dursleys all those years, isolated and alone.”

His hand brushed lightly over his stomach, as if feeling for the answers hidden beneath his skin. “I think… when that protection ended, that’s when everything changed. That’s when the Horcrux — whatever it is, whatever it was — was set free. It must have merged or connected or… something happened to form this.”

He gave a small, almost hesitant rub to his belly. “This life growing inside me.”

For a long moment, the weight of that truth settled heavily between them. Harry felt it press against his chest like an unyielding stone. He knew, deep down, he was probably right. But knowing didn’t make it any easier. It didn’t offer comfort or peace. Sometimes the hardest truths were the cruelest — they cut deepest, even when they were the ones you most needed to face.

The timing was almost too perfect, too cruel in its symmetry.

“It explains everything,” Harry said quietly, voice barely more than a breath. “How that protection held strong, defending me from the Horcrux for seventeen years… and then, when it ended, there was nothing left to stop it. No shield, no barrier. That’s when it happened — when I conceived this child.” He placed a careful hand on his stomach, eyes distant. “My child and my mother’s sacrifice — they’re tied together. Two points, separated by time and space, but connected by fate. Part of the same story, the same magic, the same love.”

Hermione watched him with a mix of awe and tenderness swelling in her chest. There were two things running through her mind at once. First, an overwhelming amazement at how much Harry had grown — how much he had thrived and blossomed over these last few weeks. Yes, there was still a part of him that was always surviving, always fighting some invisible battle. But now, it wasn’t as consuming, as suffocating as it had been before. He was carving out moments — precious, fleeting moments — to just be Harry. To be the father he was becoming, the kind of man she had always known he could be: honorable, fiercely loving, even to a fault.

And second, she couldn’t deny how much sense his thoughts made — the connection he drew between Lily’s sacrifice and the baby, the way he reasoned through it all. It was a sound, thoughtful theory. One that fit far too neatly into the pieces of their complicated lives.

Hermione smiled softly and reached out, squeezing his hand gently. “You’re right,” she said. “And you’re doing everything you can to give this child that life — a life full of love and protection. You’re already the best father this baby could ask for.”

They both agreed — though they understood more clearly than ever before how it had happened, they still didn’t know why. Why had that fragmented piece of soul, torn away and discarded without anyone even realizing something was missing, chosen to create life? A horcrux was meant to embody death, a dark tether to mortality. Yet here, against all logic, it had sparked the beginning of something new — something alive.

That question hung between them — heavy, unresolved, and likely one they would carry forever without answer.

Somewhere during their quiet exchange, Nagini had slipped away. Neither of them had the heart, or perhaps the courage, to comment on how they hadn’t even noticed a twenty-foot serpent quietly leaving their presence.

They lingered a while longer, savoring another cup of tea in front of the fire, grateful for its warm glow and silent understanding — a fire that never judged their tangled thoughts.

Eventually, they rose and began the walk back to their tower, making their way toward into the faux Gryffindor common room.

Upon entering, several things caught their eye: two delicate notes resting atop two differently sized packages.

The first package was long, short, and narrow—its sleek form almost too deliberate. The handwriting on the note resting atop it was elegant, flowing, and unmistakably careful.

Harry and Hermione,

Here are your wands. Do not betray this kindness.

I always want to know the baby is protected and cared for.

Signed simply with the initials: LV.

Inside, both their wands lay nestled in dark velvet lining, familiar and yet somehow charged with a new, heavy significance.

They exchanged a glance, the comfort of the wands doing little to ease the knot tightening in their stomachs.

Then, their eyes shifted to the second box; larger, more imposing, wrapped plainly with no hint as to what might lie inside. Only a brief note rested on its surface, written in the same elegant script, but this time without any signature:

No one touches what is mine.

Harry’s fingers trembled slightly as he lifted the lid, carefully, almost reverently, raising the box higher to peer inside.

Then, without warning, he dropped it, taking an involuntary step back. His eyes widened — though not nearly as much as Hermione’s, whose face had paled instantly.

Inside the box, the severed head of Fenrir Greyback stared back at them, eyes blown wide and forever trapped in a haunting expression. It was a grotesque and vivid reminder of the darkness lurking just beneath the surface of their fragile peace.

The room seemed to grow colder, the fire’s warmth paling in the shadow of the chilling message.

A silent warning, carved in flesh and blood.

Jesus, Tom – Can’t you just be normal?

I mean, look, he isn’t the best at giving gifts normal people would find appropriate. I think he would actually think this would be an acceptable gift to carry out his plans. He’s trying, badly, but trying. Also, Nagini would have probably thrown in an arm or a leg too for even more drama – provided they weren’t dipped in sugar of course.

Would love to know what you are thinking!

Chapter Text

AN: Buckle up folks. Please keep your hands and feet inside the ride at all times.

JK owns HP. She also owns a blacker heart than Voldemort ever had.

The next few days passed in a strange, disjointed blur — a haze of managing Nagini’s increasingly unhinged, reptilian sugar addiction, casting cautious spells with their newly returned wands, and deliberately skirting any mention of the severed head.

Neither Harry nor Hermione had felt the need to bring it up.

The grotesque, unblinking face of Fenrir Greyback, his final expression frozen in a mask of raw, animal terror.

The message between the wands and the head had been unmistakably clear — crystal in its cruelty.

Do not betray this kindness.

Do not step out of line.

And for now… you will be safe.

It was a promise dressed in the language of a threat, or perhaps a threat spoken with the cadence of a promise. A warning wrapped in civility — Voldemort’s version of it, at any rate.

Or rather — what passed for civility in Voldemort’s house.

And by his standards, it was practically a gesture of goodwill.

But they didn’t talk about that. Never that.

Instead, they focused on what they could control.

Hermione had immediately launched into a round of diagnostic spells on the baby — quick, efficient, and impossibly precise. Her magic was steady, her movements practiced. Every result came back clear. No anomalies. No cause for concern.

Everything was fine.

The relief that followed was silent but profound, shared in a glance and a long, exhaled breath. It settled in their chests like warmth after a storm.

Then, with a subtle flick of her wand, Hermione transfigured the ring back into something far more familiar — her enchanted, bottomless beaded handbag. Small. Purple. Deceptively delicate.

It sat oddly in Harry’s hand to ensure contact with the Horcrux, the contrast jarring, a soft thing meant for safer times – not the war they had used it for.

Now came the next step — taking stock. Regrouping. Holding fast to the fragments of order they still had, even as everything else shifted beneath their feet.

Because sometimes, even in a war, survival came down to the small things you could still carry.

Harry’s hand fished out the locket immediately and almost without thought, fingers brushing the chain as though it had called to him. By the time he realized what he was doing, it was already around his neck.

It settled against his chest more easily now, as if the locket had grown used to him — or perhaps he had grown used to it. Resting just over his heart, it radiated a strange, unnatural calm — subtle, steady, almost like a lullaby only the child within could hear. Not words, not even thoughts, but a rhythm… a pulse. Primitive and instinctive. Protective not by intention or design, but by presence.

Hermione, meanwhile, had nearly buried herself in a pile of books — sprawled around her like a one-woman library under siege. She rifled through bindings and parchment with the focus of someone in battle, and Harry suspected, not for the first time, that she really had emptied half of Flourish and Blotts before they had left.

He watched her for a moment, a small smile flickering at the edge of his mouth.

Every day, he was grateful she was here.

Anchoring him.

Saving him, again and again.

Without ever asking to be called a hero.

While Hermione meticulously sorted through their belongings — cataloging, reorganizing, and returning only a few, essential books, and some new additions she was currently reading, to the Mokeskin pouch, while discarding the majority into a secondary nondescript bag she’d conjured (a practical adjustment now that the Dark Lord’s vast and unsettlingly thorough library was at her disposal), Harry found his attention beginning to drift elsewhere.

To the Snitch.

A small, golden sphere, its surface etched with delicate, purposeful filigree that gave it shape and quiet complexity — so much easier to see now without its restless wings fluttering to distract the eye.

The first Snitch he had ever caught.

A memory forged not in victory, but in a coming of age — that moment during his first match at Hogwarts when he had seized the impossible midair, and the world had seemed to hold its breath while he had caught it. Albeit unconventionally, in his mouth.

Later, it had been returned to him in a moment heavy with finality: bequeathed by Dumbledore upon his death, accompanied by a simple inscription.

 I open at the close.

More words. More riddles. Another cryptic clue left behind in the hope of shaping a future no one fully understood how to achieve except for what was at stake.

And not for the first time, Harry found himself wishing — aching — that Dumbledore had just been clearer. Or that he had done more himself when he was in a position to.

Maybe then, they wouldn’t be stuck piecing together riddles and half-truths, still second-guessing the meaning behind every cryptic word and unspoken expectation. The mission, the Horcrux hunt, was now paused, indefinitely altered by the unlikeliest complication imaginable: his child.

Sometimes, in the darker corners of his mind, Harry even wondered — had Dumbledore known?

Had he somehow orchestrated this too?

It wasn’t impossible. The man had always played a long game, weaving lives and destinies into a tapestry only he understood. And this... this reeked of the kind of manipulative brilliance Dumbledore was capable of.

But that wasn’t why Harry was holding that thought now.

He didn’t have the energy to dig through that particular box, not when everything else already felt so unbearably heavy. His feelings about Dumbledore had always been complicated, but the longer time passed, the more skewed they became.

And not in a good direction.

Still, it was a question for another day. Just like the question of whether they would even return to the Horcruxes at all.

He wasn’t ready. Not for that. Not for any of it. Not yet.

Instead, he returned to the present, to the Snitch. His fingers traced the familiar curves of the Snitch as he lifted it toward the light, letting it catch on the golden surface. He wasn’t searching for a secret. Not this time. He wasn’t trying to solve anything.

He was feeling.

For the first time in what felt like years, he allowed himself to look, really look at the Snitch.

Not as a puzzle. Not as a prophecy. But as a keepsake.

A tether to a younger version of himself who had believed that catching this little golden ball meant winning everything.

He had no idea what winning looked like anymore.

But he knew what he was fighting for. For someone, impossibly small but all consuming in its presence. And that — at least — had never felt clearer.

It was strange, how easy it was to forget the Snitch was even there. Small. Silent. Unassuming.

And yet, somehow, that made him think of the baby all the more; how something so tiny could carry such staggering weight. How its size meant nothing next to its significance.

Stranger still was the way his thoughts kept circling back to his mother. To Lily.

To her protection. Her sacrifice.

The quiet, blazing courage of a woman who had chosen death not as surrender, but as a way to protect what she had cared about most. Her final act had forged something eternal, something that had lived on in him—and now, impossibly, in the child he carried.

It humbled him. Strengthened him.

And all of it: his mother, the child, the indescribable magic laced through their lives; was somehow echoed in this small, golden sphere resting in his hand.

The Snitch had awoken something in him.

Wonder. Grief. A sense of sacred purpose.

And above all else – love.

After that, parting with the Snitch felt... wrong.

So, he didn’t.

It became part of him. Joined the small, growing collection of objects his body seemed unwilling to let go of. Unlike the ring that had returned to locket-form and hung at his chest like a second heartbeat, the Snitch didn’t need to be worn. It was enough to carry it with him, tucked securely in his pocket wherever they went.

His fingers would brush against its etched gold grooves throughout the day, the familiar touch grounding him as time began to pass with unexpected ease.

Faster now.

Routine had a way of doing that — of smoothing the hours, lending shape to days that might otherwise collapse beneath the weight of uncertainty. Tasks to complete. Books to read. Meals to eat. The faintest whisper of hope returning.

Their mornings became quiet rituals: tea and reading, the subject matter always circling back to the baby. Pregnancy, magical inheritance, developmental charms, possible protection rites they could employ in the future. Anything even remotely adjacent to what they were preparing for.

Lunch followed, then more reading; this time in the library, where Hermione’s focus sharpened to a point that bordered on ruthless efficiency.

And with every passing day, Harry became more and more convinced that, under her relentless tutelage, he wouldn’t just be prepared for his N.E.W.T.s.

He would ace them.

Probably with Outstandings. Across the board.

Assuming he survived long enough for exams to matter at the end of year… or beyond.

Every evening, they took a walk around the lake before dinner. It had started as a way to stretch their legs, clear their heads, and give Hermione a chance to escape the library on her own terms without having to be forcibly pried from her books. But over time, it became routine.

And Nagini, naturally, had started coming along. With thoughtful warming charms to ensure her scales didn’t freeze over.

At first, Harry insisted it was because he was getting genuinely concerned about the alarming volume of cookies, cakes, and brownies she had consumed over her recent seventeen-day sugar bender.

But the truth was far simpler. And far stranger.

Nagini and Harry had become, much to Hermione’s ongoing horror, inseparable.

She slithered beside him on walks, shadowed his every errand, and had taken to curling around the arm of his chair like a particularly judgmental armrest while he read. Most baffling of all, she had claimed permanent residence in his bed.

Hermione had tried to protest. Once.

But by now, the sight of Harry tangled in a nest of sheets and glistening scales was so common that she no longer flinched when passing the giant lump of snake and boy limbs on her way to the loo each morning. She’d merely sigh, mutter something about "boundaries," and make a mental note to add a section on magical co-dependence to her research notes.

It was weird. Comforting. Unsettling.
But also, somehow, completely normal.

Harry had tried explaining it once.

“She gets cold at night,” he mumbled.

“She’s a snake,” Hermione replied flatly.

“Exactly,” he said, as if that explained everything.

But not everything in their strange new domestic life was sunshine and enchanted rose petals.

The day after Nagini’s seventeen-day sugar spree ended was, without question, the worst day of Harry and Hermione’s life. Hands down.

The snake had been absolutely insufferable: sulking, hissing, dramatically collapsing in doorways, muttering veiled threats under her breath about poisoning tea or swallowing toes. She was a mess of withdrawal and venomous mood swings, and both Hermione and Harry privately agreed she had come far closer to killing them through nagging than Voldemort had ever managed through curses.

By the morning of the second day without sugar, after she had screamed a string of Parseltongue obscenities so loud neither had slept a wink, Hermione had finally snapped.

“She gets Tuesday and Friday,” Hermione had said with the tone of a woman who had survived something.

“Agreed,” Harry muttered, handing Nagini a brownie like a peace offering to a small god.

Nagini uncoiled from her sulk and devoured the treat with gleeful smugness.

"You two are learning," she said, licking chocolate from her fangs. "Slowly, but learning."

“You manipulative bastard,” Harry said, shaking his head in disbelief, realizing they had been played expertly.

“I prefer strategic mastermind,” she replied, coiling herself around his shoulders like a smug, scaly scarf.

Hermione just sighed – able to piece enough of the body language and tone together to understand more or less the context. “You realize if she had been the one planning things, we’d have all been dead in third year.”

Harry didn’t even argue. “We’re lucky Voldemort is too proud to admit that he needed help.”

Nagini just gave them both a satisfied, sugar-glazed smile.

And thus, Tuesday and Friday, in addition to Nagini’s beloved Sunday, became Official Sugar Days.

Because it was easier to give the snake cookies than to survive her without them.

To Hermione, that was the moment she realized they had fallen into a rhythm — a strange, delicate groove that blurred the days together and let time begin to slip by faster.

November faded into December, and with the holidays approaching, only a few things stood out in the haze of routine and quiet survival.

The first was a conversation she and Harry had shared one evening, curled in the warmth of the firelight, their voices low but steady as they unpacked a truth they’d long avoided: Dumbledore.

Looking back with the clarity of distance and the benefit of hindsight, it was undeniable — things had been seriously messed up. What once felt like noble tests now read more like calculated risks. Harry’s first year alone had been littered with choices no child should have ever been forced to make.

Quirrell had literally had Voldemort on the back of his head and teaching children. They’d been allowed, encouraged, really, to dive into danger. To face trials. To test themselves against magical protections most adult wizards wouldn’t have dared challenge.

And then there was the Dursleys.

The man had known. About the cupboard, the neglect, the cold indifference passed off as protection. And yet, he had let it continue – because it served some greater design.

“He saw people as pieces,” Harry had said quietly that night. “Even the ones he claimed to care about.”

Hermione had agreed; marking just how far she’d come in her once-absolute deference to authority. She could still recognize that Dumbledore had likely begun with noble intentions. But that didn’t excuse the manipulation. The carefully worded omissions. The sacrifices made without consent.

All of his actions could be summed up neatly in what had happened to Sirius.

It still made Harry’s blood boil to think about it; how Dumbledore had known. Knew Sirius had never received a fair trial. Knew the truth, and still left him to rot in Azkaban. Left him to waste away while Harry grew up in a cupboard, believing he had no one.

Intentions didn’t outweigh impact of that nature. Not anymore. Not for Harry.

The second thing that stood out in Hermione’s mind was harder to articulate. It had taken shape slowly, like a pattern forming just beneath her awareness.

It had to do with Nagini.

More specifically — with what happened the few times she wasn’t around.

It wasn’t anything obvious. Harry wasn’t collapsing or lashing out. But Hermione, who had learned to read him like a well-worn book, had noticed the subtle shifts: a little more tension in his shoulders, a bit less energy in his voice, a weariness that settled behind his eyes like stormclouds gathering just out of reach.

He was edgier. Tired. Withdrawn. Crabbier, even—though he never snapped at her.

It was as though, without Nagini there, something in him went just slightly… off balance.

She hadn’t said anything yet. Not out loud. Not even to herself, really. It was still forming. A suspicion. A connection.

But that wasn’t what Hermione was worrying about right now.

Because tonight, they had been invited to dinner.

Again.

By the Dark Lord.

And this time, there was more.

He had extended the invitation with an additional note — calm, courteous, and utterly unnerving:

Join me after dinner. There will be a surprise.

Which, of course, was precisely the kind of phrase no one ever wanted to hear from Lord Voldemort.

Neither Harry nor Hermione had the faintest clue what to expect. It could be a gesture of magnanimity. It could be a trap. It could be… anything.

A ‘surprise’ from the man who had split his soul seven times did not inspire comfort.

And Nagini?

She wasn’t saying a word.

Which, frankly, was worse.

She slithered about all day in a state of barely contained excitement, humming to herself in Parseltongue that not even Harry could guess at, her eyes gleaming with secret delight. She had told them she was excited — repeatedly, in fact — but refused to give any details.

“Don’t ruin it,” she had said, tail flicking like an exclamation mark behind her. “You’ll love it. Probably. Maybe. Well… one of us will, at least.”

That hadn’t helped.

At all.

Harry had shot her a narrow-eyed look. “Is it food related?”

Nagini only smirked and coiled more tightly around his shoulders.

Hermione, for her part, had tried everything to get the answer out of Nagini: logic, guilt, strategic flattery. She was almost to the point of resorting to outright bribery: extra sugar days, enchanted heat stones, a new velvet-lined warming nest. But she had to draw the line somewhere.

Not that Hermione could have understood her response anyway—Parseltongue still sounded like a nest of angry snakes to her—but still, it was the principle of the thing. She hated that Nagini knew something and was deliberately keeping it to herself. Knowledge should be shared!

Which, in Hermione’s mind, left only one certainty: It was going to be weird.

And she was right.

Because finally, finally, Harry managed to con it out of her.

He was taking a bath, trying to relax before dinner, when Nagini decided she too deserved a “pre-event soak.” Her words, not his.

That was how Harry ended up sharing a ridiculous, oversized bubble bath — more like a small indoor pool than a tub — with a very smug serpent coiled along the tiled edge, occasionally dipping her massive form into the water like she was royalty and this was her private spa.

There were bubbles everywhere. Lavender-scented ones that Harry had gotten scarily good at conjuring. Wandless.

“I’m not saying another word unless you make it worth my while,” Nagini announced, flicking a strand of bubble foam off her nose with imperial disdain.

Harry groaned, pushing wet hair back from his forehead.

“What now? You already have three sugar days a week. You are not getting another one!”

Nagini narrowed her eyes. “I just want pie, a chocolate cream pie.”

“A pie.” Harry clarified, suspiciously. And deeply, fundamentally, confused. He was pretty sure either him or Hermione had already offered something similar.

“Yes.”

“A whole pie?”

“Unshared,” she added sweetly.

Harry stared at her for a long moment. “You realize I’m the pregnant one here, right?”

“And yet I’m the one withholding valuable intel,” she hissed, dipping her tail dramatically beneath the foam.

Harry scowled, defeated. “Fine. One pie. Full-size. No slices. All yours.”

Nagini grinned like a queen receiving tribute. “Pleasure doing business,” she said, her voice syrupy with triumph as she flicked a lazy ripple through the bathwater.

“Right then,” Harry muttered, resting his head against the rim of the tub. “Spill.”

“It’s a celebration,” she said with practiced nonchalance. “A special gathering to honor the baby and the Yule season.”

Harry’s brow furrowed immediately. “You mean a ceremony; a ritual?”

Nagini rolled her eyes. “Oh, relax. No ritual magic, no blood sacrifices, no binding oaths under starlight. Honestly, your imagination is exhausting.”

“Forgive me for not trusting the guy who used to call human sacrifice a Tuesday.”

Nagini snorted. “It’s nothing dark. It’s old — pagan. The Dark Lord thought it would be… fitting for his heir to be recognized on the longest night of the year. Symbolism and all that. Death. Rebirth. Light returning. That sort of thing.”

Harry remained suspicious, but he said nothing — mostly because he didn’t want to risk renegotiating the pie terms.

Besides, he knew Hermione would personally and ruthlessly vet any ceremonial details long before it ever happened. Nothing would slip past her scrutiny.

Instead, he let himself relax, just a little, while Hermione finished getting ready on the other side of the door.

She was standing in front of a tall mirror, fastening the last braid into her hair. She wore a deep lavender gown; simple, elegant, and charmed just enough to shimmer when she moved. Her hair had been woven into a single plait that draped over her shoulder like a satin rope.

For a moment, she simply stared at her reflection.

A Muggle-born witch, alive and well in Voldemort’s stronghold.

Not just alive — thriving.

And it was strange, disorienting even, how calm she felt. How, despite everything, the war, the trauma, the politics of survival, this had somehow become one of the least stressful periods of her life.

She wasn’t constantly running for her life, dodging hexes in the woods, or rationing stale bread in a muddy tent. She wasn’t drowning in pink toads, the consequences of Hagrid’s life choices, petrified in the infirmary for a few months, or under the crushing expectations of a world that didn’t know what to do with someone like her.

She was learning. Thinking. Planning.

She was even — though she hadn’t admitted it aloud yet — enjoying parts of this twisted new reality.

Merlin help her. Morgana give her strength.

Hermione cast a quick Tempus Charm and swore under her breath.

Thirty minutes until eight. And Harry still wasn’t dressed. He wasn’t even out of the bath.

With growing irritation, she marched toward the bathroom and knocked sharply on the door.

“Harry, you need to get out of there and get dressed. Now!”

No reply.

Just laughter.

And hissing.

She frowned. “Harry?”

Still nothing. Just more muffled giggling, the unmistakable slosh of water, and what might’ve been Nagini snorting.

Her fingers curled into a fist. “Alright. I’m coming in. You have three seconds.”

“Three…”

“Two…”

“Harry James Potter—”

She flung open the door.

And froze.

Absolutely, irreversibly froze.

Harry was in the bath.

Nagini was also in the bath.

And the tub—no, the small lake masquerading as a tub—was overflowing with what could only be described as the most aggressive display of bubble bath magic ever unleashed. Thick, shimmering foam piled high in artful, gravity-defying peaks, drifting lazily through the air like enchanted clouds. It looked less like a bath and more like a theatrical set designed for a low-budget opera themed around “whimsy and poor decisions.”

Harry spotted her in the doorway and grinned like he was already halfway to the punchline.

“Oh no,” he murmured, eyes twinkling. “She used my middle name. That’s never good.”

Hermione said nothing.

Not because she was angry.

Because her brain was still frantically trying to categorize the scene in front of her.

Snake.
Boy.
Bubble beard.
Possibly sentient foam.
Why did Nagini look like she was auditioning for the role of ‘bubbly Dumbledore’ in a wizarding holiday pantomime?

Her mouth opened. Closed.

No words emerged.

Just the faint, internal sound of her sanity packing a weekend bag and quietly slipping out the back door.

Harry completely lost it then.

“Oh Merlin,” he wheezed, doubling over as waves sloshed around him. “Nagini, stop—you look like Dumbledore welcoming everyone to a Hogwarts fest— Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!”

Nagini gave a dramatic toss of her coils and struck a pose, eyes half-lidded. “I am wisdom incarnate,” she said in a silken hiss. “Lemon drop, anyone?.”

Harry cackled harder, practically choking on a soap bubble.

Hermione just stood there, staring at them like the universe had personally insulted her.

Then she pressed two fingers to her temples and muttered something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like a Latin curse mixed with a desperate plea to any higher power listening.

It was the kind of moment that made her question every choice she had made since age eleven.

She was this close to stamping her foot, first-year style. But they looked so utterly ridiculous — one a snorting, half-submerged wizard with foam stuck to his glasses and then about three feet more atop his head; the other a sentient murder-snake impersonating their former headmaster with startling accuracy — that the anger never quite landed.

Still.

Time was ticking.

“You have ten minutes!” she said crisply, turning on her heel like a woman on the brink. “If you’re not dressed and out here by then, I will vanish that entire bath – whether you are in there or not. And I won’t miss!”

Behind her, the splash of water and renewed peals of laughter echoed like the soundtrack to a dream she hadn’t meant to have.

At this point, she wasn’t even sure what kind of dinner she was preparing for.

Still, she couldn’t find it in her to feel anything other than appreciation. No, that wasn’t the right word but close.

Because Harry had never smiled this much. He had never laughed this much. And he had certainly never baked this much in his entire life. There was something in this strange, surreal version of Hogwarts — a distorted mirror of the place they once knew — that allowed him to simply be in a way he never could before.

Despite the impossibility of the situation — the fact that they were technically prisoners in Voldemort’s castle, that a war still loomed in the world beyond — Harry was thriving.

Truly thriving.

Not just surviving day by day.

Not just existing despite everything he was dealing with.

But living.

And somewhere between the quiet moments of shared meals, sugar negotiations with Nagini, and lazy afternoons in a library where no one asked him to be anything but himself… he had started to find something resembling peace.

And that, Hermione thought, as they stepped into the soft golden light of the dining hall at eight o’clock sharp, was worth every ridiculous bubble bath delay and test to her sanity.

She had barely finished that thought when they caught sight of the Dark Lord – the man if anything, had grown more inhumanly attractive.

It was almost offensive, really.

He looked less like a man and more like the collective fever dream of every Renaissance master sculptor come to life. As if Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci had conspired to create the most unnervingly flawless specimen imaginable: chiseled angles, fluid grace, and an aura of such magnetic command that it felt more divine than mortal. And then, for reasons unknown to anyone sane, they had breathed life into it and set it down at the head of the Yule banquet table, bathed in the soft, golden light of the enchanted Christmas tree.

Harry blinked.

Then blinked again.

Someone, he decided, really needed to check him for a Confundus Charm. A strong one. Possibly layered.

Because Tom — dressed in midnight-black robes tailored to within an inch of sinful perfection — had no business looking like that, especially not while sipping wine like a cursed prince presiding over his dark court.

The place settings were immaculate; elegant in a way that felt almost ironic now, as though the gold gleam on the silver cutlery and the flicker of floating candlelight were part of some grand, ongoing joke that only the castle itself was in on.

Silver platters glowed softly, enchanted to stay perfectly warm. Spiced cider and roasted chestnuts appeared in self-replenishing bowls. Wine was poured for the host and his guest.

Sparkling juice, as always, for Harry.

Nagini was already curled up by the hearth, content and gleaming, her post-bath scales shimmering with impossible beauty. Hues of deep green and burnished brown rippled down her length, accented with glints of coppery red and orange that caught the firelight in slow, hypnotic waves. She looked like a creature born of myth — some ancient forest guardian touched by gold.

Harry tried not to stare. At any of it.

Tried not to think too hard about the absurdity of his life; this impossible, gilded parody of peace he’d somehow stepped into. Because what unsettled him most wasn’t the surreal splendor of the meal, or even the man sitting at the head of the table.

It was how normal it was starting to feel.

How calm he was in Tom’s presence. How settled, and pain free.

Whether that had to do with the child inside him, the Horcrux humming quietly at his chest, or the strange, magnetic gravity of the man who looked like sin born from starlight — he couldn’t say.

He only knew that looking at Tom Riddle felt like staring into an eclipse. Blinding. Brilliant.
Dangerous in ways that didn’t announce themselves, but still promised to scorch something vital if he gazed too long.

So he didn’t.

Mostly.

Or, at least, he tried as dinner began.

Which Harry was present for. Technically.

He sat at the table, listened as best he could, even nodded at the right moments. He was aware of the conversation flowing between Hermione and the Dark Lord, their words dancing carefully around the subject of the upcoming Yule ceremony. She was doing what she did best — pressing for details with polite persistence, questioning intent cloaked in academic curiosity.

Tom answered her in kind, unbothered and smooth, drifting into the historical origins of Yule traditions over the clink of cutlery and the soft pour of wine. His voice, as always, was rich and measured, like something sourced from an ancient bottle, aged but potent.

And Harry heard all of it.

But he wasn’t really listening.

Because his mind had wandered far from the table.

It wasn’t fear for the baby. Oddly enough, he didn’t feel that. He wanted to be suspicious. Wanted to question everything, to brace himself for some hidden twist, some betrayal wrapped in tradition. But the fears never fully manifested. They flickered at the edge of his thoughts, faint and hollow.

Instead, he found himself preoccupied by something harder to define.

The baby. Tom. Everything.

What it all meant.

And, more disturbingly, the lingering ghost of a feeling he didn’t understand; something born of that brief moment of touch, when his skin had met Tom’s and something in him had cracked open and settled all at once. The memory of it pulsed faintly under his skin, soft and wrong and so right that it unnerved him more than any curse ever could.

It hadn’t been pleasure, exactly — not lust, not desire in the traditional sense — but something euphoric. Something that had whispered, you are safe.

You are whole .

That was what haunted him most.

The terrifying, beautiful possibility that he had felt — if only for a heartbeat—something he had never truly known in all his years.

Wholeness .

And so, while Tom spoke of sacred nights and ancient rites, and Hermione countered with theories and questions, Harry sat in silence—his hands resting gently over his bump, his eyes on his untouched plate, his thoughts somewhere distant but perilously close.

“So, explain it to me again,” Hermione said, her voice cutting gently through the soft clatter of silverware and the low hum of charmed candlelight.

Her tone wasn’t impatient, just insistent; curious in the way only she could be, relentless in pursuit of understanding and, above all else, ensuring her godchild would come to no harm.

Tom didn’t sigh. He didn’t bristle or roll his eyes. If anything, he welcomed the questions, turning to her with the smooth grace of someone who had prepared for this moment. His expression was calm, composed, almost warm.

He had taught himself to wear kindness like a well-tailored cloak. Measured, elegant, and useful. It suited the role he had chosen to play: gracious host, patient teacher, architect of something far more enduring than control.

“The rites of Yule,” he began smoothly, “are among the oldest magical traditions still remembered. Long before Christian hands reshaped the world, before doctrine replaced intuition, witches and wizards celebrated the winter solstice — the longest night of the year — not as an end, but as a beginning.”

Hermione leaned in slightly, brow furrowed in interest.

“It was a time to honor the death of the old sun and the birth of the new,” he continued, his voice soft but resonant. “A liminal space, when the veil between what was and what could be thinned. Fire rituals. Feasts. Wreaths made of oak and holly. Evergreen branches hung to remind the world that life endures, even in the coldest dark.”

He paused, letting the warmth of the hearth and the echo of his words settle into the room.

“It was sacred,” he added, “not just because of magic, but because of memory. And like most things sacred, it was slowly overwritten. Replaced.”

Hermione’s gaze sharpened. “By Muggles.”

“Indeed,” Tom said, nodding. “When Muggle influence crept further into wizarding spaces, their new holidays pushed out the old. Yule became Christmas. Samhain became Halloween. Ostara was twisted into Easter. And with each shift, something was lost. Something that was ours.”

He didn’t sound angry. Not exactly. But the weight of those last words carried something older — resentment tempered into cold conviction.

Hermione tilted her head. “So, you’re reviving it?”

“In a way,” Tom said, folding his hands loosely on the table. “Honoring it. Reclaiming what was cast aside. And in doing so, celebrating new beginnings.”

His gaze flicked to Harry. Just for a moment.

“A pregnancy under such an alignment,” he said, “especially one where the child is about halfway to term is very auspicious and deserves to be acknowledged. Marked by a tradition older than kingdoms, older than names. A rite of welcome. Of protection for the rest of the pregnancy.”

Hermione’s lips parted as if to speak, but no words came.

Even she, as rooted in logic as she was, could feel the gravity of it — the symbolism, the intention. Not just ceremony but meaning. Not just history, but legacy.

Hermione sat in contemplative silence, the words still echoing through her mind.

It made sense… more than she expected. The way Tom spoke of tradition, of memory and reclamation… there was a logic to it. A rhythm. And strangely, a kind of reverence.

No one had ever explained it to her like that before.

She had read countless histories, devoured every magical theory she could find, but this—this quiet intersection between belief, culture, and magical identity — had never been offered in the textbooks. It hadn’t even been footnoted.

And now, tonight, it was being shared not in a lecture hall or a library, but around a firelit table set for three. By the Dark Lord of all people.

Tom folded his hands and looked at them both. “Yule was always meant to be shared,” he said softly. “And tonight, I would like to offer that; not in ceremony, but in acknowledgment. A tradition that marks this turning point, this moment of quiet change.”

Before either of them could respond, there was a sudden pop of magic, and Tizzy appeared beside the table with a radiant, proud grin.

“Dinner, sirs and miss!” she squeaked, and with a flick of her fingers, the main course was revealed.

Steam drifted lazily from a deep, cast-iron pot set in the center of the table. A rich stew — slow-cooked and fragrant — perfumed the air, thick with root vegetables, tender meat, and herbs that made Hermione’s mouth water before she even picked up her spoon. It was the kind of meal that spoke of warmth, of hearths and comfort, of long winters and full bellies.

Perfect for Yule.

Alongside it was a vibrant salad, dotted with jewel-like segments of blood orange and pomegranate, tossed in a citrus-honey dressing that sparkled with flavor. A carafe of spiced mulled wine appeared next — deep red and aromatic with cinnamon, cloves, and orange peel.

Hermione took one sip and nearly moaned aloud. The warmth bloomed through her, curling her toes beneath the table.

Even Harry had been served his own version; non-alcoholic, yes, but with all the richness of memory. One sip and he was back at the Burrow, surrounded by laughter, by knitted jumpers and singing gnomes; by the family he had always longed for.

The food was beyond delicious. It was healing.

Tom waited until they were well into the meal before speaking again.

“I’ve been preparing something,” he said, his voice calm, but underscored with something quieter. Intent. “For the Yule evening itself.”

Hermione looked up, fork halfway to her mouth.

“It’s symbolic,” he continued quickly, as if anticipating their reaction. “There’s no magic involved. No significant spellwork. Just tradition — ancient, harmless. A circle. A vow of protection. Nothing more.”

Harry raised a brow. “For the baby?”

Tom inclined his head. “Yes. For the child. It is meant to bless, to guard, and to anchor the soul in the strength of the community that welcomes them.”

Hermione stared at him, still tasting rosemary and winter root vegetables on her tongue. “You’re saying you want to hold a pagan circle. In your fortress.”

“I want to honor something real,” he said. “Not in dominance. Not in control. But in acknowledgment.”

There was something oddly still in his expression then—not cold, but unguarded.

And in the quiet that followed, Harry found himself staring again. Not with suspicion.

With curiosity.

With the faint, unsettling hum of wonder.

Tom explained the ritual — though he was quick to clarify that calling it a ritual might be misleading.

“It’s not structured magic,” he said, his voice smooth and deliberate. “Not a spell or an incantation. It’s a tradition — ancient, symbolic. A circle is drawn to represent the cycle of life: the beginning and the end. Then, a few words are spoken to honor the old magic, to state your intentions, your hopes.”

He paused, letting the weight of those words settle before continuing.

“If wizards had prayers,” he added, “this is what they would look like. Pagan rites were never about control. They were about connection. About giving up something now so that it would come back stronger in the future. About remembering those who came before and preparing the way for those still to come.”

His eyes flicked briefly to Harry, to the gentle swell of his stomach. “Tonight is... significant.”

“Because of Yule?” Hermione asked.

Tom nodded. “It marks the return of light. The rebirth of the sun after the longest night of the year. A turning point. Pagans would gather to honor that return — and in doing so, ask for blessings to guide the year ahead. Not demands. Not bargains. Just… intention.”

“But why?” Harry asked, eyes narrowing slightly. “Why are you doing this?”

The question cut through the air with a quiet kind of challenge, not angry but searching.

Tom didn’t flinch.

“Because I’ve already learned what happens when I try to harm you,” he said simply. “And now that extends to the child as well. That path led to my downfall once. I’ve no interest in repeating it.”

He said it without bitterness — just fact. Like someone who had touched a fire and would never again need to be told it burns.

“But more than that,” he continued, softer now, “I want this to be seen. A gesture, yes… but a sincere one. Whether I asked for it or not, this child… is a part of me. Of my legacy. And that matters. It means something.”

Harry studied him for a long moment. He wanted to argue. To scoff. To call it manipulation, another mask.

But the words hadn’t felt hollow to him.

So he nodded — reluctantly, quietly. Not in full belief. Not in full trust.

But enough.

For now.

Tom went on. “The heart of the ceremony is what you bring to it. What you give. Each of us, myself, Hermione, and Nagini, will offer a single item to Harry and the baby — something meaningful, something personal. A symbol of what we’re willing to part with so that the child might gain in its place.”

“A sacrifice,” Hermione said softly.

“A gift,” Tom corrected, gently. “If you choose to see it that way.”

And somehow… that distinction made all the difference.

Hermione didn’t reply, not immediately. But her eyes flickered with thought, her fingers briefly tapping against the stem of her glass. A dozen considerations moved through her mind all at once: philosophical, emotional, practical. But in the end, she simply nodded to herself, mentally filing it away with a note to retrieve something from upstairs before the ceremony began.

That was it.

Harry gave in with a quiet sigh. He wasn’t entirely sure why — maybe because it all felt too surreal to resist, or maybe because something in Tom’s voice had struck a chord. Not trust. Not belief. But… acceptance. For the moment.

Dessert followed.

Harry barely noticed.

His focus was elsewhere, his mind drifting through thoughts he didn’t want to linger on too long. The idea of giving up something meaningful stirred a quiet ache in him. And imagining what they would choose — not just to lose, but to give — was more vulnerable than he was ready to admit. Especially for Tom.

He paid no attention as Tizzy popped in with Nagini’s pie, though he did vaguely register the sound of something metallic being dragged across porcelain.

She’s probably eating the entire tin, he thought absently. No way she has the patience to take it out of its shell.

It was only when he looked up from his half-eaten dessert that he realized Hermione had quietly excused herself.

And suddenly —

Tom. Harry. Nagini, yes, but curled by the fire, and completely engrossed in staring into its depths.

Which left him —

Alone.

With Tom Riddle.

Harry swallowed hard.

It struck him then — sharp and awkward — that this was the first time they’d been alone. Truly alone. No Hermione. No distractions. No convenient escape from the fact that he was, in every literal and surreal sense, carrying the man’s child.

His ears went red before he could stop them.

A flush crept up his neck and kissed his cheeks as memory ambushed him: the last time they’d touched. That jolt of something between them: raw, overwhelming, almost euphoric. He’d covered Tom’s hands with his and felt, for a terrifying second, not power or fear, but completion.

And now here he was, stuck at a table, painfully aware of the silence stretching between them, and mortified to realize his brain was calculating things like what would more skin contact feel like?

Would it be worse? Better?

Harry nearly stood up just to flee the room and bury himself somewhere snowy and remote. Preferably with a shovel.

Fortunately — blessedly — Hermione returned less than four minutes later, clutching her bottomless pouch.

She sat back down, eyes flicking between the two of them with a sharpness that suggested she missed nothing.

Harry resumed eating his dessert with the intense focus of someone pretending he had not, moments earlier, been contemplating the arcane physics of accidental hand-holding-induced soul-level intimacy.

Eventually, the time came.

The remnants of dinner faded into soft candlelight and half-drunk glasses, and with little ceremony, they rose from the table and stepped into the night.

The cold greeted them like a wall — sharp and immediate, the kind of chill that cut through fabric and nestled in bones. Nagini let out an indignant hiss the moment her coils touched the frost-hardened ground.

“This is barbaric,” she declared, coiling tighter and glaring at the sky as though winter itself had made an enemy for life.

Hermione, without missing a beat, flicked her wand in a practiced arc. Small, floating orbs of sapphire-blue fire burst into existence, drifting just above their heads like lanterns spun from magic. The flames hovered and danced, casting a warm, gentle glow that pushed the cold back in ripples.

Nagini made a pleased sound and nestled closer to Harry, who could feel her warmth at his side as they walked.

They made their way down to the lake, their footsteps crunching softly on the frozen grass. The water was still, the surface dark and glossy like obsidian, reflecting the firelight and the sharp silver stars overhead.

It was dark.

Not city dark. Not Hogwarts dark. But real darkness. The kind that felt stranded and wild and holy.

And the stars — Harry had never seen so many in his life.

They blanketed the sky in endless constellations, stretching from horizon to horizon. Cold, quiet, eternal. It took his breath away, just for a moment.

He tipped his head back, lips parted, and stared.

It was beautiful. Too big. Too much. And yet, he felt impossibly small beneath it all in a way that didn’t hurt. It humbled him. Grounded him.

Something about it felt… right.

Like they were exactly where they were supposed to be.

An end and a beginning, just as Tom had said.

They began in silence.

No command. No fanfare. Just motion.

Together, they moved across the frozen earth, tracing a wide circle in the brittle grass with the tips of their wands, careful and deliberate. The line glowed faintly — just a shimmer, no more than moonlight caught in dew — but it hummed with intent, with the barest whispers of meaning. A boundary, not of magic, but of purpose.

They stepped inside it, one by one.

The air shifted.

Soft chanting began — not in Latin, not in spellwork — but in something older. Earthy. Rooted. A cadence of sound that wrapped around them like the wind, reverent and slow, carrying with it the weight of memory.

Tom led them.

And Harry watched; he could not have looked away if he tried.

There was something unsettling about how effortless it was for Tom to slip into this role: leader, guardian, priest of something half-forgotten. He did not just perform the rite; he inhabited it. His voice was low, commanding, with just enough warmth to make it feel intimate. Human.

And that’s what unmoored Harry the most.

Because in that moment, Tom Riddle wasn’t a tyrant. Nor a specter. He was a man; beautiful, poised, elemental. He looked woven from the night itself, lit from above by the blue fire hovering over them all, his robes catching the faint silver of starlight like constellations stitched into shadow.

This, Harry thought, this is how they followed him.

Not out of fear. Not always. But because he could make people feel — powerful, seen, chosen. Like the world was remade in his presence.

He understood now, in a way books and war stories never quite conveyed.

And still, no incantations were spoken. No spells cast.

Yet the air around them thrummed. Everything felt more alive—the earth beneath their feet, the trees in the distance, the quiet pulse of the lake. As though the world was listening. Holding its breath.

Not because of magic.

Because of meaning.

Because of belief.

And Harry — despite himself, despite everything — felt it too.

Harry stood at the center of the circle, a soft glow of the blue firelight casting flickering shadows over the snowy ground. The others formed a triangle around him — Hermione, Tom, and Nagini — each equidistant, each poised with something cradled gently in their hands.

He was the center. The axis. The constant.

It felt… overwhelming. Reverent. Strange.

They had explained it earlier: each participant would offer something of meaning, something deeply personal, to be buried within the circle at Harry’s feet. A symbolic sacrifice, laid to rest in the earth beneath the stars, a gesture meant to bless the child’s coming year. Not magic, not incantation — just intention.

Harry had hesitated at first. Despite everything he was hesitating now, recalling the words that Tom said to him earlier.

He had questioned the purpose, asked — point blank — why this was necessary, what it meant.

Tom, standing with effortless stillness in his dark robes, had met his gaze without flinching.

“I cannot harm the child,” he had said quietly. “What’s growing inside you is, whether by accident or fate, mine as well. And I will not see it enter this world without receiving what it is entitled to.”

Entitled. The word had curled at the edge like smoke.

Now, beneath the stars, it began.

Hermione stepped forward first. Her breath puffed visibly in the cold; her fingers wrapped tightly around a large, leather-bound book.

“I offer Hogwarts: A History,” Hermione said, her voice soft but unwavering, the quiet reverence in it making the firelight seem to still around her. A faint, bittersweet smile curved her lips — equal parts wry affection and wistful memory.

“Because while this child will grow up surrounded by stories, I want them to have truth. Knowledge. Context. I want them to understand the world they inherit… and have the wisdom to change it when it fails them.”

She stepped forward slowly, the blue flicker of flame glinting off the deep chestnut of her braid. In her hands was a copy of the book — her copy. The spine was cracked, the corners frayed from countless rereads. Margins overflowed with scribbled notes. A thousand quiet hours had passed between its pages. It had survived tents, battles, heartbreaks.

It had survived her.

Hermione knelt in the snow before Harry, the book held out like an offering at an altar. She didn’t speak again. She didn’t need to. The gift was already speaking for her.

It was history — not just Hogwarts’, but hers, and now… the child’s.

Harry swallowed past the tightness in his throat and watched her place the book into the large hollow at his feet before covering it with the earth.

Then it was Nagini’s turn.

She slithered forward with ceremony that was almost convincing—almost—and from the coiled loop of her body, presented… a pie. Harry didn’t even know how she had even carried it without him noticing.

“I offer… a chocolate cream pie,” Nagini announced, her tone solemn but there was mischief in her eyes.

Harry choked back a laugh, and Hermione audibly sighed through her nose.

“I want the youngling to grow up not only with nourishment, but delight,” she intoned, as if delivering an ancient creed. “To know that joy is not frivolous. That pleasure — true pleasure — is worth defending. That life should be savored.”

And somehow, impossibly, it worked. There was a strange dignity in the absurdity. The murder snake, who once stalked war camps and killed on command, now nudging a pie forward with her snout with all the reverence of a monk placing a relic at a shrine. She didn’t even try to steal a taste as it was pushed into the nook next to where Hermione’s offering was buried.

The contrast was almost too much—one gift for the mind, the other for the soul’s sweet tooth.

Harry blinked down at the pie and murmured, “This is either the weirdest altar in history… or the most honest.”

Nagini gave a satisfied hum, coiling back with a flick of her tongue. “If they don’t like chocolate, we try again next year.”

And before Harry could stop her, she buried it. Right there. With her tail.

Then Tom stepped forward.

He didn’t speak right away.

Instead, he stood still — hands steady but eyes distant — as he looked down at the object cradled in his palm. A book. Like Hermione’s. But darker. Smaller. Its spine cracked, its cover scorched and peeling. A hole bored straight through the center, like a wound that had never fully healed.

Harry recognized it instantly. His breath hitched, and for a moment, he felt the ghost of a fang in his arm, the memory of venom and panic.

“Is that—?” he asked, voice tight.

“Yes,” Tom said softly. “It is.”

He stepped forward, each movement deliberate, as though approaching something sacred or cursed. Maybe both. The diary, his diary, rested in his hands like a relic. And somehow, in this strange new light, it was.

“I offer what this once was,” Tom said, lifting the object with deliberate care. “The first part of my soul I ever tore away. My first Horcrux.”

Utter silence.

It wasn’t fear that filled the space — but something heavier. Truer. A silence thick with weight and reverence, as if the act itself shifted the air around them.

Harry met his gaze. Those strange, burning eyes — so often a window of control or power — held neither. There was no cruelty in them now, no triumph. Only a raw, quiet vulnerability. The echo of a boy who had once made an impossible choice to never feel powerless again.

Tom stepped closer, the distance between them collapsing until they stood almost toe to toe. Harry could feel the heat of his breath — warm, laced with the faint spice of mulled wine — and something deeper, something magic-laced, curled between them like an invisible tether.

His heart beat faster.

“I want the child to be bold,” Tom said, voice low, almost reverent. “To dream without fear. To reach beyond every limitation the world will try to place on them. To chase the strange and the impossible without shame.”

He paused.

Then, softer—less Dark Lord, more man:

“This… is my offering. That they may understand ambition not as hunger, but as possibility. That they may know where it can lead when it is tempered by purpose.”

Harry swallowed hard.

Because for all the horrors tied to that object, for all the blood and darkness and pain — it was also something else now.

A gift.

A vow.

A piece of the past, willingly surrendered for the sake of something entirely new.

For a moment, neither of them moved. No more words were said.

And then Harry watched, careful and reverent, as Tom bent down and laid it with the others — one book, a pie, another book — each one ridiculous, ominous, and sacred in its own way. Even more perfect altogether.

The circle held its breath around them.

Tom stepped backward, preparing to end the circle and the moment.

His expression was calm, composed, and with an innate grace, he raised his wand, opened his mouth to speak the final words — words meant to seal the offering, to consecrate the intention and tie it to the earth.

But he never got the chance.

Because in that moment, the wind shifted.

Not harshly. Not violently.

It changed like breath drawn in awe: soft, slow, almost reverent.

And then, from the vast sky above, an ethereal light descended.

It wasn’t pale like moonlight or bright like flame. It was something formless, gentler — liquid and silver-gold, moving like mist laced with stardust. It drifted downward with no source, no beginning, until it reached the edge of the circle.

There, just beyond the boundary line, it pulsed once… and began to change.

To form.

It rippled, blurred, and then gathered shape — arms, shoulders, a fall of auburn hair, eyes so impossibly familiar it made something in Harry crack open like a shell.

And then she was there.

Lily Potter.

Whole. Luminous. Present.

Her feet did not touch the ground. Her figure shimmered faintly, as though woven from memory and morning fog, but her smile — soft, radiant, aching — was unmistakably real.

“I would also like to offer a gift,” she said.

No one moved.

Not Hermione. Not Nagini. Not even Nagini’s mouth.

Shock anchored them in place, breathless and blinking, as though a single word might shatter the moment.

Silent tears began to stream down Harry’s face, tracing lines through the warmth of his cheeks, catching on his lashes, his chin. His lips parted, but no sound came out. There was no air in his lungs, only awe. So big, so full, it hollowed him and filled him once more.

Tom, too, stood motionless.

Except he wasn’t still. Inside, he felt hollow; like something old and frozen had cracked in his chest and left nothing but open space. Not fear. Not rage. Not even grief.

Wonder .

He had no idea what sort of magic had summoned this; what he meant for was something showy, significant if you believed it but nothing real. Not like this. Never like this.

What no one knew — what no one could have known — was that three forces had aligned with impossible precision.

First: the night itself. The longest night of the year. When the veil between worlds stretched thin as breath, thinner still than grief. A night when endings and beginnings touched, when the living and the dead might brush against each other like shadows passing through smoke.

Second: Harry. Unaware, unassuming, carrying the Resurrection Stone in his breast pocket. Still hidden inside the Snitch. Still nestled against his chest — close to his heart in every sense that mattered.

And the third — perhaps the most important — was Lily Potter.

Because in the end, it had been her choice.

Not magic. Not fate. Her.

People liked to remember Lily Evans as a rule follower. A Head Girl. A quiet rebel at most. But that was never the whole truth. She had fallen in love with a boy who broke the rules with laughter and loyalty, and she had learned how to break them too — when it mattered.

She had learned when to yield, and when to fight.

And most of all, she had learned when to trust that love could go where law and reason and magic could not.

So, she had come.

Not summoned.

Not conjured.

Not pulled from beyond with a stone or a wand.

But because she chose to bend the rules herself — and stepped across the veil.

For him.

For them.

Because a mother’s love, once given, is not easily silenced.

And Lily Potter had never been one to stay quiet.

Lily stepped forward, her eyes lingering on her son — her child who had lived, who now carried life of his own — and her smile trembled with something deeper than sorrow.

Her form glowing faintly, her presence impossibly gentle and impossibly strong. She looked at each of them — Hermione, Nagini, Tom — then finally settled her gaze back on Harry.

And when she spoke again, her voice was like wind through leaves, soft but full of gravity.

“My gift,” she said, “is forgiveness. Something I have withheld for many, many years — through pain, through silence, through the kind of love and heartbreak that outlasts even death.”

She looked at Tom then.

Straight into him.

“I forgive you,” she said, without bitterness. “For taking my life. For what you did to my son. Not because it is right. Not because it should be forgotten. But because someone must choose to stop the cycle. And it starts with me.”

Tom did not move.

But the air around him tightened, as if the very world had gone still to listen.

Lily turned her eyes back to Harry – towards his belly – and continued.

“To this child, I offer mercy. May they grow to understand the flaws in others without turning those flaws into weapons. May they have the humility to admit when they are wrong, and the strength to change.”

In her hand, a white petal shimmered into being — fragile, glowing with a light that was not of this world. She released it with the barest movement, and it drifted gently downward.

As it touched the earth, it did not rest on the cold, hard earth. It sank, slowly, burying itself among the other offerings like a seed laid in consecrated ground.

Then there was silence.

A silence deeper than breath, richer than prayer.

Even the wind bowed to it.

And then—

Everything changed.

The stars above them ignited — truly ignited — like some vast, cosmic engine had roared to life. Color poured from the heavens in ribbons of light: violet, gold, cobalt blue, ember red. The sky was alive with swirling magic, with sound and shimmer and song so otherworldly and profound that it made language feel small.

They were no longer just standing by a lake whose edges were starting to freeze.

For one endless moment, it felt as though they had been transported to the very heart of the universe — where time paused, where souls stirred, where everything that was and ever would be flowed together.

The starlight spilled downward in waves, coiling around them, wrapping around the circle, seeping into the snow and the earth and the buried gifts. The ground glowed. Warmed. The air buzzed with life.

Harry felt it then, the sensation of the sun on his skin despite the cold and the long night. His face warmed, his heart eased, his body softened beneath the divine weight of grace.

Lily stepped forward.

She cupped Harry’s face with both hands, her palms warm, her touch feather-light. Her eyes — green, like his — held tears that would never fall.

“My darling boy,” she whispered. “You have always been enough. You will always be enough. Whatever you choose to be.”

She pressed a hand to his stomach. The gesture was tender. Fierce. Timeless.

Then she stepped back.

And began to fade.

With her retreat, the celestial fire dimmed, folding in on itself, rising back to wherever it had come from. The stars quieted. The warmth receded. The color sank into the earth, into the circle, into them.

And then — darkness returned.

But it was no longer the same darkness.

It felt gentler. Softer. Not empty, but full.

Blessed.

Harry stood in the center, unmoving. His face was wet with tears, but he didn’t notice them. He couldn’t speak. Couldn’t form sound.

His heart had never felt so full — and so open. Raw, but full of life.

And on the edge of the circle, Tom Riddle stood utterly still, his face unreadable.

Except that it wasn’t. Not to Harry.

Because he saw it.

Not fear.

Not rage.

But something deeper.

Guilt.

And not the kind that twisted into self-preservation or pride. This was quiet. Heavy. True.

Not remorse. Never that.

But for the first time in his life, Tom Riddle felt something similar. And in that moment — he didn’t fight it.

He couldn’t.

Because something holy had touched him.

And no one—no one—could be left by that experience unchanged.

I sobbed writing Lily. No idea she was going to make an appearance until she did.

Would love to know your thoughts.

Chapter Text

AN: Apologies in advance – there is a reason for this. Use the buddy system if needed. This one fucking killed me.

JK owns Harry Potter. The community does not stand for her bigotry.

That night had been, without question, the most profound experience of Harry’s life.

It wasn’t just the magic. Or the stars that had opened like the heart in the center of all things above them. Or the way the universe had seemed to fold inward, holding its breath to witness something sacred.

It was the feeling.

The love. The impossible, overwhelming comfort.

And, perhaps most of all – the relief.

Relief that went deeper than words could reach; deeper than even thought could penetrate. Relief that the thing growing inside him, the impossible, delicate life taking root in his body, had not tainted him in the eyes of those he had lost. That his mother — Lily Potter herself — had come not to chastise or correct, but to bless.

She had touched his cheek, then his stomach, and in that touch had been the kind of quiet, enduring grace that Harry hadn’t realized he’d been aching for.

Needed.

She had known. On some level, in some otherworldly way — she had known. And she had offered her love freely, without hesitation, without condition. Not in spite of what he was going through, but because of it.

And not just love for him.

But for the child as well.

She had seen what he was afraid to speak aloud — that he would be judged for carrying the child of the man who had taken them away from him. And with a single look, she had erased all of that. As if to say: I see you. I see your child. And I love you both. Always

It was more than he had ever hoped for.

More than he had ever imagined he was allowed to want.

And in the stillness after she vanished, after the stars had dimmed and the heavens folded themselves inward as they quietly shut, Harry remained standing in the circle. Motionless. Too scared to move, to cause something to break and to then realize then it had all been a dream.

Except, it had happened.

The world around him now felt changed. Softer, but vaster. As though it had opened a door that could never be fully closed ever again.

And in that sacred hush, Harry understood something simple.

Something devastating.

That he had never been alone.

Not truly. Not ever.

Even at Privet Drive, behind locked doors and silence and withheld care — they had been watching. His mother. His father. Maybe even others he would never know. Her protection hadn’t just lived in blood magic or spells. It had lived in presence; woven into the corners of his life, unseen but unyielding. A shield formed from love and will and memory.

It had been there all along. Holding him. Guiding him. Waiting for the moment he was ready to feel it. His child existed now because of her love.

He had held it together through the ritual — composed, steady, and then too on the walk back with Hermione in silence, each step weighted with a quiet reverence. But the moment they crossed the threshold of their tower, and the door clicked shut behind them, Harry collapsed into her arms — no longer the anchor, but the one who needed to be held.

He cried. Not the kind of cry that drained you, but the kind that freed you.

The kind of cry that left your lungs clearer and your chest lighter. That made space in your soul.

Tears that felt like rain after years of drought: cleansing, grounding, alive.

Hermione had said nothing. She had simply held him, her arms steady and sure, like a wall he could lean against without fear of collapse.

And Harry had closed his eyes, head resting on her shoulder; breath hitching, heart full.

It was the kind of release that came only after touching something divine — as if he’d glimpsed the furnace of creation itself and, for one impossible second, understood everything.

And yet — somehow — knew nothing.

Only that he was loved. Enough. Had always been. Would always be.

And now more than ever he wanted to ensure his baby would never be without that feeling, that certainty. Bone deep.

By the time dawn broke, all three of them — Harry, Hermione, and their surprisingly well-behaved sugar-addicted murder snake — had succumbed to sleep right there on the rug in front of the fire.

Even Nagini, who had coiled herself in a warm crescent around the hearth, tail occasionally twitching in her dreams. Blankets tangled. Faces peaceful. The embers casting a faint orange glow over a rare moment of absolute stillness.

It was, perhaps, the first time in weeks they had all truly rested.

Needless to say, the following day was slow by design.

They woke just before noon, groggy and blinking in the winter sunlight that filtered through the tall windows. There was no rush, no tension. Just the quiet luxury of time. They shared a light lunch — soup, warm bread, and laughter between long stretches of silence that didn’t feel empty, only full in a different way.

And then Harry suggested they bake. Even if it wasn’t an Official Sugar Day.

To Nagini those were sacred words.

"Say it again. Slowly. Bake. I want to taste the air when you say it," she hissed, eyes gleaming.

She slithered forward, tongue flicking like she could already sense frosting on the horizon.

"If there is no buttercream by sundown, I will burn this house to ash."

A pause.

"Lovingly."

Harry could only smile fondly.

He was in a mood — the kind of mood that insisted the world could only be better if it smelled like vanilla and cinnamon and butter. So, they spent the afternoon in the kitchen; sleeves rolled up, flour in their hair; Nagini occasionally licking batter off a spoon she had absolutely not been invited to lick.

They didn’t care.

They baked everything — muffins, cookies, a whole pie just for Nagini as thanks for the night before – for what she had sacrificed. Given.

“I should sacrifice a pie every night if these are the spoils – I mean, to ensure the child continues to be honored.”

She tried batting her eyes while Harry just rolled his.

They reminisced too — talked about second and third-year disasters, professors they missed, classes they didn’t, and moments that now seemed lightyears away.

But mostly, they thought about the night before.

And none of them dared call it anything other than what it had been:

Sacred.

Holy, even.

Something vast and luminous had passed through them, and they all felt it — still tingling just beneath the skin, woven into the edges of their thoughts.

Harry couldn’t stop thinking about it.

And he couldn’t stop thinking about Tom, his response in particular.

That flicker of something buried deep in Tom’s expression during the ceremony — a sliver of recognition. A crack in the veneer. Not grief. Not repentance. But something adjacent to guilt. The barest breath of remorse.

It hadn’t lasted.

But it had been there.

And somehow, that was enough. It mattered because Harry had seen it. Felt it.

Harry didn't know what it meant yet, or what would come of it. But it lived within him now, tucked beside the quiet peace of his mother's blessing and the steady rhythm of the child growing inside him.

As Harry stirred another bowl of dough, hips swaying slightly to the quiet tune he was humming under his breath, Hermione read out measurements with the crisp authority of someone who truly trusted in the science of baking.

Nagini, meanwhile, had stationed herself directly in front of the oven like a scaly, serpentine kitchen god demanding tribute. She was coiled tightly, tension radiating off her in waves, eyes narrowed into venomous slits. Draped dramatically around her neck was a kitchen towel she had insisted was a ‘formal dining sash,’ giving her the unmistakable air of a murderous duchess at a bake sale.

“Heat, you insufferable, clanking box of betrayal!” she hissed with growing fury. “I have waited centuries for kingdoms to fall, for enemies to perish, and now you, some glorified chamber pot with a plug, dare to test me with this… sluggish preheat cycle?”

She slammed her tail against the floor for emphasis.

“Do you think me a common garden snake or some mildly venomous side character in a children’s fable? I have killed for less than this undercooked mockery of fire.”

Then, with the solemnity of a snake prepared to wage war on all household appliances:

“Do not make me hiss again. I will unhinge my jaw and swallow you whole, thermostat and all.”

It was domestic. Ridiculous. Warm.

And in these absurd moments, Harry allowed himself — just for a moment — to be grateful.

Even to him. Even to He-Who-Had-Been-Lord-Voldemort-And-Maybe-Sort-Of-Still-Was-A-Little.

Because Lily Potter, his mother, had stood before all that darkness and pain and suffering he had caused… and forgiven it.

That had to matter.

Harry needed it to matter.

He needed to believe that her forgiveness wasn’t just a gesture suspended in light and memory, but something real. Something that had landed. That had left an imprint on the man who least deserved it, and perhaps, in some quiet corner of himself, had felt it.

And Harry wanted — no, needed — to acknowledge that.

Not because Tom deserved absolution.

But because Harry did.

And forgiveness… It didn’t always have to be deserved to be given.

That was the kind of truth that Harry had only come to understand recently — through grief, through survival, through his mother’s touch and the unbearable softness in her eyes when she looked at the man who had once taken everything from her. Had cost her everything.

Had cost Harry more.

But that would have to wait.

There were more immediate matters at hand.

Like Christmas.

And more specifically: what on earth he could possibly give to one, Hermione Granger.

She had given up her copy — her copy — of Hogwarts: A History as her offering to the circle, to the child. Not just any book, but the book. Annotated, dog-eared, water-damaged in the corners from too many rushed meals in the library. The one she had read more than any other. She had given it up, buried it. 

She had offered it to his child, with a blessing of wisdom, truth, and the strength to write their own story.

How did you thank someone for that?

What could he possibly give that would match not just the gesture, but the life that lived behind it? The years of loyalty. The sleepless nights. The spells she had cast with trembling hands and the ones with unwavering certainty — always at his side, always choosing him, no matter how dark the road became.

Harry had nothing of equal weight. Nothing physical, at least. Nothing glittering or rare that could measure against what she had done for him, time and time again.

But maybe… maybe he could give her something else.

In the end, there was really only one thing Harry could do.

He cooked for her.

Not out of obligation. Not because anyone asked him to. But because it was the truest way he could think to say thank you — a language of effort and intention, spoken in scent and spice and warmth.

He surprised her with a home-cooked meal, set quietly in the cozy familiarity of Gryffindor Tower, the space transfigured with candlelight and quiet charm. It was simple, heartfelt, and utterly sincere.

The bread he made from scratch — kneading it by hand, watching it rise with the kind of reverence he reserved for spellwork and cleaning his Firebolt. It baked into a rustic loaf, crackling with a golden crust, bursting with the tang of slow-fermented sourdough that Tizzy had supplied. The scent filled the tower, earthy and inviting, like the kind of home he had never really had but always imagined.

He paired it with Boeuf Bourguignon — rich, tender beef slow-cooked in red wine and herbs, the sauce deep and complex, layered with mushrooms, carrots, and pearl onions. It was a dish that demanded time and patience; the sort of meal that couldn’t be rushed. And Harry had poured every ounce of himself into it.

Not just his time.

His love.

At the Dursleys', cooking had always been a chore. A duty. A punishment. He had stirred and chopped and basted under the weight of silence and disdain, meals scarfed down without so much as a glance in his direction. Sometimes he wasn’t even sure they chewed before swallowing.

It had never felt like nourishment.

It had never felt like care.

But this… this was different.

This was the first time he had ever cooked for someone he chose.

For someone who mattered.

For someone who had always, always stood beside him — even when it would have been easier to walk away.

And when Hermione arrived, eyes widening at the spread, suspicious of why – on Christmas of all days – Harry had told her to spend the day in the library and go crazy – to read and plan and study to her heart’s content. Harry only smiled and gestured to the table he had set for her.

She blinked.

“You cooked?”

He gave a small shrug. “It’s not much. But it’s for you.”

“Merry Christmas,” Harry said softly, raising his glass of spiced cider in a quiet toast. “Happy Yule. And thank you—for being here. With me. At the center of all things absurd and ridiculous.”

Hermione let out a soft, contented sigh, her eyes twinkling with both amusement and warmth.

“It is absurd,” she agreed with a grin. “But it’s ours.”

The meal was the best thing she had ever eaten and in the company of someone she was very proud to call her friend – but more than that, her family.

She leaned back in her chair, cheeks flushed from warmth and wine, a plate of the most perfect bûche de Noël in front of her for dessert. For all the chaos of their lives — for all the war, the loss, the unexpected turns — it was a crazy, almost unthinkable truth:

Hermione Jean Granger had never felt more content.

More satisfied. More… safe.

And yet, even in her rare moment of peace, her instincts didn’t fail her.

Because when she glanced up mid-bite, she caught it — that look on Harry’s face. That one.

His brow was furrowed ever so slightly, lips pressed together in that familiar way that meant his thoughts were winding down strange, unpredictable paths. The quiet scheming kind. The Harry kind.

“You’re plotting something,” she said flatly but with mirth in her eyes.

Harry blinked, feigning innocence with the kind of wide-eyed expression that hadn’t worked on her since they were twelve.

“I am not.”

“You are absolutely plotting something,” Hermione muttered, narrowing her eyes as she spooned another bite of dessert. “And why do I have the distinct feeling that Tizzy and Nagini will be involved too?”

Harry didn’t answer right away.

He just smiled — the small, suspiciously innocent kind of smile that Hermione had long since learned to mistrust.

Because, of course, they would be involved – and she wanted to be as well.

The moment he’d uttered the vaguest outline of his plan the next day — barely more than a sentence, half-formed and whispered like a secret — Tizzy had gasped, clutched her tea towel to her chest, and vanished, only to return seconds later armed with a clipboard, ready to take notes.

Hermione had tried very, very hard not to laugh. Or to ask for her own clipboard.

Nagini, not to be outdone, had immediately suggested dramatic enhancements involving enchanted skywriting and “a tasteful burst of fire above the table.”

Harry had gently explained — twice — that this was meant to be a gesture of goodwill, not threatening.

Nagini had sulked for the better part of an hour, muttering about how “sentimentality is wasted without spectacle”.

Still, they’d both committed to helping in their own chaotic, slightly unhinged ways.

The plan wasn’t elaborate; it didn’t need to be.

But it was something.

A gesture. A reply. A ripple, maybe, to carry his mother’s grace one step further.

Because sometimes the only way to honor forgiveness… was to pass it on.

In a different part of the castle Tom Riddle was, to put it plainly, a mess.

Not in the way others might imagine or experience — not pacing and muttering, not rending his robes or spiraling into theatrics. No, his posture was as straight as ever, his expression composed, and his study immaculate.

But inside?

Inside, he was chaos in its purest, most insidious form.

It had all been so carefully calculated. The ritual, the gesture, the timing. He had chosen his offering with exquisite precision: something that appeared meaningful, even intimate, but which had cost him nothing emotionally. A token of significance without substance. Just enough sincerity to plant seeds, to shift perception, to stir Harry’s irritatingly soft heart into seeing him — finally — not as a monster, but as something… complicated.

Human, perhaps.

Understandable.

It was manipulation at its most elegant.

And then Potter — that boy, that infernal paradox wrapped in green eyes and righteous defiance — had done something. Again. He just knew it.

There was no other explanation.

He had touched something.

Broken something.

Moved something.

Because the moment Lily appeared — impossible, luminous, real — Tom's plans began to unravel. Not because she threatened him. Not because she called him out or cursed his name.

No.

Because she had forgiven him.

That she had looked at him — not as a monster, not as the architect of her death — but as someone she could offer something as devastating as forgiveness to.

It undid him.

Forgiveness.

The word itself stung more than any curse. Not because it was cruel, but because it wasn’t. It had landed in him like a quiet incantation — no light, no sound, just the unbearable weight of being seen and spared. Forgiven.

He could still feel the echo of it, like the aftershock of some ancient spell whispered straight into the marrow of his soul. Not flashy. Not theatrical.

Just real.

And because it was real, it hurt in a form he didn’t even know existed within himself.

Guilt.

Not the kind he had long since dismissed — the kind that snarled and blamed and turned inward like a wounded animal. This was something older. Quieter. Deeper.

It was for what he had done.

Not to himself. But to others.

To her.

To the boy.

It crept in slowly, without flourish — just the steady, cold truth that he had crossed a line not merely of morality, but of humanity. And for the first time, he couldn’t retreat behind pride or justification. Not when her eyes had held grace. Not when her voice had offered him something no spell, no Horcrux, no empire had ever given:

A way back.

And he hadn’t known — had never known — how much he might have wanted that. Even if it was a very small part of him.

Because she looked at him not with fear or hatred, but with calm. With clarity. With that maddening, disarming motherly compassion that wrapped itself around him like silk and steel — soft in presence, lethal in effect. It wasn’t sentimental. It wasn’t pitiful. It was worse.

It was understanding.

And acceptance.

Made all the worse, all the more potent, all the more insufferable because he didn’t deserve it. He had not earned it.

It slipped past every armor he had ever built, past the carefully forged persona, and found the boy beneath — the one he had buried so thoroughly he had forgotten the shape of his own name when spoken with kindness.

She had seen him.

The boy in the orphanage.

The boy who had never been held with love.

The boy who had learned too early that to be touched was to be owned.

And she had forgiven him. He thought it disgusting.

Freely. Which was Absurd.

Willingly. A Weakness.

And it had nearly undone him. Threatened to undue him now.

It was not rage that pulsed in his veins; it was something far worse.

Longing.

Not for power, not for glory, not even for redemption. But for something far smaller. Simpler.

It was the sort of impossible grace that only a mother could bestow. Not because it was deserved. But because it was needed.

But he wouldn’t dwell on that. Couldn’t. He shoved the thought aside like poison. He refused to acknowledge how close he had come to the edge — that edge. The one he was standing at now. The one just past guilt, where remorse takes root. Where the next step would have been something unbearably human.

An apology.

The very idea of it sickened him.

What kind of sorcery was this, to conjure such feelings inside him? Feelings he had not merely buried — no, that would suggest they had ever had a grave. These were things he had eviscerated, excised, burned out of himself by sheer force of will. He had reshaped his soul to make room for nothing but survival and domination.

There was no space in him for that kind of softness.

And yet...

There it had been.

A flicker. A crack. A breath.

The dead did not return to the living to make conversation. They did not manifest merely to offer absolution. The veil between life and death did not thin for sentiment. It had purpose. It mattered.

And there was only one person he knew that could remake the fabric of space and time and magic to get under his skin – Potter!

What impossible, unspeakable magic had he called down and bent to his will this time?

Was this the power the prophecy had spoken of? Not the sort born of wands or lineage — but something greater?

The power to create life within himself… the power to protect with only words… the power to summon peace from the dead.

It made Tom feel suddenly, unbearably small.

And for a man who had torn himself into pieces to escape weakness…

That was almost unforgivable.

Tom had spent the next seven days consumed — utterly possessed — by the need to understand.

Sleep became irrelevant. Meals went untouched.

It wasn’t curiosity that drove him.

It was necessity.

What had happened on the solstice was not a trick of light, not a hallucination born of ritual and cold air. He had felt it. With every cell of his being. That magic — that power – had been real. Eternal. And it had been given shape by the woman he had murdered.

For the boy she had died to protect.

So, he hunted its origin with the same fervor he once used to hunt immortality.

He tore through his libraries, clawing into forbidden tomes and grimoires so brittle with age they left ash on his fingertips. He devoured obscure volumes on necromancy, desperate for insight — not into resurrection, which he had mastered — but into visitation. Into grace. Into mercy.

He traced myths of sun gods — Ra, Horus, Aten — gods who had walked among mortals in flesh and flame, some of whom, he discovered, had almost certainly been powerful wizards in the years before recorded magic was formalized.

He followed references to convergence points: places in time and space where the fabric between worlds had grown thin. Solstices. Equinoxes. Notable Births. Great Battles. Deaths.

He even — briefly, with a sneer he could not hold for long — considered the possibility that Harry Potter was Merlin reincarnated. It would explain the absurd confluence of defiance and compassion. The instinctive ability to unravel the firm knots of fate. The way the boy stumbled into and out of impossible situations as though destiny had tucked him into its pocket.

But every path — no matter how remote, no matter how arcane — led to the same conclusion.

No.

Nothing he read explained what had happened that night.

Because what had happened was not just magic. Not in the way Tom understood it. Not willed. Not summoned. Not commanded.

It had seemingly come on its own.

The moment had felt less like a spell and more like a threshold. A portal opened not by words or wand-work, but by meaning. By something woven into the very bones of the universe. Something that had recognized the truth beneath their feet, beneath their breath — that life was standing at its own beginning and end, folded into one impossible knot.

He had chosen that particular pagan ‘ritual’ precisely because it was all theater — ornate wandwork, cryptic chanting, and symbolic flourishes designed to impress, not to function. It was nothing more than an elaborate performance, a ceremonial sleight of hand that conjured the illusion of meaning without any true magic behind it. Safe. Hollow. Convenient.

Yet, it was as if they had stood in the birthplace of all magic. Where the first spell was spoken not with language, but with hope.

And he, Tom Riddle — who had mastered death — had not been invited to it.

Not fully.

Not like Harry.

That was the part he could not reconcile.

Harry had stood in the center of it all — untouched by fear, filled with something that he could not understand.

He pressed a trembling hand to the desk to steady himself.

There had to be an answer.

And if he couldn’t find one in magic...

But even Tom Riddle had limits.

Somewhere around hour 170 — more than six and a half days without meaningful rest, with nothing but adrenaline and obsession sustaining him — his body made the decision for him. His mind, brilliant and burning, finally flickered under the strain. The dried ink blurred on the page before him. His fingers slackened around the spine of a tome older than the Ministry itself.

And then he simply… collapsed.

Face-down in a flurry of open texts and scattered parchment, the Dark Lord fell into unconsciousness with all the grace of a felled statue.

To say that Tizzy was alarmed when she discovered him would have been a spectacular understatement.

She had appeared, as usual, to refresh the tea she knew he wouldn’t touch — but the sight of her master slumped forward, deathly still and pale as candle wax, had stopped her tiny heart in its tracks. Her squeak of horror could have shattered glass.

But Tizzy was a very good house elf.

After the initial panic (and the sniffles, and the pacing, and the internal screaming), she checked him over carefully. His pulse was steady — if slow — and his breathing deep and rhythmic. Magical and physical exhaustion, she diagnosed with the quiet gravity of someone who had tended to her master longer than anyone else ever had.

Not dying. Just being dramatic, she muttered under her breath.

And because she was clever — and deeply, deeply fond of one Harry Potter (even if he did do things in her kitchen) — she took it upon herself to leave a little something behind.

On the corner of the desk, atop a freshly smoothed sheet of parchment, she carefully placed a small, handwritten note—its ink slightly smudged, the script unmistakably messy but still perfectly legible, full of character and intent:

To: Lord Voldemort
Yes, you read that correctly.

You are cordially invited to a New Year’s Eve dinner on the evening of December 31st.

Time: 7:30 PM sharp (or fashionably late, if you simply must make a dramatic entrance)
Location: You know the place. You own the place.

Dress Code:
- We’re celebrating — try to look like it.
- Preferably robes that don’t whisper ominously when you walk (you know the ones)

- No ritualistic daggers

Important Notes:
– Absolutely no dark rituals during or after dessert.
– Nagini may or may not be provided with her own cake.
– An uneventful evening is the goal. Let’s aim high!

Dinner Will Include:
• A main course that does not involve fireworks or explosions (seriously, what have you been doing with Nagini?)
• Dessert that doesn’t shriek when cut into
• Sparkling cider for me, and more wine than you probably deserve
• At least one awkward silence (it’s tradition at this point)
• Some laughter, if you’re brave enough

Here’s to a peaceful evening among unexpected company.
Try not to hex anyone.

– HJP

P.S. If fail you to attend I will unleash a sugar-deprived Nagini after you,

Tizzy left a tiny sprig of enchanted holly beside it for aesthetic reasons. Presentation mattered, after all.

And when, two and a half days later, the Dark Lord finally stirred — eyes bloodshot, limbs heavy with the weight of sleep too long denied — he blinked up at the unfamiliar glow of morning light.

His body ached.

His thoughts were sluggish.

He felt… mortal.

And then his eyes fell on the envelope.

A dinner invitation. On New Year’s Eve. (Which was that night.) From Harry Potter.

He stared at it for a long, long time.

Then he read it.

Twice.

And for reasons he could not have articulated — not even to himself — he did not burn it.

He simply leaned back in his chair, temple resting against his knuckles, and whispered to the empty room:

"...you are a menace, Harry Potter; an absolute menace.”

The Dark Lord arrived five minutes early.

He stood just beyond the grand doors of his own Great Hall, the soft echo of his footsteps fading into silence behind him. The corridor, empty and still, held its breath around him — as if the very walls were waiting to see what he would do.

He didn’t move.

Not yet.

It was absurd, really — to be invited to something in his own home.

And yet… Harry Potter was throwing dinner parties like he owned the place.

But that wasn’t what stopped him.

Not truly.

It was apprehension — subtle, insidious. Not fear. Never fear. Dark Lords did not fear.

But this was something close.

It slithered beneath the surface like a fault line, sharp and treacherous, waiting to split him open. A tension in the spine, a hesitation in the breath.

He didn’t want to admit it — not even to himself — but he dreaded what was waiting beyond those doors. Not because he feared confrontation. Not because he was unprepared.

But because he didn’t know what he would feel.

The Yule night still haunted him — quiet and devastating. Lily’s appearance. Her words. The touch of something older than prophecy or power. And Harry, at the center of it all, glowing with a kind of unshakable grace that made Tom feel, for one terrible moment, small.

He hadn’t understood it.

And Voldemort did not like what he could not understand.

His hand twitched at his side. He could walk away now. Turn, vanish. No one would stop him. No one could make him do anything.

He told himself it wasn’t fear — it was strategy. Dark Lords do not run, he reminded himself, spine straightening. Instead, they choose their battles. He could simply decide not to enter. Reframe it as a tactical delay.

But still…

The invitation had been extended. An olive branch, however absurd. And that, in and of itself, was proof that Operation Long Game was still very much in effect.

(Yes, he had actually named it that.)

The Yule ceremony hadn’t gone according to plan, true. But nothing had changed the calculus of his long-term plans – there was just more stuff to contend with. No matter.

So, he breathed in. Gathered. Collected.

You are Lord Voldemort, he reminded himself.

And at precisely 8 o’clock — not a moment sooner, not a moment later — he placed one of his perfect hands on the door and pushed it open.

Tom’s breath caught the moment he saw Harry.

It was not a gasp — Tom Riddle did not gasp — but something subtler. A stilling of the air in his lungs, a sudden tension in his chest as if some invisible thread had pulled taut. His eyes found Harry at the far end of the hall, illuminated by firelight and laughter and the soft hum of warmth in a place that should not have felt warm.

And in that instant, he felt as though he were seeing him for the first time.

Not The Boy Who Lived. Not the symbol of defiance. Not the vessel of his child or the thorn in his side or the one who kept surviving.

But Harry.

Radiant in the most maddening, quiet way.

He carried himself with an ease Tom couldn’t fathom — softened by joy, sharpened by grief, strengthened by something far more enduring than power. There was a fullness to him now, a groundedness, as though whatever had once been fractured was, impossibly, beginning to mend. Maybe it already had.

And Tom — Lord Voldemort, heir of Slytherin, the man who had shaped empires from terror — couldn’t understand it.

He couldn’t explain Harry. Not in the way he could parse out everyone else. There was no logic to his resilience. No formula to his grace.

He was the first person Tom had ever met who resisted definition.

It was like staring into an infuriating paradox.

Or worse… a mirror.

It felt, absurdly, as though magic itself had woven itself into human form and walked willingly into the chaos of life, carrying kindness like a weapon and sorrow like a prayer.

And Tom — brilliant, ruthless, precise — could not look away.

His feet moved without his permission, carrying him toward the table like a man caught in the orbit of something inescapable. A fish out of water, yes — but worse than that: a god disarmed, drowning in a sea he had once believed he could part.

He should have turned around.

He should have left.

Because now he was caught in Harry’s gravity well, drawn in by something he didn’t understand and didn’t trust — but a small part of him, a very small part to be sure, wanted to.

And in the face of that pull, he had only one defense left: the illusion of control.

So, he walked to his seat, spine straight, face unreadable. As if nothing inside him had just shifted.

As if he couldn’t feel those green eyes watching him. Steady. Gentle. Knowing.

And the worst part — the part that undid him even as he sat — was that those eyes didn’t accuse.

They didn’t challenge.

They welcomed.

And Tom had no armor for that.

No shield against a gaze that saw not the monster, not the legend — but the man.

And not even he knew what to do with that.

Tom sat at the table and took it all in, slowly, deliberately — as if he were cataloging a moment he hadn’t expected to witness, let alone be part of.

The table had been set simply, but with intention. No grand displays or enchanted centerpieces, just the warmth of candlelight flickering against silverware, the scent of roasted herbs wafting through the air.

Everything was laid out family-style, as though this were some quaint celebration instead of the strangest dinner in magical history. Bowls and platters clustered close enough to encourage sharing — an unspoken invitation to reach across the space between them.

At the center of the table rested a roasted pork loin — glistening in its own juices; its golden-brown crust flecked with herbs and cracked pepper. It was almost decadent in its simplicity. Tom could practically feel the tenderness of the meat just by looking at it, the way it would yield beneath a knife with the soft resistance of something cooked with care and patience.

To its left, a vivid winter salad sparkled with pomegranate seeds and slivers of ripe pear. The greens were fresh and glistening, tossed in a ginger vinaigrette that carried a bright, citrusy aroma that danced over the table.

There were lentils, too — small, multicolored jewels nestled in a low ceramic dish, steaming gently and seasoned with warming spices: cinnamon, clove, maybe a hint of orange zest. They smelled earthy and rich, the kind of food that anchored you in your own body.

The whole thing was unexpectedly… beautiful.

Not lavish.

Not performative.

Just real.

And that, perhaps, unsettled him most of all. Because this meal — this evening — felt like something fragile and human. A gathering, not a trap. A gesture of inclusion, not manipulation.

He glanced at Harry from across the table — his dress sleeves rolled to the elbows, his hands calm in his lap, his eyes expectant but unguarded.

Tom looked away before that green gaze could unravel him further.

The food — structured, tangible, understandable — was safer ground.

His eyes shifted back to the table, focusing on the final dish: a cast-iron skillet of golden cornbread, still steaming faintly as if it had just emerged from the oven beside the pork. The top was crisp, crackling with melted butter at the edges, the center soft and warm, dotted with rosemary and the faintest hint of honey.

It was humble. Honest.

The kind of food that filled more than a stomach.

Harry cleared his throat quietly, drawing Tom’s attention — not with force, but with intention.

“I wanted to thank you,” Harry said, his voice quiet but unwavering. “For Yule. For what you gave… for letting it happen.”

He didn’t say her name. Couldn’t. Not yet.

She had offered her forgiveness — soft and radiant and impossible — but he hadn’t decided what to do with his. Not when the man sitting across from him was still capable of making him feel every unbearable thing at once.

Tom’s gaze flicked back to him, sharp but unreadable. He said nothing.

Harry gestured to the table, fingers brushing the rim of the salad bowl as if grounding himself in the ordinariness of it.

“It’s a simple meal,” he said, more gently now. “It’s what I used to do at the Dursleys. Holidays were never mine. But I cooked. Quietly. In the background. It was the only part of the season that ever felt like… mine.”

A silence stretched between them, thick with things neither of them had names for.

Then, finally, Tom’s brow lifted — elegant, skeptical, faintly amused. And deeply, deeply stunned.

“You cooked this?” he asked, like the words themselves tasted foreign.

Harry shrugged, the corner of his mouth tugging upward. “We all did.”

Tom tilted his head. “As in… with your own hands?”

“Yes, Tom. With our actual hands,” Harry replied dryly.

“Well — except Nagini. She supervised.”

At that, Nagini raised her head with slow, deliberate grace, her coils rippling with offended pride.

“Supervised?” she hissed, eyes narrowing to regal slits. “Please. I was culinary overseer. Without my refined palate and unwavering presence, you’d have charred the roast and seasoned the lentils with tears.”

Harry snorted.

Nagini paid him no attention. “Frankly, you’re welcome.”

Tom looked back at the meal — simple, warm, absurdly domestic — as if trying to make sense of how it had happened. As if something this plain couldn’t possibly belong here. Not in his domain. Not in their story.

But the pork was tender. The lentils were seasoned just right. And somehow, impossibly, it was real.

As real as forgiveness.

As real as the boy across the table.

Something about that made him feel even more unsettled.

"Thank you," Tom said finally, the words slow and foreign on his tongue. Not because he didn’t know them — but because part of him, disturbingly, might have meant them.

Harry gave a small nod, meeting his eyes without flinching. “You’re welcome.”

From there, the evening stumbled forward into something resembling civility — polite, awkward conversation filling the space like steam rising from warm plates.

They spoke of Christmas.

Tom hadn’t said much, just that he had simply spent the holiday reading.

Harry replied that he had cooked. And read. And fed Nagini what he referred to as “enough sugar to collapse a small government.”

“Best holidays ever,” Nagini hissed from her spot by the fire, where she was stretched luxuriously across a plush rug, a visible bulge in her midsection. Her scales shimmered slightly, catching the firelight like polished armor.

Harry glanced over and raised a brow. “That lump? Her own suckling pig.”

“She made us glaze it with brown sugar first,” Hermione added, deadpan.

Nagini let out a contented hum, utterly unbothered.

Hermione, meanwhile, was watching both Harry and Tom with a strange expression — half suspicion, half curiosity. As if something was circling the edges of her awareness, some puzzle piece she couldn’t yet place.

Something was changing between the two of them. She could feel it.

And then Harry spoke.

“We, uh… made dessert too.”

Tom’s brow twitched. “More food?”

Harry called for Tizzy and the elf appeared holding a cake. It wasn’t lavish, or enchanted; clearly homemade. Carefully frosted. Decorated with soft blue icing and scattered stars piped around the edges. Candles in the middle.

A birthday cake.

Tom stared at it.

Once. Twice.

Blinking as though he wasn’t sure the object in front of him was real. He was having trouble with determining whether a lot of things were real.

Harry said nothing at first. He didn’t make a speech or offer an explanation. He simply met Tom’s gaze — quiet, steady, and without expectation.

And that was what undid him.

It was for him.

For Tom.

He had not expected it. Had not prepared himself for anything of the sort. In truth, he had spent his entire life not expecting it — never once in all his years had anyone celebrated his birth. Not at Wool’s Orphanage. Not as a boy. Certainly not as the man he had become.

He had never celebrated it himself.

And no one else had dared try.

It had always seemed irrelevant. Weak. Sentimental nonsense. The date came and went like all others — silent, forgettable.

But now… this.

A cake.

No incantation. No ceremony. No strings.

Just… an offering. A gift.

He glanced at Harry again, half-expecting to see mockery. Or worse, pity. But there was none. Only that maddening, impossible look of someone who understood — who had lived unloved, unseen, who knew what it was like to grow up in the shadow of everyone else's joy.

Someone who remembered what it felt like to not be remembered at all.

And for the briefest, most disorienting moment, something twisted in Tom’s chest. A flicker of something raw and simple and human — the ghost of a child who had once waited for someone to remember he existed.

These were not thoughts he allowed himself to have.

Certainly not aloud.

Never that.

He could barely even think them without recoiling from the vulnerability they carried.

So, he looked down at the cake instead.

And said nothing.

But he did not leave.

“Happy birth—” Harry began, his voice warm and hesitant, but he cut off suddenly, one hand reaching instinctively for the table’s edge to steady himself while standing.

His expression faltered. His breath hitched.

“Sorry,” he murmured, almost too softly, his other hand pressing to his abdomen as though to calm something unseen. He swayed slightly, a tremor running through him.

Then — clang — a goblet tipped and rolled off the table, crashing to the floor and shattering against the stone.

The silverware rattled next.

Not from anyone moving, but from something else — something deeper. Something wrong.

Nagini was already slithering toward Harry before anyone else could react, her sleek form blurring with speed, eyes narrowed with an urgency neither Tom nor Hermione had ever seen in her. She caught Harry just as his knees gave out and he collapsed to the side, wrapping her coils around him gently, cradling him as he fell into her embrace.

“I don’t… feel so good,” Harry gasped, his voice thinner now, laced with confusion and pain as he curled forward, both hands clutching his stomach.

Tom and Hermione rose at once — both nearly knocking their chairs over — but froze halfway, as if caught in the space between recognition and terror.

Something was happening.

Something they couldn’t name yet.

Nagini had begun to glow — a low, golden light unfurling from her scales, not fiery, but warm and pulsing like a heartbeat made visible. It poured off of her in waves, soft at first, then brighter, a halo of energy that illuminated Harry’s form.

Then, slowly, the glow shifted: draining from her, dissolving toward Harry. Thread-thin strands of light passed between them, winding around Harry’s body like ribbons of otherworldly magic.

Hermione’s hands clutched the back of her chair, knuckles white. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.

Tom stood as still as stone, eyes locked on the boy — on his boy — his mind racing through every spell, every curse, every ritual that might explain what he was witnessing. Only one did.

The light sank beneath Harry’s skin, disappearing as if absorbed.

And then the glow was gone.

Only Harry remained — slumped in Nagini’s coils, limp but breathing. His eyes were shut, his face pale, and his chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven rhythm. Each breath seemed to scrape through him like wind through broken glass.

Then, without warning, the table shattered.

A crack like it had been left by lightning split the table in two as the heavy oak buckled clean down the center, sending platters and silverware flying. Splinters of wood shot outward like shrapnel, ricocheting off stone walls and narrowly missing where Hermione had ducked down with a cry.

Tom didn’t flinch.

His eyes weren’t on the wreckage.

They were on Harry.

Something was building. Something was breaking.

Beneath the torn edge of Harry’s shirt, the locket he wore — his locket — began to glow. Not brightly, not blinding, but steady, with a terrible, molten intensity. It pulsed once, twice… and then faded, extinguished like the last ember of a dying fire.

Exactly as it had with Nagini.

A silence followed — thin and taut, like the breath held before a scream.

Harry stirred, just barely, eyes fluttering open. Glazed and unfocused at first, then clear — too clear — as they locked with Tom’s across the room.

And in that look, a terrible truth passed between them.

A dawning horror.

No words were needed.

The two Horcruxes were gone.

Not simply dormant. Not hidden.

Gone.

The tether that had bound his soul to those two vessels — painstakingly created, ruthlessly protected — had unraveled in a matter of minutes. As if some deeper magic had reached through the cracks and pulled them out by the root.

Tom’s chest constricted, a sensation rising inside him that felt far too close to dread.

And then—

He felt it.

A tug in his core. Deep and primal.

Not magical. Elemental.

A warning. Like his life force was leaving.

And that was when everything changed.

Not just bad.

Worse.

Much, much worse.

A ragged, guttural cry tore from Harry’s throat — raw, primal, agonized — and in the next instant, the air itself split apart.

A hurricane of magic erupted from his body, not in a wave, but in a detonation. It burst outward in every direction, a cyclone of light and force and immeasurable power that hit them all like a shockwave.

Tom, Hermione, and Nagini were flung back as though gravity itself had been rewritten. The very stones beneath their feet trembled. Windows cracked at the edges. The candles were snuffed in an instant, leaving only the blinding core of Harry James Potter.

Hermione hit the floor hard, her ribs aching, but she scrambled to her knees, wand trembling in her grip.

“Protego!”

The shield shimmered to life, flickering against the torrent like a sail in a hurricane. She pressed back against Nagini, who was curled and hissing with more fear than pain, as if trying to shield Harry from a distance but unable to get close.

The magic was searing — blinding in its purity, as if the sun had descended into the Great Hall. They couldn’t look directly at him. Even with their eyes clenched shut, golden light bled through their lids, burning hot trails into their minds.

Beyond the whirling chaos, Hermione could barely make out the silhouette of Tom — his form staggered, struggling forward step by agonizing step. One foot, then the next. Robes whipping violently around him. He raised a hand to shield his eyes, but didn’t stop.

All around them, the storm screamed.

But it was Harry’s screams that drowned everything else out.

They weren’t words. They weren’t even fully human — just pain made sound, echoing off the stones and walls, impossibly vast for such a small body.

And then—

Tom vanished into the light.

The last Hermione saw was his silhouette being swallowed whole, as if the very storm had claimed him.

She shouted his name, unheard.

Her shield buckled. Magic howled.

For a single, terrifying heartbeat, Hermione feared the worst.

The kind of fear that hollowed out your lungs, that made time stretch unbearably between one breath and the next.

And then — just as suddenly as it had begun — the storm stopped.

No gradual fade, no lingering tremor. Just a switch, as if some cosmic current had been severed mid-surge.

The magic stilled.

The room, once a cyclone of raw power, fell silent.

Hermione gasped in air like someone breaking the surface of deep water. Her shield flickered out. The roaring in her ears faded. Light dimmed to candle-glow.

And when she opened her eyes — really opened them — her heart nearly stopped.

There was Harry.

Limp. Motionless.

But breathing.

His chest rose in gentle, shallow rhythm, and he was no longer alone at what had been the eye of the storm.

Tom was with him.

Kneeling.

Cradling Harry against his chest, one hand supporting the back of his head, the other curled protectively around his waist. They were both on the floor, surrounded by scorched stone and a shimmering residue of magic that still clung to the air like the echo of thunder.

Tom’s cheek was pressed to Harry’s forehead.

And his eyes — when he finally looked up — were wide. Too wide.

Not with fear. Not even with fury.

But with shock.

His pupils were blown, not from adrenaline, but something else — something felt. His irises had shifted from their usual crimson blaze to something darker, deeper. Still red, but no longer the red of blood or rage.

Now it was the red of burning coals — banked, but alive. Simmering with something Hermione couldn't name.

She didn’t move. Couldn’t. But she exhaled. Loudly.

Tom blinked, once. Slowly.

Then, without a word, he shifted Harry in his arms.

And stood.

Lifting Harry as though he weighed nothing, holding him close, protective, and sure.

His expression didn’t change much.

But something had. Something in the tilt of his mouth. The stillness in his frame.

The storm was gone.

But its impact was only just beginning.

Tom turned to her.

Still holding Harry — limp, unconscious, a fragile weight in his arm — he met Hermione’s eyes. Something in his expression was unreadable, but not empty. Never empty.

Hermione opened her mouth to speak, to ask if he was all right, if Harry was all right—but the words never made it out.

Because Tom raised his wand.

And pointed it at her.

Her breath caught. Her wand hand twitched but didn’t lift. Not yet.

“Sir?” she said, voice low and measured, masking the sudden jolt of fear that laced down her spine.

“What are you doing?”

His face was stone.

“I’m sorry, Miss Granger,” he said quietly, and that was somehow worse than if he’d shouted.

“But this has suddenly become a private, family matter.”

A soft click echoed in the air.

Hermione looked down.

The obsidian bracelet around her wrist — the one layered in subtle protections and binding her to the house, the property — slid to the floor in a silent fall, rolling once before settling, lifeless.

Her brain kicked into overdrive.

Three seconds. That’s all she had.

Three seconds to act, to think, to speak—

She met his gaze.

And in those final, suspended seconds, she didn’t plead. She didn’t run. She didn’t even hope to win.

But she had to try.

“Protego Maxima!” Hermione cried, and it wasn’t just a spell — it was a scream of defiance, a prayer, a promise. She poured everything she had into the shield — her fear, her fury, her love for Harry and the child he carried. It roared out from her wand in a burst of radiant light.

Across the space between them, Tom’s voice cut through the air, cold and absolute.

“Obliviate.”

The spells met with a violent crack, colliding midair in an explosion of silver and gold, sparks cascading like shattered stars across the chamber. The force of it would have matched the destruction of only a few moments prior had it occurred first.

Hermione held the shield — held it with everything she had. Her feet slid back across the floor as the Dark Lord’s magic pressed against her like a tidal wave. Her wand hand trembled. Her knees buckled.

But she held. And for a moment — one brief, defiant moment — it was enough to stand against the Dark Lord.

Tom narrowed his eyes, his spell never faltering, the magic in his free hand cool and deadly. The other still cradling Harry’s limp body, pulling it closer to him in a tender embrace as if he weighed nothing but meant everything.

Protective.

And that, more than anything, told Hermione what this was all about.

It was about possession and his fear of the unmade Horcruxes that she had also seen unmade, had also understood the significance of in that moment.

Her shield fractured then, lines spiderwebbing across its surface like glass under strain. The edges began to flicker.

She didn’t have long.

And yet — there was time for one more breath.

One last choice.

As the light of her Protego began to fail, she met his eyes — truly met them — and said, in a voice that didn’t tremble:

“Protect them.”

Her shield shattered. And then everything was light. And silence.

And as the Obliviate took hold, Hermione Granger — the brightest witch of her age — was unmade from her own memories.

But she had bought time; she had spoken.

And sometimes, the smallest words can echo the longest.

Then, with another swish of his wand, Hermione Granger was gone.

Look, I know this is bad now – but I promise, I promise this is not the end of her story. I am right there with you.

Please review!

Chapter Text

AN: Now we get to the fallout. Part I. - Really tried to get this out as quickly as possible after the last chapter.

Thank you all for the amazing reviews and for reading this. Really means a lot that this is resonating with folks.

JK owns HP and owns all the hate in her heart.

The Burrow was quieter than usual this New Year’s Eve, the familiar warmth of the home dimmed beneath a heavy hush of fear and uncertainty. Candlelight flickered gently across the walls, casting long, golden shadows that danced in time with the scent of cinnamon and clove — Molly’s attempt to coax a bit of joy, of life, of something close to normal through her cooking.

But even her best dishes couldn’t lift the weight that hung in the air.

Normally, the Burrow would be ringing with laughter, with off-key singing and enchanted fireworks popping over the garden with the gnomes calm and behaved (for once) as they took in the explosions of color and sound.

There would be spilled drinks and burnt pudding and someone — usually a twin — dangling mistletoe in exactly the wrong place. It was always messy, always loud, always alive.

Not this year.

This year, the house felt too large. Too still. Worry and uncertainty had made their home in the corners, curling up in the empty chairs and lingering in the space between words. The usual chaos was replaced by cautious smiles and muted conversation, everyone pretending not to notice how often their eyes drifted toward the clock. Or the door.

No one said it aloud, the reduced gayety spoke for them. It was present in the slow scrape of utensils on plates, the untouched slices of pie, the way Molly’s hands wrung her apron when she thought no one was looking.

Uncertainty hung like fog, pressing into the rooms that were once filled with careless noise.

Laughter still echoed, but it was gentler now — tinged with something wistful, like the memory of joy rather than joy itself.

The twins were there, mercifully still capable of stirring levity, though even Fred’s jokes seemed to land a half-beat slower. George had laughed, once, a real one, and everyone had looked up as if startled by a sudden gust of wind.

Ginny sat near the hearth, home for the holidays from Hogwarts, legs curled beneath her and a book she wasn’t really reading open on her lap. Her eyes flicked up more often than they turned the page.

Charlie had arrived earlier that day, smelling of dragons and distant fires, his coat still singed at the hem. Bill and Fleur were there too, their presence steadying, though Fleur had barely let go of Bill’s hand all evening.

And then there was Ron.

He sat apart; a worn blanket draped over his shoulders like a makeshift shield. Unshaven, hollow-cheeked, hair longer than he normally kept it; he looked more vagabond than brother. His eyes had a haunted sort of stillness to them, the kind born of too many nights with too little sleep and too many memories gnawing at the corners of his mind.

Of how the tent had looked when he had returned the next day – in ruins, signs of a fight, a battle. One he desperately hoped that they had escaped. Every day since then he had returned – to that place and to others. While Harry and Hermione were looking for Horcruxes – or worse, he hoped not worse – he had been looking for them.

The not knowing was killing him.

While he imagined that they were hunting Horcruxes, he was searching for something far more important. For absolution. For forgiveness. Even though he knew in his heart that he didn’t deserve it – that he never should have left in the first place.

Guilt.

He hadn’t said much. But then again, no one really expected him to. They all knew what had happened. Why he was there. The circumstances.

Molly kept glancing at Ron with the kind of quiet worry only a mother could manage — subtle, constant, and devastating in its gentleness. Her eyes kept darting toward the plate he hadn’t touched, to the way his fingers rested near his wand but never quite gripped it — like he needed to remember it was there, that he was still here, even if some part of him hadn’t quite returned.

He hadn’t felt whole for a long time.

Arthur, ever the steady hand, tried twice to pull him into a conversation about the chicken coop needing reinforcement — rabbits, he claimed, had been nibbling at the base. Ron had nodded both times, made the right noises, but said nothing. Not really. He was there, and yet somehow not.

He had lost weight. His jumper hung too loose at the shoulders, and the freckles on his face looked sharper against the pallor of his skin. But it was his eyes that gave him away — the hollowness there, the quiet ache. A sadness so deep it had hardened into shame, clinging to him like soot after a fire. It hadn’t left him since the night he’d walked away. Since he had left them — Harry and Hermione — when they had needed him most.

Guilt.

Normally, the Burrow would have been alive with laughter, with music, with a raucous and chaotic energy that could drown out even the darkest thoughts. That was then, this was now.

Their new normal.

The war had crept into their home. Not with wands drawn or curses flung — but with absence. With fear. With the weight of what they didn’t know and the unbearable strain of what they did.

It was New Year’s Eve — but the air at the Burrow felt hollow, as if the turning of the calendar had arrived too quietly, too precariously, to matter. No one quite felt like celebrating. Not under this regime. Not when the outside world still teetered at the edge of unraveling, thread by thread, spell by spell.

And yet, that didn't mean they weren’t grateful. They were. Grateful to still be here, to be whole, to be together for another year. Perhaps there should have been more joy, more laughter, even relief — but joy felt fickle now, like a flame held too close to the wind. Even good news came wrapped in doubt.

Because the truth was, the world hadn’t felt quite as bleak in recent weeks. There had been a shift. A quiet, subtle lifting of pressure — like the breathless pause between thunder and rain. Rumors had begun to circulate, whispers passed in pubs and on parchment: that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was being seen less and less. That his followers were growing restless. That something — something — had happened.

It made it all the more worse for Ron.

Knowing that whatever shift had happened in the world, whatever reprieve or softening of fear people felt in hushed tones behind closed doors — it had begun after he had left. After he had turned his back. After he had run.

Abandoned.

Ron didn’t sit with the others. He couldn’t. Instead, he found himself rising from the couch without really deciding to, drawn to the window like gravity itself was asking him to look. He stood there, one hand resting against the frost-laced glass, peering out at the stillness beyond.

The snow lay thick and undisturbed, bathed in silver moonlight, quiet as a secret. Somewhere out there — he didn’t know where — Harry and Hermione were still moving through the dark. Maybe together. Maybe not. Maybe angry. Maybe worse.

The not knowing was eating him alive.

He pressed his forehead to the glass, breath fogging a soft patch in the cold, and let his thoughts drift to the next day. Another search. Another hollow promise to himself that maybe this time he’d find them. That if and when he did that they would let him come back.

He didn’t even realize his eyes had closed until the light came.

It was soft at first — almost beautiful. A gentle flare across the horizon, like a falling star forging a path through the night. For one aching moment, he just stared, lips parted, struck by the purity of it. The hope of it.

Then it swelled. Blazed. Blinded.

Ron had only enough time to stagger back from the window, hand flying to shield his eyes, heart leaping in panic — before the light exploded across the wards, against the lawn like a silent bomb, turning the world outside into day.

The house shook.

Not just a tremor, but a deep, resonant jolt that rippled through the floorboards and into their bones—an ancient, guttural groan as if the very foundation of the Burrow had felt something break.

Dishes rattled. A photo frame fell from the mantel with a soft thud. Arthur shot to his feet, eyes wide. Ginny’s wand was already in her hand. The twins stopped mid-joke; expressions turned grim.

But it was Bill who felt it first — truly understood it.

His head snapped up, eyes narrowing like a predator scenting danger on the wind. One hand squeezed his wife’s hand, the other clutched the holster that held his wand. His breath hitched — just slightly.

“The wards,” he murmured, more to himself than anyone.

Then louder, sharper: “The wards!”

No one moved.

He turned to his father; face gone pale. “I built them myself. Layered them sixfold, and someone just passed them—”

“An attack…” Molly whispered, fear in her throat. Panic in her eyes.

Her voice was barely audible, yet it seemed to echo in every corner of the Burrow. No one questioned it. No one needed to. Every magical instinct within them screamed the same thing.

Something had breached the wards… someone was there.

Uninvited.

“Wands at the ready,” Arthur said, his voice low but steady, honed by years of quiet resolve and wartime instincts.

He stepped toward the door with a confidence born not of power, but of necessity — the kind that made him, time and again, the calm center of his family’s storm.

He opened the door.

Frosty air rushed in, sharp and biting. For a brief, breathless second, Arthur braced himself for the worst — his mind painting images of masked figures, wands drawn, curses ready to fly. He was prepared for the cold glint of Death Eaters’ eyes, for the scream of spells on the wind.

What he found instead made him falter.

She stood alone in the snow.

Hermione Granger.

The rest of the family spilled out behind him, shoulder to shoulder, prepared for battle — but they too stopped short at the sight of her. Her presence was jarring, not because she was unwelcome, but because of how impossibly wrong it felt to see her here. At this door. At this time. In this way, given how she looked.

She looked like she had been created from moonlight.

Her dress shimmered with an impossible fabric — like it had been spun from stardust and shadows. Midnight blue laced with threads of soft silver that caught the starlight, scattering it like moonlight on water. It should have looked regal. Otherworldly.

But the hem was torn, ragged as if she’d run through brambles. One shoulder hung askew, fabric shredded, exposing thin gashes down her bare arms — scratches still fresh, still bleeding sluggishly in the cold. Her braids had come undone; strands of hair spilling wildly around her face, littered with fragments of glass and porcelain that glittered with cruel, unintentional beauty.

She looked like someone who had stepped into a war the moment she had left the opera.

No one moved.

She was breathing too fast. Her chest rose and fell in shallow bursts, and her eyes — gods, her eyes — were vacant and too wide, like she’d been ripped out of one world and thrust into another. Haunted. Lost. Disoriented in a way that had nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with memory — or the lack of it.

The blank stare of her gaze was unmistakable to those who had seen it before.

One blink. Then another.

The world came back to her in fragments — sharp, stinging edges of reality pressing in. Her gaze landed on Ron and her breath hitched, caught between memory and disbelief. The last time she had seen him — hours ago in her mind — she had cried herself to sleep in a tent, the taste of betrayal bitter in her mouth. His absence had hollowed out her chest, leaving nothing in its wake. It felt hollow still.

And now here he was.

But everything was different.

He was different.

The beard was the first thing she noticed — full, unkempt, somewhere between burnt copper and rust. His clothes hung awkwardly on him, like he’d lost weight too fast and hadn’t bothered to replace what no longer fit. His face was hollow, not just in shape but in spirit — etched with the kind of wear that came from nights without sleep and mornings without hope. Time hadn’t just passed; it had worn him down, chiseled grief into the corners of his eyes.

And yet, when their gazes met, there was tenderness, hope in his eyes. A softness so startling, so raw, it nearly unmoored her.

The ache surged all at once — hot, unbearable — because for her, no time had passed at all.

For her, she may as well have still been in the tent.

Still the silence after he had left.

Still the empty bunk and the crackling fire and the way she had cried herself to sleep clutching nothing but questions.

But even as her chest constricted with grief, her mind was already moving. Fast. Relentless.
Images flashed in succession — cold earth, warmth of a chair by the small fire, then cold and snow, and now… the Burrow?

She searched for orientation, anchoring details.

The Weasleys, Ginny not at Hogwarts – Charlie home from Romania. The house decorated in lights. The cold, bitter air.

Ron looked months older. Maybe more.

And then — Harry.

Her breath hitched.

The last image she had of him was blurry with exhaustion — his skin pale, lips chapped, shoulders swaying beneath the weight of something unnamed. He had looked fragile in a way that frightened her. A way he never had before.

Where was he now?

Her pulse thrummed with panic.

She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t remember how she got here.

And worst of all — she couldn’t remember if he was safe.

Her mind raced, cataloguing everything in front of her — the details, the inconsistencies, the weight of time she hadn’t lived but now had to wear. And all of it clashed violently with her last memory: crying herself to sleep in a cold tent, heart cracked open by absence and silence.

She looked down at herself — at the shimmer of a gown that wasn’t hers, at her arms streaked with both fresh and dried blood, at the bruises that told of a journey she couldn’t remember taking.

Where had she been?

What had she doing?

And then — a blank space in her thoughts. A yawning, terrible void.

Why didn’t she remember—

Her breath caught.

A sudden, gutting chill passed through her. Her stomach twisted. Her vision wavered. Because things were starting to click into place, in that horrifying way where your brain connects dots before your heart can shield you from what they form.

She hadn’t simply forgotten.

She had been made to forget.

And if she’d been Obliviated—

Someone had done it.

Deliberately.

Intimately.

Someone who had looked her in the eye — and erased her.

She wanted to be sick. To collapse. To give in to the quaking dread surging beneath her skin.

But she didn’t. She couldn’t.

They had been hunting Horcruxes. She forced that to the forefront of her breaking mind.

And time — time — was everything.

Even if it had been stolen from her. Even if pieces of her mind had been shattered and swept away like ash in the wind, she had to try. She had to act quickly, to recover whatever time she could. She knew it had to be important.

Her knees trembled, but she remained upright, forcing breath into her lungs. Willed her voice to obey.

“The date,” she whispered — so softly it was nearly lost to the bitter wind rustling through the trees. Her lips moved again, firmer now, as if sheer urgency could drag the answer from the air.

“What’s the date?” she asked again, louder this time, her voice cracking from the cold, desperation threaded through every syllable.

It was Ron who answered.

He took a step forward — then stopped, as if the distance between them were made of more than snow and shadow. He looked like he wanted to run to her. To explain. To beg. But something in him recognized that this moment was larger than apologies. Larger than guilt.

“It’s December 31st, Hermione,” he said quietly.

And the words hit her like a blow to the chest.

December 31st.

Weeks. At least. Hopefully not years.

Her breath caught. Her mind reeled. Something inside her buckled.

“The year?” she asked, her voice barely more than a breath.

Her body trembled, not from the cold, but from the mounting pressure of magic already overdrawn — of having fought, instinctively, against the very spell that had shattered her memory and brought her here.

There was a long silence. The ones that hadn’t known by the glaze in her eyes were now coming to understand a terrible truth.

Then, quietly, Molly stepped forward, her voice gentle but steady.

“1997.”

That was it.

Hermione collapsed to her knees.

The weight of it hit her all at once — crushing and inescapable.

Two months. Gone.

Two entire months ripped from her, erased without permission, without memory.

A strangled sob tore from her throat. She doubled over, hands fisted in the snow and cried.

Exhaustion hit her. Deep, deep tiredness. From having her mind rewrote, from her forgotten defiance against the Dark Lord – pouring all her magic, her love for Harry into her spell in a desperate attempt to stay by his side – the full weight collapsing her, undoing her.

“Harry!” she wept, her voice breaking on his name.

Molly was there in an instant, arms wrapping tightly around her, holding her as though she could anchor her to the world. As though warmth and kindness could undo the violation.

No one else moved.

They couldn’t.

And Ron — Ron, who had broken once already — stood frozen, shattered all over again. At the sight of her, that what she was going through might not have happened if he hadn’t run.

Because whatever had happened, wherever Harry was now…

He was alone.

And none of them knew how to find him.

Ron sat at the kitchen table of the Burrow, the weak morning sun filtering through the frost-laced windows, casting soft gold across the wooden floor. Beside him, a mug of tea sat untouched, steam long since vanished. The quiet clatter of the house waking up felt oddly distant, like it belonged to someone else’s morning.

He hadn’t slept. Not even for a moment. Never even tried.

One by one, his family padded softly into the kitchen — Bill, Charlie, Ginny, his mum — but none of them stayed. They paused just long enough to get something to eat, to catch his eye, to offer a silent, fragile acknowledgment. No one spoke. No one laid a hand on his shoulder. They left him the only thing he could bear: silence.

They knew. They understood what Hermione’s arrival last night had meant for him, for someone already drowning with grief and shame. Worse because of how she had arrived.

His body was still, but his mind wouldn’t stop pacing — looping, retracing, punishing.

The guilt that had gnawed at him every waking hour for the past two months had come back with a vengeance the moment he saw her. Hermione. Alive.

For the briefest, most agonizingly pure second, he had felt nothing but joy — an almost childlike euphoria that she was back. That she had somehow found her way home.

But that moment didn’t last.

Because then he had looked at her.

Truly looked. Her wide, vacant eyes. The way she held her wand like a lifeline – gripped so tightly in one shaking hand that her knuckles had gone bone-white. And then the cuts in her dress, her skin; her hurricane swept hair tangled with Merlin knew what.

She looked like she had come through fire and storm.

Whatever had brought her back – sent her here – had also shattered her. And that, more than anything, had stopped Ron in his tracks.

Slowly, painfully, the pieces began to fall into place for him as he stared at her.

Like she didn’t know the days she’d missed. Like she hadn’t lived them at all.

She had been Obliviated.

Somebody had taken her memories — stolen them. She had fought it; her body bore the marks of resistance. But whoever it was had succeeded. Because through the cracks in her voice, in the few words she managed to speak before exhaustion pulled her under, they had learned the last thing she remembered:

Him leaving.

That moment in the tent. That fight. His departure.

Ron could have lived with a lot of things.

The silence. The guilt. The way failure had draped itself over his shoulders like a second skin since the night he walked out of that tent. He could live with the ache in his chest, dull and constant, and the shame that made it hard to meet his family’s eyes.

He sat motionless at the kitchen table, staring at the knot in the grain of the wood as if it might untangle the snarl inside his chest. His fingers curled slightly, resting near the edge of a cup he hadn't touched.

Ron could have lived with the guilt of failing her. With the failure of giving up.

He could have borne the shame of walking away, the regret of that hollow snap of Apparition that still echoed in his memory. Because Hermione was here now. Bruised, shaken, and not entirely whole — but alive. Breathing. Safe, at least in body.

But what he couldn’t endure – what threatened to eat away at him as he had sat in the kitchen all night – was the blank space where his best friend used to be. Harry.

He wouldn’t be able to live with that.

Guilt. Shame.

Because if he hadn’t left, hadn’t stormed out into the cold that night with too much pride and not enough faith, maybe he would’ve been there too. Maybe he could have stood between them and whatever had torn those memories from Hermione’s mind. Maybe he could’ve taken the hit instead. Maybe he even could have stopped it altogether.

Instead, she had been alone. And Harry — Harry was still alone. Somewhere out there. Or worse.

Ron felt the bile rise in his throat, but he swallowed it down like he had been doing for weeks now, ever since the first hints of regret had curdled into something darker.

He had thought things were bad before. The kind of bad that gnawed at the edges of your sanity in the dead of night, whispering that you’d already made the worst mistake of your life.

But this — this was worse.

This was ten times worse.

Every second that ticked by felt like a moment lost forever, and Ron was spiraling. Something significant had happened with Hermione being sent here, in that state – and he felt like time was running out to repair what he had broken.

His thoughts continued to loop in frantic circles, grief compounding guilt, shame warping into helplessness.

Then a soft sound broke the quiet — bare feet against the creaking stairs — and Ron looked up, heart thudding.

Hermione stepped into view.

Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen, her face pale and drawn. She wore a thick jumper, likely one of Ginny’s, and a pair of sweatpants that had seen better days. She looked fragile.

But what startled Ron the most wasn’t her disheveled appearance or the dull tremble in her hands… it was the look in her eyes.

A flicker of steel. A glint of determination beneath the haze of exhaustion and pain.

She didn’t speak. Not right away. She just stared at him — long enough for the tension to stretch, for the air between them to grow thick with everything unspoken.

And Ron, for all his shortcomings, didn’t need words to understand.

He knew strategy. He knew her.

She had made up her mind.

Hermione might have been Obliviated. Her memories might be fractured, her heart still raw. But she was back. And she would not stop — not until she had unraveled the truth of what had happened to her, and more importantly, where Harry was.

And Ron, his throat tight, stomach a tangled mess of shame and something like awe at her resiliency – her strength, and a little hope — knew exactly what that look meant.

Hermione was already preparing to do the impossible. Like she always did. And he was going to help.

Not because he expected forgiveness. He didn’t deserve that, not yet. Maybe not ever. He wouldn’t ask for it. He wouldn’t cheapen what she’d been through by trying to make it about himself. By wasting their time with an apology that would neither be useful nor wanted.

But he could still be useful. He had to be. And if there was one thing Ron Weasley needed — needed to prove to himself, to her, to Harry — it was that when it mattered most, when the stakes were highest, he wouldn’t run again.

He shifted forward, voice steady but low. “What do you need?”

Hermione didn’t answer right away.

She poured herself tea from the pot Molly kept on out of habit more than hope. The steam curled between them — soft, ghostlike. Like a memory trying to reassemble itself.

She moved like someone untethered from the present — caught between two versions of herself, uncertain which one belonged here. Her steps were hesitant, like the floor might give out beneath her. Her right hand trembled as she crossed the room with her cup in her left, its fingers ghosting over the edge of the table before she lowered herself into a chair.

Even that motion was cautious. Like she didn’t quite trust her own weight.

Ron didn’t speak. Didn’t push. He waited.

And eventually, Hermione wrapped both hands around the chipped teacup, letting its warmth seep into her fingers, into her bones, and when she finally spoke, it was quiet — but anchored in that iron resolve Ron had always known was her truest magic.

“I need parchment. Quills. Ink. A list of everything that’s happened in the last two months. A timeline. Every detail you remember.”

She looked up. Her gaze steadier now. Sharper.

There it was — her mind already organizing, planning, bracing for battle in the only way she knew how: with facts, with information, with truth.

Ron watched her for a moment in quiet awe. Her brilliance. Her drive. That relentless fire in her bones that no curse, no war, no Dark Lord had managed to extinguish.

He didn’t deserve her. Not after the way he’d left. But he would give her everything anyway.

He took a breath, grounding himself — then stood, retrieved parchment, ink, and a handful of quills from the drawer near the sink, and returned to the table.

No hesitation now. Just purpose.

He sat across from her, the morning light catching in his hair, and began — his voice low but resolute.

“I went back the next morning.”

A pause. He glanced at her, then away again.

“To the tent. To say…” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter what I was going to say. You were already gone.”

His jaw tightened, a flicker of something dark and regretful flashing behind his eyes.

“The place was wrecked,” he continued. “Like a battle had happened. Not just chaos, not just someone leaving in a hurry. It was torn apart.”

He swallowed hard.

Shock gave way to alarm inside her chest, then to something harder. Sharper. Her mind racing again, already trying to examine and place this new information.

“You went back,” she repeated, voice distant. “And it was destroyed?”

Ron nodded. “I thought... There wasn’t any sign of you or Harry. No wands, not your bag, none of the books or other supplies that you had brought – nothing important. Not even the locket.”

Hermione’s eyes widened, her breath hitching. The quill trembled slightly in her hand but the scratching of tip against parchment told Ron she was pushing through – and so he would too.

Ron drew in a slow, steadying breath, his eyes falling shut as he forced himself back — back into that sickening moment, the icy grip of fear when he’d first stepped into the remains of the tent.

“The tent was ripped, no structures remained standing. And the wards — what was left of them — were fried.”

Another breath.

“I remember two bowls,” he said quietly. “Tossed aside. Empty but looked to have been porridge. The table was towards the entrance, shattered. There were several footprints – half-formed and entering the tent but no tracks leaving.”

He opened his eyes, gaze distant. “I got there around noon, so whatever happened… it must’ve been right after breakfast.”

His voice lowered. “From what I saw, it looked like you and Harry either fled — or were taken.”

Hermione’s quill stilled mid-sentence. Her fingers reached for her tea as if by instinct, but she didn’t drink at first. She stared through the steam, past it — like she could drag the memory out from wherever it had been buried, wrench it back into place by sheer force of will.

But nothing came.

Not a flicker. Not a glimpse. Just silence behind her eyes. And the ache of absence pressing against her ribs.

“Okay,” Hermione whispered, her voice barely audible over the clink of the teacup. Her mind was scrambling — trying to organize emotion, memory, logic — anything to ground her.

“What happened after that?”

Ron exhaled slowly, fingers curling slightly against the parchment in front of him. Then he began to speak.

Not in a rush. Not all at once.

But with the careful, halting rhythm of someone walking barefoot across glass — each word measured, each memory edged in guilt.

“After I found the tent... like that,” he began, eyes focused somewhere far away, “I didn’t know where to go. But I couldn’t just sit still, Hermione. I couldn’t not do something.”

He looked at her then, really looked — like he needed her to understand this part, even if she never forgave him.

“I went back through every place we’d ever talked about going. Every rendezvous point we’d marked on the map. That abandoned church in Cornwall. The ridge near Tintagel. Even the cave by the sea where you thought a Horcrux might be hidden.”

A faint, hollow smile ghosted across his lips. “I hate caves. But I went.”

Hermione blinked, holding very still, as if any sudden movement might fracture the fragile air between them. Might cause the dam to break.

“I kept a log,” Ron continued, his voice steadier now, like the act of recounting was grounding him. “Every day. Notes. Potential Sightings. Patterns. It’s all mapped out upstairs, pinned to my wall like some bloody madman’s war room.”

Her breath caught.

“I was trying to find you,” he said. “Both of you. I wasn’t going to stop until I did; I’m still not going to stop.”

Hermione nodded, unable to speak around the lump forming in her throat.

“And the war…” Ron trailed off, running a hand through his overgrown hair. “It’s... weird. Too quiet. No raids. No Muggle attacks. No one’s even seen You-Know-Who in weeks — not a whisper.”

He leaned forward, his brows furrowed.

“It’s like someone hit pause, Hermione. Like he called everyone back and told them to hold still. The others are saying it’s a trap. That he’s planning something big. But me? I’m starting to think it’s something else.”

He exhaled hard; frustration evident in every line of his body.

“Something’s happened. Something’s changed. And whatever it is... it started after I left.”

Hermione sat silently for a moment, absorbing it all. The search. The silence. The storm that had been held back not by fear, but by something deeper.

“Even Ginny said the last few weeks of term felt... easier,” Ron continued, his voice low, careful.

“Like something shifted there too. Less tension in the halls. Fewer punishments. Even the Carrows weren’t as —” He broke off, shaking his head.

“There were whispers. From students. From staff. Like they were all waiting.”

Hermione pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, trying to force clarity into a mind still fogged and aching. There was something there, just beyond reach. Something critical. Important. Missing.

Her hands dropped into her lap as a new thought struck her.

She looked up sharply, eyes searching his. “Did I come with anything else? Anything at all?”

Ron shook his head, then hesitated. “Just your wand,” he said quietly. “And your bag.”

He walked over to the side table and picked them up, returning with both in hand. He set them down gently in front of her.

“I haven’t gone through it,” he added quickly. “Didn’t want to snoop. Just... figured you’d want to do that yourself.”

Hermione reached out but didn’t touch the bag — her fingers hovered above it like it might burn. So familiar. And yet, after everything, so impossibly foreign.

Ron cleared his throat, then spoke again, softer this time.

“I’m here, Hermione. Whatever you need. To find Harry. I’ll do it.”

She looked up at him, surprised by the quiet conviction in his voice.

Hermione didn’t answer right away. She just looked at Ron — really looked at him. At the exhaustion carved into his face, the regret shadowing his eyes, the apology he wore like a second skin but hadn’t yet said.

Tears welled in her eyes, but she blinked them back.

They didn’t need to say it aloud: We’ll deal with us later. After Harry. After we bring him home.

Wordlessly, she reached forward and unclasped the bag.

Her breath hitched as she opened it — not from fear, exactly, but from the weight of not knowing what she might find. Her hands moved with a trembling urgency, rifling through the contents like they might somehow anchor her to a timeline, to a memory, to a truth.

But there wasn’t much.

A few books she recognized — texts on Horcruxes, obscure rituals, maps and history books from the first war. Those she remembered.

Others made her stomach turn – those she had no recollection of.

Dark books, darker than anything she had ever seen before on soul magic and binding rituals – even one about necromancy and visitation.

There was also a handwritten journal on obscure magical protections and vows – looked to be centuries old.

And then came the peculiar ones — books that made absolutely no sense. Not for Horcrux hunting. Not for war.

The first was a slim, glossy volume with a ridiculous title stamped in enchanted silver: Scales and Sass: A Beginner’s Guide to Living with a Magical Serpent.

Hermione blinked at it. Once. Twice. The subtitle shimmered mockingly.

Then she pulled out another.

She stared at the cover— Alchemy in the Oven: The Magical Science of Beginner Baking—like it had personally insulted her.

“What…” she whispered, her voice small, “Where have I been?”

The absurdity of it all twisted into her chest like a corkscrew — equal parts dread and disbelief.

Part of her felt like she was dreaming – like it was all one big cosmic joke.

Her hands trembled slightly as she set it aside, heart pounding.

“What have I been doing?”

She returned to the back and dug deeper, desperate now — but that was it.

No change of clothes. No emergency supplies. No Hogwarts: A History. No trace of her careful planning, their survival tactics, the mission that had consumed them.

No Harry.

Hermione sank back into her chair, clutching the beaded bag tightly to her chest. It felt featherlight in her arms now — useless, almost mocking in its emptiness.

“No clue,” she murmured, her voice cracking beneath the weight of exhaustion and despair.

“Not even a hint — just more questions that make everything worse.”

Ron didn’t answer. He stood nearby, fists clenched, his face pale and drawn as the silence thickened around them. The absence of their friend — the unbearable uncertainty of it — pressed in like fog. Heavy. Suffocating. It settled between their breaths and coiled around every unspoken thought.

Hermione’s fingers trembled over the scribbled notes before her. Her eyes unfocused, glassy, caught somewhere between the present and some impossible past she could no longer touch. She drew in a breath. Then another. And another — shaky, shallow, desperate to anchor herself in the moment.

She had been Obliviated — violently, precisely — less than twelve hours ago. She was still recovering from the trauma, the magical dissonance, the sheer confusion of waking into a world she no longer fully recognized.

And still she was doing the impossible: trying to piece it all together with nothing but scattered instincts and a mind still fogged by forced forgetfulness.

And then there was Ron. A Ron she barely recognized. Not the boy who had left her behind — but someone changed, hollowed out, forged in guilt and sleepless nights. That alone would have been enough to break her concentration.

But it didn’t stop there.

There was still the Horcrux hunt — paused or shattered, she didn’t know. Harry was missing. Their world was unraveling. Her memories were gone.

And now her tears came. Quiet at first. Then heavier.

She couldn’t stop them. Couldn’t control them. Her brilliant, brilliant mind — the one that had outmaneuvered death and darkness — felt broken under the weight of all that she didn’t know, all that she feared she had lost forever.

And Ron, across from her, could do nothing but watch. Watch and wish, with every atom of himself, that he could take her pain into his own chest. He had no wandwork that could undo this, no apology big enough to rewind time.

But he didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. He simply stayed with her in the storm of it.

This — watching Hermione Granger unravel before him, powerless to help — was the worst moment of Ron Weasley’s life.

But he would not collapse. Not this time. Not until Harry was found. Not until the war was over. Not until every piece of their shattered trio was home again.

He would not give in to the grief or the guilt or the despair.

He would have to die before he gave up this time.

Hermione is iconic. It physically hurt to do this to her but have to keep Tom in character for the moment.

To be honest, I had no intention of Ron’s redemption arc when I drafted my outline – it sort of just wrote itself when I got to this chapter and I am not mad.

Chapter Text

AN: Be kind, rewind. We are going to go back a little – it is fundamentally important to the story that we see something from Tom’s point of view (also as a story telling experience it works better and I just had so much fun with this scene in general)

JK owns harry potter. She is also a terrible role model for basic humanity.

Tom was not prepared for the meal or the cake. Especially the cake.

It shouldn’t have mattered — something so small, so laughably ordinary. A round, frosted thing with candles. But it did matter. More than it should have.

It was nothing, he told himself. A child’s tradition. Sentimental drivel. But his hands were clenched beneath the table, and he felt the pounding of his heart like it was trying to betray him — remind him of something he’d spent a lifetime burying.

No one had ever celebrated him. Not once. Not in the orphanage, not in his so-called rise to greatness. He was the storm people survived; the legend they whispered about, not someone you lit candles for.

And yet — this boy. This insufferable, man – Harry. He had done it. Looked at him not as a monster or a mistake, but as someone worth cooking for. Worth baking for.

It shook something loose inside him.

He didn’t know what to do with the warmth crawling up his throat; with the oddest, most foreign stinging sensation behind his eyes.

That was absolutely not going to spill over.

He wanted to stand, to leave, to destroy the cursed cake for what it made him feel — but he couldn’t move. Couldn’t even breathe.

His chest fluttered, unsteady. He hated the feeling. Hated how his body – his heart – him – was acting so… human.  

Weak, he wanted to spit.

Instead, he had muffled out a “thank you” at some point during the meal and tried not to think that perhaps some small part of him had meant it.

Then Harry had fallen.

Then Nagini had begun to glow — and Harry took it. Her light. Absorbed it.

Tom’s mind was already racing, grasping at theories as the magic around them surged. Glasses exploded. The great table cracked down the middle like it had been cleaved by divine judgment. Tom didn’t want to think it but there was only one explanation that made sense – and it was all but confirmed when the locket went the same way.

The two Horcruxes, their magic, their essence, anchors to his immortality, gone.

The realization was vast and terrible and complete.

Tom stood paralyzed, horror clawing up his spine, thick and cold and choking. The air itself felt thinner, like reality had shrunk around him, leaving only the awful truth suspended in the space between two heartbeats. Harry’s eyes found his then and between them passed something unspoken.

Only two horcruxes left. He didn’t think anything could get worse than that.

And then the world exploded.

Not with fire, not with sound — but with magic. Raw, unfiltered, and searing. The shockwave hit him like a physical blow, hurling him backwards. His body struck the stone wall with a brutal thud that reverberated through bone and breath.

But pain was secondary.

Because that was when he felt it. The echo of something older, deeper. A magic that had been born not from wandwork or incantation, but from sheer will. From belief.

The protection Harry had crafted — had birthed into the world to shield their child — was no longer just wrapped around the boy and his child.

It was inside him now. Alive in his blood. Racing through his veins like wildfire, ancient and sentient and unmistakably binding.

And then came the tug.

Low and fierce, in the center of his chest — where something primal, something foundational, began to unravel. He staggered, clutching at his heart as a foreign ache bloomed through him.

Not physical. Existential.

He felt it then. The life within him beginning to leave.

His immortality be damned.

Leaving.

He had thought — arrogantly — that if he didn’t harm the child, that if he simply refrained from violence, that he would be spared. That magic would honor the letter of the vow Harry had etched into being.

But he had misunderstood.

This magic, Harry’s magic, what had been created was not legalistic.

It was alive. It had intention.

And what it demanded was more than restraint.

It demanded more than mere abstention from harm. It required action. Protection. It wanted him to not simply allow the child to live, but to protect it. Actively. Fiercely. As if it were his own.

Because it was.

In the span of milliseconds, he understood it deeply – primitively – an ultimatum.

It stood between him and annihilation. There would be no middle ground.

That truth landed like a blade: sharp and deep.

And in the echoing void of realization — his lungs refusing to pull in breath, his soul fraying at the edges — Tom knew with sudden, terrible clarity:

If he was to survive, he had to bind himself to Harry. To the child. The way his Horcruxes once had. Not with destruction, but with connection.

Not to own, but to belong. To be a part of something.

Connection.

He staggered, chest heaving, and forced himself upright — magic roaring like thunder in his ears, Harry’s guttural, primal screams rising over it like a beacon. A sound ancient and terrible, like the first pain being born into the world at the beginning of time.

And it was calling to him.

One step. Then another.

Each step was a war.

Not of flesh, but of will — a clash between something unyielding and punishing that tried to shove him back and the defiant, feral and terrified part of him that refused to yield. The magic around him howled; not wild, but righteous. It cracked the very air; split the world at its seams. Time itself trembled, frayed at the edges like parchment too long held to fire.

And still, he moved forward.

Into the eye of the storm.

Into the magical abomination of light and power — if its brightness were made of agony and judgment and something frighteningly close to grace.

Into the center of the only thing that might save him.

One step. Then another. Then another.

He had never walked like this before. Not toward an enemy. Not toward a prize. But toward a truth he didn’t understand and couldn’t control. His body screamed, his bones shuddered beneath his skin, and there was a breath, a single, harrowing breath, where he thought he might collapse. That this would be it. The end of Tom Riddle – the Dark Lord – Lord Voldemort, undone not by a wand, not by prophecy, but by mercy that demanded too much.

And then — he crossed the threshold.

And everything in the background stopped.

Not slowed. Not stilled.

Stopped.

The magic held its breath. The universe, waiting.

And with a final surge of everything he was, had been, or might yet become, he reached out — fell to his knees, and his hand found Harry’s.

Their fingers brushed.

And time — sovereign, unyielding time — paused.

There was no heat. No scream. No death. Just Tom and Harry.

Just the sudden, impossible silence of two souls touching at the edge of something unnamable.

Harry lay unconscious, his body limp and unmoving, and Tom moved instinctively drawing the boy into his arms, gathering him with a gentleness so at odds with his name, his title, his past. As though Harry were the most delicate thing in the world.

And the most precious.

Carefully, reverently, he cradled him. One hand slid beneath Harry’s back to support him, the other rose to cup the back of his head, fingers splaying protectively through his hair. The boy’s brow came to rest against Tom’s cheek, and for one suspended moment, the world narrowed to nothing but breath and silence and skin.

Tom looked down at the figure now curled against him — this boy, impossibly small for the weight he carried, impossibly strong for the way he bore it. Magical in ways Tom had never seen before — had never thought could be. That had nothing to do with magic.

There was power in Harry, yes. But more than that, there was a purity of purpose, a recklessness of love, that defied every rule Tom had ever written for the world.

He was light, and he was heavy.

A fragile weight in Tom’s arms, but one that had burrowed deep into the marrow of him, changing things that were never meant to change.

This boy — this man — had undone something in him. Not just a war. Not just a prophecy. But the structure of belief itself.

And now, he stood on the edge of something even more dangerous than power.

Change.

Real, irrevocable change.

And it terrified him.

Not just the unraveling of everything he’d built, not just the rawness of emotion clawing through his chest like something alive — but the terrible, inescapable truth that now pulsed through his thoughts, his veins, his very soul:

Some part of him had to remain in contact with Harry.

Always.

Skin to skin, magic to magic. The need wasn’t sentimental — it was biological. Mystical. Binding. A mandate birthed into reality by whatever had created this child in the first place from a piece of his soul.

A piece of him. And Harry’s belief.

And now, his choices — his lack of them — stood before him with brutal clarity.

He could remain like this, tethered to Harry by constant physical contact until the child was born. Which was practically impossible.

Or…

He could give up one of his two remaining Horcruxes — transfer it to Harry to wear as an anchor to maintain his existence, knowing full well what could happen. That it, too, might dissolve, just as the others had. Just as the ones in Nagini and the locket had. Reduced to nothing. Burned clean.

Which would leave him with only one. And then what would he do if he lost both?

Or…

He could forgo all contact. All connection. The effect would be death. Not eventual. Not hypothetical. Immediate.

Which wasn’t much of a choice at all.

He wanted to scream. To rage. To kill something; anything. To carve the world open and create a thousand more Horcruxes, forge anchors in blood and bone and fire. He wanted to defy fate — defy magic and sentiment and the fragile mortality now tightening around him like a noose.

He had once been cold, calculating, efficient — untouchable. Able to do what others couldn’t.

But he couldn’t create more – no matter how much he wanted it.

Because the ritual that had returned him to life — rebuilt his body with Harry’s blood — had solidified certain things. He could no longer split his soul. That was the price: the fine print buried in the Dark Magic he had wielded with such arrogance and surety. He had thought it a worthy trade at the time.

What need had he for new Horcruxes when the old ones were eternal? If he got to get his body back?

Now, as he stood in the shattered stillness, he felt the full weight of the realization settle into every cell of his body.

Shock bled into his expression — cold, breathless shock — as he measured his choices and realized there were only two: sacrifice a Horcrux and risk everything he was or stay tethered to Harry until the child was born.

The storm now stopped. Just like that. One breath and it was over. The hurricane of magic, of destiny, of unraveling — all of it gone as if it had never been. But the silence it left behind was thunderous.

Tom stared down at Harry in his arms, at the impossibly quiet boy who had undone everything with nothing but belief and blood and unbearable grace.

Everything he had built. Everything he had planned. It would all have to be re-evaluated. Rewritten. If he survived this at all.

And then, he caught movement. A sound.

An exhale. The girl.

Granger.

Given his choices — and the precarious possibility that his remaining Horcruxes could be lost, exposed, or dissolved by the same impossible magic — Tom knew the truth with brutal clarity: she couldn’t stay.

She had seen too much. Understood too much. And in this moment, that made her dangerous to him.

There could be no place for the girl now. Not in this house. Not with the lines between self and other so violently unraveled, not with the protections encasing Harry — and, by extension, himself — still raw, volatile, and untested. The balance was too fragile. The risk, too great.

No matter how much she had grown on him – like moss to a wall.

So, he had raised his wand, calm and deliberate, and with a flick, unlatched the obsidian bracelet that had anchored her to this place.

He moved to cast the spell, but Hermione Granger — brilliant, infuriating Hermione — had fought back. Hard. Her magic surged like a wildfire, raw and unflinching. She had surprised him — impressed him, even. She was stronger than Bellatrix – no doubt in his mind. 

But, in the end, he was still him.

When her magic cracked, his spell struck — precisely, efficiently. He knew exactly what to remove. The memories of the pregnancy. Of the Horcruxes’ bond to the child. Of the castle. Of the moment magic had remade his world.

He had already been inside her mind once before.

And so, with brutal elegance, he erased every thread that might unravel what little control he still had. Control he would cling to. Then he sent her away. Where she would be safe.

But her final words lingered, echoing like a ghost: Protect them.

It haunted him.

A charge he now carried — and always had, if he were honest. It had been his from the beginning, long before he’d been willing to name it. From the moment in Malfoy Manor when Harry’s magic and sheer belief, wild and reckless, had wrapped itself around the unborn child. From the moment that protection had tangled with his own soul and bound him, irrevocably, to their survival.

He had been running from that truth ever since.

Running from so many truths: layered, dangerous, disorienting. From the reality of what he had become. From what he had not allowed himself to feel. From the impossible shift in the story he thought he was writing.

But there were no more places left to hide.

Not from this. Not from them. Not from himself.

Tom didn’t know how long he stood there, holding Harry close, the boy’s breath feather-light against his collarbone. Time had unraveled, become shapeless, meaningless. The ruined hall around them no longer mattered. Only the fragile weight in his arms did.

Eventually, he turned away from the wreckage. Silent and slow, he passed the shattered remains of the evening, moving past the gargoyle that guarded the stairwell, up the winding steps to his private chambers. The magic in the air was still thick, clinging to the walls like mist. The castle, although not ancient nor sentient, seemed to watch in silence.

In his room, he sat on the edge of the vast, shadow-draped bed, Harry still nestled against him — magically drained but alive. The baby, too. Still safe. Still whole. He could feel them both. A rhythm, barely perceptible, yet undeniably present. Two heartbeats bound together, and somehow… bound to him.

He sat there for a long while. Motionless. Stunned. Numb. Thinking.

Feeling.

Then, wordlessly, he made the only possible choice.

With a flick of his hand, he summoned Hufflepuff’s Cup — one of only two anchors he had left. He stared at it, that once-prized vessel of immortality, its gilded edges catching the dim light.

And then he transfigured it.

Not into something grand or ceremonial — but into a simple gold chain. Unadorned. Unremarkable. Functional.

He reached out, clasped it gently around Harry’s neck, the magic still humming faintly beneath his fingers. A tether. A sacrifice. A promise.

He removed the locket and set it aside.

Then he laid Harry down carefully among the sheets, brushing a curl from his brow, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest.

Only then did exhaustion take him — sudden and absolute. With barely a breath, he collapsed beside Harry.

Harry was drifting.

Through something vast and borderless — time, space, memory, maybe.

He floated just beneath awareness, not fully present but not entirely gone either.

He was aware, in that vague, floating way a dreamer was — where nothing made sense but everything felt important.

There was… a cake.

There was… a man.

There was… a pause.

He thought — maybe — he had fallen. Or slipped. A snake caught him. Held him.

Warm light, then discomfort. Lots of discomfort.

More lights. Soft at first. Then brilliant. Blinding.

Colors that bled into one another — too many to name, too vast to count.

More discomfort.

Then a man had come.

A flicker of fear in his eyes. Something frantic. Shattered.

But his arms were strong. He caught him. Held him close.

It was nice. Warm.

The colors went away, and with it the wind.

It was still nice. 

Comforting. Harry wanted to stay like this. The man was close – so close.

And then there was a girl. 

A very strong and pretty girl. And then the man attacked her. But she didn’t run. She stood against him until she couldn’t.

She wasn’t afraid. She looked like she knew something. And then her voice – so pleasant so warm. Protect them.

That sounded nice.

And then she went away. That was sad.

Now it was just the man was holding him alone again.

And then they were moving – it was dark and cold but he felt warm. Safe.

They were in another room now. With a bed. It was big and looked soft. They sat down – he was still being held. The man was quiet. Thinking. Maybe.

Then something was placed around his neck. The metal felt just like the man. Strange. Warm. Protected.

Then he was put to sleep and the man fell beside him. That was the most nice.

He wanted to stay there forever. Peace.

But then he woke up.

Harry stirred.

One eye blinked open — slow, unfocused — then the other followed, squinting against the low morning light. His breath came slow and even at first, his mind still heavy with the remnants of whatever strange, color-soaked dream had just released him. But it didn’t take long for awareness to creep in.

The room was different.

Too different.

This… this was luxurious. The sheets beneath him were impossibly soft — cool and smooth like silk, warm like memory. The pillow cradled his head like it had been conjured from clouds. Everything smelled faintly of something expensive and unplaceable: spice and old paper and the subtle sweetness of magic.

Harry inhaled deeply, and that’s when it hit him.

He knew that smell.

His body tensed as recognition sliced through the haze. Rich. Dark. Familiar in a way that made his heart leap into his throat.

Tom.

The grogginess vanished in an instant.

His hand twitched toward where his wand might be — it wasn’t— and he froze.

Because that wasn’t the worst of it.

He wasn’t alone.

There was warmth behind him. Steady. Real. A body — lean and tall, unmistakably male — pressed along his back. The weight of an arm draped around his waist. A hand resting just below his ribcage. Possessive. Gentle. Unmoving.

Holding him.

Harry didn’t move. Not yet. His breath slowed to a deliberate crawl, as if staying still might somehow keep reality from crashing down around him.

His thoughts raced. How did he get here? Where was Hermione? What had happened after—

The memories stuttered, fragmented. Light. Pain. A voice calling his name. A hand reaching through sheer and unrelenting chaos. Then—

Nothing.

And now this.

This silence. This closeness. This terrifying intimacy.

Still not the worst thing.

Not the surreal, disorienting softness of the bed, nor the unfamiliar, decadent warmth of the room. Not even the slow, steady rise and fall of breath at his neck — someone else's breath. No, that wasn’t what made Harry’s chest seize with dread.

Because despite the impossible strangeness of it all — the comfort, the silence, the body curled against his like it belonged there — his body had betrayed him.

He was aroused.

Painfully so.

His face flushed with heat as shame and disbelief surged through him in equal measure. It was absurd. Unthinkable. A nightmare dressed in the softness of silk sheets and the intimacy of shared breath. And still… it was real.

He could feel it.

The dull ache. The electric awareness of skin not touching skin but close — so close — it made him ache in ways he wasn’t prepared to name.

And it wasn’t just the physical. It was the awful, quiet truth that some part of him — the part he couldn’t explain, couldn’t control — felt safe. Not safe in the way he did with Ron or Hermione or even Sirius, once. But safe in a way that came from being held. Watched over. Claimed.

And he hated that.

Hated that it was comforting. Hated that it wasn’t just his body responding — but something deeper, older, bone-level and inexplicable. It made him want to scream. To run. To take the sharp edges of his shame and slice through whatever this was before it took root.

But none of that was the worst part.

The worst part — and Harry knew how to identify worst parts, he’d lived a life full of them —the worst part was the certainty blooming cold and steady in his gut.

The man behind him, the one who had carried him through chaos, who had laid him down in this impossibly soft bed, who now held him like something breakable—

Was also aroused.

Harry felt it — undeniable, inescapable — pressing into the curve of his hip with a heat that seemed to brand his skin. It wasn’t imagined. It wasn’t a trick of sleep or magic or fading dream logic. It was there. Large. Real. Unwelcome.

And, somehow, not entirely unwelcome.

Panic surged, wild and immediate. But it wasn’t alone. Lurking beneath it was a confusing curl of want — deep in his stomach, lower still, coiling like smoke. Desire. Raw and disorienting. It made no sense. Nothing made sense.

He took a breath — too shallow. Then another, deeper, but no steadier. His thoughts scrambled, half-formed and slippery, like trying to hold water in cupped hands.

He needed space. Time. Clarity.

He needed to get out of this bed.

Slowly, agonizingly slow, Harry began to shift. Every movement felt like an eternity. He could hear Tom’s breath behind him, soft and steady, and each exhale sent hot ghosts of air across the back of his neck. He held his own breath, muscles tight, every inch a gamble.

Please stay asleep, he begged silently. Merlin, Morgana, Salazar — anyone. Please.

Bit by bit, he inched away, untangling himself from the sheets, from the warmth, from him. The bed creaked once, softly, and he froze, heart hammering, but Tom didn’t stir.

Another inch. Then another.

When his feet hit the floor, the cold shocked through him, grounding him just enough to remind him that yes — this was real. He was awake. And very much in over his head.

He turned toward the fire.

Nagini was there, coiled like a sleeping deity in front of the hearth, the flames casting molten gold across her scales. Her massive head turned the moment he moved. Those ancient amber eyes locked onto him, bright with curiosity and far too much knowing.

Harry raised a finger to his lips. Please, he mouth-hissed, barely daring to breathe.

The snake blinked once. It was slow. Sardonic. Judging.

Harry braced for a quip, a hiss, a full-on commentary about the absurdity of the situation and his current state of disheveled panic.

But instead — mercifully — she nodded.

A truce, then. Or pity.

Harry crept across the room, his mind a mess of nerves and noise. He didn’t know what had happened last night — only that something had. Something powerful. Magical. Terrifying. Binding.

And as he reached the far wall and pressed his forehead to the cool stone, he tried desperately to push down the memory of warmth, of breath, of skin. Of the way, for just a moment, he had felt safe.

Of how he had wanted to lean back into that strong embrace, push his hips back into that large…

Stop.

Harry kept moving.

Nagini followed him without a sound.

Her massive form slithered behind him like an ominous shadow, her scales whispering against the stone as Harry crept down the winding staircase. He didn’t know where he was going exactly — only that he needed space, answers, anything that wasn’t the thick silence of that bedroom or the heat still lingering on his skin.

The bottom of the stairwell curved, dimly lit by floating sconces that flickered low with soft magic. It led him to a room that reminded him of a room in Hogwarts he had spent more than his fair share of time in – he recognized it instantly for what it was — Tom’s study.

Books lined the walls from floor to ceiling, their spines marked with runes and titles that made his skin crawl. A sleek desk sat near a broad window overlooking the winter grounds below. The sunlight spilled across the carpet like golden smoke.

Harry didn’t look at the books. Not yet. He made his way to the small sitting area tucked near another window — a low table, two chairs, a place that looked meant for quiet contemplation or control disguised as civility. He collapsed into one of the chairs like his bones could no longer hold him up.

His mind reeled. Images swam beneath his eyelids — blinding light, screaming magic, the weight of Tom’s arms, the sensation of being tethered. Of something powerful choosing him, binding him. Protecting him.

His pulse thudded in his ears like war drums. His hands trembled as they gripped the armrests. Slowly, he forced himself to breathe. Not calm — he was far from calm — but just present. Anchored.

And then, cutting through the fog of panic and confusion, came a single, crystal-clear thought.

“Where’s Hermione?” he whispered.

The question dropped like a stone into still water, its ripples spreading through the room.

A soft hiss answered him.

Nagini had coiled herself around the base of his chair, her body a massive, warm presence at his feet. Her head rested in his lap with a strange, almost feline grace. When he looked down, her amber eyes met his; not cold or calculating, as they often were, but soft. Almost… apologetic.

She blinked once, slowly.

“I think,” she hissed quietly, her voice slithering through his mind in Parseltongue, “that master should explain.”

Harry’s breath caught.

The words were simple. But the way she said them — low, deliberate, not cruel — sent ice down his spine. Something had happened, something he had been present for but not aware.

Slowly bits of his dream came back to him – that strong and pretty girl who had gone away.

Harry stared out the window, jaw tight.

And then, like a thunderclap splitting the silence, a crash echoed from above.

Harry jolted upright, his breath catching in his throat. He scrambled for his wand, his hands patting his pockets, his lap, the folds of the robes he had dined in, slept in —

Nothing.

His wand wasn’t on him.

Before panic could fully seize him, footsteps thundered down the stairs — rapid, unsteady, urgent. And then the door burst open.

Tom Riddle stood in the threshold, half-wild, eyes fever-bright, breath sharp and shallow like he’d run through a battlefield. He was disheveled in a way Harry had never seen before — hair unkempt, magic still crackling faintly around his fingertips like static that hadn’t quite settled.

For a moment, they just stared at each other.

Tom’s eyes locked onto Harry’s, dark and unblinking, scanning for something — damage, betrayal, absence. Then, just slightly, they softened. The mad gleam ebbed. He exhaled, visibly grounding himself. A measure of control returned to his posture, but only just.

He didn’t apologize. He didn’t explain.

Instead, he crossed the room with a slow, almost reluctant grace and took the seat opposite Harry at the small table.

For a breathless moment, neither of them spoke.

The air was heavy with too many things unsaid: questions, memories, something else Harry didn’t have a name for. Tom looked at him not like an enemy, not like a lover, not even like a captor.

He looked at him like a man who had crossed a line in the dark and wasn’t sure what he would find on the other side.

They sat in silence.

A long, thick, unbreachable silence.

Nagini, who had moved to the warm hearth, gave a long, theatrical sigh. With the haughty air of someone who had endured one too many awkward human interactions, she flicked her tail and hissed sharply. A moment later, with a faint pop, a house-elf appeared; and, without a word, Tizzy began laying out breakfast.

The usual spread soon blanketed the table: warm scones, a silver rack of toast, eggs softly steaming in enchanted dishes that kept them at the perfect temperature. Tea poured itself. Butter churned quietly in its dish.

Neither of them moved.

Eventually, Harry reached for a piece of toast more out of habit than hunger. He took a bite, barely tasted it, and set it down again. Tom, across from him, did little more than stir his tea in slow, mechanical circles, eyes watching the ripples like they might reveal an answer.

They made a halfhearted attempt at eating, neither fully touching their food. The silence lingered — not hostile, not even uncomfortable. Just… heavy. Thick with unspoken truths neither was ready to unpack.

Harry’s thoughts drifted.

Back to the dream. Or what he thought had been a dream. Except now he was fairly certain it hadn’t been a dream at all. The blinding light. The storm of magic. The way his body had felt — like it was being unraveled and remade all at once. The warmth, the voice, the touch. Tom.

His mind turned over the memories slowly, carefully; like pages in a too-old book that might tear if handled wrong. He sifted through what he’d seen, what he’d felt, and tried to arrange it into something coherent. Something that could explain why he was sitting here, across from a man who had once tried to kill him — and now looked at him like he was holding a ticking clock.

Had held him in his sleep like he was the most precious thing in existence.

He had questions. Dozens of them. But most, he could already guess at the answers.

That was the worst part.

Because Harry knew Tom. Not just the facts or the public face, but the quiet workings beneath the cruel logic, the hunger for control, the cracks that had let obsession and fear seep in long ago. He’d studied him, fought him, bled because of him. And through all of it — through Voldemort and Riddle and whatever this third version of the man was now — he had learned him.

And, if he was being honest, he might know Tom Riddle better than Tom Riddle knew himself.

And wasn’t that just utterly fucked.

Tom, naturally, was lost in his own head too. But unlike Harry, whose thoughts churned and collided in sharp bursts of clarity, Tom’s were buried beneath layers of practiced denial — justifications stacked on rationalizations, spiraling down a pit he refused to admit he’d dug himself.

Still, Harry had to ask. Needed to hear it spoken aloud. Needed the weight of it to fall between them, undeniable and real.

He looked up, his voice firm. No preamble. No softening.

“Where’s Hermione?”

Tom didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. His voice was even, almost infuriatingly calm.

“At the Burrow,” he said. “She’s safe.”

Harry let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding — half relief, half something jagged and lonely twisting under his ribs.

But relief was not enough.

“And what else did you do to her?”

He said it flatly. Without accusation in tone, but every syllable laced with warning. Because he knew Tom. Knew he wouldn’t have let Hermione walk away with her memories intact. Not after what she’d seen. Not with what she knew.

Tom didn’t answer right away.

Harry leaned forward, voice rising — not with volume, but with force: “What did you do to her?”

Tom’s eyes flicked toward him then, something unreadable passing behind them.

“I removed the last two months from her mind,” he said at last. “She remembers nothing after the day the Weasley boy left. Not the child. Not this place. Nothing.”

The silence that followed felt deafening.

Harry stared at him; hands clenched around the edge of the table.

“You obliviated her.”

“I protected her.”

“Don’t —” Harry’s chair scraped back as he stood, voice sharp. “Don’t twist this into mercy. You took her agency. You violated her.”

“I ensured her survival.”

“No. You ensured yours.” The words cut like glass. “You erased her because she was a risk — to you.”

Tom stood too now, the calm mask cracking, voice low but electric with tension.

“She couldn’t remain here knowing what she did, and she couldn’t go back with that knowledge either. She would have told the Order. They would have come for you, for the child – they would have a found a way in. Everything would’ve collapsed.”

Harry’s jaw clenched. His mind was a storm of fury and heartbreak. He didn’t know everything – he realized other things had happened, but he would get to those in times.

It was the absence of the light in the world named Hermione Granger that was his sole priority now.

“She was my friend,” he whispered. “She would have protected us.”

Tom said nothing.

And for once, his silence felt like the closest thing to guilt Harry had ever seen on him. More so than with Lily… No – he couldn’t go there right now.

Harry exhaled again — this one shuddering, broken at the edges. A single tear traced down his cheek before he could stop it.

He supposed — supposed — he should feel grateful that she got to keep anything at all. That there were still pieces of her memory intact. That she was alive. Whole.

But it didn’t stop the ache. Didn’t stop the hollow, gutting sense of loss that twisted through his chest. Because he remembered everything. Every moment. Every impossible, fragile, beautiful second that they had made out of the chaos together.

Their chaos.

Surviving Malfoy Manor. The stolen mornings in the kitchen, laughing over batter and burnt biscuits. The night his mother’s echo had left him reeling, and Hermione had held him like she could shoulder the grief for him.

All of it… gone.

Wiped from her like chalk from a board.

He swallowed hard.

“She was there,” he whispered. “Through everything. And now… now I’m the only one who remembers.”

His voice cracked, and another tear slipped free.

Still — he forced himself to breathe. To steady. To find something solid in the wreckage.

“She’s safe now,” he said, like a vow to himself. “She can live her life… instead of always sacrificing it for mine.”

And he’d make sure of it. Because he owed her. For her stubborn loyalty. For her friendship. For the impossible gift she had tried to give him every day of this war.

For Hogwarts: A History.

Another breath. Another tear.

His gaze lifted, sharp and burning.

“Swear it,” he said, voice low but unwavering.

“Swear to me — she’ll be safe. That the Weasleys will be safe. That no harm will come to any of them.”

Harry was a wreck — raw and unraveling at the edges — but this… this was the least he could do. If nothing else, he could make sure his family was safe.

That had to be enough. Eventually.

“Okay,” Tom said quietly.

Not Voldemort. Not the Dark Lord. Just Tom.

Now and forever.

But Harry didn’t move. Didn’t blink. His green eyes locked onto him, unwavering.

“Swear it.”

It wasn’t a plea — it was a sentence carved in stone. The kind of command that didn’t rise from anger, but from grief too old and heavy to carry gently anymore. A voice shaped by war, by sacrifice, by too many promises broken too late.

Tom met his gaze, and for a moment — brief, weightless, eternal — something passed between them. Not magic, not entirely. Something older than spells and darker than oaths.

“I swear it,” Tom said, the words falling from his lips like iron dropped into still water.

The vow settled over the room like a shift in barometric pressure — no flash of light, no thunderclap, but reality itself felt subtly rearranged. Something sealed. Something surrendered.

Harry exhaled, long and slow.

Tom didn’t look away.

He couldn’t.

Because there, across from him, sat the boy who had defied prophecy and death and the universe’s most twisted joke. The boy who was now a man, bearing something inside him that should have never been possible.

And yet was.

The boy who had once been an enemy. A threat. A symbol.

Now... now he was something else.

Something Tom didn’t have a name for.

And as that silence stretched, filled only by the sound of Harry’s breathing and the fading tremor of vow-magic still hanging in the air, Tom realized — with the quiet panic of a man glimpsing the edge of a cliff he hadn’t meant to stand on — that he was slipping.

The author bangs head into keyboard. These two are idiots.

Also, following an outline is one thing; turning it into whatever that was is quite another. To be honest I feel like I am straddling the most absurd thing ever and something profoundly deep and honest and I worry now I’m going to mess up whatever this has become.

Reviews would be very much appreciated right now.

Chapter Text

AN: I really appreciate all of you being on the ride with me. Even if you do not comment – I really just hope it has been entertaining.

Also, everything is written – it just needs to be edited and is going through my dearest friend for the sake of continuity and all that. Shout out to WML – I’m so blessed to know you and have you through the hell that has been this year.

PS – this is hands down my favorite chapter so far.

JK owns HP. She does not own this community.

Harry slammed the book shut with a sharp, final crack — the sound slicing through the quiet, high-vaulted hush of the library like a spell misfired. The echo lingered in the rafters, accusatory.

He was done.

Seven days of tiptoeing. Of polite detente and strained civility. Of breathing in measured counts, careful not to disturb the fragile rhythm they had established in the aftermath of Hermione’s Obliviation. But it was fraying — he was fraying. Thread by thread, their arrangement had worn him thin.

The words on the page no longer made sense, swimming in his vision, drowned beneath the weight of frustration he could no longer name.

“I need space, Tom.”

His voice cut cleanly through the stillness. Controlled. Low. But brimming with tension that had no more room to stretch.

Across from him, Tom slowly raised his eyes from the worn volume on male pregnancy in his lap. His expression shifted — not anger, not yet — but something colder. Calculating. The narrowing of his gaze was almost imperceptible, but Harry felt it like pressure on his ribs.

“Space,” Tom repeated, his voice as even as glass just before it cracked.

On the rug between them, Nagini stirred in front of the hearth. Her coils shifted with lazy grace, head lifting, tongue flicking once through the air. She tilted it at an angle that might have been interpreted as sympathetic — if not for the unmistakable gleam of smug satisfaction in her yellow eyes.

She had seen this coming. Had smelled it days ago in the way Harry’s magic sparked like static and the way Tom’s patience coiled tighter and tighter.

Finally, her expression all but purred. Let the humans combust. I’ve earned my front-row seat.

“No,” Tom said simply. Calm. Final. As though that one word settled the matter.

Harry’s eyebrows shot up. His arms flailed slightly, half-incredulous. “No?”

It wasn’t a shout. Not yet. But it carried the kind of edge that said a storm was about to break — and Tom, brilliant dark wizard or not, might not escape unscathed.

“Are you joking?” Harry snapped, his voice rising an octave as he shot up from his chair.

Well – as fast as a five-month pregnant person can shoot out of a chair.

“You’re always here. Always. If I’m reading, you’re suddenly fascinated with the concept of words on pages. If I’m in the kitchen, you’re hovering behind me — constantly questioning why Nagini needs any baked goods in the first place – and not even helping.”

Tom, lounging far too comfortably in his chair, didn’t even blink.

“She’s a snake. She shouldn’t be eating sugar at all.”

Nagini, who had been draped along the hearth like a sated goddess, lifted her head with deliberate menace. Her tongue flicked once — slow, sharp, and thoroughly offended.

“I will eat you before I give up cinnamon rolls,” she hissed venomously in Parseltongue.

“And last night,” Harry continued, turning back to Tom, “you followed me into the bathroom. The bathroom, Tom.”

“I didn’t follow you,” Tom said coolly. “I opened the door. There’s a difference.”

Harry stared at him.

“You opened the door while I was getting into the bath. Naked!”

“I thought you had fallen in – or that you needed more towels.”

Harry stared murderously.

“It’s been seven days,” Harry snapped, barely keeping his voice steady.

“Seven days of you shadowing me like I’m a bloody Snitch and you’re the world’s most obsessive Seeker.”

He immediately regretted the phrasing. His cheeks flushed red, and he cleared his throat in a futile attempt to move on.

“You know what I mean!” he huffed, throwing his arms up.

“I haven’t had five minutes to myself since — since — hell, since I blacked out and woke up in your absurdly large bed like some Victorian invalid!”

His ears burned now, heat creeping all the way down his neck. Especially at the memory of how he'd woken up a week ago.

(And every day since.)

Hard. Pressed up against a Dark Lord. And worse, aroused.

Thank Merlin Tom didn’t know. He had tried to be careful since then. Always kept a pillow — no, a bloody barrier — between them at night, as though it might keep everything at a proper distance.

Which was another matter altogether. That Harry even had to sleep in his bed in the first place!

Tom, for his part, was blissfully unaware of the mortifying memory currently short-circuiting Harry’s brain (he was too busy with his own). He remained seated, gaze narrowed and unreadable, the slow blink of a predator deciding whether to pounce or stay still.

“I’m monitoring your condition,” he replied, with maddening calm.

“The connection requires proximity. You know that.”

Harry crossed his arms.

“There’s proximity, and then there’s stalking.”

Tom arched a brow.

“You collapsed in a magical event that nearly killed us both. Forgive me for being invested in whether or not you do so again.”

Harry’s glare only deepened.

“So your solution is to never let me out of your sight?”

“Yes,” Tom said without hesitation. “That is the solution.”

Harry sputtered. “You’re impossible!”

“And you’re alive,” Tom said, eyes glittering. “Because of me. Because I was able to get to you in time!”

His nostrils flared.

“I need space,” Harry said, pacing now, gesturing wildly.

“Like, physical distance. A room. A door I can close. Preferably one you don’t immediately open because I sneezed and you thought it might be a ‘signal.’”

Tom arched a brow.

“In my defense, you were in distress.”

“I had pepper up my nose.”

“An easily mistaken sound for what happened that night—”

“No.” Harry pointed at him like he was warding off a hex.

“You don’t get to rationalize this. You’ve followed me into the library, the gardens, the loo, and once — once, Tom — into the pantry when I was just looking for a bloody jar of cloves.”

Tom crossed his arms, looking entirely unrepentant.

“That cupboard has no visibility. You could have been attacked.”

“By what, a rogue jar of nutmeg?”

Nagini gave a long, theatrical sigh and flopped her head dramatically onto her coils.

“Honestly,” she said, with the bone-deep exasperation of someone who had lived through decades of mortal idiocy, “you two need to either rip each other’s clothes off or schedule a double session with a very patient therapist. Possibly both. I’m not picky.”

She flicked her tongue in lazy judgment, her emerald eyes narrowing with withering clarity.

“At this point, I’m the only one in this house with any emotional intelligence, and I don’t even have eyebrows to raise at you. And yet…”

She gave a deliberate, exaggerated glance between them.

“Here I am. Exhausted.”

That earned her a withering look from Tom and a half-choked laugh from Harry, though his amusement was brittle, fraying almost as soon as it surfaced. Because beneath it — behind the flushed cheeks and the startled expression — was something else entirely.

A flicker of sorrow. The quiet ache of something unsaid, unhealed, unresolved.

The room stilled, if only for a breath.

Harry stopped pacing.

“Why, Tom,” Harry said, and his voice was different now — low, almost gentle. Not a weapon. A question. A plea.

“Why are you so scared of death?”

Tom’s posture changed instantly. He didn’t move — he didn’t have to. It was in the eyes. In the jaw. In the way the air in the room seemed to constrict, cool, like all the warmth had been sucked from the fire and dragged into the hollow of something ancient and defensive.

The silence that followed felt unnatural.

Even Nagini didn’t speak.

“Because that’s what this is, isn’t it?” Harry continued, taking a step closer.

“All of this. The Horcruxes. The immortality. The... shadowing me like I’m some kind of time bomb. It’s not power you’re afraid of losing. It’s just... not existing.”

Tom said nothing.

The tension in the room coiled tighter, a thread pulled taut. The library, once filled with candlelight and parchment and half-eaten scones, suddenly felt cavernous. Cold. Like the echo of a mausoleum.

“I used to think you were obsessed with control,” Harry said, his voice rough now, the words costing him something.

“But it’s more than that, isn’t it? You’re terrified. Of the unknown. Of what comes next. That there’s nothing – when you know that there is – when you’ve seen people come back from it.”

His voice had been a whisper at the end.

Tom’s fingers curled against the armrest of his chair. Slowly. Like it was taking everything in him not to lash out. His lips parted once, then pressed closed again.

“You don’t know that,” he said finally. Quiet. Dangerous.

Harry tilted his head. “Don’t I?”

There was a flicker in Tom’s eyes then — a betrayal of something deeply buried and barely restrained.

“You think I wanted this?” Tom hissed.

“To be bound to a boy I once marked for death? To share magic — soul, fate — with you, because the universe had a flair for irony?”

Harry didn’t flinch.

“I think you’re scared of dying alone. I think you always have been.”

Tom surged to his feet so suddenly the chair screeched back across the floor.

And Nagini — Nagini made a sound low in her throat, not quite a warning, not quite surprise. Just... awareness.

Awareness of something unspoken but enormous pressing in around them.

Harry stood his ground, breathing hard, his hands clenched at his sides — not because he expected violence, but because this wasn’t about winning ten minutes of freedom anymore.

It was about truth.

And Tom, for once, had none to offer.

“You have to trust that I do not want this baby to be hurt – that I will do everything in my power to make sure that it stays healthy. That I stay healthy.”

Tom stood just an arm’s length away, close enough that the air between them felt electrified, thin with something unspoken. Neither of them acknowledged the fact that all it would take was one step forward — one raised hand — and they could bridge the distance. Could satisfy that quiet, aching need for closeness that they never dared speak aloud.

Because they knew — even if they never said it — that in sleep, their bodies gravitated toward one another. That in the dead of night, half-dreaming, half-desperate, they found warmth in the shape of each other.

But morning always came. And with it, silence. A polite, suffocating denial.

Now, in the charged hush of the library, Tom’s voice cut through it, low and sharp.

“And what of the protection?” he demanded.

“You didn’t feel what I felt — when the Horcruxes dissolved. When the magic in my gut twisted and pulled as if my life itself was being wrenched away. It’s not just about avoiding harm to the child — it’s about guarding it. Actively. Constantly. And you are bound to that child.”

He stepped forward, just half a pace. Close enough that Harry could see the flicker of fear behind the anger in his eyes.

“That means I’m bound to you. And that’s why I don’t let you out of my sight.”

Harry didn’t flinch. Didn’t look away. He met Tom’s gaze head-on, searching. Digging.

Looking past the words, into the truth buried beneath.

“And if this Horcrux protection fails?” Tom asked, voice cracking just slightly — more thought than sound.

“What if it wears off and I’m not near you? What if something happens to the child? To you. To me?”

The room stilled, thick with the weight of that question. Not rhetorical. Not hypothetical.

Real.

Tom was admitting what he hadn’t dared to say aloud: that he was afraid.

It was Harry’s turn to remain silent.

So, they just stood there — two impossibly tangled lives suspended in the eye of something neither war nor peace could quite define. On the threshold of something new, something strange, something terrifying. Enemies, not quite. Allies, maybe. Something else, certainly. Whatever it was, it bound them like a string pulled taut between opposing stars.

And then the baby kicked.

Harry’s breath hitched — his whole body stilled — and his hands flew instinctively to his stomach. His eyes went wide with disbelief and wonder.

Tom reacted instantly, the shift in Harry’s expression igniting something primal. His hands shot out, gripping Harry’s shoulders, drawing him close with a protective urgency that belied every dark myth ever whispered about him.

“What is it?” Tom demanded, eyes searching Harry’s face, his voice low but laced with something that sounded alarmingly like worry.

Harry didn’t answer — not at first. A smile began to bloom across his face instead. Not the guarded kind, not the tired one he wore when trying to hide. But a real one — soft and luminous and full of breathless awe. His fingers trembled slightly as he lifted his shirt, baring the gentle swell of his stomach.

“I felt them,” he whispered, eyes shining.

“They kicked.”

He stared down at the place where magic and life converged beneath his skin, one hand moving in slow, reverent circles over the bump. There was no mistaking it now — he was pregnant, undeniably and beautifully so.

And then he looked up, locking eyes with Tom.

There was still worry etched into Tom’s features, still the tension of a man who didn’t know what came next. But something deeper was surfacing too — something older than fear. Older than power. Something human.

Without breaking eye contact, Harry reached for him.

“Here,” he said, his voice barely more than a breath.

He took Tom’s hand — handsome, long-fingered, and uncertain — and placed it gently over the curve of his stomach.

A moment passed.

Then another kick.

Tom inhaled sharply, like he had touched divinity and didn’t know what to do with it. His fingers flexed ever so slightly, not pulling away.

Harry kept watching him.

Watched as the astonishment on Tom’s face softened — melted into something slower, more deliberate. Something that looked almost like reverence. The sharp edges between them dulled for a breath, the labels they’d worn for so long — enemy, savior, murderer, boy — blurred into something unnamed.

Something human.

They stood there, bound together by the quiet miracle fluttering beneath Harry’s skin, and for the first time in what felt like lifetimes, neither moved to break the silence.

Harry swallowed, then spoke softly. A peace offering, a boundary, a plea for normalcy.

“Just a little space,” he said.

“Ten, fifteen minutes, that’s all – every now and then. To take a bath. Or frost a cake. Or just…”

He faltered, trailing off into the shared warmth between their hands.

From her spot by the hearth, Nagini’s head snapped up, tongue flicking with sudden, intense interest. She fixed him with laser focus.

“Did someone say cake?” she hissed, as though invoking an ancient rite.

Tom cut in — quiet but firm. “Okay.”

Harry blinked. “Okay?”

Tom nodded once, and for all the power he wielded, it was not a gesture of control, but consent. A rare thing from him.

“Okay,” Harry echoed, voice softer this time.

And still, neither of them moved.

They stood there, hands layered over bare skin, the ghost of another kick beneath their fingertips grounding them in the present like a tether.

Time, for a moment, bowed out.

For one moment the world just seemed to only be made of them.

It had been two weeks since Hermione Granger reappeared at the Burrow — two weeks since she’d stumbled through the wards in a starlit dress, dazed, bloodied, and missing two months of her life.

Fourteen days wasn’t nearly enough time to process something like that. Not the gaping hole where her memory should have been. Not the sharp dissonance between what she remembered and the world she had returned to.

In her mind, Ron had only just walked away. The pain of his departure still fresh, still raw — as if it had happened hours ago rather than months.

And yet, the man who now sat across from her at breakfast, who stayed up helping her piece together a timeline each night, wasn’t the same boy who had left the tent in a storm of frustration and fear. This Ron bore the weight of those missing weeks like bricks across his shoulders.

He had looked for Harry. Had searched every day without fail. And it showed — in his thinner frame, his haunted eyes, and the way he never asked for forgiveness, only offered his help.

He had shown her his notes. Carefully kept summaries, sketched maps, timelines built out of desperation and sleepless nights. Pages and pages, all marked with dates, potential sightings, dead ends, and the maddening blanks that no amount of ink could fill.

And Hermione — Hermione hadn’t had much to say. Not because it wasn’t impressive, but because it was. Ron had always had a mind for tactics, for fitting disparate pieces together under pressure, even if he rarely gave himself credit for it. She had read through his work in silence, turning page after page, and found herself nodding — not out of politeness, but because his conclusions made sense. His logic tracked. His theories, solid. He had done the work.

And something about that undid her a little.

They still hadn’t spoken about it. Not really. Not about him leaving. Not about the ache his abandonment had left in her. There would be time for that… later. After they found Harry. After they understood what had really happened to her.

But even without those words, things had begun to shift between them. The tension had dulled. The silences had become companionable. They moved around each other like two people learning a new rhythm.

Each day brought a little more clarity. A little less pain. And something like hope.

They were doing something. They weren’t standing still. And after everything that had been taken from them, that mattered more than anything.

Every day, they went out.

Retraced old steps. Scoured new ones. Marked maps. Tested theories. Held onto hope like it was a tangible thing — grasped in their hands, woven through their breath.

And every day, they returned — not to the Burrow. It was too dangerous. Given that Hermione was a Muggleborn and still vulnerable to scrutiny and surveillance, they had made Shell Cottage their haven. Remote, protected under the Fidelius Charm, and wrapped in the scent of sea salt and wind. It had become a place of maps and theories and tea. A place where the war could be held at bay for just a few hours.

Today was no different.

They had Apparated to the northern coast of Scotland, just outside of Aberdeen, in search of Dunnottar Castle — a long-abandoned ruin with whispers of dark magic threaded through its stones. The coast had roared around them when they arrived, waves crashing like war drums, but as always, the search had yielded nothing. No sign of Harry. No trace of him in the footprints they cast over craggy bluffs or the windswept trails winding through gorse and heather.

And now, the two of them sat on a cold stone outcrop protected from the wind with sandwiches in hand, their lunch wrapped in wax paper, their faces pink with windburn but warmed through magic.

Hermione squinted into the distance.

“There’s nothing out here.”

Ron didn’t answer right away. He took a bite of his sandwich, chewed slowly, then muttered, “There never is.”

She turned toward him.

“You don’t think we missed something?”

He shook his head.

“No. I mean… we’ve triple-checked every site he mentioned. Every location we mapped back in the tent. Every hunch I’ve had, you’ve had, Dumbledore had. We’ve covered them all.”

She looked down at her barely-touched sandwich, fingers tightening around the wax paper.

“We’re running out of places.”

“Yeah,” Ron said quietly. “We are.”

The wind picked up, whistling between them, tugging at the strands of Hermione’s hair that had come loose from her plait.

“I hate this,” she said softly.

“Not knowing where he is. Not knowing if he’s safe. Not knowing what they did to me.”

“I know.” Ron's voice cracked just slightly, and he cleared his throat quickly as if to shake it off.

He glanced down at his hands, fingers tightening around the edge of his own sandwich.

“You can’t get discouraged,” he said, quieter now, but firmer.

“We’re going to find him. I’m not stopping. I don’t care if we have to search every cursed inch of Britain — we will bring him home.”

Hermione looked at him, eyes soft but tired.

She wasn’t used to his resolve giving her strength and courage; she could get used to it. In time.

“You look better,” she said gently. “Healthier. You’re eating more.”

Ron gave a half-shrug, almost self-conscious.

“Helps… not being alone,” he said. His voice dipped again.

“Which is why I can’t stop, Hermione. I can’t take it either — thinking of Harry out there. Alone. After everything.”

His knuckles went white around the sandwich.

“He’s had more than his fair share of being alone. People thinking he can handle it because he’s The Boy Who Lived or whatever. But I know better. I should have known better.”

Hermione’s lips parted, as if to say something, but she couldn’t find the words. Instead she just nodded. There was something about Ron now — quieter, steadier. Like the jagged edges she remembered had been worn down by time and guilt and heartbreak.

She was still adjusting. To him. To all of it. This wasn’t the Ron who stormed out of the tent, his voice loud and angry and hurting. This Ron sat beside her with an ache he didn’t try to hide and a mission he refused to abandon.

Maybe grief shaped people. Maybe guilt did too. Molded them into something new.

She glanced down at her notes, then up at the horizon, wind catching the strands of her hair again.

“I believe you,” she whispered. “That we’ll find him.”

They finished their meal quietly, the lull between waves crashing against the distant cliffs filling the silence between them. Hermione took the last bite of her sandwich, chewed slowly, and swallowed as if bracing herself.

“You know, Ron,” she said at last, her voice low and thoughtful, “I’ve been thinking a lot lately — about what it’s like, being on the other side of memory loss.”

Ron looked up from where he was absently crumbling a chip between his fingers, his attention sharpening.

“I keep wondering,” she continued, “if maybe… maybe I had this coming. For what I did to my parents.”

Ron frowned. “Hermione—”

“I mean it,” she said, pressing on before he could interrupt her.

“I know why I did it. I did it to keep them safe. So that they wouldn’t be targets because of me. I told myself it was necessary. That it was love. But it was still a violation. I knew that when I cast the spell. But not like this. Not—” She faltered, exhaled.

“Not until now. Until I woke up with months missing, feeling like my own life had been stolen from me.”

Ron dropped the crumbled chip onto the ground and leaned forward. “You can’t do that to yourself, Hermione.”

She looked at him, eyes sharp with unshed guilt.

“You were always planning to give them their memories back,” Ron said firmly. “You weren’t trying to erase who they were. You were trying to keep them alive. And you know, deep down, they would understand that.”

“But I didn’t ask them, Ron,” she said quietly. “I didn’t give them a choice. I just… did it. Took their agency. Their right to decide what risks they were willing to take for their daughter.”

Silence fell again, heavier this time. The sea murmured in the background, a reminder of how far from answers they still were.

Ron rubbed the back of his neck, struggling with something. Then, finally:

“How would you feel, Hermione,” he asked, “if someone took away your memory to keep you safe?”

Her eyes met his, steady and unreadable.

“What if it wasn’t to hurt you, but to protect you?” Ron continued, his voice quieter now.

“What if you knew something — or learned something — something dangerous? What if you’d even asked for it, because you knew it was the only way to survive?”

Hermione inhaled slowly, her fingers tightening around the edge of the bench she had conjured.

“I guess it’s hard to say,” she murmured. “Because I don’t remember making the decision. If I did agree to it — if I gave permission — it’s still gone. That knowledge, that consent... it isn’t with me now. So even if I had asked for it, I wouldn’t know that I had. I’d still wake up assuming it was taken from me. Done to me, not with my participation.”

She stared down at her hands.

“So maybe it doesn’t matter what the reasons were,” she added. “Not really. Because either way, it’s done. It’s missing. It feels like theft, even if it wasn’t.”

Ron didn’t say anything for a long moment, just sat with her in the thick quiet that followed.

“It’s...” he began, searching for the right word.

“Complicated,” Hermione finished for him, exhaling a laugh that didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“Yeah.”

But Ron was frowning now, brows knit in that particular way he got when something started clicking into place in his head.

“But what if you did know something,” he said slowly, “something important. What if it wasn’t malicious at all?”

Hermione looked up, surprised by the sudden focus in his voice.

Ron leaned forward, elbows on his knees, thoughts catching fire.

“Why did they stop your memories from that moment? Why bring you back to just after I left? Why not wipe you back further, or more completely?” he asked, voice sharpening with every word.

“Why only the last two months?”

Hermione’s brow furrowed; her breath caught.

“If someone was going to be cruel, or trying to cover their tracks,” Ron said, “they’d take everything. But they didn’t.”

He looked at her, eyes shining with something fierce — something hopeful.

“They took only what mattered. Which means there’s something in that window of time... something worth protecting.”

Hermione blinked at him, stunned. She wasn’t used to this level of deduction coming from Ron — not that he was incapable, but because he so rarely let himself lead with thought instead of feeling.

“You’ve really been thinking about this,” she said softly, her voice caught between admiration and disbelief.

“Two months, Hermione,” Ron said.

“I haven’t done much else but think.”

“You’re right,” Hermione breathed, her voice soft but electric — like something dormant in her had finally begun to stir. She sat forward, hands braced on the table as though grounding herself in the thought, in the feeling.

Ron blinked, surprised by the shift in her tone.

“I think you’re onto something,” she continued, her words gaining strength as she spoke.

“This — what we’re circling — it feels closer than anything has in the past two weeks.”

She glanced toward the window, where the pale coastal sunlight spilled through.

“And you said the war... slowed after that, didn’t you? That strange lull? You mentioned it when I first got back.”

Ron nodded, slowly. “Yeah. Raids dropped off. Attacks stopped altogether. It’s been weird — like someone hit pause, or like something changed the rules.”

Hermione’s eyes sparked with sudden insight.

“And even now, I can feel it — subtle, but there. When Bill comes home from Gringotts, when your mum drops by with news from the Order — it’s like there’s... less urgency in the air. Less panic. Almost like the pressure’s shifted.”

Her brow furrowed, deep in thought.

“What if they’re connected?” she whispered.

“The memories I lost. The exact moment they were taken. The shift in the war. What if it’s not a coincidence?”

She closed her eyes tightly, willing her mind to open.

“I feel like it’s right there, Ron. Like the memory is behind some curtain I can’t tear down. It’s in me, I just can’t access it.”

Ron leaned in, his voice low and encouraging.

“Maybe there’s a reason for that. Maybe you — or someone — put up that barrier for a reason. Something that couldn’t be risked.”

Hermione opened her eyes again, frustrated tears glinting in the corners.

“But why? What could we have learned that was so dangerous it had to be hidden even from me? And why only from that moment — just after you left – and not what we were hunting altogether?”

Ron reached out, resting a steady hand over hers.

“We’ll figure it out. You’re closer now than you’ve ever been. And we’ll keep digging. Whatever it is — you already lived it once. We’ll help you find it again.”

She looked at him, really looked, and nodded. This time, there was steel behind her exhaustion. A spark behind the pain.

“Then let’s start again,” she said.

“From the day you left. We map every moment from there. We’ll find the thread I lost — and maybe that thread leads us to Harry.”

It was the end of January, and the Castle was fully in the heart of winter.

Frost bloomed across the tall windows like veins of silver, and the snow outside came and went in bursts, caught somewhere between ice storm and unrelentless snow. Inside, however, warmth reigned — soft and golden, filtering in through high glass and firelight.

The kitchen, once a place of sterile grandeur, now thrummed with a kind of domestic rhythm again that had been absent since Hermione’s departure.

Harry was six months along. Exactly six months today. Tom had checked that morning with quiet precision; his hand warm, but his touch clinical and careful. As if Harry might break, or disappear, or worse — become something he could no longer contain or predict.

It had been three weeks since the baby had kicked; since things had changed between them.

Softened.

There were still arguments, of course. Some explosive; some petty. Tom had a habit of hovering — hovering over Harry like he expected him to collapse or combust or rewrite the very foundations of magical theory and what was possible.

Again.

And Harry, hormonal and stubborn and increasingly uncomfortable in his own skin, did not appreciate being watched over like a first year, in a constant state of supervision.

Still, something had shifted. The constant friction had given way to something else — something quieter. Not friendship, not yet. But the beginnings of something not unlike it.

And today, it was Sunday.

Which meant baking.

Which meant Nagini had declared it a sacred day of sugar and indulgence, and therefore no war plots, no soul magic, and absolutely no existential dread until dessert had cooled and been eaten.

She was willing to negotiate on the cooled part.

Ever the taskmaster she was currently coiled in a warm patch near the oven, watching them with the keen eye of a general surveying her troops. A silk napkin had somehow been tied around her neck like a cape, and she radiated both satisfaction and judgment in equal measure.

“This is the true magic,” she hissed contentedly, watching as Harry assembled the ingredients before him.

“You two working together for what matters most.”

Tom, sleeves rolled up and brow furrowed, was currently chopping semi-sweet chocolate with an alarming degree of focus. Every piece was exactly the same size. Because of course it was.

Harry shot him a look.

“You know we’re just melting that down, right? This isn’t Potions class.”

“Precision matters,” Tom replied flatly. “Even in chaos.”

“Especially in cookies,” Nagini added wisely.

“This is why I’m here — to elevate the culinary standards of the Dark and Delicious Arts.”

Today’s request — or rather, decree — had been cookies. All kinds. Sugar, chocolate chip, snickerdoodle. But Nagini was especially invested in her latest obsession: chocolate and peanut butter. The holy grail. Her eyes all but glittered every time she said the words.

“If I had discovered this pairing sooner,” she mused with a dramatic sigh, “perhaps I would have taken a different path in life. A bakery instead of a battlefield. Aprons over ambushes. Meringues, not murder.”

She gave another sigh, this time longer and even more theatrical, flicking her tongue with tragic flair – as if mourning the life not lived. Mourning the bite not eaten.

Harry didn’t even glance up from the batter he was mixing, “You would still murder anyone who asked for raisins in their dessert.”

“Obviously,” she sniffed, offended on both a moral and culinary level.

“I’m not a savage.”

Tom, standing across the counter weighing flour with precision, didn’t look up either — but Harry caught the corner of his mouth twitch. Just barely. A flicker of amusement. It was gone almost as soon as it appeared, but it had been there.

And it made something in Harry’s chest warm unexpectedly — an ember glowing brighter than he meant to let it.

Nagini let her head loll sideways.

“Imagine it,” Nagini drawled, flicking her tail with flair.

“Nagini’s Culinary Confections. Elegant. Enchanted. Slightly life-threatening.”

Harry raised a brow, amused despite himself.

“Subtle tagline.”

She didn’t miss a beat. “And I’d still earn five stars on every review scroll,” she added smugly.

“Fear, after all, is an excellent incentive in building a loyalty program.”

“You’re completely unhinged,” Harry said, biting back a laugh.

“I’m visionary,” Nagini corrected, coiling herself into an exaggeratedly regal pose.

“You two just lack entrepreneurial instinct. If I ran a patisserie, there’d be hexed éclairs, enchanted scones, and a strict no-raisins policy enforced by permanent life banishment to Azkaban.”

Tom’s smile was more apparent this time. Nagini caught it instantly.

“See? He gets it.”

“I think he’s just imagining what a hexed éclair would do to a critic,” Harry said.

“Exactly.” She smirked. “It’s all about impact.”

Harry and Tom stood shoulder to shoulder at the counter, elbow-deep in dough, both doing their utmost to ignore the increasingly unhinged culinary monologue coming from across the room.

“…Death by Ganache, obviously, that would be the signature dessert,” Nagini drawled, slithering behind them; the light from the oven caught the gleam of her scales.

“But I’d follow it with Hexberry Tarts, Custard Crucios, and of course, Doomnuts.”

“And Unforgivable Cupcakes,” Nagini continued, undeterred, “each one laced with a different surprise spell. You never know what you’ll get — terror, tears, or temporary possession. Very trendy.”

Harry stifled a laugh behind his sleeve.

“And let’s not forget Polyjuice Pudding — a dessert that changes flavor and texture depending on who you’re thinking about — and the Poison Apple Turnover, naturally,” Nagini finished with a self-satisfied hiss.

Harry set down the spoon, finally looking up.

“If she opens this bakery, we’re all doomed.”

“She would never get a five-star review from the Prophet,” Tom said very matter-of-factly.

Nagini, overhearing, narrowed her slits menacingly.

“Please. I’d get six.”

It was tender, absurd – but also, right.

When Nagini became silent once more, they returned in earnest to their mixing bowls in front of them, dusted with flour and surrounded by chaos: measuring spoons, mismatched bowls, open jars of spices and extracts.

"Alright," Harry said, scanning the ingredients.

"Next step — just a drop of almond extract."

Tom, who had been watching his mixture like it might reveal the secrets of the universe, picked up the tiny bottle with surgical precision.

"A drop," he repeated flatly.

"Yes. A drop," Harry echoed.

Without breaking eye contact, Tom tipped the bottle — and poured in a decidedly non-drop amount.

Harry stared at the bowl, then at Tom.

"You didn’t," he said slowly, as if trying to convince himself it hadn’t happened.

Tom set the bottle down with the casual poise of someone who didn’t know they had just signed a death warrant.

“It’s approximate,” he said coolly.

“That was not approximate,” Harry snapped.

“That was… aggressive. You just murdered that batter.”

Tom raised a brow, completely unbothered.

“You poured the vanilla like it was holy water.”

Their eyes locked onto one another.

“Vanilla doesn’t count,” Harry huffed, snatching the nearly empty bottle of almond extract from Tom’s hand.

“You can bathe in vanilla and the worst that happens is your cookies taste like store-bought cookies. But almond? Almond extract is dark magic. A drop enhances. Two drops overpowers. And what you just did — you drowned it. That batter is dead. Gone. No resurrection spells will save it.”

Tom looked at him like he’d lost his mind.

“I’ll have you know there is a science to baking,” he said icily, folding his arms.

Harry arched a brow.

“Says the man who hadn’t even touched an oven until a week ago.”

Tom’s eyes narrowed, but before he could retort, a sudden and deeply satisfied burp echoed from the other side of the counter.

They both turned.

Nagini, looking far too pleased with herself, uncoiled from the counter stool where she had stealthily slithered up and now lounged like a queen. The mixing bowl — Tom’s mixing bowl — was empty. Spotless. Licked clean.

She gave them a slow, unrepentant blink.

“Well,” she said with theatrical languor, “someone had to spare you both the indignity of baking those cursed cookies.”

“Did you—” Harry sputtered, gesturing helplessly to the now gleaming bowl.

“That was an entire batch!”

Nagini flicked her tongue lazily, utterly unbothered.

“Consider it a noble sacrifice. It’s a good thing I’m willing to suffer through your culinary crimes for the greater good.”

She gave another tiny, satisfied burp and added with a smirk, “You’re right, by the way. Far too much extract. Try harder next time.”

Tom looked down at the space where his batter used to be, then back at her, then back at the bowl, his jaw tight.

“Do you want to explain to her,” Harry muttered, “or shall I?”

“Explain what?” Tom said, still glaring at the empty bowl like it had betrayed him.

“That we’re not baking for her,” Harry replied dryly. “We’re baking with her.”

Nagini raised her head proudly, tongue flicking once more.

“Semantics,” she declared. “And besides — who’s going to stop me? You?”

She turned her amused gaze toward Tom, eyes glittering with mischief.

“Your last attempt at custard ended in scrambled eggs,” she said airily, as though discussing the weather. “And don’t even get me started on that sorry excuse for caramel.”

Harry let out a strangled cough that might’ve been a laugh.

“You’re lucky baking wasn’t on the Hogwarts curriculum,” Nagini continued, stretching lazily, her tone pure theatrical disdain. “You would’ve received a Troll – your first.”

Tom looked up slowly from his mixing bowl, one brow arching with dangerous precision. There was a long, pregnant pause. His expression was composed — but only just.

“I burned sugar once,” he said coolly, “because I was reading a book on ancient rune sequences while stirring.”

Nagini’s tongue flicked in amusement. “Ah yes, the classic multitasking defense. Charming. And wildly ineffective.”

Harry, now openly grinning, added, “For what it’s worth, I thought the eggs were... brave.”

Tom turned his slow, withering stare on Harry, who just shrugged and kept stirring, his smile not fading in the least.

Nagini preened. “I rest my case.”

Harry was already cracking another egg into a fresh bowl.

“Start over,” he said, tone resigned. “And this time, you measure the almond extract like it’s Polyjuice.”

Tom scowled.

Nagini, curling back into a relaxed coil, murmured like a queen settling into her throne, “Carry on, peasants. I eagerly await batch two.”

Tom stared at her, genuinely stunned — like the realization had only just hit him that his long-time familiar and previous Horcrux serpent who once whispered strategy into his ear was, in fact, a fully unrepentant sugar goblin.

“You’ve always been like this?” he asked, blinking slowly.

Nagini blinked back.

“Did you think I stayed by your side out of ideology?” Her tongue flicked. “Please. I was holding out for the possibility of pastries.”

Harry snorted. “You’ll learn to tune her out,” he said, giving Tom a commiserating pat on the back as he moved to gather fresh ingredients.

“Or at least learn when she’s about to strike. She has a very specific look she gets before she eats the batter if you catch it in time.”

“I do not—” Nagini started but paused. “...Okay, I do. But I’m helping. You were heading for a tragedy in three acts.”

They moved around each other now with a surprising ease — Harry stirring the second batter with practiced sweeps of his whisk while Tom weighed flour with the exactitude of someone measuring out volatile potion ingredients.

Once the doughs were chilled, they began to roll out the cookies — neat rows of sugar, chocolate chip, and the peanut butter-chocolate hybrids that had quickly become Nagini’s reigning obsession. Tom had taken command of oven duty, setting and rotating the trays with meticulous attention under Nagini’s relentless, hawk-like gaze from atop the kitchen counter.

Where she was absolutely not supposed to be.

“I might like sugar,” she hissed, tail flicking in warning as she watched a batch begin to rise, “but even I have standards.”

Harry didn’t look up from the frosting he was whipping into stiff peaks. “That didn’t stop you from eating the cupcakes and the wrappers last week.”

Nagini blinked slowly, wholly unrepentant. “Your point?”

Harry chuckled and began scooping the frosting into piping bags, wiping the corner of his mouth where a streak of flour — or maybe frosting — had landed in the chaos. He licked a bit of it off the tip of his thumb before glancing over his shoulder.

“How much time’s left?”

Tom had just finished rotating the trays, the scent of caramelizing sugar thick in the air, when he checked the enchanted timer hovering above the stove.

“Five minutes,” he said, his voice calm, measured.

Tom turned back toward the counter, his movements smooth, controlled — too controlled, perhaps, for how tightly the air seemed to hum around them. He reached for the parchment-lined tray, but as he did, his gaze flicked sideways toward Harry. Just a glance.

And then he stilled.

The warmth between them pulsed like a live current, crackling and heavy, and before Tom could stop himself, his eyes dropped — unintentionally, irreversibly — to Harry’s mouth.

“Oh — you have something,” he said, the words low, almost absentminded.

A smear of chocolate frosting glistened on the corner of his lower lip, absurdly rich against the soft pink. Tom stared, a flicker of confusion, awe, and something sharper passing through his expression. Hunger, yes — but not just the carnal kind. It was hunger for understanding, for nearness, for something he didn’t yet know how to name.

His hand lifted — slowly, cautiously, like approaching a volatile spell — and his thumb brushed the edge of Harry’s lip, removing the frosting in one deliberate sweep.

It was too gentle for how feral the moment felt.

A slow drag of skin. A quiet intake of breath. Time stilled around them.

Then, as if to ground himself, Tom brought his thumb to his own mouth and licked it clean. Not lasciviously. Almost thoughtfully. As though trying to solve a puzzle he hadn’t expected to enjoy tasting.

And still, he didn’t look away.

The kitchen fell utterly silent.

Except for the crackling of the empty piping bag in Harry’s hand. Except for the heat suddenly creeping up Harry’s neck. Except for the way neither of them could quite break the stare now stretching between them, taut as a string pulled to snapping.

They didn’t speak. They didn’t move. Whatever had sparked between them — something volatile, something electric — had frozen them in place, caught between too many possibilities and the weight of everything unsaid.

And then—

“THE COOKIES, YOU FOOLS!”

Nagini’s shriek nearly shattered the moment. She launched herself from the counter in a dramatic arc, tail flailing as she pointed toward the oven with the full outrage of a sugar-deprived deity.

Harry and Tom blinked, breaking apart like two magnets suddenly repelled.

Tom spun toward the oven, yanking the door open, and muttered a curse. Harry clutched his piping bag like a sword, trying to remember how to breathe.

Nagini coiled herself with supreme annoyance back onto the counter.

“Honestly,” she hissed, “I give you both one chore. One.”

Harry’s cheeks were crimson as he turned away, but his smile was still there — crooked, quiet, a little stunned.

Tom didn’t smile. But his hand lingered on the oven handle a second longer than necessary.

DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD PACING IS?!?!?

Chapter Text

AN: Heading into the homestretch – only 8 chapters left.

Thank you very much for the comments and that you are enjoying this.

JK gave us HP – I wish that was all she gave us.

Petition to start S.P.E.L.L. (Society for Protection, Equality, Love, and Liberation).

Because real magic is standing together

Or C.H.A.R.M (Community for Hope, Acceptance, Resistance, and Magic).

 a CHARM powerful enough to counter hate.

Tom and Harry were in the library again one morning, seated across from one another in a quiet lull of turning pages. A silver tray sat between them, laden with warm scones and a generous pot of clotted cream.

It was mid-February now, and the Castle had settled into a deep, insulated kind of silence — one born from snow-dampened windows and routines worn into habit.

Harry was at the stage in his pregnancy where everything required a bit more planning. Getting into a chair meant an extra breath and a calculated bend of the knees. Getting out of it sometimes required Tom’s arm, offered in silence. Even simple things — sitting, standing, crossing the room—had sometimes become simple exercises in negotiation between his will and his body’s slow rebellion.

Thankfully, the library chairs were deep and forgiving, padded in velvet and charmed to warm in the cold. A matching ottoman sat in front of him, enchanted to adjust to the perfect angle beneath his feet, which he now kept elevated as he read.

And read.

And read.

More than he ever had in his life. Not even during the sleepless nights before exams at Hogwarts. Not even when Hermione would bribe him with chocolate frogs if he made it through another chapter without groaning.

Now he read because he wanted to. Because books were the one place where things made sense, where patterns could be found, where answers still waited to be uncovered. And because — if he was honest with himself — reading the N.E.W.T. pamphlet series Hermione had crafted for them in this very castle brought her back to him.

Every section she had annotated in her neat, brisk script. Every tab she had added. Every exclamation mark in the margins where she disagreed with the author – a sign of how far she had come since first year.

He could almost hear her. The way she’d sigh when he got distracted. The soft huff when Ron said something daft. The stubborn pride when she was right — and she always was.

The jagged edges between Tom and him had softened — not vanished, never that — but dulled into something more livable. The silences weren’t brittle anymore; they carried warmth now, or at least a curious sort of ease.

They read in synchrony, the occasional rustle of a page echoing softly through the library like the ticking of an invisible clock. And in the hush, their rhythm — quiet, consistent, unspoken — became its own kind of closeness. A quiet intimacy woven not through words, but through presence. Through the simple, stubborn fact of staying.

And every once in a while, when Harry shifted or sighed or set a hand over the not-so-subtle curve of his stomach, Tom would look up — not sharply, not possessively, but with something unreadable in his eyes.

Something still becoming.

Then there was the other side of Tom — perhaps the only person alive who surpassed Hermione Granger in a reverence for libraries and disgust for ignorance. He read like breathing. Retained everything. And when Harry found himself stuck on a particularly dense passage, it was Tom who would wordlessly conjure a diagram or launch into an explanation that — annoyingly – made perfect sense.

Between Hermione’s N.E.W.T. guides and Tom’s impossibly vast knowledge of theory and magical history, Harry felt like he was enrolled in the most demanding private tutoring course in existence. A crash course in everything. Every subject, every discipline. Some days Tom even brought out old exams — charmed replicas from Hogwarts records — and made Harry take them under timed silence.

Which made him think of Hermione in the weirdest and most absurdly fond way.

And the worst part?

Harry was getting good.

He was learning more in these past few weeks than he had in entire years at school. With Tom pushing him, correcting him, challenging him, and developing the seeds that Hermione had planted he wasn’t just keeping up — he was excelling. He knew — knew — that if he sat his N.E.W.T.s tomorrow, he’d pass. With high marks, no less.

It was maddening. And exhilarating.

Today’s lesson had veered into more complex territory — combination spells that wove together elements of Charms and Transfiguration. Elegant, volatile things that demanded precision, finesse, and a kind of magical intuition Harry hadn’t quite mastered yet.

“I just can’t get it,” Harry snapped, frustration bubbling over.

The spell fizzled out again at the tip of his wand with an anemic puff of smoke. His shoulders tensed, his cheeks flushed with irritation — or maybe it was the heat of the room — or the hormones. Merlin, the bloody hormones.

Everything lately felt like it was dialed up too high: every feeling louder, sharper, more immediate.

Tom, for once, didn’t scold or sigh or offer some coldly cutting remark. Instead, he remained, infuriatingly, calm.

“You’re holding your wand wrong,” he said evenly, rising from his chair and crossing the space between them.

His voice was quiet, low, the edges of it smoothed by patience.

“Your grip’s too tight. You’re choking the flow of the spell.”

Harry barely had time to react before Tom was behind him — close enough to share breath. One of his hands reached out, firm but careful, covering Harry’s where it gripped the wand. He adjusted Harry’s fingers — subtle shifts, minute changes. But the effect was instant.

Heat flared at the contact.

Not just the physical warmth of palm to skin, but something deeper — something that hummed beneath the surface. Magic. The wand’s core thrummed in their joined grip, a bright thread of connection tugging at something inside both of them.

Recognition. Resonance.

The stiff wood beneath their fingers pulsed — alive, aware — and Harry swallowed, suddenly very aware of how close Tom’s breath was to his ear. Of the steady, grounding pressure of his hand on his wand. Of the way their magic had begun to overlap, bleeding into one another in quiet, invisible threads.

The spell wasn’t cast yet, but the air between them was already crackling — thick with magic, tension, and something far less easily named.

“Try it individually,” Tom murmured, his voice low and velvet-dark, mouth hovering just behind Harry’s ear.

His presence was palpable — almost but not quite touching, his breath a ghost across Harry’s neck.

Harry swallowed hard, trying not to lean back. Not to react. His pulse jumped anyway.

“What is the nature of a charm,” Tom continued, “at its most basic?”

The richness of his voice didn’t help. It settled along Harry’s spine and pooled in the pit of his stomach, sending sparks lower, to places he resolutely decided not to think about.

Focus. Breathe.

Harry cleared his throat, words coming faster than intended just to keep his mind moving.

“A charm adds to the essence of an object — either properties or functions. It can enhance or alter behavior. Some are temporary, but others — if cast properly — can be semi-permanent. Even outlast the caster, in cases of enchanted objects. Like a Snitch or… a Pensieve.”

Tom said nothing for a beat, but Harry felt the shift — something approving and warm in the silence between them.

“Excellent,” Tom said at last, a smile audible in his voice.

“Very good, Harry.”

Harry didn’t know what startled him more — the praise, or how much he wanted to hear it again.

“Now,” Tom said, “think of the addition you want to make. See it in your mind’s eye. And then—”

His hand, light but sure, moved to Harry’s temple. Traced a line down, over the curve of his ear, the slope of his neck, down the length of his arm — slow and deliberate. His fingers slid over Harry’s until they were both holding his wand again. He gently adjusted the angle of it, guiding Harry’s hand with a subtle shift to the right.

“—send it forward,” Tom finished, his voice barely above a whisper now.

“From thought, to intention, to the spell. From you, into it.”

Harry’s breath caught. The magic building inside him didn’t feel like just magic anymore.

“Piertotem Locomotor,” Harry said, firm and focused.

His wand flicked with precision toward the potted flower, and a second later, the bloom began to stir. First a quiver, then a graceful twirl of its stem, petals rustling as it swayed gently—almost as if dancing to a silent rhythm only it could hear. A dance, a series of movements that made it seem like the plant was alive. Sentient.

“Excellent,” Tom purred, the sound like velvet and pride wrapped in fire.

Harry swallowed hard, the praise hitting deeper than he’d expected. His pulse jumped again, traitorous and hot beneath his skin. He pretended to brush sweat from his fingers and didn’t look up.

“Now,” Tom continued, moving with that unhurried grace of his — like someone who had never been denied anything and never expected to be.

He raised his wand and conjured another flower — this one submerged inside a tall, narrow vase of water. Its petals trembled slightly in the current, suspended like a thought mid-formation.

“Focus on the second flower,” Tom said.

“This time, we’ll move into Transfiguration.”

Harry nodded once, already narrowing his eyes at the bloom.

“Remind me,” Tom added, his tone almost casual but his gaze anything but, “what is the essence of a Transfiguration spell?”

Harry didn’t miss the way Tom stepped closer as he asked it — close enough that Harry could feel the heat of his body again, could hear the subtle inhale-exhale of breath beside his ear.

“Transfiguration…” Harry began, steadying himself.

“It changes something into something else. Entirely. It doesn’t enhance or subtract — it alters the core, the identity. It’s transformation, not addition.”

Tom’s mouth curved in approval, sharp and slow.

“Good. Very good.”

Harry clung to the words like an anchor, focusing on the second flower, on the shape it currently held and what he wanted it to become. Anything to stop thinking about how close Tom was now, how the warmth of his voice slid under his skin like silk, how it left shivers behind.

“Do it,” Tom whispered; the command slipping past Harry’s defenses before he could stop it.

Harry lifted his wand, took a breath.

““Piscifors,” Harry intoned, his voice laced with resolve.

The magic leapt from his wand, swirling in an elegant arc of pale blue light before enveloping the flower in the vase. A shimmer ran down the stem like a breath of wind — and then, with a flicker, the petals collapsed inward, rippling and reshaping.

Moments later, a small, iridescent fish darted through the water, scales flashing gold and violet in the filtered light. Its fins fluttered delicately as it swam a slow circle, as if testing its new form.

Harry exhaled, stunned by how smooth the spell had felt — how natural.

“Beautiful,” he whispered, more to himself than anyone else.

But as the word left his lips, something shifted behind his eyes.

A memory — not vivid, not his own, but one conjured from secondhand stories. The kind you build in your mind’s eye from someone else’s words, fragile and idealized.

He could almost see it: a crystalline vial catching the light, a flicker of warm, girlish laughter echoing through the high-ceilinged corridors of Hogwarts. His mother, young and radiant — no older than he was now — her eyes bright with the thrill of doing something clever, something kind.

A petal, transfigured with delicate precision, drifting softly through the air before it slipped into a bowl of water and bloomed into life — a fish. A gift for Slughorn, a token not of ambition, but of grace. Something beautiful meant to be remembered.

Harry blinked hard. His throat felt tight.

No, not now. He couldn’t think about that now.

Tom had been watching him carefully, standing close enough to feel the other man’s heat radiate off of him. He didn’t miss the flicker of pain across Harry’s face.

“Are you alright?” he asked softly, tone stripped of its usual sharpness.

Harry shook his head — just slightly.

“It’s nothing,” he murmured, eyes still on the fish. “Just a memory.”

A beat passed.

“The problem with Transfiguration,” Tom said, breaking the silence with a calm, measured tone, “is that it’s never truly permanent. No matter how intricate the magic, how precise the execution — eventually, the object reverts to its original form.”

Even as he spoke, the fish in the vase began to shimmer. Its scales lost their luster, its body folding inward like paper catching flame, until it blossomed back into a flower — petals unfurling once more, bobbing gently in the water.

Harry watched it happen, his jaw tightening slightly.

Tom stepped closer to the desk, gesturing loosely toward the vase.

“And this,” he continued, “brings us to the purpose of combination spells. When you layer Charms with Transfiguration, when you blend them properly, you can grant the transfigured object new properties — extend its state, imbue it with function or permanence. A charm, after all, modifies essence. If you bind that change properly, the result can last.”

He paused to let the idea land.

“At least… for as long as your magic does.”

The words lingered in the air like the smell of ozone after a storm. Harry didn’t answer, his thoughts still trailing behind — haunted by something he hadn’t shared.

Tom didn’t notice. Not fully.

He turned toward the blackboard behind them and waved his wand, conjuring a fluid diagram: a sequence of shimmering symbols, charm runes entwined with transfiguration glyphs.

“What makes combination spells so… challenging,” he said, “isn’t just the mechanics. Even I struggled with them at first.”

Harry blinked, surprised by the admission.

Tom smiled faintly — wry, but unguarded.

“They require synthesis. Not just of technique, but of intent. The spells must be cast together — wordlessly — woven as one. A perfect union.”

He tapped the diagram with his wand and the glyphs merged: dancing together in a complex, glowing pattern.

“It requires control,” he added, his voice lowering slightly.

“Focus. You must see the change, believe in it, and hold the belief so vividly in your mind’s eye that the magic responds without question. Not just the what — but the why.”

Harry looked down at the flower in the vase. Then at his wand.

He was still holding the idea of it. Still feeling the echo of the fish. Still wondering if anything ever really changed — or if everything just circled back, the way people did. The way he and Tom kept circling each other.

“What happens if you don’t get it right?” Harry asked softly.

Tom turned to him fully.

“Then it unravels,” he said. “Sometimes violently.”

Harry nodded once, his fingers tightening subtly around his wand. His voice, when it came, was low but steady.

“Right. Let’s try again.”

Tom didn’t respond immediately. Instead, he stepped in closer — close enough that Harry could feel the faint warmth of his breath at his temple. Gently, he guided Harry’s wand hand upward, adjusting the angle with a light but deliberate touch.

“Higher,” he murmured, voice like silk over steel. “And a touch to the left.”

With a flick of his own wand, Tom summoned another identical flower standing alone. No flourish. No sound. Just precision and ease.

“Focus,” he said, breath brushing past Harry’s ear.

“Picture it completely. Let the image form in your mind — not just the transformation, but the essence. Don’t force it. Let it unfold.”

Harry exhaled through his nose and did exactly that.

He closed his eyes and went still. He saw the flower — delicate, soft, trembling on the edge of something else. He imagined the shift, the changing of its nature. Not just a plant mimicking movement but a creature, fully formed, breathing and gliding. He recalled Slughorn's old memory then — the reverent awe as he spoke of Lily’s magic, her ability to combine Charms and Transfiguration so seamlessly that even the unnatural seemed to belong.

The memory ached in his chest, but he held it close, channeling the emotion — not fighting it.

He felt the magic stir, rising like a current through his arm, aligning with his intent and vision. His wand vibrated faintly under his grip as the spell surged forward — silent and focused — and struck the flower with a shimmer of soft purple and gold light.

Then Tom’s voice came again, softer now, almost reverent.

“Test it.”

Harry gave a single nod and stepped away, his movements deliberate, careful, as if afraid to break whatever spell had settled between them. His heart thudded in his chest, loud and certain.

He lifted the magical flower from the shallow pot, cupping it with a tenderness that made Tom pause. Every motion was reverent, like a ritual.

Crossing to the nearby bowl he released the bloom into the water.

It didn’t hesitate.

The shimmer of Transfiguration took hold the moment it touched the surface, petals dissolving into scales with a ripple of gold and violet light. The fish swam forward, effortlessly, as though it had never been anything else. It moved like it belonged. Like it had always existed this way.

Harry stayed beside the bowl, watching.

His expression shifted — first joy, then something softer, sadder. Longing. A thread of memory passed through him, wistful and aching, as if something precious had surfaced only to slip from reach again. He blinked, once, and then again, like trying to steady himself in a tide of emotion.

Tom didn’t speak.

He simply watched him.

After a long moment, Harry turned, eyes bright — not with tears, but with something clearer. Something full.

“Thank you,” he said quietly. And he meant it.

Tom held his gaze, taken aback by the depth in those two words. He nodded once, unable to look away.

And in the silence that followed, a thought settled uncomfortably into Tom’s mind: this had never really been about the spell at all.

After their time in the library, Harry had quietly asked for space — a bath before lunch, time to let his mind settle and his body relax. Tom had simply nodded, saying nothing, though his eyes lingered for a moment too long on Harry’s retreating figure.

Tom’s bathroom was, frankly, obscene.

Clad in black-veined marble, enchanted crystal lighting, and taps that ran water infused with whatever scent one could possibly imagine, it had the scale of a spa and the aesthetic of a dark cathedral. The tub was massive, sunken into the floor with charmed jets and a warming spell that kept the water at the perfect temperature.

Nagini, having slithered in after him with a huff and a swipe of her tail against the door, now draped lazily along the edge of the bath, her head resting near Harry’s shoulder. The room was filled with soft steam and the scent of bergamot and cedarwood, thanks to Harry's quiet preference. His damp curls clung to his forehead as he sank a little deeper into the water, one hand trailing along the surface, the other on his growing belly.

“You seem… quieter than usual,” she murmured, voice smooth and low, lacking her usual theatrical sarcasm.

“Even for someone whose feet now resemble puffed pasties.”

Harry huffed a laugh.

“I’m relaxed. For once. Sort of. Your ‘partner in dramatic hovering’ isn’t looming over me for the first time all day.”

Nagini blinked slowly, tongue flickering. “You know, he didn’t used to hover.”

Harry tilted his head toward her. “Yeah?”

“No,” she replied, turning her gaze to the ceiling as though contemplating the farthest corners of the world.

“He used to be distant. Detached. Dead-eyed, if you want the truth. Brilliant, yes — but so locked in that he couldn’t even feel the difference between silence and solitude.”

Harry stayed quiet.

“Now…” She trailed off for a moment, letting the soft sounds of the bath fill the air.

“Now he watches you like you’re an eclipse he never thought he’d see. As if looking away might make you disappear.”

“That’s... a bit dramatic,” Harry muttered, flushing, and tried to focus instead on a ripple in the water.

“Not nearly dramatic enough,” Nagini replied, her voice dry again now, the sass returning like a snake coiling up for warmth.

Harry covered his face with both hands and groaned.

“You’re the worst.”

Nagini stretched languidly and adjusted her coils.

“You love me.”

He gave her a tired, fond glance.

“Unfortunately.”

Her voice turned softer again, almost too soft to be real.

“He’s changing, Harry. Not fast. Not easily. But I’ve seen it. You’re in him now. You’ve changed the axis of his world.”

Harry didn’t know what to say to that. He sank a little deeper into the tub and rested his other hand over the not-so-subtle swell of his belly too, his thumbs brushing against the skin.

Nagini, sensing he needed the silence more than more questions, let it linger.

But inside, her mind hissed in its own dry-witted language:

Idiots. Absolute idiots. And if they don’t figure this out before the baby arrives, I am transferring my soul into a cactus just to avoid the secondhand angst.

She flicked her tongue, closed her eyes, and enjoyed the steam.

Harry stepped out of the bathroom wrapped in warmth — his hair damp, cheeks flushed, wearing sweatpants and an oversized jumper that hung soft over the clearly-there-bump of his stomach. Comfortable, casual… but to Tom, it was something else entirely.

He looked incandescent.

Bathed in the golden spill of midday light through the high windows, Harry seemed to glow, as though he had walked straight out of a memory too delicate to name. His skin shimmered faintly with the remnants of bath steam, and the quiet magic always thrumming around him now was brighter, more alive. It clung to him like starlight. Like promise.

Tom stared for a beat too long, but somehow not long enough as they moved to the sun-drenched sitting area in the study below.

Lunch had been laid out — a rich, fragrant stew, thick with root vegetables and tender meat, ladled into warm bowls. There was buttered bread on the side and a fresh pot of tea steeping by the window. It was a simple meal, but it smelled like comfort.

They sat across from each other, the low winter sun casting a sleepy warmth over the table.

Harry ate, slowly at first. He was ravenous — he always was these days — but with each bite, he began to slow down, distracted, his brow furrowing. His spoon lingered in the bowl.

Tom noticed instantly.

“What is it?” he asked, already pushing his chair back, ready to reach for Harry, to scan him, to tear the house apart if he had to.

“It’s not the Horcrux,” Harry murmured quickly, catching the panic beginning to sharpen Tom’s eyes.

“It’s still there — I can feel it, strong as ever. The connection’s intact.”

Tom didn’t relax.

Instead, he crossed the table in two long strides and dropped to one knee beside Harry’s chair, his hand hovering just above Harry’s knee, as if afraid that touching him might either break him or reveal something he couldn’t fix.

“Then what?” he asked again, softer this time.

Less demand, more plea.

Harry exhaled shakily.

“I don’t know,” he said, eyes trained somewhere over Tom’s shoulder.

“It just feels like... something’s missing. That the baby needs something. It’s been this weird feeling the past few days.”

Tom stilled.

Tom had no idea what that meant.

Not a single reference, not even a whisper of it in the hundreds of books he’d devoured in the past few months. He’d read every known volume on magical pregnancies, soul-bound enchantments, Horcrux physiology, magical inheritance theory — every dusty tome, forbidden scroll, and dry academic essay he could get his hands on. He’d consumed the information like a man possessed, cataloguing every anomaly, every spell, every symptom.

If sheer obsession could make a person an expert, Tom could’ve authored So You’re About to Be a Father: A Dark Lord’s Guide — in at least three volumes, with annotated footnotes and color-coded appendices.

And still, he was at a loss.

Whatever Harry was feeling — this sense of something missing, something shifted — wasn’t written anywhere. It didn’t match any spell failure, any magical depletion, or curse signature he recognized. It wasn’t physical. The Horcrux was intact, he could still feel it, humming through Harry like a quiet chord tied to his own soul. And yet…

The uncertainty clawed at him.

He was not a man who tolerated helplessness well. And now it lived under his skin like a parasite.

The idea of storming into St. Mungo’s with Harry in tow had surfaced more than once — and lingered. It was tempting, almost logical. But the risks were immense. Exposure. Questions. Vulnerabilities he couldn’t control. And while he might once have seen that as an acceptable trade for power, that was no longer the only calculus in his mind.

Because there was more than the Horcruxes to protect now.

There was Harry. There was the child. People other than himself.

Tom swallowed down the flicker of uncertainty clawing at the edges of his restraint. It wasn’t fear. Not exactly. But it was unfamiliar, volatile — something slippery that refused to be named.

Still, his face remained composed, his voice ironed smooth with deliberate control.

“We’re going upstairs,” he said, calm and commanding.

Not a suggestion. A quiet decree. His tone cut through the lingering static in the air like the cool edge of a blade.

“You’ll lie down. If you're tired, you should rest somewhere that offers actual support.”

Harry blinked, momentarily thrown by the unexpected softness threading through the stern cadence. He stared at Tom as if seeing him anew — some contradiction he couldn’t quite puzzle out. Then, slowly, Harry nodded, the lines in his brow easing.

“Yeah,” he murmured.

“That actually sounds... good. Thanks.”

Tom gave a curt incline of his head, turning just slightly to hide the strange tension in his jaw. He wasn’t used to being thanked. He wasn’t used to asking. And he certainly wasn’t used to caring whether someone found rest in his presence.

He moved toward the doorway, then paused.

The words came out quieter this time, almost reluctant — less command, more offering.

“Maybe a treacle tart or two wouldn’t hurt,” he added, not looking at Harry. “Still warm. If that... matters.”

Harry arched a brow, a crooked smile forming as he followed.

“Look at you,” he teased lightly.

“Bribing me with baked goods. Did you hear that Nagini?”

Tom gave a slow exhale through his nose, half-glare, half-exasperated resignation.

“If this is what it takes to keep you from collapsing… I’ll indulge your pastry fixation.”

From her spot coiled luxuriously beside the hearth, Nagini perked up with immediate and deeply suspicious enthusiasm. Her tongue flicked twice, tasting the change in atmosphere like smoke on the air.

“Oh, yes,” Nagini hissed, practically vibrating with delight.

“Upstairs! Tarts by the fire! How delightfully indulgent. So civilized. Comfort and sugar in one sitting — it’s practically medicinal, really. A prescription for the soul.”

She gave them both a look — sharp, knowing, and entirely smug for a creature without eyebrows. Her tongue flicked once, slowly.

“You know,” she added, tail swishing contentedly, “it’s the smallest pleasures that keep one sane during prolonged emotional repression and magical codependency.”

Tom shot her a look so flat it could have leveled a city. Harry, despite himself, snorted.

The laugh escaped before he could catch it — light, unguarded, a thread of warmth that cut through the air like smoke curling in candlelight. It echoed faintly in the corridor behind them, leaving something unexpectedly tender in its wake.

They ascended the stairs in companionable silence, the air between them loose but still weighted — a storm remembered, not forgotten. The kind of quiet that comes after a battle not quite fought.

In the bedroom, Harry let out a soft groan as he eased himself onto the bed, the comfort of it wrapping around him like a charm. He moved slowly, not just from fatigue, but from the subtle wariness that came with occupying the same space as Tom Riddle for too long — even now.

Tom followed, silent and composed, setting the dessert tray down before beginning his quiet ritual of rearrangement. He fluffed the pillows with almost clinical precision, adjusting the angles, folding the edges just so. Then he crouched beside the bed to tuck an additional cushion beneath Harry’s knees.

“Posture affects circulation,” Tom murmured, not quite meeting Harry’s eyes, his voice lower than usual.

“Elevating your legs can ease strain on the lower back.”

There was something oddly reverent about the way he moved around Harry — not fussy, not performative. Just careful. Purposeful. Like he was handling something fragile not out of fear it would break, but because it deserved not to be bruised.

Harry watched him quietly for a moment, eyes soft.

“Thanks,” he said, voice rougher than it should have been.

Tom didn’t respond, but the line of his shoulders eased — just slightly — and he remained there, kneeling beside the bed, one hand still resting lightly on the blanket near Harry’s calf. Neither of them spoke. Neither of them had to.

With the fire crackling low and sugared pastries waiting patiently, a strange kind of peace settled in — a moment suspended between everything they had been and whatever they were becoming.

Then, Tom stilled.

A flicker of something shifted behind his eyes. Resolve. And a little reluctance. He stood up at the edge of the bed, paused for a beat longer.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said quietly.

“About bringing someone in.”

Harry blinked.

“Someone?”

“A healer,” Tom clarified.

“Someone I trust. Someone I think you could trust — given time. They… they have been trained to be a healer and used to specialize in magical pregnancies. Before.”

There was a hesitation in his voice. A pause that said more than the words alone. This was not an easy concession. Tom didn’t do vulnerability. He didn’t invite people in. And offering to do so now — was something significant.

Harry looked at him. Really looked.

And for all his own uncertainty, for all the flickers of discomfort still curling in his belly, he nodded.

Because he could see the cost. And because compromises were something they both had to make now.

“Okay,” he said softly.

“Who?”

Tom didn’t answer right away. His jaw flexed, his gaze slipping from Harry’s face to the floor as though the name itself was heavy. Complicated.

Harry waited, sensing that the silence was not indecision — but a reckoning.

“He’s nowhere.”

Hermione’s voice echoed dully through the quiet kitchen at Shell Cottage as she slumped into the nearest chair, her hands limp at her sides.

“A month and a half, Ron. Six weeks. And we’ve got nothing. No trail. No leads. Not even the whisper of one. We’re no closer than when we started.”

Her voice cracked on the last word, frustration bleeding through exhaustion. She stared at the chipped edge of her teacup like it might hold answers if she looked hard enough.

Across the table, Ron cupped his own mug like it was the only solid thing in the world. The steam curled between his fingers, warming his palms but not much else.

“I know how you feel,” he said quietly, his eyes fixed on the tea as though watching memories rise with the vapor.

“That feeling… like you’re shouting into a void and all you get back is silence. Like you’re running, pushing, doing everything — and the world doesn’t budge. It wears you down, yeah. Not just your body. Your heart. Your mind. It gets into your bones. Makes everything feel heavier.”

Hermione looked at him then — as if taking him in for the first time — and in Ron’s eyes, she saw the very reflection of what was beginning to haunt her own. A weariness deeper than bone, an exhaustion no amount of sleep could fix. And yet… something else. Something stronger.

“And still,” Ron said, after a long pause that settled heavily between them, “we get up. And we try again. Because he’d do the same for either of us. Because he’s still out there. Somewhere. And we’re not going to stop until we bring him back.”

His voice didn’t waver. It wasn’t loud, or dramatic, or meant to be inspiring. But it burned with quiet conviction — like coals under ash, steady and persistent.

Hermione blinked, her throat tightening. She hadn’t expected him to be the anchor. Not Ron. Not the boy who once fled from fear and pressure. But now? He looked like someone who had been reforged into something undeterrable.

She saw it then — the soft, unwavering flame behind his tired gaze. That undying spark that refused to dim, refused to yield. It didn’t burn bright, not in the way of speeches or heroics, but in the way a lantern does when everything else has gone dark. And for a moment, it made her want to cry.

“So,” Ron continued, setting his tea down with quiet finality, “we take today. Breathe. Regroup. Lick our wounds, if we need to. And first thing tomorrow, we start again.”

Hermione nodded slowly. Not because she felt better — but because she believed him.

And not for the first time, she realized — truly realized — that the Ron she’d known before the war was gone. In his place stood someone resolute. Someone who had learned what it meant to break and still get up again. Someone who wouldn’t stop until Harry was safe. Someone who, no matter how impossible the road ahead, refused to surrender to fear, or failure, or silence.

Someone who, against all odds, had become the lighthouse in their storm.

Hermione took a deep breath and sat back, forcing her shoulders to relax. It felt like trying to soften stone.

“You’re right,” she said quietly. “I just—”

She shook her head, exhaling through her nose.

“This is soul-sucking, Ron. Every lead, every place we check, it all leads to… nothing. And it’s not just frustrating anymore. It’s exhausting. It gets into your bones.”

Her eyes met his then, and for a moment, something sharp and unspoken flickered between them — so close to the subject they dared not name. Horcruxes. But they weren’t alone. Fleur was sitting with them, humming softly to herself as she prepared something in the kitchen with needles and yarn, and this wasn’t a conversation they could risk having out loud. Not yet.

Still, they both knew the truth: they hadn’t been aimless. They were searching for something. Something important. And Bill and Fleur had offered them this house not out of convenience, but out of trust. It had become a quiet sort of headquarters — one that felt more like a sanctuary some days and a coffin on others.

Hermione rubbed her temples.

“It doesn’t help that I’ve been feeling… off. Unbalanced. Like something’s missing, and I don’t even know what it is.”

Her voice dropped.

“And when we come back empty-handed again,” Hermione said, her voice quieter now, rough at the edges, “it just makes that feeling worse. It makes the disappointment feel real. Tangible. Like we’re failing him in real time.”

Ron nodded slowly; his gaze fixed on the rim of his mug as if it might offer a better answer than any of them could come up with.

“I know,” he said. “Me too.”

Hermione rose from the table, tea in hand, the steam curling up toward her face like a ward against the chill that had settled deep in her chest. The mug was warm between her fingers, grounding in a way nothing else seemed to be these days. Except for Ron.

She crossed the room to the window, staring out at the grey horizon where the sky met the icy waves in a smear of slate and steel. The northern wind was brutal this time of year, but Shell Cottage was snug, and the fire behind her crackled like it was doing its best to fight the cold back on her behalf.

“I’m just so tired,” she murmured, more to herself than anyone else.

“But it’s not the kind of tired sleep fixes. It’s deeper. Like there’s something in my gut that won’t settle. Something that feels incomplete.”

She turned slowly, her eyes searching Ron’s, then flicking toward Fleur — who had been pretending to knit but was clearly listening. At Hermione’s words, her posture shifted, subtle but alert.

“I know we’re trying,” Hermione continued, voice stronger now.

“We’re looking for him. We’re trying to piece together what happened to me and what I was doing before… before everything went blank. But lately—” she hesitated, words sitting on the edge of her tongue.

“—lately I’ve had the strangest sense that there’s a place I’m supposed to be. Somewhere specific. Not just emotionally, but physically. Like my magic is… restless. Like something’s pulling at it.”

Ron sat up straighter, eyes narrowing slightly.

Fleur set down her knitting with surprising care, the soft clink of needles barely audible over the hum of the wind outside. She looked up slowly, her blue eyes sharper than they had been a moment ago — no longer idly watching but seeing. Something in Hermione’s voice had shifted, and Fleur, ever attuned to things unspoken, didn’t miss it.

“Describe eet to me,” she said, her voice lower now — quieter, yes, but edged with something unmistakably grave. Intent.

“Zis… pull. Is eet a memory? A feeling? Or is eet like a door half-open in your mind — one you’ve never stepped through, but know is waiting all ze same?”

Hermione swallowed hard. Her throat was tight, her palms clammy, and something deep in her chest ached — like recognition knocking before she was ready.

“I don’t know,” she admitted.

“It’s more like… standing in front of a door you can’t quite see, but you know it’s there all the same. You feel it. There’s something on the other side — something important. Like it’s calling you. And no matter how many spells you try, how much you want it — the door just won’t open. It won’t even let itself be found. But you know... you have to get through it.”

Fleur tilted her head. Her silver-blonde hair caught the light like moonlight drawn into thread, the sharp tilt of her gaze softer now, but no less piercing.

“Magic does not tug wizzout purpose, ma chère,” she said gently. “If you feel drawn... then somezing — or someone — is calling you back.”

The words landed with the weight of prophecy.

The room went still.

Ron’s fingers tightened around his mug until the ceramic groaned under the pressure. His knuckles whitened, but he didn’t seem to notice — his entire focus fixed on Hermione. Her expression was unreadable, too calm. But behind her eyes... something shifted. Something old. A crack along the surface of something long buried. As if a locked door in her mind had just creaked open, and she was no longer standing before it — but in it. On the threshold.

Fleur felt it too. She leaned forward, voice gentler now. Deliberate.

“You know, ‘Ermione,” she said, “Veela sometimes feel somezing like zis. When zey are bonded to a child — not by blood, but by soul. A godparent, yes. A guardian in spirit. When zey are missed... truly missed — zey feel eet. A pull, at first like a whisper. Zen stronger. Until it becomes a call. And we do not question eet. We go to zem. We answer.”

Hermione didn’t blink.

She didn’t breathe.

Her body went stock-still, as though some invisible thread had snapped taut between her and something very, very far away.

Ron noticed it immediately — the shift in her posture, the quiet unraveling happening behind her eyes. He’d seen this before. The terrifying moment when Hermione’s mind began working faster than the rest of the world could keep up. Her breath shallow. Her gaze glassy. Her tea forgotten in her hand.

“Hermione?” he asked gently.

But she didn’t answer.

Instead, her fingers slipped.

The ceramic mug tumbled from her grasp and shattered on the stone floor with a crash loud enough to make Fleur flinch. Tea spread like a dark stain at their feet, steam curling upward in ghostly ribbons.

Hermione stared at the mess. At the steam. At the shards.

And then, finally, she spoke — her voice low, reverent, a little shaken, and laced with something electric:

“…Well, fuck.”

This was supposed to be one chapter but it was getting ungodly long.

So it will be a slight cliffhanger. Have been waiting for the next part for YEARS.

Be kind and leave a review.

Chapter Text

AN: hi there – enjoy.

I hope you enjoy this offering as much I did writing it.

JK owns HP. She also owns her bigoted and hateful view. That shit has no place here.

At Malfoy Manor, the atmosphere was oddly still as the family settled into a late luncheon. The table was set with exquisite precision — goblets glinting like cut diamonds, steam curling from a tureen of spiced consommé.

Lucius had returned not long ago from the Ministry; his mood unreadable, his cane resting against his chair with the same silent menace as its owner.

Narcissa was just lifting her fork when the air shimmered. A sudden gust of cold swept through the windows, and then it came: a magnificent black raven, larger than any ordinary bird — sleek as oil, regal as a judge, and with a wingspan that might rival an eagle’s. It circled once, then dove gracefully, dropping a single scroll tied with silver thread into Narcissa's lap.

The raven did not caw. It did not flap. It vanished the moment its message was delivered, as though it had only ever been shadow made flesh.

Bellatrix was on her feet before the scroll had landed, breath sharp with obsession.

“Give it to me—!” she rasped, half-lunging across the table.

Her eyes were wild, glittering with desperate hunger.

“It’s from him, I know it is! Let me see it, let me—”

“Remain seated, sister,” Narcissa said coolly, without even glancing up.

Her wand was in her hand, resting lightly on the stem of her wine glass, and yet the intent behind it was as firm as a blade to the throat.

Bellatrix froze mid-reach, chest heaving, trembling from the effort it took to obey.

Narcissa broke the seal with the precision of a practiced diplomat — fingers steady, movements elegant, her spine as straight as the cut of her wand arm. The wax gleamed — a slick, silver-black stamp of the Dark Mark that shimmered like a snake’s skin under moonlight.

Lucius, seated at the end of the long, gleaming table, arched a brow in mild intrigue. He said nothing, simply reached for his glass with the air of someone who had learned long ago that certain things were best observed in silence.

Bellatrix, by contrast, could not contain herself.

She gripped the edge of the table with white-knuckled intensity, her breath coming in sharp bursts. Her nails gouged tiny crescents into the polished wood. Her eyes, wild and too bright, were fixed on the scroll in Narcissa’s hand like a starving dog watching meat fall from a plate.

“It’s from the Dark Lord,” she rasped, half to herself, half to the air; her voice shaking with pent-up mania.

“It’s from him. Where is he? What has he been doing? Why hasn’t he summoned me — what can I do?”

The questions tumbled out like spells gone awry, each one higher and more frantic than the last.

Narcissa lifted one gloved hand, the gesture small but commanding.

“Enough, Bella.”

The room stilled.

Bellatrix stood frozen, lips parted, fury trembling just beneath her skin — but she obeyed.

Narcissa unfolded the parchment with care, her expression unreadable as her eyes scanned the letter once, then again, slower the second time. Her jaw tensed, barely, but Lucius noticed it.

Narcissa,

I am in need of your assistance and discretion.
Pack a bag. You are to leave immediately.

The portkey enclosed will activate in thirty minutes.
You will not be able to return home during this time.

Lord Voldemort

Bellatrix took a single step forward, her boots creaking faintly on the polished floor.

“Well? What does he say? Is he all right? Is he returning? Is there a new plan—”

Narcissa folded the letter and rose with quiet finality. Her voice was calm but left no room for argument.

“I must go. He’s requested my presence. The portkey activates in thirty minutes.”

Bellatrix’s mouth opened in protest, but Narcissa didn’t wait for the outburst. She moved swiftly from the room, her robes trailing behind her like a storm cloud with purpose.

Upstairs, she packed with the ruthless efficiency of someone who had been raised to be prepared for such moments. A single bag, charmed to carry everything she might need. Robes. Potions. Her wand. No hesitation. No sentimentality. She was the wife of Lucius Malfoy — but she had always been her own weapon.

A child of House Black.

When she returned to the main hall, Lucius was waiting for her near the hearth. He reached for her hand briefly — not to stop her, but to offer it, warm and steady.

“You’ll be careful,” he said, voice low.

“Of course.”

He inclined his head once. It was all either of them needed.

Narcissa turned to Bellatrix, who was now pacing wildly in front of the fireplace, her hair even more unhinged than usual, fury sparking in her eyes like lit gunpowder.

“I want to go too!” Bellatrix snapped.

“He would want me… he needs me—”

“He has not summoned you,” Narcissa said, cool and measured. “He summoned me.”

“This is absurd,” Bellatrix spat, her voice rising with every word until it neared a shriek. “Why would he summon you and not me—?”

“Enough!” Narcissa’s voice cracked through the room like a whip. Cold, sharp, final.

Bellatrix froze mid-rant, but her eyes blazed.

“You are to remain on the grounds,” Narcissa continued, each word crisp with authority. “That was his last instruction. Along with his protections extended to the Weasleys — and to Hermione Granger. Those orders still stand. I will not argue them again.”

Bellatrix looked like she might combust from the inside out. Her hands curled into fists, nails digging into her palms.

“Oh, I see,” she sneered, lips curling.

“You think you’re special now? Just because you received a note?”

Narcissa’s gaze turned to ice.

“No, Bella. I think I’ve been trusted. There’s a difference.”

Lucius stepped forward, placing himself subtly between the two sisters.

“You heard her, Bella. You’re not leaving.”

Bellatrix opened her mouth again, but Narcissa was already drawing the portkey from beneath her cloak. A small, silver pendant shaped like a raven’s claw. Elegant. Dangerous.

She held it between her fingers and looked to Lucius one last time.

“Watch her.”

“I always do,” he replied dryly.

One minute before the portkey activated, magic stirred.

It wasn’t the gentle tug Narcissa was accustomed to with Ministry-registered travel. No, this was older, denser — magic laced with intent. It shimmered red and gold as it unfurled from the pendant, snaking through her limbs, weaving into her very bones. She could feel it, unmistakably: this was ward magic.

She was being keyed into protections as powerful as they were secret. Wherever she was going, it was a place veiled from the world.

She stood still, poised as ever, her back straight and chin high, the quintessential picture of elegance. But beneath the surface, her stomach coiled tightly. She had no idea where she was about to arrive — or what she would find waiting for her.

Then, with a soundless snap, the world vanished.

The magic gripped her like a current, and in the blink of an eye she landed on polished stone, heels clicking lightly against the floor.

The air was different here. Still and charged, like the space between thunderclaps.

She looked around.

The room was unmistakably a study, but not like any she’d seen. It bore the same architecture as the Headmaster’s quarters at Hogwarts — arched windows, high ceilings, a central hearth — but it had been stripped of every ounce of whimsy. No glittering trinkets or cluttered shelves. No ticking devices or gently puffing curiosities.

This was a place of purpose. Of intellect and power. Dark, polished wood. Ancient tomes. A collection of wands laid out like instruments. Magic hummed from the walls like a living thing.

And then she saw him.

A man stood by the fire, one hand resting on the mantle, his posture casual but impossibly precise. He turned at the sound of her arrival — and Narcissa’s breath caught. Not just in surprise. Not just in awe. It caught in the space between reverence and dread.

He was beautiful.

But not in any way that lent itself to softness. His beauty was sculpted — severe, elemental. The kind of beauty that belonged to winter storms and knife edges. His features were refined, aristocratic even, devoid of warmth but fully capable of it. Perfect skin, smooth as marble. Eyes like frozen mercury. And robes (black, of course) tailored so perfectly they moved with him like a second skin.

She knew who he was before he even opened his mouth.

Of course she did.

One didn’t need a Mark to know his magic. She could have been a squib, blindfolded, and she still would’ve recognized that particular pressure in the air, the way the room itself bent to accommodate him.

Lord Voldemort.

“Narcissa,” he said, voice smooth and deceptively quiet. “You came.”

The words were simple, but she knew better than to think them casual.

“My Lord,” she replied, dipping her head in a measured show of deference.

Her voice was calm. Her posture impeccable. She hadn’t survived this long by showing fear — especially not now, in the presence of someone who could cleave her mind open with a thought.

“I require your assistance,” he continued with a swish of his wand, as an obsidian band appeared around her wrist — a sleek, seamless cuff that shimmered with faint runes.

“You will remain here,” he said.

“This is now your place of residence for the foreseeable future. You will not be able to leave without my permission.”

A pause. Her breath tightened in her lungs, but she did not let it show.

He watched her carefully.

And still, Narcissa Black Malfoy did not flinch. She had walked into fire before.

“How may I be of service, my Lord?” she asked, chin lifted, eyes steady.

There was no question now that something monumental was unfolding — and that she had just been placed at the center of it.

“I have a task for you,” the Dark Lord said, his voice velvet-clad steel. “It will require absolute discretion — complete silence. You will not speak of anything you see or learn in this place. Not to your husband. Not to your sister. Not even in your own thoughts, if such a thing were possible.”

He stepped closer. The fire crackled behind him, casting flickering shadows that danced like ghosts across the floor.

“Your sole purpose while here will be to carry out the assignment I give you. Nothing more. And Narcissa — should you fail me… in any way, shape, or form — your life will end. Painfully. That is not a threat. It is a fact.”

Narcissa did not blink.

She had faced worse than death in her lifetime, and in far more unpredictable forms. But more than that, she understood this was not a moment for fear. It was a moment for resolve. For precision.

“Of course, my Lord,” she said smoothly, her voice a graceful curtsy made of sound.

“I was raised for this.”

His eyes narrowed, then lifted his hand.

“Swear it.”

She drew her wand without hesitation and raised it between them.

“I swear it,” she said, each syllable deliberate and unshaken.

A soft pulse of magic rippled through the room as her wand glowed faintly, and then the light vanished. The vow was sealed.

The Dark Lord watched her for a beat longer, then turned.

“Come.”

He moved swiftly, silently, his steps echoing off ancient stone. Narcissa followed, her heels striking the floor like measured drumbeats as they climbed a narrow, spiraling staircase.

At the top, a set of carved double doors. The Dark Lord pressed his palm to the center, and they opened inward with a low groan of ancient hinges.

Narcissa stepped inside — and froze.

Nothing in her entire life had prepared her for what she saw.

A bedroom, warmly lit. Soft firelight glowed against the stone walls, casting a golden hue over everything it touched. And on the bed, surrounded by thick blankets and pillows—

Harry Potter.

Pregnant.

Clearly and unmistakably so, resting against the headboard, one hand placed instinctively over the rise of his belly. His eyes were half-lidded, tired but aware, and he looked up as the door opened.

And curled protectively at the foot of the bed — Nagini. The great snake’s gaze met Narcissa’s with something that could almost be described as smug amusement.

Narcissa’s breath caught — not from fear this time, but from sheer, stunned disbelief. Her mind tried to make sense of it, to find the threads that could connect what she thought she knew to this impossible image. But she had been obliviated months ago, along with Lucius and Bellatrix.

This… was the task?

The Dark Lord said nothing. He simply stepped aside, gesturing for her to enter.

Narcissa gathered herself in a heartbeat. Straightened her shoulders. Lifted her chin.

Because even when the world twisted itself sideways, she was still a Black.

And she met it head-on.

There was a pause — brief, but weighty. A silence laced with a thousand questions that Narcissa didn’t ask. She didn’t need to. Not yet.

On the bed, Harry watched her with a kind of weary resignation, his arms loosely wrapped around his middle. He didn’t bother hiding his discomfort.

“Hello, Mrs. Malfoy,” he said dryly, as if greeting an unexpected guest at a dinner party he hadn’t agreed to host.

His expression made it abundantly clear that this had not been his idea.

Compromise, Harry reminded himself. This wasn’t about pride. It wasn’t about comfort. It was about the baby — and Tom, for once, had compromised too. That had to count for something.

Narcissa inclined her head coolly.

“Mr. Potter,” she returned, her tone perfectly composed.

Only the fist clenched at her side betrayed the tension coursing through her. Not the hand holding her wand — no, that remained steady and ready, as it always had been.

Then, in a flash, she shifted. The Black elegance transformed into sharp, clinical efficiency.

“How far along?” she asked briskly, her eyes already scanning him with the keen assessment of someone trained to miss nothing.

“Any complications with sleep, appetite, magical surges? Has there been fetal movement? What about—”

“Six months,” Harry replied, sitting up straighter as she approached. “There’s movement — frequent. Appetite’s good. I just feel really tired today and like there is something off.”

She gave a sharp nod and turned to the Dark Lord, who had stepped back into the shadows, watching everything with a coiled stillness.

“Am I permitted to use my wand for diagnostics and general assessment, my Lord?”

Tom gave a single, silent nod.

That was all she needed.

Narcissa didn’t ask for context. She didn’t ask why or how or what madness had brought them all to this moment. That wasn’t her job — not right now.

She rolled up her sleeves and lifted her wand, her voice cool and clipped as she began murmuring diagnostic incantations, each movement precise, each flick laced with purpose.

Because this was her purpose now.

And she would see it done.

After what felt like every diagnostic charm and magical scan known to wizardkind; half of which Harry was certain she’d invented on the spot, Narcissa finally lowered her wand. The room had been silent save for the occasional hum of magic and the soft sound of Nagini breathing beside the bed.

He sat there, arms folded protectively across his belly, feeling vaguely annoyed, vaguely exposed, and entirely too tired to pretend otherwise.

Narcissa, for her part, looked thoughtful. Concerned, but measured.

“My Lord,” she said at last, turning slightly toward the other side of the bed where he was sitting.

Her voice was cool, but there was a rare trace of hesitation there, as though even she wasn’t sure how this particular conversation should go.

“I assume you are the father?”

Tom, seated in the high-backed armchair in the corner — poised like a king listening to a court physician — nodded once. It was almost imperceptible, but it carried all the weight of certainty.

Harry didn’t bother hiding his exasperation. He rolled his eyes with a theatrical flourish that Nagini would have been proud of.

“No, Mrs. Malfoy,” he muttered. “The baby is a metaphor.”

Tom arched an eyebrow but said nothing.

Harry sighed. He wasn’t truly angry… not at her, anyway. He knew why this mattered, and that she’d walked straight into this impossible arrangement because she had been asked.

Because Tom had asked. Well, probably not asked.

Still, it was surreal. Having Narcissa Malfoy wave her wand at his stomach while Nagini offered breathy, syrup-coated commentary about magical nutrition and sugar cravings from the edge of the bed. His life had become a bizarre dreamscape of insanity, but he supposed this was normal now.

Narcissa cleared her throat, the barest lift of one fine brow acknowledging the absurdity, but she pressed on.

“Well, physically,” she began carefully, “there’s nothing wrong. The fetus is healthy. Strong magical signature. Heartbeat steady, movements well within range. Hormonal levels of the father — within expected bounds, if a touch... elevated.”

Harry blinked.

“Elevated how?”

She gave him a glance that said You don’t want me to explain that with him in the room; and turned primly back to her notes.

The tips of Harry’s ears tinged with pink.

“What I will say,” she continued, “is that while your body and the baby are both fine, something magical has shifted. Recently. It’s subtle — barely detectable — but it’s there. And that may be what you’re sensing.”

Tom’s posture shifted — not dramatically, but enough. A subtle straightening of his spine, the barest tilt of his head. He was listening now, carefully, the flicker in his eyes betraying the heightened attention.

Narcissa caught it, of course. She was too sharp not to.

“And I will admit,” she said, her tone measured but not without warmth, “I have never overseen a male pregnancy before. They are exceedingly rare, often manifestations of powerful, ancient magic — sometimes even seen as… blessings.”

She inclined her head slightly.

“Congratulations, my Lord. It is… fitting that such a miracle would choose you.”

There was a beat of silence.

Harry shifted on the bed and raised an eyebrow, looking at Tom sidelong.

“You hear that?” he muttered.

“You’ve been blessed. Does this mean I get to start calling you Saint Voldemort?”

Tom ignored him, but his lip twitched — just slightly.

Narcissa, to her credit, remained focused.

“Is there anything,” Narcissa asked delicately, her voice silk over steel, “that I should be made aware of? Any magical conditions surrounding the conception?”

The question settled like a weight on the room. Not heavy — but cold. Dense. Atmospheric.

The shift was subtle and yet absolute.

The fire seemed to dim.

The shadows pulled in closer, thickening in the corners like watchful sentries. The temperature dipped just enough to raise goosebumps, and even the walls, stone and ancient, felt like they leaned in to listen.

At the foot of the bed, Nagini stirred from her luxurious coil, tongue flicking out with languid interest. Her eyes gleamed.

If she’d had hands, Harry had no doubt she’d be reaching for popcorn. Or cookies.

Or just pure granulated sugar to bury her snout in as she took in the show.

Harry, however, didn’t need parchment to feel the way the tension wrapped itself around Tom like a second skin.

Stillness.

Harry inhaled, slow and measured. He could feel it building. That particular brand of fury Tom didn’t express with shouting or flinching, but with precise silence. With eyes that didn’t blink.

He could practically hear the thoughts tearing through Tom’s mind: This is mine. This is sacred. This is not for your eyes or your curiosity. You do not get to know.

And yet… Tom said nothing. Not yet.

Harry glanced over, eyes catching the strain in the set of Tom’s jaw, the white of his knuckles where they curled too tightly around the arm of the chair.

These were his secrets. His safeguards. His last remaining Horcruxes. And he would not — could not — tolerate them being handled like academic curiosities, even by someone magically bound to him.

Harry turned to Tom fully.

“Tom,” Harry hissed quietly; softening the edge before it cut too deep.

“You don’t have to tell her everything, just what matters to the baby – a half truth.”  

Tom was still motionless.

“Just… tell her. You brought her here and she’s bound to help, right?”

Eventually Tom gave the smallest nod – as if it were costing him something – then turned back to Narcissa.

“There are… complicating factors,” he said quietly – ice in his voice. “The child is linked to a magical object. One of mine. Its presence was necessary at the time of conception, and it has since become… symbiotic with the child.”

The power radiating off of him was staggering giving they were tiptoeing around his Horcruxes.

Narcissa didn’t flinch. She merely adjusted her gloves, processing that calmly — externally, at least.

“I see,” she said, after a moment. “And the object is still intact?”

“For now,” Tom said menacingly.

Another long silence.

Harry blew out a breath and looked at Tom, his expression somewhere between tired and resigned.

“Tom. Stop scaring her.”

Tom turned at once, brows rising.

“She’s standing like she’s waiting to be executed,” Harry said, voice dry, gesturing vaguely toward Narcissa without lifting his head from the pillows.

“Can you not loom at people like that? Honestly, it’s unnerving.”

Tom shot him a glare, all sharp cheekbones and imperial disapproval.

“I do not loom,” he hissed coolly, folding his arms with all the hauteur of a monarch unjustly accused of breathing too loudly.

From the bed, Harry rolled his eyes.

“ Please. You act just like a basilisk that is watching their prey … just more blinking .”

Tom huffed through his nose and muttered something under his breath in Parseltongue that Harry either didn’t hear or chose to ignore.

“She’s fine, Tom,” Harry added, softer now – in English.

“She’s not going to betray you or me or the baby. You don’t have to... do the Dark Lord routine.”

Narcissa’s spine remained perfectly straight, but her eyes widened, just slightly, against her will, as she watched the two of them bicker like an old married couple.

Tom rolled his eyes skyward, as if pleading for patience from an uncooperative universe, then told her an abridged version about the chain, and then returned to his original spot in the chair.

Narcissa cleared her throat — gracefully, of course — then turned back to Harry, wand in hand, and resumed her diagnostic charms. Her tone was crisp but no longer strained.

“The magical chain is intact,” she reported. “Your vitals are stable. The baby is healthy, and the bond remains unbroken.”

Tom exhaled. Quietly.

But then Narcissa’s gaze lingered on the soft shimmer of magic still woven around Harry’s abdomen. Something in her expression shifted. Her brows drew together.

“There is something else, though,” she said slowly, her tone more curious than alarmed.

“Something... missing. Or perhaps, something that was once present and is no longer.”

Harry blinked at her.

“Missing?”

Narcissa nodded once.

“A magical echo. A faint imprint — almost like... a second bond. Faded now. Severed, maybe. But strong enough that its absence is noticeable.”

Harry’s breath hitched faintly. Tom went still.

Narcissa looked at him closely now, and then at the Dark Lord, and then back at Harry. Her voice soft but pointed.

“Harry, has there been anyone else? Any magical interactions involving the child — someone who might have, even unintentionally, formed a connection?”

For a moment, silence fell thick across the room.

And then Harry swallowed, mind racing, a flicker of something warm and familiar twisting in his gut.

Harry’s breath caught.

He hadn’t thought about that day in weeks — not properly. It had been buried under spells, studies, baking disasters, and stolen glances with a man he still couldn’t quite define. But now it surfaced like a bubble from deep water, insistent and sharp.

His eyes widened.

“I—” he began, then stopped, nodding more to himself than to either of them.

“Yes. There was...something.”

Tom’s gaze narrowed, unreadable. Jealousy, unwanted and hot, twisted low in his chest. It came out of nowhere, unwelcomed and ridiculous. And yet it burned.

But overriding that was concern. Real, pressing concern — for Harry, for the baby. So he said nothing. Not yet.

Harry drew in a slow breath, steadying himself as if the memory alone could knock him off balance.

“It was Hermione,” he said quietly.

“We had just arrived here. Everything was uncertain — I didn’t know if I’d make it out, if the baby would. I just needed to know that someone would be there. Someone to love the child, to protect it. So it wouldn’t end up like me – orphaned  – but then she was sent to the burrow….”

His voice caught for a moment, the words hanging fragile in the air.

Across the room, something flickered in Narcissa’s expression. As a mother, she felt the weight of it in her chest — a quiet ache she didn’t show. But as someone serving under the Dark Lord’s charge, she schooled her features, tilting her head slightly, eyes sharp with evaluation.

“And you performed this bond with intent?” she asked, her tone measured, careful.

Harry nodded slowly.

“I asked her to protect it,” he said.

“And she accepted. We didn’t use a spell, but... something happened. Magic responded. I could feel it. It did something — like it knew. Like it was agreeing.”

He paused, rubbing the edge of his thumb across his palm.

“I didn’t think much of it at the time. It just felt right. But now...” He glanced at Tom, then back at Narcissa.

“Maybe it was more than just words.”

Tom’s mouth was a hard line. He didn’t speak, but his fingers twitched once at his side, betraying how tightly he was holding onto his composure.

“Well then,” Narcissa said, with the calm authority of a woman piecing together a very complex puzzle, “that settles it, my Lord.”

Both men looked at her.

“The child is bonded to its godmother. What you’ve been sensing — the tiredness, the longing, the incompleteness — it isn’t a threat. It’s longing. The child remembers her. It wishes to be near her. It misses her.”

Harry blinked, and for a second, his throat tightened.

“The baby misses her?”

Harry smiled — but it was tremulous, a flicker of warmth edged with emotion that caught in his throat before it ever reached his eyes. The realization that something as simple, as profound, as missing could be the cause of his unease stirred something fragile inside him. He blinked quickly and looked away.

Tom, ever watchful, saw it all. The moment the idea settled. The relief. The grief. And something in him slumped — half frustration, half inevitability.

Of course.

Of course it would be like this.

Harry Potter was an agent of chaos and Hermione Granger was his partner in crime. The stability of Harry Potter’s life always returned to that girl. And now, apparently, so did his child.

I’m going to have to storm the Burrow to retrieve her, aren’t I? Tom muttered internally with a long-suffering sigh, raking a hand through his hair.

Why do I even bother planning anything anymore? Nothing ever goes the way I intend.

But then—

A shimmer of light lanced through the quiet — soft, silken, and unmistakably magical.

It unfolded slowly, like moonlight spreading across still water. An otter took form in the air, rising from a glimmer that pulsed once before unfurling into motion. It didn’t walk or run — it swam, gliding with the fluid grace of something made of light and memory rather than flesh. Its fur shone with an otherworldly glow, shifting in shades of silver and opaline blue, as though dipped in the memory of dawn.

It moved with intent.

First past Narcissa — who stilled, sharp and statuesque, but let it pass.

Then Tom — who stood entirely still, a flicker of alarm passing behind his eyes, old reflexes twitching toward defense before falling quiet.

And then, inevitably, it turned to Harry.

Harry gasped. Not out loud — not quite. But the sound broke in his chest all the same. His breath caught, one hand instinctively rising to his stomach.

Because he knew.

Hermione.

He could feel it — not just recognize the shape of her Patronus, but feel her, unmistakably, in the pulse of it. The magic was warm and familiar and steadying — like her voice, like her touch when his hands shook, like the unwavering look in her eyes when she told him he was not alone.

His throat tightened. Tears pricked the corners of his eyes.

And then came the Jack Russell Terrier — bounding in behind the otter, tail wagging, energy humming. It paused near the doorway, uncertain but eager, nose twitching as though sniffing out permission.

As if it didn’t know it would be welcomed but had needed to come anyway.

The otter circled once more — graceful, deliberate — before gliding toward Harry. Closer. Closer. It moved like it knew him, like it remembered everything.

Harry barely breathed.

Then, with a softness that seemed impossible for something made of light, it nuzzled the curve of his belly.

It didn’t just brush him — it lingered. Pressed its silvery head into him with quiet insistence, as if to say: I’m here. I’ve always been here.

Magic bloomed in the room, but it wasn’t the kind that crackled or sparked. It was quieter, deeper — old as stone, and soft as breath.

Not power.

Presence. A kind of knowing.

Harry’s other hand flew to his abdomen, covering the place the otter was; where it rested against him, his child. His fingers trembled, not from fear, but from the aching relief that spread through his chest like thawing ice.

It was her. Not just her Patronus. Not just her magic. Her.

Hermione.

Somehow, across whatever distance separated them, she had found him. Answered the need — not just his, but the child’s.

The otter rested its head there, breathing light into him. Magic shimmered off its pelt like moonlight on a lake, and then — slowly, as if it had one last message to deliver — it began to unravel.

The glow unspooled like golden thread, drifting downward in slow, sacred arcs. Each filament of light kissed his skin before sinking into the swell of his body, disappearing like sunlight into water.

Tom stood frozen beside him, eyes wide. There was calculation in his gaze, yes, but behind it something else flickered — something far more human. A fractured yearning. A grief. A wonder he didn’t quite know how to name.

“She knows,” Harry’s voice pulled him back to the present.

His voice cracked like glass.

“She still knows.”

The glow sank deeper, and with it went the ache. The silence. The gnawing absence he hadn’t dared admit to. It was gone, replaced by something whole.

And then — movement.

The baby kicked. Not weakly. Not uncertainly. But deliberately — as if it, too, recognized the warmth that had passed through him. As if it knew her.

Harry’s breath caught. He smiled — barely, tremulously — but it was real.

Not just light.

Love.

Harry gasped — a sharp, broken sound that caught halfway between a sob and a breath — as the tension he'd been carrying unraveled all at once. His shoulders sagged, and the tears came easily, silently, slipping down his cheeks in rivulets he didn’t bother to stop.

They weren’t tears of fear. Or pain. They were release. Gratitude. A relief so vast it hollowed him out in the best way.

His hands drifted instinctively in small circles around his stomach, cradling the place where the Patronus had touched — as if his fingers might hold the warmth there longer, seal it into his skin. His head dipped, not in defeat, but reverence. A gesture of silent thanks, quiet and unspoken, offered to someone who couldn’t possibly hear him.

To someone who shouldn’t even remember.

And yet… she did. In some way.

Somehow, impossibly, even after her memories had been taken, Hermione had found him.

Her magic still lingered in the air, tangible as breath — warm and sharp and distinctly hers. It hummed around him, wrapping itself around his soul like a tether. Familiar. Precise. Anchored.

She had found him.

The room itself shimmered faintly with the echo of it. Like the aftertaste of light. Like an embrace that hadn't ended.

And in the corner, still as stone, the Jack Russell Terrier sat quietly.

Its tail gave one uncertain wag. A tentative thump against the floor. Not demanding. Not begging.

Waiting.

It hadn’t moved forward. Hadn’t pressed.

It simply existed — present and patient, like a memory he hadn't yet decided whether to touch.

Like a question asked with infinite gentleness: Do you want me?

Harry’s breath hitched. A new ache bloomed in his chest, raw and jagged and full of wonder. The kind of pain that only comes when grief and hope brush shoulders.

It wasn’t just the otter. It wasn’t just her magic.

It was Ron and what he brought.

The one person Harry hadn’t dared to call out for — not because he didn’t want to, but because the wound ran too deep. Because wanting too much from someone who had left… that was dangerous. That was true grief.

But now — here — Ron hadn’t spoken. Hadn’t pressed.

He had stayed.

Harry looked at the small, loyal Patronus with something reverent in his gaze. Something almost scared. As if reaching out might break whatever fragile thing was starting to bloom between them.

The Jack Russell gave a soft, hesitant bark. Not loud. Just… hopeful.

Harry’s lips parted, and when his voice came, it was soft and low and barely more than breath.

“Come here, boy.”

The Patronus hesitated for only a heartbeat — just long enough to make Harry’s breath catch again — then trotted forward, silent as starlight on water. Its silver paws barely touched the floor, its body a soft blur of light and memory. The Jack Russell Terrier reached the edge of the bed, ears lifted, tail giving a cautious wag, and looked up at Harry with eyes that somehow radiated more than magic. They held warmth. Recognition. Something that felt like… home.

With the lightness of thought, it leapt up — a flicker of silver cutting through the dark — and landed at Harry’s side.

It padded forward slowly, humbly, until its nose brushed Harry’s cheek. Just once. A gentle nudge. A weightless press of light and meaning.

An apology.

Harry closed his eyes, his throat thick, chest tight.

“I’m sorry too,” he whispered into the space between them.

And that was all it took.

The absence that had lived under Harry’s ribs for months shifted. Softened. There was no explanation, no spell to make sense of the way forgiveness moved like this — invisible but absolute. But it was there. Palpable. In the hush that followed, in the quiet way the dog gave one last wag of its tail before circling once and curling up against Harry’s belly.

It rested there a moment — one glowing shape tucked beside where another had just been — and then, as if exhaling the last breath of a long-held promise, began to dissolve. The light peeled away in golden wisps, silver threads unspooling into the air, sinking into Harry’s skin and into something deeper, more enduring. Not just memory — but grace.

The room did not dim when the light vanished.

If anything, it glowed more.

Not from any one source, but from the residue of something sacred — something whole. As though the Patronuses had left not just magic, but hope stitched into the walls, the floor, the very air.

“For Merlin’s sake,” Tom muttered under his breath, dry but rattled, the weight of implications — uninvited visitors, emotional Patronuses, godparents by proxy — tugging sharply at the edge of his composure.

He already sensed this meant more people would soon be invited into his sanctuary, into his life.

But before Tom could spiral any further — into irritation, into suspicion, into the familiar, thorny instinct to tighten every mental latch and slam every emotional door — a hand closed around his own.

Harry’s.

Warm. Grounding. Steady in a way that nothing else ever seemed to be.

Tom froze.

He looked down, startled by the contact — by the simplicity of it. Just fingers threaded through his, palm to palm, like it was the most natural thing in the world. But what truly unraveled him was what he saw when he raised his eyes to meet Harry’s.

Joy.

Unmistakable. Undeniable. Radiant.

It wasn’t restrained or careful or polite. It was unfiltered and unguarded — reckless, even — the kind of joy Tom had never learned how to feel, let alone offer to another. It shimmered in Harry’s gaze like starlight breaking through a storm. And it made something inside Tom ache with a ferocity he couldn’t name.

He forgot, all at once, about the logistics and the looming future. About the fragile balance he kept with the world. About the plans he'd spun out like silk and strangled himself with for years.

Because there was Harry — radiant, incandescent — not just glowing but burning, lit from within by something fierce and full of life. And all of that light, all of that warmth, was pointed squarely at him.

At Tom.

It stole the breath from his lungs.

He couldn’t look away — didn’t want to — because in that moment, in that impossibly tender, unbearably real moment, something inside him shifted. Not like breaking. Not like ruin. But like the first turn of a long-forgotten key, the creak of a door that had always been there but never opened.

Until now.

And he knew. With a clarity that stunned him: he would give Harry the world, if asked. Without hesitation. Without condition.

Not for power. Not for control. Not to win.

But for this.

For the way Harry smiled — open, unguarded, utterly unashamed.

For the way he looked when the fear didn’t reach his eyes.

For the way he reached for Tom — like it was instinct, not obligation.

Like trust had always lived in his bones, waiting for a reason.

And that terrified Tom more than any prophecy, more than death itself.

Because for the first time in his life, he didn’t want to be feared, or followed, or even forgiven.

He wanted to be worthy.

Look, I started this as a joke and now we are here – I don’t know how it happened either. YOLO.

Reviews feed my soul

Chapter Text

AN: I could not wait to get to this chapter.

Also, can’t believe I am also going to finish something.

YOLO.

JK owns HP – never the fandom.

-----

Tom couldn’t sleep.

He had tried — had done everything short of casting a bloody Sleeping Charm on himself. He’d laid on his side, back to Harry; then flat on his back, arms crossed like a corpse.

He’d even turned to face Harry once, foolishly, and regretted it instantly. The image had branded itself into the backs of his eyelids: Harry curled loosely on his side, peaceful in a way Tom couldn’t fathom. The rise of his growing belly showing beneath the blanket. That maddening little furrow between his brows that never quite left, even in sleep.

The fire had long since dwindled to embers, faint orange veins in the hearth still pulsing with residual magical heat. A sign that the castle had fallen into its usual midnight hush, that peculiar kind of quiet that didn’t soothe — it echoed. It hummed, thick with unsaid things. With weight. With warning.

And Tom lay there, motionless, while the storm inside his mind roared louder by the hour.

It wasn’t just the child — though the thought of it growing inside Harry, of something so impossibly theirs, clawed at his every thought. It wasn’t even the steady erosion of all the carefully crafted plans and contingencies he had built to keep control.

It was Harry.

Harry, who had smiled with tearful joy when the Patronuses had arrived. Who had taken Tom’s hand with such unquestioning certainty, like he had always been meant to hold it. Harry, who was now fast asleep beside him — radiating warmth and magic and that infuriating, impossible lightness.

It made Tom feel like he was burning alive.

So close to the source of it, he could hardly breathe. A sunbeam, an eclipse; something radiant and cataclysmic, bending the world around him and threatening to unmake everything Tom had ever been.

Harry was undoing him. Gently. Quietly. Without even trying.

And yet Tom couldn’t find it in himself to run from it. Couldn’t walk away.

He turned over again, restless. His thoughts a cacophony: What if he failed them? What if the child inherited the wrong parts of him? What if this infatuation — this newfound feeling – whatever it was — wasn’t enough to protect them from the world he had built?

From the people still loyal to the version of him that would let them burn… From those who would have ignited the spark…

Another hour passed. Maybe two. The embers finally dulled to ash.

Eventually, with a hiss of quiet frustration, Tom slipped from the bed. He didn’t bother with shoes or a cloak. The stone beneath his feet was cold, grounding. Punishing, in a way he welcomed.

He padded across the room like a shadow, silent and sharp, and disappeared into the bathroom without a sound.

Sleep would not come tonight. But perhaps in the silence, he might make sense of what remained.

He stood at the sink in the en suite, bracing himself against the cold porcelain, head bowed – eyes still able to see the mirror. Himself. His reflection looked too pale, too open. Vulnerable. He hated it.

Behind him, Nagini having followed him in, had her glinting eyes focused on him in the low light.  

“You’re doing that thing again,” she murmured. “Staring at yourself like the answers will carve themselves into your face.”

Tom didn’t look at her.

“They won’t,” he said flatly.

“I’ve already tried.”

Nagini slithered forward slowly, curling lazily near the base of the vanity.

“Can’t sleep?”

Tom exhaled through his nose, something too close to a scoff.

“Of course not. That would suggest my mind has quieted down. It hasn’t. It’s louder than ever.”

She flicked her tongue, sensing more than hearing the weight pressing down on him.

“You could try lying down.”

Tom finally raised his head – eyes still on the mirror. If anything, he looked paler.

“And what? Watch him breathe? Feel that… warmth?”

He said the word like it tasted foreign.

“I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know what to do with him.”

Nagini tilted her head, tongue flicking in wry amusement.

“Affection,” she said, drawling the word like a diagnosis, “is a terribly inconvenient affliction. You’re lucky I’m immune.”

Tom exhaled a dry, humorless breath — something caught between a laugh and a sigh, sharp at the edges.

“This isn’t that… ” he muttered, low and rough, as if saying it aloud might make it true.

“Mm,” she hummed.

“Of course it’s not. That’s why you’re hiding in a bathroom, talking to your snake about feelings in the middle of the night.”

Tom glared at her finally, but it lacked any real venom.

“I had it all mapped out,” he whispered.

“The horcruxes, the sanctuaries, the contingencies, even this castle. Thoughts of the future, plans for control to watch them grow, to live out their lives, to watch them d…  Every inch of it shaped to preserve control. And now — he touches me, and I forget how to breathe. He smiles, and my entire body… aches.”

Nagini was quiet for a beat.

“That’s called being alive, darling,” she said softly.

“Mortals get it all the time. It’s terribly inefficient, but you lot seem fond of it.”

Tom stared down at his hands, flexing them slowly.

“I don’t know how to protect him without losing myself. I don’t know how to hold both — power and him — without ruining one.”

“Maybe you’re not meant to,” she said surprisingly gently.

“Maybe the point isn’t to have everything anymore.”

He looked over at her, eyes bleak.

“If I lose them, I lose everything. But if I keep them…” His voice thinned, trembled. “I may not recognize who I become.”

Nagini studied him for a moment, then slowly coiled up close beside him.

“Then become someone better. Or don’t. But don’t pretend it isn’t already happening.”

There was no cruelty in her voice. No mocking, not now.

Just truth.

Tom turned back to the mirror; his hands braced on the edge of the marble basin. For the first time in decades, he didn’t recognize the man staring back at him. The sharp lines were still there, the unmistakable beauty and sinful intensity — but something behind his eyes had shifted. Warped. Softened. He studied his reflection, and — crucially — did not look away.

His voice became quiet, almost casual, but heavy with unspoken weight.

“Are you afraid of death, Nagini?”

There was a pause, and then the soft rustle of scales. Nagini lifted her head, golden eyes narrowing.

“If I had eyebrows,” she said dryly, “I’d raise one at you for asking such a ridiculous question.”

He didn’t smile.

Nagini sighed, curling more tightly into herself, a low hum beneath her words.

“No. I’m not afraid of death. Why would I be frightened of something so… inevitable? So honest?”

Tom turned slightly, just enough to glance at her over his shoulder.

“I’ve lived,” she went on, voice softer now.

“I’ve tasted the world in its cruelty and in its sweetness. I’ve known pain, and power, and… pastries.”

She gave a pointed flick of her tongue.

“And let’s not pretend we both haven’t seen it — what lies beyond the veil. We know it isn’t nothing.”

He was quiet for a long beat.

“I’m not rushing toward it, mind you,” Nagini added, curling her tail with a lazy, elegant flick.

“Far too many sweets I haven’t tried. And I’d like to witness what utterly tragic name you plan to saddle this child with before I slither off this mortal coil – to teach them everything you will undoubtedly fail to – to watch them grow and drive you up the wall.”

Tom exhaled sharply through his nose again — not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh. A sound like something else breaking quietly inside him.

Which was becoming a disturbingly common occurrence.

He didn’t look at her. His gaze remained fixed on the mirror in front of him, on the stranger he couldn’t reconcile with — the man wearing his face but none of his certainty. None of his armor. None of the hunger for conquest that used to burn behind his eyes like a second sun.

“It’s not that simple,” he said at last, voice low, tight.

“It never has been. I’ve spent my entire life trying to outpace it. Outwit it. Death was always a flaw in the design — a failure to be corrected. A weakness.”

Nagini watched him in the reflection, expression unreadable.

“Why, though?” she asked. “Everyone dies. Even stars.”

“I wanted to be the first not to,” he whispered, so quiet it felt like a confession.

“And then what?” she asked after a pause, her voice almost gentle. Gentle for a twenty-foot murder snake.

“What would you have done with it? With all that time?”

He opened his mouth, but no answer came. Nothing that didn’t sound hollow, or small, or painfully childish when stacked against the weight of that question.

Nagini tilted her head.

“Were you even living? Or were you just… not dying?”

Silence stretched between them — vast, aching.

And still, Tom said nothing.

Because the truth clawed too close to the surface.

No.

He hadn’t been living. Not really. Not until recently. Not until the ache of proximity; the unbearable joy and terror of watching Harry laugh and cry with his friends despite being separated by distance; clutch his belly with one hand and his wand with the other as he called magic forth.

Magic that never failed to sing to him.

Not until he had tasted what it meant to protect instead of dominate… To hold something fragile and want it to thrive, not because it served him — but because it simply existed, and that was enough.

“Let me put this another way,” Nagini said, her voice quieter now, less sardonic.

“Are you… unhappy? With how things are. With where they’re going.”

Tom stilled.

It was a simple question — deceptively so. He could have dismissed it with a sneer, with some clipped retort about sentiment being a distraction, about how contentment was a leash forged by the weak.

But he didn’t. He couldn’t.

Because the truth — the one that refused to be vanquished, no matter how many wards he built around it — was that he wasn’t unhappy.

He couldn’t admit it aloud. Not yet. Not even to himself in words.

But something had changed. There had been moments — quiet, strange, disarming moments — in the last few weeks that had stirred something deep in his bones. Something richer than ambition. Stronger and more terrible than fear.

He had watched Harry laugh in the sunlight. Had seen and felt the child kick beneath Harry’s skin and experienced the world tilt beneath his feet. Had touched Harry’s hand during a spell and felt magic pulse between them like a second heartbeat.

And for all his obsession with evading death, with mastering the limits of the body and soul — that feeling of a second chance terrified him more.

Because it asked things of him that no prophecy or fate or destiny ever had.

Because it was real.

Time passed.

Nagini didn’t press him. She only watched with ancient eyes, still and patient as the quiet curled deeper around them.

Minutes bled into an hour. Maybe two.

Outside the bathroom, the castle was still — its silence a kind of suspended breath. In the other room, Harry stirred in his sleep, a soft sound muffled by thick blankets.

Tom closed his eyes.

He didn’t return to bed.

He stayed where he was — eventually sitting on the cold tile, face drawn and distant, staring into the invisible horizon of a future he never meant to want.

-----

Hermione sat in the kitchen at the Burrow. Numb.

She and Ron had moved in the night before, after the whirlwind of the previous twenty-four hours — after Fleur’s offhand comment that had shattered what little sense of normalcy remained. It had taken Hermione all of ten seconds to put it together. The moment Fleur had mentioned ‘godmother,’ it was like a key had turned. Everything clicked — again.

Harry’s symptoms hadn’t been random. The nausea. The sudden bouts of exhaustion. The pallor. The way he could barely keep anything down for weeks. They hadn’t been just aftereffects of the searching, the war, or the stress of living on the run. They were textbook.

They were unmistakable, in hindsight.

He had been pregnant. Was currently with child.

And that, Hermione realized with cold dread, was probably why she had been Obliviated in the first place.

Harry Potter being pregnant wasn’t just unusual — it was catastrophic in the wrong hands. A dangerous, volatile secret that someone had clearly gone to extraordinary lengths to bury. Someone had wanted her to forget. And they had succeeded — until now.

But who?

She didn’t think Harry would have done it. He was secretive or withdrawn at times, sure, but to erase her memories? No. That wasn’t him. Which meant someone else. Someone with access. Power. Motive.

And then there was the other question — the one that made her stomach knot even tighter: who was the other parent?

That list was terrifyingly short. And each name on it came with a tangled mess of political fallout, personal danger, or both.

But there was one name — one horrifyingly plausible name — that her mind kept circling back to. One person who matched the silence in the war’s shifting tide. One person whose growing absence had been too conspicuous ever since Ron’s departure in the tent – the point from which her memories had been erased. The same person who could explain the dark books she’d unexpectedly found tucked into her bag — the ones she hadn’t packed, hadn’t borrowed, hadn’t even seen before. Ancient, brittle tomes on dark things. One of them had practically hummed with malevolence when she touched it.

And then the book on living with snakes.

The baking book was the bizarre outlier. But in retrospect, it might have been the perfect misdirection. Everything else — everything that mattered — fit too well.

Hermione had a sinking feeling, the kind that settled in her bones and made her chest feel tight. Cold. Dreadful.

It was him. You-Know-Who. She didn’t know how, or when, or why exactly — but she was almost certain.

And then there were their Patronuses — the otter and the dog — that they had sent to Harry, to the child. Both of them had felt it — the moment the spells landed, the moment the magic took shape and stretched across the distance between them and Harry. It wasn’t just a flicker of magic; it was a tangible wave of emotion, a peaceful release that surged through their bodies as the Patronuses found their target.

Somewhere, they had arrived. Somewhere, Harry had received them. And in that moment, they both knew without a doubt that it wasn’t just the magic that had reached their friend — it was something more. Something far deeper. A message of love. A message of joy. Acceptance and recognition.

But even as that sense of connection lingered, it didn’t erase the reality of their situation. There were too many unanswered questions, too many unknowns. Variables they couldn’t control or predict. Not nearly enough answers.

The weight of it all settled heavily on their minds, a pressure that seemed to grow with each passing hour. They were waiting for clarity; for something definitive to show them the way forward, but the answers remained elusive.

One thing, however, had become unmistakably clear — sharp, urgent, undeniable. If Harry was going to come for them — or worse, if someone else was going to come through him — it would be a catastrophic mistake to be cloaked under a Fidelius Charm.

Where they couldn’t be found.

Since Hermione had been sent to the Burrow, that is where they would return to.

Familiar. Open. Magical, but not hidden.

They had barely slept that night. Every creak of floorboards, every groan of the pipes, every distant crackle of magic or gust of wind had put them on edge.

They had gotten used to living within the security and protection of powerful magic.

Morning had arrived and brought with it exhaustion.

Arthur had just left for work, his footsteps fading down the path outside. The door had barely clicked shut when Molly, already up and moving, busied herself in the kitchen. She was humming softly under her breath, her sleeves rolled up, a small attempt at a comforting, familiar routine. Hermione couldn’t help but notice the way Molly’s movements were both efficient and tender, almost as if the act of keeping herself busy was the only way to stave off the heaviness in the air. Ron, sitting nearby, seemed too lost in thought to speak.

It wasn’t just the kitchen that felt different. It was everything. The Burrow itself — this haven that had always been a sanctuary for the Weasleys — now felt too quiet, too still. Neither she nor Ron could bring themselves to act like everything was fine, though Molly seemed determined to create some semblance of normalcy.

Molly glanced up at the family clock hanging on the wall. Her eyes softened slightly, watching it with a quiet familiarity, like a mother checking on her children. A small, satisfied nod followed when Arthur’s hand shifted from ‘Traveling’ to ‘Work.’ A moment later, Fred and George’s hands moved, confirming that they too were safe in their shop. Molly’s lips curled into a brief, weary smile.

Everyone else was accounted for. The relief, though faint, was visible in her posture as she turned back toward Ron and Hermione.

“Would you two like some tea?” she asked lightly, her voice tinged with a kindness that didn’t quite match the gravity in the air.

“Or perhaps something to eat? I’ve got fresh bread coming out of the oven.”

But that moment of warmth, of mundane routine, shattered abruptly.

Molly glanced down at the family clock again, and for a brief second, Hermione swore she saw the faintest tremor in Molly’s hand. Her gaze locked onto the clock too as if the world had gone still around her.

Molly’s hand. Ron’s hand. Moved, slowly, chillingly, from ‘Home’ to—

‘Mortal Peril.’

Hermione’s breath caught, and she watched in silence as Ron stiffened beside her, his eyes blown wide, like he had just seen something he couldn’t fully comprehend. Molly’s face turned ashen; her breath caught in her throat like a fist had clenched around it.

“No,” Molly gasped, her voice barely a whisper, but it was thick with raw fear.

"No... this can’t be—".

Then Molly felt it.

Molly’s head snapped toward the window, eyes widening in realization. She felt the wards beneath her skin — their protective boundaries that had kept this house safe through years of danger — shudder violently. They didn’t just tremble; they buckled. The edges of the wards strained, as though they were being pressed inward by some invisible force. They groaned, howled, and, for the briefest moment, it sounded like the Burrow itself was in pain.

Molly’s heart plummeted into her stomach.

Then she saw it. Saw her.

There, just beyond the boundary — standing in the dim light, wreathed in shadow, her figure rippling with malice and raw power — was Bellatrix Lestrange.

She paced along the invisible perimeter of the wards, her steps slow and deliberate. Her wand dragged lazily through the air, tracing an invisible line just at the edge of the protective barrier. With every movement, a red shimmer followed in its wake — a line that sizzled softly, like blood drawn across glass. The faint sound echoed in the stillness, unsettling in its quiet menace.

She was testing the boundary. Probing. Hunting for weakness.

Bellatrix, with a twisted smile playing on her lips, continued her slow march, seemingly unhurried, savoring the anticipation. The air was thick with the tension of something terrible about to happen.

Ron and Hermione rushed to the window, their feet skidding to a halt beside Molly, whose gaze was locked on the nightmarish scene unfolding just beyond the Burrow’s wards. Her face was pale, her lips pressed together in an expression of quiet terror.

"Let’s Apparate!" Ron’s voice was strained with urgency. "To Bill’s!"

His wand was already raised, and he spun on the spot, bracing himself for the familiar pull of Apparition, the sensation he knew so well.

But there was no shift, no pull, no familiar twist of reality that marked the moment of transport.

Nothing. Only a crushing, suffocating stillness.

Ron’s heart plummeted into his stomach. He turned on his heel, desperation rising in his chest.

"We’re trapped," he muttered, the words thick with disbelief.

Hermione, standing beside him, closed her eyes for a moment, her hand clutching her wand.

"Anti-Apparition wards," she breathed, her voice sharp with realization. Her words sliced through the air like shards of glass, cold and final.

"She’s locked us in."

Molly’s fingers dug into the windowsill, trembling.

“It’s an attack,” she whispered, her voice barely audible.

Her eyes glistened, wide with fear. Her knuckles had gone bone white.

Ron didn’t waste a second longer. He turned, stepping in front of his mother, his hand gripping her arms with a force that left no room for argument.

“Mum, listen to me,” he said, his voice low but full of authority.

“You need to go. Now. Run — go in the opposite direction, away from her. Keep running until you’re out of range. Then Apparate straight to the twins’ shop. Get everyone to Bill’s. Shell Cottage.”

Molly opened her mouth, her expression one of shock and fear, but Ron was already turning away, his words cutting through the air with the sharpness of someone who had made up their mind.

“I’ll hold her off,” he added, his voice hardening with unyielding resolve.

“Don’t wait for me. Go.”

Molly’s eyes filled with a mix of defiance and terror, but Ron’s gaze had been unwavering. He wasn’t asking her to leave; he was commanding her to do what was necessary to survive.

She opened her mouth to protest, but no words came. She closed it again, her heart heavy with the weight of an impossible decision. But before she could argue further, Ron had already spun on his heel, determined, his focus narrowing.

He glanced back at Hermione, a silent question passing between them: Go with her. Protect her.

But Hermione didn’t hesitate. Her eyes met his, steady and unwavering. No words needed to be said. She shook her head slowly, firmly. She wasn’t leaving. They were in this together.

In one synchronized motion, they drew their wands, each of them moving with a quiet understanding, their expressions hardened with purpose. A shield of silence fell between them and the rest of the world. They were not going to run. They were not going to hide. They were going to meet it head-on — together.

And without another word, they flung open the door and charged into the storm — magic bristling at their fingertips, hearts hammering in their chests, side by side.

Bellatrix saw them and threw back her head, letting out a screeching laugh that pierced the countryside like a banshee’s cry.

“Oh, it is a test!” Bellatrix shrieked, spinning on the spot, arms outstretched like a performer before a roaring crowd.

“A test to see which of us is truly loyal! Which of us will bring him the Weasleys —” her eyes locked on Ron, glittering with malice, “— and the mudblood.”

She spat the last word like venom, grinning, already tasting victory.

Ron and Hermione stood firm, wands raised, hearts pounding. The wards pulsed violently now — strained to their limits.

With a shrill, wordless scream, Bellatrix thrust her wand forward and stabbed at the very air, piercing the unseen barrier that separated her from them. The wards cracked like glass, light bleeding along fault lines, and then —

Boom.

They shattered inward with an eruption of force and magic that sent tremors racing across the countryside. Birds scattered from the trees. The sky pulsed with energy. The ground beneath the Burrow shook.

And Bellatrix stepped through.

The fight began instantly.

A jet of red light screamed from Ron’s wand — Bellatrix batted it aside with a lazy flick, laughing. Hermione cast a rapid succession of hexes, forcing Bellatrix to dodge and weave with sudden fury.

The air thickened with magic — fiery spells, crackling curses, the high-pitched snap of shields breaking. Bellatrix was relentless, her movements wild but precise. She hurled a chain of Blasting Curses that tore up the earth around them, sending clumps of sod and flame skyward.

Ron lunged forward, wand slashing through the air as he hurled a barrage of spells.

“Stupefy! Expulso! Petrificus Totalus!”

One of the cutting spells caught Bellatrix in the shoulder — she hissed, stumbling slightly, then spun with a snarl.

“Poor little Ronniekins playing war hero!” she cackled, her voice a jagged scream of glee.

She snapped her wand forward. “Flagrate!”

A lash of blazing red fire cracked like a whip, slicing through Ron’s shield with a shower of sparks. The heat seared his arm as the spell struck and sent him tumbling backward into the grass.

“Ron!” Hermione cried out, lunging between them. Her wand flicked in a blur.

“Confringo! Glacius! Bombarda Maxima!”

A cascade of blue and gold light burst from her wand like thunder, the spells roaring through the air. Bellatrix twisted, dodging two, but one caught her in the ribs — her scream was feral, almost delighted.

“Oh yes! Hurt me!” Bellatrix shrieked; eyes gleaming.

“Let’s bleed together, darling!”

The fight turned brutal. Magic cracked the air in every direction. The ground scorched black where stray curses landed. Bellatrix moved like a phantom, erratic and vicious. Hermione and Ron stayed shoulder to shoulder, circling her, refusing to give ground.

“Serpensortia!” Bellatrix cried.

A storm of corporeal snakes erupted from her wand, hissing and lunging for Hermione, their fangs glinting with venom.

Hermione didn’t blink.

“Protego Maxima! Incendio Circum!”

Ron dove out of the way while a blazing dome of fire surged up around Hermione, incinerating the conjured serpents mid-air. Their shrieks of magical agony echoed as they burned to ash.

Ron stumbled to his feet, blood trickling down his temple. His breathing was ragged, but his wand was steady.

“You okay?” he shouted.

“Not really!” Hermione shouted back.

Bellatrix laughed — a high, cracked cackle that made the hairs on their necks rise.

“You think you’re strong because you’ve got each other?” she sang, almost mockingly.

“You think love will save you?”

Her grin stretched too wide.

“I’ve buried people in love. I’ve burned families whole. I’ll carve that pretty little face right off your skull, girl.”

“Try me,” Hermione spat, raising her wand again.

They were barely holding her off. Bellatrix was faster, crueler, and utterly unhinged. But Ron and Hermione fought like twin blades — desperate, burning with purpose, and utterly united.

Then Ron saw it. An opening.

He shouted, “Now!” and hurled a blinding light charm at Bellatrix’s face.

She reeled back, screeching, shielding her eyes for just a second.

It was enough.

Hermione flicked her wand in a clean, vicious arc and screamed, “Sectum sectorum!”

The slicing hex flew through the air like a blade of light — sharp, focused, furious.

Bellatrix tried to block, too slow.

There was a sickening snap and a spray of blood as the spell hit its mark.

Her broken wand flew one way. Her severed hand the other.

Bellatrix screamed — no longer triumphant, no longer laughing — just raw, ragged pain. She crumpled to her knees, clutching the bleeding stump of her arm, her wand lost, her power fading with every breath.

But she wasn’t done.

With a shriek of fury, she reached with her remaining hand, yanking a thin-bladed knife from a sheath strapped to her inner thigh. Her eyes burned with madness as she lunged for Hermione — who hadn’t expected her to keep fighting, but didn’t flinch.

Hermione’s wand was already raised, the tip glowing with searing light, the incantation poised on her tongue.

But just as she inhaled to speak the words of the most vicious cutting curse she knew, she heard another voice: low, calm, and precise.

“Avada Kedavra.”

A flash of green light tore through the air from behind Bellatrix. It struck her squarely between the shoulder blades.

She didn’t even scream.

Her body went rigid, then crumpled to the earth in a lifeless heap; the mad gleam still frozen in her wide, glassy eyes.

Hermione froze, breath caught in her throat. That voice hadn’t been Ron’s. It hadn’t come from behind her. It had come from the trees.

Slowly, wand still raised, she turned toward the sound.

A figure emerged from the treeline — not running, not wary. Walking. Straight-backed. Confident. Beautiful.

And terrifying.

The stranger’s magic pressed against the air like humidity before a thunderstorm — thick, electric, clinging to the skin. Hermione felt it in her bones. In her lungs.

She had only felt this once before.

At the Ministry.

When Voldemort had been there. In the atrium.

Her mouth went dry. No. It couldn’t be. She refused to believe it – even if made all kinds of horrible sense.

She swallowed hard, trying to push back the sick certainty rising in her throat.

The man approached. Young — perhaps early twenties. Raven-dark hair, sculpted features, eyes so piercing they felt invasive. He radiated power.

Hermione kept her wand trained on him. Ron stepped fully in front of her, shield-like, wand unwavering.

“Who are you?” Ron demanded.

The man stopped several paces away, unfazed by their weapons.

“No need for wands,” he said smoothly. “I’m not here to harm you.”

“Didn’t answer the question,” Ron snapped.

The stranger inclined his head.

“Thank you for sending the Patronuses.”

Hermione faltered. Her wand wavered — just slightly. Her mind racing – becoming more and more certain as another domino fell into place.

Ron’s didn’t.

His wand never wavered. His stance was solid, eyes sharp, locked onto the stranger like he was a curse waiting to happen.

The man noticed — and smiled. It was a slow, deliberate expression, albeit unreadable in its intent. Calm, composed… dangerous.

Hermione’s voice broke the silence, shaky with equal parts desperation, hope, and fear.

“Do you know where Harry is?”

Her words came out in a rush, emotion rising in her throat.

The man nodded once, unhurried.

“I do.”

Hermione took a step forward – feeding off of the warmth of Ron’s back as if to give herself more strength.

“Then who are you?” she asked again, more firmly this time.

But afraid to know the answer – to have her suspicions confirmed.

The stranger held her gaze.

“I’m the one who took your memories,” he said evenly.

“And the one who sent you here.”

Hermione recoiled as if struck. Her breath caught. Ron kept standing protectively in front of her, fury flashing in his eyes.

But the man raised a hand — calm, preemptive.

“Before you react — hear me out.”

Ron’s voice was low, edged with fury.

“You erased her memories. Why?”

The man exhaled slowly, almost like the conversation bored him.

“It would be easier for everyone if I simply gave them back. Truly. I mean you no harm.”

“That doesn’t answer the question,” Ron growled.

A flicker of something — guilt, maybe, or calculation — passed through the stranger’s eyes.

“I took them,” he said, “because she knew too much. Things I couldn’t allow to be known at the time. Things that could have endangered certain people.”

Hermione’s expression tightened.

“You felt threatened by me?”

“Yes,” he said simply. “I did.”

There was no apology in his tone, only admission.

“I’m not exactly eager to restore them,” he added.

“But… with you being the godmother of my child. That rather limits my options.”

The silence that followed was deafening.

Hermione’s heart thundered — not from fear, but something stranger. Something harder to name. Some terrible truth she desperately wished was a mistake.

She blinked at the man.

“Your child?” Her voice was thin. “With… Harry?”

The man nodded once, slow and unapologetic. There was a flicker of amusement in his expression — like he was enjoying the way the questions made her falter.

Hermione stared. Ron shifted beside her, eyes narrowed, his grip on his wand tightening. They exchanged a glance. A silent conversation passed between them — disbelief, confusion, wariness. Dread.

Still, neither lowered their wand.

The man — Tom, though they didn’t yet know to call him that — watched them both.

Harry’s friends.

No oath-bound followers. No enchanted fealty. No dark marks inked into skin. And yet… they had followed him to the ends of the earth. Slept in forests and tents. Bled for him. Fought for him. Would die for him. Would probably even have killed for him.

Not because of magic.

Because of love.

Because of choice.

Tom understood the power of fear, of domination. But this kind of loyalty? It was foreign. Unpredictable. He had no idea what to do with it.

He couldn’t compel them. Not now. Not without ruining something with Harry that he didn’t want to name.

He needed another way.

Tom’s eyes flicked to Hermione — and then downward, to the worn beaded bag at her side. A detail most might miss, but he recognized it instantly.

Harry had told him about that bag. About the hunt. The woods. The cold. The quiet agony of those endless months.

About her — the girl who carried knowledge in one hand and fire in the other. Who kept them all alive with nothing but books and willpower. He had learned about her first-hand from living with her for two months.

The bag was a relic of that time before coming to live with him. A symbol of what they had survived. What it had once contained.

He took a slow step forward. Not threatening. Calculated.

“I know this is hard to believe,” he said at last. His voice had softened into something careful.

“But Harry is safe. Alive. And I’ve done what I’ve done — for him. For the child. And for myself.”

He glanced at Hermione.

“And because of who you are to him – which is why I am here.”

Hermione didn’t move. But her wand didn’t lower either.

Ron, standing firm beside her, said what she couldn’t yet bring herself to speak:

“Prove it,” Ron said flatly, his wand never wavering.

The man inclined his head as if he’d expected it.

“You’re missing your copy of Hogwarts: A History,” he said calmly.

“It’s buried on my property. You gave it up willingly, during a pagan blessing we performed for Harry and the baby during Yule. You wanted the child to have access to knowledge, context, truth. You said, and I quote, that you wanted them to understand the world they inherit… and have the wisdom to change it when it fails them.”

Hermione stiffened.

That book had never left her side. Not since first year. But in her heart she knew that is exactly something she would have said – and Harry’s child would have been someone she would have given that up for.

Tom continued.

“You also created a study guide for Harry. A pamphlet, color-coded, with checkboxes. You didn’t want him to fall behind. You told him just because he was going to be a father didn’t mean that he had to be a dropout too.”

A faint, amused curve ghosted across his lips.

“He’s been doing well. Brilliantly, actually. He could sit for his NEWTs tomorrow and pass with straight Os.”

Hermione’s throat tightened. Ron’s eyes widened too – that was something so Hermione it physically hurt. And endeared him to her all over again.

Tom’s voice softened.

“I took your memories. Yes, but that isn’t the point.”

He looked between them, gaze steady.

“What matters is that Harry needs you. The child needs you. That is why I’m here.”

He took a slow breath.

“You may have felt something missing — a pull. That hollow ache that said you needed to be somewhere – for someone.”

(Narcissa had explained it to him very well.)

“Harry felt it too. When your Patronuses came, he felt his pull ease.”

Hermione’s lip trembled, but she didn’t speak.

Then Tom turned to Ron.

“Harry told me about you, too. About your fight. About how he thought that was it; the end of your friendship and of the Golden Trio.”

It was Ron’s turn to tremble now.

“I watched your Jack Russel Terrier come in after the otter. It was shy, uncertain – not knowing if it would be welcomed.”

Ron stopped breathing.

Tom shook his head, “But Harry – always Harry – told it to come. I watched as it rubbed its nose against his cheek – watched as he forgave you – apologized too.”

That caught Ron off guard. Completely.

Enough for the air between them to shift. The tension didn’t break, but it bent. The tiniest crack in the wall.

Tom noticed.

“I’ll take you to him,” he said, quietly.

“With or without the memories. But I believe they would help. Not just for clarity — but for trust. So you’ll know I’m not your enemy.”

He looked between them.

 “Not anymore.”

Hermione stared at him for a long moment. Her wand remained raised — but only out of habit now.

“Okay,” she said at last. Her voice was soft. Tired. Resolute.

Tom stepped forward with careful intention, lifting one hand — not in aggression, but focus. A shimmer of green-gold magic laced between his fingers as he touched two fingers to Hermione’s temple.

There was no flash. No pain. Just a slow warmth.

Then it hit.

A crack — like the sky splitting open — and the memories came rushing in.

Not in pieces. Not gently. But all at once.

A kaleidoscope of moments, once locked behind a veil, now breaking free with brutal clarity. The tent — smoke, blood, fear. Malfoy Manor, with its cold stone and colder cruelty. Harry’s voice, raw and desperate, commanding the universe to intervene — please, protect the child. The castle that wasn’t Hogwarts but still felt like home. Voldemort’s home.

The snake — Nagini, who somehow wasn’t just a monster anymore. Sugar cubes on her tongue. Laughter during late-night baking sessions. Harry’s quiet exhaustion. The warmth of long talks beside the fire. Arguments sharp enough to cut, and then the salve of forgiveness. The baby's heartbeat — thudding like hope inside a borrowed stethoscope. Yule lights tangled in frost. The Ceremony — ancient, aching, binding.

Lily Potter’s ethereal descent and the magic of that night – the colors of the universe swirling about them.

Forgiveness. To her murderer. To Voldemort.

Mercy.

A birthday cake. An explosion. The sudden weight of choosing. Tom’s presence — looming, watching, changing.

The knowing.

The choosing.

The loving.

It all came back.

Flooded in, not like a river but a tsunami — crashing over every thought, pulling at her breath, her balance, her very self. A thousand versions of who she was and had been, colliding with who she had become.

Hermione staggered under the weight of it, her knees buckling as the tide surged. It was too much. Too fast. The memories didn’t trickle in — they tore through her like wind through a broken dam.

And then — a hand.

Ron.

Steady, solid Ron — his grip firm around her elbow, grounding her like the earth beneath a lightning storm. His eyes searched hers, wide with concern, and something else: knowing. He didn’t have to ask what was happening.

He just held on.

Hermione gasped, clutching at his sleeve as visions danced behind her eyes — not illusions, not dreams. Truth.

She blinked hard, her breath ragged as she tried to steady herself, her lips parted like she was gasping for air after a sprint. Her heart thudded painfully in her chest, each beat a reminder of everything she’d endured, everything she had yet to face.

Tears fell from her eyes, hot and heavy, as if the dam holding them back had finally shattered. The release was sharp — painful — as the weight of it all hit her in a single, overwhelming wave. She wasn’t just crying for the present, or the future, but for everything that had been, everything that had been lost.

“It’s fine,” she murmured, her voice distant, almost hollow, as if she were trying to convince herself.

“It’s—”

She faltered, her words slipping away like sand between her fingers. She shook her head, the bitter laugh escaping her lips before she could stop it. It was dry, humorless.

“No. It’s not fine. Not remotely. But…” Her voice caught, her chest tightening as she swallowed hard, trying to pull herself together.

“It is what it is.”

And maybe that was the worst part of it all. It wasn’t fine. It never would be. But in this strange, twisted reality they were all bound to, the only thing left to do was to keep moving forward — no matter how heavy the burden became.

Ron was still staring at her, then at Tom, then back again. His confusion was absolute, and she didn’t blame him.

Hermione turned to him fully, voice flat with exasperated clarity.

“Ron,” she said. “Meet Lord Voldemort.”

She gestured toward Tom with a vague, weary hand.

“It’s a long fucking story.”

Harry was eating breakfast with Narcissa.

Or, at least, he was supposed to be.

The eggs on his plate had congealed into a rubbery mess, untouched and long forgotten. His tea had gone tepid. Across the table, Narcissa Malfoy sat like a portrait — composed, elegant, her spine straight and her every movement deliberate — except for her eyes. Her eyes, which kept flicking to Harry with a quiet, persistent concern.

He wasn’t speaking. He wasn’t eating. He was pacing.

Nagini slithered behind him like a loyal shadow, her long body gliding in lazy coils along the polished floor. She did not speak either, but her tongue flicked in and out, catching the edges of his fury like static in the air.

Harry’s footsteps were uneven, weighted. One hand braced against the small of his back — the only concession he gave to the heaviness of his belly — while the other curled into a tight fist at his side. He moved like someone marching toward war. Pregnant or not, he could still pace, damn it. He could burn a path through the floor if he needed to.

His rage simmered, low and volatile. It wasn’t the type of anger that exploded. It was the kind that sharpened. The kind that waited. The kind that made blades gleam a little brighter before they struck.

“Mrs. Malfoy,” he snapped, without warning, his voice slicing through the thick quiet of the room.

Narcissa did not flinch. She had faced worse.

“Narcissa, please, Harry,” she said calmly, gently — knowing the outburst was not truly for her.

With elegant precision, she set her teacup down. The soft clink sounded impossibly loud in the silence that followed.

“Harry,” she tried again, her voice smooth as silk but firm as steel. “You need to sit. Your pacing is not helping anything.”

“No,” Harry bit out, the word brittle, too sharp to be stable. “What would help — actually help — is knowing why he just left. Where he went. Why he didn’t say a word to me before doing it.”

He stopped, finally, his hand trembling slightly where it pressed against the edge of the table. He wasn’t looking at her — his eyes darted instead to the empty chair across from him, then to the untouched teacup, then to the door as if sheer force of will might summon the man who had left him alone.

Without warning. Without explanation. Without a word.

“Why would he leave without saying anything? Not even a note. Not a damn word. He just ran off like — like he had somewhere more important to be while I was getting dressed this morning.”

Harry’s voice was sharp with hurt, not quite a shout — but only because shouting took breath, and breath took effort. Instead, he seethed with tightly wound frustration, pacing across the floor with the stubborn gait of someone who refused to acknowledge how much their back hurt.

Nagini kept following dutifully at his heels, a silent shadow gliding across the polished floor. Like a queen supporting her king.

“After everything — after all that hovering — all that obsessive clinging like I would explode the second he blinked — now he’s the one who disappears?”

Harry threw his hands up in a dramatic arc and muttered something unkind under his breath. He turned on his heel — or as close to a dramatic turn as a heavily pregnant man could manage — and braced a hand against the small of his back.

“Gone,” he said, voice rising. “Just—poof. Like I made the whole bloody thing up. Like he wasn’t hovering over my shoulder every time I even looked tired or stared too long at a stair.”

He paused, then muttered to himself, “Can’t even go to the loo without him lurking near the door. And now — now he’s just gone?”

At the far end of the long table, Narcissa Malfoy took a dainty sip of her tea and managed — barely — not to smirk into her cup. Her expression was all practiced elegance, every inch the composed aristocrat. But inside, her mind was a whirlwind of conflicting thoughts.

On one hand: pure amusement. She was certain now that her Dark Lord was embroiled in a relationship — a chaotic, wildly emotional, almost embarrassingly domestic relationship — with Harry bloody Potter. Of all people.

On the other hand: cold, bone-deep panic. Because if this — whatever this was between them — was real, it meant the balance of power had shifted. And if the Dark Lord’s decisions were being influenced by his feelings, then the entire future of the magical world had just become far more unpredictable.

But still. She allowed herself the smallest of smiles behind her cup. Of course he would fall for someone who made such a scene.

“What if I needed something?” Harry snapped suddenly, dragging her back to the present. He was pacing again, a hand resting protectively on the swell of his stomach.

“What if the baby needed something and I didn’t know where he was? No message, no note, no enchanted mirror. Nothing. Just — just vanished.”

He turned toward the door as if sheer willpower could summon Tom back through it. Then, with a huff and a dramatic puff of air, he looked back at Narcissa.

“When he gets back,” Harry muttered, eyes flashing, “he is in so much trouble.”

Then, more thoughtfully — dangerously — he added, “I might even let Nagini eat him. Just a little.”

Nagini, from her spot beside him, flicked her tongue in what could only be described as eager agreement.

“I only eat people if they’re sugared properly,” Nagini hissed, her tone bone-dry.

She coiled tighter around the base of the nearest chair, tongue flicking in indignation.

“But for you,” she added, her voice silk over venom, “I’ll make an exception.”

Harry, pacing with the tense energy of someone moments from launching a coup, gave a curt nod of approval. His slippers scuffed against the polished floor as he stalked the length of the room again.

“I’m just saying,” he bit out. “A note. An owl. A bloody whisper in the goddamn fireplace would’ve sufficed.”

Nagini uncoiled and slithered to his side, rising up with solemn grace.

“I want to support you in this, Harry. I truly do.”

Harry glanced down at her. Her tongue flicked once, amused.

“Last week,” she hissed lowly, conspiratorially, “he told me I was ‘overindulging.’ Claimed I was becoming ‘visibly sluggish.’ Then he actually said the words: ‘cutting back on Sugar Days.’”

She paused dramatically. “Sugar Days, Harry.”

Harry stopped mid-step and let out a low, serpentine snort of disbelief.

“Complete dictator, that one.”

They shared a moment. A strange, sacred alliance formed between a heavily pregnant wizard and a sugar-deprived sentient murder snake — bonded through betrayal and dietary oppression.

Then — with the kind of perfect dramatic timing usually reserved for theater — the grand doors creaked open.

Slowly.

Ominously.

And in stepped Tom Riddle, as composed and unreadable as ever. His dark robes swept behind him like shadows curling at the edge of a flame. Even the air seemed to shift, to part for him — as though reality itself made space when he entered a room.

Harry turned slowly. Deliberately. His arms crossed over his chest, one brow raised in a gesture of unimpressed authority. He looked every inch a man scorned — glowing with righteous pregnancy and months of unshed wrath.

“Oh,” he said flatly, voice like ice over fire. “Look who decided to come home.”

Tom’s eyes flicked between Harry and Nagini, who had now coiled protectively near him like an armed and emotionally wounded bodyguard.

“You,” Harry continued, jabbing a finger at him as Tom stepped forward, “are in so much trouble. Where the fuck have you—”

He froze mid-sentence.

Because Tom had stepped to the side.

And there — framed in the doorway like a ghost pulled from the marrow of memory — stood Hermione Granger.

And just behind her, broad-shouldered and blinking fast, was Ron.

Harry’s breath caught, sharp and sudden. The world tilted beneath him — not violently, but like something coming loose. A single thread tugged from a tapestry, unraveling him from the inside out.

He didn’t say anything. Couldn’t. His throat cinched tight, chest locked up, and emotion hit him like a tidal wave — salt and pressure and the staggering ache of a lifetime crashing into one impossible moment.

Hermione’s eyes were already glistening, her hand rising to her mouth as a sob cracked free — raw, real, uncontained.

“Harry,” she whispered.

Then she moved.

She was across the room before he could blink. Her arms went around him — around him, around the baby — wrapping him in the kind of warmth only history could weave. She held tight, like she was anchoring him to the ground, as though if she let go he might dissolve into grief or joy or both at once.

Harry buried his face in her shoulder, the scent of old parchment and rose oil hitting him like a memory too vivid to bear. His hands clutched at her, desperate, grateful, stunned. His breath hitched, then broke. Tears spilled hot and fast down his cheeks, soaking into her jumper.

No words could find him. Not yet.

Then came Ron.

He stood frozen in the threshold, just a breath behind Hermione — not hesitant, exactly, but overwhelmed. As if his mind couldn’t quite align the sight in front of him with all the versions of Harry he’d been carrying for months — the versions found in nightmares, in whispered rumors, in desperate hope.

Because there he was.

Harry.

Alive. Real. Whole.

And very, unmistakably, gloriously pregnant.

Ron’s lips parted, but whatever he meant to say snagged on the lump in his throat. He took one cautious step forward, eyes flicking from Harry’s face to the swell of his belly, then back again — trying to take it all in, trying not to crumble under the weight of it.

And then he just… moved. Not with words, not with explanation, but with the quiet, unmistakable gravity of love.

He pulled Harry into a hug.

It was careful — mindful of Harry’s body, but anchored in something unshakable. There were no flourishes, no grand declarations. Just Ron, steady and solid, arms wrapped around his best friend like he meant to hold the pieces of him together.

It was a little awkward. A little tight. But it was warm and it was true.

Harry melted into it without hesitation, the tension in his shoulders finally giving way. A quiet sob escaped him — soft, exhausted, not quite sorrowful, not quite joyful. Just too much.

They held on.

When they finally pulled back, their faces were damp and flushed, eyes rimmed red, but their expressions had softened — cracked open in the way that only time and love and war could do.

Hermione hovered nearby, beaming through her tears like someone who had been holding the sky up and had finally found someone to help her carry it.

Tom had stayed silent through all of it. Watchful. Unmoving.

Not intruding. Not reacting.

Just observing. Something in his face unreadable, but not cold.

And then, after a beat, his gaze flicked to Narcissa.

His voice, when he spoke, was soft. But iron still ran through it.

“I need a word,” he said.

The room shifted, barely perceptible — something in the air drawing taut.

But no one interrupted.

Because everyone knew: something had just changed.

-----

UGH THAT WAS SO FUCKING SATISFYING

And Harry bitching about Tom being gone – as if the man wasn’t out fulfilling the vow you made him swear. God, these two.

Thoughts?

Chapter Text

AN: Getting closer to the end now. 5 chapters left.

This is the last relatively peaceful chapter btw. Because, you know, shit needs to wrap up.

JK owns HP – she doesn’t the fandom.

Life had settled into an unusual rhythm within the castle.

Six beings — no, six personalities — now shared the same roof. The Dark Lord’s roof.

Each one an improbable housemate in their own right. An arrangement so implausible, so bizarre, that even the patterns on Dumbledore’s old robes suddenly felt like paragons of logic by comparison.

If someone had told any of them a year ago that this was where they would end up — living under the same roof, sharing meals and routines — that person would’ve been laughed straight out of the room. Then conveniently and quickly escorted directly to the long-term spell damage ward at St. Mungo’s, and had the key thrown into the deepest vault at Gringotts for good measure.

It was that unusual.

They were the most unlikely roommates in the world — chaotic, clashing, wildly different.

It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t easy. But it also wasn’t terrible, either.

Somehow, it even worked on occasion.

First there was Nagini, the serpent who had once struck terror into the hearts of anyone who crossed Lord Voldemort’s path. Now, she slithered through the house with a kind of comfortable arrogance, as though she owned every inch of it.

And knew it.

Reveled in it.

With her unnervingly sharp wit and tendency to hiss biting remarks, she was often more of a curse than a blessing, providing a soundtrack of sarcastic commentary that only half of the castle could only ever really understand without translation. She was, however, at her best on the Official Sugar Days — those Tuesday, Fridays, and Sundays when her craving for sweets were sated, turning her into something resembling a contented house pet. Only much larger and much more terrifying. With deadly venom and the ability to squeeze the life out of her victims.

On those days, it was almost easy to forget what she had once been.

On others, when the Dark Lord was firm that she must adhere to a traditional snake diet (where absolutely nothing was glazed in sugar) she was a terror — foul-tempered and insufferable, her wrath enough to send any living creature scurrying for cover.

Kitchen appliances included.

Harry remembered one particularly tense afternoon when, after being denied treacle tart from the Dark Lord, Nagini had hissed something low and dangerous about swallowing Tom whole. Harry had laughed so hard he had given himself hiccups, while Tom — equal parts irritated and horrified — had sent Nagini a long, frozen glare.

It wasn’t the first time she had made such a threat, nor would it be the last.

But it was these absurd, strange moments that gave the house its peculiar and odd warmth; the kind of warmth born not of comfort, but of reluctant companionship and making the best out of unusual circumstances.

Which all seemed to begin and end with one Harry James Potter.

The Boy Who Lived — though that title no longer felt adequate. At seven months pregnant, Harry had changed in ways no one, not even he, had expected. His physical transformation was only the surface of something deeper: his once restless energy had shifted, channeled now by purpose and fierce protectiveness.

There was a clarity in him, a weight to his presence that hadn’t been there before.

At times though, his moods came like storms — swift and sharp, and almost always aimed at Tom, whose own temper was not built to stand against hormonal warfare.

But there were other times, quieter ones, when Harry moved with a kind of grace that could only come from someone carrying the future inside him. In those moments, he seemed older than his years, tempered by the gravity of what he bore.

The child had become the thread that tied everything together — Tom’s darkness, Lily’s light, Harry’s blood, and the future of a world still struggling to recover from a war that was on pause. It was a child born of contradiction: one foot in legacy, one foot in prophecy. And Harry... Harry carried it all. The hope. The fear.

The weight of what was, and what could still be.

And then, there were his two best friends, Ron and Hermione.

Ron seemed to be adjusting to this madness with more grace than anyone would have expected, despite his occasional grumbles. He could always be counted on to make a well-timed joke or two, especially when things got too heavy. Too weird. Too absurd.

Hermione, ever the voice of reason, was a constant whirlwind of activity, making sure things were organized, orderly, and above all, safe. But she wasn’t immune to the oddity of the situation, nor to the weight of the past few months.

Months that she had only recently gotten back in full.

Not to be forgotten was Mrs. Malfoy. The still-formidable witch, versed in the ancient magics of the Blacks, who had found herself in the most unexpected of roles: caretaker. Not just for Harry, but for the child of the Dark Lord he carried; for the strange household she now called home.

It was a side of her that many had forgotten or hadn’t seen outside the walls of Malfoy Manor. Her sharp tongue still cut through the tension with biting one-liners, but there was an undeniable tenderness beneath the surface, especially when it came to Harry and the baby.

And, finally, of course, there was Tom. The Dark Lord. He-Who-Sometimes-Didn’t-Know-What-To-Call-Himself-Anymore. Maybe.

The man who had once ruled with a brutal, iron fist was now caught in an odd limbo. He wasn’t fully the cruel man he had been, but neither was he the person he could have been had his life taken a different path. His ruthlessness had softened, however, tempered by his strange protectiveness for Harry and the child — though no one dared speak of it aloud.

Because this path had fundamentally been started to protect himself above all – even if those edges were bleeding with and into others he couldn’t name or even possibly begin to describe.

Or acknowledge fully.

It had been more than a week since they had all moved in together, and they were still standing — still managing, if not entirely thriving. No one had lost a limb. No one had gone completely mad.

Yet.

There was still time, however, but that time was spent with figuring things out, exploring, and making sense of the strange new world that had become their lives.

One of the first things the reunited Golden Trio had done was take Ron on a tour of the castle — a near-identical replica of Hogwarts, but far more imposing because of who it belonged to. Harry showed him everything — the grand dining hall, the expansive study rooms, the secret alcoves hidden in the corners, and, of course, the library.

A place Hermione had deeply, deeply missed.

And then there was the matter of the Quidditch pitch — or rather, the absence of it. Ron’s face had fallen when Harry casually mentioned that there wasn’t one.

“No Quidditch?” Ron had asked, incredulous, as though Harry had just told him the sun had stopped rising.

Harry only shrugged in response, casual and unbothered.

“Tom’s not one for flying. Says he doesn’t have much use for it.”

Ron had stared at him like he’d announced he was giving up oxygen next.

But the moment Harry led him into the kitchen, Ron’s disbelief evaporated like steam off a cauldron. His entire demeanor shifted the second he saw the space. The kitchen was — his word, not Harry’s — wicked. Massive counters stretched across the room, wide and gleaming, as though begging to be covered in plates with generous portions of all of his favorite foods.

An enormous hearth crackled warmly in the corner, throwing golden light across polished stone. And the food — Godric’s knickers, the food — appeared on command, summoned either by the flick of a wand or the snap of Tizzy’s fingers, who was already muttering fondly about “Mr. Weasley’s enthusiasm.”

Ron looked around like he’d just stepped into heaven. He claimed a stool by the prep island and didn’t budge for the next three hours.

“I could live in here,” he muttered, mouth full of roasted chicken and what looked to be potato remnants.

Harry just smiled.

“That’s what Nagini said.”

As for living arrangements, it had sorted itself out quickly and naturally.

Ron and Hermione had gravitated to the Gryffindor Tower wing, their old rooms replicated nearly down to the bedsheets. Narcissa, of course, took to the Slytherin quarters with her usual cold grace and a small collection of books already arranged by magical principle and aesthetic alignment.

But Harry?

Harry remained with Tom.

And that was a quiet point of intrigue for Hermione. She noticed it without trying to. Two months ago, she would’ve chalked it up to necessity — proximity, magical dependence, shared responsibility for the unborn child. Tom’s desire for control, above all.

But now? Now it felt like something more intentional. Something chosen.

It wasn’t just the fact that Harry stayed in Tom’s wing. It was the way he spoke about him — less guarded, more thoughtful. It was the way his tone softened when he referred to things Tom had done or said. It was in the glance he gave the hallway before answering a question, the half-smile when he mentioned Tom’s opinion, the slight pause when Tom entered a room.

And Tom… Tom, for all his notorious composure, had begun noticeably hovering.

Not in the obvious way from what Hermione saw — he wasn’t shadowing Harry’s every step — but he had developed a curious tendency to always be nearby to offer help.... Always within reach. Whether in the library, the dining hall, the gardens — even the kitchen — he drifted back towards Harry like a compass needle pulled toward true north.

And the longer Hermione watched, the more she came to believe it wasn’t about control.

It was about comfort.

It was about need.

Whatever was happening between them, it wasn’t something she fully understood. But she recognized the current when she saw it — the undercurrent of something changing. Shifting. Growing in silence between them like a vine twisting around a wall. Quiet. Slow. Inescapable.

And maybe the most startling thing of all was this: it didn’t feel wrong.

There was a shift — a transformation that had somehow turned their dynamic from hostile to something else entirely. Hermione didn’t know how to put it into words, but she could feel it. She could see it. It was like a quiet understanding between them, something that neither of them had been able to articulate, but that seemed to exist all the same.

That wasn’t the only noticeable change to Hermione, however.

Hermione couldn’t help but notice that Nagini had gained a bit of weight. The once sleek, sinuous serpent had grown a little (or a lot) rounder than before, her smooth scales now stretching slightly over her form. Hermione raised an eyebrow, her curiosity piqued.

“You’ve grown,” she remarked.

Nagini preened; the motion graceful despite the extra weight.

“I did it for Harry,” Nagini purred, her voice smooth and unhurried, as though her answer was self-evident.

“I thought it would be cruel for him to be the only one looking like a pumpkin pasty.”

She flicked her tongue in amusement, a look of smug satisfaction on her face as though it were the most natural explanation in the world.

Hermione blinked, of course not understanding any of it.

Harry, on the other hand, shot the serpent a pointed look.

“Yes, and it had nothing to do with how much you’ve been eating on your sugar days,” Harry said, his tone dry, an amused glint in his eyes.

Nagini’s head snapped up, clearly offended by the suggestion. Her tongue flicked out, and she hissed softly, the sound almost indignant.

“Everything I do, I do for the child — and for you,” Nagini retorted, her voice laced with a faux seriousness.

“Who else is going to eat everything that you bake? We don’t want food to go to waste – think of the starving snakes of the world!”

Harry rolled his eyes, unable to suppress a grin.

“Right,” he muttered, leaning back with a resigned sigh.

“Like we couldn’t just save them for the next day – as a leftover.”

Nagini looked confused – like it was a novel concept she had never heard of before.

“What is this word? Left…over…?” she sounded it out.

“Seems unnecessary and wasteful – things should always be eaten when they are fresh.”

Hermione couldn’t help but smile at the absurdity of it all. It wasn’t the first time she’d witnessed this strange dynamic between them, but it never ceased to leave her slightly bewildered – especially with how easy it was to slip into old routines.

Or rather, forgotten ones.

Speaking of, they were in the library one afternoon, the quiet space filled with the rustle of pages and the occasional click of a turning page. Ron was perched on the edge of his chair, unusually quiet. Hermione couldn’t help but notice the way his gaze wandered — distant, as though he was deep in thought or perhaps simply uncomfortable in the strange quiet of the room.

Harry, too, seemed off. His posture was rigid, his body tense as if weighed down by invisible pressure. His fingers drummed absent-mindedly on the edge of his book, but his eyes... his eyes kept drifting, staring off into the distance, as though he were trying to break through the very stone walls with nothing but sheer will.

It had started the previous day and had only grown more apparent with each passing hour.

“Oi, you okay, mate?” Ron’s voice broke the silence, a little hesitant, as though he wasn’t sure if he was intruding or genuinely concerned.

Harry blinked, his focus snapping back to the present. He let out a slow breath, as though shaking off the weight of thoughts that had been gnawing at him for who knew how long.

“What?” he muttered, blinking again as his mind adjusted. “Oh.”

His exhale was sharp, almost too sharp — an unconscious release of the tension coiling inside him.

“I guess I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop,” Harry said, his voice quieter than usual, tinged with a sort of resigned weariness.

He didn’t seem to be speaking to either of them, but more to himself, as if the thought had been pressing on him for some time.

The words hung in the air for a moment. Ron raised an eyebrow, looking at Harry as if he hadn’t quite heard him right.

"The other shoe?"

Harry sighed, dropping his gaze for a moment, as though considering how much to say. The weight of the last few days — weeks, really — was pressing down on him more than he was willing to admit. There was a heavy tension in the air, a lingering feeling of anticipation, as though they were all waiting for something to happen. And with Harry’s track record, it often seemed to mean that when something did happen, it rarely ended well.

The hormones didn’t help his with mood fluctuations. Everything was sharper; hit harder.

Harry shifted uncomfortably, his fingers playing absently with the edge of his sleeve, his gaze distant. The silence stretched between them, thick and uncomfortable, before he finally spoke, voice low and hesitant.

“Don’t get me wrong… I’m glad you are here…” he started, his words trailing off as he struggled to find the right way to phrase what he was feeling.

“I just…”

Ron, ever the one to pick up on what was unsaid with his recent growth, finished the sentence with a quiet understanding.

“Expecting me to get riled up about something and leave again?”

Harry nodded slowly, a flicker of shame crossing his face. His shoulders slumped slightly, as if the weight of that expectation — of all the past moments — was still dragging on him. He didn’t want to feel this way, but after everything, it was hard not to. Even after they had reconciled; made up.

Guilt always lingered for past wrongs.

Hermione, pretending to focus on the book in her lap, couldn’t help but listen. She wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but the words, the raw honesty between them, demanded attention.

Ron, without hesitation, leaned forward in his chair, his voice steady and sure.

“I get it, mate. I really do. I don’t blame you for thinking that way. I never should’ve left, but…”

He paused, searching for the right words, his gaze flicking to Harry’s.

“Without doing that, without walking away, I never would’ve faced the truth about a lot of things.”

The room felt quieter then, as Ron’s admission lingered in the air, his eyes never leaving Harry.

“And I swore, Harry,” he continued, his voice softer now but no less firm, “I swore that if I ever found you again, I wouldn’t run. Not this time. Not ever. I’m not leaving.”

Ron’s smile was simple, but it was full of understanding.

“None of this is your fault, mate,” he said, his tone firm but gentle.

“You’re just doing the best you can with the situation you’ve found yourself in. And honestly? Look at what you’ve done with it.”

He paused, letting his words hang in the air for a moment, watching Harry closely.

“Things are changing. They have changed. Small things, maybe, but they matter. People aren’t being rounded up or killed anymore. That alone is huge.”

Harry’s brow furrowed slightly, but Ron held up a hand to stop him from responding.

“I’m not saying it’s perfect,” he continued, “but look where we are, Harry. We’re standing here, in his home, talking about all this. That has to mean something, right?”

Harry looked away for a moment, the weight of Ron’s words settling on his chest. But then Ron added something that caused him to meet his gaze again.

“And you did that, Harry. You got us here.” Ron’s voice was softer now, almost as if he were speaking to someone who wasn’t just his best friend, but someone he genuinely admired.

“I don’t know if I ever fully realized what you have had to carry. But you did this. You made things change.”

Harry felt something stir in his chest — something tight, something unspoken — and it took him a moment to gather his thoughts. He shifted uncomfortably, running a hand through his hair, before answering quietly.

 “Thanks, Ron. But honestly, I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.”

His voice caught, and he sighed, the exhaustion in his words evident.

“I’m just trying to protect this —” He motioned again, but this time more deliberately, his hand resting over his stomach, “— everything else just feels secondary at this point.”

Ron’s smile softened, his eyes understanding, and he gave a small nod.

“I get it. You don’t have to explain. But, Harry…”

His voice became serious, earnest.

“Thank you. For not giving up on me. On us.”

Harry blinked, surprised by the quiet intensity of Ron’s words. For a moment, it felt like everything else in the world had fallen away, and it was just the two of them — here, together, in this strange, tumultuous space they now shared. That they had carved out for themselves.

“I can’t tell you how thankful I am,” Ron continued, his voice quieter now, tinged with sincerity.

“To be here with you. After everything we’ve been through, I’m just... glad we’re still here. Still together.”

His words were simple, but they carried weight, and Harry felt the impact of them more than he expected. It wasn’t just about surviving, it was about the unspoken bond they shared — the one that had endured through years of uncertainty, sacrifice, and unimaginable hardship.

“Thank you for not giving up either, Ron. I guess we both have faced our own truths these past few months. I’m glad our paths were able to cross again, too. Still together.”

Both Harry and Ron just stared at each other, taking that small but immeasurable comfort of just being. Understanding. Connection.

At that moment, Hermione’s eyes shimmered with emotion, and she sniffed, her voice breaking slightly as she looked at them both.

“Boys!” Hermione exclaimed fondly, swiping at her eyes as she tried — and mostly failed — to hold back the sudden swell of emotion. Her voice was thick with affection, the moment catching up to her.

Her sudden outburst broke the heaviness in the room like a crack of sunlight through clouds. The three of them shared a brief silence, softened with quiet laughter, smiles blooming despite the strange new normal they found themselves in.

But, true to Hermione form, the sentimentality lasted only so long.

Within minutes, she had pivoted back to her natural state: organized, focused, and mildly terrifying. From her satchel, she withdrew a stack of pristine parchment, held together by neat magical binding and adorned with color-coded tabs.

“The newly updated, meticulously annotated, second edition,” she presented with pride, holding up a freshly revised N.E.W.T. pamphlet set like it was a sacred text. “I even added a section on magical ethics during pregnancy.”

Harry stared at the booklets as if they were a sentient threat. He couldn’t help but chuckle, though, shaking his head fondly. Hermione always had a way of making him laugh — even when she was being insufferably Hermione. Warmth flickered in his chest. And then, faintly, the frustration returned.

He leaned back slightly, arms crossing over his chest.

“Hermione, I’ve done nothing but read for the past several months. I could probably take those exams in my sleep.

“Oh, that’s what he said, too,” she said breezily, eyes dancing over the top of her open book as she shot him a knowing wink.

Harry tilted his head.

“He?”

Sometimes, Harry could be unbearably dense.

Hermione didn’t even look up.

“You-Know-Who,” she said, her voice casual but pointed, like a dagger wrapped in ribbon.

Harry blinked.

“Oh. Him.”

His tone dropped into a low murmur, thoughtful in a way that made his brow knit just slightly.

There was a long pause.

“…He’s actually been a really effective teacher,” Harry admitted at last, his voice tinged with reluctant disbelief — as though saying it out loud might somehow make it less true.

“Which is... deeply unsettling,” Hermione replied dryly, lowering her pamphlet just enough to give him a withering look.

“Yes, well, you’re not the only one who finds that worrying,” he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck.

Hermione didn’t argue. Instead, she watched him closely as he continued.

“Honestly,” Harry said, a bit more seriously, “I’ve learned more in these last few months than I did in my previous two years at Hogwarts.”

Hermione’s brow furrowed, intrigued despite herself. Her pamphlet lowered another inch.

“There’s something about the way he explains things,” Harry went on, gesturing vaguely. “It’s sharp. Exact. Like... he teaches the way he fights. Like everything is a duel, even theory.”

Hermione gave a wry little smirk, the corner of her mouth twitching.

“That actually makes a disturbing amount of sense.”

She gripped her pamphlet harder around the edges, a determined glint in her eyes.

“Guess I’ve got some catching up to do, then.”

Harry smiled, but something flickered in his expression — a quiet shift in energy. He didn’t sit back down.

Instead, he stood abruptly, a glint of focus in his eyes. Not showy. Not theatrical. Just... ready. There was a subtle pulse of confidence in the way he reached for his wand, like a runner stretching at the starting line.

“Well,” he said, his grin returning with a hint of mischief, “if all I’ve done is study and practice for three months, I’d better have something to show for it.”

He raised his wand.

“Watch this.”

With a smooth, fluid flick, he began casting — no incantations, no dramatic flare; just quiet precision. The air responded instantly.

A soft shimmer bloomed at the tip of his wand like light passing through water, and then spread outward in spiraling layers. Magic unfurled through the room, silent but powerful, as if the space itself was holding its breath.

Hermione’s eyes widened, her mouth parting slightly in awe. It was clear from the first movement — this wasn’t just a spell. This was about control.

The shimmer at the tip of Harry’s wand continued to spiral outwards, blossoming into a several successive swirls of light. Flowers bloomed midair — the petals delicate, translucent, almost too fragile to exist. They hung there for a breath, then twisted in on themselves, reshaping into a small group of luminous birds. Their wings stirred with silent grace, feather-light and impossibly real, fluttering soundlessly as they took flight across the room.

And that… that was only the beginning.

A single feather broke away from one bird mid-flight, spinning lazily through the air. It caught a shaft of afternoon sun as it hovered, then unfolded like paper touched by breath — becoming yet another bird, soft-glowing and glass-winged. It circled Hermione once, casting a flicker of light across her cheek, then darted skyward with a flick of its tail, its motion so smooth, so natural, it felt like it had always belonged there.

Hermione’s gasp caught in her throat. Her eyes widened in astonishment, lips parting without a word. She’d seen complex magic before. She had performed complex magic herself. But this wasn’t just technical — it was art. And more than that: it was quintessentially Harry.

She didn’t have long to reflect before Harry moved again.

A quill on the desk trembled, then glowed. It slowly unfolded and bent, reshaping itself with almost painful delicacy. Wings unfurled like gossamer, shimmering with shifting iridescent patterns of light. The quill transformed into a butterfly — fragile, glowing, alive in every sense but breath.

It hovered for a moment, then fluttered around the room in gentle arcs, its wings catching the light like stained glass. As it passed Hermione, it circled once and then drifted downward, landing lightly in her hair.

She didn’t move. Couldn’t.

“Beautiful,” she whispered, eyes locked on the glowing butterfly nestled in her curls.

Harry shrugged, trying to play it off, but the smile tugging at his lips betrayed him.

“Figured you’d be glad to know I didn’t just nap for two months,” he said.

“Kept up with your outlines. Even the ones with footnotes.”

Hermione turned to look at him, something warm and fierce flickering in her eyes.

“Harry…” she began, but the rest of the words didn’t come.

He gave her a lopsided grin, flicked his wand again — and the air itself shifted.

Tiny vortexes of the wind itself spiraled into existence, no larger than teacups. They spun like enchanted dreidels, each one humming with a different pitch. Some drifted lazily through the air, soft as falling leaves, while others whirled past with a whispering rush that made their hair lift in passing breezes. The birds weaved around them as they flew about the room.

The room was filled then with quiet motion, light, and wonder — an ecosystem of magic that felt alive and aware, like it was watching them back.

Hermione turned toward him again, slower this time. Her expression was unreadable — somewhere between awe and disbelief, like she’d just glimpsed something that changed the shape of everything she thought she knew.

“You’ve grown,” she said finally, voice quiet.

And Harry — wand still raised; eyes alight with something stronger than pride — just nodded.

“Yeah,” he said softly. “I think I have.”

“Not just magically. It’s like… you’ve stepped into something bigger.”

Harry met her eyes, and for a moment, neither of them said anything. The butterfly from earlier landed quietly on the back of her hand, wings still glowing.

And in that quiet shimmer of light, it was clear: something had changed.

“Harry,” Ron gasped, his voice filled with awe.

“That’s incredible mate... How long have you been practicing this?”

Harry smirked, the confidence in his movements matching the glint in his eyes.

“Not long enough,” he said, a touch of humility in his voice despite the impressive display.

“But I’m starting to get the hang of it.”

Ron, who had been watching with an impressed expression, chuckled.

“I don’t know, mate. You might be showing off a little too much for us mere mortals.”

Harry laughed, feeling lighter than he had in days. The magic in the room, the simple joy of it, seemed to dissolve the tension in his chest.

“But what I’ve just started with is absolutely fascinating — and I think you’ll appreciate this, Hermione,” Harry said, his voice alight with genuine excitement.

He reached into the growing pile of books beside him and retrieved one with careful reverence, like it was a rare artifact.

His eyes sparkled as he handed it over.

“Here. Just started reading, but it’s already incredible.”

Hermione took the book, curiosity ignited by the gleam in his eyes alone. She glanced down at the title etched in shimmering gold script across the cover:

Multilingual Spellcasting: Layering Magic with Language

Her eyebrows rose.

“This looks… intriguing,” she murmured, flipping it open and scanning the table of contents.

She barely made it past the first section before Harry leaned in, too eager to wait.

“So, most spells in the wizarding world,” he began, leaning back slightly on the table behind him, “are cast in Latin — or, well, pseudo-Latin. You know that part.”

“Of course,” Hermione nodded, already engrossed.

“But apparently,” Harry continued, “other languages are used too — each one tied to different magical traditions and emotional spectrums. The idea is that every magical language resonates with a specific frequency of magic. Not just sound — but intention, meaning. Even emotion.”

He spoke faster now, unable to contain the rhythm of his thoughts.

“And when you layer them — either simultaneously or in sequence — they don’t just combine. They enhance each other. They expand the range, refine the outcome, sometimes even bend the spell’s entire function into something new, unique.”

Hermione’s head tilted, eyes narrowing with intrigue. She set the book gently in her lap and gave him her full attention.

“Think of it like a musical chord, right?” Harry went on, gesturing animatedly with his hands.

“Each language is a note. One gives force. Another adds emotion. A third might anchor it in memory or transformation.”

He paused, catching his breath as something flickered across his face — a glimmer of inspiration.

“For example, Latin is traditionally linked with Force — strength, power. What you fundamentally want the magic to do. But there are other languages that resonate with different aspects of magic.”

He paused, his eyes flickering with a sudden excitement.

“Parseltongue, for instance,” Harry said, eyes deep with thought, “has a natural connection to Emotion. It’s not just snake-speak — it taps into instinct, feeling, that visceral kind of magic that comes from the gut rather than the head.”

Hermione nodded, brow furrowed, clearly intrigued.

“That actually explains a lot,” she murmured, more to herself than to him.

Encouraged, Harry continued, voice rising slightly with excitement.

“Then there are languages like Old Norse or Aramaic. Those are tied to the Soul — magic rooted in essence, identity. Really deep, almost primordial forces. Some researchers think that’s why spells cast in those languages feel more potent. Like... ancient magic responding to an ancient voice.”

Hermione’s eyes were growing wider by the second. She clutched the book tighter in her lap.

“And then there’s Ancient Greek and Sanskrit,” Harry went on.

“Those resonate with Memory and Intellect — mental clarity, learning, comprehension. Then, on the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got the Elemental languages: Old Irish, Druidic, anything Runic-based. Those tie into Nature and raw elemental forces — earth, wind, fire, water. When spoken, it’s like aligning with the rhythm of the natural world.”

He looked at her, voice steady.

“It’s all about tuning your magic — your intent; desire; meaning — to a different layer of reality depending on the words you speak. On what the words mean.”

Hermione was silent for a moment, processing, her expression a mixture of awe and intellectual hunger. Then:

“So... it’s like musical harmony,” she said slowly, her voice full of quiet reverence.

“Each language carries its own frequency, and when you layer them together, the spell doesn’t just get stronger — it gets deeper. Richer. It reaches into places normal magic doesn’t usually touch.”

Harry’s grin widened. “Exactly.”

He leaned forward slightly.

“The theory is that if you know how to order the languages — if you stack them properly — you can guide the spell toward specific outcomes. Like layering Latin for power, then Parseltongue for emotion, then Old Norse for essence. It’s not just casting. It’s orchestrating.”

Hermione drew in a slow breath, her voice barely above a whisper.

“That’s not just spellwork... that’s transformation.”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed, his voice quiet now too.

“It’s not just the words. It’s the resonance. You’re not just shaping magic — you’re speaking to different aspects of it, calling them forward, one frequency at a time.”

A long beat passed between them.

Then Hermione said, “And of course... he would know all of this.”

Harry’s mouth quirked into a wry smile.

“Yeah. Tom knows. That’s why he teaches like he’s wielding a blade — every word, every phrase, it all matters. It’s not just knowledge to him. It’s leverage.”

Hermione looked down at the book again, running her fingers slowly along the edge of the page.

“Why don’t they teach this at Hogwarts?” Hermione whispered, awe and exasperation warring on her face, her brow furrowed in genuine disbelief. A faint pout tugged at her lips.

Harry chuckled, a playful smirk forming.

“Hermione, you of all people should know the answer to that. We barely survived getting people to say Leviosa correctly.”

Ron flushed beet red.

“I said it right eventually,” he muttered.

Hermione shot Ron a sharp but fond look but didn’t argue.

“You’re not wrong,” she admitted, folding her arms. “Most students can barely manage consistency in a single magical language — let alone navigate the nuances of multiple ones.”

For a moment, it looked like she might launch herself into the book and vanish between its pages entirely. Her fingers twitched on the cover, her whole posture vibrating with suppressed excitement. This was her domain — dense, intricate, elegant magic tied to theory and structure. She lived for this.

“Just imagine,” she murmured, “what kinds of spells you could create — design — by layering languages intentionally. Not just by saying incantations but building them. Based on intent, purpose, even the magical tone you want to strike.”

Harry’s grin widened, lighting up his face.

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

Ron, meanwhile, was still staring, slack-jawed and blinking, as if someone had just asked him to take N.E.W.T.-level Ancient Runes without notes.

“Wait — we’re learning more languages? Latin nearly killed me.”

Harry leaned forward, completely undeterred, his enthusiasm unmistakable.

“Alright,” he said, his voice quickening with eagerness, “let me walk you through the structure of a layered spell.”

He held up three fingers.

“There are three components. First is the Primary Word — that’s the core. The focus. It defines the intent of the spell, gives it shape. Think of it like the foundation of a building — without it, nothing holds.”

He paused there, letting the thought settle before continuing.

“For example,” Harry began, “take Lumos. That’s the Primary Word — it’s the intent, the core directive: to make light.”

Hermione nodded, immediately following, her eyes sharp with interest. Ron shifted beside her, half-leaning forward in his seat, brow furrowed in concentration. He looked like he was absorbing the words with equal parts fascination and alarm.

Harry offered them both a small, encouraging smile, then continued.

“Next comes the Secondary Word. It doesn’t change the intent, but it shapes the outcome — how the magic manifests. Say you want to delay the light slightly, maybe for dramatic timing or strategy. You could pair Lumos with a word in Aramaic, which — according to this — can introduce a delay of a few seconds. Just a breath of space or time before the light actually flares.”

Hermione’s brows lifted in appreciation, the cogs clearly spinning.

Harry’s eyes glinted as he leaned in slightly, his excitement crackling.

“So, imagine: you’re preparing for a duel, or you’re sneaking into a dark corridor. You cast Lumos, but with the secondary modifier in place, the light only ignites when you need it — not immediately. That pause might give you just the edge you need perhaps to cast another spell in a few moments.”

He let that sink in before lowering his voice a notch.

“And then there’s the third piece — the Silent Component.”

He paused, letting the weight of it settle.

“This one’s the trickiest. Because it’s not spoken at all. It’s felt.”

Hermione leaned forward slightly, utterly captivated.

“It’s your emotional input,” Harry continued. “The energy you carry into the spell — the fear, the joy, the urgency — it changes how the magic expresses itself. It’s the layer that makes the magic yours.”

He met their eyes, first Hermione’s, then Ron’s.

“Think about it: you cast Lumos, but your intent is anxious — your magic is nervous, flickering. That light might waver. But if your emotion is calm or protective? The light steadies. It glows differently.”

Ron blinked, visibly trying to picture that and understanding it perfectly.

Hermione spoke softly, wonder dawning in her voice.

“So... the Silent Component personalizes the magic. It doesn’t just execute a command. It feels it. And reflects it.”

“Exactly.”

Harry’s grin returned, bright and sure.

“It’s like layering your own essence onto the spell. Not just what you want it to do, but why. That’s what gives it shape beyond intent — it gives it meaning.”

Hermione stared at the book in her lap, then back at Harry. Her voice was low, reverent.

“That’s really not just spellwork,” she murmured. “That’s... storytelling. Through magic.”

And Harry, still glowing faintly from the inside out, said, “That’s exactly what it is.”

Harry rose to his feet, the motion graceful, instinctive — like the spell had already begun inside him before the words even touched the air. His grip on his wand was steady, but his expression was calm, thoughtful, as though something far older and deeper had just settled beneath his skin.

He raised his wand with purpose.

“Lumos,” he said, softly.

A steady beam of white light ignited at the tip. Familiar. Predictable. But that wasn’t the point — not this time.

His voice lowered to a near whisper as he spoke the next word, careful with its shape on his tongue.

“Ta’amru.”

The wandlight faltered.

For one suspended breath, the room dimmed — then stilled. The delay took hold: just five seconds. Five seconds that felt like a heartbeat caught in amber.

And then, Harry closed his eyes.

He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just breathed.

He let the final component rise inside him — not a word, but a feeling. The warmth of being here, now, in this impossible home, with Ron and Hermione beside him. The relief of survival. The gratitude for every hard-earned quiet moment after years of chaos. That sacred kind of calm that only comes when you stop bracing for pain.

He wove that into the magic, silently.

The response was immediate.

The wandlight didn’t just return — it blossomed. It broke apart like a star exploding underwater, scattering into a constellation of soft-glowing fragments. Dozens — hundreds — of warm pinpricks floated upward, trailing through the air like stardust given direction.

They drifted through the room in waves, shimmering gold and pearl, silver-blue and soft lavender. As they passed, the lights shifted with the beat of Harry’s emotions — gentle, slow-moving, and somehow alive.

Each one flickered not just with brightness, but with feeling. They weren’t cold. They were warm, like small pieces of a memory. Like laughter. Like home.

Hermione gasped, barely above a whisper. Her hand came to her mouth, eyes wide.

“Harry… that’s… beautiful.”

Ron said nothing at first. He just stared, slack-jawed, as one of the lights floated near his shoulder and pulsed softly before drifting upward again. He blinked, swallowed, then said, “It’s like… Christmas and fireworks had a baby, and it knows how to hug.”

The lights continued to spin slowly, filling the room with a hush, like the echo of a lullaby long since sung. They weren’t just illuminating the space — they were transforming it. Calming it. Turning it sacred.

Harry opened his eyes and watched them move; his face lit by the spell’s glow. For once, he didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.

The spell spoke for him.

"Blimey, Harry," Ron murmured, "that’s amazing."

Harry stood still for a few extra seconds, letting the shimmering lights hang suspended in the air like a constellation caught mid-breath. The colors shifted slowly, gently — tones of gold and violet and warm rose swirling in a soft dance. The hush that followed the spell was full, weighty with meaning. He turned back toward Hermione and Ron with a quiet, contented smile.

“That’s the beauty of layered spellwork,” he said softly.

“It’s not just the words — it’s what you bring to them.”

Hermione nodded slowly; her eyes still fixed on the last few sparks drifting downward like stardust.

“I never imagined magic could be so…” she paused, searching for the right word.

“Intimate. So intrinsically tied to who you are — not just what you want the spell to do, but who you are when you cast it.”

Harry’s chest warmed with something that felt suspiciously like pride—but quieter, steadier. Fulfillment.

“Exactly,” he said. “Magic isn’t just what we say. It’s what we feel. What we mean.”

They spent the next hour perfecting it together — Hermione catching on quickly, as always, her lights more orderly and precise, like dancing thoughts made visible. Ron’s version came slower but brighter, his sparks larger and oddly protective in shape — like embers that wouldn’t dare burn. The three of them lit up the library in a mosaic of color and motion.

For a while, nothing else existed.

The afternoon stretched lazily toward dusk, and by the time dinner approached, the house had slipped into an almost sacred stillness. The dining room flickered with soft candlelight, each golden flame casting long shadows across the walls. The quiet was different now — less silence, more serenity. It felt like the house itself was exhaling, as if, for once, it didn’t have to brace for disaster.

It was one of those rare moments where time seemed to bend and soften, where the world felt safely enclosed in magic and memory and presence. Nothing hovered. Nothing threatened. Just now.

And then, like clockwork, dinner arrived — and with it, the first stirrings of change.

Tizzy appeared in the doorway with a beaming smile, her entire being humming with a brightness that was both grounding and unmistakably magical. Her presence had a way of settling the room, like a warm draft that slipped under the skin and made the world feel softer for a moment. The subtle hum of her magic swirled around her like a gentle breeze, curling beneath the edges of the candlelight.

“Dinner is being served!” she announced, clapping her hands with the giddy pride of someone unveiling a masterpiece.

And she had, in fact, outdone herself — again.

Harry tried not to look overwhelmed. There was still something about being cooked for, fussed over, cared for that made him feel like if he acknowledged it too openly, it might vanish. He murmured his thanks with a smile that didn’t quite hide how much it meant to him.

Hermione, meanwhile, sat straighter than usual, inhaling deeply through her nose — not just to savor the smells, though she certainly did, but because something in her chest had unknotted just a little. She would never say it aloud, but she had missed this: the rituals of warmth and noise and shared meals that Hogwarts had once made routine.

The air was thick with rich, mouthwatering aromas: herb-crusted meats roasted to perfection, charred vegetables laced with garlic and thyme, golden rolls steaming as they were torn open, and something sweet just barely cooling on the far counter — apple, cinnamon, clove. It smelled like the kind of comfort that you didn’t realize you’d needed until it was already reaching for you.

They gathered slowly around the long table, drawn in by the magnetism of the feast and the rare promise of peace. The clink of cutlery and scrape of chairs made a gentle, familiar music. Platters jostled for space; pitchers of wine slid between hands. It was beautiful in its chaos, every inch of the table crowded with something delicious, something good.

Wine flowed — deep, ruby red, the kind that shimmered with warmth and settled like velvet in the throat. Everyone drank it freely.

Everyone except Harry, who raised his goblet of sparkling juice with quiet confidence, entirely unbothered. He didn’t need wine to feel the warmth already working its way through his chest.

And then came the conversation.

It arrived the way hard things often do: unexpectedly, and all at once.

A hush passed through the table, like a breeze curling through a crack in the wall — too cold to ignore, too expected to be surprised by. The clatter of forks quieted. The silence swelled.

Hermione cleared her throat.

Her voice, when it came, was soft but sure — worn with thought, the kind of tone used when navigating the tightrope between honesty and tact.

“I just wanted to say… my condolences, Mrs. Malfoy. For Bellatrix. I know she… tried to kill us. But she was still your sister.”

The words didn’t land cleanly — they weren’t meant to. They hit the table like something carefully set down, but heavy and noisy all the same.

Hermione knew how it sounded: awkward, halting, more an attempt at trying than a graceful offering. But she had always been the one willing to extend grace when it cost something. Especially when the cost was humility — hers or someone else’s.

It wasn’t just sympathy. It was an invitation.

To acknowledge pain.

To allow for grief.

To say the unsayable out loud and see who could meet her there.

And across the table, Narcissa Malfoy lifted her gaze. Not with sharpness. Not with disdain.

But with something unreadable. Something that might, just barely, have been gratitude.

The table stilled. Not with shock, but with that peculiar kind of hush that falls when someone says something brave, uncomfortable, and undeniably necessary. The name had hung in the air unspoken for days, waiting for a moment like this to surface. Just… maybe not from her.

Narcissa didn’t flinch. She didn’t look away. Her hand rested lightly on her wine glass; her fingers as poised as ever. But her eyes — sharp, pale, unblinking — shifted ever so slightly. Not in pain. Not even in grief. But in the way one reacts to an echo they’ve lived with for so long, they barely noticed anymore.

“Thank you, Miss Granger,” she said at last, her voice even, every syllable deliberate.

“That’s… kind of you. Especially considering the circumstances.”

A small, ironic smile flickered at the corner of her lips.

“But do call me Narcissa. There’s little point in formalities now… Hermione.”

She paused, her gaze drifting, not quite distant — just slightly turned inward, as if the glass in front of her was a mirror to the past.

“I mourned Bellatrix,” she said quietly.

“But not at the end. I mourned her long before that. Before Azkaban twisted her into something feral. Perhaps even before... before she became…”

Narcissa trailed off, but not out of uncertainty. Her meaning was clear, her silence louder than any condemnation. She did not look at Tom. Not even briefly.

“Before she lost herself to a madness that I no longer recognized.”

There was no venom in her voice. No lingering resentment. And somehow, that made it all the more devastating. Her words fell like silk over iron — soft, but unmovable. Final.

Hermione nodded; her throat too tight for words. There was a prickle behind her eyes, a quiet ache, not just for having been seconds away from killing Bellatrix herself, but for the sister Narcissa had already buried long before her death.

The silence that followed was… awkward. There was no escaping that. But it wasn’t the clumsy kind born of not knowing what to say — it was the stillness that follows when people acknowledge something irreparable. When there's nothing left to fix, and nothing left to fight about.

Just... acceptance. And the impossible things we live with.

Harry studied Narcissa for a moment longer, struck again by how different she was from the image he’d once had of her from his interactions with Lucius and Draco but had gotten to know this past week. She was composed but not cold, detached yet still deeply human. And as he looked down at the empty space in front of her — the empty wine, the quiet plate — he wondered if grief always looked so neat once it had lived long enough.

Harry also couldn’t help but be struck by the oddness of the moment. He found himself thinking back to Bellatrix’s death — the way Tom had killed her for him, for Hermione. It was oddly endearing, in a strange way, how Tom had acted. There was something almost human about the way he had killed Bellatrix, the way he had done it with a certain sense of care, as if it wasn’t just about eliminating a threat – but an acknowledgement that Lord Voldemort and his past was no more.

At least that was what Harry had wanted to believe.

Harry’s mind also flickered to Sirius, to the way he had been taken so suddenly, and he felt the familiar pang in his chest. He still wished Sirius could have been spared, but in the end, the circumstances were different now. Bellatrix was dead, and that was... something. Harry still couldn’t quite reconcile everything, but at least, in this strange, twisted world, there was a sense of justice in it.

It seemed that tonight was a night to get unspoken things out in the open.

The conversation shifted — subtle, quiet — and then Tom’s voice cut through it like a cool current.

“Miss Granger… Hermione,” he said, his tone carefully measured, as though each syllable had been weighed and chosen with precision.

“I was wrong to take your memories. To send you away as I did.”

Harry felt it instantly — an almost imperceptible change in the air. It wasn’t an apology, not in the way most people gave them. Tom Riddle didn’t apologize. Not truly. His pride was too deeply rooted, his authority too absolute. But this — this was something else. A quiet, unvarnished admission. Not theatrical. Not forced.

Just honest.

Hermione stilled. Her expression didn’t shift much, but Harry, who had known her long enough to read the tiniest changes, saw it: the way her spine straightened. The faint tension in her jaw. The way her fingers wrapped just a little tighter around her glass. She looked at Tom, holding his gaze — not with hostility, but with something more complicated. Wariness, yes. Memory. But also thoughtfulness.

And maybe… something that almost resembled respect.

“I’m not seeking forgiveness,” Tom continued, his voice lower now, devoid of flourish or manipulation.

“But I acknowledge that what I did was wrong.”

The room held its breath.

Hermione didn’t respond right away. For a moment, it wasn’t clear whether she would respond at all. Then, slowly, she nodded.

It was not a gesture of forgiveness. But it was something. An acknowledgment of her own. A recognition that this — this act of saying it aloud — was the closest thing to an apology she would ever get from Tom Riddle.

And perhaps, for once, that was enough.

Across the table, Narcissa — who had been silent, observing the exchange with the poise of someone long trained to read rooms with lethal precision — met Harry’s eyes.

She didn’t speak. She didn’t need to.

In her glance was something unspoken but unmistakable: approval. Not of Tom. But of Harry. Of the effect he was having. The softening, subtle as it was, that no one else could have coaxed from the man who had once ruled by fear alone. It was not redemption, and it certainly wasn’t repentance. But it was movement.

It was progress.

Harry felt it too. Something like relief flickered across his chest. Tom had not been prompted. He had not been manipulated into that moment. He had chosen to say it. Freely. And that meant something.

More than Harry had expected. More than he knew what to do with, honestly.

But just as the silence began to settle — poised between solemnity and peace — it shattered.

Nagini, who had been sprawled near the hearth in dramatic disinterest, suddenly hissed, loud and sharp, slicing through the quiet like a whip crack.

Her tongue flicked. Her eyes gleamed.

And with impeccable timing, she announced, “If this turns into a second toast to mutual growth and self-awareness, I’m leaving.”

Hermione choked on her wine.

Ron snorted, barely suppressing a laugh.

They could only guess at what she was saying.

And Tom — Tom actually blinked and sighed like a long-suffering tutor whose pet snake had just ruined a carefully crafted lesson plan.

The tension, like steam, hissed out of the room in quiet bursts of laughter.

Balance, as always, restored.

“Okay, okay, enough of this maudlin apologizing and endlessly boring conversation.”

Nagini’s voice was smooth, but with a teasing edge that made Harry’s lips twitch in amusement.

“Here are my requests for tomorrow’s baking.”

Harry, who had been unusually quiet for most of dinner, chuckled fully now and shot Nagini a look.

“You sure know how to break the tension, don’t you, Nagini?”

The serpent gave him a sly smile, flicking her tongue in a way that only made her seem more mischievous.

“Someone has to,” she replied, her voice dripping with playful sarcasm.

“And besides, you all are far too serious. If we don’t get on with things, we’ll be sitting here forever — stuck in endless apologies and pointless emotions. Baking, on the other hand — now that’s something worth focusing on.”

Harry laughed softly, and for a brief moment, the weight of the conversation lightened. Nagini, as always, knew how to shift the mood without even trying. And just like that, dinner returned to a more comfortable, familiar rhythm.

Who knew Nagini would be the perfect comedic relief for whatever the hell this turned into. The author is working through their own feelings of guilt and regret while writing this so apologies for having you all witness to this.

Also, I realize we are +115k words in and it has been slow between Tom and Harry. I hope the next chapter will make you more content. 

Chapter Text

AN: More baking!

And a very pivotal scene between Tom and Harry.

In the words of my Queen, Nagini: “Frankly, your welcome!”

JK owns HP – she does not own the Fandom.

Harry was seven and a half months pregnant, and by this point, nearly everything required a bit more effort — sometimes a lot more. But that hadn’t stopped him from hunching over the kitchen table with the same fervor he once reserved for last-minute essays. He scribbled in bursts of untamed handwriting, lines of ink curling across parchment in frantic, overlapping layers.

When Hermione and Ron stepped into the kitchen, they froze.

There it was again — that strange, oddly familiar sight: Harry and Nagini, heads bent close together, whispering in low, sinuous tones. Parseltongue slid through the room like smoke, winding around them in soft, sharp-edged coils. The sound wasn’t frightening anymore, not really. But it still sent a ripple down Ron’s spine. Not from fear — just from the sheer otherworldliness of it.

It was a language that demanded adjustment, that reminded you, quietly but insistently, that magic didn’t always feel safe or easy.

Hermione, by contrast, barely blinked. Her expression thoughtful and unsurprised, as if she had walked back into a conversation she had merely stepped away from.

Nagini was draped elegantly across the counter like royalty reclining on a throne, her coils layered with deliberate grace. Her head dipped slightly as she hissed something low and deliberate toward Harry, her tongue flicking with emphasis. Harry responded with equal seriousness, murmuring back between scratches of his quill. There was an intensity to it—something sharp and exacting — that suggested this wasn’t idle talk. It was planning. It was work.

Harry would occasionally pause, brow furrowed, to add something in the margins. Nagini, ever expressive, would either nod with queenly approval or recoil in what could only be described as withering disdain.

Hermione didn’t need to understand Parseltongue to read the dynamic: this was collaboration. This was a shared obsession. And by the look of it, Harry was fully immersed.

She’d found them like this before — often, in fact. Whispering in corners, their heads close over books and scrolls. Crouched beside the hearth late at night with notes strewn across the floor like fallen leaves. Locked in wordless rhythm, debating with body language alone.

And always — always — the same thing happened when they realized they weren’t alone.

Total erasure.

Whatever it was — papers, plans, half-written thoughts—it vanished the instant they looked up. One blink, one flick of a finger, and the entire operation dissolved like smoke in the air.

Notes. Diagrams. Parchment. Gone.

As if they’d never existed at all.

Vanished — wandlessly, effortlessly.

It still drove Hermione absolutely mad.

She was still struggling to master the kind of nonverbal precision that let you vanish one scroll, let alone an entire desk’s worth of materials with the flick of a wrist and not a syllable spoken. But Harry? Apparently, his studies with Tom — the actual Dark Lord — had honed his focus to a level that made even Hermione feel like she was lagging behind.

And whatever Harry and Nagini were plotting… Hermione wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to know. Not because she feared it was dangerous — though, with those two, danger was never far off — but because the secrecy itself suggested something delicate. Something protected. Something that wasn’t for Tom’s ears.

They never did this around him.

Never when he was in the room.

Never within range of his gaze or ears.

Which, of course, made Hermione even more suspicious.

But this time… this time there was a detail she hadn’t seen before.

Nagini — regal, unflappable, eternally poised — was wearing a chef’s uniform.

Or rather, the closest approximation of one Hermione had ever seen on a snake.

A crisp white jacket, custom-fitted (if one could use such a word for something without arms), trimmed in gold thread with glinting little buttons that shimmered each time she shifted. Perched delicately atop her head was a miniature baker’s hat, tilted ever so slightly to one side.

It looked like something out of a fever dream.

And, maddeningly, she pulled it off.

Hermione blinked. Then blinked again. Then once more, as if repetition might somehow make the image settle into something that made sense.

Ron leaned in beside her, voice low.

“Should we be worried or… I don’t know… impressed?”

Hermione didn’t answer. She was still too busy reconciling the sight in front of her with the fact that, for some reason that escaped her, it made perfect sense.

Because despite the ridiculous hat and the absurdly tailored snake-sized uniform, there was a weight in the room. An energy. Beneath the parchment and ink and half-finished scribbles, there was focus. Coordination. Urgency.

And above all else, secrecy.

Just as she registered it — felt the current of something real running beneath the absurd — Nagini’s eyes flicked toward her. Harry’s quill stilled.

And in a blink—

Poof.

Everything disappeared.

Every scrap of parchment. Every inkwell. Every diagram. Gone. Without a trace.

Hermione resisted the urge to throw her hands in the air.

“Hiya, Hermione,” Harry said quickly — too quickly — the forced cheer in his voice almost blinding.

He straightened in his chair, brushing his shirt like he hadn’t just been mid-conspiracy with Nagini.

Hermione gave him a long, unimpressed look that clearly said she wasn’t fooled.

But — for now — she would let it go.

She folded her arms and arched an eyebrow.

“So,” she said evenly, pretending right along with him, “what are we baking today?”

Nagini, still draped across the counter like an overindulged empress, lifted her head with regal deliberation. With a proud flick of her tongue, she launched into a rapid stream of Parseltongue that carried the unmistakable cadence of a monologue.

Harry didn’t bother translating as she spoke — he just nodded periodically, resigned to his role as her personal interpreter.

“She wants doughnuts,” Harry translated eventually when she had finished, sighing.

“A variety. Different shapes, different flavors. Some cinnamon. Some chocolate. Possibly a maple glaze with chunks of bacon.”

He paused.

“Also — and these are her words, not mine — ‘If they are not perfect, someone will lose a hand.’”

Nagini gave a dramatic flick of her tail for emphasis, then slid down the counter with crisp purpose, her body flowing with such controlled precision she resembled a displeased Le Cordon Bleu instructor surveying a failed soufflé. Hermione half-expected her to summon a clipboard and begin deducting points for uneven flour distribution.

“She would also like to remind you,” he continued solemnly, “that you may call her Chef Nagini for the duration of the bake.”

“Charming,” Hermione muttered, tying her apron like she was preparing for battle.

“I feel like I’m back in Potions. Except the cauldrons are fried and the instructor might bite.”

“To be fair,” Ron offered, strolling after her and grabbing a mixing bowl, “Nagini gives off fewer murder vibes than Snape ever did.”

“Challenge accepted,” Nagini hissed from the far counter where she had positioned herself, entirely too pleased.

With that, they got to work.

Bowls clattered onto the counter. Measuring cups, bags of flour, sugar, yeast, and every spice Nagini had ever hissed about were arranged with military precision. Hermione, of course, had already pulled out a thick, dog-eared cookbook and was flipping through the pages at breakneck speed, murmuring notes under her breath.

Harry stood beside her, one hand braced on the counter for balance, the other helping flip pages. There was a strange, undeniable eagerness in him — something about baking brought a rare kind of calm. A sense of structure and progress, a goal with clear steps and sweet results. He liked it. And in a house where the definition of “normal” had long since disintegrated, that sort of thing mattered.

Nagini watched them from across the kitchen, perched on a counter she had claimed as her observation throne. Her head was high, her eyes narrowed, tongue flicking like a critic sniffing the air for weakness. Not an ounce of dough had been touched yet, but her judgment was already palpable.

“This one’s for raised doughnuts,” Hermione said, tapping a page. “Yeast-based. We’ll need to let it proof for at least an hour.”

Harry nodded, already reaching for a mixing bowl.

“So… basically, we have one hour to not ruin everything before the dough notices.”

“Let’s just hope we survive long enough to see them rise,” Hermione muttered.

“Otherwise, I’m fairly sure Chef Nagini will have our heads — and serve them glazed.”

Nagini hissed, long and low. It sounded suspiciously like a laugh. Or a threat. Possibly both.

And then it began… and went quickly downhill from there.

The doughnut-making process did not go smoothly.

Not even remotely.

If there had been a disaster scale for frying pastries, this would’ve landed somewhere between ‘catastrophic culinary meltdown’ and ‘Department of Magical Accidents-level arson event.’

Ron — somehow, impossibly — defied every known law of baking safety and managed to cause not one, but three oil-related explosions. No one could figure out how. Hermione paused mid-stir, watching in horror as yet another plume of smoke rose from his pan like a warning from the kitchen gods.

Even Neville Longbottom, who had once set a no-flame potion on fire, would’ve quietly removed himself from the scene in embarrassment.

Harry, who had been tending his own pan like it was an advanced potion, glanced up just in time to see Ron yelp and leap back from the stove — again — as a fresh geyser of oil hissed angrily upward.

“Ron!” Harry barked, flinging a dishtowel toward the smoke curling ominously toward the ceiling.

“What are you even doing?”

“I don’t know!” Ron snapped, waving the tongs like they were cursed.

“I followed the instructions! It said to drop them in gently!”

Hermione, who had paused mid-measurement, didn’t even look up. “Ron, you dropped it from chest height. It’s a doughnut; we are not going for splash size!”

“It was gentle!” he protested, holding the tongs aloft as if they might corroborate his story.

Nagini, observing regally from another perch atop the highest cabinet for safety reasons, coiled like a great and scaly gargoyle, gave a long, pointed flick of her tongue.

“If he’s going to kill us all with boiling oil,” she hissed, voice dry as old parchment, “I vote we eat him first.”

Ron’s hand froze mid-air. He stared up at her in disbelief.

“Did she just—?”

“She said you’re officially on probation,” Harry translied with far too much delight, flipping a doughnut that turned over perfectly in the pan with a satisfying puff.

“And I might second that motion.”

“Excellent,” Nagini purred, her tail swaying like a cat preparing to strike.

Ron narrowed his eyes.

“I’d like it noted that I’ve only almost set the kitchen on fire three times.”

“Today,” Hermione muttered, not even glancing up.

“Details,” Ron said stiffly.

Slithering down from her perch with the grace of a queen descending a marble staircase, Nagini glided toward the cooling racks of the acceptable attempts with the ceremonial gravity of a royal food critic arriving unannounced. She paused before a tray of freshly glazed doughnuts, her eyes narrowed in silent judgment. Her tongue flicked out once, twice, as if she could taste incompetence on the air.

Then, with the solemnity of someone pronouncing a royal edict, she nudged a chocolate-glazed specimen away and declared, “too much nutmeg.”

Harry spun around from the stove, affronted.

“You said more nutmeg.”

“I changed my mind,” Nagini replied, her voice as smooth and shameless as ever.

“That’s—” Harry waved a wooden spoon in the air like a conductor at the edge of a breakdown.

“That’s not how any of this works!”

Nagini sniffed, utterly unbothered.

“Then you clearly don’t understand the artistic process.”

She selected another doughnut, eyeing it with the solemn precision of a high priestess preparing for ritual sacrifice, and took a slow, deliberate bite.

Ron, now bearing a faint flour explosion in his hair and a mild oil burn on his apron, stood off to the side like someone who had stumbled into a highly specialized battleground he didn’t remember enlisting in.

“I miss when doughnuts were just doughnuts,” he muttered. “Fried and eaten. Not judged by homicidal snakes in tiny chef hats.”

Nagini didn’t so much as glance at him — too absorbed in silently condemning the uneven swirl of a maple glaze with the kind of pointed disdain typically reserved for scathing restaurant reviews.

“We’ll have to start over with a new batch,” Harry sighed, wiping his hands on his flour-dusted apron like a man preparing for emotional resignation.

“She’s decided this one’s beneath her.”

Nagini flicked her tail once, regally.

“Correct.”

“She changes her mind a lot,” Hermione muttered darkly, sprinkling a final dusting of cinnamon sugar over the second tray.

Her tone was low, flat, and dangerously even — the tone she typically reserved for situations involving Weasley twin inventions or impending academic disaster.

“The art of baking is subject to sudden inspiration,” Nagini replied loftily, inspecting the tray like it had personally insulted her.

“More like the murder noodle is a glutton and can’t decide on flavor profiles in advance,” Harry mumbled from behind the cooling rack, still nursing a minor burn on his wrist.

“Untrue,” Nagini snapped, her voice crisp with indignation.

And yet, despite the chaos — the minor oil fires, Ron’s ill-advised attempt to charm the dough into flipping itself (which nearly turned the stove into a volcano), and Nagini’s endless critiques — they had somehow, in the end, produced tray after tray of truly spectacular doughnuts.

There were crullers and filled ones, classic rings and delicate twists. Some were bathed in sugar, others glossed in glazes or oozing with molten chocolate. Each batch gleamed on its cooling rack like a tray of edible trophies, the kind of thing that might bring a tear to the eye of a sentimental pastry chef.

Nagini, of course, moved among them with the efficiency and entitled air of a Michelin inspector. Her tail tapped thoughtfully against the edge of the counter; eyes narrowed as she scrutinized the golden finish on each pastry with laser precision.

Ron wasn’t far behind her.

At one point, Hermione glanced up from the icing bowl to see them — Ron with chocolate glaze smeared across his mouth like a moustache, and Nagini delicately licking powdered sugar off her scales — and let out a long, slow sigh that contained the weight of all her life choices.

“Brilliant,” she muttered.

“Now there are two of her. Or him. I genuinely don’t know which is worse.”

“I shall take that as a compliment,” Nagini said primly, not even looking up as she used her tail to select a cinnamon twist with the kind of reverence usually reserved for wands or Horcruxes.

Ron licked his fingers and nodded sagely.

“Honestly, I think whatever she said is right. These are wicked.”

“You’re just saying that because you’ve eaten your body weight in them,” Hermione said, not even bothering to mask her judgment.

“I’m doing quality control,” Ron shot back. “That’s what a professional does.”

Nagini inclined her head toward him with approval.

“At last. Someone who understands the suffering for great works of art!”

By the time Tom and Narcissa arrived — no doubt lured by the rich, irresistible scent that had saturated the house — the kitchen was in a state best described as ‘culinary crime scene.’

Flour blanketed the floor like soft snowfall. A dishtowel, half-burned, dangled over the edge of the sink like a white flag of surrender. The oil on the stove was still quietly bubbling, completely unattended. And the counter — once the proud display ground for an impressive variety of pastries — was now a graveyard of crumbs, sticky glaze smears, and several empty platters stacked haphazardly like ruins after a feast.

Tom stepped into the room and came to an abrupt halt.

He didn’t say anything at first. He just took in the chaos — the scorched dishtowel in the sink, the smoke-smeared ceiling, the flour-dusted floor, and the faint, lingering scent of sugar and frying oil that clung to the air like guilt.

He blinked. Once. Slowly.

“Did you leave any for us?” he asked, voice flat and deceptively calm.

It hovered somewhere between mild irritation and that eerie sort of disappointment that sounded more dangerous than rage.

Harry, leaning against the counter with the unbothered swagger of someone nine-tenths smug and one-tenth extremely pregnant, pointed lazily at his stomach.

“I’m growing a human life. That counts as a medical exemption.”

Nagini, without even lifting her head, hissed mid-bite.

“I didn’t want the chubby pregnant one to feel bad, so I ate the most.”

Then she took another languid bite of what was — unquestionably — the last cinnamon twist. Her absurdly small chef’s hat, still perched atop her head with improbable dignity, bobbed slightly as she chewed with slow, deliberate satisfaction.

Tom’s eyes moved, almost mechanically: to the tray (empty), to the counters (covered in sugar and destruction), and finally to Nagini, who was daintily licking powdered sugar off her fang like a queen uninterested in the grievances of commoners.

“If you wanted one,” she said coolly, “you should have arrived earlier. There was a sign-up sheet.”

“There was no sign-up sheet,” Harry muttered behind Hermione who was at the sink, elbow-deep in sticky glaze and looking profoundly betrayed by her own cookware.

Nagini didn’t dignify the comment with a response. If anything, her expression sharpened into the snake equivalent of regal contempt — a look so witheringly aristocratic it might have been chiseled into ancient marble.

Tom stared at her. She stared back. She flicked her tongue once, slowly — satisfied — and stretched along the windowsill like she’d claimed the house, the kitchen, and probably his throne while she was at it.

Harry leaned toward Tom with a placid smile.

“They were excellent, by the way. Perfect rise. Fluffy centers. She only disqualified two batches. So, you know. Progress.”

Tom exhaled slowly and rubbed the bridge of his nose, the weariness of a man who had lived through wars and witnessed horrors (and been the cause of most of them) and still somehow found the doughnut debacle the most mentally exhausting.

He didn’t speak again. What was there to say?

And yet... it had been a successful day. Miraculously. The kitchen still stood. No one had lost a limb. There had been doughnuts — even if not a single one remained.

The rest of the afternoon passed in a slow, sugar-laced haze.

Harry napped, curled on the sofa with his feet propped up and a contented hand on his stomach. Ron dozed in a chair; a trace of cinnamon still dusted across his nose. Hermione read, cross-legged on the floor.

And Nagini, of course, snored faintly on top of a tea towel, her hat tipped over one eye like the world's sassiest sous-chef.

Harry, now deep into his third trimester, moved with a kind of weary determination that came from sheer necessity. Grace had long since left the equation. The bath had helped, marginally — but even drying off required careful calculation, as if the very act of balance had become a spell he could miscast.

He emerged into the bedroom bundled in oversized sweatpants and one of Tom’s jumpers, the sleeves too long, the hem fitting comfortably over his belly. One hand braced instinctively against the small of his back as he waddled toward the bed like someone carrying both life and a low-grade grudge.

“You’d think,” Harry muttered, breathless as he eased into the room, “with all the magic flying around this place, someone would’ve figured out how to conjure a spine that isn’t trying to assassinate me.”

Tom, seated near the window in his usual armchair, glanced up from his book. One eyebrow lifted with quiet disdain.

“You sound surprised that pregnancy is uncomfortable.”

Harry shot him a sideways look, the kind that would’ve withered a less arrogant man.

“I don’t think you want to explore those thoughts further. Not unless you’re trying to get hexed in your sleep.”

Tom didn’t reply, but the corner of his mouth twitched — not quite a smile, not quite a warning. Still, his gaze lingered a moment longer than necessary as Harry slowly, carefully, lowered himself onto the edge of the bed.

For a while, neither of them spoke.

Harry’s fingers drifted to the chain around his neck, brushing against the cool gold that lay flat over his collarbone. It pulsed faintly beneath his touch — warm, steady.

“The Horcrux is still holding,” he said, his voice quieter now, like it didn’t want to echo too loudly in the stillness.

Not about this topic; Tom’s souls. His anchors to immortality.

Tom’s book lowered slightly in his hands. His posture hadn’t shifted, but there was something about the angle of his jaw that changed — a tension that came not from a combination of fear, calculation, and acceptance. Something that had been on his mind almost every second of every day since that night – his birthday. When two of his Horcuxes had been erased from existence.

Harry turned his head slightly, not quite meeting Tom’s eyes.

“Do you think this one’ll go like the others?”

Tom closed his book. Slowly. Deliberately.

There was a pause — not long, but weighted — as if even he felt the gravity of what was being asked.

“Possibly,” he said at last, his tone flat but not dismissive.

Tom’s eyes didn’t leave his.

“I have no way of knowing when, or even if, it will vanish like the others. Which is precisely why I never let you out of my sight or reach for long.”

Harry studied him carefully. There was no defensiveness in Tom’s posture, no visible anger at the mention of the Horcruxes. Just a strange, unsettling stillness. A contemplative sort of calm.

He had brought up the subject cautiously, aware of the risks, the history.

The words weren’t romantic. They weren’t even particularly warm. But they were honest.

Just months ago, a conversation like this would’ve been impossible. Back then, Harry had expected fury — rage, even — at the mere mention of Horcruxes. The thought of Tom acknowledging the possibility of losing another fragment, possibly leaving him with only one more tethering him to immortality? Unthinkable.

And yet here they were. Talking about it. Calmly. Civilly. Like it was just another problem to be solved, instead of the crumbling foundation of a man who had once built his life on never dying.

The realization hit Harry like a soft jolt: Tom had changed.

Maybe not drastically. Maybe not enough. But something fundamental had shifted.

There was a silence. Not the heavy kind, nor the sharp-edged one that preceded conflict. This one was soft. Quiet. The kind that usually meant Tom was thinking about something deeper than he cared to admit aloud — even to himself.

Harry shifted, sinking further into the bed, his back propped up against the pillows. He stared at the ceiling like it might offer some insight, eyes narrowed.

“You’re being weird,” he said flatly.

Tom turned, lifting one infuriatingly elegant eyebrow with glacial precision.

“Weird?”

“You know,” Harry gestured vaguely, “extra weird. Like you’re overthinking something but trying really hard to pretend you’re not. It’s very suspicious.”

Tom didn’t reply immediately. Instead, he watched Harry for a moment, then moved — slowly, deliberately — from his place by the window to the edge of the bed. He stood there, looking down at Harry with an expression that defied any singular emotion. Not cold, not warm — just... layered.

“I’m allowed to be thoughtful,” Tom said eventually, his tone dry but not defensive.

Harry squinted at him.

“Yeah, that’s not the word I’d use.”

Still, he didn’t shift away. And Tom didn’t leave.

Something hung in the space between them — not quite tension, not quite understanding. Just something unnamed. Hovering. Waiting.

And for once, neither of them tried to chase it away.

“Are you okay, Tom?”

The question lingered in the air between them, soft but pointed.

Tom didn’t answer right away. He stared ahead, his gaze distant, like he wasn’t quite in the room anymore.

Then, quietly — almost like he was testing the words on his tongue — he said, “I’ve been thinking about what you said. About death. About what it means.”

He exhaled slowly.

“And about the fact that I’ve never really been… a good person. Not once. Not really.”

Harry sat up straighter, surprised by the vulnerability in Tom’s voice. Not the content necessarily, but the fact that he was admitting it.

Out loud. To him.

He opened his mouth to speak, but Tom beat him to it.

“My mother,” he said, voice sharp with a softness that somehow made it even more rough.

“She gave me up. Didn’t fight for me. Left me in that place.” His jaw tightened.

“She had magic. She had power. And she still left. She still died.”

Tom moved, almost without thinking, sitting beside Harry on the bed.

It was the most human Harry had ever seen him.

Grief. Pain.

Loss.

Abandonment.

Things he never expected to dance around with this man. At this range. While carrying his child.

“I know,” Harry said after a pause.

“Dumbledore… he showed me. All of it. Every memory he collected — your mother, the locket, the orphanage. I saw how she sold it. How Borgin swindled her. She didn’t even try to bargain.”

Tom didn’t react visibly, but Harry could feel something shift beside him. He wasn’t surprised that Dumbledore had collected and archived his pain like a trophy — just surprised that the old man had shared it with Harry. That wasn't Dumbledore’s usual style. He always preferred his truths carefully rationed, one painful breadcrumb at a time.

Tom was silent, but not cold. Just… pensive.

Harry half-expected him to explode. To sneer. To reject the topic with the disdain it surely brought. But he didn’t. He just sat there, silent and still, as if some part of him was waiting for Harry to finish.

And Harry couldn’t help but think — for all Tom’s brilliance, all his mastery, all his ego — this might be the first time in his life that someone had just listened to him. No fear. No performance. No agenda. Just… listened.

But even as Harry sat quietly beside him, trying not to break the fragile stillness, he couldn’t ignore the knot tightening in his chest. Because he still didn’t know where this was going. And he wasn’t entirely sure Tom did either.

Tom’s voice, when it came again, was low. Careful.

“I’ve always viewed death as weakness,” he said.

“Especially after learning about her… my mother’s passing. Morfin told me. Cruelly, of course. Only reinforced my memories of summers in London during the war… the summer air choked with smoke and fear. I didn’t know if I’d survive the night. The bombs. The silence between them.”

He didn’t look at Harry. His eyes stayed fixed on a point just beyond the window, like he could still see the ghost of that burning sky.

“I had no one,” Tom continued.

“Only myself. Always myself. And so I learned early: anything lesser than strength was vulnerability. Anything soft was a liability. Death… was the final defeat. The ultimate failure. So I made it my enemy.”

There was a pause. He exhaled — not heavily, but deliberately — and turned to look at Harry, truly look at him.

“I built a life around that belief. I conquered it. I fractured my soul, reached for immortality. I made death kneel.”

He hesitated. And then, in a quiet voice that struck Harry harder than anything else had:

“But I don’t think I’ve ever actually lived.”

The words hung there, raw and unguarded.

“I just… wasn’t dying. That’s all. I told myself I wanted to revolutionize magic. To elevate it. To create something new. And yes, I’ve done things no wizard has ever dared. But have I built anything worth remembering? Have I created anything truly new? A new branch of magic? A better world?” He gave a quiet, humorless laugh.

“No. I’ve only ever destroyed.”

He fell silent again and looked away, the shadows across his face suddenly sharper.

Harry shifted, uncertain. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to hear this — it was that he hadn’t expected to. Not from Tom. Not like this.

“Why are you telling me this?” he asked, his voice softer than he intended.

“Not that I don’t want to know… I just—”

He didn’t finish the sentence, but Tom looked at him anyway — eyes darker, yes, but not closed.

And in that look — raw, searching, wounded — Harry understood something that shook him more than any curse or revelation ever could.

Tom didn’t know why either.

He didn’t have answers. Just questions. But he needed someone to hear them.

And somehow, impossibly, that someone was Harry.

Tom’s voice broke the silence, quieter now. Almost tentative. His eyes didn’t lift from looking at Harry’s belly.

“Did I leave behind anything but bodies? You’re here. In the same place I was. Alone. At the edge of something impossible. Just like I was.”

He looked up then. And Harry felt the weight of it — not a threat, not a calculation, but a question so bare and human that it startled him.

“I’m telling you this, Harry, maybe, because I don’t understand.” Tom’s voice cracked slightly — not in sound, but in steadiness.

“How did we live through the same cruelties, carry the same scars… and you didn’t turn out like me?”

The next words were barely more than breath, but they sliced deeper than any spell.

“How do you not hate me?”

Harry didn’t know what force had brought them here — to this moment, to this conversation. But he didn’t flinch. He didn’t look away. He met Tom’s gaze — those cold, guarded eyes — and let himself see it. All of it. All of him.

“I think it’s because I had people,” Harry said, slowly. “Real ones. People who… stuck around.”

He exhaled, grounding himself in the truth of it.

“I had Hermione. Who you obliviated — and she still found me. She didn’t know where I was, what had happened, or why she didn’t remember. But she came. Because that’s who she is.”

He paused, his voice thickening just slightly.

“She stayed by me through everything — Hogwarts, the war, the worst moments of my life. And she never once let me fall.”

A quiet settled between them, dense and heavy — the kind of silence that didn't need to be filled, because it was already speaking volumes. It held the weight of things never spoken aloud, of truths both of them had danced around for far too long.

Harry’s voice softened, but it didn’t falter.

“And Ron — even though we fight. Even though he walked away once — he came back. He never stopped looking for me. He was willing to risk everything, even knowing I might never forgive him, or that it might not change anything between us. But he did it anyway.”

Harry paused, eyes distant now, not looking at Tom but through him — to memories that felt both close and impossibly far.

“They love me, Tom. And I love them. They’re not just friends. They’re my family. I didn’t come from them — I made them. They made me. And they stayed.”

He looked over at Tom then, carefully.

“You didn’t have that. You didn’t get the chance to make friendships like that.”

Tom didn’t argue. He couldn’t. Not when the truth sat between them like a quiet confession neither of them had the strength to deny.

“And then,” Harry continued, voice thickening, “there’s my parents. I didn’t remember them at first. But I knew — eventually — that they died for me. That they chose me. That I was loved. That I was wanted. And even if I didn’t grow up with them, that knowledge… it carried me through more than I can explain.”

He turned away then, not out of shame, but because the weight of it was too much to meet Tom’s eyes and still speak the truth.

“You didn’t get that either.”

Another silence. Sharper this time. And Tom was still.

“So yes,” Harry said finally, “we’re similar in a lot of ways. Too many. But you didn’t have that. You didn’t have what I did. And honestly?” He glanced back at him.

“I don’t know who I would’ve become if I had lived your life. After seeing it — the pieces of it — I’m not sure I would’ve turned out any better.”

His voice was quiet now. Gentle. But honest.

“I think that’s the difference. Not power. Not choices. Just… circumstance. Connection.”

Harry swallowed around the tight ache in his throat. He was thinking of Lily now — his mother, and the impossible gift she had given him. For weeks, he hadn’t truly understood it. But here, in this quiet moment, with Tom beside him, he finally did. She had known. She had chosen. And somehow, he was starting to understand how.

“Trust. Forgiveness. Grace.”

The words lingered between them, soft and powerful.

Then, quietly, almost too quietly to hear, Tom asked, “But how do you not hate me, Harry?”

Harry turned to look at him, startled not by the question itself — but by the rawness behind it.

Tom was reaching for his hand now, not demanding, but searching. Needing. There was something in his touch that trembled with unspoken desperation — like he was holding on to the question itself just to keep breathing.

“You know my weaknesses. The Horcruxes. You could destroy me. You have every reason to. And yet… you don’t. Why?”

For a moment, Harry couldn’t answer.

Not because he didn’t know — but because the question was too real. Too vulnerable. It wasn’t just a tactical curiosity. It was a man asking why someone hadn’t already put him down like the monster he was. Had been.

And Harry realized something. Maybe Tom wasn’t really asking him. Maybe he was asking himself something he should have faced a long time ago.

Harry let out a slow breath. His fingers curled slightly, not pulling away from Tom’s, but grounding them both.

“I wanted to,” Harry admitted, glancing sidelong at him.

“Back then. I did. Like with the diary. We were tracking them — every one of your Horcruxes. That was the plan.”

He paused, blinking hard.

“And then I found out I was pregnant.”

Tom flinched almost imperceptibly. He didn’t speak.

“Everything shifted after that,” Harry continued, voice quieter now.

“It stopped being about vengeance. Or justice. Or war. It became about survival. About protecting someone who hadn’t even been born yet. And when I thought of how my mum had protected me… what she’d done…”

His voice caught. But he pushed through.

“I did the same. Because I knew. In my bones. I had to protect that child. That nothing else mattered more. And if I could do what she did — if I could give my baby even the smallest chance to live — wouldn’t any parent do it?”

He looked at Tom then, and this time, it wasn’t with anger. Or fear. Or judgment.

It was something softer. Sadder. Real.

“And maybe that’s why I don’t hate you,” Harry said quietly.

“Because I’ve seen who you were. Who you still are, sometimes. And I see what could’ve been. If someone — anyone — had just chosen you.”

For one long, breathless moment, he swore he could feel something break inside Tom. Not loudly. Not violently. But in that quiet, bone-deep way that speaks of things too long held together by sheer will. The kind of fracture that no magic could ever mend. A truth so deep, so brutal, it felt like it could destroy the very core of a person.

But Harry had seen grace. Had been saved by it. Had extended it. And he’d seen Tom touched by it too — in strange, fleeting ways. Sometimes in the way Tom looked at him. Other times, in how he didn’t.

“If there wasn’t that vow right now,” Harry murmured, “if there was no protection shielding me or the baby — I don’t think you’d target either of us.”

Tom didn’t speak. But something in him was moved.

“I might be wrong,” Harry continued, “but I don’t think I am. I think I know you. And I think you’ve changed.”

Tom’s nod was barely perceptible, but it was there. Small, reluctant, and filled with a sorrow that had been carried for so long it wasn’t recognized as grief.

Harry felt it — something in him uncoiled, eased. Just a little. His shoulders softened; his jaw unclenched. He inched closer.

Tom’s eyes — no longer that searing crimson but something closer to a burned umber, dark and human — met his. There was no shock in them. Just sorrow. The kind you see when someone has been seen too clearly. When your soul is laid bare in someone else’s gaze, and all that’s left is to endure the feeling of being known. It wasn’t shame exactly, but it was close. That unbearable weight of being understood.

“How could I kill someone,” Harry asked softly, “who no longer wants to hurt me?”

A silence passed between them like a held breath.

“I’ve changed too, Tom. We both have — for this,” he placed a hand over his belly, “and because of this.”

He swallowed, carefully forming the next words.

“So no. I can’t hate you. If I did — if I still carried that much hate — then part of me would have to hate this too. And I can’t. I won’t. I could never hate something so pure and light and... full of dreams.”

Tom was very still. When he spoke, his voice was the most human Harry had ever heard it. No theatrical cadence. No cold, calculating edge. Just something tired. Soft. Frayed.

“I am sorry… for what I did,” Tom said quietly.

“I don’t know if I even understood what it meant back then. But I do now.”

Harry blinked. The moment hung between them — fragile, surreal. He never imagined hearing those words. Not from him.

“I’m sorry for taking your parents away,” Tom continued, voice low and strained. “For forcing you to grow up in a world without them. I don’t even know when I began to feel it… the guilt. But I do. And I’m sorry that it’s taken me this long to say it. To understand it. And for—”

Harry gently cut in; his voice warm but steady. “I know.”

Tom’s head snapped toward him, eyes wide, searching. Disbelieving.

“I know you’re sorry, Tom,” Harry repeated, meeting his gaze without flinching.

“I think… part of me forgave you the moment my mum did. And the other part… well, it stopped mattering a while ago. Not because it didn’t matter, but because it stopped defining me.”

Tom didn’t speak. He couldn’t. His throat felt tight, as though something unspoken was stuck there, something ancient and heavy that refused to be dislodged. But he stayed seated beside Harry, more still than he’d ever been.

They sat like that for a long while. The silence wasn’t uncomfortable. It was full — full of things too complex to name. Harry felt something settle in his chest, a strange and unexpected sense of peace. And Tom… Tom felt like someone had carved open his ribs and exposed his heart to the air — raw, vulnerable, terrifying — and somehow, he wasn’t crumbling under it. Somehow, he felt safe. Safe in a way he didn’t have language for.

It wasn’t weakness. It was something deeper.

Tom studied the boy — no, the man — beside him. All this time, Tom had thought strength meant domination. Power. Fear. But sitting here, watching Harry speak forgiveness without effort, offer grace without conditions… he understood, in a way he hadn’t before, what real strength looked like.

He had no words for how deeply it awed him.

And perhaps what shook him most was the realization that Harry didn’t even know. He didn’t see the enormity of what he was giving. Because to Harry, it wasn’t about power. It never had been.

And in that moment, Tom saw something more terrifying — and more beautiful — than any spell he had ever mastered. Not power. Not control. But the quiet, unflinching strength it took to forgive, to let someone in.

Then the necklace began to glow.

It started faintly, a soft pulse of gold against Harry’s chest. At first, Harry didn’t notice. Then he did — and he panicked.

His breath hitched. His hand flew to the chain. He looked at Tom, eyes wide with the unmistakable flicker of fear — not just for himself, but for what this meant. For what it might take from him.

But Tom was already moving.

Without hesitation, without ceremony, he reached into the folds of his robe and pulled out the last Horcrux already transfigured — the one he’d begun keeping on him at all times. Just in case.

He placed it around Harry’s neck without a word. Without thought. Removing the unmade one too.

A quiet gesture. Simple. But monumental.

It was the last piece of him. Of what he had been. The final tether to the monstrosity he had once chosen to become. And he gave it to Harry like it was nothing — like Harry was everything.

Part of Tom was spiraling. How could he not? There was only one Horcrux left, and something in his chest screamed at the loss, at the vulnerability. But another part of him — quieter, steadier — felt something else.

Peace.

He didn’t understand it. But he didn’t fight it either.

Harry blinked at him, stunned. Several minutes passed. Just staring at each other. Reeling from this moment – this shift.

This gift.

Then, wordlessly, Harry reached over and turned off the light.

Tom barely had time to process it before Harry lay back and tugged him down too — not urgently, but with familiarity. Like it was the most natural thing in the world. Their hands, still clasped, shifted in the dark until Tom’s arm was curled around Harry’s middle, pulling him close.

Their hands on the child. Their child.

No masks. No games.

Just quiet breathing. Shared warmth. Two people holding on.

And for the first time in a long, long time, they didn’t need to speak.

It wasn’t new, not really. They had woken this way before — half-aware of the way their bodies found each other in the early hours of morning, seeking comfort without naming it. But now, they chose it. Consciously.

Even if they had no idea what it meant.

The distance between them — once vast and filled with fire — was now measured only in heartbeats.

And in the stillness, neither of them felt quite so alone.

Look, the author is just as surprised as any of you this is happening. Our Tommy is growing.

To be honest – my outline did not have him this far into a redemption arc. This is all coming out when I go to write the chapter and I find myself really leaning into the emotions of what is going on. It might be out of character – no idea – but in my head it (hopefully) works for them.

Also – I’m going to go sob now because writing about this shit is hard – especially when it is having you revisit all the times you failed someone else. How you don’t necessarily want forgiveness but you just want to be better. Do better.  

To those people you love.

Chapter Text

AN: 3 Chapters left

JK owns HP – she absolutely does not own the fandom and the community that supports inclusivity and acceptance.

Ron and Hermione were getting ready for dinner — in their own separate rooms within what passed as a very good imitation of the Gryffindor wing. What looked to be the same halls, the same portraits, the same familiar stones beneath their feet. And yet... everything felt older now. Quieter. Like even this intentionally designed castle was realizing that it could become something different.

Something that it wanted to be.

Ron stood at the edge of the bed, staring down at the formal robes laid out before him. Rich crimson, finer than anything he had ever worn, stitched with gold thread so delicate it shimmered when it caught the light. They looked as if they belonged to someone else — someone who fit in at places like this. Someone who knew which fork to use at state dinners, who didn’t spill gravy down the front of his shirt, who didn’t get sweaty palms when told to sit near royalty.

Someone braver. Taller. Better.

He exhaled and reached out, letting his fingers graze the fabric. For a moment, he imagined what it would have been like to have robes like these back at the Yule Ball — how he might have stood straighter, asked sooner, mattered more. Maybe he would not have spent the night watching Hermione dance with someone else. Maybe he wouldn’t have felt so far behind her, even then.

The thought made him wince, and he pulled his hand back. Briefly.

But then he pushed through and got dressed. He had experience in pushing through hard things and coming out the other side.

However, the sight of himself in the mirror caught his eye.

The clothes matched his coloring, he noted absently — warm, bold, Gryffindor through and through — not that it mattered now. Not really.

Because what struck him most wasn’t the robes. It was the room. The place. This impossible castle — hidden in shadow, wrapped in silence, yet still undeniably representative of Hogwarts.

Of their past.

This was where she had been all this time.

He still couldn’t wrap his head around it. Hermione — brilliant, fierce Hermione — had been sent here after everything collapsed about their friendship. And Harry... Harry had been here too, carrying burdens none of them had known, raising secrets like children in the dark.

Ron swallowed hard. He had spent months searching this part of the world, convinced they were just around another corner, or perhaps worse – gone from him forever. And all along, they had been here. Living. Surviving. Building something in the wreckage.

With the Dark Lord.

He never would have guessed. Not in a million lifetimes.

His gaze drifted to the far corner of the room, where soft candlelight flickered against the old stone. And suddenly, unbidden, came the memory of her in that dress from New Years. The one he would never forget. Silver and starlight, like moonbeams stitched into fabric. She had worn it like a second skin — radiant, untouchable.

It didn’t matter that the dress had been broken, ragged.

She had worn it here. She had lived in it.

In this place that had taken her, remade her, and then handed her back piece by piece.

He wished he could have seen her in it when it was whole – when she had been.

Before she had been sent away without her memories.

Before she had stood against the Dark Lord face-to-face for a moment – just a moment – to stay by Harry’s side.

He wished he could have seen that too.

Before all the space between them had settled into something so fragile and unspoken.

He had wanted to tell her that for a while now. That he should have noticed sooner. That he missed things — important things. That the dress wasn’t what mattered, not really — it was that she had been beautiful and brave, and smart, and that he had wished he had been there with her. To stand by her side like he had with Bellatrix.

He hadn’t known how much that could hurt — the weight of what had gone unsaid — until there was no one left to say it to.

But maybe tonight… in these absurdly fine robes, in this strange, haunted castle that still felt like a heartbeat of home… maybe tonight he finally could.

In the distance he heard the soft tap of footsteps echoing off the stone. Slow. Steady. Closer.

She was coming.

He inhaled, bracing himself. He was ready. He would tell her everything — not just about the Yule Ball, not just about the dress, but about the guilt. The regret. The way he should have seen her, should have said something, should have been brave enough to feel what had always been there between them.

But then she stepped into view, and the world fell silent.

And all of it — all the words, all the speeches he had rehearsed in his head over months — vanished.

His mouth opened but nothing came out.

Because she was radiant.

Not like the memory he had clung to — that version of her had been carved from grief and moonlight, a phantom wrapped in pain and stitched in silence. But this — this was her reborn. Glowing, not from magic, but from within. Her presence felt like sunlight warming old stone.

Reminding things that they too could be whole again.

And the dress… Merlin, the dress. It shimmered like it had been pulled from a dream — something spun from memory and mended with hope. But it wasn’t the dress that made him ache. It was her.

It had always been her.

And gods, it had taken him too bloody long to see it.

Hermione paused at the top of the landing, catching the way his gaze had caught on her — the stunned silence, the awe. For a beat, she just blinked at him, uncertain.

And then — she blushed. A soft, pink bloom rising to her cheeks, delicate and genuine.

Surprised. Not embarrassed. Like maybe she hadn’t expected him to look at her that way. Like maybe she hadn’t dared to hope.

“Wow,” Ron breathed.

Soft. Certain. Reverent.

Because it wasn’t just that she was beautiful.

It was that she was still here. Still her. And this time, he saw her.

Hermione smiled fully — slow and genuine, her eyes shining. Not just from the compliment, but from the fact that after everything — after time and silence and war and absence — she was still standing here too.

She felt like she had come out on the other side of something.

“You don’t look so bad yourself,” she said softly, almost shyly.

And it was true. He didn’t. Not just the robes. He looked better. Lighter. Like something inside him had finally mended.

It was a familiar feeling. They had each gone through different yet parallel journeys.

After everything they’d been through to get here — they were still standing. And maybe, finally, ready to say the things they never had.

Ron grinned. “Yeah?” His voice was hopeful — lighter than it had been in weeks. Then he blushed too.

Which was always a little hard to tell with him. The freckles didn’t exactly help, but Hermione had learned the tells: the way his ears went pink, the way he rubbed the back of his neck like he was trying to casually wipe the vulnerability away.

He looked... good, she realized. Healthier. Stronger. He had put on weight — not the sluggish kind, but the kind that came from training again, from finding a rhythm and a reason. He hadn’t lost his edge, just reshaped it. Ron was always the one who wanted to be ready now, just in case.

Hermione mentioned it in passing, gently, as she walked down the stairs. He rolled his eyes but smiled — and she knew he appreciated it.

She moved closer to him.

Then, as she reached up to brush a bit of imaginary lint from his sleeve — an excuse, maybe, just to stay near him for another moment — she dropped her voice and leaned in, conspiratorial.

“Have you noticed anything… odd… about Harry and Nagini?”

Ron blinked. “Odd how?”

Hermione gave him a long, pointed look.

He raised his eyebrows, then shrugged.

“I mean, we’re living in a magical fortress that’s a replica of Hogwarts, run by a somehow-rehabilitated Voldemort, alongside a sugar-addicted murder snake who orders people around in the kitchen and gives surprisingly good pep talks. You’re going to have to be way more specific, Hermione. What’s odd anymore?”

She huffed a laugh despite herself.

It was a fair point.

She gave him a look anyway — the kind that said: you know exactly what I mean, and don’t play dumb.

Ron sighed, dragging a hand down his face, already resigned.

“I mean… yeah, they’ve always been a bit weird. But now it’s different. It’s not just cryptic Harry stuff and Nagini being, you know, Nagini. It’s whispering. Constant whispering. And not the gossipy kind — the kind that sounds like it should come with a secret handshake and a blood pact.”

Hermione arched an eyebrow. She had not expected Ron to notice such detail.

“Whispering?”

He nodded.

“Full-on snakish scheming. You know — soft hissing, synchronized nodding, the occasional evil chuckle.”

He paused, grimacing.

“I’m not even joking. I heard Harry hiss-laugh the other day. It haunts me.”

Hermione crossed her arms, unease tightening across her brow.

“They’ve been scribbling things too. Parchment scraps all over the place. I caught them drawing something in the corner of the library the other day — and when I walked by, they stopped and Nagini sat on it.”

Ron blinked. “Sat on it?”

“Like a cat.”

She exhaled.

“And always when Tom isn’t nearby. Like they don’t want him to know. They’re careful. Intentional.”

Ron frowned now, his earlier sarcasm slipping into something more thoughtful.

“Now that you mention it… yeah. There’s this thing they do. They freeze up when anyone gets too close. Like someone flicked a switch. Dead silent, eyes forward, smiles that are too innocent. Creepy.”

Hermione chewed on the inside of her cheek — a nervous tic she hadn’t quite lost, even after everything.

“I don’t like it,” she murmured. “Do you think it’s something bad?”

Ron tilted his head, considering.

“Well… it’s Harry and Nagini.”

“Exactly,” Hermione muttered.

He snorted. “Best-case scenario? They’re planning to rig the castle with exploding truffles. Worst-case? Global sugar-fueled conquest. One enchanted pastry at a time.”

Hermione gave a half-laugh, dry and uncertain.

“You say that like it’s a joke.”

“It’s them,” Ron said. “It’s never a joke.”

Hermione didn’t answer right away. Instead, she glanced toward the hallway — toward where, even now, she could just barely hear a soft sibilant murmur trailing off into silence.

“Like I said,” she whispered. “Something bad.”

Hermione reached up and gently adjusted the collar of Ron’s robes, her fingers smoothing out an invisible wrinkle with the kind of care that masked quiet urgency. It gave her something to do — something small and manageable — while her thoughts spun faster than she could contain. Her mind was already racing towards another conversation she wasn’t entirely sure she was ready to have.

“Have you noticed it too?” she asked quietly, barely above a whisper, her eyes flicking toward the hallway — as though Harry and Tom might appear at any moment, mid-scheme or mid-silence.

“How different things are between them now?”

Ron gave a noncommittal shrug, half-hearted. He was fussing with the sleeve of his robe, focused on the fold in the fabric as if it might hold answers. Hermione pressed on anyway, voice tight with the need to speak it aloud.

“I mean… he’s holding doors open for him, Ron. Helping him into chairs. Making sure he’s comfortable. Bringing him tea.” Her brows drew together. “Tea, Ron. The Dark Lord. Bringing someone tea.”

Her voice cracked just slightly on the last word, as though it hurt to say it — not because it was unthinkable, but because it was thinkable, and that was somehow worse.

She crossed her arms tightly, grounding herself.

“He even helped him sit yesterday. Adjusted the cushion. Made sure Harry didn’t strain himself.”

Ron didn’t immediately respond. Hermione turned to look at him, bracing for a reaction — a sharp breath, a protest, a furrowed brow, something. But all she got was a slow blink and then a small, easy shrug.

“Good,” he said simply, and meant it.

Hermione froze. The floor tilted under her feet. No, the world.

“…Good?”

Ron glanced sideways at her, and this time, there was no deflection — just the bare, startling sincerity of someone who had thought long and hard, and quietly come to peace with something before anyone else had noticed.

“Yeah. I hope there’s something going on.”

Hermione blinked at him, stunned. “You… hope—?”

Ron nodded, his voice steady and lower now, as if speaking something sacred.

“Because it means Harry’s still Harry.”

He swallowed once, but his eyes didn’t waver.

“He’d never let himself be swallowed up by something cruel. He wouldn’t stand beside someone who wanted to hurt him or others — not again. And I think… I think he sees something else now, when he looks at him. Not Voldemort. Not the monster from before.”

Ron looked down at his hands, rubbing a thumb over a faint scar across his knuckle — a reminder of a time when everything had felt sharp and breaking.

“I’ve seen what this version of Tom is like,” he said slowly. “And if Harry’s the reason for that? If Harry’s the one anchoring him, keeping him human instead of… whatever he was—” He paused, brow furrowed. “Then yeah. I hope there’s something going on. Because it might be the only thing keeping him from turning back into the monster we used to know.”

Hermione didn’t respond at once. She just looked at him — up and down and side to side — as if seeing Ron not for who he had been, but who he had become. Not the lanky boy who panicked over homework and practical exams and Yule Ball invitations, but the man who now spoke like someone who had been tempered by fire and come out the other side quieter, steadier, truer.

She reached up again, fussed one last time with the already-perfect collar of his robe, and let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.

“Sometimes,” she said, voice low and warm, “you really surprise me, Ronald Weasley.”

Ron gave a lopsided smile, the corner of his mouth hitching up. “I get that a lot,” he replied, but there was something soft in the way he said it. Something that spoke more of gratitude than bravado.

Then, after a thoughtful pause, he added, “I think even Ginny would approve. Of all of this.”

Hermione blinked, caught off guard. “Ginny?”

Ron nodded.

“Yeah. She was always braver than me. Sharper. But she believed in people — in second chances, even when they didn’t deserve them. She would have said the world has already started to shift. And that we’ve got a duty to help it along.”

His voice caught slightly, then steadied again. “She’d probably say Harry’s doing that already. Just by being who he is.”

He glanced down at his shoes for a moment — brand new and polished — then lifted his gaze back to Hermione’s.

“He doesn’t even know it, but just by being… kind. By being Harry — he’s dragging us all into the future. A better one. Not perfect, but better.”

A small smile curved his lips, and his voice dropped to something more tender.

“So yeah,” he said again, “I hope there’s something going on between him and Tom. For all our sakes.”

And this time, Hermione didn’t just look at him.

She stared at him.

“Ronald… that’s quite mature of you.”

Ron rolled his eyes, but the gesture lacked its usual sting. It was all warmth now — fondness worn comfortably, like an old jumper.

“I’ve been working on it,” he said dryly. “Turns out, emotional growth is contagious around here.”

Hermione arched a brow, but her lips twitched. He wasn’t wrong.

“Besides,” Ron added, a little quieter, “things have been… better between us too, haven’t they? You and me. We’ve both grown up a bit.”

He took a small step forward — not imposing, just steady. And now they stood close enough that the space between them felt charged with something unspoken. Not quite touching, but near enough to feel the quiet hum of something shifting. Something old softening into something new.

“People are allowed to change, Hermione,” he said gently. “They’re allowed to grow. Allowed to mess up and still be worth trying for. Allowed to become better.”

Hermione searched his face — and for a moment, the sharp, logical brilliance in her eyes flickered beneath something far softer. She looked like she wanted to believe him, and maybe, just maybe, already did.

Ron’s voice dropped. “We’re allowed to have more emotional range than a teaspoon.”

That earned him the smallest huff of laughter — barely audible, but it cracked through the quiet like sunlight through storm clouds. The corner of Hermione’s mouth betrayed her with a twitch.

Ron grinned, smug. “See? Progress.”

She shook her head, but the motion was fond, almost reverent. He was still Ron — silly, stubborn Ron — but now with a steadier heartbeat. A deeper anchor.

And just like that, with almost no warning at all, she realized:

She couldn’t possibly be more in love with the man standing in front of her.

Not because he was perfect.

But because he was trying.

It hit her all at once — not like lightning, but like sunlight breaking through the clouds.

The way he looked in those robes, shoulders set just a bit straighter, chin lifted with the quiet confidence of someone who had grown into himself. The way his hair curled at the edges like it always had, familiar and endearing. The way his voice, lower now and tempered by time, still carried the warmth that had once pulled her through the darkest of days as she was growing into her body.

He had changed. Softer in the right ways, stronger in others. But still, unmistakably, unfailingly Ron.

Hermione swallowed hard, emotion swelling in her throat before she could brace herself. It pressed behind her eyes, curled warm in her chest.

“Who would’ve thought,” she murmured, her voice barely more than breath, “that the best thing to happen this year… would be Harry James Potter getting pregnant.”

Ron’s grin widened, boyish and bright, but his eyes — his eyes had settled. They had that spark again, the one that said he was exactly where he wanted to be. He took a step closer, something steady and unshakable in his gait.

“I can think of one more thing,” he said, voice low and sure.

Then he leaned in.

When their lips met, the world held its breath.

It wasn’t wild or sweeping. No cinematic urgency or blazing fire. It was slow. Intentional. The kind of kiss built not on adrenaline or longing, but on something much rarer — trust. Years of it.

The kind of kiss that said:

I know you.

I love you.

You’re safe with me.

Always.

It was anchoring. Whole. Undeniably right.

And when they pulled apart, everything felt… quieter somehow. Calmer. As if some invisible thread had been tied into place.

The air between them had changed — not charged with electricity, but glowing with something quieter. The kind of warmth that didn’t ask for attention. The kind that stayed.

They turned back toward their preparations, shoulders brushing now and then, smiles tugging at the corners of their mouths — not from awkwardness or nerves, but from that golden, blooming thing that only grew when you stopped trying to name it and just let it be.

And when they stepped out into the corridor, side by side, toward the Great Hall and whatever came next — they carried it with them.

Not just a kiss.

But a beginning.

When they arrived at the Great Hall it was clear that it had not been just them that had transformed.

The Great Hall was aglow with floating candles and soft charmed lights, casting everything in a dreamy, flattering shimmer. It felt like stepping into another world — one where beauty wasn’t accidental, but intentional.

Narcissa stood near the far side of the room, draped in a robe of pale sky blue interlaced with hints of silver while trimmed in metallic silver and green, the fabric rippling like water each time she turned. Her hair was swept into a loose chignon, strands of gold glinting like starlight threaded through silk. She looked less like a woman and more like a painting — a Greek deity mid-transcendence, elegant and untouchable.

Nagini, not to be outdone, had donned a translucent cape that flowed over half her sinuous body, shifting and glimmering like smoke captured in crystal. Her scales reflected the candlelight in hues of flame and moonlight, and the expression on her face was one of smug satisfaction — she knew she looked magnificent.

And then there was Tom.

He wasn’t dressed in anything extravagant — just a high-collared black robe with clean, minimal lines and silver cuffs at the wrists — but he wore it like it had been conjured for him alone. Every seam lay flat, every fold fell with precision, like even the fabric understood the command of the man wearing it. Tom Riddle didn’t need ornamentation. He was the ornament.

Where Narcissa looked like a goddess sculpted in light and silk, Tom looked like the mold from which lesser gods had been cast — something ancient, flawless, and terrifying in its symmetry.

And yet… when he looked across the hall and his gaze found Harry, something shifted.

It was subtle — a quiet yielding in his posture, a softening around the mouth that didn’t quite become a smile but held the shape of one unspoken. The kind of expression you would miss if you weren’t already watching closely.

Like maybe — just maybe — even a god could step down from their pedestal, if only to sit beside someone who reminded them what it meant to be mortal. What it meant to feel alive.

Because all of them paled beside Harry.

Harry, radiant in a robe of deep forest green, the color rich and velvety, clinging gracefully to the sharp curves of his changing body. Golden embroidery traced the hems and collar like threads of sunlight woven into fabric — subtle, but enough to catch the candlelight and draw the eye. It brought out the impossible green of his eyes, made them shimmer like something old and powerful and beloved by fate.

He moved with a quiet dignity, a calm self-assurance born not of pride, but of having survived. Of carrying life — literally and metaphorically — and knowing the strength that came with it.

Tom could not look away. He didn’t even attempt it.

And it was so obvious — so unguarded, so raw in its reverence — that Ron and Hermione, standing just a few paces behind, exchanged a glance.

A knowing look. A silent agreement.

Something had shifted — had already begun — and quietly, without fanfare, they all hoped it would continue. Whatever was developing between Harry and Tom, whatever change had begun unfolding in the space between them, it felt real. Earned.

And it made the air feel gentler. Easier to breathe in; like anything was possible.

They all took their seats just as Tizzy appeared with a soft pop, a wide grin stretched across her face and her ears perked high with pride at how full the space was. With a graceful snap of her fingers, the table shimmered to life.

Deep amethyst wine poured itself into tall goblets, glinting in the candlelight like liquid velvet. For Harry, a nonalcoholic version — sparkling and pale, with whole raspberries tumbling lazily amidst the bubbles, clinking against the inside of his glass like fruit caught in a gentle current. It smelled faintly of hibiscus and summer gardens.

Then the food arrived.

It was warm, rich, and familiar — the kind of meal that tugged something loose in the chest. Ron nearly fell out of his chair from joy. The scent alone transported him straight back to the Burrow, so vivid he could almost hear Molly Weasley fussing about portion sizes or shooing gnomes from the back door.

Or scolding the twins from their latest endeavor.

At the center of the table sat a golden, glistening roasted chicken, seasoned to perfection with rosemary and lemon, steam curling up from the crisped skin. Around it: a mountain of fried potatoes, crunchy on the outside and buttery soft in the middle, sprinkled with herbs and coarse salt. A mouthwatering sour cream and onion sauce of subtle coolness sat beside them to dip them into.

Roasted green beans lay among blistered cherry tomatoes — their skins gently cracked, waiting to release bursts of juice with every bite. The tomatoes practically glowed, like miniature rubies still warm from the sun.