Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I’m sorry, Harry. I can’t give you any more Dreamless Sleep.”

Harry swallows. He knew Madam Pomfrey would say that, eventually. She told him early on that the potion could only be a temporary solution. If you suppress dreams for too long, you get sick.

Harry sighs. “Okay.”

He knows it’d be pointless to protest. Madam Pomfrey won’t listen to his pleas, no matter what he says. And it’s not like Harry will gain much by one more peaceful night, anyway.

“I’m sorry,” Madam Pomfrey repeats.

Harry hears the concern in her voice and smiles reassuringly. At least, that is what he tries to do. By the way the lines on Madam Pomfrey’s face deepen, it doesn’t look very convincing.

“Don’t be. It’s not your fault.”

Madam Pomfrey sighs. She looks sad and conflicted, but ultimately, there is nothing she can do for him, and she knows it. She hesitates for a moment. Then she wishes him a good night and leaves.

The second she is out of sight, Harry grimaces. He is so tired of it all. Tired of fighting, tired of hurting, tired of…

No, not tired of living. Not yet, anyway.

Harry pulls the blanket over his head, trying to block out the world around him. There is only one reason why he doesn’t try to remain awake for as long as possible.

He can’t stay awake for the rest of his life.

***

When Harry opens his eyes, he instinctively knows he’s dreaming. Slowly, he turns around and finds someone standing in front of him, only a couple of feet separating them.

Harry stares at the person, taking in every little detail. One of the first things he notices is that person is male. He has broad shoulders, is considerably taller than Harry, and lacks any characteristics a woman would have. Most obviously, his chest is completely flat. Even his face looks distinctly male, even though Harry can’t make out more than the most basic features. Just like the rest of his body, his face looks blurry, like there is a thick wall of fog between them.

Harry’s mind is reeling. He knows what this dream means, but he doesn’t understand why it’s happening now, of all times. Most people get their first soulmate dream sometime after they turn seventeen. Harry isn’t even fifteen yet. It feels weird to meet the person he is meant to be with so shortly after the worst day of his life.

The man looks back at him, at least as far as Harry can tell. It’s hard to know for sure since everything looks so foggy. Then, like he thinks Harry is a scared animal, the man takes a slow step forward and then another until he’s standing right in front of him. Harry watches as the man raises his hand.

When the hand touches his cheek, Harry feels tension he hadn’t even been aware of leaving his body. The hand is warm and smooth and fits perfectly against his cheek. Harry exhales slowly and closes his eyes.

It’s just a hand, Harry thinks, slightly hysterical. There is no reason why it should make me feel like I can finally let go, like I don’t have to fight to keep my head above water anymore.

Harry knows he can’t allow himself to feel that way. No one can fight his battles for him. Not even his soulmate.

“I have waited decades for this moment,” the man says. His thumb brushes over the skin right under Harry’s left eye.

Harry gets goosebumps, both from the words and from the thumb that sets his skin on fire.

“Decades?” Harry asks, frowning. Dread pulses through his veins when he thinks of being bonded to a full-grown adult. The last thing he needs is a soulmate who treats him like a child.

“Yes, decades.” The hand on Harry’s cheek pushes into Harry’s hair, and his fingertips lightly brush over Harry’s scalp. Again, Harry gets goosebumps and shudders. It’s weird. The man’s hand isn’t even doing anything special, and yet it feels better than anything Harry felt since the graveyard.

“How many decades?”

“Does that matter?” The man raises his other hand and pushes it into Harry’s hair as well. Harry lets out a low whimper against his will. Harry desperately wants to let go and just enjoy his soulmate’s touches and his calming presence. But before he can allow himself to do that, he has to make sure it’s a safe and reasonable thing to do.

“Of course it matters!”

The man makes a noncommittal noise, his fingertips still lightly brushing over Harry’s scalp, making him shiver now and then.

“I will tell you once we meet in person.” The man leans forward until his nose softly rubs against Harry’s. Harry gasps for breath, scared by how much the man’s gentleness affects him. Part of Harry wants to draw back so that he can think more clearly, but he quickly realizes that he can’t. His thirst for pleasant sensations is too strong.

“Who says we will meet in person?” Harry says, careful to keep his head as immobile as possible, so their lips don’t accidentally touch. He feels the man’s breath on his lips and can’t help but wonder how it’d feel like to lean forward.

Would it be weird to have his first kiss in a dream? Everything feels exactly like it does when he’s awake, so he doesn’t think it’d make that much of a difference.

The hands in Harry’s hair become rigid. Harry shivers. Somehow, the less gentle touch feels even better. More real and less like the man is trying to lure Harry into some kind of trap.

“What do you mean?”

The man’s voice sounds sharp and demanding.

Harry bites his lips and tries to make eye contact, only to give up almost immediately. He can see that the man has two eyes, but that’s about everything he can make out. It’s impossible to make eye contact that way.

Harry isn’t worried about everything looking foggy, though. That’s how soulmate dreams work. You dream about each other every night, only seeing vague silhouettes of each other until you have completed the bond.

Harry narrows his eyes. “I’ve heard enough stories about abusive soulmates that I’m not just gonna blurt out my name like a fool.”

The man’s grip gets even tighter. It still doesn’t hurt, but Harry knows that it won’t take much more to become painful.

“I will not hurt you,” the man says with so much conviction Harry almost believes him.

Harry smiles faintly. “Most people hurt me sooner or later. Sorry but I don’t know if I can trust you.”

The man’s grip loosens significantly, and he resumes the gentle touch from earlier. He lowers his head until his lips touch Harry’s neck. Then there is something wet, teasing his collarbone. Harry gasps and instinctively leans his head to the side to give the man better access.

“I will make sure that no one will ever hurt you again,” the man says between the licks of his tongue. “All you will have to do is tell me your name.”

Harry laughs, surprised that it sounds more breathless than incredulous. “You can’t, even if you wanted to. There will always be someone out to harm me. You can’t fend off everyone.”

Especially not Voldemort. There is no way his soulmate is powerful enough to keep Voldemort from going after Harry.

“Yes, I can. I’m the most powerful wizard alive.”

Harry freezes. “No, you aren’t. That’s Dumbledore.”

This man can’t be Dumbledore, right? Dumbledore wouldn’t act like this. He wouldn’t be… wouldn’t be this touchy, this eager to get close to Harry.

Right?

Well. He might be if he had waited to meet his soulmate for over a century. Harry desperately hopes he’s wrong. He doesn’t want to be connected to Dumbledore that way.

The man scoffs against Harry’s neck. “Stop shaking. I’m not Dumbledore.”

Harry exhales sharply, and some of the tension leaves his body. The man shifts his head again, and this time, Harry feels teeth brushing against his vulnerable neck. Harry holds his breath, momentarily too distracted to think about anything at all.

Then he shakes his head mentally. If his soulmate isn’t Dumbledore… and he claims to be the most powerful wizard alive…

Harry gasps.

Frantically, he pushes the man away and stumbles backward.

“You’re Vo-” Harry catches himself just in time and coughs, hoping that his slip-up goes unnoticed. “You’re You-Know-Who.”

Voldemort smiles. At least, Harry thinks he does. It’s hard to tell, considering his face still looks blurry as hell.

Harry’s skin crawls. He never would’ve allowed Voldemort to touch him like that if he had known it was him!

“Took you long enough.” Voldemort cocks his head. “Now, tell me your name. I promise I won’t hurt you, no matter which side you’re on.”

Harry shakes his head. “No.”

Voldemort stops smiling. “You can’t hide from me. You will dream of me every night, for the rest of your life, if you don’t give in. That’s hardly any different from being in my presence for real.”

Harry laughs humorlessly. Voldemort can’t honestly think he’s that stupid, right?

“Yes, it is. You can make me suffer while I’m dreaming, but it won’t affect my body. And you can’t kill me here.”

Voldemort growls. “I will not harm you in any way.”

“Of course, you will. You torture people for fun. You punish your followers with Unforgiveables. Why should you treat me any differently?”

“You’re my soulmate,” Voldemort says like that explains everything.

Voldemort takes a step forward, and Harry stumbles backward so hastily that he falls-

And then, suddenly, he finds himself sitting upright in his bed, a concerned Madam Pomfrey leaning over him.

“I heard you screaming. Are you all right?”

Harry looks around, panting. When he sees that there is no one else in the room, he relaxes somewhat.

“I…” Harry swallows. “No. I’m not all right.”

Chapter Text

“What can I do for you, Harry?” Dumbledore asks, looking at him with those blue, piercing eyes.

Harry takes a deep breath. It’s been around fifteen hours since he found out who his soulmate is, and while he hasn’t come to terms with it yet, he’s at least able to think straight again.

“I have to ask you something,” Harry says and winces at how tired his voice sounds.

Dumbledore looks at him for a long moment, obviously taking in his appearance. Harry does his best not to grimace, wondering if you can see just how badly last night affected him.

“Go ahead and ask.”

“I...” Harry hesitates. “Sir, do you remember what we talked about at the end of my first year? The question you promised to answer when I was older?”

It feels weird to refer to something they had briefly talked about three years ago, but Harry’s intuition tells him he needs to ask again. Maybe - just maybe - Dumbledore’s answer will explain why fate decided to make Voldemort his soulmate. The chances for that are minuscule, of course, but Harry will take what he can get.

Besides, he would’ve wanted an answer to that question even if he hadn’t found out that Voldemort is his soulmate. Granted, he probably wouldn’t have thought to ask again if he hadn’t racked his brains for hours, hoping to find something that could give him an advantage over Voldemort, but that’s beside the point.

Dumbledore sighs. “You want to know why Voldemort tried to kill you when you were a baby?”

“Yes. Please.”

Dumbledore shakes his head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Harry clenches his fists under the table and hopes he does a decent job at hiding his desperation and anger. “Why?”

“You have been through a lot.” Harry cringes. Dumbledore’s voice sounds so goddamn soft. For some reason, Harry would have preferred it if Dumbledore had screamed at him. “The answer you’re seeking... It’s not pretty. There’s no reason why I should have to burden you with this information today. You will return to your relatives soon, and Voldemort can’t hurt you there. Ask me again when your fifth’s school year starts, and you had some time to process what happened.”

“I - Sir, please. I can’t wait that long. I…” Harry hesitates, wondering how he could convince Dumbledore to tell him what he wants to know without revealing who his soulmate is. He isn’t ready to share that with anyone. “I need to understand why Voldemort went to such lengths just to get me to the graveyard. He could have returned months earlier if he had picked somebody else’s blood. Why did it have to be me? It has to do with why he tried to kill me in the first place all those years ago, right? I... I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s eating me up inside.”

Something in Dumbledore’s face shifts. It seems like some part of Harry’s little speech must have gotten through to him. He closes his eyes and sighs. “Alright. I suppose you are old enough to know the truth.”

Dumbledore stands up, and Harry watches as he places an item onto the desk that Harry instantly recognizes. It’s a Pensieve, the one Harry stuck his head into earlier this year.

And then Dumbledore shows him something that turns Harry’s world upside down for the second time in less than twenty-four hours.

xxx

Harry sits in the corner of an abandoned classroom, his Invisibility Cloak wrapped around him. The coldness of the floor seems to have spread from his arse to the rest of his body, making him feel numb and dead inside.

The prophecy would’ve been horrible to hear all on its own, but knowing Voldemort is his soulmate makes its content straight up unbearable. While you hear stories about people abusing their soulmates now and then, there are only a handful of people per century who end up killing their soulmates. It’s not something any sane person would think about doing. It’d be easier to grab a knife and cut your heart out of your chest while being fully conscious.

Harry closes his eyes and wonders how Voldemort will take Harry’s life. Because that’s exactly what will happen, sooner or later. The prophecy claims one of them has to kill the other, and Harry will never be able to end his soulmate’s life, even knowing that Voldemort is a psychopath and a mass murderer. The thought alone is so repulsive that Harry has to swallow multiple times so he doesn’t throw up all over himself.

Will Voldemort be merciful and use the killing curse? Will he torture Harry beforehand? Well. Considering the kind of curses Voldemort used against him at the graveyard, Harry’s death will most likely be neither fast nor painless.

Harry feels a tremble working its way up his spine. He’d thought he’d hit rock bottom when he returned from the graveyard and then again when he found out who his soulmate was.

But this… This is infinitely worse.

Harry wraps his arms around his legs, shivering uncontrollably. He stays like that for hours, alone with his thoughts and unable to be found by anyone thanks to the Invisibility Cloak.

Eventually, his limbs stop shivering, and reluctantly, Harry stands up. If it were up to him, he’d spend the rest of the night here. Part of him feels like he doesn’t belong around normal people anymore. He doesn’t want to taint anyone with his presence.

He can’t stay here, though. Madam Pomfrey will inform Dumbledore that Harry has gone missing if he doesn’t return to the Hospital Wing on time. And then Dumbledore will wonder if he made the right choice when he told Harry about the prophecy. Harry can’t risk that. As much as he loathes the content of the prophecy, he needed to know it existed. He can’t let Dumbledore come to the conclusion that he should continue to keep things from Harry.

And so, Harry pulls the Invisibility Cloak from his head and makes his way back to the Hospital Wing, knowing Voldemort will be waiting for him in his dreams.

Chapter Text

Harry takes a deep breath and waits. He knows Voldemort has to be somewhere behind him, but he doesn’t bother turning around. It’s worse enough that he has to share a dream with Voldemort. He doesn’t want to look at him if he can avoid it.

Harry tenses when he feels warmth at his back and realizes that Voldemort is standing right behind him. Voldemort isn’t touching him - not yet - but since Harry can feel his body heat, there can’t be more than an inch or two separating them. Harry grinds his teeth. The sudden urge to lean back and let Voldemort embrace him leaves Harry confused and slightly ill.

Harry can understand why he enjoyed Voldemort’s touches last night. He didn’t know who his soulmate was, and he had been desperate for comfort, for pleasant sensations in general, really.

But now, Harry knows better. He doesn’t understand why he still craves Voldemort’s arms around him. Harry licks his lips, looking for something that could explain this sudden, bizarre urge. Maybe… maybe there is no logic behind it? Maybe it’s a normal reaction to being in a soulmate dream?

No, that can’t be it. If Voldemort were as desperate for skin-to-skin contact as Harry, he would have done something about it by now. Harry shakes his head.

This isn’t getting me anywhere. I’ll read up on the nature of soulmate dreams tomorrow. There’s no way for me to find out the truth right now.

Harry pushes his confusion to the side and waits for Voldemort to make his next move. Any second now, Voldemort will wrap his arms around Harry and then... Then what? What will happen after that? Voldemort most likely still wants to know Harry’s name. The real question is how Voldemort intends to get that information. Does he think he can make Harry feel comfortable and safe enough to coax it out of him? How quickly will he realize that won’t work and start using pain as a motivation?

And why hasn’t he done anything yet? Why is he just standing behind Harry, doing absolutely nothing?

Harry waits and waits while the urge to lean back continues to grow until it becomes impossible to ignore. Harry closes his eyes. He doesn’t have a good justification for what he does next.

Harry leans backward until his back touches Voldemort’s torso.

Immediately, strong arms wrap around Harry’s chest and pull him firmly against Voldemort’s body. Harry bites his lips to keep himself from making any embarrassing noises. Warmth spreads through him, and his whole body goes slack. The knots in his stomach dissolve as if they had never been there in the first place.

Voldemort’s hands roam all over his chest, and Harry can’t help but shiver. Harry hasn’t been hugged very often in his life, and this is unlike any hug Harry ever got. It makes him feel comforted and wanted at the same time. It’s intoxicating.

Harry feels Voldemort’s head shifting behind him, and then there’s something wet and soft at Harry’s neck, swiftly followed by sucking.

Voldemort is giving him a hickey.

Harry gasps for breath and leans his head against Voldemort’s shoulder. He’s starting to feel a little light-headed. His body is loving every second of it and can’t get enough, but his mind is screaming at him to put an end to this madness right now.

And yet, Harry can’t bring himself to struggle against Voldemort’s grip.

After what feels like forever, Voldemort’s lips let go of Harry’s neck, and he licks over the abused skin a couple of times before raising his mouth to Harry’s ear.

“You’re mine. Never forget that.”

Harry freezes. These words should alarm him. They should be the last push needed to break free of Voldemort’s arms. And in a way, they are. But not in the way one would think.

The words are tempting. It would be so easy to give his soulmate control over his life, hoping he will make the right decisions for him.

Easy, but also unbelievably stupid. Harry grimaces. Why is he so... so...

“Pathetic.”

Yes, that’s the right word. Harry is pathetic. Harry feels Voldemort freezing behind him.

“What.” Voldemort’s voice sounds as emotionless as a corpse.

And suddenly, it’s all too much. Harry has to get out of here before he breaks down completely.

“Let go of me,” Harry whispers. To his surprise, Voldemort’s grip on his torso actually loosens significantly. Still, it’s not enough. “Let go!”

Harry grabs Voldemort’s wrist and pulls them to the side so that he can step out of Voldemort’s arms. The coldness crawls back into his body all at once. Harry manages to take three steps away from Voldemort before he loses his footing and falls to the floor.

Harry pulls his legs to his chest and wraps his arms around them, hoping to keep some of the coldness at bay that way.

It takes a while for Harry to feel the dampness on his cheeks and even longer to become aware of the sounds he’s making, the broken sobs, the gasping for breath. No wonder Voldemort let him go so easily. Harry’s weakness probably disgusts him.

Now that Harry is aware he’s crying, his pride urges him to suppress his sobs, as he’d normally do. But what would be the point of that? Voldemort already heard his sobbing. Harry can’t embarrass himself much further, anyway.

With that thought at the back of his mind, Harry lets go of his pride and allows himself to bemoan everything he has lost. He cries over the horrors he went through at the graveyard, over Cedric’s death, and over the knowledge that he will die at the hands of his soulmate.

Harry cries and cries until his eyes are irritated and dry, and the tears stop coming all by themselves. And during all of that, he can feel Voldemort’s presence behind him, quietly observing him.

Chapter Text

“Do you still want to know my name?” Harry asks, rubbing his eyes. All this crying has left him feeling numb and empty, something he is slowly getting used to.

“Yes.”

Harry frowns. The firmness of Voldemort’s response confuses him. He had been sure Voldemort would be repulsed by his breakdown or, at the very least, slightly disgusted. None of that can be heard in Voldemort’s voice, though.

“But why? What do you want from me?”

Most people long for their soulmates because they want unconditional love and companionship. It’s what Harry had dreamed of as well before that dream got shattered into a thousand pieces. However, Harry finds it very hard to believe that Voldemort cares about love or companionship, especially since Dumbledore claimed that the power the prophecy mentioned, the one the Dark Lord knows not, is Harry’s ability to love.

There must be some other reason why Voldemort wants to find out who he is.

For a moment, Harry can only hear his own shallow breathing. Then there is the sound of robes rustling behind him. A few moments later, Voldemort stands about five feet in front of him.

Harry remains cowering on the floor, his head tilted back slightly so that he can keep an eye on Voldemort’s face, though that doesn’t do him much good. He can’t read Voldemort’s expression at all, thanks to the blurriness of his features.

“I’ve been looking for someone worthy enough to stand at my side for over half a century now,” Voldemort says quietly. “I want someone to rule beside me. An equal. Someone who will lend me their strength and make me truly invincible.”

Harry blinks. And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal. That’s what the prophecy said. Harry shakes his head. That doesn’t mean anything. The prophecy was referring to his scar, nothing more.

Besides, that’s not the most alarming aspect of Voldemort’s confession.

“You’re talking about combining your magic with mine,” Harry says, dazed. He’s amazed Voldemort even considers doing something so reckless. Combining your magic with your soulmate’s should never be done lightly. Once it’s entangled, you can only untangle it with your soulmate’s cooperation. And as long as it’s entangled, one of them can take hold of their combined strength in the blink of an eye, leaving the other one unable to perform even the simplest of spells. Harry swallows. “That’s never going to happen.”

Voldemort tilts his head. “You’ll change your mind, eventually.”

Harry grinds his teeth. If there is one thing he can’t stand, it’s people patronizing him. And the way Voldemort’s voice sounds like - careless and even - tells him everything he needs to know.

There is not a shred of doubt in Voldemort’s mind that Harry will do whatever the hell he wants eventually, even if it might take a while to get there. Harry clenches his fists.

“Listen. I will never be your equal. I’m not nearly as strong as you, so you wouldn’t gain much by combining your magic with mine, anyway. And I’m not particularly smart, either. If you really want an equal, you should look among your Death Eaters. All of them are better suited to rule beside you than I am.”

Voldemort looks at him for so long that Harry’s neck is starting to hurt from being tilted back. “Who told you that you’re weak and stupid?”

“I... What?”

“You heard me. Who convinced you that you’re beneath even my weakest followers? Tell me their name, and I will make them pay for what they did.”

Harry tenses. This conversation isn’t going the way he had hoped it would.

“I don’t want you to hurt anyone on my behalf,” Harry says, making his voice as cold as he can. “Besides, no one told me I’m weaker and stupider than I am.” Well, besides Snape and the Dursleys, maybe. “I’m just not above the average person in most areas, that’s all. And that really shouldn't surprise you. I mean, you literally heard me crying my eyes out a couple of minutes ago. How can you think I’m powerful when I can’t even control my emotions?”

Harry bites his lips, more than a little curious how Voldemort will answer his question. Voldemort claims he wants an equal, and Voldemort wouldn’t consider anyone his equal who isn’t nearly as powerful as he himself is. And yet, he ignores everything Harry does and says that proves Harry isn’t the kind of soulmate Voldemort had been hoping for. Ah. Could it be...?

“You’re too stubborn to accept that I’m not the person you have waited decades to meet, aren’t you? You can’t accept that I’m so much weaker and stupider than you because then all of that waiting would have been for nothing. Well, guess what: most people don’t get what they wish for in life. I don’t want to be bonded to you, either. I would've preferred even Dumbledore over you-”

Before Harry can do more than flinch, Voldemort has grabbed him by his upper arms and yanked him to his feet. Voldemort growls lowly, like an animal getting ready to pounce on its prey, and Harry can feel him shaking from uncontrollable rage. Voldemort’s fingers dig painfully into his arms, and Harry suppresses a wince.

“See?” Harry whispers. “I knew you’d hurt me, eventually.”

Harry feels Voldemort freezing. Then he abruptly lets go of Harry’s arms and turns his back on him.

Harry rubs his throbbing arms, staring at the back of Voldemort’s head. I didn’t think he’d actually let go. A couple of long moments go by in which Harry tries - and fails - to understand what just happened.

Then Voldemort turns into thin air, and a moment later, Harry wakes up in the hospital wing.

Chapter Text

Harry slowly sits up and stares into the darkness of the hospital wing.

Voldemort let go of him. He didn’t have to. Harry didn’t struggle, didn’t try to stop Voldemort from digging his finger into Harry’s arms. That in and of itself would have been confusing enough, but Voldemort hadn’t just been irritated. He’d been livid. Harry’s words must have triggered something inside of him that made him lose control when nothing before had.

And yet, he let go.

Why?

Harry shakes his head and crawls out of his bed. While he stumbles through the dark to the bathroom, he thinks about what he said right before Voldemort grabbed him.

I would’ve preferred even Dumbledore over you-

Harry swallows and rubs his wrist.

I should have seen it coming. Voldemort said he wants an equal, someone to rule beside him. Voldemort’s equal would despise Dumbledore and want nothing to do with him. Of course, Voldemort lashed out. My words proved to him without the shadow of a doubt that he can’t mold me into the kind of soulmate he wants.

Harry shallows, wondering if he made a horrible mistake by being honest with Voldemort. The next time he goes to sleep, Voldemort will be there, ready to punish Harry for daring to be his soulmate.

Harry feels his arms shaking slightly and clenches his fists. That’s what you get for not thinking things through, he thinks bitterly. Now deal with it.

When Harry enters the bathroom, he catches something in the mirror that seems... out of place. Frowning, he gives his reflection a second glance - and freezes. For a long moment, his mind is completely blank.

Slowly, he raises a shaking hand and traces the part of his skin Voldemort’s lips had touched. Suddenly feeling dizzy, Harry grips the sink with his free hand to steady himself.

Harry takes deep, controlled breaths and forces himself not to freak out. He can’t risk losing control. If he wakes Madam Pomfrey up and she sees his neck, sees the goddamn hickey that wasn’t there when Harry went to sleep…!

Harry closes his eyes and concentrates on breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth. In and out. In and out.

When he stops feeling like he’ll pass out any second, Harry becomes aware of the throbbing of his upper arms. He shrugs out of his pajama top, already knowing what he will find. And indeed, finger-shaped bruises cover both of his arms.

Harry hears his breath speeding up again when a thought enters his mind that puts everything into a new perspective:

Who cares? I’ll die anyway. All this means is that I might die sooner rather than later - nothing more, nothing less.

Harry allows that thought to calm his nerves. As if in a trance, he puts his pajama top back on and walks back to his bed. He only allows himself to think more deeply about what this newest development means for him after he climbed into his bed and pulled the blanket up to his nose.

Harry will have to hide any and all injuries and hickeys Voldemort will give him. Otherwise, one of Voldemort’s followers might see them and tell Voldemort about it. And then…

Then Harry is fucked.

If Voldemort finds out that Harry is his soulmate, he won’t hesitate to hurt him during their soulmate dreams. He’ll do that anyway, of course, but it will get a lot worse if Voldemort knows the truth.

Voldemort could even try to kill him while they are both sleeping. It’d be easy, really. He’d just have to wrap his hands around Harry’s throat and suffocate him. It might not work - it shouldn’t, it’s supposed to be impossible to hurt your soulmate during a soulmate dream - but considering Voldemort is able to leave bruises on Harry’s skin, he is inclined to believe it might be possible.

Harry takes a deep breath and reaches for his Invisibility Cloak and the Marauder’s Map. He needs to research some things, and he couldn’t care less that it’s the middle of the night. He’ll be back before Madam Pomfrey wakes up.

xxx

Harry closes the sixth book about soulmates and lays it to the others.

He had been right. Voldemort shouldn’t have been able to hurt him. There’s not a single recorded case about something like that happening, at least according to the books Harry flipped through.

Once again, Harry is the huge exception. There must be something about Harry or Voldemort that differentiates them from everyone else. It could be many things, really, but Harry suspects it has to do with the way Voldemort was resurrected. One of the books mentioned that while your soulmate can’t harm you during soulmate dreams, you can still hurt yourself. Harry and Voldemort aren’t the same person, but the blood that flows through their veins is the same. Maybe that’s enough.

In the end, it doesn’t matter why Voldemort can hurt him. Harry doubts there’s a way to put an end to it. He’ll just have to learn to live with it.

That hadn’t been the only question Harry tried to get an answer to, though. He also wanted to figure out why he enjoys it when Voldemort touches him.

It’s normal for soulmates to want to be close to each other, but all the books Harry picked up claim that the desire comes from within, that there is no magic causing it. Harry wants Voldemort to touch him because... Well, because Harry likes it, apparently.

Harry grimaces and rubs his throbbing forehead.

Something is seriously wrong with me.

Chapter Text

Ron leans forward, his gaze fixed on the chessboard. They are nearing the part of the game during which Ron tends to get super focused and finds the holes in Harry’s defense almost effortlessly. Harry’s eyes flicker back and forth between the chessboard and Ron’s face, waiting for the moment when Ron figures out how he can back Harry into a corner.

Ron’s lips twitch. “Queen to F4.”

Harry’s stomach drops when he sees Ron’s queen gracefully sliding towards Harry’s last rook.

The rook starts trembling. It knows that nothing can stop its demise, and yet it still starts begging the queen to spare him.

“Please, you don’t have to do this! I’ll do anything! Just please don’t hack me into pieces!”

Harry clenches his fists. He has the sudden, totally irrational desire to pick the figure up and press it to his chest where no one can harm it. Why should it suffer just because Harry is incapable of protecting it? It’s not fair. His chess figures deserve someone who isn’t too stupid to do what needs to be done.

The rook screams when he gets hacked into two. Harry flinches as the pieces fall onto the board. Before the queen can humiliate Harry’s figure further by dragging the remains off the board, Harry picks them up and repairs the rook with a simple Reparo. Then he sets it down beside the chessboard.

“Mate? Are... are you all right?”

“Hm?” Harry looks up, surprised to find Ron’s eyes fixed on him, concern written all over his face. “Yeah, of course.”

Harry's eyes flicker back towards the chessboard. After giving himself a moment to analyze the positions of his figures, Harry sighs.

“I resign.”

“What? But you could still win!”

No, I can’t. I never stood a chance. “Maybe, but I’m tired of playing. Besides, Hermione is probably bored, anyway, right?”

The moment Harry glances at Hermione, he regrets dragging her into the conversation. Her book lays forgotten in her lap, and she’s looking at Harry with huge eyes.

Harry hunches his shoulders, suddenly wishing he hadn’t picked up the broken chess pieces. The air feels thick and uncomfortable all of a sudden.

“Come on, let’s go outside.” Harry stands up and walks to the door without checking if his friends follow him. As long as he is back before curfew, Madam Pomfrey allows him to come and go as he pleases. “The weather is too nice to stay inside all day.”

xxx

The sphinx walks back and forth, looking at him with hungry eyes.

“Time’s up. What’s your answer?”

Harry raises his wand slightly. “A... a spider, right?”

The sphinx lips twitch and form into a smile.

“Wrong,” she says and jumps.

Harry stumbles backward and opens his mouth, ready to stun the creature. But no matter how hard he tries, no sound comes over his lips.

Harry raises his arms to protect his face, hoping that the sphinx won’t rip him in two. Fangs sink into his left forearm, and Harry screams. His legs give out, and he crashes to the floor. Tears spring to his eyes, but he refuses to let them fall.

Harry knows better than to yank his arm back - that would rip his whole arm apart - and yet it takes all of his willpower to stay still. Blood flows down his arms, warming his skin in the process. Harry takes deep breaths through his mouth and waits for the sphinx to bite a second time. Only... only that those fangs can’t belong to a sphinx. They are too long. Harry raises his head to look over his arms… and finds huge, yellow eyes staring at him.

Harry wants to scream, wants to jump to his feet, wants to point his wand at the huge fucking snake that hangs from his forearm. Why am I not dead? The basilisk’s gaze should have killed me.

The glasses! It must be the glasses.

Unable to move even a fraction of an inch, Harry has no choice but to keep staring into the basilisk’s eyes. For a long moment, the snake just holds his gaze. Then it pulls its fangs back, which makes Harry scream inside his head in agony. Without giving Harry another glimpse, the basilisk slides out of Harry’s field of vision and leaves him alone with the pain and the knowledge that he will die in a matter of minutes. Harry can feel the poison making its way through his body, leaving behind a burning coldness.

Harry wishes he could close his eyes. Maybe then he could pretend that he’s just falling asleep instead of dying.

“Look at you.”

Harry would’ve flinched if he could. Cedric...?

“Ready to accept death without fighting. Do you know how much I would give to be in your situation? To get a second chance? You’re so fucking ungrateful. It’s disgusting.”

Harry feels guilt twisting inside his stomach like a snake. It doesn’t surprise him that the feeling is harder to tolerate than the basilisk poison. He’d always been better at dealing with physical than emotional pain.

Harry hears footsteps, and a moment later, Cedric enters his field of vision. His eyes are cold and empty, the way they were after Pettigrew killed him. He looks like a corpse pretending to be alive.

“If it weren’t for you, I’d still be alive. You owe me more than this.” Cedric gestures at Harry’s petrified body. “You’re not even trying to fight for your life, are you? What would your mother say if she could see you right now? She died to save your life. And this is how you repay her? Does her sacrifice mean nothing to you?”

Tears roll down Harry’s cheeks, giving everything a blurry look. Harry can’t help but be grateful for that. If he had been forced to look at Cedric’s talking corpse for another second, he would’ve lost his mind.

And then, from one moment to the next, Harry can finally move again. He snivels and hastily whips his tears away. He doesn’t deserve to cry. Cedric is right. How could he just accept his death so easily? He owes the people who suffered because of him more than that.

“What happened?”

Harry yanks his head around and jumps to his feet. He sees Voldemort walking towards him and stumbles backward.

Voldemort stops in his tracks. Harry tenses his leg muscles. Would he be able to outrun Voldemort? Harry has shorter legs, yes, but he also has a lot of experience in running away from others.

“What happened?” Voldemort repeats.

Harry hesitates. He could refuse to answer, but it’s probably better to save his energy for the stuff that actually matters.

“Had a nightmare.”

Voldemort takes another step forward, and Harry backs off again. Harry sees Voldemort’s right hand twitch and form into a fist. Ah, yes. He’s getting angry already. I wonder when he will lose his cool this time.

“If you tell me when you usually go to bed, I will make sure to be asleep by that time.”

Harry blinks. Voldemort can’t honestly think he prefers soulmate dreams over nightmares, right?

“If you really wanted to do me a favor, you’d sleep during the day.”

It might not be the smartest move to be honest, but Cedric’s words are still ringing loud and clear in his head. His subconscious gave him that nightmare for a reason. Harry might not be able to change his fate, but that doesn’t mean he has to give up. In a way, it would be easier to just lean back and wait for Voldemort to kill him, yes. But that’s not the kind of person Harry wants to be.

“You are a walking contradiction.”

Harry blinks, taken aback. “What?”

“You say you are weak, and yet you aren’t scared to stand up to me. You like it when I touch you, and yet you do your best to suppress that desire. You’re worried I might hurt you, and yet you’re not afraid to anger me.” Voldemort pauses for a moment. “I suppose your political stand is the biggest mystery. You dislike violence and the path I have chosen for myself. However, your feelings about Dumbledore seem to be mixed at best, which makes me wonder whether you fought on his side during the war.”

Harry feels sick. Did Voldemort really spend that much time thinking about him? If he keeps that up, he’ll figure out who Harry is in no time.

Harry feels like there is a rope around his neck, growing tighter and tighter. And yet…

“Good,” Harry whispers. “As long as you don’t understand me, you won’t figure out who I am.”

There is a long pause. When Voldemort finally opens his mouth, his voice is almost as quiet as Harry’s was. “Are you that afraid of me?”

Harry licks his lips. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say that Voldemort doesn’t like the thought. Which is ridiculous. Voldemort loves instilling fear in others.

“Does that surprise you? Is it that hard to believe that I don’t want to become another one of your victims?”

“You won’t be. I would never hurt you.”

“You already have. Don’t promise something you can’t keep.”

Harry folds his arms. Apparently, Voldemort still thinks he might be able to mold Harry into the violence-loving, power-hungry monster he was hoping to find. Shouldn’t he have realized that’s never going to happen by now?

Harry watches suspiciously as Voldemort starts walking back and forth, ready to back off if Voldemort should try to approach him again. As far as he’s concerned, there can’t be enough space between them.

Eventually, Voldemort slows down until he stops walking altogether. He turns his head towards Harry and just looks at him for a long moment.

“Tell me how I can gain your trust.”

Chapter Text

Harry shakes his head. “You don’t get it, do you? I will never trust you. You can’t force people to feel what you want them to feel. It’s one of the few things even you don't have power over.”

Voldemort cocks his head. “So no matter what I do - or stop doing - you will always look at me the same way? You sound like a stubborn child.”

Harry grinds his teeth, suppressing the urge to snap back. Giving Voldemort more reasons to believe that he’s young and naive is the last thing he needs.

“Okay, fine. There are things that might - might - make me change my mind about you.” Did I actually just say that? “But those things include so many aspects of your behavior that it would be a waste of time to talk about them in detail. I already know my trust isn’t worth that much to you.”

When Voldemort doesn’t immediately answer, Harry averts his eyes and looks around. During the last soulmate dreams, he never took the time to take in his surroundings because he had been too busy with keeping an eye on Voldemort. However, it doesn’t look like Voldemort will attack him anytime soon, so Harry decides to take the risk. Let’s see if Voldemort will use my momentary distraction to his advantage somehow.

All in all, there isn’t much to see, apart from Voldemort and himself. If he had to give this place a name, he’d call it a cave. A cave with an unnatural, impossible to locate source of light. They are standing in a dimly lit circle that grows dimmer and dimmer the farther away you look until there’s nothing but blackness. Harry bites his lips. He’s pretty certain that the circle of light would follow him if he moved. Otherwise, he could just run away and hide in the darkness, and none of the books he read mentioned that.

“I told you that I’ve been looking for an equal for over half a century now. Being equals means trusting each other. So yes, gaining your trust does mean a lot to me. Tell me your price, and we will see if it’s too high.”

Harry frowns. You can’t put a price on trust, and that Voldemort thinks it’s possible proves that he doesn’t understand what trust even is. Harry opens his mouth to tell him that but hesitates at the last moment. Voldemort won’t give up. He will keep bothering me with this topic until I tell him something specific. Something he will immediately reject, obviously, because the price, as Voldemort calls it, will be way too fucking high.

“Alright. Fine. If you really want my trust, you will have to change your behavior fundamentally and permanently. You will have to stop with the torturing and the killing and find some way to feel remorse for the suffering you put others through.”

Voldemort doesn’t respond immediately. Maybe he just realized that he doesn’t want the trust of someone with such fundamentally different values and needs some time to come to terms with that?

“You can’t possibly care about every single person on this planet. Why does it matter to you if I torture or kill people you’ve never met? I already told you that I will never do that to you.”

“Stop saying that you’d never hurt me! I don’t believe you, and this isn’t about me. You want to know why I care about the strangers you torture and kill? It’s because I can empathize with them. I know what it’s like when people who are bigger and stronger than you abuse their power and do with you whatever the hell they want. No one deserves that. If you knew how it feels like to be at the mercy of someone else, to feel utterly helpless, you wouldn’t throw around Unforgivables like they are candy!”

Harry clenches his fists, breathing heavily. Part of him already regrets losing his temper. Voldemort won’t understand his point, anyway. It will only increase his anger and resentment towards Harry.

“I do know what it’s like to be helpless.” Voldemort’s voice is so quiet that Harry has to strain his ears to understand him. “I grew up in a Muggle orphanage in London during a time the Muggles call the Second World War. I was safe during the school years, but every summer, I had to return to the orphanage knowing that a bomb might get dropped on the building I had to stay in. Bombs are Muggle artifacts which explode-”

“I know what bombs are,” Harry says quietly.

Voldemort nods. “Then you know that they can rip you into a thousand pieces. And yet, none of the professors at Hogwarts I reached out to tried to help me. I tried to get permission to stay in Hogwarts during the summers, but my request was denied over and over again.”

Harry swallows. Why has Dumbledore never told me about this? I know Voldemort wanted to stay in Hogwarts after his fifth year, but I thought that was just because he despised Muggles. Maybe Voldemort didn’t make it clear enough just how desperate his situation was? But even then, the professors should have known about the World War and that Muggle London wasn’t safe. I refuse to believe they were that ignorant.

“I... I’m sorry you had to go through that. No one should have to fear for their life. But this makes it even harder for me to understand why you make others go through stuff similar to what you had to experience. Don’t you get that others don’t want to suffer and die just like you don’t want to suffer and die?”

Voldemort scoffs. “Of course, I know that people don’t want to die. I use that knowledge to my advantage. The more people fear me, the fewer dare to stand between me and my goals. It gives me power, and power guarantees that I will never end up in a situation where I can’t control what will happen to me again.” Voldemort pauses for a moment. “I admit that having the power to make someone scream in pain and beg for their life can be intoxicating as well. You will understand what I mean if you ever use an Unforgivable yourself.”

Harry shivers. Hearing Voldemort talking about killing and torturing so casually freaks him out more than he wants to admit, and he has to force himself not to back off a couple of steps.

“The thing is, you’re wrong. The power you have - or, more importantly, the way you use it - also makes you incredibly vulnerable. By harming as many people as you have, you have made powerful enemies, including Dumbledore. Besides, all the power you had meant nothing in the end. You were still defeated by a baby at the height of your power. If you had chosen some other way to achieve power - like, I don’t know, going into politics and becoming minister of magic, for example - you wouldn’t have disappeared from the face of the earth for thirteen years. If you took the time to think about the things you did and their consequences, you’d realize that you’ve made severe mistakes and that you should alter your course fundamentally.”

At least, if you weren’t crazy and addicted to the pleasure you get out of hurting others. Why do I even bother explaining this? Voldemort is too far gone. Thinking my words will make him change his mind is ludicrous. He will never change.

And yet, it’s weirdly freeing to speak his mind like this, especially since Voldemort can’t retaliate without proving that he will continue to hurt Harry after all.

“Your interpretation is flawed. Harry Potter didn’t defeat me. It was the love of his mother that worked against me, ancient magic that I failed to consider. I won’t make the same mistake again.”

Harry shakes his head. “That doesn’t change the fact that if you hadn’t tried to kill him, you never would have died in the first place.”

“I didn’t die.”

Harry dismisses the response with a wave of his hand. “The point is that your thirst for power was your downfall. Is it really that hard for you to see, or are you just being stubborn?”

Harry bites his lips. Surely, that last bit was too condescending for Voldemort to tolerate. But when Voldemort doesn’t immediately react - outwardly, at least - Harry decides to take it one step further. Words are burning at the tip of his tongue, and the desire to let it all out is stronger than the fear.

“The power you’re after will only get you so far, and you’re too stubborn to accept that. Nothing will give you one hundred percent security and safety. And there are things you can’t get with your power, like my willing cooperation and trust. The things you did - and will do - disgust me, and I’ll never tolerate them.”

Harry tenses, waiting for hell to break loose. Voldemort tortured one of his followers because he dared to ask for forgiveness. What will he do to someone who criticizes everything Voldemort strives for? The longer Voldemort remains quiet, the more anxious Harry becomes. Is he waiting for an apology? He won’t get one. Harry meant every word he said.

“So if I stop cursing people, go into politics and make my way up to the very top, you will tell me your name?”

What…? “How the hell did you get to that conclusion? I never said I would tell you my name!”

“You said I will gain your trust if I change my behavior. You will have no reason to keep your identity a secret if you trust me.”

“Yes, but-” Harry hesitates, feeling like Voldemort is backing him into a corner. “I don’t want to see you going into politics, either. Your political opinions are repulsive, at best.”

Voldemort makes a hissing noise, which tells Harry that Voldemort is at the very end of his patience. It took a lot longer to get there than Harry expected. Still, Harry isn’t ready to let the topic go just yet.

“Why are we even talking about this? I mean, this is all just hypothetical, right? You wouldn’t actually change who you are for me.”

Voldemort growls, and Harry tenses his leg muscles, wondering if the moment has come to test whether the circle of light will follow him if he runs away.

“Do you really think I’d waste my time on hypotheticals?”

Harry’s heart skips a beat when he realizes what Voldemort is implying.

“Don’t play games with me,” Harry whispers. “There’s no way in hell you’ll change just because I told you so. I can’t be the first person to tell you that what you’re doing is immoral and horrific.”

“Not the first one, no. But the first one who told me I might be better off if I change the way I do things.” Voldemort cocks his head. “I’m not yet convinced it will have more advantages than disadvantages, but I’m willing to hear your arguments.”

Harry stares at his soulmate, his heart racing. He can’t be serious. This must be some kind of trick. But what is his end goal?

Chapter Text

Harry shakes his head. He just can’t figure out why Voldemort is blatantly lying to him, what he’s trying to accomplish by that. So he decides to go along with it for now. He will pretend to believe that Voldemort is indeed willing to change and see what kind of responses he will get.

“I don’t…” Harry licks his lips. “I don’t think you can change even if you wanted to. I mean, you are obviously addicted to hurting others. You’ve been doing it for decades now. Even if I convinced you that it would be better for you to stop doing all those horrible things, that sadistic nature would still be a part of you.”

Voldemort cocks his head, which is a much milder reaction than Harry expected to get. All in all, Voldemort seems to have his anger surprisingly well under control, at least if you ignore how he grabbed Harry’s arms last night. And even that was incredibly mild by Voldemort’s standard. What are some finger-shaped bruises compared to an Unforgivable, after all?

“You think I don’t have enough self-control to change?”

Harry shrugs. “No, not really. You are used to getting whatever you want whenever you want. It would be incredibly hard for anyone to give that up.”

“You’re wrong,” Voldemort says, clenching his fists. “I can control myself just fine. I only need to want it badly enough. I suppose you haven’t noticed it, but I’ve been holding myself back during all three dreams we shared.”

Harry mentally goes through everything that happened during their soulmate dreams, trying to figure out what Voldemort is talking about.

“I don’t see how you were holding back during the first dream,” Harry says slowly. “I know I was testing your patience yesterday, and especially today, but during the first dream, I woke up before I could anger you.”

“You really didn’t notice?” Voldemort asks, chuckling. Harry stares. He has never heard Voldemort chuckle before. “I wanted to devour you, but I could tell that you were feeling a bit overwhelmed, so I held back. And I let you step out of my arms when you figured out who I was, even though I didn’t want to.”

Harry blinks. Voldemort wanted to devour him? What’s that even supposed to mean?

“Why did you tell me your name, anyway?” Harry asks slowly. “I mean, I had already told you that I didn’t want to meet you in person just yet. By telling me your name without asking for anything in return, you gave me power over the situation. I know who you are, but you don’t know who I am. It must be hard for you to accept that I have an advantage over you.”

Voldemort cocks his head in thought. “Isn’t it obvious why I did that? You said I couldn’t protect you from everyone who wants to hurt you. I needed to prove that I do have the power to give you everything you could ever wish for.”

That’s the reason? Voldemort was trying to prove that he could keep him safe? Harry swallows. That’s… almost touching. Of course, it’s not really Harry Voldemort wants to protect, but even like this, Harry can’t help but feel a weirdly abstract form of appreciation.

For the first time, Harry wishes he weren’t Voldemort’s soulmate not for himself but for Voldemort’s sake and that of the rest of the world.

“Did you take into consideration that I might run to the press and tell them you’re back? Or did you assume I wouldn’t betray you?”

It’s a risky question, but Harry couldn’t help but ask. Once again, his curiosity got the better of him.

“I don’t care if you go to the press or not.”

Liar. Of course, he cares. How could he not? It’s easier for Voldemort to extend his power when everyone thinks he’s dead. The best thing that can happen to Voldemort is for Fudge to remain stubborn and refuse to warn the general public.

Unless...

Unless Voldemort hopes his chances to find out Harry’s identity are higher when Harry goes to the press?

Harry growls. “I don’t like being manipulated.”

Voldemort chuckles again, which is incredibly distracting. It makes him seem too human.

“How you can think you’re stupid is a mystery to me.”

“I never said I’m stupid. I just said that I’m not particularly smart. There’s a difference.”

“There really isn’t.”

Harry clenches his teeth. Prick.

“Anyway,” Voldemort says. “Now that we established that I have enough self-control to change if I want to, you may tell me more about the benefits of changing my ways.”

Harry slowly shakes his head. “No.”

“No? Why not?”

“I don’t...” I don’t want to lose myself in wishful thinking. “I don’t want to waste my time. Besides, you should be able to figure out what the advantages are on your own. Until you demonstrate your willingness to change, I refuse to talk about this topic any longer.” Harry hesitates and then adds, “just know that I will never accept you the way you are now. So if you actually care about making me your equal, you will have to change either way, no matter which other advantages and disadvantages come along with that.”

Voldemort hums thoughtfully. He keeps his head turned towards Harry as he starts walking up and down. “What kind of demonstration are we talking about?”

Harry shrugs. “Don’t know. I want to see what you will come up with on your own.”

He isn’t actually considering going along with my demand, right? No. He can’t be. Voldemort has many other goals that have nothing to do with binding his soulmate to him, and he won’t just abandon them for anyone. Still, I wonder what kind of demonstration he would come up with if he actually meant what he said.

“Alright,” Voldemort says eventually. “I’ll figure something out. With that out of the way, there’s something I should have asked you much sooner.”

Harry instinctively straightens his back. The way Voldemort’s voice deepened can’t mean anything good.

“You have made it clear by now that you’re used to getting hurt. I need to know if you are in any immediate danger.”

Harry blinks, glad that the nature of soulmate dreams hides his surprised expression.

What the hell? Did Voldemort really just ask someone if they are in danger of getting hurt? What would he even do if Harry said yes?

The more time Harry spends around Voldemort, the more he realizes that he doesn’t understand him. Harry swallows and hopes Voldemort can’t sense his uncertainty.

“No, I don’t think I’m in any immediate danger.”

“You don’t think so?”

Harry shrugs. “I don’t know who you and your followers are planning to attack. That’s another reason why you should decrease the amount of violence you use, by the way. You might hurt me without realizing it’s me.”

Harry smiles faintly. If it were up to him, that’s how he would choose to go out: let Voldemort kill him without realizing they are soulmates. That way, he wouldn’t have to deal with Voldemort’s rage at being denied a proper soulmate.

“You wouldn’t tell me you’re my soulmate if I were about to hurt or kill you?” Voldemort asks quietly. “Why?”

Harry clenches his teeth and raises his chin defiantly. If Voldemort wants an answer to this question, he will have to torture it out of him.

Voldemort nods, like Harry’s refusal to answer has told him everything he needs to know. Harry curls his lips. Voldemort can pretend to understand him, but Harry knows he doesn’t. Voldemort even admitted it earlier.

“You have given me a lot to think about. Sleep well, my soul.”

And just like that, Voldemort turns into thin air. His surroundings shift, and Harry slips back into another nightmare full of dead people, telling him how disappointed they are in him.

Chapter Text

“Professor Snape is expecting you in his office in an hour.”

Harry looks up at Madam Pomfrey, blinking. He can feel Ron and Hermione’s questioning eyes on him but ignores them for now. “What? Why?”

Madam Pomfrey’s lips form a thin line. “He didn’t say. He only claimed that it’s urgent and can’t be delayed under any circumstances - unless you are too weak to walk down the stairs to the dungeons, of course.”

Madam Pomfrey gives him a meaningful look. She still wants Harry to rest as much as possible, and she knows that Harry and Snape don’t get along. A visit to Snape’s office would be the opposite of rest.

Harry clenches his teeth. “No. No, I’m fine.”

He’d rather fight against a basilisk again than let Snape believe he’s too weak to walk down a couple of stairs.

Madam Pomfrey purses her lips but thankfully respects his decision and returns to her office.

Ron leans forward the moment she is out of earshot. He seems to have completely forgotten about the half-finished chess game between them.

“Why do you have detention with Snape?”

Harry shrugs. “I don’t think this is a detention. I mean, I can’t even remember the last time I saw him.”

“But what else could it be? Snape isn’t known to invite anyone to tea, let alone you.”

“Ron is right,” Hermione says. “What else could it be but a detention? Well, unless...”

“Unless what?” Ron asks, sounding about as impatient as Harry feels.

Hermione bites her lips. “You don’t think it has something to do with, you know, what Professor Dumbledore asked him to do that night?”

Hermione glances worriedly at Harry, as if the mere mention of that night, the night Voldemort returned, might be too much for him to handle. Harry suppresses his irritation as best as he can. He isn’t a fragile little kid who will fall apart if you mention the wrong topics in front of him.

“I don’t think this is about Voldemort.” Ron and Hermione flinch, and Harry rolls his eyes. How are they supposed to fight against Voldemort if they can’t even bear to hear his name? “Snape would have gone to Dumbledore if he had found out anything useful.”

“Yeah, but maybe Dumbledore ordered him to tell you about it?”

Harry suppresses a sigh. It’s understandable that Ron and Hermione want to know what Voldemort is up to - Harry does as well - but hoping Snape will tell them anything is ridiculous.

“Dumbledore would have told me himself if he had found out something that concerns me.”

At least, I hope so. Considering how long he kept the prophecy from me, I’m not so sure about that.

Hermione licks her lips. “But if you don’t think it’s a detention… I mean, he must have some reason to want to talk to you.”

“Sure, maybe,” Harry says, just because he doesn’t want to disagree outright. “I guess I’ll see what he wants in an hour.”

xxx

The moment Harry enters Snape’s office, his eyes are drawn to the object on Snape’s desk.

“Close the door, Potter.”

Harry reaches behind himself blindly, not looking away from Snape’s desk for even a second.

What is Dumbledore’s Pensieve doing here?

“You are probably wondering why I ordered you here.”

Harry nods absently. Until now, he has had only bad experiences with the Pensieve. Seeing it here, right beside his most hated Professor, makes him uneasy.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you!”

Harry reluctantly rips his eyes away from the Pensieve and glances up at Snape.

Harry blinks. There are dark circles around Snape’s eyes. Instinctively, Harry hunches his shoulders. A tired Snape is probably easier to anger than a well-rested Snape.

“Whose memories will we look at, sir?” As far as he is concerned, there is no reason to beat around the bush. He wants to get this over with as quickly as possible.

Snape narrows his eyes slightly. “Yours.”

What? Snape wants to look at his memories? Why?

“Which memories are we talking about?”

Snape looks at him, his face completely blank. “All of them.”

Harry freezes. All of them? What the hell? Slowly, Harry takes a step back. Whatever Snape has in mind, it can’t mean anything good.

“I’m sorry, sir, but I’m… I’m not in the mood to analyze almost fifteen years worth of memories,” Harry says, reaching behind himself. His hand wraps around the door handle. “Thanks for the offer, though.”

Snape waves his hand, and Harry hears a click. He presses the door handle down, but the door refuses to open. Without thinking, Harry draws his wand and points it at Snape’s face.

Snape sneers. “Put the wand away, Potter.”

Snape crosses his arms in front of his chest, showing no intention of drawing his own wand. Harry tries not to let that influence him. Snape locked the door with a simple wave of his hand, so who knows what else he could accomplish without a wand.

“No. Not unless you unlock the door.”

“Put the wand away, Potter. I will not repeat myself. The school year isn’t over yet, so I can still give you detention.”

Harry laughs. It sounds breathless even to his own ears. “You think I care about detention? The last time a Professor locked a door, he told me he was working for Voldemort and tried to kill me.”

Harry grips the door handle harder, looking for support. Why can’t Snape just leave him alone?

“The headmaster ordered me to teach you Occlumency.”

Harry frowns, confused about the sudden change of topic. “Occlumency? What’s that?” And what does it have to do with looking at all of my memories and the Pensieve on your desk?

Harry listens to Snape’s explanation closely, still with his wand raised. Quickly, his arm starts feeling as heavy as if it were made out of lead.

“So... you’re basically saying that Voldemort can read minds?” Harry says once Snape finishes his explanation. “And all he needs to do is to make eye contact?”

The thought alone is enough to make Harry sick to his stomach. How the hell is he supposed to keep his identity a secret when Voldemort can read the truth out of him with a single look?

Snape sneers. “Only someone who doesn’t know the first thing about Legilimency calls it mind reading. The mind isn’t a book you can read and toss aside at will, Potter.”

Harry ignores the contempt in Snape’s voice and tightens the grip on his wand. Snape didn’t outright disagree with him, which probably means he got it right. Snape just doesn’t like his choice of words.

“And for you to teach me Occlumency, you will have to enter my mind over and over again and see glimpses of random memories? That’s why you said we will be looking at all of my memories, right?”

Snape curls his lips. “There is more to it, but that’s the gist of it, yes.”

Harry exhales slowly. “Okay.”

Hesitantly, he lowers his aching arm, though he still doesn’t feel comfortable enough to put his wand away.

Snape’s words sound worse enough to be true. It makes sense that Dumbledore wants him to learn how to protect his mind, now that Harry knows about the prophecy.

“Isn’t there someone else who could teach me?”

“Do you think the headmaster would’ve asked me if he’d had another option?”

No, probably not.

“And you can’t learn Occlumency by reading books or something?”

Snape looks at him for a long moment. Then he turns his face away.

“Fine,” Harry says, sighing. Quickly, he goes through his options. If he lets Snape into his mind, it won’t take long until he stumbles over the first soulmate dream, and Harry can’t let that happen. Just the thought of Snape finding out who his soulmate is freaks him out. But refusing to learn Occlumency isn’t an option either.

What now? I want to keep my secrets and learn how to protect my mind. But I can’t have both.

Unless…

Harry takes a deep breath and squares his shoulders. “Alright, I’ll let you teach me. But I have a condition.”

Chapter Text

Snape curls his lips. “You will let me teach you?”

“Yes. You do know you can’t force me, right?”

Snape’s hands form into fists. Harry keeps a close eye on Snape’s body language, so he won’t be taken by surprise when the situation escalates.

“If you don’t learn how to protect your mind, no one will be able to tell you anything of importance.”

Harry shrugs. “I don’t think that’s true. Dumbledore told me why Voldemort tried to kill me when I was a baby. If Dumbledore withholds crucial information from me, I will probably die. He won’t risk that.”

At least, I really, really hope so.

Harry needs a moment until he realizes that Snape’s eyes are wider than usual. Huh. Looks like Harry managed to surprise him.

Snape’s next words are so quiet Harry has to strain his ears to understand him. “If the headmaster told you about the prophecy, you should know how crucial it is that you learn Occlumency.”

“Yes, and I do want to learn it. But I also don’t want to share my most personal memories with you, not knowing what you will do with them. I want you to swear a magical oath that you won’t tell anyone anything without my explicit permission. That’s my condition.”

Snape’s face darkens. “You want me to swear a magical oath?”

“Yes,” Harry says, raising his chin. “Or would you allow me to enter your mind without making sure I couldn’t spread around what I see there?”

Snape’s eyes flicker towards the Pensieve for a fraction of a second. Harry glances at the innocent-looking object. Snape still hasn’t told him what it’s doing here. Then Snape waves his hand the same way he did earlier. Something clicks behind Harry.

“Leave, Potter.”

Harry hesitates. “Does that mean you won’t teach me Occlumency?”

“I said leave, Potter.”

For a couple of long seconds, a mixture of defiance and anxiety doesn’t allow Harry to back off. Then he grimaces and presses the door handle down. This time, the door opens without a problem.

xxx

“So what did he want?” Ron asks the second Harry closes the door behind him. They had agreed to meet in an abandoned classroom so that Madam Pomfrey wouldn’t be able to overhear their conversation, be it intentional or unintentional.

Harry sighs and rubs his forehead. Standing up to Snape had cost him more energy than he wants to admit, and now all he wants to do is lay down and sleep - which he can’t do without worrying his friends since it’s not even 6 p.m.

“He wants to teach me Occlumency.”

“What’s Occlumency?” Ron glances at Hermione, but she just shrugs.

Harry can’t decide if it surprises him that Hermione has never heard the term before. Hesitantly, Harry tells his friends everything that happened, only leaving out the real reason he doesn’t want Snape in his head. His friends don’t need to know about that to understand why he has reservations.

“...and then Snape unlocked the door and told me to leave. He’s probably on his way to Dumbledore right now to tell him I’m not cooperating.”

Harry glances at his friends, wondering what they think about all of this. Hermione’s eyes are glassy, and she’s chewing on her lips. Ron, on the other hand, looks sick. He’s probably thinking about what it means that Snape and Voldemort can read minds and not liking the implications.

“But what will you do if Professor Snape refuses to swear a magical oath?” Hermione asks after a while.

“He has to. It’s not an unreasonable request.”

“It’s Snape, mate,” Ron says, grimacing. “When has he ever been reasonable?”

Ron has a point, unfortunately. But that doesn’t mean Harry will go down without a fight.

“If Snape insists on being a prick about this, I’ll talk to Dumbledore myself. I won’t let him have his way.”

Hermione gasps. “Harry! You can’t call a Professor a... a you-know-what!”

“I’m with Harry on this one,” Ron says, chuckling. He pats Harry’s shoulder, and Harry can’t help but grin. He has missed this. These last couple of days, he had been too focused on the inevitability of his death to enjoy his friends’ company. “It’s good to have you back, mate.”

Harry’s smile dims somewhat. Good to have you back? What the hell is he talking about?

“Yes, I’m glad you’re doing better, too, Harry,” Hermione adds. “We were worried about you, you know?”

Harry hesitates, frowning. Yes, he noticed their looks during the chess game yesterday. But apart from that…? “Why didn’t you say anything if you were so worried about me?”

“You… you didn’t seem to be in the mood to talk? We didn’t want to pressure you into talking about something you weren’t ready for.”

“I’m not a little kid, Hermione. I know how to set boundaries and tell someone to back off.”

“Uhm... sorry?” Hermione looks at Ron, looking for guidance.

Harry grinds his teeth so that he doesn’t snap at her to stop treating him like something fragile, something that’s going to break if you say the wrong thing. The mood has shifted from carefree to uncomfortable, and Harry doesn’t want to make it worse by showing his irritation.

Ron bites his lips. “Look, mate, you can’t be mad at us for being afraid to say something. You didn’t see yourself. You looked like...”

“Like what?” Harry snaps.

“Like you were on the brink of falling apart,” Hermione whispers. “Harry, did something happen a couple of days ago? You seemed to be doing remarkably well before then, all things considered.”

Shit, so they picked up on the sudden shift in my mood? What now? Ron and Hermione know me better than anyone else. I’m sure they’ll notice if I try to lie myself out of this.

“You don’t have to tell us anything if you don’t want to,” Hermione says softly. “We get it, Harry. Really.”

Ron nods, his face unusually serious. Harry opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. Ron and Hermione already know that something happened. It’d be pointless to deny that. And yet, they let Harry decide if he wants to share his worries with them.

And suddenly, the tension, the need to deny his friends’ observations, turns into thin air, and all Harry feels is warmth, spreading from his stomach to the rest of his body.

“I... yes, something did happen. But I don’t want to talk about it.”

“That’s okay,” Hermione says, smiling hesitantly.

“We’re here for you either way, mate,” Ron adds, patting his shoulder again.

Harry swallows, unable to speak. What did he do to deserve friends like this?

Chapter Text

The second Harry opens his eyes, his muscles tense up. Something isn’t right.

Or rather someone.

The air around Voldemort seems to be vibrating. His hands are clenched into fists, his breath ragged.

“How the hell did you fall asleep like this?” Harry whispers, torn between awe and fear. He would give a lot to be able to fall asleep, no matter what kind of emotional state he is in.

“There are magical means for almost everything.”

Even Voldemort’s voice vibrates. There is so much barely controlled rage right underneath the surface that Harry instinctively backs off a couple of steps.

Harry hears a long, drawn-out breath. Then Voldemort unclenches his fists in a deliberate movement. “Don’t be afraid. My anger isn’t directed at you, although you indirectly caused it.”

Don’t be afraid. Yeah, right. That’s impossible after a comment like that. “What do you mean by that?”

“I was researching ways to demonstrate my willingness to change. I had something in mind, but I needed to get some inside information to figure out-”

Voldemort breaks off in the middle of the sentence and clenches his fists again. Harry swallows. He can feel Voldemort’s rage like it’s a physical weight pressing in on him from all sides. It’s suffocating, so much so that he almost misses Voldemort’s next words.

“I talked with a couple of my followers. One of them helped in the destruction of an object that I left in his care.”

Harry swallows. “Which follower?”

Do I really want to know?

“Lucius Malfoy.”

Shit. He’s talking about the diary, isn’t he? Harry sways on his feet and hastily sits down before he can lose his footing. He pulls his legs to his chest and grips his knees with his hands to prevent them from shaking.

I’m the reason he’s this angry. I destroyed the diary.

“What’s wrong?” Voldemort’s voice sounds alarmed. Harry raises his gaze and sees Voldemort coming towards him.

“Don’t! Don’t come near me!”

To his immense relief, Voldemort listens to him and stops in his tracks.

“What’s wrong?” Voldemort repeats, this time utterly emotionless.

“You tortured him, didn’t you? I knew it. You don’t actually mean what you said. You’ll do whatever the hell you want, no matter what I think of it.”

Harry closes his eyes and presses his face against his knees. The words were meant as a distraction, as an alibi. If Voldemort figures out that Harry knows more than he lets on, he’s fucked. After all, only a handful of people could have guessed which object Voldemort is talking about.

Still, he didn’t fake the emotions behind the words. There is a tightness in Harry’s chest, a bitter taste in his mouth. Some small part of him feels betrayed. A part of him had hoped Voldemort actually meant what he said. A stupid, irrational part. He had known from the beginning that Voldemort would disappoint him, that he was trying to manipulate Harry.

“Is Lucius a friend of yours?”

Like I’ll answer that. “You still don’t get it. I don’t want you to torture anyone. Why is that so hard to understand?”

“Lucius knew what he signed up for when he took the Dark Mark. Power has its price.”

Harry raises his head and gives Voldemort a dark look. He can’t be fucking serious.

“Have you ever been under the Cruciatus?”

“I don’t see how that-”

“Have you?” Harry realizes that he’s shaking almost as uncontrollably as Voldemort did at the beginning of the dream.

“No.”

Harry nods. “Well, I have. It was excruciating, miles worse than any pain I had felt up to that point. And trust me, I’ve had quite a few life-threatening injuries. How you can inflict that on your followers, people who are loyal to you, is beyond me.”

“Quite a few life-threatening injuries?” Voldemort’s voice sounds strangely uneven, but Harry doesn’t have the patience to interpret the emotions behind it right now.

“Don’t change the subject. Your inability to show compassion-”

“You said you aren’t in any immediate danger.”

Harry frowns. Voldemort is still using this strange voice. He sounds almost breathless.

“I’m not.” Harry bites down on his lip, angry with himself for taking the bait. “You're such an-”

“But how can you be sure that you won’t end up in a life-or-death situation again?”

Harry frowns. It almost seems like Voldemort isn’t just clumsily trying to change the subject. It’s enough to make Harry curious.

“Honestly? I don’t think I’ll still be alive in a year or two.”

Voldemort moves so fast that Harry flinches back and almost lands flat on his back. Voldemort grips his upper arms, and Harry flinches again. The grip isn’t painful the way it was during the second soulmate dream, but it’s so unexpected that it freaks him out more than pain would.

“You can’t die. I won’t let you.”

Chapter Text

Harry freezes. Having Voldemort right in his face combined with his words is a bit much all at once.

“You can’t die,” Voldemort repeats.

Harry swallows. The lump in his throat forces him to whisper. “I don’t want to die. It’s just that I keep getting into dangerous situations, and I don’t see a way to change that.”

Voldemort makes a sound that reminds Harry vaguely of a wounded animal. “There’s an easy way out of this. All you need to do is tell me your-”

“I will not tell you my name.”

“Why not? Letting me know who you are can’t be worse than dying.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” Harry leans backward, uncomfortable with how close Voldemort is. “If I tell you who I am, you’ll kill and torture me. I prefer a less painful death.”

The grip on Harry’s arms tightens. “How many times do I need to repeat myself? I will not kill you. I don’t care who you are or what you did. You could be Dumbledore for all care, and it wouldn’t change a thing.”

Harry grimaces. He only says that because he knows it can’t be true. He sees enough of my body to be certain that I don’t have a beard like Dumbledore’s. This is just another manipulation attempt.

“I don’t believe you. I don’t trust you. I told you multiple times that I won’t tolerate violence. And what did you do? You ignored my words and tortured someone the very next day. Well, guess what: as long as you torture people for destroying some stupid object, I will always wonder if you’re lying to me.”

“It wasn’t just a random object. It was... You could say it was a part of who I am.”

Harry shakes his head. “That’s no excuse. Let me ask you a question: what would you do to the person who destroyed the object?”

Harry’s heart is beating so fast that he’s pretty certain Voldemort can feel it through his grip on Harry’s arms.

Voldemort seems to think about the question for a couple of long seconds. Harry uses the time to grab Voldemort’s wrists and pull them away from his arms. Voldemort doesn’t fight against the attempt, which is a relief. Harry doubts he could win in a physical fight.

When Voldemort finally opens his mouth, his voice is even and controlled. “The person who destroyed the object is dangerous. They could mean my death. They need to be dealt with.”

Harry shivers. He’s a bit surprised that Voldemort didn’t lie. After all, Voldemort has no way of knowing that Harry already knew the answer. That Voldemort told the truth proves that nothing will change his mind.

Harry Potter needs to die because he poses a risk. It’s as simple as that.

“See? That’s why we will never see eye-to-eye. I could never kill someone, not even to save my life or that of my friends. I wouldn’t be able to live with the guilt.”

“You can’t be serious. Nothing is worse than dying.”

Harry grinds his teeth.

“If you really think that… If there’s really nothing worse than dying for you…” Harry trails off, not knowing how to finish that sentence.

He can think of so many things that would be worse than dying. Torturing or killing his friends, spending more than a week in Azkaban, having all of his friends turn on him for good, getting kissed by a Dementor… The list goes on and on.

Harry is afraid of dying, too, of course, but his Boggart is a Dementor for a reason. The thought of dying has never been the defining fear in his life.

Harry looks at Voldemort thoughtfully.

It’s funny. He never would have guessed that Voldemort is his soulmate just by looking at him. The fogginess of the soulmate dream hides his facial features pretty well, but the few details Harry can make out look... off, somehow. Harry frowns.

“Don’t move,” Harry warns. “Not even a finger.”

Hesitantly, he extends a hand towards Voldemort’s face. To his relief, Voldemort listens to him and holds still. Harry’s fingers are shaking when they make contact with Voldemort’s cheek. Slowly, he slides his finger across Voldemort’s skin to the middle of his face, where his nose would be if he had one. Harry feels his face heating up and hopes that the blurriness of the soulmate dream hides his blush.

Harry’s breath catches when he reaches the middle of Voldemort’s face. There is an actual nose. Not just two slits. Harry’s eyes flicker over Voldemort’s face. He hesitates for a moment, then he pulls his fingers away from Voldemort’s nose and raises it to the top of his head. His fingers sink into smooth, silky hair, and Harry exhales sharply. He draws his arm back and places his hands back on his shins.

Only then does he notice that Voldemort’s breath has turned ragged.

“Since when do you have a nose and hair?”

Voldemort clenches his hands into fists. Harry swallows, wondering how he angered Voldemort this time.

Voldemort clears his throat, but his voice still sounds rough when he opens his mouth. “I’ve changed my physical appearance through magical means many times over the course of the last decades. However, changes caused by magic don’t manifest in soulmate dreams. That’s how it works.”

Harry raises a hand but luckily stops himself before he reaches his forehead. He’d love to know if the lightning bolt scar is gone, but he doesn’t want to draw Voldemort’s attention to his forehead.

Oh, god. What if the scar is there and Voldemort touches my face? He’ll know who I am right away if he feels the scar tissue. Hastily, Harry looks for a topic to distract Voldemort with.

“Why would you want to have a nose like a snake and no hair?”

“Those are just side effects.”

“Side effects of what?” Does that mean Voldemort didn’t intentionally make himself look like a monster?

“I changed my body to be more resilient. I can last longer without water and food, as well as sleep, as any other human alive, and my senses are better. Some of my experiments even enhanced my magical power.”

“So even your body is barely human anymore,” Harry mutters. Suddenly, his limbs are as heavy as lead, and he wishes he could lie down and sleep - which is ironic, since strictly speaking, he is sleeping. “I wish you’d just leave me alone. I’ve got enough problems right now without you urging me to reveal my identity.”

“I could take some of the weight off your shoulders. If you let me, I could teach you how to protect yourself, so you’ll never have to suffer again.”

Harry presses his face against his knees. “Just leave me alone.”

Harry’s eyes are burning. The ugly, pathetic truth is that Harry wants to believe Voldemort. He wants to believe Voldemort won’t care about the prophecy, that he will support and help and protect Harry, that he’s actually willing to change. But he can’t fool himself. Just a couple of minutes ago, Voldemort claimed that the person who destroyed the diary needs to die. In the end, it won’t matter that Harry is his soulmate, no matter what Voldemort says.

Harry hugs his legs harder and lowers his head even further to hide the tears that escape his eyes.

After a few seconds, he hears the rustling of clothes. When he raises his head slightly, he sees that Voldemort backed off a couple of feet.

Harry lowers his head again and closes his eyes.

Harry has no idea how long they stay like this. It’s hard to measure time in a soulmate dream. After a while, he starts counting his breaths. He’s about to reach a hundred when Voldemort speaks up again.

“Make sure to look at the Prophet when you wake up.”

Harry’s heart skips a beat. What did he do? Do I even want to know?

Chapter Text

“You won’t believe what happened!”

Harry pushes his breakfast away when he sees Hermione running into the hospital wing, an issue of the Daily Prophet clenched in her fist. Ron follows a second later. Both of their faces are white, and their steps are rigid like they haven’t recovered from the shock of whatever they read yet.

“Give me that,” Harry says, extending a hand.

His heart clenches in nervous anticipation when he touches the parchment, but that’s nothing compared to the shock he feels at seeing the title on the front page.

HOGWARTS IS A DEATH TRAP

For a couple of seconds, Harry stares at the title. Then his eyes flicker towards the article, and he starts reading. He barely hears Madam Pomfrey storming into the room or that she forces Ron and Hermione to leave for upsetting her patient.

A week ago, the seventeen-year-old Hogwarts student Cedric Diggory died during the third task of the Triwizard Tournament. The exact circumstances of his death are still unclear. However, one can assume that the dangers he willingly subjected himself to by participating in the Triwizard Tournament are to blame. His death is a tragedy, but at the end of the day, it was an accident.

Or was it?

The Minister of Magic empathized time and time again that the tasks of the tournament would be safer than they have ever been and that only students by the age of seventeen and older would be able to participate. However, that didn’t stop the Goblet of Fire from choosing a fourteen-year-old that didn’t even want to participate.

Harry Potter did not put his name into the Goblet of Fire, yet he was forced to take part in tasks designed for adults. The second Harry Potter was announced as one of the champions, Headmaster Albus Dumbledore and Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge should have put all their energy into finding out who manipulated the Goblet of Fire.

Why? Because the person behind all of that wasn’t someone who wanted to do Mr. Potter a misguided favor. No, it was a Death Eater. Yes, you read that right. There was a Death Eater at Hogwarts this year.

A Death Eater that spent the year drinking liters upon liters of Polyjuice to pose as the former Auror Alastor Moody, and the great Albus Dumbledore didn’t notice that an old friend of his was nothing but a stranger in disguise. He didn’t realize the danger his students were in every day and didn’t even bat an eye when “Professor Moody” requested to show fourteen-year-olds the Unforgivable Curses. Neither did the headmaster voice any concerns when his old friend used the Imperius curse on students during class, claiming that he wanted to train them to resist the curse.

It’s not far-fetched to assume that this Death Eater was responsible for Mr. Diggory’s death and for throwing Mr. Potter’s name into the Goblet of Fire. Unfortunately, the name of the Death Eater is still unknown, but it is only a matter of time until Albus Dumbledore will be forced to explain what happened.

This isn’t the only unsuitable person Albus Dumbledore hired in the last couple of years. Just the year before, he chose Remus Lupin for the Defence Against the Dark Arts position, a man the headmaster knew to be a werewolf.

That in and of itself can be considered a questionable decision at best, but he also didn’t inform the students or their parents of the men’s condition, thus putting them in unnecessary danger. Many people believe it was Remus Lupin’s fault that Sirius Black was able to break into Hogwarts since the two of them were friends before Black ended up in Azkaban.

The same year, Albus Dumbledore chose Rubeus Hagrid for the Care of Magical Creature’s position. Mr. Hagrid is not only a half-giant, he was also expelled during his third year at Hogwarts. Someone with so little formal education shouldn’t be allowed to teach students for many reasons. Mr. Hagrid proved his incompetence during his very first class when a Hippogriff broke loose and attacked Lucius Malfoy’s son.

Given all of that, every responsible parent has to ask themselves if the current headmaster does everything in his power to protect the students under his care. Cedric Diggory’s death shocked everyone who heard about it, but the real surprise should be that a tragedy like that didn’t happen much sooner.

The Prophet slips out of Harry’s numb fingers. This can’t be the article Voldemort was referring to. Yes, the article hurts Dumbledore’s reputation, which is certainly in Voldemort’s interest, but he wouldn’t want the public to know there was a Death Eater at Hogwarts. Or would he?

Harry shakes his head and picks up the newspaper to look at the other articles. Maybe it’s just a coincidence that an article about the third task got published on the same day Voldemort told him to look at the Prophet. Maybe Voldemort was referring to something else entirely.

But after Harry took a look at the rest of the pages, he has to admit that all the other articles pale in comparison to the one on the front page. Apparently, Voldemort really does want him to know that he is trying to destroy Dumbledore’s reputation. The question is why. Does Voldemort think that Dumbledore and Harry are enemies, that he’s doing Harry a favor with this? Or does he have some entirely different reason, one Harry is incapable of seeing?

Harry is still trying to figure out Voldemort’s motives when he hears footsteps coming towards him. He turns his head and sees Madam Pomfrey looking at him with thin lips and a worried frown on her face.

Harry sighs and throws the Prophet onto his nightstand. “Snape wants to see me again, doesn’t he?”

Chapter Text

“I have spoken with the headmaster,” Snape says the moment Harry closes the door behind him. “He insists that I teach you.”

Harry nods. That doesn’t surprise him. Snape wouldn’t have ordered him to his office if he had a choice.

“So you will swear not to tell anyone what you see in my mind?”

“Not exactly.”

Harry bites the inside of his cheek so hard he tastes blood. What now? Harry can’t leave his mind unprotected. It’s too dangerous.

“What do you mean by not exactly?”

“I will not swear a magical oath. However, I will give you my word. That will have to be enough for you.”

Harry hesitates. In a way, it’s more than he expected. Snape isn’t known for compromising… and that’s exactly what makes Harry suspicious.

“How can I be sure that you will keep your word?” Snape narrows his eyes. Before Snape can get too angry, Harry hastily adds, “I’m not necessarily saying that you will. But let’s be honest, sir, we both know you don’t like me. I need some kind of guarantee that my secrets will be safe with you.”

“I do not break my promises.”

Harry grinds his teeth. Why does Snape need to be so stubborn? Harry can’t trust him. He needs something better than a promise, but he can’t force Snape to swear an oath. Unless…

No, I can’t do that. It’s too manipulative, too despicable… Right?

Harry gives Snape a once-over. Since his very first day at Hogwarts, Snape had treated him unfairly. He had used every opportunity to make Harry’s life harder, to humiliate him. One could say that Snape deserves it. Harry isn’t a fan of the whole an eye for an eye mentality, but he’s desperate. More desperate than he wants to admit, even to himself.

Harry grimaces. He doesn’t want to stoop so low, but it seems like he doesn’t have a choice.

“Do you remember how Lupin was forced to leave Hogwarts after you told everyone that he’s a werewolf? I wonder what would happen to a professor who can read minds, not just once per month but all the time. Especially if the professor was a Death Eater once.”

Harry keeps an eye on Snape, waiting for him to lose his temper. He never dared to threaten a professor before. It wouldn’t surprise him if Snape tried to curse him.

“You stupid, little brat. You should be grateful I’m willing to teach you how to protect your mind. Without me, everyone with the right skill set will rip those little secrets you care so much about out of your mind-”

“I am grateful. Really, I am. I don’t want to die just yet, and I know I need as much help as I can get to accomplish that. But I don’t want to stay alive at all costs. There are some things I’m not willing to give up, and that includes my privacy.”

Suddenly Snape’s expression shifts. His anger melts away and makes way for something that makes a shiver run down Harry’s spine. Instinct tells Harry to back away, to give in. But he already got this far. It’d be stupid to back down now.

“You are as arrogant as your father, Potter. You come in here, threaten a professor and expect to get away with it. Let me show you how defenseless you are. Maybe then you will see reason. Legilimens!”

Snape’s office disappears from one second to the next. Images appear before Harry’s inner eye, too fast to make out. It’s like someone pushed him off a cliff. The ground comes closer and closer, and all Harry can do is wait for the inevitable crash that will rip him into pieces.

The attack ends as abruptly as it started. Harry finds himself kneeling in Snape’s office, panting. His legs must have given out during the attack. Harry bows his head and closes his eyes, desperately trying to collect himself.

What did he see? What did he rip out of my mind?

“So that’s what you’re trying to hide.” Harry digs his nails into the floor. Calm down. Snape could mean something else entirely. It doesn’t have to mean- “Your soulmate.”

Snape’s words are like a punch to the gut. For a couple of long seconds, Harry can’t form a single cohesive thought. He can only listen to his own heartbeat. Then it’s like something inside of him clicks, and he climbs back to his feet with calm, deliberate movements.

“You can’t tell anyone.”

“Tell me one reason why I shouldn’t.”

Harry licks his lips. His mind is surprisingly clear, but he doesn’t know how long that will last.

“Because... Because I didn’t choose my soulmate. I want nothing to do with him. He disgusts me-”

Snape sneers. “Like father, like son. How long did it take you to reject your soulmate? A day? Two? Or did you have the decency to wait a week, like your father did before you decided you wouldn’t get along?”

What...? Snape can’t honestly think that I shouldn’t have rejected Voldemort. He’s supposed to be on Dumbledore’s side. Hastily, Harry tries to remember what exactly Snape had said.

So that’s what you’re trying to hide. Your soulmate.

Damn. I should have listened closer. Snape never said that he knows who my soulmate is.

But that’s not all.

“My parents weren’t soulmates?” Harry asks, hating how small his voice sounds. Why did no one ever tell him about that? Why did he have to hear about it from Snape, of all people?

Harry shakes his head. He can’t allow himself to get distracted.

“Okay, how about this: You will swear a magic oath to tell no one anything about my soulmate without my permission. In return, I won’t press charges against you for entering my mind against my will, and I will swear an oath that I won’t blackmail you ever again.”

When Snape just stares at him for a very long moment, Harry adds, “Come on, it’s a good deal. You’re getting a lot more out of it than I do. What’s there to think about?”

“I do not swear magical oaths lightly.”

Yes, you made that perfectly clear! But I need that oath.

“I’m not bluffing about reporting you to the authorities.” Granted, Harry doesn’t know the laws, but he can’t imagine you’re allowed to read people’s minds without their permission. “So, do we have a deal now or what?”

Chapter Text

“Mate, what are you doing in the library?”

Harry blinks and looks up. He didn’t even notice that Ron and Hermione sat down across from him. Wordlessly, Harry holds the book up to show them the title.

“Magical oaths and their characteristics...?” Hermione reads aloud, eyes going wide. “Does that mean you got Professor Snape to swear a magical oath?”

Harry nods.

Hermione opens her mouth, but Ron is faster. “For real? How did you do that?”

“By swearing a magical oath myself. Now I won’t be able to blackmail him, and I can’t report him to the authorities for invading my mind against my will. And, to answer your question, Ron, I came here to find out what will happen if Snape or I break our oaths.”

Harry ducks his head to hide his grin. Ron and Hermione look about as incredulous as he thought they would. Harry isn’t exactly happy with how things turned out with Snape, but telling his friends what happened is still fun, and nothing can take that away from him.

“Why would you-”

“Harry, are you telling us that you swore a magical oath without knowing what will happen if you break it?” Hermione stares at him with that annoying, disapproving glint in her eyes.

“No, I knew what happens if you break an oath: you lose your magic for a while. You won’t be able to use spells, or brew potions, or do anything, really, that requires a hint of magic. What I didn’t know was how long that would last.” Harry closes the book and touches the title with his fingertips. “And, according to this book, it’s impossible to tell. It can last for only a couple of hours or up to six months. That’s why magical oaths are so effective. Most people aren’t willing to risk living without magic for so long.”

Hermione frowns. “I still think you should have done your research beforehand. Do you realize how dangerous-”

Harry laughs. “Hermione, I’m always in danger. Now more than ever before. This is nothing. I won’t break my oath, so I’ve got nothing to worry about. Can we drop this now? I’m much more interested in what you guys think about that Prophet article…”

xxx

“You’re thinking about him again, aren’t you?”

Harry blinks and looks down at Nagini. Lazily, he caresses her with his index finger, and she turns her head to give him better access. “What gave me away?”

“The glint in your eyes. Are you getting closer to finding him?”

Harry cocks his head. “Maybe. I’m not sure yet.”

His soulmate is too confusing to be sure of anything. Many of the things he says and does contradict each other or just don’t make any sense.

“You’re worried about him.”

“Yes. He thinks he’ll be dead in a year or two, and yet he refuses my help.”

Harry clenches his left hand into a fist. Why is his soulmate so convinced Harry will hurt him? He won’t do that, ever, just like he’ll never hurt himself. Not intentionally, anyway. Harry sneers, thinking about how he had grabbed his soulmate’s arms during their second soulmate dream.

Harry had promised his soulmate he wouldn’t hurt him, and he had broken his promise the very next day.

Okay, so maybe he can understand why his soulmate doesn’t trust him. But that doesn’t mean Harry has to like it or that he won’t do everything in his power to prove that it won’t happen again.

“Why is he refusing your help?”

“I think it’s because people keep disappointing him. He doesn’t trust easily.”

“So he’s too weak to accept your help?”

Immediately, Harry shakes his head. “Nothing about him is weak. Nothing. However, he seems to think he’s weak.”

That’s another thing Harry has a hard time understanding. His soulmate is one of the few people brave enough to stand up to him more than once and the first one who made him think differently about power and its price. Without him, Harry would never have blackmailed the Prophet into publishing an article that could have negative consequences for him.

I wonder if he knows how much power he has over me? How far I would go to have him at my side? How much I’d be willing to give up?

No. He doesn’t, or he wouldn’t be so bloody stubborn.

His soulmate’s mind is a bizarre place. Harry is slowly starting to accept this fact, but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating. How can anyone be hurt over and over again, the way his soulmate apparently was, and yet refuse violence as a weapon? Especially since he got tortured with the Cruciatus curse. Any sane person who went through that would scream for vengeance.

Harry doesn’t understand it, can’t understand it. His soulmate’s tormentors need to be punished. He’ll make sure of that. His soulmate might convince him to spare some of them, but the one who used the Cruciatus curse against him will die. There’s no question about that. Harry just hopes that it wasn’t Barty Crouch because then it would have been his fault-

“You should sleep,” Nagini says and slides away towards the fire in the corner of the room.

Harry sighs and stands up. Nagini is right. His soulmate should be asleep by now. It’s time to find out what he thinks about the Prophet article.

Chapter Text

Harry’s hands are shaking.

That wasn’t a normal dream. It had felt like Harry was Voldemort, like he could control his every movement, which is definitely not something that usually happens to soulmates. Harry feels a shiver run down his spine.

What if Voldemort has a dream like that as well and figures out who I am that way? How can I prevent that from happening? What caused it, anyway? Harry had dreamt about Voldemort last summer, long before their soulmate dreams started, but the nature of that dream had been... different. He hadn’t seen through Voldemort’s eyes at the time.

“You seem distressed.”

Harry laughs. He can’t help himself. He’s so sick of all these strange and unexpected things that keep happening around him.

“I’m alone with a mass murderer with no way to escape. Of course, I’m distressed.”

Voldemort cocks his head. “That’s not the cause for your distress. You’ve had time to get used to the thought.”

“Get used to... You’re kidding, right? You can’t honestly believe I’ll ever get used to that.” Harry shakes his head. “You know what, don’t answer that. Please, just... Just leave me alone tonight. Just once.”

Voldemort probably wants to talk about that Prophet article, but Harry doesn’t feel up to that. He can’t be sure he won’t make any fatal mistakes while he’s so distracted.

Can Harry even be sure that Voldemort’s thoughts and the conversation he had with Nagini had been sincere? Voldemort is insanely powerful. Could he have found a way to somehow feed his soulmate a lie through a dream?

Well, if he’s really that powerful, I’m doomed anyway. So I might as well assume that’s not the case.

Voldemort takes a step forward. “No, I don’t think so.”

Harry clenches his teeth. “You know you can’t force me to talk with you, right? Well, you could, but then you’d have to hurt me and prove that there are things more important to you than making sure I’m not in pain-”

“You are hurting me right now.”

Harry freezes. “What?”

“Don’t sound so shocked. I’ve waited decades to meet you. I used to imagine how it would be like to spoil you, how I’d make sure you’d have everything you could ever dream for. Never in my wildest dreams did I think you’d be too afraid to tell me your name or that you might die before I could find out who you are.”

Harry gulps. I know he doesn’t want me to die. But this...

“I... I don’t know what to say.”

“You could tell me your name, but I know that’s just wishful thinking on my part.”

Harry rubs his forehead and relaxes slightly when he realizes that his lightning bolt scar isn’t there. That’s at least one thing he won’t have to worry about.

“Please, just… give me a moment. I need to think about a couple of things. Then we can talk about whatever you think we need to talk about.”

Harry exhales slowly. He wishes he could turn around without having to fear what Voldemort might do in the meantime. It’s hard to think straight when he knows he’s being watched. Well, at least Voldemort can’t read his expression.

Okay. So what does it mean if what I just saw isn’t part of some intricate form of manipulation that, let’s be honest, should be close to impossible to pull off, anyway?

Well. It means that many of the things Voldemort had claimed in their dreams are at least partially true. He cares about his soulmate, at least in an abstract sort of way, and he’ll do a lot to find out who he is. Harry swallows. Underneath Voldemort’s thoughts had been a yearning so intense it almost felt like an obsession. If that wasn’t just a temporary thing but something Voldemort regularly experiences, then it’s only a matter of time before Voldemort will resort to more drastic measures to find out Harry’s name.

The dream also proves that Voldemort only sees an idealized version of Harry. He thinks nothing about Harry is weak, which is just plain ridiculous. Harry cried in front of him and showed fear and uncertainty more than once. He’ll have to keep that in mind. Surely there’s a way to use that to his advantage somehow.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Voldemort shifting impatiently. Looks like his short break is about to be over.

Okay, so what does this mean going forward? I think it’s safe to assume that Voldemort’s yearning for a soulmate is real, but his desire to see me dead is most likely even stronger. As long as I can’t be sure that Voldemort won’t kill me on the spot the second he finds out who I am, I’ll have to remain careful.

Harry grimaces. The prospect of having to keep Voldemort at arm’s length, night after night, is incredibly daunting. But what choice does he have? He can’t just throw caution to the wind and confess to Voldemort that his soulmate, the person he has waited decades to meet, is Harry Potter. The thought alone is ridiculous enough to make Harry smile.

Harry sighs. “It wasn’t my intention to hurt you.”

“And yet you won’t tell me who you are.” Voldemort’s voice is quiet and calm and - surprisingly - without a trace of resentment or judgment.

“No. You haven’t proven that I can trust you yet.”

“Not even with the Prophet article?”

Harry hesitates. He needs to be careful what he says now. If he makes his feelings about the article too clear, he’ll only give Voldemort more clues to work with. “I’m honestly having a hard time understanding what you were even trying to accomplish by publishing that.”

Voldemort cocks his head. “You must have at least some idea.”

“Yeah, but most of them don’t let you appear in a particularly good light.”

Voldemort hums. “So you’re not very deep into politics. Interesting.”

Harry’s heart skips a beat. Great. So much for not giving Voldemort any more clues to work with.

“I know that Dumbledore poses a threat to you and that you’re trying to discredit him. But why this way? Most of the stuff in the article was already common knowledge, as far as I know, apart from the Death Eater thing. If the article hadn’t included that, it would never have made it onto the front page in the first place. Well, unless you blackmailed them into doing that, of course.”

“Yes, Dumbledore’s questionable decisions aren’t well-kept secrets, but that doesn’t mean that everyone in Britain knows about them. Dumbledore is highly regarded by many people, which means that most of them disregard or ignore anything that makes him appear in a bad light and don’t spread it around.”

Voldemort takes a couple of steps towards Harry until there’s only an arm’s length separating them. Harry raises his chin and refuses to back away. Voldemort can try to intimidate him all he wants. It won’t work.

“I can’t help but notice that you haven’t accused me of lying yet. That means you know the article includes nothing but facts, though you might not like how I framed them. You’re young, you feel like you’re constantly in danger, and you seem to have mixed feelings about Dumbledore. Tell me, my soul. Are you a Hogwarts student?”

Harry’s heart skips a beat. Oh, god. What now? What can I say? Voldemort worded it as a question, but he made it sound like a fact. Is there some way I can convince him that his conclusion is wrong?

Voldemort raises his hand and lays it against Harry’s left cheek. “If I wanted, I could kidnap every male Hogwarts student, one after the other, until I find you.”

Harry flinches and takes a step back. Voldemort seems to have anticipated the movement since he moves with him. The hand on Harry’s face shifts a bit but stays where it is.

“That’s insane,” Harry blurts out before he can stop himself. “Something like that would never go unnoticed.”

“I don’t care.” Voldemort’s thumb traces the skin right under his eyes, and Harry shivers. “You’re right that I wrote the article partially because I want to discredit Dumbledore. He’s powerful, and he hates me, and if you don’t want me to destroy him the old-fashioned way, I have to resort to destroying his reputation so that he loses his power and influence. But that wasn’t the main reason I decided to blackmail the Prophet into publishing this article. I’ve already suspected for a couple of days now that you’re attending Hogwarts. That place is dangerous. I intend to turn it into a place where you can’t get hurt again.”

Harry draws a shaky breath and turns around. The hand on his cheek leaves his skin for a moment, only to settle on Harry’s shoulder. Harry hears Voldemort taking a step forward, and a second later, he feels warmth at his back, and an arm wraps itself around Harry’s torso.

“Let me help you,” Voldemort whispers right into Harry’s ear. A shiver runs down Harry’s spine, and he’s pretty sure Voldemort can feel it since he pulls Harry even closer toward him. “You don’t need to deal with everything on your own.”

Harry grinds his teeth. It’s weird. Voldemort is overstepping so many boundaries, and yet it doesn’t feel wrong to have him this close, to feel the warmth of his body or his lips against his ear. Harry fights against it for a couple of seconds, but then he gives up and leans backward and into the embrace. As if to reward him, Voldemort’s lips brush against Harry’s earlobe. This time, Harry doesn’t even try to suppress the shiver.

“You’ll never gain my trust if you kidnap hundreds of children.”

“I wouldn’t hurt them. I’d just enter their minds to see if they have any memories of our dreams.”

“And that’s supposed to make it better?” Harry asks incredulously. “You’d still invade their privacy. You’d still scare them and their families to death.”

Voldemort hums. “If that’s what it takes.”

“It’s a form of violence. I’d never forgive you for that.”

“You only say that because you don’t want to be found.”

“That’s part of it, yes,” Harry admits because that’s just plain obvious, and it’d be a waste of time to deny it. “But I’m also not lying. I told you I won’t tolerate violence.”

Harry knows that he’s grasping at straws, that it must be beyond obvious he’s just saying whatever might change Voldemort’s mind. But what choice does he have? He can’t put his classmates in that kind of danger. They’ve got nothing to do with this. It’s not their fault Voldemort figured out that Harry is probably a Hogwarts student.

They don’t deserve to suffer because of Harry’s mistakes.

Voldemort’s lips make their way downwards towards Harry’s neck, and Harry twists in Voldemort’s embrace.

“Stop that.”

“Why?” Voldemort asks but thankfully draws his head back a bit. “You like it. Don’t try to deny it.”

Harry bites his lips. “I can’t think straight if you do that.” And I don’t want to have to hide another hickey.

The grip on Harry’s torso loosens for a moment, only to become stronger a second later. “Maybe that should tell you something. Your body already knows that it can trust me. It’s only your head that’s giving you a hard time.”

“That’s ridiculous. If anything, my head is giving you a hard time.” Harry sighs and closes his eyes. Why does his life have to be so hard? “Promise me you won’t kidnap any Hogwarts students.”

Voldemort is quiet for a long moment. “In exchange for what?”

Harry’s heart skips a beat. He’s actually considering it. “I don’t know what you want from me. Apart from my name, of course, and I can’t give you that.”

“You can’t hide from me forever. Sooner or later, I’ll find out who you are.”

I know. That’s what I’m so afraid of.

But... if it’s inevitable, I might as well use it as a weapon.

Harry hesitates for a long moment before he decides to throw caution to the wind. “Okay, how about this: If you promise not to do anything shady to find out who I am, I’ll tell you who I am a year from now.”

“A month.”

Harry grinds his teeth. “Six months.”

“Two months. That’s as high as I’ll go. If I used all my resources, I could find you in a matter of weeks, at most.”

Harry hesitates. Two months is such a short time. The next school year won’t even have started by then…

Well… I can always break my promise if I have to. I just need Voldemort to back off for now.

Harry sighs. “All right. Two months. But if I find out you don’t hold up your end of the bargain...”

“Don’t worry about that,” Voldemort whispers into Harry’s ear. “I do not break my word.”

Chapter Text

“Get up, Potter.”

“Why?” Harry asks, rubbing his aching knees. “I’ll just end up on the floor again, anyway.”

Snape sneers. “I said get up, Potter. Stop wasting my time.”

Harry suppresses a curse and climbs back to his feet.

“Again. Clear your mind. Let go of all emotions.”

“I can’t,” Harry snarls. Not while I’m only waiting for the moment you’ll figure out who my soulmate is. This anticipation is killing me.

“Oh, you can’t?” Snape whispers and slips into Harry’s mind without warning.

Memories appear before Harry’s inner eye, but they are less clear than they were the last couple of times. It’s almost like Snape is brushing past them, like he’s looking for a specific memory. Harry tries to pull himself together so that he can find the energy needed to push Snape out of his mind, but it’s hard when everything whirls around him, and he feels like he’s coming apart at the seams.

And then suddenly, Harry finds himself in the foggy surroundings of a soulmate dream.

“You know you can’t force me to talk with you, right?”

Oh, no, you don’t. This is none of your business, Snape-

“Well, you could, but then you’d have to hurt me…”

This is between Voldemort and me and no one else-

“…and prove that there are things more important to you than making sure I’m not in pain-”

Get out of my fucking head!

A second later, Harry finds himself kneeling in Snape’s office once again, breathing heavily. His head and knees pulsate painfully, and he wipes the sweat on his forehead away before it can end up in his eyes.

“Better,” Snape says somewhere above him. “You managed to push me out of your mind, but only after you let me see a memory you didn’t want to share. Tell me, Potter, do you think it’s funny to verbally abuse your soulmate?”

Harry laughs. Verbally abusing Voldemort? That’s impossible. Voldemort would never sit back and let anyone insult him. Besides, Snape complaining about verbal abuse? That’s rich.

And then Harry glances at Snape and sees his tightly clenched jaw and the barely controlled rage in his eyes.

Great. Making Snape angry is the last thing I need.

Slowly, Harry climbs back to his feet. “Sorry, sir, I shouldn’t have laughed. That was inappropriate. But I couldn’t help but notice the irony of your statement-”

“What irony?”

“My soulmate isn’t a push-over. He can stand up for himself.”

After all, he’s one of the most powerful wizards that ever lived. I wonder what Snape would say if he knew that he’s defending Voldemort right now?

Harry shakes his head. It’s pointless to think about stuff like that.

“Anyway, there’s something I don’t get,” Harry says slowly. “You’ve been telling me over and over again that I need to clear my mind, that I need to get rid of my emotions. But that’s exactly what I used right now to push you out of my mind: emotions. So... what’s up with that?”

Snape looks at him for a long moment. “Describe how you pushed me out of your mind. Which emotions did you use?”

“Er...” Did Snape really just ask him to talk about his emotions? Sure, he has more than enough reasons to make sure that Harry learns Occlumency as quickly as possible because then he won’t have to spend time with Harry anymore… But it’s still weird.

“I...” Harry licks his lips, looking for the right words. “It was a mixture of determination, anger, and panic. You had no right to see that memory. Getting you out of my mind felt like a necessity.”

Snape raises an eyebrow. His eyes flicker over Harry’s face like he’s trying to figure something out. Harry forces himself not to cringe. He can’t stand being examined like that.

“You need to clear your mind so that no one can enter your mind in the first place. If that doesn’t work, you need to gather enough determination and willpower to push your opponent out. You don’t necessarily need emotions like anger for that, but they can act as fuel.”

Harry frowns and thinks about that for a second. Maybe it’s easy for an emotionless bastard like Snape to turn off his emotions, but the thing is, Harry doesn’t want to get rid of his emotions. Not even temporarily. And as long as he feels that way, clearing his mind will be close to impossible.

Harry hesitates. “I know I need to learn how to keep others from invading my mind in the first place and how to push them out when they do enter. But can we please focus on the latter, for now?”

Snape folds his arms. “No. You have to learn both at the same time.”

“Why, though? If Voldemort is as good at Legilimency as you claim he is, I won’t be able to stop him from entering my mind, anyway. It’s more important that I learn how to push him out, don’t you think? Shouldn’t we focus on that, first and foremost?”

“Do not call the Dark Lord by his name!” Snape snaps, and Harry wishes he could roll his eyes without angering Snape even more. “Every moment the Dark Lord spends in your mind, he might find something you don’t want him to see-”

“All the more reason to make sure I can push him out of my head as quickly as possible, right? If I focus all my attention on clearing my mind, it will be really hard to find the needed determination to push him out right away. I’m not saying that I don’t want to learn how to clear my mind at all. I just… I think it’s better to focus on that at a later time. I’m horrible at suppressing my emotions, sir. It’s much easier for me to embrace them and use them as a weapon.”

Snape doesn’t answer immediately. He looks at Harry contemplatively and then he nods slowly. “All right, we will try it your way for now. But if I don’t see an improvement by the end of this lesson, I will consider this experiment failed.”

And without giving him a chance to respond, Snape slips back into Harry’s mind.

Chapter Text

“You are a walking contradiction.”

Harry’s heart skips a beat. No, not another soulmate dream...

“What?”

“You say you are weak, and yet you aren’t scared to stand up to me.”

Harry gathers his anger and resentment towards Snape as best as he can and focuses on the desire, the need, to keep his soulmate’s identity a secret for a little while longer.

“You like it when I touch you, and yet you do your best to suppress that desire.”

Harry feels the emotions swell inside of him, but by now, he knows that they aren’t strong enough to push Snape out. Not yet.

“You’re worried I might hurt you, and yet you’re not afraid to anger me. I suppose your political stand is the biggest mystery-”

A jolt of panic goes through Harry. He knows what Voldemort will say next, and he doesn’t want Snape to hear it. It would give him too many clues to work with. Harry lets the panic amplify his other emotions.

Now!

Harry pushes with everything he’s got against the presence in his mind.

A second later, he’s back in Snape’s office, gasping for breath, nails digging into the cold dungeon floor. Sweat runs down his forehead, and he blinks multiple times when some of it ends up in his left eye. God, that was really close…

“We’re done for today. We will continue the day after tomorrow, at 5 pm.”

What? Does that mean Snape won’t comment on what he just saw at all?

Harry licks his dry lips and stands up, ignoring his pounding head and aching knees. Fine. As long as Snape can ignore what he saw, so can I.

Harry’s already halfway across to the door when he realizes something. Slowly he turns around and stares at Snape. “Tomorrow is the End-of-Term Feast.”

“I’m well aware of that.”

Wait. Does that mean...?

“You intend to visit me during the summer?” Harry asks incredulously

Snape sneers. “What, did you think you could learn Occlumency in a single day? How thick-headed are you?”

Harry grinds his teeth. Don’t let him get to you.

“I didn’t think that far ahead!” He’d been too busy worrying about Voldemort, the prophecy, and the Prophet article to give it much thought. Harry shakes his head. “My relatives won’t allow it.”

Snape raises an eyebrow mockingly. “Because you complained to them about me?”

Harry’s lips twitch. For a second, he imagines what it would be like to pull uncle Vernon to the side to tell him that his potions professor is bullying him.

He’d probably say that he wishes all of Harry’s professors would treat him like that.

“What’s so funny?” Snape asks, his voice as cold as ice.

“Nothing.” Harry sighs and rubs his forehead. The Occlumency lesson left him emotionally and physically drained. He doesn’t have enough energy to keep arguing about something Harry’s on board with, in principle. With that deadline hanging over his head, he’s all for continuing the lessons over the summer. But...

“Look, I can try to convince my aunt and uncle to let you visit, but I’m not sure how successful I’ll be.” Harry hesitates for a moment. “It’d be a great help if you could dress like a muggle. My relatives care a lot about keeping up appearances.”

Without waiting for a response, Harry turns around and walks to the door, all the while feeling Snape’s eyes on him.

xxx

When Harry opens his eyes and sees the familiar surroundings, he smiles slightly. Ever since the soulmate dreams started, Harry went to bed with a knot in his stomach. That’s slowly starting to change.

“I’ve got a question for you,” Harry says before Voldemort can try to lead the conversation to a place Harry doesn’t feel comfortable with.

“Okay,” Voldemort says, sounding curious. “Go ahead and ask. I can assure you I will always answer you to the best of my abilities.”

Harry blinks. Leave it up to Voldemort to turn everything into some grand gesture. “Yesterday, you said that you could look into the minds of Hogwarts students and search for memories of our soulmate dreams. I’ve been thinking about that comment quite a lot. Do many people have this... ability?”

“No, not at all. You need to have a lot of patience to master Legilimency. Everyone can enter other people’s minds, but they wouldn’t be able to make sense of what they see. That takes time and experience.”

Harry exhales slowly. Well, that’s a relief. “Do you know anyone else who can read minds besides you?”

“The term mind reading is misleading,” Voldemort explains patiently, and Harry rolls his eyes. Apparently, Snape isn’t the only one who cares about semantics when it comes to Legilimency. “It’s impossible to hear, let alone read, someone’s thoughts when you enter their mind. Most Legilimens only see images of their victim’s memories. Only someone like me who has decades’ worth of experience can sense and correctly interpret the emotions behind these memories.”

Harry shivers and wraps his arms around his torso. Decades worth of experience. How am I supposed to keep Voldemort out of my mind if he’s that far ahead of me?

“Don’t be afraid,” Voldemort says softly. “There are very few Legilimens. I only know three people in Great Britain who are any good at it. Albus Dumbledore, Severus Snape, and Bellatrix Lestrange. And Bellatrix is in Azkaban right now.”

Harry exhales sharply. It’s kind of ironic that Voldemort doesn’t realize he’s the cause for his distress.

“Why are you so worried about this?”

Harry licks his lips. He doesn’t like that tone in Voldemort’s voice. He sounds... dangerously quiet.

“I don’t like the thought of someone entering my mind, maybe even without me noticing. My memories belong to me and no one else. There are many things I’d rather keep to myself...”

Harry lets his voice trail off. It’s the best excuse he could come up with, but he doubts Voldemort buys it, at least not entirely. Surely he understands that I want to protect my mind against him, first and foremost.

“I could teach you how to protect yourself against it.”

Harry’s heart skips a beat. “But n-not here, right?”

Voldemort cocks his head. “Not the traditional way, no. Occlumency is easiest to learn by letting someone into your mind. Someone you trust, ideally. But you can’t enter someone’s mind in a soulmate dream. Still, I could teach you the theoretical side of Occlumency. The best way to clear your mind, strategies for how to push someone out of your head when they do enter, and so on. That alone won’t be of much use when you do encounter a Legilimens, but it will be a big help in two months...”

... when I teach you in person, Harry finishes the sentence mentally. The way Voldemort’s voice lingers makes it obvious he’s thinking these words.

Harry takes a deep breath. “What do you want in exchange for your help?”

There’s gotta be a price. Voldemort isn’t someone who hands out anything for free. If he wants me to reduce the two months even further...

“Nothing.”

Yeah, right. “Stop playing games and tell me your price.”

“There is no price. I want to help and protect you. When are you finally going to accept that? You could ask for anything. As long as it doesn’t harm you or me in some way, I’ll give it to you. No questions asked.”

Harry frowns, trying to find the hidden meaning behind Voldemort’s words. But no matter from what angle he looks at it, he can’t figure out what Voldemort’s aim is this time.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Why not?” Voldemort asks, a hint of anger in his voice.

Harry laughs. “Do you really need to ask? You keep telling me that you don’t want to harm me, and while I believe that you mean it, it didn’t stop you from hurting me yesterday.”

Harry folds his arms. Last night, he had been too thrown off guard to feel much besides fear and a sense of resignation. But when he woke up, there had been this rage inside of him that he didn’t know the cause of right away. It took him almost until noon until he figured out where it came from.

“What are you talking about?”

Harry does his best to ignore the shock in Voldemort’s voice. He doesn’t think Voldemort is faking it, but that’s no reason for Harry to go easy on him.

“You forced me to make a promise I didn’t want to make.”

“I didn’t force you-”

“You would have traumatized hundreds of children if I hadn’t given you my word. You made me choose between two impossible options. How would you feel if I blackmailed you out of nowhere?”

Chapter Text

Voldemort remains silent for a long moment. Then he inclines his head. “I only did what I needed to do to keep you safe, to keep you alive.”

Harry folds his arms. “And in the process, you hurt me. Which you said you wouldn’t do. Or did you only mean physical pain?”

Voldemort growls. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course, I don’t mean only physical pain-”

“And how the hell am I supposed to be sure you actually mean that? You said you wouldn’t hurt me, yet you still grabbed my arms hard enough to bruise, just like you tortured Lucius Malfoy, even though I told you I wouldn’t tolerate violence. And now this. Blackmail. Is this really something you’d do to someone you consider your equal?”

Harry lets the words flow out of his mouth without carrying how they might come across. If there’s something positive about spending every night in Voldemort’s company, it’s that he barely scares Harry anymore. As long as Voldemort doesn’t know who he is, nothing too bad can happen.

Voldemort exhales sharply, and Harry raises an eyebrow. “What? Are you not used to someone questioning you so much?”

“No. I’m not.” Harry blinks, surprised that Voldemort answered so bluntly. “I can understand why you’re angry. You have to understand that this is new to me. I usually don’t need to care what others think of me and my actions. You are very different from the person I expected you to be, and I will need some time to adjust.”

Harry looks down, trying to gather his thoughts. That… was both more honest and self-reflective than he expected it to be.

Harry takes a deep breath. “If I’m not the kind of person you expected, then why can’t you just pretend I don’t exist and-”

Voldemort lets out a frustrated sound, and Harry stops in the middle of his sentence to stare at him.

“I said that you’re different than I thought you would be, not that I don’t want you.” Voldemort cocks his head. “I didn’t expect you to challenge me so much. Looking back, that was stupid. You wouldn’t be worthy of being my equal if you just nodded along to everything I do and say. I don’t want some compliant pet, but someone who’s strong and confident enough to stand up for what he believes in, no matter what I think about it.”

“And you think I’m all of those things? Confident and strong and worthy of being your equal?”

“Yes,” Voldemort says and sneers. “The people responsible for destroying your self-confidence will pay. I promise you that.”

Harry’s heart skips a beat, and his mind goes back to the dream he had last night, where he had seen everything from Voldemort’s perspective. He had thought about punishing the people who hurt Harry then, too.

“I told you I won’t tolerate violence,” Harry says icily. “That comment right there proves that you don’t take your words to heart. I think you’re fooling yourself. You don’t want an equal. You wouldn’t have blackmailed me if you did. You only want someone to patronize, someone to obsess over.”

“That’s not true!”

“Then prove it! Release me from my promise and give me your word that you won’t kidnap any Hogwarts students.”

Harry holds his breath and waits for Voldemort’s response. He doubts that Voldemort will give in to his demand, but there’s still a tiny part of him that isn’t ready to give up hope yet.

Voldemort clenches his fists. “I can’t.”

Harry exhales sharply and closes his eyes. “I knew you’d say that.”

Why does he even bother arguing with Voldemort? Harry will always get the short end of the stick. Voldemort is too powerful, too sure of himself, too stubborn. He should rather focus on stuff that will actually get him somewhere, like learning Occlumency.

Harry feels something touching his cheek, and he snaps his eyes open. Without him noticing, Voldemort stepped up to him and laid his hand against Harry’s cheek.

“I wish it wouldn’t have to be this way,” Voldemort mutters and brushes his thumb over the skin under Harry’s eye. “I wish you’d trust me enough that I didn’t need to blackmail you. If I have to hurt you to keep you alive, that's what I will do, even if it pains me.”

Harry shivers. He’s not even sure why. It could be a reaction to Voldemort’s hand against his cheek, or maybe he’s just scared. He’s not sure. He just knows that Voldemort feels very far away right now, even though he stands right in front of him.

“I want to believe you,” Harry whispers. “I want to believe you have my best interests at heart. But you have given me barely any reason to trust you until now. How can I be sure you won’t blackmail me again the next time something bothers you?”

Voldemort’s hand moves from Harry’s cheek into his hair and to the back of his head. Too tired to put up a fight, Harry allows Voldemort to pull him to his chest. Voldemort’s other arm wraps around his lower back, and Harry leans against Voldemort’s chest.

He should probably push Voldemort away and refuse any kind of physical contact, but to what end? It’s not like that will discourage Voldemort, not really, at least. And even though Harry hates to admit it, he enjoys being close to Voldemort. Not even the possibility that Snape might stumble over this memory is enough for him to push back. Harry feels trapped in the best way possible.

“Keeping you alive is my highest priority,” Voldemort whispers against his hair. “I will do everything in my power to make sure you survive. That includes doing things you don’t like. But I can assure you that I will never blackmail you or hurt you for any other reason.”

Harry grimaces. Voldemort sounds like he means it, but given everything that happened since the soulmate dreams started, Harry can’t be sure he won’t change his mind.

“And what will happen in two months when I tell you who I am? Will you lock me in a room so that no one can kill me?”

Voldemort’s arms tighten around him. “Of course not!”

“Are you sure about that? You’re obsessed with me and with keeping me safe. It’s not far-fetched to assume you’ll take some extreme measures to make sure I don’t die.”

“I won’t treat you like a prisoner!” Voldemort snarls and pulls Harry closer to his chest. Harry turns his head to the side so that his face doesn’t get smothered. He can feel Voldemort’s heartbeat against his ear. It’s beating significantly faster than Harry’s right now.

“Do you trust me so little that you’re afraid I’ll lock you up?”

Harry shrugs. “As I said, you’ve given me barely any reason to trust you until now.”

“I published the Prophet article-”

“-which proved that you want to keep me safe, yes, but not that I can trust you. You published it partially to see how I would react to it, to find out who I am. So, if anything, it made me distrust you even more.”

Voldemort’s heart starts beating even faster. Interesting.

Voldemort inclines his head, and his chin comes to rest on Harry’s head. “If I had known that, I wouldn’t have written the article.”

“Really? You got what you wanted out of it. And didn’t you say you did it mainly to make Hogwarts safer for me? Or was that a lie?”

Voldemort growls. The sound comes from somewhere so deep inside of him Harry can feel the vibrations against his ear. “Why are you making this so hard for me? I only want to keep you safe and by my side.”

“You said you don’t want a compliant pet. You can’t have both.”

Voldemort takes a deep breath. His hand slowly moves upwards along Harry’s spine, making him shiver. Once it reaches Harry’s hairline, his hand moves downwards again. He repeats that over and over again until Harry rubs his cheek against Voldemort’s chest and closes his eyes.

“I want to gain your trust,” Voldemort says after a while. “But I don’t know how.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever completely trust you,” Harry mutters, still with his eyes closed. “You’ve done too many horrible things.”

“I’ll stop doing them.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that you did them in the first place,” Harry responds. He feels sleepy and comfortable and like he’ll fall asleep any second. Absently, he wonders if that’s even possible. After all, this is a dream. He’s already sleeping. “You should have thought this through before you decided to become a Dark Lord.”

“Maybe. But I can’t change the past.”

Voldemort’s hand stops moving and comes to rest at Harry’s neck. “Tell me how I can gain your trust. I know you said that I should come up with something on my own, but apparently, I don’t know you well enough to figure out what you might want. You can ask for anything, anything at all, and I’ll give it to you.”

Harry’s heart skips a beat. Slowly, he pulls his head back slightly to look at Voldemort’s face. “Anything?”

“Anything that doesn’t put you at risk or keeps you away from me,” Voldemort corrects himself.

Harry bites his lips. Even with that restriction, quite a few things immediately come to his mind. The question is if and how Harry can ask for them without giving away who he is.

“How many things can I ask for?” Harry asks cautiously.

“As many as you want.”

Harry hesitates. He can’t help but think that this is a trap. He’s too sleepy to be sure that he’s not missing something crucial. It’d probably be better to think everything Voldemort said through when he wakes up and is a bit more clear-headed.

“I’ll need some time to think about what I want,” Harry says, laying his head back against Voldemort’s chest.

“Of course. Take all the time you need.”

Chapter Text

Harry sits in the corner of an abandoned classroom, shivering, the invisibility cloak wrapped around him. A glance at his watch tells him that curfew starts in half an hour, and he gulps. He has no idea how he’s supposed to get his emotions under control by then. The guilt inside of his chest only seems to grow, becoming more and more unbearable by the second.

Harry pulls his legs to his chest and presses his face against his knees. He still doesn’t know how he made it through the End-of-Term Feast. It started out fine. The atmosphere had been gloomy, but Harry had expected that. After Voldemort published that article, Harry had only seen serious or scared faces every time he left the hospital wing. The articles that followed Voldemort’s probably didn’t help. The last two days, the Prophet had been full of interviews with concerned parents, ministry officials - including Fudge - and even someone who claimed to have worked at Hogwarts at some point. None of the articles painted a particularly rosy picture of the situation.

Still, despite that, the End-of-Term Feast had been bearable until Dumbledore stood up and gave his speech. Harry had averted his eyes the second Dumbledore started talking about Cedric, a knot of discomfort forming in his stomach. But that feeling had been nothing compared to the guilt that threatened to overwhelm him when Dumbledore raised his glass in honor of Harry, the rest of the staff and most of the students following his example. Dumbledore made it sound like Harry was some kind of hero for making it out alive while Cedric died, like surviving out of sheer luck was something to be admired, something to be proud of-

Harry suppresses a shiver and hugs his legs tighter.

Every single one of them would turn their backs on him if they knew Harry all but hugged Voldemort last night. They’d be disgusted with him, and Harry can’t even blame them. Hell, he’s disgusted with himself.

Harry wipes the tears off his face and stares at the wall across from him. He’ll give himself ten more minutes to calm down. Then he will go back to the hospital wing, no matter what kind of emotional state he’s in, and ask Madam Pomfrey for a favor.

xxx

Harry reaches for the vial, but Madam Pomfrey pulls it out of his reach at the last second.

“Before I give you this, I have to inform you of the risks associated with it.”

Harry frowns. “You already did that.”

“Yes, but that was over a week ago. At the time, you weren’t...” Madam Pomfrey clears her throat, looking uncomfortable. With a jolt, Harry realizes what she was probably about to say. You weren’t in the right frame of mind. You were too delirious to understand much of anything.

“Anyway, it can’t hurt to remind you of the dangers.”

“Fine,” Harry says, trying to keep his irritation at bay. He knows Madam Pomfrey only has his best interests at heart, that she just wants to make sure Harry doesn’t get hurt. He reminds himself of that, over and over again, as she explains to him how dangerous it can be to consume too much Dreamless Sleep. As if Harry didn’t know that already.

“...as long as you only take it once per week and never two nights in a row, you will be fine,” Madam Pomfrey concludes eventually. “Without supervision, anything more than that could lead to lasting health issues. Is that clear?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Madam Pomfrey sighs and holds the vial out again. This time, she doesn’t pull her hand back when Harry reaches out to take the potion. After giving Harry a long and thoughtful look, she places five more vials on Harry’s nightstand.

Harry stares at the vials, his heart beating faster all of a sudden. He didn’t ask for more than one dose, didn’t think Madam Pomfrey would be willing to give him more vials for the summer. She doesn’t seem to be a big fan of Dreamless Sleep.

Harry opens his mouth to thank her, but he can’t seem to find the right words. With these vials, he’ll be able to sleep without dreaming of Voldemort. That’s insanely valuable. Madam Pomfrey nods at him while Harry is still struggling for words and turns around. Harry follows her with his eyes all the way to her office, a lump forming in his throat.

After Madam Pomfrey closed the door behind her, Harry slowly uncorks the vial and looks at the clear liquid. It’s crazy to think that something so simple, so innocent-looking, is powerful enough to suppress soulmate dreams. Nothing else can do that, at least to Harry’s knowledge.

Harry shakes his head and raises the vial to his lips. He can’t stand the thought of seeing Voldemort tonight. Not after Dumbledore’s speech. His emotions are all over the place, and he can’t be sure he’ll remain calm and rational with Voldemort standing right in front of him. He just needs one night to himself, that’s all.

Harry gulps the potion down and is asleep seconds later.

xxx

The next day goes by in a blur. Before he realizes it, he’s sitting in the Hogwarts Express on his way back to London. Knowing that he won’t see his friends for at least a few weeks, he tries to enjoy the time with them as best as he can. But every time he looks them in the eye, his chest hurts. There’s a pretty good chance he’ll never see them again after today. There’s so much that could go wrong in the next couple of weeks.

Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle come by at one point to taunt them. Harry barely listens to what Malfoy has to say, too busy wondering if Malfoy will notice that something is different about his father when he comes home. Lucius Malfoy laughed as Voldemort humiliated and tortured a fourteen-year-old, and he was tortured himself a couple of days ago when Voldemort found out about the diary. Surely those two experiences changed him - or at least his mood - in some way. Harry wouldn’t want to be around him if he were Lucius’ son.

Harry pushes the thought aside when his friends end up cursing the Slytherins for something Malfoy said. It’s none of his business, really. No one cares what goes on at the Dursleys, either, after all.

Harry smiles faintly when Fred and George, who apparently helped Ron and Hermione curse the Slytherins, sit down across from him after pushing Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle out of the way. It’s good to have the twins close by. It means he won’t have to look for them to give them the thousand Galleons that never should have been his in the first place.

Harry sighs and leans his head against the window. In a few hours, he’ll be back at the Dursleys, waiting for Snape to show up. He can’t decide if he’s dreading his second Occlumency lesson or looking forward to it.

Chapter Text

Harry drags his trunk to the middle of his room and falls onto his bed. Lazily, he looks around. The room looks exactly like he left it behind, so much so that it sends a chill up his spine. It’s like the room was only waiting for him to come back, like his personal little prison cell.

Harry snorts and shakes his head. What a stupid thought. Sure, his room came close to becoming what he imagines a prison cell to be like once, but that was years ago. Uncle Vernon removed the bars on his window and the cat flap, and the Dursleys won’t dare to do something like that again. Not while they think Harry’s godfather is a mass murderer.

Harry sighs and closes his eyes. He’ll have to go downstairs soon to tell his relatives about Snape coming by, but he can’t bring himself to do that yet. He just needs to rest his eyes for a moment.

xxx

By now, the surroundings are so familiar to him that Harry instantly realizes what happened.

So much for just closing my eyes for a-

Something crashes against Harry, and all air gets knocked out of his chest. Harry stiffens, trying to figure out what’s going on. He feels arms on his back, pulling him against a chest so tightly that Harry has trouble getting enough air back into his lungs.

Harry blinks multiple times, trying to make sense of the situation. Whatever prompted this crushing embrace, it doesn’t look like he’ll get out of it anytime soon, so he slowly forces himself to relax. He waits for Voldemort to say something, to explain himself, but all he hears is the rapid heartbeat against his ear. He swallows when he realizes Voldemort is shaking all over. Harry feels his own heartbeat picking up.

If Voldemort were anyone else, Harry would think he’s scared and seeking comfort. But that’s ridiculous. Voldemort doesn’t get scared, and even if he did, he wouldn’t show it openly, let alone go to someone for comfort. Right?

Harry hesitates before he brings up his arms anyway and wraps them around Voldemort’s torso. Even if Voldemort isn’t scared, he’s... something. Whatever caused him to all but run into Harry, it’s probably something serious. Harry rubs Voldemort’s back in slow circles and closes his eyes in relief when Voldemort’s hands finally stop shaking so much.

“Don’t do that again,” Voldemort says, his voice raw and rough.

Harry licks his lips, his hands stilling on Voldemort’s back. “I don’t... I don’t know what you mean.”

Voldemort stiffens and tightens his grip on Harry even more. “You don’t- Are you serious?”

Harry relaxes at the anger in Voldemort’s voice. That’s at least something he can make sense of, something he knows how to deal with.

Harry opens his mouth to tell Voldemort that yes, he is serious, but he doesn’t get that far. The soulmate dream dissolves around him, and a second later, Harry blinks up the ceiling of his bedroom, a loud ringing sound in his ears. Harry frowns. It sounds like-

Harry glances at his watch and curses. Hastily, he jumps out of his bed and rips the door open.

“Dudley, get the door,” uncle Vernon says from the living room, quickly followed by a loud explosion and the sound of gunfire. Harry suppresses a relieved chuckle. He should have known they’d be watching TV.

Dudley groans. “Do I have to?”

Harry runs down the stairs as quietly as he can, calling towards the living room, “no, you don’t, I’ve got it.”

He stops in front of the door to rub the sand out of his eyes and run his hands over his shirt to remove the wrinkles left behind from sleeping in his clothes. Then he reaches for the handle and pulls the door open.

Harry frowns. For a second, he thinks he got it wrong. Maybe he read the clock wrong, and it’s not 5 pm yet, after all, because this man looks nothing like his potions professor. Then Harry forces himself to only look at the man’s face, and he grips the door handle a bit tighter. Who would have thought that clothes have that big of an effect on how someone looks? Instead of his usual dark robe, Snape wears a black shirt and midnight blue jeans. Harry can’t help but be impressed by how effortlessly Snape picked appropriate muggle clothes.

Snape curls his lip. “Will you let me in or what?”

Harry shakes his head slightly and steps aside. Snape passing for a muggle might make things easier, but he can’t count on that. He hopes his aunt and uncle won’t be too angry he didn’t warn them.

“Who is it?” uncle Vernon asks from the living room.

“Oh, no one, really.” Harry glances at Snape and cringes. That might not have been the best thing to say. “Anyway, we’ll be in my room. You won’t hear a thing from us.”

Harry walks towards the stairs, hoping that uncle Vernon is too focused on whatever show they are watching to listen to his words. Harry walks to the stairs and places his foot on the first step when he hears heavy footsteps from the living room. Harry closes his eyes for a second and suppresses a curse. He should have known better than to hope uncle Vernon would let it go.

Harry turns his head towards the living room door and braces for the worst.

Uncle Vernon’s eyes find Snape almost immediately. He blinks a few times and frowns slightly. Harry can’t really blame him. The only people who visited Harry at the Dursley’s were wizards, and none of them wore clothes uncle Vernon would have approved of. Snape could have passed as a muggle for all intents and purposes.

“Who-”

Vernon gets interrupted by a loud yelp. “You!”

Harry glances over uncle Vernon’s shoulder. Without him noticing, aunt Petunia stepped up behind him. She has a duster in one hand that she’s clenching so tightly her knuckles have turned white.

“Tuney,” Snape says and raises an eyebrow mockingly. “It’s a pleasure to see you again.”

...What?

Harry grabs the stair railing to steady himself. Why the hell had Snape never mentioned he knows his aunt?

Uncle Vernon turns around to look at his wife. “You know this man?”

Aunt Petunia avoids her husband’s gaze and looks past him at Harry. “I don’t want him in my house. Tell him to go.”

Harry grimaces. Well, this is going just great. “You won’t have to talk with him. We’ll just be in my room, you won’t even see us-”

“I don’t care. I don’t want him here.”

“Is this really how you greet an old friend, Tuney?”

Aunt Petunia’s eyes snap towards Snape for a moment.

“Stop calling me that!” She looks back at Harry, and he tenses at the anger in her eyes. “You can’t just invite anyone here without asking us first!”

Harry flinches. More often than not, his relatives demand unreasonable things of him, but in this case, he can even understand aunt Petunia’s anger. But…

“It doesn’t matter that I didn’t inform you beforehand. I wouldn’t have thought to mention Snape’s name. I didn’t know you know each other.”

Harry looks back and forth between Snape and his aunt, waiting for someone to offer an explanation. He’s not surprised when he doesn’t get one. He’s used to people not telling him anything.

Uncle Vernon clears his throat. His face is still turned towards his wife. “Petunia, darling, is this man… Is he…”

The way his voice lingers makes it obvious what he’s asking.

“He is. He was a friend of my sister.”

What?! Harry’s eyes snap towards Snape. Four years. Harry was his student for four years, and Snape never said anything that made him think he knew Harry’s mother, let alone that they were friends.

What else is he hiding?

Snape sneers, utterly ignoring Harry’s look. “This is a waste of time. Since Potter failed to tell you why I’m here - which isn’t surprising, he’s known to be unreliable - I will tell you myself. I intend to teach him Occlumency. If you want to know what that is, ask your nephew. I will stop by every couple of days, and I’m not interested in hearing your complaints.”

Uncle Vernon turns around slowly, his eyes narrowed, and his nostrils flared. “This is our house, and we don’t want you here. If you don’t go, that’s trespassing.”

Snape raises an eyebrow. “Do I look like I care? You can call the cops, but they won’t find me. You’ll only embarrass yourself.”

Harry shivers at the coldness in his voice. Snape walks towards the stairs, and Harry presses himself against the stair railing to make enough room for Snape to slip past him.

Harry glances at his aunt and uncle and catches their incredulous and fearful faces. “Sorry. I can’t stop him either, even if I wanted to. I can’t use my, you know.”

He waves his hand around, and his relatives flinch back. Harry sighs and follows Snape up the stairs. Maybe he should have just kept his mouth shut.

Chapter Text

Harry’s hands are shaking when he closes the door behind Snape and himself. He’d never been good at suppressing his emotions, which had gotten him into a lot of trouble in the past, especially two years ago when he blew up aunt Marge.

Right now, though, Harry’s not even trying to control his anger. He ignores the voice in his head, warning him that he might get expelled if he isn’t careful, and turns around to glare at Snape.

Not only was Snape unnecessarily condescending towards the Dursleys - which more than likely will fall back on Harry - no, he also failed to mention that he’d been friends with Harry’s mother. And Snape wasn’t even the only one who didn’t say anything. No one else told him about it either. Sirius and Lupin must have known about it, and yet they only ever talked about the animosity between Snape and Harry’s father.

Harry is so tired of everyone around him keeping things from him. It’s like every time someone tells him something about his parents, he has to adjust the image he has of them in his mind. He’s not even sure what it means that his mother was friends with Snape, of all people. Maybe he wasn’t such an asshole when he was younger? Harry can only hope so.

“This is your room?”

Snape’s eyes wander around, taking in the battered furniture, Dudley’s broken toys on the shelf, and the lack of any personal items or pictures.

“Oh, no, this is just the room I use to store all the stuff I don’t need.”

Harry raises his chin slightly when he gets a sharp look in response. Really, what did Snape expect? Harry never made a big secret out of the fact that he’d prefer to stay at Hogwarts over the summer.

Harry watches as Snape glances at Harry’s trunk that still lies in the middle of the room.

“You haven’t even unpacked yet? What a surprise. Care to tell me what was more important than telling your relatives that I will visit you during the summer?”

Harry blushes and glances at his bed involuntarily. In his haste to reach the door before the Dursleys could, he left the sheets in a tangled mess, partly hanging onto the floor.

Snape snorts exasperatedly and rolls his eyes. “Teenagers.”

For a couple of blissful seconds, Harry can’t make sense of the remark. Then he chokes on his own spit, mortified. “No, that’s not- I was sleeping, not- what you think. I would have referred to unpack, actually. I’m tired of all these soulmate dreams-”

“Really? I’m supposed to believe that your soulmate is just as lazy as you? What are the chances that both of you are asleep at the same time in the middle of the day?”

In any other situation, Harry would have avoided talking about his soulmate at all costs. But given what Snape thinks he did…

“I’m not lazy, and neither is my soulmate. In fact, he told me he needs less sleep than...” any human alive “...most people...”

Harry lets his voice trail off at the end and frowns. Why had Voldemort been asleep in the middle of the day? It doesn’t make sense if you really think about it.

“I wonder how he even managed to fall asleep,” Harry mutters absently. “He was so...” Harry hesitates, looking for the right word. Scared? Distraught? Out of it? “Upset. And angry at me, I suppose, but that’s hardly anything new.”

Snape sneers. “I’m not surprised you managed to upset the one person you should always put first-”

“I didn’t do anything!” Harry snaps. “We didn’t even see each other last night, and before that, everything was more or less fine between us.”

Harry shakes his head and suppresses a curse. He shouldn’t have risen to the bait. Snape is just being a dick, as usual. They should really get on with the Occlumency lesson before Harry ends up saying something he’ll regret.

“What did you mean you didn’t see each other?” Snape’s voice is barely more than a whisper. “If you pulled an all-nighter, this lesson will be a complete waste of time.”

“I didn’t. I just took some Dreamless Sleep.” When Snape looks at him sharply, Harry feels the need to add, “Madam Pomfrey approved of it.”

“Did you warn your soulmate?”

“I- What?” Harry asks, taken aback by the question. Is that really something people do, or is Snape just messing with him? Why should he have warned Voldemort?

“You’re even stupider than I thought,” Snape snarls, disgust in every syllable. “Have you, for one second, thought about what your soulmate would think when you didn’t show up? There are only three possible reasons why you didn’t, and they are all cause for concern: you didn’t sleep, you took Dreamless Sleep, or... you died.”

Harry blinks. He hates to admit that Snape has a point. He remembers how much Voldemort’s body had been shaking and grimaces. Did Voldemort really think Harry might have died?

“Great. Now he’ll be even more insufferable.” Just what he needed. He should never have let it slip that he keeps ending up in mortal danger.

Snape growls. “You disgust me.”

Harry clenches his teeth. He’s used to Snape insulting him, but this...

This is low. Even for Snape.

“How come you are so intent on defending someone you don’t even know? Have you considered the possibility that I might have good reasons for wanting to distance myself from my soulmate? That he might harm me if he knew who I am?”

Harry glares at Snape, absently noticing that he’s breathing heavily and that he has clenched his hands into fists.

Snape looks at him for a long moment, his face completely blank. “Given the way you talk about him and what I’ve seen in your mind, it seems like you are the abusive one.”

Harry shakes his head and grabs his trunk to pull it into a corner of the room. He keeps his mind on the task, swallowing down the words on the tip of his tongue. Snape has made up his mind, and he doubts anything he says will be enough to change it. And why should he bother, anyway? It won’t make his situation any better if Snape is on his side. In the end, he will have to deal with his problems on his own, just as he always has.

“Can we begin the lesson now?”

Chapter Text

The second Occlumency lesson is just as nerve-racking and taxing as the first one. Every time a soulmate dream appears before Harry’s inner eye, a jolt of panic goes through him. It helps him with pushing Snape out of his head, but it also puts him on edge the entire time.

He can’t wait for the lesson to end.

Harry is kneeling on the floor, panting heavily, after the seventh time Snape entered his head, when Snape says, “You need to stop waiting until I find a memory you don’t want me to see.”

“I’m not waiting for anything.” Harry pushes to his feet, suppressing a grimace. He’s pretty sure his knees will be blue tomorrow. “It’s just hard to gather enough willpower right away.”

Snape curls his lips. “Do you think the Dark Lord will take pity on your weakness? He won’t show mercy, no matter what you say or do. You need to pull yourself together and try harder. Otherwise, you might as well lay back and wait for him to tear you to pieces.”

Harry straightens his clothes to avoid looking at Snape. He already knows all of that. Snape didn’t need to put it into so many words.

“Why do you always end up seeing memories I don’t want to share, anyway?” Harry asks in an attempt to change the subject.

His soulmate dreams only make up a minuscule part of his memories, and yet Snape ends up seeing bits and pieces of them almost every time he enters Harry’s mind. It doesn’t make sense if all of his memories are equally likely to show up.

“I see what is at the forefront of your mind first. That means the more time you think about something and the more significance you give a memory, the more likely it is for me to pick it up. In a few weeks or months - depending on how quickly you learn - I can teach you how to bury memories you want to hide deep inside your mind so that they will be harder for the Dark Lord to find.”

Harry licks his lips. He didn’t even know that was a possibility. “Can’t you teach me that first?”

“No. It’s the part of Occlumency that is hardest to master. You’re still struggling with the basics. Legilimens.”

Harry feels a brief flash of anger before a whirlwind of images takes up any available space in his head. Snape rarely gives him any time to prepare for the mental assault.

Quirrell screams in agony as Harry presses his hands against his face, unable to see anything through the pain. It feels like Harry’s head will burst open along his scar at any moment.

Cedric looks at him with dead, empty eyes, saying, “Look at you. Ready to accept death without fighting. Do you know how much I would give to be in your situation? To get a second chance?”

A sixteen-year-old Tom Riddle screams as Harry drives the basilisk fang into the diary. Ink flows out of the book like blood, tainting Harry’s hands.

Harry looks at the cat flap, waiting for dinner to arrive, his stomach a tight knot, wondering if someone will look for him when he doesn’t show up at Hogwarts.

“Keeping you alive is my highest priority,” Voldemort whispers, pressing Harry against his chest. “I will do everything in my power to make sure you survive. That includes doing things you don’t like.”

Harry pushes as hard as he can against the presence in his mind, and a second later, he’s back in his room, feeling distraught. For a second, he wonders what it means about him that all of those memories are at the forefront of his mind before he pushes the thought aside. That’s not important right now.

“That was barely any better. You’re still wasting too much time and energy.”

Harry stands up, feeling lightheaded, and wipes the sweat off his forehead. Snape looks at him for a long moment before his eyes focus on something behind Harry.

“I didn’t think Petunia would allow a cat into her house.”

Harry frowns and glances behind himself briefly, but of course, there’s no cat to be seen.

“She wouldn’t,” Harry responds, wondering what Snape is talking about. “She barely even tolerates Hedwig.”

Snape raises an eyebrow. “What was the cat flap for, then?”

Harry freezes. Of course. That’s why Snape thought the Dursleys had a cat. Shit.

“Oh, that. Well, we... we did have a cat for a short time. I just... forgot.”

“You’re lying.”

Harry blinks, trying to look as innocent as possible. “Why should I lie about that?”

“You tell me.”

Harry shakes his head, wracking his brain for an explanation that might satisfy Snape. “I don’t see how it’s important if we had a cat or not-”

“Legilimens.”

Harry flinches. He should have expected Snape to pull a stunt like that.

Harry bites his lips to keep himself from crying out when uncle Vernon grabs his upper arm and shoves him into his cupboard. After the door closed behind him, Harry tenderly touches his arm and only relaxes once he is sure uncle Vernon’s grip won’t leave behind more than a bruise.

“Aunt Petunia? What were the names of my parents?” Harry flinches back when aunt Petunia turns around to glare at him, snapping, “I told you not to mention them. Now stop asking questions.”

Harry straightens his back, glad that he finally finished his chores for today, when Dudley and two of his friends come into the kitchen to get ice cream, their muddy boots destroying his hard work. Dudley grins at him, ice cream running down his chin. “We don’t want you to get bored, do we?” Harry ignores their laughs and starts anew.

Harry’s stomach growls when, finally, the cat flap opens, and aunt Petunia shoves in a bowl of soup. Harry jumps out of his bed and picks it up, grimacing slightly. He doubts that it will be enough to still the ache in his stomach.

Harry finds himself back in his room, on the verge of throwing up. He keeps his eyes on the floor, taking deep breaths in through his nose and out through his mouth. It’s worse enough that Snape saw that Harry didn’t fight back against his relatives. He refuses to show even more weakness by emptying his stomach.

Harry hears footsteps coming towards him, but he keeps his eyes stubbornly on the floor, even as Snape opens the door and leaves the room. Harry strains his ears, listening to the stairs creaking. He holds his breath, waiting for the front door to open. When that doesn’t happen, Harry climbs back to his feet, feeling shaky all over. He doesn’t want Snape to talk with his relatives, discussing the best ways to make Harry’s life miserable. Both the Dursleys and Snape are already good enough at that as it is.

Harry walks to his door, frustrated that his legs refuse to carry him steadily. If this is how his body reacts to Snape finding out how his relatives treat him, then what will happen when Snape figures out who his soulmate is?

Harry grips the stair railing, afraid his legs might give out under him otherwise. He’s about halfway down the stairs when he stops in his tracks.

Snape stands before the cupboard under the stairs, looking inside. After a second, he raises his gaze and locks eyes with Harry.

Harry squares his shoulders and refuses to look away. Snape can make fun of him all he wants. Harry got mocked for all kinds of stuff all his life. This is no different.

Something in Snape’s expression shifts, and he breaks eye contact.

“What’s going on here?”

Harry looks behind Snape and sees uncle Vernon in the doorway to the living room. It’s a mystery to Harry how he could have missed his heavy footsteps. Uncle Vernon’s eyes wander from Snape up to Harry, and he scrunches his face up in disgust.

“What did you do up there?”

Harry licks his lips. He can imagine how he must look like. It’s still a struggle to stay on his feet, and he knows he’s gripping the stair railing too tightly. Not to mention that he’s so sweaty his hair sticks to his face.

Harry opens his mouth - though he has no idea how to answer uncle Vernon’s question - when he sees Snape turning around slowly. Harry closes his mouth and braces himself for whatever will happen next.

Chapter Text

Harry stares at the back of Snape’s head, growing tenser with every second he remains silent. What is he waiting for?

“Get out.”

Harry’s eyes snap back to uncle Vernon, and he recoils at the look on his face. He’s used to uncle Vernon looking at him less than favorably. That’s not the problem. It’s the darkness in his eyes that sends a shiver down Harry’s spine. Uncle Vernon’s eyes had never glinted quite like that before.

“Pack your stuff and leave. I don’t ever want to lay eyes on you again.”

Harry licks his lips, his mouth suddenly very dry. He shoves his worry over what Snape might do to the side and tries to figure out what he did to anger uncle Vernon. He had never threatened to kick Harry out before.

“Why?” Harry asks hesitantly. “What did I do?”

Uncle Vernon laughs, ugly and mean. “What didn’t you do? Ever since we took you in, you brought us nothing but trouble and pain. I’ve lost count of how often your aunt broke down in tears because of you. All just because you couldn’t control yourself, because you had to have your way. And it only grew worse when you started your education.”

Uncle Vernon spits out the word as if it disgusts him to call it that.

Harry feels rooted to the spot, heart beating erratically in his chest. The words aren’t too bad. He had always known that uncle Vernon despises his freakishness. It’s the utter loathing with which the words spill from his mouth that gets to him.

Uncle Vernon hates Harry. With all his heart.

The realization shouldn’t have been such a surprise, but for some reason, it still rocks Harry to his very core.

“Ever since you started going to that- to that school, you’ve used every opportunity to hurt us. Sometimes with the help of your freakish friends, sometimes on your own. And then you brought this man here-” Uncle Vernon breaks off and shakes his head. He grinds his teeth, a vein pulsing menacingly at his temple. “I will not, under any circumstances, tolerate that particular kind of freakishness inside my house. It goes against human nature, and I will not allow you to spread it around. I won’t give you the satisfaction of infesting my family with it. Enough is enough. We have indulged you for far too long. This ends today.”

Harry still feels frozen in place. He has no idea what that last part was about, but that hardly matters. The intent behind uncle Vernon’s words is clear enough as it is. And Harry…

Harry doesn’t know what to think. He wouldn’t mind getting kicked out if he had somewhere to go where he’s safe from Voldemort. He can’t stay the rest of the summer at the Leaky Cauldron as he did before his third year. Voldemort has too many followers who would try to kidnap him. He supposes he could stay at the Weasley’s for a while or maybe even with Hermione and her parents. But he can’t move in with them. They have their own lives, their own family dynamics. He would feel like an intruder.

“You can’t just kick me out,” Harry says, surprised how even his voice sounds. Uncle Vernon narrows his eyes, a muscle jumping in his cheek. Harry wonders, briefly, if he should have made his voice shake on purpose. Maybe that would have soothed uncle Vernon’s temper.

“Oh, I can’t?” Uncle Vernon whispers viciously. “Don’t be so sure of that. I did take certain precautions years ago. I can get rid of you if I have to.”

Harry shivers, ice-cold dread forming in his stomach. What did he do? Buy another gun? Or maybe some kind of poison Harry won’t be able to detect before it’s too late? Harry doesn’t want to believe that Uncle Vernon would harm him severely, but the dark look on his uncle’s face makes him more than a little cautious.

Harry shakes his head and briefly glances at the back of Snape’s head, wondering why he’s just standing there, doing absolutely nothing.

“I don’t... What brought this on, anyway? Today isn’t the first time a wizard visited me here.”

Just last summer, the Weasleys made more of a mess in the living room than Snape ever could with his mere presence. Even Hagrid caused more harm than Snape when he gave Dudley the piggy tail.

“You don’t...” Uncle Vernon breaks off to grind his teeth. “Don’t play games with me, boy. I can see right through you. It’s beyond obvious what the two of you did up there.”

Uncle Vernon’s eyes slide over him, lingering at Harry’s sweaty hair and his clothes, disheveled from falling to his knees over and over again, and for another blissful second, Harry still doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Then a jolt goes through him, and he feels hot and cold at the same time.

Harry’s eyes find the back of Snape’s head again.

Did uncle Vernon really think Snape and I... what? Kissed? Made out?

“Enough.”

Harry feels himself going still all over. Snape sounds so quiet and controlled. It makes the hairs on Harry’s neck stand on end.

Harry glances over at his uncle again and sucks in a little breath when he sees that Uncle Vernon’s eyes have glassed over and that he’s swaying slightly on his feet. Harry looks back and forth between the back of Snape’s head and uncle Vernon’s face, wondering if he should interfere. Whatever Snape is doing, it doesn’t seem to be particularly healthy for uncle Vernon.

“Sir, what-”

Harry cuts himself off when uncle Vernon shakes his head and blinks a few times, the glassy look disappearing from his eye.

“What did you do?” Uncle Vernon asks, fear in every syllable. Snape reaches inside his pockets, and uncle Vernon flinches back violently when two spells hit him in his chest in quick succession, one yellowish and the other purple. Harry remains frozen on his step, too scared to move a finger.

He has no idea what Snape is doing, and that freaks him out more than anything else.

Snape brushes past uncle Vernon into the living room, and Harry hears two terrified shrieks, one coming from Petunia, the other from Dudley, before they break off abruptly. Harry feels his limbs shaking and absently wonders if he should sit down so that he can’t fall down the stairs. Before he can decide, Snape comes back and walks to the door without glancing at Harry even once. His face is perfectly even and controlled, and Harry desperately wishes he’d show some kind of emotion. Anything.

Snape pulls the door open and stops for a moment, looking outside.

“I will be back as soon as I can.”

Snape closes the door behind himself, and Harry gasps for breath, only now realizing that he was holding his breath. His knees buckle worrisomely, so he hastily sits down and buries his head between his knees.

It feels like ages until he finally stops shaking. When he raises his head, uncle Vernon is gone.

***

It doesn’t take Harry long to realize that there’s something wrong with the Dursleys. For one thing, they don’t look at him, not even in passing. However, they don’t seem to avoid looking at him. Harry knows how that feels like. No, it’s almost like they are seeing through him, like he’s invisible to them.

Harry wonders how long the effect will last and what he should do once uncle Vernon becomes aware of Harry’s existence. He doesn’t know what he should do when uncle Vernon tells him to leave again.

The next few hours, Harry spends searching for a solution to this new problem - as if he didn’t have enough of those already - until his eyes start to get heavy. He bites his lips and longingly glances at the vials filled with Dreamless Sleep. He knows he can’t risk taking the potion two nights in a row. Madam Pomfrey made it more than clear how dangerous that would be. But he still can’t help but long for them.

Feeling more exhausted than he did in a long time, Harry crawls into his bed and closes his eyes.

Chapter Text

Harry relaxes slightly when Voldemort doesn’t just run into him like he did earlier. That must mean he calmed down somewhat. Harry sighs and sinks to the floor, waiting for Voldemort to demand an explanation. If Snape is right - and Harry is pretty certain he is - Voldemort thought Harry died. That must have felt like a complete loss of control to him. Harry isn’t looking forward to the unavoidable accusations, not least because he is feeling a bit dizzy and his limbs are as heavy as lead. Every movement feels like a chore.

Harry keeps his eyes on Voldemort when he finally moves towards him.

Voldemort sits down beside him and lays an arm around Harry’s shoulder, pulling him against his side. Far too exhausted to put up a fight, Harry just lets it happen and even leans into the touch. Voldemort feels warm and comfortable, and Harry closes his eyes. Thanks to the fogginess of the soulmate dream, Voldemort shouldn’t be able to tell if they are open or closed, anyway.

Harry enjoys the quiet while it lasts, feeling the muscles in his shoulders and back relaxing more and more.

“Will you tell me what happened?”

Harry cracks an eye open, the movement much harder than it has any right to be. “I took Dreamless Sleep.”

Harry hears the slur in his voice and frowns slightly. Hopefully, Voldemort won’t think he’s drunk. It wouldn’t surprise him. It’s like the people around him can’t help but project stuff onto Harry that couldn’t be further from the truth. Snape is particularly fond of doing that.

“Why?”

“Because I needed a break. From everything.”

The hand on Harry’s shoulder pulls him closer, and Harry lets out a satisfied little hum. Voldemort makes a surprisingly good pillow.

“I can’t remember the last time I woke up feeling less tired than I did when I went to sleep.”

There is still the slur in his voice, but Harry doesn’t care. Nor does he care about the voice at the back of his head, warning him that he’s being too honest. Why should he worry about such inconsequential things when his head feels pleasantly fuzzy, and his limbs are warm and relaxed? Distantly, he’s aware that Voldemort is saying something in return, but he can’t make out the individual words. It’s much more satisfying to focus on the melodic sound of his voice, anyway, the way the syllables smoothly transition from one to the next.

Harry sighs and rubs his cheek against warm, soft clothing. For the first time in a long time, Harry feels at peace.

The next time Harry opens his eyes, he feels disoriented, unsure where he is or what is going on. That lasts until he becomes aware of the hand on his shoulder, gently caressing him.

Harry tenses and holds his breath.

Did I... did I fall asleep, leaning against Voldemort?

The thought is so absurd Harry wonders if he’s hallucinating.

“Relax. Everything is alright.”

Harry gulps and forces himself to continue breathing.

“What happened?”

“You fell asleep,” Voldemort says, making it sound like that should be obvious.

“I didn’t even know that’s possible.” None of the books he read about soulmates mentioned it. And he read quite a lot about the topic when he was still at Hogwarts since he didn’t have much else to do.

“It doesn’t happen very often,” Voldemort explains. “Usually only under extreme circumstances.”

“Extreme circumstances?” Harry repeats flatly.

“Like bone-deep exhaustion.”

Harry grimaces. If that’s true, then he was worse off than he realized.

“What happened?” Voldemort asks after a short stretch of silence.

Harry has half a mind to repeat what he said before he fell asleep, that he took Dreamless Sleep, but that would only drag out the inevitable. He knows what Voldemort is asking about.

“Nothing that concerns you.”

“Everything that harms you concerns me. I don’t want to go to sleep one day and not see you in my dreams because I failed to protect you.”

Harry licks his lips and pushes slightly away from Voldemort. To his surprise, Voldemort doesn’t try to stop him, though he keeps his hand on Harry’s shoulder. Harry turns his head to look at Voldemort, and the words die on his lips. He feels his cheeks getting hot and hopes Voldemort won’t be able to see his blush. He didn’t realize just how close they were. It’s weird how he could have missed it, given that he fell asleep leaning against Voldemort, but it still confuses him for a moment.

“That’s what you thought happened, didn’t you?” Harry whispers. “You thought I died.”

“Does that surprise you? You said-”

“I know what I said.”

Harry pulls his legs to his chest and wraps his arms around them. He can guess the kind of direction their conversation will take if he doesn’t put a stop to it right away. Voldemort is obsessed with making sure Harry survives. He made all kinds of ridiculous promises to get Harry to tell him who he is.

Harry can’t allow that fear to get any stronger.

“Listen. I... When I said that I keep getting in mortal danger, I was exaggerating. It doesn’t happen that often. And anyway, I always manage to get out of these situations. I don’t depend on your protection.”

Harry rubs his neck and sighs. His body still feels pleasantly numb from sleep, but his mind is clearer than it was since Snape found out-

Harry pushes the thought aside. He doesn’t want to think about that right now.

“I don’t believe you.”

Harry blinks. “What?”

“If you truly weren’t in danger, you would have corrected yourself days ago.” Voldemort cocks his head, and Harry gets the uncomfortable feeling that he’s being examined. Though, in all honesty, there’s no way to know for sure if Voldemort is looking at him. “If I had to guess, I’d say you are just trying to reassure me. You don’t want me to become even more concerned.”

Harry licks his lips, unsure how to respond. Voldemort isn’t exactly wrong - but not protesting could potentially have quite a few negative consequences.

Before Harry can say anything, Voldemort adds, “Don’t insult me by trying to deny it. I know you well enough to be able to tell when you mean what you say and when you don’t. I don’t appreciate being managed like that.”

“I’m not managing you!” Harry snaps. Aggravated, Harry stands up. Voldemort’s hand trails over Harry’s back during the movement, sending a jolt through his body. Harry does his best not to let that distract him. Once Harry is on his feet, Harry glances down at Voldemort. “And anyway, if you weren’t so unpredictable, I wouldn’t have to resort to stuff like that. You threatened to kidnap hundreds of children, for god’s sake! You’re so obsessed with me that it scares me. I know that if your fear for my life gets any stronger, you will start doing shady stuff, and I don’t want that!”

Voldemort stands up as well, looking perfectly controlled, which makes Harry only more furious. Because it’s nothing more than a mask, just another thing that proves Harry can’t take anything at face value when it comes to Voldemort.

Voldemort growls lowly. “You could have just said so from the get-go.”

Harry laughs. It sounds breathless even to his own ears. “Oh, really? And you would have just nodded and ignored the issue if I had? Come on, don’t be ridiculous. I know that’s not how it would have gone down.”

“So you decided to try to manipulate me, someone known to be an expert at spotting lies and deceptions? Did you really think you’d get through with that?”

Harry grinds his teeth. “Well, I had to try, at the very least.”

“Why? Do you think I can’t be reasoned with?”

Harry hesitates. That question sounds like a trap. If Harry says yes, Voldemort will probably remind him of a moment during their soulmate dreams in which Voldemort could be reasoned with.

“I won’t kidnap anyone if that’s what you’re worried about. But I do need to take some precautions to reduce the likelihood that you die.”

Harry raises an eyebrow. “And how are you going to do that if you don’t even know who I am?”

“That depends on why you end up in these dire situations. I will need to ask you a few questions.”

Harry folds his arms. That doesn’t exactly sound promising. “Go ahead then. Don’t expect me to answer them, though.”

Voldemort nods as if he expected Harry to say something like that. Maybe he did. How’s Harry supposed to know?

“Who do you get threatened by more? People or magical creatures?”

Harry hesitates. That sounds like an innocent enough question. Voldemort won’t be able to figure out much about Harry as a person if he answers that, right?

“People,” Harry settles on, eventually. It’s true enough. Though he has had a lot of bad experiences with magical creatures as well, most of them wouldn’t have bothered him on their own.

The Basilisk was controlled by the diary, the troll was let in by Quirrell, even the Dementors were only there because the ministry thought it was necessary to place them at Hogwarts to protect the students. All of those instances were caused by people, ultimately. There are a few exceptions, of course, but all in all, it’s fair to say that people have caused him more harm.

“I thought so,” Voldemort mutters. “Of course, magical creatures aren’t a danger to you.”

Harry bites his lips to prevent himself from protesting. The Basilisk would have killed him if Fawkes hadn’t been there, and the Dementors would have kissed him if not for the Time-Turner. But correcting Voldemort would be one of the dumbest things he could do, so he keeps his mouth shut.

“These people that hurt you... were any of them under my command? Or sympathetic to my cause?”

Harry freezes. That’s exactly the kind of question he isn’t ready to answer. No matter what he says, it will give Voldemort more information than Harry is willing to give up. Voldemort probably already suspects that Harry isn’t a Dark wizard, but he doesn’t want to confirm anything.

Voldemort exhales sharply. “They were. I should have known.” Voldemort takes a few steps towards Harry, which reduces the space between them to about an arm’s length.

“I’m sorry,” Voldemort whispers, pushing a strand of hair out of Harry’s face. His fingertips lightly brush over his forehead, and Harry has just enough brainpower left to be glad that his lightning bolt scar doesn’t manifest in soulmate dreams. “I will make sure none of them will ever hurt you again.”

Harry swallows heavily and does his best to ignore the hand that settles against his cheek. He can feel himself blushing again and hopes Voldemort can’t feel the heat against his hand.

“How? As I said, you don’t know who I am.”

“Oh, that’s simple. All we need to do is decide on a code phrase you can use when one of my followers is about to hurt you. I will instruct them to bring the person who uses that phrase straight to me, without harming them.”

Harry grimaces and feels the hand on his cheek shifting slightly. “But that means I’d have to reveal my identity.”

“Yes,” Voldemort admits. “It’s the easiest and safest way. Or do you have a better idea?”

“Well, you could just tell your followers not to hurt anyone.”

Voldemort’s hand brushes over Harry’s cheek to the back of his head. Then he pulls Harry against this chest. Harry goes with the movement, a bit disturbed by how familiar and right it feels.

“Can you think of a good code phrase?” Voldemort asks, and Harry suppresses a sigh. He should have known that it would be too much to ask. At the end of the day, Voldemort has more goals than just figuring out Harry’s identity. He supposes he should be glad Voldemort is only asking for something so small in response to the fear and shock he must have felt when Harry didn’t show up last night.

“It should probably be something no one will say on accident, right?”

Voldemort hums in agreement, and the next few moments they spend looking for a suitable code phrase while Harry still leans against Voldemort’s chest. After they decided on a phrase, neither of them says anything for a while.

“There’s something I don’t understand,” Harry says eventually. Voldemort trails his fingertips along Harry’s spine, making him drowsy and sleepy. Not so sleepy that he’ll nod off again, though. “Why were you asleep earlier in the day? Didn’t you say you need less sleep than any other human?”

“Just because I don’t need to sleep a lot doesn’t mean I don’t. I slept through most of the day, hoping you’d show up.”

Harry freezes. “Are you serious?”

“Yes. I’m used to sleeping more than I need to. There were times in my twenties and thirties during which I made myself fall asleep every few hours, just in case my soulmate had an unusual sleep pattern.”

Voldemort’s hands keep trailing along Harry’s spine as if he isn’t aware of the significance of his words. Harry bites his lips.

What exactly did I get myself into here?

Chapter Text

Harry still isn’t over his shock the next time Voldemort speaks up.

“Do you remember what we talked about the day before yesterday?”

Harry hesitates and tries to recall how the soulmate dream had ended. It’s harder than it probably should have been. After all, it’s been only forty-eight hours, and yet it feels like it was ages ago. Eventually, though, he remembers what Voldemort must be referring to.

“You asked me to think of a way you can gain my trust.”

Voldemort nods. “And did you?”

“Yes and no,” Harry says slowly. “There isn’t one single thing you can do that will make me trust you. But I thought of something that… could be a place to start.”

Voldemort hums. Harry can feel the vibration in his chest. “What is it?”

“I want to know more about you and your past. How you grew up, your time at Hogwarts, stuff like that.”

“And that will get you one step closer to trusting me?” Voldemort asks, his voice full of surprise and skepticism. The next time Voldemort’s hand reaches Harry’s neck, he gently pushes his fingers into Harry’s hair.

Harry shrugs. “It will help me understand you better, and that’s one step in the right direction. How am I supposed to trust someone if I don’t know how their mind works?”

Voldemort keeps his hand in Harry’s hair, fingertips lightly scraping over his scalp, and Harry suppresses a shiver. Voldemort’s other arm stays wrapped around Harry’s lower back, keeping him close. Harry isn’t sure what it means that he doesn’t mind that Voldemort keeps invading his privacy. Quite the opposite, actually. He likes it. It’s nice being held so closely.

Does that make me a bad person? That I enjoy being close to Voldemort?

“Alright, then. What do you want to know?”

Harry blinks and pushes his worries aside. So what if it makes him a bad person? He’d be damned if he denied himself one of the few good things in his life.

“You said you grew up in a muggle orphanage, right? What was that like?”

Harry had tried to imagine how living at an orphanage would be like countless times, not least because the Dursleys threatened to drop him off there every now and then. The threat never bothered him. He figured that he’d at least get treated like all the other kids there.

Voldemort tightens his grip on Harry’s lower back. He slowly pulls his hand out of Harry’s hair and lays it against his neck.

“What do you think?” Voldemort says icily. “I was surrounded by muggles, day in, day out, for eleven years straight.”

Harry frowns. Voldemort's whole body has turned rigid. It’s impossible to miss, given the way they are pressed against each other. Harry wonders if Voldemort’s hatred of muggles is so strong that he can’t even talk about his experiences with them without getting upset.

“Does it really matter that they were muggles?” Harry asks hesitantly. “Wouldn’t your experience have been more or less the same if you had grown up in a wizarding orphanage? If something like that existed, I mean?”

Voldemort doesn’t respond immediately. His body stays rigid, which probably isn’t a good sign. Harry hunches his shoulders. Maybe now would be a good time to take a step back and let Voldemort collect himself.

“I thought you had a lot of experience with muggles. It looks like I was wrong. If you had, you wouldn’t need to ask this question.”

Harry bites his lips to keep himself from saying something stupid. If Voldemort thinks he rarely interacts with muggles, then that’s a good thing.

“They can’t all be bad,” Harry chooses to say instead. That’s something someone who is sympathetic to muggles, but doesn’t have much experience with them, would say, right?

“Wrong. Muggles are spiteful creatures, afraid of everything they can’t explain with their faulty logic. They are a danger to everyone with the slightest bit of magic in them.”

Harry blinks. This is just getting weirder and weirder. “How can they be a threat if we can just alter their memories with a single spell? Isn’t the fact that they don’t even know we exist proof enough that they can’t harm us?”

Voldemort exhales sharply. “You’ve never thought about this topic before, have you?”

“Are you calling me stupid?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, that’s the last thing I’d do. I’m just saying that you haven’t considered all the implications yet. Why do you think it’s forbidden to use magic in front of muggles? Why does the ministry put thousands upon thousands of galleons into making sure the muggles don’t become aware of our existence?”

Harry hesitates for a moment. He did wonder about that from time to time, especially when he was new to the wizarding world.

“Because if the muggles knew magic exists, they’d come to us with all of their problems?” It’s the explanation Hagrid had given him on his eleventh birthday. It made sense to him then and still does. “I mean, if they knew that there are people out there that can heal broken bones in a heartbeat, they would expect us to treat their injured and sick.”

Which, if Harry really thinks about it, is probably something they should be doing. How many muggles die every day just because there are no wizards and witches around to treat them? Shouldn’t it be considered a moral obligation to save people’s lives? Especially if it’s so very simple?

“That’s what the ministry wants you to believe. The truth is that they wouldn’t be able to do much against billions of fearful muggles and their weapons. Yes, we are superior to muggles in every way, but our numbers are minuscule compared to theirs.”

“Billions?” Harry repeats. “Do you really think the whole world would... what? Conspire together to wipe out all witches and wizards?”

“If they became aware of our existence, they would certainly try. There’s no question about that.”

Harry shakes his head. Voldemort’s hatred for muggles goes so much deeper than he ever would have thought possible. He thought... Well, if he’s being honest with himself, Harry thought Voldemort despises muggles simply because of their lack of magic. He thought Voldemort considered the ability to use magic to be such an integral part of himself that he sees everyone without it as less than human. It seems like he was wrong about that. Or, at least, it’s not the only reason he looks down at them.

“Why do you have such a bad image of muggles? What have they ever done to you?”

Voldemort’s grip on Harry tightens once again. “Do you really want to know?”

“Yes. Your hatred for muggles is a big part of you. I would like to understand it if I can.”

Voldemort hums. Harry can feel Voldemort’s chest extending as he breathes in.

“You’re not going to like it. Not if you think muggles are harmless.” I never said that. “Do you know what exorcism is?”

Harry holds his breath. He saw part of a documentary on the topic once when he was a little kid. He... didn’t like what he saw. Briefly, Harry wonders if Voldemort is lying. It’d be easy since Harry can’t even read his expression. He depends on the sound of Voldemort’s voice to determine if Voldemort is telling the truth.

Wait, that’s not true. I can feel that he’s still tense. That doesn’t prove anything, of course, but it is a strong indicator.

“I take it you heard the term before?” Voldemort asks, and Harry suppresses a curse. Why is it so easy for Voldemort to read him? He didn’t even say anything! “Either way, you may or may not know that muggles practice exorcism when they think there is something evil inside of someone that they want to get rid of. A demon. Something that could harm them.”

Voldemort pauses for a moment. Harry ignores that way Voldemort’s nails dig uncomfortably into his neck and waits for him to continue.

“I was an outsider at the orphanage for as long as I can remember. I guess they could feel that something was different about me, even before all of those strange, unnatural things started to happen around me.”

Harry swallows. Strange, unnatural things. He heard these words over and over again in his childhood. Aunt Petunia and uncle Vernon used them almost like swearwords. It feels weird to find out that Voldemort went through something similar.

“They didn’t tell me that they thought there was a demon inside of me, of course. I think I was five or six when the matron put poison in my food. It burned me up, and I couldn’t keep anything down for over twenty-four hours, not even water. Every time I ate or drank something, I just threw it back up. At the time, I thought it was food poisoning or some common illness. I didn’t get sick often, but when I did, it was usually something serious. Once I was almost delirious from dehydration, a priest came into my room and dragged me to the bathroom. He...”

Voldemort takes a deep breath, almost as if he’s steeling himself. Harry waits for him to continue with bated breath. Voldemort’s grip on Harry tightens even more momentarily.

“He filled the bathtub and pushed my head underwater. I was too weak to put up much of a fight, not that it would have done me much good if I hadn’t been. Without my accidental magic, I would have died. The second I breathed in water, my magic lashed out and knocked the priest unconscious. They never tried anything like that again after that. I suppose the matron was afraid I might kill someone if they did. But I never stopped looking for signs that she might change her mind. And I never touched any food the other children weren’t eating, even when I was starving.”

Harry feels frozen in place. His heart is beating so fast he can feel it in his fingertips. Voldemort is a master at talking and manipulating, but the way he told the story felt too raw to be part of some intricate plot. Voldemort’s voice cracked more than once, and he seemed to unconsciously hold on to Harry, which, all things considered, can really only mean one thing.

Voldemort is telling the truth.

“Are you alright?” Voldemort asks, laying his hand against Harry’s cheek.

Harry exhales sharply. Why is he asking me that?

“I just... Could you let go of me for a second? I need some space to think.”

Wordlessly, Voldemort takes a step back. Harry’s chest, cheek, and lower back - the places Voldemort had touched him - feel weirdly cold without him. Harry turns around and takes a few more steps away from Voldemort. It’s too hard to think straight when Voldemort takes up all the space around him. Then he closes his eyes and wraps his arms around his middle.

He pictures Voldemort as a young boy, sitting in front of a plate of food, too scared to eat it, and something inside of him aches. He supposes that it shouldn’t have been such a huge surprise to hear a story like that. Voldemort told him himself that he wants power so that no one can hurt him again. Harry should have known that there was more behind that statement than just living through a world war. A lot of people did that, and yet most of them didn’t turn into Dark Lords. Harry just never gave it much thought to why Voldemort turned out the way he did. It was easier to believe that he was born that way.

Voldemort’s traumatic past doesn’t excuse the horrible things he did, of course, but it sure as hell explains a lot. If Harry isn’t completely mistaken, the way Voldemort sees the world isn’t some unchangeable part of himself. It’s based on experiences. And that means...

Voldemort might be able to change after all.

Harry’s arms fall to the side, and he slowly turns around. He looks at Voldemort’s blurry face and bites his lips. For the very first time, he allows himself to feel the faintest bit of hope that this whole mess might end in something else than his own untimely death.

“Are you done thinking?” Voldemort asks quietly. Something about the tone of his voice opens up a pit inside of Harry’s stomach. Harry has his friends to lean on and support him whenever he needs them. Who does Voldemort have? Most of his followers didn’t care when he disappeared from the face of the earth over a decade ago, and the few Death Eaters that tried to find him got themselves thrown into Azkaban.

Voldemort has no one, Harry realizes with a jolt. No one to look out for him, to steer him in the right direction, to challenge his beliefs. Maybe that’s the problem.

“Yes. I am.”

Harry walks towards Voldemort until he’s standing right in front of him. Without giving himself the chance to really think about it, he lays his hands against the back of Voldemort’s neck. It’s a shock when his fingers slide into silky hair. It’s so easy to forget that magical changes to one’s physical appearance don’t manifest in soulmate dreams. Harry raises up on his tiptoes and pulls Voldemort’s head down towards him.

Before Harry can change his mind, he brushes his lips against Voldemort’s cheek.

“Thank you for being honest with me,” Harry whispers and presses himself against Voldemort’s chest. It takes a long moment until Voldemort wraps his arms around Harry as well. When he does, the touch is feather-light.

Chapter Text

Harry looks down at the Daily Prophet and forces himself not to scrunch up the newspaper and throw it away. That won’t make the words on the paper go away, nor will it prevent anyone else from reading these articles. Still, he can’t help but glare at the ministry official on the front page. He never even heard of the guy before today. What gives him the right to make such broad and outlandish statements?

Harry rubs his forehead and sighs.

Ever since Voldemort blackmailed the Prophet into publishing that first article, Harry has read every article the Prophet published in response to it - which usually filled more than two-thirds of the newspaper. Harry wonders if Voldemort anticipated that the backlash would be this huge. Maybe he’s even still influencing what they write? He really should have asked Voldemort that last night.

Harry scrunches up his nose as the ministry official in the picture waves his arms around pompously. It doesn’t surprise him that most of the articles the Prophet publishes on the topic contain plenty of half-truths, misinformation, and speculations. But this...

This is low. Even for the Prophet.

Hinting that Remus Lupin might have been a Death Eater since he was a friend of Sirius is just plain disgusting. Lupin must already be going through a rough time now that everyone knows he’s a werewolf. People are so prejudiced that it wouldn’t surprise Harry if he’s having trouble finding and holding a job. But apparently, it’s not enough to drag Lupin’s name through the mud. That despicable ministry official on the front page also has the audacity to demand that everyone who was the slightest bit involved in Cedric’s death should be questioned, including Cedric’s parents, Dumbledore, Harry, and even Cedric’s soulmate, Cho Chang.

Harry curses and jumps to his feet. Enraged, he starts walking up and down.

The Daily Prophet already published an interview with Dumbledore. The headmaster told them everything they needed to know, from how Barty Crouch disguised himself as Mad-Eye Moody for so long and what he was doing at Hogwarts, to how Voldemort came back. Dumbledore didn’t tell them much about what Harry went through at the graveyard, and he is very grateful for that. He doesn’t want the whole world to know all the excruciating details. Still, Dumbledore told them enough to know the most important thing: Voldemort is back, and he’s here to stay.

It’s not Dumbledore’s fault that the Prophet and most ministry officials refuse to believe him, that they prefer to claim that such a ridiculous story can’t be true. Surely, the ministry would have noticed if a Death Eater broke out of Azkaban right under their nose? Surely, the fact that a Death Eater managed to pose as an old friend of Dumbledore only means that Dumbledore is getting old and senile? Surely Voldemort couldn’t have come back from the dead. After all, no wizard, no matter how powerful, had ever accomplished that.

“Maybe I should reach out to the Prophet to tell them my side of the story,” Harry says to the empty room. Sure, the Prophet would probably find a way to twist his words or frame them in a way they prefer, just like they did when Dumbledore talked with them, but…

But Voldemort’s obsession with Harry won’t stay this strong forever. Eventually, he will lose interest, and then the world should be ready for him.

The world won’t need to be ready if you get Voldemort to see things from your perspective, a voice whispers at the back of his head, and Harry shakes his head to get rid of the thought. There’s no time. Voldemort will expect Harry to reveal his identity in less than two months. Even if there is a way to change the way Voldemort sees the world, doing it in just a few weeks is more than a little ambitious. Harry can’t allow himself to put all of his hopes into something that has such a low likelihood of succeeding. It’s-

Harry flinches when someone suddenly knocks against his door. He turns towards the door, feeling himself grow tense. Did Snape’s spell wear off already? Will Uncle Vernon try to kick him out again? Harry shivers. He still hasn’t figured out what he will do if that happens. Dumbledore said that Harry should be safe at the Dursleys, and Harry is inclined to believe him. But-

“I know you’re in there, Mr. Potter.”

Harry stares at the door, feeling his heart rate increasing rapidly.

“It’s open,” Harry says, pushing aside his discomfort by sheer force of will. Snape already has enough power over him as it is. He doesn’t want to give him anything else to taunt him with.

The door opens, and Snape steps through. It’s still jarring to see him wear muggle clothes instead of his usual black cloak.

Snape’s eyes flicker around the room, just like they did yesterday when he had seen Harry’s room for the first time. Though his eyes linger on similar objects - Dudley’s broken toys, the battered furniture, the unmade bed - it feels different this time. Harry shakes his head, wondering why Snape feels the need to look at everything a second time. How much does he think could have changed in less than twenty-four hours?

“Can we begin the lesson now?” Harry asks impatiently. He sees no reason to ask how Snape got inside the house. He’s a wizard, a simple lock won’t stop him, and he can’t blame Snape for avoiding uncle Vernon after the homophobic bullshit he spouted yesterday. Harry himself feels sick just thinking about it, and he’s used to uncle Vernon talking down to him. Snape isn’t.

“I’m not here for another Occlumency lesson,” Snape says once he took in the entire room. “Pack your things, Potter. We’re leaving.”

Harry tenses. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

Snape curls his lip. “Don’t be ridiculous. I know you don’t want to be here-”

“I didn’t say that. I said I’m not going anywhere with you.”

Something flickers over Snape’s face, but it’s gone too fast for Harry to recognize the emotion. But, given that it’s Snape, that’s probably for the best.

“Tell Dumbledore to send someone else.”

“I’m not here on Dumbledore’s orders. In fact, by coming here, I’m defying his orders.”

Harry feels himself growing cold all over. If Snape isn’t here on Dumbledore’s order, then there’s really only one other logical explanation. He’s here on Voldemort’s orders.

“Are you here to kill me?” Harry whispers.

Snape flinches violently. His eyes widen for a moment. Harry keeps a close eye on him, but as far as he can tell, Snape’s shock isn’t feigned.

“Why are you here, then, if not to kill me?”

“I told you,” Snape says, his voice oddly faint. “I will take you away from here.”

“Why?” Snape still hasn’t offered any kind of explanation. Why would he come here if not on Dumbledore’s or Voldemort’s orders?

“Because this is no place for a child.”

Harry frowns. I’m not a child. Most importantly, though... “Don’t act like you care about my well-being.”

This time, Harry only sees Snape’s flinch because he is looking at him very closely. The unease in Harry’s stomach grows bigger and bigger with every moment. Snape is acting weird. Not only did he knock against Harry’s door when he could have just walked in, he’s also talking about taking Harry somewhere else. Against Dumbledore’s order. Suddenly, Harry is very glad that he always carries his wand with him, even at the Dursleys. He will get expelled if he uses it, of course, but that won’t stop him from protecting himself.

Snape pulls out the chair from behind Harry’s desk and sits down. The wood creaks like it will give out any second. It feels weird to suddenly be looking down at Snape.

“I think you and I need to talk,” Snape says and folds his arms. “If you want to stay here by the end of that, I will respect your wishes and leave.”

Yeah, right. As if Snape will ever respect my wishes.

“Sit down, Potter.”

Harry hesitates for a moment, then he sighs and sits down on the edge of his bed. It’s not like he can kick Snape out, so it seems like he has no choice but to listen to what he has to say.

Chapter Text

“Who is your soulmate, Potter?”

Harry freezes up. Part of him had been waiting for that question ever since Snape invaded his mind against his will a few days ago.

“That’s none of your business. Sir.”

“I think it is. If I am not completely mistaken, I’m the only one who knows your soulmate dreams have started early. I want to know why you kept it a secret.”

“And I want you to mind your own business,” Harry growls. “You don’t have the right-”

“Did you know I swore to do everything in my power to protect you?” Snape interrupts him.

Harry stares at him. He doesn’t know how much more he can take of this. Why can’t Snape just act like he always has? Why did he decide now, when Harry already has more than enough worries as it is, to start behaving weirdly?

“If that’s true, then you’ve done a horrible job at it.” Not that Harry believes a word Snape says. He never showed any indication of wanting to protect Harry. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Snape’s eyes flash, which is not exactly a good sign, but Harry still prefers that over Snape trying to apologize or something.

“Oh, really?” Snape whispers. “You would’ve died without me, Potter. You would’ve fallen off your broom and broken your neck if I hadn’t interfered.”

Harry folds his arms. “I fell off my broom during my third year, and I was just fine.”

“Because the headmaster was there. That’s the only reason you survived.”

“Fine,” Harry admits begrudgingly. “But apart from that one time-”

“That wasn’t the only time. Remember how I followed you to the Shrieking Shack? I went near a mass murderer and a werewolf who forgot to take Wolfsbane because of you.”

“Sirius isn’t a mass murderer-”

“No one knew that at the time.”

Harry grinds his teeth. Fine. So Snape wanted to save Harry’s life two times. So what? That doesn’t mean that he did it because he wanted to keep Harry safe or even that he had a choice in the matter. Snape would have gotten into a lot of trouble if Harry had died and someone had found out Snape could have prevented it. And-

“You only did that because my dad saved your life once, and you didn’t want to be in his debt forever.”

Snape freezes. Harry squares his shoulder when Snape slowly clenches his fist. 

“Your father...” Harry braces himself, expecting some kind of insult. “...was a lot of things. But he didn’t consider me to be in his debt for saving my life. At least he didn’t by the time he died.” 

“Why? What did you do?” And why didn’t Dumbledore mention that when he told me the story? Dumbledore made it sound like Snape only saved Harry’s life so that he could keep hating Harry’s father with a good conscience. If that wasn’t the case... Well. Then that makes everything so much more confusing. 

“Wrong question, Potter,” Snape whispers. “The real question is: what did your father do?”

Harry hunches his shoulders. He feels torn between wanting Snape to shut up and hoping Snape will keep talking. It’s so refreshing to finally be told things, though he knows that he has to take everything Snape says with a grain of salt. Even if Snape believes what he says is true, that might not actually be the case. Snape has proven time and time again that he doesn't view things objectively.

“I suppose I can’t fault your father for rejecting me,” Snape says with an expression that indicates he’s doing exactly that. “But I can despise him for only interfering at the last moment, for almost allowing me to be torn to pieces. Soulmates are supposed to keep each other alive at all costs.”

Multiple emotions flicker over Snape’s face - disgust and anger and guilt - and Harry can’t do anything but stare at him. Because if he understood that correctly…

“Are you saying my dad was your soulmate?” Harry asks faintly.

Maybe Snape is lying? But what would he gain by claiming that Harry’s dad rejected him? Most people think you only get rejected by your soulmate if... Well, if there is something wrong with you.

“The headmaster didn’t tell you?”

Harry shakes his head. Dumbledore knew? “He barely tells me anything at all.”

“He told you about the prophecy.”

“Only after I practically begged him to. And he didn’t even warn me that I would have to learn Occlumency if he answered my question.” Harry pulls his legs towards his chest and lays his chin onto his knees. “Did you start hating each other before or after your soulmate dreams started?”

“Before. It was hatred at first sight.”

Harry blinks, surprised by the dry humor. He bites his lips and hugs his legs a bit tighter. There are so many things he wants to know, but he’s not sure if it’s a good idea to say any of them aloud. Snape appears to be semi-reasonable today, but who knows if it will stay that way.

Snape curls his lips. “False restraint doesn’t become you, Potter. Say what you want to say.”

Fine. He asked for it. “You said my dad rejected you. Does that mean you never completed your bond?”

“Yes.”

“But... that means you dreamed of each other every night until my dad died, right?”

Harry tries to imagine what that must have been like. Snape was a Death Eater before he became a spy for Dumbledore, and Harry’s dad fought against Voldemort. Does that mean neither of them could let their guard down, even when they slept? Harry feels nauseous just thinking about it. His own soulmate dreams are exhausting enough as it is, even without any immediate danger of getting hurt. He can’t imagine what it must be like to stay on guard every night, year after year.

“Not exactly,” Snape says slowly.

“What do you mean?” Harry says, leaning forward slightly. Does Snape know of a way to suppress soulmate dreams besides taking Dreamless Sleep and staying awake? If there is another way, Harry wants to know what it is, just in case he might need to avoid Voldemort for a few nights in a row.

“After your father and I left Hogwarts, we decided that it’d be better not to sleep at the same time anymore. Of course, it didn’t work out every night, but we managed to avoid each other most of the time.”

Harry lowers his gaze, and his shoulders slump forward in disappointment. That wouldn’t work with Voldemort. Sure, Voldemort said he doesn’t need much sleep, but Voldemort wouldn’t deliberately avoid Harry.

“However,” Snape says, and when Harry raises his head to look at him, he sees that Snape is looking at him closely, “there is a way to suppress soulmate dreams indefinitely. In case you are interested.”

Harry’s heart skips a beat. “Why would you think I’d be interested?”

Snape raises an eyebrow. “You are not good at hiding your emotional state. Tell me, Potter, why do you desperately try to push me out of your mind every time I stumble over a soulmate dream? Who are you trying to protect? Your soulmate? Or yourself?”

Chapter Text

“I don’t see how that concerns you,” Harry says quietly, refusing to look Snape in the eye.

Harry picks at his washed-out jeans, feeling himself growing tenser and tenser with every second. Just because Snape shared his own depressing story doesn’t mean Harry has to do the same. Hell, maybe that was even the only reason Snape told him about it in the first place: to guilt Harry into answering his questions - though Harry still doesn’t get why Snape even cares.

“Harry.” Harry raises his gaze against his will. Snape never called him by his first name before. “I know how messy it can get when soulmates don’t get along. You have every right to distance yourself from your soulmate if you think you’d be better off without him.”

Harry lowers his gaze and grimaces. The truth is that Harry would have jumped at an opportunity like this a week ago. But so much has happened since then.

“I can’t distance myself from my soulmate.”

“Why not?”

Harry laughs, hating how shaky it sounds. “I’m surprised you even have to ask. Just yesterday, you criticized me for taking Dreamless Sleep. You called it abusive.”

“It wouldn’t be abusive if you told your soulmate what you are planning to do.”

Harry shakes his head, trying to imagine how that would go down. Voldemort would be so angry.

“It wouldn’t work. He’d never agree to let me go.”

Snape leans forward, the wood of Harry’s old chair creaking threateningly. “That sounds unhealthy.”

Harry shrugs. “I suppose it is. He’s obsessed with the idea of having a soulmate. And...”

Harry hesitates. He went over a week without telling anyone anything about his soulmate situation. It’d be easy to continue doing so, especially since he can’t imagine that Snape would show much sympathy. But...

But Snape is bound to find out how messed up Harry’s situation is, anyway. It’s just a matter of time. What’s the point of keeping everything bottled inside for as long as possible?

He hated the way Snape found out how the Dursleys treated him. It felt like a total loss of control. He doesn’t want to get overwhelmed like that again.

But he also doesn’t want Snape to know.

“And what?” Snape asks quietly.

Harry sighs and closes his eyes. “And he already threatened to kidnap every Hogwarts student in order to find me, once. He’ll do that for sure if I stop showing up at night.”

Harry glances at Snape, unsure how he will react. Snape seems to be frozen in place. Then he slowly sits up straight, the wood creaking all the way.

“He threatened to kidnap children?”

Harry shrugs. “It’s not the only reason I can’t stay away from him. Right now, I have a certain degree of power over him. He doesn’t know who I am, and he’s willing to do a lot to find out my name. I can influence him and dampen some of his more harmful behaviors, but that will stop once he finds out who I am. He’ll be livid that he wasted so much time waiting for me. I need to make sure he doesn’t find out who I am for as long as possible.”

Harry bites his lips, worried that he might have said too much. The way Snape’s face tightens can’t mean anything good.

“If that is true,” Snape says, and Harry notices that Snape’s voice sounds a bit stiff, “then that’s all the more reason to suppress your soulmate dreams. I spend the last decade developing a potion that does exactly that without any of the negative side-effects of taking Dreamless Sleep over a prolonged period of time if that’s what you’re worried-”

“I can’t suppress my soulmate dreams,” Harry says, feeling like he’s talking to a wall. “He will kidnap hundreds of children if I do that, remember? Besides, by not hiding from him, I can make sure he doesn’t harm as many people as he otherwise would.”

Snape furrows his brow. “It’s not your job to risk your life and wellbeing so that no one else gets hurt.”

Harry laughs. He can’t help himself. He doesn’t even care that Snape looks at him with narrowed eyes. He’s given up trying to figure out what goes on in Snape’s head, anyway.

“Yes, that is my job. I mean, you know what the Prophecy says, right? And either must die at the hand of the other, for neither can live while the other survives. Voldemort or I will have to die. So yes, it is expected of me to risk dying in order to keep the Wizarding World safe.”

Harry realizes that he might have made a mistake almost right away. Pure shock is written all over Snape’s face before he hides it behind a calm mask.

“You didn’t know what the Prophecy says,” Harry mutters, confused. Didn’t Snape admit to knowing that the Prophecy exists a few days ago?

“I... I only heard the beginning, the part that describes who would have the power to vanquish the Dark Lord.”

“Well, now you know,” Harry says, hunching his shoulders. “Since my likelihood of surviving is so small...” ...close to zero, in fact, since I can’t bring myself to kill Voldemort... “...I can at least make sure my soulmate doesn’t kidnap anyone or unnecessarily hurts others in general for as long as I can.”

Snape stands up and starts walking up and down, looking at Harry with that weird look in his eyes. Eventually, Snape stops walking and looks down at him with dark, unyielding eyes.

“There’s no reason for you to play the martyr, Potter. If you tell me who your soulmate is, the Order of the Phoenix will ensure that you and everyone else your soulmate might hurt in retaliation will be protected.”

Harry smiles. If it were that simple, he would have told someone what is going on much sooner. “I don’t know anything about this Order of the Phoenix, but I very much doubt they are powerful enough to keep my soulmate in check.”

“Why do you think that?” Snape asks, narrowing his eyes.

Harry considers the question for a long moment. He supposed he could keep evading Snape’s questions until Snape grows tired. That could end in Snape invading his mind again to find out the truth, though, and he really doesn’t want that to happen.

Harry takes a deep breath. He might be about to make a horrible mistake, but it’s not like he has much to lose, anyway.

“Did you know Tom Riddle was a Parselmouth?”

Chapter Text

A jolt goes through Harry the second the words leave his mouth. Now, there is no going back anymore. If he got it wrong, and Snape is loyal to Voldemort after all-

Well. He knew of that risk when he opened his mouth. Now, he’ll at least find out if Snape is full of shit or not. Harry ignores the voice at the back of his head, screaming, demanding to know how he could have been so stupid, and focuses all of his attention on Snape. If it turns out he made a terrible mistake, he can still draw his wand at any time.

“You-” Snape chokes on his own words and clears his throat. His face has turned as white as a sheet. “How did you... Your soulmate is a Death Eater?”

Harry blinks. How did he come to that conclusion?

“No?” Harry hesitates. “Sir, do you know what the words I just said mean?”

He might not. After all, they had only picked them last night. Maybe Voldemort didn’t have time to-

“Of course, I do. Who told you to use that phrase?”

Harry hunches his shoulders. He supposes he could lie and say that it was one of Voldemort’s followers who doesn’t have the Dark Mark yet since he already said his soulmate isn’t a Death Eater. But what would be the point of that? His soulmate being a follower of Voldemort isn’t much better than it being Voldemort himself. And Snape will find out the truth, anyway. It’d be stupid to back off now.

Well, at least he hasn’t tried to attack or drag me out of here yet. I suppose that can be counted as a victory.

“Isn’t that obvious, sir?” Harry asks quietly, still keeping a close eye on Snape. “I accidentally let it slip that I keep ending up in mortal danger and now Voldemort is concerned I might die before he can figure out who I am. I don’t plan on using the code phrase the next time Death Eaters threaten me, but... well, it seemed like an easy way to reassure him. One that didn’t require me to reveal anything about me.”

Snape stands in the middle of Harry’s room, his eyes wider than ever before. He looks frozen to the spot, almost like someone petrified him while Harry wasn’t looking.

Harry bites his lips. He didn’t think it would be that big of a shock for Snape, given what Harry had already told him and what Snape saw in his mind.

“Sir? Maybe you should sit down.”

Snape’s eyes slowly move across the room until they land on Harry. “Please tell me your soulmate isn’t the Dark Lord.”

Harry grimaces. Hearing Snape say please is almost as jarring as seeing him this distraught.

“It’s... not as bad as you might think. He only physically hurt me once, and that was an accident. The only real problem is that he’s obsessed with me and refuses to give up on trying to figure out who I am.” Harry lowers his gaze. He’s pretty sure by now that Snape won’t attack and bring him to Voldemort and allows himself to let his guard down a bit.

After a few seconds, Snape sighs almost soundlessly and sinks down onto Harry’s old chair again. The wood creaks unnaturally loud in the otherwise quiet room.

“So you are the reason the Dark Lord is behaving erratically.”

Harry’s heart skips a beat. That’s not what he expected Snape to say once he accepted that Voldemort is Harry’s soulmate. “What do you mean by that?”

Snape raises an eyebrow. He still looks shaken up, but he seems to be closer to hiding behind his calm mask than Harry would have liked.

“He called in a Death Eater meeting almost every day after his return, talking about plans and strategies and what it means that Dumbledore knows he’s back thanks to you. And then his demeanor changed from one day to the next. He stopped summoning his followers every day, and the meetings were shorter, in general. He seemed... distracted, like his mind was somewhere else. He canceled a few plans he was very enthusiastic about before and put others into motion.”

Harry sits up straighter, listening with bated breath. He never expected to get so much inside into what Voldemort is doing outside of his soulmate dreams from Snape.

“I’m far from the only one who noticed his unusual behavior.” Snape stops for a moment to scratch at his jeans thoughtfully. Then he raises his gaze and locks eyes with Harry. “How did you do that?”

“I...” Harry bites his lips, at a loss for words. How do you answer a question like that?

“How did you convince him to change his tactics? To try a different approach?”

Harry hesitates. Had Voldemort really behaved that differently since the soulmate dreams started? Enough for his followers to notice? Why hadn’t Voldemort said anything about changing his plans and strategies? Wouldn’t he use that to prove to Harry that he’s willing to change, that he’s actively changing already?

“I... I know next to nothing about what he does outside of our soulmate dreams. But he knows I don’t agree with his worldview and his tendency to use violence to get what he wants. I told him I’m afraid he’ll kill me and that I don’t trust him.” Harry licks his lips. “I didn’t think he’d be willing to change for his soulmate, but apparently, he is willing to give up a few things, at least temporarily.”

“You-” Snape curses and stands up. He starts walking up and down again, glancing at Harry now and then. “You don’t seem to realize the significance of your words. No one has ever managed to influence the Dark Lord. He does what he wants and doesn’t care about the opinion of others.”

Harry frowns. “I don’t think he cares what I think, either. Or at least not all that much. He’s just willing to do whatever it takes to find out my name.”

“No,” Snape says softly. “I don’t think that’s true. If he were willing to do whatever it takes, he would have figured out your name days ago. I’m sure he has realized by now that you don’t like it when people get hurt. He could have just threatened to kill a few witches and wizards if you didn’t reveal yourself. Or he could have tried to beat the truth out of you. He might not be able to use magic in your dreams or leave lasting marks on your body, but he can still hurt you easily since he’s physically stronger than you.”

Harry shivers at the thought. He supposes he should be glad Voldemort doesn’t want to hurt him on purpose. “He wants to gain my trust,” Harry admits quietly. “He can’t do that by hurting me, physically or mentally.”

“He wants to gain your trust,” Snape repeats flatly and finally stops walking up and down. “The Dark Lord demands loyalty and devotion, not trust.”

Harry shrugs.

“He said he wants an equal. Someone to rule beside him.” Harry grimaces. Just the thought of ruling anything is enough to weird him out. He can’t figure out why Voldemort likes the thought of that so much. “I wasn’t exaggerating when I said he’s obsessed with the idea of having a soulmate. He said he has waited to meet his soulmate for over half a century.”

Snape stares at him for a long moment, then he sinks back down onto the chair, sighing. Harry probably would have thought that it’s funny that Snape keeps standing up and sitting down if the situation hadn’t been so serious.

“Well. I suppose you aren’t in any immediate danger for as long as the Dark Lord doesn’t know who you are.” Snape looks at Harry sharply. “Or are you?”

Harry shakes his head. “As I said, one of his most important goals, when it comes to me, is to gain my trust. Hurting me won’t get him any closer to achieving that goal.”

Snape nods slowly. Harry is about to ask why he looks so unconvinced when Snape speaks up again.

“Well, then. I guess it’s obvious what we should do next.”

Harry frowns. “Sir?”

“We need to decide what to do when the Dark Lord finds out who you are. Depending on when and how he figures it out, we will have to react differently.”

Harry blinks. Does Snape really intend to help him?

Snape sneers.

“Don’t look so surprised. I told you, I swore to do everything in my power to protect you, and it seems to me like you are in dire need of help.”

Harry shakes his head. He still can’t wrap his mind around the fact that Snape not only didn’t flip out but also wants to actively help Harry - as if that were something he regularly does.

“First things first,” Snape says and leans forward. “I suppose it’s obvious you should start suppressing your soulmate dreams the second the Dark Lord figures out who you are. If not sooner.”

Harry takes a deep breath and nods. That sounds reasonable.

“Good. Then on to the next point. There are generally two scenarios during which the Dark Lord can find out the truth: either during one of your soulmate dreams or when the two of you meet in person. The way we will have to deal with the fall-out in these two scenarios is obviously quite different...”

Harry nods along and soon finds himself in a drawn-out discussion with his least favorite professor - though Harry has to admit he’s acting a lot less hostile than usually.

Well. That could have gone a lot worse.

Chapter Text

“The possibility that the potion won’t work should be relatively small, but we should still consider-”

Snape hisses and doesn’t finish the sentence.

“What’s wrong?” Harry asks, alarmed. Snape is so concerned with pretending that he’s above everything else that it’s always a bad sign when he does something unexpected and weird.

“The Dark Lord is calling,” Snape says, rubbing his forearm. “I have to go. I’ll be back tomorrow if I can.”

And just like that, he stands up and walks to the door. Harry looks at his retreating back like an idiot.

“Wait! At least tell me what you did with the Dursleys first. They don’t seem to be able to see me.”

Snape shakes his head, reaching for the doorknob. “There’s no time. They can’t hurt you, no matter what happens. That’s all that matters.”

And before Harry can think of a response to that, Snape has opened the door and slipped out of the room. Harry takes a deep breath and reaches for the Daily Prophet. Looks like he’s back to worrying about his problems on his own. Well, there could be worse.

Hours later, Harry yawns and crawls into his bed. Apart from Snape’s visit, the day had been uneventful, almost boringly so. In other words: exactly what Harry had needed after days of constant ups and downs.

***

Harry smiles slightly when his eyes fall on Voldemort. He cocks his head, curious to see how long it will take Voldemort to pull him into his arms this time. In the last few dreams, Voldemort had always found an excuse to do that. Well, if Harry thinks about it, there hadn’t been any actual excuses, really. Voldemort just did it as if it were a normal thing to do.

It probably is, for most soulmates, Harry admits to himself, but somehow I still view us as the great exception to everything.

“You seem to be in a good mood.”

Harry grins and raises an eyebrow. “How can you tell?”

The fogginess of the soulmate dream should be enough to hide his expression, so why-

“You’re humming.”

Harry blinks a few times. Then he laughs. Right. He had been humming. He’d seriously felt relaxed enough to hum in front of Voldemort.

Voldemort walks towards him until there is only an arm’s length separating them. Harry stops laughing and raises his eyebrows.

“Do that again,” Voldemort demands.

“Do what again?”

“Laugh.”

Harry snort.

“You do know I can’t just... laugh on command, right? Why do you want me to laugh, anyway?”

“I like the sounds of it.”

Harry laughs, surprised more than anything else. Voldemort likes the sound of his laugh? Really? That’s so cliché. Voldemort lets out an intrigued sound and takes another half step forward. Now they are so close their chests are almost touching. Harry gets goosebumps and shivers slightly. No matter how many nights he spends in Voldemort’s company, he can’t seem to get used to being so close to him. Voldemort lays his hand against his cheek, and Harry closes his eyes for a moment.

“Why do you always end up touching me?” Harry asks curiously and leans into Voldemort’s hand.

Voldemort cocks his head. “Shouldn’t that be obvious? I enjoy it.”

Harry frowns and leans his head slightly forward when Voldemort’s hand wanders to the back of his head and pulls Harry against his chest. Ah, yes. So he had been right to assume he’d end up here sooner rather than later.

“You do?”

Voldemort freezes for a second before he starts moving his hand back and forth along Harry’s neck. Harry leans into his touch, almost against his will.

“Do you really need to ask?” Harry raises an eyebrow. Voldemort’s voice is higher than usual, and he isn’t sure what to make of that. “Of course, I like touching you. You’re my soulmate.”

Harry hesitates. From a logical standpoint, he knows that most soulmates like touching each other. But for some reason, he thought Voldemort wouldn’t enjoy something so common and normal. He had assumed that Voldemort thinks stuff like that is only for love-sick fools.

“I thought it’s just your way of staking a claim, of showing that you consider me to be yours. You never said you wanted a lover, just... an equal, someone to rule beside you.”

Voldemort goes still for a long moment. Then he wraps his other arm around Harry’s lower back and pulls him even closer against his chest.

“My soul,” Voldemort whispers into his ear. “I want everything you are willing to give me. Everything.”

Harry grabs Voldemort’s upper arms because he needs something to hold on to and hides his face against Voldemort’s chest, even though that’s obviously completely unnecessary. Voldemort can’t make out his expression, anyway.

“So, you want to... kiss me... and stuff.” Harry’s face burns, thinking of the and stuff part. He doubts he’s ready for any of that. He’s never even kissed anyone before. Harry shifts uneasily. Will Voldemort ask for that, now that Harry broached the subject?

Voldemort hums and presses a soft kiss to Harry’s hair. “I said I will take everything you are willing to give me.” Voldemort hesitates. “I realize that I was a bit too pushy during our first soulmate dreams. Especially when I gave you that hickey.”

Harry lets go of Voldemort’s upper arm for a moment and touches his neck. He remembers clear as day waking up in the hospital wing only to find the hickey on his neck. It had been devastating to find out Voldemort could leave actual marks on his body that he would have to hide. But Voldemort hadn’t done that again after that night - well, he had tried to give Harry another hickey once but stopped when Harry asked him to.

“Don’t worry,” Voldemort whispers against Harry’s hair. “I spend my whole life without touching anyone that way. It won’t be a problem for me to keep doing that until you feel comfortable enough to want it as well.”

Harry blinks. His whole life...? “Wait. Does that mean you never had a lover before? What about...”

Harry hesitates. This feels incredibly intimate. Maybe it’d be better to just let it go, though he can’t deny he’s curious.

“I’ve never had sex before if that’s what you mean, nor have I kissed anyone or given anyone a hickey besides you.”

Harry’s face burns, both from the knowledge that Voldemort is about as inexperienced as Harry himself is and from having this conversation in the first place. No one he knows talks about sex openly, not even the older students - or at least they don’t do it in front of Harry. It feels weird, almost wrong, to do it out in the open.

And then Voldemort’s words really sink in, and Harry remembers something. “I started crying right after you gave me that hickey.”

Something in Harry’s stomach twists. Now that he knows a little better what goes on in Voldemort’s head, he can guess how Voldemort must have felt in that moment. He had just found his soulmate after decades of waiting, and when he tried to show his interest in Harry, maybe in the only way he could, his soulmate broke down in tears.

“Like I said,” Voldemort murmurs. “I know I overwhelmed you.”

Harry licks his lips. “I wasn’t so much the hickey itself that was too much, but everything surrounding it and my own physical reaction to it.”

Voldemort takes a deep breath in, his nose softly rubbing against Harry’s scalp. Harry exhales sharply. It’s still weird to know that Voldemort has a nose in their dreams.

“I figured as much. I can’t say how glad I am that you aren’t beating yourself up so much anymore.”

Harry twists around uncomfortably. Of course, he thinks that. He just admitted that he likes touching me. If anyone else saw me right now, they would be appalled.

“Relax,” Voldemort says and presses another kiss to Harry’s hair. “There’s no reason to feel uncomfortable. Why don’t you tell me why you were in such a good mood earlier?”

Harry smiles, grateful for the change in subject.

“I told someone that you are my soulmate, and they didn’t react as badly as I thought they would.”

Voldemort tightens his grip on Harry. “You were happy because someone didn’t react badly?”

Harry shrugs. “Yeah. I mean, they were far from happy about it, but they also didn’t lose their mind over it. I count that as a victory.”

“A victory,” Voldemort repeats flatly, pulling Harry even closer - too closely for Harry’s taste.

“Tom,” Harry says, hoping that hearing his real name will distract Voldemort from whatever he’s thinking about. “I can’t breathe properly like this.”

Immediately, Voldemort loosens his grip.

“Sorry,” Voldemort mumbles, and before Harry can get over the shock of Voldemort apologizing to him for something so minor, Voldemort, adds, “I can’t stand it when people don’t treat you properly, and you act like it’s normal.”

Harry blinks. Okay, that’s... not something I can leave uncommented.

“First of all, they treated me just fine,” Harry says, and the moment the words leave his mouth, Harry realizes that that’s actually true. Snape didn’t insult him, nor did he twist his words, even though Harry’s revelation obviously shocked him quite a bit. “And second of all, if they had treated me unfairly, it would have been more because of you than because of me.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. Could you explain that?”

Harry hesitates before shaking his head. “Just forget it. It doesn’t matter.”

Voldemort should already know of the prejudices the soulmates of criminals face, and if he, for some reason, shouldn’t, Harry doesn’t want to be the one to bring it to his attention.

Voldemort trails his fingertips along Harry’s spine and exhales slowly. “Fine. I won’t ask again - not because I don’t think it matters, but because you don’t want to talk about it, and I respect that.”

Harry rolls his eyes at the tone of Voldemort’s voice, smiling slightly. He sounds like a stubborn child that only gives in because it wants to appear more mature than it actually is. Well, Harry supposes he can’t blame him. If Snape is right, Voldemort has next to no experience in considering the wants of others.

Harry bites his lips in the short silence that follows. He’d love to ask Voldemort about the plans he canceled and put into motion, the ones Snape talked about, but he’s not sure if he should. He doesn’t want Voldemort to think that he has insight into what Voldemort is doing outside of their soulmate dreams, and he doesn’t trust in his abilities to fool Voldemort all that much.

But there is something he had been wondering about and that he feels comfortable asking about.

“Are you still influencing what the Prophet writes?” Harry asks hesitantly. “Did you expect them to write so much about that little article you forced them to publish?”

Chapter Text

“Ah, yes. I was wondering when you would bring that up again. I’m surprised it took that long. You didn’t seem to like the first article very much, if I remember correctly.”

Harry frowns. “Just answer the question.”

“As you wish,” Voldemort says smoothly, and Harry could have sworn that Voldemort is smirking. “I don’t have as much control over what the Prophet writes as I’d like. I have a few Death Eaters with connections in the ministry, but their power is limited.”

“Wait,” Harry says slowly. “That doesn’t make any sense. What does having connections in the ministry have to do with being able to influence what the Prophet writes? I thought the ministry and the Prophet are independent of each other.”

Voldemort laughs humorlessly. “Who told you that? The Prophet can’t publish anything without someone from the ministry giving their approval. They have a whole department for that. The Prophet is far from being an independent newspaper, even though they like to pretend they are.”

Harry blinks. If that is true...

“But how is the Prophet supposed to criticize the ministry if they control what they are publishing? Isn’t that, like, a huge problem?”

“Of course it is.” Voldemort pulls back a bit to look down at Harry. “You really don’t know anything about the Prophet at all, do you?”

Harry twists around uncomfortably. He doesn’t like getting stared at. The fact that Voldemort can’t see his expression only makes it marginally better. “I noticed that Rita Skeeter’s articles usually contain misinformation.”

“Ah, yes, Rita Skeeter,” Voldemort says, amused. “She’s just the tip of the iceberg. At least with her, it’s easy to guess that she isn’t completely truthful, even if you don’t know anything about the topic at hand.”

Harry narrows his eyes. “Are you telling me that the other journalists aren’t much better?”

“There are some that are decent and at least don’t make stuff up, but even they twist the facts more often than not. Not that they have a choice, of course. If the ministry doesn’t like what they write, their articles won’t get published at all.”

Harry shakes his head. “I refuse to believe that. The Daily Prophet is the biggest newspaper in Great Britain. Are you really telling me that it’s full of half-truths and misinformation all the time?”

Voldemort hums. “If you start reading the Prophet regularly and you know a bit about what goes on in the world, you’ll quickly realize that I’m right.”

Harry thinks about that for a moment. He read a lot of Prophet articles over the last few days, and he has to admit that he can see where Voldemort is coming from. There were a lot of half-truths in there, as well as straight-up lies. And most articles gave off the impression of wanting to convince the reader that Dumbledore is getting old and senile and that Voldemort can’t possibly be back. Still...

“But not every article feeds into the same narrative,” Harry protests. “There were a few articles that defended Dumbledore and claimed that we should consider the possibility that you are back.”

“They have to include these articles. Otherwise, it would be beyond obvious that the Prophet isn’t an objective source of information. Besides, maybe you have noticed that the arguments in these articles usually aren’t very strong.”

Harry grimaces. He had noticed that. There are so many arguments you could use to convince people that Voldemort is back, and yet these articles had relied heavily on claiming that Barty Crouch must have had some reason for disguising himself as Moody and that it could be possible that Voldemort ordered him to do that.

Still, there is one last thing Harry doesn’t understand. “If the ministry has to approve everything the Prophet publishes, then how did you convince them to publish that article? I mean, it’s pretty obvious they are doing damage control right now, right? Couldn’t they have avoided that in the first place?”

“That’s why I had to blackmail them,” Voldemort responds. “Lucius told me that a few people lost their jobs because of it, so it will take some time until I can do something like that again.”

Harry grimaces. People lost their jobs, partly because Voldemort wanted to prove that Harry can trust him? The thought alone is enough to make him uncomfortable.

“Anyway,” Voldemort says and trails his fingertips along Harry’s spine in a way that is already starting to feel familiar. It has an incredibly relaxing influence on him. “If you don’t have any further questions about the Prophet, I would like to ask you something.”

“Okay?” Harry says, narrowing his eyes slightly.

“No need to sound so suspicious. The answer won’t help me figure out who you are.”

Harry raises an eyebrow. Somehow, he has a very hard time believing that Voldemort would be interested in asking a question like that.

“What’s your question?” Harry asks, reminding himself that he doesn’t need to answer anything he doesn’t want to.

“It’s...” Voldemort sighs and Harry can feel the hand against his back tensing. Voldemort’s chest extends as he breathes in. “I was just wondering what I need to do for you to kiss me again.”

Harry freezes. He feels himself blushing furiously, thinking about last night when he had pulled Voldemort’s head down to brush his lips against Voldemort’s cheek. That’s what Voldemort must be talking about, though Harry feels more comfortable calling it a peck than a kiss.

Absently, Harry notices that Voldemort has turned slightly rigid. It’s impossible to miss when they are pressed so close against each other - just like Voldemort has probably noticed Harry’s discomfort. Harry can’t explain, not even to himself, why he feels more uncomfortable talking about kissing Voldemort’s cheek than it was to actually do it.

“I...” Harry clears his throat. If he isn’t completely mistaken, it had taken Voldemort some courage to ask that question. It’d be unfair not to answer it honestly, even though part of him wishes he could just pretend that he didn’t hear Voldemort. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to put conditions on stuff like that.”

That doesn’t seem like something a normal couple would do, and even though Harry can’t imagine that they will ever even come close to being a normal couple, he also doesn’t want to do stuff that will get them further away from achieving that than they already are.

“So you won’t kiss me?” Voldemort asks, and something about the tone of Voldemort’s voice leaves Harry breathless. He sounds… almost shy. A bit vulnerable, even. Harry can feel his face heating up even more.

The truth is that brushing his lips against Voldemort’s cheek had felt… good. Harry hadn’t allowed himself to think about it, neither while he was doing it nor after. But now that Voldemort more or less forced him to think about it, Harry has to admit that it had felt right, even like it was the only way he could possibly react in that situation. But that was something he had done in the moment, not something he had really thought through. Doing it again, after Voldemort asked him to…

“I’m sorry for asking,” Voldemort whispers. “You don’t need to answer that.”

Something in Harry’s stomach twists. Harry exhales soundlessly and closes his eyes for a moment. Then he raises his hands to the back of Voldemort’s head.

I’m only doing this to find out if it will feel the same the second time around, Harry tells himself. That’s all.

Voldemort leans his head down at the slightest bit of pressure. Harry’s heart is beating rapidly in his chest when he rises up on his tippy toes. This time, he hesitates an inch before his lips can touch Voldemort’s cheek. His own breathing sounds unnaturally loud in his ears.

Harry shakes his head mentally and deliberately moves the last inch until his lips make contact with Voldemort’s skin. Almost immediately, Harry sinks back down onto his heels and leans his cheek against Voldemort’s chest. He can hear Voldemort’s heartbeat against his ear. It’s beating noticeably faster than would be normal.

Alright. So kissing Voldemort’s cheek had felt just as right as it had the first time. Now all I need to do is figure out what to make of that.

Chapter Text

Harry rolls his eyes and throws the Prophet aside. It looks like it will only be a matter of time until a journalist pays him a visit. The number of articles claiming how important it would be to hear Harry’s side of the story is growing rapidly. Harry bites his lips, wondering if he should send the journalist away when that happens or try to give them an honest summary of how Cedric died. Given what Voldemort told him last night, he is a bit worried they will twist his words to fit their narrative.

Well, I’ll just have to make sure not to say anything that could be taken out of context. That should be simple, right?

Harry grimaces. Something tells him that, no, it won’t be that simple.

Suddenly, someone knocks on his door. Harry turns his head and narrows his eyes slightly. Did Snape really break into the Dursleys’ house at - he glances at his clock - 7 am?

“Come in,” Harry says and stands up. To his relief, it’s indeed Snape who opens the door. That doesn’t stop Harry from being annoyed and a little alarmed, though. What reason could Snape have to show up here this early in the morning? Harry hopes it isn’t an emergency.

That hope flies right out the window when Snape freezes the second his eyes fall on Harry.

“What’s wrong?” Harry asks, standing up straighter.

Did Snape find out something bad during the Death Eater meeting yesterday? Something that concerns Harry? But why would Snape freeze after seeing Harry in that case?

Snape locks eyes with Harry. “I advise you not to let the Dark Lord know that you have a girlfriend or boyfriend.”

Harry blinks. That’s... honestly the last thing he expected Snape to say. “I don’t have a girlfriend or boyfriend.”

Snape raises an eyebrow, his eyes flickering to the side a little. “Nevertheless, I think you should know that the Dark Lord can be quite possessive.”

You don’t need to tell me that. Harry sighs exasperatedly, still not understanding how Snape came to that conclusion. There’s nothing about Harry’s appearance that would indicate that he has a lover-

And then Harry realizes where Snape is looking, and he blushes furiously. Hastily, he pulls his shirt closer to his neck.

It had been easy to hide the hickey at Hogwarts because his uniform had covered it up completely. With muggle clothes, it’s a little harder. Harry suppresses a curse, frustrated with himself for slipping up and annoyed that hickeys take so long to fade in the first place.

“That’s not-” God, this is so embarrassing. “It wasn’t-”

Harry closes his eyes, mortified. He should have just pretended that he didn’t understand what Snape was referring to. Harry takes a deep breath and opens his eyes again. Snape’s comment might be embarrassing, but his words actually remind him of something he’d been wondering about for quite a while now.

“Sir, do you know why Voldemort can leave marks on my body during our soulmate dreams? Marks as in bruises, I mean.”

Snape narrows his eyes. “Bruises? Didn’t you say the Dark Lord doesn’t hurt you?”

“I said he only hurt me once accidentally,” Harry corrects him, gesturing at the finger-shaped bruises on his arms. They are little more than yellow spots by now, while the hickey is still pretty noticeable. “And hickeys are a kind of bruise as well, strictly speaking, aren’t they?”

Snape freezes. “The Dark Lord...?”

Harry hunches his shoulders uncomfortably. “Yes.”

“And you still don’t want to suppress your soulmate dreams?”

“You know I can’t do that-”

“That’s not what I’m asking.”

Harry bites his lip so hard he tastes blood. If he isn’t completely mistaken, Snape is asking if Voldemort gave him that hickey against his will - which is not what happened. Yes, Voldemort overwhelmed him a bit, but Harry didn’t tell him to stop or showed him in any way that he didn’t like it.

“Voldemort is respecting my boundaries, if that’s what you’re asking,” Harry mutters, refusing to meet Snape’s gaze. Harry wishes he’d just picked a different shirt when he got dressed, one that hides the hickey. Then he wouldn’t feel so ashamed right now.

“Anyway, do you know why he can leave marks on my body?” Harry asks, desperately trying to change the subject. “As far as I know, that’s supposed to be impossible.”

“It is,” Snape says, and Harry relaxes somewhat at his even tone. He glances at Snape from the corner of his eye and is surprised to see him looking at Harry almost worried instead of disgusted. “I will try to find out what is different about the two of you that makes it possible.”

Snape sits down on Harry’s chair and rubs his forehead, staring into nothing for a moment. For the first time today, Harry notices the huge bags under his eyes. Snape looks dead on his feet, almost like he didn’t sleep at all since Voldemort summoned him.

“Why didn’t you tell me this sooner? It’s an important piece of information that will make keeping you safe even harder.”

Harry folds his arms. “I forgot. I’ve got a lot on my mind these days.”

“Understandable,” Snape says and just... looks at him. It makes Harry even more uncomfortable than he already is.

“Could you tell me what you did with the Dursleys now, sir?” Harry asks, hoping Snape will drop the topic.

Snape blinks and finally looks away.

“If you insist. I blocked part of their memories. They can’t remember anything about the Wizarding World, including you, nor can they see you. You can cancel the spell by touching them, though I’d advise against it.” Snape narrows his eyes as if in thought. “I suppose you remember that I intended to take you away from here yesterday? I’m still willing to do that if you want to, though I’m beginning to think that it might not be a good idea. At least not right now and not the way I intended.”

Okay, that’s... about as vague as it can get. Harry waits for Snape to clarify what he means. When that doesn’t happen, Harry sighs and says, “Where did you intend to take me, sir?”

“To my house in Spinner’s end. I’m rarely there at the moment, so you’d have peace and quiet. But I’m afraid it’s far from safe for you there. If the Dark Lord figured out that you’re staying with me, he’d be able to get to you pretty easily. I’ve been trying to convince the headmaster to let you stay with your godfather instead, but I’ve been unsuccessful, so far.”

“Sirius lives on the streets.” And in caves, but that’s basically the same. “How is that any safer?”

Snape sneers. “Black has a house. If you want to know why he chose to live on the streets for two years, you will have to ask him yourself. The house is under a Fidelius Charm, which is fortunate and unfortunate at the same time. Fortunate, because it means you’d be safe there, but unfortunate because you can’t get in without Dumbledore’s permission. He is the secret keeper. I’m sure I can convince Dumbledore to let you stay there, though it will take some time.”

Harry takes a deep breath. So there is an actual house he could have moved into a year ago if Pettigrew hadn’t escaped and Sirius had been exonerated. Harry blinks and pushes the painful longing in his heart aside. Focusing on the past won’t get him anywhere.

“Why are you trying to help me so much, sir?” Harry asks quietly.

Snape raises an eyebrow, looking sober. “Do I need a reason?”

Harry hesitates. He doesn’t need to have a reason, but Harry is sure that he has one. Yes, Snape swore to protect Harry, but the Dursleys don’t pose a threat, especially now that they can’t even see or interact with him.

“Don’t you have better things to do?”

Snape laughs humorlessly.

“I have many responsibilities and not a lot of free time, that is true. But I wouldn’t say that my responsibilities are more important - though I also can’t ignore them.” Snape casts a Tempus charm, and, without giving Harry the chance to process what he just said, Snape adds, “I’m afraid I’ll need to go now. I’m already late. Unfortunately, I’m not sure if I will find the time to stop by tomorrow. Either way, make sure to practice clearing your mind as often as you can.”

Snape nods at Harry and stands up. Seconds later, Harry is alone in his room again, staring at his closed door.

Did Snape just say that his responsibilities to Dumbledore and Voldemort aren’t more important than helping me? What the hell?

Chapter Text

Harry decides to follow Dudley and his friends on a whim. He’s bored and curious to see if Dudley will behave any differently now that he doesn’t know that magic exists. Harry makes sure not to come too close and watches them from a distance. Dudley can’t see him, but the same doesn’t apply to his friends. It’s better not to seek out trouble on purpose.

As far as Harry can tell, there’s nothing unusual about Dudley’s behavior. He laughs with his friends, pushing each other around, and Harry rolls his eyes. Well, at least they aren’t beating anyone up at the moment.

At the end of the street, Dudley and his friends split up, and Harry starts walking faster, wondering if he would have ended up the same way if he had been born as Dudley’s brother instead of as his cousin. Harry shivers, repulsed by the thought. That’s at least one good thing about growing up with the Dursleys the way he had. He’ll never turn into a bully.

It doesn’t take long for Harry to catch up with his cousin. Dudley doesn’t spare him a single look, of course, which does feel a bit weird. It’s almost as jarring as seeing Dudley’s relaxed and content expression. Harry is so used to seeing glee and resentment on Dudley’s face whenever Harry is around-

“What...?” Dudley says, his voice wavering slightly, and Harry hunches his shoulders, alarmed. Dudley’s voice sounds uneven, even scared. What-

And then it hits him. The coldness, the dread, the despair. Harry gasps, distantly aware that he has fallen to his knees.

Dementors. What are they doing here?

The world spins around him, and Harry forgets where he is.

Harry is sitting in Dumbledore’s office, desperately trying to pull himself together, not to let it show how horrified he is by Dumbledore’s revelation, but all he can think is, My soulmate will kill me, over and over again.

Harry looks at Dumbledore and knows that he didn’t manage to keep all of his despair off his face. Humiliation mixes in with the shock. Dumbledore must think he’s weak for reacting this way to the Prophecy. Harry pulls himself together by sheer force of will, feeling like he’s dying inside.

He says something to Dumbledore - he couldn’t, for the love of God, have said what exactly - and pulls himself out of his chair. He only allows himself to fall apart once he has made it to an abandoned classroom and hid beneath his Invisibility Cloak.

“No, stop. Help!”

The frantic voice draws Harry out of his own mind. Dudley lays somewhere beside him, whimpering quietly. Harry rips his eyes away from him, pushing away his surprise that Dudley reacts so strongly to the Dementors and glances around.

He spots the Dementors right away. There are three of them, coming closer and closer towards them. Harry draws his wand. He doesn’t bother standing up and hastily begins looking for a happy memory, hoping that the despair won’t overwhelm him again.

Harry shakes his head and tries to imagine how it’d be like to be normal, without a scar on his forehead, without a Prophecy hanging over his head, and without a Dark Lord for a soulmate. Harry tries to imagine how much freedom that would give him, how much better he would feel without all of these burdens weighing him down.

“Expecto Patronum!”

Nothing happens.

That’s because you’re a failure, a voice whispers at the back of his head. That’s all you will ever be. You don’t even have the strength to protest when a mass murder touches you, though you know he’d let go of you if you asked him to. You are rotten on the inside. Why else would you get pleasure out of hugging and kissing the murderer of your parents? And despite all of that, you still think you’re better than Voldemort, that somehow your ideas of morality and your sense of what is right mean you aren’t as despicable as he is. You can’t even see your own hypocrisy.

Harry shakes his head, feeling dizzy. He needs to get rid of these thoughts as quickly as possible. Otherwise…

Harry shivers, thinking about what might happen otherwise.

But wouldn’t it be a relief? The voice continues mercilessly. If you let yourself be kissed, you won’t have to feel this way anymore. You won’t have to question yourself all the time, nor will you have to worry about what Voldemort will do in retaliation once he figures out that you are his soulmate. If you gave up, if you sacrificed yourself, you would do the world a favor.

Harry lowers his hand. The voice has a point. Maybe the Dementors are a blessing in disguise. He’s so sick of fighting. Giving up, allowing himself to be killed - or kissed, in this case - had felt repulsive to him until now. It’s not an option Harry had ever seriously considered before, not even during the first few days after his soulmate dreams had started.

“No,” someone whimpers and Harry’s head snaps to the side.

For a moment, he had completely forgotten that he isn’t alone, that Dudley is right beside him. A jolt goes through Harry when he sees the Dementor leaning over Dudley’s face. Maybe it would be for the best to allow himself to get kissed if he were alone. But he isn’t.

The fierce desire to protect, to keep someone from harm, rises within him, and Harry raises his arm. The other two Dementors have almost reached him. He’ll only get one shot at this. Harry takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, focusing all of his attention on how he felt after saving Ginny’s life in the Chamber of Secrets, after he freed Dobby and proved that there’s no reason for Hagrid to rot in Azkaban.

Harry focuses on the bone-deep satisfaction and joy he had felt at the time, hoping that it will be enough.

“Expecto Patronum!”

Harry opens his eyes, and all the tension leaves his body at the sight of the silver stag. The Patronus forces the two Dementors in front of Harry to retreat, and Harry frantically gestures at Dudley.

“There! Go there!”

The stag follows his order and pushes the Dementor on top of his cousin away. Harry allows himself the faintest of smiles - he hadn’t been sure if he’d be able to produce a Patronus so quickly - and glances at Dudley, opening his mouth to ask him if he’s alright.

Harry freezes the second his eyes land on Dudley’s face.

The world stops.

Time loses all meaning.

Harry has to put all of his willpower into making sure he keeps breathing.

Harry doesn’t know how long he stares at his cousin’s face. It could have been hours for all he knows. A part of him knows that his Patronus must have forced the Dementors to retreat, but he still feels just as cold as he did before.

After what feels like half an eternity, Harry hears a familiar voice. Not Dudley’s - he’ll never hear his voice again, of that, Harry is sure - but a familiar voice nonetheless. It’s Mrs. Figg. Harry doesn’t even try to understand what she says, nor does he bother putting his wand away. It doesn’t matter. Nothing does.

Harry blinks, and from one second to the next, he’s standing in front of a door. He has no idea how he got there - he might have blacked out for a while, or maybe he Apparated without meaning to. All he knows is that there is an arm hanging over his shoulders, and when he turns his head slightly, he sees watery blue eyes staring aimlessly into nothing. Harry flinches and hastily looks away.

The door opens, and Harry catches a glimpse of aunt Petunia’s confused expression before he lowers his gaze. He isn’t sure what she sees. Does it look like Dudley’s arm is hanging in midair for her?

“Dudders, what…? Vernon! VERNON! Come here!”

Harry had never seen uncle Vernon move so quickly before. In a matter of seconds, he has made his way from the living room to the front door, his shoulder bumping against his wife’s.

Aunt Petunia wrings her hands. Something seems to be holding her back from touching Dudley. Harry can’t blame her. Dudley’s empty eyes are terrifying.

Uncle Vernon is the first one to pull himself together. He reaches out with his hands.

“Let’s get you inside.” The words seem to snap aunt Petunia out of whatever haze she had found herself in. Together, they pull Dudley into the house. Harry does his best to stay out of their way, but his aunt and uncle still end up brushing their hands against Harry’s arm.

Harry can see the moment Snape’s spells stop working. His aunt and uncle freeze, their eyes going wide. For a second, they seem to forget about their son standing, still as a statue, between them.

“You,” uncle Vernon chokes out. “What did you do to us? What did you do to our son?”

“I...” There’s nothing he can say, is there? No excuse, no explanation he could offer that would be good enough.

“Fix him,” uncle Vernon demands. “Now.”

Harry shakes his head, avoiding eye contact. “I can’t. It’s irreversible.”

“You’re lying,” aunt Petunia says, her voice higher than ever before. “Use your stupid wand and undo whatever you did.”

“I can’t,” Harry repeats, staring at the ground. “A Dementor removed his soul. There’s no way to put it back.”

For a long, painful moment, there is nothing but silence. Then aunt Petunia lets out a keen, so agonized Harry grips the door frame for support.

Aunt Petunia falls to her knees, grasping Dudley’s shirt. “My boy. My boy, my boy, my boy.”

“Petunia!” Uncle Vernon’s voice is shaking almost as much as Harry’s knees. “What-”

“He’s gone, Vernon,” aunt Petunia sobs. “Gone. Losing one’s soul… That’s worse than dying.”

Harry takes deep, controlled breaths. He can’t think or see straight anymore.

From somewhere far away, he hears uncle Vernon growl, “leave. Before I kill you.”

Shaking, Harry lets go of the door frame and turns around, knowing that he will never come back here, no matter what happens.

Chapter Text

Harry puts one foot before the other, not caring where he will end up. He has no idea how much time has passed or even where he is when he becomes aware of a distant pain in his hands. Glancing down, he sees owls picking at his fingers. Harry blinks, following the blood dripping onto the pavement with his eyes.

Absently, Harry reaches out to remove the letters from their talons. Immediately, blood soaks into the parchment, tainting it. The owls rustle their feathers after Harry freed them of their letters and fly away, not even sparing him a second glance. Harry looks after them until he can’t make them out anymore. He wishes he had his Firebolt with him. He’d like nothing more than to fly away. From everything.

Harry turns his head when he hears a quiet pop and finds red eyes staring at him. Harry blinks and meets the gaze head-on.

He should probably be scared or wonder how Voldemort found him or even draw his wand to protect himself, but he can’t bring himself to do any of these things - not while everything feels so surreal and far away.

Voldemort is probably just part of his imagination, anyway. If he could reach Harry while he’s at the Dursleys’, he would have done it sooner, after all.

Voldemort opens his mouth and says something, but Harry can’t make sense of the words. He stares at him blankly, blinking slowly.

Harry watches as Voldemort curls his lips and draws his wand. Harry’s hand twitches, urging him to protect himself. He suppresses the impulse. If Voldemort is really here, he’s as good as dead anyway. He’s in no shape to fight for his life.

Voldemort moves his hand in a weird way, and a blue spell shoots out of his wand.

Blue? Why blue?

The next second, Harry’s question gets answered. Agony unlike anything Harry had ever felt takes hold of him and forces him to his knees. The letters slip out of his fingers, and Harry wraps his arms around his stomach. Guilt and sorrow and regret and anger fight a vicious battle inside of him, all of them demanding his attention. It’s like there isn’t enough space inside of him for all these emotions racing through him.

Tears spring to his eyes when Harry realizes - truly realizes, for the first time - what happened.

Dudley is gone, and it’s my fault. I could have stopped it. I could have driven the Dementors away if I hadn’t been so bloody weak-

“What did you do to me?” Harry gasps, glancing up at Voldemort. Tears slide down his cheeks, blurring his vision, but despite that, he can still make out the morbid curiosity on Voldemort’s face.

“I forced you to feel what you’re feeling.” Voldemort cocks his head, drinking in the sight before him as if he couldn’t get enough of it. “It’s a spell that is most often used during torture to prevent the victim from mentally withdrawing.”

It takes a while for the meaning of Voldemort’s words to sink in, but when they finally do, thick betrayal joins the chaos inside his chest.

Harry blinks away the tears and locks eyes with Voldemort, looking for a sign of the man he spent night after night with, the one who opened up to him about his abusive childhood and who told Harry he would punish everyone who raised a hand against Harry.

After a few seconds, Harry lowers his head. There’s nothing. Nothing - only a monster who tortured Harry at the graveyard and killed his parents.

It was all a lie. A farce. The man Harry got to know in his dreams doesn’t exist.

“Any last words?”

Harry clenches his fists and raises his gaze once again. He always knew it would come to this. Even when he allowed himself the faintest bit of hope that, given enough time, Voldemort might change at least a bit, he had known deep down that Voldemort would kill him, eventually.

And either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives.

But that doesn’t mean Harry will surrender peacefully. He can’t bring himself to raise his hand against Voldemort, not even now, but he doesn’t need his wand to hurt Voldemort. He knows Voldemort is obsessed with the idea of having a soulmate. The vision he had had told him that much, at least.

Harry will tear Voldemort’s hope of ever finding an equal into a thousand pieces.

Harry looks into those cruel, merciless eyes and says, “Did you know Tom Riddle was a Parselmouth?”

Voldemort freezes, eyes going wide, and Harry knows what will happen a split second in advance. It’s not enough time to prepare himself, though.

The mental assault hits him like a train. It’s like someone knocked his head against a wall. He feels dizzy and disorientated. Memory after memory flies by at an alarming speed, a lot faster than they had when Snape entered his mind.

Voldemort doesn’t stop to look at anything. He just pushes through, shoving Harry’s memories aside ruthlessly. It feels like someone is digging a hole inside Harry’s mind.

When Harry finally pulls himself together enough to shove against the presence inside his mind, Voldemort pushes back with so much force Harry gasps for breath and retreats into a corner of his mind. For a second, it had felt like Voldemort was about to push Harry out of his own mind. He’s not sure if that’s possible, but he’d rather not find out, so he curls into himself, trying to ignore what’s happening, to blend out the memories flying by.

And then everything stops whirling inside of him all at once and words echo inside his mind, louder than any Howler.

“See? I knew you’d hurt me, eventually.”

Something inside of Harry snaps and the sound of glass shattering reaches his ears. He barely even notices Voldemort slipping out of his mind.

Chapter Text

Harry keeps his eyes clenched shut, not wanting to see Voldemort’s cold, merciless eyes again. For a while, he can hear nothing but his own heartbeat and ragged breath, distantly aware that he’s lying on the ground, his hair and shirt sticking to his skin - he’s drenched in sweat, and suddenly Harry can’t help but be utterly furious at the weather. He only spent the entire day outside and ended up following Dudley because it was stiflingly hot inside.

If it hadn’t been so bloody warm, Dudley wouldn’t be soulless now. His cousin was nothing more than collateral damage. The Dementors were obviously after Harry, not Dudley.

Harry clenches his fists, shaking all over. No, the weather isn’t at fault. Voldemort is. He must have sent them. Who else has the needed power and desire to try and get me kissed? And it would explain how he found me, too.

Harry takes a deep breath, desperately trying to get his emotions under control. He’s not sure if the spell Voldemort hit him with is still having an effect on him. All he knows is that he has never been this furious before.

Voldemort has tried to kill you your whole life, a voice whispers at the back of his head. You should have known that something like this would happen. You should have prepared for it. Don’t try to put the blame on somebody else.

Harry grimaces and rolls onto his side, drawing his legs up to his chest. He knows it’s his fault. He should have been able to produce a Patronus sooner. He’d done it before. But it’s only natural to try and figure out who else - or what else - played a part, isn’t it?

Harry lowers his head, pressing his face against his knees, and bites his lips so hard he tastes blood. Well, it’s not like it matters either way. Voldemort will kill me as soon as he is over his shock. That should be any second now.

“You,” Voldemort says, his voice vibrating. “How-”

Harry draws his shoulders up, curling further into himself. There’s so much barely controlled rage in Voldemort’s voice. It makes him wonder if it was a good idea to use the code phrase. It had felt satisfying to say it in that moment, to hurt Voldemort instead of getting hurt by him for once, but is that brief moment of satisfaction really worth getting tortured over?

He probably would’ve tortured me either way, just like he did at the graveyard. So it doesn’t really matter.

Harry feels something shifting in his pocket, and with a jolt, he reaches down, but he’s too slow. His wand slips out of his fingers, and Harry freezes, his fingers clawing at his jeans.

There goes his very last hope of making it out of here alive.

Then Harry hears parchment rustling, which makes absolutely no sense until he remembers the owls and the letters they brought him. Voldemort must have picked them up or summoned them. Harry flinches violently when something touches his upper back and the back of his knees. He almost opens his eyes when Voldemort - it has to be him, there’s no one else around - picks him up, pressing him against a broad chest.

A distant part of himself wonders where Voldemort will take him. Maybe some kind of prison cell where he can torture Harry for weeks on end until he gets bored of it? Harry shivers at the thought. He doubts he would survive that without losing his mind. The torture would be bad enough all on its own, but what really frightens Harry is the prospect of being locked up somewhere with no way to escape.

The grip on Harry’s legs and back tightens. A warning. A reminder that fighting is useless, that no matter what he does, he won’t be getting out of this. Harry turns his face as far away from Voldemort as he can.

“Take a deep breath,” Voldemort says, and Harry follows the order without thinking, absently noticing that Voldemort’s voice is back to sounding cold and emotionless.

Before Harry can wonder what that might mean, something presses against him from all sides. Harry can’t breathe. There’s no air around him.

Maybe he is trying to suffocate me? But why would he tell me to take a deep breath, then?

After what feels like at least a whole minute, the pressure goes away all at once, and Harry gasps for breath, entirely against his will. He wishes he could tell his body not to bother, to just give up. That would make everything so much easier.

Harry feels himself being lowered onto a surface, and then the hands finally disappear. The surface he’s lying on is soft and comfortable, which confuses him.

What exactly does Voldemort have in mind? This doesn’t feel like the beginning of a torture session.

Harry’s eyes are still closed, refusing to give Voldemort another chance to slip into his mind. Voldemort will have to pry his eyes open if he wants to do that again. This time, Harry suppresses the flinch when Voldemort touches his shoulder and pulls him into a sitting position. Something cold presses against Harry’s lips, and he almost gags at the foul smell.

“Drink.”

Harry clenches his fists but opens his mouth without hesitation. He doesn’t know what kind of potion Voldemort wants him to drink - if it’s poison or Veritaserum or something worse - but Voldemort will force him to drink it if Harry protests, and he doesn’t want to give Voldemort that satisfaction. The object on Harry’s lips shifts. The second the liquid touches his tongue, Harry gags. But instead of drawing his head back, he opens his mouth wider and swallows the liquid down as quickly as possible.

Voldemort pulls at Harry’s shoulders. Harry takes the hint and lowers himself back down onto his back.

Wait. Shouldn’t I be... scared? Devastated? Something horrible happened, but I can’t... I can’t remember what? Harry frowns. Well, if I already forgot about it, it couldn’t have been that bad, right?

Harry sighs and sinks into darkness.

Chapter Text

Voldemort closes his eyes and runs a hand down his face.

He fell asleep right away.

That wasn’t the primary purpose of the potion. It was a simple Calming Draught - the strongest one he had at hand, yes, but nonetheless just a Calming Draught.

Maybe that was the only way to calm him down - to make him fall asleep.

Voldemort shakes his head and looks down at the boy, trying to get his thoughts back into order.

Even in his sleep, Harry curls into himself, like he had done on the streets of that disgusting muggle neighborhood. His hair sticks to his skin, and his skin is almost as pale as Voldemort’s.

He looks so small.

Voldemort hadn’t spent much time thinking about his soulmate’s height. Seventeen-year-olds aren’t done growing, and there was always the possibility that his soulmate wasn’t an adult yet, though the likelihood of that was pretty small.

He didn’t seriously consider the possibility that his soulmate might be only fourteen.

That oversight is entirely Voldemort’s fault.

Almost everything else wasn’t an oversight.

It had crossed his mind once or twice since the dreams started that his soulmate might be Harry Potter, but he always dismissed the idea right away. The thought was ludicrous. Harry destroyed his diary, a part of Voldemort’s very soul. He’s the reason Voldemort spent thirteen years as barely more than a shadow. It made no sense for him to be Voldemort’s soulmate.

Most importantly, though, Harry never would have said and done the things he had in their dreams.

Harry wouldn’t have enjoyed getting hugged by Voldemort.

He wouldn’t have kissed Voldemort’s cheek.

He definitely wouldn’t have cried in front of Voldemort. He hadn’t at the graveyard, and he had been tortured and almost killed there.

Harry Potter would have fought him at every step of the way and never would have tried to have an open conversation with him.

It doesn’t make any sense. Voldemort curls his lips. He hates being clueless. If he hadn’t seen the truth in Harry’s mind, he would still believe that it’s some kind of trick.

Voldemort sits up straighter when he hears a quiet whimper. Harry’s face scrunches up in his sleep. Is he in pain? Or is it just a nightmare? Voldemort’s eyes slight over Harry and come to rest on his blood-stained hands.

Voldemort stands up to get a closer look, remembering the blood that had been on the letters Harry carried around with him.

There are cuts on Harry’s hands that look like they might have been caused by owls. Voldemort narrows his eyes. It’s not particularly common, but some people order their owls to attack people who ignore their letters. The ministry, in particular, is known to do that when it comes to legal documents.

Well, now he knows what one of the letters is probably about, at least.

Voldemort draws his wand and picks Harry’s right hand up, examining the cuts for a moment. Then he presses the tip of his wand against Harry’s palm and watches as the cuts close up, leaving behind perfectly even skin. Satisfied, Voldemort lets go of the hand and does the same with Harry’s left hand. After that is done, he vanishes the blood.

Voldemort strokes his thumb along the back of Harry’s hand, almost missing the way the fingers twitch slightly. Straightening his back, he raises his head and finds green eyes staring at him.

The second they make eye contact, Harry yanks his arm back and scoots away from him as far as the bed allows.

Voldemort watches him, frowning slightly. He just healed Harry’s hands, so why-

“Why haven’t you killed me yet?”

Voldemort blinks, startled by the question. Shouldn’t that be obvious?

“You used the code phrase so that I wouldn’t hurt you.”

Harry laughs. It sounds cold, humorless. Nothing like the laugh Voldemort heard the other night, the one he liked so much.

“Come on, don’t play games with me. I said that to hurt you, and you know that.” Harry glances away for a fraction of a second. “Why am I in a bedroom and not in a torture chamber?”

I said that to hurt you, and you know that.

There is so much meaning packed into these few words that Voldemort has trouble grasping it all right away.

“You thought I would kill you either way,” Voldemort realizes, dazed. “Even though we came up with the code phrase to ensure that wouldn’t happen?”

Harry narrows his eyes. His shoulders are drawn up, and he’s leaning back so far that it looks like he is one second away from jumping out of bed.

“That’s not-” Harry licks his lips, looking at Voldemort sharply. “I don’t know where you’re going with this, but I’m not falling for it. Just cut the bullshit and tell me what you want from me. I might give it to you if that means you’ll grant me a less painful death.”

Voldemort takes a step back, his mind reeling. He expected Harry to be angry at him for invading his mind the way he did and for using the spell on him that forced him to feel what he was feeling. He mentally prepared himself to offer his apologies and to soothe Harry’s temper.

He’s starting to realize it won’t be that easy.

Voldemort takes a few more steps away from the bed and sits down on one of the chairs. Only then does he realize he still has his wand drawn and puts it away.

“I will not hurt you, Harry.”

Harry bares his teeth. “Didn’t you hear me? I said cut the bullshit.”

Voldemort grinds his teeth, ignoring the anger rising in his chest as best as he can. He sees Harry looking at him intently, nodding slowly, as if Voldemort just confirmed something for him - though Voldemort has no idea what that might be.

“I will not hurt you,” Voldemort repeats, but even as he says that, he realizes that words alone won’t be enough to convince Harry. He hesitates for a moment, mentally going through all the repercussions his next course of action might have, before arriving at the conclusion that it’s worth it. “What do I need to do to convince you of that?”

Chapter Text

Harry stares at him for a very long time. Voldemort waits as patiently as he can, determined to give Harry as much time as he needs to think about his question.

Eventually, Harry straightens his back and climbs off the bed. Voldemort remains seated, which means that Harry is looking down on him for the first time ever.

“Go fuck yourself,” Harry says, his face perfectly even. “I’m not having this conversation again. Not after everything you did to me.”

Voldemort freezes. He knows he’s gaping, but he can’t help himself. No one had dared to tell him to go fuck himself since… Actually, Voldemort is pretty certain that no one has ever said that to him.

Voldemort doesn’t understand why Harry is being so unreasonable. Everything was fine between them last night. There’s not a lot that could have changed between then and now.

Does Harry’s anger really just stem from what Voldemort did earlier on that muggle street? That doesn’t seem very likely. Harry had been under the Cruciatus curse two weeks ago - don’t think about that, not now - so the spell that prevented him from mentally withdrawing must have felt like nothing in comparison, just like the mental assault probably only felt like mild discomfort.

Voldemort just can’t figure out how Harry’s mind works, why he would suddenly act so differently.

Maybe it was all a farce. Maybe he deliberately pretended to open up to me more and more during our dreams so that I would dismiss the possibility that Harry Potter might be my soulmate.

Voldemort pushes the thought aside after considering it for a moment. As far as he knows, Harry isn’t that good of an actor.

“Not after everything you did to me?” Voldemort repeats Harry’s words. “I could say the same thing. You have hurt me just as much as I have hurt you, if not more. If it weren’t for you, I would have gotten my body back three years ago-”

Harry laughs. There’s an edge of hysteria in his voice that causes Voldemort to sit up straighter. Maybe it was a bad idea to have this conversation right now. Maybe it would have been better to let Harry rest for a while longer-

“The difference between you and me is that I only hurt you in self-defense so that I wouldn’t die,” Harry says, his voice raw and uneven. “But I’m not surprised you don’t see it that way. I know you care about your own survival and your own well-being, first and foremost. That’s why you send the Dementors after me, isn’t it? Because I pose a threat to you.”

Harry starts walking up and down, his hands clenched into fists, almost vibrating from barely controlled rage. “Do you know that I almost let them kiss me? I was ready to give up, to just let it end there. The only reason why I’m not soulless right now is that my cousin was with me, and I didn’t want him to get kissed.”

Harry’s face contorts in pain, and he lowers his gaze. Quietly, he adds, “It’s my fault he’s gone. I know that. I hesitated. But you are the reason the Dementors were there in the first place, and I will never forgive you for that. So you might as well just kill me now. It’s time for you to accept that the perfect little soulmate you were hoping to find doesn’t exist.”

Voldemort stares at Harry’s blazing eyes, his mind completely blank for the first time in decades. Harry is meeting his gaze head-on, refusing to back down. Voldemort feels… weird. His stomach aches, which reminds him of his childhood when there had been nothing but moldy bread to eat, and his heart is beating erratically, and his hands are shaking, and none of that matters because all he can think is my soulmate almost got kissed by a Dementor. It’s nothing but sheer luck that they didn’t steal his soul.

I never would have found out what happened to him.

Voldemort shivers and closes his eyes, only to open them again right away. Harry is suicidal. He can’t leave him out of his sight, not even for a few seconds.

Harry curls his lips. “Stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?” Voldemort asks, not even caring how hoarse his voice sounds.

“Like you care about me. I know you don’t, so stop bothering. I won’t buy into your lies.”

A shiver runs down Voldemort’s spine. As long as Harry is convinced that Voldemort sent the Dementors, he won’t listen to a single thing Voldemort has to say. “Harry. Listen to me. I didn’t send Dementors after you. I don’t have any control over them yet.”

Harry folds his arms and raises an eyebrow. “Really? That’s the best you can do? Who else would have the needed power and motivation to try and get me kissed?”

“The ministry. They are the only ones who have any control over them.”

Harry shakes his head. “You aren’t seriously telling me that you think the ministry sent Dementors after me, right? They have no reason-”

“They have. You’ve seen the articles in the Prophet, right? The people demanding that you should be interviewed? The ministry might control what the Prophet publishes, but that doesn’t mean every employee agrees with the narrative they are trying to sell. One of them might have decided to take things into their own hands. Maybe they wanted to make sure you couldn’t tell the world that I’m back-”

“Even if that were the case - which I don’t think it is because it sounds ridiculous - that would still mean that it’s ultimately your fault the Dementors attacked me. You blackmailed the Prophet into publishing that first article. I didn’t ask you to do that.”

Harry sighs and takes a couple of steps back until his back hits the wall. Then he sits down on the floor and pulls his legs to his chest. All the while, he keeps his eyes on Voldemort, like he can’t afford to look away from him for even a moment.

“If you aren’t going to kill me, could you at least leave me alone? It physically hurts me to look at you.”

Voldemort’s heart skips a beat. “I can’t do that.”

Harry scoffs. “You mean you don’t want to do that.”

“No, I can’t. You’re suicidal. You shouldn’t be left alone.”

Harry stares at him for a long moment. “Then leave a house-elf with me or one of your stupid followers. Just get out of my fucking sight!”

Harry glares at him for a few intense seconds, then he lowers his head and hides his face against his knees.

Slowly, Voldemort stands up. Staying won’t do either of them any good. Not while Harry doesn’t want him around.

Chapter Text

Harry freezes when Voldemort opens the door, and a huge snake enters the room. He recognizes her instantly. He saw her twice in the last two weeks, once at the graveyard and once in his vision.

“Nagini, this is my mate. I want you to look over him. Make sure he doesn’t get hurt, not even by himself.”

Nagini moves a few feet towards Harry, and he tenses, forcing himself to say still, not wanting to provoke her.

“So you finally found him?” Nagini says, her eyes fixed on Harry. “Wait. I know this one. Didn’t you torture and almost kill him?”

Harry feels like snorting. Well, at least there is someone here who realizes that Voldemort is making a fool of himself. Harry wonders if Nagini will be the one to talk some sense into him. As far as he knows, she’s the closest Voldemort has to a friend.

“That was a terrible mistake. I wish I had known who he was sooner.” Voldemort raises his gaze to look at Harry. “I left your letters on the nightstand. I suspect that at least one of them is from the ministry. Please do not worry. I won’t let anyone snap your wand, and I will make sure you get the education you deserve, one way or another.”

Harry bites the inside of his cheek. Does he really think it’s a good idea to leave me alone with a giant snake that was supposed to eat my corpse two weeks ago? If she gets hungry-

Harry pushes the thought aside. Nagini might be dangerous, but he still prefers her company over Voldemort’s. Harry doesn’t want to give Voldemort a reason to stay.

“Will I ever get it back?” Harry asks instead. “My wand, I mean.”

Voldemort looks at him for a long moment. “Not as long as you might hurt yourself with it.”

Harry lowers his gaze to hide the anger in his eyes. He’s so full of shit. I know the real reason why I will never see my wand again.

“If you need anything, call a house-elf, and I will be here in a matter of seconds.”

Yeah, that’s not going to happen.

Voldemort nods at him one last time, and Harry relaxes slightly when the door closes behind him. He almost doesn’t care that he’s now alone with a deadly snake in an unfamiliar room with nothing but a few letters to occupy himself with.

Harry lowers his hands to the ground to push himself to his feet but stops in his tracks when he sees Nagini moving towards him. She stops about a foot in front of him, tasting the air with her tongue.

“He doesn’t look very impressive. Much smaller and thinner than Master.”

Harry bites his lip to keep himself from snapping back. It’s not his fault he’s so small. Besides, he’s still growing.

Nagini comes even closer until she almost touches his shin. Harry wants to cringe away from her but refrains from doing so since he doesn’t want to anger her.

“He looks like any other human. I thought he would look more like Master. I wonder why he doesn’t.” Her tongue comes out again, almost touching Harry’s knees. “His smell is far from ordinary, though. It’s perfect. Sweet and spicy.”

Harry’s heart skips a beat. He raises his chin and looks at Nagini as directly as he can. “Voldemort told you to make sure I don’t get hurt. So no matter how delicious I smell, you can’t eat me.”

Nagini lets out a surprised hiss. “You can talk.”

“All humans can,” Harry says dryly.

“Why is Master not with you right now? He’s waited so long to meet you.”

Harry grinds his teeth. “I don’t want him around. You were there at the graveyard. You’ve seen how he treats me.”

Harry shakes his head, angry at himself for answering. She will probably tell Voldemort everything Harry says. It’d be better to just keep his mouth shut.

“He’ll make it up to you,” Nagini says with so much conviction that Harry rolls his eyes, hoping that Nagini doesn’t know enough about human body language to interpret that correctly.

“Could you back off a bit? I want to stand up.”

Nagini moves back two or three feet, and Harry lets out a relieved sigh. Ever since his encounter with the Basilisk, he has always felt a bit queasy around snakes.

Harry climbs to his feet and grimaces. He wishes he could take a shower and put on fresh clothes. He feels sticky and filthy.

Harry pulls at his shirt while he walks to the nightstand, picks up the letters, and sits down on the edge of the bed.

Then he opens the letters, one after the other.

Two of them are from the ministry. The first one claims that he has been expelled and that someone from the ministry will come to snap his wand. The other one rectifies that, saying that Harry will have to go to a disciplinary hearing instead.

Harry rolls his eyes and throws the letters aside. He doesn’t have any energy left to worry about getting expelled or losing his wand - not while he is Voldemort’s prisoner and could be tortured or killed at any moment.

The next two letters are from Sirius and Mr. Weasley, both urging him to stay inside and not use his magic again, though Mr. Weasley added that Harry shouldn’t worry since Dumbledore will do everything he can for Harry.

Harry lays the letters to the others and rubs his eyes. They probably sent the letters before finding out that Dudley got kissed and that the Dursleys kicked me out.

Harry shakes his head and picks up the last letter. It’s very short, but that doesn’t stop Harry’s blood from growing cold halfway through reading it.

Harry,

do not touch any of the Dursleys. If they kick you out, the protections around the house and the neighborhood will fall. Don’t take any unnecessary risks.

Destroy this letter immediately.

Harry stands up and throws the letter into the fireplace without a second thought, forcing himself not to glance at Nagini. Hopefully, she won’t read anything into this.

There was no signature, but that doesn’t surprise Harry. Snape isn’t stupid. It actually surprises Harry that he took the risk of writing a letter that could have been intercepted in the first place-

A jolt goes through Harry. What if Voldemort had read the letter? All five letters had been sealed, but that doesn’t mean anything.

Snape might be in terrible danger right now. Because of him. Because he had been too stupid to open his letters before Voldemort showed up.

“I need to get out of here,” Harry mutters, looking at Nagini without really seeing her.

“Then let’s go. It’s boring in here, anyway.”

Harry frowns. “You mean the doors aren’t locked?”

“Why would they be?”

Harry shakes his head and looks at the walls. He can see two doors, though there might be more hidden behind concealment charms. Harry stands up and opens both of them. One of them leads to a bathroom, the other reveals a corridor. Harry glances at Nagini, who followed him through the room.

“Could you please lead me to your Master?”

“Of course,” Nagini says, sounding delighted, as if Harry had just promised her a trunk full of mice. “Follow me.”

Chapter Text

“How big is this house, anyway?” Harry asks after Nagini led him through four corridors and a room with an unusually high ceiling without showing any sign of slowing down soon.

“Big,” Nagini responds, sounding bored. “Master seems to like it, though I don’t know why. There aren’t even any prey in here apart from a few humans and that rat-man, and Master told me I’m not allowed to eat any of them at the moment.”

Harry’s step falters before he starts walking even faster. He narrows his eyes and looks around warily. He hopes he won’t run into Pettigrew or any of the other Death Eaters that apparently are around here somewhere. Voldemort might have ordered Nagini to protect him from harm, but he probably didn’t expect Harry to wander around the house. Pettigrew and the others might not even know Harry is here yet.

Harry hopes luck will be on his side for once. He wants to reach Voldemort as soon as he can, without any unnecessary distractions.

Luck isn’t on his side, of course.

“We’re almost there,” Nagini says after a few minutes. “Master is behind the door ahead of us. I can feel him.”

Harry starts walking even faster, almost jogging now, when someone walks around the corner. The boy freezes all at once.

“Potter?” Draco Malfoy says, his mouth hanging open slightly.

Harry clenches his teeth and walks around him, hoping Malfoy will be too shocked to do anything. Under other circumstances, Harry would have been surprised to see Malfoy here as well, but right now, he can’t bring himself to care.

Harry reaches for the door handle and lets out a frustrated hiss when a pale hand presses against the door to keep it closed.

“What are you doing in my house?”

Harry frowns. No wonder Malfoy is so snobby. Harry would be as well if he grew up in a place like this.

“Let go of the door, Malfoy. Trust me, you don’t want to get involved.”

“You can’t go in there. The Dark Lord-”

“…is in there, I know. Now let me through, or I will order Nagini to bite you.”

Malfoy’s eyes widen. “You can’t do that!”

Harry raises an eyebrow. “Watch me.”

Harry turns around to look at Nagini, his hand still on the door handle. Her eyes are fixed on Malfoy, as far as Harry can tell.

“Nagini? Could you scare Malfoy a bit? I don’t want you to hurt him, just… let him think you will attack him, okay?”

“Gladly.”

Nagini opens her mouth, showing off her teeth. Malfoy squeals and hastily backs off a few steps.

“Boring,” Nagini complains. “I was just getting started.”

Harry yanks the door open and closes it behind Nagini and him before Malfoy can get over his fear.

Harry freezes, and all of his amusement over Malfoy’s reaction turns into thin air when he sees what he just walked into.

“…might even have gotten himself hurt on purpose a few times so that he wouldn’t have to attend classes…”

Snape’s voice trails off when his eyes fall on Harry. Harry barely notices Snape’s look, though, since all of his attention is on Voldemort and the way his eyes start blazing. Voldemort raises his wand.

Shit. I need to do something to shift Voldemort’s anger over to me-

“Master,” Nagini says, sounding delighted for some reason. “You shouldn’t have left your mate alone. He missed you.”

Voldemort’s head snaps towards Nagini, and his eyes widen. “Harry? What are you doing here? Do you need something?”

“Yes,” Harry says through clenched teeth. “I need a soulmate who isn’t a complete and utter idiot, for starters.”

There’s a quiet gasp, and Harry allows himself to look to the side for a moment. Snape’s eyes widened, and his lips are parted the slightest bit.

“You proved yet again that you don’t mean anything you say. Or are you telling me that you weren’t about to torture Snape just now?”

“He deserved it,” Voldemort responds, anger in every syllable. “He said you hurt yourself on purpose-”

“I don’t care what he said. You shouldn’t torture someone because you don’t like their opinions. Besides, you think I’m suicidal, so you might as well think I’m intentionally hurting myself as well.”

“You are suicidal.”

“I’m not. I’m just sick of suffering because you chose to believe some stupid pro-”

“My lord,” Snape says almost loud enough to be considered a shout. “You shouldn’t place too much meaning on Potter’s words. He’s self-righteous and arrogant, and quick to anger. He doesn’t mean half the things he says.”

Harry bites the inside of his cheek to keep a frustrated cry in. He successfully shifted Voldemort’s anger over to Harry. Why did Snape have to destroy his efforts like that?

Voldemort turns his head to Snape, his eyes as cold as ice. “Leave.”

Snape hesitates. “My lord, I know how to handle Potter. Give me ten minutes with him, and I guarantee he won’t give you any more trouble after that.”

Voldemort tightens his grip on his wand. “Don’t make me repeat myself.”

Harry forces a sneer onto his face. He needs to reassure Snape somehow that it’s alright to leave Harry alone without making Voldemort suspicious.

“I should have known that you aren’t loyal to Dumbledore. You never were any good at pretending that you don’t want to hurt me. You could learn a lot from Voldemort.”

Snape glances at Harry before he bows and murmurs, “My lord.”

Snape turns around and walks away. Harry only allows himself to relax once the door closes behind him. Unless he is completely mistaken, Voldemort didn’t read the letters. Snape will be safe. For now, at least.

The only problem that remains now is that Harry is alone with Voldemort yet again.

Chapter Text

Harry hunches his shoulders. Now that Snape is gone, he’s starting to worry about his own well-being again. He can’t imagine that Voldemort liked how Harry talked to him - in front of a Death Eater, nonetheless. He’s surprised Voldemort hasn’t punished him for it yet.

Nagini lets out a displeased hiss and moves towards Harry. “I don’t like how your smell has changed since coming in here. It’s too bitter.”

“Why do you care?” Harry asks, glancing down at her. “I told you, you can’t eat me.”

Harry hears a sharp intake of breath and his eyes snap towards Voldemort. “You’re a Parselmouth?”

Harry takes in Voldemort’s expression, the wide eyes, the slightly parted lips.

“You didn’t know?” Harry finds that very hard to believe until a thought enters his mind. He curls his lips. “Of course, you didn’t. Your followers were probably too scared of your reaction to tell you.”

“How can this be?” Voldemort asks, still in Parseltongue, even though Harry responded in English. “The vast majority of Parselmouths are descendants of Slytherin. You aren’t.”

“The vast majority and all aren’t the same. Besides, Dumbledore said you accidentally gave me the ability.”

Harry bites his lips. He hadn’t meant to say the last part. He needs to be more careful. If he slips up at the wrong moment, a lot of people could get hurt.

“I didn’t. You can’t give anyone Parseltongue. Dumbledore knows that.”

Harry bites the inside of his cheek. Will Dumbledore be mad at Harry for answering Voldemort’s implied question? If Harry doesn’t respond, Voldemort might start wondering why Harry came here in the first place so shortly after Harry told him to fuck off. That could put Snape in danger. He needs to distract Voldemort from stuff that actually matters. This seems like the perfect topic for that.

“Dumbledore believes you accidentally passed some of your powers on to me when you tried to kill me as a baby. According to him, that’s also the reason why the Sorting Hat wanted to put me in Slytherin-”

“I’m sick of only hearing one half of the conversation,” Nagini interrupts him. She seems to be pouting, as much as a snake can, anyway. “Why are you excluding me on purpose?”

Nagini moves towards him until she’s right in front of him before straightening up and rubbing her head against Harry’s stomach.

Harry suppresses a flinch as best as he can and awkwardly reaches out to pat her head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to irritate you. I can only speak Parseltongue when I’m looking at a snake, you see?”

Nagini glances up at him through huge, unblinking eyes. “That’s weird. Master doesn’t need to do that.”

The corner of Harry’s mouth twitches. There’s something oddly hilarious about being called weird by a snake that eats people.

“The Sorting Head wanted to put you in Slytherin?”

Harry shrugs and makes sure to glance down at Nagini this time. “Yeah, so what? It’s not like that matters in the great scheme of things.”

Voldemort looks at him with a flat, unreadable expression long enough to make him uncomfortable.

“You aren’t at all how Severus described you.”

“That’s because Snape doesn’t know the first thing about me,” Harry says and can’t help but notice that the statement doesn’t sound as accurate as it once would have. Hopefully, Voldemort won’t notice anything off about his voice. “Is that why you summoned Snape? To ask him questions about me?”

That’s probably the best he can hope for, in all honesty. It would mean that Voldemort didn’t want to talk to Snape because he plans to use him in some sinister plot or because he suspects him of not being loyal.

“Among other things, yes. I would have preferred to talk to you instead, but since you told me to go fuck myself, that didn’t seem like a good idea.”

Harry cringes at the vulgar words coming out of Voldemort’s mouth. It sounds pretty bad, even though Voldemort is just quoting him.

“Yeah, well,” Harry mutters, suddenly glad he needs to look at Nagini to speak Parseltongue. “Snape is pretty biased when it comes to me.”

Or he was, until recently, at least. I’m not entirely sure what to make of him at the moment.

“Yes, I figured as much.”

Harry lets out a sigh of relief when Nagini draws her head back and backs off a few feet. “Master, your mate smells exhausted and weak. He should rest. We don’t want him to get sick, do we?”

Harry frowns. Can Nagini really tell that much by his smell alone? He feels fine, more or less. Maybe a little light-headed and burned out. Nothing he can’t handle, though.

“Yes, you should rest, Harry. You had a rough day, and it’s late. I will order a house-elf to bring food and some of Draco’s clothes to your room.” Voldemort looks down at Nagini. “I assume you don’t mind staying with my mate for the night?”

“Of course not,” Nagini says, winding herself around one of Harry’s legs. Harry shakes his head. If she keeps that up, she’ll be touching him almost as much as Voldemort does during their soulmate dreams.

Harry frowns. “Maybe you should tell the Malfoys you brought me here. Draco was pretty surprised to see me when I ran into him earlier.”

Voldemort stands up straighter. “Did he give you any trouble? Severus claimed that the two of you don’t get along?”

“No, he didn’t-”

“He tried to keep your mate from coming here,” Nagini interjects. “He ran off, though, when I showed off my teeth.”

Voldemort curls his lips, his eyes blazing. “Do you want me to punish him?”

“No!” Harry says as vehemently as possible.

“As you wish. But please do tell me if he bothers you again. I’m sure we could find a punishment for him you’d agree with.”

Harry stares at Voldemort for a moment before shaking his head and turning around. Well, at least he asked this time instead of assuming I want to hurt Malfoy. That’s something, I suppose.

“Sleep well, Harry,” Voldemort says right before the door closes behind Harry.

***

“Master said I need to make sure you don’t get hurt,” Nagini says stubbornly.

Harry groans and pulls at his hair in frustration. “How am I supposed to get hurt while showering?”

“You could slip and butt your head against the wall.”

“I’m not that clumsy!” Harry snaps back. The argument has been going on for so long at this point that he doesn’t even worry about angering Nagini anymore. “Look, do you really think your Master’s mate is so incompetent that he can’t be left alone for ten minutes?”

Nagini hesitates, tilting her head.

“I won’t leave the room.” Harry is ready to butt his head against a wall on purpose when Nagini adds, “But I can turn away from you if you insist.”

“Fine,” Harry agrees immediately. That’s probably the best he can hope for. Once Nagini turned towards the bathroom door, Harry takes off his clothes and steps into the ridiculous huge shower.

He washes off all the sweat and dirt as quickly as he can, ignoring Nagini’s complaints that it doesn’t make sense that humans don’t want to be seen without clothes. He only allows himself to relax fully once he dried himself off and pulled on the pajama he found on the bed earlier. He picks at the fabric and grimaces. He should have known that Malfoy’s clothes would be unnecessarily fancy. The material is incredibly soft, which feels weird and unfamiliar.

Well, it’s still better than sleeping in dirty clothes or, worse yet, naked.

Nagini bumps her head against his leg when they go back into the bedroom, and Harry doesn’t even bother hiding his flinch this time. If he weren’t so done with everything, he would probably ask her to stop touching him without warning him first.

Harry sighs and slips into bed, already dreading the nightmares.

Chapter Text

Harry leans forward with his whole body, desperately trying to get free. The Dementor gets closer and closer with every second. He can’t let it happen again. Harry yanks and pulls, but the ropes don’t give even a fraction of an inch. Harry sobs, the sound muffled by the piece of fabric in his mouth. Harry turns his head towards the only person who can put a stop to this.

“Please,” Harry tries to say, wishing he could spit the gag out. “Please, I’m begging you.”

Voldemort cocks his head. Then he leisurely draws his wand and points it at Harry’s face. Harry could have sobbed in relief when Voldemort waves his wand, and the fabric leaves his mouth and falls to the ground.

“Please,” Harry says, absently noticing how raw and uneven his voice sounds. It probably didn’t help that he spent the better part of the last hour screaming into his gag. “I’m begging you. Call the Dementor back. He doesn’t deserve to get kissed. Please, show mercy-”

Voldemort laughs, his voice cold and emotionless. “Oh, Harry. I’m already being more merciful than I want to be. I could torture him for weeks on end until there is nothing left of him. Instead, I’m putting an end to his existence while he still has some dignity left.”

Everything turns blurry, and Harry feels tears running down his cheek. “Please. I’ll do anything. Just don’t take his soul.”

“So naïve. You know I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because he kept you from me. He needs to be punished.”

Harry keens. It’s all his fault. People keep getting hurt and killed and lose their very souls, all because of him.

I just want it all to end. Anything would be better than knowing everyone around me suffers because of me.

Someone is talking. The person - a man - seems to repeat the same thing over and over again. It takes a while until Harry can make out individual words and even longer until he understands the meaning behind the sentences. When he does, he slowly allows himself to relax and hides his face against the chest he’s pressed against.

“I’ve got you, it’s alright. It was just a nightmare. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

“Shut up.” Voldemort’s clothes muffle his voice, but it’s not as bad as it was in his nightmare. Thank god for that.

Voldemort stops talking, though he keeps rubbing Harry’s back in a gentle, soothing way. Harry wishes he had the strength to push Voldemort away. He’s so tired and exhausted that the thought of pulling away from the comforting embrace feels like an insurmountable task. It’s stupid and unhealthy to let the person who caused his distress in the first place comfort him, but Harry can’t bring himself to care.

“Sleep,” Voldemort murmurs. “You need the rest. I’ll watch over you.”

Harry closes his eyes. He can’t deal with all of this right now.

He hopes he’ll feel more like himself when he wakes up.

The next time Harry opens his eyes, not a lot has changed. He’s leaning against Voldemort’s chest, and Voldemort is still - or maybe again - rubbing Harry’s back. They are sitting on the ground, and Harry’s legs are tugged under him, which doesn’t surprise him. He has a habit of making himself as small as possible when he feels like shit, be it physically or mentally. He got used to doing that long before he started clinging to Voldemort for comfort.

“Are you feeling better?” Voldemort murmurs, reaching up to brush a strand of Harry’s hair aside.

Harry glances up briefly, unsurprised to see that Voldemort’s face is just as blurry as it was last night. It will stay that way until they complete their bond, something that Harry refuses to believe will ever actually happen. They would have to consciously and unconsciously accept and embrace each other in order to do that. Harry wonders if Voldemort is delusional enough to think that might happen someday.

Harry lowers his gaze. “No.”

Voldemort exhales sharply. “I should have anticipated this. I should have gone to bed hours ago-”

“I’m glad you didn’t. I needed to have this nightmare. It reminded me that I can never let my guard down around you.”

But you did let your guard down. Harry grimaces. That’s true, unfortunately. He fell asleep, curled against Voldemort. Again.

“Why? What was the nightmare about?”

Harry laughs harshly. He pulls back and sits up straighter before climbing to his feet. Immediately, he misses the warmth of Voldemort’s body. It’s necessary, though, to put some distance between them. He can’t have this conversation while he is cuddling with Voldemort.

“You, of course. You and your desire to destroy people’s lives for stupid reasons.”

Voldemort doesn’t move. It looks like he is holding his breath, even. “Your nightmare… was about me?”

Harry raises an eyebrow, wishing he could see Voldemort’s expression. “How can that be a surprise to you? Did you think it wouldn’t leave scars when you tried to kill me over and over again? When you tortured me? When you threatened and hurt and killed people I care about? That’s not something I can just forget, no matter what you say or do. I’m damaged goods. Deal with it.”

Harry curls his lips when Voldemort lowers his head and digs his fingers into the ground. It might not be the smartest idea to convince Voldemort that Harry will never be comfortable around him. However, Harry would prefer it if he realized it now than after Harry got used to being around Voldemort all the time.

“What did I do in your nightmare?” Voldemort asks, his shoulders tense. “Did I hurt you?”

“Worse. You tortured someone I… care about. I couldn’t do anything to stop you because I was bound to a gravestone and gagged. And then you ordered a Dementor to kiss them.”

“Harry,” Voldemort says, standing up slowly. “I swear I didn’t send Dementors after you.”

Harry grinds his teeth. He can repeat that as often as he wants. That doesn’t mean Harry will believe him.

“Who did I hurt in your dream? Your boyfriend?”

Harry frowns. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

There’s a short pause. “Your girlfriend, then.”

“I don’t have a girlfriend, either. Why would you think…”

Harry’s voice trails off. He feels cold all of a sudden.

He must have seen the hickey.

After Snape caught a glimpse of the hickey, Harry made sure to put on a shirt that covered it up. There’s only one way Voldemort could have seen the hickey.

“You-” Harry chokes on his own words, coughs, and starts anew. “You came into my room? While I was asleep?”

Chapter Text

Voldemort frowns at the accusatory tone in Harry’s voice. Yes, of course, he did that. That shouldn’t be news to Harry unless…

Oh.

“You thought I pulled you out of your nightmare by falling asleep?”

That’s the only thing that would explain Harry’s incredulity. Apparently, Harry was too caught up in his nightmare to realize that Voldemort woke him up.

“Wait, hold on a moment,” Harry says very slowly and stiffly. “Are you saying you came into my room while I was asleep, climbed into my bed, and pulled me against your chest?”

Voldemort cocks his head. If you say it like that, it does sound a bit creepy, though he still doesn’t understand what the big deal is. They touch each other frequently, and Harry didn’t pull away from him. On the contrary, he even pressed his face against Voldemort’s chest. He gave off the impression that he was glad Voldemort was there.

Harry exhales sharply. “Alright, I’m only going to say this once: if you want to have any chance of gaining my trust or - or whatever it is you are trying to achieve, you will not do that again. There was no reason for you to come into my room, let alone my bed.”

Voldemort frowns. “I came into your room because Nagini warned me that something was wrong with you. She thought you were in pain. If I had known that you were having a nightmare, I wouldn’t have wasted valuable time getting to you. I would have made myself fall asleep right away.”

Harry takes another step away from him and folds his arms. “You’re lying. Nagini wouldn’t have left me alone. She wouldn’t even leave the bathroom so that I could shower in peace.”

A jolt of jealousy goes through Voldemort. Harry would never have allowed him to stay.

Does that mean Harry likes Nagini more than me? And if that’s the case, what can I do to gain his favor? Right now, it seems like no matter what I do, I only succeed in angering him.

“You’re right, she didn’t leave you. Nagini and I can communicate with each other without having to be in the same room.”

Unfortunately, though, they can only communicate on a very primitive level. He will have to look into ways to strengthen their bond. It could prove vital to get more detailed descriptions of what is wrong with Harry should Nagini have to contact him again. Not that Voldemort won’t do everything in his power to ensure it won’t come to that.

“Why do you care so much about that, anyway? We touch each other all the time, and I don’t even initiate it every time. You…” Voldemort hesitates for a moment before going on. “You even kissed my cheek. Twice.”

“I… That’s different.”

“Why?” Is he imagining it, or did the area around Harry’s face turn slightly red? Is he blushing? Voldemort wishes Harry would allow him to touch his face to find out if it is hotter than usual.

“It just is!” Harry curses and runs a hand through his hair. “Why can’t you just leave me alone? I wanted one night to myself. Is that really too much to ask for?”

“You wouldn’t be satisfied with just one night. Besides, I won’t let you suffer if I can do something about it.”

Harry snorts. “Yeah, right. I know you’ll hurt me again. You can’t help it.”

Voldemort’s stomach clenches uncomfortably, remembering what he saw in Harry’s mind yesterday. As a Legilimens, you can tell right away which memories are of soulmate dreams. They have a certain feel to them. And since he was driven by the desire to find out if Harry was his soulmate, he didn’t bother looking at anything that didn’t feel like a soulmate dream. Because of that, the first and only memory he saw with any clarity was that of their second soulmate dream.

Maybe it was more than just a coincidence that he saw the moment right after Voldemort hurt him, after he grabbed Harry’s arms and yanked him to his feet. Harry must have thought about that quite a bit.

Voldemort certainly did.

“I know you don’t believe me,” Voldemort murmurs. “But I promise you I will not hurt you again.”

Harry scoffs. His arms are still folded across his chest. “You say that now. Maybe you will even be able to keep that promise for a few days or even weeks. But once you realize without a shadow of a doubt that you can’t manipulate me, that you can’t mold me into someone who won’t give you such a hard time, that promise won’t mean a thing anymore.”

Voldemort clenches his teeth. He wishes there was some way he could convince Harry that’s not going to happen. He doesn’t want to mold Harry into anything. But from what he can tell, it seems to be a waste of time to assure Harry of that. It appears that time is his best ally. The longer he treats Harry well and provides him with everything he longs for, the higher are the chances that Harry will eventually believe him. There are no shortcuts to gaining Harry’s trust and affection.

He will have to prove to Harry through words and actions that everything will be different now that Voldemort has found him.

And there is one thing he can say that might get him closer to achieving that goal, even though it goes against every instinct in his body.

“Regarding that girlfriend of yours-”

“I don’t have a girlfriend.”

“-I can guess who she is. I won’t hurt her. I won’t even threaten her or her family.” The words taste bitter, but they need to be said. She isn’t Harry’s soulmate, so as long as he keeps Harry away from her, she won’t be able to get between them.

Voldemort does his best to ignore the jealousy and hatred inside of him. Those feelings aren’t helping right now.

“How many times do I need to repeat myself? I don’t have a girlfriend or a boyfriend.”

Voldemort narrows his eyes. “Hickeys don’t appear out of nowhere, Harry.”

“I know. Come on. You can’t tell me you didn’t notice anything strange about the place the hickey is.”

Voldemort’s left eye twitches, and he clenches his fists. Of course, he noticed where Granger put her lips. He wishes he could kill her without upsetting Harry.

“Such an idiot,” Harry mutters so quietly Voldemort isn’t sure if he was supposed to hear it. “It was you! You gave me that hickey!”

Voldemort blinks. What? “That’s impossible.”

“That’s what I thought too. But if you had bothered to glance at my arms instead of my neck, you would have seen finger-shaped bruises instead.”

Voldemort’s mind is reeling. I grabbed his arms hard enough to bruise? No wonder he’s so reluctant to trust me.

“That’s…” Voldemort doesn’t know what to say. Would Harry accept an apology? Does he even want one? “Scratch me.”

Harry coughs. “Excuse me, what?”

“Scratch me. I want to know if it goes both ways, if you can hurt me as well.”

“I don’t care what you want. I’m not scratching you. I’m not a cat.”

Voldemort cocks his head. “You could give me a hickey instead if you preferred that.”

“You’re such an-” Harry takes a deep breath. “Give me your arm.”

Voldemort steps towards him right away, feeling light all of a sudden. Harry might only be willing to touch him right now to scratch him, but that’s better than nothing.

And he didn’t outright say that he doesn’t want to give Voldemort a hickey.

Chapter Text

Harry glances at the arm Voldemort is holding out. His face is still burning, and he really hopes Voldemort can’t make out his red cheeks. Voldemort not only brought up the hickey and the fact that Harry kissed his cheek, no, he also crawled into his fucking bed.

Well, at least Voldemort seemed to understand and respect that Harry didn’t like that.

“Come on,” Voldemort murmurs. “You can’t tell me you aren’t curious to find out if it works both ways.”

Harry frowns. Yes, he is curious, but he isn’t exactly eager to hurt Voldemort despite all the things he did to him. Absently, Harry runs his thumbs over his fingertips. His fingernails are pretty blunt. Would he even be able to leave scratches with them?

Hesitantly, Harry reaches out and wraps a hand around Voldemort’s arm. A jolt goes through him when he feels the soft, even skin. Muscles jump under his fingertips, and soft hairs brush against the palm of his hand. It’s so easy to forget that Voldemort’s appearance is vastly different in their dreams.

Suddenly, Harry realizes that he’s caressing Voldemort’s skin with his thumb and puts an end to that right away. Harry shakes his head. That’s not what he’s supposed to be doing. He’s supposed to hurt Voldemort badly enough that it should be visible when they wake up. Harry grimaces. The thought is off-putting, to say the least.

“Well?” Voldemort says, sounding breathless. “What are you waiting for?”

Harry exhales sharply and closes his eyes for a moment. “Don’t read too much into it, alright?”

“Into what?”

Harry wraps his other hand around Voldemort’s arm as well and pulls it upwards towards his mouth.

I can’t believe I’m doing this, Harry thinks, slightly hysterical. Maybe Voldemort’s weird behavior is rubbing off.

Voldemort catches his breath when Harry’s lips touch his skin. He feels the muscles tensing under his mouth. Voldemort’s skin tastes slightly salty, and Harry’s face starts burning even hotter when his nose accidentally brushes against Voldemort’s arm. Voldemort has goosebumps.

Deciding that he should get this over with as quickly as possible, Harry starts sucking, taking care to keep his teeth far away from Voldemort’s skin. The last thing he wants is to leave imprints of his teeth.

Harry flinches when something touches his hair. Voldemort lets out a soothing sound, brushing his fingertips over his scalp. Harry shivers, feeling like he’s melting on the inside.

Harry starts sucking a bit harder. Since he never gave someone a hickey before, he has no idea how persistent you need to be for it to work. All he knows is that he’d rather not have to do it again the next night just because he didn’t do it right - though he has to admit that it feels… nice, in a weird way.

Eventually, Harry lets go of Voldemort’s arm and hastily takes a step back. He’s feeling a little light-headed, and something tells him that staying near Voldemort will only make it worse. Voldemort’s hand slides out of Harry’s hair, and Harry shivers when his fingernails lightly scrap over his scalp.

There’s a short, awkward silence during which Harry is incredibly grateful that Voldemort can’t make out his expression. He’s not feeling like himself, and he doesn’t want Voldemort to see him that way.

“That…” Voldemort breaks off and clears his throat. “Are you ever going to do that again?”

Harry bites his lips at the hesitant and hopeful tone in Voldemort’s voice. He sounds oddly vulnerable.

Slowly Harry shakes his head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why?”

“Because…” Harry hesitates. What’s the best way to make Voldemort understand the problem? “The more often we do things that are normal for soulmates, the more likely you will be to believe that things are fine between us. They aren’t. I feel like you don’t understand me at all. The fact that you were surprised that I have nightmares about you is just one of many red flags. I wish…”

Harry bites his lips and runs a hand through his hair, cursing softly. The situation feels weirdly surreal.

“I wish there were a way for you to look inside my head, if only for a moment, so you could finally understand what the problem is. Legilimency doesn’t count. You already did that against my will, and it did nothing to improve the situation.”

Voldemort hums. He slowly starts walking up and down, obviously lost in thought. “There are a few things we could try that could help me understand you better. However, I will need some time to determine which one would work best.”

Harry raises his eyebrows. There are multiple things Voldemort can think of off the top of his head? For some reason, that surprises Harry.

Well, he is supposed to be pretty smart, though it’s easy to forget that given how much trouble he has understanding social cues.

“Fine, you do that. In the meantime-”

“I’ll leave you alone, don’t worry. I know you value having some time for yourself.”

Harry rolls his eyes. He doesn’t mind spending time with other people most of the time. Being around Voldemort, though… Well, there is no way to deny that Voldemort draws a lot of different emotions out of him. It can be pretty exhausting.

Harry sighs and backs off a bit further. Then he sits down and watches Voldemort blatantly, feeling the tension leave his body slowly.

***

Harry buries his face in the warm, comfortable pillow, humming contently. One thing’s for sure. The beds at Malfoy manor are much more comfortable than his bed at the Dursleys’.

“Good morning, my soul. If you want me to back off, you will have to let go of me.”

Harry freezes. Voldemort’s voice came from under him. Slowly, he turns his head until he looks straight into red eyes. Harry yelps and scrambles away. In his haste to back off, he gets tangled up in the sheet and feels himself slipping off the bed. He would have hit his head pretty hard if Voldemort hadn’t caught him in time and pulled him back onto the bed.

“Be careful,” Voldemort murmurs, his eyes flickering over Harry’s body like he is looking for injuries.

Harry frees himself off the sheets and pulls at his arm until Voldemort lets go of it.

“Get out of my bed!”

He really should have expected this. Voldemort saw no problem with crawling into his bed while Harry was asleep, so it’s not that strange that he also chose to sleep in it.

That reminds Harry that he will have to talk with Voldemort about all kinds of things he will not tolerate. He obviously has no idea what’s appropriate. It makes him wonder what kind of behavior his Death Eaters put up with over the years.

Voldemort sighs and climbs out of bed, brushing away the wrinkles in his robes. “I think I know the best way I can start understanding you better now. Do you want to hear it?”

Chapter Text

“I want to see your arm first.”

Voldemort looks at him blankly for a moment before he blinks and glances down at his forearm. Harry raises an eyebrow. He didn’t already forget about the hickey, right? It was his idea to check if Harry could hurt him as well! Why would he suggest that if he doesn’t care about the result?

Harry tenses when Voldemort rolls up his sleeve. His mind goes blank. Apparently, he sucked way too hard or way too long. Maybe even both.

“Just as I thought,” Voldemort murmurs, twisting his arm slightly to look at it from different angles. “It would have been strange if it didn’t work both ways.”

“You aren’t angry?”

Voldemort raises his gaze slowly and stares at Harry. “Why would I be angry?”

“It’s… pretty big.”

Harry’s mouth feels dry. He did that. He’s the reason Voldemort’s skin is red, the color jarring against his otherwise unnaturally pale skin. Harry feels uncomfortable looking at it, so he averts his eyes.

“Yes, I can see that,” Voldemort says slowly. “Harry, you do know that I’m glad you chose this way to test my theory, don’t you? I enjoyed it. Very much so.”

Harry frowns. He enjoyed it? That’s…

…not weird at all. I liked it as well when Voldemort gave me that hickey a few nights ago. And even sucking on Voldemort’s skin felt nice, in its own way. Oh god, what is wrong with me?

“Are you still hurt, little one?”

Harry turns his head and sees Nagini moving towards him. He completely forgot that she spent the night in his room as well. Nagini nudges her head against Harry’s hand, and he automatically starts scratching her. Nagini let’s out a low, satisfied sound. When Harry catches Voldemort looking at Nagini will a slight frown, he wonders if he should pull his hand away.

Does Voldemort not like it that Harry is touching his snake?

“Well? Are you?”

Harry blinks. Right, Nagini asked him a question. Since he doesn’t know if snakes know what nightmares are, and he isn’t in the mood to explain it, Harry says, “I’m fine. You don’t need to tell Voldemort if something like that happens again.”

“I disagree.”

Harry furrows his brow. Great. Just great.

Voldemort clears his throat. “Are you hungry?”

Harry’s stomach answers for him. He presses a hand over his belly, feeling embarrassed.

Voldemort nods. “I will tell the elves to get breakfast ready. I’ll meet you in the dining room down the hall. Talking about my idea can wait until after breakfast, I believe.”

***

Harry’s step falters when he opens the door to the dining room. Slowly, he walks to the long table and sits down at a chair a few feet from Voldemort. The table is big enough to easily fit twenty people, but that’s not what surprises Harry.

“Didn’t you say you need less food than any human alive?” Harry asks, staring at the wide variety of dishes in front of him.

“That’s true.”

“Then why…” Harry glances at the mountain of food again. There’s no way in hell that two people could eat all that, even if those two people were his cousin and uncle. Harry ignores the sharp pang in his chest at the reminder of Dudley. Can Dudley even still eat and drink on his own, now that he is nothing more than an empty shell? What happened to Barty Crouch Junior, for that matter? He’s the only other person Harry knows that got kissed by a Dementor. Did they send him back to Azkaban? Did he die of thirst already?

“I didn’t know what you like, so I told the house elves to make a bit of everything.”

Harry’s eyes slowly wander towards Voldemort and then back to the food. Is he serious?

“I’m feeling itchy,” Nagini complains and crawls into Harry’s lap. Nagini nudges against his arm, and Harry lets out a sigh before reaching out to scratch her again.

“I see the two of you are getting along.”

Harry looks up. Voldemort is staring at Nagini with the same small frown he wore earlier.

“If you don’t want me to touch her, just say it,” Harry responds, keeping his eyes carefully turned away from Nagini. She doesn’t need to know what they are talking about. “Honestly, I’d be glad if you could order her to back off.”

“Why don’t you tell her yourself? You have no problem being blunt with me.”

Harry rolls his eyes. Isn’t that obvious?

“You claim that you don’t want to hurt me. Nagini didn’t. She could easily kill and eat me if I anger her.”

Voldemort drops his eyes to Harry’s lap. His face turns stony.

“Nagini, come here, please.”

Nagini lets out a soft whine but crawls off Harry’s lap and moves towards Voldemort. “You won’t hurt my mate under any circumstances, right? Not even if he angers or annoys you?”

“Of course not!” Nagini responds, sounding offended. “I know how valuable he is, how much he means to you.”

Harry grimaces and closes his eyes. There goes his hope of Voldemort ordering Nagini to keep her distance. She spoke with so much conviction that Voldemort won’t see any reason to doubt her.

“You look unsatisfied. Why?”

Harry stares at a plate of scrambled eggs. Such a waste of food. Most of it will end up in the trash. “I feel uncomfortable near her. I don’t like snakes.”

Voldemort remains silent for so long that Harry raises his head slightly to glance at him. Voldemort is stroking Nagini’s tail with his pale fingers, looking at Harry with a critical eye.

“Don’t tell me you think snakes are evil and Parselmouths-”

“It’s not that. I’ve only made bad experiences with snakes, that’s all.”

Voldemort cocks his head. “Bad experiences? Why? What happened?”

Harry shrugs. “Once I went to the zoo with my relatives and accidentally freed a boa constrictor. That was before I got my Hogwarts letter. My aunt and uncle punished me once we got home.”

“That was stupid of them,” Voldemort says bluntly. “Accidental magic only gets worse if guardians punish their wards.”

Really? That’s completely new to him. He wonders how his aunt and uncle would have reacted to finding out about that. Would they have punished Harry less if they had known? Or would they have been too stubborn to take that knowledge into consideration?

“Besides, that wasn’t the snake’s fault. It was your guardians who punished you.”

Harry tenses when he sees the cold anger in Voldemort’s eyes. Not wanting Voldemort to get murderous ideas, Harry hastily continues.

“Fine, but that was just one incident among many. The next time I came near a snake, I accidentally revealed that I’m a Parselmouth in the middle of the Great Hall. I didn’t know that until then. After that, half the school thought I was the heir of Slytherin and that I was the one petrifying everyone. And then there was the Basilisk, of course.”

Voldemort sits up straighter.

“You encountered the Basilisk?”

Harry frowns. “Yes?”

Didn’t Lucius Malfoy tell him that? He must have, right?

On second thought, Lucius Malfoy might not have known that Harry fought against the Basilisk. As far as Harry knows, barely anyone knows what caused the petrifications. A lot of parents would have pulled their kids out of Hogwarts if it had become public knowledge.

“Your sixteen-year-old self ordered the Basilisk to kill me,” Harry says because that seems like the easiest way to explain why he doesn’t like snakes.

Harry rolls up his sleeve and shows Voldemort the scar on his arm.

“How-”

“Dumbledore’s phoenix cried for me.”

Harry waits for Voldemort to say something, but he just stares at Harry’s scar like it’s the ugliest thing he has ever seen. Harry shrugs and covers his arm up. He’d rather not have the scar either. He can understand why Voldemort doesn’t think it’s pretty.

Harry pulls the first best dish towards him and finally starts eating.

Voldemort doesn’t say a word during the whole meal, nor does he touch any of the food.

Only after Harry finished his meal and pushed his plate away does Voldemort open his mouth again. “Do you know what a Pensieve is?”

Harry nods slowly.

“Good. Are you aware that there is a potion that allows you not only to view a memory from an outside perspective but to experience everything the person felt in that moment? And I really do mean everything: all five senses as well as the thoughts that went through the person’s head.”

Harry blinks multiple times. “And you want to… what, live through some of my memories to understand me better?”

“Yes,” Voldemort says calmly like he doesn’t understand how insane that sounds. “Well? What are your thoughts on that?”

Chapter Text

Harry doesn’t respond right away, which Voldemort is grateful for. While he is very interested in hearing Harry’s thoughts, his mind is still reeling from what Harry told him before he started eating. He could use a few more minutes to think everything through.

From the little bit that Harry told him, the diary must have gotten powerful enough to appear in some kind of physical form. Voldemort would love to know more about that but now is neither the time nor the place to ask follow-up questions. The important part is that Harry didn’t destroy the diary out of malicious intent or because he thought the book was Dark.

No. He was simply fighting for his life.

But he did tell me that, didn’t he? He said he only ever hurt me in self-defense and to protect himself.

“How exactly does this potion work?” Harry asks eventually.

“Simple. You put the memories and the potion into a Pensieve. Everything else works the same.”

Harry frowns and stares at his empty plate. Even lost in thought as Voldemort had been, he had noticed that Harry ate less than he would have expected from a growing teenager. Was that because he still feels uncomfortable around Voldemort? Or is there a different reason for his lack of appetite?

Nagini butts her head against Voldemort’s hand affectionately before she yawns and moves towards the fireplace. “Wake me up if something interesting happens.”

Voldemort barely resists rolling his eyes. He won’t drag Nagini into his conversation with Harry if he can avoid it. The topic at hand is too important to allow her to distract him.

“And I suppose you already know exactly what memories you want to look at, right?”

Voldemort takes a moment to acknowledge the frosty tone, the tense shoulders, the hard look in Harry’s eyes. Voldemort’s chest hurts. He really doesn’t trust me at all, does he?

“Actually, I wanted to leave that up to you.”

Harry narrows his eyes. “Why?”

“Isn’t that obvious? I know you’re worried that I’m having ulterior motives. By giving you full control over which memories I will get to experience, you won’t have to worry that I’m trying to trick you or that I’m hoping to get secrets of the Order of the Phoenix out of you.”

Harry snorts. “Since I don’t even know what the Order of the Phoenix is, that’d be impossible, anyway.”

Voldemort leans back and looks at Harry intently, but he can’t make out any sign that would indicate that Harry is lying. How can that be? Surely Harry heard countless stories about what the Order accomplished, how brave its members were?

“The Order of Pheonix was a group of people who fought against me and my Death Eaters. Dumbledore was its leader. Your parents were part of it, as was Alastor Moody, your godfather, the Longbottoms-“

“Hold on. The Longbottoms? Is that why they were tortured into insanity?”

Voldemort furrows his brow. “Why do you know about that and not about the Order?”

“I saw Barty Crouch’s trial in Dumbledore’s Pensieve,” Harry says, sounding distracted. “Who else was part of the Order?”

Voldemort lists off every member he can think of off the top of his head. Once he’s finished, Harry’s face closes off.

“And so many of them are dead now. All because they stood in your way.”

Voldemort holds off on saying that they posed a threat. Harry knows that and apparently doesn’t care. Instead, he says, “they weren’t saints, either. You should have seen some of the things they did. It was war. Both sides were reckless, particularly towards the end.”

Harry narrows his eyes. “Maybe. But I’m sure none of them would have tried to kill a baby, not even yours if you had had one.”

Voldemort ignores the jab as best as he can. It’s easier for Harry to lash out at him than to wonder why Dumbledore and other people in his life kept the existence of the Order from him. That’s all. Besides, Harry might not know why he tried to kill him as a baby.

That’s a conversation for another time.

“You still haven’t told me if you would be willing to share some of your memories with me.”

Harry shakes his head slowly. “I’d have to think about it. What you’re asking for is incredibly… personal, for lack of a better word. What are you even hoping to achieve by that?”

Voldemort blinks. “I told you. I want to understand you better. And what better way to accomplish that is there than to feel what you’re feeling, to think what you’re thinking? There are so many things I’d like to understand. I’d love to know why you’re so averse to violence, why you respect Dumbledore even though he keeps so much from you, how you reacted to finding out that I’m your soulmate, and so much more.”

When Harry doesn’t respond right away, Voldemort pulls a plate of bacon and eggs toward him. While he doesn’t need much food to sustain his body, he still has a healthy appetite. How could he not when he spent a large portion of his childhood starving?

Harry only opens his mouth again once Voldemort finished eating. “Do you know what’s funny? You are so intent on understanding me better that you didn’t even realize that what you’re asking for requires me to trust you - which I still don’t do.” Voldemort opens his mouth, but Harry holds up his hand. “Wait, let me finish. I might be willing to let you live through some of my memories after I got to do the same thing.”

Harry looks at him and raises an eyebrow in a mocking way. Voldemort takes a deep breath.

“Harry. You’re a genius.”

Harry lowers his eyebrow and curls his lip. “Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m not. I’m serious. Why didn’t I think of that? I’ve been looking for ways to make you understand how much you mean to me for at least a week now.”

“Hold on, that’s not why-“

“Yes, it is. You want to know you can trust me, right? Well, if you spend some time in my shoes, you will. I’m sure of it.”

“I’m not. I already did that, and I still didn’t really change my mind about you.”

Harry bites his lips and glances to the side. If Voldemort hadn’t magically enhanced his senses decades ago, he might have missed the quiet curse Harry let out.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing. Just forget about it.”

“I can’t. I need to know. Did Dumbledore… do something?”

Harry glares at him. “Not everything is about Dumbledore.”

“Harry, please. It could be important.”

Harry bites his lip. Voldemort can tell that Harry wants to share it with him, and yet he hesitates.

“I had a dream,” Harry says eventually, “in which I was you.”

Voldemort listens intently as Harry tells him everything he remembers about it.

“That wasn’t a dream.”

“What was it, then?”

“I’m not sure. A vision of some kind, probably. All I know is that there is a connection between us that has nothing to do with us being soulmates. I wonder…”

Voldemort lets his voice trail off and raises his gaze to Harry’s scar. His mind is reeling. There were so many little things he didn’t fully understand, things that seemed... off.

The fact that they can hurt each other in their soulmate dreams.

The pain Harry’s scar had caused him, though that seems to have stopped recently.

Harry’s ability to talk to snakes and his almost-sorting into Slytherin.

The way their wands connected at the graveyard.

The fact that someone - probably Dumbledore - tried to teach Harry Occlumency. Voldemort felt his clumsy attempt at pushing Voldemort out of his mind yesterday.

And, most importantly, the vision Harry had.

Could it be…?

“What?” Harry asks sharply. “Did you figure out what caused the… the vision or whatever it was?”

Chapter Text

Harry hunches his shoulders. He can’t help but notice that Voldemort’s eyes are fixed on his scar.

That can’t mean anything good.

“I have a theory,” Voldemort says slowly. “When was the last time your scar hurt?”

Harry raises a hand to his forehead self-consciously. The scar prickles from all the attention, but not in a painful way. “At the graveyard.”

“Interesting. So it stopped once I didn’t consider you my enemy anymore.”

“But why? And what does that have to do with the vision I had?”

Voldemort’s gaze slowly moves from the scar to Harry’s eyes. “I’m not sure how you will take this.”

“Take what?” Harry asks impatiently. “Look, if you’re going to tell me that I’m too young or… or that I’m better off not knowing the truth, then save your breath. I don’t want to hear it.”

Voldemort raises his eyebrows. That is, he raises the skin where his eyebrows would be if he had any to begin with.

“I was going to say neither of those things. I don’t see the point in hiding things from you, Harry. That would only increase your resentment towards me, and that’s the last thing I want.”

Harry blinks, taken aback. That makes sense, in a way. I guess I’m so used to being treated like a child - to being patronized - that I didn’t consider the possibility that Voldemort would see it that way.

“Then stop beating around the bush and tell me what you think caused the vision.”

“As you wish. Dumbledore told you that he thinks I accidentally gave you some of my powers when you were a baby, right? Well, I think he was right, only that I think I gave you more than just Parseltongue. I wonder if Dumbledore knows more than he let on. Maybe he already figured it out and just didn’t want you to know.”

A shiver runs down Harry’s back. “What else did you pass on to me?”

Voldemort cocks his head. His eyes are glinting in a weird way.

I feel like I’m hanging over a cliff, and Voldemort holds the power to push me into the abyss or pull me into safety.

“It’s just a theory,” Voldemort repeats. “I think my soul might have splintered into pieces when the killing curse was reflected back at me. One of those pieces might have latched on to you.”

Harry’s mind goes blank, and he forgets how to breathe.

“A piece of your soul?” Harry hears himself say. “Is that why we are soulmates?”

“No. Absolutely not. That’s not how it works.”

Harry laughs. He hears the hysterical edge to it and wonders if he’ll pass out. It wouldn’t surprise him. “You aren’t supposed to survive the killing curse, either. But we both did, anyway, didn’t we?”

“There are reasons for that. I took certain precautions to make sure I can’t die. And you survived because of your mother.”

Harry shakes his head. If there is a piece of Voldemort’s soul inside of him, then…

Then everything he thought he knew might be a lie.

“You can’t know that. How many children did you kill after their parents tried to protect them? I’m sure you’ve done that more than once. And even if you didn’t, someone must have. So I shouldn’t have been the first person to survive the curse.”

Harry isn’t sure if he’s making sense, but he doesn’t care. He needs something to distract him from the insaneness of what Voldemort just told him.

I’m not my own person, I never was. There’s something inside of me, like a parasite-

“You survived because your mother didn’t need to die. I gave her a choice. If she had stood aside, I wouldn’t have killed her.”

“I don’t believe you. Why should you have spared her? She was part of the Order, wasn’t she? She posed a threat.”

Voldemort frowns. Harry knows he’s watching him very closely, and yet he can’t bring himself to care. It doesn’t matter if he’s hurting Voldemort’s feelings. Harry laughs again. Voldemort’s feelings. Right. He probably can’t feel much besides anger and hatred, anyway.

“Severus asked me to spare your parents. I was willing to grant his wish to reward him. But your parents were too stubborn.”

Harry feels like someone pulled the rug from under his feet. His mind is a mess. He can’t focus on anything for longer than a second or two.

“Please stop talking. I can’t… I need to think.”

Actually, that’s the opposite of what Harry needs to do, but he doesn’t have the brain power to formulate his needs properly right now.

Voldemort furrows his brow. “Are you alright?”

“I said no talking!” Harry snaps.

Voldemort audibly closes his mouth, and Harry takes a deep breath. Then he shuts his eyes. Harry waits for his thoughts to calm down, waits until he feels like he can think rationally again.

It takes much longer than Harry likes to admit. Eventually, he feels composed enough to open his eyes. He’s not surprised to see that Voldemort is looking at him. He probably didn’t even glance away once while Harry’s eyes were closed.

“How sure are you that there is a piece of your soul inside of me?”

“It’s hard to say. Something like that isn’t supposed to happen by accident. But it would explain your vision. Did you have dreams like that before?”

Harry hesitates.

“I’m not sure. I had a dream about you last summer, but I don’t remember enough about it to know if I saw things through your eyes. There was an old man in the dream, a muggle. You killed him. I recognized him when he came out of your wand at the graveyard.” Harry sighs and rubs his forehead. He’s so tired even though he woke up less than an hour ago. “What would it mean if you were right? Like, what consequences would it have, apart from the visions and the Parseltongue?”

“First and foremost, it means that as long as you are alive, I cannot die.”

Harry freezes. I will not lose my mind again. I refuse. I lost my composure in front of Voldemort way too many times already.

“Why-” Harry clears his throat. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I told you. I see no reason to lie. Besides, don’t you understand what this means? This is another reason why I will never kill you. You hold part of my soul. Literally.”

Harry shakes his head. We don’t know that yet. It’s just a theory at the moment. Harry grimaces. He can’t lie to himself. Even if there isn’t a part of Voldemort’s soul inside of him, there is still some kind of connection between them. The dreams and his scar are the best proof of that.

As if things between us weren’t complicated enough already.

“I want to try something, if you’ll let me,” Voldemort says slowly. “If I’m right, it should be a relaxing and soothing experience.”

Harry hesitates a moment before he sighs and shrugs. “Sure, why not?”

He could use something to get his mind off of things. Any distraction is welcome.

Voldemort stands up. Harry forces himself not to cringe away when Voldemort sits down beside him, and their knees accidentally brush. He woke up pressed against Voldemort’s chest, for Merlin’s sake. Compared to that, this is nothing. Harry doesn’t want to seem childish.

Still, Harry can’t help but look at Voldemort’s hand suspiciously when he raises his fingers to Harry’s face. What is his plan?

Voldemort doesn’t leave him guessing for long.

His index finger brushes against Harry’s scar.

Harry’s eyes flutter closed. All tension leaves his body. Slowly, Voldemort’s finger moves along the lightning bolt. Harry shivers, feeling like he’s melting on the inside.

He can’t remember the last time he felt this relaxed.

Once Voldemort traced along his scar once, Harry feels the pressure on his forehead easing slightly.

“Don’t. Don’t pull back.”

The finger holds still for a moment, then it starts moving upwards along the scar.

Harry couldn’t have said how long Voldemort kept at it. Time quickly loses all meaning. All that matters is the soft touch against his forehead and the boneless feeling throughout his whole body.

Eventually, Harry draws his head back slightly because he’s afraid he’ll nod off if he doesn’t.

Harry takes a deep breath and opens his eyes. “What was that?”

Chapter Text

“So it worked? It had a calming effect?”

“Obviously,” Harry deadpans.

“Interesting.”

Harry frowns. “Could you stop calling everything interesting? It’s not, it’s weird a-and unnatural, and… and why are you smiling?”

Harry can’t help but stare, especially since Voldemort’s smile doesn’t look as weird and, for lack of a better word, freaky as it normally does.

“You’re cute when you’re flustered.”

Harry gapes. “I’m…?”

Did Voldemort really just call me cute?

Harry shakes his head. It’s probably better to just ignore it.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Ah, yes. Everything I can say about that is obviously only a theory. To me, it seemed like the Horcrux - that’s what it’s called - caused you pain in the past as a means to warn you whenever I was close. The closer I was, the worse it got. Since the Horcrux is a part of me, it feels the same way about you as I do and hence stopped sending you that warning once it found out that you are my soulmate.

“Anyway, it seems it works the other way around as well. I think the feeling you got, the absence of any tension, was its way of telling you that you can let your guard down around me.”

Harry blinks multiple times, trying to take that in. Voldemort’s explanation does make sense in a way, though it would be foolish to take it at face value - especially since Voldemort admitted that it’s only a theory.

Harry licks his lips. “You’re making it sound like the Horcrux is aware of itself. Like it’s sentient.”

The thought sends a shiver down Harry’s back. Does that mean that Harry has never been truly alone? That there was always something there with him, watching his every move?

“It’s hard to say how aware it is of its surroundings. I could tell you more if you would let me enter your mind. But I assume you don’t want that.”

“You’re right about that,” Harry says curtly. “Unless… Is there a chance that it could take over? That it could possess me or something?”

Voldemort cocks his head, looking at Harry thoughtfully for a long moment. “If it were able to do that, it would have done so years ago. The Horcrux would have tried to tell me that it’s there so that I would stop trying to kill you.”

Harry exhales shakily, feeling like a weight was lifted off his shoulders. “So you don’t think it will try to harm me in any way?”

“Definitely not. It is a part of me, remember? It should have the same motivations, the same desire to keep you safe as I do.”

That’s… a relief and concerning at the same time.

“Is there a way we could find out if you’re right?”

“Yes. The easiest way would be, again, for me to enter your mind. I could check if there is a foreign presence.”

Harry grimaces. “I knew you’d say something like that.”

“There’s no need to worry, Harry. You’ve known that there was some kind of connection between us for a long time now, right? Well, now you have one possible explanation for that. That’s all.”

Harry shakes his head. He still thinks that this is a pretty big deal, but it doesn’t surprise him that Voldemort sees it differently.

He is right about one thing, though. There are many more pressing matters that I can worry about instead.

“Fine. So, what’s the plan?”

“Plan? What do you mean?”

Harry raises an eyebrow. “I mean that you kidnapped me out of nowhere, and you have yet to tell me why and how you plan to explain my sudden disappearance.”

When Voldemort blinks and just stares at him for a long moment, Harry folds his arms. “You do have a plan, right? You didn’t just drag me here on a whim, right?”

“When I felt the wards around your house go down, I expected to find the boy-who-lived, not you.”

“I am the boy-who-lived. You might have forgotten about that, but I haven’t. Look, the longer I stay here, the harder it will be to explain my absence. I’m sure someone has noticed that I have gone missing by now. On top of that, all of my stuff is still at the Dursleys’, and there is no actual reason for me to be here, is there? You know why I keep getting into life-threatening situations now and know how to put an end to that. You only need to stop attacking me and tell your followers to do the same. Why don’t you want me to go home? I mean, we will see each other every night, anyway, right?”

Harry bites his lip, curious to hear Voldemort’s excuse. Because it will be some kind of excuse. Voldemort won’t let him go, but he isn’t going to say it that bluntly. He’s still trying to gain Harry’s trust, after all.

Voldemort leans back in his chair and looks at Harry calculatingly. “There are things we can’t do if we aren’t in the same room. Like using the potion I mentioned earlier, for example.”

Harry raises an eyebrow. “So after we used that potion, you will let me go?”

Voldemort sits up straighter. “Does that mean you’re willing to share some of your memories with me?”

“I might after I experienced a few of your memories. But I already told you that, stop trying to change the subject. Will you let me go or not?”

“It’s not that simple. There are many things to consider. First and foremost, there is your suicidality.”

Not this again. “I’m not-“

“And I don’t think you will be safe at a place where Dumbledore can reach you.”

Harry frowns. What the hell? “Why wouldn’t I be safe around Dumbledore? He’s never tried to harm me before.”

“He might only be waiting for the right time. If he knows that as long as you are alive, I cannot die, he will sacrifice you. I’m sure of it.”

Harry freezes. I knew it. I knew this whole Horcrux thing was bad news.

“Dumbledore wouldn’t hurt me,” Harry hears himself say.

“He would. Oh, I’m sure he wouldn’t enjoy it. But he will still convince himself that it needs to be done, that he will do more good than harm by bringing me one step closer to mortality - even if it means that he will have to kill you.”

Harry feels weightless, like a gust of wind could knock him over.

“Stop,” Harry says weakly. “Please, I can’t… I don’t want to hear it.”

Dumbledore wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t. He’d never-

“I’m sorry,” Voldemort murmurs. “It was not my intention to upset you. You wanted to know why I don’t want you to leave my side. I can’t take the risk of losing you. Not now, so shortly after I finally found you.”

Harry closes his eyes.

There you have it, Harry. Voldemort will never let you out of his sight again. He can’t risk it.

You’ll never be free again.

Chapter Text

Harry runs a hand down his face and sighs. After breakfast, he had asked for some time alone. To his surprise, Voldemort hadn’t protested. Slightly confused, Harry had returned to his room, crawled into bed, and pulled the sheets up to his neck.

Harry had hoped getting away from Voldemort would help him sort his thoughts. It hadn’t worked so far. Every time Harry tries to think everything they discussed through, Dudley’s empty face appears before his inner eye. The guilt clawing at his bones makes it all but impossible to think about anything else.

Harry curses and jumps out of bed. He wishes he could talk with someone, anyone, besides Voldemort and Nagini. Hell, he’d even settle for Snape. He’d at least offer Harry a fresh perspective. Nagini is too loyal to Voldemort to give him that, and Voldemort is the cause for most of Harry’s confusion and uncertainty. He wouldn’t be of any help, especially since he would try to make himself appear in the best light possible.

“You seem restless.”

Harry glances at Nagini.

“Is it that obvious?” Harry asks dryly. He wishes he had his Firebolt with him. Flying always helps him settle his nerves.

“Is it because your mate isn’t around to comfort you?”

Harry snorts. “No, it’s the opposite. I’m not far enough away from him.”

That’s not entirely true, Harry has to admit to himself. He wouldn’t be fine even if he were at Hogwarts with his friends.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Nagini complains. “I know he’s good for you. I’ve seen it.”

Oh really? You think he was good for me when he tortured me? Harry bites his lips to keep the words in. Snarky comments won’t do him any good.

“So he never did something you didn’t like? You never felt the desire to be away from him for a while?”

“Of course, he upset me a few times. But no, I never felt the desire to get away from him. I just told him what I needed, and everything was fine again.”

Harry frowns. “That might work for you, but it won’t for me.”

“Yes, it will. You just need to be blunt and specific. Otherwise, Master won’t understand you. He needs step-by-step instructions.”

Harry feels the corner of his mouth twitching. The thought of Nagini ordering Voldemort around is oddly hilarious.

Harry cocks his head. Huh. The more he thinks about it, the more he thinks Nagini might be on to something. Voldemort is socially inept - there is really no other way to call it - and obsessed with pleasing Harry. He might be more open to his suggestions than Harry assumed so far.

Well. Apparently, talking with Nagini did offer me a fresh perspective. Who would have thought?

Harry bites his lips, his eyes wandering to the parchment that’s lying on the desk in a corner of the room. It’s time to test how far Voldemort is willing to go to please me.

***

It takes Harry almost two hours until he is satisfied with the results. Eventually, he leans back in the chair and reads through what he has written one last time.

Yes, that should do it.

Harry stands up and looks around. He finds Nagini lying in front of the fireplace, looking at him curiously.

“Could you lead me to your Master again?”

This time, they don’t meet anyone on their way to Voldemort. Harry keeps a tight grip on the parchment, his heart beating rapidly.

He’ll probably refuse.

Harry shakes his head to get rid of the thought. Either way, the two hours he spent writing will not be for nothing. At best, Voldemort will allow it, and at worst, he’ll know that Voldemort is a hypocrite and a liar.

Harry knocks on the door once Nagini tells him they have reached their destination.

“Come in.”

Harry reaches for the doorknob, hoping he won’t walk into a Death Eater meeting. He relaxes slightly when he sees that there are only two people in the room, only to hunch his shoulders when he recognizes the second person.

What is Snape doing here again?

“Ah, Harry. I was about to ask Nagini to bring you here.”

Harry’s eyes wander to the vial in Voldemort’s hand. Is that the potion they talked about? Did Snape brew it? Is that why he is here?

“What’s that?” Voldemort asks, gesturing at the parchment in Harry’s hand.

“Letters. To my friends and Dumbledore.”

Something flickers in Voldemort’s eyes, but it’s gone too fast for Harry to be sure if it was anger or something else.

Voldemort glances at Snape. “Leave us.”

Go, just go. Voldemort can’t know that you care whether I live or die.

Snape hesitates. “The Order is still looking for the boy aggressively. They are about to report him missing. Dumbledore suspects that you felt the wards around his house go down.”

“Hm.” Voldemort looks at Harry thoughtfully. “How do you want to handle this? Do you want Dumbledore and the Order to know that you are with me?”

“Of course not!” Harry says, deliberately not looking at Nagini. He wants Snape to be able to understand him. “I don’t want them to worry about me or, worse yet, plan an attack on you in hopes of freeing me.” Harry turns his head to Snape. “Tell Dumbledore that Voldemort felt the wards go down and looked for me for a while but that he gave up, eventually.”

Voldemort cocks his head. “Does that fit with the information you included in your letters?”

Harry glances down at the parchment self-consciously. “Yes.”

He tried to keep his letters as vague as possible to increase the chances that Voldemort would allow him to send them. The most his friends and Dumbledore will be able to read out of them is that they shouldn’t worry about him and that he doesn’t want to be found.

“Very well. You may go now, Severus.”

This time, Snape just nods and walks to the door. Harry’s heart skips a beat when Snape looks at him for a whole second on his way out. Stop that! Do you want Voldemort to get suspicious?

Harry only allows himself to relax once Snape is through the door. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Voldemort swinging his wand. A Pensieve appears on the table in the middle of the room.

“Are you ready?”

Harry raises his hand. “I want to send off these letters first.”

“Ah, yes, of course. You will find owls down the corridor. It’s the second door on your right.”

Harry hesitates. He’s allowing it? Without having read the letters first? Slowly, Harry walks to the door, glancing at Voldemort suspiciously.

Nagini follows him through the door and down the corridor. Voldemort stays behind.

Harry waits for the other shoe to drop all the way to the room with the owls, while he’s attaching the letters, and on his way back.

It doesn’t have to mean anything that he’s allowing it. Voldemort might have ordered the owls to bring all letters to him first.

Harry frowns. Somehow, that doesn’t seem very likely.

“What about now?” Voldemort asks once Harry closes the door behind Nagini and himself.

Harry takes a deep breath. “Yeah. I’m ready.”

Chapter Text

Voldemort raises his wand. “I was thinking of showing you our first soulmate dream-“

“No.”

Voldemort pauses, his wand pressed against his temple. “No?”

“I want to decide what I get to experience.”

Slowly, Voldemort lowers his wand. “Why? The whole point of doing this is to understand each other better. Don’t you think I know best which memory would help with that?”

“I don’t, actually.”

A muscle jumps in Voldemort’s cheek, and Harry hides a smirk. It feels oddly satisfying to irritate Voldemort. Harry isn’t even sure why. Maybe it’s knowing that Voldemort won’t push back too hard?

Or maybe I just like teasing him.

Harry shakes his head.

No. That’s ridiculous.

“I want to see your father’s death.”

Voldemort freezes. His eyes are fixed on Harry, and at the same time, it seems like he’s seeing right through him. It’s so weird that Harry gets goosebumps and has to force himself not to wrap his arms around his middle.

“Ask for something else.”

“Why? Are you trying to hide your dark side from me? If so, forget about it. I’ve already seen enough-“

“That’s not it. I just don’t… I don’t want you to suffer.”

Harry takes a step back. Suffer?

“Did he…” Harry licks his lip. “Did he hurt you?”

Voldemort hesitates, and Harry holds his breath. He did?

“No.”

“Then why-“

“Ask for something else,” Voldemort repeats roughly. “I’ve lived a long life. Surely there are other moments you’d like to experience.”

Harry shakes his head. “Look. I love my parents, okay? I would’ve given everything to grow up with them. I just… I need to understand how you could kill the only family you had left - especially since you grew up in an orphanage. Please?”

Voldemort closes his eyes. He stands as still as a statue for about four or five seconds. Then he exhales through his mouth and slowly opens his eyes.

“Okay.”

“Thank you,” Harry says, smiling hesitantly.

Ten seconds later, the memory and the potion are inside the Pensive, and Voldemort takes a step back to give Harry some room.

***

Harry should have expected it. Uncle Morfin mistook him for his father, and even Mrs. Cole told him a few times that he doesn’t look like his mother at all. Still, it’s a shock when the door opens.

Harry feels like he is looking twenty years into the future.

His father’s eyes widen slightly. That’s the only indication Harry gets that his father recognized him.

As if there were even the slightest chance that he didn’t.

Harry clears his throat. “Hello. My name is Tom. Tom Riddle.”

His father’s eye twitches. Harry’s stomach clenches uncomfortably, fully expecting his father to shut the door in his face.

Instead, his father steps aside and opens the door a bit wider.

Harry takes the wordless invitation and goes inside. Immediately, he feels out of place. The house already looked fancy from the outside, but that’s nothing compared to the inside. Everything from the chandelier to the soft carpet looks classy and impeccable.

Every one of these paintings has to be worth more than everything I ever owned put together.

His father wordlessly leads him to a sitting room and waves a hand at a chair. Harry sits down and tries not to let it show how out of place he feels.

“Tell me about you,” his father says once he sat down across from him. “What brought you here?”

Harry takes a deep breath. At first, he has trouble finding the words, leading to awkward pauses and poorly phrased sentences. It doesn’t take long until he gets his confidence back, though. His father is just a muggle. There’s no reason to feel intimidated.

Harry tells him how his mother arrived at Wool’s, how she died giving birth to him, and how he grew up there. He leaves out his magic, of course, since he doesn’t want to get into trouble with the ministry, as well as most of the bad parts of living at the orphanage.

Eventually, Harry said all he wanted to say. He folds his hands in his lap and waits for his father’s response.

His father lets out a long sigh. “So she’s dead? Your mother?”

Harry nods. His throat feels weirdly tight, but he refrains from rubbing it. The feeling should go away on its own.

“Thank god.”

It takes a few seconds until the words sink in. “Excuse me?”

His father laughs. The sound reminds Harry of some of his Knights of Walpurgis after they narrowly passed an exam.

“Your mommy was the devil, boy. You should be grateful you never meet her. Now get the fuck out of my house.”

Harry feels frozen to the spot. Distantly, he’s aware that he has stopped breathing.

This isn’t how it was supposed to go, a distant part of his brain whispers. I was supposed to finally understand why my mother chose a random muggle over her soulmate.

“You were lovers,” Harry murmurs. “You loved her enough to have a child with her.”

“We were not lovers,” his father snarls. “That woman forced herself on me. She imprisoned my mind and kept me as her slave. If I'd had any say in the matter, you would never have been conceived. Now get the fuck out, or do you want me to call the police?”

Harry grips the table. The room seems to be spinning around him.

“You’re lying. She didn’t… She couldn’t have…”

“What’s going on here?”

Harry’s head snaps to the side. Two people entered the room without him noticing.

“Nothing. This lovely little boy just lost his way. He was about to go.”

The man at the door says something, but Harry can’t concentrate enough to focus on his words. His mind is a mess. All of them just need to shut up for a moment and tell him what really happened, what really caused his mother to reject her soulmate. They need to tell him why she died and left him to grow up at an orphanage.

Then something shoves him out of nowhere, and he falls to the floor, disoriented.

Harry acts on instinct. There’s a threat - no, three threats - and he needs to get rid of them. His life depends on it.

It takes an eternity until the world stops spinning around him.

The next thing he sees with any clarity makes him question his sanity. His father and the other two people - his grandparents, probably - are lying on the floor, their faces contorted in horror.

Their eyes are staring into nothing.

Harry looks at them uncomprehendingly. What happened? Harry blinks and glances down at his hand. When did he draw his wand?

Slowly, Harry climbs to his feet and looks down at his father and grandparents.

They shouldn’t lie on the floor. I should help them to their beds.

Harry raises his wand, feeling like he’s acting on autopilot.

Twenty minutes later, Harry stands in the door frame of a bedroom, staring down at his father, waiting for him to blink and sneer at Harry again.

Harry is still standing there when the sun comes up.

Chapter Text

“Harry? Are you alright?”

Harry raises a hand to his cheek. His fingertips come back wet. Are that tears?

“I’m... fine. Just give me a moment.”

He wipes his face dry with his sleeve, then he turns his back to Voldemort and lets everything he just experienced play back in his mind, trying to make sense of it.

It’s a lot to process. Harry still feels the after-effects of Voldemort’s shock and disbelief.

“You lied to me.”

“What do you mean?” Voldemort’s response comes so fast that he stumbles over his words. Maybe he’s nervous? But that can’t be, right?

Why not? Wouldn’t you be nervous after sharing such a personal memory with someone whose opinion you care about?

“At the graveyard. You made it sound like you killed your father because you hated him.” Harry turns around. “But you killed him on accident.”

Voldemort raises his chin. “What difference does that make?”

Harry gapes. “What difference...? You can’t honestly think it doesn’t matter. You didn’t choose to kill your father. That changes a lot.”

“It changes nothing. I killed a lot of people intentionally.”

“Why are you trying to make yourself appear in the worst light possible? I thought you’re trying to gain my trust.”

Harry steps away from the Pensive and sits down at the table, curious to hear Voldemort’s response. He braced himself for feelings of hatred and disgust when Voldemort put the memory into the Pensive. It would be putting it mildly to say that the memory caught him on the wrong foot.

“It won’t do either of us any good if you start trusting me because you draw the wrong conclusions. I’m neither a misunderstood person nor a good guy deep down.”

Harry considers that for a moment. Voldemort is right, of course. He experienced firsthand how vicious Voldemort can be. And yet, the memory showed Harry something profound. Voldemort didn’t seek his father out because he wanted to kill him. He was looking for answers. Maybe, deep down, he had even hoped to build some kind of connection with his father. Harry still remembers feeling that Voldemort didn’t want to give off a bad impression. If Tom senior hadn’t directed his hatred of Voldemort’s mother onto Voldemort, the whole meeting would have gone down very differently. Speaking of Voldemort’s mother…

“Hold on. Is that why you have a problem with Half-bloods and Muggle-borns? Because their parents - or grandparents or whatever - weren’t soulmates?”

Harry rarely thinks about it anymore, but muggles and squibs don’t have soulmates. He still remembers how shocked Hagrid had been when Harry admitted that he didn’t know anything about soulmates. Because of that, every time a witch or wizard marries a muggle, they are choosing them over their soulmate.

“That’s one of the reasons, yes. Abuse - physical, psychological, sexual, you name it - is astronomically less likely to occur if you choose to be with your soulmate. It’s not healthy for our society as a whole to have children with muggles.”

“But isn’t that necessary, though, to prevent inbreeding? There aren’t that many wizards and witches, after all.”

Voldemort shakes his head. “More often than not, your soulmate is from a different country. We do have a problem with inbreeding, yes, but that’s more because many people choose whoever they fell in love with at Hogwarts over their soulmate.”

Harry blinks and leans back in his chair. That’s completely new to him. He thought most people marry their soulmates. No one had ever told him that many people reject their soulmate.

“There are also purebloods who don’t marry their soulmate, though. My father, for example. Shouldn’t you have a problem with them as well?”

“I do,” Voldemort says to Harry’s surprise. “A few decades ago, rejecting your soulmate was very uncommon. Now it happens more and more often. It’s one of the many crises the ministry refuses to acknowledge.”

Harry shakes his head. “I don’t understand why the abuse rates are higher, though. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? I mean, if you reject your soulmate, you probably have good reasons for that, right? Also, it’s a lot harder - almost impossible, in fact - to avoid your soulmate. After all, you see each other every night until you complete your bond. That opens up a lot of opportunities to abuse your soulmate. It’s one of the many things I worried about when I found out that you are my soulmate.”

Voldemort walks to the table and sits down next to Harry. He’s so close that their knees almost brush.

“Harry,” Voldemort says quietly. “I am not my mother. I won’t force you into anything. If you decide that you don’t want to be with me, I won’t touch you.” Voldemort leans back in his chair and closes his eyes. “I should have assured you of that right away. I’m sorry it took me so long.”

Harry swallows. His throat feels tight all of a sudden. “So you won’t get... impatient?”

Voldemort opens his eyes and looks at Harry intently. “No, of course not. You are still very young, Harry - some people might say that you are too young to consent to anything at all. Either way, as far as I’m concerned, everything that goes beyond what we have already done will have to be initiated by you.”

Harry exhales slowly. Voldemort didn’t put pressure on him until now, but it’s still good to hear the reassurance.

“I’d like to see another memory now.”

“Alright.” Voldemort stands up and walks to the Pensive. “What would you like to see?”

Harry hesitates. There are many things he’d like to know about Voldemort, but most of them, he’d rather hear about than actually experience. Harry already has enough traumatic memories as it is. He isn’t quite ready to let Voldemort experience some of Harry’s memories, though.

“Surprise me. Pick a memory that will show me a different side of you.”

Voldemort stares into nothing for a long moment. Then he nods slowly and brings his wand up to his temple.

Harry takes a deep breath and joins Voldemort at the Pensive.

Chapter Text

“Still no luck?” Nagini asks.

Harry shakes his head and reaches for the potion beside his bedside table. His throat feels tight. There is a growing tension inside of him that makes it impossible to sleep for longer than an hour or two at a time, even with the help of potions - which is beyond frustrating because Harry never wanted to sleep as badly as he did today.

“I’m sure he’s fine.”

Harry stares into nothing for a moment. Then he brings the vial up to his lips, begging that Nagini is right.

He slips in and out of sleep, always reaching for the sleeping potion if he doesn’t nod off again right away. After a while, his hands start shaking, which makes drinking the potion a little bit harder.

There’s nothing he can do. Nothing. He knows that his soulmate should be at Hogwarts but that knowledge is useless. The school is like a fortress. He can’t take it by storm, not even with the help of all of his Death Eaters. He already summoned Severus and demanded an update on what Dumbledore is doing and how the atmosphere at Hogwarts is. He didn’t mention anything about a terrible accident, but that doesn’t reassure him. There are a lot of students at Hogwarts. It could take a while until someone notices that one of them went missing.

There is nothing he can do. There is no way for him to find out if his soulmate is dead. He can only hope, with all his heart, that his soulmate either took dreamless sleep or is pulling an all-nighter.

I need to find a way to protect him without having to know his name, Harry thinks the next time he’s pulled out of his sleep.

This time, he stays awake long enough until he finds a solution to that problem. What he comes up with isn’t perfect, of course. A code phrase will only protect his soulmate against people who are loyal to Harry. Still, it’s better than nothing. Harry could curse himself for not coming up with that idea sooner. Maybe he wouldn’t be lying here, then, gripping his sheets tightly.

Nagini rubs her body against his arm. At some point, she must have slithered into his bed to comfort him. It’s not really working, but he doesn’t have the heart to tell her.

Sighing, Harry summons a new vial of sleeping potion since the first one is already empty.

***

When Harry finally finds himself in the familiar, nebulous surroundings, his body moves on autopilot and pulls his soulmate into a crushing embrace. Distantly, he notices that his heart is pounding, that he is shaking all over and that his soulmate has stiffened slightly, but none of that matters because the only person Harry cannot live without is alive.

Relief floods through his body like a drug.

He feels his soulmate raising his arms and start rubbing his back. Harry hides his face in his soulmate’s hair and closes his eyes.

“Don’t do that again,” Harry says, his voice raw and rough.

His soulmate’s hands stop moving. “I don’t... I don’t know what you mean.”

Harry stiffens and tightens his grip even more. “You don’t- Are you serious?”

He feels his soulmate relaxing which is confusing, to say the least. Does he not understand how scared Harry had been? How terrified he’d been that the one person he’s wanted to meet since he was eleven years old was just gone?

I was so scared I lost you.

The words are at the tip of his tongue, but some stupid little part of him refuses to say them out loud, even though he knows that his soulmate needs to hear them. He has to understand how desperately Harry needs him.

Before he can gather enough courage to say anything in that regard, the dream dissolves around him, and he finds himself back in his bed.

He’s alive. I got lucky.

I can’t take any more risks.

***

This time, Harry doesn’t shed any tears. He’s shaking, instead, the same way Voldemort had in the memory.

Harry turns his head towards Voldemort. The moment their eyes meet, the knot in Harry’s chest dissolves.

I asked him to show me a different side of him. And he chose this memory out of decades worth of life experience.

Harry runs into Voldemort and wraps his arms around him exactly the same way Voldemort had a few nights ago.

Voldemort pats his back hesitantly. His heart beats strongly against Harry’s ear.

“I should have chosen a different memory.”

“No.” Harry pulls his head back just enough that he can look Voldemort in the eyes. “The memory was perfect.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” Harry lays his head back against Voldemort’s chest. They stay like that for a while.

“I think…” Harry takes a deep breath. “I think I’m ready to show you some of my memories.”

He feels Voldemort’s heartbeat increasing and wonders if Voldemort is aware that he is giving himself away.

“Now?” Voldemort asks, his voice higher than usually.

Harry hesitates. “Tomorrow. It’s late, and I want to sleep over it first.”

They keep standing there, embracing each other, until Harry becomes self-conscious and steps back.

Chapter Text

“I’d like to be alone tonight. It won’t be a problem for you to stay awake, right? You said you don’t need much sleep.”

“If you insist,” Voldemort says slowly. “Do you want Dreamless Sleep?”

Harry grimaces, thinking yearningly of the potions Madame Pomfrey gave him at the end of the term. He didn’t get to take a single one of them.

“I already drank too much of it lately. If I took more, I could suffer health consequences.”

That’s what Madame Pomfrey said, at least, and Harry is inclined to believe her. She can be overbearing at times, but she doesn’t exaggerate.

“How much did you take?”

“I’m not sure, actually.” The days after Voldemort’s return had been foggy, to say the least. It must have been his brain’s attempt at dealing with the trauma. “I took it every night after the third task up until our first soulmate dream.”

Voldemort remains quiet for a long moment. “That’s a dangerously long time span.”

Harry shrugs. “Madame Pomfrey supervised it, and she knows what she’s doing. Anyway, there is one thing I have to ask of you: promise me that you won’t come into my room while I’m asleep.”

“I can’t do that. If I think you’re in danger, I will check up on you. I won’t risk your safety.”

Harry grimaces. There’s no way for me to win this argument, is there?

“Fine, then at least promise me you’ll leave my room immediately once you’re sure I’m alright.” He waits until Voldemort nods. “Thank you.”

***

“Where are the Malfoys?” Harry asks the next day during breakfast, pushing around the scrambled eggs on his plate. There’s a tight knot in his stomach that makes it hard to keep eating even though the texture of the eggs is exactly to his liking.

“I told them to stay away from us.”

“Why?”

“Because you don’t like them.”

Harry blinks. That’s the reason?

“Doesn’t it bother them that you’re ordering them around in their own home?”

“Not particularly, no, and even if it did, I wouldn’t care.” Voldemort cocks his head. “I’ve asked a lot of my followers in the past, Harry. This is nothing.”

“Hm.” Harry keeps pushing the food around, wondering how he could keep the conversation going.

Come on, this is ridiculous. You’re stalling, and you know it. Stop being such a coward.

Harry sighs and stands up. “Alright, let’s get this over with.”

***

“I’m gonna need my wand,” Harry says, his eyes fixed on the Pensieve. Has it always looked so cold and unyielding?

“Of course.”

Voldemort pulls Harry’s wand out of his robes and hands it to Harry the same way one would a knife, with the tip pointing at Voldemort. The warmth that floods through Harry when he touches the wood is a welcome distraction.

Maybe it’d be better to pick a different memory-

No. Voldemort said he isn’t going to hurt or kill me. It’s time to find out if there is any truth to that promise.

“How do you extract a memory?”

“Simple. All you need to do is focus on the memory you want me to experience. Make sure to keep the exact beginning and end of the memory in mind as well. Then you pull the wand away from your temple and put the memory into the Pensieve.”

Harry licks his lips. “What if I want you to experience two different memories right after each other, without a break in between? Is there a way to do that?”

“Yes, just put all the memories you want me to experience into the Pensieve.”

Harry nods slowly, ignoring Voldemort’s curious look and his unasked question. There is no way Harry will tell him beforehand which memories he has in mind.

“One last thing. Is there anything you aren’t willing to experience?”

“No. I’m fine with everything that will help me understand you better.”

“Alright,” Harry says and takes a deep breath.

Am I really doing this?

Yes. Yes, I am.

Harry brings the wand up to his temple and closes his eyes. A few minutes later, there are two memories swirling around in the Pensieve.

Voldemort pulls a vial out of his robes and pours the potion into the Pensieve. Then he leans over the Pensieve, and Harry holds his breath, desperately hoping that he didn’t just make one of the worst decisions of his life.

***

The minutes tickle by agonizingly slowly. Harry keeps glancing at his watch, wondering how much longer he will have to wait. His shoulders are so tense it seems like an insurmountable task to pull them down into a more normal position.

“Stop walking around so much,” Nagini complains from her spot at the fireplace. “You’re disrupting my rest.”

“Sorry,” Harry mutters and forces himself to stop moving. That, however, only increases the tension in his muscles, so he starts bouncing on his feet instead. Before Nagini can complain about that as well, the door opens a few inches, and Harry freezes.

Hesitantly, he walks to the door, wondering if a house-elf or one of the Malfoys is behind it. Maybe there is some kind of emergency? Harry opens the door wider and furrows his brow. No one is there. All Harry sees is a dimly lit corridor.

“Wait for me. Master said you aren’t supposed to go anywhere without-“

The rest of Nagini’s words gets cut off when suddenly something crashes against Harry, something utterly invisible, and he gets pulled into a whirlwind of colors.

Chapter Text

Harry whirls around, his heart pounding in his chest, and holds his breath when he sees that his surroundings have changed. He’s still inside of a house, but the ceiling is lower, there is more furniture, and even the smell is different.

Most importantly, though, Harry isn’t alone.

“What did you do? Bring me back!”

“No.” Snape pulls a vial out of his robes. “Drink this.”

Harry grinds his teeth, his eyes fixed on Snape’s blank expression. He should probably be glad that it was Snape who kidnapped him and not someone else. And yet, he isn’t, mostly because Harry doesn’t know why he did it. Snape saw that Voldemort treated him decently, didn’t he? What motivation could Snape have had to put himself into so much danger?

“What’s it for?” Harry says, nodding at the vial. The greyish color all but confirms that it’s a potion of the disgusting kind.

“It will suppress your soulmate dreams.”

Harry takes a step back. “Thanks but no thanks.”

Snape narrows his eyes and draws his wand. Harry tenses but forces himself to hold still as Snape swings his wand. Maybe he’s being naive, but he doesn’t think Snape will hurt him, especially right after he saved Harry - which Harry didn’t ask for, but that’s beside the point.

“You aren’t under the Imperius or comparable curses,” Snape says with an odd tone in his voice. After a moment, Snape shakes his head and raises the vial in his hand slightly. “Drink. I won’t ask a third time.”

Harry takes another step back. “I can’t.”

Snape curls his lips and swings his wand again. “I don’t have time for discussions.”

The vial uncorks itself. The liquid flows through the opening and into the air.

Harry backs off further and keeps his lips pressed together, but it’s no use. The liquid flies towards him, pushing past his lips and into his mouth. Harry coughs and almost throws up when the liquid moves to the back of his throat and down his esophagus.

Harry stares ahead into nothingness, his arms and legs shaking. He moves a hand over his stomach, his nails digging into the skin there.

“What did you do?”

“I think that’s fairly obvious,” Snape says dryly.

Harry clenches his fist, rage burning in his chest like wildfire.

“How could you-“ Harry curses and closes his eyes. “Reverse it. If you can force feed me a potion, you can forcefully remove it as well.”

“If you paid attention in my class, you would know that’s impossible. The potion is already in your system.” Snape cocks his head. “You have no idea how much danger you were in, have you? The Dark Lord cannot be trusted. Whatever he’s told you, it was nothing but lies and false promises.”

“I don’t care. You need to bring me back!”

“I will do no such thing.”

“Listen,” Harry says, forcing himself to remain calm. There is still a way to fix this. “If Voldemort finds out I’m gone, he will destroy everyone and everything in his way until he gets me back.”

“You’re exaggerating. The Dark Lord won’t risk exposing himself to the world.”

Harry thinks back to the memory Voldemort shared with him, how scared Voldemort had been that something might have happened to Harry, and laughs. “Yes, he will. He already did. You remember the Prophet article about the Third task? Voldemort blackmailed the Prophet into publishing that one because of me.”

Snape stares at him for a long moment before shaking his head.

“He really did a number on you. I should have found a way to get you out of there sooner.” Snape puts the empty vial back into his pocket and turns towards the door. “I will be back as soon as I can. In the meantime, try to remind yourself why you were scared of the Dark Lord just a few days ago.”

And before Harry can do more than open his mouth, Snape has stepped through the door and pulled it shut behind himself. Harry stares at the dark wood, utterly speechless.

Harry chuckles once, twice, and before he knows it, he’s laughing so hard his stomach hurts.

The audacity, the nerve to kidnap Harry only to disappear right away without even telling him where Snape took him.

It’d be funny if the situation weren’t so serious.

Eventually, Harry’s hysterical laughter dies down, and he sits down on one of the armchairs in the room.

Alright. Snape won’t bring me back, so I’ll have to find a way to get to Malfoy Manor myself, preferably without using magic again.

The Knight Bus should do the trick, right?

Harry spends a few minutes thinking through every eventuality - he needs to make sure he gets back to Malfoy Manor in one piece, after all - before he stands up and walks to the door.

The door won’t open.

Harry pulls on the door handle for a solid minute until he draws his wand and tries Alohomora, which doesn’t work either.

Shaking, Harry sinks to the floor and buries his face in his hands.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Harry murmurs into his hands, praying for the first time in his life that Snape is right, that Voldemort won’t do anything too drastic.

Chapter Text

Voldemort grabs the edge of the table, breathing heavily. His heart is beating so fast it feels like it will jump out of his chest any second. Impressions of the two memories he just lived through appear before his inner eye, so all-consuming and intense Voldemort is incapable of breaking away from them.

Voldemort sits in the corner of an abandoned classroom, his Invisibility Cloak wrapped around him. The coldness of the floor seems to have spread from his arse to the rest of his body, making him feel numb and dead inside.

Voldemort digs his nails into the wood of the table. Harry’s loneliness, his hopelessness are tearing him apart. He wishes he could go back in time and pull Harry against his chest, could reassure him that everything will be alright.

The prophecy would’ve been horrible to hear all on its own, but knowing who his soulmate is makes its content straight up unbearable. While you hear stories about people abusing their soulmates now and then, there are only a handful of people per century who end up killing their soulmates. It’s not something any sane person would think about doing. It’d be easier to grab a knife and cut your heart out of your chest while being fully conscious.

Voldemort closes his eyes and wonders how his soulmate will take his life. Because that’s exactly what will happen, sooner or later. The prophecy claims one of them has to kill the other, and Voldemort will never be able to end his soulmate’s life, even knowing that he is a psychopath and a mass murderer. The thought alone is so repulsive that Voldemort has to swallow multiple times so he doesn’t throw up all over himself.

Will his soulmate be merciful and use the killing curse? Will he torture Voldemort beforehand? Well. Considering the kind of curses he used against him at the graveyard, Voldemort’s death will most likely be neither fast nor painless.

Voldemort tastes bile in the back of his throat. Just a few days ago, one of his main goals had been to get hold of the prophecy. That feels like a sick joke now. The prophecy was enough to convince Harry that there wasn’t the slightest chance Voldemort would spare him. Harry knew how few people killed their soulmates, yet that didn’t reassure him in the slightest.

Harry didn’t think Voldemort was capable of looking past the prophecy.

Voldemort feels a tremble working its way up his spine. He’d thought he’d hit rock bottom when he returned from the graveyard and then again when he found out who his soulmate was.

But this… This is infinitely worse.

Voldemort wraps his arms around his legs, shivering uncontrollably. He stays like that for hours, alone with his thoughts and unable to be found by anyone thanks to the Invisibility Cloak.

Eventually, his limbs stop shivering, and reluctantly, he stands up. If it were up to him, he’d spend the rest of the night here. Part of him feels like he doesn’t belong around normal people anymore. He doesn’t want to taint anyone with his presence.

Voldemort bites his lips to keep a whine from slipping out. He did this to his own soulmate, to the one person who he should protect at all costs. He was the reason Harry had a breakdown, why Harry fell into a dark pit of hopelessness. He didn’t mean to, but that doesn’t matter.

Voldemort swallows, trying to get rid of the lump in his throat. Now he finally understands why Harry had been so scared of him.

“-ster? Master!”

“Not now, Nagini,” Voldemort says, already feeling his attention shift over to the second memory Harry chose for him. If anything, this one was even harder to get through.

Voldemort watches as his soulmate curls his lips and draws his wand. Voldemort’s hand twitches, urging him to protect himself. He suppresses the impulse. If his soulmate is really here, he’s as good as dead anyway. He’s in no shape to fight for his life.

His soulmate moves his hand in a weird way, and a blue spell shoots out of his wand.

Blue? Why blue?

The next second, Voldemort’s question gets answered. Agony unlike anything Voldemort had ever felt takes hold of him and forces him to his knees. The letters slip out of his fingers, and Voldemort wraps his arms around his stomach. Guilt and sorrow and regret and anger fight a vicious battle inside of him, all of them demanding his attention. It’s like there isn’t enough space inside of him for all these emotions racing through him.

Voldemort feels one of his nails breaking off because of how forcefully he digs his fingers into the wood, but the pain is nothing compared to the emotions surging through him.

At the time, he hadn’t understood why Harry had broken down the way he did. He had simply assumed that Harry was afraid of dying.

He couldn’t have been more wrong. Why hadn’t he realized that sooner?

Tears spring to his eyes when Voldemort realizes - truly realizes, for the first time - what happened.

Dudley is gone, and it’s his fault. He could have stopped it. He could have driven the Dementors away if he hadn’t been so bloody weak-

Guilt is not an emotion Voldemort has a lot of experience with. It’s a shock to feel firsthand how all-consuming it can be, how much it can tear you apart from the inside. It’s enough to drive Voldemort to the edge of madness.

“What did you do to me?” Voldemort gasps, glancing up at his soulmate. Tears slide down his cheeks, blurring his vision, but despite that, he can still make out the morbid curiosity on his soulmate’s face.

“I forced you to feel what you’re feeling.” His soulmate cocks his head, drinking in the sight before him as if he couldn’t get enough of it. “It’s a spell that is most often used during torture to prevent the victim from mentally withdrawing.”

It takes a while for the meaning of his soulmate’s words to sink in, but when they finally do, thick betrayal joins the chaos inside his chest.

Voldemort winces. He can’t blame Harry for reacting that way. Forcing Harry to confront his emotions the way he did was the stupidest thing he could have done in that situation. Harry wasn’t ready to face his guilt, that’s why he mentally withdrew in the first place.

Voldemort blinks away the tears and locks eyes with his soulmate, looking for a sign of the man he spent night after night with, the one who opened up to him about his abusive childhood and who told Voldemort he would punish everyone who raised a hand against him.

After a few seconds, Voldemort lowers his head. There’s nothing. Nothing - only a monster who tortured him at the graveyard and killed his parents.

It was all a lie. A farce. The man Voldemort got to know in his dreams doesn’t exist.

That’s not true. Voldemort didn’t feign anything, and he hopes Harry has realized that by now. If he hasn’t, Voldemort will not stop until he has convinced Harry of the truth.

“Any last words?”

Voldemort clenches his fists and raises his gaze once again. He always knew it would come to this. Even when he allowed himself the faintest bit of hope that, given enough time, his soulmate might change at least a bit, he had known deep down that he would kill him, eventually.

But that doesn’t mean he will surrender peacefully. He can’t bring himself to raise his hand against his soulmate, not even now, but he doesn’t need his wand to hurt him. Voldemort knows he is obsessed with the idea of having a soulmate. The vision he had had told him that much, at least.

Voldemort’s eyes are burning. He yanks a hand away from the table to rub them furiously. He will have to teach Harry how to protect himself, no matter what. In that moment, Voldemort had posed a real threat to him, and yet he had lacked the motivation to make sure he made it out of there alive. That is unacceptable.

Voldemort will tear his soulmate’s hope of ever finding an equal into a thousand pieces.

Voldemort looks into those cruel, merciless eyes and says, “Did you know Tom Riddle was a Parselmouth?”

His soulmate freezes, eyes going wide, and Voldemort knows what will happen a split second in advance. It’s not enough time to prepare himself, though.

The mental assault hits him like a train. It’s like someone knocked his head against a wall. He feels dizzy and disorientated. Memory after memory fly by at an alarming speed.

His soulmate doesn’t stop to look at anything. He just pushes through, shoving his memories aside ruthlessly. It feels like someone is digging a hole inside his mind.

Voldemort swallows thickly. He had no idea how reckless he had been. He had been hyper-focused on finding out how Harry knew of the code phrase, especially since he had told his soulmate about that idea less than 48 hours ago. It hadn't been his intention to hurt Harry.

“Master! Your mate! He’s gone!”

Voldemort freezes. Then he turns around. “What?”

“He’s gone. I have already searched the whole house. I can’t smell him anywhere.”

It takes a few seconds until the meaning of Nagini’s words really sinks in. Then he lays his head back and shrieks, the sound of glass breaking all around him joining him soon after.

Two days. It took less than two days for Harry to slip through his fingers.

Chapter Text

After a few minutes, Harry stands up. The front door is locked, yes, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that there is no way to get out. He just has to hope Snape missed something.

Ten minutes later, Harry finds himself in the same spot, beyond frustrated. Snape brought him to a small house with a few windows and a front and back door, but all of them are locked. That means he won’t even be able to send Voldemort a letter — not that there’s an owl around here, anyway. He feels a pang of guilt when an image of Hedwig appears before his inner eye. He hadn’t thought of her once since Voldemort kidnapped him.

Harry shakes his head. There is nothing he can do for her right now.

“Alright,” Harry murmurs and looks around. “It’s time for some drastic measures.”

Harry picks up a chair and throws it against the living room window. The chair bounces off without leaving so much as a scratch. Harry picks it up again. He won’t give up that easily.

It takes longer than he thought until the window breaks into a thousand pieces. Either the movies he watched as a kid were inaccurate, or Snape strengthened the glass with spells. Harry doesn’t particularly care.

He shoves the chair out of the way and steps towards the window, careful to avoid the broken glass. Then he pushes the glass splinters on the window sill aside and climbs onto it.

Alright. Now let’s get out of here.

Harry jumps out of the window.

That’s what he tries to do, anyway. Instead, he jumps against an invisible wall. Harry loses his balance and falls off the window sill and onto the broken glass.

For a few seconds, Harry just stays where he is, feeling disoriented and dizzy. His head pounds painfully where it bumped against the invisible wall. Then he stands up and removes the glass clinging to his skin, ignoring the blood running down his skin. He can recognize serious injuries. These cuts are shallow and unimportant.

Grinding his teeth, Harry presses against the invisible barrier as hard as he can. It doesn’t move even in the slightest. Harry lets out a frustrated hiss.

These are the kind of moments in which he hates magic with every fiber of his being. The Dursleys wouldn’t have been able to lock him in so efficiently.

***

It takes almost two hours until Snape returns. By that time, Harry’s cuts have long since stopped bleeding.

When Snape opens the door, Harry doesn’t even try to shove him aside to run through the door. Snape would have to be beyond stupid not to use the same spell on the door as he did on the windows.

“You made quite a mess,” Snape says as he pulls the door shut behind himself. “Are you going to clean that up?”

Harry bares his teeth. “Are you going to clean up your mess? Voldemort will tear the whole world to shreds if you don’t bring me back.”

“You already said that. There’s no need to repeat yourself.”

Harry laughs, aware that it sounds more than a little breathless. Having to wait so long until Snape returned only increased his anxiety.

“Why are you acting like this wasn’t the worst mistake of your life?”

Snape’s eyes darken.

“I was a Death Eater, Potter. Not just a spy but an actual Death Eater. If this,” Snape waves a hand around, “was the worst mistake of my life, I could call myself lucky.”

Harry curses, tearing at his hair. “You don’t get it. You picked the absolute worst time to kidnap me. Voldemort might think that I killed myself and… and since I won’t show up in his dreams tonight, I can’t exactly blame him.”

“Why would he think you killed yourself?”

“’cause he thinks I’m suicidal.”

There’s a short pause. “Are you?”

“No, god damn it!”

“It would explain why you are so intent on going back to the person who tortured you and killed your parents.”

Harry takes a deep breath, swallowing the words on the tip of his tongue. He needs to get through Snape’s thick skull, somehow.

“Look. I appreciate that you’re trying to look out for me. But there is so much you don’t know. You’re only making everything worse.”

“Am I?” Snape asks quietly. “You don’t know the Dark Lord the way I do. He’s a master at manipulating. He knows how to find your weaknesses, how to make you believe your wildest dreams will come true. That’s how he pulls people in, and before you know it, he has bent you to his will. You can’t trust anything he says.” Snape waits a moment to let his words sink in. “I don’t blame you for falling for his tricks, Harry. Openly opposing him would have been the worst you could have done in your situation, anyway.”

Harry bites his lips so hard he tastes blood. “You don’t get it. You don’t understand how our relationship works. He treats me differently than everyone else.”

Snape’s face darkens. “Oh, I have no doubt about that. You are a child, Harry. You can’t consent. I can only hope the Dark Lord held back and didn’t do any lasting damage.”

Harry frowns. What is he talking about?

…Oh.

“That’s not what I meant. He didn’t… He…”

Snape pulls something out of his robes and throws it toward him. Harry catches it easily.

“For your injuries. Try not to hurt yourself again.”

Chapter Text

Voldemort slips out of Draco Malfoy’s mind, ignoring the boy’s shrieks and sobs. His parents pull him into their arms, shielding him with their bodies — as if they could protect him if Voldemort wanted to harm him.

“Leave.”

Lucius and Narcissa stumble towards the door, pulling their son along with them. They need two attempts until they finally get the door knob down, which doesn’t come as a surprise. Legilimency can leave the body weak and uncoordinated for a while if the Legilimens isn’t careful.

Voldemort had had no reason to be careful or gentle — not as long as there was the slightest chance that one of the Malfoy was responsible for taking Harry away from him.

Voldemort walks around the room, agitated, when he suddenly feels something bumping against his legs. Glancing down, he sees Nagini rubbing her head against his leg, attempting to soothe him.

“I’m sure he’s alright. He may be smaller and thinner than you, but he wouldn’t be your mate if he were incapable of protecting himself, right?”

Voldemort clenches his teeth. There’s no doubt in his mind that Harry can look out for himself, that he can fight off an attacker or two — as long as he wants to fight them, that is. Maybe Harry didn’t mind being taken away from Voldemort. Maybe he even helped the kidnapper pull it off. He asked Voldemort more than once to let him go, after all. Wincing, Voldemort remembers the letters Harry sent to his friends and Dumbledore. He should never have allowed Harry to send those.

“You said he disappeared into thin air?”

“Yes,” Nagini responds. Voldemort leans down to caress her head, allowing her to soothe his temper for the moment. “I thought he just went to another room the way you sometimes do, and since you told me to stay with him, I went looking for him. His scent is gone, Master. I can’t smell him anywhere.”

“Did you smell anyone else when he disappeared?”

Nagini hesitates. “I’m not sure. There was a sour, rotten smell in the air, but I’ve never met a human who smells like that.”

Voldemort curls his lips. So whoever took Harry made sure to mask their smell. It will be significantly harder to find the kidnapper this way.

Will it, though? Yes, Harry might have asked his friends or Dumbledore to rescue him, but it’s very unlikely that they found a way past the wards in such a short time. It’s much more likely that one of my followers betrayed me.

Voldemort pulls his hand away from Nagini’s head and clenches his fists. It’s not hard to guess who could have a reason to turn against him.

***

Harry hesitates in the doorway. It’s weird to see Snape behind a stove instead of a cauldron or desk.

“Well? Did you calm down a bit?”

Harry flinches. He didn’t realize that Snape heard him coming.

“Where are we? And why is all my stuff upstairs?”

“What, would you have preferred it if I had left them with your relatives?” Snape glances at him, raising an eyebrow. “This is my house in Cokeworth. Your mother grew up not far from here.”

Snape’s house? Blinking, Harry looks around. The house looks normal, for lack of a better word. Not very lived-in and a bit impersonal, but far from the dark, cold place Harry would have assumed Snape lives in.

Wait. If this is Snape’s house, does that mean…?

“No.”

“What?” Harry asks, confused.

“I know what you’re thinking. The Dark Lord won’t look for you here. I put the house under the Fidelius charm yesterday.”

The air leaves Harry’s lungs all at once, almost as if someone punched him in the gut.

“Stop looking at me like that. You should be thanking me. This is one of the safest places for you to be right now.”

“You-“ Harry bites his lips to suppress a curse. “You’re kidding me, right? You don’t actually expect me to thank you for keeping me locked up somewhere with only you for company. Not to mention that you forced me to drink a potion that will make my soulmate believe I died. Weren’t you the one who called me abusive for taking Dreamless Sleep without warning Voldemort first?”

Snape looks at him for a long moment. Then he swings his wand, and a few seconds later, the food is on the table, ready to be eaten.

“Sit.”

Harry grinds his teeth and stays where he is, deliberately avoiding looking at the food.

“What, you won’t even answer me?”

Snape sits down at the table and picks up the fork beside his plate. “Why should I? It’s pointless. You won’t listen to me anyway.”

“Maybe I would if you listened to me. I… Look. I understand why you thought you needed to get me away from Voldemort. But I don’t think you really thought this through.”

“Oh, do you, now,” Snape says softly, laying the fork aside. “I know the Dark Lord will assume that I was the one who took you. He will hunt me down and torture me to death if he gets his hand on me. I took all of that into consideration before I decided to do anything. I know what I’m doing. Now sit down.”

Harry feels frozen to the spot, his heart hammering away in his chest. He turns Snape’s words over in his head a few times before he licks his lips and curls his hands into fists in an attempt to get rid of some of the tension.

“I don’t get it. Why would you willingly put yourself into such a vulnerable position? I mean, I wasn’t even in mortal danger. And you were aware of that, weren’t you? You saw me with him, so you must have known that he treated me decently.”

Snape folds his arms. “There are things worth risking your life and safety over. I know you’re no stranger to that notion.”

“Yes, but-“ Harry hesitates, wondering how he can get Snape to finally understand. “I didn’t ask for this. I don’t think it was necessary at all. Maybe… maybe I can convince Voldemort to spare you if you bring me back right now before he can grow too worried.”

“Harry,” Snape says softly and waits until Harry looks him in the eyes. “You can’t change my mind.”

Harry bites his lips so hard he tastes blood. Snape had never looked at him like that, so serious and honest at the same time. It leaves no doubt in his mind that it is pointless to protest.

“Can you at least let me send Voldemort a message? He needs to know I’m safe and unharmed and that I won’t show up in his dreams.”

When Snape just looks at him intently, Harry walks over to the table and sits down to show that he’s willing to listen, to play along.

Snape opens his mouth, but instead of words, a hiss leaves his mouth.

“What’s wrong?” Harry says, alarmed when he catches Snape glancing at his forearm. “Is he calling you?”

“No. Worse.”

Snape grimaces and pulls up the left sleeve of his robes, revealing the Dark Mark. It looks more like a burn wound than a tattoo. It didn’t look like that the day Voldemort returned and Snape shoved his arm into Fudge’s face.

“Stop looking so tense. He can’t kill me from afar.”

Snape stands up, his movements stiffer than usual.

“Where are you going?”

“Away from you,” Snape says, letting out another hiss Harry is pretty sure he meant to suppress. “There’s no need for you to see this.”

“See what?”

“Nothing you need to worry about.” Snape gasps and grips the edge of the table. “It seems I won’t make it to my room. Go away, Harry. I mean it.”

“No,” Harry says, growing more and more anxious by the second. “Not before you tell me what’s going on.”

Chapter Text

“Leave,” Snape snaps with such intensity that Harry flinches back on instinct. It’s far from enough to make him back away, though.

“Why?”

Snape groans in pain and clenches his eyes shut. “Because I need to cut off my forearm.”

Snape pushes a hand into his robes, still with his eyes closed, and pulls out his wand. Harry’s mind goes blank. Before he knows what he’s doing, he yanks the wand out of Snape’s hand and backs off a few steps, needing to put as much distance between Snape and him as possible.

Snape slowly opens his eyes. “Give me my wand back.”

“No,” Harry says, taking another step back. “You can’t cut off your arm.”

“I can and I will. It’s better than the alternative.”

“What’s the alternative?”

“Me going mad.”

While Harry is busy trying to process that, Snape’s face contorts in pain, and his legs give out, leading Snape to awkwardly sink to the floor.

“We don’t have much time. I need to cast the spell while I can still think somewhat clearly. Give me my wand. Now, Potter.”

Harry swallows. All he can think about is the shriek Pettigrew let out when he cut off his hand. It’s one of the many things Harry will never be able to forget.

“No. There needs to be something else we can do.”

“There isn’t. Trust me. The Dark Mark stems from the Darkest of Dark Arts. Mutilation is the only way to break the connection. That, or the Dark Lord deciding to stop what he’s doing.”

“Then that’s what we need to do! I can convince him, trust me!”

“No. There’s isn’t enough time to contact the Dark Lord, anyway.”

Harry tenses at the sluggish sound of Snape’s voice. He seems to have trouble getting the words out. It probably won’t take long until he won’t be lucid enough to talk.

“There might be a way I can reach him almost instantly, actually. Let me try that first. You can still cut off your arm if it doesn’t work.”

“I told you, there’s no time. Soon, I won’t be able to concentrate enough to use magic.”

“Then tell me the incantation, and I’ll do it myself! And no, that won’t be more traumatic than letting you do it! I’m so sick of people dying and getting hurt around me without being able to do anything about it!”

Harry locks eyes with Snape, feeling the wood of the wand creaking under his tight grip. He won’t back down. Snape will have no choice but to give in.

Snape returns his look, his expression impossible to interpret, contorted in pain as it is. Eventually, Snape clenches his fists and closes his eyes.

“Sectumsempra. That’s the incantation. Make sure to aim for the crook of my arm.”

Harry exhales shakily, feeling some of the tension fall off him. Then he lays Snape’s and his own wand on the floor, out of reach, and crouches down beside Snape. Not willing to waste another second, Harry lays a hand on the Dark Mark.

“What are you-”

“Shh. I need to concentrate.”

Harry isn’t sure how to do it or even whether it’s possible. He only knows that he needs to try to find that foreign piece of soul inside of him — if it’s even there, that is. Either way, he hopes that touching the Dark Mark - a direct connection to Voldemort - will help him find it.

***

Voldemort feels a weird sensation at the back of his mind, almost as if Nagini is trying to contact him but not quite. Narrowing his eyes, Voldemort focuses his attention inwards and pushes a bit against the anomaly. Immediately, the presence seems to grow at an alarming rate until it becomes impossible to ignore. Voldemort catches his breath when a whole range of emotions that aren’t his own flood his mind.

Immediately, Voldemort focuses on sending back calmness while he tries to sort through the different emotions Harry - who else could it be? - is sending him. He can make out fear and determination and dread and… and then the emotions turn into thin air from one second to the next. A wave of fear goes through him. What does that mean? Did Harry lose consciousness?

And then the emotions are back all of a sudden, this time dominated by anger and disappointment, both so strong that it takes his breath away. It’s all very confusing. Voldemort wishes they could communicate with more than just emotions. But he never managed to do that with Nagini, so he probably won’t be able to do it with Harry, either.

A wave of annoyance joins the anger and disappointment, which only increases Voldemort’s perplexity. Maybe Harry can feel my confusion? Does he think it should be obvious why he is angry and disappointed? Voldemort shakes his head and focuses on sending Harry his desire to understand, not sure how well it will work. Emotions are such fickle things, so easy to misinterpret.

It doesn’t take long until he gets a response. Voldemort looks at the emotions from all sides, trying to understand what they could mean. There’s a deep weariness and the desire for something to be over. And, underlying that, a thick sense of betrayal.

Voldemort winces. Ah. He’s with Snape, isn’t he? He doesn’t like that I’m hurting him.

He takes a deep breath, unsure of what to do. If he cancels the spell now, he won’t be able to locate Snape, drastically reducing his chances of getting Harry back soon. On the other hand, he’s hurting Harry. Again. And not only that, Harry will lose respect and trust in him if Voldemort ignores his wish. That’s unacceptable.

Voldemort swallows heavily and draws his wand, pointing it at the Dark Mark hovering in the air a few feet in front of him. It takes no time at all to cancel the spell, and Harry’s relief and gratitude almost make it worth it.

Voldemort stares at the floor, wishing he could pull Harry into his arms where he would be safe and happy. It worries him that Harry will have to fend for himself until Voldemort finds a way to get him back. Harry can look out for himself, there’s no doubt about that, but he deserves a break after everything he’s been through.

He must have sent some of that through their connection since Harry sends him a weird mix of emotions, ranging from soothing to worried and exasperated.

Don’t you worry, Harry. Everything will turn out alright. I promise. There are countless ways I could get you back. I’ll just need a bit longer, that’s all.

Chapter Text

Harry pulls his hand away from Snape’s arm, feeling… raw. There is still something like an afterimage of Voldemort’s emotions inside of him, but he tries to push them away for now. They will only get in the way at the moment.

“How did you do that?”

Blinking, Harry glances in Snape’s direction. His face is still pale and a little sweaty - evidence of how much the pain must have affected him - but he isn’t grimacing anymore, and his eyes are sharp and intense, not fogged like before.

So it worked, then. Harry leans back a little, stunned. He had hoped Voldemort would listen to him, but he hadn’t known he would. The relief flooding through his veins makes him giddy, and he smiles slightly, ignoring how Snape narrows his eyes.

“I’m not sure, actually. I never tried to reach out to him through the Dark Mark before.”

“That’s not what I meant. How did you convince the Dark Lord to change his mind?”

“Oh, that,” Harry says, blinking. “That was pretty easy. I simply made it very clear that I didn’t want him to torture you.”

Snape stares at him, slumped on the floor as he is, not moving even a fraction of an inch. Harry gets tired of that pretty quickly and stands up. He picks up their wands, tossing the one that feels wrong in his hands in Snape’s direction. To his surprise, Snape doesn’t try to catch it, simply allowing it to fall into his lap.

“What did you promise the Dark Lord in return?”

“What do you mean?”

Snape’s eyes flash, apparently annoyed at having to explain himself. “What did you promise the Dark Lord in exchange for canceling the spell?”

Harry folds his arms, grinding his teeth in irritation. “Didn’t you listen to me? He didn’t ask for anything in return. He backed off once he realized I wouldn’t forgive him if he didn’t stop. What’s so hard to understand about that?”

Snape’s eyes flash again - this time in anger - and he stands up, putting his wand into a pocket of his cloak. “The Dark Lord doesn’t do anything for free, and if you think he does, then he brainwashed you even worse than I thought he did.”

He didn’t brainwash me. Harry bites his lip to keep the words in. Just objecting to all of Snape’s claims obviously doesn’t do him any good.

“Did you know Voldemort could do that to you from afar?”

“Yes. I was waiting for it, actually.”

“You what?!”

Snape moves his hands over his cloak, brushing off dust, apparently uncaring - or unaware - how much Harry’s mind is reeling from shock.

He was cooking dinner when I came in earlier. How could he do something so normal while he was waiting for Voldemort to start torturing him, knowing that he could only stop it by cutting off his arm?

“The Dark Lord doesn’t use this particular spell very often,” Snape says, sounding like he’s standing much further away than a few feet. “Which is stupid if you ask me. It’s the most effective method of tracking people that I know of. But I suppose the Dark Lord relishes too much in knowing that his victim is waiting for the spell to kick in to actually use it, most of the time. The vast majority of purebloods would rather die than suffer the humiliation of losing a limb. Which is - again - beyond stupid. You can regrow limbs, though it’s a painful and long process with a few drawbacks. Death, however, is permanent.”

Harry closes his eyes, trying to take all of that in. So that was the purpose of the spell? Voldemort was trying to figure out where Snape and I were? It wasn’t just meant as a punishment?

“Wait. If you can regrow limbs, why does Mad-Eye Moody walk around with only one leg?”

“He lost his leg long before the potion used to regrow limbs was invented. The potion only works on freshly severed limbs.” Snape pulls a vial out of his robes, the sickly green liquid inside unnaturally bright. “I’ve been carrying this around with me everywhere I went since the moment I decided to rescue you.”

Harry holds his breath, feeling like the room is spinning around him. He walks to the nearest chair, his legs shaking under him, and only continues to breathe once he sat down.

“What’s next?” Harry asks faintly. “Are you going to tell me that you were the one to invent that potion?”

“…I had a lot of time to prepare for the Dark Lord’s return.”

Harry gapes. That’s a yes if I ever heard one.

“Why-“ Harry clears his throat. “Why would you risk so much - your life, your health, your ability to be a spy for Dumbledore - on something as simple as getting me from one place to another?”

There’s more to what Snape did, even Harry has to admit that, but that’s the gist of it. Voldemort could kidnap him again, and then Snape’s decision would be for nothing.

“You want to know why I rescued you?” Snape says quietly, sitting down across from him. “Keeping you alive and well is my highest priority. That’s why.”

Harry freezes, focusing on keeping his face as expressionless as possible.

Did someone mess with Snape’s mind? Is he being possessed? What is wrong with him?

Snape nods slowly. “You don’t believe me. I can understand that. But it’s the truth, I assure you of that. If you give me a chance, I will explain why reporting to Dumbledore and fighting against the Dark Lord are only secondary concerns of mine. And after that, we might want to talk more about how exactly you convinced the Dark Lord to cancel the spell.”

Chapter Text

“I swore to do everything in my power to protect you-“

“I know,” Harry interrupts him impatiently. “You already told me that a few days ago at the Dursleys’.”

“But I didn’t tell you why, did I?” Snape says quietly, and Harry shakes his head. “How much do you know about how your parents died?”

Harry shrugs uncomfortably. “I know they were hiding behind the Fidelius charm because of the Prophecy and that Pettigrew betrayed them. Sirius blames himself because he convinced my parents to choose Pettigrew as their secret keeper instead of him. And you…” Harry hesitates. “Voldemort said you asked him to spare my parents’ lives.”

Snape turns even paler, but he doesn’t avert his eyes. Harry waits with bated breath.

“That is correct. My relationship with your parents was… complicated, to say the least. Your mother was my best friend until she turned her back on me when I went too far down the Dark path. And your father…” Snape shakes his head. “There were many things standing between us, but I never wanted to seriously harm him, not even while I was a loyal Death Eater.”

Harry glances away, preferring to stare at the food that is still standing untouched on the table. Quietly, he asks, “Why are you telling me all of this?”

“Because you deserve to know. The headmaster didn’t tell you how the Dark Lord found out about the Prophecy, did he? It was my fault. I overheard the beginning of the Prophecy, and — stupid and naive as I had been at the time — I went straight to the Dark Lord to tell him about it without checking who the Prophecy might be talking about first. I owe it to your parents to look after you, to protect you the same way they would if they were still alive. That’s why I swore to keep you out of harm’s way to the best of my abilities — and being at the Dark Lord’s side is the most dangerous place you could be right now. I couldn’t leave you there.”

Harry’s mind is running a mile per hour. He keeps his eyes carefully fixed on the food, not wanting Snape to see his inner turmoil. Seconds go by slowly as Harry tries to come to terms with what Snape told him.

“What are you thinking?” Snape asks eventually.

“I think,” Harry says slowly, “that you’re doing what you think would be best for me. And I can’t be angry at you for that-“

“You can be angry at whoever you want.”

Harry finally looks up from the food to glance at Snape briefly. “Maybe. Anyway, I understand your motives, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’re wrong. I’m perfectly safe with Voldemort. He wouldn’t hurt me intentionally, and he’s gotten a lot better at not hurting me unintentionally.”

Pleased, Harry notices the thoughtful glint in Snape’s eyes. He’s thinking about what I’m saying, at least. That’s good.

“What makes you so sure of that? It’s not like you can look inside the Dark Lord’s head and see his true intentions.”

The corner of Harry’s mouth twitches, and before he knows it, he’s grinning openly. He doesn’t even care that Snape narrows his eyes suspiciously.

“I can’t look inside his head, that’s true, but I did something very similar to that. You remember the potion you brought Voldemort? I lived through two of his memories, so I know how his mind works. I felt how frightened he was the night I took Dreamless sleep without warning him.” Harry pauses to let that sink in. “Voldemort can be merciless and sadistic, monstrous even. But not towards me. Not anymore.”

Snape stares at him, his eyes widened slightly. Then he stands up abruptly.

“Where are you going?”

“To my room. I need to think.”

“Wait,” Harry says hastily when Snape is already halfway across the room. “I have one more question. Do you know who my mother’s soulmate was?”

Snape stops walking and slowly turns towards him. “Yes, Rabastan Lestrange. As far as I know, she never told him who she was, though I’m sure Rabastan put two and two together when his soulmate dreams stopped the night your parents died.”

Without waiting for a response, Snape turns around and walks away, leaving Harry alone with his thoughts.

***

Harry flinches when someone knocks on his door.

“Come in,” he says, closing the book about counter-spells he found in the living room. He didn’t bother asking Snape before he took it. Providing Harry with something to read is the least Snape can do after kidnapping him.

Snape comes in, holding a parchment in his right hand.

“What’s that?”

“A compromise.”

Harry frowns, looking back and forth between Snape’s face and the parchment. “What?”

Snape closes the door behind him, rolling his eyes. Then he gives Harry the parchment and sits down at the edge of Harry’s bed. “It’s a message I intend to send the Dark Lord through a Patronus. I thought you should read it first.”

Tensing slightly, Harry looks down at the parchment and starts reading intently.

Harry is with me, hidden behind a Fidelius charm. No one can reach him apart from me. He is unharmed, and I intend to take good care of him. But, much to my regret, he wants to get back to you as soon as possible. I can’t allow that at the moment. Harry needs time to process the trauma you inflicted on him on the night of the third task, so he will stay with me until his fifteenth birthday. I won’t stop him if he still wants to return to you then.

In the meantime, we will suppress Harry’s soulmate dreams — not with Dreamless Sleep but with a potion of my own creation. It won’t harm him in any way. I will allow him to reach out to you every evening through my Dark Mark so that you know he’s still alive and well.

Harry reads the message a second time, just to make sure he didn’t misunderstand anything.

“Well?”

Harry rubs his forehead and sighs. “I don’t like it, but I can live with it.”

It’s probably the best he could have hoped for, anyway.

“Good.”

Snape extends a hand, and Harry gives him the parchment back.

“Expecto Patronum!”

Harry blinks when a stag appears that looks almost exactly like Harry’s. He listens as Snape reads off the message from the parchment and only relaxes once the stag storms off.

I really hope Voldemort won’t do anything stupid and will accept the message at face value.

Chapter Text

Voldemort catches his breath at the sight of the silvery stag. He used magic outside of Hogwarts, again, just to send me a message? That’s stupid… and greatly appreciated. But then a voice emerges that isn’t Harry’s at all, and bitterness fills Voldemort’s mouth. He still listens intently, of course, needing to know what Snape has to say for himself.

The question of why Harry and Snape have the same Patronus can wait for later.

“Harry is with me, hidden behind a Fidelius charm. No one can reach him apart from me. He is unharmed, and I intend to take good care of him.”

Voldemort tenses. Is that really the truth? Snape wouldn’t tell him if Harry were hurt, would he? How can I trust anything he says?

“But, much to my regret, he wants to get back to you as soon as possible.”

Relief flows through him like a drug. So Harry didn’t want to leave. I already suspected that, of course, but it’s still good to hear I was right.

“I can’t allow that at the moment. Harry needs time to process the trauma you inflicted on him on the night of the third task, so he will stay with me until his fifteenth birthday. I won’t stop him if he still wants to return to you then.”

Voldemort frowns, ignoring the uncomfortable tightness in his throat. I could have given him space if that’s what he truly wanted and needed. He didn’t need to leave to get that.

“In the meantime, we will suppress Harry’s soulmate dreams — not with Dreamless Sleep but with a potion of my own creation. It won’t harm him in any way. I will allow him to reach out to you every evening through my Dark Mark so that you know he’s still alive and well.”

The Patronus turns into thin air, and Voldemort stares at the space where it had been, his fists shaking uncontrollably.

No soulmate dreams.

No way to reach out to Harry, to see him, to talk to him.

Snape took the one thing Voldemort can’t live without.

Absently, Voldemort notices that his fists aren’t the only part of him that’s shaking anymore — it’s his whole body. He ignores that as best as he can and closes his eyes, trying to reach out to Harry the way he does with Nagini. He crashes against a cold, dark wall and flinches back on instinct. He tries it again after a second or two with the same result.

Breathing heavily, Voldemort starts walking up and down, for once glad that Nagini isn’t around. He wouldn’t want her to see him like this.

What does that mean? Is it because of the Fidelius charm? Would I be able to reach him otherwise? Why didn’t I analyze our connection more while Harry was still around?

Voldemort stops walking abruptly, inhales deeply, and holds his breath. Then he mentally counts to ten, hoping that will somehow calm him down.

It doesn’t. At the end of it, he feels even more tense.

Letting out a frustrated noise, Voldemort sits down on one of the chairs, suppressing the impulse to draw his wand and cast the spell to locate Snape again. Harry made it abundantly clear that he didn’t like that, and it wouldn’t work anyway — not as long as Snape is hidden behind the Fidelius charm. Besides, Snape mentioned something about Harry reaching out to him through his Dark Mark, so he can’t afford to damage his connection to the traitor in any way.

So what can I do?

Voldemort spends a few long minutes thinking about that question, trying to look at it from all sides. He doesn’t like the conclusion he arrives at.

There’s no way to get Harry back right away, or at least no way Harry would forgive him. Still, there are a few things Voldemort can do, even from afar, that will strengthen his relationship with Harry.

He didn’t cry out for help when he reached out to me earlier. That has to mean something. I have to trust that he can look out for himself, that he knows when to ask for help.

For now, at least.

Chapter Text

“You already reached out to the Dark Lord today.”

“I know,” Harry says, sitting down beside Snape. “But you said in your message that I’d contact Voldemort every night, and I’m pretty sure Voldemort will take that literally.”

“Will you stop saying his name?” Snape hisses, folding his arms.

“What, would you prefer it if I called him Tom?” Snape grimaces and Harry nods. “See? Besides, I never understood this whole you-know-who bullshit-“

“Language!”

“-it’s literally just a word. What’s the big deal?”

Snape curls his lips. “Growing up with muggles doesn’t give you the excuse to ignore social norms in the wizarding world.” That’s not what I’m doing… am I? “You can’t tell me that muggles don’t have words they don’t use out of principle.”

“Well… I mean, they do. The N-word, for example. But that’s hardly the same.”

“What’s the N-word?”

Harry stares at Snape, forcing himself not to let his mouth fall open in disbelief. “Are you kidding me? How can you not know what the N-word is?”

“I spent some time in the muggle world as a child, but I never interacted much with muggles. My parents weren’t exactly the kind of people to invite anyone over for dinner.”

Harry blinks, trying to imagine Snape as a little kid. I wonder if he always was such a piece of work. “Well, for your information, the N-word is a racist slur used- Wait. You’re trying to distract me.”

Snape raises an eyebrow. “Took you quite a while to catch on. You’ll have to get better at spotting mind games if you want to keep up with the Dark Lord.”

“No, I don’t,” Harry says, narrowing his eyes. “I understand Voldemort’s goals and motivations. I understand him. And that means that it’s relatively easy to notice when he’s trying to manipulate me.” Not that he’s been doing a lot of that lately. “Now, let’s get on with it. I’m tired.”

Snape looks at him for a long moment, his face perfectly even, and suddenly Harry is grateful that Voldemort doesn’t do that, that he shows his emotions openly, as far as he can tell, when Harry’s around.

Eventually, Snape lets out a barely audible sigh and rolls up his sleeve. “How does it work? Why can you reach out to the Dark Lord through my Dark Mark in the first place?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that there’s a connection between Voldemort and me that has nothing to do with us being soulmates — Voldemort has a theory, but even that theory wouldn’t explain why I need the Dark Mark to contact him. Or maybe it does somehow, I don’t know.”

Snape curls his lips. “That’s one of the most inconclusive answers I’ve ever heard.”

“Well, it’s the only answer you’ll get.”

Harry reaches out, but Snape pulls his arm back at the last second. Harry keeps himself from letting out a frustrated hiss, if only barely.

“What now?”

“I want to know how it works first.”

“I told you-“

“That’s not what I meant. How do you communicate with each other? Can you use words? Images? Can you see each other?”

Harry shakes his head. “None of that. We just… send emotions. It’s not exactly a fail-proof form of communication. It could easily lead to misunderstandings.”

Snape nods, apparently choosing to ignore the sharpness in Harry’s words. “Alright, then. Make it quick.”

Yeah, I don’t think that’ll be possible. Voldemort might be a little upset that you are not only planning on keeping me away from him but also intend to suppress our soulmate dreams.

Harry takes one last deep breath before he lays his hand on top of Snape’s Dark Mark and closes his eyes.

***

Voldemort’s quill falls out of his hand when he suddenly feels a dull anxiousness that isn’t his own. Gripping the edge of the table, Voldemort closes his eyes and focuses on what’s going on inside of him. The foreign emotion quickly gets replaced by something that feels like an awkward attempt to soothe. Something twists inside of Voldemort’s chest.

It should be the other way around. I should be the one comforting Harry. He’s the one who was taken away against his will.

Voldemort shoves his emotions down as best as he can, focusing on his desire to know that Harry is alright instead, on his need to make Harry feel safe and happy and wanted.

A confusing mix of emotions answers. Voldemort needs a while until he manages to separate them all.

There’s confusion and shyness and fondness and underlying all of that something Voldemort doesn’t have a word for, but that feels profound and meaningful.

Most importantly, though, Voldemort can’t make out any sign that Harry is feeling unwell or that Voldemort needs to get him away from Snape at all costs.

Voldemort holds on to that with all his might.

***

“What happened?” Snape asks sharply. “Did he hurt you?”

“No,” Harry says, wiping away the tears, beyond mortified. “His emotions were a bit… overwhelming. That’s all.”

Harry stands up, refusing to look Snape in the eyes. “I’m going to bed.”

Chapter Text

Harry spends the next couple of days sulking, only talking to Snape when he absolutely has to. Maybe it’s childish, but he doesn’t want Snape to think that he’s forgiven him for kidnapping him, let alone for force-feeding him that potion that suppresses his soulmate dreams. He spends most of his time in the room Snape put all of Harry’s stuff in, thinking about the future and what Voldemort is up to. He doesn’t think it’s very likely that he’ll just wait until Harry’s birthday, especially since there is no guarantee that Snape will keep his word.

Harry rolls around in his bed on the third night, too wound up to fall asleep after a particularly raw quote-on-quote conversation with Voldemort. It’s nerve-racking that there’s no way to actually talk to him, not even for a moment.

Suppressing a curse, Harry tosses the sheets aside. Seconds later, he’s at the door. The room feels too small and the air suffocating, though he knows that, objectively speaking, that’s not the case. Hell, he even left the window open for most of the day.

Still, Harry can’t help but let out a sigh of relief when he leaves the room. Snape told him that he should consider the room his for as long as he stays here, but Harry doesn’t even really know what that means. He never had a room of his own. Not really. The room at the Dursleys is full of Dudley’s old stuff — don’t think about Dudley, not now — and at Hogwarts, he shares the dorm with four other boys. The closest he ever got to having a room to himself was the time he spent at the Leaky Cauldron before his third year, but that doesn’t really count. It was a hotel room, after all.

Lost in thought, Harry walks down the stairs and flinches when he hears Snape’s voice coming from the living room.

“You should be in bed. It’s past midnight.”

Harry grinds his teeth. Part of him wants to keep ignoring Snape, insisting that he doesn’t deserve a reply. But he’s sick of staying quiet. Besides, Snape didn’t even seem to care that he ignored him these last couple of days. Time to go on the offensive.

“I could say the same thing.”

“I’m an adult,” Snape says because, of course, he does. “And I have reading to catch up on.”

“And I have hours-of-being-bored-to-death to catch up on,” Harry snaps back and turns to the kitchen to get himself a glass of water.

“You can’t run away from your nightmares forever.”

…What?

Slowly, Harry turns around, arching an eyebrow.

“I’m not running away from anything.”

“Really,” Snape drawls and closes his book, laying it aside. “You’ve made a habit of staying up into the middle of the night. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

Harry folds his arms. “And who’s fault is that? I mean, how am I supposed to get tired if there’s nothing for me to do all day, if I can’t even leave the house or invite my friends over? You really haven’t thought this whole thing through, have you? You can’t just keep me locked up inside here and expect me to go on like nothing is wrong. You-”

“You’re right,” Snape interrupts him, and Harry takes a deep breath, only to stop halfway through and frown when the meaning of Snape’s words sink in.

“What?”

“You’re right,” Snape repeats. “Nothing about your life is as it should be right now. Therefore, I don’t expect you to act like nothing is wrong. It’s only natural that you’re feeling angry and on edge, that you can’t sleep at night, that you’re blaming me for everything, and even that you want to go back to your abusive soulmate. All of that and all the numerous little things you’re trying to hide, consciously or unconsciously, are understandable. I’d be more worried about you if you didn’t act like that.

“But you can’t go on like this forever. You can’t keep ignoring everything that happened to you. During the last three weeks, you were tortured with the Cruciatus curse, you watched a classmate die in front of you, and you found out who your soulmate is and that there’s a Prophecy about the two of you — not to mention that you had to go back to your abusive relatives and watch as your cousin got kissed by a dementor-“

“The Dursleys didn’t abuse me,” Harry snaps, feeling himself grow stiff and cold. “They didn’t do anything to me I couldn’t handle.”

“Harry,” Snape says, his voice quiet and unusually soft. “They locked you in a cupboard.”

Harry hunches his shoulders. “So what? They gave me a mattress. Could’ve been worse.”

Harry realizes that he slipped up almost right away. Snape’s eyes widen, and he leans back as if he suddenly lost the strength to keep himself upright. “They made you sleep in there?”

“That’s none of your damn business. You had no right to dig around in my mind like that. In that regard, you’re just as bad as Voldemort.”

Snape opens his mouth, but Harry has heard enough. He spins around and runs up the stairs back to the stupid room Snape wants him to think of as his. He crawls back into the bed, feeling even more wound up than he did before he left the room.

He’s still lying there when the sun comes up, with his eyes wide open.

Chapter Text

“I thought about what you said last night.”

Harry glances up briefly but doesn’t react otherwise. Snape should be glad he even came down for breakfast. He’d contemplated staying in bed but ultimately decided against it since Snape had already bothered him twice for skipping meals.

“You said you’re bored and want something to do.”

Frowning, Harry bites into his toast. From what he remembers, he worded it a bit differently, but he supposes that doesn’t matter. It’s true enough, anyway.

“There are a few useful things you could do to keep the boredom at bay. I bet you haven’t finished your homework yet?”

Harry slowly raises his gaze. He can’t be serious.

“I don’t even know if I’ll be expelled yet.”

“I highly doubt it. You were attacked, and the evidence is on your side.”

A vivid image of Dudley’s empty face appears before Harry’s inner eye, and a shiver runs down his back.

“But if you insist on procrastinating, we could continue with your Occlumency lessons.”

Harry tenses and drops his toast. “So you can spy on me and dig around in memories that are none of your business? No thanks.”

“It would help against the power imbalance-“

“Which power imbalance? The one between you and me or the one between Voldemort and me?”

“Both.” Snape pauses to sip his coffee. “You don’t have to decide right now. I understand why you don’t like the idea. All I’m asking for is that you think about it. In the meantime, I have something for you.”

Snape puts a box on the table and opens the lid. Harry straightens up in spite of himself and glances inside.

“These are letters your parents wrote me — well, mostly your mother. I thought you might want to read them.”

Harry pulls the box closer to him, his heart beating uncomfortably fast in his chest.

My parents held these letters. They leaned over them, filled them with meaning, and sent them on their way.

Slowly Harry’s eyes wander from the box to Snape’s face. “What do you want in return?”

“Nothing. But I do expect you to treat them with care and that you give them back to me in a few days.”

Harry grinds his teeth. “If you plan on using this to guilt trip me into continuing the Occlumency lessons-“

“I don’t.” The chair squeaks as Snape stands up. “Read them. They should keep you occupied for a few hours.”

Harry stays where he is for a few more seconds after Snape left the room. Then he cradles the box to his chest and stands up to go upstairs.

***

I will never forgive you for putting a target on my family’s back. You forced us into hiding. You destroyed any chance my son had at a normal life.

I cannot put into words how much I despise you.

Do not sleep during my time ever again. I do not trust myself to remain civil while you are around.

- J

Harry flinches when somebody knocks on his door. “Yes?”

The door opens, and Snape steps inside. Harry folds the letter in his hand and lays it to the ones he wants to read a second time.

“You should eat something.”

Harry’s eyes automatically snap toward the clock. Did I really read letters for four hours straight?

Wordlessly, Harry stands up and follows Snape downstairs. Just as wordlessly, he starts eating. He’s too occupied thinking about the letters he read to taste much of the bland soup.

“You’re unusually quiet.”

Harry snorts. “I wouldn’t call that unusual. I ignored you the last couple of days, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“Was it a mistake to give you the letters? Did they upset you?”

“No! I just…” Harry sighs and leans back in his chair. “My parents… Everyone always says they were great people — kind and helpful and talented and all of that.”

“They were.”

Harry frowns and wraps his arms around his middle. “They don’t sound like that in the letters they wrote you.”

Snape snorts. “Of course, they don’t. They had reasons to be angry at me. We had reasons to be angry at each other. Your parents weren’t perfect, Harry. Your mother could be self-righteous and too proud for her own good, and your father was a bit of a hothead. That doesn’t mean they weren’t good people at their core. Besides, you should have seen some of the letters I send them.”

Harry picks up the spoon and plays around with the soup so that he has an excuse not to look at Snape.

“I just really wish I could talk to them, at least once. Did you know that I saw them at the graveyard? They came out of Voldmeort’s wand, except it wasn’t really them. Dumbledore said they were just a memory or something. They talked with me, but… it wasn’t real. I’ll never get the chance to truly get to know them.”

He waits for Snape to say something, but when that doesn’t happen, he glances up, not sure what to make out of Snape’s silence. Harry swallows when he sees Snape’s pale face and the distant look in his eyes. After a second or two, Snape blinks and shakes his head slightly.

“I could share some of the memories I have of them with you. I know it’s not the same, but it’s something. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have things to do. Eat your food before it gets cold.”

And before Harry can even open his mouth, Snape has left the room, leaving him to dwell on his thoughts. Frowning, Harry raises the spoon to his mouth. His appetite is all but gone, but he forces himself to finish the soup anyway.

Chapter Text

Three days later, Harry knows more than a handful of his parents’ letters by heart, and he’s become as familiar with their handwriting as he is with Ron’s — or maybe even a little bit more since he’d never obsessed over how pretty Ron write his A’s or how you can almost see the emotions in his hastily scribbled words. Eventually, Harry notices how his obsession with the letters goes down a bit, and his attention shifts over to other stuff. Like Snape.

Snape left him alone while he was occupied with the letters, for the most part. He didn’t bring up restarting the Occlumency lessons again and didn’t try to start conversations about topics Harry would rather not think about. That doesn’t mean Snape has given up, of course. Harry assumes he’s just waiting for the right time.

Harry would never have thought that he would be the one to bring up the unspoken things between them, though. But he, of course, also had no idea of knowing what Voldemort was up to while he was trapped with Snape. And so he doesn’t think much of it when Snape snorts one day during breakfast. Harry gets a glimpse of Snape’s disdainful expression before he notices the picture on the front page of the Prophet.

Choking on his juice, Harry rips the newspaper out of his hands, his heart beating erratically in his chest. How did he make himself look like that? For a few seconds, Harry is incapable of ripping his gaze away from the handsome man on the front page. His dark hair moves slightly in the wind, the little smile on his face makes him look younger than Harry knows he is, and his brown eyes — not red, not anymore — glance over to Fudge now and then.

Harry feels like he could stare at the picture for hours on end without getting tired of it, but he forces himself to move his gaze downwards anyway.

Assassination attempt on the Minister by thought to be dead Death Eater!

Harry stares at the headline uncomprehendingly. Then he shakes his head slightly and skims the article. Afterward, Harry is left with more questions than answers.

Snape tucks on the Prophet, and Harry reluctantly loosens his grip on the newspaper.

“How about you ask before you rip something out of my hands next time?”

Harry bites the inside of his cheek. What’s the end goal here? What is Voldemort trying to achieve?

“It’s good to see that you don’t like the Dark Lord’s drastic measures,” Snape says, folding up the Prophet.

“What?”

Snape raises an eyebrow. “The Dark Lord obviously orchestrated this whole thing. Pettigrew never would’ve attacked Fudge of his own free will. I bet the Imperius was involved. Besides, the Dark Lord loves to talk about the importance of having people who Fudge owes favors to on his side.”

“You… You don’t recognize him, do you?”

“The wizard who saved Fudge’s life? No. I’ve never seen him before.”

Harry blinks multiple times, his mind running a mile a minute. He’s not trying to become Minister of magic, is he? I told him I don’t want that! Besides, it wouldn’t work anyway. Dumbledore will recognize him just as easily as I did. He could simply tell everyone that Tom Riddle and Voldemort are the same person.

Maybe Voldemort is just trying to gain some political influence and isn’t aiming for a high position in the ministry. But even then, Dumbledore could still blow his cover at any time. I don’t get why he made such a decision.

“I need an antidote for the potion you force-fed me.”

“No.”

Harry folds his arms. “I know you must have one. You wouldn’t be stupid enough to invent a potion without having a way to reverse its effect.”

“Save your breath, Harry, it’s not up for-”

“Why not? I can’t hide from Voldemort for the rest of my life. Besides, you promised to bring me back to him on my birthday anyway. And I’m only asking for one night. I’ll… I’ll even tell Voldemort that I agreed to stay with you for an additional three days. I need to talk to him. And I could do without nightmares for a night.”

“I could give you Dreamless Sleep-“

“I don’t want Dreamless Sleep.” Harry pauses, wringing his hands under the table. “We can restart the Occlumency lesson if that’s what you want. Or you can tell me about your experiences with Voldemort, and I’ll promise to listen, just-“

Snape holds up a hand, and Harry closes his mouth. “Have you thought this through? He might let his pent-up anger out on you.”

He won’t. “If he will, I’ll allow you to keep me away from him indefinitely.”

Snape looks at him for a long moment, his face utterly unreadable.

Eventually, he says, “I’ll think about it,” and Harry closes his eyes in relief.

That’s probably the best I could’ve hoped for.