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Chapter Text

(Please do not put this work on goodreads or upload it anywhere else. I'm very grateful for everyone who reads and enjoys this story, but do not want it anywhere other than here on A03)

*

“Urg,” Harry muttered, already reaching up to tug his glasses free from where they were squashing his ear. His fingers brushed over ribbed, velvety fabric under his cheek, and he stilled, squinting his eyes open against unexpectedly bright light. “What?”

Because he wasn’t in his bed, or in the Gryffindor common room. He hadn’t drifted off in History of Magic or the library or –

“Oh shit,” he breathed, remembering, and pushed to his feet. His body protested, bruises and cuts aching, but he barely looked around before heading straight for the door.

It was locked.

“Hello?” he called. “Sir?”

He rattled the doorknob, then banged on the door. “Professor Dumbledore?” Waiting even a few seconds seemed interminable, and then he banged again. “Professor?”

He supposed if they thought he was sleeping, there might be no one nearby to hear him. He patted down his pockets, then his sleeves, then his pockets again in an increasingly frantic search for his wand. He’d had it on him, hadn’t he, when he portkeyed back from the graveyard? He was sure he had.

His eyes trailed across the room and came to rest on the sofa he’d woken up on. It was weirdly shaped for a sofa, so it probably had a fancier name. He dug along the side and backs of the velvety cushions, and searched underneath.

Still no wand.

He returned to the door, banging it again. “Sir? Can anyone hear me? Sir?”

The banging produced no results, and he started to feel stupid after a minute, because surely if anyone could hear him, they would have come.

Where was he, even?

Turning to the room again, he took in ivory wallpaper and sage green curtains and bed drapes. A huge four poster bed dominated one side of the large room, and the other was filled with a desk, a sofa, a stiff looking armchair and a pair of bookcases.

There was another door, he noticed with a jolt, in the far corner of the room, behind the bedframe.

“I’m an idiot!” he mumbled under his breath.

He strode over to it, not quite running, and his cry of triumph when the knob turned trailed off forlornly when he saw white and grey tiling and realised he’d only succeeded in locating the bathroom. At least half a minute passed while he hovered, indecisive, on the threshold, before he entered fully and yanked the door shut behind him. If anyone came in the meantime, he would hear the outer door open. And he really, really needed to pee.

As he washed his hands, he glanced up into the mirror above the sink. “Oh, love,” it said reproachfully, and his hands stilled under the tap as he took in his dirty, blood-streaked face. The mirror kept talking, but Harry barely heard it, unable to do anything but look into his own eyes and remember the limp weight of Cedric in his arms.

He brought a hand up over his mouth, suddenly gagging, and sprawled to his knees in front of the toilet just in time to heave into it. And then again, until he thought there could be nothing left in him. He listed sideways against the wall, feeling cool tiles under his cheek.

How the fuck had he made it back alive, when Cedric hadn’t? When Voldemort had tried to kill Harry, too? The gash on his arm where Wormtail had cut him throbbed, and he listlessly pushed his sleeve up to look at the scabbed over cut. His whole arm was covered in dark, peeling flakes of blood.

Eventually he pushed himself to his feet and washed his face. Rinsed out his mouth. He searched the cabinet in desperate hope for a toothbrush, but it was completely empty. Washed his arm, trying to be thorough without looking at it too much.

There were no towels. Or soap. Even for a guest room, that seemed weird.

Slowly he emerged back into the bedroom, and this time looked more carefully. The bookcases stood empty. A quick rummage through the chest of drawers, wardrobe and desk showed the same. Not even an inkwelll. He drew net curtains aside, revealing a large, wooden window seat, and looked out onto some kind of park. He couldn’t tell if it was a garden or not – there were wildflowers and long grasses and the start of a wood nearby. Fields stretched patchworked in the distance.

Where was he?

He tried to retrace what had happened, mind flinching away from the thought of Cedric’s body, of Cedric’s father. After that? He remembered Dumbledore. Remembered Moody - taking him somewhere the Professor had said Dumbledore said was safe. Remembered walking down a corridor in Hogwarts, and then just –

“Urgh,” he groaned in frustration. Why couldn’t he remember? Had he passed out? They must have brought him here to keep him safe – was there danger? Was Hogwarts under attack? Or was it not safe for him to stay there anymore in case Voldemort attacked the school to get to him?

He banged on the door again. “Hello? Sir? I’m awake. Please, I need to talk to you. Sir?”

*

Several hours passed, at least by Harry’s best estimation. He’d got bored of shouting, and a wandless alohamora had produced no results.

His thoughts had quickly progressed to the horrifying possibility that everyone was dead, and there was no one left who knew where he’d been put to keep him safe. He’d tried the window at that point, but there were strong charms on it that meant even the desk chair bounced harmlessly off.

Even after he gradually talked himself back from that thought, the alternative didn’t feel wonderful either.

He’d been forgotten.

Dumbledore and Moody had put him here to keep him safe from… well, he wasn’t sure. Voldemort? Death Eaters? The Ministry? Reporters, even, maybe. And then they had presumably been sucked into managing the disaster that was Voldemort’s return, and all the necessary security and dealing with public panic, and in the midst of all that had forgotten to come back for him.

He bit his lip, curled up in a ball in the armchair, and tried not to feel sorry for himself.

Maybe, as he’d thought earlier, they’d assumed he wouldn’t be awake yet. But if he’d got here early yesterday evening and woken up not long after dawn, they couldn’t have expected him to sleep much longer than that?

Didn’t they need more information from him? Surely there was something he should be doing right now. How bad were things out there, that they’d decided it wasn’t safe for him? Why couldn’t they even leave him a message?

He dwelled somewhat resentfully on this last point, having searched both rooms thoroughly again just so that he could feel properly justified in being annoyed that no one had left a note. ‘Dear Harry, please wait here for a few hours, we haven’t completely abandoned you. Dumbledore.’ Would that have been so hard?

*

At some point in the afternoon he cried, and couldn’t stop crying. At some point, he screamed.

*

He was sitting upright on the sofa, staring blankly at the door, when he heard a small pop and the rattle of cutlery. Jerking in the direction of the noise, he saw a covered plate sitting innocuously on the desk, as though it had always been there.

“Hello?”

Lifting the cover revealed slices of roast chicken dripping in gravy, mashed potatoes and peas. There was a jug of water, cold to the touch, and a glass.

“Hello? Are you house elves? Can you hear me?” Then, in desperation, “Dobby?”

The door did not open to this round of banging any more than it had to the previous times, and after a minute he slid down it to lean in a hopeless sprawl at the base. “Ron,” he whispered. “Hermione. Sirius.” Because even if the headmaster and Professor Moody were so occupied that they hadn’t had a chance to remember about Harry, surely his friends were asking them about him, wanting to know where he was? “Where are you?”

Another minute passed, and he dragged himself up and over to the desk. He was hungry.

*

He’d felt awkward at the idea of sleeping in the bed in his dirty clothes, because they too were covered in graveyard dirt and blood. So he’d sat guard on the couch most of the night, dropping off for brief bursts in between his vigil monitoring the door.

He woke up with the dawn, and no one had come.

The window seat offered a better view of the sunrise, so he moved his perch there and watched it, trying to focus on nothing but the range of colours, the way the clouds were limned in light, the way the green of the trees lightened and came alive.

There were rabbits in the park. He watched those too.

Breakfast arrived, and then lunch. The plates with food arrived with no warning or sign of a living creature, and then vanished again half an hour later.

The rest of the time, Harry had nothing to do. His childhood at the Dursley’s had been full of long periods of time where he couldn’t go anywhere and had to entertain himself. He always been good at imagining things to fill the time. At going still and quiet and just letting the hours pass by while he was tucked away inside his own head.

Now, however, was a horrible time to be left trapped with his own thoughts. His initial sorrow and anger at Dumbledore leaving him here had passed and left him with a strange hollow feeling and healthy dose of self-loathing. Maybe no one was coming for him because they didn’t know what to do with him yet.

Maybe they didn’t believe him.

His usual daydreams – that someone kind would notice him for some reason (he came up with long, detailed reasons) and take him away from the Dursleys – shattered under the apprehension that anyone finding him right now might think he had not tried hard enough to save Cedric. That it was his fault Cedric was dead. That it was because of him that Voldemort was back. And the really horrible part was that those things were true, really true, so that any fantasy of someone telling him it wasn’t his fault was just a transparent lie.

That night he fell asleep on the hard wood of the window seat, trying to count the stars.

He had strange dreams.

*

Chapter Text

He woke with a start in the morning to more popping sounds, gone even as he groggily raised his head. His bruises still ached fiercely, but he ignored them and grabbed his glasses from where they’d fallen on the window seat in the night.

There were two big boxes next to the door.

Heart hammering, immediately fully awake, he got down on hands and knees beside one and pried it open. They were of the type you got goods in from Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade – tap with your wand to open. He’d seen plenty of them delivered to people at school. Of course, he didn’t have his wand, so he had to pull up the edges by force, the charm fighting him all the way.

Books.

He was so surprised that he eased his grip, and the box snapped closed on him. “Ouch,” he muttered, shaking off stinging fingers.

He tried the other box.

Toys.

This time he tipped them all out and let the box close itself once empty, and then stared in bewilderment at the objects on the floor.

The thing that had first caught his eye was the cuddly toy – a red stuffed bear with fangs and wings – which came up to about his knee. But there were art supplies and figurines and smaller boxes with wizarding gadgets. It was a weird mixture of things you might give a teenager and things you might give a child.

It was, Harry realised after a moment, exactly the kind of thing Dumbledore might do, given that the headmaster seemed to delight in childish things. Perhaps he wouldn’t have realised that it might be insulting to give a fourteen-year-old a stuffed toy. Not that Harry had ever had one of his own.

There was no note.

He pried open the other box again and dumped all the books out, gradually sorting through them. There was a primer on broomstick care and another for wands, a bunch of wizarding history books and several books on curses and counter curses ‘for all ages’. One on everyday charms, how to care for your own puffskein, how to do wizarding knitting. And a trilogy of ‘Helena goes to Hogwarts’ that he knew he’d seen some of the girls in Gryffindor reading in previous years. It seemed completely random.

Still no note.

He was abruptly furious and performed a renewed assault on the door for several minutes, shouting himself hoarse. He’d gone from: “Can anyone hear me” and “Please, Sir,” to “I need to get out, let me out,” and “Why are you doing this?” before he was careless enough in his strikes to bring his hand down on one of the ridges in the door’s moulding.

He stared at the blood welling up from the small cut on his finger and remembered the blood on his face in the mirror that first day. His gaze flicked back up, and the closed door seemed to taunt him, undaunted by his efforts.

“I hate you,” he said, small and quiet. He immediately felt like he should take it back, but he didn’t.

When he went to wash the cut in the bathroom, there were dark red towels hanging from the towel rails. They were fluffy under his hesitant fingers. The bathroom cabinet now contained the much longed for toothbrush and toothpaste, and there was soap in the soap holder.

This prompted a re-exploration, and the wardrobe next to the bed now contained several robes. The chest of drawers had socks and nightshirts and underwear. The desk had ink and quills.

Struck by a sudden idea, Harry tore off one of the sheets from the art pads, and wrote in blotchy letters:

Dear Professor Dumbledore,

Please could you tell me what has happened, sir? Why am I here? What has happened with Voldemort? Is everyone okay? If I cannot leave, could you pass my letters to my friends? Please tell me what’s going on.

(If you get this and you aren’t Professor Dumbledore, could you please give it to him?)

Thanks,

Harry

He read it over afterwards, and wasn’t sure of it, but he shoved it flat under the door anyway. Hopefully it would make Dumbledore see that Harry really needed to know what was happening. The appearance of the boxes proved that he hadn’t been forgotten, and that Dumbledore was trying to supply him with things to make his stay more comfortable.

Harry thought about that for a minute, looking at the piles of stuff on the floor. He went and looked again in the cupboard. Five robes. And in the drawers, seven pairs of socks, seven pairs of underpants.

These were not supplies for a brief stay. He wasn’t going to be here just until tomorrow, or the day after.

Half numb, he tore off another piece of paper and wrote: How long am I staying here for? and posted it under the door.

He watched the door futilely for a little while, straining his ears to see if he could hear anyone picking the paper up. Eventually he grew annoyed at himself and investigated the cupboard and bathroom again.

The last shower he’d had was the morning of the third task. He’d wiped himself down a bit in the sink yesterday, but with no soap, towels or clean clothes it had seemed pointless trying to do more. And, at the time, he’d assumed someone might come to get him any second.

There wasn’t a shower in the bathroom, but there was a luxurious triangular bath. Harry hadn’t even known that baths could come as triangles. He couldn’t really see the point of it. He turned the taps on and adjusted them so that the ratio of hot and cold resulted in about the right temperature, then let them run and fetched himself some clothes from the other room. He agonised over whether to leave the bathroom door open or shut; because what if someone came while he was in the bath and he missed them? On the other hand, what if someone came while he was in the bath and saw him in the bath! He compromised with half ajar.

When it was full enough, and the temperature felt just too hot, he carefully stepped into it. The burning feeling on his legs went away after a few seconds, so he lowered himself down, wincing a little as bruises came in contact with sudden heat. There was a raised part of the triangle in one of the corners, so he sat on that for a minute, watching his legs through the warp of the water. Then he eased down fully.

The advantage to a triangular bath, Harry felt qualified to judge after half an hour in it, was that it was bigger, and you could turn around in it without ever hitting the sides. It was deeper than a normal bath too, but he could rest his upper back on the raised bit and sort of float in it. He’d have done that more if he wasn’t still trying to keep an ear out in case of movement in the other room, even though he could admit to himself it seemed unlikely at this point.

The towel was soft on abraded skin, and when he looked in the mirror at his wet, snarled up hair, the mirror said, “Think I’ve got a comb in here somewhere.”

Feeling altogether more human, Harry dressed in a dark blue robe that felt silken and smooth against his skin. It was a bit big on him, but not too much. The hems were fancy and embroidered, and Harry played idly with the cuffs as he went to sort through the new deliveries.

Hermione might have arranged the books on the shelves quite differently, but Harry decided on: books vaguely related to school; weird instructional books; fiction. Each small section in order of how interesting he found them.

He put stationery and art supplies in the desk drawer, the teddy on the armchair for lack of any other ideas, and then sat down with the wizarding train set that had been in one of the smaller boxes.

It was fascinating. There was a small block which drew out magical train tracks as you pulled it along, and when you connected it to the next block, it formed a natural, looping curve between the two.

Harry created a simple figure of eight track first and set the small blue and black engine on it. It chugged happily around, small puffs of steam rising from the funnel at the front. There was the gleam of embers inside, as though real coal was being piled into a furnace. When it reached the start of the track, it made a ‘choo choo’ whistling noise, and Harry reached out in a blind panic to pull it off the track. His eyes darted to the door as the engine’s wheels spun uselessly, waiting to see if anyone had heard. What if Moody burst in and scolded him for playing with kid’s toys? Or laughed at him.

Heart slowing, he realised this was completely ridiculous. No one had heard him shouting in all this time, and even if Moody did burst through the door, Harry could get over the embarrassment since it would mean someone had finally come.

Besides, there was nothing else to do.

He pulled apart the track he had made, finding that shaking the blocks disconnected and reset the tracks between them. His next endeavour was to make as long and complicated a track as possible. He looped it under the feet of the bed, over the cardboard boxes in a daring cliffside track, and then halfway around the room he figured out how to make the tracks go under and over each other.

He had to stop for lunch in the middle, but that just gave him time to think about extra additions.

For the first test run, he added two wooden carriages on to the back of the engine with satisfying clicks and held his breath as he set it off. The train pulled out from next to the armchair he’d designated the station, sailed smoothly around the long arc next to the desk, and then plunged into the tunnel created from sketchbooks. The steam puffs cut out, trapped in the tunnel, and there was the loud sound of a whistle. Harry crossed to a better vantage point to see the train emerge, steam rising into the air once more, and then it was into the darklands under the bed.

Small twin headlamps came on.

“Cool,” Harry breathed, even more delighted when they flicked off again as the train emerged from under the bed. The train started up the ramp the track had formed to the top of the cardboard boxes, and Harry picked up some of the discarded packaging material beside it. He considered the crumpled up paper for a moment, then the train topping the boxes. He squashed the paper into a smaller ball.

Tossing the ball of paper had almost no effect on the engine and carriages. Next, he rained down several. The second carriage rocked slightly, but the train kept on chugging forward happily, not knocked off after all.

Disaster came on the spiral down from the boxes, however, which Harry had been quite proud of building but turned out to be too tight for the length of the train. The whole thing toppled off sideways and lay sadly on the floor while Harry frowned down at it. He placed it back on the box and decoupled the carriages. “Sorry, passengers,” he said. “You aren’t cleared for the emergency route.”

The engine made it back to the station safely, but alone. Harry had to send out a rescue fleet of two quidditch figurines to bring the carriages back.

Then it was time for dinner.

That night, he changed into a long blue pinstriped nightshirt, which felt a bit weird but was soft and comfortable. The bed was huge – he’d never been in a double bed before! Or bigger than a double bed, probably – he could lie sideways on it easily! He wriggled happily down between the covers, and was out like a light.

Chapter Text

Two days later, after lunch was removed, a tea tray popped into existence on the small round table next to the sofa and armchair. Harry stared at it, unmoored by this change in routine.

There were two cups and saucers on the tray, and a small, rectangular card that said only, ‘Three o’ clock.’

Anticipation flushed through him, followed by indignation. How was he supposed to know what time it was; he didn’t have a clock!

Scrambling, he tidied the room. Books were placed on the desk or bedside table; art supplies back in the drawers; train track disassembled and tucked behind the wardrobe and boxes tidied into a corner. He carefully made the bed, then inspected everything to ensure he wouldn’t be embarrassed if Dumbledore saw it.

Everything ready, he sat himself down to wait.

*

“You’re not Dumbledore,” was the first thing out of Harry’s mouth.

Voldemort eyed him. “Indeed I am not,” he agreed with a frown.

Harry, having backed away the moment the black robed figure had apparated in, regarded him warily from the other end of the room. Voldemort still had a face mostly like a snake, and a weird nose, and evil looking red eyes. He looked like a monster.

“Shall we sit, Harry Potter?”

Voldemort gestured at the seating before moving to the armchair. He paused for a fraction of a second upon seeing the teddy bear, before moving it and placing it on the sofa instead. Alarm and loathing just about overrode the mortification Harry would have felt at forgetting to hide it. Voldemort proceeded to sit nonchalantly in the armchair as if this was all perfectly normal, and reached for the teapot that had just appeared.

“But I- But you’re- How-?”

“I see I shall be carrying the brunt of the conversation then,” murmured Voldemort. Voldemort! Sitting in Harry’s bedroom, pouring tea.

“What are you doing here?” blurted Harry.

“I would have thought that would be obvious,” Voldemort said. He poured tea into the second cup.

“Where’s Dumbledore?” But a horrible, heavy feeling rose up in Harry’s chest.

“Surely-“ Voldemort paused, red eyes narrowing. “Don’t tell me you considered yourself a guest of that doddering old fool?” His long fingers dug into the armrests for a moment, and Harry took another half step back. “Laughable!”

“Dumbledore isn’t a fool,” Harry snapped reflexively. But… “It was you? You brought me here?”

“But of course.” Voldemort calmed, tucking away his temper as though it had never flared. “My dear Barty – I believe you knew him only in his disguise as Alastor Moody – secured you as soon as you arrived back at Hogwarts and brought you to me.”

“But Professor Moody-“

“Was one of my most faithful using Polyjuice since the beginning of the school year.”

Harry stared blindly, suddenly remembering the frequent sips from the hip flask, his hopes turning to ashes. Professor Moody had been working for Voldemort. Moody had said he’d been taking Harry to a safe place on Dumbledore’s request, but… Shit. All this time – Harry had been here for what, almost a week? – he’d been a prisoner of Voldemort, and he hadn’t even known. Where were they?

“Where are we?” he asked, immediately upon having the thought.

“Safe,” was all that Voldemort replied. “Sit down.”

“I’d rather stand, thanks,” Harry said smartly.

Voldemort hissed, eyes flashing darker red, before breathing out a long breath. “I have no great personal investment in whether you sit or stand.” His voice was terse; he was annoyed, though Harry thought he was trying to conceal it. “However, I believe we would both be served by reaching the meat of the discussion sooner, and that can be best served by you sitting and allowing the progression of the conversation.”

Harry didn’t think he’d particularly diverted the conversation – as far as he was concerned, questions like why are you here and where are we were fairly essential points.

Along with, “Let me go,” he said.

“Or… what?” Voldemort asked silkily, and smirked into his teacup. Harry glanced around him for a weapon, still not understanding why Voldemort hadn’t attacked him yet. He was in the corner between the bed and the bathroom door though; there was nothing to hand. When he looked back, Voldemort was holding his wand lazily in one hand, tapping it against his thigh.

“Why aren’t you trying to kill me?” Harry asked, since this was another essential point. And then, following on the heels of this thought, “What do you want?”

“Precisely,” said Voldemort, and gestured at the sofa with his wand.

Warily - although what advantage Voldemort would gain from having Harry sit down was beyond him - Harry crept forward and slid onto the other end of the sofa, furthest away from the tea set.

“Milk?” Voldemort asked neutrally.

Harry stared at him. “You’ve poisoned it,” he said.

The Dark Lord sighed. “Of course. I have chosen this specific moment to poison you, rather than lunch. Or breakfast. Or any of the proceeding days.”

Which made sense, but brought another horrifying thought. “Have you been watching me?”

Voldemort tilted his head. “No,” he replied slowly, and the tone of his voice queried whether Harry had done something interesting enough to merit watching.

“Nevermind,” Harry said hurriedly. He shuffled a bit nearer and grabbed the teacup, leaving the saucer behind. He still wasn’t entirely sure if he liked tea, and he definitely didn’t really like it black, but there was no way he was asking Voldemort to add milk to it. “Why am I here?”

“Good,” Voldemort hissed approvingly. “That is a more pertinent question. You are here because I deemed it sensible to remove you from the playing field while things were being resettled.”

That didn’t mean a whole lot to Harry. Resettled sounded vaguely ominous, though.

“Are my friends okay,” he asked. “Ron and Hermione?”

Voldemort seemed bemused by the question. Maybe he didn’t understand the concept of friends. “They have come to no harm.”

“Then-“ Harry stopped himself, realising there was no point in guessing when Voldemort seemed to want to tell him. “What do you mean, resettled?”

There was the soft clink of Voldemort’s cup meeting its saucer. “I am now the Minister for Magic.”

Harry’s mouth fell open.

“Yes.” Voldemort paused, apparently enjoying his astonishment. “It was a quick and bloodless transition, if that is of concern to you,” he added, words edged with derision. “Fudge retired and ceded office to me, since I was the selected leader in this eventuality.”

“You can’t be Minister for Magic!”

There was a slight thinning of lips. “And yet I can confidently assure you that it is the case.”

“But – people wouldn’t stand for it. And how can you have been the leader?” Harry asked, shocked. Not that he knew anything about how wizarding politics worked, but, “You’ve only just been-“ he waved an uncertain hand “-re… bodied?” And the body was definitely the strange, inhuman one Harry had last seen at the graveyard, with a bald, almost scaled scalp, and slits where a nose should be. No one would elect that! “You look like a snake,” he gibed, though thinking this was likely to get him cursed.

Voldemort stared him down. “Indeed,” he hissed. “Perhaps you mean that as an insult? Fortunately, I am an expert at glamours. And an alias has been prepared for me over the last two years in preparation for this day.”

“But surely people wouldn’t just let you take over?” Harry said numbly. Except it sounded like no one knew it was Voldemort. But Dumbledore should have… “Dumbledore would have known! He would have fought you!”

“Would he?” Voldemort queried, sinister. “I think you will find he has not been active in doing so, at least not in the way you might think. But we shall speak of Dumbledore another day.”

Another day?

“For the moment,” Voldemort continued, tone smoothing out, “I wished to assure you of your continued comfort and safety in this place. Unfortunately, I have many demands upon my time at the moment and cannot stay for longer.” It was left implied that he felt Harry had wasted much of that time with pointless questions. “We shall cover further topics next time.” Voldemort placed the cup and saucer down on the table and rose gracefully to his feet. Harry jumped up too, not wanting to sit while his enemy towered above him. “Good afternoon, Harry Potter.”

“Wait!”

Crack. Voldemort was gone.

*

Two days later, the tea set again appeared on the table with a note, and Voldemort appeared with the crack of apparition a couple of hours later. By sheer force of will, Harry managed to keep himself in his seat, and Voldemort rewarded his calmness with a nod as he moved to sit in the armchair again.

“Harry Potter,” he greeted. “How are you today?”

Harry had not expected this question.

“How am I?” he asked sharply. He forgot everything he’d planned to say. “How do you think I am? I’m fine thanks, except for how you’ve kidnapped me and locked me up!”

“Good,” Voldemort commented, apparently unironically. “I am glad you are well.”

“I am not-“ Harry almost choked on his hatred. “You killed Cedric!” he shouted. “Right in front of me. Stop acting like you’re some kind of rational… politician or something. Like everyone should be okay with all the things you are doing!”

Voldemort considered him. “Who is this Cedric?”

“You-“ Harry sprung to his feet. “Get out.”

“I shall-“

“GET OUT!” he yelled, glancing wildly around for something to throw.

After eyeing Harry somewhat like a dog that was making a mess, Voldemort sighed and was gone.

*

The tea set appeared two days later.

In between Voldemort’s visits, Harry passed the time reading, with some doodling and playing with the train set mixed in. He stared out the windows a lot. He wanked. He took baths. He’d taken to having a nap after lunch.

He thought a lot, because he had a lot of time to do that. There was some reason he was here, and some reason Voldemort wasn’t killing him. Not necessarily the same reason. Voldemort hadn’t even crucio-ed Harry, and Harry had certainly given him reason enough with his outburst.

Why?

Why did Voldemort want to talk to him? Why was he here? Was he going to be a captive forever?

Although he could not have stopped himself at the time, he almost regretted yelling at Voldemort, because it had delayed the answers to any of these questions.

When the tea set appeared again, Harry sat down and wrote a list. He told himself firmly that he would not let Voldemort being a murdering asshole distract him from it.

There was an obvious moment, after Voldemort apparated in, in which the Dark Lord was waiting to see if Harry was willing to behave rationally, or if he was still angry.

Harry was, of course. Still angry. But upon reflection, he’d decided that Voldemort also probably still did want to kill Harry. If Voldemort could resist killing or cursing Harry for the moment, it made sense for Harry to resist shouting at him until after he’d found out what he wanted to know.

Voldemort almost immediately made him regret this decision.

“Cedric Diggory,” Voldemort said, standing tall and imposing, and Harry fisted his hands in his sleeves. “In hindsight, my actions were… regrettable. I was not expecting any other to appear that night.”

Harry swallowed. Don’t get angry. Don’t get angry. “Then why did you have him killed?”

“I suppose you could call it… instinct.” Voldemort walked, unhurried, around behind the sofa and stood gazing out of the window, his back to Harry.

Harry wondered if he had any chance of killing the Dark Lord if he hit him on the head with a lamp.

“This plan has been many years in the making, Harry,” Voldemort finally said. Harry. As though they knew each other. “He had already seen too much. At the time, you, too, should have died that day. Neither of you would have reappeared. No one would have known of my return.”

A clean sweep. Harry could see the outline of it, tidy and evil. Voldemort coming back and no one knowing he was here. No one able to act against him, and immediately entrenched as Minister for Magic. It must have been a complicated plan. And it had almost gone perfectly.

“But I got away,” Harry said, dry mouthed. “People do know. Dumbledore. And Snape.” Who else had been there, after they portkeyed back? It was an aching blur.

“Hmm,” Voldemort acknowledged.

“I-“ Harry hesitated. The explanation was more than he’d expected to get, and had strangely dulled the hurt in his chest. Cedric hadn’t died because Voldemort thought him worthless and unimportant. Cedric had not been any more expendable than Harry; he’d just been given less time to try and luck his way into an escape. “What did you mean, when you said you regretted it?”

Voldemort turned, gaze shrewd and assessing. “Lord Voldemort does not misstep,” he said forbiddingly.

Harry thought about that. “That means you think you did?” he suggested slowly. “Because you could have just knocked him out and obliviated him. But instead, you created a dead body that people would investigate.”

Now Voldemort’s gaze was… interested? “In hindsight,” the man conceded, “other avenues might have been more productive. He might have been blamed for your death. Or, as in the current case of your survival, it would not have been necessary to sacrifice a follower in order to obfuscate matters.”

Voldemort, Harry had a sudden moment of clarity, had panicked when he’d seen Cedric. Instinct. He thought back to the parasite on the back of Quirrell’s head in Harry’s first year; to Tom Riddle in his second. Both times, Voldemort had attacked, even though he might have been better served by continuing deception or stalling.

But he wasn’t attacking Harry now. Perhaps because he had the upper hand, and Harry couldn’t see any way he could currently be a threat to him?

“I have questions,” Harry said, instead of talking about Cedric further.

“Sit,” Voldemort waved a hand, and the tea began to pour itself. “Ask.”

Harry sat and pulled out his list.

“Where is my wand?”

“Safe.”

Harry waited a moment, but no further information was forthcoming. Asking for it back seemed rather pointless, he supposed. “Is everyone at Hogwarts okay?”

“I have harmed no one at Hogwarts, if that is what you are asking.” Voldemort paused, considering. “There is a new headmistress.”

Harry went cold. “What’s happened to Dumbledore?”

“He is dead.”

Dead?

A terrible shudder went through the room at that, and kept going. Harry gripped the edge of the couch hard, feeling his body shake wildly along with the walls and floor. There was the crash of a mirror falling to the ground and he flinched, shying away, only to startle back in the other direction at the clamour of teacups shattering, the thuds of books tumbling off shelves.

Harry’s breaths came in short gasps. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe. He didn’t know what-

A hand touched his shoulder, thumb pressing into the joint and fingers wrapping around his arm. He took a jerky breath. Another. The loud roar in his head receded and he opened his eyes to find-

“Get off me!” He scrambled backwards, half falling off the couch, frantically putting distance between them.

The world stopped shaking.

“Fascinating,” Voldemort murmured, contemplating him with interest. Harry wanted to hit him.

“You killed him!”

“I did not kill Dumbledore. And, before you ask, nor did any of my followers.”

“You’re lying!”

“I have no need to. I would have gladly ended his life, but as it happened, I did not.”

Harry opened his mouth but forced himself to hold back the accusations. Voldemort would just leave again, and Harry would get no answers. “What happened, then?” he asked, tone short. He shifted back up to sit on the couch from his half-sprawled position, but stayed at the far end of it.

Voldemort returned to his seat. “After learning of my return,” he said, waving his wand to repair the broken cups and clean up the spillages on the rug, “Dumbledore sought to gather things precious to me in an attempt to harm me. Or bargain. I know not his thinking. At one of the locations he broke into, there were traps that he did not anticipate. His colleagues from his little Order announced his death shortly afterwards.”

“What-“ So many questions. What things, what traps, what order. “It was still your fault then,” he said, surly. “That he’s dead. Your traps killed him.”

“If a burglar breaks into your home and trips, are you responsible for his fall?” Voldemort asked silkily.

Harry wasn’t quite sure how to argue that point, but he still felt like it was Voldemort’s fault. “Your home?” Was this place Voldemort’s home? Had Dumbledore come here, while Harry had been here?

“An old, dilapidated family home.” Voldemort waved away the question. Not here then. No chance Dumbledore had actually been coming for Harry; that it was Harry’s fault Dumbledore was dead. If he was. If Voldemort wasn’t lying.

“When did this happen?” he asked. He realised, as he did so, that Voldemort hadn’t said anything about Harry wasting his time today. That probably meant he was asking questions that Voldemort wanted him to ask. And they’d already been talking for a while – would Voldemort leave soon?

“Over a week ago,” Voldemort said dismissively. “I shall bring you a newspaper, next time. Or have one delivered.” He looked around the room. “Is there anything else you would like?”

Harry followed his gaze.

“A clock,” he said without thinking, still frustrated by not knowing when three o’ clock fell in the day. There was a dry, hissing noise, and his eyes darted back to Voldemort and realised it had been a laugh.

Slightly bolder, he said, “Some more books. Or something else to do.”

Then he realised that wasn’t what he wanted to say at all.

“I want you to let me go,” he said.

“Hmm,” Voldemort said. “That is a discussion for next time, I believe.”

*

Chapter Text

“You can’t just keep me here,” Harry opened with as Voldemort appeared next to the armchair two days later.

“Indeed not.” Voldemort brushed a hand down his robes, even though he was as impeccably dressed as he had been on all his visits. Harry stared at his snake face, stymied. Reading the appropriate level of surprise into Harry’s silence, Voldemort clarified, “I have never intended to keep you here for longer than necessary.”

Knees suddenly wobbly, Harry sank onto the couch. “You’re going to have me executed,” he guessed with dull certainty.

Voldemort look down at him with an air of superior amusement. “Why would I do that?”

“Why would you – I don’t bloody know! Why do you do anything?” Harry snapped. “Why did you have a reign of terror and torturing people if you’re going to look so accusatory every time I suggest you might be about to kill me! It’s not like you haven’t tried before.”

Voldemort inclined his head, conceding. “Nonetheless, I would not have bothered to keep you here if I were merely going to execute you.” No, there would have been manacles, and a dungeon, Harry thought darkly. “Nor do I have any need to do so.”

Voldemort wanted something from him, the voice in Harry’s head that sounded like Hermione piped up again. Harry had been kept in luxury during his stay. No torture, three meals a day, books and things to do. It was actually much better than –

“Anyway,” Harry said hastily, “what will happen then? When can I go?”

Voldemort ignored Harry to sit down in his usual stately manner. He spent the usual few moments considering Harry, as though Harry was a strange, unpredictable creature. He wandlessly directed the teapot to pour, and added milk but no sugar to Harry’s cup. Harry felt a shade of hysterical amusement that he had a routine with Voldemort. One that didn’t involve him attacking Harry. Come to think of it, they’d now officially had more peaceful interactions than hostile ones. That was so, so weird.

“I am not entirely sure yet,” said Voldemort finally, and Harry snapped back to attention. “Your absence has not yet been greatly remarked upon, as it is now the summer holidays for schoolchildren. Your immediate disappearance was easily explained as treatment for the shock you had endured.

“There are a few further hearings and congresses that must be dealt with in the interim.” Before Harry could ask what they were and why Harry couldn’t be released before them, Voldemort upended his world again by saying, “Then, of course, there is the matter of where to put you.”

Harry’s mouth opened. Closed again. “Where to put me?”

Voldemort nodded.

“What do you mean?”

“There is still well over a month left before Hogwarts reopens for the autumn term. Mid-September sometime, isn’t it? No, early September. You must be placed somewhere in the interim.”

“But I – I live with my aunt and uncle.”

In hindsight, maybe he shouldn’t have told Voldemort that. But then, what was the man going to do, come and kidnap him again?

“Absolutely not,” said Voldemort brusquely. “Your previous accommodations are irrelevant. I will not be sending you to the Muggle world, Harry. It cannot provide suitable oversight nor provision for my… for you. We must find somewhere else for you.”

Harry hadn’t heard much past the first words. Not go back to the Dursleys? Spend his summer somewhere else? They were words he’d been wanting to hear his entire life, and yet it was Voldemort saying them.

“Go… somewhere else?” he said to himself.

“As I said.”

“I… Could I stay at Hogwarts?” he asked almost automatically. Then drew back into himself as he remembered who he was talking to.

“Hogwarts?” Voldemort sat back in the armchair, elegantly crossing one leg over the other. His red eyes scanned Harry intently, and Harry shrugged and picked at the embroidery on his sleeves. It was a stupid dream.

“Um, yeah. I asked Dumbledore once.”

“Did you now?” Voldemort murmured, his gaze sharpening. “I would certainly have considered such a request if a student brought it to me. It is unlikely to be possible to arrange such a thing at such short notice, however. Nor is it a suitable long-term plan.”

Harry stared at him.

Long-term plan meant Voldemort wasn’t planning on killing Harry at all. Long-term plan meant Harry was never going back to the Dursleys, not any summer.

His chest felt strangely tight.

“Where will I go, then?” he asked.

Taking a sip of tea, Voldemort appeared to think. And yet Harry was abruptly sure that Voldemort had already decided; that this entire conversation had been planned in advance.

“I won’t stay with the Malfoys,” he declared rashly, and unbelievably thought he saw Voldemort’s lips twitch in amusement.

“It would certainly be easier if you did.”

“But I won’t,” Harry said again, more certainly, because that hadn’t been a ‘you’re going there and that’s that.’ “You can’t keep me away from my friends,” he added bullishly.

“I have no desire to,” Voldemort said smoothly, and Harry had been right; he was amused.

“Why are you doing this?” Harry asked suddenly, unable to keep it in any longer. “Why are you being… Why aren’t you killing me, and why are you helping me, and why…”

When it became clear Harry wasn’t going to finish his sentence, Voldemort put his cup down and steepled his fingers. Classic super villain pose.

“I do not desire you as my enemy,” Voldemort began. Harry snorted, but the other man ignored him. “I realise we start from a disadvantageous position on that front, but past events cannot be changed.”

There were a few seconds of silence. “You think I’m going to just… stop hating you? You killed my parents! You killed Cedric!”

“Yes,” Voldemort said, and Harry deflated at how matter of fact he was about it. “And yet I ask that, for the stability of the wizarding world, and to avoid a war, you go about your life as though I do not exist.”

There was a long pause, in which Voldemort stared hard at Harry, and Harry felt a wave of dread sweep over him.

War?

“You will not say that the Minister for Magic is Lord Voldemort,” continued the Dark Lord. “You will not say that Lord Voldemort has returned. You will not oppose me in any way. And, in return, hundreds of witches and wizards will not face each other on the battlefield – your teachers and friends among them - killing and dying and reducing our world to ashes.”

You started this whole war, Harry thought fiercely, and if his eyes could have set Voldemort on fire they would have. “I don’t want there to be a war,” he said. “But you can’t just stay Minister!”

“Why not?” Voldemort asked, and it was just so… unbelievable.

“You’ll be a terrible Minister!”

“Because the recent candidates have been stunningly competent,” was the dry rejoinder. And, yeah, okay, Voldemort might have a point about that, but that didn’t make him any better!

“You’ll outlaw Muggle-borns, and-“ torture people, Harry was going to say, but then it was unlikely Voldemort would do that openly as Minister for Magic, wasn’t it? He’d probably do some awful things secretly to get people to agree with him, though, so actually, yeah. “And torture and kill people.”

Voldemort was eying him with a look of revelation. “What has Dumbledore told you about me?” he mused, hissing thoughtfully. “You know nothing of my political goals? The only point of dispute you can imagine is that I might outlaw Muggle-borns?”

Harry scowled.

“I really must remember to have a newspaper sent in,” Voldemort muttered to himself. “Harry. Regardless of previous rhetoric that was used to manipulate pureblood support, there is no feasible way to remove Muggle-borns from our society.”

“Bullshit,” Harry muttered.

“Have you ever thought about it?”

“What?”

“What would happen if we ‘outlawed’ Muggle-borns? You describe either their death and segregation, which would be a slow downwards spiral of magical strength in our society, or ignoring and refusing to train them, which would instead be a very quick death to the statute of secrecy, and annihilation at Muggle hands.”

That made sense. Either inbreeding or exposure. “Right,” Harry said. “But it’s what you wanted?”

“Is it? Or is that what you’ve been told?”

There was an uncomfortable churning feeling in Harry’s gut. “Everyone knows it,” he defended.

“Ah, yes, the unimpeachable wisdom of everyone.”

Harry knew it was true but had no way to prove it. No, wait! “You tried to use the basilisk to kill Muggle-borns!” he said. “You said – younger you said-“ He tried to remember exactly what Tom Riddle from the diary had said about his plans, but couldn’t capture the wording. “You wanted them all dead.”

“The basilisk was a tool Harry, a means to an end. There would have been no benefit to killing all of the Muggle-born children at Hogwarts.”

“But you killed someone,” Harry pushed.

“I have killed a great many people. The majority of them were not Muggle-born. Does that disprove your thesis?”

Harry choked on his words, unable to articulate quite how wrong what Voldemort was saying was.

Voldemort waved a hand dismissively. “The pureblood families will be appeased with the idea of earlier education of Muggle-borns and the alignment of their cultural and religious understanding. That is an important goal, but really the largest problem we are facing as a nation is stagnation.”

Harry blinked.

“Our magical teaching, and magical research, are years behind other countries’. Our economy is failing. Our magical creatures are rebelling.” There was passion in Voldemort’s voice, but not the crazy, killing people kind. It was kind of fascinating.

Voldemort observed him for a moment, then said, “Dumbledore engineered things this way because he wanted to avoid the conditions he thought might have spawned Grindelwald. He was afraid of power. And so he hobbled the ministry, and the country, with his oh-so-reasonable words of wisdom and advice. For the last fifty years, Britain has marinated in its own mediocrity, just to assuage his fears that someone ‘evil’ might come into power.”

“And now they have,” said Harry, before he could help it.

Voldemort smiled, which was creepy on his face. “And now they have,” he agreed. “And the country shall be much better for it.” He stood, dark and looming, and looked down at Harry with his red eyes. “Think of your friends,” he said. “Think of their safety.”

Another shard of fear through his gut. “I-“

Crack.

Harry was left replaying their conversation after Voldemort apparated away, and, despite the implied threat in the last sentence, there were so many things in it that confused and bewildered him. Some of it sounded so plausible. But it was Voldemort. Not for the first time, the thought that Voldemort could be lying about things – about Dumbledore’s death, about not starting a war – rang around his head.

*

Half an hour later, two different newspapers appeared on the desk, along with a plate of chocolate wafers.

Harry read them, and really wished he could talk to his friends.

Chapter Text

Two days later, the usual tea set did not appear after lunch, rendering Harry’s new clock redundant. He was more than slightly irritated, especially because he’d been having practice conversations with an imaginary Voldemort for the whole last two days and had quite a lot to say. Once three o’ clock had come and gone, just in case, he enacted a spectacular train crash to vent some of his feelings. Many people died, but the train survived intact.

Harry felt a little better.

The next morning brought a little ringing noise that he dashed out of the bathroom to investigate. There was a tiny bell with wings hovering in a circle over his desk and ringing every time it tried to clumsily correct its trajectory. On the desk was a note that said: Breakfast at 8:30.

A hurried glance at the clock revealed it to be only eight, giving Harry half an hour to stew. And tidy up, of course.

Breakfast was preceded by the arrival of a small square table, set against one of the walls, which quickly filled itself with croissants and fruit and porridge and boiled eggs with little knitted hats on. Harry approached to investigate just as two chairs popped in, and he heard the crack of Voldemort arriving behind him.

“Ah, excellent,” Voldemort said, striding towards the table. “Coffee.” Coffee appeared on the table. “And… juice?” He looked enquiringly at Harry, who shrugged. “Juice.” A goblet of juice appeared next to one of the place settings – apple, Harry thought from the colour. “Shall we?”

I’m having breakfast with Voldemort. The thought didn’t get less surreal the longer it went on.

“None of the papers-“ because they had been arriving every day now “-were the Prophet,” Harry stated cautiously.

“No.” Voldemort looked up from where he was cracking the top of his egg with a spoon. “Because the Daily Prophet is a sensationalist rag.” He sighed. “Of course you get your opinions from the Daily Prophet.”

Harry felt defensive for a moment, but then he remembered loads of times he’d looked at someone’s copy of the Prophet in the Great Hall and, well, it was really overdramatic and stupid. He still remembered the stuff they’d said about him during the Triwizard Tournament – it had made his blood boil.

“These other ones are okay,” Harry allowed. Honestly, he’d found them pretty hard going. It seemed to be a lot of in-depth analysis of the state of the country and different political parties and economics. He hadn’t known a lot of the context, or who the names that kept being mentioned were, and he’d felt really dumb. It wasn’t a great feeling.

Voldemort snorted. “The Daily Prophet and The Ambiguity,” he stated loudly, and two papers appeared next to him on a small folding table. “Here,” he said, and passed Harry the copy of the Prophet.

The Dark Lord, Minister for Magic and ruler of wizarding Britain, then proceeded to vanish behind his newspaper for the remainder of breakfast.

Harry felt… He didn’t know what he felt.

The Daily Prophet was a lot easier to read than the other newspapers had been, but, as he unfolded it and made his way through, Harry couldn’t help noticing that on every page they were trying to make minor things into problems and find people to blame for them. The price of flobberworms was up because of the French. The Ministry was wrong in trying to impose laws that would stop people behaving like idiots. The Aurors weren’t doing their jobs properly. This famous author had done something scandalous. It was just… complaining. No potential solutions, no analysing why things might be the way they were. Just… bitching about people.

Harry set it aside and drew up his courage. “There’s a lot in there about Dumbledore,” he said carefully.

“Mmm,” came a hum from behind the pages of the newspaper opposite.

Harry took a croissant and started to pull it apart. “In the other papers too. Is that… Is it-“

The paper opposite folded down along the horizontal crease, and Voldemort looked at him over the top of it. The strange visage was becoming familiar now; Harry could read exasperation around the eyes, tension in the tightening of thin lips, amusement in the huffed exhale. “Is it true?”

“Yes,” Harry said, relieved not to have to say it.

“Then, yes,” Voldemort said back. “If, however, what you mean to ask is: did I deliberately release this information, then the answer is: partially. I funded a few ambitious and thorough journalists to investigate Dumbledore’s past and present, and, although their work spoke for itself, I ensured that their articles were given the spotlight they deserved.”

There had been a lot about Dumbledore’s part in the last war with Voldemort, and about some weird things he’d apparently been doing recently as well, which threw his reasoning and respectability into question. Lots of commentary over his interference in the Ministry and his relationships with various Ministers, including Fudge. An in-depth investigation into his tenure as headmaster, and the various ways he’d been failing children under his care, most especially in recent years. Most especially Harry. Harry was always marked down as unavailable for comment, which almost made him guiltily glad he’d been stashed away here where no one could find him.

There had been a lot about Dumbledore and Grindelwald, and things Dumbledore used to believe, and Dumbledore’s family.

It could have all been fake, of course. Not even the facts being made up and fed to the newspapers; for all Harry knew, he was being delivered completely fake newspapers. Reading what Voldemort wanted him to believe, for whatever convoluted reason.

But Harry was horribly afraid that it was all true.

“Enough for the moment,” Voldemort said firmly, and placed his newspaper back on the tray. “I shall get enough of this nonsense reported to me later, anyway.”

For the first time, Harry wondered what it was like – Voldemort as Minister for Magic. Did he sit in an office somewhere all day? Did people have to bow to him when they brought him news? What did the Minister for Magic even do?

“So, letting me go,” Harry started bravely.

“Yes,” Voldemort said. “Precisely. Have you had any further thoughts?”

Harry hesitated. “I could stay with the Weasleys?” he offered. Not his first choice, but he was guessing there would be problems with his first choice. And it wasn’t like he hadn’t thought about it, the last few days. All of his previous summers, the thought of staying with the Weasleys for even a few days had been a light in the darkness. They were really nice; they were. But he wasn’t sure if they could take him, if it was for longer than a few days. And, he’d had to admit to himself, things had been weird again with Ron this year. They’d patched things up, but the way Ron had acted after Harry’s name had come out of the Goblet of Fire had stung.

“Are you asking me what I think?” Voldemort said. Amused again.

Harry huffed. “We both know you’ve already decided. Just tell me already.” He’d tried to think what other Slytherins might have families that served Voldemort. He couldn’t imagine living with any of them.

“I have no desire to stoke your rebellious spirit by placing you somewhere you will feel, however untrue, imprisoned,” Voldemort said. Which maybe made sense. Harry hated how Voldemort kept making sense. “But I did look into the matter before speaking to you regarding it.”

“If you let me go wherever I want, how do you know I won’t tell them all that stuff – about you being back, and being the Minister for Magic but in disguise.”

“We shall make an agreement, before you go. We shall both agree to each other’s terms.”

That sounded strangely reasonable. But – “Otherwise you won’t let me go?”

Voldemort nodded.

“Why?” Harry asked, and it felt like he’d been asking this one thing over and over.

The head tilt again, and Voldemort tapped his finger lightly against the table as he seemed to consider how to phrase things. How to manipulate Harry.

“As you so unerringly pointed out,” Voldemort eventually said. “I could have made you disappear. I could have obliviated you; indeed, that is still an attractive option. But, given the future I am trying to forge, I believe that this path has the most merits.”

“You want me to support you,” Harry realised. Voldemort had kind of said it, last time, but Harry hadn’t really thought about it like that.

Harry supposed that having Harry Potter, defeater of Voldemort, wandering around denying that Voldemort was back would be advantageous. But if Harry had been obliviated they could have just said he’d been in an accident and in a coma for a few weeks or something, and then he still wouldn’t have known Voldemort was back. Would people have been suspicious? Was there a way to overcome the memory spell, if people could guess he’d been obliviated?

“Support would be ideal, but I would settle for a lack of active hostility,” Voldemort explained.

But you killed my parents, Harry wanted to say but didn’t, because they had already had that conversation.

With more than a little effort, he wrenched his thoughts back onto the previous topic. He knew where he actually wanted to stay, and it was almost bursting out of him, but he was also really curious what Voldemort had thought of. “What are your suggestions?”

Rather than say the names straight away, Voldemort lead with: “My considerations were fourfold. A family with time and attention enough to take on a child-“

“-I’m not a child,” Harry interjected.

“- as well as the willingness to do so, the funds necessary to support one-“

“-I don’t need anyone’s money!”

“-and finally some degree of connection to you. Now, do you wish to continue arguing whether a fourteen year old is a considered a child-“ Oh gods, Voldemort had bought him a teddy bear “-or shall I continue?”

Harry said nothing.

“The first of the two options I would suggest are Andromeda and Edward Tonks – she is a pure-blood from the house of Black, and he a half-blood. They have one child-“

“Sirius!” Harry blurted, because the idea of being placed with someone from the house of Black that wasn’t Sirius, when Sirius wanted Harry to live with him, was ridiculous. He didn’t actually want Voldemort to seriously consider anyone else. And if Sirius couldn’t, because he was still unjustly listed as a criminal: “Or Professor Lupin.” 

This gave Voldemort pause. “I shall address these in reverse order,” he said. “I will not send you to live with a known werewolf, as it is safe for neither of you. You should respect the fact that Mister Lupin maintained no contact with you except when forced by his teaching position.”

Harry’s heart dropped into his stomach and he bit his lip. Voldemort actually had looked into some of the people Harry might ask about then.

A dozen arguments ran through Harry’s head – that he could pay for Wolfsbane potion; that they could be careful; that he liked Remus. But he had a horrible moment of looking at it from someone else’s perspective: that Harry was so desperate to go and live with someone he barely knew; someone that he’d only talked to privately a handful of times during lessons on casting a Patronus; that had accidentally almost killed him and his friends.

That hadn’t been in touch, even once, since he’d left the school.

“Sirius then,” Harry said, voice less steady than he would have liked. “He’s my Godfather.”

“Sirius Black is currently under arrest,” Voldemort stated blandly. He seemed bemused when Harry burst up from his chair with an exclamation, and waved a hand to rescue the breakfast tray. “Sit down. I am not familiar with the current state of the case, but it is unlikely to go beyond a hefty fine. I shall send you the relevant articles later, if you are curious.”

A hefty fine. “Not Azkaban?”

Voldemort inclined his head. “It was not a serious incident. As a side note, although it may take some time, I am in the process of drafting legislation to dismantle Azkaban. It is a monstrosity.”

Which, coming from a monster, was saying a lot. And Harry agreed with him. Merlin.

“Not Azkaban,” he muttered to himself reassuringly. “But then I could live with him!”

Voldemort hesitated. Harry had the sudden, horrible thought that he was trying to spare Harry’s feelings.

“Just tell me,” he mumbled, then steeled himself and looked Voldemort in the eye. He rather thought Voldemort looked approving, which was intensely disconcerting.

“Sirius Black is not a suitable guardian for a child,” the Dark Lord issued bluntly. “My investigation revealed behaviour indicative of instability, depression, and a lack of ability to take responsibility. These factors are currently embodied in his incarceration in a Ministry holding cell,” he added dryly. “Once his current issue is resolved, the Ministry will take responsibility for its own, previous actions when imprisoning him in Azkaban without trial, by funding a mind healer and home support until he is better able to function.”

Harry sat quietly though all of this, and then stayed quiet a while longer. He’d wanted to object to everything Voldemort had said. None of it was fair to Sirius. At the same time, it seemed so obvious when Voldemort said it. Harry himself had noticed and sometimes been disturbed by Sirius’ behaviour. And it being due to his time in Azkaban would make sense, and of course he probably couldn’t handle Harry if he couldn’t take care of himself yet.

“He was the first person to ever want me to live with him,” Harry mumbled.

Voldemort said nothing, but the silence wasn’t horrible. 

“Who’s the other person?” Harry asked.

“Madame Longbottom. The grandmother of one of your year mates, I believe.”

“Neville’s grandmother sounds terrifying,” Harry said, before he could stop himself.

“I see. I mention these specific candidates because, amongst their other qualifications, both families applied to adopt you after your parents died.”

“They did?” Harry asked, a rush of something swooping through his stomach.

“Indeed. Many people did, of course, but the Ministry records on their applications deemed them the most suitable.”

“Oh,” said Harry faintly.

People had applied to adopt him.

“Other alternatives are that you may go through the full Ministry process for rehoming children, though that may take time. Or, of course, there is always the Malfoys.”

Harry stared at Voldemort’s deadpan face and realised that the man was amused again.

“Who were the first people again?”

Chapter Text

A week, two breakfasts and two tea times later, and Harry had thought the whole situation to dust. He had an appointment three days away to meet with the Tonks family. To discuss the possibility of ‘transferring to their care,’ as Voldemort put it. Harry had also been promised the use of an owl later this afternoon, to contact his friends, as long as he and Voldemort came to an agreement first.

They sat at the breakfast table, with a document in Voldemort’s slanted handwriting in front of Harry.

“Will not move against, cannot talk about… Will not…” Harry mouthed the lines as he read through them. It was basically what Voldemort had said before. Don’t talk to anyone about Voldemort. Don’t do anything against Voldemort. “And you’ll…“

Underneath the first part was the list of concessions that Voldemort had written down, except it was actually only two: Voldemort would not kill or torture anyone except for his followers, and he would enact reasonable laws with regard to Muggle-borns and half-bloods.

Harry read the list again, then on the bottom part carefully wrote down:

No Unforgivables by you or your followers

Will respect the rights of sentient creatures

Will not start a war

And, feeling somewhat silly about it: Will try and be a good Minister for Magic

Merlin, he wished Hermione could have been here for this. He was sure there were so many things he wasn’t thinking of.

In response, Voldemort added to the top part:

Will say he was confused and wrong about thinking Voldemort was alive

Will tell the truth about interactions with Dumbledore when asked

Will educate self on political processes and remain current on legislation

Which all seemed a bit odd to Harry, and not really an equal return for not killing and torturing people. But then the first one was asking Harry to outright lie, rather than just obfuscate, the second was asking him to not defend Dumbledore, and the third…? Harry had no idea about the third.

“Now what?” Harry asked, which was basically an agreement. “Do we sign it in blood or something?”

Voldemort huffed a laugh. “Nothing so dramatic. We could perform a vow, but I am willing to leave it as a verbal agreement.”

Harry stared at him. “But then I could do whatever I wanted. I could tell lots of people in secret.” Voldemort stared back. “And then you would quietly kill me, and all my friends,” Harry concluded. “But how do I know you aren’t killing and torturing people?”

“Do you doubt Lord Voldemort’s word?”

Harry directed an uncertain glower his way. Trusting Voldemort’s word didn’t seem like it was ever going to be sensible. But he wasn’t sure some kind of magical vow would be better – he didn’t know much about them, but he’d heard horror stories about them going wrong and killing people. Plus, it would be one that Voldemort chose and put into place, and that would probably place Harry at some kind of disadvantage.

He didn’t really have a choice. Voldemort would do what he liked either way, but this way Harry would be released. And the threat of war, of his friends and their families getting caught up in it, was an effective enough deterrent from spilling the beans all by itself.

Tapping his long index finger against the piece of paper, Voldemort asked, “Is there anything in here you feel is unreasonable?”

“No,” Harry said glumly. Merlin, he was letting Voldemort win.

“Then we have an agreement?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent.” Voldemort’s yew wand tapped on the document and a copy appeared. “Only you will be able to read this. I would request that if ever you think I have violated our terms, you contact me for information first before taking irretrievable steps.”

“Contact you?”

“You may owl me.”

This time it was Harry who snorted, and he buried his face in his hands to hide it. “This is so surreal,” he said from behind them.

There was silence for a moment, then, “This is not something I, too, would ever have envisaged coming to pass.”

*

Three days later, Harry met with Edward and Andromeda Tonks. They had been told he had been staying in Ministry approved accommodation for the last few weeks while recovering and having his new placement assigned, and seemed not at all surprised that he didn’t know where it had been.

“Sounds just like the Ministry,” said call-me-Ted.

Ted was funny. Not loud, or pushy, and not big and intimidating like Uncle Vernon. He had a sly sense of humour, like he was poking fun at everything. He smiled gently at Harry, as though they were poking fun at things together.

Mrs Tonks was quiet, and rather observant, Harry thought. She mostly watched and let her husband do the talking, but when Harry asked a question it was usually her that answered. She was the one who clearly told him how things would be if he came to live with them – that he would have a room to himself, and be expected to help out with a few things around the house, and they would sit down and make a budget with him for school expenses and pocket money. That they would help him aim for whatever career he was interested in and arrange tutoring as needed. Harry was embarrassed that he hadn’t really thought about what he wanted to be when he grew up, apart from a wizard. Maybe an Auror.

Eventually Harry plucked up the courage to say, “The Ministry said you tried to adopt me, after my parents died.”

“Yes.” Mrs Tonks looked sad. “I knew your father. And Nymphadora was a few years old by then, and we’d been thinking of having another. I thought-“

She didn’t say what she’d thought, but Harry felt a warm, squirming feeling in his stomach that she’d at one point wanted him to be that other child.

After they talked for about an hour, and Harry had drunk creamy hot chocolate and eaten a delicate lemon tart, Ted caught someone’s eye behind Harry’s back. Twisting, Harry saw a girl with pink hair standing next to the door of the patisserie. This must be Nymphadora. He maybe remembered her from the years above him at school.

“We’ll leave you two alone for a little while to talk,” Mrs Tonks said, and the two of them stood up.

“Hey mum, dad,” Nymphadora said, coming up to lean against her dad’s side in a familiar manner. Harry felt the usual wistful, jealous twist in his gut. “Get out of here, you guys. Let me tell Harry all the juicy family gossip.”

Her parents left, and Nymphadora – Merlin, don’t call me that, only my mother calls me that, what are you trying to do to me? – ordered a coffee and then moved her chair round the side of the table nearest to Harry so that they were bumping knees.

“Right,” she said, “what do you want to know?”

When Ted and Mrs Tonks returned, exactly half an hour later as promised, they asked if Harry would like to come for a quick tour of their house or if he wanted to head back.

It felt like an enormous decision. If he said yes to the tour, was he basically saying he wanted to stay with them? And if he said no, would they take that as a rejection?

Ted must have seen the panic on his face. “Totally up to you, Harry. I’d love to show you around, but I know it’s already been a long day.”

It was Harry’s first day outside of the bedroom he’d been held in for almost three weeks.

“I’d love to see your house,” he said bravely.

The house was nice. The Tonks family was nice too. Harry sort of loved Dora already. She was going to be an Auror, so maybe it wasn’t a silly dream after all.

They all trooped back down to the entrance hall, and Dora drifted off with a “Wotcher, Harry.” Harry wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but it sounded cool.

Mrs and Mr Tonks stood quietly, waiting for him to say something.

Maybe there were more questions he should ask. Maybe he should try and find out more about their motives – if this was all a setup by Voldemort. Maybe he should have asked to go back to his room and had a think about everything for a while.

“I’m a lot of trouble,” he blurted instead.

Mrs Tonks blinked, taken aback.

“I mean, you don’t even know me. Weird things are always happening to me, and I’m not very good at school, and I don’t really understand loads of things a proper wizard would, and I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t really…” Harry trailed off.

“Oh, Harry,” Ted said. He sounded sad.

Mrs Tonks looked Harry straight in the eye, and her hands came up to lightly rest on his shoulders. “I don’t think you would be a lot of trouble, Harry.”

“I think if trouble happens, we would deal with it together,” Ted put in.

“We would be very glad to take you into our family,” she carried on, as though her husband hadn’t spoken, and Harry trembled.

She didn’t have to say that. They were just giving him a place to stay, that was all. It might not even go beyond this summer, if things didn’t work out. They might get annoyed with him in a few days, for all Harry knew. She didn’t have to talk as though they were really… as though…

He nodded jerkily, not allowing himself to think about it more. His breath caught in his throat, and he swallowed convulsively to try and stop his eyes from watering. It would be stupid to cry over something like this.

“I’m glad,” Ted said simply.

And so Harry went to stay with the Tonks’.

Chapter Text

Ron and Hermione, who’d been understandably freaked out by Harry’s silence, were easily placated when he said that he’d been taken away for his own protection and that, yeah, he’d really gone nuts at not being able to get in touch with them too. He told them in his letters about being placed with the Tonks’, and, a week after he’d moved in, they came round to see his room and have lunch and play games. And talk.

It was weird having secrets from Ron and Hermione, especially one this huge. He lied to them and said it had just been Pettigrew that had kidnapped him. Guilt formed a huge cave in his stomach.

Proving that she was sharp as a tack, Hermione bit her lip and asked, “Is the Ministry forcing you not to talk about… about You-Know-Who?”

Harry’s shock at the question had been real, at least, if not the reason for it. Apparently, as she explained, Fudge had issued an immediate series of statements to decry the hysteria being spread by certain individuals, which made it seem like the Ministry might be trying to stamp out the truth. And his successor was acting calmer about the whole thing, but…

“It’s my fault,” Harry said slowly, feeling his way through it. “I said something about Voldemort when I came back, I think. I was so-“ He swallowed, forcing himself to think of Cedric, knowing it would make him look shaken. “I was really messed up, guys. And they said I’d lost a lot of blood.”

He paused to clean his glasses on his robes, giving Hermione a chance for a quiet “Oh, Harry!”

“And Wormtail said Voldemort was there. He kept saying it. Again and again, while he…” Harry cleared his throat. “There wasn’t anyone else there. Wormtail killed Cedric… He killed Cedric as soon as we landed. He said he needed me for something. He, uh, he tied me up and… well, you know. And he raved a lot. I told Dumbledore what he said as soon as we got back, because I thought he would need to know, just in case.”

“But we know he is out there, Harry,” Hermione said with a frown. “After our first year he must have vanished somewhere, right?”

Harry looked away.

“What is it, mate?” Ron asked.

Feeling like the world’s biggest traitor, Harry muttered, “What if it wasn’t true?”

They both stared at him.

“I’m scared that… It’s just, after I woke up in the hospital wing, after the stone, Dumbledore was there.”

They both nodded.

“It’s just… He said a lot of things. I thought he knew what was going on, and I-“ he blinked as his eyes threatened tears, “I trusted him. I felt honoured that he was telling me the truth, about Voldemort being back. That it was Voldemort inside Professor Quirrell.”

“Harry,” Hermione said in horror, “are you saying-“

“I don’t know,” he interrupted. “I don’t know. I just… Guys, what if it was only ever Quirrell and Pettigrew? What if they were just crazy?”

They stared at him and couldn’t find an answer. They all talked over Pettigrew’s actions again, and Hermione and Ron told Harry that he’d been arrested while Harry had been locked away. That he’d been given the dementor’s kiss.

Harry… didn’t know how he felt about that.

“I’m supposed to start seeing a mind-healer for a bit,” he confessed to them, hushed and kind of ashamed. Hermione had been instantly supportive. Ron had given him an awkward thumbs up and then immediately started talking about Quidditch.

*

Harry had to lie to the mind healer too, but it turned out there were a lot of things he had to talk about that had nothing to do with seeing Voldemort at the graveyard.

Their first awkward session, in which the mind healer – an elderly man who smiled with his eyes and waited out Harry’s avoidant first twenty minutes of silence – asked “What information about you do you think would help me know you a little better?” threw Harry for a loop.

People normally assumed about Harry. Harry had defeated Voldemort. Harry was just like his father. Harry was the heir of Slytherin. Harry was the kind of person who would cheat to get into the Tri Wizard Tournament.

“Umm. I’m Harry? I’m fourteen. Fifteen soon. I go to Hogwarts. I, uh, I just moved in with Mr and Mrs Tonks. They seem really nice. They’ve given me my own room?” he said questioningly, not sure what the healer wanted to hear. The man nodded. “And, uh, helped me decorate it. And Ron brought round a poster a couple of days ago – Ron’s my friend, sorry, and Hermione, but Hermione didn’t bring the poster – with the Chudley Cannons on it and now he says my room is like a proper wizard’s room!”

The man smiled appreciatively. “It sounds like you’re making the space your own.”

“Yeah.” Harry bit his lip, uncertain whether he should have said all that. Unsure if he wanted to be here at all. But he felt like if Mrs and Mr Tonks had arranged all of this… “It’s okay.”

“Ron and Hermione are friends from Hogwarts?”

Harry nodded. “We’ve been friends since first year. Ron always says that you can’t defeat a troll together without becoming best friends. And Mrs and Mr Tonks said I can have them over whenever I like! As long as I make sure all my school work is done,” he added quickly. That had been one of the rules Mrs Tonks had gone over at the beginning. Having a rule to do his summer homework rather than hide it was novel. “We’re going to Diagon Alley next week, and then-“

Harry stopped.

“Can you tell me what you were thinking about just now?” the healer asked after a few moments.

Harry blinked. “What? Oh, nothing, sorry.”

The man observed him for a moment. “I asked because it seemed like you felt a change in mood, going from thinking happy thoughts about meeting your friends to something quite different.”

Harry shrugged. “Well, uh.” He picked at a nail. “It’s nothing.” His cheeks turned slightly pink, since the man had already said he knew it was something. “I was just thinking about my birthday, is all.”

“I see.” The healer leaned back in his chair. “And what will happen on your birthday?”

Harry shrugged again. “I don’t know.”

The man made a little humming noise and noted something down on the pad of paper resting on one knee. Harry burned to see what was on it.

“What are you writing?”

The man considered him for a few seconds. “Would you like to see?”

“Uh…”

The notepad was proffered in his direction, and Harry took a few awkward steps out of his seat to take it, then a cautious two steps back before he glanced down at it. There were a few short words describing the other things Harry had said – Harry’s room, Ron and Hermione’s names, then: Party, specific event or unknown?

“Oh,” Harry said, and thrust it back in the healer’s hands, shuffling backwards until he could perch on the edge of the armchair again. “What does that mean?”

“What do you think it might mean?”

“I don’t know,” Harry snapped. He was immediately embarrassed, sinking back into the chair and waiting to be scolded.

“In this case,” the healer said calmly, “it refers to your response when I asked you about the birthday party. There seemed to me to be two probable causes to your change in feelings: the first is that you literally don’t know what is going to happen for your birthday, and that perturbs you. The second is that you anticipate something specific happening on your birthday that you are… concerned about.”

“Oh.” Harry uncoiled a bit. He thought about it. He realised that he knew exactly what the cause was. Glancing up under his eyelashes, he considered the old man sitting across from him. “It’s because of Sirius,” he said bravely, and then his stomach clenched.

“I see. Is Sirius someone that is coming to your birthday?”

Harry folded his arms across his chest and shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. He’s been pardoned,” he said defensively. Then added, “He’s my Godfather.”

The healer nodded.

Harry fidgeted some more, then breathed out a long breath. “He hasn’t been replying to any of my letters,” he said quietly.

*

So yeah, the mind healer wasn’t horrible. And Harry had Hedwig, faithfully brought along with Ron on that first visit, to talk to about all the other stuff. At night, he ran careful fingers over soft, downy feathers and confessed everything to her in a hushed voice, talking through things again and again. Voldemort’s weird behaviour. Cedric and Dumbledore’s deaths.

Hedwig just listened, but it helped.

*

The talk about Dumbledore continued at school, where everyone was various shades of disbelieving, betrayed or vindicated, largely dependent on their House. A lot of people asked Harry what he thought. The image of the agreement he’d written with Voldemort flashed through his mind the first few times, and he had to physically stop himself from saying that Dumbledore had been a good person. He forced himself to say facts, instead. It shouldn’t have been a condemnation, except it turned out that, just like when he’d said some of them to the mind-healer, the facts Harry stated about what had happened in his first year (and his second and third and fourth year) were condemning all by themselves.

Professor McGonagall was now Headmistress McGonagall, and there was a new Transfigurations professor. Actually, there were a bunch of new teachers: two DADA professors, an extra Potions professor, and a new History of Magic teacher.

“Maybe Malfoy finally complained to his father about Binns,” Ron joked, and it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.

The thing was, it was the best year Harry had ever had at Hogwarts. All the teachers seemed less stressed, presumably because the workload was more spread out – even Snape! Harry had more time to focus on his lessons, which was good because Ted and Mrs Tonks (call me Andromeda) were actually interested in how Harry was doing. He got letters from them. The first time one arrived and was dropped on his plate at breakfast, he’d almost combusted with delighted embarrassment. He got the odd letter from Dora too – she’d started calling him little Tonks. 

He had time to focus on Quidditch too, which was important because he was captain! Mrs Tonks had smiled and said she was proud of him when the badge came over the summer.

They always wrote to ask all about his games.

Ron and Hermione were Gryffindor prefects – Harry thought Ron was a bit of an odd choice but wasn’t sure who would have been a better one. There seemed to be something else going on between them too, which made Harry feel a bit weird, so he steered well clear of any conversations that started ‘What do you think Ron/Hermione would think about this…’

Hermione was delighted that Harry was actively reading newspapers – and stunned and remorseful that she’d never investigated other publications before now. “I’ve basically been reading The Daily Mail and believing everything it told me,” she bemoaned to him. He remembered her ridiculing The Daily Prophet tons of times, so he didn’t think that was entirely true, but he knew what she meant that there were plenty of things he’d never thought to question just because they were printed in the paper.

Her newfound drive to trial various newspapers in an attempt to discover and subscribe to the most informative was a massive boon to Harry, who had technically committed to informing himself about politics. Hermione made that easy, because she informed him about politics. He read things himself too though, both because he thought it was how the agreement was phrased and also because she wanted to discuss the politics, which required him to have done enough reading to have opinions.

So yeah. Schoolwork, Quidditch, reading newspapers and hanging out with his friends. They went to Hogsmeade regularly, and Harry spent his pocket money on sweets and gobstones, which he’d started playing with Neville. It felt like maybe this was the way school was supposed to have been all along.

*

Then, halfway through the first week of their OWLS, someone tried to kill Harry.

*

Harry didn’t remember much about it afterwards. He’d been ushered into the room with the Ministry official for the practical portion of Charms, and then there had been a lot of pain and he’d blacked out.

“He used a severing charm,” Voldemort said, when Harry blurrily woke in his four poster in his ivory and sage coloured room. “Slit your throat.”

Harry brought shaky fingers up to feel his neck, and thought he could feel the ridge of a scar.

“You have been attended by the best healers,” Voldemort added stiffly. “Although it was-“ he paused “-closer than it ought to have been.”

“I-“ Harry managed, but it was rasping and barely there.

Voldemort took a glass of water from the bedside table and helped Harry drink it.

“Your family are frantic,” Voldemort said after a moment, setting the glass back down and rapping the table twice with a knuckle. The glass instantly refilled itself. “They have so far been staved off with the information that you are in an isolation wing, for both your health and security.”

His… family. Harry felt his face warm, and his fingers gripped the duvet cover.

“What happened?” he asked.

Voldemort was silent.

“Who attacked me?” Because weirdly, Harry’s first thought wasn’t Voldemort. Even without the man hovering by his bedside giving him drinks of water.

“It was an… unexpected political enemy. One of Dumbledore’s people,” Voldemort clarified on seeing Harry frown.

“Dumbledore? But then – why?”

“We may never know,” Voldemort said, and Harry was instantly very sure that Voldemort already knew.

Either Voldemort was lying about why the person had done it, or the world was truly upside down and Voldemort wanted to keep Harry alive while Dumbledore’s ‘people’ wanted him dead.

“Is whatever secret you’re keeping going to hurt me?” Harry asked. It was a stupid question, he knew that, because surely even if the answer was yes, Voldemort wouldn’t tell him.

“No, Harry. The secret I am holding will keep you safe. Will keep us both safe.” Harry didn’t think he was lying. “But it is alarming that someone knew enough of it for you to be endangered.”

Harry’s mind instantly tuned into what Voldemort might be thinking. “You can’t keep me here,” he said, in an echo of almost a year ago.

Voldemort looked down at him for a long time, and Harry felt horribly helpless lying there in bed.

“No,” Voldemort said eventually. “I will not. But I will provide you with extra security. It will take a day or two to arrange. You will stay here.”

*

It turned out Harry had been in an enchanted sleep for over 24 hours already, to enable the damage to his oesophagus and vocal cords to heal correctly. Now he felt weak and uncoordinated and couldn’t stand or sit up for very long before needing to lie back down.

Two house elves popped in and out of the room frequently, bringing him drinks and grapes and potions that had to be taken every hour. The popping noise kept waking him every time he started to doze off, and at one point he felt so tired and frustrated that he snapped at one of them. Mipsy, he thought, although he wasn’t sure he could tell them apart yet.

He subsided onto the pillow, tears of frustration leaking down the side of his face to soak his hair.

The crack came a minute later, and he turned his face angrily away. He didn’t want Voldemort, of all people, to see him like this.

Long fingers gripped his chin, turning him effortlessly despite his attempt to resist.

“Drink this, Harry,” murmured the voice.

A thin vial was tipped against his lips, and Harry didn’t even care anymore. He opened his mouth and let the potion trickle in, and there was a taste like-

*

Harry awoke at what the clock told him was six in the morning, feeling groggy and awful. He dragged himself out of bed, feeling more stable on his feet than he had yesterday, and finished in the bathroom without feeling like he immediately needed to lie down again.

An elf popped into the bedroom, squeaked and then retreated again.

“I’m sorry,” Harry said loudly to the air. His throat felt much better today. “I wasn’t feeling well and I’m sorry I took it out on you.”

A bowl of porridge and a glass of milk appeared on the small table.

“I really am sorry,” he said.

After breakfast he stared out of the window, feeling like he didn’t have the concentration necessary for reading. Besides, he’d already read all the books here. The elves did start coming back in person, if only to make sure that he took his potions when he was supposed to, and drank enough liquids, which was important for some reason. It meant Harry had to pee a lot.

He took a nap, feeling justified in not having changed out of his comfortable nightshirt.

In the afternoon, feeling nostalgic, he staged a daring bandit heist of the train. A strongly anchored rope was strung across the tracks in a ravine formed by cushions. The two repurposed Quidditch figurines were now air bandits, and the centaur was the bandit chief. The rope snagged the train engine perfectly as it chuffed round the track, but Harry’s anchoring was not quite as strong as he’d thought and the train carried on, dragging the rope with it.

He wasn’t sure whether to laugh or be disappointed, and then, with no warning, Voldemort was standing in the middle of the room.

Harry froze. His hand was still outstretched towards where the train was merrily chugging away from him, and a second later it entered the tunnel created by the desk chair with a towel draped over it and the train whistle sounded out loud and clear.

“Fuck,” said Harry succinctly, because there was nothing like being caught playing with a toy train by your arch-nemesis.

Voldemort did the thing where he almost smiled. Was it weird that Harry was getting quite good at reading his facial expressions?

“I see you are feeling better.”

Harry buried his face in his hands. “Kill me now,” he said, voice muffled.

Voldemort did laugh at that, the dry, hissing noise that Harry remembered from before. “Come,” he said. “We will discuss the security precautions.”

The security precautions seemed to mostly be chained layers of spells that would be cast both on Harry and something Harry would have on his person at all times. They would activate to shield him if his blood was shed and to remove him from danger. Harry and Voldemort then had a spirited discussion about what the definition of danger was, since Harry didn’t want it accidentally going off during Quidditch. They agreed on a voice activated portkey to cover most situations, with the proviso that excessive blood loss or trauma would trigger the same.

He was offered his choice of object-he-was-not-allowed-to-remove. A ring seemed like it would be annoying and get in the way. He wasn’t sure about the idea of a necklace. An ankle bracelet would be… weird but at least mostly not visible. But…

The sting of Harry’s ear being pierced was sharp but over almost immediately, and he stared fixedly at the tiny scales on Voldemort’s scalp and brow as the man moved his wand in tiny, precise gestures to move the burning hot needle away from Harry’s left earlobe.

“Now,” Voldemort murmured, and brought the small golden stud to his ear, fingers brushing Harry’s hair away and holding him still as he threaded the rod through the new hole before sliding the back on.

Harry went to look at it in the bathroom mirror.

His aunt and uncle had had nothing good to say about men with piercings. But Charlie and Bill had piercings, and so did a bunch of the sixth and seventh years at school. Harry thought they looked cool.

“I like it,” he called through to the other room, and he didn’t have to see Voldemort to imagine his slight smile.

“Of course you do,” Voldemort said, voice carrying easily.

When Voldemort got up to leave half an hour later, after more medication and discussion of logistics for the following day, the man glanced down at the train set. The engine had been dragged off the track on a curve almost immediately after his arrival, and he reached down to free it from the entangling rope and set it back on the track. They both watched it start moving again.

“A year mate had one of these in my first years at Hogwarts,” Voldemort said, thoughtful. “I always coveted it.”

Harry was still staring at him in amazement when he apparated out.

*

Ted and Mrs Tonks (call me Andromeda, dear, really) were incredibly relieved that he was alright. They told him so multiple times, and Mrs Tonks kept reaching out to touch his shoulder, his cheek, his arm, as if to reassure herself that he was really there. Harry thought maybe Ted wanted to as well, but he’d always been careful with coming into Harry’s personal space, and he held back now too. Harry didn’t know how he felt about that, but he shuffled a bit closer to the side of the hospital bed that Ted was standing by and leaned his way a little, and Ted’s arm slipped casually around his shoulders for a half hug, as though it was something they did all the time.

St Mungo’s released him with a great deal of forged paperwork, given that Harry had actually only been there for the half an hour before he was picked up, and what Harry assumed were more than a few memory charms by Death Eaters. He couldn’t find it in himself to mind too much. No one had been hurt by it, he supposed.

He wondered for the first time what had happened to the man that had attacked him. He hadn’t thought to ask Voldemort.

He was cosseted at home for a week, to the point where it was almost smothering, and then, at his insistence, taken to the Ministry so that he could sit the rest of his OWLs. An exemption on the normal testing dates was made for him due to special circumstances. Harry wondered if Voldemort was the one to approve it.

His grades arrived three weeks later, and they were good. Surprisingly good, and he read the list through three times as though expecting the letters to change before his eyes. Mrs Tonks (I never meant to make you feel like you couldn’t call me Andromeda) sat next to him at the kitchen table drinking her morning cup of coffee, pointedly not asking. It made Harry smile.

*

His sixteenth birthday came and went with an impressive chocolate cake baked by Ted (even better than last year’s), a party with his friends and a present from Voldemort.

That last part was very new.

It was a writing set – high quality parchment, a fancy brand of quill that apparently had all sorts of enchantments on it and came with a booklet to explain them and give examples of calligraphy. Harry spent hours doodling with it, and lying about who it was from after Ron borrowed it to draw rude cartoons on all his birthday cards.

Presents were still an enthralling concept to Harry, even after a few years of Weasley jumpers and books from Hermione. Even after the extravagant firebolt from Sirius, and the even more extravagant promise from him this year to learn to ride a flying motorcycle. The idea of someone else – of Voldemort – buying him something actually nice and useful, made him feel blindsided and warm.

*

He wrote Voldemort a letter.

*

Chapter Text

Harry’s sixth year was when the subjects were supposed to get much harder. He was taking Charms, Defence against the Dark Arts, Transfiguration, Care of Magical Creatures, Herbology and History of Magic (he actually enjoyed History of Magic now that they had a different teacher. Who knew?). He hadn’t quite got the grade to make it into Potions, and, although Mrs Tonks had offered to write a letter on his behalf, Harry wasn’t going to beg Snape to take him in his class. He didn’t really want to do it anyway.

He still had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. McGonagall had attempted a career chat last year, and Harry hadn’t known how to say that his biggest ambition was to not accidentally break the agreement with Voldemort and cause a war.

Firmly burying his head in the sand when Hermione also attempted to talk about wizarding careers, he kept reading newspapers and started researching more on the foundation of wizarding political structures, which intersected nicely with his History of Magic studies. He wondered how you became the kind of person who wrote history books, or who researched them. He wondered how you were even supposed to know what kind of jobs there were.

“It’s all horribly biased towards pure-bloods,” Hermione ranted seriously. “They have contacts in the Ministry, and in industry and research. Their children are given so many opportunities and so much guidance!”

This made Harry, who theoretically had access to some of this guidance now through the Tonks’, feel guilty and avoidant. About the only thing he’d realised when trying to think about his future was that he was vaguely surprised he was going to have one, and that he got annoyed when other people seemed to think it was surprising that he didn’t know exactly what to do with it.

He’d thoughtlessly said as much to his mind-healer over the summer.

“Why are you surprised that you might have a future, Harry?” the man had asked.

Given that the scar on Harry’s throat was still reddened, a sarcastic answer hovered on his tongue. If he counted life-threatening situations on his fingers, it was multiple every year since he was eleven. Most of those had been people directly trying to kill him. If you added in some of the near misses with the Dursleys, he would run out of toes too.

“It just isn’t something I ever really thought about,” he said finally.

“What isn’t?”

“I don’t know. The future.”

When Harry had been younger, he’d tried to run away from the Dursleys. He got much further when he was eight than when he was six, but the fundamental realisation that he didn’t even have the money to pay for a train ticket or a sandwich had hit hard when he’d reached the station. Awful as life at the Dursley’s was, it was a roof over his head and bits of food and going to school. The spectre of Stonewall High, grim though it seemed, had been the first ray of light in suggesting a possible world without Dudley. Without the Dursleys. But he’d never really got to think about what that might look like before he was swept away to Hogwarts, where he’d been so wrapped up in everything going on he hadn’t really stopped to think that one day he would no longer be at Hogwarts. He would have to make a life for himself. That was terrifying.  

“It’s terrifying,” he said out loud.

*

He figured he’d try and do well in his studies, and see what he ended up liking, and work it out from there. His mind healer and the Tonks’ didn’t seem to have a problem with that, and he thought maybe he’d like to travel a bit after finishing Hogwarts anyway. So all he had to do was make it through the next two years.

Weirdly, one of the most stressful things in his sixth year ended up being Quidditch. After half a year, he already knew he was going to give up being captain for next year. It took too much time, and although he enjoyed the flying, there was way too much wrangling of his teammates. Worse than last year, because they’d had a few shuffles in the team. Why did people have to be so frustrating?

He wrote about this to Voldemort, who was surprisingly empathetic in his reply. Harry tucked the letter away after it was delivered at breakfast, and read it behind his bed hangings that night after it had burned a hole in his pocket all day.

It sounded like both the Minister for Magic and the Dark Lord had to deal with a lot of people management.

“Huh,” Harry said.

Voldemort included suggestions. None of them involved torturing people.

In their next practice, Harry made the more experienced of the beaters responsible for the other one. He took Katie and Jimmy off to one side, and said that, whatever beef they had with each other, they needed to keep it off the pitch or he would replace both of them. When Ginny kept missing practices, he sat down with her and asked what was wrong, and stayed quiet until she told him. It wasn’t something he could fix, and she didn’t ask him to. But she came back to practice with renewed determination.

Thanks, he wrote back to Voldemort. Now I can go back to worrying about what to do after Hogwarts.

*

The end of year examinations came, and this year’s were supposed to be a good indication of how on track you were for your NEWTs. Hermione, predictably, turned into the strange, frantic werecreature that only emerged in the light of exams, and, as always, Ron and Harry were equally irritated by and grateful for her help. Neville had been absorbed into their little group in the last year or two, which Harry was secretly very grateful for because now that Ron and Hermione were dating it would have been incredibly uncomfortable to be the third wheel.

Also, Harry had met Neville’s gran a few times now, over the summers, and wow, he was glad for the choices he’d made about where to stay. He half wanted to adopt Neville away from there too. Neville seemed to love his gran though, and Harry had seen her be softer to him sometimes, so he figured they were okay. She just seemed to make a habit of putting him down in company, which...

“Tell her it makes you uncomfortable,” Harry insisted as they got off the train at King’s Cross. “Hell, tell her it makes me uncomfortable.”

Neville laughed but shook his head. And because he didn’t say anything to his gran, one day when Harry was visiting them, Harry did.

*

By the time Harry reached his seventeenth birthday, no one had tried to kill him in a whole year. He supposed that statistic might not be surprising in the case of anyone else he knew, but in Harry’s life since starting Hogwarts it was fairly groundbreaking.

Ted baked a chocolate cake and decorated it like a castle, and later Harry and his friends went out for dinner and drinks in Diagon Alley with the strict instruction not to get home too late and to be (reasonably) sensible. Then they all slept over in Harry’s bedroom after trying some of the very expensive firewhiskey Sirius had slipped Harry; five of them on the floor and three squashed in the bed.

Harry got a present from Voldemort. It was a pair of cufflinks for robes, the kind that were charmed to keep your sleeves out of the way while casting. They were small ouroboros snakes, smooth and simple.

“Who are they from? Ted had teased when he saw them during Harry’s birthday breakfast. “A secret admirer?”

And wow, there had never been a more awkward misread of a situation.

*

Harry’s seventh year was stressful. He, along with all the lower years, had always viewed the beleaguered upper years with a sense of superiority that surely it couldn’t be that bad.

It was that bad. Several of his classmates seemed to be having prolonged nervous breakdowns. Harry briefly thought Hermione would be one of them, but she emerged from an early, brief bout of anxiety to became unstoppable. She was in her element. And she was dragging Ron and Harry and Neville and Parvati with her, kicking and screaming. None of them were irritated this year. Just grateful.

The casual eye that Harry kept on new policies going through the Wizengamot noticed a couple more major changes this year. Last year it had been that the families of all Muggle-borns were to be contacted and ‘onboarded’ when the child was a year old, which tended to be the earliest incidences of accidental magic. The year before that it had been the preservation of wizarding culture, and also something to do with ley lines.

There were some dissenting opinions in the newspapers, but people in general seemed to think these changes were a good thing. That the Minister for Magic was doing a good job, especially given that he’d had to take over at short notice when his predecessor abandoned ship. People at school thought the same.

Hermione thought the same. This bills this year, that Voldemort had been secretive about in his letters, were ones condemning Azkaban, increasing the rights of werewolves, and expanding options for squib employment.

“This is revolutionising the Wizarding World,” she gushed. “I didn’t realise when we started here how stagnant things have been!”

“Me neither,” Harry muttered. He turned to the second page of the day’s newspaper, and saw that a new Ministry funded fellowship for magical research had been approved. A few weeks ago it had been Gringotts partnering with new businesses to… something. Harry hadn’t read about it in that much depth, but Hermione had been excited. And all of the papers were talking excitedly about the construction of two new wizarding villages: one in Kent and one in Wales.

“This is a brilliant time to be graduating! There’s so much change, and we’ll be able to get in and help with the policies, and make amendments, and there are going to be so many more opportunities, Harry! I’m so glad Fudge left!”

Harry hesitated, because this felt like a step too far. Hermione loved the new Minister because of the outward changes he was making, without knowing he was Voldemort. Harry knew. “Me too,” he sighed.

It really seemed like things were better with Voldemort in charge.

The mind boggled.

*

It was three weeks until his NEWTs, and Harry tapped the letter he’d received at breakfast against the side of his glass of pumpkin juice.

“Who’s it from?” Ron asked with his mouth full.

“Ronald, honestly,” Hermione scolded. Harry didn’t have the heart to tell her she sounded like Mrs Weasley.

Ron swallowed his mouthful. “Who’s it from?”

“Sirius.” Harry didn’t want to open it. “I kind of don’t want to open it,” he admitted.

“Oh, Harry,” Hermione said softly.

His relationship with Sirius was… difficult. It had been hard for him to admit it, but Voldemort had been spot on with his original assessment. Sirius wasn’t quite… all there. Interacting with him was like talking to a perpetual fifteen-year-old; like the best efforts of the mind healers hadn’t been able to unfreeze Sirius’s mind from a time when he’d thought about nothing but pranking people and hating everyone he deemed dark.

Sirius gave him amazing gifts, and made a fuss of him, and made him feel connected to his parents. But Sirius also got angry at him over things without Harry knowing why, and more than once hadn’t shown up when they’d arranged to meet over the summers. Sirius seemed to think Harry had let everyone down by giving up Quidditch captain, for caring about his schoolwork, for being interested in politics. For not pulling pranks on people all the time, or hexing Slytherins all the time.

Whenever Harry saw Sirius, he had to listen to him rant about how evil the Blacks were. And how evil Slytherins were, and Snape in particular. Which, aside from making Harry feel like he was only there as a sound-absorbing piece of furniture, also made him feel not-great about Sirius’s opinions.

But, most alarmingly, Sirius was convinced that Voldemort and Wormtail were still out there, plotting against him and Harry. Some of the stuff he came up with sounded a bit… deranged? Even though he was ironically correct that Voldemort was alive. Harry couldn’t outwardly agree with him about any of it and felt like he could see Sirius getting ever more insecure and doubtful of him. Sirius was already holding a massive grudge that Harry was living with someone else instead of him (though he luckily didn’t hate Mrs Tonks since she’d broken away from the Blacks too). He didn’t even know that it was actually a choice Harry had made - he thought it had been imposed by the Ministry - but he was still angry that Harry hadn’t fought hard enough to stay with him to change their minds.

Harry had kind of… stopped wanting to see him. He missed the days when he’d been excited to see Sirius, and not worried what his Godfather would say or do.

“You don’t have to, you know,” said Hermione, jolting him out of his thoughts.

“What?”

“You don’t have to open it,” she repeated patiently. “Leave it until after your exams; you don’t need the distraction.”

Next to them on the other side, Neville quietly ate his breakfast and didn’t comment. He didn’t know quite as much about Harry’s life as Hermione and Ron did, and he didn’t always seem confident in speaking up. But, when Harry glanced at him, he gave a little nod, and Harry suddenly remembered the advice he’d given Neville about his gran.

“Okay,” he said after a minute. He set the letter down. “You’re right. After exams.”

*

The night before their last exam, they all burned their colour coded study guides with a sense of ritual importance, and the girls tearily said that they had to all promise to love each other no matter what their results were. The boys let themselves be hugged slightly awkwardly, and even more awkwardly agreed that yes, they would still love their friends no matter the results.

“Girls are weird,” Ron muttered quietly out of the side of his mouth.

“Yeah,” Harry breathed. Neville gave a subtle nod. Dean shrugged.

*

Once all their exams were finished, the seventh years proceeded to party and get quite drunk.

This was an event that transcended house boundaries, so they held it in a room on the seventh floor, which Harry and Hermione had been told about by the Weasley twins last summer. The room could change into anything you wanted, and what they wanted was a room with lots of floor space and some comfortable seating and a lot of tables to put food and booze on. And music.

The house elves brought giant platters of finger food: samosas and sausage rolls and pasties and cupcakes and swissrolls.

The booze was smuggled in from various people’s older siblings and parents. Everyone was very hush hush about it, thinking it was a great secret, but Harry had overheard Professor Vector telling Professor Sprout the date of the party and that they would need to set up patrols to rescue students who had over imbibed.

With the strange sense of distance that came from realising that people outside of your bubble had whole lives of their own, Harry comprehended that this event probably happened every year. He’d even seen some of the seventh years massively hungover in the past, now that he thought about it. And the teachers apparently knew about it every year, and just kept an eye out for them.

So yeah, quite drunk. But not too drunk, because the idea of being picked up by a teacher because he was too wasted to successfully make it back to the common room was not a desirable one.

The next morning, they drank tea and pumpkin juice and moaned pitifully. The pumpkin juice helped, somehow, rather than increasing the nausea the way Harry had half expected. He wondered if one of the teachers had spiked it with a hangover cure.

“Kill me now,” Ron groaned. “I’m not going to make it.”

Parvati rested her head on the table, next to a quietly suffering Hermione. Neville, who hadn’t drunk anything, happily read his book.

After breakfast, Harry went walking on the grounds, telling the others he needed fresh air to clear his head but fancied being alone. He left them in a pile on the common room sofas and circuited idly round the back of the Quidditch pitch, then over to the edge of the Forbidden Forest. Sometimes you could see the centaur herd, if you were lucky. Or thestrals, or any number of magical creatures. They’d done a fair amount of field trips into the outer layers during his Care of Magical Creatures studies at NEWT level.

He'd never seen another unicorn. But then, he’d never seen another acromantula, either, and that was a trade-off he was willing to live with.

I’ll miss Hogwarts, he thought. It had been such a huge part of his life, and there was a hollow sense of loss at the thought of not walking these corridors every day, of not seeing these grounds again.

“Goodbye,” he said to the forest.

*

That was the moment when Sirius Black kidnapped him.

*

Chapter Text

“What the fuck?” Harry said dazedly, trying to lift his arms and finding them tied to a chair. He jerked his head as far to the side as he could, but there was a rope over his neck, and it was pressing on the scar where his throat had been slit.

It was hard to breathe.

“Sirius,” Harry said, quietly freaking out. “Sirius, let me go.”

Sirius paced back and forth in front of him, muttering to himself and shaking his shaggy black head of hair. It was not a sight to inspire confidence in someone tied to a chair.

“Sirius,” Harry tried again.

The rope pressed against his throat when he swallowed.

Harry thought this was one of the rooms at Grimmauld Place, but he didn’t recognise it. It seemed largely bare of furniture aside from the antique chair Harry was bound in and the usual weird cabinets and pictures on the walls. From the dust and cobwebs and weird smell, it wasn’t a room that was usually used.

“It’ll be alright, Harry.” Sirius didn’t look at him, just kept pacing erratically. “Don’t you worry; it will be alright.”

“That’s good, Sirius,” Harry managed. He hated himself now, for not reading that letter. Maybe it had contained some indication that Sirius desperately needed help. He could feel his wand in his pocket, trapped between his thigh and the side of the chair, but he couldn’t reach it with his hands tied. “Can you untie these ropes so that we can talk about it?”

“No,” Sirius said, shaking his head again. He walked back and forth, back and forth. “I can’t do that Harry, I’m sorry.”

“Is this about your letter? I’m sorry I haven’t replied yet, but we’ve had exams and-“

“It’s not your fault, Harry. They’ve got to you.”

Harry’s mouth went dry. Sometimes Sirius said weird things like this, like there was a giant conspiracy that only Sirius knew about. And the things Sirius said about it didn’t seem to line up with what was actually going on, so Sirius was just… was just…

“Who’s they, Padfoot? No one’s got to me, I promise. Let’s talk about this. Is Remus here? Healer Castor?” He waited a second, then yelled, “Remus! Healer Castor?”

There was a moment of silence. Sirius barked a laugh.

“Hey,” Sirius said, softening, smiling. “Hey, I’m sorry I scared you. It’s okay, Harry.”

Relief swept over Harry, so strong it left him weak and shaky in the wake of it.

Fuck.

A prank. This was just a prank. Taking Harry right after his exams was exactly the kind of thing Sirius would do – this must be some kind of weird hazing. In a minute Sirius would break out the firewhiskey.

Sirius wouldn’t hurt him. He didn’t know why he’d been so scared.

“Very funny, Sirius.” He forced his voice light. Angering Sirius by telling him his pranks were incredibly shitty wasn’t the greatest idea until after Harry was untied. “You couldn’t have waited until a morning when I didn’t have a hangover?”

“A hangover?” Sirius blinked, surprised. “Look at you, little Prongs. All grown up.” His eyes scanned over Harry, and Harry thought he seemed… wrong somehow. Not like someone delighted at having pulled off a prank.

“Um, can you give me a hand here?” Harry asked again. “This kind of hurts, Sirius. My ne-”

“I know it does, kiddo.” Sirius’s voice dropped, and he ran a hand over his face. “I know it does. I still can’t believe it. To think it’s been hurting you your whole life. You even told me, and I-“

“Sirius,” Harry interrupted, nerves rising again. “Sirius, I mean the ropes hurt. I get that you thought it was funny, but please untie them?”

Sirius did not untie him.

Sirius sat down cross legged on a threadbare rug on the floor and stared up at him intently. “You look the same,” he said wistfully.

Harry swallowed again, the press of the rope making it hard to talk. “Well, uh, I haven’t grown that much, but-“

“So like James.” Oh Merlin. “My best friend’s son. Little Harry.”

“Have you talked to Healer Castor lately?” Harry asked carefully.

There had been a schedule, the first year after Sirius was pardoned. Now it was up to Sirius to arrange visits, when he felt they were needed, but Sirius had mentioned once or twice that it was all a bunch of gnomecrap and there was no point in going.

“He can’t help,” Sirius said impatiently. “But don’t worry, Harry, I never told him.”

“That’s, uh, that’s good, Sirius. Maybe. Actually, maybe you should talk to him about whatever it is. How about I floo him for you?”

“Oh, Harry.” There was a sudden shine to Sirius’s eyes, and he wiped at them roughly with the back of his wrist. “Sometimes you…”

They stared at each other for a minute.

“Not a prank?” Harry summoned the courage to ask. Knowing for certain would make everything so much worse.

Sirius gave him a shaken smile.

Not a prank.

“Sirius,” Harry said, a cold grip of fear closing around him. “Sirius, you have to let me go. My friends are waiting for me. Andromeda and Ted are expecting me home. I have to, uh, I have to go prank some Slytherins, and-“

“I’m sorry it had to be this way, Harry.”

Which, oh gods. “It doesn’t have to be this way, Sirius,” Harry said quickly. “It’s okay. We’re okay. Why don’t you just let me-”

Sirius got slowly to his feet, his shape large and threatening like it had never seemed before. His black shaggy hair hung limp in front of his face.

“I have to get you free of them, Harry.”

“No, Sirius, no.”

“It’s alright, Harry. It’s alright.” His Godfather was almost crooning now, coming closer to hush him.

Harry jerked backwards, but there was nowhere to go, and he choked on words that he knew would only make the situation worse.

“Let me go,” he asked again. Whispered.

Sirius came in closer, closer, face only inches away from Harry’s and staring at him fixed and mad. Mad. “I can’t do that, Harry,” he said. “I can’t do that.”

Harry roared, fear flooding into anger, and slammed his whole body forward. His forehead cracked into Sirius’s, and Sirius’s hands came tight and bruising on his arms to hold him down.

“Let me go, you asshole,” Harry yelled. “Let me go.” He tried to kick, but barely loosened the rope. The coil around his neck seemed to constrict as he struggled for air. He kicked again.

Sirius backed off a few steps, back to tragic sadness again. “It’s the only way, Harry. Dumbledore knew,” he said, and the cold inside Harry turned to ice because Dumbledore knew what? Dumbledore knew something that had someone try and assassinate him when he was fifteen, that had Sirius kidnap him, that had Voldemort protect him?

“Incantus,” he whispered under his breath, and the portkey in his earring pulled him from the chaotic, mouldering house they were in and dropped him in a heap in his green and ivory room.

*

Harry floated in the bathtub, feeling oddly numb.

He thought he should be angry with Sirius. He thought he should be worried about what the hell was happening in his life. He thought he should probably feel guilty for not sending an owl to his friends immediately, in case they were worried when they couldn’t find him.

Harry just floated.

At some point Voldemort arrived, and Harry blinked up at him without really caring that the Dark Lord had found him in the bath.

“Harry,” he said, but Harry closed his eyes.

Surprisingly gentle hands guided him to sit on the step in the corner of the triangular bath.

For a while, Harry’s eyes focused on tracing the pattern of the grey tiles at the other end of the tub. The same path of the gaps between tiles again, again, rhythmic and soothing. At some point he broke the pattern, and then he could suddenly hear the sound of water sloshing, of Voldemort’s quiet murmurs. He could smell herbal shampoo.

His breath hitched.

Voldemort continued massaging shampoo through Harry’s hair, not in any hurry, carefully going over each area of scalp as though memorising the shape of it.

Harry’s breath hitched again. Silently, he began to cry.

The quiet murmurs didn’t cease, and the fingers only stopped their massage to turn into smooth carding motions. Fingertips brushed over the back of Harry’s neck and against the tops of his ears.

“-and I shall bring death to your enemies, and suffering, and Nagini shall visit a thousand strikes upon them and a thousand more, until they beg for oblivion. And I shall-“

“Stop,” Harry croaked, because that was absolutely the weirdest thing to tune back in to. Had Voldemort been reciting all the ways he would murder people since he’d arrived?

“Harry?” Voldemort’s fingers stilled on his head, and after a moment he shielded Harry’s eyes and murmured “Aguamenti.”

A wave of warm water sloshed down over Harry’s head, thankfully directed down and back, and Voldemort’s hand kept the worst of the shampoo out of his eyes. Squinting them open again, he turned to find Voldemort scrutinising him.

“That was my worst ever kidnapping,” Harry judged seriously. “Much worse than when you had me cut open in a graveyard.”

“I see.”

Harry saw Voldemort’s eyes drop to his neck, his arms. He felt a sudden urge to cover the marks that were probably there.

Voldemort merely said, “I will fetch you a salve.”

This provided enough time to dry himself off, and then to realise there were no clothes in the bathroom to get dressed in. Experiencing a sudden crisis at this, despite the fact that Voldemort had already seen him very naked in the bath, Harry wrapped the wet towel around his hips and poked his head around the bathroom door.

No Voldemort.

Well, alright then.

He’d just made it to the wardrobe, and opened it to find robes which he abruptly thought must be too small for him now, when Voldemort apparated back in.

“You should wear nightclothes,” Voldemort commented after seeing what he was doing. “You will be going to bed.”

“I don’t need to; I’m fine,” Harry said stubbornly, crossing his arms over his chest. This had the unfortunate side effect of making his towel start to slip, so he grabbed the top of it desperately and went bright red.

Voldemort’s lips twitched.

Harry trailed him to the chest of drawers and tried to reach out and knock away the nightrobe that Voldemort fished out and started to resize. “Really, really fine,” he emphasized.

Nightshirt expanded to accommodate three years of growth, Voldemort handed it over.

“I shall write to your parents and fri- No, you shall write to your parents and friends,” Voldemort self-corrected. “You will explain that you are safely in Ministry custody.” Which Harry supposed was technically true.

Giving resistance up as a lost cause, Harry dropped the long, dark grey nightshirt over his head, threading his arms through it, and then let the towel fall from underneath.

“Here.” Voldemort drew the collar of the shirt down to each side as he carefully smeared whatever concoction he’d found – the cleansing scent of mint filled Harry’s nostrils - across the abraded skin on Harry’s throat.

His long fingers were gentle on Harry’s skin. For some stupid reason this made tears rise again, and Harry held his breath to try and keep them in.

Voldemort’s fingers stilled.

“You will tell me what has occurred.”

Harry stared up at him. His breath was a little ragged when he let it out, and he held the next breath too.

“Who has hurt you, Harry?”

And oh.

“You don’t know?” Harry’s voice shook a little on the words, on the burden that dropped on him as he understood the weight of them. “You don’t know what happened?”

Voldemort was scanning his face, and the man seemed calm, seemed reasonable, but there was a darkness there that-

“I was alerted when you arrived here,” Voldemort said. “I came as soon as I could.”

Perhaps he had thought Harry injured. Dying. And instead he’d found Harry in the bath, spacing out like an idiot. Harry flushed.

“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m sorry – I didn’t know the spell would tell you I was here.” Although of course it would, and Voldemort must have told him that, at the time.

“You are stalling.” Voldemort’s head tilted, assessing.

“I, uh – It was an accident,” Harry blurted instinctively. Voldemort’s gaze dropped to his neck, where the applied salve was soothing, cooling. Where Harry could still feel the imagined pressure of the rope.

“You are lying.” Voldemort smoothed more salve into the other side of his neck, tipping his head for access.

“I don’t – I can’t…” What had Harry said already – anything that would give Sirius away? Something about being kidnapped he thought, but nothing else. Nothing about his Godfather.

As though intuiting the root of Harry’s reluctance, Voldemort stated, “It is not your responsibility to decide whether or not to tell me. Or to decide what consequences will come to the person responsible. You will tell me what has happened.”

Harry breathed shallowly for a moment.

If he told Voldemort…

Sirius’s joyful face when they’d gone flying together the summer before last. The presents he sent. The way he tousled Harry’s hair and then laughed when Harry tried to slap his hand away. All of that would be gone if Harry said something.

Harry would never have those things again.

A tear fell, gliding cool down one cheek.

Voldemort was quiet, watching him.

Harry forced himself to try and think ahead. What could he do? Sirius was… Sirius was not okay. He would probably try to do it again. Do worse. Harry didn’t think that he could somehow secretly get Sirius confined to the hospital with mind healers. Guiltily, he thought that what he actually wanted was for Sirius to leave the country and not come back. So that Harry didn’t have to deal with him ever again.

Harry didn’t want to deal with this. He maybe… shouldn’t have to deal with this.

It is not your responsibility to decide, Voldemort had said.

“It was-“ he managed to get out, before he cut himself off. Speaking even that much – the intention of betrayal – was enough to send him flinching back from where Voldemort’s hand still rested on his collarbone.

Voldemort stayed as he was, all of his focus on Harry. Waiting. Calm. Implacable.

Harry forced a breath out. Looked down at the floor. “Sirius,” he said, guilt and resignation swamping him. “It was Sirius. He said-“ and this the most damning of all “-something about Dumbledore telling him something.”

“Did he?” Controlled. Ominous. “Did he tell you what?”

Harry shook his head, damp strands of hair flopping over his eyes.

Voldemort’s hand entered Harry’s vision, knuckles catching under his chin to tilt it up. Harry could smell again the mint of the cream he’d been applying. He tried to focus on that, but, as he stared into Voldemort’s eyes, his mind slipped back to the image of Sirius saying ‘Dumbledore knew.’

“I can’t stop thinking about it,” Harry mumbled, and Voldemort blinked and glanced away.

“Let me finish this.” Voldemort scooped more salve from the container and waited patiently. Harry shuffled a little closer again and tugged up his sleeves when indicated so that it could be applied to Harry’s upper arms – Harry wasn’t sure if those marks were from the ropes or Sirius grabbing him. “Are you injured anywhere else?”

Harry shook his head. “Thanks.”

The pot of salve and the remains on Voldemort’s fingers magically vanished.

“You have had a long day,” Voldemort said. “A very short letter, one that can be copied, shall suffice.”

His hand guided Harry to the desk, where Harry struggled to write a couple of lines. Sirius kidnapped me but I’m fine. Ministry has me. Need to rest for a bit. Then the hand guided him up and towards the bed.

Harry considered protesting again, but he was so tired.

“Okay,” he grumbled, and moved to crawl under the soft green covers. Voldemort followed him to stand beside it as he settled, and then held out a hand that one of the breakfast chairs zoomed obligingly into.

The chair was placed at the bedside. Voldemort gracefully sat down in the chair.

“You don’t have to stay,” muttered Harry, not sure if he was more embarrassed or weirdly grateful at the thought.

“And yet that is what I shall do.” A sheaf of papers popped into existence on the bedside table. That was oddly reassuring. Voldemort wouldn’t be wasting his time, staying here; there were things he could do.

Harry shuffled down a bit until his head was better positioned on his pillow. The bath had helped, a lot, but, despite the foggy exhaustion of his brain, his body was still thrumming, tense. Like something was going to happen any second.

“What if he comes here?” Harry asked. He felt foolish as he said it, but the idea pressed on his mind.

“He will not come here.” Voldemort’s red eyes fixed on Harry’s, and the absolutely surety in them bolstered him a little. “He does not know where you are. He does not know of the existence of this place. He would be unable to enter the wards that are here. As soon as I communicate with the Aurors, he will be arrested immediately.” Monitoring Harry’s expression, he added, “But if, despite all of those factors, he did make it into this room, I would very forcibly remove him.”

Harry turned on his side towards Voldemort, bringing his hands up to rest in front of his face. The silver threading on the cuffs caught his eyes, and they started to sweep over the pattern of it. Again. Again. He was jolted from his contemplation when a hand came to rest gently on his damp head, laying quiet and heavy on him. He breathed in.

“Sleep now, Harry.” And, feeling somehow warm again, Harry did.

*

Chapter Text

“Well, you were right, weird things do happen to you sometimes,” Ted acknowledged humorously when they came to pick him up from St Mungo’s the next day. Harry had woken up there this morning with the ghost of Voldemort’s hand on his head. He’d been disoriented enough to perfectly fit in with the new memories of the staff on the ward, who had cooed over him and given him extra breakfast.

“Yeah,” Harry replied, not quite able to look either of them in the face. If his own Godfather – if Sirius – had treated Harry like that, there must be something really wrong with him.

“A bit too weird this time, eh?” Ted asked more quietly. Harry shrugged. “I’m sorry, kid.”

“I just-“ the words wouldn’t come, and Harry didn’t know what they would be if they did.

“Come on,” said Mrs Tonks. Andromeda. “Let’s get you out of here and have a quiet few days. I could use your help with baking for the new town opening.”

“Quiet, she says,” joked Ted. Harry managed a half smile.

He didn’t want to ruin what they were trying to do, but… “Is Sirius…?” he asked.

“He was arrested yesterday,” Andromeda said seriously. “We had a personal visit from the Head Auror to tell us about what had happened to you. They said they found him still at Grimmauld Place. Apparently, he was…”

The two adults exchanged a glance.

“Crazy,” Harry said softly, unhappily. “They said he was crazy, right?”

Andromeda sighed, and Ted reached over and took her hand. “We know you’ve mentioned you thought he was struggling before, Harry.” Honestly, Harry had mostly covered it up. He’d dropped a few uncertain ‘I think maybe Sirius is tired/stressed’ comments if his Godfather didn’t show up for something, or if Harry came back from his house visibly upset. He thought he’d been discreet though.

“He was… Yesterday he…” Even after a few moments, the words wouldn’t come, and Harry shook his head.

“Alright, love, let’s get you home.”

Ted gathered the dismissal paperwork and daily potions they’d been given to ensure Harry’s throat wasn’t aggravated.

“What will happen to him?” Harry asked as they stood in line for the floo.

“Sirius?” There was a moment’s silence, and he guessed that the two of them were exchanging looks behind his head. Then, “I cannot emphasize the degree to which that is not your problem,” Andromeda said firmly.

*

Harry was pretty good at baking.

*

“Harry!” cried Hermione as she came through the floo, as he saw a red head start to duck in behind her. She opened her arms and he awkwardly gave in to her hug, and felt tears prick his eyes again.

*

There was no letter from Voldemort, not after two days, or three, or four.

“Should I write to him, Hedwig?” He stroked her neck with the back of one finger. “I thought he would-“

*

The new wizarding town in Kent – Wiggenwill – didn’t look particularly new when the portkey deposited the family there for the grand opening fete. The cobbled streets were wonky, the trees lining them already gnarled with age, the buildings had ‘character’ and the freshly painted shop signs swinging in the wind were the only sign that the whole place had been built from scratch in the last month or two.

Harry wondered if the Minister for Magic would come to a new town opening.

“I see the stalls,” Andromeda said, distracted. “Harry, dear, we’re three B, if you could drop the apple pies there.”

Harry had also learned all kinds of tips for baking cakes and tarts and puff pastry, but Andromeda had mainly set him to chopping apples the last few days like they would stave off the apocalypse. Harry suspected she thought it would take his mind off things.

“Ted, could you-“

“I promised I’d help with the kegs, Andi, but I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

“Nymphadora, please-“

“Harry!” He turned, and saw Ginny striding towards him, Luna and Neville in tow.

“Hey guys! Can you help me carry the pies?”

*

“The mail’s here!”

Harry lightly jumped down the last four steps of the stairs and his socks skidded on the tiled floor as he swung into the sunny kitchen. “Morning!”

“Good morning to you too! Here you are – this one, this one, and, oh, this has the Ministry seal on it…”

*

“Why did he do it?” Harry asked quietly.

It was a week after he’d been kidnapped. Harry had arrived for a follow-up interview at the Ministry and been led to a small, cramped office full of boxes. He’d been twitchy with nerves, no matter that Andromeda and Ted seemed to think it was all routine and were glad that the case was being taken seriously. Harry had wished the whole thing would just get left alone, since he hadn’t been sure what kind of questions he’d be asked, or what Sirius might have said to the Aurors when questioned.

He’d expected some overworked and dismissive Auror, or worse, a fawning one, but instead Voldemort himself had slid in surreptitiously a minute later.

It had been weird seeing Voldemort at a distance at the fete in his glamour as Minister for Magic - a middle-aged man with a proper nose and eyebrows and dark hair. It was even weirder up close. It didn’t really look like him – it was just a famous face from the newspapers – which kind of creeped Harry out. His voice was the same as usual, at least.

Voldemort had arranged a secret meeting with him. Voldemort did want to see Harry. And Harry needed to ask so badly – had cursed himself for not asking at the time.

Why did Sirius do it?

A few flicks of Voldemort’s wand put up what Harry guessed were some fairly hardcore privacy wards.

“What do you mean?” Voldemort asked, but he knew. Harry waited him out, until he crossed his arms across his chest and inclined his head. “It is not yet information I wish for you to have.”

That was… not okay. “It’s about me, though. People keep trying to…” Now it was Harry that paused, and Voldemort that waited. Harry forced the sentence out. “People keep trying to kill me for it.”

Because Harry thought he’d seen that, in Sirius’s eyes.

Sirius would have been sorry. He would have been sad. But Harry jerked awake at night dreaming of Sirius killing him.

“Yes,” Voldemort said.

Trying to keep calm. “When will it be information you want me to have?”

Voldemort’s eyes roamed over Harry’s face. “I am unsure.”

“It’s… This…” Harry started again. “You – you said before that this secret wouldn’t cause me any more harm.”

“My lack of foresight was regrettable.” Voldemort dipped his head, breathing out a sigh. “I did not anticipate the actions of Sirius Black. I was aware of his instability but, bizarre as it may seem, my vision was clouded by an assumption that his sentiment bound him to you. And, more pertinently, an assumption that Dumbledore would not have been so imbecilic to recruit him to his cause. But I suppose he was… desperate.”

A miserable knot tangled in Harry’s stomach. Voldemort hadn’t investigated Sirius further because he’d assumed that Sirius wouldn’t hurt Harry. Harry had thought that too. He stared at the nearest pile of boxes. “Right,” he finally said.

Apparently feeling clarification was sought, Voldemort added, “In those first few days after your initial disappearance, before his death, I conclude Dumbledore laid contingency plans. I do not know whether he recruited Sirius Black then, and it has taken this long for him to act upon instructions, or if there was instead a delayed message or-“

“I don’t-“ Harry interrupted. Swallowed. Wished he hadn’t said anything. Wished, briefly, that he wasn’t here after all.

What was better? To think that his Godfather had been planning something for years, all of those times that Harry had spent with him? But that he’d maybe resisted it that long, that he’d maybe cared enough to-

He cut off his own thoughts ruthlessly. “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

Brown eyes narrowed. “I believe it was you that asked the question.”

“But you aren’t going to tell me why he did it! So what’s the point!”

“We were discussing your safety.”

“Right, because-“ Harry swallowed it down. Swallowed everything down. Stood shaking, hands fisted at his sides. “Nevermind.”

After a moment, Voldemort leaned back on the overcrowded desk behind him. His pose was casual, but his gaze was sharp. “You are not angry with me, Harry.”

“Yes, I am,” snapped Harry.

“Why?”

“Because you’re keeping secrets about my life, and Sirius-“ He gulped back the words again. “Fuck,” he whispered.

Because no, it didn’t matter whether Voldemort told him whatever this stupid secret was. Even if Harry had known what it was, how could he have ever expected Sirius to go crazy like that? He wouldn’t have been prepared for it, and he probably couldn’t have done anything to stop it. It’s not like Sirius had confided in him what it was, or how to fix things, or-

And the thought unexpectedly hit him like a bus: Sirius had known, whatever this thing was, and he hadn’t told Harry.

“Fuck,” he said again.

Voldemort rose, and took a few steps closer.

“Why are you angry, Harry?”

Harry shook his head.

Closer still. “Why-“

“I don’t know!” Harry exploded, hands coming up as he backed away two steps into the back of the cramped office, cornered between tall stacks of boxes. “I don’t know.”

But he did know.

“Fuck,” he said again, and drew in a ragged breath.

Whatever this secret was, it had been more important to Sirius than Harry.

Harry wasn’t important.

Another shuddering breath. Another. Voldemort edged forward again, observing Harry carefully.

Sirius hadn’t really loved him.

Harry breathed into the pain of it. Out the other side. It wasn’t true. It wasn’t. Sirius could love him and still act like a crazy person. Sirius just hadn’t loved him… enough.

“I’m sorry,” he said after a moment.

“Mmm.” Voldemort caught him under the chin, tipping his face up. Harry kept looking down for an embarrassed few seconds before meeting his eyes. “Betrayal is not an easy thing to recover from.”

He flinched. It was betrayal. Sirius had taken him and tied him up in a fucking chair. Sirius had never tried to talk to him about the problem. Sirius hadn’t cared about him enough to- “He didn’t betray me,” Harry’s mouth said. “He thought he was trying to – he was confused. Messed up.”

The grip on his chin tightened a little. Harry averted his eyes, staring fixedly at a poster on the far wall. Wellington’s wizarding wand holsters. Premium magical leather.

“And does that negate the consequences of his actions?”

“Does it negate the consequences of yours?” Harry scorned.

Voldemort moved a little closer, dark robes swallowing most of Harry’s view, and if he glanced up the strange, normal face would be only inches away.

“No,” Voldemort said.

That jerked Harry back to him, scanning the brown eyes for a hint of familiar red. Harry hadn’t been prepared for apparent sincerity.

“I am prepared to accept the outcome of my previous actions. To alter my course to achieve better results. To acknowledge the harm done to those unduly wronged.”

Lord Voldemort does not make mistakes, he’d once said to Harry, or something like it.

“You wronged me.” Harry’s voice came out fragile; more the words of a boy of ten than one of almost eighteen. An echo of ‘it’s not fair,’ like Harry had heard Dudley scream so many times.

“And I am making amends.” Smooth, reasonable. But it wasn’t the same, it didn’t make sense.

“Sirius isn’t going to get second chance disguised as someone else though, is he?” Harry drew back, and Voldemort let him go.

“I assume that he may indeed get a second chance, in the future, if he works for it.”

Harry licked his lips, forced his temper down. Right. It’s not like Azkaban was a thing anymore, so Sirius would be confined somewhere but not tortured by dementors. Would be given some kind of help, since he’d been listed as… insane. What was Voldemort suggesting, that in five or ten years Sirius could go back to attempting a normal life if he got better?

Voldemort had clearly referenced a parallel in their situations. As though the time between his defeat when Harry was a baby and his return in the graveyard had been some kind of punishment, of exile. Of prison. Harry supposed maybe it had been. And he guessed that Voldemort thought he had worked to overcome his exile, to get where he was. But if he was suggesting Sirius could do the same…

“You obliviated him,” Harry said, because that was the only thing that made sense. Voldemort would never leave Sirius with the potential to go free in the world if he was still a threat.

“Yes.”

“He won’t come after me again?”

“He won’t come anywhere near you.”

Which maybe sounded more extreme, and like something that Harry should have been consulted over. But inside, all Harry could feel was horribly grateful. He supposed the rest could be dealt with in the future.

Harry swallowed. “And… I mean, was it just – was Sirius… Is there anyone else?”

“All loose ends have been dealt with.” There was a finality in his tone that made Harry shiver. “Within the terms of our agreement, of course.”

“Of course,” Harry echoed, and he would have been dubious except that he thought he had a peculiarly accurate sense of when Voldemort was lying. “Have you ever broken our agreement?” he asked impulsively.

“No,” Voldemort said cooly. Not lying. “Have you?”

“No,” Harry breathed, astounded by what he’d just heard. Astounded that he believed it so easily.

He’d gradually come to understand the naivete of many of his demands in their agreement. Fourteen-year-old Harry might have been told the Unforgivables were the worst of sins. Almost-eighteen-year-old Harry knew that people could be killed, tortured and compelled in a multitude of other ways, most of which were a great deal less kind. Voldemort’s Death Eaters might be hypothetically bound from the Avada Kedavra, Imperius and Cruciatus, but for all Harry knew they eviscerated people with dark arts, blackmailed them with the lives of their children, and tortured them with potions that could melt people’s eyeballs. 

Voldemort himself, however, had agreed not to torture or kill anyone at all, and he’d just confirmed that he’d adhered to that, which was pretty huge. And there weren’t swathes of Voldemort’s political enemies turning up gutted or eyeball-less, so…

Maybe Voldemort’s current actions matched his political agenda. Maybe he’d just found that he could be equally effective without the killing and torturing. But some secret, needy voice inside Harry whispered that perhaps he’d was doing it to please Harry.

“I shall send for tea.”

*

A tea service arrived via house elf in a stiff embroidered tea towel who bowed and seemed very proud to be serving the Minister’s tea. Voldemort sat on the chair behind the desk. Harry found a stack of two boxes that felt pretty solid and perched on it.

“And how were your exams?” Voldemort asked.

They made what Harry supposed counted as small talk for a few minutes. It felt weirdly natural to tell Voldemort about the last week at Hogwarts, and Andromeda’s cakes and what had happened at the Wiggenwill town fete.

“I saw you there,” said Voldemort, and Harry warmed.

“What about you? What did you have to do?”

“Very little on the day; it was the culmination of years of paperwork. I was hemmed in by a multitude of Wizengamot members, however, who all felt the need to be self-congratulatory.” Harry made a face. “Yes, exactly.”

There was silence in the tiny office for perhaps half a minute; Harry trying to work out what to say next while Voldemort stared at him contemplatively.

“I’m going to travel,” Harry announced, when the silence got too much.

Voldemort raised an eyebrow. Harry, who was used to Voldemort not having eyebrows, watched the motion in fascination.

“Why, Harry-” Harry made a hash of mimicking Voldemort’s voice “-what are your plans now that you’ve finished your NEWTs?”

“Why, Harry,” Voldemort repeated smoothly. “What are your plans now that you have finished your NEWTs?”

“I’m going to travel.” Harry gave him a grin. “Bulgaria, maybe. Egypt. South America.”

Voldemort’s gaze was unblinking for half a minute. A phenomenon that was natural on his snake face, but unnerving on a fake-person face.

“I do not agree,” Voldemort eventually said.

“Good thing it’s not up to you,” Harry returned cheerfully. He’d got himself into this topic, and now he just needed to get through it without getting kidnapped again. “Any suggestions? China?”

“It is dangerous.”

“China?”

“Travelling.” Voldemort almost hissed the word, which again, weird with a normal face.

Then again.

It took a moment of focus, of trying to visualise a snake. It’s not like this was a skill he’d practiced. He thought of the basilisk; of the boa constrictor from the zoo when he was young.

“I want to see the world,” Harry hissed in parseltongue.

Voldemort’s eyes dilated, his gaze fixing on Harry’s mouth.

Flushing an awkward red, Harry realised he must have got it right. A feeling of triumph beat in his chest. “I want to see other places, other ways,” he hissed. And, grasping for a line of reasoning, remembering something from a letter a year previous, “It’s what you did, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Voldemort hissed back.

“Then I wish to be like you.” Because surely stroking Voldemort’s ego was a foolproof strategy.

And sure enough, Voldemort looked torn. “It is right that you have the opportunity to grow,” he hissed, musing. “But I do not want you far from me.”

“Why not?”

“Because you are-“ And then Voldemort drew back, a fleeting frown there and gone. “Oh, very clever, little snake,” he murmured in English. He contemplated Harry a moment. “You have never spoken parseltongue to me before.”

Harry shrugged. “It never came up.”

“No,” Voldemort said slowly. “And I did not think of it.”

The contemplation continued, and Harry shifted, restless. “I’ll probably leave after the summer. I’ve already been talking to Ted and Andromeda about it, over the last year. They’re-“ Harry hesitated. “They’re worried too. But I’ll be travelling with friends for at least some of it – different people in different places. It just feels… I just want-“

He didn’t know how to articulate it: this feeling that although he had always loved Hogwarts and Britain, he had also always been trapped there. At the Dursleys. In the weird cycle of events in his first few years at Hogwarts. In the relentless media attention, which, to be fair, had been slightly less oppressive in the last year or two, since a recent law placed tighter restrictions on baseless character defamation and invasions of privacy by the press. And now, after Sirius…

“When you return,” Voldemort started, jolting Harry out of his thoughts and making him grin because when you return was conceding that he was going, “I would like you to consider a position in the Ministry.”

Harry stared at him. There were lots of positions in the Ministry, of course, like Mr Weasley’s, for example, but what Voldemort presumably meant was…

“I’d be a terrible politician,” he said, astonishment making him blunter than he usually endeavoured to be these days.

“You’d certainly be an interesting one,” Voldemort mused.

“No brain to mouth filter,” Harry said, since he’d just proved that one. “Fly by the seat of my pants plans. Painfully obtuse to plots going on around me.”

“These are failings indeed,” Voldemort commented drily. “And yet I am surprised that you would regard subtlety and plotting as integral traits you would look for in a political representative.”

Harry’s surprise must have been obvious. “They aren’t!”

“Then why did you list them as detractions in your own instance? What would you look for in a politician, Harry?”

Honesty. Trustworthiness. Someone who cared about people. Someone who hadn’t always had it easy. Harry scowled at Voldemort and received a pleased smile in return.

“Obviously, many others feel as you do. You have the additional boost of fame.”

Rising, Voldemort came to stand in front of Harry and reached as though to shake hands. But, when Harry put his hand out, Voldemort instead took it between both of his and just held it in a stretched moment that made Harry’s cheeks heat with strangeness.

“When you return, then.”

*

Chapter Text

Visiting foreign countries was a shock to the system.

Harry had mostly only ever seen other places on tv, or in the holiday photos that Aunt Petunia would leave out after showing them to her friends. But actually being there felt different, in some intangible way.

He went to Greece with Neville and Hermione and saw the sea.

He hadn’t expected to be quite so moved by it. He’d seen it before, after all – a couple of times he’d been begrudgingly dragged along to the beach when he was young so that Duddikins could have fun (stay here on the towel and don’t move, boy), and the last time when his uncle had rowed them out to the hut in the middle of the sea. But standing unfettered on the rocky edges of it now, looking down into pure glimmering blues and turquoises, feeling the spray on his face-

“Feels good,” Neville said quietly, and Harry blinked as the salt from the spray made his eyes sting.

‘I feel like I’m a part of the world in a way I didn’t before. Like I was just existing in some suspended state, waiting for things to happen to me, and now-‘

Hermione told them the in-depth Muggle and magical history of every set of ruins they wandered around, and Harry and Neville quietly soaked all of it in. Neville turned out to be a genius at picking restaurants, and Harry happily put him in charge of all their meals. Hermione followed along wherever they lead, nose buried in one of the many guidebooks she pulled from her expanding bag.

They’d started on Crete, but Hermione couldn’t stay for more than a couple of weeks, so, after she took the international portkey back, Harry and Neville took a ferry to one of the smaller islands.

The next six weeks were some of the most peaceful of Harry’s life. Neville only stayed for one of them, and after he was gone Harry took to hanging out in the local taverna for much of the afternoon and evening, sitting contentedly under the pergola with its rampant pink bougainvillea. He occasionally got dragged into conversations by locals, particularly to pick sides in arguments, which led to him perfecting his translation spells. At some point, one of them took it upon himself to take Harry out and teach him how to fish.

That was Nikolaus, or later, Niko. They spent a lot of time out on his boat.

Eventually, Harry left to visit Athens. Thessaloniki. He walked the mountains that starred in myths and legends. The places where magical laws and theories had been birthed. He saw the stars more clearly than he ever had, alone amongst ancient columns, and felt as though his own life was very small.

‘Did you ever wonder what things might be like if even the smallest things had changed in our histories? If we would even exist? If I would still be myself. If we would have fought each other instead? I was-‘

After Greece was touring Egypt, where Harry tried all the things Ron and Ginny and the twins had recommended. He rode camels and saw the Muggle and magical pyramids and found little wizarding shops that were so completely different to anything they had back home. The spells were in a different language; a different alphabet. The ingredients used for potions were almost completely unfamiliar, and Harry had to use a bird of prey – an osprey - to carry his postcards to the international wizard mailing office rather than Hedwig. Harry had to go to the sorting office to find out why she kept returning his mail unsent, and was told that they accepted ospreys only. Hedwig was unimpressed. They had owls in Egypt, apparently. The Egyptians just thought he was awfully odd for thinking they might carry post.

‘Turns out the DO NOT PASS signs in the pyramids are there for a reason, but the locals were impressed that I’d managed to dodge the curses. Accidentally caused a new passageway to open up-‘

‘Ospreys really do hate me, it turns out – it wasn’t just the first one. Tarek and Seth say I just need to cultivate an affinity with them, but that seems to require some kind of blood ritual. They may have been leading me on about that, but-‘

He continued sending postcards to Ted and Andromeda, to Dora (who briefly and spontaneously came to join him for a week down the Nile), most of the Weasleys, Hermione and Luna and Neville and Parvati and Padma. Every time he stood spinning the racks of Muggle postcards (since most of his friends got a weird kick out of anything Muggle) and counted how many he would need, he ran out of fingers. It gave him a flush of happiness to have so many people that wanted to hear from him. They always wrote back, as well, when he told them he would be in the same place for a week or two.

Voldemort was the only one who did not write back.

Harry kept sending him letters and postcards anyway, because he felt oddly sure that Voldemort was pleased to receive them. Sometimes, the locket that Voldemort had given him before he left – some kind of antique engraved with a stylised S – warmed against his skin and made him imagine that Voldemort was thinking about him.

‘Sometimes I wonder if being apart from Ron and Hermione and the others means we don’t really know each other anymore. We lived in each other’s pockets for-‘

‘I was thinking about one of your old letters today; the one where you told me that any modern system of government is like-‘

As he travelled, Harry thought often of his last conversation with Voldemort. More often still of times before that – of Voldemort washing his hair in the bath. Of Voldemort gripping his chin. Of Voldemort, so obviously and for no understandable reason, caring about Harry.

He imagined stepping around a corner and bumping into Voldemort. Voldemort’s hands would come up to grasp his arms, to stop Harry from losing his balance. Voldemort would look quietly pleased to have surprised him, Harry thought. Or it would be by accident, because Voldemort would be visiting somewhere for Minister for Magic reasons, and he’d see Harry, and…

*

Harry went to India and Thailand and Sweden with a larger group: Parvati and Padma, Ron, and Susan Bones (who was friends with Parvati and asked if she could tag along). He stayed on in Sweden for quite a while by himself, revising his estimates of how long he planned to travel for. He had enough money to keep going for a while, and he missed Britain, he did, but he didn’t want to go home yet.

‘Magical elephant hybrids are insane. I had no idea this kind of magic was even possible, and-‘

‘Did you know pear cider is the default drink in Sweden? They have Citrobeer and Moosefoot, but if you just ask for a pint you get-‘

‘Sweden having a dual monarchy is really interesting. I wonder what would happen if the magical and Muggle kings and queens disagreed!’

Travels and new interests notwithstanding, Voldemort had never said anything about dissolving any part of their agreement, so Harry studied foreign political systems everywhere he travelled, both the magical and Muggle ones. They were very different, at times. He wasn’t sure why he’d subconsciously expected the rest of the world to be a carbon copy of the UK.

Usefully, the internet had happened somewhere along the way, or at least became accessible to Harry. He could go to an internet café or a library and login to msn messenger, and chat to Hermione halfway around the world! The Weasleys soon joined in, after Hermione ‘accidentally’ mentioned it to Mr Weasley at dinner, prompting endless fascination. Dean too. Sometimes they would arrange a time with Harry in advance, and a bunch of the others would visit Hermione or Ron’s house so that they could all type to Harry, in a confusing string of messages where he had no idea who had said what.

Harry could admit to himself that one of his biggest fears in leaving had been that he would be forgotten. He was almost twenty now, and hadn’t seen several of his friends in more than a year. But he hadn’t been forgotten. They were all still his friends.

*

Voldemort still hadn’t written back.

*

Harry travelled by train to the Northenmost tip of Norway where he’d coordinated to meet Hermione again, after she’d begged for a few weeks off her apprenticeship in the Ministry to join him. He’d heard from a few wizards he’d befriended in the government in Sweden about a conjoined project up here, and wanted to investigate the wizarding operations to reverse the damage to arctic sea ice.

‘Saw the Northern lights. They made me feel sad for some reason. I wonder-’

The research team recognised the name Harry Potter, and, although he was still wary of trading on his name, here he was glad it gave them an excuse to hear in depth about the giant runes being inscribed underwater on the ice itself, and the use of atmospheric wards to attempt sunlight reflection. They went out on a boat and got to see an example of the rune applications, Harry quiet with awe while Hermione almost buzzed out of her skin.

“You will tell all in Britain about this, yes?” the team leader joked as he shook Harry’s hand goodbye a week later. “We need funding. And people.”

It was a joke, but it wasn’t one too. The reminder that Harry potentially had that kind of power, that kind of sway over people’s opinions, was an uncomfortable one. Hermione was sympathetic, but obviously didn’t understand why he wouldn’t use any power he had to champion important causes. And she had a list of those that was taller than she was.

Harry went to Brazil, because he’d had that in his head since he was a kid and realised that such faraway places existed. To Australia, because the magical creatures there were absolutely wild. He sent odd little drawings of them to his friends. To Voldemort.

‘I wanted to run away when I was a child. To Brazil, at one point. I had no idea how far away it was. Maybe I could –‘

‘I miss my friends. I feel guilty that I don’t miss them more. I feel like, now I’m on my own, I don’t want to go back to some of the ways things were. Maybe I don’t have to. Maybe it would be okay to tell them when they do things that make me –‘

Harry rather thought, if someone asked him what he wanted to do right now, it would be to work with magical beasts somehow. To be like Charlie Weasley, and work with dragons.

He sent Charlie a letter, asking how he’d got into his position.

He thought about where he wanted to go next.

*

He returned to the UK the spring after his twentieth birthday.

‘I lived here for eighteen years and never saw a badger. Now I’ve been back for five minutes and-‘

*

“No one would have taken an eighteen-year-old seriously in the Ministry,” Harry said to Voldemort, after an official looking letter had arrived at the Tonks’ house inviting him to meet with the Minister for Magic to discuss ‘the concerns of our country.’

They were in the Minister’s office this time, and Voldemort was now the elected Minister rather than just the stand-in after Fudge’s emergency departure. People had voted for Voldemort. Occasionally, Harry gave himself a good laugh by imagining the shock and horror if they ever found out who their Minister actually was.

“No one will take a twenty-year-old seriously either,” he added.

They had already discussed the various bills and progress that had taken place over the last two or three years, and Harry had mentioned highlights of his travels even if he’d already written about them, and asked about Voldemort’s own past experiences where their journeys might have overlapped. The noise of the street outside was gradually rising as people started getting off work.

“Why did you never write back?” Harry had asked earlier as a second round of tea had been brought in. Voldemort had wandlessly poured the tea – milk and no sugar for Harry, just as he liked it – and cast him an amused glance.

Harry was starting to get used to his fake human face a little – there were similarities in the cheekbones and the shape of the eyes, now that he looked. The echo of an older Tom Riddle from the diary. And the voice was still Voldemort. Harry had weirdly missed Voldemort’s voice, although sometimes he felt like he heard it in his dreams.

“What need was there?” Voldemort asked. “You kept writing.”

Harry snorted. “As if that would be the only reason to write to me – to make me write back. You always wrote back to me before!”

Voldemort stirred his own tea.

“You… wanted me to write to you. But you’re saying you didn’t need to write to me to get that, so you didn’t bother. Which means… there was some other reason you were writing to me before.”

Voldemort smiled.

“To influence me?” Harry thought aloud. “Or to ask specific questions? And then while I was away you didn’t need to influence me anymore? No, you specifically wanted to avoid influencing me. And any questions you had were answered by what I was writing.”

There was no reply, but Harry felt a shift in the man opposite him.

“Huh,” Harry said, having answered his own question to his satisfaction. “Just for the record, I would appreciate replies in the future so I feel slightly less like I’m talking to myself. Also, because it’s unfair that you never answered any of my questions while I was away. I nearly stopped writing, a time or two.”

This caused Voldemort to stir. “That would have been an unlooked for outcome.”

Harry waited.

“Your point of view has been noted,” Voldemort allowed. “I shall maintain equal contact in the future.”

It shouldn’t have been a surprise that there would be a future. Not after Voldemort’s actions in the past, and not after he had invited Harry here so soon after he returned to the country. But the last couple of years of no contact had allowed insecurities to creep in, and this promise to write back to Harry, to be equal, stirred a deep coil of satisfaction in him.

“Just as well,” said Harry, “I suppose you need to get back to influencing me if you want to try and get me to take a position in the Ministry.”

“Your talents would have already helped to shape many bills if you had taken up a position here.”

“Pfft,” said Harry. “No one would have taken an eighteen-year-old seriously in the Ministry. No one will take a twenty-year-old seriously either.”

“And yet your friend Miss Granger enjoys acclaim for her recent groundwork on creature rights.”

Harry’s face softened. “Hermione’s different. No one doubts that she’s clever enough to be here. People would just say I’m coasting on my fame.”

He detected irritation in the flaring of the nostrils. The tightening of the lips. He could still read Voldemort, even after two and a half years. Even with the glamour.

“No one,” Voldemort said deliberately, “would doubt that you were clever enough to be here.” And live, Harry imagined him saying in an ominous voice, and suppressed inappropriate amusement.

“Why is this so important to you, anyway?” Harry asked, curious. “That I learn about politics? That I come and work at the Ministry with you?”

Voldemort was silent for some time.

Harry hadn’t expected to stymy the Dark Lord with this question, but he could see that he had; that he had forced Voldemort into self-reflection and puzzlement.

A knock came on the door.

“Sorry,” apologized the flustered secretary as the door opened and he stuck his head and shoulders around it. He’d already reminded Voldemort of two meetings and been turned away, told to cancel them. “You are supposed to be meeting the French ambassador for dinner, Minister. Shall I-“

“Yes, yes,” Voldemort said testily with a wave of his hand. “Make my apologies.”

Voldemort had just snubbed an ambassador for him. The thought shouldn’t have brought Harry as much pleasure as it did.

“Would you care to join me for dinner at my home, Harry?”

*

Chapter Text

Voldemort had a mansion, or a manor house maybe – Harry had no idea what the difference between those was. It was all carved stonework and marble and Grecian-pillars, and Harry wasn’t at all surprised. He did wonder if this was where he had stayed, all those years ago. If his room with the train set and triangular bath was still there, with his smaller robes hanging in the cupboard. He wanted to ask if he could see it.

House elves arrived with a snap of the fingers to take Harry’s cloak – a birthday gift from his family – and Voldemort’s various trappings. The man proceeded to shed his glamour like a second skin, and Voldemort with his lightly patterned scalp and slit nose stood before him once more.

“Much better,” Harry said, and saw Voldemort start in genuine surprise.

“You do not find my true visage awe-inspiring?” he queried, gesturing the way towards the dining room. Awe in the historical sense, Harry was guessing, meaning fear and intimidation.

“It’s what you’ve always looked like.” Harry shrugged. “I can see some similarities of your glamour to your younger self – that was in the diary I mean – but this is the face I associate with you.”

Voldemort scanned Harry’s face minutely, as if searching for the truth of his words. “Yes,” he hissed finally. “Good. And here we are.”

It was one of the ungodly long tables of the aristocracy, with one chair placed at either end. Harry looked between them, and wondered what the point was – you might as well eat in separate rooms.

Following his gaze, Voldemort hummed, and waved a hand to manoeuvre one of the chairs to sit near the other. The place settling vanished and popped back into existence in the new spot.

“Shall we?”

Voldemort took the head of the table of course, and it would have amused Harry more except that it somehow felt very appropriate. Their breakfasts together seemed a long time ago, and he came to the table feeling strangely shy.

“To answer your earlier question,” Voldemort began when the soup course appeared, “I think the reasons to encourage your political leanings have changed, over time. When I first took you – when you were what, sixteen?”

“Fourteen,” Harry corrected ruefully.

“Fourteen. My main concern was to secure you and ensure you would not act against me if given your freedom. I found it likely that Dumbledore and his ilk had contaminated your way of thinking so that you were reflexively against anything dark, anything pure-blood. Certainly, anything that I might put my name to.”

Harry nodded.

“I felt that by issuing this challenge there was an opportunity to rein you in peacefully; even if you did not agree with all of my policies, perhaps you could see there was no more threat to our society from them than any other Minister for Magic we have had.”

Their empty bowls were removed – Voldemort had taken a little longer to finish since he was doing the majority of the talking – and tiny herb encrusted pastries appeared.

“Duck,” said Voldemort, to Harry’s enquiring glance. “Where were we? Ah, yes. As I began to observe your opinions altering, and I confess, as I monitored my own policies in an attempt to see them through the eyes of the commonplace witch or wizard – Wine?

A decanter hovered over Harry’s glass. He held up his thumb and forefinger in the gesture for ‘a little.’

“I do enjoy this vintage.” Voldemort took a sip, and Harry followed – it was a smooth, dry red.

Don’t drink too much, Harry told himself firmly. You’ll say something stupid about his arms, or how you weirdly like his eyes, and embarrass yourself.

“As I was saying, I began to think about the opportunities that a person in your position – the hero of the wizarding world – would afford my campaign. It would be criminal to waste that potential if it could instead be harnessed.”

Harry looked down at his plate, which was now some kind of delicate meatballs on a bed of vegetables.

“They are not made of meat,” said Voldemort, “but aubergine. Try them.”

A brief discussion of their preferred cuisines followed, then Harry worked up the courage to say, “Hermione says the same thing. About using my fame, I mean. That I have a responsibility to do it, if I could make things better.”

Voldemort considered him. “It makes you uncomfortable,” he stated finally. Harry shrugged. “Because you have never used it. Your fame has never provided positive results for you, only negative ones.”

That was… insightful. And the idea that Voldemort understood him, that he had been paying attention…“I have used it, sort of. We got into a research station in Norway because of it, and I got into some other places I wouldn’t have otherwise. I got to see some of the, uh, some of the equivalents to the Ministry, in other countries.”

Voldemort considered him again. “Yes,” he murmured. “Some of our foreign diplomats mentioned that you had been spotted. I had not thought it was deliberate – I assumed you had been shanghaied.”

He topped up Harry’s glass.

“Regardless, it may behove you to exercise small instances in order to familiarise yourself. Make a comment to a newspaper.”

“I… had thought about that.” Harry hadn’t quite decided to do it yet. Or how he would even go about it – approach a random journalist and just assume they would want his opinion?

“Mmm. If you find a topic you would be interested in giving an interview on – it could be a very casual, off cuff thing for your first few introductions – I can put you in touch with journalists with… some standard of integrity.”

Voldemort had to talk to journalists all the time, Harry supposed, in his official capacity. Articles about him always came across surprisingly well, and he was certainly managing public opinion far better than Fudge. Far better than Harry ever had.

“Thank you,” he said. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

*

They had dessert, and then cheese and port and tipsy, lingering glances.

“Is this where you grew up?” he asked eventually, the wine having made his tongue bold.

“No,” Voldemort said. Harry was on the verge of asking more when he registered the tone, which invited no further questions.

Having no wish to poke an irked Dark Lord, Harry’s mind instead returned to his question on first arriving. “Is the room I stayed in before here?”

Voldemort blinked. “Here?” He laughed, and seemed drawn out of whatever dark mood had swept over him. His whole face changed when he laughed. “Dear Harry, this manor is newly purchased and renovated. When I captured you, it was immediately following my return; I had no established base of my own.”

Harry stared at the tablecloth, frowning. “But then where-“ His eyes met Voldemort’s in sudden betrayal. “No,” he breathed.

Another laugh. “Why yes, Harry. I believe you mentioned the idea of staying with the Malfoy’s at one point?”

“Only to say I’d never do it,” Harry grumbled. His beautiful room. “Draco is such a prick.”

“The suite was created especially for you. It required excessive containment measures. You were kept unconscious for a few days while these were arranged. It was… highly draining, given the recentness of my return and the concurrent political demands.”

That was a lot more information than Voldemort had ever shared with him before.

“And you couldn’t even give me a towel for when I woke up!” Harry remembered.

“It was an oversight on my part. I… fell unconscious before being able to provide full instructions to my house elves.”

Harry bit back his next question. “Oh.”

Voldemort had fallen deep into thought and didn’t seem to hear him. The silence that followed gradually shaded into an uneasy one.

Shifting restlessly, Harry wondered if it was time for him to say he should head home. Perhaps Voldemort no longer-

“I grew up in the Muggle world,” Voldemort said abruptly, voice barely a whisper. Harry stilled. “In an orphanage, during the Muggle second world war. It was a miserable existence, and they were excrement not fit to be crushed under one’s heel.”

Which was…

Harry had never really stopped to think about how long ago Voldemort had been born, even though he knew Tom from the diary said he’d been trapped in there for many years. He couldn’t imagine Voldemort living with Muggles. He couldn’t imagine Voldemort alone in an orphanage.

When nothing more seemed forthcoming, Harry hesitantly said, “We’re a bit similar then.”

“Yes,” said Voldemort, absently staring across the room. “And also no.”

Harry waited another few minutes, then, carefully signalling every movement, pushed his napkin aside and stood. “It’s been a wonderful evening,” he said. He rather wished he hadn’t ruined it with an accidental question.

Voldemort ignored the cue, still staring unblinking.

“I, uh… Thank you for having me. You have a very impressive home, and dinner was lovely.”

He took a half step, and Voldemort stirred beside him, glancing up and taking in his move to leave.

“Of course.” Voldemort stood in a smooth, graceful motion. “My apologies for my absentmindedness. It is a topic that takes me away from the present.”

Harry nodded. “I understand.” And he really did.

Voldemort walked him to the door of the dining room, then along cool stone corridors hung with complex historical tapestries that Harry hadn’t had a chance to look at on their way in. This led to a divergence along a side corridor to examine the downfall of Howard the Horrendous, and another to see Merlin and the wizards of the high table.

“These are incredible!” Harry said happily, shining light from his wand to view some of the details. His arm brushed against Voldemort’s. “This one at least seems to be in complete conflict with the histories and the paintings I’ve seen at Hogwarts.”

Voldemort smiled.

“And you have more, you say?”

“Collecting tapestries has become something of a hobby.”

Harry bit his lip, forcing back the demand to see them all.

“Where did you find them all?”

“Old estate sales. The Ministry vaults of unclaimed artefacts. And some donations from my-“ Voldemort hesitated the briefest moment “-followers.”

Were they still Death Eaters, secretly, Harry wondered, or did they have a new name? Or had they dissolved to become devotees of the Minister. Would Voldemort tell him, if he asked?

Passing back alongside the first couple of tapestries again – the construction of a tower, a battle of staff wielding wizards on horseback – Harry lingered as unobtrusively as possible. Voldemort’s indulgent smile, when he finally made himself catch up, told him he hadn’t been very subtle. A hand settled in the small of his back as he was guided forward and just – oh.

Harry’s brain shut down a little bit.

They reached the entry hall, which Harry knew had been several hallways away yet didn’t remember walking down. The light pressure on his back blazed along all his nerve endings, and the hand flexed and then withdrew.

Harry drew in a breath.

You’re overthinking things, he told himself firmly. He’s just being polite.

“I should be heading home.” He didn’t want to go. “I’m sure you’ve had enough of my company for today.”

Was there some excuse he could make to draw things out a little longer? He didn’t want to lose this feeling; this warmth and giddiness and-

He turned to say goodbye, but the look on Voldemort’s face stopped him.

“I… find I have missed our conversations.”

The words thrilled through Harry’s chest; made him tip his chin up and say, “I thought about you, while I was away,” with painful honesty.

“Did you?” Voldemort’s eyes scanned his face, head tilted slightly, and Harry felt a creeping hope.

Long fingers came up to catch his chin, Harry’s inhale loud against the thumb that sketched his lower lip.

“May I take you to bed, Harry?”

And fuck. The tug of desire left him breathless, and he’d been wondering; Merlin, he’d been wondering if that was how this night might end.

“Yes,” he said.

*

Chapter Text

As he followed Voldemort’s styled, flowing robes up the stairs, Harry’s thoughts were fairly evenly split between ‘I’m going to get laid’ and ‘what the hell am I doing?’

By the time they entered a richly appointed chamber, the thoughts were ‘I’m going to get laid’ and ‘oh gods, this is Voldemort’s bedroom!’

Then he was staring at the bed. Voluminous bed hangings partially concealed dark covers, and the rest of the room faded into the background.

Standing beside him, Voldemort took his wrist, sliding long fingers up under his sleeve to cup his elbow. The touch was simultaneously grounding and inflaming, and Harry leaned into it.

“What do you like, Harry?”

A kneejerk remark about liking pretty much everything wasn’t far from Harry’s lips, but he forced it back. Gryffindor dorm humour seemed maybe inappropriate here.

“What do you like?” he returned, angling towards Voldemort.

“With you? I suspect I will enjoy everything.”

Harry went red.

According to Witch Weekly magazine, Harry liked long flights in the countryside, magical pets, history, and Quidditch.  

In bed, and luckily never covered by Witch Weekly, Harry liked blowjobs, being fingered open slowly, being told what to do, and, on one memorable occasion, being tied up. His fantasies of Voldemort had featured all of the above. Given Voldemort’s historic urges to have the world kneel at his feet, and Harry’s arousal when thinking about kneeling at Voldemort’s feet, Harry was rather hoping they might turn out to be compatible.

Voldemort stripped him, running idle fingers over Harry’s scars. “How you are still alive...” he murmured in a low voice, and there was something there. Something almost worshipful. “You might have died before I knew you.”

Harry stayed quiet, lifting his feet to kick off his pants as they were pushed to his ankles, and then toe off his socks. Voldemort draped Harry’s robe over a nearby chair and drifted back to him.

A large hand spanned the centre of Harry’s chest, guiding him backwards until the backs of Harry’s knees and the bottom of his thighs hit the mattress. The hand exerted steady pressure and Harry sat back, then sprawled across the bed, wriggling backwards on his elbows. Voldemort paid him a flattering amount of attention while he did so, eyes fixed on Harry’s every move. He followed Harry onto the bed, still robed, and loomed over him.

Harry reached up, desperately curious what the hints of scales would feel like on Voldemort’s skin. Smooth and cool? Or warm?

His wrist was captured before he made contact, and Voldemort brought it briefly to his lips. “Will you allow me to touch you, Harry?”

Harry flexed his wrist testingly. The grip on it tightened and then eased. Still firm, though.

Tentative, Harry brought his arm back down to the bed, careful not to dislodge Voldemort’s hold. Sharp eyes measured him, trying to understand and anticipate. Once his hand rested on the pillow beside his head, Harry flexed his wrist again, deliberate and unhurried.

Voldemort gave a slight hiss, grip cautiously tightening, and, when Harry didn’t protest, he pressed Harry’s arm down into the mattress.

Tugging slightly against the hold, Harry’s breath quickened.

“Harry,” Voldemort murmured in a tone of discovery.

He pressed Harry’s other arm against the bed too, pausing to scan Harry’s face, and let Harry strain against him. His weight across Harry’s torso pressed Harry down easily, and he was strong, far stronger than a normal man. Harry’s breath caught on a gasp, and he rooted his feet on the mattress, arching his back to try and throw Voldemort off. He squirmed and writhed and yanked against the grip on his wrists, and Voldemort stayed steady above him for all of it, implacable.

“Shall I keep you, Harry?” Voldemort hissed quietly into his ear when he finally stilled.

Harry made a small, wounded noise.

“I think I shall. So many times, I have let you go. Because your Lord is a merciful Lord. A kind Lord.” He nosed against Harry’s ear and Harry felt the ridge of scales, the puff of breath. “And you have come back to me.”

Voldemort lifted some of his upper body weight, moving agilely to straddle Harry and transfer both of Harry’s wrists into one hand. The other came to toy with the locket hung around Harry’s neck, that he had left on while he removed everything else. His fingers smoothed up Harry’s chest to his neck and dragged across the thin line of scar there, and he shifted down to follow it with narrow lips.

“Everything you are belongs to me,” he said as he pulled away, mere inches from Harry’s face. Eyes hungry.

“I came back,” Harry hissed. “But you have no claim on me.”

Voldemort’s eyes were dark as he spent long moments watching Harry, as his thumb pressed hard into the join of Harry’s shoulder until Harry tossed his head back with a cry.

“My Harry,” he said.

His grip on Harry’s wrists did not loosen as he shifted off to sit on one side, revealing Harry’s body to avaricious eyes. He sketched the space between the base of Harry’s cock and balls with exploratory strokes, circling around to press interestedly behind them. Pressed cool fingertips against Harry’s opening and rubbed them back and forth. Harry stayed as Voldemort had positioned him, hands firmly held to one side, legs spread and vulnerable, trembling at every new touch.

Nails scratched lightly against his lower stomach, gliding through pubic hair until Harry arched with a cry as they ran tauntingly up the underside of Harry’s cock.

“You do keep surprising me,” Voldemort mused. His hand on Harry’s wrists squeezed gently. “Such a different future than I had imagined. And such a different destiny you have.” His thumb swiped the slit of Harry’s leaking cock, and Harry pressed his face to the other side, eyes squeezing shut in humiliated pleasure. “No,” Voldemort said, releasing his penis immediately. The grip on his wrists squeezed. “You will not hide. Open your eyes.”

It was harder to open his eyes than it had been to be undressed. He was stripped far barer now, and he had volunteered the tools to do it.

When he finally glanced up, Voldemort looked ravenous, transfixed. “Look at you,” he hissed. “Bare and trembling before me.”

*

Voldemort’s fascination had full rein. He toyed with Harry for what felt like hours, uncaring of Harry’s first or second orgasm as he continued stroking and massaging him.

“It’s too much,” Harry said, feeling tears gather in the corners of his eyes and streak salted lines down his cheeks. “It’s too much.”

“Is it?” Voldemort softly asked. His fingers deftly manipulated the head of Harry’s sensitive cock, only half hard. Harry shook his head wildly, and Voldemort didn’t stop, gently pinching and probing and-

“I can’t,” Harry cried, shying his hips away instinctively, “It’s too much.”

“Is it?” Voldemort asked again, horribly gently.

Harry shook his head again, breath jagged and rasping.

“No,” Voldemort agreed, and he took Harry’s cock in his oiled hand and slowly pumped it. Harry’s mouth opened on a soundless cry. “It isn’t enough. You will take what your Lord deems you should have.” He leaned down so that his cheek was pressed against the inside of Harry’s bent knee, watching the motion of his hand on Harry’s cock from so close. He hissed quietly, and Harry’s hips jerked up instinctively.

Voldemort’s eyes darted up to meet Harry’s. He smiled.

*

Sometime later, when Harry’s cock was hard but his body pliant, Voldemort’s hands directed him onto his stomach. He pillowed his head on crossed arms, relaxing into the mattress with a sigh.

Voldemort lightly scraped fingernails down his back. Over his buttocks, lingering in the creases between buttock and thigh. Harry shivered, and Voldemort teased there again.

A large hand slid to his inner thighs and parted them, sliding briefly below Harry to cup and massage his cock and balls with a firm palm. Harry moaned softly but didn’t move. “Good,” Voldemort praised. Harry shuddered again.

Oiled fingers slid up the cleft of his ass, dragging lightly up and down until Harry’s hips rose to meet them. The fingers stilled. “Sorry, I’m sorry,” mumbled Harry, forcing himself to relax down into the sheets again, fingers releasing their tight grip on the pillowcase.

The fingers returned, twisting and pressing and the feel of them there, of a broad thumb coming to rub and pull gently at his hole, almost made him sob.

“My Harry,” Voldemort hissed, and pressed in.

*

When he finally heard the whisper of robes falling behind him, Harry could have wept. He hadn’t known it was possible to be wound to such a high note; for his mind to be so craving and so empty of everything else at the same time.

“Please,” he said, fingers clenching into the sheets to keep himself from moving. “Please.”

No part of Voldemort was touching him; nor could Harry see any part of him from where he rested on forearms and knees. He could hear his breathing though, hear the slight sigh of admiration as he watched Harry from behind.

“Please.”

“Precious one,” Voldemort hissed. “You have pleased me. What may I grant you?”

Harry’s breath hitched. Hitched again.

“Please,” he said. “Please, please.”

“Must I help you, Harry?” Harry nodded his head against his hands, twining fingers in his unruly tangles. “Yes, yes, I must. Lord Voldemort must help you.”

The murmur of sheets moving behind him, and then the graze of fingers against ass and hip. Harry jerked, helpless to control himself, and his breath left him in a half sob.

The fingers stilled.

“I cannot help you if you will not obey me, Harry.” Harry sobbed again. “Will you obey me?”

“Yes,” Harry said hoarsely. “Yes. Please.”

“Good,” Voldemort breathed. “Very good. Lord Voldemort will ascertain what you desire.”

Fingertips traced around his hip and down the line of his groin, feather light as they tapped his hard cock.

Harry groaned, then swiftly shook his head.

“No? Your poor cock has had enough attention from Lord Voldemort tonight?”

Two hands now, light on his hips, soft strokes across his ass to the bottom of his cheeks. Then, without warning, thumbs slowly spreading him open until Harry felt he might split at the seams, baring him to Voldemort’s gaze.

“Oh, oh!”

“Yes, my little snake?” Voldemort’s voice was deep, caressing. “You like to be touched here. You hunger for it. Is this what you desire?” And one hand released him to slide inwards, the thumb catching against Harry’s hole and slipping warm and full inside, rocking gently, and Harry was sobbing, sobbing. “It is? Then-“

Harry shook his head, frantic. “No,” he said, “no.”

“No?”

The thumb slid slowly out, tapping lightly on the rim as it slipped free. That hand moved to spread Harry’s other cheek again, and Harry hung in an agony of suspense as Voldemort appraised him.

“Is it Lord Voldemort himself that you want, Harry?”

“Yes,” Harry breathed, and then keened as he felt the hot skin of Voldemort’s cockhead nudge between his open cheeks, the wetness of his precome smear against Harry’s delicate skin.

“Is this what you want, Harry?”

“Yes. Please yes. Please yes.”

“But do you deserve it?” Voldemort asked, and Harry might have cried if he couldn’t hear the iron control in Voldemort’s voice, if he hadn’t known that Voldemort was denying them both for the pleasure of drawing this out. “You have confounded my plans many times, after all.”

The tip of his cock slid slickly over Harry’s hole, and Harry’s groan echoed Voldemort’s own.

Voldemort released his grip on Harry’s buttocks, leaving his cock nestled snugly between Harry’s arse cheeks, pressing them together lightly with broad palms. “My own,” he whispered, and Harry could only imagine the sight of it, could only imagine…

“But no,” Voldemort said, turning cold. “You have disobeyed me.” One hand came down in a stinging slap on Harry’s right buttock. His breath was shocked out of him in a cry, as the force of it nudged Voldemort’s cock to breach Harry ever so slightly and then retreat.

For a moment, there was nothing but the roughened sound of their breathing.

Voldemort’s hand trailed across Harry’s arse in a brief caress, and then drew back.

“You have put yourself in danger.” Smack. “You have ignored my instructions.” Smack. Harry moaned as Voldemort’s cock jostled against him each time, and he’d never wanted anything as much as he wanted it inside him. “You have questioned me.” Smack. “You have failed to accept your place.” Smack. “You have not taken care of yourself.” Smack. “You have denied you were mine.” Smack.

Harry hung trembling, taken apart, every inch of him Voldemort’s.

The hand came to rest gently on the warmed skin of his ass.

“Have you learned your lesson?” Voldemort asked softly.

“Yes,” Harry said, equally soft.

Voldemort stretched forward and stroked his fingers into Harry’s hair. He tugged, brief and harsh, and Harry came fully back onto hands and knees.

“Yes, who?” asked Voldemort. His cock ground forward, the tip goading Harry’s entrance.

Harry closed his eyes, swamped by a sharp tide of arousal. “Yes, my lord.”

Chapter Text

Had you asked Harry what waking up with Voldemort might be like, he would have been hard put to imagine it. Unless it was being woken up with sex. He’d definitely imagined that.

The morning after the night before, Harry stirred and stretched, naked skin uncovered and sliding pleasantly across fine sheets. His fingertips rubbed idly across a crease in the sheet, enjoying the texture of it, mind agreeably blank. He stretched again, holding the motion in brief ecstasy as his muscles seized and released, and then nuzzled languidly into his pillow.

Soft fingers drifted over his spine, and there was a moment’s readiness, a clench and release and where am I, and then he sighed out the tension and hummed his approval.

“You are awake,” Voldemort observed.

Harry refused to open his eyes. The fingers glided up his back and teased at his dishevelled hair instead. They were gentle. Harry hummed again.

They tugged.

Cracking a disapproving eye, Harry found Voldemort sitting up against the headboard next to him, robed and with a sheaf of papers leaning perilously off one crooked knee.

“What time is it?” he grumbled.

“Early,” said Voldemort. “But I must leave you soon. I rather neglected my Ministerial duties yesterday.”

Harry’s lips curved in a smile. “I know.”

There was a huff of a laugh. “I had not planned for this,” Voldemort mused.

“Do you plan for everything?” Harry asked, but it was a rhetorical question.

“I suppose this will teach me that some surprises may be very pleasant.”

Harry shuffled sideways a bit on his front, so that his head occupied the same pillow Voldemort was leaning on.

“Ridiculous boy,” Voldemort said fondly. Then, on a sigh, “You are so young.”

Harry had wondered if that would be raised. Then again, until last night, he hadn’t put much thought into quite how old Voldemort was. “You’re so old,” he rejoined. “And look at you. Minister for Magic.”

Voldemort’s eyes narrowed. “Are you implying I might be senile?” His voice was chilling.

Harry smiled happily. “I think you may actually be improving with age. You were too young for me before.”

They both considered the truth of this statement. Voldemort had certainly settled down in his old age, as far as Harry can see. At least ninety nine percent less murdering.

“You are a curious wizard, Harry.”

Harry took that as a compliment, as it was far better for Voldemort to think one interesting than a pest. Having been viewed as both, his current position was immeasurably superior.

“When will I see you again?” Voldemort demanded.

Muffling a yawn, Harry pressed his face against Voldemort’s side. “Later this week? I can’t do Wednesday or Thursday.”

“Saturday then,” and Voldemort’s voice was full of dark promise.

*

Saturday brought a light lunch at a newly opened bistro on the newly opened Spindleweed Alley. Two of the shops on Diagon had been magically tucked around the corners to open up space for the alley, and now there was a whole new street for expansion and new businesses.

“Won’t it be weird for you to be seen with me?” asked Harry as he tucked into his spinach and gruyere quiche.

“If you mean the possible spins that might be put on the gossip, I have already nudged it towards ‘renewed collaboration between wizarding hero and the Ministry’ rather than ‘Minister requires advice from Harry Potter.”

Harry flushed. “That wasn’t… It hadn’t actually occurred to me that people might think the second thing.”

“You were too busy worrying whether we would be linked romantically.”

The blush grew fiercer.

“Luckily for all concerned, I have an excellent publicity team, who are competent at anticipating and managing such things. When any further connection between us is revealed, it will seem a natural progression of said collaboration.”

“What is our collaboration?” Harry asked, interested. He would have assumed a fancy euphemism for sex, but if Voldemort was putting it in the papers there must be substance behind it.

“That is for you to decide. Currently, it is nothing more than a rumour. Pick one of those projects you mentioned your friend is trying to guilt you into abusing your power to support, and we shall attempt to make something of it.”

“Oh,” Harry said, feeling warm and a little overwhelmed. “That’s a really good idea.”

“I am known for having them,” was the dry rejoinder.

Harry didn’t mention the whole murder, torture, being-defeated-by-a-baby thing. Small compromises were necessary in any relationship.

*

On apparating to Voldemort’s manor, they moved to one of the sitting rooms. Voldemort seemed oddly twitchy, Harry thought, and at first assumed it was a kinky sex thing and Voldemort was building up to commanding him to go down on his knees.

“There is a matter I feel we should discuss, before we go any further,” Voldemort began.

He was leaning against the mantel of the fireplace, having finally stopped pacing, and oh, Harry realised all at once.

Oh.

“When you say discuss, you mean that you’ll finally tell me why people kept trying to kill me,” Harry said from his spot on the couch, ensuring his voice stayed calm.

Voldemort inclined his head.

“I have a condition.”

Voldemort stared at him. Then made a slight gesture that signalled him to go on.

“If you dislike my reaction,” Harry cautioned, thinking about his words very carefully, “you will not immediately obliviate me. I may need time to think about it. Or it might be something we could talk through.”

Voldemort blinked.

Harry thought a little longer, making a slight gesture to ask for time when Voldemort stirred. Voldemort subsided.

“If you are likely to lock me up somewhere while I think about it,” and Harry could see from the look on Voldemort’s face as he said it that this was a real possibility, “then it might be worth thinking about whether this is really a good time. I can see you picked a Saturday,” he said, trying to be positive, “but I don’t know your schedule, and you aren’t always great at spur of the moment kidnappings.” Voldemort’s face did something complicated. “Also,” Harry added, “I would need to give my friends some excuse for the fact I might be out of contact for a few days, so that they don’t worry.”

“Harry,” Voldemort said after a moment.

“I know it must be really bad,” Harry rushed, “for you to have kept it this long. And, uh, also because it makes people try and kill me.”

Voldemort contemplated him for a while. Harry used the time to look around the sitting room and mentally compose a note to his family and Hermione and Ron. He thought about slipping in some kind of coded reference that meant ‘if I’m gone for more than a week, please avenge my corpse,’ but couldn’t see how he’d do it. And honestly, he thought Voldemort was rather attached to him at this point. Having kept him alive this long, it seemed unlikely that he would snap and kill him now.

“It is a secret,” Voldemort finally said, “that you would have reacted to very badly when I first knew you. I am no longer certain this is true.”

He glided on silent feet until he stood looking down at Harry. His fingers slipped easily through Harry’s hair, cradling the back of his head. The fingers tightened, lightly fisting through strands to angle Harry’s head back.

“Are you mine, Harry?” he asked, almost meditative.

“Yes,” Harry answered easily, stomach jolting in pleasure at the phrasing. Perhaps this was very new, and there was a lot of context and limits that they weren’t discussing right now, but overall, the answer was yes. He wanted the answer to be yes. “Yes,” he repeated.

Voldemort breathed out a long, satisfied sigh, running his gaze over Harry’s captured face. “Then I suspect your conditions unnecessary, though not unwise. It is strange,” he added, “to be known so deeply.”

The house elves brought parchment and ink for Harry, and he sat at a small corner table and wrote his letters. “Mipsy,” he called, and Voldemort’s head house elf appeared. “Please could you owl these for me?”

Voldemort gave him a lightly amused glance as she left. “You do not trust me?” he asked.

“I think you might get distracted,” Harry replied diplomatically. “So?”

He moved back to the couch, and allowed Voldemort another minute to pace. “Just tell me,” he finally said, and Voldemort turned and fixed red eyes on him.

“You are- No.” He smoothed his hands down his robes in a nervous tell Harry had noticed before. “I have- No.”

Harry’s lips twitched. He heroically didn’t laugh.

“When I was resurrected to this body,” Voldemort said, after deliberating, “I was initially disoriented. I came to stand before you, to touch you, and did not correctly register the sensations that I should have.

“I… When I was younger, I pursued immortality.” Harry nodded, because hadn’t Dumbledore said something like that once? And there was Quirrell’s obsession with the stone in Harry’s first year. “I achieved this end many years ago via the mechanic of horcruxes.”

There was a moment of quiet.

“You’re actually immortal?” Harry said, shocked.

“Yes.”

“Wow.” Harry sat back in his seat.

“That is not what I have to tell you.”

“Oh, okay, sure,” Harry mumbled to himself. “Not a big deal at all.”

“Horcruxes are magical objects infused with a part of one’s soul. They can be created through the action of taking a life.” Harry didn’t flinch. It wasn’t as though he was unfamiliar with Voldemort’s murderous past. “I created several of these objects, securing my escape from mortality. I cannot be killed while they remain.”

Harry thought about that. “That’s why you survived when I was a baby. You could come back, because you had these… horcruxes?”

“Yes. It was debilitating; far more than expected. Although the circumstances of that night were unusual, and likely to be the cause of the-“ Voldemort wrinkled his face in distaste “-weakness I experienced.”

“Right,” Harry said. Because it was true, spending a decade as a wraith and then possessing the backs of people’s heads etc. did not sound like it was a great choice as immortality methods went.

“It was in searching for these objects that Dumbledore perished,” Voldemort continued. “Upon learning of my return, and then your disappearance, I surmise that he panicked. He appears to have gathered rumours over the years of possible locations I might have hidden the pieces of my soul, and immediately set out to find and purge them.”

“They can be destroyed?”

Voldemort tipped his head. “It is difficult, but yes. I had left fierce safeguards, and this end is what befell Dumbledore when he tried to break into my ancestral grounds in search of the first of them.

“He-“ Voldemort paused. “Dumbledore had a group of… rebels, I would have called them. People allied in the cause of my destruction. The Order of the Phoenix, they called themselves. I believe you knew several of them, although they would not have revealed themselves to you as such. But some information, Dumbledore played very close to his chest. I know this,” he added dryly, “from the members of the Order I had tortured and obliviated before our little agreement was put in place. I could not allow any risk to my soul.

“I then believed, as far as I was able, that no others had this knowledge. I gathered the pieces of my soul into a secure place, protected with all of the knowledge I had accumulated. At some point I learned, however, that Dumbledore had communicated his knowledge about my horcruxes. That, indeed, he had communicated another theory I did not even know he had. One that it is immeasurably frustrating he suspected before I realised myself.”

“What was the theory?” Harry asked, not following.

Voldemort briefly closed his eyes. “Do you remember, Harry, when your instructor attacked your during your OWLs?”

Harry fingered the thin line at his throat. “Yeah.” He thought about what Voldemort had said when he woke up. “You said… You said they attacked me because they were Dumbledore’s people? Did they… did they think I had one of these things? Something I took from when you were holding me captive?”

Voldemort eyed him in surprise. “It is not a bad supposition. But no, Harry. When I emerged that night in the graveyard, and came to stand near you, I felt a strange familiarity, a spark. It is something that I only feel on contact with one of the vessels of my soul.”

Harry stared at him. He couldn’t think of anything he would have had on him that night that would have been one of Voldemort’s horcruxes.

“Right,” he said eventually. It took a while. “So the secret isn’t that you are immortal, but that I am one of the reasons why you are immortal.”

“Indeed.”

“I am – I have part of your soul in me? How is that possible?”

“Dumbledore theorised, as I learnt from Black under veritaserum, that in the instant I killed you I created the correct conditions for a sacrificial horcrux. This… seems unlikely to me, given that none of the requisite rituals were followed. But given that I was at the same time disembodied, some further factors may have come into play.”

“Sirius,” Harry said, and gods, he still had such unhappy, mixed feelings about the man. “Then he was going to try and kill me? Because… Because Dumbledore told him I had part of your soul in me?”

Something cracked and jagged in his chest shifted, and he drew an uneven breath. Sirius had taken Harry because he thought there was part of Voldemort inside Harry. Was that better or worse than the assumption Harry had had until now – that there was something so deeply wrong with Harry himself that even his Godfather-

“But… he didn’t even know for sure!” Harry blurted, struck by this. His hands fisted in his robes, remembering the terror of that day in Grimmauld Place. “And Dumbledore – Dumbledore would have tried to kill me too? But why did he think it in the first place? How did he guess?” And then a moment later, answering his own question, “The parseltongue. He said… I can’t remember, something about it being from our connection.”

“That is my understanding. You were lucky you were sorted into Gryffindor; as a Slytherin, I fear that he would have moved against you earlier, before I returned and realised what you were.”

“He would have killed me,” Harry whispered to himself.

Dumbledore, who had seemed so kindly to Harry. So wise. Whom Harry had looked up to and believed in. Dumbledore, who had named him a hero as a baby but left him with the Dursleys, and then run Harry through some strange parade of tests once he got to Hogwarts. Who had decided Harry had to die, so that Voldemort could die too.

One of the reasons Harry had wanted to travel was because it felt a little like his whole life had been under the direction of others. The Dursleys, Dumbledore, then Voldemort.

But the latter part, that controlled by Voldemort, had been strangely full of both freedoms and security. Voldemort had ensured he was safe. Voldemort had found him a real family.

Voldemort had protected him again and again, but only because Harry contained his soul.

“You wanted my loyalty,” he said quietly.

“Yes.”

“So that you could ensure I would never act against you, or put your soul in danger.”

“Yes.”

“But you let me leave?” That didn’t make sense. That didn’t fit any pattern.

Voldemort’s throat worked. “Yes,” he eventually agreed.

“Why?”

“You… are a part of me, Harry. I cannot describe the depths to which I care for you.” There was a brief pause, and Harry breathed through the rush of those words. “You carry my soul,” Voldemort continued softly. “Regardless of my fears, I would not stifle my soul.”

Voldemort came to stand tall in front of him again, pensive as he cupped Harry’s jaw in his hands. “You have become so precious to me,” he murmured.

Harry breathed out carefully again, the swooping feeling in his chest that had delighted when Voldemort called him ‘mine’ once again assuaged. Voldemort would not tire of him, would not kill him, would not act against him. Voldemort treasured him.

“Okay,” he said quietly. Voldemort blinked, thumb stroking a question over Harry’s cheek. “I mean, it’s okay. I do need to… digest everything you’ve said, because it was a lot of information, but I’m not… I don’t…”

Voldemort’s gaze sharpened. “You are happy to be Lord Voldemort’s soul,” he said, in tones of wonder. “You rejoice in it.”

Rejoice might be a tad too strong in Harry’s opinion. And the whole ‘Lord Voldemort’ thing had been disturbingly hot during sex, but might need to be nipped in the bud the rest of the time.

His hands came up to rest on Voldemort’s wrists. “I am content to carry part of your soul,” he emphasized. “Because-“

He shivered.

“There is no fear here, my precious one,” murmured Voldemort, and his thumb again swept Harry’s face.

“Because it binds us together,” Harry managed, voice uneven. “Because it means you won’t leave me.”

Voldemort breathed out a long, long sigh.

“I will never leave you, my Harry. You are mine.”

*

Chapter Text

Harry had tipped forward to rest his head against Voldemort’s middle at some point, and long fingers swept meditatively over his hair and forehead. Harry’s breath calmed and his eyes unfocused, feeling pleasurably dazed and taken care of.

“Now that you have gone to all the effort of informing your friends you may be absent for some days,” Voldemort spoke quietly after a time, “perhaps you might be willing to stay with me for them regardless.”

Harry hazily contemplated this. Being reunited with his friends and family over the last two weeks had been brilliant, but more than slightly overwhelming. As if compensating for having moved on in their own lives, they currently strove to involve him in everything.

“Won’t you have to go to the Ministry?”

“I shall take a little time off,” Voldemort promised. The thought ignited a satisfied ember in Harry’s stomach.

“Sounds nice,” he said.

Voldemort’s fingers pressed a little harder, then slipped down to the back of his neck to cradle and squeeze it. Harry’s eyes slipped blissfully closed and he gave a little hum.

“I shall need to make a few arrangements first,” Voldemort murmured. “Mipsy will show you to our rooms. Mipsy!”

The house elf obligingly popped into the sitting room. Harry rolled his head to the side against Voldemort’s stomach to see her. She didn’t react in any way to finding the two of them so close.

“Mipsy, you will show Harry Potter to my rooms and prepare a bath for him.”

“Yes, Lord Master. Mipsy will. Master Harry is coming this way please!”

Harry tilted his head back so that he could look up at Voldemort. Voldemort’s fingers grazed along his jaw to tug his chin between thumb and finger, then reached to stroke over Harry’s lips. He started to lean down, but then pulled back. “You have quite bewitched me,” he admitted thoughtfully.

Harry smiled.

*

Mipsy led him up flights of stairs and down half remembered hallways until they reached the master suite. He was ushered into the bathroom adjoining the bedroom, which was as big as he remembered. He’d only had time for a quick shower the last time he was here, but now the large round bathtub was already filling from the ornamental fountain of brass taps on one side. Steam rose into the room as Harry began to remove his robes, carefully setting his glasses on a cabinet, and Mipsy rummaged through cupboards on one side before an array of coloured glass bottles danced through the air, uncorking themselves with little pops to let gleaming droplets fall into the bath.

Harry hesitated, down to his underwear, and after blinking patiently for a moment Mipsy seemed to realise he was waiting for her to leave. She gave a little mutter and click of her fingers, and then both she and his discarded robes disappeared.

Alone, Harry removed his underthings and cautiously climbed into the bath. It was large enough for a few people to sit in a circle on the benches around the side. As he sat, the water swirled and bubbled against his skin, almost massaging. It was lovely.

His mind flitted from thought to thought. Memories of his travels. Plans for the next few weeks. People he needed to owl to inquire about apprenticeships and positions. They gradually dissolved and drifted away, until there was only sensation and a faint anticipation.

Eventually he dragged himself from the bath, finding rich, soft towels to dry himself with. His clothes had not been returned, but there was a dark green bathrobe that felt like brushed silk hanging on the back of the door. It draped loosely around him, fastening at the front with only two corded strings. He pulled it close around himself so that the front edges overlapped and felt less indecent, and then cautiously stepped out into the main bedroom, the long material of it pooling out behind him.

Voldemort awaited him. He turned to Harry with a flattering inhale at the sight of him, red eyes fixed and burning.

“You would undo even Lord Voldemort,” he murmured eventually.

Harry blushed.

Unhurried, Voldemort moved towards him and stood gazing down, drinking him in. A hand rose and thin fingers gently dragged the collar of the robe aside, revealing flushed skin and a few droplets of moisture that Harry had missed. One hand came to cradle Harry’s head as Voldemort dipped his head to taste, and another wrapped around Harry’s lower back to pull him closer. Harry leaned into them, testing, and Voldemort took his weight easily. A small, content sigh escaped him, and Voldemort’s head rose like a lion’s from its kill.

“You willingly put yourself in my power once more,” Voldemort mused. Several thoughts seemed to pass behind his eyes. “I had thought, at first, when you left to travel the world, that I might hunt you down.”

Harry’s heart thumped with fear and arousal both. “What changed your mind?”

Voldemort’s eyes scanned his face curiously. “You sent cards.”

“Postcards?”

“Yes. And letters. You described… your days. What you were thinking. I… enjoyed having this access to your thoughts. It seemed as though you were not running, as I had thought you might be.”

“You’d thought I wasn’t coming back?”

Voldemort’s head tilted. Harry reached a hand to gently trace the smooth ridge of his brow, and Voldemort leaned into his palm, eyes half lidded for a moment. “It seemed a possibility. But a few years passes in an instant, and you had protections upon you to keep you safe.” Harry’s hand pulled back to tug at his earring at the reminder, and Voldemort’s eyes followed it. “Still, I was… pleased, at the information that you were in England once more.”

“Because you want me to take up some kind of political position?”

“Let us say-“ Voldemort gave him a dry look “-that it is easier to keep an eye on you when international distances are not involved.”

“And now that I’m here?”

“My plans are… undergoing revision.”

Revision to accommodate Harry, include him, please him. “Good,” Harry said softly.

“Good,” echoed Voldemort, voice deep and dark.

Harry shivered.

Pulling back a little, Voldemort’s gaze dropped to the front of the silken robe. His fingers traced down the collar again and then teased the two sides to hang naturally, a gap down the centre except where held in place by the fastenings.

“You look very fine in my robes, little horcrux,” he murmured. His touch feathered down the gap, pads of fingers brushing Harry’s bare sternum; his navel. Harry drew in an involuntary breath, skin jumping at the contact, and Voldemort’s eyes flashed up to meet his. With a small crook of his lips, the Dark Lord slipped his hand fully under one side of the robe, curving it around Harry’s ribs. A firm, confident pressure that Harry breathed into. Then, withdrawing fully, taking Harry’s elbow to lead him towards the antique divan.

Harry was carefully arranged against the cushions, arms beside him and one knee bent just so. Then, greedy hands teased at the front of the robe again, catching at the lopsided bows Harry had tied the cords in. Knuckles brushed his chest, his stomach, and there was a long, drawn out pull of the top fastening until it slipped loose, robe gaping open across Harry’s chest.

“Beautiful,” Voldemort murmured, draping himself over the divan; over Harry. A dull red flush spread across Harry’s skin at the praise.

Another tease, and this time knuckles brushed against his lower stomach, the groove of his hip. Harry’s breath caught, and caught again, and Voldemort slipped the fastening open to leave him bared to his sight.

“Yes,” Voldemort hissed, seeming almost mesmerised at seeing him framed in emerald silk. Harry’s cock was already hard, and twitched under the attention. One of Voldemort’s hands came to rest at the top of his inner thigh, thumb idly stroking. “You desire me.”

Harry blushed again.

“Tell me.” And now curious fingers moved to pet his cock, a gentle massage between thumb and fingers that had Harry pushing into the touch, “Have you thought of our last encounter? Have you abused yourself imagining it?”

“Yes,” Harry hissed back. “I could not stop thinking of it.”

Voldemort preened. “I regret the many things I did not try,” he said speculatively. He weighed Harry carefully in his hand. “You pleased me last time. I wish for you to please me again today.”

“Yes,” rasped Harry.

Moving slightly further down the divan, Voldemort swooped down to inhale the scent of Harry, to bite lightly at the crease between groin and thigh. Harry widened his legs at a little more at pressure from Voldemort’s hand, and then stayed as still as possible while he was inspected; stripped and laid bare. His stomach trembled with every breath, held taut, and his prick jerked just at the feeling of Voldemort staring at him so intently.

“Here,” Voldemort hissed, and took the very tip of Harry’s cock between thin lips, holding it there. Harry jolted, fingers digging into cushions to keep himself still. The pointed tip of a tongue teased consideringly against Harry’s slit, and he moaned helplessly but didn’t move. The only points of contact were the broad hand spread firm across Harry’s inner thigh, and the tight, finely ridged lips closed over the tip of him.

Voldemort hummed a satisfied sound, and then started to suckle.

“Oh,” gasped Harry softly, as Voldemort sucked and sucked and sucked. “Oh fuck that’s-“

Not even the whole head in his mouth, just the – oh, gods – just the tip, and Harry was losing his mind. It was absolutely single minded; no other movement, no other sound; absolute focus and attention on suckling at Harry’s tip and slit.

His breath hiccoughed in his throat, his stomach clenched and released, his cock bobbed and Voldemort swayed with it.  

The fingertips on his thigh pressed down, unyielding. A slow flush of heat flooded Harry at the thought that Voldemort might do this all night. Might suck him forever. Might just keep going and going and, “Oh fuck,” never let him come and just keep him here and suck him forever and tie him down if he fought and hold him down and pinned and swallow him down and –

Harry came with a small, strangled noise, hips arching despite himself. Voldemort followed easily, and Harry forced his eyes open to see Voldemort lapping thoughtfully at the come pulsing from Harry’s cock. His eyes slid closed again, overwhelmed, and he gasped and shuddered.

There were a few seconds of hazy rest; of Voldemort caressing his thigh and hissing, “So good for me.” And then the inevitability of Voldemort’s head dipping again, of feeling hot breath and a rasping tongue and almost twisting away but stopping himself, of Voldemort inquisitively holding the tip of Harry’s softening, over sensitised dick between his teeth before gently releasing it to rest between his lips once more.

Harry’s whole body shuddered. 

Voldemort gave one long, tender suck.

“I-“ Harry forced the words back, forced his head back to lie against the cushions. Don’t move.

Another.

An uneven breath. Just keep breathing. Don’t move, don’t move.

Voldemort gave another pleased hum. He latched on to the softening tip more firmly and began a series of slow, lingering sucks, as though savouring Harry. As though he really would stay on Harry’s cock all night. Harry’s breath hitched, quickening at the thought, and he dared to move his arm to cover his face, to bury his eyes in the crook of its darkness.

Voldemort was still moving on him so gently, so fucking gently; as though Harry was precious, as though he wanted to tenderly wring every last echo of Harry’s pleasure out of him until he broke with it all over again.

Something built and built in Harry’s chest, huge and uncontrollable, until it erupted as a half sob. His hand flew to cover his mouth, unshielded eyes squinting down to see the top of his plumping dick sealed in Voldemort’s questing mouth.

Voldemort’s glanced up at him, enraptured by his responses. He suckled a little harder, pressing his tongue forcefully into the furrow of Harry’s slit and pulling around it.

“Ah,” Harry cried. “I-“ He cut himself off again.

Slight creases around Voldemort’s eyes, which Harry recognised as satisfaction. Don’t give in, don’t give in. The pressure from the tongue eased, and instead it lapped and probed and, “Oh gods, oh fuck, I can’t! I can’t!” burst from Harry, torn from him, and he was undone - tears leaking from the corners of his eyes, hand fisted uselessly against his mouth.

Voldemort slowed. Drew back, the tip of Harry’s cock resting there for an eternal moment before falling, bobbing helpless and free. The feel of cool air on the head of his dick made Harry cry out again, and he couldn’t, he couldn’t-

“Hush, now,” Voldemort murmured. “Your poor mind doesn’t know what your body needs. How it has longed for me. How it begs for me.”

Harry shook his head pathetically, hand falling to his side, ragged breathing hitching and catching and refusing to still.

“Hush,” hissed Voldemort in a whisper, sliding up the divan. “Oh Harry. You are exquisite when you cry.”

Deceptively tender fingertips ran along Harry’s temples, tracing the path of tears. Moved back to Voldemort’s mouth where his tongue darted out to taste. “So sweet.” He leaned over to press a gentle kiss to Harry’s slack mouth. To glide cool lips against cheekbones and pause to press little kisses at the corner of his eyes and collect the gathering tears. “So precious.”

The hand Voldemort wasn’t supporting himself on dragged firm strokes along Harry’s side. Harry curled in towards Voldemort, gripping his robes, curving around the knee leaned on the divan.

“Please,” Harry said, and he didn’t even know what he was asking for.

Voldemort’s hand slid down between them to rub gentle circles on his lower belly.

“More?” Voldemort asked, gentle and implacable.

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. I know you can.”

Harry’s breath eased out of him in a long shudder. Voldemort’s fingers slid a little further, bumping the head of Harry’s hard prick, and Harry arched into the touch with a muffled noise.

“Do you want me to stop?” Voldemort murmured. His fingertips nudged.

The feeling built in Harry’s chest again, and his next breath broke as Voldemort’s fingers gently pinched his dick. “No,” he said. “Don’t stop.”

Voldemort leaned down to kiss the new tears away. “Good, Harry. Very good.” He skimmed down Harry’s body, adjusting and positioning him once more. His mouth moved red and hungry to between Harry’s thighs. “I hadn’t finished yet.”

*

Chapter Text

Harry woke alone. His blissful stretch aborted as his reaching fingers found no warm body on the other side of the bed. A quick search of the rooms revealed no sign of Voldemort and he stood alone in the morning light, naked and frowning.

The door nudged open.

“Little master,” came a hiss.

This, then, was Nagini.

“Hello,” Harry hissed back uncertainly. He’d seen and attempted to talk to many species of snakes on his travels, and, in his experience, being able to communicate with them didn’t always render them less aggressive.

“Master left Nagini and little master. Master was angry.”

Harry parsed this. Voldemort had left because he was angry, or was angry because he had had to leave? The latter made more sense, but his stomach clenched at the thought of the former. “Did he say why?”

He took a tentative step backwards as Nagini slithered closer; two meters away; one.

“Stupid humans,” was her helpful comment. “He should kill them all.”

“Right.” He tried not to flinch as her forked tongue flicked out to feather his toes. “Umm, what are you…”

She reared up, swaying her body forwards to nudge her snout against his knee, then higher, to his hip. Her tongue flicked out again, tasting the air. “You smell like the master,” she hissed.

Given their activities the night before, that probably wasn’t surprising.

Harry felt himself go bright red and blurted: “Shower!” He hadn’t even said it in parseltongue, he realised after he’d retreated to the bathroom and shut the door.

The pressure of the hot water was still amazing, and the soap still made his skin tingle and feel refreshed, but Harry couldn’t quite relax into it. Had something happened? Why hadn’t Voldemort woken him?

Despite himself, Harry’s mood had turned sour by the time he towelled himself off and emerged back into the bedroom. He’d wrapped a towel around his waist because, even though Nagini was a snake, he felt uncomfortable being naked in front of her. He supposed she would have no more opinions on his slightly scrawny body than Hedwig would but… it was just different.

Searching the wardrobe revealed no robes that he felt like stealing. All of them were very fine, of course. All of them would drag along the floor when Harry walked. Voldemort was far too tall.

“Mipsy,” Harry called.

“Young Master is calling?” she asked, popping in.

“Could I have my clothes, please?” he asked.

She looked momentarily pleased. “I have many clothes ready for Master Harry. Light spring robes, for today. Would master like blue? Or green?”

“The clothes I came in,” Harry interjected quickly. This brought a look of disapproval. “I would like the clothes I came in, please.”

Mipsy popped out and then back in again, holding Harry’s simple, hardwearing black robes to her as if reluctant to hand them over. “Low quality,” she muttered. “Worn out. Rough fabric. Nessy has cleaned them, but…”

“Hey,” he objected, because okay, they might not be up to Dark Lord standards, but they were well made and had lasted him through years of travel. He hadn’t wanted to spend much on clothing, preferring to use the money from the Potter vault to finance the trip itself. And okay, Andromeda had also been making noises in the last week or two about taking him shopping, but he’d had other things to think about!

He held out a hand, and Mipsy transferred the robes to his hold with a much put upon sigh. “So many nice new robes,” she said mournfully. Which flustered Harry a little, because had Voldemort brought him clothing? It was presumptuous if he had, but Harry could admit that the idea stirred something warm in him. Then he remembered that Voldemort had probably meant to kidnap him after revealing he had part of Voldemort’s soul in him. Those were kidnap clothes.

Harry still liked it. Which irked him. Especially since Voldemort wasn’t here for him to be irked at in person.

He changed in the bathroom, since Nagini had moved to coil on the divan. She seemed sleepy and uninterested in conversation when he emerged, and he tried to decide what to do next. Would Voldemort be gone all day? There was no reason to remain in the bedroom, and yet Harry felt a strange reluctance to leave it.

This triggered his contrary side enough to push him downstairs, and he was guided by a house elf to the breakfast room. Breakfast was crumpets dripping with butter, and grapefruit juice, coffee and a pile of lightly sugared strawberries. Harry’s temper improved slightly as he ate. Not that he’d been annoyed, since it made perfect sense that the Minister for Magic might get summoned at short notice, even first thing on a Sunday morning.  So it definitely wasn’t annoyance Harry was feeling. Just… he just felt weird.

The initial plan to root around Voldemort’s study, or wander round looking at tapestries or the gardens, was derailed when he heard the rush of house elves to the front door, and the one who was attending Harry – maybe Nessy? - squeaked “Master is home!” and disappeared.

Harry felt a nonsensical urge to hide, or to leave. To leave Voldemort wondering where Harry was. Instead, he finished the last sip of coffee, put aside the newspaper, and calmly walked out to the main hall.

No Voldemort.

“Master is changing!” Harry turned, but the house elf vanished almost before it had finished speaking.

Feeling awkward and out of place, Harry trekked back up the stairs to the master bedroom.

He cracked the door to hear hissing, and entered to find Voldemort fully naked and speaking to Nagini. Harry’s eyes darted over the shifting muscles in Voldemort’s torso and behind as he dropped his Ministerial robe to the dressing chair, and then flicked back up to see Voldemort glancing round at him with an amused smile. Caught.

“My Nagini says you woke a little while ago,” Voldemort said. “I confess, I had hoped to make it back while you were still sleeping.”

Harry shrugged. “I had breakfast. Were you at the Ministry?”

“Indeed.” Voldemort sighed. “It is dealt with. I had anticipated a far more pleasant morning.”

He moved towards Harry, swift and confident, and Harry involuntarily shied away.

Eyes narrowing, Voldemort slowed his approach, halting a foot or two apart to analyse Harry’s face.

“What is this?” he murmured thoughtfully. Then, “Nagini, leave us.”

“Sleepy.”

“Leave us!”

With much grumbling, the long serpent snaked down from the divan and slinked across the room. Voldemort gave the slightest wave of his hand and the door shut behind her.

Harry licked his lips.

“You are nervous,” Voldemort observed. “You are… unhappy.”

“No,” denied Harry.

Strong hands cupped both sides of his jaw and tilted Harry’s head with a casual possessiveness. For a moment, looking into Voldemort’s dark eyes, Harry almost felt as though the Dark Lord could see right into his mind, could see every squirming, vulnerable thought that Harry had.

“You did not like waking up alone,” Voldemort concluded after a moment. Harry tried to pull back, but Voldemort merely tightened his hold, then moved one of his hands to contain the back of Harry’s head in his palm.

“I knew you were at the Ministry,” Harry said, tone even.

“But you did not like it,” Voldemort hissed calmly. Something tightened in Harry’s chest. “It has made you fractious.”

Harry tried to pull back again, but the hands remained implacable. His heart beat a little faster. “You could have left a note!” he said finally, cheeks flushing.

Voldemort’s eyes roved his face. “I could have. It is a reasonable suggestion – I should have thought of it.”

“Oh.” Harry looked down.

Issue resolved.

“You are still unhappy.”

Harry tried to twist back automatically again, and this time Voldemort’s fingers gave a harsh tug in his hair. Stilling reluctantly, eyes rising, Harry tried to take a mental step back. Why was he reacting like this? There was nothing wrong. He needed to calm…

“Do you need to fight me, Harry?” Voldemort asked, voice curling with pleasure. Harry froze, breath held. “Do you need me to prove that you are mine? Yes, I can see that you do.”

His body reacting with sudden adrenaline, as though he’d been attacked, Harry thrashed and threw himself backwards. His movement was swift enough to surprise Voldemort, and he slipped from his hold. Two steps back, three, and Harry drew his wand and pointed it at Voldemort.

Voldemort smiled. “Alright, little horcrux. I shall give you what you need.”

“I’m not just your-“ But Voldemort launched himself forward, powerful muscles bunching in shoulder and thigh. For a brief moment, his fierce red eyes instilled fear rather than familiarity as Harry scrambled back and away and cast an immobilisation curse that was easily countered with a wave of a hand.

Harry spun and sprinted for the door, mouth dry and gasping, casting blindly behind him. He would make it; he would yank the handle and slip to the side and-

His fingers barely glanced along the cool metal of the door handle before a forceful arm swept around his middle, yanking him off balance. Yelping, he struggled fiercely, but he was crowded up against the hard wood of the door in an instant. He tried to kick, tried to earn himself a distraction to cast. But strong fingers pressed cruelly into the knuckles of his wand hand until he released his grip, and his wand fell with a muffled thud.

Disarmed, Harry gulped air and tested his position. Voldemort’s left arm was still firm around his abdomen, and his right gripped Harry’s hand with the faint promise of further pain. Harry let out a low, angry hiss.

Voldemort bullied him forward a little more, until he was plastered full length against Harry from behind, and the panels of the door pressed uncomfortably against Harry’s face and body.

“Enough?” asked Voldemort, and Harry heaved again, hissing and squirming and determined. Voldemort held him there. When Harry thrashed again, again, Voldemort leaned a little more weight against him, pressing the breath out of him, and Harry finally gasped to a shuddering halt. “Enough?”

The next breath Harry drew was ragged. The one after, edged with tears.

“Enough,” Voldemort murmured again, but this time it was an agreement. He nuzzled into Harry’s hair. “Hush, now. Do you feel more secure, to know I will not let you go so easily? To know I would not have left you of my own volition?” Harry drew another ragged breath, moisture gathering at the corners of his eyes. “You do not like having this need for reassurance recognized,” Voldemort hypothesized after a moment. “It is… unfamiliar. Disconcerting.”

It was strange, hearing his innermost feelings laid bare when he hadn’t even realised what they were. Harry made a small, uncertain noise of agreement.

“This is unfamiliar to me too.” Voldemort ran his lips over the tip of Harry’s ear, and Harry trembled. “Never before have I felt this… intoxication. The urge to tend and care so for another. The urge to possess every part of you.”

He stayed, pressing hard along the length of Harry, for a minute or two. Harry’s breath gradually evened, his muscles unwound, his mind became more tranquil.

“Thank you,” Harry mumbled finally. The hand holding his squeezed a little.

“Next time,” Voldemort whispered in his ear, “I shall leave a note.”

It was so abruptly funny that Harry laughed, and he couldn’t quite breathe and laugh, held as he was against the door, but he couldn’t stop laughing either. He could feel Voldemort’s silent amusement behind him. When he stopped, calming to a strange hollowness, the weight behind him drew back.

Voldemort seemed to take pleasure in Harry’s small noise of discontent. His eyes greedily traced the red flush of the side of Harry’s face, the dishevelled hair. “You look as though I have ravished you.”

Harry blushed. “Is that how you anticipated the morning going?” he asked, turning.

Voldemort gave him a slanted smile. “There are so many possibilities. Indeed, pondering them was the only thing that saved the lives of the incompetent minions that summoned me. Metaphorically speaking,” he added.

*

Chapter Text

“You’re naked,” Harry said. This wasn’t quite the correct response to anything Voldemort had said, but he was completely incapable of stopping the words coming out of his mouth.

And Voldemort was really, really naked.

“Am I distracting you, Harry?” Voldemort asked smoothly.

“Really naked,” Harry said, slightly defensively.

“I understand. To look upon Lord Voldemort is to venerate; to be overwhelmed-“

About to make a devastating comment about Voldemort’s ego, Harry glanced up from the light patterning adorning Voldemort’s collarbones to see dry humour in his eyes.

“It’s your elbows,” he managed to say seriously in reply. “I find them overpowering.”

Voldemort looked at him for a moment, trying to determine if he was in earnest. Harry’s lips twitched.

“Terrible boy,” Voldemort murmured.

“Hey, I’m all on board with the venerating…”

“I should have left you in an enchanted sleep.” Voldemort took a step towards him, and Harry backed away. “Or turned you into a pet and kept you on a leash.”

They both paused to consider that one.

“Have you… been thinking about this a lot?” Harry asked helpfully. He backed away another step.

“Locked you up in a dungeon!” Voldemort growled.

“I’d have been venerating from afar then. Unless you came to visit. I suppose you would. Big fan of dungeons, aren’t you?” Harry’s shoulder hit the bedpost, and his heart started to speed. “What happened to saying this was all a nice surprise, anyway?”

Voldemort’s expression shifted and settled. “You are,” he whispered, “a revelation.”

Harry blushed. “Oh.”

Still a few feet away, Voldemort paused to contemplate him. “Remove your garments.”

Harry’s fingers came up to the catches at the front of his robes.

“I had wished to find you naked on my return,” Voldemort said, eyes following the movements of Harry’s fingers. “Laid out on your stomach on the bed. You would have complained at being awoken. I would have… persuaded you.”

Cheeks red at the image, Harry shrugged off his robe and let it drop to the floor. His hands went to the waistband of his pants, but Voldemort was a step closer, was cupping him through the thin fabric, and oh. Harry shuddered, eyes slipping closed, breath caught on an exhale.

“Distracted again, are we?” Voldemort murmured.

“I can’t think when you touch me.” Which made Voldemort look pleased.

“How do you plan to function in the future then?”

Blushing again at the implication, Harry pushed his pants down, Voldemort’s fingers skimming up over the bunching fabric to rest on Harry’s bare abdomen.

Caught between Voldemort and the bed, Harry tried to subtly toe his shoes off. Except they were proper wizarding boots, designed precisely to not come off accidentally.

Voldemort’s face gradually reflected amusement at Harry’s squirming. “Why do you not ask for what you need? Why must everything be a struggle?”

Because Harry had been enjoying the touch too much to move away. “Let me just get my boots off,” he said.

Voldemort glanced down and murmured a spell.

“Hey!”

Bootless, he was tipped easily onto the bed, and sat back up at the edge of it, grinning. He leaned forward to press his face curiously against Voldemort’s sternum, to feel the hard planes of bone and muscle. Tilting his head back, he found Voldemort’s eyes rapt upon him.

“What will you do to me today?” he asked cheekily, and saw Voldemort’s gaze grow sharp.

“Oh, how you tempt me, dear one,” Voldemort murmured, hands drifting to rest on Harry’s shoulders. One thumb ran up the arc of his neck, tipping his jaw, smudging over his lips.

“What will you do?” Hushed now. Wary curiosity.

“Do you have any idea what you do to me when you ask me that, Harry?” Voldemort scanned his face, pensive. “As though the decision is mine alone. As though you will accept anything I do to you. You quite devastate me.”

Breath quickening, Harry shivered. “What will you do?” he whispered unevenly.

Voldemort’s eyes slipped closed for a moment.

“Here,” the Dark Lord finally said, moving along the side of the bed until he reached the pillows. “Come here.” Harry slid sideways along the edge of the bed and, when he drew level, Voldemort reached to take the hair at the back of his head in a firm grip. Leveraging Harry with it, he drew him up onto the bed, so that he had to scramble a leg up underneath himself, then onto hands and knees. Followed Harry, implacable, hustling him up on his knees against the tall headboard, crowding in behind him.

There was an echo of the feeling of being held in, contained, that Harry had felt when Voldemort pressed him against the door before.

Voldemort rested his forehead between Harry’s shoulder blades, one hand still fisted loosely in his hair, free hand moving to rest easily on Harry’s hip, and breathed him in. Harry felt his own breathing slow to match, settling himself more comfortably, leaning the side of his head against the dark wood of the headboard. There was a long, slow drag of lips and teeth up to the nape of Harry’s neck, then up the side of it to one ear. Harry closed his eyes and tried to keep his breathing even, to ignore the press of Voldemort’s naked body along his back.

“We have the whole day, Harry,” murmured Voldemort. “Is there anything you would like?”

Harry tried to shake his head, pressed awkwardly against the headboard between Voldemort’s mouth and hand. Voldemort gave a small laugh.

“Let me remove these for you.” He pulled back and drew off Harry’s glasses, which had been pinned against his face. Reached to the side to set them on the bedside table, and Harry craned his head to watch the flex of powerful muscles.

“You find the sight of Lord Voldemort distracting once more,” Voldemort said, catching his eyes upon him. “Yet it is not where I wish your attention to lie. I shall remove the source of your preoccupation.”

“I-“

“Accio neckcloth.”

“What-“  

A soft strip of fabric was tugged across his face and he flinched back, bumping into Voldemort’s chest. The space he’d gained revealed a length of dark grey cloth with silver detailing, held taut in front of him between Voldemort’s hands.

“Hold still,” Voldemort said, and brought the cloth back to rest lightly across his eyes. There was a moment’s pause, and Harry realised Voldemort was waiting to see if he would baulk. He inhaled and felt the long press of the Dark Lord’s body behind him. Exhaled, and Voldemort breathed out with him and gently kissed the back of his head.

“Yes,” Harry said quietly. “Please.”

*

“Tell me,” Voldemort said softly into his ear, flexing two fingers slowly, slowly inside Harry. Harry’s mouth was open on a gasp, his eyelashes blinking blindly against silken threads. “Tell me what you desire.”

“I – oh… I can’t…”

“What acts do you think of when you touch yourself?”

“I don’t-“

“You don’t touch yourself?” Voldemort’s voice curled with amusement. “Dear Harry, I cannot believe that to be true.”

“No, I meant – I meant I don’t know what to- I don’t-“

Narrow lips closed over the tip of Harry’s ear, teeth teasing.

“Oh,” Harry cried, knees weakening, and he leaned hard into the headboard, tilting his arse up further. The fingers inside him paused.

“Sensitive,” Voldemort murmured, and Harry mewled again at the brush of breath over his ear. “And, oh, the sounds you make for me.”

A ragged breath, lost into a moan as Voldemort took the lobe of his ear and sucked it gently. “Oh fuck.” Harry writhed, brain shorting out at the sensations flooding through him. Voldemort’s fingertips helpfully circled inside him and then pressed, and Harry cried out again, arching, torn between escaping into the headboard and pushing back into Voldemort’s lap.

“What do you think of?” Voldemort asked again, pulling away from his ear to press open mouthed kisses against Harry’s temple above the tied cloth.

Harry felt surrounded by him, consumed by him.

“I- I think about-“

The fingers withdrew from him, and Harry groaned in empty disappointment. But he heard the pop of a cork, felt a fresh drizzle of oil down the cleft of his cheeks, and the fingers returned to push more of it inside him.

“Yes, Harry?” The voice coming from further back now, and Harry imagined that Voldemort had leaned back to watch the renewed shine of oil over Harry’s hole, to see the way it welcomed the push of Voldemort’s fingers.

“I think about you just – just taking whatever you want. Doing whatever you want to me.”

“And what do I want?”

Fingers slid out again, and Harry’s hips were tugged backwards until he was nestled against Voldemort, a long, hard cock sliding slick between his cheeks.

“What do I want, Harry?” Voldemort prompted again.

“I – you…” Harry closed his eyes behind the darkness, tried to pull himself back from the sensations. He felt like he’d lost track of what they’d been talking about.

The head of Voldemort’s cock nudged behind his balls.

“Oh!”

“What do I want?”

What did Voldemort want?

“I… You want me to be yours. And-“ Harry cast his mind back several days, to the blurry impressions of Voldemort’s voice that first night “-and for me to listen to you, and to be safe, and take care of myself.”

The hands on him gentled. Smoothed over his hips and stomach, one arm coming up to wrap around his chest to hold him even closer while the other came up so that fingers could trace delicately over his blindfolded eyes, his mouth.

“You have been paying attention,” Voldemort murmured, and there was such a tone of praise in it. “Your answer is unexpected, but most welcome. So then, if you are mine, if you listen to me and you care for yourself, tell me what you desire.”

Harry would have laughed at the Slytherin manipulation, but instead found his breath hitching on almost tears. “I want-“

Voldemort gently rocked his hips, nudging the two of them together, the heat of his shaft taunting against Harry’s hole.

“I like it when you hold me down,” Harry managed. “I like feeling like you’re touching me for your pleasure and not mine. I want you to-“ and Voldemort pulled back a little, enough for his cock to catch against Harry’s hole, for there to be a flutter of potential that Harry assumed was only a tease, and instead for his words to be lost on a long moan as Voldemort slid smoothly in to the hilt.

“That’s good, Harry,” Voldemort murmured against his hair, arm pulling him back again so that there was no gap between them, hips flush and rocking them gently together. Harry’s mouth was slack with pleasure, with the pressure and fullness of it. “What else? Tell me one of your fantasies.”

“I-“ He had to pause to breathe, to lean his head back against Voldemort’s shoulder and feel hot breath against his temple. “I want you to come in me but not let me come. Not yet. So that… For me to be- For you to… I want – oh! – I think about you saying – oh shit, I can’t, it’s too embarrassing…”

“Tell me.”

“Saying that I need a – oh fuck –“ The breath punched out of him as Voldemort jerked Harry’s hips back. “A bath,” he managed breathlessly. “That I need a bath.”

Voldemort nuzzled against his ear, one hand trailing down to cup Harry’s cock even as the other tightened across his chest. “Do you wish me to bathe you, dear one? I have thought of the idea often.”

Harry’s hips stuttered, but Voldemort held him firm and still against him. “I-“ Because fuck, Harry had thought about it a ridiculous amount. “I thought about it so much. I went to public baths. In Sweden. In Greece. What if you had found me there and insisted-“

Voldemort waited a moment, then ground his hips forward a little. “Yes?”

“Insisted on…” He couldn’t quite say the words. He didn’t know why.

“On caring for you?” Voldemort murmured softly. The smallest noise escaped Harry’s lips. “Oh, my Harry, this is a desire I shall take a great deal of pleasure in fulfilling. Relax now – relax, that’s it – and let me enjoy you.”

He was drawn back further, until it felt like he was losing his balance, until he was in Voldemort’s lap with his legs askew in front of him, impaled and with no leverage to move of his own accord. He could only let Voldemort move him, roll their hips, rub up into him, could only gasp and twitch and open.

“Please,” he said. “Please.”

*

Chapter Text

“What if I never get a job?” Harry mused, sprawled naked and damp on freshened sheets.

Voldemort, propped up beside him on one elbow, eyed him indulgently. He spread a palm across Harry’s chest, as though measuring how much of Harry he could contain in it. “I suspect you would grow bored,” he rumbled.

“I might not,” Harry said, just to be contrary. “I might welcome the peace and quiet.”

He thought about it for a minute, the idea of having nothing planned, of no expectations. He’d enjoyed that at times on his travels – but there had also been so many new things to see and do.

“I can’t say my perception of you is particularly associated with peace and quiet.”

“And how much of that was your fault?” Harry complained. “Without you trying to kill me every year, or other people trying to kill me because of you, I would have had an almost uneventful life.”

Voldemort’s eyes creased with amusement. “Events would still have found you, I believe.”

“Anyway, maybe I won’t get a job. In protest. Or I could just try and do what Hermione’s always suggesting and spend all my time trying to publicise some causes.”

Voldemort hummed.

“Not like I’ll have a choice though.” Harry shrugged against the sheets. “I’ll have to find something soon to get some money, so I don’t starve. Andromeda and Ted have been amazing, but I can’t keep staying with them, and-“

His words were cut off by Voldemort reaching to tug Harry towards him.

“Yes, Harry,” Voldemort said, turning him so that Harry’s back was tucked to his front. He rested his lips next to Harry’s ear. “I will keep you in luxury while you live in indolence, if that is the question you are asking.” The amusement in Voldemort’s voice sent Harry’s face an embarrassed, fiery red. He hadn’t been asking that question. “You may lie abed every day, beloved, or champion your causes on the streets as you like. You will never want for anything.”

Harry stared fixedly at the wall opposite, fuzzy without his glasses.

You will never want for anything.

He licked his lips. “I-“

A minute passed. Voldemort held him a little closer, chest rising and falling evenly behind him.

“You’re right, anyway,” Harry said in a rush, because saying what he was actually thinking was too much. “I’d get bored. And what kind of person just sits around and doesn’t have a job anyway? Only deadbeats, that’s what Uncle Vernon would say.”

Voldemort said nothing.

“I never-“ Harry shifted uneasily. “Why aren’t you saying something?”

“What is it you wish me to say?” Voldemort asked smoothly.

“I don’t know.” The hot flush of embarrassment deepened.

“We need not discuss it if you do not wish to.”

His mouth was dry. “Discuss what?”

A moment’s pause. “Your need for reassurance that I would never let you go hungry. That I will never let you suffer any deprivation.”

“I don’t need that.” The words jerked out of him. His muscles tensed and coiled, his eyes sought out the door. “I can take care of myself!”

Voldemort’s cheek nestled atop his head. “Hush,” he murmured.

Harry forced himself to breathe. The instinctive reaction to Voldemort’s words was still clawing through his gut, shame and denial thick in his throat.

It wasn’t like Harry hadn’t talked about the Dursleys with the mind healer, years ago. It wasn’t like he didn’t realise that what they’d done hadn’t been normal. It wasn’t like any of his friends, or the Tonks’, wouldn’t help him now if he needed it.

He wouldn’t actually starve.

“You act as though this were a burden,” Voldemort continued. “As if our needs were not perfectly complementary. As though I do not desire to cherish you as much as you long to be cherished.”

The trembling spread through him again, and Harry recognised the same urge to flee, to fight as he had earlier.

“Why?” His voice was unsteady and missed calm by a mile. “Because I’ve got part of your soul? Can’t let part of your soul go hungry. Why do you even want this, why are we even doing this-”

Tense, coil-

“Stop,” hissed Voldemort. “I meant to reassure you, not distress you. Let us pause for a few minutes.”

Harry almost said no, wanting to throw himself forward, to argue, to run.

Calm the fuck down, he said to himself. Breathe.

“Maybe some tea?” he managed.

*

Harry dressed, feeling vulnerable enough without being naked as well, and Voldemort drew on the dark green bathrobe that Harry had borrowed the day before.

The tea that was poured was herbal, and Harry could smell apple, camomile and vanilla.

“I don’t know why I reacted like that,” he said quietly a while later, cradling the half full cup in his hands. It had taken a few minutes to cool, and then they had drunk together on the divan, Voldemort pensive and watchful.

“Did you never discuss potential treatments with your mind healer?”

Harry shrugged. “He thought I might not need them. And I’m not, I mean, I’ve just never…” The words stuck in his throat again. “I guess I hadn’t realised I’ve never really talked about stuff outside of there.”

“Hmm.”

He could reach out to the mind healer again. The treatments to realign fight or flight responses weren’t too difficult, but they weren’t recommended in the case of Aurors, and when he’d been fifteen Harry had thought maybe…

“It is not something you must solve in a day,” Voldemort said, and then his thoughts seemed to turn inwards. “I once said to you that we were at a disadvantage in forming an alliance due to our history, but that I wished to attempt it anyway. Here it is similar; our backgrounds may push us against each other.”

Harry opened his mouth. Closed it. “Yours?” he asked, instead of getting defensive about his own.

There was a stillness, as there had been that night in the dining room when Voldemort had told him about the orphanage.

“Trusting others does not come easily,” Voldemort said slowly. “I find it necessary to be in control, in all things. When things important to me are threatened, my first reactions are not always the most rational course.”

Harry moved a little closer and leaned into him. “I want to trust people,” he confided. “I wanted to trust Ron, and Dumbledore, and Sirius. And when I did, I did completely, and I didn’t… I didn’t say things when I should have. I should have told them when they were doing things that – that-“ He sighed. “I don’t know. And then every time it turns around and kicks me in the balls.”

Voldemort huffed a laugh.

Harry was quiet for a minute. “When did you know about… When did you know?”

“About your Muggle relatives?” Harry nodded against his shoulder. “Initially I did not look that deeply. I would not have had you stay with Muggles regardless. But you said some things during our conversation – I cannot remember them – that made me suspect they had been bad guardians even for Muggles.”

Harry waited, chest tight.

Voldemort cleared his throat. “I visited them,” was all he said.

Oh Merlin.

Harry hadn’t been in touch with the Dursley’s since the summer after third year. Seven years now, almost. He’d just thought, well, that they didn’t care. And it’s not like they would have welcomed it had he written.

“Within the terms of our agreement?” he asked, stomach clenching.

An arm came to rest loosely around his shoulders. “This was before our agreement, dear Harry.” A moment of nauseous freefall, then, “But yes, within the terms of our agreement.”

“They aren’t dead?”

He’d wished them dead, when he was young. Many times.

“They aren’t dead.”

“I used to wish they were,” he confessed, because, on second thought, a semi-reformed Dark Lord would appreciate that kind of thing.

He was held a little closer. “I wanted to burn that orphanage to the ground,” Voldemort hissed quietly. Harry reached out and slipped his hand into Voldemort’s.

“Thank you,” Harry said. He might have meant for not killing them. He might have meant for caring enough to do whatever he did do. He wasn’t sure. Then, prompted by the twisting in his stomach, “Did you go because you thought they’d – they’d done something to part of your soul?”

Three breaths. Four. “No, Harry. Any such action towards a wizarding child is abominable. Towards you, it was unconscionable.”

“But you only cared in the first place because I have part of your horcrux.”

“It alerted me to the issue, which would otherwise have gone unobserved.”

“But you-“

“Harry,” Voldemort said. “The fact that you carry part of my soul creates an irrevocable bond between us. But, as raised when I first took you, I could have imprisoned you or obliviated you.”

“But you said - you said yesterday, about when I wanted to travel, that it was because you didn’t want to stifle your soul.”

“I am-“ Voldemort hesitated “-uncertain of how much awareness this soul fragment has. Apart from a feeling of warmth when I am near you, I cannot distinguish it as a separate entity. When I said that I did not want to stifle my soul, I meant you, my little horcrux. I did not wish to stifle you. I do not wish to harm you.

“I have come to know you, over these many years. To feel akin to you and care for you. If, by some inconceivable measure, my soul was removed from you tomorrow, I would find you no less fascinating. You would be no less mine, unless you chose to be.”

The words were almost unbearable in how much Harry had desired to hear them. He again forced himself not to run, not to lash out, and instead tucked himself closer to Voldemort. A hand came up to gently card through his hair.

“When you first told me about your soul, I felt glad,” he said after a minute. “Then I got twisted up about it.”

“I can see that,” murmured Voldemort. They rested in stillness for a moment, Voldemort seeming to think through his next words. “I apologise for not being clear that, although the reason I initially valued you was because you are my horcrux, it is not the reason I care for you. That honour, you have won all by yourself.”

*

Chapter Text

Epilogue

*

One week later

*

“You seem very happy, dearest.”

Harry and Andromeda were sitting at a small table on the garden patio, watching chaffinches and great tits come to the bird feeder. The grass still glistened with morning dew, and the teapot was steaming lightly, kept warm by a charmed tea cosy.

“It’s nice to be back,” Harry said. “I’m realising more and more how much I missed things here.”

Andromeda sipped her tea.

“And Master Tanaka has replied about my interest in tapestry restoration. I’m missing the Runes background, but we could make that up, and he says the History and Charms are more important anyway.”

Andromeda nodded.

“Though that isn’t an apprenticeship offer, more just learning for the moment. I don’t really know if it’s a viable career path anyway, it’s more just something I was interested in finding out more about. I don’t like it as much as political history, though. And no, I still haven’t decided whether to apply for the new History of Magic position at Hogwarts. And no, I still don’t feel qualified for it, but I appreciate your love and support,” Harry finished wryly.

Andromeda reached out and patted his hand, then poured more tea.

They watched the birds.

Then, quietly, “Okay, so I’m kind of seeing someone. And it’s all very new but I think – I mean I think – I mean, I really like him.”

Andromeda smiled.

*

“Harry.”

The mind healer greeted him at the office door, standing back to usher him in towards the couch. It was still the same office, the same patterned rug, the same texture of the couch under his fingertips.

“It’s been a while,” Harry said ruefully. He’d gone once, after Sirius had kidnapped him, but he had been too mixed up to really talk about it. And before that, not since the summer after fifth year.

“How have you been?”

Harry told him a little about his travels, about how it felt reconnecting with his friends and family. About still feeling directionless.

The healer listened warmly, then, ten minutes before the end of the session said, “Now, why don’t you tell me why you’re really here.”

“I-“ Harry took a deep breath. No point in coming here and not coming out with it. “I’ve started seeing someone. And I… It’s different, from anyone I’ve been with before. They weren’t really serious.”

“And things with this person feel serious?”

Breathe in, breathe out. “Yes.”

The mind healer smiled.

“But I keep… I don’t know.” Harry paused to think about it. “I keep freaking out? At all kinds of stupid things. Like when he left in the morning for a work emergency without waking me up, or when he says nice things, or when-“ his voice cracked “- he says anything even vaguely connected to – to when I was a kid.”

“To your childhood with the Dursleys?” the healer clarified.

Harry nodded, avoiding eye contact.

The mind healer leaned back. “I see. Have you spoken much about what you went through at your relatives with other people?”

Harry shook his head.

“It was a large portion of your life,” the mind healer said gently.

“I know.” Harry sighed. “And I know they didn’t – I mean, I know none of that was my fault.” He stumbled over the words. “I just need to stop lashing out whenever he mentions anything that… I don’t know. I don’t even know what I’m trying to say,” he finished miserably.

“It’s perfectly normal to still be struggling with those feelings. We talked before, a long time ago, about the fact that having the kinds of experiences you’ve had can cause you to react automatically in certain ways, even when they aren’t necessary or helpful.”

Harry nodded.

“So, let’s revisit that and see how we can help you. Shall we meet once a week?”

*

“What if I fuck this up, Hedwig? I feel like at some point I’m going to say or do something really stupid, and I mean, it’s Voldemort – it’s not like he’s the most forgiving person ever.”

Harry stared out of the paned window, tucked sideways onto the ledge. Hedwig had a perch attached to the side of the window, and was observing him neutrally.

“This wasn’t really a sane life choice, was it?”

Hedwig hooted softly.

“But I just – I mean, I just…”

Hedwig waited for a moment, then rustled her wings.

“It’s weird, but I feel like he’s always… been there for me. I mean, once he stopped being evil. I mean, once he was less evil. Oh Merlin, is he still evil? Am I in love with someone who’s e-“

Harry stopped.

Hedwig stared at him.

“I mean, I’m not in love with him,” Harry said defensively.

Hedwig blinked.

“I’ve only even been seeing him for a couple of weeks. And oh, sure, give me that look, why don’t you? But I really don’t – I mean, I really…”

There was a moment’s silence.

“Fuck.”

Hedwig shuffled a bit closer to run her beak through his messy hair.

*

One month later

*

“The Minister for Magic!”

“It doesn’t matter how many times you say it, Hermione.”

“But, the Minister for Magic!”

“I think you broke her, mate.”

“How fascinating,” Luna said. “I noticed he seems to have far less wrackspurts about him these days. I think that must be your doing.”

“Harry’s only known him a few weeks though,” Hermione said, snapping out of it.

“Hmm,” Luna hummed, and tilted her head.

Harry took the information that Voldemort had less wrackspurts as a very positive sign. He might not entirely believe they existed, but he had always seen a definite correlation between Luna’s comments about imaginary creatures and the state of things in the real world.

“Longer than that, though,” Ginny added. “Didn’t you meet him once before?”

“Uh, yeah, once or twice. He was involved in some of the meetings after Sirius ki– uh, after Sirius.”

“And he remembered you all this time?”

“I mean, he is the Boy Who Lived, Hermione. He’s kind of memorable.”

“Oh hush, you.”

“What’s he like?” asked Neville quietly.

They were all piled into the living room at the Tonks’, supplied with snacks and drinks by Ted as though they were still fifteen. Hermione, Ron and Ginny were piled on the couch, and Harry, Luna and Neville were sitting on the rug while several perfectly respectable armchairs went unused.

“Yeah, Harry, what’s he like?”

Harry was weirdly unprepared for this question. “Oh, he’s um, you know?”

“No, Harry,” Hermione said, a slight edge to her tone. “We don’t know. We don’t know the Minister for Magic personally. I’ve only been in the same room as him a few times, and I work there!”

“Uh-“

“Have another butterbeer, mate.”

Harry smiled his thanks, and picked at the label on the bottle. “He’s interested in my opinions,” he said slowly. “He’s very confident in his own, but he always listens to me, and he’ll change his mind if I give a good argument. He’s, uh, kind of weirdly chivalrous-“

“Chivalrous?” Ron mouthed.

“-and really patient when I’m in a bad mood and… he likes being around me even if we’re not really doing anything and, I don’t know. I really like him. And he touches my hair a lot.”

“Aww,” said Ginny quietly, even as Hermione leaned forward combatively.

“How did this even start, Harry?”

“Uh, it was when we were looking into the new creature rights campaign, you know that, Hermione.”

“Right, but I don’t know how you get from that to dating him, Harry?”

“I mean-“ Harry glanced at the others, uncomfortable “-we just, I don’t know, liked each other, Hermione.”

“People don’t just like you, Harry.” Which, okay, blow to his somewhat shaky ego, and Hermione must have seen the hurt on his face. “I’m just remembering Terry from sixth year, and Blaise from seventh year, and-“

“Yes, alright, Hermione!”

“I just want to make sure he’s not using you, Harry.”

“He’s not. No, don’t Hermione – I really mean it! I’ve talked about a lot of stuff with him, and I trust that if there are beneficial side effects to his political career then that’s exactly what they’ll be – side effects.”

“I think it sounds like you’re happy,” Neville said. The rest of them paused at that and took a moment to look at Harry. Harry blushed.

“Good,” Ginny said bluntly.

*

“Can you identify a difference between the things your partner says that you don’t have a problem with, versus those that cause you to react strongly?”

Harry thought about this for a minute.

“I – When he says stuff like - like he’ll say, umm, ‘you’re mine,” Harry reddened, hand rubbing over his hair, “That’s okay. That feels good.” The mind healer nodded. “When he says,“ Harry paused, then carried on more slowly, “like, compliments. That I’m, I don’t know, clever or beautiful or good,” he had to rush the words out, awkward, “then I mostly feel, I don’t know, like they’re not true? Like he’s just being nice. Except I know he isn’t. He wouldn’t say things like that to me unless he meant them. So, it makes me uncomfortable, but at the same time, I really like it? And, um, I don’t feel like I have to run away.”

“Alright.” The healer made a few notes. “So, what makes you feel like you have to run away?”

“Uh…” They’d been circling around this for a few sessions now, while rediscussing mind healing treatments and how the wizarding mind worked and a bit about the Dursleys. “When he says stuff like-“ Harry looked fixedly at the rug “-like that he wants to take care of me or that he’ll never leave me or – I don’t even remember! This is stupid!” He flared up, and was halfway to standing before he forced himself to stop.

Calm, breathe. Calm.

“Sorry,” he muttered, and dropped back to the couch.

The mind healer waited him out.

“Or when he said stuff about me needing reassurance, and him being happy to give it to me,” Harry said after a minute. “He’s stopped saying things so much, now, after he noticed how I was – I mean, after he realised it was freaking me out. I think he was trying to be nice. I mean, it is nice. They’re all nice things. It’s really stupid.”

“The thought of someone paying attention to and desiring to care for your needs-“ Harry was already shaking his head “-indeed, of being keen to do so, triggers this response in you.”

“No it doesn’t,” Harry said angrily, even though that was exactly what he’d just said. “This is stupid. Why would I even care whether or not he says things like that? But it’s stupid that he does – I mean, who would say that? Who would say they want to take care of me?” he scorned.

They sat in silence for a minute.

“It’s not that I don’t see the issue,” Harry said eventually. “I just can’t… stop.”

*

“What do you mean you’re a legimens?”

Voldemort frowned. “Exactly as I said. It is a technique that was very useful during the war, not to mention against my political opponents.”

Harry stood with his mouth slightly open, a churning feeling building in his gut that he couldn’t acknowledge yet.

“And that doesn’t seem, I don’t know, morally wrong to you? No, never mind, what am I even saying – who am I even talking to?” His fists clenched and unclenched by his sides. “Have you-“ and here the feeling came, giant and swelling and crashing because he already knew the answer. “Have you used it on me?”

Voldemort said nothing.

Harry’s breath came a little faster. “When?” he asked hoarsely. “When have you used it on me? All the time? Have you always been reading my thoughts, all this time? Do you just sit around in my brain laughing at my incredible naivete, manipulating me because you always know what I’m thinking, you always know what-“

“No, Harry, no-“

Harry was already at the door, was so fucking done.

“Because of course you would do that, because you’re Voldemort, and how I could be so stupid as to-“

“Do not leave like this. Allow me to speak.”

Harry hesitated, hand on the doorknob. If they were anywhere else, he would have already been gone, but the wards at Voldemort’s manor meant he had to walk out the old-fashioned way.

“Why?” he said bitterly. “So you can manipulate me some more?”

“I do not make a habit of reading your mind, Harry.” Truth, Harry heard. “I will admit I have done so on select occasions.”

Warily, Harry released the doorknob. He stayed with his back towards Voldemort, body held in a hard line. “What occasions?”

A slight rustle of robes behind him. “Early on in our acquaintance, to acquire knowledge of your interactions with Dumbledore. To learn what happened during the attacks upon you when you were still at Hogwarts. And-“ Voldemort hesitated.

“And?” Harry snapped.

“And a few times since your return, when you have been upset and seemed unable to communicate what was wrong.”

Harry deflated like a punctured balloon. He leaned his head forward against the door. “I don’t know if I can believe you,” he muttered. “I do know you don’t think you did anything wrong. How can I even be with someone who doesn’t understand it’s not okay to poke around inside my head?”

There were a few moments’ silence. Voldemort didn’t try to move closer, and Harry’s muscles gradually uncoiled a little.

“I do not comprehend why you object,” Voldemort said eventually. “All of the instances were practical and of benefit to you.”

Harry tensed again.

“Nevertheless, I can see that my actions have upset you. This is not a desired outcome.” Harry gave a rusty laugh. “I apologise for failing to take into account your feelings about this. How may we remedy the situation?”

Astonished, Harry tipped his head sideways, looking at Voldemort out of the corner of his eye. “What?”

“I do not wish you to leave. What steps may we take to remedy my error?”

Harry turned a little, reading honesty on Voldemort’s face. Hearing it in his words.

Voldemort was sorry. Voldemort didn’t want him to leave.

The tightness in his chest uncoiled a bit. This… felt a little less like the world-ending crisis he’d felt threatening a minute ago. He’d thought this was it. End of their relationship, their friendship, their everything. He would completely cut contact; Voldemort would probably have him stealthily monitored for safety. They would never see each other again.

But Voldemort wanted to know what they could do that would fix this.

“Why do you care?” Harry couldn’t help but ask. “Even if I’m angry and we end things, I’m not a threat to you. We - we don’t make any sense together – you know we don’t.”

“I find,” and now Voldemort did take a step closer, two, holding out his hand, “that I would not make sense without you.”

*

One year later

*

“We’re on the front page of The Prophet again,” Harry called, as he fished it out from the pile of papers beside the breakfast table. “Terrible photo. Oh, there’s a much better one on The Observatory.” He hummed, pleased.

“That was Ms Hillcrest’s article, I believe,” Voldemort said as he came through the door of the breakfast room. He was still fussing with the collar of his robe, and Harry stood with an eyeroll to straighten it for him. “I’m surprised they haven’t taken her on full time yet.”

“Another pet project of yours?” Harry asked fondly.

“I merely believe-“ Voldemort sat and pulled his chair in under the table, reaching for his coffee “-that journalists of integrity and ingenuity ought to be encouraged and sponsored.”

“Uh huh.”

A cup of tea, doctored with milk, no sugar, was passed to Harry.

“And the right to a free press should not be used as an excuse for poor quality and sensationalism!”

“Uh huh.”

“Surely everyone must see the benefits of unbiased dissemination of information? Of the improvement of our society?”

“Very unbiased,” Harry agreed with a straight face.

“And-“ Voldemort paused, a forkful of scrambled egg halfway to his mouth. “Ah. You are humouring me.”

A smile broke out on Harry’s face. “I like your efforts to encourage ‘young people,’” Harry said. “And you know I agree with you about the press. And you know I see straight through all your protestations that it is solely for the benefit of the public, since it is at least a tiny bit because this way you end up with all the good journalists on your side.”

Voldemort was stiff. “I am not bribing any of them.” There was a slight pause. “At the moment.”

Harry snorted a laugh. “Pass the butter?”

They ate in silence for a few minutes, Harry amused by Voldemort’s continuing offended dignity. “Oh, by the way,” he said as a thought occurred to him. “I had a dream about you last night.”

A raised eyebrow. A faint smirk.

“Not that kind of dream. It was of you, still at the party. You said something to Madame Butterworth – I can’t remember. She really put your back up about how disadvantaged half-bloods were. Man, you were angry.” Harry snorted again.

Voldemort looked at him in absolute fascination.

“What?” Harry said. “Do I have something on my face?”

“My dear one,” Voldemort murmured. “What you describe actually happened, about an hour or so after you returned home.”

Harry blinked.

“Do you often have such dreams?”

“No… Yes.” Harry tried to remember. “I used to dream of you sometimes. Weird dreams. I thought they were representations of my fear of you, or of overcoming it, or something. Of getting to know you.”

There had been meetings with Voldemort’s Death Eaters, very early on. Voldemort had been angry in a lot of those. Then the dreams had become more mellow; occasional glimpses of parties and dinners and quiet meetings in which it was difficult to make out the words, but Voldemort’s face was so clear.

“They were… real?”

“I suspect so. You say, ‘used to.’ They stopped?”

“Yeah, although they were never that frequent. They stopped… a while ago now. Maybe a yea-“ Harry paused. “When I started learning Occlumency,” he said ruefully.

Voldemort leaned back in his chair, looking enraptured. “The connection between us grows more compelling the more that I learn of it,” he said. “I have never had such dreams of you. You did not clear your mind last night?”

“I was very drunk!” Harry protested. Then, “I suppose it’s the first time I’ve been drunk but we’ve gone to bed separately in a long time.”

“Yes,” Voldemort said, thoughts turned inwards. Then he looked at Harry, eyes gleaming. “I wish to experiment.”

*

“Oh Merlin, I hate being pregnant,” groaned Ginny.

Harry, in the role of supportive friend, flagged down the server to order cake and ginger tea.

“It is not the joyous time that it is made out to be. And there are so many potions you can’t take when you’re pregnant – including all the ones for fucking nausea.”

“All men are bastards,” Harry said pre-emptively.

“All of them,” Ginny agreed bitterly.

“Especially me,” Harry added.

“Especially you.”

When Ginny and her partner had been looking around for a sperm donor, she’d got both herself and Harry very drunk and then asked him. ‘Unless it’s weird,’ she’d said, ‘in which case pretend you were too drunk to remember we had this conversation.’

It had been weird to be asked, but he’d been kind of okay with it. Voldemort had, unexpectedly, also been okay with it, and indeed surprisingly enamoured of the idea of part of Harry running around in the world.

Harry, it turned out, had only been okay with it until Ginny was pregnant. Then he’d freaked out. Now that he was very gradually un-freaking out, Ginny had started freaking out. Which wasn’t helped by the rampant morning sickness.

“It will all be okay,” he said as reassuringly as he could, and mentally pencilled in doing something nice with Voldemort tonight as a requirement for his sanity.

“It will all be okay,” she repeated glumly.

*

“I think he’s going to ask me to marry him,” Harry said to the mind healer, leaning sideways into the arm of the couch.

“Oh?”

“Either that or he has a terrible secret that he’s working up to telling me. He’s getting really twitchy. And sometimes I catch him pacing a lot, or talking quietly to himself in the mirror.”

“All clear signs of a proposal,” the mind healer agreed, deadpan.

Harry grinned. “I think they are in his case.”

“And how would you feel? If he asked you to marry him?”

Harry opened his mouth. Shut it again. “I wanted to say ‘great,’” he said after a moment.

“But?” the mind healer prompted after a minute.

“I don’t know,” Harry said slowly. “Mostly great. I - I like the thought of being married to him. I want that. A lot. I – I really like the idea that he cares about me enough to want to marry me.”

The healer nodded.

“But also kind of scared?”

“Why scared?”

“I, uh, I think that’s pretty normal actually, right? Ron said when Hermione proposed to him, he almost fainted.”

“Any large change to one’s life can certainly be intimidating. But why did you in particular say scared?”

Harry shrugged.

“Let me ask you something else, then. Why was your friend Ron scared?”

“Oh, uh, he worries he isn’t good enough for her and that she’ll suddenly realise that, he worries she’ll get bored of him, he worries he’ll never make enough of himself and… Yeah, actually it’s all stuff about him worrying she’ll realise he’s not what she wants.”

That was easy enough to reel off. Even if Ron hadn’t confided in him in a panicked floo call a couple of hours after the proposal, Harry knew his friend well enough to have guessed with reasonable accuracy.

“Are you worried your partner will realise you are not what he wants?”

Harry stared at him.

“No,” he said slowly, not realising it until he spoke it. Harry might worry a lot about whether he was good enough in general, but if you asked him whether Voldemort thought he was good enough…

He thought about it for a minute longer.

“I mean, it’s not like I think he’ll get bored of me. Or that he doesn’t really know me. Or that he won’t stay invested. He’s the only person on the planet who I feel I should really believe when he says he will care for me forever.”

The mind healer watched him.

“And the way things have been this last year…” Harry started to count points on his fingers. “Okay, so: He apologised and changed his behaviour when I pointed out he’d been doing something that upset me. We’ve had more than one argument, and the world hasn’t ended, which, uh, wasn’t beyond…” He snorted a laugh. “Nevermind. He listens to me, which Ginny and Hermione tell me is the number one most important thing in a relationship. He’s really, uh, good to me. I feel-” He stopped, voice suddenly hoarse, and the mind healer stayed carefully still and quiet. “I feel safe with him,” Harry said. “Like he’s always going to have my best interests in mind alongside his own. Like he would maybe make sure I got what I wanted even if it wasn’t what he wanted. Which again, big thing for him.”

He crossed his arms over his chest, staring down at the floor.

“The thing is, I think it might be a good thing. I think we might be happy together. I can –“ his throat worked for a moment “-actually imagine a future; one with him in it. But-“

A moment’s silence.

“I - I’m scared that I won’t be allowed to have this.” His voice cracked a little. “That it will get… taken away somehow, as soon as I want it.”

The mind healer waited a few seconds. “It sounded like that was hard to say.”

Harry snorted, uncomfortable.

“Who would take it away, Harry?”

“I mean, I’m not saying it makes any sense…“

“Is there anyone who could?”

Harry thought about it. Nobody external. Voldemort would kill anyone who tried. So then the only risk was Voldemort himself. If his deception was discovered, somehow. If he felt an urge to grandstand, or got tired of playing nice. But Harry didn’t think Voldemort would allow that risk to their relationship either.

And, worst case scenario, they could just run away to the other side of the world together.

“No,” he said slowly. “No one could take it away from me.”

*

Ten years later

*

“Come see the catacombs with me, you said.” Harry heaved a sigh.

“It is necessary to do it in pre-dawn light in order to see the runic carvings, dearest,” Voldemort murmured absently. His attention was entirely occupied by the stone in front of him, and had been for some time. It was lit up with a web of traces of silvery rune work. Harry supposed it was kind of pretty.

“I could still be in bed,” he grumbled. “We could both still be in bed. Travel the world, you said. Take a little time to ourselves, you said.” He blew on his hands, then tucked them into his armpits. “It’s freezing.”

“And are you not a wizard?” Voldemort finally looked up and took in Harry’s peeved face. “What exactly has upset you, darling? I was honest about why we were coming. You could have stayed in bed had you preferred it.”

“Catacombs, you said!”

“Ah.” Voldemort’s face took on an amused cast, and he rose from his kneeling position. “Had you perhaps imagined something more exciting? Cursed gargoyles? Rampant mummies?”

Harry reddened.

“Your frustrated Auror dreams are showing, Harry.”

“I do not have – I never really wanted to be an Auror!” he spluttered. “I was fourteen! And I am not a thrill-seeker, no matter how you try to paint me. Quidditch is completely different,” he added pre-emptively.

“I thought you would be fascinated by the history of this place, to be honest,” Voldemort said, avoiding the argument entirely.

And oh.

“Oh,” Harry said softly. “You were trying to do something nice for me?”

Voldemort’s lips twitched. “No, beloved, I am here for the entirely self-serving reasons I originally stated. But,” and he reached out to gather Harry to him, to tuck him against his side, “I did also think that this presents another side of the city, and that you might like to look at the frescos and reliefs.”

Harry squinted into the surrounding darkness, where the reliefs were presumably hiding. He pressed his head against Voldemort’s shoulder. “I am not a this-early-in-the-morning person,” he said regretfully.

“I know.”

“Perhaps this afternoon?”

“Indeed. I have finished taking down the notes I wished, so we can return at our convenience. Shall we find somewhere nice to have breakfast? Places must be opening soon.”

“Mmm.” Harry pulled back a little in order to be able to lean up and press a kiss to his husband’s jaw. “And then a nap?”

“And then a nap,” said Voldemort agreeably.

*

“Do you ever think about Voldemort?”

Harry turned his head to stare at Hermione. Given that she was still breastfeeding her much planned for firstborn, Elinor, he just as quickly whipped it back around to the garden and the rest of the party.

She laughed slightly at his embarrassment. “You Know Who,” she clarified.

“Yes, I do know who.” Harry snorted. As Voldemort himself was standing only twenty feet away, talking to Harry’s friends from work, the question seemed absurd. “What brought this on?”

“Oh, I don’t know. We had a girl’s night and were reminiscing about our school days. The way something weird happened almost every year. Ginny was saying her kids will have a positively boring experience in comparison.”

Harry hummed.

“I used to wonder sometimes - whether he was really dead or not,” Hermione continued. “Whether the whole revelation of Dumbledore’s obsession with him was just a smokescreen. I worried you might feel betrayed that we all just… stopped believing he was back – no matter what you said about it being the most logical thing.”

This had obviously been bugging Hermione, so Harry stayed quiet and thought through his response. “I was never just saying that,” he said after a minute. “I had my doubts too, to start with, but… well. Talking it through with you guys helped. It was a long time ago, now.”

They sat for a few minutes in silence broken only by small noises from the baby. The wind rustled the leaves of the apple tree above them, and dappled sunlight fell on their faces.

“They held thirtieth anniversary celebrations of his defeat, last Halloween,” Hermione finally said. “I was glad you were away.”

“Worse than the quarter of a century ones?”

“Much. Or perhaps it’s that my perspective has changed. Did you read that biography that came out a little while back?” Harry shook his head, although of course he had. “It was so strange finding out the roots of Voldemort’s attempt to overthrow the Ministry. I’ve never read a book that made me agree so much with someone’s point of view whilst still finding them utterly reprehensible.”

“You? Agree with Voldemort’s views on blood purity?”

“Well, more the other parts. But the book provides evidence that even the pureblood angle was vastly overstated by the opposition, and we all know history is written by the victors. In fact-“

“Happy Birthday, Harry! Sorry we’re late.”

Harry and Hermione looked up and found Neville and his girls standing in front of their bench. “Sorry,” Harry said, getting to his feet, “Have we been ignoring you for long?”

Neville stepped in for an easy hug, and then pulled back to very formally hand over a somewhat squashy present.

“Will it eat me?” Harry asked suspiciously. “Should I open it in an explosion-proof lab?”

“Harry!” Neville protested with a laugh while the three girls giggled. “But, uh, maybe somewhere with a fair bit of space? And outside.”

“Thanks! And hey girls.” He bent to receive shy kisses on the cheek from Neville’s daughters. “I think your friends are hiding out behind the butterfly bushes.”

The three of them ran off, squealing.

“I’m going to go say hi to Luna,” Neville said. “Can I bring you guys back a drink?”

“A ginger beer would be lovely,” said Hermione, and Harry nodded and held up two fingers. “Now, where were we?”

“Voldemort, I believe,” Harry said as Neville headed back out onto the lawn.

“Oh, yes. Hang on.” She switched Elinor to the other side. “Ouch. I don’t know. I just think what a different life you might have had if he’d never turned to violence.”

“What – grown up with my parents? Known about magic?” Harry stared out at his friends and family strewn across the lawn of the manor. Their manor – Voldemort’s and his. “I used to wonder, when I first got to Hogwarts,” he said quietly. “I used to dream about growing up with my parents – with people who loved me. I used to think about how unfair it was that they died so young, and left so little behind.”

Hermione reached over and squeezed his hand.

“But,” he rallied, “on balance I find I’m very happy with what I have. I wouldn’t give it up, Hermione,” he said seriously, catching her eyes. “Not even to have had my parents. Who would I even have been, in another world? And-“ and here he glanced towards the small forms darting in and out of the bushes, two of which had bright, bright green eyes “-part of my parents will keep living on. That helps, somehow.”

*

“You’re being twitchy,” Harry called without looking up from his book.

This resulted in Voldemort coming through from the study, hands folded behind his back and frowning lightly. “I was just looking for-“

“Twitchy,” Harry emphasized. “Enough that I can still feel it from a different room. Go ahead and tell me whatever it is, and spare yourself the agony.”

There was a moment’s offended silence. Harry glanced up, took in the affront, estimated it would take another minute for Voldemort to process it, and turned to the next page.

Finally, when it had been much longer than a minute, Harry said, “I thought we might go into town this afternoon? I need to pick up some-“

“I must speak with you,” Voldemort announced.

Harry smiled inwardly. “Oh?” he muttered disinterestedly.

Voldemort moved to stand just in front of him and said again: “I must speak with you, Harry.”

Well, alright then. Harry set the book aside, adjusted his glasses, and gave Voldemort his full attention.

“I… There is a matter which…”

Harry ran through the list of things that might get his husband this nervous. The possibility that Voldemort had yet another secret that he had been keeping from Harry wasn’t entirely surprising, but it didn’t make Harry feel great, either.

“I feel it would be unwise to keep it from you for longer,” Voldemort said.

Harry nodded. Definitely unwise.

“You may become upset,” Voldemort warned.

“Should I warn my friends that you might kidnap me?” An old joke now, but Voldemort’s lips didn’t even twitch. Perhaps it was mean of Harry to tease while he was this nervous. “I may become upset,” Harry allowed. “I shall require your abject apologies for whatever it is, and for you to be very nice to me for a while.” He thought for a moment. “Or to leave for Albania, if it’s really something terrible.”

Voldemort eyed him with caution.

“Just tell me,” Harry sighed.

“I became aware – that is, there is the possibility… That is to say…” There was a long pause. “It is to do with the nature of horcruxes, Harry.”

Ah.

“You may have noticed – or you may not, you are hardly a vain creature – that you have not started to show the small signs of aging you see in your compatriots.”

Harry tilted his head inquiringly.

“I believe this to be related to your status, and indeed…” Voldemort trailed off.

Weighing the potential entertainment that dragging this out might bring him, versus the ability to take the wind out of his husband’s sails, Harry went with: “I know.”

Voldemort stared at him, uncomprehending.

“Assuming you are trying to gently breach the topic of my likely immortality, I know.”

“You do.” Voldemort’s eyes roamed his face. “My Harry,” he breathed.

“I am shocked and offended that you never thought I would research horcruxes after finding out that I was one,” Harry said wryly. “I knew this was quite probably the case before I agreed to marry you. Incidentally, I hope that you really meant forever, in those vows, otherwise I shall become very angry with you.”

“Beloved.”

“Although admittedly, I struggle to think about how living such a long time will really work. Possibly, I shall have to take extensive holidays away from you on tropical islands so that we don’t get too annoyed with each other.”

Voldemort came a step closer, reaching to smooth his fingers up Harry’s jaw. “You are not angry?”

“It’s not something you caused on purpose.” Harry hesitated before continuing, “I can’t imagine it, to be honest. I’ve never quite understood why it was something you desired so desperately. I am… curious to see the future, however. To see how magic will evolve, how humans will be. To see it with you. So no, I don’t mind.”

An involuntary smile crossed Voldemort’s face, and for a moment Harry smiled back.

But.

“If that-” and here he reached up and pressed his own hand over Voldemort’s, “If that ever changes – and this will upset you, but tough. If that ever changes, I expect you to honour my wishes.”

He saw delayed comprehension spread across Voldemort’s face, saw his eyes burn as he stared down at Harry.

It was a lot to ask of anyone, Harry knew, but even more to ask of Voldemort in particular. His beautiful, obsessive, stupidly possessive husband, who must have been positively delighted when he realised that Harry no longer seemed to be aging.

“I vowed to honour your wishes in all things,” Voldemort finally murmured.

“In all things,” Harry agreed.

There was a long silence.

“But not yet?” Voldemort asked, hushed. “Do not ask it of me yet.”

“Not for a long time,” Harry said seriously.

They stayed in a still tableau, Voldemort gently cupping his cheek.

“I suspect,” his husband said slowly, “that I shall accompany you on that journey as well. As I do in all things.”

“In… all things,” Harry repeated numbly.

The words rang in his head.

Voldemort, who feared death beyond everything. Voldemort, who had broken his own soul and murdered in order to avoid it. Voldemort would-

A tear slid down his cheek to break against Voldemort’s thumb.

“Except on the trips I’ll take to tropical islands when I get fed up of you,” Harry managed unevenly.

“Except for those.” Voldemort caressed him again, eyes seeking to memorize his face. “My dearest, my own.”

Harry made a small noise. “I love you too,” he mumbled.

Voldemort let out a long, satisfied sigh.

“I cannot imagine a life where we did not come to this moment together, where our destinies were not so intertwined.” He leaned down and pressed his lips to Harry’s forehead, over his scar. “I would burn the world before allowing myself to be parted from you.”

“No world burning,” Harry mumbled into the side of his neck.

“No,” murmured Voldemort. “There is too much of you in it, and of what you and I have created, for me to ever desire that.”

*

The End

*