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Chapter Text

Harry sat in the center of the tent, staring at the two items that lay on the blanket in front of him. His shattered holly wand, to the right. The locket Horcrux, to the left.

“Harry?”

Harry glanced up with a wan smile for Hermione, who looked so worried that Harry thought she might burst into flames in the middle of the tent. “I just need to think, Hermione. Just to be alone for a while.”

“All right.” Hermione hesitated, eyes on Harry’s broken wand. “I—I’ve been looking through some of the books we brought with us, Harry, and I can’t find any way for a wand to be repaired.” Deep breath. “But that doesn’t mean a charm doesn’t exist!”

“I’d like to think, Hermione,” Harry said, as gently as he could.

Hermione squeezed his shoulder once, also gently, and then turned and walked out of the tent. Harry felt a little guilty as the flap fell shut, but reminded himself that she knew Warming Charms, and that thinking wouldn’t take him long.

Not when he’d done most of it last night.

He turned back to the wand and reached out to touch the splintered wood, gently. The phoenix feather felt warm under his fingers, but Harry knew it was only an illusion. The wand was broken, and nothing could bring it back. Given that Ollivander had disappeared, who knew if Harry could even get another one?

I won’t do any good against Voldemort without a wand.

Then Harry turned and stared at the locket Horcrux, which might have been a large part of the reason that Ron left. But even if it wasn’t, and that just came down to Ron’s homesickness and hatred of what was happening, they still hadn’t come up with a way to destroy it that didn’t involve basilisk fangs. And there was no way they could sneak into Hogwarts with Snape there as Headmaster.

Harry closed his eyes. The conclusion sat and stared him in the face. But he barely wanted to say it even to himself.

We have to ask Voldemort for peace.

Part of Harry rebelled at the notion, mostly because it didn’t seem like it would work. Voldemort was insane. How would he respond to an offer of a peace treaty? By tearing up the letter and laughing about it with his Death Eaters, most likely.

But against that, Harry laid the bare truths he had come to accept. He and Hermione—and Ron, if he ever returned—had no notion of how to destroy the locket with weapons they could access. They had no clues as to where the next Horcruxes were. Harry was without a wand, which meant he was helpless even if Voldemort had no more Horcruxes. He could borrow Hermione’s wand, sure, which would make her even more of a target, or he could try to steal one, which would be bloody difficult to do when he was wandless himself.

Harry had toyed with the idea of just offering himself up to Voldemort in exchange for peace. But that would mean Voldemort would kill him and go on living, just as insane as before, and Ron and Hermione would be left with the problem of hunting down Horcruxes they didn’t know about and destroying them with weapons they didn’t know about.

Plus…

Harry wanted to live.

He clenched his hands next to his knees, even though he kept his eyes shut. He wondered if that was a reprehensible, cowardly desire.

But, well, plenty of people in the rest of Britain wanted to live. Ron and Hermione did. The Weasleys did, which was why they weren’t out there openly opposing Voldemort. All the people who were keeping their heads down in the Ministry and going along with what Voldemort wanted were doing it so they could live.

Why should Harry be the only one who had to sacrifice his life? Particularly when it wouldn’t do much good anyway?

If he lived, if he offered himself in marriage, then Voldemort would be bound by the vows to not commit genocide and mass torture. Harry was going to insist on that. In return, he would deliver the locket and what he knew about the rest of the Horcruxes, which honestly wasn’t much.

And he would recommend that people lay down their wands against the Death Eaters.

Harry shuddered and opened his eyes. It was a terrible bargain. But it was the only way he could think of to buy time to reduce Voldemort’s insanity and influence him in some way. Hermione’s books from Grimmauld Place said wedding vows tied the spouses together into one unit, which meant that Harry’s priorities would have a mental and magical effect on Voldemort.

And his on you?

Harry grimaced. Yeah, that was the sticking point. But he did think that if he went into this with good faith, then he would manage to have his way. That was another thing the books had said, that the very same vows that would keep the spouses from fighting each other would make them prioritize their common good. And at the moment, Harry had a hell of a lot more of their “common good” on his mind than Voldemort did.

He stood and walked to the tent flap. Hermione immediately turned around, her eyes big. She was shivering a little in spite of the shimmer of a Warming Charm around her.

“I’ve decided,” Harry said quietly. “We need to steal a camera, so that we can take a picture of my wand and the locket and send it to—Riddle, along with a request for peace.”

*

“I’m not insane.”

Hermione gave him a doubtful glance. Harry shifted in the ropes that bound him, and stilled with a sigh when Hermione lifted her wand in his direction. She had not taken the announcement about them needing to reach out to Voldemort with a peace proposition well.

“That’s not you, Harry,” she said now, for at least the fifth time since she had Stunned him a few hours ago. “You fight until the bitter end! You don’t give up! I think You-Know-Who is influencing you, somehow…”

“Yeah, I know it’s possible, but would he really want peace? Or would he just inspire me to do something stupid like go challenge him to a duel so he could win the war?”

“If he doesn’t think he can defeat you—”

“Who’s shivering in the middle of the woods in a tent right now and who’s snug and secure in Malfoy Manor, Hermione? Come on.”

Hermione bit her lip several times in a row, not seeming to know what she was doing, until a little trickle of blood crept down her face. “We owe it to people to protect them,” she whispered. “We owe it to them to keep fighting.”

Harry felt as though he were a cup, overflowing, but what came out when he opened his mouth was bitterness. “And what are they doing, huh? Keeping their heads down, pretending they don’t know Muggleborns are being arrested right now, enabling Umbridge, doing what the Death Eaters tell them—”

“They’re scared!”

“We fucking are too! But we’re out here doing something about it!”

Hermione lowered her eyes. “And you think sending a surrender offer would be doing something about it?”

Her voice was an angry whisper, but there was something else in it. Harry cocked his head. She sounded—tempted.

She’s scared, too. She’s starving and cold. She wants this war to be over, and that might finally have worn down her conviction that we need to keep fighting no matter what. Maybe she was even arguing because she thought I would expect it.

“It’s more than anyone else is doing right now,” Harry said, keeping his voice as calm and steady as possible. “You know that. And you know what that book you found says. That he and I would be bound together if we got married. I could influence him. He would influence me, but I’d count on you to keep me tempered.”

“And Ron?”

“If he ever bloody comes back, sure.”

Hermione made a little twitchy motion, but didn’t say anything. And then she abruptly twirled her wand, and the ropes fell away from Harry. He brought his arms forwards with relief, eyeing her cautiously as he rubbed his wrists.

“You’re right,” Hermione said, her words tumbling over each other like rocks in a stream. “You’re right. I don’t have any ideas how to destroy them or stop him. I don’t know how to get you a wand. We might as well try this because no one else is trying anything and because nothing we’re trying will work.”

By the time she finished, tears were bright in her eyes. Harry lunged towards her and hugged her. Hermione clung back.

*

Stealing a camera was the hardest part, once he’d convinced Hermione.

Hermione was the one who finally searched through the books from Grimmauld Place and found the spell that enchanted magical photographs to move. Then they just put on a Disillusionment Charm, walked into a Muggle shop, and carefully took a camera. Harry felt a painful tug in his chest as he realized that the reason he knew that would work was because Colin Creevey had had a Muggle camera and had told Harry excitedly in second year about a spell that would develop the film and enchant it to move.

I’m doing this for him, too. For all of them.

They had to steal film, and they stole plenty, because Hermione had to cast the charm several times to get it right. But when she finally did and took a picture of Harry, they enchanted it and watched as Harry smiled at the camera, then tried to duck out of the frame, glancing at them over his shoulder.

Hermione took the picture of the broken wand and the Horcrux, with Harry sitting behind them, his hair swept to the side and his scar prominently displayed. Then Harry sat down to write the letter.

The offer.

The surrender.

*

To the Dark Lord.

(Harry had decided to begin that way since he didn’t know if Voldemort would like Harry using any name, and this sounded more respectful than You-Know-Who).

As you can see, I have reached the point where I am ready to surrender. I have one of your Horcruxes, but I am willing to return it to you and tell you what I know about the others if you will agree to the following conditions:

*No genocide or mass killing of Muggles or Muggleborns
*No mass torture
*To marry me under the Rite of Alcyone no later than a month after treaty negotiations have concluded
*Not to harm me during these treaty negotiations

(Harry and Hermione had argued about the wording of that last condition for a long while, but they’d at last agreed that it was better if they didn’t ask Voldemort not to harm her or Ron. They would be stretching his patience thin enough as it was).

With these conditions fulfilled, I await your pleasure.

Harry Potter.

They sent it with an owl that Hermione sneaked into Diagon Alley to Confound, and they waited, and they hoped.

*

Pain roared through Harry’s scar like a waterfall.

He rolled on the floor of the tent, his hands clasped around his scar, screaming. Hermione was shaking his shoulder and yelling into his ear. He knew that, with one part of himself, but the rest was very far away, holding a letter in one trembling hand and feeling death close a great hand around him and rip away his security.

My Horcrux. My Horcrux!

He cast the letter and the photograph into a wooden box spelled such that no one but him could open it, and rushed out the door. His people followed him, babbling questions, but Lord Voldemort had no time for them. He fixed his eyes on the horizon and Apparated to a certain cave that only he knew of.

The locket must be a fake. They discovered the nature of the Horcruxes but not its hiding place.

When he came to the cave, when he crossed the lake of Inferi, when he discovered that the locket in the cave had vanished, his rage was boundless. Harry screamed once and passed out.

*

“Are you all right?”

Harry gave Hermione a wan smile. He’d come back to himself almost two hours after the painful episode with the vision from Voldemort, and found that Hermione had been cleaning blood from his scar with muttered charms. It apparently hadn’t stopped bleeding the whole time he was unconscious. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Convince me of that.”

“He received the letter and the photograph. He was upset.”

“Go on.”

“He went to where the locket was originally hidden, because he thought we’d found out what the Horcruxes were but we didn’t have the real one. And then he found out that the locket was gone. He believes we have it, all right.”

Hermione shut her eyes and sat there so silently for a minute that Harry wondered if she was going to say anything ever again. Then she nodded and opened her eyes. “So he’s on his way?”

“He doesn’t know where I am right now. I do believe that,” Harry added, when Hermione grabbed her wand tightly. “But he’s going to respond to the letter. And I don’t think he’ll accept right away—he’ll just want to kill me—but he will accept.”

Hermione waited as though she thought someone else was going to show up and explain the situation a different way. Then she nodded and reached into her expandable bag. They’d given up on morals in a few different ways, enough to steal peanut butter and some other food when they were among the Muggle shops. “Come on. You need to eat.”

Harry tore into the food like a werewolf and tried not to think about the ways that Voldemort would probably try to kill him when he got used to the fact of the marriage. If he would accept the marriage in the first place. If he wouldn’t just send an owl and try to trace it back and then hit Harry with a Killing Curse to the face.

All they could do was wait.

*

The black eagle-owl found Harry when he was walking around the tent early the next morning, trying to give Hermione some privacy to shower and himself some privacy to think. He started when the bird soared towards him, wings utterly silent.

Harry sorely missed his wand as he dived and rolled, and the owl missed his arm, where it had seemingly intended to land. It made a hissing, irritated noise, and landed on the branch of a tree nearby, staring at him.

Harry took a deep, slow breath. There wasn’t much doubt who had sent the letter, and he—

Well, he didn’t have a wand to try to cast detection charms on it and see if it was a Portkey, or poisoned in a way to make him drop dead. He backed towards the tent, never taking his eyes off the owl.

“Hermione?”

Hermione burst out of the tent, and Harry turned his head away so fast he gave himself whiplash. “Honestly, Harry, I’m not naked,” Hermione snapped, and then fired the first detection charm at the bird.

The owl screamed at them, wings spreading as if it would fly at their faces, but remained still and let Hermione’s spell wash over it. Hermione squinted in its direction, her lips moving for a moment. Harry bit his own.

“What is it? Does it have something on it?”

Hermione concentrated for a moment more, then shook her head, wet hair dangling around and slashing at her face. “Just the letter.” A second later, she made an irritated noise and cast a Drying Charm in the general direction of her head.

Harry slowly approached the eagle-owl. It stared at him, but didn’t move away. In fact, the more he looked at it, the more he thought he knew it.

“You’re Malfoy’s owl,” he whispered. This was the bird that had delivered so many packages of sweets to Draco Malfoy at meals. “Right?”

The owl twisted its head away as though refusing to say yes or no and held out its leg. Harry took the parchment with steady fingers, but they were shaking by the time he got the twine undone.

The parchment looked as though the words had been burned into it, scored, instead of written, and they were the dark red of ink. There were only a few lines, and a small portrait at the end, somehow enchanted onto the paper, of a snake wrapped around a pale wand.

I will meet with you. Six-o’clock three nights hence, in the front garden of Malfoy Manor. My word you will come to no harm—for that evening.

The rest of the letter was a detailed list of Apparition coordinates.

Harry breathed shakily and handed the letter to Hermione. She read it, several times, as if thinking the words might change if she looked at them for a little longer, and then stared at him with a face that Harry knew to be as pale as his own.

“We have a beginning, then,” she said, and her words fell into the silence and were lost.

*

Harry closed his eyes, then walked through the front gates of Malfoy Manor.

The evening was dark and cold and silent around him. Frost seemed to ring between the earth and the stars. Harry was horribly aware that this was the first time he’d confronted Voldemort without a wand, even if some of the other times, his wand had been taken away.

But bringing Hermione’s wand would have made it seem like his story of the wand being broken was a lie. So Harry clasped his hands behind his back and kept walking towards what looked like a throne in the distance.

It was a throne, of what seemed to be a single gleaming mass of ebony, set up under a large, embracing tree with flat green leaves that had to be enchanted. When Harry came to a halt with his footsteps crunching the last of the snow in front of the throne, a glowing ball of light sprang into existence, hovering over the tree and casting sharp shadows into the distance.

Harry bit back a cry. Voldemort was sitting there with Nagini twined around his shoulders like a huge ribbon, her face so close to his that it looked like Harry was facing a man with two heads.

“Harry Potter,” Voldemort said.

“Lord Voldemort.”

Harry wondered if he was supposed to bow, but, well, he didn’t really want to. And Voldemort might think Harry was mocking him, or giving the wrong impression, about how Harry was going to be the subservient one in this marriage. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Voldemort watched Harry with his fingers rapping against the arm of the throne. Harry waited, unnerved. He’d expected yelling or immediate demands for the Horcrux. Or maybe a Cruciatus, honestly. Voldemort had to have a reason for this silent waiting, but Harry didn’t know what it was.

Is he just waiting for me to break and tell him what he wants to know?

At last, as if he thought that Harry might not break after all, Voldemort said, “Tell me how you acquired the locket.”

Harry clenched his hands harder behind his back and kept his voice as neutral as possible. People’s lives depend on this. You can’t go on shouting in rage and hatred. “Before Snape killed Dumbledore, Dumbledore found out the location of the cave where the locket was hidden. He managed to drink the potion and take the locket that was there, but it was a fake—”

“Do not lie to me!”

The savage pain in his scar nearly made Harry fall to the ground, whimpering. But he held his head up, teeth gritted, and reminded himself that it didn’t compare to things like watching Sirius or Dumbledore die. “It was,” he insisted. “The one we found there was. We found the real one in the Blacks’ old house.”

“You are lying.”

But this close, Harry could sense Voldemort’s emotions even through the pain, and he could feel the tremor of doubt. He shook his head. “No. It turned out that Regulus Black discovered what your locket was, and he stole it. Kreacher, his house-elf, said that Regulus lent him to you to test the trap, but Regulus told Kreacher to come back home. In the end, Kreacher was the one who took the locket, and he kept trying to destroy it, but he didn’t know how. Then a member of the Order of the Phoenix stole it from the Blacks’ house and sold it on. We found the real locket around Dolores Umbridge’s neck in the Ministry.”

He paused, but Voldemort didn’t accuse him of lying again. He stared at Harry with wide eyes, a look that made him seem almost human. Nagini was as still as bone.

“You are telling the truth.”

Harry still couldn’t easily tell the difference between Parseltongue and English, but he did feel the shift this time. It was more about the weight of Voldemort’s voice, something about how his words struck the air, then how it sounded. Harry swallowed. “Yeah.”

Voldemort’s fingers relaxed and clenched on the throne. Then he said, “Why did you choose to come to me and offer your surrender?”

“It’s the only thing that I thought might spare some people.” Harry met Voldemort’s eyes. Honesty, he had to use honesty, and not just because Voldemort was a Legilimens and would be able to tell if he lied. “If you agreed to marry me, then I might save some Muggleborns and so on from dying or being tortured.”

Voldemort was silent for long moments. Then he said, “You were seeking my other Horcruxes.”

No point in denying it. “Yes.”

“To do what with them?”

Harry met his eyes, and the pain clawed at his mind, but it was the pain of Legilmency, nothing he hadn’t put up with when Snape was “teaching” him. “To destroy them, and make you mortal.”

“This is the reason that Dumbledore died as he did. This is the quest that he left you with.”

Harry didn’t know that for certain, but he also thought that he didn’t have to. It was enough that Voldemort believed it. He nodded.

“Tell me what Horcruxes you are aware of.”

“The diary. The locket. A ring that Dumbledore destroyed—”

The pain that lanced through Harry then was pure, uncomplicated. He staggered and would have fallen if something hadn’t wrapped around his legs to keep him upright. He looked down and saw that it was Nagini. She lifted her head and gave him the flattest and coldest stare he’d ever received.

“Continue,” Voldemort said. His hands were claws on the arms of the throne, but he didn’t seem interested in hurting Harry anymore.

“Probably Nagini,” Harry said, not looking down at her. He thought he felt the flicker of a tongue against his leg anyway. “A cup belonging to Helga Hufflepuff. An artifact of Ravenclaw’s, but I don’t know what it is.”

Voldemort tilted his head back and forth, like a thoughtful snake. Then he said, “And why did you believe that there were this number, and not more?”

“Because seven is the most powerful magical number. And this way, there would be seven pieces of—your soul.”

“Hm.” Voldemort rapped his fingers on the throne arms again, and stood abruptly, gliding over to Harry. Harry swallowed and forced himself to hold still. He had come here, and if he didn’t trust Voldemort’s word not to harm him, then everything was all over anyway.

Voldemort stuck his fingers beneath Harry’s chin, turning his face back and forth. Then he asked, “How do you think your friends will react to this marriage? The masses in the Ministry who count on you to save them? The remains of the Order of the Phoenix?”

“I think they’ll hate me.” Except maybe Hermione, but that wasn’t a complication that Harry wanted to get into right now.

“And yet, you will go ahead anyway. Ever the noble martyr.”

Harry swallowed and shook his head a little, despite the way that Voldemort’s hand was still beneath his chin. “Not really. I realized that I wanted to live, not die a noble death. That’s why I’m suggesting this marriage.”

“Despite the fact that I killed your parents? That I tried to kill you?”

Harry swallowed again. He knew it was stupid that he felt able to be most honest with his prophesied enemy—but he could. Voldemort and Nagini were the only ones who could understand what he was saying right now, and they wouldn’t report it to anyone who would care about it.

“My mum and dad died a long time ago. I’ve—felt more and more like that since the Horcrux quest began. There’s nothing I can do to bring them back, and it seems like there’s nothing I can do to avenge them, either. At least maybe they would be happy if I’m still alive, because that’s what they sacrificed their lives for? That’s all I can think.”

Voldemort laughed softly. The sound was pure frost, and Harry shuddered and barely resisted the temptation to wrap his arms around himself. But Voldemort stepped back and moved his hand, calling Nagini from Harry’s legs. She coiled up Voldemort’s shoulders and put her head next to his face again.

“It seems that we have more in common than I had thought,” Voldemort hissed, while Harry fought back the temptation to tell him that they were nothing alike. “I accept.”

Chapter Text

“Harry! What did he say?”

Harry gave Hermione what was probably the most difficult smile of his life. She had started to her feet and moved forwards from behind a tree when she saw him. She’d Apparated him to just outside the gates of Malfoy Manor, and Harry thought maybe the bravest thing she’d ever done was letting him go in by himself.

“He agreed.”

Hermione clapped a hand to her mouth, her eyes wide. It took a long moment, but then they filled with tears. She collapsed forwards into his arms and cried.

Harry held her, stroking her hair. He and Voldemort still had to work out some of the negotiations, but the one thing Harry had insisted on right away was mercy and a pardon for Hermione. Voldemort had agreed in a way that made Harry think he had never really been afraid of her.

He would have killed her because she’s Muggleborn and important to me, but he doesn’t hate her outside of that.

Other things were going to be harder, and Harry knew it. Probably getting mercy for the whole Weasley family would be harder, for instance, since Voldemort was staying in Malfoy Manor and they had fought the Malfoys. But it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t let it matter. He would get some of what he had wanted.

And as for the price he would need to pay himself…

It was going to be paid. That was the only important thing he needed to think about right now.

*

“Harry Potter stands beside me today as my betrothed.”

Harry shivered a little, and not because of the lack of fireplaces nearby. He wore thick, rich robes, red ornamented with silver, and lined with white fur Harry hadn’t wanted to ask the origins of. He felt like a Christmas ornament.

But that was part of the role he was bound to play now. He was ornamental, decorative for the public. In some ways, it was a relief to have something so many people had assumed acknowledged in reality now.

There was still the coldness in Voldemort’s voice, though, and in the fingers that gripped Harry’s elbow as they stood at the podium in the center of the Ministry’s Atrium. There was a huge crowd in front of them, all gaping at Voldemort and Harry, some of them shivering in turn. And some of them shook in rage, staring at Harry.

Harry made himself meet their eyes and say nothing. His guilt would eat him alive if he let it, but for now, he’d locked it in a cage deep in his mind. He kept reminding himself that these people had let him fight alone and said nothing. He didn’t even remember them standing up to object to what was happening at the Ministry.

Because they would have disappeared if they had.

But if they had such strong beliefs, they should have fought for them. Harry turned back to Voldemort as he heard his betrothed wrapping up his own part of the speech. It would be Harry’s chance to speak in a second.

“And now my intended would like to say a few words.”

Voldemort turned towards Harry with his lipless smile and a wide gesture of one hand. It was the first time he’d released Harry’s elbow since they Flooed in. Harry moved up to speak into the crystal infused with a Sonorus Charm at the top of the podium, taking his own deep breath.

“Thank you for listening to us,” Harry told the crowd. They had remained silent while Voldemort spoke, but now they shifted back and forth, and a muttering started up. Harry ignored it. “As my betrothed has said, we have made this arrangement for the sake of peace. Too many of our people are dying and being forced out of the magical world. Too many Ministry bureaucrats have seized on the chaos of war to enrich themselves and grasp power that they should not have.” He and Voldemort had agreed that was the reasoning they would use for people like Umbridge. “We must make sure that are stronger in the future, more united. The union of two sides of the war—”

“How could you? You betrayed us!”

Harry flinched. That was Arthur Weasley, standing in the middle of a rapidly scurrying-away group of people with betrayal in his eyes.

Voldemort’s hand brushed the small of his back, like having a bucket of ice dropped down his robes. They had discussed what would happen if something like this came up, and Harry had to be prepared.

He just hadn’t known it would be Arthur. Someone who had fought with the Order of the Phoenix, believed in the rights of Muggleborns, sheltered Harry in his home.

Someone whose life you saved. Someone who wasn’t out here fighting openly, either.

“How could you?” Harry snapped, and had the petty satisfaction of seeing Arthur’s eyes widen in surprise. “Send a child to do your dirty work? Tell me that I had to fight a war alone? I haven’t seen anyone else volunteering to duel the Dark Lord, the way I’ve done already!”

Arthur looked stunned. Harry felt another pulse of guilt, because what he was saying wasn’t entirely fair, the way it would have been if it had been someone like a Hufflepuff at school asking the question.

But in a way, it was good that it was Arthur. It meant that he didn’t respond quickly because he probably felt guilty, and that shut up some other people who might have complained.

I hate thinking this way.

But he would hate seeing people be murdered and tortured more, so Harry bore straight ahead. “I’ve taken care of it. We’ve taken care of it,” he corrected himself, as he felt Voldemort’s cold hand on his back. “There won’t be any more deaths, unless someone opposes the Dark Lord’s new regime.”

“And yours?”

Harry stifled a groan as Rita Skeeter pushed her way to the front of the crowd. She didn’t look as terrified of Voldemort as everyone else. She was practically bouncing on her toes as she smiled at him. “You’re to be his husband, correct, Harry? What will your title be? Consort? Second Dark Lord? Prince of the Darkness? Will you change your name? What—”

“These questions are inappropriate.”

At least Skeeter had sense enough to shut up right away when Voldemort spoke. Harry turned a little to look at Voldemort, and his—betrothed looked back at him, red eyes glittering. He was probably getting all sorts of things from Harry’s head that Harry wasn’t aware of it, but wasn’t that always the way of it?

“You will address my husband as Mr. Potter until we are married,” Voldemort said, every word like a steel bar clanging on the floor. “And then we will decide on our new last name together. Without your input, Ms. Skeeter.”

Skeeter nodded hastily and backed away, giving little bobs that were probably the short nervous version of bows. Voldemort, meanwhile, straightened up and turned a languid gaze around at the people in the Atrium.

“Does anyone else have any more questions to ask about my husband?”

This time, there was silence. Harry sighed soundlessly. At least it seemed like no one was going to die today.

“Good,” Voldemort said, and directed a smile around the room that looked bloody for all that he didn’t literally have blood on his teeth. “You are all, of course, invited to the wedding.”

And he took Harry’s hand and led him back to the Floos. Harry went with him, ignoring the way that people had broken into whispers.

Their first public appearance was over.

*

“It’s fake.”

Harry glanced up from the long list of conditions he was revising, because Voldemort apparently needed everything Harry wanted from him put into paragraphs. Bellatrix Lestrange was standing in the doorway of the room Harry had been assigned in Malfoy Manor, and while she looked calm, Harry only had to glance at her clenched, trembling fists to know how she really felt.

She’d been outwardly calm when Voldemort had introduced Harry to his Death Eaters the other night, too. Harry had thought then that he was the only one burning with hatred at the sight of her.

“Go away.”

“It’s fake.” Lestrange’s eyes were suddenly bright with rage, and her wand snapped into her hand. “It’s false! You have enchanted our Lord! You will pay for that!”

Harry got to his feet, but slowly, because Voldemort had told the Death Eaters in explicit terms what would happen if they harmed Harry. Voldemort would probably assume that Harry distrusted him if Harry defended himself without being attacked. “Listen, Lestrange—”

“Crucio!”

Harry dived and rolled. He heard something shatter, and hoped desperately that it wasn’t the inkwell, leaking all over the contract and meaning he would have to rewrite it from the beginning.

He ducked behind the bed as another spell hit, and sent a frantic pulse of emotion to Voldemort. It seemed he would need help after all.

Lestrange stalked closer, her movements suddenly slow, her voice a low croon. “Come out, widdle Potter, wherever you are.”

Harry gritted his teeth and gripped the floor. He really, really wished that Voldemort had prioritized getting Ollivander back from the place he was holding him so that Harry could have got another wand.

Lestrange spoke a spell that Harry didn’t know, except that it had “Revelio” as part of it, and he assumed she would be able to see him. He moved again, rolling from behind the bed to under the table, and broke off one of the delicate wooden ornaments fastened to the foot of the table. While she was peering over the bed for him, Harry threw the ornament as hard as he could through the open door and sent another pulse of emotion to Voldemort.

Lestrange whirled around when she heard the tiny noise. “Come back here, Potter!” she shouted, and started out into the corridor with her wand raised.

Harry got to his feet, intending to slam the door shut behind her and engage the wards that Voldemort had claimed were there to protect him, but she heard him and turned back in an instant. Harry froze. Her features already seemed lit by the clear green light of the Killing Curse.

“Good-bye, Potter.”

“Bellatrix.”

Voldemort’s voice was so deep with rage that Harry couldn’t actually tell whether the word was in English or Parseltongue. Probably English, though, because Lestrange whirled around and fell to her knees, cowering.

“Master,” she whispered.

“What are you doing here?” Voldemort took one quick glance at Harry, then froze and stared. Harry stared back. Was he bleeding from somewhere? He hadn’t thought so, but he was also so high on adrenaline that he hadn’t been paying attention to much other than pure survival.

“What spell did you cast, Bellatrix?” Voldemort asked, still staring at Harry. So he must be wounded, even though it didn’t feel like it.

“To reveal the Dark Arts that he practices, Master! The Dark magic that clings to him! So that I could see what spell he used to enchant you—”

Voldemort did something with a gesture of his hand that made Lestrange shriek and clutch her left arm. Probably affecting the Dark Mark, then, Harry thought dazedly. He backed up another step and waited with his hands clenched.

“You have been told not to touch my betrothed,” Voldemort said. His voice was strange, bored on the surface, but—tight underneath. Because Lestrange had almost killed Harry? Probably. “I am not enchanted. Or are you such a fool as to believe that your lord, who has gone further down the paths of the Dark than any other, would not recognize such nonsense as a love spell?”

“No, my lord! Forgive me, my lord!”

Harry bit back his nausea. At least this kind of obedience meant the Death Eaters wouldn’t be just going around slaughtering people anymore, if Voldemort told them not to.

“You may go, Bellatrix. If I catch you speaking to Harry again, I will eat your tongue.”

“My lord,” Lestrange gasped, and then Harry heard her get up and run off. He started to heave a sigh of relief, but Voldemort spun around and confronted him. Harry froze again.

“I didn’t do anything to encourage her or anything,” he blurted, while Voldemort stared at him. “She just showed up at my door and started ranting about Dark magic.”

“I know that you did not encourage her,” Voldemort said, in a gentle, caressing tone that made Harry gape at him. Voldemort strolled forwards, his skin seeming lit from within by an inner glow, and reached out to let his fingertips rest on Harry’s forehead. Harry flinched, but there was no pain from his scar. “Do you know what spell she used on you?”

“No, sir. Just that it had Revelio in it.”

Voldemort smiled. Harry stilled, even though what he really wanted was to fling himself out of Voldemort’s hold. There was—something disturbing to that smile, because it wasn’t disturbing. It was tender and fascinated and triumphant. Harry could imagine Voldemort smiling like that at Nagini, but no one else.

“Let me show you,” Voldemort breathed, and turned Harry around to face the mirror along the back wall.

Harry swallowed when he saw the way that his scar was shining. It did have the clear green light of the Killing Curse. It hadn’t been his imagination, after all, that Lestrange’s face was lit by it. “Does that show where Unforgivables have been cast on your something?” he asked, and reached up to touch his scar. Was it a little warmer than it usually was? Maybe.

“Oh, Harry. Harry.”

Voldemort’s was thick, and the way that his hands moved across Harry’s shoulders suddenly felt like the coils of steel snakes. Harry swallowed and said nothing. What was he supposed to say? Was he supposed to say anything?

“That spell,” Voldemort says, leaning forwards to whisper in his ear and make Harry’s breath come short in ways he definitely didn’t want, “shows the presence of Dark magic. I assume Bellatrix cast it because she assumed it would reveal the love spell she was convinced you had placed me under. Instead, it shows the presence of something in your scar that I never guessed was there.”

By this point, Voldemort sounded almost drunk. Harry tried to swallow again, but it felt like it got stuck halfway through. “But—everyone knows that the Killing Curse hit me there.”

Voldemort laughed aloud, a sound that seemed to cut at Harry’s ears like knives. “And the Killing Curse alone would not have left so strong a trace after seventeen years. No, my darling.” Harry did try to jump away then, but Voldemort’s hands were sliding down from his shoulders, linking together over his chest, like a huge necklace. “This shows that you are my Horcrux.”

Harry felt as though someone had hit him over the head. His vision tunneled abruptly, and he swayed. Voldemort nudged a little closer to him, keeping him upright and murmuring a series of Parseltongue endearments that Harry paid no attention to.

A Horcrux. Harry was one. How in the world—

But Voldemort’s soul had to have been incredibly unstable when he went to confront Harry’s mum and dad, and it made sense that he would have wanted to use Harry’s death to make another of the things. Maybe he’d managed when the Killing Curse was reflected back on him. Why couldn’t it work that way? Maybe it wouldn’t, but Harry had no understanding of the magic that made Horcruxes in the first place. Maybe it could. Maybe he was yet another link in the chain that kept Voldemort alive.

He made a rough noise, one that sounded like the beginning of nausea to him. Part of him hoped it would make Voldemort pull away. But Voldemort gathered Harry closer, kissing the back of his neck with lips as cold as worms, and he—

He was crooning over Harry, all in Parseltongue. “It makes sense, my dearest darling, that you speak the language of snakes, that you can feel my emotions. Nagini can, too, and she is the only one of my Horcruxes that is alive.” He paused a moment, and then laughed, a sound that welled through the room and ran down the walls like fire. “I should say, the only other one of my Horcruxes. Oh darling, darling.”

Harry trembled and said nothing. He wondered if anyone had known about this. Dumbledore? Well, probably he had. Maybe he had given Harry all those lessons in Horcruxes, when he could have just told Harry outright about them, because he had hoped that someday Harry would recognize the commonality between himself and Voldemort’s artifacts.

An object. I’m an object. I’m a container—

He didn’t know what he was doing, there was a long blank flash, but Voldemort’s fingers had closed around his wrist and were holding it still. “You are not to damage yourself, darling,” he hissed.

Harry looked into the mirror to see the long scratches across his scar, the blood dripping down his face.

He closed his eyes, because he didn’t want to see it anymore.

“You are for me. Forever.”

Harry shuddered again. He hadn’t thought about being immortal the way Voldemort was. Why would he? The only thing he could have hoped for was that by the time he died of old age, Voldemort would have become used enough to the way things were to keep governing with some kind of rationality. Or take another spouse.

Or that someone would figure out a way to find and destroy the Horcruxes by then.

Now, instead, he was condemned to live as long as the rest of them did.

“I do not understand what you are feeling right now, Harry. Didn’t you come to me in the first place because you wanted to live instead of dying the way that most of those people would expect you to do?”

Harry swallowed and forced his eyes open. Voldemort was watching him in the mirror, leaning forwards so that his head hovered beside Harry’s much the same way that Nagini’s did beside Voldemort’s when she was around his shoulders.

“I never thought of this. I feel—tainted.”

“You are not. You are wondrous beyond conception.”

Voldemort’s nails were cutting into his shoulders. Harry slowly drew himself up and twisted around in his betrothed’s arms to look at him.

“You really believe that?”

“I can no more lie to you now than you can lie to me.”

Harry had to admit that was true. The flow of Voldemort’s emotions felt as clear and sweet as water for the first time since Harry had started feeling them. There had always been anger, hatred, despair, something poisonous in them. Now they made Harry feel as if he could get used to the Horcrux link.

And now—

“You cannot hide the thought from Lord Voldemort. He knows all.”

Harry just nodded. He had thought there was still the possibility that Voldemort would snap and kill him in a rage, either before the wedding vows could take place or early on in their marriage. Now he knew he was safe. Forever.

Part of him had stopped being afraid for the first time in—years, probably.

“I will destroy anyone who puts their hands on you.”

Harry bowed his head and stood there, feeling Voldemort’s arms bracket his neck and chest again. It was oddly soothing, and he had no intention of trying to move out of reach any time soon.

Who knew all it would take to make me feel safe is a homicidal Dark Lord who just discovered that I’m his Horcrux?

Chapter Text

“If he upsets you, he shall not leave the house.”

Harry swallowed and nodded. He understood the threat beneath the words. It was up to him to make sure that Ron behaved while he was in Malfoy Manor.

Voldemort, who was standing in the doorway of the sitting room with the Floo, abruptly took two quick strides and rested his hands on Harry’s shoulders. Harry stared up into his face, blinking. He didn’t know what had changed the mood so quickly, but—

Voldemort leaned towards him and let his forehead rest on Harry’s, right over the scar. It tingled gently, the way it had been doing lately whenever Voldemort touched it. Voldemort smiled at him, that same bloody smile he had given when they ended their public appearance in the Atrium.

“You are not responsible for him. I will end threats to your happiness. That is all.”

Voldemort claimed a kiss, and then turned and left, before Harry could do anything more than stare at him. And the flames in the Floo were turning green. Harry turned around and slid his hands into his robe pockets.

Ron appeared and stumbled into the middle of the room. He saw Harry and opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Maybe he was overcome by how much Harry looked like a prat in the rich robes Voldemort insisted on draping him in.

Harry swallowed. “Hey, mate.”

“Mate,” Ron whispered back. He took a wavering step forwards, then stopped, looking around at all the gilt and mirrors and ivory in the room. Harry had had more time to get used to it, but he had to admit it was a bit much. Ron wrapped his arms around himself. “So you’re betrothed to You-Know-Who.”

“Yeah.” No sense in softening the blow. After all, although he’d sent an owl to Ron right after he’d made the deal with Voldemort, Harry had announced it in public the next day, not giving Ron a chance to write back.

“I leave and you do that?”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“I’m not saying it was my fault. I said I left and you did that.”

Harry rubbed the back of his neck. “Do you want to sit down?”

Ron nodded jerkily and sank into a large green chair with gilded legs that stood with its back to the fire. He looked at Harry’s face, but his eyes kept darting down to the robes that crowded Harry’s body, the gold-and-opal bracelets around his wrists.

(The bracelets hadn’t been Harry’s idea. Voldemort had simply presented them to him and said that they had wards in them that would keep Harry safe from the kinds of attacks that other frustrated Death Eaters might make).

“Why?” Ron whispered.

Being asked for an explanation, instead of shouted at, was more than Harry had hoped for. He spoke quickly, in case Ron changed his mind. “Because my wand was broken and we had no idea how to destroy the Horcrux. Because we didn’t know where to find the other Horcruxes, either, or how we would have destroyed them. Because Hermione had books from Grimmauld Place with the description of the marriage ceremony in them, and how one partner could influence the other.” He shivered a bit, despite the robes, and tucked his hands into his elbows. “So—that’s it.”

“But you didn’t think that something else would have been better?”

“What something else?”

“Writing to me. Coming back to the Burrow. Going to Hogwarts and seeing if you could make contact with any of your professors and they could help you. Anything other than this!”

Ron’s voice had been rising, and Harry saw a shiver in one of the portraits above the fireplace mantel. He shook his head and said as quietly as he could, “I didn’t want to put anyone else in danger. So I couldn’t go anywhere else. And Snape was at Hogwarts, there was too much chance that he would have caught me if I went there.”

“And you didn’t write to me because I left.”

“Yeah.”

Harry found it hard to look at Ron, but Ron was the one who slumped back in the chair and closed his eyes. “I deserve that,” he whispered. “I could have done something for you, but I didn’t. I left.”

“Well. I said it wasn’t your fault. I meant that.”

Ron gave a bitter chuckle and opened his eyes. “Well, you can say that all you like. But it still partially is.” He leaned forwards insistently. “He’s not upsetting you? Hurting you? He’s treating you decently?”

“More than decently,” Harry said, and lifted his arms so the bracelets and the sleeves of his robes swayed back and forth.

“You know there’s more to it than that.”

Harry swallowed and resisted the temptation to say that he hadn’t thought Ron would see it as more than that. “Yeah. He—yeah.” There was no way that he could tell Ron about him being a Horcrux, both because Voldemort would kill Ron and because he didn’t want to watch the look in his best friend’s eyes change. “He does.”

“Good,” Ron whispered, and bowed his head. “I never thought—you were never meant to sell yourself, Harry.”

“I did what I had to do to survive.”

“I know. And more than that. So everyone else could survive.”

Ron’s voice was accepting, calm, final. Harry felt as though he’d been purged of poison. He sat down cautiously in the chair across from Ron, and met his best friend’s eyes, the way he hadn’t been sure he would ever do again.

Ron smiled at him, and leaned forwards. “So, what’s good to eat around here?”

*

“I hope that you will convince the Dark Lord to use our gardens for your wedding, my lord.”

Harry hid a grimace before he turned around. Narcissa Malfoy stood behind him, in an ice-blue set of robes that made her look lovely and graceful. The moment their eyes met, she curtsied, even though they were all alone in an empty corridor and no one would have known if she didn’t.

The first time I saw her, she looked utterly disgusted by everything around her. And now this.

Harry did his best to smile pleasantly. “Thank you, Mrs. Malfoy. I believe that my—lord is comfortable here, and I don’t believe he was planning to hold the wedding anywhere else.”

“Most excellent.” Mrs. Malfoy curtsied again, which just made Harry want to tell her to stop. He held his tongue, though. “And do you think—you could see your way to including my son in your wedding?”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Malfoy. I don’t understand what you’re asking.”

Mrs. Malfoy delicately wrung her hands, the first time Harry had ever actually seen someone besides Aunt Petunia do that. “It’s simply that Draco has been out of favor since the Dark Lord announced your betrothal, because of the conflicts that he had when you were Hogwarts students. I hope that he could play a role in the wedding, which the Dark Lord has said he will design himself.”

“I’ll ask him,” Harry said. He had noticed that he hadn’t run into Draco, but he hadn’t assumed it was deliberate, just that Draco was probably sensibly staying away from Lord Voldemort’s betrothed. “I don’t know what he’ll say.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

“You don’t have to call me ‘my lord,’” Harry said, because he couldn’t take it anymore. “You can just—call me Potter until we decide on our new last name when we get married.”

Mrs. Malfoy gave him the politest look of disbelief he had ever seen. “I’m sure, my lord, but the Dark Lord might take exception to it.”

And until we’re married, his desires are the only ones that matter, Harry translated to himself. He nodded a little wearily to Mrs. Malfoy. “All right. Then please call me whatever makes you comfortable.”

She gave him one more smile and whisked out of sight. Harry sighed and continued his journey to Voldemort’s room. He would have to ask him about Draco’s participation in their—ceremony.”

The wedding of the Dark Lord and his Horcrux.

Harry slumped against the wall, his eyes closed, as sickness danced through his stomach and his chest. Sometimes it still hit him like this, even though it had been almost a week since Voldemort had told Harry that the curse scar carried a bit of Voldemort’s soul.

Should I have died? Should I have hoped that someone else could track down and destroy the Horcruxes, and not tried to set up this marriage that basically means Voldemort’s going to live forever?

Harry stood with his face pressed against the wood for a second, and then straightened up with a gasp as he forced his shoulders back. No. He had had no idea he was a Horcrux. Whatever little hints Dumbledore had left, Harry hadn’t picked up on them. Why would he? It was a terrible, twisted, nonsensical idea.

Voldemort thinks it’s wonderful. He thinks you’re wonderful.

Harry just closed his eyes as he thought about that. Yeah, Voldemort did, and yeah, Harry didn’t agree, but he wasn’t going to just—kill himself or something either.

He hadn’t known, and he hadn’t made this decision just because he was trying to earn life for himself. But it was as true as it had been a fortnight ago that he wanted to live, and it was true that he wouldn’t do something noble like trying to kill himself now.

For all that he felt tainted, as though someone had reached into his soul and smeared a handful of crushed charcoal all over it.

When he felt able to do so, Harry pulled back from the wall and turned, continuing to walk to Voldemort’s rooms. The rooms he would be sharing, in less than a week.

Harry closed his eyes for another second, but he kept walking.

*

“Come in, dearest.”

Voldemort was lounging on cushions in front of the fireplace with Nagini curled around him, for all the world as if he were some kind of giant serpent himself. Harry let the door fall shut behind him, and said, “You don’t have to do that.”

“Don’t have to do what?” Voldemort arched his neck in Harry’s direction. Harry didn’t think it was his imagination that it moved more fluidly than a typical neck, and the tiny scales patterned under Voldemort’s skin definitely weren’t his imagination.

“Call me darling or dearest or anything like that. I know why you value me. You don’t have to pretend that you’re in love.”

Harry looked around the room as he spoke. Voldemort had the largest set of rooms in the Manor, the one that until recently had belonged to Lucius and Narcissa. There were still traces of the white it had been decorated in, but Voldemort had replaced it with red and black as much as possible. Tapestries and robes and chairs and bedclothes, all of them were those colors.

The bed.

Harry had tried to avoid looking at it, but it drew his gaze anyway, especially with the long spill of red in the middle of it from the pillows. It made the whole thing look like it was soaked in blood.

“I call you those things because I value you.”

Harry turned back to Voldemort. He had lifted a languid hand and was beckoning to Harry. Harry swallowed and walked over to him, sitting on the floor and leaning against his side. As always, Voldemort felt more like a snake than a human, flushed with warmth from the fire instead of from inside.

“I may not love you in the way that you always expected to be loved, but we will be content together. And eventually joyful.”

Harry was silent for a moment, his eyes on the fire. Nagini gave a slow hiss and unwound herself from Voldemort, draping her coils across Harry’s lap. Ever since she had learned that he was Voldemort’s Horcrux, she had acted like this, as though she preferred to rest on another Horcrux rather than anything else.

“You mean it?” Harry whispered at last. “Joyful? Really?”

“Yes, I mean it. I will give you everything you desire. You will lack for nothing.”

Harry relaxed a little. He thought he understood now. It wasn’t really about Voldemort grasping joy and thinking that he could give it to Harry because he was joyful himself, but insisting that Harry would have everything he wanted, even if that meant Voldemort had to warp himself to give it to him.

Harry closed his eyes and listened to the crackling of the fire for a short time. Then he thought he should bring up what Mrs. Malfoy had asked for before he forgot to. “Can Draco be in the wedding?”

“That does not sound like your idea.”

“It’s not, it’s Mrs. Malfoy’s, but I don’t mind one way or the other.”

Voldemort was silent for a short time longer. Harry drew in a breath as slow as Nagini’s movements and let it out. He realized that he didn’t mind if Voldemort told him no. He felt no urgency on the state of the question.

It was nice, to ask but not worry about the answer to that question at all because it didn’t affect him. It was nice to relax and know he would be taken care of.

“I will see it to it that he has a role. A small one. It would not do for him to get ideas above his station.”

Harry hummed and leaned back further against Voldemort, who rearranged himself rather like a snake and coiled around Harry in turn. Harry drifted in and out between waking and sleep, between fire and darkness.

He had made his decision. There was no going back now. And there was some peace in that, even as he thought of himself as irrevocably tainted.

There are at least two people who don’t think so, Harry thought drowsily, his head resting on Voldemort’s chest, his hand resting on Nagini’s scales.

*

They did hold the wedding in the Malfoy Manor gardens, on a night when the stars were almost painfully brilliant overhead. The gardens were deep in snow, and lit with flickering torches of a fire so deep and red that it hurt Harry’s eyes to look at.

He wore red robes, and Voldemort black. They were an incredible contrast against his white skin. The thought startled Harry the first time he had it, and then made him want to shake his head, and then made him sigh in acceptance.

He would be seeing that skin soon, touching it. He should get used to it.

Although there would be a public ceremony for the benefit of the people who still stirred and murmured uneasily about the treaty, this wedding was private, for Voldemort’s Death Eaters and Harry. And one friend. Hermione had asked to come, and Voldemort had granted the request after some long, silent deliberation. She stood off to the side in white robes, in a bubble that offered her protection from the Death Eaters if anyone fired off a curse, her smile soft and painful and wide.

None of the others had asked to come. Harry hadn’t asked them. There was no point. They all knew what was happening.

Draco Malfoy was walking behind Harry, holding up a white crown that he was keeping anxiously in place over Harry’s head. Harry had resisted the temptation to duck or weave just because. Mrs. Malfoy and Mr. Malfoy were waiting with blank faces near the arbor of black roses that Voldemort had made grow.

It was fine. It wasn’t the way that Harry had ever pictured his wedding, but then, when had he had time to picture it?

It was fine.

He walked across the snow to the arbor, where Voldemort already waited. Voldemort had Nagini draped across his shoulders again, and although the Death Eaters formed a large, loose half-circle around them on either side, he had no one standing close to him. It felt very—something. Harry didn’t know what.

He came to a halt in front of Voldemort and nodded to him. Voldemort hadn’t looked at anyone or anything else since Harry entered the gardens.

Voldemort touched his wand to his throat and cast a spell Harry didn’t know, but when he spoke, it turned out to be a modified Sonorus. His voice wasn’t as loud as it would have been with the usual charm, but it echoed throughout the garden, and made some of the shifting people stop shifting. “You are here to witness the joining of the Dark Lord Voldemort and Harry Potter.”

Harry looked up with a swallow of air that he knew was probably too loud—it was painful, too—and began his part, the vows that he and Voldemort had agreed on. “Harry Potter comes willingly to join his life with Lord Voldemort’s.”

More than one of the Death Eaters started, as if they hadn’t known that Harry would speak the Dark Lord’s name aloud, and Draco nearly dropped the crown. Harry checked a sigh. He hoped everything would work out as far as that went. He didn’t want to be responsible for Malfoy getting murdered as part of the ceremony.

Voldemort bobbed his head like a snake moving to the music of a charmer, still never looking away from Harry. “Lord Voldemort grants his hand and his body to Harry Potter.”

Harry echoed the words back, aware of the silver beams of radiance that had begun to form around them. This was the first part of the spell that Hermione had found in those books from Grimmauld Place, ensuring that they couldn’t have sex with or marry anyone else as long as the one they married was alive.

Ensuring they wouldn’t even want to look at anyone else.

This is so weird.

“Lord Voldemort grants his mind and his thoughts to Harry Potter.”

Again, Harry made the same vow, and more bars of silver light joined the first ones in the air. It was going to be painful when they started pressing in.

“Lord Voldemort promises to honor and cherish Harry Potter’s friendships, desires, strengths, and weaknesses.”

As Harry made that part of the vow, he had to hold back a hysterical giggle. Did Lord Voldemort even have friends?

Nagini would count, maybe. Maybe some of the older Death Eaters. Regardless, Harry had no interest in trying to kill them. He had come too far.

“Lord Voldemort promises to give due consideration to Harry Potter’s commitments, morals, and promises.”

Harry sighed a little in relief as that vow passed, and he made the same one. It was the one that would potentially change the most. Voldemort would have to at least wrestle with Harry’s morals, now that he would understand them from the inside out.

“Lord Voldemort promises to grant access to his magic to Harry Potter.”

Harry choked. That vow hadn’t been one he’d thought they would make, even though it had been in Hermione’s books. It would mean they could use each other’s magic, that their power would pool between them and make them both capable of the same feats—casting the stag Patronus, for example. Harry hadn’t thought—

But Voldemort was staring at him intensely, and a few of the guests, like Hermione, were shifting around uneasily the longer he remained in silence.

Harry took a deep breath. “Harry Potter promises to grant access to his magic to Lord Voldemort.”

The air rang as though it was a great gong the vows had struck, and then the silver bars that had gathered around them spiraled towards them and struck through their bodies.

Harry screamed, going to his knees. He heard Hermione saying something worried, heard Draco babbling as he tried to keep the crown in place over Harry’s head, but he couldn’t concentrate on anything but those bars. They were so painful, they were driving through him and into the ground, he would never be free of pain again, he had been wrong to do this, he had come too far to turn back now—

And then it was done.

Harry raised his head, knowing that tears and snot were dripping down his face and then he looked a mess. Hermione was clutching the sides of her bubble, where she must have tried to run to him. The Death Eaters were shaking their heads or pointing or whispering, depending on what they thought. Draco was shaking like a leaf, but held the crown in place.

Harry met his husband’s eyes.

And he knew.

He understood, in a whirl so chaotic that it was like standing in the middle of a snowstorm, what it was like to fear death so much he made Horcruxes, what it was like to enjoy the Cruciatus, how he could look at his Death Eaters and see tools of limited usefulness—

He knew love. He knew the closest thing he could feel to love, for his Horcruxes.

Harry lifted his head, shaking all over himself, and saw Voldemort kneeling in the snow like he was. Then Voldemort looked up and nodded, and Draco started and lowered the crown onto Harry’s head. It felt light, compared to the weight of everything tumbling through him.

“Harry James Potter,” Voldemort whispered, “has become Harry James Slytherin.”

Well. Harry ought to have known that he would choose the name of the ancestor he identified with most. Harry nodded dazedly and forced his way to his feet, crossing the distance between them to take Voldemort’s hand.

Voldemort didn’t kiss him. He had warned Harry that he wouldn’t. He saw no reason to share something like that with the Death Eaters. He turned Harry around, lifting their joined hands between them. Nagini swayed back and forth, and rested her chin on their hands.

“Behold my consort, Harry James Slytherin, the Prince of the Darkness,” Voldemort hissed, and Harry had to hold back a laugh. So he’d adopted some of the ridiculousness that Rita Skeeter had asked about, after all.

The Death Eaters bowed. Hermione hesitated, then did the same thing. Harry sighed a little in relief. He was just as glad that she hadn’t done anything that would make Voldemort single her out for disrespect.

“The wedding is now over,” Voldemort announced, and swept Harry back into the house.

Somehow, Harry wasn’t really surprised when Voldemort pinned his shoulders against a wall next to the door of his rooms and bent over to kiss him.

His lips were still grave-cold. It didn’t matter. The vows bound them far more strongly than any gestures of physical affection ever could. Harry stretched up and kissed him back, Voldemort’s ideas hammering in his head.

“I will enjoy this,” Voldemort said, and drew Harry into his rooms. The bed was before them, and Harry shivered a little, but didn’t try to get away.

No turning back.

*

Harry leaned on the railing of the balcony that was attached to Voldemort’s suite. His arse ached, and he knew a lot about sex that he hadn’t known a few hours before.

But as before, the most overwhelming thing was the new perspective literally forced into his head, circling between his ears like a trapped maelstrom.

He knew. He understood. It was no longer possible to be as innocent as he had been, in any sense of the word, or misunderstand Voldemort.

Harry closed his eyes. He was afraid of death, too, now. He knew exactly what he would lose if he died. This connection. This vow. This sense of living a second life, having a second mind.

He gazed out over the snow on the grounds, and wasn’t entirely surprised when a pale hand fell on his shoulder.

“Come back to bed, darling.”

Harry could believe that Voldemort meant the “darling” now. If only because Voldemort would understand Harry’s notions of friendship and honor and goodness, whatever Harry called by that word.

He twisted around and leaned up to kiss his husband, wondering as he did whose perspective would win out.

They would have to see.

“Yes, darling,” he said, and enjoyed the way Voldemort’s eyes widened before Harry leaned in and kissed him again.

The End.