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Chapter Text

It is ridiculously easy in the end to lure all of the boy’s relatives out of the house at once. Especially so, he learns after thorough rounds of Legilimency through all of their minds, in light of the fact that they have apparently fallen for a similar trick before during the previous summer. Then, it had been a letter about some foolish muggle contest presumably sent by the Order so they could safely spirit Potter away to their secret Headquarters before his expulsion hearing, though he does not understand why they bothered with the pretense when these…people…seem more than happy to be rid of their nephew under the flimsiest of excuses in any case.

His own ruse is much simpler, and thus more elegant and foolproof. All it takes is discovering the large man’s place of work and putting his employer under the Imperius, then commanding him to extend an invitation to dinner for the entire family. If they happen to bring the boy along, that is merely a bonus which will make his task one step easier.

They do not bring the boy along. But he cannot claim disappointment, for this is more satisfying anyway. It allows him time and the rare opportunity to indulge in his own personal flair for the dramatic.

In a grim scene not so unlike one he staged many years ago in a terrible backwater little village called Little Hangleton, he is waiting for them in the dining room when they arrive, seated at the head of the table while the manager and his family are all arranged neatly in the remaining chairs, all of them already dead.

The woman is more immediately cognizant of their situation and thus more demonstrably terrified than her husband and son at first. This lends more credence to the theory that it is she whom the blood wards are tied into, as it suggests she is the most well informed of the group, but it could also be that the others are simply that stupid. What little intelligence could be gathered about Harry Potter’s guardians without raising suspicion at the Ministry had been frustratingly meager and vague. A well placed Legilimens confirms his suspicions quickly enough. He will not waste breath actually speaking with any of these muggles, and he has no reason at all to be gentle as he scours their minds for any and all potentially pertinent information about his target.

The more memories he sifts through, the more his lip curls in righteous anger and disgust. This is who they left their precious savior in the hands of for all these years? Dumbledore is even more cunning than he had originally credited. It is just the sort of tactic he might employ himself if he had the time or patience—leave his preferred asset to cold and uncaring people who would make his offers appear all the more gracious and generous by comparison. It will benefit him now, he decides.

That advantage does not make his treatment of his Chosen One’s “family” any kinder however. Even silenced—mustn’t disturb the neighbors after all—their screams as they spend the next hour under Cruciatus are a pleasant accompaniment to the middling but adequate sangiovese he purloined from the kitchen—even upper class muggles in this day and age apparently don’t at least have good wine cellars anymore—and sips idly until their grotesque contortions devolve into pathetic drooling twitches and cease to amuse any longer.

Their deaths follow swiftly. Then he exsanguinates the aunt and the cousin both, since he cannot be certain the wards are not tied to both of them, and brings the flasks with him to Number Four, Privet Drive—an address that was not difficult to attain once he knew the guardians’ names and thus was able to track the uncle to his place of employment. It had been listed right there in the payroll files for anyone to find. The staggering incompetence of wizarding kind to account for muggles’ irrepressible need to document everything is exactly the sort of oversight he intends to correct once he is in power, but at least it is of use to him now.

The muggles’ greatest possible future weapon against his kind isn’t the atomic bomb after all, he muses. It’s their unique relish for and superior skill at bureaucracy.

The house is dark when he arrives, suggesting that if the boy is home, he might have gone to bed early. It would be irritating if he is not home after the effort Voldemort has already gone to for this, but he is confident the boy has not been moved to Order headquarters yet, so he need only wait patiently for his return if this is the case.

Under cover of a powerful Disillusionment Charm, he carefully draws a circle in the combined blood of Petunia and Dudley Dursley around the house, then uses the rest to draw the key runes he needs to undo the blood wards right on the front door.

He smiles as he crosses the threshold of Harry Potter’s childhood home without any further resistance, his Scourgified fingertips still smelling faintly of the blood of his victims like he is some dread vampire come to stalk his favorite prey right in his own home. Lord Voldemort is something far worse than that.

He knows the layout of the house from the Dursleys’ memories and finds the bedroom he seeks on the second floor with nothing more than an intentionally faint Lumos to guide his path. The door is locked. From the outside. His teeth clench once again in anger before he tamps down on the feeling behind his Occlumency shields. It would not do to alert the boy through their connection now that he is finally here.

He opens it with a simple Alohomora and Potter sleeps on, unaware of the unwanted houseguest standing over him now, his lax face washed out paler than normal by the moonlight which filters in through barred windows. A swift Silencio prevents the white owl perched in its cage from disturbing its master’s rest as it squawks and attempts to rattle the bars. A muttered Stupefy puts Harry into a deeper unconscious state he will not wake from until Voldemort releases him from it.

“Accio Harry Potter’s belongings.” Items fly to him from the bedside table, the broken wardrobe to his right, and even from beneath a loose floorboard under the boy’s bed, but it is still far less than he would have expected. A dull knocking from downstairs reveals that the rest is locked within the very cupboard these abhorrent muggles stashed their own nephew away in like forgotten luggage for nearly ten years of his young life. He does not have more time to waste on fury already spent on the offending parties, so he does not dwell on it as he retrieves the boy’s school trunk and opens it to pack the rest inside.

He does pause for a moment to finger the soft, silky material of the Invisibility Cloak folded on top of the rest of his robes. It is of finer quality than any other he has ever seen. Briefly, he allows himself to wonder, his eye catching also on the recently reclaimed family ring on his right hand. There will be time to further consider the ramifications of that possibility as well later. He closes the trunk and shrinks it to fit inside his pocket. Then with one hand he picks up the cage of the still screeching bird. He levitates the sleeping boy to him, floating upright and hovering inches above the ground, tucks Harry’s head against his shoulder, and wraps his other arm around his slim torso. Without another word or cursory glance to their bland surroundings, he Disapparates.

Harry Potter is laid out on a divan in one of the Malfoys’ private studies which Voldemort has temporarily claimed as his own, an oversized dressing gown which has seen better days thrown over his shoulders to cover even thinner and rattier hand-me-downs which he guesses are supposed to be pajamas. His glasses and his wand are set out on the small table beside him within easy reach. Almost an afterthought, he remembers the owl and places it under a gentle sleeping charm before removing the silencing one. That should keep it from disturbing what will be a long overdue chat he has been much looking forward to for several months.

“Ennervate.” Having been unconscious already when he was Stunned, Harry wakes gently rather than with the frightened, gasping shock people usually do when they have been Stunned while awake.

No, the shock comes after he has blindly fumbled for his glasses—the table they are on similar enough in height and distance from him to the one that had been beside his bed that he does not immediately recognize anything amiss—and realizes with wide-eyed confusion that he is not in his own bedroom any longer.

The fear comes when he sees who is sitting in the chair across from him.

Voldemort smiles when the boy instinctively raises his wand to him, his hand only shaking a little. Truly, the brave little Gryffindor he has come to know and admire from afar. He had not been sure Harry would recognize him so quickly. Gone is the snakelike appearance he would be more familiar with, replaced by the man he had once been, older than the teenage Tom Riddle Harry would also recognize from his diary, his dark hair just starting to silver at his temples, yet still close enough apparently that Harry had known him instantly. Only his eyes still glitter like garnets rather than onyx.

“You may keep your wand trained on me if it puts you more at ease,” he states calmly. The boy startles, he suspects because of the unexpectedly deeper, natural timbre of his voice that is so unlike the high, cold snarl his less than ideally reconstituted body once favored. “But know that if you utter a single spell unprovoked, it will not go unpunished.”

The boy wisely keeps silent, though predictably without lowering his wand. He can easily see that the Dark Lord has not similarly armed himself, but is smart enough to recognize that this does not make him any less a threat. After a few more seconds, eerie and tense for him undoubtedly but rather tranquil and unconcerned for Voldemort, he finally distills everything he wants to know into a single word. “How?”

There are any number of answers he could be seeking with that one question. He decides to address them in the order he believes the other wizard will find most pressing first. “The Dursleys are dead. The blood wards are down.” Harry flinches, which is more of a reaction than that family deserves in his own opinion, but for a boy usually so expressive and whom Voldemort has gotten better at reading, this response is otherwise remarkably muted. Voldemort does not show how much this pleases him, but it bodes well, better than he hoped already.

“I have not looked as I did on the night I was resurrected for approximately six months,” he continues. “When I joined my followers at the raid on the Department of Mysteries, I was wearing a glamour.”

“Why?” Harry interrupts. These one word questions are uncharacteristic of the boy he knows, but with a subtle mental prodding at their connection, he understands why. A part of Harry still does not quite believe this is real; the part of him which knows it must be does not yet trust himself to speak without casting ill-advised curses or screaming. Voldemort allows himself another, wider smirk which he knows does nothing to reassure the unnerved teen.

“What do you know of the prophecy, Harry?” he returns with a question of his own instead of immediately answering.

The boy swallows nervously. His arm must be growing tired but he continues to hold his wand steady. “Nothing. It was smashed, or don’t you remember?”

“Liar,” he accuses pleasantly in Parseltongue, enjoying the shudder this elicits from his boy. His boy, not the Dursleys’, or Albus Dumbledore’s, or anyone else’s.

“Is that what this is about then? You plan on torturing it out of me before you kill me?” he asks, sounding resigned but feeling oh so deliciously afraid. Good. That is how one should feel at the prospect of an unpreventable, imminent demise.

Lord Voldemort savors it for a moment longer before he answers. “I have no intention of killing you anymore, Harry Potter. Not if you don’t force my hand.”

“Now who’s the liar?” How did Voldemort never notice, before his recent resolve to “better himself” so to speak, just how lovely the spark of those green eyes and the clench of that narrow jaw are in self-righteousness?

“Does it feel as if I am lying to you?” Unease ripples through the teen, and Voldemort knows it is because Harry has not willingly reached back through their connection like that before and is wary of starting now. Because he is prepared and leaving himself open to it, however, he can tell when the boy sets his caution aside and presses into it gently like a blushing, first-time lover.

The boy’s eyes widen and his wand arm lowers at last, though he keeps it out in his lap rather than put it away. “Okay,” he mutters with more breath than voice, dragging those two syllables out longer than they need to go and appearing to say it more to himself than to the Dark Lord. “That’s…definitely unexpected. Why did you change your mind?”

“The prophecy lent me new perspective on the unique nature of our connection to one another,” he explains, enjoying the adorably confused expression that immediately clouds over the boy’s face.

“But you never heard it! No one could hear it over the fighting when it got smashed.”

“That is the misapprehension our enemies have fallen for, because they foolishly believed Lord Voldemort too weak or too afraid to set foot within the Ministry’s hallowed halls himself,” he sneers. He leans forward a bit in his chair so he can impart this first secret shared between them in a mocking whisper, “But I had already listened to it shortly before Yule, my dear.”

“When Mr. Weasley was attacked,” his Chosen One puts together quickly. “You got past him while Nagini had him pinned down, before anyone else ever got there to help.” Though he shows nothing in his own expression, Lord Voldemort is flattered that the boy remembers his familiar’s name and opts to use it instead of one of the many uncreative descriptors he’s heard over the years, usually some amusing but utterly disrespectful variation of “big, bloody terrifying, poisonous snake.” The correct term is venomous, and he is often inclined to toss out an extra Cruciatus every time he has to hear someone make that ignorant mistake yet again.

“Correct. Unlike your supposed allies, my Chosen One, you are no fool so I assume you can also work out just as easily why I left the orb there and allowed you all to believe that was yet another failed attempt to retrieve it.”

“You also kept sending me visions of the place. You wanted me to hear it too.” Harry’s gaze flickers and seems to turn inward. “But if you already know it too, it doesn’t make sense that you wouldn’t still want to kill me, that’s—” He cuts himself off, immediately realizing his error, but Voldemort is still watching him with placid and polite interest when he dares to look back up.

“I am glad that night was not a total waste,” he responds honestly, and ignores the flash of rage and haunted sorrow that follows this statement. He can guess the reason for it, but now is not the time to address that yet. “Dumbledore obviously realized he could no longer refuse to tell you about the prophecy once you became aware of its existence.” Voldemort clicks his tongue thoughtfully between his teeth. “A version of it that suits him, at any rate.”

The boy narrows his eyes at him. “You expect me to believe that Dumbledore would lie to me but you wouldn’t?” he asks sharply, which is fair given their history.

“The man has done nothing but lie and prevaricate to achieve his own goals since before you or I were ever born, Harry, why should he stop now?” He tilts his head like a shrug. “You won’t have to take my word for it. I will be happy to show you my own memory of it directly, in good faith.”

“Thanks, but I’ve already seen one. It’s not exactly a favorite of mine either so I’m not keen on watching it again.”

If that is true, it would mean this child is more stubborn and foolish than he had hoped, but considering his willingness to listen so far, Voldemort suspects the reality is more complicated than that. “And yet you’ve made the most interesting presumption, my dear,” he points out. “Despite supposedly knowing it as well, you assume it cannot possibly have changed my mind about the necessity of your death.”

He knows that he is right and his patience is about to be rewarded, when after another weighty pause the boy asks so softly that Voldemort has to lean in again to hear him, “You just said…despite knowing it?”

“Perhaps a trade of memories is warranted rather than a simple one-way exchange, wouldn’t you say? How about it? You show me yours and I’ll show you mine,” Voldemort offers, unable to resist drawling his suggestion out like a tease. It makes the boy blush so prettily even as he hides by averting his gaze once more while he seriously considers it.

“You’ve shown me fake visions before,” Harry reminds him.

“I have,” Voldemort admits readily. “In dreams. And as dreams, they always maintained that hazy quality of unreality, of possibility rather than certainty, did they not? But you and I are both awake now, and more importantly…” He stands and Harry, instinctively knowing his intention, sits up straighter on the divan and pulls his legs in, looking more like a child than he ever has as he wraps his arms around them protectively and stares wide-eyed over his own knees when Voldemort sits at the spot they just vacated.

“More importantly,” he continues, half-turned to face Harry. “You feel it as well…don’t you? How in just the last hour, actually talking and listening to each other for once rather than fighting, or you trying to escape me, our connection, our…our bond, it’s already changing, Harry. Deepening and opening up to each other more in a way that won’t allow for continued dishonesty between us now…”

In truth he has only become aware of it himself in the same moment as he tries to articulate it, his usual eloquence halting a little on his tongue, the subtle shake he hears in his own voice not faked. He had not known until this moment how desperately he wanted this new direction for his plans to work, how much he had pinned on his hopes for this already, until he had already given up one of his greatest advantages over the other, his cunning.

Harry recognizes this too, judging by the way he closes his eyes and shudders again. “Alright,” he says a bit hoarsely, before clearing his throat. “Okay, fine. Let’s…let’s share what we know then.”

He instinctively flinches when he opens his eyes and finds that Voldemort has already inched closer with his wand drawn, but he doesn’t move back any further and tenses only a little when the older man rests the tip of his wand against the boy’s temple.

So much trust already. Normally such a realization would have him internally sneering at the weak-willed fool who put such faith in him so readily without guarantee of reward, but Harry Potter he knows is weak of neither will nor mind, and for all his Gryffindor brashness that sends him running headlong into danger time and again, he is surprisingly cautious about feeling out the intentions of others before offering them his allegiance, with only one notable exception that Voldemort intends to rectify soon. Nothing less than intimate, first-hand understanding of the other’s sincerity through their bond would have allowed for this to happen without a struggle, and for that the Dark Lord feels not merely triumphant but honored.

He doesn’t even need to say the incantation, out loud or otherwise, another example of how far things have progressed already. Harry is pushing the memory he seeks to the forefront of his thoughts freely for the taking, unhesitating about giving his own up to Voldemort first.

He sees it all unfolding through the boy’s eyes, and because there is little to no barrier between them left, he feels as Harry felt then as well, all of his horror and awe, his grief, his self-hatred and bone-deep exhaustion. A silvery figure in a shawl rises up from the bowl of the Pensieve and recites the prophecy as he remembers it almost word for word. Almost, he latches onto quickly…except no, it’s not really he who fixates upon that one small, careless word he thought, is it?

Voldemort withdraws as smoothly as he had entered, looking no further beyond the memory freely given, though he could easily spread tendrils across the mind opened so willingly to him now if he chose to. The difference between this and his cruel invasion at the Department of Mysteries only a month ago, between this and the dreams he fed Harry for months before that, is so stark that it leaves Lord Voldemort feeling almost ashamed of his past actions.

“What a clever old goat he is,” Voldemort says with grudging respect. “Did you know, Harry, that memories shown in that shallow manner with a Pensieve can be altered in ways that are harder to detect than when you are pulled into the Pensieve directly to witness the event as though you were present for it yourself?”

It is a little sadistic, he acknowledges, how much pleasure he derives from the miserable hurt slowly spreading through Harry’s expression and the subtle shake of his shoulders already from this revelation alone, the worst of his beloved headmaster’s crimes against him still yet to be shown. Voldemort is not, however, and will never be a good man, and this newfound empathy growing between them will not change the core of who he is. “I didn’t,” Harry whispers.

“The true brilliance is he didn’t even alter it all that much,” Voldemort confesses. “Not much, but enough to steer you exactly where he wants you to be in this battle of wills.” Putting his wand away, Voldemort extends his hand for Harry to grasp. “Now may I show you what it really says?”

“I don’t know Legilimency,” Harry tells him, though he already knew that.

“I think,” Voldemort responds, a little perturbed when it comes out in nearly a whisper as well, unable to disguise his own growing wonder, “that may not matter anymore. Not between us, darling.”

With his other hand, he grasps the boy’s chin, ignoring the indrawn breath that follows as he shifts so that their faces are closer. Following Harry’s example, he allows the memory he wants to float up to the surface and gently nudges it forward as he looks into uncertain but welcoming green eyes.

He recalls holding the orb in his hand, spidery white and with wretched overlong black fingernails as this is when he was still in that ugly half-formed body, before he became aware of how clouded and volatile his mind had gotten over the years and sought to correct a few mistakes that led him there. As the smoke within it swirls and shifts, he hears again the disembodied voice that intoned without opinion or emotion his own destiny, long misunderstood and nearly ruined because of that until this precise moment, which gave him the chance to finally correct its course.

“The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches…born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies…and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not, unless power between them is willingly shared…yet either may die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other merely survives…the one with the power to strengthen the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…”

He feels when Harry retracts himself from this vision and also physically pulls back, not far, Lord Voldemort’s thumb catching on his bottom lip which is shivering and petal soft, before he politely allows it to drop down to his own lap. His boy’s eyes are wet, the subtle shaking that began in his shoulders no longer subtle as his breaths also start to quicken. “That is…but that means…” A high, hiccuping sound which cannot be neatly categorized issues forth before he gets ahold of himself, just barely.

“You mean to tell me,” he tries again, and the look he gives Voldemort now is full of such awe and so much heartbreak it takes the older man’s breath away. Harry Potter is beautiful cloaked in betrayal and tragedy. “That we really don’t have to…that there’s, there’s a choice?”

His voice cracks on the final word, and Lord Voldemort, who has never in all of his years desired to coddle anyone even as an act merely to manipulate and further his own goals, tugs Harry closer by the hand still clasped in his and puts his other arm around him, ignoring the awkward press of knees against his middle.

That Harry lets himself be pulled in like this and even allows himself to sob without shame in his supposed enemy’s arms is the sweetest victory of all, one he could never have imagined and never intends to let go of, now that he has it literally within his grasp.

Not the Light’s victory, nor the Dursleys’, or the Order’s, or Dumbledore’s, but his. His to cherish and hold and no other’s. His Chosen One. His Harry. Mine.

Chapter Text

No one has ever held him like this before.

He’s had his fair share of hugs in the last four or five years, certainly—from his friends, from Sirius (the reminder makes another painful lump form in his throat), or from Mrs. Weasley, but he has never been held like this. Those other hugs, while genuine in their affection, were often fleeting and casual, given by people who took such touches for granted as normal, or in his godfather’s case with a desperately tight squeeze and a niggling sense when he pulled back and looked Harry in the face afterwards that he was really seeing someone else.

This is just the right amount of steady and firm, functional in that it’s given solely for Harry’s benefit and not the other person’s, which shouldn’t make it seem more significant but somehow does, especially because it is also in no way casual, fleeting, or taken for granted by the one giving it. It occurs to him with a quiet sense of awe that this is very possibly the first act of kindness the Dark Lord has ever bestowed on someone else, yet he also acts like it’s something Harry should expect from now on, not despite who they are but because of it.

Horror that it is Lord Voldemort cradling him so close is what he should be experiencing, especially since he does it with this immensely satisfied, dangerously proprietary feeling he is making no effort to disguise or bury. Shame too, for finding any comfort in it whatsoever and for breaking down so completely like this in front of him in the first place, when he normally takes such care not to cry openly even in front of his friends. The danger of letting himself be vulnerable around others was instilled in him from a very young age.

The man holding him now just killed the people who instilled that lesson in him tonight. He doesn’t know what he feels about that yet either.

Like he knows where Harry’s mind has wandered without a word exchanged between them—an alarming new development in their mental connection, but an undeniable one to be sure—Voldemort leans his head against Harry’s so he can quietly tell him right in his ear, “I would bring them back just to kill them again if it would make you smile, Harry.”

His fingers’ grip in the older man’s robes (and when did that happen?) tightens and he shudders. This man is still the terror of the wizarding world, he’s suddenly reminded, just in case he was actually in danger of forgetting.

He pulls back from the embrace finally and pushes his glasses up so he can wipe his eyes with the back of his hand. He’s not about to examine his own feelings on what the other wizard just said for the moment, but he is going to question it because there’s clearly more going on here that he hasn’t been told yet. “This isn’t just about the prophecy, is it? That wouldn’t be enough to—something else is different too.”

“You’re right,” Voldemort admits freely. “Although it is thanks to the prophecy that I became aware of it. The line about me ‘marking you as my equal’ caused me to reexamine what I thought I knew about the bond between us. It made me realize something that should have been embarrassingly obvious from the beginning, that would have been obvious had I started thinking more clearly sooner.”

That’s another thing Harry’s wanted to ask about but wasn’t sure he could without offending the other wizard—the fact that he’s so calm, witty even, and suddenly so dangerously pleasant to talk to compared to before. At least now it seems he won’t have to be the one to bring it up.

“What has Dumbledore told you about our connection, Harry?” Just hearing the name again makes him feel almost like curling up into a ball. He doesn’t quite, just lifts one knee back up to clasp it loosely with both hands while letting the other leg dangle over the side of the divan. The Dark Lord’s smile at his reaction is not kind. “He must have shared some ‘suspicions’ with you whenever you’ve asked him about it before.”

“Not much,” Harry says. “I asked him after I met, uh, you again in the Chamber of Secrets. Your diary-self had a lot to say about our similarities. Dumbledore said it was because you transferred some of your power to me on the night you tried to kill me as a baby.”

“My diary,” the older wizard mutters. “Funny enough, that’s actually where this all starts.” He has his chin on his hand and a contemplative expression on his face. He looks up at Harry again and straightens. “What I have to tell you now must stay between us, darling,” he says. Harry nods, unhesitating, and spares little thought now to how willing he is to keep the Dark Lord’s secrets just because he’s been asked to.

Voldemort runs his tongue over his teeth behind his closed mouth, not quite a nervous tick but as close to one perhaps as someone like him gets, leaving no room for doubt that this topic is very important to him and something he has not shared before with anyone else. “My diary,” he says, “was my first foray into a branch of the Dark Arts known as soul magic, more specifically with the creation of something called a horcrux. In essence, it is a method of ensuring immortality by separating a piece of one’s own soul and putting it into something else.”

“So that was actually you in that book, not just a memory imprinted onto it?” Harry asks, eyes widening. Suddenly he feels horrible about destroying it, even if there had been no other option available to him at the time. “I didn’t know. I…I’m sorry, I guess?”

“Don’t be. As it turns out, that may be the best thing you could have ever done for me,” Voldemort tells him, if a bit wryly. “The method may have left something to be desired, but it’s not as if you could have realized there was a better way under those circumstances.” He shifts a little, arms crossed. “Destroying it left the soul inside damaged but still able to return to me, though I didn’t realize it had or that it was repairing itself and the main core of my soul it had reattached to for quite some time. Had I chosen to reabsorb it myself properly in the first place, it would not have been such a slow process.”

“You made more than one,” Harry says, uncannily knowing it to be true as soon as the thought occurs to him. “I can’t imagine that was very good for you, mentally or emotionally speaking.”

“The first few were fine,” Voldemort says, unfazed when Harry cringes at this casual admittance. “Looking back, I’m sure I was stable and still myself until I crossed a certain threshold, then past that point was too far gone to recognize that I should stop and kept making more, like a compulsion.”

Harry takes in a ragged breath, sympathetic and understanding while not sure that he wants to be. “How many?” he asks.

“Seven. I had a fixation on that number from an arithmantic standpoint, that a soul split seven ways was the ‘divine ideal.’ Meaning, in other words, that it was always my intention to stop at six horcruxes.” He pauses here to look at Harry with a strange glint in his eye. “The seventh was…an accident.”

It takes a second for Harry to absorb the significance of this final statement. As it suddenly hits him, he takes in another, dizzy breath and whispers softly, “Oh.”

“Oh,” Voldemort repeats with an odd little smile. “Yes, I felt quite the same, when I realized.”

Harry swallows. “That’s not normal, is it? For a living thing to be able—wait, no, but Nagini’s one too, isn’t she?” He looks around now as if expecting to find her in the room with them, maybe like he means to ask her to confirm it, but instead notices Hedwig asleep in her cage by the window. He smiles bemusedly and looks back at the other man.

Voldemort’s smile also widens. “Correct again, Harry, but Nagini is my familiar much like that owl is yours. She was already attuned to me and my magic long before I made her into a horcrux, and wonderful companion though she is, snakes and owls are far simpler creatures than humans, especially wizards. Simple enough that making one into a horcrux is even enough to secure their immortality as well without requiring any further steps. You were only an infant, but even so what happened that night should not have been possible.” That odd look is back when he says again more softly, “You should not be possible.”

Harry glances away, not exactly sure how he’s supposed to take that. “So what exactly does that mean for us now?” he asks. “You mentioned another way to get those bits of your soul back without destroying the horcruxes?”

“Yes, I’ve done so with two already to restore myself more fully than the one from the diary could do on its own. The rest are not as easily accessible to me for the moment.” He licks his teeth again. “I’m content with the equilibrium I have reached and have no intention of reabsorbing the others, however, merely safeguarding them somewhere more secure once they’ve been recovered.”

“Including me?” Harry asks. Voldemort hesitates.

“It is…theoretically possible to remove it from you safely, if both of us consent,” he answers carefully.

“But you don’t want to,” Harry says wonderingly.

“No,” the Dark Lord confesses. “I don’t.”

Harry swallows again lightly, his fingers clasping each other a little tighter. “Why not? I have a right to know why you would refuse in my case.”

“There is some margin of risk to removing a piece of one’s soul from a living horcrux who also has a soul of his own. The possibility that it could damage you is not something to be taken lightly.” Fair enough, but it feels like that’s not the whole answer though. “I would also not be so quick to discard the foundation of our newly evolving bond either. Would you?” he asks curiously.

Harry shrugs, as honest of an answer as he can give in that moment. “I only found out about it a few minutes ago. It’s…a lot to take in.”

“It is,” Voldemort agrees lightly. “I’ve had time to come to terms with all of this which you haven’t yet. It would be concerning if you didn’t want more time to think it over.”

The smile Harry gives him now is almost pained. “Come on, Tom,” he says, and nearly winces when that slips out on accident. He chooses not to backpedal now that it’s out there though, sort of as a test—he’s certainly not about to start calling the man “my Lord” and no one bloody well calls him Voldemort for a casual chat, now do they? He can always call it revenge for all those weird “darlings” and “my dears” Harry hasn’t called him out on yet if he’s feeling so inclined. “Let’s not pretend you’re just gonna let me go on my merry way if I tell you this isn’t going to work out. It’s nice knowing that theoretically the prophecy gives us both a choice in all this, but you’re not really giving me one any more than he was.”

“Listen to me,” the older man says, moving closer to him on the divan only to hesitate in reaching for him with Harry’s hands still clasped together on his raised up knee. But then he just does it anyway, letting his hands alight on the back of the boy’s wrists and lifting his gaze up to meet his again, making Harry’s breath catch with the deliberate, stolen intimacy of the gesture.

“You are not wrong,” the man says. “We are not truly equals, not yet, and I will admit that part of me is still uneasy with the concept in general, but I do see it as a real possible future for us if you stay. Our current positions are deeply imbalanced, however, and I am…” His fingers on Harry’s wrists twitch like he wants to grasp them, but stop short of actually doing it. “I am sorely tempted to use that to my advantage if you refuse me now. Doing so would be antithetical to actually getting me what I want from you though, wouldn’t it?”

Harry realizes after a few seconds of silence that this question isn’t rhetorical and Tom is actually asking him. He nods, more hesitantly than he would like because he’s still not sure where this is going.

The man returns the same small, uncertain nod in what seems to just be unconscious mirroring, looking away from Harry now but still keeping his hands on him. “And of course I can’t just lie and make you promises I have no intention of keeping anymore,” he says with a wry, grim chuckle under his breath. “Nor can I make any offers I don’t want to and convince myself I actually mean them.” The Dark Lord closes his eyes and clicks his jaw, humming unhappily low in his throat, clearly warring with himself.

It’s—damn, this is the last thing Harry wants to be thinking at such a critical moment and not a thought that bodes well for his own sanity at all—but it’s sort of weirdly, troublingly endearing to watch him struggle with this. He really hopes he’s not broadcasting this opinion too obviously, or if he is that the older man is too distracted with his own internal debate to pick up on it.

“I can offer you this,” Tom says finally, reopening his eyes. “If you truly feel that we cannot work together, I will return you to that miserable cookie cutter house unharmed, after Obliviating certain details of this conversation from your mind. And after you have sworn an Unbreakable Vow to me that you will never again interfere with my plans unless I consent to your involvement in them.” Harry straightens up a little where he sits.

“I know that is not the freedom of choice you feel you are owed,” Voldemort continues. “A Vow that still effectively ties you to me by cutting off your ability to fight, yet also leaves open the potential for you to still join me instead if you decide later on that you can be convinced after all. I realize it’s hardly fair that your only alternatives to a violent end are still rigged in my favor either way.” His fingers curl, still not precisely holding Harry’s wrists, but only just. “I cannot change who I am, Harry. This is the best deal you’ll get from me. Unbreakable Vows are tricky beasts even under the most careful of wording; I would prefer not to bind myself in one even as the avowed to rather than the avower, but if we cannot trust each other now then needs must.”

“But you won’t require one if I don’t ask you to let me leave now?” Harry asks for clarification. “Then what’s to stop me from saying I’ll consider it, that I’ll help you instead of opposing you, then trying to escape at the first opportunity?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Voldemort answers, but he says it with a little smile quirking up the edges of his mouth and Harry completely understands why. They both know that Harry can’t lie any more than Voldemort can now, and if he agrees in earnest only to get cold feet later, they’ll also both know at the same time. All he’s done here is paint staying at his side as the preferable option, the one that doesn’t tie Harry up in magic that could kill him if he puts a toe out of line.

But he has given Harry an option other than “join up or die,” and that’s better than he ever thought he’d get from the bloody Dark Lord himself. Better than anything Albus Dumbledore has given him either, with his “version” of the prophecy that can essentially be summed up as “kill or be killed,” and which actually now that he thinks on it might be more like “kill and be killed,” if the headmaster has also guessed how Voldemort might have transferred his powers to Harry that night.

And there’s the matter that he doesn’t actually know with any degree of certainty what helping him really entails or what the Dark Lord actually wants for the wizarding world, especially now that it seems he’s become (slightly) less of an egotistical homicidal maniac. To hear others tell it, it’s nothing short of kicking puppies, killing all the muggles, and subjugating everyone who doesn’t have a last name that’s been written on the rosters of Slytherin House for innumerable generations. Maybe that’s what he became after tearing out more and more pieces of his soul than he could afford to spare anymore, but Harry doesn’t think that’s how he started or what he’s after now if he believes as sincerely as he seems to that Harry might genuinely see things his way after hearing him out.

“Okay,” he says finally. “I’m not promising anything more right now than to keep an open mind but…I’ll stay.”

“That’s all I ask of you for now.” His smile for the boy widens into a full-on grin, disconcertingly handsome and enormously pleased like Harry really has just given him everything he’s always wanted, which does nothing to soothe the niggling worry at the back of Harry’s mind that he’s just signed a deal with the devil himself.

The hands around his own turn their grip into more of a caress as they finally withdraw, the sleeves of Tom’s robes brushing carelessly against Harry’s pants leg as he stands back up.

There is nowhere to look other than into wine-dark eyes as they stare back into his own and Tom offers him a hand to help him up.

Harry takes it.

Chapter Text

“I want to owl someone.” No sooner has he shown Harry where he will be staying for the time being—in a bedroom not far from his own, making it the only other occupied room on this wing of the estate, though he sees no reason to point this out for the moment—and had been about to bid him good night when these words tumble in a rush out of the boy’s mouth.

Voldemort blinks. It is not often that people surprise him, but Harry has a particularly keen talent for it. “Oh?” he asks mildly. “And who would that be?”

“My friend Hermione.” The boy juts his chin out a little in order to look up at him defiantly—sweet Merlin, he is so short for his age—clearly expecting an argument.

“You’re a free wizard, Harry. You can do as you like.” Even if he does think that would be a dreadfully foolish idea. He takes the school trunk out of his pocket and enlarges it back to normal size. “I trust you have parchment and ink of your own, but there’s more in the study we just left should you need more.”

Harry’s shoulders droop as the tension in them deflates. “Thanks, er, just give me a moment,” he says before rummaging through it for the materials he requires, apparently expecting the Dark Lord to stay while he writes his letter. Well, why not? He is in no hurry to return to his own quarters just yet for the evening.

The owl has already been freed from her cage and perches on the footboard of Harry’s bed, currently cleaning her feathers. She stops what she’s doing to watch the Dark Lord balefully and gives a trill in warning when she notices his approach.

“S’okay, Hedwig,” Harry tells her soothingly from across the room, already seated at the small desk in the corner to start writing. To Lord Voldemort, he adds, “Careful, she bites.”

“Well, of course she does,” Voldemort says, not surprised. “She’s yours.” Harry huffs under his breath but doesn’t refute this character assessment. “Hedwig? Like Lady Hedwig the Forgotten?” Even as he asks the question, he realizes he’ll probably have to explain who he means and half-turns to face Harry again, only to find him paused in his writing and looking up at him strangely.

“I…yeah, actually. How’d you know that?”

How did he know that an eleven-year-old boy with an unusual heritage from an abusive, magic-hating home might have found the story in his first History of Magic textbook of a medieval noblewoman, who escaped being burnt at the stake by Obliviating her muggle family and the entire royal court in a burst of accidental magic before running away to freedom, compelling enough to name his new familiar after her?

“Must have been a lucky guess,” he drawls.

Harry frowns at this answer which he must be able to tell is perhaps skirting the truth a bit, but he doesn’t seem to know what to say in response. After a moment he returns to his letter, his left hand rubbing the back of his neck in an idle, self-conscious manner. The Dark Lord turns away again to allow him to write in peace.

The owl, Hedwig, still has her luminous and mistrustful golden gaze fixed upon him, but when he returns the look she deigns to give a soft, low hoot that almost sounds like wary approval, as if just now he might have passed some undisclosed test. Cautiously he brings his fingers up for her to examine, silently awaiting judgment.

The bird does indeed bite, but shy of hard enough to break the skin, not drawing any blood. This time, at any rate. The next coo she gives when he pets her anyway, ruffling her feathers up a bit as most of her species usually seem to like, is grudgingly happy.

“I’m finished.” Harry now holds the letter out to him expectantly, though Voldemort made no demand to be apprised of its contents before allowing it to be sent off. It truly is of no concern to him what might get back to Dumbledore and his puppets, barring details about his horcruxes or their current location which he has not disclosed to the boy yet.

While he finds discretion the wiser course in almost every case, the Order will soon know by morning that their precious savior is beyond their reach one way or another regardless. He will earn no favor or trust by denying him this. Losing the minor advantage of their confusion and uncertainty about Harry’s current status is an ultimately trivial cost if it helps to maintain the rapport being built here now.

That doesn’t mean he won’t indulge his curiosity when given the opportunity to do so freely. He takes the offered parchment and reads:

Hermione,

A lot’s going to start happening with the Order soon, if they haven’t found out already. I can’t explain much now, but I’m ok. That’s the important bit I know you’ll want to hear first, and the one you’ll probably have the hardest time believing after you learn about the rest, but I really am. Pretty sure I’ll stay that way too so long as I’m—here, a small spot of ink as if he let the quill sit for a few seconds too long while considering his next choice of words—careful. I know I’m asking a lot already, but I need you to trust me on this.

There's one more big favor I have to ask of you, and this one’s probably going to be harder. Don’t go looking for me. Don't help the Order out and don’t go around behind their backs either. If you can, keep the rest of the DA from trying anything either.

I’m—another ink spot—working some things out right now, but I think I’ve found a way to keep you all safe. In the end that’s all I really care about. But in order for it to work, I need you all to stay out of this fight. I mean it. No matter what happens or how hard it gets, no matter how scared or worried you are, please PLEASE just stay out of it! Even if you think I must have lost my mind by this point, just do that for me.

I lied actually because I have one more favor to ask. Get rid of this letter when you ’re done reading it. Don’t show anybody in the DA or the Order, maybe not even Ron unless you’re really sure he can keep quiet about it too. Most of his family’s in the Order so…I don’t know. I feel bad saying it, but I really don’t know that he’d be ok keeping this from them when I won’t even explain why it has to be a secret for now. You’re the only one I know for sure I can trust to do this just because I’m asking you to.

(Now, that is clever, the Dark Lord thinks, even if he’s not certain Harry would take it as a compliment were he to tell him so. A manipulation tactic which could have been taken right out of his own playbook, inviting someone into your confidence and assuring them that you already know they won’t betray you because they’re such a good friend, thus making it far more likely that they actually will keep the secret so they don’t lose that trust.)

I'm sorry about all of this. Hopefully I’ll get the chance to explain myself in person one day soon. But til then…please stay safe,

Harry

The boy is petting his owl, murmuring to her softly under his breath, and overall giving a surprisingly good impression of someone who has not been watching him surreptitiously the entire time like Voldemort knows he has.

“Do you think she’ll do as you ask? Or that she could successfully convince these others you mentioned of the virtue of pacifism on even less evidence than what you’ve given her?”

“I don’t know. I hope so.” Harry shrugs. “I know you must think it’s dumb to even bother, but I have to at least try. The last thing I need is more people getting hurt taking unnecessary risks for me.” His eyes take on that distant look again. “The adults in the Order will just do what they want no matter what I say, but maybe some of my friends will listen,” he says quietly.

Some of. So at least he is being marginally realistic instead of hopelessly naive. As far as the Dark Lord is concerned, there are only two likely outcomes to this endeavor—one, she brings the letter straightaway to senior members of the Order, confirming to them that the boy is, at least at the time of writing, still alive and being somewhat cooperative with his “captors,” most likely by coercion or manipulation it would be assumed. The letter is intentionally vague enough it might even be interpreted by some that Harry could have run when his home was invaded and gone into hiding. Dumbledore would certainly never buy that, but others might.

The other possibility is that the girl does follow his wishes—hides what she knows and destroys the evidence, and meanwhile also tries to persuade the rest of their merry little band of wannabe teenage heroes not to follow their own ideological principles in the absence of their de facto leader. If she can successfully convince any of their group to trust that she alone knows his mind best and what he really wants without being able to explain why she knows, it might even work on one or two members.

“Friends,” Harry calls them, but from where Voldemort is standing this “DA” sounds a lot more like the Knights of Walpurgis by another name.

While no one else was watching, distracted by the threat of the Dark Lord’s imminent return, this delightful boy has gone and created his very own cult of personality which not even he recognizes the irony of yet. But he will have to learn the hard way, just as Voldemort has with his own Death Eaters, how one’s cult can take on a life of its own in the absence of its founder’s guidance, with everyone squabbling and trying to push forward their own agendas whilst justifying to themselves that it is what their leader would want them to do.

Which is precisely why the task he has set before Hermione Granger, should she accept it, is not only doomed to failure but will most likely result in her ultimately being ostracized from their little group altogether. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing—another lesson learned from his own experience is that sometimes breaking things, even the rewards and accomplishments hard-won by your own hand, is how you separate the wheat from the chaff so that only the best of these assets remain. You isolate them from the rest of the herd, so to speak.

Is that not rather literally what Lord Voldemort has done again himself, in bringing Harry Potter here?

Voldemort folds the letter over and hands it back to him with a diffident expression. Harry takes it almost warily, again able to tell that the Dark Lord is keeping certain thoughts to himself but unable to guess what they might be, only that they present no imminent danger to himself.

His intentions, after all, remain unchanged—win the boy over so that together they can build wizarding society up for a better future, one that actually reaches for its truest potential rather than continuing to wallow in its own mediocrity. To that end, he will only ever encourage choices which ultimately serve to benefit them both in the long run, even if it happens in ways Harry might not be expecting yet. He is young. He will learn.

“So, er, you don’t think it’s a bad idea then? Sending this off, I mean.” It pleases him to no end that the boy would ask, already seeking his approval this early in their evolving relationship.

“I think you have good instincts and a keen eye for character. You should trust them more.” Harry gives him another dubious look, but attaches the letter to the owl’s leg and takes her to the window nonetheless, murmuring instructions to her on its delivery.

Hedwig chitters irritably as they approach the glass, prompting Harry to gaze curiously out the window before he opens it. He murmurs something else to her, too quietly for Voldemort to overhear without stepping closer, and reassures her with another fond head rub before she flies off.

“This is the Malfoys’ place, isn’t it?” he asks, still gazing out but head tilted to look down rather than watch his familiar’s departure.

“It is. How did you guess?”

Harry gives him a shrewd, narrow-eyed look. “There are peacocks standing under my window.” Before Voldemort can stop it, the corner of his mouth twitches. “White ones, which I didn’t even know were a thing. Hedwig doesn’t like them.”

The older wizard stifles a laugh and joins him finally at the window, ostensibly also to look out, though with his shoulder resting against the wall beside it so that he is still facing the boy.

“Nagini doesn’t either,” he says, leaning forward slightly as if imparting a secret. “In fact, I’d say it’s been more trouble than it’s worth so far convincing her not to eat any of them.”

Harry’s mouth quivers. “You…you should tell her the tail feathers would probably give her indigestion,” he suggests.

“That is nearly verbatim what I did tell her.” Harry can’t hold it in any longer. He laughs, at first just a small helpless giggle, but then as if there’s something funny about that too it sparks another that is louder and longer than the first, and then another, until before long he has to grip the windowsill to hold himself upright while trying to hide his face behind his other hand in clear embarrassment, which still does not allow the unexpected bout of hysterics to dissipate.

Voldemort can’t help but start to laugh a little as well, mostly in surprise and pleasure at getting to watch the previously solemn, uncertain boy turn into this silly creature who can barely hold it together anymore because of something he, the Dark Lord, just said to him.

He cannot even remember the last time he has made someone else laugh this genuinely, and not in cruel commiseration over a particularly cold-hearted comment he’s made or because they thought it the appropriate reaction expected of them in that moment. It’s a strange feeling, one only compounded by the tantalizing mere glimpses he gets of the boy’s joyous expression when his hand moves, and almost troublingly addictive in that he’s already thinking about when he might get to see it again and how he can convince Harry not to cover it up next time.

When the laughter dies down, Harry looks up, pinker in the face now, and finally catches him looking. Staring really, to be perfectly honest with himself, and only now a bit self-conscious about it as Harry stares back.

They both look away at the same time, out the window again at the Malfoys’ pristine gardens and those stupid albino peacocks strutting nervously about even though he’s fairly certain they shouldn’t still be this active at this time of night. He actually will need to have another chat with Nagini soon to find out if she’s been harassing them again.

After a few minutes of oddly comfortable silence, the boy yawns beside him. Voldemort finds himself wondering whether he sleeps well most nights. He suspects not, and wonders then if that’s his fault. Strange how much it bothers him now that it might be.

It gives him a reason to finally leave as he’d meant to earlier, telling the boy good night before retiring to his own room.

Apart—if only just down the hall from one another—and out of each other’s sight for the first time since he abducted the boy from his childhood residence, their newly heightened awareness of each other is reduced in strength but not gone entirely, which is…disconcerting, to say the least. He did not anticipate anything like this happening before he set up his plans and left the Malfoy estate in secret to carry them out alone earlier this evening.

Will the potency of their connection continue to expand further as they spend more time together? A fascinating yet also mildly terrifying possibility to consider now, for a number of reasons. Not least of which is the clarifying reality that this likely means before long he will not be capable of feeling disconcerted and mildly terrified by the consequences of his own actions without someone else knowing it.

Much of the eminence and mystique of Lord Voldemort, as he is well aware, lies in his unknowability. To others he is…well, he is Other, something almost inhuman even after the restoration of his natural countenance. Before his features were initially twisted by his resurrection, in fact, he was already considered an enigma by most, granted such monikers as You Know Who and He Who Must Not Be Named as if the very utterance of the name he gave himself might act as a summons, a grave sign of disrespect, or the first unholy spark of madness and ruin for the speaker, depending on their own temperament and level of gullibility.

To his enemies and the rest of the masses he is likened to a phantasmic creature, a bogeyman of sorts. To his followers, he is their messiah, a god who walks the earth amongst them. To no one is he considered simply a man—one of immense power and great ambition who has already achieved immortality, of course, but still a man nonetheless.

This is because before no one else does Lord Voldemort ever allow his voice to waver, his eyes to avert contact, his lips to smile unbidden, or the focus of his words to veer from purposeful and deliberate to spirited and conversational, spoken for the sole intent of drawing a smile from somebody else with no ulterior motive behind it. Never…until now.

He knows he is not the only one who will be lying awake for a while thinking about these unexpectedly rapid changes to their entire dynamic with one another. And if it’s making him a bit uneasy, what must it be doing to the boy who can quite fairly lay the blame for the majority of his troubles and woes directly at Lord Voldemort’s feet?

He can only hope that in the light of day, Harry Potter’s doubts are not renewed so strongly that he regrets promising to give them a chance. It is certainly unreasonable to hope they will not make a return at all. Even at this moment, he must be questioning how he could allow himself to ever consider the possibility of an alliance with his parents’ killer, to say nothing of the additional losses he has suffered between then and now.

As unpleasant as it is sure to be, that is a discussion which cannot be put off for long. Already he is thinking about what he could offer to bring some form of closure to that chapter of their history, has been considering that little conundrum for months now in fact. He has ideas but nothing actionable yet. Much depends on Harry now—his stances, his beliefs, and his unpredictable reactions to things. Is it any wonder that Voldemort has concerns when it would seem the future before them is astonishingly dependent upon the whims of one gifted yet moody teenager?

But then again, this would not be the first time that has been the case. Harry is no younger than he had been when he first learned about horcruxes, found the Chamber of Secrets, and decided in the wake of both these discoveries that it was the world which should bow before Tom Riddle, not the other way around. It was then he had chosen his new name, the one so few now dare to utter.

Morning brings the first real test, or rather several. He does not come to fetch Harry personally out of bed this time—that is too much like hovering, too much like open control and a blatant lack of trust. He merely instructs one of the house elves to direct him to the dining room as soon as he wakes, or to escort him there if he prefers. Or…

Choice, he reminds himself, and amends the order to include a third option. “Or, if he chooses not to join us at the table this morning, bring a plate to his room instead.”

The creature actually seems offended that anyone would knowingly snub the hospitality of the Great and Noble House of Malfoy, but is wise enough not to say anything and bows deeply once dismissed. Now to see to his followers next and find out if they will be as smart as the house elf.

The mistress of the house precedes his entrance into the dining hall with her own and is already standing in wait for him there with her son at her side, per their usual custom. After a few weeks of being home from school, Draco has gotten marginally better at hiding his initial fear and awe whenever the Dark Lord enters the room. He is a great deal better at it than his father has ever been, at any rate, no doubt due to his mother’s stronger influence.

The pair of them greet him with short bows and only sit once he does, himself at the head of the long table, whilst by unspoken agreement for the duration of his stay they have chosen to take their own places at the farthest end, Narcissa directly facing him in her husband’s absence while Draco takes the nearest seat to her right.

Because Lord Voldemort is recognized as the highest authority in the manor and accordingly treated as such, the staff do not announce his arrival like an honored guest, just as they do not announce any of the family whom they serve. Once he and the Malfoys have been seated, however, another house elf announces the Lestranges and the three of them enter by the double doors connected to the main hallway, Bellatrix flanked by her husband and brother-in-law on either side. Voldemort personally always uses one of the side entrances reserved for the Malfoy family, which are also distinctly different from those used by the servants.

There are quite a lot of implied rules of decorum and custom in traditional pureblood households such as this. One way he had earned the respect of his housemates during his early years at Hogwarts was by quickly picking up on these nuances without needing them explained to him, and by appearing to be comfortable complying with them at first. By fourth year, however, he was already proving his own superiority well enough to gradually subvert the established rules in ways that better suited him. By fifth year, the Knights of Walpurgis were formed, and from that day forward there was no going back. They all knew to defer to him.

The Lestranges now bow to him as well before sitting down, and though this is the usual seating arrangement, Draco often seems almost as perturbed by his aunt’s presence across from him as he is by Voldemort’s at the other end of the table. More sometimes, in fact, perhaps because of her closer proximity.

Narcissa is similarly uneasy and resentful about continuing to host these fugitives from Azkaban when her husband and a few of his comrades have ironically taken their place there now, though she is more adept at hiding it. Her demeanor around them is cooler however than it used to be, even with her own sister, though he doubts Bellatrix has taken much notice of the change. She is his most loyal and one of his fiercest fighters, but not necessarily the wisest or most perceptive of the bunch.

It is she who sneers haughtily when the elf who announced them does not immediately disappear and the table before them remains empty. “What are you still standing around here for?” she demands before it has had a chance to speak again. “Forget how to do your job? I think this one’s going senile, Cissy.”

To the elderly servant’s credit, it appears unfazed by the verbal abuse and maintains an air of dignity as it looks to the lady of the house rather than her. “Will Mistress’s newest guest be joining the others or is Vivy to be sending the breakfast out now?”

Narcissa blinks down at the creature in wide-eyed surprise, the most expressive she has been all morning. “My…newest guest?” she repeats haltingly.

“That is yet to be determined,” Voldemort answers the elf on her behalf. Subtly “peeking in” at their connection now informs him that Harry is already awake at least, so it shouldn’t be much longer before they have an answer. “Allow him another fifteen minutes at the most. If he is not seated here by then, you may start serving regardless.”

He enjoys the mixed range of confused to mildly alarmed expressions from the rest of those already at the table while the elf merely bows to him in gracious acknowledgment before vanishing.

“Your continued hospitality is much appreciated, of course, Lady Malfoy,” he says airily. “Now, before our mystery companion joins us, a few clarifying points need to be made. As you are the most loyal and dedicated of my inner circle, everyone in this room trusts my judgment implicitly and without question, yes?”

There are murmurs of assent all around, all effusively given but to varying degrees of sincerity. He smiles winningly as if he is not perfectly aware of this and gives no hint that he doubts even a single individual present.

“Excellent. And so when I tell you now to set aside any preconceived notions you may have and treat this guest as you would any potential ally to our cause in need of gentle persuasion, you will all gladly obey with open minds and not one shred of hesitation in the execution of this endeavor.” This, he does not bother to obfuscate as though it is a question. They all know an order when they hear one. The only question in his mind that he keeps to himself is which of them will find it most difficult to follow through and keep their word to the letter as they give assent again.

He knows that Harry is speaking with the other elf from before when he senses the boy’s hesitancy now, an instinctive reluctance to be in the same room again with not only Voldemort this time but several of his Death Eaters as well. This is the question he actually cares about—will Harry be willing to set aside preconceptions and ugly past experiences to break bread with half a dozen of his former enemies, at least this once?

He needs to know what is a step too far beyond the boy’s comfort zone at this early stage to determine where his boundaries will need delicate handling and where they might be reasonably malleable already.

He does not change posture or expression, giving away no indication whatsoever to the others present that he is aware when hesitancy resolves into certainty. He only straightens and turns to look when the door to his right opens shortly after. The same door he came in through himself only a few minutes earlier. There is no announcement of Harry Potter’s arrival either, but he does glimpse the haughty elf in the hall behind him, visibly distressed if not a little disdainful, and can only conclude that its attempts to steer Harry toward the main entrance instead and its inquiries about how to address him had both been rebuffed.

He is admirably calm, if still understandably wary, as he walks in, which is more than can be said for Voldemort’s followers. None of them appear to be capable of adequately hiding their shock, most of them completely frozen in place and some of them even gaping openly like utter fools. Young Malfoy goes considerably paler than normal.

Bellatrix, always the quickest to react and never one who can keep entirely still for long, is halfway out of her seat already as he approaches. Harry’s hand drops tensely to his trouser pocket where the handle of his wand is just visible. He’ll need a proper wand holster, the Dark Lord idly makes a mental note to himself before addressing the minor situation at hand already in danger of escalating to violence this early in the morning.

“Going somewhere before we’ve eaten yet, Bella?” he asks mildly. The witch falters and looks to him, then immediately falls back into her chair, bowing her head so low her nose nearly brushes the table as she murmurs her sincerest apologies. The boy’s face flickers, now just barely holding back a sneer. There is more to his uneasiness and agitation around Bellatrix in particular than the fact that she seemed for a moment to forget herself and had almost acted rashly despite his own warnings, but he still makes himself relax his tensed shoulders now that she is less obviously and immediately a potential threat.

Undoubtedly it would have been more considerate of him to address Harry’s misgivings about his followers, which strangely (delightfully) almost seem to run deeper than his mistrust of the Dark Lord himself, before setting any kind of expectation that he should attempt to tolerate their company anyway, but he cannot pretend he is not pleased by how well Harry seems to be handling himself thus far.

Unseen by anyone else on the opposite side of the room since he is half-turned away from them, a corner of the boy’s mouth twists rather crossly when his eyes briefly dart to meet Voldemort’s. The look is meant for him alone and conveys unequivocally that Harry is aware this little exercise in civility today is a test, one which he does not appreciate being subjected to. Voldemort allows himself a tiny, equally missable smile in answer to it.

“Thank you for joining us, Mr. Potter. I do hope your stay has been comfortable thus far,” Narcissa says once she has recovered from the initial shock, ever the attentive hostess. “If you would please be seated,” she continues, gesturing toward the chair next to Rabastan, who sits on Draco’s right across from his older brother, “breakfast will be out shortly.”

“Sure, uh, thanks for having me,” Harry responds politely and starts moving to that side of the table, crossing behind Voldemort now to do so. Narcissa winces, despite his earlier entrance having clearly expected him to take the longer circuitous route to his chair that would have allowed him to avoid making such a potentially deadly faux pas.

Harry continues to breeze past all propriety when he does not take the chair that was indicated either and stops many lengths short of it, sitting himself instead at Voldemort’s end of the table, though he does leave an empty chair between them.

Even the most stoic members of the group at the other end appear to be holding their breaths now, whether in offense or horror, as Harry breaks nearly every possible social rule placed before him in seeming ignorance and with a sort of boyish guilelessness to his expression. Draco looks just about ready to faint in terrified mortification on his classmate’s behalf.

Were it not for the mild sense of exhilaration, almost like a mean-spirited glee currently taking root at the back of his mind, Voldemort might have also been fooled by the naive act, but no. It is once again a surprising challenge to keep his own smile in check as he has firsthand, intimate knowledge that Harry knows exactly how much chaos he can sow in the smallest of actions here and chooses to do them on purpose. This is made all the more obvious to him by Harry’s unfailingly good table manners otherwise once their meal appears, though no one else seems to recognize the contradiction. They are perhaps simply too stunned that Voldemort in no way acknowledges the boy’s failure in “proper” comportment himself, and instead behaves as if there is nothing inappropriate about it at all.

“Did you sleep well?” he asks, merely to enjoy the novelty of having someone around whom he does not utterly despise the idea of engaging in small talk with. Despite his own adeptness at social mores, he has never connected to the concept on a genuine level and ceased to bother with it once he no longer had to. It has never occurred to him before now that there could be anything genuine about it, that someone might ask not because it is considered polite to do so but because they are actually interested in hearing the answer.

Harry looks up at him in surprise, as if he recognizes this. “No worse than usual, I guess.” He shrugs. “Which probably says a lot, come to think of it actually. How’d you sleep?” He punctuates the end of his own question with a bite of toast slathered in marmalade as if they have always been this casual and relaxed in each other’s company, not even glancing to the others in the room anymore, which for some reason is immensely gratifying to Voldemort even though he is, in theory, trying to gauge how Harry will choose to interact with his Death Eaters now, not himself.

“Like a baby,” he responds blithely. Harry makes a face at this answer.

“I never really got that expression. Babies seem to me like they’re supposed to be notoriously light sleepers, from what I’ve always been told by people who actually raised them.”

Voldemort grips his fork harder, unable to explain this strange fluttery tightness in his chest now, this almost giddiness which he knows to be entirely his own, not Harry’s. It is suddenly more difficult to maintain his facade of nonchalance in front of his followers, who are still clearly baffled by the whole situation and abysmally dreadful at hiding their own surreptitious stares, but in his opinion for entirely the wrong reasons. What they see and hear is their Lord indulging some air-headed child who appears to have already forgotten he should be afraid, or at the very least meek in his presence.

If they only knew how far from meek he truly is. They do not hear the deftly hidden edge to his words, this seemingly inane, prattling comment which Voldemort is once again only aware means something entirely different beneath the surface because of insight provided by the curious, blossoming connection between their minds and their very souls.

‘Liar,’ this boy accuses him in secret.‘You slept just as poorly as I did.’

How many times already in his short life have people taken Harry Potter for an oblivious fool, never realizing that he notices far more than he lets on? Far more perhaps than they even know they’re giving away, picking up on unconscious cues and tells and little red flags but never sharing them with others unless absolutely necessary. A natural gift for observation no doubt honed by years spent navigating the warning signs of impending tantrums and their undeserved consequences, a glib tongue that learned to smooth its barbs not by getting rid of them entirely but by merely disguising them better, at least most of the time.

Having seen the boy through his relatives’ eyes just last night and putting two and two together now, Voldemort recognizes many, many more of their similarities now than he had ever imagined there were. Harry Potter is a Slytherin in Gryffindor colors, and a better Slytherin than many of those in robes trimmed in silver and green because of this camouflage.

“My Lord,” one of the Lestranges bravely speaks up at last. Voldemort tamps down on his immediate irritation and drags his eyes away from Harry to let them sweep over the others and determine which of them has dared to interrupt. It is Rodolphus. “I believe I speak for all present when I say we are quite curious about this…recent development,” he says, gaze flickering over to Harry. “May I inquire as to how it came about and what this means for us now?”

Voldemort smiles thinly, the feel of it more familiar on his face than those he has endeavored to hide since Harry came in, for it is not kind. “Of course you may. Quite simply, since you all failed to bring me Harry or the prophecy as I instructed before the end of the school year, I have taken the task on and collected him myself.”

They are all suitably cowed by this reminder, but an unfortunate side effect to bringing it up is that Harry also tenses up again because of it. He is also curious to hear the rest of what Voldemort has to say, however, and does not interrupt. “We have since discussed the prophecy’s loss, among other things, and come to the conclusion that our interests may in fact align more closely than once thought. What this means for the rest of you, as I have already stated before, is that Harry Potter is no longer to be treated as an enemy but as a respected ally, and I will take no further questions on the matter.”

Were it not far too obvious of a tell, he suspects Harry would like very much to give him another wry, narrow-eyed look by the end of this brief explanation. It has certainly not escaped his notice that the Dark Lord just implied to his followers that Harry is more or less on their side now, his joining up all but a foregone conclusion already rather than something they are just starting to carefully negotiate on. He wisely does not argue the distinction in front of them, realizing it is to his own benefit if they begin to view him with less doubt and uncertainty in their minds about his position as early as possible.

It has also surely not escaped his notice that Voldemort just outright lied to his followers as well in regards to the prophecy and its continued relevance to them both. There is a simple explanation for this which he will wait to disclose once they are alone again, though Harry is smart enough to have likely already guessed it.

Warmth blooms as Harry smiles at something over the Dark Lord’s shoulder, prompting him to also turn his head to look out the window. The owl is returning, difficult to make out at first, her feathers white against the clouds and pale light of morning.

“Will you join me for a walk in the garden after we’re finished here?” he asks as he faces forward again, deciding it best that Harry not accept any reply she may have brought in his followers’ presence. Because he has phrased it as a question rather than a command, none are foolhardy enough to assume he might be addressing anyone other than him.

Harry nods, his smile shrinking slightly as his gaze flickers back to Voldemort’s instead of past him, but not disappearing altogether. That peculiar sensation like something squeezing the inside of his chest makes a brief return before he shifts his own focus away.

He is suddenly anxious to wrap this up quickly and head outside, some of which is undoubtedly Harry’s own eagerness to meet up with his familiar again and leave the Death Eaters behind indoors while he and Voldemort pick up their earlier conversation where they left it off in relative privacy…but not all of it.

Chapter Text

Hedwig glides down from her temporary perch in a nearby tree to meet them as soon as they step outside. Harry pets her as she lands on his shoulder, grinning widely, even as she nips him on the ear for making her fly all that way to Hermione’s house and back with little time for a break in between since he asked her to come straight back to him without delay.

“Ow, okay, I get it, you’re annoyed with me and I can’t say I blame you, but here, look!” He takes out of his jeans pocket a tightly folded up linen napkin and unwraps it to reveal a neat but generous pile of crumbled bacon pieces inside. “I promised I’d make it up to you, didn’t I?”

Hedwig gives a soft trill in approval and moves down his arm, happily eating out of his hand when he holds this offering up to her.

“I didn’t even notice you taking that,” his other companion murmurs in quiet bemusement.

Harry smiles wryly. “I wasn’t allowed to take food back to my cupboard,” he says. “But Dudley had this habit of taking anything I couldn’t scarf down fast enough off of my plate. I could eat pretty quickly but not as quick as him without making myself sick, so I learned how to sneak a lot of it into my pockets when no one was paying attention to finish later.”

The expression on the older man’s face makes it quite apparent that he wishes the boy’s relatives were still alive so he could torture them some more. Still not entirely sure how to feel about this strange shift that makes Voldemort want to act as his fiercest protector and avenging angel, Harry takes another risk by asking, “What about you? I can't imagine the orphanage was much better.”

The question succeeds in throwing the man for another loop that makes him stop thinking too deeply about the additional insight into Harry’s childhood at least. He appears to have forgotten until now that Harry would know about that because of his diary.

“It wasn’t,” he answers after a moment. “Particularly when the war rationing started.”

It seems to be Harry’s turn to feel indignant about past wrongs carried out by people who are no longer around to answer for them. He remembers well from that memory he saw in the diary how Headmaster Dippet had quibbled and sighed over Tom’s request to stay at Hogwarts over the summer but ultimately done nothing to help. Much like how Dumbledore would later sigh and admit to Harry that he knew he was condemning him to “dark and difficult years” when he left him on the Dursleys’ front doorstep as a baby…and then sent him straight back to them that summer anyway. His jaw clenches and a vindictive thought crosses his mind, Well, too bad that didn’t work out quite how he intended it to, now did it?

Tom looks at him now like he has some idea of what Harry is thinking about, but he doesn’t comment on it. “We were all extra cautious about guarding our own plates from each other as well during that time. I confess though I just as readily stole from others’ whenever the opportunity to do so arose without getting caught.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.” It doesn’t upset him either the way Dudley doing it had. His cousin was always fed plenty and had no excuse for it, unlike Tom and those other kids who had to be ruthless to survive.

“Don’t make the mistake of thinking me purely a product of my environment and circumstances,” the man tells him sharply, easily guessing where his thoughts lie again. “As you’ve just noted yourself after all, you and I had remarkably similar upbringings, and yet we’ve both made very different choices in our lives up to this point.”

Up to this point, he says, because beyond it that might be changing soon, yet Harry still doesn’t know what that would actually mean for him yet. He only knows it doesn’t mean taking the Dark Mark, which he would never agree to anyway. Voldemort isn’t treating him like some Death Eater recruit but like a potential partner of sorts, as if that’s not the most bloody ridiculous thing in the world for a mad genius Dark Lord to want from a fifteen-year-old with mostly average grades at a school he may not even return to as a student, considering the circumstances.

He’s not thrilled about that either, but he understands there weren’t many options available for Voldemort to reach out to him before Dumbledore could manipulate him further. He would have gone to the headmaster straight away at the first inkling of another dream sent by him and automatically dismissed any message it might have conveyed as mere falsehood. What else could the man do, send his own letter by owl post?

Having finished her bacon, Hedwig finally deigns to stick her leg out and let him untie the letter attached there. “Thanks, girl,” he says, rubbing her head again before opening it. Tom shifts closer to look over his other shoulder without asking, eyes cutting away briefly to the owl with an amused glint when she gives a disapproving low hoot in response to his sudden proximity to her human.

Hermione has smartly written her own reply on the back of his letter so she doesn’t have any evidence to destroy. There in her neat handwriting are only four words, “I trust you, Harry.” A bit of tension he didn’t know he was carrying finally eases.

Tom looks at him curiously. “You truly believe in her earnestness, just like that?” The fact that he doesn’t sound judgmental like he thinks Harry’s being an idiot, only honestly surprised, makes it easy for Harry to return his gaze.

“Do you ever find it tiring to be surrounded only by people you can never fully trust?” he asks in kind.

“It’s not that my followers are inherently less trustworthy than others in general, though some are, but that I make it a habit never to fully trust anyone.” Harry figured as much. He gets it honestly—Harry tends to be a bit cautious about new people himself, but he also forms impressions quickly that he usually sticks by, both good and ill, unless someone proves his judgment too hasty later. It’s surprisingly rarely ever steered him wrong.

“Still, that’s…not a great way to live all the time,” he replies dubiously. The older man tilts his head at him with a curious smirk.

“Then it’s a good thing you’re here now, isn’t it?” He begins to walk further into the garden, past neatly trimmed hedgerows and tall trellises groaning under the weight of twisted ivy. Harry follows him deeper in, Hedwig taking flight from her perch on his shoulder to settle back into the nice shady tree she found for a long nap.

Voldemort stops at a stone bench situated under an arched trellis and takes a seat. There are no other benches nearby. Harry chews lightly on his bottom lip, wondering if he’s expected to join him there and whether it would be rude to opt to remain standing instead.

Voldemort lifts a brow at him with a mild, diffident expression but Harry can feel his low creeping amusement steadily grow the longer he continues to stand there awkwardly. Huffing under his breath at the clear implied challenge, he drops onto the bench beside the other wizard, both of them turning just enough to meet each other’s gaze evenly.

“You know, for someone who’s supposedly trying to court an alliance here, or whatever…” he says, immediately wondering why on earth that’s the particular phrasing that came to mind. He’ll just blame it on their ridiculously posh surroundings. “You really like pushing buttons, don’t you?”

“Must be another thing we have in common,” Voldemort agrees shamelessly. “And you do make your buttons so very easy to find, darling.”

“Right, well, you’re not as slick at hiding yours as you think you are, Riddle.” Voldemort keeps his smile up but Harry is satisfied enough by the twinge of irritation that follows like a mental eye twitch.

“I think I almost preferred Tom,” he mutters in deathly quiet.

“Duly noted, Tom. So which elephant in the room here do you want us to address first?” Despite the sarcastic tone, the other man’s gaze turns inward like he’s giving serious consideration to this question.

He carefully takes Harry’s hand into his own. It is almost surprisingly warm to the touch, like a part of him still expects the man’s skin to feel unnaturally smooth and reptilian, or at least for it still to hurt the way it used to whenever they come into direct contact like this. This more than anything else so far makes it unignorably obvious how fundamentally their feelings toward each other have already shifted, how much something in him has shifted and settled more comfortably within…perhaps literally, considering what he learned about their connection last night.

It’s exhilarating. It’s frightening. He’s not the only one to think so either, on both counts. The hand around his own squeezes gently and Tom seems a little lost in the same jumbled up musings as Harry for a moment before he blinks and clears his throat, finally remembering what he was going to say. He doesn’t let go of Harry’s hand.

“I have caused tremendous harm to you and yours over the years, even as recently as only a month ago when it was not actually my intention to do so. I lured you to the Department of Mysteries so you could hear the prophecy and I could steal you away at the same time, but my Death Eaters were under orders not to curse anyone with intent to kill unless absolutely necessary. Your godfather’s demise was a dreadful, unplanned affair that should never have happened. While it was not caused by my hand directly, I accept responsibility for my followers’ incompetence.” The hand squeezes again. “I would like to know if, and how, you might allow me to make amends for it going forward.”

Harry squeezes his hand back, feeling chilled despite the warmth of the sun slowly drying up all the morning dew on the grass underneath their feet. He wasn’t expecting them to dive straight into that first thing after breakfast. He would have expected the older wizard to spend more time trying to butter him up first or start making his case for why Harry should want to abandon his own ideals and favor the Dark Lord’s instead before easing into the more difficult topic of their ugly past later.

“You can’t…that’s not something you can just fix,” he bites out harshly.

“I am not offering to fix it. Nor would I be crass enough to suggest I can repay anything of equal value to what you have lost. What I can give you, however, is some small measure of recompense, if you will accept it.”

“Unless it’s Bellatrix Lestrange’s head on a platter—”

“Yes,” Voldemort says quickly, almost eager. “If that’s what it will take, consider it done. Shall I summon her out here now?”

“What—no!” He stares wide-eyed at the older man, not sure whether to be horrified or—nope, no, he definitely should be horrified. Right? Right. “I-I wasn’t being serious!”

“Are you sure? You did come up with that answer awfully quick, darling.”

“I’m very sure.” Tom actually seems disappointed. “I don’t understand, isn’t she your most devoted follower?” Harry asks, glancing back towards the opulent mansion as if worried the woman might be watching them avidly from one of its many windows as they speak. “Fanatically so, even.”

“Unquestionably, yes. Of all who have pledged their life to my cause, she undoubtedly means it the most and I daresay would hardly hesitate to bare her neck if I held a blade to it,” Voldemort agrees with a smile that borders perilously close to fondness.

“That’s sick,” Harry tells him quite frankly. “And I somehow doubt she’d really be that happy to die if she knew it was for me.”

The older man shrugs as if that’s of no matter. “Fanaticism is also hardly the most useful trait to me otherwise,” he says dispassionately. “Not when it is also precariously balanced with a great deal of impulsivity, as she demonstrated not only last month but just this morning in the dining hall.”

“Wow, you really don’t give a damn about anyone else at all, do you?” Harry murmurs. Realizing they’re still holding hands for some reason, he finally pulls his own away and turns more to look at the man head-on. Tom’s fingers twitch, returning to his own lap. “I also don’t think you’re planning on offering me the same ‘recompense’ across the board unless you intend to off yourself too eventually. Sirius’s death isn’t the only one you had a hand in, indirectly or otherwise, he’s just the only one you consider to be a mistake.”

Tom frowns but doesn’t refute this point. “I am certainly not willing to make it all up to you via suicide or self-harm, that is true, but there must be something I can do for you. There is also Wormtail…” he starts to suggest.

“I hate to break it to you, Tom, but you cannot buy forgiveness with more murders,” Harry says, ignoring how his own breath had nearly caught at just the mention of that traitorous rat. “You can’t just fast-track your way into my good graces either and expect that means I’ll roll over and give you whatever you want in return. It doesn’t work like that.”

“I don’t want you to simply roll over and give me everything, Harry,” Tom whispers, suddenly leaning in closer. Harry resists the instinctive urge to pull back nervously. “If I only wanted another puppet too afraid to tell me no about anything, I would cajole and threaten you into taking my Mark. I wouldn’t waste my time trying to negotiate or asking you what you want out of this.”

Harry swallows lightly. “Okay, well…I think actually helping me understand what you want better would be a good place to start. What is it exactly you’re trying to accomplish other than consolidating more power for yourself? And how am I supposed to fit in with all of it? What do you actually want from me?”

The older man looks at him like he’s so delighted Harry would finally ask. “What I want is what everyone should want, if they would only look beyond themselves for once and their own petty little lives to take in the bigger picture.” Oh boy, this is going to be a whole long speech, isn’t it? He should have known going in that the sales pitch, once they finally arrived at that point, would be this big bombastic affair he’d need to settle in and get himself comfortable for.

“While the muggles have continued to advance more and more over the centuries, our people have stagnated, Harry. They cling to old ways of doing things that were hardly innovative even in the medieval ages—wax candles and wooden torches for lighting. Owl post that can take half a day or longer depending on the distance to convey a single message. Children’s homework written on expensive vellum made from calfskin,” the man sneers.

“Wait, we’re not…we don’t really still make parchment out of that, do we?” Harry asks, feeling mildly ill. Tom fortunately seems amused rather than annoyed by the interruption.

“Well, what did you think it was made from, my dear?” Harry makes a face, kind of wishing he could go back to a few seconds ago when he didn’t know that yet, which pulls a quiet chuckle from the older wizard before he returns to what he was saying.

“There are all these little ways and more in which we have not sought to improve ourselves at all since the days of the witch hunts, when hiding became the topmost priority, and in fact have even gone backwards in some cases,” he continues. “The sabbat traditions have all but completely died out, for instance, celebrated today practically in secret by only a few of the oldest wizarding families because they’re believed to offend muggleborn sensibilities at best or gatekeep them out of our society altogether at worst. Students meanwhile are taught little more than how to wave their wands at every problem and brew a few basic household potions when there is so much more to magic than that, and of course any form of higher education beyond when they’ve reached their majority is essentially nonexistent other than a bit of specialized training in particular fields like becoming a Healer or an Auror.”

Harry frowns consideringly. “Do you mean like Dark magic?” He has no idea frankly what a ‘sabbat tradition’ is either and knows he’s going to have to ask about that later as well.

“Some of what has been lost in the currently accepted curriculum is Dark, yes, but not all of it. Most magic we are taught at institutions like Hogwarts could be considered grey as it requires little in terms of power or sacrifice. These are the common spells we use to go about our day-to-day lives, when everyone could be learning about so many other ways to tap into their natural talents and become truly extraordinary with just a bit of deeper digging into themselves.”

“So…your big plan for the wizarding world that’s got the Order quaking in their boots is educational reform?” Harry asks skeptically.

“Well, when you put it like that…” Voldemort drawls with a devastatingly handsome smile. “Obviously, there is more to it, but if we’re to tear out the roots of bureaucratic laxity and foot-shuffling to set wixenkind on the right path to achieving true greatness, we need a new solid foundation to build upon. A better educated citizenry is naturally going to be an essential stepping stone to that.”

“But where do these future reforms of yours leave muggleborns?” Harry asks him. “The muggles too for that matter.”

“Ah, and therein is our first and biggest major hurdle. The fact that we cannot mention one without also bringing up the other is telling in itself, is it not?” Voldemort straightens up more where he sits, face smoothing back into a far more serious expression. “An entire sub-sect of our society dangerously straddles the line between two worlds—and this includes most halfbloods as well, mind you—yet how much does the Ministry actually understand about muggles?” Harry senses growing agitation in the other wizard now that they’re on this particular topic. He might consider reaching out to pat him on the arm or something if he wasn’t half-worried his hand might come back a bloodied stump if he tried.

“We are in constant peril of mass discovery happening any day, and yet no one currently in charge seems to care. Why should they when the only class concerning muggles in school—an elective which most ignore, at that—is woefully inaccurate and out of date, portraying them as nothing more than bumbling gullible fools reliant on technologies which wixen do not understand but laugh at anyway as if they were no more than silly toys? When the only so-called ‘experts’ that anyone will listen to on the subject are little more than pureblood hobbyists who further spread such misinformation and prattle on about how muggles need protecting like they’re the endangered minority of our species?”

Harry bites his lip, immediately thinking of Mr. Weasley and his well-meaning but honestly rather asinine questions about ‘eckeltricity’ and ‘fellytones’ during summers at the Burrow, the way he’d go on about muggles and their devices like they were all just a bunch of quirky and kooky gadgets to playfully poke at and chuckle fondly over.

Tom gives him another smile, this one a bit nasty like he knows he’s got Harry’s thoughts on the same deeply uncomfortable wavelength as his own now. In truth, he may have subtly primed the boy’s mind for it much earlier on purpose when he’d mentioned ‘war rationing.’ Harry wouldn’t put it past Tom to think ahead and sneak something like that in organically, knowing well it would prove useful to his arguments later.

“What sort of plan of action do you think our government has in place if the muggles find out about magic and come after us, Harry?” Tom asks him next. “Do you think they know anything about how guns work? Or bombs?” His jaw clenches briefly. “How about the more inventive and insidious tools at their disposal? Chemicals like napalm, or those tiny microbes they like to grow in labs to blight crops and make people sick?” he goes on, the look in his eyes now dark and glittering.

“I completely get where you’re coming from, Tom,” Harry says quietly. “Persecuting muggleborns and other halfbloods for keeping ties to their muggle families isn’t the answer, however, and you know it.” He sighs through his nose, rubbing his eyes tiredly behind his glasses for a moment. “At least you’re not also trying to convince me you actually believe all that blood purity BS too though,” he mutters. “You’re way too clever to buy into that rubbish. It’s just convenient to spout the rhetoric back to those gullible sods,” he says, jerking his thumb back towards the mansion, “because it’s the easiest way to get them on board since some of their goals accidentally line up with some of yours.”

Tom’s face brightens into a real smile again. “I love it when you do that,” he says in this weird, sort of hushed tone that makes Harry feel like squirming and looking away almost anywhere else for some reason.

“Er…when I do what?”

“See through me,” he explains in that same weird tone. “Casually dissect whatever I say, or don’t say, and pick it all apart right in front of me as if it’s easy.” This does not sound like something he would expect the Dark Lord to enjoy. Despite the man’s own sudden claim that Harry can read him easily, he doesn’t quite know how to process this and elects to just skip past it for now. He can circle back to it later once they get through the rest of this disconcerting conversation.

Although, why does he get the feeling every conversation they might have both now and in future is likely to be a disconcerting one?

“I have several ideas for solutions to the muggle threat,” Tom continues, thankfully also moving past their brief, odd detour. “Many of which I don’t imagine you would like much, but that is partly why we’re discussing this.” He leans forward a bit again. “So far, you haven’t dismissed anything I have to say out of hand like the self-righteous sycophants of the Order or the Ministry, nor are you too afraid like my followers to tell me when you think I’m wrong. I’m not too proud anymore to admit that I need that sometimes.”

“Is that what my role here is supposed to be then?” Harry asks, rubbing the back of his neck a bit self-consciously. “You want me to act as some kind of advisor or sounding board for you?”

“Not quite.” Tom rolls his bottom lip into his mouth, looking down. It occurs to Harry now that he doesn’t exactly know yet what he wants him here for either, other than some vague implication from a prophecy that he’ll have more success achieving his aims with Harry than without him. Is that why he doesn’t want the Death Eaters to know they’ve both heard the prophecy by now, because it might give away how much his meticulous, exacting plans have secretly just been him winging it more often than he’s let on?

Looking at it like that, perhaps they really do have more in common than the boy ever would have guessed.

“To be honest, I really haven’t given much thought to most of these things before,” Harry admits. But if he truly can influence how the Dark Lord chooses to run things if he helps him on his way to power—if his choices are only this or to stand aside trapped in a Vow of inaction and passivity—then doesn’t he owe it to everyone to at least try?

“I mostly only agreed to this to secure a deal for my friends,” he confesses further. Voldemort nods as if he expected this.

“I cannot promise anything for those who would choose to take an active role against me, other than give them the chance to reconsider if it seems possible they would take it. For the rest, if they stand aside as you’ve instructed, I have no reason to seek harm to them,” he says. “This holds true even if you also do no more than stay out of my way.”

Harry blinks owlishly at him, not expecting this. Tom straightens but also turns to face him more directly as Harry had earlier.

“I have already told you I will not threaten you to secure your loyalty to me, Harry, and I understand that leaving open the possibility of retribution against them would be exactly that. I want you to stay because you want to stay with me, not because you fear the backlash to follow if you don’t.”

Harry bites his lip again, not sure how to describe what he’s feeling, other than surer of his answer than he had been a moment ago. “I’m staying. I think if you’re actually serious about wanting to make things better for everyone and not just yourself then…I want to help with that.”

He glances away again shyly, unable to handle looking at Tom as this exultant sense of satisfaction blooms once more even though the man’s expression barely changes. It’s still absurd to Harry that his promise of aid could really mean that much to him.

“Not that I know how much help I’ll actually be,” he blurts, his self-doubt finally getting the better of him. “I’m not sure what you’re expecting here, but I’m still just a kid.” He huffs softly. “A kid who doesn’t even know how many of his OWLs he passed yet…not that it’s going to matter much now anyway, I suppose.”

“I’m not concerned with how you did on some standardized tests, Harry, tests which I was already distracting you from no less.” A hand comes to rest gently atop his own in Harry’s lap. “And I certainly wouldn’t worry about you falling behind in your education, darling, not with the teacher you’re going to have.”

The self-assured smirk Tom is giving him now does not ease up Harry’s sudden bout of nerves one tiny bit.

Chapter Text

The Dark Lord is of half a mind to Crucio Severus the next time he sees him. He has made it more than clear to his followers that there are certain things he will not tolerate from them under any circumstances. Failure. Incompetence. Lies.

Voldemort has been well aware of his spy’s biases for some time and already knows Harry possesses far more intelligence and talent than his least favorite professor would care to credit him for, but this is just outlandish. After only a few lessons thus far, he can already say Harry is easily one of the best pupils he has ever had the pleasure of tutoring directly and that any prior teacher of his who disagrees is worse than a fool.

In fact, it would be fair to admit that he only ever really liked teaching his followers previously due to the simple joy of sharing a tiny sliver of what he knows on quite obscure and often Dark subject matter, and for the ego boost it brings him to do so. However, he and Harry have gone over spellwork little more advanced yet than the most vital charms he would have otherwise learned on his Sixth and Seventh Year curricula, and yet Voldemort feels almost exhilarated each time Harry succeeds in replicating what he’s just been taught, often after only a few attempts. For what might be the first time, it is the student’s progress he finds enjoyable even more so than the opportunity to show off his own knowledge and skill to an admiring captive audience.

The only reason he can venture to guess why the boy has not been making as high of marks in his classes as his muggleborn friend is that he shines brightest when given the opportunity to apply his skills in a practical demonstration, without also having half of his time wasted on pointless essays and written exams. Even so, it’s not just that he’s good with active spellwork—in conversations that are also absent of the usual strictures common to formal pedagogy, Harry displays genuine interest and creativity regarding the topics at hand and a fairly innate grasp of magical theory all on his own. As the Dark Lord has grown accustomed over the years to any general discussions about magic inevitably revolving more around the desire for power and little earnest curiosity from his followers over how it all works and why, this is honestly quite refreshing.

Expanding his repertoire of spells for defense and evasion had been their initial target aims for the first couple of days, playing more to Harry’s strengths first before tackling areas where they both know he could use more work. Now, they are beginning to cover more ground about going on the offensive against someone else with serious intent to incapacitate his opponent, rather than merely surviving the encounter for long enough to be able to flee. It would be astonishing to Voldemort how little he has learned in this area before now if he wasn’t aware that much of the blame lies with his own curse laid upon the Defense position after that joke of an interview with Dumbledore many years ago. A childish mistake he will have to rectify once he eventually has control over the school.

Once, he might have assumed the headmaster would try to make up for these gaps in Harry’s education personally to better prepare him to face his prophesied nemesis, but now he understands the cold reality. The elder wizard had never bothered because his supposed golden goose had in fact always been meant for the slaughter. Why put in the effort of training someone to fight whom you have always intended to die in the end regardless? He wouldn’t be surprised if the old coot justified this to himself with some twisted logic about Harry being better off without these skills in the long run because it would be “cruel” to give him hope and teach him how to drag out longer a duel that he was always meant to lose.

Voldemort will not allow his Chosen One to be hamstrung like this any longer. Power willingly shared. If he is to have Harry by his side, as an equal prepared to help him in revitalizing his own once meteoric rise to greatness before he stumbled and lost his way, then he cannot afford to waste their time by holding anything back from the boy as he would from his followers—ever tempting them with the promise of more while never fully keeping that promise, always instead keeping something else in his back pocket to dangle over them later like a pack of salivating mongrels.

The terms “master” and “apprentice” do not come up even once during these lessons, but he is well aware of the picture they make together to his Death Eaters as he and the boy spend more and more time together on his training. It has escaped none of their notices that he devotes more time to this than he ever has on any one of them individually, and displays far more patience for the current gaps in Harry’s knowledge than any of them were ever afforded. He allows them to draw what conclusions from this that they will.

“Adjust your grip,” he says one morning after demonstrating a particularly complex set of wand movements, trying to show the boy how to more quickly chain spells together one after another without leaving pauses in between that would allow his opponents an opening to retaliate.

Seeing how he still struggles a bit with this instruction, Voldemort walks over, lightly taking hold of Harry’s wrist as he subtly readjusts the boy’s finger placements for him. “There, see—you almost had it down and weren’t too far off from the correct positioning. The trickiest part now is just keeping your fingers loose and flexible so the movements flow easily from one pattern to the next, while also maintaining a firm grip to ensure that nobody can disarm you while you’re still casting.”

Harry nods once in understanding. “Thanks. I’ll keep it in mind,” he says, glancing up at the older man’s face to give him one of those small genuine smiles which he seems to hold almost in reserve for the Dark Lord alone.

While not the wide beaming grin he wore that first night when Voldemort made him laugh, it’s casual in a way that denotes a certain degree of comfort and ease in his company. Voldemort returns the smile in kind, as he often seems to find himself doing more and more lately whenever they’re working together alone like this.

That lovely smile stays up, but Harry’s gaze flickers after a moment or two to where both of Voldemort’s hands continue to linger on his own, one still encircled around his wrist while the other has come to alight loosely curled fingertips over the back of his hand, his thumb remaining gently pressed against the heel of it just below the base of the wand in his palm.

Voldemort blinks when the boy’s eyes flicker with less certainty back to his own. He quickly lets go and steps back to give Harry the space to move freely once more. “Alright, try that again now,” he says somewhat briskly.

Harry struggles with it a little more, but appears to have the basics mostly down after a few more attempts. They’ll continue to work on it more as his lessons progress. It’s not as if he expects the boy to become some incredible dueling master in the span of only a week or two. He’s already greatly more proficient than he had been when he first arrived, an eager student quick to learn and keen to soak up everything Voldemort has to teach him like a sponge, a trait he is not unfamiliar with in most of his pupils. Unlike the rest of them, however, Harry is not shy about challenging and questioning him as well whenever it suits him.

“I wonder if this isn’t why Severus considers you to be such a difficult student,” he teases a little after another one of his points gets turned back on him during a bit of light debating in the middle of one of their breaks.

That energetic spark he’s gotten used to seeing in the boy’s eyes and the upturned quirk of his lips unexpectedly dims. “Er…yeah, I guess I can be a bit of a pain in his class sometimes. I don’t always back down when I should, maybe, but mostly I do at least try to keep my head down and my mouth shut until I’m as far away from the dungeons as possible,” he admits, shrugging.

Voldemort’s good humor abruptly dissipates as well to be replaced by something like cold anger at this reminder of the double agent’s miserable failings as a teacher. It has been a necessary evil all this time since there is no one else he can place so closely into Dumbledore’s orbit, but to think of his boy’s enthusiasm getting trampled so thoroughly under the booted heel of blind prejudice and enforced mediocrity makes his wand hand twitch with the need to curse someone, preferably a particular someone who is unfortunately unavailable to him at the moment, entrenched as he is within the Order whilst they run about like headless chickens following the murder of Harry’s guardians.

He tamps down on the feeling once more as Harry shifts awkwardly on his feet, since it was not his intention to sour the mood between them and make the boy uncomfortable.

“Speaking of though,” Harry says, changing the subject a bit. “We should probably talk more about, er, who do you think he’s really—”

The unexpected knock on the door to the large unused parlor room turned temporary dueling chamber nearly makes the older wizard snarl. His followers are supposed to know better than to disturb him outside of scheduled meetings and somewhat less formalized debriefs during shared meals. Whatever this is about had better be important enough to warrant such a disruption now.

He is a bit surprised to find that it is Narcissa standing on the other side of the door when he wandlessly opens it from across the room. Even more surprising is that she does not wait for a verbal invitation before marching in swiftly. Although this is her home, it is still a rather audacious break from standard protocol.

“My Lord, please forgive the interruption. An urgent matter has just been brought to my attention that simply could not wait.” He silently gestures for her to continue, but curiously it is Harry whom her eyes cut away to next when she speaks again. “Mr. Potter, are—are you aware that you were once designated the sole heir of the Black estate as written in my cousin’s will?”

Harry’s shoulders tense as he visibly freezes in place. “Sirius wrote a will?” he asks quietly after almost an imperceptible pause, as if such a thing should be surprising from the last remaining scion of a noble pureblooded house. Well, from what little he does know of Sirius Black, perhaps such careful foresight would be rather unexpected, not that he would say as much to Harry out loud.

“What do you mean he was ‘once’ the sole heir?” he focuses his own attention on instead, a chill of foreboding sweeping up his spine as she turns back to him with an ashen expression.

“My Lord, it would seem that as the named heir’s status and current whereabouts are unknown, making him unavailable to step up and lay claim on his new assets…” She swallows nervously, clearly fearful of his reaction, which only makes him angrier and want to shake the rest of that sentence out of her faster, perhaps under a Cruciatus if she doesn’t hurry it up. “…my niece has decided to contest this claim and intends to seize control of the estate herself,” she rushes to finish, perhaps noticing his rapidly growing impatience.

Voldemort feels as though he is the one frozen in place now, though he takes care not to show more than a reasonable amount of displeasure, betraying none of his own blaring disquiet through any change in expression or body language himself. This is an alarming development for more reasons than their hostess is allowed to be privy to, reasons he has not even disclosed to Harry yet.

“She can do that? Stupid question, never mind, it just doesn’t seem like something Tonks would care about though,” Harry mutters. Quick as his Chosen One often is to put things together on his own, he continues, “Dumbledore must have put her up to it then so they can keep using—” He abruptly cuts off mid-sentence, looking briefly perplexed as if he had not intended to stop there, mouth working soundlessly a couple more times before his confused expression clears up. “Oh right, bugger me, I can’t actually say it because of the Fidelius!”

“It’s of no matter, we were already aware the Black family home has been headquarters to the Order for some time,” Voldemort tells him. “There could only be one reason after all why those of us who have been there before should all inexplicably forget its location and find its address suddenly unlisted in all public records.”

“So why is it such a big deal now when you know they’ve been there for awhile already?”

Narcissa answers him with her own presumed reasoning, thankfully sparing Voldemort from having to obfuscate a reply of his own whilst in her presence. “There are many Dark artifacts and heirlooms in the vaults, and likely at other defunct properties which they have not had the opportunity to comb over freely before now.” Her mouth pinches as she telegraphs her own thoughts and emotions more openly than she would normally. “Even if these were not potentially useful resources that could be a boon to our side if we got to them first, I must admit I would personally mourn the loss of so much family history.”

Harry winces sympathetically, and Voldemort senses with a bit of hidden guilt as well. It would not surprise him at all to learn that many such artifacts were lost or destroyed already at the main house sometime during the Order’s stay there, but having this suspicion more or less confirmed is still rather unsettling even if Voldemort downplays the true depths of his own concern.

He only says blandly, “I assume you have already taken the steps necessary to counter this injunction before coming in here.”

“Of course, my Lord. I immediately sent my own house elf to Gringotts with a written statement expressing my own claim. I fear given the current…political climate, however, that it may not be considered as strong as Nymphadora’s once the Ministry steps in to settle the dispute.”

Privately, he agrees, but the heavy wheel of bureaucracy in this case is an advantage, if only while it delays the inevitable. For how long though, he fears to venture a guess. He suspects that the current administration will do its best to ram through the required legal proceedings as swiftly as possible in order to appear strong and unwavering against known Dark families, and will be especially unsympathetic to the wife and sister of two convicted Death Eaters. Useless as Lucius has proven himself to be time and again, his recent arrest is his biggest failing which continues to cause Voldemort headache after headache as unfortunate consequences such as these keep piling up.

“Thank you, Lady Malfoy, for bringing this to our attention. You may go,” he dismisses her.

“Can the Ministry really take charge of things like that when it’s Gringotts that’s got control of the inheritance at the moment?” Harry asks him once they’re alone. “I can’t imagine the goblins would like that too much.”

“They absolutely would not,” Voldemort agrees. “Generally, the Ministry does whatever it can to keep them appeased and not step on the bank’s toes, but in a case such as this an exception could certainly be made. The goblins may take it as an encroachment upon their domain and a sign of wavering trust, but they will ultimately have to defer to whatever decision is made in civil court if they cannot broker a satisfactory deal between the disputing parties themselves before then.”

“A deal which doesn’t have to be made at all if this whole dispute becomes irrelevant the second I step up to claim what’s apparently supposed to be rightfully mine,” Harry shrewdly points out.

“True, but unfortunately there is no way you could do that without presenting yourself at the bank in person to prove that you are indeed Harry Potter. It is entirely possible the Order is hoping for precisely that outcome.”

“You think it’s a trap, don’t you? That they’re laying an ambush for me.” Voldemort is both amused and endeared by that phrasing as it would imply that Harry has temporarily forgotten the circumstances under which he first came here and would assume that his change in loyalties must be somehow obvious to them.

“I believe it is an ambush for your kidnapper, who must surely be a rogue Death Eater or some other wayward supporter of the Dark Lord hoping to win back his favor by stealing out from under the Order’s noses not only you but the entire Black fortune as well,” he replies in a voice dripping with irony. They could hardly suspect that Voldemort himself is Harry’s abductor, after all, for surely he would have already murdered the boy and paraded his corpse around for the world to see if that were the case.

It is very likely in fact that this whole scheme is a testing probe to try to determine whether the boy is still alive and who might be behind his disappearance, one that conveniently doubles as a way to keep Black’s estate under their thumb even if it ultimately yields no such proof one way or another. A clever move on their part, he has to admit.

“Well, even so, whether they think I’m there on my own or that somebody’s coercing me, it amounts to the same thing—they’re gonna try to take me back the second I show up there.”

“Exactly, which is why you’re not going.”

“Don’t be daft, of course I am!”

“No, you are not. This is not a matter for debate, Harry.” The mere possibility of him being stolen back makes it not even worth considering. It makes Voldemort want to curse something just to get rid of the gnawing pit in his stomach even thinking about that brings.

This unforeseen hurdle regarding the inheritance is disappointing, yes—he had assumed there would be time later to search the estate and didn’t prioritize it as he perhaps should have, but nothing he might have hoped to eventually find and recover amidst the Black family’s belongings is worth taking that risk. Not even another piece of his own soul. It would return to him one way or another eventually anyway, albeit slower than he might like if its vessel were destroyed.

Harry, on the other hand, could not be so easily restored if the worst were to happen. Should he fall back into Dumbledore’s clutches, the headmaster would undoubtedly look into his mind and learn that his own machinations are no longer a secret from him, not to mention Harry’s own resulting change of heart. He may then decide there is no sense in keeping the boy alive any longer. That cannot happen. He will not let it happen.

“Look, I know it’s risky, but unless you want to lock me up in chains after all, I’m seeing this through with or without your help.”

“I just might consider it if it keeps you from doing something incredibly foolish,” Voldemort tells him, voice deathly quiet, stepping closer right into the boy’s space.

Despite the clear looming threat here, Harry holds his gaze looking entirely unfazed. “Why are you so set against this? It’s way better than just sitting around hoping the Malfoys will get ahold of it instead of Tonks somehow.”

“Why are you so insistent on it? I don’t see why an inheritance you knew nothing about five minutes ago should be worth going to all this trouble. Has the Potter trust fund dried up so quickly?” he sneers.

The boy shakes his head, surprisingly unmoved by his taunting. “She could burn the house down and chuck everything from the vaults into the sea for all I care. I’m doing this for you, you bloody ungrateful git,” he retorts.

“You…” Voldemort deflates a bit, his growing ire giving way to confusion. “What?”

The boy’s face softens, the almost fond look he gives Voldemort making his stomach flip strangely. “Did you really not know that? Of course it’s for you, idiot. You put on a good poker face for Mrs. Malfoy, but I could tell how much the Order getting their hands on it was freaking you out. I don’t pretend to know why it matters to you so much, but it’s obviously important we keep it away from them for some reason.”

There’s an unasked question in that statement that Voldemort finds himself answering anyway, still a little thrown by the motivation to this madness. “I recently found out one of my horcruxes was stolen years ago and I have reason to think it was hidden in either the Black vaults or at one of their properties.”

Harry sucks in a sharp breath and then nods as if that settles something. “Okay, yeah, that’s a pretty good reason. Let me just get my invisibility cloak,” he says, already halfway to the door before he suddenly halts and turns back around. “Oh, and, er, you know, you should probably do something about all of the…” He trails off meaningfully to swirl a hand over his own face. “You know, all of it. Mostly the eyes, obviously, but you could also soften up those cheekbones a bit, and the hair…I dunno, maybe just un-style it so that it’s a little less…posh?”

“Posh,” Voldemort repeats on a dry note, some knot of tension in him loosening with the realization that the boy fully expects that both of them will go together. Not that he ever intended on letting Harry leave this manor without him for a single second, but it’s somewhat relieving to know he doesn’t even plan on trying it.

The boy huffs. “You know what I mean. Aim for a look that’s more ‘average bloke,’ not…whatever this is,” he says with another vague sweeping gesture that’s meant to encompass the older man from head to toe this time. “Something less Dark Lord chic. Which, speaking of, have you got anything in your wardrobe that’s not the evil wizarding equivalent of ascetic monk’s robes?”

“Harry,” the man warns with notably less amusement than before.

“Never mind, sorry, forget I said anything. Back in a mo!”

Voldemort waits for the sound of the boy’s running footsteps to disappear before conjuring a full-length mirror to float directly in front of him. He must admit that Harry does have a point about his tendency to…stand out. Though there are few left alive who would still recognize this face that he needs to worry about running into, there is little denying the Dark Lord carries himself with a self-assured presence that commands attention nonetheless wherever he goes.

He debates whether it’s necessary to fully alter his appearance but decides against it. He believes Ragnok may still be Head Goblin at the bank’s London branch, and if so that’s one individual it would actually behoove them for Voldemort to be recognized by as it increases their chances of gaining a private audience with him for this. He’s been meaning to reach out soon anyway, so might as well kill two snidgets with one stone.

First, he runs his fingers through his hair a few times to deliberately mess up its neat part and allow a few loose strands to fall naturally into his face, then with a basic cosmetic glamour lightens it by several shades to a golden chestnut brown. His eyes become a darker shade of brown, and after deliberating for a moment he decides to add the appearance of stubble as well. There, now to just slouch his posture a bit, and it’s almost as if a perfectly ordinary wizard now occupies the space where the Dark Lord once stood. Hm…almost.

Reluctantly, he also has to admit that perhaps there really is a certain severity to the style of his robes that doesn’t quite match the current aesthetic he’s going for either. He changes them from solid black to a deep forest green for the outer robe and dark slate blue for the under-tunic. With a quiet sigh, he also loosens the fit of the crossover collar a bit, trying to ignore how slovenly it feels as it leaves his clavicles partially exposed now since that is rather the point.

“Boo,” says a flippant voice behind him as he vanishes the mirror, Harry Potter’s cheeky grin revealed a moment later as he pulls just the hood of his cloak down, giving him the morbid appearance of being little more than a floating head. “Did I scare you?”

“I’m shaking in my boots, darling,” Voldemort says. Harry blinks, his gaze seeming a little unfocused now as the man turns around fully. “Do I pass muster as well then?”

“Huh…?” A floating hand appears where the sleeve of Harry’s cloak has ridden up as he raises it, reaching up like he intends to touch the older man’s face. He stops at the last second, pulling his hand back quickly and dropping it again. His eyes dart over everything above the man’s shoulders as if unsure where exactly to settle.

“Hm, that’s, uhm…mm-hm. Yeah, this is, you’re looking…uh, sure. It’s, it’ll do fine. I guess.”

“Eloquently put,” Voldemort says, lips pulling up into a satisfied smirk. The boy suddenly pulls up his hood again, a bare second too late to hide the beginnings of a blush forming.

“Right, so are we ready to go or what?” Harry asks. It’s a little strange hearing his voice ring out so clearly when Voldemort cannot see him anymore. In answer, he bends his elbow out slightly in silent offering. Harry takes it, and a moment later they’re Disapparating away to the familiar cobblestoned sidewalks of Diagon Alley.

Having Harry on his arm is a good reminder to keep his steps shorter, less straight-backed and resolute in his strides than his regular walk even as he heads with purpose into the bank. He sees no one from the Order or any suspicious strangers lurking by the entrance, but that is no reason to lower their guards just yet. He needs to get Harry out of this large, open public lobby into one of the private offices in the back as expediently as possible.

He gets in line behind a couple of other wixen and idly tries to remember when was the last time that Lord Voldemort had to stand and wait in a queue along with the common rabble. Today is to be a lesson in patience and humility, it would seem.

He can tell that Harry is feeling a little more nervous now that they’re here, though he does an admirable job of not fidgeting too much at Voldemort’s side. He puts his hand over Harry’s invisible one in a way that makes it look as though he’s just crossing his arms while he waits, wrapping his fingers over the cloak’s billowy silken sleeve. The boy relaxes a little more against him, allowing his shoulder to brush against Voldemort’s arm.

Fortunately there aren’t many others ahead of them in line and it isn’t too long before one of the tellers waves him over to the counter. “Vault key?” the goblin prompts boredly.

“I’m not here to enter a vault. I’m here to see Ragnok.”

The bank teller straightens up in his seat, looking at him now with greater interest and a calculating gleam in his eye. “And what business would he have with you?” he asks curiously and with a hint of suspicion, getting right to the point. Voldemort has always found the goblins at Gringotts refreshingly straightforward compared to most of the mindless paper-shufflers who think they run everything at the Ministry.

“That’s his business, not yours,” Voldemort answers just as succinctly.

The teller’s eyes narrow, undoubtedly considering whether or not to insist, try to wheedle and cajole, or otherwise express doubt that the wizard in front of him could have anything to offer that would even deem him worth the bank manager’s time.

It’s instinctive for most humans to react in one of two ways whenever they know they’re being sized up like this. The average person tends to fidget and look away or shrinks back unconsciously, whereas the self-important ones are more likely to straighten where they stand and puff out their chests, whether that be to impress or intimidate their would-be assessor.

Voldemort simply stands in place and makes no change in his posture or expression, giving the goblin currently trying to take the measure of him in hopes of finding some chink in the armor to exploit absolutely nothing to work with. He understands goblin culture well enough to know that the best way to prove yourself to one as they try to stare you down is by not giving them any type of reaction that reveals you have anything to prove at all.

“Name?” the goblin asks once he decides this is indeed an exchange to be taken seriously and handled promptly, not one to be turned into a drawn-out power play expressly meant to waste Voldemort’s time and frustrate him into leaving without getting the audience he came here for.

The Dark Lord gives him an ironic smirk. “Tell him I don’t have one.”

Harry reflexively clutches his arm a little tighter, apparently unamused by this answer, which is too bad for him as Voldemort thinks it was quite funny actually.

The teller looks a bit annoyed since he obviously doesn’t get the joke himself, but he doesn’t push on the matter and hops down from his tall stool to go relay the message. After about five more minutes of waiting at the most, he returns and crooks his fingers in silent gesture for Voldemort to follow him.

Ragnok stands in wait in the middle of the room with his hands clasped behind his back when the teller ushers Voldemort into the man’s office, making no pretense of being disinterested or too busy for this conversation by remaining seated at his desk. As far as meetings go with a goblin of such high rank, this can be taken either as a good sign or a very bad one.

“He Who Must Not Be Named,” the manager greets, also with a touch of irony in his tone, once the other goblin returns to his post and the door is shut securely behind them. “I must say you appear to be in better health than the rumors would have us all believe.”

Voldemort inclines his head in silent acknowledgment. “You are also looking well, Ragnok,” he responds simply.

“I fear this shall be a waste of your time, however,” the head goblin says now that the niceties have been met. “My answer has not changed from the one I gave thirty years ago.”

“No? Perhaps it has not, but circumstances have.” Taking this as his cue, Harry finally lets go of his arm and removes his invisibility cloak. Voldemort is gratified to see the normally stoic goblin give a brief startle at the boy’s sudden appearance.

“Hello, Mr. Ragnok. I’m Harry Potter,” Harry introduces himself quite unnecessarily, as even the goblins for all their feigned disinterest in wizarding affairs are guaranteed to recognize him on sight. “We’re here about an inheritance I’m told some people want to steal out from under me.” Voldemort refrains from quirking a smile at the boy’s wry humor.

“It is only Ragnok, Mr. Potter. We of the Goblin Nation do not use such appellations.” Ragnok’s eyes dart between the two wizards, still in mild shock and clearly not sure what to make of the two of them here together. “You are referring to the Black estate, I take it?” he asks, finally deciding to seat himself at his desk after all, latching onto this unexpected turn in the conversation in a grasp no doubt to anchor himself in more familiar territory.

He nods to another set of chairs in front of the desk and waits for both of them to sit as well before continuing. “Proof of your identity must first be provided before these assets can be signed over. Have you your vault key or your wand to be weighed and examined?” he asks, indicating to a set of golden scales on his desk. “If not, you must wait here an hour until the window has passed in which a dose of Polyjuice Potion would have run its course, then an interview will be conducted under veritaserum which will be administered to you in no less than three drops.”

His eyes cut briefly over to the Dark Lord again. “I shall also inform you that I am obligated by law to ask during said interview whether you are of sound body and mind and here today of your own free will. You will answer truthfully even if you are under the Imperius Curse or a lesser compulsion charm or potion. The veritaserum will override these effects.”

“That won’t be necessary. I have both,” Harry says, drawing the cuff of his sleeve back enough to show the wand in its holster. “You said you only need the key though, right?” He draws this out of his pocket and sets it between them on the desk.

Another flicker of surprise appears on Ragnok’s face, there and gone between one blink and the next. He obviously did not expect Harry to still be armed with his wand, or as calm and prepared for this meeting as he has thus far proven to be. He picks up the key and examines it by hand under an enchanted magnifying loupe for several painstaking minutes before returning it to Harry, also a little bemused to discover that it is clearly not a fake.

“Very well, I shall summon the necessary paperwork you will need to sign and then you can be on your way, Mr. Potter.”

“Before we do that, I have a question.” Ragnok waves patiently for the boy to continue. “Say that one of the properties I’ve inherited is under a Fidelius charm and we, er, might have reason to suspect its Secret Keeper and anybody he might have told it to could be there waiting for us. Uh. Waiting for me, that is. Is there anything that can be done about that?”

The goblin gives them a toothy grin now, the most comfortable and lively he’s been since they got here. “But of course, Mr. Potter. These undesirables you mention would hardly be the first who thought they could swindle us and get around wizarding inheritance laws by hiding away someone else’s rightful property from them. It is standard procedure that once you sign, a geis of the bank’s own patent and design which breaks such enchantments will be activated. Most ancestral wards should still hold, but those such as the Fidelius which are keyed to only allow specific individuals access will fall. It shall be entirely up to you to reinstate any which you see fit afterwards.”

“Goblin magic can break the Fidelius?” Voldemort asks him with deadly softness. Why is this not something he has ever heard of before? Not for the first time, he must lament the bank’s insistence on neutrality. Such a neat trick could have been quite the boon had he only known about it years ago.

“Indeed it can,” Ragnok says, prideful and sly as he and the Dark Lord make eye contact once again. “But alas, this geis and others of similar nature are bound and magically restricted for use only in regards to legal matters such as these and nothing more,” he adds, easily guessing the slant of Lord Voldemort’s current thoughts.

“Under whose law?” Voldemort asks, other wheels turning in his mind now. “Your own or the Ministry of Magic’s?” He is gratified once more to see something like intrigue now flicker behind the goblin’s gaze.

“I suppose, as with many deals brokered between your people and ours over the last few centuries, this is something that could perhaps be renegotiated under the right regime.” Voldemort gives him a light smile in return, the only tell he will allow himself to give which belies the true depth to which this statement thrills him to his core. It is the closest Ragnok has ever come to budging so much as an inch from the goblins’ firm neutral stance.

And once again, Voldemort has the boy at his side to thank for it. Ragnok would only make such a remark because he recognizes how the tides of war must be turning, if the Dark Lord can convince even his supposed greatest enemy to ally with him now, which means he sees a surer line to profit this time around that will benefit his own people if he reconsiders Lord Voldemort’s offer.

“That’s great, but even with the Fidelius down, how do we get the Order to leave?” Harry asks, looking to Voldemort for an answer this time, but it is Ragnok who speaks up again first.

“For a reasonable fee, Gringotts would gladly evict these squatters for you and place a temporary watch around the premises to prevent their return until you have established your own security measures.”

“How reasonable are we talking here?” the boy asks with zero hesitation. Voldemort couldn’t be prouder of him for picking up on the importance of negotiation so quickly when he knows for a fact that Harry couldn’t actually care a whit about the cost. He merely sits back and observes as the two of them hash out terms, resolving to step in only if Ragnok tries to take advantage of the inexperienced youth.

With terms made and papers signed, Harry turns back to him, unconsciously seeking his approval once more. Voldemort is more than happy to give it, sharing a wink and a secretive smile with him while the goblins are busy finalizing arrangements. He can’t fail to notice how the boy’s eyes linger again around the lower half of his face and his throat before he appears to catch himself at it and hurriedly glances away.

Voldemort’s smile deepens, unbeknownst to Harry with his eyes now averted. He’s so unbearably cute when he gets flustered like this, Voldemort just wants to hide him away again as soon as possible so no one else can look at him. And now they’ll have an entire house to themselves—one of a few, in fact. If Harry doesn’t want to stay at Grimmauld Place (and what a relief it is to finally be able to recall the name, like an itch that’s been needing to be scratched for about a year or more) there are others to choose from, though they’ll likely need a bit of renovating first after so many years of neglect and disuse. Narcissa will no doubt secretly be thrilled to have the Dark Lord out of her home at last.

It is a minor relief to be able to tuck Harry’s arm into the crook of his elbow once more as they leave, Harry again disguised underneath his remarkable cloak of invisibility. He pivots on the heel of his foot once they step out, pulling the boy along with him to their next destination with a feeling of satisfaction about all that they’ve accomplished together already and their many joint endeavors yet to come.

Chapter Text

Harry can’t say that he doesn’t get his companion’s eagerness to set out for Grimmauld Place as soon as the goblins give the all-clear because he does, truly, having some idea of what the man expects to find there. He just can’t muster quite the same level of enthusiasm when this is the first time he’ll be setting foot in that house himself since last Christmas.

Upon first sight of the townhome’s weatherworn brick facade, the memory stirs up almost immediately of his godfather’s voice bellowing out entirely the wrong lyrics to classic Yuletide carols while he haphazardly hung up tinsel and holly all along the main stairway banisters. He unconsciously clenches Voldemort’s hand tighter once they land on the sidewalk just outside the front stoop.

Voldemort’s thumb runs along his skin in a soothing pattern as they stand there. The older wizard is currently hidden under a Disillusionment Charm himself, so it doesn’t look like there’s suddenly some strange bloke missing part of a limb just randomly standing around in the middle of the street, as it might have appeared otherwise were he currently visible to outside observers, save for his hand covered by the billowy cuff of Harry’s invisible sleeve.

Another goblin awaits them right inside the main foyer as soon as they walk in, not taking action yet but looking a bit wary nonetheless as the door appears to mysteriously open on its own. He doesn’t lower his guard until Harry pulls his hood down after the door shuts behind them.

“Hi, thanks for not blasting us with magic the second we walked in,” Harry says dryly, removing the cloak entirely now while Voldemort drops the Disillusionment Charm.

“But of course, Mr. Potter. I was informed the owner and his traveling partner were arriving shortly and would be discreet about their entry,” the goblin informs him. “Had you hesitated to reveal yourselves upon arrival, however, I admit things might have gone a bit differently just now,” he adds, his tone still neutral but the smile he now wears rather pointed with a darkly amused glimmer in his eyes.

The Dark Lord’s eyebrow lifts mildly at this, the only hint given as to what he makes of that assessment. Harry thinks he might be ever so slightly offended by the implication that he would have been even the least bit unprepared for such an outcome, had it come to that, and has to bite back a fondly amused smirk.

“I should also inform you, sirs,” the goblin continues, straightening up, “that we have indeed removed a small handful of individuals who were still present here as the Fidelius ward came down. One in particular attempted to abscond with some of your rightful property, shrunk down to fit into his pockets. Naturally, we thoroughly searched each person before evicting them and were thus able to thwart this act of petty theft. Your elf told us this was not the first time he had made such an attempt, however, though the elf also saw to it that he did not succeed in any of those previous attempts either.”

“Fletcher,” Harry says with a note of sharp disdain, knowing there could only be one member of the Order who would have the audacity to blatantly pull something like that right under everyone else’s noses. Beside him, Voldemort bristles as well. Dung had sure as hell better hope he didn’t manage to sneak off with at least one item in particular, because otherwise Harry doesn’t think the Dark Lord would listen to any kind of plea he might try to make for the lousy smuggler’s life.

“I see you are familiar with the wizard in question already. A few of my associates have…persuaded him to invite them back to his own premises and are there now searching them from top to bottom just in case your elf missed anything before.”

“Wow, you lot really are thorough,” Harry says, kind of impressed. “Er, they do know to be extra careful with anything they might find, right? I’d hate for any of them to end up getting cursed for their efforts.” Or worse, he thinks, since he can only imagine what kind of horrifying protections the Dark Lord would have placed around his precious horcrux.

The goblin briefly makes a face which Harry interprets as surprise before the look swiftly vanishes. “Ah, yes, your concern is quite understandable, though it is unwarranted, let me reassure you. It is not at all unusual for long-established families like the Blacks to weave quite formidable anti-theft charms and more around their most valuable belongings, so we are always prepared for the worst and handle every artifact of uncertain origin we come across with extreme delicacy. Every precaution is being taken to ensure no harm comes to any of our staff or to your possessions, Mr. Potter.”

“Well, that’s good. Thank you, um…sorry, I didn’t actually catch your name yet,” Harry realizes after a moment a bit sheepishly.

“I am Belgrud, Mr. Potter.”

“Great, thanks, Belgrud! I’ll still feel better though if they could just play it safe and let us know if they find anything, er, questionable over there rather than put themselves at unnecessary risk trying to bring it back on their own,” he says, hoping the goblin won’t take this as a slight. Again, that look of minor surprise appears before Belgrud bows shortly in acknowledgment and promises to relay the message to them as soon as possible.

“Is there anything else we should know before touring the house ourselves?” Tom speaks up finally, pacing the foyer a bit and looking at some of the decorations scattered around with mild interest, perhaps cataloguing any changes that might have been made since the last time he would have visited probably decades ago. He pauses for a moment at the thick drapes hiding Mrs. Black’s portrait but thankfully doesn’t try to open them. Fortunately, she appears to be asleep at the moment since she hasn’t tried to interrupt them so far.

“Only that the standard foundational wards have mostly held, but many others which seemed to have been added only within the last few years or so all appear to have come down once the geis was activated. We’ve temporarily disconnected the house from the Floo network as well as an additional precaution, but have not yet had the opportunity to perform a full inspection prior to your arrival.”

“That won’t be necessary. We can take it from here,” Voldemort says, dismissing him. Belgrud bows to them both again.

“I will let you know if my associates find anything of note in Mr. Fletcher’s domicile. Should you have further need of us otherwise, sirs, we shall remain nearby for a short period. A small contingent of our staff will be present at all times outside the premises over the next two days, to allow you time to reestablish protections and set up new wards of your choosing to prevent the squatters from returning.”

Harry is curious how they will manage to do that without being spotted by any of the neighbors since they’re smack in the middle of muggle London, but he doesn’t want to ask and risk offending the goblin if he thinks Harry is calling their capabilities into question.

He’s both a little glad and weirdly disappointed when Tom drops his glamoured appearance after Belgrud leaves, and turns away quickly after staring a beat too long while the man readjusts his collar and smooths his hair back to normal with his hands in front of a hallway mirror. It feels like something a bit too intimate to watch somehow, never mind the fact that he shared a dorm for the past five years with four other boys and never felt awkward around any of them no matter their various states of dishabille as they got ready for class each morning.

He turns again at a light tap on his shoulder. Deep garnet eyes gaze back into his own and he finds himself suddenly realizing that he’d missed their familiar red shade over the past hour or so since they left Malfoy Manor. When did he grow so acclimatized and comfortable with what once seemed like an unnatural trait to him that only served to further highlight what an obviously unholy monster the Dark Lord must be?

“Now that we’re alone, we should discuss what we’re here to look for, as well as what type of wards we should put up to keep any unwanted guests from dropping in on us for an unexpected visit.”

Harry nods without speaking and lightly tugs on the man’s sleeve to steer him toward one of the nearby drawing rooms, his eyes darting again briefly to the covered portrait. He’s reluctant to continue any sort of discussion out here just in case Mrs. Black wakes up after all. Tom lifts a diffident brow again, his own eyes flickering back over to the same spot, but he follows Harry’s lead otherwise without a word of complaint.

“I don’t know much of anything about wards really,” the boy admits once the parlor door is shut behind them. “Whatever you think is best suits me fine,” he says, and while it’s true, he does have to suppress an eye roll at the swell of gratified pleasure that swiftly follows, as it often does whenever Harry freely defers to the older man’s knowledge and expertise on pretty much anything. The only thing Tom seems to enjoy more than Harry’s easy compliance at times like this is when he chooses to argue and challenge him at other times instead, because he’s weird like that.

“Perfect, then I think another Fidelius first and foremost should take priority. It’s the most complex spell that will take the longest to set up, but once established it’ll be the most effective at keeping others out as well.”

“Sure, makes sense,” Harry nods agreeably. “Er, doesn’t the Secret Keeper have to be somebody who won’t be staying here though?” he asks, then immediately gets embarrassed realizing he’d just assumed they would both be staying here. Well, no taking it back now. At least Tom isn’t looking at him funny like there’s anything weird about what he just said.

The other man shakes his head in answer. “No, it’s only commonplace to designate the role to a non-resident to ensure someone from the outside is always able to maintain contact with those within, should an emergency need arise.”

“Oh okay, um, well in that case, you can just designate yourself as the Secret Keeper when you’re done casting the spell then,” he says, tentatively probing to see if that gets more of a reaction since the man may not have realized what he’d accidentally implied a second ago.

He has no idea what he might have said this time to elicit such a strong response, but that immensely satisfied feeling returns along with a fair amount of surprise and a sort of slow-creeping, pleased warmth as well. “You truly have no qualms with me taking that role for myself?” Tom asks carefully.

Harry shrugs and glances away, not sure what’s making him feel this self-conscious all of a sudden. “I mean, better you than one of the Malfoys or, ugh, the Lestranges,” he says with an exaggerated shudder to try to hide it.

Tom’s smile turns rather shark-like, the way it always does when Harry expresses so plainly just how much he can’t stand the Death Eaters he’s been forced to keep such close quarters with all this time, again like a total weirdo who doesn’t seem to think it at all important for Harry to get along with his followers even though they’re all theoretically supposed to be on the same side now.

It occurs to him now that he really won’t have to go back to Malfoy Manor after this except to grab Hedwig and collect his things. Well, not unless the Dark Lord actually does want to keep staying there so he can continue to keep tabs on his minions. He’s already dead certain the man won’t be letting him live here on his own—not that Harry would be too keen on it with only his owl and a grouchy old house elf for company anyways.

Who would have ever guessed that he would find living with Voldemort preferable to all other options available to him, even over having a whole house practically all to himself?

Rather than think on it for too long, he’d much prefer getting them back on topic to what they came here for in the first place. “So, if you can describe for me what this horcrux looks like, I’ll ask Kreacher if he’s seen anything like it around the house while you work on getting the wards set up again. Er, why do you think it’s here anyways? You said it was stolen?” He can’t see anyone from the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black wanting to steal from the Dark Lord of all people, except for maybe Sirius, but he’s sure that he would have heard plenty of bragging from his godfather about it at some point if it had been him.

Voldemort casts his eyes about the room at the mention of the house elf, almost as if to make sure he isn’t there to listen in on them. Harry wouldn’t put it past the elf normally, but considering this is the beloved Master of his precious ‘Miss Cissy’ and ‘Miss Bella,’ there’s really no need to worry that the mean little git would ever dare betray him by giving up his secrets. Still, he’ll be mindful not to bring anything like horcruxes up around the elf since he’s sure Tom doesn’t want anyone other than the two of them to know anything about them.

“Regulus Black,” Tom spits out tersely, his tone carrying almost as much vitriol as it does whenever he says Dumbledore’s name, “was a follower of mine, one of my most devoted, or so I once thought. I even trusted him to lend me aid in hiding the very item he later stole.” He sneers. “He left in its place a fake along with the most charming note, in which he gloated over his knowledge of what it was and his intentions of seeing it destroyed.”

This news leaves Harry feeling somewhat conflicted. On the one hand, a sick trace of unwarranted guilt and sadness that Sirius died hating his younger brother, believing him to be a loyal Death Eater to the bitter end who ultimately sacrificed his life in service to the Dark Lord’s cause. And on the other hand, a bit of sympathy to Tom as well who is clearly quite bitter about the betrayal, even if he did probably deserve it in all fairness. Someone like that wouldn’t have simply turned on Lord Voldemort for no good reason after all.

Tom’s jaw clenches and his eyes narrow a bit, which means he’s probably also getting a sense for what Harry is thinking and feeling right now even if he’s not looking directly into his mind. Well, too bad. Just because he’s come around a bit on seeing Voldemort’s side of things more clearly now doesn’t mean he’s going to just forget what an awful person he’s been to everyone around him for literal decades or let Tom completely off the hook for all of it either. And even he would have to grudgingly admit now that if Regulus had actually succeeded in his task, he would have unwittingly done the Dark Lord a favor in restoring some of the man’s sanity and reason to him that much sooner.

“It is a gold locket, encrusted with emeralds in the shape of an S,” the other man explains to him coolly. “An heirloom passed down in my family for centuries, all the way back from Salazar Slytherin himself.”

Harry winces, now realizing that Tom might actually have more reason to be upset over this horcrux’s loss in particular. He tries to remember if he’s ever seen a necklace by that description laying around here somewhere before. It’s hard to be certain with the sheer amount of stuff that got thrown out in Mrs. Weasley’s overzealous campaign to clear out any and all Dark artifacts they could find, but Kreacher would undoubtedly know for sure.

He waits to summon the elf until he’s left the room and gone into the kitchen, not wanting to distract Tom while he’s working on the wards. “Kreacher?” he calls out uncertainly.

The elf appears in front of him with a sharp crack of displaced air, already grumbling under his breath. “Filthy halfblood Master calls upon Kreacher and Kreacher must obey. Oh, oh, if Kreacher’s Mistress could only see how low the House of Black has fallen…!”

Harry rolls his eyes, well-acquainted with Kreacher’s antics by now and none too fond of the little creature anyways. For now, he chooses to ignore the running commentary about his blood status and the “shameful” state of the Black family’s ancestral home—he has no arguments there anyhow. The place is fairly rundown and shabby, albeit not as bad as it used to be.

If he wanted to be cruel, he could lay the blame for that right at Kreacher’s feet, but he knows it’s unfair to shoulder all that responsibility onto one elderly house elf working here all by himself for god only knows how many years. Harry’s going to have to put in his own fair share of work too to make this place more livable. He can’t even imagine asking the Dark Lord of all people to help out with the household chores.

“Kreacher, I’m going to ask you something and you have to be honest with me,” he says firmly. “Have you ever seen a golden locket laying around in this house somewhere?”

Kreacher suddenly stills, eyes wide, and seems reluctant to answer. Quite against his will, it would seem, the words quickly burst forth anyway. “Yes, Kreacher has seen it! Kreacher has kept Master Regulus’s locket safe all these years! Kreacher swore to keep it until Kreacher could find a way to destroy it!”

“Do you still have it then?” Harry asks urgently. He’s certain the elf hasn’t managed to destroy it yet at least, or else Tom would already know that it was gone just like the diary. With luck, maybe Regulus also would have kept his reasons for wanting it destroyed to himself so Kreacher may not even know he was betraying Voldemort in doing so. That would make a lot of sense actually since he has no problem with listening to other Death Eaters and giving the Order’s secrets away to them freely.

Kreacher twists his ears with his hands, no longer acting stubborn and mean, only seeming rather anxious and distressed now as he stares up at Harry. It makes something pinch tight in the boy’s chest to see it, suddenly remembering that despite how hateful the elf has been ever since they met, he’s still another living being with true depths of feeling who has been sadly mistreated for most of his life. Realizing this, he lowers himself carefully to his knees to be of a more similar height with the elderly house elf.

“Kreacher,” he says gently. “Please, it’s important to me. I…” A sudden inspiration hits. “Listen, I don’t think it even can be destroyed,” he says, feeling only a minor twinge of guilt about lying. Really, if this works, it’ll be to everyone’s good anyways. Tom will have his locket back and Kreacher won’t have to feel like he’s failed to keep his word by returning it to him at last.

“I think perhaps what Master Regulus really meant is there might be a curse on it or something,” he says, weaving a new narrative on the spot that Kreacher can hopefully accept so it won’t feel like he’s disobeying one master’s order in favor of another’s. “One that made the Dark Lord want to hide it away somewhere it couldn’t hurt anyone else. But if we give it back to him now, he should be able to remove the curse finally! He’s had loads of time to figure it out by now, after all, and I think he would really, really appreciate having it back after all these years, Kreacher,” he adds, injecting as much hopeful enthusiasm into his voice as he can.

The elf looks deeply uncertain about this. He seems quite fearful and reverent as well at the mention of Lord Voldemort. Perhaps a fair bit more so the former than the latter if he’s being honest, which is probably something else that Harry will need to work on next if they’re all going to coexist peacefully in the same house from now on.

He feels suddenly more aware than ever that he really needs to be more delicate with Kreacher going forward. If there’s anything Dumbledore may have been right about, it’s that Sirius really should have treated the elf better from the beginning in order to secure his loyalty—or at the very least simply because it’s the right thing to do.

(It hurts all over again as well, just thinking about his former headmaster. It hurts to remember that for all the man’s flaws, there has always been an abundance of wisdom and genuine kindness there too, a respect for other beings no matter their level of power or usefulness to him.)

(It hurts to recognize that this same man who wanted Harry to understand the value and importance of those supposedly “lesser” than wizards also sent Harry back to the Dursleys time and time again, even acknowledging how much Harry hated it there while seeming unwilling to ever ask or investigate further just why that might be. Maybe because it would have meant reevaluating certain hard choices he’s made and finding them lacking after all.)

“Master is certain this would please the Dark Lord?” Kreacher mumbles finally. He blinks, seemingly confused as the meaning of his own words registers in his mind. “Master Harry wishes to please the Dark Lord?” he asks next, searching the boy’s face as if looking for some tell that he may be lying.

For some reason the wording of that last question almost makes Harry want to blush, a little embarrassed. “Right, I guess I should tell you, um…I’m kind of…working with Lord Voldemort now? The Order and I don’t exactly see eye to eye these days, although I’m pretty sure they don’t know that yet.” There’s no telling when they might figure it out though. How odd is it to be grateful all of a sudden that there would be no love lost between the old elf and any of its remaining members?

He feels distinctly uncomfortable with the swell of emotion that enters Kreacher’s voice and his now worryingly starry-eyed expression. “Then does this mean Master Harry has chosen to follow in Master Regulus and Miss Bella’s footsteps?”

“…Sure.” It takes every bit of his willpower to keep his tone neutral when he answers and not to cringe at being compared in any way with Miss Bella.

He watches bemusedly as Kreacher scurries over to his kitchen cupboard all of a sudden and starts rifling through his hidden stash of “rescued” Black artifacts, a little too far away for Harry to hear what he’s mumbling about this time, but at least he sounds a bit happier for once. That’s likely a good sign, right?

The elf quickly scampers back to him with both hands clasped together around something almost small enough to be completely hidden within his grasp, except for a dull glint of tarnished gold just barely visible in the gaps between his fingers. Harry straightens up a bit, still kneeling in place, and wonders at his own luck that it could really be that easy.

Kreacher is practically vibrating now as he stands in front of Harry, whether from excitement or nerves is rather hard to say, and without further ado he opens his hands to reveal a beautiful gem-encrusted locket that exactly matches the description Tom gave him. He notices an approving gleam in the elf’s eyes as he accepts this offering with the same amount of careful reverence that Kreacher has shown in presenting it to him.

Looking at it closely now, Harry realizes that he has indeed seen this necklace before. Last summer when he and his friends were all reluctantly helping Mrs. Weasley clear out most of the rooms of potentially dangerous items left behind by the house’s previous tenants, they had all passed it around to one another with such casual disregard that he finds it sort of horrifying to look back on, now that he’s aware of exactly what it houses inside.

There’s a curious sort of warmth to it in his hands that he doesn’t remember ever noticing before. He wonders if that might have something to do with his own acceptance of the horcrux in him, like something akin to a comforting and familiar resonance between them both that wouldn’t have been there last time. Or maybe it’s just that he knows what it is now and how precious it is to Tom. A literal piece of the man’s soul is in his hands, which curl protectively around it as he hugs it close to his chest.

“Thank you, Kreacher,” he says solemnly. “I promise we’ll take care of any curses that are on it so you’ll never have to worry about it again, alright?” Biting his lip somewhat guiltily, he adds, “You’ve done well, Kreacher. I’m sure Regulus would be really proud.”

He realizes he’s overdone it when Kreacher suddenly tears up and starts bawling. For the next several minutes before he can go find Tom again, Harry sits there awkwardly patting the inconsolable creature on the back with one hand, the other still clutched tight around the locket.

“Kreacher will be preparing a late lunch now for Master Harry,” the elf says once he’s finally recovered well enough to speak, head held high and standing a little bit taller now than ever before.

“Oh, uh, that’d be great, thanks!” Harry says, knowing that it wouldn’t be taken well at all if he were to tell Kreacher that he doesn’t have to do that. If anything, this surprising attitude adjustment would suggest that it actually makes him happier to be able to do things for Harry now that they’ve finally started to get along. “Actually if it’s not too much trouble, could you make enough for all of us? You, me, and To—er, Lord Voldemort.”

Kreacher nearly drops the pan he’s holding and turns wildly in place to stare up at Harry again, eyes boggling wide. “The Dark Lord is…is here?” he asks, suddenly nervous enough that Harry feels a bit guilty all over again.

“Um yeah, well, he’s…er, look, I’m sorry to just spring it on you like this all of a sudden, but I’m pretty sure he’s planning to start living here with us soon. If…is that okay?”

Rather than answer, Kreacher stares at him for a beat longer, then throws himself back into the task of preparing lunch with much more frantic energy than before, his movements a bit shakier than normal. He mutters to himself all the while about the horrid state of the house and all the various chores he must get done right away to make it more presentable. Realizing there’s little else he can say at this point when Kreacher will probably only listen to him after he’s had some time to calm down on his own, Harry decides to quit distracting him and simply leave him be for now.

He runs his fingers over the locket a few times unconsciously while he just stands there, until he suddenly realizes what he’s doing and drops it hurriedly into his pocket instead, glad that Kreacher isn’t looking his way to see him blush. He should give it back to Tom now, not stand around here playing with it as if it were just any old trinket to fidget with idly in his hands.

Tom is no longer in the drawing room when he steps out but back in the front hallway again, looking at the drapes covering Mrs. Black’s portrait again with a curious and critical eye. He glances at Harry briefly as he walks over, then turns back and reaches forward as if to open them.

“I really wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Harry warns him in an urgent whisper. “Not unless you want to get berated and screamed at by a shrill old portrait with nothing better to do than hurtle insults at everyone who dares step foot on her precious estate,” he explains with another roll of his eyes. Then again, maybe she’ll recognize Voldemort and try to suck up to him instead? That might honestly be worse to witness.

Tom hums quietly under his breath and then mutters a spell to muffle the sound in a small radius just around the portrait before reaching again to finally unveil it.

“FILTH! DEFILERS OF MY ANCESTRAL HOME!” Walburga Black shrieks the second she’s awoken. The spell helps slightly in that Harry doesn’t feel as though his eardrums have been pierced yet and her shouting doesn’t carry beyond the foyer itself, so he probably wouldn’t hear her at all if he were in another room right now. It’s still distinctly unpleasant to listen to her as she continues on without stopping though. Harry imagines if she were still a living person, she would already be red in the face by now much like how Vernon gets—used to get whenever something would set him off, like Harry “defying” him in any way or sassing him, or on a particularly bad day sometimes just for “breathing too loudly.”

Tom has the oddest look on his face as he watches the portrait scream her heart out. He appears vaguely stunned but delighted like someone who’s just walked into the room only to find all of his friends waiting inside ready to throw a surprise birthday party for him. Somehow though, Harry already knows that this isn’t a pleasant surprise for the man because he actually likes Walburga Black, but rather quite the opposite instead.

“Burgie, it’s so lovely to see you again after all these years. I must say, you’ve never looked better than this,” the man says over her muffed shouting, greeting her pleasantly in a voice dripping with condescension.

The portrait pauses in her yelling just long enough to sputter with indignation that anyone would dare to call her by such an undignified and unflattering nickname. “And just who do you think you are??” she demands.

“Oh, now that hurts, Burgie. Don’t you recognize your favorite housemate anymore? We used to have such fun debates together, you and I.” Tom’s smile turns extra sharp. “Well, at least we did for a while until you realized you couldn’t afford to keep losing face in front of everyone by continually losing arguments against a fourteen-year-old ‘nobody’ with a muggle surname.”

“YOU!” she bellows, finally putting two and two together only after he spells it out for her like this. “GET OUT OF MY HOUSE THIS INSTANT, FILTHY MUDBLOOD! I WON’T STAND FOR THIS DISRESPECT—GET OUT!!” Harry’s jaw drops a little at the sheer vitriol in her voice that is somehow worse than anything he’s ever heard from her before.

“You’ll have to excuse her for the outdated misinformation, darling,” Tom says lightly, head tilted to look at Harry while he ignores the continued barrage of insults shouted his way. “Dear old Burga here graduated at the end of my Fourth Year.” Before he found the Chamber of Secrets and revealed his true heritage to his Knights, in other words.

His smile thins a little as he adds, “Coincidentally, she and Orion were officially engaged soon after, even though he was still in school and we both used to mock her together in private, and I mysteriously stopped receiving invitations to visit here anymore that very summer.” Tom’s jaw ticks subtly now. “He had been one of the few I genuinely considered a friend up til that point.”

Harry hears what he’s not saying aloud—that this makes it twice now a member of the Black family has betrayed his trust. Walburga Black clearly had been no more to him than a would-be schoolyard bully who thought he made an easy target, only to find she’d bit off more than she could chew and humiliated herself by trying to match wits against a clever and charismatic younger student. Her husband and youngest son, on the other hand, each properly earned the full brunt of Lord Voldemort’s ire entirely on their own merits.

“So she doesn’t know that you’re Voldemort and the Heir of Slytherin?” he asks. Harry’s ears are suddenly ringing from the swift silence that immediately follows his question.

He turns back to face the portrait and notices her staring at him, looking distinctly paler than normal. “W-what did you say, boy?” she asks him, timid and quieter than he even thought her voice could get.

Tom laughs once sharply. “Now there’s a face I wish I could have seen while she was still alive to make it,” he sneers. “And what was it you just called your Lord again, dear sweet Walburga? ‘Filthy mudblood,’ wasn’t it? I see the years you’ve spent here with nothing better to do than sit around thinking up insults for passersby haven’t made you come up with any newer, more creative ones.”

“P-please, my Lord, I did not know!” she wails, begging forgiveness while she appears to be trying to curve herself into a deep bow, which is a bit awkward and strange-looking when she’s nothing more than a head painted above a neck and half a torso.

Tom merely watches her grovel for a minute in silence before rolling his eyes and sighing. “It’s not even that entertaining to listen to her beg when I can’t also Crucio her in the middle of a sentence, but at least there are other ways to shut her up,” he says, pulling out his wand and casting a spell now that Harry doesn’t recognize.

The woman in the portrait abruptly falls silent and stops moving altogether, her hands halting mid-gesture and her mouth held slightly agape in a very unflattering way. Only her eyes remain animated, darting around wildly without blinking in a look of frozen terror.

“Brilliant,” Harry says with an impressed smile creeping over his face. “You’ve got to teach me that spell next!”

Tom turns to face him again, a strangely predatory glint in his gaze now as he smiles back. “Are you sure about that, darling?” he purrs. “Magical portraiture is a type of soul magic, you know, the only kind in its category that is legally sanctioned in most countries.”

He leans down a bit into Harry’s personal space, his voice deepening further, growing more hushed and intimate as he adds softly, “Which therefore makes any spell that tampers with that magic inherently quite Dark, Harry.”

“O-oh, I…er, I didn’t know that,” Harry mumbles, glancing away from him shyly. He can’t ever look at Tom directly when he does that…that low rumbly thing with his voice or when his eyes go all hooded and dark occasionally at times where it’s just the two of them alone together, and he especially can’t handle both at the same time. He just knows that the man’s doing it on purpose too because he likes to get Harry all flustered for no good reason sometimes, the git.

“Do you still wish to learn it?” Tom asks him solicitously.

“Ummm…” The thing is he’s not really against learning any Dark Arts spells necessarily, but he’s still a little nervous about dipping his toes in just yet and taking that final plunge. He’s not even sure why—he trusts Tom not to let him get too “swept up” in it like he’s heard some undisciplined novices will when they get their first taste of that kind of power, and to pull him back down to earth and keep him grounded if it does start to happen.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Tom always seems to get like this whenever the subject comes up, his whole demeanor shifting into something more playful and dangerous that Harry might like just a little too much.

Tom appears to take pity on him for now, saying, “Perhaps another time then,” with a hint of a tease still lingering in his voice. He straightens and glances back over at Mrs. Black’s frozen features with a small moue of distaste. “In any case, it’ll have to wait until we get a different painting to practice on. I’m sick of looking at this one.” Wordlessly, he banishes the ugly drapes which had previously kept her hidden into nonexistence and turns back to face her fully.

“I hope you plan to replace those curtains then. Whoever hung her up there used a Permanent Sticking Charm to do it. We tried everything to get her down last summer but nothing worked.”

“Everything, you say?” the older man drawls in a tone which suggests that he doesn’t quite buy that himself. Perhaps there’s another special kind of Dark spell Harry’s never heard of before meant for breaking such charms as well.

Tom draws out his wand again, eyeing up the whole frame assessingly as if he might be looking for a weak spot. Harry doesn’t think he’ll find one, but the older wizard doesn’t seem discouraged by this. After a moment, he utters a new spell and glides his hand over his wand in a motion similar to that of someone unsheathing a weapon. A shimmering silvery substance like the one that formed Wormtail’s prosthetic hand coats it now from handle to tip, ending in a sharp deadly point that glints rather ominously in the hallway light.

He adjust his grip on the wand then, holding it less now like a delicate instrument of magic and more like a carpenter’s tool, and in one swift motion slams the sharpened end into the wall directly next to the picture frame. Harry jumps a little in surprise and suspects that Mrs. Black would have too if she could still move. Her eyes widen dramatically in freshly renewed terror as Tom begins to drag the wand blade down in a perfectly straight line along the edge of the frame, cutting through wood and plaster with barely any resistance at all. It appears to only take him about as much arm strength as one might need to stir a wooden soup spoon through an especially thick pot of stew.

Harry can only stand back and watch in awe as the Dark Lord carves a perfect rectangle directly into the wall itself, then with a casual twist of the fingers of his right hand uses magic to yank that chunk of wall right out and lets it crash unceremoniously to the floor. Harry is quite glad the muffling charm is still holding up or else Kreacher would have come running to see what all the commotion was by now.

With a casual flick, the silvery substance coating the wand is cast off of it like paint that never lands anywhere else, vanishing into nothingness without ever touching Tom’s robes or the grimy wallpaper’s flat surface. The wand itself shows no sign of damage or wear either from its unusually harsh use, not that he expected it to. Tom would never do something like that with his own wand if he wasn’t in perfect control the whole time and if there was even a small chance he might damage it at all by using it in such a manner.

Where Mrs. Black’s portrait used to hang, there is now a hole in this side of the wall revealing the insulation and scaffolding boards inside and lines of sawdust along the cut edges, but it doesn’t stay that way for long. Wordless and wandlessly, Tom levitates the missing chunk of wall with Mrs. Black still attached to it back up to eye level and gives the terrified woman within the painting an eerie smile.

“I do hope you’ll enjoy your new accommodations, Wally. It may be dark, a little bit snug, and…woefully lacking in Amontillado or any other casks of fine vintage, I’m afraid, but at least you’ll have the occasional cockroach scurrying by or a rat nibbling on your canvas to keep you company back there!” he tells her far too cheerfully before flipping her around and inserting the dislodged bit of wall back into place like a backwards puzzle piece.

“Was that a bloody Edgar Allan Poe reference?” Harry mutters under his breath. Tom doesn’t answer his (admittedly rhetorical) question even though he has to have heard him, too busy sealing up the seams in the wall and smoothing down its roughened edges before covering it all up with another spell that replicates the surrounding wallpaper, albeit much cleaner in this one spot compared with the rest—rather how Harry imagines the wallpaper still stuck under the picture would look if it were actually possible to separate the two now.

Tom makes a show of dusting off his hands like a humble craftsman proud of a job well done as he takes a step back to admire his handiwork. As Harry comes to stand beside him again, he turns to meet the boy’s eyes with another playful smirk that Harry can’t help returning. He’d almost feel bad for poor old Mrs. Black, trapped awake and eternally silent and unmoving within the walls of her own home, but he only has to remember the darkened scorch mark where Sirius’s name used to be on the Black family tapestry to let go of any remaining sympathy he might have still had for her.

“I’ve gotta say, even though it makes all that caked-on grime on the rest of the wall stand out even more, this room has never looked better. Once we get it all cleaned up in here, it’ll be like she was never there at all!” Harry enthuses. “Er, if Kreacher asks though, I think we should just tell him we handed her over to the goblins to store her in one of the family vaults for safekeeping. Oh! Speaking of…” He finally remembers to fish the horcrux out of his pocket and shows it to Tom.

He has the distinct pleasure of watching as an uncharacteristic look of shock and amazement passes over the man’s handsome features. “You already found it?” he breathes, his eyes flitting up from the locket back to Harry’s face with a look of deep appreciation and unbridled wonder.

“I mean, it…it really wasn’t that hard,” Harry mumbles and rubs the back of his neck sheepishly, feeling shy and embarrassed by what he considers to be a fairly unwarranted amount of gratitude leveled towards him, all considered. “Turns out Kreacher has been holding onto it all this time on Regulus’s orders. Which,” he adds pointedly, “you are not allowed to get mad at him for, by the way. You know he’s got to do what he’s told and never had a choice in the matter anyways.”

He stands firm on this, ready to hold his ground and get belligerent if he has to if Tom looks like he’s about to argue, but the man barely acknowledges what he said, seeming a bit distracted now as if he’s suddenly realized something. “The elf…” he mutters to himself before making an exaggerated noise of frustration and pinching the bridge of his nose as though exasperated. “House elf magic, of course, I should have bloody realized it sooner. That’s how he was able to get in and out of the cave again to steal it!”

“Well, that’s pretty impressive of him then, isn’t it?” Tom drops his hand to look back up and scowl at him. “I mean it though, Tom, no taking your frustrations with his old master out on him. In fact…” Harry pauses to dart his gaze around now, hoping that Kreacher is still in the kitchen and not eavesdropping on them in secret. Luckily, his obvious fear of the Dark Lord ought to be enough to prevent him from pulling something like that at the risk of getting caught, much as it might make Harry feel guilty for even hoping that’s the case.

With a bit of mental effort, namely by pretending like Nagini’s here taking part in the conversation too, he switches over to Parseltongue for now anyways, just in case. “In fact, he doesn’t even know Regulus did that because he was working against you. I convinced him that he was still on your side and wanted to remove a curse from it as a favor to you, and you’re going to let him keep on thinking that unless you like the taste of burnt toast and undercooked eggs for breakfast every day for as long as we’re staying here, got it?”

Once again, instead of actually responding to what Harry is saying, the older man appears to lose all previous trains of thought and blank out as he merely stands there, giving Harry an awfully intense stare all of a sudden that makes the boy fidget nervously in place, getting strangely flustered again. “What?” he asks, reverting back to English.

This impatiently voiced question seems to make Tom snap out of whatever weird daze he just fell into for a moment. “I…it’s nothing,” he murmurs vaguely, breaking eye contact with Harry to look over his shoulder at the wall instead. “If the elf really means that much to you, then I promise to treat it no differently than I would one of the Malfoys’ servants.”

That’s probably about the best answer Harry can hope to expect right now. He’s never seen Tom be anything other than polite, if rather coolly dismissive, of the house elves at Malfoy Manor. It’s honestly better than how he talks to some of his Death Eaters. “Good, I’m glad to hear it,” he responds sincerely. “Because this is as much his house as it is ours now and I want him to always know that.”

That one little word, ‘ours,’ slips out without him consciously realizing it at first, not quite recognizing what he just said until Tom’s gaze flickers back over to him, something significantly warmer and softer than before now taking up space in the corners of this rather faint, dreamy smile the older man suddenly graces him with.

“Of course, darling. If that’s what will make you happy, then that’s how it should always be.”