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Chapter Text

Harry hadn’t really been raised to defeat Voldemort.

It’s one of those things he realizes on that slow walk across the grounds of Hogwarts to his death. If he’d been raised to defeat Voldemort, he would have been taught magic—serious magic, war magic. Private tutoring in Defense Against the Dark Arts, from tutors who actually cared to teach him. He wouldn’t have lived with the Dursleys, stunting his growth with malnourishment. It didn’t make sense.

Perhaps Snape was right, and Dumbledore had raised Harry for slaughter. All this empathy and courage that the late headmaster had nurtured in Harry would, after all, guarantee that he would understand what must be done when the moment came. He would march to his death like a good little hero if it meant saving the ones he loved.

But he’d also been outfitted with an almost encyclopedic knowledge of Tom Riddle’s childhood, and where did that fit into things? He can feel the inevitability of this path, his own death and Voldemort’s subsequent defeat, pulling him forward like it has its own inexorable, temporal gravity. But he also knows the injustices they suffered, he and Tom alike, that led them to this moment, and it feels so raw, like the world is taking one more shot at them before putting them both down for good.

Here is another tool Harry was given: he is not afraid of Voldemort. Of course, Harry carries a healthy fear of what Voldemort could do, the ways he could hurt people and destroy things. But Harry hasn’t been afraid of the man himself for a long time. Harry knows the face of evil, has known the face of evil since it locked him in a cupboard as a child. The face of evil is familiar. And the face of evil, as Voldemort wears it, isn’t even as frightening as it might have been on another, because Harry knows there is a human man underneath it all, and Harry knows his name.

So at the encampment in the woods, Harry watches Voldemort raise his wand, watches Voldemort tilt his head like a curious child wondering about the consequences of what he is about to do.

And Harry says, “Tom. Can we talk, first.”

***

The element of surprise gains Harry a private audience with the Dark Lord.

More precisely, Voldemort stiffly offers to listen to Harry’s final words before casting the killing curse, and Harry looks around at all the bewildered faces of the few unmasked Death Eaters before pointing out, “Er, you really might want us to do this in private.”

More discomfort from everyone. The cries of Hagrid for Harry’s life mix with the cries of Lestrange for Harry’s swift death. Even Nagini seems to writhe uneasily in her glittering, magical cage. In an effort to prove he’s serious about his request for parley, Harry hands over his wand to Lucius Malfoy, which, unfortunately, does little to settle anyone’s nerves, especially not Malfoy’s.

Nevertheless, Voldemort yanks Harry deeper into the woods, and orders his followers to stay put, overruling their protests. Then he casts some silencing wards, and cocks his head at Harry again, indicating wordlessly that it is time for Harry to say whatever he was going to say.

Not having expected to get this far in the first place, Harry studies Voldemort’s face up close for the first time. The man looks truly…inhuman, odd and snakelike. If you really look at him, you might be able to spot Riddle somewhere under there, in the ridge of his cheekbones perhaps, or the shape of his eyes. But there’s no mistaking him for the man he once was. It’s almost like a scar, Harry thinks. This face—it’s like the leftover consequences of Tom Riddle’s self-mutilation.

When they are this close to each other, the bond between them thrums, and Harry can sense the unease roiling in Voldemort’s stomach as if it were his own. It’s a weakness, like blood in the water, and Harry can hear Dumbledore, or some imagined version of Dumbledore, urging him to latch onto that weakness, to find a way even now, at Voldemort’s mercy, to taunt the man into casting the killing curse and taking them both down.

Instead, Harry says glumly, “I really am unarmed; you can stop worrying I’m going to jump you. I won’t. I’m really just here to talk, and at any point you can just go on with it and murder me, I suppose.”

Voldemort narrows his eyes. It’s odd for Voldemort to be so silent in one of their encounters—normally he won’t shut up. But those times, he’d been prepared for Harry’s arrival. Now, off script, Harry has caught him on the back foot.

“I just don’t want you to spend this whole conversation waiting for the other shoe to drop,” Harry explains. “That wouldn’t be very useful for either of us. So here,” Harry holds out his arms, “No other shoe. Unarmed. At your mercy, alright?”

Then, pain.

It isn’t until after the Cruciatus expires that Harry, from his new position staring up at the canopy of the forest, realizes what happened. Because of course Voldemort wouldn’t trust what his nemesis tells him, no matter how frankly spoken. It’s still Riddle underneath all that scarring, and many a kinder and more affable man than Harry has betrayed Riddle’s trust before.

“Get up,” demands Voldemort, after a moment.

“Give me a—” it breaks off into a sob, and Harry raises a trembling hand to his face to wipe his eyes, his brow. “Give me a s-second, I’m not—I’m not like your people, you can’t just—fuck—expect m-me to recover so quickly.”

Harry manages to push himself into a sitting position at last, though the prospect of standing seems daunting. With his face hovering over his knees while he catches his breath, Harry asks, “Are you satisfied I’m not here to trick you, Tom? Can we just talk, please.”

“My patience is wearing thin.”

“What, are you in a rush to go find and kill Harry Potter? Give me a break. You’ve already got me where you want me.” Harry wheezes. “Would you sit down or something? I don’t think I’m getting up again for a while.”

After some more warding, the dark wizard joins Harry on the floor of the forest. It makes Harry’s heart start racing, because a truly irredeemable megalomaniac wouldn’t have let even the hem of his robes brush the dirt. “You’ve changed,” Voldemort says curiously, though his tone of voice still carries the familiar lilt of threat. “Your attitude is… different from when we last spoke.”

“Yeah, I’ve learned some things that changed my perspective a bit. Listen, Tom, I—”

“You think you have some power over me, with that name. But we both know that is not my true name anymore.”

Harry lets out a slow breath, and then says, “I told you, I’m not trying to hurt you or anything; does that name hurt you? If it does, I won’t use it. But I’m trying to talk to you as a person, not as a Dark Lord. What name do I use for that?”

A beat passes. “Proceed,” Voldemort offers warily. Harry wonders how long it’s been since anyone has even tried to speak to Voldemort as a person. If anyone did, they probably didn’t live long enough to talk about it—not that Harry’s likely to break that pattern.

“Tom,” Harry says. “The thing is, the only reason I’ve been fighting you is because of all the evil you’ve been doing.”

Voldemort curls his lip. “Evil is what weaker men call progress.”

“No, that’s my whole point. You can reform Wizarding society, you can concentrate political power. I don’t care about all that. Call yourself Minister for Magic, call yourself King, call yourself God; it doesn’t matter to me. You have as much or as little right to it as any other conqueror throughout history and, honestly, it’s not like the current system is all that great to begin with. But you just… if you would just stop hurting people, Tom. If you would just stop hurting people, I would have no quarrel with you.”

Voldemort frowns. “I killed your mother.”

“That was a long time ago," Harry says wearily.

“I am responsible for the deaths of many other allies of yours,” Voldemort points out, with an abortive gesture towards the field of battle.

Harry shuts his eyes. “Look, I didn’t say it was rational, did I?” he growls. “I hate what you’ve done. I hate that you’ve destroyed so many lives. I grieve for the people you took away from me. And I can’t even claim you’re a madman who is too rabid to be held responsible for his own actions, because we’re having a perfectly sensible conversation right now, and you clearly know exactly what you’ve done and you feel no remorse for it.

“But… I’ve seen through your eyes. I’ve felt what you feel. You’re not an incomprehensible monster, Tom, you’re an entirely too comprehensible man who chooses, chooses to do monstrous acts. And I know how you became this way. I know every step of your path. And it’s such a waste.” Harry covers his face with his hands, and thinks about cycles of history, and how three abused boys in three different generations were raised in the shadow of Grindelwald to fight each other to the death. “It’s such a fucking waste.”

A moment passes between them in silence, and Voldemort looks away, briefly, at the line of his illusion wards. “While your deep empathy is flattering, Harry Potter,” he says wryly, “take heart that my efforts will not be wasted. When I kill you, and all those foolish enough to follow you, I will seize power, and transform our world in my image.”

“Oh, sure, and you’ll be happy then, won’t you?” Harry taunts him. “When you’re sitting on your grand throne, blithely genocidal, and all the purebloods are kissing your boots, you’ll be happy then, of course? It’ll satisfy you?”

The second round of Cruciatus feels shorter than the first, though quantifying the time spent in that incredible realm of searing, unarguable agony is impossible. They are so physically near to each other that their souls create a feedback loop, and Voldemort cannot torture Harry without feeling some echo of the pain himself. It makes Harry laugh, through his shaken weeping. Perhaps Voldemort will catch on to the rules of the game after all.

Harry coughs, and then groans into the dirt. “It makes you feel good to torture people, doesn’t it, Tom? Feels good to—to make them wr-writhe and thrash around under your power. I, I remember that from when I’ve seen inside your head. But it’s so fleeting, isn’t—isn’t it? You’ve torn yourself to shreds, and there’s nothing left inside you to feel anything. Not satisfaction, not pleasure, not happiness.” Harry pushes himself onto his elbows, trembling from the effort. He spits into the dirt, and then he laughs again, helplessly. “You were so scared of dying, Tom. Don’t you realize you’re already dead?”

This time, Voldemort only manages to hold the curse for a few moments. Instead of a prolonged nightmare, this Cruciatus is a flash, sudden and disorienting, like getting punched in the jaw. It’s over so fast Harry can hear the echo of his own screaming.

“What is the point of this?” Voldemort asks. He isn’t so off-kilter that he would let his voice waver, but it’s a near thing. He’s standing now, pointing his wand down at Harry. The expression on his face, when Harry can manage to tilt his head and blink away the tears well enough to see it, is something a bit like horror. “It changes nothing. Soon I will kill you, and—”

“Except you won’t kill me, will you, Tom?” Harry shakes his head, mirthlessly smiling. “You’ve just realized—you’re not sure what killing me would do to you. But… it’s more than that, isn’t it? It’s more than just reasonable caution.”

“Harry,” Voldemort hisses furiously. “Cease this immed—”

“It goes both ways.” Harry pushes himself back onto his knees. “The bond, it—and you could feel, in every brief moment when you brushed your mind against mine. You could feel again, and it burned, didn’t it? It terrified you, to feel again, because you knew I could use it against you.

“But now you know. I won’t use it against you, Tom. I’m not here to hurt you. And if you kill me, you’ll never get to feel anything ever again.” Harry crawls forward towards the Dark Lord, because he isn’t strong enough to stand. Every movement of his limbs feels uncoordinated and shaky with the aftereffects of the Cruciatus, but he crawls nonetheless. “I’m so tired of this,” he says. “I’m so tired of fighting. I know you’re tired, too. I know you’re tired, Tom.”

With every centimeter he crawls, the bond hums louder and louder, until it is tangible, inexorable. Harry reaches up blindly and finds Voldemort’s hand, lukewarm and faintly trembling. “It used to burn. But it doesn’t—it doesn’t burn anymore, to touch you. It’s not so overwhelming anymore. We—we don’t have to hurt each other.”

Harry lifts his head to look up at Voldemort, while still grasping his hand tightly. And with the peculiar tone of gentle cruelty reserved only for speaking to the self, he says, “Come here.”

The Dark Lord is weakened, shaking from the intensity, the power of sustained contact, and his knees give out from under him. Harry pulls him down until he can grasp the side of the dark wizard’s throat, and hold himself steady enough to press their foreheads together, so the bond screams between them like so many echoes of the Cruciatus. Harry smiles, victorious, when Tom Riddle’s tears drip down onto his wrist.

“We can fix this,” Harry says to him. “We can fix this.”

Chapter Text

The Death Eaters leave the battle unfinished. Their entire army disperses like smoke in the wind, with Voldemort and Harry among them.

Voldemort would not have been able to think clearly enough to give the order to retreat had Harry not gently suggested it to him. It’s a little unnerving to see him this way, because Harry isn’t sure how to predict his behavior when he’s so disoriented from Harry’s proximity. But Harry went into this situation expecting to die, so… his concern about Voldemort’s volatility isn’t born out of instincts for self-preservation. It’s more that Harry has caught sight, now, of this fragile new possibility for them both to escape their destinies, and he’s trying to be so careful not to shatter it.

So he can’t risk letting go, and letting Voldemort slide back into his usual calculated apathy. Instead, Harry keeps a death-tight grip on the sleeve of the Dark Lord’s robes. The Death Eaters at the encampment are naturally suspicious of the fact that Harry Potter hasn’t been killed yet, but Voldemort pieces himself together just enough to strike terror in his followers for daring to question him. And then he orders the retreat, and Harry doesn’t let go of his sleeve until they are both inside some sort of headquarters, and then inside some sort of bedroom where they will not be disturbed. And even then, when the door finally shuts between them and the outside world, Harry still doesn’t let go.

The walls are a yellowish plaster, or maybe it’s cream plaster that looks yellowish in the dim light of the sconce flames. Floor trim neatly separates the plaster from the terra-cotta tiles below, and the trim’s dark color matches the stain of the bedframe, side tables, dresser and armoire. Most of the surfaces are bare and empty. The only thing about this space that helps Harry feel safe is the fact that there are no windows—only one exit to guard.

Now that he’s alone with Voldemort, it finally clicks for Harry that he’s not going to be returning to Hogwarts. He’s not going to be returning to his friends anytime soon, if ever. He’s still alive, but when he walked to his death he’d had to accept the finality of the action, and even though he is not dead, the finality stands.

At least for the moment.

Voldemort stands beside him, just inside the doorway, expressionless and unmoving.

“Are you alright?” Harry asks him.

Wordlessly, the Dark Lord shakes his head.

“We’ll fix this,” Harry tells him. “We will. For now, you should rest.”

Red eyes suddenly lock on Harry, like the eyes of a wounded, feral animal.

Harry’s head knocks against the drywall. It isn’t a normal incarcerous spell; there aren’t any ropes, just the force of Voldemort’s magic pinning Harry against the wall like a bug pressed under a glass display. Harry flexes, squirms, trying instinctively to resist the hold, but then his mind catches up with his body, and he stops moving.

“Do you take me for a fool?” Voldemort chokes out, gone straight past exhaustion into mania.

“You’re not a fool, Tom,” Harry says with a bravery he doesn’t really feel, his instincts screaming at him to fight back but he forces himself to stay still and calm. “What did I say that upset you?”

“You—” Voldemort starts, then pauses. The consternation leaves his face for a moment, fury slipping away into an open sort of dismay. This is the proof, really, that Harry’s strategy of getting through to him is working. If Harry had cowered, or pleaded for his life, or tried with any desperation to placate the dark wizard, the display of cowardice would have only stoked the man’s sadistic appetites. But speaking to him in a calm, conciliatory manner disarms him utterly.

Finally, Voldemort says, “I will not be so foolish as to fall asleep in front of the boy prophesied to kill me.”

“I didn’t raise a hand against you an hour ago, Tom, and you were far less coherent then than you are now. I will not hurt you.”

“Don’t be so naive. You may truly believe you have benign intentions, but with your mortal enemy at your mercy, even you would succumb to temptation.” Voldemort squints at him calculatingly. “If you killed me, your precious little friends would be saved, and the war would be over. You expect me to believe you wouldn’t drop these peaceable pretenses if it meant the end of the war?”

Harry gives him a flat look. “I know about the horcruxes, Tom. Even if I killed you, you wouldn’t die.”

“I would be weakened.”

“If I killed you, you’d still be out there, and you’d inevitably return to power, except I wouldn’t know where or when. You think I’d rather that than have you here, whole, and willing to talk to me? There’s no benefit to killing you, Tom. If you can’t trust me, trust the logic of the situation. We’re at a tactical stalemate.”

Voldemort’s eyes dart to the side, as if instinctively searching for an observer, but there is no one else in the room. If Voldemort chooses to take a leap of faith, and gets burned for it, there is no one who would know, who could mock him for poor judgment.

The dark wizard’s face cracks into resignation. Harry’s feet land on the floor again, and the crushing pressure of Voldemort’s spell disappears.

Cautiously, Harry asks, “Would you mind if I sent a message to my allies?”

“Why not?” Voldemort says with bitter nihilism. “I’ve conceded every other absurd thing you’ve asked of me.” And then he sits down on the mattress, and covers his face with his hands, rubbing his temples.

“If they don’t hear from me, they’ll either think I’m dead or kidnapped. I don’t want them mourning for me, and I don’t want them to try to rescue me. And I don’t want them trying to send me messages, either. That’s all I want to tell them.” It’s strange that Harry feels so guilty for asking for this. He offers, “You can even draft it yourself, if you’re concerned about me inserting secret messages.”

“Thank you for your permission.” Voldemort sneers, without lifting his head. “What does it matter, anyway? Before today, I’d always assumed that, if there were some complication with killing you, at the very least I’d get the chance to torture you and make you regret the circumstances of your birth. Or I would sever all your limbs and lock you away, neutralized in an inescapable prison.”

Harry shivers, feeling queasy.

The same feeling seems to travel along their bond like a lightning rod, the crackling bolt of empathetic discomfort making Voldemort gasp. “I won’t, ” the dark lord grinds out through clenched teeth. “Obviously I couldn’t. So stop—stop.”

“Tom…” Harry steps closer. Voldemort begins to rock forwards and backwards, curled over himself with his arms over his head. It feels eerie to see him in such a state. “Are you alright?”

“It was never like this before,” Voldemort shouts into the cradle of his own arms covering his face. “You’ve done something to change the bond. Using it to torment me. Such a proud little hypocrite, aren’t you? It pleases you to torture me.”

Unwilling to comfort the dark wizard who had just threatened to imprison and mutilate him, Harry tries for a pacifying tone, but doesn’t make any move to touch Voldemort. “I haven’t done anything to the bond, Tom. Only… acknowledged that it exists.” Harry frowns, thoughtfully. “I suppose I’ve spent all this time denying it, while you’ve, for lack of better phrasing, marked me as your equal. All these years, you’ve been sending me visions, making me see things through your eyes, but you… you haven’t had any visions of me, have you? Not as vividly, at least. Maybe, now that I’ve acknowledged it—”

“Rescind it,” Voldemort begs, though it doesn’t sound like he expects begging to work. “Take it back. I was to be the most powerful wizard in all of history and you’ve made me—”

“Human again. I’ve made you human again.” Harry’s reluctance fades, and he seats himself on the mattress next to Voldemort, resting a hand on his back. Just as before in the forest, touching Voldemort doesn’t feel nearly as unfamiliar as it should. Almost like touching his own shoulder, like an extension of the self rather than another separate person.

“I cannot kill you; I cannot hurt you; I cannot even threaten you. I have no leverage. Everything I’ve worked for, everything I’ve sacrificed for the last fifty years, you will destroy, and I will allow it, because I am too weak to—” Voldemort cuts himself off, and lifts his head. “No,” he croaks out. “Better to burn it all down.”

A drawer in the armoire opens on its own. A jewel encrusted dagger zips out of it, slapping hilt-first into Voldemort’s palm. “Congratulations, Harry Potter. You’ve won. I’ll kill you, and it will kill me, and all your damned little friends will dance on our graves.”

“Tom—” Harry tries to move away but it’s useless when Voldemort grabs him and physically throws him down onto the bed. His skull slaps against the mattress and the ricochet makes his throat squeeze uncomfortably.

“Hold still,” Voldemort demands, pressing the tip of the dagger to the left side of Harry’s chest, notching it between Harry’s ribs, preparing—god—preparing to shove it into Harry’s heart. At the first twinge of pain when the very tip of the dagger pierces skin, Voldemort’s body flinches, and his eyes overflow with tears, but it does nothing to break his deranged focus. He laughs, humorlessly, and in an ironic tone he grits out, “Hush, child; this will hurt me far more than it hurts you.”

“Wait, Tom!” Harry shouts, and like his body has suddenly remembered how to fight back, his hands grab onto Voldemort’s wrists to stop him.

“You said you would not stop me from killing you,” Voldemort shouts, and the shift of his weight pins Harry into place. “You said—”

“You think you have no leverage against me. Here is your leverage, Tom: I don’t particularly want to be stabbed in the chest, thank you very much! Does that—” Harry pants, seeing some of the mania slip out of Voldemort’s expression, “does that make you feel more, more secure in this arrangement? It’s a—a stalemate, a temporary truce, we’ll work things out as equals.”

“What good will it do?” demands the dark wizard, still weeping furiously. “You’ve unmade me.”

“I know you think there is no room for compromise, but there is. Let me explain, let me tell you what I think it could look like. Please. Before you do something rash.”

With a choked sound, Voldemort throws himself backwards off the bed, and tosses the dagger blindly towards the armoire, where it neatly slots itself back into the drawer. And then, to Harry’s shock, Voldemort mutters “Episkey,” and the small cut underneath Harry’s t-shirt closes up, though the hole in the fabric and all the blood remains. Stunned, Harry watches Voldemort rub absently at his own chest, where the sympathy pain must now have abated.

“It’s possible,” Harry starts, without sitting up from his supine position, “that the intensity of what you’re feeling is only because you’ve gone so long without this part of you. You might get used to it over time.”

“Over time,” Voldemort repeats hollowly. “And what of my Death Eaters? What of my empire?”

“Nothing,” Harry says. “I mean… well, I’d want you to stop hurting people. I’d want you to stop the Snatchers, and roll back all the ways the Ministry has been preparing to commit genocide. All the things you’ve done to threaten the lives of muggles and muggle-borns—you couldn’t do any of that.”

Voldemort scoffs wetly. “What else is there?”

“You tell me, Tom!” Harry snaps. “Have you really spent your whole life interested in nothing but hating muggles? Is there really nothing productive or good you can arrange for the Death Eaters to do?”

“Cleansing the bloodline would—”

Harry grabs his hand. “The people who hurt you weren’t muggles, Tom. It wasn’t the muggle world that failed you. It was this one.”

Voldemort yanks his hand, but fails to shed Harry’s grip. “You know nothing of—”

“It was your pureblood mother who drugged your father and brought you into the world out of a marriage built on manipulation and lies. It was Dumbledore who met you as an eleven year old child living in an orphanage and immediately wrote you off as something evil. At Hogwarts, you found a place where you were empowered and you weren’t alone, but Headmaster Dippet sent you back to that orphanage every year even though he knew, he knew how awful it was.” Harry lets out a shaky breath. “It wasn’t the muggles who hurt you.”

“They did hurt you, though,” Voldemort points out.

Harry’s grip on Voldemort’s hand tightens. “Neither muggles nor wizards have a monopoly on cruelty. I can’t let you try to exterminate muggles and muggle-borns. I could help you find a way to protect magical children raised in abusive environments. Would that work for you?”

There is a hesitation from Voldemort, a flash of remembered injustice. But he only asks dully, “How does this plan benefit me? I suffer the pain of this bond, and as a reward I suffer the indignity of being the political puppet of a child.”

“Come sit back down,” Harry tells him.

Voldemort folds back into place beside Harry on the edge of the bed. The exhaustion in his movements makes Harry start to feel it too, the heaviness of it all. Neither of them have slept for at least… thirty-six hours, by now. They both need rest.

“Have you ever been able to cast a corporeal patronus, Tom?” Harry asks. When Voldemort glares at him, Harry tacks on, “I’m not mocking you. I’m just asking.”

“You know the answer, else you would not have asked.”

“Fine,” Harry dismisses the argument. “Hold your wand. I won’t take it from you; I’ll just hold your wrist. Like this.” He shifts his grip on Voldemort’s arm, feeling now the warmth of touch. Voldemort produces his wand—it’s the Elder Wand, Harry remembers suddenly but doesn’t comment.

Harry closes his eyes. And he brings to mind… what could have been. What should have been. On that day in Wool’s Orphanage, sixty years ago. Instead of Dumbledore, Harry pictures Hagrid there. The big strong half-giant, jovially making space for himself in Tom Riddle’s quarters, toting his dear umbrella and a partly squashed birthday cake. “Yer a wizard,” he’d say. And he wouldn’t have just given Tom the stipend to buy his books, like Dumbledore had. Hagrid would have brought Tom to Diagon Alley; he would have made an adventure of it. If it’d been Hagrid—or, well, if it’d been someone like Hagrid…

He might’ve made even a boy like Tom smile, at least once.

“Expecto Patronum,” Harry says, softly.

When he opens his eyes, Prongs is there. His tail does a little flick, and his head bobs, glittering antlers tilting. His hooves make little tapping sounds against the hardwood floor as he steps closer.

“Oh,” whispers Voldemort, when the warmth hits him. His other hand closes over Harry’s, as if holding onto Harry is the only thing keeping him from drowning in it.

“This is the reward, Tom.” Harry whispers back. “Happiness, warmth, joy… I’ll help you feel alive again. Or, for the very first time.”

“Alright,” says Voldemort, shakily, entranced by the stag and the overwhelming warmth flowing through the bond. “Okay, Harry.”

Chapter Text

So Harry tells Prongs to go back to the battlefield, back to Hogwarts, and let himself be seen by as many allies as possible. Let there be no doubt that Harry is alive, let no one be in pain mourning for him. And then he asks Prongs to pass along a message, despite how odd it feels to send a wartime missive to the Light when he has their primary enemy cradled against his shoulder like a loved one.

“Hi, Hermione. I’m sorry for worrying you, and everyone. I, um. I’m not dead, obviously. And I’m not…” He glances down at Voldemort, who is nearly unresponsive, like a snake born deep underground, finally reaching the surface and basking on a sun-warmed rock for the very first time. “I’m not in danger, either. I can’t tell you where I am or what I’m doing, but I’m safe and I’m okay. It’s not safe for anyone to send me owls or patronus messages right now, but when it is I’ll be sure to let you know. Just, please don’t let anybody try to rescue me, because I really am okay, and I don’t want anyone risking themselves when I’m totally, completely fine.

"I hope that sending Prongs will be enough to verify that I’m me. As for verifying that I’m not under some kind of mind control…” Harry sighs heavily. “Blimey, I don’t know. I haven’t slept. I guess there’s no way to prove that I’m in my right mind. What’d you call it? Infallible? No: unfalsifiable. I guess I had a chat with Neville before I left. He can tell you that I wasn’t acting too strangely, I think. That’s the best I can offer. But really, I’m… things are going alright. I’m going to do my best to save as many people as possible. So please trust me, and just help everyone at Hogwarts recover. I’m going to send word as soon as I can but I can’t promise when that’ll be.

"I love you. Tell Ron and Ginny and everyone I love them. I really… for the first time, I really feel like things might turn out alright.”

He wraps an arm around Voldemort’s shoulders, as familiar as ever, like casting through the other man’s wand. The dark wizard makes a sound, a breathy whisper of awe, his beady red eyes still locked on the stag.

“That’s all, Prongs.” Harry says. His stag bows, and then bounds out of the room, straight through the wall. Without the glow of the Patronus charm, the room settles back into the muted haze of magically-lit sconces.

Harry gives a gentle squeeze. “Was that alright? I would have asked if you were okay with it before sending, but I figured you would have interrupted me if you had a problem with it.”

Voldemort doesn’t say anything one way or the other. Instead he tucks his face in closer against Harry’s body. Voldemort is not a short man, and Harry is Harry, so it’s a bit of an uncomfortable angle, but judging from the expression on Voldemort’s face, being held like this is an all-encompassing bliss.

“It’s time to sleep,” Harry says to him, carefully. “Do you sleep in this bed? Shall I—are there elves here? May I ask for a cot?”

After a long moment, Voldemort’s eyes flick up at Harry, and Voldemort says in a slow, lazy tone, “Harry Potter… if you stop touching me, I will feed you your own entrails.”

Harry’s gut goes cold. Not because he thinks he's in any imminent danger (Voldemort may as well be purring), but because the lazy, vicious threat reminds him that Voldemort delivers no warnings. Harry's continued existence is hardly secure at this point, and if he gave all his loved ones that message of hope, only to find himself outright murdered later… it will devastate them, as surely as if he'd hurt them himself.

Perhaps he shouldn't have… shouldn't have sent them a message after all.

“No!” Voldemort snaps at him, and then suddenly Harry finds himself being shaken back and forth, like a much beloved teddy bear being reprimanded by a toddler for some imagined slight. “Stop it! How dare you!”

“Sorry,” Harry says, bemusedly. “What did I do?”

“Cast your patronus again, you fool! You stopped… you became cold again. Give it back immediately.”

A spiteful laugh bubbles up out of Harry unbidden. “Sorry, sorry, you want me to feel happy again? You want me to think pleasant thoughts? Merlin, maybe if you hadn’t spent the last six years trying to kill me, I’d have given you a lot more of this feeling.”

Voldemort seethes at him. “You withhold it to mock me.”

“I’m not withholding it from you, I just stopped feeling happy because you threatened me the moment I asked an entirely benign question about sleeping arrangements.” Harry covers his face with his hand and gives a frustrated huff. Not really, he admits to himself. He didn't mean it as a threat. He just doesn't know how to ask for things. He lets out a slow breath, and tries to temper his tone. “The nicer you are to me, the nicer I will feel towards you, Tom. It isn’t rocket science. You’ve a brilliant mind, so use it.”

Voldemort does spend a long few moments thinking. Perhaps weighing the pros and cons of accommodating Harry’s demands, or perhaps trying to figure out how to be nice to a degree that would earn him that feeling of warmth as quickly and as consistently as possible.

“I apologize,” Voldemort articulates carefully. “I would… appreciate it if you would continue sharing that… feeling… along the bond, as you had been.”

Harry studies Voldemort, studies the… fear in the dark wizard’s eyes, fear of denial. And Harry knows what it was like to be in Voldemort’s head. He knows that Voldemort’s pride is the foundation of his whole identity. His dignity is his most cherished possession. He would not part with it lightly.

If Voldemort is so desperate for this feeling that he will allow himself to be cowed into politeness, it has to be because his need for the feeling is so consuming that it takes precedence over every other concern. There is a hunger, here, that only Harry can fulfill, and the power it lends him over the dark lord is a heady but terrifying thing, especially because, as the wielder of that power, Harry will become an even bigger target the next time Voldemort has a manic episode of defensive aggression.

“What happens tomorrow, Tom?” Harry asks, tiredly. “When it’s not so new and overwhelming—what then? I need us to come to an understanding. You can’t keep lashing out at me every time you feel vulnerable. That’s not going to work.”

“I understand,” Voldemort grits out immediately, though he seems like he might be in such a state that he would have said anything to appease Harry.

Harry says nothing, weighing his options. Dread creeps over him, at the thought of falling asleep tonight and then never waking up. At any point in the night, Voldemort could wake, newly unhinged, and decide to follow through with his worst impulses while Harry is unconscious and unable to talk him down. But Harry can’t stay awake all night, either. He’s exhausted.

Voldemort’s hands clutch around the empty air. He asks, carefully, “Do you require of me an oath?”

“No,” Harry says quickly. “Don’t. I don’t think you can afford to make any binding promises to me. You don’t have enough self control to keep them, and I don’t want to see you endure any permanent consequences for… well. For feeling cornered and reacting as such.”

Voldemort’s eyes narrow. “Should I feel insulted that you think so little of me?”

“Am I wrong?” Harry challenges. “Am I wrong to worry about you waking in the middle of the night, freaking out, and murdering me reflexively?”

"Reflexive, indeed," mutters Voldemort.

The solution comes to Harry, finally. He would have thought of it sooner if he weren’t running on fumes. “I’ll cast an alarm, to wake me the moment you’re conscious,” he says aloud, as if to taste the merits of the plan. It should work, for his purposes, though it’s certainly an unconventional application of that sort of magic.

Here he goes, repurposing infirmary charms as defensive magic, repurposing defensive magic as a soothing warmth, and repurposing a sacrificial lamb as a nurturing shepherd.

***

Is Voldemort a thing to be nurtured? If not the man himself, perhaps it would be his capacity for human emotion that can be nurtured, the piece of his soul left behind after so much self-mutilation and hatred and fear. Surely such a piece can still grow and change, like a cutting from a tree, with Harry acting as a stable trellis. Shouldn't it be possible?

Isn’t it worth it to try?

If you’d asked anyone but Harry, the answer would probably be no. Maybe Voldemort has done too much harm to ever be redeemed. Maybe to let him live is to put other people in danger. But Harry feels an unalienable kinship with Voldemort, which must be a consequence of growing up the last sixteen years with a piece of the man’s soul inside of him. Over all this time, the growth of Harry’s soul must have encompassed that part of Tom Riddle, consumed it, and assimilated it.

***

There is a long period of silence. Voldemort’s hands still curl and uncurl by his sides, and sometimes his mouth opens as if to say something, but he says nothing. Harry wonders if this will be the final moment of defiant violence. He wonders if it's time again to hold his breath and wait to be stabbed.

Then, Voldemort stands, towering over Harry, and in a terribly sober tone he says, “Here is my oath, Harry Potter.”

And he hands Harry a wand. But—not just any wand. A thirteen-and-a-half inch yew wand that feels entirely too familiar in Harry's palm.

This was Tom Riddle's wand. Voldemort's spare. Now… it is Harry's.

"Please," says Voldemort hungrily. "Renew your… spell.”

***

They don’t shower. Spells are sufficient for that. When you’re at this level of exhaustion, the logistics of managing that sort of thing seem insurmountable.

Harry doesn’t undress, because he doesn’t have anything to change into. They don’t eat, because there isn’t any food immediately available. In either case, it is likely that house elves or Voldemort’s minions could have provided something, but Harry insisted they shouldn’t bother, for now. They need sleep, first and foremost, and Voldemort needs his fix of whatever this is that Harry has unlocked in him, and then maybe the surreal prospect of asking a Death Eater to please fetch some pajamas won’t sound as strange and bitter in the morning.

Morning, of course, is relative, because Harry is fairly certain it’s close to noon right now and it will likely be late in the evening when they wake again. But without any windows it doesn’t really matter what time it is. The duvet is plush, thick and embroidered with muted geometric patterns, and the sheets underneath are worn and soft.

Voldemort does change his clothes. His movements are routine, mechanical; his expression is empty, completely submitting himself to the absurdity of their situation. He wears emerald green silk pajamas, like a parody of himself.

It’s odd to see him without his robes on. Harry can remember seeing his body nude, once, when he was first resurrected, but the man that had come out of the cauldron had been like a walking corpse, skin stretched taut over a fresh skeleton. Now, Voldemort is still sickly white, and wrinkled in odd places, not like an elderly person but like a piece of paper with too many folds. Without his duelling robes, Harry can see the way Voldemort’s shoulders move when he breathes, and that is... uncomfortably personal.

Voldemort wavers, at the foot of the bed. Harry opens one arm in invitation. “I know,” Harry says. “Trust me, I know how weird this is. Now lay down and sleep, please, because I can’t cast the spell until you’re unconscious, and I can’t fall asleep myself until I cast the spell.”

Finally, after some maneuvering, Harry has the most powerful dark wizard in generations curled up against him. Looking down, Harry can see the top of that bald, vaguely reptilian head. Voldemort is stiff, but compliant, trying in good faith to adhere to their plan, and Harry… Harry thinks about where they started this day, and where they ended it.

He lets his satisfaction flow through the bond, his relief, his renewed hope. And he also shares the affection he feels for Tom, for how much he’s changed in just one day, for how much he was willing to change.

The sound Voldemort makes, when the feeling reaches him, is almost like a sob. All the tension empties out of his body. He curls up against Harry’s chest, intentionally close, to melt himself against what must feel like the source of all that is good in his world. The first ever good in his world.

And then Harry sets the infirmary charm so he’ll know when Voldemort wakes up. And then Harry passes out.

***

The weird thing is, Harry doesn’t dream of Voldemort.

Or, maybe it’s not too weird. If Harry remembers anything from Divination class, he remembers the unit on dreams, because such a thing was rather important to know when you kept having nightmares about the man you were prophesied to fight to the death. And what Harry remembers is that normal dreams, non-prophetic dreams, come about from the mind consolidating short-term memory into long-term memory. Your memories get shuffled around during this process and that’s what causes dreams.

When you stick your head in a Pensieve and watch some second-hand memories, it’s not unusual to dream of the Pensieve memories the next time you sleep.

So, despite all this drama with Voldemort, Harry doesn’t dream of Voldemort. Harry dreams of Snape.

The dreams aren’t specific. Non-prophetic dreams rarely are. Harry has a glimpse of an ordinary day in Potions class, though he’s not sure what year of schooling it’s supposed to be. He sees Snape at the front of the room, scowling as usual, scolding children for neglecting to debone their frog legs before incorporating them into whatever was the potion of the day. Harry steps away from his cauldron and walks directly forward to the professor with that sort of floaty confidence one can only truly achieve in dreams, and Harry says, “I’m not going to hurt you,” and Snape looks at him.

And Harry has a glimpse of that windy hilltop, and Dumbledore’s face filled with so much contempt, and Snape there on his knees looking so distraught, so lost… and Harry steps forward into the scene. “Such a proud little hypocrite, aren’t you?” he says to Dumbledore, in Tom’s voice. Harry gestures down at Snape, who is young and stupid and begging, begging for help, for guidance. Harry accuses Dumbledore: “It pleases you to torture him.”

And Harry has a glimpse of Snape casting his patronus from the headmaster’s office. Except this time the little glowing doe leaves the office, and she gallops down the grounds until she reaches the forest, and then she finds Harry and Ron and Hermione, and in the midst of the battle she leads them to the vial of memories. They wouldn’t have followed if Snape had shown up himself. They wouldn’t have listened to him. But the doe had helped them before, with the sword, and now… this was how Snape would tell them what he knew, without revealing himself. A spy. A wonderfully clever spy.

A spy who had been conspicuously absent from all the groups of Death Eaters Harry had encountered face-to-face during the day.

***

When Harry wakes, and silently summons his glasses from the bedside table, it takes a moment of squinting to resolve the face of the baroque wall clock into an actual time (all these years in the wizarding world and he still hesitates every time he’s forced to read analog). It’s five, probably five in the evening if he had to guess.

Harry hadn't been woken by the alarm, just by his own confused circadian rhythm. Voldemort is still asleep, curled up in the space under Harry’s arm. He’s… snoring in his sleep, or, rather, wheezing. It sounds like it’s a struggle to breathe, like sleep apnea but instead of the sinuses it must be an issue in the lungs or something. It must be a consequence of splicing yourself with a snake species, that some internal structures don't turn out quite right.

Harry wonders, with a touch of pity, what other medical problems Voldemort might be suffering internally. His body is, by some definitions, an abomination.

Yet still, stubbornly, he lives. Harry listens to him breathe, and holds him a bit closer.

Now that he has gained some stability with Voldemort—assuming, of course, that said stability will remain intact when Voldemort wakes—Harry must consider the next steps. He’ll have to find out where they are, since they apparated into this house and he has no idea even what country they’re in. Spain, maybe? They'll have to eat something, too.

They'll have to decide how much of their arrangement can be revealed to the Death Eaters, and how much should be kept discreet for the sake of retaining the Death Eaters' obedience and loyalty.

Besides that, Harry will have to acquaint himself with the Death Eaters' standing orders. And… he’ll have to find out whether the Death Eaters are likely to obey an order that directly contradicts everything they’ve been working towards.

If Harry asks Voldemort to order the Death Eaters to stop the genocide, and Voldemort complies but the Death Eaters defy him, Harry’s not sure what he’ll do. The Death Eaters aren’t a monolith; some of them will surely resist if their leader veers away from deadly politicking. When it comes to the hardcore racists and the hardcore sadists, like Lestrange or Greyback, will Harry help Voldemort cow them into submission? Will Harry tacitly endorse torturing those types of people to ensure their obedience? Or would it be better to… execute them? Would that be safer?

And that’s just what they’ll need to do to keep the Death Eaters from actively hurting people. What about when it comes to making the Death Eaters do something? What should they do? Should they stay embedded in the Ministry, or release the government back into the hands of the Wizengamot, which never was a particularly representative government to begin with? Or if they did overhaul the government into some kind of republic, so that the power would rest in the hands of the citizens, who’s to say the people wouldn’t just elect another fool minister, and fill the governing body with racist purebloods anyhow?

Ruefully, Harry thinks that at the moment, magical Britain is probably safer with the devil they know. Especially if Harry can shoehorn progressive policies through the corrupted Wizengamot.

God, Harry wishes he could ask Hermione for help. He’s sure he’s going to bungle this up or overlook something important. He doesn’t know the first thing about governance.

At the sudden wail of a siren, Harry flinches. Then he realizes the siren is in the back of his own head, and he cancels the infirmary charm, relieved at the confirmation that the charm works. Voldemort shifts against him, in the sleepy warmth of the space under the duvet. “What is… is this disgust?” Voldemort queries, quietly. He lifts his head to peer at Harry in the darkness, his eyes reflecting the little strip of light from under the door to the hallway. Sleepily, the dark lord musters enough awareness to articulate, “You were worried that I would be the one regretting our deal in the morning. Perhaps you do not know yourself as well as you think you do, Harry Potter.”

It takes a second for Harry to realize what Voldemort is implying, but then he feels himself break into a fond smile without even really meaning to. “I’m not disgusted with you, Tom. I was just thinking about some of your allies. I’m sorry if that woke you. I’ll try to focus on something else, if that helps.”

“See that you do,” says Voldemort stiffly. The haughty entitlement of the statement falls flat when he immediately tucks himself back against Harry’s chest.

But he doesn’t fall asleep again. He lays there curled against Harry, and Harry feels almost telepathic with how easily he can imagine what must be going through Voldemort’s mind, recalling everything that happened, realizing the position he’s in, and newly learning how it feels to be held. Harry runs his fingers up and down the green silk in what he hopes is a calming manner, and he feels what little tension had slipped back inside of Voldemort dissipate back into the dark.

“They are obedient,” Voldemort murmurs after a while, without lifting his head. “And their loyalty, such that it is, is transitive. They will obey me, and I will obey you, therefore they will obey you.” He doesn’t even sound particularly bitter about that statement, only matter-of-fact and a little bit cold.

“I hope you’re right,” Harry says.

“If they are disobedient,” Voldemort continues dangerously, “they will be corrected.”

Harry remembers, with terrible clarity, what it felt like to be Voldemort, casting the Cruciatus on the Death Eaters who had displeased him.

He remembers what it felt like to cast it on Severus Snape.

“Tom,” Harry says, “Have you seen Snape since the battle?”

The tension is back in full force. “I have not,” says Voldemort.

With gnawing anxiety, Harry shifts away from Voldemort to sit up in bed, against the bumpy, intricately carved headboard. “What are you being evasive about? He’s not dead, is he? You would know if he were dead.”

Disgruntled, Voldemort also sits up, with the duvet draping around his shoulders. The flick of his wand re-lights the sconces, and then Harry can see him, tired and warm and disheveled. “Snape was not a casualty of the battle,” Voldemort says deliberately, “else I would have felt the severing of the dark mark’s bond.”

“What aren’t you saying?”

Voldemort averts his eyes to the wall, and his mouth twists as he chooses his words. “Severus Snape,” he says finally, “is an invaluable ally. He is just as talented a spy as he is a potioneer.” He turns his piercing gaze back to Harry. “You would do well not to sacrifice such an irreplaceable resource on the altar of petty revenge for old feuds.”

Harry gapes at him.

Voldemort huffs and looks away again. “I’ll summon him if you wish; far be it from me to prevent Harry Potter from doing something foolish.”

“I’m not going to hurt him!” Harry barks a laugh. “Tom, has anything I’ve done in the last twenty-four hours given you the impression that I’m interested in hurting anyone?”

Voldemort scowls. “He betrayed your Order and killed your beloved Dumbledore; it was perfectly reasonable to caution you against abusing your newfound authority for revenge.”

“I’m sorry for laughing,” Harry says, reaching out to grasp Voldemort’s shoulder in a friendly manner. “It’s just… you surprised me. I’m glad you won’t hesitate to tell me if you think I’m being stupid, and I’m glad you were concerned for Snape’s welfare.”

“You give me too much credit,” Voldemort shakes off Harry’s hand, “it’s not out of sentiment. Stupid men or ambitious men make fine soldiers but poor lieutenants. Severus Snape is neither stupid nor ambitious. I invested decades cultivating him, educating him, ensuring his loyalty, bending him to suit my needs. Good help is hard to come by. I won’t have you wasting it in your ignorance.”

Harry remembers, again, what it felt like to torture Snape, through Voldemort’s eyes. The careful cruelty of meting out discipline to an unruly child, in the hopes that violence and pain would bring them back in line.

This was years ago, fifth year or something. It had been easy enough, at the time, for Harry to harden his heart while witnessing the suffering of a man he believed was a coward playing both sides of the war. After all, Harry had witnessed many others suffer the torture curse under Voldemort’s wand, and whenever the victim happened to be a Death Eater, Harry knew to smother his empathy. When he endured such frequent visions of brutality, steeling himself against their suffering was the only way Harry could maintain his sanity.

Harry remembers watching Snape, with that coldness in his chest. He remembers thinking about how surreal it was to hear his Potions Professor screaming in agony. He remembers thinking, damn. I owe him three feet on Kneazle whiskers. Almost forgot.

Harry wonders if he can blame his capacity for apathy on the piece of Voldemort’s soul inside of him. Maybe not. Maybe that was his own doing.

It makes him feel ill.

“I think we’d best get to work, Tom.” Harry says, soberly. “Could you ask for some food, please? If it wouldn’t be too much of an imposition.”

He feels Voldemort watching him, the tension between them. He can feel the way Voldemort reacts to the sudden coldness, the little tugs of him examining the bond, like he’s trying to read tea leaves without a book, trying to divine what it was that upset Harry.

Harry touches Voldemort’s arm. “It’s alright,” he says, gently. “You’re fine. I’m not upset with you.”

After a moment, Voldemort gives him a clipped nod, and then stands from the bed.

Chapter Text

Some time later, Harry is picking at a tray of dried fruits while Voldemort spreads brie on a piece of crusty bread. There is wine, too, but neither of them are drinking it. They’re still in the bedroom, sitting at a card table which Voldemort had transfigured from the empty footlocker. The wood is dark, matching the rest of the bedroom set, and sometimes the whorls on the surface catch the light in a flash of gold. Even transfigured, the raw materials of the footlocker have retained their luster.

“So, you don’t have house elves,” Harry remarks, prying apart two slices of dried apricot with his thumbnail.

“Not personally,” says Voldemort. “I did have one assistant during the first war, but I never found out what happened to her after you killed me.”

Harry snorts, and doesn’t bother to argue the point that he’d been an infant at the time and hadn’t really done any killing. “So, whenever you want food or laundry service, you just ask a Death Eater?”

“Is there really any difference between calling upon a wizard or a house elf? Either way, they serve me. If I’ve need of something a wizard cannot provide, I simply ask the resident elves wherever I happen to be staying.”

“Where are we staying, anyway?”

“Dolohov’s summer estate.”

Harry tilts his head at the dark wizard. “So, where is that, geographically?”

“We’re in Belgium.”

“Wh—really?” Harry stands up out of his chair, feeling suddenly bubbly. “Where’s a window? Is there a window in the hallway?”

“What?”

“I’ve never been to Belgium. I thought we were in Spain? Though I’ve never been to Spain either—”

“Sit down, Potter, it’s not like we’re in the blasted tropics.”

Harry sits again, smiling and amused but not wanting to push his luck with Voldemort’s patience. Setting aside his excitement, he asks, “Do you move between different safe houses frequently? I thought you stayed mostly at Malfoy Manor?”

“Surely you can wrap your mind around why Malfoy Manor would make a poor headquarters at this juncture.”

Harry winces, remembering the dungeon and Pettigrew and Dobby and the messy escape. It feels like that happened ages ago, when really it must have only been a couple of weeks. “Point taken. Not very secure, I suppose.”

“Is this really the conversation you wish to have at this moment?” Voldemort asks, rubbing his temples with one hand. “There are about thirty Death Eaters in the drawing room who have been waiting half the day for new orders.”

“Right, well, admittedly I don’t have a lot of sympathy for them. Let them be bored; if that’s the worst thing I wish upon them, it’s a mercy.”

Voldemort smirks at that, without commenting further.

But Harry sobers, and he settles a bit further back in his chair. “How do you think we should handle this, Tom? The Death Eaters, I mean. What should we tell them?”

“You’re asking my opinion? This is your plan, boy; I am the one being coerced.”

Harry snorts. "It's not really coercion, is it?”

Voldemort stares at him. Something passes over his face that makes him seem very, very old.

"Is it?" Harry asks again with less confidence.

“Harry…” says Voldemort, shaking his head and shifting his gaze to somewhere above Harry’s eyeline. “I think if you tried to separate yourself from me, and take away from me the peace you have given me, I might just kill you, and then kill myself. A life without it, without you, would be worthless to me. You have spoiled for me anything but a parasitic existence. Is that coercion?”

Harry grits his teeth. “I’m not sorry for it, though.”

“Nor should you be, any more than the horseman should be sorry for offering the carrot. But you must understand my position. I won't attempt to influence your choices, for I cannot afford to risk displeasing you.”

“So, what, you’re censoring yourself?” Harry rolls his eyes. “If you’re so afraid of displeasing me, then how come you’ve been so grumpy with me? You haven’t been holding back much at all, I think.”

“This is different,” says Voldemort. He picks up one of the empty wine goblets, and instead of filling it from the carafe of belgian chardonnay, he taps the rim of the glass with his wand to fill it with water, then sips from it. He continues, “If you were to act on my advice and something went wrong, you would assume it had been sabotage, since that is the only avenue of resistance left available to me.”

“And… you think I’d be angry with you?”

“Depending on the gravity of the error, certainly.”

Harry’s not sure what sort of face he’s making right now, but it must be a rather strange one given how Voldemort is staring at him. Harry says, “Voldemort,” which makes Voldemort’s eyes fractionally widen, “What exactly would you expect me to do if I thought you sabotaged me? Am I meant to take offense, and punish you by restricting access to the only thing tethering you to humanity?”

“A stick to go with the carrot, yes. I’d rather not risk your ire if it’s all the same to you.”

Harry scoffs. “You have an incredibly concrete view of power.”

“You’ll find most Slytherins do.”

“Alright, fine.” Harry says. He reaches across the table and snatches the cheese knife from Voldemort’s plate, wordlessly daring the man to complain about this rude behavior. When Voldemort says nothing (with a tinge of amusement in the crinkle around his eyes), Harry huffs and takes a piece of bread on which to spread the brie. “I won’t ask your opinion broadly, then,” Harry resolves. “I’ll ask you questions about specifics.”

“I am at your disposal, Harry Potter,” Voldemort says in a distinctly playful tone.

“I want to ensure we retain the Death Eaters’ obedience and loyalty, and I want to lie as little as possible. If we tell them the truth, will they still obey you?”

“And what would you say is the truth?” prompts Voldemort. His lips almost curl into a smile when he sips from his water.

Er, that we’re in a sort of partnership? is what Harry would have said earlier, but he reevaluates in light of their conversation thus far. “I suppose the truth, as a Slytherin would understand it, is that I’m holding power over you.”

Voldemort taps the subtle ridge that may have once been the side of his nose. “Precisely.”

“And the Death Eaters would have a hard time accepting that. Which I knew already. But what other option is there? Should I pretend to be your prisoner or something? That would cause lots of other problems.”

The Light would not allow their savior to be held prisoner, no matter any patronus messages he might send to quell them. And beyond that, as a “prisoner” Harry wouldn’t be able to advise Voldemort or even speak with him with any of the Death Eaters watching. And if Voldemort needed Harry’s touch, well, they would find themselves under a whole new level of scrutiny.

“So what else should we do?” Harry asks. Voldemort opens his mouth, and Harry holds up a hand when he remembers the arrangement. “Right,” Harry says. “Specifics. Er… regardless of how a Slytherin would actually describe our circumstances, couldn’t we just tell them that we’re on equal footing?”’

Voldemort cocks an eyebrow. “Will our behavior corroborate that?”

“Well, mine will!” shouts Harry defensively, “I’m not going to be lording this over you just to swing my dick around!”

Voldemort squints at him. “Evocative,” he offers, flatly. “And what of my behavior, then?”

Harry flounders. “Well, you’ll behave like you usually would, ordering people around and stuff. Won’t you?”

“Will I?”

He won’t. Harry knows he won’t. Harry can see plainly that Voldemort, even now, is studying Harry, trying to understand him well enough to predict his thoughts and actions. The same way Harry used to study the Dursleys, a lifetime ago, because predicting the Dursleys’ behavior would allow Harry to minimize opportunities for conflict.

“You’ll keep looking over at me for permission, won’t you? When you’re facing the Death Eaters you’ll keep looking over at me, and they’ll know.”

Voldemort’s grin is sharp. “You could always instruct me not to do so. Specificity is key, dear Harry. I will endeavor to follow your instructions to the letter, but barring that, I will never act without your express approval.”

Harry stabs the cheese knife into the brie. “‘The only avenue of resistance left available to me…’ That was a load of bollocks, then. This is your resistance, isn’t it? This—malicious compliance.”

Voldemort’s face is unreadable. “Harry—”

“I don’t want it to be like this!” Harry shouts. “I don’t want to have to twist your arm. I don’t want to have to do things the Slytherin way. And you claim to be preoccupied with pleasing me, so can you please just—just work with me? You know working together is best for both of us. You know I can’t do this alone. So please stop fighting it; please just help me.”

Voldemort lowers his eyes, and lets out a breath. “I apologize. I should not have toyed with you.”

And that’s that, it seems. “Thank you,” Harry says, though he can sense the bond twisting with a new strand of anxiety. He wonders if Voldemort had even consciously intended to start being difficult, or if it had just been a reflexive defense mechanism.

It had been nice to see him smiling, but Harry needs Voldemort’s cooperation, not his obedience nor even his companionship.

The brie is good, when Harry takes a bite of it, finally. Soft and creamy, with a delicate flavor. He hasn’t actually tasted anything like it before. Even with the variety of foods offered in the Great Hall, Harry had never really experimented beyond the staples. He wonders if this will be the caliber of cuisine offered to him for as long as he is standing by Voldemort.

“I believe we could say you are acting as my advisor,” Voldemort says, after a long period of silence. It sounds like an olive branch. “If we made some changes to the way you present yourself, you could pass for a far more dangerous man. Then, they would think better than to question your place at my right hand. Or… my place at yours, as the case may be.”

“What sort of changes?” Harry asks.

“You will never be alone with a Death Eater. So long as you are by my side, I will allow no harm to reach you. Bearing this in mind, you have nothing to fear from any of them. So…” Voldemort begins to smile once more. “Show them. You have enough imagination to behave like an eccentric little tyrant. Let them believe your confidence is based not in my protection but in your own power. They will not think me weak if we elevate you.”

And it will make me feel better, Voldemort isn’t saying aloud, but Harry can still hear it between the lines. It will make me feel better to see you exerting your power over other people as well, rather than just over me.

Harry nods, and wipes his mouth with the cloth napkin. “Alright. Tell me what to do.”

***

First, Voldemort instructs Harry to bathe.

The bedroom has an en suite with a modest bathtub-shower, more terra-cotta tiles and outdated furnishings. Unlike the bedroom, the bathroom makes use of electricity for overhead lighting and a vent fan, which will hopefully make it more functional than the average wizarding water closet. A glance around the shower curtain confirms that there are small green potion bottles on the soap shelf, likely shampoo and conditioner, maybe a body wash. The bathroom hadn't been stocked like this when they arrived, since it was meant to be a summer home and nobody had expected to be living here until August, but Voldemort had sent for toiletries and towels, as well as colognes and clothing (though Harry is yet unaware of the specifics).

He lingers in the doorway of the bathroom and glances back at Voldemort, who is carefully hanging opaque garment bags in the bedroom’s wardrobe. Harry feels... unsure, suddenly, about whether it's safe to trust Voldemort unsupervised. "Will you be alright, Tom?" he asks.

Voldemort startles, then turns to look at Harry across the room. After a beat, he says, "I can't imagine the resonance between us will be impeded by a few scant inches of drywall."

"Still," says Harry. "If you find yourself feeling... agitated, please do let me know. I... I will be very displeased with you if you neglect to tell me before it becomes an issue. You understand what I mean?"

"Yes, Harry," says Voldemort, with a sweeping bow drenched in sarcasm, "I understand."

So, with no small amount of trepidation, Harry shuts the bathroom door, and undresses. He hesitates a moment when he removes his t-shirt, distracted by the little hole over the chest where Voldemort had stabbed him, and all the dried blood. But he puts it out of his mind, and he begins to bathe.

And, damn. It feels nice to be clean. To have the luxury of hot water, and the time to be thorough about it—little things he hadn't realized how much he missed until he finally had them again. Harry vaguely recognizes the shampoo label from one of those pricey little wizarding boutiques. It’s the same brand he saw in the bathrooms at Shell Cottage, though this scent is more woodsy than floral. It feels nice; it makes his hair feel smooth but not squeaky.

As he showers, he muses about his impending meeting with the Death Eaters. Will Snape be there? He probably will, assuming that Voldemort summons all of his minions to ensure everyone is on the same page about Harry’s untouchable position. Harry briefly considers sending Snape a warning, letting him know what to expect so he won’t think Harry is a turncoat, and so he won’t do anything rash. But Harry dismisses the idea as too dangerous. Snape has been a spy for almost all of Harry’s life, so he will know how to handle himself during the meeting better without Harry mucking things up trying to help him.

Still, Harry should try to find a way to speak to him alone, later, to assure him that Harry hasn't become a Death Eater or anything terrible like that.

He hears a soft rapping at the bathroom door. "Will you be much longer?"

Harry leans around the curtain to wipe his face with the towel. "I'm almost finished, I’ll be out in a moment. Are you still alright?"

A beat. Then, "Yes, of course. But don't dawdle, Potter, we've much else to do."

This is what Harry had expected, really. Voldemort has made it quite clear that he values his connection to Harry more than life itself. It’s only to be expected that he would find Harry’s absence unsettling. Mostly Harry’s just impressed, and relieved, that Voldemort lasted this long, because that means they'll at least be able to function in separate rooms for brief periods of time. And hopefully in the future they will be able to spend even more time apart. But they’ll take things at Voldemort’s pace. It would be unnecessarily cruel to rush him, Harry thinks.

Harry exits the bathroom wearing a couple of towels for modesty. He considers vanishing the ruined clothes on his way, but ultimately chooses not to, just in case… well, just in case Voldemort tries to dress him in something unwearable. Voldemort is standing in the middle of the room, watching Harry, and it’s only after a moment of transparently relieved staring that Voldemort finally turns back to the wardrobe and motions Harry closer. “All of these are genuine hand-embroidered renaissance antiques,” Voldemort explains while thumbing through the garment bags until he finds the one he was looking for and removes it from the rack.

“Prepared by Lucius Malfoy?” Harry asks, smirking.

“Prepared with his assistance as curator, yes, but this is my collection. These pieces are suitable for… public, if you understand my meaning.”

“You do love your showmanship.”

Voldemort shoots him a glare. “There’s no reason to be snide. Presentation is important. You must understand that presentation has opened far more doors for me than power alone.”

Harry nods. “Fair enough. You do scare the pants off most people, and that fear is what kept them from fighting back. Still, isn't it a little odd to use psychological warfare on your supposed allies?”

“Shut up. Put this on.”

Harry snorts, then complies. Voldemort politely looks away when Harry sets aside the towels and drags the plain white underwear up his damp legs. Then, piece by piece, the outfit is disassembled from its hangers and reassembled on Harry’s body: black tights, a lace-trimmed white chemise, loose-fitting breeches of golden satin paneled with black stripes of embroidery, black knee-high boots, and a tall black doublet with golden embroidery patterns all up and down the sleeves and the body.

“This has lions on it,” Harry points out, looking down at himself.

Voldemort pauses in the process of fastening the buttons, and glances up at Harry’s chest. “Griffins.” he corrects, and then returns his focus to the buttons.

“Why would you give me something with griffins on it?” Harry prods.

“Because griffins appear in renaissance embroidery far more often than snakes do.” He stiffens at Harry’s giggling, and bites out, “For god's sake, Potter, not everything is about house allegiances.”

“You just said presentation is important!” Harry says, grinning, “I just thought you might have something more on-brand.”

“Yes, well, it would look far too heavy-handed to pass you off as a snake. This will do fine. Now stand up straight so I can cast the fitting charm.”

Under Voldemort’s wand, the bulky doublet smoothes out and tightens up to fit snugly against Harry’s body. Only the collar still hangs open around Harry’s throat. Voldemort reaches for the collar, then hesitates and asks, “May I?”

“Sure.”

And it’s fascinating to see how gentle Voldemort is capable of being. The collar of the doublet is tall, and will need to be fastened all the way up the line of Harry’s neck. Voldemort is so careful, looping button by button without pressing or tugging. His eyes flicker up to Harry’s face after each one, ready to abandon his task at the slightest discomfort in Harry’s expression.

While Harry might not have chosen an outfit like this himself, and while he might have preferred a less constrictive shirt collar given the choice, he doesn’t mind it much. Not when Voldemort has put so much care into it, and he's decided Harry is worthy of that care.

Voldemort eventually steps aside to allow Harry to look into the full length mirror which hangs on the inside of the closet door. In his reflection, Harry doesn’t look as ridiculous as he expected to look. He thought this outfit would look as silly and out of fashion as those dress robes Ron wore to the Yule Ball in ‘94, but this… isn’t like that at all. The man in the mirror looks like he’s just stepped out of a painting, like some kind of prince or even a king… He’s never seen himself look like this before. He stares.

“We’re not quite finished, but if there’s anything you dislike, you’d best speak now before the accessories,” Voldemort warns.

“It’s… um. It’s a lot of layers, huh?”

“It is,” Voldemort says flatly. “There are more to add on top of this. Is that a problem?”

“No, not really. I won’t overheat, will I? I mean, you’ve said you wear things like this often, but you’re also part snake, so…”

This makes Voldemort flinch, which Harry feels sorry about because he hadn’t realized that was a sensitive subject. But Voldemort just says, “there are charms in the clothing for ventilation. And for protection, for that matter. You’ll find it’s surprisingly comfortable. Shall we continue, or would you prefer to try something else?”

“This is… this is fine.”

“Fine, he says,” Voldemort mutters to himself with a sneer while he unhooks a cape from its hanger. “Boy, you are currently wearing more galleons than a salaried worker would see in his lifetime.”

“I don’t really know much about… economics,” Harry admits shamefully.

Voldemort wraps the cape around Harry’s shoulders and fastens it in place. It matches the doublet, draping flatteringly along the line of Harry’s elbows. And then—

“Is that a sword?” Harry squawks. “You’re giving me a sword?”

“It’s a rapier, and it’s not meant to be functional. It’s a prop.”

“Why would a wizard have a sword?”

Voldemort scoffs. “Why would a wizard have something embroidered by hand? Money and power. And besides, if you saw a wizard with a rapier on their belt, what would your first thought be?”

“Er… my first thought would probably be, why would a wizard have a sword?"

Voldemort rolls his eyes. “And your second thought, then?”

“I suppose my second thought would be, I hope I don’t get stabbed today.”

Voldemort fastens the sword belt around Harry’s waist, cinching it tight but not uncomfortably so. “Wonderful. Now you see the point of the sword. Now lean forward, please.”

Voldemort casts a drying and styling charm, and Harry is surprised for a moment that Voldemort’s charm was able to tame Harry’s notoriously difficult hair so quickly, but then Harry remembers that Voldemort is using the Elder Wand, so he really couldn’t have failed if he’d tried.

“Those are snakes,” Harry points out when he catches a glimpse of what Voldemort is about to put on his head.

“Yes.”

“Subtle snake embroidery patterns would be heavy-handed, but a gaudy gold circlet of snakes won’t be?”

“No, Harry,” Voldemort says with waning patience. He removes his hands from Harry’s hair to tap one long white finger against the Griffin on the left. “This is to show your identity, whereas this,” Voldemort returns to settling the circlet in Harry’s hair, “is to show your allegiance.”

“Where’s your Griffin circlet, then?” Harry asks with a pout.

“It would slide right off my head,” Voldemort says, in a tone that suggests he’s not being truthful, but he’s tired of walking Harry through every little nuance of his grand design.

Then he outfits Harry with an assortment of rings to adorn his fingers, and finally a cane. In an impressive show of restraint, the cane is not topped with any opulent animal imagery, though the handle is solid polished brass and fits nicely in Harry’s palm.

“Pull the handle,” says Voldemort.

Harry struggles with the cane for a moment, but eventually he finds the right way to slide the handle out of the body of the cane. It just… pops out, and there’s nothing inside. Harry looks at Voldemort quizzically.

“The handle of your wand goes there,” Voldemort says, gesturing to the base of the handle. “Then the wand is hidden in the cane. At the first sign of combat, you remove the handle. You will be armed without anyone knowing you are armed.”

“Except for the sword,” Harry points out.

“Except for the sword,” Voldemort concedes with a smirk.

Now the illusion is complete, and Harry looks like someone larger than life. The only problem is that Harry is not a prince or a king. Harry is just Harry, just an uncomfortable young man playing dress-up. He’s not sure he can manage to convince anyone that he’s meant to be wearing these clothes.

Then he feels Voldemort’s hand on his shoulder. “Stop doubting yourself. You are better at this than you give yourself credit for. You weren’t afraid of me, and from the way you speak of them, you aren’t afraid of the Death Eaters. So don’t worry about appearing a certain way before them; you don’t care what they think. Walk, talk, dress, and behave however you please; your impassivity will tell them they are beneath you. That is what will assure them of your worthiness. The costuming is just shorthand to tell them what you already are."

And there is a kernel of doubt there, in Voldemort’s words. If Harry isn’t able to control the Death Eaters as easily as he is able to control Voldemort, then Voldemort will have to reassess his own position on the food chain, and that scares him. But he doesn’t say any of that out loud to Harry. Harry can just… feel it from him, as easily as he was able to feel Harry’s doubts.

“Alright,” Harry says. “We’ve got this. I’ll let you do most of the talking, though, if that’s alright?”

“Ideally, you will not even open your mouth,” Voldemort says snidely, and Harry gives a giddy, nervous laugh.

Chapter Text

There are almost fifty Death Eaters in this room, but they are all so silent that Harry second guesses his own eyesight—are there truly that many people here? It doesn’t help that someone has charmed the dining room to make use of wizard space. The dining table is stretched to an absurd length, and it feels like staring into the depths of two mirrors pointed at each other. There is a seat for every last Death Eater and all of their associates. A dining table this long couldn’t, shouldn’t exist. Just stepping into the room makes Harry feel queasy, but at least there are no dishes or goblets or anything on the table, so he likely won’t be expected to eat.

Everyone is staring at Harry, but that’s to be expected. He tries to meet each of their gazes at least once, at least for the Death Eaters sitting closest to this end of the stretched table. There is Yaxley, the man who broke the Fidelius at Grimmauld Place. There’s Macnair, the bastard who almost killed Buckbeak back in third year. And there’s Dolohov, whose house they're camped out in. Harry remembers how sick and cowed the Malfoys had looked when Voldemort was their houseguest, but Dolohov doesn't look anything like that. He looks fine, even proud, with a sick glint in his eyes that says he knows damned well that he owns the place.

Speaking of the Malfoys, all three of them are seated further towards the belly of the table, at a distance where Harry can't really get a read on their expressions, though he assumes things can't be going very well for them given the way Lucius is hunched over with his shoulders drawn in. Narcissa and Draco are still sitting up straight with their typical pureblood posture, but that's probably less to do with how they are feeling and more to do with their skills at hiding it.

Seeing Draco is most disorienting of all. Harry knows how terrified Draco was of Voldemort. Harry knows how Voldemort threatened the child to control the parents, and threatened the parents to control the child. It's disorienting because… Harry had assumed that, when he walked into this room, he would be able to think of the Death Eaters as a collective of terrible people, and he could just sit back and allow Voldemort to threaten them into submission without feeling bad about it. Harry can't tell, from this distance, what Draco is thinking. Harry can't tell what impact the costuming and pageantry and Harry's mere presence at the Dark Lord's side has had on Draco. But his heart aches to think about it, and he wants to reassure his former schoolmate that it's all going to be alright.

And then there’s Snape. He’s at the foot of the table, which makes Harry reevaluate his assumptions about the significance of the seating arrangements. He’d assumed Voldemort would keep his closest allies in the nearest seats, but looking out over the gradient of Death Eaters he realizes that actually, Voldemort has kept his most level-headed allies at a distance. It is the volatile ones who got the near seats, so they would receive the full brunt of the Dark Lord’s intimidating performance.

Harry can’t make out anything of Snape’s expression. He looks as stiff and impassive as ever. It’s almost comforting, really, to see him like this again, because ever since the pensieve Harry hasn’t been able to stop thinking of him sobbing and begging on that windy hilltop. Harry itches to tell him I’m not a traitor, but with circumstances as they are, he keeps his mouth shut for now.

He startles when he feels a touch on his elbow, but it’s only Voldemort checking in. Harry makes eye contact, and nods, I’m fine, continue.

Then Harry takes his position behind and to the right of Voldemort’s chair at the head of the table, where he will spend the whole meeting standing. It will offer a certain ambiguity; either Harry is standing because he is like Voldemort’s pet and has no need for his own chair at the table, or he is standing because he is above everyone, and Voldemort only acts with his permission. This ambiguity will offer some protection, until everything stabilizes so that Harry is part of the new normal.

Harry consciously relaxes his shoulders, and lifts his chin, as Voldemort had instructed him to.

Voldemort points his wand at his own throat to cast the amplifying charm. In a high, clear, menacing voice he says, “Welcome, my friends. How wonderful it is to see you all… together.”

Everyone remains silent, and some of the Death Eaters near Snape shift uncomfortably in their seats.

“Yaxley,” Voldemort begins, “report.”

And so Voldemort proceeds methodically through questioning his highest-ranking followers on various aspects of their operation. He receives reports about the status of the takeover of the Ministry, the status of the takeover of the Daily Prophet, and the status of the prisoners still kept in the dungeons beneath various pureblood estates. He receives reports about the battle, the Death Eater casualties, and the structural damage sustained in particular areas of Hogwarts and Hogsmeade.

He offers no feedback on the intelligence he receives, nor does he say anything about Harry’s presence. To ignore the burning curiosity of his followers is to remind the Death Eaters that they are owed no explanation.

“Severus,” Voldemort says, “tell me of the battlefield.”

But before Snape has a chance to cast the amplifying charm on himself, the excitement that has been visibly building in Bellatrix Lestrange since the start of the meeting suddenly boils over. With wide eyes full of zealous admiration, she exclaims, “The Black family has been cleansed, my lord, just as you wanted! I killed the brat, and the beast’s dead too!”

That… hurts. There’s a part of Harry kicking himself for not bracing for it. Of course the people in this room would be bragging about… he squeezes his eyes shut.

Teddy Lupin. Teddy Lupin is somewhere out there, across borders, across the channel, in that homey little living room Harry had spent all of five minutes in before taking the hairbrush portkey to the Burrow. And that baby doesn’t know that he’s lost his mother and father and grandfather. Or maybe he does. Maybe he’s looking for them, wondering where they’ve gone, still crying for them and waiting for them to return.

And Harry is his godfather, but Harry is here making nice with the bitch that murdered Teddy’s mum.

“Harry,” says Voldemort in a low, strained voice. The bond is alive, writhing and twisting between them, an inescapable resonance of grief and anger and discomfort.

Harry takes a deep breath, holds it in his chest, and then slowly exhales, burying those feelings. When he opens his eyes, the Death Eaters are staring at him again.

“Is there something you need,” Voldemort asks guardedly, without looking at Harry. To the Death Eaters, Voldemort’s tone probably sounds annoyed or impatient, but Harry knows Voldemort is just trying to check on him without giving anything away. They had agreed before entering the room that Harry would signal to Voldemort if he needed to make an emergency retreat. Voldemort is ready to escort Harry out of the room at the first sign of distress—neither of them can afford to show the Death Eaters the true extent of their co-dependence.

“No, thank you,” Harry gets out, tightly, and he tries halfheartedly to push what little gratitude he can muster through the bond. “Let’s just carry on.”

“Bella,” says Voldemort with a flash of restrained fury, “it does not become you to speak out of turn.”

Tears of adoration and terror spill down Bellatrix's cheeks. “Understood, my lord.”

“Severus, your report.”

At last, Snape casts the amplifying charm on himself. His flat, controlled voice fills the room. “Our sources report that the Order has sustained serious casualties, as Bellatrix has pointed out so eagerly. Many of their most talented duelists are dead or injured. Morale is waning, especially with Harry Potter removed from their ranks. Though the chain of command remains intact, their forces seem disordered and anxious.”

“And Nagini?”

Harry looks sharply at Voldemort, and then remembers to hide his shock as best he can. But really, Harry had completely forgotten about the snake. Ever since he decided to try to save Voldemort, the horcruxes had been a moot point. Last Harry saw the snake was at the encampment in the woods. Had she gotten lost in the disarray of retreat? Voldemort certainly hadn’t been lucid enough to remember to bring her along.

Snape lowers his head. “Killed, my lord.”

“Impossible.”

Harry feels an impact like a wave breaking over him; fear, primarily, but also grief. I’m sorry, Harry wants to tell Voldemort. You don’t need her as a horcrux anymore, but she was your familiar, and I’m sorry you’ve lost her. I know how that feels. But Harry just stands there beside Voldemort’s chair, silently.

Harry almost feels guilty for telling Neville to kill Nagini. But then he remembers Voldemort told Bellatrix to kill Tonks, and he doesn't feel guilty at all anymore. He just feels sort of cold.

“Avery and I recovered her remains, if you wish to examine them, my lord,” Snape offers.

Voldemort shakes his head, and waves a hand dismissively. “Later," he says. Then he takes a deep breath. "For now, there are some items I must address."

Many of the Death Eaters lean forward eagerly, clearly waiting for Voldemort to finally reveal what he's been doing with Harry Potter. Instead, Voldemort levels a long, pale finger at Yaxley. "The Ministry's bounty on muggle-borns and blood traitors… will be publicly rescinded."

The temperature in the room plummets ten degrees. Jaws hang open. Greyback frowns. Even across the length of the table, Harry can see the whites of Snape's eyes.

"My—my lord?" stutters Yaxley.

"Must I repeat myself?"

"No, my lord. Right away, my lord," Yaxley says, dabbing at his forehead with a hastily procured handkerchief. His gaze darts around at his fellow Death Eaters, as if worried they would turn against him for obeying such an order.

Harry grips the handle of the cane tighter.

Voldemort, meanwhile, turns his attention to Dolohov. “Antonin, for the last three years you have managed the guests in our dungeons… reliably. While I do commend you for your efforts, you will be relieved of that responsibility today. I have a different position in mind for you.”

Dolohov is smart enough not to question this aloud, but his jaw flexes with his restraint. “I see,” he says tightly.

Next, Voldemort says, “Draco.”

Draco flinches, and then he goes completely still, like a prey animal trying not to be spotted. From the movement of her shoulder, Harry suspects Narcissa is squeezing her son’s hand under the table. It takes a moment for Draco to speak without his voice wavering, but he finally gets out, “Yes, my lord.”

“I believe your mother and father have taught you how to be an exemplary host, am I correct?"

"Um—as you say, my lord."

"You will replace Dolohov, managing the dungeons."

Draco turns ghost white. It’s funny, in a bitter sort of way, because Harry knows that just two years ago Draco would have been thrilled to have the Dark Lord’s attention, to have an opportunity to prove himself. But that sort of opportunity had been twisted into a noose around his neck once before, and now he looks as ill as his father. “My—my lord, I don’t know how to—”

But Narcissa squeezes Draco’s hand in warning.

Draco catches himself. With a muted dread, he says, “I am honored, my lord.”

“You may as well just let all the ruddy bastards out the front door,” grumbles Greyback under his breath.

Voldemort’s eyes narrow to slits. “Have you something to say, Fenrir?”

Harry is reminded, oddly, of Crookshanks spotting a housefly.

The thing is, from what Harry remembers about Fenrir Greyback, the werewolf isn’t really a Death Eater as such. Greyback is a leader of his own werewolf pack, so he has his own ego, only barely collared by Lord Voldemort’s status. While everyone else at the table seems to be more or less willing to submit to their leader’s inexplicable change of course, Greyback is bold enough to speak his mind.

And boy does he.

“I said,” Greyback repeats firmly, “you may as well let all the ruddy bastards out the front door. That brat doesn’t have the bollocks to be anyone’s jailor, and some of those cells are holding prey you already promised to me, lord.”

Unfazed by the flagrant disrespect, Voldemort coolly says, “I understand your concern, Fenrir. Draco is inexperienced. I will assign Rookwood to assist him in these matters. Does that satisfy you?”

Glaring at Voldemort, Greyback makes a noise somewhere between a grumble and a growl.

Voldemort stands from his seat. “No, it doesn’t satisfy you, does it?” His voice is gentle, like the smooth surface of a river belying the deadly current underneath. “You are confused, frustrated. I had everything lined up in my favor at the castle and I’ve given it all away, just to get ahold of Potter, and evidently not even to kill or torture him. That makes no sense to you, does it, Fenrir?”

Greyback tries to pull his face to the side to break eye contact, but the legilimentic bond is too strong. Those Death Eaters seated near the werewolf shift in their seats to be a bit further from him; they can tell where this is going.

Voldemort’s tone finally cracks into menace. “You must understand, Fenrir, that your opinion does not interest me. I do not answer to you. I do not answer to anyone. Do you dispute this? Do you presume to hold the Dark Lord Voldemort, who sheltered you and raised you to the highest echelons of power, indebted to you?”

With the legilimency dropped, Greyback is panting, and his eyes dart around to the Death Eaters as his claw-like hands curl into fists. “No, my lord,” he grits out.

“Imperio,” says Voldemort, with a flick of his wand.

Greyback stops moving. His face has glazed over with an eerie calm, awaiting instructions.

“How grateful each of you must feel towards Fenrir Greyback, who dared to say aloud what you all had been thinking quietly to yourselves," Voldemort comments mildly to the rest of the Death Eaters. "Now he will bear the consequences, and you will escape reproach for your traitorous inclinations.

“Nonetheless, those inclinations must be addressed. I recommend you listen to what I am about to say very carefully, if you wish to survive.”

With a burst of magical energy, Voldemort floats to stand atop of the head of the stretched table, his robes billowing with all the terrifying grace of a dementor. “My friends, let me relieve you of any illusions you may still harbor," he says. "Though I am an unmatched tactical strategist, that is not why you follow me. Though I intend to drag Wizarding Britain into a new golden age, that is not why you follow me. Though I have promised you protection, wealth and power, that is not why you follow me. You follow me because you bear my mark on your left arm. I own you.

“On my order, you would kneel, grovel, debase yourself, and thank me for the trouble. On my order, you would surrender yourself to our enemies and willingly spill secrets about all your closest allies and loved ones. Your loyalty is not conditional on the quality of orders given to you. Your loyalty is not conditional on anything at all.

“I am the Dark Lord Voldemort. I am the alpha and the omega; my word is law. If you serve me well, you will be rewarded. But if you try to resist me, you will find that you are nothing more than a dog gnawing off its own leg to escape a trap. Fenrir… care to demonstrate?”

With single-minded focus, Greyback’s sharp teeth plunge into the flesh of his own arm. Harry flinches. As much as he understands the necessity of demonstrating this sort of thing to the present audience, he can’t stomach it himself. And, unlike all those times he was forced to witness atrocities through Voldemort’s eyes, this time Harry has the power to close his eyes. So he does, gratefully.

He still hears the crunch when the werewolf’s powerful jaws crack the ulna. He feels nauseous. From a different direction, Harry hears the sounds of vomiting; from another, harrowed praying.

“Good work, mutt,” Voldemort says. Then, “Finite.”

The Imperius lifts. When Greyback sees the damage he has wrought, and tastes his own flesh in his mouth, the sound he makes is indescribably horrible. He begins panting and crying.

“Finish your meal, Fenrir,” says Voldemort, calmly. “That is, if you wish to live. Or will this be the end of your line? Will the name Fenrir Greyback become nothing more than a cautionary tale, only ever mentioned when teaching a fool dog not to put its paw in its mouth when speaking to its master?”

Greyback whimpers and moans incoherently, then begs breathlessly for mercy.

“Finish your meal, Fenrir,” says Voldemort again, and Harry screws his eyes shut even tighter. When he hears the sounds of Greyback… doing whatever it is Voldemort has told him to do, the only thing that keeps Harry standing upright is the walking cane, hot and damp from gripping it so tightly.

If it had been the Malfoys, or Snape, Harry would have intervened. He would not allow Voldemort to do this to any of them. But the Death Eaters in general are… unrepentantly horrible people, and this awful performance will renew their fear of Voldemort, and will keep them obedient despite all the changes Voldemort is about to make to their organization. So Harry does not intervene.

Mostly, Harry is glad that Voldemort is handling it by himself. Harry is grateful that he doesn’t have to watch, and he doesn’t have to try to contort himself into the sort of person who could participate.

Eventually, everything quiets down into sniffles and silence. Serenely, Voldemort says, “My friends, if you remain loyal to me, no harm will reach you. I cannot make the same promise to those who question me. Are we understood?”

Among the Death Eaters, there are various murmurs of that familiar obeisance, and then silence again.

Harry feels a ghostly brush of air when Voldemort uses the same flying magic as before to lower himself from the table. “It’s over,” Voldemort says quietly, just to Harry.

Harry lets out a breath, and then he opens his eyes. There is Greyback, still in his seat at the table. He has both arms clutched protectively toward his stomach, so Harry can't see the damage, thankfully. But Greyback is rocking back and forth, sweating profusely, crying, looking sick. All around his mouth and down his chin, he is stained with blood. Down the front of his robes, the fabric is wet, soaked with it. And on the table, in front of him, there are splatters, and streaks, and pools of it.

Harry looks away from the werewolf. The rest of the Death Eaters seem… rattled, but composed. At the furthest end of the room, Snape’s expression remains impenetrably neutral.

But Draco is crying, when Harry looks over at him. Draco isn’t making any noise, but it's like he can't get his tears under control, and while he cries he stares emptily at some undefined point in the wood grain of the table. Narcissa doesn’t comfort him. Lucius still seems trapped in his own head. And Harry promises himself that, for better or for worse, the first person he's going to try to save from this mess is Draco.

Voldemort settles back in the chair at the head of the table. For a while, he lets the silence just hang in the air while his minions process their thoughts. Then, he finally says, “I’m sure you’ve noticed that Harry Potter is standing beside me.”

Here is the subject that the Death Eaters have been waiting all day for him to address, but in the wake of what just happened to Greyback, they're all too shell-shocked to focus on Harry.

Harry supposes that’s a good thing. He doesn’t feel ready to bear the weight of their scrutiny, costuming aside. The circlet of snakes weighs heavily on his skull.

“Harry Potter belongs to me, now,” says Voldemort slowly. “You will not touch him. You will not question him. You will not allow him to come to harm. You will treat him as an extension of myself, with all the respect that I am owed. If he delivers an order, behave as if the order has come from my own lips. Is this clear?”

Every Death Eater says “Yes, my lord.”

“Apart from those actions I have explicitly outlined this evening, and those activities necessary to ensure the continued functioning of our organization, there will be no other movements. You will not confront any members of the Order, nor any civilians, without my direct approval.

“The only exception to this rule is this: if you suspect you’ve found a traitor in our midst, you may subdue and detain them before contacting me. You will not kill them, for it is only with my consent that they may be granted the mercy of death.”

Chapter Text

After the meeting concludes, Voldemort leads Harry back to their quarters with a hand on Harry’s shoulder. Just like how Harry had been unwilling to let go of Voldemort’s sleeve when leading him away from the battlefield, so too Voldemort is unwilling to break physical contact with Harry until they are safe, with the door of the bedroom shut between them and the Death Eaters.

“Are you alright,” Voldemort asks urgently, and his voice sounds quite hoarse from overuse, like maybe his vocal cords are another thing to add to Harry’s ongoing list of the limitations of Voldemort’s body. “Has this satisfied you? Is there anything else you would have asked of me?”

Harry nods, though he’s not sure what he means by nodding yet. He just scrubs a hand over his eyes and takes a deep breath, and he tries to stop thinking about the blood, and Draco crying. “I’m alright,” he breathes out, eventually, and then he finds enough focus to say, “You’re fine, Tom. That was a fine start. We’ll figure out the rest of the details as we go.”

A sort of relieved exhaustion makes Voldemort’s shoulders slump, like he had been prepared to bear Harry shouting at him for unmet expectations. On the contrary, Harry thinks that the meeting went fairly well. It was a tricky situation and Voldemort navigated it with the care it was due.

It was exhausting, though, and terrifying and miserable. Harry leans against the edge of the bed and lets out another long breath. “I think, um… that was a lot.”

“Yes,” replies Voldemort, still standing near the entryway.

“I had some things I was planning to ask you,” Harry remarks, “but there was a lot that happened and I’m still trying to get my thoughts in order.” It occurs to Harry, dully, that the way he feels right now is the way he feels after an encounter with a dementor. “Do you think… could we get some chocolate?”

Voldemort’s head tilts. “Chocolate?”

“We’re in Belgium, they’re famous for chocolate aren’t they? Maybe we could have a hot chocolate?”

Voldemort frowns. “It would not be wise to bring this request to Dolohov himself, at the moment. But I shall call for an elf.”

“Whatever you think is best,” Harry says.

Voldemort hesitates, and then his mouth stretches into a wobbly, unsure smile, like he can’t decide if he is pleased or pained by that wording. “Indeed,” he says, and then he opens the door and makes his requests with the people on the other side of the doorway.

Harry, meanwhile, removes the circlet. His scalp feels tender in all the places the metal had been weighing on. Then he removes the rings, and the boots, and by that point Voldemort has returned and cleared his throat disapprovingly.

“What?” Harry asks. “You can’t expect me to wear it all the time, can you? You said it was for public.”

“What precisely was uncomfortable for you?” Voldemort counters. “We could charm the outfit to suit your needs.”

“Must I?”

Voldemort looks away, at the door which he has shut behind him. “In anticipation of receiving unannounced visitors, I would suggest so.”

“Anyone in particular?” Harry wonders.

Then Harry scrambles backwards at the crack of a house elf apparating in, one flappy left ear popping into existence just inches in front of his nose. “Oh dear,” says the elf, blinking at Harry with big eyes, “Liefje is sorry, mister. Liefje bringed the, uh, warme chocolademelk. Enjoy please.”

The tray she sets on the table carries a tea kettle and a set of teacups and saucers, but the smell of hot chocolate is unmistakable. “Thank you, Liefje,” Harry says.

“Oh, no thanks necessary, thank you mister. Goodbye!” says Liefje, and then with another crack she disappears.

Voldemort looks at Harry, pointedly.

“Unannounced visitors,” Harry repeats, smiling. “Understood. Well, if you could make that snake thing a bit less heavy, I suppose I could keep wearing it.”

While Voldemort retrieves the circlet, Harry pours the hot chocolate. It is thick and rich, probably made with whole milk, and Harry has poured three cups of it before he realizes that first of all, it’s absurd that he’s about to offer hot chocolate to the Dark Lord, and second of all, there are only the two of them in the room so who would he pour a third cup for? But then he remembers what he meant to ask Voldemort: “Hey, um, is there a particular reason you put Draco on the spot with the—what was that, exactly? The dungeons? How many people are you holding prisoner?”

Voldemort taps his wand against the circlet, tests its weight, and then taps it again. With half of his concentration, he replies, “I do not know how many there are. It wasn’t an important thing to know, before your intervention. No less than fifty, and no more than one hundred.”

“So, I understand why you would want to keep Dolohov away from them.” Harry says, because he remembers that Dolohov has a reputation for sadism. “I’m pleased that you thought to do that. But why not just let the prisoners go?”

“In time, perhaps,” Voldemort allows. “But you understand the delicacy of this system. I do not know how many there are. I don’t know what condition they are in, nor what they may have seen or heard. We should not act rashly just to clear the blood from our hands. There is already too much of it. Better to act methodically.”

“And Draco?”

Voldemort taps the Elder Wand against each of Harry’s discarded boots. Without looking at Harry, he asks, “Is Draco Malfoy likely to torture prisoners?”

Harry hums thoughtfully. “Guess not. But he might need help. There’s a difference between not harming people and actively protecting them. He needs to know that we’d like for him to actively protect them, or else he wouldn’t even think of doing it, I bet.”

Then, Harry tastes the hot chocolate, and he makes an unashamedly satisfied noise. Voldemort gives Harry a queer look, but Harry uses his toe to scoot the other chair out from under the card table. “Have a seat, Tom, you need to try this.”

"Perhaps not," says Voldemort stiffly.

“I insist,” Harry pushes. “Just a taste! It’s good for you.”

Voldemort’s face pinches in discomfort. “It certainly would not be good for me. It would make me ill.” He unceremoniously drops the boots, and they land with a thud before flopping over to flatten against the floor.

Harry looks down at the hot chocolate, which had always seemed like a panacea back at Hogwarts, and then he stares blankly at Voldemort, wondering if it’s something like how pure, benign water could melt the Wicked Witch of the West.

“This body is generally unsuited to digest sweets,” Voldemort mutters as explanation.

Harry offers a sympathetic hum. Then he sips some more of the hot chocolate and he shuts his eyes to focus on the taste of it.

A sharp sting of grief through the bond tells Harry that with the reminder of the snake-like limitations of his body, Voldemort has just remembered again about Nagini’s passing, how she is now lost to him, how he will never see her again. Harry can piece it together from the emotional resonance, even if he can’t read Voldemort’s thoughts directly. It feels very, very familiar, like how it felt the last time Harry found a stray white feather caught in the stitches of his jumper.

“Listen,” Harry says around the tightness in his throat, as he finds the thread of a plan. “I want to speak with Draco. I think he’s been through a lot and he deserves to at least know that nobody’s going to hurt him. But he’s obviously not going to feel safe with you in the room. Maybe you should take the time to go speak with Snape and Avery about what happened to Nagini—”

“Already?” Voldemort's brow wrinkles in sudden, transparent dismay.

“What do you mean, 'already?'” Harry asks. But then the ache of it, the hunger reaches him, and he remembers that he still must continue fulfilling his own end of their bargain. “No,” Harry says as soon as he gets it, “No, not already. I didn’t mean to make it sound like I’d push you. Come and have a seat, really; you don’t have to drink anything.”

Delicately, Voldemort lowers himself to the chair, and refuses to say anything that would further expose his own need. But he doesn’t have to say anything, because Harry doesn’t mind doing this.

If I was like him, Harry thinks, from the amortentia or from the horcruxes or whatever it might have been… I’d hope someone else would take the time to share this with me, too.

So he sips the hot chocolate, and he thinks about how everyone had behaved like chocolate was some sort of real medicinal cure for the symptoms of a dementor encounter. Harry’s pretty sure it was never about the chocolate at all. It was about how the scent and taste of chocolate reminded you of good things, happy things, treats and friends and trading cards and the sweets trolley. Chocolate was probably just a quick way of cutting into that acute misery and filling it with a sense-memory reminder of happier times.

Harry reaches out to grasp one of Voldemort’s hands. Between the touch, and the memories Harry is revisiting, the bond seems to pass along the contented feeling to Voldemort. It’s not as dramatic or as intense as yesterday with the patronus, but Harry can see the lines of tension disappear, the way Voldemort shuts his eyes and makes a sound under his breath a little bit like a whimper but not quite as pitiful.

“Do you remember the first time you had chocolate as a child?” Harry asks gently. “I remember mine. My uncle came back from a work trip and brought my cousin an enormous souvenir bag with these wrapped chocolates. One of them rolled under the sofa when he was tearing into it, and I found it the next morning when I was vacuuming—cleaning the carpets, the muggle way. It wasn’t all that good, I think; it had a cherry center that tasted like medicine. But it was mine, and that’s why it was lovely.”

Voldemort is quiet for a long time. Suddenly, Harry feels that distinct social vertigo that accompanies accidentally mentioning a cupboard story to someone who hadn’t already known about the cupboard. But this is Voldemort, who is intimately familiar with Harry’s very soul, so he probably already knew about the Dursleys, broadly speaking.

“Diagon Alley,” says Voldemort softly. “There was money in the stipend to purchase a familiar. Instead, I spent it on a veritable dragon’s hoard of sweets, for if Hogwarts was anything like the orphanage, that would be the main currency. Other children would trade all manner of favors for a milk chocolate bar, I thought.”

“Did they?”

Voldemort gives him a wry look. “Not the purebloods.”

“Ah. Well, did you at least have any of the chocolate yourself?”

Voldemort stares into middle distance and nods slowly, then his lip curls before he covers his face with his free hand and laughs, once, bitterly. “That was sixty years ago. It is uncanny how clearly I can picture it. A stash in a crevice by the wall, blocked by a spare cauldron. The wrappers smelled like pewter.”

“It’s a fond memory, then?” Harry asks.

Voldemort shakes his head ruefully. “Words cannot adequately express how much I hated that boy.”

“What boy?”

“At eleven years old, Tom Marvolo Riddle was naïve, foolish, arrogant, reckless, greedy and painfully dumb. Pureblood wizards have long memories. It is no exaggeration to say that it took twenty years to fully erase and overcome every poor first impression that boy made among his social betters. Every hour of those twenty years, I nursed a profound, festering hatred for him, and the inconvenience he’d caused me. Even now, to think back on it fills me with...desperate loathing.”

“It must be painful to carry that much shame." Harry sighs, running a thumb over the backs of Voldemort’s wrinkly, reptilian fingers. "I wish the world had been kinder to you, back then. Maybe things could have been different if you hadn't been taught to hate yourself."

Voldemort snorts. "By your lights it wouldn't have made a difference. You forget, I was a monster even then. A kinder world would have only eased my rise to power, saving me the inconvenience of currying favor among the old blood."

"Maybe. If the amortentia really did make you some sort of psychopath, maybe there was no way to reach you. But in a kinder world, someone would have tried, at least."

Voldemort frowns. His fingers curl in Harry's grasp, and he turns his palm over to cover Harry's. "Perhaps this is the kindest world," he says quietly, "for this comedy of errors has created you. A piece of my own shed soul taken and nurtured in a way Riddle never could have been, then finally returned to me, to deliver me from the abyss."

Harry makes a bitter sound. "If only you hadn't killed so many people to get to this point, I might think you're right. But that isn't a kind world. That's just… a world that chooses mercy, every once in a while."

Speaking of mercy, Harry suddenly remembers that there are certain things he needs to say explicitly before he regrets not having said them down the line. “Listen, about what you did today with Greyback… I won’t get in the way of you doing things like that with the Death Eaters generally. If they were happy to torture other people, I won’t question using torture to keep them in line. But I don’t want anything like that happening to any of the Malfoys, or to Snape.”

Voldemort looks over at Harry, his gaze still wistful and tired. "What makes you think the Malfoys or Snape are exceptions to that rule, about being happy to torture my enemies?"

Because Snape was a spy, and anything he did for you after 1981 was done under duress, Harry does not say. Instead, he points out, "We've already agreed that Draco isn't capable of that sort of thing. At least, not willingly."

"And what of Malfoy senior?"

Harry considers Lucius. He remembers how eager Lucius had been to turn Harry over to Voldemort back when they'd gotten caught by the snatchers. But even then, Lucius had only been a shell of his former self. Capturing Harry would have been his only hope to escape Voldemort's disfavor. And, if Harry chooses to be particularly generous with his interpretation, perhaps Lucius had wanted to protect Draco from Voldemort's disfavor.

"I don't like him," Harry admits. "And if he starts behaving like a pompous, self-important arsehole again, I might change my mind about this. But for now, he's… sort of broken, isn't he? And hurting Lucius would hurt Narcissa and Draco as well, which seems… unnecessarily cruel. So I'd rather you just leave them all alone."

“And presumably the same reasoning applies to Severus, since Draco relies upon him as much as Lucius, if not more so.” Voldemort hesitates, studying Harry. “Unless there is… another reason you would wish to protect him?”

“You’re the one who told me what an invaluable ally he is,” Harry points out, evasively.

“But I never suggested he was naturally pliant,” clarifies Voldemort. “His loyalty still requires maintenance.”

That particularly euphemistic phrasing makes Harry’s gut twist. “Just, not Snape, alright? Just leave him be.”

Voldemort’s thin lips part in fascination, and his bright red eyes gleam with predatory intent. This is exactly why Harry has been trying so hard to be upfront with Voldemort, because when you try to evade him, like prey, it only engages his hunting instincts. He starts feeling this sadistic pleasure out of watching his target struggle and squirm. That sick pleasure is apparent in the tone of his voice, his playful disbelief when he asks, “You still think of him as an ally, don’t you? You haven’t accepted his betrayal.”

“It’s… well, it’s a little more complicated than that, but—”

“Harry, do you not realize that Snape was a spy?” asks Voldemort, with a not-so-sympathetic tutting noise. “Even when he was a member of your Order, he was always reporting back to me. His betrayal was not just the single act of murdering your mentor; he had betrayed you from the very beginning. He was the one who delivered the prophecy to me.”

And how is Harry supposed to react to this? At this point, there is not a doubt in Harry’s mind about Snape’s true loyalties, because he saw Snape’s memories. Though Snape might be talented at hiding his emotions, that doesn’t mean he’s any good at projecting false emotions, so that devastating anguish in his Pensieve memories was undeniably genuine.

So, what is Harry supposed to say to Voldemort? How can he admit that he knew all of this, without admitting that Snape was a double agent?

“Why are you telling me this?” Harry asks stiffly. “You didn’t want me to seek revenge.”

“Well, I don't want you to kill him, but that doesn’t mean he deserves your protection.” Voldemort wears a frightening smile. “He is a snake, Harry. He is one of mine.”

“Fine,” Harry grits out. “Fine, he’s a snake, whatever. But he’s like us, Tom. How much do you know about his life before he met you?”

Voldemort turns the question around on Harry. “How much do you know? Why are you so knowledgeable about the biography of your least favorite professor?”

Harry gives a sudden, anxious snort of laughter. “I had far worse professors than Snape. As for why I know so much about him… well, I know about him the same way I know about you.” Through Pensieve memories.

“Through Dumbledore,” Voldemort reasons, with a sniff of disgust. “I am indeed aware of the similarities between Severus and myself. This does not endear him to me.”

“Oh,” says Harry, finally getting a foothold. “Of course it doesn’t endear him to you. You hated Tom Riddle.”

Like a dog whose nose has just painfully discovered the claws of the cat it had been chasing, Voldemort stares at Harry with a startled, wounded expression. “This has nothing to do with Riddle.”

“Sure it does,” Harry says, sitting up straighter. “You said yesterday that you spent decades educating Snape. I thought that meant you put him through an apprenticeship or something, but that’s not what you meant, is it? You meant… you were trying to train him out of the mistakes that Riddle made. You were teaching him how to hold his own around purebloods.”

“Harry...”

Harry hums thoughtfully. “I’d never really thought about that, but, when he was younger, when he was just out of Hogwarts, he wasn’t like he is now, was he? He was still… oh, what were the words you used about your younger self? Foolish, arrogant, greedy, naïve… and it infuriated you to see him make little social missteps because it reminded you of yourself.”

Voldemort clenches his jaw tightly shut, and for a moment he looks like he might scream at Harry. But it passes. He looks down at their hands, still clasped together on the table. “Perhaps you’re right,” he mutters.

Harry squeezes his hand. “Did you torture it out of him? Was the cruciatus your teaching method?”

Voldemort’s lip curls into a silent snarl, but then he looks away from Harry. “Infrequently,” he says. “Severus is my lieutenant; I would not risk his sanity with prolonged exposure to the cruciatus.”

“But you found other ways to hurt him. You hurt him in all the ways you wanted to hurt Riddle.”

Yanking his hand out of Harry’s grasp, Voldemort stands from the table. “I shall summon Draco for you.”

“Tom—"

“Fine!” Voldemort shouts, whirling around to face Harry. “Fine, maybe you’re right. I had never considered it in that light before, but I will grant you the plausibility of your theory. I do not wish to speak of this anymore!”

Relieved to not be the one under scrutiny, Harry stands from the table, and then he steps forward towards Voldemort. He grasps Voldemort by both arms, and just holds the dark wizard in place for a moment, while Voldemort catches his breath from shouting. Harry lets what he’s feeling right now slip through the bond, the wistful bittersweet tang of empathy and regret, but also affection and pride for Voldemort’s restraint, the way he chose to cede the argument, the way he chose to remove himself from the table rather than physically lash out.

“He didn’t deserve that,” Harry says, softly, as Voldemort deflates into the warmth of the bond. “I think you can see that, now. He didn’t deserve that, and Riddle wouldn’t have deserved that either. It should be okay to make mistakes, even embarrassing ones, even in public. The only reason it wasn’t okay was because you were trying to gain the esteem of such rotten people to begin with.”

“I do not regret it,” Voldemort whispers. “Painful though the lesson may have been, Severus Snape is a far more formidable man today than he would have been without my guidance. I am proud of what I have crafted him into. And he is ever grateful for the gift of my favor, though he may not express so aloud.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Harry assents. Though he’s certain no one would be grateful to be tortured, he’s willing to set that particular conversation aside for another day. “For now, though, could you please promise me you’ll leave him alone? Not just for his sake but for yours?”

“As you wish.”

Harry nods his satisfaction, and he pets Voldemort’s upper arm. “Do you feel sated enough to go conduct business while I speak with Draco?”

Voldemort nods, slowly, still with his eyes shut, focusing on the bond, the warmth. “I must say one thing to Draco before I go, else you’ll never get through to him. You’re too much of a Gryffindor, child. You don’t know yet how to wield the power you hold.”

Given the fact that he has the Dark Lord Voldemort acting compliant and satisfied to be held by him, Harry actually feels fairly confident about his ability to wield power carefully. But he agrees to this plan anyway, if only because it has made Voldemort smile again, and without the predatory edge. Just a regular, human smile.

***

Awaiting Draco’s arrival, it suddenly occurs to Harry that his memories of casting the torture curse on Snape were not only through the eyes of the Dark Lord.

He remembers… Dumbledore was already dead. It was over. But Harry was sprinting down Hogwarts grounds, desperate to prevent Snape and Draco escaping. And all Harry could think was you just killed him! You just killed Dumbledore! You killed him! and there was no room for any other thought besides that raw fury.

So Harry tried to cast it. Not once, but twice, and with more desperation the second time. Snape was cheating with Legilimency, so neither spell connected. Even if Snape had not been cheating, he is a far better duelist than Harry, and Harry is sure, realistically, he would never have been able to land the curse. Not back then. Not when Harry was so unfocused, and felt so horrible, and wanted nothing more than to rewind the previous hour and pretend none of it had ever happened.

But if he had cast the spell, what would he have done?

There, in front of Hagrid’s hut with hot flames bursting through the windows and Fang yipping somewhere inside, in front of Draco’s pale and terrified face frozen helplessly without his escort—if the curse had connected. If Snape had dropped to the ground under the torture from Harry’s wand, what would Harry have done?

Oh, that night Harry had hated Snape more than he had ever hated anyone—more than the Dursleys, more than Voldemort, more than Dolores Fucking Umbridge. Harry had hated Snape more than he thought it was possible to hate another person. He had hated Snape so much he thought the hate might overflow and bleed out of him like burning lava.

If the curse had connected, how long would Harry have held it?

He would have wanted to make Snape scream, of course, just like he had seen Snape scream in Voldemort’s visions. By the time the screaming had begun, somebody would have interrupted them—either Draco, or one of the other Death Eaters catching up with them, or maybe Fang’s frightened barking would have forced Harry to prioritize saving the poor beast. But if they had been in a vacuum… if it had just been Harry and Snape and Crucio, when would Harry have stopped?

Voldemort's use of the torture curse is typically methodical and restrained. Voldemort casts the curse in waves, granting his victims brief respite between sessions. The actual curse never lasts more than a few minutes at a time. He doesn’t like to risk pushing them past the point of insanity—after all, if they were not a valuable pawn in some form or another, then he would not bother to torture them. He would just kill them outright.

But, that night, Harry had no use for Snape. No matter how much torture he endured, Snape would never be able to undo what he had done. Dumbledore would still be dead. So there was nothing that Harry would have wanted from Snape, except the satisfaction of watching him suffer.

With nausea rising in his throat, Harry realizes that he might not have ever stopped. He might have held the curse until Snape stopped moving. He might have killed Snape. He might have actually killed him, given the chance.

Chapter Text

At Voldemort’s summons, Draco arrives at their room looking haunted and lost, back stiff and eyes staring at nothing, saying “Yes my lord,” and “No my lord," irrespective of whether it is Voldemort or Harry he is addressing.

But Voldemort gets through to him—not particularly kindly, mind, but with a brutal clarity of purpose that slices through Draco's panic. "As the scion of a sacred twenty-eight family, you are familiar with the mechanism of privilege," Voldemort exposits. "Draco, look at me. Good. Listen to me carefully: the rules that apply to the other Death Eaters do not apply to you. You are privileged. You may speak freely without fear of retribution on yourself or your loved ones. You will not intentionally put myself or Harry Potter in danger, but any offense short of that boundary will be overlooked, because you are privileged, and you will not be hurt."

With that said, Voldemort leaves. And though Draco is still shaking, at least he sinks into the chair Harry indicates without offering up another uncomfortable, robotic honorific.

The hot chocolate helps. Harry sets a saucer and full teacup in front of Draco and tells him to drink some, and Draco complies. Some of the tension releases from his shoulders at such a familiar taste, so closely associated with safety.

Harry sips more of his own hot chocolate. The sweetness and warmth of it dissipates some of the growing nausea, but only just. When Harry puts those thoughts about Snape and the torture curse out of his mind, they are immediately supplemented with thoughts of Draco crying, and Yes my lord, and the streaks of blood on the stretched dining table.

Harry has never felt this squeamish about wielding power before. He’s felt discomfort or guilt about it in the past, sure, but he’s never felt so physically ill. Even so, Harry chooses to wear his kindest face for Draco, because this is Harry's first opportunity to ease someone's suffering, and it matters. It matters dearly to Harry.

Draco must have gone into the bathroom at some point after the meeting to wash his face and set himself to rights. His cheeks are clean of tear tracks, and his eyes are no longer puffy from crying, but his exhaustion lingers in his features. His gaze darts up at Harry's face.

"I know you're thinking it," Harry tries to tease him, far too gentle in tone to truly be considered teasing. "Go on and say it, Malfoy."

There's a flash of panic in Draco's eyes.

Harry just smiles at him. "'What the hell is going on, Potter?' Come on, say it. It's okay."

It's odd to reach back into their history looking for some kind of familiar foundation, like trying to put on clothes they've both outgrown. But Draco looks down at his cup, and he breathes out "What the hell is going on, Potter?" with such cautious resignation that Harry's stomach gives another twist of pity.

Harry looks at his own cup, too, as he puts things to words in roughly the manner he'd been rehearsing. "I spoke to Voldemort during the armistice. We discovered some sort of bond between us. Because of it, we've made a truce, and we're working together to end the war peacefully."

"The Dark Lord doesn't believe in peace," Draco whispers, though there's no one around to hear them. "He believes the strong shall inherit the earth and the meek would be lucky to be spared from annihilation."

Harry scoffs. "That does sound like him."

Draco looks at the rings adorning Harry’s fingers, and the embroidery on Harry’s doublet. “Was this… was this your plan all along, then?” Draco asks in an ambiguous tone, to gauge Harry’s reaction. “Professor Snape said once that you might turn out to be a dark lord. I didn’t—I thought he was joking.”

“What?” Harry gives a nervous laugh, “I’m not dark. This is just a costume to scare the Death Eaters into keeping their distance from me. But I’m still on the side of the Light.”

“But—but you’re literally in bed with the Dark Lord!” yelps Draco.

Startled, Harry looks over at the bed where he’d soothed and held Voldemort. No one had seen them in that compromising position, so Harry assumed they wouldn’t have to worry about such twisted rumors. It hadn’t occurred to Harry that people might construct those same rumors given only the fact that he’s been spending all this time with the Dark Lord behind a shut door in a room with a bed. “That’s not… that’s not what you think it is. It’s a thing with our magic, okay?” Harry shudders, and fixes Draco with a look. “Get your mind out of the gutter, Malfoy.”

Draco gapes. “I only meant—” he starts, but then he deflates, ducking his head down. “I’m sorry, my lord.”

Which makes Harry really want to start retching. “No, Draco, stop calling me that. We’re just talking, alright, and there’s nothing you could possibly say to me that would lead to any sort of punishment, I swear. You could call me names or insult my friends, anything, and I might get pissed off at you, but I won’t touch you, and I won’t let anyone else hurt you either.”

Draco clenches his jaw and doesn’t look up.

"I want to hear what you have to say," Harry tries. "Really. Please."

Draco crosses his arms tight against his chest and he fixes his gaze on the wall. Still, he asks in a small, impetuous voice, "Are you going to kill him, then?"

"...Voldemort?" Harry grimaces. "I won't. Not unless he gives me a reason to."

"A reason?" Draco laughs. "Unbelievable. You’re waiting for a reason. Is none of this reason enough for you, Potter? Are you waiting for an invitation?"

“Malfoy—”

“You’ve been here for one day,” Draco says wildly. “I’ve been here for three years. You have no idea the things he's done, the things he's forced me to do—”

“I have.” Harry tells him bluntly. “I've had visions of it, through his eyes. I’ve seen plenty.”

Draco stares. “That’s worse,” he breathes, “Merlin, that’s worse.”

Ashamed, Harry studies the shut door. He tries to summon up those feelings from before, the hate he’d once felt for Voldemort. But it's like he can only see his hate through a glass window, unable to reach it. “It’s not like I’ve forgotten that he was a monster," he hedges, "But I don’t see how retribution is supposed to make anything better. Not when… when I’ve already gotten him to stop hurting people.”

“He just made a man eat his own hand.”

“Greyback doesn’t count.”

“Oh? And who decides who counts and who doesn’t count?”

“Well, Greyback is a sadist and a murderer. I won’t protect someone like that from Voldemort.”

“But the Dark Lord is a sadist and a murderer too!”

“Yes, but I can control him!” Harry shouts.

Draco’s mouth snaps shut.

“I can control him,” Harry repeats, softly. It was more information than he had intended to share with Draco, or really with anyone, but it’s too late to take it back.

Draco doesn't ask how Harry can control Voldemort. Harry can see the question in his eyes, but Draco doesn't ask it, because this is the sort of information that people might be killed for knowing, and Draco is smart enough to know he doesn’t want to be one of them.

“Look,” Harry says instead, running a hand through his hair. “If I did kill him, say that’s like knocking someone off their broom. The broom keeps going. The broom could be going a mile a minute, and it could really hurt someone. So it’s better not to kill him, because I reckon I can help him land the broom.”

Draco scrubs a hand over his face. “So you’ll only keep the Death Eaters running until you can ensure they won’t be a threat when left to their own devices. And then you’ll… you’ll end it?”

“I’ll end the Death Eaters,” Harry clarifies.

Draco shakes his head, helplessly, and in a shaking voice he says, “Fuck you, Potter. You’re just as much of a self-absorbed bastard as ever.”

“The point—” Harry swallows around the nausea and starts again, “The point is, you’re protected, Draco. You and your family. So you don’t have to worry anymore about what Voldemort might do to you, because as long as I’m around, he won’t do anything. You’re safe.”

“Safe, as long as I have your favor,” Draco points out dully.

Harry rolls his eyes. “You never had my ‘favor’ in the first place.”

“Why protect me, then? Surely you don’t believe my father is a more innocent breed than Greyback. And I—” he squeezes his eyes shut, “I’ve tortured people. I’ve heard people beg me for mercy and I—”

“You were forced to.”

“I was afraid.” Draco croaks miserably. “Does that make me special in your eyes, Potter? Don’t be stupid. They’re all cowards, and I’m one of them.”

When Harry gets out of his chair the room swims, but he steels himself to ignore it, throwing himself around Draco to keep the other boy from falling apart completely. Draco stiffens, but then he returns the hug fiercely, holding on tight to what is likely the first real human contact he’s had in months, gasping a sob against Harry’s shoulder. “They’re monsters,” Harry tells him. “You’re not like them, Malfoy. For fuck’s sake, even Voldemort knows you’re not like them. He put you in charge of the dungeons because he knew you wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

“If he bid me to, I would. I h-have done.”

“And look how much you’re tearing yourself up about it. Does Greyback regret his victims? Does Lestrange? Does Dolohov? Of course not. You aren’t like them. You won’t be.”

“And now you’re the Dark Lord’s pet,” Draco tries for a sardonic tone between his sobs, “so you’re obviously a f-fantastic judge of character.”

“Shut up,” says Harry, squeezing tighter. “Moron.”

***

When Draco calms down a bit, he tells Harry some other names. Theo Nott. Gregory Goyle. He almost says Crabbe, too, out of habit, before he remembers, and his eyes grow dull. But when Harry promises to protect Nott and Goyle, Draco nods slowly in acknowledgement.

Then Harry glances at the door again, feeling Voldemort’s absence more acutely than he expected to. He knew his own proximity had a sedative effect on Voldemort, but he hadn’t realized the same was true in reverse. At least… it’s easy to pity Voldemort and want to redeem him when he’s in the room. With him gone, Harry feels… disturbed by all this unwarranted, unearned affection he's been feeling for the monster that was once Tom Riddle.

And the nausea comes in waves.

Harry stands to walk Draco to the door, planning to offer Draco his hand, a reaffirmed promise and a weak smile. But, as soon as Harry stands upright, the room spins again, more violently than before.

Oh, Harry thinks. Maybe it wasn’t just the dread and guilt that was making him feel ill.

Then he collapses.

***

After that, it’s all vague, blurry impressions of his surroundings.

Some of it is Draco’s harried whispering and shaking hands, “Potter, wake up. Wake up. What’s wrong with you? You—you can’t do this to me, he’s going to blame me. Fuck, Potter, please!”

Then the sound of retching.

***

The bond is thick with choking dread, and grief, saturated and oppressive. Destiny has always ever mocked you. You should never have let the boy out of your sight; you should never have given fate even the narrowest opportunity to steal this away from you. Fool! Always a fool! And now look at the consequences.

Clammy fingers grasp around Harry’s limp hand, gently tugging the rings from his fingers. “Bring me Severus.” demands the Dark Lord. Then, more viciously, “Fetch. Severus. Now.”

***

A more clinical touch at the pulse point of Harry’s wrist. Diagnostic spells, murmured in a familiar low timbre. The intrusive prodding of a cotton swab against the inside of Harry’s cheek before it is removed, and the diagnostic spells continue.

“Wake the Malfoy brat,” hisses the Dark Lord. “I will legilimize him.”

“If it is your will, my lord, I will attempt to wake him,” Snape responds. “But I do not believe he will have any useful insights for you.”

“Why not?”

“Because this illness is the result of a poison.” The clink of ceramic. “And if Draco had known about the poison, he would not have drunk it himself.”

***

More spellcraft. The clack of a glass stirring rod against the walls of a cup. “The main ingredient is yew tree extract.”

“Fatal?”

“At this concentration, probably not. Assuming Potter drank no more than five cups, standard cardiac regulation spells should stabilize his condition until his magic can heal the rest.”

A wave of almost debilitating relief, through the bond. “Cast them.”

Shuffling of robes. The door opening, and the sound of Voldemort’s voice muffled as he speaks to someone in the hallway. Meanwhile, Harry’s eyelids slide open without conscious intent; he cannot see, and then he can, just a little. A blurry figure standing above him.

Fingers, holding Harry’s left eyelid open. The acrid scent of Snape’s brewing robes, unmistakeable. Urgent, rushed casting: “Legilimens.”

If Harry were fully conscious, he might have decided to volunteer memories to Snape.

Instead, he occludes, like fighting against a nightmare, all instinct and reflex. Trying to resist the invader. Pain; Snape’s magic shoves violently into Harry’s mind, tearing and tugging for memories of Voldemort. Stop, a part of Harry begs, hurts!

Then rage.

***

The thud of Snape’s body impacting the wall.

“Look at me,” hisses Voldemort.

“My lord, I—”

"Look at me!" Another thud. “Legilimens!”

A grunt of pain.

***

“This was your doing.” growls Voldemort. “You poisoned him, just for the opportunity to break into his mind. And for what? To ascertain the boy’s true loyalties?”

An unfamiliar spell. A choking sound.

“Brazen and reckless. Entirely unlike you, Severus.” Voldemort’s tone is tight with rage, but the fury roars under the surface, echoing along the bond and vibrating Harry’s ribcage. “What has lit a fire under you? What is so urgent that you would so flagrantly invite my ire?”

“My lord, I only—”

“I know what you were looking for. Fool, do you think I have not searched for it myself? But that boy has no desire to see me harmed. And even if you had uncovered such a plot, it would not absolve you of your… audacious disobedience.”

More choking.

“Indeed, you were afraid your position at my right hand would be incompatible with the new state of affairs. You ought to have resigned yourself to that. I am generous enough to let you live, Severus; you were never entitled to my favor.”

“My lord,” says another voice from the doorway, warm and cheery, unaffected by the violence taking place before him.

“Rookwood,” says Voldemort tightly, “I presume you have a passing familiarity with standard cardiac regulation charms. You were a healer once, were you not?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Cast them on the boys, and monitor their conditions until my return. You shall not allow Harry Potter to die, under any circumstances.”

“Understood, my lord. Ah, Snape, have you gotten yourself into a spot of trouble there, friend?”

“Rookwood! You have your orders; do not test my patience.”

“Yes, my lord. At once.”

***

Spellcasting makes it easier to breathe. Harry is unaware of anything after that.

Chapter Text

When Harry wakes, the bedroom is dark. His body feels chilly, except for the left side of him which someone else is sleeping on. It takes some time for Harry to gain his bearings, to feel awake enough to tilt his head and look down until he can see the top of Voldemort’s head resting against his chest.

Okay, Harry thinks dazedly. Right. This is something that happens now. He blinks, then holds his palm open for his glasses, relieved when he feels them hop from the bedside table into his hand at his halfhearted summons.

For a strange moment, Harry considers falling back asleep so as not to unnecessarily rouse his companion. And then he starts berating himself for trying to be considerate with the Dark Lord. He goes back and forth like this in his mind, drowsily, before he realizes that Voldemort is not asleep.

In fact, Voldemort seems fully alert. Though his cheek is pressed flush against the warmth of Harry’s chest, he holds the Elder Wand, laid out flat across Harry’s stomach and pointed towards the door. The little light from the gap beneath the doorway reflects in Voldemort’s wide, attentive eyes.

Like a starving, feral animal defending a coveted meal.

“Tom?” Harry whispers.

“Welcome back,” says Voldemort tonelessly, still staring at the door.

It’s a bit frightening to see him like this, coiled to strike. But Harry is still groggy, disoriented and sort of hungry. He yawns, slurring out “What’s going on?”

“You’ve been in a coma for three days.”

“Oh,” Harry responds. He can… sense the weight of those three days, especially as he remembers where he is and what he’d been doing, what his relationship with Voldemort had been like. He reaches into the bond and finds it all: the stale and jagged impressions of pain, the sense of abandonment, the fear so intense it became numbing. The anguish and shame of making a mistake and paying dearly for it. “I feel better now,” Harry whispers to him. “I’m awake, I’m okay.”

Voldemort doesn’t react. He doesn’t look at Harry. “Shall I review what you’ve missed,” he offers tightly.

“Um. Yes, sure.”

“One of your people sent a patronus for you, but it would not deliver its message in my presence.”

“Oh shit. What animal was it?”

“An otter, I believe.” Voldemort’s jaw tenses. “They must have had some way of scrying upon you. You were very ill and they must have been alerted to your distress.”

“Damn, I… I need to respond to them.”

“I cannot promise that your magic is recovered enough to allow for it, but if you wish to attempt it...” He lifts himself off of Harry just enough to press the Elder Wand into Harry’s right hand. Then, with a frown of concentration, Voldemort summons Tom Riddle’s wand from the bedside table, and he settles back against Harry, pointing the old wand at the door once more.

The Elder Wand feels agreeable enough, as best Harry can tell. He concentrates on his happy lassitude, how it felt to wake up in the warmth of this bed, and he summons his stag.

“Fuck, that’s bright,” Harry hisses, shielding his eyes. “Prongs, can you tell Hermione, um. I’m still not dead. Still fine. Sorry for the scare. A little busy right now. Will get back to you later. Not in any immediate danger. That’s… that’ll have to do for now, Prongs; you’re giving me a headache. Sorry. Thank you.”

With a sheepish bow, the stag leaps out of the room and Harry lets his head fall back on the pillow, groaning. “Okay,” he says to Voldemort, feeling more lucid than before. “So… so, I was sick. I remember having a conversation with Draco… and he got sick, too. Is he alright?”

“He’s made a full recovery.”

“That’s good. Okay. What was it that made us sick?”

“Severus Snape poisoned your hot chocolate.”

Harry squints in the dark, down at the top of Voldemort’s head. “What?” he says automatically, “No he didn’t.”

Voldemort shifts, finally looking at Harry for the first time since Harry woke up. Even in the dark, his expression is clear enough, equal parts baffled and frustrated. “Yes,” he tells Harry gravely, “He did.”

“Well, alright, maybe he did,” Harry concedes, “but he probably had a very good reason for it.” That tends to be the pattern with Snape, after all. Whenever Snape does something that appears malicious, Harry later finds out that actually Snape was trying to save Harry’s life, or he was acting out a role in one of Dumbledore’s schemes, or something.

“What is wrong with you?” Voldemort snaps. “He poisoned you. You were gravely ill.”

“Well, yes, but it’s Snape. He wouldn’t just… try to kill me for no reason.”

Voldemort sits up, and with a flick of his wand the sconces flare up. He snarls at Harry, “You’re impossible. I legilimised him. I read his every thought. He brewed the poison. He delivered the poison to the kitchens. He spelled it into your hot chocolate kettle. All with the explicit intent to harm.”

“Yes, but—”

“As he was brewing, he acknowledged that a poison as lethal as this very well might kill you outright. Granted, it was not his intended outcome, but he made no special effort to prevent it.” With a hysterical edge, Voldemort raises his wand. “Shall I pensieve this?! Is that what it will take to break this absurd loyalty you feel towards the man who has habitually betrayed you?”

In the light, Voldemort looks… awful. His skin looks greyer than usual, dehydrated and loose, with dark smudges under the eyes from, presumably, lack of sleep. His grip on the wand is awkward, his fingers stiff with blisters.

How long has he been in this bed? How tightly has he been gripping the Elder Wand and scaring others away like this, primal and defensive? Harry supposes it makes an unfortunate bit of sense. Voldemort had been reluctant to leave Harry’s side in the first place, and the poisoning would only have reinforced that anxiety, leaving the Dark Lord in a state like… this.

If not for the matter of the poisoning, Harry might offer to stay in bed with him, to hold him for a little while and gentle him through the bond. But it’s beginning to dawn on Harry that a frightened Voldemort is a dangerous Voldemort, and there’s no telling what he might have done—

***

Harry remembers—

The boy has been unconscious for twenty-four hours now. Harry sees his own body, looking small and helpless atop the bedcovers. He sees Rookwood, snoring on a cot in the corner while Voldemort maintains the charms. The incriminating kettle and drinkware still sit on the card table, though the sample in the cup has turned a sickly green after all the diagnostic charms.

With the magic, Voldemort can hear every beat of Harry’s heart. The way it tries to stutter out of rhythm, and the way the magic gently coaxes it back into synchronicity. The fragile thump, thump, thump.

All this time I believed that my favor and my discipline would ensure Severus’s loyalty, and that would be enough. But he has always been intelligent, and he has always been a liar, and I allowed his willfulness because it was familiar, because it was charming, like precociousness in a child.

Voldemort stares at the boy’s body, source of all good. Defenseless and small.

How dare he, Voldemort seethes. All of my generosity, every time I granted mercy, all the ways I hoped for his success… how dare he. How dare he be the one to take this away from me.

Utterly helpless in the face of Harry Potter’s fragility, Voldemort wakes Rookwood, then leaves for the dungeons. How dare he. Thump, thump, thump. How dare he.

And the feel of the whip. The sight of the blood, like hot black syrup in the darkness. The body—fragile, fragile enough that Voldemort can sink fingernails into the mess and peel away the skin while his victim, delirious with pain, begs for mercy. “Not this time, Severus,” Voldemort hisses into the darkness. “You will not have my mercy again. You have abused that privilege.”

Harry feels it, the handle of the whip and the arc as he strikes the man. The way its enchantments cut into the body, rending flesh to the bone. It feels bitter and vengeful and righteous. It is so satisfying when the body ceases its struggles.

***

“Oh God,” Harry whispers. “Did you kill him?”

Voldemort’s eyes flash. “No,” he grits out. “I left that for you.”

“Tom, I asked you not to hurt him.”

“These particular circumstances seemed exceptional.”

Harry’s chest hurts. “I need you to take me to him. Now.”

Voldemort doesn’t seem surprised at this, but the hurt is palpable. He won’t look at Harry. He blinks a few times at the wall and then he rises from the bed. With a flick of his wand, his over-robes are in place. Numbly, Harry follows. He discovers he’s been dressed in some sort of soft pajamas, but he doesn’t care to take the time to change. He takes the grey knit throw blanket from the edge of the bed, and he wraps it around himself to keep the warmth in. Then he slips into those worn trainers he’d been wearing during the battle, which he finds exactly where he’d left them, neatly tucked under the little bench against the wall.

Nervously, he tries to remember all the healing spells he’d learned with Hermione on the run.

***

There are no dungeons in Dolohov’s summer estate in Belgium. Instead, Voldemort apparates them to a cobblestone path leading towards the entrance of a different estate entirely; “Goyle,” he answers Harry’s querying look. “France.”

It’s dark out, and the sky is particularly clear here, painted with swirls of stars and galaxies and distant planets. Harry’s having a hard time summoning his memories of healing spells, but looking at the sky, he immediately remembers the incantation for the spell that reads the current time and date from the position of the stars in the sky. That’s practically the only thing he retained from his final year of Divination classes. He doesn’t cast it, though.

***

Harry remembers—

Voldemort considers the position of bondage: Severus’s wrists are shackled tightly to the mounting point in the floor of the cell. It does not hold him in any particular position, but instinct does; curling up from the pain, protecting his front and extremities.

Earlier, Voldemort took his wand from him, and placed it neatly on the designated shelf at a standing wizard’s eye level, near enough to taunt. Severus hadn’t resisted—he’d have been a fool to try. Lord Voldemort’s will is inexorable. Even if Voldemort had not disarmed him, the runes in the shackles and around the perimeter of the room would have prevented Severus from making any use of his magic.

This is not new. Voldemort has made Severus endure lashings before.

But Voldemort has never felt like this when delivering the blows.

The use of a physical weapon in lieu of the torture curse has always been an attempt at restraint, with the location of the strikes chosen deliberately, methodically. This time, there is no restraint. This is not calculated discipline; this is anger, this is a kick in the ribs, this is a whip enchanted to always strike true, always cut deep and flay the body open.

Every grunt of pain gives satisfaction to the sadistic animal inside Voldemort. Every flinch, the way his target’s body curls over itself as if trying to hide itself. Perhaps Severus is also reduced to animal instincts, else he might realize how futile are these feeble attempts to escape the pain.

Eventually the blows drive Severus forward onto his knees. Then, with the imprecision of Voldemort’s fury, he lands a lash across the soles of his feet—Severus howls, like an animal, trying to cover himself with his body again.

But Voldemort still hears Harry’s heartbeat. Every stutter renews his fury. So he puts his boot on the center of his victim’s back, pushing the body prone. He has found a new target for the whip.

***

The Goyle manor is smaller than Dolohov's place in Belgium, though it’s hard to tell the full scale of it in the dark. As he follows Voldemort through the arched doorway, Harry notes the inside of the building is dark as well, with sheets covering most of the furniture in the foyer and the adjacent sitting rooms. No one’s living here, it seems. The Death Eaters must only be making use of the space for its dungeons.

They come to stand before a heavy, warded door, just adjacent to the kitchen.

“Tom,” Harry says, and Voldemort pauses with his hand on the doorknob.

Harry feels suddenly afraid of what they'll find on the other side of the door. Now that he's starting to remember pieces of what must have been unconscious visions through Voldemort’s eyes… “You’re sure he’s still alive?” he asks in a small voice.

Voldemort nods, once.

“If you had killed him like that, I don’t think I would have ever been able to forgive you for it,” Harry whispers.

Voldemort’s jaw tenses. Perhaps he wants to point out how absurd it is that Harry could excuse the murder of his own parents, but would draw the line at murdering the man who had just made an attempt on his life. Instead, Voldemort only says, “I take it you mean that as a warning.”

“I think I do.”

Voldemort nods. “Heard and understood, then.”

“And,” Harry adds, “you’ll help me heal him?”

“I will do as you ask of me,” Voldemort concedes. Then his lip curls into a snarl, and he continues, “If he makes another attempt to kill you—”

“Then you will subdue him, non-lethally.”

“Fine,” Voldemort bites out. “Fine. We will renegotiate this at a later time.” Then he pushes open the door with such force that the door itself makes a solid cracking sound against the wall it impacts.

Beyond the door is a claustrophobic stone stairwell leading down to a lower floor. Tiny runes carved in the base of the wall give off a faint green glow, illuminating the steps just enough so that the stairway isn't a tripping hazard. At the bottom of the stairs they reach a long black corridor with walls of carved stone, and every few feet the walls are interrupted by a set of metal bars on either side; prison cells, sitting empty.

All the rest of the Death Eaters' prisoners must be kept in dungeons back in Britain, then. Voldemort must have made an exception for Snape, finding a dungeon on the continent so he wouldn’t risk exposure to the British Ministry every time he tried to apparate across the channel.

He didn’t leave behind a guard to watch Snape, either. No need for that, Harry supposes, when Voldemort can monitor Snape’s condition remotely via the mark. It must be better for Snape, in some ways, to not have to listen to the cries of other prisoners, nor endure the torments of a bored and sadistic warden.

But it must also feel isolating, Harry thinks, to be tortured and then left completely alone, insensate and vulnerable, chained in the basement of an unfamiliar building, miles and miles from any other human being.

Harry has always known that Voldemort is capable of causing an incomprehensible magnitude of suffering, but Harry has never been in a position to heal any of that suffering himself, so he’s always been forced to swallow it and turn away from it, refocusing his efforts on the war, knowing that any effort to save the single individual victim would be futile.

Now that Harry is in a position to help an individual victim, each new memory he unwraps from Voldemort’s perspective settles like another massive weight on his body, making it hard to breathe.

But there is this Gryffindor thing—at least, Harry hopes it’s a Gryffindor thing, and not some leftover coping behavior from his childhood. There’s this Gryffindor thing that comes up when you’re faced with an impossible, terrifying, unbearable, necessary task.

You turn off the part of you that thinks. You simply do what must be done.

Voldemort stops at the end of the corridor and turns to face the last cell door on the left. Harry does not hesitate before stepping into view of the cell, and he does not process any of what he sees inside. Instead, he asks Voldemort to unlock the door, to which Voldemort responds, “I never locked it.”

Given the state of the body on the floor of the tiny, bloody room, this seems reasonable. Harry puts a hand around one of those cool metal bars and gives it a tug to squeak the doorway open on its hinge.

The body makes a sound that Harry blocks out of his mind. “What healing can you do now before we move him?” he asks Voldemort.

“Shall I attempt an Episkey?” Voldemort asks dryly.

“How has he not bled out? Have you—” Harry pauses, and in the tiny circle of his tunnel vision (entirely dissociated from its context) he sees some pale stripes among the deeper wounds. “You cauterized some.”

“Where necessary.” From the shelf, Voldemort retrieves Snape’s wand and a skeleton key, the latter of which he tosses towards Harry without warning. Seeker instincts catch the sharp, weighty metal before it can land on the body.

Harry almost asks what to do with the key before he remembers what he saw in the visions. The body is folded up compactly over itself like a snipped marionette, but somewhere underneath it are the shackles. Harry has to touch it.

He tries to lift the shoulder from the floor, but the whole body flinches and—

“No,” the body pleads in an unrecognizable whisper. “No more. No more.”

“Sir,” Harry says without thinking, “I’m here to help—”

“Severus,” Voldemort interjects in a loud, impatient voice. “Your punishment is over.”

When Harry tries to lift the shoulder again, he meets no resistance beyond shivers and gasps of pain.

Harry uses the key to unlock one cuff, then the other. The body does not move. There is still tension keeping the soles of the feet pressed to the insides of the thighs; the tattered trousers fabric is fully soaked with blood. The muscles will strain in this position. Better to make the body entirely prone for transport.

So Harry moves the legs.

The body makes a sound, a vocalized sound, and Harry can’t think clinically anymore, because that's Snape's voice. He's heard Snape being tortured before but he's never heard him make a sound like that.

Then he sees the feet. "Christ," Harry whimpers, impotently.

A stupid part of Harry wants to call for Madame Pomfrey, wants to drag his broken professor up from the dungeons and into the hospital wing where he ought to be. "Can we apparate with a mobilicorpus, or will that drop him?" he asks Voldemort instead.

"Really, Harry, your unwavering faith in my omniscience is quite flattering."

Harry stares at Snape's body. Just do it, he tells himself. He casts a featherweight charm, and then he gathers Snape into his arms as best he can manage. There is no way to avoid touching the wounds, and the touch makes Snape struggle, cry out and plead nonsensically. Blood soaks into the silk sleeves of Harry's pajamas. Urgently, Harry asks Voldemort, “Do you know anything to block the pain?”

"Stupefy," says Voldemort, and Snape falls unconscious.

Harry shoots him a glare, then shifts his grip on the limp body in his arms. An arm around Snape’s middle and another under his knees… it’s not the best way to carry him, given the locations of the wounds, but Harry couldn’t think of anything better on the spot and they really need to get him medical attention as fast as possible. With Snape’s body cradled against him, Harry can feel the feverish heat of him.

After the uncomfortable tug of apparition, they’re back in the bedroom in Belgium.

Chapter Text

The sheets are still upturned. The sconces are still lit. The room is still empty. Voldemort, upon closer inspection, looks just as drained as before.

Snape's shallow breathing puffs against Harry's shirt. Juxtaposed with the inoffensive scent of the bedroom, the odor sticking to Snape is more obvious: blood, sweat, urine, and bile.

Stiffly, Voldemort gestures to the corner of the room furthest from the door, where the glow of the sconces cannot reach. When Harry squints, he can make out the silhouette of a cot. “Why is this here?” Harry asks, already moving towards it.

“Rookwood was tasked with keeping you alive. He was not permitted to leave this room until your condition was deemed stable.”

“I’m surprised you let him sleep at all,” Harry offers absently. He lowers Snape down onto the cot. It’s not even really a bed, just a canvas stretched out over a metal frame, but given all the gore, it’s probably better to avoid a mattress and sheets for now.

Harry stares down at Snape, considering. Then he rolls Snape over onto his front, moving one of his arms under his head so he won’t suffocate or twist his neck. Then he cancels the featherweight charm, and the body sinks into the canvas slightly.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Harry says without looking at Voldemort. “I understand you’re not much help with healing. I need you to provide me with someone else who can help. Would that be Rookwood?”

Voldemort coughs. “You want Rookwood to heal Severus?”

Harry glances at him. “Yeah. Why? Is there something I need to know about that?”

Voldemort studies Harry for a moment, and then his gaze flickers down to Snape. “No,” he says, “I suppose not. Rookwood will obey orders, and he is the most skilled healer of the options available. I will summon him.”

Nodding, Harry turns his attention back to the unconscious man. It won’t matter if there’s history between Rookwood and Snape, because Harry is going to be here the whole time, and he won’t let anything bad happen to Snape. Not again. Not when he’s here to stop it.

He sits on the floor beside the cot and watches Snape’s face.

***

This is the same man who called Hermione an insufferable know-it-all in front of the whole class. Who nearly killed Neville’s toad. Who enjoyed—unmistakably enjoyed—taunting and belittling Harry at every opportunity.

But Harry feels almost nostalgic for that time. By virtue of being an irascible bastard, Snape had made things seem so simple. He was an easy man to hate, and hating Snape had been a fantastic distraction from the darker things looming in the periphery of Harry’s life. Looking back, Harry misses the days when his biggest concern was whether Snape was likely to assign a detention that would conflict with quidditch practice.

He looks different like this. Younger, maybe, without all that furious tension wrinkling his forehead. Now that Harry knows the whole story, he knows that Snape was by far the youngest member of the Hogwarts staff, though you wouldn’t have seen the age discrepancy unless you saw him alone, at rest. And even if you did, he might just appear weary, and that would make him seem just as old as ever.

But now Harry notices things he wouldn’t have seen otherwise: the splay of Snape’s eyelashes, the chapped lips, the tiny wheeze of his breathing. I’ve got you, Harry wants to say to him. I’m not going to hurt you.

***

“Nice to meet you properly, lad,” says Rookwood with a smile, and he shakes Harry’s hand. He’s an older fellow, well built, with greying curls and lots of laugh lines around his eyes. “Figured I’d either meet you here, or I’d be right behind you to meet you in the afterlife. Rather glad it’s here.”

Bemused, Harry glances over Rookwood’s shoulder at Voldemort, but the Dark Lord seems uninterested in meeting Harry’s gaze. “Er,” he says to Rookwood. “Nice to meet you. Can you help, please?”

Rookwood casts a charm for some temporary overhead lighting, then starts to examine the patient. A flick of his wand removes a layer of grime from Snape, and Harry winces at how much worse it all looks in the harsh white glow of the lighting charm. “Oh, what’s the boy gotten himself into this time?” Rookwood asks, using the tip of his wand to nudge some scraps of cloth around to get a better look at the wounds. When he reaches Snape's feet he grimaces. “Nasty bit of work, there.”

“Is there a potion, or…?” Harry prompts, because in the time Rookwood has taken for his examination, Madame Pomfrey would have already seen to three patients and scolded a fourth.

“Sort of,” Rookwood replies. “Poor Severus had us well supplied before the battle, so we’ve got enough salves and general healing draughts to spare for him. But those types of magic only accelerate healing.”

“Isn’t that what we want?”

“Well, have a look here,” says Rookwood, pointing with his wand to the feet, and… a shiver runs up Harry’s spine when he realizes what Rookwood is showing him. “You see that? That’s bone. Salve’ll help you grow most of the skin and muscle back, but you’d need a lot of it, and it’d still take a couple weeks before all those places are fully healed over. Even then you’ll have a lot of scarring. May as well just let it—”

“Augustus,” Voldemort interrupts from across the room. “Check for broken bones.”

Rookwood nods agreeably, then runs a diagnostic spell. A tiny skeleton glimmers in the air before him, with discolored sparkles at some of the ribs, the left hip, the wrists, and many of the bones in the feet. “Yes, my lord, the extremities will need some plaster,” says Rookwood, dismissing the spell. To Harry, he explains, “The faster the body starts healing, the faster you’re stuck with the results. Best to set the broken bones in plaster, so you don’t have to re-break them later when your metacarpal fuses to your trapezoid, am I right? Hah!” He gives a big belly laugh.

“And the fever?” Harry prompts. “And the blood loss?”

Rookwood smiles kindly, giving Harry’s shoulder a squeeze. “Don’t you worry about the blood loss, lad, I always carry a couple replenishers on me.” He pulls a familiar potion vial out of the pocket of his robes, and before Harry can say anything, he spells the contents of the vial right into Snape’s stomach.

Harry shoots a look of alarm at Voldemort, who is still observing passively. At least Voldemort doesn't seem worried that Rookwood might lie about the potion. And when Rookwood pulls out the second dose, Harry can see the label—brewed by Severus Snape, of course. Probably safe, then.

“As for the fever,” Rookwood says, “that’s just the body trying to fight off infection. For that, we’re just going to keep the wounds as clean as possible. A bath with soap and water, and then the spell to apply bandages—do you know that spell? Very convenient when you’re dealing with so many injuries on the same patient; saves a load of time. The incantation is—”

“I will show the boy the bandaging charm,” Voldemort interrupts, with a note of irritation. “Rookwood, go to Dolohov and ask for the nearest reputable apothecary. There, you will purchase clean bandages, essence of murtlap, a full course of dittany-based healing potion, and Skele-Gro.”

Rookwood freezes, his cheeks turning pink. “My lord, I… I cannot—”

“Tell Lucius it is for Snape; he will provide the funds.”

Rookwood’s eyes narrow, and some of the humor returns to his expression. “Will he, now?”

“Also…” Voldemort continues forcefully, “moonstone, pomegranate juice, and a porcupine quill. Go.”

“Yes, my lord,” says Rookwood, cheery again. He squeezes Harry’s shoulder once more, promising “I’ll be back in a jiffy!” before trotting out of the room.

***

“Should I wait for him to come back?” Harry asks. His hands twist uselessly in the grey blanket wrapped around his shoulders. “Or… he said soap and water to wash the wounds.”

Voldemort, who is slouching and scowling at the floor, tilts his neck so he can scowl from a new angle. He doesn’t say anything.

Harry looks over Snape’s unconscious body with trepidation. “Do I have to bathe him?”

“You don’t have to do anything,” Voldemort spits out.

“Yes, but, is that—is that what one ought to do, in this situation?”

There’s that flash of hurt again. It’s acute; the sort of frustrated pain that would have made Harry’s eyes start to burn, if the emotion had originated from him in the first place. Instead, Voldemort is the one blinking furiously at the floor and gripping the sleeves of his own robes with white knuckles. “One ought to execute a traitor,” says the Dark Lord.

“Tom.” Harry sighs. “Look, if this weren’t urgent then I could properly coddle you the way you clearly need right now, but—”

Voldemort’s eyes bulge with fury. “Coddle?” he yelps, and then he staggers into a dueling stance with his wand pointed at Harry, “Crucio—”

The curse hits Harry square in the chest, catching him off guard. The pain never arrives, probably for lack of real intent on the part of its caster, but the fact that Voldemort tried to curse him at all makes Harry’s blood boil. “Really?” Harry shouts. “Really, we’re doing that again?”

Voldemort lunges forward, and his spidery fingers yank on Harry's blanket-cape. "He tried to kill you," he says, and there's something like begging in his tone. "Now you wish to bathe him and relieve his pain—he tried to kill you!"

"You're one to talk!" Harry counters.

Voldemort’s mouth hangs open in profound anguish. He gathers himself enough to whisper, “I am not a present danger to you. He is.”

Harry scoffs. “Look at him, Tom. Look at what you’ve done to him.”

Still refusing to release Harry’s blanket, Voldemort peers over Harry’s shoulder at the body on the cot. There is no sting of regret forthcoming along the bond, of course, but Voldemort does at least offer an unenthused grumble of acknowledgement.

“He’s disarmed, feverish, and unconscious; I think I could probably hold my own against him in a fight, don’t you?” The humor falls flat. “I know that you cared about him, once. You had a funny way of showing it, but you did care. Can you please just focus on that for a little while, and help me?”

Voldemort says nothing for a long time, staring at Snape, as if waiting for the unconscious man to suddenly spring up and shout the killing curse. But Snape just lays there, and eventually Voldemort sighs and tucks his head down against Harry’s shoulder, bending his spine to fit. “You don’t have to bathe him,” he says, muffled against the blanket. “You’ve already valiantly rescued him from my wrath, and his condition is stable. Additionally, the potions I’ve sent Rookwood to purchase are far, far more expensive than what Rookwood would have prescribed, left to his own devices. You would have resented me, had I allowed your ignorance of those matters to impede your goals. Severus shall heal, even without you personally attending to him.”

Harry rolls his eyes. “He deserves proper medical care, Tom.”

Voldemort growls, “The mere idea of you bathing your betrayer is deeply profane, on a biblical level.”

With a furrowed brow, Harry leans back a bit to look at Voldemort. “Are you serious? That’s what's bothering you? The… what, the symbolism?"

“He tried to kill you,” Voldemort whimpers, watery-eyed and pleading. “He almost took you away from me. He doesn’t deserve your care. He deserves to die.”

Astounded, Harry shakes his head. “You are such a hypocrite,” he says, shoving him away. “Go start the water.”

***

Snape's still bleeding. Harry hadn’t realized it before, but it’s more obvious in the tub. The trails of his blood are suspended in the water, like every lashmark has an aura, morbid pink against the porcelain white background.

It sort of reminds Harry of that awful day in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom, the way Draco’s blood spattered onto the broken sinks, the way it diffused through the puddles on the floor.

Harry remembers Snape chanting that healing spell, though he doesn’t remember the specific words. It’s really terrible luck that Snape is the one who is so severely injured, since he’s also the only person Harry has ever witnessed doing such powerful healing. Then again, even if Snape were conscious, his magic would be far too depleted to heal himself.

So they continue. The bathing isn't nearly as much of an ordeal as Harry had expected. It ought to have felt strange and uncomfortable to undress his professor and wash him. A childish part of Harry had insisted that Snape would be ugly under his clothes, just like his ugly face. And it turned out he was ugly… but only because his body had been so thoroughly beaten. Bruised and bloodied skin stretched taut over his skeleton—there was no aesthetic judgement to be made there. It was clinical, not embarrassing. Harry acclimated to the nudity quickly, and now there’s no hesitation in Harry’s hands as he works.

A healthy man should have recovered from the stupefy by now, but the fever has kept Snape under until these past few minutes. He’s only just now beginning to brush against the barrier of consciousness. Harry is trying to be gentle, cupping his palm to pour warm-not-hot water over the wounds on the shoulders, but Snape tenses, blindly flinching from the pain. When his eyes squint open, his gaze travels in confused, slow circles. He looks at Harry, but with only vague recognition.

“You’re safe,” Harry says helpfully, but Snape just looks at him with that blurry, wary expression. Eventually the man’s concentration breaks, when he heaves a gasping breath, succumbing to a throb of pain that his delirium had failed to mask. His eyes stay shut again after that.

Between Harry’s and Voldemort’s magic, they maneuver Snape out of the bath and back to the cot. Snape isn’t strictly conscious by this point, if his limp, helpless shivering is any indication.

“You’ve got him all clean, then?” Rookwood bustles into the room and sets his medical satchel on the floor by the cot. “Blimey, if I'd had someone like you heading the nursing station in DMAC, I'd never have transferred to Mysteries.”

His return sets Harry at ease, because now there’s something to be done for Snape that amounts to more than water and humiliation. “Where’s the healing salve?” Harry asks. “I can help… just, show me how.”

But Voldemort interrupts them. “For your information, Augustus, he is recovering from stupefaction and he is beginning to regain consciousness. Mind yourself around your patient.”

“Yes, my lord. And here are the ingredients you requested. They had no African crested porcupine quills, but they had a stock of Indian crested—”

“That will do.” Voldemort snatches the ingredients from Rookwood and, after banishing the remains of the hot chocolate, he sets them on the card table. He also collects a small brass cauldron from a drawer under the armoire—it’s really small for a cauldron, like the size of a bludger. Harry’s not enough of a potioneer to recognize the standard sizes by sight, but he remembers that the numbers go up the smaller the cauldron, so that might be a size eleven or twelve.

“I don’t need to know what that’s for, do I?” Harry asks him.

“Not at the moment,” Voldemort growls, “and not in present company.”

“Fine, then,” Harry yields. There are more important things to attend to, anyway. Harry stands beside Rookwood. "Tell me what to do."

“Salve and bandages first, then Skele-Gro,” Rookwood explains. “After he takes the Skele-Gro, he’ll have to keep himself still for a couple of hours, and that’ll be mighty difficult for him if we keep poking and prodding at all the worst cuts to put the salve on. So we’ll do the salve first.”

“He’s still feverish,” Harry says.

“Aye, I don’t doubt that. Fighting infection, like I said. We’ll keep everything clean so we don’t make it worse.” Then Rookwood casts a charm to sterilize his hands, and he shows Harry how to cast it on himself.

“No gloves?”

“That’s muggle thinking, boy. This is magical healing. You and I have magic in our bodies,” Rookwood wiggles his sterilized fingers with a wink, “and our friend Severus here has magic in his body, too. All these systems work best when they’re directly in concert with one another. There’s a sort of… activation energy, that the healer’s magic passes into the salve.”

“So… it wouldn’t work with gloves on?”

Rookwood tilts his head back and forth ambiguously. “It would, of course, else only the most powerful mages could become healers and we all know that isn’t true. Even a squib could make a passable nurse. But it’s just not quite as effective as this. Here, lad, give me your hand.”

Rookwood pours a generous portion out of the bottle and over Harry’s hand. It tingles coolly on his fingers, and the sensation reminds him of the sunburn-relief potion Snape taught in second year, made with boiled cucumbers and aloe. This potion is creamier, though, like the texture of cake frosting, and it smells like… Harry’s chest clenches up. It smells like the horcrux hunt. It smells like Hermione’s bag. It smells like fear, and splinching, and snake venom, and charred flesh.

Without acknowledging the fact that Voldemort is now staring at him across the room, Harry lets out a breath, and he rubs the salve between his palms to warm it.

“That’s the good stuff,” Rookwood whispers conspiratorially. “That’s the dittany; it costs an arm and a leg to brew. When I was a boy, folks used to say Nobby Leach must’ve been using our tax money to put dittany on his papercuts.” He chortles. “Severus is a lucky man to have friends like he does. Here, Harry, stand opposite me and we’ll work our way down from the shoulders, yeah?”

While Voldemort ignores them in favor of his secretive brewing project that Harry will have to address later, Harry focuses on trying to be gentle with Snape. He braces his fingers against a section of unbroken skin, then uses his thumb to paint the salve across the line of a deep cut. He tries to pile enough of the potion on the pad of his thumb so he won’t actually make contact with the raw skin.

Likewise, Rookwood is taking care to be gentle, for which Harry feels unaccountably grateful. When Snape begins to moan from the pain, and tension ripples up and down his narrow torso as he tries feebly to escape the contact, it is Rookwood who hushes him, kindly, like a healer would. “Alright there, Severus,” Rookwood murmurs, giving Snape’s uninjured bicep a pat with potion-damp fingers, “keep still, now. We’re halfway done and you’re going to feel much better for it afterwards.”

Snape grunts out a weary acknowledgement, though Harry’s not sure how much of that he understood. With Snape face-down like this, it’s hard to even tell if he’s awake, or if he’s just in that twilight stage between sleep and consciousness.

Except… with a prickle of awareness, Harry realizes Snape is watching him. At the head of the cot Snape has twisted himself to peer back over his shoulder with one eye. He seems more lucid, if antagonism evidences lucidity. Harry backs off, lifting his hands peaceably. "Sir," Harry says, "are you… you’re awake?”

Their eyes meet. Harry has this sense, suddenly, that the only thing preventing Snape from casting Legilimens at this moment is his physical inability to do so. It’s obvious, from that stare, that Snape wants to cast it. Like the crackle in the air before a bolt of lightning, or the way a vampire’s incisors drop right before the bite… this fixated, icy stare from Snape has always preceded an invasion of Harry’s mind. But it’s hopeless. Snape isn’t in a state to cast anything right now, let alone with the precision to keep from damaging both their minds.

So he just stares.

Harry wonders, dully, how Snape must feel, now that he’s conscious enough to recognize what’s happening. To find himself disarmed, crippled with injury, and naked in front of them, must feel… excruciatingly mortifying. Or maybe the pain is bad enough that it blocks out the shame.

In a hoarse, parched voice, Snape grinds out, “Why am I not dead?”

“Incarcerous,” says Voldemort, flippantly, without looking up from his brewing. Thin whipcord ropes bind Snape’s wrists and ankles to the cot.

“Tom!” Harry yelps, “Let him go! What’s your problem?”

“If he is lucid enough to speak, he’s lucid enough to try to escape your tender care,” says Voldemort with a sneer. “Likely injuring himself as well as anyone else around him.”

“He’s right,” Rookwood warns Harry. “We’ll be getting to his feet soon, and that’s not going to be pleasant.”

“No,” Snape snarls, yanking on the ropes, reopening the deep gash on his left ankle. His lucidity gives way to some kind of primal terror. The cot screeches along the floor with his momentum.

Harry looks dubiously at the damage along the feet, the fraying muscles, the rent flesh, the bone. Of course Snape would tear himself to pieces just to keep them from touching him there. “Damn it,” Harry barks out, “don’t either of you have some kind of anaesthetic?!”

Voldemort leans back in his seat to face Rookwood. “Murtlap essence could take the edge off,” he offers breezily. “Or whiskey, I suppose.”

“Stupefaction’s more effective,” reasons Rookwood, readying his wand.

Harry lunges at Rookwood to slap his wand down. “What the hell?” Harry shouts, “He just woke up from being stupefied; don’t you know how dangerous that would be?” It’s so fundamental—it’s basic duelling etiquette, drilled into Hogwarts second-years the same day they learn to cast the damn spell. Rookwood must know that.

Rookwood smiles, and claps a hand on Harry’s shoulder. “Oh, don’t you worry. Our friend Severus is a crossbreed; he’s sturdier stock than that.”

Snape stiffens. Flushed with exertion from his struggles, he levels a piercing glare at Rookwood’s back.

Harry blinks at Rookwood. “Sorry, what was that? What did you just say?”

“Well, muggle brains are different from ours, lad. Mental magics aren’t as dangerous for muggles; structural differences, a fluke of evolution. That’s why the Ministry can go around obliviating them all the time.” Rookwood smiles fondly at their patient. “Severus here is half-muggle, so he’s hearty. No need to worry about repeated stupefaction; really, it’ll be better for him than the alternatives. He won’t want to be conscious for this.”

For one eerie moment, Harry almost believes him. It sounds reasonable, especially coming from someone friendly like Rookwood, who really does seem to care for Snape’s welfare. Even now, he steps away from Harry to hush Snape and mildly scold him for reopening the wounds, and he tenderly paints some more salve on the bleeding cuts at Snape’s wrists.

But then Harry remembers the word crossbreed, and the way it sounded so insidiously harmless when Rookwood spoke it.

“Get out.”

Rookwood startles, looking up at Harry with his brow curled up in confusion. His fingers are still gentling Snape’s hand to comfort him. Snape says nothing, and he shuts his eyes in resignation; despite his fury at this treatment, Snape’s body is beyond exhausted, and it takes far more energy to resist than to submit.

“Get out,” Harry says again. Something about watching the skin-on-skin contact makes Harry feel sick with rage. “Don’t touch him. Get out, now.”

Rookwood holds up his hands in surrender, his face crestfallen. “What—lad, what did I do? What’s wrong? I’m—whatever it is, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do anything wrong by you.”

“Harry,” says Voldemort.

“Get out!” Harry shrieks, brandishing the Elder Wand at Rookwood. “Leave! I never want to see your face again—”

“Harry!” White fingers wrench at Harry’s arms, and Harry feels the wave hit him right in the sternum: concern, calm, focus. He begrudgingly turns to face the Dark Lord. Their eyes meet.

Rookwood stands near the doorway, distressed and regretful.

“Augustus Rookwood is loyal,” Voldemort says meaningfully. “He wishes to serve you. Tell him what you wish from him, and he will do it. He cannot be blamed for not knowing how to please you.”

“He’s a racist!” Harry cries.

“He’s a Death Eater,” Voldemort retorts, “which you knew. Why are you so surprised?”

Harry doesn’t have a good answer for that. Of course Rookwood is a Death Eater. But he’d seemed so good-humored, so kind in the past few hours that Harry had entirely forgotten to wonder how a man like that could be following someone like Voldemort.

Rookwood had spouted those revolting, eugenical lies as if he actually believed them.

Harry shuts his eyes. A week ago he would have been distrustful of Rookwood from the start. How did he forget to be cautious of an honest-to-god Death Eater? Why is it so easy to be near these people, up close? Why is it so easy to forget what they are?

Well, Harry’s not the one getting called a crossbreed, so that might have something to do with it.

“Leave the room, Rookwood.” Harry instructs mutedly, without looking at the man. “Stay outside. If I have a question for you, I'll find you and ask it. Barring life or death situations, I don’t want you touching Snape or coming anywhere near him. And I don’t want you to say anything about blood purity in my presence, ever.”

“Yes, my lord,” replies Rookwood, miserably. He leaves, and shuts the door behind him.

Chapter Text

Harry concentrates on the smell of the dittany, then murmurs “Vulnus ferula,” the way he had rehearsed with Voldemort. Clean bandages wriggle out from the medical satchel, then slither up and over the wounds on Snape’s body, twisting and fastening themselves into place.

Harry hasn't yet applied salve to the soles of Snape's feet, so those are left bare. Nonetheless, Snape should be able to shift into a sitting position now. A brief sawing motion with the tip of the Elder Wand snips through the whipcord at Snape’s wrists and ankles.

“There was a reason I bound him, Harry.” Voldemort grumbles.

Harry ignores him. He offers to help his patient up, but Snape refuses, choosing instead to strain his muscles, push himself upright on wobbly elbows until he is kneeling on the cot.

“Can I get you anything?”

Snape looks down at the edge of the cot. “A blanket would not go amiss,” he says quietly. “Or some pants.”

“Oh!” In the past few hours the sight of Snape's body has lost any novelty, and Harry had forgotten that the man himself might wish to be covered. He fumbles the grey blanket off his own shoulders and onto Snape. “Right. Sorry. Is that better?”

Snape delicately rearranges himself, careful to keep his feet from contacting any other surface. Eventually he’s fully upright with his legs loosely in front of him, and the blanket covering most of his body besides his legs. He looks at Harry, then at Voldemort, and he says nothing. From his perspective, he probably has nothing to gain by speaking unnecessarily.

“Your feet,” Harry adds. “Should I—can you hold yourself still, while I…?”

Snape’s jaw twitches. He stares at his feet, though he addresses Harry when he says, “If it is an option, I would prefer to handle it myself. There is a spell—”

“You’re not getting your wand back, Severus,” says Voldemort, without lifting his gaze from the brass cauldron.

Snape sighs. “Still,” he continues meekly, “I would… do the bandaging myself. If that is permitted.”

Harry shoots Voldemort a dirty look. “Of course it’s permitted,” he says, passing a pot of salve to Snape. “Do you want… something for the pain? They said, um, there’s murtlap essence, or whiskey, or—well, you’re Snape. You probably know twice as many pain relievers as they do.”

“Nothing on hand,” Snape grunts, “and nothing that would leave me in control of my faculties. Better to bite the bullet.”

Harry sterilizes Snape’s hands for him. Then—

It’s awful to watch. Snape’s fingers flinch as he touches the gash at the sole of his right foot. The white hot agony makes him gasp, screwing his eyes shut. He’s panting. As he works, he unconsciously hunches over himself, flattening his torso over his feet as if to protect them. The contortion must be hell on his broken ribs and bruised hip bone, but he probably can’t feel that. The concentrated pain in his feet would numb the rest of his body.

Then it becomes too much. He smears some of the potion on his forehead when he buries his face in his hands, heaving out great bursting breaths of exertion. “Oh God,” he moans, muffled by his palms.

Harry can’t bear it any longer, so he perches himself on the edge of the cot next to Snape, and he wraps an arm around him. “Okay, okay,” Harry says, which probably sounds stupid, but Snape doesn’t tell him so. And the arm around Snape’s shoulders probably puts pressure on the wounds there, but Snape doesn’t react to that either. Maybe he can’t feel it, or maybe any pain is a welcome distraction from this torture.

Voldemort seethes at the sight of the hug, but Harry ignores that. He rocks with Snape. “Take your time,” he says, “It’ll start to feel better afterwards. Do you want me to take care of it for you?”

“No!” Snape growls, wrenching his hands away from his face. His eyes bulge with fierce, unhinged determination.

He scrapes an enormous glob of salve from the pot and spreads it over the deepest wounds, and the cauterization scars. He’s rushing, which reopens some of the clotted vessels. The blood mixes with the salve. But it’s fast. And then it’s finished.

Snape sobs, and curses himself. Tears escape the corners of his eyes and mix with the sweat. Harry squeezes his shoulders. It’s the only support he can give.

Gritting his teeth, Snape does the same to his left foot. There’s one moment when he touches what’s left of the arch, and his whole body flinches, violently, like the pain was an electric shock. He almost knocks Harry off the cot. But Harry doesn’t let him go, and Snape soldiers forward, panting sharply through his nose.

The moment Snape finishes, Harry casts the bandaging charm again. The touch of the cotton and gauze makes him scream, but Harry holds him through that too. “It’s over,” Harry tells him breathlessly, “Shh. Shh. It’s over. It’s finished.”

Snape covers his face again, and lets loose another tirade of curses. Then he’s quiet.

Harry lets go. He finds the Skele-Gro in the bag and he passes that to Snape in exchange for the pot of salve. “Just drink this, and then you have to stay as still as possible for a couple of hours.”

“I know,” Snape croaks. He uncorks the bottle and drinks half, then corks it again. “That—that should be plenty.” He doesn’t say thank you. Had the circumstances been different… well, he still probably wouldn't thank Harry. He's still Snape, after all, though it’s hard to remember that when he looks like this.

“Harry,” says Voldemort stiffly, standing nearby with the little cauldron floating in the air beside him. “May I have a word with you in private?”

Harry blinks at him.

Before all this mess, before the poisoning and the coma and the torture and the aftermath, there had been one critically important item on Harry’s to-do list, and that was to liaise with Snape. Ever since seeing those memories in the pensieve, he’s wanted to speak with Snape. Now that Snape is finally conscious, and accessible, Harry can’t let this go on any longer.

Voldemort will have to wait.

“No,” he says to Voldemort, and it hurts. It hurts because Voldemort has been waiting for Harry’s attention for hours—for days. “Tom, I swear to you that I will honor our agreements. But I need to speak with Snape alone, first.”

“I’m not leaving you with him!" Voldemort snarls. “I’m not foolish enough to make the same mistake twice—”

“Then I’ll just muffle our voices,” Harry says to placate him. “You can watch. You just can’t listen to what we say.”

Something dangerous flickers across Voldemort’s face. “Is there something I should know about?”

“Not at the moment, and not in present company,” Harry retorts, nodding to the floating cauldron as he repeats Voldemort’s excuse from earlier.

Voldemort's fingers clench into fists, and he looks so mutinous that Harry worries he might try to summon that knife again from the drawer. Instead Voldemort simply says “Fine,” and he leans against the bed, fixing his gaze on Harry and Snape.

***

Harry casts muffliato.

Snape’s hair is waterlogged, from both the bath and the sweat. It’s plastered against his scalp, his neck, and the sides of his face. It looks stringy like this. His face is still blotchy pink from the pain he endured, and his eyes are bloodshot. Wearily, he says to Harry, “You can’t trust that he isn’t listening.”

“Yes, I can,” Harry says, lowering himself to the cot beside Snape. “He wouldn’t betray me like that.”

Snape opens his mouth to make any number of reasonable objections to that notion, but Harry holds up a hand. He focuses on his bond with the Dark Lord, and he holds his breath, waiting for a wave of guilt or shame.

It doesn’t come. Harry puts down his hand. “Now I know for sure he isn’t listening.”

Snape’s brow furrows, but he doesn’t ask what mess have you gotten yourself into this time, Potter? Instead, in a quiet voice, he asks, “What did you wish to tell me?”

Harry flounders. Clearly Snape still thinks… that he has to watch himself, that Harry might be the enemy. "I didn't betray the Order," Harry blurts out. "I didn't, I swear. I need you to know that. That's why you poisoned me, isn't it? Because you had to get me alone to find out why I was with Voldemort, and you thought I became a Death Eater or something?"

Snape’s expression does not change. “Fine,” he says evenly. “Tell me what truly happened.”

So Harry tries to tell him the whole story as plainly as possible. “As soon as I finished watching your memories, I knew I had to let him kill me. So I left the castle, and I didn’t tell anyone where I was going—except I did pass on the message to kill Nagini. Then, when I was walking towards the forest, I got really angry about how inevitable it all felt.” Harry pulls his feet up onto the cot, to rest his chin on his knees. “By that point, I was already aware of Voldemort’s past. But your memories were like the missing puzzle pieces that finally revealed the whole picture.”

“What did this picture reveal to you?”

“Dumbledore could have made kinder choices. With all three of us, and probably plenty of other children besides. He could have made kinder choices, but he didn’t. And maybe—maybe that’s got something to do with Grindelwald, I don’t know.”

At the mention of Grindelwald, Snape lifts an eyebrow. If they were in class, Snape might have offered Harry a backhanded compliment for managing to remember the name of the most famous dark wizard in history. But he remains silent.

“Anyway, Voldemort and I were set on a collision course. It was probably far too late to fix anything, but I was going to die anyway, so I had nothing left to lose.”

“And what of the rest of the world? What did they stand to lose?” Snape asks sharply.

Harry opens his mouth to respond, probably to say something defensive (though he hasn’t worked out the specifics), when Snape holds up one pale, thin hand like a white flag. “Forgive the interruption. Go on,” he says.

“Snape,” says Harry, helplessly confused.

“Continue your story.”

Harry sighs. “I disarmed myself. Then I asked Voldemort if we could speak privately before he killed me. He agreed. When we were alone, I started talking to him. He tortured me. We realized that, in close proximity, he could feel my pain. In fact, he could feel all my emotions, and I could feel his. And,” Harry hesitates, studying Snape. “Sir, I don’t know if you knew this, but Voldemort has only a tiny sliver of soul left. So, when he felt the world through my soul, that was… intense, for him. He realized he couldn’t kill me, couldn’t torture me, couldn’t even bear to do anything that would make me upset. So he called for a retreat, and we came here and hashed everything out. Now we have an agreement, and we’re working together to end the war and fix things.

“I tried telling Draco some of this, before we got sick. He was angry with me, but I don’t know how much stock I should put in his opinions about things.” Harry worries his bottom lip for a moment, and then he says, “Sir, after seeing your memories, I think you’re the only other person in the world who could understand my situation, so I wanted to ask... But, er, now I’m afraid you’re going to be cross with me.”

Snape shuts his eyes and lets out a deep breath through his nose. Some of the residual tension drains out of his body. “To be perfectly frank,” he says, “I do not possess the endurance to be cross with you.”

“But, you… you disapprove? You think I made the wrong decision? Should I have let him kill me, for the greater good?”

Snape frowns. He pulls the grey blanket closer around himself and stares at the bandages on his feet. When he finally speaks, his voice is low and matter-of-fact. “Potter, in the years I have known you, you have often failed to meet my standards. Between your abysmal work ethic and your chaotic temper, you consistently undershoot even my most generous expectations for your behavior. However...” He shuts his eyes, and admits softly, “I could never expect you to will yourself to die. It would be unfair to ask that of anyone."

“Oh,” Harry whimpers, shakily, scrubbing his wrist over his face. “Alright. Thanks, professor.”

"Don't," says Snape. "I did not intend for the poison to kill you but I made no special effort to prevent it. If you had died, then I would have assassinated the Dark Lord to end the war."

Harry sniffles, then tilts his head curiously. "Really? I saw how much you tore yourself up about killing Dumbledore," (Snape flinches) "and that was practically euthanasia. But you wouldn’t have had any issue killing me?"

"Do not speak of things you don't understand!" he snaps at Harry. "There was no one else to bear that burden; I would have borne it. Do you think it would have pleased me?” Snape covers his face with a shaking hand. “Given the circumstances, I thought maybe it would be merciful to take the decision out of your hands.”

“Why didn’t you just wait to find out more information?”

“And then what?” Snape asks. “The Dark Lord, now assured of his victory, would march on Hogwarts and demand that all the Order members and children in refuge there surrender. But they would resist, and consequently I would be smoked out of the Death Eater ranks, because I will not idly watch that man murder the children I’ve sworn to protect. What then? Would I have the time and the resolve to dispose of you on the field of battle?” Snape shakes his head ruefully. “I am not a soldier, Potter.”

Oddly, Harry’s skin prickles with that feeling he gets when he’s flown his broom too far into the sky, and, looking down, he sees that the grass of the quidditch pitch is blue-tinged with distance, and the air is thin and cold. “So,” he asks Snape, “you don’t have a plan, either?”

Snape looks away, and Harry studies the back of his neck, the strings of his damp hair that disappear into the cover of the blanket around his shoulders. “Forgive me,” Snape grumbles sourly, “I’ve spent the past week trying only to catch the unraveling threads of Albus’s plan. I must come to grips with the futility of the last two decades of my life before I can invent new, more exciting ways to damn myself.”

“It wasn’t futile,” Harry says.

“Oh, wasn’t it? You’re not going to kill the Dark Lord and that was rather the point of most of my efforts.”

“Killing Voldemort was never really the point,” Harry argues. “The goal was to make a more just world, where blood status doesn’t matter, and all magical children receive the resources and support they need. It would never have been enough to just kill him. The problem is so much bigger than just him.” He shifts in his seat, glancing sidelong at Snape. “I think you knew that, on some level.”

Snape pinches the bridge of his nose. “If you say so,” he rasps.

“I’m still working towards that larger goal,” Harry says, “and I believe I have a much better shot at it now than I did before. I really think I can fix things. But I also really need your help, professor. You’re… well, I’ll just come right out with it: you’re much smarter than me.”

Snape makes a strangled noise. “Of course I—Potter, you’re seventeen.”

“Well, yes! Exactly! I need…” Harry scrubs a hand over his face. “I need guidance. And I, I trust you, after everything. I need you.”

“Would that you had come to that epiphany before I threw away the Dark Lord’s favor.”

“I did! I wanted to tell you—”

“Enough. Fine.” Snape makes a sound sort of like a laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “While I did not intend to spend my final moments on this earth still toiling in your shadow, I will nonetheless—”

“Wait, hold on,” Harry cuts in. “What do you mean by that? Final moments? Are you ill or something?”

Years ago in school, while nursing his hatred for his potions professor, Harry had wondered if it was possible to frustrate Snape so thoroughly that he would cry. Evidently it is possible, and this last question was the final straw, though Harry hadn’t intended for it to be. Snape gapes at Harry with a disbelieving expression, and then he chokes out, “The most powerful dark wizard on the planet spent the past three days flaying the skin from my body.” Tears roll down his cheeks but he doesn’t seem to notice them, too incensed with Harry’s apparent foolishness. “For all the time we’ve been speaking, he has been glaring daggers into my back. What did you expect, Potter? Did you think I would live to see morning?”

“Oh.” Pity crawls up Harry’s throat. “Sorry, I really should have made this more clear: He’s not going to kill you.”

“No more of your pollyannish fantasies,” Snape begs. “I’ll try to help you salvage what’s left of your scheme, but—”

“No, Snape, I mean it.” Unthinking, Harry grabs Snape’s shoulder, and instantly regrets it when the man hisses and shrinks away from the pressure on his wounds. “Sorry. But It’s true. He won’t hurt you. I have control over him—”

“You control him?” Snape gives a wet, miserable laugh. “Is that how he earned your trust? Merlin, every time I think I’ve plumbed the depths of your stupidity, you discover a new low.”

“Snape—”

“Enough!” Snape cries, and his voice is so raw with fury that it renders Harry silent. “Enough. I’m done. Let it be finished.”

Harry wants to plead with him further, to try to make him understand, but it’s clear that Snape is more than exhausted.

“Harry,” says Voldemort, standing nearby.

Harry startles badly at the sight of him. “You weren’t supposed to listen to our conversation!”

Voldemort tilts his head curiously. “That is impressive spellcraft,” he murmurs. “Even when speaking to me directly, your words make no more sense to me than the buzzing of a particularly persistent housefly.”

Ah. Harry had forgotten to remove the muffliato.

But what if Voldemort is lying? Maybe he has eavesdropped on the whole conversation and now he’s boldly lying right to Harry’s face about it. From his quiet scoff, it’s clear Snape believes as much.

But the conversation between Harry and Snape had been about Snape’s efforts to kill Voldemort, and Voldemort couldn’t overhear such a thing without reacting strongly, and Harry would have noticed such a reaction through the bond. In fact, if Voldemort had overheard their conversation, he would probably be trying to strangle Snape right now.

So Voldemort must be telling the truth. And Harry reminds himself that Voldemort, despite everything, has been trying so hard.

Harry flicks out a finite. “What is it?” he asks Voldemort, without the venom he’d been ready to spit just a few moments earlier.

“Perhaps I should cast that spell on you the next time you start rambling about chocolate.”

“Very funny,” Harry deadpans. “What did you want?”

“I could see that you both had become upset,” Voldemort explains carefully, sparing an uncomfortable glance at Snape's wobbly composure. “I wished to intervene, because after you finally allow me to speak to you, all of this… discord may become moot.”

Harry glances between the both of them. Voldemort’s stiff and discomfited posture makes for a stark contrast with Snape’s physical and emotional weariness. “We’ll have to pull the same trick,” Harry says with a wince when he returns his focus to Voldemort. “I won’t leave him by himself.”

“As you wish,” Voldemort says with a shrug, before leading the way to the opposite corner of the room near the door.

Harry stands from the cot, then looks back at Snape.

“If he tries to feed you that potion,” Snape warns softly, “refuse.”

“Why?” Harry whispers back. “What’s in it?”

With a heavy sigh, Snape lies down fully on his side. “I’ve no idea,” he says. “But it can’t be anything good, can it?”

Despite himself, Harry snorts and shakes his head. Snape had been unconscious for most of the brewing process, so it makes sense he wouldn’t have any special insight into the potion. Still, a spy would recognize a dangerous ploy in the making, and Harry nods his understanding (and gratitude) before crossing the room to follow Voldemort.

Chapter Text

“For whatever reason, you wish to keep him alive,” Voldemort begins, with an uncharacteristically gentle tone. “But I cannot trust him alive unless he remains a prisoner, physically and magically bound.”

“Or,” Harry cuts back, “you could trust me to keep myself alive.”

“Yes, and you’ve done a terrific job of that so far.”

Harry crosses his arms, knocking his shoulder against the wall. “Point. But you could at least trust me when I say he isn’t going to try to kill me again.”

“Yes, I recall you seemed quite adamant that he wouldn’t have poisoned you unless he had a very good reason. Did he answer your questions adequately? Have you received a satisfactory answer?”

“Yes,” Harry shoots back.

“And there is absolutely no possibility that Severus might make another attempt? You are completely certain of that, with no room for doubt?”

Well. That’s a different question. Harry glances over at the cot where Snape lays on his side facing the wall. I thought maybe it would be merciful to take the decision out of your hands, he had said, and Harry wonders if there is still a part of Snape that feels obligated to finish the job.

“Snakes do not lend themselves to unconditional trust, do they?” Voldemort murmurs knowingly.

“You speak as if you’re not a snake yourself.”

“I am the heir of Slytherin, of course I’m a snake. But you’re wise enough to treat me as such, most of the time. Now you must apply that same wariness to your other would-be murderer.”

Harry feels the predatory intrigue again, the way Voldemort studies his reactions, searching for a weakness. They’ve only been speaking for a few moments, but already Voldemort has backed Harry into a corner. “You’re having fun with this again,” Harry accuses. “Please don’t do this to me, Tom, you know I don’t appreciate it.”

That stops Voldemort’s momentum before he can get carried away. He looks at Harry blankly for a moment, and then, with a contrite twist of his mouth, he averts his slitted eyes. “Apologies.”

“It‘s alright. What are you trying to get at?”

“I have prepared a ritual which, if completed, would allow for that trust to be restored.”

“And something about said ritual is completely outrageous,” Harry reasons blandly, “which is why you’ve been so secretive about it until now.”

The bond lurches, like something yanking on Harry’s chest. His eyes well up when he looks over at Voldemort, when he feels that weight again, three days. Nearly four days, now. There’s this primal dread, the anguish of failing to protect something precious, this mourning and fear and wanting.

“Tom,” Harry says.

“It’s a way to keep him,” Voldemort bites out. “I thought that was what you wanted.”

“What I wanted was for you to leave him alone. Everything will be fine as long as no one tries to kill anybody. There’s no need for a ritual.”

“No,” bellows Voldemort, “No. This is the line. I will do as you ask of me to earn your grace, but not this. I will not tolerate an attempt on your life. He must die, or he must remain incapacitated.”

“You could send him far away.”

“And invite further paranoia?” Voldemort scoffs. “That is the worst option. Intolerable.”

Standing this close to him, Harry can feel every minute change of Voldemort’s heart like the tiny, flinching twitches of a small animal. He restlessly steps around Harry to stare at the wall.

“Do you think I have not already considered your objections?” Voldemort asks. “I spent the time you were unconscious planning for all possible outcomes. While I had hoped that you would see reason and allow me to kill him, I was prepared for the necessity of compromise. I knew—I know you, Harry. I know how you think.”

Harry’s brow furrows. “You know me so well that you could carry on an argument with me in your own head?”

Voldemort grimaces. “I have studied you for nearly your entire life. I know you more intimately than it is possible to know another separate person—this has been true for years. The only recent development is my direct entanglement with your overall health and happiness.”

“So…” Harry glances at the floating cauldron. “You were so confident that you could convince me to go along with this ritual that you bought the ingredients and brewed the potion already.”

“Yes. And if you would listen to what the ritual entails, perhaps you would understand why.”

“Fine.” Harry says coldly. “Tell me about the ritual.”

***

Voldemort explains it.

Harry looks at Snape asleep on the cot, facing away from them, the sharp angles of his bones tenting the blanket strangely. “So it’s slavery,” Harry says with disgust.

“No. It is not enslavement, nor enthrallment, nor blood magic. Those require entirely different rituals.” Voldemort stands closer, and with less confidence he continues, “Harry… a more adversarial negotiator would have begun with a more selfish opening bid, with no thought for your needs or preferences. But I care only that we do this quickly, to relieve my anxiety on the subject. I knew you would not consent to enacting any cruelty on that man, no matter how justly deserved,” Voldemort growls with conviction, “so I sought out the least cruel ritual that would still guarantee your safety. I cannot compromise further.”

Harry grits his teeth, feeling the honest distress from Voldemort. “How do you expect to convince Snape to go along with it?” Harry counters. “The ritual requires consent.”

“Severus’s attempt on your life was a severely misguided bid to secure my favor,” Voldemort explains patiently. “He will consent to any path forward which pleases me, and restores him to his position at my right hand.”

Privately, Harry marvels at how well Snape maintained his cover even in the midst of that desperate attempt to salvage Dumbledore’s plan. If Harry had been the one caught by Voldemort like that, Harry certainly would have shattered under the pressure of that moment. But that is why Snape is the spy, and Harry is not.

Still, Harry tries to approach this dilemma rationally, as Snape would.

“I can’t just take your word on this,” he tells Voldemort. “We’ve agreed you’re a snake. I can’t have you tricking me into casting something without knowing exactly what it means. There must be a book or something—”

Automatically, Voldemort produces a heavy, bookmarked tome.

Harry hesitates. “No, that’s—that’s your copy. You could have changed the content… I need a different copy.”

“Dolohov will have a copy. It is a fairly common book to find in the library of a pureblood family, for reasons I’m sure you can imagine.”

“No, not… not from this house. Not from any of the Death Eaters. Where’s Draco?" Then, catching an unimpressed look from Voldemort, Harry continues, “Yes, I know Draco is a Death Eater. Don’t be pedantic. You know what I mean.”

***

Harry shows Draco the book. “I need you to find me a random copy of this book, from a shop. Not from anyone’s personal library.”

Draco looks at the title, and then he looks at Harry with unrestrained horror, saying, “Please don’t. Please, I—I’m trying. My lord, I swear I’m trying to—”

“What? Fuck, Malfoy,” Harry grabs Draco’s shoulder to steady him. “This isn’t about you. You’re fine. I’m asking you to get this for me because you're the only person here that I know well enough to spot if you were lying to me.”

“I’m not lying, I haven’t lied to you, I swear! I’m already loyal, you don’t need to—”

Harry shakes him back and forth a little bit. “Draco. Shut up. Listen. I know there are some really dark things in that book, but those aren’t even the rituals I’m researching. I’m researching the bond of fealty. That’s all. And I need you to go out, find some random Belgian bookstore, and find me a copy of that book that Voldemort has never touched, so I can make absolutely sure that the information has not been tampered with. And, in fact, if you can find other books on the subject that would be great too. Only the bond of fealty, none of the other rituals. Do you understand?”

Some clarity returns to Draco’s pale grey eyes. He swallows, and clears his throat. “Is there a—a time limit?”

“I don’t know, a few hours? It shouldn’t take longer than that, right?” Harry asks, baffled by the question. “Don’t you remember we had a whole conversation about how you’re not in any danger and no one’s going to hurt you, even if you make a mistake?”

Draco looks away and lets out a small breath. “That conversation ended with you falling into a coma.”

“Yeah, well, that didn’t change anything. I still meant what I said. Relax. Everything’s going to be fine. Can you do this for me?”

Draco nods, hesitantly at first and then more firmly, setting his jaw.

“Alright, good. Thank you. I’ll see you in a few hours, then.”

***

“In the meanwhile,” Voldemort suggests, “Perhaps you can trust my copy on a trial basis, pending the corroboration from Draco’s books.”

Harry watches the cot coolly. To Voldemort he asks, “What, are you in a rush or something?”

“Just as this ritual will allow me to trust Severus again, so too will it allow you to trust me, because I will no longer be a threat to Severus.” Voldemort explains. “You are angry with me. You have been angry with me since you woke. It is… unexpectedly difficult to endure your animosity.”

“If your goal is to soothe my anger,” Harry mutters, “I don’t think forcing me into a bonding ritual is the best way to achieve that.”

Voldemort’s head lowers. “My goal… is to neutralize any threat to your life. Regaining your esteem is secondary.”

“The fact that I’m even considering doing this is the most esteem for you I can muster right now, alright? So don’t push me.”

***

Evening finds Harry seated at a transfigured full-size desk stacked with books.

The bulk of them are various copies and editions of An Unabridged Guide to Ritual Subjugation, including Een oningekorte gids voor rituele onderwerping and Ein ungekürzter Leitfaden zur rituellen Unterwerfung (the Dutch and German translations, respectively.) Additionally, Draco was able to secure a couple of paperback copies of smaller books specifically dedicated to studying the historical context and legacy of the bond of fealty—theses written by students of a Wizarding History doctoral program, published for circulation after the students earned their stoles of mastery.

“It’s not very old magic,” Harry muses aloud—primarily to Draco, who is seated next to him and reluctantly assisting with the research. “I mean, it says the wording itself, ‘fealty,’ comes from an Old French bastardization of Latin ‘fidelitas.’”

“That might just mean that it’s older than the common Latin spells,” Draco tells him. “It was a 17th century trend to give modernized spells more pure Latin names, to make them seem more historically grounded. Common spells with Old English or Old French roots are usually older. The only really, really old Latin spells are dark ones.”

“So… this ritual is probably from the 11th century, and that’s… that’s particularly old for Wizarding history?”

“For British Wizarding history? Sure. It’s different timescales elsewhere.” Draco’s mouth twists. “Did you really not know any of this?”

“Bits and pieces. Could hardly make out what Professor Binns was saying, most of the time. But I’m surprised you remember so much, since you usually spent that class doing your level best to trick Binns into giving me detention.”

“I didn’t learn this from school,” Draco mutters, and he doesn’t say anything else on the subject.

He does, however, keep glancing over at the cot, and it belatedly occurs to Harry that Draco might not know that it’s Snape, over there in the dark. He might not have known that Snape was alive, or he might not have even known that Snape was in any danger to begin with. “Um,” Harry ventures, uncomfortably. “How much do you know about what's happened?”

Draco hesitates. “The Dark Lord punished him,” he says after a moment. “I know. I manage the operation of the dungeons now, of course.”

“Right,” Harry remembers. (They’ll have to address the question of the other prisoners, he can’t forget that!) “But, um, when I woke up and found out about what Voldemort did to him, we brought him here and he’s received medical treatment. He’s going to be fine. Right now he’s just resting.”

Draco lifts a paperback. “This is for him, then? For… disloyalty?”

“Sort of,” Harry admits. Truthfully, Voldemort still believes Snape was being too loyal, but that’s beside the point. “It’s complicated. Trust me when I say that this is the least bad option.”

Draco shrugs, without making eye contact.

“You could go check on him, if you want,” Harry offers. “No reason not to, except that if he wakes up he might be annoyed with you for staring at him.”

Draco shakes his head. “Shut up,” he says, and returns his focus to the books.

***

Before Draco leaves, Harry asks him to make an audit of the prisoners.

“And if they need medical attention, I need you to provide that. If they need food, or bedding, or clothes to wear… that’s what Voldemort meant, when he mentioned your skills in, er, hospitality.”

Draco makes a face. “Potter… there’s such a thing as tone of voice.”

“Well, okay, maybe he was being performatively evil at the time. But, in a very literal sense, we need you to manage hospitality for the prisoners, and make sure that everyone’s safe and healthy and not being tortured anymore. And then give me a list of everyone who’s in there.”

Draco looks between Harry and Voldemort a few times, and Voldemort—who had been mostly ignoring them up to this point—gives a lazy wave of his hand. “Do as Harry asks,” he says.

***

Harry has to repeat the details to himself or else he’s going to lose track of them.

Voldemort was being truthful, first of all. It’s not an enslavement ritual, nor an enthrallment ritual, nor is it blood magic. Those three things can be found elsewhere in the book, in their own dedicated sections.

The fealty ritual, in contrast with those monstrosities, is extremely limited in scope.

There are elements of a blood magic bond, insofar as Harry will always have a mild, unobtrusive sense of Snape’s well-being, but it won’t be anywhere near as cloying and overwhelming as Harry’s bond with Voldemort, because the fealty spell was originally a part of the feudal system where one liege lord might have hundreds of vassals, and it would be overwhelming to feel every one of those bonds as intensely as a true blood magic bond.

There are elements of an enslavement ritual, insofar as Snape will have to endure a particularly mild influence to obey commands from Harry, but it will be nowhere near the level of a compulsion. The magic required for true compulsion would, again, be unsustainable at a scale of hundreds of vassals. The fealty magic amounts to little more than a suggestion.

And there are elements of an enthrallment ritual, insofar as Harry will have access to Snape’s magical core—but exclusively for spells used to protect the vassal or the liege lord’s domain. After all, the original purpose of the fealty ritual was the defense of feudal territory. Harry wouldn’t be able to tap into Snape’s magic for any greedy or unjust purpose; the magic would only permit Harry access for the casting of protection spells.

And then there is the side effect of the fealty ritual which will satisfy Voldemort: Snape will not be able to intentionally harm Harry. Even if he wished to do so (and there is nothing in the spell preventing him from wishing), the magic will stop him from carrying it out.

That’s it. Harry looks for a trick, he looks for some sort of convoluted backdoor that would change the spell into something darker. He even holds some of the onion-skin pages over the lamplight like he saw in a movie once, but there aren’t any hidden messages there.

The ritual certainly isn’t a pleasant thing to have to do. But if this is the price for Snape’s life, it’s certainly not as awful a sacrifice as Harry had expected. The only question is whether Snape will see it that way.

***

Eventually it is late again, and Draco leaves. Snape is still asleep.

Harry feels tired as well. Despite having spent three days in a coma, he hasn’t built up a surplus of sleep. In the dim light, his gaze flickers over to Voldemort, who wears the same expression he’s worn for the past few hours—listless, agitated, and expectant.

It strikes Harry that it has been almost a week since the battle, and Harry hasn’t yet functionally changed anything about the state of the wizarding world. He’d intended to, obviously, but he’d gotten caught up in the tangle of Voldemort and Snape and…

And he’s taking all the time necessary to untangle things without breaking anyone.

Harry spells himself clean instead of showering, and he pushes himself onto the bed. “C’mere,” he says before he has the chance to second-guess himself. “I’m going to cast my Patronus.”

Warily, like a dog unsure of its welcome on the furniture, Voldemort climbs onto the bed. After some form of wordless magic, his robes are pajamas, and his feet are bare. “Generous of you,” Voldemort says cautiously, “considering the circumstances.”

“I’m going to cast it anyway,” Harry explains, “and I know it’ll please you to be near me when I do, so I may as well share it with you. Doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten to be upset with you about other things, but it’s late, and I won’t be unnecessarily cruel to you—not now, and not ever, because I’m not that sort of person.”

Still, Voldemort kneels carefully on the duvet, studying Harry. He’s a starving man trying to decipher how greedily he can consume his dinner without offending his gracious host.

“Well, go on,” Harry says to him, opening an arm, “What would be comfortable for you?”

Voldemort still doesn’t move, and a note of unease twines between them. “I—” Voldemort says stiffly, but he cuts himself off. Abruptly, he curls on his side beside Harry and, after Harry repositions himself to help Voldemort settle, he lays his head in Harry’s lap, facing away.

Harry studies the Dark Lord’s profile. The snake-like folding of his pale skin… and the delicate shell of his ear, which strikes Harry as entirely Riddle, though Harry hasn’t seen a photograph of the young Riddle in over a year. “This works for you?” he asks softly, running a hand over Voldemort’s shoulder.

Voldemort doesn’t say anything in response, but he shuts his eyes tighter, and tucks his face in against the criss-cross of Harry’s ankles.

“Alright. Got you. Here we go.”

Harry casts his Patronus—it’s easy like this. Suddenly Prongs is there, graceful and attentive as ever.

“For Hermione again, Prongs. Just her. I don’t feel comfortable with anyone else hearing this, alright? Good. Hermione—everything’s still fine. Listen, there’s got to be a way for us to actually talk, right? I haven’t floo’d you or anything because I’m concerned that either the Ministry or the Order will try to track it. I really, really don’t want anyone trying to play a hero and messing everything up. So that’s why I’ve been overly cautious.

“But there’s got to be a way for us to talk, isn’t there? I’m sure you can think of something, or you can invent some kind of secure method like the coins in fifth year? Or like the mirrors? I don’t know, I would have tried to think of something but I’ve had my hands full.

“If you think of a method worth betting our lives on, then let’s use it. In the meanwhile I’ll try to keep checking in, but I really want to be able to discuss things with you more, and I want to know what’s going on with our people too. I just can’t… trust a larger group of people with any of the details, even just the Order. Things are delicate right now.

“Anyway, I’ll be awake for a little while longer, if you’ve got time to message back by the time Prongs gets you alone. Take care.”

Prongs leaves, and Harry sits there for a little while. Then he stacks the pillows against the headboard of the bed, and he leans back against them with a sigh. He pets up and down Voldemort’s arm, and he focuses on the layers of tension unfolding, like the petals of a flower in the morning sunlight.

“I appreciate the amount of thought you put into the ritual,” Harry tells him, and Voldemort melts further, his cheek brushing against the fabric of Harry’s pajamas. “I don’t appreciate that it’s an ultimatum, that you’ve backed me into a corner with it. But you’ve been forthright about it from the start, and you haven’t lied to me or tried to manipulate me. I know that’s not an insignificant amount of trust that you’ve shown me.”

“You know why,” Voldemort grumbles.

“Coercion, right?” Harry huffs, fondly. “Fine. Still. Thank you for trying. I know it’s not easy.”

“Nothing in my life has been easy,” says Voldemort. “But this… coexistence has not been particularly difficult. You are... simple.”

“I’m simple?” Harry snorts. “Wow, thank you.”

“No, no,” Voldemort turns over a bit to lay on his back, and bleary red eyes gaze up at Harry. “I only meant that… it is not difficult to meet your expectations. You have been... fair. In return, I have been trying to respond with the same consideration. As long as you do not ask me to leave you vulnerable to assassination, I will capitulate with whatever you require of me.”

Harry smiles, resting his arm across Voldemort’s chest like a loose embrace. “Thanks,” he says.

Voldemort doesn’t say anything, but his eyes shut, and the contentment filtering across their bond is novel and precious.

Hermione’s otter arrives just a few minutes later. “Harry,” says the otter, “I’m going to give you some instructions that you’ll have to write down somewhere, so tell the Patronus to wait, if you need to gather a quill or something.”

Harry politely asks the otter to pause for a moment. “Tom,” he says, patting Voldemort’s chest, “can you let me up for a sec?”

Voldemort scoffs, and flicks his wand to summon the notepad and biro from where Harry had left them on the desk. He passes them to Harry, and then turns over again onto his side to shield his face from the Patronus light.

Harry grins, and sets the notepad on his other knee so he can write. “Okay,” he says to the otter, “go ahead.”

“To be completely honest, Harry, I don’t think anyone in the Ministry or the Order would expect us to use a muggle telephone. Muggle technology is completely beneath their radar, and even if they were aware we were using it, I don’t think they have the capacity to trace calls. So I’m going to give you a phone number, and I want you to call it at exactly noon tomorrow, from wherever you can get your hands on a phone.” She pauses, thoughtfully. “That is, 12 o’clock, British Summer Time. I don’t know what time zone you’re in.”

“Me neither,” mutters Harry.

She gives him a phone number which he scratches down on the paper. “And listen, Harry,” she says quietly, and he can picture her face from just the tone of her voice, the concern and compassion in her eyes. “Whatever… whatever it is, whatever’s going on, we’ll figure it out together, alright? Like always.”

He hugs the notebook to his chest. “Could you tell her thanks, from me?” he asks the otter. The silvery animal nods, and gives a friendly wave of a webbed claw before swimming out of the room.

“Bright girl,” Voldemort says, without opening his eyes.

“Yeah,” says Harry. “I’d offer to introduce you two, someday, but... honestly, I don’t want you anywhere near her.”

Voldemort hums. “Fair enough.”

“Did that help?” Harry asks, “I mean, with how rotten you’ve been feeling… did that soothe you a bit?”

“Yes. Very much so.”

“We should sleep, then?” Harry asks, then looks over at the shadow of Snape on the cot dubiously. “I’ll talk to Snape about the ritual in the morning. In a perfect world, he’ll agree and we can get it over with before noon, though I wouldn’t bet on that. If we can’t finish the ritual before noon then I’m not sure what we’ll do, since none of us can stand to leave each other out of eyesight. Will it be much of a hassle to get access to a telephone?”

“I don’t know,” Voldemort answers. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. Would probably have to—” he yawns, and the needlepoint tips of two fangs peek out from behind human teeth, “—enter a muggle city and use a telephone box or something.”

“Was this manor built before telephones?”

“I doubt it,” Voldemort says with a dismissive sniff, “but neither was it built by muggles.” He squints up at the ceiling thoughtfully, then adds, “Goyle Manor might have a landline.”

“That would work. Could you ask someone to check on that?”

“Mm.” Voldemort waves a pale hand in the air, “Give me the pen and paper.”

Harry tears the page with the phone number off of the notepad, folding it and tucking it in the pocket of his pajamas. Then he passes the items to Voldemort, who somehow manages to scrawl a note without even sitting upright.

Voldemort tugs that page from the notebook and folds it in three, muttering something about how not everyone can rely on pretty little animals to send their messages. He tosses the folded paper in the air, points his wand at it, and the little paper sprouts… bat wings, it looks like. “Find Goyle,” he grumbles at the paper, and the message flaps across the room to land on the tile in front of the shut door. For a moment it hesitates there, and then it squeezes itself under the gap beneath the door, and it’s gone.

Voldemort chucks the pen and notepad in the general direction of the desk, where they helpfully set themselves down in an orderly fashion.

“You’re funny when you’re tired,” Harry tells him.

“I have no higher aspiration,” Voldemort replies, and then he flicks his wand to extinguish the sconces.

Chapter Text

Harry startles awake to the sound of cursing, and then a thump, and then the screech of metal. Voldemort flinches into consciousness too—Harry feels it, because they had been pressed against each other in sleep. But Harry recognizes the voice. “It’s just Snape,” he whispers to Voldemort, “I’ve got it.”

Displeased and fully alert, Voldemort grips the Tom Riddle wand readily, but he makes no move to stop Harry from slipping out of the bed.

“Lumos Minima,” Harry whispers, and the tip of the Elder Wand emits a dim white light. He finds Snape seated upright on the edge of the cot, hunched over and breathing heavily. “Sir?” Harry whispers, hesitantly.

“If you aren’t going to return my wand,” Snape growls, “then kindly piss off.”

“What’s wrong? Are you alright? Don’t try to stand; you’ll hurt yourself.”

“Timely observation, thanks,” Snape grunts, and then he pushes himself onto his feet anyway, before stumbling forward and bracing himself against the wall with a hoarsely whispered, “Fuck, ow, fuck, god damn…”

“Sit down!" Harry yelps. “Stop—I’ll help you, just tell me what you need!”

Panting heavily, with his face twisted in agony, Snape reluctantly concedes, stumbling backwards to land himself heavily on the cot. He immediately tugs his feet up onto the cot as well—Harry barely catches a glimpse of the blood now seeping through the bandages, before Snape hides his legs under the blanket. He won’t look at Harry, but he glares furiously at the wall.

“What is it?” Harry asks, “Just tell me; I’ll help.”

“It is difficult,” Snape bites out, “to cast an evacuation charm, when you are not equipped with a wand.”

“Oh." Harry looks to the en suite bathroom, which unfortunately remains inaccessible to a man who cannot walk or even stand. “Oh. Sorry. I can—is it alright if I—? Or would you prefer—”

“Just get it over with.”

Harry casts the evacuation charm, which makes Snape flinch in discomfort, but then it’s over, and some of the tension in his spine unravels. “I’m sorry,” Harry says, “I should have thought of that sooner. Your feet—we should change the bandages—”

“Leave it.” Snape jerks the blanket tighter over his shoulder, “I’ll handle it myself.”

A chiding voice from the other side of the room interrupts them: “Severus, the boy is only trying to help.”

“I didn’t ask for his—” But Snape cuts himself off when he realizes to whom he’s speaking. Harry can’t blame him for the mistake; Voldemort had sounded eerily like Dumbledore just then.

Snape glances sidelong at Harry, and then he peers over his shoulder into the room, trying to find Voldemort in the dark. First he looks towards the door, but then his gaze drifts to the bed. His eyes bulge and his head whips around to face Harry.

“You’re sleeping together?!”

Harry hadn’t thought Snape’s voice could even go that high.

“No!” Harry assures him.

“Careful, Harry,” Voldemort goads, “there is no telling what Severus Snape is capable of doing in a fit of jealousy.”

“Oh shut up, Tom!” Harry snaps, and then he casts muffliato over himself and Snape.

In fact, Snape’s expression is nothing like jealousy; he looks pale and green but for a splotchy blush of outrage, and in a horrified whisper he says, “You’ve completely lost the plot.”

“No, really, it’s not like that—”

“Do you have any idea—do you have even the faintest recollection of how much was sacrificed, how many lives were—I allowed people to die, I killed, all so that you—and now you’re fucking him?” Snape’s body trembles. “This has gone beyond ignorance; this is actively malicious. What the hell is wrong with you?”

Harry doesn’t have a good answer. It’s not like Snape has said anything new. Harry knows the situation is messed up, but he’s only trying to find the best way to play the cards he was dealt. He sits on the far end of the cot from Snape and covers his face.

“I should have killed you,” Snape whispers.

Harry gives a quiet, bitter laugh into his hands. “I’m not sleeping with him, you bastard. We’re just sharing a bed.”

“In this particular situation, that distinction matters far less than you seem to think it does.”

“Well, what other option is there?” Harry asks. “None of us can leave this room. Voldemort won’t leave my side because the last time he did, you tried to kill me. I won’t leave your side because you’re on pretty much everyone’s shit list. So we’re all stuck here until we can work out some kind of arrangement. At least if I'm sleeping next to him, I know he's not hurting anyone behind my back."

“A standoff,” Snape summarizes in a dull tone.

Harry sighs. Aside from the hour, and Snape’s anger, this is probably still as good a time as any to tell Snape about the ritual. He just has to figure out how to explain it in a way that Snape will be willing to hear.

***

When Voldemort had told Harry about the ritual, Voldemort had kept the conversation from devolving into a shouting match because he had prepared for it. He’d spent all that time thinking things through from Harry’s perspective and meeting Harry’s needs before those needs were even spoken. If Harry wants this conversation with Snape to go smoothly, he’s going to have to do the same thing.

So how do things look from Snape’s perspective?

Snape had been made to kill Dumbledore. Then he accepted the role of Hogwarts headmaster, alienating all of his former colleagues (the only people who had ever respected him). He spent a year like this, completely isolated from any allies. He had the fate of the war on his shoulders and absolutely no one else with whom to share the burden. Then, when Harry veered off the planned course, it must have felt like a slap in the face.

The pressure must have finally gotten to him. He’s changed. The Snape Harry remembers would never have come up with a plan as desperate as “poison Harry’s hot chocolate and then wing it from there.”

And then, on top of everything, he was tortured for three days. He can’t walk. He’s in terrible pain. Aside from the bandages and the blanket, he’s still naked. His body is, even now, trying to contort itself to protect his extremities.

He’s not okay. He’s probably just waiting for the next terrible thing to happen, waiting to finally be crushed underneath it all. Maybe there’s an unspeakable, profound dread that sticks in his throat—that sort of thing is familiar to Harry, after cupboards and wartime burials and walking to his own death. He knows what it’s like to face the inevitability of suffering.

It would be utterly pointless to ask Snape to take anything on faith. He doesn’t have the capacity for that right now.

Harry has to set his sights lower. Forget about comforting Snape, forget about telling him that he’s safe and that the future looks bright; he won’t believe it. For now, Harry just needs to focus on getting Snape to agree to the ritual. Then Snape can have his wand back, and maybe then he’ll start to believe all of the good that can come out of Harry’s truce with Voldemort.

Not to mention the fact that… if they complete the ritual then Harry won’t feel like they’re teetering on a precipice anymore. With a bond between them, Harry will have a sense, an ongoing sense of Snape’s welfare, and he’ll also have the means to protect Snape if things turn sour.

(If Snape were to die, by Death Eater or by suicide, Harry’s not sure what he would do. It’s not the man himself that he’s become so attached to, it’s the idea of him, the story, the abject tragedy that he suffered alone for so long. It would be the worst kind of injustice if he died before Harry could make things better for him. If Snape’s life slipped through his fingers… if Harry won his own survival, but only on the back of Snape suffering for decades and then dying alone… the weight of that would be too heavy to bear.)

So that’s what matters, for the moment. The ritual. They just need to get it over with and then things will be better.

***

“Listen.” Harry says softly. He can feel his heart beating in his chest like an unstoppable train, but he tries his best to stay composed. He has to get this right. Snape’s life depends on it. “I know you don’t believe me about most of what I said earlier. I know that you think I’m being tricked, or mind-controlled, or maybe you just think I’ve turned into a dark lord myself. I wish I could show you my memories with legilimency and you would understand exactly what’s going on. But that can’t happen, because Voldemort thinks you’re going to try to kill me the moment you have your wand back, and I’m starting to believe him.”

“I won't deny that," says Snape with chilly conviction.

“That said,” Harry pushes onward, “there is a way out of this standoff. And though you won’t believe anything I say about it, I hope that the logic of the situation will speak for itself.” Harry braces himself, then carefully says: “Voldemort has promised that you can have your wand and your freedom back if you swear a bond of fealty to me."

Snape blinks. "To you?"

"To me." Harry rises from the cot, like his racing heart is filled with helium and he can't stay seated. "I've done a lot of research into it. We have books here if you want to take a look at the fine print yourself. If you want to assure yourself they haven't been tampered with, I'm happy to facilitate you purchasing your own copies or something—"

"I don't need the book, I know what it says."

Stunned, Harry sits back down. "Really?” he asks, “What, do you have it memorized?"

Snape lets out a slow, measured breath and stares at the wall. "Albus and I reviewed the literature many years ago. There was always a chance that the Dark Lord would demand ritualized loyalty in addition to the Mark, especially at the highest ranks. My cover... could survive certain rituals. For others, we determined that it was necessary for me to kill myself rather than take the bond, else I would be handing over all the Order's secrets and my autonomy besides."

Harry's throat spasms. "Oh," he says. "Fuck." He feels like he’s looking over the edge of that cliff. Please don’t, he begs Snape in his mind. I really don’t know what I’d do.

“This was the Dark Lord’s idea?” Snape presses, “Fealty to you, specifically?”

“Yes.”

"That…" Snape shakes his head. “If he knows you possess a piece of his soul and he wishes to protect you, he could have just as easily bound me to him with a stronger ritual. He could have brought me to heel, so to speak.” He pauses, and one of his hands disappears under his blanket, touching the bandages around the sole of his foot. “I know how he disciplines those he deems useful. In the dungeons, it was evident from his… treatment of me, that I was useless to him. He nearly killed me. What good would a fealty ritual do?”

"That's what I mean, when I say the situation speaks for itself." Harry leans forward, trying to catch his gaze. "Snape, this bond I have with Voldemort—he doesn't just need me alive. He needs me happy.”

Blankly, Snape stares back at Harry.

“If I’m in pain, he’s in pain.” Harry continues, “If I’m in distress, he’s in distress. What pleases me pleases him. I mean, for fuck’s sake, we share a soul—it makes sense, doesn’t it?”

Furrowing his brow, Snape glances between Harry and the darkness which fills the rest of the room. “I am… willing to entertain the premise.”

“So… when you tried to kill me, Voldemort was stuck. He wanted to kill you, to erase the threat. But he knew that would upset me.”

“Why?”

“Because I care about you,” Harry offers automatically. Given the way he’s treated Snape in the past twenty-four hours… it would be silly to talk around that particular point.

Snape laughs once, tinged with hysteria. “Setting aside that admittedly baffling assertion, what I meant was: what gave the Dark Lord reason to believe such a thing?”

“Oh.” Harry looks at the ceiling thoughtfully. “Well, I’ve made it quite clear to him that certain people are off-limits. I’ve asked him to leave you and the Malfoys alone.”

“And this… did not arouse suspicion?” Snape asks. “You were meant to hate me.”

“Hmm. Yeah, I suppose you could call it suspicion. But not suspicion about you. He thinks I’m in denial about your ‘terrible betrayal’ of me. I think… he invested so much confidence in you that he’s refusing to see any signs of your disloyalty. It’s going to be… devastating when he finds out.”

“When—” Snape sputters, “when he finds out?!”

“Well—” Harry smacks himself in the forehead. “God, I’m sorry, that probably sounded terrifying. I swear, I would never, ever jeopardize your life without talking to you about it first.”

Still, Snape is speechless, and if his eyes were daggers Harry would be fully impaled by now.

Harry can feel his heartbeat all the way in his fingers, vibrating his nerves. “Look, the only reason I said that in the first place is that, ultimately, I hope we can find a way forward where you don’t have to maintain a cover and hold your life on the line every single day. But that's a conversation for another time, and nothing would happen without your consent and participation, I swear. Please, can we go back to the original topic?"

After a short, frustrated outburst of breath, Snape gives a weary gesture, Go on.

“So,” Harry continues, “he wanted to kill you to erase the threat. But that’s not an option, so he had to come up with an alternative which aligns better with my preferences. He settled on the fealty ritual—it’s the least intrusive bond that still magically blocks you from causing me harm. That should prove to you well enough that Voldemort is genuinely concerned with my feelings.”

“... and you believe I should consent to the ritual.” Snape scowls.

“I think… Voldemort is most dangerous to you if he’s afraid of what you can do. This ritual will ease his mind, without great sacrifice on your part. It’s not like the bond will allow me to read your thoughts, or control you, or order you around. I won’t be able to tap into your magic except for spells of protection. If Voldemort ever did find out about your true loyalties… between your magic and mine, I think we could probably protect you from the backlash.” Harry tries to speak calmly and clearly, but he sees the way Snape’s head lowers, the defeat written into his body language. “But, sir, you don’t—you don’t have to decide now. If you want to consider it, or do research, or just rest and recover before making any decisions like this, that’s fine—”

“You are truly here of your own volition,” Snape says tiredly. It’s not a question.

“Well,” says Harry, “yes.”

“Aside from myself, there is no one else living who knows that you must be killed to defeat the Dark Lord. If I consent to this ritual, there is no one else who will have the tools to defeat him.”

Harry rubs a hand across his forehead. “There’s nothing in the spell to stop you from telling someone else,” he whispers. “If that makes you feel better about it. But I… I wish you wouldn’t.”

“Because you don’t care about defeating him.”

“I—I care about people. I care about keeping people safe and making the world better.”

“And you’re willing to ally yourself with him to achieve that goal.”

“...yes,” Harry says, meeting Snape’s gaze in challenge. “Yes, I am.”

Snape’s face pinches around the corners of his eyes. “You are your father’s son,” he spits out. “Warm and beloved by his public, yet nevertheless a master of frigid, unrepentant cruelty.”

Harry shivers, and takes a deep breath, finally turning his face away. Snape’s right, in a way. He endured so much so that Harry could kill Voldemort and now… what is there left to say? I’m sorry for wasting your life's work?

“We should change your bandages,” Harry says instead. He summons the salve and the bandages without looking, and he puts them on the cot next to Snape. Then he casts a charm to light the nearest sconce. “Do you need help?”

“No.”

“Do you want something for the pain?”

Snape scoffs at the irony, and shakes his head, beginning to pick at the bandages around his right foot.

Harry just watches, bearing the weight of Snape’s dismissal. Really, after all those years in school, this shouldn’t hurt as much as it does. Harry should have better defenses against… the urge to seek Snape’s approval, and the sting of his rejection. And yet, it feels raw, perhaps even more raw than it did when Harry was eleven, because now all these years later Harry has reason to respect Snape, and that just makes it more painful.

“Harry,” Voldemort calls mildly from the bed, without lifting his head from the still warm mattress. “Are you alright?” Voldemort’s probably only asking this as a gesture of moral support, or, more likely, as a chiding reminder that Harry should mind his emotions lest he pollute the bond and pass his discomfort onto his more volatile other half.

“I’m fine,” Harry says.

“Oh no,” Voldemort deadpans, “Harry Potter has turned into a mosquito.”

Harry casts finite on the muffling spell. “I’m fine,” he says again, then re-casts the spell.

“Not sleeping with him, hmm?” murmurs Snape.

“I’m not!”

“What difference does it make?” Snape asks in an airy, mocking tone without looking up from the bandages. “After all, you’ve decided to build a friendly rapport with your mother’s murderer. Your chastity doesn’t lessen the blow.”

He has finished unwinding the bandages from his right foot. Shamed into silence, Harry just watches him. The bone is no longer visible. The lacerations aren’t quite as deep as before. But it’s still just raw flesh, unrecognizable and bleeding sluggishly. Snape paints the salve back on, gritting his teeth but not making a sound. It must not be as painful as trying to stand.

"Will you consent to the ritual?" Harry whispers, helplessly.

"Yes," Snape grunts, "fool that I am.”

It doesn’t feel like a victory; it settles like a rock in Harry’s stomach. “Why?” Harry asks. “You seemed so certain that he needed to die, and—”

"I haven’t much of a choice in the matter, have I?” he snaps, glaring at Harry. “If I refuse the ritual and incur my death, I guarantee the wizarding world falls to the Dark Lord. But if I consent to the ritual, the fall of the wizarding world is only very, very likely.”

Then Snape focuses on his left foot. It’s harder for Harry to see the extent of those wounds from this angle, but when the bandages are removed, Snape pauses with his gaze fixed there on the blood.

“Snape?”

“I do have one question, though,” Snape admits. “If you would be so gracious as to remove the muffling.”

Harry hesitates. “You’re not going to say something stupid, are you?”

Snape gives him a flat look.

“Fine,” Harry concedes. He takes a deep breath, shaky on the exhale. Then he removes the muffliato.

Snape turns over his shoulder to look back towards the bed in the dark. “My lord,” he ventures softly, unsure of his welcome.

With a groan of sleepy annoyance and a clipped gesture to flick the remaining sconces alight, Voldemort rouses himself to sit up in the bed. “While I understood the initial urgency, I had hoped you would both return to your beds by now,” he grumbles. “What is it, Severus?”

Snape… looks genuinely cowed by this, but Harry’s not sure how much of that is lingering trauma from bearing the brunt of Voldemort’s displeasure, versus how much of it is just his pretend Death Eater submission. “I apologize, my lord, I have a question about the fealty ritual that I anticipate… your friend, here… would not be equipped to answer.”

“Don’t underestimate the amount of research the boy has done,” Voldemort says absently, pulling his silk shirt away from his skin. “But, go on, then. What’s your question?”

“Does the bond preclude suicidality?”

“What—hold on,” Harry cuts in, horrified. “Two seconds ago you were saying you didn’t want to die, you can’t—”

But Snape keeps his eyes fixed on Voldemort, and Voldemort says, “Hush, Harry," with something uncharacteristically kind in his voice. “It is an entirely reasonable question to ask about any spell which affects the mind. It does not mean the asker wishes to die.”

“But—” Harry shuffles around to face him fully, kneeling on the cot. “What?”

Voldemort smiles and shakes his head. “I suppose your innocence in these matters is a sharp indictment of my Death Eaters’ creativity. Harry, how much did you read into the chapters about slave bonds?”

Harry shifts uncomfortably. “Not much.”

“Spells that control the mind are by their very nature designed to force the victim to take an action they otherwise would resist taking. This applies to slave bonds, enthrallment rituals, the imperius curse… It would be unfortunate for the caster, if the target of the spell could simply end their life rather than comply with the caster’s demands, don’t you think? A waste of time and resources.”

“Oh,” Harry says, feeling cold.

“And it would be very frightening indeed, as the victim, to find yourself in an intolerable situation from which you could not escape, even by death. Stuck as a passenger inside of your body, for the duration of your natural life and sometimes a fair bit beyond that as well, depending upon the creativity of the wizard who bound you.”

“Oh my god,” Harry chokes out. “Tell me this doesn’t…”

“No, of course not. The magic of this bond wouldn’t be strong enough to force Severus to do anything, let alone force him to stay alive. But…" Voldemort offers an approving nod, "it was clever of him to ask.”

The relief hits Harry square in the chest. Snape, too, seems to relax slightly, shutting his eyes and taking a deep breath. “The books didn’t mention anything about that, I swear," Harry tells him in a rush, “but if you want to check, if you want to make sure he’s telling the truth, I can find you other resources.”

“Not necessary.” Snape shifts and runs a hand over his face. “I already assumed as much, I just… wished to confirm.”

“Okay." Harry looks at him and then at Voldemort, and oh god, Harry just wants to stop having to worry. "Um, shall we just do the ritual now and get it over with?”

“As your witness for the proceedings,” Voldemort interrupts, “I would prefer not to witness anything at three in the morning, thank you.”

“Oh." Harry forces himself to laugh. "Maybe we should do this when it’s light out."

Snape fastens the bandage in place around his left foot, then pulls the blanket tighter around himself. In the flickering glow of the sconce his face looks gaunt and old, but still he manages to sneer at Harry, “You’re going to return to his bed now, aren’t you?”

Harry flushes. “Goodnight, Snape,” he says, and then he douses the sconces. Snape doesn’t respond.

Chapter Text

It occurs to Harry, vaguely, that he hasn’t been having nightmares anymore.

In the morning, everything is silent and still. When Harry wakes, he only knows it’s morning because the gap at the bottom of the door glows with natural light instead of sconce light. But absent any windows, the room remains dark. Harry squeezes his eyes shut and reaches for the Elder Wand. Then he lights the sconces without looking.

Voldemort makes a sleepy grumble, with his face still pressed against Harry’s armpit.

Harry squints at the room, trying to give his eyes time to adjust. The piles of books on the desk, the little brass cauldron under a stasis charm, the medical bag and the used, discarded bandages...

Snape is sitting up on the cot. He’s looking at Harry. He’s looking at Harry in bed with Voldemort, and his baleful expression says far more than even Snape could manage with words alone.

Harry lets out a long breath and tries not to acknowledge the feeling of discomfort and guilt welling up inside of him. Fantastic way to start the day.

***

After a tense negotiation about the precise angle at which the bathroom door should be left ajar, Harry showers. He only takes a few minutes to scrub himself down and get his hair clean, but as he exits the bathroom with a towel around his waist, he discovers a few minutes was plenty enough time for Voldemort to get into mischief.

“...He who swears fealty to his lord ought always to have these six things in memory; what is harmless, safe, honorable, useful, easy, practicable.” Voldemort reads aloud cheerily from a small paperback volume. “Harmless, that is to say that he should not be injurious to his lord in his body; safe, that he should not be injurious to him in his secrets or in the defences through which he is able to be secure; honorable, that he should not be injurious to him in his justice or in other matters that pertain to his honor…”

“What’s this, then?” Harry whispers loudly to Snape, who is sitting up in his cot looking disheveled.

“The writings of a french bishop in the eleventh century,” Snape responds blandly.

“...that that good which his lord is able to do easily, he make not difficult, nor that which is practicable he make impossible to him. Are you listening, Severus?”

“Raptly, my lord.”

Voldemort’s mouth quirks. “However,” he continues, “that the faithful vassal should avoid these injuries is proper, but not for this does he deserve his holding; for it is not sufficient to abstain from evil, unless what is good is done also. It remains, therefore, that in the same six things mentioned above he should faithfully counsel and aid his lord, if he wishes to be looked upon as worthy of his benefice and to be safe concerning the fealty which he has sworn.”

Standing wetly in front of the armoire, Harry pulls open the sock drawer. “The magical oath doesn’t match one-to-one with the muggle oath, Tom.”

“I never suggested it did,” Voldemort replies primly. “But that does not change my personal expectations for Severus’s conduct.”

Harry scoffs, tugging pants on. “I think you spent three days making your expectations pretty damn clear. Maybe you should quit while you’re ahead.” Harry glances over at Snape. “Are you alright?”

Snape blinks at Harry, slowly. “I’m really not sure how you expect me to answer that question,” he says.

“Yeah. Fair enough.”

Harry scrubs the towel ruthlessly over his curls, which Voldemort naturally takes as another opportunity to pester Snape: “Severus, were you really listening?”

“You were instructing me to follow the spirit of the oath, even though the magic itself will not force me to obey the full set of traditional precepts.”

“And,” Voldemort prods, “you understand the consequences of straying from the oath would be…?”

“Something extremely unpleasant, I’m sure.”

“For fuck’s sake, Tom, leave him alone.” Harry finds a shirt, something plain and grey with buttons and a collar, which is probably still expensive but not gaudy like the renaissance outfit had been. He’s halfway through fastening the buttons when it occurs to him—“Hey, did you ever find out the time zone thing? I mean, I don’t think the ritual will take very long, but I don’t want to cut it close to the telephone appointment without realizing—”

Voldemort smiles at him, and any discomfort Harry should feel about that is long gone by now. “You have an extra hour,” Voldemort says. “I will escort you to the Goyle estate at a quarter to one.”

“Oh, perfect,” Harry says, buttoning his trousers. “That’s—”

“Harry.”

For a moment, Harry doesn’t recognize the voice, and then he realizes it’s Snape, calling him by his first name. Snape also seems uncomfortable with the familiarity, but… Harry supposes that after the lecture Snape just received, it must have clicked for him that Voldemort wouldn’t abide him saying Potter with his usual vitriol. Harry’s given name was, evidently, the best of the alternatives.

Harry turns to face Snape, and their eyes meet. “Um. Yes?”

“While you are… near the armoire, could you…” He clears his throat, and tears his eyes away from Harry. “Could I please have some underwear?”

Harry freezes. “I thought… I just thought that’d be uncomfortable, with all the bandages.”

“It will be,” Snape affirms stiffly, “but, with the… physical position required for the ritual, I fear the blanket may not be… sufficient, for modesty.”

“I-I mean,” Harry stammers, and feels his face heat up. “It’s not like I haven’t seen—”

“He bathed you, Severus,” Voldemort points out.

“He—?” Snape looks up at Harry sharply, then scowls at the wall. “Yes, of course—well, bully for him. I’d still prefer to be clothed.”

“Yeah, I’ve got you,” Harry mutters, turning back to the drawer with socks and pants and undershirts. And he… oh, God, now he’s thinking about Snape’s penis. It hadn’t mattered yesterday because things were clinical, and Harry hadn’t been forced to reckon with the fact that… well, Snape has a body, of course, and now Harry knows how his body looks, which feels very odd.

But it’s a normal-looking penis. Harry shouldn’t feel so shaken about having seen it. You can’t share a dorm or play Quidditch without seeing penises occasionally. It’s just that it’s Snape's.

Harry picks a pair of plain black underwear, and then he uses a charm to float them over to Snape because he absolutely cannot look at Snape right now.

And he doesn’t think about Snape’s testicles, either.

“Thanks,” Snape says roughly.

***

Liefje serves them breakfast. She places a tray of coffee, pastries and fresh fruit on the desk, and her big elf eyes fixate on Harry, and then on Snape, and then on the Dark Lord. But she doesn’t say anything; she’s only waiting in case they have further orders.

And Harry feels absolutely wretched that he hadn’t thought to ask after her welfare yesterday. God—if Dobby had served poisoned hot chocolate to the Dark Lord, Lucius Malfoy would have killed him without blinking.

“Liefje,” Harry says. “You… you weren’t punished, were you?”

Her big eyes study Harry. “Pu-nisht… I do not know this word, mister?”

Behind her, Harry sees Voldemort’s head tilt. “Bestrafung,” he offers.

Her head whips around to face him, “Straf? Nee, nee, nee…!” and her big eyes fill with tears as she speaks quickly in Dutch, little fingers clutched close to her chest.

Harry grabs her shoulder, “Liefje, no, it’s—” but she whimpers, she’s shaking, and Harry feels like scum. He looks up at Voldemort, panicked. “Can’t you tell her what I meant?”

“That was German. I never learned Dutch.”

Harry rolls his eyes, thinking of course he speaks fucking German, fucking Grindelwald. He drops to his knees in front of Liefje, still holding her shoulder. He chooses his words carefully, trying to guess where the limits of her English vocabulary might be: “I am sorry. I am asking, is Liefje okay? Is Liefje well? No—no straf?”

He notices, as he’s touching her shoulder, that the fabric of her little elf-shift isn’t scratchy or dirty like he’s seen with neglected elves like Dobby or Kreacher in the past. Recognition lights in her eyes, and she says, “Oh, oh,” and wipes the tears from her face. “Liefje is sorry. Liefje is well. Thank you, mister.”

“Liefje, if… if anyone tries to hurt you, please tell me. If…” Harry trails off, unsure how to convey such an already-delicate message across the language barrier.

“Honestly, Potter, don’t you have bigger fish to fry?”

There’s a twitch in Voldemort’s jaw like he’s about to speak, but Harry beats him to it, shooting Snape a sharp look. “What’s that supposed to mean? She might have gotten caught in the fallout of your stunt with the poison, I’m just making sure—”

“If anyone believed the house elf was involved, she would be dead. As she is not dead, we can infer she was not blamed. From the state of her clothes, demeanor, and apparent health it is clear she has not suffered any recent trauma. If you truly mean to save everyone," (and at this point Snape looks a bit breathlessly frustrated, like he hadn’t planned to say this much) "you must learn to triage, rather than fixating on whichever poor sod happens to land in front of your nose."

Voldemort rolls his eyes with a huff. "You've held his attention the last twenty-eight hours, Severus. Give someone else a turn."

"My lord," Snape grits out, "you have known me for the better part of two decades. You know there is nothing I want less than to bear Potter’s attention."

Harry frowns thoughtfully. “The prisoners,” he interrupts before Voldemort can reprimand Snape’s insolence. "You’re thinking I’ve forgotten about the prisoners, but I haven’t. Draco's taking stock of them. He's ensuring they get proper food, clothes, and medical care. It's not perfect, but it'll hopefully take the edge off for just a few more days until we can figure out how to let everybody go."

Snape stares at him. "You've… delegated."

Harry gestures sheepishly at him with his free hand. "I had some more urgent concerns."

“I am irrelevant,” Snape whispers. “There are children.”

Harry’s fingers twitch around Liefje’s shoulder. She’s still waiting patiently for him to address her. “Liefje… be safe,” Harry tells her, inadequately. “If you need any help, come to me. I will help. I will keep you safe.” And I’ll learn some sort of translation spell before this becomes a problem, he doesn’t mention out loud.

Liefje gives a close-mouthed smile and a nod before apparating away, but he isn’t sure that she understood him.

“As for the children,” Harry continues, standing up, “we’ll address that after the ritual.”

“Severus,” says Voldemort with the lazy interest of an apex predator, “I was not aware the state of our dungeons was of concern to you.”

“Ritual first,” Harry growls.

Snape stares at nothing.

Voldemort gives a thoughtful hum, then fetches the cauldron.

***

It takes some maneuvering to help Snape off the cot. The ritual requires him to be kneeling, so they’re lucky that kneeling is a good position for him, because it doesn’t involve putting weight on the wounds. Then he’s down there, with the blanket hanging around his shoulders and his hands clasped in front of him as if in prayer. Apparently Snape had been right about the modesty thing. The position leaves the blanket hanging open, and in the shadow of Snape’s hunched shoulders, between wrapped strands of gauze, Harry can see the little dip of his bellybutton, his wiry body hair, his matchstick thighs, and the black fabric of his briefs.

(It wouldn’t have been a problem, really, if he had still been naked. Harry wouldn’t have allowed himself to be distracted by something as juvenile as that, really—this ritual is a life-or-death situation and Harry desperately needs for it to go smoothly. But he understands that it would have made Snape uncomfortable, in an abstract sort of way.)

(That is to say, Harry can picture himself feeling embarrassed if he were exposed in front of his peers at Hogwarts. He completely understands that. It’s just that Harry isn’t really Snape’s peer in the same way, and neither is Voldemort, and their current circumstances are at such a life-or-death scale that Harry struggles to wrap his mind about why Snape had bothered to ask for underwear. Then again, it had been one way for Snape to feel less vulnerable, and Harry understands why he would want that, at least, given everything else that’s been happening to Snape lately.)

“The potion,” says Voldemort, carrying a large bronze chalice filled with what must be the entirety of the brew. The thin broth is a deep jewel-toned red color, with an iridescent film on its surface. “Keep your hands in front of you, Severus; the witness feeds it to you.”

“Lovely,” says Snape under his breath. But he accepts Voldemort lifting the ritual goblet to his lips, and he begins to drink.

“How much of it does he have to take?” Harry asks, shutting away memories of Dumbledore and the inferi.

“As much as he can manage,” Voldemort answers. “It prepares his magic to accept the bond—Oh, Severus, pace yourself, don’t choke on it.”

He wants to get it over with, Harry thinks. A droplet of the potion runs from the corner of Snape’s mouth, the translucent red of the pomegranate base turning a pale pink against Snape’s skin.

“Don’t I have to drink any?” Harry asks, “So that my magic can accept the bond?”

“It doesn’t go both ways, Harry.”

Harry shifts uncomfortably in his chair. “...right.”

Setting aside the empty goblet, Voldemort now levitates two scrolls before each of them at their respective eye levels, bearing the texts of the oaths. Graciously ignoring the gassy sound from Snape as the liquid settles, Voldemort asks, “Are there any final questions before we begin?”

“Actually, yeah,” Harry says with forced composure, reviewing the text and trying to settle his nerves. “Remind me again, what’s a wergild?”

“A wergild is historically the monetary value assigned to a person’s life,” Voldemort explains patiently. “A convicted murderer would be charged with paying their victim’s wergild to the surviving family or liege lord. In our world, however, the wergild is an amount of the murderer’s magical essence that you would be lawfully permitted to collect from them, in proportion to the boon Severus had provided to your power—”

“So it would only be relevant if Snape were killed?”

“Yes,” says Voldemort, sounding pleased with the idea.

“That explains why I ignored it in my research.” Harry clasps Snape’s outstretched prayer hands between his own, covering Snape’s knuckles with his palms the way the ritual prescribes. “I wouldn’t let that happen in the first place.”

Snape's gaze locks on Harry, his eyes glittering with such dark intensity that they bring to mind the basilisk. “Best of luck with that, Potter,” he hisses under his breath.

‘Is that all?” Voldemort asks. “Are we ready to proceed?”

Harry nods.

“Then, Severus, whenever you’re ready.”

Snape doesn’t say anything. For a time he studies Harry's expression, and then, with that familiar resignation, he shuts his eyes.

“Remember, Severus,” Voldemort adds. “Only willing bonds are binding. If I am forced to brew again for a second attempt, I will not be pleased.”

“I know,” Snape says. “I know, my lord.”

Then he takes another deep breath. And in the half second before he begins to speak, Harry feels a flash of sudden warmth from the junction of their hands.

“By the Lady Magic, before whom all willing oaths are holy...” Snape’s clear, low voice hesitates for a moment, but then with renewed determination he continues, “I will be to Harry Potter faithful and true… and love all that he loves, and shun all that he shuns, according to the laws of magic, and according to the world's principles... and never, by will nor by force, by word nor by work, do ought of what is loathful to him; on condition that he—”

Snape cuts off, and he looks up at Harry. No longer does he look like a basilisk. He looks like… well, he looks like himself, the way he looked during those awful confrontations with Dumbledore. He looks defeated. “...on condition that he keep me as I am willing to deserve, and all that fulfill that our agreement was, when I—when I to him submitted and chose his will.”

Oh.

He means it. From the glow of their hands clasped together, from the way Harry can feel the aura of Snape’s magic cradled in Snape’s hands like an offering… he means it. He knows that this is the only path left available to him... or, rather, he knows that it's better to tie himself to Harry's imperfect leadership than to continue struggling and suffering on his own. This is what submission looks like: Keep me as I am willing to deserve.

Harry has no idea how to process the way he feels about that, so he starts speaking his own part of the oath. “It is right that those who offer to me unbroken fidelity should be protected by my aid,” he says with firm conviction despite his wobbly, nervous tone of voice. As he speaks, the glow of the ritual magic shifts in hue, until their hands are swathed in indigo and violet bands of light. “And since Severus Snape, by the favor of Lady Magic, has seen fit to swear trust and fidelity to me in my hands, therefore I decree and command by the present binding oath that for the future Severus Snape be counted with the number of those loyal to me.”

Harry hesitates, studying Snape’s uncharacteristically raw expression, with the light of their shared magic giving his features an almost alien glow. He’s alive, and he’ll be protected. That’s what matters. That’s the closest thing to salvation Harry can offer. “And if anyone perchance should presume to kill him,” Harry continues pointedly, “let them know that they will be judged guilty of his wergild in the eyes of Lady Magic, which I have been ritually invested with the power to collect.”

“As she wills it, so mote it be,” says Voldemort.

The glowing bands of light expand, enveloping both Harry and Snape in a swirl of royal hues, and Harry can feel the heat of their magicks touching each other like a tiny dwarf star encased between their hands.

And then it’s over.

Harry looks at Snape, who is looking back at him. Harry can feel their bond now, and he thoughtfully prods at it like a loose tooth, feeling the shape of it within his own magical core.

Then, Snape says “Oh, fuck.”

***

It’s incredibly frustrating to know that things will go wrong, and yet find oneself unequipped with the prophetic knowledge necessary to actually prevent things from going wrong. Of course there would be a problem with the ritual—nothing in Harry’s life ever goes smoothly, especially not when he wants it to. But Harry hadn’t been able to predict what the problem would be, and he feels so helpless watching the threads unravel right in front of him.

Snape stares at his own arm, at the dark mark. He breathes heavily through his nose, and clenches his jaw shut. If Harry focuses all of his attention on the newly forged bond, he can sense it, far away like an echo—the pain, like if you had taken a hot coal right out of a burning hearth and placed it directly upon Snape’s inner left forearm, red-orange and sizzling. Frankly, Snape’s pain tolerance belies the severity of what’s happening to him.

“Tom,” Harry breathes, slipping out of the chair and falling to his knees in front of Snape. “Tom, what’s happening—”

Voldemort is frozen. At first Harry thinks he’s being impassive, being horrible, but then Harry can feel Voldemort’s panic, too, distinct from his own, though their emotions are twisting together and feeding off each other until they’re both paralyzed with fear and—

“Tom!” Harry screams at him.

Voldemort’s eyes flicker away from Snape’s arm to Harry. “The—the mark, it feels threatened by a second bond; it believes Severus has betrayed his oath to me. I didn’t know this would happen, I didn’t—Harry, I didn’t mean for this to—”

“Do something!” Fuck, Harry can smell it now, burning flesh. The tattoo of the snake writhes and flicks its body around, trying to strangle its prey. Snape’s veins are glowing beneath the skin, radiating outwards from the mark and through his circulatory system, like the snake’s venom is molten ore set to be cast in the shape of Snape’s capillaries. Snape doesn’t scream. He’s just trembling, and passively watching it kill him.

In his imagination, Harry can hear Professor Snape’s voice making a typical dry remark: It is so like you, Potter, to fail to kill me when you meant to, and then succeed in killing me when you were actively trying to prevent my death.

“Tom, please!” Harry cries.

Internally, he berates himself as his eyes burn with tears, I wasn’t ready, I should have researched more, discussed it more, this is my fault, my mistake, my failure...

It sounds like Voldemort, almost. The anguish of making a mistake and paying dearly for it. The agony of losing the one person you were trying to protect.

Voldemort drops to his knees and yanks on Snape’s wrist, and then—with zealous, almost robotic concentration, he begins to chant in Parseltongue, too fast for Harry to make out the words, harsh susurrations and the flash of his fangs in the sconce light. His grip on Snape is severe, bruising.

That’s when Snape starts to struggle. Eyes glazed and disoriented, he tries to yank his arm away, mistaking (or correctly identifying) Voldemort for the source of the agony. “No…please,” Snape begs, “no, my lord, please forgive me, please forgive—” and then he’s screaming and Harry has to belt his arms around Snape’s middle from behind, to hold him in place so he can’t get away from Voldemort, who must be fixing things, he must be, there’s no alternative if the mark kills Snape, there’s no do-over.

Voldemort’s incantation falters, but he regains the rhythm with a flash of determination in his eyes.

A string of magical energy, red, almost black, rises from the flesh of Snape’s arm. It curls curiously in the air like a charmed python, and then it finds its master. The magic flows back into Voldemort, a wisp of a memory returned to its original bearer.

Snape’s shoulders spasm, then he collapses back against Harry like deadweight, breathing heavily. Voldemort lets go of Snape’s wrist, which falls limply against his body.

“What did you do?” Harry whispers. Then he sees it. Or… the absence of it.

“It was necessary,” says Voldemort. “I have never removed one before… truthfully, I’m just relieved that it worked.”

“I didn’t know it was possible to remove it.”

“Yes,” Voldemort says tightly, looking away. Like busywork, he retrieves the goblet from before, and fills it with water from his wand. Next he summons a towel, wets it in the goblet, then presses the damp fabric to Snape’s arm where the mark had been. After a moment, Snape begins to shiver in Harry’s hold. “There,” murmurs Voldemort, though a certain degree of tension remains in his expression, “There you are, Severus. It isn’t burning anymore, can’t you tell? It’s over.” He strokes the towel back and forth against the skin there, and Harry can’t see what Snape’s face looks like from this angle, but he watches Voldemort’s face, and he realizes that Voldemort is waiting for something.

Snape comes back to himself with a jolt. He makes a sort of choking sound and nearly elbows Harry in the gut. Then his right hand reflexively grabs for the towel, which Voldemort willingly surrenders to him. Snape squeezes the makeshift compress against his own skin with a shaking, white-knuckled grip.

Voldemort’s gaze flickers to Harry in relief, and Harry belatedly realizes what Voldemort had been worried about: Snape might not have woken up. He might have been rendered unresponsive from the mental injury of sustained agony—but Snape is awake, now. It’s all okay. Harry shivers, feeling as if a ghost just passed him by.

Chapter Text

Voldemort helps Snape back onto the cot. He's still violently shaking when Voldemort towers over him and says, with an uncomfortably sincere demeanor, “Severus, please accept my apologies. I know this was not the outcome we had agreed upon. I was forced to remove the mark by necessity, but I do not wish to cast any disrespect on the oath you swore to me years ago, nor do I wish to reject you. As promised, my esteem for you is entirely restored.” He rests a pale hand on Snape’s shoulder. “If you wish to wear some other mark of belonging, I will arrange for an alternative.”

Snape doesn’t look up from his own blank forearm. “May I have my wand,” he asks, nearly a whisper.

From thin air, Voldemort produces Snape’s wand. He patiently waits for Snape to have a firm grasp of it before letting go.

Harry reminds himself that it was Voldemort who marked Snape, it was Voldemort who killed Harry’s parents, it was Voldemort who killed Snape’s best friend, it was Voldemort who tortured Snape over and over and over again until Snape’s pavlovian response to agony was to assume that he was being punished.

And yet there is tenderness here—at least on the part of Voldemort. Strange, unwelcome tenderness.

Wand restored, Snape mutters a rote list of spells to remove the soiled bandages, clean the wounds, apply the salve, and replace the bandages. The tip of his wand wobbles in the air, but his magic remains diligent. There’s a far away look in his eyes, a crease in his brow. He wordlessly transfigures the blanket into a bathrobe, something to cover himself with while leaving his hands exposed. He looks at his arm again. He presses the damp towel back into place.

It's still only half past ten. After an absentminded malice-detection spell on the food, Harry takes a pinch of a muffin from the breakfast tray Liefje left on the work desk. By the time he starts chewing he realizes he’s not hungry. His hands are shaking, too.

“Tom,” Harry says after swallowing, “I think… now that we have this settled, maybe you ought to check on your people and make sure they haven’t started a mutiny in your four-day absence."

Voldemort frowns. “Harry, it really was not my intention to cause—”

“I know it wasn’t. You’re fine. Just, please go take stock of things. I need to speak with Snape, and we’ll need up-to-date information about the status of the war before this afternoon, so. Please go.”

After a moment, Voldemort nods and goes to the door. He pauses there.

“If you really can’t stand to separate yourself from me, then we just went through all of that ritual nonsense for nothing,” Harry grumbles.

“I’m going,” Voldemort replies tightly, but he turns around and looks at Harry, and there’s something disarming in his expression, something dangerously human. “I am truly sorry for what happened with the mark,” he says. “Truly.”

But you’re not apologizing for hurting him in the first place, Harry thinks but doesn’t say.

The door shuts behind Voldemort and then they’re alone.

Neither of them speak for a while. Harry takes another tasteless pinch of the muffin. Snape’s hands are still shaking, and he’s not quite sitting upright under his own power. He can’t seem to decide whether to press the water against his arm to relieve the psychosomatic aftereffects of the burning, or whether he should stare at the newly bare flesh. He keeps checking under the towel to confirm that it’s really gone.

Harry knows better than to ask if he’s okay.

“The call this afternoon is with Hermione.” Harry tells him. “I’m going to tell her everything. I’m not good at politics, at seeing the whole picture and making sure nobody gets hurt or left behind. But she’s good at that. We’ll be able to figure out next steps together.”

Snape summons a stout little glass from the desk and fills it with water from his wand. He only fills it halfway, so the water won’t slosh out over the sides when he holds it. He doesn't say anything.

“If you’re up for it,” Harry continues, “you would be a big help on that call. Though we’d have to break your cover, for you to be able to share your true opinions.” Harry looks down at his own wand, the Elder Wand, held loosely between his fingers. “I think, without the Dark Mark to worry about, the risks of breaking your cover at this point are negligible.”

“Negligible,” Snape echoes in a whisper.

“Yeah. I mean… well, we can use legilimency now that we’ve got the bond. I can just show you. If… if you’re up for it.”

But Snape still doesn’t look at him. Harry lets out a breath, and then goes to the cot to sit next to him, so they’re facing the room together. Snape smells like the war, like dittany and sweat.

“Are the wounds healing well?”

“No.”

“Oh,” Harry says. “Shit.”

Snape casts a diagnostic spell on himself—this time it takes two tries, two flicks of his wand before the spell actually activates. He’s running out of magical stamina, trying to do too much too fast after straining his core to keep himself alive. The results of the diagnostic make him click his tongue and dismiss the spell with a jerking motion. “It was enchanted.”

“What?”

“The whip. Enchanted. Rookwood was right. This is a waste of dittany.” Snape’s wand wobbles in his grasp and the medical satchel goes skidding leftward until it makes a thump against the wall.

“What does that mean?”

“It means you should have left me to die, Potter, because I’m not going to be much damn help for you,” Snape growls, then pinches the bridge of his nose and shuts his eyes.

Startled, Harry latches onto the fact that Voldemort wouldn’t have given Harry so much help in saving Snape if the whole operation had been pointless. So it can’t… it can’t be as bad as all that. “What does it really mean?” Harry asks. “The dittany isn’t working?”

“Standard potions accelerate natural healing processes. Dittany-based potions reverse damage as if it never occurred. But curse damage cannot be reversed; its temporal gravity overwhelms the catalytic agent—” Snape glances at Harry. “You are familiar with ‘Convalescent period’ as a unit of time?”

“The time it would take for an equivalent physical injury to heal without magic.”

“Correct. With no potion, typical curse wounds heal at a rate of the convalescent period over nought—in other words, curse wounds do not heal without intervention. With standard potions, the wounds would heal at a rate of the convalescent period over nought point five, and with dittany potions the wounds would heal at a rate of the convalescent period over one.”

“That means it’ll heal at the rate a normal wound would heal without magic?”

“Yes. But it’s not because of the dittany—the dittany is never activated." Snape's eyes flash. "The dittany potions only heal curse wounds slightly faster because they have a higher concentration of the active ingredients found in standard healing potions. The dittany just happens to help the patient metabolize that high concentration of ingredients without contracting murtlap poisoning.”

It’s a bit frightening that Snape sounds nothing like himself when he says all this. He doesn’t sound like mean old Professor Snape, not even when he uses big words to explain complex magi-chemical processes, not even when he curses Malfoy for footing the bill for a potions regimen that “even he would have recognized was pointless.” He just sounds hollow, like his speech is having to cross some big chasm in his chest to reach Harry.

“The dittany is the best,” Harry says. “So, we got the best.”

“If I were to maintain a dittany based regimen over the entire convalescent period—which, mind you, will take months—the cost would be fourteen times what a regimen of standard potions would cost over double the convalescent period, and the end result would be just as poor.”

“So, what, it’ll scar?” Harry asks. “Scars aren’t so bad. As long as they’re not possessed by the souls of evil wizards.”

Snape rolls his eyes. “Your scar is cosmetic.”

“Aren’t all scars cosmetic?”

“Not when they interfere with the regrowth of muscle tissue, and tendons, and nerves, and… the point is—” Snape lets out a short burst of breath and shuts his eyes. “The point is, walking will likely be painful for the rest of my life.”

“I’m sorry.” There’s nothing else Harry can say to that. Compared with death, it doesn’t sound like a terrible prognosis, but that wouldn’t be a kind thing to point out. He looks down at his hands. “At least… at least you’re free of the mark. That’s good, right?”

Snape laughs, an alarmingly fragile sound. “I suppose so.” He shakes his head. “Twenty years ago I thought, if I could only remove the mark… there would be nothing left to tether me here. I could escape and build a new life… but it—it was a fantasy. What would be the point of such a life? It would be the life of a coward, hiding from the mess of his own making. I—”

Snape covers his mouth with one hand and looks at the floor. The empty water glass rolls a half-circle around the indentation of his knee on the cot. “I am old enough now,” Snape says, “to accept the fact that I lost any right to peace the moment I took the mark. Removing it cannot change the past. But at least—” he laughs again, and it’s this gut wrenching sound, a whimper, “at least I won’t be buried with that ugly thing.”

And, God, this is the thing that Harry couldn’t let go from Snape’s memories. When Dumbledore saw Severus Snape at his lowest, thoroughly beaten by the world and feeling his own guilt with such acute agony… Dumbledore was cold to him. That was utterly baffling to Harry.

“Severus,” Harry says, because that’s his name. “Severus, hey—” and he puts an arm around him just when the first painful sob wracks his body. Severus shakes his head, red-faced and squinting through tears—he weakly pushes Harry away but Harry just gathers him closer as the sob bursts out of him, and it’s… awful, quiet weeping, the sort that can’t be stopped, can’t be stifled. Breathless and silent but for the wet hitch of air and the almost inaudible whine of incomprehensible pain.

The little thread of their bond is sore and inflamed. Harry’s shoulder becomes damp with tears. Severus tries to pull away and curl up into himself, but Harry says, “No. No. It’s okay,” and pulls him closer again, until Severus sniffles against Harry’s heart. Harry tries to soothe him, dragging fingers through his hair. I just want to make it better. You’re not alone, you should never have been alone. None of us should ever be this alone.

Something about Harry’s touch unlocks another wave, a whimper, a whisper of mouthed, nonsensical words that finally reach Harry: “You stupid boy…” breathes Severus, followed by a wet, voiceless laugh and the shaking of his head, the painful grimace of a wobbling lip, “...you stupid boy…”

“It’s going to be okay,” Harry says to the nape of his neck, the loose collar of the transfigured bathrobe that exposes the bandages down his spine. Harry hugs Severus, and finds one of his hands to hold in the tangle of their bodies. “I don’t know where you get off thinking that you deserve to suffer like this—it’s not true. You’ve already redeemed yourself a hundred times over. You’re the bravest man I’ve ever met. Of course you deserve peace. You deserve—you deserve to feel safe.”

Severus can’t speak now, can’t do anything more than shake his head and let out another wretched sob against Harry’s body. But he squeezes Harry’s hand so tightly that it probably cuts off blood circulation. Harry doesn’t mind. He squeezes back. “You’re safe now,” Harry affirms. “Between our bond and the lack of the mark… you’re safe now. I’ll keep you safe. I won’t let anyone hurt you ever again—not Voldemort, not the Death Eaters, not the Order, not anyone.” Gently, gently, Harry rocks him, and whispers against his hair, “You’re safe now. It’s all going to be okay.”

***

Eventually the sobbing wanes. In perfect, unintentional symmetry with Voldemort’s chosen position the night before, Severus eventually settles with his head in Harry’s lap. He’s still crying. Harry doesn’t think any less of him for that. He just keeps stroking through Severus’s hair.

Harry can tell, if he pays attention to that thread between them, that the crying wasn’t exactly cathartic, and Severus is probably more miserable now than he was when they began. He’s raw, wide open and vulnerable, and the only thing Harry can do is keep making promises that he hopes, eventually, Severus will start to believe.

“If you’re ready,” Harry says softly, “I think you should legilimize me. I think it will make you feel better, to know for sure what’s happened, what I’ve seen.” He scratches fingernails gently down Severus’s scalp, and Severus chokes, and scrubs a hand over his eyes.

Harry summons a napkin for him to wipe his nose with and Severus accepts it without any snide remark. There are still noises, tiny whines and whimpers out of his conscious control, but he’s starting to pull himself together, shakily, with pieces of armor that don’t quite fit the way they did before.

“I’m—I’m not certain I can cast it safely,” Severus admits in a small, nasally voice.

“You only need to start the spell, right?” Harry suggests. “My magic… I can permit you entrance and lead you through from there. Would that work?”

Severus scrubs the napkin over his face and sighs into it. “It would permit you to curate the memories,” he says. “That would not… inspire confidence in your testimony.”

Harry smiles. “I think… I mean, I’ll grant you full access to my head later when you’re feeling better, so that you can trust me.” He squeezes Severus’s shoulder, carefully avoiding the bandages. “But I think the memories I can show you now will be more than sufficient to help you trust that I can keep Voldemort from hurting you, which is the main issue.”

Severus pushes himself upright. For a fraction of a second, in profile, Harry sees his potions professor. At first it’s two images superimposed: one of detentions and flobberworms and sneering vitriol, and the other, regret and diligence and sacrifice and courage. Then, steadily, those two images start to merge, and here is Severus, who is tired and pink-faced, and ready to pick himself up again. “Potter, I—” he starts to say, then clears his throat. “I apologize for losing control of myself…”

“Stop,” Harry says. “Don’t—you don’t have anything to apologize for.”

Severus shakes his head, and says in a defeated tone, “Fine.” Then he straightens his posture somewhat, and takes a deep breath.

Harry feels the crackle in the air.

“Legilimens.”

***

It’s nerve wracking to feel Snape in his mind again, like he’s sitting down for a test he hasn’t studied for. But there’s no flickering film reel, no foreign invader shoving past Harry’s barriers and rifling through his memories. Instead, Severus remains an unobtrusive observer, some quiet presence in the corner of Harry’s mind.

Harry brings the memories to him, displaying them for him like a projection onto a screen. He shows Snape everything he ever learned about Tom Riddle, and every idiosyncratic thing he’s seen Voldemort do this past week. All of the dark wizard’s vulnerability, his need for reassurance, his capacity for gentleness. His fear and shame.

It’s not even in the right order. Harry tries to step through the memories chronologically, but sometimes the branches of one conversation remind him of the branches of another, and he finds himself drifting into the swirls and eddies of tangential discoveries. Nevertheless, Severus ably follows along, though he does ask to revisit certain memories multiple times, to ensure he has the full picture—particularly the memories involving the patronus spell.

Then Severus’s magic pulls away. “That’s enough,” he says, his posture drooping. “I concur with your assessment. You may tell him the truth about my loyalties.”

Harry stares at him. “That’s it?”

“In the past, I have risked far more with worse odds. Based on what you have shown me…” He sighs. “I trust that your hold over the Dark Lord will be sufficient to prevent any fallout more dire than what I have endured from him already.”

“I won’t let anyone hurt you.” (It gets easier to say that with repetition, Harry notes. It cements his conviction.)

Severus gives a brief, wan smile, though the whites of his eyes are still bloodshot, and his lashes dewy.

It’s a wonder that they both made it this far. Back during the armistice, when he was marching to his death, Harry had hopelessly begged the universe for a spare moment, just one spare moment to make meaningful eye contact with Snape across the battlefield. Just one moment for them to finally acknowledge each other before reckoning with destiny. But now… it’s a profound relief to have this instead, to have a future, where neither one of them will ever have to face the world alone.

“You have the whole picture, now,” Harry points out. “You know everything I know, and you’ve seen Voldemort the way I’ve seen him. Do you… do you understand why I’m doing this now? Or do you still… resent me?”

"What do you wish for me to say?” Severus whispers, then clears his throat, and in a weakly snide tone he manages to ask, “Am I meant to announce that the plight of Tom Riddle has moved me to tears? It has not. He was an arrogant little prick and he deserved what meager consequences he faced.”

Harry frowns. It’s probably good that Snape is starting to sound like himself again, caustic and dismissive. But mostly Harry’s frustrated with him. Can’t he see that Tom was just a boy, and he couldn’t have been the monster Dumbledore assumed he was? “He was just sixteen when he split his soul in half,” Harry points out.

“Rather, he was sixteen when he murdered a classmate in cold blood.”

“Yes, but—” Harry shakes his head. “Things shouldn’t have ever gotten that far. If a student had asked you about Horcruxes, you would have recognized the danger immediately and acted accordingly. But Slughorn—”

“Are you suggesting that sixth year students cannot be expected to refrain from murdering one another?”

Harry flounders for a response. “Well, I mean… Draco nearly killed Dumbledore in sixth year and—”

But Snape holds up a hand. “First of all,” he says, “Draco Malfoy could not bring himself to follow through with homicide, because he was mature enough to understand the gravity of taking a life. Second, the context of Draco’s attempt was entirely different. Fear for one’s life and the lives of one’s loved ones is an entirely reasonable motivation, though not an excuse.”

“But Tom was afraid, too!” Harry argues. “He was—he was pathologically afraid of death. And everyone had already written him off, he didn’t know how to relate to others in a normal way, his own family threw him away to live in an orphanage where everyone was afraid of him—”

“And do you believe the witches and wizards beyond that door became Death Eaters by whim alone? Each and every one of them carries some tale of woe you could twist into a justification for their actions—oh, Mum was sick, Father used the belt, I just wanted to fit in—does that excuse them, Potter?” Snape’s black eyes gleam with righteous fury. “By what criteria can a man be judged if not by his own choices?”

Suddenly, Harry recalls meeting Tom Riddle’s horcrux in the Chamber of Secrets. He remembers learning that Tom had deliberately killed poor fourteen-year-old Myrtle Warren, who had only come into the bathroom to cry. It’s… it’s so obvious that there’s no version of this story where Tom Riddle is just a victim of circumstance. Harry remembers how much he had hated the Tom Riddle he met in the Chamber. But it’s just… it’s just…

Once again, Harry looks at his own hatred for Voldemort as if through a window, and the hatred remains inaccessible and unfamiliar.

“I think something’s wrong with me,” Harry admits.

“How do you mean?”

“I can’t hate him. I know I should hate him but I just can’t, it’s like my mind isn’t working right.”

The irritation fades from Snape's expression, giving way to the usual exhaustion, except for a small glimmer of academic intrigue. “Do you... want to hate him?” he asks.

“Yes,” Harry answers, because everything would make a hell of a lot more sense if he did. But then he thinks about what that would look like, in the real world. He imagines meeting Voldemort’s meek and anxious behavior with resentment and cruelty. “No,” he changes his mind, “no, I… maybe I don’t want to hate him. Or maybe I just… I want to get along with him more than I want to hate him.” He crosses his arms. “What good would it do, if I did hate him? What would be the point?”

There’s a low hum of voices, barely audible, from somewhere outside the room and down the hall, but Snape is only looking down, turning his wand between his fingers pensively. “Harry,” he murmurs, “you will find that… if you associate with a monster, you will alienate the people who have been hurt by him. The Dark Lord feels no sympathy for his victims, and your affection for him would imply you also feel no sympathy, else you would not be able to stomach his presence in your life.”

“But that’s not fair,” Harry argues. “I haven’t got a choice in the matter. He only dies if I die. So if I want to live, then he gets to live, too. And as long as he’s alive, this is the only way I can stop him from killing people!”

“Your affection for him seems to be... above and beyond what is necessary for that arrangement.”

“But what am I supposed to do? Make him miserable? I don’t want to spend the rest of my life bound to someone who hates me.”

Snape lets out a breath, slowly. “Where is the line?” he asks. “How much will you allow him to harm others before you can no longer forgive him? You’ve already forgiven him for murdering your parents; I cannot imagine what other cruelties you would allow him.”

“I haven’t forgiven him,” Harry says, which makes Snape scoff and turn away. Harry continues more pointedly, “I’ve just acknowledged that the man who killed my parents had no soul. He was a monster. He wasn’t human. But this version of him you saw in my memories from this week… he does have a soul, because he shares mine. As long as he’s near me, he’ll have a soul, and he’ll become human again.”

Snape huffs. "You are suggesting… you are sharing a soul in such a literal sense? Like a chemical bond?"

"I… I think so?"

"And now you wish to rehabilitate him," Snape concludes.

(Rehabilitation. The word brings to mind… fifth year, playing with the cruppies out by Hagrid’s hut. Hagrid actually taught them useful things about crups when Umbridge wasn’t breathing down his neck, like how if you wandered the wilderness of the Scottish Highlands, you might encounter a pack of full grown crups out there, and you’d be able to tell they were feral if their forked tails were still intact. And if a pack of wild crups attacked a muggle village, the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures would have to come in and cull any crup packs they could find in a forty mile radius. But last time that happened, Hagrid had smuggled some of the wild crups to Hogwarts, and in his experience, those feral crups weren’t inherently violent. They’d just been following their instincts. A soft bed, plentiful food, and a firm hand to train them would turn them into nothing but well-behaved little dogs, who could walk merrily on a leash through any Scottish village without even looking twice at a muggle.)

“Would it really be so bad?” Harry asks. “For him to be a person? Isn’t that the whole reason we needed to kill him in the first place, so he would stop being such a monster? He won’t be a monster anymore. He’ll be a person, and he’ll try to help fix the world.”

“There is such a thing as retributive justice. Punishing the guilty for what they have done.”

Harry looks at the floor. “What do you want me to say?” he whispers. “I don’t want revenge. Can… can you forgive me for that?”

Snape is quiet for a long time. He combs his fingers through his limp hair, to pull it out of his face. “You’re seventeen,” he says eventually, “and as far as I can tell without fully legilimizing you, your motives are entirely selfless. I will… endeavor to ensure you remain concerned with the welfare of those beyond your bedroom.”

“So… you think what I’m doing is alright?”

“I think what you’re doing is forgivable.” Snape rests a hand on Harry’s knee, and then he adds wearily, “Sometimes that is the most one can hope for.”

Chapter Text

At a quarter past noon, Harry leaves the bedroom on his own for the first time. In the hallway, the Death Eaters grant Harry a wide berth; they silently watch him with wild, hungry eyes, just like he’d imagined in his nightmares, but they don’t touch him.

Past the dining room, past a series of shut doorways, Harry follows the thread of his bond with Voldemort until he arrives at the other end of the villa. Dolohov exits the last door on the right, and when he notices Harry he sneers, but he leaves the door open, and they pass each other without incident.

The room itself is… well, at first it’s so bright that Harry can’t properly tell what it is. The windows on the eastern and northern walls have flooded the room with more daylight than Harry has seen all week. He hears the scrape of a chair, and then his eyes adjust, and he takes in the large wooden executive desk. Behind the desk, Voldemort stands, like he’s at a wedding or something, anxious and formal.

“How is Severus?” the Dark Lord asks, as if he actually cares. Maybe he thinks he does.

“So you do actually have an office,” Harry observes instead of answering. The room is fairly bare, with only one stout bookshelf in the corner. Various parchments cover the desktop, and a jewel-toned peacock quill rests in the inkwell, and there’s a reddish-brown persian rug over the tiled floor. “I was beginning to think you must always conduct business out of your bedroom.”

Voldemort frowns, and glances at the room around him blandly. “It is not my office,” he clarifies, “it is an office, which I happen to be occupying. Just as this is not my villa. None of these properties belong to me.”

Voldemort gestures at the desktop, and Harry steps closer to get a better look at the papers. They look like… crude, sketched outlines of floor plans. Yaxley Manor, one says in the top margin. “These are Death Eater homes?”

“We will need to return to Britain eventually, once we have negotiated terms with the opposition. It is better to plan such things in advance, rather than blindly choose in the midst of a hasty, disorienting retreat.”

Harry steps back from the desk and settles himself in the chair facing Voldemort. “You wouldn’t have chosen this place, if you could do it over again?”

“A Spanish villa in the Ardennes?” Voldemort winces. “It’s a bit gauche.”

“I’d been wondering about that. Is there a story or something to explain that?”

“Not one that would endear you to this place,” Voldemort says, sitting heavily in the other chair. “It is a pureblood estate, and traditional pureblood estates all tend to boast a violent, bloody provenance. This one was conquered, and then relocated to the land which suited the conqueror. If you wish to learn the finer details, you should ask our host.”

Remembering the chilly greeting he received from Dolohov, Harry dismisses that idea. Instead he asks, “What were you talking to him about, anyway?”

“My organization has experienced a dramatic shift in policy,” Voldemort says enigmatically. “Antonin has been tasked with observing the ranks, to ensure that everyone remains… compliant.”

“He’s… spying? Internally?”

Voldemort glances at the door and flicks the Tom Riddle wand to set some privacy wards. Then he says, “It does serve a secondary purpose in giving a particularly restless and belligerent man something productive to do. Were I actually concerned with gathering intelligence, I would have given the role to Severus.” Then he pins Harry with a beseeching expression.

“He’s fine,” Harry offers. “Really.”

There’s a little splash of relief through the bond, but Voldemort purses his lips. “I will not overburden you with further apologies,” he says guardedly. “Unless you give me some indication you wish to hear them.”

“I don’t.”

“Very well.”

“There are… there are a lot of things about that situation that I blame you for,” Harry admits. “But not the part that you’re trying to apologize for.”

In a whisper, Voldemort asks, “What do you wish to hear from me instead?”

“It doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t mean it, even if you said it.”

“Harry—”

“You’re not sorry for hurting him. I know you’re not. You still think it was justified.”

Harry knows it’s true. He can still sense that lingering, righteous fury. You would do it again, Harry thinks. Given a second chance you would absolutely torture Snape again, even knowing how furious I was. You would do it again because it was retribution.

Voldemort says nothing, conceding that point, and Harry crosses his arms and looks away, feeling queasy and disgusted.

The cognitive dissonance of living with Voldemort tends to fade when left unexamined. But whenever Harry actually takes an inventory of his own motivations, it triggers this immediate, visceral discomfort, as if he had unwittingly knocked himself out of alignment. The discussion with Snape laid bare all of Harry’s convoluted justifications, and Harry feels… askew. Voldemort is like a stranger again, for all Harry sympathizes with him.

But his face is familiar: the inhuman milk-white of his skin, the way his cheeks are always sallow and veiny, the smoothed over place where a nose should be. And there are parts of Tom Riddle there, too. Even reptilian and strange and evil, he’s got this… innate guilelessness that comes through whenever he isn’t expressing disdain or sinister intrigue, the sort of helplessness that once might have lured people into the jaws of the beast. Sometimes Harry catches a glimpse of him like that, looking strangely innocent and painfully lost.

Harry vaguely wants to hit him.

“Listen,” Harry says tightly, “that’s not why I came in here. I need to talk to you about something, before the telephone call. It’s very important that no one else hears. Are we warded enough?”

Quirking his brow, Voldemort nods. “We will not be interrupted, nor will we be eavesdropped upon. What do you wish to tell me?”

Harry hesitates.

He had planned for this conversation. He’d been so confident that he could manage it, that he could rip off the bandage in such a way that Voldemort would not burst into uncontrollable rage. But that plan had been… gentle, and Harry doesn’t feel very gentle right now.

But… he wants to be deliberate. Consistent. Rehabilitation, he thinks again, laughing at himself on the inside. You need to be consistent when you’re training crups, or they’ll never associate the reward or punishment with the corresponding behavior.

Harry wants to be reliable. So, he needs to rein himself in. He takes a deep breath. He shuts his eyes. He feels his heartbeat slow down. He sinks a bit in the chair, and it feels like his feet are planted firmly on the carpet.

Anxiety slithers across the bond. Warily, Voldemort asks, “Is this truly such a grave matter?”

Harry sighs. “No,” he says softly. “I know your primary concern is our arrangement, and this doesn’t affect that at all. So you can… just relax, please.”

Voldemort doesn’t relax, but he does lift his chin, and he waits silently.

“I have a secret to tell you. A couple of secrets, actually, about my side of the war. And I know that… hearing about these things will upset you. The first secret, I think, will trigger some sort of immediate panic. But I want you to remember that we’re sitting here together, and it’s quiet, and neither of us is in any danger right now. So please don’t panic. We’re going to talk about things calmly.”

Voldemort looks ill. “Yes,” he says stiffly, almost like a question. “Go on.”

“The other secret, I think, will embarrass you. And I’m worried that you’re going to cover up that embarrassment with anger. I’m worried you’re going to hurt someone I care about, because they’ve tricked you, and you’re going to be angry with them for having tricked you. But…”

“Who,” Voldemort asks.

“I’ll get to that. But only if you can promise me that you won’t hurt them. You can’t.”

Voldemort just stares at Harry, statue-still and wound tight. After what happened this morning with the Dark Mark, Voldemort probably feels less secure in his position with Harry. Maybe he’s holding himself so stiffly because he’s determined to show compliance. Maybe this is the only way he knows how to restrain himself.

Harry shifts closer and reaches across the desk, resting his wrist against the blueprint of Yaxley Manor. “Give me your hand.”

Voldemort does so, robotically. His skin is colder than usual, but Harry doesn’t mind that, because he’s got enough warmth for the both of them. Finally, he can reach the part of himself that knows how to be gentle.

“Tom,” he says, “you have to remember that these things don’t matter anymore. We’re on the same side now. We’re moving forward together. So the things that happened in the past, on my side of the war, are just part of what led me here, and that has to be okay. You have to be able to accept it. I need you to accept it, and… preemptively abandon that anger, before I can tell you these things.”

“Yes,” says Voldemort.

“Yes?”

“Or whatever you need me to say. Just spit it out.”

Harry shakes his head, and rubs a thumb down the back of Voldemort’s hand. “I need you to swear to me that you will stay in this room with me until I say we can leave. I need you to swear to me that you’re not going to storm out of here with your wand drawn. Can you do that?”

Voldemort gives a jerky nod. “I swear,” he wheezes. He’s holding his breath, Harry realizes.

Harry reaches out to hold on with his other hand, too. He says to Voldemort, in a neutral tone, “All of your horcruxes have been destroyed.”

Voldemort’s throat works through a dry swallow. “...All?”

“The diary, the ring, the locket, the cup, the diadem… and Nagini. I’m all that’s left.”

“...Ah.”

To Harry, the emotional resonance from Voldemort sort of feels like falling off a broom—the same weightless terror you feel when the world itself upends. Harry looks into Voldemort’s eyes and… it’s like he remembers, like Harry remembers being Tom at sixteen, performing the horcrux ritual for the first time. He remembers Tom’s ruthless internal dialogue, how he ridiculed himself for every hesitation. There had been a part of Tom worried that the ritual might harm his soul, but the rest of his mind loathed him for it—don’t be so precious, he’d told himself, what makes you think your soul is worth saving? Tom Riddle is nothing. Only Lord Voldemort matters.

Now, that diary is gone, and every other horcrux as well. All those people he killed, and all the parts of himself he cut away—up in smoke. But maybe all that destruction occurred in the act of making the damned things, a sunk cost. Maybe the objects themselves were just the leftover artifacts of one man’s descent into madness.

“You destroyed them,” Voldemort says in a thin voice.

“Yes,” Harry says. He hadn’t done it alone, of course, but he won’t risk mentioning anyone else. “I won’t apologize for that, Tom. They were awful things, and they needed to be destroyed.”

“You’ve killed me.”

Harry tilts his head, and grants the dark wizard a small smile. “You don’t look dead.”

“I—” Voldemort’s eyes flutter shut, and he finally takes a breath. Forcefully, he says, “Fine. Yes. I understand. They’re gone.”

“It isn’t so bad, is it? It just means that I’m the only horcrux. You’ll only die if I die. And you’ve already said a few times that you wouldn’t be interested in living in a world without me. So it’s not as if the other horcruxes would have mattered in the end.”

Blindly, Voldemort nods. A note of grief flickers across his face, a wrinkle in his chin.

Harry waits.

Then—there it is. The Dark Lord’s eyes snap open, with a sharpness in his gaze, something of Riddle’s cleverness. “Who else knows that you are the final horcrux?”

Harry is about to say just me, but then he thinks a moment about how… well, he really left the pensieve there in Dumbledore’s office and Hermione must have watched the memories by now. He’s not sure who all she would have shown them to after that, but he at least trusts her discretion. “Only my closest allies,” he says.

Voldemort’s fingernails dig into the back of Harry’s hand. “They are your allies no longer. They will know that you are the key to defeating me, and they will kill you—”

“Shh. I told you. We’re not under attack right now. I’m not in any danger right now. Stay calm.”

“How can I?” Voldemort shrieks, “The moment I let you out of my sight, you will grant your former allies the same irrational trust you have granted me, and then you will be dead.” His already bruising grip on Harry's hand tightens as he whispers, “If one of your friends offers you a glass of water, you must not drink it. If they offer shelter, a place to rest, your wand must never leave your hand. They will try to assassinate you. They are your enemies now.”

“Tom. Breathe,” Harry says harshly. “You promised me you would stay calm.”

Voldemort yanks his hands away from Harry and covers his face, massaging his forehead with shaking fingers, as if to soothe a headache. He breathes heavily against the junction of his wrists. “You must have someone to guard you at all times.”

“They wouldn’t kill me,” Harry says, though his resolve wavers somewhat. At first, he was certain that his friends and loved ones would never hurt him. But now he's starting to consider those other Order members he doesn’t know very well, like Kingsley, Diggle, and Jones. What would they think?

Not to mention the fact that the whole damned plan to let Harry die was Dumbledore’s idea from the start. Had Dumbledore told any of the others? And would they follow Dumbledore’s influence from beyond the grave? Could Dumbledore sway even the Weasleys to turn their backs on Harry?

But Dumbledore was Dumbledore. He was a complicated man, and this wasn’t the only decision of his that Harry questioned. Unlike Dumbledore, the other members of the Order—the ones still living, at least—have shown Harry nothing but courage, resolve, and kindness in the face of terror. They are steadfastly good people. How can he doubt them now?

“Tom,” Harry continues gently, "You have to understand, it’s different on my side. These are my friends, these are people who—” he swallows, “people who love me. They wouldn’t kill me. And even if we weren’t friends… they wouldn’t kill an innocent person in order to kill you. That’s a line they wouldn’t cross.”

Voldemort’s palms hit the table. “Quit being so naïve.”

“I know these people better than you do. There is only one person in the Order who… who would do that sort of thing. And he’s dead.”

“Dumbledore,” Voldemort reasons bitterly. “He knew. He planned for me to kill you.”

“Yeah.” Harry sighs. “But he’s dead. And as for everyone else… I don’t think they would even consider doing such a thing unless they were cornered, and desperate, and they felt they had no other choice. So that’s something in our control: we won’t corner them. We'll slow the war down. If we just keep the Death Eaters in line, and stop them from hurting anyone, then no one will feel pressured to make any hard choices.”

“It’s not enough,” Voldemort argues tiredly. “You must be defended.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Harry promises. “I’m sitting in the middle of a Death Eater stronghold; I’m not in any danger from the Order right now. Later, if I’m likely to meet with my friends in person, then we can discuss taking some precautions. Okay?”

Voldemort doesn’t answer, but his head dips forward to hang between his shoulders in resignation.

“You’re doing well,” Harry whispers.

“Don’t patronize me,” Voldemort rasps. “I have given you my word that I will remain calm, and I intend to keep it. Go on.”

So, this isn’t so bad. Things are half-resolved, now. Harry is like a bomb technician, carefully disarming the abandoned munitions buried in the landscape. With this one finished, he wipes the sweat from his brow, and wiggles the tension out of his shoulders.

He lowers his eyes as he considers how to approach the second secret. “So… the second thing. It’s going to make you feel… foolish, and then angry because you can’t stand feeling foolish. But it’s… it’s okay.” He reaches out again, and rubs his palm over paper-white knuckles. “You were wrong about something, you were mistaken, and it’s okay. No one will rub your nose in it. I can promise you, personally, that I don’t think it makes you foolish.”

“I was wrong about something,” Voldemort repeats slowly, his eyes narrowed to slits. “But you have promised it has nothing to do with the trust I have placed in you.”

“I swear. It’s a secret that I’ve kept from you, yes, but one that had zero bearing on most of our conversations. I’ve lied to you very little, and only to protect someone from you.”

“Fine, then,” Voldemort growls, straightening his posture. “I understand your concerns. I will not harm anyone. Tell me.”

Harry says, “One of your allies was loyal to the Order.”

“Who, Harry?”

“This is especially going to bother you," Harry pushes forward, "because you cared about this person, and valued them as an ally. But if they had not betrayed you, I would have been killed. You would have killed me, and then you would have stayed miserable and insane for the rest of your long, sad life. So this is better. They did you a favor.”

Brittle fingernails scrape against the desk. “This isn’t another Snape situation, is it?" Voldemort demands. "You are absolutely certain you have the right of their loyalties? You aren’t mistaken?”

Well, that’s a tricky question. “Yes,” Harry says after a moment. “Yes, I’m absolutely certain. I would stake my life on it.”

“Then who is it?”

Fervent determination begins to infect Harry through the bond. Under the surface, he can feel Voldemort’s conviction that this, at last, is a matter he can address, unlike the horcruxes which have already been lost. If he can find the traitor, he thinks, it will counter this lingering sense of impotence.

“No,” Harry says, “you need to… Breathe, Tom. Just breathe. I need you to be relaxed.”

“I am relaxed,” Voldemort insists.

“You’re imagining killing this person.”

“Is imagination a crime?” He scowls. “Just give me the name. I’ve already promised you I will not hurt them.”

“But you’re hurting yourself.” At Voldemort’s incredulous expression, Harry explains, “You’re letting it make you angry.”

“I’m letting it—” Voldemort cuts off with a growl. “You are such a hypocrite. You yourself are not unfamiliar with the pain of betrayal. I can recall how you felt following Snape’s betrayal at the top of the Astronomy tower. Such vivid emotion. For months, your dreams were fantasies of revenge.”

“Tom,” Harry warns.

“But you will not permit me to keep my anger? Not only must I refrain from punishing the traitor, but you wish for me to endure the insult without even a reaction? Am I your dog now, Harry? Every time I comply with your demands will you just move on to teaching me the next trick?”

Acute guilt flushes through Harry so fast that he can’t prevent it from leeching across the bond.

Voldemort’s fury ratchets up a notch. “I see,” he mutters darkly.

“Tom—”

“You feign guilelessness, when it suits you, but power is your native language. You understand the dynamics at play between us perfectly well, as much as you insist otherwise,” whispers Voldemort with a snarl. “You have Slytherin in you. I ought to be proud.”

“It isn’t like that,” Harry says.

“Tell me the name, Harry.”

“Take a breath.”

“Tell me the name!”

Harry shuts his eyes. His heart is beating too fast and he feels unmoored, dangerous. He has to rein in his own parallel emotions, if he wants to have any hope of reining in Voldemort’s.

He takes a deep breath.

It’s okay, he tells himself. I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know how to navigate this whole… tightrope of ethics, but that’s okay. I’m doing my best. It’s all going to be okay as long as I keep trying to do better. All I can offer is my best efforts. It’s all going to be okay.

He exhales. He feels his heartbeat slow down.

As soon as he exhales, though, he hears a muffled expletive from Voldemort, who has yanked his hands back and covered his face again in frustration.

“I don’t think of you as a dog, Tom,” Harry says, softly. “It was an analogy I was using, to make sense of what I wanted the future to look like. To make sense of how I didn’t want to punish you or lock you away. I want to rehabilitate you, like you might do with a dangerous animal. I want you to be alive, and integrated with the world.”

Face still covered, Voldemort mutters rapidly, “I know you are too dense to realize how condescending you sound right now and that is the only reason I have not strangled you.”

“Take a breath,” Harry tells him again, peaceably, but that only triggers another flare of Voldemort’s temper.

There’s nothing to be done but to wait it out.

Harry watches Voldemort wrestle with his own frustration, a full-fledged battle across what must be the entirety of the dark wizard’s underdeveloped emotional landscape. Time continues to pass. Voldemort breathes. Not the intentional, calming breaths Harry had prescribed, but breaths nonetheless. The longer Harry goes without speaking, the more the tension uncoils.

Finally, Voldemort says, “I suppose your strategy has worked. This whole conversation has been far more infuriating than anything this mystery traitor may have done.”

So they’ve surpassed the summit of Voldemort’s anger, now. It’s all going to be a downward slope from here. Harry braces himself, and, soberly, he suggests, “Why don’t you repeat it all back to me? Everything I’ve told you.”

Voldemort groans, “you were never truly above seeking to humiliate me.”

“Tom, hey,” Harry reaches for his hands again, to pull them away from his face. “I’m sorry that I’ve upset you so much, okay? I’m sorry. Maybe there was a better way to say all of this, I’m not great at—at any of this. But I’m just trying to do the right thing for you. I genuinely believe this will make a difference for you. I’m insisting on this for you. Please just… meet me where I am. Don't try to drag yourself back into anger and frustration. It’s not worth it."

Voldemort braces himself against the desk. He seems sickly, and his dry red eyes seek patterns in the golden whorl of the wood. “I was wrong about something,” he says, tonelessly.

"Yes," Harry says.

"I trusted someone and they betrayed me; they were loyal to the Order and they saved your life."

"Yes."

Voldemort’s gaze drifts to Harry, unfocused and tired. "Well? Was that enough?"

Harry shakes his head. "You missed one."

"What."

"...that it's okay." Harry squeezes his fingers, offering a smile. This is the point.

"...it's okay," Voldemort repeats woodenly.

"It's okay that you were wrong."

"It's okay that I was wrong."

"No one is going to rub your nose in it."

"No one is going to rub my nose in it."

"No one is going to think you're foolish."

"No one is going to think that I'm…” Voldemort sighs, and shakes his head. “...that I'm foolish."

“It’s Snape,” Harry says.

It takes a beat for Voldemort to actually look at him. “What?”

“It’s Snape.”

For a moment, Voldemort seems frozen, and then he finally gives a dismayed little huff. “You put me through all of that nonsense because you still believe…?”

“No, Tom, I’m serious. It’s Snape. I know you think… you think you know the truth about him, because you’ve used legilimency all these years. But he’s a master occlumens. He only ever showed you what he wanted you to see.”

“Harry,” Voldemort says, sounding almost heartbroken. “He murdered Dumbledore.”

“It was pre-arranged. Dumbledore was already dying from a curse. They used his death to catapult Snape up the ranks.”

For a time, Voldemort watches Harry. His gaze flickers back and forth between Harry’s eyes, searching for answers without resorting to the impatience of legilimency.

“Oh, Salazar,” Voldemort finally says, filled with awe, “Dumbledore told him to kill you.”

Harry makes a face. “Not… not exactly. You’re the one who was supposed to kill me. But… yes, it may have been implied, as a last resort.”

“Albus Dumbledore told him to kill you,” Voldemort repeats, then laughs, an especially fragile sound. “Incredible. Truly astounding.”

“So, you believe me?”

Wearing a somewhat manic, wobbly grimace, Voldemort tilts his head back to look at the ceiling. “I hate him,” he says petulantly.

“Dumbledore?”

“How he regretted that he could not frighten me and force me to repent…” Voldemort scoffs. “He made himself an altruistic white knight defending the next generation. But in the end… he would discard even you. What a fraud.”

“He was still a better man than you,” Harry mumbles.

“He was a sophist. He had the entire wizarding world fooled into believing he was a man of conviction, but he would abandon those same convictions if they interfered with his goals.” Voldemort clicks his tongue. “His faults were obvious to anyone who had bothered to read a newspaper prior to 1945.”

“I thought you idolized Grindelwald?”

“My opinion is irrelevant. Dumbledore swore a blood pact, and then a few decades later he broke it. He broke a blood pact. Yet that did nothing to diminish his credibility. No one had any trouble swallowing the promises of a man who had already broken the most holy oath in all of magic. It was madness that he ever became Headmaster.”

But the impetuousness in Voldemort’s expression fades to wistfulness, as his gaze drifts to the southwest corner of the room, in the vague direction of the other wing of the villa. “And now you insist my Severus was loyal to that man.”

“I do."

Without another word, Voldemort stands from the desk, and he almost makes it to the door before Harry lunges for his arm. “Hold on!” Harry yelps, yanking him back into the room. “You promised, Tom!”

Voldemort stiffens, and bows his head. “I won’t hurt him,” he explains gently, “but you must let me speak to him.”

Uneasily, Harry looks inward to study their bond. Voldemort doesn’t feel violent right now, it’s true. But there’s something else there—a tension, like he’s bracing himself for something. Harry doesn’t trust it. “You’ve put him through enough these past few days," he says, "I won’t let you go in there to confront him.”

“Harry, I have known that man longer than you have been alive,” says Voldemort. “I will not insult him by casting aside twenty years of loyal service on your testimony alone. I must speak to him.” With his free hand, he unsheathes the Riddle wand, and offers it hilt-first to Harry, adding, “Please.”

Stunned, Harry takes the wand, but he just looks down at it in his hand, wondering, will this be enough? If I have the Elder Wand, and my magic, and Snape’s magic, and the bond, AND Voldemort is unarmed… will that be enough? Can I keep Snape safe from the man he’s been lying to for sixteen years?

Suddenly, the Tom Riddle wand begins to glow, and Harry is so startled that he fumbles it, and it falls point-first to the floor. Voldemort manages to summon it before it impacts, and it floats back up to the dark wizard’s hand, still glowing as if Harry had cast a lumos through it.

“What…?”

“An alarm,” Voldemort explains sourly. “It’s a quarter to one.”

“Oh. Shit. We’ve got to go.” There isn’t enough time to resolve this, after all. Harry’s heart rate kicks up again. “I need Snape on that call, Tom. Can you just set all this aside for now, and you can have a conversation with him about it afterwards?”

Voldemort is silent for a beat, weighing the request. Harry catches a splash of bitterness from him, a wry self-loathing. “I am well trained,” says the Dark Lord, eventually.

Chapter Text

Voldemort stands there in the doorway, staring at Snape, and Snape stares back from the gloomy shadows of that back corner of the bedroom. Both of them are silent, like animals poised on the knife edge of fight or flight.

“It’s time,” Harry tells Snape. “We’re going to use the phone at Goyle Manor—it’s tested and working. Are you willing to come with us?”

“Yes,” Snape says after a beat, “provided I’m not locked up again.”

“You won’t be. Question is, how should we—how should we do this? Would a mobilicorpus—”

“I’d rather not risk concussion upon arrival,” Snape says. Then he grimaces, and turns his legs over the edge of the cot. “I suppose I could—”

“You’re not walking,” Harry tells him. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Perhaps just a sonorous," Snape suggests, frowning at the floor.

This makes Voldemort chuckle. “Goyle Manor is north of Calais; it’s about seventy miles from here.”

“A very powerful sonorous, then.”

Harry rolls his eyes. “I’ll carry you again. Or, I don’t know. If your dignity can’t handle that—”

“The wounds on my shoulders and knees would also protest.”

“Yeah. Yeah, so you can, um. You can just piggy-back with a featherweight charm.”

That solution affords Snape more agency than the other options, so he agrees easily enough. Harry crouches in front of the cot so Snape can climb on, and it’s—it’s awkward, obviously. But that’s less because of the intimacy, at this point, and more because Snape’s body is all bones and sharp corners. To accommodate their height difference, Snape’s forced to keep his shins parallel to the ground, which makes his pointy knees knock against the backs of Harry’s legs.

It’s raining when they arrive outside the manor, but Voldemort casts a barrier to keep them all dry until they reach the door. Then he leads them to a sitting room which must have been restored since yesterday morning—all the sheets have been removed from the furniture, and everything has been dusted and polished.

As soon as the sofa is at a manageable distance, Harry can sense the crackle of magical energy that tells him Snape is about to cast something. “Oi,” Harry interrupts him sharply, patting Snape’s arm around his neck, “just give me a second to let you down. No need to waste your energy showing off.”

“Showing off?” Snape repeats as Harry kneels down next to the couch. He heaves himself off of Harry without delay, finding a seat and deliberately tucking his bandaged feet into the back corner of the cushions.

“That flying thing you do can’t be cheap, magic-wise.”

“It does require a great deal of power,” Snape says blandly. “But it also requires a great deal of routine practice, which hasn’t anything to do with impressing you.”

“Right,” Harry concedes with a little huff of a laugh. This is going to be a regular thing now, he realizes with a twinge of awe. Me and Snape, lightly bickering. Alive.

Harry plops himself down on the couch next to Snape. There were other places to sit, but at least proximity to Snape will afford them more time should Voldemort decide suddenly to lash out. The furniture is a matching set of frilly old antiques with flower-prints on the fabric, but it’s clean, and it’s sufficiently comfortable. There’s a small table near the wall where the corded telephone is sitting—Voldemort levitates it closer to Harry, and the telephone cable unspools until it hangs like a tripwire, gamely holding fast to its connection on the wall.

The phone itself is likely more than a few years old, but it’s got an answering machine and a speakerphone mode, assuming the button symbols mean the same as they did on the kitchen phone at the Dursleys. That’s a relief—there’s probably a way to amplify the sound from the handset with magic, but Harry wouldn’t have trusted himself to do it properly without breaking anything. Better to just keep the electronics and magic separate where possible.

“You’re just a minute off the hour,” Voldemort warns. Then there’s a quick burst of embarrassment across their bond, and he pulls a parchment from the folds of his robe to pass to Harry. “Apologies, I nearly forgot. Draco brought his report to me while you were with Severus earlier. I imagine you’ll need it.”

“Oh,” says Harry, “Yeah. Shoot.”

His hands start to shake when he receives the papers—not because of the content (though maybe that’s what he ought to be affected by) but instead because of that odd, irrational adrenaline that comes over him whenever he’s about to make a phone call.

His eyes glaze over when he looks at the list of names, and with a sigh he passes the whole list over to Snape. “Could you—” he clears his throat, “could you figure out who can be released immediately?”

Snape furrows his brow. “According to what metric?”

“According to your best judgment.”

“But, Potter,” Snape presses, “to what end? Strategy? Mercy?”

“I don’t know,” Harry says, “I really don’t know. But I’m going to be taking my cues from you anyway, so…” He trails off, and pulls the crumpled paper with the phone number out of his pocket and unfurls it.

Snape glances at Voldemort. It’s evident that he knows Harry has already broken his cover, but it’s still a big step to proceed to behave this way, as himself, with his true motivations. He’s waiting, maybe, for Voldemort to pounce.

Voldemort says nothing, and what Harry feels from him across the bond is more unease than predatory intrigue.

“Alright,” Snape says. With a flick of his wand, he produces a pair of reading glasses from God knows where.

Harry dials the phone, and sets it to speakerphone.

…

Hearing Hermione’s voice again is like missing the last step on a stairwell. Like tripping, and falling, and suddenly being made aware of the precariousness of your position in space. At once, Harry feels so much safer (because she’s there, it’s Hermione, she’s so reliable, she’s such a good friend), and yet so much more vulnerable, because he’s stranded at such a great distance from her.

The emotions reverberating through their bond make Voldemort clutch the armrest of his chair with white knuckles, but he doesn't say anything.

Harry, meanwhile, only manages to choke out, “God, it’s good to hear your voice—”

“Harry,” Hermione interrupts. She sounds scratchy and distorted through the phone line but he can hear the gravity of her tone, the forced neutrality, as if she’s reading from a script. “Before we begin, please let me say one thing.”

“Um,” Harry says, “Of course. Go on.”

There’s silence, and then she breaks her script to burst out, “I’m just trying to do that thing you always do, where you defuse a situation before it becomes a problem and just—okay, okay, give me a moment.” She takes a deep breath. “Harry, you’re my friend, and I care for you very much.”

“Yeah,” he says, bewildered, with his eyes starting to burn. “Me too.”

“My top priority right now,” she says, “is to keep this line of communication open between us, alright? That’s incredibly important to me. So if I say something that upsets you, if I say something wrong that makes you angry—please, you mustn’t hang up. Please just tell me, and I’ll apologize, and we can work things out. But you musn’t hang up. Promise me.”

“What?” Harry studies the phone, as if he could find Hermione’s facial expressions hidden in the plastic machine. “Of course I won’t hang up.”

“Promise me.”

“Hermione, I promise.”

She lets out a sigh of relief that makes the speakerphone crackle loudly. “Good,” she says. “Good. Okay. Next, I need to tell you that I’m not alone right now.” Harry’s heart rate kicks up further, but before he can panic she continues, “I asked Neville to join me. Because he’s had a lot of experience this year with… clandestine operations, and I—I didn’t want to be in a situation where I might be tripped up by an esoteric pureblood term. I didn’t want that to hinder our conversation. So… I hope that’s alright.”

“Yeah,” Harry says thoughtfully, “yeah, I see what you were thinking. That’s a good choice. That’s fine. Hi, Nev.”

“Hi,” says Neville, sounding farther away. They must be sharing the handset.

“Listen,” Harry says, glancing up at his companions. “I should be honest, I’m not alone either. I’m with Voldemort and Snape.”

The line goes very quiet. Snape gives a bitter laugh and mutters, “Good job, Potter. Now she'll think you're being censored."

“No,” Harry mumbles, “I think—Hey, Hermione?”

“Yes, Harry?” Hermione responds tightly. She still sounds fairly composed, like maybe she was prepared for this possibility and she’s been trying to plan all morning how she would handle it.

“Since I’ve been gone, have you watched the pensieve memories?”

“...yes, I have."

Snape stiffens. Unthinkingly, Harry pats a reassuring hand on his knee.

“And has Neville seen them also?”

“Yes, I showed them to him before the call.”

“And, um. Neville, what did you think? ‘Cause I figure… I figure we all have to be on the same page about the facts of the situation before the professor’s testimony is going to mean anything to you.”

There's the sound of a sigh. "I'm not sure what I can afford to say in present company," says Neville.

“What? Oh, with Voldemort? You don’t have to worry about—”

But Voldemort’s hand suddenly comes down on Harry’s shoulder. He’s gotten up from his chair to move closer to the phone. “Allow me,” he murmurs.

“I don’t know if that’s the best idea, Tom.”

Voldemort just gives Harry a little condescending smirk, before crouching down near the phone. “Children,” he says into the speaker. “This is the Dark Lord Voldemort.”

Snape shuts his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose, unseating his glasses.

Over the phone, Neville says something that sounds like a scathing Hello, fuckface, but most of the syllables are garbled, as if smothered by Hermione’s hand.

“Hello,” Hermione finally says, and that’s all.

Voldemort continues, “I understand your reluctance to speak openly where your words will reach me. Your caution is entirely reasonable. However, if I were in total control of Harry, as you believe I am, and if I were interested in overhearing secret information about your organization, as you believe I must be… then wouldn’t I have arranged this call differently? I would have instructed Harry not to mention my presence, or perhaps I would have eavesdropped using a separate telephone on the same line. Instead, we find ourselves all on the phone together, transparently. I hope that informs your judgment.”

“That’s… actually a good way of putting it,” Harry admits while Voldemort returns to his seat. “Hermione, Neville—the fact is, I’ve got the situation with Voldemort under control. He’s not going to hurt anyone anymore. And he knows about Snape’s secrets, so it’s okay to talk openly about that. If you trust Snape now—which, I hope you do—then maybe you can listen to him explain things and you’ll trust that he’s telling the truth, I guess. That was my plan, anyway. I figure you can't trust that Voldemort isn't controlling my mind, but you can probably trust that Voldemort isn't controlling Snape's mind because Snape is… well, he's better at that."

“Harry," says Hermione, "we are happy to listen to anything you wish to share with us.”

Harry shifts uncomfortably on the couch. “Um, that’s good. But, um—what did Neville think? About the pensieve? Because we really have to get that straight before—”

“Harry, the pensieve only confirmed what I knew already,” Neville says firmly.

Startled, Harry’s gaze darts over to a dazed Snape, who simply says in a soft voice, “I am relieved to hear that, Mr Longbottom."

“Wait,” Harry cuts in, “you already knew?”

“You would have known, too, if you’d been at school this year," says Neville. “Whenever one of our people got caught by the Carrows, they were brought before the Headmaster so that he could legilimize them to find out where we were headquartered and where we were getting our resources. But he kept our secrets. He berated the Carrows for making a mistake, for bringing the wrong student. So, there wasn’t really any other explanation for that.”

"Oh," Harry says. "Well, that's… that's good, then. So you'll trust Snape to explain things? You'll believe him?"

After a moment of hesitation, Neville says, “Well, I’m willing to listen.”

"Perhaps that is the most we can hope for," Snape says tightly before Harry has a chance to push for more reassurance.

Harry sighs, and leans against the back of the couch to listen as Snape begins to explain.

…

The thing is, Harry doesn’t often feel comfortable relying upon adults.

When he was very little, he had only the Dursleys, and the only thing reliable about them was how reliably they despised him.

Then his other guardians over the years—well, Hagrid was wonderful but he was also fairly gullible. McGonagall was trustworthy but rigid, and she had a lot on her plate besides Harry’s messes, so he couldn’t always trust that if he told her something, she would be able to treat it with the necessary urgency. And she kept Dumbledore’s secrets, which…

Harry had spent a good few years hoping that Dumbledore would take care of the Voldemort problem. He was Dumbledore after all, the most powerful wizard since Merlin or something, and on top of that he’d been trying to shield Harry from the darkness of the world. He’d made it seem like he had everything handled.

But Dumbledore hadn’t really handled anything. He’d just been waiting for the right moment to let Harry die.

There were other adults, too. There were Molly and Arthur, who could be relied upon to feed Harry, and send sweaters, and give big hugs if he really needed a hug. There had been Sirius, who would reliably cheer Harry up when he needed cheering up.

But there were only a handful of people Harry felt genuinely protected by.

Lupin, who saved Harry from the dementors.

Tonks, who was a bit abrasive sometimes but always seemed entirely capable of keeping Harry alive.

And, retrospectively, Snape.

The thing about Snape in particular was that he was really different from all the other professors. The other professors hadn't tried to save Harry from being knocked off his cursed broom in first year, and they wouldn't have scolded him for sneaking into Hogsmeade without permission in third year, and they wouldn't have yelled at him for twenty straight minutes after he mixed newt eyes with rehydrated Moon Jelly and nearly caused an explosion in fifth. But Snape was always there, either saving Harry’s skin from Death Eater machinations, or raking Harry over the coals for getting into other sorts of trouble on his own.

It’s disorienting, now, to think back to second year and the Flying Ford Anglia incident, and how Snape was the one who laid into him for his recklessness. Snape had been furious with him. Harry remembers being so indignant at the time because, well, it hadn’t been his fault that the train platform was blocked, and how else was he supposed to get to school? But Harry had been just twelve years old, and he and Ron could have easily died in that stupid car.

Looking back, he thinks maybe it was the first time he was ever scolded for putting himself in danger, rather than for having breakfast out late, or for folding Dudley’s sweaters incorrectly, or for overlooking one tiny weed in the flower bed.

Snape has always cared about keeping Harry alive and out of harm’s way. He had a funny way of showing it, and there were layers of misdirection he was forced to wear on top of it, but really, at the end of the day, he kept Harry safe, and he did so more reliably than anyone else in Harry’s life, even the nicest people.

So that’s why Harry feels comfortable relying on Snape now. Because he genuinely trusts that Snape knows better than him. It seems like he always has before.

…

“You are aware, of course, that your friend Mr Potter traipses through life alternately blessed with both the best and worst luck imaginable?”

This gets a wobbly laugh from Hermione. “Yes, professor.”

“And, given that you have both snooped through a collection of pensieve memories that you were never permitted to view—thanks very much for that, by the way—you must now also be aware of the unfortunate news Mr Potter learned during the armistice.”

“He knows,” Harry interjects mildly. “Tom knows the whole story now. You don’t have to talk around it.” He sits up, to project his voice to the phone. “I’ve got a piece of Voldemort’s—”

“Can we not—” Voldemort interrupts, “can we not say those things explicitly, please, without reason? The children already understand, yes? Let’s not make it easier for our enemies to eavesdrop.”

Harry sinks back against the cushions.

“In any event,” Snape continues, “upon learning this news, Mr Potter apparently utilized his extraordinarily good luck to successfully negotiate a truce with the Dark Lord. And the Dark Lord is now so… so devoted to Mr Potter that he will do anything Potter asks of him.”

“...pardon?” says Hermione.

Snape repeats himself. And when Neville asks how can you be so sure, Snape goes on to explain his own experiences over the past few days: the assassination attempt, the “punishment,” the recovery, the fealty ritual, and the removal of the dark mark.

“Mr Longbottom, had I not witnessed the effect Potter has upon the Dark Lord with my own eyes, I would be the first to say that this situation is patently ridiculous. Unfortunately I must reconcile with the evidence of my senses. But, please, do continue your skepticism—it is evidence that you are the only one left among us thinking rationally.”

Hermione also sounds fairly skeptical—though that’s only apparent from the forced neutrality of her tone when she asks, “If Harry does have control of—of him, then why hasn’t he ended the war?”

Harry sits up again. “That’s why we’re on the phone, Hermione. That’s the whole point of this… I need help figuring out how to do that.”

Snape adjusts his glasses and glances down at the papers, adding, “To lend some veracity to what has been said thus far, I have in hand a list of political prisoners held in Death Eater dungeons, and there are… about thirty of them that are well enough to be transferred to Order custody immediately. The rest are currently receiving the best medical care and protection that the Death Eater infrastructure can provide, and can be transferred to Order custody as soon as the Order has the spare medical capacity to treat them. My understanding, however, is that the Order’s resources are stretched thin at the moment.”

“They’re better off here than in a dungeon,” argues Neville.

“To my understanding, Draco Malfoy has received direct orders from the Dark Lord himself to ensure the humane treatment of the prisoners, and the resources of the Malfoy clan have been employed to support this endeavor. Make of that what you will.”

Silence from the phone, and then a quiet, “Neville, could you summon some more parchment?” before the sound of rustling papers. Then, “Professor, could you read me the list please?”

Painstakingly, Snape reads every name, and all the notes from Draco about each prisoner’s condition. After the first few names, Snape seems to disappear somewhere inside of himself—his voice continues, but the sharpness of his expression dulls. It’s understandable, Harry thinks. It’s hard to reckon with the fact that so many of these names are familiar. Scrimgeour’s niece. The old man who worked the post office in Hogsmeade. A few former classmates who graduated at the end of Harry’s second year. Hagrid.

Harry shoots Voldemort a hard look. He wants to ask, are you proud of this? All this pointless suffering you’ve caused? But Voldemort is apparently fascinated with the pattern of the carpet.

Hermione, Neville, and Snape make arrangements for the transfer of the healthy prisoners. It takes some time for them to work out a system that involves security precautions on both ends and a neutral ground for the drop-off, and most of the discussion of passcodes, trust chains, and intention-warding goes over Harry’s head. But at the end of it, Snape says, “Potter will be the one to deliver the portkey to each cell,” and Harry nods his agreement because this is a concrete thing they are asking him to do, and he can do that.

When the conversation about the prisoners settles, though, the question of the broader plan for the end of the war looms over them.

“Look,” Harry says, “in a perfect world, we could just force all the Death Eaters to surrender themselves to Auror custody, and that would be the end of it. But we don’t live in a perfect world. The Ministry has been a puppet government for months, and even before that, we couldn’t trust the Wizengamot to actually do anything.”

“I disagree,” says Neville. “As long as there isn’t anyone pulling the strings this time to keep Death Eaters out of Azkaban, the Wizengamot won’t have any trouble convicting.”

“Neville, the Venn diagram of Wizengamot members and Death Eater sympathizers is practically a circle. Even if they weren’t Death Eaters themselves, they’ll still want to hand lighter sentences to people from pureblood families.” Harry shakes his head. “We can’t go back to the way things were. Even if you threw all the Death Eaters in jail, you’d still have kids growing up learning about blood purity and sacred families and all that rot. We’d inevitably have new Death Eaters banding together behind some new Dark Lord down the line. The only way to actually end the muggle-born genocide is to completely dismantle the structures that enforced blood purity in the first place.”

“Harry, we all want change, believe me,” says Hermione, “but we need to resolve the war first. The Death Eaters have infested every part of the Ministry and the Prophet, and we can’t possibly gain any reforms with them in power.”

“No, Hermione, the only way we can gain reforms is with them in power, because Voldemort controls them and I control Voldemort. Think about it. Can we really afford to rely on, what, Pius Thicknesse to implement wixen childcare standards? Can we rely on the Hogwarts board of governors to set a mandatory muggle studies curriculum? Can we rely on the Daily Prophet to report on everything fairly instead of drumming up a panic about the decline of society?”

The phone is silent. Voldemort smiles, and shakes his head fondly. “As I said,” he whispers, “power is your native language.”

Harry feels the prickling of doubt and shame at the back of his neck. “I mean,” he says, voice cracking, “I’m not saying that we should have a Dark Lord running everything. I’m not saying we should have one concentrated seat of power. I’m just saying we should temporarily use the powers we have right now to force structural change, and then we can give power back to a more fair government with a new constitution. Is that… does that really sound so bad?”

With a neutral tone, Snape says, “It would be unprecedented. As far as I am aware, no dictatorial regime has ever willingly ceded power back to the masses.”

“Actually, one comes to mind,” Hermione says tightly. “Ataturk carried more-or-less autocratic power and used that power to create and enforce a democratic, progressive constitution in Turkey in the 1920s. But he was still the president of the new nation, and he ruled over a one-party state, so he still retained power in a practical sense.”

“So we won’t keep our fingers in the pie indefinitely! We’ll just push through the reforms, give them a couple of years to settle, and then roll back any direct oversight until we have a full democratic system. Wouldn’t that work?”

“Even if it could, the Ministry of Magic is still a function of the government of the U.K. You can’t just replace it and set up magical Britain as its own state.”

“Why not?” Harry argues. “What difference would it make? With the statute of secrecy, it’s not like anything that happens in our world could be discussed in Parliament. We’re not really a part of the U.K., we’re just friendly nextdoor neighbors. We’re like Ireland—”

Snape gives a sudden snort, then starts choking on air. He beats a fist against his chest to catch his breath, rasping out, “I’m beginning to see the appeal of mandatory Muggle Studies.”

Harry frowns. “Whatever. The point is, we’re already self-governing in all the ways that matter. We just need a better system than the one we have. And as long as we have the Death Eaters under control, we can just… do that. We can make the better system now. Besides… can you think of a better punishment for the Death Eaters than forcing them to dismantle all the blood-status policies they worked so hard to enshrine in the first place?”

Snape clears his throat, but he doesn’t offer any verbal support for Harry’s arguments, and Voldemort is still sitting there looking satisfied with himself. Through the phone, it sounds like Hermione and Neville are speaking to each other, but not loudly enough for Harry to make out the words.

Then, Hermione asks, “Harry, do you still promise not to hang up even if I say something which upsets you?”

“...Yeah? Why?”

“In this new system you’re imagining… will the Death Eaters stand trial for what they’ve done? Will… will he also stand trial?”

“I mean… are you concerned about due process or something? Anyone with a dark mark would be forced to work cooperatively towards building the future. That would be a punishment for the hardcore racists and sadists among the Death Eaters, and anyone who only took the mark under duress wouldn’t really be suffering from that arrangement.”

“Are you serious?” Hermione demands. “These are the people who terrorized us, tortured us, took our parents away from us, and you want to sentence them to community service? That satisfies you?”

“Putting them in Azkaban isn’t going to undo any of that.”

“That’s not the point, Harry!” Hermione shouts, and the phone crackles with the volume. “It sounds like you don’t even care!”

“Of course I care—!” Harry shouts back, but before he can launch into an impassioned defense of himself, he feels Snape’s hand close over his knee, and he falls silent.

“Ms Granger,” Snape says calmly. “Before this devolves into an interrogation of your dear friend’s character, which is sure to be distressing for all parties, allow me to save you some time. Based on my observation of him these past few days, I can conclude that yes, this is in fact Harry Potter, not an imposter pretending to be him. Additionally: no, he is not under any coercion, hypnosis, or imperius. As for why the boy who flayed Draco Malfoy alive for the crime of hiding in a bathroom believes community service is a fitting punishment for the crimes of the Death Eaters… I can offer one possible explanation: It is unquestionable that Potter’s proximity has triggered a profound change in the Dark Lord. Perhaps, then, the proximity of the Dark Lord has changed Potter as well.”

Oh, Harry thinks, with dawning horror. Oh, shit.

Voldemort squints at Snape. “Don’t blame me for the boy’s light touch, Severus. If I were in Harry’s position, I would lay waste to my enemies and salt the earth where they stood… not that you should take that as a suggestion, mind.”

Harry stares at his own knees, and tries not to sound too relieved when he says, “Actually, I think the same issue is true in reverse? If Voldemort was just becoming more like me… the old me… he wouldn’t have agreed to our truce. He would have kept fighting tooth and nail to take me down.”

But Snape shakes his head. “I never suggested you were becoming more alike. Only that you were becoming something different.”

“Could it be reversed?” Neville asks. “If they were separated?”

“No,” Harry says immediately. “Separation isn’t an option.”

But even that isn’t enough to settle the panic suddenly rising in Voldemort like silt from a riverbed, dredged up by the suggestion of separation. “Harry,” he whispers urgently.

“It’s not an option,” Harry says again, to soothe him. Then he turns back to the phone. “Merlin, is it really such a big deal? Okay, yes, I’m finding it hard to hate Voldemort the way I used to, and yeah, that’s weird and unsettling. But that has nothing to do with the Death Eaters. I still hate the Death Eaters plenty, believe me. I just think they’re more useful to us as chess pieces than they would be in prison. And as soon as we’re done fixing everything, you can send them right to Azkaban! I don’t care!”

But Hermione doesn’t seem to find this reassuring. “Haven’t you wondered why you don’t hate him, Harry?”

“Well, no. I know why. I know it’s because of the—that thing that he didn’t want me to mention. But I’m going to mention it anyway, because I think he’s just being paranoid. Sorry, Tom.”

Voldemort sighs and looks away, his long white fingers folding and twisting in his lap.

“It’s because of the soul thing. It’s because he can access the part of his soul inside of me when we’re near each other, and that makes him human. It makes him a real, human person instead of whatever the hell he’s been the past fifty years.”

“Longer,” Voldemort whispers. He’s still looking at the wall, wrestling with his unease, and he said it so quietly that Harry’s not sure if it was meant to be heard.

“Longer,” Harry agrees, remembering the atrocities Riddle committed as a child. “So he and I are sharing this soul between us, and… well, that’s why I have such a hard time hating him. Because it feels like we’re two parts of the same person, and… if I hated him, I’d be hating myself.”

“But it’s your soul, Harry,” Hermione says. “You shouldn’t have to share it with anyone, especially not with him.”

Perplexed, Harry gives a little laugh. “I don’t know how to explain this in a way you’ll understand. Over the past week, Voldemort has given up his power, his magic, and his dignity. He has laid everything he ever built at my feet, in exchange for the promise that I wouldn’t abandon him. I guess, in my brain, I know he’s done so much evil that if I betrayed him, it wouldn’t even begin to tip the scales of justice. But in my heart, I know that I couldn’t stand to do something that cruel to another person. So I’m sorry that it’s weird, and I wish that I could make everything make sense to you. But it makes sense to me, and that’s what matters, right?”

Before any response can come from the phone, Snape interjects, “Ms Granger, that statement was fairly representative of everything Potter has been saying for the past few days, and no amount of clever reasoning will budge him from that stance. I advise you to focus on more practical, immediate concerns for the time being.”

“I understand,” Hermione says tersely. Then the phone is quiet, but for the rustling of papers and an unintelligible murmur from Neville.

When the silence goes on too long, Harry offers, “Maybe we can talk about a plan for the immediate future of the war. Right now, the Death Eaters are in a safehouse out of the country, but we’ll need to return soon if we’re going to get to work on fixing things.”

“And you need a promise of safe passage,” Hermione fills in. “What am I supposed to tell the Order, Harry? How am I supposed to tell our people—” But she chokes up, and she says nothing further.

A naïve part of Harry had hoped he wouldn’t have to worry about that part. He looks to Snape for help, but between the reading glasses and the generally dissatisfied mien, Snape looks like he’s about to assign a detention. “Harry,” he asks coolly, “am I to expect that every marginally difficult problem you face hereafter will be shuffled to me?”

Harry flushes. “I mean, not if it bothers you. I can try to figure something out. Or I can ask Tom for advice.”

“My advice would be to employ a show of force,” Voldemort chimes in. Though his nerves haven’t settled yet after the earlier threat to their bond, he nonetheless tries for a characteristic sneer, saying, “I imagine you would prefer a more diplomatic solution.”

Snape shoots Harry a pointed look. Then he sighs, massaging his forehead with two fingers. “You’ll only need to convince Kingsley,” he says, “then he’ll handle the rest. He is a practical man who will do what is necessary to protect wizarding Britain.”

“He’ll go along with us, you mean?” Harry asks mildly, “Or is that a euphemism for trying to kill me?”

“The former, naturally,” Snape says with a smirk. But then he sobers, and explains, “I think he will see eye-to-eye with me. He and I often found common ground on moral dilemmas in the past. Kingsley will understand that you are likely to set your plan into motion with or without input from the Order, and because said plan is… broadly altruistic, it would be in their best interest to collaborate on the project, rather than reject you and try to destroy your army. They’ve already failed at that once.”

“I don’t want to have to… coerce them to cooperate with me.”

Voldemort clicks his tongue. “What else is new?”

…

So they arrange for a meeting with Kingsley—in person, on neutral ground, with a magically binding contract to approach the negotiations in good faith. Snape crafts the text of the agreement, adding provisions upon provisions to rule out any possible threat of violence or subterfuge. Snape also promises to bring to that meeting a written outline of Harry’s vision for the new government, which he and Harry will have to commit to parchment at some point in the next few days after managing the transfer of the prisoners.

“Hermione,” Harry says, when the call begins to wind to a close and his insecurities bubble up. “Are you… I mean, we’re still alright, aren’t we? Because… I was warned that this plan sounded like a good way to lose friends. And I know you weren’t sure what to make of me at the start of the call, but—”

“I’m still not sure what to make of you,” she says woodenly.

“Ah.” He fiddles with the button on the cuff of his sleeve and tries to keep his voice from wavering. “Right. Good. Well, I just—I just wanted you to know that… I’m not trying to hurt anyone. I’m trying my best to do what I think is the right thing and… and I hope we’re still friends? I mean, once you can trust that I’m not being mind-controlled or anything. Once you’re sure that I’m me, I hope that I’m still…” He blinks hard. “I hope that I’m still a person that you want to be around.”

After a beat, Hermione says, “I hope you are, too.”

Chapter Text

The summer after Harry’s first year at Hogwarts was the most difficult summer of his life. It was as if Harry’s body had forgotten how to survive at the Dursleys. Just one afternoon of working in Aunt Petunia’s garden would make his muscles horribly sore. He couldn’t seem to wake himself up in the mornings (no longer accustomed to waking before dawn), and that meant he would always wind up rushing to prepare breakfast, and the scrambled eggs sometimes turned out so runny even Dudley wouldn’t touch them, so Harry was forced to prepare Dudley a new batch and eat the runny eggs himself.

He was often hungry, that summer, because his stomach had gotten used to having all the food it wanted at Hogwarts, and he couldn’t figure out how to inform his stomach that it should go back to expecting very little.

But the worst part of the summer after first year was the nightmare. He had the same nightmare nearly every night, and it was awful.

In the nightmare, he would wake up in his bed in the Gryffindor dormitory like any other day at school; he would get dressed and wash up, and then he would see Ron and Dean Thomas. But as soon as he said good morning to them, they’d stare at him like he was an outsider. It was the same expression Dudley used to wear when he passed Harry in the hallways in primary school: don’t talk to me, freak, don’t even look at me.

That was bad enough, but worse were the dreams where he continued on to breakfast. In those dreams, he’d spot Hermione at the Gryffindor table, and she’d give him the same look, putting her bookbag on the bench to block Harry from sitting there.

So then he’d start looking for another seat, only to discover the whole bench was full and everyone was glaring at him. Dismayed, Harry would look to the head table for help, but Dumbledore would just say in his soft, patient voice, Harry, you know you aren’t permitted to sit at the Gryffindor table.

So Harry would look to the Slytherin table, where the hat had wanted to put him originally. But that table was always full as well, and so were Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw. No, Harry, Dumbledore would say firmly, get back in your cupboard.

He had other nightmares, too, especially nightmares about waking up back in his cupboard with no Hedwig and no school trunk and no proof that Hogwarts had ever existed. But it was somehow so much worse, to dream of a world where Hogwarts did exist, but Harry was just as reviled there as he was everywhere else.

…

“You’re feeling guilty,” Snape observes.

They’re back in the bedroom. It’s early evening now, and Voldemort is just outside the door, delivering orders to Draco, Rookwood, and Macnair—logistical arrangements for the creation of the portkeys and the preparation of the prisoners for transfer.

Without responding to Snape, Harry flops back against the bed with a huff.

“One could argue,” Snape continues, “that the sensation of guilt is the mind’s way of informing us when we have done wrong.”

Harry throws an arm over his face to shield his eyes from the sconce light. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he says, but that doesn’t stop the thoughts in his head. Hermione hates me. God, if Hermione hates me then that means every one of them is going to hate me.

Snape clicks his tongue. “Quit moping, Potter. You were warned, and you made your choices anyway. Forgive me if I lack sympathy for your plight.”

Not like you ever had sympathy for me before, Harry thinks uncharitably. He tilts his chin up to glare at Snape, upside-down, saying, “You warned me not to alienate my friends. Well gosh, sir, I hadn’t thought of that!” He covers his face again. “I guess if I’d been some hacked-off fifth-year about to call my best friend a slur, maybe that would have been helpful, but this wasn’t like that. I didn’t have any other choice about what just happened.”

“Didn’t you?”

“No, as a matter of fact I didn’t. Piss off.”

“And therein lies the problem,” Snape says. “It wasn’t your choices themselves that put them off, Potter, it was the fact that you were so firmly married to them. You made it clear to your friends that you would refuse to countenance any discussion of punitive measures against the Dark Lord. Forced to reckon with your split loyalties, you chose him.”

“That’s not true!” Harry scrambles up into a sitting position to glare at him. “I didn’t choose anything.”

“You could have aligned yourself with your friends, hoping to convince them to show mercy. Instead you aligned yourself with the Dark Lord, hoping to convince your friends to forgive you. You. Chose. Him.”

Well, when you put it that way… Harry thinks, faltering. “No,” he says, “No, I didn’t—I didn’t choose him. I chose to honor my obligations to him.”

“Obligations you invented! He murdered your family; it’s hardly possible to be less obliged to him!” Snape then lowers his voice to a menacing whisper. “Loyalties can never be split evenly, no matter how hard you may try to convince yourself otherwise—there is always one side you will refuse to betray. Perhaps that choice was made unconsciously, but it revealed itself during that phone call.”

Before he can launch himself into another retort, Harry suddenly recalls his conversation with Voldemort yesterday, standing in the kitchen of the Goyle manor and worrying that Snape might be dead in his cell. If you had killed him like that, I don’t think I would have ever been able to forgive you for it. Harry had drawn that line deliberately. He had wanted Voldemort to understand… that would have been the point of no return. That would have broken any hope Harry had for their truce.

So, yes, maybe Harry had decided that honoring his agreement with Voldemort was more important than his friendships. But he had also decided that protecting Snape was more important than his agreement with Voldemort. And frankly, if Voldemort had killed any of the people Harry was protecting, or even if he had killed some innocent stranger, Harry would have rejected him.

I haven’t gone completely round the bend, Harry thinks, reassured. I still have some sense of justice. I would be fully capable of rejecting him, if he crossed that line.

He settles back down into the cradle of the mattress. Hermione’s rejection is still a bleeding wound inside him, and Harry’s mind splashes over it again and again, like lapping waves of saltwater, renewing the sting. But as for his anger at Snape—he allows that to wash away with the tide. “Fine,” he says tiredly, “You’re right.”

Snape is still staring at him. It’s sort of funny, actually, that Snape doesn’t seem to know what to do with a concession like that. After a beat, the man just huffs and looks away, leaving unsaid Of course I’m right.

“But just for the record,” Harry adds, “I haven’t chosen him above everything. If anything, I’ve chosen you.”

A pause. “Don’t be absurd.”

Harry tilts his head to peer at him. “Tell me Voldemort hasn’t changed. Tell me my plan is going to cause more harm than good. Tell me my judgment is compromised—”

“Your judgment is compromised,” Snape cuts in, blandly.

“Fine,” Harry says, with a self-deprecating laugh. “Fine. So, tell me that what I’m doing is wrong. Tell me it’s unforgivable and you’ll hate me for it.”

Snape’s lip curls into a sneer, but he glares at the wall and says nothing.

“After everything,” Harry says with wholehearted sincerity, “if you still think I’m making the wrong choice, then I’ll believe you.”

“Why does the same reasoning not apply to your friends?”

“Because you have all the information. You’ve seen this whole situation through my eyes.”

“If only Granger could legilimize you, you believe that would convince her of the merits of the Dark Lord’s rehabilitation? You believe she would subscribe to the same corner of morality where you have made your bed?”

“I’m not sure,” Harry admits, and the sting of imagining it is almost unbearable. But he gathers himself enough to whisper, “I hope she would.”

“And if she did not? Would her judgment hold the same weight as mine?”

No, it wouldn’t be the same. Harry shakes his head.

Snape stares at him, his eyes like black, polished stones glinting dangerously in the sconce light. “Why?” he whispers. “What has made you so fixated on me?”

Before Harry can come up with anything to say, the bedroom door slams shut, and Voldemort staggers up to the bed. “Harry,” he says, sounding queasy, “in the future, could you please delay your emotional crisis until after I’ve finished conferencing with my subordinates.”

“Sorry about that,” Harry says, wincing.

Voldemort makes a vaguely dismissive gesture. "In an hour, I will escort you to the Macnair estate dungeons, where you will distribute portkeys to the agreed-upon list of prisoners.” He sits heavily on the edge of the mattress, running his hands briefly over the bald panes of his head—an uncharacteristic expression of exhaustion. "I suppose you have already resolved… whatever your distress was? There is nothing you need for me to do?"

Inwardly, Harry examines the tiny thread of his bond with Snape, like the taut string of a musical instrument, resonant, humming with the aftermath of Harry plucking at it. “Um,” Harry says, “yes? I was upset about what happened with Hermione. But I think I… I think I’m feeling a bit better now.”

Voldemort’s gaze flickers over to Snape, then he looks away again, brushing his hands down his lap to smooth out his robes. He’s uncomfortable—but there’s a twinge of something else there. Eagerness, perhaps. “We have about an hour,” he says. “Will you allow me to speak to Severus?”

Right. Snape’s disloyalty has been top of mind for Voldemort this whole time; he’s been waiting to address it with all the patience of a spoilt child.

Harry retrieves his wand from his sleeve, holding it beside his thigh on the side facing away from Voldemort, so he’ll be able to react quickly if things go wrong. “Give me yours, too.”

Voldemort holds out the Tom Riddle wand, and Harry tries to take it, but it doesn’t budge. Voldemort’s fingers are still locked around the base of the wand with white knuckles. He asks, “You will take Severus’s wand as well, won’t you?”

“What? No! Why would I?”

“He could attack while I am disarmed.”

“Why the hell would he do that? He knows perfectly well how useless that would be.”

“He is a very emotional man who sometimes reacts without thinking—”

Snape scoffs loudly and says, “You’re one to talk!”

Then he stiffens and falls silent.

Voldemort says nothing. With his eyes now pinned on Snape, he releases his grip on the wand, which Harry sets aside on the bedspread. Though the three of them had been aware all afternoon of the change in Snape’s status, this is the first instance of direct insolence. Snape’s backtalk hangs between them like a gauntlet, and each of them waits for the other to react.

Harry isn’t actually sure how this conversation will play out. He knows that Snape hates Voldemort politically, but he’s not sure how Snape feels about him personally. That might be hatred as well, but it’s… it’s a more nuanced hatred, isn’t it? It must be. For how long they’ve known each other, for how large a shadow Voldemort has cast over Snape’s life, it must be more complicated than just he’s a bad man and I hate him.

Snape’s jaw flexes, and he doesn’t apologize for the insolence. He doesn’t genuflect, nor does he beg forgiveness. Any servility which had been present in his prior dealings with Voldemort has been completely excised from his mouth, like a rotten tooth.

Eventually, it’s Voldemort who speaks first. “When Harry first suggested that you were disloyal, I immediately discounted it. I know what malicious rumors have clung to you over the years, my Severus. I know how the others hunger for your humiliation. I would never—have never—allowed them the satisfaction of seeing you beneath them.”

Snape turns away, his features melding into the shadows of the wall behind the cot.

“You have nothing to say? No pretty words for me, no explanation?”

“No.”

Then silence.

A brief flash of rage in Voldemort’s eyes is quickly suppressed. Instead, the Dark Lord lets out a breath too tense to be a sigh, and he watches Snape, consideringly. "When I finally allowed myself to see the truth, I thought I would ask you if it was my apparent defeat at the hands of an infant that made you betray your oath to me. But… you were not fooled. You knew I would return. Your betrayal arrived long before that. It was that woman—the mother.”

“Careful,” Snape warns tightly.

“Lily Evans Potter.” Voldemort says her name reverently, which is surprising. Given all he’s learned recently of the magical consequences of Mum’s sacrifice, maybe he’s developed a measure of respect for her as a worthy adversary, posthumously. “When you heard Avery deliver the name of the newborn, you begged me to spare the mother."

Though Snape won’t look at him, Voldemort still gazes wistfully in his direction, as if seeing the man Snape once was. “This was the first time you had ever asked for anything,” he recalls. “The others always wanted favors; they saw in me a benevolent idol to whom they could direct their selfish prayers. But not you, Severus. You just liked to be part of something. You wanted nothing more from me than my approval. When finally you asked me to spare this woman, I was glad to be in a position to reward you for that loyalty.”

Harry pulls his knees up, hugging his legs. He feels cold, but not upset—at least, not more upset than he already was. A week ago at the battle, when he spoke to the ghosts of his parents for the first and last time, he learned that they weren’t suffering in death. They were at peace, and all they wanted was for Harry to be at peace, too. So it doesn't hurt anymore when he thinks about the night they died, recalling half-memories through eyes too young to comprehend anything. It just makes him feel cold.

But Snape’s face twists into grief—his pain is a well-exercised muscle, still vivid and intense after all these years. “You killed her.”

“Unfortunately my hand was forced, in the end. But I had already lost you prior to that—I had lost you the moment her surname left Avery’s lips, hadn't I? Oh, Severus…” Voldemort’s long white fingers clench tighter over his knees. “I didn’t know at the time that you had actually betrayed me. I knew only that I had lost your faith. The young man who had wanted nothing more than my attention and approval… he began occluding, dulling the wonderful sparkle of trust and adoration that had once shone from him. He aged ten years in just a few weeks. My poor Severus, always too clever for his own good.”

“I don’t believe cleverness was at issue,” Snape bites back.

“Wasn't it? If you'll recall, Lily Potter was still alive, and I had promised you that I would make every effort to allow her to remain so. Yet there was something newly begrudging about your service. You required frequent reminders… reassurances that I was still the Dark Lord Voldemort; still powerful enough to bring you to heel. At the time, I did not connect this to the woman—rather, I began to lend more credence to Lucius's assertions about your nature: while a racehorse needs only a light touch to reach victory, a workhorse thrives under a master who holds firmly the reins.”

Black eyes snap to Voldemort, filled with molten rage. "Lucius is a fool."

Voldemort smiles gently. “Just so. You were never a workhorse, dear Severus.”

That’s not a compliment, Harry thinks, but he doesn’t interrupt. Magic willing, there will be time enough to unpack all of this eugenics crap later.

“Predictably, you did not respond favorably to the stick—so I resorted to offering the carrot instead, yet still you resisted me. I made a point to inform you that neither Dolohov, nor the Lestranges, nor the Carrows would accompany me to raid the Potter household… I wanted you to understand that I would follow through, that I would be patient with this woman for your sake. And that wasn’t all I offered you.”

Voldemort inclines his head towards Harry, explaining, “We were at war, and I was our General; I was so busy I could no longer spare time to indulge the prayers of my sycophants. Each day was filled with reports, meetings, strategizing—we were moving quickly towards the endgame. Then one day, in the midst of all that momentum, Severus received his stole of potions mastery. You see, Igor Karkaroff was a member of the Board of Mastery at the time, and though he was recused from the deliberations on Snape, the Board still allowed him to hand-deliver the results to his friend. Severus received his stole in the war room, in front of all of those wealthy men and women who had looked down upon him. But even in that moment of triumph, Severus was weary and distracted. I decided something must be done.” He turns back to Snape. “Do you remember how I tried to reach you, Severus? You must remember. I’m sure that, in their envy, the others haven’t allowed you to forget.”

Snape doesn’t respond.

“A young man like that,” Voldemort murmurs to Harry, “who wants only to be deemed worthy… I knew that the undivided attention of his benefactor would be the greatest reward I could offer him. So I abandoned the war room and all my commanders. I paused the entire war effort, just so that I could spend an afternoon with my Severus in the lab. I invited him to explain his mastery thesis to me. We brewed together, for hours, with no distractions.” He laughs, bitterly. “And if I had done that two months earlier, the boy would have been absolutely euphoric. Alas… I had waited too long. Though he was obsequious as ever, he had no love for me anymore. And I was still at a loss as to why."

Voldemort's voice turns conspiratorial. "Unable to reach him through any other means, I made my final concession to Severus, hoping this, at last, would prove that he could trust my mercy. I allowed him to join the Order. Dumbledore already knew of my plans for the Potters, so there was no risk in allowing Severus to feed them information, ingratiating himself in their ranks as a spy. And most importantly, it would give Severus the opportunity to warn his sweet Dulcinea and convince her to run."

Harry blinks. “It… what… it was your idea?!”

With a nihilistic snort, Voldemort levels a glare at Snape. “Evidently not. You had already kissed Dumbledore’s ring by that point, hadn’t you, Severus? And here I thought I was being extraordinarily kind to you.”

“It didn’t matter,” Snape rasps out, still facing the wall. “You didn’t tell me the date of the attack. And even if you had, it wouldn’t have mattered. God, sometimes I wonder if that’s the only truly selfless thing Albus ever did, impressing upon me that it wouldn’t have mattered.” He turns, then, just enough to look at Harry. He’s not crying—his face is still dry, at least, but his cheeks are pink with anguish. “Your mother,” Snape croaks, “was the bravest person I’ve ever known. She was always going to die for you. There is no possible reality in which she would have abandoned you to your fate. No matter any warning—it was inevitable that she would look her own death in the face and welcome it, to protect you.”

“And so she did, in the end,” says Voldemort.

“Albus said I must have always known it, in my heart,” Snape whispers. “For if she was the sort of mother who would abandon her own child to the Dark Lord’s wrath, I would not have loved her in the first place.”

“Thus my favors and consolations meant nothing to you,” Voldemort spits. “Dumbledore had poisoned you against me, and made you resign yourself to the idea that I would kill her.”

“And he was right!” Snape cuts back. “Of course you would kill her!”

“She wasn’t dead yet! Perhaps I could have stunned her—”

“No. Even if you had somehow spared her that night, she would have sworn vengeance against you for killing her husband and child, and she would have been killed, too.”

Voldemort gapes at him. “Are you serious? Is that what he told you? Think, man. If the young woman had been left alive, yes, of course she would’ve been distraught. But she would’ve been alive, and with an entire organization to support her in her efforts to kill me. How frequently do members of the Order catch their deaths?” Voldemort scowls. “Dumbledore’s people are notoriously difficult to kill.”

“Then why didn’t you spare her?!” Snape shouts. “If it would have been so easy to—”

“Because I knew it didn’t matter anymore,” says Voldemort, holding himself upright and stiff with piercing disapproval. “Showing her mercy would not have brought you back to me. Your attitude during those months made that perfectly clear.”

"No."

“Let it be known that I did give her the chance, Severus. I told her to move aside. But when she refused, yes, I killed her, because I knew that if I allowed her to live, you would always choose her over me. It was cleaner to let her die, and instead embark on the long and difficult process of consoling you and making reparations… though, obviously, I died before I had the chance.”

Snape says nothing. He scrubs a hand over his face to wipe the tears, then he just leaves his hand covering his face while he takes a deep breath.

But Voldemort isn’t satisfied. "Was I wrong, Severus? Picture a world where I had spared her. Would you have fallen to your knees in gratitude? Would you have loved your master then?"

Snape says nothing, but the unspoken “no, never,” is so blatant that it may as well be audible.

“Then it wasn’t the woman. It was something else, some other trigger that made you turn against me. Severus, what was it?”

“Perhaps it was your decision to slaughter an infant in the first place,” Snape hisses.

“What?” Voldemort’s brows knit in puzzlement. “That—that isn’t fair, Severus. Don’t play the fool—you brought me that prophecy knowing that the correct strategic move would be to exterminate the child before the threat could manifest.”

“And I was wrong!”

The conviction in Snape’s voice makes all the little hairs on the back of Harry’s neck stand on end.

“I was wrong,” he repeats, in a hoarse whisper. “He was just a child. What kind of society would you build on the corpses of children?”

Voldemort stiffens. Something shifts within him; some of his righteous anger transforms into… hurt? Grief? Harry looks at him sidelong. The proud tilt of his chin belies whichever new, painful emotion has taken root in his chest when he says, “You did not express this opinion back then, Severus.”

Snape laughs miserably. “I was an idiot. It wasn’t until… it wasn’t until it was all over, that I…” He covers his face with both hands. “God, Harry,” he whispers, “you were so damned small.”

Harry blinks at him. “You… were there?”

“Only briefly. Albus wished to torture me—he forced me to hold you. To reckon with the fact that the child in my arms would have been dead, if things had gone to plan.” He shakes his head. “It was quite a… visceral lesson.”

With tightly crossed arms, Voldemort interrupts to say, “This is very frustrating for me. Of everyone who knew of this operation to kill the Potter child, no one was concerned about the ethics of the matter. Everyone took for granted that it was a sound strategic move to eliminate the threat as swiftly as possible. Severus, how can you hold me accountable to a standard not established until after the deed was done?”

“Tom,” Harry says, “you shouldn’t need someone to tell you that killing children is wrong.”

“Of course it was wrong, Harry, but it was necessary. At the time, Severus agreed it was necessary. He himself laid the sacrifice on the altar, but now he resents me for wielding the knife.”

Snape rolls his eyes. “Don’t insinuate hypocrisy. I am under no illusion that you were the only monster between us.”

“But even though I was behaving entirely within your expectations for me, you still resent me.”

Snape’s jaw drops open in disbelief. “Of course I—oh, Merlin’s fucking tits. You killed Lily. You’ve killed hundreds of others, terrorizing the whole bloody country. You’ve personally tortured and humiliated me too many times to count, and worse, you’ve tortured my students. You’ve tortured children. What did you—did you think I would like you? Did you think I would respect you?!”

In a flurry of movement, Voldemort rushes forward, but he stops short just before Harry can cast a bubble shield. His arms are at his sides, making no movement to attack—just looming over Snape, a tall terrible spectre of darkness.

Snape doesn’t flinch. You’ve already hurt me in all the ways that matter, his posture seems to say. He returns Voldemort’s stare with a baleful, challenging expression.

“I can see… that I have hurt you,” Voldemort says in a low tone, laboriously enunciating every syllable. “I can appreciate… that you resent me for it. The part that I cannot understand is this: when you swore yourself to me, it was because I saw greatness in you when everyone else cast you aside. I protected you. I sponsored you. At my knee, you learned power beyond even the dreams of Merlin… and yet, you betrayed me to swear loyalty to a man who never saw your worth, who repeatedly ignored your needs, and who, quite literally, threw you to the wolves. You chose him.” There’s a spark of helpless sincerity in his voice. “How could you choose him?”

“Quite easily,” Snape cuts back. “Albus Dumbledore was not a killer.”

“You know perfectly well that a man with clean hands can still be responsible for grievous harm. Don’t tell me you've convinced yourself he was a good man, after everything.”

“He was a better man than you.”

“I could have—” Voldemort cuts himself off. A spiderweb of cracks jets across what was once the frozen lake of his composure. “It wasn’t just a rejection of me. Something drew you to him. What did he give you that I could not?”

“Redemption.” Snape’s eyes glitter with unwavering conviction. He says nothing more than that, because that is everything, has always been everything.

In the tense silence that follows, Harry looks inwards at his bonds with the two men, because he needs to understand… he needs to know if they’re back on the precipice of violence. But what he finds in Voldemort isn’t true rage; it’s a roiling distress, some sort of animalistic pain too colossal for a human mind to properly experience all at once. And on the other side, from the thread of Harry’s connection with Snape, he can feel bowstring-tension—a thin, taut layer like the skin of a drum, covering the surface of a dark well of vicious post-traumatic terror that Snape will never, never allow Voldemort to witness.

Suddenly, Harry hears a hitched breath and a sniffle. One pale, spidery hand emerges from the shadows of Voldemort’s robes, reaching up to cover his trembling lip. “It’s—it’s not fair,” he whimpers, “it’s not—”

“Tom…?”

Voldemort turns to face Harry, his hand clutched over his mouth and a flood of tears spilling from his eyes. “It’s not… Harry, it’s not fair, it’s…”

Somewhere behind Voldemort, Snape’s expression is equal parts flummoxed and disgusted, a perfect reflection of Harry’s emotions. What the hell is wrong with you, a part of Harry wants to ask Voldemort, this isn’t Privet Drive and you aren’t my cousin; you can’t just throw a fit when things don’t go your way.

But Harry doesn’t say any of that, because he can feel how bafflingly genuine the outpouring is, a blaring signal of true emotional distress suffocating the bond between them. And then Voldemort collapses onto the bed beside Harry, burying his face in the duvet while reaching one hand to grasp at Harry’s knee.

“...what is this…?” the dark wizard whispers between bouts of sniffling, “what—what is happening to me…?”

Harry frowns. “Uh, you're… you’re upset, I reckon.”

“Of course I’m bloody upset!” Voldemort snaps, only partly softened by the bedding and the miserable, croaking tone of his voice. “But… I’m not this upset,” he says between gasping breaths, “I’m not… I’m not… oh Salazar, why does it hurt? Why does this hurt so much?”

“More pertinently,” Snape interjects, fixing his gaze on Harry instead, “why are you not hurting?”

Harry frowns. It is odd, that though Voldemort’s distress is something he can sense, he doesn’t feel overwhelmed by it. And why would I? he thinks, I’m not the one Snape is angry with.

Which explains things rather neatly, doesn’t it?

“I think… maybe he’s absorbed some of my… attachment. To you. Or maybe his existing feelings have been amplified by mine. I think this might be how I would have felt if… if you had rejected me.”

Snape blinks. Dryly, he asks, “I’ve broken his heart by refusing to be his friend?”

“Seems like it.”

Snape watches Voldemort whimper and cry for a moment longer, then gives a dismissive huff and looks away, rubbing his own face. “There’s no need for me to mince words out of consideration for your half of the soul, is there?”

Unsure, Harry looks down at Voldemort. In the bond, in the flooding anguish of rejection, Harry tries to find any piece of it that feels resonant with his own emotions. But all he can think of is… how it felt to be near Snape during the telephone conversation. How it felt when Snape placed a hand on Harry's knee and answered a question on his behalf. How it felt to be accepted. "No," Harry says, "I think I'm fine. I think the bond is just… confused."

Snape nods slowly. "And you won't demand I coddle him as you do?"

"God, no. After what he's put you through? By all means, say whatever you need to say." Absently, Harry pets a hand across Voldemort's trembling shoulders. "He deserves to feel… regret, or shame, or whatever this is."

"Well," Snape says stiffly, "I suppose that's something."

…

It takes about ten minutes for Harry to coax Voldemort into pulling himself together. Mostly this just involves rubbing his back while he cries, and whispering things like, “Tom, just breathe, alright? You’re fine.”

When Voldemort keeps whimpering it’s not fair, it’s not fair, Harry doesn’t indulge it, but he doesn’t really respond to it either. He wants to say that of course it’s fair, it’s more than fair: if you hurt someone, they won’t like you anymore. That’s just how that works. But Harry knows pointing this out will just make Voldemort cry harder, and frankly he doesn’t have the patience for it.

(Snape, furnished with even less patience than Harry, just tries to ignore the emotional display altogether. If he could leave the room he might have done so, but instead he just stays on the cot and arranges his notes from the telephone call.)

“Tom,” Harry says when the crying begins to subside, “enough of this. Come on.” He pats a hand over the back of Voldemort’s bald head, and finally the man lifts his face from the bedcovers.

He looks pathetic. Harry had expected the pink puffiness around the eyes, stark contrast to the typical paper white of Voldemort’s skin, but he hadn’t expected the inflammation of the lines of his nostrils. Voldemort furiously rubs the back of his hand against them, further irritating the bright red slits, drenched with mucus. “Don’t do that,” Harry says automatically, pulling Voldemort’s hand down, “you’re hurting yourself. Here.” He summons a tissue from the bathroom, pushing it into Voldemort’s hand.

“Why can’t you tell him?” Voldemort whines, rubbing his face with his wrist again instead of the tissue, “Harry, please, he will listen to you.”

Annoyed, and feeling rather too much like Aunt Petunia, Harry takes the tissue back and cleans his face for him.

Voldemort just shuts his eyes and accepts the contact, hiccupping. Then he whispers, “can’t you explain to Severus that I—if I had known it would push him away, I never would have—”

“That’s not true at all,” Harry interrupts. “If you knew how he felt back then, you wouldn’t have changed course. You would have just tortured him until he promised to be loyal again.”

Voldemort blinks wetly. “Yes, but—but only because I cared, because I wanted—what I really wanted was for him to be my second, my favorite…”

“That’s not how it works,” Harry says, and then he presses a clean tissue against the center of Voldemort’s face. “Blow.”

Voldemort does so, but in a rather snake-like way: mouth open wide, eyes shut tight, letting a short burst of air through his nostrils.

Harry vanishes the tissues. “I get that it feels unfair. You’re much more sensitive now, and you’re dealing with the consequences of decisions you made when you were emotionally numb. But you’re still responsible for the decisions you made then. I know you didn’t think it would hurt this much, but that doesn’t excuse you.”

“But how do I fix it? I need to fix it. Harry, there must be a way to fix it."

Harry frowns, and glances at Snape, who has his back to them. "You might not be able to fix this, Tom."

But that makes another broken sob erupt from Voldemort, and it's the first one that Harry actually feels across the bond---beyond the monumental anguish of rejection, there is a second agony: the finality of one's mistakes.

"You'll have to try to redeem yourself," Harry tells him, more gently. "You'll just have to try to earn forgiveness. And you'll have to keep trying and trying, and you might never be forgiven, but... at least there's a chance. If you really work to learn what you did wrong and make yourself better, there's a chance."

"But that---" Voldemort whimpers, "that isn't fair."

“You’re not a child, Tom. It’s past time you understood that your actions have consequences." He squeezes Voldemort's shoulder. "Get it together. We have work to do.”

Finally, after a deep breath, something like clarity returns to Voldemort’s eyes. “Yes,” he says weakly, “the portkeys will be ready shortly.”

…

Fortunately, the confrontation has no real impact on their ability to work together. They’re both Slytherins; it’s easy for them to set aside personal strife to further their collective ambitions. Harry’s pretty sure that, if Slytherins and Gryffindors had ever shared a DADA classroom before OWLs, Draco would have fallen over himself to pair with Harry for a group project rather than someone like Goyle. Better to tie your fate to a competent enemy than an incompetent friend.

“You will wear white,” Voldemort declares hoarsely, pulling a plain cotton tunic from the dresser. “To predispose them to trusting you.”

Harry holds the tunic against his body, positioning himself so he can see through the bathroom doorway to the mirror within. “Is it really necessary to give me a costume for this, too? These people are—they know me. When they see that it’s me, they’ll know that I’m only there to help.”

Snape shakes his head ruefully. “It is very likely that their jailors have taunted them about your allegiance to the Dark Lord. Even despite Draco at the helm… if just one comment about your status has reached the ears of a prisoner, the story will have already spread throughout the dungeons like a virus.”

“But… if it’s just a rumor, surely they’ll have doubts about it. When they see me—”

“The goal, Harry, is to transport these people without any unnecessary stress or fuss,” Voldemort interrupts soberly. “It’s pointless for you to spend time convincing these people to trust you one by one. Better to play into their expectations for what a rescue might look like, so that they can reach the Order as quickly as possible.”

“The shirt should be more worn than that,” Snape points out. “Even if we leave ambiguous whether Harry is meant to be an escaped prisoner himself or a white knight staging a rescue, he’ll have fought his way to their cell regardless. If he looks too clean, they will suspect something is amiss.”

After a series of charms and illusions, Harry is rendered dirty and bloodied. He looks at himself in the mirror and… it’s strange, that he can see in the mirror his split lip and his shoulder singed with curse damage, but he feels none of it. Like he’s a stage actor playing pretend.

Maybe it’s a little cruel to trick his allies like this. Just a few days ago, he had made fun of Voldemort for using psychological warfare on his Death Eaters. But Harry understands where Voldemort and Snape are coming from; this is the best way to keep these people calm for transport, without compounding their trauma.

Eventually, it’s time for Voldemort to bring Harry to the dungeons. He opens the door and gestures for Harry to lead their way out, but Harry hesitates, looking back at Snape still seated on the cot in the dark of the room.

Snape scowls at him. “I have my wand now; I’m hardly an invalid.”

You’re exhausted and you can’t even stand, Harry thinks but doesn’t say. If they leave him like this, he knows that Snape will spend hours just watching the door, ready to defend himself from any Death Eater who might want to harass him. “I just—give me a second,” Harry says, brandishing the Elder Wand. He draws a circle around the perimeter of the cot, pulling defensive magic from both him and Snape to power the shield.

“This is overkill,” Snape grumbles.

“It’ll make me feel better to know you’re not exposed.” Finished, Harry returns to the doorway. “Send a patronus if you need anything.”

“I won’t,” says Snape. A flicker of his magic slams the door shut behind Harry.

…

From the moment he and Voldemort departed the field of battle, Harry has been waiting for things to settle. If things could just settle into some sort of new normal, then he would feel secure, he would feel like things were safe again, safe enough to plan for the future without worrying that the present would be pulled from under his feet.

After delivering the first portkey, and then receiving the patronus from Hermione confirming safe return, Harry realizes that he made it. He made it. This is stable—stable enough that Voldemort just watched him escort a prisoner to safety, with no concern more urgent than whether Harry was satisfied with the process. Stable enough that Voldemort was able to endure an entire emotional breakdown without ever resorting to violence to resolve his distress. Stable enough that Harry can envision a future for himself that doesn't involve destiny and strife.

And Snape—Snape is safe, and Draco is safe, and no one else is dying. This is really, truly, finally happening.