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Chapter Text

throw me a lifeline

cause honey i got nothing to lose

THE KILLERS - SHOT AT THE NIGHT

They hide from the bright light of the sun.

The lower the lighting, the higher the danger. Lord Voldemort has seen it many times—the sky turning orange and red with the slow drag of the sunset like a beacon for the living dead to emerge from their hiding spots. The rotting, desiccated flesh hanging off their bones as they shuffle and limp listlessly into the dark. Their moans clash and harmonize like a mouth organ carved from suffering itself. Lord Voldemort watches them from his fortress in the bones of what was once a city—always watching, always waiting.

A slitted red eye stares down the scope of his rifle. One by one, he examines the dead. A blond woman with her jaw torn off. A tall bald man, scalp pockmarked with tears that reveal the white bone beneath. The torso of an elderly woman, dragging herself along with bloodied stumps that once were hands. Each of them was once a muggle. Each of them is, therefore, a waste of his bullets. Voldemort shifts his aim to the next person and—

Bright green eyes stare at him, unblinking. A gangly young man, thin and wiry, with a mop of messy black hair and a vacant gaze. Beat up red canvas shoes, jeans, and the remains of a t-shirt. A yawning, hungry mouth, stained with the rusty residue of long dried blood. Something about him is familiar. Something about him calls to Voldemort. Those eyes—he’s seen them before.

There’s only one way to determine if this man is what Voldemort is looking for. He adjusts his aim, squints, and pulls the trigger.

The young man’s head snaps back in a spray of blood and he crumples to the ground. Around him, the zombies moan and shuffle as if nothing has happened at all.

Lord Voldemort paces his basement laboratory. Piles of parchment and ancient tomes litter the many tables, mingling with medical dictionaries and printed test results pages. The air hums with the sound of electronics and curved computer screens generating lines of code. The latest experiment was another failure. Red eyes follow the sound of muffled thumping over to a tall tank filled with a preservation potion. Inside, a zombie writhes and claws uselessly at the glass: an ethereal, nude creature, with platinum hair shorn to the scalp. Milky blue eyes glare at Voldemort, a dark tattoo visible on its forearm. The only other visible mark on the creature is the scar of a bite wound, gouged into its neck as if many years healed.

“Oh, how your father would be so, so disappointed in you,” Voldemort drawls to the brainless creature, his voice gravelly from disuse. “Lucius Malfoy, reduced to this.” Voldemort’s lips curl in a predatory smile. Long pale fingers grasp a pull cord and tug. A curtain falls over the tank, obscuring the repulsive monster from sight. Lord Voldemort steps to his research journals, definitively crossing out a passage. He closes the journal and tosses it onto a growing pile of failed research. He needs another infected wizard. Experiments utilizing Lucius alone do not give him enough information to work with.

A sheaf of papers slips off an overloaded desk and cascades to the floor. For a moment it sounds like a whisper of spoken words. Voldemort cranes his head searching for the source. But no, of course not. There are no living humans left within fifty miles of this place. Voldemort scowls and aims his wand. He carefully focuses his magic, gently levitating the papers back into place. The longer he is alone the more his brain searches for patterns in the sounds and shadows to interpret as other humans. A scuff of his boot sounds like a laugh while a hanging towel becomes a silhouette, a moan like a cry for help. More and more he speaks to Lucius as if the man can hear him. What else is there to do between experiments?

Experimenting with muggles is a dead end. The virus slowly transforms infected muggles into ravenous undead beasts. They are completely useless for anything besides killing. Honestly, Voldemort would consider the mass annihilation of muggles to be a great feat, a way to liberate the world from the clutches of filthy, magicless animals. Perhaps when he found the cure for wizards, he could proceed to breaking the quarantine over Great Britain and spreading the virus worldwide.

Of course, he could escape now if he wanted. The Dark Lord Voldemort’s power could crush any other wizard alive. But the answers he seeks are not on the vast globe, they are right here in the quarantine zone. 

The answer to immortality is almost within his grasp.

The alarm trips at three in the morning; the witching hour. A red light on the wall flares to lurid brightness as a high-pitched wailing sound drags Voldemort out of his slumber. He claws strings of black hair out of his eyes as he blinks away the shadows of his dreams. Again, he dreamt of Hogwarts. Lord Voldemort was walking across the great lawn, towards the black lake, towards a figure standing on the edge of the water. The figure turned, and just as their face came into view—he wakes up clutching his locket.

Lord Voldemort slings his rifle over his shoulder, secures his wand in its holster, and climbs the ladder to the roof of his fortified warehouse. Red light means containment breach. It means one of the creatures has penetrated the outer walls. Voldemort swings his spindly body onto the flat roof and untangles his rifle from its strap as he jogs over to the edge of the roof. Quickly, he scans his perfect night vision over the perimeter walls. There—on the western corner, a zombie writhes in a trap of razorwire. The monster appears to have climbed the outer fence and became entangled in the wire. With a definitive twist of his hand, born of a decade of practice, he flicks the bolt to load a round into the rifle. Voldemort peers down the scope. What he sees makes him grin a wide, predatory smile, full of sharp teeth.

The zombie tangled in the razor wire differs from the others.

Back when there were still muggle survivors in this city, they had one rule. If you spot a zombie wearing a strange, flowing garment, like a dress or a bathrobe, you run. Because, simply, zombies created from wizards are different. They sprint and jump. They absorb damage like a sponge. They never stop pursuing you once they see you. And, most frightening of all, they heal. Voldemort aims and pulls the trigger. The side of the undead wizard’s head explodes in a gush of bone and brain. From here, he has mere minutes to capture the creature. Minutes before the trapped soul of the monster pulls magic from his core to restore the brain, regrow the bone, and knit the scalp back together. A miraculous virus capable of stopping death in its tracks–it’s unfortunate it also drives mages entirely mad. 

Lord Voldemort grasps a lever mounted on the wall and pulls it down. Massive flood lights ringing the perimeter fence blare into the gloom. The shock of the bright lights causes Voldemort’s eyes to throb, and he blinks spots out of his vision. In a slow, disorganized mob, the lurking zombies grumble and wander away from the reach of the light. They step to the edge of the light, furtive and restless.

Voldemort slings the firearm strap over his shoulder and slides down the exterior steel ladder. Worn combat boots hit the concrete, and he jogs past chugging gasoline power generators to the fence. As he nears the infected wizard, he looks for signs of recovery. The creature’s clawed hands twitch as a guttural, hissing breath passes past its torn lips.

“Salazar,” whispers Lord Voldemort. The reanimation refractory period of magical zombies shortens the longer they suffer infection. This one must be from the original infection wave. He aims his bone-white wand at the zombie and vanishes the razor wire. He tries to pull the body to him but the magic stutters on the way out of the wand and fizzes out. Voldemort hisses a curse. The aborted levitation spell jerks the body forward. It rolls down the wall and impacts the concrete with a loud, wet thump. Bitterly, he swallows down the rage at his unreliable magic. There is nothing more important than his research right now. As soon as his research finishes, he can work on tearing down the magical quarantine and slaying all those responsible. 

Snarling in frustration, he tugs a sack over the zombie’s head and secures its limbs. Voldemort throws the body over his shoulder and begins the painstaking climb up the side of the industrial warehouse he’s transformed into his fortress. With each rung of the ladder the zombie twitches and moans, slowly regaining movement. By the time he heaves it over the lip of the roof, he can hear the hollow sound of chomping inside the bag. Voldemort sneers at it. He reaches a hand out to turn off the lights and freezes.

A single zombie stands in the convergence of the bright lights. The young man from yesterday, messy hair, bright green eyes, bathed in blaring illumination. He stares directly at Lord Voldemort as if he can see him–as if he knows who he is. Voldemort brings the rifle up, squinting down the scope once more. A blank, vacant gaze. A gust of wind picks up and blows the hair away from his face, revealing no sign of an entry or exit wound from the gunshot. And, there’s something else.

He has a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead.

Lord Voldemort recoils. Green eyes, like that mudblood harlot. Lightning-shaped scar, like his so-called vanquisher. It’s him.

The latest acquisition claws feebly at the glass of his tank. Stuffing him in there was a massive pain in the ass, but in the end the situation is satisfactory. Once the matted hair was shorn off and the body cleansed, more features of the captured zombie wizard became visible. Hair as red as a cut copper wire. Freckles. Tall and thin. Perhaps thirty at the oldest. Voldemort found a broken pair of tortoise-shell glasses on its body, hanging around the zombie’s neck at the end of a retaining cord. A Weasley, or perhaps a Prewitt, or perhaps just a mudblood. It certainly smells bad enough to be filth. Whoever it is, it doesn't matter unless Voldemort restores the beast’s mind.

Lord Voldemort covers the tank with a curtain and turns back to his research. He reaches for his notebook, hands shaking. When he notices the sign of weakness, Voldemort clenches his fingers until his knuckles pop. The thoughts racing through his head go back to the Boy Who Lived. Voldemort remembers those horrible years of suffering and pain. Bodiless, miserable, the world a blur around him. The boy and his mother condemned him to such a shameful fate. And he would have stayed out there if he had not stumbled upon those muggles.

A research team dedicated to studying the muggle science of DNA and aging. Deep in the Albanian forest, taking samples of a rare plant, having petty arguments, sleeping without someone on watch. Voldemort slipped inside their minds effortlessly. He ripped away their knowledge, taking it all for himself. He puppetted their bodies and used their blood to create himself a new body. His current form is imperfect—the ugly features of Tom Riddle haunt his face, in the gentle curl of his hair, in the ridge of his nose that exactly matches his disgusting father. But, it is much improved in other ways. Pale as death, with long limbs and fingers containing monstrous strength. Talons and claws and teeth. Slit red eyes that can see in the dark. A predator in a world of prey. When this is over, he will finish reconstructing his perfect form. Until then, this form must suit his goals.

The goals have suddenly become much more complicated.

Harry Potter. The Boy Who Lived. An apparition, a phantom of the world before the end. A boy at the top of a list of individuals Lord Voldemort intended to kill once he’d accomplished his research. Now the boy has returned to haunt him. His fated enemy, his fated equal. Lord Voldemort smirks at the very thought. A so-called equal who allowed himself to be bitten, to be infected, to be reduced to a mindless beast.

Perhaps, if he captures it, he can unlock the secret to the boy’s survival. Could it even be the key to his research, the key to ending this wasteful plague? Licking his lips, Lord Voldemort climbs back onto the roof. As the sun rises overhead, the green-eyed man remains stock still. Voldemort flicks the lights off and watches as his prophesied enemy lurches away, disappearing into the shadows of a shattered building.

The sharpie squeaks as Lord Voldemort pens a neat ‘#27’ onto a label made of masking tape. He raises the potion vial and regards it solemnly. The twenty-seventh serum, the twenty-seventh attempt at reversing the infection. Red eyes flick between the two tanks. Which specimen shall he test this upon? Lucius’s hands slide down the glass, his white teeth gnashing hungrily. The Weasley boy's eyes flicker over the room and then settle on Voldemort like an aimed missile. How fascinating. The glasses around the creature's neck suggested myopia, and yet he can see across the room. Voldemort feels a smug thrill of pleasure at the idea that the virus even cures one's eyesight.

The redhead smacks a fist against the glass and Lord Voldemort shakes off the reflex to go down a new rabbit hole of research. He picks up a plastic ballpoint pen and sketches down his thoughts and then focuses back on the serum. How shall he administer it? Introduce it into the tank ecosystem? Spell directly into the undead? Or intravenously? The infected almost always contact the original virus through a bite, scratch, or other fluid-fluid contact.

With a careless slash of his wand, a cut opens up on the creature’s arm. Sluggish, black blood flows into the water and dissipates like an ink drop. Voldemort flicks his wand again and the vial opens. This part is tricky. The amount of magic needed to levitate the serum is incredibly minuscule. So, Voldemort has found, that if he is very careful, he can administer medication without risk of spell failure. With a prod of his magic liquid swirls out of the top of the vial and into a small opening in the tank. It flows through the water and enters the cut all at once.

Lord Voldemort watches carefully, his red slits unblinking. The serum should have started combating the virus immediately—the question is, how long until the patient shows a response?

The answer is one hundred and twenty-six seconds.

A flicker of awareness. A flicker of fear. A desperate hand scratching against the glass, a mouth opened in an anguished yell. The man in the tank makes brief, horrified eye contact with Lord Voldemort—and then his skin begins to boil. The man screams a shrill undulation of sound that causes all the glass in the room to vibrate. Inhuman, animal agony.

Then, the change begins. It starts at the cut on his arm; thready tendrils of black blood ripping their way out of the wound. The strands thicken and pulse as his arm deflates, skin hanging loosely as the innards churn their way out. Voldemort watches, fascinated, as the man’s very blood roars to life. Bones crack one at a time, his limbs snapping to strange angles. Clotting tentacles burst from his mouth, his nostrils, his waste orifices. They slam into the glass, squeaking as they search for a means to escape. One hits the roof of the tank with a metallic ping. It gropes along until it finds the small opening and slips through. What remains of the man’s deflating body shivers and convulses as his terrible scream cuts off into a wet gurgle. The last of his skin stretches until it rips like an overfilled garbage bag.

And then, all at once, it expands. Pulsing flesh and shredded meat press against the tank walls. A throbbing tentacle covered in teeth slams into the glass, again and again and again until it cracks. A spiderweb of hairline fractures crawls across the glass with each slam. At the top, the tentacle wriggling free has widened to the width of a thigh. It whips around the room, slapping into monitors and stacks of notebooks.

As fascinating as this is, Lord Voldemort cannot allow one experiment to ruin his well-organized laboratory. He pulls out his machete—quite useful for dismembering the walking dead—and the next time the tentacle whips by he slices it in half. The beast roars in fury as the severed appendage flops to the floor. As Voldemort watches, it shrivels into a crispy, dried husk. Like seaweed, he thinks, the kind one would put in their miso soup. Ah, that is something he misses. Much better than the same canned beans, the same anemic homegrown vegetables. Voldemort debates what he will eat for dinner as he watches the expanding monster fill the tank, the pressure pushing the lid off. The tooth-covered tentacle shatters the glass and wriggles through. Water pours onto the floor in wet spurts.

Lord Voldemort has no reason to worry. Whenever this has happened before, there was always a limit to how much energy it could spend. Once the magical core drains of all power the mutations will end.

Right on cue, the beast groans. The tentacles grow sluggish and fatigued. The growth stops. Piece by piece, the mutation slows until the misshapen pile of meat goes completely still.

“Serum #27,” Voldemort drawls in a deadpan, “another failure.” He plucks his notebook back up and crosses out a line. He tosses the tortoiseshell glasses into a scuffed old trunk and shuts the lid.

At dawn, he incinerates the failed experiment. The stringy wet meat resists the flames from his wand, so Voldemort resorts to a generous splash of expired gasoline. Noxious black smoke drifts into the powder blue sky. Voldemort inhales the smell of it and memories half a century old drift to the surface. Bombs raining from the high heavens, London burning. Pleasure thrums through him at the knowledge he survived long enough to see it burn for the second time. Red eyes focus on the flames, on the meat as it sizzles and blackens and curls upon itself.

The sun stands at high noon when the final remains of the failed experiment crumble into ash. The Dark Lord’s expression twists into a grimace. Another failure, another sleepless night. This cursed, weak body of his, that still requires food and sleep, that wilts without social interaction or fulfillment of carnal urges. One day, he will make his final ascension and none of that will matter ever again. A cool autumn wind rustles through the skeletal fingers of the bare trees and scatters the ashes into the sky.

Lord Voldemort climbs the ladder to the roof of his warehouse. He pushes stringy strands of dark hair out of his crimson eyes and looks down at his future kingdom. As always, the zombies have long retreated from the sun. The streets are as quiet as a tomb, as still as the pre-Anthropocene forest that once covered this land. Every few meters lays a desiccated skeleton, a smear of blood, a caved-in skull. This land is ruled by the dead—the walking and the still. A cat darts down an alleyway, landing on the ground briefly before clawing up the side of a building. A forked tongue slips out of Voldemort’s mouth and moistens his lips. Perhaps, later, he can catch the little beast and have a meal of fresh meat for the first time in over a year.

Perhaps. After scrubbing the stink of roasting flesh from his skin and taking a well-deserved nap. Voldemort turns towards the ladder and pauses. A chill trickles down his spine. Something stands in the center of the street. Something that has not been there a minute ago. Something that stares directly up at the Dark Lord. Voldemort swings his rifle up and peers down the magnifying scope.

Empty green eyes and a slack mouth. He’s back–of course, he’s back. Voldemort traces his eyes over the zombie’s ashen skin, rendered in desaturated sepia. He wonders how old the man is, and what age he made it to before the infection sank into his veins. Nineteen, at the youngest, if Voldemort’s memory of his enemy’s birthdate is correct. There’s a fullness to his limbs and a contrasting sharpness to his face that suggest he’s past the coltish awkwardness of teenage years. Voldemort’s long finger strokes over the smooth steel trigger. Oh, how he wishes to shoot him one more time. To see a gush of blood and brains Pollock the pavement; his own personal masterpiece. But, after a few moments, he lowers the weapon. Voldemort is no longer the type of man to repeat the same experiment twice.

Stepping back, he swaps a new magazine into his rifle. Restlessness buzzes beneath his skin. In his youth, Lord Voldemort was a creature of impulsiveness. The instinct to move, to act, to take every opportunity as the boon it was, allowed him to sculpt godhood from nothing. Perhaps it is time to be that man again, to embrace the fruits of the moment. He descends the ladder and approaches the heavy iron gate. Voldemort’s instincts did not fail him until that fateful night in 1981. Harry Potter, standing in the street, is proof of that. Even now, the memory of that Halloween night skitters like a swarm of bugs over his skin, bringing a chill to his very soul. Pale fingers grip the iron handle of the gate. The choice is now—does he continue his useless experiments, or does he change the rules of the game? Voldemort pushes the sliding fence with a grunt. Metal screams and scrapes as he opens up a meter-wide space.

Now, nothing is standing between himself and his fated vanquisher.

Harry Potter locks gazes with Lord Voldemort. Milky green eyes follow his every movement as Voldemort walks into the street. It’s a strange day for England. A cloudless, cerulean sky. It’s almost painful to look at after so much time cooped up underground. Voldemort’s heavy boots echo off the cracked pavement as he approaches the zombie. The breeze swirls around them. Even above the ever-present stink of decaying corpses, Voldemort can practically taste the walking corpse on his forked tongue. Filthy clothes, matted hair, skin streaked with coagulated liquids—he smells like fermented sewage.

A few more steps and they stand face to face. Or face to collarbone, as the zombie’s respectable height barely makes it to Voldemort’s shoulder. Observing a zombie is always quite fascinating. They lack the natural movement of a living human body. No breathing, no fidgeting, just an eerie stillness. Vampires are like this too, Voldemort recalls. He wonders where they have gone. Have they starved while all their prey turned to rot?

The creature shifts, then, head tilting to the side as it regards Voldemort. This is the first time he’s ever been this close to an undead without the beast trying to rip his throat out. He wonders, is the zombie blinded? Are those too-green eyes clouded and sightless? Can he simply grab him, no resistance, no biting, a meek lamb to be led into his laboratory? Oh, he could kill him. Magical zombies are not invulnerable. But, knowing the history of this one, he doubts it shall be so simple. The urge to fill him with bullets rises again. Chop him up, burn the remains, vanish the ashes. But, Lord Voldemort resists. For science, for the entirety of Wizarding England, and for the future of the world. And, mostly, for himself.

“Hello, Harry,” Voldemort says. The zombie does not respond. Voldemort steps closer. He secures his dragonhide gloves–he's not stupid–and reaches for Harry. Voldemort wants to feel him, he wants to make sure he is real. His gloved finger bridges the distance between them and, almost lovingly, caresses the lightning-shaped scar on his forehead. The touch vibrates a tingle of electric current up his arm, an intangible pleasure. Is it his final victory? Or perhaps something else?

Harry’s eyes flutter. The pupils contract and focus on Voldemort. With no warning, the zombie lunges for his face. In a blur of movement, Voldemort’s hand flashes out and he catches the creature by the neck. Ragged fingernails stretch towards his face, to claw, to maim, to consume. At an arm’s length, the much smaller being cannot hope to harm him. It growls and convulses against his grip, to no avail. Voldemort lifts him off the ground and dirty trainers kick at Voldemort’s thighs impotently. The delicate neck quivers beneath his fingers as the creature spits and hisses.

Voldemort’s lips curl in the mockery of a smile. Oh, how he wishes he had done this two decades ago. Taken the prophesied infant and crushed his bones with his bare hands. Squeezed and squeezed until the baby was reduced to red jam between his fingers. Smash its skull on the ground like he smashed the prophecy the day he’d finally stolen it. His hackles rise; his mouth waters. Voldemort inhales to calm himself, unfortunately taking in the rank odor of the zombie still struggling against his grip. Rot and rubbish. His gorge rises.

Another lab rat, then. Perhaps it will prove more fruitful than the previous guinea pigs. If not, well, it’s not like he’s wasting anything important. Voldemort glances around the street. Other zombies watch him from their hiding places—in the caved-in doors of residences, from the darkened gaps of sewer grates. Watching and waiting for the cover of darkness to surge forward and rip him to shreds. Or try, at least. Voldemort has not survived this long by luck alone.

Harry, the zombie, the monster—has stopped struggling against his fingers. Now, it stares at him like before, dull and vacant like an empty shopfront. At least it shut up; the noises it was making were horrendous. He turns his head towards the gate, considering the easiest way to subdue and capture the beast.

Something throbs beneath his fingers.

A steady, pulsing beat.

Voldemort sucks in a breath and drops the creature in shock. What was that? Is his mind playing tricks on him? The zombie stirs on the ground, slowly struggling to its feet. It groans with a wet rattle and raises empty eyes at him. With a clean, well-practiced motion, Voldemort pulls out his pistol and shoots his fated enemy in the head. The zombie’s eyes roll back and his knees fold beneath him. Voldemort, drawn by some kind of instinct, lunges forward and grasps him by the forearm. Voldemort has a moment to register the cold stiffness of the zombie’s limb before the body collapses in his arms. Blood drips from the head wound in a steady trickle. It’s the only sound on the empty street.

Voldemort cannot explain what he does next. The zombie is light in his arms. They step over the threshold of his compound like a groom carrying his bride. He puts Harry down to slam the gate shut. Heavy locks click into place. Voldemort inhales, exhales, and then carries the body inside.

Harry’s skull is in the process of knitting itself back together when they reach the basement. Beneath the stairs is a long row of wire kennels designed to contain the largest dog breeds. They are all empty and bloodstained. Voldemort bundles Harry into the last kennel on the line. There’s no time for a full exam today—all he can do is note his initial observations. Harry’s brown skin carries a sickly ashen tint, his purpled lips cracked and peeling. When he looks closely, he can see the telltale black veins that spiderweb through the epidermis of every zombie. It’s one of the final signs that shows up before all sense and reason are lost. Voldemort peels his glove off and lays a pale hand over Harry’s chest. For years he’s looked for an anomaly, a mutation, and then one simply walks up to his doorstep. How strange. How fortuitous. The zombie’s fingers twitch. The chest moves beneath Voldemort’s hand. Zombies often suck in and expel air like this. Otherwise, they could not growl or moan. But this is too steady, too consistent.

Something thrums beneath his palm and jerks back in surprise. In a moment, his wand is in his hand, pointing directly at Harry’s head.

Nothing happens. The dead boy continues to breathe.

And his heart continues to beat.

Chapter Text

i got soul but i'm not a soldier

THE KILLERS - ALL THESE THINGS THAT I'VE DONE

The zombie is restless in the kennel. Voldemort can hear it, hour after hour, tapping on the wire bars of the cage. Tap tap tap. Tap tap tap. His hand clenches around a ballpoint pen, and a line appears in his notes. It has been three days since he brought Harry into his laboratory and nothing has changed. The creature still breathes, its heart yet beats, and Voldemort is at a loss to explain any of it. 

The virus, when infecting a magical being, places all organs into stasis—including the majority of the brain. The pathways to the being’s magical essence are all opened, flooding its body with magic that heals any wound and keeps it ambulatory in perpetuity. The zombie then, mindlessly, seeks out magic to restore its strained core. That is why magical zombies are so dangerous—beyond the healing factor, beyond the ravenous hunger, the most horrific aspect of their mutations is the instinctual ability to track magical signatures to the end of the earth. Once found, the zombie shall consume the magic whether it is an enchanted teapot or a child.

Even the mundane are not safe from them; the average muggle has traces of magic in their body absorbed from the environment, like a tuna with mercury in its blood. Voldemort watched through his scope, once, as a magical zombie ate the heart of a struggling muggle. No matter how many bullets they poured into the monster it stood up, again and again. When the muggles finally took an axe to the zombie’s neck the body dragged itself towards its severed head. 

Only burning the parts separately finally killed the thing.

Through intensive study, Voldemort has concluded the original virus is almost perfect. With such healing abilities, Voldemort and his allies would never be conquered. And if he were, the scattering of his soul would allow him to return. The brain is the problem—all higher functions like memory, emotion, and reason shut down and transform the infected wizard into a mindless monster.

What could the answer be? Perhaps, Voldemort must approach this from a different angle. One of the most difficult protections within the human body to bypass is the blood-brain barrier. Many medications cannot affect the brain because they are not engineered to pass the barrier. What if ensuring the integrity of the barrier is the key to preserving cognition? He will need to take samples to confirm this, and then change the serum accordingly. 

Tap tap tap. Green eyes stare at him from beyond the kennel bars. Voldemort stretches his arms over his head, his spine popping. He stands and crosses the laboratory, squatting in front of the cage. Slitted pupils roam over the creature. Voldemort’s lip curls in disgust.

“The worst part about the infected,” Voldemort says, “is how much you stink.” He sneers, head tilting to the side. “Disgusting thing. I can’t exactly examine you in that condition, can I?” He pulls out his wand, aims, and whispers “Scourgify.”

The spell sizzles and hiccups. Instead of removing the grime, green sparks squirt out of the end of his wand. The spray splashes onto the floor and hisses and smokes as it eats away at the concrete like a deadly acid potion.

Voldemort glances at his wand and then at Harry. Frustration boils inside of him. 
“I suppose we must do this the muggle way, then.” 

The creature moans beneath the torrent of freezing water from a sputtering shower-head. Voldemort, standing just about two meters away, grips the handle of a long mop. With harsh, careless strokes, he scrubs the soapy mop-head over the filthy creature. The soap suds turn a putrid gray as the cotton fibers rake over the zombie’s emaciated form. Years of caked-on blood, decay, and sewage scrapes from his brown skin. Voldemort has never resented the international community for fucking up magic more than this precise moment. A wave of his wand would have easily cleaned the boy head to toe—but no, the cursed spell had to backfire and almost eat a hole through the floor.

Voldemort uses the mop handle like a cattle-prod to flip the zombie around so he can clean his front—a difficult task when the creature is chained by the neck to the wall. He gets it, eventually, and is greeted by Harry's dour face. Dull green eyes glare at him almost reproachfully—it must be a trick of the light, because moments later they are back to blank emptiness. Voldemort pushes the mop up to rub at the zombie’s face. He’s not in the mood for this. One would think, after nearly twenty-eight years after his first death, Voldemort would be quite used to the humiliation of existence. As he uses his floor mop to scrub the tangled mess of a zombie’s hair he thinks he needs to re-evaluate how low he has fallen.

After it is more or less clean, Voldemort leaves the zombie beneath the torrent. Perhaps, after an hour, all the soap will be out of it’s hair and he can dry it off. Voldemort opens a can of peaches and uses his pocketknife to spear the slices. They taste sticky and sickly sweet, like the hint of autumn air while boarding the train to Hogwarts. He wonders if the orchards stink of rot with no one to tend them. 

Later, when Voldemort goes to check on the zombie, he’s huddled in a corner growling and snapping his teeth. Voldemort shuts off the water valve, and waits for the last drips to fall from the shower-head. Then, he approaches. The zombie scrapes his back on the concrete wall cringing away from him. The creature is alarmingly thin, his skin stretched taut over the faint lines of ropey muscles.  Was he like this before the infection? Or was it the infection that caused this? Scars cover the boy. Slash wounds, a snakebite, what looks like an acid burn. There is not a single limb that is free from harm.  It’s a marvelous roadmap of suffering and Voldemort clicks his tongue when he realizes he will never learn the source of these. Well, he knows the source of two of the scars at least. Voldemort’s gaze settles on the creature’s forehead and then snaps to the front left forearm. A healed bite wound has concaved into the flesh, as if whatever bit him took a solid chunk with it. 

That must be ground zero of the infection. A defensive wound, as if Harry raised an arm to shield his face. Voldemort wonders how long it took for the virus to spread, for Harry to die. Muggles take hours or days, but for wizards? It can be minutes. Seconds. Long enough to realize one’s fate, but not long enough to prevent what happens next.

“How long did it take to conquer you, little Harry?” Voldemort whispers. “How long did you fight before the darkness swallowed you whole?” 

As always, the boy does not respond. He simply glares at Voldemort, green on red, his fingers twitching at his sides. Apparently, while the sun is still out, the zombie grows sluggish and slow to react. It makes it relatively easy to unlatch his chains and shove a hospital gown around his nude form.

Lord Voldemort knows his good fortune with the little monster will run out eventually. That is why he’s prepared to defend himself when, guiding him back to the kennel, the creature snaps. 

It starts when Harry sees the kennel and stops in his tracks, feet planted firmly on the ground. No matter how many times Voldemort pokes him with the mop handle, he does not move. Annoyed, Voldemort steps forward and seizes the boy’s upper arm to shove him inside. When their bare skin touches, something passes between them. A spark, a current, a sting. As if his hand and the boy’s arm are magnetically charged—the creature suddenly jerks away with a rattling groan. The tensile strength of Voldemort’s long fingers hold him in place. With every second Voldemort maintains the hold, the zombie writhes and hisses like it’s under the Cruciatus curse. 

Then, as if fed up, the creature strikes at him. A clawing grab at Voldemort’s arm, a snap of his jaws towards the offending appendage. If Voldemort had not clipped the zombie’s nails, if he had not stepped out the of way just in time–well, no matter. Voldemort shoves it back inside the kennel and slams the door shut. The lock clicks into place. Red eyes pin on the dead man as it slinks to the back of the kennel, hissing and spitting and growling like the monster it is. 

“Bizarre little monster,” Voldemort croons, softly, as if speaking to a wounded animal. “What a fascinating anomaly you are.” He can’t stop looking at him. The sickly gray to his brown skin, the slackness of his features. The way the skin felt warm beneath his hand despite the cold shower. 

At the sound of his voice, the creature’s head tilts to the side. The hissing quiets and the growling stops. Slowly, so slowly, it approaches the wire bars of its cage, and squints at Voldemort’s form as if seeing him for the first time. 

It opens its mouth. No words come out. It closes its mouth, eyebrows bending in consternation for a long moment until all expression drains its face into the animal emptiness of a monster. 

The zombie retreats to the back of the kennel and folds onto itself, arms around knees, rocking back and forth.

Voldemort’s fists clench. Why does this one behave completely differently? He must examine him further to figure it out.

The zombie struggles against his bonds. Harry is strapped to a stainless steel gurney, writhing beneath the harsh brightness of the operating lights. Lord Voldemort stands over him, his gaze red and calculating. He’s dressed in a muggle-style surgical gown complete with gloves and safety goggles that exaggerate the size of his eyes. Without reliable barrier magic, it is the best way to prevent contamination. And Harry, here, this wretched monster, carries a warhead of viral load in his blood. Until Voldemort can guarantee the virus shall not affect his mind, he cannot risk infection.

"Stay put, now," Voldemort brandishes his weapon—an electric hair trimmer. With a twitch of his thumb the trimmer is buzzing under his fingertips. Harry's thick black hair hangs off his head in filthy mats like a long-haired alleycat. It's not something he can clean with a bit of shampoo, and he sure as hell is not wasting his time detangling the mess. So, he presses the mouth of the trimmer against Harry's scalp and cuts the hair. Under the tight straps holding him down Harry wheezes and vibrates with fury, moving his head in sharp little jerks that keep dislodging the blades. Voldemort stays focused, sweeping the trimmer over his scalp in steady consistent movements until all that is left behind is a dark fuzz. It's odd how much a haircut can redefine the features of a face. Voldemort's eyes scrape over the ridge of his brow, the curve of a cheekbone, the line of his nose. He'd never noticed the creature's straw jaw ticked when he clenched his teeth, or that he had soft little detached earlobes. A dusting of shorn black hair litters the monster's shoulders and the examination table. Voldemort takes a moment to thoroughly clean and sanitize the area. He hesitates, and then puts the cut mats of hair into a little plastic bag.

Now finished, it's time to get to business. Voldemort presses play on a small tape recorder. It whirls to life, magnetic tape swirling around the center.

"It is Monday, September 28, 2009,” says Voldemort as he puts on clean gloves. “2149 hours. I am examining Specimen No. 7.” Gloved fingers seek out his pulse and he counts, watching a clock on the wall. “Seven shows several unique traits that are anomalous with the standard infection symptoms. Most notably, a BPM of forty-two, seven breaths per minute, and pupils that sporadically react to light. I will be examining the exterior of the body as well as opening the thoracic cavity to determine the extent of organ functionality.” Voldemort moves down the gurney. He shall start with the feet.

The examination is slow and thorough. The creature writhes in protest beneath his touch but Voldemort pays it no mind. He’s too distracted by the fascinating marks on the zombie’s body, Curse scars, mundane scars, a tapestry of pain and suffering. It annoys him, on some level, that others have damaged what is his alone to harm. He records each discovery in the tape recorder and moves on. From all accounts, the body matches exactly the symptoms of a human being moments after death. Pliant and functional but utterly empty. Unlike every other zombie he has ever studied, this one alone seems caught between life and death.

Voldemort grips its jaw harshly to paralyze the jaw. He pulls the struggling zombie’s cheek to the side to get a good look at his molars. Nodding, he runs gloved fingertips over the creature’s shorn scalp to feel the ridges where skull bones knit together.

“Judging from his bones and teeth, I estimate his age to be between 23 and 25.” So, that means the creature had survived long enough to reach that age before his transformation. He fingers the bite scar on Harry’s arm. Where was he hiding? Were there more mages like them, sequestered in the wilderness? 

Voldemort’s forked tongue moistens his bottom lip. Could it be Hogwarts? An oily burn flows from his chest to his stomach. Greed. Desire. He wants nothing more than to storm the gates and take it for his own. He clenches his jaw and glances around the laboratory. Not yet. When he gets to any mage sanctuary he will come bearing a gift—the serum to reverse the infection. With such a gambling chip they will have no choice but to submit to his rule.

The creature stares blankly at the ceiling. Voldemort wishes he had more specimens—it was too risky to test his new serum on this one. The zombie’s status as an anomaly makes any serum created from its blood likely to not work on other undead as well. And, Voldemort is quite sure that he will never forgive himself if he ruins this specimen with tests before discovering its many secrets. 

“The researcher has decided, for now, not to test any serums on Seven. We shall then proceed with the internal examination.” A gloved hand reaches for the surgical tools. Several stainless steel implements gleam in a tray—but what Voldemort’s fingers wrap around is the heavy hand-held saw with a circular blade. He tests the charge, triggering the spin of the blade with a high-pitched whir. If this were a normal surgery he would carefully cut through the skin and other tissues first before examining the heart through the ribs.

Luckily for the Dark Lord, there is no reason to cling to surgical conventions at the end of the world. The best thing about operating on a self-healing dead boy is the moment the sawblade bites into his breastbone with a wet grinding noise. The vibrations recoil up his arms as the saw squeals. Blood and bits of bone splatter on his mask, his goggles, the exposed angle of a cheekbone. Oh how he wishes the creature was not contaminated. He imagines what the spray of gore would feel like splattering onto his face and dripping into his mouth. The blade finishes its buttery glide through bone and Voldemort clicks it off. The next tool he selects is a large steel retractor used to keep the chest cavity open while he works. He secures the arms and, slowly, eases the ribs apart until he can cut open a path to the heart. The creature writhes and moans above him but he only has eyes for the work in front of him as the bones pop and spread open.

It’s beautiful, Voldemort thinks, when he finally spots the creature’s heart, throbbing and red. Beautiful. Not in a sappy, sentimental way. It’s beautiful because of what it represents. A beating organ, flushed red and full of life, in the body of a dead man.  A man who, currently, squirms against his restraints as he sucks in erratic breaths. Voldemort wraps a gloved hand around the slippery organ. The flexing muscle easily fits in his large palm, pulsating with such strength it feels like it might hop out of his grip and escape. What if he crushed it right now? Would it grow back, beating once more? Or would such an action end this strange miracle? He continues to narrate the tape as he replaces the heart and examines the lungs. Despite the heart and lungs theoretically functioning, it quickly becomes clear that most other bodily functions remain shut down. 

He removes the retractor, sets the bones, and clicks a stopwatch.  Before his eyes, the breastbone knits together. Muscles reattach, and finally the skin seals by itself. At the 500 second mark there is no sign of the saw-blade cut. Voldemort runs his finger over the man’s breastbone in thought. The zombie stares at the wall with an empty expression, whatever fight it had completely drained away.

Voldemort throws a sheet over the body and leaves to clean himself up.

After the examination, Voldemort shoves him back in his crate. Now, he has many decisions to make. To clear his thoughts he fondles the discarded rags of the clothing the creature wore when it died.

The sneakers have worn away to scraps. They practically dissolved when he ripped them off of the man’s feet—there are no clues there. He tosses them into the incinerator. The denim jeans come next. They are torn and threadbare but ultimately still in one piece. Large fingers root around in the tiny pockets, finding several items. A gold galleon that, upon closer inspection, appears to be counterfeit. It positively glows with magic. A folded up blank parchment which similarly is not what it seems to be. Sweets wrappers and lint, a broken quill, chewed bubblegum. Is he a boy or a man? Voldemort scoffs. The next item is a folded-up enchanted knife. Voldemort opens it up and sees many attachments–ah, a Landsknechte Knife. Orion Black had one just like this back in their Hogwarts years.

The last object is a crumpled-up note. In neat, even handwriting, a message reads a series of coordinates for the Scottish countryside and then a quickly penned line: “Get in and out fast. If you’re not back by midnight we’re sending out a search party - HJG.” Voldemort purses his lips. Could it be a Greengrass, perhaps? Certainly not a Gaunt. Regardless, what this strange assortment of items tells him is simple—the man was not kitted up for a significant journey when he was bitten. It must have been a surprise or an ambush while he was outside of the safe walls of Hogwarts. Pity, that.

Next, a jumper and a T-shirt. The jumper was knitted with magic, that is certain, but otherwise unremarkable. The shirt is ridiculously oversized and has some sort of muggle advertisement printed on the front. He chucks the clothing into the fire. The only thing remaining is a strange-looking pouch cut away from Harry’s neck. The string holding it closed will not budge—instead,  it shrinks beneath his fingers. He examines the leather—it’s scaled and strangely textured. As he runs his fingertips over the surface it seems to shudder as if aware.

“Mokeskin.” Voldemort spits. Only the zombie can open it, and not while dead, either. It requires a living and familiar magical signature. There could be anything in there. Sure, he could dedicate time and study to deducing how exactly to open it himself—but that would delay the serum. It simply must be put to the side for now. Voldemort opens his beat-up trunk and shoves all the objects, rubbish and all, in there for later. 

There's nothing useful in here. Voldemort turns, eying the hallway leading to the kennels. The creature cowers somewhere in the shadows, shivering.

The creature is back to tapping on the bars. It has been three days since the examination, three days of Voldemort updating all his research journals and staunchly ignoring the zombie in the room. It would be one thing if the creature could keep rhythm, but it feels like the cadence and frequency of the taps are specifically designed to be as annoying as possible. After another smudged line of ink, Voldemort shuts his journal with a scowl.

There must be some form of data he can extract from the creature to aid his many hypotheses. With a grunt, he stands up and approaches the kennel. The creature stares at him, his eyes the color of a dying swamp.  What would he look like full of vibrant life? A fool’s question. This man will never speak and walk and eat like the living again. Without the fringe of hair those eyes blaze like beacons from sunken eye sockets ringed in dark purple shadows.

The creature gazes back without blinking. Voldemort notices something, then—it is not staring at his face. Its eyes turn slightly upward and rest somewhere on the center of his chest. Voldemort steps from side to side, then squats into a crouch. With every movement, those unsettling eyes remain fixed on his chest.

Abruptly, the Locket grows uncomfortably hot. Voldemort hisses and fishes it out from beneath his collar. He holds the offending gold away from his skin and glares at it. "Calm down," he hisses. And yet, the Locket continues to burn. The portion of himself within the Locket must be ornery again. A soul without a mind to control it is an erratic, hateful thing. As he certainly saw no reason to give his extra Horcruxes a mind of their own, the entity inside mostly screams in eternal anguish. Honestly, it gives him ideas for a whole new method to torment his enemies. Hadn’t he read about the Tudor royal magician trapping King Henry VIII’s soul in a chamber pot for a century? 

Voldemort glances over to check on the creature. Dull eyes remain locked onto the gaudy chain. Voldemort moves it in a slow circle and the zombie’s eyes follow every swing of gold. How peculiar. Is it the innate draw of the undead towards locations and objects of intense magical power? Can the dead hear the Horcrux shrieking for freedom? 

Sometimes, Voldemort wishes he had allowed more of his personality and brilliant mind to exist in the Horcruxes. He’d have someone to talk to, then. Someone that did not piss him off with the near-infirm idiocy of the general population. But, he knows himself too well. Any version of the great Lord Voldemort would never consent to an eternity squatting in a mere object. He did craft a mind for the diary. For a time they would have stimulating conversations–until he caught the entity trying to siphon away his magic. As a punishment, he left it at Malfoy Manor, intending to retrieve it after the Horcrux learned its lesson. After the outbreak, he’d sought it out for safekeeping. When he found the smoking crater in the ground where the manor once stood he assumed that Horcrux would not be accounted for again on this plane of existence. 

In fact, he’d assumed most of his Horcruxes were gone now. The Gaunt Ring currently hung around his neck on an unbreakable cord. The entity inside was a quiet, contemplative thing, mostly just content not to be locked in a box again. Back then the remaining soul containers were out of his reach. Voldemort had never made the journey to Scotland to check Hogwarts, and the Goblins barricaded their entire nation beneath the ground the moment the undead infection was out of control. When he’d first gone to retrieve his Locket all he found was evidence of treachery and a fetid corpse. 

But, even in a dying world, fate favors Lord Voldemort. After a torrent of rain cooled the ashes of south London, he’d explored the ruins. And, while walking over the twisted rubble and shattered bricks, over rotting animals and incinerated bones, he felt it. A pulse, a presence, a tugging on his very soul that he could not resist. And in a twisted ruin of crumbling brick townhouses, he spotted a gleam of gold.

Perhaps fortune shall favor him again. Voldemort slips the Locket from his neck and stares down at the gaudy gold. An idea slides into his head.

Keeping his eyes locked on the creature in the kennel, Voldemort holds up the Locket and whispers magic into the air. A gentle hovering spell, still reliable despite everything, lifts the Locket into the air. It slips through the bars of the kennel and towards the creature. Harry looks up, alarmed, and jerks away from the chain. Too late. The Locket slips over Harry’s head and settles around its thin neck. A vein throbs next to the gold of the chain, the zombie’s heart a steady beat. The zombie falls back on its ass with a yelp, disappearing into the shadows.

If the creature’s interest lies with the Locket, so be it. The item obeys him utterly; it was created to enthrall and trap anyone who dared touch it. Voldemort turns, then, and opens up his journals once more.

There is no more tapping that night.

“Stop,” commands Voldemort. The Locket freezes in place five and a half feet off the ground, as solid and unmovable as bedrock. Harry’s steps falter and stop. The zombie groans a few times as it tries to keep walking, pressing its neck against the stationary chain. The skin puckers and bruises from the pressure as the feeble thing fails to escape its new binding. Voldemort's fingers tighten on his rifle, the weapon a reassuring weight as he watches an immortal killing machine walk around in his secret hideout. This entire experiment popped into Voldemort's mind when he'd watched the Locket freeze in an instant to prevent Harry from lunging at him—and after another few days of silence and boredom, Voldemort decided it was time to give it a try. The zombie has been docile and still since he’d put the Locket around its neck—so why not see how it behaves when presented with an open door?

"Come closer, but out of range.” Voldemort watches as the chain relaxes enough for the zombie to move again. With a growl it lunges at Voldemort—but as soon as it is within a few feet the Locket chain becomes a stationary collar and stops the creature in its place. “Excellent,” he says to his Locket Horcrux. The antique is enchanted with many means to defend itself. It can freely change properties such as weight and density to ensure its safety. And Voldemort, with his infinite knowledge, taps into that same magic to turn the Locket into a leashed collar. 

The chain makes a fetching accessory on the dead man. It would have looked pleasing against Harry’s brown skin, had the zombie been flushed with life. Truly a pity. Voldemort nods.

“To the version of myself which resides in the mighty Locket of Salazar Slytherin,” Voldemort hisses, “you shall allow the zombie to move freely. He is not to be within touching distance of me, my research materials, any technology, any stored food, or the water tanks. You shall remove him if he gets close to anything important, and chain him to the ground if he tries to attack me.” Voldemort raises his gun and waits.

The zombie, after a few moments, seems to realize it can move. It steps this way and that, bare feet scraping on the concrete floor. As Voldemort watches the creature walks up to a stack of books. As it raises a hand as if to touch the Locket yanks backward and away. The zombie keens and chokes and stumbles back. Dull green eyes turn to glare at Voldemort. A snarl crawls over the creature’s face and it stalks forward. Voldemort aims his rifle, just in case. 

Step, step, step—and then as soon as the zombie’s face fills Voldemort’s scope the Locket wrenches to the ground with the speed and velocity of a meteor strike. A crack and a crunch later the zombie’s head flops around on a rubber neck—the spine snapped. Meanwhile, the Locket fractured the concrete slab with a spiderweb of cracks. Voldemort lowers the gun. His Horcrux will not fail him—because sentient or not, it is still a part of the Dark Lord Voldemort. He turns his back on the twitching zombie and returns to his studies, a smirk on his lips. 

Behind him, bones crunch as grind as the zombie heals. For the rest of the night, it wanders the halls in an aimless fugue.

Over time, Voldemort simply grows accustomed to the company of the creature. They form a sort of routine. Voldemort wakes up a few hours before sunset to the ring of a wind-up clock. He dresses in the dark—black utilitarian muggle attire. Robes are simply not advantageous when half of the zombies out there are crawlers. High boots and thick gloves are paired with a rifle and machete. The wand holsters at his thigh. Voldemort gathers his dark hair into a braid and tucks it under a wool hat. Once dressed, he carefully unlocks and opens his bedroom door.

Harry stands there. Stationary in the shadows of the corridor, a gleam of gold around his neck. The first time the creature did this, Voldemort nearly swung his machete. Now, though, he merely steps around the thing. And, as Voldemort completes his daytime tasks, Harry follows. At sun-up, Voldemort turns on the generators and lights and checks the compound—the fences, the razor wire, the vegetable garden. Harry stands frozen in the daylight, his face turned sunward. The generators run with a steady hum as Voldemort measures the remaining fuel. By the time he heads back inside the sun is sinking beneath the horizon. Harry stumbles after him, aroused as if from a daze.

With the night come the zombies.

As the sun withdraws from the sky they begin to scream—moans and cries rising as one from the surrounding ocean of the dead. The calls creak through the building like a November bluster, echoing strangely off the high ceilings. Harry stills when he hears them, eyes wide and head cocked as if listening. Voldemort, for his part, has learned to drown them out.  The creature follows him into the laboratory where it stupidly stares at blinking motherboards and monitors. Voldemort works. He runs simulations and flips through dusty old grimoires. Lucius snarls and taps on the glass and, when he needs to clear his head, Voldemort watches the formerly proud man flail like a fishtank in an office. 

For a week, there are no incidents. Voldemort, much to his future chagrin, begins to let his guard down.

The following Saturday, just as Voldemort steps out of his bedroom, Harry lunges for him with a snarl. Before he can even react the Locket yanks Harry backwards by the neck. The zombie falls to the ground and Voldemort stares down as it claws at its neck. 

“What is it, Harry?” Voldemort asks. The creature does not answer. There’s a look in its eyes he can’t place.  Baleful, resentful, hatred, disgruntlement—can a zombie even feel such things, or is Voldemort humanizing its vacant death stare out of his lonely madness? “Brainless animal. Speaking to you is a waste of breath.” Voldemort exhales out of his nose and looks away. “If it attacks me again, I will have to put it back in the kennel. And it would hate that, wouldn’t it?”

The creature glares at him from the floor.

After that, Voldemort pays careful attention to the monster. During the daytime, Harry is more animated. He takes more breaths per minute and the throb of his heartbeat is visible in the sinews of his neck. Harry’s skin turns a warmer shade of brown and sometimes even appears flushed. As the day progresses, these improvements backslide into the cold countenance of death. His movement slows, his skin grays, and the shine of his eyes dulls. After two weeks of observation, Voldemort has only added more questions to his ever-growing list. 

Harry never attacks him again. The worst part of this tentative peace is Voldemort has no way of knowing the reasoning. Is it the pull of the Locket conditioning it not to get close? Is it Voldemort’s words, getting through the goo of his animal brain to some modicum of remaining logic? Or was it a third factor he is missing?

All Voldemort can do is wait and watch.

Chapter Text

You sit there in your heartache
Waiting on some beautiful boy to
To save you from your old ways
You play forgiveness
Watch it now, here he comes

THE KILLERS - WHEN YOU WERE YOUNG

On a brisk day in late October the petrol stores run low. There’s no way around it—Lord Voldemort must go on another supply run or risk a total shutdown of his research operations within the next few weeks.

There’s plenty in the ruins of the city. Scavengers don’t bother with the remaining petrol anymore. Petrol lasts less than a year in storage and after that is not reliable for running engines without damaging them. Luckily for Voldemort, changing expired petrol into usable petrol is such a simple runic transfiguration that the magic quarantine only occasionally causes the spell to spontaneously combust and burn off his eyebrows. 

Many survivors take one look at a collapsed petrol station and move on without checking the underground tank. Voldemort is not the average survivor. The map of the greater London area shows a number of locations circled in orange alongside with an estimation of how much petrol remains. V studies it and draws a dotted line between stations until he makes a circle. That shall be his route today.

There are simple rules for traveling in the wasteland. Cover your eyes and mouth from possible infection via blood droplets. Wear tall boots that can resist a human bite. Travel only during the day and barricade all night. Avoid shade, shadows, and the inside of buildings. Stay away from windows and doors and anywhere a zombie can hide. Overcast, rainy days can turn into a deathtrap quickly. And most importantly, get to your destination before the sunset begins. The undead, magic or mundane, fear bright lights. The only rule that really matters is as follows: zombies own the dark. 

Voldemort is ready to leave when the creature follows him to the door. His little shadow, as he’s thought of the creature the last few days. Always dogging his steps, leaning in, just far enough away to not trigger the Locket’s defenses. Voldemort cannot explain what he does next. Call it morbid curiosity or intuition—whatever instinct it is, it inspires Voldemort to keep the door open so the creature can follow him into the midday sun. 

They depart together. Voldemort takes point, his red eyes flickering from shadow to shadow. Figures crowd the maws of broken doors and caved-in windows. He sees them lurk, just out of the light, their eyes and teeth glistening in the gloom.  The rotting stink of the city invades his nose and he steps over the small bleached bones of a long-dead child. Harry follows behind him, barefoot and wearing only his hospital gown. The creature’s steps do not make a sound. His presence prickles at Voldemort’s spine like lingering static. 

By approximately one in the afternoon, Voldemort caps the final petrol can and squeezes it into his expanded bag. He found this satchel, the inside imbued with an undetectable extension charm, on the body of that red-headed zombie. After the magical quarantine was established it became nigh impossible to make reliable enchantments. All Voldemort had at his disposal was whatever he managed to scavenge from the remains of Diagon Alley and any wizarding residences he had stumbled across. He tugs the drawstring of the satchel tight and replaces it over his shoulder. 

Harry lurks nearby. Voldemort glances over to make sure he’s not getting into any trouble. The creature holds its face toward the sky as if drinking in the rays. For a moment he looks almost alive—flushed face, its chest rising and falling in steady breaths, a throbbing pulse in his neck. The serene expression is new, a placid relaxation that is somehow totally at odds with the zombie’s normal desolate emptiness. As Voldemort watches, the creature notices his regard. With a glance, the expression melts off Harry’s face and his eyes grow dull and listless. A zombie once more, as if the very idea of him living and breathing was a pipe dream all along. Voldemort tears his gaze away. How foolish of him. The cracks in his psyche from nearly a decade without social interaction have driven him to see hope where there is only death. 

The changes to the creature disturb him—what if it is all in his head? A hope for a better future, for companionship, twisting his reality? Voldemort ponders this. He’s so distracted that he does not see the pothole until it is too late. Voldemort takes a step, then another, and then his right foot plunges through a caving crack in the concrete. There’s a horrible shattering sound and a groan and Voldemort is falling. The last thing he sees before the ground swallows him up is the widening of those too-green eyes.

Voldemort falls for only a moment before landing. The impact of his legs on the ground below vibrates from his soles to his pelvis in a way that promises aches and pains tomorrow. A great cloud of dust and debris swirls around his head and he cannot see where he’s landed—just the bright blur of sunlight from above. For a moment, the only sound is a lazy hailstorm of crumbling asphalt. And then, from the obfuscated darkness, something groans. 

In a moment Voldemort grabs his rifle and checks the chamber. Satisfied, he aims into the gloom beyond the dust. One groan becomes two, then three, more and more joining together until he can no longer tell them apart. His eyes flick towards the ceiling—the street—and then back. Can he risk using his magic? Or will it just backfire and further cave in this horrible sinkhole? Voldemort steps back into the light streaming in from above. His only hope, now, is that the light makes them hesitate long enough for him to pick them off one by one. 

A silhouette shuffles in the dirt haze. Voldemort can make out the triangle of its torso, and the tentative reaching of its ravenous hands. He licks his lips and aims the rifle at approximately where the head should be. He exhales and squeezes the trigger.

The shot reverberates through the sunken chamber like a dropped bomb. The bullet plunges into the dust and impacts something with a wet thump. Blood, brains, and bone explode outward and confetti Voldemort’s coat. The zombie pauses, stumbles, and then slumps to the ground at his feet. The entire top section of the skull is blown clean off and Voldemort watches pink brains ooze onto the ground. 

The first thing Voldemort thinks is that the brain material looks remarkably fresh for having ostensibly spent years inside a zombie. Something to pursue, perhaps? The second thing is that he recognizes the surroundings: the inside of a municipal storm drain. 

Voldemort ejects the spent shell and loads another round. He aims. A frizz of gray hair looms from the murk and he squeezes the trigger. An elderly zombie’s left eye socket erupts in a gout of gore. Its skinny legs wobble and careen to the side as it falls heavily to the sewer floor. Another zombie immediately trips over the body, moaning piteously, before Voldemort blows a hole through its neck. Shells litter the floor as Voldemort shoots, ejects, and reloads. Again and again, as faces twisted with empty hunger gnash and march over a barricade of fallen bodies. 

Voldemort counts each shot. Fifteen and then he will need to reload. Sweat sinks into his eyebrows as he counts ten, eleven, twelve. His eyes adjust to the dark as the last grains of sediment settle. There are bodies as far as he can see, writhing and pushing against each other to get to him. He sneaks a glance over his shoulder only for his vision to be filled with cracked yellow teeth. Voldemort ducks to miss the snapping jaw of a zombie. With a practiced motion he slides out his machete and swings. Dark blood sprays into the air, fermented and rotten. It clings to his coat with the viscosity of a dessert custard. Voldemort swings again and hears a crack as bone breaks and an arm falls to the ground. He keeps swinging. 

The zombie’s head flops sideways on the final blow. It rips free of the raw red sinews of the neck and falls to the ground with a sound like a smashed rotten watermelon. The body follows a second later. Turning, Voldemort sizes up the half-dozen undead approaching him. He considers the wand at his thigh and reaches for it. If his spells misfire, so be it. He shall die a civilized wizard. Voldemort levels his wand at the approaching monsters when the light overhead cuts out. For just a moment, there is complete silence in the sewer. Voldemort looks up and spots the ragged ends of a hospital gown and a pair of filthy feet standing on the edge of the sinkhole. Harry? 

Fingertips brush his arm and he jerks the limb away from the reaching zombie with a grunt. He raises the wand to strike, the end glowing a putrid yellow. And then, quite suddenly, something slams into his shoulders. The collision drives him straight into the ground and air bursts from his lungs in a shout. Whatever hit him must have come from above. Voldemort blinks up from his prone position and sees his creature standing over him. The hospital gown flutters as it climbs to its feet. Why didn’t the locket stop it? Will this boy be his end, as the prophecy demands? Green eyes meet his red gaze and Voldemort’s innate legilimency detects the barest whisper of stay down in the void of mindless death.

Then, as fast as a striking snake, the creature’s fist flies out and slams into a huge zombie’s face. The head snaps back. He kicks it in the chest and it trips into the pile of dead zombies. Turning, Harry strikes a teenage zombie in the mouth with an elbow. There’s a sickening crack and the next moan the zombie makes is punctuated by flying shards of teeth. The huge zombie stumbles over a body and pitches forward. Harry darts forward and thrusts out a knee to catch the thing’s neck as it falls. There’s a crunch like wet gravel and the zombie collapses in a heap, neck shattered.

So, this is the power of a magical zombie turned against its brethren instead of the living. It is a terrible sight to behold. Voldemort grins wide enough to reveal his sharp teeth. Harry’s foot, now smeared with a jam jar’s worth of gore, slams into the fallen zombie’s back. He reaches down and seizes the monster’s wrist and pulls. Voldemort cannot quite figure out what he’s up to until he hears the tearing and popping as muscles rip and tendons disconnect from bone. In a final savage pull, Harry rips the arm off the fallen zombie and brandishes it like a club.

From that moment the fight is already over. Harry dives into the fray with a grunt and a swing and the sewer is filled with wet sounds of flesh on flesh and the breaking of bones.  Voldemort remains flat on the ground in the pool of light. From this vantage point he cannot see much—but what matters is the walking dead do not spare him a glance. They only have eyes for their Chosen One.  

Harry slams a zombie’s head in the sewer wall hard enough for the concrete to crack and reveal rusting re-bar. Blood spatters from the blow, spraying the walls and dousing Harry in red. A zombie bites Harry’s arm and manages to tear out a ragged mouthful of skin—only to have his jaws gripped by steel fingers. Harry braces the body with his foot as he pries the jaws apart, revealing teeth, and a flailing tongue. There’s a pause where the zombie’s moan grows reedy and high and then a crunching rip Harry yanks the top half of the skull clean off. Harry grips the skull like a bowling ball, his middle finger jammed into the brainstem, and uses it to bash the next zombie’s face in. 

From there, Voldemort loses track of what is happening. He shields his face from the sprays of gore with his coat. No zombie gets close enough to fall on him, let alone try to bite. There’s nothing but a veritable symphony of wet crunches and ragged groans swallowed up by gurgles.  Voldemort does not realize the fight has already ended until the only sound left in the sewer is a steady drip of blood. 

The creature, no, Harry, quietly stands among a pile of mutilated bodies. He’s soaked head to toe in crimson, green eyes incongruently bright past the gore. Voldemort climbs to his feet, his coat dripping rivulets of blood on the floor. The scent is overpowering, like sticking one’s head inside the abdominal cavity of a week old carrion. Harry wobbles on his feet and Voldemort lunges forward just in time to catch the man as he collapses. He smooths spidery fingers over Harry’s fine features to clear away the blood. Voldemort’s thumb nail digs into the ridge of his scar. It buzzes against his skin. 

“Shall you ever reveal your secrets to me, my Chosen One?” Voldemort whispers to the body. It does not answer. A moan echoes through the twists of the drainage system. It’s distant but inevitable. How many more zombies lurk down here? Voldemort lifts Harry’s body and stares up at the hole in the asphalt.  

With a heave, he tosses his zombie over his shoulder. Voldemort concentrates and wills magic into his feet, his legs, into the very molecules of air around his body.

With a thrum of energy and a crackle of power, Voldemort tries to fly. Smoke swirls around him as he lifts from the ground and for just a moment he thinks it will work. He’s in the air for only a few seconds before the magic disruption barrier falls onto the spell like flies on a carcass. The magic stutters, interrupts in a staccato rhythm, and then simply stops.

Voldemort falls, his foot clipping the inner lip of the sinkhole on the way down. Pain slams into his ankle. He impacts the pavement, hands stinging as the fall scrapes a few layers of skin from his palms. Voldemort rolls over onto his back and laughs, Harry cradled against his chest.

The light is a smear of sunset orange by the time they arrive home. Voldemort carries Harry Potter in his arms like a bride, his bag of shrunken petrol bumping against a hip with each step. The blood has dried against their skin, sticky and textured like old leather. Despite how light the body is, Voldemort's arms have long transitioned from aching to numb with the strain on his muscles.

With each step the light dims as the sun sinks. Shadows blink into existence as the sun descends past the taller buildings. The dead stir restlessly in the dimness of their shelters, the weight of their collective gaze fixed on the passing pair. Hundreds of dull eyes observe the final steps to the steel gate of Voldemort’s safe house. The monster's pace in his peripheral vision. Voldemort focuses on each step, his vision narrowing down to a tunnel. Ahead, he can finally see it—the squat square of his fortified warehouse, the corrugated steel gate reflecting a smear of orange sunset directly into his eyes. 

Voldemort jogs towards the gate. The pads of his feet ache while his ankles sting with the pain of popped blisters. There is something so humiliating to the Dark Lord about the agonies of the flesh. Mortality, to him, is failure. And every moment he spends without true invulnerability feeds the fire of repressed rage. Once the serum is perfected all of these mortal woes shall end. He must only endure long enough to prevail.

The creature in his arms stirs with the coming darkness. Bloodstained eyelids flutter open, dull eyes rolling in a pattern of panic before fixing on Voldemort’s face. It reaches for his face but Voldemort jerks his head away from the groping fingers and drops the zombie onto the pavement with cold abruptness. 

"Come.” Voldemort commands. He rubs his hands over his aching arms to bring the feeling back and presses a palm to the gate. It’s a simple latch gate, the entire locking mechanism encased in the welded steel of the frame. To unlatch, one simply only needs to use a levitation spell. With an effort of will, Voldemort directs a gentle stream of magic to lift the latch. The gate clicks and clunks and Voldemort seizes the steel frame and pushes. With a resounding shriek of metal on metal the gate opens. Harry slips past him, leaving Voldemort alone to close the gate behind him. The sun sinks beneath a row house and casts the street in shadow.

The undead flood out of their shelters from the sun. A moan ripples through the hoard as one by one they fix their empty eyes upon Voldemort and shuffle forward. Dozens of mouths open in hungry yawns as they close the distance to the open gate. Voldemort grabs the gate and pushes. Metal screams in protest, and Voldemort's sore arms shake with the effort. 

There’s a clicking sound, and then electricity buzzes to life. Overhead, massive wide flood lights flick on in a blinding glare. The zombies pause and groan at the lights, feebly pawing at their eyes as if to block the offending glare. Voldemort slams the gate shut. The latch falls back into place. He looks up to the roof of the warehouse—Harry’s bloody form stands like a beacon upon the roof, a single hand latched onto the lever to activate the lights. He is magnificent, blazing and red in the light of the setting sun like an oil painting of some mythological battle. 

Voldemort rips his gaze away from the startling sight. There’s no time to wait—they have stirred the hive and must get out of sight as soon as possible. Even lights cannot entirely stop a hoard whipped into a frenzy. Voldemort ignores the throbbing pain in his hips and ankles as he ascends the ladder in fluid steps. “Come,” he commands in a clipped tone. He grabs the zombie by the bicep and pushes him towards the stairwell. A realization tickles at Voldemort’s mind—when had Harry stopped feeling pain from their touches? Red eyes fix on the locket around the man’s neck, glimmering and pristine despite the gore. He leaves the lights on as they head down into the belly of the hideout. The scent of blood and the sight of them outside will rile the zombies up. The lights will guarantee none will attempt to breach the walls this night. 

Voldemort’s directs Harry into the bathroom. The creature freezes once his bare feet hit the cold tiles. his entire body cringing away from the shower. Voldemort hisses in annoyance and redirects him into the iron bathtub instead. With efficient slashes of his knife he cuts the hospital gown from Harry’s form and pushes him down. Then, he twists the taps. 

Water splashes into the tub. Harry slides away from it, clutching his knees to his chest as far from the gushing water as he can squeeze.. "Keep him in there." He hisses to the locket. There’s no point to cleaning the creature if he’s still filthy. 

Voldemort's clothes are completely saturated in gore. He painstakingly peels off each layer and plops the fabric into a wet pile that more resembles the hides of wild game than shirt and trousers. Fluid leaks from the garments and trickles towards the drain in the floor. Voldemort’s lip curls. The long lines of his body oscillate between pale skin and red gore. Voldemort touches a streak of blood and pictures billions of writhing viral particles under his fingers, desperate to infect him. He must cleanse himself as soon as possible. The pipes rattle ominously as he cranks the water on, grabs his antimicrobial scrub, and steps beneath the water. 

Chilly spray hits him like a winter gale. His skin erupts in instant gooseflesh, his skin almost blue beneath the overhead lights. Voldemort grits his teeth. Of course the bath taps are hogging all the hot water. Voldemort shall endure this as he endures all things on the road to eternity. The washing is perfunctory and rushed, leaving his pale skin raw and dry from the harsh chemical soap as he steps out. His hair hangs around his head in stringy clumps like swamp moss on a tree branch. He rubs a scratchy towel over his body, cursing every second that he can’t just use a drying charm. Across the room, the creature huddles in the water. Voldemort retrieves a spare pair of goggles and a surgical mask—it would be unfortunate if he were to be infected by a stray drip of blood. 

Wary green eyes follow his every movement. A strange twinge of relief shudders through Voldemort’s chest. It would be such a pity to lose his most interesting research subject. He squats down next to the tub and watches the dead man. Skinny arms clutch knobbly knees to a bony chest. The zombie’s chin rests on his kneecap. Voldemort watches swirls of dried gore dissolve and flake away from his submerged skin. The tendrils of blood dissolve in the water, slowly turning the bathwater pink. He raises a hand and traces the tip of his index finger across the creature’s bicep. Warm flesh greets his probing touch, flushed ruddy beneath the layers of gore. Skin-to-skin contact with the zombie feels strange—a frisson of static electricity buzzing from fingertip to spine. It’s definitely changed from before when his touch seemed to cause the monster pain. 

When Voldemort looks up his eyes meet Harry’s. They gaze at each other. The creature looks away first, eyes focused on the jagged edges of broken wall tiles.  

Voldemort leans back and retrieves a few items—flannels and the harsh soap.  Voldemort dips the flannel in the pinkened bath water, lathers up some soap, and then draws it across the blood caked onto the zombie’s shoulders. Gray-tinged skin reveals itself in the slow strokes like the inverse of a paintbrush. The steam from the water loosens the dried blood as Voldemort works. He scrapes away layers of fluid and tissue and bits of bone. Voldemort soaks the flannel in the hot water, wrings it out, and tries again. The water goes cloudy, then opaque, and stringy blood clots drift through the water like errant jellyfish. Harry closes his eyes and presses his cheek against Voldemort’s fingers—strange behavior. What does it seek?

The buzzed hair is fuzzy beneath his fingers, caked so severely with blood and dust it renders the flannel as filthy as the zombie. Voldemort exhales out of his nose and reaches over to unplug the tub. Green eyes crack open and regard him, bleak and desolate as always. Is it his imagination, or is there an unspoken question on Harry’s face?

“What is it?” Voldemort says, eyeing the creature. “Do you think I want you dripping filth all over my notes?” The drain makes a few elongated digestive groans as it sucks down the remaining water and Voldemort replaces the plug. He fiddles with the taps until the water is just shy of scalding and allows it to refill the basin. Splashes lap around the creature’s limbs and it squeezes its knees even tighter. “Come on, now, we need to get you cleaned up.” Voldemort coaxes, the same tone he uses to calm a stressed-out snake. This feels strange, domestic even, and Voldemort scowls at the implication. The brainless monster will never understand how lucky it is to have the great Lord Voldemort tend to its filth. How debasing. The lengths he will go for science, indeed.  With a sneer Voldemort grabs one thin wrist and pries it off a calf, then the other. He places a large hand on Harry’s chest and presses him back. The zombie resists, a sudden hint of fear in his opaque eyes. “Shh. Just for a moment.” Voldemort forces his voice to be gentle but the phrase ends up more sinister than soft. With deliberate, gentle movements, Voldemort shifts his hand to the back of Harry’s neck and slowly lowers him beneath the surface of the water.

Harry sinks beneath the surface. Voldemort runs his fingers through the short fuzz of his hair to dislodge any trapped tissues. The temperature of the water scorches his fingers but does not seem to bother the zombie at all. An air bubble escapes Harry’s nose and drifts to the surface. Now relatively clean of blood, Voldemort can easily examine  the body. Most of the wounds from this afternoon have long since healed, the only exception being the fresh bite on his forearm. He tugs the limb out of the water and watches as even now muscles stretch and grow as the skin knits itself back together. He predicts within an hour there will be no evidence a wound ever existed. 

Sliding his palm to cup the back of Harry’s neck,  he draws him out of the water. The zombie lets out a gasp of air, eyes fixed on Voldemrort’s face. He reaches up, wet fingers searching for purchase on Voldemort’s bare shoulders and thin chest, a look of feral desperation in his eyes. The touches leave streaks of reddened water in their wake. Finally, Harry’s fingers find Voldemort’s face. They trace over his mask, feeling his cheekbone, his jaw, the water wrinkles on his fingertips strange against the exposed slivers of his skin. 

“Calm down, Harry Potter,” says Lord Voldemort. His voice is soft and low, almost drowned out by the drone of the fluorescent lights overhead. Surprisingly, the creature obeys his command. It sits there, rigid, while Voldemort squeezes soap onto a second flannel and, carefully, cleans the remaining streaks of blood from the body. It’s odd, how his thoughts on the creature change from one second to the next. Harry, he; creature, it—Voldemort considers the correctness of either term as his fingers draw cloth over skin. Harry’s brown skin is as warm as the bathwater, ruddy and red as if blossoming with blood. Voldemort wonders how long it will retain the heat, until it’s freezing cold once more. He swallows down the urge to draw the monster close and share that heat, instead unstopping the bathtub and fetching some towels.

Harry stands as still as a doll as Voldemort dries him off, his skin already cooling to room temperature by the time he finishes his work. It’s fascinating how, when infecting a wizard, the virus maintains a constant maintenance of the body. The zombie still retains the slim musculature of a young man, the pliant and soft skin of youth. If not for the stillness and ashen tones, he could really mistake this monster for the living. 

The zombie cringes away from a fresh hospital gown and Voldemort pauses. He exhales an impatient breath out of his nose—letting the monster wander around nude would be distracting. The only clothes he keeps on site are his own. Perhaps, the more he treats this man like a human, the more his mind will reject the bestial instincts of the virus. Thoughts pinball around in Voldemort’s head as he leads the zombie into his bedchamber and pries open his cupboard. He’ll start with a simple pair of trousers and a jumper. Harry sits on the bed, expression blank and listless.  What does all this mean? How much more can the creature improve? Will it soon hunger for food and have the same functional needs as any other man? Voldemort wrinkles his nose at the idea of having to clean up after the zombie if its digestive tract becomes functional again. Perhaps, in that case, he can keep it in the kennels once more. 

Voldemort seizes Harry’s arms and directs them through one armhole, then the other, wriggling the jumper over Harry’s head. It falls almost to his knees, the sleeves hanging past his limp fingers. The trousers are loose on his his thin hips and slip off with the slightest movement. Voldemort grabs a belt and slides it through the loops. It’s too large, tightening well past the last notch. With an impatient exhale he carves a new notch with his knife. Voldemort  thinks of square kilometers filled with shops and clothing stores, their wares rotting on the shelves. They’re too dangerous, these days, the darkened department stores teeming with the moaning dead. Since he has never added fiber craft to his vast repertoire of skills, Voldemort must simply share his own belongings. The thought leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

After the close call on the petrol run, the creature follows him even closer throughout each day. This becomes an unexpected boon to Voldemort’s research—certain aspects of the zombie’s changed behavior are much easier to observe at such a close distance. A trend slowly emerges. When the sun is out Harry warms up, his skin flushes with life, his heart throbs in his neck. As the sun sets and night falls he grows cool, desaturated, his colors rendered in ash instead of warmth. 

Another fascinating aspect is that, despite the fact that an infected wizard no longer produces sweat or waste, the little fucker constantly accumulates grime as if he were a dust mop instead of a man. It’s humiliating, in a way, for the creature that dirtied half your wardrobe to watch you scrub his garments and hang them up to dry. Still, the way that Harry allows himself to be cleaned and changed is showing remarkable progress in the monster’s slow acceptance of human routines.

“It’s time to retire,” Lord Voldemort speaks, clearly. The infected man has recently demonstrated the approximate intellect of a stubborn dog. A mastiff, perhaps—certainly not a hound or terrier. Harry seems to understand certain commands—for example, at the mention of retiring he turns and shuffles over to Voldemort. Voldemort takes Harry’s arm and leads him to the loo, where he makes quick work of changing him. Arms up, shirt off. Trousers down, a sidestep into pajama bottoms. The creature does not sleep, of course, but Voldemort hypothesizes that a familiar routine may coax more desirable behavior from the creature. 

For the last step, Voldemort grips Harry’s jaw. “Open,” he hisses, and the zombie’s deadly maw falls open. Voldemort loads up a toothbrush with minty paste and takes his time cleaning the teeth. He doesn’t trust Harry enough to floss for him, not yet, but the nightly brushings have highly reduced the rancid sweetness of the monster’s breath. “That’s right, good, good,” Voldemort whispers. Green eyes stare blankly at him while he works. Harry raises a hand and touches Voldemort’s arm, a curious glint in his eye. Voldemort stares back steadily, watching as the zombie’s eyes go distant once more.

At some point, Harry starts following Voldemort to his bedroom. The zombie never tries to force his way in, simply standing outside of the door all night like some kind of undead sentinel. Sometimes, Voldemort is curious what would happen if he let him inside. Ultimately, though, he bolts the door shut and commands the Locket to keep Harry out. 

On a cold day on the cusp of November, as Voldemort steps towards his bedroom to catch a scant few hours of sleep, something stops him.

Thin, frigid fingers grab the back of his shirt. Voldemort freezes, waiting for the beast to strike. A few long moments pass, no sound or movement. Voldemort turns, gently extracting those cold digits from the folds of his clothing. The zombie stands there, eyes locked on him, arm still extended. As he watches, Harry’s pale and chapped lips move. Voldemort leans in. The noise coming out of Harry’s mouth is strange. A rasp of dry air coughs out of his throat as his lips form the shapes of sounds. Dread fills Voldemort’s stomach, dread and something else. Something strange, not unlike hope. Is he trying to speak?

Against his better judgement, Voldemort leans down to listen. Minty air ghosts over his face, expelled from the creatures lungs. An elongated S-sound hisses out of the lips and Voldemort freezes. Is that Parseltongue? No, it’s something else. The words end with an abrupt consonant stop—T, or D?

“So?” Voldemort repeats. Is there a K sound in there somewhere? Is the man even saying words, or is he going insane? “So…code? Cut?” Could the K be a G instead? “Gold? God?” Voldemort muses. It’s funny how the human brain constantly searches for patterns. Faces in grains of wood, words in the whispers of the wind. Religious iconography branded into a slice of toast. Voldemort’s lips twitch—he's certainly hallucinating words in the zombie’s mindless babbling. Still, it’s fascinating that the zombie is now attempting speech. 

“Goodnight, Harry Potter,” Voldemort whispers, untangling his jumper from the zombie’s grip. 

With a hiss of frustration, the creature tightens his fingers and yanks Voldemort closer. Green eyes blaze with simmering frustration and stubborn relentlessness.

“I’m,” it whispers, words stuttering. “I’m so cold.” 

Dread washes down Voldemort’s spine. He backs away, shoving the zombie out of his space. In two long steps he’s in his bedroom, slamming the door shut and locking each latch and bolt. Prickly cold panic shivers over his body, a coppery taste drifting over his tongue. What was that? Was it even real? Is he finally losing his mind, his shattered psyche piecing together familiar sounds into speech? A laugh coughs out of his throat, brief and desperate. What the fuck? What the fuck?

There’s a thump and a shadow beneath the door as the creature appears to press itself to the door. Through the wood he can hear it, the ragged whispers, the wheezing breath, the babbling that can’t possibly be words. Voldemort backs away. He pulls out his pistol, holding it close, eyes glued to the door until the shadow shifts and moves away. Voldemort sleeps fitfully that night and wakes well after the time for chores. Part of him wants to stay in his bedroom, to ward off the nightmare that awaits him, to pretend for a moment longer he is not going insane.

But, his curiosity and ambition have always outflanked his fear. Voldemort gears himself up as if he’s going out, bite resistant clothes and mask and goggles, weapons at the ready. When he exits his bedroom, Harry is there. Voldemort seizes him by the arm and drags him to his gurney. Cold red eyes ignore the whine and struggle of the zombie as he takes samples, as he purposefully ignores the wheezing sounds coming out of the monster. 

Beneath the magnification of a microscope there is no difference between Harry and Lucius’s blood. Voldemort compares sample after sample, taken from the extremities, the brain, the bone marrow. The red blood cells have the same deformities, the white blood cells are identically sluggish and unresponsive. On a micro level, there appears to be no difference.

So, then, what is it that gives Harry control? What allows him a measure of restraint, of humanity? Why does this boy, alone, seem to retain his soul?

Voldemort removes his latex gloves and rubs his palms over his face. If only he had access to an MRI machine, a CT scanner…but no. The amount of electricity necessary to power the equipment and process the results is more than what his generators can produce. Voldemort considers cutting open their skulls, side by side, to compare the brain matter. Will Harry’s be flush and pink, while Lucius’s rotted in his skull? Or, perhaps even more concerning, what if their brains showed identical damage?

A traitorous whisper in the back of his head tells him to abandon this line of thought. The voice must have been an auditory hallucination, his desperation for company finally tangling the folds of his mind into insanity. Harry has not spoken again since Voldemort has strapped him down. In addition, he has not responded to any attempts to combat the sensation of cold he seems to be experiencing. A heated blanket, a pile of quilts, more hot baths—nothing has altered his internal body temperature one bit. 

In the end, he releases the creature from its confines. Harry regards him morosely, resentfully perhaps, shuffling off to a dark corner instead of his usual shadowing routine. Good riddance. Maybe, for once, he’ll be able to focus. 

After hours and hours of painstakingly studying his samples, Voldemort cannot find a single clue as to what is going on. Exhausted, he goes to bed, bolting the door carefully before collapsing into bed. 

A floorboard in the hallway creaks. Voldemort wakes from a restless slumber, his serpentine eyes adjusting quickly to the darkness of the room. There is a gun, a knife, and a wand beneath his pillow.

The air buzzes with magic. As Voldemort watches, the deadbolts on his door unlatch themselves one by one with a heavy metallic clunk. Beneath the pillow, he grabs the gun. With a whine of rusty hinges the door slowly opens.  The chosen one stands in the dark doorway, stationary, eyes obscured by an errant shadow. He cannot see his face. Voldemort shifts the gun to his stomach. He’s ready to shoot the moment the monster moves. 

Harry’s head tilts to one side and then the other. Voldemort has seen this before when the zombie seemed perplexed by something. And then, deliberately, it takes a step forward, padding through the narrow space between Voldemort’s bed and the door. Voldemort clutches the gun beneath the blankets, gripping so hard his hand aches. The zombie stops at his bedside. Any second now he will lunge and Voldemort will have to shoot. He can investigate why the Locket enchantment failed later, once the boy is back in his crate.

The creature steps forward. The mattress sinks as it braces one knee against the springs. It extends a claw and grabs the corner of the blanket and pulls it back. Cold air rushes over Voldemort’s form as his comfortable sleep clothes are exposed. He raises the gun and aims it at Harry’s head. The boy shifts closer. Voldemort thumbs back the hammer. Harry leans down and presses his forehead directly to the barrel of the gun. Voldemort stills. This close, he can see the famous scar, the glimmer of those green eyes. There’s no rabid snarl or empty hunger on his face right now. There’s something else, a desolation, an abandonment, like a skeleton crew left behind to die trying to prevent an inevitable disaster. 

Voldemort makes a sudden rash decision. The most alarming part of the choice is how he never really has to think about it at all. He lowers the gun and scoots back across the narrow mattress. Harry stoops down and crawls into the space left by his body. Slowly, as if trying to avoid spooking an animal, Voldemort resettles the blanket over the strange creature and settles himself back down on the bed. The gun is heavy in his hand. But, as curious as Lord Voldemort is, he is not one to leave himself without defenses.

And so, he watches. Watches as the zombie’s eyes close, as it curls into itself like an embryo in the womb. And, after about five minutes, Voldemort watches as the creature turns over. As it makes a soft sound of displeasure and shifts across the bed. He stays still as cold fingers find his arm, grip digging in like the stab of frozen needles. Fuzzy hair tickles his neck as the creature burrows into his side. 

Voldemort shivers as a chilly nose presses against his collarbone. Fingers grip the front of his sleep shirt. What is he doing? The monster could attack any second. Right now, those vicious teeth are inches from arteries and veins. So why is he allowing this? Curiously, he reaches out to run gentle fingers over Harry’s shoulder. Thin fabric over skin, skin stretched over protruding bones. The creature is cold to the touch and Voldemort can feel himself begin to shiver as it seems to absorb his warmth. What ought he to do? Despite his genius intellect and vast knowledge, there’s no precedence for this. No convenient how-to guide about how best to handle it when a flesh-eating zombie wishes to cuddle you. 

Careful not to rouse Harry, Voldemort reaches over his lump of a body to reach beneath his pillow. His arm wraps around the creature’s back in the process, and for some reason the little demon takes that as an invitation to press even closer. 

“Leech.” Voldemort hisses. His fingers wrap around his wand and he carefully withdraws his arm. With the warm wood in his hand—he forces himself to focus. If he is very, very careful, there is little danger of the spell miscasting. Voldemort whispers an incantation, and sudden warmth buzzes through the blanket. The creature lets out a tiny, contented sigh and goes still. Against all logic, it feels…nice. It feels safe. The warmth of the blanket, the strange comfort of another laying so close—it’s too much for him. Voldemort’s eyes flutter shut and his jaw rests against soft black hair. In his dreams green eyes glitter with mischief and a pink mouth sharpens into a smile.

Voldemort wakes up alone. The pillow smells of old sweaters and leather oil. His arms ache as if they spent all night clutching something close. 

The following night, he leaves his door open. 

Chapter Text

Ready let's roll onto something new
Takin' it's toll then I'm leaving without you
'Cause Heaven ain't close in a place like this
I said Heaven ain't close in a place like this

THE KILLERS - SOMEBODY TOLD ME

Call it foolishness, folly, or failure—ultimately, he doesn’t care. Lord Voldemort continues allowing the strange creature close to him. The warmth is worth the ruin, after the long years without the touch of another.

So, the new normal is as follows: Voldemort wakes to a reassuring weight on his chest and the scent of mint and soap. He stretches his arm, aching from a night spent clutching Harry, and extracts himself from the greedy clutches of the monster. Harry will groan, or murmur, shreds of syllables sticking together in a simulacrum of speech. As Voldemort dresses for the day, Harry will stir, sitting up when it’s time to don his day clothes. At mealtimes, he guides Harry to sit across from him at the rickety table in the larder, the boy’s wide eyes watching as Voldemort scrapes the bottom of a can of beans. 

Touch, warmth, the steady regard of verdant eyes. Voldemort has never sought companionship before; his partners were fleeting persons of transactional value that he simply tossed aside once he was done with them. This, somehow, is different. Harry feels like his. He feels like home in a way nothing has since Voldemort stepped out of Hogwarts for the last time. Perhaps he is finally losing his mind—but he does not care. Lord Voldemort has never been a man who denied himself the simpler pleasures of the flesh. 

There’s no excuse but weakness for the behavior Voldemort engages in the following week. Precarious, dangerous, and utterly addicting to the point where he’s not sure if he can ever stop. Whether at his desk or computer terminal, watering his plants or watching the horizon, when the zombie approaches, he has no choice but to touch him. It starts with gripping his arm or shoulder, but within days, he’s gently touching Harry’s waist and guiding him to press to Voldemort’s side. 

They take turns bathing and dressing. At first, Voldemort had to do all the scrubbing, but one day Harry takes the shampoo and tries to wash Voldemort’s hair in return. Cool fingers massage his scalp and squeeze water from his hair, and Voldemort lies to himself about how it feels. They rinse, and dry, and then Voldemort helps Harry dress in oversized clothes. Then, he’ll work, as the zombie drapes over him like a hairless cat, his icy fingers buried in the folds of Voldemort’s shirt. He’s not sure who started it, but soon Harry slides into his lap to be closer, always closer, as if the man would crawl beneath his Lord’s skin if it were possible. It is here, pressed to his chest, hazy eyes watching the graceful loops of Voldemort’s handwriting, when the beast attempts to speak once again.

Cool breath ghosts over the shell of Voldemort’s ear, and he pauses, his pen blotting the page. “Cold,” Harry whispers, curling closer, his freezing feet chilly even through the fabric of Voldemort’s trousers. 

“Are you not always cold?” Voldemort responds stiffly, as he tends to do. Harry’s eyebrows press together in frustration, his gaze unfocusing as if he’s searching for a memory he cannot find. “Learn the words you need to get what you want. I am a mind reader, but I cannot speak to the dead.” With that, Voldemort continues writing in his notebook. About an hour passes before Harry speaks again. 

“Cold,” says Harry. A few moments go by, Harry appearing to be trying to puzzle something out. Then, it speaks again. “Cold feet.” The creature shifts until it can jam the offending appendages beneath Voldemort’s thigh. 

“Was that so difficult?” Voldemort asks, nosing his face against Harry’s short brush of hair. Is it getting longer? He must remember to start measuring the strands each morning. “You cannot get what you need without imposing your will on the world. Whether you ask for it or simply seize it for yourself.” Against his chest, Harry makes a humming sound, his fingers tracing the heirloom ring Voldemort keeps on a cord around his neck.

Harry is quite obsessed with the thing, similar to the Locket, he never takes off. The Locket itself has been quiet recently, seemingly able to discern whether Harry means harm or not and therefore allowing him to get as close to the Locket’s master as he wants. It is not following the word of Voldemort’s command, instead sticking closely to the spirit of the command. Voldemort always prides himself on creating enchantments with a level of plasticity, an ability for the magic to adapt as the situation changes. And, if the Locket feels that Harry will not harm him, Voldemort must simply trust in the magnitude of his magic.

One night, a strange sound pulls Voldemort out of the black depths of his dreamscape. Blankets shifting, growls, and a hissing as familiar to him as human language. Voldemort’s eyes snap open, squinting through the shadows at the shape tangled in the sheets. He reaches for his wand, fearing the worst.

The cotton collar of Harry’s pajamas hangs from his protruding clavicles, his thin chest heaving with great, terrified breaths. Voldemort’s eyes linger on the gleam of his exposed skin as the man seizes, back arching into a bow in a sudden great convulsion. An acrid odor tickles at Voldemort’s nose, and it takes him a moment to recognize the smell—sweat. It soaks Harry’s shirt, his face covered in a sheen of moisture, his short strands of hair clumping together. The creature lets out a strangled gasp and then, quite suddenly, exhales a series of spitting hisses that all merge together—

coldcoldcoldcoldcold

—before Harry clenches his teeth so hard that his jaw creaks from the strain. Parseltongue? How can this be? Is it the locket, trying to possess the creature’s body? The parseltongue word Harry is using refers specifically to brumation, a fact that he files away for later. For now, he must wake the beast. 

”Harry,” Voldemort says sharply. No response. Voldemort clicks his tongue and then gives the zombie’s face a sharp slap. No change, the insensate creature’s eyelids fluttering as if it were caught in some kind of nightmare. Voldemort sucks in a breath and kicks free of the restraining blankets. He was not aware zombies could sleep, let alone dream. Voldemort smiles, his teeth exposed to the air. With a simple fluid motion, he swings his legs over Harry’s body and pins down Harry’s thighs with his knees.

The creature trembles and convulses beneath him, lean muscles starkly visible as he claws at the sheets. Voldemort presses him down, seizing his head with spidery fingers. It’s slick to the touch with sweat, clammy and feverish. Voldemort peels back an eyelid, watching in fascination as an unfocused green iris rolls back into his skull. Could legilimency work, perhaps? Voldemort is pondering this theory when his fingers brush over the infamous scar.

Harry arches his back, bucking against Voldemort’s grapple, every single muscle in his body seizing up as if electrified. His mouth falls open in a silent scream of agony. The scar buzzes against Voldemort’s fingers like a live wire, and a strange thrill thrums through him. It feels like the first time he touched Harry’s bare skin, but a hundred times more potent, a current of unknown magic passing between them. 

Harry sucks in a great gasp of air and collapses onto the bed. His chest rises and falls in rapid breaths, like a drowning man suddenly pulled out of the water.  Voldemort’s fingers press to a protruding vein in his temple to measure his fluttering heart rate: 133bpm, a new high. Voldemort closes his eyes for a long moment, resisting the urge to drag Harry to a gurney for examination. 

The creature’s eyes roll around in his head a bit more before fluttering back into focus. He gazes up at Voldemort, half-lidded with apparent exhaustion. The creature makes a fetching sight beneath him, tousled and soaked with sweat as if they had been—No. Voldemort swings off of Harry in a panic, ignoring the heat in his gut, ignoring the mutinous organ between his legs that has suddenly made its presence known. A physical reaction, nothing more. He should have expected it, after so long with no intimacy. 

“If you are finished having a fit, I would like to salvage what rest I can out of the remainder of the night,” Voldemort says, callous and cold. He flops back down on his pillow, mind racing a mile a minute. This is a breakthrough, the first sign of restored body function outside of Harry’s beating heart. What does this mean that he can dream, that he can sweat, that he can panic? Is the endocrine system functional, now? What will come next?

The shape next to him shifts in bed. In slow scoots, Harry presses himself to Voldemort’s side, air whistling out his nose as his rapid breathing calms down. Harry’s hand slides across Voldemort’s sleep shirt, caressing the hard lump of the ring through the fabric. Harry swings a leg over Voldemort’s thigh, squeezes his eyes shut, and promptly falls back into the zombie equivalent of slumber. Something hot and hard presses against his thigh and, for a moment, Voldemort’s brain short-circuits. 

Voldemort wants to scream. He needs his notebooks, he needs his medical texts, he needs a fucking cigarette—and he hasn’t smoked since 1960. Maybe that would scour the scent of Harry’s sweat from his nose, a musky note now polluting the mint and soap combination that Voldemort is so accustomed to. 

Theories whirl in his brain like the destructive winds of a cyclone. The sweat, the physical reaction, the fucking Parseltongue, it’s too much. In that moment, he forcibly shuts his eyes. One side effect of becoming a master in occlumency is that, at a certain point, you can simply force yourself to fall asleep. He’ll deal with this bollocks in the morning. 

Of course, the morning does not provide relief nor clarity from the cursed events of the night. Voldemort wakes to wide green eyes watching him, clammy fingers stroking over his ring like it is something precious.  Something inside Voldemort, perhaps the final shreds of his soul that feel such kinship with his Horcruxes, urges him to give the boy the Ring. And why not? He’s taken such good care of the Locket.

Voldemort carefully reaches out, drawing the chain of the Locket from beneath Harry’s pajama top. The creature stiffens, as if frightened, and lets out a low hiss as Voldemort clicks open the clasp on the chain.

”Relax, greedy thing,” Voldemort says, and the boy visibly shivers at the sound of his voice. Voldemort slips the ring onto the locket chain and delicately fixes the clasp. With a shaky breath, the fearsome beast reaches up to delicately cradle the Locket and Ring in the palm of his hand. He pulls the Horcruxes to his chest and closes his eyes once more. 

Harry does not get out of bed that day. It’s awfully annoying, actually, for Voldemort to go about his chores alone. When did he get so accustomed to another body, close enough to pull against him at the smallest whim? He finds himself reaching for someone who is not there, in between entering Harry’s vital signs on a spreadsheet and scouring clandestine tomes for any information about interaction between Horcruxes and undead constructs such as inferi. At one point, he grabs a pillow from a sagging ancient sofa and holds it against his chest, as if to replace what was lost. How pathetic. When bedtime rolls around, Voldemort is irritable. In the old days he would blow off some steam with a Cruciatus Curse or two, the writhing forms of his followers screaming and pissing themselves an extremely effective stress relief.

Instead, Voldemort finds himself in the shower. The shock of cold water coursing down his body does nothing for his acute sense of unrest. He thinks of the creature, how easily he slides onto Voldemort’s lap, the sight of his writhing body beneath him, sweaty and gasping. 

He thinks of men sent away to war, lonely on the high seas, finding comfort with their comrades. He thinks of prisoners, isolated from the outside world, seeking convenient release with one another behind bars. He thinks of the Slytherin dorms, of Abraxas’s hazy blue eyes and Orion’s sated stare. Once again, he curses his past self for not scouring away all the weaknesses of the flesh. In this half-form, he’s still at the mercy of his body. 

At least, that’s what excuse his mind clings to as his long fingers find his thickening length, heavy with blood between his legs. Voldemort leans his arm on the wall and presses his forehead into his elbow, squeezing his eyes shut as his fingers move in practiced strokes. The water is a poor lubricant, and he’s gripping the thing hard enough to hurt, but it doesn’t matter. The moment his eyes are closed the boy, the creature, tattoos itself on the inside of his eyelids. He can feel that body pressed close, can smell the musk of his sweating body. Voldemort imagines the creature straddling him, pressing his hardness against Voldemort’s thigh and rutting in slow, animalistic movements, as if even half-dead, the creature cannot help himself. As if their connection is deeper than their shared past, their recent intimacy, and even the veil between life and death

Voldemort’s hand speeds up as he imagines the creature spread out beneath him, nude except for the Horcruxes around his neck, his scar a pale line against ruddy, reddened skin. In his mind, he reaches up, pressing a thumb to Harry’s forehead as he slips inside of him—and suddenly, white hot pleasure thrums through him as his body finds release.

For a few minutes, Voldemort stays there, beneath the freezing water, watching his spend swirl and disappear down the drain.

Then, he puts it firmly out of his mind and resumes his ablutions.

Harry is still in bed, curled up with his fist clenched around the Horcruxes. Voldemort seizes the boy around the ankle and drags him from his bed, depositing the hissing creature outside his door where he belongs. He slams the door and flops against rumpled sheets.

Dreams come, despite his effort to clear his mind before sleep. In them, Voldemort stands on the great lawn of Hogwarts. His mind weaves images, terrible images, of crumbled brick and collapsed towers. His first home, utterly ruined. Voldemort turns his head towards the Black Lake, hoping to see the figure that so often haunted his dreams—but there’s nothing, just a drained depression in the ground where the water once stood, only the bleached bones of the merfolk left behind.  

Voldemort wakes in a haze of panic. He’s often wondered if he is the last man on earth, if the virus has spread to every corner of the globe and snuffed out humans and mages alike. Now, alone in his bed, the sheets cold once more, the thought terrifies him. What is a Lord without any subjects? What point is there to pushing the limits of magic, to immortality, if there is no one to kneel in awe beneath his might? 

He stumbles out of bed, gait wobbling as he reaches for the door. It swings aside, and in his haste, he trips over the warm lump on the floor and crashes into the hallway wall. A shape is curled up on the concrete in front of the door, shivering in a tight ball. Voldemort waits a moment for his panic to subside, breathing in and out to calm himself, grimacing at a dent in the drywall from his clumsy impact. And then, he squats down and tentatively reaches out to press his hand to the creature’s shuddering back.

Harry makes a small, wounded noise and shifts, his eyes peeking out and glaring reproachfully at Voldemort. A weight lifts from Voldemort’s chest at the contact, and isn’t that just pathetic? Voldemort strokes the shivering back until Harry relaxes, lying limply like a discarded fetus instead of a balled up armadillo. He’s never been a man to offer comfort, as he’s never benefited from such gestures. The anger inside him is like the mantle of the Earth, unaffected by the changes to its crust. Simple touches have never had the power to calm him down. But if this is how he obtains compliance from his creature, so be it. 

After a while of petting Harry like some kind of kicked dog, he stirs from the floor. Locket and Ring clink together as he shifts his weight, gleaming at the center of his chest. Something like contentment wafts from the artifacts. Normally, they grow ornery and irate when they are separated from Voldemort for too long. But, around Harry’s neck, they sink into placidity. Curious thoughts wiggle around his brain, present and irritating, but not quite formed enough to hatch into concrete ideas.

Voldemort looks down and catches Harry watching him. He reaches out his spindly fingers and strokes the bristles of Harry’s buzzcut, his thumb pressing hard against the scar. And, oddly enough, he feels the contentment of his Horcruxes flow into him. A hiss not unlike Parseltongue flicks off Harry’s tongue as if natural to him. One of the thoughts breaks free, an idea falling from his brain and landing like a stone in his stomach.

“Do—,” Harry rasps, and Voldemort freezes like a fawn before a wolf. “Do you see?” Harry’s fingers, hot and sweaty, press to Voldemort’s face. “Do you see us?”

Voldemort squeezes his eyes shut. Twenty-eight years ago, when the rebounded curse severed his soul from his body, something else happened. A terrible, wrenching pain that reached the very root of his being. This pain transcended the physical form and stabbed deep within him, a magic pain, a soul pain. A pain he’d felt before, each time he’d shaved off bits of his ragged soul for safekeeping.

Could it be possible that the night he sought Harry Potter’s death, he once again conquered the limitations of magic? That he, Lord Voldemort, accomplished something no other mage in history even dared to try? Of course, Harry found him—like calls to like, soul to soul. 

“I see you,” Voldemort whispers. He gathers Harry in his arms, pulls him close, and walks him back to their bed. “I see you.”

They settle into the blankets once more. Harry is unpleasantly stiff and cold from the floor. Voldemort rubs his palms over shivering limbs to warm Harry up, more for his own comfort than the boy’s, of course.  He tucks him close against his chest until the zombie goes still with slumber. 

What if the anomaly has nothing to do with physiology, the blood-brain barrier, or the limitations of the internal sciences—but instead, has to do with the soul? Voldemort strokes Harry’s fuzzy head as he considers the behavior of the magical zombies. They sought more magic with a single-minded frenzy. The ones he’d seen actually consume magic from an artifact or location would grow sluggish after their meal, lying or resting in the shadows for hours before slowly resuming their endless hunt. Voldemort had tried feeding a specimen before, to see if it could sate the magical depletion, but it never worked. Perhaps he was missing something vital. Perhaps it is not the magic itself, but the soul that channels the magic to begin with. 

And Harry, the wonderful anomaly, Harry, had an extra soul latched to his own. The first time Harry reacted abnormally was when Voldemort touched him, and with each additional Horcrux bestowed upon him…Voldemort’s mind races, even as he feels his heart rate lulled into calm with the steady breaths of his creature. There’s so much research to be done: new tests, collecting data, perusing his grimoires for hints of why this was even possible in the first place. 

Voldemort shifts to get out of bed, but a clawed hand seizes the fabric of his pajama top and yanks him back. Voldemort makes an undignified sound as he flops back on the bed, struggling feebly as steel-strong arms wrap around him and wrestle him to the mattress. 

“You–” Voldemort spits, struggling as his body is dragged back beneath the blankets. There’s no fighting the tensile strength of a zombie, especially when it’s smothering you like a lethifold. “Locket,” Voldemort whispers in Parseltongue. “Restrain him.” Nothing happens. Instead, cool breath tickles the back of his neck, something soft that can’t possibly be lips pressing to the soft hairs at his nape. 

“Stay,” Harry whispers against the shell of his ear. “Sleep.” 

Voldemort waits for the press of teeth that never comes. Instead, the creature that had so thoroughly subdued him goes still again, breath evening out, limbs loosening with the onset of sleep. And, magic help him, Voldemort’s eyelids flutter the moment he hears that soft breath, and he finds himself unwillingly dragged into sleep as well. 

In his dreams, he’s back at the Black Lake. Harry is there, as he’s always been, something that seems so obvious now, the boy’s profile stark against the backdrop of stars. Here, his hair is shaggy and wild, his eyes oddly magnified by thick glasses. He smiles, extending a hand to Voldemort, the bright lights of Hogwarts behind them. They cross the lawn, wet grass crunching underfoot, the scent of the feast drawing them towards the great hall. Harry presses a palm to the massive door and pushes—

—and Voldemort wakes up. The alarm blares, and in his flailing to shut the damn thing off it takes Voldemort a while to realize the creature is gone. With a click, the alarm turns off, and Voldemort listens. He can hear distant moans, the rumble of the generators, and a distinct high-pitched whine that vibrates through the pipes when the hot water is running. 

Voldemort follows the sound, his feet bare on cold concrete, until he reaches the bathroom. Inside is quite a strange sight—Harry, wet as a drowned bag of kittens, fumbling with the small buttons of a red flannel shirt. It’s buttoned all wrong, the collar to the center, buttons skipped, fabric bunched oddly. Harry looks up at him, an expression of embarrassed consternation making its home on his face. 

“Come here,” Voldemort sighs, stepping into the room. He can surmise what happened: a confused, half-dead zombie in recovery attempting to clean and clothe itself. For a first-time attempt, it’s not bad. Besides the fact that he didn’t dry himself off before trying to put the clothes on, at least. The wet zombie shuffles over, and Voldemort reaches for the mess of buttons. One by one, he frees the creature from its flannel prison. When he’s done, the wet fabric hangs limply from prominent collarbones. Much to Voldemort’s surprise, a frisson of goosebumps rise on the brown skin of Harry’s chest. Voldemort reaches out and runs his thumb over the pimpled flesh. 

Warm skin, a heartbeat, a pair of lungs expanding and contracting. Sweat, goosebumps, recovering motor functions. His eyes track up to Harry’s face, a strange expression occupying the normally empty countenance. Harry looks at Voldemort like Pandora after Zeus gave her the box, like he wants nothing more than to crack Voldemort open and see what is inside, regardless of the consequence. At that moment, Voldemort feels exactly the same. 

He drags Harry back to their room by the hand. Together, they attempt a second set of clothing—this time, a more reasonable jumper instead of a button-up shirt. After that, the morning resumes as the new normal. Over breakfast, Harry stares at Voldemort’s food from his perch on his Lord’s lap, peering down into the opened can with dubious curiosity. Voldemort doesn’t ask, too intent on his breakfast. With nothing but tasteless tinned mush most days, eating can sometimes feel like an unpleasant chore. He offers Harry a bite just to see the man’s face scrunch up in disgust. It’s so funny he does it again, until Harry swats it away and turns to glare up at him. 

The air between them remains pleasantly silent throughout the day. Once the chores are done, Voldemort dives headfirst into research. He’s cleared his desk of anatomical texts, replacing them with titles such as MALEDICTIONS OF MAGIC and Restoring the Core: The Aftermath of Dragonpox. Harry is restless, slipping off Voldemort’s knee to wander the room. Voldemort is too focused to pay him any mind. He copies a line down from MALADIES:

"The soul is the conduit from whence all magic comes. Soul damage confounds the core, clutters the pathways, and shatters the safeguards of our magic."  

Voldemort frowns. Whoever wrote this book had certainly never dabbled in Horcrux magic; if anything, Voldemort’s magical reserves only deepened with each crack to his soul. He switches to the Dragonpox book.

"A rare complication in cases of near fatal Dragonpox is ensquibification. There have been claims of reversing disease-borne ensquibification, but all claims are eventually revealed to be hoaxes perpetrated by practitioners of the dark arts seeking to legitimize banned practices such as necromancy…"

Voldemort leans back in his chair, glancing over at Harry. There’s a different gleam in Harry’s eye, now, when he stares at monitors and peeks at journals. A curiosity, and perhaps an understanding.  When his companion finally speaks, Voldemort starts so violently that he drops his book.

“What—?” Harry asks, pointing at a line graph. Voldemort’s ass is going numb from sitting so long, so he decides to stand and indulge the little monster.

“This is a measurement of the viral load in the bloodstream over time during an infection,” Voldemort explains. He points at the vertical Y axis. “This is the measured amount. The lowest the equipment can read is 10,000 copies/mL.” He runs a finger over the horizontal X-axis. “This is time.” The line sweeps up in a dramatic curve, not unlike a population graph measuring the human race over centuries. 

“Virus,” Harry whispers. His heavy eyebrows bunch together into a frown. “All of this,” he gestures to the lab, “the virus?” 

“Yes,” Voldemort can't help but smirk. Not only is his monster speaking in clauses now, but he has an excuse to talk to someone about all of his research. “I have procured all of the original research materials and have spent these long years attempting to synthesize a serum to help mage’s bodies fight the virus.” He guides Harry over to a monitor and taps a few keys on an attached keyboard.

The computer whirrs and beeps as it boots up, finally displaying a command prompt made of bright green text against a blank black background. Voldemort rests his chin on the crown of Harry’s head and reaches around him to type in a file name. Camcorder footage pops up. In the video, a pale arm lies strapped to a table. Gloved hands enter the frame holding a scalpel and drag the blade against the supple skin. Blood wells and flows. A moment later, the gloved hands return with a syringe. They stick it into the bleeding wound, pressing the plunger to administer a liquid. A minute passes, and then the ragged wound stops bleeding. Almost imperceptibly, the way a groping vine moves, the skin slowly knits itself back together.

“A retrovirus that infects host cells and changes their genetic makeup, both to propagate itself and to administer the intended effect. Originally, it was designed to halt aging, but it was soon discovered to cause rapid healing to wound sites and the removal of parasites and cancers from the body. Of course, how could any researcher resist following the possibility of ageless invulnerability?” The video footage flickers and ends. 

“Why?” Harry gestures to his arm, then to himself. “Zombie?” 

“Ah, that is the question. It is a complicated answer, but to put it simply for you, the virus needs to shut the body down to complete the spread and transformation of each cell and function. And, for some reason I cannot yet figure out, it cannot turn the body back ‘on.’ The functions shut down but do not restart. But the body is now ageless, invulnerable, perfect in every way except the fact that no one is home to pilot it. Animal instinct is all that remains.”

Harry hums an acknowledgement. Another video plays, this one depicting a shadowy corpse with a crushed skull twitching as its head slowly heals itself whole. Harry tilts his head to the side. “Muggles?”

“Ah, yes, muggles,” Voldemort sneers. “Well, the virus was designed with mage genetic material, for mages, so of course, the magicless have an adverse reaction to it. Reanimation without healing, using the tiny amount of magic their bodies have managed to absorb from the environment…that is why they hunger. The virus lacks the necessary magic to heal the body, so it seeks it until it rots to nothing. That is what you’re hungry for, my little monster, though in your case, you still have enough magic to keep your body whole.” Voldemort pulls away, glancing at the glass tank containing Lucius. He’d covered it with a thick curtain weeks ago, sick of looking at the reminder of all his failures. As far as he knew, Harry did not know a being was in there, and Voldemort is not about to attempt to explain.

“I thought the answer to the plague had to do with the structure of the virus and magic physiology, but it turns out it’s always been about the magic.” There’s so much more Voldemort could speak of, research and experimentation going back over a decade. About his new ideas on the role of the soul in all this, ideas so obvious he wonders why he did not think of them years ago. 

“Magic,” Harry repeats. He touches the Ring and Locket around his neck, nestled together on the same chain and clinking together softly with every movement. Harry grows distant, then, his expression emptying back into a death mask. Voldemort pulls away and returns to his research, watching warily as Harry paces listlessly and eventually exits the room.

Voldemort considers his collection of books. He pulls out a third one: ERADICATING INFERI. In the prologue, a line jumps out at him:

"An inferius is not resurrected. Inferi are empty bodies with no memory or reason, no desires or needs. You cannot recall a shade from beyond the veil. Without a soul, all that remains in the mind is hunger."

Souls. Horcruxes. Necromancy. The answer is close. He just needs to find it. 

By the time Voldemort finishes his notes, Harry is already in bed. Something is unsettling about the knowledge that his little creature has managed the nighttime ablutions by himself. Something wrong. Voldemort should be ecstatic that he no longer needs to dress it or brush its teeth. Instead, staring at the lump beneath the blankets inspires an odd sense of loss.

Voldemort half expects Harry to remain distant and cold as he climbs beneath the sheets beside him, as if the newfound independence shall extend to all aspects of their connection. Voldemort has barely settled onto his back when the creature stirs. Harry lets out a small, plaintive sigh and shifts closer. Cool fingers stroke over Voldemort’s chest before the creature’s shorn head settles onto his breastbone. Harry swings his knee over Voldemort’s thigh and curls around him. After a moment, the man lets out a little impatient sound and grabs Voldemort’s arm, pulling it around his shoulders in turn.

Now, Voldemort is not sure he could move even if he wanted to. Harry’s breath evens out, and the little monster drifts back to sleep. Slowly, hesitatingly, Voldemort lifts his spare hand. He runs his fingers through Harry’s short fuzz of hair and lets his thumb rest against the raised ridge of his scar. For the first time in decades, Voldemort feels whole. 

A soft gasp tugs him from slumber. A shadow presses against him, undulating, sinuous, hot and hard. Voldemort opens his eyes only to be trapped in a gaze of green, a spotlight pinning him in place from above. The creature moves, then, with a gentle roll of his hips. Voldemort gasps at an unexpected wave of pleasure, his body growing hard in mutiny with his mind. He can’t think. Not with those eyes trapping him, not with the sensations shuddering through his body with each lazy thrust of Harry’s hips as he grinds their groins together in an endless, merciless rhythm.

“Harry—“ Voldemort hisses, the sound sudden as if punched from his chest.

“Shh,” Harry responds. He reaches down to free Voldemort from the tight constraints of his pajamas and squeezes their feverish flesh together. Harry pins him down with the green of his gaze and the preternatural strength of his undead thighs. Voldemort’s fingers scrabble on Harry’s chest, nails raking his dark skin. He doesn’t know if he’s trying to fight him off or claw him closer, his mind lost in a scarlet haze of long forgotten pleasure. He wants to be closer, to have nothing between them, no cloth or skin or flesh, their souls steeping together until there was no distinction between them. 

“Trust me,” Harry whispers against his neck, into the shell of his ear, as he drags calloused fingers over Voldemort’s heated length. “Trust me,” he repeats, leaning forward until Voldemort can taste the sweet rot on his breath. Harry’s strokes speed up, pleasure building until Voldemort can barely think. Harry presses cracked lips to the corner of Voldemort’s mouth. “Kiss me.”

Voldemort’s vision narrows, his back arching as the building pleasure crescendos over, his mind growing blissfully blank as he chases Harry’s lips. There’s a flash of gold, a crackle of light, and Voldemort loses himself to the feeling. For a moment, there’s nothing, just the smell of Harry’s sweat and the odor of sex cutting through the air from Voldemort’s spend. 

Nearby, Harry gasps. Voldemort’s eyes flutter open, and it takes his muddled mind a long moment to make sense of the sight before him. Harry claws at the golden chain digging into the skin of his neck, as the Locket keeps him cruelly suspended above Voldemort. 

Confusion swirls in Voldemort’s mind, and then, like the slow descent of an executioner’s axe—a realization. Harry tried to kiss him, to infect him with the virus swimming in Harry’s saliva, to render him no better than a mindless monster. He pushes himself away from Harry, horror quickly transforming to a blaze of fury. 

“Trust—“ Harry gasps, coughing against the tightened chain. “Please.” 

“Stop.” Voldemort hisses at the Locket. He stares at Harry, the treacherous monster, the taste of blood flooding his mouth at the panicked realization that this thing almost killed him with a single kiss. 

“Get out.” Voldemort gestures at the door. “Now.” 

The Locket moves, dragging Harry kicking and screaming towards the door. Harry fights it like a cornered, feral beast, clawing at the chain and hissing and spitting. He claws at the sheets, ripping the fabric, and seizes the bed frame, but it’s useless. The Locket drags him through the open door, and it slams shut behind him.

Voldemort collapses onto his back. Aftershocks of the climax war with simmering fury. Shame rises, for allowing himself to get so close to this monster, to lust for the cursed thing, to have allowed his defenses to fall so thoroughly. Betrayal, as well, because how long has the creature been plotting to do this? To chip away at his defenses and blind him with lust until finally ending his life with a kiss of death? If the Locket had not realized at the last possible moment what the creature had been planning—Voldemort finds himself stumbling into the bathroom, forcing his mutinous body beneath a spray of freezing water, shivering violently as it washes away all evidence of the wretched lust that nearly took his life. 

The days that follow are cold and empty. Harry avoids Voldemort, though whether that it of his own volution or due to the Locket's intervention he does not know. A good thing, Voldemort thinks, because if he were forced into proximity with the beast, he’s sure it would end in it being stuffed back into the kennel where it belongs.

Voldemort abandons the soul research. Whatever he thought was going on with Harry is obviously incorrect—the creature is not returning to life, merely using the horcrux connection to grow craftier about sinking its teeth into him. Voldemort returns to synthesizing the next iteration of his serum. He sleeps alone in his cold bed, his wardrobe shoved up against the door to deter intruders. And, whenever he feels a pair of eyes on him, or hears the shuffling of feet, by the time he looks up, Harry is gone.

A week into their separation, the tin in the kitchen where he keeps his rice is empty, so Voldemort opens the hatch leading to the larder. Down the many rungs of a ladder, in the cold darkness, he shines his torch over crumpled boxes and cases of tinned food. Suddenly, the light reflects off impossibly bright green eyes. The creature lies there, swaddled in old blankets and torn towels, using his fifty-kilo bags of rice like a makeshift mattress. It shivers in the cold, gaze turning baleful, resentful. Gold glitters around its neck. 

Voldemort sneers. Suddenly, he thinks he may need a break from rice. He can find something else to eat. Keeping the torch trained on it, he climbs back up the ladder and out the hatch. For a moment, he considers putting something heavy on the hatch. Let it rot down there, let it lie in the darkness, let it scratch its fingers bloody on the walls and fester forevermore.

Instead, he clicks on his camping propane stove and watches the bean juice bubble.

Harry is up to something. The way the creature carefully stays out of his sight is more suspicious than consoling. He knows it sleeps separately from him, that it roams their home while he’s sleeping. Voldemort sets up a camcorder in a dusty corner of the lab. When he plays it back the next day, the grainy footage shows the zombie rising as Voldemort goes to sleep. It digs through his research materials, and it watches archival footage on the computer. Voldemort cannot look away as it touches the curtains covering Lucius’s tank, as it pulls back the fabric and stares up at the feebly struggling form of the other captured zombie until the tape runs out.

An acute sense of doom falls into Voldemort's stomach like a lead weight. He shuts the camcorder off and shoves it into a drawer.