Chapter Text
The DA was one of the best things Harry ever did in his entire life. Not only was teaching fulfilling in a sense that it boosted Harry's confidence in himself, it was also amazing to see how his friends grew, how they learned and how they smiled. Harry would have liked to do more of it.
In his absence, his friends have continued their practicing, and have become all fierce and truthfully more or less terrifying. Harry doubts he's seen anywhere close to the true depth of their sharpened abilities, but they spend some time every other day or so gathering together in that large hall to duel, share experiences, and practice spells. It's all nostalgic, painfully so, yet simultaneously something Harry doesn't really know how to process - that while in the past they were all kids trying to get used to the violence of the real world, they were now all adults so intimately familiar with said violence.
Hermione had taken her intelligence and analytic mind and made it into a machine that worked constantly. Whenever Harry came across her, she was clearly in the middle of something - she was planning, brewing, plotting, all of the above, all of the time. Harry wasn't sure if her mind rested even in her sleep, if she ever truly shut off. She had figured out how to break the ancient wards surrounding Voldemort's castle through trial and error with old pureblood house wards, and had somehow pulled the entire operation off. Harry was terrified of being under her magnifying glass -like scrutiny, because he felt that if she really tried to, she could unveil everything he hadn't told her. But something, perhaps an instinctive respect for his reluctance, was keeping her from doing so. She leads the practice times with an iron fist and pokes holes at anyone and everyone who thinks their techniques are solid. She watches duels with pursed lips and calls out how they will end long before they do, and on occasion, she resembles Professor McGonagall with a frightening quality.
Ron always had an eye for wizard's chess, and his longform planning combined with Hermione's sharp mind makes for a terrifying duo and really illuminates how they've managed to keep this operation going even with the circumstances all but in their favour. Magically, he's never been so lucky with offense, and seems to have accepted the fact - instead, he can cast the thickest shield spells Harry's ever seen and lock down a position akin to an immovable object. When he and Hermione get together and team up for some of their exercises, they become an unkillable machine, working in unison and covering one another's blind spots perfectly. They just lack the offensive power to make themselves an unkillable killing machine. Thankfully.
Ginny sharp tongue and array of curses have become a combination that Harry already got a taste of. She has lost any shreds of mercy she ever had, and she seems to gain some sort of pleasure from embarrassing her opponents. She doesn't go for the most obvious, the most harsh spells, but instead uses things Harry's never heard of, jinxes and curses that may at first seem just mildly annoying, but wind up being the very thing which causes your downfall. And then she smiles at you when you go down, but not nicely at all, no, but instead with too many teeth.
George is... quiet. He's still as creative as ever, and still has the same endless amount of Weasley twins -brand tricks, but he seems lost without Fred. Even though it's been years since the other half of the twins died, Harry sees the mourning in George, and thinks it might never go away. George will stop his sentences halfway through, perhaps waiting for someone to finish them for him. When he stands, he leaves space at his side, space which remains empty. He grins, but it's hollow. He frowns, and it stays. His hands are always covered with grease and soot, like he's given up on washing them. Harry knows he has a workspace somewhere in the base, but Ginny advised him not to go there alone under threat of actual death, and Harry was fine with following her suggestion.
Luna doesn't seem indulgent in fighting in direct combat, but instead just floats around the room, dropping seemingly random instructions or observations every once a while. At first, you just nod, ignoring what she says. But then you catch it, that she's not just speaking nonsense - when you listen, you gain invaluable insight on what your opponent might do next, where they might go, what spell they might fire. She just knows, and seems to direct the room around at her own whims. Harry sees her whispering into Hermione's ear, every so often, and while the two used to be at odds with one another back in school, something has drawn them closer now, a trust formed so firm that instead of waving her off like she once might've, Hermione instead holds her breath and listens. Every time Harry sees that happen, he makes himself scarce, knowing that in a few minutes Hermione will be sweeping everyone's feet out from under them.
Neville is a fine wizard. Harry always thought him to be that way. He's not special, but he's nowhere as bad as some might say. Most importantly, he has a fine heart. Harry thinks he still has it, somewhere, if it's been steadily covered by layers and layers of something harsh. Neville's face has hardened and he frowns more often than smiles, and when he does smile, there's something off about it - it doesn't really reach his eyes. His spellwork is fine, and he can hold his own in combat, but he has two things up his sleeves. One of them is his still -remaining friendliness; he seems to be on first name terms with everyone, and it seems like people are almost reluctant to go up against him, much preferring on exchanging smiles or stories or clapping his shoulder. Neville's spine has straightened and it makes gazes practically drawn to him, like the way he was holding court at the campfires. The second ace up his sleeve, the one which Harry finds himself hype aware of - the Sword of Gryffindor. The decorated hilt and the gleaming blade attached to it are always at Neville's hip, and he isn't afraid of brandishing it even in a magical battle, the blade apparently capable of deflecting spells. Harry has no idea when or where Neville has learned how to wield a sword, but it must have been a long time ago, because Harry hasn't seen him falter or fail even once. Every time he sees a flash at the corner of his vision, Harry jolts, all too aware of what that sword could do to him.
In any case, Harry could stand around watching his friends for as long as he liked, committing their similarities and differences to his memory, but it wouldn't change the one fundamental difference between them now - time had created much distance. He'd been gone for over three years, after all, and while the way he spent that time might have been static, it hadn't been for them. No, their lives had continued, with or without him, and where they'd used to have been grown and nurtured by very similar circumstances, they had now experienced vastly different challenges. And, perhaps even more influentially, they'd done their growth without him. Harry was sure his absence had left a hole, but he couldn't find it now, like his friends had already grown over the gap. The idea probably shouldn't hurt him as much as it does, but he's found that his mind rarely cares for the 'reasonable' way to think about what's happening around him.
Instead, it watches and it bleeds for every painful thing it sees. It aches for the way he's both forgotten and over-included, hates how nothing is natural anymore, yearns for dynamics that no longer exist. Hermione and Ron have conversations unspoken with their mere eyes, falling back to conversations Harry no longer gets to third wheel in on, and then are shocked when he doesn't know what they're talking about or on what basis they make their decisions on.
Ginny will soften up to Harry on occasion, stepping up to him and speaking to him with a wry grin that almost echoes something that used to be between them, but then she'll actually look at him and a shadow crosses over her face - Harry doesn't look like he used to, doesn't smile quite like he did. His hair, longer, is somehow also more tamable, and he doesn't cut it (a decision which he knows Ginny doesn't agree with), and the vision he'd inexplicably regained doesn't return to what it was, and so Harry doesn't bother with glasses.
It would be funny, seeing how his friends seem unsure on what to do with him, if it wasn't so sad. They don't distrust him, but they don't quite trust, either. He hears conversations past half-open doors that infer to plans he isn't directly included in, partakes in training where he doesn't quite receive the same inclusion as everyone else does, not the same kind of happy compliments or helpful advice. He lingers on the outskirts of social moments, willing to be pulled in to be ogled but wrong-footed at every turn, sometimes stumbling into things that people have unspoken agreements not to talk about. He feels about as graceful as a bull in a china shop. He mentions as much to Rowena, and all she says is that it takes time.
Harry feels acutely like his time is running out. The longer he lingers and nothing happens, the more he feels himself being side-eyed. He doesn't blame them.
He blames the bottle of foul-smelling muggle alcohol instead. And coincidentally, himself.
The nearest muggle town with a liquor store is only one apparition away for Harry, and he finds himself there at the end of the day more often than not. Something about the burn of the alcohol as it goes down his throat helps to reflect the mental pressure he feels, and the awkwardness and hesitation that he carries with him on the regular lessens the more he drinks. He doesn't always bother going out to talk to anyone when he drinks, considering he doesn't really want people (Rowena) to realize how much it is he actually is drinking.
Other positive sides to getting drunk out of his mind include the fact that on the nights where he just stumbles to his cot and passes out, he doesn't see nightmares. He doesn't remember anything of the night's dreams when he wakes, but he knows somehow that the dreams aren't nightmares, and so he'll take it as a win. Sometimes he even wakes comforted, despite the oddness of the sentiment. Prongs help with that part, too, his silvery glow always chasing off the shadows in the corners of Harry's vision.
Drinking every other night is able to chase off the cold of the winter for some weeks. A few months. Until Christmas approaches at the distance and Harry forgets more and more how to be an actual person instead of a shell of one. The ground around them gets colder and colder, until it feels like there aren't enough layers in the world to scare off the biting frost, until the cold begins to seep into what Harry thinks might be his very soul. It reminds him of Azkaban in ways he doesn't like, the stone walls around him threatening to throw him into the past if he touches it with his eyes closed. He drinks more. Wanders the birch forest and the muggle towns and avoids Godric's Hollow like the plague. He feels like he's searching for something, but whatever it is, he doesn't find it. He just gets colder. It feels like his heart is somewhere else, someplace else, warming up something that very much isn't Harry's own limbs.
Snow crunching under his feet, Harry kicks it with a petulant motion, his shadows blending amid the birch trees even as he kicks up snow in puffs of white mist. That sensation of loss remains, aching, tilting him to a direction he doesn't know, urging him to go somewhere. To find it. But how could he find it, when he doesn't even know what he's looking for in the first place?
Grumbling these thoughts out loud, Harry digs around his pockets for the bottle he brought along. It isn't big enough to get him in trouble, but it's just enough for him to be warmed by it, for the churn of alcohol to loosen his shoulders. He leans up against a tree to steady his stance as he tilts the bottle up. The sky is dark, the pale trunks reaching up toward it like fingers stretching toward an inky void. Reaching out for what? For a god to save them? Or for the wild wind to ruffle their branches?
Feeling awfully morbid, Harry moves on, walking the half-familiar forest with his gaze downturned, moving to take a sip every other step or so. The ground is usually rather uneven, but the snow has evened out the grooves of the earth, hiding trip -inducing roots and small dips. As such, Harry's somewhat stumbled movements don't cause him to trip, albeit sometimes his foot sinks into the snow and makes him yelp at the sudden motion.
He walks and for once he lets that sensation within him take hold, even when stray beams of light begin to filter through the trees. He doesn't want to go there, doesn't want to look beyond the snow covered wall of stone uphill from where he stops to catch his breath, but something within him thinks he ought to, thinks that he's avoided this for long enough.
The last time he'd been through here he'd been much more focused on his rescue operation (which he still can't believe he pulled off at all) and the urgency of that matter had given him the excuse he needed to not linger. He'd promised them he'd come back, and he'd fully intended on doing so, but something had... something had made him wary of it, in the end.
He supposes they won't mind, as he ambles down the rows of graves. It's not like he bothered coming by for the first, what, sixteen years after they died? The blame isn't all on him, but the blame still remains. What kind of a son doesn't come visit his parents' graves, after all?
Lily and James Potter's graves are still the same they were every other day. Unmoved. Harry is half-surprised that they are, but perhaps even evil Dark Wizards have standards.
Harry hovers by the stones. He should've brought flowers or something. Instead, he only has the half-drunk bottle. His cheeks are warmed by it and by slight embarrassment. He wasn't sure what they would say, if they saw him now - no longer the brave hero they last saw him to be, but rather just a weak, drunk, useless man.
Magic used to be harder for him to use. He used to struggle remembering incantations and wand movements, used to default back to expelliarmus and would only marvel at duelists that actually knew what they were doing. But now it had changed - he had changed. Magic didn't seem so reluctant to follow his will, no, but rather came to it eagerly, as if still missing him from the time when he couldn't use it. His own core feels like it's spilling out of him half the time. Ignoring it sort of works, up until Harry loses control of himself, until he starts thinking of things he shouldn't.
The stems of pale blue flowers peek out through the snow. Harry had dragged them out of the confines of their burial under layers of snow, where they'd been slumbering peacefully, waiting for spring to come. Harry swallows bile as they follow his demands, even to their own demise - if he relinquishes his hold of them, they will die.
The flowers Harry doesn't even know the names of dot happily in the white ground, petals shifting to try and find sunlight that doesn't exist. Harry feeds them with his own power, and it feels like nothing. It shouldn't be possible to just do that. He should've, at the very least, had to find some spell, some direction to give to his power. But it seemed to only need a vague will, a wish for something.
Harry drinks again.
"Hi", he says, feeling like an absolute moron. "Here I am."
The ground does not crack open to reveal his parents. In fact, absolutely nothing moves, beyond the clouds of loose snowflakes that the wind throws around. There's no one else at the graveyard at this hour, and no one to witness the tears that begin to roll languidly down Harry's face.
It's nothing particular. He just looks down at the engravings of his parents' names, of the fact that this is the most concrete way they exist to him. There is no mum and dad in Harry's life. Hell, there's no more Uncle Sirius, or Lupin, or anyone else for that matter. Harry's never seen the Dursleys as family, and he feels like his actions have directly made the Weasleys scatter to the winds. Everywhere he turns, he finds the same aching of loss as what he feels now as he looks down at the two graves before him.
The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death, the grave swears. There's something really ironic, there. Harry doesn't quite want to grasp it right now.
Tears still falling, unable to be stopped, he crouches down, uncaring for the way the snow wets his pants and the coldness begins to spread - he barely feels it, anyway. He tilts forward and has to steady himself with a hand at his dad's grave, the world swinging around him. He tries to blink to clear his vision but that doesn't work at all, so he just closes his eyes instead, leaning his forehead against his knees.
Adrift. That's the word for how he feels. Loose. Between places, not there, but not past tense. Existing, but with little meaning. The burn of alcohol isn't purpose. It's punishment. It's something to do while ignoring everything around him.
"What would you have me do?" Harry asks quietly, his voice cracking. "I don't know."
He opens his eyes, licking his lips to taste the salt - his tears are warm.
"I don't know, and I never will. I won't know who you are. People will tell me, they do, saying that you were heroes or brave or smart. But that's not... you could say that about most people. That's not who you are."
Harry's voice falls off because he can't say it, doesn't want to speak the truth out into the world. He'll never know things like whether his mum was a morning person or how his dad liked to take his coffee. He'll never know what they smell like, what they look like when they smile, or when they're mad. He won't know how painful it is to disappoint them, or how wonderful it would be for them to praise his test scores or cheer him on in Quidditch. He won't know what it's like to come home after a long time away, to your home, the one that isn't a place but is the people that literally made you, the atoms that you're made up of.
Lily and James could have been a great many things. But they never got to be Harry's parents.
He pushes himself to his feet, swaying again, his heart aching painfully. Almost like it's being stabbed - and for a second, he thinks, great, I'm having a heart attack. But he isn't. The pain probably isn't real, but rather just a manifestation of his mental struggles, of the tears running down his face. It still hurts just as much, though, and he fists his hand around the fabric of his shirt until it's so tight that it hurts.
"I want to go home", he croaks out loud. "I want to go home."
He turns on his heel, his magic taking charge, taking him where he wants to go.
Home.
The wands bend aside for the intruder without resistance. It's so easy that Voldemort nearly doesn't notice. But he does. His head perks up from where he'd been halfway through putting a forkful of steak into his mouth - Nagini startles from where she'd been curled around the legs of his chair, her own belly round with dinner. For a second, Voldemort isn't sure what to do.
Then he suddenly seems to recall how to move, and he stands, avoiding jostling Nagini.
"I will return in a moment", he promises the sleepy snake, and she only hisses in response.
Voldemort thinks he may look calm on the outside, but his wayward heart is hammering. There's only one person it could be. The thought both excites and terrifies him. But he refuses to hope, not until he lays eyes on the man. Not until he has seen what kind of expression the other might wear.
The castle itself seems indulgent to facilitate this reunion as Voldemort has probably never made it to a door from the dining hall so quickly. He pushes the wooden servants' exit door open and ignores his own, shaking hand, the green fields greeting him as he steps through. He lifts up the Elder Wand, it's tip lit aglow in a lumos.
There. A figure, in the distance. He has no light of his own, so Voldemort can barely make out his figure, but there he is. Standing, looking...
lost.
Voldemort approaches directly, not bothering with the footpath but simply sliding through the flowers, wading through the stems and petals and unwilling to look away from Harry - because it is Harry, as that head of hair is unmistakable, even if the wall still exists between them, even if he has his back turned. Harry's shoulders are tense, and he seems to almost be swaying in place.
Once Voldemort gets close enough, he slows down, eventually stopping a few paces away. Harry surely heard him, but had not turned to face him. Voldemort tries to gouge their connection for the slightest hint of emotion bleeding through, but there is none, infuriatingly.
Throwing all caution in the wind in favour of seeing those green eyes, Voldemort calls: "Harry?"
Jolting into motion, Harry spins around, so quickly Voldemort almost misses it. But it is of no matter in comparison to what Voldemort sees as he finds Harry's face - yes, he looks the same, but yet.
Voldemort had been correct in that you would be able to see when Harry remembered everything. His eyes, oh, how they shine. In the glinting light of Voldemort's lumos, they gleam, they sparkle. Peeking out from under strands of black curls, they capture Voldemort's attention without contest. For a moment, the emotion on his face could be described as shock.
Then, akin to a switch being flipped, his eyebrows turn and a fury unlike anything Voldemort has ever seen comes over him, like a hurricane making landfall. In short, he looks marvelous. Voldemort doesn't even hear what curse Harry casts at him, nor does he even pretend to try and dodge it. It strikes his upper arm and stings. He barely notices, so focused on the fact that Harry's there, in front of him - not in a dream, but physically right ahead, just out of reach.
Voldemort doesn't even consider lifting his wand. In the light of his lumos, Harry's eyes blaze as he rushes up to Voldemort and he cannot look away. He had feared that he'd begun to forget what Harry was really like, but now he realizes that he had never forgotten - how could he have, when it was this. Seemingly angry, Voldemort should maybe be wary of him, but he finds no will to do so, watching the way Harry tumbles through the field of flowers fed by his own magic, by the power Voldemort knew not-
Harry reaches Voldemort.
"Harry-"
The punch comes so quickly that Voldemort has no time to react. There is only the flash of a fist coming at his face - and then, the impact. The force of the swing throws Voldemort backwards, and he stumbles, hand lifting to cradle his nose in shock. For a moment he sees stars. He turns to look at Harry, shocked - his intention perhaps to demand reason for the physical attack. I mean, send a curse his way, fair enough, but to stoop down to playground fights like this? However, Harry is already following after his punch, grabbing Voldemort by his robes and throwing him around. Harry is strong, and Voldemort's resistance is futile as he is manhandled to the side. Harry's hold seems unsteady, even sluggish, but is powered by pure emotion, so it carries enough strength to throw Voldemort without issue.
Voldemort doesn't remember the last time he was in an actual fist fight. His motions are slow and halfhearted as Harry comes at him, dodges unsuccessful and blocks weak. His nose stings from the power of the very first punch, and he feels his face begin to be coated with blood as his nose drips it down his chin and into his mouth. The taste is coppery, and his blood is warm. When Harry's advances ease up for a moment, Voldemort turns his head to spit a mouthful of blood to the side, red splattering into the flowers.
"You bastard", Harry shouts at him, furious, his voice cracked and desperate and almost pleading, if it were not filled by so much rage. "Fight back!"
Voldemort doesn't. Some horrendous, sick part of him, one which has never existed before, thinks Harry has the right to do this. Another, even more horrendous part of him, is happy. He loves being right, after all, and this was the furious revenge which he had been expecting. Harry had every right to do this to him, and the thought slackens Voldemort to the point where he ceases even the miniscule attempts at self-defense, feeling his arms ache from the slowly forming bruises as they fall way from their weak position. Harry's hand hesitates at this blatant show of surrender.
For a moment, they both stand still, out of breath - Voldemort leaning backward and Harry forward, a string taunt between them like a bridge, slowly pulling them closer and closer, until the inevitable moment where an inevitable line is crossed, throwing them back into motion again.
Harry kicks Voldemort's feet out from under him and he tumbles down to the ground. The world tilts and Voldemort struggles to follow it, unable to even so much as catch himself as he falls backward, the back of his head slamming against the ground despite the grass' best attempts to catch him. Harry follows, setting his weight down on Voldemort's chest to stop him from escaping. Voldemort expects another punch, but crooked fingers coil around his throat instead.
Harry's expression is pure fury. The wall still exists. Voldemort doesn't even bother looking for the door. It's never been there when Harry's awake. As each finger touches skin, followed by Harry's palms, there is no explosion of good. There is only a pain more horrendous than anything Voldemort has ever experienced, a crucio -like flood of pure terror and pain, a reflection of what shows in Harry's face. Voldemort tries to pry the hands off of his neck - Harry isn't even squeezing, but the pure contact is eliciting such terrible pain. Harry doesn't budge, but instead laughs, like a broken record. Voldemort's wand had been knocked out of his hand, and it's lying somewhere to the side, the harsh light shadowing Harry's face in a way that makes him look deranged.
From somewhere deep in his memories, from a time he'd near-forgotten of, Voldemort recalls an echo of his own words. They exist in the past but feel like a completely different world, where they meet amid dusty stones and the night sky. I can touch you now.
"What was the plan, huh?" Harry spits, a ferocious grimace opening upon his face. Voldemort notices now that his cheeks are streaked with tear tracks. "I can't fucking figure it out, Tom."
He spits the name out with the appropriate anger, demanding answers Voldemort doesn't have. He can barely even see through the pain, teardrops forming at the corners of his eyes. And that's before Harry actually begins to squeeze.
Voldemort remembers very well how he tried to do the very same thing. Back then, he'd been impassionate; cold and clinical. It had been a tactical option, if a personal way to kill. He knew he would never do it, even as he was in the process of it. As the moon as his witness while he bowed over Harry's sleeping face, he'd considered taking the easiest way out. But Harry now? He was operating with pure hatred, with years of built up anger that had finally been given an avenue to pursue, a way to explode and get the revenge he'd been denied of. Harry had once been a self-sacrificial lamb, but he had changed now into an object of destruction, and through his slowly darkening field of vision, Voldemort could see it. Harry could - would - kill him. White dots emerge and swim in the inky void behind Harry's head, joining the twinkling stars above them.
Voldemort is scared to die. But he closes his eyes.
And then, before he can lose touch with the grass under the pads of his fingers, the hold eases, fingers unwinding themselves from around Voldemort's throat and retreating away as if they'd been burnt. Gasping for air, Voldemort coughs and inhales, his world spinning with renewed vigor as air flows back into his lungs. Harry doesn't get up, and Voldemort doesn't try to push him off, blinking blearily to clear his vision but then closing his eyes back when the white spots refuse to go away.
"Why?" Voldemort asks amid coughs. His voice comes out ragged. He swallows the blood in his mouth instead of spitting, afraid of turning his head and irritating the forming bruises around his neck.
"It wouldn't do much for me", Harry says quietly, but the rage is there, simmering in the background. "After all, you still have horcruxes left."
Voldemort opens his eyes properly, peering up at Harry's face. His hair is shadowing it, but his eyes glint in the light with a familiar sheen of something that could be described as insanity. Voldemort had grown close with that look, finding that very gleam in his own reflection.
"Of course you knew", Voldemort whispers. He'd all but confirmed it, after all, having had plenty of time to check on all the hidden pieces of his soul.
"It's my job to know everything about you", Harry replies flippantly, as if that isn't a distractingly flattering thing to hear. "You were lucky that I lost all that knowledge so conveniently."
"If you're insinuating that the memory loss was my intention-"
"No", Harry says with an air of frustration that makes Voldemort feel a bit insulted. "No, you're not that smart. In fact, you're very stupid, Tom."
He isn't childish enough to get into that argument.
"Killing Nagini... even if you couldn't, one of your friends could", Voldemort doesn't know why he's attempting to convince Harry to kill him.
Harry frowns at him. Then, slowly, comes an expression of confusion.
"Don't tell me you don't know?" Harry whispers, a bit of laughter escaping into his words as he looks down at Voldemort in complete disbelief, such a expression that Voldemort begins to feel embarrassed about whatever it is Harry thinks he does not know.
"What?" he rasps, a bit of that embarrassment sneaking into his tone.
Harry's mouth twitches and he laughs, but in a short fashion, chipped. He casts a glance toward the stars, as if asking for a higher power to give him strength. Then he reaches around for Voldemort's arm, flopped down uselessly onto the ground, now that he is no longer being strangled. Just like he did once before, Harry moves the arm around until the fingertips are brushing against his forehead, where his infamous scar rests upon his brow.
As soon as they touch, that familiar sensation floods through - Harry's face turns softer, the crease between his brows disappearing. Voldemort draws in a breath, his eyes threatening to roll back from the difference of the physical pain in his body and the mental pleasure.
Harry sighs, heavily. "You can't be that dense", he says, and he almost sounds like he's begging, "What do you think this weird connection is?"
"Some latent effect of the killing curse", Voldemort mumbles as the go-to answer he's always defaulted to, in the case of this rather puzzling question. "Or the prophecy, or any other multitude of things. An effect of... of the universe's determination to tie us together."
Harry laughs again, shaking his head. He closes his eyes for a moment, and Voldemort watches him exhale and inhale in a practiced fashion.
"What?" Voldemort asks again. "Do you mean to say that there is something else?"
Harry opens his eyes and the expression is filled with a kind of warmth Voldemort remembers him having before he left, and the combination of that softness and the now everpresent fire in his gaze is so breathtaking that Voldemort gets caught in it akin to a fish being lured. And then, of course, he speaks, and, as he is tend to do, completely throws Voldemort off course.
"Think", Harry exhales, still a bit of frustration and disbelief lingering in his tone, "Why are we mentally connected in the way we are? Why does a simple touch make this happen? Why is it that the same connection is between Nagini and I? Why can I speak parseltongue?"
Each and every claim could have an explanation. Voldemort's still bleeding nose and swimming head aren't helping with attempting to puzzle Harry's words together. He had assumed that Nagini's involvement was due to her bonds with Voldemort. The parseltongue had always been curious, but Voldemort had assumed that perhaps someone from the Potter line had the necessary genetics and the skill had simply popped up for one reason or another. The connection between Voldemort and Harry was presumably somehow from the scar, from the violent explosion of magic that night when Voldemort first attempted to kill Harry. The killing curse failing in the forest should have been impossible, considering that Voldemort had sidestepped the effects of Lily's original sacrifice, but Voldemort had always thought that perhaps Harry had went down another road in preparation, intending on faking his sacrifice and gaining an element of surprise. These factors were all mysterious and lacked concrete evidence for their source, but Voldemort had never attempted to consider them together as symptoms of a singular cause. He was inclined to dismiss such notion, since it all seemed so random together, unlike anything he'd ever heard of before.
"I can see you're thinking about this really hard", Harry says in a tone that conveys incredible disappointment in his failure to connect the dots. "Let me help you out."
"Diary", Harry says, letting go of Voldemort's hand to begin counting off with his fingers. "Ring, locket, cup, diadem, Nagini", he lists of the objects that once housed Voldemort's soul akin to the most ordinary of items, as if its a set that he's gone through about as many times as making sure you have your wallet and wand when you leave the house. His voice falls off at the end, and he looks down at Voldemort with an expectant expression.
Voldemort is still. And then his heart roars with a thunderous emotion that he fears, with how loud it is, with how it makes his ears redden and his heartbeat suddenly thunder so loudly he fears Harry can hear it, too.
"No."
"Uh-huh."
"I did no such thing."
"Oh, it wasn't intentional, I'm sure."
This time, when Voldemort reaches for Harry's face of his own volition, and to his shock, Harry does not escape his touch. Voldemort's hand is shaking ever so faintly as he brushes his fingertips over Harry's brow. The brief touches of skin tingle, and the sensation travels down his fingers all the way to his toes, like his entire nervous system is suddenly a part of a fireworks show.
"It should be impossible", he mumbles, attempting to comprehend that this man before him is his-
his horcrux.
"The impossible is just something we haven't done yet", Harry replies.
"But the killing curse", Voldemort finds himself arguing if just to find out a little more about Harry, who grows and grows into a mystery far larger than Voldemort could ever have suspected. "It should've destroyed it."
To Voldemort's complete bewilderment, Harry flushes deep red at his words. "That's... that's none of your business", he speaks with a defensive tone - which as a statement is completely wrong, considering that if anything is Voldemort's business, as the subject is a piece of his very own soul. Before Voldemort knows it, Harry has risen off of him and is standing out of his reach. Harry glares down at him, lips pursed.
"It won't be any good beating you up, if you're going to look like a kicked puppy the whole time", Harry avoids meeting Voldemort's eye. Voldemort rises slowly, still feeling rather like all air has escaped his lungs. His nose isn't actively bleeding any longer, but the blood is wet down his chin. He wants nothing more than to touch Harry's scar again, now that he knows why the sensation is so pleasing - what being would not be soothed by reuniting with the last wayward pieces of his soul?
Harry moves, tilting his body away, and every single alarm bell begins to ring at once. Voldemort's hand darts out before he can even register intending to move it, grasping Harry's wrist - both of them exhale at the same time when the contact does it's thing.
"Wait", he rasps. "Just... wait a moment."
Voldemort expects Harry to draw himself away, to demand to be let go, and he's so scared of the thought that it makes him sick. Not because he would have to keep Harry against his will but because he would let him go.
But Harry doesn't do that. Instead, he stops. He turns his head, slowly, until Voldemort can see his eyes again, peeking out cautiously from under his dark hair, which he hasn't cut at all, and is still cascading down to his shoulders in a messy fashion, just begging for someone to run his fingers through it.
"Don't-", Voldemort rasps, unsure of what he's even saying. "Don't. Stay."
But of course, Harry would never just do as Voldemort wishes. He looks shocked for about three seconds, and then a grin dances at his lips: "Ask me nicely."
"Please", Voldemort says so quickly Harry barely has time to finish the last syllable of his sentence. The grin falls and Harry's brows lift as Voldemort does precisely that. "Please, stay."
Harry keeps his word.