Chapter Text
When a bad day comes, it is one Harry should have seen coming.
Every so often, Harry can feel the muted thrum of Voldemort’s frustration and displeasure whenever they’re apart working on their own things, so every time he senses these kinds of emotions, he assumes that Voldemort must be meeting with his Death Eaters, consolidating all their intelligence or assigning them their roles for whatever scheme he has contrived.
Today, however, Voldemort’s anger flares.
It immediately makes Harry double over where he was watering the conservatory plants, and Tierny reacts superbly fast in magically suspending the watering can he just dropped to clutch at his throbbing head.
It’s not the biting sort of anger he feels. No, this anger stabs at him.
He must be royally pissed off, Harry weakly thinks around the juddering pain. Despite how much practice he has put in, Harry cannot shield his mind that well to moderate the severity of the emotions being transmitted to him.
At the very least, since he’s crouched on the floor and therefore almost at eye level with her, he has enough concentration to see Tierny perking her head up and turning it toward a particular direction as though she has a built-in antenna that can pick up an invisible signal from somewhere. She disappears for a brief moment, and then, in the next, she’s back where she was before, but this time, she’s reaching out for him.
Her expression and tone are the grimmest she’s ever had, but she carries out her master’s orders to the bitter end. “Lord Master has summoned Young Master Harry to him. We must go.”
“Wait,” Harry gasps out. “I don’t feel too good—”
When Harry lands wherever Tierny has taken him, he rocks forward unsteadily, and his knees hit the carpeted floor. Groaning loudly, he claps one hand over his mouth, afraid that he’s going to hurl. To Apparate while having the worst migraine imaginable is not an experience he recommends at all.
Tierny stays close beside him with a hand resting gingerly on his shoulder. Her concern for him, rather than being reflected in her eyes or on her face, is conveyed through her body language and in the way her magic seems to be tensely strung up.
“We cannot keep Master waiting,” she tells him, and her stiff tone is due to her clashing desires to obey her master’s command and to take care of her ailing charge. “Please get up, Young Master.”
It’s not wanting to distress Tierny further that infuses Harry with the energy to stagger to his feet. The pain in his head lessens a little as he bumbles through the corridors like a drunkard. Thankfully, he’s led to a room not far from where he was Apparated in.
He can sense him beyond these doors like a powerful magnet, and for the first time since becoming a hostage, Harry is struck with a harsh sense of foreboding.
After inhaling a large gulp of air, Harry shoulders one of the doors open. He shuffles inside the room while Tierny stays out in the corridor.
Voldemort glances over his shoulder at him as he warily makes his approach. The magic pouring out of the older wizard all but drowns the enclosed area in his anger. It has Harry swaying on his feet again. “Ah, there you are, Harry. Right on time. Why don’t you come over here? There’s something I have not had the chance to demonstrate to you until now.”
The rasp of Voldemort’s sinister voice nearly reintroduces Harry to another bout of nausea, but he clenches his jaw tight to stave the feeling off. His green eyes quickly survey the room, which he realizes is a large study with its stately furnishings and curtained windows.
Not far from the desk stands Voldemort, his back ruler straight and his hands folded neatly behind him. He’s looming over someone, a man by the looks of him, who’s hunkered almost completely flat on the floor, his stomach pressed to his thighs the way his forehead is to the floorboards. The man is trembling so badly that Harry swears his image is going double—or maybe that’s just Harry’s vision. Either way is worrisome.
“…What’s going on?” Harry is fearful to ask. “Why do you need me here?”
To speak the truth, Harry has a strong hunch as to why he’s here, and it frightens him. He wants it to be anything but.
“It is as I said—for a demonstration,” Voldemort says, brusque and cold that Harry flinches a little. He really has been spoiled lately, he thinks in dismayed shock. After getting most of their disagreements and cynicism out of the way, Voldemort hasn’t behaved anything less than cordial with him. Until today. “A vital lesson that would be remiss of me to overlook as part of your education.” Those frightening red eyes of his flick back down to the quivering man at his feet. A loathsome sneer decorates his face. “Tell me, Harry, you know what happens to those who disappoint me, don’t you? So then think of what happens when it turns out that disappointment is the worst of them all. Betrayal.”
Harry’s heart convulses, and it hurts so much more than his convulsing stomach. No! he wants to scream.
But Harry’s mouth won’t move, unnerved as he is by this development, so his objection goes unspoken. He watches in horror as Voldemort aims his wand. The man’s whimpering pleas turn into earsplitting howls.
As the man’s body contorts, so does Harry’s mind.
“Would you like to know what Bletchley did, Harry? What he did to betray me, his generous and transcendent lord?” Not waiting for an answer, Voldemort is on the verge of hissing in Parselmouth as he spits his vitriol at the man he has under the Cruciatus. “Apparently, being one of my esteemed followers was too much of a hardship for him to endure, so he sold a couple of my plans to Dumbledore’s Order in exchange for protection. Can you believe it, for a man so devoted to his pureblooded politics that he would go and cast it all aside to beg his enemies for sanctuary? Is that not so, Mr. Bletchley?”
Adding the address of Mister to Bletchley’s name is done out of mockery. The Dark Lord lifts the curse to allow Bletchley a moment to answer, but Bletchley is too overcome with sobs and spasms to do that.
If Harry has to listen to his sobbing for a minute longer, he'll break down into sobs, too.
Or he may literally dissolve into tears when Voldemort declares, “Now it’s your turn, Harry.”
Apart from the hitching gasps that come out of him, Harry’s mouth doesn’t work, hence his lack of response to Voldemort’s command. His limbs are equally useless in their frigid numbness as Voldemort grabs his arm, dragging him into position so that he’s facing Bletchley with Voldemort directly behind him, back to chest.
“Let’s see how far you can get with casting the Cruciatus this time, Harry.”
Voldemort murmurs this against his temple as he slips his yew wand into Harry’s cold, stiff fingers. He then clasps his hand over Harry’s to hold his wand arm steady, pointing it down at Bletchley’s pathetic, misshapen form. This is yet isn’t like all those times Voldemort has personally helped Harry in his spellcasting. It’s more, it’s less. It’s better, it’s worse. The wand he’s being forced to hold purrs at him, but he denies it a single drop of his magic, even though it strains him to gather it all up, to lock it all away.
“Do not falter,” is the severe warning Harry gets. “If you cannot punish him for his treacherous actions, then I will make sure that his death will be a long and arduous affair. He dared to expose you, Harry. Part of the information he sold to the Order included which function I intended to take part in, the ones I would’ve gone to with you. The Order could’ve stolen you from me, and I will not abide that.”
Harry struggles to swallow. His knees are shaking so badly he just wants to fall and never get up again.
“Now, when I count to three, recite the incantation, Harry. One.”
I can’t.
“Two.”
I won’t.
“Three.”
“NO!” The wretched scream that got stuffed down his throat finally bursts out of him with indignant release. Harry flings away his outstretched arm the same time he shoves back against the chest behind him. When Harry can’t get away—for the hand that was latched on to his has moved down to clamp around his elbow—Harry thrashes like a wild animal seized by their throat and screams his refusal to exercise such vile mistreatment even louder. “NO, NO, NO!”
And then tears are running down his face, blurring his vision, as he cries and yells at the man who won’t let him go, each one of his accusations blending into another. “You bastard! How could you force me to— I’m not one of your insane followers. I can’t stand abuse, you know that. You saw my fucking memories, yet why are you— I feel so sick my throat’s going to burn if I—” A harsh inhale through the nose that gets lodged there like glue because of his tears and phlegm. Desperate to breathe, Harry coughs, rough and wet, until his airways open up, yet all his anguish and torment and reproach spill out of him unceasingly. “Bastard. Bastard. Bastard—! That’s what you are. You’re so cruel to everyone, even me! Even when you act like you really do care. I thought you were changing. I thought you were getting better because you— I was wrong, I was stupid. I can’t believe that I— You hurt me, you hurt me, when will you ever stop hurting me—don’t you feel any regret for hurting me? It makes me hate you—I do hate you, so much—”
“ENOUGH!”
That furious bellow shocks Harry enough to silence him, his watery snuffling tapering off as well as he limply sits where he has collapsed onto the floor, and the only reason he hasn’t sagged over completely is due to the hand still attached to his elbow. In minutes, a bruise will bloom around the joint, caused by his mad thrashing when clenched within an unyielding grip.
“Enough,” Voldemort repeats, softer this time but raggedly. Like Harry, his chest is heaving, as though there is a heavy weight his diaphragm needs to push and pull against in order to let him breathe. Because Harry is wilted on the floor, Voldemort’s tall frame is bent over him, eclipsing him in his shadow. Harry tiredly lifts his head to glimpse at the man’s face through the tears in his eyes.
Voldemort looks beaten. He looks distraught. He looks…
Shattered. As much as Harry is.
Where Harry can feel Voldemort’s strongest emotions, Voldemort can feel his.
Are those my emotions he’s feeling, or are those his emotions in response to mine?
Seeing that Harry's rage and misery have bled out of him, Voldemort gently releases him, only to gather him up into his arms, lightening him with a murmured spell. Too drained to protest, Harry closes his eyes and lets his head loll against the other man’s shoulder, deaf to whatever commands Voldemort gives to a summoned Tierny.
Soon enough, Voldemort takes him away. Away from the room with its smashed glass, overturned chairs, displaced books, and slashed up floorboards. Everything had been destroyed in the upheaval that was Harry’s tempestuous magic.
Which is something Harry will never have a memory of.
It’s for the best that he doesn’t.
It may be minutes or hours later when Harry is cognizant of reality again. He’s lying on a bed that’s not his and is tucked under a thick blanket. The bed hangings are drawn to block out the silvery light—moonlight, he thinks fuzzily, not sunlight—that slips past through the windows’ closed curtains.
Disoriented, Harry shifts his limbs, trying to sit up, but from the dimness, a ghostly pale hand lands on his shoulder to urge him back down.
“Rest,” entreats a gentle voice close above him. “Just rest, Harry.”
Harry turns his head on the pillow to squint up at the man lying beside him. His glasses are gone, so Voldemort is a long, vague shape in the darkness. “What happened to that man?” he asks in a hoarse voice.
A sigh tickles a few strands of Harry’s hair by his temple. “For now, he has been moved to a cell. For what awaits him in the future, that will be decided amongst my upper ranks.”
“Oh.” After a moment of deliberation, Harry wriggles over onto his side so that he’s curled toward Voldemort, who adjusts the blanket over him, the upper edge covering Harry’s nose. Underneath his shirt, Harry feels the warmed metal of the protective pendant that Voldemort had given to him resting in the depression between his arm and side. Its presence soothes him a little. He borrows that grain of comfort to speak up again, his whisper muffled beneath the blanket, though audible enough with their proximity to each other on the bed. “Can’t you keep him imprisoned and bind him with vows instead of, you know, killing him? You’ve tortured him enough, haven’t you?”
A pause comes after his tentative suggestion, but he knows Voldemort is considering it, which is more than he could ask for.
“We shall see,” he eventually answers, and though it’s not a promise, it’s nevertheless a minor reassurance, so Harry lets himself succumb to exhaustion once more.
As he sinks into unconsciousness, he can’t be sure if it’s his mind that conjures up the fingers that caress a line up and down his cheek—or the whispered words that go with that touch. “What else about me will you upend with that heart of yours, Harry Potter?”
Everything, Harry would’ve said had he the chance to. Everything beloved about you, I want to bring it all back.
“Oh,” is the quietest exclamation Harry’s ever heard from anyone when he strides into the room with Hedwig on his shoulder. Although, if anyone would have such a hushed reaction of surprise, it would be Theodore Nott, Harry supposes.
“You don’t mind, do you?” Harry asks him. In hindsight, he should’ve asked for permission before bringing Hedwig with him, but he’d been too preoccupied with his dispirited mind to think ahead. It wasn’t even his idea that she was here with him—Hedwig had landed on his shoulder and vigorously nuzzled his face just when Tierny was about to Apparate him to Nott Manor. Since her reliable presence grounded him to an extent, he had let her come along without thinking twice about it, which was Hedwig’s wish in the first place anyway.
“Not at all,” Nott says, and he’s staring at Hedwig admiringly, which eases Harry’s thread of worry. Then, to his surprise, Nott remarks, “She’s very recognizable, you know, your bird. It was easy to spot her whenever I went to the Owlery—though I can’t be the only one at school who recognizes her and knows that she has the nasty habit of biting at strangers.”
That last remark produces a laugh from Harry. “She does! She’s very smart, smarter than me even. Isn’t that right, Hedwig?” He rubs her chin affectionately as she coos proudly in agreement.
Nott gazes at him speculatively for a beat, then cordially offers, “She’s more than welcome here, should you wish to bring her along, Potter.” He then snaps his fingers for a house elf. A perch and a bowl of owl treats are provided for Hedwig. Harry’s owl shoots Nott an appreciative look before she flies over to that perch. She begins to clean her feathers while Harry and Nott sit down in their usual seats to resume Harry’s studies.
During their break for afternoon tea, Harry decides to throw out the question he’s been meaning to ask.
“Nott, would it be alright if I asked you how—how he acts around you and other people when I’m not around?”
This question freezes Nott for a second before he sets down the spoon he was using to stir his sugar-infused tea. “The Dark Lord?” Nott twitches his nose nervously like a rabbit’s, Harry notes. “He’s, well, er, as he usually is.”
Nott seems too apprehensive to elaborate on that, as though he expects Voldemort to immediately appear and Crucio him the second he dares to let slip so much as a backhanded compliment about the man.
So Harry daringly pries answers out of Nott by verbalizing what he can’t. “So…what? He’s cruel? Ruthless? More screwy in the head than he should be?” Nott looks like he wants to faint right out of his seat at that last part, but Harry plows on with his quizzing. “Okay, fine. But can you say for certain if anything about him now seems different than before?”
Nott’s face scrunches up as confusion mixes in with his earlier dread. “Different?” he repeats. “I…am not the best person to ask this, Potter, as I rarely have the chance to meet with the Dark Lord, whether on a personal level or from afar. So if there are any discrepancies to his behavior, I wouldn’t know for certain.”
When he sees the downward twist to Harry’s lips, he hastens to volunteer, “But if I do have to say one thing, it is that the air around the Dark Lord seems…milder when you’re around. More…subdued? No, that’s not it. It’s almost as if he’s more…approachable, if you can believe it.”
Although Nott sounds like he doesn’t quite believe it himself, this sort of viewpoint is precisely what Harry wants to muse over.
Could it really be that Voldemort is only more…agreeable to be around so long as I’m with him? At first, I assumed that our connection acted as an anchor of sorts to stabilize that temper of his, but if going by what Nott says, then… Harry stares at the opposite wall as he thoughtfully rolls his necklace’s pendant between his fingers, and this catches Nott’s notice, his gaze curious and amazed as he scrutinizes Voldemort’s gift, the little gemstones winking at him in the light. Hmm, maybe distance does play a part in this. And maybe exposure, too. Sometimes, I get the feeling that his mood isn’t as volatile just after he leaves me behind at the house, but that stability doesn’t tend to stay in the hours that come later.
Harry sags back into his chair with a huff, letting his pendant bounce back to its spot against his breastbone.
Does this mean… I have to constantly stay beside him if I want to curb those psychotic tendencies of his? This all has to do with the soul piece that I’m carrying for him, right? From what I’ve learned, the more parts you’re missing from your soul, the more deranged you’ll become, and that’s what’s happened to Voldemort. But he won’t take the soul piece that I have back because he wants to keep me as his horcrux. And that’s not even mentioning his other horcruxes, whatever and wherever they are… How would I even…?
A half-formed idea floats about in his mind, but the question is, could Harry do it when it relies far too heavily on Harry’s worth to Voldemort? He needs a better gauge of his relationship with the man…
“—you listening? Potter. Pot-ter. Harry!”
“Huh?” Harry snaps his head up and blinks at Nott. “Sorry, did you say something?”
Nott sighs, though he’s not as vexed as Harry assumes he is. “I was just saying that you should hurry and finish your tea since we still have your Herbology lesson next.” He cocks a brow at him. “Unless you have another matter to attend to…?”
“Oh!” Harry waves his hands as he quickly reassures the other boy. “No, no, no, I’m good. I can continue, it’s fine.” He cracks a sheepish smile. “Sorry about that.”
Nott eyes him skeptically. “If you say so.”
Harry hurries to drink his tea and eat a sponge cake or two before Nott gets the idea to probe him about his weird preoccupation.
Either out of boldness or impulsiveness or just the gnawing need to know, Voldemort does not leave the elephant in the room alone when he appears within the study’s doorway, his posture rigid and still as he states without inflection, “You are uncomfortable with me.”
Harry immediately lowers his quill and swivels around in his chair, laying his bent arm atop the back of it. He tries to keep his own tension from tightening his expression and shoulders, but it’s hard to when it’s invoked by Voldemort’s.
This is the first time Harry has seen him since he woke alone in the man’s bed. Voldemort has avoided him at mealtimes, though Harry could vaguely sense him somewhere in the villa via his magic. Otherwise, there would be emptiness if Voldemort had left the property altogether.
Their link had been shut down—on Voldemort’s end as he was the only one between the two of them who could do that.
Aiming for placidness, Harry corrects the older wizard. “Awkward, not uncomfortable.”
Had they not shared a bed together just fine the night before? Then again, Harry had been too emotionally wrung out to concentrate on anything else, and the combined effects of the quiet mood, the soft bedding, and the protective presence of the man who lay beside him that night had worked well to placate him.
But none of that tranquility had carried beyond the morning after, hence the questions and worries and reflections that have been pestering Harry since. And as they should be because, God, Harry’s been an absolute idiot. Just because Voldemort doesn’t torture him, that doesn’t mean he isn’t torturing others whenever he leaves the peaceful confines of their shared living space. Harry’s the one with immunity here, not his friends, not his friends’ families, and especially not those who don’t match the script of Voldemort’s making. All those Muggles and Muggleborns and Squibs and blood traitors out there are currently terrified out of their minds because they’re the targets of Voldemort’s crusade, the ones who are to be policed or disposed of should Voldemort win the war.
When all these realizations had crashed down on Harry… The guilt he had for being so carefree and spoiled and small-minded had burrowed deep into his conscience; it would take more than a few shovels and several days to dig it all out.
But, at present, he has to deal with this fracture between him and Voldemort, and how it will be resolved is what he’s been fretting about—that is to say, if they resolve it rather than take two steps back.
“Then, did you mean what you said that day?” Voldemort asks, his voice still hollow. “That you hate me?”
There’s a lump in Harry’s throat as he recalls how he had irrationally said those hurtful words to Voldemort before the other man had managed to cut through his meteoric outburst. Did Voldemort deserve that? Many would say, yes, he does. But does Harry think so?
He’s not so sure anymore.
“It’s—it’s not you that I hate,” he stutters, and such a pronouncement is unbelievable to his ears in contrast to how his heart throbs with truth, “but rather your—preference for violence and oppression. For war. That’s what I hate.”
Sighing, Harry drops his gaze and doesn’t realize it when his hand goes for his necklace, the engravings on the sides leaving little imprints against his skin as he clutches it tightly.
“I can’t stomach any of the methods you use to punish your followers,” he mumbles to the floor. “It’s inhumane and not something that should be permitted in any government. In any household.”
“Yet, without such severe measures, my followers will think they can get off lightly for their errors,” argues Voldemort, “and I do not countenance insubordination in any form.”
It pains him to admit this, but Harry does understand where Voldemort is coming from by saying this. For all that the Death Eaters embody highbrow traditions and ethics, they’re also cheaters and deceivers who presume they’re above the law and can discard morals whenever it suits them, thus Voldemort’s decision to resort to extreme modes of viciousness when punishing them.
But, regardless of how effective these punitive methods are, it’s wrong to use brute force and fear to control people, even more so when threats are issued toward the innocent for the perceived fault of one.
“So where does this leave us?” Harry whispers, more to himself than to Voldemort. He’s leaning sideways against the back of his chair now, needing it to support him. The paths ahead of him are all dark and twisted and promise nothing but suffering. Unless— “I can’t agree with your cause. I can’t tolerate your plans for this country. And I can’t live knowing that you corrupted your own soul to have a life that would never end.”
His next words are merely a breath.
“That you won’t let go of my life when dying is the only way for me to see all the people I’ve lost—the ones you took from me. And yet I—”
Feeling choked up, Harry presses his hands over his mouth, his head bowed so that he’s hunched low over his lap. If his voice is too muffled to be heard, he can’t be bothered by it right now, too overwhelmed by his emotions.
“I hope for you, Voldemort,” he cries. “I hope so much for you. You, the man who was once Tom Marvolo Riddle.” His voice cracks as tears begin to wet his face. “I would’ve done anything to save you had I known you earlier.”
Across the room, Harry hears a sharp intake of breath.
Then there are hurried footsteps alongside the swoosh of robes. There are cold, large hands enclosing over Harry’s to pull them away from his face, to tug him to his feet.
The soft, bitten back sob that comes from Harry is smothered in the chest he’s burying his face into. Arms wrap around him to hold him close, to offer him comfort that words can’t provide.
“Tell me,” says the rough voice by his ear. “Tell me what I can do to make you feel better. Whatever you can think of to take this pain away, tell me.”
“You’ve seen most of my past,” he says after a long moment to gather himself, and the arms around him squeeze tighter. “Do you think…you could let me see yours? I want to see how Tom Riddle became you. I want to see why you made all those decisions that brought you to this path of yours. You and I both know that, even if I really had the choice, I would never willingly join your cause. But I also can’t ignore how deeply entangled we are with one another. So I want to understand you, Voldemort. Inside and out. Show me how everything came to be, through your own eyes.”
Harry swallows, then forces himself to say the last of his requests. He closes his eyes against Voldemort’s chest. He’s so nervous it feels like his heart will take flight any second now.
“And it may be too much for me to hope…that you’ll be persuaded to listen to me if I make suggestions on how you should govern your followers or whoever falls under your thumb in the future, but I want you to consider that at least.” Shy and wary, Harry peeks up at the man holding him, the fall of his fringe partially hiding his eyes. “Would that…be alright with you?”
Ruby red eyes are fixed on him with arresting force. Harry shivers a little, and one of the arms at his back eases off and away so that Voldemort can rub the back of his fingers below Harry’s eye, wiping away the wet stain of tears with a thumb.
“Yes, if this is what it takes, then—yes, I can grant those memories to you, my dear. By Pensieve, I presume.”
Harry coughs out a laugh, entertained and appalled by the alternative option to that. “Oh, Godric—it better be by Pensieve because then you’re asking for it if you want to see how shabby I am at mind arts.” A frown falls on his lips, and the hand by his cheek shifts incrementally to trace that frown with a delicate fingertip. “Don’t ever let me use Legilimency on you, I don’t want to hurt you. And don’t bother teaching me it either—I’ll just fail on purpose since I know I’m not made for it.”
A faint smirk lifts the solemnity from Voldemort’s features. “Duly noted.”
Dazed by what he has accomplished, Harry lets himself be embraced longer. In truth, he doesn’t want to break this moment so soon, so he clings back just as much, pressing his ear against the spot where Voldemort’s heart is. He can hear the strong and quickened beating of that all too indispensable organ.
Have faith in me, he begs to it, fall for me.
Feel what I feel, please.