Regrets
Voldemort looked up when he felt the wards around their wing ping. Someone not living in the wing, someone not Harry, Chaos or himself, had just run through the wards, and it was the middle of the night. As far as he knew, everyone but himself was asleep. He was already standing by his desk, wand in hand, when there was a hurried rap on the door and Astoria did not even wait for a command to enter before opening the door.
“My Lord! Chaos is tearing down the wards around the Manor!” Astoria hurriedly bowed and then got out of his way, so as to let him out in the hallway and to Chaos’ door. “She is not supposed to be able to reach them from her rooms! I felt something similar in the past weeks, but it was just a brush, I decided that I had to be wrong, but now!” Her voice became shrill before she managed to gather herself again.
Even Voldemort, who only held the wards around their wing, could feel the pressure the Manor’s main wards were under. He did not blame her for her distress. If the Manor’s wards fell, the fact that anyone who would want to, could get in, would be a secondary problem. Unravelling wards, even if done by a Master, which, granted, Chaos undoubtedly was, was highly dangerous and could easily end in a ward cascade that killed and destroyed everyone and everything in its vicinity. That anyone in the Manor could survive such an occurrence was extremely doubtful.
“Evacuate everyone, Astoria, including the elves. I will take care of Chaos and Harry.“
It was just a precaution, because if anything should happen, Chaos would hate herself if she hurt Zinnia, and Zinnia needed her parents.
“Yes, my Lord!” She didn’t run away. She summoned the elf Prim and had the elf pop them away.
Voldemort didn’t bother knocking on the door to Chaos’ suite. He opened it and proceeded to her bedroom door, which he also opened. There were no wards to try to keep him out of her rooms. As far as he knew, there hadn’t been such wards on her rooms for months. Chaos had slept in the same room as him countless times by now and was no more suspicious towards him than Harry was, unless she had a bad day, but on bad days all bets were off, for both her and Harry.
He knew what he would find in Chaos’ bedroom. He had not known that she would ever be able to damage the wards in her sleep, but he knew he would find her asleep. Asleep and fighting a nightmare with all her considerable might.
It had taken Voldemort less than two weeks to regret his decision to go through with the so-called God Maker Ritual at Yule. Not because the ritual failed in any way, shape or form, because it had not. He was now a shapechanger and capable of changing his form into seven different shapes. So far, he had only chosen three shapes.
The first was his most human appearance, and he was thus able to hold it indefinitely without any problems, finally. There was no longer any need for any glamours. He had also chosen his most snakelike appearance, because somehow, for some reason and with profound irony, Harry was now deeply attached to that appearance. It had happened because of their mating, he knew that, he understood that, but where Harry before had only felt fear and revulsion, where distress had been his only response, he was now positively clingy the moment he saw Voldemort in that shape. As clingy as he most often was a Naga. One theory they had discussed was that it was that shape Voldemort had had when the two of them had mated, and since no part of Harry actually was human anymore, even when he looked human, they theorised that shapechangers recognised someone as their mate, no matter what shape they themselves were in. And while Voldemort could get Harry to become needy no matter either of their shapes, Voldemort in his most serpentine form was the shape Harry had been mated to, and his hindbrain never forgot that. Harry wasn’t even bothered by that fact and Voldemort found it no less pleasing now, when it happened more often, to have Harry cling to him and beg him for attention. Not that Harry ever had to beg much, not truly. Voldemort was far too pleased, and far too fascinated, to not give Harry all the attention he wanted.
The last of the three shapes Voldemort so far had chosen was, of course, his Naga shape. He was bigger by far than Harry was as a Naga, not because he was a dominant Naga, but because while he had starved in his childhood and youth, Harry had had it far worse. Even if Harry had healed a lot in the past almost two years, he was still small, still skinny, for a grown man. Voldemort was simply taller, broader, bigger, and he was not used to trying to be small, the way Harry instinctively was, even still. So, his Naga shape took the space Voldemort was used to taking, his scales were a beautiful glossy black and red, his black hair was long and lustrous, his red eyes big and his tail was half again as long as Harry’s. And, not surprisingly, less than half a meter longer than Chaos’, because of course she too had a Naga shape, she had just omitted telling him until he had shown her his Naga shape. He adored spending time in his Naga shape, no matter what he did, but especially when he was with Harry. As long as Harry had the potion that made it impossible for him to get pregnant as a Naga, he very happily submitted to all of Voldemort’s attentions.
No, the reason he had begun to regret the ritual so soon after he had gone through with it was not because of the impact the ritual had on him personally, but because of what had happened to Harry’s slowly healing mental health, and to Chaos’, too. They had all known it would be hard, but both Harry and Chaos had agreed to go through with it. They had argued that they wouldn’t have worked on making the ritual safe nor given it to him as a gift, if they didn’t plan to help him go through it. He had acquiesced, as he had genuinely wanted it, but the price had been high. Now it seemed that it truly had been too high.
Both Harry and Chaos had been upset right after the successful ritual. Not so much because the ritual had been painful to Voldemort himself, though Harry had been vehemently casting diagnostic charms on him as soon as he was able to control his tears and breathing. No, doing the ritual again had forced the traumatic experience of their own rituals to the forefront. The rituals that had been anything but safe. The rituals that had almost cost them their lives. The rituals that each had done in turn, endured in turn, while watching the person that mattered most to them in the whole world scream and thrash in the ritual circle. Voldemort had experienced pain during the ritual, true, quite a lot of it, but not the life destroying, mind-bending pain that Harry had told him about.
It had taken Voldemort less than a week to begin to suspect that the ritual had made Harry’s nightmares worse. Two weeks to understand that it was escalating, and he had begun to regret the entire endeavour. Now, at the end of March, he regretted it all, not only because of Harry’s pain, but also because of Chaos’. The bags under her eyes, the trembling of her fingers, her new, or resurfaced according to her, inability to keep her temper in check, even towards Zinnia. Which had led to Chaos’ keeping her distance so as to not hurt the girl, which in turn had hurt them both.
It was strangely disturbing seeing all that and knowing that it was directly because of him, not because of what he had done or ordered done in the war, but in peacetime. Because of something that could have been, should have been, avoided. They could have sworn in some other people, seven would have been a solid, safe, number, and the ritual would have been done safely, without this pain for Harry and Chaos. No matter what happened, the two of them would never again see that ritual done. He would make sure of it.
To absolutely no surprise from Voldemort, he found Chaos’ screaming silently on her bed. Magic swirling and crashing around her, the ceiling above her cracking and splintering, the wards she had set around her room already in tatters and Voldemort’s own wards over their wing pierced in several places in such a way that he had not noticed it. Her magic heaving and pushing at the Manor’s main wards, despite the fact that, as Astoria had said, she shouldn’t even be able to touch them in this room. Not like this.
Voldemort did only hesitate for a moment before he lifted his wand, cancelled her silencing spell and sent a deluge of water down on the woman in the bed. Better make sure she was truly awake, all at once.
Chaos sat up with a scream, sopping wet and angry. Her gaze, one soft brown eye and one black eye with raging red flames, landed on him. He only looked up, at the cracked ceiling. Chaos followed his gaze and swore, but made no move to remove herself from the situation, even as a part of the ceiling fell down only a meter from her bed.
Voldemort gave a sigh and summoned her night clothes, with her in them. She flailed and swore some more, but made no move to attack him in any way, just grumbled tiredly as he dried her off while herding her out of the room. When both of them were safely outside of her suite, he did his best to prop up the ceiling and walls with some spells and continued to herd her into his own suite, almost directly across from hers. There he used a spell to switch out her partly destroyed nightclothes with one of the few silk shirts he owned, one that reached her thighs, and then he steered her through his rooms and into Harry’s suite where he ushered her into bed beside Harry.
As soon as she laid down, Harry looked up, mumbled something unintelligible and did his best to curl around her form. Chaos looked at Voldemort, her face pale and drawn, with eyes decades older than her actual age. He highly doubted that she would sleep more tonight, not without help, and she had already taken Dreamless Sleep three nights in a row in a desperate attempt at getting enough rest. He knew that because he at the very least could keep track of both Harry’s and her potion use, as it was indirectly his fault that both now used more than they had in months. It was strange to feel like he owed anyone anything, and he highly doubted that he would have felt such for anyone but his husband and that husband’s closest friend, but still … It was unnerving. Now, nothing but that strong of a potion could force her to sleep. But he might be able to get her to sleep another way.
He summoned a chair and the book they were reading at the moment, and held up the book in a silent question. Chaos looked at him for a long moment before giving a nod. He sat down, but before he began to read, he summoned Dobby and told the elf that it was safe and to get everyone back on the property.
It took Chaos over an hour to fall asleep, even if she usually, before the ritual, went into a slumber quite fast, if he read to them late at night, or if she was exhausted. He made sure that both were asleep and put up some wards to both strengthen the security in the room, in case of more nightmares, and a spell to signal him if either of them woke. It was better to know as soon as possible.
He was not at all surprised to find Astoria in the wardroom in the basement. She walked around the biggest warding stone, the one who kept the main ward of the property and the one which held the wards Chaos’ had threatened.
“It should not have been possible, my Lord,” she said without looking up at him when he entered. “It simply should not have been possible! One thing would have been an attack on the wards from the outside, but what she did should only have been possible from this very room!” She raked her hands through her long, loose hair.
“I have left it to Harry to repair the actual room, he is so much better at such spells than I,” Voldemort said and drew his wand, “but I will help you set the wards right and of course donate magic if the wards need it to repair themselves, or just to recharge them.”
Astoria gave a heavy sigh. “Thank you, my Lord.”
They worked in silence. The harm to the wards had not come close to critical levels, but the fact that there shouldn’t have been any harm at all was disturbing.
During the next few weeks Voldemort encouraged Harry and Chaos to sleep in the same bed as often as possible. They both slept better that way. He went so far as to suggest that it would be easier to contain any damage that might occur during nightmares if they did so. He insisted on taking several trips to the valley in Argentina with them, in addition to a couple of day trips for just the two of them. Somehow, his shot in the dark plan, in addition to time and the psychiatrist they both went to, helped them. It helped so much that at Beltane both of them were almost back to what they had been before Yule. It only made him even more certain that he was correct in his decision to never let them see the God Maker Ritual done again. And even more importantly, all those who had told him that Harry and Chaos were a package deal had been truthful. He had never truly considered getting between them, as he early on had seen that Harry appreciated, probably loved, the woman, and that he got better, his mind easier, with her around. Now Voldemort decided that whatever happened in the future, he would make sure the two of them never got separated for long, if he at all could help it.