A cooling vacation

All day, everyday for the past weeks, it had been a series of fine days, culminating in an extremely fine day when the sun shone bright. Lounging in the meadow, lazing around in the garden behind the manor, unkempt like her hair, Harry basked in the sweet breeze. The scent of soil and dried bark blared up like a forest fire. 

No rain nor cloud in sight. Above her, it was infinite. A blank of blues and dusty gold. 

Voldemort was coping up in the house, away from the glares of the sky, away from her sight but she had an inkling feeling that he kept a good close eye on her from his makeshift office of tiny desks and creaky old wooden chairs. 

In the back of her head, Harry spied wet inks and parchment upon parchment of records. An ocean worth of never ending work welcomed him. 

But when it was an ocean, there must be an end somewhere. So Harry adjusted her feet on the ground, leaving him to do whatever he pleased, providing a constant stream of songs from her mind to his so he wouldn’t get bored. She hoped they shared the same music taste, not wanting to find out another continent of his preference. Voldemort was awfully sassy the last time she caught him singing in the shower, out of tune and maybe slightly out of his mind. Having sworn up and down that she was in the dark, he slammed the shower curtain shut, grumbling about privacy. 

A jolt ran through her hand and Harry slipped in again. 

Blotchy ink stains and black sleeves, he cursed loudly in the comfort of his solitude. What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt as Harry slinked into the floor, scurried to hide from the echo of his temper. 

Maybe that was why Voldemort could avoid the boredom of immortality. The stress and the workload and the deadlines were enough to keep him active. One of the downsides of living forever was that it was incredibly dreadful as you ran out of things to do. She could only wish he took up competitive baking. Or mastering cheese-making, perhaps. So Harry could reap the benefits and get fat from his food. It was a fine lifestyle and Voldemort had the great look of a househusband. 

Pity that he was a workaholic instead, she turned to lie on her stomach, feet waving back and forth, shrinking inside the quilt when grassy reeds tickled her soles. 

Harry pinned a note to her mental to-do list, feeling the need to show her appreciation to Voldemort for the lack of bugs and insects in his spare time, not hers because Harry was unemployed and enjoying life after quitting the Auror office. He had employed a good measure of bug repellent with herbs and mints. 

Summer was an oversized cat curling up on her stomach, purring and kneading from the inside of her abdomen. It was the kind of summer where nothing ever happened. 

Or not. 

She pushed her sunglasses up, squinting her eyes at the charmed window panels from the highest tower. Creep, she mouthed, exaggerating her expression, from the explosive consonant to the ridge, to the middle vowel and ending with a p that sounded more like a b. 

A quick visit to the beach every few days. Kicking Voldemort off the bed when he sneaked in after midnight with hands smelled of leather and old papers. A simple meal delivered at their porch. Dragging him to the nearby town’s bakery because she was craving for its famous chocolate eclairs. It couldn’t be compared to home with Mrs. Weasley’s secret ingredient of love but she adored it all the same. 

Safe to say, when Harry pressed a kiss to his cheek for her gratitude, Voldemort became boneless in his chair, smug as the cat that caught a canary. 

“My pleasure.” He smirked in triumph, eyes closed in bliss. A hand lightly stroked up and down her spine and suddenly, something in Harry faltered. Something about being the object of desire. Something about the object. And the desire at the same time. 

It wasn’t about Voldemort anymore. 

No breath in and no breath out. She parted her lips, sucking in a hushed gasp. 

Having noticed the fluctuating shift in her demeanour, coming and going quick as a wave, so faint and subtle that he might not have caught it at a second glance, Voldemort ducked, head bumped with her so they could be at the same height, on the same stance. Hair mingled, both dirty brown and red under spots of sunlight, he peered into her eyes as if looking into a dark dried-up well, not knowing what to expect. So dark he could glimpse at the blinking stars from its bottom. They dilated when he stared for too long, blurring out like oil paints. 

Through her eyes, the world seemed brighter, more gentle, and kind. Voldemort raised his hand, fingers running over the soft slope of her jaw, brushing away the stray hairs fallen from her plaids. Goosebumps rose along his touch on her skin. 

Colours saturated and swirled with the wind in the sky. 

Summer that year had been a world away from the summer of his youth. 

The starving starving summer of being 16 and hunger stretched over his bones, the skin pulled tight with anguish. Voice lowered, softer, almost as a caress over the skin on her lips, he inquired. “Is something not fit to your taste? Something wrong?”

Pressing her frown to his temple, Harry murmured. “Nothing, I feel sick.”

“Is it the sweets?” Harry could spot the ‘I told you so’ behind his question as Voldemort followed the rim of the sweet tea with his finger, finely shaped nail and pushed-back cubicle. 

One hand barricading her from the treats, the other around her waist, pulling her close, fingers laced as if threads in a tapestry, he shoved his thigh under both of hers and kept Harry there, fuming in the shade. Head on his shoulder, she composed herself, cupping her palm to gather the fragmented thoughts, glittering like a mirror. 

“Probably not.” Absolutely not, Harry occluded her mind, tired of his prodding curiosity. 

“Should we retire for the day?” Nosing at her cheek, lips measuring how many kisses it took him to reach from her earlobe to her chin and up her mouth, Voldemort suggested with a teasing voice. He was saving the butt of the joke for her. “We have been soaking up the sun the whole morning, I doubt your immune system would be pleased upon returning to England now.”

“Don’t mention it. I dread going back there.” The Mediterranean sun had spoiled her rotten, transforming silver into gold. It was alchemy at its best, giving Harry a flush of life. The dark days were over. Least until summer ended. 

“Maybe we could relocate to the continent after my eventual retirement and you can happily start your much desired hermit phase."

"Sounds nice.” And Harry was giddy to think of not being bothered by the press, too giddy sketching up a vague outline of their future to remember what she was upsetted about. “We could travel around.” She went on and on, listing out things she wanted to do and things Voldemort hadn’t tried yet. On the contrary of expectation, he hadn’t had a lot of experience outside of his foray into Dark Arts in his youth, too engrossed into books and good cafes to explore other parts of life. He hadn’t learnt how to make cheese yet nor visited Italy with the aim to learn about the history of the Medici, one of the unexpected partners of the old Black family. Harry was pretty sure their existing descendents were mostly magical while some married out of the family, taking up other names and rarely ever meeting the main branch. 

There was so much to do in this world, the world she could live with him under a roof, stay in bed, and wait for him to come back like the sleep he shooed away with a heated kiss in the dark of the night. With a pleased sigh, Harry accepted this little life. 

“Home?” More of an announcement than a question, Voldemort enthusiastically fished for his wallet in her tote bag, poking her cheek, stealing a whiff of cream and sugar. He couldn’t wait to fuck off and be an absolute couch potato, too old for this. The leathery scent of his wallet diminished under the sun. Harry fought against the urge to smile, the muscle on her face twitched to see him like that, appearing goofy despite his brooding features. 

It hurt to refrain from feeling happiness. “Yeah, home. And I want steak for dinner.”

Pulling back from the peck he was about to curse her with, Voldemort’s eyebrows shot up, the creases of his forehead darkened. “I have a feeling you are hungry again.” 

In the middle of collecting their possessions into her bag, Harry halted, shooting a piercing look. Words were unnecessary accessories by now. He knew her intimately enough to understand why she didn’t like having anyone touching her toe nails. Images of a bloody foot still haunted Harry to this day, a crooked nail on one toe. 

“What can I say? I have a big appetite.” 

Always hungry for more, always wanting the feeling of being a whole human.

Voldemort barked out a laugh, a rumble of warmth and pride, shaking his head as if he should have known better. A few Euro bills under her tea cup and he helped Harry with her trist, plucking the bag off her shoulder. They walked side by side, left foot grazing right. Made to be a pair. Made of the same whole halves. Harry made him the same way he made her. Not that Voldemort made her and it was just it. And she didn’t feel like a limb severed from him with a rusty butter knife. 

Their joined shadows lumped on the dark grey pavement, one tall mountain and a smaller slope, footsteps fell into a rhythm. When he squeezed her hand, so tight that not even atoms could get in between, Harry was convinced that they were the same entity splitted in pieces or else the gods above couldn’t stand a chance. 

At the end of the cobblestone road, the edge of the town, with a bridge crossing a particular lazy stream, bare pebbled painted dark at the bottom, Harry stopped in her tracks. 

Hands clasped, Voldemort reeled back. He wasn’t going anywhere soon. Not without Harry. 

Doubts came back in a battalion in her head, smashing against her cranium. 

Looking back and forth between the road and Harry, he wondered what had given her such a sickly green complexion. It wasn’t the food, he assumed. Nor the weather, Voldemort tilted his head back, glaring at the sun, tasting the wind on the tip of his tongue that peeked through thin lips. Nonetheless, he conjured up a sunshade, dead sure that Harry’s health was better than him with her occasional exercises. He took a step closer, smoothing his hand from her palm up along her forearm and settled on the elbow, thumb on the pit of it. 

“Do you want to rest your legs?” Glancing down her chunky sneakers, the ones he was never approved of but begrudgingly accepted due to its comfort, he nudged the side with his foot, careful not to soil the pristine white design. “I know a great place.”

“Not a cafe?”

“You don’t like cafes anymore?”

“My bum is sick of sitting on metal chairs.” Heels already halfway turning, he coughed into his fist, sparing a glance in reply to the looks from the bypasser on the street. 

By the river, Harry spayed out, not dissimilar to the blanket under her, the soft valleys cradled her body. Summer heat surged from the soil, seeping through the blanket he summoned with a wave of wand. She sighed and sunk into the earth. It took Harry back to Hogwarts, near the Black lake with the playful giant Squid. The banks were welcoming after exams and her little friend group was there. A bushy haired and cute bunny teeth girl. One gangly-limb boy. A slightly chubby timid other Chosen One. One fiery red hair with a temper to match sister. And an unexpectedly funny girl with hair brighter than the purest sunlight. Harry missed her old life even if Voldemort was a nightmare then and not a husband. 

Eyes shielded from the harsh daylight that trickled through branches by her forearms, Voldemort shuffled from her left, ironed trousers brought along a sun-dried scent. He dropped on the ground beside her, blanket ruffled and her contemplations too. Laying on his side, an arm sneaked under her neck and the other over her waist. 

The gravity of his desire urged to have Harry close by. 

Like animals seeking comfort from companionship. The primal need to have flesh flushed with flesh, bodily contact in replacement for the closeness between souls. To be one again. Not in that way. No. 

Voldemort ranked his fingers through her hair, unknotting the kinks in her curls, having half a mind to catch how the light dances between her hair. The auburn undertone burnt a bright red instead of the good ol’ brown like his. His lips moulded to the shape of a kiss on her head, inhaling her natural scent, taking in a lung-full of something akin to sunlight and love. Harry’s complexion was all over the place. Sometimes, it was brighter than the stars, the other days, it was deep and dark as if in her, an entire ocean existed. Perhaps she was a mystery even in all things mundane. It seemed right. 

“Ask me again the question you have.” Voldemort was the deer that stepped on a twig, breaking the placidity in the quiet forest. Life ceased to breathe in anticipation. 

“Huh?” Cracking an eye open, Harry broke out of her trance. 

“What you meant to ask.” He kicked off his shoes, sock tugged off and shoved in there, they joined Harry’s at the side of the blanket. Hands wiping on the outer seams of his trouser, they resumed their post on her, cupping the curve and filling out the flesh. They fitted together like pieces of a puzzle. 

Muttering, more to herself than to him, Harry blinked rapidly, eyelashes quivering as if wings of a skittish dove. How he loved her. “Forget it, it’s silly.”

“I don’t mind.” That must have been the most attractive thing a man could say to her. 

“It’s just-” Teeth worrying her bottom lip, a raging blush dusted her cheeks, she hid in the dip between his shoulder and chest, warm breaths heaved wetly. The point of her nose traced the overlapped fabrics and Voldemort unbuttoned his collar, it seemed hotter than normal. Must be global warming or whatever the Muggles were losing their heads over on the news. Their Prime Minister even mentioned it to the Wizards’ representatives in the Queen’s Palace, telling them the god awful reports on trade’s activities and its consequences. He tried to wrap his head around the whole concept but found it to be ridiculous that Muggles were willing to destroy their living habitats for economical benefits.

Going back to the problem at hand, he looked down, getting a face full of hair instead of soft skin, and scowled. 

“You know that feeling when life doesn’t feel real?”

“I was a warth for 13 years, what do you think?” He complained, the mere thought of the absolute hellscape doused him in a cold flush of fresh dread. 

“I think I shouldn’t have this life. Like there was another one that I’ve escaped. My original world.” Her voice was water in a stream, the tune and sound of it hitting stone and pebbles in its way turned a beat sadder. 

No longer cheerful. 

“My otherworldly wife!” Voldemort remarked, sending fireworks and sparks into the air. It was meant to be a joke to lighten up the mood but he cut it out when she unhinged her jaw and bit his cheek. He sobered up, a finger pried her puppy teeth away from his face with a grimace, rubbing his wound. 

“Not that I dislike this one or it’s bad but,” Harry faked her nonchalant by playing with the grass, plucking them up from the earth then plaiding them. Her voice came a tad bit smaller, as if not quite sure of what she was speaking but the feeling became overwhelming in her head. “Sometimes I wonder if there’s other choices out there I could’ve taken. The correct options.”

“You could choose to go on with the war, which resulted in more mindless unnecessary bloodshed for the magical communities. You could play the political cards and assassinate me on a good occasion.” He added with a humorous quip. “Not that I would actually die.”

Harry spent a few moments in the world where she could kill, teeth and canines bared in blood. She shuddered, limbs withdrawing to fit into his body. 

“Or, maybe-” Voldemort parsed his words, counting the knuckles on his finger. “If you use that cunning streak which I know you have and let someone else be the scapegoat. Least let the adult be the adult.” Harry let out a ringing slew of laughter, it went out and out and out of her system until she was shaking apart in his arms. Not being a martyr seemed unlikely. It wasn’t a choice she considered before. It might have been that if it wasn’t Harry the scapegoat then why be the Chosen One? Why did her parents have to die just for another to bear the weight of the worlds? It was wrong even with all the thoughts in her head. 

“No.” She shook her head vehemently, set on being the hero of the day.

“No?” He hummed, voice took a higher tune, a question he reserved for another better day. “Well you can still run for the hills and never look back.”

“No divorces?” 

A strum of distaste flared up in her head, reverberating from his side. The bridge between their minds cut short with an axe made of anger. “I would surely fight against it.” Voldemort pinched her side, it sickened him to his core. 

“Why?” 

“Because,” Again with the dramatic pause, she rolled her eyes, preparing herself for the absurdity. “Divorces are finalised by institutions while if you ever run off to Merlins knows where, I would simply-oof.” Harry crawled her way up his body and laid over his torso, thighs entangled with thighs, hair set loose in waves down his pectorals. “-find you and drag you back kicking and screaming.”

A lost rib returned, Voldemort welcomed her back, using his spare jacket as a pillow. 

“Don’t I have a say?” Head on his heart, hand in his chest, playing with the heartstrings there like a lyre, Harry sighed at the proximity of warmth. 

“Like I said, you can scream about it if you want.”

“Creep.”

“You married me willingly.” He recycled her words the other day, feeling like justice served. 

“Under circumstances that proved it was the only peaceful and viable option.”

“Willingly.” He repeated like a parrot with his nose up the fucking sky with how unreasonably pleased he had been. “But if you aren’t satisfied with our lives in general, you are welcome to take a break and see where it leads us to.”

“Still no divorces?” Harry poked at his sore spot, wanting to know if the big bad wolf would bite back. 

“If you keep mentioning that curse, I will get ideas.” With a grunt, he went back on petting her hair, still on the fence about Legilimens her brain to scout out which particular moment that led to Harry thinking annulment was on the table for them. Spelling the puppy teeth indents on his skin away, the stray rhythm of his heart resumed its song when he was reminded of the foundation of their marriage. Annulment meant war. War meant death. And death was ugly. Voldemort was grateful that Harry had great personal taste. “And it won’t be great.”

“I’m fine with this.” Heart hammering in her chest, she rushed it out at the caress of his magic, its tendrils wrapped loosely around her body, faintly but enough to send the warning. “It’s just that my thoughts have been all over the place and frankly, I’m a little worried.”

In reply, the hazy calming mist inched closer, enough to let her know that her panic was bleeding over his but subdued so she could collect the pieces of herself. 

“I miss my old world.” Their world was a kaleidoscope of red and brown when she closed her eyes, the fragments of sight flashed under her lids. Head lolled back as if lured into a dream, Harry clasped her hand over his, drawing circles round and round the knuckle on his ring finger. “But I forgot what it’s like when I wake up in the morning.” 

“Are we together in the other world?” He asked mutedly. 

Magic gripped tightly at her ankle, as if afraid that she would disappear into thin air. Harry must have imagined claws because it soon took shape, the needle points dragged white streaks down her calves. 

Voldemort was willing to be whatever she wanted just so Harry would stay. “I doubt I can get away from you.”

His magic had taken her apart and put her back right in place. “Hurtful.” The pressure on her leg dissipated and the wind filled in the post, rising again at the tenor of his word. Their world darkened when the cloud rolled by the hills, over the plaine and the meadow, lumping over streams of a river and hiding the sun. It would be an absolutely down pour later as she tasted a certain tangy scent of tree sap and earthly soil. 

“There’s still time.”

Having read the sliver of alertness shooting through her vein like the cleanest fear, Voldemort carved a block of his flesh for Harry to settle in, back bowed, feet pushing up until they were almost sitting upright, ready at any given moment to take the run. 

“You don’t have a heart for it to hurt, Vee.”

“You are my heart.” Said so assuredly that Harry was almost convinced. “Above all,” He whispered against her lips, a secret for only the both of them. “-you, alone, might be the only creature capable of destruction that would ruin me permanently.”

“Permanent is a big word there.” Harry was flattered. So much the feeling tilted her lips into a smile, stretched from ear to ear. So much that he could see the fat on her cheek from this angle, a nail tapping on her small canine to ruin the moment before it ripened and spoiled. “I never thought you could be this romantic!”

“I’m being serious.” Voldemort should have seen the joke a mile away, but no. 

As soon as it went out of his mouth, Voldemort regretted it immensely at the flicker of mischief on her face. 

The absolute menace Harry was to say: “Daddy?” instead the sane ‘father’ option and she yowled from the force of his uncalled for spank, knee jumped up in pain before he closed his legs, muscles seized up, trapping the top assailant. His instinct was the only thing stopping her from aiming for his family’s jewels. No, it did not include the locket. Grinding his molar together, Voldemort choked down the zap of electricity, a sigh of relief passed through his nostrils as her knees dropped over his hips. His entire body slumped back onto the trunk. 

Rubbing her burning backside, Harry cursed him out under her breath, glaring at the amusement in the tug of his mouth. The skin behind her thighs heated up and being the gentleman he played, Voldemort wasn’t about to laugh at her face but he was close to. 

“You just hurt your heart right now.”

“You took this upon yourself.” He sniffed, so quick to dismiss his accountability. 

“Nuh uh.”

Voldemort huffed. “All the same. Care for it, love it, leave it alone, Do whatever. The only thing I ask of you is to keep it safe. My heart is very precious to me.”

“Then put your hand away from my arse before I raise hell.” Had Voldemort been another man, he would have blushed with shame because the dirty look she gave him could raise the dead from their graves and put them back right away. Instead, he cooly tilted his head and laced his hands behind his head, feigning sleep. 

Water over stone, birds in bouches, it was just him and her in this world. 

Harry cupped his face. Eyes fleeting over the sleek sharp eyebrows, the shadow underneath it and the slight tint of purple in his waterline despite a full night of sleep, she tipped his chin up, having all of Voldemort to herself. 

On her knees, kneeling on the ground, praying at the altar of her life, Harry leaned in for a chaste peck on his eyes, they fluttered but shut tight, awaiting for her to orchestrate the play. From the dark of his irises to the dark of his beauty marks, she connected the dots, making a constellation on his skin. Far away from the worlds, deep in the banks separating the dream and the river, him the unknowing sleeping beauty and Harry the king, stealing a kiss from his lips. The stress between his brow dwindled away when she roamed the high of his cheekbones and the low of his very kissable cupid bow. She nibbled and held it hostage between her teeth. A hiss of breath curled at her chin. 

Before her inhibition was in order again, the world was upside down. The blood rushed back and forth in her body like a lava lamp. 

Just by kissing Harry, Voldemort called forth the tidal waves of hunger in her, lacing hands and thighs, crouching on the earth while she spreaded out, blooming like a jungle orchid before him. From the lips to the column of neck, he lapped up her day, building up her ecstasy by the notes and the bars of a classical play. 

She gasped, eyes wide open, tracing the slope of his jaws and the curves of his ears absentmindedly thinking where it came from. She had seen the blurred memory of his mother, a caricature of a girl barely past adolescence, in his dream where Voldemort invited her there when it was too much. His mother was remembered barely as a human and more of the past. Before she could register her own voice, Harry agreed, just so he could get back to whatever he was doing to her.

What else could she say when the red in his eyes parted like the sea for overblown pupils? 

Voldemort came from a long line of people who had something wrong with them. 

But, hopping on another train to nowhere in her mind, holding his face, receiving the affection pressed to her palm, Harry wasn’t any better. His roman nose scented her skin, collecting his adoration, his venom plunged into the pulse of her wrist, teeth interpreting the high-line and the rabbit-rapid beats. A sound of breathlessness stumbled out of her mouth as the delicious pain infiltrated her bloodstream. When the angle was right, he wasn’t Voldemort nor Marvolo or even Tom Riddle, not any of the things they accused him of, it was love. It was adoration and barely any lust. Harry was admired like the embodiment of love and not flesh. He could be simple like the direction where rivers headed to, going further and further away from land, overcoming any valleys and mountains for the seas. 

Hand around his neck, hand in his hair, Harry held onto each part of him she could reach. A moan broken into halves in the heat of their kiss, neither of them knew where it came from but oh, Harry hooked her leg behind his knee, pushing herself up so his teeth could plummet into the side of her neck. The sweetest kind of venom filled Harry up while the dress she had on split at seam, disintegrated like ashes under his hand. So warm, so inviting his hands were. She burrowed deeper there, welcoming it in. 

In the sun or in the shade, he kissed her all the same. Grappling her as if a man falling down the sky, Voldemort broke it off without the slightest warning. Air rushed to her brain and Harry was mildly ashamed of the want crashing through her body before sobriety settled in. 

They were too far beyond the line and Harry wanted . 

Flipping the script, flipping the position, she caged him under, grasped his hands and put them over his head.  

As if a switch had been turned on, Voldemort groaned, wine-dark eyes half-lidded and teeth over bottom lip. Blood flushed his visage and he made that face again, like he was about to play on her pity and cry. And he actually fucking did when a stray flash of sunlight blinded his sight. He winced, squinting his eyes, the water collected at the base of his lashes. It trickled down the side of his face, disappearing into his hairline, speckled with salt and grey. Harry followed the trace with her tongue like a hunting dog to its prey. 

Something akin to the sound of a wounded dog, he whimpered, knees shaking at her calves. 

Before Harry could go on and on, spending the whole afternoon ravishing him- "I think that’s enough." He stuttered in a breath, spit slicked lips and tousled hair. Hah, she vibrated with joy, take that pressed shirt and 20-minute hair styling. 

Throwing herself all over him as if they hadn’t been doing that for a while, she nuzzled her face to his cheek, leaving small nibbles as if saving for a better occasion. “Fix my dress.”

The fabric mended itself together, stitching and wovening like flesh on a wound under the mingling of his magic and his will. A much more favourable couple than his magic and the unbridled rage he got when he saw Harry in wild burning red hair in the middle of his running campaign a few years back. Buzzing pieces of a soul and maybe another tiny half that didn’t quite make it through her puberty, her appetite subsided. When the ache dulled, Harry was a girl again. 

Ear to his heart, she narrated the music of his soul, the notes were slow and deep, like water in a lagoon. Something stagnant and calm. Something hidden and vicious when needed. Harry had heard better but none lured her to sleep more effectively than his, calming the storm in her head, welcoming the violent waves to the shore before they melted into seafoams all on their own. The pearlescent bubbles bursted on her skin. 

“I think I’m with child.” Harry braced for his reaction, knowing sooner or later, she would have to tell him eventually, better be now when he was in a pleasant mood. 

He shot up, body rigid and words wilted. “What?”