He will have power the Dark Lord knows not.
Voldemort cares about only two things in this world. The first is his immortality – he will not die, ever. And that demands only one response to this prophecy. If one must die at the hands of the other, then he needed to kill this upstart, the sooner the better.
But.
But the second thing he cares about, the only other thing that can change that calculus, demands a different path. Voldemort cannot love, but if he could he believes he would love knowledge. And here he is being told, by fate itself, that there is something he does not know of, power he does not understand, and is being directly pointed to where he can learn about it.
So, kill the upstart, yes. Of course. But maybe not as soon as possible. Maybe he can take some time, learn what this power is first.
He sets a few of his slightly-less-useless Death Eaters on it, and in August they return with two names born to particularly stubborn enemies at the end of July: Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom.
Voldemort does not mean to think it, but it strikes him as strange. The war has been heating up all year, getting increasingly bloody on both sides. Voldemort lost three of his original Knights of Walpurgis in April alone, and Tom remembers the screams of infants as bombs fell, the smell of soiled diapers in the darkness of a bomb shelter. Two couples in the heart of the war deciding to bring new life into this bloodshed – the Light is nothing if not pompous and selfish.
Not that it matters. The boys likely won’t live long enough to start forming memories anyway.
It is a simple thing to collect the Potter half-blood. This is a kidnapping, not an assassination, so Voldemort doesn’t want any stray curses flying around that could damage the goods. Some out-of-favor Death Eaters staging a mass attack that demands a general call-to-arms for the Order, and it’s simple enough to slip past the batty squib nanny and take the boy.
(Because this is not an assassination, there is no turncoat Potions Master to feel dread and guilt. The Order never hears Voldemort is targeting the Potters until Harry is gone.)
And then, because the Longbottoms are also out stupefying his minions and he’s buying baby formula anyway, Voldemort takes the other kid too. Just in case.
Lord Voldemort does not make mistakes. Every action, every redirection he has taken in his decades of life have brought him here – immortal, known and feared across Britain, and a half-won war away from all-powerful.
He does not make mistakes. He may, however, have made a miscalculation.
Wrangling two babies who cannot even walk yet should not be so difficult. He has magic, and grit, and an arm for each child. It should be enough. But, given the spitup chunked in his hair and the screaming coming from the nursery (angry and demanding, not at all the fun kind), it’s not enough at all.
Initially, he wasn’t supposed to hold onto the boys at all. The plan was to take them back to his current base, run a series of tests on them to identify whatever this unknown power was, and then drop them over the North Sea. It was to take a week, tops.
But there wasn’t any “unknown power.” The boys showed power, yes, and could both grow up into impressive wizards if given the chance. But there was not a hint of anything mysterious or inexplicable about them. Which was, in itself, the most mysterious and inexplicable thing.
He’d seriously considered cutting to the chase and pitching the brats off a broom right then, but magic was known to manifest with age. He did not want to miss some fascinating break through by being overly hasty. Also, history is littered with examples of prophecies coming true in backhanded ways for those who sought to avoid them (Oedipus, anyone?) and Voldemort is not about to let the boys go before he understands this power.
Which is how he ended up here, sleep-deprived and furious, holding a stinking Potter while Longbottom caterwauls in the next room. Potter doesn’t even have the decency to look regretful about soiling the nappy Voldemort put on him not two minutes ago – in fact, he looks downright pleased with himself.
Horribly like his parents, that one is. Voldemort could kill him right now, prophecy be damned. He could strike the smirking little devil with an avada. Lord knows he has the hatred curdling in his heart for it. Or skip right past magic and bash the ungrateful tyke’s brains in. Muggle methods are lesser, barbaric, but no one can claim they’re not satisfying.
But, no. Voldemort releases a long sigh, the stream of cool air ruffling Potter’s hair and making the baby giggle. He will not disrupt his current plans in a fit of pique.
He spells the baby clean and conjures a new diaper to fold itself around him, then drops him in the crib by the window before approaching the wailing child in the next room. At first he kept them both together, thinking it would streamline all the needed care into an efficient assembly line system, but he’d soon found the flaw in that plan. If one infant started crying, the other one would get worked up, creating a never-ending feedback loop of pointless baby distress. Better to sacrifice his reading room and place heavy muffling charms on the walls and doors between.
Longbottom is purple-faced, his extended wails leaving no room for breathing. He is also buried under every scrap of fabric that was in the room. Which is probably the source of the problem.
Voldemort reverse engineered the situation – the child was cold, so his magic tried to summon a blanket and went overboard. He rights the room with a wave of his wand, casts a soft warming charm with another, then sweeps from the room to cast heavily silencing charms on each nursery door so he won’t hear it if either babe wakes up or gets upset or dies.
He nearly falls onto the long velvet couch before the living room fire and, because no one else is here to hear it, groans tiredly.
Before, he never spent time in this room. He did not need a room for aimless living. Either he was in his study, researching and planning, on the grounds training, in the laboratory brewing, or out in the world doing. Or, on rare occasions, sleeping behind his wards. But now simply sitting in silence, motionless on the couch is a relief. He’s even napped here once. Absurd.
The babies are monstrous. They need, constantly. To be fed, cleaned, handled, lulled, entertained. He does not remember the babies at Wool’s being such monsters. Surly he was never so needy, so unaware, so pink.
And God help him if he ever tries to get anything else done. If he leaves for a mission or locks himself away to plot or God forbid just turns away for a second, suddenly every object in the house is zooming towards Longbottom. Or Potter has somehow wriggled out of whatever was meant to be keeping him contained and disappears. Voldemort has read (skimmed) books in the few minutes he has while levitating bottles into their mouths and apparently Longbottom isn’t supposed to be able to do magic like that for at least another two years and Potter should be barely able to lift his head, but the boys don’t care.
Maybe the unknown power is the ability to escape a crib without developed leg muscles. It’s certainly mysterious.
He’s barely seen his Death Eaters in the three weeks since the kidnappings. The one and only raid he went on personally since bringing the monsters to his house ended in a three-hour man hunt for the damn Potter, who he found sleeping in the broom cupboard. He’s been sending out dispatches, but as he’s never really been one for delegation it’s far from ideal.
Voldemort drops his head back onto the couch with a sigh and is treated to the wildly unpleasant feeling of cooled baby spit-up squelching against his scalp and into the crushed velvet below.
Fuck.
The problem with being a Dark Lord is that everyone Voldemort knows is a psychotic murderer who cannot be trusted in his safehouse.
Which makes it rather difficult to find a babysitter.
He could, of course, just give the devils spawn back to their families (who created them on purpose and probably miss them for some unfathomable reason), but that would be worse prophetic etiquette than just killing them out right, and he’s already decided against that. For now.
“You will handle the children in my absence, Narcisa,” he says, and his voice is its usual cold hiss. Why would it be anything else? It’s not like he hasn’t spoken to another adult in a week. Or two.
“Of course, my lord,” the blonde lady responds, folding into a puddle of ice grey satin at his feet. She does not remark on the sudden appearance of the trio in her entrance hall or the fact that she’s had no warning to prepare for taking care of two infants.
He cancels the levitation charm on the twin carrier, pointedly careless, and it clatters to the ground. Potter looks delighted at the turbulent arrival. He briefly considers tearing through the wards and aparating out to make a show of omnipresence and power (the threat implied), but that would leave the prophecy children needlessly vulnerable. He turns to smoke and takes flight instead.
Not that Narcisa really needs a threat. She and Lucius are appropriately afraid of him. Not as loyal as some, but unfortunately his truest followers are even more unsuited for childcare. (Bellatrix would take their screaming as an invitation and return them mauled – Bartemius, the squirrely teen that he is, would either forget about them entirely or faint). And the cracks in Malfoy loyalty come from the side of Light, with Lucius trying to keep his footing and prestige in both worlds. Voldemort does not have to worry about the Malfoys trying to outflank him from the Dark and use the boys against him.
So, he’ll leave them with the young mother Narcisa and let her try and figure out if she should pamper them or abuse them to curry favor. And if they’re not there when he comes back, well, that’s one problem taking care of itself.
Narcisa does not get rid of the children.
Narcisa does not hurt the children.
For some reason, in her calculating little mind, while looking for the best way to garner favor with her lord, Narcisa seems to have decided that he wants the children happy.
Or, at the very least, well-tended and developmentally on track.
And, well, she’s not wrong, per se. After all, Voldemort’s nemesis will reflect on him. He cannot have fate tying him to some stunted, maladaptive buffoon.
So, when Narcisa delicately implies that the boys might benefit from some movement toys, Voldemort sends an elf to buy out a store. When she subtly intimates that social isolation is detrimental, the members of his inner circle with children find themselves part of the world’s most high stakes play group. And when she flatly states that Potter will hurt himself if he keeps getting out, the wards around his crib dramatically improve.
Slowly, ever so slowly, life in his safehouse finds a manageable rhythm. The boys start sleeping through the night, much to everyone’s delight (a sleep deprived Dark Lord is rather liberal with the cruciatus). They go to the Malfoy Manor most days, but they always return to the safehouse at night (Narcissa made an oblique reference once to the importance of routine and stability in childhood). Voldemort starts cooking again and keeping to a regular eating schedule, something that slipped away after his third Horcrux.
Then it’s July again, and Voldemort is stepping out of the fireplace at Malfoy Manor only to have his foot run over by a cruising toy and two tiny fists attached to his robes.
“Dada,” a tiny voice squeaks, green eyes staring up at Voldemort with open excitement.
Voldemort goes perfectly still.
The first instinct is to kick it away. The only hands that are allowed to touch his robes are those of groveling sycophants just before their torture or execution. He wants to kick it away, teach it a lesson it won’t forget.
But. But the child called him dada. The ignorant little whelp thinks he’s its father. And now that it seems the boys will be around a bit longer, that could be useful. If they’re attached they will be compliant, easier to control. He may even be able to shape them to his will, go beyond simply understanding whatever is locked in one of them to using it.
Voldemort smells opportunity.
“Hello, Potter,” he says smoothly to the little monster. Potter’s face cracks into a wild grin.
Once the boys are through the floo, he obliviates Narcissa. Only he is going to remember their firsts.
With his two potential dooms happily tottering around the Malfoy estate, the war is progressing smoothly. Bagnold was proving as inept and useless as her predecessors, and he can smell blood in the water.
“My lord,” Avery says, his cultured tone almost successfully masking the tremor within. “Tremblay and Wilson have broken with the imperious and been sent to Azkaban.”
Avery is right to be nervous. Voldemort has made this lesson painfully clear – if you cast the imperious, you are responsible for all your mark’s mistakes. This deserves a round of cruciatus at the least, and Avery will get it before he leaves this room.
But first, there are plans to be made.
“Really, Avery. To think the magic of a Sacred family could be so easily overpowered by a mudblood like Wilson.” He says it mostly to see Avery flinch, though how the others react to these little jibes is also quite telling about current tensions in his ranks. “It is fortunate, then, that this plays into our hand.”
“My lord?” Avery says again, and his eyes seem to be attempting some bastardized form of what Longbottom does when he wants another story before bed. It’s much less effective on a grown man.
“The Ministry is weak. Bagnold would rather send those loyal to her to Azkaban to appear like she is taking action than bother to investigate whether their actions were compelled. She’s a desperate woman running an ever-weaker Ministry. The moment has come for us to step out of the shadows.”
For something he’s been planning for thirty years, the final steps to the Ministry’s takeover are almost disappointingly simple.
The Ministry is running on a skeleton crew already, hollowed out by distrust and his recruiting and, of course, a few murders here and there. A few more weeks of chaos, a dozen more Ministry loyalists imperioused into bungled false flag missions and sent off to Azkaban, and there will hardly be a Ministry left to take over. Just as Voldemort wants it.
After all, why limit himself to a restructure when he can burn it all down anyway?
Of the two, Voldemort has had his money on Longbottom as the prophecy child. He’s been using magic since day one, flexing potential that even Voldemort has to acknowledge is noteworthy. He’s mostly relegated Potter to second fiddle, ignoring the boy as he scuttles around the shadows of the house.
As time passes, though, he’s less and less certain. Potter has beaten Longbottom on every milestone since, leaps and bounds past the Malfoy and Parkinson infants. He is mobile and babbles constantly. Still not a spark of magic in sight, however.
If fate attached him to a squib, Voldemort will destroy the entire prophecy hall and leave the baby disemboweled in the ruins.
The baby books displacing the dark tomes on his nightstand say it’s normal not to show magic until age seven. Voldemort has no intention of keeping the boy around that long, but with the current routine in place there’s no real reason to kill him until he becomes inconvenient again.
Voldemort is starting to think that time has come and the Potter squib has outlived his usefulness when he finally, finally uses the restroom by himself. (Voldemort will not call it a “potty.”) If he’d had to change one more goddamn diaper he would have cursed the boy in the soiled thing, leaving his body to rot in its own filth.
But he doesn’t have to because the boy can go by himself. He is independent and brilliant and ahead of his peers and Voldemort is halfway to the floo powder before he remembers there is no one to call to gloat to.
He grabs the tiny boy and swings him around the room instead.
He’s been bleeding for over an hour.
The wound is cursed, or he would have healed it right off. Instead, all he could do was repair the fabric over it and spell his robes to not show blood, then spend too long corralling his Death Eaters out of their shamble of a retreat and to various healers. Of course, he himself had to stand impassively observing the healers and then head home still bleeding. He’ll die before showing such weakness. Maybe literally, given how this night is going.
It was supposed to be simple. Just one final push to put the sputtering Ministry out of its misery. But it turns out the Ministry is quite violent in its death throes.
Needless to say, by the time Voldemort apparats to their front stoop he is not at his best.
“Fuck.” The umbrella stand and his wand hit the ground at the same time, all of his muscles seeming to go slack as soon as he crosses the wards. Only a spine of steel keeps the rest of his body from following. His pride drags him to the couch.
The world is a play of shadows, the familiar hulking shapes of the living room furniture fading in and out of the haze. Eventually, some distant part of his mind notes the blood slipping past his bespelled robes and soaking the velvet couch. Funny, how bloodstains seem so much more acceptable than baby spit-up.
He wakes to screaming.
One of the boys – he’s gotten to a point where he can usually tell their voices apart, but his head is full of cotton right now – has taken umbrage to his loud entrance. Or maybe something else, given his delayed response if the sticky pool beneath him is anything to judge by.
Pool. Fuck, he’s fucking bleeding out. And just happily drifting away like a fool.
The realization is enough to get him off the couch and staggering into the potion’s laboratory, tacky fingers sticking to handles and vials. The toddler screams and screams, and maybe the other one is awake too now, or maybe the sound is refracting through his pain-addled brain.
It’s dawn by the time he makes it to bed with a clean shirt and a new scar. The boys are in his bed too, though he doesn’t remember bringing them in. Potter arranges himself across the bottom of the bed like a puppy, and Longbottom seems to be trying to burrow through his ribcage.
It’s only as he’s drifting into blackness that he’ll hopefully wake from that he realizes why he dropped his wand. Finally back in this house, his body felt safe. When did that happen?
It is a bloody two years.
The giants, decimated. The werewolves, best fighters put down and the rest retreating with their tails between their legs. Rosier, Wilkes, Lee, Bulstrode, and Pyrites dead, and Rookwood, Dolohov, and Karkaroff imprisoned. Not that that last one is much of a loss.
The Ministry is the Aurors, and the Aurors are the Ministry. And they are fanatical. All other governmental functions fall to the wayside, all moral compunctions take a holiday. The first time a Killing Curse flies back at their side, his Death Eaters almost can’t believe it. But the Light is a cornered animal, and it is finally baring its teeth.
There is a moment, watching Frank Longbottom’s desperate rage from across a battlefield while his Death Eaters crack out of existence around him, that Voldemort realizes they might lose.
As the world outside skids towards disaster, home becomes the place where he can find victory. While he will never say it to anyone - barely even lets himself think it – on truly bad days even coaxing Longbottom into eating his peas or charming Potter into drinking his milk feels like enough of a win.
On their second birthday, his Death Eaters seem to have taken the boys’ continued existence as a sign of Voldemort’s favor. And a person with Voldemort’s favor is someone to suck up to, even if that someone is a toddler. Narcissa throws a lavish birthday party, with decorations made of thousands of live butterflies and cakes spelled to change their flavor with every bite.
Voldemort would usually never deign to be seen near such an event, but watching the Ancient and Most Noble lords and ladies bow and scrape to a half-blood toddler is worth it. And Longbottom’s quiet consternation about the ever-changing cake and Potter’s shrieks of delight might help, too.
The event becomes an annual thing, the one time of a year the Death Eaters outside Narcissa’s parenting group see their little lordlings.
Not that either boy could ever be a true heir. At four, Potter still has not shown a hint of magic (Voldemort obliviated Narcissa the one time she asked. And took the memory of Draco’s own moment of resurrecting a bouquet of roses for good measure). And Longbottom, well…
Longbottom is soft. He cries when animals are injured in Voldemort’s bedtime stories, and he insists on including whichever of the pureblood children the rest of the play group is excluding that week. He’s shown hints of a spine, like demanding Draco return Millicent’s ribbon he stole to pull attention back to him after her father’s death, but he will never rule with an iron fist. Four-year-old Longbottom can read the books with small pictures and watches Voldemort with earnest eyes when he is cooking or brewing and for now that is enough.
He comes home cursed or bleeding more nights than he would prefer, but he always wakes to a face full of soft baby hair or tiny, frigid toes pressed behind his knees. Most importantly, he wakes.
The tides start to turn at Christmas. The population is tired of war. Between the Ministry’s fixation on the war and Voldemort’s own backchannels with foreign Ministries, trade with other wizarding communities has all but ceased. Goods are scarce, the atrocities are piling up on both sides. Wizarding Britain wants out.
Voldemort forced them into this bloody mess. He lit a match under the unrest of the 60s and plunged them into all-out war, sowing the land with murder and fear.
But before he was Voldemort, he was Tom Riddle. And Tom Riddle has always been a chameleon. If they will bow to him as a peace-bringer, then he will bring them peace. Either way, Britain will bow.
It is the easy takeover Voldemort expected two years ago. A decisive move to take over the wireless and the wizarding press, and after a few months of addresses and appeals for a ceasefire the wizarding world is putty in his hands. Acting Minister Crouch will never agree to talk terms with dark wizards, and every move Tom makes forces him to radicalize further, isolate further.
By Beltane, the remaining active Aurors and Order of the Phoenix members are formally public enemies, and Bartemius Crouch Sr is floating over the dining table of Knott Manor.
It is a very blessed Beltane indeed. Particularly for one Bartemius Crouch Jr.
Voldemort does not wish for parents and a family anymore. Most of the time, he is ambivalent on the subject of his orphanhood. But sometimes, like right now, he is so very glad he never had a parent.
“Hello, Daddy,” Barty says with a grin he clearly learned yapping at Bellatrix’s heels.
Crouch, of course, can’t reply. Even without the petrificus totalis, he’s been through several rounds of torture already, enough that he’s unlikely to be coherent at this point. His eyes, however, are eloquent: hatred and absolute terror.
The former Minister has no use at this point, but Barty requested some time to pay his respects, and Voldemort tries to be accommodating to his truly loyal followers. He even drops the petrification so Barty can hear the screams. The boy really is quite creative.
Voldemort is watching with magnanimous amusement as Crouch’s blood starts boiling over through his pores when he hears it.
Sounds that should be here: screaming, raucous jeers, breathy pants of excitement.
Sounds that should not: the padding of socked feet, a quiet gasp, a squeak that’s quickly muffled.
Voldemort whirls towards the sound, catching a glimpse of green eyes in the crack of the door before they disappear into the patter of running feet.
Fuck.
The boys asked to stay over with the Nott whelp for Beltane. The boys were upstairs this whole time. And Tom hadn’t cast a muffling charm.
Voldemort actually might make mistakes. But only when it came to Potter and Longbottom.
He’s out of his chair and into the hallway so fast he might have accidentally flown. It doesn’t matter, the Knotts can amuse themselves scrambling to patch up any damage to their wards. He catches the Nott boy halfway up the stairs, but those green eyes are already out of sight.
“Where’s Potter,” he demands, grabbing the boy’s arm in a vice grip. The idiot just gapes up at him, and Voldemort wants to shake him like a ragdoll. (You aren’t supposed to shake littleones – a factoid from one of his baby books floats up through the chaos of his mind. Shaking them too young can kill them. Is five too young? Does it matter?) “Where is Harry?” he tries again. “Take me to him.”
The child seems to understand now, and his parents have communicated the importance of following orders. Or, Voldemort’s orders, at least.
He leads him up three flights of stairs, then points him down a dark hallway. There is a small lump at the end, a shadow hunched before the last door.
“Po-“ Tom starts, but stops himself. He has faced James Potter three times across a battlefield. In that moment, crouched before the bedroom door, tiny body braced for a fight and tilting forward slightly, almost willing the attack to come, the boy looks just like him. The boy who Tom raised, the little wild animal he bottle-fed and tamed, the child who is his in every way that should matter. Tom does not want that man to have any further claim beyond the thinnest of blood.
“Harry,” he says instead. And then, because maybe the little idiot can be talked out of believing any of this happened, “Why are you out of bed?”
The child does not respond, doesn’t even move to acknowledge Tom.
“Harry,” he says again, and something of tension and warning seeps into his voice. He does not enjoy being ignored. But when he takes a step forward, the boy flinches.
Well. If he’s frightened enough to show fear of Tom, the whole incident is probably too vivid to gloss over. Unfortunate.
He’s probably supposed to do something comforting. Narcissa would say something about validating feelings and unconditional support and the importance of physical touch, always talking about Draco, of course, and being careful not to shoot Tom any significant looks. But honestly, Tom suddenly becoming touchy-feely will likely only compound the boy’s distress.
“From my vantage point it seems that you have three options. You can go to bed and leave all this for another day. You can continue to stand there and listen while I return to work. Or you can speak with me about this matter,” Tom says when he’s tired of the silence (which, admittedly, only takes moments).
The boy just keeps staring at him, and how are his legs not cramping by now, crouched like that?
Tom’s had enough of this. He has real work to do, fun work after a day of paperwork and logistics. He turns back towards the stairs, ready to leave the boy to his silence.
“W-wait,” a small voice says when his foot hits the first step. Tom turns back, an eyebrow raised. “You were hurting someone.”
Explaining the intricacies of his organization’s hierarchy and his level of culpability for his Death Eaters’ actions is probably too much right now. See, Narcissa? I can be age appropriate. “Yes.”
“Cissi says we’re not supposed to hurt people,” Harry says, with all the moral authority of a five-year-old. “She makes us sit in the time out corner.”
Harry says it warily, like someone whose done their time and isn’t about to do more, and that’s interesting. Narcissa failed to mention any such incidents.
“Have you had to go to the time out corner?”
“Once,” he mumbles, scuffing at the floor. Tom just waits, the eyebrow raising again expectantly. “Neville wouldn’t let me have my turn with the broom. But I said sorry! And Cissi healed him right away!”
And oh, that was just delicious. At least one of his charges was capable of violence, did enough damage to need healing to get what he wants. That had potential.
But Tom can see Narcissa’s point. It wouldn’t do for the boys to be constantly going at each other around the house. No, that sounded like an absolute headache.
He needs to draw a line somewhere, one that keeps him from coming home to arguing toddlers every evening.
“You shouldn’t hit your brother. But this,” Tom waives down the stairs airily, “is different. That man used to hurt Barty.” As much as Tom tried to prevent it, Bartimaeus has become a mainstay for the children. He was an unavoidable guest at their birthday parties, where he’d ingratiate himself to the little hellions with his wicked sense of humor and mean transfiguration skills. Once he’d turned Lucius’s hair into porcupine quills, there was no putting the boys off him. “Hurting him is right. And helpful,” Tom adds, because he prefers his pain productive.
Harry’s eyes are washed out in the dark and too serious for his age. At Wool’s they would have called him a freak just for that. “Are you going to let them hurt us, too?” the boy asks.
“Why would I do that?” He has potential, yes, but the boy’s mind is still a bit slow (there is no way Tom was ever so illogical). But Tom can help him along, can help him learn to see the logic in every action like a proper Slytherin.
But Harry doesn’t look like he’s thinking. He just looks worried.
“I don’t know. Will you?”
Ugh. Fine. “Of course not,” he says, but the boy’s still cautious. Skeptical, even, if that’s something preschoolers can look. Maybe he’s not as unaware of the realities going on around him as Tom assumed.
Tom tries again. “I have kept you safe your whole life. Why would I stop now?”
Lots of reasons, of course, but Harry seems to have reached his limit for jaded insights for the day. He stares at Tom for another moment, then sticks out his hand. “Pinky promise?” he says, curling tiny fingers so only one chubby finger extends. “Millie says you have to mean pinky promises.”
Tom nearly laughs, the sheer absurdity catching in his lungs. But if it will get the boy to bed, then a pinky promise he shall have.
“Of course,” Tom says, wrapping his finger around the offered one.
That seems to be enough for Harry’s child logic. He immediately slumps, the tumult of the evening clearly catching up with his tiny body.
“To bed,” he says, and for once Harry doesn’t argue.
It’s only once they’re in the bedroom that Tom realizes this isn’t Harry’s guest room at all. Longbottom – Neville – is a perfect sphere in the center of the bed, having slept through the whole drama. Harry, five years old and fierce, was standing guard at his brother’s door.
Not a Slytherin. Gryffindor, Tom thinks, and this might be what horror feels like.
Maybe it’ll be better if he is a squib. Then he won’t go to Hogwarts, and Tom won’t have to live with the shame of having raised a lion.
Winning a war, it turns out, is boring.
He doesn’t drag himself into bed, singed and bloody, anymore. No, now he doesn’t make it to bed at all, slipping into repose at his desk instead. He reinforces the wards of his study door so no one can catch him drooling on Ministry orders. If he drooled at all. Which he doesn’t.
It’s the twentieth time he floos to the Malfoy estate late to find the boys already asleep that Narcissa asks the question.
“Might you prefer for the boys’ things to be moved here, my lord? Lucius and I would be honored to give them permanent rooms.”
Move the boys, his boys, away from him? No. Never. He should curse her for even suggesting it. He wants to. Except.
Except he knows why she’s suggesting it. Even in the darkest days of the war, he was always back in time to tuck the boys in at home. While the Malfoys and Parkinsons and Goyles poured whatever fairytale drivel in their spawn’s ears, Tom told Neville and Harry of the snake charmers of Mumbai, the oracles of Delphi and the necromancers of Lisbon. When was the last time he helped Neville trace ley lines across an atlas, saw Harry’s bright eyes grow luminous at the thought of some rare magical creature?
In some ways it was easier in the war. Six in the evening is hardly prime time for house raids. It was easy enough to tuck the boys under monitoring spells and wards before suiting up for a night of strategic mayhem. Six pm is prime time for overlong meetings and people who want to curry favor from the magical world’s new Consul, however.
“That would not please me,” Tom says, levitating the boys off the couch and into the fire without waking them.
The boys don’t move in with the Malfoys. They also stop sleeping there. After all, what’s the point of taking over the world if you can’t do exactly what you please? And the boys are more pleasant to be around than his court full of sniveling sycophants.
That’s not to say there’s no more fighting. There’re skirmishes still, Albus’s Order still trying to rally. But it’s hard to run a guerilla campaign without public support to hide behind, and it’s less and less strategic attacks and more and more desperate retreats when his Death Eaters find their latest hidey-hole.
It’s on his way out of his rebuilt Ministry – the Curia Serpens, now – when one such raiding party returns. It’s five minutes to six and Tom is striding past them, face distantly approving and cloak flapping briskly in a way that says don’t approach, I have somewhere to be, when he sees it.
The Death Eater phalanx is rowdy, pouring out of the floo with adrenaline in their voices and victory in their blood. But that’s not what makes Tom pause.
It’s Alice Longbottom’s head, suspended for a moment in the air before it drops back down into Bellatrix’s hands.
It’s typical Bella, dragging home some bloody scrap to present. That woman is worse than a cat. Usually her gifts range from the inconsequential to the amusing, and he’s more than once had to bite his tongue bloody to remain appropriately solemn as she lays a mangled hand before him like it’s Ravenclaw’s diadem itself.
Right now, Tom is not amused. Staring into Alice’s glassy eyes, he knows one thing for certain: he has lost Neville.
Maybe not today. But once Neville knows what he allowed to happen, what he’s done, he will never forgive Tom. And he will find out. Voldemort had never planned on keeping the boys so long, so he’d never bothered to change their names. He will find out. Maybe at twelve, with some would-be usurper telling him in a bid to hurt Tom. Maybe at sixteen, angsty and rebellious and lashing out. Or maybe at thirty, accidentally stumbling across an article while looking for something else. And then he will hate Tom. He will leave.
Tom stands poised before the green flames of his own floo connection for a long moment, watching the Death Eaters revel in their bloody victory. There must have been more to the raid then the death of Alice to set them off so – Voldemort will hear all about it later.
But right now, Tom can feel a thought forming on the far horizon of his mind, coming slowly into focus as it drifts closer. He can be patient. He waits.
When it arrives, it is crystal clear: he cannot lose Harry too.
There are a lot of things wrong with Gryffindors. They’re loud and brash and smug and idiotic. Most to the point currently, they’re absolutely terrible at negotiating.
If he was dealing with normal, reasonable people, Tom could just send an emissary to talk terms. Likely start with offering total capitulation and then be slowly talked down to pardons, with conditions. Of course, reasonable people wouldn’t still be trying to resist him at this point.
No, instead he has to prepare a reasonable position for them. Something to talk them into when they get done with all their grand declarations of we’ll fight to the last man and we’ll never stand with the likes of you. Negotiations are like chess – much less enjoyable when you have to play for both sides.
Still, there might be an opportunity hidden in the idiocy. Tom isn’t blind to the realities of his situation. It was the very pureblood-supremacy system his followers champion that drove a young Tom out of the normal channels of finding power and into violent resistance. If he upholds the same system it’s only a matter of time before another disillusioned mudblood tries to make the same play. And, if nothing else, they need the bodies in jobs. Numbers don’t lie, and the magical world cannot run on purebloods alone.
He could order his followers to accept half-bloods and mudbloods. There might be grumbling behind closed doors, but he’s well practiced at forcing their hands. But, saying this is the price of peace is a much easier pill to swallow than I used you for your power and funds and am now kicking your agenda to the curb.
Which is how Tom ends up at the Order’s latest base at eleven in the morning on a Tuesday, wearing dove grey formal robes and carrying an avalanche of parchment magicked into his pockets.
The wards, it pains him to admit, are impressive. Really, he should not even be aware that the house is there. But there’s a rot at the root of them, something creeping up the vines of magic that encase the building and leaving them hollow and soft. It’s natural for Tom to follow the darkness and pull.
“Did you feel that?”
“Shit!”
“He’s here.”
“Hestia, get Albus!”
“He’s here?”
“Stupefy!”
“Molly! Where’s Molly? Where are the kids?”
“Go, go, go!”
“Fuck.”
“Avada ka-“
It’s less natural to move through a battle without aiming to kill. But just because he doesn’t usually do it doesn’t mean he can’t, so he steps through the house silently, non-verbal body-binds felling Order members before they can spit out a curse. He’s almost surprised when a man goes straight for the killing curse, but then notices his eyes and doesn’t bother. No amount of running with lions will ever make a Black wizard Light.
Albus himself is barely conscious, still reeling from the curse Alice Longbottom tried to take for him. The rot that wreaked havoc on the wards is in him, and his eyes are unfocused, head lolling. He reminds Voldemort of no one so much as Morfin Gaunt.
“Well,” Tom says, once he has all of their stiff bodies piled in the living room. “Thank you for the welcome. Now that we’ve gotten the pleasantries out of the way, I have an offer.”
“Tom?”
The boys had stopped calling him Daddy years ago, and he hadn’t cared enough to track down why. (He remembers Barty’s smile as he said Daddy, the speckles of blood on his cheek. It’s a title best left dead.) They sound quite similar at this age, but he knows before he looks that the eyes waiting for him are brown, not green, because the voice is trembling and Harry’s voice never trembles. Tom sighs, placing his quill down carefully to not splatter any ink, and looks up.
It’s as he suspected. Neville’s face is red and puffy, a bubble of mucus inflating in his nose with every exhale. His little hands are clenched tight around a golden filagree pot.
“Tom, it went splat,” the boy hiccups, and he isn’t wrong. The occupant of the pot, the mimbulus mimbletonia the Malfoys presented Neville for his last birthday, is no longer cactus-shaped. It seems to have collapsed in on itself, puddling into a gelatinous mass above the soil.
“I can see that,” Tom says, taking the jelly-like plant from Neville’s hands and inspecting it more closely. It seems to be a victim of overwatering, which is not that surprising given the young age of his charge and the advanced nature of the plant.
“Can you fix it?” he asks, and there is such fragile hope in Neville’s voice that Tom has to master the urge to throw the ruined plant on the ground on principle. But the resulting tantrum would be loud, and he would not truly enjoy the boy’s pain. Instead, he hands it back.
“Not without significant and complex magic that would be disproportionate to the benefit. It would be better to get another one.”
The sudden and rapid expansion of the snot bubble is all the warning Tom gets before the boy is sobbing, the sound loud enough to make Tom wince. Neville launches himself forward, pulling the pot close with one arm while latching onto the front of Tom’s robes with the other hand.
Tom, long since used to such displays, bears it stoically, resting one hand on Neville’s head as has become his habit over the years. It’s an amount of physical touch they can all live with.
“Nev!” Harry flies through the study door, the other boy’s caterwauling summoning him as surely as an accio . “No, no, Nev, don’t cry!” Harry’s hands flutter around the other boy in panic, never quite managing to land and honestly, he’s reacting much the way Tom would if he bothered to try harder.
“But, but, but it’s RUINED Harry,” Neville continues to sob, clutching tighter at the pot. The was-once-a-cactus jiggles ominously.
And then, quite suddenly, it stops.
At first, Tom thinks it’s just a trick of the light. But, no, the cactus is inflating. It puffs up slowly, the goopy mass stretching upwards and resolving into the grey, warty flesh it was meant to be.
Which, really, isn’t all that surprising. It’s a clearly treasured possession of a powerful, untrained wizard. But the magic isn’t coming from Neville.
It’s coming from Harry.
The boy is scowling something fierce at the expanding plant, a look of absolute determination reshaping his features. Then Neville’s sobs train off, finally catching sight of his impossibly healthy plant, and Harry’s face splits open in a brilliant grin.
Tom should be ecstatic. Both boys can do magic. One of his wards, his prophesied equals, isn’t a squib. He won’t have to face the stares, the questions, the judgment when September 1, 1991 arrives and Harry isn’t on the train.
And he is happy. Relieved. He can feel it in the loosening knot in his chest, breath coming just a little bit easier, and the way his mouth seems to want to quirk up at the edges. But, oddly, it seems to be less about this display of frankly impressive magic, and more about the fact that Neville has stopped crying. That boy has lungs.
Still, it’s a milestone. Another first he was here for, got to see bloom into the world. And that’s worth celebrating, at least a little bit.
Tom sighs, looking back at his desk speculatively. It’s barely noon and the pile of papers on his desk looks downright ominous, several new memos having fluttered into place in his spelled inbox while he’s been distracted. If he’s being honest, he really shouldn’t step away.
But there’s nothing really that urgent. Albus’s execution had riled up nationalistic spirit and put a damper on his political opponents in the Curia. And, when Frank Longbottom and the Potters thought to go down in a final blaze of glory rather than accept Tom’s offer, he’d played his trump card. He’d threatened Neville and Harry’s lives. And so, the Longbottom and the Potters, the last of the resistance, had come into the new world order. Not quietly, but they came.
Really, he should have been using the boys as political hostages years ago. The placidity of the last few months has been restful. But, honestly, the thought hadn’t occurred to him. The idea of anyone throwing away their plans, their principles, their very life for a barely-sentient lump they’d known for all of two months was ludicrous.
He might understand now. A little bit.
Surely there’s time for at least a short break.
“Who wants ice cream?”
The Dark Lord never does find out what the power he knew not was. If someone told him it was love he’d throw a Killing Curse. But that doesn’t mean they’d be wrong.