Perfect Places

Dancing of angels: – No...the gold current slid

Moving its dark arms, tired, cool above all, and green.

She, sombre, having the blue Heavens for canopy,

Summoned, as curtains, the arch and the hill’s shade.

- Arthur Rimbaud, Memory

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The boy refuses for them to view the memories separately.

He speaks of reasons that elude Voldemort, of privacy and the importance of different visions, and with it, gesticulates so much that it is these gestures and not his words that attract Voldemort's attention.

Voldemort accepts, words contradicting his acceptance already on the tip of his lips, ready to be poured out in half a second, but he knows the fire of trust to be fanned by repetition. He knows the fickleness of it, how fire can suffocate under his eyes, for a single word that would have escaped the barrier of his lips.

He accepts thus, sweet nothings that make the boy give him a confused glance. Potter knows, Voldemort thinks, how incongruous it is for him not to satisfy his desires for the benefit of others.

But if the boy’s heart is filled with suspicion, he does not speak of it. Instead, he mumbles some words about Quidditch, and needing to get back to his previous level, and flees the room.

For a Gryffindor, Voldemort thinks, Potter is so very fond of fleeing from danger. Or perhaps, it is the danger of his own thoughts and desires that the boy decides to flee, before they grow strong enough that their voice can no longer be stifled.

~*~

“Alright,” Potter says, the last vestiges of his recent shame still flushing his cheeks. “We”ll begin by me, so when we will get to your memories, perhaps It’ll outshine the very probable embarrassment of this one.”

“There is no shame in recognizing beauty and skill,” Voldemort answers, because he still cannot explain the satisfaction he feels at the boy’s acknowledgement of his superiority. Perhaps, he thinks, and this is a hard thought, painfully brought to the surface, it has to do with Potter being the embodiment of Dumbledore’s principles. By correlation, it feels as if it is the old fool himself who is saying the so desired words.

“Talk for yourself,” Potter distastefully murmurs; because it seems that age did not remove the teenage-like moodiness he had borne.

Voldemort hums and says nothing, his long fingers stroking the head of a summoned python. It bears no resemblance whatsoever with Nagini, except perhaps for its length, for its scales shine of the whiteness of albinism.

Potter had laughed upon seeing it, after the initial fright, recommending for Voldemort to call him Junior. The suggestion would have been met with a Cruciatus, had the curse not been impossible to cast at the boy.

Instead, Voldemort had merely gritted his teeth, and given no name to the serpent. It would name itself, should it feel the urge to.

Potter, him, had taken to obey his own advice and referred to the snake solely by the name of Junior.

“Let’s go then,” Potter whispers, unusually tensed.

There is an urge then, quick, and terribly surprising. It makes him halt, even for a second, to realize the strangeness of the thought. He had almost whispered words of comfort, and Voldemort frowns at his reaction before easing. Merely the reflexes he had built, the thinks, and it pleases him, for his body to always answer his will, for his mind to be so easily trained.

Voldemort needs to build trust between him and the boy, and had reluctantly realized that such could only be brought by strict regulations on his physical reactions.

Potter pours the vial in the pensieve, and they do not wait for it to completely merge with the water to enter the memory. This time, though, they are not alone, for a serpentine guest is leisurely draped around Voldemort’s shoulders.

When the memory ceases to be blurred, both Voldemort and the boy can see a recent version of the boy sitting behind a desk.

“Why would it-” Potter begins to say, but Voldemort does not need his intervention to recognize the scene around them.

The auror department. As full of life as he had been when he had last gazed upon it, for the exception that there had not been dozen of eyes glancing tentatively where the memory version of Harry Potter is sitting.

“Out of all the possible days?” Potter incredulously asks himself. “I really don’t understand the point of these memories,” he then says to Voldemort, with a confused exasperation. “What is it supposed to tell you? The eighteen different manners paperwork needed to be filled? That people can’t focus on their work when there is something, or someone, more worthy of their attention?”

“Twenty-three,” Voldemort absently corrects, because he had never been one to trust entirely, and Lucius had always given him his paperwork to be corrected. Many times had he found something that would have profited the Malfoy more than enough, and had told Lucius that he was not one to be fooled.

He had let it pass although, for a Slytherin’s nature could not be changed, and for it reminded Lucius that all of his cunnings could not be measured to those of the true heir. Men had used words, be they written or spoken, to deceive and profit themselves from time immemorial, and one raised in the arts of rhetoric would not be exempt from the rule.

“Ah yes, my bad,” Potter absently says. “I forgot about those five techniques of Andrea the Elder.”

In front of them, Auror-Potter is frowning upon a piece of parchment.

There is a silence, and then. “Wait. How do you know that?”

Junior- no, Voldemort furiously corrects himself, the snake, tilts his head at the noise. He lowers it again when Voldemort’s fingers brush against his snout. “I was the head of the Ministry,” Voldemort murmurs, referring to both the first wizarding war and Potter’s seventh year in Hogwarts. “It is my duty to know every aspect of it.”

Potter gasps. Then, because he had worn Tom Riddle’s soul for the vast majority of his life, he says. “Every aspect, you say. I don’t believe you.”

Voldemort raises an eyebrow. “I am not in the habit of lying,” he says, and this might be the greatest lie he had ever said.

Potter too arches an eyebrow, and snorts. “Yeah, sure.” They have both stopped to gaze at the younger form of Potter, finding a greater interest in the other. Perhaps as it always had been, Voldemort thinks, reminiscing about prophecies and fate. “If you know everything then, you must know about the Muggle department.”

Voldemort does not grin, but it comes very close. “This is very vague, Harry,” he murmurs. “You might be talking about the Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee. Or perhaps you were thinking about the Muggle Liaison Office. Another, perhaps, my apologies. The Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office? Or the Muggles Relation Committee?”

“You’ve only read about them,” Harry Potter accuses, his eyes narrowing and suspicion flashing in his gaze. “You don’t know anything about it past their names.”

Voldemort sighs. “You should know better, Harry,” he says, because he has always enjoyed saying the boy’s name, in a petty retaliation, he acknowledges it, to Dumbledore’s refusing to say his. He can understand, to an extent, the refusal of the old fool, for Voldemort must have shown the same outrage and anger the boy displays upon being called as such. “-then making assumptions about my person. I would have hoped for you to understand by now that your perception of a person can not be constructed uniquely on biased memories of some of his actions.”

Harry Potter laughs. Unlike the usual bitter laughs he gives, it is amused. It intrigues Voldemort, for the flashing outrage in the boy’s eyes had been nothing but that, passing, and it is incredulous amusement that now replaces it. “You are incredulous,” the boy says in mirth. “Trying to charm me as if I didn’t talk to you directly, as if I never met you before. Trying to pass for the misunderstood one. It’s like having Riddle in front of me all over again.”

Voldemort snarls, and the snake reacts to it, opening his eyes and flickering his tongue, but Potter continues, mimicking a voice that resembles nothing like Tom Riddle’s. “I needed to catch the Monster who was hurting students, Harry, you understand, I couldn’t let someone do such a horrible thing…”

Voldemort’s nostril flares. His grip tightens on the snake.

“I didn’t really want to arrest Hagrid, you understand, but he had to be stopped…”

“What are you saying-”

“You,” Potter says, and he laughs again. Potter laughs often, and Voldemort is not quite certain if the reason behind half of them is amusement or despair. “Biased memories!” he says again, and chuckles as if he cannot contain his hilarity. “Biased memories! As if it was a memory that held me in the cemetery, that forced me to bow, that allowed Bellatrix Lestrange to kill Sirius, that tried to kill me again, and again! Very biased indeed!”

Voldemort’s fingers get more tensed on the scales of the python, his touch now painful. In retaliation, it strikes, and plunge its teeth in Voldemort’s hand.

Harry Potter stops instantly, his amusement disappearing in a second-

Voldemort hisses in pain. “You fooled beast!” he furiously snarls at the snake, and it is only iron self-control that refrains him from snapping its neck. Instead, he vanishes it with a flick of his wand, and furiously thinks that he will wait for his mind to change when he will want to summon another python.

There is blood running along his skin, where the fangs had pierced the skin.

“Are you-” Around them the memory is still very vivid, Auror-Potter having not moved an inch from his desk. Potter’s gaze is concerned on him. “Are you alright?”

Voldemort does not answer at first, another movement of his wand closing the wound and vanishing the blood. The pain, he does not vanish, for the spell tends to numb the mind and Voldemort does not want to do such a thing near Harry Potter.

“I have seen worse,” Voldemort coldly says, just as the memory finally fades. And then, when they find themselves once more in the Lestrange’s library, because the boy is gazing at him with concern and regret, a combination that he had never ever seen directed towards him, and because there is no better moment (no better opportunity, he fiercely thinks, as if it was the only reason behind his motive) he speaks to the boy.

“But I thank you for your concern,” he says, less glacially than his previous sentence, and Harry Potter’s eyes widen in surprise.

“It's- uh- it’s nothing-” the boy manages to mutter.

Voldemort is in half a mind to summon back the damned beast to nail him to their door. Perhaps Morfin Gaunt had a point, he thinks, for all the flaws that had been part of the man, an insult to what Slytherin had ever represented, he might have marked a sensible argument in his treatment of those ungrateful creatures.

But then, Potter is still looking incredulously at him; as if politeness coming from his lips is the farthest thing from his perception of Voldemort, and he pleasingly thinks that this is a step further for the boy’s growing trust.

There is something that Voldemort decides he likes; in the myriad of emotions that seizes the boy, so very different from anger, and he ignores the irritating tugging in his chest. It comes from a boy long dead, one whose neither name nor self exist anymore.

His mind is treacherous, alas, and Voldemort frustratingly thinks that if neither his soul nor his mind is faithful to him, then demanding such from men is a pointless endeavour.

~*~

There is a bowl of fruits on the table.

Why is there a bowl of fruits on the table?

Harry Potter has a suspicious sheepish look on his face. The boy says nothing, however, about the bowl of fruits and continue to stir his coffee.

Voldemort levitates a piece of grapefruit, for he will not seize it barbarically. He glances at the boy, which is still suspiciously silent, and wonders about the merit of summoning some beast of a sort for it to test the offering for poison. Nothing can kill them here, of course, but he is without Horcruxes and will not let assumptions bring him to Death’s door.

Too many times had he seen it, he thinks, and there is a cold shiver along his skin, reminiscing the Horcrux ceremony, the lingering presence of Death around him, the killing curse that needed to be cast at one-self; the fear, terrible fear, the agony of tearing through his self, the green light directed towards one’s throat-

“It’s not poisoned.” The boy’s murmur is barely audible. He has flushed cheeks; something less akin to embarrassment and more to-

Regret?

Voldemort does not understand the reasons behind this emotion. He stares at the boy, but the mind is clouded to him, as it had been since he had woken up, and he grits his teeth in frustration. It is as having lost a limb, for his ability to pierce the thoughts of others to be out of his grasp.

He eats the grapefruit, then, and it tastes as everything; which is an allegory to say that it tastes like nothing. The sense of taste has been taken away from him, this he remembers, even he is not quite certain of the when. Voldemort merely remembers to be exempt to hunger and the need of satiety, remembers finding his food to be ash on his tongue, remembers forcing himself to sustain himself, only to realize that it was not necessary.

Not anymore.

“It is quite good,” he says nonetheless, and the boy’s eyes shine with pleasure.

It amazes him, all those emotions that the boy wears in his eyes. The easiness in which they are offered to the world, in a way that Tom Riddle had certainly never done, and he strangely finds himself wanting for more of them to appear.

It is the curiosity of their differences, Voldemort thinks, persuades himself.

He takes another piece of fruit, then, and another, and another, and Potter says nothing at all but he does not need to. Windows of the soul, indeed, Voldemort thinks, and greedily watches them, with the avidity that he had always displayed when finding something worthy of his attention.

“It’s not worth a cake, obviously,” the boy tentatively says, another olive branch that he proposes. “But you don’t strike me as someone appreciating over-sugary things. Especially with the braised tongue.”

Voldemort wonders if it is the right time to inform that he had never gotten close to this so-called favourite meal of his. No, he thinks, for sweet lies prevail over truth, when the latter only brought disappointment and deceit.

An adage, of course, that he reserves for others than him. He has no fondness for the candid happiness of the ignorant, which favours his bubble of peace over the reality of the world. There is a duty, Tom Riddle had thought and Voldemort too, to knowledge, to one’s environment that every human is bound to respect.

Only fools choose to live in self-made mirages.

“I don’t really see the point,” the boy says once more, plaintively so. He seems frustrated, a frustration that Voldemort would have shared had he not known the hidden use of their Pensieve sessions. “Why would they show us this? Why would they even show us something? What is their point-”

“Whom are you referring to?” Voldemort wastes no time asking; because he is certain that the boy knows something he refuses to share.

Harry Potter throws him an annoyed look. “I already told you,” he says. “It is up to you to believe me or not, and we both know that you’re having some trust issues.”

Voldemort laughs. Only Harry Potter could look at the cautiousness induced by war, induced by an environment made of betrayal and lies, and say it a problem of trust.

“Perhaps there is no point at all,” he says instead. It is intriguing how the boy’s head immediately snaps in his direction, the frustration fading for incomprehension.

Ah, Voldemort thinks, Potter must have thought Voldemort to speak of mysterious reasons, invoke fate’s will and meaning that eluded the common of mortals. He will not. He is no Albus Dumbledore, and refuses to hide his ignorance behind the pretence of higher beings.

“Perhaps,” Voldemort continues, his tone velvety as he affectionates it the most. “We try to give meaning to something that has none. Perhaps it only bears the importance we choose to give it.”

It is one of the first times, or is it the first, Voldemort is not quite certain, that he addresses Harry Potter as an equal in an exchange of thoughts, and not as someone to merely receive his words and give him nothing of interest in return. It is one of the first time, or is it the first, that Harry Potter listen to what he has to say, and judges his words for what they are and not from whom they come.

“But if I give them none,” Harry Potter quietly says. “Then how could I think us advancing? How can I think that what we are doing is useful and not another pointless endeavour that will eventually remind us that we are fucking stuck here?”

“We are not static in our research,” Voldemort says, because he had seen the crack that runs over the door. He had stopped in front of it, mesmerized by the final thought that he had been right, as time always tended to prove him, and brushed a finger against it. It was Harry Potter, as it always seem fated to be, who was the key to Lord Voldemort’s freedom. “You need not to lose hope.”

How intriguing, he thinks, for him to be in this situation. It is amusing, with an ironic point of view, to gaze at the boy who had destroyed him, soul and body, and to rekindle the fire of his hope. It does not matter, Voldemort says to himself, because he above all was the one that could understand his motivations the most. He cannot doubt himself, not when it is the last pillar of his strength. It does not matter, for he plays the long-term game.

Harry Potter will die, he thinks, and the thought brings the same myriad of emotions it had always brought. Endless joy, fright, a reminiscence of a pain and desolation, and an avidity, an avidity so vivid and raw it burns, and burns.

~*~

They decide – or Harry Potter decides, and he very reluctantly agrees – to see one of his memories this time.

“It’s only fair,” Harry Potter declares, one eyebrow raised, and strong of a determination that had been brought back tenfold. “You have escaped it for far too long.”

Voldemort is amused, to a certain extent, because the boy seems to have decided to display an over amount of confidence in order to disguise his earlier defeated self. He does not argue, however, because he could not care less about the memories of a boy that is long gone.

Lies, something whispers in the back of his mind, and Voldemort kills it without a second thought.

“Shall I choose then?” Voldemort asks.

Potter shakes his head. “Fate will, since you seem so fond of it.”

He says nothing, intrigued by the teasing easily audible in the boy’s tone. He knows his scheme is working, for Potter seems to have loosened the tension he carried since Voldemort had woken up, but he still dares not to induce contact.

He does not want it, for he loathes the touch of skin, the warmth of it, but Voldemort knows that his peers had always craved it; that most of mankind revered it with an incomprehensible awe, and that it will help fade away the last vestiges of Potter’s mistrust.

The boy will not forget, Voldemort knows, but is not oblivion he is after, it is misguided forgiveness. If not of his loved ones’ death, of what he represents.

“Give me a number,” Harry Potter says, an amused smile on his lips. “Any number between one and ten.”

Voldemort sighs. “Pick one of them.” It is not a suggestion. “We have no time for childish games.”

“On the contrary,” Potter grins. “We have all the time in the world, as I thought we already settled. And it is not a childish game, it is giving fate another opportunity to prove to us that she does not loathe us up to a hundred per cent.”

Voldemort looks at Potter. He is unashamedly grinning, waiting for Voldemort to abdicate.

“Nine,” Voldemort then says, because he does not like being predictable.

Harry Potter nods. “A strong number,” he agrees and turns towards the vial to begin a counting that makes only sense in the twisted mind of his.

A few seconds later, or is it minutes, Harry Potter turns to face him with beaming satisfaction. He has a vial in his hand, and Voldemort’s nostrils flare. “Here it is,” Potter exclaims. “All shiny and mysterious.”

“Potter,” Voldemort warns between gritted teeth.

Harry Potter chuckles and pours the vial in the pensieve. “Let’s go explore your inner thoughts, then.”

They exchange no glance as they plunge their head into the pensive for the fourth time.

~*~

They are at the Malfoy Manor.

It was foolish of him, incredulously naïve, Voldemort thinks, to have thought that the memories would only show Tom Riddle’s life. If their jailer had stolen their past, nothing had said that it would not show his.

“I hate this place,” Harry Potter says, with a rare disgust. He gazes at the place with far more loathing than he is giving Voldemort recently, and there is a hatred in his eyes that can not be hidden. “It should burn to the ground.”

Voldemort does not know that Harry is staring at the Manor, at this place which had carved Hermione’s skin, which had engraved the worst of hatred in her very flesh, which had heard her scream and scream without Harry being able to do anything. What he knows, is that it makes Harry Potter’s eyes flash with something delightful, something that mesmerizes him, and he sees it now, in the fury that animates the boy, the traces of another, the traces of himself.

He does not know that Harry Potter’s anger is born out of love, and it is only the twisted reflection of it that he sees.

Voldemort opens his mouth to say something, but finds himself cut by his apparition.

It is very recent, Voldemort realizes, for his mirrored self wears the exhaustion of the war, hidden to anyone but so easily recognizable by his bearer. Nagini is draped around his shoulder, as she often loved to, for she spoke of a warmth she lacked, and his footsteps are silent around the Manor.

Harry Potter cannot refrain from flitting his gaze from one Voldemort to another.

“You must have been terribly satisfied,” he says then. It is barely audible, and Voldemort, who has found himself following the path his other self is taking, needs a few seconds to hear the words the boy has spoken.

“Whatever for?” he asks.

“Silence,” his other self is saying to his soul. “I am not in the mind to indulge your whims now.”

“Walking in a pureblood castle,” Harry Potter merely says. He has a strange expression on his face, one that Voldemort can not exactly place. “Owning it by everything but the law.”

Voldemort stops then. He averts his gaze from his other self, where Nagini is hissing words of false outrage and looks at Potter. He is not angry anymore, not this vicious anger that had seized him upon seeing the castle, and instead is looking at the other Voldemort with an intrigued intensity.

“I fail to understand,” Voldemort murmurs. Lies, the voice think, lies, lies. It is a familiar voice, one that bears the accent of London’s poor districts, and Voldemort furiously thinks that he has murdered the boy, that he had buried him deep under the ground, and that he deserves none of Voldemort’s attention.

“I think you understand very well,” Harry says, and he bears the coldness of another. It is strange, for he doesn’t seem angry, but something else entirely, and it infuriates Voldemort that he does not recognize it. “I bet they were all little shits, like Malfoy was. Well, is. Looking down at the Slytherin’s mudblood.”

Voldemort’s head snaps in furious incredulity. He cannot breathe, for his anger seizes him entirely.

His hiss is pure ice. “You dare-”

“Beaming about their large Manors, and all that they possessed, drowning everyone with their insufferable pride for it, disdaining those who did not. Distributing contempt as if it was candy, laughing at the rest. Spending their vacations in their bright home; then returning with arms full of gift and always laughing at the ones that had stayed.”

“Silence,” Voldemort snarls.

His eyes are wide with fury, his face livid. His gaze has left entirely his other- his eyes focused on Harry Potter’s features, the moving lips of his. His fingers are too frozen on his wand for any spell to leave it, and yet he knows that it would do nothing.

“Oh you don’t need to be angry,” Harry Potter dares to add. “But I just think you must have felt pretty pleased. To be in their house, have the Most Ancient and Noble Families,” Harry Potter says it as the Black’s say mudblood, with a condescendence that speaks of disdain and loathing. “-bow in front of you, when they had been so proud in the past, so prompt to disregard of those who had not belonged to their narrowed, biased, cruel principles.”

Anger, as always, sharpened the tongue to make it cruel. “You forget a thing, boy,” Voldemort quietly whispers. “I am the Heir, and bears the noble blood of Salazar Slytherin in my blood. You mistake me for your mudblood of a mother, and if you wish to speak of the pitiful life of hers, you would do well to talk to a grave.”

“That’s a lie,” Harry Potter calmly says, not rising to the bait. “You went to Hogwarts with no knowledge of your ancestors.” He sighs then, just as Voldemort’s fingers twitch on his wand. “But that is not the point, please stop jumping immediately to this fury every time I speak. I am just thinking that it must have been quite the revenge to watch them grovel at your feet when they had been so haughty in the past.”

Voldemort thins his lips, so tightly it brings a wave of pain. He tastes blood then, and realizes for his glamoured teeth to still have pierced his flesh.

It infuriates him, very much so, for the boy to have such a knowledge of his life. It is returned, of course, for he knows of every of Harry Potter’s days; but whereas the boy’s life is uninteresting, his bears a value that should not be shared. Even less via the biased vision of Albus Dumbledore.

Something catches their attention, just as he is about to speak. They have instinctively followed the footsteps of the other Voldemort, even if snarling at the other, and his mirrored self is entirely unaware of their presence as he enters his office.

“Shall we?” Harry Potter quietly asks. He has the audacity of sheepishness, when Voldemort can not vanish the blood of his mouth, not in a memory.

He says nothing, and enter the office.

Bellatrix is there, patiently waiting in one of the armchairs, and immediately kneels to his feet upon seeing his mirrored self. There is an inhalation behind him, and Voldemort says nothing, for he knows of the boy hatred for his General.

It flares something in his chest, something akin to loss and anger, to see her so vividly. He will kill Molly Weasley, Voldemort furiously thinks. He will kill her slowly; not before making sure for her to survive her children. He will blind her, then, for her to know of the cecity of her actions, the blind stupidity of them, and he will cut her tongue for it had been it that had screamed the curse that had taken his General’s life. He will watch her choke and gurgle on her blood, and he will cure it, vanish the blood, again and again, for her to know the circle of pain.

It is a torture of Prometheus that he wants to inflict to the Weasley woman, the pain of the loss and the reconstruction of the flesh, only for her to taste once again the agony of its destruction.

And then, when she will be a broken shell of wails and nothingness, when her sobs will no longer hold sanity in them, he will kill her.

“My lord,” Bellatrix is saying. She speaks in a feverish voice, rendered so by her time in Azkaban. “Thank you for accepting to teach it to me, I know I have missed many inventions… I will not take much time I promise… I am not up to date with the spells that have been created in the last decade…But I will fix it… I will render you proud…”

Harry Potter, amongst all his contempt, manages to raise a surprised eyebrow. “I was not aware- new spells?”

For an auror, this is terribly disappointing. Voldemort too arches an eyebrow. The anger of his heart had managed to recede upon seeing the scene in front of him. It is one that had pleased him, the satisfaction so rare in the middle of a war that he wanted neither annoyance nor fury to taint it.

“Of course Harry,” he murmurs. “You can thank Severus for many of those inventions. Magic is Might, but Magic is progress too. I do not accept idleness. Do you think me satisfied with the work of others? The curses of my own creations are what cost dear Alastor his eye.”

Harry Potter gasps. “You’re teaching her your own curses?”

Of course, Voldemort irately thinks, the boy would pick the most useless information amongst what he gave him. “Yes,” he says, his tone slow for he is doubting the boy’s state of mind. “Yes, I did.”

“That’s quite enough, Bella,” his mirrored self is murmuring. “I am aware of the drawbacks your loyalty entailed. I will decide on the duration of our sessions.”

“Okay,” Harry Potter says. “That’s strange. That’s very strange. I thought- I mean- you’re sharing your curses? With someone else? Someone who is not, to an extent or another, a part of you?”

The boy’s incredulity, far from bringing back his anger, only amuses him.

“I believe that this is what was said.”

Harry Potter incredulously looks at his mirrored self, then Bellatrix, who is murmuring words of thanks, then back to him, and back to his mirrored self, in an endless loop. “I thought you cherished your uniqueness? Would it not beneficiate you better to be the only one to know of those curses?”

Voldemort looks at the boy, with his narrow vision of himself, and says. “It is a war, Potter. Would you refrain from instructing your Aurors apprentices to fulfil your ego?”

“Of course not!” The boy exclaims.

“Then why should I be subject to such a constraint?”

Harry Potter opens his mouth, closes it.

“There is much to be learned in fourteen years wasted away,” his mirrored self says, not one to give comfort over truth, and Voldemort has the time to see for a second time Bellatrix nods to his words before the memory begins to fade.

Then both Lord Voldemort and Harry Potter open their eyes, and the familiarity of the Lestrange’s library greets them.

Harry Potter looks at him with barely hidden surprise. He is no stranger to this sight, for everyone was eventually bound to gaze at him in such a way, but it is usually a secondary emotion, tainted by something stronger.

“I think I understand the point of those memories,” Harry Potter then says, and it seems that the boy will give a meaning of his own to those pointless sessions. “But I am not sure yet to know how to put words on it.”

~*~

There is no other crack on the wooden door. Voldemort stares at it, and tries, certainly not for the first time, nor even the thousand, to break it further.

Nothing happens, as it seems is bound to be, but it is calmly that his wand disappears in his sleeve. Patience, he thinks, and is reminded of a boy who had worn it in the palm of his hand. Patience is the tool of the strong, for it demands to have a vision wider than one’s eyes.

“No change?” Potter says from a few steps away.

Voldemort says nothing, and the silence speaks for him.

“At least the crack means that we’re doing something right,” the boy murmurs, and it is more to comfort himself than for Voldemort. “We just have to continue this way.”

Yes, Voldemort thinks, but what he thinks must be very far from the thoughts that agitate Potter. He turns, then, because there is nothing else to do.

“Join me in the kitchen,” he says.

“We’ll have to work on orders and suggestions,” Potter says with a lifted eyebrow, but he complies all the same.

The boy follows him as a ghost follows his anchor, and the remainder of them makes him grit his teeth. He remembers all too well the dread at their sight, of those souls who had not been able to leave Earth, who were marked by death and seen by all. It reminds him of-

“Did you request the assistance of Ravenclaw for the diadem?” Voldemort abruptly says, lifting his wand for two cups of fuming tea to come to them.

Harry Potter’s lips twitch, as if he is not sure for the sentence to be a trap. It is, and it is not, in a sense. He wants to know, fiercely so, if even those reached by death had betrayed him. Or perhaps, he thinks, and finds that there is no satisfaction in the thought, he is the one to have broken his oath to Ravenclaw.

He does not regret, nor is pleased by it. It is just a fact, one that makes him wonder. He had tried to diadem in itself, and had found no particular use to it. It had whispered a pearl of wisdom that had already been said by another voice, fiercer and inherent to his self.

Voldemort did not like the thought of being dependent on an artefact. The Elder Wand had proved it to him, that an object’s loyalty is fickle and can not be ordered.

“Not really,” the boy says, and accept the tea. It is not one selected randomly, but the one Voldemort favours the most.

It is rather simple, with no resemblance to be found with the Da Hong Pao nor the Vintage Narcissus the purebloods prefer. Voldemort remembers finding some of it in the Malfoy’s Manor, for Abraxas had always been fond of the monetary value of things rather than their intrinsic value. In some cases, however, the two went hand in hand, and Voldemort recalls appreciating the beverage.

But there is value too in simpler things, and it is silver needle tea that he enjoys. It is one of the very few things that hold taste, and he cherishes it.

“Hey!” Potter exclaims. “That’s really good!” He takes another sip then, and conjures a spoon of honey to mix it within.

Voldemort says nothing, for it is bad taste to criticize another’s tea preferences, but pinches his lips just slightly. “The diadem,” he then says.

Harry Potter, fascinated by his tea, needs a few seconds to raise his gaze. “I saw it in your mind,” he confesses. “You thought about the one you had hidden in Hogwarts, and then, because you had artefacts, I thought of something belonging to Ravenclaw, and I asked her, but she did not want to speak to me, of course, not after what you did to the tiara. So uh- we had a little discussion- because it’s really gruesome what happened to her- and I deducted that you must have hidden the diadem the night you went to ask for the DADA post and uh- that’s it.”

It is Voldemort’s magic that refrains the cup from breaking under his grip. That’s it, he thinks, and desires so vividly to claw out the boy’s eyes to wear such sheepishness.

“The night I asked for the post?” he slowly repeats, then.

The boy scratches at his beard. “Uh, yes. Dumbledore showed me the interview.”

Voldemort’s anger shifts. He hisses under his breath.

“Did you really want to teach?” Harry then asks, curiosity replacing his prior embarrassment. The boy guards his cup of tea as if Voldemort would snatch it from him should he lower his focus. “I mean, I know you like Hogwarts, but to teach to actual children?”

Voldemort, having taught the Dark Arts to his inner circle and found them much harder to manage than children, takes a sip of his tea.

“Yes,” he says. He does not offer reasons, and the boy fidgets as if he wants to ask for more. Voldemort continues then, because he does not desire for the boy to ask and see his questions denied, for it is bound to shatter the trust he has built. “Knowledge is only valuable if it is shared. I do not desire to be the sole bearer of it, nor to see the young wizards of our society be crippled by ignorance.”

Harry Potter hums. There is still incredulity in his gaze, but it is tainted with a hinge of comprehension.

“I guess it changes from retail,” the boy says.

Voldemort barely hides a grimace at the thought. It had been worth it, he tries to tell himself, for it had allowed him to create a list of all the purebloods versed in the Dark Arts. It had allowed him to delete all entries of the Slytherin’s locket, and to put his hand on both it and the Hufflepuff’s cup.

“I thought about it too,” Potter then comments. “But in the end, I think an auror suits me better. Suited me. I don’t know.”

Voldemort stares at Harry Potter and his misguided trust, his forgiveness given far too easily, his smiles offered to the world and he compares it to the cruel efficacity of Alastor Moody. No, he thinks, the boy might be seen for the masses as an adequate Auror, but the reality is far from it.

He keeps silent, then, but Harry Potter has grown to see the truth in his silences.

“You don’t think so?” the boy incredulously asks. “Why not? I’ll let you know that I am behind forty per cent of the recent arrests to Azkaban !”

“Leniency,” Voldemort murmurs. His voice is laced with contempt.

“I know how to be professional!” Potter is still outraged. “Do you think I would let a Death Eater go away because of leniency?”

“Perhaps not to such a length,” Voldemort softly agrees. It eases the boy’s agitation, to a certain extent, and leaves him the time to quietly continue. “It is death, Harry, that would have been the fate of my opponents. Certainly not a house arrest. Even less a full release.”

He speaks of the Malfoys, always the slippery eluders of punishment, and Harry Potter knows it. Both know, too, for Voldemort had had the time to think about it, and find the reason underneath, that it is the treachery of Narcissa Malfoy that had saved the boy’s life.

She too, will be regretting her betrayal. It angers him, for he had been nothing but merciful with the Malfoys. He had not killed Lucius for forgetting his vows, nor punished his son for it. He had killed none of them when Lucius had been tasked with the retrieval of the prophecy and failed, had even offered to their coward of an heir a chance to redeem themselves. He had taken Lucius out of Azkaban, too, after a reminder to who he obeyed. He had been nothing, nothing, but magnanimous; and this had been rewarded with treason.

The nature of men, Voldemort knows, but desires in some instances to find mistakes in his thinking.

It does not happen, although; for he, better than most, has seen the heart of mankind. It is laced with self-interest and treachery, and had made him value devotion above all qualities.

“She saved my life,” Harry merely says. He shrugs then, and smiles, a slight smile as if he knew of Voldemort’s thoughts on the matter. “And Draco was nothing but a pawn in a war bigger than himself. Lucius although… He would have deserved Azkaban.”

“And yet he did not enter it,” Voldemort says.

“He did not,” Harry Potter agrees. “A flaw of mine, certainly, in your eyes; but I don’t regret my decision to vouch for them. All of them.”

Voldemort smiles. It is not one of Harry Potter’s smiles, bright and laced with mirth. “Leniency,” he murmurs again, and his tone is triumphant.

The boy shrugs once again. “If you wish. It has nothing to do with my skills as an auror though. I assure you that Lestrange had found himself a very nice cell near the dementors. I won’t lose sleep over it.” He marks a pause. “If I could sleep.”

“How intriguing,” Voldemort says, his voice velvety.“-for this light Ministry to still employ such dark creatures.”

“I, for one, prefer them hovering above Azkaban than the countryside,” Potter argues with an arched eyebrow. “We have an agreement with them.”

“I am certain,” Voldemort murmurs, remembering how easily it had been to gain their favour. “I shall remember it, then.”

Harry Potter narrows his eyes. “We have a verygood agreement with them.”

Voldemort does not smile, but it is not very far from it. “Yes,” he softly repeats. “I am quite certain of it.”

“A very very good agreement with them. One that will not be broken. One that can’t be broken.”

Voldemort inclines his head.

“Alright,” Harry Potter says. “How did you manage to get them under your side the first time?”

“Are you referring to the first wizarding war?”

Harry Potter throws him a loaded look. He has finished his tea, and gives it a regretful glance, before returning his gaze to Voldemort. A wandless movement of Voldemort’s wrist and it is full once again. “You know very well what I am saying. Very well, the second time. And thank you.”

Voldemort taps his fingers on the table, near where Bellatrix had sunk her nails into the wood.

“As all negotiations go,” Voldemort murmurs. “You give the other part something desired, and acquires what you desired. You draw the zone of possible agreement.”

The Boy-Who-Lived gives him a blank look.

“It is the bargaining range,” Voldemort says. “The mutual overlap of both their sine qua non criteria and mine.”

Harry Potter gives him a very pinched smile. “Of course.”

Voldemort stares at him in silence for a little while. In front of his scrutinization, the boy squirms, scratching his beard and sipping his tea to regain composure.

Once again, he is stunned by the mediocrity of the Ministry. It infuriates him, that he has shaken things, only for them to return to the willful ignorance it seems to love indulging in. How the human mind was prompt to settle for the easiest path. Voldemort had no time, of course, for the changes he truly wanted to implement to see the light of day, for the war was a time-consuming affair, but nonetheless, it angers him deep to his core to see all of it to have been in vain.

Severus, who he had tasked to review the Hogwarts’ curriculum, had only seen fit to hide in his office and let the Carrows implement the Unforgivable and test them on children. Voldemort is not exactly against them for the meaning they bear, but he is against them, for it is once again the path of convenience.

It is more that he had wished for the students to learn the Dark Arts and the secrets they held, the ancient rituals that honoured their magic. He recognizes, most certainly, the usefulness of those three curses, those raised above all, but Voldemort uses them to be efficient.

Now, if he wanted to be magnificent, there are others spells, others curses that would serve the purpose better. He understands, of course, the utility of teaching those three to the students; but it is not enough. Not when, when the war will be finished, he will need proactive minds. He needs for Hogwarts to stimulate the student’s creativity, not impair it by uniquely teaching them three curses.

“It doesn’t matter, does it?” Harry suddenly says, pushing his cup of tea in front of him. “The nomenclature behind what we did. We negotiated. We found a point of agreement. They abide by our demands, we abide by theirs.”

Voldemort refrains from sighing. “I suppose not,” he agrees.

“That’s too generous,” Harry Potter mutters in his beard.

“You eluded the subject,” Voldemort swiftly says, not one to forget what he desired. “Agreement of not, it is intriguing to have forgiven their shortcomings.”

The boy raises an eyebrow. “There is nothing to forgive. They chose another side because we treated them like beasts. Now, don’t get me wrong, I still find the Dementors entirely disgusting and they’re still my boggart, but there might be a point to learn in our mistakes.”

Voldemort, as always, focuses his attention on what interests him the most. He brushes a finger against his own cup, still fuming, even after the passage of minutes, and rivets his brown – hidden red – gaze on Harry Potter. “Your boggart?” he asks.

His voice bears the cold softness of vicious curiosity.

“Yes,” Harry says, unashamed to share what frightens him the most.

Fascinating, Voldemort thinks, for never before had he given thoughts to what shook the boy to his very core. Fear, he knows, spreads its roots in the hearts of men in a sinuous way, so closely linked to their spirit and their courage, that one cannot go without the other and that one would be hard pressed to want the one without acknowledging the presence of the second.

“It’s fear itself, I believe, that frightens me the most,” the boy simply says, unaware of the uniqueness of his. It fascinated Voldemort, and he could see it, then, what makes such a simple wizard, with no special skills, his equal on the scales of fate. “It was not born out of soulful wisdom and reflection about fear itself, initially. I will not lie. I feared the Dementors because of what they brought, this sense of dread and my Mother screaming… you asking for her to step aside…”

Voldemort remembers Lily Potters. He remembers ordering her to simply step aside, to not continue in her foolishness… he had given his words for her to live… but she had not. She had not, and Voldemort had wasted no time to remind her that his leniency was not everlasting.

He says nothing, because the boy is continuing, and Voldemort knows it is bound for Potter’s anger to flare again should he speak now.

“Then, I thought about fear, and death,” Harry Potter murmurs. “You know, I never feared death. Not like you do. Maybe it is because I thought that in the realm of living or death, there would be someone to wait for me. I am not scared of dying. You know the saying, after all, dying is easy, it’s living that is difficult.”

“Dying is cowardice,” Voldemort says.

“For you, certainly. I disagree. It takes a courage that we can, well, that you can not know of. You should not be prompt to judge it.”

“Let me rectify my words,” Voldemort murmurs. “It is not dying in itself which is the testimony of one’s weakness but the resignation to it. The acceptance of it to be bound to come.”

“But it is a part of life,” Harry argues. “You value immortality, but do you really want to see the Earth in a hundred years? In a thousand years? Do you want to not die or do you want to live forever? I think the difference is very telling.”

Voldemort stares at the boy and finds himself short of words. Potter bears a blank face, tapping his fingers against the wood, just where his wand is laying. Voldemort glances at the holly wand, and thinks about another, the one he had so fervently pursued.

“Where is the Elder Wand?”

If Potter is surprised by this sudden change of subject, he shows nothing of it.

“Somewhere,” he says, very quickly. Too quickly.

Voldemort narrow his eyes. There is a sense of dread that fills him, one he is quite certain to be proven right in the next few seconds. “Potter,” he warns.

“I-broke-it-in-half-and-threw-it-somewhere-no-one-would-find-it.”

“Contrarily to what you might think, I do not, yet, speak Troll. In English, Harry.”

Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Twice-Lived, has the audacity of displaying sheepishness. He smiles, because, as Voldemort is realizing, it is a defence mechanism for the boy. He hides his discomfort behind cheeky smiles, which will not provide any help, and averts his eyes.

“I snapped it in half and threw it somewhere. I don’t know where. It’s broken,” Harry Potter hastily says.

Voldemort freezes. His eyes, riveted on Harry Potter, become unblinking. His entire body becomes as rigid as marble, and not even one emotion passes on his face. He stares at the boy, the boy who had just said to have snapped the Deathstick, chased and chased throughout Europe for months, lost for decades.

Then, his stiffness breaks, and Voldemort pleasantly smiles. “Excuse me?” he asks.

Harry Potter is unprepared for this sudden pleasantness. A myriad of emotions passes on his face, caution, incomprehension, doubt, fright. Slowly, he says. “It was very dangerous. I could not have someone get a hand on it. We saw what it did.”

Voldemort nods. “Of course,” he agrees, his voice dangerously soft. “The preferable solution was to snap it in half.”

“You are frightening me,” Harry Potter says.

“You snapped it,” Voldemort says, with no indication whatsoever to have heard the boy’s last words. “You snapped the most powerful wand of the world. Certainly a predictable decision.”

“I had no other choice! What would I have done with it? Keep it? I don’t want it! Put it back where you took it? I was not going to desecrate Dumbledore’s grave! Give it to the Ministry? For them to take it and become corrupted by it? It was the only solution.”

Voldemort stares at the boy. “Hiding it,” he says.

Harry Potter crosses his arms on his chest. “No,” he says. “No. Not for someone else to try to find it, put his hands on it and use it as you did. As Grindelwald did. No.”

“Do you realize,” Voldemort murmurs, his voice velvety in his softness. “-how laborious it has been for me to find this wand? Do you realize the greatness it bears?”

He is angry, certainly, but above all astounded. The boy had been the Master of the most powerful wand on Earth, and had decided to snap it, to disregard the greatness of it, the strength, the power it would bring him? He had taken a look at it and had judged it unworthy?

“This is a lie,” the boy says. “You duelled Dumbledore when he had the Elder Wand and he did not win. He did not lose either, mind, but you were easily matched. I saw it in the Atrium. The legends can say what they want, it’s not the wand that makes his bearer powerful. Dumbledore had defeated Grindelwald who had it. It was not the wand that made Dumbledore win. It was his mind, his power. You spoke about tools one day. This is nothing but one, a tool.”

Voldemort grits his teeth. “It was the most powerful artefact of the wizarding world.”

“It was an object! You who said that you did not want to be dependant on one, that’s what the Elder Wand brings. Paranoia, dependence, fear. It is better broken.”

“No,” Voldemort hisses, and he regrets for his gaze to not bear the flames of the purgatory anymore. “You destroyed the most powerful wand of all because of men’s shortcomings, because they would kill each other rather than to realize the weakness that inhabits them. No, Harry Potter, you did not destroy the wand because it was a tool for the others but because you judged yourself not strong enough to bear with the spite that comes with greatness!”

The Boy-Who-Lived held his burning gaze without blinking.

“Spite your venom all you want,” Harry Potter says. “I know of my own flaws, the mistakes I made, and this- this- was perhaps the greatest thing I have ever done.”

“The greatest!-”

“Yes, the greatest!” Harry Potter too exclaims, with a fervour born of years of rethinking this decision. “You don’t understand! What do you think would have happened? Even if I had hidden it, another was bound to find it, it wants someone to find it! You had it! You heard its vicious whispers in your mind! Why do you want it so much? To have even more power? You are already the one with the most power with Dumbledore being dead! Why does it matter to be better than others from a hundred point rather than fifty?”

“It is not a question of my power,” Voldemort snarls and growing talons sink into the table. “It is the question of your right to do so.”

Harry Potter, having risen from his seat, marks a pause. “My… right?”

“Yes, Potter, your right! Do you judge yourself above all, above Death, to destroy what something far greater than you had brought in this world?”

“I-” Potter’s eyes widen, and of course, Voldemort thinks, furiously so, the boy had not thought of anything else than his own satisfaction, his own comfort, and it seemed to be the fate of men- but then Potter speaks, hesitantly so.“If the tale is right, then I think it must have been pleased.”

Voldemort’s anger does not recede, but his curiosity spikes. “The tale?”

“Well, yes,” Harry Potter murmurs. “The Tales of Beedle the Bard. Three brothers cheating Death at its game and asking for the resurrection stone, the Deathstick and the invisibility cape.”

It is the first time Voldemort has heard of such a thing. “Speak more clearly.”

“The tale,” the boy repeats, stunned. “You know. That’s why you went for the wand, was it not?”

Voldemort’s eyes search for the truth on the boy’s face. He displays nothing but surprise and incomprehension. “The wand traversed history,” he murmurs. “It is legendary from it went from wizard to wizard. It is nothing like a tale; but I assure you, very much concrete.”

Harry Potter shakes his head. “Let me talk,” he says, and Voldemort arches an eyebrow at the impertinence. “It’s this story, about three brothers that want to pass a river everyone is dying there. But they’re wizards,” Harry Potter’s skills at storytelling are abysmal, but Voldemort listens, nonetheless. “So of course they just create a bridge, and Death appears to them, and tells them something like because you passed it and didn’t die you can ask anything of me. Of course it’s upset and wants to have them die, so it’s twisted. So you have the first brother, or I don’t know if it’s the second, he says something like I want to be the most powerful of all, so she takes some wooden stick and transforms it as the Death Stick. Cut to a little while later and the brother dies because he had bragged about his wand and someone killed him and stole it.”

“Potter,” Voldemort says.

“No, let me finish. Then there’s the second brother which wants to see the dead because his fiancée or wife I don’t remember is dead. So Death gift him a stone that allows him to see the dead, but she’s unresponsive and sad, so he kills himself to join her.”

Voldemort’s lips twitch. Weak, he thinks.

“And cut to the third brother,” Harry Potter continues. “Which only wants for- shit- I don’t remember what he wants, I think something to eludes Death’s gaze? In any case, he receives the cape Death wears and it protects him from Death sight. So she has the two brothers but not the third, and then, when the third one is old he gives the cape to his son and he greets Death as a friend and Death finally collects the third brother.”

“As fascinating as this might have been,” Voldemort says. “Those are tales, Potter, to explain the power behind the Deathstick. In reality, its wood must have been taken from a tree blessed by magic.”

The boy shakes his head once again. “It’s not a tale,” he corrects. Then pinching his lips. “Well it is, but it’s not only a tale. The stone and the cape exist. You had the stone. I had- well I had all of them.”

Voldemort arches an amused eyebrow. “I had a stone capable of resurrecting the dead? Certainly, Harry, and I did not notice it, for you know that I am terribly blind to magic and the powerful artefacts blessed by it.”

“I am serious,” the boy says. “It was in your ring.”

In a second, Voldemort’s disdainful amusement fades. “My ring?” he softly asks, his eyes flashing dangerously.

Harry Potter, as always, does not retreat when facing danger. It is most admirable of him, Voldemort reluctantly admits, for many men stand proud in the belief of their courage, only to prove when the time has come that their bravely was based on mirages.

“You ring,” Harry Potter repeats. “Dumbledore took it from the Gaunt’s house, and there was the stone inside. I saw- I saw my parents when I met you in the forest. And I had the cape since I was eleven years old. Those are not tales.”

Voldemort’s first instinct is to disregard the words of the boy as lies. But then, he stops, and thinks about the ring. The ring which he had been prompt to hide away, to not wear, when it would have brought him awe and support from the purebloods. Families’ rings could not be stolen, for they were heavily protected by their families, and bore a blood curse. Only one sharing the blood of the family’s ring could wear it, or he would have seen his flesh slowly necrose, condemning him to Death.

It was not well-known to the public, but every pureblood would know the truth.

And yet, he still had taken it off. There had always been, Voldemort knows, a strange feeling that he had towards this particular Horcrux, an uneasiness that he had not been able to name, and he had been quick to remove it, to hide it.

Had the ring contained a part of death itself?

The thought seems not as impossible as it had seemed a few minutes earlier.

“The stone of resurrection,” Voldemort murmurs. He stares at Harry Potter, then, which had proclaimed to have owned the stone, the wand and the cape. “What does such a possession entails?”

Harry Potter scratches at his head. “Well,” he says. “It was supposed to make me the Master of Death, but I don’t really want to be the Master of anyone, and it certainly does not feel like the case.”

Voldemort rivets his gaze on the boy who has, not thrice like his parents before him, but more than a dozen times, defeated Death. The boy, who had gazed upon the most powerful item the Earth had ever seen, and judged it unworthy for he had no desire for its power. The boy who, supports his gaze, not because his thoughts are clouded by occlumency, but because he stands tall in his confidence.

A confidence, Voldemort thinks, that should not have any reasons to be. Not born from magical strength, nor wit beyond measure, nor, even, a knowledge that which ensures his survival. No, he thinks, and his eyes pierce through the boy, as if he wants to tear him apart; as if he wants to dissect the boy’s every thought, every cerebral zone to find what he desires to see.

He has no respect for Harry Potter, Voldemort knows, for it is only by holding the favour of fate that he has survived.

And yet, he thinks.

There is something in the boy that he had not been able to see. Clouded, perhaps, by the veil of hatred that he had always associated with him. It is something that follows him, and he wonders about the Horcrux. Certainly, Voldemort thinks, it is the remains of what bearing a Horcrux does a human soul.

The boy is weak, that he knows, for the considerations that anchored him to the mundanity of his peers. But this is not fated to be irremediable. He could be strong, Voldemort thinks, if he realized the futility of these attachments.

Harry Potter, it seems, is a child of Luck, and it is written everywhere on his skin, on his soul. It is audible in the words he speaks, in the emotion that lace his voice.

For the first time, Voldemort understands the prophecy. He understands the reasons for such a choice, and realizes that Fate never does mistakes. Harry Potter, it seems, could very well be the only one to be his equal. Not in the ways Voldemort had always thought, be it raw power, intelligence or ambition, but in the hidden ways of magic.

The Master of Death, Voldemort thinks, and he has no need for a proof to know this was fated to be, well before Harry Potter’s birth. Well before the prophecy.

Respect is – was – a fickle notion. Prompt to disappear, hard to be regained.

But, Voldemort thinks; and Potter finishes the last sips of his tea, unaware of the thoughts that agitate him; it is here.

Harry Potter has gained Lord Voldemort’s respect.

A few meters away, another crack runs over the door, elongating the crevasses of the first one.

Edit 6.02 Now with art! I commissioned it from @bubblyernie which is super talented! (I can’t draw even if my life was at stake but I love love fanarts)