Perfect Places

On my destroyed shelters
On my crumbled beacons
On the walls of my boredom
I write your name

On the absence without desire
On the bare solitude
On the steps of death
I write your name

- Liberté, Paul Eluard

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.

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It is easier than he would have thought to initiate contact.

It does not mean that Voldemort appreciates it. It merely means that he does not have to hide his recoil, for there is no recoil, nor smoothen his disgust into indifference. He displays, it is true, a mask of nonchalance that surprises him by its easiness.

The boy, he, reacts very far from indifference.

The first time Voldemort had brushed his fingers against the boy’s shoulder - a boy, which he realizes has grown to be none at all, but Voldemort still painfully remembers the infant who had destroyed his body – Harry Potter had frozen. His entire body had gone still, a perfect statue of Medusa, with the incredulous horror her victims had born on their features, and Voldemort had wasted no time offering Potter sweet loneliness.

There had been no comment on the situation. This state of fact, added to the new crack on the door, Voldemort thinks, is a valuable aid. Harry Potter dares not to speak on the matter, not when he does not understand the meaning behind those light touches and where he had been much more daring, only a few weeks ago.

Voldemort does not forget, nor forgive. He remembers, quite vividly, the warm – disgusting – lips of the Boy-Who-Lived on his. He knows, and it pleases him; this cruel delight he had always felt when seeing a discomfort in others, one created by his own hands. He sees the shame, the incomprehension on Potter’s face when his fingers linger too far, for far too long.

And thus, never one to suppress his own wills for the merit of others, even less when not asked to, Voldemort continues.

It is a touch on the boy’s finger when he offers him a cup of tea, it is the brushing against the boy’s back, shoulders when he passes near him, it is his breath on the boy’s neck when he reaches for something near the boy.

Harry Potter is confused, he can see it clearly. He does not understand, not when Voldemort had always painted himself as a creature of fear, greatness and devotion; not one for those simpler pleasures.

The boy lessens his barriers, in retaliation. He grows less wary, offering his emotions as one offers his words, displaying them as a book can be wide open.

And they are a delight, Voldemort thinks, avidly drinking them whenever they pass on Potter’s features. He is fascinated, this he realizes, by them. He relishes in their fierceness, in the fire that they light in the eyes of the boy, for it reminds him of another, of prophecies, and equals.

It is a pity, Voldemort surprises himself to think one day, for the boy to have been destined to stand against him. He thinks of Bellatrix and the fire that had animated her, the fierceness of her, he thinks of Rodolphus and his cold mind, his sheer devotion, he thinks of Rabastan and his promptness to obey, to please him, and the wittiness of his tongue, he thinks of Bartemius, and his impetuosity, his viciousness, and the worship in his eyes.

He thinks of Harry Potter, his loathing, and his prompt-to-give laugh.

He is not one to change his mind on such important matters, although. Harry Potter, for the hindrance in his plans, for having destroyed him, soul and body, will die. He will die, as all lesser men did, and Voldemort would live.

The boy grows daring, too. Or perhaps he had never ceased to be, but had restrained himself; pushing down his recklessness in favour of this newfound myriad of emotions.

“Did you,” Potter asks, and he scratches his chin, the very same way he tries to hide embarrassment. “Uh-”

There is an ashamed curiosity in his eyes, and Voldemort wonders which kind of indiscreet question the boy wishes to ask.

He inclines his head, then, a silent consent for the boy’s curiosity to overcome his shame.

“The Death Eaters,” Potter mumbles, believing his keyword to be precise enough to convey his question without having to pronounce the words that composed it. In front of Voldemort’s silence, he continues, his cheeks turning pink. “Was there- I mean- Was- uh- did one of them attract your attention?”

Voldemort smiles. It is not a nice smile, for he rather relishes in the discomfort that animates the boy. “Every of my Death Eaters attracted my attention,” he softly says. “I would not have graced them the mark if they had not.”

Harry Potter pinches his lips. “That’s not what I asked,” he says, plaintively.

“On the contrary, Harry,” Voldemort murmurs. “I believe to have very suitably answered your question. Now, if you desired  to shift the meaning of the word attraction…”

The boy throws him a certain look. It seems, as Voldemort is realizing, that annoyance is stronger than his misplaced curiosity. Voldemort knows very well what the boy is asking of him, a question that is not incongruous, for Harry Potter desperately tries to offer meaning to those nonchalant touches he is receiving.

“Very well,” Potter snaps, with teenage moodiness. Voldemort refrains from telling the boy he is not one anymore and should behave accordingly. “Tell me, Voldemort, have you ever wanted to fuck one of your Death Eaters?”

The words are crude, distastefully so, and it is only the use of his proper name that refrains Voldemort from leaving the boy to his own company.

“Why, Harry,” he murmurs, the well-familiar anger begging to be allowed a release. Voldemort pushes it down, for he has grown well-accustomed to those spikes of fury the boy provokes in him. They will never disappear, this he knows, even with the growing trust of the Boy-Who-Lived. Their mind confronts, for the boy disposes of the same recklessness his Father had shared, and Voldemort is not one to tame his displeasure. “I found myself intrigued by the reason behind such an interest.”

The boy blushes, his snapping anger making him realize the crudeness of his words.

Voldemort lets him have no time to mumble insincere apologies. “I did not. I value devotion, intelligent minds, ruthlessness, power. I had no time nor will to indulge them in their desires.”

Harry Potter’s eyes widen. “Their desire? They wanted-”

Tom Riddle might have been outraged by the boy’s incredulity. Voldemort finds it rather amusing. The boy is still deluded, for the criteria he values in partners lacks the one thing that appeals the most to mankind, power.

He says it, and the incredulity of the boy morphs towards disgusted resignation.

“True,” Harry Potter admits. “I had seen many times at the Auror Department. I truly don’t get it. Surely power is not that attractive…?”

Voldemort who had craved it since he had opened his eyes on the world, says nothing. He opens his hand, and invokes Fiendfyre to dance on his palm.

Harry Potter rivets his eyes on the fire, where a stag battles a snake, and the flames reflect on his irises.

Fiendfyre is very easy to invoke. It is not its invocation that proves Voldemort’s point, but the control he exerts on it. Not once does the flames waver out of his palm, nor does they lick his skin to ashes. They float, proud and great, in the palm of his hand and consumes Voldemort’s essence.

Another word for soul, one that even the Darkest Books had not wished to say, but Voldemort knows his soul, back to fullness or not, to have undertaken worse.

Voldemort closes his fist and the fire dies in his grip.

Harry Potter raises his eyes.

The flames of the Fiendfyre had not vanished from them.

“This proves nothing,” he says after a second, but there is a newfound breathlessness to his voice.

Voldemort gives him the same smile the Basilisk had given its prey.

~*~

Every morning since his discovery of it, Harry Potter trains on the Quidditch Pitch.

He comes back exhausted from it, soiled by sweat and mud, but always with a beaming smile.

Voldemort, not one to shed his dignity for something as crude as Quidditch, reads in the Lestrange’s library. He had summoned an armchair, one cold enough for the insufferable warmth of the House not to reach him, a couch, on which the boy delights himself in sprawling on it, and, against his better judgement, Junior.

The snake, for his visible resemblance to himself, reminds him of the boy. It is prompt to bite should it be disturbed from his sleep, hisses insults at Potter, and pretext a desire for warmth to coil itself around Voldemort’s forearms.

Voldemort is not certain to know why he indulges it.

“One day, I will propose a new meal and he will be on the menu,” Harry Potter is saying, taking a step through the mirror to come plopping on the couch. He glares at the snake, and passes a hand on his forehead. An empty threat, Voldemort knows, for the boy is relentless in trying to gain the animal’s affections. “Perhaps then we will be relieved from this menace.”

We? Voldemort absently thinks.

“I am getting back to my prior level,” Potter continues, as always relishing in the sound of his own voice. Voldemort turns a page from his book. “That’s nice. Perhaps I’ll even go farther; I was afraid for this house to have made me forget all about it.”

A few seconds stretches between them, the boy stretching and Voldemort absently gazing at this book. As often when the boy decides to monopolize his attention, judging himself worthier than Voldemort’s occupation of the moment, he finds himself unable to sustain his prior level of focus on the pages he is reading.

“Did you play?” Harry Potter suddenly asks. “When you were at Hogwarts. Did you play Quidditch? I mean you had to take the course in the first year, but except that?”

Voldemort thinks of Abraxas Malfoy and his devotion for the useless sport, his fierce rants about it, and his lips curl in distaste. Never had he understood the love, for such a strong obsession could only be coated in the mantel of love, of Abraxas for it.

“I did not play,” he says. “I had mastered a far worthier mean to fly.”

He had given no trust in those decayed brooms, their wood rotten and half-eaten by termites. Not when his own magic had given him the strength to disregard them, not when he had worked on this ability until it had become an inherent part of himself.

By the time Abraxas Malfoy had morphed his distaste for admiration and affection, offering him the latest broom to partake in the activity, Voldemort was flying so effortlessly that it disregarded the Earth’s gravity as yet another constraint that bind lesser beings than him.

“I did view some of our Houses matches,” Voldemort lies. He had been present at each of them. “Abraxas Malfoy was a Chaser.”

“Malfoy’s Grandfather?” Harry Potter asks with a grimace. “No wonder he tried so hard to join the team. Talk about nepotism, with another seeker they could have won way more times.”

Voldemort knows not of what the boy is saying.

Potter shrugs. “At least it made Slytherin lose. I won’t regret that.” Then, leaning on an elbow, raising his gaze to Voldemort. “And other clubs? There’s a Gobstones one, no- and I think a chess club? Ron wanted to join it in second year but then we were a little bit busy. Perhaps others too?”

Voldemort is not certain to remember all of them. He frowns, then, a second at the very most. “I believe them to be far more numerous than the few ones you recalled. I am quite certain there was a gathering for Arts, another made by a few Ravenclaws to develop their Astronomy’s skills. A Potion one too, certainly.”

“For Arts?” Potter says, curiosity shining through his voice.

“The six original Arts,” Voldemort specifies. “Mostly paintings in my time,” he says after a few lingering seconds. “Wizards had always embraced the thought of leaving an animated legacy of who they were, a better version of themselves. A desire, certainly, to erase their flaws in favour of a golden image that is tasked in indulging respect and awe.”

Potter hums. “I’m not sure,” he says. “I think people just like the idea of leaving a version of themselves to see their descendants. To be able to talk to their grandchildren and their children.”

Voldemort is very careful for his facial expressions to remain neutral. “You offer them a credit they do not deserve.”

“Or perhaps you are the one to blind yourself to the vast qualities wizards have, only seeing their shortcomings.”

It is easy, Voldemort thinks, when for far too long had he only been offered said shortcomings, had only seen such exposed to his sight. He has yet to find someone deserving of admiration, and if he had been able to see in many qualities he had appreciated, going as far as feeling affection for them, genuine awe is something that had never grazed his heart.

Expectations, certainly, that had been dressed higher than anyone would. He accepted nothing but the best, for he knew for such to exist, had himself proved it again and again.

However, for this demand of perfection, Voldemort knew better than asking of someone something far above his capacities. The tasks he had given to his Death Eaters had always been something they should have been able to do, something within their reach.

Wormtail, to perfectly execute the ritual. Severus, to let his mind absorb every word spoken around him, Lucius, to retrieve the prophecy. Bella, to hoard his cup. And yet, he thinks, yet, even those seemingly simple tasks had proven too much of a hassle.

This is what infuriates him, perhaps more than their flaws. It is the knowledge of their capacity to do so, only for them to hinder themselves, or betray him.

Above all, Voldemort despises treason.

Ignorance, the sweet gift of the fools, he can pardon. Magical weakness, too. Recklessness, the impatience of wanting to please, the fleeting disregard of caution for adrenaline runs strong in the veins, he can be lenient to. It does not mean that he necessarily will; but more than once had Voldemort seen young Death Eaters, freshly marked, been eager to prove themselves and make mistakes during the first wizarding war.

He had punished, but forgiven, for such flaws were the proof of an overwhelming devotion.

Betrayal, on the other hand... It reminds Voldemort of bitterness, it reminds him of everything he loathes, it reminds him of a boy that had wished for his circle to never falter in their worship; it reminds him of the promises in their eyes, his mark on their arms, and it stirs in his stomach a sensation he loathes above anything else.

This, Voldemort thinks, is unforgivable. This, does not deserve Death, for Death is far too kind to sinners, but to painfully live. This, deserves the cruellest survival. This, deserves for their mind to be ripped apart, for their sanity to cling to it, only to painfully realize the futility of it.

Lord Voldemort, and Tom Riddle before him, had never been one for compassion and understanding.

“I never heard of this,” Harry Potter is saying. He had sprawled himself on the couch as a feline leisurely basks in the sun. His legs are dangling in the air, an indolence that Voldemort would never have thought to see in the Boy-Who-Lived. “Then, I was never one for, uh, classes. I was quite preoccupied with other things too, mostly staying alive, which should have been a normal expectation and yet was not one at all.”

“How terrible,” Voldemort murmurs, for he bears no pity for the boy who had reduced him as a  wraith for thirteen years.

“And were you a part of those clubs?” Harry asks; as if he had not heard his words.

Voldemort closes his book. His fingers stroke the snake’s head, the cold scales under his touch. “I, too, had others preoccupations,” he says. “Horace Slughorn had already succeeded in monopolizing the time I had decided to accord to clubs.”

“Ah yes,” Harry Potter nods. There is a small grimace of distaste in his features, and Voldemort stares at it, intrigued. Few are those who attract Harry Potter’s dislike, at least amongst those who do not bear his mark. “Slughorn and his little club. I suppose you were the jewel of it. What a lechery man.”

This is one of the few points Voldemort and Harry Potter can agree on.

“You know that he still has all those portraits in the houses he steals?” Harry says. “All the students that were a part of his club. I wonder how long did he wait before frighteningly tearing the one you were on.”

Voldemort laughs. It surprises him, this barking laugh that resembles nothing in the high-pitched delight he offers when cruelty amuses him. Harry Potter is delighted too, but not for his own amusement, for the own that animates Voldemort’s features.

“Did he?” Voldemort asks. His amusement stretches his lips. “I wonder if he gazed upon it at night, murmuring words of comfort towards himself, trying to convince himself of his own relevance.”

“Perhaps,” Harry Potter chuckles. “I’m half a mind to think him sleeping with those pictures under his pillows.”

He does not grimace, for he will not lower himself to favouring vulgar body language instead of words; but his silence speaks for himself.

“Well,” the boy says, still amused. “You wished for Hogwart’s students to display more Slytherin’s features. Here you go. Do you really want a school fulfilled by Malfoys and Slughorn’s?”

Voldemort thins his lips. “Draco Malfoy and Horace Slughorn might have worn the colours of Salazar Slytherin but they shared none of his qualities.”

“Didn’t they?”

“No,” Voldemort snarls. His wounded pride is quick to morph into anger, for Salazar Slytherin, his ancestor, his legacy, his blood, resembles nothing of the cowardice and childishness of the Malfoy’s child. Nor with the sugary greediness of Horace Slughorn, who had filled himself with the greatness of others, unable to attain it by his own means. “Slytherin values the rightful ambition, power. Not nepotism nor childish whining.”

There is a pause.

Harry Potter raises to a sitting position. “There wouldn’t have been nepotism under your reign?” he quietly asks.

Voldemort thins his lips, and says nothing. He does not expect a child to understand the differences between his rightful demands and the attempt at power that Horace Slughorn was trying to exert to feed an ego wrapped in honeyed lies.

Voldemort had never needed to feast on the talents of others to elevate himself.

~*~

Voldemort stares at the door.

The two fissures do not let anything appear behind them. There is only wood offered to his sight, and even the strongest magic can not spread the cracks. Only, as he supposes, a magic that he can not control.

Or, Voldemort thinks, a magic that is not supposed to be controlled. How terrible then, that he had never let supposed boundaries hinder his will.

Harry Potter, upon gazing at the door, is elated. “It’s really working,” he says, and he throws a piercing look at Voldemort, one of wonder and incomprehension. “What are we doing that is working?”

He is standing next to Voldemort, close enough that he had let his fingers graze against the boy’s frame. Voldemort had said nothing for it; for he would be more of a hindrance than an aid; but a certain pink had spread through the boy’s cheeks.

How curious, he thinks, finding himself intrigued by such a silence. Surely the boy’s shame for his previous action does not outweigh the outrage of being treated as such. Or perhaps, Voldemort comes to realize, perhaps Harry Potter does not let words pass the barrier of his lips for he would be afraid of what they would reveal.

“I hate this,” Harry Potter suddenly says. “I hate the fact that we don’t even know what it is that we’re doing that is making the house crack, nor if it’s even us who are responsible for it and if we believe it to be so because we can’t fathom someone else doing it, or to be a consequence of actions made by others. Hell, it could even be the magic cracking because of time!”

“It is not,” Voldemort says. He throws a last glance at the fissures in the wood, and it pleases him deeply to know it to be a consequence of his actions. He does not need proof to be certain of it, he feels it, very similarly to one’s instinct works. “We are responsible.”

“But how?” the boy plaintively asks.

Potter will not be satisfied with ignorance, Voldemort realizes. Not this time, not when he feels the answers waiting to be reached, waiting to be given.

Voldemort has a choice to make; and perhaps for the first time, considers the truth instead of sweet-flavoured lies. Lies, he is certain, could prove themselves more valuables. Harry Potter, while fiercely desiring for his freedom, must realize the fate that will await him.

And yet, at the boy’s growing incomprehension, at his furious desire for truth, he finds himself less inclined to offer falsities.

Voldemort is not certain to know why. He is even less certain to desire exploring such a feeling, for he is bound to name it should he accord it focus. There is a temptation in leaving it nameless; in leaving it obscure; one that surprises him. Never had he before disregarded a rational choice; favouring sweet, foolish, ignorance.

The boy stares at him, and Voldemort stares back.

A few seconds pass between them.

“There is a ritual,” he begins.

~*~

Harry Potter stares at him in silence.

He has his hands firmly grasped around a cup of coffee, as if the warmth of it could spread to his soul, and rivets two green eyes on the unblinking face of Voldemort.

“You knew this,” the boy finally says. His voice is low, the quiet tone of those whose anger is greater than the ones engaging in screaming matches. He bears the coldness of an anger that pierces through the skin, through the mind. “You knew about this Ghanaian ritual. That we needed to establish trust between us.”

“Yes.”

Harry Potter hums. His features show none of his anger.

Voldemort rivets his eyes back. Them, who had been burned forever by the flames of the bottomless pit, who were forever marked by a fire nothing could extinguish, hidden by a glamour. They are black, for black is the soul that gazes back, but Voldemort knows for the glamour to hide far more than a change in colour.

A few seconds pass. Then a couple more, for silence helps the mind to reflect undisturbed.

Harry Potter passes a hand in his hair. He is tired, for sleep had eluded both of them since their awakening in this house.

“Alright,” the boy says.

Voldemort arches an eyebrow. “Alright?”

“Yes,” Potter murmurs. “Alright. It doesn’t change anything. I can’t force my mind to think differently. Just…” he sighs. “I know how to free us. It doesn’t mean that I can do anything about it.”

“Trust is perhaps the most laborious link to build,” Voldemort quietly says. “To put aside your knowledge of the human condition, its propensity for betrayal is… difficult.”

“It is, isn’t it? All the other emotions, you can always find something to believe in, I don’t know, a quality or a flaw to find in the other and focus on it. But trust? Trust? Between us?”

Harry laughs then. “I don’t know what is upsetting me the most,” he confesses in a low voice. “That it is this that will free us, or that, since it’s clearly working, there’s already a hinge of trust between us. Do you imagine that?”

Voldemort says nothing at first. He basks on the despair that gleam through the boy’s eyes, and thinks of his soul, volatile enough to have settled inside a human body. He is not sure if he finds it admirable or fascinating, for his soul to have recognized the potential of the child destined to stand against him, to have ensured Voldemort’s survival by making the boy a Horcrux.

The desire for ataraxia, certainly. For his soul to have undergone so much change, the desire to achieve quietude, one closely related to their survival was not surprising.

“I can,” he murmurs.

The boy’s eyes widen with surprise.

“You are my soul,” Voldemort says. “One of my Horcruxes.”

He smiles then, and there is nothing comforting in the gesture. Harry Potter pinches his lips, surprise still tainting his gaze, and Voldemort tilts his head to the side.

“You have been forced to stand against me,” he continues. His words, for all the truth that had been previously laced with them, bear the sweetness of lies. Harry Potter, Voldemort now knows, desires nothing more than to unload the burden of Atlas that had been entrusted to him. “But you are free to follow your own desires, Harry.”

Harry Potter, eyes still wide, tries to deflect his words. “Yes, of course,” he mutters. “With them being to let you do whatever you want with the country.”

“You are avoiding the subject,” Voldemort was never one to abdicate, be it in a conversation or in a battlefield. Perhaps the former is far more dangerous than the latter, for a blood path always fades in front of words wisely spoken. “You told it to me, yourself, Harry.”

“What?”

“You were a child. One thrown away in the midst of battle by a man who had preferred to cover his shortcomings by the ineffability of prophecies.”

“Dumbledore was not weak.”

“I did not call him such.” The old man was, although, weak in all the ways that mattered but Voldemort is not searching for the boy’s anger to turn into fury. “He, however; camouflaged his sanctimony with the cloak of wisdom. For all the love he spoke of, he was prompt to use it to smoothen the most vicious demands.”

Harry Potter thins his lips. He vividly seems to be wanting to say nothing, but Voldemort needs not for him to speak to know his thoughts. It is not legilimency, merely deduction.

“Dumbledore,” Voldemort says the name with disgust, a word that taints his lips. “-asked of you the greatest sacrifice of all, did he not?”

Harry Potter averts his gaze. “There was no other choice,” he whispers. “Why does it matter? It didn’t come to it in the end.”

Voldemort laughs. “Oh, it does, Harry. Prompt to dress a portrait of a bogeyman, and yet far crueller in his love.  It is forgiven, certainly, for he had asked it out of affection.”

“I am not saying this.” The boy’s voice is barely audible. “I would have done it all the same. Even if Dumbledore had not asked it of me. I understand why he would ask, anyway.”

“Surely you would ask the same of your friends. Out of love, of course.”

“Don’t draw parallels where there are none! What was the other option? Letting you do as you want? Abdicate? See you create a cult of the personality, hide in fear and kneel in front of your demands?”

 The boy’s eyes are fiery with his outrage, and the word slaps in the air that separates them. Voldemort finds something spiking in his stomach, nameless and unknown, as he pictures the boy dropping to his knees, wide eyes risen towards him, the same flames of indignation and anger burning within them.

“I do not need desire bloodbath, nor to annihilate an entire part of our world,” Voldemort says instead, for there is a need for others fissures in the wood. “I still stand, when every lesser being would have been reclaimed by Death. I will stand for centuries more, Harry, and it depends entirely on your desires to have freedom or to bask in misery.”

The boy says nothing, and Voldemort repeats the words that are bound to cause him distress.

“You are my soul. I do not care anymore for your destruction nor will I.”

Harry Potter lets out a breathless noise, and pleasure strengthens its grip on Voldemort’s stomach.

The boy falters, he knows, for he desires nothing less than being relieved of his concerns. He stares at Voldemort, and if nothing passes on his features, his thoughts are painfully easy to decipher.

The boy hopes, Voldemort sees, and hope had always proved itself a far crueller master than fear.

~*~

Harry Potter hides in his rooms for a few days.

It is of no surprise for Voldemort, who rather relishes in the boy’s absence. He knows for the boy to be mistaken, for, far from releasing its hold on him, the confusion he feels will only be amplified by the sudden changes.

If Harry Potter wishes for the maelstrom of emotions he feels to vanish, letting them roam free, with no other distraction than his own thoughts, it is bound to duplicate. Nature abhors the vacuum, laws of the world had tented to prove, and never had a fire been able to extinguish when suddenly finding fuel after days of privation.

Voldemort, he, brushes his fingers against the wooden fissures of the door, and wonders.

The snake, a third companion of their duo of misfortune, claims the entirety of the sleep which eludes them. He sleeps, leisurely draped around Voldemort’s shoulders, and leaves them only to hunt, or cheat boredom by exploring.

“You find pleasure in the simplest things of life,” Voldemort asks, once. “Don’t you desire for more?”

The snake stares back. “What more is there to have?”

“More,” Voldemort merely answers. “A control over your environment. To discover, instead of being satisfied with what you have.”

“Why? I have everything. Sleep. Food. Warmth. What would more bring me?”                       

Voldemort says nothing.

It is perhaps akin to the human condition, he thinks, absently stroking the snake’s head, for their desire to never be satiated. An instinct, one that had kept them alive and nomad, long before they had decided to finally settle through the arts of agriculture and farming.

How else, he thinks, would they have climbed the food chain, if it hadn't been for their fervour for exploration, their desire for more, and eternal dissatisfaction with what already was theirs.

~*~

“What do you want from the world?” Harry Potter asks, when he steps into the kitchen this very morning.

Voldemort is not certain if it is. Morning. It could as easily be nighttime or the early afternoon, for no change of light passes through the windows. They lighten the rooms with their white luminosity, one that does not morph with the hours.

“It is a very vague question,” Voldemort says.

The boy does not sigh. Instead, he leans against the doorframe; having exchanged his usual dark robes for a light jumper. Voldemort does not curl his lips at the sight, but he finds it distasteful all the same. Muggle attire, he thinks, and this thought is tainted by displeasure.

“It calls for a vague answer,” the boy murmurs. “But you know what I mean. We never talked about it. Or perhaps I should say that you never mentioned it.”

“Sit down,” Voldemort says.

The boy sits. He is fast to do so, perhaps a lifetime of passing orders as his own desires.

“Clarify your demands,” Voldemort then says. “What do you wish to know?”

Harry Potter does not immediately answer. He thinks, that much is easy to notice, and rivets a piercing gaze on the glamoured face Voldemort wears. “Take it off first.”

“I cannot,” Voldemort murmurs. “Not as easily as you think it to be. This is a work of magic.”

“Then glamour it. Brutally. I don’t care. Cast something for your true features to come to light. I want to speak with Voldemort, not the simulacra of Tom Riddle you are trying to pass as.”

Voldemort stares back. There is nothing but determination in the boy’s gaze, and he agrees, then, for the will of another to become his. He takes out his wand, waving at his face. It is easy to do so; for his features to vulgarly morph; an imperfect mask, but one that will be sufficient enough.

The skin pales, blemishes, for it to resemble the deathly pallor of his true self. One that is translucent, the flesh white enough to see the bone structure under it. The nose then, for it had been the true change of the mask he had worn. Gone is the aristocratic nose Tom Riddle Senior had given his son, for it is another blood that runs through the veins of this body. One tainted by Nagini’s, one that favours the appearance of the skeleton rather than its mantle of flesh.

His nostril flares; but Harry Potter’s stare does not falter.

The eyes, then, for they burned for all eternity. Tom Riddle, when reaching for his soul to be sliced in half, had found himself gazing at a void that had most certainly gazed back. One that had reached him, and burned him alive, licking his very flesh to find refuge in his irises. One that had settled there, as immortal as the flame Prometheus had gifted mankind.

“Speak now,” Voldemort murmurs, bare in front of his enemy.

Harry Potter does not avert his gaze from the features Voldemort displays. Features he has no shame in wearing, for their bore the signification of the Ouroboros and the cycle of resurrection, of eternal life; for they bore the greatness men could only dream to achieve.

“You are not doing a war for the sole likeness of it,” Harry Potter says. “What are your goals? What are your desires?”

“Vast are the desire of men.”

“And yet you think yourself above them. It does not exempt you from desiring, and perhaps makes such desires even more burning.”

“Is it not the very definition of desires,” Voldemort whispers, “-to burn the one that tries to hold them?”

“You are averting my questions.”

Voldemort tilts his head to the side. His eyes, red and scorching, pierces through Harry Potter’s flesh. “I am not. I show you, Harry, the vast futility of questions when acts matter more. I could tell you everything you wished to be said to you; I could twist my wishes for you to see the appeal in them, but would it make them any different?”

“No,” Harry Potter says. “I don’t want your sugary lies. I want the truth, and it is nothing less than the truth that you owe me.”

“Owe you?”

“Yes, owe me. Like it or not, there is an obligation of truth between us, for to whom better than the one destined to destroy you should you speak the truth? To whom better should you not coat it with lies, for neither of them will influence my will? My duty?”

Voldemort thinks of the boy and his misplaced compassion, the boy and his desire to come to aid to every living thing, his burning want to be kind to a world that is not; and thinks that above all else, this is the most painful mistake Harry Potter is making.

He lies, then, for he was born with a lie between his lips, and it is lies that will bring him immortality.

“There is a rather large distinction between my true desires and the ones you think to know.”

Harry Potter smiles. “Please,” he says. “Do not answer my demand of truth by something that contradicts it entirely. You have seen my mind, it’s true, and knows it perhaps better than I do, but you easily forget that I have seen yours too.”

“And what did you conclude of it?” Voldemort snarls.

“Should have I? Is it not enough to have seen it?”

“Those conclusions are correlated to what you saw. The latter include the formers. They cannot be separated. The human mind jumps to conclusion, it is its natural state.”

Harry Potter shrugs. “Perhaps,” he agrees. “You’re right, of course, when are you not? I know a few things that I know not to be biased by the perception you gave me of you.”

“And what would those things be?”

“Things that you offer without realizing you do,” the boy says. “Your terribly fear of Death, which includes a fierce desire for survival, by all means necessary. Your distrust of the human mind, for you judge it to bear flaws that even the uniqueness of each cannot correct. Your distaste for ignorance and mistakes, for you tend to judge it more harshly than the rest of their shortcomings.”

“It is easy,” Voldemort says. “to gaze at the character of others in order to avoid reflecting on your own flaws.”

The boy is quick to acknowledge it. “Perhaps,” he agrees. “Does it take anything away from the truth of my words?”

Voldemort says nothing. He taps his fingers on the table, a habit he has yet to overcome, and rivets his gaze on the boy. “You spoke of my desires for the world.”

“I did.”

“I do not wish for magical blood to be spilt in vain. Be it pureblood or half-blood,” Voldemort softly says. “It proves a point in a war, most certainly, but it is not my objective for the wizarding world to suffer major losses to its population. There are some changes to come, of course, but none as radical as you would think.”

“Surprise me,” the boy says, a daring smile adorning his lips.

“A severe cut from the magical world and the muggle one,” Voldemort begins. “From the magical children to be taken from their caretakers and given to others, ones with the means to raise them, in the proper traditions of our world. For them to be integrated certainly, even if some of their career possibilities to be limited.”

“Of course,” the boy murmurs. “No mudblood at the Ministry.”

“No mudblood as the minister,” Voldemort corrects. “For the secrecy to be rebuilt, and the muggles in the knows to be obliviated. For certain creatures to be more regulated, and others to be given new rights. For the legacy of the wizards to solely belong to the wizards, and not by some species who judge it theirs by some laws we do not abide by.”

“How magnanimous.”

“It is,” Voldemort says. “Or would you prefer them dead? Achievable, I promise you. For some of the rituals to see the light of day, and certain magics legalized. Everything that is not controllable by the Ministry is judged as forbidden, surely an Auror would know. For a proper education to be given, and new courses to be given. Magical Healing and First Aid. Wizarding Politics. History of Spells and Curses. Latin. Alchemy. Debate. Spellcrafting.”

Harry Potter stays silent for a few seconds. He stares at him, and something gleam in his eyes.

“You seem to have thought it in depth,” he finally says, seeming stunned.

“Should not I have?” Voldemort retorts. “I wish for my side to be in control of the Wizarding World, Harry, it includes an agenda of a sort.”

The boy laughs. “I would have thought it to be mainly composed of chaos and mayhem. Perhaps the Cruciatus, too.”

“I punish laziness, weakness, and failure,” Voldemort says. He arches a hairless eyebrow. “People who do not disappoint me should not expect to receive punishment.”

“Really?” Harry Potter quietly asks. “What about Severus Snape?”

Voldemort bares his teeth.

“Severuss,” he snarls, “was already spoken about.”

“People can’t be forgotten because they had been mentioned once.”

“Traitors do not receive interest.”

“He was not a traitor to you when you had him murdered.”

“Severusss Snape wasss standing in my way.”

Harry Potter tilts his head to the side. “I see. And here I candidly thought that it was possible for who calls himself the best dueller in the world to disarm his opponent. One that has, supposedly, proved himself loyal.”

“Except he wasss not,” Voldemort hisses. “I killed him, Harry, and his death was far less painful than the one he should have been given.”

Harry Potter hums. “People who do not disappoint me should not expect punishment,” he simply quotes.

Voldemort’s fingers twitch on his wand.

“It is disappointment,” he murmurs. “-to stand between me and the most powerful wand of the wizarding world.”

“Yet another death has fallen for the possession of a tool.”

Voldemort rivets his burning gaze on Harry Potter. “And you have wished for him to be the last.”

“I have made it so,” the boy absently corrects. “No more blood to be spilt for a relic to be passed from hand to hand.”

“Another fallen to the weakness of men.”

The boy chuckles. “I don’t judge its loss a true tragedy. I know our views differ, but I am not too surprised. It’s more of a surprise to see us agree than its contrary.”

Voldemort’s amusement surprises him. “And yet we manage to do so on certain points.”

Harry Potter raises an eyebrow. “We do? Please tell me.”

“Lucius Malfoy,” Voldemort merely says, arching an eyebrow.

The boy laughs, caught unaware. Voldemort knows it. He was expecting a strong rant on whatever subject he had thought of, not a jab at a man who had made cowardice his family motto. It infuriates Voldemort, for the man to have slithered through punishment, cantoned to his House as if it could be a punishment.

Lucius Malfoy will walk free again, and will wear a mask of pride that is not one at all.

“True,” the boy says, amused despite himself. It is shown in the lines that crease his features, in the twinkle in his eyes. “Your slippery friend. This is what comes with recruiting Slytherin and not Hufflepuffs. You’d have found more loyalty in them.”

Voldemort raises an eyebrow. “Many Hufflepuffs have graced my ranks,” he says. “Some of them did even climb to my inner circle.”

Harry Potter’s eyes widen.

“Seriously? Which ones?”

Voldemort tsks. “Now, Harry,” he murmurs. “You would not expect me to graciously offer names that would benefit you far too much.”

“Surely I must know at least of one of them,” Harry Potter insists.

“Jugson,” Voldemort then says, thinking of names that could be revealed. Large had been his circle during the first wizarding war. “Barnabas Snyde. Wilhelm Wilkes.”

The boy shrugs and scratches his chin. “I know of none of them.”

“Of course you don’t,” Voldemort murmurs. “Death Eaters, either dead or in Azkaban.”

He waves his wand then, a quick gesture that does not make Harry Potter flinch, he who amongst all should have been wary of Voldemort’s wand, and his latest glamour fades.

Once again the paleness reveals healthier flesh, human features. Gone is the reddish hue of the flames burning in his eyes, for black again shines the iris. Gone are the fangs that graze at his lips, and the talons that adorn his fingers.

“I love magic,” the boy breathes. There is awe in his gaze, but one so deep that Voldemort would be tempted to think it directed to Magic itself. An awe another boy had shared; or perhaps that he still shares.

Voldemort says nothing, then, for there is nothing to be said to the delight the boy displays.

Instead, he stares, and when he gets up to leave, lets his fingers brushes against the boy’s shoulders, let them graze at the skin of his neck.

His touch is cold, but it is not the coldness of it that makes Harry Potter shiver.

~*~

Voldemort is once again alone with his thoughts.

He relishes in it, as he had always done, for then only could he appreciate the silence around him, the absence of external considerations.

He likes the silence. It is soothing, in a way discussions could never manage to be. It allows for his thoughts to roam freely, for them to sort themselves out, without any distraction. It allows from the franticness of them to loosen, even if for a minute, when his attention is always solicited.

There is an open book on his lap; one that he had been prompt to disregard. Voldemort had forgotten about the futility of it, the dubious reflections of its author. A few pages in had he realized that he had already categorized the work as unreadable, a pure product of fiction that had tried to hide it by poorly brought facts and information taken out of context.

Junior, for he had vividly protested at the thought of being sent back to its forest, rests his head on his left forearm, the rest of his body coiled around his neck.

Voldemort considers changing the snake into a Horcrux.

He will need to create one, as soon as he would be free from their entrapment. He will not try to kill Harry Potter, not instantly, not without precautions. Far too long had the boy been favoured by fate for him to risk it. Voldemort is not certain to win Luck’s affection, should he be confronted to the Boy-Who-Lived.

He thinks of Nagini, who had born his soul beautifully; and gazes at Junior, the fiery snake who could become a part of him.

Perhaps, he thinks. Or perhaps something else entirely. Something that could never be taken away from him.

He needs two, at the very least. One on his body, another hidden; should the body be destroyed.

Voldemort’s soul stirs inside his chest; it screams, he knows, for it doesn’t want to be broken anymore, for it doesn’t want to be cut, sliced. Not again; not ever again.

Voldemort, as ever, does not listen to others’ requests.

It is a sacrifice needing to be made, for he will not suffer mortality; not when he knows how to overcome it; not when, by some whims of the destiny, he has regained enough of a soul for his sanity to not have left him.

He is close to death, perhaps closer than he ever has, even when Tom Riddle had heard the bombs fly above his head, when he had heard their hissing in the night; their blinding, deafening noise as they hit their target. Not even when the boy had hid under desks, hands clamped against his ear, heart pounding in his chest, and fear, sweet, terrible, fear creeping through his veins, running and running, and whispering in his mind.

When fear had seized his lungs until Tom Riddle couldn’t breathe, until he couldn’t hear anything else but its murmurs, when his eyes had opened to the world, only to find pictures created by his mind.

No, Voldemort thinks. Not again. Never again.

The boy is dead, and his fears with him.

Junior hisses distastefully, tasting the bitter mixture of anger and fear that is so familiar to Voldemort’s heart. “It smells,” it says.

Voldemort lowers his eyes to where Junior’s head is resting. “Not for long,” he murmurs. “The Boy doesn’t know the utility of his mind.”

“None of you do,” Junior hisses, for he judges foolish the motivations that drive mankind. The desires of an animal, who sees no farther than immediate comfort, food, and sleep.

Not so different from many men, Voldemort thinks.

~*~

Harry Potter is furiously writing.

He had been sitting at the place he is at for a few hours, his gaze riveted on parchment, a quill between his fingers, and he writes, and writes, and writes.

Voldemort had said nothing at first, merely casting an intrigued glance at the boy’s actions. The boy had offered no explanation, perhaps not even noticing his presence in the study, and thus Voldemort had not asked.

Not because of a desire not to inconvenience or any other futile consideration that a lesser man might have had, but because he refuses to let Harry Potter believe him to be curious about the boy’s pastimes.

Voldemort reads then, silently, and only the sound of Harry Potter’s quill scribbling breaks the silence.

It is, perhaps as always, the boy that eventually raises his gaze towards him.

“I’m writing to Hermione and Ron,” he then says. His voice is tight, strained as if he dares Voldemort to say anything about it. Voldemort very much desires to tell the boy he could not care less about whoever those two are. The names seem familiar, but not enough so for him to associate faces and tangible memories to it. “In case something happens. I want them to find my letters. Perhaps a will.”

“The Goblins will not respect such a will,” Voldemort points out.

Harry Potter crosses his arms on his chest, and throws him a heated glare. “Why the hell not? I sign with my name, all my demands are very much explicit.”

Voldemort does not answer the boy’s anger with his own. “The Goblins will not accept anything else than a will signed at Gringotts, with their quills and parchment.”

The boy’s anger fades for incomprehension.

“But then everyone needs to go to Gringotts to make a will? What if they suddenly want to change it on their death bed? What if they don’t have the time to go to the bank?”

Voldemort rivets his eyes on the boy. “Then,” he says. “-the wizard or witch’s will can not be respected. It is only the wills that follow the legislation of Gringotts that can be applied. Have you not studied such subject, when you had received yours?”

Potter frowns.

“Mine?” he asks.

“Your parent’s will,” Voldemort says. “Your godfather’s. Albus Dumbledore’s.”

He stands then, and comes to gracefully sit on the seat in front of the boy, certainly too close for the boy’s liking. His left foot briefly brushes against Potter’s leg, seemingly innocent as he settles inside his seat. “Have you not received them in Gringotts?”

Potter, whose gaze had dropped to the table and their knees underneath, suddenly rises it. There is a distinct flush to his cheeks, and he silently shakes his head, before words once again grace his lips.

“Nothing like that,” he says. “Scrimgeour gave me Dumbledore’s will. I don’t know about my parents and Sirius… Dumbledore told me he had left something, the House, but that was all.”

Voldemort thins his lips.

“Certainly,” he murmurs, distaste colouring his words. “A tentative to protect you from entering the bank. I would have been instantly notified of your arrival.”

“Well, you were not when we got there for the-” Harry Potter snaps, before brutally stopping.

The boy averts his gaze, and Voldemort once again brushes a foot against the boy’s skin. Very shortly, perhaps a second at most, but enough for Harry to glance at him, incomprehension tainting his gaze, and yet choosing to stay silent.

“The cup,” Voldemort murmurs, leaning forward. The boy tenses, just slightly, but it is noticeable all the same. “You can say its name, Harry. It was as much a part of yourself than of mine.”

Harry Potter’s glare is, as always, delightfully burning. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I am not,” Voldemort says. “Disregard my words as lies all you want, it will not take the truth out of them.”

“Your version of the truth is not the one shared by the majority.”

“And yet,” Voldemort murmurs, a snake-like smile stretching on his lips. “-when had you ever been on the side of the majority, Harry Potter?”

Harry Potter does not shiver in front of the black gaze he receives, but it is very near so.

“This is nothing like it,” Potter breathes. He is smaller than Voldemort, yet sitting on the same chairs. His eyes raise, a few centimetres, for them to lodge themselves in the brown they meet. “You are twisting my words.”

“I am clarifying them,” Voldemort sweetly says. “Offering them an insight you lack.”

“One I lack?” Harry Potter’s voice has faded to a murmur. His entire body had tensed, and Voldemort does not pretend anymore for his touches to be accidental. He lets the bare skin of his feet touch the fabric the boy’s wear, a subtle, or perhaps not at all, reminder for the boy to not shift his attention, for him to always accord a part of his thoughts to him.

Voldemort fervently drinks the gleam that shines in the boy’s eyes; the one that is inscribed in his every feature. He is fascinated, he knows, and learns nothing new, as he avidly stares at the emotions that dance on Harry Potter’s face.

His soul, he thinks again; and searches for a trace of his self on the features lay bare in front of him.

Voldemort, as he suddenly realizes, wants.

His desires, tainted by the greed that possess the ones that were born with nothing, carry within them a burning avidity. One that will not, can not be stopped by anything other than satiety. It is smoothened, usually, for Lord Voldemort does not desire without seeing such desires be satisfied.

However, as he realizes, his scorching gaze riveted on the boy, this had been treacherous; for he now knows his unsatisfied wants to be tenfold stronger.  For them to burn, and burn, and burn, until meeting gratification.

The boy is silent but his gaze too is scorching on the face it meets.

Potter licks his lips, a swift movement. One that he, most probably, had not realized doing.

“You lack many things,” Voldemort murmurs. His voice bears its usual softness, one so velvety that it should induce fear. “But it is not so unredeemable. Most of them could be learned, certainly.”

Harry Potter stares back, and it is not fear that graces his gaze.

He finds that he can not avert his own gaze, of fear of missing the slightest change, for he heavily drinks in the smallest variation in the boy's emotions.

“You have been building it for days,” Harry Potter says. “Touching me. Brushing your finger against my skin. Did you think I wouldn't notice it? I noticed.”

Voldemort’s eyes are unblinking.  “Of course, you did.”

“Then perhaps you thought I would say something about it.” Harry Potter’s voice is low, so very low, that Voldemort needs to rivet his entire attention on the boy to catch each of his words. “That I would scream, perhaps even try to duel you.”

Voldemort smiles.

“Would you?”

Harry Potter talks as if he has not been interrupted. “Or I am wrong entirely,” he slowly says, and his knee nudges against the one pressed against it. A clothed touch, one that flares a heat in Voldemort’s body, a sort of heat he had not felt in years. One that finds refuge in his stomach, and then sinks, lowering, again and again. “And you had wished for me to react a different way.”

Voldemort abruptly stands then. He does not avert his gaze from the boy, merely detaches his knee from where Potter is brushing his own against it, a strange sort of regret replacing the heat, and walks the few steps that separate him from the boy’s chair.

“Which way?” Voldemort quietly asks, and he is standing behind the boy; pale long fingers tracing the line of the neck.

Harry Potter, true to himself, does not falter. He does not; but what he does instead is to twist his neck, just enough to meet the burning gaze that is settled on him. His eyes are wide; betraying thoughts that would not have passed the barrier of his lips.

The boy seems small, so, Voldemort thinks. Head risen for him to meet two eyes far too high for his comfort; and once again does Voldemort thinks about Harry Potter falling on his knees, an entirely different heat animating his glare.

“To lean in,” Harry Potter says. His voice is breathy; and Voldemort’s fingers rise, enough so to graze at the boy’s jaw, for his nails to brush where the jawline meets the neck. “To sayyes.”

Voldemort leans forward, enough for his breath to graze against the boy’s ear. It is warm, he knows, and Harry Potter shivers under it.

“And is it a yes?” he murmurs, for he desires nothing much but for Harry Potter to be ravished entirely, for him to fade his anger for pleasure, for his lips to beg and moan, for them to be rendered speechless.

There is a silence, long enough for Voldemort to slip a hand under Potter’s robes, his pale fingers curling on the boy's muscular waist.

“Yes,” Potter then breathes, eyes wide. His cheeks are flushed, and his mouth parted.

Voldemort hisses in delight then; a litany that only he can understand and promptly retrieves his hand from where it touches the boy. His nails graze at the warm flesh as they leave, and there is the slightest arch from Harry Potter against the chair.

One that flares heat low in his stomach.

“Are you certain,” he whispers, and greedily presses a kiss against the boy’s jawline. The boy's skin is warm, soft against his touches. Harry Potter shudders, and gasps; just enough so for Voldemort’s talons to sink into the boy’s flesh; avidly claiming it. It is burning in his stomach, this desire for the boy to fall to his knees, to raise his eyes to him, to beg-

“Yes,” the boy says; quickly, almost desperately. “Yes. Yes.”

Voldemort takes a step back and licks his lips. He tastes the boy on them, where he had pressed them against Harry Potter’s skin.

He wants more, he knows, and more he will have.

“Then, kneel,” Voldemort says.

Harry Potter does not hesitate.

He slides from his chair, quick enough that Voldemort hisses in appreciation, and his knees hit the ground.

It flares something in Voldemort’s stomach, something ugly and raw, something roaring that will burn and devour until satisfaction.

“Are you satisfied, Harry,” he murmurs and slides a palm against the boy's cheek. Harry Potter leans into it; grasping at the forearm, and Voldemort’s heart pounds in his chest. “Are you comforted to know yourself to have found your right place?”

The boy says nothing, and rubs his cheek against the offered palm.

Voldemort steps forward and closes a hand around Harry Potter’s neck. The boy shudders, his green eyes blow wide, and Voldemort surges forward; entrapping his daring, infuriating, brash lips in a savage kiss.

The boy breathes against his mouth, and Voldemort tightens his grip around Potter’s neck; enough to hear a choking sound that makes the heat in his stomach multiply tenfold. A heat so deep it spreads, making his skin feel too tight; making his heart pound as if wanting to escape-

Voldemort slides his kisses to the boy’s neck, where he presses barely hidden fangs against the warm flesh, where he bites.

Harry Potter breath is hitched. The boy shiver under his every touch, grasping at what he can grab, his fingers curled in a painful grip.

“Please,” the boy says, the boy pleads, rendered frantic by want. “Please, please-”

“Patience, Harry,” Voldemort murmurs and suck another love bite just where the jawline ends. “A quality most rewarded.”

“No, no- please-”

It is delightful, for the boy to open wide begging eyes at him, for his lips to let pleads carelessly fall from them, and Voldemort wants to devour them whole; wants for the boy to shiver under him until he loose touch with reality, until he screams and cries; until he is nothing but a body shaken by pleasure, a pulse racing in his chest.

He indulges Harry Potter then, for the boy sinks his nails in Voldemort’s arms; and shudder when Voldemort’s lips press against his skin.

He reaches for the boy’s trousers with one hand, and with the other curls it around Potter’s hair, holding him in place. The boy's untamed hair is softer than it looks, and Voldemort tightens his grip around it, pulling the strands for the boy to be entirely at his mercy.

The boy is quick to help, a franticness that the years had not helped him to lose, and Voldemort laughs, cold and low, against Harry Potter’s skin.

He pulls the boy’s hair, enough so to make him gasp, to make him let out a pained breath; one mixed with bittersweet pleasure.

The jolt of arousal that springs in his gut surprise him by its intensity; deep and scorching; a white-hot desire that runs along his skin, that brushes invisible fingers against his very soul, one that aches for more, aches for being seen, for being desired-

Voldemort wants, that he knows, he wants so fiercely it is a river of fire in his veins; one that set him ablaze; in a way he had forgotten, in a way he had not desired- but such a mistake, he thinks, as he gazes hungrily at the boy, the boy who arches against his touch, who lets out breathless gasps, ones that he could easily turn into moans; the boy who is all the kinds of warm against his skin; who opens greedy eyes on the world and begs for his desires to be indulged, for his very self to be revered-

“Please,” the boy says again, "please-" and each please is a jolt of pleasure in his gut; one that sends a painful delight to his half-hard cock.

Voldemort’s long fingers curl around the boy’s manhood; enough so for him to shake, to throw his head backwards.

Harry Potter’s fingers dig into Voldemort’s forearms, and Voldemort’s fingers slide along the length of his enemy’s cock, sensing it twitch under his touch; overly sensible with each brush. Potter’s cheeks are delightfully flushed, looking positively sinful.

Tousled hair, blown wide eyes, irises so black it devours it; lips open to gasps breathless words of begging, skin shivering under Voldemort’s every touch.

“Aren’t you greedy,” Voldemort murmurs to the boy. The boy arches under his touch, his cock throbbing under the pale fingers of Voldemort, and finds no strength to talk; merely letting out wordless breaths. “Wanting me. Wanting to be taken care of. Wanting to be pleasured.”

Voldemort’s pace fastens; stroking Harry Potter’s cock.

“Yessss,” the boy hisses, and surges forward, seizing Voldemort’s lips into a kiss; a biting one, hard and savage, that draws blood. One that mixes pain and pleasure; one that makes the inside’s of Voldemort stirs; his white-hot pleasure increasing- head spinning with want, with too many desires- his grip tightens against the boy’s length; talons sinking into the flesh-

And the boy finally abdicates.

He shudders, and moans; a needy whimper that escapes his lips.

Voldemort freezes. His entire body tenses- strong enough for his own cock to throb, at the panting noises that fall free from Harry Potter’s parted lips; and he hisses- parseltongue escapes him; words that only he can hear, and he shivers, rocking his hips; a snake-like groan-

Voldemort wastes no time flipping the boy, sinking his hands into the boy’s hips, the warm flesh that makes him mad; that he so desires to devour; to possess; for it is his, and his only, a part of his soul that he needs, needs so vividly that its loss would render him insane-

There is another moan, louder, and in the midst of his spinning thoughts, of the dizziness that clouds his mind, he doesn’t know, is not certain if it comes from him or the boy-

Harry Potter tenses then- arches his back, vision going white.

 He silently screams, fingers searching for something to grasp, something to sink in, something to reach- his green eyes find Voldemort, and- too much, too much- the boys thinks, the boy pleads- burning against his skin, his flesh, grazing at his cock, too sensitive,pleasure- so deep- pain- fuck, fuck, fuck- and his eyes roll in his head, the connection is lost, Voldemort can no longer see the boy’s thoughts-

Harry Potter cums and goes limp between his arms.

“Oh, no” Voldemort murmurs, nails sinking in the boy’s flesh to hold him in place. “I don’t think so, Harry.”

Creamy come stains Harry Potter’s fingers, and Voldemort curl his hand around the boy’s wrist; coating his own fingers in it.

“What are you-” Potter tries to whisper, but it comes strangled, hitched-

A swift movement of his hand and he pulls up his robes, high enough for him to wrap his fingers around his own cock, for his breath to hitch.

And he presses it against Harry; making another breathless moan escape the Boy-Who-Lived’s lips.

He thrusts in, without waiting for the boy to accommodate him; and relishes in the whiny sounds that pass the barrier of Harry Potter’s lips. Whining noise that Potter can not refrain, that falls from him, each one greedily drunk by Voldemort.

The heat in his stomach flares; fiery and devouring.

It makes his head spin, his talons to sink into the given flesh; swallowing each whimper that Harry Potter offers him; pleasure building in his chest, growing stronger and stronger, strong enough to blind him, for his senses to multiply or perhaps desert him entirely, focused only on the warmth under him, the tightness around his cock; thefire that runs through his veins-

Harry trashes under his grip. He has forsaken words for broken moans; and can only shiver, shudder, or tremble under the thrusts that rock his body.

“Faster,” he manages to beg, to moan, and Voldemort is only too delighted to indulge Potter’s desires. "Please -faster- I'll do anything, anything-"

He grips harder the boy’s hips, and murmurs sweet nothings in the boy’s ear. “My soul, mine,” he says, again, and again, hissing in a language that is reserved to him and him only. “Mine, mine, mine.”

“Yours,” Harry Potter breathlessly agrees; for he always had, he amongst all, been able to understand Voldemort; and there are pleasure-tainted tears that run along the boy’s cheeks.

“Yours,” the boy says again, and Voldemort’s vision goes white.

He comes, his talons leaving marks where they sink in Harry Potter’s flesh.

Mine, mine, mine, the newfound half-moon scars of Harry Potter’s skin scream.

Voldemort grasps Harry Potter’s chin and kisses him; violently; with the fervour that animated his every desire.

Yours, yours, yours, the hunger flashing in brown irises screams.

~*~

There are already two fissures that run deep in the wooden door of an entrapment.

Two, now, would be enough for the majority of broken souls.

But there are cases where it is not.

There are cases where it is not, and the third one begins where the second one ends. A small crack, at first, not enough for a butterfly to pass through. But it spreads, then. It spreads, again, and again, enough so that it runs along the entire length of the wooden door.

Only one more.

One more, and then.

Freedom.