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Voldemort closed the door at his back with a simple snap of his fingers, walking - no, gliding to the large bay window dominating the back gardens of Malfoy manor. He could see the green fields unroll to the horizon in lazy, soft curves over the hills, and the deep green, almost black, line of the faraway forest circling the property. In the highest chamber of the noble family house, he felt like a king of old.
A very tired king of old.
The Dark Lord gave himself only ten seconds to sigh and press his eyelids, then he went back to his desk and sat down on the leather chair to work on his thrice-damned paperowk. Why a Dark Lord had to sign paperwork was still a mystery to him, but sadly the world didn’t move only by the power of torture and screams, and his men had to be controlled somehow. So, paperwork. Long reports that he had to check and verify, and permission slips to approve of some financial desicion or another. Funds that he had to allocate to his various endeavours, letters from his allies - or his soon-to-be allies, such as Vampires or Werewolves. A large pile came directly from the Wizengamot, laws or proposals that his minions copied down for him to read and decide to approve or reject. And an infinite, truly infinite, amount of fanmail. There was not a better word to call them. Most of the letters came from his own Death Eaters, praising him, asking him favours or simply inviting him to dinners and birthdays. Others… well, came from the population of Magical Britain. From old purebloods that wanted to ally themselves to him, or donate him funds, or simply — and that was a bit embarrassing, promising him the hand of their best-looking daughter, or son. Whichever they felt like selling, he supposed.
Voldemort groaned, inside, and when Nagini slithered over the floor, under the desk and brushed her long, smooth body against his feet, he took her up in his arms and began to pet her. The snake hissed quietly all her satisfaction, while the Dark Lord scratched her under the chin, or booped her snout.
“My Nagini, the world is going mad.” he said, pushing papers around over his desk in the hope they would simply disappear in a bout of accidental magic. Nagini laughed, a slow hisshshshsh sound that made her whole body tremble.
“Paperwork still keeping you, my dear?” she tasted the air with her forked tongue, then pushed it inside his ear, making Voldemort groan again, out loud this time.
“Will you stop?”
“Never. It’s the only fun I can have now, well… if we don’t count scaring your men. That is always fun.”
The maledictus laughed again and then quieted down, settling with her big triangular head over his shoulder, to sleep. Voldemort cast a warming charm over his robes and took the first of a long list of reports. At least he didn’t need to sleep.
It was around midnight that he first felt it. The prickling sensation of sleep creeping up to him. His body, modified to magic’s limits, had not the necessity to rest, if not for very specific occasions. Usually he went months without closing his eyes for more than a few minutes at a time. So, why now? Voldemort put down his papers and grabbed his wand in hand, jostling Nagini until the snake was awake and tasting the air in search of threats. His first thought went to a curse. A sleeping spell, to render me weak, perhaps? But his magesight couldn’t see any trace of a spell around him, nor over the papers on his desk. Not a curse, not a charm. And he wasn’t drinking or eating anything.
Have they dosed me at dinner? He raised his wand with the intention of casting a spell to trace potions in his blood when he felt it - the distant call of something ancient, bigger. Voldemort opened his mouth to speak, to tell something to Nagini, to do anything — and he closed his eyes, falling asleep over his chair.
When Voldemort opened his eyes again, he wasn’t in the ornate room at the manor anymore. No. He was standing in the cold, November air, bare feet over damp asphalt. He didn’t recognize the place. It looked… It looked like a normal, boring, muggle suburb. A place so sterile that only made his anger grow. Rows and rows of houses, all with the same architecture, all with the same small yards, all filled with filth.
Confused, the Dark Lord tried to move, cursing under his breath - had someone truly dosed him with something, and then transported him there? What for? He was still robed, and he still had his magic, and after a quick pat to his sleeve, he still felt the low pulse of his wand - of the magic that the yew wood was oozing. So he was armed.
But before he could laugh at his captors’ stupidity, he heard a crack low enough to pass unnoticed by the muggles. The tall figure of Albus Dumbledore appeared just on his left, and the old wizard all but ignored him, taking out some sort of magical instrument to suck out the light of nearby lampposts. Voldemort sneered, ready to cast - expecting a fight — only it never came, and he found he didn’t really want to fight him. Like he had been spelled to simply observe. It was then that he noticed it. The grain quality of the place, the soft fogginess of the edges, his vision closing around Dumbledore like the world was slowly disappearing around him.
A pensieve? He thought, moving towards Dumbledore, still sucking out light until the whole street fell into darkness. He tried to push him, to grab his robe, but his hand fell through him. A memory, then. But whose…? And it hit him, then. He was not seeing a memory, he was not standing with his head pushed inside a pensieve. He was dreaming. The Dark Lord then calmed down, deciding to simply observe.
If I fell asleep, then I’m inside someone’s dreams. His Occlumency had tried to kick in, giving him more control and autonomy, almost convincing him the plce was real. But it was not. It was but a dream.
From the bushes, a small tabby cat jumped towards Dumbledore, and mid-jump it transformed into the tall and stern figure of Minerva McGonagall, dressed in a subdued red robe. The witch was old, much older than Voldemort remembered her when he had last seen her — but still, familiar. Like… like…
“Albus, I’m not sure. They seem like the worst kind of muggles! Can we really leave him here?” she asked, and Dumbledore stroked his long beard. His twinkling eyes burning even in the dark.
“But we have to, Minerva. They are his only family, and besides… for the blood protection to work, he needs to be near someone connected to his mother. Now, they’re coming.”
Both wizards turned to look at a dark patch of sky, and suddenly a single light appeared, the rumble of a motorcycle breaking the near-oppressive silence. From the sky fell down Hagrid, the big half-giant sitting perched over a small bike, a bundle in his arms, protected by his forearm. As Hagrid parked, Dumbledore took out of his robe a letter, signed in his usual green ink, bearing the Hogwarts crest. With the letter there was a note, but no matter how Voldemort tried to read it, the note was fuzzy and unfocused. Whoever was dreaming, then, didn’t know the contents of the letter. Hagrid sniffed, grabbing his attention once more, and gave the bundle to Albus, blowing his nose with a dirty handkerchief.
“Y’er sure to leave ‘im ‘ere? He’s so small, so tiny.” said the half-giant. Dumbledore simply moved a piece of the bundle, revealing the small face of a baby. A baby that had bright green eyes, and a lightning bolt scar over his forehead.
Voldemort faltered, took a step back, then went back to the baby, looking at him with strange eyes. It wasn’t possible. He couldn’t dream about him — about that night — Potter himself couldn’t know the details, he had been too small. So who — who—-
Voldemort froze, his heart stopping in his chest.
It couldn’t be.
There was only an explanation, but it couldn’t be.
After all those years — after a lifetime. It couldn’t, it couldn’t—
Albus walked towards a house, not at all different from the rest. The number read Privet Drive 4, and its inhabitants seemed to be asleep, given that not a single light was coming through the windows. Carefully, the Headmaster deposited baby-Potter over the doorstep, putting the letter and the note over the small duvet in which the baby was wrapped. The man touched, slowly, the scar - red and angry and looking ready to open up again and bleed all over his face. In the background, Minerva was scoffing and Hagrid was crying. And Voldemort…
Voldemort was watching, silently, as his soulmate was left alone, on a cold, cold November night.
The dream shifted minutely, hours passed in the blink of an eye. The night grew old, the sun rose slowly from the horizon, the sky turning purple and lilac and then pale blue. Harry Potter slept in his bundle, shivering in the freezing wind. Voldemort reached for him, sitting down at his side, watching the baby as it stirred and grumbled but never cried, not once. Always so brave, Harry Potter. There was no trace, if not for the scar, of the horror that he had just survived, as Voldemort had - just mere hours before, marched over the corpses of his parents to cast the killing curse at him. It was absurd, for Voldemort himself, to see him so quiet - remembering that night when he had destroyed his life.
He wanted to touch him, but his fingers merely passed him through, and so he did not try again, but waited as the night became morning. It wasn’t until the sun had passed the line of the horizon that the house slowly awoke, first with a light coming from the windows, and then with the quiet creak of the door. As a bulky man made its way outside, the woman, behind him, screamed.
This is how Harry went into the Dursley’s care. With a scream.
“Oh pet, what do we do?” asked the man, big as a walrus, with a dirty set of moustaches over his big mouth and a purple-toned face. The woman, the wife, was a thing and ugly thing, screaching like a pained horse as she grabbed the baby from the door and quickly shut it, to hide from her neighbours. Voldemort simply crossed the threshold, following them in their tiny and kitschy living room. She deposited the baby over the kitchen table and took the letter from his blaket, reading with wider and wider eyes - “Vernon! It’s— it’s! It’s their spawn! My sister and that— that freak! Potter! It’s one of them!”
The man, Vernon, read the letter too and became even more purple in the face, crushing the parchment in his big hand.
“We can’t keep him!” he said, sure of himself, as his wife began to sweat.
“But we can’t give him away, they will know! They surely will know. They will tell everybody, they will—” gently, if the man was even capable of such, Vernon patted his wife’s back to calm her down from the hystrionics, looking at the baby with utter disgust.
“Then, if we cannot give him away we will… hide him. Yes. Hide him.”
Vernon called in sick from work and together with Petunia, spent an entire morning discussing and deciding the baby’s fate. Not once Potter had screamed or cried. In the end, Voldemort watched as they grabbed the small bundle and threw it inside a small cot. For days on end, Petunia barely fed him, giving him only what her own son left in the bottle. They forgot about Harry, kept in the living room at all times, far away from their bedroom and the safety of their watch. They cared for their kid, and slowly, Harry became a forgotten knick-knack, left to take dust upon a shelf.
Petunia had grabbed Harry, putting the toddler over her hip, and her husband had opened the small cupboard under the stairs.
“Come here, boy. This will be your new room, aren’t you excited? You will stay here, like a good boy. Do not make a sound, do not speak, do. not. cry. Here, here.” she said, voice filled with venom as she pushed Harry inside the cupboard and closed the door.
Years passed in mere moments, images blinked beyond Voldemort’s eyes. And he looked, and looked, as Harry grew up in the dark. Unloved, pushed into a space too small for his body, for his power. Stretched into doing the cooking and the cleaning like he was a house-elf, never once called by his own name. He was boy , he was freak , he was there to be invisible, to be kicked down and punched. To be Hunted.
The first thing that small Harry had learnt in his still brief life was how to run. How to hide under the bushes in the garden while his cousin searched for him with a branch in his hand. And how to curve himself so as to protect his soft organs, while Dudley’s feet kicked him down in his back and ribs. He was so small, so frail. Covered in bruises and dirt.
His uncle always sneered, opening the garden hose to wash him, even in winter, and locking him inside the cupboard with his clothes soaked through. Voldemort had seen how fast magic came for young Harry, answering his soft and silent cries, healing his bones and his wounds - even when Harry had no idea she was doing it. And every time, his aunt yelled at him, told him he was only a monster. Told him that the only useful thing he could do was die.
Voldemort flinched everytime they hit him. With hands or fists or feet. Or when Petunia took the iron skillet, beating him around the head, and Voldemort could hear the bones cracking.
Everytime Harry was locked in the dark, he followed, sitting with him in his small cot, putting a hand over his, even if he couldn’t touch. He whispered things that went hunheard, as the small boy trembled and sobbed himself to sleep, pain burning in his veins.
Voldemort never left him, and silently, he plotted.
Endless cold winter passed, endless scorching summers came. Harry worked in the garden and his skin bristled, burned, as he weeded and planted. He ran away from Dudley and his friends, who spent their time hunting him and beating him until he puked nothing but bile over the asphalt. Harry never tried to stand up - never tried to beat them down. He kept quiet, his head low as he went inside the cupboard, once again to be forgotten.
When Harry was six, he went to school. After a week, one of the teachers noticed how skinny he was, and how he never talked to anyone. And the bruises littering his arms. She wanted to call the police, and Voldemort silently cheered for him - even if he, personally, would have just murdered his abusers. But as she took Harry away to ask him about his wounds, a thread of magic lifted around her head, and she forgot. Everyone did, every time. Because no one could save Harry Potter. Dumbledore had seen to that. To keep him in that house where they beat him and closed him in the dark, he had cast some sort of ward that made everyone not notice.
So Harry grew and grew. He turned the teacher’s hair blue, or apparated to the school’s rooftops. But no one noticed. And Harry turned ten without ever knowing he was special. That made Voldemort’s blood boil in rage, as his soulmate suffered, for he wanted to grab him and scream at him: “ You’re powerful! You’re majestic! You’re mine!” but he couldn’t. Lost in the dream, he could only wait.
Harry was sorted into Gryffindor. He became friends with a silly blood traitor and a know-it-all mudblood. He followed the crumbs carefully put in his path by a meddling old fool, journeying under Hogwarts to protect a stupid stone. Harry killed, burning Quirrell with his bare hands. And Dumbledore gave him points for that. For taking a man’s life, for endangering his own.
Then Harry put a sword through a basilisk’s mouth, and went back in time, and found himself stuck to a grave.
Harry suffered from endless hours carving his own hand with a blood quill until the words scarred him, forever marking him as a liar.
And then— and then, Voldemort woke up with a gasp, filling his lungs as morning came and the dreams dissolved. Leaving him trembling in his chair.
Nagini slithered up to him, coiling around his neck and bumping her snoot over his cheek.
“Tom, I thought you had died. What happened?” asked the maledictus, tasting his skin. For the first time in his life, he was unsure on how to respond. Too many different feelings were swimming in his mind. Rage and anger, to the people that had hurt his soulmate. Desire, for him and that connection that for sixty years was taken from him. Affection for the small boy. And a deep - deep violence that shook him from the inside.
“I had my soulmate’s dreams.” he said to his snake, as she hissed happily. then: “It’s… Harry Potter.”
If snakes could look surprised, then Nagini would surely look like it.
“The boy?!”
“Yes. I have to fetch him, I want…”
“Of course you want him, Tom. But… what have you seen?”
Tom told her, skimming through the dreams, still clear in his mind palace thanks to his legilimency.
“I left him to suffer. He was mine, and I— tried to kill him. And for years he suffered, alone. Beaten and starved.” he did not think of a small boy in an Orphanage, he did not.
“Then go, Tom. You can protect him now.”
The Dark Lord dressed, ready to find the boy-who-lived - apparating where his dreams had showed him, when he felt it. The slight tug of the wards, and a voice rippling through. Lucius jumped, ready to face whoever was at the door, but Voldemort beat him to it, apparating with a thought to the gates.
And there he found the boy, full with his same rage - with his same anger at the world and whoever had put them against eachother. Was the prophecy even real?
“You came.” said the Dark Lord, swishing his hand to open the gate, and Harry walked over to him, putting both hands over his robe. The gesture surprised him, but he showed nothing but delight at Harry’s forwardness. He was not scared of him, not anymore. As he had seen his dreams, Harry saw his. His horrible, horrible childhood.
“Of course. You’re my soulmate.” whispered Harry, and Voldemort smirked, tilting his head. Harry was still small, still scrawny and thin. But he was also beautiful, with soft bronze skin kissed by the sun, and bright eyes calling for him from the depths of ancient magic. Full lips and soft jaw, made to be kissed and cherished. His hair, curling wildy, looked soft enough to be grabbed. To be controlled.
Harry fit snugly against his taller body, and Voldemort wanted nothing more than to have him. Forever.
Slowly, Harry touched his cheek, making him take a sudden breath. No one dared to touch him. But he was not anyone. He was his soulmate.
Harry Potter is my soulmate. He is mine.
The realization made him smirk, and he said: “And are you ready to be mine forever, Harry Potter? I won’t let you go. Never.” because now that he had him, not even Death could take him from him. He would make Harry immortal, he would give him the world. They were not enemies and probably never were. This was his equal, his marked. The boy that Fate designed for him, twice. Two halves of the same soul, brothers as their wands cores were. Tied even tighter than the prophecy ever suggested.
Harry put his thumb over his lip, and Voldemort opened his mouth just slightly, just to taste with the tip of his tongue his skin - to brush it against the soft pad of his finger, searching for his warmt.
“You’re mine too, Tom. And I won’t let go, either.”
Tom shivered, placing both hands over his hips, pressing them flush together. He inclined his head, taking his lips for himself, claiming a kiss that knew Harry wanted just as much as he did. He pushed his tongue inside his mouth, relished in the sweet wetness of his tongue, and squeezed him until he couldn’t tell where his body ended and Harry’s began.
Twisting, Voldemort apparated them both to his chamber, and pushed Harry over the soft covers of his bed, climbing over him to kiss him and kiss him and kiss him some more - just to be sure, just to sure—
“I won’t leave.” Harry whispered, after, caressing his bald head with a hand. Voldemort had pushed his face against Harry’s sternum, kissing the soft skin that now - and forever - would bear his mark. In beautiful ruby-red calligraphy - his calligraphy - sat a name. Shining with magic and glittering in the dark, the name Tom Marvolo Riddle truly marked Harry as his equal. Voldemort hummed, feeling the soft thump-thump of his heart.
“I know you won't.”
Maybe he had been a bit too happy, bringing Harry to dinner and sitting the boy over his legs. But Merlin’s beard if the look upon Lucius' face was worth it, in the end.