[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Retreat, R, Harry/Voldemort, 2/4
Part One.
Title: Retreat (2/4)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Voldemort
Rating: R
Content Notes: Forced marriage, AU (ignoring DH), angst, torture, extremely dubious consent, disassociation
Wordcount: This part 5600
Summary: AU. Harry didn’t understand why Voldemort had suggested their marriage as a solution to the war. He didn’t understand why his friends were supporting the suggestion. But he goes into it, trying to be as numb as possible, trying to retreat into his mind and just let the world play out around him-no matter how difficult that is.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics that are being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. It should have four parts, to be posted over the next four days. This is very dark; please pay heed to the warnings.
Thank you for all the reviews!
Part Two
“What the-”
“You did not come down to breakfast.”
“I didn’t know what time it was or anything.” Harry swallowed and stared, but even when he rubbed his eyes, the admittedly blurry image didn’t resolve itself as anything other than Lord Voldemort standing in the door of Harry’s bedroom, carrying a silver breakfast tray in his hands.
“Where are your glasses?”
“They got broken last night.”
Voldemort studied him, or so Harry assumed, from narrow eyes for a long moment before he waved his wand. Harry flinched instinctively, and then again as the repaired glasses slammed into his face.
“I assume that you broke them in a childish tantrum. Do not do so again.”
Harry just nodded. Better for Voldemort to assume that than for Harry to have to lie or say anything about Malfoy. “I won’t, sir.”
He started to get up, but Voldemort made a soft hissing sound that had the Parseltongue word for still somewhere in it, and Harry froze as the man strode up to him and laid the tray across his knees. Harry stared down at the food, at a loss. There were eggs and some kind of steaming omelet and treacle tart and scones and something covered by a silver dish-
His eyes darted sideways to Voldemort, who had arranged himself on a chair he must have conjured and was watching Harry. The trickle of pleasure oozed down behind Harry’s scar again.
“I promised that you would have regular meals. You shall have them.”
“Um, thanks,” Harry said, and picked up the fork and knife and began to cut away at the omelet.
Voldemort corrected him in a constant monotone stream of instructions-“Not that fork, the other one.” “Do not grip so hard.” “Lay the cover on the blankets, it’s not as if the house-elves will not clean them.”-and Harry listened, puzzled but relieved that they wouldn’t discuss anything else right now. He laid aside the cutlery when most of the eggs and scones were still left, and Voldemort stared at him like a hawk who couldn’t believe the mouse under its talons hadn’t stopped squirming yet.
Harry burned the thought at once. It was easier after his effort last night. “Thank you for breakfast.”
“You do have some manners, then.” Voldemort continued to study him. Harry sat there, breathing.
“Why did you not eat all the food?”
“This was as much as I could eat, sir.”
“I want to know why. And why you requested regular meals as part of our marriage vows. Why you assumed I would starve you.”
The impulse to panic clawed through Harry, but it was already an impulse and not the emotion itself, he was grateful to note. He nodded a little. “When I lived with my Muggle relatives, they took food away from me as a punishment. It’s harder for me to endure than some other things.”
The claws unfurled in his gut again. Why was he giving Voldemort information that would help him torture Harry? He should hold out until the very last moments, make Voldemort drag the information out-
But then he would never live to see Ron and Hermione’s plan come to fruition. He couldn’t act like himself. He had to act like the Harry who lived with the Dursleys.
“Why did they do that?”
Harry blinked and looked at Voldemort. He wondered if Voldemort hadn’t been punished like that in the orphanage, or maybe it had just been general starvation and hadn’t been used as a punishment. “They said that I was a burden and taking food out of their mouths. So they repaid the favor.”
Voldemort was silent for long enough that Harry thought he would leave, which would be good. This was weird enough. He needed to lie back in bed and work on his thoughts again, get the worst of them to leave him alone.
Instead, Voldemort reached out and brushed a cold hand down Harry’s arm, as if checking for crumbs that had fallen there. He leaned close enough to leave Harry with an overwhelming impression of red, although admittedly it would have been worse if Voldemort hadn’t repaired his glasses first.
“I will never do that to you.”
The words seemed to echo and linger around the room. Harry’s first thought was that if he really meant it, Voldemort would have spoken them in Parseltongue; then his second thought that he shouldn’t have thought the first one; and his third thought that Voldemort had said it in Parseltongue already, in their wedding vows.
“Er, thanks,” Harry said, after a pause that he knew had lasted too long.
Voldemort nodded and stood up, floating the breakfast tray into the air with a careless wave of his hand. “I expect you to keep regular hours from now on, including joining me for breakfast. It will always be at eight in the Malfoys’ smallest dining room. Get the house-elves to show you the way.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And then I expect you to attend lessons.”
Harry curled his fingers into the blankets over his legs and pinched hard enough that he knew he’d have a little pink spot on his leg later. “Lessons, sir. On what?”
Voldemort turned to stare at him, and Harry dropped his eyes. “On magic, of course.”
“Oh. Um. Will I be allowed my wand?”
It was a stupid question, blurted out too fast, but Voldemort didn’t blink. “Yes, of course. Why did you think you wouldn’t be allowed your wand?”
“I thought you wouldn’t want me to lose my temper and attack someone.”
“I think the peace treaty is far more effective a leash on you than the lack of a wand. Use it. Do not use it against my Death Eaters.” Voldemort reached into his robes and produced the holly wand, which made Harry shiver and struggle not to reach out. “Or against me. But I think you know that.”
There was a strange look in his eyes as he handed Harry his wand. Harry was too caught up in receiving his wand again to pay much attention to it. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
“I felt as if I could use your wand while I held it. Why? Is it because you have truly surrendered all of your power to Lord Voldemort?”
Another trap question, like the one about wanting to come to Harry’s room last night. What was the right answer? Was Voldemort testing to see if Harry would tell the truth, or asking for more knowledge?
In the end, Harry chose to do both. “I-haven’t, sir.” Voldemort only nodded, face expressionless, and Harry went on. “I think it’s probably because they’re brother wands. The same reason that they-they can’t cast against each other.”
“Brother wands.”
“Feathers of the same phoenix in them. That’s what-Ollivander said.”
Harry swallowed, remembering that Ollivander had supposedly disappeared. It was one of the few bits of news he’d heard while he was in isolation preparing for his “wedding.” He wondered for a moment what had happened to him, and then pushed the thought away again. If Ollivander was dead, there wasn’t anything Harry could do for him. And if he was still alive, then his safety depended on Harry acting compliant the way everyone else’s did.
“I knew that. I had wanted to see if you would speak the truth.”
Harry nodded, back on slightly more familiar ground. A trap, then. And probably Voldemort would lay out similar traps, and would penalize Harry if he lied. That was fine, as long as Harry knew that. He could maintain his calm, at least enough to make sure that he was the one who suffered for any mistakes he made, and not his friends.
“Cast a spell.”
Harry destroyed the formless wisp of a thought that was trying to form about how peremptory Voldemort could be, and drew his wand. “All right, sir. Which one?”
“The most powerful spell you know.”
There was no question about that, of course. Harry turned carefully away from Voldemort so there would be no chance that the paranoid-man would think Harry was aiming at him, and drifted back into a memory of Hermione’s arms warm and tight around him. The way she had hugged him after fourth year and the disaster in the graveyard. The way she had hugged him after Sirius died.
Harry breathed out and called, “Expecto Patronum!”
The silvery mist seemed lighter than normal as it boiled out of his wand, but considering the edge to the memories and where he was, Harry thought he still did well. The silver stag formed at the end of the bed, tossing its antlers and solidifying as Harry watched. Maybe that was his confidence, his relief that he could still perform the spell.
He glanced at Voldemort to make sure he hadn’t done something wrong, and recoiled. Voldemort’s eyes gleamed at him, possessive, feverish, and the warmth behind his scar burned in a way that nothing had yet.
“Sir?” Harry asked, while Prongs danced over to his side of the bed and pushed at Harry with his antlers as if wanting to be petted. But Harry didn’t dare take his eyes from Voldemort and the-whatever-it-was in his face.
“I cannot cast a Patronus.”
“Oh,” Harry said, because his interest in why Voldemort was telling him this far outweighed his interest in what Voldemort was telling him.
“With you at my side, that deficiency is made up for.” Voldemort raised his hand and let it hover above the scar. Harry braced himself for pain, but there was only more of that warmth as Voldemort’s fingers came to rest on the lightning bolt, which felt as if it might grow hot enough to melt bones and skin. “You know why I took you as husband.”
Harry nodded. “Yeah. I mean, yes, sir.” He did know. To stop the war, to paralyze resistance. There were a lot of people-although not Ron and Hermione-who would give up when the symbol of the fight against Voldemort was in his power.
Voldemort nodded back and retracted his hand. The warmth faded, to Harry’s promptly buried relief. “Then you should know, as well, why I wanted you to practice magic.”
After a moment of thought, Harry did see it. Voldemort probably imagined they would be attacked at some point, either by members of the Order of the Phoenix or by Death Eaters disgusted by what Voldemort had done, like Malfoy.
(Don’t complain about him. Don’t complain).
“Yes, sir,” Harry said quietly. He would still have to defend himself if that happened, of course. Assuming it wasn’t against Death Eaters. Then Voldemort-might do it? Probably would? He would at least make sure that Harry didn’t die before he wanted him to.
Harry wished the thought was less of a relief. He did have to stay alive for a certain period of time, to let Ron and Hermione’s plan play out, but he might also have to let himself be tortured or die at the right time, to distract Voldemort. He only wished he knew how long that was, and what the plan had been.
He buried it, covered it up. He was concentrating on his breathing, and started when Voldemort moved to the side, leaning at an odd angle, so that their eyes were locked once more.
“There is a tutoring room near the cellars,” Voldemort breathed out. “You are to go there and receive lessons with your tutor. I understand that he has taught you before, so he should know your strengths and weaknesses, and be able to gauge your progress.”
Harry blinked a little. “Who, sir?”
*
“We meet again, Potter.”
Harry just nodded, coiling up all his anger and burning it in the center of his mind. Then he scraped and stomped the ashes flat again. He was getting good at this. He finished burning the anger before he walked across the length of the enormous, silly, parqueted room to stand in front of the man. “Good morning, Professor Snape.”
Snape stared at him, eyes hard and probing. Harry just stared serenely at Snape’s chin. Well, not serenely, not really, but as serenely as he could. He couldn’t let any of his anger or grudges get in the way.
Snape had killed Dumbledore, but that didn’t matter. Other people were still alive, people Harry had to work to save.
Snape was a Death Eater, but that didn’t matter. So was Harry, in a way.
Snape might hurt him, but that didn’t matter. Voldemort had told him not to complain, so Harry wouldn’t.
“What, no complaints?”
“Our lord has made it clear that he won’t tolerate that kind of thing from me,” Harry said, and his voice wasn’t as empty as he wanted, but it was empty enough to make Snape start, apparently. “So I won’t complain, sir.”
“Not if I cast a spell on you that makes you ache?”
Nothing he does to me can be worse than what Voldemort is planning or what Voldemort could do. “No, sir.”
Snape began to stalk in a slow circle around Harry. Harry kept breathing as calmly as he could and stared straight ahead. Having his wand back wasn’t necessarily a good thing. The temptation to turn and strike at Snape was almost overwhelming, in a way it hadn’t been with Malfoy, because now he could do it.
But Snape was one of Voldemort’s most favored Death Eaters. Had to be, after the way he’d killed Dumbledore.
Harry’s chest ached, but he breathed through it, and Snape came to a halt in front of him with his eyes narrowed in a new way.
“You could have done with this kind of obedience when you were a regular Hogwarts student.”
Which I never will be again. One consequence of Voldemort having Harry “tutored” in magic had to be that he wouldn’t be allowed back into a regular Hogwarts classroom. Loss squeezed him and flew past. “Yes, sir.”
Snape took a step backwards, his face shuttering. Maybe it was less fun when Harry refused to play along. “Draw your wand and cast the most powerful spell you know.”
Harry did it, and watched the stag prance around the room for a minute. Snape’s face was fixed in a sneer as he paced in another circle. Harry wondered fleetingly if it was because his father’s Patronus had also been a stag, and then burned that thought, too.
Obedience. Not complaining. Interacting with Snape had to be simpler than it was with Voldemort, who set all those questions as traps and held so much more over Harry’s head.
“That is the most powerful defensive spell you know, I would assume?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The most powerful offensive one.” Snape waved his own wand and conjured a thick metal shield that he hung on the wall. “At this, as strongly as you can and as quickly.”
Harry acted without thinking about what the consequences would be. Obedience. “Sectumsempra!”
The shield fractured and clanged into two separate halves that rocked on the floor for a long moment. Snape was in Harry’s face abruptly, clenching both of Harry’s shoulders and shaking them hard enough that Harry’s cheek ached where Malfoy had bruised it last night.
It occurred to Harry to wonder why Voldemort hadn’t said anything about the bruise, but only for a moment. No doubt he’d thought Harry had injured himself in the same “tantrum” that had broken his glasses.
“You will never use that spell again.”
Snape was huffing that command right into his face, but he was no longer the most important thing in Harry’s general vicinity. The thought glanced off the glass walls that Harry had built around his mind, and he nodded.
“Yes, sir.”
“How could you use it after what you did to Mr. Malfoy?” Snape folded his arms and stood back with a violent sneer on his face. “You are a murderer. An unrepentant one. You would have murdered him if I had not been there.”
Harry might have felt some sorrow at that, no matter how badly Malfoy had been treating him lately. He didn’t want to kill anyone. As it was, memories of things like that were being steadily buried. He just nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“And for what? Why did you cast that spell?”
Harry didn’t know why he said it. He didn’t think some hidden desire to justify himself to Snape still burned in him. After all, it wasn’t like Snape would exonerate him anyway. But he answered the question, just as he had cast the spell. “He was casting the Cruciatus Curse on me at the time.”
Snape’s face shut down again. He stared at Harry, and then said, “Do not lie to me.”
“I’m not, sir.”
“Mr. Malfoy hates to torture people. Not even the Dark Lord has been able to make him feel happy about it.”
Snape sounded like he was talking to convince himself, in Harry’s opinion. But that wasn’t his problem. Harry stood there, blank and passive, waiting for the next thing that could count as a question or a command.
“You will not use that spell again,” Snape said. “And you will not-bring your absurd accusations about Mr. Malfoy before the Dark Lord.”
Harry blinked. Snape had been worried about that? He didn’t know why. Voldemort had made his stance clear. His Death Eaters were more precious possessions to him than Harry. Then again, maybe Voldemort would have taken it out on Malfoy because he had tried to use the Cruciatus Curse on Harry before Voldemort got a chance? Harry didn’t know. It wasn’t like he understood the internal machinations of a bunch of Dark wizards.
“Yes, sir,” he said, to show that he understood Snape.
Snape nodded shortly and seemed to put that idea aside. “Now, you will show me the range of hexes and countercurses that you know.”
*
“Here is a message from your Mudblood friend.”
Harry kept his reaction coiled tightly inside himself, and accepted the letter from Voldemort with a nod of thanks. He wondered, and crushed the wonder before it could fully form, why Voldemort was playing the part of a house-elf, first with the breakfast this morning and now the letter.
But, of course. He would have wanted to read Hermione’s message for himself. At least Harry was allowed owl post, which was also something he had assumed that he wouldn’t get.
He opened the message with eagerness that he couldn’t dim, even though Voldemort sat in the conjured chair again and watched him. Hermione had written only eleven words, with the last two of them underlined heavily.
Dear Harry,
I hope you’re keeping safe and acting like yourself!
Harry furrowed his brow and turned the letter over, but there was nothing on the other side. Hermione hadn’t even signed her name. Then again, maybe she had on the envelope, since Voldemort had known it was from her. It wasn’t like he would be familiar with her handwriting the way Harry was.
Harry sighed a little, and gave the letter to Voldemort when he reached for it. Voldemort crumpled it up, and Harry strangled his instinctive protest.
“What did she mean by acting like yourself?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Harry said, letting his brow furrow and a little more emotion breathe through him, because this was one of those extraordinary occurrences he had to be awake for. “I thought she would have told me not to act like myself, if anything. She would want me to obey and not do anything reckless or angry so that people can live.”
“And you assume I want the same thing?”
Harry froze as Voldemort leaned across the bed and placed his hands on Harry’s legs. Harry breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth, holding steady, but his senses were shrieking at him. There was weight, and coldness, and what if Voldemort wanted-
Shit. He needed to work harder on being indifferent, on lying back and thinking of England if that was what needed to happen.
“Yes, sir,” Harry said after a long moment, when Voldemort’s eyes had begun to glow and he’d remembered that he had a question to answer. “I know that you said you wanted me to obey you and the Death Eaters, and I’m trying. I know I don’t always do it well. I’ll still try.” He thought about adding that he had displeased Professor Snape that afternoon, but then didn’t say it. Voldemort wouldn’t want to hear the complaint.
“You are wrong.”
The questions, they were traps. Harry stiffened, which he knew Voldemort would have caught, but kept his voice as low as he could when he asked, “Then will you please let me know what you want, sir? I’m afraid of getting it wrong.”
Voldemort lifted Harry’s chin, smiling into his face, and replied in Parseltongue. “I want your spirit and your fire and your anger and your indignation and your cruelty at my side. I want you obeying me because you want to, and because you are grateful to me for what I give to you. I want to be first on your mind, and not the constant sacrifices that others have constrained you into making.”
He brushed his lips across Harry’s, and Harry didn’t let himself pull away, although he did go rigid underneath the touch. Voldemort ran his fingers over Harry’s scar again and pulled back.
“I do not have it yet,” Voldemort continued in English, as if all of this was exquisitely normal. “But I am willing to wait. Am I not immortal?”
Harry looked down, because everything he knew about Horcruxes would be written all over his face if he kept looking up. “I-all right, sir,” he said. “I’ll try.”
“Which means,” Voldemort added, “that I wish you to abandon this façade of emotionless compliance that you are presenting me with.” His hand tightened on Harry’s knee, enough to make Harry gasp.
“But then what do you want?” Harry snapped in spite of himself, bringing his eyes up, and noticing that Voldemort’s smile widened. “I don’t-to be obedient and to not complain about people and to obey your Death Eaters, I have to keep silent! I don’t have any other choice!”
“I have told you what I want. It is up to you to find a way of achieving it. A balance.” Voldemort stood up and moved towards the door. “Dinner at six, Harry. This time, wear the green robes. I think you’ll look stunning.”
He turned around and added, with a slight tilt of his head, “And this time, be able to say something other than direct answers to questions. This is your life now. I shall expect you to live it.”
Voldemort walked through the door. Harry crumpled back on the bed, his breathing fast and uneasy, his hands rising to fist in his hair.
How was he supposed to do this if he couldn’t burn his thoughts? If he couldn’t go away in his head?
Had Hermione somehow foreseen that Voldemort would want this? Was that why she’d written her letter? Act like himself…
I shall expect you to live it.
Do that, and yet somehow obey Voldemort and the Death Eaters and not complain.
This time, Harry deliberately summoned his thoughts, the images of Ron and Hermione and Mrs. Weasley with tears pouring down her face and Headmistress McGonagall and everyone else who might suffer if he acted out, who might need time to search for Horcruxes, who deserved to have uncomplicated lives no matter how complex his was.
I’ll try.
*
Harry walked into the dining room in the green formal robes that the Malfoy house-elf had helped him put on, his head held high.
He only realized how different that was from his entrance the night before when conversation paused and everyone turned to stare at him. Apparently they had been expecting the meek, cringing mouse. Harry hid a grimace. How did that fit in with Voldemort’s plan that he also obey Death Eaters? Was he supposed to-
“Harry, my dear. Come here.”
Harry’s attention snapped back to Voldemort-which had probably been the reason Voldemort spoke in Parseltongue in the first place, he thought-and the seat he had once more extended next to him. His eyes shone. Harry could see that much even from this distance, and he wondered if Voldemort had cast charms on his glasses besides the one to fix them.
Harry tipped his head to the side and walked towards Voldemort as if it was his own idea, as if he was going there of his own free will. He sat down and let Voldemort push the chair in for him, which he did by telling Nagini to coil herself around the chair’s feet and shove. Harry sat still and tried to look as if he did this every day.
“Very good,” Voldemort told him before reaching for the plates on the table to heap food before Harry as he had last night.
Harry stopped him this time when he would have added meat and only meat. “I’m not a pure carnivore, although I appreciate them, my lord,” he said, letting his eyes flick down for a second to Nagini on the floor, swaying a little as she stared at him. “Could I have some fruit and potatoes, please?”
“Of course.” Voldemort all but purred like an immense cat, and Harry told himself to stop making creepy comparisons. “You have but to ask.”
Harry smiled a little, and dug into the potatoes when Voldemort finished making up the plate. For whatever reason, he hadn’t had potatoes since the Leaving Feast at Hogwarts, after Dumbledore’s death.
The thought of the death made the potatoes taste briefly of ashes, but Harry closed his eyes and fought past that. Dumbledore would want him to live, he knew that. He had gone to great lengths to make sure that neither Snape nor Malfoy knew Harry was there when Snape killed him, and he’d thought Harry would continue the Horcrux quest. He couldn’t have foreseen this, but he wouldn’t want Harry to get hurt because he was grieving, either.
“What are you thinking of?”
Harry looked up at Voldemort. “Death,” he said honestly. He didn’t have to say whose death.
Voldemort’s smile surfaced like a shark rising through the waters of his face. “No death shall ever touch you.”
Harry blinked, utterly thrown. That-that hadn’t been part of the wedding vows or the treaty, had it? Sure, Voldemort had promised to protect him, but he hadn’t said from what.
“You look shocked. And yet, you said that you knew the reason I married you, and I told you what I wanted this afternoon.”
Harry nodded slowly. He supposed he could see it. Voldemort wouldn’t want to kill Harry if he wanted his willing submission, or some version of it. “Sorry, my lord. I wasn’t thinking.”
“I suspect that fault will become much less pronounced as time goes on.”
Harry ducked his head and nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said, in English before he considered it.
Voldemort’s hand slid idly up the back of his neck, and Harry didn’t flinch. Somehow, it was easier than it had been last night not to jump when Voldemort touched him. Harry returned to his potatoes, and Voldemort returned to his conversation with some Ministry flunky, while Harry pondered that.
Maybe detaching hadn’t been the best way to handle this situation. Or maybe not the kind of detachment he’d been doing.
Harry was contemplating that when Malfoy’s nasal voice said from the end of the table, “My lord, I would like to know what kind of pleasure Potter provides you.”
Harry tensed, wildly, but he kept staring at the table, the fork clenched in his fist. Then he reached out for the spoon and dug into the potatoes again.
“I do not know what you mean, young Malfoy.”
Harry caught his breath and ended up inhaling potatoes and choking a little. As he reached for a glass of water, coughing, he felt briefly sorry for Malfoy. He knew that tone in Voldemort’s voice, even if Malfoy didn’t seem to, and he didn’t think he was going to be the one to end up bleeding, himself.
“I mean,” Malfoy said, flinging out a hand that Harry saw from the corner of his eye as he determinedly drank his water, “look at him! Uncouth, ugly, wearing those robes that look as though they cost three Galleons-”
“I chose those robes for him, young Malfoy.”
Darkness loomed about the room, spreading out from Voldemort like a maelstrom. Harry saw the torches visibly lower in their sconces, and his scar burned with a steady fire, but not painful like he had in nightmares. More like sitting too close to a blazing hearth.
Incredibly, none of the other guests flinched, and Malfoy just kept going. Harry blinked. Could none of them sense the extent of Voldemort’s power like he could? Why not? “My apologies, my lord, but he probably told you that he wanted them, right? Trying to show off his eyes. Well, I suppose I can’t blame him, they’re his only good feature, Mudblood mother that he has-”
“And you think our lord would rather be with someone who looks like he tried to Transfigure his face into ice and botched it halfway?” Harry snapped. “You’re insulting his taste?”
This time, the guests did flinch. Those sitting nearest Harry and Voldemort on either side slid their chairs delicately away, as if they assumed Harry would fall to the floor from Voldemort’s Cruciatus. Malfoy gasped, and his face turned pink.
“Potter!” Malfoy spluttered.
“And now you’ve sprayed at least three dishes with your spit.” Harry smiled and kept going, because he would already suffer for what he’d said. He might as well enjoy this memory. “Aren’t you supposed to save that for lubing up your arse when you bend over for Snape?”
Utter, ringing silence consumed the dining room. Harry leaned his elbows on the table-and enjoyed that, too-and stared at Malfoy with a grin that he knew was vicious. In a second, he would begin convulsing with pain. But he would remember that he’d stunned Malfoy speechless, and that his parents sat on either side of him like bewildered statues.
Then a sound broke the stillness.
Voldemort laughed.
It swirled around the dining room, and this time people did shiver and seem to notice the magic that poured away from him. They hunched down. Harry watched Voldemort from the corner of his eye, and didn’t flinch when the cold hand fluttered out and stroked his cheek.
“I will answer the question, young Malfoy, since you have been thoroughly punished for insulting my taste already,” Voldemort said, voice amused but distant as the husk of a burned-out star. “That is the pleasure my husband provides to me. He makes me laugh, which none of you have ever done.” His eyes swept the table, and everyone tried to flinch and hold still at the same time. “And he has courage undaunted. He pleases me.”
He turned to Harry, who was trying to deal with the dazed feeling that he might have got the combination of defiance and submission that Voldemort wanted right after all, and slid his hand down Harry’s chin to his throat, pausing where the pulse beat. “May I come to your room tonight?” he asked in Parseltongue.
Harry didn’t know what kind of luck had guided him this far, but he decided to ride it a little further. Maybe he could get away with defiance when Malfoy was plainly the one who had started shit. “I would prefer to wait, but I will yield if you want me to.”
Voldemort’s eyes stared into him, and these stars were on fire, anyway. “When you want me there, I will be there.”
He sat back, and added, “Breakfast at eight-o’clock tomorrow, Harry. I presume that you will not be late.”
“No, my lord.”
It was so easy to say now that he had got one over on Malfoy. Harry glanced at the other boy, his eyes still wide and his face so pink that he looked like a suckling pig, and snickered. His snicker echoed throughout the silent dining room like Voldemort’s laughter had.
Harry reached for the treacle tart in good spirits.
*
“Good night, my own.”
Harry stood utterly still for Voldemort’s kiss, only bowing his head a little when Voldemort stared at him. Then Voldemort walked down the corridor, and Harry turned to walk into his room.
He was smiling, and told himself to stop that. Everything was still horrible. He was still a prisoner, and he ought to be mourning the loss of his freedom and thinking about how he could help Ron and Hermione.
But he had acted like himself, and that was what Hermione had told him to do. So maybe he was doing all right on that front, too.
He folded up his glasses and put them down on the table, and turned-
“Sectumsempra!”
Malfoy was in the doorway with his wand out, and that was all Harry had time to see before he was crumpling in agony, in pain. The Crucio that hit him a few seconds later was actually dim beside that pain, something he hadn’t known could happen.
But then, blood loss was fuzzing the edges of his perceptions and making his head swim.
“I told you not to take my father’s place,” Malfoy snarled, and then Harry heard the door slam.
Harry’s head lolled to the side. He knew he was dying. Part of him was distantly grateful, part was horrified, part was sorry that he probably wasn’t going to live long enough to make a difference to Ron and Hermione’s plan.
And part of him thought, Sorry, Voldemort, not going to make that breakfast on time, either.
Then the night embraced him.
Chapter Three.