[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Retreat, R, Harry/Voldemort, 3/4

[lomonaaeren]

Part Two.

Part One.

Title: Retreat (3/4)
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 5800
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 again for all the reviews!

Part Three

“Yes, Harry. That is it.”

Harry took a long breath, which he had to admit surprised him. He’d come pretty close to never breathing again, he’d thought. He coughed and turned his head, and Voldemort’s hand curved under his chin, supporting him and tilting his face back. Harry opened his mouth to question why, and a smooth, cool liquid filled his throat.

Water. Harry had never been so thirsty, or so grateful. He swallowed, and tried to ignore the way that Voldemort’s hand lingered on his throat, massaging and helping the water down.

Finally, he opened his eyes. He was staring directly into Voldemort’s, of course. He was lying on a bed that didn’t feel like his-and why did he know what his felt like after only two days, anyway?-and a room that seemed to be darkened. He blinked and tried to struggle up, but Voldemort hissed, “Lie still.”

His voice was so stern that Harry did it, although he didn’t feel burning from his scar. He glanced around, struggling to focus, and then Voldemort slipped his glasses onto his face. Harry could see that, yeah, this wasn’t his room. The bed was a lot bigger, the carpet on the floor seemed to be just deep blue rugs scattered over marble, and the windows were darkened with swathes of deep blue curtains.

“My room.”

Harry breathed his way through his panic at the thought of being in Voldemort’s bed, and just nodded. Then he sighed. “What happened? How did you find me?”

“I felt it through our link when you were hurt,” Voldemort said briefly. “When you began to travel down the tunnel to death. You did not die, of course, but it could have been a near thing.” His hand drifted for a moment over Harry’s chest, and Harry forced himself to look down.

Bandages swathed his chest from his collarbone to his waist, but they were odd-looking bandages, soft and dark green and leafy, as if they were made of the tendrils of some kind of plant. Well, that wouldn’t be the strangest thing to have happened to Harry since he came into the wizarding world. He reached for them, and Voldemort gripped and held his wrist in a non-painful hold that still rendered him immobile.

“You will not do anything that could jeopardize your recovery.”

Harry sighed, and lay back. Voldemort continued to sit there and stare at him. Harry couldn’t see from this angle whether he was sitting in a chair next to the bed or on the bed itself, and honestly, he didn’t care.

“What happened to Malfoy?” he asked.

“He has spent the last thirty-eight hours under the Cruciatus.”

Harry swore in shocked horror and tried to sit up again. Voldemort snapped his teeth close to Harry’s ear, making him jerk back, and then hissed, “It is a variation of the spell of my own devising, keeping him from escaping into either unconsciousness or death. It also heals his nerves enough that there will be no permanent damage. Unless I decide that there should be.”

Harry glanced around, wondering if Malfoy was in the room with them, but saw no sign. “Please,” he whispered. “Please let him go.”

“Why?”

“He-he doesn’t deserve it.”

“He tried to kill you. He tortured you as you were dying. Explain to me why he deserves less than this.”

“I don’t want to kill people! I don’t want other people to kill people for me.” Harry stared hard at Voldemort, smoothing away his horror. He could see that he wasn’t convincing his husband. He would have to try something else. “And I don’t want to deal with the grudges other Death Eaters might carry against me for him being tortured.”

“Other Death Eaters.”

“His parents. I know they only have Draco. If they lose him-” Harry’s throat closed, and he shook his head, looking away. He couldn’t pretend to less than the pain he was feeling at this. “I wouldn’t want to deprive parents of their only child. Not when I have no parents.”

“I see. And others?”

Voldemort’s tone was so neutral that Harry had no idea what he was feeling, and there was no burn behind his scar. Harry sighed out raggedly. “And Snape. He tried to protect Draco while he was working on killing Dumbledore. Draco’s death would devastate him, I think.”

Voldemort was so silent that Harry almost thought he’d left. Then he reached out and caressed Harry’s hair. Harry closed his eyes despite himself at how good Voldemort’s cold skin felt against his forehead and temples.

“Because you beg for him, he shall be released.”

“Thank you,” Harry said, in Parseltongue because he thought that might make Voldemort more merciful, and he rolled back over enough so that he could look at Voldemort. “Seriously, thank you.”

“But he shall not be allowed to go on as he was. He was the one who broke your glasses and bruised your cheek, was he not?”

“Um. Yeah.”

Harry had only admitted that because he didn’t see how he could get Malfoy in worse trouble, but Voldemort’s eyes darkened with harsh temper. “Why did you not tell me? We might have avoided this!”

“You said that you didn’t want to hear me complain.” Harry eyed him, wondering if Voldemort’s orders had also been a trap, like the questions he had asked. “It was pretty minor stuff until the Sectumsempra. I thought it would come across as complaining.”

Voldemort closed his eyes and spent a long moment sitting there like that. Harry just waited. If he knew Voldemort, and the steady throb behind his scar was a reminder of how deeply he did, he was about to change the rules again.

“I meant only that I did not want to listen to you talk about schoolboy rivalries and how Severus had treated you in his classroom,” Voldemort finally said, when the throb had become almost a burn. “I did not mean that you were not to speak if one of my Death Eaters harmed you.”

Harry nodded. “Okay, I’ll keep that in mind for next time.”

Voldemort’s eyes were open again so fast that it felt as if there was no transition between Voldemort looking and not looking at him, and now the man leaned towards him in a way that was, frankly, terrifying. “There will be no next time. When Malfoy is removed from the Cruciatus, then he will be bound to you with a special Mark that will allow you to override his will at any moment, read his mind, and manipulate his body like a puppet.”

“I didn’t ask for that!” Harry snapped, switching back to English.

Voldemort smiled at him, the horrible smile Harry had seen the night of his resurrection in the graveyard, and reached out to push the fall of Harry’s fringe back from his scar. “It does not matter. I need a way to make sure that he will not hurt you again, and that you will not allow him the chance out of a misguided sense of compassion.”

“Why are you so angry, anyway?” Harry asked cautiously. “I mean, you found me in time. Your symbol of conquest didn’t die.”

Voldemort stared at him. Harry stared back. He wanted an answer to his question. Malfoy was a Death Eater, and had been for at least a year, if Harry had his timeline right. Lucius Malfoy was important to Voldemort’s plans, and they were staying in the Malfoys’ house. Harry had only been here for two days.

Well. Probably four, now, if he’d been unconscious for thirty-eight hours.

“You really believe,” Voldemort said at last, in a voice that was less dangerous than the magic surging out of his body to make the room darker, “that I would tolerate a Death Eater attacking my Horcrux?”

Harry’s world shattered into pieces.

He began to shake. He was aware of that, but dimly, while he fell more deeply inside himself than he’d ever managed while he was trying to burn and flatten his thoughts.

Voldemort was saying something. Harry couldn’t hear it over the blaze in his mind.

Of course. Of course. The connection. The transfer of Voldemort’s powers, like Parseltongue, on the night that Voldemort had tried to kill Harry. The fact that Professor Dumbledore had said that he thought Nagini might be a Horcrux, which meant that living ones weren’t impossible. The fact that Voldemort had wanted to marry him.

Wanted to keep him safe. He had asked if Harry knew why Voldemort had wanted the marriage, and Harry had thought he did.

But it wasn’t-it wasn’t-

Dumbledore had known.

Harry began to howl. He thought it was laughter, he meant it to be laughter, but it emerged from his throat as a simple keening noise of pain, from so deep inside himself that it felt as if he were tearing out his liver to make it. He rocked in place, his hands wrapped around his head, his chest aching as fiercely as if Malfoy had hit him with the Sectumsempra again. His vision was blurred. He floated in a perfect hell of his own devising.

Voldemort knew. Harry had no idea how, but maybe he had explored the link between them and figured it out. Or maybe it had happened after he’d possessed Harry in the Ministry last year.

When he’d said that death would never touch Harry?

Shit. Shit. For Voldemort to die, for the war to really end, Harry had to die.

“Harry!”

The voice at last got through to him, but Harry was still laugh-howling. He couldn’t stop, even when a sharp slap collided with his cheek. Only when the link between him and Voldemort, the Horcrux link, flared to life, could he pay attention to something other than his own pain and horror and bone-deep, sudden longing to die.

Other emotions came crowding to answer him, impossibly hot and deep and clear, as if Voldemort was holding up a piece of stained grass he had lit on fire in front of Harry.

Listen to me, Voldemort said down the link, in a mental language that might have been either Parseltongue or English. You are precious. You shall not die. You are more priceless than gold, than pearls, than my own magic.

Harry stared in silence back down the link, and didn’t answer. Voldemort felt that way, of course he did, because Harry was a way for him to cheat death. But Harry felt differently. He was filthy, tarnished, a-

Do not refer to yourself that way.

Harry felt his howling finally die with a hiccough. Voldemort’s conviction surrounded and gripped him. He ended up closing his eyes and just drifting there in the middle of those emotions, because he had no idea what else to do.

Are you not the slightest bit curious how I knew?

Harry swallowed and managed to reply after a minute of struggling to separate the mental link from the part of him that wanted to speak through his mouth. I thought it was either the possession in the Ministry or that you explored the link and figured it out.

It was the possession. I should not have been able to do that no matter what kind of curse scar I left on you. And then I reached down the link once more-exploring it while you were asleep, most of the time-and found…you.

Harry had thought he hated knowing he was a Horcrux, but it was nothing to how much he hated the tone of awe in Voldemort’s voice. He tried to jerk away, but Voldemort’s hands held him still.

You are precious. You are valued. I will protect you from everything that threatens you, and you shall never die.

Harry reached out and grasped the first thing he could find, the first weapon. I destroyed another Horcrux of yours. The diary. I enjoyed watching it die.

He felt Voldemort’s fingers flex on either side of his face, and Voldemort uttered a long, cold sigh that faded away like a draught after blowing through a few curtains of Harry’s mind. I know. Lucius told me some months ago. Why tell me now?

I enjoyed doing it. Don’t you want to hurt me?

Voldemort abruptly withdrew from the mental link. Harry opened his eyes to find the man hovering above him, his hands still encompassing the sides of Harry’s head. Harry tried to turn away, but he was too weak for that. He settled for glaring.

“You are trying to make me hurt you,” Voldemort said. “Kill you. My own, did I not just tell you that I will not do that?”

Harry closed his eyes and breathed deeply, slowly. This was a nightmare. He had-he had to do something. He had to make Voldemort kill him, no matter what was necessary. It didn’t matter if it messed with Ron and Hermione’s plan. They’d understand eventually, if only because they would know that he’d had to have a good reason for it.

Oh, God.

A deep, sickening realization opened up in him, and he asked before he could think better of it. “Did Dumbledore know that you knew?”

“Yes. I sent him a letter a month or so before he died. Nothing long. Just enough to let him know who it was from, and that I knew what you were.” Voldemort sounded as if he was smiling. “I have to admit, I am somewhat amazed he did not try to get rid of you. Not that it would have worked. There are very few ways to destroy a living Horcrux, as you can see from you surviving what Malfoy cursed you with.”

“Dumbledore-loved me,” Harry said, while his heart rebounded and his thoughts spun in dizzying circles.

What if-

What if Dumbledore had received the letter, and shared it with Ron and Hermione? What if they knew that Harry was a Horcrux, and that there were very few ways to destroy one? What if they had supported the marriage and Hermione had sent that letter that said for him to act like himself because they knew that Voldemort had to kill him, and they thought the best way to do that, since Voldemort already knew and would never do it on purpose, was for Harry to taunt Voldemort into acting on impulse?

Oh, God. It made too much sense.

Harry clapped his hands over his face and tried to roll away again, but Voldemort was right beside him, still holding onto him, and within his mind, too. He buffeted waves of calm and greed against Harry’s own emotions. Harry fought to hang onto his own, but he wasn’t sure that he succeeded. He was breathing more normally than he had before. He was lying still instead of running away from the conclusion that maybe this had been the only plan his friends saw to kill Voldemort and end the war.

But parts of him still burned with shame and self-loathing.

“If you knew what I see when I look at you,” Voldemort murmured, and Harry opened his eyes again, conscious of the tears in them, not sure he cared.

“Someone weak and stupid and broken,” Harry said flatly. He was sure.

“No.” Voldemort lifted his chin. “Do you understand how few could have stood against me, survived where you have survived? Do you understand that I would give five Horcruxes to have you here beside me, alive and spitting defiance in my face?”

Harry shook his head. All he could think of was the shard of Voldemort’s soul clinging to his own, like a-a leech, or something.

“You are beautiful. Not ugly. Why do you think I asked for marriage instead of simply for you to surrender to me?”

“So that you could have the protection of wedding vows?”

Voldemort laughed, a sound that was softer than the one he’d given in the Malfoys’ dining room, but which roared up and rose and rustled around them anyway, still mingled with magic. “I do not need it. No, my Harry, it was so that I could have the privilege of you in my bed.”

“Much good it’s doing you right now,” Harry muttered, filled with the last empty fumes of his temper. What did it matter? Voldemort knew he was a Horcrux. He wasn’t going to kill him. Ron and Hermione’s plan wasn’t going to work.

And Dumbledore had known. And he hadn’t said anything. And he hadn’t told Harry when Voldemort had revealed that he knew, either.

Why? What had he hoped would happen?

Harry supposed he would never know.

“You are too wounded for such play,” Voldemort said, his voice a low, rumbling sound now, like an enormous cat Harry had once fantasized about that draped itself over him and purred when no one else in his primary school wanted to spend time with him. “But I would like to do something for you.”

“No,” Harry said miserably. He wanted to be alone and mourn his inability to die.

“You have not even heard what I proposed.”

“I don’t need to.”

Harry opened his eyes and glared, but Voldemort simply held his gaze, and then flooded emotions through the mental link again.

Harry gasped. It wasn’t physical sensation, but the rocking, floating feeling that took him was more wonderful than anything he’d ever felt. It was as if Voldemort’s lust and greed and fascination and pride of possession were lifting him and soaring him right out of his body. His eyes closed, and he basked in it.

Part of him still echoed with hollow laughter. This was the only time he would ever feel something like this, because Voldemort was the only person who would ever think him beautiful with this kind of stain on his soul.

But that just made other parts of himself embrace this more eagerly. And he floated away, and he drifted, and he soared into the center of a sunburst made of light that wrapped around him and dissolved him in pleasure.

He didn’t know if he came, and he didn’t know when he fell asleep. Right now, there was nothing that he could do but go.

*

“We are here because my husband has asked for mercy.”

Harry twitched as the Death Eaters’ eyes focused on him. He had thought Voldemort wouldn’t have a throne room in Malfoy Manor, since it wasn’t actually his house, but, well, he did. And this throne room was an enormous white place that probably served as a ballroom some of the time, with mirrors gleaming on the walls.

Harry didn’t want to see what he looked like, especially since he was wearing, at Voldemort’s direction, green robes with no shirt underneath them, so that the tendrils wrapping his chest showed through. He kept his eyes focused straight ahead, on the elder Malfoys who stood before the gilded throne Voldemort sat on.

Harry’s chair was smaller, but still gilded, and sitting on the dais that Voldemort’s throne occupied instead of on the floor beside it. He didn’t want to think about what that meant, either.

Malfoy-Draco, that was-lay trussed on the floor in front of him. He still twitched, as though the tremors from the Cruciatus Curse coursed through his muscles, although his eyes were sane. Harry didn’t know how Voldemort had done that. He didn’t want to imagine thirty-eight hours of torture.

Or forty-three, as it had more likely been. He didn’t think Voldemort had actually released Malfoy from the curse until Harry woke up for the second time.

“This man attacked my consort,” Voldemort said, with a wave of his hand. Nagini reared next to him and hissed on cue. Everyone in the room except Harry cringed. He wasn’t sure that anything would make him cringe again, after the revelation of his status as a Horcrux. “He cut him open and tortured him with the Cruciatus. He intended to make him die.”

There was utter silence after that, except for Nagini’s soft hisses. She left Voldemort’s throne, and Harry tensed, because he wouldn’t put it past Voldemort to break his word and have his snake devour Malfoy right now. But instead, to Harry’s surprise, Nagini slid over to him and laid her head in his lap.

Harry caressed her, hesitantly, and found that her scales were as warm as if she had been lying in front of a fireplace. He hoped that wasn’t like recognizing like, Horcrux recognizing Horcrux, but he reckoned it probably was.

He tried not to let his self-disgust show on his face.

“But because my consort is merciful and just,” Voldemort said, his voice picking up edges of sibilance, “he has begged me to spare young Malfoy’s life. So I will. But Malfoy will be bound to my consort, the Mark he has disgraced taken from him. He shall receive a replacement Mark, which will tie him in a slavery bond to Harry Potter-Gaunt.”

Harry clenched the hand that wasn’t petting Nagini. He hadn’t even realized that he had a new married name.

“You are distressed.”

Harry considered not answering Nagini, but from the way she flicked out her tongue, she would just get more impatient and pester him some more. “I don’t want this to happen,” he replied in Parseltongue, and people still flinched and jumped and gave muffled screams. Harry didn’t know why. Wouldn’t they get used to it after a while? It was as bad as people on his side flinching continually when someone said Voldemort’s name. “I don’t want to own slaves. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want my name to change. I don’t want to be a Horcrux.”

“Our master has honored us.”

“Maybe you,” Harry said, because he wasn’t fool enough to argue too much with an enormous snake whose jaws were just a few inches from his groin. “But he made me by accident. He doesn’t-he can’t value me.”

“Harry.”

Harry glanced up and met Voldemort’s eyes. Nagini gave a low, wordless hiss of something that might have been contentment. Perhaps she thought Voldemort would be able to convince him, despite the fact that it hadn’t happened so far.

“I have told you how much I value you,” Voldemort said clearly, although in Parseltongue, which just made his Death Eaters stare without understanding. “I have shown you. I will tell you and show you over and over again, until you understand. You fascinate me as no one else I have ever met does.”

“Doesn’t Nagini count?”

Nagini hissed softly again to herself, and looped more of herself up Harry’s legs until she was sprawled most of the way across his lap. Voldemort, meanwhile, laughed, and his magic once again coursed out of his body, and the torches turned green. Harry swallowed. The color reminded him too much of Voldemort’s favorite spell for him to consider it beautiful.

The spell that Voldemort would never use on him, even though Ron and Hermione and Dumbledore had probably all been depending on Harry to arrange it.

“She counts. But you are human, you can spend time with me and converse on a level that she does not.”

Harry glanced cautiously down at Nagini, wondering how she would react to this pronouncement, but Nagini only said, “I am still better at catching rabbits than either of you.”

Harry was startled into laughter of his own, and only when Malfoy gave a desperate little whimper did he realize what he probably sounded like to people who couldn’t speak Parseltongue. He swallowed and said, “I still wish that you would reconsider, my lord. Have Malfoy swear an oath not to harm me.”

Malfoy stared at him with wide, blank eyes. Harry looked at him, and found the hatred in those eyes anyway, and winced away from it.

There was hatred in the way that Mrs. Malfoy stepped forwards and gave an elegant bow, too. Harry knew that she loved her son. She probably wished that he’d succeeded in killing Harry and not been found out.

Harry wished for a second that he had, but-would that have killed the Horcrux? Voldemort had said it was very difficult to destroy a living one. Maybe the soul-piece would just have taken over Harry’s body and run him like a puppet. Harry shuddered away from the horror of that thought.

That was the way Voldemort wanted him to run Malfoy.

“My lord,” Mrs. Malfoy murmured, her eyes downcast, “I beg you to reconsider. My son does not deserve such a slavery bond. If you would-”

Voldemort slammed his hand on the arm of the throne. That produced a much louder cracking sound that should have been possible, echoing around the room. Mrs. Malfoy sank fully into a kneeling position, trembling as if someone had replaced her bones with leaves.

“He does not deserve it, you say?” Voldemort hissed. “When he cut open my consort, when he tortured him with the Cruciatus, when he ignored my explicit orders? You forget yourself, Narcissa. Perhaps you would like to join your son under the slavery bond?”

“No,” Harry blurted, and ignored the way that Voldemort’s eyes blazed as they swung to him. “Please. Not her. Not him, either. If you would.” He was suddenly glad that Nagini’s weight was draped over his lap, because it kept him from flinching back as Voldemort’s eyes locked on him. “He can-pay a different price.”

“The only other price I will accept is the death that he tried to deal you.” Voldemort lifted his wand, his eyes still fastened on Harry. “Is that your wish, my own? Shall I cut him open and torture him as he dies?”

Mrs. Malfoy made a sound of inexpressible distress, and then bowed her head. Mr. Malfoy looked like he wanted to go to her and was restraining himself.

And Harry-

Harry was ill with the horror of it all. He didn’t want to decide Malfoy’s fate. He didn’t want to be here.

He didn’t want to be Voldemort’s Horcrux.

But he was, and that meant he had to make a decision. Voldemort actually hadn’t launched the spell yet, which was more restraint than Harry would have expected of him. He was leaving the choice up to Harry.

“I prefer the slavery bond to that,” Harry whispered.

Voldemort nodded, and turned back to face his Death Eaters. “You were all witnesses to the taunts that young Malfoy dealt to my consort and to me in the dining room three days ago. You know what he did to try and kill Harry Potter-Gaunt. What you do not know is that he attacked Harry Potter-Gaunt the first day he was here, the first night, breaking Harry’s glasses and bruising his cheek.”

He leaned to the side, his eyes fixed on someone Harry couldn’t see from the angle of his own chair. “And yet, Harry said nothing. He was protecting young Malfoy even then, so forgiving that he tried to spare him the consequences of his own actions.”

Harry stared at the back of Voldemort’s head. No, that wasn’t it. He hadn’t said anything because Voldemort had told him not to complain, and Harry was still trying to obey Voldemort’s orders at that point.

Then again, bringing that up now, at least in English, would probably get him punished severely.

“Not at all,” Voldemort said softly, “the actions of a lying, attention-seeking brat, are they, Severus?”

Harry sucked in his breath so hard that he started coughing. Nagini leaned her head against his chest. “You must be in front of a warm fire soon,” she declared. “Your chest is hurt. Master, why are you making my brother Horcrux sit up?”

“It will not be very much longer, Nagini,” Voldemort said absently, his eyes on Snape as he moved forwards and dropped to his knees before Voldemort. Harry let his hands rest on Nagini because he couldn’t do anything else right now.

“My lord.” Snape bowed his head, shooting Harry one intense glance before he lowered his eyes. Harry had no idea what emotion or information that was supposed to convey. “I had many chances to observe Mr. Potter when I was teaching him at school, and although his behavior may have been different since he wed you, I stand by what I said when it came to him as a Potions student. He also almost murdered Mr. Malfoy a few months back. I plead the case that Mr. Malfoy’s ill-judged, rash actions, while inadvisable, were only seeking vengeance for Mr. Potter’s unfair treatment of him.”

“Harry,” Voldemort said, although he never turned away from staring at Snape. “How well did you do in Potions at Hogwarts?”

Harry blinked, utterly thrown, but answered because it delayed the moment when the slavery bond became final. “I didn’t do well.”

“What mark did you earn in Potions on your OWL?”

This is so bizarre, Harry thought helplessly. But he replied. “An Exceeds Expectations.”

“Why did you use Sectumsempra on young Mr. Malfoy?”

“He was trying to cast the Cruciatus on me,” Harry said quietly, staring down at Malfoy, who was lying on the floor now with his chin tucked into his chest, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “And I had seen the spell in a book that said it was for enemies. I didn’t know what it would do at the time.”

“I see,” said Voldemort, with some awful weight of emphasis in the last word that Harry didn’t want to think about, and turned to stare at Snape. “So. He does well on his exams despite your attempts to stamp the talent out of him. And he defends himself from a torture curse with a spell that he did not know the nature of-the same spell that Mr. Malfoy used on my consort, which he did know. I wonder how far I should trust your information, Severus.”

“My lord,” Snape said calmly, although Harry saw a muscle twitching in his cheek and thought that he was probably a lot less calm than he wanted to look. “I gave you the information as I had at it at the time.”

“And it nearly resulted in the death of my consort, since I would have known about Mr. Malfoy’s potential for violence towards him much earlier if Harry had been inspired to tell me the truth.” Voldemort lashed out with a boot and kicked Snape in the side of the head, knocking him over. “Get out of my sight. I shall think of a punishment for you later.”

The silence of the room returned as Snape picked himself up and edged backwards, bowing, until he reached the far edge of the room and stood. Harry wondered if the man would come at him now. Probably not. Voldemort would end the lessons Harry was having with Snape, most likely, and Snape wouldn’t want to be placed under a slavery bond the way Malfoy was going to be.

It seemed that wouldn’t be delayed any longer. Voldemort floated Malfoy, still bound, over to Harry, and Harry reluctantly stood up when Voldemort hissed at him to do so, pushing Nagini onto the floor. The bonds around Malfoy dissolved, and Voldemort instructed Malfoy to kneel and Harry to put his hands in the middle of the other boy’s forehead.

Boy. He’s a kid, like me.

But they were both legal wizarding adults, and there was no getting out of this. Voldemort was the one to actually cast the spell, thank God, but Harry had to repeat certain words in Parseltongue and Latin when Voldemort told him to.

Once again, Harry tried to detach himself from everything that was happening around him. He stared straight ahead instead of down at Malfoy as he said them, and hoped he hid his flinches when the Dark Mark was stripped from Malfoy and he screamed, and when the new Mark formed on Malfoy’s right arm in its place, and he screamed.

Harry did sneak a look down at the new Mark as it formed, too fascinated not to. A green snake carrying a lightning bolt in its mouth.

Pretentious, but then, look who was casting it.

Harry swallowed back his desire to say that aloud, and then gasped aloud instead as Voldemort hissed a final incantation and the slavery bond formed between him and Malfoy. Suddenly there were three strings floating in the back of Harry’s mind, separate from his connection with Voldemort. One of them, Harry knew without asking, led to Malfoy’s mind, and would let him read the git’s thoughts. One led to Malfoy’s will, and would let him override it.

And one would let Harry manipulate his body like a marionette.

Harry lifted his hands off Malfoy’s forehead as soon as he could. Malfoy bowed and stumbled to his feet, moving back into the arms of his mother, who received him.

“Your will be done, my lords,” he gasped, the first words he’d spoken all evening.

Harry just nodded, because he had no idea what else was expected of him, even when Voldemort looked in his direction. Luckily, that seemed to be all Voldemort required. He made a languid motion with one hand, and the Death Eaters bowed and began filing out of the throne room.

Harry sat back down on his chair, and Nagini crawled promptly back into his lap, hissing complaints about being displaced. He shuddered and shuddered and shuddered.

“You do not want to be my Horcrux,” Voldemort said curiously. “You do not want to be a lord. You do not want to be the Boy-Who-Lived. What do you want to be?”

Harry didn’t know what to say. His first desire was to say that he wanted to be the Boy-Who-Lived and go back to his friends, but, well, he had thought about dying a lot today, hadn’t he? And Ron and Hermione…

If they really had known he was a Horcrux and had been encouraging him to get himself killed, he didn’t know how to speak to them.

Finally, he whispered, “Free. Free would be good.”

Voldemort rose and walked towards him. Harry knew that, but he didn’t look. He sat still as Voldemort’s cool hand slid down his forehead and rested for a moment on the back of his neck.

“My brother Horcrux is cold and still wounded, master,” Nagini said imperiously. “Take him to your bed and warm him.”

Harry swallowed, his eyes flying open, but Voldemort only said, “He will come, but he will rest.”

Harry had to put up with being floated back to Voldemort’s bed like a toddler in an invisible pram. But he didn’t argue. He lay down under the covers and let Voldemort sling a cold arm over his waist and hold him there on his back, so that he couldn’t roll over and irritate the dressings on his chest.

Nagini is mad if she thinks he can warm me.

This time, when the night came for him, he welcomed it eagerly.

Part Four.