Tentative

Chapter 4: The hanged man

Chapter 4

The Wild Unknown deck.

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Harry has positively vanished from the face of the earth. No matter where Lord Voldemort searches, who he threatens or bribes, he finds nothing. No one has any information about Snape either, most of his Death Eaters agreeing that Regulus Black seemed to be closest to him in the last few months. But Regulus Black was dead, Lord Voldemort had made sure of it. His only clue lies in the bottom of a cursed lake.

He is less than pleased. The people around him pay dearly for his moods.

Bellatrix had never been summoned to Harry's side, she cries at the end of his crucio. She had not seen the child that night at all. Her last memories of him, Voldemort sees, show a happy Harry being bathed, the child charming and talkative as ever, smiling fondly at Bella.

The Welsh hideout holds silence a graveyard would. It's imposing, daunting. Lord Voldemort can still feel Harry's little head resting on his chest. Harry's laugh in his ear, his small body tucked against him in the middle of the night, warm and safe and his. Now Harry is gone. Either their home had been attacked, again... or Severus had betrayed his master. Lord Voldemort is not sure which possibility enrages him more.

It has been three days since Voldemort held Harry in his arms for the last time. Their soulmark bond seems to be quieted down as if someone was blocking it, yet the Dark Lord can feel it. The bond shakes and lights up with Harry's distress, but Lord Voldemort can't reach Harry through it. It is driving him crazy. His Death Eaters know it. They avoid him, aware that his mood swings are more dangerous to them than to their enemies, as for now.

Even after her torture, Bellatrix seems to feel Voldemort's rage as if it was her own. A surprising amount of his followers do. He finds it almost comical, how his Death Eaters seem to find some new respect for their master after his son had been stolen from him. Pain makes us human, Dumbledore had once said. How ironic, that most of his followers found the Dark Lord's pain and anger something that elevated him, when he had spent his life mocking and exploiting those same feelings on them.

In some way, they all had Harry taking away from them, he supposes. Every opportunity at power Harry represented had been stolen, and even his less devoted Death Eaters seemed angry about it. Good. he had no time for their pity, but their rage could be used, somehow, at some point. How, when, Lord Voldemort doesn't know. He can't think.

He is restless. He can't sleep at night, his head hurts all the time, and he is worried. Terrified. He feels helpless, in a way he hadn't been since he was a pitiful child stuck in an orphanage.

And it's all Dumbledore's fault. He can feel it in his very bones.

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Lord Voldemort does not stay in the welsh house for too long. Just looking at the walls makes his blood boil in rage.

He sets a new goal for himself: go back to Riddle Manor, and finish wrapping it in so many protection spells not even Merlin himself would be able to step in without the Dark Lord's explicit permission. It is a good hobby, keeps his mind from Harry for a time. Nagini, injured but not dead, that lucky magical snake, is still too weak to roam free. The Dark Lord has her hibernating in his old studio, waiting to see her memories of the event.

A part of him resents being back, but he couldn't just abandon the mansion. This is his home, Harry ́s home. When he gets Harry back they will live here, as they were always supposed to.

He goes over his memories of that night through a pensive, searching for anything that might have been overlooked. After a few days, he finds it. There had been a third, not completely unfamiliar, magical trace in the house the night Severus and Harry had disappeared. A third person had walked into Lord Voldemort's home that night. Had they attacked Severus, taking both him and Harry? Regulus, that halfwit, must have been working for the Order of the Phoenix.