Warning: violent scene
A pale, flickering glow was the only light in the circular office. Piles of paper threatened to topple off the desk, but a charm kept them in place. Sat before the desk was a man with a long beard, which was starting to grey, his body expressing the stress of age with its mix of grey and auburn hairs. To his right was a fiery bird, looking sympathetically down at the aging man.
"Whatever am I to do, Fawkes?" asked Dumbledore in a low voice, seeming sincerely concerned.
He received a low chirp in response from the bird.
"News is going around of Tom Riddle's return to Britain. I was half expecting him to return to ask for a job here, but... it seems that I do not know him quite as well as I thought. Politics must be a greater concern to him, now."
Fawkes responded with another chirp, which sounded rather like an agreement.
"We cannot have two Dark Lords in Britain. The dark cannot regain the power that they once had. They are already out slaughtering muggles mercilessly, probably even more than the papers know of... They must continue to be repressed, Fawkes. Lord Potter was one thing; he's certainly a threat, with his smart words and persuasive style. But two? I don't know if I can handle two, Fawkes."
Dumbledore sounded exhausted, and this time Fawkes just looked downwards, morosely. Like the bird felt his same sense of hopelessness.
"I have to get to them early. Nip the movement at the bud. Tom is harming people; the wizarding population won't stand for that. Once they know what he's doing, what the dark is about... There is hope, Fawkes. There is hope for the light."
The bird only nodded.
"This poor, greying beard will have further struggles to live through yet," he commented, and then went to blow out his candle.
"Merlin's beard have I fucked up, I've fucked up so badly," Harry groaned as he dropped his head onto the tome in front of him.
Lin, his ex-tutor, said nothing in response, merely continuing his own research. Harry had wanted to enlist the help of all his followers for this task, but he knew that Voldemort would be maddened if he found out that Harry had told even his most trusted advisor. A horcrux was an incredibly personal issue, and it was not information that one threw about freely. Harry trusted all of his followers, but he still didn't think it was a good idea for them all to know, lest it spread further, and Harry was responsible for the untimely death of the man. Instead, he had reserved this information for Lin. He went to Lin for everything; he was like the father Harry had never had, and, while he was admittedly getting on a bit, he was still the most knowledgeable in the dark arts that Harry knew of.
"I shouldn't have done it like that, I should have been gentler in my approach. Why do I always do this? Why do I always run into these things headfirst? Merlin and the founders damn me, he's going to make another, I've made it worse, Lin, I've fucked up so badly!"
"Harry, my friend, please try to calm down," the old man soothed. "You will not be successful in your research if you are teetering on the cliff of a panic attack. Just breathe, and work slowly."
Harry followed these instructions, and let his breathing patterns fall even. He had been frantically searching through some of the darkest books that he had in his possession, books that he had travelled to the ends of the Earth to acquire, and Lin had been right; he could barely remember a word of what he'd found so far. Said man was working at a steady pace, taking in any relevant information, and noting it down, overall working much more efficiently than Harry had been.
"Why are you so desperate to save this boy, anyway? What's it to you if he splits his soul? You barely know him."
Harry felt his body tense, but he could not get angry at his ex-tutor.
"He's not a boy, Lin. He's a man. A very powerful man who doesn't know what to do with his power, there's too much of it. He didn't have a tutor like I did, they don't accept the Dark Arts in Hogwarts. This is a man whose power has no direction, and he needs to be saved. He deserves to be saved. I don't want the world to face another Grindelwald, and that's what will happen if I let his soul deteriorate."
Lin was silent for a moment, his lips pursed, and it was obvious that he was not sure how much to say to Harry.
"You're right, he is becoming much like Grindelwald was. But you didn't save Grindelwald. You defeated him, you sided with the light just to defeat him. Tom Riddle is certainly no match for both you and Albus Dumbledore like Grindelwald was, at least not yet. What makes him different? You want to save Voldemort, and there's more reasoning behind it than you're letting yourself believe."
Harry could not stand all this talking. There was a man out there who was who knows how close to making a thirdbloody horcrux, at terrible risk of completely destroying his own soul. They simply did not have time to sit around having a nice little chat about why exactly Harry wants to save this man. It should not matter why they were saving him; Harry just wanted it done.
"Nobody should just be left to tear at their soul, Lin. Grindelwald was older, he was lost. Voldemort still has a chance at living. It's tragic what he's doing to himself. It's the highest form of self-torture, and it'd break my heart to let it continue. When I met that man in Canada... it affected me. I don't want that same fate to fall upon Voldemort."
"And I suppose it helps that this man is handsome. I would've thought." Lin commented, making Harry's blood boil further.
"I would have thought that the effect on the mind was more cause for concern. Just how shallow do you think I am that I would try to stop this happening just for the sake of some eye-candy? I'm more principled than that, and I thought you of all people would understand this."
"He really is your type, Harry. I know if I were in your shoes I'd think it a shame to see such good looks wasted. Do you think he will appreciate your intervention?"
"Shut up," Harry bit out, growing increasingly anxious and maddened by the direction this had taken.
"You can't hide it from me, Harry," Lin continued. "I saw the way you were looking at him from backstage tonight. You were practically fucking him with your eyes!"
"This is not a fucking joke, Lin!" Harry bellowed, his magic threatening to lash out. "Voldemort could be on his way his mutilate his fucking soul right this minute, and you want to piss about talking about my fancies! I don't fucking care what's motivating me, I just can't stand to let a human to this to himself!"
There was a moment where Harry's words hung, sweating in the now claustrophobic room, for both men to sit with. Harry was done; there was no more to say.
"I never meant to make a joke of the situation. I understand fully the severity, and I too do not want to see this young man ruin his future through blind desire for power. But you must understand what you're doing by choosing to save him. This is no casual act. You are interfering with this man's own business with his soul, you are potentially saving his soul, and if he understands the extent of what you have done for him, there's no going back from it. It will affect the both of you in ways you may not be prepared for. You need to know why you are doing it, to fully understand the consequences of the action."
"I'm just doing what's right," Harry defended himself. "Good looks have no effect on justice."
"Very well," conceded Lin. "I will endeavour to continue helping you in this task."
Voldemort was mad. Mad, mad, mad. He was completely fuming, bursting with rage that he could barely keep it in. The rage was infecting his mind, twisting everything he saw into red, red, red. He needed to cool off before he did anything; he was nowhere near thinking straight. He was barely thinking at all, so fuelled by his own instinct to fight. He needed his decisions to be careful and measured; this could not be done when full of adrenaline.
The first place he arrived at was a small village in the north west of England, a muggle area. It was not often that he went into muggle homes to let off steam, but he was not often so filled with adrenaline. Even in his state of reactive behaviour, he would be able to be in and out without leaving a trace. It was late, and so most of them were in bed, and he chose a house at random to enter. Unlocking the door with ease, he made quick work of the adjacent window to make it look as if another muggle had broken in. In fact... muggle methods would be the way to go to truly satisfy his anger. He would not make this kill one for a horcrux – he needed more time to think upon that issue – but it would do for clearing his head. He conjured a long knife, and headed upstairs towards the bedrooms. He found a couple asleep, and put a silencing ward around the room, before getting straight to the act, plunging the knife into the neck of the man taking the life from him immediately. Voldemort could practically taste the soul leaving the pitiful body, breathing it in as if it could be absorbed to make his fractured soul whole again. Alas, it could not. Not that Voldemort would want a muggle soul inside him anyway. To wake the woman up, he gently brushed the blade of his conjured knife against her throat. She woke with a start, and immediately turning to her partner, not yet seeing Voldemort in the darkness. The bloodcurdling scream was music to his ears, and he almost sighed as the scream became louder when he slowly dug the knife into her chest. He banished the knife away, and apparated from their home. Though his bloodlust was lessened, he could still feel his blood pumping unnaturally fast around his body in stress.
He arrived at his headquarters, striding purposefully through the dark building until he reached his training rooms. None of his followers were here at this time, which was overall fortunate for them; they had every right to access this room, but it does not do to stand in the way of a mad Dark Lord. He summoned the dummies, and took a short pause to assume a duelling stance.
After a count, his body snapped into motion. Jumping forward, his wand-arm flew in front of him and he cast a wordless spell at the dummies before him, mercilessly slashing through them again and again. Decapitating them, exploding them, drilling holes into their bodies. He found that it was even more satisfying to visualise each of them as Lord Potter, and he found that this made him more violent in his methods, using exotic dark spells to destroy the inanimate objects, fake blood oozing out of their chests, their eyes, their neck and onto the clean floor. Voldemort was half angry merely that Lord Potter existed; he wished desperately that he did not even need to be slashing away at these dummies in an attempt to get rid of him, and instead had the bliss of the man never having been present in his life at all. But he also wanted the pleasure of testing his mortality, applying the darkest of curses to his fragile body for the inconvenience he had caused Lord Voldemort.
It was a full half hour of angry thoughts endless violence against the innocent figures before Voldemort felt in clear enough mind to stop. He was left stood panting in the room from his physical exertion, drenched in sweat, the blood suddenly draining from his body in an almost dizzying fashion. Once he had been relieved of his anger, he was left with fear. Pure terror.
Somebody knew about his horcruxes.
I'm not safe, somebody knows.
He had never considered this possibility. It was such a rarity that anybody even knew about horcruxes, he had thought he was safe. He had thought that nobody would know. But Lord Potter had worked it out. And now he had a choice.
He either had to challenge Lord Potter, defeat him, murder him... Or he had to trust the man not to reveal the key to Voldemort's mortality, or to use the knowledge against him. Neither seemed particularly pleasant options. He was momentarily incensed at himself for not being more careful; he should never have been in this situation.
But not even the simplest of fools would trust a stranger to keep the secret of their soul pieces, it was incredibly sensitive knowledge. Only the most basic of common sense was needed to know that strangers should not be kept alive if they knew about your horcrux. So why was Lord Potter still alive even now? Who knew what he could be doing with the information he had. He could already have told all his followers, even before confronting Voldemort! But this seemed unlikely... If he was not mistaken, he had sensed concern when Potter had spoken to him. But he should still be dead by this point. Why had he not yet killed him?
Probably because Potter was also very powerful. As much as he hated to admit it, Voldemort had no idea how a duel with the man would end. Voldemort was certain that in raw power he had the edge, but in experience he was a few years behind. The floor was uncomfortably even between the two of them, meaning that attempting to kill Potter would undoubtedly be a bad move. And so, he would have to trust. Unless he had something of equal weight against Potter... He could not think of anything. Indeed, he knew very little about the man that was not already accessible to the general public.
For now, he would merely have to keep a sharp eye on the situation, look out for suspicious behaviour from Potter. Such a task would not be hard, Voldemort felt, as Lord Potter lay out his feelings to read like a book. He would know if there was something up.
Meanwhile, he needed another one. He simply could not feel safe leaving it as just two; Potter knew there were two, even knew what one of them was, and there was an ever-present risk that he would find them, even destroy them. If he created a third, that Potter could not prove the existence of, he had another safety net to fall back on. He had been planning to make another at some point regardless; seven was a number of great magical strength, and he felt that this was a fair goal.
He would set about it straight away.
The cold was one that sent icicles from the tips of Harry's fingers to deep inside of his heart; frost covered the branches of the trees and made the leaves scattered on the floor crunch. It immediately made him shiver, suddenly wishing he had had the foresight to wear more layers. But this was not a natural cold; it was almost certainly magically created, though perhaps not on purpose. He had been right, then, to come looking here to find Voldemort. He had no idea why he would come to the forest where they first properly met to make his third horcrux. Perhaps there was something symbolic in this place. Perhaps Voldemort had wanted Harry to find him here, no matter how unaware he was of such a desire.
The man in question was stood, still as a statue, facing away from Harry. There was no sound other than the crunch of Harry's approach, and still the man had his back exposed.
"You won't be able to stop me, Potter, though by all means do try." His voice was low and cool, a slight frost to it as there was to the air around him. "I still need a murder to set my third step of immortality, and it's an added bonus if I can kill the one to have found out about my horcruxes. You must know that I despise the knowledge of you walking free with that information."
"Lord Voldemort, please, I implore you just to listen," Harry begun his plea. Voldemort still faced the other way.
"You have nothing of importance to say to me," he proclaimed.
"But I do! I understand your feelings, Voldemort. I understand them. But it's not... it's not based on thorough research. You wouldn't be doing this to yourself if you knew–"
"And what do you know, Potter?" Voldemort interrupted. "You're not going to spout some rubbish about the soul and the afterlife, are you? Perhaps you believe in the muggle idea of heaven and hell – that would be rich! I am not going to hell; I have already lived through it, and I am stronger from it."
"Voldemort, please. One horcrux is bad enough, and it's not in the way you think it is! The soul is vital to your life now, the soul is important to your mind. The more you split your soul, the more your mind will deteriorate; you will survive forever but you won't live, you won't know the world you are in or the person you are. Is it really worth it? If you keep splitting your soul, the tear will grow and grow, and you won't be yourself anymore. I have the research for it right here."
Harry thrust the documents out in front of him desperately. Voldemort did not respond. Harry grew despondent; if Voldemort would not listen to reason, what hope was there?
"Come have a drink with me," Harry offered, completely out of ideas. He had assumed that Voldemort would listen to his research at least, but this had not happened.
"What?" Voldemort turned around finally, and though it was not obvious on his face, it was clear that he was thrown off by the invitation.
"Come have a drink with me. We can talk. About anything, it doesn't have to be horcruxes. I'll swear an oath of secrecy if you join me. If you're going to go through with your third, I'd like to know a bit more about the person the world is losing."
Voldemort raised a brow incredulously at the latter point, but did not seem particularly averse to the idea.
"And you will swear an oath of secrecy."
Harry nodded.
"As you wish. Take me to where you had in mind."
Completely bewildered that this of all things had worked, Harry strode over the Voldemort, took his outstretched arm, and apparated them.
They arrived in his personal quarters, as he did not want to run the risk of coming across any of his followers in the corridors. It would not be an easy situation to explain. Harry quickly found his drinks cabinet, and pulled out a glass for himself, pouring a generous serving of Firewhisky.
"Would you like some, or would a weaker drink be more to your taste?" Harry asked, taking a gulp of the spirit, sighing lightly as it warmed his body.
"Just a glass of wine will do, thank you," Voldemort requested, observing Harry with a sharp eye.
"As you wish," Harry conceded. "White, red, rosé?"
"White."
Harry retrieved a Sicilian glass from the cabinet, and filled it with a cool white wine.
"Only the best," he claimed passing the glass to Voldemort. "Crafted by Italian elves. They're treated a lot better over in Italy, so they've had more time to work on their crafts. They're famed for their wine."
"Indeed," Voldemort hummed.
"Please, please, do take a seat," Harry gestured, and sat down himself, taking another gulp of his drink. "I swear, I've only just met you and you've taken a good ten years off my life," he laughed.
Voldemort did not comment, only taking a sip of his own wine. The man was the image of elegance, Harry felt, poised on his seat, hair styled into neat waves, taking only gentle sips of his wine. Harry could only dream of having such class.
"Certainly warmer in here than that damn forest. I'll be having nightmares about that place if I'm made to go there one more time."
"Nobody made you go either time," Voldemort pointed out, looking only minutely irritated. Harry just laughed.
"Yes, I suppose that's true. And yet here we are."
There was a short silence, in which Harry managed to finish his drink. He only just convinced himself to wait until Voldemort was finished with his own before pouring himself another. He was rarely in an awkward social situation, though he supposed taking a drink with the man he had confronted a few hours earlier about having a horcrux would not be easy.
"I can imagine it's frustrating," Harry broke the silence again, leaning forwards slightly. "But you really do appear to have missed out on some fascinating research."
Voldemort's gaze darkened, but Harry went on all the same, more confident now that he had got the man with him, getting out one of his pieces of parchment.
"If you look at this one – Arthur Seaborn, a Dark wizard from Australia. It took me a full decade for me to get hold of his book, and I've barely read it! But he actually experimented on people's souls to see what would happen. It was absolutely immoral, but the findings are magnificent. Just look at these charts!"
He pushed the parchment forwards towards Voldemort, and watched as the man skimmed over the research. There was not much change in his expression other than the slight purse of his lips, which Harry took to mean that he had not considered this research before.
"And there's more research, from a Persian witch by the name of Turan, that develops these ideas further! Obviously, there's very little on horcruxes themselves, but it looks like there's a whole lot on souls if you know where to look and who to bribe."
Harry pushed forwards a new piece of parchment, and watched Voldemort scan over this, too. He was pleased to have been able to get the man to sit and consider his point from an academic perspective. In retrospect, Harry probably should have expected hostility from the start; he had likely terrified the man with the way he confronted him, and terrified men do not think logically.
"You should not have interfered," Voldemort finally spoke, looking up at Harry. His eyes were shockingly clear and without emotion. Beautiful though, Harry thought.
"I couldn't not," Harry protested.
"You should not have. It appears you may have saved a part of my soul. Surely, with all your research, you must have some idea of what that means." Voldemort looked like he might be sick at the admission that Harry had saved him, but Harry was filled with relief knowing that Voldemort would not be creating another horcrux.
"I guess I have a vague idea, though I wasn't really paying much attention to anything not directly related," Harry admitted, sheepishly.
"Merlin, I thought you were intelligent" Voldemort muttered, thankfully seeming far less hostile with the opportunity to show a superiority of knowledge. "There is likely now a loose connection between our souls. Soul magic is incredibly complex, and so it's hard to say, but we ought to keep in fairly regular contact, in case one of us notices any adverse effects; this may sometimes happen in the case of connections between souls that are not compatible."
"Ah."
Perhaps Harry should have paid more attention to Lin when he was discussing the consequences of his actions. He would not have changed his mind on the situation, obviously, but it may have been wise to go into it knowing what could potentially have happened to his own soul, by saving Voldemort's. He had been too caught up in the act of saving to really consider it, running on adrenaline rather than his mind.
There was a silence, where Voldemort sipped at his wine, and Harry contemplated his situation. He supposed he did not mind terribly meeting up with Voldemort occasionally. He had supposed that they would do so, already having seen the man far more frequently than he had anticipated after the first introduction. He could even work on getting him to feel differently about the treatment of muggles, and that certainly would be a success. It would bring difficulties, though. Voldemort, obviously, still saw them as rivals, but that image would be compromised for him by them meeting on amiable terms. Harry would have to manage the interactions carefully. He would also need to work out how to keep his followers informed on the interactions. It certainly was not a partnership, and he still wanted to keep an eye on Voldemort's behaviour, lest it interfered with his own activity, but he certainly did not want to lie about the situation either.
"Would you like another drink?" Harry offered, a moment after Voldemort had finished his glass.
"That would be nice."
Harry busied himself with pouring the drinks, grateful for an excuse to get himself another firewhiskey. As he sat back down, there was another moment of silence.
"Did you like the speeches?" Harry broke the silence once again. "I thought that there were quite some interesting speakers, it was a pleasant evening."
There was a pause before Voldemort answered, the words seeming carefully chosen.
"There was certainly a wealth of knowledge."
"There really was, I had no idea that you could use human blood for healing; that one really got me!"
Voldemort made a small hum of agreement, but otherwise stayed silent. Harry was beginning to become uncomfortable with the silence, determined for there to be some form of conversation now that he had brought Voldemort to have drinks and to talk, this feeling certainly not dimmed by the alcohol.
"I really am sorry, I am," Harry said, leaning forward on his chair slightly. "I shouldn't have confronted you the way that I did. It was wrong of me. I just- I can get quite carried away, you know? Well, obviously you do know. I found out and I panicked, and perhaps I should have thought it through a bit more, but to be really honest with you I was really very tired at the time." He laughed nervously, still getting no reaction from Voldemort. "I've learnt to be quite an open person, at least to the people around me, and I sometimes forget that certain things need keeping to oneself for a while, to gauge the situation. I'm sure you're a lot better with such things. But maybe... maybe if you are to trust me with the knowledge of your horcruxes, maybe you might want to know a bit about me. I can tell you stuff about myself. I know it's probably foolish, you could very well use it against me, but, well, I could use my knowledge of your horcruxes against you, and maybe you'll feel better knowing that there's stuff you can use against me if it comes to it. Obviously I never will, but sometimes people like to have something to prevent such things happening."
Harry stopped, catching his breath slightly. Maybe he should have restrained himself on the alcohol front; he got far too talkative when he was under the influence. Voldemort, poised as he was, was just managing to prevent a sigh from escaping him from what Harry could tell.
"I want to know about your childhood," Voldemort spoke finally. He stared at Harry with disinterested eyes, but Harry knew that such a topic would be of great value to Voldemort; there was much mystery around Harry's experiences with his muggle parents, himself only revealing minute details into the public. Knowledge of another's childhood, especially a traumatic one, was powerful.
"The good or the bad?" Harry asked, bracing himself for the story either way.
"You lived with muggle relatives for a large portion of your childhood, did you not? I am not expecting there to have been much good involved."
"You're willing to hear a sob story, then?"
"I want the reality. Sob story or not, I expect it to be well told and I expect it to be interesting; if I'm here listening to your story, it may as well be somewhat entertaining."
"I see," Harry nodded, and then thought back.
Voldemort sat back in his chair.
"The first memory I have is of an inconsequential moment. I was about four years old, and there is every possibility that this one memory is informed by many days, many weeks, many years of the same experience. But the memory which I can see most vividly is one from the age of four.
"I feel it worth noting that I had tried for many years of my life to keep from my friends the small fact that, for the first decade of my life once my parents had died, I lived in a cupboard. I had felt ashamed that this was my past, felt that nobody needed to know because it was no longer reality, but by keeping it from those closest to me, I was keeping myself in that cupboard. Not all prisons are physical, you see, and this one I carried with me, held up by every lie I told about my childhood.
"But this first memory I have, was in that cupboard. Every memory I have of that time is lit by the flickering lamp that hung just above the pillow of my bed. All of it is shrouded in darkness and cobwebs. This one especially, it being in that very space. I remember being curled up under my blanket, in my cupboard, a scrappy teddy as my only company, and I remember crying. Not sobbing, as such, though I suspect I wanted to. I remember feeling that I couldn't sob, for fear of being told off for being too loud. I think I must have been in that situation many times in early childhood, before I learnt how to internalise it all."
Harry took a moment for himself, astounded at how raw the feelings still were when he delved into his past. He still felt resentment for his carers, and he still felt the ghost of his fear towards them. He was more powerful than them now, however. He no longer needed to fear them.
"The issue was that with my aunt and uncle, they just didn't want me. They had their own son, my age, who they adored and wanted to put all of their time into, and I was the son of my aunt's detested sister. For a long time, they had convinced me that my parents were killed by their own mistakes, having drunk too much one night. They had convinced me that magic wasn't real.
"Only a freak believed in magic."
Harry felt an uncomfortable chill at his own use of the word; there was something harsh and cold about it that made him feel like he was a child again, being looked down over his aunt's long nose. He noted a twitch in Voldemort's eyes that looked eerily similar to how he had felt momentarily, and wondered whether Voldemort and he had any shared experiences with the word.
"Freak did the dishes, freak tidied the garden, freak worked sometimes until his hands were blistered. But one thing that freak never did was enough." Harry gave a humourless laugh. "Freak barely even knew his own name. On top of that, I was bullied mercilessly by my cousin and his friends. I'm sure you know how children can be, and it's worse when such behaviour is actively encouraged by their parents."
Voldemort nodded lightly, but did not interrupt the narrative.
"Going to school was better. Wizarding school, that is. Soon enough everybody, teachers and students alike, adored me. I'm sure you know what that's like; I remember the way that Dippet spoke of you when I visited the school. And I adored everybody in return. It felt like home, and it felt like family. There was one person, however, who I adored far above the rest."
Harry stopped abruptly, eyes falling on Voldemort's empty glass.
"Would you like another drink?"
"I'm quite alright, thank you," Voldemort declined.
"Right, just me then," Harry said as he got up to fill his glass.
Voldemort watched him with a sharp gaze until Harry sat back down, resisting to urge to throw it back down his throat once again.
"This one person, then," Voldemort prompted, "I take it brought you some pain?"
"Expertly observed," Harry praised, raising his glass lightly. "This man was the first man who I ever loved. I was fourteen when I met him, and we became lovers a year later. I loved all of my friends, of course, but I had never known such love as this. My love for him controlled me. As much as I hate to say it, perhaps it is a good thing that it ended.
"I would have done anything for him, really. I'm sure there's much more to say about this latter part of my childhood, my time in school, but I don't remember it; all I remember is him. He brought me such great joy, such happiness and contentedness that I never needed to remember anything else. He made me feel complete. But it wasn't to last. At home over the summer my uncle discovered letters that had gone between me and him. I'm sure you must be aware that homosexual activity, as the muggles call it, is illegal in most muggle countries, and my uncle was repulsed. He was more than repulsed. He beat me unconscious for my relationship, horrified to have me in his home. It might have destroyed me but for my love for this boy, back at school. And yet, my love was not enough to save the relationship."
Harry took a breath, and swallowed as much of the dark liquid in his glass as he could. It had been decades since, but retelling it to Voldemort like this... Harry felt the pain and the heartbreak as fresh as he had on the day it happened. Yet he still tried to keep a cool expression for his story.
"When I returned to Durmstrang, I heard news of his death. The pain of it was far stronger than my love for him had ever been. For a week or so, I was severely depressed. And then I attempted suicide. Very few people know that it happened. It was kept very secretive; the turmoil of the mind has never been very well respected in the wizarding community, and anybody who did know felt that people may lose their respect for me if they knew, and so I was convinced to keep yet another secret. But my mentor, Lin, he got me out of it. It was tough, but I was able to swim to the surface against the currents. Since then I have never feared death, and despite it I have never feared love. The love from my friends got me out of the depression, despite it having been caused by love in the first place."
There was a slight frown gracing Voldemort's features, and Harry greatly suspected that it was from the sentimentality of his story.
"From then on I became all the more devoted to my studies. I never went back to my muggle family, although I wasn't yet of age. I stayed with friends over the subsequent summers, friends who started to become very trusted followers. The reality of the war was kicking in, and we all had a youthful desire to fight. I hadn't wanted to lead at the time, but it seems that it is my destiny to do so. It happened almost by accident, the way people rallied behind me, and so my childhood stopped being a childhood. I had to push all the trauma to the back of my mind once again in favour of fighting for what I believed in."
"I confess myself unable to understand why you are able to trust so easily, Lord Potter, with a background such as yours" Voldemort admitted, eyeing Harry carefully.
"Trust is all I have!" Harry laughed, taking the last sip of his drink. "If I do not trust my followers, if I do not trust my friends, if I do not trust anybody who comes by me, then I will be wasting so much of my life in paranoia and overthinking and isolation than it will not have been a life at all. I want to live, and I'm surprised that you don't too, what with you set for a lot more of it than I am."
"For all of your power, Lord Potter," Voldemort commented, "you really are quite foolish."
"If you insist," Harry said, resigned.
Another silence had the two men alone with their thoughts once again. Harry was still incredibly relieved that Voldemort would not be creating any more horcruxes. And Lin had been right; it truly would have been a waste of good looks. Voldemort had appeared regal as ever at first, but upon closer inspection he was in fact relatively dishevelled by his standards, perhaps from the stress that Harry had brought unto him. Yet his appearance was still as pleasing as ever, looking to all the world a god upon earth, in all honestly. The way he held himself was proud, but not pompous, and there was a wisdom in his deep red eyes that defied his youth and occasional stupidity. His hair looked almost more enticing when not neatly styled as it was usually, and Harry wondered mildly if the man was the type to lose his pristine image in the bedroom, because that certainly would heat things up.
Not that Harry should have been wondering such things, certainly not while in the company of the man, a man who would most certainly be able to read such thoughts from any eye contact. That would not be the best of ways to end the night, effectively reversing the tentative steps of alliance that Harry had been subtly forming.
"Thank you for your hospitality, Lord Potter," Voldemort broke the silence formally. "I am going to take my leave, if you do not mind me doing so."
"Of course, of course!" Harry jumped up, ready to see him off. "Thank you, really, for your company. I'm glad that you were willing to come and sit with me."
Voldemort merely nodded as he stood himself. They walked in silence to the apparation area at the entrance of the manor, and bade a quiet farewell before Voldemort apparated away, leaving Harry alone.
What a fucking day this has been Harry thought to himself as he made his way back to his quarters, considering passing by the potions cabinet for a dreamless sleep draught.