Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Voldemort’s kitchen is a place with very little personality. Just as a whole house is, surprisingly. Harry was expecting something more grand, perhaps more evil lair themed - but no. The general impression is disturbingly not unlike Privet Drive Four.

Probably because Voldemort never really lived here, was keeping it up his sleeve heavily warded to hell and back, just in case. 

How many remote little houses with a patch of land forever canceled from reality does Britain even contain at this point? Harry doesn’t know. 

The plate that Voldemort places in front of him is big, and filled to the brim. It is mostly meat. 

It’s too much.

“What about me?” Tom asks.

Voldemort passes a glance at him, expression unreadable.

“You are perfectly capable of handling your own food.”

Tom's expression doesn’t change. While he stands, his chair scratches the dingy floor a little too loud. 

His portion is much more reasonable. He is also having bread and some of yesterday's vegetables. 

Voldemort has nothing at all.

He sits with them nonetheless, white hands folded on the yellowing tablecloth in front of him.

“You can start,” he offers mildly. 

They do. 

Harry remembers that he woke up a little hungry, but now - how does Voldemort expect him to eat it all? He will be nauseous at the end of breakfast, he knows. And all day after. 

Every bite taken makes this reality closer. 

“You learned not to rush,” Voldemort observes. “Good.”

His eyes trace every forkful Harry takes, from a plate to his mouth. 

“About time,” Tom quips, “we weren’t like this. Even while…”

“You will look into your own plate.”

Harry is quite surprised that Tom’s food is not combusted under his gaze yet. But he stays silent, even if something in his face is not unlike a Malfoy, deprived of any little thing he wants. 

Harry feels torn. There is a minuscule, ugly part of him that is vindicated whenever Tom is given a taste of his own medicine, put in place and shut up. There are also twelve years in the home where he was a nuisance and a burden, while another was fed and seen to every second of every day.

Harry feels like Voldemort shows him in the very cold version of Dudley's shoes, and they fit him poorly. 

“And you, Harry, in yours.”

“I - “ he starts, then glances at Tom again, then at his food, less than half of it eaten.

“Yes?”

“It’s too much for me.”

“No, it is not.”

Do not pick a fight you can’t possibly win, Voldemort teaches them both nearly every day. He did not succeed quite yet. 

“I can take some vegetables too,” Harry tries.

“I am not going to entertain caprices," Voldemort tells serenely. “Either you eat what I made for you, or we dispose of it.”

“But can we just. Leave it for dinner? Or for tomorrow?”

Voldemort regards him with a very unimpressed look.

“It has been on a plate, and it’s not coming back in the pot, Harry. Eat it or leave it. But I have to confess; I did not take you for a type to waste food. Or,” he takes a disinterested glance in the general direction of the window, “an effort made for you.”

Tom’s foot lightly shoves Harry’s under the table.

It is a little advice, a mild warning: stop there. He wants Voldemort much more than Harry, but he also knows to be afraid of him much more. 

Harry takes a deep breath, then exhales. 

He is not - not really not afraid. He learned not to fear the concept of Voldemort, a name and a dreadful shadow hovering over his existence.

There, in the kitchen, is no concept. There is a man, tall, strong, with big hands and a dangerous temper.

Harry knows not to argue too much with such men, especially while they are handling his food.

So they eat, and Harry finishes his plate. 

It’s not bad, delicious even, who could have known that the Dark Lord learned to be a decent cook in his spare time, but - he feels heavy, and defeated, and like he is going to throw up.

“Thank you,” Tom says.

“Thanks,” Harry echoes.

“You are very welcome.”

Voldemort slaps his hand from the buttons.

“You won't do it right,” he chides, “let me.”

He reaches to the buttons himself then, but Harry takes a little step back. He is nowhere near being out of reach of Voldemort's long hands, but man actually stills. 

“What is it now, Harry?” he asks quietly.

“I am thirteen.”

“Quite a nice age. What of it?”

“I can do my own buttons, thank you.”

Voldemort looks him in the eyes, wrinkles around his own a little sharper.

“But these clothes are mine. As are the buttons on them.”

As are you, Harry hears between the words, spelled for him carefully, as if for a small child.

“Wizarding fashion is intricate, Harry. Until you learn more about it, I would prefer you not to ruin my scarce supply of it here. Come closer and be still.”

Harry would have preferred his own clothes, hand-me-down and worn as they are, but he is quite sure that they had fuelled a bonfire Voldemort made outside late into the night yesterday. He has found none of it in the morning, in any case. 

Not that he had much time to search. Voldemort took him to his room barely awake. 

To play dress up, apparently.

He uses magic and, surprisingly, a bunch of old mismatched pins to fit Harry in a couple of shirts and a pair of trousers, all of them still not sitting quite right. 

This is a thing to contemplate: Voldemort does nearly everything to perfection, and if his shirt causes Harry discomfort, it has to be deliberate. But he also does not remember provoking him too much in any recent times. And Voldemort wouldn't be shy to let him know if he did, to declare it all a punishment.

(His Aunt, on the other hand, very much will. She will give him a room that has a bed and garbage in it, and say it is a luxury. She will give him a cupboard and say that there is enough room for a child.

She will give and give, cataloging meticulously each of her gifts in her head, and have Harry thank her for every last one. 

They were mostly loans with a heavy percentage, her gifts, and all were a punishment in some way or another.

With Voldemort, on the other hand, every discomfort is equally deliberate, but he at least does not pretend it is not. 

Harry can… keep track of things. 

Before him every possible step was a misstep, but now, as strict as Voldemort’s expectations are, they create a very clear path for Harry, which is exhilarating novelty.

He feels like he lived in a dense forest before.

He would have preferred to stay a forest creature all the same.)

While large, veiny hands engulf Harry in a heavy woolen robe, as they hold it for him to wiggle his own into the long sleeves, he turns his suspicions this way and that in his head. Robe is comically large for him all five minutes that Voldemort frowns and tuts and inserts pins here and there. He then takes a step back and gestures for Harry to turn around. “Almost…” he murmurs to himself, and tweaks with pins a little more. 

Then he waves Harry’s wand in some complicated fashion, swift and decisive, and the robe shrinks and folds around Harry in a way it apparently should.

Voldemort looks pleased with himself, at least.

Could it be, Harry thinks, that he is just not used to clothes that fit? 

After Voldemort finishes with all adjustments, he transfigures Harry a pair of old-fashioned shoes and crouches in front of him to tie his shoelaces.

He does it unhurriedly, face as calm and focused as it is when he casts or reads. Harry doesn’t say anything this time. It is humiliating in a way, but also - no one ever did it for him before. Or he does not remember times when someone (his mom. His dad.) probably - surely - did.

Something squirms inside of him, hot, uncomfortable, secretive. It is a part that did not actually want to step or talk back when Voldemort started doing his buttons. 

Voldemort looks at him pensively from where he is crouched on the floor, a stray ray of early sunlight tangled within white hair, reflected in one bloodshot eye. His face looks even more wrong, mismatched somehow this way.

“Thank you,” Harry murmurs.

Voldemort tilts his head.

“The pleasure is mine.”

After breakfast they have studies. It is at the same time every day except Sunday, as every meal at the same time, as a reading, as a bedtime. Tom is subjected to a routine just as strict as Harry is. 

Once Voldemort caught Tom with a light still in their room, and Harry doesn’t like to think about how it ended.

Studies are the only time when Voldemort attends to them both equally. He is a meticulous teacher, patient and intense.

First thing he did when their… time together came to be, was to request Harry’s class notes for both his years at Hogwarts. He dedicates all evening and probably a good part of the night to going through them, stacking mismatched parchment into two neat piles. 

First Harry never sees again, second is returned to him, sorted by subject and date. He is warned not to disrupt that order again. 

There is missing all of his second year of Defence, which is not surprising at all, and, curiously, two-thirds of his first.

When Harry ponders on it, he thinks he understands why. 

Penmanship is the answer. Not his own, horrendous as it is, but red ink all over his words. 

(He went through those particular notes himself, after all, one cold evening in his second year. That was a moment where he noticed the difference between the missing part and that which is left. 

When he also found out why the penmanship in the diary, a new, strange friend, seemed so familiar.)

There is an awkward moment when Voldemort inquires about where his History notes are. And, well. All Harry has to show for himself is exactly one scroll, which is very tattered and contains more doodles than actual work. He didn’t even know that one was still not in the bin.

Voldemort closes his eyes, and Harry has a suspicion that he is doing some Dark Lord version of counting to ten and back. 

“Your drawing skills show some promise,” he offers, “but I am afraid you will have to pursue that passion in your spare time from now on.”

Harry’s face feels hot.

“Alright,” he says.

“You are free to share your work, of course.”

Harry does not exactly believe there will be anything to share, but nods anyway, eager to leave this conversation behind.

Fingers touch his chin lightly, imploring him to meet Voldemort’s gaze.

“I mean it,” he insists, “I will, in fact, be very interested to observe your progress.”

Voldemort has a tendency to become strangely intense over very trivial matters. For Harry it seems kind of random. He nods a second time, unsure if he means it, and Voldemort lets the conversation rest for a while.

That was a couple of weeks ago.

From that time on, they worked out some kind of a lesson routine, which starts with Harry writing seemingly random lines, because Voldemort claims that his way of writing insults his eyes with every last letter.

Yes, he phrased it just like that, solemn and tired on the second morning.

So Harry sits here, in the room on the first floor that contains a fireplace, a large armchair beside it for Voldemort, and tall, but very sparsely filled bookshelves. 

High shelves contain some mean-looking books that Harry is not to touch without supervision, and they are already multiplied twice the amount from the beginning of their stay. In the middle is a mismatched collection of literature, which consists of traveling guides of varied obscurity, stacks of old papers, journals with nothing but a year on their covers, and - unexpectedly - some actual books.

(“Actual books,” Voldemort mocked him once he asked about them, “that is how you regard muggle fantasies now, boy?”

“I mean,” Harry said, “they have stories within? Not lessons or receipts or. Instructions?”

“Oh, there are plenty of good stories within my books.” Voldemort’s smile at these words is not a nice one.

He looks like he is sharing a mean joke with himself.

“But I believe you should grow up for these just a little… to appreciate them properly.”

“We read some of them in our first year,” Tom scoffs from where he is crouched beside the fire. He feeds something to it; Harry is not sure what exactly from where he stands. 

“Well, Harry is a little more gentle soul than you are, dear. We should appreciate variety… were he more like you, I believe I would be two brother tethers short at this point…” 

Tom glares at Harry over his shoulder, but stays silent, returning to his occupation with unnecessary vigor.

“But aren’t they all your books?” Harry frowns. 

Voldemort stops acknowledging his existence altogether until the next morning.)

So, Harry sits in this room, which is a library, a study, and some sort of a guest room if they ever have guests, and writes his lines. His wrist is already sore from his efforts, or probably the sheer tediousness of this task manifests as a pain directly into his bones.

Voldemort is not content with his letters just being readable (which Harry can manage if he is not in a rush), he wants them pleasing to the eye.

Tom has much more interesting things going on.

A bunch of things levitate around him, in and out of his sight - a dozen mismatched buttons, a couple of needles, a bowl, a water sphere, a spot of mild condensed light.

All this - and today Voldemort didn’t let him have a wand.

As Harry understands, only half of the things here are under Tom’s control, and he is not aware which ones. It is a - brother tether thing. Voldemort apparently can weave his magic in Tom’s casting so smoothly that it is not discernible from his own, until it is.

“All to metal,” Voldemort commands.

The bowl blooms with rust first, and then dull shine comes through it. Buttons hum like angry wasps, spinning into little hot gold pinpricks in the air. 

Magic, Harry writes, is might. Then again.

Next time, Voldemort will make him write that grass is green, probably. With an extra princess swirl on a “g”.

Water boils, then freezes, then boils again. Light is seemingly untouched, until it falls abruptly a couple of inches and solidifies into something shiny, half initial size. Harry doesn’t recognise material.

Water boils and boils, until all that is left is a milky vapor. That then comes to a bowl and rains into it sluggishly, turning silver on the way - a mercury.

Tom smiles. Needles hover untouched near his hand.

“Which ones are yours?”

“All the buttons,” he answers confidently, “a light.”

Voldemort hums, chin resting on his hand.

“Lightning, then, through all at once. Maintain the same intensity in all your conduits.”

Hermione would have been ecstatic to be here, Harry thinks, digging his quill into the parchment a little too harshly. This is such an interesting challenge - not only to show what she learned, but to combine it all, charms, transfiguration, physics. 

Too bad that Professor Voldemort here is a face behind every slur or underhand complement she ever received for her prowess.

Harry misses her so. 

Things around Tom arrange themselves into some kind of order, which switches and tweaks several times, until mercury sprouts from the bowl in front of him, tangling each of them into something of a glistening web. 

Tom raises his hand, but one of the needles pricks him harshly.

“Do not touch,” Voldemort reprimands.

“But lightning has to have a source.”

“There are several objects that are yours. Use one.”

Tom stands motionless for a whole minute. Harry notices how his forehead shines with sweat.

“Well?” 

Tom bites his lips into his mouth, eyes laser-focused on a key part of his arrangement, hands feeling the air near it. Voldemort waits serenely, not doing anything to help or disrupt him for now.  

A heavy blob of ink falls on a parchment right over Harry’s recent line that came out prettier than usual, and he barely refrains from cursing out loud.

Finally, air fills with a barely audible hum. 

Harry perks up, some feeling buzzing in his mind not unlike one with which he usually observes his quidditch teammates' success - and then all Tom’s careful arrangement falls apart. 

Golden nods scatter in the air in all directions, mercury web distorts and whirls and boils - 

And freezes.

Literally. Everything in the air is now caught in intricate swirls of thin ice, resembling what he usually sees on the windows in December.

“And that is why,” Voldemort says calmly, like he is continuing some conversation Harry wasn’t witness to, “I say you need to broaden your horizons. Magical potency will only get you so far. It served us to impress our peers and professors… to impress me, you will have to put in some actual work.”

Tom inhales heavily, chest heaving, and his breath comes white into the air.

“I am not,” he clips, “trying to -”

“Enough,” Voldemort waves him off. “You will work on your mistake by yourself now.”

“Work how! There is…”

“All you will need is in this room. Try to find some inspiration.” He looks away from Tom dismissively, “Harry, come.”

Harry is more than relieved to leave his parchment behind. He registers out of the corner of his eye how Tom stalks to the desk, falls pointedly heavily on the stool. 

He drags Harry’s parchment closer, looks into it, brows furrowed, then picks up Harry’s quill - and in the next beat all Harry’s attention is consumed by Voldemort.

He rises gracefully from his armchair and picks a pebble from the mantle. It is very plain, gray and smooth. He offers it to Harry on the palm of his hand, and it howers upon it, spinning slowly.

“Such an uninspiring piece of matter, isn't it?”

His tone is a mile different from a minute before. Now it is mild, even playful. All of the harsh pressure and demand evaporated.

Harry’s wand fished from some inner pocket of Voldemort’s robes, and when he offers it, the handle is warm as a friend’s hand.

“Do not grasp it so harshly, dear,” Voldemort admonishes, “It is not going anywhere until we end this session. Well… I feel like we should revisit those first term transfiguration lessons. Minnie is quite a fine teacher for many, but you will benefit from a more individual approach.”

Minnie, Harry thinks, who - 

Oh. 

Professor McGonnagal.

Is Minnie for Voldemort, apparently.

“She is great,” Harry says, caught between defensive and bewildered.

“Sure she is,” Voldemort dismisses, “Now…”

While Voldemort guides him patiently through his wand movements, explains where he should be more precise and how it can affect his casting, Harry floats a little. It feels as if Voldemort can discern all the little imperfections in a way that he recognises all the questions Harry didn’t think or dare to ask at the time he learned at Hogwarts, and he offers answer after answer.

It feels so stupidly easy under his guidance.

This is, Harry thinks, how people must have come to him. Some people, at least, it couldn’t be that there were only the likes of Malfoys under his banner, right? Britain won't scrape so many wealthy purebloods to form an army just from them.

He promises himself not to forget with whom he deals with. Aunt Petunia was also capable of playing kindness in front of strangers. She also didn’t turn around and kill people for the wrong sort of parentage. As far as Harry knows.

The thought of her stirs Harry so wrong that when Voldemort comes closer to correct his grip on a wand by hand, he even catches a whiff of her perfume.

Hermionie told him once about things like that. How scent memory is so strong that it can help people to remember decades past.

Does his aunt miss him at all? Probably she isn’t (Harry knows she isn’t), but does she even wonder where he is?

Or is she just glad that he finally doesn’t sully the perfect picture of her home?

Tom is restless somewhere on the edge of his perception. He finished whatever he did with Harry’s abandoned lines, and now stalks around bookshelves, picks and abandons book after book. He doesn’t go for high shelves, Harry notices.

When it keeps happening long enough, Voldemort stops Harry with an open hand in the air.

“You know perfectly well where to find your answers,” he tells Tom evenly, “seize your tantrum.”

The book slides from Tom’s hand and falls on the floor, open. It is not as daring as if he threw it, but still vividly deliberate.

“Do I?” he asks darkly.

Voldemort slowly shifts his gaze to the book on the floor, and then lifts it to Tom’s face again.

“Pick it up,” he says softly.

“It is garbage. Its place is in a bin.”

The step Voldemort takes forward alarms Harry in a way his uncle’s would.

“And where is yours, then?”

Pick that stupid book up, he thinks, and something deep in his bones suggests: do not be seen, do not be heard.

Be safe.

Tom is not inclined to be safe that afternoon, apparently.

He holds his head high and steps forward himself. 

Over the book he did not pick up. 

He opens his mouth to say something damning, no doubt, but the opportunity is stolen from him.

Voldemort slaps him hard across the face. So hard that Tom nearly topples over himself and joins a book on the floor, catching his balance at the last moment. 

His hand on his cheek, his eyes wide.

Voldemort stays still, his face a wax mask.

“So, Tom?” he murmurs, “where is it? Your place?”

“Here,” Tom utters, barely audible.

“Wrong,” Voldemort chides, “it is on a shelf. As all my other books.”

Tom’s cheeks are a vivid, ugly red, even where a vague handprint is not blooming into existence. So are even the tips of his ears.

“Stop it,” Harry says, aghast.

He is ignored.

The staring match between Tom and Voldemort continues for seemingly an eternity, until Tom finds his tongue once more.

“You look like yours in a garbage,” he hisses, incensed, trembling, “where all the old garbage is!”

He then turns around and stalks out of the room.

Harry inhales harshly.

“Shave at least, you animal!” Tom calls from the outside, and slams the door behind himself. 

Voldemort doesn’t visibly react.

He stands frozen like a statue, and Harry doesn’t dare to make any move, any sound.

Until Voldemort blinks, silent still, and leaves the room as well.

Harry picks the book up.  

It’s physics. 

In the evening, Voldemort comes to the table changed. There is no more stubble on his face, and his hair is cut short to his head. It is almost a military look, if not for his robes, loose and flowing around him as always. 

Tom hesitates a moment to sit, posture stiff, a little too straight.

Harry lays his hands on the table carefully.

The tablecloth is changed, too, he notices. It is the same as before, but the yellowish look and a couple of ingrained old stains are gone. It is crisp and terrifyingly white. 

Voldemort puts plates in front of both Tom and Harry tonight. He is silent. 

There is - miraculously - some vegetables for Harry, and the portion is a size he believes he can actually eat whole without nausea.

“Thank you,” Harry offers quietly.

Voldemort nods to him.

They eat. 

Tom eats slowly. He always is, but more in a way like he savors every bite, luxuriates on every simple kind of food. It doesn't seem to be this way now. 

“Come now, Tom,” Voldemort chides, “you should know that I wouldn’t spoil a good meal with poison. Eat your fill.”

Tom stares at him silently, hands on the table carefully around his plate, cutlery raised a little up the surface. 

“Eat,” Voldemort presses. 

Harry rests his ankle against Tom’s under the table, and receives a sharp little kick in response. Tom doesn’t look at him. 

They eat. 

They finish their dinner. It’s so quiet. Harry believes he can hear electricity hum in the old lightbulb above.

Aunt Petunia would be proud, he thinks dejectedly. Not his fork nor his knife clinked on the plate even once. 

Tom’s did. One time, on the last forkful. Then he drops his cutlery with an even sharper sound.

“Why so short, though?” he asks conversationally, as if continuing some nonexistent conversation. “It is not proper in our society. Not a good look at all.”

Oh no, Harry thinks, mortified. What are you doing, he thinks, searching Tom’s face desperately. Tom looks Voldemort in the eyes firmly, some new, raw anger under a daring smirk. 

“Why so short?” Voldemort muses, “Why, indeed… well, let me explain it to you, dear Tom. Come.” 

He rises from his seat unhurriedly. 

He comes to the stove.

Harry stands abruptly. 

“No,” his mouth says. 

“You will stay where you are, Harry… it is not about you.”

“V… Voldemort,” his name is such a mouthful, so strange to address with, but where on Tom it fitted more as a morbid promise, on that man, tall and pale, it fits, oh how it fits, “please.”

It is the first time Harry uses it. Not a “you”, not a “sir”.

Voldemort blinks at him slowly, like a cat. Then Harry’s chair shoves him under the knees, and he finds that his legs wouldn't serve him anymore. He tries to say something more, but his mouth won't open either.

Tom approaches the stove warily. 

“Closer, dear,” Voldemort murmurs, “weren’t you so brave a moment ago? Two hours ago? Do not relent now, you would not like to disappoint me even more.”

Tom takes one exaggerated step ahead, fear and pride coiled together in his form like angry snakes, both biting him at the same time.

He is a tension incarnate. 

“Disappoint!” he spats, “You are the one to tell about disappointment, are you? Whip me for telling the truth, then. Wouldn’t be the first time, as you should know.”

Voldemort is a harsh contrast to him, pose straight and regal, mild interest in the tilt of his head.

“Elaborate, then,” he offers, “I see some concerns festered inside that little head of yours quite enough time unspoken.”

Tom seems choked on pure rage, but then he closes his eyes for a moment, inhales, and exhales audibly. It does not work that much. He shakes.

But he is able to speak:

“What are we even doing here? Playing house? Sharing family dinners? While he is God knows where, alone, seeking -”  

Voldemort slaps him lightly on the mouth. 

It is a lazy gesture; there is no force behind it at all, but Harry recoils together with Tom. His lips smart a sympathetic burn. 

“You will not use such language in my house,” he says evenly, “but do continue, please, I am all ears.”

The kettle explodes on the stove. 

As all the dishes left on the table.

There are burn marks, vivid and ugly on the pristine tablecloth, shards of Voldemort’s fine china everywhere. 

Not one of them lands a cut or a burn on Harry or man himself, though. Tom, on the other hand, sports a couple on his shaking hands. Blood fills a cut slowly on his cheekbone, very near his eye.

“What there is to continue,” Tom whispers, and then answers himself, “Nothing! I see you, how content you are to cosset this thing all day long, indulge yourself in your books and not going anywhere! We should have left you in that glorified pile of garbage, then you would be happy, we should have to go search for him -”

His voice goes louder with each word until he shouts, and then it breaks.

Voldemort is silent for a time, seemingly waiting for him to say more, but what comes is only more rattling from the cabinet where the rest of the dishes are.

“You are a funny boy, Tom,” Voldemort smiles mildly, “first you call your brother a thing, then all that we in your speech… he will forgive you, of course, he is so very forgiving…”

None of them looks Harry’s way.

“Let’s imagine it, then,” Voldemort says, “you are two boys, without supervision and much magical prowess to offer for yourselves.” Tom opens his mouth there, but is robbed of his voice with a harsh gesture, just like Harry is still, “silence. I had let you talk, and so far, I hear only the whining of an arrogant brat that you are. So. With that premise, you are set on a quest to find The Dark Lord. Who is very likely not even in Britain, I have to say. Let’s go even further and say that by some miracle, you are successful in your endeavor. You find him, delirious and extremely unwell, in some deep forest where there is no one to come to your aid… and what does he see? His enemy, vulnerable, and his stray memory running around, using that little “we”, while he should have stayed safe and quiet where he was put. Will Lord Voldemort listen to you like I am right now, or will he devour you both instantly to sustain himself, I wonder?.. Who could tell… Certainly, it will be you, Tom, over fifty years apart from him… You will find the right words and will have time to utter them…”

Tom’s face has that feverish red tint to it now, his fists clenched. 

“I am afraid, Tom, that you fail to understand your place. And mine, and Harry’s. We are not meant to run around at all. In an ideal situation, you are sitting prettily on Abraxas’ bookshelf, which is heavily warded and hidden from the eye of any of the guests and even meddling family members. I am in my home, secluded and solitary, free to contemplate on any magical concept I wish in the coming centuries and share my findings with my main part, if he so desires. Harry is dosed with the Draught of Living Death, put in a glass coffin like Snow White, out of sight, out of mind…”

This is terrifying. Not even a picture itself, but how detached Voldemort sounds, he, who feeds Harry every day, who does his buttons and ties his shoelaces for him.

And Tom. What torture it would have been for him, what torture he already gone through, on this undoubtedly nice bookshelf, alone, robbed of life.

As if sensing his dismay, Voldemort shifts his heavy gaze in Harry’s direction.

“Don’t fret, dear. It is not my perspective I recite. We need to help your brother understand our predicament. To come to peace with it… however long it may take.”

However secrets we keep from him, you and I, blooms in his head when he meets Voldemort’s eyes. He smiles at Harry, strangely warm. One corner of his mouth ticks a little higher than the other.

That smile withers when he looks at Tom again. Harry thinks he recognizes that subtle twist his lips form - it is very similar to his aunt’s, when she was forced to deal with Harry’s existence in her life.

“Now. I believe we should address your earlier critique and the way you chose to bring it to my attention, Tom.”

No, Harry thinks. No, no - he does not know what is coming, but it cannot be anything good, anything even remotely sane. Not after all that Tom spewed out of his mouth today.

He wants desperately to come, to take Tom’s hand and get him out - kicking and screaming, perhaps, so be it, so be it. He will figure out things from there; he is good at it.

They can go to that stupid forest, then, they can go anywhere Tom wants.

(Why did Voldemort choose to invite Tom so close to the stove?

Let it be a coincidence, Harry prays.

Let it -) 

Voldemort lays his hands on Tom’s shoulders. It is a seemingly unhurried gesture, lazy even. It creates the illusion of an easy escape, of a choice for Tom to stay put or not.

He stays: rigid, breath shallow.  

“You both are not my subjects, and you are also very young,” Voldemort states softly. “You are allowed to have complaints, autonomy, some freedoms, even. You, Tom, much more than Harry - you are nearly an adult, after all… I expect much more from you because of it. But you have me wondering if I am justified with such an approach.”

His hands come higher - Harry’s breath hitches when they pass Tom’s neck, but they do not linger here, thankfully. Instead, Voldemort cradles Tom’s face between them tenderly, his fingers buried in Tom’s soft locks.

Tom pinches his brows high, blinks slowly, long lashes casting a shadow even longer on his cheeks. His lips part and try to form some word. 

But Voldemort gave voice back to none of them yet.  

So only a shaky exhale comes.  

“Tom. Dear Tom… You wear the face of a man who killed your mother by his negligence, who had us starving and miserable. And how proudly you wear it, my darling… how glad you are to have such lips, such eyes, such fine bone structure… As much as I loathe to witness it every day, I believe.”

Harry notices how Tom’s lower lip is - quivers. A bit. A second until he bites it. Voldemort’s long finger then finds that lip, presses and taps on it thoughtfully, as if to advise or suggest something beyond Harry’s understanding.

He feels suddenly that he shouldn’t be here, not meant at all. His face is hot for some reason. Like he is going to cry, but not quite. 

“Yes,” Voldemort murmurs, “I know you quite well, you vain little animal. Do you believe your pain is greater than mine in that regard?”

Tom looks him in the eyes still. 

Then he tips his head on the side gently, as little as hands around his face let him, and Harry thinks - afraid that - Tom is going to. 

Kiss it finger.

He doesn’t know why, it is just - he can almost see it. 

But Tom does something different entirely.

He bites. 

It is not light, nor playful. All his face contorts something ugly around that bite, and all Harry sees there are teeth, blood on them.

It’s not that much. 

It’s too much.

Voldemort is motionless. 

“Are you quite done?” he inquires freezingly.

Finally, after a couple more mortifying moments, Tom relents a little, teeth hidden once more under his lips, bloody finger released with a very sound wet pop from them. He moves to shake Voldemort’s hold off, to step away. 

Voldemort almost lets him. 

Almost.

Until all his body suddenly moves with a deadly swiftness, his fist locks around Tom’s hair in a punishing grip, his ankle around Tom’s in a threat to trip him -

Fire flares to life on a burner an inch from Tom’s face.

Tom makes a sound.

It is wounded, angry.

Afraid.

His knuckles are white where he grips desperately at the edge of the stove.

Voldemort lets him contemplate his behavior for - seconds, a minute. Harry can’t comprehend anymore.

The lightbulb above them all goes impossibly light for a moment, searing all the incredible awfulness that’s happening right into Harry’s brain. Then it seemingly eats itself from the inside.

All the light now comes from the burner.

“This is,” Voldemort tells, cold and loud, “answer to your question. Now you know why so short, aren’t you, Tom? If you ever,” he shifts his ankle lightly, still letting Tom have his balance, but only just, “take with me such a tone again, I will make sure to enlighten you as thoroughly as I can. Am I understood?”

He still didn’t return Tom’s voice, Harry thinks, he didn’t…

Voldemort grips Tom's hair harsher and makes him nod. 

The burner goes out before the flame can kiss Tom’s face.

For a long moment, there is only darkness and sound - breath, desperate, heaving, like a ribcage it ignites in can’t possibly hold it. 

Then the air in the kitchen fills with light, cool and dim. It doesn’t have any particular source, creates no shadow.

Tom is in a heap on the floor at Voldemort’s feet, face hidden under his hands. 

“Every worry,” Voldemort states, “every suggestion or complaint of yours I will hear and address. You dragged me from a peace of my home to father you both, and I will. All I expect is these instances to come with appropriate dignity and respect. You brought me upon yourself, so cease behaving as a petulant child.”

 All of the broken glass and china then comes into the air, merging itself back into dishes and stacks on the edge of a sink. Tablecloth flutters and folds, brushing Harry’s knees featherlight on the way.

A lightbulb doesn’t restore itself. 

Because there is nothing to restore or because Voldemort noticed it for the first time is unclear.

“Now,” he nudges Tom with his feet, “out of my sight. I had enough of you for today.”

Tom stands on shaky legs, hands hiding his face still. He goes out as told, staggering on the way.

In the doorframe, he hesitates for a moment, and Harry has a nauseating suspicion that he intends to beat one more, final nail in his own coffin - 

But he doesn’t. 

He disappears into the hallway, and Harry listens to his uneven steps up the staircase. When Tom seemingly makes it upstairs, there is a quiet moment, and then - howl, long, maddening. Then a loud crash, and another, and another, and howl again - absolutely inhuman, another crush -

Harry finds himself on his feet, finally, finally, then he is almost out of the door - if not for a steel embrace burst around him like a bear trap.

“Shhh, Harry, shhh. Darling. Be still…” 

Cold lips almost touch his ear.

“It’s alright. He will be fine, it is just his poisonous temper, nothing more… nothing more.”

Harry understands that he is crying now. It is just - like a switch turned. Now his face is a waterfall. 

It was his own breathing he heard in the dark.

He feels pathetic, ugly, wants to hide his face desperately. Anywhere, anyhow… he is allowed to do so. 

Made. 

Voldemort turns him like a doll in his embrace, and Harry is not quite sure if he tries to push him away or push himself closer. It doesn’t matter, anyway, with how much power Voldemort stores in his ridiculously tall body, and how much Harry does not in his. 

Long fingers card through his hair, and Voldemort hums quietly under his breath some tune, gentle and somehow familiar.

Harry cries until he exhausts himself stupid, and when he quiets some, Voldemort hoists him on his hip like a baby. There isn’t a bone in Harry’s body left to feel mortification at that.

Voldemort brings him upstairs like that, chin resting on Harry’s temple.

He passes by Harry and Tom’s room to the end of the corridor without pause. 

“You will stay with me tonight,” he murmurs when Harry stirs, “don’t argue. I had enough arguments for today…”

He lays Harry in his own bed, tugs his shoes and socks off his feet, but thankfully lets all his clothes stay. He cocoons him in a blanket, then kisses his forehead goodnight.

It is the first goodnight kiss that Harry knows.

Voldemort folds himself into the large armchair that forms itself under him just in time for him to do so, and Harry thinks, vaguely, that he looks old.

It is such a strange word to attach to him, but in that second until he falls asleep, it fits.

“Delightful woman, your aunt,” Voldemort remarks nonchalantly in the morning, inserting cuffs into Harry's sleeves.

It is a nice, nondescript pair, nothing like almost the jewelry Voldemort wears himself and bestowed upon Tom. 

Harry stiffens on the bed.

“You know her?” he asks.

“I came to know her recently, yes. Had a nice cup of coffee with her, insightful talk on top.”

“Why?” Harry whispers.

He feels cold all over, in a way one feels cold the first moment after boiling water pours onto the skin. Embarrassingly, his first thought is: what did she say? Was it how Harry is a liar and a delinquent, how he can’t be trusted with anything? 

Has Voldemort seen - 

Has Voldemort seen, and - decided that Harry deserved this?

What if she is dead now, what if they all are dead and this is his fault fear comes only second in order, and Harry is mortified by himself.

Voldemort pays no attention to his distress. He doesn't even look Harry in the face, too caught up with adjusting his robes, touching with magic wrinkles visible to him only. 

His voice comes distant, barely audible. 

“Well. I have never had children of my own, you see? Now there are two of you, and I was at a loss what to make of you, how to approach such a task… Tom is easier, of course, I know him and his needs intimately. But you?.. Naturally, I came to a woman who has taken care of you for eleven years.”

“Did you kill her?” 

There Voldemort seemingly comes to the present, and looks for a moment as if he is surprised to find Harry here, under his hands, talking. Then he smiles a gentle, teasing smile. The dimple on his cheek, so attractive on Tom, looks like a strange cavity between muscles that are not aligned quite right.  

“Did you expect me to?” he tups Harry on the nose.

Harry flinches back, still horrified but also utterly bewildered now.

Voldemort frowns. 

“Do not fret, child. I took enough of your family for now, I believe. I came to her for a talk, and talking we did; nice and proper… for the most part.”

There he pauses, and Harry knows that pause very well already. He opens his mouth, but no sound comes out on the first try. 

He tries again, and chokes out: “Thank you.”

Voldemort pats his cheek lightly, very… paternally.

“Ah, but the child she described for me should not be so thankful, no. You see, I recognised that malicious boy very well… I have to deal with his unfortunate paperback version every day now.” 

A cavern seemingly opens in his tone at these words, deep and dark, which then closes in the next beat without a trace.

“And yet, here you are, gentle and forgiving, so afraid for this blind animal that you shy away from a hand that feeds you.”

His voice is light, but a frown deepens.

“To think: my prophesied enemy sleeping under the stairs of a muggle home, starved and miserable, like a boogeyman… I thought about killing them all for such a blow, do not believe I didn’t. She talked and talked, my dear, so relieved to finally pour her heart out to a sympathetic ear. How you embarrassed her, how you inconvenienced her. How she tried to love you and how she just couldn’t manage.”

He retrieves a comb from a nightstand. It is intricate, dark wood carved into flowers and eyes on the handle. Very girly - or woman-y - in Harry’s opinion, but so are most things wizard. 

“You see, while she caused me such indignity, I found my sympathy for her turn, and became almost genuine. Such a small mind, such frail hands she has, and what a handful was bestowed into them…” He starts to comb Harry’s hair gently, not seemingly trying to bring it to any kind of order, “Unloving husband, who desired only a picture of a wife, ungrateful son, you.”

You, he says, without elaboration. 

Like Harry is an answer in itself. 

Harry wants to get out, to stand and storm out of the door, like Tom would have probably done at that point, consequences be damned, but he just has to know. What else did she say. What else festered in that shriveled heart of hers for Voldemort to discover and learn from?

(For Harry to finally understand what was so bad about him. Except - him.)

“You know what she told me? That moment when she truly despised you, wished you had never been?”

Harry is fleetingly surprised that there apparently was a specific moment when she felt so. 

“No,” he croaks.

“That one time when you were five. You got assigned to draw a picture for your mother in school, and while your cousin didn’t bother, you very much did. It slighted her so. She told me that you intended to mock her, disrespect her…” Voldemort stands then, reaches to the drawer in his nightstand, “and yet. She kept that picture.”

Harry barely remembers that episode. It wasn’t first and wasn’t last in his long and futile quest to deserve a little bit of love from his aunt, one he gave up long ago.

He doesn’t want to see that picture. 

It feels somehow like Voldemort intends to show him a key to all his misery, and he thinks he wouldn’t be so horrified if there were his aunt's head in this drawer.

Voldemort stands with it in his hands, admires it, caressing the edges of the paper not unlike how he did with wrinkles on Harry’s robes.

“You vicious little thing,” he says, and sounds proud. 

Voldemort makes a motion to offer it to Harry, but he doesn’t reach for it. His body feels like a cage tailored to every inch of his being, and it wouldn't move. All he can do is sit and look at Voldemort out of the corner of his eye.

The picture is shown to him nonetheless, when Voldemort crouches before him and holds it to his eye level.

It is a very naive drawing, and very innocent. No happy family with Harry included in it, no spider friends and rainbows. 

Just flowers.

Petunias and lilies intertwined.

“You must have thought yourself so clever and endearing, didn’t you, Harry?”

“I don’t remember.”

Harry really, truly doesn’t. But he sees the evidence of care. How precise are lines, how careful spaces are filled with color. A teacher must have helped him.

It must have taken time.

“Pity.”

He sounds disappointed indeed.

“Did she really keep it?”

“She did. Only that one, unfortunately.”

Harry’s eyes become hot once again, his throat clogs, and he doesn’t dare to say anything else. 

Voldemort takes the picture away and shuts it in a drawer out of sight once more. Then there is a weight beside Harry on a bed. 

“Now,” Voldemort says softly, “I will.”

They sit like that together for some time, until Harry feels that he can breathe easier once more. He almost dares to hope that Voldemort is done with him for now. 

That he can go and see how Tom is, and then be alone in the bathroom for a little while.

But Voldemort speaks once more.

“I also spared her because I thought about myself, Harry,” he whispers. “Of every myself, but most of all - Lord Voldemort, who suffers still. Because of you, who didn’t aid him as you should have… but you didn’t know then what you are to us, and he didn’t… because of your mother, who your aunt yearns for and despises so much.”

Harry shifts to look at him. Voldemort has that distant look about him again, lines of his face still and soft in the dull light. 

“You liked it, didn’t you?” Harry utters, something in him hoping not to be heard. 

“Liked what?” Voldemort asks, eyes still on peeling wallpaper.

“That she…” he swallows. He never in his life said it out loud, “that she did not love me.”

“And starved you. And kept you under the stairs. And loved another in front of you so vividly,” he closes his eyes, inhales deeply, brows pinched high.

It is a look Harry can’t decipher. It looks like a pain, it can be a pleasure. He thinks he saw something resembling it in his history books long ago, in a religion section. Men there were much prettier, though. 

More like Tom.

“Yes,” Harry says.

“Yes,” Voldemort answers, “yes, Harry. I liked it very much.”

He opens his eyes and shifts the weight of his attention to Harry again. That girly comb reappears in his hands, but he doesn’t move to use it.

“That wretched Potter’s hair,” he mutters, squinting, “eyesore. At least you do not wear it as short as your grandfather… maybe if we let it grow a little…”

“No!” Harry says, louder than he intended, and repeats quieter, “no.”

“No?” 

“I like it that way.”

It is a lie. Harry doesn’t have any particular preference, except for a vague fear of looking like some of the people his uncle despises more than others. 

And now also - a vivid image, harsh hand intertwined into Tom’s soft locks, that is why so short.

Voldemort holds his gaze for a couple of seconds, and a corner of his mouth jerks momentarily up. 

“Very well,” he says. “As for Petunia dear, I blessed her home, as appropriate thanks for taking care of you. For raising you to be such a gentle boy… I wonder, Harry, if one day you will care for me that much. If you will be afraid for me as you are for her… for Tom even… who had nothing for you but a betrayal, and has nothing now but a jealousy and harsh words…”

Harry looks him in the eyes steadily and keeps quiet. 

A little more, he thinks. It is almost time for breakfast, and Voldemort keeps to the schedule religiously.

“Well, Harry?” Voldemort goads, “Will you?”

“While you are like that?” Harry bites.

“You have no idea how I can be,” Voldemort smiles coldly, “or, well. Maybe some now. You wouldn’t like that, wouldn’t you, Harry? I am making an effort to love you. Perhaps you should make some in return.”

Harry’s fingers feel cold. He hides them, clutches them into fists.

“You don’t… love me.”

“Love is labor,” Voldemort counters, “I am laboring day and night.” 

Harry can’t talk about that anymore.

“So,” he starts quieter still, “you… blessed her home. And just left?”

Voldemort stays silent for a moment, but then seemingly decides to let the matters of love rest.

“Yes,” he says, examining the comb in his hands.

He touches the edge of it, as one touches the edge of a knife.

“I kissed her with my blessing, and bid her farewell.”

“Kissed?..” Harry asks, perplexed.

“Yes,” Voldemort smiles, a strange glint in his eyes, and brings the edge of a comb to his lips. “On the mouth, Harry. And other places her husband doesn’t kiss her anymore.”

Harry storms out of the room.

Voldemort doesn’t stop him.

When Harry makes it to his and Tom’s room, he has a blissful, desperate second where he shuts the door after himself and it is quiet. The door is solid and cold under the palms of his hands, under his cheek. The frame of his glasses digs into his face awkwardly, and it is a welcome, grounding sensation.

It lasts until one more version of hands that feed him clasps around his shoulders, and Harry is roughly jerked around. 

Tom is pale, and there is some rabid quality to all of him. His eyes are bloodshot. 

“What did he do?” he whispers frantically, “Harry. What did he do?”

“What?..” Harry asks dazedly.

Tom doesn’t wait for him to say more, eyes searching all his figure desperately, hands turning him this way and that until Harry slaps them away and steps back.

Tom visibly holds himself from following, not even fazed by physical rebuke. 

Harry looks at him warily. 

“What’s wrong?” 

He can’t storm from two rooms in a row. It is a small house, and that way he will be short of rooms to storm from very fast.

Tom looks and looks, silently for some time.

Then he says simply:

“He took you away.”

“Yes? Because you were - ” he doesn’t know how to put it into words. 

How to put into words all of this. Dinner.

“...upset.” 

Hurt, wild. Punished?

But this is ridiculous. Tom despises Harry; that is clear, and Voldemort makes sure to feed into that every day. Why would he punish Tom by taking Harry for a sleepover?

“Upset,” Tom repeats. “That was what he told you?”

“He didn’t tell much,” Harry shifts, looks away.

Except that he didn’t care for his grandfather, and that he went and kissed Aunt Petunia.

That one opens that strange, deep pit of dread in his stomach again, and he hastily tries not to think about these words. Not to… imagine.

“He said that he loves us,” Harry offers, half-truth as it is. Voldemort was only talking about Harry, “that we should… make an effort in return.”

Tom tilts his head sideways, and repeats in a way one would chew some particularly strange piece of a meal:

“Loves us. And what then?”

“He brushed my hair.”

Tom closes his eyes.

“Just that.”

It is not a question, but Harry answers anyway:

“Just that.”

“So,” Tom begins, his face shifting into another quality, while his voice remains half-dead, “you made a mess of his kitchen, broke his things, and he - brushed your hair.” 

“What?..”

For a second, he has no idea what Tom is on about, but then he remembers vaguely how everything around them had begun to fold and shutter that evening, when he was - when he wanted so desperately - to stand, and move, and all this to end. 

“Was it me?..” he asks dumbly.

“Of course it was you, you imbecile,” Tom scoffs, eyes wide-open and angry, “I am not a child. My magic was not accidental even when I was.”

Maybe Voldemort didn’t kiss Aunt Petunia after all, Harry thinks, maybe he just. Said it. To mess with Harry a little. To top everything else about how he liked what she did.

She is a muggle, right? Voldemort won't go around kissing muggles, won’t he?

Tom starts to pace around, hands in his hair, three steps to Harry’s bed, three back to a window, and looks like he wants to break something. Probably Harry, as forbidden a ground for harm as he is.

“He did well,” he whispers, and then stands still and repeats, “he did well that he took you with him. I would have set your bed on fire if he didn’t.”

Harry is unnerved by how much he resembles Voldemort right now. These times when he seemingly is not all here, talking to himself.

“Or I would have shaved your stupid hair off,” Tom whispers, “or burned it.”

“My aunt tried once,” Harry says, detached.

Day only started, but suddenly he feels so tired already that he can’t even feel bothered about receiving more threats. About how he believes that Tom very much would have, strict harm ban be damned and Voldemort with it.

“And what then?” Tom asks.

“It's grown back.” 

There is no lightbulb hanging from the kitchen ceiling anymore. Now in its place hovers a seemingly glass sphere, which emits only enough light to illuminate itself. That will probably change in the evening.

The tablecloth is pristine, plates bear no mark of harm.

Voldemort feeds Harry and Tom both some eggs and bacon, and, unlike every morning before, drinks a little fancy cup of coffee himself.

All three of them stay silent.