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Chapter Text

Molly Prewett became a Weasley on the nineteenth of August, 1968. The ceremony was held outdoors, on the hillside behind her family home, and took a modest amount of time for weddings of the day, but Molly hardly remembered it after the fact – the celebration was far overshadowed by the conversation that preceded it.

For the previous night, her Aunt Lidia had taken Molly aside in the parlor and imparted unto her a family legend, passed down by women born into the Prewett line, that now she was getting married she would need to know.

Every pureblood line carries a unique power, inherited only rarely – Metamorphmagic, Parseltongue, creature blood – and the Prewetts were no different once, producing an unusual number of talented cursebreakers and inventors. But talent was not the Prewett power, though it made a convenient cover, Lidia explained after Molly took the oath of silence. In truth, no one knew what it was: every instance of the Prewett bloodline’s true power had been last recorded centuries ago.

The Muggles took up the superstition around seventh-sons and seventh-daughters long before the Statute of Secrecy, said Molly’s aunt, voice airy with mysticism. That legend began with us, Molly. Us Prewetts, back when we mingled with the non-magical races as priests and druids – our bloodline power manifests only in the seventh son, or seventh daughter.

Lidia had smiled over her wine glass. You and I both know Fabian and Gideon won’t marry. That leaves only you in this generation. So she explained the ‘rules’ to Molly, the ones written of in the family grimoire that Molly had never been permitted to open: Seven children, born to the same parents, all sons or all daughters. All of us who know have tried and failed, Lidia sighed, but promise me you’ll continue it. Something tells me you’ll succeed.

Molly promised. The next year, she had her first sons – Bill and Charlie, twins. They were followed by Percy, then Fred and George, then Ron. Six sons, closer than anyone had gotten in twelve generations. At the same time, the war took Molly’s family from her, one by one and two by two; Arthur assumed her enthusiasm for a large family was an attempt to compensate, but there was something older than war and magic growing in the air.

When Molly swelled with child for a seventh time, that sense of foreboding, like the air ahead of a thunderstorm, kept her awake at nights. When she realized she was carrying twins, for a third time, the concern tripled. She kept the fact of twins a secret: the last attempt that had gotten this close to fulfilling the legend had ended in miscarriages or still births.

She bore the last set of twins on a quiet day, while Arthur brought the rest of the children to the lake to swim, in a warded room, alone. And lo and behold, the seventh child was a son, born ahead of Ginny – yet, as Molly had feared, he did not make a sound, nor wake when Ennervated like her other children had.

Molly watched the unnamed boy – unnamed, she decided, until he woke up (if ever) – for an entire day, and most of the night, but he remained asleep, breathing steadily, no matter what she said or did.

There was nothing to be done but wait. What if this was somehow part of the Prewett Power? In public, she announced Ginny as the seventh child, a wonderful daughter in Arthur’s words, and made use of the Fidelius Charm that Albus had rediscovered in order to hide the existence of her seventh son. Honestly, she’d expected the boy to waste away in a day or so, but weeks went by, and he remained in that curious stasis, bundled in Molly’s grandmother’s white blanket.

There was too much to attend to now that the war was over; Molly visited the hidden room where her son resided every day at first, but found herself increasingly busy in the months that followed. She set a charm over him, so that if he ever did wake, she would know – and the same if he ever died – and so, time went on.

Bill and Charlie graduated Hogwarts with exceptional marks and went on to live exciting new lives. Percy – Head Boy Percy – graduated and made his way up in the Ministry. Fred and George dropped out in their seventh year, but tempered Molly’s anger by becoming wildly successful shortly after opening their joke shop. And Ron took up a place at Harry Potter’s side in the war that was to come.

The war did come, as did Bill’s wedding, and Ron’s mysterious adventure, and all of it kept Molly so busy that she had nearly forgotten about the seventh son she’d never gotten to raise, asleep in his linens. The final battle took Fred from them, and Molly was awash in such grief that she barely slept – until three days later, when that old charm startled her awake in the middle of the night: the seventh son had finally opened his eyes.

The secret room had grown dusty in the intervening years, but her son, her son, had never changed. He was no different from his state at birth: the same size, the same color. Just an infant, trapped in time.

Molly realized, holding him, that she’d never be able to explain this to Arthur or her now-grown children, especially not now that they were all mourning Fred’s loss. Perhaps, if this infant had woken up a year earlier, she could have passed the sudden appearance as a war orphan or a refugee. But no. It was too late to bring another child into the family.

Ever so briefly, she considered Confunding Fleur and Bill into thinking they had two sons. It was a hasty plan and a foolish one. But the idea of passing the child off to the next generation did fit, in a cosmic sense.

“Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place,” she called into the Floo, holding the still-unnamed child in her arms.

Chapter Text

Harry had come out of the Last Battle still waiting for the other shoe to drop. He'd shuffled off to Grimmauld Place -- his house, now, all his, with its dim lamps and dusty hallways and house-elf heads and all -- less than a day after Voldemort's body dropped, and had only managed to sleep a few hours before he was up, awake again, and kicking up dust in the sitting room while he paced in front of the Floo.

Hermione had insisted he rest at least a week; you've done all you have to, Harry, leave it to everyone else now . She had promised to visit with Ron a few days after Fred's funeral later in the week. And so, Harry paced, and waited for news on the injured who'd gone to St. Mungo's; waited for the letters he expected any time now from the Wizengamot to have him stand witness at the Death Eaters' trials; waited, waited, waited --

He was keyed up with anticipation of something happening, but had no certainty as to what it might be. He figured he'd know when it happened.

Then it was the middle of the night, on the third day, and Molly rang the Floo, and: there it was.

Ron's mum had never looked so out of sorts, Harry thought, as she did when explaining the situation to him. The bone-deep weariness he'd seen on her features when she'd first seen Fred's body had been replaced by an almost frantic energy just barely tempered by the gentle wonderment in her features as she spoke of the unnamed boy.

Harry shared in that wonder, at tales of ancient bloodlines and hidden powers; it was fate, wasn't it, first the prophecies and now this. As her explanation continued, though, the wonder was eclipsed by a growing certainty as to what Molly was telling him everything for , and a creeping, sinking suspicion about this that he would not yet voice.

She asked him to raise the baby, promised him anything he needed, and his face was solemn. "I understand," Harry told her. "Give him here."

He took the white-wrapped bundle through the flames, and insisted over Molly's continued words of thanks that he would handle things from here.

When the flames had receded back to flickering yellow, he adjusted the swaddled baby in his arms, looking down at its slowly blinking eyes, and murmured,

"Congratulations, Lord Voldemort. You really have overcome death."

The abyss gazed back.

Despite being unable to physically move at the moment, trapped in an infant's body as he was, Voldemort just radiated smugness. Harry was incredibly tempted to have Kreacher retrieve the Basilisk fang from his belongings and just...take care of the problem. But attempting to kill a baby was how Voldemort had gotten killed in the first place, and Harry considered himself a bit smarter than to make his enemy's mistakes and risk whatever this was from backfiring on him.

So killing infant Voldemort was out of the question, but it wasn't like he could talk , so Harry could quite easily ignore him. With a bottle of brandy in one hand and his wand in the other, Harry spent the first hour doing just that. Eventually, though, it seemed silly not to address the Dark Lord in the room, so he propped him up on some cushions in the armchair across from his, and set his brandy aside.

"So," he leaned forward in his chair, "blink twice if you understand me?" Two blinks.

"All right. Two blinks yes, one blink no: did you hear everything Molly said about this?" Two blinks.

"Is there some way I can age you enough to make you able to talk?" One blink. Damn.

"Can you still speak Parseltongue?" A relatively articulate-sounding hiss, and two blinks.

"Cool. Wish I still could. Would have made this easier." Harry sighed. "Do you mind if I call my house-elf for some food?" One blink. He turned his head and called, "Kreacher, a tea set." (Harry had learnt his lesson about being polite to house-elves that didn't like it.)

A minute later, tea and tea-cakes appeared on the table at Harry's side. A cup was prepared how he liked it already; he took a long drink, putting off the rest of this question-and-answer session until he'd soaked up some of the alcohol with food.

"I'm probably neither drunk nor sober enough for this," Harry muttered to himself around a biscuit. He glanced over at Voldemort. "I'd offer you food, too, but I don't actually know what babies are supposed to eat."

No response. "I'll figure it out, though," Harry hastened to say, "I wouldn't starve you to death." He thought about that. "That'd be ironic."

How so?

Harry nearly fell out of the chair. When he realized what had happened, he barked out a laugh. "Bloody hell, telepathy?"

Yes, said the voice, sounding like how he remembered the Diary's voice had sounded. Only with eye contact.

"That makes this easier, I guess," Harry supposed. He rubbed at the bridge of his nose, stifling a yawn. "All right. I'm not going to try and kill you anymore, seeing as it's never going to work, and I'd rather not piss you off any more than I probably already have over the past seventeen years. I don't know if I can convince you not to kill me, but I'm not going to try and push my luck. We're stuck with each other for now, it seems like, so...what are we going to do?"

Voldemort shifted under the blankets. Harry wondered if he was too warm sitting by the fire; he didn't have snake skin or anything. Mind magic...exhausting this body, the Dark Lord said. Will explain what I can while awake. Truce, yes...make up a cover story...war orphan? Don't care...will explain...after...nap... The body's eyes began to close.

"Oh," Harry mouthed silently.

Well. At least he knew he wasn't going to die yet.

He picked Voldemort up again; the Dark-wizard-in-a-baby's-body didn't stir from his slumber at being jostled. "Kreacher," Harry muttered under his breath, "is there a crib in the attic somewhere?"

The house-elf appeared without making a sound. "If Master Potter-Black be's stealing babies," he croaked, thankfully quietly, "there is beings a crib in Master's room now, yes."

Harry snorted, glancing down to make sure he hadn't woken Voldemort with the sound. "He's not stolen, " he chuckled. "They asked me to take him."

"That's what they’s all sayings," Kreacher muttered, but the elf seemed amused.

Chapter Text

Kreacher's apparent ignorance, wilful or otherwise, of Voldemort's identity meant that Harry could task the elf with the practicalities of caring for him, come morning, without having to worry about any murder attempts. This spared both wizards the awkwardness of changing nappies - Harry didn't want to have to think about his former mortal enemy in the same sentence as 'nappies' ever again - and had the unexpected benefit of improving Kreacher's mood. Apparently, the house-elf liked babies. Go figure.

(Harry relegated his mad peals of laughter at that discovery to the place in his mind he imagined the Horcrux used to occupy.)

Their main obstacle, then, wasn't feeding and hygiene but the simple fact that babies had to sleep a lot. Even being his highly magical self, Voldemort could only be awake for about a third of the day, left to his own devices, Kreacher insisted; and the strain of using Legilimency ( or magic at all, Harry amended, watching the baby float himself around the room) tired him faster, so that he was really only able to communicate for periods of ten to fifteen minutes before needing another hour's nap.

To make the most of those minutes, Harry mostly sat and listened, and when Voldemort slept, he attempted to process all the information he'd learned.

Probably the most shocking revelation had been the first one he brought up. I think, for a time, I truly was dead, murmured Voldemort. If he'd been more mobile, Harry suspected those words would have been accompanied by a shudder. I am not... better, for the experience. Unbeing is even more terrifying than I had conceived of in the past.

"You weren't in limbo?" Harry wondered. "When I was there..."

Limbo and Unbeing are different, Voldemort snapped. One is a place and the other a void. I only knew I had been there because I came back, do you see?

Harry tried to comprehend that, and eventually shivered. "...Oh."

Exactly. It should terrify you. The Dark Lord didn't say anything for a while, though he did not sleep. Nonexistence...

Voldemort's last word rang in Harry's ears even after Kreacher brought him away for a nap. Harry made his way up to the library, mind on a cluster of books on one shelf that Sirius had never let him read. The tomes were old and dusty, bound in leather under such heavy preservation spells that they tickled Harry's fingers on contact. Someone of a previous generation had even left a note carved into the wood of the shelf - death magics. Reader beware.

There were no titles in any of the books; only a skull drawn on the first page and a number below it. Assuming they were all part of a set, Harry had once taken the first on the shelf and tried skimming it, back when he needed information on Horcruxes, but he'd gotten such a bad feeling the more pages he turned that he had put the book back and avoided the shelf thereafter. Now, though, he didn't get that feeling, starting over with the first book; he squinted down at the nearly illegible handwriting of the author.

...Unbeing, the void, the true death, from whence no soule returns...

"Kreacher is bringing the baby," the house-elf announced, setting Voldemort down on a cushion on the table. The Dark Lord did a double-take at the book in Harry's hands, turning wide eyes on him. (Harry wasn't sure if babies were supposed to be able to open their eyes that wide.)

Harry, he asked urgently, what are you reading?

"It doesn't have a title," Harry shrugged. "I remembered seeing nonexistence talked about in here --"

That book has a title, Voldemort interrupted. Put it back.

"What? Why? It's informative-"

IT'S CURSED, he shouted, and Harry cringed back, closing it and returning it to the shelf before he gave it any thought. Only after he'd let go of the book did he feel a burning sensation in his hands as if frostbitten.

"Oh," Harry gulped, "it really was cursed. It didn't do that before."

Before? Voldemort's eyes were narrowed, now, glaring. Harry felt strangely cowed.

"Yeah. When we were getting ready to look for Horcruxes - I was trying to find more information and skimmed through it."

And?

"It was giving me a bad feeling. I eventually put it back without finding anything."

That sounds about right, all things considered, Voldemort mused. You really have no idea what you were reading, do you?

"Well, not really, no. Someone carved 'death magics, reader beware' on the shelf at some point, so I guessed."

Yes, that was me.

"What - you?" Voldemort had been in this house? "When?"

1943. The Dark Lord's tone was almost nostalgic. Orion was part of my Inner Circle, once. I called on him here many times to examine the rare tomes in the Black ancestral library.

Harry repressed a shudder at the knowledge that he was sitting in a house, in a room, in a chair where Voldemort would have sat before. He'd never thought of Grimmauld Place as anyone's home, not really - had never considered what the Blacks' reputation actually meant. Logically, of course the Dark Lord would have been here. But to know it for certain was... unsettling. "Oh," he said, not having much else to contribute. "And you found those books?"

Among others, but those were the reason I came back. I, however, wore gloves.

"Gloves," Harry echoed faintly.

Yes. A rule of thumb, Harry: never touch bare-handed any books bound in human skin.

"Human - human skin?!" Harry darted a glance at the books, revolted. He hadn't even noticed. "Bloody hell."

Hm. Voldemort didn't seem particularly fazed by Harry's outburst. Frankly, you should wear gloves when handling most books, regardless of their bindings. Oils wear at the paper... but I digress. Let us discuss the matter of a cover story, as we had planned to.

They moved the discussion down to the sitting room, in part because the library was now making Harry uncomfortable and he needed time to get over it. Ironing out a cover story took a lot more time than it had to because of Voldemort's aforementioned need for sleep, and Harry had taken to dozing off while the Dark Lord did as a matter of expediency. Sometime during one of these naps, fortunately well after the main points of their cover had been established, Ron and Hermione must have come in the front door, because Harry (and Voldemort, presumably) woke up with a start to the sound of them calling his name.

"Harry! Is that Teddy?" He blinked his eyes open in time to cradle the infant closer to his chest. Weren't they supposed to visit in a few more days? As in, not so soon? Giving him a break?

Whatever.

"It's not, actually," Harry said softly. His friends apparently got the hint, because they didn't make nearly as much noise from that point on.

(Tangentially, it should be noted that Harry had completely forgotten he had a godson in the past twelve hours; and now that he was reminded of it, he actually felt kind of bad. Not bad enough to do anything about it today, but. Yeah.)

"This is... well, he doesn't have a name yet. He was left on my doorstep this morning. What is it with wizards and leaving babies on doorsteps, do you think?" Harry was privately pleased with himself at speaking his planned lines so casually; the yawn midway through one sentence wasn't even faked.

Ron's eyes were as wide as dinnerplates. Harry got up from the armchair, not trusting himself not to fall back asleep if he kept sitting in it, and crossed the hall to the kitchen, smiling at the pile of warm scones and clotted cream Kreacher must have just left there. "Mate, someone left you a baby and you didn't tell us?"

Harry blinked at them. "Well, it was only an hour ago," he lied, keeping to the story they'd worked out. "I was going to tell you after I'd gotten over the surprise."

"And got a nap, apparently," Hermione muttered.

"Don't tell me you're keeping him," Ron gaped.

"Why wouldn't I?" Harry's uncomprehending stare was yet another thing he hadn't needed to fake. "I've got a whole house, a house-elf, and nothing else to do." The bundle chose that time to shift in his arms. "Oh, bugger. You've woken him up. Hey," he said to Voldemort, glancing down, "these are my friends Ron and Hermione."

Cover story in place? the Dark Lord asked in the brief moment of eye contact before Harry held him up to show the other two. Harry took a cue from the conversation the day before and blinked twice for 'yes'.

It'd be cool, he thought, if he could figure out telepathy too.

The next hour was a cavalcade of awkwardness, as to Harry's surprise both Ron and Hermione cooed over "Harry's baby". ("Can we not talk about this like I produced him? Thanks.") Ron as the maternal type was pretty fun, but less funny was the direction the discussion took once his friends accepted Harry was keeping the baby.

Names.

Coincidentally, it was one of the topics Harry and Voldemort had been working on before Harry's friends showed up. Unable to discuss anything with Voldemort without breaking their cover, though, Harry had to play along while his friends pored over a massive book of wizarding names brought down from the library, pelting him with suggestions and meaningless information associated with different names on the list.

(Harry eyed the book dubiously, before ordering Kreacher to get gloves for each of them. Just in case.)

"You know, he can't be more than a week old," Ron observed, squinting down at Voldemort's wrinkly face. The Dark Lord didn't seem particularly impressed. "If we could find out his actual birthday we can run numerology. Mum did it for each of us before she picked out names."

Thinking back to Molly's explanation, Harry wondered what date counted as Voldemort's birthday. "I mean, there's probably a blood ritual for it," he suggested, before realizing what words had come out of his mouth, and why Hermione was staring at him with such an affronted expression. "Oh. Right. Sorry. Forgot those were illegal."

He blamed Voldemort for talking about them so much earlier in the day.

Hermione just shook her head disapprovingly, going back to the book as if pretending she hadn't heard him in the first place. Harry kept his mouth shut for a while as a peace offering, gaze straying to the basket set on one of the chairs where Voldemort had been relegated so Harry wouldn't drop crumbs in his Slytherin-green blankets. Someone save me from this nightmare of a conversation, he pleaded silently.

"Look, do we have to name him today," Harry finally complained an hour later, eyeing the tome on the table with a level of dread previously reserved for Potions homework. "If it's got to be such a production, I'll just name him Tom and have it be done with."

Like the blood rituals comment, he realized belatedly that maybe he shouldn't have said that. Ron and Hermione turned equally incredulous stares on him, thankfully shutting up. "Tell me you don't actually mean to name him Tom," Hermione sighed, exasperated. "You can't just name babies after your defeated archenemy, Harry, that's - it's weird as hell."

"Actually," Ron cut in, stifling a snort at her language, "it did used to be a done thing in the seventeen-hundreds. My great-great-great-granddad was named after the bloke his dad defeated in a duel for the land the Burrow is built on."

"Why?" That was Hermione again, flabbergasted.

"Superstition," the redhead shrugged. "It's supposed to give them your enemy's powers, or something like that - not literally," he amended, "more like, to make them more formidable? I think?"

"...I don't think I'm actually going to call him Tom," Harry said weakly.

"All right then," Ron continued, nodding agreeably. He ran a gloved finger down the page. "How about... Tamarind?"

"That's a girl's name, you dolt," Hermione laughed, "and a fruit besides."

The problem was, the longer Harry thought about it, the more 'Tom' seemed to fit. He stood up from the table, taking the basket with him, and excused himself for a minute. In the next room, he threw up a dozen privacy wards and held Voldemort at arm's length. "Help me out here," Harry pleaded, "I need a name or they're never going to leave."

Can't help you, Voldemort told him. Much as I want to.

"Why not?"

If any infant could manage an eye roll, it would be Voldemort. It's tradition. The first name of a newborn is chosen by their guardian.

"Even though you're... you?"

Yes. This is not like the artificial body I had before. I may have had the knowledge and power I had before Unbeing, but... the soul is different, somehow. Not quite new, but... He trailed off, pensive. The point being, I am subject to this tradition like any newborn would be.

"That's ridiculous, but so is everything about wizarding society. Fine. I'll figure something out."

He made to take down the wards and go back to the kitchen, but Voldemort stopped him with a noise. Wait , he said. Are you keeping the family name in mind?

"Well, it's Potter, isn't it-"

You're not even Potter, you idiot.

"What?! Of course I am-"

You're tiring me out, is what you are. Look at the... tapestry... Voldemort made a sound like a yawn, and went back to sleep.

Great.

Harry returned to the kitchen to find Ron and Hermione arguing over the appendix of names added to the end of the book by successive generations of Blacks. "I had a thought," Harry announced over their bickering, setting Voldemort's basket back on the chair. "Since I'm adopting him, he'd be a Potter, wouldn't he?”

"Yes," said Hermione, at the same time Ron said, "No." They looked at each other, equally baffled.

"Harry's inherited the Black surname from Sirius," Ron insisted. "You can't just give away the seat of a family home to someone without the surname. The wards don't take."

"So, I'm a Black," Harry guessed.

"Well, no," Ron disagreed, shaking his head. "You're probably Potter-Black or something, there are ways to find out-"

"Like the tapestry?" Harry cut in, finally understanding what Voldemort had meant.

His friend's eyebrows rose. "That's a good starting point, yeah," he agreed. "It might not be completely useful, but we'll be able to see how you're connected to the lineage."

"Why do you know all of this, anyway?" Hermione wondered, peering at him.

"Well..." Ron blushed. "I asked Mum, because, um..." he dithered, looking around a bit. "Okay, fine, don't tell Mum I told you but I kind-of-asked-her-about-whatifyouandIgotmarried-"

Hermione gasped. "Oh, Ron, you mean it?"

Harry watched from the doorway as Hermione planted a big kiss on Ron's cheek. His friend ran his hand through his hair, sheepish. "Was gonna propose on Sunday at the Burrow," he mumbled. "But so, erm, Mum started telling me about family names and Lordship stuff, because the Weasleys are a House and the Prewetts had a Lordship before the first war. Bill is taking Fleur's name, officially, so she can stay a Delacour, and Charlie turned down any titles because of his line of work, and Percy hasn't really come back yet, and, well, ultimately one of the titles could fall to me. I think Mum wants Ginny to have the Prewett name when she gets married, so..."

Ron trailed off, and squared his shoulders, regaining his composure. "We had to go to Gringotts and use the ritual room there to see whether I could inherit-"

"What? The goblins let you in?"

"-yeah, apparently the dragon thing impressed them, they're not going to kill us-"

Harry noticed Voldemort stirring in his basket, and went over to pick him up. He might like to hear some of Ron's story.

"-seems I can be Head of House Weasley after Dad, after all," Ron finished, shrugging. "If I want to claim it officially I have to fill out a lot of paperwork, so Mum was explaining it all when we had time." He looked over at Harry. "Anyway... that's how I know about it. The goblins were a little weird when I showed up at first, but they'll let us use the room if we ask."

"Why do the goblins have anything to do with it, anyway?" Harry had to ask.

Hermione perked up at the opportunity to talk about something she knew. "It's part of the twelfth goblin war treaty," she explained excitedly. "The war was fought over magical interference between ritual circles in close proximity causing goblin spells to go awry, back before most ritual magics were made illegal. Arithmancers and goblin researchers collaborated to construct a large ritual room and make it accessible to wizards and goblins alike, and they built Gringotts around it since the goblin foundation magics were already there."

That was actually kind of interesting, Harry thought. He wondered if Voldemort had set up his own ritual room somewhere. A glance down at the bundle in his arms confirmed he was still too asleep to ask, yet, so Harry would have to wait until later. "So, what, I'd go to Gringotts and ask to run an inheritance test, then?" he inquired of Ron.

"That was pretty much it, yeah. Are you going to bring the baby, too?"

Was he? Harry thought about it. If the goblins discovered Voldemort's identity somehow through the test, they would probably not hesitate to kill him, or worse, hold him hostage. "Not this time, I think," he decided. Best to err on the side of caution.

"Let's look at the tapestry before we go to the bank," Hermione suggested.

"I'll meet you in the sitting room - let me put the baby to bed first."

Upstairs, Harry tapped Voldemort on the cheek with his finger to wake him. "Sorry," he said when the baby's eyes had focused on him, glaring somewhat, "but we're going to Gringotts for an inheritance ritual, apparently." A lazy blink. "I wanted to warn you I'll be gone since I'm leaving you behind - if the goblins identified you somehow..."

...Sensible, came the eventual reply. The telepathic voice still managed to sound sleepy. Wake me again when you return. Bring documentation of your holdings in full.

"All right," Harry agreed, about to set him back in the crib, but Voldemort stopped him with a hiss.

Take everything they offer you, he insisted. Goblins respect greed.

Then he was asleep again, and Harry returned downstairs.

Ron and Hermione were bickering again when Harry joined them in the sitting room, but this time, it sounded rather like they were stifling laughter. "-should tell him before he finds out, Ron!" Hermione was saying.

"Tell me what?" Harry asked, crossing the threshold. The way his friends both sprung up in front of the part of the tapestry where Sirius' name had been was rather telling.

Ron's eyes crinkled at the corners. "Have a look for yourself," he said, then, with a teasing edge to his tone, "Mr. 'Harry James Antares Sirius Potter-Black-ellipses '." He stepped aside so Harry could look at the tapestry, snickering into his hand.

Harry stared at it for a full minute before he too burst out laughing.

The laughter only grew the longer he looked at it. Harry James Antares Sirius Potter-Black-... , read the tapestry, just as Ron had said. "It's worse than Dumbledore," Harry howled, tears running down his cheeks.

Merlin, it was the longest name he'd ever seen. And it was his name! And what in Merlin's name was after the ellipses anyway?

Harry was rolling on the floor, struggling to breathe. Look at the tapestry, he says. He clutched at his stomach, wheezing.

Ron and Hermione were trying not to join him, watching with mirth in their eyes. "When..." Harry gasped out, "when did Sirius actually adopt me, do you think?"

Hermione struggled to regain her composure. "Sometime after fourth year, probably. The Goblet of Fire wouldn't have taken 'Harry James Potter' or whatever, if it had been before then."

A few shuddering breaths later, Harry managed a weak "Neat," in reply. More laughter threatened any time his eyes strayed toward the tapestry. (The moving portraits in the fabric were giving him odd looks.) "Okay, okay, let's go to Gringotts."

"Harry," Ron squeaked suddenly, eyes watering, "they're gonna ask for your name when we get there - just imagine! Harry James Antares Sirius Potter-Black-ellipses!"

That was it.

The three of them gave in to comedy and laughed like drunken hyenas.

On Hermione's suggestion, they made their way to the Leaky Cauldron on foot, rather than travel by Floo. The half-hour it took to arrive was more than enough time for Ron to explain what he'd gone through when he went for inheritance testing, and had the added benefit of Harry seeing sunlight for the first time in days. He'd forgotten how nice it was to be outside, even in the mess that was city life.

It also gave him time to think. This was to be Harry's first public appearance since the Battle ended, and it was fitting that it would be the three of them together on his return.

"I don't think I would've been able to show my face in Diagon if it were just me," Harry admitted to his friends. "Three war heroes is better than one, right?"

Ron clapped him on the back. "We're here for you, mate. 'Specially once the trials start, none of us is going it alone."

"Did they announce the dates yet?" he wondered. "I never re-subscribed to the Prophet."

Hermione was happy to distract him with that information, it having just been announced the day before, for the rest of their walk. They didn't bother going into the Leaky Cauldron, instead squeezing through the narrow gap between it and the next building to get to the bins behind. Someone had spray-painted a lightning bolt high up on the brick wall, away from the entrance. "Here we go," Hermione said, opening the gate.

Chapter Text

“That wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be,” Harry admitted, glancing back at the crowd of well-wishers they’d had to pass through to get up the marble steps of Gringotts Bank. He’d anticipated something worse, with reporters swarming them demanding statements like in Muggle films -- but thankfully, none had shown up while the three war heroes were shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries with the Diagon Alley shopkeepers and visitors. It being so early in the morning had worked to their advantage.

Harry was glad to see that not only had the boarded-up shops in Diagon begun to reopen, the front of Gringotts had been fully restored as well from their escapade with the dragon, as though it had never been damaged in the first place. At the doors, Ron stopped Harry, and addressed the guards. “We’re here to have an inheritance test run,” he said to one of them. Underneath the plate helmet it was wearing, the goblin’s eyes turned to survey Harry and Hermione.

“Me specifically,” Harry offered helpfully.

The guards muttered between themselves in Gobbledegook, then knocked the bottoms of their spears on the stone. “You may enter,” they said in unison.

Inside, Ron led them away from the line of people waiting for the tellers (at this hour, it wasn’t a very long line) and over toward an archway where a pair of goblins had just exited. The two goblins intercepted them; one, Harry was surprised to see, appeared very old and wrinkled, with gold earrings in one ear.

“Who is it that is being tested?” asked the earringed goblin. Ron pushed Harry forward.

The goblin adjusted its spectacles, peering up at Harry through squinting eyes. “Name?”

Harry scrambled to remember the full name, blinking quickly. “Oh, it’s -- Harry James Antares Sirius Potter-Black.”

In the periphery someone in line glanced over, but he didn’t recognize the face.

“This way,” said the scholarly goblin, beginning to walk back toward the archway. Harry glanced back to see that his friends weren’t following.

“We’ll wait out here for you, mate,” Ron called from behind him, looping an arm around Hermione’s shoulders. “Don’t worry, it’s not actually fatal.”

“What’s not fatal?” Harry asked sharply, turning to send his friend an alarmed look --

And the world went dark.

He woke to a dull pain in the crooks of both his elbows, terribly familiar as he had felt it in one arm before -- he was being bled -- and the very alarming realization that he could not move. “What,” Harry choked out, readying himself to struggle, but was silenced on the next word by a spell cast from outside his field of view.

“Silence, Harry Potter-Black,” came a guttural voice Harry recognized -- Griphook. “Your blood is being studied by the ritual array.”

... All of it? Harry wanted to ask. It rather felt like all of it.

He could not say for how long he lay there, immobile, with the dull ache radiating up to his shoulders; the room spun, and a few times Harry thought he might have heard singing, somewhere. But finally, he must have fallen asleep again, for he woke without any pain at all, unrestrained but exhausted, to a cold, round room whose ceiling was far overhead -- and a group of several goblins standing over him with expressions Harry could not decipher.

At a gesture from one, he sat up, rolling stiff shoulders. “Erm, thank you for the help,” Harry said uncertainly. He didn’t want to annoy them -- Merlin knew he was probably on thin ice with the goblin nation --

“Never mind that now,” dismissed Griphook, but he did sound rather entertained, Harry thought. The goblin held up a scroll for Harry to take. “The sum of your holdings, as determined by the ritual, is listed here. Claim as many or as few as you will.”

Recalling Voldemort’s advice -- goblins respect greed -- Harry’s first instinct was to agree to everything without even opening the scroll -- but common sense prevailed in the next second, and instead he unfurled the list. His eyebrows climbed into his hairline the further he read: Potter-Black-’ellipses’ was right.

The goblins’ list was not some neat and convenient assembly of information -- probably, Harry reflected, on purpose -- but a long and exhaustive list of vault numbers, ordered from lowest to highest, with ‘method of ownership’ in the second column and ‘associated name’ after that. As families could and did have more than one vault, there was a lot of repetition of names, making the whole document somewhat confusing to read. Harry could see why Voldemort had insisted he bring a copy back to Grimmauld Place for him to look over.

Further down was a second list of just landholdings, organized by the name of their previous owners, and Harry’s eyes boggled at just how much land he technically controlled. At least most of these are marked ‘occupied’ or have house-elves listed, he thought. I can barely keep Number Twelve from falling apart. There’s an entire mountain listed on here.

Then there was the third list, rather more concise than the other two -- of just names and titles that now belonged to him, with their ‘method of acquisition’ in parentheses after each one. Harry would wonder about some of the listed methods later -- liegelord by proxy , what the hell -- because prominently at the very end of the titles list was:

Lord Voldemort.

“...Voldemort had a lordship?” Harry muttered under his breath, incredulous. And it’s… mine by conquest, according to the list.

This was utterly mad. Harry snorted, drawing looks from the goblins. I am Lord Voldemort, Harry imagined proclaiming, and had to stifle his giggle down into a squeak.

If he laughed about it now, he wouldn’t stop laughing. Harry took a steadying breath and rolled up the scroll. “All right,” he spoke up, raising his head to look at the assembled goblins. “I’ll accept everything.”

The group promptly descended into muttering, and Harry saw coins changing hands. They’ve bet on me, he realized.

Griphook spoke up again, and Harry wondered if he’d ever gotten in trouble for conspiring to steal the Cup or if the Sword of Gryffindor had been a sufficient exchange. “Very well,” the goblin acknowledged. “Per the old laws, then, you have until the winter solstice to solidify your claim and prepare your defense against challengers. Congratulations, Boy-Who-Lived, on a most fruitful endeavor.”

Harry got the distinct impression, getting to his feet from the stone platform, that he’d just signed himself up for a lot of work. “Is this the only document related to my holdings?” he asked.

“Certainly not,” said Griphook immediately, and Harry would wager that the toothy expression he was wearing was a smile. “You would like the full set, I presume, to review?”

Voldemort woke up from his latest nap to the sound of Potter’s house-elf popping in and out of the library around him, bustling about with -- from the sound of it -- a great deal of loose paper. “Master is giving Kreacher much to do,” the elf muttered, sounding gleeful. “Stealings babies, claimings lordships…”

Ah, so Gringotts went well, Voldemort surmised. He wondered what the boy had gotten -- Potter and Black, he already knew, and perhaps someone had willed him their title? Dumbledore, most likely, which would entail the handling of regent Houses. It was unlikely, but he might even have earned something by conquest, if he had personally killed anyone besides Voldemort himself. Severus’ vaults, perhaps. Lord knew how far the traitor’s dedication to Potter’s mother had gone.

Being effectively a newborn certainly had its drawbacks in this moment -- being unable to speak, and thus unable to get his questions answered, the most prominent of them -- but the Dark Lord supposed he would soon have his answers right from the Thestral’s mouth. Indeed, he could hear the front door opening downstairs…

“...still, Harry, that’s bloody wicked.” That was the red-head who’d tried to name him after a fruit. (Voldemort would remember that slight.)

“As long as you guys don’t start calling me by my titles I think I’ll survive.” And that was Potter, sounding weary. Or Potter-Black, or whatever. “I’m going to read through everything -- and check on the baby. See you guys in a day or two?”

“All right,” said Potter’s female friend. (Good that he only had two friends -- it spared Voldemort the trouble of remembering names.) “You’re sure you’ll be fine alone, Harry? You look exhausted. Ron said he slept an entire day after he was tested.”

Potter promptly let out a loud yawn. “I’m fine,” he said. “I’ll go to bed early. See you later.”

Voldemort tuned out the remaining pleasantries; eventually, the two hangers-on had departed, leaving him and Potter alone in the house again. Footsteps thudded up the stairs as the boy approached his basket, and hands unwrapped the blankets around him -- a welcome change, as they were getting quite warm -- and propped Voldemort’s body up on a few cushions, so that he could see the room.

Voldemort blinked at the stacks of parchment, crates of scrolls, and what appeared to be an expanded map of England laid out on an adjacent table. He returned his gaze to Potter, wordlessly demanding answers.

“So,” Potter began hesitantly, “I took everything, like you suggested. Erm. Did you know Dumbledore made me his successor? Look at this --” he unfurled a scroll he’d been holding -- “I’ve got the vaults and property of all his dead followers.”

We will deal with that later, Voldemort told him. More importantly: names and titles?

“Well…” Potter trailed off, unrolling further down on the scroll. “Okay. Guess I’d better just show you.”

Voldemort scanned the list of titles, absently pondering the question of how soon he could re-enhance his vision to the unnatural clarity to which he had grown accustomed. When his boring, human eyes focused on the page, and realized what he was seeing, something happened that had not happened in many years.

He laughed.

The laughter that projected into Harry’s mind was not the high, cold, mocking sort that he’d always heard from Voldemort before. No; he laughed now as Tom Riddle might have, ringing, musical, in the echoing chamber of Harry’s thoughts, as though he were doubled over wheezing from sheer mirth. Eventually, Harry joined in, unable to help himself.

“If I’m Lord Voldemort,” he wheezed, blinking through tears at the corners of his eyes, “and you’re Lord Voldemort, then it’s -- House Voldemort, successor to House Slytherin, of the Sacred Twenty-Eight -- Most Noble and Ancient, or Ancient and Most Noble, House of Voldemort, oh Merlin --”

The baby’s face was attempting to smile, but lacked the strength to do it yet. It could have happened, Voldemort agreed, when his laughter had died down. But no, no, the entertainment won’t be worth the chaos unless we’re both immortal to enjoy the extended aftermath.

Harry reached over and took the glass of water Kreacher had placed on the table, drinking it down. “All right, all right, sorry, back to business. So what are we going to do?”

While I still cannot name myself, Voldemort reminded Harry, I might advise you on the names and titles you choose to display -- for it is terribly gauche to use them all at once, the way Dumbledore did…

About an hour later, they wrapped up the discussion, both of them too tired to progress further. Potter would, for now, be ‘Harry Potter-Black’ on normal correspondence, saving his middle initials for formal letters and self-introductions. Voldemort suggested the practical measure of simply pretending he hadn’t inherited the Lord Voldemort title for the time being: the only ones who knew about it were the goblins, after all, and they had no interest in wizarding titles beyond the associated vaults.

(He decided not to mention that goblins would share that information for enough gold, as it was unlikely to happen, and would only needlessly alarm the boy.)

Perhaps, Voldemort supposed, you might someday have use for my title, but not now. He informed the boy as much, and went back to sleep.

Given the space of several hours before Voldemort woke up again, Harry knew he should be sleeping, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Instead, he called Kreacher to return Voldemort to his crib, and then: “Bring me the Black family grimoire.”

“Which one, Master?” Kreacher croaked, eyes alight.

“Well, how many are there?”

“Twenty-seven, Master.”

Now seated at a table piled with twenty-seven massive books, Harry sighed. For once, he couldn’t rely on Hermione to skim through on his behalf; this, he had best take care of himself.

(Just his luck that it took twelve books before he found the information he needed.)

It was about five or six p.m. when Voldemort woke up again, and Harry still hadn’t slept. He stared blearily down the page of the thirteenth grimoire, reading and rereading the information about the adoption ritual. Sirius’ handwriting had translated the illegible blackletter in the margins; were he on his third glass of Firewhiskey and not his first, Harry thought he might have teared up. His godfather had had to do this, too, he realized.

“Kreacher is bringing the baby,” came the familiar announcement, a bit distant to Harry’s ears. He yawned, rubbing at his eyes, and turned, taking a calculated sip of Firewhiskey and eyeing Voldemort where he was propped up in the pillows.

“Is there any rush to naming you?” he wondered aloud, because he had no idea where the Potter grimoires might be, if they even had any. If I’m lucky, they’re listed in the contents of the family vault. And if he were unlucky, they might have been destroyed or lost.

Only that of convenience, answered Voldemort, blinking lazily at him like a cat. Harry’s tired mind was briefly distracted by the question of what Kreacher was feeding him -- did wizards use Muggle formula? Did Voldemort care what food tasted like? -- but refocused his attention in time to hear him say, I am somewhat surprised you are taking the process seriously.

“Rather than giving you a silly name, you mean?” Harry sighed, downing the rest of his drink. Kreacher refilled it without appearing in the room. “I like to think that, whether or not there’s good and evil, there’s still ‘being a dick’, and… I can’t do that.

“I… respect you, I guess. I mean, you came back from the dead on a fluke, this time, and I’m…” He trailed off, drinking again. It was telling, Harry thought absently, that in the short amount of time he’d had access to the stuff, he had ceased to notice the burn of the Firewhiskey much at all.

When Potter did not continue his thought, instead staring blankly into space, Voldemort prompted, And you’re what?

“...I’m glad,” came the answer, quietly as though it weren’t meant to be voiced. “After all of this, when it was done, I wasn’t angry anymore, and -- I didn’t want you to die, in that duel.” He hesitated, looking over as if he expected a comment; and Voldemort could have called him naive, because he was , but he held his tongue.

Even quieter, Potter whispered, “I don’t want anyone to die.”

The admission hung in the air between them, for a time. Of all the things Potter could have said, Voldemort had not anticipated one such as this. He remained silent a while longer, considering the sentiment.

Eventually: I suppose you will live up to the name of Voldemort, after all.

Another hour later, Harry was leafing through the rest of the thirteenth grimoire, struggling to stay awake, when he finally grasped the contents of the paragraph he’d been reading and rereading. The Black adoption ritual was adapted from a general blood adoption technique -- in other words, Harry didn’t need to go looking for the Potter grimoires, if he used the general one. He’d made a lot more progress than expected.

Voldemort too seemed pleased by the progress they had made, and requested that Harry leave the grimoire open for him to read when he finally excused himself to sleep. In the moments between his head hitting the pillow and succumbing to exhaustion, Harry realized he’d even decided on the baby’s name.

Chapter Text

Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place had lain dormant for a decade or more before Sirius' two-year-long occupancy, and then been unoccupied again for as long before the end of the War - which meant the only improvement made to it between Harry's fifth year and the less-than-a-week since he'd moved in was that Kreacher had started properly cleaning the place. It was otherwise as dark and dreary as always, down to the heavy, dusty drapes covering the townhouse's windows.

And yet. Harry found himself awakened sometime in the afternoon to none other than a beam of sunlight shining directly into his eyes. He groaned, rolled over in bed, and reached a hand over to the nightstand, groping about for his glasses. They nearly clattered to the floor when his hangover caught up with him; only after several minutes did he manage to fumble the bloody things on, and from there, spot the tiny bottle of Hangover Cure and pitcher of water set on the nightstand as well.

Perhaps an hour later, which turned out to be two-thirty p.m. when Harry thought to cast a Tempus, he was showered and dressed and sitting in the kitchen with a late lunch, and Kreacher brought Voldemort in to sit across from him, as had become their routine.

"You know," Harry muttered between bites of a large sandwich, "I never actually see you eating. Are you getting formula or something?"

He wasn't.. starving him, was he? The very concept turned Harry's stomach, and he shivered.

The baby's face scrunched up in exaggerated disgust. It was a very Voldemort expression, in Harry’s expert opinion. Presently, a mix of goat's milk and what tastes like blood, was the reply.

"Kreacher," asked Harry aloud, "what are you feeding him?"

The elf popped into existence, wringing its hands. "Master is not givings Kreacher instructions, and so Kreacher is feeding the baby goat's milk."

"Is there blood in it?"

"One drops dragon's blood per bottle," Kreacher informed him. "For strong magicses, Master. Every Black be's drinkings some."

"..That's what you gave me when I first got here, wasn't it?" When he'd been delirious with exhaustion and flopped onto a sofa in the sitting room, too fatigued to climb the stairs and too dizzy to Apparate - Kreacher had woken him up with a glass of the stuff. Harry grimaced at the sense-memory, now all too sympathetic to Voldemort's plight.

You of all people ought to be able to afford a proper nutrient broth, the Dark Lord complained. I have ingested too many dreadful things in my past life. Take pity, o gracious host.

Harry couldn't keep a straight face at the sarcasm, pursing his lips to keep from smirking too much at Voldemort's past misfortune, but he dutifully noted down the contact information for a supplier of said broth and then sent Kreacher to order some in person, as he couldn't yet bring himself to replace Hedwig.

While the elf was away, he leaned back in his chair and told Voldemort about the adoption rituals he'd found. "You're the ritual magic expert, though. What do you think?"

In lieu of an immediate answer, the Dark Lord insisted Harry bring down the relevant grimoires so that they could review them. Then he insisted upon several alterations, giving an explanation which exhausted him into two naps and took most of the remaining daylight. Writing everything out took another block of time, enough that the moon had begun its ascent; and finally, about eleven p.m., Harry set down a stone basin Kreacher had fetched from the basement with a loud 'thunk' on the kitchen table, lighting the edge of it with bluebell flames.

Near-simultaneously, every other light in the house went out, leaving only the basin's blue glow to cast Voldemort's face in eerie flickering shadows. It was barely a bright enough light to reach the edges of the table, much less the edges of the room; Harry felt, for a moment, as though he were floating in space. He resisted the urge to shake himself out of the sleepy feeling it was giving him, for fear of disturbing the basin.

Conjured water filled the basin halfway. It looked black, not like water at all; Harry remembered the lake in the cave, its surface smooth and reflective like glass. He breathed, in and out, and held his left hand over the basin, using a wordless Diffindo to rend a shallow cut in his palm. Seven drops of blood welled up and fell into the black with a 'plink', one after another. In the dark, both liquids were the same.

Blood calls to blood, Harry recited to himself, so shared and shed, its magic called up. He turned to where Voldemort lay on the table - imagine Hermione walking in on this, Harry thought with sudden mirth, it looks like he's a potions ingredient, she'd jump to such conclusions - and let three drops of his blood fall on the baby's forehead before healing his palm.

Voldemort had had him memorize the steps and the words a dozen times over - recite the name he was giving him, and 'I welcome you into the bloodlines of Potter and Black,' and so on, and then have the baby drink some of the water from the basin. The words were on the tip of his tongue.

But when Harry opened his mouth to continue,

"This blood which bore the sacrifice," he intoned instead, feeling a cold breeze sweep the room from behind him. Voldemort turned his head to look at him with a visible alarm beyond what his face should yet be able to manage, the three ink-black droplets (like the Diary) on his forehead slipping sideways to form for an instant the same lightning-bolt as was on Harry's scar, catching in Harry's peripheral vision.

"This blood which sacrificed again," Harry thought he'd healed his palm, but it was itching again as he moved his hand back over the basin, the skin splitting. The next drop gleamed, silvery, where it welled up, and Harry shuddered, for it could not be blood at all.

"This soul," the words formed on his lips, tasting like ice in his mouth, "which bore yours," the silver drop clung to his hand, still; it was more viscous than blood, and trembled as his hand trembled, for Harry had discovered could not pull away, "which tore yours, from the world, piece by piece," the drop of silver just barely clung to his skin now, and he could feel it in his hand, too, pulling like thread, yet there was no pain-

He sucked in a breath through his nose as it dropped to the unnaturally-still water of the basin with a hiss, spreading over the surface like oil and forming a quick-shifting, luminescent pattern. Harry could not turn his eyes from it, mesmerized, barely aware that he was still speaking.

"And I myself," he continued, "who has inherited your Name, who has flown from Death-" he could feel Voldemort watching, unable to speak to stop whatever this was, for it was far removed from the ritual they had intended and none knew what would come of it-

"I welcome you back into this world," voice rising now from the hoarse whisper it had dropped into, "Veil-Crosser," Harry recognized the sensation of fine, frayed cloth against the back of his neck as the breeze picked up again, except there was no reason fabric should be there, "into my bloodlines, as my heir as I am yours."

Voldemort floated up over the basin now, and from his expression he had not done so intentionally either, and the silver-and-water rose like a glittering web around him, suspended in the air like stars in the sky, before it snapped closed - and Voldemort screamed, and Harry feared something had gone horribly wrong, but he could only continue-

"Thomas Hadrian Antares Potter-Black!" the name he had chosen, now shouted, as Harry reached for the infant body encased in black and limned with light, "Heir Potter, son of Black, Heir Voldemort!"

The silver dissipated into a cloud of mist, and the fire went out, and Harry came out of the trance only to nearly topple over into the basin as Voldemort (Thomas?) ceased to be held up by the air and fell into his outstretched arms. Quickly, heart pounding, he pulled the baby in against his chest and shoulder, regaining his balance.

The house around them was more still and silent than it ever was, but the tension was gone. The ritual, it seemed, was over.

Harry sagged back into the kitchen chair, cradling Voldemort-Thomas in his arms, and succumbed to exhaustion before he could turn the lights back on.

He woke up an indeterminate amount of time later, to Voldemort floating over him and smacking him on the forehead with his limp little arm. "Wake up already, you absolute fool," the baby hissed at him.

Harry was immediately very awake, because that had been spoken aloud. And Voldemort couldn't speak English yet.

"Don't tell me I speak Parseltongue again," Harry moaned, but he could tell without thinking about it that he was indeed speaking the snake language too.

Voldemort scoffed, rolling his eyes, and allowed himself to fall back into Harry's arms. "I won't tell you, then."

Harry scrubbed a hand down his face, and yawned. "So, what did I do this time? I swear I was trying to follow the bloody original ritual."

He could feel a mild burning sensation where Voldemort was glaring at his chin, and frankly, Harry doubted he was imagining it. "Don't worry, Potter, you've only made me your singular magical heir, and possibly invoked an indirect form of necromancy-"

"What-"

"-to make us each other's Horcruxes, which sounds like drivel from a wizarding romance novel, I can't yet tell given that I don't have any bloody magical control to find out!"

Harry had meant his response to be more horrified, but the novelty of hearing Voldemort swear just turned it into laughter, and then he couldn’t quite stop laughing. The absurdity of it all. Really. He doubled over, wheezing. He just couldn’t.

“So,” Harry sighed when he’d gotten over it, some time later, “is this going to be like last time with the visions and the burning sensations?” Because Harry would really like to avoid the visions and the burning sensation.

“I doubt it,” Voldemort - Thomas, Harry corrected himself, it was Thomas now - replied, attempting to kick his way out of the blankets, “but perhaps we will remain immune to the Killing Curse. I do not intend to test the possibility.”

And that was that. Harry stood from the chair, still cradling Thomas in his arms, and made his way upstairs to the room that had both his bed and the baby’s crib. “So,” he wondered, setting him down, “about your name..?”

“I find myself not nearly as irritated by it as I had expected it to be,” murmured Thomas, thoughtful. “‘Thomas’, an extension on my previous name as this is an extension on my previous life; Hadrian, a fittingly ironic name - Rome’s ‘benevolent dictator’, really, Potter? - this is also similar to your own. Whether you recognized the significance of the star Antares or simply used it because it is your Black name, I find it appropriate, as well.”

“I’m glad you like it.” Harry flopped down onto his bed’s comfy pillows. “Can I shorten Thomas to Tom as a nickname or will you hex me?”

“..I suppose so,” Tom sighed, muttering under his breath, “damn Gryffindors and their shortened names…” as he drifted off into true sleep. Harry didn’t really have the time or energy to remark on that, because he too was finding his pillow too comfortable to resist any longer.

In the morning, he fire-called Ron and Hermione at the Burrow. “Can I come through?” Harry asked, reaching for more Floo powder. “I have news. And you have some of your mum’s chocolate chip muffins,” he observed the platter on the table behind Ron.

“Sure,” his friend said. “We’re doing brunch.”

It emerged that Ron and Hermione had actually kept their mouths shut about “Harry’s baby” (“Seriously Ron, stop saying it like that, it’s weird”) until Harry himself was present to introduce him. Given the sheer number of Weasleys present for brunch, Harry (and Tom) had to endure a full half-hour of delighted cooing once he’d introduced him.

And also endure Hermione’s face-palming: “You seriously named him Tom? I can’t believe you.”

“Well, I named him Thomas Hadrian Antares,” Harry pointed out, to general snickering. “Hey! It’s a good name!”

“For an old man,” Charlie snorted, further down the table, eyes watering with suppressed mirth. The rest of the table all looked at Tom’s scrunched-up expression: he was probably trying to glare at them, but it just made him look exactly as elderly as Charlie had joked.

They lasted thirty seconds before howling with laughter, even Mrs. Weasley, while a red-cheeked Harry held Tom in one arm and covered his smirk with the other.

(Funny, though, the ‘old man’ quip. Technically, Charlie was right.)

Molly pulled him aside later, letting Harry cast a Muffliato around them, to thank Harry again for taking the matter in stride. “You’ll let me know if you need any help, dear,” she insisted. “I can never thank you enough for this, after all. You say you blood-adopted him?” Harry nodded. “Then he’ll take after you, when he grows up. The Potter and Black traits will overwrite the Prewett and Weasley ones.”

“Oh, dear,” Harry blinked, “you mean he’ll have my hair?”

She giggled, swatting Harry on the arm. “Of all the things to worry about! I suppose we will have to wait and see.”

When they finally returned to Grimmauld Place in the afternoon,  it was with a large wicker basket stuffed full of sweet things - Molly had been stress-baking - and a soft knit hat for Tom that was currently being used as the baby’s pillow instead. “That wasn’t too bad,” Harry decided, relieved.

“I won’t have your hair,” Voldemort told him firmly. “I won’t allow it.”

Harry dissolved into snickering, unable to help himself.

Chapter Text

Given that it was barely June, and the challengers to Harry's claims on his titles were to be presented on the winter solstice, Harry hadn't thought it important enough to discuss right away, but Voldemort felt differently, and was quite loud about it. So they spent the next week in discussion on the matter-

"What do you mean there's a triad blood feud-"

"Would you read the bloody details, all these feuding Houses are under your control-"

"So then-?"

Some of it had been fun (the blood feuds, specifically, there was a really cool ritual for that he could do later) and some more had been so mind-numbingly boring that Harry had fallen asleep in the middle of reading documents aloud and Voldemort had made a shrill noise so unearthly even he was surprised he'd produced it, afterward.

Speaking of which. "You know, I don't think you're supposed to be able to move around this much yet," Harry pointed out. Just yesterday Hermione had informed him that Muggle babies, at least, couldn't even hold their own heads up before four months; Ron, the most informed of all of them, had agreed that 'Thomas' was growing up faster than was strictly natural.

Voldemort waved off his concerns, looking remarkbly snooty for an infant. "It's a product of the reincarnation, more than likely," he insisted, floating himself across the table to read over Harry's shoulder. "I'd go into the maths of it, and the soul magic theorems, but you're not going to understand a whit of it."

Of course Harry requested the Dark Lord explain it anyway, and then his head was spinning with phrases like 'metaphysical tesseract' and 'the determinant of a three-by-three matrix' and 'have you considered doing your A-levels, Harry, and going to uni before you ask for complicated answers next time?'

Kreacher's shifty-eyed suggestion that Thomas was 'blessed by the outer gods' was absolutely terrifying, thank you, Kreacher, and Harry tried not to examine either explanation too closely.

Molly - she kept reminding Harry that he'd more than earned a first-name basis - had after the big Burrow meeting begun making a point of coming by to advise on the care and keeping of Baby Thomas at least once a week, which Harry found a welcome break in the routine they otherwise maintained. It was at her urging that he eventually got in touch with a specialist Healer to give Thomas a checkup: something Harry would never have thought of on his own, as the Dursleys had never brought him to the Muggle equivalent.

Healer Inwood was a witch with a care-worn face and broad hands, a longtime friend of Molly's who had only just returned to Britain after fleeing the war. She pronounced Tom an exceptionally healthy eight-month-old by her reckoning, and congratulated Harry on managing to raise him during wartime, of all times, how did he work that out with the mother?

"He was adopted, actually," Harry rushed to clarify. "His mother entrusted me with him earlier in the month. The war, and all," he made a vague hand gesture that encapsulated the situation.

Gossip mostly averted (though there was a damp shine in Healer Inwood's sympathetic eyes), Harry let his guard down - and found himself being examined next, at the healer's polite insistence that it was 'no trouble, young man, I am already here, and I owe it to young Thomas to ensure you are well.'

(Ironic.)

Then the basic diagnostic charms Inwood said she was casting lit him up like a rainbow, and Harry remembered why he didn't exactly like the hospital wing. The healer gaped at him for a moment before she reined it in, and cast several more spells, the results of which each seemed to alarm her more than the last. Voldemort watched the scene with rapt attention as Inwood muttered to herself in French, taking each of Harry's wrists in her hands and feeling at his pulse, or something, Harry didn't know what healers did besides fix magical injuries and fuss over him.

"Mr. Potter," Inwood said eventually, "with your permission I would like to call in a few of my colleagues to consult on this - under extensive confidentiality vows, I assure you-"

Harry blinked at her. "Erm. Sure, but why? Is something wrong?"

She choked. "'Is something wrong' - to be quite frank with you, Mr. Potter-"

"Harry, please-"

"-Harry, it would be a shorter list to say what's right!" Inwood took a moment to compose herself. "I will fire-call them presently."

As the Healer hurried out of the sitting room to use the Floo downstairs, Harry accepted a fortifying cup of tea - spiked liberally with brandy - from Kreacher, and looked to Voldemort for answers. "What's all this then, do you think?"

"Your guess is better than mine. The golem body I constructed was not alive enough to require healers on retainer, and my Death Eaters either healed themselves, hired private physicians, or died, I never paid much attention to it."

"No, I mean all the wandwork," Harry clarified. "What do they need so many spells for anyway? And I feel perfectly fine, how do they know the spells aren't wrong?"

"Those are all standard diagnostics," Voldemort scoffed. "They used them even back in my Hogwarts years - you'd have seen them before in your yearly physical like everyone else."

Harry stared at him.

"Potter, you did get yearly physicals, right?"

"..I didn't even know Hogwarts did those," Harry said sheepishly. "I only ever went to the hospital wing when me or my friends were sick."

Voldemort looked like he wanted to go on a rant, but Harry was spared by Inwood's return - with two more people in Healers' robes. "Good day, Mr. Potter," the wizard on the left greeted, "I am Apprentice Healer Danby, of Healer Inwood's retinue."

"Healer Windon, at your service," the cheerful witch on Inwood's right chirruped with a jaunty salute that reminded Harry a lot of Tonks. "Danby's here as my apprentice. Inwood is our department lead and supervisor at Thames International Hospital."

"Erm. Nice to meet you all," Harry waved. "I'm Harry, and-" he glanced at Voldemort, having nearly forgotten about him for a moment, "-this is my adopted son Thomas."

Danby said hello to Thomas in that weird way people talked to babies; Windon, meanwhile, amused Harry by acknowledging the baby with a polite "Thomas Potter," as if he could understand her perfectly well on his own. (Which, unbeknownst to her, he could.) Further observation was interrupted by Inwood activating the chalk circle she'd drawn on the floor around Harry while he was distracted, and a series of peculiar little tests that the three Healers had Harry perform for them. He lifted crystals in his hands, cast a few different spells with and without a wand at their direction, and was instructed to try and sense a spell being cast with his eyes closed; then there were more Muggle tests, like hopping on one foot, lifting and lowering his arms, attempting various flexible poses, staring at a moving light, and so on. He couldn't for the life of him figure out what it was all for.

Which was why it was so surprising and kind of funny to see the Healers exchanging words in French and repeating the diagnostic spells, resembling nothing more than agitated wasps - and even more surprising to learn that not only was there indeed a lot wrong with him, but:

"How in the bleeding hell are you alive?" Danby sputtered, close to tearing his hair out in frustration.

Windon shot Danby a glare and repudiated him in French. "Pardon my apprentice's bluntness," she said to Harry, "this is only his second month of residency, and you are a somewhat interesting case."

"How so?" Harry finally asked.

It fell to Inwood to explain. "Harry," she began, hesitating, "keeping in mind that everyone here is under confidentiality, would you agree that you were raised in an environment with little in the way of food, and other things that a growing person might need?"

"Well, yeah," Harry shrugged, "they kept me in a cupboard and didn't feed me much."

Danby and Windon exchanged a look.

Inwood sighed. "I suppose it's good that you know that's not a good thing, at least." She went on: "All evidence indicates that you have been sustaining yourself with magic since early childhood, if not longer, in lieu of essential nutrients from food, water, and sunlight. We normally see this in survivors of famine, drought, or natural disaster, for whom it is considered a medical emergency."

"I feel fine, though," Harry had to point out, and the Healer nodded.

"You would," she agreed, "given that this has been the case for your entire life - but had you ever been in a situation where your magic was stifled, it would have been immediately fatal."

Harry resisted the urge to look at Voldemort, just knowing the man was kicking himself for never thinking of that. "So then, what do I do about it?"

The answer to that was, 'a lot of things, here's a chart with steps'. The healers talked about balancing magic and the body, parts of which were oddly reminiscent of Voldemort's explanation for his accelerated aging; he was given a whole book of exercises for physical rehabilitation as if he were a coma patient, with an extensive potions regimen on top of that, and orders for strict bed rest for a week, Mr. Potter, to quote Inwood directly.

Harry promised to start on his prescribed routine within the week, and to follow up with Inwood directly a week after that, and soon was bidding the three Healers farewell-

At which point he turned to Voldemort and went, "What do you think of all this?"

The baby giggled, and through Legilimency, Voldemort projected endless laughter at his expense. "To think," he cackled, "all this time - you're no more alive than I was!"

"'Neither can live while the other survives,'" Harry quoted, considering the prophecy in a new light. "But wait - why didn't any of this show up when I went for the inheritance test at Gringotts?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Harry. Why would an inheritance test ever include a health screening?"

They came back to the subject at dinner, later. "I've thought it over," Voldemort said without preamble, sucking nutrient broth through a straw. "Powering my golem body with magic took up a solid half of my magical capacity at any given time. If you've been doing the same thing, all this while, and still managed to keep up with Death Eaters twice or thrice your age in duels, it's more than likely you have enough raw power to rival me at my prime - or Dumbledore at his, long may he rot."

Harry scrunched his nose up at the quip, but otherwise ignored it. "So there's actual benefits to me going through with all the recovery steps, then," he observed with a grimace. "Besides, well, the whole not-dying thing."

"Not only 'not dying' but 'living longer,'" Voldemort pointed out. "You did hear the part where Inwood said you'd only live to eighty if you kept going at this rate? And fifty if you took up a strenuous job - like being an Auror."

"Fifty is kind of young, but eighty isn't bad," Harry said.

Voldemort choked on his broth. "You think eighty is old ? Potter, wizards are meant to live to three hundred !"

"I thought that was an exception, not the rule."

"The Flamels are only considered impressive for crossing four hundred - two-fifty to three-fifty is the standard for anyone who actually manages to die of old age!"

If that was the case, then.. Harry squinted at him. "Why did you worry so much about dying, then? If you had centuries ahead of you?"

Voldemort leveled him with a flat stare. "I was in London. They were dropping bombs on London. Of course I was afraid of dying."

Right. Harry grimaced. He'd forgotten about that.

Chapter Text

Three days later, having made barely a dent in all the damn scrolls from Gringotts because he kept getting tired after only a few hours - despite sitting in bed the entire time - Harry’s patience, which had never been particularly long, finally gave out.

“I am so bloody sick of this slow health regimen!” he bellowed, throwing the notepad he’d been using across the room. It didn’t even reach the wall, and he flopped back against the pillows, gasping for breath. “Why’s it - taking so damn long - to work?”

Minutes passed before he’d recovered, pulse racing like he’d run a marathon - or done intensive Quidditch practice. “Back me up on this, won’t you? It’s stupid.”

Voldemort sent him the most unimpressed look he could manage; which, as he continued his accelerated aging, was becoming slightly more unimpressed each time. “You cannot take shortcuts with your health, Harry,” he repeated the Healers’ words, deliberately, as though Harry were someone very slow. “Besides, you have it much easier than I did: I had to spend more than a year as an accursed infant, helpless in the hands of incompetent servants, while preparing my golem body. Here you are, in full control of your bodily functions, with a centuries-old house-elf to attend your every need - and intelligent company! You should be grateful.”

“Tch.” Harry shouldn’t have expected to get any sympathy. “So what you’re saying is, you don’t have any rituals that would speed this up? None at all?”

“Sure, if you don’t mind a bit of murder.”

Harry grimaced.

“Hey, you were the one that asked. Now pass me the next scroll in this section, I need to cross-reference.”

Harry couldn’t, actually, as it was out of his reach, and he wasn’t allowed to use wandless magic for the remainder of the week lest he impede his progress. Voldemort smiled a little at this reminder of his pathetic-ness - sadistic bastard - and summoned it himself.

Soon after, Kreacher arrived to re-situate Harry on the bed and provide lunch: Voldemort’s nutrient broth, and Harry’s… nutrient broth. To Voldemort’s’s endless amusement, they were both stuck eating the same thing, except the baby’s still looked better than Harry’s.

“Kreacher is putting the dragon’s-blood in the baby’s food,” the elf reminded Harry when he complained. “Master is not to have any more until after his bed rest is over. Master’s Healer insists.”

“Damn,” Harry grumbled. “Can I get a butterbeer, then?”

“That, Kreacher can be getting.”

(Voldemort was visibly jealous.)

On the fifth day of Harry’s week of bed rest, a familiar magpie Patronus dive-bombed him from the ceiling and settled, fluttering, on his nightstand. “Hey, Harry,” it spoke with George’s voice, “mind letting me in? Mum’s made a bunch of snacks, and I think this is a baby onesie.”

“Kreacher,” Harry yawned, “let George in, have him come upstairs.”

“Will Master be requiring the baby?” Kreacher wrinkled his nose. “Master’s… acquaintance… will need to be supervised, if so.”

“Yeah, sure, I’ll watch them,” Harry handwaved it, summoning a Weasley sweater from the wardrobe to pull on over his pyjama shirt-

Or, well, watching Kreacher do it, after being shrieked at about not exerting himself, and what about ‘strict bed rest’ does Master not understand?

Voldemort was floated into the room in his basket and set down beside Harry on the bed, hissing laughter at his expense, while they listened for the door opening downstairs, and George’s cheery thumping up the staircase. “Harry~,” he called, chuckling, “Mum made chocolate chip muffins~!”

“Proof?” Harry called back. “Won’t believe you til I’ve got one in front of me.”

George appeared in the doorway and obligingly produced the entire, oversized basket of homemade sweets - and what looked suspiciously like a baby-sized sweater, as promised - on the opposite side of the bed as Voldemort’s backed, hemming Harry in. “No pranked food, pinky promise,” he declared. “Mum’s already threatened me over ‘interfering with your recovery’. Recovery from what, anyway, the press?” He flopped into the overstuffed armchair Kreacher had provided for bedside visitors. (It kicked up a small cloud of dust.)

“Ugh, I’d bloody prefer if it were,” Harry began, and related what he could of the situation. By the end, George’s eyes had gone wide as dinnerplates, and he had reached for a Honeydukes chocolate bar, looking faintly ill.

“You fought a whole war like that?” he whispered, looking over Harry as though searching for symptoms. “Shite, mate, I had no idea.”

“Neither did I,” Harry pointed out, between bites of his second chocolate-chip muffin. “Then they put me on this stupid potion to ‘flush my system’ or whatever, and I can barely lift a bloody scroll without getting tired, much less get out of bed.” Not to put too fine a point on it, but Kreacher was using some kind of house-elf magic to spare Harry the indignity of a bedpan.

George grimaced. “That’s… pretty serious, Harry,” he said, quieter. “Like… when Dad was in St. Mungo’s after that snakebite. That bad. I’m… glad you’re alright.”

Harry decided it might be best to change the subject. Especially with Voldemort radiating I told you so in his general direction, from the basket. “Never mind all that,” he insisted, “let’s have a look at this Weasley sweater, eh?”

Minutes later, Voldemort was done up in a rainbow knit onesie with a white ‘T’ on the front, and shooting death glares at the two of them. Harry had to look away before he asphyxiated from laughing too hard. George vowed to convey his request for more garish baby clothes to Molly, on his way out.

“I will find a way to ensure you regret this,” Voldemort hissed as soon as George was gone.

“Oh come on,” Harry griped, “you Cruciated your Death Eaters to cheer you up all the time!”

“I was insane, what’s your excuse?”

The dawn of the eighth day made itself known to Harry before the sun fully rose, as he woke from a dead sleep to a sudden feeling of building energy - like the telltale fizz and crackle of a Filibuster’s Firework, freshly lit, seconds away from going off. “What the fuck,” he yelped, bolting out of bed - not even realizing that he’d managed to stand on his own for the first time in the whole week - and fleeing into the hallway, looking around for the room where Voldemort was supposed to be sleeping. “KREACHER!”

“What is Master - oh, dear,” Kreacher exclaimed, and Harry sensed more than felt the elf grabbing his wrist and Apparating them both somewhere else before the energy reached threshold and his senses whited out.

He opened his eyes again on a hillside, somewhere, staring up at the pinkening sky from the center of a wide circle of singed brown grass. Very much like a firework, Harry decided, eyeing the tendrils of smoke drifting in the wind.

“-with us, Mister Potter?” someone was asking him. Harry blinked several times and sat up, which was about when he started to notice what was going on.

To his left, past the edge of the burnt grass circle, was Kreacher, and Healer Inwood’s team. To his right, there were half a dozen Aurors.

They were all looking at him, and he was - just in his underpants.

“I - I can explain?”

Chapter Text

Kreacher swiftly provided Harry with clothes to wear, while the Aurors and the Healers argued. Apparently, while he had broken no public decency laws - this was a nameless Scottish hillside at the crack of dawn, so no, nobody was here - he had managed to produce a surge of energy so strong, and so suddenly, that it set off the DMLE’s detection system for magical bombs.

They’d wanted to bring Harry in to the Ministry holding cells to wait while everything was sorted out - but fortunately, he was Harry Potter and all that, and Healer Inwood was very insistent that his recovery not be impeded by the magic-dampening handcuffs the Aurors carried. Ultimately, Harry was allowed to go home to continue his recovery, and Kreacher didn’t have to carry out his threat of knifing anyone who tried to arrest Harry that day.

(Where had he gotten that knife? It looked more like a short sword.)

“How generous of them,” Voldemort drawled, when Harry recounted the tale an hour later.

“Yeah, I was worried for a minute-”

“Did you get their names?”

“...No?” Why would he?

“Ask Kreacher. He should have gotten a list.”

Kreacher did have a list. Harry did not understand what the list was for, but he had it. He said as much to Voldemort.

“Are you daft? They need to be paid off, Potter, or are you asking for the press release?”

Sending bribes to the relevant Aurors, and a thank-you gift to Inwood and co., meant returning to Gringotts. Harry, slightly manic with the amount of energy now suffusing his body, decided he was going to bring Voldemort. Ahem. ‘Baby Thomas’.

He related this decision over a hearty breakfast - the first he’d had in a week, now that the potions were finally out of his system - and was a little surprised to receive approval: not just from Voldemort, but also from Kreacher. “Kreacher will be preparing clothes for the Master and the Young Master,” which was what he’d started calling Baby Thomas after Harry pointed out he’d adopted him.

So it was that Harry emerged an hour later from a much-needed bath to find clothes laid out on his bed: a shirt and trousers and such, and an over-robe with wide sleeves that he thought resembled a Hogwarts professor’s.

“Old-fashioned,” observed Voldemort, “but it’ll do.”

He did not feel the same way about his own baby clothes, however. Apparently - Harry half-listened as he ate a snack - the fabric was both too smooth and too stiff, pulling in weird places, restricting his range of motion, and the embroidery on the wrists was chafing Voldemort’s skin. The toddler fussed and complained and devolved into wordless angry hissing until Harry finally remembered the incantation for a spell that temporarily blocked all sensation below the neck, something he’d found in a volume of the Black family grimoire last week, and Voldemort glared at him, but subsided.

“C’mon, we’ll go to Madam Malkin first and get new clothes for you,” Harry muttered.

“Twilfitt and Tatting.”

“Huh?”

“I insist on being tailored at Twilfitt and Tatting.”

It would not do to be seen heading into Gringotts for the bribery too early-

(“How would anyone know it’s for the bribery?”

“They wouldn’t, not immediately, but eventually? Gossip finds a way.”)

-so they went to Twilfitt and Tatting first.

Harry had been dubious about just showing up without an appointment, but Tatting was apparently one of the unmarked Death Eaters - that is to say, a vassal of House Voldemort - and recognized Harry as the successor-by-conquest on sight.

(It helped that, for the first time, Harry hadn’t stumbled out of his Apparition - one of the many little inconveniences of his life that had turned out to have been symptoms of his magical imbalance, and therefore, had now disappeared.)

So there he was, in some posh tailor’s shop on Knockturn that he vaguely remembered Draco once mentioning, the awkward recipient of Tatting’s enthusiastic chatter, when who should walk in but Narcissa Malfoy, of all people?

She seemed as surprised to see Harry as he was to see her, cutting off whatever she’d been about to say and hastily bowing in his direction. “Good afternoon,” Narcissa greeted in a low voice, “Lord Voldemort.”

Harry twitched, flicking an alarmed glance at “Baby Thomas” before he remembered that, right, he was Lord Voldemort now. “I - yes, good afternoon, Lady Malfoy,” he managed after a second. “Erm. You can just call me Harry, by the way?”

Pale blond brows rose sharply. “Only if you call me Narcissa, my lord,” was the reply as she straightened up. “Forgive me, I had thought Tatting’s schedule was open at this hour; I will return at a later date-”

“Wait,” Harry blurted out, “before you go - can you help me pick out clothes for my son?”

“Your - son?” Narcissa echoed faintly. But she had stopped fleeing for the door, which was progress.

Harry went over to the basket containing Voldemort - who was beginning to fuss again as the sensation-blocking charm slowly wore off. His face was scrunched up in annoyance when Harry held him up for Narcissa to see. “This is Thomas Hadrian Antares Potter-Black,” he introduced, making sure to use the whole name like Kreacher had insisted. “He’s adopted.”

Inexplicably, Narcissa found Baby Thomas adorable. It seemed that, like Kreacher, Draco’s mum actually liked children; go figure.

And she was happy to help him pick clothing for Voldemort, too. Harry had had the benefit of Legilimency communication when it came to choosing fabrics earlier - fine silks and light-weave cottons that were all butter-soft to the touch - but Voldemort now proceeded to fall asleep before Harry could get his opinion on colors.

This turned out to be Narcissa’s area of expertise, about which she could speak at length. Over tea - which Tatting practically fell over himself to provide - she spoke of wizarding traditions around color, superstitions and practical elements alike; patterns, embroidery, and useful elements. “Pockets on baby clothes are for the parents’ benefit,” she said, and in the next breath, “my lord, it is extremely unlucky for children under seven to wear all black all the time, please limit the color to at most once a week.”

Harry put his foot down about outfits consisting of more than three layers - unless it was winter, that was just too much fabric to deal with - but gleefully agreed to magenta ruffles, which Narcissa swore were a traditional color in House Black symbolic of magical prowess. Voldemort had pitched a fit over lace and embroidery earlier, so those were also out, except for one over-layer that would be stitched with real gold thread to illustrate somesuch astrological nonsense of his birthdate and needed to be worn at the next equinox.

(“Guess I’d better do the ritual to figure that out,” Harry muttered, thinking back to the Black grimoires, and missed the startled expression that crossed Narcissa’s face.)

Ultimately, Harry ended up with outfits in dove-grey, three shades of red, two shades of green, a weird sort-of-gold that looked silvery from the right angle, a shade of indigo that even he had to admit looked pretty, and the customary black that he knew Voldemort would insist on wearing whenever nobody was around to see him. Kreacher, Narcissa insisted, would manage the actual dressing process, so Harry wouldn’t have to; and until he was capable of moving himself around, there was no need for shoes, which Harry thought suited Voldemort just fine.

“And now, my lord, we can select your wardrobe,” announced Narcissa brightly.

“Eh? Me?” Harry blinked. “I don’t need anything.” He had plenty of clothes to wear from the attics in Number Twelve; why bother getting more?

“With all due respect,” Narcissa began, “Walburga Black wore that over-robe, my lord.”

Harry was no longer opposed to getting new clothes.