Chapter Text
“You look remarkably like my mother when she was young.”
That was the voice that Harry had been waiting to hear for some months, maybe even a year. For a long time he had been afraid of being alone, and of the dark -- he always drew his bed curtains open with his wand at the ready; he could never study in the library without jumping at sounds and movements that weren’t really there. Ron always walked back to the dormitory with him and Hermione was always up later than he was, studying harder, writing and learning more -- but now, in Fifth Year, Harry found himself a victim of circumstance: Hermione was sick, and Ron was tending to her, and he was in the library all alone, finishing homework in advance of a Quidditch game. Alas.
Harry looked up -- and he had replayed this conversation many times in his mind, over and over again, but somehow it was still a shock to see the face that he had expected: sharp-boned, smiling, handsome. It was his lover’s voice, and -- Harry could see from a glimpse into the eyes -- his lover’s mind, as it had been twenty or thirty years ago. But had schoolboy innocence ever sat so perfectly on Voldemort?
“And you, your Royal Highness,” Harry said, so softly that he could hardly hear it over his own heartbeat, “look remarkably like your father.” He tried to smile; he failed.
Tom Riddle laughed. “I should hope that I have my mother’s hair. My father went bald long before you were born,” he said, just as softly, just as agreeably, and he pulled up the chair next to Harry. Harry froze, but Tom Riddle only stuck out his hand and locked eyes. “It’s nice to meet you, Harry Potter, after everything I’ve heard about you. My name’s Tom Riddle.”
Robbed of a response, Harry could only offer, “And I’ve heard a lot about you, your Royal Highness. All positive, of course… though I don’t expect… It’s a pleasure.” Though he did nothing to stave off the silence, Tom Riddle continued to smile. Now that Tom Riddle wasn’t across the Great Hall, or a classroom, he looked even more unnervingly handsome, and less evil -- warm, almost, Harry thought, even though he knew better than that. Harry shivered.
“Are you cold, cousin?” Tom Riddle half-cooed -- and that was his mother’s voice, suddenly, his mother’s saccharine smirk. He gave Harry no time to respond: “Let me fix that for you.” Under the table Tom Riddle waved his wand, murmuring inaudibly, and heat caressed Harry from the inside. In any other circumstance it would have been cozy, but for Harry, the additional heat flushed him with fear and shame.
“Your Royal Highness…”
“Family friends call me Tom,” Tom Riddle said. “And we are, furthermore, cousins, so let us not stand on formalities, dear Harry.”
Had it been anyone else… Harry gave up. “What do you want?”
“To have the pleasure of your company,” Tom Riddle replied, “and to shower you with gifts.” He didn’t even pretend to use his wand this time; with a flick of his wrist, he sent Harry’s things back into his bag. Harry tried not to glare. “I suppose I’d like to meet the boy that my mother wants so desperately to kill.”
X
They walked to Tom Riddle’s suite in silence, locked arm in arm -- because no matter how much Harry hated it, he lived at Tom Riddle’s pleasure, and Harry’s body belonged to Tom Riddle as surely as it belonged to his father.
Harry had known, when he gave in finally to Voldemort’s advances, that this would happen -- had known that this would happen from the moment he met the Minister for Magic and the Minister had kissed his hand instead of shaking it.
For even if he were not received as a Black, Harry was a charge of the House of Black, and from the gossip that Sirius and Regulus exchanged when they thought he was asleep, Harry knew better than most that Voldemort had married Bellatrix Black for her family’s power, her family’s money, and nothing else; that Voldemort did not attend Quidditch games because he enjoyed the game; that someone like Harry would fall into Voldemort’s orbit sooner or later. Had Sirius and Regulus raised him from the start, Harry would have never been given a broom -- but after a childhood spent in a cupboard, there was nothing that could take the love of flight away from him, not even the attentions of a Minister for Magic, or a Dark Lord.
Quidditch was what he was good at; Quidditch made him happy. What did the price matter?
But now, waiting helplessly as Tom Riddle ordered the house elves to prepare some sort of dessert -- “Not too heavy, and not too sweet,” he assured Harry, smiling; “nothing that will make tomorrow’s game too uncomfortable” -- Harry wondered if it were a price he were rich enough to pay. Here he felt distinctly lowborn: Tom Riddle’s suite was sparse, by Slytherin standards, and at the moment it was -- deliberately -- unlit, but by the moonlight he could see that the room was filled still with priceless treasures, like globes that twirled themselves and shelves of books bound in calfskin with “TOM RIDDLE” embroidered on their spines. And on his bedside stand, there was a miniature of his father, set in a frame of turquoise beryls and sapphires which didn’t do anything for his lover’s complexion.
“ Lumos ,” Tom Riddle’s voice whispered in his ear. Harry, very carefully, did not start, though his heart began to judder again. He had not noticed when the room had fallen silent. It looked even more lifeless in the light, as did Tom Riddle. “What nerves you have, Harry! No wonder why my father admires you so. Sit, please.” He thought resentfully that Tom Riddle had whispered for effect more than anything; according to his own father, Tom Riddle had long ago mastered wandless magic.
Harry sat. Tom Riddle’s bed was, thankfully, not made like his father’s; the linens felt coarse, even. Who was more dangerous to anger: the father or the son? And who was more dangerous to indulge?
Tom Riddle smiled. “I know that your acquaintance with the men of my family is of long standing, but I do not resemble my father in all ways, I hope. I meant at the table.”
Harry flushed. “There wasn’t a table --” -- but, glancing back at the way he had come, there now was a table, and two chairs with velvety seats, and a veritable feast. “Yes, your Royal Highness.” He looked at the seats, at Tom Riddle standing by indifferently, and chose the one by the door.
When he sat, Tom Riddle clucked his tongue. “That’s my seat.” You could have said so, Harry thought, but nevertheless he silently switched seats. “Are you going to talk, Harry? I must confess that I’m failing to see what sets you apart from any other floozy. You have a pretty face, but I’m afraid that I’m going to have to lower my offer considerably if you continue to act this way.”
“Offer,” Harry said, slowly.
“Yes, Harry. Do keep up.” Resting his elbows on the table, Tom Riddle cradled his face against his palm. “Though you ought to tell me what it is that you want, so that I can make an appropriate offer. Go ahead. You can drop this act now. I’ll thank you very handsomely to stay away from my father. Name your price.”
It was useless to protest that it hadn’t been an act -- and besides, with someone like Tom Riddle, being dumb would be worse than playing dumb. Harry straightened in his seat. “Very well,” he said, and tried to think of something that a kept boy would demand: Black properties or money, Slytherin jewels, boxes at Viktor Krum’s games. He stayed silent.
Tom Riddle sighed. “Name your heart’s true desire. Or should I make you an offer instead?”
“Malfoy Manor,” Harry blurted out. To even his own ears it sounded as if though it were the product of long contemplation.
“Done,” Tom Riddle said immediately. And for a moment Harry thought about it, what it would be like if Malfoy Manor were his... “Would you like to inherit the peacocks as well? What day do you want to move in? If you want me to disarm the wards as well, though, you’ll have to promise me more than breaking it off with my father -- ”
… but he didn’t hate Malfoy that much. “I was kidding. You don’t even own Malfoy Manor! Would you really evict your own cousin?”
“As much as my mother loves her, Aunt Narcissa didn’t marry a Dark Lord,” Tom Riddle replied. He smiled a little and relaxed in his chair. “As far as I’m concerned, the house belongs to us, and Draco will live there for as long as we permit it. Do you think the Manor not splendid enough? My mother -- well, I will build you a castle in Romania if you will agree to go away.”
“Charming,” Harry said, dryly. Tom didn’t say anything, and even though food was the last thing he wanted, Harry reached for the roasted pheasant, which was far away enough that he could have stalled for enough time to think of something else -- but Riddle saw what Harry was doing and beat him to it, slicing it with a deft motion of his knife. And, evidently as a precaution, Riddle stood and began serving Harry a little bit of everything.
“I’ll remind you that the friendship of the Houses of Slytherin and Black are not insignificant. I’m sorry about the food. I’m afraid it’s already cold,” Riddle said, poking skeptically at the food. He passed Harry the plate full of very hot food and he didn’t sit back down; instead he began to pace the room. “I didn’t anticipate that it would take you so long. You have a game tomorrow, after all.”
“And how,” Harry asked, before he could quite lose his courage, “would I still be allowed to play Quidditch, if I were to move to a castle in Romania, or Malfoy Manor, in exchange for rejecting your father?”
Riddle looked at him. “Ah,” he said, exhaling, enlightened -- but he wasn’t smiling; his voice was sounding out from behind Harry, but Harry knew that from the shape of his mouth. His father often used the same tone. “That’s what you want.
“More than anything,” Harry replied, and his own earnestness shocked him. He had never acknowledged -- not to Ron, Hermione, or even himself -- how much Quidditch meant to him, and what sacrifices he would make for it; it was easier to pretend that it was only because there had been a vacancy on the team, or that it was the only way he fit into the wizarding world. But he was good at other things, too -- he was good at Defense, and, after Voldemort had someone other than Snape give him Potions lessons, even Potions. Even if he was no Hermione, he was smart and strong and skilled enough, but he didn’t want to be an Auror: it was Quidditch he was willing to die for.
“Do you mean that?” Riddle asked. Harry wondered if Riddle was a Legilimens too, or if he, too, could sense the rhythms of Harry’s heart and mind without even looking. “I don’t know how to give you what you want, and I’m not the only one who’s trying to get you to go, you know. I can guarantee you that my mother will break your legs. Or worse.”
“I want you to make your father forget about me,” Harry said. He tried to sense what Riddle must be feeling, felt nothing -- and added, half-questioning, “More than I want Malfoy Manor.”
“Really, Harry, I don’t owe you anything. It’s -- unusual, to say the least, that I’m offering you a settlement of some kind. Most families would have gotten rid of you by now. It would be easy for us to send you to Azkaban, or to arrange for an accident.”
“Your father would never allow it,” Harry pointed out. “If your mother could have done it, she would have, wouldn’t she? You wouldn’t be talking to me right now.” Riddle was silent. “If she kills me, she’ll die too, won’t she? I don’t think that’s a risk she’ll take.”
Riddle hissed -- his eyes flashed -- but he recomposed himself. “Mr. Potter, you don’t know my mother.”
“Harry,” Harry interjected. “It’s Harry. As cousins, we aren’t to stand on ceremony, remember?” Score. He felt himself smiling for the first time since Ron and Hermione had waved goodbye -- just a few impossible hours earlier.
“She’ll kill you, and then she’ll kill herself. If you value your life…”
Harry rolled his eyes and chewed his food for longer than strictly necessary, though in truth his stomach was too constricted for him to be anything close to hungry. “Why do you care so much about what your mother thinks, anyway, if Voldemort does this all the time? If he doesn’t care for me, he won’t care if I disappear. If he does, someone’s head will roll.” Maybe even Harry’s own -- despite his own bravado, he was glad that Riddle wasn’t looking at him.
“Don’t call my father that. He might hear us.”
“That’s just a superstition.” Morgana knew he had used Voldemort’s name and said worse to Hermione and Ron in the wee hours of the night.
And now Riddle was looking at him. “Do you really want to know why?” Harry’s mouth was full of food, but he tried to respond anyway; Riddle flinched, much like Draco would have. “Don’t do that. Rumor has it that you are in line to be the next Dark Lady.” Harry came perilously close to choking. Riddle was content to watch him languidly and took the moment to reseat himself. “Yes, Harry. My father is planning on divorcing my mother and marrying you instead. You wouldn’t survive a Dark Ladyship. My mother murdering you is the best you could hope for. This is a humanitarian mission, really,” Riddle was saying, but Harry wasn’t listening.
Of course. He should have known, he thought, swallowing. Voldemort’s sweet nothings, bestowed in the drowsy moments of the morning -- just before Harry flooed to Hogwarts -- weren’t nothing after all: Voldemort really had been watching his Quidditch career since he had first mounted a broom; Harry really was the love, or something, of Voldemort’s immortal life… And if that were all true, everything else was true as well. Voldemort would never let him out of his sight again; Quidditch had only served to recommend Harry to Voldemort, but it was far too risky an activity for a Dark Lady. Since marrying the Dark Lord, Bellatrix had lived in a cage -- and he didn’t even care for her, hadn’t even ‘bedded’ (for that was the Dark Lord’s word) her since his son’s conception. How much worse would it be for Harry?
But as Bellatrix’s son, Tom had every incentive in the world to help Harry. Harry felt himself relax, involuntarily; he knew he should keep his guard up, but now he knew that he was in no real danger.
“If Voldie,” -- how like his father’s smile was Riddle’s glare! -- “were to send your mother off to a convent or something, you’d become illegitimate, right? Just like with Henry the Eighth and Catherine of Aragon… or something.
“How dare you,” Riddle said, hotly. “He adores me. But even if he didn’t, he’s said before that he doesn’t want to have contact with women again.”
But his response told Harry that he’d hit a nerve.
“Well, Voldie doesn’t need an heir if he’s immortal.”
Riddle scowled. His fingers twitched against the tabletop. “My father told you about that?”
“He’s seventy,” Harry said, yawning and stretching his arms behind his head. “And keeps talking about how he wants to spend, and I quote, ‘the rest of my life with me’. You know, not his life. It’s pretty obvious.”
“Whatever happened to ‘your Royal Highness’?”
“I figure that you need me way more than I need you. Since, you know, I’m about to become your actual stepfather and everything.” Harry beamed suddenly, full of life. “And I bet Voldie would punish you if I were to tell him about this, right?”
“I’m his heir, his only child, his beloved son,” Riddle said. He sounded more uncertain than before.
“Your family would lose everything. Imagine, you might even be reduced to living with Draco! If that. Your mother would go to the convent and he might have to kill you, because you would imperil my sons.” Harry wagged his finger. “Don’t cross me,” he said, and took a deep sip of the -- wine? Cranberry juice. “Merlin, this isn’t even actual red wine? What do you take me for?”
“You’re playing Quidditch tomorrow,” Riddle grumbled. “At least cranberry juice is roughly the same color.”
“You’re not anything like Voldie,” Harry said, pouting. “Your daddy always gives me the good stuff.”
Through gritted teeth, Riddle said, “Don’t call him those things. And don’t call me Tommy.” And added grudgingly: “It’s bad enough when my mother does it.”
“You don’t even like your mother, do you?”
“I honor the woman who bore me,” Riddle responded.
“So, no.”
Silence. Harry clapped his hands together. “Well, if you don’t want to talk anymore, I’ll just be going. Big game tomorrow and all that.”
“Don’t go yet, Potter --”
“You sound just like your daddy,” Harry cooed, as much like Bellatrix as he could. He had been informed before that he was an excellent mimic, and Riddle seemed to agree; a nerve twitched in his face and, uncharacteristic as it was for the Prince of Slytherin, the heir of Voldemort, Riddle began to splutter. “Good night, Tommy!” He ducked whatever hex it was that was sent his way, opened the door, and began to run.
X
Dreamless Sleep had become a mainstay of Harry’s bedtime routine since he had arrived in the Wizarding World, full of the darkness of cupboards; his use of it had intensified after he had started playing Quidditch and become the pride of Gryffindor; he hadn’t missed a night since the day he had become Voldemort’s lover.
Harry took off his glasses, spelled his curtains dark and impenetrable, and drank his night’s dose of Dreamless Sleep. He cleared his mind, the way his Quidditch trainer had instructed him to do, and slept.
But despite everything he could do to prevent it, Harry dreamed. Or maybe the Dreamless Sleep worked after all and he was only thinking, not dreaming, because probably he was only half-asleep: he could never sleep the night before a Quidditch match; his eyes would flash open to gold, and his ears would buzz with the sounds of snitches.
And now his dreams were too real to be dreams.
Harry thought of Voldemort, of seeing him at Hogwarts years ago on Harry’s first ever day in the Wizarding World. He had been handsomer, then, from a distance; the broad light of day had taken away much of the blueness of his complexion and made brilliant his red eyes. And Bellatrix had been with him, hovering a few steps behind her husband, holding her son’s hand in her own. How lovely Bellatrix was, with her black curls and black veil and red lips and her eyelashes like dripping venom. How much like his mother Riddle looked: already his mother’s height at thirteen, and with his father’s arrogance.
It had never occurred to Harry, then, that they were the First Family, no matter Bellatrix’s loveliness, or that the crowd parted around them, that Riddle sat just apart enough at Slytherin’s table. Even later it seemed unbelievable, for what oddity was there in their family that marked them out for such a distinction? The husband, accomplished, an acclaimed philanderer; the wife, lovely, blue-blooded, mournful somehow; the son beautiful as a statue, and serious as one, always in the nicest robes.
Harry had seen many such families while he lived with the Dursleys, and he had always been amazed by his jailors’ capacity for envy when the Dursleys slept in spacious, airy, bright bedrooms, and ate abundantly, and often sat around watching the telly, reading magazines, and sometimes they left him at home and went to seasides and lavender fields that they brought back postcards of and didn’t let him touch. What could be more opulent? Harry had never imagined that even people like Tom Riddle lived in bigger houses in the Dursleys’, or ate finer food, or went to more faraway places.
It was only slowly that the degree of Harry’s deprivation, and of other people’s wealth, became apparent to him, and in tiny ways. The Patil twins had ink quills made of heavy glass that sparkled and scintillated when the light touched them, and were light in your hand; even the knits of Ron’s jumpers, and then the jumpers which Molly Weasley sent to him, were more intricate than anything Harry had ever worn. Even now, when Voldemort showered him in things sensuous and costly, Harry still liked to touch Molly Weasley’s jumpers sometimes, even though the wool was itchy. And then there were the brooms.
That had been the moment, probably, that he had made up his mind to play Quidditch, and to be good at it, when he saw Malfoy on his Nimbus 2000. Of course, later there came the Nimbus 2001, and then there was the Firebolt that Voldemort gave him after their first month together that traveled across the sky only a little slower than sound, but even the memory of Malfoy’s Nimbus 2000 tasted like the thrill of Quidditch: love, joy, triumph, everything that he willed himself to feel in Voldemort’s arms. And how Voldemort loved him.
Harry felt so drowsy, so quiet; he wanted to stir, but his body was holding him in an iron cage of fatigue. It felt as if though Harry had been awake for hours, and indeed, he could hear the other boys beginning to wake up; Ron had always been an early riser, and there he was, humming now, making his bed. Ron rustled -- it was Ron; it could be no one but Ron -- near his bed curtains. Harry wanted to call Ron’s name, but his lips wouldn’t move, and his eyes wouldn’t open.
Maybe fifteen minutes more.