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In Due Thyme Post-Second War AU | Forced Marriage AU | Voldemort is bad at feelings | But he has a lot of them | Pre-relationship (but married)
The main hall was a madhouse.
Voldemort’s death eaters were scurrying everywhere, their arms overloaded with what looked to be half a forest’s worth of greenery. Fir branches spilled down the banister of the central staircase like a winter waterfall, the tips of the needles brushed a delicate gold, and bunches of bright, red berries were tucked into every possible nook and cranny. Silver ribbon was gathered into rosettes and spooled from the ceiling in long, graceful arcs, cascading across the elegant antiques that Voldemort had carefully selected to grace his manorhouse with a riotous disregard for restraint–or good taste.
Tiny conjured snowflakes spun from the ceiling in dizzying whirls, fading out of existence before they could land on the marble floors, and bright, multi-colored lights sparkled madly as they darted through the air like particularly exuberant doxies. There were several radios playing, not all of them tuned to the same channel, and the discordant clash of christmas music warred with the voices of his minions as they shouted instructions at each other with a similar lack of decorum.
And in the center of the maelstrom stood the bane of his existence, one Harry Potter.
His dark head was bent as he conferred with a man holding a large blanket-covered basket. Several somethings were wriggling under the fabric and bright red sparks kept shooting out ominously from between the woven wooden canes. It was impossible to hear what his husband was saying, but judging by the way the death eater he was talking to was nodding enthusiastically, Voldemort wanted no part of it.
Voldemort let out a long, hissing breath, then turned on his heel and stormed out of the room. He could feel the beginning of a headache building behind his eyes and he grit his teeth as every turn only revealed another bit of manic holiday cheer tucked into the previously calm rooms of Voldemort’s home.
At least his office was untouched. Grimly, Voldemort cast a series of warding spells, blocking out the sounds of the chaos, and sat down at his desk to work. Never in his life had he appreciated the endless paperwork that came with being the dictator of a small country more. It was easy to soothe his irritated temper with the banalities of forms and the simple, comfortingly petty vengeances of subtly ruining the pet projects of the more annoying of his followers.
Lucius’ peacock breeding sanctuary was about to have to deal with a lot more red tape.
Hours later, Voldemort surfaced for air with the reluctant realization that the tax issue he was looking at was going to require an actual trip to the library for references. A quick tempus told him he had missed dinner and that it was nearly midnight. He put his quill down and stared at the door. He could summon one of the elves and send them to get the books he required, but Voldemort didn’t consider himself a coward.
On the other hand, discretion was the better part of valor.
He lowered the wards on the door and listened. It was quiet. He rose from his desk with a muffled groan, stretching his stiff muscles, and opened the door.
It was still quiet.
Music was playing somewhere in the distance, something softer and less obnoxious than the christmas jingles that had been blaring earlier, but Voldemort had to strain to hear it. The hallways were empty, with no sign of the Death Eaters who had been crowding the space mere hours earlier, and the lights were dimmed. It seemed safe enough.
Wrapping a warming charm around his shoulders to fight the cold drafts that plagued even a magical house in winter, Voldemort ventured forth. He found himself retracing his earlier steps, driven by a morbid curiosity as he took in the changes to his house. They were… less extreme than he had originally feared.
Elegant bundles of greenery graced the doors and windows, making a refreshing contrast against the bleak winter landscape outside. The gilded tips of the pine needles, which had seemed gaudy in the brightly lit whirlwind of activity he had arrived home to find, had a subtle shimmer in the low light of the enchanted baubles that were woven around them. Within each orb a tiny blue flame burned, a seed of fire to warm the turning year and bloom in time to summer’s heat. The glass window panes were glazed with magical frost that shifted in slow, fractal patterns as it drew and redrew runes for good health and luck for those who dwelled within the home. Voldemort could quietly admit it was attractive, even if nothing he would have chosen for himself.
Voldemort frowned. What would he have chosen for himself, he wondered suddenly.
The winter holidays had always been overshadowed by the opportunities that came with them. As a child at Wools, Christmas had brought an influx of donations from wealthy patrons and with it, a chance for his younger self to charm, con or steal luxuries like rich food or better quality clothing that he saw at no other time of the year.
As a young adult, he had been too busy furiously learning about the wizarding traditions that came with the Yuletide celebrations to pay attention to the specifics of personal taste. Voldemort had been at war, after all, waging a silent campaign of charm and subtle magic to claw his way up into the good graces of the old houses. They had initially possessed little patience for the mudblood friend their children had insisted on bringing home with them, so Tom had been forced to prove himself exceptional in–well, everything, over and over again.
He had memorized every story, every blessing, every nuanced social grace and esoteric ritual. He could light the candles with his breath and a spark of wandless magic to carry the light of life into the coming season, he knew how much blood to add to the mulled wine and where, precisely, to cut to favor the gods of each particular noble house. He could dance, dine and hunt with the best of them, but most importantly, he knew when not to excel.
He shone brilliantly, but he never outshone his host.
Voldemort had made himself into a graceful ornament, charming and witty, but demure and aware of his place. The Pureblood families had patted themselves on the backs for finding such a useful tool, and paraded him around to show each other exactly how open minded they could be, if only the muggleborns would learn how to behave correctly.
How well he had done, they had told him with condescending smirks, for someone with his disadvantages. How remarkably clever he was, for mastering these things their children had learned by the age of six.
And Voldemort? Voldemort had smiled and thanked them for their disdain and eaten their children for their parent’s sins against him, branding them like slaves. He had stolen their secret magics, twisted their wards to his bidding and made himself the master of their houses. They had taken an asp to their bosom and though it had taken him decades longer than he had initially planned, he had waged his war to completion and won.
There had been little time for whimsies in the midst of that.
So why, Voldemort mused, had there been no time for them after? He trailed a hand through the frost on the window and watched it repair itself where the heat of his fingers had melted it, rewriting its wishes for good fortune over and over again. There had been a time when he had coveted these things for himself, hadn’t there? A time when he had been hungry for more than the trappings of power.
Voldemort turned away and continued to drift through his quiet house, unable to name the odd mood that had settled in his heart. Everywhere he looked, he could see Harry’s hand at work, and he wondered when the boy had bothered to learn about wizarding traditions. He had discovered–far too late to be of any use, to his irritation– that the boy’s upbringing had been muggle. Had, in fact, shared uncomfortable parallels with Voldemort’s own.
Had Harry also spent time in the Hogwarts library, reading frantically about a world he had been thrust into entirely unprepared? Did he have friends who had taken him home with them and opened their hearts and hearths to him, who had introduced him to the culture he was born to belong to? Did the Weasleys, blood traitors that they were, even keep the old ways?
Voldemort didn’t know. He had never cared to ask. It had been enough for him to bind the boy—the man, now, five years past the end of the war and the Light’s carefully negotiated surrender—to his purposes and his side. He had moved Harry into his manor, wed him, bed him the once to ensure the ritual ties between them set strong and unbreakable and then left him to his own devices. The vows Harry had made would keep him out of trouble and Voldemort had a country to build.
If he had occasionally dreamed of wide green eyes and sleek, tanned flesh beneath his pale hands, well, that was his own business. He was busy. His horcrux was tamed and could entertain himself.
Voldemort pushed open the door to the main hall and came to an abrupt stop, shocked out of his musings by the sight before him.
The room had been utterly transformed. Astonished, Voldemort stepped forward and let the door swing shut on silent hinges behind him. He craned his neck to take in the changes, turning in a slow circle.
The enchanted snow he had seen earlier had continued to fall over the hours he had spent working. It had settled in gentle drifts on top of the fir-wrapped banister and along the edges of the room, softening the harsh lines of the manmade space into something that was hauntingly natural. Silver birch trees rose in slender pillars along the walls, spreading bare branches up to frame the enchanted sky that had taken the place of the ceiling. Every twig and branch was coated in a thick layer of ice, making the wood shine like crystal beneath the shifting lights of countless hovering orbs that glowed like stars in the dark room.
As Voldemort made his way slowly towards the center of the hall, the fragrant scent of crushed herbs rose from the ground beneath his bare feet. Startled, he looked down and realized that what he had assumed to be black marble was in fact low, dense groundcover. He crouched, robes billowing around him, and picked a sprig, rolling it between his fingers. Thyme. Tiny white flowers bloomed against the dark leaves like snowflakes, caught in the moment before they melted.
Voldemort frowned. Thyme was not one of the traditional herbs used to mark the passing of the Winter Solstice and the darkest night of the year. He let the plant drop back to the floor and tilted his head, considering. What did this mean? Was it a deliberate choice or one made in ignorance? Had the boy simply thought it would look festive or did it have some deeper meaning that Voldemort had not yet divined?
“For courage,” came a familiar voice from behind him. Voldemort rose to his feet in one smooth motion, only barely keeping himself from drawing his wand despite the fact that he knew there was no danger here.
“And for protection,” Harry Potter added, taking a sip from a steaming mug he was holding. He was leaning casually against the door Voldemort had entered from, dressed in simple dark robes.
Voldemort tilted his head to one side, watching the man for a long moment.
“Do you find yourself in need of protection from me, Harry Potter?” He asked, genuinely curious. They had seen each other only in passing over the last few years, living like ghosts in the same house. He drifted closer, breathing in the sharp, clean aroma of the crushed plants underneath his feet and the cold, damp scent of fresh snow. Voldemort found himself mildly disappointed that he couldn’t smell Harry; the enhanced senses that had come with his new body had been a surprising boon in reading what others were trying to hide from him.
Perhaps that was the real reason for the thyme? Voldemort touched his sheathed wand gently, more for the comfort of the action than any real need to draw it. The smooth yew wood warmed companionably beneath his fingers, making them tingle.
“No,” Harry said. He was watching Voldemort closely, but his body language remained open and relaxed. He made no move to draw his own wand. Instead, he opted to take another sip from his cup. “It’s not for me, anyway.”
Voldemort felt his brows raise. “Who of yours needs protection?” he asked. Many of Harry’s friends had parted ways with him after he had bound himself to Voldemort, though the Weasleys and that bushy-haired mudblood of his remained loyal to a fault. Still, if he had needed help, Voldemort had assumed the man would ask him. The vows between them worked both ways, after all, and Harry’s enemies were Voldemort’s enemies. His horcrux’s safety was paramount.
Harry didn’t answer. Instead, he let his gaze drift away, taking in the room. “Do you like them?”
“The decorations?” Voldemort looked around. “They’re lovely, I suppose.” The words felt odd in his mouth. They were the sort of pleasantries you exchanged with strangers, back when Voldemort had been forced to care about such things. For all that he failed to understand Harry Potter, they were anything, but strangers.
“It reminds me of Hogwarts,” Voldemort added for lack of anything better to say. “And my first winter with the Malfoys.”
“After you resurrected?” Harry asked curiously.
“No,” Voldemort said. “When I was a boy. He invited me home in second year.” After he had seen a young Voldemort’s first year exam results and decided that the boy, despite his lack of ‘proper breeding,’ was worth keeping in his pocket. Horace wasn’t the only one with a collection, after all. Every proper Slytherin had one.
Voldemort allowed his thin, lipless mouth to curve into a cold smile. His collection was the best, though, with an entire country to sort through in the search of useful talent.
“Oh,” said Harry, looking oddly pleased by Voldemort’s inane comments. He turned his mug in his hand, tilting it as if he was checking his tea leaves, but his gaze was riveted on Voldemort’s mouth.
“I’ve never seen you smile before. I didn’t know you could.”
Voldemort felt his expression freeze in place. He had let his guard down. There was something about the softness of the night and the strange, almost nostalgic mood the yuletide decorations had stirred in him that had left him feeling… peculiarly vulnerable. His skin crawled uncomfortably.
Harry laughed suddenly, a sharp bark of sound that made Voldemort want to curse him. He raised a hand to cover his mouth as he tried and failed to hide a grin. “Merlin, we’re bad at this, aren’t we,” he said ruefully.
“Bad at what?” Voldemort snapped.
“Pretending to be people,” Harry said with a shrug. “Doing, y’know, this. Making small talk.”
Pretending to be a person. Because Voldemort, after all, was the monster in the room.
Harry laughed again, his grin crooked and mocking as he glanced down at his cup, and Voldemort felt his magic flare around him in silent rage.
Pointless. This had been absolutely pointless. Voldemort had let himself be ruled by emotion and nostalgia, wasting the time he could have spent doing more productive things to gawp like a first year seeing Hogwarts decorated for the holidays for the first time. There was no reason for him to stay here and be taunted by the one person who could do so without fear of lethal retribution.
A wandless flick of power slammed the door back open, nearly knocking Harry off his feet as Voldemort stalked out of the main hall. He knew without looking back that the plants beneath his feet were blackening and withering, scorched by the dark magic crackling angrily across his skin. A petty part of him was satisfied with the destruction, and yet–reluctantly, without any interest in examining his own reasoning too closely, Voldemort wrapped himself in a lightweight shield, just enough to keep his roiling magic from destabilizing the delicate charm work around him.
This was fine. He didn’t need a lot of sleep; there was plenty of time for him to get what he needed from the library and return to his desk.
“Oh, wait, hey,” Harry called out behind him. “Damn it! Voldemort, stop!”
A hand, blisteringly warm, wrapped around his wrist and Voldemort jerked to a stop with a hiss, whirling around and drawing his wand. He pinned Harry to the wall hard enough to make the man’s head bounce off with a jarring thud, jamming his wand painfully against his neck. The mug slipped from Harry’s nerveless fingers and went crashing to the floor.
“Do not,” hissed Voldemort, thrumming with rage. “Touch me without my permission, Potter.”
“Right,” gasped Harry. “That’s fair.” He swallowed, adam’s apple bobbing, and tried to tilt his head away from the cruel point of the yew wand.
Voldemort didn’t let him.
The scent of crushed thyme still clung to them both, obscuring his senses, but he took a deep breath anyway, trying to taste the emotions he could see shifting too rapidly to follow across Harry’s expressive face. Instinctively, Voldemort pressed gently at the edges of the other man’s mind, but was rebuffed by occlumency shields before he could do more than skim the barest sensation of yearning / irritation / regret. The shields were amateurish at best, but if he broke them, Harry would know. The Dark Lord had no interest in reading his thoughts tonight anyway. He had had enough of Harry Potter for one evening.
This close, Voldemort could see the scruff on the man’s chin and the faint bruises beneath his uncanny, haunting eyes. Harry licked his chapped lips, a quick little dart of a pink tongue that somehow made the prickling sensation beneath Voldemort’s skin ten times worse.
He released his grip on Harry’s robes and stepped back, trying to get his riotous feelings under control. Voldemort hated most people, but there was no one he hated like he hated Harry Potter.
“I’m sorry,” said Harry.
Voldemort sneered.
Harry cleared his throat awkwardly and winced. His fingers fluttered up, as if to reach out again, then he let his hand drop with a rough and ragged sigh.
“I wasn’t laughing at you,” Harry explained. His voice had a slight rasp to it, perhaps damaged by the painful way Voldemort had dug his wand into that slender neck. “I was laughing at this whole mess. I can’t seem to figure out how to get your attention, and when I finally manage it by accident, I can’t figure out how to talk to you.”
Voldemort twitched. “When did you try to get my attention?” he asked, focusing on the important part of that rambling sentence. He frowned. And why? He hadn’t had a conversation with his husband in quite a while, though he dimly remembered seeing him in passing.
“I’ve been trying for months,” Harry told him dryly. “And yes, I know you didn’t notice. I tried joining you for dinner, but you’d either just ignore me or leave outright. When I followed you to the library, you started retreating to your study when you needed to work and sent the elves for any books you wanted. I even tried scheduling an appointment with you at the ministry once, but you foisted me off on baby Malfoy, so I didn’t try that one a second time.”
Voldemort said nothing. He had vague memories of these things, but they hadn’t really registered. He found it easier not to think about Harry; it was distracting and confusing and, ultimately, utterly pointless. He had thought, if anything, he was doing the boy a kindness by giving him space and the time and freedom to pursue his interests, whatever they might be. It was something he’d have been grateful for, at least, at one point in his life.
The silence between them was heavy. Harry broke it at last with a sigh, shifting his weight in a subtle way that made Voldemort think he was squaring himself up for a fight. He recognized that look.
“You hate me,” Harry said simply.
“Yes.” No. Perhaps.
He hated (and admired) the fierce, brave boy who had faced him unflinchingly across multiple battlefields, shining like a beacon and reminding Voldemort sickeningly of his own mortality. He wasn’t sure how he felt about the man who had taken that bright, unyielding light and hidden it away in the name of peace and choking civility.
“You’d kill me if you could,” Harry said, shadows swimming through his green eyes.
“Of course,” Voldemort hissed. “And you would do the same. It is not as if we came to this willingly—“
“I did,” Harry interrupted him. Voldemort's grip on his wand tightened in irritation. “And I wouldn’t. I chose this.”
“Yes, I am aware of your sacrifice,” Voldemort said mockingly. “Seeing as your ridiculous morals have left my hands tied in matters of common sense and are a daily irritation, how could I forget?”
“Gods, can you stop being such an unbelievable arsehole for one minute and just let me apologize?!” Harry exploded.
“Of course,” said Voldemort silkily. “You are off to such a good start, after all.”
Harry made a choked noise and ran a hand through his messy hair, tugging on his curls and making them stand even more on end.
“The thyme was for you,” Harry snarled.
What.
“What,” Voldemort said flatly. He wasn’t in need of protection by any stretch of the imagination.
“I’m trying to— d’you know how hard it is to talk to you?” Harry asked, gesturing wildly. “I don’t mean finding things to say,” he clarified hastily, “I mean just tracking you down at all. We live together and yet, I see Hermione more than I see you and she moved to Australia.”
“I am busy,” Voldemort said. To his own ears, it sounded uncomfortably like an excuse and he frowned. What did he have to be defensive over? This was the way things were done.
“I know you are,” Harry said, collapsing back against the wall as his sudden rage burnt itself out and crumbled into exhaustion. Voldemort found himself struck by an uncommon pang of— not regret, exactly. He didn’t regret. But sorrow, perhaps, for the way the easily confident man he had met in the main hall had vanished, buried beneath the strain of their interactions.
It was better to stop wasting time and go, Voldemort decided. He waited for Harry to speak his last piece so they could end this debacle.
“I don’t hate you,” Harry said at last. Voldemort couldn’t hold back his look of surprise and the man’s lips twisted in a wry smile. “I’ve never hated you, you know,” he added somewhat wistfully. “Things probably would have been simpler if I did. Of course, one of us would also probably be dead, I suppose.”
“How could you not hate me?” Voldemort asked, bewildered. He had intended to leave, to abandon this pointless endeavor, but he found himself stepping closer.
“Dunno,” Harry said, in that ridiculously honest way of his. The unexpected bluntness of his reply started a huff out of Voldemort, a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh, but could have been. Harry brightened, straightening and stepping forward to meet Voldemort in the center of the hall. He was careful to keep his hands at his sides, though his body curved towards the Dark Lord as if he was having to hold himself back from reaching out again.
Oddly, Voldemort found himself wishing he would.
“The thing is,” Harry said, his voice low and intimate in the stillness of the night. “There’s no way to resolve the things between us. Neither of us can undo or return what the other has lost, and I’m done dwelling on it.”
“We are tied to each other,” Harry said. “We’ve tried fighting it. We’ve tried ignoring it. I think I’d like to try something else now.” He offered Voldemort his hand, palm up in the traditional wizarding way as if he was introducing himself for the first time. His expression was set, and though he was a man now, grown into his body, Voldemort could see the visage of that fierce boy swimming behind the broader planes of adulthood.
Voldemort was lost.
Nothing had gone as he had anticipated in this encounter. Despite his best efforts, Voldemort still found himself unable to understand Harry Potter, and he wondered, standing there in the empty halls of the manor they shared, what it would take to change that.
He looked down at the hand Harry had offered him.
It was calloused, strong and capable with a broad palm and short, thick fingers. Voldemort’s hand would wrap easily around it, would make it seem fragile in his own long-fingered grip despite the fact that the man was anything but. His wrist still tingled with the warmth of it, the phantom heat of Harry’s touch lingering long past the time he had let go.
Voldemort had been so cold since his resurrection. Impulsively, he took Harry’s hand in his, palm to palm as he wrapped his fingers around the other wizard’s narrow wrist and felt Harry mirror the gesture in turn. It was just as warm as he remembered.
“Merry meet,” Harry told him, eyes shining brightly in the darkness.
“... Merry meet,” Voldemort murmured.
Harry’s slow, gentle smile did something strange to Voldemort’s insides again. He found his grip tightening, unwilling to let the other man’s hand go. On a whim, he found himself asking, “Why the thyme?”
“Er, what?” Harry said, blinking. “Uh, well, it’s a Potter family tradition, apparently.” He showed no sign of wanting to release Voldemort’s hand. His thumb had begun to move in slow, lazy circles on Voldemort’s wrist, stroking the delicate skin.
“I don’t know if you remember, but that first year after we married, you sent me a stack of books for Yule,” Harry said, eyes going distant. “At the time, I thought you were taunting me for my lack of pureblood knowledge because they were all histories and books on etiquette and rituals and things like that. But, going out of the manor then was– rough, so I didn’t exactly have anything better to do and I read them.”
Voldemort remembered. Although the treaty negotiation between the two opposing factions had taken most of a year, after Harry had wed the Dark Lord and finalized the Light’s surrender, public opinion had turned on the boy once again. A series of inciting articles written by a female reporter who had apparently been holding a grudge had whipped the disgruntled holdouts into a murderous fervor. Voldemort had publicly executed her, but it had been too late. After two separate attempts on his new husband’s life, Voldemort had ordered him to be confined to the manor while he had gone on a hunt to cleanse his country of rebels. Harry had taken to confinement poorly, so Voldemort had been forced to find him a distraction.
The Potter estates had burned in the first war, but like many families, their libraries were better warded than the rest of the house. Some of the books had survived, though they had been dispersed by looters and sold quietly through shops such as Borgin and Burkes to those with an interest in collecting such things. It had been a simple enough matter to command his followers to bring him what they had and send them to the boy. Voldemort had hoped that the information on Harry’s family would keep the boy busy long enough for him to finish his work– and it had.
He hadn’t given it any thought since.
“Everyone had told me the Potters were Light,” Harry said.
“No, they were rather famously Grey,” Voldemort murmured. “It’s uncommon to have dual cores show up that frequently. They managed it, I think, by marrying so freely into both factions.”
“Makes sense,” Harry said. “Anyway, they apparently have their own entire set of rituals because of it, mixing summer and winter freely. The thyme is part of that. It’s to protect you wherever your feet might wander, to, ‘go with you where I cannot,’” Harry added, in the air of one quoting from a book.
“Not for courage, then?” Voldemort asked, and to his surprise he found his voice had taken on a light, teasing note.
“Maybe just a little,” Harry demurred. He glanced up at Voldemort through his eyelashes, lips curving in a wicked smirk and his grip on Voldemort’s hand tightened. He tugged gently, just enough to make Voldemort take that last half step forward until they were pressed against each other. “That part was for me, though.”
Voldemort began to laugh. He was still laughing when he bent his head and, for the first time since they had exchanged cold vows and ended a war, kissed his husband.