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Ice cracked as the castle doors swung open.
In the threshold, there was a girl. She stood for a while there, taking in the once grand hall as snow flurried in around her. A gust of wind blew a red cap off of her head, tossing her unbound hair into her face. Bare hands pushed it back—her dark skin was cracked by the cold.
Her only protection was the brown coat that dwarfed her. It was well worn, with a fraying hem and patches on the elbows.
She looked like any unfortunate traveller seeking shelter might. But her eyes gave her away; they gave everyone away.
Fear. And desperation.
Finally, as all who came before her had, the girl left the threshold. The doors closed with a hollow thud behind her, the howling storm shut out once more.
In the sudden silence, there was no way to hide the scrape of her boots as she walked. Soon, the entire castle would know she was here, if they didn’t know already. A misplaced step, and the girl’s boots slipped on the icy stone. She only just caught herself before a fall, arms pinwheeling through the air.
Harry didn’t move—not to warn her, not to help.
He stayed precisely where he was, leant up against a pillar of ice. He might as well have been a part of it. But for the fog of his breath, the way his chest rose and fell, he could be a statue—one of many that crowded the hall. Each one formed by his husband’s magic. Each one twisted forever by their shame, their greed, their fear.
Slower now, the girl picked her way across the hall.
Though the way was clogged by the bodies of those who came before her, she didn’t stop to stare. She kept her gaze trained forward, didn’t falter even once. And all the while, Harry stood there.
And all the while, Harry watched.
He didn’t follow.
He knew how this would end.
One way or another, the girl’s foolish heart—and it must be foolish, for her to have ended up in his husband’s halls—would stop. Frozen for eternity or cooling on the floor, waiting to be torn apart, what difference did it make?
For the most part, the passage of time meant little.
Still, when the silence of the hall was next disturbed, he knew enough time had passed for the girl to have met her fate.
Familiar footfalls padded along the hall’s edge, and he turned with a hand already raised to meet the wet nose that pressed eagerly into his palm. The wargs that called his husband’s realm their home were vicious beasts, as wide and as tall as a bear with enough strength in their jaws to crush stone.
On its breath he smelled rot and ice, but no blood.
“Frozen, then,” Harry said, petting idly at its snout, though he supposed he already knew. He would have heard the howls that announced a feast.
He left his pillar, and the warg loped easily at his side.
“Will you carry the body for me?” Harry asked as they approached the doors to his husband’s library—they had already checked the throne room and found it empty. The warg eyed him, then huffed, shaking its wild mane. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
The library was in disarray.
Books had been tossed to the floor, and chairs and shelves toppled. In the center of the mess stood—“Husband,” Harry greeted as he entered the room, shivering as mage-fire leeched the cold from his limbs. The warg had stayed in the hall with the others of its pack, which had joined them as they walked. “Has something happened?”
His husband did not reply.
A flash of ire, quickly smothered. He tried again. “I’ve come for the body, unless you’ve decided to move it yourself.”
His husband had long since refused to keep the statues he created in his throne room, claiming to be disgusted by the proof of their weakness. For lack of anything better to do, and because he didn’t trust his husband to move them with any semblance of care, Harry had taken up the task of removing them.
Eventually, his husband spoke. “The girl is a witch.”
In the unused corners of his heart, Harry felt curiosity begin to stir. “She used magic?”
His husband sneered. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You said—”
“I know what I said.” His husband stalked closer, towering over him. Harry did not back away. “She is a cheat, a liar. She—”
“Outsmarted you,” Harry said, certain it must be so. How else could she still be alive, but to wager her life on a game?
She certainly couldn’t overpower him.
“Tricked me,” his husband finished, seething.
Harry laughed, a wicked pleasure coiling in his chest. “Same thing.”
His husband moved as though to hit him, for his magic would not harm Harry even now. Again, Harry refused to flinch. Throughout this long life they lived together, he had known many flavors of his husband’s rage. This one was impotent, weak. Petty.
He had weathered worse before.
“Is the girl still here?” Harry asked, knowing it would sting to have his threat ignored so easily.
And sting it had. His husband’s fine features twisted in rage.
It felt good, seeing him brought so low.
Deciding to twist the knife just a bit more, Harry turned on his heel and made for the door, not waiting for an answer. He would leave his husband to his sulking and find the girl himself.
He found her in the garden (or, where the garden used to be—nothing grew here now, not anymore), throwing rocks at the castle wall. As he approached on silent feet, she threw another, then began to pace. Her boots crunched against the snow. Long-dead stems crumbled like ash beneath her feet.
“I thought you’d be dead by now,” Harry said.
The girl jumped, whirled around with a yelp, and fell. She sat up, bracing her hands—sleeves tugged down to cover them—against the frozen ground. She extended one toward him. “Well?” she demanded, flustered. “Aren’t you going to help me up?”
Harry tilted his head. “Why would I?”
The girl sputtered. “You made me fall!”
“So?”
With a huff, she pushed herself to her feet, brushing snow from her long coat. “You’re very rude,” she informed him, shoving her hair away from her face. Her knuckles, when he saw them, were bleeding. At least she’d recovered her cap. “Who are you, anyway?”
Instead of an answer, Harry said, “You’re not wearing any gloves.”
The girl crossed her arms, winced when her hands curled into fists. “I’ve noticed, thank you.”
Harry only hummed in reply. He thought of the gloves sitting on the bedside table in a room he refused to enter, the room he and his husband once shared. They were a gift. They were warm.
They weren’t needed, now.
He didn’t offer to go get them. He said, “My name is Harry.”
The girl blinked, looking startled, likely not expecting such a common name. “Hermione,” she said in turn, and Harry frowned. He’d heard that name before, hadn’t he? Then she rallied, stuck her chin in the air and straightened her spine. “I’m here for my husband.”
Ah.
There it was.
She was no different from anyone else to enter his husband’s halls. It was almost disappointing. The only people who came here were the ones who wanted something they thought his husband could give them—power, wealth, love. Each was turned away empty handed; the lucky ones got to leave with their bodies still warm.
“You can’t have him,” Harry told her. Shattering this dream was a kindness, one he rarely bothered with anymore. “He belongs to the keep now.”
She would give up soon, he knew.
The ones who lived always did. They understood how futile the journey was, and they decided their lives were worth more than their desire.
But then the girl surprised him. “Yes,” she said, glaring, “I can.”
Pride, he supposed.
“There’s no shame in it,” Harry said and ignored how it rang false. “The Dark Lord always wins.”
The girl’s jaw clenched. “He lost once today.”
And Harry found his thoughts stalled, tripping over the truth of it. Because his husband had lost, hadn’t he? She was still here, still breathing. And if his husband could lose once, why not again?
The girl stalked closer. “But this isn’t a game. This isn’t about winning,” she said, trembling with her anger. She poked him hard in the chest, and he swayed with it, surprised. “I came here to bring my husband home. I won’t leave without him.”
Harry frowned. “Then you’ll die here, too.”
In their wake, he wished he could take the words back, that he hadn’t said them. He buried the wish before he could think on it and turned to leave, only stopping when a hand latched on to his wrist.
Her touch burned.
He’d forgotten what it was like.
“Wait! He—he’s not dead.” The girl’s voice was firm. “I know it.”
“How?”
“Vol—He told me so.”
Ah. “Then he was frozen,” Harry said, and pretended he was unmoved as he had always been. In truth, there wasn’t much of a difference. “You still won’t get him back.”
For a long time, she didn’t move. She just stood there, hand on Harry’s wrist, breathing. Then she said, “I want to see him. Can I?”
“I suppose,” Harry said after a beat.
No one had ever asked before.
They usually didn’t get the chance. “Follow me.”
“Tell me about your husband,” Harry said as they walked back to the castle door. Her hold on him had shifted, until their hands were palm to palm, fingers laced together. He could have let go, but he didn’t.
If she found his touch too cold, she didn’t say.
“His name is Ron,” the girl told him. “Ron Weasley. We met when we were children, and we married just last year. He’s—”
“I meant what he looks like,” Harry interrupted, and told himself he wasn’t sorry for it.
“Oh.” Her voice had shrunk again. Embarrassment furrowed her brow before she tossed it aside. “Well, he’s tall. He has red hair, and the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. He has freckles all over. He doesn’t like them, but I—I think they’re—” She stopped walking, one hand pressed to her mouth.
Harry stopped too. He turned to face her, waiting.
“Is that enough?” she asked.
Harry thought back. “Yes,” he said, and then he changed course from the entrance hall, turned toward the cellar instead.
Ron Weasley came to them two months ago. Or, rather, he was brought—dragged through the hall on his back by the pack that lived near the eastern snowfield, near the border of his husband’s lands. Harry remembered him.
He’d been arguing with his husband when the wargs arrived.
The boy was missing his coat. In his hand, he clutched a flower. It had almost been impressive, that he’d kept hold of it through so much.
Theft, his husband had said as he plucked it from the boy’s hand, a smile on his horrible face as he crushed it. Greed, which demanded only the harshest of punishments.
Stupidity, Harry had thought as he looked away.
A rush of cold, a gasp, and the deed was done. The wargs had dragged the body away—to the cellar, his husband commanded, because the entry hall was full.
When she saw her husband’s body, the girl stumbled back from the sight and swayed, a wail caught behind her teeth.
Harry didn’t interrupt.
Not even when she marched forward, one hand lifted like she was going to strike his frozen face, then stopped. She clutched her hand to her chest instead. “I hate you,” she said, voice frayed, like the words had to be dragged out from the pit of her chest. “You idiot. How could you? You swore to me”—she shook her head, glared through wet eyes—“you promised.”
Harry felt the words like an echo.
He had said words just like them, once. And so he felt compelled to ask, “What did he promise?”
She sucked in a breath, held it. “To come home,” she said eventually, voice thick. Then, angry again, “Why did he even come here?”
Harry wasn’t sure if she expected an answer.
He decided to give her one anyway. “He had a flower when the wargs brought him.”
She stilled. “What?”
“They grow at the edge of the Dark Lord’s realm, when the first melt of spring meets the eternal winter. He was caught stealing one.”
She choked on a sob, shoulders hunched. Her hands hid her face. “You idiot,” she said again, softer this time. She rubbed at her cheeks, smearing the tears that had fallen there. Eventually, she met Harry’s gaze and laughed, seemed helpless not to. “I told him about them, you see. I said that I’d give—that I’d give anything to study one. And he…”
“He wanted to bring one to you.”
She nodded, lips pressed tight together. “I—I’ve been so furious with him. I swore to myself that I’d find him, just to tell him off.”
Harry’s lips twitched.
He knew the feeling.
But she wasn’t done. “This entire time, I’ve been so…so angry, because I couldn’t understand why he’d do something so stupid. I couldn’t understand why he’d left me, and I hated him for it, but…”
Something stirred in his chest. He swallowed around a sudden lump in his throat. “But?” he prompted.
She didn’t answer right away. Instead, she stepped closer to her husband’s frozen form, put her hand on his and pressed her forehead to his chest. Harry touched his own chest, felt a hitch in his breath and couldn’t smother it. She closed her eyes, then said, “I wasn’t really angry, you know? I just…I miss him,” she said, soft. “I want him back.”
This, too, was familiar, though he hadn’t felt it—hadn’t let himself feel it—in years. And now that he was feeling it again, he knew why.
It hurt.
The cellar blurred around him.
His heart had cracked. It must have, for there was an ache in the pit of his chest that hadn’t been there before. It travelled up his throat, until his every breath was strangled by it.
His eyes burned, and when he blinked, twin lines of heat spilled down his cheeks.
When he opened his eyes again, everything was different.
It was as though he saw the world through new eyes, like he’d been living in a fog, and for the fist time in a long, long time, he was seeing clear. The cellar—so dark before, like everything was dark—was flooded in light. Mage-fire burned along every wall. Its light pooled in the ice that covered the room, made it glow.
The stone floor at his back was cold.
Something touched his shoulder. He flinched from the heat of it, shoved himself away until he could put his back to the wall, but there was no threat. There was just Hermione, one hand raised, with a look of wide-eyed concern on her face. “Your eyes…” she said, voice full of wonder. Harry lifted a hand to his cheek, felt ice where his tears fell. “They’re green.”
Her eyes, he saw now, were brown—dark and rich as loam. In the fire’s light, they shone.
Her face was kind. She looked tired.
She held out a hand, and after only a moment’s pause he took it, let her pull him to his feet. A hand on his shoulder steadied him. “Are you alright?” she asked, frowning.
Was he?
“I… I think so.” He touched his chest, felt his heart beating, felt warmth. His eyes stung again. “Hermione,” he said. Then his gaze slipped, landed on the reason she was here, and the breath was stolen from his lungs. “I’m so sorry.”
Without thought, he stood before her husband, eyes wide and chest tight.
It was like she said—his eyes were blue, like a summer sky.
His face, too, looked kind.
“If you’re going to tell me it’s hopeless again,” Hermione began.
“I’m not,” Harry said. He lifted a hand, hesitated. “I think…”
He knew this magic.
He had loved his husband much longer than he hated him. He knew every part of him, even the ugly ones. Even this. He could fix it. Or, he could try. He folded Ron’s hand in his, thought of warmth, thought of life. In his head, he heard Hermione’s voice. I want him back.
The magic greeted him like an old friend.
It knew him, just as he knew it. His husband didn’t love him now—didn’t love anything—but he’d loved him, once.
It was enough.
Slowly at first, then faster, the magic dripped from Ron Weasley’s body and fell to the floor, harmless as rain. As it pooled at his feet, he gasped, stumbling forward. Harry stepped aside, and Hermione flew into her husband’s arms, sobbing into his neck as she clutched him tight.
They couldn’t afford to stay long.
“Come with us,” Hermione said as they stood beside the gate, eyes bright as she clutched Harry’s had in hers, Ron a steady presence by their side.
He’d cried more in the past hour than he had in centuries. “I can’t.”
“Harry—”
“So many people have been hurt here,” he said. What he didn’t say was this: I watched it happen. I could have stopped it. “I can help them. I have to help them, and—” He hesitated, but when she squeezed his hand, he found the courage to go on. “I can’t leave now, not without…”
He couldn’t say it, after all, not out loud. But apparently he didn’t need to.
“You’re staying for him too, aren’t you?”
He swallowed, chest tight. “Yes.”
She shook her head, despair written across her face. “What if you can’t fix him? What if—”
“I have to try, Hermione,” he said, and knew she would understand. Perhaps better than anyone. Because—“I miss him. I want him back.”
Her gaze softened. “Oh. Oh, Harry.” She threw her arms around him. “Please be careful.” She squeezed extra tight, then pulled back so she could look him in the eye. She held his gaze, steady. “And when you’re done, come visit us.”
Laughing, feeling lighter than he had in years, he said, “I will.”
And so he sent them off, giving them his cloak in the hope that the scent would keep them safe from the wargs. He stood at the gate until even their footsteps vanished, buried by fallen snow.
Eventually, he could stall no longer.
When he turned to face the castle again, his husband was waiting.
“Did you think you would hide this from me?” he asked, and he sounded so much like himself that Harry felt as though he could cry again.
For a long time, Harry only looked at him.
His features were still beautiful, but everything else had changed. In all their years of loving each other, his husband’s gaze had never been so cold. Even when desire and affection were overcome—by fury or, more rarely, even hatred—there was a light to his gaze, a fire that was missing now.
His eyes were blue, bright and pale as ice.
Harry had teased him endlessly after the failed ritual that bled his eyes red. He’d never thought he would miss it.
“I can’t hide anything from you,” Harry said finally, when those fine features twisted with impatience.
His husband’s eyes narrowed. “Explain it to me.”
“Explain what?”
“Your treachery.”
Harry stepped forward, closing some of the distance between them. “It wasn’t right, what was done to them. What you did to them.”
What they both did to them, and to everyone else.
“I?” his husband asked. He, too, stepped closer. “I punished a man who stole from me, as is my right.”
“Stole?” Harry couldn’t help but laugh. “He picked a flower.”
“From my realm.”
“Our realm,” he said quickly.
His husband’s voice grew soft, dangerous. “Pardon?”
“It’s our realm.” When his husband sneered, he lifted his chin and said, “I am your husband, Lord Voldemort. What’s yours is mine. You swore it to me.”
His husband’s lips curled in a snarl. “A mistake, I see now.”
“No,” Harry snapped, losing hold of his temper. He charged forward, fisted a hand in his husband’s robe. “It wasn’t a mistake, and it wasn’t some—some great misfortune. You chose me.” Harry steeled himself and said, “You chose me because you loved me.”
His husband’s eyes were wide now, and still so pale. He scoffed, but to Harry’s ears it sounded halfhearted. Like he didn’t mean it when he said, “Love is for fools.”
Harry was shaking his head before he finished. “You remember it,” he said. “How it felt. I know you do. You can feel it again.”
“I feel nothing.”
But it couldn’t be true. He wouldn’t let it. Using his hold on his husband’s robe, Harry pulled him in. He pressed his forehead to his husband’s chest as his eyes watered. Give him back to me, he thought, but there was no magic here.
No spell to be undone.
“I love you,” he said, and meant please.
But Lord Voldemort remained unmoved. “Cease this,” he said, and this time, Harry refused to trick himself into hearing something that wasn’t there. “You will return what you have taken from me, and—”
“I won’t,” Harry said, stepping back. He kept his voice steady, because this was important. “You don’t get to hurt them again. I won’t let you.”
“You believe you can stop me.”
“I’ve already done it,” he said, lifting his chin. Voldemort’s magic wouldn’t hurt him. This, at least, he knew. “I freed Ron Weasley, and I can free the rest.”
“I see.” Before he could react, Voldemort’s hand shot out and grabbed him by the neck, dragging him closer. Closer than they’ve been in years. “You’ve grown bold. I should have known it would come to this. I should have prevented it.”
Harry had forgotten Voldemort didn’t need magic to hurt him.
Involuntary tears leaked from the corners of his eyes. At the sight of them, Voldemort said, “You’re weak.”
But there was no sneer on his face, no disdain. He eyed the tears on Harry’s face with hunger.
Harry’s breath caught. “Let me go.”
“What’s yours is mine, husband,” Voldemort said, savoring the words. A cruel light in his eyes, he asked, “Is this no longer true? Are you not also mine?”
Harry shook his head. He clawed at Voldemort’s hand, tried to wrench free. But Voldemort held fast.
When he called on the wellspring of his magic, it wouldn’t come.
Voldemort’s hand touched his face then, catching his tears on his fingers, and without thought, Harry lashed out. His teeth caught the meat of Voldemort’s thumb, and with a shout, Voldemort shoved him away.
He stumbled back, hand massaging his throat as he caught his breath.
When he looked up again, Voldemort lifted his hand for him to see. A bead of blood dripped down his wrist. On his fingers, Harry’s tears glistened, not yet frozen. “Oh, husband,” Voldemort said, a grin on his face, “how I’ve missed you.”
Then he licked Harry’s tears from his hand.
Harry couldn’t do anything but watch as Voldemort swallowed, a sudden fear overtaking him.
Was this his fate? Pushed and pulled by the whims of a Voldemort without care?
It couldn’t be. He wouldn’t let it.
But before he could even begin to plan, Voldemort groaned and fell to his knees. Harry rushed to his side, pushing him over onto his back when he collapsed forward. “What is it?” he demanded.
Voldemort clawed at his chest, face twisted in pain.
Harry tore his robe open, expecting a wound. But there was nothing. Nothing, except that he was too pale, too thin.
With Voldemort’s chest heaving on every gasp, Harry’s hands fluttered uselessly above unbroken skin. He didn’t know how to help, how to fix it. He didn’t know if he could.
After a fortifying breath, he planted one hand in the center of Voldemort’s chest, where the pain seemed to be coming from.
And for a moment, it seemed to help.
Then Voldemort grabbed him by the neck, grip strong enough to bruise. “You’ve done something to me, you—” Voldemort accused, then stopped. His eyes were open now. “You… You.” The hand on him grew gentle, and in those wild eyes, he saw something new. “Harry.”
“Yes?” Harry prompted. “What is it?”
Voldemort only stared up at him. The hand on his neck rose to cup his face. “It’s you.”
“It is,” Harry said, not sure what he meant, but knowing it was important.
Voldemort sighed, and his eyes slipped shut.
In a panic, Harry leaned in again, jostling him. Voldemort groaned in response, peeling his eyes open to glare, annoyed.
And that look was so familiar, Harry felt his eyes watering again.
Even if his eyes were still blue.
“Oh, gods,” he said, choked with relief, “I thought you were dying.” He bent to hide his face in Voldemort’s chest. This close, he could hear the rush of his heart beating. Then, “I thought I’d lost you.”
Voldemort said, “I know.”
His voice was thick.
Startled, Harry sat up again, and the sight that met him stole the breath from his lungs.
Voldemort was crying.
As Harry watched, Voldemort’s pale eyes welled up with tears. He blinked, and they spilled from the corners of his eyes and down his cheeks. Where they fell, they left lines of glistening frost.
When next those eyes opened, they burned.