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Harry loves the rain.
Be it from a drizzle, light shower, or pour, feeling it batter against his skin rinses away everything wrong. The pitter patter of raindrops on trees and cement make a comforting pattern, one he sings along to when he knows he’s alone.
Bubbling laughter when he follows his friends and peers as they rush for cover, and end up drenched no matter how quickly they find it. Token protests when Harry laughs at them and jumps back out under the open sky, telling him not to come complaining to them later if he gets sick.
The rain is dramatic in all the best ways. Flashing lightning, which Harry swears he can feel in his scar, roaring thunder that shakes his brain, flash floods that could carry him away in an instant.
A storm carried Harry away from the Dursleys, once.
He still hasn’t left from where he ended up.
Rain gave Harry a father, gave him safety, gave him peace.
As apparently even Voldemort can feel sympathy for drowned, underweight people, be they his nemesis or not.
Harry was stuck under an old bridge to escape freezing rain, and he felt close to death. Harry doesn’t know how Voldemort found him, only that he did, and that the cloak Voldemort wrapped him in was so warm. It chased away the lingering chill in his bones, and Harry let Voldemort bundle him up and carry him away.
To Voldemort’s exasperation, Harry has never stopped running outside when it starts to rain. He’ll kick off any sort of rain shoe Voldemort tries to squeeze his feet into, and wave away any spell he places over Harry to keep him dry. Bribing Harry to stay indoors with hot chocolate doesn’t work, no matter how he’s not allowed to have it any other time. Harry hesitated once when Voldemort promised he could stay home the next time he visited the Malfoys, if Harry would just stay inside for once in his life, but then the loudest peal of thunder Harry's ever heard reverberated his nerves, and he bounded outside.
“Hadrian,” Voldemort sighs when Harry once again dashes outside into a thunderstorm. “I should chain you up in my dungeons.” Harry sticks out his tongue at the man, and falls backward into the soaked grass. Voldemort curses under his breath, casting a cover from the rain over his head, so he can walk over to him dryly, and Harry giggles.
“Daddy say he won’ do that,” Harry reminds him. “Daddy say ‘arry is too impot, imporpa, inortan… special.”
“Lord Voldemort says many things, my child.” He shakes his head, and scowls down at Harry’s muddy clothes. “And the word is ‘important’, Hadrian.” Harry pouts up at him.
“‘Arry.”
“Hadrian.”
“‘Arry.”
“Lord Voldemort calls others what he wants.” Harry huffs. One day he’ll get his father to use his actual name. For now, Voldemort’s still too salty that a baby killed him, and wants as little connection between Harry now and Harry then as is possible.
“‘Arry go outside when he wan’s.” Harry crosses his arms.
“Pettish brat.”
“Hippo, hippo-cry, cry…te? Dah? Daddy?” Voldemort closes his eyes, gathering his patience.
“The word is ‘hypocrite’, Hadrian. I certainly hope you know these words when you are older.” Harry shrugs, and then nods. He probably does.
Voldemort asks if Harry will come back inside of his own power, or if he’ll have to use force. Harry pretends to think, and blows a raspberry.
“Bye bye, Daddy,” he flips around on his stomach and starts crawling away at his top speed. Voldemort sighs.
“Of course, this is my life. How wonderful for Lord Voldemort to have a human horcrux.” Hmmmm, old Harry thinks that sounds like important information to know. “A marvel of magic, he proclaims; worthy of receiving the bonding potion to secure its existence, he decides.”
Too bad right now Harry doesn’t care all that much. He has rain to enjoy.