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"Nice costume, mister!"
He saw the small boy's smile falter as he ran near enough to see beneath the hood of the cloak, saw the fear cloud his ghost-white painted face: Then, quite sensibly, the child turned and ran away. . . Beneath the robe, spindly fingers twined around a caramel white yew wand. . . One simple movement and the child would never reach his mother. She, too, would know the pain of losing someone, losing the crux of her life.
The fingers stilled. Unnecessary, Voldemort decided, quite unnecessary.
And the small boy lived to see another day.
Down along another dark street, a house stood without its Fidelius Charm, unbeknownst to its residents in the bright sitting room—the tall black-haired man in his glasses entertaining the laughing child in blue pajamas, and the mother with long dark red hair coming to collect her son.
The domestic scene called forth shadows of a nostalgic past, and Voldemort shed those fragments at the gate. The door burst open. He was over the threshold when James Potter—a wizard who had thriced defied him—sprinted into the hall, and for a moment, Voldemort stilled.
It was the nearest either of them had ever been, and those past glimpses of this man became fully formed by the tall, lithe frame, impossibly messy black hair, and ridiculous round spectacles. Something in Voldemort's broken chest stuttered awake.
The frantic hazel colored eyes behind those glasses chilled his insides with unfeeling ice once again.
"Lily, take Harry and go! It's him! Go! Run! I'll hold him off!"
Without a wand? Voldemort laughed. He only knew of one other person who could be so stupid as to think such a thing. At the memory of warm protective arms, his detatched amusement died.
"Avada Kedavra!"
There was only screaming now, somewhere on the upper floor, behind the door and chair and boxes piled in a pitiful attempt at a barricade.
And there she stood, holding a child instead of a wand.
At the sight of him, she dropped her son into the crib behind her and threw her arms wide, as if it would help, as if—
Voldemort's breath rattled out of his cold, dark chest. He was momentarily paralyzed by those startlingly green almond-shaped eyes.
But then she spoke.
"Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry!"
"Do not say his name," Voldemort hissed, rather inanely he reflected. His lips curled at Lily Potter's sudden stupor. "Stand aside, you silly girl… stand aside, now."
"Not Harry," she continued pleading, heedless of his one order. "Please no, take me, kill me instead—"
Voldemort wished to rip her mouth off and gouge out those hauntingly green eyes. "This is my last warning—"
"Not Harry!" she screamed again. The name raked through his ears and tore through his throbbing chest. "Please… have mercy… have mercy… Not Harry! Not Harry!"
"Stand aside!" he screamed, gripping his ears and tearing his eyes away. How dare she have those eyes and say that name in his presence.
There was a green light, and she dropped like her husband.
A blissful silence enveloped him and his target. The Potter child, who dared to bear that name before him, had not cried all this time. He only stood with his little hands clutched around the bars of his crib and looked up into the intruder's face with a bright kind of interest.
And Voldemort broke at the sight: He was nothing, nothing but pain and memories—
"I'm Harry. Harry Potter. I'm going to adopt you." He stuck an ink stained hand out. "It's nice to meet you."
THROB—
"We're wizards, Tom," he said in a deep west country accent.
THROB—
His fingers steepled from across their Christmas spread. "I know this is a game," he said finally, "but I'm really sorry you had to go through any of that. Lie or not. If I had been there sooner, I wouldn't have let it happen."
THROB—
"I'll have you here," he swore, every word pure and true like his piercing green eyes, "for better or for worse, in sickness or health, through war or peace, and I'll have your flaws and all. Until you don't want me and don't need me anymore."
THROB—
THROB—
THROB—
Voldemort knew death for the eternity that he was pinned in that pocket of space and time with a creature designed by fate to be his bane.
And what a design it was, to mix a tall father, selfless with messy hair and poor vision, and a mother, stubborn with eyes of green fire. What a deadly combination this child would grow up to be if Voldemort simply let it be.
"This is how you'll do it," he realised quietly. "You take his name and wear his face, knowing that it is my only weakness."
Harry—the boy, the stranger hitched his breath, finally seeing that he was not James. His sudden wailing spread a numb coldness through Voldemort's chest. Echoes of the miserable orphanage ricochetted in his rushing ears.
But a part of him twisted at the sound. "Don't cry," he snapped.
Harry, as though to spite him, cried harder.
What a dangerous sound coupled with those dangerous eyes. "You're not him." He pointed the wand very carefully into the boy's face. "Harry—My Harry has a scar in the shape of a lightning bolt on his forehead. You are not him."
And suddenly, the idea that someone would dare make a mockery of Harry's memory by impersonating him to such an extent—an inferno spread from Voldemort's cold heart to his unfeeling fingertips.
"Avada Kedavra!"