Chapter Text
Then:
Harry Potter, former trainee Unspeakable and self-taught necromancer, drew an enchanted scarf taut across his mouth and nose to filter out the acrid smoke that had filled the room. With his other hand, he fanned fruitlessly at the air - trying, unsuccessfully, to peer through the charred remains of his ritual circle.
His ritual circle, for which he had drawn every element with utmost precision - had painstakingly gathered components from all over Britain - gone all the way to Baghdad to read the original text for the incantations off of the cursed cuneiform tablets the words had first been carved in. His ritual circle, for which he had dedicated years of his life and a generous share of his own wealth (no small sacrifice, as he would not be able to access his family’s vaults for another twenty years) to getting everything not just superficially correct, but absolutely perfect.
…So why was he not able to see anything in the center?
Another billowing cloud of smoke wafted off of the outer circle’s thick line of incense. (Merlin, Harry hated incense - damn Mesopotamian alchemy.) Harry shoved open an air vent on one side of the room and finally got enough of a breeze going to see again: for his efforts, he got a glimpse of a shape moving under the shroud laid across the central axis.
“Tom,” Harry exclaimed, racking his brain for how to enter the circle without disrupting the remnant energies. Was it from the south, northwest, or northeast? “Tom, can you hear me?”
There was a faint gurgling noise in reply, and the shape went still.
No, thought Harry, beginning to panic. He had worked so hard on this - surely it hadn’t failed-
Damn the consequences, he decided, and threw an arm over the border of the circle to yank the shroud off. “Tom,” Harry cried, “are you-”
His words died on his tongue.
(He… had thought that shape was rather small, to be a wizard.)
“Tom?!” Harry squeaked.
Another gurgling noise from the thing that had been under the shroud. Harry fell to his knees in utter astonishment, and no small amount of despair. Carefully, his heart filling with dread, he gathered it up in his arms.
This ritual was supposed to have embodied the horcrux he’d found in Hogwarts - the Diadem of Ravenclaw. Tom had been sealed into the diadem in his thirties, he’d said, not much older than Harry was now; his new body, constructed in a careful mix of ancient alchemy and modern necromantic blood magic, was supposed to have matched that. On the off chance he failed, through some mechanism beyond either of them to understand, the golem body Harry was using as an effigy would just melt into wax, and the soul fragment return to the Diadem.
Instead, the fine goblin-wrought silver artifact was strewn about the room, in pieces. And what Harry had in his arms was…
…an infant.
Oh, no.
Now:
“-Adrian Marvolo, get back here this instant!”
Lord Voldemort stopped short enough to nearly trip over his own feet, whipping his head around to the source of the words that had just graced his revered ears. (They were so revered, in fact, that he was wearing a Notice-Me-Not in public, lest he be swarmed by the common rabble. No one, therefore, could have seen him stumble.)
Had he just heard that name correctly?
“But dad,” a boy - some ten years old, the Dark Lord guessed - complained, “it’s my birthday! You said I could go anywhere I wanted on my birthday.”
“With supervision, I said,” corrected the exasperated man standing beside him, massaging the spot of tension between his eyebrows. “So if you want to explore Knockturn, you still need to wait for me.”
The boy’s - Adrian’s - eyes widened. “You’ll really let me?” he gasped, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. “Hugo said he wasn’t allowed at all!”
His father sighed and raised his head. Brilliant green eyes gleamed behind thin-rimmed round glasses, in sharp contrast to his messy waves of dark hair; Voldemort scoured his memory for what it was about those features that struck him as so familiar. “Let’s start by getting your wand, though,” he suggested with great patience. “Much easier to defend yourself with a spell than a knife, yeah?”
“Like the Killing Curse!” Adrian exclaimed, too loudly. Heads turned; Voldemort watched as the boy covered his mouth bashfully with his hands, stepping closer to his father, under the sharp eyes of passersby.
His father ruffled his hair with a broad hand; black nail polish shimmered in the unseasonably warm autumn sunlight. No ring on his finger, Voldemort noticed, and then wondered why he was noticing. Far more interesting, really, were the intricate tattoos on the backs of the man’s hands, sun-faded geometries speaking to long practice in certain Dark Arts only very recently made legal in Voldemort’s Britain: yet he was clearly no foreign visitor, going by his accent, bearing, and general appearance, which gave every indication of a mage of British stock.
So did his son, but they didn’t much resemble each other, the Dark Lord mused, comparing them side by side. A step-parent, perhaps? It would explain why the man seemed familiar, if he had seen his likeness in a foster placement file.
But it seemed rather more than that. How very strange, Voldemort thought, watching ‘Adrian Marvolo’ and his still-nameless father begin to weave their way through the crowd toward Ollivanders. I feel as though I ought to know him.
It was a curious thing. And if he hadn’t misheard, and the boy really did have his middle name, then it was too curious to not investigate further, especially when he had no real plans for the day.
So he followed them.
Harry remembered vividly his childhood visit to Ollivanders, Makers of Fine Wands Since 382 B.C.E. - it had the distinguishing feature of being the first time he ever disappointed his parents.
(“What do you mean, ‘terrible but great’-”)
“What kind of wand do you think I’ll get?” Adrian asked him, leading the way to the shop’s door with a too-tight grip on Harry’s hand - the only hint that he was, in fact, nervous.
Harry smiled. “One that looks cool, I’d bet,” he told him, “and that costs seven galleons.”
Adrian stopped with a hand on the door handle to peer at him. “Don’t they all cost seven galleons?”
Harry didn’t answer. More fun to let him wonder.
The interior of Ollivander’s shop was dimly-lit and dusty, with dark wooden shelves nearly up to the ceiling stacked with long, narrow boxes. It smelled like wood polish and sawdust, old paper and that indescribable hint of magic that one grew accustomed to finding in any mage’s workshop - and was, save for their breathing, silent as a mausoleum.
Which was to say, it was exactly as it had been the last time Harry was here. And so was the wandmaker, appearing out of nowhere between one blink and the next.
“Harry Potter,” Ollivander greeted softly, peering at Harry with his eerie silver eyes. “Good morning to you. It has been some years now, has it not? And this must be… hm.” He regarded Adrian, unblinking. “Well met, young fellow. How shall I call you?”
“Adrian Marvolo Potter,” Adrian told him, just as softly. “Pleased to meet you, sir.”
Ollivander gave a toothy grin. “Likewise, young Mr. Potter. You know,” he glanced over in Harry’s direction, not quite meeting his eyes, “those were your father’s exact words to me, back in the day.”
Harry felt himself go very still, a chill like a cold breeze down his back.
Because he knew what he had said to Ollivander on that day in ‘91.
And that hadn’t been it.
Thankfully, Adrian was too focused on the wandmaker’s autonomous silver measuring tape to have noticed Harry’s reaction, and Ollivander swiftly moved on, cheerful as he ever was. “Now, let us see what wand will suit you. Have a seat here; I will select a few to start with…”
Those were your father’s exact words to me, back in the day.
Lord Voldemort stood, frozen, against the wall of the wandmaker’s shop, as a long-buried memory echoed like church bells in his ears.
(“Well met, young fellow. How shall I call you?”
“Tom Marvolo Riddle. Pleased to meet you, sir.”)
Ollivander had spoken in Harry Potter’s direction, but his piercing silver gaze had met the Dark Lord’s over Harry’s shoulder. Unreadable - but knowing.
Voldemort looked between Harry Potter and his son with new eyes. Now, as though freed from a geas, he saw the resemblance: Adrian Marvolo was his spitting image, save only for the slightly darker shade of his hair. And he wore the same faint frown, as wand after wand remained inert in his hand, that a young Tom Riddle once had.
If he had any uncertainty as to whether Harry knew, it was dispelled in an instant by the man suggesting a wand made of yew. “It would match his father,” Harry said.
Voldemort had not wielded his yew wand in decades, ever since he wrested control of the Elder Wand from Dumbledore.
Ollivander gave a thoughtful hum, and excused himself to the back of the shop for a few minutes. When he returned, it was with a box significantly newer and less dusty than those on the shelves. “I crafted this wand only very recently, you see,” he explained; “I did not think it would see a match for many years yet. Twelve inches, yew, and dragon heartstring.”
The boy’s brow furrowed as he drew the wand carefully out of its box, but Voldemort could tell immediately that this was the last wand he would need to try.
With only the slightest wave, a gust of warm air blew through the shop, carrying a thick scent of incense. “This is it,” Adrian said, decisive, a small unconscious smile on his face, and only put the wand back in the box when said box was handed over to him to keep.
Ollivander’s gaze flickered to Voldemort again. “I would be remiss, I think, if I did not tell you the story of this wand, young Mr. Potter.”
The Dark Lord saw Harry twitch, hands clenching into fists where he had clasped them behind his back.
“There are precious few yew trees within Britain which deign to grant wood to a wandmaker; they grow slowly, even moreso than other wand-trees. The last wand I crafted from this tree, indeed, was your father’s - and he has gone on to do great things with it.”
“Terrible, but great,” Harry Potter murmured, while Adrian listened to Ollivander’s tale with starry eyes.
“Just so,” the wandmaker agreed, meeting Harry’s eyes now. “And have you not gone on to do great things with yours, as well, Mr. Potter, with a feather from the same phoenix?”
The same phoenix.
Lord Voldemort did not hear the last of the Potters’ conversation with Ollivander, or the light tinkle of the bell as they opened and closed the shop’s door. His mind was preoccupied, turning over those words, and piecing them together with what information he had now gathered.
Madness had taken many things from him, over the years, before he realized it. He was… keenly aware that there remained some gaps in his memory, even ten years into his recovery, but he had thought they were only trivial things, easily remembered.
He was, it seemed, mistaken.
Bad enough that he had forgotten Adrian Marvolo Potter, who was, undoubtedly, his son.
Far, far worse to forget Harry Potter-
Who had to be his husband.