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He breathed in cold granite, before his eyes unclothed his newly formed, slitted pupils.
He brought his hands up to his face in clinical examination; white as a dove’s feather, clean as a hospital bed.
There was blood flowing in his veins, the same Wormtail had taken from the Potter boy to complete the ritual.
He breathed in.
A rat, trembling in fear and submission.
“M-master…”
He looked over at the man, who was quick to avert his eyes.
Oh, how he had missed it! The sweetest scent of distress caused by his person.
His forked tongue tasted the air.
He frowned.
“Unnh…” Potter was still tied to his father’s tombstone, Voldemort could make out the names of his grandparents, engraved above the boy’s head.
Potter was bleeding, the cut a jotted line on his skin, made by an uncaring artist.
“Master, how do you feel?”
“Wormtail.” The little man bowed deeply upon being addressed directly.
There was something in the air…
Wormtail raised his arm, the one he had severed, demurely.
Voldemort did not even need to touch it to make it grow back.
“Oh, Master! Your humble servant is most thankful!”
“Silence!”
Wormtail disappeared further back in the cemetery, his animal instincts calling upon him to flee.
“Voldemort, you!”
He turned his attention back to the boy. There was something to him, a smell he had almost forgotten, as he had survived as little more than a wraith for all those years.
He took some steps closer, his tongue flickering in and out.
“S-stay away from me!” he cried. Dew embellished his buds-like eyes, quivering.
Voldemort, naturally, did not listen.
He never did, not even when he was a mere mortal boy.
He took one last step that let him get as close as possible to the Potter.
Potter was panting, choking on air. His nose twitched, there was a disturbance it could sense, too.
“I can touch you, now,” Voldemort murmured and raised one of his ghastly fingers up to touch the boy’s scar, reverently.
Potter screamed at the contact, writhing fruitlessly within his vices.
His forehead, Voldemort noticed, was hot. He explored more of it, the boy lamented some more, trying to shy away from his touch.
Then, unexpectedly, he made a twisted movement that would have snapped him in half at the waist, if he had not been incapacitated.
Voldemort smelled pain, which had not been caused by him.
He had to investigate further into it.
But there was something in the air…
Something wet and moist, like a ripened plum fallen from its mother tree. There was a lingering sweetness swirling around Potter, almost completely masked by the boy’s pain and confusion.
“What are you doing to me?” spit collected in the corners of his small, red mouth.
“Nothing,” Voldemort answered, bewildered and light-headed himself.
It looked like the boy was experiencing a severe form of stomach ache.
But what of the smell? What of the glistening fruit? Voldemort could taste it on his tongue, in his nostrils, in the hollow of his cheeks.
He gulped down his own saliva, repeatedly, unable to contain himself.
It found a nest underneath his tongue, crouching there and purring.
Potter gasped and did make a sound of his own, an aborted attempt of a hatchling calling for his mother.
Voldemort’s chest echoed the vibrations that had started in his throat, unable to stop himself.
Until he realized, with horror, what was going on.
It was not his immortal body which enabled him to smell everything so acutely, not his snake-like senses, though they did help a good amount.
Voldemort, and Tom Riddle before him, was an omega.
He had guarded his secret like a dragon his little treasure chest, and he never once succumbed to his senses.
He battled each wave of each and every heat with stubborn resistance, staying wet and neglected throughout them.
It had been easier to control them as he got older; and, with every Horcrux he made, the urges quieted down, until they became no more than a subdued hiss underneath a rock.
He was, at that moment, experiencing it again through Potter, who was still squirming in pain and smelling strongly of slick.
That was the plum fallen from the tree, Voldemort realized, and he had picked it up without meaning to.
“What is going on?” The chilly breeze had scooped away the dew, but the buds still shone from the ghost of them.
Voldemort felt a sudden and uncontrollable pull towards the boy. A pull which he was able to put down by the throat, even though his own blood was the source of it.
“You’re an omega, Harry Potter,” the name, so thoroughly hated until that moment, tasted sugary, too.
“What? What is it?”
Voldemort stared at him.
“You truly do not know?”
Potter shook his head, but it was more a gentle lull side to side.
Alphas and omegas had been everywhere at the dawn of wizardkind, only to slowly die out in between each forgotten century. It was such a rare circumstance that the only reason Tom Riddle had been prepared for it was because he had read it in a dusty book.
Voldemort saw the dampness forming a spot on his pants, in between his thighs.
“Ugh! Did you curse me with it?”
Potter scratched at the emptiness around his fingers.
Voldemort paused to think, to feel the pull of his restrained blood urging him to go to the boy.
A blood Wormtail had taken directly from Potter.
Voldemort closed his eyes, in frustration. That kind of magic had its mysterious ways of binding people together.
It was entirely possible that Potter’s second gender had been awaked by the whole ordeal of the ritual. Distress was a powerful trigger, indeed.
But why was Voldemort feeling things he shouldn't?
Did Potter’s blood do something more, than simply allowing him back to proper life?
With a wave of his hands, the restraints on Potter’s ankles and wrists disappeared, and he collapsed on the ground with a yelp.
He writhed and bent at its waist, putting his arms around his middle.
Voldemort’s– and any recently presented omega’s– first heat was the most unbearable of them all, because it was not about the need to be filled and impregnated.
It was the rearrangement of their internal organs, making room for a newly-forming womb.
Voldemort winced at the memory.
Potter must be suffering immensely, since he had lost blood and was already worn out by the Tournament’s task.
Sweat glistened his forehead, where his damp hair hid the scar from view.
He stared down at the boy– who was openly crying at that point– torn between his hatred and his newfound desire to scoop him up and cradle him to his chest like a babe.
“Just kill me now, please, you bastard,” he begged.
Voldemort wanted to, except he couldn’t.
Potter brought one of his hands down to his pants, wet and soaked with his bodily fluids.
“That is slick. Your body produces a lot of it, especially during your first heat.”
Potter growled at his hand, at Voldemort, at the both of them, before curling up on himself once more.
“My belly hurts so much, make it stop. Make it stop…”
Voldemort, despite himself, crouched down next to him.
“I can’t. That is your womb growing,” Potter howled, “it will take time.”
The pain and fear and sorrow he could feel were not pleasant, it made some instincts within him rouse to the call of help of this little bird just come to life.
With both of his arms he dragged the boy’s body into his lap, putting his head on his chest.
He cooed, Potter sniffed and whined.
“It hurts…”
“I know,” he murmured, the pull of his blood quenched.
“How long…?”
“A while,” he caressed his air and his lithe body all over.
“M-master?”
Potter tensed and Voldemort growled, snapping his head at the intruder. The babe needed his undivided aid and attention.
“If you show your face again, I will kill you.”
Wormtail had the decency to disapparate on the spot.
Potter clinged to his robes and Voldemort resumed his touching, until he rested one of his hands upon his belly.
The boy moaned.
Voldemort knew that a freshly presented omega, in ancient times when second genders were the norm, was supposed to spend their first heat with their mother, who would tend to them in every way possible.
Young Tom Riddle had no such luck, but Potter had him.
Guided by an instinct he didn’t know he possessed, he began massaging his aching belly, with light touches, moulding his skin under his fingertips.
Potter all but melted, taking harsh breaths with his mouth open. Voldemort knew what to do, and took a moment to guide it towards his neck, where his glands resided.
Potter lapped at his skin there, purring.
Voldemort knew he was likely producing pheromones which helped him with the cramps, anaesthetizing the pain as much as possible.
“There, there,” he whispered with a gentleness he never had even for himself, and started to rock back and forth.
His hand went under the boy’s shirt, touching his feverish skin. He felt it pulsing and twisting.
He brushed the insolence of it with his thumb, just below his belly button, again and again.
Potter’s breath eased, and he searched Voldemort’s mouth with his own, travelling from his neck to his face.
Voldemort opened his.
He had the worm this little hatchling was looking for, and he offered it to him, in devotion.
Potter latched onto his tongue and suckled, enmeshing their individual smells further together.
They were one once more, as Voldemort embraced the fruit his body had to have produced, at some point in the past. How had he forgotten something like this?
When did an alpha put his seed inside of him?
Tom Riddle had never allowed anyone in his bed, nor Voldemort, after him.
The bundle in his arms stopped his gentle ministrations on his tongue, and tucked his head under his chin. Voldemort gripped him tighter.
They stayed like that for interminable minutes, until his child fell asleep on his heart.