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“The boy-who-lived.” Lilted a voice from behind Harry. “You are not easy to find.”
Harry sighed, leaning heavily onto the kitchen counter.
“Though I suppose you’re the man-who-lived now, aren’t you?”
Ignoring the comment, Harry turned around to face his prophesied enemy; the man who ruined his life before he was even born. Crossing his arms, Harry examined the dark lord critically. He kept any shock neatly occluded behind his shields at the sight of an older-looking Tom Riddle—much like how diary Tom had appeared to Harry in his second year—but with sharper lines and tidy facial hair. Having expected the unnaturally pale, snake-like visage he’d come to associate with the dark lord, the change in appearance was slightly off-putting. Easier on the eyes, but weird all the same.
“What do you want?” Harry asked.
Voldemort’s left eyebrow raised smoothly. “Skipping the pleasantries, are we, Harry? My, my, one would think after 10 years you’d have learnt some manners by now.”
Harry scoffed. “As if anyone could associate pleasantness with you. I have no interest in small talk, especially not with you. What do you want?”
Voldemort sauntered ever so slowly towards the island in the middle of the kitchen, examining the room around him. “I wanted to see how my prophesized enemy was faring these days. It’s been so long, Harry, far too long. I see you’ve traded a life of magic for muggle farm life.” Voldemort stated, pausing before the word muggle. “Quite the contrast.”
“This lifestyle doesn’t put my life at risk on a daily basis. Seems like a reasonable trade-off to me.” Harry remarked.
Voldemort smirked. “Yes, a peaceful life, I imagine.”
“It is,” Harry stated, flinging the dish towel on his shoulder to the countertop with a thwap. “Now, if that will be all, you’d best be leaving.”
“Oh, but Harry, we have so much to catch up on!” Voldemort drawled as he traced a dark line over the granite countertop, his eyes fixed on Harry’s face like a hawk.
“We have nothing to catch up on. I left for a reason.” Harry snipped.
“Ah yes. The famed light-bringer, abandoning the wizarding world in its time of need. I’d quite like to hear the story behind that decision. After all, I have you to thank for my success in winning the war.” Voldemort chuckled.
Harry strengthened his occlumency shields. “There’s nothing to tell.”
“I’m sure there is.” Voldemort insisted, taking an exaggerated step closer to the island.
“Not to you there is. You don’t even care why. Just get it over with or leave.” Harry snapped.
Voldemort leaned forward. “Get ‘what’ over with, exactly?”
Harry turned away defiantly, grabbing the dishes lying on the counter to put them away as he had been doing before he was rudely interrupted. “Either kill me already or sod off.”
Silence reigned for far longer than Harry liked as he continued mulling around the kitchen, his hands moving on autopilot.
“What makes you think I want to kill you?”
Harry hesitated only briefly in placing a plate in the cupboard before replying. “I’d say the first 15 years of my life can attest to your homicidal desire to off me.”
“I am not the same man I was then.” Voldemort points out.
The laugh that bubbled in Harry’s chest could not be smothered as he rolled his eyes. “Sure. You can change your appearance all you want, Tom; that doesn’t change who you are. What you are.”
Suddenly, Voldemort was rounding the island, mere steps away from Harry’s person. “You do not wear ignorance as well as you think, Harry.”
Whirling around, Harry seethed. “It’s not ignorance when I’m right. You aren’t capable of changing! Don’t think you can convince me otherwise just because you have a pretty face and less violent proclivities now.”
Voldemort smirked. “While you’ve spent the last 10 years tending to your pathetic muggle livestock, I’ve been busy, Harry. My—what was it you said—‘pretty face’ is one such testament to that, though it goes far beyond that. The wizarding world is thriving under my rule.”
“I don’t give a shit about the wizarding world!” Harry yelled. “If I did, do you think I’d have left it so easily? I’m done with that part of my life, you prick! Why’d you have to show up now and muck up everything I’ve built? Huh? It’s been 10 bloody years, so why now?”
If Harry’s outburst put out Voldemort, he hid it well. His face betrayed nothing as he examined Harry.
Finally, Voldemort responded. “Do you know what a Horcrux is?”
Harry grimaced, his mind faltering at the abrupt change in conversation and the nature of said change, but his body language hid his surprise well enough. “No, and I don’t care.”
Voldemort tsked. “Ah, but you should, Harry. They’re how I survived the killing curse rebounding off of you as a child. They’re a bit of rather dark soul magic. In creating a Horcrux, one splits their soul, depositing a piece of it into an object for safekeeping. Though one’s physical body may be destroyed, a Horcrux keeps the soul tied to the mortal world, rendering its creator immortal.”
Harry neglected to respond, staring at the dark lord to get on with it.
“I made six Horcruxes, so that even if one should be found and destroyed, my remaining Horcruxes would ensure my survival.” Voldemort steps closer to Harry, a knowing look on his face.
“Would you like to know what I’ve been doing the last 10 years, Harry?” Voldemort asked slowly. “I’ve been gathering my scattered Horcruxes,” a deafening pause, “ and reabsorbing them.”
Harry’s aloofness faltered.
Voldemort smiled. “I’ve retained a few, of course, but imagine my surprise when—in my hunt to find my errant soul containers—I learned that I had unknowingly made a 7th Horcrux.” Voldemort leaned in terribly close, whispering, “You.”
Harry let his eyes fall shut in defeat. After 10 years of running, it had been for nothing.
“You knew.”
Opening his eyes, Harry saw that Voldemort had taken a step back, scrutinizing Harry.
Deciding there was little, if anything, left to lose, Harry acquiesced. “Not at first. Living in isolation for 10 years gives a person plenty of time to explore the darker sides of magic. After piecing things together, what with the prophecy and all, I figured that was the likely explanation.” Harry paused, his eyes lowering from the weight of old grief. “That, and because of Dumbledore.”
“Why did you leave?”
Harry shifted uncomfortably. “I wanted to since 4th year. The prophecy and Sirius’ death were just the nail in the coffin.”
“My resurrection?” Voldemort pondered.
Harry nodded, moving to put the island in between him and Voldemort once more as he recalled the events of that fateful night. It was one of the most traumatic nights Harry had ever had the displeasure of living. But…something else had happened that night. Something he’d never told anyone; not his friends, not even Dumbledore.
It was true that the pain he’d felt when Voldemort touched his scar was excruciating. He’d never forget the searing, white-hot pain that had overtaken his body in that moment. It was the most agony he’d ever experienced in his life, and yet, the rightness he’d felt in that moment has plagued him ever since. A wholeness unlike anything he’d experienced defined that night, as if a piece of himself he hadn’t known he’d been missing had finally returned. The duality of pain and completeness created a mindfuck that Harry had never quite shaken. Making it to the portkey with Cedric’s body to escape the graveyard should have been a relief, and to an extent it had been, but there was an unexplainable loss too. It greatly disturbed him that such feelings were due to the same dark lord that had murdered his parents.
After hearing the prophecy, losing Sirius, and being possessed by Voldemort (don’t even get him started on that), he’d had enough. He couldn’t stomach the feelings Voldemort incited; couldn’t sit amongst the Light and his friends to plot against the dark lord when he wasn’t even sure he could bring himself to face the man directly, to oppose him.
It had been too much.
There was a smooth, warm hand cupping his cheek, drawing Harry from his reverie. The sudden warmth that travelled through him felt like a punch in the gut that nearly made him sob. But the touch lacked the ambivalence of pain; simply pleasure. It encompassed his entire being, sending him into a haze. Such a simple touch rendered Harry boneless.
When the hand slipped away, Harry did sob then, devastated by the loss. In an instant, though, the hand was back and with it the tingling of pleasure and safety of home. He could feel Voldemort’s magic reaching to wrap around Harry too, which was such an overwhelming feeling after having spent the last decade of his life in the muggle world, far, far away from magic of any kind.
“Why deny yourself this, Harry?” Voldemort puzzled softly. Merlin, he’d never heard the dark lord speak with such a tone.
He had abandoned the only world and people he’d known—had called home—to live a life of solitude that he told himself he deserved for his-his perversions. He’d practically handed the wizarding world to Voldemort on a silver platter because he couldn’t face the alternative; couldn’t face the truth. In denying it, he’d been forced to deny everything else too. For 10 years.
He kept meaningful enough tabs on the wizarding world to know that Voldemort wasn’t lying; Britain was thriving, against all odds or belief. Sometimes he wondered just what the Order and his friends thought of it all. But now, it mostly made him realize that there was no reason left to deny himself.
Voldemort was right.
But then what were the 10 years of exile for? If he walked back into the wizarding world, what did the last 10 years matter? They’d be for nothing.
“No.” Voldemort asserted, making Harry refocus on the man, who he just now realized was skimming his thoughts with Legilimency—the bastard.
Voldemort raised a brow at the curse but said nothing of it, instead cupping Harry’s head so they were squared with each other.
“Harry, I told you that I am not the same man I was 10 years ago.” Voldemort began. “It is only now, in hindsight, that I can admit that I had perhaps…overreached beyond the necessity of my goals in my youth.”
Harry was taken aback by the admission, one he’d certainly never imagined hearing from the dark lord.
Voldemort soldiered on. “Splitting my soul so many times made me unstable in ways that I can only now realize. My mind had devolved into an insanity that cost me and my plans. It is only now, with my sanity restored, that I have corrected what I needed to. All that remains now to be corrected,” Voldemort paused, thumbing away a tear from Harry’s cheek, “is you.”
Harry looked into Voldemort’s eyes, and his heart clenched painfully. “You’ve come to take it, haven’t you? The soul piece…”
Voldemort cocked his head consideringly. “No, Harry. I am not here to take my soul from you. The size of the piece inside you is inconsequential enough that the risk of trying to remove it is not worth it.”
Harry felt his swallow lodge in his throat. “...Then why are you here?”
Voldemort grasped Harry’s chin with his fingers, looking over Harry’s face, cataloging it. After 10 years, Harry was certainly not the same boy Voldemort had waged war against, but neither was Voldemort. It felt needless for Harry to search for changes in the face of Tom Riddle, a visage that Harry had only ever seen in the man's diary. Yet here it was, made flesh. It was eerie in its similarity to the diary Tom, but also in the added crow's feet and mouth lines that now lived there.
After finding what he was looking for, perhaps, Voldemort softly admitted: “That is yet to be determined.”
“What do you want from me?” Harry whispered, clutching the arm of the hand that rested upon his cheek.
The corner of Voldemort’s lip twitched up every so subtly as his hand moved from cupping Harry’s face to grasping his chin, guiding Harry in so close that their noses nearly brushed together.
“That,” Voldemort begins, leaning in to Harry’s lips only to change trajectory last second to hover just below Harry’s ear, his searing lips brushing against the sensitive side of Harry’s neck as he purrs, “is yet to be determined.”