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The place where Harry Potter died burned a long time ago. It was the Great Fire of Hogwarts in 2042, maybe, or the Student Protests of 2113; Voldemort couldn’t exactly remember which one. Its loss was not noticed. After all, no one believed that Harry Potter had ever existed; why should they remember the place where he died?

Harry Potter was nothing more than a folk tale at this point. Voldemort had ensured it, had ordered the suppression of any mention of his name, had systematically slaughtered his way through ‘Potter’s Resistance’ as easily as he had massacred ‘Dumbledore’s Army’. The Battle of Hogwarts was a long time ago now, hailed as the deciding victory of Voldemort’s empire, and Harry Potter’s name had died just as he had; bleeding in the dust as Voldemort laughed. Now, everyone who had ever known him was dead.

Centuries had passed since that battle. Over that time, magic being real had become old news and Emperor Voldemort had become the ruler of the largest empire in human history. He’d also been haunted by nearly 50 ghosts.

That was the thing about killing millions by proxy and thousands by hand; many of the insurgents that fell to his hand were magical, and when magical people died their magic didn’t just disappear. Most of the time, when a wizard died, their magic dissipated out into the environment. Sometimes, it coalesced into another form, and a ghost would appear to haunt the spot where they died. At the height of his annexation efforts, a new ghost would form in Voldemort’s throne room once every few months.

They usually cried a lot, he noticed. Paltry things, weak, snivelling; they screamed at him, and begged. They always wanted to know the same thing — ‘why?’ — they would ask it like he’d never heard it before, like their deaths were anything special. Their deaths were the most important part of their lives, whereas for Voldemort they were the typical events of a pleasant enough Thursday morning. They wanted explanations, and oh how they raged for them, and cried, and raged again. They would irritate him, eventually, with their whining; he had an exorcist hired only for the purpose of ridding him of them.

This newest ghost was not crying. It was also barely visible from its spot hovering in the middle of Voldemort’s bookcase; only its left arm and foot visible. It was wearing muggle sneakers, he noticed with a wrinkle of his nose. Oh, not another mudblood in his office. The Wizengamot session yesterday had shown him an abundance of amendments that needed to be added to his new batch of bills, and now he’d have to call the exorcist again if he wanted to get anything done today.

“Show yourself,” Voldemort ordered, leaning forward in his chair. There was a moment of silence.

“No, thanks,” said the ghost. Male, he noticed, and British. That did not narrow down the possibilities at all.

“I command you to show yourself, ghost,” he said with disinterest, “Or I’ll now call my exorcist and you shall be returned to the afterlife in time for lunch.”

There was another moment of silence as the ghost seemed to contemplate his words, foot tapping the air. Voldemort looked back down at his papers, picking up a pen and beginning to sign off on another bill.

A minute later, he smiled as the figure finally floated into view. He was small but not usually so, the size of a young adult who had not had time to grow, and was wearing muggle jeans and a striped T-shirt that was much the fashion of centuries ago. It would have confused Voldemort to see such old fashion on any other ghost, but this ghost was quite recognisably a relic of a past era. Well, not recognisably. No one would recognise this ghost except the Emperor Voldemort alone.

“Centuries,” Voldemort whispered, tilting his head in fascination, “I vanquished you centuries ago. Why now do you choose to haunt me, Harry Potter?”

“Does my death not already haunt you?” the ghost asked. He laughed.

“Oh, Harry. It is the sweet lullaby that lulls me to sleep each night.”

The ghost of Harry Potter looked slightly put out at that, and flew back into the bookcase.

“Don’t sulk, Harry,” chuckled Voldemort, leaning forward in his chair. “It’s unbecoming.”

“You’re unbecoming,” said the ghost. Voldemort rolled his eyes and flicked a hand; the ghost cried out in alarm as he was dragged from within the bookcase to stop in front of Voldemort.

“You can’t use magic on a ghost! It’s impossible–”

“What is your purpose here?” Voldemort interrupted with mild interest.

“I wanted to see you with my own eyes, ‘Emperor’,” said Harry mockingly, before a rather wistful look softened his face. “And I wanted to see what had changed. I wanted to see the new world.”

Voldemort hummed flatly, turning his attention back to his papers. “Maudlin, sentimental, and wholly uninteresting. I expected a less vapid desire from you, Harry.”

“Would you stop calling me that?!” the ghost squawked, belligerent.

“Why?” he asked, “You’ll be gone in a week anyway, so–”

“You’ve admitted that your only intention is to sightsee, and even then your radius will only include a few dozen rooms and hallways, and perhaps some of the gardens. You want to spend longer than a few weeks at most doing so?”

“No, but–”

“I’ll have you exorcised in a week,” Voldemort said plainly.

“Don’t!” cried Harry, going as pale as a ghost could.

“Why not, pray tell?” he questioned, raising an eyebrow.

“I could give you information!” the ghost exclaimed. Voldemort shook his head.

“Any information you know became obsolete a hundred years ago.”

“I’ll…” Harry looked truly desperate now, and Voldemort cracked a smile at the sight. “I’ll tell you something you can’t learn from anyone else, living or dead!”

“And what is that?” he asked, almost patronisingly.

“How I survived the Killing Curse!”

Voldemort’s head snapped up, eyes narrowed. He clutched his pen in such a vice grip that it creaked under the pressure. “Explain.”

The ghost smiled boyishly, zipping away. “I’ll tell you in a week, Tom!”

Voldemort stood, sending his papers fluttering to the ground, but the boy was already gone. He sighed, sitting back done. How strange it was that a ghost would return to the mortal world centuries after their death just to look around! Then again, humans were strange. Voldemort was almost detached from them now, after hundreds of years on the throne. He hadn’t personally led a raid in twenty years, more interested now in matters of government and legislature. Perhaps it was a perfectly normal human sentiment to have such sappy, mawkish desires.

“A week,” he muttered to himself, “A week. Fine.”

Indeed, as Voldemort went about his usual routine that week, Harry Potter was there. His range was as miniscule as the Emperor had predicted, yes, but it did not stop him from hanging around Voldemort’s office at all hours, or hovering just outside the window to stare out over the gardens. He followed Voldemort in the nearby hallways, always chattering about some inane difference he’d noticed — “Your peonies seem to grow in a true blue colour! Isn’t it exciting how horticulture has developed?” — and practically asking to be silenced. Spells didn’t seem to stick on ghosts for too long, though, so Voldemort gradually adjusted to only being granted silence for ten minutes at a time before he had to reapply the silencing charms.

Memorably, Voldemort awoke one morning to see the ghost of Harry Potter hovering over him, nearly horizontal, staring down at his sleeping face. He’d cackled, zooming away, as Voldemort had bolted upright. His wand came to his hand unthinkingly and Voldemort cast a brilliantly fast and vibrantly green Killing Curse at the ghost. As he should have expected it to, the curse passed right through the ghost and bounced off the mirror behind him; Voldemort stared down at his chest as the curse hit it, then blankly up at the ghost. Harry grinned back at him.

“What…” he said flatly, “are you doing?”

“As trigger-happy as ever, I see!” the ghost laughed, hovering out of his reach. “And still invulnerable too!”

Slowly, an aching hurt grew in Voldemort’s chest. He looked down at it, and beneath his nightshirt saw a spreading discolouration almost like a bruise. “Ow.”

“That’s what I said!” Harry exclaimed brightly. “Hurts like a bastard, doesn’t it?”

“Get out of my room.”

“You can’t be killed by it,” the ghost continued, “But I could! I had to wake up from being dead with an enormous bruise on my chest! Talk about adding insult to injury!”

“Was this your plan?” Voldemort asked dryly, “Get me to hit myself with the Killing Curse and hope it would work! I would remind you that you’ve been gone for actual centuries? My horcruxes have not miraculously disappeared since your death; I’d say that that plan was doomed to fail.”

“Not my plan, just a happy side effect,” said the ghost. “But thanks for the monologue.”

He rolled his eyes as Harry waved him goodbye and phased through the floor. Casting a quick healing charm to allay the soreness in his chest, he hauled himself out of bed and dressed. As the irritation of the ghost’s presence wears off, he sighs and leaves the room. He must go to the Wizengamot for this week’s session; perhaps Harry was acting as an alarm clock.

The day at the Wizengamot was long and dull. The Emperor had complete control over all legislation on the floor and total power to veto anything, but it was Voldemort’s great privilege to debate his advisors, as scared as they were to disagree. There was a certain balance needed; he required empire-worshipping sycophants who would respect his power but also intelligent lawmakers who could prove flaws in his bills. Unfortunately, he seemed to have cultivated advisors that leaned more sycophantic.

It was almost too quiet without the ghost incessantly talking at him. Voldemort resolved himself never to think something so complimentary about Harry Potter ever again.

He returned to his bedroom tired, and fell asleep thinking of the next day; indeed, when he woke up the first thought in his mind was that this day was the end of Harry’s allotted week. Today, he would discover the greatest secret of the Boy-Who-Lived.

First, he had meetings. Advisors drifted in and out of his office, offering and withdrawing suggestions on his new information suppression laws and Walpurgian Guard budgets; he found himself nearly unable to leave his chair all day.

Around noon, he was visited by Valerius Malfoy, one of his lower advisors.

Oh, Voldemort thought, leaning back in his chair, the Malfoys. Valerius’ grandfather Draco had joined the rebels towards the end of his life; Voldemort had allowed him to live to see the birth of his grandson before he had been publicly executed–

“–at the public execution.”

“Hmm?” Voldemort hums.

“They’re growing restless the longer they’re allowed to propagate there; some have even grown violent. Most are peaceful protestors currently, but they may not be soon.”

As Voldemort listened, he noticed a spectral limb floating through his wall. Harry floated through almost idly; he seemed to have a low attention span as a ghost, and so the Emperor’s meetings with his ministers and advisors only bored him. He tended to either float around making snarky comments or just mindlessly phase through the walls at will to alleviate his boredom. As a preventative measure, Voldemort quickly sent a silencing charm over at him; Harry looked rather affronted and flew into the bookcase again. He had no idea why exactly the ghost found that bookcase so comfortable but it was better than always having to be distracted by his hovering, so he didn’t exactly mind.

“My Lord?” Valerius said with a questioning tone, casting a nervous glance in the direction of the ghost. “Is he… meant to be here?”

Voldemort looked up. “You’re aware that I like to give the new haunts a week to prove themselves tolerable before I get rid of them, are you not?”

“I am, My Lord; I was simply surprised by his presence in your office, of all places.”

“Never mind that,” Voldemort dismissed, “He was a formidable opponent in his time, anyway. I’m letting him remain as little more than a courtesy.”

“Oh,” nodded Valerius. “What was his name?”

“Nothing you would recognise,” he replied, another dismissal.

“Yes, a-anyway,” Valerius said, clearing his throat, “The rioters, My Lord? Shall we deploy the Walpurgian Guard to subdue them?”

“No,” he hummed. From his desk he drew a plain piece of paper and a pen, and he began to write. “Kill them.”

“My Lord?” Malfoy stammered. “Kill–”

“Have you suddenly lost your sense of hearing, Valerius?” asked Voldemort, still writing, “Kill them.”

“Y-yes, Emperor,” the man said. Voldemort set his pen down and lifted the paper towards him, and Malfoy scrambled to take it.

“A decree, Valerius; forward it on to the Guard.”

Malfoy nodded hurriedly and left, the paper fluttering in his hand. From within the wall floated Harry again, stunned.

“Is something wrong, Harry?” Voldemort asked casually, putting his pen away.

“You killed them so thoughtlessly,” said Harry, eyes wide.

“I am a tyrant, Harry, and do not forget it,” reminded Voldemort, “I am no benevolent ruler. Since your death, hundreds more have fallen to my hand; millions have been killed on my orders. These insurgents are no more threatening to me than the last group, or the group before that; they are all just bodies waiting to be executed. Do not mistake my love of government as a lack of thirst for my previous raiding and pillaging; I have not forgotten the satisfaction of stealing the life from a child’s throat. I simply do not have to do it myself anymore.”

“You…” Harry whispered, “I had forgotten how heartless you were.”

“I am not heartless, but simply… efficient.”

Harry shook his head. “You want to know how I survived the killing curse? You’ll never be able to get it. You’re heartless.”

“How did you survive?"

“Love,” Harry whispered, “Love. I was loved so strongly that the world could not bear to kill me and leave all that love behind. No one will ever love you as purely and as enormously as I was loved.”

“I am beloved by my nation,” Voldemort countered.

“You are beloved by no one. Your people fear you, your lords scheme around you, and you have no family. You are a soulless, heartless husk of a being who is not loved by anyone, because you show them no love in turn.”

“What do you mean?” asked Voldemort. “I can make people love me; is it not enough to simply be loved?”

Harry shook his head again. “Love is a two way street; echoes only return to a voice that speaks. I loved my mother just as strongly as my mother loved me. I protected the friends you slaughtered out of the force of my love alone, because they had only ever shown me love. You cannot make people love you, Voldemort, not truly, and neither can you love anyone. You’re heartless, Tom Riddle. Heartless. And for that you will never be protected as I was.”

“Idiocy,” snarled Voldemort, “Love is nothing.”

“Love is everything, Voldemort,” Harry said, “You think that you control the world, but it is love that you are trying to control.”

“Love is nothing,” he repeated.

“You say that because you can never have it,” laughed the ghost.

“I could have anything I wish for,” Voldemort shouted, standing, “I am the Emperor! I could have anyone in the world killed with a wave of my hand; I could have any possession I wanted offered to me just by looking at it.”

“But you could never have love!” the ghost said again, zipping around. As the Emperor grew more frustrated, he only seemed to grow more ecstatic, bouncy and childish with mirth. “Oh, you could never have love, Tom Riddle! Never!”

“I can, and I will!” shouted Voldemort.

“How?” giggled Harry, “Oh, I want to watch you manage that! Loving, and being loved; you will die before you truly love anyone, Emperor. It is impossible.”

“I will not be ridiculed by the ghost of a boy I killed centuries ago!” he roared. “My exorcist will banish you by dinner, Harry Potter, and you will watch from the afterlife as I conquer love!”

“You will never love anyone,” Harry said, mirth still in his voice, “Because you will never deign to love someone who is not your equal. You’ve only ever had one equal and you killed him!; tell me, Emperor, how will you manage another?”

And the wind was taken out of Voldemort’s sails with one heaving exhale, because the infernal ghost boy haunting him was right. He sat down heavily.

“You realise it now?” the ghost said almost tenderly. Voldemort nodded, staring down at his desk.

Indeed, he had realised his foolishness. Emperor Voldemort was the most important being in existence; none could match his knowledge or power, and the relatively puny lifespans of even the longest-living wizard meant that as the decades ticked by like seconds it was less and less likely anyone ever would. Alas, Voldemort would never be able to fall in love with someone who could not match him. He had no equal, in mind or fractured soul, but Harry Potter, and he had killed Harry Potter with his own wand. Thus, the only obvious option was out of reach.

And even if that option had been feasible, how could he possibly have achieved it? Even if Harry Potter had been right in front of him, breath in his lungs and blood in his cheeks, Voldemort would struggle to woo him anyway. He had no time for love, he realised; all of his time was taken up by matters of government. He worked into the early hours of the morning nearly every night, his inhumanity lending itself to a lack of desire for sleep or menial pleasures. He had found his passion in the drudgery of tyranny, and it was possibly the only thing that could be called a ‘love’ of his, if his soul was still capable of such a thing.

Voldemort pondered this dilemma for days on end, holed up in his office with nothing but his paperwork and the ghost. He could barely drag himself out of the room for the weekly Wizengamot session, distracted as he was, and almost nothing of substance was accomplished in that session. The suppression of news about the riots was decreed by him and his advisors readily agreed, but their later debates on his newest bills did nothing but bore him, surprisingly. Voldemort was troubled, in all honesty, in such a manner which he had not felt in many years. It was nearly never that he put so much thought into personal matters.

The next morning, when the passing of his press control decree was reported upon in the papers, Voldemort was infuriated but not altogether laser-focused on finding the leak in his Wizengamot like he might have been before Harry’s appearance. Spies in his cabinet were spies, yes, but they were also mortals, and a mortal could be turned from a problem to a body with a single flick of his fingers. He was too busy for investigation; he had matters of immortality to ponder, after all.

“It’s been two weeks,” Harry pointed out one afternoon as Voldemort once again stared out the window of his office, deep in thought, “Aren’t you going to exorcise me?”

“No!” Voldemort hissed, spinning around to glare at him. The ghost looked surprised.

“Why not?”

“Because I am going to grasp love,” Voldemort said firmly, “And you, Harry, are going to be the first to witness it.”

“Go to bed,” the ghost encouraged. Voldemort ground his jaw.

“Not until I figure out your puzzle.”

“You will accomplish much more if you allow yourself to rest,” said Harry, almost like a parent scolding their child.

“Don’t act as if you care for me, Harry Potter,” he growled, “I will accomplish this not because of you but in spite of you.”

Nevertheless, he stomped off to his room. When he awoke in the morning, Harry was there in the corner staring at the paintings on his wall, and Voldemort rolled his eyes but did not banish him.

The library was just out of Harry’s range, so when Voldemort ventured there that day the ghost did not follow. Voldemort sat in one of the armchairs and read, mindful to stay out of sight of the librarians as they worked in case they balked at their Emperor’s sudden appearance. They were gorgeous, these librarians, the finest beauties in all the Empire. They had been cultivated to please him by his advisors in much the same way that a gardener would cultivate only the most beautiful flowers.

Voldemort tried his absolute hardest to admire them. He could see the appeal, certainly — their hair was luscious, faces classically beautiful, limbs long and slender — but try as he might, the Emperor could not find himself attracted to a single one. Angrily, he left the room and returned to his office. In the corridors, his servants took note of his thunderous expression and made themselves scarce.

Harry was ‘sitting’ in the window when he returned, hovering just an inch or two over the windowsill and staring out into the garden. He turned to Voldemort with a curious expression.

“How went the librarians?” he asked.

“I could not love any of them for their beauty,” Voldemort swore. “And as intelligent as they are, none will compare to me. But I could love one of them as a small, adorable thing — like a pet, perhaps — and they could worship me as their Emperor. Would that not work? Is that not love?”

“Fanaticism is not truly love,” Harry reminded, “And neither is pity. You need an equal, Voldemort. Which poor girl there will you curse to be your equal?”

He sighed, leaning against the wall in despair. “Then how? How can I…?”

“You must have an equal,” said the ghost, and at once a plan formed in the Emperor’s mind. He didn’t speak it aloud, scared to chase Harry away. After all, if he needed an equal so badly, couldn’t he just use the one in front of him? Couldn’t he just fall in love with Harry?

There was the small problem of him being the murderer of not just Harry but Harry’s entire immediate family and friend circle, but Voldemort could solve that. He was the Emperor, after all. He had defeated Harry Potter once, and he could beat him again. This time, he would simply defeat him in a battle of love.

Despite his dedication to this new cause, he still had to run an empire. He woke up in the morning every day and poured over his legislation and his news, and with every new minister that came in to talk to him he found himself growing more annoyed. He had not, after all, forgotten that one of them was spying on him, or perhaps more than one. Perhaps all of them were.

Some might call him paranoid. Voldemort would argue that the only way to rule for all eternity was to trust absolutely no one at all, and kill without discretion.

He called his advisors to his office one by one.

“My Lord,” Valerius greeted dutifully as he entered Voldemort’s office. “Is this about the–”

He lifted his wand and Malfoy fell over screaming. He held the curse for several moments, a taste but not a full showcase of the world of pain that he could inflict upon anyone he chose to. Malfoy shrieked, blood frothing from his lips; he’d likely bitten his tongue. Voldemort hummed, twisting his wand.

Malfoy began to seize and he finally let off on the spell.

“M-my Lord–” coughed Malfoy from the floor. He spat a mouthful of blood into his sleeve, shaking with the effort of lifting his arm. “My Lord, w-wha…”

“Have you betrayed me?” hissed Voldemort, “Have you pulled the wool off the eyes of the masses despite my orders not to? My explicit orders, under pain of death? Have you turned traitor like your grandfather before you, Valerius Malfoy?”

“N-no, My Lord,” Valerius cried, “I-I-I would never dr-dream of it–”

Voldemort hit him with a specialised kind of curse he’d learned during his quest to dispose of the dregs of Dumbledore’s Army; it would freeze the blood and then quickly thaw it within milliseconds, forming tiny clots all over the body with every single blink of the eye and dissolving them just as quickly. It didn’t sound excruciating, but truthfully the way that it burned and itched at the nerves could drive a man insane in mere minutes. It wasn’t quite as painful as the Cruciatus Curse, but this spell was more sophisticated. Malfoy screamed again, writhing, and then with a tremendous shake bit through his tongue. Blood sprayed across the office as Malfoy’s mouth tore open in one final scream. Within moments his advisor was dead.

Voldemort gazed down at the body on the floor and sighed. It was not exactly his intention to kill Valerius, but it was no great loss; the Malfoys may have been a ‘noble’ line long-favoured by the Empire, but there were thousands of other sycophantic clans who would have killed Malfoy themselves to install their own sons in the Emperor’s Wizengamot. He could find a replacement if necessary.

With a flick of his wand, the blood that had sprayed across his office floated off the various surfaces it had adorned. The droplets formed into hard pebbles and casually he sent the blood flying back at Valerius; it tore at his skin, creating thousands of tiny holes in the dead man’s skin.

Seconds later, Harry entered the room through the floor, which coincidentally led to him passing right through the corpse. The ghost somehow went pale and zoomed backwards away from Malfoy’s body. His breathing went short and shallow, almost panicked; Voldemort watched with something like detachment, then looked away. Did it tug at the heartstrings he had long left untouched, unacknowledged? Yes, but he only felt sorry for Harry’s fear rather than Malfoy’s death. Traitors would be disposed of, after all.

“What the hell are you–”

“What is it like to be dead, Harry?” Voldemort asked absentmindedly. Harry stopped dead — hah, Voldemort thought, smiling to himself in a manner that must have frightened the ghost based on the way he stiffened — and looked very uncomfortable.

“Cold,” he murmured, “But peaceful. And then you get to see everyone you love.”

“Did you like it there?”

“It was…” the ghost shrugged. The ghost floated closer to him as if pulled by some unconscious urge, and Voldemort turned to look up at him. “I did. Really, I was… almost grateful.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Really,” Harry nodded.

Voldemort turned away slowly, brow furrowed. Those words swirled in his mind in a whirlwind of confusion, suspicion, and something almost like satisfaction. The boy seemed overly forgiving to him, somehow, in a way that would have been questionable if it weren’t exactly what Voldemort was hoping for. In fact, Voldemort required him to be so. It would only make it easier to woo him, for Harry was his only equal and Voldemort could not be loved cosmically by someone who was not his equal. Thus, he didn’t mind the boy’s weak-willed sentimentality.

He summoned an attendant with a flick of his wand. A tall woman walked into the room shortly after he called, eyes wide at the sight of the pool of blood, and Voldemort gestured down at the body.

“Dispose of him,” he ordered.

“Yes, Emperor,” said the woman, and she did her cleaning and vanishing spells with trembling hands. Voldemort rolled his eyes. Mortals were so squeamish.

“Send in the next minister when you’re done,” he told the attendant, who nodded quickly.

“Of course, Emperor.”

Harry flew out of the window and down into the gardens below, face turned away from the window above. Voldemort sighed and scoured the last of the blood off the floor as the woman led his next advisor into the room. The man stood nervously in the doorway, and Voldemort beckoned to him.

“Come in, Johanneson,” he said coldly, “We’re just going to talk.”

Minister after minister he interrogated and yet minister after minister denied being the source of the leak. Minister after minister, Voldemort grew more irritated. A few times, he grew so frustrated by his lack of progress that he lashed out and slung fatal curses at his advisors; the attendant that was called in to clean the bodies up looked progressively more traumatized every time she opened the door. At the end of the day, he was no closer to finding the leak. He stared down at the final body — Lucian Lestrange, son of Rabastan’s fourth child — and lifted his wand. Over and over he cast the Killing Curse at it, a pulsing green light that filled his office, and after several dozen he was exhausted but the well of anger inside him had at least stopped overflowing.

“Gah!” he spat, eyes narrowed, and he transfigured the body into a delicate vase and destroyed that too. The glass crunched under his shoes as he left the room, waving a hand at the shell-shocked attendant standing outside. “Get rid of that.”

He laid in bed that night, staring at the softly glowing form of Harry in the corner. The ghost didn’t sleep, per se, but he hovered close enough to the armchair there that he appeared to be curled up in it and his hair fell over his face, blocking his eyes from his view and creating the illusion of sleep. Voldemort could hear his deep, measured breaths as he rested; he synced his breathing to the ghost’s and it made him feel even more tired.

He was furious at the treason of his Wizengamot, yes, but having Harry there seemed to calm him down. He fell asleep to the sound of Harry’s breathing.

The next day, it was Wizengamot day again. The chamber was dead silent when Voldemort swept in, robes brushing along the floor with a swishing sound that was too loud in the quiet room. He came to a stop at his throne and sat down to face his ministers.

Around a third of the seats were empty now, he noticed, and the remaining advisors sitting there resolutely attempted not to meet his gaze. A few of them were shaking, curiously. How weak-willed they must be, what snivelling children. He had killed others but he had not killed them; they should have been kissing the hems of his robes in gratitude, for their Emperor had shown them his mercy!

“Does anyone have any suggestions to make regarding Bill #410294?” he asked, shuffling his papers. The room remained silent, no one meeting his eyes. “Excellent. Let’s continue onto Bill #410295. Any suggestions?”

One minister put a trembling hand up. “I-I would recommend changing the wording of section 8 sub-section 41 to use “beings” rather than simply “people”, so that all sentient species will be under your purview, My– My Lord, Emperor Voldemort.”

“Hmm,” Voldemort said, and a corner of his mouth twitched upwards at the woman’s flinch. “A most appropriate suggestion, Clarke. That will be changed.”

The woman dropped her hand so fast she hit it on the desk in front of her; she bit her lip hard enough that she must have drawn blood. She made no whimper of pain, terrified as she was, and hurriedly looked down at the desk.

“Any other suggestions? Anything?” he asked, then sighed. “Useless, the lot of you.”

Several ministers flinched at that.

Perhaps he should have been kinder to them in that meeting, Voldemort wondered as he stared down at the evening paper; if he had been, perhaps they would not have thought it appropriate to leak the news of his execution of their colleagues to the press.

In the morning, he awoke to Harry’s frantic voice. The ghost was hovering over him nervously, fiddling with his hands in lieu of being able to actually shake him awake; his eyes flicked between Voldemort’s face and the nearby set of windows.

“Voldemort,” Harry said, “You have to get up now.”

He pushed himself to his elbows, raising an eyebrow. “What is it?”

“They’re– they’re saying my name,” Harry said, and that had Voldemort dragging himself out of bed. He strolled over to the window and looked out and there in the grand courtyard — between the government buildings and the ministers’ lodgings, at the foot of his palace — was a crowd of people. It must have been thousands strong, a mass that churned and pulsed like ocean waves during a storm. They were all chanting together, random words that Voldemort couldn’t make out from here, and waving signs and sticks. A few people had torn a signpost out of the ground and were waving it around, while others were jumping around and pressing against the barriers separating the palace from the courtyard. Luckily the barriers were magically reinforced and blocked attacks, so they wouldn’t be broken through, but Voldemort still made a mental note to keep an eye on the situation. There were always people protesting his leadership; the problem was violent people protesting his leadership. Voldemort could not abide violence in the slightest.

“They started chanting a while ago,” he said, “But a minute ago they started to– they said my name. I thought you said no one remembered it anymore.”

“Most don’t. For others, you’re something of a folk hero to them,” Voldemort explained, “Like King Arthur, or Robin Hood; they don’t truly believe you existed, but they remember your name. I destroyed every part of your legacy that I could, and yet this part remains.”

“Thank you,” Harry swallowed, looking down at the crowds. “I never wanted a legacy.”

“I can’t comprehend the sentiment,” replied Voldemort, brow furrowed, “You don’t want the world to remember your name?”

“Never,” said Harry, shaking his head.

“Never?”

“I hated my fame,” the ghost explained, “I just wanted to be normal.”

He laughed, a dry thing. “Funnily enough, this was the closest thing I’ve ever had to being left alone. Being forgotten is… it’s peaceful, to me at least. Of all the things, suppressing my name is the nicest one you’ve ever done for me.”

Voldemort smiled at the thought. He reached out to Harry, attempting to touch him in a show of comfort, and his hand passed right through. It was as if Harry was nothing more than a mirage, a false oasis. He pulled his hand back and it passed through again. Voldemort scowled down at himself.

Foolishly, he had missed the possibility of the sensation. It had been years since he’d touched another person for any purpose but to torture them. Yet again, even if Harry was a ghost, a normal person would have felt the coldness of touching a non-corporeal spirit; Voldemort didn’t feel a single thing. In truth, many mortal sensations had been lost to him over the years. Warmth and frigidity were the first to go, and then many tastes, and soon some of the higher frequencies had been lost from the capabilities of his hearing.

Surprisingly, looking up at Harry revealed not disgust by Voldemort’s proximity but instead a strange despairing-resigned look that Voldemort had never seen on his face before.

“I wish I could touch you,” the ghost said despondently.

“Don’t return to being maudlin and sentimental again, Harry; I’d just started to grow more tolerant of you” laughed Voldemort, somewhat mockingly. Harry frowned.

“Don’t– don’t talk to me like that,” he defended, “It’s so rude.”

“Why do you care if I’m rude to you, Harry?” Voldemort laughed again. The ghost looked away. There was a moment of silence.

“‘Cause I love you,” murmured Harry, almost so quietly that he couldn’t hear it.

Voldemort raised an eyebrow in disbelief. “What?”

“I love you, Tom Riddle,” Harry whispered, “And it is completely unfair. Something must be wrong with me. How could I love the man who killed me and all my family? It is a cruel joke of the universe that you should be the one I’ve fallen for, and yet it has happened all the same.”

Voldemort could not believe his luck. All of his scheming thoughts yet unexecuted in the pursuit of manipulating Harry into falling in love with him, and the boy had gone and done it anyway. A great victory swelled in his chest, and under it too something fluttered at the thought, silly and inane as it was.

“Obviously,” he said, looking back at the window.

“Do you have nothing to say back to me?” demanded Harry.

Voldemort sighed. “Must I?”

“Must you what?”

“Elaborate on my reciprocation?”

Harry blinked, stunned. “You… you love me back?”

Voldemort rolled his eyes. Was it the truest love one could feel? No, far from it, but Voldemort’s soul was so splintered that it was unlikely that he would ever love the same way someone with an intact soul would be able to. This facsimile of it, selfish as it was, was the closest he could get. But wasn’t much human love selfish? Humans as a whole were terribly selfish beings; Voldemort would be far from the first person to fall completely obsessively in love for entirely selfish reasons. Coveting was a sin as old as humanity itself, and Voldemort coveted all he could reach. He would covet Harry as purely as he could in order to ensure the love’s protection over his mortality, but at the end of the day it was coveting, plain and simple. Voldemort was as selfish as they came.

“‘Obviously’, I said,” he replied, staring up at the ghost in front of him with a rapturous expression. “You are the only one I loved in life. Isn’t it fitting that you remain the only one I have ever loved, even in death?”

“You never loved me in life,” Harry snapped.

“Oh, I loved that I had found someone to rival me,” said Voldemort, “And I loved that I defeated you. That is love, is it not?”

Harry shook his head, eyes downcast. “It is not.”

“It is now,” Voldemort declared. “And perhaps it always was.”

“Do you truly believe that?”

“I have conquered death yet again, Harry Potter,” smiled Voldemort, “I have fallen in love with you.”

“Yeah, alright,” Potter said, a smile tugging at his lips. Voldemort saw victory in his expression, and revelled in it. Was it not a victory to finally be favoured by the Emperor? Was it not the greatest achievement one could possibly accomplish?

“Come,” he said suddenly, “Let’s walk.”

They went out to the gardens and for the first time Voldemort did not feel irritation at Harry’s chattering. He listened dutifully as the ghost talked to him about the flowers. Was this not what people in love did? Was he not in love?

Harry looked at him with stars in his eyes and Voldemort looked back at him hoping that the ghost could see the same emotion reflected across his own face. It was strange, he thought, how quickly he had abandoned his pretenses. He had wanted to fall in love for his own personal gain, but as Harry said, that wasn’t love; instead, he could feel himself day by day falling deeper and deeper into a ravenous obsession. He had accomplished his great mission, as was expected of the Emperor.

The next day, he called off the weekly Wizengamot session in order to walk around the gardens again with Harry.

“Do you see my devotion?” he asked him, and the ghost nodded, and Voldemort felt as if nothing could be wrong in the world; he was in love.

The protestors remained in the courtyard, seemingly not tiring. They battered the walls endlessly with spells and curses that did nothing but fizzle away, and yet they did not give up. The signpost was used to crumble a tiny bit of one wall, but it twisted and broke in half shortly after that and was discarded. Those that did not try to bring down the walls instead continued shouting.

“Show your face!” they chanted, “Show your face!”

Voldemort did not show his face. What use was it to bow to the wishes of the masses? He was their Emperor and he would be ruling after their grandchildren had died of old age. There was nothing to be gained through listening to the people, and thus he never had and never would.

After a week more of trying, the protestors broke through the walls. One of them crumbled to rubble with a deafening boom, hit by some perfect combination of spells, and the protestors swarmed inside like ants invading a kitchen. Voldemort was unconcerned; he knew that his Wizengamot had protocols to deal with such situations, as they had happened before. Doubtlessly there would be guards corralling all of the insurgents out of his palace before they could get anywhere near their Emperor. Nevertheless, Harry looked frightened, and so Voldemort returned to his room to wait out there for a few hours.

Voldemort sat on the end of the bed and Harry floated in front of him, just far enough away to be out of his reach, and they listened to the crowds beating at the palace doors.

“I’m a little scared,” Harry admitted.

“Don’t be,” laughed Voldemort, “Neither of us could be hurt by any of them.”

“I just…” the ghost looked away. “I wish we could touch each other.”

“I do too,” said Voldemort, surprising both of them.

“Really?”

“Yes,” Voldemort confirmed, “I do too.”

“Tell me,” begged Harry, nearly desperately. Voldemort nodded placatingly.

“I want for us to be able to touch each other more than anything,” he said, and it was true, “I’m sorry that we’ll never be on the same plane, never truly connect; I am truly sorry, Harry.”

There was a bizarre twinge in his chest, like it was fuller than before — something like heartburn — and he rubbed at the skin there. Harry smiled at the sight, almost fond.

“I’m so happy you did that,” he said, adoration shining from his eyes, and Voldemort smiled back at him.

“You’re welcome, Harry,” he said, “I wish I could hold you now.”

All of a sudden, he felt exceedingly strange. There was no pain, no excruciating change within him, but there was a noticeable change nonetheless; he collapsed under the weight of it, shivering against his blankets.

“Voldemort?” asked Harry, voice strange, “Are you alright?”

When he failed to respond, his love reached over and touched his shoulder. For the first time in centuries Voldemort could feel the coldness of it, the slippery sensation of something that shouldn’t truly be in this mortal realm trying to interact with it. He gasped at the feeling, distressed. Oh, this could not have happened! How could he have regained this sensation so miraculously, so terribly?

“What–” Voldemort choked, “What is happening? What did you do?”

“You wished to touch me, love,” said Harry, like that explained a single thing, “And magic has granted your wish.”

“I don’t understand!” he cried. Again, sensation wracked his body, a great difference in him that seemed to obey none of his commands for it to stop. He had not been at the mercy of his own body since he was a child; his first horcrux had muted many human needs and stirrings, and the proceeding ones had only dampened them further.

“Would you like me to explain, Emperor?” the ghost asked. Curiously, he was smiling.

“Yes!” cried Voldemort again, “Yes! Tell me.”

“Love and remorse are just two sides of the same coin, Voldemort,” said Harry, a smile flitting across his face, “They’re the only two things you’ve ever lacked, but one leads to the other; love leads to remorse. You loved me so much that you regretted your horcruxes, and now they’re gone. You’re mortal again, Tom Riddle. Mortal.”

And Voldemort felt an anger like he had never felt before, a swelling, frantic thing, a red-eyed monster coiled under his skin that was waiting, raring, itching to strike. It was an anger so great that it tormented him, for he could never express it fully, no matter how long he lived to scream it out into the world. It was immeasurably fast, a thousand buzzing needles underneath his skin that fizzled like sparklers– no, not sparklers, fireworks– explosions to a scale that a human mind could not comprehend. All of these tremendous feelings directed themselves through the conduit of his wand as he screamed.

“Avada Kedavra!” he cried, and the bolt burst from his wand brighter than the curse had ever shone before. A curse born of such hate had never been cast and never would be again, such was the immensity of Voldemort’s fury. Hate was, after all, the emotion he had been born from, and it was his lifeblood.

The spell passed right through Harry’s wispy body, ricocheted off the mirror, and hit Voldemort squarely in the chest. For one miraculous second, it did nothing but ache. He lowered his wand.

Then, without much further ado at all, the immortal Emperor Voldemort fell over dead.

“Like I said,” Harry murmured, “Trigger-happy.”

He floated over to Voldemort’s body and stared down at it. The man was hideous, truly, and yet it was not a crime to not be beautiful; Harry had met many a person whose kind heart was not outwardly visible. Voldemort’s true crime was his hatred. He had founded an empire of violence and treachery, a place where none felt safe, and a place without love. Harry, in his wanderings around Voldemort’s ostentatiously marble palace, had talked to many a servant who feared for their life daily and comforted many a crying courtier who felt trapped within the confines of the Emperor’s gaze. Again, he had stared out across the city outside of Voldemort’s palace and seen thick smog and dirty buildings, people trudging through their lives in the darkness with only the reflected brilliance of the palace to light their way. Voldemort’s crime was his lack of humanity, and his disdain for everything that made this mortal life beautiful. He saw no beauty, after all; the man had admitted it himself. A man like that could not feel anywhere near the immensity of love necessary to save one’s life, nor could anyone love him the same. All that talk of devotion, and neither of them had loved the other at all. Harry was a ghost on a mission to get Voldemort to regret his horcruxes and Voldemort was a man who confused obsession with adoration, and both loves were weak, false things that wouldn’t have protected anyone from anything at all.

Harry wasn’t the best actor, admittedly, and in fact he had a reputation amongst his friends for being a bad liar, but it could only ever have been him sent down here; no one else could have acted as Voldemort’s ‘equal’. It was lucky for him that Voldemort was apparently so far removed from mortality that he couldn’t see through Harry’s terrible poker face. That poker face had lost him so many games against Ron and Hermione during their weekly game nights.

Harry sighed and moved away, ruffling his hair. Oh, he was homesick for the afterlife now. He wanted to mess around in the kitchen with Ron, and study the books in the library with Hermione, and go for a run with Sirius. Perhaps he’d walk down the road to his parents’ house and visit them for tea; the time would stretch on and on, but it would never drag. There would be an endless afternoon sunshine if they wished for it, something warm to bathe them in light while they talked. They’d snack on food that was always fresh and drink tea that was always the right temperature; his mother would ruffle his hair and the brush of her fingertips would in an instant comfort him in a way he had died hungry for. That was the way things were in the afterlife: everything was love. The world was as one desired, and the bedrock and sky and all the people in between were made of love. He couldn’t wait to go back.

There were footsteps thundering up the stairs outside the room. Harry floated over to his chair and curled up in it, watching the door. It swung open with a loud bang and a dozen people spilled into the room, wands drawn. Immediately, they zeroed in on Voldemort’s body lying back against the bed. Two dozen spells and curses flew at him — “Jesus, Doris, didn’t know you’d learned that one–” “–literally not the time, Albert!” — and most of them managed to hit Voldemort. The Emperor remained still.

“Wait, hold fire!” cried a woman at the front, and the others stuttered to a stop. “Is he…”

She lifted a hand and the crowd stopped moving forward. All eyes were on her as she crept towards the corpse on the bed. With the tip of her wand, she reached out and poked his cheek. He did not move. Again, she cast a quick hex at his throat and he made no reaction.

“He’s dead!” she cried, glancing back at the people with a grin growing on her face. “He’s dead!”

The crowd around her repeated itself, growing louder in volume, until it was nearly a roar, and it spread down the line of rioters. Harry could hear it being yelled down the stairs, then across the hallway a floor below, and it continued on and on until he couldn’t hear it being passed along anymore. It would likely reach the courtyard outside within minutes.

Such was the enormity of the news that they barely noticed Harry until the woman at the front turned and saw him in the corner in his chair. She shouted, pointed, and there was a bristling of weapons towards him like a porcupine’s quills raising as it defended itself from danger.

“Who are you?” she hissed, raising her wand like that would do anything to a floating composite of particles and memories, “Did you kill him?”

“He killed himself,” Harry said simply.

“How? Why?”

“He tried to hit me with the Killing Curse, but since I literally do not exist it ricocheted off the mirror over there and hit him.”

She blinked. “What?”

“He killed himself,” shrugged Harry, “I didn’t do anything.”

There was a moment as the people slowly lowered their wands and considered that. Then, a man hurried out of the crowd over to the wall and wrenched the mirror off it. He stumbled a little under the weight, but recovered quickly and turned to face the others.

“This is the mirror that killed Voldemort!” he cried, lifting it above his head, and the crowd roared again as one. The man hurried towards the door, assisted by several others, and a dozen others rushed over to Voldemort’s body and took hold of it. They laughed as they did, loud, hysterical, joyful laughter, and dragged it towards the door. The crowd cheered and chanted around them, shouting their victory, giggling and crying in equal measure, reaching out to graze their fingertips over the frame of the mirror or aiming kicks down at Voldemort’s corpse. People trailed down the hallway, hooting, and all together the people dragged their tyrant’s dead body down the stairs. His head hit each step on the way down and Harry bit his lip in order to not smile.

As the rest of the protesters filed out of the room, the woman stood in the doorway and stared at Harry.

“You didn’t answer my first question,” she said, “Who are you?”

Harry tilted his head. “My name was once Harry James Potter. I’ve been dead for a while.”

Recognition sparked to life in the woman’s eyes, but her jaw tightened.

“I thought you weren’t real?” she asked, suspicion evident, “Aren’t you dead?”

Harry shrugged, thinking of a centuries-old conversation with an old man in a white train station.

“Just because I’m dead doesn’t mean I’m not real,” he said, and the woman nodded slowly and left. Harry waited a moment longer in the quiet room until her footsteps faded away.

He floated down through the floor away from the bedroom, past the office, and out the window. There Harry sat, hovering next to the peonies with his legs folded under him and his eyes closed, until slowly he disappeared. All that was left behind was love, an immense amount of it, and it slowly dissipated through the air. The flowers grew just a hair taller.