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The meeting is agonizing. Voldemort has sent Harry Potter five bored mental probes already.
He doubts, really, that the boy realizes exactly what it is or what he's doing when he mentally brushes Voldemort off, but the irritated waves coming back push him to lean in further as if he's shoving into Harry's personal space and asking, curious, what are you up to?
Harry Potter, his prophesied enemy, is pointedly thinking about Transfiguration. A glance at the Geminioed schedule pinned to the wooden back of the door to Lucius's study is only confirmation that Voldemort's small, irrepressible nemesis is attending one of Minerva McGonagall's lectures at the moment.
How Voldemort would have teased him, if he was there. Next to Harry.
As Yaxley drones on with his monthly report from the Ministry, Voldemort allows himself very briefly to fantasize about watching Harry study. Knowing what he focuses on, when his eyes glaze over. When he shakes his head, trying to focus again. Oh, cruel world, where he knows precisely what the boy is up to at every moment, with just a thought, leaping into his mind like into a welcoming cool pool but he can never catch a glimpse of Harry Potter himself. Never does he linger at the mirror in his bathroom, never does he walk past windows where his body is reflected in blue lines. His brilliant gaze is always set dead ahead, or at his feet, those boyish sneakers wearing away at the sole. Upon his friends, who gaze at him when he looks away, of that Lord Voldemort is convinced.
It was like that for him, when he was in school. The way they'd followed him around like a young god. And poor dear Harry wears it so well. Bashful where Tom had been enigmatic. Anxious where Tom had leapt at the chance. Irritable when Tom had gloated.
He's seen him in glimpses since his resurrection day. And what a night that had been. Harry at his most furious, his most passionate.
Voldemort focuses on his meeting for a minute.
'Several departments are asking for budget increases, but it is my view that Fudge won't be reading those notes as Lucius has a habit of Incendio-ing them on sight,' Yaxley says sincerely.
Lord Voldemort continues to look at him thoughtfully, but his eyes glaze over once more. And he tries to get Harry's attention again.
Peeks into the world with Harry's eyes. Ah, Voldemort thinks. Hogwarts at midday.
It is beautiful, through Harry's eyes. His nemesis has his chin resting on his palm, fingertips visible in his peripheral. One wonders how those nimble fingers feel. He's gazing out at the open sky and the empty fields beyond the castle, the mighty cliffsides and vast wilderness beyond the pane. His attention has diverted again, and his mind must be elsewhere. On the sky, Voldemort hazards, how his sweet nemesis loves to fly.
Voldemort would teach him. He turns his own head an inch, connection breaking briefly to look out at the forest and clouded sky outside the window in the Malfoy study. It's drearier than the day is in Scotland, but Voldemort prefers this weather for flight and somehow he knows Harry does too. An innate understanding of him, the bones he built from Harry's, Adam to Voldemort's Eve say with confidence that Harry loves the spray of a pouring rain drenching his clothes flat to his body, his hair flat to his head the same way Voldemort loves hurtling his way through a cloud. Harry has never been through a cloud, of that Voldemort is certain.
There are many things about Harry Potter of which Lord Voldemort is certain and he wishes he knew the rest. Needs to capture him and take him apart piece by piece.
Harry is focusing on Transfiguration again, when Voldemort blinks away to his eyes. His view is curtained with sweeping, soft looking bangs that a quick upwards hand does nothing to brush aside. He looks over his notes, head tilting this way and that as he scans. Voldemort could recognize Harry's penmanship in a line up. He spent a year grading it, after all. Remembers the gentle swoop of his g, the dart of his period that felt more like a slant than a simple dot. It was endearing, the quick way he wrote. It's endearing now, as he marks out a misheard quotation from his professor and it is fascinating when his hand gently pushes aside the parchment, his quill hits a thin notebook, and he begins to sketch out a diagram.
Voldemort loses all interest when the bounds of a quidditch pitch take form.
He probes at Harry roughly. Find a new hobby. These strategies are futile, Slytherin's team will win. Plan for the war ahead.
I hate you very much annoying bastard Slytherin's team is shit dark lord no life needs real hobbies himself in class right now can't leave me alone for the love of!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! says something small and irritable in Voldemort's ears. He could almost smile. The way he has no control whatsoever over what he sends. The way he sounds, lovely and young and unfettered.
The way his fist had clenched, against the table, against his thin battered notebook with lines and a spiral wire edge. How their similarities never end.
Voldemort almost wishes he had had Harry when he was young, but it is far more entertaining this way. His small, overwhelmed enemy, with his quick fey eyes, and oh, the way he fights! Frenetic and jaw set for justice, like someone who has grown up losing and has been handed a sword. There is something about children with that look in their eyes. Agonized and determined. Not yet broken. Voldemort commends the headmaster's choices, raising an army of school children if the rumors hold any truth, which he doubts they do.
Harry Potter, as their leader. Their man in silver, how tempting he would look in armour and horrid amounts of blood. Never his own. Lord Voldemort entertains a fantasy of happening upon a Harry Potter who is dead on his feet, after fighting down a legion's worth of Voldemort's men.
Though a part of him pains at the thought. He should never be made to fight. In summertime, Voldemort had ailed, toiled away in wait. Watched as poor, grieving Harry had paced his small room like a tiger in a cage, like a bride with cold feet.
His child bride. And the thought comes unbidden, Harry Potter, still in his ropes and strung up like on a cross, isn't it so similar, in the end, to Harry Potter in pearly white. Flushed and gazing up at him like an accusation. Small brown palms tight against a bouquet, the chains of matrimony.
A white dress, in the graveyard where his father had been buried. Voldemort's mind blanks.
A white dress. A wedding gown.
Yaxley trails off. 'My lord?'
Voldemort raises a hand. 'You are dismissed.'
When Yaxley has left, Voldemort stands, and stares at nothing in particular. Harry Potter, in a white dress. What must he do to make it happen?
For it will be done. Lord Voldemort will chase it like a hellhound. That is the solution, isn't it? To capture his enemy, to win the war.
He focuses again, palms flat against the oakwood desk. Harry Potter is glancing up and back at his notebook, and scribbling down a syllabus outline. It is several weeks into the term, and the titles and book references on his page are Defense titles Voldemort had read at the same age, not the Transfiguration he's been assigned by the teacher whose classroom he sits in now.
Harry, are you forming an army? he inquires.
For the very first time since he made his body, Voldemort is shut away from Harry Potter's sweet, welcoming, lotus flower mind.
It cannot last forever. It opens again but a few hours later, when he has sent for Narcissa's best tailors, demanded catalogues of the latest high fashion, and then tore them all to shreds in a pique of rage. He stares out, dispassionate, onto the extensive gardens of their manor. Peacocks and abraxans flying within their binds, leaping through the air and soaring back down once they hit their charmed limits. His head is churning, imagining a ceremony and drawing up a detailed, manipulative contract already. It is the perfect solution and yet Voldemort is frustrated, watching them fly, watching their gleaming white feathers shift and sway in the wind. Surely, he thinks inanely, there exists a gown in that flawless shade of white? There must be a bridal robe fit for his nemesis. It exists in his mind's eye, snug around Harry's runner's figure, clinging to his waist. Pearls upon his chest, hand-sown, maybe Harry will struggle with the veil on.
His mind goes blissfully blank once more. Harry with a veil on.
Then something prodding at him, poking at him as he stands.
What's with all the racket dark lord being weird angry he's angry can't believe I'm wasting my lunch on this madness what's pissed you off this time.
Voldemort sighs. 'You won't understand yet, my dear. But you will, very soon.'
Harry seems to sigh. Psycho.
And if it seems a bit fond, perhaps that could be a fault of Voldemort's mind. But when has he ever been mistaken?