Chapter Text
Now:
It had not been his intention.
Lord Voldemort always planned ahead, carefully, fastidious about the details. In complete control of every agent that interfered at every step of his plans; plans that he mapped perfectly and everybody, friend or foe, followed as a guide, willingly or unwittingly.
Yet, as always, no matter what he did, no matter the information at his disposal, no matter the rules of the world, Harry Potter came and ruined everything by sheer luck alone.
Gravity hesitated if Harry Potter was the one falling.
Luck favored Lord Voldemort.
Luck favored Harry Potter.
He came onto his senses with the firm grip of hands at the sides of his head.
“It’s alright.” Someone soothed him. A body so close to his, the heat of it like a hearth, a firm press at his hips; he was being straddled.
Lord Voldemort realized he was lying down while someone carefully cleaned his face with a wet rag. The coppery smell of blood thick and overwhelming to his senses, he could taste it at the back of his tongue. His throat was dry and his usually flawless vision was blurry.
“You are alright, ” came the soft voice again from up above. He recognized it, then.
Harry Potter.
Lord Voldemort tried to move, but it was as if his muscles were turned into lead. He called upon his magic and commanded it to attack, but a force pushed back onto him and he choked.
“Calm down, Tom.” Harry Potter hissed at him “You are safe —now, don’t try to move, you’ll hurt yourself.”
Lord Voldemort tried to speak but only a dry heaving sound came out of his lips. Then he felt relieved as cold water was being slowly poured in his mouth, slipping a bit at the corners. A thumb caught the drop sliding down his cheek and it felt almost like a caress.
His chest heaved and he tried to speak again “You...dare…”
“Don’t speak, ” the boy shushed him “I’ll tell you, alright? If you don’t remember I will tell you.”
he felt the soft press of lips on his forehead, a foreign sensation but a recognizable one “Now, sleep.”
Lord Voldemort knew no more.
“He is rather pitiful, don’t you think?” Whispered Harry. Hedwig hooted at him, clearly in disagreement. The summer heat dying down after the sun hid, Harry kept his window open to let the air in. Hedwig perched at the frame, by his side. The smell of her was not particularly pleasant but Harry found it immensely comforting. “I can feel him, even now,” he confessed.
Then:
It had been a week after Sirius' death and Harry was numb. And when he wasn't, the grief was so strong he felt himself drown in it, overwhelming as it was, it left him rooted on the spot. He’d come to his senses after, on the floor and his heart beating as if he had run a marathon.
He couldn’t handle it.
He couldn't, not anymore.
Vernon had received him with the same enthusiasm he showed every year, but there was a new look in his eyes that Harry recognized easily. He’d seen it before, many times. The first time he had been standing in a dueling arena, and he saw it in the wide eyes of Justin Finch-Fletchley when Harry spoke parseltongue for the first time in public; fear, revulsion.
He saw it again when Umbridge was being dragged away by the centaurs.
Once they got out of the car, his uncle turned to him. Vernon's eyes flared and he huffed like a bull at Harry, brusquely opening the door and striding towards the house, leaving Harry alone and perplexed in the back seat.
The next day, Harry walked to the kitchen in a daze and almost stumbled into Vernon, who halted abruptly, the inertia making him stagger.
His uncle paled and staggered away.
It was perplexing.
Harry knew how Vernon would have normally reacted; he would have shoulder checked Harry, he would have shouted at him, he would have loomed, his hands would have twitched, grabbing at the air as if it were Harry’s neck.
Yet, similar situations happened one too many times, when Vernon would take a look at Harry, he’d stutter, hesitate, and flee. When usually he would have just… pushed him, with his meaty hands swatting him like Harry was paper, or just like the stick thin teen he was.
But now he didn’t dare touch him, he grumbled and flinched and gritted his teeth, and if Harry walked by he would storm out of the room instead of roaring at Harry to disappear. And Harry didn't understand what could have caused it. As far as Vernon knew, nothing had changed.
He couldn’t have known about Voldemort’s return, about the blade that hung on all of Harry’s acquaintances, loved or not. Everybody could be used against Harry, even the Dursleys, he knew—
The dawning realization came when Petunia cowered into herself when their eyes met, as if Harry had raised his hand to strike her, and the abrupt pure undiluted fear in her eyes was enough to make his head swim.
It was him. Something was wrong with Harry, and everybody could see it –even muggles could.
Everybody but him.
He’d stare at the mirror and see Lily’s vibrant eyes stare back at him. They didn’t hold any love, not like he pictured when he imagined her looking at him.
Her eyes sat on heavy purple bags, on a gaunt and pale face. Harry wondered if Sirius’s death had robbed him of something important, something he had not been aware he possessed before.
The wind made the leaves from the tree outside rustle softly, he could hear the tv on the ground floor and his aunts cackled at it. Harry breathed in, his eyes hot, and he felt in his fingertips Sirius’ robes as he saw himself grabbing him, seizing them tight and pulling him back to him. He could feel the warmth of his godfather clearly in his arms.
He heard Bellatrix’s deranged laugh clearly ringing in his ears, cruel and deafening, reverberating on the walls and his chest burned with horrid intensity. Filled with coals and the need to hurt-
His room’s door slammed back onto the wall as Harry sprinted towards the bathroom and vomited on the ceramic floor. He heaved out bile and realized he had not eaten anything at all the whole day.
“Boy!” bellowed his uncle, his steps thundering in the hallway. “What is this scandal?!” He pulled Harry’s shirt and Harry stumbled and fell on his ass, breathing shallowly in an effort to breathe at all.
Vernon stared down at him, like he once did when Harry didn’t reach much above his navel.
“ARE YOU DRUNK?!”
“I-”
“YOU UNGRATEFUL LITTLE SHITE, AFTER ALL WE’VE DONE-!”
Harry blacked out for a second. He felt himself float and his extremities tingle like thousands of ants were walking under his skin.
The ringing in his ears started to dwindle and Harry realized that he had not been able to hear until then.
When he came back Petunia was hovering over him, a foreign expression of worry on her face “I think he is sick, Vernon,” she mumbled. Harry’s cheek throbbed in dull pain. “Look at me, look at me!” She commanded when Harry’s eyes glazed over, “You will clean this mess and then you’ll go to bed. No arguing!”
Harry blinked back at her, wondering where Dudley was.
“Answer her, boy!”
“Y-yes aunt Petunia,” he stammered.
She nodded sharply and stood up, hesitated slightly before whispering “I’ll bring you a rag and chlorine. Stay there.”
He thought himself dreaming. Reality around him was fragile and flawed, he registered tremors that shook him at the periphery of his awareness, distant, and he couldn’t be sure he was awake at all. He thought he was in his bed, the blankets pulled high and covering his nose, but he couldn't be sure.
He could as well be lying in the hard stone of the Ministry of Magic, glass strewn around him and his body quivered and twisted as Voldemort settled inside his skin.
His face was wet and his nose clogged; he had been crying.
He felt a pounding headache throbbing in his skull and the side of his face burned.
Harry was sweating but he was so cold, and he wanted to die.
He blew his nose in the sheets for a lack of tissue and buried his face on the pillow. Hedwig was making distress noises from her cage but Harry couldn't find it in himself to care. He could hear his heartbeat loud as if he was pressing his ear in someone’s chest, and that person's bones were made of paper.
His mind was sluggish and blank, he shrank and hugged himself with the vague intention of sleeping.
There was pain, his oversensitive skin couldn't stand the scratch of his sheets, almost like sandpaper on a burn.
From the tip of his toes to his hair he felt a chill, and a keen sense of loss; he felt empty where that unknown something had been ripped out of him. Like claws sinking into his guts and taking away something so precious.
Harry whimpered, he was so, so cold .
He was leaning on something comfortable, a sweet presence curled around his neck. Its weight settled heavy and comforting on his shoulders as she hissed in his ear. He caressed her soft scales and hissed back.
The Daily Prophet on the desk announced his comeback, dread dripping off the printed words. He was content, the world feared him again.
Harry opened his eyes abruptly, jerked himself up, stumbled out of bed and hobbled towards his closet; he opened it and looked at himself in the mirror.
The face that he found there was his, the scar, the eyes, the sick countenance and-
And a purple bruise on the side of his face, where it was throbbing hot and swollen.
Someone had hit him, possibly when he passed out.
It had been Vernon, he knew, Petunia didn’t have the strength. In anger, maybe? Trying to wake him up? probably. It didn’t matter.
Harry took in a ragged breath and dragged himself back to bed, he kneeled at the edge of it and sobbed, guilty and nauseous at what he had just done.
At the sheer relief that it had brought him.