Once upon a time, there was a boy who slept in a cupboard.
His name was Harry Potter, but he had many names: Freak, the Boy Who Lived, the Chosen One, but to himself he was just Harry.
He hadn't always slept in a cupboard, but he couldn't remember more than a strange flash of green light from before.
"Your parents died in a car crash," his aunt told him shrilly when he asked about before. He didn't ask again.
Nevertheless, he didn't know if he believed her.
"Lily and James Potter, die in a car crash?" spluttered Hagrid, the friendly giant who freed him from the cupboard—in a roundabout sort of way, but freed him all the same. "Preposterous! They died as they lived, standing up to You-Know-Who to the last."
Harry didn't know who.
"Voldemort," Hagrid said bravely, "the evilest wizard to ever live."
(Voldemort too had other names, all of which Harry would come to know.)
And so, the boy was swept off to a school where he learned the magic his parents had learned. He made friends with other young wizards and witches. He discovered a talent for flying and for the strange yet wonderful sport of Quidditch. (He nearly died during his first match and in others to follow.)
Harry met Voldemort, the wizard with a god complex and a constant need for validation, at the end of his first year, for nothing in this magical world was as peaceful as it appeared.
"Join me," the wizard said from the back of his stuttering servant's head (for the mighty have fallen far). "Together, we can bring your parents back." The boy roundly rejected him ("Kill him!" Voldemort shrieked predictably) and was saved from the wizard's servant through the protection his mother left him.
"Why did he try to kill me?" Harry asked Professor Dumbledore, the wise old man (who was only too human, in his own sadly twinkling eyes) when the ordeal had ended. The wise old man did not tell him then. He never would.
No, the wizard himself would have that honor.
Harry returned to the home of his family, who were no happier to see him than he was them. Had it all been a dream? he often wondered.
"Harry Potter must not go back to Hogwarts!" a strange little creature with pointed ears told him.
Not a dream, then.
"Why?" Harry protested.
"Harry Potter is in grave danger!"
Wasn't he always? No one will stop him from going back to the school of magic, his first true home.
But the strange creature was right, of course. The boy was in grave danger, but so was Hermione, the brilliant girl who was his friend, and every other student born to parents without magic.
Many in the school suspected the boy for the multitude of unexplained attacks, for he spoke the language of snakes as the heir to Slytherin did. But it was not the boy.
It was the wizard, though not quite.
Hello, Harry Potter. My name is Tom Riddle.
The name meant something to Harry, but he couldn't say quite what. It felt familiar, friendly. But Tom Riddle was no friend to the boy... nor anyone else, for that matter.
In the end, the Chosen One saved the school and his friend's little sister. He killed Slytherin's monster, a giant serpent (what else would it be?). And he knew Tom Riddle for what he was. Tom Riddle: the first of Voldemort's names.
But Tom Riddle knew the boy, too.
"Wait," Tom cried. "You are part of—" But Harry stabbed the diary with the serpent's fang to save the little girl, and the boy-wizard disappeared.
In his third year, Harry found his godfather Sirius Black, a man imprisoned for the crimes of a onetime friend. "You have a house? When can I move in?" (It was not to be, for the ripples of betrayal spread far.)
But it is in Harry's fourth year that our story truly begins.
There was a Tournament that year between three rival schools, a champion chosen from each. The boy was also chosen. He did his best in the Tasks and received help when his best wasn't quite enough.
There were strange dreams, too, with an old man and a snake. There were suspicious disappearances. There was a dead man masquerading as a professor. And it all led up to this:
Harry reaches the center of the hedge maze—replete with obstacles and cursed champions—and takes hold of the grand prize. The other—true—Hogwarts champion joins him; why not share the victory? They land in a graveyard. The other champion dies. Harry is tied to a grave stone by his parents' betrayer. It's all very quick and orderly.
A large stone cauldron crouches menacingly, filled with a bubbling brew. Several ingredients are added that terrify and displease the boy (his blood is one of them). There is a small figure swaddled in a bundle of cloth. Harry knows him and is afraid.
Voldemort emerges, fully-warped, from the amniotic fluid of the cauldron-womb. (Rebirth, 'tis true.) It slides from his skin—translucent, pallid—like water off the back of a duck. His scarlet eyes bore into Harry's with an unholy gleam. "Robe me," he orders the cringing servant, his voice a cold rasp. Harry is horrified yet transfixed.
Voldemort stands before Harry and stretches a bony finger toward his face. "Your mother's protection is gone, and I can touch you now."
Harry's scar throbs at the Icey touch, and he cries out. Voldemort, however, feels something... more. A stirring, a warmth. He understands all too well. He cannot kill the boy. He must keep him safe, must protect him from any that dare threaten him. "Wormtail!" he snarls.
"Yes, master?" his servant groans, a bloody, quivering heap.
"Avada Kedavra!" Wormtail flops back, dead without quite knowing why. Voldemort kicks the corpse aside, utterly unfazed by what he has done. Harry whimpers faintly. "None of that, now." Harry's bindings fall away. Voldemort grasps him about the waist, and Disapparates without a sound.
"Do you know what you are, child?" he murmurs almost gently, though it fits him ill. His wand dances in patterns hitherto unseen, magic flowing forth to wrap about the bare room in which they have appeared like a skin upon the stone.
"No," Harry says, his voice a croak.
The gentleness morphs into something harsh and true. "You are mine," Voldemort replies simply, as if it is the plainest of facts. He is Lord Voldemort. Perhaps it is.
"Where are we?" Harry asks, curling in on himself and trembling convulsively as Voldemort steps away.
"Somewhere no one will ever find you."
From the view of his window, Harry guesses he is being kept in a tower. The chamber (at the very top) is sumptuous: A wide, pillow-laden bed; a comfortable armchair; a color scheme of soft maroons and mellow golds. Harry doesn't ask how this all came to be here, and Voldemort doesn't bother to explain. If it weren't a prison, Harry thinks, it would be heaven brought to heel.
Voldemort stands impossibly tall at the chamber's center, not a hair to shadow his translucent flesh, not a whisper of humanity in his serpentine face. "I will grant any wish," he says. "But I will never let you go."
"But I don't want anything else," Harry says plaintively. "And I would like to see my friends again."
"No," Voldemort snaps. He is afraid, but what could one so powerful as he have to fear? "You want for nothing else?"
"I don't know," Harry admits. "I've never been able to ask for anything before."
"Ah," Voldemort says. He understands this, you see. Tom Riddle was an unwanted orphan once, too. "We have time, Harry Potter," he says. "We have all the time in the world. You shall learn desire." Unlike most things Voldemort says, this is not meant to sound as sinister as it does. He cringes slightly.
Harry feels his heart sink further still.
Voldemort is undeterred. He brings him good things to eat and beautiful trophies and books of magics uncounted. "I'll teach you, if you wish," he says in desperation.
"Will you teach me to escape?" Harry asks sardonically.
In lieu of a reply, Voldemort flees.
There will be no official search for the boy. He makes sure of that. His followers (never more than that) have resources. He uses them well. He is never grateful to have them; he deserves them.
Harry sits in his tower day after day. He opens his window to breathe in fresh air and tries to put his hand through. It stops, prevented by an invisible barrier. He listens to birds sing, wishes he could join them in their joyous flight.
Voldemort returns in the evenings, each gift delivered with feline satisfaction.
"I have a question," Harry says around three months after his capture. "Dumbledore didn't tell me when I asked, and you obviously know, so…" He trails off, uncertain.
Voldemort does not forbid questions. Instead, he gives a rather twisted smile and says, "Fire away."
"Why did you try to kill me that night? I was just a baby, and I mean, I'm never been a threat to you…"
Voldemort's disappointment is sharp enough for Harry to taste. "Dumbledore didn't tell you."
"He said I was too young," Harry mutters, suddenly feeling almost grateful, because it was information Voldemort craved and would possibly never possess.
"There was a prophecy," Voldemort says. "My spy heard only part of it. You were foretold to be my equal, to have the power to vanquish me." He moves suddenly, his hand wrapping around the back of Harry's neck. "You do not have that power now, however the prophecy concludes." His grip is too tight for Harry to pull away.
But unlike Voldemort (Tom Riddle, the Dark Lord, etc. etc.), Harry is not alone. The world shifts, a war looms, but Hermione is determined, and Sirius Black is restless, and Severus Snape has a promise to keep.
(Meanwhile, Dumbledore hunts strange treasures that do not wish to be found.)
It's an odd team the three of them make, the brilliant girl and the bitter potions master and the fugitive godfather. But they have one goal in mind, and they will achieve it. They will accept nothing less.
"He isn't dead, no matter what the Ministry says," Hermione says, her eyes blazing with desperate conviction.
"He is not," Snape agrees. "The Dark Lord would have spread it far and wide if he were."
"Optimism's new for you, isn't it, Snivelus?" Sirius goads, for schoolyard rivalries die harder than quasi-immortal dark lords.
"No, Black," Snape retorts with a long-suffering sigh. "Just realistic."
"How do we find him?" Hermione presses. "Where would V-Voldemort be keeping him?"
"Do not speak his name," Snape hisses. "The Dark Lord has knowledge of magic beyond any of ours," he continues. "Potter could be anywhere… right outside the Hogwarts grounds, even, and we may not know it."
"Magic always leaves a trace—" Hermione protests.
"Voldemort wouldn't be that stupid—" Sirius says simultaneously.
"Shut up, both of you!" Snape barks, raising a hand to silence them. "It was only an example. Traces can be… microscopic."
And so they begin.
"I would kill anyone who dared try to harm you," Voldemort tells Harry one day, a few months after his capture. Harry sits reading a tome of curses, wand in hand. ("Why shouldn't you have your wand?" Voldemort had replied to Harry's doubtful query. "You cannot possibly use it to free yourself.")
"Even if they were your followers?" he asks, listlessly turning a page.
Voldemort comes up behind him, plucking his wand impatiently from his fingers and capturing his hand. "Anyone," he replies fervently. "You matter most of all."
And Harry feels a glimmer of something new. It is not unpleasant, yet unwelcome nonetheless. He is tired. He has given up hope. No one has come to find him. He lets his head fall back against Voldemort's chest. Voldemort cards a hand through Harry's hair, sighing contentedly.
(If Harry closes his eyes and keeps his head turned away, then none of this is happening—no matter how good it feels, no matter how something deep within him shudders in pleasure at the touch.)
There are tidings of war spread through whispers; heralded by owls; obscured by the paper of record. Hermione and Severus and Sirius, however, do not cease their search.
"We ought to look in places we feel inclined to avoid," Severus snarls in frustrated excitement. It seems so obvious. Why didn't he think of it sooner?
"Because he's got wards that repel scrutiny," Hermione seconds, her bushy hair in frantic disarray.
"I could sniff around a bit," Sirius suggests—seriously. "Could be something that's not designed to work on dogs."
They're all correct, in the end.
Dumbledore finds what he seeks: a cup in a Gringotts vault (he offers the goblins something they desperately want back, to be delivered when it is no longer needed); a tiara in a hidden room (found through the persistence of Ginny Weasley, the little girl now nearly grown and out for blood); a locket in a decrepit house (found because of a note left with a decoy); a ring in a hovel that shrivels his hand and condemns him to die a painful death. (No matter. His work is nearly finished.)
Voldemort doesn't notice the destruction of his scattered scraps of soul. He has eyes only for the boy who carries the most insignificant of pieces. But Harry is more than just his Horcrux. He knows the words for what he feels. He doesn't dare use them. It is not just that Harry is beautiful—for beautiful he is, with his eyes of endless summer and his hair of endless night. It is… more, other, wondrous, beyond him.
There are collapsed bridges and unexplained disappearances and a head of government told naught but half-truths.
There is a boy cradled lovingly in the arms of a wizard who has too little heart for love.
There is a tower deep in the Forbidden Forest, far beyond the reach of the Hogwarts wards. What it was built for, no one remembers… if they remember its existence to begin with. Voldemort remembered; that was enough.
Hermione, Severus, and Sirius find it by the barest of chances. They take a walk on a whim, see the centaurs veer oddly, wonder why (but almost wonder nothing, for the enchantments are strong).
"There's something up there, all right," Sirius reports when he returns from bounding ahead in his hulking dog form.
Severus puts a hand to his forehead. "He really wasn't far from the school."
Hermione smiles tightly. "We've found where he's keeping him. How do we get Harry out?"
"The Dark Lord must be thoroughly distracted," Severus replies.
"Only way you could manage that is by killing every motherfucking Death Eater," Sirius grumbles.
"You're an idiot, Black," Severus maintains, "but you may be on to something."
"End this war before it really breaks out," Sirius confirms, seeming to take his purported idiocy in stride.
"Indeed."
They hatch a plan. It is convoluted and dangerous, and the odds of failure are high. Dumbledore's death is the foundation. The celebrations will bring all the Death Eaters into one place and Severus into the Dark Lord's highest esteem. Everyone protests, but Dumbledore and Severus are adamant—the latter reluctantly.
"I am dying, Severus," Dumbledore says gently—and it fits him well. "We cannot waste an opportunity like this. Tom must be defeated, and Harry must be rescued."
"I know," Severus replies bitterly. "I'll do it."
"Thank you." Dumbledore settles back in his chair. "You know what to give Harry when I'm gone."
"Dumbledore is dead," Voldemort tells Harry, sweeping into the chamber. He is not exultant. His anxiety is overwhelming, and Harry tries in vain to block it out.
"Shouldn't you be happy about that?" Harry asks. He himself doesn't quite know how to feel, except that Voldemort is surely unstoppable.
"I should." Voldemort paces from one end of the room to the other. "Victory is nearly mine, and yet I cannot help…"
"What?" Harry rises from where he sits, approaches his captor. He needs Voldemort's anxiety to ease for his own comfort.
"Fifteen years ago," Voldemort begins, drawing Harry close, "I was on the cusp of victory. The Order of the Phoenix and the Ministry fought well, but they had lost many. Magical creatures of all sorts were my allies. Mudbloods were dying or fleeing in droves." Harry cringes, and Voldemort sighs fondly. "But then I tried to kill you. You know how much of a success that was."
Harry nods, his head tucked beneath Voldemort's chin. (He has grown within the last year, but not enough to significantly decrease the difference in their heights.) "What could possibly go wrong for you now?" he spits.
"I could lose you." The reply is instantaneous. Not "I could lose my war," as it no doubt should have been.
"I must attend the festivities," Voldemort murmurs, beginning to reluctantly pull away. "My absence would seem… unusual."
"You should go, then." Harry feels a heat, what must be desire. He knows it is merely an echo of Voldemort's own (shameful, therefore suppressed), that he himself feels nothing of the sort. But—
Harry stretches up and kisses him. Voldemort makes a surprised little moan and returns it with desperation.
Fuck, Harry thinks. This isn't so bad. Their hearts pound in unison, their breaths come in pants.
It ends far too soon. Harry's disappointed; he's not so sure it was just Voldemort's desire. Voldemort is amazed, appalled, thrilled. "You did not want it. I did not ask for it."
Harry turns his back on him. "Does it matter anymore? You've said it a hundred times: I'm never getting away."
"Indeed." Voldemort hesitates. "I will not be gone long," he says at last and vanishes silently. Harry has never been more relieved at his departure.
Miles away, there is a toast to an old man's demise. The champagne goes down. Glasses shatter as people drop them and clutch at their throats. At the table's head, Voldemort does not partake. He watches in mute shock. Blood spurts from the neck of the serpent coiled by the fire, an invisible figure fleeing. His curse just misses them. He stands then, his rage transcendent. They are dying all around him… They are dead…
Severus poured the drinks. Severus is no longer here.
"Harry! Harry!"
Harry wrenches open the tower window, recognizing the voice, not believing what he hears. "Hermione?" he croaks. "How did you—?"
"Never mind that now, Potter. We don't have any time." Snape—dour as ever, but an oddly welcome sight—flicks his wand, and the barrier around the window dissolves.
"Jump, Harry," Hermione implores. "We've gotten as far as we can."
Freedom beckons. Harry is elated, yet his heart goes still. He looks around his prison, filled as it is with all the comforts he had ever wanted, and many that he had only dreamed of (Voldemort plucked them from his head, for he enjoyed Harry's flights of fancy).
"I—" he begins, terribly uncertain.
"Get your ass down here, Harry!" He recognizes Sirius's voice, and that's finally impetus enough. He clambers onto the narrow sill, swings his legs through, and jumps. they catch him and spirit him away.
"How long was I there?" he asks them once they've made their triumphant return to what they inform him is the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix.
"A little over a year," Hermione replies, bleak. "We searched everywhere. You have no idea."
"Thank you," he tells them, his words choked. "Thank you." And yet…
No! Harry's scar bursts open. Pain like nothing he has ever experienced. Pain and rage and grief, a cocktail of woe. Come back to me! From one that has now lost everything.
I'm sorry, Harry replies across a wondrously wide distance —and he is sorry, to his own disgust. They offered the one thing you never would.
Voldemort's response is laden with stops and starts, a twinge of guilt, a consuming adoration. Harry wants to push it away, but he's never been good at closing his mind.
This is what I want, Tom, he whispers, and oh how strange it is to address him by any name. Please, let me be.
Voldemort has fought his way out of an army of Aurors, has no choice but to lay low. For now, Harry, he replies. But you will always be mine. Harry nearly cries when he feels his emotions fade.
There is a single strand of memory, coiled in a vial. "Dumbledore wanted you to hear that," Severus says gruffly. "Told me to give that to you, right after he ordered me to kill him."
Either must die at the hand of the other, for neither can live while the other survives. The final portion of the prophecy. When he has finished viewing it, Harry has only one thing to say. "He cannot die while I live."
Severus puts a finger to his lips. "That is not common knowledge and mustn't become so."
Groups of Aurors are sent after Voldemort. Most return empty-handed. Some never return at all.
"We need to find him!" Rufus Scrimgeour—Minister of Magic and believer in justice of one form or another—roars, slamming his hand onto a table.
Harry hardly understands why he's in this meeting: Something about him surviving a year in Voldemort's captivity and not going insane (oh, what they don't know...), and that he's always been their hero. "I could find him," he says. "I can sense him. And I suppose I am the perfect bait."
No, that wasn't what he meant to say! But he cannot take it back.
"Well, I'm out of ideas," Scrimgeour says approvingly.
"Don't do this, Harry!" Hermione begs. "You might never come back." Sirius nods in frantic agreement.
"I know." He misses him, or something like it. And he is Harry Potter. He will never be free.
Voldemort has shrouded his mind, but Harry can indeed find him. He is a bloodhound; he leads them true. And when they arrive, he gives them the slip.
"You came back to me," Voldemort says in wonder.
"You've lost everything else," Harry replies.
"I wished for the world," Voldemort says, embracing him. "I will settle for you." (He will always want more, but perhaps Harry is his world, now.)
"Let's go, Tom," Harry says.
"This is what you want?" Voldemort's lips brush the lightning scar.
"I want you," Harry sighs. Perhaps…
Perhaps, it is near enough to true.