He knew something was wrong as soon as the Hogwarts wards pinged in the back of his mind at two in the morning.
He was absolutely certain of it when hissing alerted him that someone was at his office door, smelling of sweat and terror.
Voldemort rose, using spells to materialise a robe around him and remove any sign of his having been asleep and apparated from his quarters to his office, taking a moment to breathe before allowing the door to open.
A very dishevelled Yaxley practically flew into the room to throw himself at his feet, and he knew that he was about to be dealt a crushing blow.
"My Lord, I came as soon as I heard. It's Azkaban. He took Azkaban."
The man had his forehead pressed against his toes and was looking anywhere but up so Voldemort allowed his eyes to slide shut for a few moments, focusing on retaining control of his rage until he knew more.
"How many gone?" he asked quietly.
"No, my Lord." And the word of defiance had his anger crackling around him until the next words hurried forth. "He took Azkaban. The prison. It's gone."
"What!?" And while he usually tried to maintain a lighter touch when it came to Yaxley, because he was generally much more competent than many of the others and needed to be able to perform his duties in the Minister's chair, the man was soon twitching on the ground in front of him, not crying out, but certainly in agony.
Voldemort wrestled with himself until he was in control, then released the spell. "What do you mean, Azkaban is gone?" he asked slowly.
"Sightings of unusual dementor activity were reported in Newcastle, my Lord. When Aurors arrived to investigate it was quickly determined that it was the Azkaban contingent. When they travelled to the island, the entire structure was gone. Not destroyed, just . . . gone."
"Find it," he hissed, each word clipped. "Put out warrants for each inmate. Anyone found to be harbouring a fugitive will be facing the same fate as those they are hiding. And Yaxley, we are returning to wartime directives for security. Your people have the authority to check everyone. Do you understand?"
"Checking registration, my Lord?"
"And wands, and pockets, and applying anti-disguise hexes, everything. You need to get your Ministry under control otherwise it won't be yours for much longer. Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes, my Lord. Thank you, my Lord," Yaxley replied in a rush of air before hurrying out of the office like the floor was on fire.
Voldemort shut his eyes, apparated to the cave, his cave, and let out a roar of fury. Then he proceeded to burn every single inferius that he had ever stashed in the place, as wave after wave of fire rolled out across the inky black water.
He lost himself in his wrath. It was like a living, breathing thing, and it consumed him, for long hours until the air was choked with steam and the water level had dropped significantly, and all around the perimeter of the cave were feebly twitching corpses, all mutilated and blistered and scorched.
And when the harshness of the anger had been soothed down to a gentle burn he returned to his office and sank into his chair. There was something else burning within him, he knew. It was a strange sort of admiration for the utter brazenness of the act. Stealing Azkaban. And the power it must have taken to accomplish such a feat.
Voldemort tilted his head back against his chair and felt a curious smile pulling at his thin lips. "The game is afoot, you wretched menace. And your annihilation will taste so sweet."
Harry tossed the Prophet aside in disgust.
No, it wasn't disgust, he decided a few minutes later when he felt his gaze returning to the annoying headline, thinking of the stupid rhetoric within its pages. Disappointment.
It was all so predictable. And pointless. Voldemort would tighten his grasp around his 'subjects,' and they would quiver in fear, and then once he had complete and total submission he would relax that grasp, and people would forget that he was a monster. Round and round they went, and it was all so boring.
And it was a shame. Harry was working so hard to actually achieve something, to tidy up the mess that Voldemort had made of his country and the other man wasn't even playing along.
It was almost as though Voldemort wanted to be bored.
Harry frowned. Well, he wasn't going to let the ridiculous security measures scare him. In fact he was going to prove how completely ineffective they were.
"And you're going to thank me for it, Tom," he told the empty kitchen as he dug into his breakfast.
Before diving into his next efforts though he took the time to write up another note, this time to accompany a crudely-drawn map of the Faroe Islands with an X over the spot where he'd left the prison.
Dearest Tom
Azkaban was a problem so I got rid of it for you.
I should think you'd be grateful.
Here I am taking care of that to-do list I gave you,
while you're busy being boring.
Another gift.
ϟ
The bundle was set aside while he planned for his future misdeeds, however, since he didn't want to leave Grimmauld Place unless it was to be extremely productive. And so he prepared, with emergency portkeys and additional presence-masking charms that he'd used on covert assignments, once upon a time. And he enchanted small transfigured lightning bolt plushes to carry his voice, even at great distances.
Then he set off, and left the thoughtful gift right at the centre of Voldemort's desk before popping around the country to enact some mischief.
Voldemort ventured to the spot marked on the map alone, not wanting to entrust to anyone else the first glimpse of whatever awaited them.
And when he did arrive, easily locating the distinctive black structure rising from the tiny island like it belonged there, he didn't want to believe what he saw.
It shouldn't have been possible. And yet, here it was.
He entered through the open door, pausing for a few moments when he heard the bleating of sheep emanating from somewhere within. Then he continued, wandering the twisting corridors, checking each wing, assuring himself that yes, Potter had indeed freed every blasted criminal that had been inside.
What a bleeding heart. A madman. An infuriating pest.
And yet so unashamedly bold that Voldemort couldn't even begin to comprehend it. How? How was it possible for a person to throw all caution to the wind and act in such a wild manner all the time? With each act more incomprehensible than the last? More reckless than the last?
That thought would continue to haunt him in the coming weeks, and months, as reports from Yaxley revealed that the entire DMLE was being caught up in the hunt for Potter, not only because of his own orders, but because Potter seemed to be in a hundred places at once, scattered across the country and triggering the Taboo. On purpose.
So he responded by having Yaxley announce a nationwide lockdown, for the sake of security, so that they could finally catch the brat, except that ended up being turned back on him when their own Snatchers started being brought in for triggering the Taboo.
Potter was making a complete mockery of the Ministry, and he both hated it and admired it.
All until he returned to his office after attending to some early morning matters on the Continent in May and found a headline that he had not authorised.
CURFEW ABOLISHED
Lockdown Ends Midnight Tonight
His fingers pierced through all of the pages of the newspaper as he read the words, and then the article containing a prepared Ministry statement. He was apparating to London before he'd even finished standing.
"Explain this," he demanded, tossing the paper onto Yaxley's desk.
"My Lord, I spoke with Cuffe as soon as I saw. They received this notice last night," came the immediate reply, as a hand held out a missive.
Voldemort's eyes were narrowed to slits as they quickly read the contents, taking in the minute details that only one who was intimately connected to him, and one who was familiar with the processes of the DMLE, would know to include.
"What news do you have? Have your people found anything?" he snapped.
Yaxley winced before he was able to check himself, then replied, "Snatchers and Aurors keep responding to alerts and finding our own people. We still have a dozen of them in Holding until we're certain the Imperius has worn off. And we've collected some children's toys that appear to be carrying . . . his voice."
He hissed wordlessly in frustration, then raised a wand and tore through the Taboo on Potter's name, and its many variations, rending it to tatters.
"Give me one of the objects that was found," he ordered, and shortly was back in his office holding a golden plush lightning bolt.
It took him until dark to unravel the spellwork on the thing. It was a slow and delicate process to remove the spells that he didn't care about, layer by layer, until he reached the core of it, where the object carried Potter's voice and with it, a hint of a connection to him.
With his jaw clenched in fierce determination he grasped that connection and pulled.
When he arrived it was silently, and he sent a tremor of magic through the ground in all directions, catching the instant it seemed to pass under something unseen and flicked an immediate Killing Curse in that direction.
And then he watched in horror as his wand seemed to willingly leap from his grasp even as the bright green light gathered at its tip, and like in his nightmares, like he'd seen in the Pensieve, the wand arced into the air and began to spin.
"No!" he heard a voice—Potter's voice—shout, sounding anguished, before he felt an impact in his gut and was being forced to the ground with a solid weight on top of him.
And he stared as the green light streaked through the spot where he'd just been standing.
Neither of them spoke, or moved, or breathed, for what felt like hours.
Then Potter was the first to release a shuddering breath that he both heard and felt, before the Elder Wand was flying into an invisible grasp and the two of them were being sucked through a tube of apparition and being spat out on what appeared to be a rooftop somewhere entirely different.
And then the invisible Potter tossed both of their wands several feet away, and Voldemort reached up to rip away the dratted invisibility cloak.
Potter looked broken. His eyes were wide, his face pale, and quivering, his breath coming in short gasps, and his entire expression appeared shattered. He was still lying across Voldemort where he'd lunged at him and knocked him to the ground, and both hands were now fisted into his robes.
Then he shut his eyes with a shaking breath, and lowered his forehead to Voldemort's chest.
He found his long fingers wrapping a tight grip, likely uncomfortable, around Potter's upper arms and holding him in place.
"Explain yourself," he hissed.
"It would've killed you," Potter mumbled into his robes.
"I believed that was your entire purpose."
Potter looked up again and met his gaze with one so green and furious it seemed to contain its own Killing Curse.
"Don't you get it?" the man demanded hotly, and the hands that were gripping his robes shook him. "You can't die! I need you! Without you I'm nothing!"
He was breathing hard by the end of those words and Voldemort could only stare, stunned.
From anyone else, to anyone else, that might have been a declaration of love. As it was, it felt much the same to him, to be needed so unrepentantly, not out of fear, or admiration, but in simple irrefutable fact. It was powerful, so much so that he felt those words continue to pummel him again and again as they echoed in his mind.
And it was that declaration, the truth of it, that had him calling on some wandless privacy spells and divulging a secret to hopefully avert a disastrous accident in the future. The instant they'd crashed around the two of them, he admitted quietly, "I can die."
There was a horrid choking sound above him, and then Potter's forehead was back on his chest.
"I am still seeking a better option to horcruxes, since you and your friends proved how ineffective they were. And now that I've pushed my soul to the limit—particularly because I pushed it beyond its limit, if your claims about the additional horcrux I knew nothing about are true—I will need another solution. It remains to be seen what that is."
He could almost hear Potter's joints creaking from how tightly his fingers were wound into his robes.
Voldemort tightened his grip on the man's upper arms. "Why are you fighting me so hard if you need me to live?" he asked quietly.
"Because you need someone to fight you. Because the things you're doing are wrong."
He loosened his grip as he sighed and looked up toward the mists in the night sky. They were likely still in London then. "Your thoughts about right and wrong are so naive. Especially for one with your power."
"And your thoughts about the value of human life are stupid," came the retort.
Voldemort could feel the corner of his mouth quirking in amusement, entirely without his permission, as the horrible tension surrounding the events of the previous few minutes finally seemed to ease slightly. Yes, he still had a coiled knot in his stomach and his skin prickled with anxiety over the thought that he might have just died, but even so, there was an understanding in the air, now.
They would fight each other, with all that they had, but it wouldn't be to the death.
He shook his head slightly at the utter ridiculousness of the man who was still sprawled on top of him. "Where is this?"
"Hmm?" Potter lifted his head and looked around, then dropped his chin onto a hand to hold his gaze. "Oh. Office block. It's where your orphanage used to be."
And that looseness that had been lingering suddenly vanished as the anger came rushing back in, his magic coiling ready to strike at the impudent brat who dared—
"So predictable," Potter said then in a bored tone, and then had the gall to laugh at him.
Voldemort felt his anger release in a rush, hissing wordlessly as the desire to disintegrate Potter evaporated into something no more tangible than the mists above them.
Instead, he thought over the challenge that the man had issued in his home several months earlier. Azkaban had been part of it, and had now been removed entirely, though their nation still needed a system of punishment for serious crimes. And he already had people working on re-establishing a prison, though perhaps organised a bit differently.
The matter of citizen policing . . . was being handled. Or, it would be once this nonsensical night was over.
The other matters, on the other hand. . . .
"The children need protecting," he said several minutes later, and was surprised that Potter didn't immediately launch into a derisive comment about his methods thus far. Instead, he was looking at him steadily, his expression somewhat thoughtful.
"They do," Potter then agreed, surprising him anew.
"We know the worst of it, I imagine," he continued. "But children being raised in an environment of fear, learning to fear themselves and their magic, is unacceptable. It is shameful that our community has allowed it for so long."
"But you're stealing them from their parents, whether they need an escape or not."
"They deserve to be raised in an environment that nurtures them, and teaches them about their magic," he countered.
"So, what. Just because we didn't grow up with families who loved us means that no one else can, either?"
He inhaled sharply, bristling at the words, at the audacity, and felt himself stiffening. Clearly Potter felt it too because his eyes brightened, and the last of the pain in his expression melted away to reveal something much more threatening.
Voldemort pushed his weight off of his chest and stood, calling his wand to his hand just as the other man rose to his feet and did the same.
"And the New Blood and Old Blood nonsense?" Potter pressed, agitation bleeding into his tone. "You have an entire nation under your thumb and you're still catering to the purebloods with their blood supremacist tripe?"
"Us marrying muggles threatens the safety of our world."
"Do you even hear yourself? Look up, Tom! Dementors in muggle London threatens the safety of our world. The fact that none of your people know how to dress around muggles, the fact that your education about muggles includes blatant lies, threatens the safety of our world. How can one person revealing a secret, with measures in place to make sure that secret doesn't spread, be more dangerous to us than what you've already done!?
"And," Harry continued, the air around him beginning to warm with the anger of his magic, "restricting marriage between this 'Old Blood' and 'New Blood' rubbish based on how many generations new the magic is? If that was around thirty years ago I wouldn't exist! If it was around a century ago, you would have never been born!"
"Those laws aren't only about the precious muggles," he countered. "Too much Old Blood intermarrying creates squibs. Would you agree that first cousins and siblings perhaps shouldn't marry?"
"What—yes!"
"And so, by your own double standard, your godfather Sirius Black would have never existed. Is that what you want?"
"But—that's not the point!" Potter blustered.
"It very much is. But," he replied, raising a hand to head off the outburst he could see forming on the other man's face, "if not for these restrictions, what would you propose?"
Potter's eyes appeared to flash in anger. "No," he said harshly, then stepped forward and jabbed a finger into Voldemort's chest. "No, I'm not cleaning up all of your messes. You can do some of your own heavy lifting. You were known for being brilliant once. So show me what you're capable of, Tom."
He was close then, too close, and Voldemort could feel his power crackling around them both, pressing in on them like an impending storm. "Because if you force me to kill you," Potter continued in a dangerous whisper, "it won't be fun anymore."