Yes! He had done it! It had taken longer than he had expected — after his son's escape, Crouch had revised his security, the information the boy had given his lord outdated, and Lord Voldemort had hardly made the study of wardcrafting a priority. He'd had more important things to attend to, and specialists for that sort of thing anyway, but he needed young Barty in his current position, and a few days made little difference at this stage in the plan.
He'd simply had need to prove that no ward could keep out Lord Voldemort, any more than any paltry human mind could withstand him.
Occlumency?
Pathetic!
Even the best occlumens was hardly a match for Lord Voldemort — Bellatrix had been perfect, and even she had never managed to keep him out. Crouch wasn't in the same league as his most loyal lieutenant, let alone the Dark Lord himself.
He slipped into the man's bedroom, silent as a serpent, a brief burst of magic lifting him onto the bed, his target's slumber undisturbed. Not necessary, of course — he could feel the man's mind from the corridor — but to creep about on the floor was so very undignified.
Not that the man before him was what one might consider dignified. The facade he maintained in public life was, of course, an uptight, self-righteous automaton of a wizard, but under all that he was only human. He was younger than Lord Voldemort himself, but prematurely aged, his face lined by years of stress and thinning, disheveled hair threaded with grey. Drool stained his pillow and an unconscious frown reflected the troubled dreams behind closed eyes. Lord Voldemort was hardly equipped in this state to taste the scent of a potion on the air, but he suspected that if he could the vial on the bedside table, carelessly abandoned alongside the man's precisely placed wand, would carry the sour reek of a sleeping solution.
The house itself was equally pathetic, the home of a man who had forgotten how to care for himself, if indeed he had ever known how to do so. His elf — Barty's elf — dismissed after freeing her master as Barty had in turn freed Lord Voldemort himself, had not been replaced, a desperate attempt at order maintained in the organisation of his personal effects, even as cobwebs and dust gathered in the corners of rooms, discarded robes and soiled dishes accumulating in piles upon the most convenient surfaces.
"Wake up, Bartemius," Lord Voldemort ordered him, savoring his shock, his confusion and fear as his eyes blinked open, the Dark Lord's temporary form reflected in them. This was also unnecessary, but he thought of it as a gift to his loyal servant, to make this failure of a man who had sired him suffer for his crimes against his son. A wave of hatred and dark joy rose up within him, rage and satisfaction entwined — as vile as this man might be, this man who had delayed the return of his son to his Lord's service for so many long years, he was not without use.
The man began to reach for his wand, to speak, scrabbling away from the Dark Lord's golem, struggling to sit and managing two paltry syllables ("What the-?") before his mental shields broke under the pressure of Lord Voldemort's assault. He resisted only a moment longer before surrendering to the inevitable, his consciousness retreating as Lord Voldemort twisted the mortal's mind to serve his own, subsuming his will entirely.
Pathetic.
He would have expected someone so well-versed in the Imperius to have enough personality to put up a bit of a fight, at least. But then, no mere human, no Ministry stooge, could hope to stand against so relentless a force as the will of Lord Voldemort.
He took control effortlessly, stretching and flexing the man's muscles, wiping the drool from his cheek with the briefest thought, before abandoning the construct he had so briefly inhabited entirely, settling into the wizard's body as though it were his own. Not for long — it would certainly not be to his advantage to infiltrate the government of Magical Britain at so high a level only to be discovered as his vessel was corrupted by the overwhelming power of his sublime presence, as that idiot Quirrell had been. But long enough. Long enough to remove him to a safer location, long enough to capture him with the most useful, most versatile of the so-called Unforgivable Curses, remake him as an extension of Lord Voldemort's will, regardless how unwilling a conscript he might be.
Yes...yes... All proceeds according to plan, he thought, shaking off the lethargic effects of the potion the man had indeed taken and rising to his feet. Yes...
Halfway around the world, Harry Potter woke panting, fighting the urge to scream. He managed it, just, though he wasn't quite able to keep his fingers from straying to the burning scar on his forehead. They were cold, felt nice against his feverish skin, even if they did nothing to ease the burn.
"Hey," Blaise said sleepily, his head rising slightly from his pillow on the other side of the bed — which was enormous, more than twice as large as their beds at school, it was barely like sharing a bed with someone...even though Blaise sprawled in his sleep as much as he did when he was awake, he must not have been out very long if he was still all the way over there...
Harry had, at some point after his conversation with Sirius, he wasn't really sure when, come to accept the idea that Blaise probably did want him to make the next move. This, sleeping together, wasn't it. Granted, Harry wasn't entirely certain what it was, the next move, but the sharing a bed thing, that was just because, well...
It started with the lucid dreaming thing. Snape had told him to get someone to wake him up at odd intervals to catch himself dreaming, then write down the dreams. Which seemed like a good idea, but after a couple of nights, Blaise started falling asleep on him, and there was really no reason to make him suffer, too, so Harry had asked Lyra to do it instead. Not because he wanted to make her suffer along with him, but because it wasn't as though she ever slept at normal people times anyway.
That, of course, also hadn't worked, because Lyra had thought he meant that Snape said he wasn't to sleep at all, which Sirius had confirmed was a method of learning lucid dreaming — getting so sleep-deprived that you couldn't tell where the line was between sleeping and waking — but one that only crazy people like Sirius used. And when they'd finally established that Harry was not nearly that insane, Lyra had frankly informed him that she'd only agreed to do this because she'd thought it was only going to take a week or so, and she had no intention of spending every night for who knew how many weeks in California just to wake him up every few hours, and why didn't he just use an alarm charm like a normal person?
Which...okay, aside from the irony of Lyra saying anyone should act like a normal person, he'd felt like a bit of an idiot, then. But a vindicated idiot when he'd just turned the alarm off and went back to sleep the first couple of times, didn't even fully wake up. So then Blaise had suggested that he could stay with Harry and make sure he actually got up when the alarm went off, until he got into the habit of it.
But before he'd actually gotten in the habit of waking up to a fucking alarm without the rest of his dorm room turning out and being loud and obnoxious and reinforcing the damn thing, he'd...kind of gotten used to Blaise being there. Because even when it wasn't time to wake up to write down his dreams, if he was tossing and turning like he was having a nightmare, it tended to wake Blaise, and then Blaise would wake Harry, and even if that maybe wasn't the best way to deal with accidentally legilimising an undead dark lord from halfway around the world, it...seemed pretty effective?
And Blaise didn't seem to mind getting woken up by Harry's alarms and nightmares three or four times a night, so now they just...shared a bed. Harry had no idea what he was going to do when they had to go back to Hogwarts. He'd never considered sharing a bed with someone before this summer, and if someone had asked him about it beforehand, he'd probably have said no, he wouldn't want to — it had taken ages for him to get used to sharing a dorm, even — and he had been all awkward and uncomfortable about it for the first week or two, but now it was kind of hard to imagine sleeping alone.
Especially since he suspected he'd also started wandering into Blaise's mind sometimes, instead of Voldemort's. It was kind of hard to tell because Blaise didn't dream, but he thought that was what was happening when he woke up well-rested and couldn't remember anything at all. Which, dreamwalking into the mind of the nearest person you were really familiar with was apparently a way more normal legilimency problem and Blaise's mind was infinitely less disturbing than Voldemort's, but he was kind of concerned that, with Blaise fifteen floors away on the other side of the Castle, he'd start creeping into his roommates' dreams instead, and that was just...no. So he was already planning to ask Lyra to ward his bed so that wouldn't happen, but then the only place for his sleeping mind to wander off to would be Voldemort's mind, and he still hadn't managed to stay lucid enough to fucking stop doing that.
Though...maybe he was making progress? "M'fine," he muttered, reaching for the muggle notebook and biro that lived on his bedside table, jotting down what he remembered.
"Voldemort again?" Blaise sounded much more awake than Harry felt, which somehow didn't seem fair.
He groaned. "Yeah. Though, I don't know, it was weird."
"Weird how?"
"Weird like...he was breaking into someone's house to imperius them, but he was like...an evil doll, or something."
Blaise snorted trying not to laugh. "Like Chuckie?"
Harry had just seen the muggle horror movie for the first time the other day — some theater had been having a horror festival downtown. Harry thought they were kind of silly, but Blaise loved them. And even Harry had to admit they were more fun when there were other people around being all excited and scared and silly about the whole thing.
"Ah, no, more like a mannequin, you know, no face? But tiny. Like, maybe a foot tall. So I think maybe I was kind of pulling away enough to get normal nightmare things mixed up with what he was doing?" He had been getting better at not focusing on what Voldemort was doing, less like he was there and more like he just had a vague impression of what was going on, maybe with a few clear flashes, but nothing like the first few dreams, which had been...
Anyway, he was getting good enough at not getting lost in Voldemort's mind that when Blaise asked, "Do you know who he was using the Imperius on?" all he could do was shrug.
"He had dark eyes?" Harry only knew that because he'd seen the doll's faceless face reflected in them when he woke up. "That doesn't sound quite right, though, now that I'm thinking about it. Maybe...yeah, I think he was actually going to possess the guy, and take him somewhere else to imperius him."
Actually, he thought he had possessed him, and it was a lot more like when Harry had tried to legilimise Lyra than when Voldemort possessed Barty Crouch Junior, which was one of the things that kind of made him think some of the details might be from his own nightmares.
Blaise frowned. "Why would he... Oh! Whoever he was trying to imperius is probably someone important enough that he has monitoring wards to alert someone if certain kinds of spells are cast in his house."
"Well that would make sense, I think he was...someone in the Ministry?" And then, with a sudden, sick realisation, Harry's blood began to run cold. "Britain's Ministry — Blaise, he's back in Britain!"
Voldemort was back in Britain, and Harry was going to be there, too — they were going to the World Cup, leaving tomorrow, or...later today, probably. He'd been so excited, even more than when they'd gone to Magic Mountain for his birthday (because rollercoasters), and now... Even if Voldemort wasn't anywhere near the Cup, knowing he was in the same bloody country was going to make Harry too anxious to enjoy the thing properly, he just knew it.
Especially since just being in Britain for a few days for the Final was one thing. He'd already agreed to disguise himself so people wouldn't freak out about his presence like they always did, even when someone hadn't started rumors of his untimely death — and even though quidditch matches had been known to go on for weeks, Lyra had insisted that the arithmancy said it wouldn't go more than about six hours, tops. (Something about the Nimbus 2001's speed and maneuverability and the changes that had been made to the player detecting enchantments on a standard Snitch apparently made it very unlikely that it would be able to evade the Seekers for more than a few hours.) After the match, they'd be spending one more night at the campground and then coming back here, putting an ocean and an entire bloody America between him and Voldemort's evil, possessed doll. (If in fact he was possessing a foot-tall mannequin, which...seemed unlikely? Maybe? Oh, who was he kidding, having an unconscious line into Voldemort's mind didn't give him any sort of clue what the madman might or might not do.)
But he wouldn't be staying here. He was going to go back to Hogwarts. He couldn't exactly pretend not to be Harry Potter at Hogwarts. And he definitely didn't think he'd be safer there, he'd already been attacked by Quirrellmort and a horcrux and a bloody basilisk, not to mention he'd shared a dorm room with the man who'd betrayed his parents to Voldemort for two and a half years. Not exactly the safest place in Britain. Sirius had managed to break in and escape even while he was half out of his mind and everyone was on high alert looking for him! (Granted, they weren't looking for Padfoot, but a big fucking dog sneaking into the school still should've been noticed, Harry thought.)
Voldemort and whoever he'd possessed or enslaved with that horrible fucking spell — he'd asked Blaise about the Unforgivables, after Lyra had been hit with the Cruciatus, and the Imperius sounded like the worst of the lot — would know exactly where he was, and—
Hey. Harry. Look at me, Blaise thought at him, a wave of serenity and confidence breaking over him even as the hint of compulsion behind the order had his head turning without a thought.
Blaise was suddenly very close to him, their noses only inches apart. Somehow it still surprised Harry when an arm snaked its way around his shoulders. He flinched. Blaise pulled back far enough to give him that cool, reassuring smile he did so well — not mocking or laughing or happy, even, more like Harry, you're being a silly moo, can't you see everything's under control. Harry could barely make it out by the dim city-at-night light that filtered through the curtains, but he was pretty sure it was that particular smile. "It's going to be alright, Harry."
Still calm, still impossibly confident, Harry could tell he actually believed that, but, "No, Blaise, how do you— You can't know that! You just can't. He's going to be there, I know it, and—"
"And if he is, we'll exorcise him, or stuff his little Tommy-doll in a box and lock it in the Chamber of Secrets, or something."
"This isn't funny, Blaise! He– He has people again, working for him! Crouch, and whoever he just possessed! He's not just a helpless wraith, he's got some kind of body, he can do magic, and he wants to kill me, okay? He wants to kill me and Dumbledore and burn Britain to the fucking ground, and now he's there, and fucking Lestrange is on the loose, and—"
"Bellatrix doesn't care about you," Blaise interrupted. "And you have your own allies. Lyra and I aren't going to let Riddle kill you."
"No offence, Blaise, but you're pretty worthless in a fight, and in case you missed it, Lyra got kidnapped and tortured herself at the end of last year! And how the fuck would you know Lestrange isn't after me?"
"If Bella was trying to kill you, you'd already be dead. Lyra underestimated Draco at the end of last year, it won't happen again. And I may be useless in a fight, but you're not. Gin's not. Theo and Lyra are fucking scary, and Snape could kick both their arses. Besides, intelligence wins wars. Intelligence and planning. I'm very good at getting people to tell me things I want to know, and Maïa's fucking diabolical. Snape was a professional spy. I'm pretty sure the three of us will be able to suss out any plots against you now that we know to look for them. You know Snape's on your side, now, so there's an adult in the school you can take shite like Quirrell or the basilisk to instead of trying to handle it yourself, and Mira and Sirius out here in the real world..."
He trailed off for a moment, looking deeply into Harry's eyes, not using legilimency on him, just...staring. He'd leaned in again at some point, Harry hadn't really noticed when. He was too close for Harry to meet both his eyes at once, close enough to feel his breath on his cheek when he said, so certain, "You're not alone, Harry."
And Harry, without thinking, turned his head, his lips pressing against Blaise's — hot, and softer than he'd expected. Blaise froze in surprise, and Harry had a brief moment of panic — what if– what if he didn't want to, this was a terrible mistake, he shouldn't have—
But then that arm around his shoulders was pulling him closer, a hand rising to his cheek, long, thin fingers slipping into his hair and a thought slipping into his mind, don't be stupid, Harry, why shouldn't you have? And, well... Honestly, he couldn't really remember at the moment, because Blaise's fingers were trailing across his shoulders and he tasted like peppermint, and he was all warm and solid and real and here.
With Harry.
Saying without saying that whatever Harry needed, he would be there, and they'd get through his weird Voldemort dreams and the madman's latest attempt to make a comeback and dealing with everyone inevitably freaking out about him not being dead and the fucking Triwizard Tournament with its stupid Ball and anything else life decided to throw at them, and everything was going to be alright.
And even if it wasn't, at least he'd got one thing figured out, he thought, pulling himself free long enough to breathe, long enough to catch a glimpse of Blaise's grin, so white against his skin and the shadows. Long enough for him to say, "About time, Potter," and Harry to say, "Shut up, Zabini," and long enough to realise that there were things he'd much rather be doing than talking or worrying about Tom fucking Riddle and the threat he may or may not pose to Harry's life at some indefinite point in the future that definitely wasn't right now, in his bed, with Blaise being all...Blaise, and—
Ooh, that felt good...that felt really good...
This scene ends here because not being (or ever having been) a teenage boy, I don't think I'm really capable of writing the rest of it. And also because writing sex scenes between people half your age seems kind of squicky to me. —Leigha
The summer scenes are all finished now. We have two more to be posted, and then we'll actually be getting into fourth year. Finally. Because we're absolutely ridiculous. —Lysandra
