Chapter 4

Voldemort gestured at Harry to grab the other handle of the trunk and together they carried it through the living room and into the conservatory.

"We have plenty of options to work with," Voldemort said while he glanced around the piles and piles of wooden objects. "But I do believe the Cyprus trunk will be the closest match for me." Voldemort gave Harry a critical onceover. "Now we have to figure out which item would work best for you. What's your wand made of?"

"Holly and phoenix feather," Harry replied automatically.

"Holly is not a wood you often see used in furniture making," Voldemort mused. "Except very rarely as a veneer perhaps, but that would be entirely unsuited for a wand. You'll have to feel for a suitable replacement wood."

"How am I supposed to do that?" Harry said in a bit of snappish tone. He was so eager to make a blood wand that any delay, no matter how small, made him feel incredibly frustrated. Perhaps it was time to visit the bathroom with Peach Williamson again.

"You're a wizard!" Voldemort snapped back. "Though I've yet to see you act like one, you halfwit."

"Oh, so just because I'm a wizard I should be able to feel which candlestick would make me a decent wand?" Harry was beyond annoyed with Voldemort right now. That man constantly expected things from Harry he honestly had no clue about.

"You are made of magic, boy. Use that to feel which item resonates strongest with your magic," Voldemort said absently, already having lost interest in the conversation, his attention firmly fixed on the trunk at his feet.

"How?" Harry threw up a hand in sheer frustration.

Sighing, Voldemort slowly turned around again and gave Harry an incredibly disappointed look. "You meditate, you get in touch with your magical core, and then you pick up wooden items and feel for their compatibility."

None of that made much sense to Harry but he could also tell that Voldemort was about done with him and he didn't feel like being slapped in the face again. "Fine. I'll do that."

And thus while Voldemort went in search of tools, Harry sat down on the conservatory floor in the most comfortable position he could find and closed his eyes. He had to get in touch with his magic. The thing was, Harry had never thought about his magic in such a way. His magic had always just sort of been there when he needed it ever since he started Hogwarts.

But what did his magic actually look like? Did it look like anything at all? Or was it this invisible force that literally held Harry together. The glue to Harry's being, as it were. Harry decided he liked that idea and tried to focus on that. But before long his thoughts went wandering, first in the direction of his dead friends, which Harry refused to contemplate, and soon after that in the direction of Peach Williamson and her voluptuous body.

Yeah, this wasn't working, Harry was forced to conclude just as Voldemort came back with his arms full of knives and screwdrivers and other things Harry didn't recognize.

Harry jumped up and walked out of the conservatory without comment.

"Giving up so soon?" Voldemort called after him in a clearly disapproving voice.

"I need a break!" Harry yelled back, refusing to feel embarrassed by essentially admitting he was going for a wank.

Voldemort snorted and muttered something disparaging about teenagers.

Harry and Peach spent a very productive five minutes together in the bathroom and afterwards Harry felt a million times calmer again, his mind able to focus on what he needed to think about once more. Harry shook his head while he washed his hands. Voldemort could complain about Harry's incompetence all he wanted but he wasn't sitting around meditating for hours either. If Voldemort needed to do something magical he simply used the invisible barrier around the house.

Harry halted in the doorway of the bathroom, suddenly hit by an idea with the force of a small avalanche.

If Voldemort could use the barrier, so could Harry!

Thundering down the stairs and dashing through the living room, Harry gave Voldemort the biggest shit-eating grin he could manage once he arrived in the conservatory.

"Don't mind me," Harry said, trying for casual and failing completely as he stepped up to the large windows where the barrier was. "Just going to feel some wood."

Voldemort, who was disassembling the trunk with the help of a few screwdrivers, merely quirked an eyebrow in return and continued his own work.

With a smug little smile, Harry picked up the first item at hand, a wooden fruit bowl, and stuck his hand in the barrier, bowl and all. The bowl felt dead even when Harry could sense the faint magic of the barrier. Harry discarded the bowl carelessly and picked up the next item, a wooden jewellery box. It also felt dead and Harry moved on to the next item. After a while of trying all sorts of things, Harry began to worry that his plan might not work. That he might not be able to feel for the right wood, even with the help of the invisible barrier.

But when Harry picked up a wooden candlestick and pushed it into the barrier, a faint tingle travelled up his arm, making his hair stand up. Harry released a joyous shout and waved the candlestick in Voldemort's direction. "This one! This one tingles while everything else just felt dead."

Voldemort straightened himself and gave Harry an approving nod. "Well done, Mr Potter. We'll make a real wizard out of you just yet."

Harry rolled his eyes at Voldemort's dramatic proclamation but he couldn't help a warm wave from washing over him. Just because Harry hadn't ever learned to accept compliments from anyone didn't mean he didn't enjoy receiving them. Even from his arch nemesis as it turned out.

Voldemort gestured him to come closer and once Harry did, Voldemort took the candlestick from him and carefully examined it as he turned it around in his hands. "This looks like Ash. A common wand wood."

"I'm sure it will work for me," Harry insisted, because it had to work. Harry needed a wand to get the hell out of there before Snape killed everyone he cared about. "It made me tingle."

"We'll see eventually." Voldemort gestured at the pile of knives and other tools on the side table. "Your next step is to shape it into a wand. And be careful. You don't want to make a mistake and waste the candlestick."

Harry's giddiness ebbed away again once he realized he only had one chance at carving a wand out of the candlestick. "So no pressure," Harry mumbled as he shook his head. "That's good to know."

Ignoring Harry's antics, Voldemort went back to his trunk while Harry picked up a large carving knife and sat down in one of the rattan chairs nearby. He started very carefully cutting away at the ornamental circles that adorned the candlestick. This was a lot harder than it looked because the wood might as well have been made of concrete. He barely managed to cut off little chips of wood and he realized that carving a wand might actually take several days at this pace.

Voldemort sat down in a chair as well after he'd ripped apart the lid of the trunk, yielding him a large, rectangle piece of wood. Voldemort selected a much smaller knife to carve with.

After what must have been an hour, Harry's stomach started growling. It was well after lunch at that point.

"Go fix us some sandwiches," Voldemort commanded without looking up from his work.

Harry wanted desperately to tell Voldemort to make his own fucking sandwiches, but he realized that would be rather childish. Voldemort had pretty much cooked all their meals up until that point, so it wasn't unreasonable of him to expect that Harry got off his arse and made them some food once in a while.

"And take the items from the kitchen with you," Voldemort added with a vague gesture at one of the piles. "You'll need a cutting board at least."

Rolling his eyes, Harry loaded his arms up with board and bowls and marched to the kitchen. It took him a few trips and ten minutes to put everything back but then the kitchen was fully stocked again. Harry first turned the kettle on to brew a pot of tea. Next he found wholegrain bread in the breadbox and there were slices of roast beef in the fridge. He smeared mustard on the bread, four slices for each of them, and then piled on a generous amount of roast beef. He added some salt and pepper and then called it a decent sandwich. He used a tray to carry it all back to the conservatory.

"What did you put on it?" Voldemort asked with a dubious look when Harry served him his plate and cup of tea.

"Roast beef with mustard," Harry said, wanting so very much to say something about ungrateful Dark Lords but he stilled his tongue.

"Hm." Voldemort picked up a sandwich, gave it a critical look, and then took a generous bite.

Seriously, that man. Harry shook his head, sat down and started on his own lunch. As he ate his delicious sandwich, Harry couldn't help but look at Voldemort once in a while. Now that the immediate horror of the situation had passed and Harry wasn't worried for his life anymore for every second of every day, he started noticing things.

Voldemort eating a sandwich looked funny.

It was perhaps because Voldemort's face looked so utterly alien, with it's absent nose and pale, waxy skin and blood-red eyes. Voldemort looked like a monster out of a child's bedtime stories, and one never expected such a monster to sit down and eat a roast beef sandwich.

Harry looked away again quickly lest Voldemort noticed him staring. It was just decidedly weird to see Voldemort doing such utterly human things, like eating and sleeping and cooking, when Voldemort had always been the monster in Harry's imagination. As far as Harry was concerned, Voldemort only made sense when he was doing menacing things, like trying to kill Harry. A Voldemort doing human things meant that Harry had to think of him as a human being and that was a very strange thought.

They finished their lunch in silence while they both stared out of the conservatory windows to the beautiful back yard. It was a sunny day and the many flowers in the garden beds swayed gently in the wind.

"If this wasn't a prison, this would be a nice house," Harry said out of the blue while he sipped his tea. "It's got a big yard."

"Hm." Voldemort emptied his cup of tea in a gulp. "I've certainly seen worse."

They went back to their carving without further comment. Lunch had distracted Harry from the fact that his candlestick was fucking impossible to carve, and he released a frustrated growl before putting as much pressure on the carving knife as he could. The knife skimmed over the wood and the tip sliced right into Harry's left hand, basically splitting his whole thumb wide open.

"Fuck!" Harry jumped up, candlestick and knife clattering to the floor as blood gushed from his hand all over his jeans. "Oh fuck!"

"You foolish child!" Voldemort was at his side in a second, grabbing Harry's hand and giving it a quick examination. "It'll need stitches but you'll live. To the kitchen, put it under the tap."

Harry hurried to do as Voldemort said, leaving a trail of blood behind. He stood with his hand under the running water for what felt like an hour but must have been no more than a few minutes. Voldemort appeared in the doorway, carrying a small box, a larger box and a towel.

"It's a sewing kit," Voldemort explained as he held up the small box. The larger box was clearly a first-aid kit, if the big red cross on it was any indication. Voldemort placed down a clean towel on the kitchen table and gestured for Harry to sit down while Voldemort stepped up to the hob. Harry sat down, placed his bleeding hand on the towel and then watched curiously as Voldemort turned on the hob and held a needle in the flames for twenty seconds or so.

"It disinfects the needle," Voldemort said when he noticed Harry's curious look. "It's the easiest method to do so."

"Fire kills everything," Harry agreed with a small nod. He was glad to see that Voldemort thought of things like that, since Harry absolutely didn't. If it was up to Harry he probably would have wrapped up the wound as well as he could and gotten a nice infection for his troubles.

Voldemort sat down beside Harry and opened the first-aid kit with one hand. He fished out a bottle of rubbing alcohol and flipped open the top with his thumb. "I'm going to pour some over the wound. It will sting."

"Motherfucker!" Harry yelled as Voldemort bloody well doused his split thumb in liquid fire.

Voldemort gave Harry a look that was best described as disappointingly unimpressed. "I've had you under my Cruciatus Curse while you barely made a sound. But disinfecting a little cut makes you scream like a banshee?"

"That is not a little cut," Harry insisted, eyes watering from the stinging in his hand. "I almost cut my hand off. And it's different than torture, all right?"

"How so?" Voldemort asked pleasantly as he threaded the needle.

"With torture you don't want to give them the satisfaction of hearing you scream," Harry said through gritted teeth, watching that bloody needle with trepidation.

"So what you're really saying is that you've become complacent around me. You're comfortable enough to show weakness." And with that, Voldemort stuck him with that bloody needle.

"Ouch!" Harry glared at Voldemort as if his life depended on it. "You could try to be a bit more careful. And I'm not weak!"

"Oh, I know," Voldemort agreed as he tied off the first stitch. "If you were I'd have been able to kill you years ago."

Harry wasn't sure if that was a compliment or not, so he decided not to comment on it. Voldemort kept sliding the needle in and out of his skin and after a short while Harry had ten black stitches keeping his thumb together. Voldemort poured a little more rubbing alcohol over it, the absolute bastard, but this time Harry gritted his teeth and flared his nostrils and bared the pain without a sound.

"Well done," Voldemort said, though his tone was quite sarcastic. "Keep those stitches in for at least a week." Voldemort placed a few gauze squares over the cut and wound some bandages over them. "Keep it covered for the first day, perhaps two, and then expose it to some air."

"You know a lot about this," Harry mumbled as he sat back and watched Voldemort clean everything up.

"I made it my business to understand how the human body works and how to keep it operating to the best of its abilities," Voldemort said with a shrug. "I cannot fathom why anyone wouldn't want to know these things."

Harry pursed his lips. Voldemort might just have a point there. Harry had suffered from plenty of cuts and bruises and worse in his life, yet he had very little knowledge on how to treat any of those things, with or without magic. Perhaps he should read up on some simple healing techniques. Even now, with this large cut, Harry would have been fucked since he had no clue about how to give himself or someone else stitches. Yet it hadn't looked that difficult to see Voldemort do it.

Yeah, the more Harry thought about it, the more he realized that he was rather ignorant of certain important things in life. Perhaps it really was time to change that.

After Harry sat for half an hour, just calming down and getting used to the throbbing pain in his hand, he'd had enough of sitting around and he got up. He much preferred to be productive than do nothing at all.

With one hand Harry filled a bucket with some soapy water and then he got a cleaning cloth. He followed the trail of blood all the way back to the conservatory and cleaned it up carefully.

"Why on earth did you use a butcher's knife to carve a wand," Voldemort said, gesturing at the candlestick and the huge knife Harry had been using. "It's not a hog that needs butchering, Harry. It's a piece of wood."

"Well, we can't all be expert woodworkers," Harry snarled, getting so, so tired of Voldemort assuming Harry knew every little thing there was to know in the world. "I've never bloody well done this before."

Voldemort sighed in that annoyingly disappointed way of his and he picked up a much smaller knife, similar to the one he was using, and placed it on the side table within Harry's reach. "That size gives you much more control over the blade."

"Fine." Harry went to pour out the bucket, and once he returned he plopped back down in his chair and started carving again. He had to be careful not to press the candlestick against his wounded thumb, but he managed to use his knees to keep the bloody thing in place and with the smaller knife he was able to take off more wood. "Thanks," Harry mumbled after a while, because he did have more control this way.

"You're welcome," Voldemort said in a bit of a snooty tone. "You're no good to me bleeding out from your own incompetence."

Harry let the insult slide, but only because he was grateful for Voldemort preventing him from bleeding out.

By the time Voldemort got up to prepare some dinner he'd managed to turn his plank of wood into something resembling a very rough wand. Harry stared at it in envy because he was still only chipping away very small bits from his concrete candlestick.

They enjoyed a simple meal of spaghetti Bolognese which Harry managed to eat with one hand, though Voldemort didn't seem to approve if his frown was any indication. Harry couldn't care less. His left hand throbbed something awful so Harry made do with slurping up his spaghetti with just a fork.

"You're still doing the dishes," Voldemort said without mercy. "You're not on your deathbed, Harry." He disappeared out of the kitchen, leaving Harry to clean up with one hand. He managed just fine but it took him at least twice as long. After he was done he made a pot of tea and carried it to the living room on a tray.

"Tea?" Harry asked, and if Voldemort was surprised by the offer he didn't show it.

"Yes, thank you." Voldemort was nothing if not polite. Well, when he wasn't being a homicidal maniac, that was.

Harry poured them both cups of tea and then sat down in his usual spot opposite Voldemort. He reached for the newspaper which Voldemort had left on the coffee table and read the sports section. There were no new pictures of Peach, which was a pity. She really was Harry's favourite Quidditch player.

"Do you like sports at all?" Harry asked out of the blue. Sometimes he got these strange questions in his head and he just had to ask them, no matter the consequences.

"No particularly, no," Voldemort muttered, cup of tea balanced on his knee as he stared out the window.

"Why not?"

Voldemort took a sip of his tea. "Because it's boring."

Harry gasped in quiet outrage. Quidditch was not boring! But then he remembered Hermione's opinions about Quidditch. "Is that a smart people thing? Thinking sports are boring? Because my friend Hermione is very smart, easily the smartest witch at Hogwarts right now, and she doesn't care for sports either."

"Probably," Voldemort agreed quietly. "I'd much rather spend my time learning something new instead of watching other people exercise. It's such a waste of time."

"Yeah, it's a smart people thing," Harry concluded with a regretful shake of his head. Imagine thinking Quidditch was boring! What a dull person you had to be to think that.

"If you believe it to be a smart people thing, does that mean you consider yourself stupid?" Voldemort asked with a teasing smile.

Harry frowned. Well, crap. "I hadn't considered that," he said honestly. "I'm not stupid, I know that. But I'm not anywhere near your level of intelligence either."

"Fair enough," Voldemort said and finished his tea. "Few people are on my level, though."

"Here's what I don't get," Harry said, folding the newspaper up and giving Voldemort a serious look. "How come you ended up like this if you're so fucking smart?"

Voldemort's brow rose and he looked at Harry in astonishment, as though no one had ever dared ask him this before.

"I mean, why didn't you go on to invent lots of new magic and potions?" Harry asked, genuinely curious. "Or why didn't you just become Minister for Magic or something if you liked politics so much? Why this whole Dark Lord thing?"

Voldemort didn't seem to know if he should laugh at Harry or strangle him with his bare hands. "This whole Dark Lord thing? Show some respect, Potter."

"I'm not being disrespectful," Harry insisted. "I'm just being really curious."

"It's none of your business," Voldemort said with a certain sense of finality as he got up. "I'm going to bed."

Sighing, Harry cleaned up the tea cups and eventually followed Voldemort upstairs. He hadn't meant to upset the other man, but he was really curious about what had turned the handsome Tom Riddle into the monster he was now. And since this was probably the only time in both their lives they were on speaking terms, Harry figured he might as well see if he could get Voldemort to explain himself.

But Voldemort wasn't interested in discussing that subject, apparently, much to Harry's regret.

The night passed in much the same way as the previous one. Harry spent some time in the bathroom with Peach and he woke Voldemort up halfway through the night to take his place.

The next morning, after a quick breakfast of oatmeal, which was not Harry's favourite thing at all, they went back to work. It took Voldemort an hour to finish up his own rudimentary wand while Harry kept struggling.

"Give it here," Voldemort said in a tone that betrayed he was close to losing his patience with Harry. "I'll finish it."

Since Voldemort was carving Harry's wand for him, Harry went and made them sandwiches for lunch again, turkey this time. Right after they finished their meal, Voldemort presented Harry with his rudimentary wand. It was rough and could probably do with a good sanding, but that hardly mattered. It was a very simply but functional wand. Well, it would be.

"So now we cover them in blood?" Harry asked as he sat in the conservatory, admiring the wand in his hand.

"Yes," Voldemort said. "We'll use our blood to cover both wands. Then it has to soak into the wood for at least four weeks. Probably closer to six, before they can be used to cast simple magic."

Sighing, Harry nodded. That was a long time in which Snape could kill a lot of people. "Isn't there anyway to speed up the process?" Harry sat up a little and looked at Voldemort with wide eyes. "Could we put the wands in the barrier? Would that speed it up?"

Chuckling, Voldemort shook his head. "Not everything can be solved by the barrier. No, the only way to speed up the process is to increase the power in our blood. That's possible, but I doubt you'll like what's needed to accomplish that."

"Try me," Harry said in a clear dare. "I'm willing to do a lot to get out of here."

"Oh?" Voldemort sat back in his chair and offered Harry a positively lewd smirk. "Are you willing to let me fuck you? Because that is what it takes. Sex magic."