Title: The Seducer's Path
Pairing: Harry/Voldemort
Content Notes: AU starting in fifth year, underage, dark, suicidal thoughts, heavy angst, ambiguous ending
Rating: R
The first time the dream happened, Harry honestly didn't know what to make of it.
He'd dreamed of long corridors and black stone and a sense of urgency for months, and then he'd had the dream where he was Voldemort's snake and trying to kill Ron's dad. He had thought all his dreams, at least the ones that came from Voldemort, would be the same, full of danger and mystery.
Well, he supposed this was one mysterious, anyway.
He stood in the middle of a forest with trees around him the exact color of emeralds, their trunks gleaming like they were made of polished jewels, too. The trees marched along a path that wound through the woods, clear of branches, made of white stones. Red roses grew along the sides of the path, so perfect that Harry's first, fleeting thought was that Aunt Petunia would die of envy if she could see them. That, or try to cut them for her garden.
Harry stood on the path, and a voice whispered to him.
Come to me…come here…come to me…
Harry snorted and folded his arms. "Why should I?" he asked.
There was a long pause, as though the voice hadn't expected an answer. Harry glanced around again. The details were sharper and clearer than even the details of his dreams about the corridor, but that probably just meant Voldemort was trying to trap him or something.
He knew his dreams were from Voldemort. He knew he should work harder on Occlumency to stop them. But it was so hard to do, when no one was giving him the answers and he knew the answers were out there if he just looked for them…
The voice resumed. Come to me.
It was hard to tell where it was, but Harry glanced over his shoulder and saw a big black gate of what seemed to be wrought iron blocking the path in that direction. He shrugged and walked forwards, testing his will all the while to see if he could wake up.
He couldn't.
He moved down the path, and smelled soft fresh scents, the musky scent of the roses heavy in the air, the sharp odor of pine needles. He heard distant songs, what might have been the murmuring of a brook, and the crushing of grass in the breeze. He felt the air against his skin, cold enough to press a little, warm enough that Harry didn't wish he was wearing something other than the short-sleeved shirt and Muggle trousers he was wearing.
It wasn't just the most vivid dream he'd had from Voldemort; it was the most vivid dream he'd ever had.
The path began to bend in gentle curves, sweeping back and forth, as though whoever had made it had wandered like that, scuffling their shoes in the dirt. Harry traced it with his eyes, and looked up sharply when the path abruptly swept to the side in a wide curve, broader than before, continuing on into the distance.
Voldemort sat in the clearing the path had bent to avoid.
Harry could hear his breathing in his own ears. It was the loudest noise, now that the wind seemed to have stopped and he couldn't hear the brook anymore. Voldemort turned around and looked at him.
Even Voldemort's features seemed to have changed in the dream. He still had the bald head and red eyes and slit of a nose that Harry had recalled in nightmares since last summer, but they were brightened and polished, as if he was made of marble and rubies. He sat at a circular stone table, on a circular stone bench attached to it, and in front of him spread a breakfast that made Harry's mouth water: eggs as bright as diamonds and gold, toast that looked as if it was made of the same bright brown jewels as the tree trunks, marmalade so brilliant an orange that Harry could taste the melting sweetness it would put into his mouth.
"Come share with me, Harry."
Harry looked him in the eye and shook his head. He didn't know what had changed in the dreams or why Voldemort wanted him off the path or what he would do to him if Harry ate the food, but he wasn't stupid enough to try. "No, thanks."
"Why do you not speak in Parseltongue? It is the shared language of our souls."
Harry turned away, and kept walking up the path, which bent again and again and again, until finally it faded into mist as he awoke from the dream.
"What are you looking for, Potter?"
Harry turned around with his hand on his wand. For all that he didn't think he had ever spoken to the Slytherin boy in front of him before, just the sight of a serpent crest was enough to make him jumpy right now, with Umbridge and her nonsense.
"Dreams? Foretelling the future through dreams?" Nott—Harry thought his first name was Theodore—stared in interest at the book in Harry's dreams. "Are you trying to foretell what the Dark Lord will do next?" His eyes darted up to Harry's, and a little smirk weighed down his lips before it dissolved.
"None of your business, Nott," Harry said coldly, and shoved past him.
Nott turned with him, so their shoulders didn't do more than brush, and called after Harry, "One thing you might find particularly interesting is in the section of the library devoted to pureblood fairy tales. Some messages come to us through dreams that we would do well to heed, Potter."
Harry kept walking without acknowledging him.
"Will you never come join me, Harry?"
Harry ignored Voldemort the way he had for what felt like countless nights, but was really only seven or eight of them. Harry never received any other kinds of dreams now. Just the endless white stone path edged with roses, and the forest, and the tableaux of Voldemort sitting off the path, offering him something.
Sometimes he had food, as he had the first time, the first night. Sometimes he was resting on a bench in a meadow of spring flowers, with crystal-clear water running past him, and he offered Harry a place to relax and refresh his mind. Once he'd been standing by Umbridge's corpse.
But Harry had heard fairy tales about what happened to children who strayed off the path. And unless he could find something that conclusively said this was different, he would stay on the path.
He took another step, and Voldemort called again. Harry glanced at him, something he had told himself he wasn't going to do.
His legs froze. Voldemort was sprawled in the middle of a huge bed.
It had midnight-blue coverlets and long lacy white fringes around them that dangled down to the ground, which was a wash of black stone just around it, the way Harry had seen in his dreams of the Ministry. There were four posts and a canopy just as there was on Harry's bed in Gryffindor Tower. But the bed was open to the sky, without curtains, and Voldemort was lounging on the bed with his face split by a serrated smile.
And naked.
He was naked.
Harry shook his head, hard, but the vision didn't go away. And Voldemort looked as if he was made of smooth, polished marble the way he always did in these visions, his fingernails sharp and pointed and gleaming, marble, too, while his teeth might have been diamonds.
And…
It was inevitable, probably. Harry found himself looking downwards until his eyes came to rest on Voldemort's cock.
It was engorged and lying against Voldemort's belly. Harry wasn't surprised to see that it was paler than his own, the way the rest of Voldemort's unnatural skin was, but it still had a flush like rubies. And it was so hard…
Harry averted his eyes and shook his head, continuing to walk up the path.
"Are you not curious why I would wish to bed my worst enemy?"
"You want to trap me and get me in trouble and kill me, what else?"
Voldemort sat up with his eyes brightening, and Harry realized it was the first time he'd spoken Parseltongue to one of the visions. He also didn't think it was his imagination that Voldemort's cock had got harder. Harry flushed, told himself not to look, and kept walking.
"You cannot resist me forever, Harry," Voldemort called after him.
"Watch me," Harry muttered, making sure to keep it in English this time, and disappeared around the next bend.
"Found any reference to paths in your dreams yet?"
Harry glared at Nott over the book about dreams in front of him. It was the first time he had come to the library by himself in a while, which was probably the reason Nott had chosen to approach him. At least Harry could easily claim to both Hermione and Ron that he was researching dreams because he wanted to do better on the Divination OWL than he was going to.
"What do you know, Nott?"
"I know that there's a scent of old, subtle magic around you." Nott sat down in the chair across from him, arms folded, as alert as Harry himself to whether someone was about to come around the corner and find them here. "Like juniper mixed with holly."
"Who the fuck memorizes that scent?"
Nott frowned a little at the language, but didn't stop talking. "And there are paths we can take in our dreams that might produce such a scent. The one you have only manifests around a certain path, though."
"And what's that one?" Harry drawled, not expecting a useful answer. He knew Nott's father was a Death Eater. He'd probably got an order from Voldemort to participate in whatever trap Voldemort was setting up. Harry idly scratched the back of his hand, which ached from Umbridge's detentions.
Nott glanced at the bandaged wound and blinked, but didn't stop smiling. "The seducer's path."
Harry choked.
"Yes," Nott hissed, as if he was a Parselmouth himself, leaning closer now. "The path is made of white stone and edged in red roses, isn't it? And you're walking down it, and you see tempting scenarios off the path, scenarios meant to seduce you—"
"I'm not enough of a fool to stray off the path, Nott. Tell Voldemort that."
At least Nott jumped at the name, although he didn't lose his nasty grin. "But don't you know what lies at the end of the path?"
"Of course not, seeing as I've never heard of this before."
"Something worse than all the rest," Nott whispered. "Death and its temptations. Turning off before then, giving in to the seduction, is better."
Harry rolled his eyes as he watched Nott get up and leave the library. He hadn't found any references to dream paths in anything he'd read, and he'd gone through at least half the library's books on dreams by this point. Ten to one this was something Voldemort had made up and ordered Nott to tell him to distract Harry from other things, like dreams of the Ministry.
Of course, that meant Voldemort would know about the link that bound them together, and that Harry had been having those dreams. And he had decided to replace it with something else.
Harry swore, briefly and hard, and wished he could tell Hermione and Ron about this. But Ron would only be frightened, and Hermione would tell Harry to go to Dumbledore. Who he'd tried to talk to, and Dumbledore just avoided him and wouldn't look him in the eye.
Besides, these dreams were different from the Ministry ones. At least they were pretty simple. Harry just knew that he couldn't leave the path, and as long as he kept walking, he would be fine.
"Are you a virgin, Harry? I hope so. I would hate to think that someone else had enjoyed my prize before I could."
Harry gritted his teeth and kept walking. He was, unfortunately, near a large bend in the path right now, and there was a stretch of black stone floor larger than he'd ever seen just off it, and a bed even bigger than the last one. This bed was green with silver accents, which was so stereotypically Slytherin that Harry snorted under his breath as he made his way past it.
"Do you know what you are, Harry?"
"Your enemy," Harry muttered, and kept walking.
"The holder of my soul."
Harry paused, and told himself off a moment later for that stupid move, as Voldemort's triumphant grin flashed across his face like lightning. "What did you say?" he demanded, spinning around to face Voldemort.
Voldemort looked as delighted as he always did when Harry spoke Parseltongue. "The holder of my soul," he crooned, sitting up in the bed. Harry successfully kept his eyes from drifting down to what was between Voldemort's legs by staring at his face. "I thought you might know. I see that you did not. The connection between us…you carry a piece of my soul in your own, Harry Potter."
"That's impossible," Harry hissed back, feeling trembling and sick. He nearly stepped off the path, wanting to go confront Voldemort and make him retract the nauseating accusation, but he remembered to stay on it at the last minute. "I can't be—I won't be!"
"You are precious. So precious."
Harry laughed aloud, feeling hysterical. He thought he knew now why Voldemort had bothered with this bloody seducer's path, if that was really what it was. He would want Harry to come willingly to his side instead of resisting him, and probably thought he could convince Harry to join him the way he'd offered in first year.
"Is that the reason Dumbledore won't look at me?"
Voldemort's eyes flashed dangerously. "He does not know. But he knows of the connection. You should run away from him and come to me, Harry. You would be so much safer."
Harry closed his eyes and shook his head. His thoughts were whirling. "What I should do is jump off the Astronomy Tower tonight and get it over with."
Voldemort hissed like he was trying to call several snakes at once. "Do not dare to harm yourself. I will know, and I will come and take you away from Hogwarts." He paused, leaving Harry to listen to his rapid breathing, and then, by the sound of it, eased back on the silken skeets in the bed. "Besides, it would not work. I would prefer that you come to me of your own free will, Harry. It would be much more pleasant for us both."
"You want to fuck me because I carry your soul, and you're such a bloody narcissist that you—"
"You are the first human to carry a piece of another human's soul, ever. In history. I wish to fuck you because you are mine, and unique."
Harry shook his head. "I'd rather be your enemy than a piece of—jewelry."
Voldemort didn't respond. Harry turned away and began walking down the path again.
Harry sat with his head between his hands, not bothering to look up as Nott sat down in the seat across the table from him.
"The Dark Lord is upset," Nott said quietly.
Well, that confirmed he was passing messages and orders on from Voldemort, then. Harry just looked at him dully. "What do I care?" he asked. He thought he was the one with the right to be upset. He'd researched what Voldemort had told him, and it did seem that he was unique, in that no book even mentioned it was possible for someone to march around with a part of someone else's soul inside them.
But he had found a book with a reference to what Nott had told him. The seducer's path ran through dreams, and the temptations grew worse and worse—the book didn't say how—along the way. The path would end only with death. Better, the book had said sternly, to step off the path as soon as possible.
Harry still wasn't going to, not if his choice was Voldemort.
But what other choice was there? Suicide? Betrayal of all his friends, if Voldemort could possess him or use him like the diary had used Ginny?
"He cares for you," Nott said, which made Harry gape at him. Nott sniffed. "Put your tongue away, it's undignified. I mean it, Potter. My father's been with the Dark Lord a long, long time." Nott was speaking quietly now, leaning forwards. "He said that the Dark Lord's cared for nothing for decades except causing pain and attaining power. Now he suddenly wants to know what you like, what you eat at breakfast each morning, how you're doing."
Harry just sat there. Maybe Nott was right. So what? It wasn't because Voldemort really cared about him. He just wanted to make sure the piece of his soul was safe.
Fuck, if Harry had known how to take it out, he would have sent the bloody thing off by owl with Return to owner scribbled all over it.
"Another thing to keep in mind," Nott said in a tone that failed to be casual, after he and Harry had sat there in silence for some time. "The Dark Lord is immortal."
Harry laughed harshly. "Yeah, the returning from the dead thing pretty much proved that."
"I mean," Nott said, "that he has a long, long time to wait, Potter. He can play this game for as long as he needs to. You'll walk the seducer's path in your dreams every night for the rest of your life, unless you surrender to him."
Harry just shook his head, mutely. Nott stood up and stared at him with something that seemed to blend pity and envy.
"Imagine what he can offer," Nott said softly, and left.
"How long will you resist me, my dear soul?"
Harry kept walking. This time, the temptation off the path was a huge bed, with a tree drooping over it laden with blood-red apples that made Harry's mouth water, and a table groaning beneath a feast that put the ones served at Hogwarts to shame. Harry's stomach twisted with hunger.
Voldemort was sprawled in the middle of the bed, stroking himself with one hand, the other reaching towards Harry. That much Harry saw in the one, the absolutely one, glance he allowed himself.
"There is something you should know about the seducer's path, Harry."
"Yeah, you're immortal, you can make it last the rest of my life," Harry muttered. He was tempted to say something about how that could still be pretty short if he did jump off the Astronomy Tower, but he didn't want to test if Voldemort's threat to break into Hogwarts and kidnap him was real.
"I am immortal," Voldemort agreed, with a smug smile that made Harry look over. He had bent so that he was lying on the bed on his stomach now, which at least hid his erection from view. His hands were beneath him, his spine curved, his body crouched like he was some great predator.
"Which means," Voldemort said, "so are you, and thus, the path need not have an end."
For a moment, the vision of what that could mean slammed into Harry. To walk like this for centuries, ages, eons, while Voldemort watched him, and patiently waited—
Was his will strong enough to resist temptation forever?
Harry turned away jerkily and kept walking, between the blood-red roses. Voldemort's laughter followed him into the distance.
