Unseen Perspective

by TendraelUmbra

Not all wars are black and white, as Harry learns when the second war with Voldemort seems to be painted in nothing but shades of grey. In which Harry is confused, Tonks is overwhelmed, Barty is a genius, Snape hates everyone, Dumbledore is trying his best, and Voldemort is having the time of her life. fem!Voldemort

13. Forgotten Memory

Harry's mind was racing as he followed after Voldemort. He couldn't believe what he'd just done. He thought back through the conversation he'd had before she apparated them away, but even though each individual action made sense, he still found himself in disbelief at where he ended up.

Voldemort stopped walking and turned around to face him. "Are you doing alright, Harry?"

How was he supposed to answer that? "I…"

Voldemort sighed. "I am sorry to bother you on Christmas, but I have something that I need to get done while Hogwarts isn't in session, and having you along would really help. Today is the best opportunity I'm going to get. Don't worry, I'll drop you back off at Grimmauld once we're done, and hopefully no one will even notice that you were ever gone."

Harry nodded, the words strangely reassuring. "Where are we going, anyway?"

They were on an old dirt road, one that didn't seem to see much use from the amount of overgrowth. The location was wholly unfamiliar to him, that much was certain.

"We're paying a visit to one of your classmates." Voldemort explained as she continued walking. "If all goes well, then he should be an ally in dismantling the Wizengamot."

"And if all doesn't go well?" Harry asked, morbidly curious.

Voldemort paused long enough that Harry began to wonder if she didn't hear him. He was about to ask again when she gave a reply.

"If all doesn't go well, then I will have to do something very… wasteful." She said sombrely. She then turned around and shot him a grin. "But I'm sure it won't come to that. I won you over, after all."

Harry still wasn't quite sure how that had actually happened, but she had somehow managed to do just that.

"Here we are." Voldemort said.

Harry had been so distracted that he completely missed the building coming into view. Either that, or it was only visible up close.

A wrought iron gate with identical fencing surrounded a well-manicured, if spartan, lawn. In the centre of the lawn sat a moderately large gothic house. Harry didn't consider himself a fan of the style, but he had to admire the craftsmanship of the house, if nothing else. Several large gargoyles sat on outcroppings just below the roof, completing the image of a classic haunted house.

"Come along, then." Voldemort said, holding out her hand. Harry grabbed it and let her Blink them across what must have been the wardline, still not feeling confident in his own ability with the skill.

Harry was much more impressed by the interior than he was the exterior. He'd expected something similar to Grimmauld place, with a constant, oppressive atmosphere, but the interior felt far more welcoming than he would have expected. The floors were a rich mahogany, which added a note of warmth that the ebony floors of Grimmauld lacked. Bunches of holly had been strategically placed throughout the rooms, a simplistic yet surprisingly effective form of decoration. The lightning was also done with torches, as opposed to the pure magical lights of Grimmauld, which further added to the warm atmosphere.

It wouldn't be Harry's first pick as a place to live, but he'd certainly pick it over Grimmauld place, that much was certain.

Voldemort walked into the dining room and put her hands on her hips. "Elf!" She shouted.

A diminutive house elf appeared right away and bowed. "How may I- Eep!" It squealed as it got a good look at her.

"I see that you know who I am." Voldemort drawled. "That saves me some trouble. Is your master home?"

"N-n-n-no, Lady. He is not."

"A pity, I shall have to wait, then. In the meantime, fetch all of your number and bring them to me. I have a task that I require of you."

The house elf squeaked and vanished with a silent pop.

"What was that about?" Harry asked, now that they were alone.

"Putting on a show." She explained, the serious tone gone from her voice. "The house elves are likely to be questioned after we're done here, and it works better if they believe the story I want to be told. Very few people will think much of 'She-who-must-not-be-named' killing one of her followers for a perceived failure, so it helps to put on the associated persona. Fewer questions are asked that way."

"I thought you were laying low?"

"I was laying low, but I don't see much need for that anymore. Winning you over was one of the last big hurdles I had to deal with. Now it's just a matter of… cleaning up the trash."

Harry stared at her for a moment. "Just how close to winning are you?"

"Very. I can give you an exact breakdown later. Suffice to say that I don't expect this to take more than a few months."

Any further discussion was halted as the house elf reappeared, this time with three others accompanying it.

"Um… h-how can we help you, M-m-miss Lady She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named?" It squeaked.

"Sleep." Voldemort commanded with a snap of her fingers, causing all the elves to fall to the ground like puppets with their strings cut.

For a brief moment, Harry was worried that they were dead, but that thought went away as he saw the rise and fall of their chests.

"Are you any good in the kitchen, Harry?" Voldemort asked as she began walking deeper into the house.

Harry found himself thrown by the abrupt subject change. "Uh, yeah, I've been working in the kitchen for years."

She nods. "Good. With the house elves out of the picture, no one is going to be available to make breakfast, and I'm sure that our guest will be more amenable to my proposal on a full stomach."

"I'm pretty sure that we're their guests, technically." He mumbled. "Also, you know that sounds really ominous, right?"

Voldemort laughed, which did wonders to lighten the mood. "I'm told I have a talent for that. That said, I was serious. The less inconvenience we pose, the more likely we are to succeed. We should be able to make a decent full English before he wakes up."

Voldemort quickly made herself at home in the kitchen, rooting through various cabinets and placing various fixings on the counter.

She held out a pan and a link of sausages. "Can you get these started? They take the longest to cook, so it's best to get them started first."

"Oh, uh, sure." Harry put the pan on the stove and started looking around for a knife to cut the links apart.

"Ah, my bad. Let me get that for you." She snapped her fingers and the links immediately separated, each one suspended in the air where they had been cut.

"Um…"

"Don't just let them hang there, Harry." Voldemort chided. "We really do need to get them cooking."

"Right." Harry was not at all used to such displays of magic when cooking. Mrs. Weasley tended to use magic, but Voldemort was more flamboyant with her displays, in a way he wasn't able to put his finger on.

As the sausages started sizzling away in the pan, he glanced at Voldemort, who had placed several tomatoes on the counter. She snapped her fingers again, and each one fell cleanly into slices. It finally clicked with him why Voldemort's display was more impressive.

"You didn't use a wand." He remarked.

"I don't need to use one most of the time." She replied. "I can do most spells wandlessly. I only need my wand when I'm going to get in a serious fight in which conserving magic is key, and even then, I tend to rely heavily on wandless techniques as well. Storm harvesting, the one you saw me use to attack Snape, only needs a wand to carve the initial stormcaller runes. Everything afterwards can be done wandlessly. Likewise, my hellfire cloak doesn't need a wand at all, not even for the initial casting, nor do some of my other favoured techniques." She rooted through several more of the cabinets. "Damn, they don't have any baked beans. Well, luckily I came prepared."

She opened her handbag and rummaged around in it. It was obviously bigger on the inside, given how deep her arm was in it.

"Ah, here we are!" She pulled her arm back out, now holding a can of baked beans that she opened with another snap of her fingers. "Really, to think that the elves didn't have any on hand…"

"You just… keep those on you at all times?" Harry asked, feeling morbidly curious.

"I may be magical, Harry, but I'm still British. I like baked beans."

Harry didn't really get what the fuss was about, nor could he imagine keeping a can of his favourite food on him at all times just in case he needed it.

The two worked in relative silence after that, frying up the remainder of the food. Voldemort set out three plates and had all the food leap onto them with another snap of her fingers.

"Come along, Harry." She said, levitating the plates around her. "Let's go take a seat and wait for our guest to arrive."

Harry still didn't think that it was correct to say that whoever they were meeting was their guest, given that they broke into his home and all that.

Voldemort scooped some beans onto her toast and took a bite. "Hopefully we won't be waiting long. I have it on good authority that he's an early riser — well, early for a teenager, at least. Bellatrix preferred to sleep until noon when I first met her. Nowadays she only sleeps until ten."

"What can you tell me about Bellatrix, anyways?" Harry asked. "Delphini has mentioned her a lot, but the image she paints of her is really different from the one Sirius painted of her."

"That's to be expected." Voldemort replied. "Bellatrix joined me because she loathed her family and wanted to not only wipe out most of them, but destroy their legacy in the process. Part of this plan hinged on her family not knowing what she was doing. She put on a façade of insanity, passing her murderous whims off as the impulsive decisions of a madwoman. Sirius was on the receiving end of that, and he likely never realised that that behaviour was a mask." She took a sip of her tea before continuing. "Unfortunately, that impulsive behaviour did lead to her family taking increasingly drastic and futile attempts to try and control her, culminating in them attempting to arrange a marriage between her and Rodolphus Lestrange. She refused to go along with it until I asked her to, as the Lestranges had refused to associate with me before that point, and getting the Lestrange brothers under my thumb was the ideal way to arrange their deaths."

"They're Sacred Twenty Eight?"

"They were Sacred Twenty Eight. I killed them both during the breakout, and the Lestrange line is now extinct by my hand. I had tried to kill them countless times during the war, but they two were slippery enough that they kept surviving whatever dangerous situation I sent them into. I'm rather glad that they're now dead, as being married to them was a source of much stress for Bellatrix, especially since she's a lesbian."

Harry supposed that wasn't very surprising. He didn't think that asking another woman if she could bear her child was something that a straight woman would do. Still, that raised another question that he wasn't sure he wanted an answer to. "Are you two… an item, or something?"

Voldemort shook her head. "I don't believe that I'm capable of experiencing that type of emotion. I won't deny that I feel closer to Bellatrix than I do anyone else, and that Bellatrix is very likely attracted to me in the same way that Barty is. That said, while Barty likes to make constant flirtatious passes at me, Bellatrix respects my boundaries, so I'm more comfortable reciprocating to the furthest extent that I'm able."

Harry didn't think he had enough context to understand everything she was talking about, but he was pretty sure he got the gist of it.

The sound of movement on the stairs caught their attention, and they both looked to the figure descending into the room. He froze when he caught sight of them, clearly unsure what to make of the situation.

"Hello, Theodore." Voldemort said. "I hope you don't mind us making ourselves at home. Your elves are all knocked out, so we made breakfast."

"Why are you here?" Theodore Nott asked them. "Why are you both here!?"

"I have a proposition for you, one that I'm certain you'll find agreeable. Harry is here to help me convince you."

He stared at the two of them. Harry was pretty sure that Theo was reevaluating his entire worldview, if his expression was anything to go by. It was something Harry had a lot of familiarity with.

Voldemort gestured to the empty seat at the table. "Eat. I'm sure having something in your stomach will help settle your nerves."

Theo reluctantly sat down and began picking at his food, eyes constantly flicking up to look at Harry and Voldemort. Harry couldn't really blame him for being suspicious, given the apparent absurdity of the situation. Harry Potter and Lady Voldemort making breakfast together was an outrageous enough concept that it would make most people in the magical world think they were being duped.

Voldemort tore through her breakfast far faster than Harry or Theo did, leaning back in her chair when she finished. "So, I'm sure that you've got questions."

"I have so many questions." Theo said sarcastically. "But I don't think I'm going to get answers to most of them."

She smiled at him. "No, probably not. Well, let me start with my proposition."

Harry watched as Voldemort walked Theo through her plan, staging a false war to divide the Wizengamot as a way of weakening the body until it could be destroyed. Most of the general points she made were the same ones Harry had heard just a few hours earlier, though some of them were phrased slightly differently. When Voldemort finished, she leaned back and waited for Theo to say something.

Theo looked at Harry. "Is this true?"

Harry nodded. "Best as I can tell. It's the only thing that makes sense."

"What do you want with me, then?" He asked cautiously.

"I am proposing a simple exchange." Voldemort continued. "You forfeit your family's Wizengamot seat when I make my final blow against the body, and in exchange, I murder your father right now and keep all scrutiny into his death firmly away from you."

Harry blinked. What the fuck?

Theo's expression turned calculating. "That's it? That's all you want from me? I forfeit my seat and you do something I was planning to do anyway in exchange? Forgive me if this seems too good to be true."

What the fuck!?

Voldemort grinned. "Just because something is good doesn't automatically make it a lie. Sometimes, good things just happen. Sometimes those good things come in the form of a Dark Lady hell bent on destroying the government."

"And there are no other stipulations? I don't have to take your mark or do whatever it is that the rest of the Death Eaters do?"

"Not unless you want to."

Theo went quiet as he considered that. After waiting for a solid minute, he nodded. "Alright, let's do this."

Voldemort clapped her hands together. "Lovely. I'll get your father over here right away."

Ink welled up from beneath the skin on Voldemort's left arm, revealing the same snake pattern Harry had seen after escaping from Hogwarts with her. Voldemort held her wand to it for a second, then stood up.

"Well, nothing to do now but wait." She said as she paced around the room.

Theo squinted at the snake pattern that was still visible on Voldemort's forearm. "Is that…?"

"Master control for the Dark Mark." Voldemort confirmed. "It was quite troublesome to design all of the features, but absolutely worth the effort. When I call for someone, they know exactly where I am. I'm sure your father will have lots of questions about why I'm calling him to your house. Do you mind if I gloat a bit before killing him? It's a guilty pleasure of mine."

Theo shrugged. "Do whatever you want."

"Lovely." Voldemort began humming a tune to herself as they waited.

Harry nearly jumped when a man apparated into the room. He was tall, though not as tall as Voldemort. Lank, greying hair fell on either side of his face, with slight salt and pepper stubble visible across his jaw. All in all, he looked old, definitely older than Voldemort, but Harry didn't know what that meant about his age. Voldemort looked much younger than she actually was.

The man looked across the room, taking in the sight of Harry and Theo both sitting at the table. "My Lady, I-"

Voldemort held her hand out and the man was thrust against the wall and held there, limbs splayed and his wand clattering to the ground.

"I've been waiting a long time for this, Thaddeus." Voldemort said sadistically. "Time to return all that suffering you inflicted on me back in school."

Harry winced as the man was dropped from where he was being suspended, landing on his knees with a loud crack.

"That's what this is about, Riddle?" He said, spitting the name. "Petty revenge for something that happened decades ago?"

Voldemort laughed. "No, that's just an added bonus. No, this is about trimming your family tree the way I've trimmed so many others."

"What are you…?" His eyes widened. "No… You can't be serious…"

Voldemort flung her hand to the side, sending Thaddeus sprawling across the ground. "And what are you going to do to stop me? Isn't it funny how easily all that time spent building your family's legacy is so easily torn down? Perhaps if you had actually treated your son well you might have someone willing to fight for that legacy, but instead you pushed him away and made him loathe you and everything you stood for."

Flames cloaked Voldemort's right hand as she strode over to him. She reached down and grabbed him by the neck and lifted him above the ground. He wailed as the flames burned all the flesh she touched.

"No amount of torture I could inflict on you now will compare to the glee I'll experience from knowing that I have destroyed everything you worked for your whole life."

She turned around and threw him to the ground, sending him sliding across the floor until he hit the table, making Harry and Theo both jump.

"It's time for you to do something useful for the first time in your miserable life and die." She said as she calmly strode towards him. "Theo, would you like to do the honours, or should I?"

Theo looked away from the scene. "Just get it over with."

"My pleasure." Voldemort pulled out her wand for the second time that morning. "Avada Kedavra."

Harry was still trying to process everything that had just happened. Theo just seemed conflicted.

Voldemort walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. "Hey, it's going to be okay."

"Yeah…" Theo muttered. "I guess I just never thought this far ahead."

"I know that feeling. It's understandable to feel conflicted — much as you hated your father, you feel sad seeing him die because it represents a definitive ending to any potential relationship you could have had."

Theo just gave a small grunt.

"I'll leave you to sort out your feelings. If you ever want to speak with a mind healer about this, then let me know — I know several good ones. Just send a letter to Malfoy Manor and I'll do what I can. All I ask is that you be ready to attend a Wizengamot meeting sometime this summer so we can end this."

Theo nodded, which Harry took as a sign that they should leave. Voldemort pulled a black trenchcoat out of her handbag and donned it, then heaved the body of Thaddeus Nott over her shoulder and made for the exit. Harry followed closely behind her, trying to process the last few minutes. Once the door had closed behind them, Harry finally spoke up.

"That was…"

"Yeah, sorry if you found that disturbing or upsetting, but I don't feel bad about killing people, and I quite enjoy doing so when the person in question deserves it."

"Why did Theo want his father dead?" Harry asked.

"I'm sure that you could make a good guess based on your own experiences." Voldemort replied.

"Oh…"

"Unfortunately, your unhappy home life was not a unique experience. Some parents are just… really not suited to the role."

Voldemort blinked the two of them past the wardline and pressed her wand into the still-present snake tattoo on her forearm.

"I just need to have someone fetch the body and then I can get you back to Grimmauld place."

The sandy-haired man appeared again, and Voldemort chucked the body at him.

"What the fuck, Voldie!?" He shouted as he struggled to catch the body. "Are you going to make a habit of this?"

"Maybe." She said with a smirk. "Just take care of that until I get back. I'll dispose of it properly when I have time."

"Roger that. Happy Christmas, Harry."

"Uh… Happy Christmas." Did Harry know this man? He seemed familiar, but he couldn't place a name to the face.

He apparated away, leaving Harry alone with Voldemort.

"Thanks for the help, Harry." She said.

"Thanks, but I didn't really do anything." He replied.

"Your presence was enough. It cast doubt on Theodore's preconceptions about me, which made him more receptive to my argument. I don't doubt that he would have thought it a trap had I shown up alone."

That made a certain amount of sense, Harry supposed. Still… "What happens now?"

"Now? Now I take you back home."

"That's it? I just go back to my old life?"

Voldemort smiled at him. "I'd rather not disrupt your whole life. If I have something that I need you to do, then I'll find a way to contact you. I have no reason to keep you from your friends and schooling barring a dire emergency."

She held out her hand, which Harry took once again.

"Let's get you home."

The ground fell away into a suffocating void, and new ground rose up to greet them. Harry took in the sights of Grimmauld place, seeing it to be almost exactly as they had left it. Almost.

The sound of them arriving by apparition had obviously drawn attention, as the eyes of a significant chunk of the Order were fixed on them. Harry had no idea why they were outside, but his brain was more focused on how to explain this.

Voldemort pursed her lips. "Well this is inconvenient."

---

If there was anything Ron missed about being younger, it was the ability to wake up full of energy. He remembered just two years ago how he'd woken up fully alert on Christmas morning and didn't understand why others couldn't do the same. Now he'd been awake for over an hour and still felt dead on his feet.

He shuffled into the kitchen and fumbled around on the counter until he found the tea.

"Good morning, Ron darling!" His mother said with disproportionate cheer. "Happy Christmas. Did you sleep well?"

"Mmmhngmm." Ron mumbled as he scooped some tea into the strainer and poured hot water onto it. He paused halfway through. Did he remember to set out a mug first? He looked down on the counter to see that yes, there was a mug, and he was not pouring hot water onto the counter. That was good. He didn't want to make that mistake again.

"Such a sleepyhead today, aren't you?" His mother said, ruffling his hair. "Don't take too long to wake up or we might have to hold off celebrating Christmas."

"Mornings." Was all Ron could manage to mumble in response.

Ron stared vacantly at his mug of tea for an indeterminate amount of time. When he came to, he realised that he had no idea how long he'd been staring there, but that the tea had probably steeped long enough. He tossed two lumps of sugar in and a splash of cream. A literal splash. He'd have to clean that up later.

He sipped at the tea, feeling invigorated, if not awake. He moved to the den where everyone else was gathering and slowly nursed his tea as people wandered in.

"Who are we still missing?" His mum asked. "I'm not seeing Harry, Ginny, or Remus. Does anyone know where they are?"

"Ginny was still getting dressed when I came down." Hermione volunteered. "Harry might still be asleep. He's been even less of an early riser than Ron these days."

"Was Harry still asleep when you came down, Ron?" His mum asked.

"Thoddee salredy downeer." Ron mumbled. He looked around the room and noted that Harry was indeed absent. That was odd.

Apparently no one could understand his remark as Hermione went upstairs to check if Harry was in their room, which Ron knew he wasn't. Some part of him felt like he should be panicking about that, but panicking could wait until he was awake. Thinking was hard. Ron took another sip of his tea.

He had finished his tea by the time Hermione came back down to tell them that Harry wasn't in their bedroom, the shower, nor anywhere else she could think to look.

The cobwebs of sleep finally chased from his brain, Ron began to realise why this was a problem. If Harry wasn't in the house, then where was he?

They promptly formed search parties to search for any sign of Harry, but Ron wasn't optimistic that they'd find any sign of him. A few of the adults were using spells to see if any curses had been tripped that might have done something to him, but Ron also didn't think that was likely. They'd looked through loads of cursed objects over the summer, and Harry was as cautious as the rest of them.

When the search came back empty, everyone began gathering back in the den.

Sirius was the first to speak up. "We need to call Dumbledore. If something was able to get Harry out from under a fidelius, then it's a huge security threat. Then we need to work on actually finding him."

Remus nodded. "I'll floo over to Hogwarts and fill him in."

He strode across the room and vanished into the green flames of the fireplace.

Silence hung over the room until Ron's mum spoke up.

"Well what do we do in the meantime? We can't just wait for Dumbledore to get here."

"What would we do, Molly?" Sirius sniped back. "The only method I can think of that explains Harry's absence is if someone who also knows the secret kidnapped him. I already saw the Order torn apart by distrust once, and I'd prefer not to see that happen again until we have a more complete picture of what happened. Throwing accusations will get us nowhere."

"What about Snape?" Moody said from the corner. "He's been missing for a few days now, and the last we heard of was him going to meet the Dark Lady herself. The timing seems mighty suspicious if you ask me."

"I distrust Snape just as much as you do, Alastor, but that's far from the only explanation for his absence."

"What about your elf?" Moody countered. "The one who hates your guts and can teleport through wards because he's an elf. He could have done it.

"My elf-" Sirius cut off as he processed the implications. "Kreacher!"

The elf appeared in the middle of the room with a pop. "You called, Master Filthy Blood Traitor?"

"Harry. Where is he?"

"Kreacher doesn't know, Master."

The two stared at each other for some time.

"Let's try this again, then." Sirius said. "When was the last time you saw Harry and what was he doing?"

The elf gave a wicked grin. "Kreacher has not seen Mister Potter since he walked out the front door around sunrise."

"He walked- Why didn't you stop him!?"

"Because Master Filthy Blood Traitor told Kreacher that he was not to leave the house unless ordered to."

Sirius's face tensed in anger. "Fine. Go back to… whatever it is you were doing. And next time Harry tries to leave on his own, stop him!"

Kreacher vanished with a pop, and Sirius stood to address the room.

"Right, let's start looking outside. It's been a while since he went out, but with any luck, Harry should still be fairly nearby. Let's go!"

There was a flurry of donning cloaks and boots as everyone suited up to go out, leaving Ron and Hermione as the only ones left. Ron shot a glance over to Hermione. "You coming or not?"

She bit her lip and shook her head. "I'm going to look around the library to see if I can find a more advanced tracking spell than homenum revelio. There are already enough people out there and I'd just slow you all down."

Ron shrugged and threw his scarf on before walking outside.

The fresh snow crunched slightly under his boot. Several people were checking behind bushes or under cars. Ron was making way to the nearby alley when a loud crack sounded through the street. He turned around to see Harry standing in the middle of the street next to a tall woman with black hair tied up in a loose ponytail. She didn't have any substantial protection from the weather, most likely relying on warming charms exclusively. Her outfit was simple — black boots, black slacks, an untucked red blouse, and a long black trenchcoat. Ron stared at her face, trying to process what he was seeing. Her eyes were red, an impossibly vibrant shade of blood. There was only one conclusion Ron could make about the woman's identity, but it didn't make any sense!

The woman made a displeased expression. "Well, this is inconvenient."

---

As Voldemort took in the sight before her, she realised that she may have been a little too optimistic about how much time the business with the Notts would take.

Her brain ran through countless options for how to get out of the situation. She briefly entertained playing dumb, but too many people recognised her for that to have any chance of success. Mass obliviation would be possible, but impractical under the current circumstances — there were too many people she'd have to deal with and not enough time before reinforcements would arrive.

That left her with one option — run.

If it was just her, she'd be gone by now, but she had to account for Harry, too, which complicated matters slightly, especially since all his belongings were under a fidelius she didn't currently have access to.

Well, she supposed she'd just have to act as a distraction. Voldemort felt out through her being until she found the sliver of her soul embedded in Harry's scar, and reached out to it.

"Well this has gone tits up." She spoke into his mind.

Harry turned and gaped at her.

"Yes, yes, I'm sure you're aghast at my language. Unfortunately, this is going to escalate very quickly very soon, so we need to be going. I'll distract the Order, you go get your things and meet me back out here as soon as you're done."

He looked at her with an expression she couldn't understand — no doubt some emotion her brain wasn't built for. For a second she was worried that he'd say no and she'd need to find a different solution, but his expression hardened and he gave her a small nod.

"Don't kill them." He whispered aloud.

Voldemort gave a small sigh and nodded. "Fine. Go." She said.

Harry made his way towards where Voldemort could only assume the fideliused house was. She didn't like this situation one bit, as she had no way to provide Harry with any support once he passed through the boundary.

Moody's eye locked onto Harry and he cast some sort of entangling spell at him. Voldemort moved to cast a shield, but Harry Blinked out of its path and out of her perception.

"What did you do with Potter?" Moody asked gruffly.

Voldemort laughed and floated off of the ground. A wave of her left hand snapped off countless icicles from the surrounding area, each one entering an orbit around her. "Oh Alastor, you should really be more worried about yourself."

---

Harry stumbled as he landed on the floor of Grimmauld Place's entrance. Apparently, it was possible to overshoot one of those "Blinks" and appear a few feet above the ground. He pushed himself to his knees, coming face to face with one of the last people he wanted to deal with at the moment.

"Kreacher sees that Mister Potter has returned. Was his walk enjoyable?" The decrepit elf said to him with a devious grin.

Harry pushed himself to his feet. "Kreacher. What did you do?"

"Kreacher merely did what was asked of him. It's hardly his fault that it was not in Mister Potter's favour."

"Right. Well, I have things I need to do, so could you please move out of my way?"

"Is Mister Potter going to leave again?" The elf asked.

"That's none of your business." Harry said, trying to sidestep the elf, only for all his movements to be matched.

"Kreacher was told not to let Mister Potter leave the house."

Harry didn't have time for this. He Blinked past Kreacher and made his way up the stairs until a slight tug on his trousers caught his attention.

"No. Please. Stop." The elf deadpanned as Harry dragged him along.

Harry tried to shake him off again, but Kreacher was steadfast in his half-hearted attempts to stop him.

Thankfully, Kreacher was light enough and willing enough to keep up with Harry that it barely slowed him down. He walked into his room and began gathering the few things he'd removed from his trunk. Kreacher finally relinquished his grip and observed Harry passively as he threw his things into the trunk. He'd just managed to slam it shut when the door to the room opened behind him.

"Ron, what are you… Harry!? When did you get back? Where were you!?"

Harry felt like a deer in the headlights as he turned to face Hermione. "It's, um, complicated."

"Complicated!? We were worried sick about you! Did Kreacher find you or something?"

Harry looked down at the elf. "No, he's here to stop me."

"Stop you from what? Harry, you're not making any sense." She said, putting her hands on her hips. "And why are you packing your things? You're not about to go and do something stupidly self-sacrificing again, are you?"

Harry picked up his trunk, confident that he'd gotten everything of importance from the room. "It's… Look, Hermione, do you trust me?"

Hermione's expression softened. "Of course I trust you. Why do you ask?"

"Do you trust that even if you saw me doing something that you thought was wrong, then you'd trust that I had a good reason for it?"

"Harry… what did you do?" She asked.

An explosion rocked the house before Harry had a chance to answer.

"I have to go. I'm sorry." He said, surprised at how much it hurt him to say that.

"Why?"

"Sorry." Harry said one last time before Blinking into the hallway and making a break for it.

"Harry!" Hermione shouted from his room. "Kreacher, stop him!"

Kreacher appeared in front of Harry and held up a hand. "Don't. Stop."

Harry Blinked past him, hearing the elf let out an amused sigh as he tore the door open.

"Well, Kreacher tried his best."

Outside was a disaster. The area was littered with craters, some of which looked molten. The entire street seemed to have been torn up, the asphalt fragmented and uneven. Most of the lampposts and cars had been destroyed, although one lamppost seemed to have been cleanly cut from its base. Most of the members of the Order were looking worse for wear and several were unconscious, but they all seemed to be intact.

For a second, Harry wondered if the battle was over, but his gaze drifted further down the street where he could see Voldemort and Dumbledore having a discussion of some sort. Harry was inclined to think that it wasn't a civil conversation, given that Dumbledore looked angrier than Harry could ever remember seeing him, and Voldemort's arms were both cloaked in fire and a shield of shrapnel was spinning around her body. He tried to move closer so he could better hear what they were saying.

"You know, if you keep this attitude up, I might start to think you don't like me." Voldemort said.

"I'm amazed that you could go this long while thinking that I did." Dumbledore replied coldly.

"Ouch. If you keep that attitude up, then you might really hurt my feelings." Voldemort said in a tone that implied nothing of the sort. "Perhaps you should watch your language so you don't accidentally hurt someone you care about."

Dumbledore drew his wand. "Enough of this. You made a dire mistake coming here."

Voldemort laughed. "Yeah, you bet I did. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to duck out right about now. Much as I love our little sparring sessions, I have other obligations I need to attend to. Besides, this is far from an ideal location for such a duel — too much potential for collateral."

Dumbledore gripped his wand in both hands and pointed it at her. "You know that I cannot let you do that."

Voldemort frowned at him for a moment, making no moves of her own. When the tension had finally grown thick enough to cut, she sighed and shook her head. "Well, that's unfortunate. I'm terribly sorry about this."

The next thing Harry knew, Voldemort was gone from where she was standing, the shrapnel orbiting her falling unceremoniously to the ground. She reappeared right behind Dumbledore and said… something. Harry couldn't make out what she said, but whatever it was caused Dumbledore to flinch and clutch his head in pain. The next thing he knew, a pair of arms was clutching him from behind and the world fell away.

---

Moody was the first to react after Harry disappeared, sending a ribbon cutter at Voldemort that she easily dodged. She sent a flurry of her orbiting icicles at him, which he effortlessly blocked.

"Your schoolyard tricks don't impress me, Voldie." He barked.

She laughed. "No? Then perhaps this is more your style."

Voldemort wreathed her right arm in crimson flames and blinked into the air behind him, bringing her fist down to the ground with as much force as she could muster. Moody dodged her attack with speed belying his condition, causing the asphalt to cave in beneath her blow.

Black took advantage of her distraction to send a barrage of maiming curses at her back. She easily blinked out of their path and turned to face him. He was giving her quite the death glare, actually. It was rather charming.

"What did you do to Harry?" He growled.

Voldemort couldn't keep the smile off of her face, not with the rush of adrenaline moving through her system. Gods, she really loved a good fight. "All I did was open his eyes to some truths of the world. If you want to blame anyone, perhaps you would blame yourself — you're the one who completely cut him off during the summer, giving me the perfect window."

Black's eyes widened in shock, taking him off guard long enough for her to Blink behind him. She swept her left arm upwards, sending an azure cascade of lightning and plasma across the ground, tearing up the asphalt in its path. Black rolled out of its path and pulled up an opaque obsidian shield that absorbed the hellfire she shot from her still burning right hand.

"Resorting to dark magic already, Black?" She taunted as she hammered it with conventional spellfire. "It's adorable how quickly you abandon your morals when you deem it necessary. I'd be careful that you don't hurt yourself, Sirius, because you're playing with fire."

"You're one to talk." He said through gritted teeth. "You toss around dark magic the same way Malfoy tosses galleons."

"I've been playing with fire for years, and do you know what I've learned?" Voldemort Blinked behind him and punched him in the back of his neck. "I. Don't. Burn."

Voldemort lashed out several more times, though Black dealt with it surprisingly well. Unlike most mages, Black wasn't completely untrained in martial combat. He was nowhere near Voldemort's level, though, and that was without Voldemort sending pulses of magic through her muscles to augment her strength. With a solid hit from her elbow to his head, Sirius crumpled to the ground, unconscious.

"Don't turn your back on an active opponent, girl!" Moody shouted from behind her.

Voldemort spun around the spells he shot at her and turned to face him. "Don't announce your presence to an unaware opponent."

While she'd been fighting off Black, Moody had managed to surround himself in a prismatic shield, which was an impressive act, if somewhat inefficient. Prismatic shields were rarely used for a reason. Unless…

"You know, Alastor," She said, putting her hand on her hip, "If you're trying to stall, you should try to be less obvious about it."

"As if you could resist the bait." He scoffed.

She grinned at him as she idly swished her hand, etching a sole stormcaller rune onto the ground. It wouldn't give her a lot of lightning, but it would be charged a lot faster. A flick of her wand set it aglow, and she turned her full attention to Moody while it charged. "Or maybe, we just both want the same thing. Didn't think of that, did you?"

He didn't reply, instead sending several stunners and other low calibre spells her way. He must have been channelling most of his power into that shield, hoping to use it to stall her out until backup arrived.

Well, Voldemort was very experienced at overpowering defences. She cloaked both of her arms in crimson hellfire and fired a condensed stream of the stuff at the shield, which licked at the shield, but no matter how many of the hexagonal panes it ate through, they were being replaced more quickly than she could damage them.

She held her arm up and captured the lightning strike from the stormcaller rune, shooting it from her left hand as she continued to shoot hellfire from her right. That at least started to damage the shield, but she didn't have nearly enough lightning to last long enough to completely eat through it.

Time to brute force it, then. No matter how much power he was putting into that thing, it had a limited ability to withstand kinetic impacts

Voldemort sent a cutting curse at the base of the nearest lamppost, and sent a stream of magic into her muscles so she could lift it up.

"Fuck you, Alastor." She said as she swung the lamppost at his shield like an oversized bat. The right side of the barrier shattered under the blow, even as it attempted to regenerate itself. Voldemort levitated the car to Moody's left and flung it at the intact part with all the force she could muster. The entire shield collapsed with the melodic sound of shattering glass, rendering Moody unconscious as the backlash hit him.

Voldemort ducked out of the way of several magical objects she felt coming from behind her. Two of the older Weasleys — twins, if she recalled correctly — had fired a volley of what seemed to be… fireworks? Certainly an unconventional choice of weaponry.

She crossed her arms and stared up at where the two of them were levitating on their brooms. "Did you really think that was a good idea?"

"Fred! George!" Their mother shouted from where she'd taken cover. "Get away from here this instant!"

"Too late for that." Voldemort called upon her remaining lightning and sent it arcing at the two of them causing them to tumble to the ground as they lost consciousness. With them taken care of, Voldemort turned her attention to the remaining people —

Harry's friend Ron and his family. The eldest child had obviously been hard at work, assembling some temporary wards to keep them safe while she'd been fighting Black and Moody, but they were hardly sufficient to keep her out. "I have no quarrel with any of you, and Harry asked me not to kill anyone anyways."

"No quarrel with us!?" The mother shouted in outrage. "That didn't seem to be the case when you killed my brothers!"

Voldemort shrugged. "There were circumstances surrounding them that don't apply to you. Besides, they'd be alive if they'd simply accepted my deal. I'm not an unreasonable person, believe it or not."

"Fuck you!" She shouted as she cast several creatively weaponised household spells. Voldemort was impressed by their novelty, but they were hardly a threat to her.

Voldemort sighed. "Oh well." She Blinked through the wards and rapidly released stunners at every conscious person there. That took care of everyone who was here at the start, but there were sure to be reinforcements inbound.

A series of pops and several shouts of "freeze" proved that theory. Voldemort turned around to face the newcomers, grinning as she recognised them.

"Nymphadora! How lovely to see you."

"Fuck off, Voldemort."

She shrugged and turned to the others. "You are Kingsley Shacklebolt, of course, and you… Hestia Jones, correct?"

Hestia ignored her greeting and turned to Shacklebolt. "Kingsley, we're way outclassed here. What do we do?"

"Stand our ground and buy time. Defensive formation, now!"

The three aurors immediately arranged themselves in a triangular formation and began casting fortifications into the ground around them. It was a classic auror technique, using three people to create substantially stronger protections to withstand exceptionally strong or sustained attacks. Voldemort could still dismantle the protections, of course, but she didn't want to waste time doing so, especially not when more reinforcements were certain to be here soon. There was a loophole in the design, though. The protections had to be built into the surrounding to enable three people to feed into them, so a significant disruption to the environment would completely destabilise them.

Voldemort decided it was time to take a page out of Peter's book. She scanned the street's surface to confirm the presence of what she needed, and sprinted for the nearest manhole cover when she found it. She pulled at it and ripped it out, flinging it at the aurors like a discus. She then leapt into the air and aimed her wand into the uncovered sewer. "Confringo!"

Muggles and their reliance on gas… Surely they saw the danger in keeping explosive substances beneath their streets? Well, she wasn't about to complain about things going her way.

She barely managed to avoid the fiery plume that erupted from the ground as sewer and gas main alike exploded, sending a shockwave down the entire street that tore the asphalt asunder. She blinked behind Jones the moment their protections shuddered and sent an overpowered banishing charm at her back. Jones was launched into the nearest building, crumpling in a heap as she fell from the impact. It wouldn't be enough to kill her — mages were far too durable for that — but it would definitely land her in the hospital for some time.

Shacklebolt was still staggered from the explosion, but Nymphadora had already recovered and was lashing out at her. Voldemort ignited her fists and aimed a punch at Nymphadora's shoulder, but the surrounding area rippled before impact, and suddenly Tonks wasn't where she ought to be, and Voldemort was reeling as her blow went wide. Before she had a chance to recover, another blow knocked her to the ground. Voldemort Blinked out of the way of any followup attacks and took stock of the situation from a distance. She grinned as she took in the sight of Nymphadora's combat pose, the air — no, the space — around her arms rippling.

"You actually managed to hit me." Voldemort said with a euphoric grin. "That hasn't happened in ages. You don't see a lot of people versed in martial magic, but spacial distortion? That's the sort of technique that only a metamorph could pull off." Voldemort pulled out her wand and began carving a full sequence of stormcaller runes as she summoned a shield of shrapnel to orbit around herself. "Seems I'll have to take this seriously after all."

She waved her wand to activate the runes, only for their glow to vanish a second later. Momentary confusion gave way to realisation as she looked up and saw Dumbledore standing in between her and the aurors.

"Dumbledore!" She said with a grin and a wave. "How lovely of you to join us on this fine day. Happy Christmas, by the way."

"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that your idea of a happy Christmas is unleashing carnage on London." He replied solemnly.

"This?" Voldemort gestured to the destruction around her. "This is merely collateral, and unwanted collateral at that. Besides, I'm trying to limit the number of casualties I cause. Consider it an early New Year's resolution."

Voldemort perked up as she felt Harry's presence reappear. He must be out of the fidelius now, so it was time for them to leave.

"You have a poor sense of humour, Voldemort, and an even poorer sense of morals." Dumbledore continued.

She put her hands on her hips. "You know, if you keep this attitude up, I might start to think you don't like me."

"I'm amazed that you could go this long while thinking that I did." He replied coldly.

Voldemort tried not to let it show how much that remark hurt. "Ouch. If you keep that attitude up, then you might really hurt my feelings." She said nonchalantly. "Perhaps you should watch your language so you don't accidentally hurt someone you care about."

Dumbledore drew his wand. "Enough of this. You made a dire mistake coming here."

She laughed hard. Oh, if only he knew "Yeah, you bet I did. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to duck out right about now. Much as I love our little sparring sessions, I have other obligations I need to attend to. Besides, this is far from an ideal location for such a duel — too much potential for collateral." If the two of them fought, they'd undoubtedly wipe at least a few blocks of London off the map. There was a reason powerful mages tended to save their fights for open, empty areas — less disastrous opportunities for unintentional terraforming.

Dumbledore gripped his wand in both hands and pointed it at her. "You know that I cannot let you do that."

Voldemort frowned at him for a moment, trying to figure out the easiest way out of this. Even if she apparated away, Dumbledore would undoubtedly trace it as fast as he could, and she knew how quickly he worked. Combining Blinking and apparition would buy her more time, but not enough on its own. She needed a way to incapacitate Dumbledore, if only for a minute or so. It didn't take her long to think of one, but the thought of using it intentionally sat… poorly with her. Still, she didn't have any other options, and she needed to get Harry out of there. Her head hung for a second as she prepared herself, thinking back through her childhood memories until she found one that, as far as he knew, she had no way of knowing. "Well, that's unfortunate. I'm terribly sorry about this."

She Blinked next to Dumbledore and whispered it into his ear, trying to suppress the guilt she felt as he clutched his head in pain.

"Sorry." She whispered before Blinking behind Harry, wrapping her arms around him, and apparating them both away.

---

Harry stumbled as the ground reasserted itself beneath his feet. He looked behind himself to confirm that it was, in fact, Voldemort who had apparated him away, and not an overzealous Order member. With that confirmed, he let out a sigh and relaxed.

"We're not out of the woods yet, Harry." Voldemort said as she looked around the street before picking up a drenched newspaper on someone's doorstep and posting her wand at it. "Portus." She tossed it on the ground and then turned back to him. "I've bought us a few minutes at most, so we need to get away from here before they trace my apparition. That portkey should throw them off the trail for a while, but we really need to get moving."

Harry looked down at the wet newspaper she'd made into a portkey, which vanished shortly thereafter. "So what do we do?"

Voldemort grabbed his suitcase and hefted it up, obviously not bothered at all by its weight. "We need to get out of here without using magic. They can't trace us if we're not leaving a trail. Let's get going."

Harry followed after her as they walked down the streets, continually changing their path so they'd be harder to follow. It was Christmas, though, so there weren't any substantial crowds for them to get lost in.

"Ah, perfect." Voldemort waved, hailing a nearby taxi. "Take us to Little Hangleton." She said, handing the driver a few notes and hefting his trunk into the boot.

As Harry got himself situated in the cab, the implications of the morning's events finally began to catch up with him. He had, inadvertently or not, burned a lot of bridges in the past hour. What was he going to do now? How would he go back to Hogwarts?

"That's up to you." Voldemort said quietly. "Your options are, admittedly, much more limited than they were earlier. You could just… go back to Hogwarts like nothing happened, but that would be a risky course of action. The Order of the Phoenix has a very strong presence in Hogwarts, and while I don't think it likely they would make any direct moves against you, it's still a possibility that we can't ignore. I was able to help you against Snape, but he was alone, and he was just a teacher. Dumbledore and I are about evenly matched in regular combat, but he is the Headmaster of Hogwarts, and he can draw upon the castle's power while inside it. If something did go wrong in Hogwarts, I can't guarantee that I'd be able to help you."

The way Voldemort was talking, it sounded like she would certainly try, which was… certainly something. No one had ever offered to storm Hogwarts and fight Dumbledore on his behalf, though he supposed he'd never needed someone who would do that until now.

"The second option is simple — withdraw from Hogwarts."

Harry blinked. "You can do that?"

She nodded. "It's very uncommon, because Hogwarts is the only school in the country that gives NEWT qualifications, but it is possible to withdraw. You'd just need the consent of your guardian to do so."

He slumped over. "Well that's obviously not an option anymore."

"Isn't it?" She said teasingly. "I'm not sure if you've really kept up with it, but your guardianship is in the air at the moment. There's been substantial debate about who has the best claim of custody over you, but your word will carry significant weight in the decision, should you choose to voice it. And since I used your blood in my resurrection, we'd register as close relatives by any test the Ministry would give us. I could become your legal guardian in a matter of minutes."

Harry narrowed his gaze. "You seem to have given this a lot of thought."

Voldemort shrugged. "I had prepared it as an option months ago — I didn't expect to need it under circumstances like these."

"Right…" He went back to staring at his hands, trying to think over his options.

"Of course, I don't have to be the one to claim guardianship over you — it only needs to be someone one of us trusts. Unfortunately, there aren't many people I trust who aren't also wanted criminals. Lucius has a fairly strong claim to your custody, but I certainly wouldn't fault you for not wanting him as your guardian."

Harry shuddered. "Yeah, let's not go that route… So those are my only two options?"

"Well, they're the only two viable options I can think of at the moment. Hardly an ideal set of choices, but this is hardly an ideal set of circumstances."

"Right, so… If I were to be withdrawn from Hogwarts, would that be… permanent?" It felt odd to even be considering withdrawing from Hogwarts, but he really didn't have many options.

"We could re-enroll you once the dust settles. Bear in mind that I expect the war to be over before the end of summer, so you'd be missing out on a few months of schooling at most."

Harry frowned. That still wasn't ideal, but it could definitely have been a lot worse. "You're sure you can finish it that quickly?"

"Let me show you something." Voldemort rooted around in her handbag until she pulled out a small black notebook. "Here's the list."

Harry took a look at the page. Sure enough, there was a list of twenty eight names. Seven of the names were crossed out, presumably indicating that they were extinct, or forfeited, in the case of the Weasleys. A further six names were underlined, including the names "Potter" and "Nott", so Harry was pretty sure that those were the ones whom she considered on her side.

"About half the families are already completely taken care of, and many others have been completely thinned. The Bones family, for example, used to have three branches totalling twenty three members. Now, it's just Amelia Bones and her niece Susan. I spent years trimming the branches off of family trees, and the ten years I was inactive were not nearly enough for those same families to recover. I was months away from winning when you killed me, and I'm still just as close to victory now that I've returned."

"I had a few encounters with Susan during the term." Harry commented idly. "She didn't make a good impression."

Voldemort laughed. "That's hardly surprising. She was raised exclusively by her aunt, and Amelia Bones is a hardline authoritarian, a mentality that obviously left an impression on her." She sighed. "Such a pity, really. I've heard that Amelia Bones is quite powerful, and it would have been nice to have her on our side."

"Right…"

"Oh! Excuse me! You can let us out here." Voldemort said to the driver.

Harry looked out the window. "Here" seemed to be an overgrown road with nothing of import nearby.

The cab driver gave her an odd look, but pulled over and stopped the car nonetheless. Voldemort pulled Harry's trunk out of the boot, and waited until the car had pulled out of sight.

"Right, well, let's get going. A shack that once belonged to my maternal family is through the trees here, and it's a heavily protected area. Even if they did somehow follow the cab, we'd be long gone before they'd get a chance to break through the wards."

"Is that really necessary?" Harry asked.

Voldemort shrugged. "Call it a sense of healthy paranoia."

The shack was quite recessed from the road, almost impractically so. Harry swore that they spent nearly as much time trekking down the overgrown trail as they did in the cab. Eventually, Voldemort came to a stop and held out her hand.

"You'll need me to let you cross the wardline." She explained.

Harry peered ahead. He couldn't see anything, but that didn't necessarily mean anything when magic was involved. He accepted her hand and let her tug him through.

The sensation of magic washing over someone as they passed through a wardline was always odd, but it was something Harry found himself getting used to with time. What he wasn't getting used to was the odd sensation that the wards were giving him. It was like… like the sensation someone got when they recognised someone, but they couldn't place where they knew them from. That's what the wards felt like as they observed Harry — like they knew him from somewhere but couldn't place where.

Now through the wards, Harry could get a good look at the building, if it could be called that. Half of the shack's roof had collapsed, and vines were visibly creeping in through the gap. All the intact parts of it still looked rotted, like the entire thing was going to collapse any time now.

Voldemort obviously expected the shack to be in this state of disrepair, given how she ignored it and summoned two comfortable looking chairs. She shrunk Harry's trunk and tossed it to him as she sat down.

"So, what do you want to do?" She asked as Harry sat down. "Do you want to go back to Hogwarts, or do you want to withdraw?"

Harry shook his head. "I'm not sure. It feels like a big decision to be making on the fly like this."

Voldemort crossed her legs. "It is, but it's also important that we act as soon as possible, lest some avenues be closed to us. No matter what you decide, I'd highly recommend getting your guardianship situation taken care of. If the Order reports that you've been kidnapped, then there's likely to be an investigation into what happened, and that would very likely dig up things that neither of us want coming to light. Now, you've got more options if you plan on going back to Hogwarts, since most guardians would be hesitant to withdraw you from Hogwarts without a very good reason. Lucius and myself are the only potential candidates I can think of, but perhaps you have more?"

There were plenty of people that Harry would have liked to have custody of him — the Weasleys, Sirius — but he felt like those bridges had been burned somewhat. Even if they were still willing to have him after what had just happened, Harry didn't know if he'd be comfortable facing them for some time.

He was so lost in thought that he jerked when Voldemort put a hand on his shoulder. "It's going to be okay, Harry." She said calmly. "You're the only one who can say for sure if this was the right choice for you, but the fact that we wouldn't have gotten this far if you were sure that this was the wrong choice. Sometimes, doing the right thing is hard, and sometimes doing the right thing involves hurting people we care about even if we don't mean to — hurting them in ways that take a long time to make right."

Harry gave her a look. That felt… oddly personal. "Are you speaking from experience?"

Her expression turned melancholy. "That's a story for another time. Have you made up your mind?"

He didn't know if he'd even be able to cast these doubts out of his mind, but there was only one clear choice. "Let's do it. You said you already had everything set up?"

Voldemort grinned. "Indeed I did. So, you're sure about this? You want me to take custody of you?"

Want was a strong word for this case, but… "You're the best choice."

Voldemort laughed at that. "Damned by faint praise, I see. Well, no matter. Let's head to the Ministry and get this taken care of."

She vanished the chairs as they stood up and held out her hand. Harry took it for the third time this morning, now well accustomed to the sensation of the ground falling away from beneath his feet.

---

Once the standard disorientation of apparition wore off, Harry was surprised that he actually recognised the area they'd landed in. "Isn't this near Diagon?"

Voldemort nodded. "The magical world is understandably wary of spreading itself too thin, so it's common for multiple magical areas to be concentrated together. Just like how Hogwarts and Hogsmeade are close together, so too are Diagon and the Ministry. The Ministry is actually a few blocks over, but there's a public washroom nearby, and I'd like to change out of my pyjamas." She glanced at his outfit. "And you might want to try putting on an outfit that looks a little less… haphazard."

Harry looked down at his outfit. A flannel shirt and oversized khaki pants with a cloak on top was hardly an ideal combination, but he didn't actually expect to wear it for very long, let alone go out in it.

"Just change into something nicer. It doesn't have to be dress clothes, but make sure it won't draw excess attention in the muggle world. We don't want many people taking note of us, as a general rule."

Harry did a quick mental inventory of his trunk. "Is a t-shirt and tracksuit bottoms fine?"

"Perfectly. Ah, here it is. I assume you know how to unshrink and reshrink your trunk?"

He nodded. Not having to deal with the Trace was already proving to be incredibly convenient.

"Good, then meet me out here in a few minutes." Voldemort said before turning into the women's room.

It took Harry longer than he'd expected to deal with his trunk in the bathroom, mostly because he didn't want to put it on the ground, nor did he want to step on it without his shoes on. Were all public washrooms this nasty? Because this was a disgrace. Regardless, thanks to some creative use of sticking and levitation charms, plus some generously applied cleaning charms, Harry made it out of there no worse for wear. Despite the amount of time it had taken him to manoeuvre around the washroom floor, Voldemort still wasn't ready when he left. He didn't have to wait long, though, as she stepped out not a moment later. She was still wearing the black trenchcoat, but her red satin blouse had been replaced with her usual white cotton, and her pants had been replaced for an identical cotton pair as well. There was something else about her, though, and it took Harry a while to put his finger on what exactly it was.

"Your eyes are green now?" He asked. It was a shade of green he was intimately familiar with, given that he saw it every day in the mirror.

She grinned. "Like them? I couldn't just waltz into the Ministry with red eyes, and I figured that if I had to replace my eye colour, I may as well use it to sell the illusion of relation. We really should get going, though, as these contacts won't last very long."

Harry had no idea what that meant, but he wasn't about to question it.

Voldemort led him over to a public phone and gestured for him to enter.

"Is this a Doctor Who thing?" He asked, getting a laugh out of Voldemort.

"Hardly. It's an elevator."

Oh. Well that was a bit disappointing.

Voldemort punched in a number and waited while the phone rang, only for it to be answered by a voice sounding throughout the whole box.

"Welcome to the Ministry of Magic. Please state your name and business."

"Emily Evans, here to claim custody of my grandnephew Harry Potter."

There was a slight whirring noise before two badges fell from the coin return. "Thank you. Please attach the following badges to your robes before entry."

Voldemort clipped hers on and tossed the other to Harry. "They're also going to be checking our wands before they'll let us enter, so have yours at the ready."

"Aren't they going to recognise yours, though?" Harry asked. "I mean, I'm pretty sure wands carved to look like bone aren't common…"

She laughed. "When I forged the documents for Emily Evans, I had one of my spare wands registered in her name. Besides, even on the off-chance that someone recognises my face, they won't think that Voldemort would be taking the identity of a muggleborn escorting Harry Potter."

Well, that much was certainly true. Harry could hardly believe it himself. "So, what story are we telling them?"

"Keep it close to the truth. I'm your great aunt on your maternal grandfather's side, and I met you this summer after finally managing to track you down and spent that time getting to know you. We shouldn't need to give anything more than that."

Harry nodded as the telephone elevator descended through the ceiling into the Ministry atrium. Unlike his last two times here, the atrium was nearly empty, with only the security wizard and a few employees milling about.

The security wizard seemed surprised to see Harry, but didn't break protocol. "Wands, please?"

Harry handed his over, waiting as the security wizard carefully examined it. He seemed to be scrutinising it fairly closely until Voldemort quietly snapped her fingers, at which point his eyes glazed over and he handed Harry a slip.

"Okay, you'll get your wand back when you leave." He said as he turned to Voldemort. "Your wand, miss… Evans?" He asked as he looked at her badge.

Voldemort reached into her handbag and pulled out an unfamiliar wand, handing it over. The security wizard spent a lot less time looking hers over.

"Twelve inches, dogwood and dragon heartstring. This checks out." He handed another slip to her. "I just need to scan you two before I can let you in." He held out an antenna-like device and waved it over them, looking at the results as they were scratched out on a piece of parchment. "Mister Potter, I'm going to have to ask you to hand over your invisibility cloak, and Miss Evans, I'm going to have to ask you to hand over your…" He paused as he looked at the list. "I'm going to have to ask you to come to the DLE with me for questioning."

Voldemort snapped her fingers again, making the man's eyes go glassy once more. While he was disoriented, she grabbed the piece of parchment and replaced it with a blank one.

"Okay, you're both clear to proceed."

"What was that about?" Harry asked once they were inside the elevator.

"I wasn't familiar with the new security procedures." She explained. "That guard was also much better trained than anything the Ministry had when I was last active. He was able to tell that your wand had its Trace removed and he picked up on a rather large number of illegal objects I keep stored in my handbag."

Harry looked at the unassuming handbag Voldemort kept on her. "What sorts of things?"

"Banned books. Bombs. A wide variety of cursed objects. A few types of accelerants."

"Bombs?" Harry asked.

"I am a terrorist, you know."

Harry decided to unpack that later.

"So yeah, I had to confund him." She shrugged. "What can you do?"

Harry was definitely unpacking that later. Fortunately, the elevator stopped, providing him with a welcome distraction.

The two of them entered the spartan office, currently manned exclusively by a middle aged witch. She seemed surprised to be getting any visitors, and immediately perked up at her desk.

"Welcome to the Department of Child Welfare. How may I help you, Miss…?"

"Evans." Voldemort volunteered. "I'm here to claim custody of my grandnephew, Harry Potter."

The witch peered around Voldemort to get a better look at him. "Yes, well, unfortunately, Mister Potter's custody is something of a hotly contested issue at the moment."

"I am his only magical blood relative not separated by any degree of disownment." She explained. "The only person who has a stronger potential claim is Sirius Black, and he's yet to be declared fit to act as such following his stint in Azkaban. Moreover, in cases like this, the child in question is given significant sway in the final verdict. Why don't you ask him what he thinks?"

"Mister Potter, is it true that you'd like to state your preference for Miss Evans to take custody of you over the other prospective guardians who've applied?"

Harry nodded. "I would."

She hummed for a moment as she looked over some parchment on her desk. "Okay, well, that does simplify the process somewhat. While I can already see the family resemblance between you, I'm going to need more evidence of your relation."

Harry coughed at being told that they had a family resemblance. That was just the hair and eye colour at work, right? It thankfully went unnoticed by the witch, as her attention was fixed on Voldemort.

"We can easily prove that with a blood test." Voldemort replied.

"Not possible at the present time, unfortunately. The person responsible for blood testing is out on vacation today."

Voldemort pursed her lips. "Well, there is the fact that we're both parselmouths, an exceptionally rare trait known to be hereditary."

The witch paused. "I beg your pardon?"

Voldemort sighed. "§Harry, say something in parseltongue.§"

"§Like what?§" Harry replied before realising that he'd already done it.

The witch schooled her expression. "Miss Evans, I regret to inform you that that's impossible. You're clearly a muggleborn, and it's common knowledge that parseltongue is inherited from descendants of Slytherin."

Voldemort raised an eyebrow. "Surely someone working in a department dealing in heredity should be aware of the 1972 paper that proved that thirty five to forty five percent of muggleborns have magical ancestry, including the ability for said ancestry to unlock heritable magical traits, such as metamorphmagery? The Evanses are descended from a Gaunt squib, gods know there were enough of them. Lily was a parselmouth too, not that she spread that fact around."

"That paper is still being hotly debated." The witch countered, without addressing her other points.

"That paper is being hotly debated because it's empirical proof that blood purity is baseless, nevermind that almost all of the debates are coming from unqualified individuals desperate to defend their bigotry. I have provided evidence of our relation through a rare, shared, heritable trait. If that is not sufficient evidence for you, then I request that you perform a blood test."

The witch's expression soured. "Fine, fine… Just give me a moment to fetch the damn thing…"

She wandered off to a nearby closet and began struggling with something located on one of the shelves. Slowly, she staggered back over to the desk and set down an enormous brass device with an extremely loud bang. She held up her finger as she caught her breath.

"Okay… okay, I just need to get the manual for this blasted thing. Edith normally operates it, but nooooo, she has to be out of the office on Christmas even though she doesn't celebrate the blasted holiday." She pulled out a manual the size of a phone book and began to flip through it, adjusting dials on the back of the device.

Harry tried to get a closer look at the device, trying to figure out what it was. He'd never seen any magical device this intricate, let alone of this shape or size. It superficially resembled a typewriter, though it was easily twice as big as any typewriter he'd seen before. Near the back, on opposite sides, were two small needles raised from rounded spires.

"Okay, I think I got it." the witch said. "If you could both please prick your fingers on the needles."

Harry and Voldemort both did as they were asked, watching as a single drop of blood flowed down through the device, which let out a ding.

"What does that mean?" Harry asked.

"A very good question!" The witch said before consulting the manual again. "Hmmm… Would you say that was more of a 'ding' or a 'dang'?"

"Definitely a ding." Voldemort said.

"Hmmm, yes okay…" She flipped through several pages. "Hmmmmm…" She flipped through more pages.

This process continued for almost five minutes before she perked up.

"Okay, yes, you two are definitely blood relatives. In that case, I'll fetch the necessary paperwork and you two can be on your way."

What followed was half an hour of Harry signing his name far too many times and far too many repetitions of the story they'd agreed on before they were finally done.

"Okay, I'll go file this, but everything else should be taken care of. Have a nice day!"

Harry was still trying to process everything, just sort of moving on autopilot until they reached street level.

"Was my mum really a parselmouth?" He asked her.

Voldemort turned back to face him. "Well, it's known to be a heritable trait. You had to get it from somewhere, and you definitely didn't get it from your father's side — their genealogy is too well documented for that to be possible. Unless you know of some other way you could have gotten the ability?"

The idea that he could have inherited it never even occurred to him. "Dumbledore said that when you tried to kill me, you transferred some of your powers to me, and that's where the parseltongue came from."

Voldemort paused for a moment, deep in thought. "I… hadn't actually considered that option. I suppose that it's possible, but it would be far too hard to test that hypothesis to know for sure." She shrugged. "Well, I suppose it doesn't really matter. Even if you came into it through atypical circumstances, it should still pass down to your children, should you have any."

Harry ignored most of what she said, his mind fixated on something else. "A few days ago, you told me that you'd tell me why I could hear your voice in my head if I asked. I'm asking now."

She sighed. "Harry, there are risks-"

"I don't think those risks are any larger than the ones I'd be facing by making you my legal guardian."

"No… no, I suppose not. Are you really sure that you want to-?"

"Yes." Harry said, cutting her off again. "I want to know. I have a right to know."

Voldemort sighed. "Yes, I suppose you do, but this is not the location to have that sort of conversation. Let's see, there's…" She paused to look at the streets. "There's a Chinese restaurant over that way — they should be open even though it's Christmas." She held out her hand. "Come on, I can Blink us over there."

Harry took her hand, and a few disorienting sweeps across London later, they were standing in front of a small restaurant. Voldemort reached for the door, only to flinch and clutch at her eyes.

"Fuck, that hurts!" She groaned. She rubbed at her eyes a few times, and Harry watched as the green contact lenses she had been wearing fell to the ground, melting, hissing, and popping as they did so, dissolving on the pavement once they landed. "Ugh, I hate contact lenses. Well, at least those lasted long enough."

"What was that about?" He asked.

"My eyes don't like having their true colour obscured for very long, unfortunately. Contact lenses last the longest, but they're also the most unpleasant when they wear off. Come on, let's head inside." Voldemort quickly ordered them a table and a pot of tea, then sat silently while they waited.

"So, are you going to explain?" Harry asked.

"Yes, yes, I just… I'm trying to figure out where to begin."

The waiter delivered their pot of tea, and Voldemort wasted no time pouring herself a cup and thinking. Eventually, just when Harry was worried she wasn't going to say anything, she spoke up.

"It's called a horcrux."

Harry paused. "A what?"

"A horcrux. It's the reason I'm immortal. A horcrux is… well, they're often considered abominations, and not without reason. See, souls aren't immutable. Events like trauma can damage them, and horcruxes are created by deliberately damaging one's own soul. By committing an act of callous murder, one can tear their soul apart, and then remove one of the torn fragments, depositing it in a prepared container for safekeeping. So long as the container, the horcrux, remains intact, it anchors the user to the mortal plane, permanently beyond the reach of Death herself."

She paused for a moment, taking another sip of her tea.

"Some people would consider me a monster for being able to do it once, let alone as many times as I did, but my emotions aren't normal. I can't feel the requisite guilt over killing that prevents one from creating a horcrux." Voldemort looked up, her gaze locked on the prominent scar that adorned his forehead. "When I went to kill you that night, I had intended to make a horcrux from your death. I had already undergone the necessary preparations, but when I cast the spell, it wasn't you who died, but me. I can only theorise about what happened, but my assumption is that since someone still died by my hand, it was enough to fracture my soul, and the small fragment I left behind honed in on the only source of my magic that it could — the scar that my curse had just created."

Harry felt like his head was swimming as he processed that. "So my scar has a part of you in it? It's the reason I can hear you in my head? Is that why you've been so interested in me? Because you know I have a part of you inside me?"

She shook her head. "I can't say that it wasn't a factor, but I was mostly interested in you for your own merits. You are exceptionally talented, but you've been kept in an environment that wasn't letting you prosper. On top of that, I have… personal reasons for wanting to be a positive influence in your life."

Harry would normally have pressed her about those reasons, but there was still too much to take in. "And so long as I'm alive, you can't die? Can't you remove it?"

Voldemort shrugged. "I really don't know. There isn't a long list of living things that have been made into horcruxes, and while I could remove it, I don't know if I could do so without severely hurting you. I don't know to what extent it functions as a horcrux, but it should keep me alive just like the others. I'm sure you can see why I was hesitant to tell you, as it's a tremendous risk to both of us, you especially. I have many enemies out there, and I'm sure that if some of them were to learn that you were keeping me tethered to life, they'd stop at nothing to kill you in the name of ending me."

His head felt like it was swimming again as he took in that new revelation. "But, Dumbledore knew. He said as much. Did he… was he planning to…?" Harry didn't like following that train of thought, but it made too much sense for him not to. He thought back to what Dumbledore had said to him just before the occlumency lesson that went wrong.

Dumbledore sighed deeply. "At the end of your second year, I told you that Voldemort transferred some of her powers to you when she first tried to kill you. I was not lying when I said that, but I did omit certain details. I believe that what actually happened was that it created a connection between your minds — a connection that is active now that she has regained a body. I believe that you have been unintentionally gleaning knowledge from her mind without either of you realising."

Harry's mind was racing now. The reason that Dumbledore insisted he go back to the Dursleys every summer, the reason Harry knew nothing of the prophecy until Voldemort told him, the reason Dumbledore insisted he compete in the Triwizard tournament despite being way out of his depth. Dumbledore knew Harry had to die, so was he just hoping to keep his hands clean by letting someone else do it?

"Harry!" Voldemort said, snapping her fingers in front of his face. "Are you with me? Listen, no matter what flaws Dumbledore has, he is not the sort of person who would just consign you to an early death."

"Oh, fuck you." Harry snapped back. "Why are you so willing to defend him, anyways? Every time I've had something bad to say about Dumbledore, you've stepped in to defend him. Why!? He hates you! Even your diary had enough sense to hate him back!"

Voldemort sighed. "My diary never got the full story, unfortunately. It took me far too long to figure out what happened, and filling her in was never a priority. I didn't exactly expect Lucius to set her loose on Hogwarts before I got a chance to fix things." She pulled some notes out of her handbag and left them on the table, then stood up and held a hand out to Harry. "But if you're in this deep, then I suppose I may as well tell you. No retelling I could give you could possibly do it justice, but I have a pensieve in one of my safehouses. You want to know why I trust Dumbledore so much even though he hates me? I'll show you why."

Harry stood up and took her hand, looking around the nearly — but not quite — empty restaurant. "Don't we need to hide it when we do magic?"

Voldemort scoffed. "Fuck the Statute of Secrecy. It's a shitty law anyways."

Well, he couldn't argue with that logic. Harry took her hand as the ground fell away once again, leaving a few very bewildered people in their wake.

---

If there was any advantage to the day's frequent apparitions, it was that Harry was getting used to them much faster. He looked around where they'd landed, but there was nothing but rocks and grassy hills for as far as he could see. "Where are we, anyways?" He asked.

"Ireland." Voldemort said. "My safehouse is nearby, but it's under fidelius. Give me a moment to get the secret keeper over here." The ink of the coiled snake welled up beneath her forearm and she pressed her wand to it for a moment.

The same sandy-haired man came to Voldemort's call, though this time he was wearing a chef's hat and apron. "Can't it wait, Voldie? I'm trying to wrangle the elves so they cook the food properly and- Harry? What the hell are you still doing here?"

"Things went south, Barty." She explained. "Can you give him the secret? We'll be joining you shortly."

"Hm? Oh yeah, sure. Voldemort's third safehouse is located on Inishturk. Uh, see you two at dinner, I guess?"

The man — Barty — apparated away, leaving them alone near a small concealed building that Harry hadn't been able to see earlier. "So this is your safehouse?"

Voldemort nodded. "One of them, at least. This one is mostly dedicated to memories I've collected. It's a habit I picked up from… Well, I'm sure you'll see soon enough. Let's go."

Harry looked around the small and cluttered room of the safehouse, finding it much bigger than it looked from the outside. The walls were lined with shelves full of bottles, each holding an ethereal, silvery thread inside. Voldemort ignored all the shelves and made her way to a safe located on the opposite wall, hissing at it in parseltongue and tracing odd patterns on it. Harry left her to that and turned his attention to the pensieve in the middle of the room. It was carved of the same dark stone that Dumbledore's was made out of, but looked smoother and more polished.

His gaze was drawn back upwards when the safe opened with a clunk, and Voldemort pulled out a small phial from it. "Bear in mind that this memory has been edited slightly." She explained. "However, you will be able to tell which parts were edited — pensieves tend to expose those manipulations quite well."

"Why show me an edited one at all?" Harry asked.

"Security reasons. Some knowledge is truly dangerous to know." She dumped the phial into the pensieve's pool, which immediately took on the same silvery colour. "This is my memory of July 10th, 1970, the day I applied for the Defence Against the Dark arts position at Hogwarts. After you, Harry."

Unsure what to expect, Harry dipped himself into the memory until he fell in.

---

The memory did not begin in Dumbledore's office like he expected it to. Instead, it started outside on what Harry recognised as the seventh floor, near the secret room Tina had described after their first session. The memory Voldemort walked back to the main staircase and jumped down off the landing, falling three floors before slowing her descent and landing on the fourth floor landing. He and Voldemort followed after the memory until she reached the gargoyle outside Dumbledore's office.

"Twizzlers." The memory said to the gargoyle, which sprang to the side.

"I might have to pause the memory at a few points to explain things." The real Voldemort said from beside him. "Just don't be surprised if things stop for a moment."

Harry nodded without saying anything, intent on watching things play out as the memory Voldemort reached the top of the stairs. He didn't know what to expect when she and Dumbledore came face to face. A shouting match? A tense conversation? A battle of wits laced with subtext?

No matter how much he thought about what might happen, nothing prepared him for the reality of seeing Voldemort and Dumbledore pull each other into a tight hug.

"It's good to see you, dear girl." Dumbledore said as he patted her on the back. "It really has been far too long."

"Tell me about it." Voldemort said as she withdrew from the hug and sat down in the chair opposite the desk. "While the past two decades have been fruitful, I do feel like I've missed out on a lot."

"There was nothing stopping you from returning, even if only for a bit."

Voldemort stared down at her hand for a moment, fidgeting with her fingers. "Honestly, I think that the opposite is true. If I had returned, something would have stopped me from leaving. This country is flawed, but it's still my home, and I feel like I'm needed here."

"Oh dear." Dumbledore said solemnly. "It seems that my sense of ego and self-importance has worn off on you, and your case appears to be terminal." Voldemort groaned and rolled her eyes, causing Dumbledore's composure to break as he started laughing.

"Whatever, dad." She replied sarcastically.

"What the hell is going on here!?" Harry shouted, unable to keep his confusion in any longer.

The real Voldemort held up her hand, causing the memory to crawl to a halt. "I assume you have questions?"

"Yes!" Harry turned to face her. "Why are you two acting like that with each other?"

"Isn't it obvious?" She replied. "Dumbledore raised me."

"Dumbledore… raised you." Harry repeated, as if saying the words would make them any less absurd.

Voldemort nodded. "Dumbledore stumbled upon a fucked up orphan girl in a shitty situation, and he, for reasons I can never truly understand, decided that he should be a positive influence in that girl's life." She paused, shaking her head. "I'm… not a good person. My emotions aren't right, and there are some that I just genuinely can't feel. I'm not sure that any version of me could be a good person, but I have no doubt in my mind that I would be much worse off had Dumbledore not been there for me."

She turned to face him, the expression on her face unreadable.

"You asked why I was interested in doing everything that I did for you. Part of it is that I saw a lot of myself in you and your situation, and I wanted to be able to do for someone else what Dumbledore did for me. Paying it forward, as it were. The fact that you were indirectly in that position because of me also factored into it."

Harry stood there, reevaluating his entire worldview based on the information Voldemort had just given him. "But, if he raised you, then why…?"

"We're getting there." She raised her arm, and the memory started up again.

"I see that twenty years still isn't enough time for your sense of humour to have matured." Memory Voldemort said cynically.

"You'll have to forgive this old man his awful, unfunny jokes." Dumbledore said seriously. "Onto serious matters, then. I must say, it's rather odd seeing your eyes like that in person. Hearing them described in a letter is one thing, but it's altogether different to experience them. I don't suppose you'd indulge me for a moment?"

Voldemort shrugged. "Go ahead, but they've proven exceptionally resistant to any form of analysis. By all rights, my eyes should still be brown, and according to some tests I've done, they still are, they just don't look brown, despite being brown."

"Most perplexing." Dumbledore said as he pulled back from Voldemort's face. "Perhaps we should have the Flamels take a look at them when we all have free time. I'm sure they could glean more than either of us ever could."

Voldemort shrugged. "I wouldn't be opposed to the idea, but I'm not really plussed about it. They look odd, but haven't caused me any inconvenience aside from ruining every pair of sunglasses I own. Besides, they look intimidating."

"Hmmm… Well, regardless, we should make sure there aren't going to be any adverse effects in the long term. Alas, much as I'd love to spend hours catching up, we should get down to business."

"Of course. That is why we're here after all."

Dumbledore shuffled through some parchments on his desk. "So, I've heard that you've taken a personal interest in Miss Bellatrix Black, offering her an apprenticeship and all. Any particular reason for that?"

Voldemort shrugged. "I believe that her family is failing to properly cultivate her level of genius, and that I can provide her with an environment better suited to her needs."

"Yes, well… I do feel that I should tell you that Bellatrix has had a number of incidents during her schooling. Nothing expulsion worthy, but she is… shall we say 'troubled'."

"Oh gosh, I'm sure that I have no experience with that." Voldemort said sarcastically.

Dumbledore gave her a very deliberate look. "There is a rather large difference between 'being a troublesome child' and 'taking care of a troublesome child'."

"Well, you were also something of a problem child, and I'd like to think you did a decent job with me."

"And let me assure you that it was more of an ordeal than I ever could have imagined. I pray that you never have to deal with a sixteen year old bursting into your room past midnight with a tear stained face and a freshly made horcrux in hand, sobbing about how she 'fucked up'."

Voldemort actually looked embarrassed about that. "Yes, well, that was an exceptionally bad night all around. I'd still have preferred that someone else died, but it's not like-" She cut herself off under Dumbledore's withering glare. "Let's change the subject! Shall we commence with the actual interview?"

His face softened as he arranged the parchment on his desk into a stack and set it off to the side. "The interview is only a formality, really. I'm more than willing to give you the position now, should you want it."

"Aw, look at you resorting to nepotism. The purebloods would be proud!" Voldemort teased.

Dumbledore shot her another withering look, but she was unfazed this time.

"In all seriousness, though, I'm surprised that you're willing to just hand me a teaching position, especially given that we were just talking about the time that I accidentally killed a student."

He sighed deeply. "Yes, well, I cannot deny that you are immensely talented, and I believe that a classroom should help constrain you somewhat. Besides, I suspect that you'd do far more damage out in the world at large than you would under my watch."

Voldemort crossed her arms and leaned forward. "Yes, well, speaking of doing damage to the world at large, I must admit that I do have an ulterior motive in this. I'm sure you recall my acquaintanceship with Abraxas Malfoy following Fenrir's expulsion in my third year, yes?"

Dumbledore nodded slowly. "I do. I also recall having concerns about your affiliation with him, though you assured me that you had everything in hand."

"Yes, well, we're more allies of convenience than anything." She explained. "But Abraxas was enough of a pragmatist to see that our causes had a common enemy — the Ministry. Of course, I was opposed to it on grounds of corruption and discrimination, while he was more concerned with the fact that the Ministry didn't hand his family political power for their pure blood due to his family being fairly recent immigrants. Despite our… misaligned purposes, he approached me with the idea of taking down the Ministry, complete with a fairly complete plan on how to do so. All he really needed was my power to back him up."

He paused to take that in. "Tell me more about this plan of yours, then."

Harry watched as the memory continued to play out, Voldemort continuing to describe her plan to an increasingly stony faced Dumbledore. It was all stuff Harry had heard before, but it was interesting to see the differences in how she framed it when describing it to Dumbledore, mostly putting focus on the inaction of the Ministry in the face of crisis.

"We've already been at work doing some preliminary recruitment." Voldemort continued. "Bellatrix is exactly the sort of person we've been looking for — intelligent, capable, and resentful of her family. My hope is to use my position here to put out feelers for other people like her — people who can help us dismantle the system from within. I even met a British Unspeakable at a recent symposium who's interested in our cause."

"I see." Dumbledore said seriously.

"All we need to finish the job for good is you, the Chief Warlock. What do you say?"

He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes wearily. "I have many questions, but I suppose I'll start with the most obvious one. Why pretend to be on the side of blood purism?"

"Because bigots are easy to manipulate." Voldemort said simply. "So long as they can cling onto the hope that I'll bring about their 'promised utopia', they'll overlook the fact that I'm clearly operating against their best interests. Not to mention that if they were willing to join up a militant blood purist cause in the first place, then they really deserve to die."

Dumbledore sighed. "That's what I was afraid of. While I do understand and sympathise with your desire to undo the corruption of the Ministry, I do not believe that this is the right way to go about doing it. I cannot condone a course that would lead to so much loss of life, no matter how repugnant the person in question is."

"You… don't." Voldemort repeated, as if processing the words.

"Of course not. I know that you do not have any compunctions about killing, but nor do you relish in it. Surely you can see that such a loss of life would be unnecessary? And perhaps even catastrophic should we lose too much of the population. I know that you have looked to me for moral guidance in the past, and I am begging you to do so again now. You yourself talked about using people like Bellatrix to dismantle the system from within, and I know for a fact that you could claim the Gaunt seat on the Wizengamot should you so choose. Why not try to change the system from within that way?"

Voldemort slammed her hands down on his desk. "Because it doesn't fucking work! Do you think I haven't researched this!? Every time there's someone who actually wants to use their position to advance the public good, they 'mysteriously die' or get disinherited by the person currently holding the seat! I know for a fact that Bellatrix would be cast out by her family should she let even a hint of her goals for the family be known. The system can't change from within because it doesn't want to! It's resisting every attempt people have made to make it better! I have no intention of taking up my seat only to fall prey to the same systemic corruption that I've been trying to fight!"

"And what of the human cost?" Dumbledore asked as he pushed himself to his feet. "Do you honestly believe that dismantling the Ministry would be worth the large number of people who'd have to die to make it happen?"

Voldemort squared her shoulders as Dumbledore tried to stare her down. "I do. I believe that the lives of a few bigots and corrupt aristocrats is nothing compared to the number of people who'd be harmed by the system if it's allowed to persist as it is. I might struggle with morals, but in this case, I truly believe that you are wrong."

"I'm not comfortable letting myself be judge, jury, and executioner, and quite frankly, neither should you."

Voldemort slammed down on the desk again. "Well what do you suggest then!? Someone is going to have to take up arms sooner or later, and it might as well be me! This is for the best."

"The best for whom, Voldemort?" Dumbledore shot back.

"The best for the whole country! Can't you see I'm fighting for the greater good here!?"

Harry could immediately tell that that phrase had some significant meaning behind it, though he didn't know what it was. The simmering anger in Dumbledore's expression turned to outright fury, while Voldemort's righteous indignation was immediately cowed once the words left her lips.

"I, um…" She stammered before Dumbledore cut her off.

"You," he said angrily, "Do not get to lecture me about 'The Greater Good'. I have been down that road and seen the cost with my own eyes. It is a lesson that I had hoped to impart to you without the necessity of experience, but it seems I failed on that front."

Voldemort looked sheepish, the first time Harry could recall her looking like that. "Sorry…" She mumbled.

"I cannot let you go through with this." Dumbledore continued. "Both for your sake and those your plan would affect. Should you try to go through with this, I will stop you."

The sheepishness was gone, replaced by petulant indignance. "You can't!" She insisted.

"I very much can." He said, the rage slowly leaving him. "It is my word against yours, and I hold much more political sway than you. I'm sorry that it has to be this way, but I can't let you do this. Please understand." He placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"I understand." Voldemort sighed. "And I'm sorry too." She looked up at him, a steely glint visible in her eyes. "Because I can't let you put the decades I spent working on this to waste." Her wand ejected itself from her holster into her hand. "It has to be this way."

Everything seemed to slow down as Dumbledore realised what Voldemort was about to do. His wand was in his hand immediately, and he summoned several nearby objects into a makeshift barrier in front of him. Apparently, that was all the opening Voldemort needed, as she Blinked behind Dumbledore and pointed her wand at his back.

Time slowed further as the memory distorted. Harry could see Voldemort's mouth opening to say an incantation, but the space around it was distorted, preventing him from seeing what sounds her lips were making. She spoke the incantation of the spell, but it didn't sound like anything.

"█████████!" She yelled.

The spell bolt that exited her wand didn't look like a spell bolt at all, but like a static-y hole in reality had just exited her wand. The mass of distortion travelled halfway from her to Dumbledore before time stopped completely.

Harry looked around the stopped memory. He could see holes in it — literal holes where it looked like parts of the memory had dissolved. The entire thing had a slight tint to it, both teal and magenta at the same time, which was somewhat disorienting. As he took in the scene before him, the real Voldemort spoke up.

"I'm sure you can tell that this is the part of the memory I edited." She said with suppressed sadness, gesturing to everything around them. "I assume you have more questions at this point."

"More than I think I've ever had before." Harry muttered. "What's the big deal with the 'greater good'?"

"Grindelwald." Voldemort explained. "Grindelwald was a Dark Lord — in the political sense of the word, that is. He was a staunch anti-statutarian who believed that mages should not hide from muggles. Not an outrageous belief, but he was also a magisupremacist who believed that mages had a gods-given right to rule over muggles like livestock. The man was at least partially responsible for the rise of Hitler and World War II, which he used as a way to both weaken the muggle world and exemplify that they weren't capable of leading themselves. His slogan during his campaign was 'Für das größere Wohl', which literally translates as 'for the greater good'. Unlike what most people think, though, Grindelwald didn't invent the phrase himself. No, the one who coined that phrase that Gellert so religiously followed was his childhood friend and once-lover, Albus Dumbledore."

"Dumbledore had sex with wizard Hitler!?" Harry blurted out.

Voldemort gave a wry laugh. "Rather crudely put, but more or less accurate, though I object to any historical analogy that likens Grindelwald to 'Wizard Hitler'. They were both separate and distinct evils." She put her wand to her temple and pulled out a silvery strand, which she flung at the wall to the office, forming a glowing doorway. "Come along."

Harry stepped through, finding himself in a cul-de-sac where two boys around his age were playing and talking with each other.

"Grindelwald had been expelled from Durmstrang following an experiment which cost another student his life, and Dumbledore had been forced to put his higher education on hold following the death of his mother so he could take care of his younger sister." She held up her hand and conjured an illusionary swarm of ravenous black particles, undulating and pulsing like a horde of locusts. "Ariana Dumbledore was infested with an exceptionally rare demonic parasite known as an obscurus. They have a tendency to slip through when any connection is made between the material and demonic realms, but can't survive very long unless they have a host." Voldemort closed her fist, causing the illusion to vanish in a burst of bright light. "Ariana had been severely traumatised following an incident where she was attacked by several muggle boys while trying to experiment with her accidental magic, and began to instinctively repress it out of fear of being attacked again, which is unfortunately the exact type of host an obscurus needs. Albus slowly grew resentful of the fact that he was forced to give up on his education to care for her. At the time, it wasn't known that obscurials were caused by a demonic parasite, so he firmly laid the blame for her condition on the hands of the muggles who had attacked her. It didn't take him long to start wondering if the world would be better off if mages didn't have to live in fear of muggles, so no one would have to suffer as his sister did. Gellert latched onto Albus's doubts and used his natural charisma to convince him that they could make the world a better place, one where mages held rightful dominion over the entire world. Perhaps in another world, that came to pass, but we don't live in that world."

She pulled another memory out of her temple and flung it forward into another doorway, this a memory of a frozen battle between an older Dumbledore, Grindelwald, and another boy Harry didn't recognise. A young girl was making a mad dash towards where they were fighting.

"Everything came to a head when Aberforth, Albus's younger brother, thought that Albus was ignoring his duty to take care of their sister. Words became heated, and wands were drawn, the spells quickly becoming lethal. Ariana's behaviour had become increasingly erratic as the demonic parasite slowly devoured her soul, and in a fit of desperation, she threw herself into the middle of the fight, hoping to stop it, and was immediately struck dead. No one knew who dealt the blow that killed her, but it didn't really matter. With the death of his sister on his conscience, Albus turned his attention back to his own education, hoping to make a positive difference in the world by becoming a teacher, and Gellert… well, he saw Albus's desertion as a minor setback at most, and decided to enact their vision on his own, even keeping the motto that Albus himself had coined — 'For the Greater Good'."

Voldemort pulled out yet another memory, which coalesced into another still scene. This one was also a battle, but it was much more destructive. All around them were smouldering husks of buildings, and once again, three figures stood in the centre of the battle, locked in combat. Grindelwald was standing on an elevated pillar of earth, casting a much more intense version of the plasma storm spell Harry had used to break the Trace on his wand, while his left arm was summoning… were those meteors?

Opposite Grindelwald, Dumbledore was casting an intense shield to protect against the intense beam spell as his left hand stuck into the earth, conjuring spires of earth into the path of the falling meteors. He looked fairly close to how he looked nowadays, with the long beard and hair, though he hadn't gone completely grey yet.

And beside Dumbledore… was Voldemort. The same adolescent Voldemort he'd seen in the diary, eyes not yet stained red, and arms cloaked in lightning as he'd seen her so often.

"I'm not in any history books about this battle, but I was there. Then again, the only reason for my presence was because there was no way Dumbledore could convince me not to stay with him, and he quietly got me out of the way once things were done. It was an incredibly close battle, but we did just barely manage to win. During his time alone, Gellert had become the master of the Elder Wand, an artefact of unimaginable power forged from the spine of a god. With its power, he'd managed to effectively lay waste to Europe, and he certainly wouldn't have stopped there if we hadn't put a halt to his plans."

Harry moved in to get a closer look at the wand. It was made of dark wood, one of the darkest he'd seen, and had an odd knobbed pattern going down its length. More importantly, Harry recognised it as the same wand he'd seen Dumbledore using. So that meant that Dumbledore was the current owner of this "Elder Wand"?

"Well, I think that concludes our impromptu history lesson." Voldemort said with a sigh. "I suppose we should get back to our original purpose here." She waved her wand, collecting their surroundings into silvery strands until they were standing back in Dumbledore's office. "Now, I'm sure there's an elephant in the room that you'd like to ask about."

Harry's gaze shifted to the static-y void where the appearance of the spell had been erased away. "Why did you edit this memory?"

"To prevent people from reverse engineering the spell." She answered. "If they knew the incantation or even what it looked like, they could theoretically recreate it, and believe me when I say that the absolute last thing we need is someone being able to cast that spell with impunity."

"What is it?" He asked, unsure if he'd get an answer.

"I'll just show you." She said, waving her hand to restart the flow of time.

Slowly, the spell started moving again, and memory Voldemort Blinked back to her seat, tidying Dumbledore's mess with a wave of her wand. The distortion in the memory slowly vanished after the spell hit Dumbledore, the colour returning to normal and the holes filling themselves in.

"So, where were we?" Memory Voldemort asked.

Dumbledore shook his head before looking up at her with a distant expression. "I don't believe that there's anything more to discuss."

She clapped her hands together. "Lovely! In that case, I'll try to get a preliminary curriculum ready for you in the next two weeks — that should give you plenty of time to give me feedback on it. I already have a rough idea of what my book list would look like, but I'd need to cross reference it to make sure that the price isn't too high…"

"I'm afraid that you're getting ahead of yourself, Miss Riddle. You are not getting the job."

She looked at him as though she misheard him. "I beg your pardon?"

"I said that you're not getting the position."

"Why not?" Voldemort asked, temper wearing thin. "You aren't going to get a candidate more qualified than me. Or do you think my two decade sabbatical was just for show?"

"And if it were just about your qualifications, I might be inclined to hire you, but we both know it's about more than that. As for your little journey, well, I have no doubt that you were learning ancient magicks, but there's more to it than that, isn't there, █████████?"

The memory distorted a bit as Dumbledore spoke the last word, but it wasn't nearly as severe as the last edit.

"I censored out my birthname." The real Voldemort said by way of explanation. "I do hate hearing it spoken."

Memory Voldemort completely lost her cool at that. "You've got some nerve calling me that even though you know I hate it."

Dumbledore's expression turned smug. "What, you mean █████████? Alas, much as you try to erase your 'distasteful' muggle origins, you can never truly escape them, can you? I've heard whispers that you have a new name you prefer, but I'm hardly going to go around calling you Voldemort, nor am I going to offer a prospective Dark Lady a position at my school."

Voldemort looked… she looked furious, but in that cold way that some people got sometimes.

"I see." She said in a tone that matched her expression. "Well, good luck filling the position."

She gathered a sphere of darkness in her hand and pushed it into the wall as she walked out the door, the magic dissipating into the stone.

"Because you're going to need it." She turned back to face him. "Come meet me when you've decided to see sense, and we can work things out."

"What… what was that?" Harry asked. "I feel more confused than ever. What did you do to him?"

"The most dangerous spell in existence, not that I knew it at the time." The real Voldemort explained. "It was invented by a colleague of mine, an Unspeakable who goes by the name 'Rookwood'."

"Delphini's mentioned them." Harry said, surprised to find that he couldn't even think about this person in gendered terms, despite never meeting them. Wow, that fidelius really was impressive.

"This spell was invented as a more permanent solution to the Statute of Secrecy. Muggles who stumble upon magic once are much more likely to stumble upon it additional times, which means that they have to be obliviated each time it happens. This spell was designed to make that unnecessary, by making the obliviated idea unthinkable to the person. It wouldn't matter if someone stumbled upon magic again, because the idea that magic is real would just… fail to register as a possibility."

"I… don't think I see how that's such a big deal? I mean, I'm not sure how I feel about the Statute in general, but this seems like a better way to do it than repeatedly obliviating people."

"And if the spell just erased memories of magic and only worked on muggles, then you'd be right, but it doesn't, and therein lies the danger. What would happen if I were to use this spell to erase your knowledge that magic was real? What would it be like to have something so essential to your identity ripped from your mind? How would that affect all of your memories in which magic played a role?"

Harry did his best to think it through, but it felt too enormous to even process. Magic had been such a big part of the last five years of his life, and it had painted his interactions with his relatives for as long as he could remember. What would it be like to have that torn from him?

"That's the problem." Voldemort said. "The spell doesn't just rip out the memories, sometimes it changes things to make them fit. Some staunch religious people who had the spell tested on them not only abandoned their religion because it was too close to 'magic', but they also became convinced that they were never religious in the first place. Taking an example from your life, we can look at how it would affect how you view your relatives. You know that they treated you poorly because of your magic, but if we made the idea that magic was real literally unthinkable to you, then it could very well alter your memories so that you thought your relatives treated you exactly like you were their son, never mistreating you in the slightest, since you wouldn't remember having magic. This is why the spell is so dangerous — it's capable of messing with people's memories in dangerous, catastrophic, and unpredictable ways. When I cast that spell on Dumbledore, I didn't just erase his memory of my plan — I made it literally unthinkable to him. There was one major problem with that, though — Dumbledore knew me personally, and he knew that I was sensible, so the spell ripped both of those things from him in fulfilling its purpose."

Hold on. "You mean that…?"

"Dumbledore spent seven years of his life raising me, and he doesn't even remember."

"Can't it be reversed, though?" Harry asked. There had to be some way to undo it…

"There is, but it's not possible for me to do it. It's an incredibly intricate spell, and it takes long enough to undo that there's no way to manage it without the person's consent. It was easy enough to trick the muggles into reversing it by posing as a medical team, but Dumbledore is convinced that I'm an evil madwoman and always have been. There's no way he'd ever consent to letting me poke around in his head while the spell is still active. The only way I could reverse it is if I find someone whom Dumbledore trusts enough to poke around in his head, whom I trust enough to actually describe how to cast the spell and counterspell, and who's skilled enough at mind magic to perform the counterspell at all. I had originally hoped that Severus would be able to do it for me, but… he's far too impulsive to trust with knowledge like this."

"So… what do we do?" The idea of leaving anyone like that was… frankly horrifying.

"There's nothing we can do at the moment." She said in resignation. "It took me years to figure out what the spell did to him — I thought he was just holding a grudge over something I had done, maybe it didn't erase my accidental reference to the greater good — but I haven't had any luck on fixing it once I realised what had happened. Maybe you could do it if Dumbledore's still willing to trust you, but you have nowhere near the requisite level of skill in mind magic to stand a chance of reversing it, and it would take you a long time to learn — years, at least."

"I can still try." Harry said with determination.

Voldemort smiled at him. "And I won't stop you from trying to learn. Come on, I think we've spent enough time in this memory, and we still need to get you situated."

No sooner did she say that did Harry find himself being ejected from the pensive, falling on the floor of the shack. He looked up to see Voldemort scooping the memory out of the pensieve and securing it back in the safe.

"Come on. Let's go." She said, holding out her hand.

For the first time in a long, long while, Harry felt like he finally had more answers than questions. He took her hand and pulled himself upright. "Alright. Let's go."

Harry let himself go to the now familiar sensation of the ground falling away from his feet. His day may not have gone as planned, but it was still Christmas, and he wanted to make the most of it while he could.

---

A/N (Tendra): You've heard of Mommymort, now get ready for Dumbledad.

This chapter's length certainly got away from me. Believe it or not, there were originally supposed to be three more scenes in this chapter, but I shunted them all to the next one.

Voldemort and Dumbledore's backstory has been in the works for a long time. As I was trying to work out the trajectory of this fic in the early chapters, I tried to figure out a reason why Voldemort was willing to think the best of Dumbledore when he clearly didn't reciprocate. The idea of Voldemort using a modified obliviate came to me pretty early in conception, and quickly took on a more tragic turn as it morphed into the idea of Dumbledore being an actual parental figure to Voldemort, which she unintentionally ripped from him. This relationship also manifests in other ways, such as Voldemort trusting his moral compass more than her own (which she views as defective).

Voldemort is tricky to get right at times, as she's both fucked up but also intrinsically human. It's hard for me to find ways to work around her both being unable to experience certain feelings while still being very driven by her emotions, which has manifested in elements such as Voldemort being able to feel guilt, but not feeling guilt over killing. It's actually given me some fascinating insights into her character, such as the fact that she thinks being aroace is an extension of these problems, rather than just a way that people are sometimes. That said, I couldn't resist putting her in a queerplatonic relationship with Bellatrix. I genuinely think they both need it.

I'm sure that some of you are going to be mad that I censored Voldemort's birth name during the first time it was actually spoken in this fic, as some readers have been very intently guessing it from the beginning. Ultimately, though, it doesn't matter. She shed that name a long time ago, and hasn't identified with it in years. Likewise with Harry's parseltongue — how he got it isn't important.

I do get to make some allusions to some of the alternate histories and lore that I use for my fics, like the different origins of the Deathly Hallows or Obscuri being demonic parasites rather than a purely natural phenomena caused by suppressed magic.

I haven't been writing as much as I'd have liked to lately, mostly due to general stress. I'm a transwoman in the US, and it's been rather stressful to see the recent wave of transphobia sweeping across the country. That said, my mental health improved drastically after I decided to stop using Twitter. Crazy how that works.

E/N (Xgenje): {"Dumbledore had sex with wizard Hitler!?" Harry splurted out.} Best quote that never happened. Lots of twists near the ending. We had MommyMort, now we have DaddyDore ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

E/N (Foadar): The mysteries of the purse are only made greater. I do not wish to even begin to understand that terrifying thing on muggle women, let alone a magically enhanced one. It is also important that mistakes were made, and nothing always goes according to plan. That would make for a boring and unrealistic story.

As for what is happening in America, I have a few choice opinions on the matter, and few of them are positive.

A/N (Tendra): I can confirm that purses are truly amazing and wondrous. Definitely one of the most convenient parts of being a woman, as it means I don't have to shove things in my pockets every day like I did when I was a guy. Also, I'm much more partial to Dumbledad than I am Daddydore.

E/N (Xgenje): But DaddyDore sounds so much cleaner! :sadge:

A/N (Tendra): No.