(TW & AN: Sexual scenes. This bitch double-doubled on me.)
Insomnia, IAMX
My conscience begs for time
But you can't fight the clock ticking inside
I'm just a bigger baby me
Acting smart, oh, what irony
Where will I end up tonight?
Getting fucked or frying my mind?
I've lost control, please save me from myself
I've lost control, please save me from myself
Calm me down with your caress
I'll get off while I watch you undress
Maybe the sex will help me to forget
A precious, transient, schizophrenic bliss
Oh my god, you're beautiful
Why do you stay with this neurotic fool?
By Friday morning, the Dark Lord still hadn't fed Harry's Horcrux. They'd stayed at the manor—had defaced the dining room and the small secret room connected to Voldemort's office in the span of an hour. More destructive as time wore on.
Before lunch, he was Apparated back to the school, and he followed a masked Dark Lord out to the Vivariums—snow well and truly covering the grounds—and Rookwood, who'd been expecting them. He bowed and ducked into the main Vivarium, silent as he walked them a good distance inside.
"…What are we doing?" Harry asked, not sure if he'd get an answer or not.
"You are leaving your Lethifold here for the weekend."
They'd stopped outside a small steel room plopped in the woods.
"Why…?"
Muffled yelling came from inside the box, and Harry raised an accusing eyebrow.
"We- I…" The Dark Lord began in Parseltongue, realised he was floundering and stopped to inhale. "Indonesia. For Nagini to meet her family."
Harry scanned his eyes and wished he could see more of his face. "So, Muggles?"
Voldemort nodded, gesturing at the box.
"…It had better be bigger on the inside than it looks," he said, and the Dark Lord visibly relaxed, relieved that Harry wasn't arguing.
"It is expanded."
Rookwood opened the door with his wand, several rolling clicks signalling multiple locks. It was dark inside, when the light of the clearing spilled in; it blinded the bound prisoner—a middle-aged man with his arms locked behind his back.
Bed Sheet, Harry decided, was very gullible. He went straight for the prisoner, and though no one shut the door, they could have. It made sense that he had been captured in the first place.
"I'll be looking after him for you," Rookwood said.
Harry inspected the box from the outside. Respectably expanded and made to look like a haunted forest at midnight, fog rolling toward the door from the very back.
"Got loads of enrichment planned for him if you're worried about him getting bored," Augustus continued.
Bed Sheet had nearly finished his snack, and Harry supposed it really wasn't a good idea to bring a Lethifold with them. "Bed Sheet, we're going away for… How many days? The Weekend?" His stomach jumped when he thought about Sunday and his Horcrux's nerves.
The Dark Lord's lack of plans beyond that date.
"…The weekend," Voldemort confirmed.
"…Right. The weekend. And um. While I'm gone, Rookwood is going to look after you. In here. Okay?" Bed Sheet left his half-eaten mangled skeleton pile on the floor in favour of floating out of the box to hover in front of Harry's face. "It'll only be until… Sunday? Monday?"
The Dark Lord didn't answer him.
"And Rookwood will make sure you have plenty of snacks."
"As many prisoners as you can eat," Augustus said, arms crossed, eyebrows raised.
"We're going to see people who wouldn't understand… What you even are." Harry said. Then, in Parseltongue he added, "You're not taking him off me, are you? I feel like…"
"…No."
He wasn't convinced. "If I don't come back by Monday, and he realises what day it is, he'll start eating people. I virtually guarantee it."
"I know."
"So. Don't take him off me. He'll know. And Nagini will know."
Voldemort sighed.
"I'll definitely be back by Monday, okay? And in the meantime, you'll have plenty to do."
Bed Sheet hummed, crackling like a fire, and reached out with a hem to lightly slap Harry in the face. He figured it was an endearment because he didn't seem mad, convinced enough to return to his meal. Rookwood shut the door behind him, locking the multiple locks and concealing the building with magic.
"He'll be just fine," Augustus assured, and Harry left him there feeling vaguely ill—side-along Apparated back to the Malfoy Manor.
Nagini asked where Bed Sheet was as soon as they returned to the office. Harry had no idea if she knew where they were going. She seemed too neutral to know, not excited or upset.
'Why wouldn't he tell her we're going to meet her family? Does he want it to be a surprise?' He wondered.
'I do not think it is meant as a surprise. I do not think he found a way to tell her.'
'What? What do you mean?'
'He is vastly emotionally stunted. He is frightened to tell…' Tom stopped, probably because he realised he was describing himself.
'…He's scared to tell her because she'll have a big emotion in his presence that he caused? So, he's just gonna spring it on her, instead?'
'That sounds correct. Yes.'
His assumption that Voldemort hadn't told Nagini was confirmed when she asked about the Lethifold a second time, and he told her that Rookwood was running some tests. Harry raised his eyebrows and blinked at the Dark Lord when he lied, receiving an eyeroll in return.
Harry could tell he hadn't slept well, and he'd refused breakfast and lunch, earning a mild scolding from Nagini. She insisted that the Dark Lord take a potion at a minimum, which he begrudgingly did.
He and Nagini were presented with a Portkey—a silver necklace—just after noon, so he assumed that he'd be missing—for the first time—Ancient Runes class.
As soon as they landed, he had to shrug his robes off, blisteringly hot and suddenly in a moderately wooded, humid rainforest.
The Dark Lord took the usual tent from his pocket and enlarged it, then removed his robes, too. Harry openly stared at his forearms when he rolled his shirt up to his elbows.
"Where- Where are we?" Nagini asked.
"We're… Just outside Candirejo Village. In Magelang." The Dark Lord answered.
She was immediately sobbing on her knees, trying to talk but incomprehensible through the loud, hiccuping weeping. Her eyes yellow and black, skin dark green scales. She flapped her arms around, and Voldemort was glaring at him—part clueless, part pointlessly embarrassed, part unreasonably angry—so Harry said:
"Do you want the tent? Or I'll go in the tent? I'll- Yeah. I'll be in the tent."
He left Voldemort bewildered, yanked to the leaf litter by Nagini and strangled in a hug while she told him that she loved him, the only coherent words.
He debated casting silencing wards as he sat at the small dining table and waited, but Tom wouldn't let him, and he couldn't hear much more than muttering and Nagini's slowly settling crying, anyway. He felt awkward hearing that much. Guilt and shame were mingling on the Dark Lord's behalf; the knowledge that he was likely bringing her to meet them as a final act of love made him nauseous and put a lump in his throat.
He swiped at his face and swallowed three times fast when he heard them enter the tent behind him.
Her nose was red, and her hair was a mess. She was grinning ear to ear, though she was still hiccupping and sniffling. "We're here to meet my family," she told him, and Harry smiled back.
It fell from his face when she closed herself in the bathroom.
Voldemort looked as guilty as Harry figured he should. Twitching with hunger, and by then, likely Crux's cutting rage at not being fed.
"You haven't fed my Horcrux," he said, not a question, "Don't you think you should-"
"I'm feeding him now."
He detected the 'Him' but pointedly ignored it, "Oh. Oh? In Indonesia? I mean, by this point, you're practically levelling cities?"
"At sea." He seemed lost, hand on the back of a chair, bracing.
"…Okay. Is she okay?"
It took the Dark Lord a long time to think about it, gaze flicking around the tent as though following a flying bug, "Yes."
"Are you- are you okay?"
"Fine. Why?" He snapped out of his trance instantly, as though Harry had moved to attack him.
"Uhh. No reason."
He was told to stay with Nagini when she exited the bathroom dressed in Muggle summer clothes, and Harry wasn't about to leave her alone, even if he'd known where to look for the eggs. Voldemort left them under extensive privacy and anti-detection wards.
Though he was alone with Nagini, he didn't have the heart to tell her about the Basilisks. Her face was intermittently lit with a beaming smile, and he couldn't picture breaking it off her face.
"I have almost twenty great, great nieces and nephews, you know," she told him, "I wonder how many of them we'll meet?"
"Do they know we're coming?"
"I… Don't know? I hope so."
The Dark Lord returned a little over two hours later, after Nagini had talked his ear off with every fact she knew about her family, which admittedly wasn't a lot. She ran with the material she had.
It was dark by the time Voldemort returned; a Tempus told Harry that they'd jumped into a timezone six hours ahead of Scotland. The Dark Lord still seemed enraged—eyes wild, teeth held together like a snapped bear trap—as though he'd cut the recovery short for Nagini.
To his surprise, Voldemort didn't drink Polyjuice or otherwise alter his appearance after he showered. Dressed in a soft-looking black dress shirt—rolled to his elbows—that Harry wanted to bite.
Despite all his protesting, Voldemort was filling out in the arms and chest, and though he figured it was mostly the potions Lydia and Nagini forced on him, Harry took some credit. Thin in a way that almost suited him, though he wanted the Dark Lord to gain more than he had. Insurance weight for his next tantrum. He sighed at the thought and was directed into the bathroom.
He'd been given the same black trousers that Voldemort wore, thinner than they looked—a dark green silk button-down shirt with short sleeves and a cooling charm built in. The bathroom was stocked with his essentials, so Tom fixed his hair while Harry applied oud perfume and worried about what Sunday meant.
'Do you really think Crux would blow up? Like, the end of the world kind of blow up, if Voldemort tried…?' Harry didn't want to finish the thought, wanted it to be untrue.
'If he is capable. Yes.'
'There's a chance he's not doing it tomorrow, though; we don't know for sure?'
'…No. It is not certain.' He didn't think, 'But it is likely.'
Harry felt the words anyway. Burped and then threw up in his mouth. Furiously brushing his teeth afterward, forcing all thoughts of the apocalypse out of his head.
If the eggs weren't due Sunday, they still had time. He wasn't sure how much time, or how doubling down on the Dark Lord was going to help, but it was a plan, so he latched onto it.
The short sleeves of his shirt revealed the Dark Mark, small but prominent and still twisting, a problem he'd have to bring up with Voldemort.
When he exited the bathroom, Nagini and Voldemort sat at the dining table, the Dark Lord with a quill and parchment. "—They believe you are their lost sister…"
He stopped talking when Harry shut the door. Eyes lingering on his face then trailing down the length of him, slow and hooded, for long enough to make him blush scarlet.
"…You should have let the hat sort you into Slytherin," Voldemort said after a moment, snapping his eyes back to the parchment and shifting in his seat.
"Because I look good in green?" Harry hid how his face had gone red by sitting down and hovering over the parchment. "Probably had more to do with having some Dark Lord in my head. The hat wanting to put me in Slytherin."
'You look excellent in green,' Tom thought, making him blush harder and smirk at once.
A small family tree, hand-drawn, a few names circled—Voldemort's handwriting.
"…Josias, your nephew, was the most likely to have a child out of wedlock and keep it a secret. And he is not alive to refute it. They have been told that you were raised in England. Adopted. You will need a false name."
Nagini laughed, nervous. She looked at Harry, and her eyebrows vanished under her fringe.
"…How do I explain knowing Indonesian?" She asked, still coughing.
"You were held to your heritage by our gracious parents."
"Our?" She repeated, laughing again. "Are you my brother, Tom?"
"All intents and purposes," Voldemort said, frowning. She didn't notice. He put the crystal fish on the table and pointed with his eyes for Harry to touch it as he did.
"Tonight, we are meeting them for dinner. Your surviving niece and nephew, and your great nieces and nephews."
She shot out of her seat and laughed into her hands, a giggle that built until she was crying again. She shocked Harry by kissing him on the top of his head mid sob, so both he and the Dark Lord looked as though they had centipedes in their pants.
Voldemort cleared his throat and stood, casting a Tempus. Harry followed suit, trailing him as he left the tent, tugged along by the thread that permanently bound them.
"Am I her brother too?" He asked.
Nagini followed, too, and the Dark Lord collapsed and retrieved the tent.
"No."
He nearly rolled his eyes but didn't comment. "Do they speak English, or am I pretending I don't understand anything all night?"
"The odds are good that they have some English."
Harry decided he wouldn't speak unless spoken to.
The Dark Lord's familiar skipped beyond them through the trees and doubled back repeatedly.
It was dark within the forest, but he could see lights ahead, a small town with busted bitumen roads—asphalt cracked and potholed, swallowed by dirt—lit with old light poles haphazardly spaced under zig-zagging power lines, the forest pressed against the very edge of the village.
"Is this… Is this where you left your brother? Iskander?" Harry asked, pausing at the treeline.
Rows of similar homes lined the street in front of them, terracotta tiled ceilings covered in lush moss. Grey Besser brick walls consumed by ivy and moss, grass and weeds springing through concrete cracks as though nature couldn't be subdued.
A couple sat on their front porch, drinking and laughing, oblivious to being watched.
"Yes. I left him here. It's bigger than I remember." She whispered.
"…He grew up well. His family is successful. Happy," The Dark Lord said.
Nagini breathed a long, shaking sigh. "Good."
"You will need a name," Voldemort repeated.
"I'm sure you have something in mind," she joined him in the serpent tongue.
"…Eko. If you like."
"I like it. What will they call you?"
The Dark Lord sighed twice, then inexplicably put his hand on Harry's neck and squeezed his hair.
He gripped the tree next to him with both arms so he didn't melt into the dirt. "Dark Mark is still wiggling on my arm," he muttered when the warmth rocked the words out of his mouth.
Voldemort put his lips on Harry's ear to whisper, "Show me."
He extended his arm and held his breath as the Dark Lord traced the skull and snake with his thumb. Harry thought he may as well have been tracing his cock with the way he reacted, both he and Tom riveted and swallowing and immediately hard.
As he traced the mark, it slowed to a stop until it was simply an odd tattoo choice. He was released suddenly, and though the air was warm and humid, he was hit, as usual, with the sensation of being dropped naked in the snow.
Voldemort left the tree line first, Nagini after him. Harry needed a few seconds of recovery before he followed.
He figured they were walking to their destination—the Dark Lord's familiar alternating between skipping ahead and running back. Voldemort himself moved relatively slowly through the streets, hands in his pockets and scowling relentlessly.
"Did you cut it short? Recovering?" Harry asked in Parseltongue.
He knew it was only half of the source of his foul mood. He felt guilty for planning to destroy his Horcrux. Harry was certain of it.
"Why?" Voldemort asked, suspicious.
He rolled his eyes at the constant resistance. The Dark Lord was so private that every scrap became a secret, a riddle wrapped in a mystery, oftentimes for seemingly no reason at all.
"Would pain help?" He didn't need the answer; he knew it would. He wanted Voldemort to admit it and then ask for it.
He didn't admit or ask in words. He huffed a humourless laugh and almost gripped Harry's upper arm.
No contact, so Harry didn't perform a bliss-induced face-plant into the bitumen, but close enough to summon the curse and wind it around the Dark Lord's fingers.
"…Better?" Harry asked.
Nagini had stopped to pet a stray cat but lost her patience before she managed to coax it out of the laneway it was hiding in and sprinted back over to them. "How far are we going? Where are we going?"
"Better," Voldemort muttered, as close to a 'thank you' as Harry had ever heard, then, "A restaurant. Neutral ground, I would assume to be sure that you are not an irredeemably crazy woman seeking their money. I believe we can comfortably assure them that we are not after wealth."
Harry snorted when he made no mention of proving they weren't insane. "Did you just make a joke?"
"Almost."
'…Crux has been quiet,' Harry thought, watching Nagini sprint ahead again.
'He is afraid. And blessedly allowing you to do what you need to.'
'Did he tell you any of that?'
'No. All assumption.'
'…How are you doing?' Harry had avoided asking; the question always batted away and avoided.
Tom made no exception, 'I need to focus. If we don't have time… I can't… I'm fine.' Unconvincing.
Harry let it slide regardless, figured he was probably right. If they survived the apocalypse, there would be plenty of time to poke at their wounds.
He found himself thinking about the Horcrux ritual dream as they walked in silence, the curse stinging on his arm and snaking around the Dark Lord's wrist. The sharp sting and the end of the dream, in particular, made him realise that he couldn't hide his erection with his robes anymore. Tom didn't help, openly thinking about it with him.
'…I liked that, too,' Harry thought.
'So did I.'
He couldn't help but look at the Dark Lord and swallow, bug-eyed. If Tom liked it, so would Voldemort. Harry couldn't picture a reality where he would let Harry take control.
'He will if I have anything to do with it,' Tom thought.
He also had a hard time picturing the reality where the idea of being the one doing the fucking didn't fill him with boiling nerves.
'…I could do it.'
'I don't doubt that,' he thought, throat and pants strangely tight at the idea. 'You want to, don't you?' He added when he decided it was more than an offer of help.
He examined Harry's thoughts thoroughly before he answered, 'Yes. In short.'
'In long?'
'…God, yes.'
'That wasn't really a longer answer,' Harry thought.
The Dark Lord turned a corner so that they briefly left Nagini skipping up the wrong street.
'You want me to,' Tom thought, not a question; he knew the answer.
'I haven't thought about it. I mean, I've thought about it, now,' Harry thought, then he asked in Parseltongue, "How far are we going?" Because he desperately didn't want to meet Nagini's family with a raging erection.
'And you want me to,' Tom continued, relentless.
Harry glanced at the Dark Lord's pants and figured if he had a problem, so did Voldemort.
'…I'm not against it,' he thought, 'I don't really think now is the time to think about it.'
"…Not far," Voldemort said, slowing down further, much to Nagini's irritation.
'You want me t-'
'Yes, okay? Yep. Obviously yes. If you wanted to do that and he…' Harry cleared his throat and tried to adjust his pants with his free hand.
Tom smirked, and Harry figured if the idea of fucking himself cheered him up, he would entertain it.
He didn't strictly understand his point of view, but he'd be lying if he said the thought didn't turn him all the way on. "I'm gonna cancel the curse; I'm so…" He began, grimacing in the dark at the awkwardness and letting the curse go.
Voldemort nodded, paused in the middle of the street, and Nagini said 'Ugh' so loud she made several dogs bark. He closed his eyes and ignored her, almost meditative, holding the bridge of his nose.
"What are you doing?" Harry asked.
"Thinking about Hepzibah Smith," The Dark Lord said.
"Why are you thinking about Hep… Oh." He realised that the weird woman was an immediate boner-killer for Tom, relieving him of the horror of having to meet Nagini's family with a hard-on.
Then Harry laughed until Voldemort glared at him and began walking again, much faster than he had been.
"Sorry, that's not really funny," he said, still snorting.
The restaurant was more of a large house equipped with far more tables and chairs than usual. It was well-lit and backed straight onto the forest. The Dark Lord had stopped to stare at it, and so they did, too.
"…What will they call you?" She asked again, in a whisper.
A few small groups were sitting out the front, slowly noticing them standing outside and looking severe.
He didn't answer, instead, he shifted and looked at Harry.
"What?"
"I don't know," the Dark Lord said, scowling at the building.
"…Avrom?" Harry suggested.
"Tom," Nagini said, firm. "Now let's go. My arms are going to shake off."
He flinched repeatedly but didn't object, "Are you certain you are under control?" Voldemort asked.
"I'm going to try real hard not to serpent by accident, but if I do…?"
"I will fix it." He moved them confidently toward the restaurant, through the small crowd of diners out the front and through the front door.
It was dark inside, but not for the lack of lights. The deep tones of the wood throughout sucked up the warm light like a sponge. Harry assumed Voldemort already knew where he was going. He ignored the waitress, who looked at him expectantly and pushed through the ornately carved doors to the back. An uncovered patio area nested in the rainforest, lit with the golden light pouring from inside and several torches with naked flames.
He didn't get to take it in for long; rapid voices from his left grew until a cloud of people, talking simultaneously, surrounded them. An old woman grasped Nagini's hands and stared intently into her face.
And Harry could tell that Voldemort may as well have been tossed into the Arctic, his limbs and expression frozen, unblinking.
"I am Susanti," the old woman said, "We have heard much about you, but not your name?"
The group went silent—though still vibrating—when Susanti spoke, and they moved to drag Nagini to the large table they'd been occupying. When they sat down—Harry next to the Dark Lord, Nagini on the other side of him—he finally got a count of them.
Eleven. One older man that he assumed was around the same age as Susanti. Probably sixty.
"…My name is Eko," Nagini said, breaking the buzzing silence.
All of the younger ones began talking at once, bursting with excitement. Harry guessed that the oldest of them couldn't have been much older than forty.
One of the women was heavily pregnant, her hand on her stomach as she requested more water, loudly, from the anxious-looking waitress.
"Eko!" Susanti repeated, once again silencing the table.
They all looked like Nagini; there was no denying relation. The four younger women at the table might as well have been her sisters. All of them were well-dressed and made up as though they were attending a wedding, all their eyes glued to the Dark Lord's familiar, waiting for her to speak.
Harry quickly took to watching Voldemort—a statue holding a glass of water.
"…Eko Riddle," she said, and the Dark Lord's shoulders flinched. "I've thought about meeting you all many times."
"She speaks good, eh?" One of the men said, and the older man held a hand up.
"I am Bima," he said, smiling, revealing a straight set of dentures that nearly made him look uncanny. Harry knew—the Dark Lord had told him—that Iskander had named his children after his mother, sister, and brother, and he knew Nagini knew it too, but she still winced when he told her his name, as she had when Susanti introduced herself.
"My children, my son Talim," Bima continued. His son a probably forty-year-old man with thinning hair and a slightly suspicious expression. "My son Jude," Younger than Talim, possessed of all his hair and a too-big pair of glasses, smiling. "And my daughter, Sinta." The pregnant woman, who didn't seem older than thirty. She was beautiful, like Nagini—a puffier face and a wider nose that suited the smile in her eyes.
"I think she'd be more interested in her siblings," a woman who couldn't have been older than Sinta said. Nose pierced, a chain linking the piercing to her earring, her hair shorter than Nagini's, intricate black tattoos winding up both arms. "Your father's name was Josias." She told the Dark Lord's familiar, leaning across the table, "And this is your brother and sister. Imco and Shiloh," she gestured at the pair, both closing in on their forties if Harry had to guess.
They didn't seem particularly thrilled to find out that their father had presumably had an extra-marital affair and then shipped his offspring off to another country. Harry wondered how fresh the news was.
"…Yenny," Susanti admonished, and the woman with the nose piercing smirked and sat back. "You'll forgive my niece. The imp. My sister Nagini's only child. And impolite," she admonished again.
"For introducing my new dear cousin to her siblings?" Yenny laughed, then laughed again at the severe expressions of Imco and Shiloh.
"…How did you find us? Learn of our father- I mean- who was your mother?" Shiloh eventually said, putting her elbows on the table and then taking them off.
Voldemort's hand was still frozen on his glass, sat on the tabletop. Apparently deciding to sit the whole thing out through disassociation. Harry didn't know what to do with himself other than play wide-eye tennis.
"My brother, Tom-" she gestured at the Dark Lord, and he was startled to life as though she'd inserted a coin. "My brother found you for me. I don't- I don't know who my mother was; I'm sorry." She was looking at Susanti as she apologised, tears in her eyes.
She reached across the table, though she couldn't reach Nagini from the head seat, "Don't be sorry, you're here, and you found us. You have nothing to apologise for. And we won't be speaking ill of the dead," she shot a warning look around the table that made Bima grin. She gestured to the three that hadn't been introduced and said, "My children, Esther, Claudius, and Indra."
Each of them also looked to be in their early forties, with streaks of grey in their hair and smile lines around their eyes. Indra looked to be the youngest, though not by much. He sat beside his mother, and like his cousin Talim, he'd started paying attention to the Dark Lord, looking him over curiously.
"Does he speak Indonesian?" Indra asked, gesturing at Voldemort.
Harry was relieved to feel invisible for once.
"Uh," Nagini glanced at the Dark Lord and raised an eyebrow in question.
"I do not speak it well," he said, and his familiar's mouth fell open.
Though he'd heard it in English, Harry assumed he had said it in Indonesian. He also assumed Nagini didn't know he could do that.
"…One day, he'll randomly announce that he's highly skilled at the trombone," Harry said, rendering himself very visible. "…Uh, I mean, hello, I'm Harry?"
Yenny was smiling at him in the exact same way Nagini grinned at delinquents.
"Damn it, excuse me," Sinta got out of her chair pregnant belly first and waddled into the restaurant.
Nagini watched her go, almost frowning, but Harry couldn't work out why.
"…You speak Indonesian, too, do you," Voldemort leaned in to whisper the warning close to his ear.
"…Maybe I do," Harry muttered, then thought, 'Do I?'
'I do not know any Indonesian, no.'
"Okay, I don't," he said as the Dark Lord resumed staring at his glass. "Have you been learning Indonesian?" Harry asked as the waitress returned with an apprehensive look, Nagini's family chattering over each other as they ordered.
Voldemort stood up, put his hand on Nagini's shoulder and said, "I need a moment. If you need me…"
She nodded, torn between concern and her family.
Harry only remained in his seat for probably three seconds after the Dark Lord vanished down the back stairs and into the trees.
He stayed long enough to watch Nagini's family register that Voldemort had done a highly strange thing and then followed after him to do the same. He'd apologised quietly to Nagini, though she didn't seem to mind, pulled into conversation by Yenny and Susanti.
Harry didn't need to follow in the dark for long to find him; he'd stopped just within the forest.
"This must be hard for you," he said in Parseltongue, startling Voldemort, although he had to know he was there.
"I've warned you not to patronise me." His wand was in his hand, though he held it at his side.
"…I'm not patronising you; I'm being serious," he glanced back in the direction he'd come, though he couldn't see Nagini or her family anymore. He could hear them laughing. "I know you don't have an easy time…" He didn't say 'Sharing', but he thought it.
Voldemort shook his head as though Harry was spewing nonsense and silenced the laughter with a flick of his wrist. The Dark Lord met his eyes and stepped forward, "How is it then that my Horcrux does not seem to mind sharing you at all?"
For an instant, Harry expected Tom to explode; the high-pressure building in his side of their mind felt like a cartoon bomb that had long ago burned through its fuse, held comically in his head waiting patiently for him to breathe a sigh of relief.
Tom didn't blow up. He smirked and shrank the space between them to nothing, "You do not know yourself. I could introduce you."
"Does he love her?" Voldemort asked, swinging the conversation way left field, and shooting his eyes toward the obscured restaurant.
Harry thought it should have been something he'd have seen in his head, not hidden. Though as he considered it, he decided maybe it should have been, nose to nose with an already jealous and likely spiralling Dark Lord.
Neither of them answered. Harry was tempted to lie and say he didn't love Nagini. Which felt like an asshole thing to do at any time, but more so on the night she met her blood family. "…Um. Why?"
He hadn't raised his wand, and Harry couldn't guess intent from his blank face. Tired eyes. Always frowning.
"Do you love Nagini." He repeated, no inflection. When Harry didn't respond, Voldemort forced himself into his head.
He found it deftly, sewn together with the rest of his love for his chosen family. Ginny, Ron, Sirius, Fred, George, Molly, Arthur, Cassiopeia—something Harry only truly registered in that moment; the vampire had also found her way in. Not far behind them—not quite love, he thought, but strong affection—Draco, Ruby, Reed, Pollux, Luna, Avalon, and Narcissa, pulled like knotted fabric from a clown's sleeve.
He recoiled from Harry's head like something had bitten him, swaying momentarily.
Harry had his hand on his wand, still in his pocket, not sure if the Dark Lord was about to attack him or faint.
"…How? How? How do you love her? How do you love so many?"
Harry's eyebrows tried to meet his hair, "I… Dunno? It's hard not to love Nagini. She's- she's always been good to me." He felt weird explaining it, so he stopped, but Voldemort made a frustrated 'And?' gesture.
"Ask yourself what you truly want to know. Harry does not suffer from the same… Stuntedness that you and I do," Tom said, walking forward, the Dark Lord stepping back.
"'Suffer'?" He scoffed and realised he was relinquishing distance.
"Mm, suffer," Tom said.
Harry still couldn't tell if they were about to savage each other, both eerily still, sizing each other up like cobras. Tom moved first, but not to attack him. Hand on the Dark Lord's cock instead, pinning him to a tree with surprisingly little resistance.
"You cannot truly believe that you still hate him," Tom hissed in his ear; button and zipper dealt with rapidly.
"You're a fool, then. Turned stupid," Voldemort said, voice husky, his hands working on Harry's pants just the same, Elder wand dropped in the leaf litter.
"Oh, one of us is outside their mind with imbecilic vitriol," Tom said. Harry got the sense it was purely for the purpose of hissing words into the Dark Lord's neck.
"…Imbecilic? Warranted," Voldemort said.
Harry couldn't help the laugh that broke through the gasps, helped along by the bliss that hit his lips and his cock at once. Suddenly he was the one pinned to the tree, though he hardly felt the swap.
"Tom is barely ever… an idiot," Harry said, realising as it happened that he'd said his name.
Voldemort didn't even notice, melting into Tom's hands with an ease Harry might have found remarkable if his head wasn't clouded and buzzing.
They moved like one piece, Harry the conduit—warm, fizzing, popping bliss blasted holes clean out the back of his skull, siphoning all his thoughts into the nothing—Tom spoke through it with what must have been colossal effort:
"Are you afraid, Tom?"
"You won't succeed."
"…I always get what I want."
Both whispering, gasping, moaning on the other's throat, hands mirrored on their cocks, concerted. Tom was still fighting to pin the Dark Lord again, foiled by Harry's bliss-washed noodle limbs.
"Dark is the forest, and deep. And overhead hang stars like seeds of light in vain, though not since they were sown was bred anything more bright," Tom whispered in the Dark Lord's ear, and he pulled back to press Harry into the tree by his neck, though not tight enough to stop the words.
"And evermore mighty multitudes ride about, nor enter in; the other multitudes that dwell inside never yet was one seen." Tom stopped to moan and the sound closed Harry's eyes momentarily, like his lids were paralysed.
"The forest foxglove is purple, the marguerite outside is gold and white, nor can those that pluck either blossom greet the others, day or night." He traced Voldemort's lips with Harry's thumb until he opened his mouth, then bled the curse over his tongue, down his throat until he sucked Harry's thumb in, biting, moaning vibrations and bliss up his arm.
The way the Dark Lord rolled his tongue around his thumb had a visceral impact on Harry, repeatedly gasping. Voldemort's free hand held him into the tree by the chest—allowing him air—hand through the buttons. The Dark Lord's grip on Harry's cock matched Tom's on his. Tight, pace increasing.
He couldn't bear it for long. The sight of Voldemort drinking the curse from his hand had him moaning nonsense, hips bucking wild until he came with a yelp. Voldemort was not far behind him, biting and pulling his thumb—rewarded by Tom with repeated pulses of the curse until he stumbled away to spit blood on the leaves, put his cock away, and snatch his wand off the ground.
They led a slightly drunk and incredibly giddy Nagini back to the forest where they'd landed, chattering the entire way, blushing and giggling and occasionally crying, frequently shaking the Dark Lord's arm as though trying to infect him with her joy.
Harry could feel his mood darkening instead, rolling off him in silent waves.
They hadn't eaten, instead wasted enough time in the forest fixing their appearances—the Dark Lord healing his tongue and throat. Watching him do it had filled Harry's mouth with too much saliva, and he'd looked away lest he repeated himself—waiting for the flush on their cheeks to fade in silence for long enough to return to a drunk and fed table.
Nagini told them, breathlessly, that they'd been invited back to Susanti's farm and were going first thing in the morning, though the rest of her family would be there for lunch.
Everything she said seemed to swoop over Voldemort's head, his expression tight on his face, schooled neutral but still tense. Blinking straight ahead.
Saturday morning, Nagini woke them by pile-driving their hands apart, only separating because Voldemort allowed it, otherwise, she'd had broken both of their arms clean in two.
"Come on!" She leaned close to the Dark Lord's head to yell it, "Let's go; the sun is coming up!"
Harry stood before he was truly awake, rolling the numbness out of his wrist and squinting in the dark. He decided Nagini's statement that the sun was rising was more of a prediction than a fact—Harry couldn't see any light.
He showered anyway—Nagini was already dressed—and once he was done, he was greeted with breakfast and the dim early rays of morning. The Dark Lord took the bathroom after him, and he sat with Nagini, allowing her to spew every fact she'd learned in Parseltongue while she flapped a piece of toast around.
"Yenny studied to be a doctor for a year until she realised she hated it. Susanti said she was good at it, though. She makes art instead; she said she'd show me some, if she remembers to bring it." She dipped the toast in egg, bit it, and didn't stop talking, "Esther is a lawyer with her own firm, and her husband owns a company that rents out trucks. They have five children." She bulged her eyes, so Harry agreed it was a lot of children.
"Sinta thinks she's having a baby girl," She paused to frown at the table, then shook it off, "She's the youngest of all of them. Sinta. The oldest is Esther, but not by much because Josias had Shiloh a few weeks later."
Harry nodded dutifully and mechanically chewed.
"Do you think Shiloh and Imco hate me?" She asked, and Harry frowned.
"Hate you?" He shook his head, "No. I don't think they hate you. It'd be a shock. If you were really Josias' daughter, it wouldn't be your fault."
When the bathroom doors opened, Nagini was out of the tent comically fast, practically leaving a cloud of dust in her wake.
"She's thrilled," Harry told Voldemort, accusing in tone and expression.
The Dark Lord presented the Babel Fish and said nothing.
They were side-along Apparated to the farm, and Harry wondered when he'd been there. The image of the Dark Lord finding Nagini's family, scoping out their homes, ensuring they were safe, happy, and acceptable for his familiar to meet made his heart jump and spiked a well-worn jealousy. That he'd stood here before—watched the farmhouse in the distance, likely with Crux flipping and spitting in his head—had his stomach churning with a nervous sadness.
"Let's go," Nagini said, leading the way up the long dirt driveway.
She climbed over the gate instead of opening it, ignoring that it was barely dawn. She sprinted the entire length, startled several cows and goats—they rang cattle bells and bleated toward the house, announcing their arrival.
Susanti was awake despite the criminal hour, dragging a bag of grain in a nightgown and slippers out of the shed by the large house—the roof steep with four sloping points, corrugated sheet metal—panelled wooden walls, skirted by banana trees.
When she saw them, she dropped the sack and said, "Ah! A young woman. Right on time to take this for me."
Nagini didn't hesitate, moving to drag the bag with enthusiasm.
"This way, my dear, to the pigs," Susanti told her as though she'd been there every day of her life, looking over her shoulder at Harry and the Dark Lord before she led Nagini to the pigs.
"They grow lots of their own food!" Nagini shouted, puffing her fringe out her face as she dragged the sack backwards. Harry couldn't help grinning.
Once Susanti had enlisted a thrilled Nagini to carry out most of the farm chores—Voldemort and Harry following behind in mostly awkward silence—she finally bid them into the house for sweet tea and stories.
Which Harry thought was just as well. He'd offered Nagini help, and she'd practically bit him in response. Though he'd done nothing he was sweating through the cooling charms, the sun well risen by the time they were ushered in.
Nagini was drawn immediately to the main wall, dressed floor to ceiling with photos and memorabilia. Susanti left them to stare, muttering about sweet tea and telling them to "Wait there."
Harry scanned the wall for as long as it took for Nagini to gasp and clap her hand over her mouth. He followed her eyes to the high left to a framed piece of paper that looked at least in part made of fabric, turned yellow with age, and covered in strange, snaking script.
The longer he looked, the more it made sense. "Is that written in Parseltongue?"
"Parselscript," the Dark Lord corrected, quiet.
It read vertically, which confused him for at least thirty seconds.
Nagini whispered it aloud just slightly before he got the hang of it, "In a small village called Girah, in the kingdom of Kahuripan, lived a beautiful woman whose name was Ratna Mangali…" She inhaled, sharp, and turned to Voldemort, "Can you copy this? It- it was my mother's. I left it with Iskander," she rushed her whispered question, eyes flicking to the doorway Susanti had gone through.
"Is that you?" Harry asked, pointing at a drawing of a girl above the Parselscript.
Maybe ten years old, missing the teeth beside her two front teeth, grinning wide with ears too big for her head, a jagged cut fringe with hair to her waist. Beside it, a drawing of a little boy, likely three years old, and probably her brother, Bima. A woman with an irrefutable resemblance to Nagini above them. Susanti. All on old paper, scrawled in charcoal.
"…He got really good. At drawing. Iskander." Her voice seemed to be floating away as she stood staring.
Harry glanced at the Dark Lord and saw something borderline incomprehensible in his left eye, threatening to fall while he watched his familiar before he registered Harry and shoved him toward the doorway to 'Help' with the tea.
Helping ultimately meant carrying. He found Susanti in the kitchen as she finished staking a tray with glasses and a jug of iced tea. He took it when she gestured and nodded, and he made as much noise as was stealthily possible going back through the doorway.
He found the Dark Lord and Nagini seated in armchairs that ringed the coffee table Harry placed the tea tray on. Voldemort was far more skilled at appearing crimeless than Nagini was, her eyes darting repeatedly to the wall and the parchments he hoped the Dark Lord had time to duplicate.
Harry sat across from Voldemort and busied himself with pouring tea, moving his hands to avoid participating in the conversation.
Susanti had followed Nagini's eyes to the wall of family history. "This house belonged to my father, Iskander. One of many, but he loved this place. It belongs to Bima, now. I moved in with him and his wife Asha when my husband passed."
Nagini nodded eagerly, then realised that she'd announced her husband dead, "Oh, sorry. That's sad that he died."
Susanti almost smiled, "Five years ago now. You remind me of my father, as Yenny does. It almost feels uncanny," she laughed and stood up while Harry passed out glasses of iced tea.
The Dark Lord ignored his, observing Nagini with nearly pursed lips, eyes almost squinted, motionless like a carved effigy. Susanti and Nagini took their tea with them to the wall.
Harry stayed where he was, pretending not to understand Indonesian and feeling like the situation was distinctly not for him. No one had asked who he was yet, and he figured the question had to be coming. He hadn't been given any directive, so he would play dumb.
Susanti named several family members, pointing them out and listing their accomplishments. Harry tuned her mostly out.
The room was dressed in snakes. The more he looked around, the more statues, paintings, and scale print he found. Carved wooden serpents winding around curtain rods, thin, tiny snakes engraved around doorframes and into the wood of the walls. Porcelain pots that bore painted snakes eating their tails.
He registered Voldemort staring at him and had to refocus on the sweet tea so he didn't react predictably.
"…And Ranta Mangali's mother was the widow Calon Arang, a black witch."
Both the Dark Lord and Harry whipped their heads at Susanti's words.
"So, though Ratna was very, very beautiful, no one wanted to marry the daughter of a dark witch. Calon Arang grew furious and took her students to sacrifice a young girl for the goddess Durga. Calon took revenge on the village with Durga's blessing. Great floods washed the village away, and those that survived the black witch's wrath suffered strange curses." She was repeatedly scanning Nagini's face as she spoke.
Harry figured she must have been the perfect amount of enraptured because Susanti continued. "This writing, here, was my grandmother's. Susanti. From her, I got my name. My father spent much of his life unravelling the secrets of his mother—things she did not know herself."
Nagini had tucked her hands behind her back to hide the shaking, and Voldemort stood up, casual. Arms also tucked behind his back, feigning polite interest.
'Hate how good he looks in sunlight. Hate how good he looks in general, really,' he thought absently. Eyes running laps up and down the length of him—white dress shirt rolled just under his elbows, Dark Mark motionless on his arm to serve as a stark reminder. It was wild to watch him stand as a regular—devastatingly gorgeous—man in someone's sitting room in Indonesia.
"My father believed that his grandmother, Susanti's mother, lived in the village of Girah. That she was cursed by the witch Calon. This parchment tells the story of Ratna and Calon, given to Susanti by her mother. My father says that Susanti would tell him and his siblings—" She pointed at the charcoal drawings of Bima and Nagini and said their names, "—Stories about the witch before they slept… And she became a great serpent for the night."
They were far too stoic for the reveal, Harry decided. No one's expression changed at the wild, impossible statement. He decided the tea was pretty good.
Susanti tilted her head at Nagini, squinted, and continued, "…My father did not find out what happened to Susanti's mother, and he could not recall her name—it haunted him to the grave, not finding her. But his mother, Susanti… They did not know her transformation into a serpent would become permanent, that she would lose her mind and memories when it took her. And so when it did," Susanti hesitated and then decided to skip that part, "Iskander fled with his sister, Nagini. On her tenth birthday, as my father told it, Nagini fell to the floor-" She'd pointed at the drawing again, and the Dark Lord's familiar's arms were scaly.
Harry dropped his glass on the tiles and said, "Whoops," when it shattered.
He stood up and tried to fake apologetic. Failing, he decided, when all he felt himself do was raise an eyebrow. It was enough to distract Nagini into human skin.
She gave him an unsteady nod when Susanti scurried off to collect cleaning supplies, and he did feel guilty then.
"…Can we clean it with magic and make her forget all about it?" Harry asked in a whisper, and Nagini swatted at him.
"You will clean it up," there was a command in the Dark Lord's tone that made his neck red and made Tom think about Hepzibah.
Voldemort was smirking, just slightly. Hidden under a mega-ton of guilt—Or, at least, Harry hoped the heavy look in his eyes was guilt and not intent.
Susanti had told the story as though she was retelling a fable—a story with no root in realityt—deliberately slightly spooky in her tale. But Harry could tell that the woman believed it. Too hawk-eyed for Nagini's reaction.
Likely told the story repeatedly by a man convicted of the fact. The fact that his mother and sister became serpents, a curse placed by a witch, just the truth.
By mid-morning the house was buzzing with the first arrivals. Jude first, with two teenage boys who looked like they wanted to be anywhere else, shooting Jude disgusted looks.
Yenny arrived alone and gravitated toward Nagini immediately, chattering as they led each other around the farm and helped prepare ingredients for lunch.
After that, Harry lost track of the people, seemingly arriving at once. Surrounded by yelling children and exasperated parents, a swarm—buzzed as they prepared a fire pit in the front yard. A pig was slaughtered for the occasion, and a few of the men took the job. Harry heard the pig squeal through the over-loud hum of children, then saw it gutted on the spit what seemed like barely minutes later. He was introduced to husbands and wives, and their names were smoothly deleted from his head as they were spoken.
The women and some of the interested children were preparing fruit in the sun—some of which he'd never seen, fruit as big as his head.
The Dark Lord was taking it exactly as Harry had expected. Frozen like a deer in headlights, eyes wide, lips pursed, incessantly pretending he was a statue.
Just before lunch, he watched Nagini through the kitchen window, preparing spices and vegetables with Yenny, Esther, and Sinta at a table outside. The mothers watching their children chase chickens and goats and yelling about getting too close to the fire.
A toddler sprinted as fast as his short legs could take him out of the house and into the yard, cake in hand. Sinta spotted him and told him not to run right as he tripped and face-planted into his cake. Sinta waddled over, sighing until his shocked wailing drowned her out. He lost his breath and fell silent as she picked him up—made difficult by her belly—covered in cake and grass, turning bright red. Nagini and Sinta soothed him, taking him away to clean his face.
Voldemort stood beside him, quiet as he watched the same scene. Harry decided it had to be guilt that he felt, pouring off him in tangible waves as the day wore on.
Harry, on the other hand, felt a rabid homesickness that didn't have a place. No roots to the tree, floating in the air and longing for something he'd only ever truly been on the outside of. Family. Home. He'd witnessed it a thousand times over, seen love in its purest, most honest form. He almost touched it countless times, destined somehow to shrivel away from him as though his hands were cursed.
A choking sound came out of his mouth and startled him. He hadn't registered the lump in his throat, noticed it as he noticed that the Dark Lord was watching him instead of the window. Like a viper, he grabbed Harry's chin and locked their eyes, diving into his head and observing his most recent thoughts.
"…I am not guilty," Voldemort whispered as he withdrew, though they were briefly alone in the kitchen.
Harry smirked, distracted from the thoughts that had come after, more amused than annoyed at the denial.
"Sure-"
The Dark Lord placed his thumb on Harry's lips to silence him. Extremely effective.
"For the record, I would not learn to play the trombone." He traced Harry's bottom lip. Speaking so softly that the hum of the fridge was louder.
"…What?"
"The trombone," Voldemort kept whispering, watching Harry's mouth as his hand warmed, almost hot enough to burn.
"What- what are we talking about?"
The Dark Lord stepped back, smooth.
Yenny and Nagini were talking rapidly at each other as they entered the kitchen behind Harry.
"Tom," Nagini was breathless, the grin glued to her face, "We're making gudeg for lunch. And you're going to eat it," she glared for an instant before smiling again. Then she frowned, "…When are we leaving?"
"Tomorrow. At noon."
Harry's stomach dropped at the knowledge that Sunday was practically hours away. He pushed it back, again, and resisted the urge to frantically rub the scowl off his face.
Nagini dragged them both outside, disregarding how Voldemort seemed reluctant to exist. Although she'd pulled them out, she let them go quickly, distracted by a group of children and then by Sinta, calling her back over to the table—joined by Bima and his wife, Asha. All laughing, chatting.
The Dark Lord stood off to the side, in the shade, partly obscured by banana trees and tall shrubs Tom couldn't identify. Harry invariably followed him. They watched her family in silence for a moment.
A group of men and a few teenage boys were gathered around a guitar, singing, strumming, and drinking, steadily louder as the morning became afternoon. A few more men monitored the pig on the spit, admonished by the women for encouraging the younger ones to throw sticks in the flames.
Susanti sat with Imco and Shiloh, processing herbs and drinking sweet tea. Her lips moved, and the siblings nodded occasionally.
"Why did you bring her to meet her family?" Tom asked, almost making Harry jump.
When he frowned and didn't answer, Harry said, "They probably think you're really rude and really weird, hiding all over the place and imitating a statue."
"…What is it you want?" The Dark Lord snapped.
At whom, Harry wasn't sure. Tom answered, "I want you to see."
Harry figured he'd made his desires pretty clear by that point. Those that he could make clear, anyway. A non-apocalypse and a week off. For the Dark Lord to give up on his reluctance, that his Horcrux finally relent and allow them peace. Simple and straightforward. Like brain surgery.
"…It was like you died," Harry said, gesturing in Nagini's direction with his head, "When you put your hands to your temples and tried to blow your skull out, it was like you were dead. You broke her heart. She was devastated."
For an instant, there was wild-eyed, frustrated anger on Voldemort's face. It was as if he didn't have the energy to maintain it, slipping off in favour of exhaustion, "Love is weakness." He glanced around as though he expected Nagini to pop up behind him, "A weakness I did not have the time or the aptitude for. A weakness that I removed. Love is torture. Your godforsaken Horcrux has given me what I do not want, that which I worked to be rid of."
"Like your sanity?" Harry snapped, exasperated. He wasn't going to begin on the skewed view of love that the Dark Lord held. So much a part of him he'd likely crumble to ash if he ever managed to deconstruct the belief.
Voldemort shook his head, scoffed a laugh, hands in his pockets—distraction enough just standing before him—stunning. "Sanity? This prison with the threat of annihilation? What good is moral reasoning if I pluck my eyes from my skull in rage? What good is clear logic in the face of demolition? You don't know what you're asking for. Cease. Leave it to rest. I—will—die—first." He'd worked up an anger again.
Harry sighed and thought, 'I don't know how to convince him not to do this.' Then said, "When you destroy… My Horcrux, are you gonna kill me?"
It effectively took the wind out of the Dark Lord, flinching away from him, scowling with distaste, and watching Nagini in squinting silence.
He had a difficult time imagining the Dark Lord leaving him alive without a functioning mind and heart, Harry's usefulness reduced to his dwindling celebrity and a sum of gold—an amount that could be taken from him with relative ease if it hadn't already. Made to fight through the competition for politic's sake and done away with, if Voldemort even bothered with the schools and diplomacy without sanity. Not to be trusted as far as he could be tossed, and considered immediately a threat to the Dark Lord's empire.
Tom's silence told him he was right. Voldemort's silence made him want to punch his wildly attractive face.
"You cannot tell her," the Dark Lord eventually said.
Harry scoffed, threw up his arms, "You're such an asshole, do you know that? Are you consciously aware of the fact that you're a huge fucking asshole, or do you justify yourself? I don't have the heart to tell her; how could I tell her-" He shook his head.
Telling Nagini, on the one hand, might serve to help significantly. Or, it could make things considerably worse. Frozen with indecision and the weight of his past mistakes, he repeated, "Are you going to kill me?"
"What purpose would telling you serve," he'd put on his 'You are boring me' voice, haughty, distant, and completely transparent if you asked Harry.
"I know you feel guilt. You should examine that before it's too fucking late." He was stomping away before he was truly aware of it.
'I will not allow him to kill you,' Tom thought later, resolute as they dressed a huge table—made up of several smaller tables—that still wasn't large enough for all of Nagini's family to sit. Seven of them sitting around the fire—and the still roasting pig—instead.
'How, though? I mean, he'll track us wherever we go, forever. He has Ginny, everyone else in the school. He'd expel and murder them one by one until I martyred myself. You know that.' Harry could feel Tom trying to find a way to say, 'Who cares if they die?' with subtlety.
'I won't let any more of them die for me.'
'He'll kill them anyway. Harry, he'll kill them all anyway.' Tom's urgency was finally hitting a detectable boiling point.
Harry knew there was no plan. If the Dark Lord successfully destroyed Crux, he had no course of action. If the apocalypse wasn't the direct result, he would suddenly be Horcrux-less and worth very little to Voldemort. The Wizarding world in his grip for however long he could hold it, all the strings in his hands. Leaving Harry with no money, an incredibly recognisable face, traceable, and reliant on a wand crafted under the Dark Lord's direction—likely traceable as well. If he outlasted the Dark Lord's madness, he'd be doing so as the world's most wanted.
Running was barely an option.
Killing him had even slimmer odds, and the thought made him sick.
Sitting next to Voldemort while they both, he assumed, plotted each other's murder—served lunch by Nagini's ridiculously happy family—gave him a disembodied whiplash.
"Gudeg is made with jackfruit," Nagini told him, "Try it," she gestured at his plate, and he shook himself out of his head.
Fragrant, served with rice. He didn't like the texture. She saw him make an involuntary face, took his fork, and mixed his shredded chicken in.
"…Thanks, N-Eko," he frowned at himself and liked the texture better.
"Is the tan one with the muscles your boyfriend?" Yenny asked, and Harry coughed, then pretended he'd choked on rice.
"What is he, eighteen? Eko is too old for him," Bima said, shaking his head and chewing.
"Oh, no, uh, he's not my boyfriend," Nagini said.
Harry was having difficulty pretending not to understand them, with no way to know what language they were speaking.
"…How old are you, Eko?" Shiloh asked, frowning down the table.
Susanti backhanded her arm and told Nagini she didn't need to answer, though everyone was staring at her. Apart from the group of children, eleven of them under ten and uninterested in hashing out family drama. Squawking and giggling at each other instead.
"We are not sure exactly how old she is, but we estimated that she might have been born in nineteen-sixty-five," Voldemort answered.
"Yes. Nineteen-sixty-five," Nagini repeated, relaxing in her seat.
Imco and Shiloh were whispering at each other, making Nagini squirm, which made Harry want to say something.
"I don't like how they're treating her," Harry whispered at the Dark Lord, pointing his eyes at the muttering siblings.
"Tell us about your family, Eko. In… Where was it, you said?" Imco asked.
Susanti looked ready to shout, instead, she sipped sweat tea with narrowed eyes and pursed lips.
"I don't think I did say…" Nagini said.
Harry was frustrated with the Dark Lord on her behalf. He'd clearly told her nearly nothing, too emotionally averse to make anything clear to her.
"We were raised in London for a time. We currently live in Scotland. Our parents passed many years ago," Voldemort recited like he was reading from palm cards, stiff as a cardboard cutout.
"What were their names?" Imco insisted, and Harry grimaced, accidentally baring his teeth at the table.
"Merope. And Tom."
By then, he could feel the rage wafting off Voldemort like heat. Turning his stomach while he moved rice around on his plate. The ring popped into Harry's head, seeping out of Tom's side. Not for the first time that weekend. The Resurrection Stone and his mother a popular train of torture for Tom. Invariably, Harry would think of Lily, flinching when he tried to envision what it meant when Crux said he didn't want to know.
"And you all have money, I assume? You're not just pretending to be wealthy and worming your way-" Shiloh said, or she tried. Instead of finishing she received a face full of sweet tea—sent flying over the table, an impressive distance—thrown by Yenny.
"…With all due respect," the Dark Lord said—straight-backed, voice like butter, disrespect intended—all eyes on him, "We are the heirs of a dynasty."
"We live in a castle. Hang out in mansions," Harry added, forgetting he was not supposed to understand.
Shiloh left the table when she collected her shock, shaking sweet tea off while the younger children laughed and followed her—like cackling hyenas—into the house.
Yenny was smirking and waggling her finger at Harry, "Live in a castle, do you?"
He looked at the Dark Lord, then at Nagini, who was white in the face.
"Oh, don't worry about Shiloh and Imco," Yenny shot a look at Imco when she said his name, "They're too high-strung for their own good, and it wouldn't be a family lunch if I didn't take the opportunity to throw a drink in one of their faces."
The way the table had hardly reacted—other than a collective eyeroll and or light glare—as well as how good Yenny's aim was, told Harry it was probably true.
As the sun fell, the family began drinking with much more enthusiasm. The fire had died down and the pig was being served when Harry felt the Dark Lord pull away, the thread disconnecting as he slinked into the trees.
Harry followed him.
He found him just past the chicken coop, near the edge of the property line and far from the continuing gathering. Harry stayed far enough back so the thread didn't react like a magnet, though something told him Voldemort knew he was following regardless.
Harry watched him cast anti-muggle wards, sighed, and left the banana trees he'd been standing in. By the time he reached the Dark Lord, he'd erected the tent and gone inside without looking back at Harry, though he'd announced himself with proximity.
He hadn't lit the tent, dark inside. He'd already closed himself within the bedroom curtains. Harry ignored the 'Leave me alone' cues and pushed through the fabric, thankfully not stuck with magic—which told him Voldemort didn't really mean it.
In bed, fully dressed, though he was in his socks. Hiding his face under his forearms and ignoring Harry in a fully tensed kind of way. Harry only thought about his next idea for a moment, tired and desperate; he just did it. He climbed into the single bed beside the Dark Lord, pressed between the fabric wall and forced to scramble up from the foot end before Voldemort truly reacted. Draping one leg over him to hopefully prevent his probably impending escape with his heart threatening a mutiny.
"What do you think you're doing." He didn't move or take his arms off his face, his tone a warning that Harry disregarded.
"…It's not that big a deal. I'm tired, and I- I'm sick of waking up with a numb arm. No one is gonna know." Harry felt his muscles tense like he was about to flee, "Don't. Just… Stay. I don't want to sleep alone." He had to whisper past the weird lump in his throat and locked an arm around the Dark Lord's waist, tightening his grip with his legs.
Like snuggling up to unappreciative marble, but he hadn't escaped or exploded. So, Harry tentatively pressed his face into his neck, tucked under the Dark Lord's elbow, inhaling. The bliss hit him in the nose first, the lips soon after. Muttering and kissing his neck immediately. "I wish you'd stop trying to kill me."
Voldemort rolled to face him, tucking Harry's head under his chin and sighing, a hum against his lips—pressed to the Dark Lord's Adam's apple.
"You're insatiable. Maybe I won't kill you," he murmured in Parseltongue, snaking one arm under Harry's shirt, the other under his waist, squeezing, "Maybe I will keep you."
He felt what the Dark Lord meant by it, 'keep' as a prisoner was kept, but didn't much care in that moment. Didn't care that Voldemort didn't seem to know whether he'd kill him or not. "Why won't you take your clothes off? I want to feel this everywhere?"
"He is not property," Tom said.
"It's dark in here, if that's what you're worried about. I wouldn't see anything, and I wouldn't look, anyway-" He was deftly rolled to face the fabric wall before he was able to press his face to the Dark Lord's chest and bite his buttons off. His clothes vanished instantly, taking the words out of his mouth.
"Make no mistake, he belongs to me," Voldemort whispered it into his shoulder, holding Harry hard against him—unnecessary with the way he pushed back—trailing a hand down his naked chest.
He rolled his eyes closed and again asked him to take his clothes off. Irritatingly, permanently dressed, and not inside him. He saw the dark grow dimmer from behind his eyelids and opened them to find pitch blackness. Impossible to see.
"And I will do with him as I see fit," biting the back of his neck, gasping when Harry rocked his hips back.
He demanded entry to Harry's mind through the link while he felt the Dark Lord's clothes vanish. Dropped into an ocean of euphoric warmth with full contact. It rendered Tom pliant—allowing Voldemort into their mind to watch him come undone from the inside. His cock pressed to the back of Harry's legs, not quite where he wanted it, blazing heat through him anyway.
No thoughts in his head, though he was keenly aware of the Dark Lord's mind linked with his, pleasure and rage thrumming like ice water at the back of his skull. If he could have summoned words, either in his brain or his mouth, he would have requested to be fucked. Immediately.
The excess bliss was something that he'd wanted but not fully considered. Moaning each time he rolled his hips, almost laughing, hands, hips, legs moving without his direction while his psyche unravelled. Too much and not enough air in his lungs, the sensory deprivation of the pure darkness, and Voldemort's presence in his head, combined with the ecstasy that bled into his back so that Harry could no longer tell where he ended and the Dark Lord began.
It turned out he didn't need words. He asked with his hips, insistent, pushing against him while holding the Dark Lord's arms to his chest as though trying to climb inside Voldemort's skin, deaf to the sounds he himself was making but hyper-aware of him. Each moan won sent fireworks through him, breath on the back of his neck, heart thundering and ringing in his ears, in his chest, against his back.
He could feel the curse, but he couldn't see it; didn't feel himself summoning it. Singing on his skin of its own accord and getting him what he wanted. A hand on his cock and the Dark Lord inside him.
He wasn't lucid enough to register the lack of violence, the way the biting had given way to sucking, kissing, from his neck to his shoulder and back again. The slow roll of Voldemort's hips, languid like he'd lost himself in it—the rage no longer detectable in Harry's mind, only a shared, growing, mind-blitzing pleasure.
(AN: Tom recites 'The Dark Forest' by Edward Thomas. Man, this chapter was so 'Why am I crying several times'. You can find me on Tumblr and Tiktok as dymis—I refuse to use Twitter, and no, I won't call it X, so if you find me there, it ain't me; it's a skinwalker—if you'd like to watch me repost stuff. Possibly snippets of future chapters; if enough of you gather around and make cute baby bird faces, who knows.)