Never going to use this, but it was kinda a cute idea, even if I've forgotten what it was based on.
Voldemort’s smile is a wicked, terrible thing across Tom Riddle’s face. “Perhaps if you used your brain, your mudblood wouldn’t have lost use of two fingers.”
The worst part, Harry will muse later, is that he is genuinely hurt by the cutting remark. He'd been lulled by Voldemort’s false flirtatious and quick wit. Any compulsion to compliment brought on by the emerald lining of the Dark Lord’s robes is effectively banished.
Harry wore this colour for a reason. To remind himself. To stop himself, because he’s been getting too fond of Voldemort-as-Riddle, too friendly with a man who was only kind when he had to be.
They’d been using their colours like a game, a subtle war of punishment and amusement.
It doesn’t feel like a game anymore. Harry won't follow the steps of this purposeless dance any longer. Harry stands and turns away.
“Stop,” Voldemort commands sharply, his frustration at the dismissal is biting. “Where's your fight gone, Harry?”
Harry glances at him over his shoulder to see the moment Voldemort’s robes shift to the same crimson as Harry’s.
The compulsion tugs at him, urging Harry to spin on his heel and return to Voldemort’s side, because there are so many things he could say, words that he knows would land and cut just as sharp and brutal as Riddle’s accusation.
He meets red eyes and knows that he could decimate Lord Voldemort, because he’s come to know Harry, but that goes two ways.
Voldemort who stands at the table now sans glamour, stiff and pale, jaw clenched. Furious Harry isn’t playing along. That he’s resisting the curse.
Harry, head pounding, hands shaking, teeth grinding, leaves.
“What was that?” demands Voldemort the next day. Harry smiles at him tightly, entirely false.
“I needed the reminder,” he says.
“You—“ Voldemort’s lips purse. “You ignored the compulsion. That shouldn’t be possible.”
Harry rolls his eyes. “With a bit of motivation, anything’s possible.”
“And painful,” Voldemort spits.
Harry raises a brow. “Well yeah, but I think you’d enjoy hearing about that too much.”
“You forget yourself,” Voldemort hisses. “Forget what I can still feel—”
Harry purses his lips. “Maybe you shouldn’t have been a dramatic bitch and changed your robes, then,” he says sharply. “It was clear I was leaving.”
“Still the same brainless, self-sacrificing little hero.”
None of it registered as a compliment. Harry smiled at the momentary bafflement that rose in Voldemort.
“And I was told you’re ever-so good at flattery. Let me show you how it’s done, if you want things that are taken as compliments but meant as insults. You're ruthless,” he says, voice silken in a way Voldemort never heard from him before. “You are absolutely devastating in pursuit of what you want. Your aptitude with manipulation is only matched by the breadth of your ruinous charm,” Harry quirked a smirk, “and smarm, you absolute prat.”
The insult did little to temper his back handed flattery, effective from the moment the word ‘devastating’ had curled into Voldemort’s ears.
