“I was eating it when I died,” Harry said slowly. “I’d never had a lolly before. I suppose it just... came with?”
Harry frowned. “Magic? That’s what I could do?”
Voldemort inclined his head. “Yes, child. No muggle is strong enough to leave behind an imprint.” Especially such an odd one.
“Huh,” Harry murmured thoughtfully. “So my family wasn’t just awful, then. They had a reason for calling me a freak.”
“What?” Voldemort said softly. His voice was cold. Dangerously so. But... if Harry was already dead, he really had nothing to fear, so there was no harm telling him.
“The Dursleys,” he explains. “My aunt, uncle and cousin. They all hated me - treated me like a servant, more than family - called me a freak. I’m just saying, I suppose it makes sense now.”
The man hums thoughtfully. His eyes are a bright red, intent and gleaming, when they meet Harry’s. “You were a magical child,” he says softly. Then, “Where was it that you lived with this family of yours?”
Never tell strangers where you live was right up there with never tell strangers that we lock you in a cupboard. Harry hesitated, the rules ingrained. “Why?”
“You were magical,” the man repeated. “Every drop of magical blood is special. And they spilled it, didn’t they, child?”
“All kids bleed,” Harry says. Dudley had scraped his knees plenty.
“Most kids are given bandages,” Voldemort said softly. “But you are no longer able to accept them. So consider this a kindness from your Lord, child. I will kill the filthy muggles who dared harm you.”
...
“I’m busy, Potter. Run along and play now.”
The boy squints at him in confusion. “Play?”
“Yes. Play. Or lounge, stare at the sky, whatever you please - just cease pestering me.”
When Voldemort looked up again the brat was gone.
He wouldn’t see him again for weeks.
“You know, when I said stop pestering me, I didn’t mean I didn’t want to ever see you again. I just didn’t wish to be distracted by you.”
Harry shrugged, legs swinging back and forth. “It’s all right, I’m used to being alone.”
“As am I,” Voldemort said. “Hence my annoyance at your continued presence.”
“So you do want me to leave,” Harry concludes, pushing himself off the couch. He lands on the hardwood soundlessly.
“Is that what I said?”
“Sometimes the answer is in what people don’t say,” the seven-year-old said wisely.
“Harry,” he snaps, before the boy can vanish again to Merlin-knew-where. “You can stay.”
Harry blinks at him dubiously, but then shrugs and settles back on the sofa. “Alright. Should I be quiet and pretend I don’t exist?”
“No,” Voldemort says definitively. “You will listen to me. You wish to know about magic, do you not?”
Harry visibly perks up. “I’m allowed to learn?”
The more of these seemingly innocuous questions the boy asks, the more Voldemort wants to murder his relatives. One day, he thinks, he will convince the boy to slip. To give him the address.
“You are expected to,” he says shortly. “I will ask questions at the end.”
Teaching was different than he expected. The boy raised his hand often, and once Voldemort finished his thought and nodded his permission, he asked a question—sometimes several at once. What did a word mean, or why did wizards use Latin for spells, or why did people need wands.
“Your wand is an extension of yourself,” Voldemort lectures. “It is a tool used to channel magic. People can learn to use magic without a wand, but it is never so powerful.”
Harry’s lolly was hanging loosely in his hand. He stared down at it thoughtfully. “I’ll never have a wand,” he says thoughtfully. “I have this, though.”
He meets Voldemort’s eyes briefly before pointing his lolly at the cushion and mimicking Voldemort’s wand motions perfectly. “Wingardium Leviosa,” he says firmly.
Before Voldemort can tell him that such a thing would hardly work, the cushions shot into the air. Harry watches them with open delight, moving his lolly to and fro like a conductor. The cushions follow his antics smoothly, before slowly sinking back into place on the couch. Harry turns to Voldemort, expectant.
The man is watching him cooly, eyes analytical. “Just what are you, Harry Potter?”
What. Not who.
Harry shrinks, but then puffs himself up and glares back. “Just the same old freak,” he snaps, and then vanishes.
When he comes back a month later his hair is longer.
He’s incorporeal, but he’s growing. Ageing. Able to do magic.
Chapters: 31/31
Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage Sex
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | Voldemort
Characters: Harry Potter, Tom Riddle | Voldemort, Severus Snape, Albus Dumbledore, Lucius Malfoy
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Sane Voldemort (Harry Potter), Harry Potter is a Horcrux, Albus Dumbledore Bashing, because Voldemort is the narrator so whadaya expect, Alternate Universe - Voldemort Wins, Slow Burn, Enthusiastic Consent, Possessive Voldemort (Harry Potter), Harry Potter is a Little Shit, Enemies to Lovers, Powerful Harry Potter, Gratuitously Hot Voldemort, Dom/sub Undertones, but don't get it wrong they are EQUALS, Voldemort is weak for Harry's defiant streak but wants to see him kneel, Complete
Series: Part 1 of In which Voldemort has no chill
Summary:
All Voldemort has ever wanted is glory, and the world on its knees. But prophecy tells him of a boy who will be his equal.
Voldemort's single-minded obsession with killing Harry Potter grinds to a halt when he discovers what Harry is. Killing him isn’t an option. But sparing him reveals a weakness Voldemort never knew he had. What begins as a battle for power becomes a struggle with something far more dangerous: attachment. As Harry challenges everything Voldemort believes, the Dark Lord must decide what he truly fears more: death, or love.
This is Voldemort’s story. And some enemies can’t be conquered…only changed.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Harry Potter & Voldemort, Harry Potter & Tom Riddle | Voldemort
Characters: Tom Riddle | Voldemort, Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Nagini (Harry Potter)
Additional Tags: Sane Voldemort (Harry Potter), Identity, Identity Issues, Professor Tom Riddle, Professor Voldemort really but the tags..., Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Book 2: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Horcruxes, Mentor Voldemort (Harry Potter), Parent Voldemort (Harry Potter), not biologically but in ways that matter, Parseltongue, Sassy Nagini
Series: Part 2 of Methods of Humanity
Summary:
Tom Riddle was never taught how to understand children. Learning from scratch didn't seem proper, but it seems to be working so far.
Voldemort retires from Dark Lording to be the DADA professor. And becomes a pretty fucking reliable adult. gold.
