written for the @tomarrymortevents server's purge xl, with 24 hours to write for the prompt 🌲 pine needles 🌲
Pine needles crunched under the steady rhythm of Harry’s feet hitting the dirt, his breath fogging the air with every sighed exhale. The canopy of trees above blocked out even the starlight, leaving the forest near-impenetrable to any unfamiliar with its secrets. And very few people were — the forest was unpopular for a reason, devoid of the views and lookouts that casual hikers relished and without any of the glory that veterans demanded.
But Harry knew the forest like the back of his hand, never in need of trails or signposts; the darkness could only be to his advantage.
The Dursleys were difficult to live with at the best of times. Even as Harry aged out of childish tantrums or naive dreams of familial affection, Vernon and Petunia had little interest in seeing any signs of life from him, and while they’d be happy to keep him occupied with chores for as long as he remained at the house, he found they were perfectly pleased to have him just away from them all day. Harry had made a habit of slipping off to the Forbidden Forest, finding the right trees to climb or the best ways to navigate particularly thorny patches of overgrowth, happily spending hours hanging from branches or digging through the dirt. And while other children might have worried about getting home too late and getting in trouble, Harry had always felt confident in staying out as late as he pleased — if he ever didn’t come home, the Dursleys would probably throw a party to celebrate, blowing out candles to wish that he’d died.
Harry wasn’t a child anymore, but the forest would still always be a treasured form of escape. And when the petty frustrations of the day had begun to overwhelm him, he’d slipped out through the back door of Number 4 Privet Drive, making his way to the wilderness that lay just beside the perfectly maintained suburbia.
He hadn’t quite had a destination in mind, but his feet led him to an old, familiar tree, one he’d climbed all the time in his youth. As he traced the bark, only barely able to pick up on the outline of the trunk in the dim lighting, his hands found the familiar crevices and divots, and still operating on instinct, he lifted himself up into the mess of branches.
And he’d let himself rest there for a while. Time passed differently in the forest, where each minute seemed the same as the last, where the only sign of the passage of time would be the slightest deepening in the night’s heavy darkness.
Harry couldn’t have said how long he had been up in the trees before he heard the quiet crunching of heavy footsteps following his trail.
Nobody else ever went into the forest at night.
He froze where he sat on the branch, moving as slowly and silently as he could to pull himself even further out of sight. His heart hammered in his chest involuntarily, nearly drowning out the stranger’s muffled footsteps, and he worked to keep his own breathing quiet and measured.
The crunching noises stopped.
Around them, cicadas buzzed and clicked in the empty air, one lone, solitary owl hooting from its distant perch. Harry couldn’t hear the sound of anyone else’s breathing, only his own shallow, muffled inhales. The forest was silent for so long that Harry let himself think that perhaps he had only imagined the footsteps, or that maybe the stranger had walked away — even if he hadn’t heard the footsteps leave, the senses were fallible.
Just as Harry was about to move, he heard a sigh from below him.
“Damn,” cursed a male voice, low and smooth. “Lost him again in these goddamn woods.”
The footsteps resumed, pacing back and forth just below where Harry sat.
“Next time,” the man whispered to himself. “That Potter boy will be mine. The next time he wanders off by himself…I’ll just have to follow a little closer, that’s all.”
And the footsteps, louder than they had been originally, crunched their way out of the forest, leaving Harry behind.
written for the @tomarrymortevents server's purge, with 24 hours to write for the prompt 🐍 iridescent scales 🐍
“Hello, beautiful,” hissed Harry to Nagini, watching the snake slither by. Living with Voldemort in Malfoy Manor had been awful at first — Harry hadn’t been so without allies since the Dursleys, leaving him hopeless and miserable about his future.
But to his surprise, Nagini had accepted him instantly, seeking him out almost instinctively when Voldemort left the manor. She was sweet, in her own bloodthirsty way — perhaps Harry would never be able to get the image of her swallowing a poor Muggle whole in front of a crowd of jeering Death Eaters out of his head, but after the hours they’d wasted away hissing about topics as trivial as Nagini’s thoughts on wizarding robes or as serious as Harry’s internal moral code, he’d come to see her as a dear friend.
“Hmph,” sighed Nagini, coiling her way around Harry’s shoulders. He cast a sly lightening charm on her, readjusting her weight on his back — Nagini was heavy, but she was sensitive about Harry commenting on it. “I don’t feel beautiful today.”
“What’s wrong?” frowned Harry, running a comforting hand down her scales. They seemed shined to perfection, glistening a subtle, earthy green — Barty Crouch Jr. must have recently polished her.
“I feel so dull and drab,” said Nagini, flopping her head dramatically onto Harry’s lap and pushing her head into his hand. “Did you see Bellatrix got a spray tan? I wish I could do something like that. Something eye-catching and trendy.”
Harry frowned for a moment, then brightened. “I think I can help you with that, but I’m not sure Voldemort will like it.”
Nagini smiled, fangs flashing. “I can handle him.”
~~~
Voldemort had always had a soft spot for Nagini.
She was fearsome, the menacing picture of a vicious carnivore, inspiring dread in even his most stoic Death Eaters. They made a pretty pair, he thought — she was quite a suitable companion in his reign of terror, matching his bloodthirst and strengthening his image.
And so when he returned to Malfoy Manor, bringing with him a few rogue blood traitors that needed to be interrogated and scared straight, he called upon her, eagerly anticipating the fear she’d inspire in his helpless enemies.
“Come to me, Nagini,” he hissed, relishing the traitors’ frightened shivers at the sound of Parseltongue. “Let’s put on a show for them.”
“You’re going to love this,” said Nagini, an odd hint of childlike glee in her voice.
Before Voldemort had the opportunity to ponder what she could possibly mean, Nagini slithered her way into the room, her scales the most absurd thing Voldemort had ever seen.
Where she normally had average snake coloring, her scales had been charmed rainbow colors, iridescent and flashing, glowing on and off as if part of a lights show for children. The little twirl she performed as she slithered across the floor did nothing to make her seem any more imposing — now, instead of terrifying his enemies, he was giving them a great laugh at the ridiculousness of his man-eating snake’s makeover.
“Who did this to you?” said Voldemort, furious. “How dare they?”
Nagini drew back for a moment, retreating as if hurt. “Do you…not like it? I thought I looked nice.”
There wasn’t a thing Voldemort could do against that heartbroken tone. “How dare they…give you a makeover…without me?” said Voldemort, smiling as convincingly as he could.
Nagini spun again, overflowing with enthusiasm. “I’m so happy you like it — I love it, too!”
And with Voldemort’s approval irrevocable, Nagini’s scales remained decorated and stylish for the rest of her years.
a tomarry gift for the wonderful @valkyrie-chemist for @exquisitetomarrymortcorpse's hallmark holiday fest🎅🎄🎁
written for the prompt: a home renovation unearths secrets
“Ew,” said Harry, nose crinkled in disgust, fingers tightening on the straps of his backpack. “Is that a dead snake pinned to the door?”
Tom sighed, looking over his ancestral home with matching disdain. “Morfin was unhinged, darling. There’s a reason I never introduced the two of you.”
When Morfin had finally kicked the bucket, Tom hadn’t expected to inherit much. He was a disgusting man, living a disgusting life; as far as Tom was aware, he spent his days shitting himself and screaming at the walls of the Gaunt Shack, alone in his madness and barely functional. But nonetheless, as his only blood relative, Tom was lucky enough to be bequeathed Morfin’s sad, squalid property, and while he didn’t imagine there was anything of value to be found there, he’d at least check the place over first.
“So this is where your mother lived,” said Harry quietly, making his way carefully towards the hovel. “Poor Merope.”
Tom hissed a quick instruction to the snake on the door, disarming the wards on the lock and giving him an excuse to ignore Harry’s words entirely. Family was a sore subject for Tom, and always had been; only Harry knew just how twisted the Gaunt family could be, and though Tom trusted Harry with his life, speaking of the details felt wrong, as if by verbalizing the truth of his origins, Tom would curse himself to be more and more like his predecessors.
To be more like his uncle, cruel and wild, poisonous with his every word and every action. To be more like his mother, naive and foolish, driven insane by Morfin’s many lies.
Merope had been normal, long ago, before Tom had ever been born. She’d attended Hogwarts with the other children. She’d made friends and enemies, just as Tom had.
But when she’d finally returned home to be with family, Morfin had twisted her mind entirely, driving her insane with absurd tales. He’d told Merope they were royalty, that they were the true heirs to the Slytherin throne, that if she ever gave birth to a son, the little boy would become king of the entire wizarding world. And while his stories were unbelievable and strange, Merope was weak, weaker than Tom would ever be. Only after hearing Morfin’s ranting and raving day in and day out did Merope begin to fixate on the idea of raising a king.
In her mission to birth an heir, she’d fixated on the poor Muggle boy who lived up the hill, and landed herself in Azkaban for her crimes. Using Amortentia on a Muggle was worse than a breach of the Statue of Secrecy—it was a mind-warping violation of the highest order, one that would leave the helpless Muggle ruined for the rest of his lifetime.
And thus, Tom was born.
With a sigh, Tom stepped through the front door, ushering Harry in to join him. The Gaunt Shack was mostly as Tom remembered it, though Morfin certainly hadn’t been kind to it in the years since he’d last visited. The wooden floors were rotting away, the carcasses of roaches and beetles littering the corners of the room, patchy spiderwebs blanketing the ceiling. Stains littered the wall, of a dubious origin Tom felt no need to examine any further, and Morfin had clearly developed one hell of a drinking problem before his death, with empty glass bottles filling every flat surface.
“Anything you want to keep?” asked Harry, his eyes fixed on Tom’s face. His expression was far too close to pity, and Tom couldn’t stop his lips from twisting into a resentful scowl, even knowing it would give away just how much the sight of the shack had gotten to him.
“Nothing,” said Tom, already ready to leave. “So what did you want to do here, Harry? What was the ‘surprise’ you had planned?”
Harry’s face split into a grin, unexpectedly cheery as he swung his backpack off his shoulders. “I know you’ve been pretty pissed off recently with the Malfoy heir about to be crowned next heir to the Slytherin throne, yeah? Lucius’ coronation is in a month, right?”
Tom scowled, nodding sullenly. Everything about the wizarding world’s archaic system of royalty left a sour taste in his mouth, especially knowing how thoroughly delusions of royal blood had twisted his mother’s mind. Tom would be a better ruler of the wizarding kingdom than any Malfoy could ever dream of, would reshape all of its broken systems and stupid redundancies, but dim, foppish Lucius would take the Slytherin throne instead? He’d once seen Lucius run into a wall because he was too distracted by his own reflection in the glass of a window; the man wasn’t qualified to lead a book club, let alone all of England’s magical population.
“Well, I thought you could get a little anger out here,” continued Harry, pulling out a sledgehammer from his backpack. Tom’s eyes popped open at the sight, completely caught off guard — he’d thought Harry had packed lunch, probably, or maybe a bit of Firewhiskey. “If you don’t want anything from this house, smash it all to bits! Channel all your rage into this ugly shack!”
For a moment, Tom could do nothing but stare at Harry, speechless. Only he would suggest something so Muggle, so animalistically base, but Tom couldn’t deny the satisfying mental image of breaking apart the building with his own hands, destroying beyond repair the ancestral home he’d far surpassed.
Harry really knew him so well; even through his distress, Tom couldn’t stop a smile from softening his face, unwillingly fond.
“That sounds lovely, darling,” said Tom, reaching out for the sledgehammer with no small amount of enthusiasm. “Shall we?”
Harry beamed at him, grabbing his own weapon of choice in hand — a baseball bat, it seemed. “Let’s do it!”
And, overcome with a strange, rabid sort of enthusiasm, Tom began to swing at the ugliest lamp he’d ever seen, relishing in shattering every trace of his ancestry into shards.
~~~
After all of Morfin’s worldly possessions were shattered, crushed, or otherwise mutilated, Tom had made the executive decision that not even the walls of his hovel could be left standing, and though it pushed his rarely used, aching muscles to the brink, he’d begun swinging at the walls with reckless abandon. The shack was far from structurally sound, likely even before Morfin had allowed vermin to nibble at the home’s foundations and walls; with a few good, solid hits, the plaster of the wall had easily crumbled away.
But after a particularly vicious hit to the wall right behind what had once been Morfin’s old bedframe, Tom could swear he saw something glittering behind the crumpled plaster.
“Harry?” he called out, squatting towards the hole he’d left in the wall. “Do you see this?”
Behind him, Harry dropped his baseball bat, turning to Tom with a pleased smile. Harry, of course, had never ceased playing Quidditch even after graduation, joining a local league and playing casually throughout the week. Where Tom was sweaty and his arms leadened, Harry seemed perfectly relaxed, still swinging away with abandon, not even breathing hard.
“You alright?” asked Harry, jogging over. He peered into the hole himself, his eyes widening behind his dusty glasses. “Oh, shit! That looks expensive!”
Harry reached a hand in, grabbing the strange, glimmering object that Morfin must have hidden in the walls.
It seemed to be a necklace — a locket, certainly old, beautifully engraved. Its chain was a thick, heavy gold, and the pendant seemed to be inlaid with glistening emeralds, curving into the shape of a stylized ‘S.’
Tom recognized it instantly. He’d searched for it for years, had read every book about it, scoured every painting
“That’s Slytherin’s locket,” he breathed, entranced. He took it carefully from Harry’s hands, holding it up to the light — every gemstone was perfectly placed, every link of the chain just as the stories had been told. “How? How could it have possibly gotten here?”
Harry placed a warm, grounding hand on Tom’s shoulder, his brow furrowed in concentration. “Maybe Morfin was telling the truth. Maybe you are descended from the Slytherin line.”
He’d lived his whole life resenting Merope, his mother, a woman who’d ruined his life before he’d even been able to walk, who’d forced him to grow up without either parent due to her own delusions. If she’d been right all along, then had he been wrong all along? Should he have responded to her letters from Azkaban, so frequent in his childhood, so rare in his adulthood without any sort of reciprocation to encourage her? Should he have visited, at least once, to hear her out firsthand?
It was nearly too much to bear — Tom couldn’t dwell on regrets any longer, wasn’t cut out for reminiscing about the past. He was ambition, a Slytherin to his core.
Perhaps the locket represented something deeper, something darker, a part of his childhood he’d feared confronting for far too long.
But in the meantime, he could use this for his benefit. What could be a more convincing proof of his lineage than Slytherin’s long-lost family heirloom, passed down only to blood relatives?
“Harry, my darling,” said Tom out loud, a cruel, cutting smile spreading across his face. “How do you feel about ruining Lucius Malfoy’s year?”
written for the @exquisitetomarrymortcorpse server's purge, with 24 hours to write for the prompt 🐈 cat 🐈
“It’s the new generation that’s the problem,” ranted Voldemort, glaring up at the ceiling. “They don’t care about anything. I can’t get them to come to any of our recruitment meetings or read any of our flyers, let alone get them to actually understand my great, noble cause.”
Sharing dreams with Voldemort had been horribly unpleasant at first, Harry’s worst nightmares come to life. Voldemort was a master of manipulation, well-versed in the Mind Arts and freakishly fixated on Harry, and he’d taken every opportunity to taunt and threaten him, trapping the two of them in tense, exhausting arguments. Who knew what horrors he’d be able to inflict from within Harry’s head?
But after a few years of dream-sharing, the novelty had worn off, and though they spent most of their days preparing to vanquish each other, their nights together were peaceful, almost relaxing. Harry found himself looking forward to sharing his sleep with Voldemort, gathering stories he’d enjoy throughout the day just for the joy of retelling them to an engaged audience, and Voldemort seemed to similarly relish the opportunity to vent about the difficulties of being a big, scary Dark Lord. Harry could’ve never imagined Voldemort lying on a sofa with his legs sprawled over the sofa’s velvet-covered arms, kicking his feet and bitching about how kids these days weren’t reading his flyers, but he found that he liked Voldemort better like this — relaxed, honest, and so human.
“We’ve got cellphones now,” said Harry, grinning widely back at Voldemort from his own armchair. “Your flyers don’t hold attention anymore, old man. Try posting online. Film a TikTok dance. Post a cat meme. Prank people.”
Harry expected Voldemort to scoff, but to his surprise, Voldemort’s irate expression turned contemplative.
“You think I’d reach the youth if I simply spoke to them through the Internet?” asked Voldemort, shifting awkwardly on the couch to face Harry with a strange shimmy. “That it could embolden my recruitment efforts?”
Harry shrugged, doing his best to keep a straight face. If he could pull this off, if he could get Voldemort to make a social media account… nothing could be more hilarious. “Depends on the content. Just don’t post cringe.”
Voldemort hummed consideringly. “You’ve given me much to think about, Harry.”
Holy shit.
With a slight smile, Harry changed the subject; for once, he couldn’t wait to wake up, to see if the new day would bring Voldemort posting thirst traps on Instagram or vlogging on YouTube.
Whatever he tried, there was just no way the 71 year old man could possibly pull it off, and Harry would relish in laughing at whatever he tried.
~~~
“I’ll join your Order,” sniffed Draco Malfoy, haughty even in his attempt at friendliness. “I just can’t join the Dark Lord, not anymore.”
Harry blinked, baffled. “What changed?”
With a deep, heavy sigh, Draco held his phone out to Harry. “Just look.”
Lord Voldemort @TheRealLordVoldemort · 1h
Join the Death Eaters today!
Lord Voldemort @TheRealLordVoldemort · 40m
Join the Death Eaters today!
Lord Voldemort @TheRealLordVoldemort · 26m
Join the Death Eaters today!
Lord Voldemort @TheRealLordVoldemort · 10m
Join the Death Eaters today!
A single tear slipped down Harry’s cheek, one he was far too overwhelmed to notice, so absorbed in scrolling through Voldemort’s absolutely atrocious post history.
It was worth it, thought Harry to himself, so giddy he could hardly breathe. All of it. Growing up an orphan. The war. All of it was worth it for this specific moment.
Despite Harry's warning, Voldemort had posted cringe.
Perhaps, finally, the war could be over.
The world didn’t give Tom much in the beginning—not mercy, food or safety—but it did give him names.
Demon, for instance. Evil. Insane. Really, the world was quite generous in this respect: Halfblood. Orphan. Wrong-from-the-start.
There was power in names.
Lord Voldemort came to him like an embrace, armor he never expected to outgrow.
But then, the boy got stuck in his soul, or vice-versa, or whatever it was that had happened—Tom’s stopped questioning by now.
Voldemort was the name that put him back together: he came to regret everything he had ever done by that name.
Now, Harry calls him Tom, and who is Tom to deny him?
But in his own heart, in his soul? He’s done with names. None has ever truly fit. The only thing to call him up from below was the shape of the boy’s lips, the way sound fits in his mouth.
written for the @exquisitetomarrymortcorpse server's purge, with 24 hours to write for the prompt 🍁 harvest moon 🍁
Harry sat in his thatch of leaves in the middle of the woods, squirming in vain in an attempt to get comfortable. He loved the forest, really — he’d spent so much of his childhood exploring its secrets, every tree root becoming an old friend, every trickling stream as familiar to him as the veins on the back of his hand. Town was awful, anyway, with all the horrible stares and whispers following him no matter what he did, no matter how perfectly he acted.
He had given up on any pretense of normalcy long ago, but no matter who he’d pissed off that day or what new and awful rumor had begun spreading around, the forest would always be there, constantly changing in that unchangeable way nature had mastered so effortlessly, ready to tuck Harry into a more magical world, far, far away. He’d felt safe there, comfortable — the forest held its own dangers, of course, but a snarling wolf was far easier to understand than the sneering shop-keeper who constantly brought up his mother, or the giggling girls his age who whispered every time he walked by, or the village chief who only watched Harry with sad, hopeless eyes through his half-moon spectacles.
Today, however, he was not comfortable in the forest.
After all, the townsfolk had bound him to a tree, and no matter how creatively he’d thrashed around, he was well and truly stuck.
Their pretense was ridiculous to begin with — sure, they’d made Harvest Moon sacrifices decades ago to ensure a plentiful harvest, but those ideas were antique. And even then, as far as Harry knew, they never sacrificed humans to the forest beast — just livestock, usually, with occasional fresh produce thrown in as a cherry on top. The scene of the sacrifice, according to local stories, was always nauseating to view afterwards, blood and guts all over the clearing, skin and organs ripped apart with pure force. At the time, the villagers had been comforted by the gore, seeing the enthusiastic enjoyment of the sacrifice as a guarantee of a prosperous season, but as traditions tend to do, the habit of yearly sacrifices had eventually died away.
And even without those sacrifices, the forest beast had kept its distance, only rarely picking off livestock from the farms, seemingly content to leave the humans to live their own silly mortal lives.
There was no reason to begin the practice again. The village chief had just wanted to get rid of Harry, for whatever reason. And after all the shit he’d endured in his community, perhaps he shouldn’t have expected any differently.
As the crunch of leaves sounded from behind him, Harry stilled suddenly, adrenaline spiking in his veins. Would it be worse to have the forest beast itself, with its gnashing, fanged teeth and thirst for blood, or someone from the village there to mock him?
“Harry Potter,” hissed a voice from behind him, unnaturally low and grating, instantly sending shivers down his spine. “I’ve been waiting for you for years.”
Heart hammering in his chest, Harry began to turn his head.
His jaw dropped immediately.
No one had ever told him the forest beast was hot.
Hermione dropped the concealer with a gasp of real shock.
“Harry James Potter! What happened to your neck?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” croaked Harry in reply, mentally cursing the sound of his hoarse voice. He shouldn’t have screamed so much last night, but he hadn’t been able to help the noises that had escaped him.
Hesitantly, Hermione sank to sit beside him, scooping her makeup back up. “Tom really maimed you last night, didn’t he? I can help you cover this up, but really, this is too far. Don’t let him get carried away like this, Harry, not when you’re the one who has to bear the consequences.”
Harry nodded miserably. “He was just so eager. I couldn’t say no, not when he was having so much fun.”
Sympathetic, Hermione rubbed his shoulder. “Well, I can’t say I like seeing you in such a sorry state, but I’m happy for you. I know the two of you have been dancing around your feelings for each other for far too long – you deserve to finally be on the same page about how much you love each other. Just see if he can be less aggressive with his hickeys in the future, perhaps?”
“Hickeys?” asked Harry, blinking up at Hermione.
“Yes, hickeys,” responded Hermione slowly. “The bite marks on your neck?”
“Oh, those aren’t hickeys,” responded Harry, sounding genuinely appalled. “He was drinking my blood for a ritual he’s trying out. I’m not into him like that, Hermione, honestly. We’re just friends. Completely platonic. And I wasn’t turned on at all by him sucking on my neck, either. Didn’t even blush. You’re being crazy, really.”
Hermione sighed audibly as Harry babbled on, bracing herself for another long, tortuous month of enduring Harry and Tom’s mutual denial.
Boys will be boys.
Harry let a lazy grin spread across his face, and Tom, reclining on the now-sweaty sheets of their hotel room’s king bed, beamed back at him.
This had been inevitable from the moment they’d met – though it had been stressful for Harry to push Tom away from mass genocide and towards less bloody pursuits, they were happy together now. Tom was enjoying playing politics, at least for now, and Harry was more than willing to make the sacrifice of attending the dull, never-ending cycle of pureblood balls and Ministry fundraisers that had become his life.
They hadn’t slept together until now, though, when the moment was finally perfect – both on a work trip to Paris, overtaken by the romance of the city, unable to resist finally giving in to the tension that had simmered between them for far too long.
And now, with a deep-seated contentment so rare in his insane life, Harry let his eyes drift closed, pleased to sleep beside the man he’d loved for so long.
“Ah– Harry,” began Tom sheepishly before Harry could get too settled. “Would you mind if I played a bit of white noise? Just for some ambiance to help me sleep?”
Harry didn’t bother opening his eyes, just burrowing further into his pillows and waving his hand in a vague agreement.
Before jolting up out of bed at the sound of distant screams and moans of agony, hand grasping at his wand instinctually. There seemed to be no threat at hand – just Tom by his side, his breathing falling into a slow, steady rhythm.
“This cannot be your white noise, Tom,” muttered Harry in horror, disturbed despite himself. “That’s so fucked up. This cannot be what puts you to sleep.”
Tom’s only response was an answering snore. Perhaps Harry still had more work to do on his redemption crusade.
