lomonaaeren

Thank you for all the reviews!

Part Two

“What’s that on your neck, Harry?”

Harry knew that his hand flew up far too guiltily to the bruise on the side of his neck. He lowered it a second later and cleared his throat, but Dad had already noticed and was practically bouncing up and down in his chair.

“You have a boyfriend! Who is it, Harry? Spill, spill, spill, spill, spill, spill, spill—”

“Stop being so childish, James. Harry will tell us when he’s ready.”

Despite the way that Mum swatted the back of his father’s head and smiled at Harry, though, Harry saw the same curiosity in her face. Harry sighed and leaned his head back on the wall behind his chair, closing his eyes.

“Don’t you want to tell us, Harry? Come on, you know we won’t care if he’s pureblood or Muggleborn or half-blood. Or Muggle or Squib, for that matter.”

What if he’s the Dark Lord of Britain, proponent of all you despise?

But that wouldn’t be accurate even if Harry confessed it to them. Yes, the Dark Lord had left that mark there. But he wasn’t Harry’s boyfriend. He was his casual lover, who was possessive in bed but never communicated with Harry outside of that.

They had promised to see each other at the Ministry gala on Saturday, of course. But that still—didn’t mean much.

It won’t last. He’s only fascinated because you’re new and maybe because you’re young and the son of his political enemies. When you stop being an entertaining novelty, then you’re going to be gone, and he’ll sleep with someone else.

Oddly enough, that restored Harry’s balance. Yes, he was sleeping with the Dark Lord of magical Britain, but so what? Lots of people had.

He was one more in a nameless stream. And that let him smile at his mother and say, “When I feel more comfortable talking about him, then I’ll tell you.”

Dad sulked, but Mum nodded and smiled at Harry and asked him to pass the scrambled eggs, and that was the end of the subject for the day.

*

Voldemort was scanning the room for Harry the second he stepped into the over-decorated Ministry space. He discovered that Harry was leaning against a wall with a drink, talking to a balding man with dark red hair who must be a Weasley.

Yes, that was right. There was a Weasley who was the head of a department, which one Voldemort couldn’t remember right now, and another who worked as an assistant of some sort in the Department for the Control of Magical Creatures. Voldemort didn’t much care about that, although he wrinkled his nose at Harry’s choice of conversational partners.

Then again, a son of the Potters had surely been in Gryffindor. And the Weasleys filled that House to the brim, so it made sense that Harry would be acquainted with them.

Voldemort wanted to make his way over, snatch Harry from Weasley, and bend him over the couch he knew in an out-of-the-way alcove. But he had called for discretion himself, so for now, he turned away and took a glass of champagne from the nearest floating tray.

He couldn’t resist one glance over his shoulder, and he did surprise Harry with wide eyes and a blush staining his cheeks.

Satisfied, Voldemort joined a conversation between Bellatrix and her sisters on the proper way to integrate Muggleborn children into the magical world, and silently counted the minutes until he could scoop up his prize.

*

“Doesn’t it…matter to you?”

Harry’s voice was strained, he knew that. His neck was strained. At the moment, he was draped over a low couch that the Dark Lord had somehow Apparated them to even though there was supposed to be no Apparition in the Ministry, and he was craning his neck to see the Dark Lord.

Who was on his knees.

Between Harry’s legs.

It was as surreal as some of the twins’ best pranks.

“Does what matter to me?” the Dark Lord asked. He slid his hands into Harry’s robes and touched the buttons nearest his groin. They disappeared. The Dark Lord made a hissing noise Harry already knew to be one of satisfaction and shook the folds of his robes back.

“That I’m a—a political enemy. Son of political enemies. A Gryffindor. Low-class. A half-blood. Not subtle.”

“Are you a political enemy, then, Harry? My political enemy?”

The Dark Lord’s voice was low, purring, as if he were a great cat rather than a great snake. Harry stared at him, filled with a hard, dazzling light, and then the Dark Lord leaned forwards and took Harry in his mouth.

Harry’s head banged hard against the couch as he drove it back. He arched and cried out, “My lord!”

Then the warm mouth was gone, and Harry reached downwards, blindly scrabbling, trying to get it back. He felt hard fingers close around his wrist, and then the Dark Lord said, half-hissing, “What have I told you?”

“Voldemort. You want me to call you—Voldemort.”

“Yes. Do it.”

Harry gasped out and said, “Voldemort.”

The mouth returned, and this time, the warmth spiraled around Harry and up into his body, gripped him and shook him. Voldemort’s skin was always cold, but it seemed that his mouth could more than make up for that. Harry’s cock shifted back and forth, his mind exploded into fireworks, and he came with a sob.

A second later, humiliation overcame him in a rush that was more than cold enough. Harry rolled to the side and buried his face in his hands. He managed not to gasp out an apology, but he waited, sick to his stomach, for the Dark Lord to get up and leave.

“What are you doing?”

Strong, chilled fingers rose and pried Harry’s hands away from his face. Harry stared into those red eyes and answered, as thoroughly lost from any temptation to lie as he was from any sensation of shame at sleeping with his parents’ enemy. “I—I came too fast. I ruined it. I didn’t say anything. I’m sorry.”

“I consider it a tribute to my skills.”

And then Voldemort was flowing up the body, draping himself over Harry as strong and muscular as a serpent, and Harry opened his legs, and Voldemort was there, and he must have cast the preparation spells without Harry hearing them. The first thrust into his body was transcendent, the second radiant. Harry flung his head back with a sob.

“I want you just as you are.”

The words buzzed in Harry’s ears and made half of no sense, but by then, he was too caught up in the cock rutting in him to care.

*

“What do you think of Muggleborns?”

Harry’s eyes came flying open. Voldemort leaned over him, his left arm still cradling Harry, the other one propping him up. His cock still lay within Harry. It never became entirely soft, but Harry didn’t seem to mind.

“You’re asking me this now?” Harry’s voice was a croak as harsh as a raven’s.

“Why not?” Voldemort stretched and watched Harry with amusement. He didn’t truly know why he had asked the question, but it was a diversion, and Voldemort was not expected back at the party for another half an hour. “Tell me.”

Harry breathed for a long moment, looking at the wall. Voldemort smoothed a hand down Harry’s hair, enjoying the way it sprang back up beneath his touch. He looked quickly at the ward that blocked the alcove off, but it was strong still, and anyone who might miss him from the gala would know better than to ask.

“I think they’re perfectly fine.”

“Perfectly fine?”

“Well, yeah. They’re born to Muggle parents. They can’t help that. And my mum is one. So if you’re going to argue that they should be tortured to death or whatever, then I can’t agree with that because I wouldn’t have been born if my mum was killed. Not to mention that one of my best friends is one.”

“Hermione…Granger.” Voldemort had to strain his mind to recall the girl Harry must mean. “She has changed her name to Dagworth-Granger, from what I remember.”

“So?”

“So it would seem that she does not agree with you that Muggleborn heritage is not something to be ashamed of.”

Harry laughed a little. Voldemort admired the sleek lines of his throat and felt his cock stirring back to life. “Hermione can do whatever she wants to make life easier for herself. I’m not going to interfere. But I still think Muggleborns are fine and they have nothing to be ashamed of.”

“They do not know about our world until eleven years old.”

“And whose fault is that?”

“What?”

“The Ministry made the decision not to inform them. And Hogwarts did the same thing, before you took over.” Harry yawned, cracking his jaws in a way that Voldemort should not have admired. He did, for how unselfconscious it was, but he should not have. “So they don’t have any way of knowing who they are or what they can do. It’s not like pureblood children are born with some instinctive knowledge of it, either. If you took a pureblood child and left them to be raised by Muggles, they would be identical to a Muggleborn at eleven.”

Voldemort stared at him in bafflement. Of course, what Harry was saying made sense. It was simple. And yet it struck Voldemort with the force of a revelation.

How long has it been since someone dared to speak the simple truth to me?

“Are you okay, my lord?”

Voldemort pinched Harry’s shoulder sharply, making him yelp. “I have told you what I wanted to be called. I am not using the word Mudblood so as to spare your sensibilities. You can do something as simple with me.”

“Yes, right, Voldemort,” Harry gasped. His mouth was open, and his arse was still open, too, around Voldemort’s cock. Voldemort eased closer, casting another lubrication spell as he hardened fully.

“Fuck, you feel so good.”

Voldemort leaned nearer to kiss Harry, and shifted so that he could ride him more comfortably, and he forgot about the conversation they had had for a time.

But not completely.

*

“Harry, come on. Tell us.”

Harry had once thought that Ron was the champion of whinging, but Ron had nothing on Hermione when she really wanted to know something. Harry sighed and shook his head a little, leaning back in his chair to prop his feet on his friends’ kitchen table. Ron poked at his ankle. Harry ignored him. “Hermione, there’s really nothing to tell.”

“Someone is making you disappear from Ministry galas and leaving bruises on your neck and there’s nothing to tell?”

Harry watched Hermione in amusement. She was leaning forwards in her chair, her hair almost bristling around her, the way it hadn’t since they were children. He wondered what she would say if he told her about the Dark Lord, but…

But even though Hermione had actually commented on Voldemort disappearing from the gala this weekend for almost an hour, she obviously hadn’t connected it in any way to Harry’s disappearance. Harry wasn’t in danger of her guessing.

And he didn’t want to deal with what his friends would say. The thing he had with Voldemort was a little island in the sea of politics that existed for the two of them, and no one else. Harry didn’t want to deal with it any more than that. Simple.

“It’s a casual thing, Hermione.”

“It’s casual when he gave you that?”

Harry flushed. He had actually almost forgotten about the thin bracelet adorning his wrist. It was made of linked squares of delicate golden mesh that would expand easily to any wrist size, but also wrapped Harry’s snugly. Enchanted, obviously. There were runes on it for warmth and protection against common jinxes and to prevent anyone from stealing it.

It had appeared with a common post owl in the Ministry the other day. Harry had put it on at once, and already he was so used to wearing it that he had worn it over to Ron and Hermione’s house without thinking much about it.

“Yeah. It is.”

Harry thrust his chin into the air, daring them to argue about it, but Hermione had never meant a challenge she didn’t want to talk through. She snorted and leaned back with her hand combing through her hair. She wore it most of the time in the style of Jacinth Dagworth-Granger, a portrait who hung in the Ministry’s entrance hall. She didn’t seem to notice she was tugging it out of the neat style now, though. “Harry, do you know how expensive that is?”

“I mean…fairly expensive, of course. It’s gold.”

“Mate, it’s the runes that make it expensive, not the metal,” Ron interjected. Ron had taken Ancient Runes and Arithmancy at Hogwarts, along with Hermione, while Harry had concentrated more on Defense and Curses and Dark Arts. “There’s actually a rune sequence on there that would prevent anyone from Apparating you anywhere against your will, did you know that?”

Hermione squawked and lunged across the table, grabbing Harry’s wrist. Harry tried to pull his hand back, but she had hold of it. “There is! Oh, sweet Merlin!”

“Why is that such a—I don’t know, an expensive rune sequence? A delicate one?”

“Because a rune sequence to prevent Apparition is common, but one that invokes your will and enables you to distinguish between someone trying to Apparate you without permission and someone who has it?” Hermione twisted Harry’s wrist to the side so she could look at the runes, ignoring his small noise of discomfort. “This is—this is a serious gift, Harry. The kind of gift a lot of purebloods would make a courting one.”

Harry choked. Ron pounded him companionably on the back.

“You know that I don’t hold with all that pureblood nonsense, Hermione,” Harry said, when he could breathe. Hermione had chosen to try and adapt herself to pureblood society outwardly while retaining her core beliefs, but Harry had never wanted to. “I’m not going to—this is casual. He said so.”

“Maybe he said that, but he’s changed his mind, and he’s trying to court you delicately so that you don’t run away,” Ron said, and then glared at Harry and Hermione when they gaped at him. “What?”

“That was strangely insightful of you, Ron.”

“I can be insightful all day long, Hermione!”

Harry rolled his eyes and ignored his friends’ argument, staring again at the bracelet. He had never once hesitated about accepting it, but he did wonder if this meant that Voldemort was more serious about him than Harry had thought.

Or is it just because he’s the Dark Lord and something that would be incredibly expensive and cost lots of favors for someone else is something he can commission by waving his hand?

Harry relaxed. Yes, that was it, of course. Voldemort gave elaborate gifts because to him, they weren’t elaborate. They were no more of an effort to commission than a simple silver bracelet without runes was for anyone else.

Yes. That was it.

That was it, because if it wasn’t…

Harry had no idea how he would have dealt with the Dark Lord deciding to court him, because he doubted just claiming he didn’t follow pureblood traditions would get him out of it.

*

“I see you are wearing the bracelet.”

Voldemort didn’t manage to keep the smugness out of his voice, and didn’t really try. Harry flushed and covered the bracelet with one hand, only it squeezed and flowed past his hand, so delicate was the gold. That, of course, was also charming.

“Yes. It’s—it’s wonderful, Voldemort. Thank you.”

“Do you know the significance of the runes?”’

“Warmth. Protection. Anti-theft runes. And a sequence that won’t allow someone else to Apparate me without my permission.” Harry ducked his head, his lashes fluttering over his brilliant eyes. “Which is apparently a big deal. Thank you.”

“I would like to give you something else.”

Harry looked up at him, licking his lips. They were sprawled on Voldemort’s bed in Malfoy Manor, and Voldemort had cupped a hand behind Harry’s neck, holding his head up so that he could admire the line of his throat. “What is it?”

Voldemort took out the slim ivory circlet that he had designed that morning with a few flexes of his magic. Harry took it, blinking. “Is this a crown?”

“Too big, my darling,” Voldemort said, and enjoyed the way that delicate pink slid all over Harry’s skin. “For your throat.”

Harry flushed a harder red. “A collar,” he croaked.

“Indeed. This one with much the same runes as the bracelet, and one more.” Voldemort traced the rune on the front of the collar, and Harry turned it around so that he could see it, his hand fumbling over the latches that would hold the collar around his neck. His fingers were shaking. Voldemort, so close to him that he could feel Harry’s every breath, was sure that it wasn’t with fear.

“I don’t recognize this one.”

“It ensures that only I can take the collar off, as the one who made it.”

Harry swallowed. That was not a sound of fear, either. “You—you made it? And you want to—to collar me?”

“Yesss,” Voldemort said, letting Parseltongue trail into his voice. He was rewarded when Harry gave a little moan, apparently unable to take his eyes from Voldemort’s mouth. “Only when we are alone together, as it would regretfully not serve the purposes of discretion if you wore it outside my rooms. But when we are…”

“I’m—yours?”

“Yes,” Voldemort said, and slid the collar around Harry’s throat, not clasping it shut yet. He held Harry’s eyes, and watched them grow wider and wider, more and more brilliant. He smoothed his fingers back and forth. “Will you allow me to latch it, my darling?”

“You—made it yourself.”

“I did say that. You are not stupid, Harry. You must be able to guess what it means.”

“I know the bracelet might be interpreted as a courting gesture,” Harry whispered. He was breathing fast. His throat bobbed inside the collar, and Voldemort thought he had never seen a more enchanting sight. The sight as he had imagined it while he was making the collar burned to ashes in the face of the reality. “I just never—this implies something permanent. Beyond that. I don’t know what the collar means other than that.”

“In ancient times, wizards and witches exchanged such collars as a proposal.”

Harry stared at Voldemort, very satisfactorily dazed. “You can’t want to marry me. You just can’t.”

“Alas, I must admit that for the moment, I cannot. You will only wear the collar when we are alone. But I wanted you to know how serious I am, yes.”

“Why? I was just a casual fuck for you. I know I was. And now—”

“You have not been casual in the sense of disregarded since that first night. Only casual in that I did not make a commitment. And this is still a gesture of my desire for you that cannot be worn outside our rooms. Will you wear it?”

Silence. Harry’s eyes darted back and forth between Voldemort and the collar. Voldemort found himself holding his breath, and expelled it, annoyed. He would live if Harry did not accept this gift.

Even though Voldemort had crafted it of his own magic. Even though he would destroy it if Harry did not take it, because he could not imagine anyone else wearing it, holding it with their filthy hands, clasping it around their unwashed necks—

Harry took it gently from him, and it went around his throat with the sound of the latch closing.

Voldemort rolled Harry over with a hungry snarl and slid into him, still stretched and slick from the time before. Harry’s hands clenched down on Voldemort’s arms, trembling, while his throat warbled with his cry.

He is mine. For here, and now.

Voldemort knew himself well enough to realize that he would not be content with that for long.

And then his thoughts dissolved and became like honey in the wake of the warmth of Harry’s arse.

*

Harry lay underneath Voldemort, who was draped over Harry in that coiling, snake-like posture he so often used. Normally Harry would have been asleep too, after the power of an orgasm like that, but he lay there while his brain whirled and the collar rose and fell with his breathing, not constricting his neck but definitely there.

How can I…

But he had accepted, and he knew that he would wear the collar as long as Voldemort met him like this. Wear the bracelet longer than that, since Voldemort hadn’t said that it violated the discretion he’d demanded or shown any sign of asking for it back.

Harry touched the collar and closed his eyes. He had been all right having casual sex with the Dark Lord, because he was the Dark Lord. He had many lovers. He was in a position of power that Harry had no interest in trying to compete with. He knew all that. He understood all that.

But more than that…

Harry knew himself, and casual sex wasn’t what he would want out of this if it continued. He could fall in love. He could want to wear that collar openly.

You can’t want it. You can’t have it.

Harry spent a few endless minutes working, with the rudimentary Occlumency that was all he’d ever managed to learn, corralling his emotions. When Voldemort stirred, Harry met his eyes and smiled at him.

He didn’t flinch as Voldemort took the collar off, even when Voldemort’s fingers lingered for a moment in the hollow of his pulse. Voldemort stared at him, and his eyes were hungry.

But he needed someone who could stand at his side, openly, and play the politics of the Ministry, and Harry wasn’t that person.

He took Voldemort’s hand in his own, and squeezed, and let go.