lomonaaeren

Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the end of the story.

Part Three

“If he upsets you, he shall not leave the house.”

Harry swallowed and nodded. He understood the threat beneath the words. It was up to him to make sure that Ron behaved while he was in Malfoy Manor.

Voldemort, who was standing in the doorway of the sitting room with the Floo, abruptly took two quick strides and rested his hands on Harry’s shoulders. Harry stared up into his face, blinking. He didn’t know what had changed the mood so quickly, but—

Voldemort leaned towards him and let his forehead rest on Harry’s, right over the scar. It tingled gently, the way it had been doing lately whenever Voldemort touched it. Voldemort smiled at him, that same bloody smile he had given when they ended their public appearance in the Atrium.

“You are not responsible for him. I will end threats to your happiness. That is all.”

Voldemort claimed a kiss, and then turned and left, before Harry could do anything more than stare at him. And the flames in the Floo were turning green. Harry turned around and slid his hands into his robe pockets.

Ron appeared and stumbled into the middle of the room. He saw Harry and opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Maybe he was overcome by how much Harry looked like a prat in the rich robes Voldemort insisted on draping him in.

Harry swallowed. “Hey, mate.”

“Mate,” Ron whispered back. He took a wavering step forwards, then stopped, looking around at all the gilt and mirrors and ivory in the room. Harry had had more time to get used to it, but he had to admit it was a bit much. Ron wrapped his arms around himself. “So you’re betrothed to You-Know-Who.”

“Yeah.” No sense in softening the blow. After all, although he’d sent an owl to Ron right after he’d made the deal with Voldemort, Harry had announced it in public the next day, not giving Ron a chance to write back.

“I leave and you do that?”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“I’m not saying it was my fault. I said I left and you did that.”

Harry rubbed the back of his neck. “Do you want to sit down?”

Ron nodded jerkily and sank into a large green chair with gilded legs that stood with its back to the fire. He looked at Harry’s face, but his eyes kept darting down to the robes that crowded Harry’s body, the gold-and-opal bracelets around his wrists.

(The bracelets hadn’t been Harry’s idea. Voldemort had simply presented them to him and said that they had wards in them that would keep Harry safe from the kinds of attacks that other frustrated Death Eaters might make).

“Why?” Ron whispered.

Being asked for an explanation, instead of shouted at, was more than Harry had hoped for. He spoke quickly, in case Ron changed his mind. “Because my wand was broken and we had no idea how to destroy the Horcrux. Because we didn’t know where to find the other Horcruxes, either, or how we would have destroyed them. Because Hermione had books from Grimmauld Place with the description of the marriage ceremony in them, and how one partner could influence the other.” He shivered a bit, despite the robes, and tucked his hands into his elbows. “So—that’s it.”

“But you didn’t think that something else would have been better?”

“What something else?”

“Writing to me. Coming back to the Burrow. Going to Hogwarts and seeing if you could make contact with any of your professors and they could help you. Anything other than this!”

Ron’s voice had been rising, and Harry saw a shiver in one of the portraits above the fireplace mantel. He shook his head and said as quietly as he could, “I didn’t want to put anyone else in danger. So I couldn’t go anywhere else. And Snape was at Hogwarts, there was too much chance that he would have caught me if I went there.”

“And you didn’t write to me because I left.”

“Yeah.”

Harry found it hard to look at Ron, but Ron was the one who slumped back in the chair and closed his eyes. “I deserve that,” he whispered. “I could have done something for you, but I didn’t. I left.”

“Well. I said it wasn’t your fault. I meant that.”

Ron gave a bitter chuckle and opened his eyes. “Well, you can say that all you like. But it still partially is.” He leaned forwards insistently. “He’s not upsetting you? Hurting you? He’s treating you decently?”

“More than decently,” Harry said, and lifted his arms so the bracelets and the sleeves of his robes swayed back and forth.

“You know there’s more to it than that.”

Harry swallowed and resisted the temptation to say that he hadn’t thought Ron would see it as more than that. “Yeah. He—yeah.” There was no way that he could tell Ron about him being a Horcrux, both because Voldemort would kill Ron and because he didn’t want to watch the look in his best friend’s eyes change. “He does.”

“Good,” Ron whispered, and bowed his head. “I never thought—you were never meant to sell yourself, Harry.”

“I did what I had to do to survive.”

“I know. And more than that. So everyone else could survive.”

Ron’s voice was accepting, calm, final. Harry felt as though he’d been purged of poison. He sat down cautiously in the chair across from Ron, and met his best friend’s eyes, the way he hadn’t been sure he would ever do again.

Ron smiled at him, and leaned forwards. “So, what’s good to eat around here?”

*

“I hope that you will convince the Dark Lord to use our gardens for your wedding, my lord.”

Harry hid a grimace before he turned around. Narcissa Malfoy stood behind him, in an ice-blue set of robes that made her look lovely and graceful. The moment their eyes met, she curtsied, even though they were all alone in an empty corridor and no one would have known if she didn’t.

The first time I saw her, she looked utterly disgusted by everything around her. And now this.

Harry did his best to smile pleasantly. “Thank you, Mrs. Malfoy. I believe that my—lord is comfortable here, and I don’t believe he was planning to hold the wedding anywhere else.”

“Most excellent.” Mrs. Malfoy curtsied again, which just made Harry want to tell her to stop. He held his tongue, though. “And do you think—you could see your way to including my son in your wedding?”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Malfoy. I don’t understand what you’re asking.”

Mrs. Malfoy delicately wrung her hands, the first time Harry had ever actually seen someone besides Aunt Petunia do that. “It’s simply that Draco has been out of favor since the Dark Lord announced your betrothal, because of the conflicts that he had when you were Hogwarts students. I hope that he could play a role in the wedding, which the Dark Lord has said he will design himself.”

“I’ll ask him,” Harry said. He had noticed that he hadn’t run into Draco, but he hadn’t assumed it was deliberate, just that Draco was probably sensibly staying away from Lord Voldemort’s betrothed. “I don’t know what he’ll say.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

“You don’t have to call me ‘my lord,’” Harry said, because he couldn’t take it anymore. “You can just—call me Potter until we decide on our new last name when we get married.”

Mrs. Malfoy gave him the politest look of disbelief he had ever seen. “I’m sure, my lord, but the Dark Lord might take exception to it.”

And until we’re married, his desires are the only ones that matter, Harry translated to himself. He nodded a little wearily to Mrs. Malfoy. “All right. Then please call me whatever makes you comfortable.”

She gave him one more smile and whisked out of sight. Harry sighed and continued his journey to Voldemort’s room. He would have to ask him about Draco’s participation in their—ceremony.”

The wedding of the Dark Lord and his Horcrux.

Harry slumped against the wall, his eyes closed, as sickness danced through his stomach and his chest. Sometimes it still hit him like this, even though it had been almost a week since Voldemort had told Harry that the curse scar carried a bit of Voldemort’s soul.

Should I have died? Should I have hoped that someone else could track down and destroy the Horcruxes, and not tried to set up this marriage that basically means Voldemort’s going to live forever?

Harry stood with his face pressed against the wood for a second, and then straightened up with a gasp as he forced his shoulders back. No. He had had no idea he was a Horcrux. Whatever little hints Dumbledore had left, Harry hadn’t picked up on them. Why would he? It was a terrible, twisted, nonsensical idea.

Voldemort thinks it’s wonderful. He thinks you’re wonderful.

Harry just closed his eyes as he thought about that. Yeah, Voldemort did, and yeah, Harry didn’t agree, but he wasn’t going to just—kill himself or something either.

He hadn’t known, and he hadn’t made this decision just because he was trying to earn life for himself. But it was as true as it had been a fortnight ago that he wanted to live, and it was true that he wouldn’t do something noble like trying to kill himself now.

For all that he felt tainted, as though someone had reached into his soul and smeared a handful of crushed charcoal all over it.

When he felt able to do so, Harry pulled back from the wall and turned, continuing to walk to Voldemort’s rooms. The rooms he would be sharing, in less than a week.

Harry closed his eyes for another second, but he kept walking.

*

“Come in, dearest.”

Voldemort was lounging on cushions in front of the fireplace with Nagini curled around him, for all the world as if he were some kind of giant serpent himself. Harry let the door fall shut behind him, and said, “You don’t have to do that.”

“Don’t have to do what?” Voldemort arched his neck in Harry’s direction. Harry didn’t think it was his imagination that it moved more fluidly than a typical neck, and the tiny scales patterned under Voldemort’s skin definitely weren’t his imagination.

“Call me darling or dearest or anything like that. I know why you value me. You don’t have to pretend that you’re in love.”

Harry looked around the room as he spoke. Voldemort had the largest set of rooms in the Manor, the one that until recently had belonged to Lucius and Narcissa. There were still traces of the white it had been decorated in, but Voldemort had replaced it with red and black as much as possible. Tapestries and robes and chairs and bedclothes, all of them were those colors.

The bed.

Harry had tried to avoid looking at it, but it drew his gaze anyway, especially with the long spill of red in the middle of it from the pillows. It made the whole thing look like it was soaked in blood.

“I call you those things because I value you.”

Harry turned back to Voldemort. He had lifted a languid hand and was beckoning to Harry. Harry swallowed and walked over to him, sitting on the floor and leaning against his side. As always, Voldemort felt more like a snake than a human, flushed with warmth from the fire instead of from inside.

“I may not love you in the way that you always expected to be loved, but we will be content together. And eventually joyful.”

Harry was silent for a moment, his eyes on the fire. Nagini gave a slow hiss and unwound herself from Voldemort, draping her coils across Harry’s lap. Ever since she had learned that he was Voldemort’s Horcrux, she had acted like this, as though she preferred to rest on another Horcrux rather than anything else.

“You mean it?” Harry whispered at last. “Joyful? Really?”

“Yes, I mean it. I will give you everything you desire. You will lack for nothing.”

Harry relaxed a little. He thought he understood now. It wasn’t really about Voldemort grasping joy and thinking that he could give it to Harry because he was joyful himself, but insisting that Harry would have everything he wanted, even if that meant Voldemort had to warp himself to give it to him.

Harry closed his eyes and listened to the crackling of the fire for a short time. Then he thought he should bring up what Mrs. Malfoy had asked for before he forgot to. “Can Draco be in the wedding?”

“That does not sound like your idea.”

“It’s not, it’s Mrs. Malfoy’s, but I don’t mind one way or the other.”

Voldemort was silent for a short time longer. Harry drew in a breath as slow as Nagini’s movements and let it out. He realized that he didn’t mind if Voldemort told him no. He felt no urgency on the state of the question.

It was nice, to ask but not worry about the answer to that question at all because it didn’t affect him. It was nice to relax and know he would be taken care of.

“I will see it to it that he has a role. A small one. It would not do for him to get ideas above his station.”

Harry hummed and leaned back further against Voldemort, who rearranged himself rather like a snake and coiled around Harry in turn. Harry drifted in and out between waking and sleep, between fire and darkness.

He had made his decision. There was no going back now. And there was some peace in that, even as he thought of himself as irrevocably tainted.

There are at least two people who don’t think so, Harry thought drowsily, his head resting on Voldemort’s chest, his hand resting on Nagini’s scales.

*

They did hold the wedding in the Malfoy Manor gardens, on a night when the stars were almost painfully brilliant overhead. The gardens were deep in snow, and lit with flickering torches of a fire so deep and red that it hurt Harry’s eyes to look at.

He wore red robes, and Voldemort black. They were an incredible contrast against his white skin. The thought startled Harry the first time he had it, and then made him want to shake his head, and then made him sigh in acceptance.

He would be seeing that skin soon, touching it. He should get used to it.

Although there would be a public ceremony for the benefit of the people who still stirred and murmured uneasily about the treaty, this wedding was private, for Voldemort’s Death Eaters and Harry. And one friend. Hermione had asked to come, and Voldemort had granted the request after some long, silent deliberation. She stood off to the side in white robes, in a bubble that offered her protection from the Death Eaters if anyone fired off a curse, her smile soft and painful and wide.

None of the others had asked to come. Harry hadn’t asked them. There was no point. They all knew what was happening.

Draco Malfoy was walking behind Harry, holding up a white crown that he was keeping anxiously in place over Harry’s head. Harry had resisted the temptation to duck or weave just because. Mrs. Malfoy and Mr. Malfoy were waiting with blank faces near the arbor of black roses that Voldemort had made grow.

It was fine. It wasn’t the way that Harry had ever pictured his wedding, but then, when had he had time to picture it?

It was fine.

He walked across the snow to the arbor, where Voldemort already waited. Voldemort had Nagini draped across his shoulders again, and although the Death Eaters formed a large, loose half-circle around them on either side, he had no one standing close to him. It felt very—something. Harry didn’t know what.

He came to a halt in front of Voldemort and nodded to him. Voldemort hadn’t looked at anyone or anything else since Harry entered the gardens.

Voldemort touched his wand to his throat and cast a spell Harry didn’t know, but when he spoke, it turned out to be a modified Sonorus. His voice wasn’t as loud as it would have been with the usual charm, but it echoed throughout the garden, and made some of the shifting people stop shifting. “You are here to witness the joining of the Dark Lord Voldemort and Harry Potter.”

Harry looked up with a swallow of air that he knew was probably too loud—it was painful, too—and began his part, the vows that he and Voldemort had agreed on. “Harry Potter comes willingly to join his life with Lord Voldemort’s.”

More than one of the Death Eaters started, as if they hadn’t known that Harry would speak the Dark Lord’s name aloud, and Draco nearly dropped the crown. Harry checked a sigh. He hoped everything would work out as far as that went. He didn’t want to be responsible for Malfoy getting murdered as part of the ceremony.

Voldemort bobbed his head like a snake moving to the music of a charmer, still never looking away from Harry. “Lord Voldemort grants his hand and his body to Harry Potter.”

Harry echoed the words back, aware of the silver beams of radiance that had begun to form around them. This was the first part of the spell that Hermione had found in those books from Grimmauld Place, ensuring that they couldn’t have sex with or marry anyone else as long as the one they married was alive.

Ensuring they wouldn’t even want to look at anyone else.

This is so weird.

“Lord Voldemort grants his mind and his thoughts to Harry Potter.”

Again, Harry made the same vow, and more bars of silver light joined the first ones in the air. It was going to be painful when they started pressing in.

“Lord Voldemort promises to honor and cherish Harry Potter’s friendships, desires, strengths, and weaknesses.”

As Harry made that part of the vow, he had to hold back a hysterical giggle. Did Lord Voldemort even have friends?

Nagini would count, maybe. Maybe some of the older Death Eaters. Regardless, Harry had no interest in trying to kill them. He had come too far.

“Lord Voldemort promises to give due consideration to Harry Potter’s commitments, morals, and promises.”

Harry sighed a little in relief as that vow passed, and he made the same one. It was the one that would potentially change the most. Voldemort would have to at least wrestle with Harry’s morals, now that he would understand them from the inside out.

“Lord Voldemort promises to grant access to his magic to Harry Potter.”

Harry choked. That vow hadn’t been one he’d thought they would make, even though it had been in Hermione’s books. It would mean they could use each other’s magic, that their power would pool between them and make them both capable of the same feats—casting the stag Patronus, for example. Harry hadn’t thought—

But Voldemort was staring at him intensely, and a few of the guests, like Hermione, were shifting around uneasily the longer he remained in silence.

Harry took a deep breath. “Harry Potter promises to grant access to his magic to Lord Voldemort.”

The air rang as though it was a great gong the vows had struck, and then the silver bars that had gathered around them spiraled towards them and struck through their bodies.

Harry screamed, going to his knees. He heard Hermione saying something worried, heard Draco babbling as he tried to keep the crown in place over Harry’s head, but he couldn’t concentrate on anything but those bars. They were so painful, they were driving through him and into the ground, he would never be free of pain again, he had been wrong to do this, he had come too far to turn back now—

And then it was done.

Harry raised his head, knowing that tears and snot were dripping down his face and then he looked a mess. Hermione was clutching the sides of her bubble, where she must have tried to run to him. The Death Eaters were shaking their heads or pointing or whispering, depending on what they thought. Draco was shaking like a leaf, but held the crown in place.

Harry met his husband’s eyes.

And he knew.

He understood, in a whirl so chaotic that it was like standing in the middle of a snowstorm, what it was like to fear death so much he made Horcruxes, what it was like to enjoy the Cruciatus, how he could look at his Death Eaters and see tools of limited usefulness—

He knew love. He knew the closest thing he could feel to love, for his Horcruxes.

Harry lifted his head, shaking all over himself, and saw Voldemort kneeling in the snow like he was. Then Voldemort looked up and nodded, and Draco started and lowered the crown onto Harry’s head. It felt light, compared to the weight of everything tumbling through him.

“Harry James Potter,” Voldemort whispered, “has become Harry James Slytherin.”

Well. Harry ought to have known that he would choose the name of the ancestor he identified with most. Harry nodded dazedly and forced his way to his feet, crossing the distance between them to take Voldemort’s hand.

Voldemort didn’t kiss him. He had warned Harry that he wouldn’t. He saw no reason to share something like that with the Death Eaters. He turned Harry around, lifting their joined hands between them. Nagini swayed back and forth, and rested her chin on their hands.

“Behold my consort, Harry James Slytherin, the Prince of the Darkness,” Voldemort hissed, and Harry had to hold back a laugh. So he’d adopted some of the ridiculousness that Rita Skeeter had asked about, after all.

The Death Eaters bowed. Hermione hesitated, then did the same thing. Harry sighed a little in relief. He was just as glad that she hadn’t done anything that would make Voldemort single her out for disrespect.

“The wedding is now over,” Voldemort announced, and swept Harry back into the house.

Somehow, Harry wasn’t really surprised when Voldemort pinned his shoulders against a wall next to the door of his rooms and bent over to kiss him.

His lips were still grave-cold. It didn’t matter. The vows bound them far more strongly than any gestures of physical affection ever could. Harry stretched up and kissed him back, Voldemort’s ideas hammering in his head.

“I will enjoy this,” Voldemort said, and drew Harry into his rooms. The bed was before them, and Harry shivered a little, but didn’t try to get away.

No turning back.

*

Harry leaned on the railing of the balcony that was attached to Voldemort’s suite. His arse ached, and he knew a lot about sex that he hadn’t known a few hours before.

But as before, the most overwhelming thing was the new perspective literally forced into his head, circling between his ears like a trapped maelstrom.

He knew. He understood. It was no longer possible to be as innocent as he had been, in any sense of the word, or misunderstand Voldemort.

Harry closed his eyes. He was afraid of death, too, now. He knew exactly what he would lose if he died. This connection. This vow. This sense of living a second life, having a second mind.

He gazed out over the snow on the grounds, and wasn’t entirely surprised when a pale hand fell on his shoulder.

“Come back to bed, darling.”

Harry could believe that Voldemort meant the “darling” now. If only because Voldemort would understand Harry’s notions of friendship and honor and goodness, whatever Harry called by that word.

He twisted around and leaned up to kiss his husband, wondering as he did whose perspective would win out.

They would have to see.

“Yes, darling,” he said, and enjoyed the way Voldemort’s eyes widened before Harry leaned in and kissed him again.

The End.