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“Seeing each other two days in a row? Why Harry, it’s enough to give a wizard ideas.”
“What were you thinking?” Harry hisses the moment Voldemort appears, unimpressed by his attempt at levity.
Immediately after the scene at breakfast (and once he’d recovered from choking), Harry had dashed off a letter to Voldemort demanding to meet that evening. He supposes he should be grateful the other man showed up, but he’s spent all day alternately being grilled by his friends about the treaty terms and hiding from said friends. He’s a little strung out, to say the least.
“That you apparently missed my magnificent presence so much that you couldn’t endure one day without seeing me,” Voldemort teases (teases!) smugly.
“That’s not what I mean and you know it. The treaty, the–” He flails for a word that isn’t ‘marriage’ and comes up short. “Why??”
“The war was growing tedious and I could achieve my ends and preserve the magical population by taking a more political approach,” Voldemort replies, tone flippant like this is obvious, like this makes any sense. “But if you and your people are uninterested in negotiating for peace with me, then I will continue as I have done.”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. But…” Harry says, hesitating as he tries to find the right words. “The peace treaty… We don’t have to get married for it to happen. If you don’t want to.”
“Are you attempting to dissolve our engagement, Harry Potter?”
“Wh–” Harry wheezes. “It was a toy ring! I put it on you for a laugh! I didn’t realise it was that finger!”
“How briefly the romance lasts,” Voldemort mockingly laments.
“What romance?! And why on earth are you going along with this?” Harry feels a bit like his head might spin off his shoulders, trying to keep up with the other man’s mercurial mood.
Voldemort gives him a mildly exasperated look, which is rude, frankly. None of this has made much sense since they went to the fair, but this is about as wild a deviation from the expected course of things as he can imagine.
A stiff breeze wends its way through the park, rustling leaves and stirring loose dirt into the air around them. Harry shivers a little, regretting coming here in only a t-shirt. The muggy heat of earlier in the day had faded sharply since the sun went down, and Harry wraps his arms around himself as much as he can without seeming defensive.
A soft weight falls on his shoulders, blocking the wind and loosening the tension in his shoulders. Voldemort is tucking his cardigan – which he had been, until moments ago, wearing – around Harry. As the other man tugs the shawl collar up to protect Harry’s neck, he begins to protest. “But you’ll be co–”
“Indulge me,” Voldemort says, though it’s definitely more of a demand than a request. “I so rarely feel the urge to be kind, it would be a shame to waste it.”
Harry slides his arms into the too-long sleeves, cuffing them once and pulling the cardigan around himself more tightly. He can feel Voldemort’s lingering warmth held in the wool, and with his head tilted down as he adjusts the sleeves he catches a faint scent. He draws the collar up to give it a surreptitious sniff. It’s a nice scent. Nothing really discernable to him – clean, a little reminiscent of the Hogwarts library. Pleasant.
And of course Voldemort catches him with his nose pressed to the collar, because Harry can’t be smooth ever. Thank Merlin Voldemort seems to find it amusing, rather than creepy – he doesn’t fancy having to explain to the others that the offer of a peace treaty was revoked because he was sniffing Voldemort’s clothes.
“So…” Harry blurts, an attempt to distract from his awkwardness. “You. You’re okay with the. The marriage bit?”
“I am.”
“The marriage to me bit?”
Voldemort’s tone turns a little snappish. “I would not have included it as a requirement if I did not want it.”
Right. That makes sense. (Insofar as any of this makes sense…)
“Will that be an issue?” Voldemort asks softly, in the way that tends to spell danger.
“Er. Well. I don’t want to jeopardise the peace talks, believe me. But…” Might as well be blunt. “I want more than a political marriage. I want to spend my life with someone I can love, someone who’ll love me. I don’t think I’d survive being tied to someone who barely tolerates me.”
Voldemort gives him a look of fond exasperation, as though he’s said something rather dim.
“I am not doing this for the sake of peace, Harry.”
“You’re not?”
“No. I’m doing this because you’ve been mine since before you were born. This is simply another expression of that.”
Harry narrows his eyes at the other man. “Great. So you want to own me, like some sort of trophy?”
“Just because I am possessive does not make you a possession,” Voldemort says, which sounds an awful lot like he’s splitting hairs. But then again, Voldemort had always clearly stated that Harry was his alone to fight and kill.
“What made you change your mind about killing me?”
If Voldemort is thrown by the semi-non-sequitur, he doesn’t show it.
“You invited your mortal enemy to ride a Ferris wheel with you. Not with any ulterior motivation – for the simple joy of sharing the experience with someone else for whom it would be unique.” Voldemort stares at him curiously. “I don’t think you understand how unusual that was.”
The man gently grips his chin and tilts his face up until their eyes meet. His gaze is serious, and warmer than Harry would’ve thought possible. “I will not lie and say that I love you. I have no familiarity with the emotion, so it’s possible I will never love you. But I promise I will treat you well. You will want for nothing that is in my power to give.”
“Oh,” Harry says, hushed.
“Is that sufficient?”
“I– uh. Yeah.” Eloquence personified, he is. As Voldemort draws his hand back from Harry’s face, he finally notices. “You’re still wearing that ring?”
“Of course,” Voldemort says. “A better ring is still required, but that does not mean I will relinquish this one in the meantime.”
Harry releases a hysterical little giggle and stumbles back until he bumps into the swing set, opting to take a seat on the closest swing and consider the reality he lives in is one where Voldemort has worn a gaudy toy ring around for more than twenty-four hours. As a sign of their engagement. Which he apparently wants. Bloody hell.
He startles and almost topples to the ground when he feels a light shove to his back. “Wha–?”
“Is this not how one uses a swing set?” Voldemort says, deadpan, as he pushes Harry on the swing again.
And Harry decides to stop trying to make this night fit some established script. For Merlin’s sake, he’s calmly discussing his marriage to the man who murdered his parents. (That should probably mean something more to him than it does.) Perhaps this is the new norm for their interactions, and he’s just being slow on the uptake.
He starts pumping his legs to assist Voldemort in creating momentum, the firm touch on his back sending a little thrill through him each time as it pushes him higher and higher.
Harry had liked to swing in the little park by the Dursleys’ house whenever he could escape his chores and Dudley long enough. It was his first experience with the weightlessness, the feeling of defying gravity, the wind in his hair and pleasant burn in his thighs that he’s now come to associate with flying. It’s been years since he last did this. A reminder of one of the few simple joys he’d had in his childhood. He can feel the smile bloom on his face.
Once he’s high enough, getting close to level with the bar, Voldemort sits on the swing beside him and pushes himself lazily back and forth. Their eyes meet occasionally, and Harry feels a flutter in his stomach at the sight of Voldemort’s content look.
He eventually stops pumping his legs and lets himself drift to a slow stop, looking up at the sky. Not many stars visible from here. “How did this happen?” he asks, wondering if the other man knows.
“I don’t rightly know, though I’ve spent hours considering it,” Voldemort admits. “None of this should be possible. By all rights, I should not have shown up that first night – or I should have capitalised on your vulnerability and killed you. But I did meet you, and I didn’t kill you,” he says.
“Ta for that, by the way.”
Voldemort huffs a laugh and Harry can’t help but stare. If someone had told him he’d be sitting on a swing set with Voldemort joking about death six months ago, he’d’ve advised them to check into St. Mungo’s. But here they are – and he’s not sure he wants to be anywhere else.
“And, counter to all logic, it appears to have been the most auspicious decision I’ve made in a very long time,” Voldemort says wryly, staring out into the darkness of the nearby street. “For years now, I’ve felt like I was swimming against the current, constantly fighting for every bit of power I gained. Even magic, which has always been as easy as breathing for me, had begun to resist my will.
“This feels… right, in a way little has for me,” Voldemort says. “And I’m not willing to give that up, now that I have it.”
Harry’s hands squeeze tightly around the chains of the swing, his throat feeling tight – but it’s not as though he would know what to say even if he could speak. The enormity of all this weighs down on him suddenly, and he’s not sure he can bear it without buckling.
He hadn’t forgotten the reality of Voldemort when they’d gone to the fair, or the cinema. He’d simply decided not to engage with it temporarily, breathing through any hurts that surfaced while he was with the man. Which was all well and good for a couple hours, but can he do that for a month? A year? The rest of his life?
It knocks the wind out of him when he realises he could. If it meant he wouldn’t lose another person to this war; he wouldn’t have to kill or be killed. And beyond that, he understands what Voldemort said about it feeling right. It had been unnervingly – almost unnaturally – easy to get along with the other man, to tease and banter and share parts of himself he hadn’t even shown to Ron and Hermione.
He has no illusions that things will be sunshine and roses between them; they’re going to argue and disagree, and their history will always exist between them. But he could bear it. Even more than that, he thinks he might want it.
Maybe it really is that simple.
Without speaking, he reaches into his pocket and thrusts a small, velvet box out to the other man. Voldemort stares at it for a few moments with an inscrutable look on his face before he accepts the box and opens it.
“I thought about seeing if there was a family ring or something in the vault to give you,” Harry says, hushed and awkward. “But… that seemed wrong.”
The ease with which Harry had accepted the idea of marrying Voldemort spoke volumes about his willingness. However, giving Voldemort a family heirloom seemed a step (or fifty) too far when he was the reason Harry’s parents weren’t there to pass said heirloom on to him.
“So I got you something new. I… not to negate our history, but. If we’re really getting married, we might as well start things on the right foot.” Wryly, he adds, “I hope it fits your requirement of ‘better.’”
Voldemort remains silent, gaze fixed on the contents of the box. His face stays neutral, but the fire in his eyes belies a storm of emotion happening inside. After a few more (eternal, uncomfortable) seconds, Voldemort snaps the box shut and hands it back to Harry, who can feel himself rapidly wilting in mortification.
“It does,” Voldemort says evenly. (It takes Harry a moment to figure out what he means, but he perks up when he does.) He moves from his seat to stand in front of Harry and holds out his left hand, palm-down. “You should put it on me.”
Harry stands as well and manages to open the box and pull the ring out without fumbling, holding Voldemort’s hand with his left as he removes the toy ring (which Voldemort promptly pockets) and slides the silver snake on the other man’s ring finger in its place. The emeralds and diamonds that form the snakes' eyes and scales glitter in the dim electric light from a nearby lamppost.
Voldemort surveys the new addition to his hand with satisfaction, then grabs Harry’s left hand before he can retract it. “Now, for yours.”
“Mine?”
“Of course,” Voldemort says with an adamant look. “My intended deserves no less.”
Harry can feel his cheeks colour, but he’s quickly distracted by Voldemort pulling out his wand and pointing it at Harry’s hand.
“Uh–”
“Hush,” Voldemort says. And, without another word, a twist of magic curls around Harry’s finger and solidifies.
Harry holds up his hand in wonder, staring at the ring now adorning his finger. It’s fairly narrow and flat, gold – though not very shiny, thankfully – with a line of obsidian running along the centre. It’s much more subtle than Harry imagined Voldemort would choose, but it suits Harry’s tastes perfectly.
“That will last until the wedding, at least,” Voldemort says, drawing Harry’s attention back to him.
“Thank you,” Harry says, feeling a little tongue-tied. The feeling increases when Voldemort draws Harry’s hand up to his mouth, pressing his lips to Harry’s palm and the ring while his eyes remain locked to Harry’s. Harry chokes out some ridiculous noise while his face flames.
Deciding turnabout is fair play, he impulsively twists his hand in Voldemort’s and presses a kiss to the other man’s hand and ring, a stubborn look no doubt on his face. But Voldemort, instead of blushing or sputtering, simply looks smugly pleased, heat kindling in his eyes.
(Harry may be in a little over his head. Oh well, he’ll figure it out eventually.)
“Well, if there’s nothing more to discuss for the moment, I should depart,” Voldemort says, mercifully giving Harry an out. “Plans to make, people to manage.”
“Uh, yeah, I should go talk to the others about the treaty,” Harry says with a touch of reluctance. “I guess I’ll see you at the negotiations.”
“Oh? So I shouldn’t expect an owl tomorrow demanding a clandestine meeting?” Voldemort goads, chuckling when Harry gives him a sharp look.
He huffs, the corners of his mouth twitching up against his will. “Goodnight, Voldemort,” Harry says pointedly, before starting towards the park entrance.
“Harry.”
He turns back.
“Love has had no place in my life,” Voldemort says pragmatically. “But…”
His eyes run over Harry in a way that feels almost like a physical caress, leaving Harry shivering from something other than the unexpectedly cool evening air. “I think I could bear being in love with you.”
It’s such a backhanded… Actually, it wouldn't even be a compliment, if it came from anyone else. And yet, Harry knows the weight of this statement. “Flatterer,” he snarks weakly, his throat tight with repressed emotions.
Voldemort smiles knowingly. “Goodnight, darling.”
He disappears in the next moment, the crack of apparition ringing out in the quiet night.
Harry stares at the spot where the other man stood for a moment, before turning back to continue out of the park. Twisting the ring around his finger, the weight unfamiliar but warm, he decides to take a detour before heading back to the others. He needs some time alone with his thoughts before he has to explain himself.