Chapter Text
“What do you mean he didn’t show up?” Lord Voldemort practically whispered the question into the meeting, making several of the proud purebloods tremble in their seats like terrified children. Voldemort had, unfortunately, met actual children with more backbone in them than these poor excuses of wizards and therein lay the problem.
“We waited the whole night, my Lord- Potter never arrived.” Lucius Malfoy spoke, eyes downcast onto the table and his neck stiff.
“And then where, would you say, he ended up the night he left the school?” Voldemort stood, irritation pulsating out through him in waves and making magic like smoke swirl through the room. “If we’d have the good fortune of his demise, I’m sure we’d have heard about it by now.” The hall remained quiet for several breaths, before Lucius spoke up again.
“My Lord- the prophecy itself had been… moved. Since the boy didn’t arrive, we searched the hall several times- all we found was this.” Lucius Malfoy reached forth and set a small silver object onto the table, and Voldemort summoned it to him with a flick of his hand that made it whip through the air like a bullet.
Turning it over, it was a silver tag with neat words written into the silver, not unlike the name tags guests were given upon arrival at the ministry. But the words embedded into the silver made his temper flare and the windows exploded behind him.
Tom Riddle, Up to no good
His followers covered their faces from the glass shards, and on those who screeched in surprise he rained crucios like bombs during the blitz as his anger pulsated through him like a violent drug.
“Who found it?” He asked, voice trembling with rage as he turned back to his followers and Macnair indicated himself. Voldemort was in his head within seconds, tearing through the memories until he found the one where Macnair bent down to find the little tag in the place where his prophecy should have been. Had been for several years. Macnair wiped a thin layer of dust off it, read the words and showed the others before they’d all searched the entire hall twice more before returning to him with the news.
Something about the words picked at him through, nagging at him as relentless as Potter’s existence infuriated him. Trying to draw his temper back minutely, he returned his eyes to the tag still in his hand.
“Up to no good.” He mumbled, about to walk around the room when he noticed how Wormtail had tensed in his seat. Voldemort threw himself at him like a snake on a rat and found the memories right in the front of his brain. Screaming his rage into the room, his magic threw the table over to the side and shattered it against the wall of Malfoy Manor. Several of his Death Eaters had thrown themselves onto the floor and glass shards to escape, and somewhere in the chaos Bellatrix was laughing maniacally.
“I’m sorry my lord!” Wormtail wailed, begging while trying to hide his crying in fear. “I had nothing to do with this-”
“Of course you didn’t, you pathetic worm!” He screamed at his follower, his magic creating a strong storm in the room that almost swept the rat away. His anger pulsating like its own entity inside him that refused to settle. Lord Voldemort pushed through with all magic and rage and apparated while following that pull of magic inside him that screamed Harry Potter.
He landed in the middle of a bright, sunlit street filled with almost identical houses in a suffocating muggle place. Voldemort turned around, hissing at a child playing in their garden and making her run inside with a scream that might have delighted him any other day.
His official return to the wizarding world was supposed to be dramatic, planned to perfection as the historical moment it was. Now his first official sighting was scaring children like some common ruffian. As always; his plans were utterly destroyed by Harry fucking Potter.
“Potter!” He screamed out in his rage, making his voice magically carry enough to shake some of the closest houses. There was a silence before several curtains moved and doors opened for curious and frowning muggles to peek out at the commotion. Most, like the child, shrieked and fled at the sight of him and it was only one child about Potter’s age that remained frozen in the street, a cigarette hanging dumbly from the corner of his mouth.
“Potter.” Voldemort repeated, and the boy’s eyes instantly flickered down the stairs.”
“O- only Potter here is number four.” The boy whimpered, and Voldemort stalked past him down the street just as Potter himself indeed came around the corner of one of the small houses. The bane of his existence had a frown on his face and wore muggle clothing not even fit for rags. Those killing curse eyes found the dark lord and he stopped mid step. The expression didn’t grow into the same blank expression of fear the other muggles or even his followers had had, but he remained firm where he stood.
“You called, oh great and terrible overlord?” Potter drawled eventually, rolling his eyes. The boy looked insolently careless, still pulling a garden hose after himself as he came into the front garden.
“You have my prophecy.” Voldemort declared, now with his prey within his sight, slow to stalk him. But his prey just kept his eyes on him, not shrinking away or running but jutting his jaw out in defiance. By the property line, Voldemort walked straight into the wards that pushed him back violently. Growling in anger, he banged his hand against it and made large sparkles and ringing sounds explode in the otherwise quiet street.
Potter gave him an odd look, eyes the wards that held strong under his continued assault. Then, to Voldemort’s complete disbelief, the brat started to water the bushes in the garden, as if there wasn’t a furious dark lord ready to tear his throat out.
“Our.”
“Pardon?” He hissed furiously, glaring at the boy so hard it was a wonder he’d not caught fire yet. Potter wasn’t even looking at him anymore.
“It’s our prophecy. It had my name on it too, you know.” Potter spoke softly, as if there wasn’t only a fragile sheen of magic between him and an enraged dark lord. His eyes were focused on the roses and petunias as he watered them with the body language of someone used to the chore.
“When did you even get it?” He hissed in parseltongue, hoping to intimidate the boy who only gave him an uninterested glance.
“Christmas” The boy hissed back, as if meeting another parseltongue wasn’t a marvel. The hisses were low, almost sultry in Potter’s melodious voice and it stirred a curiosity in him he’d not felt since his starting journey on the dark arts. Like, excitement.
“Give it to me.” He demanded, and the boy, the stupid insolent boy, hosed water into his face.
“You didn’t ask nicely.” Potter said plainly and Voldemort did set several of the cars along the road on fire with his rage alone. “You’re not exactly fostering goodwill here.” Potter observed, looking up and down the street in an unimpressed manner.
“You-” he shot a crucio for the boy, but by the time it had fizzled past the wards and hit him in the chest it was weak and only made Potter rub his chest absently, as if he didn’t need to think about it. Voldemort wanted to strangle him with his bare hands. Pouring healing potions down his throat to keep him alive during an entire autopsy and show him his own organs. Squeezing his heart until it squashed in his hand as Potter watched and keep his head in a bottle on his desk.
“Gruesome. Hope you plan to do all that in a tiled room. It’ll be easier on the clean up.” Potter said casually, just as the door to the house opened and a thin woman with a sour expression peaked out.
“Boy!” She breathed in irritation and made Potter turn off the hose while looking back at the house.
“Well, that’s my que.” Potter shrugged half heartedly, looking back to Voldemort with eyes that met his own straight on. There was no cowering, no fear. Only the odd feeling of being fully seen. They were still in that standstill when there were several pops of apparition behind him. Voldemort twisted away, turning his back to the weaponless boy and reflected the spell coming at him back down the street towards Dumbledore who was already trying to draw him away from the wards.
They duelled for a long time, moving up and down the street as his Death Eater’s arrived and joined the fight. Sometime during the evening even aurors showed up, but Voldemort refused to yield up his ground or be forced to flee. It turned out even the other houses on the street were warded, so the houses and their families remained oddly unaffected by the war among them. Occasionally Voldemort saw Potter sitting in the window, observing the chaos with a blank expression.
Thankfully, a curse grazed Dumbledore and forced him to flee due to needing medical help, something that turned the battle in their favour. The aurors retreated back, setting up wards to repel other muggles and handle the chaos while giving up the street and the order’s members one by one fled up onto the lawn in front of number four and slowly gave ground until the street was theirs.
Sometime during the chaos Potter had come out, and he was moving between people on the lawn and giving surprisingly accurate first aid. Some wounds he tended would make many older wizards falter, so Voldemort observed the boy’s steady hands and slow breathing as he evaluated and treated.
“My lord?” Bella breathed behind him, words spoken in a low husky voice that was too obviously meant to be seductive. “Let me go in, my lord, let me pull him apart for you.” Bellas hands were on his robe sleeve, pulling gently and oozing dark magic and wantonness.
“Set up camp.” He spoke while ignoring her, stepping closer to the wards again to inspect them. Potter glanced up and took him in, but as the wards kept him on the other side Potter returned his eyes to forcing a dislocated shoulder back into its socket.
Though they stayed the whole night, he couldn’t break the wards.
--
At daybreak Dumbledore returned, holding a symbolic white cloth into the air until Voldemort sighed and waved him forth. They met in the middle of the street, Voldemort having the strong urge to rip the old man's spine out through his anus. Behind the wards there was an almost inaudible snort from the chaos gremlin, who acted as if he’d not noticed them.
“Tom,” Dumbledore greeted and Voldemort instinctively hissed at him like he’d done the child in the street. The old man, unfortunately, didn’t run away to hide behind his mother’s skirts. “I’m surprised to find you here, in broad daylight.”
Voldemort sneered, occasionally letting his eyes drift over Dumbledore’s shoulder to take in the chaos gremlin before letting them drift back. When he said nothing, Dumbledore sighed and took off his glasses to wipe them clean.
“Blood magic for the wards.” He said instead before he decided to rest his eyes on Potter. Keeping his eyes on the old man only made his temper fluctuate and the brat had proven an unfortunate capability of slipping through his most well laid plans. “For being the paragon of light, you’ve dabbled into the higher magics quite proficiently.”
“In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.” The old man turned around as he spoke to also watch the tiny house and the lawn before them. Potter resolutely ignored them, helping someone who’d probably lose their leg to drink water without coughing.
“Jokes on you then.” Voldemort spoke, feeling satisfaction curl around his spine like a snake, hissing in delight. “I have enough of his blood through my veins to alter the wards, a quite large flaw in your great plan to keep the precious boy who lived safe.” His smile, cold and calculated to send fear through the heart of his enemies spread over his face. “He can’t leave from within the wards- portkey, floo, apparition…”
His smile grew, and he noticed that Potter’s hands had stilled in their lifting of the cup. The person made some kind of sound in protest, and the boy snapped back to his chore as if he’d not heard them. The silence grew between the older men quite a while before Dumbledore spoke again.
“You can’t wait him out, the longer he remains, the stronger the wards grow.” And with that, the old man approached the lawn and started to remove the order members by portkey. Voldemort remained standing on the street, staring at his fated enemy until eventually it was just the two of them left.
“You can’t remain there your entire life.” He spoke, catching Potter’s green eyes. “I’ll be waiting.”
“Will you?” Potter asked, looking away with an odd look in his face. Then the demon pulled forth that damn water hose again and started to wash the blood off the pavement and put out the embers that had been a rosebush. Voldemort kept observing him, only shaking his head at the nonchalance and returning to his death eaters when the boy was pulling forth the lawn mower.
“My lord,” Lucius bowed as he approached, his back stiff, his hair smelling of smoke and his eyes repeatedly jumping to take in the muggles that started to come out of their houses for the day. “If I may, how long until the wards will fall?”
“Get rid of that house.” He spoke, glaring at the house occupying the lot directly opposite of number four. “And the one directly behind it.” Bellatrix, never far from him, were already tossing spells at the building- yet nothing seemed to catch. She was growling, fiend fyre already reflecting in her eyes when he wordlessly summoned her wand into his waiting hand. He only gave Lucius a glare, before turning his back to them both and returned to his staring down his prophesied enemy.
---
“What are all those freaks doing here?” Dudley asked, awake surprisingly early and tried to peek through the curtains out at the street. Aunt Petunia had, upon her noticing the street and her front lawn littered with wizards and blood, covered every window downstairs just shy of the craze approaching his eleventh birthday. Drawing her attention, Aunt Petunia flittered over and tried to pry her curious son from the windows, made harder by the fact he wasn’t even interested in the food Harry was setting onto the table.
“Stay away darling Dudikins. Better pretend they’re not here.” Harry held back a snort, but did roll his eyes since he was facing the stove and they’d not be able to see him. ‘Pretend it doesn’t exist’, he thought amusedly as he flipped the bacon with an arm that ached from exhaustion.
“Best not let ‘em hear you call them that.” Harry spoke softly, keeping his head down but tossing a stray glance through the semi-transparent lace curtains. Mr and Mrs Robbinson of number eight had left the house just as he went in to start on breakfast, their expressions vacant and dreamy in a way that indicated the imperius. That and the fact they were wearing their snow coats with their pyjamas, swimming goggles and clutching one single galleon as they’d stalked down the street wearing one shoe of a pair each. After that bizarre sight, number eight had been swiftly torn down, cleared away and a wizard tent was going up that was large even by wixen standards.
It was white, had a large portion with a sunroof but open sides and the inside was very obviously larger and split into several rooms by the quick glances he’d been able to steal. The decoration of the patio was being overseen by Narcissa Malfoy, who was directing rugs probably more expensive than the Dursley house on the ground. In the half dark of the tents interior the silhouette Harry would know anywhere as Voldemort sat in a chair and seemed occupied by something. But as if he sensed Harry’s eyes, he stood swiftly and came to the tarp of the tent to stare at the house as if he could see through the walls.
“Why does he look like that?” Dudley exclaimed, and Harry hurriedly moved his eyes from the dark lord back to the pan.
“Dark magic.” He replied flippantly, tensing when he heard Aunt Petunia’s china clatter. “Sorry Aunt Petunia.”
“It’s always your fault.” She snipped, and Harry didn’t need to turn around to know her face was pinched and her eyes hard. “Ruining our nice neighborhood. Bringing down property values. Ruining out sweet Dudders summer vacation…” Harry bit his tongue and transferred more of the bacon to a plate before setting it down before her.
“More tea, Aunt Petunia?” He tried to distract her, keeping his head down and motioning for the kettle. There was a tense silence, until Aunt Petunia made a small sound in the back of her throat he knew meant she’d agree. So he moved swiftly, forcing himself to not relentlessly glance through the window. That’s when Uncle Vernon came into the kitchen, steps heavy and breath already a little harsher than normal. Fuck. Moving as quietly as possible, he stepped over the room and kept his back to the window rather than his uncle as he poured Aunt Petunia her tea.
Unfortunately, he’d already caught Uncle Vernon’s attention and the man grabbed him by the elbow and yanked him backwards as soon as he set the kettle down. The motion caught him off guard, and only his uncle's firm grip kept him from falling to the floor. His shoulder hurt from the near save though, making pain flare out in painful stabs with every movement.
“What are those freaks doing here Boy?” His uncle’s spit hit the side of his face as the older man roared practically in his ear. “Why’ve you not made them leave ?”
“I can’t!” Harry declared before his brain caught on to his mouth, trying to pull free from Vernon. “Did you miss how everyone tried to get them to leave all night?” He gesticulated needlessly to the front lawn. Well, in for a pound in for a penny he guessed. “That’s the bloody dark lord - he’ll do whatever the heck he wants no matter what you think about it!” Uncle Vernon grew, if possible, more purple and it made Harry’s stomach twist uncomfortably.
“And what would a lord want with the likes of you ?” Aunt Petunia practically hissed, making Harry for a moment wonder if she’d spoken in parseltongue. But as he glanced at her, he only saw her look him up and down with plain disdain. Only his teeth clamping down harshly on his tongue kept him from muttering out ‘murder’.
“He wants something.” Harry grit out instead, keeping his eyes firmly on the ground as Vernon yanked him again, making the pain grow into pulsating fire.
“You’ve stolen from that freak?” Uncle Vernon asked, sounding, if more enraged. “You good for nothing piece of-” There was a sighed curse before he was pushed away, the surprise of the lack of restraining made him tumble to the floor. “I’ll deal with you later.” And with that, he stalked out the door. Harry blinked after him, shocked, until he heard the familiar rumble of the engine starting. Stumbling up, his heart beating violently in his chest, he tossed himself at the door and pulled it violently aside, half stepping out to stare.
Uncle Vernon’s car was backing out of the parking space, still dropping water from where Harry had hosed off the blood splatter before. The Death Eaters had all stopped in their setting up camp, with the dark lord himself grinning and watching the vehicle back out into the no man's land like the predator he was.
“Don’t-” Harry tried to stop his uncle, but was ignored. The car was fully onto the street now, and the dark lord raised his wand. The ground violently rippled, breaking apart and obviously tried to explode the car- but to everyone’s equal surprise the car didn’t. It jumped and rolled over the buckling road- his uncle looking ready to combust from indignation- the car even rolling over once but righting itself and kept driving away. Both itself and the occupant were unharmed, and they all stared in dumb silence after the retreating car as it puttered down the road. The whole thing reminded Harry oddly of a giant beadle.
“What the fuck was that?” Harry couldn’t help but to exclaim, turning wide eyes to one of the most brilliant and twisted minds in generations. “That cannot have been intentional?”
Voldemort’s anger hit him like an overpacked trolley, images of him being ripped apart bone by bone while regrowing them, strapped to some sort of table that Harry was sure he’d seen in some old schoolbooks about medieval torture or the spanish inquisition. Wrinkling his nose, he still met the furious eyes of red. “There must be spells to do that more efficiently, right? Don’t seem like you’d have the time to loiter around in my bones all day by hand…” He muttered, stepping out into the garden to take in the rest of the street around them.
The street looked suspiciously normal, with the exception of the giant tent that Harry thought reeked of magic. Why Mrs Wright of no 7 was out this early, or wearing her sunday pearls as she was sorting her mail on the garden path, was anyone’s guess. At him addressing the monster across the garden wall from her, her hands stilled suspiciously and he could practically see her ears sharpening.
Voldemort replied by sending a curse at him. The cruciatus hit the ward, making it sparkle and glow bright lilac until it was gone. Snorting amusement, Harry stepped closer to the garden wall to see where the edge of the wards went but it was gone too fast for him to see properly.
Another curse hit, this one a familiar green that made the wards shimmer and crackle like the ants on the telly used to do. Instinctively he’d tensioned, but as the curse fizzled out he couldn’t help the delighted laugh. The curse travelled along the dome of the ward like lightning bolts, almost to the top. With the relief he’d not fall dead in an instant, he could appreciate how beautiful it was. Mrs Wright had dropped both her letters and her jaw as she stared at them.
---
It turned out the street was called Privet Drive and was located in Little Whinging, Surrey.
Voldemort hated the very air of the place and the disgusting devotion to muggles' ordinariness that it was. It was a hymn sung in the sounds of cars coming and going, children being reprimanded and the boring to death conversations of nothing but the ordinary. It was a temple built with muggle machines and concrete, an ode whispered by slaving over chores in an attempt to be more effortlessly pious than their neighbour.
Voldemort saw it and tried to burn it to the ground, baptize this unholy street with blessed fire to sanitize the earth off the mediocrity- yet nothing took. He and his Death Eaters held the perimeter for several blocks around Potter’s house, a literal eye of the storm no one could breach. Around them, the order and ministry together extended and firmed the wards- creating this odd no-mans-land where the muggles were suddenly exposed to magic yet not obliviated within an inch of their mind.
That first day, everyone held their breaths and waited for something to give. The wards, the dark lords obsessive patience or the ministry’s flighty employeds, the boy’s flight reflexes.
It was dusk when Albus Dumbledore strolled down the street, nodding to the woman next to them that had only just returned out to collect her letters from the pavement as if they were old acquaintances. She stared at him, mouth hanging open as the old man stopped between number four and his tent to face him.
“Tom, my boy,” Dumbledore spoke jovially, as if he was Slughorn and Voldemort his star pupil once more. Hissing, the old man gave him a look that was chided. “The minister has approached me, seeking advice on how amenable you might be to negotiations.” The old man clasped his hands together before him, like he used to do during lectures.
“And your perception of the matter?” He practically hissed, taking slow and stalking steps towards the small wall still separating their camp from the street. With a swirl of his hand, a chair flew over from the seating arrangements made by Narcissa Malfoy and landed on his side of the garden wall. He sat down, keeping his face relatively blank of his disdain as the headmaster conjured a garishly patterned stuffed armchair. As he took a seat, Voldemort’s eyes swept past his shoulder over the damned house.
Potter was half hidden behind a curtain, and after holding his gaze a moment before something seemed to beckon the brats attention inside. For a flashing moment, he remembered. Remembered how the green light had lit up the boy’s features as he tipped his head back, a carefree laugh born of true mirth and delight spilling out from his mouth.
“Will this be a long winded, painful interaction then?” Voldemort asked, returning his eyes to the old man while imagining skinning the skin of his face. How would the wrinkled skin twist and turn, he wondered, and would it be worn thin if he held it up to the sun? Perhaps that was too personal- carving manually would be intimate and take time- something he wasn’t sure he’d want to spend on the old man. Perhaps simply strippin grim of his magic would do, Voldemort through lazily and let his eyes sweep the old man in consideration. Having him ripped to shreds by his loved ones bara hands-
There was a flicker of the curtain again, but he saw nothing.
“Negotiations require a certain element of back and forth, tit for tat, if you will.” Dumbledore spoke conversionally, calling an elf and having tea brought forth. Voldemort, plainly, ignored the invite. “I suspect that any negotiations would be preformative, yielding too many concessions that would be detrimental to our world before you’d resume your violent grasp for ultimate power.”
“Your opinion of me remains immense, I hear.” Voldemort spoke, keeping only barely from hissing angry warning sounds at the other. “Has it ever occurred to you that my approach is a result of you standing in my way for any other path?” He kept his voice calm, but he felt his eyes burn with rage.
“You’d demand the prophecy?”
“Evidently.” His eyes swept the house again, but there was nothing moving inside. “And I’ll be killing the boy.” Or perhaps nailing him to the office wall in an unholy parody of the crucifixion. Healing him and returning him there to observe the rise of the dark lord’s new world for the same decade he’d been reduced to a wraith.
“Harry’s just a boy.” Dumbledore spoke, turning to also let his eyes take in the pathetic house. “Who’ve been through too much already. I’d be willing to give up the prophecy for his safe passage.” The old man looked surprised by his short laugh.
“Just a boy-” he mumbled, amusement burning through him as he returned his glare to the headmaster. “Would a boy be the subject of a prophecy? One which includes myself? Would just a boy be a survivor of the killing curse and wreck my plans time and time again?” He turned his face back to the house, still shrouding Potter from his eyes. Infuriating.
For a fraction of a moment he remembered the eyes. Made impossibly more green by the light of the killing curse striking the wards. The boy’s expression as he took in the light of his assassination attempt with a wide grin. Voldemort had stared at him at the time, yet now it caught the chuckle in his throat. “The boy will remain. I’ll hear the prophecy after I rip it from his cold dead hands and piss on his corpse.” His amusement now sour in his mouth left him glaring at the brick across the road. “Leave.”
The headmaster did, after a moment's hesitation. He stood, leaving the horrid chair behind as he walked across the street. He stood by the edge of the wards, shooting sparkles and trying to get the inhabitants attention but no one ventured outside. Eventually, the old man admitted defeat and returned down the street as he’d come.
Reluctantly replaying the memory in his mind, he saw how the demon had eventually lowered his eyes to meet him head on. His jaw had jutted up in defiance and his grin too big for his face. The last time he’d seen the face this close up had been in the graveyard, just shy of fifteen and pale as a ghost. The face that had stared back at him now was all too harsh angles, skin glowing golden from the sun exposure and his features sharp. Eyes bright with defiance as the demon of a boy lifted his non-dominant hand and flipped him off.
The boy had spun around on his heel and stalked into the house with the confidence of a swashbuckler. He’d only cackled more mad laughs at the sky as Voldemort peppered the wards behind him with curses, vanishing into the house like a ghost into smoke.
Where he’d remained since.