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The note found Harry on the eastern terrace, halfway through breakfast.
It came to him in the shape of a dragonfly, flitting about his head, prodding insistently against his cheek, before diving for his plate. He snatched it from the air before it could send his breakfast flying, holding it by the tip of a wing as it fluttered a final time, then unfolded.
Husband, the note began.
Harry scoffed, dug his thumbnail into the parchment until it threatened to tear. His gaze darted to the edge of the roof. Tempting, but not worth it. Last time he tried to throw out one of Voldemort’s notes without reading it, it multiplied into a swarm of insects that harassed the house elves for hours before he finally managed to destroy them all. Unwilling to risk it a second time, he flattened the note out on the table, shoveled a forkful of egg and tomato into his mouth, then leaned in to read the rest of it.
Voldemort’s handwriting was as dramatic as ever. Still, it was as familiar to him by then as his own neat hand, and he read it easily.
You are expected in the ritual hall at moonrise. Our friends have been instructed to arrive precisely on time. Do not keep them waiting.
“Our friends,” Harry read aloud, chest growing tight.
Of course the Death Eaters would be called for this. He was surprised, now that he thought about it, that it hadn’t happened sooner.
Smoke curled off the parchment, and he let go of it with a hiss, shaking out his hand. As the note smouldered out of existence, he tugged the discarded copy of the Daily Prophet closer across the table, tapping the tines of his fork against his plate with a frown as he flipped back to the front page.
April twenty-third.
A new moon, and now an audience. Whatever magic Voldemort hoped to work tonight was sure to be significant.
It was too late to conjure up some appointment to take him out of the house. Ron and Hermione would have helped, but they were in Australia and had been for the last three months, having finally tracked down a mind healer who was skilled enough to try reversing the damage from Hermione’s desperation fueled obliviate.
No one else would risk it.
And Harry wouldn’t have asked them to, anyway. The less other people had to think about his marriage, the better.
He finished his breakfast with grim determination. The food tasted like ash, but he ate it anyway. It was the last meal he’d get today, and he’d need the strength.
The rest of the day passed in a slog, made worse because his usual remedy was a decidedly bad idea. He didn’t dare go flying to take his mind off of what was coming. He didn’t trust himself. In another life, he did it anyway; he kicked off the ground and flew until he reached the wardline, and then he kept going, until every tie that bound him to this house, to this world, snapped. He disappeared, swallowed whole by the wide blue sky, lost where no one would find him.
In this life, he locked the windows and drew the curtains. In the quiet dark of his room, he willed the hours to pass over him, and they did.
Fifteen minutes before moonrise, the Death Eaters started to arrive. He felt them as they crossed the wardline, felt the wound of his husband’s mark on them as they passed the threshold of the house and were escorted to the ritual hall. Dark magic dripped from them like blood. In his husband’s house, it was everywhere. Invisible to the naked eye, but he felt it.
His door was still locked.
He could have kept it that way. Could have forced Voldemort to come find him and endured whatever punishment it earned him. He’d done it before.
And like before, it would be a waste.
“Enough,” he told himself, then stood and made his way to the door.
Resolve was a shield. Once, not very long ago, he’d carried it to his death. Then, after, to every small death since. He could carry it again, and he would.
The doors to the ritual hall were nearly shut when he arrived. From inside, the sounds of bodies — a lot of bodies, how many Death Eaters had Voldemort called? — shuffling into place, muffled conversation slowly giving way to watchful silence.
He could still run.
He could.
Instead, he stepped into the hall.
Voldemort’s gaze found him first. Instantly. The Death Eaters — all of them, he’d called all of them — followed his cue, turned almost as one to look at him, fear and anticipation plain on their bare faces. Pathetic, he thought, and hoped they could feel it.
“Welcome, husband,” Voldemort greeted him from where he stood at the edge of an elevated platform, made even taller by the sloped floors meant to carry any fluids away from the center of the hall. He extended a hand. “Join me.”
Harry didn’t hesitate.
He strode through the throng of black-robed bodies, not stopping even as he shouldered them aside, not slowing. His magic seethed at his heels, and more than one voice hissed in muffled protest as the hands that sought to touch him came away burned.
In his mind’s eye, he saw a graveyard.
A fire-lit clearing.
A ring of ghosts, quickly banished.
He crossed them all, then took Voldemort's hand once he was close enough and let himself be guided onto the platform. Pleasure curled like smoke in the back of his mind, down his throat, across his tongue. He swallowed it like he swallowed everything his husband gave him. Better this than the war, he told himself, like he always told himself.
Most days, it was even true.
He looked out at the crowd — thinner now than it was at the height of the war, but still too full — to distract himself. He’d learned their faces by then, but only some of their names. In a just world, he would make this hall into a mass grave, call down the entire weight of his husband’s house and bury them all in the rubble.
In this world, he let himself dream of it for just a little longer.
“You haven’t told me what I’ll be doing,” he said once he’d indulged long enough.
Voldemort’s smile was as horrible as ever. “Tonight, husband, you will be a vessel.”
Harry didn’t ask what for. He knew. “Fine.”
And it was fine.
It was nothing.
“Strip,” Voldemort commanded, voice soft as he retreated across the platform for a better view.
No one had ever looked at him the way Voldemort looked at him. Like his gaze was a hand, like he could be touched from across a room. Under the weight of that eager, watchful attention, he tugged his shirt off first, then dropped it to the floor where it vanished upon touching stone. Annoying, but fine. His trousers followed. He hadn’t bothered with socks or shoes when he left his room, and he cursed that decision now as, all too soon, he was left in just his pants.
“Come now, Harry, don’t be shy,” Voldemort chided, and the Death Eaters laughed. He made a sweeping gesture. “You’re among friends.”
Harry bit back a scowl, then shoved the pair of briefs down his hips, kicking them aside when they fell to the floor.
The seconds crawled by, and Voldemort made him wait, naked and cold with the weight of the horde pressing down on him. But it was a weight he could bear, and he bore it. All around him, the Death Eaters watched, trembling and eager. Like dogs, Harry thought, and let it settle him. Begging for scraps, panting at their master’s feet.
“What else?” Harry asked, because the sooner Voldemort had his fun, the sooner this would be over.
Voldemort’s eyes narrowed. “Severus,” he called, and this, finally, made Harry flinch.
Satisfaction, not his own.
It burned.
The Death Eaters parted around Snape as he came forward, a bowl of black liquid held in his hands. Ink, Harry realized.
Usually, Voldemort applied it himself.
Well? Voldemort seemed to ask as Snape stepped up onto the platform, cruel amusement in his red eyes.
Harry forced himself to relax, to let Snape approach. With every step Snape took, an image sharpened in his mind; he saw himself grab Snape by his lank hair, throw him down, and beat his head against the platform’s edge, until his skull cracked and the stone floor became a lake of red, threaded with ink. Voldemort laughed, and only then did Harry realize that the thought had been plucked from his mind as it grew.
Teeth bared in a terrible grin, Voldemort said, “Begin.”
The ink was cold, but Harry didn’t flinch.
He didn’t close his eyes.
He stared straight ahead, seeing nothing. Feeling nothing.
When he’d finished with his arms and torso, Snape knelt. His legs came next, then the touch of a hand to the top of his left foot. “Lift,” Snape said, and his voice… Harry looked down at him, in his body again, and after a moment, Snape looked back. His eyes were wet, his lips pale and pinched with tension. He looked tired. Harry lifted his foot, placed it in Snape’s waiting palm, flexed his toes against the firm grip of his potion-stained fingers as the brush passed over the sole of his foot.
Snape repeated the process with his right foot. A touch. A waiting palm. Then the ink.
He expected Snape to rise, to retreat again, like he retreated after… But he only stayed there on his knees at Harry’s feet. Hatred, Harry thought, looking down at him, wanting to kick him away or touch his bowed head. This is how it feels. And then: How could you—?
Voldemort spoke before he could finish the thought, voice tight with annoyance. “Do you need assistance, Severus?” he asked, the threat audible.
Snape’s shoulders twitched, just once.
He reached up, lifted Harry’s soft prick to paint more runes. Despite himself, Harry looked away, but nowhere was safe. On all sides, desire. Envy.
He stayed soft as the ink was applied. Voldemort looked almost disappointed, but it was quickly blotted out by hunger as he circled the platform, devouring him from every angle.
Nothing, Harry thought, and made himself believe it again.
He was nothing.
This was nothing.
“Leave us, Severus,” Voldemort said from behind him once Snape’s hands finally lifted.
Snape’s hair brushed his shin as he bowed, and then he was gone. Harry didn’t watch him go.
“Look at me, Harry,” Voldemort said, and Harry did. A flush had settled in his pale cheeks, and his eyes were bright. He stepped back, then again, until he was at the farthest point of the platform. He extended a hand, as if to welcome Harry closer. “Crawl.”
A ripple of laughter moved across the hall.
Harry could have spat fire, if he’d dared to open his mouth. Like they hadn’t done the same, endlessly, and for less. Crawled on their bellies to kiss his husband’s robes, pressed their sniveling faces into the dirt to escape his wrath, just to feel it anyway.
They weren’t the same. They would never be the same, and the truth of it made it easy as he lowered himself to his knees.
The stone beneath him was rough against his skin, but the paint didn’t smudge. It never did.
He crawled, and the Death Eaters jeered, ineffectual as rain against glass. He sat himself at Voldemort’s feet, back straight, chin up. Waiting. Voldemort liked to look at him, he knew. Liked to look him in the eye as he shoved his pale, ugly cock into his mouth. You gave up a war for this, Harry had imagined telling him often, and imagined now again. Once the scourge of a nation, now just a man with a weeping prick, desperate for a warm hole to stick it into. You’ve unmade yourself.
Like he’d heard it this time, Voldemort snarled. He cast his robe away, then grabbed Harry by the hair and fucked his half-hard cock into his mouth when it opened in a pained cry.
He hit the back of Harry’s throat, then kept going, relishing in the tears that gathered in his eyes, the spasms that rocked his chest.
When he finally remembered the purpose of tonight’s performance, he stilled with effort, mouth open, panting, face flushed. His hand shook as he untangled his fingers from Harry’s hair, then kept shaking as he lifted it to cast. Shame, then rage, lanced through him, and if Harry could have laughed, he would have.
And Voldemort knew it.
He began the long chant of a ritual spell, casting it like a curse. The heat of it was suffocating, shimmering in the air as the magic swelled with the blood in his prick. Arousal — his, and his Death Eaters’ — made manifest, a bright haze that crowned the world in fire.
And then the spell was finished, and Voldemort came with a cry, and Harry swallowed it, the magic, all of it.
The runes burned with power, all the magic in the room collapsing inward.
Harry’s head spun as Voldemort finally let go of him.
There was pain, Harry was sure of it, but he didn’t feel it. All he felt was the magic. All he saw was the magic. The world swayed beneath him, and he let himself fall into it, pressing his overheated flesh against cold stone and shuddering all over. He was laughing, he realized eventually. Bright peals of sound that bounced around the room in shades of gold. He was laughing, and the Death Eaters were laughing with him — or their magic was — and so was the world, and that was all he knew.
He was laughing, and then he wasn’t, because there was something on his mouth.
Voldemort was kissing him.
Harry groaned, dragged his hands free of the world and put them on Voldemort’s body. He dreamed of Voldemort beneath him, and the world put him there. And the world was made of magic, and Harry was too, and Voldemort…
In Voldemort's eyes, Harry saw fire.
He would swallow it whole. All of it, and everything.