Chapter Text
The pain in his head was a constant, unending thing. He couldn’t focus, couldn’t even see straight. Not that there was much to see in the small, dark cell.
The walls were familiar, the small bed lumpy and hard. The low ceiling sloped at an angle.
It was the cupboard under the stairs.
And yet, it wasn’t.
Harry’s flight through the forest had ended at a sheer cliff with tree roots coiling around him, trapping him, leaving him at Voldemort’s mercy. And then everything went dark.
When Harry awoke, he was in the cupboard under the stairs. Or at least, something that looked like the cupboard under the stairs. It wasn’t quite the same: it was bigger, since there was no way Harry would still fit in the original at seventeen, and the corners and angles didn’t meet they way they should. It was as if he was in a room that loosely mimicked his memory of the cupboard—except bits were pushed, pulled, and expanded to fit.
He’d tried the door, of course, but it was locked. He hadn’t expected anything different, really.
His scar gave a particularly hard throb and he clutched at his forehead.
The door to his cupboard gave a loud creak and swung open. Harry looked up, blearily.
Tom Riddle—no, Voldemort wearing Tom Riddle’s handsome face—stood just outside the door, gazing down at him.
“What d’you want,” Harry snapped, rubbing at his scar.
Voldemort tilted his head and raised an eyebrow at the inside of the cupboard.
“So this is the form the Claustrum took for you?”
“The what?”
Instead of elaborating, Voldemort held his hand out to Harry.
Harry looked at Voldemort and then at the proffered hand and back again. “Fuck off.”
A fresh spike of pain drove itself into Harry’s brain, pulsing like fire along every nerve. He shut his eyes and gritted his teeth, not wanting to give Voldemort the satisfaction of hearing him cry out.
“Such a foul mouth you have, Harry,” Voldemort chided. “Take my hand.”
Harry dared to crack an eye open. “What if I don’t?”
Voldemort shrugged. “Then I shall assume you like being in small, dark places and leave you here.”
And with that, Voldemort shut the door, leaving Harry alone in the dark.
The next time Voldemort paid him a visit, Harry was curled at the end of the bed, tucked into the corner where the ceiling of his prison sloped downwards to meet the floor. He was alternating between too hot and freezing, having kicked the thin sheet off only to wrap himself up in it again several times.
He didn’t know how long he’d been in here. It was as if time had stopped. He felt no need to eat, or sleep, or even use the bathroom. After the first few hours (minutes? Days? Centuries?), Harry had given up on trying to make sense of it, grateful at least he didn’t have hunger pains and a full bladder to deal with in addition to the unrelenting pain in his head.
“Harry,” Voldemort said. “Will you take my hand now?”
“No,” Harry snapped.
But there was a small, shameful part of him that wavered.
If Voldemort felt it through the bond, however, he gave no sign, and closed the door on Harry again.
Time stretched unending. The pain in Harry’s head ebbed and flowed like the tide. Sometimes, he’d get a sense of what Voldemort was doing or feeling, and other times, he’d get nothing but static.
Harry started to wonder if he was dead after all.
Not needing to eat or drink or sleep surely meant he couldn’t be alive anymore, right?
But his heart still beat within his chest, and his lungs still drew breath. The pain in his head was his only companion.
Harry slept, to pass the time, even if he didn’t actually feel the need to sleep, it was a way to escape the boredom and pain. He felt he might go mad. Maybe he already had.
Madness might explain why, when Voldemort came for him a third time and offered his hand, Harry took it.
He had expected nothing but agony from their proximity, but the moment his trembling fingers brushed against Voldemort’s palm, the pain in his head receded.
When Voldemort’s long fingers closed around Harry’s, all Harry could feel was relief. He closed his eyes and a sigh escaped, entirely against his will.
When he opened his eyes, they were no longer in the cupboard, but in a large, lavish bedroom. The walls were dark panels of wood, and dark green velvet curtains hung around a four-poster bed.
Harry froze.
He tried to pull his hand away, but Voldemort’s grip was deceptively strong.
“Where—”
“I thought perhaps you’d appreciate more luxurious surroundings, if you are to be my...permanent guest,” Voldemort said. “But I can always put you back in the Claustrum , if you prefer.”
It was then that Harry noticed what Voldemort held in the hand that wasn’t wrapped around Harry’s: a small, diamond-shaped object that looked a bit like two pyramids stuck together at their bases. Inside the thing—the Claustrum —was a confusion of planes and angles and shifting colors. Harry squinted at it.
“I was inside that thing?”
“Yes, and I shall put you back the very moment you disobey me,” Voldemort promised, his nightmarish red eyes glinting dangerously.
The bond between them pulsed a warning, and that was all Harry needed to know. He nodded.
Voldemort led him over to the bed and pushed him down onto it. For a wild, horrible moment, Harry thought Voldemort would climb in with him. A ghost of amusement flickered along their bond at that, and Harry went hot and then cold.
Then Voldemort took his hand away and the pain in Harry’s scar returned with a vengeance.
He curled up on the soft bed and shuddered.
There was a bathroom beyond the only door that Harry could see off the bedroom, with a large tub and sweet-smelling soaps. Harry was glad to have a chance to soak his aching body and clean up. Fresh clothing appeared on the rack: simple, black robes. Harry looked around for his old clothes—the last of his worldly possessions—and felt a pang of sorrow when he couldn’t find them.
He heaved a sigh and dressed in the robes. They slid silkily over his body. They may have been simple, but the material was fine and almost sensuous.
It was only after he’d settled the robes around his body that he realized there was no underwear.
With a burning face, Harry stalked back into the bedroom.
Voldemort was lounging on the bed.
“Come here.”
Harry stood in the doorway of the bathroom, rooted to the spot. He refused to move.
“So stubborn,” Voldemort said.
Pain flared sharp and incandescent behind Harry’s eyes, so violent that he thought his head would split right in two. It ran along every nerve hot, electric, and unending. It was not the same as Crucio—it was brighter, somehow, and centered upon the scar on his forehead. Tendrils of agony tore through his body...surely he was dying…
And just as quickly as it started, it stopped.
He opened his eyes. Voldemort stood over him, much, much taller than he should have been. Harry realized then that he was curled on the floor.
His hand was resting on Voldemort’s bare foot. He scrambled backwards and the pain returned, but it was a dull echo of what it had been before. Voldemort gazed down at him with an unreadable expression. Wordlessly, he held a hand out.
Harry took it.
Just as he’d suspected, the pain ebbed away completely the moment he touched Voldemort’s bare skin. Voldemort pulled him to his feet, and then slowly, inexorably, reeled him in even closer. Harry’s breathing had gone ragged and his heart pounded like it was trying to beat its way out of his ribs.
Harry noticed then that Voldemort’s robes dipped down in a deep vee at his chest, exposing a slice of bare skin. His cheeks burned with shame but he buried his face in Voldemort’s chest all the same. The pain in his scar was a distant memory now, and he shuddered with the relief of it. His fingers twisted into Voldemort’s robes, and arms wrapped possessively around him, caging him in.
Harry silently begged forgiveness of his parents’ memories, of Dumbledore, of Sirius, Ron, and Hermione, as tears flowed freely down his face and the bond between him and Voldemort sang in triumph.
[to be continued in the next chapter...probably tomorrow]