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The second he’d heard the plan, Ron had been seething.
Hermione had wanted to stay, to listen longer to the Order meeting below them that they’d been eavesdropping on. And she was right, as she usually was; more information could only leave them better prepared to deal with the next massive threat to Harry’s health and happiness, as the Order sure as shit would never give them the information they needed until they’d already half-figured it out themselves. They never had, no matter how often it led the trio into greater danger.
But really, it wasn’t Ron’s fault he’d immediately stormed out the second he heard the news, abandoning the crack in the wall next to the Order’s meeting room where he and Hermione had stood in tense silence for the past half hour.
“Harry!” hollered Ron, storming his way up one of Grimmauld’s oak staircases, his feet stamping on each step as if they’d personally wronged him, less satisfying than he may have hoped with the thick carpet muffling his footsteps. Hermione trailed behind Ron, eyes distant as she thought through possibilities a million miles away. “Harry, where the fuck are you?”
Alerted by the noise, Harry poked his head out from a door lining the second story, his glasses crooked and hair messy. At the clear rage reddening Ron’s face, Harry furrowed his brows, stepping fully into the hallway. “Ron? Everything alright?”
“Let’s go somewhere private,” murmured Hermione, eyes darting to the side — somewhere, Ginny and the twins would be wandering the house, and the news that the pair wanted to share would certainly be more appropriate behind closed doors. After all, they knew all about how easy it was to eavesdrop within Grimmauld.
But Ron was far too pissed to care.
“They’re going to use you to end the war,” said Ron, grabbing Harry by the shoulder. “They’re going to make you marry You-Know-Who.”
Harry blinked once, twice, before his baffled expression moved into a horrifying neutrality.
Ron’s heart sunk in his chest as he saw it, cursing the selflessness of the man who’d become a brother to him. Harry would do it, of course. He’d make any sacrifice to end the war, no matter how unfairly it ruined his own life, no matter how much he’d already had to suffer for the sake of the awful, ungrateful wizarding world, who slandered his name even as they survived only because of his courage.
He’d put up far less of a fight than Ron expected to the idea of a marriage to the monster who’d killed his parents, but Ron wouldn’t be surprised if all the shit Harry was dealing with was finally just too much to push back against. Harry fought for the world every fucking day. He must be exhausted.
Someone had to fight for Harry.
“Ron, honestly, it’s fine,” Harry was saying somewhere far away, Ron far too lost in his own thoughts to process it. “That’s so much better than continuing this war. I don’t mind. And really, Voldemort can’t be that bad.”
The surrender in his voice, the way Harry acted as if it was all already over, as if he knew he’d always be the sacrifice, always the first lamb to the slaughter—
Ron would do everything in his power to save his friend.
***
Sirius knew each creaky step in Grimmauld Place, each shifting floorboard and squeaky door. Moving around silently came as second nature, even after the Dementors had robbed him of much of his happy memories. He would have thought the recollection of each time he’d broken one of Walpurga’s rules would be joyful, remembering the childish, spiteful pleasure of pissing off the bitchy, insufferable harpy, but perhaps the memories had been too tainted with the misery of Grimmauld for the Dementors to slurp them up. Or perhaps the memories lay somewhere deeper in his psyche, the muscle memory of childhood stored somewhere in the heart instead of in the head.
He wouldn’t know. The discussions of Harry’s impending marriage had made him too maudlin, too quick to spiral into depressed contemplation, when he needed to be ready to support his godson. Though they’d only broken the news to Harry the night before, he’d gotten the impression that Ron and Hermione had let him in on the secret at least a week earlier. It would explain a lot: the burning anger in Ron’s every movement, the disgust in Hermione’s gaze, and the abrupt, unsettling silence that had characterized Harry over the past few days.
Sirius almost would have preferred for Harry to rage and scream, to throw the mother of all fits. He deserved the chance to express his anger, his grief at being shackled to an unspeakably cruel murderer. But instead, Harry had remained curiously unemotional, nodding along to whatever the rest of the Order had said, offering little more than shrugs when they asked about how he felt.
He’d felt useless since the day that James died, but seeing Harry’s strange, unbothered acceptance had him truly adrift. There wasn’t a thing he could do, no other way to end the war without risking the lives of everyone in the Order.
So Sirius had snuck downstairs in the middle of the night to put up Christmas decorations. Nothing at all in the grand scheme of things, and he felt supremely stupid as he carefully opened the door to the parlor, but there was only so much he could control, and if a bit of tinsel on the mantleplace could at all lift the mood, at least he would have contributed something.
There, by the parlor windows, stood his godson, the window open in front of him and the tail feathers of a foreign owl flapping out of sight.
Sirius must have made some sort of strangled noise at his shock, as Harry immediately whirled around, his eyes growing wide and his face blushing red.
“It’s not what it looks like!” blurted out Harry immediately, waving his hands frantically at the sight of Sirius’ rapidly growing frown. “Please, Sirius, don’t even ask.”
“I’m asking,” said Sirius, his voice firm. Harry had every right to be upset about his marr—his situation, but the sheer risk of sending and receiving strange owls at Grimmauld, knowing how it could weaken the Fidelius, wasn’t something he could overlook. Harry was a teenager, after all. Teenagers did dumb shit, and it fell to adults like Sirius to set them right. “Who was that to?”
Harry pressed his lips shut, shaking his head.
“I’m not going to just let this go,” continued Sirius, stepping closer. With a wave of Sirius’ wand, the glass panels of the windows slammed together, sealing themselves from the outside world once more. “Any information you sent to a non-Order member could put lives at risk, Harry. We need to know what you’ve just sent out so that we can defend ourselves.”
“Can’t you trust me?” asked Harry, desperate. “Trust that I’m not stupid? That I wouldn’t give us away like that?”
“Can’t you trust me?” said Sirius, voice breaking. The wind howled wildly outside, branches scraping across the glass of the window, filling the silence. “I’m on your side, Harry. I’m not trying to get you in trouble. I’m trying to keep us all safe.”
Harry looked ready to argue again, his brows furrowing and his lips twisting down, before the fight seemed to leave him in a single breath. He looked down towards his bare feet with a glare. “I haven’t told anyone this, but I’ve been seeing someone. Or I was, at least, before we all got quarantined in this house together.”
Sirius blinked, uncomprehending.
“I was sending a letter to him,” said Harry, glancing back up at Sirius, jaw set. “It’ll probably be the last time I do before I have to marry Voldemort. I know that there's a lot of risk, but…”
Harry shrugged helplessly, his words trailing off.
And could Sirius’ heart break any further? His godson, only just recently an adult, a boy who’d never known a life without fear and crushing responsibility, had a boyfriend. He’d fallen in love right before his marriage to the monster who’d tried to kill him. And in less than a month, Harry would never again have the chance to love freely, to flirt with dashing strangers, to choose his own heartbreaks and romances and flings, tied for the rest of his life to the sociopathic Lord Voldemort, doomed to a loveless, cold marriage with a man who’d taken every chance he’d gotten to ruin Harry’s life.
Harry was being reckless, but fuck, hadn’t Sirius been far worse at his age?
Sirius sighed, plopping himself down onto the sofa. “Alright. I won’t tell.”
Harry blinked rapidly behind his glasses, his determined expression slipping into shock. “Really?”
“As long as you spill some of the juicy details,” said Sirius, a knowing grin spreading over his face. “Tell me all about your mysterious man, hm?”
Harry’s face reddened. “You’re teasing me.”
“C’mon,” wheedled Sirius, patting the seat next to him on the couch invitingly. “I’m a trustworthy confidant. It’s bonding time. I’ll tell you all about how James used to write super mushy-gushy love letters to Lily, too, how’s that?”
Harry rolled his eyes, dismissive, but Sirius didn’t miss the corners of his mouth twitching up into the beginnings of a smile. “Fine. I’ll tell you about him, but I’m not telling you his name.”
Sirius waggled his eyebrows. “How scandalous.”
And, finally plopping himself down on the sofa next to Sirius, Harry began to speak, his eyes softening and his voice low.
They could pretend things were normal, just for the night.
***
Despite all the work he’d done to ensure the wedding would run smoothly and without interruption, as Severus watched Harry walk down the aisle, the scrawny boy’s eyes glistening with what looked like tears and his lips quivering, a part of him wanted to call the whole thing off. To set Voldemort’s bridal robes on fire, perhaps, or blow himself up so violently that the wedding would need to be postponed until after all the bits of Severus Snape scattered around the venue were cleaned up. Anything to save the boy in front of him from the awful fate stood by the altar, the skeletal, otherworldly beast he’d be tied to until death do them part.
He’d helped to negotiate the wedding, scheduling it for Christmas Day. He’d sworn a vow, after all, and with the Dark Lord’s recent reacquisition of sanity, the Death Eaters’ plans had gone from mindless fearmongering to terrifyingly strategic attacks. The Death Eaters had always had an advantage over the Order without morals or legality holding them back; with near-infinite funding and no idea deemed too cruel, what hope could Dumbledore’s ragtag band of well-meaning misfits offer?
The only way Severus had felt sure he’d be able to keep Harry alive was by ending the war before it could escalate too far, by finding any sort of peaceful surrender that would allow the Chosen One a chance at continued survival, even if the Dark Lord had somehow uncovered the full prophecy. Countless nights had been lost to misery, as he agonized endlessly as to how he could possibly convince the Dark Lord to spare the boy, even as the Death Eaters only grew stronger.
When Voldemort had idly mused about political marriage, Severus had recognized the lifeline, as awful as it seemed.
So many had fought against the idea of marriage, both among the Death Eaters and the Order. Bellatrix had tried to poison his wine—foolish, to attempt to poison a Potions Master, but she’d never been half as bright as she was bloodthirsty—while Ron and Hermione, well-intended in their naivety, had done everything in their power to sabotage the negotiations, their schemes becoming increasingly desperate and increasingly easy to work around. Nobody was happy with losing their beloved leader to a compromise, of making any sort of sacrifice; curiously enough, only Harry and the Dark Lord had seemed unbothered by the prospect as the marriage negotiations had come together, as if both understood the logic of preventing needless further bloodshed.
Through Severus’ haze, he registered that Harry had finally reached the altar, his small hands covered completely by the Dark Lord’s long, spiderlike fingers, their two faces turned towards Severus expectantly.
“Do you, Lord Voldemort,” said Severus, his voice steady and sure, betraying none of his internal turmoil. “Take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, in sickness and in health, till death do you part, according to Magic’s eternal law?”
What would Lily think?
I do.
Harry had his mother’s eyes, no matter how much Severus detested acknowledging it. It was more than just the same shade of green, more than just the identical slope of his lids. His eyes held all of Lily’s delighted mischief over a shared secret. All of her righteous anger when she saw something wrong, right before she carelessly inserted herself into the situation to fix it. All of her unbridled affection when she saw her friends, a warmth that Severus missed more than anything, a warmth that had left him chilled to the bone when she began looking past him in the halls, her eyes skipping over him as if he’d never existed.
Severus was far from delusional. Looking after the boy had been a burden, but selfishly, it had been a sort of gift, too; the spark in his eyes when Severus pushed him too hard in Potions class had resurrected Lily, if only for a moment, and Severus found himself trailing the boy, almost more of a voyeur than a protector, always waiting to catch a glimpse of the woman he loved in his moods and miseries.
Do you, Harry Potter, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, in sickness and in health, till death do you part, according to Magic’s eternal law?
Would Lily look at him now, if she were alive? Would she understand that he’d acted for her sake, that the marriage was his only hope of saving Harry’s life? Could she ever look upon him with mercy again, with understanding, with all the childlike trust he’d taken for granted until the day it had shattered forever?
Or would this be another blow to their already fractured relationship, darkening the indifference in her gaze to real hatred? He was whoring out her son, in a way, selling him off to the man who’d killed her. Severus had never been a good man, but even he wished for forgiveness from beyond the veil, an absolution from the only figure he’d ever worshipped.
I do.
Harry wasn’t even looking at him anymore, his eyes locked onto Voldemort’s face. Severus would find no answer there, no sign from Lily after all these times, no signal from beyond the veil.
If all that awaited him after death was Lily’s cold indifference, it would be all he deserved.
“I now pronounce you partners for life," said Severus, his mouth dry. He had done his duty. God, he’d tried his best.
But as Harry stood in front of him, the Dark Lord looming over the boy like every worst nightmare come to life, inhuman and grotesque in the face of Harry’s perfect humanity, Severus could feel no triumph, nothing but a sick, horrified disgust.
“You may now kiss the groom.”
With all the intensity and determination he’d once shown as a Seeker on the Hogwarts Quidditch field, Harry pounced on the Dark Lord, launching himself into the man’s arms, his legs wrapping around the man’s waist as if the cruel Lord Voldemort was little more than a tree to be climbed. Voldemort’s arms curled immediately around Harry, holding him tightly, as Harry initiated the wettest, sloppiest kiss that Severus had seen in all his years of watching hormonal teenagers learn how to snog.
And the Dark Lord was matching him, equally overenthusiastic, absolutely disgusting in his unexperienced messiness.
Severus could do nothing but stare for a few long, horrified seconds, nothing but the sound of spit and sighs filling the small room.
Had they–? All along–it couldn’t be…
In retrospect, the lack of resistance from Voldemort and Harry both should have been telling, especially for a spy of his caliber.
But to be fair, how could Severus be expected to predict that the Dark Lord and the Boy-Who-Lived had been carrying on some secret, long-distance love affair behind everyone’s backs?
Just like his damn father, thought Snape with a scowl, Apparating out of the room with an angry crack. Karma for ever pitying that no-good, insufferable boy.
***
Though the Order had anticipated at least some level of public backlash, the marriage between Voldemort and Harry was quite well received by the wizarding world. The larger populace had historically been quite quick to turn on Harry, but it seemed even the masses acknowledged the gravity of Harry’s sacrifice, knowing they had no right to criticize the young man signing away the rest of his years to keep the cruel Dark Lord in check for all their sakes. For the most part, the two lived in isolation, only rarely making public appearances at important events, with Harry successfully keeping Voldemort away from the rest of the wizarding world.
And even Harry’s close friends were willing to go along with the charade. Even the most determined journalists couldn’t get Hermione to share the dirty details of how horrible Harry’s life must be with Voldemort, with her only describing the couple as “very happy” together, even though the people knew it could not be true. The rest of Harry’s friends and family were similarly unhelpful, almost disgruntled in their reassurances, as if they themselves were surprised with how well the two lived together.
And although Harry and Voldemort may not have been pictured together often, every still of them that was captured showed them absolutely absorbed in each other, stupid smiles on their faces and ridiculous softness in their eyes, a thoroughly convincing ploy.
All was well.