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At the start, Tom had thought the peace treaty to be one of the best bargains he’d ever make.
Control of the Ministry (which he’d rightfully earned anyhow), full pardons for his Inner Circle, and the safe return of all his extant Horcruxes—all in return for a few simple, binding vows to no longer pursue his goals with violence nor order others to do so in his name. Hardly a sacrifice at all, really, when you considered that he was one of the most cunning and intelligent people to ever live and could undoubtedly find ways to achieve his ambitions through the use of so-called ‘soft power’ with little trouble.
Did he mention that ‘all extant Horcruxes’ also included the beautiful, feisty, green-eyed one that he hadn’t even known existed until now? The one he’d nearly killed, in his rush to conquer Britain with the brute force of the sword, when his skill had always lain more with the pen (and silvered tongue)?
Violence was for uncreative, probably Gryffindorish imbeciles, anyway.
He absorbed the cup, locket and diadem immediately, to gain the strengths of the best Hogwarts founders, and also to restore his physical appearance to that which Narcissa’s helpful magazines called ‘wedding-ready’.
Scarcely a week later, his bonding ceremony with Harry Potter and swearing-in as Minister took place, and thus their glorious new lives began.
*
It was not turning out at all like he’d thought.
The Ministry, as it turned out, was full of lazy incompetents accustomed to doing nothing but loiter for eight hours a day and collect a paycheck, and it was far more difficult than he’d expected to motivate them when one was barred (by strong legislation, requiring a Wizengamot supermajority and approval from at least three independent committees) from using the Cruciatus, chaining them to their desks, or firing them without two years’ notice, six months of severance pay and a comfortable pension. He quickly came to rely heavily, to his utter fury and shame, on his two top deputies: Percy Weasley and Hermione Granger.
All that would have been fine, perfectly bearable—so long as he had a warm dinner, happy home, and loving husband to come home to in the evenings. Alright, so the first one was pretty well in hand—there was a reason Orion’s old house-elf had been the envy of Slytherin in the 40s, and if anything his cooking skills had improved over the decades—but the other two were a complete and utter disaster. Harry locked himself in his private quarters (which Tom had given him as a gift, for use on the presumably very infrequent nights when they were not cuddled together blissfully in their marital bed) every second that Tom was anywhere within the manor or on its sixty-hectare grounds; his presence in Riddle House would have been completely undetectable, if not for the frequent sobs, screams of frustration, and thundering blasts of spellfire (more often than not accompanied by chunks of stone and dust falling from the ceiling below) that regularly emanated from behind his heavily-warded door.
”Harry,” he’d coaxed many a night from the other side (and behind a well-cast shield charm, just to be safe). “My soul, my darling, please. This is no kind of life for a pair of immortal destined soulmates. Come out, look into my eyes”—there was a roar and a deafening crash against the door, causing the thick wood to crack and bow outward rather alarmingly—“all right, you don’t need to come out if you don’t feel like it, but at the very least speak to me! Tell me what you need, what I, in my infinite power, can do to soothe your hurts and prove to you the full strength of my devotion—“
“ARE YOU FUCKING FOR REAL RIGHT NOW!?!?” came Harry’s scraped-raw voice (oh, how lovely it was to hear him communicate in words again, but the poor thing needed throat-coating tea at once—he’d have to let Kreacher know) at last one night, after a full three hours of Tom reciting the love poetry he composed during long Wizengamot sessions, to keep himself from falling asleep or casting Avadas at the opposition. “YOU KILLED MY PARENTS—YOU KILLED SIRIUS! SO MANY INNOCENT PEOPLE! I WILL NEVER, EVER, LOVE YOU OR FORGIVE YOU, NEVER! GO AWAY!!!”
Well. This was certainly progress, even if it came delivered with more than a little hyperbole and a complete absence of tact. But then again, Tom had signed up for such things when he married his fiery little lion. The important thing was, he finally had real information, something concrete he could work with. Here, for the first time, was an inkling of exactly what it was that had hardened Harry’s heart, what Tom would need to fix if he was to eventually carve out a little space all his own within those bloody, beating red chambers.
After calling the elf and ordering him to drop everything and prepare an extra-large batch of licorice tea, Tom donned his dragonhide working robes and quickly made his way to the basement, where the ritual rooms, potions laboratory, and secure rehabilitative re-education center for mentally unwell political agitators (not a “dungeon”, no matter how many memos Granger wrote him about it) were located. Lucius and Severus had been strongly hinting lately that he should take up a hobby; and since his top choice of renovating the gardens together with Harry was still a no-go for now, a little bit of experimental magic would have to suffice.
*
”Harry? My love?”
Harry let out a tortured groan of frustration from his current position lying upside-down in an enormous green armchair, a book magically suspended several inches from his face. He’d really thought they were finally past this.
For the last week or so, since his explosion at Voldemort’s (“please, call me Tom”—was the man delusional? Scratch that, he obviously was and deeply so) latest drawn-out entreaties that they ‘spend quality time together’, the Dark Lord had finally, blessedly been leaving him alone, his presence unfelt in Harry’s vicinity, save for Kreacher stubbornly popping in twice a day to force him to drink licorice tea (“It is being Master Tom’s orders, and yes, Master Harry is Heir Black and technically takes precedence, but in this case Kreacher agrees with Master Tom on the subject of Master Harry’s distressed vocal cords.” He’d quickly decided that it would be easier to just go along). Unfortunately, Voldemort hadn’t actually left the house during that time either according to Kreacher’s reports, so Harry couldn’t follow his usual routine of leaving his quarters during the day to search for means of escape, Transfigure mustaches onto the various snake statues and portraits of Slytherin ancestors scattered about, and ride his Firebolt around the back garden while bashing Bludgers into the brickwork. It hadn’t been all bad, though; the suite of rooms that Voldemort “generously bestowed” on him included a midsized private library, and there were quite a lot of interesting books to get through even if you didn’t count all the ones about dark magic and psychological manipulation.
Apparently that was all over now, though, because Tommy Dearest was back.
”I’m not your love! Go away!” Harry shouted, putting as much venom into it as possible without straining his voice again and sentencing himself to another long regimen of eye-watering anise-flavored beverages.
”Darl—Harry, please. Just come out for ten minutes; I’ve prepared a wonderful surprise for you.” The voice was pleading as always, but also newly hopeful. Harry let out a scoff loud enough to be well-heard through the door.
”You don’t even need to see me if that’s what’s troubling you. I left your gift downstairs in the dining room; you can go and discover it all on your own. I do insist that I remain no more than two rooms away, in case they—er, in case anything happens, but I shan’t interfere or bother you further. I promise.”
Against his will, Harry’s ears pricked up at the seemingly-accidental use of they. Could Voldemort’s ‘surprise’ maybe, just maybe, be another person? Though he’d been using Kreacher to exchange letters with his friends and make sure the “ex” Dark Lord was abiding by the peace treaty, he otherwise hadn’t spoken to a soul since the wedding. He hadn’t even left the estate grounds—not because his ‘husband’ forbade it or anything, but because he knew the wanker would show up at any public place Harry happened to visit, and he refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing his face. Also—paparazzi.
“You‘ll really stay away?” he called out warily, straining all his senses as if it would help him detect Voldemort lying. “You’re not going to jump out at me the minute I open the door like a bloody snake-in-a-tin, are you?”
”No! Never! Two rooms away, I swear it. Please, just go to the dining room and see what I’ve done for you.”
After a very long pause—during which he was pretty sure Voldemort was actually holding his breath, it was so quiet—he let out a long-suffering sigh, cancelled the Wingardium on the book on the history of runic warding that he wasn’t really absorbing anyhow, and got to his feet.
”Okay, I’m coming out in five minutes. I’d better not see one speck of your stupid newly re-nosed face, though, or all bets are off.”
*
He crept carefully down the stairs to the dining room, his wand out in front and Kreacher trailing behind as lookout in case Voldemort tried to sneak up and hug him or something (it had happened before, once, at their wedding; never again). Approaching the large double doors, he could hear shuffling sounds, the scrape of chairs and the occasional clink of silverware.
There really are people!
He crossed the remaining distance and pushed through the doors in just a few quick steps, not really even caring who it was; at this point, he’d welcome even Draco Malfoy or his awful father as a decent verbal sparring partner. To his pleasant surprise, there were no less than four figures seated at the table, place settings loaded with food laid before them. Not recognizing anyone immediately (their heads were oddly hunched over their plates), he moved closer and announced himself with a friendly greeting.
”Hi, who—AAAAAAAGGGGGHHHH!!!”
Sitting in the dining room like a scene from a Muggle horror movie—their eyes blank, skin pale and discolored in stark contrast to the impeccably tailored new robes they were all wearing, stiff hands moving mechanically from their plates to their hanging-open mouths and back again—were the reanimated bodies of James and Lily Potter, Albus Dumbledore, and—at first Harry thought it was Sirius, but the man seated next to the horrible mockery of James was a bit shorter, his black hair neater and more curly—
“Master Regulus! Oh, happy day—the true and rightful heir to the Ancient and Most Noble House of Black has returned! Master, master—please allow Kreacher to serve you, you should not be’s eating food Kreacher did not prepare and check for poisons himself—“
Kreacher barreled out from behind Harry and knelt at the feet of what really did appear to be the Inferius of Regulus Black, though he had an allover bloated appearance that hadn’t been in his portraits at Grimmauld Place, as if the man’s entire body was slightly waterlogged. The elf continued to weep and beg “Master Regulus” to give him some orders to carry out, offering a long list of his own suggestions when the zombie emitted nothing but a few confused groans. Harry, however, wasn’t really paying attention.
“What the hell is this!?” he wailed, recoiling in horror and stumbling backwards to the door, only to jump and scream bloody murder again when an Inferius Hedwig swooped down from her perch on the chandelier, a more freshly-dead rat dangling from her beak. “No—no—nightmare—ahhhh—!”
”Harry!” As if things couldn’t get any worse, skidding around the corner like a cartoon character came none other than Lord Voldemort, still infuriatingly in possession of the nose, hair, and even more breathtaking version of Diary Riddle’s cheekbones that he’d sported at the wedding. “What’s happened, are you alright? They shouldn’t be attacking, the modified Imperius I used was very—“
”What…what…you did this!?” Harry demanded. “This is your fucking ‘surprise’!? What kind of sick fucker even are you!?”
Voldemort furrowed his brow and frowned in confusion. “You said you could never love me, because I was responsible for the deaths of your family,” he explained, as if Harry could’ve possibly forgotten. “So in order to prove my remorse and devotion to you, I brought them back. Normal Inferi are all rotted and washed out and basically just mindless flesh soldiers, but I made these personally!” His face lit up with the tiny but unmistakable spark of pride. “The bodies are restored as close as possible to how they were alive—I studied their photographs extensively—and they’re capable of basic movement. No speech, but then again I’ve never met an eighteen-year-old who wanted his parents to talk more—“
Unable to listen to any more of this abomination, Harry let out a wordless scream and charged at the architect of all his misery, balling his fists and pounding at the man’s chest, caring less for the actual damage he might do than just to express his utter fury and revulsion.
”What’s wrong with you!?” he yelled over Voldemort’s continued attempts at explanation and ‘comfort’. “You’re messed up in the head, that’s what! How could you ever think that this could make up for…for…!”
”Is this about Black?” Voldemort asked uncertainly, trying to put his hands on Harry’s shoulders even as the smaller boy continued to wallop him. “His body was lost to the Veil, there was nothing I could do. But the brothers looked very much alike in life, and I already had Regulus stored down at the cave—“
”You make me sick!” Harry bellowed with one last mighty shove against Voldemort’s body, then made a break for it and dashed for the door, wanting nothing more than to return to the sanctuary of his rooms. “I HATE YOU!”
And he fled back up the stairs two at a time, leaving his flummoxed-looking husband and one still-ecstatic house elf in the room with the four bodies (six, actually, if you counted the Inferius owl and her rodent prey).
*
Harry curled up on his bed in a shivering ball, rocking back and forth and trying to expunge the images of his ‘resurrected’ loved ones from his mind, to no avail. He couldn’t even decide whether the fact Voldemort genuinely seemed to have intended it as a kind gesture, and expected it to improve their relationship, made the whole thing worse or better. How was he supposed to live the rest of his days with a man like this!?
He twisted his wedding ring—the former Horcrux ring that Voldemort had re-set in a platinum band, the ring that had killed the real Dumbledore—around and around on his finger, silently reciting the names of his lost loved ones.
Lily and James Potter. Sirius Black, Albus Dumbledore, Cedric Diggory, Hedwig…
It wasn’t until he heard the voices, and felt the cold, uncanny touch of incorporeal hands patting at his shoulders, that he looked up and realized just what he’d done.
*
Tom slumped in his seat at the head of the table, only half-paying attention as the elf shined Regulus’s shoes, the other revenants (he refused to use the word Inferi, what he had created was new and better in every way than those amateur-hour dark magic automatons) continued to “eat” with bits of food regularly falling from their forks and mouths, and the bloody owl repeatedly dove and plucked at bits of his hair. How had he somehow gotten it wrong again? No, he hadn’t managed to fully return Harry’s family to him—yet, Tom had only had a week to work with and he wasn’t the one who’d destroyed the Philosopher’s Stone, now was he?—but whatever happened to ‘points for trying’? ‘A for effort’? Or ‘O for effort’, as the wizarding case may be. Harry’s reaction had barely been the equivalent of a low T.
He’d been there ten minutes and only begun to ponder these mysteries when he heard Harry scream again from upstairs and shot bolt upright, on his feet and wand drawn in an instant. What was threatening his husband now!? It couldn’t be the revenants again—they were all here and accounted for in the room with Tom.
He sped out of the room and up the stairs like Death itself was chasing him, uncaring anymore whether Harry desired his presence right now. They may have recited some Muggle nonsense when they were wed at Harry’s insistence, but Tom had privately committed to the traditional vows of a husband to provide, protect, and (gods willing and in good time) procreate; he’d rip through the wards on Harry’s private quarters with his bare hands, if that’s what it took to get between his soulmate and any foolish attacker.
Mercifully for him (especially since Harry was still screaming bloody murder on the other side of the door, sending Tom into his own state of distress almost as dire), Harry had forgotten to reset the wards when he returned to his room, leaving him free to burst headlong into the bedroom with his wand blazing. He gasped when he saw his little soul backed into the corner, being encroached upon by a crowd of…ghosts? No—they were more opaque, somehow heavier than that, with a different feel to their magic, almost like the shades that had emerged from his wand during the Priori Incantatem in the graveyard…
Some of them even had the exact same faces. Wait—
“Get back!” Harry shouted, any authority in the statement belied by the way his hands, legs and voice all shook with terror. “Oh gods, where did you come from, what has he done now—!?”
”Harry.” The shade at the front of the group, and the only woman among them, edged forward, her hands raised and her voice impossibly gentle. “Baby, it’s us. Mum and Dad and Padfoot and…well, Professor Dumbledore is here too, I suppose, and this other nice young man. I don’t know what’s happened to you before but this isn’t a trick; you called us, sweetheart, and we came.”
There was no mistaking that voice now; Tom had last heard it pleading No, not Harry, please not Harry, I’ll do anything before he’d laughed maniacally and cast his second Killing Curse of that long-ago Halloween night.
“We can’t hug you or touch you, because our physical bodies are gone,” the shade of Lily Potter continued, her tone now weighted with deep sadness, “but please, tell us what’s wrong and let us help you…”
”Well of course your bodies are gone!” Harry yelled, sounding on the verge of hysteria. “He”—he pointed his wand hand wildly at Tom, shooting off sparks in the process that the older man only narrowly ducked—“has them all downstairs playing in his sicko puppet theater, and now he’s apparently conjured up your ghosts to torture me as well—“
”Our bodies are downstairs?” the Sirius Black shade said curiously, turning away from Harry and looking down as if he might be able to see through the floorboards. “And they’re, like…moving and stuff, you said?”
”Hmm,” said the Dumbledore shade, who was standing respectfully back from the others, along with the very-confused looking spare Hufflepuff boy from the graveyard. “I wonder…”
Tom’s mind raced furiously, these miraculous new pieces slotting into the puzzle of souls and necromancy and ritual magic that he’d been painstakingly working on all this week in the basement.
“Please just make this all go away,” Harry moaned, burying his face in his hands.
”Harry.” Tom spoke very carefully, afraid that even the smallest vibrations in his voice might cause the entire fragile scene to shatter. “I know you’re very angry at me right now—and we can discuss that later, along with my apology, I promise—but I need you to listen to me. Come back downstairs—don’t take your ring off, keep it just like that!—and bring all…these,” he gestured vaguely at the monochromatic figures, “with you. I have an idea; we just need to try one weird trick…”
*
THREE MONTHS LATER
It was rather more pleasant than he’d expected, Tom mused, hearing Riddle House echo with the sounds of laughter and happy voices. He wondered how many years it had been since the last time; may have only met them for a few minutes, but his father and grandparents hadn’t exactly seemed like the merrymaking type.
Of course, there were many struggles that came with this new life he’d stumbled into, cohabitating with multiple long-deceased bodies who were possessed and animated by their own Resurrection Stone’d souls. The need to maintain their condition and regularly reapply his custom preservation and animation enchantments, just for a start.
There was also the fact that the returned Lily Potter had completely taken over Tom’s potions lab, rapidly catching up on two missed decades’ worth of advancement in the subject with the enthusiastic assistance of Severus, who had undergone a complete personality transplant and become disgustingly cheerful since reuniting with his childhood friend. And that James had yet to warm up to his new son-in-law, constantly making little digs about the ‘dishonor’ of attacking a wandless opponent, and demanding that Tom transfer his soul into a bloody deer whenever it struck his fancy.
Sirius, meanwhile, had turned up his nose at using his brother’s perfectly-good body, agreeing with an apoplectic Kreacher that it would be an unforgivable insult to the dead. He apparently had no such misgivings, however, about his late father; and so after a rather taxing expedition into the depths of the Black Mausoleum to retrieve Orion, Tom now had the uncanny experience of watching the body of his former uptight schoolmate parade around the house in Muggle band T-shirts and leather jackets—at least, when he wasn’t out on the town with his werewolf boyfriend or banging away on motorcycles in the old carriage house at all hours of the day and night.
(The hard work he’d done on Regulus hadn’t gone to waste, at least; he and Harry had quickly brought back the younger Black brother as well, not so much out of sentimentality, as because it was the only way to retain Kreacher’s services and ensure his continued good behavior. The house-elf now kept up a perpetual facade of being deaf and only responded to orders relayed through his beloved ‘Reggie’.)
On the much, much brighter side, Harry had never been happier. Tom’s darling husband now spent his days smiling near nonstop, basking in the presence of his parents, godfather, and bloody owl that was even more cantankerous than James, frequently inviting Granger, Weasley, Weasley, Weasley, Weasley, Weasley, and Percy Weasley (Tom refused to memorize the first names of people who he didn’t even employ) over for game nights or massive dinners in the renovated dining room. Thankfully, he and Tom had also been hard at work on the gardens; they should be nearly done by summer, hopefully giving the invading hordes, both undead and non-, some room to spread out a little.
(Even more to Tom’s gratification, Harry now had a very strong vested interest in wearing his wedding ring at all times.)
And then there were the nights.
Family reunions and copious sweaty hours spent together planting rosebushes and removing brambles, as it turned out, had done wonders to thaw the bond between the newlywed couple. Harry was now spending the vast majority of nights in their shared personal quarters, the fruits of this proximity proving fiery indeed. Any potential concerns about the awkwardness of passionate lovemaking under the same roof as one’s in-laws had quickly been rendered null and void; thanks be to Merlin, Salazar, and Cadmus Peverell for Silencing and Imperturbable charms.
Tom hadn’t yet managed to bring Harry around on the procreation aspect of their marriage—but it was early yet; his little soul was still making up for eighteen years of his own missed childhood. He was certain that whenever they did make the mutual decision to bring heirs into the world, their bliss would only continue to multiply.
After all, the only thing that could improve the sound of a house echoing with laughter, cheerful shouts—and the occasional creak of an undead body that needed a spot of maintenance—was the future pitter-patter of little feet.