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Harry opened his eyes to metal bars, and for half a second he panicked, thinking he was at the Dursleys' again, stuck looking out his tiny damned window - but no, the bars here were floor-to-ceiling, and the view beyond them was not the back garden of Privet Drive, rather, a large, underground room which was beginning to look ominously like a real castle dungeon. If he squinted, he could just make out a skull and snake on the tapestry on the far wall-
"Bloody hell, this is the Dark Lord's castle dungeon," Harry realized.
"No shit, Sherlock," someone groaned from another cell. (It was too dark for Harry to see them.)
"Dig deeper, Watson," someone else muttered. A few people laughed.
"..How many of you are there?" wondered Harry, looking around.
"Thirteen, now you're here," said the first person who'd spoken with a sigh.
Harry sat down on the stone floor, leaning against the bars of his cell. "Lucky me," he deadpanned.
"Lucky you, indeed," came a high, hissing voice from the far end of the dungeon.
Other prisoners gasped. Chains rattled as shackled people shrank back in their cells; quietly, someone cried, "not again."
Harry sat up straighter. Repositioning himself to face the bars, he bowed his head, and greeted his captor. "Good evening, Dark Lord."
A soft laugh, as Voldemort drew closer to Harry's cell, blocking the faint light that shone from overhead. "If nothing else, that greeting alone tells me you are not the wizard my servants so boldly claimed to have captured in the night. Raise your head, boy."
Harry did.
With the light behind him, the Dark Lord's face was almost completely hidden from view. Only the edges of his face and the flickering red glow of his eyes could be seen. "Your name?" Voldemort asked.
"Harry Potter, sir."
Was that amusement he could see in the shape of the man's eyes? "Harry Potter," the Dark Lord repeated, a murmur. "Not Longbottom at all."
At the mention of the name, Harry couldn't quite keep down the sneer that curled his lip; couldn't hide his distaste quickly enough to escape Voldemort's notice.
A cool hand came up to brush his hair away from the side of his face, and Harry almost flinched as the Dark Lord rested his palm there, thumbing over Harry's cheek. "No fondness for the Boy-Who-Lived, Harry?" he asked, voice soft.
"Not personally, no," Harry muttered. He forcibly ignored the muttering of the other prisoners which had begun the minute they heard his name. "I wouldn't be here right now if I hadn't been mistaken for him from behind."
The thumb on his cheek paused. "You take issue with him for daring to resemble you, but not with me or my followers for keeping you here."
It wasn't a question, but Harry answered anyway. "Yes, sir."
The hand slid down to the side of his neck. "But that isn't what you don't like about Longbottom, is it, Harry? Something more than this... inconvenience."
Harry swallowed. Fingers traced the movement of his Adam's apple, a fingertip lingering in the hollow of his throat, just enough pressure to be felt and no more.
"You are unsatisfied with Neville Longbottom, aren't you, Harry? The world's supposed hero, but so weak. Whose parents died the same as yours, at my hand, but only their sacrifices were honored. Who purports to be a Gryffindor, and yet cannot look me in the eyes without fear."
Harry was looking him in the eyes, right now. He'd known the minute he started that he wouldn't be able to look away, but he'd done it anyway.
"But you, Harry..." the Dark Lord's other hand came through the bars to ruffle his hair, tracing the line of his jaw with a fingertip while the first resettled against his neck, resting on his pulse. "Your ears have heard of me, and now your eyes have seen me. But you do not shrink from my gaze, my voice; you do not recoil from my touch.
"I would call it strength, or dignity, or bravery, but that alone would not satisfy you, would it? You already know."
Harry almost wished he hadn't met Voldemort's gaze at all, because he could feel the spider-silk touch of Legilimency, loosening the words he'd held back for so long so that they spilled from his lips instead. A confession he'd never meant to voice.
"I'm better," he spoke, and almost winced at the way the soft touches on him briefly firmed, red eyes narrowing in satisfaction. Go on, Voldemort was saying. Tell me.
"I'm better than him," he continued, bitter. "I outmatch him in every way. They pretended we were somehow alike beyond our circumstances, and it sickened me, because there is no comparison, no rivalry. I... I hate him," he bared his teeth, the words coming faster, spilling like a deep wound, "because he doesn't deserve that title - 'hero', ha!" he snarled. "I'm what he is but more , and if I'd had that scar, if it were me-"
"Oh, Harry." One fingertip came to rest on his forehead, slowly tracing the lines of Longbottom's famous scar upon his forehead. "Ambitious, darling boy."
"If it were me," Harry breathed, but he didn't continue, because the hands on him were withdrawing, and he gazed up into Voldemort's eyes with something akin to desperation, a worry that, having confessed, he had been found lacking, after all.
But there came a soft click of metal, and the bars between Harry and the Dark Lord fell away, disappearing into the floor. "Rise, and walk with me," he said, holding a hand out for Harry to take.
Peripherally, Harry was aware of the clamoring of the other prisoners; how they berated him for even daring to think himself above their absent hero, questioned what he was doing, told him to run. He ignored them, and let the pale, cool hand clasp his, helping him to his feet.
Voldemort walked, not in front of him, but beside him, through the door out of the dungeon and up a flight of stairs, down a corridor lined with closed doors to the double-doors left ajar at the very end. No words were shared between them in that time; Harry thought over what he had already said, and found none of it to be a lie.
He was bitter about Longbottom's undeserved fame. His yearmate, technically his Housemate, had constantly been revered for the smallest achievements while Harry's consistently superior performance earned him neither House points nor his peers' recognition. It wasn't even that Harry was used to being acknowledged; he had had a decade with the Dursleys to the contrary. But was he supposed to be grateful that instead of being punished for doing better than his more famous peer, he was now simply ignored? Was he supposed to have fawned over Longbottom like the others did, rather than ignore him just as much and find himself the outcast?
The only times he'd ever been given notice were in comparison to Longbottom - and it had infuriated him to no end. Harry regretted asking the Hat to put him in Gryffindor more and more each year; because even the least notable Slytherins made connections that lasted beyond Hogwarts, and Harry had graduated nearly the top of his class with nothing and no one.
If only he'd been the one left with a scar, he'd thought then, watching Longbottom's friends wish him well on his vague quest to defeat Voldemort - if only it had been him, things would be different.
The room beyond the doors was two stories tall, round, filled floor-to-ceiling with bookshelves - unmistakably the Dark Lord's office, when Harry saw the massive snake coiling around one chair. It was pleasantly warm compared to the dungeons, heated by the roaring fire off to one side; in the middle of the room, Voldemort stopped, and Harry did too, looking down to where their fingers were still loosely interlocked, and back up to the Dark Lord's face.
Before today, Harry had never met Voldemort, and he thought distantly that the man looked nothing like people described him. It was true that he was hairless, with serpentine features that replaced his nose; but there was a kind of warmth in his expression that no one ever said he could bear, a fondness, as he looked down at Harry now. "They have done wrong by you," the Dark Lord said to him, releasing his hand to raise it to Harry's cheek once more. "They have wasted the acclaim that you deserve.
"You have such potential , Harry." The hand on his cheek slid now to the back of his neck, drawing him in closer to Voldemort's chest so that he had to crane his head up even more to look at him.
"I visited upon your home first, in 1981," the Dark Lord informed him, toying with strands of hair at the back of Harry's neck. "I turned my wand on every member of the Longbottom household, only hours later." He stepped closer, enveloping Harry in his flowing black robes.
"Nothing would have stopped me from killing you, when I was there. Have you never wondered," Voldemort breathed, "why I spared you, instead?"
"...Sometimes," Harry admitted, in a whisper.
"It was because," the hand on his neck came up to his chin instead, thumbing over his bottom lip, "I had intended to return for you that night." His other hand smoothed down Harry's sleeve, catching his fingers in a gentle hold to bring his knuckles to pale lips. "To bring you back with me."
A kiss to Harry's knuckles. Harry felt his cheeks pinken.
"I spared you, Harry, so that I could keep you for myself ."
In one swift movement the Dark Lord released Harry's hand and cheek again, and hoisted him up in his arms to carry him through another door, into a room Harry only realized was a bedroom when he was laid down onto the bed. "Oh," escaped his lips, as he blinked up at the man with a haze over his vision that he recognized now as desire.
"Do you know there was a prophecy in play, Harry?" Voldemort asked, as he moved Harry to the center of the bed. "It told of the emergence of one with the power to defeat me, and at first, I meant to pursue that person out of self-preservation, for fear of being defeated.
"But the prophecy was not complete with that, you see." He shed the outermost layer of his robes; the fabric underneath was fitted closer to his body, showing Harry just how much lean muscle the man was hiding. "The prophesied one would be my equal - marked, by me, as a sign of my recognition."
Harry frowned, thinking of Longbottom's scar, and the Dark Lord shushed him, stroking his cheek with his hand. "Harry," he soothed, "I didn't go to Longbottom with the intention of scarring him. I went to kill him - the one I chose was you ."
The words sounded in Harry's ears like a striking gong. "What," he breathed, almost disbelieving what he'd heard.
"The one I chose," Voldemort repeated. "It was you . I wanted you to live - I wanted you to come into your power, and be at my side. I wanted you to be the only one who could fit the prophecy, Harry. My only equal in this world."
"Oh," Harry said, quietly. "Oh."
The Dark Lord leaned in on his elbows above him, resting his forehead on Harry's, and smiled. "My Harry," he sighed, half-lidded eyes never leaving Harry's own. "May I?"
It was clear what he meant. Harry felt his heart skip a beat, heat suffusing his cheeks and working its way down his neck and chest. He gave his answer the only way he wanted to: he closed the distance between their mouths in a kiss.
Voldemort returned the kiss in the next second, expertly, as though he were just barely restraining himself from devouring Harry instead. He pressed his body down on Harry's in a slow, gratuitous rhythm, drawing out the friction while he began to unbutton Harry's shirt one-handed. With exceptional self-control, Harry managed not to buck up into the sensations, instead using both of his hands to tug at the fastenings of the Dark Lord's robes.
They separated, gasping for air, just when Harry realized he had need of it; panting, Voldemort kissed him on the cheek, and murmured, "You can call me by my name," against his ear.
Harry's breath hitched, and he formed his lips around the first letter of the Taboo word, dizzy with excitement, only for a finger to press against his lips. "Not that one," Voldemort smiled. "A different name. One only you and I will know. Tom."
"Tom," Harry echoed, voice strangling as he felt one deft hand unbuttoning his trousers and slipping eager fingertips under the waistband of his briefs. "Ah-"
"Darling," Tom sighed, kissing down the curve of Harry's neck and over the skin exposed by each opened button on his shirt. "It is no wonder those philistines don't understand you - you are the answer to Samson's riddle, the honey in the lion."
"Is that - 'the Silence of the Lambs?'" Harry gasped, fumbling at the last trouser button between his fingers and the source of the tenting in the fabric that throbbed under his palm.
The recognition earned him a delighted laugh and a sucking, wet kiss just below the navel, before Tom's tongue trailed lower, probing under the waistband of his briefs faster than the two of them could cooperate to pull them off.
"'What is sweeter than honey?'" the man quoted, finally giving up and Vanishing all of their clothes off entirely. "'What is stronger than a lion?'" He left it up to Harry to decide the answer; his mouth was busy enveloping the head of Harry's leaking cock and sucking all the air out of Harry's lungs through it, apparently.
This was so much more than Harry had ever expected, and yet it was as though he'd been waiting for it, somewhere in the back of his mind where he couldn't quite focus enough to look just then. He reached to run his fingers along Tom's scalp, feeling the bumps of his skull underneath the scales, the fine bones and arches of his face; carefully, so as not to interrupt the source of the dizzying pleasure he was feeling, he traced a fingertip along the man's hollowed cheek, and shuddered as he felt himself there, inside.
He could not say for how long he had lain there, gone tense with pleasure, all but begging for more. But just as he was close to coming, Tom pulled off with a wet 'pop' and kissed him again, letting Harry taste himself on his tongue. He heard the sound of a bottle uncorking, and felt warmed, slippery fingers trailing down his inner thigh.
"Is that for," Harry panted, "what I think it is?"
"Yes," the man murmured in his ear, sounding just as drunk on lust as Harry felt. "Will you open for me, Harry?"
"Oh, yes," he groaned. "I've done it to myself before..."
"I am... glad..." Tom replied between kisses applied down Harry's chest. He sucked and bit, gently at first, then more sharply, at Harry's nipples, until Harry let out a noise and writhed on the bed. "I doubt I will be able to restrain myself enough to be gentle."
Harry's response was to splay his legs out, arching into the touch of slick fingertips against the tight muscle of his arse, and hook his knee over Tom's shoulder as he stretched him open, attentive to the location and sensitivity of Harry's prostate so as to keep him just barely from orgasm.
When, finally, the man did penetrate him, resting on his elbows to kiss Harry senseless at the same time, it was a moment of revelation like nothing Harry had experienced. "Finally," he heard himself say, digging his fingernails into the Dark Lord's shoulders, "yes - yes-"
Rather than stifle him any further, Tom set a pace just this side of too-hard, too-fast, too-rough, unrelenting as he drove into Harry, and they lost themselves in the fierce pleasure of it, uncaring of how Harry's voice echoed against the walls of the bedroom and even into the office and corridor beyond - they had left the doors ajar in their haste, and wouldn't notice until well after they were finished.
"Times like this," Tom managed to say as he neared the edge, "I am thankful my immortality is not through Faustian bargain."
"Ah?" Harry wished he could keep any thoughts in his head at all, but he hoped that would come with time and ample, ample experience.
"I would not live to the - dawn," the last word caught on a moan, "oh, Harry, I - this is a moment I wish never would end!"
His thrusts became irregular, his breathing ragged, and he ground hard against Harry's prostate, reaching to take Harry's cock in his hand.
"Beloved," Tom called him, voice low and agonized and rumbling in his chest, stroking Harry once, twice-
"Beloved," Harry agreed, a shout, as he clutched the man and his vision began to white out.
He knew the moment the man followed him over the edge, because the world seemed to shift on its axis, as though it had been slightly off Harry's entire life and only just now returned to what it ought to be. As though some last gap in him had been closed, and finally, he was complete.
Many miles away, Neville Longbottom woke up horrified from the longest and most intense vision he'd ever experienced, and wiped away the blood on his forehead to reveal bare skin where his scar had been.