Perfect Places

Chapter 6

In this world, all the flow'rs wither,
The sweet songs of the birds are brief;
I dream of summers that will last
Always!

In this world, the lips touch but lightly,
And no taste of sweetness remains;
I dream of a kiss that will last
Always.

-In this World, Sully Prudhomme.

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.

.

Neither speaks for a few seconds.

The boy's cheeks are still flushed; that deep crimson that had coloured them and now refused to fade. One bound to bring shame, most certainly, for what honour was there in forsaking your values, in renouncing in your beliefs- only to indulge in a carnal pleasure?

Voldemort is not certain if he desires to gouge at his own eyes or claw at the boy's throat.

He had thought himself above such manner; above those primal desires that animated lesser men. Those that corrupted the mind; and him, him who had always praised his own rationality, him who had known himself worthier, had known himself wiser; had fallen to the oldest entrapment in the world.

He has bitten into the apple, Voldemort thinks, and he thinks of mornings spent kneeling in front of an altar, listening to words that faded in the air, listening to murmurs that had fooled them all. They had fooled them, certainly, for they had made themselves invisible, seemingly disappearing, only to sink their claws into their mind, into their heart, into their memories.

For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality; Voldemort thinks, pupils dilated, blown wide. That each of you knows how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honour.

Harry Potter is still silent. Voldemort looks at him and does not see him. Instead, he sees the stony walls of a church; remembers the coldness of those stones on his skin, remembers the scorching gaze of a priest, and the words that had been burning on his tongue.

Potter must be saying something then; or perhaps he says nothing at all, perhaps Harry Potter's mind is merely the same mystery it had always been for him-

Harry Potter laughs.

It is not even a mirthless one; one born out of misery and self-affliction, one born out of distress and self-loathing. Not it is something else entirely. Irony perhaps, Voldemort thinks, and something shivers on his skin.

"Imagine that," the boy murmurs. His voice is still brittle, be it broken by exhaustion or the desire that had shaken him. Pain too, perhaps. Voldemort had not been particularly gentle in his desires. "Imagine saying it ten months ago. Hell. Two months ago. Perhaps even less. A week? What's a week anyway when we are stuck here? Perhaps I'm still the same age. Perhaps I'm seventy. Perhaps I bear no age; out of time and those qualifications humans had always bestowed on themselves."

The boy's words make no sense. Or perhaps they do.

Voldemort's fingers twitch. There is something warm under them, and he is not yet certain to know what. Who, something murmurs in the back of his mind.

"I think I would have been outraged. Very very angry. I liked to think that my anger came from you, from the pain our connection gave me. Then, later, I thought it was because of the Horcrux. In the end, I think it was just me. I was just so angry, you know. With everyone and everything. Fairly, perhaps, because my situation was not exactly to be envied, but... now I think I don't want to be."

"Stop mumbling nonsense," Voldemort manages to murmur. He is so very cold, he thinks, even with the warmth under his touch. Something that he now acknowledges, and finds that he loathes.