Keeping The Dark Lord (on his toes)

Chapter - 25 Be careful what you say ( 2 March 1995 )

~Voldemort~

Voldemort woke with a sense that he wasn’t in his room, but he relaxed the moment he recognized his study around him. He glanced down at Dimitri, who had fallen asleep despite his excitement. They had spoken well into the night after he managed to persuade Dimitri that a visit to the Founder of his house could wait a day.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to meet the man, he did, quite badly at that, but with the amount of information that Dimitri had piled on the previous night, he’d known that he needed time to process one thing at a time.

Luckily he’d had the thought to extend the couch before he also succumbed to sleep, otherwise, he was sure that one or both of them would have been quite sore today from sleeping on a couch.

He didn’t want to get up yet, and he wondered whether Dimitri would allow him to simply hold him like this from time to time. The fact that his mate was still disguised bothered him a little bit, but Dimitri’s explanation about the potion had erased any doubt that his mate might not want to stay with him.

He thought back about their conversation and wondered whether Dimitri even knew that he’d sometimes spoken from a personal point of view as if he WAS Harry Potter instead of just being his guardian.

It wasn’t that far-fetched, the hints had all been there. The fact that they had the same upbringing, the way that Dumbledore had become his magical guardian, and, if he didn’t have it wrong, the fact that Dimitri’s disguise would conveniently expire on Harry Potter’s 17th birthday.

There had been other clues as well, such as the knowledge Dimitri seemed to have about him and how ‘Ghost’ had often stated in his letters that he didn’t want to reveal himself because he was afraid of what Voldemort might do to him.

He’d also never seen both Harry Potter and any of Ghost’s aliases together, and given that Dimitri was supposed to be Harry’s guardian, he hadn’t floo-called him or informed Voldemort that he was going out to visit him now that he thought about it.

Severus had also informed him that Harry wasn’t with him or at Hogwarts.

Voldemort gave in to the urge to run a finger over Dimitri’s cheek before moving his fingers higher to where the famous scar would have been. His heart gave a little leap as he felt the link he had with his Horcrux repair itself, and he was amazed to find that he could feel the man next to him.

He wondered if his mate would be able to feel it as well.

But as excited as he was about finally knowing his mate’s true identity, it meant that he had to step up his work on quite a few things. He’d left the takeover for too long because he’d been spending time with Dimitri, but with his mate’s true identity being Harry Potter, he needed to ensure that he’d be safe in the world he wanted to create.

His Death Eaters might know that Harry Potter was off-limits, but he still worried about their reactions once they found out that the Dimitri they had been spending time with, was Harry Potter. Not that he would tolerate any anger towards his mate and anyone that dared touch him would forfeit their lives, but he’d seen how happy it made his mate, to have people around him that didn’t expect anything more than wanting to know whether the next batch of cookies could be ginger or chocolate-chip.

An idea suddenly occurred to him and he carefully extracted himself from where his mate had cornered him on the couch. He then pulled the blanket that he’d summoned during the night up over the other man’s shoulders and lit the fire once more to warm up the room.

He then quietly left the room and made sure he was out of earshot before he called one of the elves, “Hina…”, the elf quickly popped into the corridor, “…please bring us some tea and two full breakfasts.” The elf nodded and popped away once more, leaving Voldemort to return to the study, only to find a confused-looking Dimitry (he’d decided to keep on referring to Harry as that until everything is resolved) glancing around the room.