Keeping The Dark Lord (on his toes)

Chapter - 36. The Ritual ( timeskip to 26 September 1996 )

~Voldemort~

He woke with a strange feeling of excitement just as the darkness in the room gave way to a dim light that heralded the day. It had been a busy few months trying to set everything up for the ritual and to put the last few laws in place to ensure that all creatures had equal rights.

At first, people feared that the races would rebel due to their newfound freedom, and a few attacks did occur, but they were dealt with swiftly, yet equally, and everything died down once the general population discovered the benefits of having different races with different abilities within their workplace and as friends and family members within their homes.

Not everything always went according to plan, however, as some of the darker races that had been sent away due to their so-called ‘afflications’ couldn’t help but resent their families for not loving them enough to keep them.

Once everything died down and the families paid the compensation owed to them, the darker races decided to come together to form a society of their own. The town/small city was situated a few kilometers away from Hogsmeade, although it took the same amount of time to reach it from the school as it took to reach Hogsmeade, due to the centaurs and other creatures offering safe passage through the forbidden forest.

Voldemort reached his arm to the side but frowned when he only felt the coldness of an empty bed next to him. He sat up and glanced around the room, but the link immediately informed him that Harry wasn’t in the room, in fact, he was in an area they barely visited.

For a moment his heart lurched as he realized that Harry was in the room where Dumbledore was being held. Did the old man manage to escape or somehow control him?

An amused scoff echoed through his mind and he gave a sigh of relief as Harry’s voice echoed across the link, “How do you expect him to  be able to control me from his trapped state if I can throw off even your Imperius?”

Voldemort shook his head at the question even though Harry couldn’t currently see him, “You know I cannot help that my first reaction is to worry about you when I do not have you in my sights.”

He felt Harry’s frustration echo through their link and a part of him almost felt guilty, almost, “It’s been more than a year already and you’ve dealt with everything from the merest whisper of an uprising to a small rebellion. I stayed calm and allowed you to keep me here because I could feel how it affected you when I almost died, but you cannot keep me locked away forever.”

Neither of them wanted to back down and a tense moment hung in the air before Voldemort grimaced, but then his face softened and he allowed a slight laugh to escape him and it echoed back from Harry’s side as they both thought of the day Voldemort realized that Harry was his Horcrux, “You are right, I promised that I wouldn’t keep you locked away, and I wouldn’t want you going Ghost on me again.”

Harry laughed again and mentally shoved him lightly before Voldemort finally reached the room he had been standing in. He walked up to Harry and pulled the younger man into his arms, completely ignoring the floating figure in the middle of the room, “But that doesn’t mean that I can be less possessive of you. You are mine to protect, no matter what happens tonight.”

Harry tensed slightly in his arms, “What if it doesn’t work? What if we lose each other or we end up back where we started? I don’t think I’d be able to raise my wand against you…”

His words were cut off by the fierce scowl that crossed Voldemort’s face at his words, “You will if you have to”, his expression softened slightly, “just keep yourself safe. I won’t allow myself to fall back into the madness again if I can help it and if something like that were to occur, well, I have made plans to ensure that I didn’t.”