blood bound

chapter 17: Retail Therapy

"Harry, explain to me why you wont eat?" Voldemort asked seriously as they walked back down Knockturn Alley towards Diagon.

"I... the Dursleys... I'm nothing more than a freak that doesn't deserve to live," Harry trailed off without saying much of anything but the mention of his relatives and their obvious rhetoric was enough to help them put a few of the pieces together. Apparently they could add verbal abuse and the attempted complete mental destruction of their mate to the Dursleys tally.

Voldemort didn't say anything, he just pulled Harry close, stopping in the middle of the street, and gently kept his mate's head pressed to his chest, Severus bracketing him from behind. The tears fell quickly the moment Harry was surrounded and safe in the arms of his mates.

"You are not a freak and you deserve to live far more than that filth that Dumbledore left you with," Voldemort said harshly. "You will have justice for what they have done and you will take care of yourself. You will honestly tell us when you need blood and we will give it to you as well as anything else you will tell us that you need. Your blood and food consumption, respectively, has been erratic for your entire life so you need to listen when your body tells you what it needs."

"~I don't think he knows how to recognize it.~" Nagini commented from inside Voldemort's robes, aching to come out and wrap herself comfortingly around the three of them. "~You remember when you found me and I realized you did not know how to tell you were hungry or needed something? The change probably made it worse. The Dark Stork Man never complained about his behavior being this bad before. We both know he would have noticed something this drastic no matter how mind blind he was at the time.~"

"So a recent development then," Severus said with a hum his mind already in overdrive trying to find a solution to the presented problem. He was terrified of loosing one of his mates now that he had them. "If I mix phoenix tears, freely given ground unicorn horn, a portion of our blood, mint, thyme, lavender, and chamomile... Harry what does our blood taste like to you?"

"Er, you taste like chocolate, mint, honey, apples, and rosemary. Voldemort tastes like coffee, caramel, hot chocolate, oranges, and cinnamon," Harry said with a quiet blush, coming out of his crying jag and unwilling to try to get free no matter how embarrassing it was to be held in the middle of the street like this. Severus stared down at the black mop of a head incredulously.

"I suppose I'm not surprised that you have a massive sweet tooth," Severus said wryly, shaking his head in amusement.

Harry huffed indignantly but reluctantly nodded his agreement to both the comment on his sweet tooth and Nagini's assessment of the situation. He really wasn't happy that he wasn't able to actually outright admit what his problem had been the entire time but his magic and the transformation had prevented that. The only reason he could come up with for that was a test to see how fit his mates were to care for him and he care for them in return. Which begged the question of what test he would need to pass to prove he could care for his mates. Harry really hoped he wouldn't have to face someone in single combat or something like that but it would be a better alternative to a few other things he could think of to prove himself to the magic.

"~Oh! I want to help! What can I give to help?~" Nagini asked eagerly.

"If I use a crushed Bezoar stone in conjuncture with your freely given venom to mimic the effects of an anti-venom before adding a few of your scales it could represent whatever part of the Basilisk venom is still in his blood and causing problems," Severus said thoughtfully. "It would likely be better than using some other snake skin such as Boomslang. I will still need a few other things but it shouldn't be hard to create a specialized purging potion to help repair this. If it continues much longer without indication of letting up I would have been more worried. The fact that his transformation obviously hasn't finished or stabilized despite completing the bonding with us explains much. Some of the causes are just as obviously left over from the injuries and such he's received over the years. Between the transformation and the damaged core I should have realized it wouldn't all show up on the healer's scans and that we'd need to watch for other probable symptoms."