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This year, Harry was sure, was gonna be the year that killed him.
He wasn't even shocked anymore. Truly, it was the only possible end to the slow, sad buildup since Second Year, since he first encountered Tom Riddle's stupid, sexy face in the form of that damned, dusty diary.
Really, it was only a matter of time before the stress and hormones and everything caught up to him. He was only human.
So, when the odd dreams started up again, when he started seeing through Voldemort's eyes during Death Eater meetings, when he started having strange visions, he thought nothing of it. The dreams had happened before, after all, in his Fourth Year, and Fifth Year and —
Anyways, it had all happened before.
And that was why it took him so long to notice what else had started.
***
Harry blinked slowly, taking in the scent of cinnamon and sugar. An alarm went off, the gentle chiming of soft bells, and he was walking before he knew where he was, where he was going.
He opened an oven, and the intoxicating smells got even sweeter. A tray of biscuits was done baking. He set them on a counter top to cool and took another deep whiff.
His favorites weren't chocolate chip or jammie dodgers or any of his friends' favorites. They weren't even the frosted, chocolate-covered monstrosities his cousin favored, sweet on sweet on sweet.
No. His favorites were a kind of butter biscuit, rolled in sugar and flavored with just a touch of cinnamon, the kind he'd only ever had that summer he turned six, when Mrs. Number 11 had her cousin in for a month from the States.
What had he called it? Snapacrack? Sillynoodle? It was something ridiculous he knew.
He would give anything, do anything, if only he could have a bite. He reached for the tray, ready to take one, no matter that it was still hot. It would surely be well worth the burnt fingers and tongue.
And then he woke up.
And all he could feel was devastation.
***
Snickerdoodle. That was the word. Snickerdoodle.
If he closed his eyes, he could almost make himself believe he was still smelling them fresh out of the oven, that one was in his hand, that he was tasting one now.
Not that it was the truth.
Hermione had them on a strict diet of foraged mushrooms and gathered berries and duplicated rice, enough to ensure that they were only making trips to the muggle shops for more supplies every few weeks.
It wasn't enough.
Hermione had certainly never gone hungry before, and Mrs. Weasley would have found it a personal affront if Ron or any of his siblings had ever gone hungry, and so Harry realized what was happening long before Hermione caught on.
He saw their cheeks hollowing, how Hermione's shirts started to hang more loosely around her chest and Ron pulled on his belt a notch and then two tighter. He saw Ron's temper flare, higher and higher with each passing day, an anger caused by everything and nothing. He saw Hermione's mind falter, struggling to put together clues that would have been lightning quick just months ago, reading and rereading the same passages of the same books over and over, struggling to intuit their meaning.
Harry knew it all.
For all that he hated it, hunger was a companion he knew quite well. Hunger and weariness and the tedium of watching the days slip by, each one indistinguishable from the next. There was little else to do in the tent but sit and wait for the days to pass them by.
But he did know hunger.
So, he kept his belly full of water, comforting himself with the thought that at least this time he wasn't dehydrated. That the sunshine of early Autumn wasn't nearly so hot as the sun of Summer, that at least he had ample opportunity to clean himself. He made do with the increasingly thin broth they ate each night for dinner, with the watery rice porridge they ate for breakfast instead of anything heartier, with three meals a day dropping down to two, and then to just one.
And most of all, he dreamed.
***
Harry blinked his eyes open to the sort of sitting room Aunt Petunia always wished she had.
Chaises and armchairs were scattered at easy speaking distance from each other, with side tables in between, and a large coffee table at the center. The carvings around the marble fireplace looked detailed and expensive, and everything from the chandelier to the sconces was done up in gold and fine crystal.
Curiously, on the arm of every chair and the back of every chaise and on every flat surface he could see was a doily.
Every one of them looked different, for all that they shared a certain uniformity; they were starched and white and lace and yet unique all the same. A side table had one that looked spoked, as if resembling a wheel or a snowflake, while one of the armchairs had a set that looked like dolphins were dancing around the edges, each positioned in slightly different ways.
Entranced, Harry ran his fingers along them, trying to discern how such a thing could be made. It had to be magic, right?
He frowned as his fingers traced another, finding a small bump in the fabric under his fingers, where he suspected a stitch had been skipped accidentally, or maybe where the string had to be cut and knotted. A mistake, or at least an imperfection. Not magic, then, and likely not made by a machine either.
He decided to explore the room further, to see if there were any hints about where he was or what he was doing here, starting with the curios displayed against the walls.
And then he found it.
On an oak bookshelf, he found a picnic basket. It was lined in red checkered fabric, but not full of food or utensils or anything else he expected. No, all it held was string, spools and spools of it.
Fascinated, he lifted out the top spool, and was shocked to see it was attached to another doily — half finished, he suspected, given the distinct lack of a smooth border ringing the outside as each of the others had — this time with little cats poised as if to run around it.
He tried to see where it connected, and was horrified to discover a little metal hook daintily hanging off of the thing at the point the spool of string was attached, barely hanging on through all the moving it about he'd done.
The hook didn't look sharp or especially dangerous, or at least, it was less so than a fork would be, but he found himself strangely reluctant to ruin whatever was being done by looking at it further. He was quite certain that the entire thing would unravel itself in an instant given half the chance, with just him breathing at it wrong.
He was distracted from his study by the faint sound of a tap, metal and ceramic on wood, and a new scent appearing in the room. He took a breath, savoring it, and realized it was some sort of tea.
Early Grey, maybe?
He turned back to the room at large, and saw that a tea tray had appeared on one of the side tables while he was distracted, and he heard footsteps drawing nearer.
The handle on the door started to turn, and in a panic, he fled.
***
Harry blinked his eyes open groggily, back to the tent once more.
If he concentrated he could still smell a hint of tea in the air, a luxury they hadn't seen in months. He ached for it.
He ached for a lot of things, really; for most everything it was impossible to come upon while sharing a tent in the woods with his friends for months on end, eating bland rice day after day after day, with not a moment to himself, not a moment to collect himself in private, to rage and scream at Dumbledore for leaving them this impossible task, not even a moment to jerk off in peace before Hermione was pounding on the door of the shared loo, getting on his case about wasting the fresh water.
If only he could have just a moment of peace. A moment to sit quietly with a hot cuppa, with a fresh biscuit, he knew he could endure.
But instead, he ached.
***
He was low to the ground, moving swiftly through blades of grass that seemed too tall, far more smoothly than he should have been able to walk.
He was close he knew. Somehow, instinctively, he knew his journey wouldn't be long, and yet he had no idea where he was going, nor what would await him there.
He was excited though, for a certain definition of excitement. He moved faster than he strictly had to, and passed by several interesting smells that could be investigated later. There was a certain thrumming in his blood, the knowledge that this was good, was right, was exactly where he was meant to be.
As he neared his final location, he slowed, creeping from shadow to shadow. He finally came to a stop under a bush, content to watch and wait until it was his time.
There were people here, towering above him, all dressed in black robes and blank masks and paying heed to the one he hungered for. He knew that was right, just as surely as he knew where to go. Their noises, their movements, the little sounds they made as they spoke and shifted made little sense to him, but he couldn't find it in himself to be alarmed at the fact.
He was far too caught up in their leader for that.
Standing in their midst, surrounded on all sides, stood a figure who shone like the sun. He wore different robes than the others and no mask covered his face and his every gesture looked powerful and strong. The man just radiated magic, in a way Harry could neither quantify nor describe in any detail, but he knew it just the same.
The man smiled, a sharp, wicked thing, and a murmur of noises swept through the crowd, in deference to his whims. They backed up a step, two, forming a loose ring around him now, rather than the tight circle three bodies deep of before, and with the extra space, the man crouched down, gesturing to something in the grass.
Curious and greedy to see more of that shining man, he crept closer, darting between the legs of the masked figures.
The man's back was turned, and all thought of what he was looking at left him at the sight of the man's rear, pressed tight against his trousers from his crouch.
Though he was fully clothed, modest even, he couldn't help but gape at the sight of it. It was perfectly smooth, marred by neither underwear lines nor poorly distributed fat.
And oh, the fat. He'd almost forgotten what such a thing could look like, what with having only Ron and Hermione for company these days, but there before him was what words like bounty and plentiful were meant for.
It was perfection.
He'd made up his mind almost before he realized it, rearing up and preparing to leap forward that final distance, anything to get that delicious bite, to taste that flesh and see how juicy it could be.
At the last moment, the man started to turn, that deadly smirk on his face…
…And Harry woke up.
***
He was in another bloody forest, as though he hadn't seen enough trees to last a lifetime in these last few months. Everywhere he turned, spellfire lit up the air, and it was all he could do to keep moving.
He turned, his eyes catching the hem of a robe just as it flicked back into the shadows, back out of sight.
And then his brain froze, because that wasn't just any robe.
Heaven knew he never would have recognized such a thing months ago, but damned if he didn't recognize what painstaking hours of hand-done embroidery looked like, now.
He didn't know if the swirls were there to do something magical or if they were just there to be pretty, just something to do with his hands to pass the time, but with just a glimpse, Harry was absolutely certain he knew who embroidered those robes, and therefore, he knee who was wearing them.
His cheeks flushed, and a confusing mix of scent memories flooded him: cinnamon and tea and freshly cut grass. He tried to raise his wand, tried to get back into the rhythm of the duel, to remember which direction he was running, but his cheeks were getting more and more flushed and he just couldn't bloody remember.
And then he shifted, just enough to feel that somehow, when he wasn't thinking about it, his cock had managed to come to full attention, aching, begging for his attention.
An echo of parseltongue was in the air, just far enough away that he couldn't make out the words, could only hear the delicate hissing of it, musical and seductive in the air.
And suddenly, without any warning or build up or any logic at all, he was cumming in his trousers.
He no longer had the brain power to care about the war or the horcrux hunt or picking apart the whys and the hows of the madness that had suddenly taken him over. He might as well be some Victorian bachelor, prowling the London slums in the dead of night, if all it took was a flash of embroidery on a wrist to get him off, and he didn't care.
He needed more.
Wand forgotten behind him, he stalked into the trees, in the direction he last saw the damned sleeve. The spellfire hardly mattered anymore, it seemed somewhat distant at any rate. And besides, Voldemort was quite likely to kill him for this, but he was damned sure he'd die if he didn't have Voldemort a writhing, panting mess beneath him, begging for release right. Fucking. Now.
A flicker of the shadows betrayed where he hid, and Harry let out an unholy growl before he could stop himself.
And then he was there, upon him, pressing Voldemort's back up against the tree he was hiding behind, Harry's legs pushing him flush against the tree, all the way to the hip.
Voldemort gave him a little smirk, just like the one he'd given Nagini that day, and Harry grabbed the collar of his robes with both hands. He pulled, as hard as he could, and after some initial resistance they tore, leaving Voldemort's chest entirely bare.
He let Harry manhandle him, ripping the robes once more to completely strip him, and then letting himself be flipped, to face the tree.
His arse was somehow even more perfect than the squat-inspired dreams had led him to hope for, and for a moment, all he could do was ogle. Somehow, the moon's light made its way through the tree branches just perfectly, lighting him up like a magnificent trophy of the sort Queen Elizabeth would keep in some posh museum.
It was perfect, and soon it would be his.
He hardly registered the motions as he freed his own cock, still covered in cum from just minutes before, and before he could think too hard about it, he dove straight in to take what was his.
Voldemort let out a sound, part lusty moan, part agonized groan, and it spurred him onwards. He reached one hand around to Voldemort's throat to keep him in place, and the other to his hip so as to keep up his rhythm.
He thrusted hard, and then harder, letting Voldemort's noises carry him onwards, the vibrations of his voice under his hand, the tightness around his cock. He thrust and thrust, as fast as he could, until finally he climaxed a second time.
He slumped forward, exhausted, not even sure if Voldemort came at all. Could he, even with his body all snakey and grotesque?
But Harry wasn't quite sure if he should care.
That was the polite thing to do, wasn't it? To ensure that your partner was satisfied?
Except most partners weren't your mortal enemy, and most encounters were quite a bit less likely to end in death. He wasn't even entirely certain he wanted a repeat of this one, for all that he'd lost his mind a bit at the beginning there.
He pulled out, and the moon was very clearly no longer in their favor. Everything certainly felt wet on his prick, the breeze giving him an uncomfortable chill, but he couldn't say whether it was Voldemort's cum, or his own, or even if it was blood.
His hands were trembling as he zipped his trousers back up. It was time for him to leave, he knew it and Voldemort knew it, but still, he ached for something, he just wasn't sure what.
"Sleep well, Harry," Voldemort said with a slight hiss, and then disappeared in a puff of smoke.
Yes, maybe with some sleep everything would become more clear.