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As Voldemort left the graveyard after his triumph of a resurrection (duel with Potter notwithstanding), he reflected on how unhappy practically everyone present for his return was with said return. His Death Eaters — his chosen family — had been quick to deny and renounce their lord upon his disappearance, and they had stunk of fear and guilt tonight. And while he hadn’t expected Potter to be a willing participant, the abject horror in the boy’s eyes as he looked upon the newly risen dark lord — well, it remained disappointing that this child was his prophesied equal.
He spent a few minutes wallowing in his lukewarm welcome before he intended to move on to considering his next actions, but was interrupted by a brief coughing fit.
Looking down into his handkerchief, Voldemort spotted a single, yellow, saliva-drenched petal.
What the hell.
In his travels to different magical enclaves around the world during his twenties, Voldemort had soaked in as much knowledge and culture as he could. Even with this depth and breadth of magical understanding, he had only heard old wives’ tales of a malady that involved regurgitating flower petals. But at least he knew where to begin his research.
Days sequestered in his study, bent over crumbling manuscripts, eventually provided Voldemort with an answer.
Hanahaki.
It made an ironic kind of sense that having a magical construct for a body made it more susceptible to magical diseases. The fact that this disease was predicated on love — an emotion he had never had a use for and had been informed, in no uncertain terms, that he could not feel — was added insult to this absurd injury.
But there it was — his affliction. It was real, it was incurable, and it would prove fatal if the love was unrequited.
Now he just had to figure out who he apparently loved.
Voldemort laughed himself into an intense coughing fit, covering his study in damp, congealing masses of petals.
As his plans to obtain the prophecy slowly unspooled, he considered who the object of his affections could be. He didn’t feel particularly “lovey-dovey” towards anyone, let alone the likeliest candidates — those Death Eaters present the night of his resurrection.
If he had somehow fallen in love with Peter “Wormtail” Pettigrew because the slimy little rodent had assisted in bringing him back to power, Voldemort thought he might go on a killing rampage and just never stop until there was no one else left in the world to ever find out how pathetic he was.
He side-eyed all possibilities, but none seemed to fit. As the disease was progressing very slowly and he had a few back-ups in case his current body expired, Voldemort endeavoured to put the issue as far from his mind as possible.
It wasn’t enough that he’d done the work of luring the Potter brat and his merry band of idiots to the Department of Mysteries. Of course he had to do the work of retrieving the prophecy from the boy as well. Good help was hard to find, even amongst wealthy, bigoted extremists.
He apparated to the Ministry atrium to see a devastated Potter toss a crucio at Bellatrix and found himself torn between feeling proud of the boy’s bloodthirstiness and needing to punish Bellatrix for upsetting the boy.
Oh.
Oh no.
No no no no. This couldn’t be. He was Lord Voldemort and Potter was his mortal enemy. He couldn’t be bloody well in love with the boy.
The familiar tickle rose in his throat and soon he was coughing up a deluge of petals.
Well. That was damning.
“Gross,” the boy said, wrinkling his nose and recoiling a step. “Uh… I can’t believe I’m about to ask this, but are you alright?”
Voldemort was well-versed in the habit of vanishing the petals and cleaning his mouth with a handkerchief by this point, so within seconds he had regained his outward composure. Internally, he was railing against the universe that took such amusement in jerking him around.
“Never better, now that I have you within my grasp,” he rasped. “Now, hand over the prophecy, Harry Potter.”
He’d admit, he got a little lost in his rage over Potter’s destruction of the prophecy. Dumbledore’s arrival didn’t help the situation.
In an effort to taunt Dumbledore, Voldemort possessed Potter, which was, in retrospect, a spectacularly bad idea given his recent revelation. He felt an explosion of pain across all of his senses, which sent him back to his body almost immediately. But what would stick with him far longer was the clear, potent awareness of Potter’s immense dislike for him.
Hanahaki worsened with rejection, and if that wasn’t a rejection Voldemort wasn’t sure what would be.
Before he could expel more petals, Voldemort apparated away.
As he reappeared in his study, the pain in his chest intensified and he doubled over into the longest coughing fit yet. Great clumps of petals stuck to the inside of his mouth, clinging to his thin lips. He spit them onto the ground to clear his airway, but breath was long in returning.
Looking down at the mess, he saw one whole daffodil sitting atop the rest.
(Daffodils. Fucking daffodils, of all things. The cheerful yellow blossoms mocked him as he choked the flowery sludge out of his aching lungs. It was entirely annoying that he couldn't fault the damn symbolism, either.)
He could feel Potter’s — Harry’s — Potter’s despondency through their connection following their little tête-à-tête at the Ministry and decided, for the sake of the health of both of them, to leave the boy alone for the foreseeable future. He closed the mental bond up tight. It didn't stop whole flowers from clogging his mouth and throat regularly, or the slowly worsening pain in his chest.
So it was an utter shock when Harry somehow found and cornered him over the Christmas holidays as he was patronising Knockturn Alley while polyjuiced, in search of restricted potions ingredients. He had begun to take something to suppress his cough and ease his breathing; in the interest of disguising his malady, he would not let anyone — especially dubiously loyal potion masters — make the draughts for him.
“Do you really have the flower-vomit sickness?” Harry stage-whispered from behind him as he perused the animal livers on offer. Voldemort would deny flinching. And if he did flinch, he covered it quickly by having his wand drawn on Harry and the boy pinned against the counter immediately thereafter.
“How the hell did you find me?”
“People keep calling me a stalker, so I’m leaning into it,” Harry snarked. “Back on topic — you, chest flowers; dying?”
The glint of watching, information-greedy eyes from the back room had Voldemort dragging the Boy-Who-Lived (still, somehow) out of the shop and into a dank, disused alcove off the main alley. Casting a few strong spells to deflect attention and prevent sound from escaping, he caged the boy between his body and the wall, looming over him menacingly. (Or, at least, trying. He was dealing with a surreal yearning to lean into Harry to feel his body heat. Was there no end to his suffering.)
“How do you know about Hanahaki disease?” Voldemort demanded.
“Hermione,” the boy said, as though that explained anything. “So that’s a yes?”
“Yesss,” he hissed, not caring if he slipped into parseltongue.
Harry looked both incredulous and contemplative.
“I gotta admit, I’m shocked,” Harry said after a few moments.
“That I’ve fallen victim to such a ridiculous disease? Or that I can love at all?”
“More that you’re playing the martyr and suffering in silence. I would’ve thought you’d find some way to persuade,” the emphasis making it clear that word was doing some euphemistic heavy lifting, “the poor sod into loving you back.”
“I briefly considered a wildly inappropriate seduction scheme, but ultimately decided I would rather silently bear this indignity than have my rejection and folly made public.”
“Are you so certain you’d be rejected?”
“Oh yes,” Voldemort said, levelling Harry with a weighty look.
A pause.
“Oh no, it’s not Dumbledore, is it?” the boy gasped, simultaneously horrified and amused.
Voldemort exhaled vexedly, pinching the bridge of his polyjuiced form's nose. “No, thank all the deities there are, it is not Albus Dumbledore.”
Harry hid his laugh in a cough. Voldemort despaired that he found it charming; he blamed the disease.
“Well then, who else could it be that you’re so certain would say no?”
This conversation was over, he was done. Voldemort stepped back and raised his wand to slash down the barriers he’d put up when a small, calloused hand grabbed his wrist. The skin-to-skin contact almost made him swoon. Pathetic.
“It’s me, isn’t it?” Harry looked him in the eye, as he often did, though this time it clearly required more bravery than ever.
Voldemort remained silent, eyes fixed on the boy’s face to watch the whirlwind of emotions and thoughts that played across its surface. Harry eventually lost his patience. “Voldemo–”
“Yes,” Voldemort breathed out hoarsely. It was simultaneously freeing and terrifying to admit out loud. He felt lighter than he had since he'd first coughed up a petal, but with the nauseous vertigo of an incipient fall from a great height.
Harry rocked back on his heels and dropped Voldemort’s wrist. Voldemort curled that hand into a fist, trying to prevent his brain from reading it as a rejection and causing the disease to intensify.
He could feel the effects of the polyjuice potion fading away. The boy’s eyes drifted over his features, as though checking they were as he remembered them.
“You complete idiot,” Harry gritted out, voice wobbling unexpectedly. He swallowed hard and ran an anxious hand through his hair. Voldemort wished it was his hand. “This is when you decide not to be a selfish ass?”
“I’ve been told love is self-sacrificial. I suppose part of me took that to heart.”
He wasn’t even sure if he was being sarcastic anymore.
They stood in the alcove, staring at each other, for a minute or so.
“I’m not rejecting you,” Harry said firmly, eyes on the scuffed, worn toes of his trainers. “I– I need time. To think about this.”
“Time isn’t exactly something Hanahaki allows once it has begun to progress.”
“As I understand it, you’ve made sure you’ll have all the time you’d ever want,” Harry said archly.
Voldemort froze, gaze dissecting the boy whose lips were now firmly sealed and scowling.
“You know I won’t die from this.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes, I know you won’t die from this, you soul-splitting berk,” Harry glared up at him from under his eyelashes.
“You would prolong my suffering?”
While his voice was even, Harry’s eyes betrayed a malicious gleam. “You can’t argue you don’t deserve it.”
What exquisite cruelty. He was almost proud of the boy.
Voldemort grinned, watching Harry’s wide eyes drop quickly to his lips before darting back up to meet his gaze. A flush spread across his nose and cheekbones.
The tickle in his throat receded. Perhaps there was hope, after all.