The Oddest of Couples

In a large, beautiful house in the middle of the rolling countryside, concealed by the moon-sheened marble walls, there is a hidden room, a dark, grim little box, in which a single person is confined.

Deep in the dank underbelly, the walls are slick with black slime, which shimmers when light invasively thrusts into the room through the narrow window in the solid barrier of the door.

It is normally dark.

Seldom does light break in through the tight opening.

The occupant of the cell has grown familiar with the gloom, the chill of slick stone grating against his torn, damaged skin, although it is beyond his worst imaginings of what his fate would have been.

Since his childhood, the dark has touched him, fluttering caresses, but he has always found protection in others, surrounded by wizards who would make certain that no harm would come to him.

Until the war.

Was it hours ago or months?

He can no longer tell, time blurring. He can barely even remember who he was before the walls closed on him. Everyone in the world knows his name, but he can no longer recall it.

The war...

Curled in a corner, he almost laughs at the thought, his knees drawn up to his chest, his arms shaking from cold and pain. It was meant to be their symbolic last battle, the battle to end all. The outcome had been predicted. It had been inevitable.

He had faced his nemesis, one-on-one.

It should have been over quickly, a killing curse, then nothing. It was what everyone expected. Some spell to wipe out everything and bring triumph to one of them.

If only it had been that simple.

Everyone had underestimated his enemy, especially his ability to strip away strengths your opponent might have and leave them defenceless. He had walked into a trap.

Burying his face in his scarred hands, he knows it is enough that he failed, but now, now, he is less than nothing, held prisoner by his enemy, tormented day by day.

Stripped of any powers he had, reduced to a mere shell of a person, forced to become a helpless and feeble child once again, powerless, everything he knew physically torn from him, all the things he had learned stolen, his memories distorted.

Shivering, he adjusts the remnants of his tattered robes around him, to shield himself from the chill in the cell, the dampness soaking them making the cold all the worse.

Beyond the immense door upon which he has desperately pounded in terrifying night, childish fears resurfacing as the darkness devours him, he hears the voices of his captors, whom he daily begs to kill him.

They never listen, laughing at his pleas.

Resting his forehead against his knees, bone-thin arms curl over his head, his fingers brushing against the thinning wisps of black hair, his once-thick mass reduced to a few pitiful strands, plucked by his own feverish fingers in his mindless deliriums.

"Don´t come today..." he whispers brokenly, the wounds inflicted on his trembling body from the last visit still unhealed. "Please... not now..."

Voices near, laughing, so genial.

Nothing so cruel should ever be able to laugh like that. Cold high laughter was fitting in such circumstances. He could tolerate that, but not such genuine amusement and delight.

He remembers he used to know who they were, those who allied themselves with his enemy, but now: a blend of maskless faces he can´t differentiate.

The only thing he can know for certain is they all smile at him, mocking, deriding, showing their emotions towards him for the pitiful, worthless thing he has become.

He is sure they don´t know why he is kept alive.

They probably delude themselves with the knowledge that he is a trophy, some kind of symbol of the triumph of their master, but if they knew why their leader kept him, held him...

They probably believe that their leader simply mocks him, hurts him. It is so much more humiliating and soul-breaking than that. He is a toy, nothing more. An object to be used to sate his enemy´s twisted pleasures.

They have been at odds for so long, the bitter twist that their relationship has taken was almost an inevitable one.

It is not enough that he was defeated. They want to see him broken, left as nothing, and their leader knows how, from experiencing it at the hands of muggles. The pain coursing through his body is a testament to it.

It is his enemy´s revenge for so many years of suffering.

At first, he could understand why he was being treated thus, as he had suffered too, but days turned into weeks, the weeks to months and the pain didn´t stop. He remembered what it was to fear.

Terror and pain merged together into an indistinguishable conglomeration.

Now, they are all he knows, aside from the cold.

He freezes when he hears footsteps approaching. He has attuned himself to those passing his cell and knows those footsteps as he knows the back of his own hand.

His blood feels like ice, as he hears the words that dismiss the guard outside the door and allow his captor entry.

Pressing his forehead to his knees, his arms tighten over his head, fingertips biting into the back of his neck, as he prays to anyone to spare him from the humiliation and pain. No one listens.

He is alone, rejected, cast down from the pantheon of their society, nothing more than a legend now.

The door squeals open. He wonders briefly if it will earn a blow, if he asks to have it oiled because the squealing unnerves him. The thought of something so trivial makes him shake with silent hysteria.

The light that spills into the cell is sickly, urine-yellow, dull but blindingly bright to the one who is confined in blackness, his eyes burning. Pressing them closed, he hears the two paces that tell him that he is no longer alone in the cell.

His nostrils flare and, beyond his own sour, unwashed stench, he can easily smell the strong scent of power radiating from the wizard standing in the doorway.

"Look at me," He hears the words whispered in parseltongue, a language that he now sees as more a curse than ever he had before. He knows better than to disobey and knows why his captor uses that language.

While people don´t look into the cell, when he is there, they hear him. Parseltongue ensures that his words will not be understood. He may do - and often does - anything to his prisoner and no one would know.

Trembling, the prisoner raises eyes shielded with a skeletal arm, the brightness making his head ache. He wants to look away, but know it would be folly, his dry tongue rasping across cracked lips.

"M-Master," he whispers the salutation that has been beaten into him.

The wizard whose face is changed by power and experience, stares down at him, as if he is a piece of dirt.

No one else, aside from the prisoner, is aware how close to damnation their leader is, how corrupted he has become by the power in him, changing him into that which he fought so vehemently against.

There is a coldness and darkness in his eyes that is terrifying, which reveals that his humanity is waning, an expression that only his prisoner witnesses. His smile makes his prisoner tremble and he bows his head, shaking hands pressed to his temples.

"I said look at me," the voice says. "Do you want to be punished?"

"Please... please, don´t..."

Smiling, showing no teeth, his captor nears. "Who do you belong to?" he asks, lifting his captive´s chin.

The shivering wreck once known as Lord Voldemort convulses, raising his face to his captor, his features reduced to his teenage appearance when his magic was exorcised. "Y-you, my L-Lord..."

One of his captor´s fingertips brushes his swollen lower lip. "Do you still hate me, Tom?" he asks, as he always does, his poisonously-green eyes taunting. Tom Riddle parts his lips to answer. "Honestly, Tom."

"I-I... I hate you."

"Really?" It is said with amusement.

Tom curls in on himself, shaking, the heels of his hands pressed against his forehead as the choked sobs emerge.

How does he know?

How does he know that Tom can not exist without him?

How does he know that they are so deeply connected, soul, spirit and body, that if he were to be parted from his captor, as much as he hates him, he would die?

His face is forced up again. "The truth, Tom."

"I-I-I n-need you."

Harry Potter smiles, devoid of emotion. "Was that so hard, Tom?" he asks softly, his mouth brushing over Tom´s.

Tom Riddle makes no reply, silent tears sliding down his face as the one whom he introduced to the darkness abuses him once again.

He knows it is vengeance of the worst kind.