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Potter was quiet for a few moments before he finally gave his answer: “I don’t know.”
“That isn’t an answer Potter.” Voldemort did his best to sound calm, and not aggravated. He wasn’t sure he’d succeeded, but at least the adult thought for a while longer before elaborating.
“Well, I suppose that I’m just not the type of person who wants to needlessly terrorize children?” There was something sharp in his tone of voice, which for some reason gave Voldemort an urge to wince. It was quite obvious what Potter was actually saying. A flicker of an emotion played over the man’s face, and he let out a deep sigh, before he slapped the sides of his face with both of his hands.
“I apologize, that wasn’t fair of me, especially since we just now established that I’m going to attempt to save all of that for ‘Adult-brained’ grown-up you.”
He felt himself simply stare at Potter with what was probably a face that looked a little constipated. That apology hadn’t really been necessary. It wasn’t like his four-year-old brain would immediately be traumatized by any type of mention of his adult self’s actions on Potter’s part.
“Anyways, the other thing that I wanted to talk to you about. The way you were yesterday, was it triggered by anything I did or said?”
Voldemort opened his mouth to say something along the lines that it was none of the guy’s business, but it felt like some kind of cord started to tighten around his throat by even the mention of yesterday. Potter shuffled himself closer to Voldemort with his hands, so that their sides were touching. The physical contact calmed him, and he found himself saying: “Well, I z..suppose it was something that has been building up since we arrived here. I had been having some.. thoughts, but it all boiled over yesterday.”
“What kind of thoughts?”
“I-I’m not sure I want to talk about it.” No, Voldemort didn’t even want to think about it, even if he knew he had to. He had to, because he had to find a way to fix his ‘adult brain’ when they found a way to reverse the spell. That much was obvious.
“Are there certain topics you want me to avoid in the future then?”
He shrugged, again not convinced that Potter simply mentioning anything would trigger something like that again. “I’m not sure,” he said.
“Alright, but if that ever changes, please tell me, okay?”
He didn’t give Potter any sign of confirmation, instead he stayed silent and leaned a bit more into the adult’s side. After only a few days of being like this, he didn’t even feel that embarrassed or annoyed at the wants of his brain anymore. Physical contact was just nice. It made him feel so peaceful somehow.
“Again, I’m just wondering why,” Voldemort said with a soft voice.
“Well, I basically agreed to sort of parent you a moment ago.”
Voldemort had meant to return to the topic of the question he’s asked Potter before, now that Potter might’ve had the time to come up with a more satisfactory answer than the ones he’d already given, but the nonsense that had now come out of the man’s mouth threw him for a loop. Potter must’ve felt his body stiffen, because the man said: “At least, that’s what I asked you basically amounts to?”
“What?”
“The way I treated you yesterday, the way you said you want to be treated, it’s me parenting you, sort of.”
“W-what, I-I mean..” Voldemort hadn’t thought of it like that really. He’d mostly been thinking about future opportunities that might arise from this ‘arrangement’. The longer this talk went on, the more he began to think that he’d been a bit hasty with this decision. Somehow, he didn’t think his regular adult self would have ever wished to be treated like this, and he really wasn’t sure how to feel about that fact.
“Eh, it’s not like I’m saying I’m going to be a an actual ‘parent-parent’, or anything like that, but just kind of caring for your physical and emotional needs? I think the verb ‘parenting’ fits well.”
The man did have a point, even if Voldemort wasn’t sure he liked it. He supposed he could retract his earlier words about how Potter should treat him, but he didn’t really want to. Potter could label it whatever he wanted. They shared a comfortable silence for a while. The adult began carting a hand through Voldemort’s hair, which almost caused the boy to fall asleep.
“Now then, we should probably have some breakfast?” Potter said, but he didn’t move his hand from Voldemort’s hair for a while yet. After they’d eventually eaten and Potter cleaned up their camp, they went back in the direction of the lake once more.
“Would you like to bathe? Perhaps I could clean your clothes for you as well?”
Voldemort considered it for a moment. “Cleaner clothes might be nice yes, not sure if going into the water would be smart though.” He looked pointedly at his bandaged hands and foot.
“Ah, right, let me check those.”
The man pried the now blood caked bandages from his hands as gently as he could, which still didn’t feel very pleasant. Voldemort let out a pained whimper. The adult made a soft shushing noise, rubbing a hand on his back in soothing circles, before his hands were bandaged again with a clean cloth.
The bandages around his foot were not removed however, something that Voldemort was completely alright with. He didn’t want anyone touching those until they were back to civilization.
“For the scouring charm you should probably remove your clothes so that I can clean them, otherwise it might focus on you, and wash out your mouth.”
Voldemort nodded, aware that the spell was a common punishment in some wizarding homes. He began the arduous task of removing his robes, which was made even more difficult than it already was because he couldn’t stand. Potter ultimately had to assist in pulling off the clothes. Then the man handed him his ever handy jacket which covered Voldemort’s whole body. After the clothes were as clean as they were going to get with the help of the charm, Potter also helped with buttoning up.
Finally, they were on their way, and nearing the end of the lake where the denser foliage returned. Before they left the area Potter gathered more cattails and water. “We’ll never know when we’ll come across a new water source,” he said, as if he had to explain it.
Voldemort finally spotted the first animals that weren’t either dead, or an extremely dangerous predator. A small herd of deer grazed on the other side of the lake, Potter didn’t seem to have noticed yet. “Look there,” Voldemort said from his place on the man’s shoulder, pointing in the general direction of the animals.
“Oh, nice I guess.”
“Not going to make any comments about potentially eating one of them?”
Potter chuckled and somehow managed to pet Voldemort’s head with one hand. “You’re so weird,” he told the man, who apparently had decided to start doling out physical touch left and right since yesterday. Voldemort liked it, and didn’t exactly want to complain about it, but it was still a bit peculiar honestly. He didn’t think his earlier ‘Potter coping with the situation by treating him with fake amicability’ theory held anymore. This felt like it went far beyond that.
“Am I now?” the adult said, the smirk on his face audible in his tone of voice.
“Yup, the weirdest.”
Potter poked him lightly in the side. For some reason this caused an airy feeling type of laugh to escape from Voldemort’s mouth, one he’d never heard himself make before. “Someone is a little bit ticklish, isn’t he?” Apparently, he was.
He noticed the deer had probably noticed the strange creatures not far away from them, because the animals all quickly disappeared into the forest. Well, there went their ‘dinner’, figuratively speaking at least.
“Hmm, we should basically head in the same direction as those animals, correct?” Potter asked him.
“Yeah, well, we want to reach the barrier.”
Technically any direction would be fine for that, but he guessed they’d reach the barrier faster if they went in a straight line from their starting point. Not that reaching the barrier would be the end of everything of course. After that they still had to find their way to wizarding civilization and find a way back to Britain, but it was a plan, and plans were good.
Potter carved out a cross in a tree with a sharp rock, in order to leave another mark of where they’d already been. Now that they were heading away from the openness of the lake they were really going to need it, so that they wouldn’t be going around in circles.
The trees and plants in this area were even closer to one another than in the parts of the forest they’d been before. Animals trekking to the lake for water had created a small path, but it still wasn’t ideal for humans, especially for one human carrying a smaller human. Potter still tried to fill up the silence with words, even through labored breaths. Voldemort stayed mostly quiet, and for once didn’t even mutter to himself, at least as far as he could tell from Potter’s behavior. Usually, the man would react if he heard him muttering.
Suddenly, Voldemort realized something very obvious. Potter had just been explaining something about the usage of some kind of fruit in potions, and it hit him. “You want to be a Potion’s master, don’t you? Or at least are interested in it?”
Potter’s body stilled completely for one moment. The man stayed silent for a few seconds, but then began laughing. Great, so Voldemort had once again been completely wrong.
“No, no, you were right,” the man said, “it’s just funny.”
“I really don’t get you.”
“It’s funny, because you are literally the first person in the world besides me to know this.”
Voldemort still didn’t get what was funny about that, but then again he had never exactly been known as someone with a good sense of humor. When he’d been younger, his go to strategy when someone had made something he’d identified to be a joke was to laugh, regardless if the person was actually funny or not. It tended to make people feel at ease, well if he had been correct in identifying if someone had actually meant to make him laugh or not.
His being able to read facial expressions and voice tones had gotten a lot better over the years, but he still remembered how difficult it had been when he’d been younger. Once his Voldemort persona had been firmly established he’d been able to stop doing that. Or was it just that after he created the third or fourth Horcrux he’d just stopped caring about stuff like that? He didn’t want to think about this anymore. It was overwhelming in more ways than one.
“Hey, are you okay?”
He shook his head, because he most decidedly was not. Why was Potter so annoyingly observant, all of a sudden?
“Okay, that’s okay,” Potter said. The man maneuvered Voldemort from his shoulder to cradle him in his arms, and sunk down to the forest floor, so that Voldemort now sat in his lap. He buried his face in Potter’s belly, and the man encircled him with his arms.
“It’s okay,” Potter repeated, “I’m not feeling great all the time either.”
That statement was probably the understatement of the century, but Voldemort didn’t react to it. Instead, he just sat there, slowly relaxing as Potter began playing with his hair. Finally, he looked up at the man, whose eyes looked tired. Perhaps the man was already fed up with the way Voldemort had been behaving. For some reason that thought filled his stomach with terror.
“I’ve been thinking about the Horcrus.xes,” he blurted out, and immediately he felt that cord around his throat again. Why had he felt the need to share that with Potter, of all things? Well, he knew why, but it was really not the thing to share.
“What do you mean?”
Potter’s tone of voice was very neutral, and his face didn’t give away much either. Voldemort found himself unable to answer for at least a few very tense minutes.
“Mistake,” he finally managed to say, barely more than a whisper. The adult let out a very audible breath, so Voldemort guessed that the man had heard him.
“Were you thinking about that yesterday?”
Voldemort found himself nodding against the man’s chest.
“May I ask why you’ve come to that conclusion?”
He hesitated before answering. The things he’d realized were probably not what Potter wanted to hear as the main reason he thought the Horcruxes should never have been created. The logical thing to do would be to give some sort of sob story with a false reason to placate the man, manipulate him a bit. Yes, that would’ve been the logical thing. Voldemort wasn’t feeling like being very logical today, of course.
“Well, the fact that my brain very clearly works a lot better now that’s in its ‘four-year-old state’, than when I was an adult seems like a big clue.”
“Hmm, yeah I reckon that would clue someone in.”
For some reason, Potter’s almost flippant sounding reaction hurt him a little. His tone of voice and face made it difficult to properly discern what he truly thought of Voldemort’s conclusion.
“Are you making fun of me?” he asked, because he needed that clarification.
“No, but the way you said that was a little funny.”
He didn’t think it was funny at all, and let out a huff. He saw that Potter just barely suppressed a chuckle at his actions, which caused him to pout.
“Sorry, really, but for some reason I just keep thinking that.. never mind.”
“What?”
Potter shook his head, and tightened his arms around his body. “Just a dumb thought I had, not important for you to know.”
Voldemort got a feeling that this would be another thing for the man to save for ‘Adult-brained’ grown-up him. He felt unsure if that fact should have made him feel relieved, annoyed, or both. Instead, he decided to forget about Potter’s comment for now.
“I want to fix it,” he said eventually.
“Yes?”
“I’d rather not be insane again, if I can prevent it.” He doubted he would’ve been able to rule over anyone effectively in the long term, with the way his brain had been. This time Potter did chuckle, but Voldemort tried not to feel too offended. For a moment, he considered laughing with Potter in a shadow of a reflection of what he used to do when he was this age the first time around, but really he didn’t have to pretend in front of Potter, he thought. It wasn’t like Potter was more, or less likely to hit him, if Voldemort laughed or not.
Of course, Potter had other and more valid reasons to hate him than the people Voldemort had ‘encountered’ as a child. At least, if Potter decided physical violence was the answer it would be because of something he actually did, which was more than fine by Voldemort.
“And how would we go about that?” Potter said.
Voldemort had absolutely no idea to be honest, and Potter even less probably, since he hadn’t exactly been forthcoming with details concerning the spell they were under. Wait a second, had Potter just said ‘we’?
“You know, I‘d still like to know more details. Who knows, I might be able to help come up with a solution?”
A few days ago, Voldemort would have sincerely doubted that statement, but now he knew Potter was far more competent than he appeared. He hesitated for a bit, his knowledge of the spell was one of the few things that truly protected him against the adult just leaving him to fend for himself. Strangely enough, he found himself trusting, or at the very least hoping, that Potter wouldn’t be like that.
“The curse in its original form is meant to age someone towards the extreme they’re furthest away from, until they die. Somehow it affected both of us, but didn’t kill us.”
Potter took in that information with a very thoughtful expression on his face.
“Huh, the fact that you were affected by it might be explained by the fact that I’m the master of the Elder wand, but you didn’t die, and I was affected by the spell too.”
Voldemort had heard the unspoken question in Potter’s words, but now that he really thought of it he hadn’t really been thinking about what exactly had happened with the spell these last few days. He’d mostly been focused on making it out of this forest and trying not to have too much of a mental breakdown.
“I have absolutely no idea,” Voldemort just said.
“Well, I had been thinking we might be able to solve this with just aging and de-aging potions, but that probably wouldn’t repair your adult brain.”
“Yeah, no, a potion like that would only work for you, I think.”
Potter patted Voldemort’s shoulders with both of his hands. “We’ll come up with something, two heads are better than one after all.“
With those words their break was apparently over, because Potter positioned Voldemort over his shoulder and stood. Judging by the position of the sun it was around noon, so they still had quite a way they should probably travel today. The last thing Potter said to Voldemort before he resumed the long hike was: “Thank you for telling me so many things today. It was very brave of you.”
Voldemort had never been told that he was brave. He’d never associated the adjective with himself. Potter calling him that, or praising him in other ways, made him feel weird, but not necessarily in a bad way. Maybe.
It was still under review in his brain.