The Savior and the Scourge

Chapter 18

It was Christmas Eve day and Harry had been in Voldemort's 'clutches' for twelve days. In truth he supposed it could have been worse, he was being wooed by his mortal enemy – which was down right squicky to the teen – and Voldy was doing his darndest to convince Harry that William was a bloodthirsty animal that was just going to kill him the first time Harry pissed him off. And of course, didn't we all know that Harry Potter had an innate talent for pissing people off.

The young Gryffindor had gotten a good laugh out of that.

It was actually kind of creepy how charming the Dark Lord could be. Harry had been provided a comfy chaise to lounge on; this after the third day when he'd unexpectedly entered the 'narcoleptic' stage of the pregnancy and had nearly fallen out of his chair. He slept, ate and lived in the same bare stone room he'd arrived in, although Voldemort had kindly added a plush black rug that ran from the chaise to the door of the adjacent bathroom. There had been a fireplace that Harry had missed the first day there and it, combined with the liberal use of warming charms kept the teen from freezing his arse off.

So really, Harry was being treated better by the most evil Wizard alive than by his own relatives. However it was blindingly evident that Voldemort had no idea what it meant that Harry was a claimed Vampire mate, there was no choice involved anymore. Harry and William were mystically tied together, they were a part of each other; there could be no William without Harry and no Harry without William.

And Harry was beginning to feel the strain of being separated from his mate.

Everything was annoying him; everything was either too hot or too cold, too hard or too soft, too loud or too quiet. So far he'd managed to hold his temper and Voldemort had apparently chalked up his occasional snappishness to pregnancy hormones but it was becoming more and more difficult to keep quiet.

It didn't help that Voldemort was with him every waking moment, incessantly talking and cajoling and waxing poetic about ruling the world. Harry was contemplating taking the Dark Mark just to make the man SHUT UP!

William had best get his sexy arse here – wherever here was – and rescue him before midnight because there was no way in HELL he was spending his first married Christmas in this... this hole!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lord Voldemort stood over the sleeping Bearer seething. The boy was driving him to distraction and Potter wasn't actually doing anything; the brunette was being imminently polite – after that first day, anyway – and noncommittal. Of course it didn't help Voldemort's plans that every time Harry seemed ready to concede a point or agree with anything that was said, the pregnant boy would fall asleep.

It was maddening.

The first time it had happened the Dark Lord had been shocked, but after an examination by his own personal Medi-Wizard it was determined that the portkey had done no harm and Harry had simply entered the second-to-last phase of the pregnancy – the one where he nodded off at the drop of a hat and drove his gracious host barmy!

Voldemort paced in front of the chaise where the boy slept and considered his prey, ignoring the nervous shifting of the eight Death Eaters on guard in the room.

He couldn't just take the boy – a queer fact about Bearers was that they could not be impregnated by rape; no one really knew why, but still the fact remained that it would not get him what he wanted. Besides which rape wasn't exactly a healthy option for himself as Potter wasn't a weak Wizard by any stretch of the imagination.