Chapter Text
"Mustafa!" He scream-whispered, trying to make the cat understand that Harry was definitely not welcomed here. In vain, of course. "I-I can't go in here!"
The cat only looked back at him and continued his path towards the gates of the mansion, which he opened by pushing with both his front paws. Harry wondered how and why the creature had been added as authorised for entry by the wards, but, as he had several times with Mustafa, put the question away. However, wondering that had made him remember that he, himself, cannot go through the wards, and would be unable to enter.
"I can't pass through," he added, the cat looking back at him with a sort of expectancy. "See?" He tried to put his hand through the gates, only to be stopped by an invisible force.
Seeing this, the cat's eyebrows seemed to furrow, for Merlin's sake, before he let out a loud meow. Harry sighed, knowing this would attract at least a Death Eater's attention, if not Voldemort's himself.
Of course, because Harry's luck couldn't get any worse than it already was, the Dark Lord was the one to show up, accompanied by his own pet, Nagini. The dark wizard first spotted Mustafa, probably having noticed his presence in the wards, and then raised his eyes to look at Harry, which is when his expression turned cold and calculating.
"Harry Potter." He tilted his head to the side and slowly drew his wand in hand. "Have you finally come here to accept your defeat?"
Harry snarled, bearing his teeth and taking his own wand out of his pocket. "No. Never."
Sensing the tension between the two wizards, the cat started meowing, a string of meows that actually seemed to be stringing sentences together. Harry stared at Mustafa before looking back up at Voldemort, wondering if, on top of being able to talk to snakes, he also had the ability to talk to cats. If he did, Harry would quite like to learn that as well, as it could become very useful. However, it was not Voldemort who answered Mustafa in cat language (which, Harry would have given out a million galleons just to see the wizard meowing), but Nagini, who had seemed to understand the cat's tirade.
"~The cat is saying that you must save the boy, Tom.~" Recognising the name, Harry raised his eyebrows at Voldemort, surprised he would have given his normal-human name out to his pet. His expression was met with a terrifying death stare, and Harry quickly turned back his attention on Nagini. "~It says that he is being abused, just like you explained you had been, by Muggles. His family.~"
Multiple questions drew in Harry's mind. One, Mustafa had understood that Harry was being abused? Had he been hurt, seeing how Harry was being treated by the Dursleys? Had Harry traumatised him? Two, Voldemort had been abused? Harry knew that he was an orphan, and one during a pretty unfortunate time to be alive, that is, but he never expected him to be truly abused. I mean, look at him now, so powerful, and crazy, and able to make people pass out from a single stare... That brings him to point number three, how does Mustafa know that Voldemort had been abused? Had he come here multiple times before? Had Voldemort been taking care of him, if he felt safe enough to take Harry here so that he could be 'rescued'? That would most definitely explain how the cat was able to pass through the wards.
Harry was drawn out of his thoughts by Voldemort's interruption, who seemed to have reached the same point of questioning as Harry. "You have been taking care of Aleister?"
"Is that seriously what you call Mustafa?" Harry replied, his arms now crossed and definitely judging Voldemort's name choices.
Voldemort scoffed and answered, "Of course you would give such a lovely creature a disgusting, Muggle-like name." He turned his attention back to Nagini, and asked her, "~Nagini, ask Aleister which name it is that he prefers.~"
The snake complained about being ordered of such a sort, but complied with Voldemort's command anyway. After a second string of meowing from Mustafa's side, Nagini gave out the answer that he'd rather be called Aleister because he did not want to be called a name that meant Muggle people could have given him. Harry's jaw dropped at the answer and he immediately confronted Voldemort, who wore a triumphant smile on his face, about the story he must've told Mustafa.
"I can't believe you would feed a cat Muggle propaganda! This exceeds everything I thought you'd ever do to get Wizarding kind to hate Muggles!"
His exclamations were met with a raised eyebrow and statement that Harry hated knowing was true. "Then you truly do not have any ideas of what I'm capable of."
Harry gave a scoff of his own and replied, "Whatever. I'm taking Mustafa home and never seeing you for as long as I don't have to. Bye."
He started bending down to pick Mustafa up, ready to go back to the Dursleys and mentally preparing to be beaten down by Petunia, but Voldemort interrupted him again.
"Wait." Harry stopped and looked up at Voldemort with a look that said "what, now?". "Is it true that you are being mistreated by the Muggles who house you?"
Harry considered his answer for long, long seconds. Because what would Voldemort even do if Harry told him "yes"? Jump up and down out of triumph for his enemy's misery? Still, he was not yet at a point that he would step down to Voldemort's level and blatantly lie, so he told the truth. "Yes."
Being met with absolutely no reaction for at least five minutes, Harry sighed and decided he would leave on his own if needed, but Voldemort finally opened his mouth. "You will stay here."
A few seconds of nothingness. Or shock. Who knows.
"What???"
"I will not let you - my supposed equal - be abused by pathetic Muggles any longer. Come on."
Voldemort turned and walked back into the manor without turning back a single time to make sure Harry was following him, and the latter quickly reasoned that he could go back, right now, and no one would be here to stop him. He looked down at Mustafa, the only other being present to convince him - as Nagini had followed Voldemort inside - and even if he really did not want to live with Voldemort, and possibly be murdered by any members of his cult at any moment, his heart broke at the thought of leaving Mustafa alone, and worst of all, disappointing him.
So, guided by the best thing that had ever happened to him during a Summer at the Dursleys, Harry opened the portal gates and made his way inside.