It’s a weird pairing on paper, but honestly it seems like there's less space to explore emotional conflict and more of a playground for psychological deconstruction. A lot of authors don't even bother with romance; they're really just picking apart that connection in 'The Boy Who Lived.' Is it destiny? Is it obsession? I read one recently that was all from Voldemort’s perspective after a failed Killing Curse leaves him stranded in Harry’s mind, and the entire story is this insidious, slow takeover where the emotional conflict is just... gone. It gets eroded. Harry starts to adopt Voldemort’s logic about power and survival, and the real horror is the absence of a traditional struggle.
There’s another subset that dives into the Horcrux link, right? That’s the most common entry point. It gets treated like a soul bond, but darker, because it wasn't chosen. The conflict there is disgust versus inevitable pull. Harry feels violated because a piece of that monster is inside him, literally. The friction comes from him trying to reject that intimacy while Voldemort might see it as a claim of ownership. It’s less about love and more about a forced, grotesque symbiosis. The most interesting fics to me are the ones where Voldemort isn't humanized into some romantic lead, but stays a monster, and the 'relationship' is a study in corruption.
Some writers just flat-out ignore the moral dimensions and go for a power fantasy. You know the type – Harry goes dark, embraces the link, and they become this unstoppable, terrifying duo conquering the wizarding world. The emotional conflict there is basically resolved in chapter two, swapped for political maneuvering and shock value. It can be fun, but it's not exactly deep. My personal preference leans toward the quieter, more unnerving ones where the conflict is so internalized Harry doesn't even fight it anymore; he just accepts it as his new, grim reality, and that's somehow more disturbing than any screaming match in the Great Hall.