Dream of death

He blinked against the darkness of the night, trying to dispel the visions that had plagued his every waking moment since the battle at the Ministry. They followed him in his sleep, too. 

Black hair, grey, glassy eyes and a Veil.

The nausea was harder to dismiss.

Hedwig was hunting. Her cage was empty except for the few white feathers scattered at the bottom. Forgotten, broken toys were hiding in the corners of the room and dusty books rotted in their bookcase. Laying on the narrow bed, he looked out the window of his bedroom. No. Dudley’s spare bedroom. Nothing truly belonged to him, after all, and anything that did was destined to never last.

Harry wished there would be something for once.

Black hair, grey, glassy eyes…

Instead, he was left back at the mercy of his forbidding relatives with their surly expressions, rough handling, and hate towards any type of ‘freaky’ business. So many of the Order members had gathered at Kings cross at the end of the school year for a farewell. Harry had been touched. The indignation on Uncle Vernon's obese face after Moody's threat to not mistreat Harry was even satisfying. But for his aunt and uncle words were enough to wound. And, oh, had they liked the news. ‘One less,’ they had said.

Dead eyes…

He clutched the two way mirror. It would never reveal its secret again. A familiar lump launched in his throat. Fury, sickeningly formidable and blinding, one he tried hard to suppress, took over him. One that scared him. Then it morphed into sorrow. 

Harry wished. 

He closed his eyes. The visions were back.

He wished. He wished. Only for a second more. 

Someone.

~~~~~~

It was a cold hold that made him warm, harsh lines that made him melt. Warm and cold and cold and warm, clashing together. Entwining. A hiss to complete his succumbing.

~Harry.~

He didn't have a body, yet he felt it all. He couldn’t hear, but he could understand everything—far beyond what the simple human mind was supposed to. From the atom to the cosmos, his comprehension was stretched to unconquered before dimensions. He was lost in a galaxy of power. Of magic. And it was neither good nor bad. It just was, as it had always been and always would be. Beautiful. He was faced with his insignificance before such force, yet he, one with Magick, was everything. He was nothing and ethereal.

And there with him was another.

They soared together.

A dark aura engulfed his essence (He didn't know what he was. Corporeal or not? A mist, a being?), so charged and powerful that it drew him in like a magnet. It twisted around him intimately close, as if it knew him. Something in himself was pushing to the surface, as if it recognized It as well. It wanted to meet it. 

The other was pressing against him, insistent, and it promised an unimaginable release. Shelter. Ease. It felt climactic. Like he belonged. 

Nothing had ever felt so right. It was inevitable.

Its coldness soothed the burning that was he. With each second (Second, minute, hour. Time was irrelevant there.) it solidified its grasp. It was turning more intense, dangerously so, as dark tendrils of magic caressed him with a wicked sort of possession, and he wanted.

It felt so good.

The pressure was overwhelming. Too much.

And the other hissed:

~Harry.~

~~~~~~

Harry woke up with a jolt, painfully hard and shaking. His disoriented mind was spinning and he inhaled deeply, spooked by the enormous sense of yearning that had taken hold of him, but try as he might, the details were too blurred to remember. Still, his own name echoed in his ears with obstinacy. There was a gapping loss he didn't get and it felt devastating. 

Harry put a trembling hand to his mouth. His eyes prickled so he squeezed them shut to restrain the wetness from slipping out. 

What was that?

Continuing to tremble slightly, he turned on his other side and stubbornly attempted to ignore it all. Alone in his bed, he pulled his blanket over his head. The darkness covered him tighter.

——————

Harry’s sixteenth birthday was a gloomy affair. 

Dumbledore’s unexpected arrival weeks earlier had been a flicker of light in his otherwise dreadful yearly stay at the Dursleys. Merlin, Harry had kept the letter on him for the whole three days since its delivery and had examined every curve of the Headmaster’s handwriting. But the man’s appearance (Harry couldn't afford to hope. He had been surprised when the other actually did.) had been quickly overshadowed by an unpleasant talk of wills, a suspicious blackened hand the Headmaster refused to disclose any information on, and the reminder that he would have to return to Private Drive the following year for one last time. He did not know what to think about that. He was at the threshold of an unknown stage in life he was less sure how to navigate than even his magical schooling. Whether he would even survive his sixth year was another problem entirely.

Wizarding Britain was officially at war. This was something else Harry would rather forget about.

He had been dragged to meet up and assure an armchair, later revealed to be a bald, retired professor with a rounded stomach that preceded him, of Hogwarts' safety (a matter that shouldn't need second-guessing, really), after which Harry had been blessedly dropped off at the Borrow. He supposed further mentions of the Ministry’s accident were unavoidable, though. He wasn't sure he appreciated Dumbledore’s praise for his handling of his godfather’s untimely demise (He didn't think he was handling it much.). Nevertheless, the prospect of personal lessons with the Headmaster had been an exciting one. 

Being reunited with his friends had been the height of that summer, as any other preceding it. They had still been there, after everything, and that brought tremendous relief to his dejected mind. So, already drained by everything else, he had opted to lose his days in pointless chatter, Quidditch games in the Weaseleys’ backyard, and trying to escape Ginny and Hermione’s complaints about Fleur with Ron. That new development had strained the tension in the large household, especially when they were all confined to it with no opportunity for solitude, but Harry secretly thought the French champion and Bill looked good together. It was a miracle those bonds continued to blossom during such times. His stomach sometimes squeezed weirdly when he looked at them. 

He had hardly thought about his dream. When his brain had decided to present it to him spontaneously throughout random moments with no relation whatsoever, he had disregarded it, flustered. The need he had felt made shame crawl up his body. It was difficult to stomp down. He hadn't put much significance on his subconscious, despite the dream being the most vivid one he could remember. Harry liked simplicity wherever he could get it, and the similarity to a vision had been too disturbing to consider. So he hadn't.

Overall, he was glad to be at the Burrow, regardless of the bleakness that hung over them.

The Daily Prophet was perused every morning in silence. The articles about disappearances and deaths didn't need to be read aloud to point out their gravity.

On the thirty-first of July they had gathered around the table with a generous cake in front of Harry, courtesy of Mrs Weasley. Just after blowing the candles, the celebrations had been wrapped up when Remus Lupin, more tattered than ever, had shown up on the doorstep, carrying news of Igor Karkaroff, whose body had been found, and Ollivander, who had disappeared.

Harry pretended he didn't see Remus's pained eyes when the emptiness of the full room had become too oppressive. He didn't stay for long.

Harry’s sixteenth birthday was a gloomy affair indeed. 

On the way to his room (Fred and George's) he passed the family clock. All nine hands pointed at mortal peril. 

On the staircase he took two steps at once.

“How do you think Remus is faring?” Later he asked, unable to stand it. Harry, Ron and Hermione were hanging out in Ron’s room, but neither had spoken in a while. The lively orange decorations didn't help the mood, nor did the energetic swirls of the players on the Quidditch posters. He wondered what it would be like now that he was a Captain for the Gryffindor team. His badge had come with their O.W.L.s results.

“I don't think I'd wish his fate on anyone, mate,” Ron said. 

They didn't speak much after that either.

Back in his bed, he drifted off, full of heavy emotions and a knot in his throat he knew well. Guilt had always been awful. He wished it could go away.

~~~~~~

~Harry.~

Magick was instantly recognisable. Her gentle touch guided him along into her metaphysical domain, and he floated peacefully, surrounded by energy and the enlightenment she granted. 

She led him until a cold, inky grasp replaced hers. It was familiar, too.

Magick retreated from him, and he was accepted into the presence of the other. Then it pounced without sympathy. It coiled around him, squeezed cruelly and twisted, like a snake entrapping its prey. 

He was suffocating.

Somewhere in his mind, as the duration of Magick's absence increased, he could feel his humanity returning and with it a fear born of the assertive imprisonment. But deeper still was the contrary sense of trill.

The unforgivable hold did not relent until every part of his being was ensnared into it, and even then it kept on squeezing. Crushing him. Claiming.

It kneaded and pulled to unnatural rates in a way that tore him to pieces so it could reach his insides and claim those too. He was writhing under its hold, shredded apart. Devoured.

Distantly, he realised it was trying to merge with him. 

A hidden place inside him rejoiced in spite of the bloodthirsty dismantlement he should find utterly terrifying. It sang with delight as they continued to twine, exposed core to core.

He was revolted, yet couldn't stop.

He could not say if this was a dream or a most depraved nightmare.

The resistance he tried to put up was futile when an instinctual feeling was equally pushing for his rupture—reaching, reaching… something, and he could only await it with impatience that was shared.

What was this?

~My soul.~

It was a sinister call that left him breathless. Something shifted.

The power that was the other took shape (or maybe his vision cleared)—first in vague outlines of appendages connected to a dark silhouette, then into defined limbs, which detained him. Arms ended in sharp claws, embedded into his skin, marred with his blood, and a strong body weighed him down. It demanded submission without a need for expression. It was ruthless.

And he let go completely. 

~I shall take care of you, Harry.~

~~~~~~

Harry woke up not unlike the previous time, with a start and an ache of loss.

He was hard again.

——————

Meeting Hagrid at the Leaky Cauldron had caused a spark of joy. On the other hand, seeing the sombre Diagon Alley with the wanted posters layered on each display window couldn't have let them forget the situation.

Bellatrix's face had cackled madly at him at every turn. 

Harry couldn't swallow the transformation their little community was going through. He could hardly cross the street without an Auror breathing down his neck those days. The fact that the perpetrators walked free had frustrated him to the point of almost hexing Narcissa Malfoy at Madam Malcolm's. Thankfully Hermione had stopped him.

The respite Fred and George's joke shop had offered had been appreciated by them all. The animated interior had made for an impressive contrast to the dull Alley. 

But their fun had ended when he, Ron and Hermione had spotted a white-blond head through the windows, suspiciously alone. The decision to follow Draco had been quickly made. Under the Invisibility Cloak (Which was becoming a tight fit for the three of them) they had trailed the Malfoy heir through a deserted Knockturn Alley and to Borgin and Burkes. The conversation they had managed to listen on had been more than dubious. Draco had threatened Borgin into ensuring some mystery object. When he exited, he almost bumped into them.

The scared face of the owner hadn’t left Harry’s mind for days to come. His best friends hadn’t seemed to care as much. But Harry was convinced. He had come to a conclusion, and everything had pointed at it. Draco had taken his father’s place as a Death Eater. 

Ron and Hermione hadn’t taken it seriously. Even Mr Weasley looked doubtful when Harry had decided to reveal it to him, right before he had to board the train to Hogwarts. He tried not to pay attention to his exasperation.

As prefects, his friends had already left for a meeting at the Prefect Carriage. Ginny had also abandoned him for her boyfriend. Harry spent most of the ride with Luna and Neville, who he had been grateful to see, trying to steer clear from the people staring at him. That had not lasted. He and Neville had received invitations for a gathering with their new professor Slughorn. Honesty, the ordeal had been uncomfortable.

After, while staring at Blaise Zabini’s back on the way to their compartment, Harry had seen a great chance. Maybe no one had believed him, but he wouldn't shrug off such a risk as a Death Eater in a school full of innocents. Breathless, he had darted after Zabini under his Cloak and, slightly desperate, almost revealed himself while entering the Slytherin’s compartment. But it had been worth it. His suspicions had been confirmed. Not only that, Malfoy had apparently been assigned a task by the Dark Lord personally. 

A bad feeling had nestled in Harry. It hadn’t helped when Malfoy had discovered him and left him alone with a broken nose beneath his Cloak. 

Tonks had found him, humiliated. Even worse had been the hateful sight of Snape, who had been revealed to be the new Defence professor during the Feast. The only good news was that Slughorn, as the new Potions Master, had allowed students with an E on their O.W.L.s to continue the course. Harry's prospects of becoming an Auror weren't looking so poor anymore.

After such a terrible day, he had cherished the solace his old Gryffindor bed promised.

Their first Defence class for the year had gone as expected. Learning nonverbal spells had ended in Harry getting a detention, following Snape's attempt to use him for the demonstration. Their Potions had been the polar opposite to his absolute shock. Slughorn had distributed old copies of Advanced Potion-Making to those who hadn't bought it and Harry had discovered a new best mate in the faceless Half-Blooded Prince, whose little alteration notes had won him a bottle of Felix Felicis. As well as a very jealous Hermione. For once, he couldn't find it in himself to care. Harry had been too tired. 

He was being haunted by dreams.

Those about the Ministry had never really receded (The dark circles under his eyes could confirm it.), but there was something else. He had thought it a coincidence when the second one played out. He had been creeped out, sure, unsettled, but he had dismissed it again, with crawling skin and a hurting heart. The third time had been far too much. 

He had woken up over and over again, feeling agonising grief for something unreachable and a mortifying throbbing between his legs.

They didn't stop after he returned to Hogwarts either. 

Sometimes he pondered that he may be astral projecting.

The visions were intriguing in a way, but they could be disturbing too, and Harry couldn't understand his reactions. He shouldn't be feeling like he did. They were not particularly of a sexual nature, but they were primal in a way that made his toes curl. It was… decadent. He fought it; he could swear that he did. He hated the helplessness after one. Yet what he was most afraid of was the sense of perfection such a strange dream evoked.

It lured him in.

Harry wanted to ask who the other was, because from the gathered knowledge, where he went after falling asleep was with Magick Herself. Who he remained with when She was gone was someone else entirely. Someone real and recently far more moulded. But he usually woke up before he could manage the question or was too swept by that otherworldly bliss to even remember he had one. 

And if he occasionally, in the dead of night, put silencing spells on his hangings before falling victim to his fantasies of darkness, power and strong arms, then it was no one else's business but his own. As was his shame.

——————

Dumbledore’s first lesson did not consist of some pompous manifestations of magical prowess, as one would have expected from a veteran dueller of Dark Lords. Harry had not been instructed to raise his wand at all. Instead, they had dived into the contents of the Headmaster’s Pensieve to observe memories about a House of remnants once prominent and gauntness just like its name foretold. And it's most notable member—a miserable girl with no natural beauty or fortune of any kind. A desperate person—one so deprived of love that from abused she had become the abuser, and from the abuse's enactment, at the cost of her own, she had brought a creation to life. 

She had named it after its father.

Harry doubted he would ever forget her defeated look.

In the end, he hadn't an idea what Dumbledore’s intentions were when it came to their lessons. His mentor had hinted at those being significant for the prophecy. Know thy enemy, he presumed. While insightful, the recollections were scarcely useful information in a fight, and he knew he would need all the help he could get. 

He trusted Dumbledore nonetheless. 

Shadows shrouded the corridors, and images flooded Harry's head on his way back to the common room. One crooked gaze filled with fervent passion and another filled with the same indifference he had seen on its doppelganger.

He couldn't help but wonder. What would have changed if?

That night he embraced the dream without the typical apprehension.

~~~~~~

Relieving chill and an old feeling of rightness welcomed him.

Magick had delivered him. Then after, Her lack had been substituted by his awareness. His was named Harry again, and the other was pervading his every sense, as brutally as always.

He could feel it under his skin, rummaging around his rib cage, slithering, gnawing through tissue, going deeper and making space for itself like a parasite, imbuing Harry’s every layer with darkness. They were one as was intended. And Harry… Harry could only savour this perversion of his body, mind, and soul. Something in his fundamentality fluttered as their essences twined, and it was far beyond carnal. His mouth watered. He writhed beneath the presence above when black threads of magic pried his lips open. He didn't want it to stop. He couldn't stop.

They were in—down his throat, pooling in his stomach, in his brain, everywhere, until he was gagging on it. Harry eagerly plunged his fingers in the other, trying to carve too.

He craved it. Absorb and be absorbed. Never to be separated.

The other’s permeating satisfaction mirrored his own. He felt it.

~My soul.~ 

He heard himself emit a sound that was almost crude. Clarity of consciousness mixed with the incoherent haze of dreams and hallucinations of colors and body parts flashed before his clouded eyes. He was drunk on the madness.

Prompted by the reaction, pale hands, now tangible and beautiful, with blood splattered across them and veins pulsing black under translucent skin, sank their claws firmer into Harry. His sides burned pleasantly. Freeing one, the other let its sharpness roam up and down, tantalisingly keeping the pressure just on the verge of breaking skin. The teasing was stimulating. He didn't want it to end. He wanted to stay with the other forever. That thought turned him desperate.

He had to know.

“Who are you?” Harry uttered between gasps.

A mouth inhaled openly against his neck. He felt it twitch. The pointed tips of teeth that stabbed him retracted before the other distanced itself. 

But what emerged before his eyes, out of his own depths, was an image plucked straight from his nightmares. With a bloody mouth (his own blood, God, his own blood smeared across its cheeks, his own flesh between its glistening fangs) and bloody, red, red eyes, it moved its deformed head closer so it was level with Harry’s. It did not blink. Its unnaturally white bulk towered over him, still slithering, disgusting and hungry. The cold smoothness of scales, previously unnoticed, made him shudder. And blood dribbled from its chin, down, to fall back into Harry's open chest from which it had come. 

Tap, tap, tap.

The other smiled, its slash stretching grotesquely. Sadistic glee, not his own, flooded him.

~Don't you recognise me, Harry?~ It—no, he, because Harry knew him-–hissed, and the puzzle piece aligned at last.

~~~~~~

He awoke with a scream. 

——————

Ron wanted to summon the Headmaster. He was silently but clearly supported by their dorm mates who watched with worried expressions behind him. They hung around the room in various forms of disarray, clad in pyjamas with sticking hair and shoeless feet. After last year, Harry could hardly blame their response.

However, he didn't want to see Dumbledore.

He hugged the blanket to his chest, cursing his body. His distorted name spoken in snake's tongue ran on loop.

Harry wanted to keep on screaming, but he had been struck mute ever since the initial fright. He was still shivering from the terror that was gripping his wild heart. The idea of a role model peeping into that most deplorable nook in his mind made him sick to his stomach. Going there himself repulsed him even more.

“Was it him?” Ron enquired lowly when their roommates had reluctantly returned to their beds.

Harry shook his head, trying to swallow the bile. The urge to run into the bathroom and scrub his skin raw intensified by the second.

“I don't feel my scar,” he rasped, simultaneously dodging the damning question and realising he was speaking the truth. His head was not splitting from pain, not having done so for a while now (They had concluded he was being blocked by Occlumency.), yet that didn’t mean it was merely a gross coincidence. He rarely had such luck, and pretence was impractical, especially after months of restless sleep. That was the only logical answer (Because if those turned out to be the workings of his own twisted mind, then the implications would be too condemning to even consider.).

No. Harry wouldn't let it fester. He couldn't let him win.

He would try to bury it away, and he would tell no one. That was something he simply couldn't do.

Thankfully, Ron accepted his reply.

The next day an invisible Harry Potter stole a few vials of dreamless sleep from the hospital wing.

——————

Harry focused on his classes. Strangely enough Potions had taken the position of top subject just by following the curious instructions his Advanced Potion-Making set. His enamourment with the Half-Blood Prince had become a basis for judgement from his friends, specifically Hermione, who couldn't imagine straying from the sequence their textbooks had established. She grew more infuriated whenever class would end with Slughorn singing his praises for a recipe not performed by the rules. Harry generally avoided her until she cooled off. He had no qualms when it came to outdoing Malfoy, though. The scowls were priceless.

Defence, while remaining one of his best, had loosened a bit of its appeal now that Snape had taken the professor role. Their classes had turned into a passive-aggressive battlefield. The detentions Harry got outnumbered the learnt spells.

In addition to that disappointment, being a Quidditch captain reflected neither his glorious notions nor his tentative hopes. On the day of trials a flock of students had usurped the stands, most not even there to try out, many from completely different houses. The cacophony had been distracting, making his job of selecting the next line of players significantly taxing. Ron's competition with Cormac McLaggen had been a stressful ordeal, but even while its culmination played out, Harry could feel countless stares boring into the back of his head instead. He may not have appreciated it as much as some would have expected. 

Mirth offered refreshment when, on their way to the feast, they had stumbled upon a confunded McLaggen grappling with a nearby wall. 

“Oh, be quiet,” Hermione had huffed when Harry had poked fun at her for her biased actions on the pitch (He had mused about how quickly their pining would be resolved if Ron would stop looking at other girls and finally talk to her.). Neither dared mention her help to Ron. They knew all hell would break loose. Despite that, it was to no avail, for Ron had soon found another reason to pout when Slughorn had approached him and Hermione without extending an invitation to their friend. Harry didn't even want to go to the Slug Club meetings, not that Ron cared about that. Harry had been stranded in Snape’s den anyway, serving his detention time. There was no Dumbledore to excuse him with the pretext of their personal lessons this time around. In fact, the old man hadn't been spotted around the school for days. Harry had not received an invite to discuss their lessons further.

With the Headmaster nowhere in sight, his sudden but unwanted rise in popularity amongst students and teachers alike, and more responsibility added to his load, Harry had almost forgotten. Or so he liked to tell himself. But busying himself with school did not alleviate the burden. Sirius weighed heavily on his thoughts. When he successfully distracted himself, other images resurfaced to compensate for the recently dreamless nights.

Therefore, he sought novelties. 

Ron didn't know Harry was aware he called him obsessed with the Half-Blood Prince. But Ron harboured no interest in mysterious spells scribbled on yellowed pages. Well, he did when he had ended up an accidental guinea pig for a test of one (Levicorpus apparently hoisted people into the air by the ankles.). Hermione had not been amused, unlike him.

Of course, there was also Draco Malfoy, who was proving to be the greatest distraction yet. The cursed Katie Bell with her pained screams and hair whipping in the wind had been carrying the opal necklace they had discovered peeking out of its paper wrapping among the snow on the ground. It had been the same one Hermione had asked about when trying to figure out Draco’s business with Borgin. It had been the same one he himself had seen years ago in the sketchy shop. There was no need for questions. Harry had been certain that had been proof. But when he attempted to warn Professor McGonagall about Malfoy, his friends had acted almost embarrassed by his words, and the professor had brushed aside his theory.

Overall, that Hogsmeade trip had been a disaster. There had also been the all-consuming wrath at coming across Mundungus Fletcher just outside the Three Broomsticks with his godfather’s nicked stuff. The feeling was becoming distressingly common. 

On Monday, unsure if their arrangement stood, he hesitantly knocked on the door of the Headmaster’s office. Dumbledore's blackened hand welcomed him. Unable to hold back, Harry quickly shared his ‘Fletcher’ predicament and determinately added his concerns about Draco. He couldn't help feeling resentful at the meagre reassurances he was given. But that was soon set aside.

Mothers were peculiar. Harry could only think of Lily Potter as the soldier with fiery hair and a fierce love capable of salvation. When he thought of Lily Potter, he imagined her smile. He knew she must have been so warm. He couldn't fathom how Merope—a woman with a choice—had surrendered so. 

Her separation with Tom Riddle had driven her into forsaking her magic—not to call upon it even to preserve her seizing breaths. She had been weakened by her suffering. And there was that question again. What if? 

“Could you possibly be feeling sorry for Lord Voldemort?” Dumbledore had asked. His eyes had been twinkling.

“No,” Harry had scurried to answer, suppressing a shiver at the name.

He couldn't be.

But met with the dingy orphanage and the neglectful, alcoholic matron, Harry unintentionally drew parallels that made him uncomfortable. The dark-haired boy on the bed, holding a book which almost dwarfed him, was mistrustful and quick to bristle. In his dictionary the word ‘school’ signified ‘asylum’. The word ‘professor’ made him back away frantically and accuse Dumbledore of being a doctor. It was disturbingly evident he was terrified of those. He was so small. 

‘Magic’, however, was an intoxicating word. Harry watched as Tom's hollow cheeks flushed with excitement when it grazed his ears. The change was instant and eerie. It was a word put on a pedestal, worthy of reverence, and the boy cradled it close with a sort of maniacal possessiveness. 

“I can make bad things happen to people who annoy me. I can make them hurt if I want to.”

The cruel streak, whether nurtured or congenital, was prominent. He was a bully from a young age, with an aversion to ordinariness–later to fully separate from it by the mask of a new name– and a cold calculator. He was to be an architect of a world's damnation. Harry was staring at a monster's genesis, but still, all he could see was a hungry boy. A shocked boy who shrieked at his burning wardrobe. An unnerved boy reprimanded for stolen trinkets.

Harry had stolen trinkets, too.

It made his stomach turn.

The memory culminated with a handshake between future foes. Tom had declined Dumbledore’s assistance with his Diagon Alley trip. 

“He preferred to operate alone,” the Headmaster had pointed out, “The adult Voldemort is the same. You will hear many of his Death Eaters claiming that they are in his confidence, that they alone are close to him, even understand him. They are deluded. Lord Voldemort has never had a friend.”

Funny how the word ‘independent’ sounded a lot like ‘lonely’.

Harry tossed in his bed that night, his mind full of the memory and a new, persistent mantra. 

What if, what if, what if–

~~~~~~

Cold fingers kneaded his skin. They pulled him to bits and then knitted him back together by their own design. Their deftness induced an aberrant sense of safety. It cocooned him. He relished it.

~Why have you shunned me so, my soul?~

The sound was a purr reverberating through his insides–more beast than human. Like a snake charming its charmer, it enticed him. He was momentarily elated at having such attention centred on him.

The words’ meaning was what broke the spell.

Snapping his eyes open, he pushed away the entraping figure, only to freeze again.

“You–You're–”

~Yes,~ Came the hiss of Tom Riddle. Or what the sixteen-year-old version he had known would have grown into. The carefully sculpted features had played an integral part in Harry’s self-imposed torments. He saw the perfectly styled hair when he begged forgiveness for his weakness (so many dead, so many affected – Ginny, Cedric, Sirius) and visions of the chiselled cheekbones marked moments of self-reproach sired by his naivety. He had thought him a friend. He had liked him. 

He had been so fucking handsome.

“The diary,” Harry whispered. But no. Gone was the deep brown. Crimson eyes seared into his with pupils slitted like a reptile’s. While still youthful, he had lost the softness of teenagehood, becoming more angular, almost cadaverous in the way that Harry could see the bony structure beyond. As if something corroding had stretched new skin over itself to create a Frankenstein's monster of alien beauty. It was far more uncanny than the previously disfigured visage. What was before him was not of the human kind.

“Ah yes”, The impossible face instantly morphed into a guarded expression. An unexpected rush of anger made Harry flinch. It was not his own. “Lucius is paying greatly for his grave failings. But you are mistaken. I am no recollection, nor am I a figment of your imagination, Harry,” The man had drawn nearer once more, his eyes dissecting and unblinking. He was close enough to smell. His cold breath fanned Harry’s lashes when he declared. ~I am Lord Voldemort.~

“No,” Harry sounded hysterical even to his ears. He wanted to shield them against the diabolical call, “No!” 

He wanted to get away from this creature.

His body gave a pitiful attempt as if reluctant to part from the lingering embrace he was suddenly hyperaware of. The fingers resting on his back flexed, and claws inserted themselves into Harry’s muscles, ceasing their convulsions. They kept him in place. A puzzling billow of emotions swept him as bile rose alongside unwarranted desire.

Why? 

He immediately stiffened. The wheezing cry that escaped him was everything he was capable of. It was merely unintelligible noise.

Why, why, why?

A crushing grip on his jaw made him look back up. His nostrils, so abruptly pressed to the hand, were filled with the scent of acrid smoke and death. His eyes watered. 

The other enjoyed it. Harry sensed it through the strange bond, and he could see it in his dilated, unnatural pupils when his eyes glided along his body. His neck stretched, getting into Harry’s personal space. The skin was as void of color as a corpse's, and its strange texture gleamed. It disappeared behind shimmering black cloth—more smog than robes—and when he looked closely, he realised it was a manifestation of Tom's, no, Voldemort's own magic, swirling protectively around his body. Harry, on the other hand, was sky-clad, covered in blood.

He was exposed and vulnerable before this demon of a man. His underbelly was on display, ready for the ritual of consumption his dreams liked to fabricate. 

“No,” He protested weakly, muffled by the hand against his mouth.

The corners of the other's lips quirked upwards. Sharp teeth poked out from under them, made for slaughter. Harry shivered, making the claws still stuck inside him dig deeper.

“I assure you, my soul. This,” The man lifted a demure hand to his chin, as if to emphasise. His bloodied digit left a dark mark behind, “Is my true appearance. You see, I have finally regained my body. And you,” He then took one of Harry's own hands. “Can't escape.”

With fingers now wrapped around his, he guided them to Harry’s chest, where goosebumps chased the gentle touch. It finally halted just below his sternum. Harry’s frame shook miserably. In a flash, immeasurable pressure split his body as Voldemort thrust them past skin and matter and pushed between ribs and organs until they felt the steady pumping of the fist-sized muscle. 

Voldemort sighed, smiling. Harry couldn't breathe.

“Do you hear, my soul? Do you feel?” He enfolded it with both their hands. New waves of crimson soaked them afresh with each beat. And, indeed, Harry could hear his heart. It was louder than it should be. It moved against his skin—something that shouldn't happen. Abominable. He tried to pry away from the grip, to get away from the feeling, but it did not budge. Voldemort gazed ravenously at Harry’s chest cavity from which their arms protruded. The density of his morbid hunger made Harry’s skin prickle. He resisted the small grain of curiosity. He wouldn't be able to endure the sight. 

Voldemort took a slippery hold of his right hand, pressing it to his own breast until the rhythm there could be discerned, too. He did not pierce.

~They beat together,~ He hissed. Harry’s blood on his hands was the flawless complement to his eyes. ~It's useless to run from yourself.~

Harry couldn't hold his tears any longer. He sobbed.

“Oh, dearest,” Voldemort crooned. He was evil. Harry glimpsed his fangs from his open mouth as he came alarmingly close—close enough for his nose to bump with his brow; close enough that he dragged out his tongue and licked the salty stains from Harry’s wet cheeks. That shouldn't have excited him. It really, really shouldn't (He wasn't surprised it was exciting for the other.). Voldemort leaned to his ear, ignoring the boy's hitched inhales (he might've been hyperventilating), “Potions are addicting, Harry. You will build immunity. There will come a time when they won't be enough to restrict me.”

~~~~~~

Harry woke up crying.

——————

He had forgotten the potion. He had fallen asleep, too preoccupied with Dumbledore’s lesson to be bothered with his nightly routine. That must be it.

(In the morning he had found his glasses neatly put on his trunk, as was the custom. He remembered brushing his teeth.)

If the amount of vials did not add up, then it was a slip-up.

——————

Ron and Hermione were fighting again. It was far more dire than their standard.

Harry thought they were making progress when, due to excessive mocking on Ron’s part (his jealousy had been plain for anyone to see), Hermione had confessed her plans to invite him as her plus one to Slughorn’s Christmas party. After that their dynamic had shifted into something startlingly cautious and full of electricity. They had turned into blushing messes. Although it was weird to enter such uncharted territories among the trio, he had thought it good. Up to the point when things hadn't escalated towards the opposite direction that was. Ginny, in her rage, had zeroed in on Ron’s insecurities with a proficiency that had left lasting damage. Everything had crumbled in a blink. Yeah, okay, Harry supposed walking in on your sister snogging your dorm mate and teammate wouldn’t be a nice view. But the ensuing heated argument had been particularly nasty, especially after Ginny let it slip that Hermione had kissed Victor Krum—simultaneously rubbing her brother's nose in and alluding to his non-existent love life. Harry had found it rather awkward. His shot with Cho had turned into an utter disaster, and the dream stranger his most recent fantasies had revolved around had been… Well, it was simply inadmissible. His gut still turned. 

Harry didn't want to think about kissing. Or anything else. Maybe he was traumatised. It was something Hermione would probably say.

He entirely shut off the need for that other feeling—the one which felt like home and which was accompanied by the burn of smoke he knew to be dark magic in his senses. He would never grant it to himself. He doubted he could find it amid his classmates either. So, in hindsight, what was the point?

——————

Felix Felicis was liquid luck. He had won a little bottle of it at the beginning of term. Then why was Harry Potter the unluckiest boy to ever live?

Witnessing Hermione's conjured flock of birds viciously attack Ron had made him regret his decisions. He should have told Hermione he would pretend to pour the potion into Ron’s drink. They wouldn't have fought about her dearth of faith in him. He wouldn't have gone out with Lavender to spite her. Or maybe Harry should have actually spiked Ron’s drink. Perhaps it would have resolved whatever was going on and spared him from being torn between his two crestfallen friends.

——————

Each night, the amounts of dreamless sleep required for him to doze off increased. He doggedly did not acknowledge the inconsistencies before the second slip.

~~~~~~

Harry was back in his arms. 

“Aren't you tired, my soul?” The monster murmured. It might have been tender if his teeth hadn't been so threateningly close to Harry’s neck. “Do you not wish for rest?”

He squirmed. His breath quickened with the slide of cold palms down his torso. 

~Let me relieve your burden.~ Red eyes blazed, horrific despite the face. ~Come to me.~

Harry spluttered at those ludicrous words. It took him a second to process them, but his conflicted feelings had flared up immediately. The pitter-patter of his heart was audible, supplementing the sting of his great humiliation. It was unbearable. 

~Never!~ 

Yet his indignant outburst came out shakier than preferred and he had grabbed onto the other’s shoulders for support. He hadn't noticed his switch in language until the feral smirk hadn't grazed the other’s alluring features. Voldemort hummed, pleased. He was so similar to a dragon clutching its gold. His gratification seeped into Harry with overwhelming potency.

Harry had never felt more like prey.

He avoided the probing gaze, turning to the side and looking at his surroundings. There might be something to help him escape. 

It was a fruitless hope, of course.

They were alone in the aether. Nothing but the anti-terrestrial could be distinguished. Harry despaired.

Sensing him, Voldemort began.

~We are covered by the Veil–the Beyond, if you please. We have descended into Magick, became one with Her, and by Her will, we were united,~ He explained in the same hypnotic tongue, his magical garment dancing with the tempo of strong emotion. A straying finger brushed the scar fashioned by its own will. Red eyes glinted wildly. ~It is fate's decree.~

The frenzied Harry couldn't hold back. It was all bollocks.

~Fuck fate!~ He screamed, thrashing against the immovable body and trying to dislodge the hand on his forehead. He was still hissing, but he couldn't control himself to stop it. ~I choose my own destiny!~

Voldemort laughed. He seemed amused, as if he were indulging a child's delusion. Harry wrenched harder against the insulting feelings which violated him. 

Eventually, the other had had enough. He dropped his arm to ensnare him tighter, bringing them chest to chest. They breathed each other's breaths.

~Do you know what you are?~ The monster queried. He did not wait for an answer. Harry hadn't had one anyway. ~You are of me, my soul. My essence courses through your veins, and I hunger for you as you hunger for me. You are mine.~

Harry’s lips quivered as he spoke.

~I am no one's.~

But when Voldemort stroked his skin and dug his claws in, leaving red, dripping lines behind, Harry had to suppress a whine. The surge of anticipation was mutual. The horrifying desire was, too.

~You won't withstand for long,~ Voldemort continued, indifferent to Harry’s earlier objection, ~It can be so easy, pet. Come to me and everything shall be fine.~ His tone was placating. Harry couldn't fall for it.

~Why are you doing this?~ The strain made his voice tenuous.

The man only kept on smiling his dazzling smile. Then he brought his hand to his mouth.

“I wonder,” He popped a single bloodied and elegant finger inside. He sucked on it. “What would you really taste like?”

~~~~~~

Phantom pain from invisible scratches plagued Harry for a day after that dream. He decidedly did not panic.

——————

Slughorn's Christmas party had been as pretentious as predicted, although meeting an actual vampire had been an interesting event. 

With Hermione's warning, he had evaded a few love potion assaults by some girls desperate to get invited. He owed her. In lieu of his fans, Harry had picked Luna as his partner for the night. He had wanted a friend, and her unique worldview had always proven to be fascinating. Hermione's choice had backfired. She had wanted to annoy Ron, but she hadn't taken into account Cormac’s persistence. Hermione had spent her evening fending off her date. The most significant part, though, in Harry’s opinion, had been Malfoy lurking around deserted corridors and being accused of trespassing. While Slughorn himself had brushed it off, Snape had escorted the boy out. Naturally, Harry had followed. He had not been shocked to hear their professor offer assistance to Malfoy’s ‘mission’. He had never trusted the man.

No one else agreed. When Harry shared what he had overheard with Arthur and Remus during their Christmas break, they had said Snape had been trying to discover the mission’s nature to help Dumbledore’s cause. Ron had believed them. Harry had privately sulked for the remainder of their break. His mood had soured when Minister Scrimgeour had appeared at the Burrow to ask for his cooperation with the Ministry’s work. It was bold. After everything he had been subjugated to because of their poor excuse of authority, agreeing would have been a miracle. 

It had not been a fun break. 

His second batch of stolen sleeping draught had been running out. The amount he was consuming may have been concerning, but it brought him a sense of safety. He had had to answer questions about the bags under his eyes. He didn't like to lie to Mrs Weasley.

When they had returned to Hogwarts, Harry wasted no time before talking to Hermione. To his disappointment, she also assumed Snape was on Dumbledore’s side. They did not reach a consensus even when another proof of Malfoy’s position in the ranks of the Death Eaters was revealed by figuring out Draco’s association with Fenrir Greyback. Hermione had called it an ‘empty threat’. Harry didn't think threatening a shop owner with the savage werewolf was so idle.

He hadn't seen Dumbledore in a long time. Their third lesson began with Harry confiding in the Headmaster and once again being cryptically refuted. He felt mutinous but did not argue further. There was nothing to be gained from it.

Before they submerged themselves into the memories, Dumbledore had recounted Tom Riddle's dawn as the accomplished, devilishly charming student who had swiftly wormed his way into the teachers affections. All except for one. Dumbledore had held no trust in the boy's exterior and had collected records of his school escapades with painstaking effort–one of which being the tragic incident following the opening of the Chamber. None had dared to speak while in Hogwarts, but after Riddle’s graduation, the Headmaster had tracked a handful less terrified. They had painted a gruesome picture of a cruel leader gathering a gang of dedicated minions known as the forerunners of the Death Eaters. They had described Tom's obsession with his lineage. 

The first memory had been of the Gaunt's shack. Riddle's disenchantment had been unpreventable when faced with the last of the formidable Slytherin line in the shape of one mad uncle and his dirty house. 

But the final blow to his great expectations had been delivered by his Muggle relatives. Taking revenge on both his families for his abandonment, he had killed his father and grandparents and framed his purist uncle. The stolen heirloom had been the sole trophy from the encounters–a memento to connect him to his ancient ancestry but not his creators.

Harry had been uncertain about what to feel. 

The second memory had been of a Slughorn’s party. The professor had been younger but just as vain as ever, holding a drink. And there Riddle had stood, joking indulgently with his peers like equals, while everyone was aware of the contrary. He waved his hand negligently, as if the ring on it hadn't been gained at the cost of murder. 

The memory had been meddled with. There had been foggy holes in it which Dumbledore had confirmed were put by the paranoid Slughorn himself. Whether it was shame or self-perseverance, it was Harry’s homework to figure out and obtain the true contents. He was left with one lead–the word Horcrux and the obvious horror its utterance evoked in the professor.

The next morning Harry had shared his task with his friends. Hermione had not heard of Horcruxes before. Her stimulation was the scary thought of being ignorant on any topic, and before the end of the week, she had presented a dusty tome in front of Harry. It had been fetched from Grimmauld Place with Dobby’s help after having no success in the school’s library. They had headed for a secluded alcove, bouncing on their feet.

Their enthusiasm had dulled after reading its inside.

It was an atrocity of the highest kind–a violation of the natural sequence of life and death. It was a slap in the face of Magick Herself. 

Splitting one’s soul should have been unfeasible. The ritual had certainly sounded like it. It had been described as a most excruciating pain, and the resulting damage had been deemed incorrigible. It was the ultimate act of evil.

They hadn’t talked on their way to the Common Room. The implications had been jarring.

Harry had remembered the numerous ‘my soul’s whispered into his ear.

The dreadful feeling he had gotten would shadow him for days to come.

——————

Harry had messed up. Coaxed by Ron and his own helplessness, he had straight up confronted Slughorn. It was no wonder the professor had started avoiding him subsequently. Whatever they might say about tact, Dumbledore should have known it was not Harry's strongest suit.

With no other option, he had focused on Malfoy instead. It had come to attention that sometimes his name disappeared from the Marauders’ Map. He had observed it zealously.

——————

Harry's Apparition Lessons had not been triumphant.

——————

On the first of March Ron had gotten love poisoned by some Chocolate Cauldrons as an ill-conceived birthday gift. It should have been Harry, really. Romilda Vane had not been easily dispelled. 

When he had taken his friend to be fixed by Slughorn, Ron had been accidentally poisoned again by a celebratory bottle of Mulled Mead, originally meant for Dumbledore. Harry had saved him with a bezoar. His friend’s birthday hadn’t gone as intended.

At least he reconciled with Hermione.

——————

Harry should have probably noticed the mood swings. He couldn't tell if they were due to the recent failures or if those had been the results, but irritation had turned into his default emotion and anger had been the diversity. Maybe it was unreleased tension that had been accumulating to the point of transforming him into a live wire–a buildup since last year that he didn't know how to deal with. His unconventional outbursts had attracted quite a few stares, and the pronounced worry he could see in them only aggravated him more. He tried to disguise it. It was hard. The marks under his eyes were getting darker. He couldn’t get rid of them, nor the disorganised clutter of unresolved problems in his mind, or the visions of the dead he was sometimes concerned would start talking to him. Nor the incessant notion that something was gapingly missing. It was an itch he didn't know how to scratch. A need. It destabilised him.

(Deep down he knew it was a tug towards the forbidden. The illusive taste of smoke on his tongue was constant.)

He delved into the simple distractions. Hagrid had unintentionally divulged a dispute between the Headmaster and Snape he had overheard. Between that and the checks on the Map for one particular name Harry was becoming rapidly obsessed.

On another note, he was lamenting his rash selection of Ron’s replacement. Still indisposed after the poisoning, the boy was unable to play for the next Quidditch game. As the second best during trials, Harry had agreed to take on McLaggen. 

Every practice since then had tested him.

The match was a catastrophe, too. Harry had to repeatedly shepherd McLaggen back to his own post–each time narrated by Luna’s airy voice (he couldn't tell who had picked her as a commentator).

On the third or fourth time, she had exclaimed serenely.

“Oh, look! The Gryffindor keeper got hold of one of the beaters’ bats.”

And surely, when Harry looked, he caught sight of Cormac demonstrating how to hit a bludger to their beater. Harry shouted for him just as the other took a swipe. Needless to say, he missed.

Harry’s vision tunnelled. The ground was getting distressingly closer, and then there was nothing.

~~~~~~

“Your timing is most infrequent,” The low timbre received him into his domain, the detectable hissing notes unmistakable and a little feral. “I believe you were supposed to be winning games.”

Harry was pinned motionless by red eyes. His stun left him unguarded for one precious second, and efficiently arms like hooks attached to his body. The moment skin met skin, his insides erupted with ecstasy.

He had defied facts, as he often did. But when instant relief filled him up and something clicked in place, self-deception was not a possibility. There was solace for his anger, and the physical contact soothed his nagging emptiness. It was gone at last, as if he was recharged by touch alone. The taste of acrid smoke was not an illusion cast by his wretched imagination now. He tasted it for real. He could inhale it.

Harry sagged into the deadly hold.

He could feel the reciprocation. The other’s emotions swelled, sweepingly exultant and possessive, as they kept on barraging him. Harry couldn't deny he had missed that irreplaceable companionship anymore, despite being utterly terrified of it. He didn't know if such a connection was normal. Sharing feelings was gut-wrenching, too revealing, but at the same time completely delicious. The intimacy of the act was irresistible. It was unmatched by any other experience, and his mouth had salivated many times at the idea even through his shame. He had found it repulsive in the beginning. He didn't know when he had started hungering for it. 

If Voldemort was the only one who could offer it, so be it. Harry was tired.

He basked in the intensity of their combined emotions for a second longer.

“How–how do you know?” He asked, overwhelmed.

~I know everything about you, my soul.~ His breath ghosted Harry’s neck. Death and smoke.

Harry shook to his core.

“You follow my school life?” He couldn't help taunting. He was flustered, therefore a bit miffed, considering the identity of the being in his head. It was a principle of dignity. He had to preserve however much remained of it.

“Certainly,” Came the simple reply. The smirk, although aggravating, was undeniably fetching on that face. His beauty was blinding. He was a devil. “I do what I see fit when it comes to influence.”

It made Harry’s scowl deepen. Now, he wanted to distance himself.

“Influence over what?”

The arms around him contracted reflexively. The smirk sharpened. Fangs came through.

“Guess.”

A thrill ran down his spine. He couldn't tell which of his mutually opposing feelings had caused it. It exasperated him more.

“I am not one of your objects to hoard, Tom,” he snarled.

The smug smirk shifted into a baring of teeth, dangerously exposed and razor-edged. There was a soured hitch in the steady flow of his emotions.

~Careful, Harry.~

The man's thumb pressed on the juncture where neck met shoulder, painfully so. A threat. While what the other broadcasted was vicious, the headiness of the connection itself was stirring enough to distract. He hated himself for liking it even then.

Harry couldn't back down. He let that hatred drive him.

“Or what? I am no toy, and I won't be yours! I am destined to destroy you! If you think that sending your lackeys to spy on me will help you prevent it, then you are crazy,” He was going overboard, and he didn't mind. “Do you think Snape knows anything? Or Malfoy? They know nothing, and so do you!

The hand that had slithered to his neck tightened its grip with each goad, and the dark magic covering Voldemort's body spiralled vigorously. The air travelling down Harry’s windpipe dwindled. He went rigid. The other’s face had become a sadistic grimace, and Harry was ready to be stricken at any moment. Or bitten into. Voldemort looked like an animal about to pounce. 

Choked out of breath, Harry made a gurgling sound.

As if a switch was flicked, the emotions drained, and the other’s expression smoothed back into something impenetrable. He tipped his head to the side, scrutinising him. The dark waves of his hair swung with the movement, tickling Harry’s forehead where his scar was located. A haughty smile appeared.

Harry was almost disappointed.

Voldemort's sharp nails began tapping a paced rhythm on his neck. The grip had loosened. 

“Whoever said I require all eyes on you. Everyone has their task to fulfill, pet,” A claw punctured his skin gently. ~You will find out soon. The whole Wizarding World will fear the name of Lord Voldemort.~

~~~~~~

Harry woke up in the hospital wing, and he woke up angry. 

He talked to Ron to stifle the feeling of the scorching emptiness. The familiar longing was torturous. He detested it.

Now that he could think without the connection obscuring his perceptions, he regretted letting it affect him so. Although it was the means of calming the recent disruptions in his spirit, Voldemort (Because it was truly him; there was no contradicting it.) was a monster that could never be trusted. 

What he had hinted at worried Harry. ‘Everyone has their task to fulfil’ he had said. He had been so confident. Something evidently loomed over them, and they were all heedless of the danger. Well, Harry wouldn't be.

When Madam Pomfrey retired for the night, he summoned Kreacher and Dobby. He told them to trail Draco Malfoy.

——————

For the first time he contemplated telling someone. It was a recurring thought that turned him ambivalent. While undoubtedly consequential, what he had gathered from his dreams was not purely intel about the opponents. No, that would have been easy. It was never easy. Telling someone would entail imparting more than he would ever be comfortable with, but still, the importance of the revelation seemed larger than his despicable secrets. 

His dilemma was solved during his and Dumbledore’s fourth lesson.

He hadn't managed to retrieve Slughorn’s true memory. He had disappointed his Headmaster. Adding to the heap of his screw-ups by admitting to his dreams seemed inadvisable when met with Dumbledore’s twinkling eyes, and frankly, he was trying to quell the hot surge of rage that wanted to take charge. His last dream had softened his bizarre disposition, yet after a couple of peaceful days, it had amplified with double the strength. It was too powerful, abnormally so – so fast to ignite and catch fire to his every fiber that it must have been artificially induced. He wouldn't put it past Voldemort to provoke him by the aid of possession. It had happened before, hadn't it?

Fine, no problem. Harry would lead that one-sided battle.

But he was too angry. At everything. And that was a problem because it reflected on his relationships, on his behavior and his thoughts. He couldn't explain what was wrong to his friends. Harry didn't know. So he continued to try hiding it, ashamed by the telltale signs of something being this fundamentally twisted, since there shouldn't be anything actually wrong with him, should there? Then why did Dumbledore’s perceptive eyes scrutinise him this thoroughly? And why had Dumbledore given him a task he himself had been unsuccessful at? Why did he always keep Harry at arm’s length?

Harry knew this line of thinking was unjust, but he couldn’t stop. He could only pretend.

He pretended he wasn't boiling with animosity while viewing Hepzibah Smith’s founder antiquities and her brazen giddiness at being quested after by a young Tom Riddle–as delectable as he was deceitful. He pretended while they watched Dumbledore turn down a no-longer-human Riddle’s application for the Defence Against the Dark Arts teaching post. 

“Hogwarts was where he had been happiest, the first and only place he had felt like home,” The Headmaster said about Riddle, and Harry recognised himself in that description. “I think he saw it as a useful recruiting ground and a place where he might begin to build himself an army.”

Harry couldn’t negate that, but he couldn’t fully agree either after seeing the sneer on Riddle’s striking face. He knew Voldemort had not deserved the job. It likely would have turned into a ticking time bomb. In spite of that, the telling almost pettiness he had displayed by cursing the position showed how obvious of a personal slight that had been.

He had debased himself in front of Dumbledore. He had offered himself to be wielded as the Headmaster inclined. Tom Riddle had wanted to be a teacher.

What if, what if, what if–

Harry left the office angrier, and he couldn’t tell who he was the angriest with.

He did fulfil his promise to Dumbledore but not before some lost days in indulging his escalating obsession with Malfoy, who, turned out, was holing up in the Room of Requirement. Harry couldn’t puzzle out his business there. He had helplessly moved onto Slughorn instead. Fed up, he had downed the little Felix Felicis bottle, which had turned out to be Ron's best suggestion recently, for Harry had been quickly presented with the needed opportunity. He had gotten the memory with ease.

On their fifth lesson, his fears were confirmed.

Slughorn had told Riddle all he had known about Horcruxes.

Harry listened intently to the already familiar instructions–the necessity for an act of the greatest evil. He watched a jittery Slughorn as he unintentionally set the stage for a future smeared with death. And he watched the shining eyes of an euphoric Riddle, still unbeknownst to him that his choice would lead to oversights which would change the course of both their fates. He had single-handedly put into motion the prophesied destiny he had feared so, forging his own enemy, the same one he had unknowingly bonded to himself and by which link his destruction would be delivered.

Because Harry was a Horcrux.

“Isn't seven the most powerfully magical number…”

Voldemort had planned to split his soul into seven pieces, and Harry was one.

~My soul~

It made sense, he thought detachedly. He could speak Parseltongue. They shared wand cores. Their dreams. And he was so unreasonably angry.

Harry was tainted, a vessel for the decadent. Somewhere deep inside was a parasitic shard that ate away at him as it wriggled and thrived. He had felt its corruption. Why else would so many suffer at his expense? He was a weapon to be brandished against his friends. He was a weapon that protected his enemy.

Harry was a Horcrux, and Voldemort knew.

He barely hampered himself from fleeing the rest of his lesson. When it was over, he hurried back to his thankfully empty dorm. Then he threw up.

~~~~~~

The moment he locked gazes with the red-eyed demon, he shattered. The stream of foreign emotions was smothering.

Sensing his mood, his dorm mates had left him alone to his morose musings. He must have fallen asleep. He hadn't drunk his Dreamless Sleep. The potions had worked less and less anyway, condemning him to insomniac nights or restless dreams. The interval between their shared visions had shrunk with each one. He should have been expecting that.

He was not ready.

“My, what turmoil,” The man purred, the condescending words grating but incapacitating with their amused tranquillity. As if the turbulence in Harry was insignificant. Manageable. He pawed at Harry, manhandling his slack, lifeless body closer and propping him on his lap. They were flush against one another. The lips to his cheek were insufferable, “Allow me to tend to you, dear. What, pray tell, has distressed you so?”

Voldemort was playing with him. He couldn't let it. But he couldn’t suppress the quiver at the anomaly that was the featherlight touch, not distinct from the swirling black magic gliding against his nakedness. It was mortifying, and it was driving Harry mad.

Incensed by his complacency and by the multiplied load of a faux existence, Harry writhed.

Tears of frustration made his eyes sting.

“You!” He screamed, “I hate you! I loathe you!” Seeing how futile his struggle was, he switched tactics, turning on the man with untameable ferocity. He took a hold of the silky waves and tugged painfully hard. He gnashed at his skin, induced by the flick of surprise in the other’s eyes, before inching closer to his gorgeous, sickening face. “You have destroyed my life! You have contaminated every part of it, and you want more? What are you aiming for? I'll never stand for your manipulations, Tom Marvolo Riddle! I will kill you!”

A sliver of malice was everything Voldemort permitted through–far less than Harry hoped. With a blink, it was gone. The other was poised again. It piqued Harry more.

“You are bold, my little lion.”

“You are vile!“

“And yet you call upon me incessantly and despairingly. Why do you suppose that is?” He smiled, unruffled still. ~You need me.~

~You are a liar.~ Harry wanted his composure shaken. He wanted to shut his sly mouth.

He hadn't managed to control his slip of hissing again. 

Voldemowl's eyes looked pleased, but he sighed, as if he was dealing with a petulant child.

“You deceive yourself. I admit, I am partly a culprit, but I do not initiate. I merely answer. Your subconscious urgency for proximity is the force behind our predicament, and it is as potent as my thirst for you. You crave as me. We are connected whether you accept it or not. It is inevitable, my soul.”

“Connected,” Harry spat. The pit in his stomach had been growing ever since he had come out of the Pensieve. He felt it. “Connected! What you have done is disgusting! Your insane aspirations have led you to your state, and you just dragged me along! It was not consensual! I was a bloody baby, for fuck's sake, and you tried to kill me! You took my family away! You turned me into a child messiah, and they expect a martyr! You made me a freak! I'll probably never reach adulthood because in order to defeat you, I'll have to die, won't I? Why do you think I would ever want anything to do with you?” Like a cornered animal, he lashed out despite the indisputable pull towards the other he now knew was exactly what Voldemort had illustrated. He knew the reason for it, too.

The amusement was gone, but Harry couldn't tell if he preferred the piercing survey better. He felt the disturbance in the steady flow of the other's emotions.

The hold on his flanks tightened. Harry wanted to shrink to preserve his modesty. His precarious position was unignorable. He could feel how his thighs were being spread by the other’s own, his most vulnerable exposed.

He refused to move.

“So you know,” Voldemort's voice was smooth like satin. It was not a question.

“I do.”

There was a pause. Harry waited for him to make the next move. 

The pads of the man's fingers pressed against the jagged surface of his scar, and he recoiled. A beast shouldn’t be capable of such a cautious gesture. 

Harry had never seen fervor as the one in his red eyes when fixed on that particular spot.

He shivered.

When Voldemort finally averted his gaze to meet Harry’s, he looked feral.

“How? How am I here?” Harry questioned, having sought that answer for a while. He was not talking about the dreams, and the other was aware. 

What he was was not meant for life.

Voldemort made a contemplative sound.

“Soul magic is a fickle thing, and you are the most perilous component of them all. My human Horcrux.”

The man ran a hand through Harry’s unruly strands. It was kind. There was a thrum of something insistent circulating between them, and he wanted to feel his hair being yanked, his neck straining. Harry was chagrined at getting used to his own desire for violence. He tried to ignore it.

He was going to exploit the situation. Voldemort seemed cordial enough to indulge him. He wondered how far that would stretch.

“You speak of thirst. You…,” Harry had to gather himself to continue, ”You have done things. Here. In the dreams. You drank from me,” He had to swallow around a knot stuck in his throat. “Ate.”

“My needs differ from yours in some areas.”

The other did not elaborate further. Harry frowned.

“You look… young.” He felt goosebumps raise as the swirls of the dark mist around them became more active. The magic pressed against him. It excited.

“I do,” Voldemort said with a knowing tone. He was crowding him, inching closer.

Sentient beings had issues with the concept of eternity. Whether it be youth or life itself, there would be temptation regardless. It was unachievable, though. Not without sacrifice, as that was the principle of dark magic. ‘This is my true appearance,’ the other had told Harry, all confidence and raw power. That was not a lacking person. On the contrary. It was a man of abundance. Disgraced, perhaps. Terrible–beyond doubt. But great. 

And his face. His eyes. His teeth. He had changed from the child curled up on stained bed sheets with his big book. That deformity was transcendental. He was brought up in the Unearth.

The conclusion was rather simple.

“You are not a human.” 

Voldemort smirked.

“No, I am not.”

Harry considered his next words, discomfited. Something gnawed at him. Voldemort’s suave expression was prompting him.

“What are you?” Flashes of blood and crimson irises filled his mind. He felt so stupid for voicing it, but it appeared to be a strong chance the longer he mulled it over. So he asked, ”Are you a vampire?”

The chuckle which followed was an ominous one. The protruding fangs glinted.

Harry's arms twitched with the need to protect himself. He stubbornly refused to accept his want to touch.

“Close,” Voldemort petted his hair like a proud owner did when their dog got the trick. Satisfaction beat between Harry's ribs. It came from the other. “I am not. I am a successor of the ancient. A destiny to bestow on wixen kind. I am from the spirits of long before, those to have traversed the surface of this earth unobscured and those to have shaped it from the nowt. I am a carrier of millions of years, of Magick that flourished whilst humankind was just a babe in the cradle of Mother Nature, hidden deep in cave systems–weak and pathetic.”

Harry could hardly keep up. Voldemort's vehemence was intimidating in a way that made one tremble with adrenaline. He had always loved monologuing.

“I am of that of which you hear legends about,” He carried on, “That sacred which has no name. It is an entity of countless aggregates that the people of the Nile named the Ennead—deities to prostrate themselves before—and the people of the Mediterranean called a Pantheon. The goddess of snakes for the Minoans. The goddess of war, Ishtar, in Sumer. Kali far to the east adapted into Sara, the Black goddess, by the Romani, and the Lilu demons of the Babylonians who preyed on newborns and pregnant women to later be claimed by the Jewish as Lilith, mother of all vampires. Her children, Lady Melusine, the serpent-tailed spirit to have blessed the British soil with her heirs, the orcneas that muggles weave fantasies about, the strigoi and their sisters the lamyas, the sasabonsam, the bhuta, the pishacha, the manananggal, the jiangshi, zombies and vampires. I found their resting lairs, Harry, deep into pyramids and catacombs, and across the oceans. I spoke to them. And they bestowed their gift.”

“You are crazy,” Harry blurted.

Voldemort narrowed his eyes. It made a rather malevolent picture.

“No, my soul, I am a consumer of flesh. A necromancer. I am the one to wield the dead. The one out of its reach. It bows to me,” He looked exalted. He had never been more deranged. “I am divine.”

Harry could sense his heart racing as the man kept on grinning wildly and predatorily. His emotions were so acute that they were a jumbled mess conveyed into Harry and impossible to comprehend.

He was terrified. But he was a Gryffindor for a reason. 

“The Horcruxes…” He tried when he had summoned some of his cowering courage.

“My pact with the Mother is not unlike my initial plan. I granted a part of my soul for her offering of immortality. I had already created two Horcruxes at the time, but no more were needed, succeeding my descent into that ancient legacy. I am not bereft, as the amount of splits I had planned would have ensured me to be. Instead, the void is filled by consumption. A small price,” He tipped his head, staring through half-lidded eyes. His hair cascaded around his face like a waterfall, “Yours was an accident I had never foreseen but I presume destiny has its own schemes. Only magical prowess of unimaginable degree can reduce me to the wraith I had been,” Something concerningly resembling fondness marred his features when he glided his hands down Harry’s body until he reached his bare hips. ~I hadn’t known before. Now I do. We are matched by Fate. She has chosen me a fine companion.~

Then he tugged him even closer. 

Harry had to stifle a cry. Their contact was always unbearable yet wonderful (never enough). It was a seduction he had to resist with his whole being. He was supposed to be averse to the sort of possessiveness with which he was being treated. It was unfair.

Voldemort looked at him like he knew. It was almost pitying.

“Those dreams are a means to an end, dearest. They will not suffice.”

“I am fine,” Harry gritted out, albeit feeling it deep down himself.

“You are not,” Voldemort didn’t back down. He caressed Harry’s thigh, his thumb digging into the meat, “I assumed it was the use of the unforgivable, however unsuccessful, that unlocked the Horcrux's effect. It is possible that my possession of you has amplified it, as well as our many encounters. The dreams offer a temporary reprieve, but they won't be enough. You need me,” he echoed his previous assertion.

When he shoved the sharp claw of his thumb inside Harry’s leg, centimetres away from his groin, Harry couldn’t help but moan. Contrary to everything that should be, it was rapture that infiltrated him. Only with one had he reached this sensory experience of pleasure and pain. He was sure he would never be able to with another. No one else was as twisted. He was so lost in the headiness of it, of the promise of more, which was the other nine fingers tap, tap, tapping on his skin, that he hadn’t realised how he had arched into the embrace, needily clutching the man's shoulders.

The coil around him tightened suffocatingly, and he didn’t mind.

“I will spare them,” Voldemort whispered. He had been engrossed in the sight of Harry's squirming body. “It's about time you return to where you belong.”

Harry needed a moment to clear his head. Then he was alert again.

“You–you will?” He hated the obvious hope in his voice. He liked to believe he wasn't that idiotic though.“Would you swear on it? Even for Dumbledore?”

Voldemort scoffed. If it weren't for those circumstances and the people they were, Harry might've laughed at such unsophisticated noise coming from him.

“Dumbledore’s days are numbered,” The man declared, “Even if I don't assist his death, it will still occur before the end of the year. We can bargain for the rest. I am ready to offer an oath. Don't forget that I am a merciful Lord.”

Harry was devastated.

~You need only do the preordained,~ Voldemort reassured, hissing in the alluring tongue. He was pushing Harry’s every button. His hands had resumed their strokes, making him shudder in his anticipation of the usually accompanying pain. ~Your time is almost up, my soul. Return to me, or I may be forced to take matters into my own hands. I shan't be tolerant then, I guarantee you that.~

He had said that while invading the air Harry breathed. A knuckle lifting his chin to accommodate the head that came down to bury itself into the crook of his neck. At that moment the world did not stretch beyond the scent of smoke and death.

Voldemort inhaled greedily. His ridiculous, perfect hair tickled Harry, sending hot bolts of arousal through his body.

Suddenly, something moist lapped up the column of his neck, raising a noise in Harry’s throat.

“I am ravenous,” The monster rumbled.

The yearned-for agony finally came. Harry felt it when a chunk of flesh was ripped from his neck. He had been standing on the edge of a precipice that he had not been aware of before the plummet.

He screamed.

~~~~~~

Harry sank into his bed with the weight of the familiar, despised loss and a sinister knowledge. Most disturbing of all were his reactions to the dreams, which remained unchanged even after all the acts of degeneracy. In fact, they were getting worse. It was incriminating. 

‘Inevitable’, corrected a voice in his head.

He felt dirty when he reached for his aching cock. Tears caught on his eyelashes before they slipped out.

——————

Harry hadn't thought. Excluding the vague clue ‘For enemies’ that gave a general sense of it, he had no idea what Sectumsempra would do. He would have never expected the outcome. He hadn't meant it. 

But he had been so angry.

——————

Harry had instructed his friends to beware Malfoy before leaving on the Horcrux hunt. His displeasure shimmered under his skin. Still, he prayed they would be safe.

——————

The cave was as secluded and destructive as the man who had chosen it for sanctuary. The waves crashed into the rocks with tumultuous strength. They were quickly swallowed by the darkness. 

It had proven to be a treacherous place since the beginning, and the cruel traps were no novelty in their dealings with the Dark Lord.

Harry was curious to see his newfound information verified. He was impatient to know if the locket at the bottom of the bassin in the middle of the lake actually contained a piece of soul. Again, he wondered if he should tell Dumbledore.

The emerald green potion in the bassin had been a sadistic but cunning solution. Harry had hated feeding it to Dumbledore. He couldn't watch him convulse with thirst, too. When he had approached the shoreline of the lake surrounding them, Harry hadn't known what it concealed. He couldn't have guessed that giving its water away to satiate the weakened Headmaster would bring a legion of corpses from its black depths. There were too many to fight. Misshapen and at various stages of decomposition, with missing parts and pale bones, they made an eerie foe against the living. Harry was quickly losing.

A sudden burst of flames sent the Inferi, scurrying back. He had no time to marvel at the burning circle that had saved him. Dumbledore was there with the locket scooped in one hand and his other outstretched towards Harry. 

Before they apparated to Hogsmeade, Harry had already gotten an impression from the short brush with it. The heirloom was metal, cold, and distinctively absent of any detectable magic.

The cave was a trick. Voldemort had spoken the truth.

——————

The Dark Mark loomed over the Astronomy Tower.

Harry struggled throughout Dumbledore’s conversation with Draco. His paralysed self was hidden under the Invisibility Cloak, useless in the most crucial of moments.

He was right about Malfoy after all, but there was no satisfaction to be gained.

He struggled when the Carrow twins and Fenrir Greyback appeared.

Harry struggled while Snape pointed his wand at the Headmaster. 

His horrified shriek never left his lips when the jet of green light hit the withering man square in the chest. His white hair disappeared behind the railing in a flurry of robes, like feathers in the wind.

Harry barely felt Dumbledore's spell on him deactivating. 

First, there was static. Then came the brilliant fury.

He darted in a frenzied pursuit of a traitorous professor and his devoted pupil. His single-minded mania pushed him to pass through a battlefield, barely sparing a glance at his duelling friends and uncaring about slipping on bloodied floors. He ran through the castle until he reached the grounds. His vehement need could only be quenched by revenge.

He found himself face-to-face with his target.

He wanted to see him hurt. Harry felt no shame at using the Unforgivables. Unfortunately, they never landed. Again and again his curses were parried, leaving him frustrated beyond help.

Snape wasn’t even fully focused on him. He ushered the Death Eaters while fighting him, like Harry was a trifling obstacle in his path. As if he was not a challenge.

“Impe—” Harry tried, but he was stopped by a torturing pain. He howled. He was going to go mad.

“No!” Someone yelled. All at once the pain ceased, and Harry lay curled on the ground, panting heavily, “Have you forgotten our orders? Potter belongs to the Dark Lord–we are to leave him! Go! Go!”

Harry uttered an inarticulate sound of rage. Rage, rage, rage. It couldn't be contained. He jumped wobbly to his feet and pointed his wand in the direction of the person he resented as much as he did Voldemort. He wanted to see him down, writhing like a worm. He wanted to kill.

“Sectum–”

Snape deflected it.

Harry was sent backwards through the air, colliding with the ground with an excruciating thud. Snape looked down on his defenceless state. His face was contorted with hatred.

“You dare use my own spells against me, Potter? It was I who invented them–I, the Half-Blood Prince! And you'd turn my inventions on me, like your filthy father, would you? I don't think so… no!”

When Harry reached for his wand, Snape shot a hex at it, which made it fly far out of reach.

“Kill me then!” He shouted, unafraid. He was so angry, “Kill me like you killed him, you coward–”

“Don't—” The man's face twisted into an inhuman, agonising expression that Harry couldn't understand. Suddenly it cleared out. The only reminder of it was the waver in Snape's otherwise monotonous voice and the feel of his magic crackling in the air against Harry’s, “There is a message for you, Potter. He wished to remind you to make your choice. Your time is up.”

With that Snape retreated.

——————

Apart from Bill Weasley, none of his friends were badly harmed. Still, Harry brooded.

The tension had not dissipated. The Wizarding World had just lost its greatest asset, and the veer off course their lives had already taken was yet to be revealed to them all. 

He had not told McGonagall Dumbledore’s final ploy. The man had bound to secrecy two other people except for Harry, and he had no plans to oppose his wishes further than he was going to. His legacy was to die with Harry, Ron and Hermione.

In the end, Harry regretted hiding his troubles.

One never fully realised how much one needed somebody until they were gone. There was no one to guide him now. 

He had made his decision. He could only hope Dumbledore wouldn't be too disappointed. He hoped his friends would someday forgive him, as well. But there was a duty only he was capable of fulfilling, and he had sworn to himself that he would save those who were left.

Harry tried to enjoy one last day of peace with his family before the next day when he would tell everything to his best friends. He went to sleep without drinking a potion and with a pounding heart. He had a negotiation to partake in.