– –

The following day felt utterly surreal. It was Monday. Just a plain, regular, Monday. It was a stark reminder that the rest of the world was still utterly oblivious that everything had changed, and they just didn't know it yet. Monday morning brought Herbology with the Hufflepuffs, and then Care of Magical Creatures. Harry spent most of Lunch going over in his mind, different ways he might tackle his task of dealing with Trelawney. He was still utterly dumbfounded that it was

her, of all people, who had made the prophecy that basically dictated his entire life.

On one hand, Harry suddenly felt like he needed to learn a whole lot more about this Divination nonsense, seeing as how it had managed to play a huge role the whole foundation of his life, and he had been utterly ignorant of it. On the other hand, he wanted to read Trelawney's mind, find out the prophecy, and never again set foot in her presence. And possibly find some way to horribly decapitate her later on without getting caught.

Hermione was talking about the Arithmancy essay that was due in her next class – a class that took place at the exact same time as divination. Harry paused in thought for a moment.

"Hey, Hermione?"

Hermione paused in the middle of whatever it was she had been saying, that no one had actually been listening to and blinked at him. "Yes, Harry?"

"Do you know if it's possible to start a new elective even if you're beyond third year?"

"No... I don't think so," she said slowly as she screwed up her face in thought. "I mean, a person wouldn't be able to join in with my class on Arithmancy or Runes next year because they'd missed last year and this year. It wouldn't be possible to get caught up."

"No, not join

your

class... if I did take up either subject, I'd be in with the third years, but I'm honestly okay with that."

Hermione looked a bit stunned, but then she looked a bit excited and curious. "Are you serious, Harry?"

"Yeah. I mean, if I started either subject next year, I'd have enough years to take OWLs in the subjects. I wouldn't be able to take the class long enough to sit my NEWTs, but even three years of those subjects will be

loads

more useful than ruddy

divination."

Hermione had a proud, excited expression on her face. Ron looked horrified.

"Are you

mental, mate! Do you have any idea how hard those subjects are?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "Do

you

have any idea how

valuable

those subjects are? Honestly Ron – it may seem brilliant to take the light classes, and get an 'easy O' now while in school, just so that you can have more time to screw around, but it's only going to make more work for you later on when you get

out

of school."

"ARGH! You've turned into bloody Hermione!" Ron groaned in slightly exaggerated horror.

Hermione scowled at Ron for a moment before returning her extremely proud expression on Harry. "Oh Harry! I'm

so pleased

that you've started to realize these things for yourself! I definitely think you should go talk to Professor McGonagall and tell her about your idea. Which subject are you thinking of taking? Or do you think you could handle both, because they very taxing courses. It's a lot to handle."

Harry fought the urge to scowl at her. No matter how far he'd come, and how well he performed in classes, it seemed she would always think him inferior to her in the smarts department. He seriously doubted that Hermione could perform even half the spells he had mastered down in the chamber. But that was primarily because she just didn't have the magical affinity, or the stomach for that sort of thing.

"Yeah, I think I'll be taking both. If McGonagall is worried about the work load, I'll just drop Care of Magical Creatures. I mean... I know Hagrid will be upset, but I'm sure I could convince him that it's for the best."

"You'd drop Care!" Ron exclaimed in horror. "You can't drop that too! I mean... what about Hagrid? What about me? I'm gonna end up alone in both classes?"

"Hagrid will survive. And it's not like you're

alone

Ron. You can still partner up with Seamus or Neville in both classes," Harry said, only barely stalling his eye roll.

"But won't that be

weird?

Being in two classes with a bunch of third years?"

Harry shrugged and took another bit of the large turkey sandwich on his plate. He waited until he'd swallowed, and then said, "Honestly, I don't care if it is weird. I think that those subjects are too important to pass up."

"But

why?

You don't need either of those to be an Auror. Why bother?" Ron asked, with obvious confusion.

This time Harry

did

roll his eyes. "I don't want to

a bloody Auror. I'm still not positive what I am going to go into, but I know it's not that."

"What!" Ron and Hermione both exclaimed at the same time.

"But Harry... I... I thought –" Ron began, but his voice trailed off weakly in confusion and surprise.

"When did this happen? I thought you'd been set on being an auror since last year?" Hermione asked.

"I didn't exactly have any idea what my options were, honestly. Basically, I knew my dad was an auror; aurors catch dark wizards; and the whole wizarding world expects me to fight dark wizards. It was more of those 'this is what's expected of me, so I guess I'll just do that' sort of deals, rather than looking at my options and putting forth the effort to find something I actually

want to do."

"Well, have you looked at the options, then?" Hermione asked.

Harry frowned and looked thoughtful. "Well, I'm only in my forth year, so it's not like I

have

to make my mind up already, and I've still got lots of time to change my mind later all... I think that I'd probably prefer to avoid the Ministry, all together, but if I

did

go to work for the Ministry, I suspect the only job I'd be interested in would be becoming an Unspeakable."

Ron blanched and Hermione gaped at him in shock.

"You'd want to be an Unspeakable!" Ron said in a harsh whisper.

"It's one of the things on my 'to consider' list, at least. But I'd need to get NEWTs in arithmancy for that job, so after graduating Hogwarts, I'd have to hire a private tutor, or do private study and eventually take the test at the Ministry on my own."

"You've really put a lot of thought to this, haven't you," Hermione said with that proud look on her face.

Harry wasn't about to correct her assumption. Truth was he hadn't put much of

any

thought to it. It was all stuff he'd read in other sources and was only just now putting together. It hadn't even occurred to him, before that day, to try taking Arithmancy or Ancient Runes at Hogwarts, and while he had been fascinated about the Unspeakables when he first read about them in one of Tom Riddle's books, it hadn't occurred to him before that very moment to consider that as a career goal. Now that it

had

occurred to him, it seemed obvious, and he wished he'd thought of it sooner. He could only imagine what sorts of things he could discover for the Dark Lord if he got in there. Although, ideally, by the time Harry would be old enough to get a job there, Voldemort would have already gained control over the Ministry, so it was possible this was all moot.

Harry shrugged at Hermione. "I suppose. I've been trying to think about a lot of things, more now, than I used to."

"Well, I'm glad!" Hermione said with a smug grin and a bob of her head. Ron scowled and rolled his eyes.

"Come on, mate. We've got to get to Divination," Ron grumbled as he began to grab his bag and stand.

Harry nodded, grabbed his things and stood as well. They bid Hermione farewell and began to make the long trek up to Trelawney's tower.

When they finally got there, they found that the seats had been rearranged so that they formed a very large circle around the center of the room, where a round, stone, fire pit was placed. Trelawney was standing over the fire pit, pointing her wand and levitating a bunch of rocks into a pyramid shape, and then placing white wooden driftwood around them in a circle.

Harry rolled his eyes at the woman, not even bothering to wonder what the hell she was on now, and sat down in one of the chairs, followed by Ron. A few minutes later, most of the class had arrived and Trelawney used an

incendio

spell to light a fire in the fire pit. Once everyone was present, she began a lecture on smoke scrying. Apparently, the first half of the class they would try to see... er,

something

in the spoke from the fire. Then, after that section was done, she would be dousing the fire with water. The water, poured over the hot stones, would create steam, and they would then try to see stuff in

that.

Harry silently griped and wondered if she had performed something like this, only added somequestionable

herbs in with the burning stones right before making the prediction that destroyed the first thirteen years of his life.

"Do not follow the smoke up but rather allow the smoke to forms patterns within your spiritual gaze. In time you will see visions of many far off events," Trelawney was saying at one point and Harry heaved a sigh as he began to stare into the billowing smoke.

He saw... nothing. He

imagined

he saw himself strangling Trelawney, but he seriously doubted that was a prophetic vision, nearly as much as what he just

really really wanted

to be doing.

He tried, several times, to make prolonged eye contact with the teacher, but she was pointedly staring off into space, which made this rather difficult. At one point, Trelawney began to call on each of them so that they could describe what they had seen, and Harry quickly concocted a story to tell when she got to him. Finally, it was his turn, and as she focused on him, she looked him straight in the eyes.

He began to spout off the nonsense he made up, while at the same time, splitting off a bit of his consciousness to slip into her mind. He went digging through a disorganized mountain of memories and images, trying desperately to find something useful in what little time he had available to him. He tried focusing on the lines of the prophecy that he actually

knew, but he was coming up with nothing. Absolutely

nothing.

And then he was pulled out of her mind as she turned her head towards the fire pit again and began to recount how impressed she was with his progress. His inner-eye had apparently been developing nicely these last few months, since he learned how to be a better liar and a better actor.

He sat there and stewed in his own annoyance. He had

known

that it wouldn't be easy to find, but he had still harbored some hope that it would just

work.

Frustrated, he sighed and sat back in his seat to wait out either the next opportunity to slip into her head, or until the end of the class so he could get the hell out of the smoky, stuffy, tower room.

– –

Disclaimer: Don't own Harry Potter. JKRowling does.

First

Beta Pass

by Clemex

– –

After dinner, Harry stayed with Hermione and Ron, instead of running off to the chamber right away. They both seemed rather surprised by this, but Harry tried to play it off as a non-issue. He doubted he could get away with disappearing at 8:30 – which was when he planned to leave in order to make it to Voldemort's manor with enough time to spare – if he was also gone for his usual hour after dinner.

As he sat there, working on his homework, he asked Hermione a few remedial questions about arithmancy and ancient runes. She was clearly

very

excited to discuss her favorite classes with someone else and easily prattled on about both. At 8:20, Harry asked Hermione to recommend the best Rune dictionary for a beginning, and then said he was going to go to the library before Madam Pince closed it for the night. He said he might stay there and browse a bit.

It was obvious that Hermione was itching to come with him, but she had a huge pile of work in front of her, and he had known before he even mentioned it, that she wouldn't be willing to uproot herself from her study table.

Still, there had been a brief moment where he feared she would surprise him, and insist on coming with him.

Relieved that it didn't become a problem, Harry slipped from the common room with his bag slung over his shoulder. The first secret passageway he came across, he ducked behind the tapestry covering the entrance, and threw on his invisibility cloak while pulling out the map.

He quickly checked the Defense corridor where the statue of the one-eyed witch covered the entrance to a tunnel. It was empty, and the way there was pretty clear. It wasn't after curfew yet, so there weren't any people patrolling the halls to catch anyone out after hours.

Harry rushed there, and slipped into the tunnel without encountering any resistance. He jogged through the narrow tunnel, eager to get past the wards as quickly as possible. He finally made it, pulled up the left sleeve of his robes and hissed the command to activate the portkey.

A dizzying moment later, he was standing in the entry hall of Voldemort's manor house. He stood there for a moment and checked his wrist watch. He had arrived at 5 till 9 o'clock, so he had made it in time. He wondered if he should go up to the study, or if the ritual would be performed in the ballroom. He doubted it would be elaborate enough for such a large space, but at the same time, he really had no idea what would be involved.

Harry decided to just go up to the study to look for Voldemort there, and then if he

wasn't, he would just have to... find him some other way...

...fff... feel him...

Harry stopped in his tracks at having suddenly heard his companions voice. The two hadn't conversed much outside of his nightly routine and Potions class, so he was a bit surprised to hear the voice in his head while at Voldemort's manor.

Once his surprise had faded, he finally thought about what had been said.

"Feel him?"

Hisss... magic... Follow

your... ssscar.

Harry blinked and then did a mental 'face-palm' and grinned. It really was rather obvious, once he thought about it.

"Thanks,"

Harry thought mentally with a grin before closing his eyes and reaching out with his magic to sense the familiar magical signature of the Dark Lord.

He quickly realized that the man was

in his study. He was on the first floor, although he didn't seem to be in the ballroom that he had been in for the resurrection ritual.

He opened his eyes and followed the potent magical vibrations that radiated out from the most powerful dark wizard alive. He went down a long hall, and then turned off into another before finding himself in front of a very nondescript door. He had absolutely no doubt that Voldemort was on the other side of it, but wondered if it was alright for him to knock, or if he should wait a minute. For all he knew, he was looking at the door to the loo. And while his mind was quickly adjusting to the knowledge that Voldemort was in fact a living human being, it was still odd to think of the man going to the bathroom.

He stood there awkwardly for a minute, debating whether or not he should knock when the door suddenly flew open and Voldemort was standing there, looking at him with impatient annoyance.

"How long, exactly, did you plan to just stand there?" He asked as he spun around and began to walk back into the room, not bothering to wait for a response. Harry quickly hurried after, and closed the door behind him.

When Harry turned around to face the room, he froze and his eyes widened in shock.

It was the loo.

Well, it was a bathroom. A very large bathroom, that had tub that was sunken into the tiled floor that looked more like a small pool, or perhaps a hot tub, only without the bubbles.

To one side of the room, was a cauldron with a potion of some sort boiling away in it. Voldemort was walking back to the cauldron at that moment, but Harry was just too confused by what he was looking at to know what to do.

Surely the man had a more appropriate place for brewing potions than a bathroom?

"You will need to soak in a special bath for the next five hours. At the end of that time, you will speak the ritual words, endure about one minute of mild pain, and the trace will be dispelled," Voldemort said as he added one last thing to the cauldron and stirred it a few times.

"Whuh? I... wait... Five hours!" Harry said, finally catching up with what had just been said.

"Yes, Potter. Five hours," Voldemort responded with a flat and slightly annoyed tone.

"I really didn't make a suitable excuse for disappearing that long," Harry said hesitantly as he finally took a few more steps into the posh, tiled bathroom.

"I told you it wouldn't be a problem, and it won't be," Voldemort sighed in exasperation.

Harry sighed and shrugged. "Alright. If you say so. So... what do I need to do, exactly?"

"Very little. I've done all the work for you," Voldemort said as he finally turned his head to look over his shoulder back at Harry. He was smirking, and there was mild amusement in his eyes, which helped put some of Harry's nerves at ease. "Like I said, you

quite literally

just have to soak in the tub." Voldemort stood up and walked over over to a table at the side of the room that had a number of folded towels sitting on top of it. To one side of the table was an open book, and a couple pieces of parchment. Voldemort picked up one of the parchments and walked over to Harry.

"It has been charmed to be waterproof. At the end of the five hours, an alarm will sound. Pick up your wand, follow these instructions for the proper focus, and speak these words," as he spoke he pointed at different areas of the parchment before handing it over to Harry. "When you finish, come get me in my study, I have something I need to explain before you leave."

Harry nodded his head and began to read the piece of parchment. Voldemort walked over to the cauldron, and with a wave of his wand, it floated up into the air, away from the fire, and hovered over the tub, that was already filled with water. He flicked his wand and the cauldron turned over and its contents fell into the tub.

Harry looked at it with mild apprehension but quickly pushed past it and began to remove his robes. He folded them and set them on the edge of a counter behind him and began to remove his undershirt. He hesitated at that point, wondering if the man intended to leave soon, or if he was going to wait until Harry got into the water.

"Don't be so modest, Potter. I need to add a few additional ingredients after you've entered the water. Get on with it."

Harry blushed and ducked his head as he reached down and unbuckled his belt and began to undo his trousers. He turned away, hating how idiotic he felt, as he pulled his boxers down and took a deep breath, as he tried to compose himself. He quickly made his way over to the sunken bath and slipped one foot in. He could

feel

Voldemort's eyes on him as he stood there, stark naked for all the world to see. Or... for the Dark Lord to see. His gaze was piercing – or at least, it felt that way. For all Harry knew, Voldemort had his eyes closed, seeing as how Harry was pointedly refusing to look the other man in the face. He quickly tested the water, wanting to sink down into it and obscure his nudity as quickly as possible. It was really quite hot. A bit hotter than he was comfortable with, but he figured he'd adjust.

He quickly forced himself to sink down into the water and found that it had a raised seating platform along the outer edge. Harry's hand sank into the water and he tried to casually cover himself with them, which caused Voldemort to snicker. He walked around the bathtub adding in various sand-like looking ingredients, and a few leaves that Harry didn't recognize.

"That is all that is necessary until the five hours are up. You may read, just make sure you don't do anything stupid like drop your book in the water."

Harry grabbed his cypress wand, that he had placed on the edge of the tub and used it to levitate his book bag from against the wall to the edge of the tub where he could reach it.

"Oh, and

definitely

do not drop your wand in the water. You will have to start over completely if that happens."

Harry's eyes went wide and he nodded his head. "Right. Got it. Erm... thanks... for this. All of it. I really appreciate it. I mean, you didn't have to go to all this trouble for me, so I can't express how much I really am thankful."

"Oh, shut it, Potter. Come get me when your done. Nagini might drop by for a visit. She enjoys the warmth of the room," Voldemort spoke with easy disinterest as he gathered a few things and quickly left the room.

Harry blinked after him before taking in a deep breath and sighing heavily. Of all the things he had imagined for this 'ritual', a long soak in a hot bath, was most definitely not on his list. After a quiet, peaceful minute had passed, the stunned confusion that had filled him from the moment he had entered the room, up until Voldemort had left, finally abated, and he found himself calming down and truly relaxing.

He let himself just soak for a while. Relaxing his mind and letting himself drift away. About forty-five minutes in, he was starting to get rather bored, so he pulled a book from his backpack, cast a temporary waterproofing charm on it, and began to read.

After an hour of that, his eyes felt strained, and he decided to try doing some laps. He wasn't sure if whatever Voldemort had put in the water would be bad for his eyes, so he avoided dunking his head under the surface. He'd been playing around in the misty-looking water for a while when he heard a hissing sound that he had only ever heard in visions. He looked towards the door, but it was still closed shut. He glanced around again, and finally noticed that the hissing sound was coming from a metal vent in the wall, towards the floor. The vent cover appeared to have a hinge along the top, and no sooner had he spotted it, then he saw it getting pushed open to reveal the head of a large black snake.

Nagini slithered down the foot of space between the vent and the floor, and then slowly muscled her entire length out of it and onto the floor. Harry watched her move and was actually rather transfixed with the way she moved, and the way the light glittered off her obsidian scales. She was a really beautiful snake. He could see why Voldemort had chosen her as his familiar.

§Hello, Nagini,§

Harry hissed and the serpent froze and instantly jerked her head in his direction.

§Master sssaid you were a ssspeaker...§

she hissed with an air of surprise in her voice. She paused and seemed to consider him for a long minute.

§Make

me a rock to perch upon,she demanded simply.

Harry blinked at her.

§Pardon?§

§Make me a rock with your sstick and make it warm. Masster always uses his ssstick to make my perch.§

Harry looked around the room for anything he could easily transfigure into a rock large enough to house Nagini. There was a chair off to one side of the room that had potential. Harry grabbed his wand from the side of the tub, summoned the chair closer and set it in the center of the floor a few feet from the edge of the tub.

§What are you doing?§

Nagini hissed in impatience.

§I'm going to transfigure the chair into a rock for you,§

Harry hissed back, a little annoyed at her attitude.

§Masster can make a rock from nothing with his sstick.§

§Yes, well your master is indescribably more experienced with magic than I am. Conjuring something from nothing is not exactly easy, and I haven't really covered that in my classes yet. But I

cantransfigure the chair into a rock.§

§And you will make it warm?§

§And I will make it warm.§

Harry echoed with an exasperated eyeroll.

§Good.§

Harry chuckled and quickly transfigured the chair into a large, flat rock and then cast a warming charm on it. Nagini slithered over and curled up into a coil on top of it. She made a pleased sort of hissing noise and seemed to slip off to sleep.

Harry read a couple chapters from a book, did a few laps, and read a bit from another book, before Nagini began to stir.

Harry noticed that she had her own unique magic vibration. It was strangely familiar, and comforting, in the same sort of way he felt around Voldemort himself. There was no rational explanation behind it, he just felt an easy relaxing sort of vibe off her. Which was exceptionally odd since she was such a brat.

The best Harry could figure was that Voldemort had to have put some of his own power into her, and it was

that

that he was feeling so comfortable with. The two of them carried on a bit of a conversation for a while. Nothing serious was really discussed, although they did spend a bit of time talking about how pathetic Wormtail was. Nagini said that he was an abysmal and utterly inadequate servant to her master, and that she enjoyed terrorizing him. Apparently, having spent more than a decade as a rat had only intensified his natural fear of giant serpents, and Nagini absolutely terrified him. Harry laughed at the sight he imagined in his mind of the short, pudgy, balding man, running in terror from the large snake.

Nagini finally told Harry that she was hungry and that she was going to leave. She slithered off the heated rock and made her way back to the vent that she had entered the room from. She easily nosed it open and disappeared inside, leaving Harry, once again, alone.

He relaxed back in the still-hot water and let his head rest against the tile edge. Before he'd even realize it, he had begun to doze off. He wasn't even sure how long he had been out when a ringing bell sounded in the room, jarring him awake.

Harry blinked owlishly at the room, slightly confused for a long minute as to what was going on before his fuzzy brain cleared up enough that he remembered where he was. Quickly, he grabbed his wand and the parchment that Voldemort had left for him. He did the proper focusing and quickly read through the ritual words. The moment he had completed the last word his skin began to prickle with pins and needles. It escalated into the point where it felt like his limbs had all painfully fallen asleep. It was decidedly unpleasant, but it really wasn't that bad.

The prickling spread across every surface of his body and slowly intensified until he found himself sitting there in the water stiff-backed and clenching his teeth, hands, and toes.

And then it was gone.

Harry sighed heavily feeling the sensation completely disperse and began to haul himself out of the water. His body felt heavy after having been suspended in the water for so long. To call his skin 'pruney' would be putting it mildly. His hands and feet were wrinkled up like a giant raisin and he laughed at the sight of himself. He dried off with one of the towels and then quickly got dressed. He collected all of his things and quickly left the room.

He climbed the stairs to the second floor and went straight for Voldemort's study. He knocked gently on the door before pushing it open a crack and peering inside. Voldemort was hunched over his desk again, scratching away with his quill at some large parchments. There were a few open books scattered around as well.

"It's done, I assume?" Voldemort's voice called out, breaking the silence and startling Harry.

"Yes, sir."

"Any complications?"

"None."

"Good," Voldemort said as he gracefully stood from his seat and began to stride confidently towards Harry. Harry stepped to the side as the Dark Lord walked past him through the door and began to lead the way down the stairs. Harry followed wordlessly, and was surprised when he was lead out the front doors of the manor, and into the overgrown garden of weeds and grass beyond. The two of them kept walking until they had reached an untidy hedge and Voldemort came to a stop.

"The current wards end here. Step beyond it and cast a spell with your cypress wand. I will remain on this side of the wards, so if the trace is still in place, it will not detect the presence of an adult wizard. If the spell has failed, we will know very shortly."

Harry's eyes went wide and he felt legitimate fear in the pit of his stomach. If he got a letter from the improper use of magic office, they would know he had been outside of school. How the hell would he ever explain that he had snuck out and gotten to... where ever the hell Little Hangleton was?

"Don't look so terrified, Potter. Do you honestly think I would let you do this if I had any concerns about whether or not it had worked? I simply wish to confirm it for sure."

"Er, right. Sorry," Harry muttered before taking a deep breath, stepping beyond the shrub and pulling out his cypress wand. He cast a lumos, because that seemed the easiest to get away with, if he did get caught, and then stood there and waited. His heart was hammering in his chest, no matter how much he scolded himself for being an idiot. Getting

caught

was probably the only thing he really

was

afraid of these days.

Several minutes passed and no owls appeared carrying howlers. Harry sighed in relief and then a very wide, triumphant grin spread across his face.

He could do magic out of school, and no one could find out. He turned back to Voldemort, who was standing beside the hedge with his arms crossed, looking poised and relaxed at the same time. He was smirking down at him with a knowing expression. He jerked his chin back towards the manor and began to walk back. Harry quickly matched his stride, still grinning widely as he walked.

"This is so brilliant," he finally said under his breath when he couldn't help it anymore.

"I vaguely recall feeling much the same way when I first performed that ritual."

"Did you do it while at Hogwarts?"

"Yes. I used the Room of Requirement."

"It can have a bath tub?" Harry asked, suddenly intrigued.

"It can have anything you need. You just have to ask the room for it when you are walking in front of it. You can also ask it to provide you with any book that is also contained in the school library and it can." He hesitated for a moment and a sly grin spread across his thin lips, "Even the ones in the restricted section. It was quite handy. It had always been such a bother convincing the professors to write me a permissions slip to gain access to it. The Room made that unnecessary."

Harry gaped at him. "For real? That's incredible!"

"Mm. Yes. It was quite a boon when I discovered it."

They climbed the steps to the manor's doors and stepped into the entry hall. Voldemort continued leading Harry down the hallway past the stairs and stopped at a door not very far from where Harry always port-key'd in at. The door seemed just as nondescript as all the rest at first glance, but Harry suddenly realized that it didn't have a doorknob.

Voldemort leaned forward and hissed

§open§,

and suddenly there was a

click

sound and the door popped open an inch. Voldemort pushed on the door and slipped inside. Harry followed and found that they appeared to be in a room the size of a small walk-in closet. There was absolutely nothing in the room except for a shelf on the wall opposite the door. On the shelf were two small wooden boxes with hinged lids. They were identical and looked to all the world to just be jewelery boxes.

Voldemort reached forward and opened one of them. Inside, on a thin chain-link necklace, was –

"A time-turner!" Harry gasped as his mind registered what he was looking at.

Voldemort looked back at him and smirked. "Seen one of these before, have you?"

"A friend of mine got one for her classes last year. We ended up having to use it in order to save me and Sirius from a hundred or so dementors."

Voldemort rose a single eyebrow and the look on his face told Harry that he wanted Harry to elaborate.

"Sirius and I... it was after Wormtail got away, and Professor Lupin had transformed into a werewolf, so Sirius and I were running. We ended up getting cornered at the edge of the lake and were surrounded by dementors. There were literally a hundred of them, and I thought we were doomed. But then, out of nowhere, I saw someone across the way appear in the shadows and cast a huge corporeal patronus. It drove them all away.

"In my own moronic idiocy, I convinced myself it was my dead father, because the patronus was his animagus form. But then just a bit after that, I was with that friend – Hermione – and Dumbledore basically told to her to use the time-turner... bloody hell, he even told her exactly how many hours back we needed to go... manipulative old bastard... anyway – we went back and it turned out that the shadowy figure I saw who cast the patronus was actually

me."

Harry paused as he saw a look of mild disbelief cross Voldemort's features.

"Are you saying that

last year

you cast a corporeal patronus, powerful enough to drive off a hundred dementors?"

Harry blinked and then ducked his head. "Er... yeah. It was one of those moments where I justknew

I could do it, because I'd already seen myself do it, so I just... did. I never could get my patronus to be that clear or well formed before that. I had so much trouble with it. I practiced that spell almost all year, but there at the end it just worked."

Voldemort was quiet for a long moment before he began to laugh. Harry looked up at him, slightly bewildered by the reaction, but didn't say anything.

"You are truly an oddity, Harry Potter," Voldemort said with a smirk. "Now that you are no longer fighting off the piece of my soul that exists within you, I imagine you would find it much easier to tape into that power at will. You've already told me how learning magic comes much easier to you now. I believe you've already come to the obvious conclusion on your own – all of the magical energy that you dedicated towards restraining my soul was holding you back in your magical development. Now that you are no longer doing that, you should have access to that great power whenever you want it, not just when facing off a hundred dementors."

Harry nodded. "Yeah, I sort of figured that was the case. I've also tried casting a patronus recently, just to make sure I still could."

"And?"

Harry shrugged. "Easy. Still solid and corporeal. I was afraid I'd have a hard time with it now, since it's a light spell."

"It doesn't quite work that way," Voldemort said dismissively with a wave of his hand. "Anyway, we are getting off track. This, as you accurately observed, is a time-turner. I am going to permit you to make use of it when you are here, but you cannot take it with you. After you have spent an evening here, you will let yourself into this room, remove the time-turner from one box," Voldemort motioned towards the open box he had just taken the time turner from, "use it to go back to the time that you arrived here, and then, at that point in the past, you will leave the time-turner in the other box. Do

put the two time turners into the same box. They cannot exist beside each other at any point in time. Is that understood?"

Harry nodded his head. "Yes sir."

"Good. Once you are done, leave the room, return to the entry hall, and use the portkey to return to the castle. Problems solved. You will not have to worry about when you come here, or how long you spend here, and no one at your school will become suspicious about extended absences."

Harry looked at the time-turner, and then Voldemort with awe. "This is perfect. I... I just keep thanking you for things. You've done so much for me these last couple days. It's just so much. I don't know what to say..."

"Despite what Dumbledore and the Ministry would have everyone believe, I did not simply rule my followers through fear and torture. I treat my followers with as much respect as they earn and deserve."

"But what have I done to earn this? I'm... I'm the stupid brat who prevented you from getting the stone. I –"

"That is in the past, Potter. And while that may be true, you are also the stupid brat who willingly came to me, and offered up your body and blood in order to help my resurrection, even though you already knew I was after you, and that by coming to me, you could easily have been walking to your own funeral. Continue to prove yourself useful, and I will continue to treat you with the respect you earn from me. Fail me, or betray me, and you will

wish for death.

Do you understand me?"

Harry blinked at the man, but instead of feeling fear like he rationally knew he should, he felt a wide grin spread across his lips. He quickly nodded with odd enthusiasm. "Yes, my Lord. I understand you perfectly well."

Voldemort rose a single curious eyebrow in response to Harry's reaction.

"Good. That is all for tonight. Return tomorrow and you will continue reading the chapter on countering the

affinitatem reveleo

spell. When you feel sufficiently comfortable with it, we will practice. I imagine you will catch on quite quickly."

With that Voldemort handed the time-turner to Harry, and slipped out of the room. Harry was left feeling a bit odd with the abrupt dismissal, and stood there for a few long seconds, at a bit of a loss. Finally he shook his head clear and turned down to the time-turner. He looked at his watch and saw that it was just after 2:30am. He put the time-turner's chain around his neck and turned the tiny hour glass six times. A moment later, the world swirled around him, and was suddenly still again. Harry cast a tempus and saw that it was now 8:34pm. He took the time-turner off and put it into the second box. He looked in the first box and saw the time turner already resting there.

He wouldn't be arriving at the manor for another twenty minutes. If he used his portkey to return to the tunnel, would he run into his other self on the way? He hadn't before, so he would obviously find a way around that. He could either hang out in the manor for another twenty minutes and leave after his other self got here, or he could go and make sure he got out of the tunnel before his other self entered it. Would he have enough time for that?

He would, he decided. He left the 'closet' and made his way back to the entry hall. He hissed§morsmordre§

and activated the portkey, bringing himself back into the tunnel where he had departed from. He put on his invisibility cloak and ran down the tunnel at a rather quick pace. He got to the end, surprisingly fast, used the password to move the statue away from the entrance, climbed out, put it back to rights and quickly ran from the hall.

He pulled out the marauder's map and checked it. It was odd seeing two different dots marked 'Harry Potter'. He watched as his other self got to the statue and disappeared into the tunnel. Remembering that his excuse for leaving had been to visit the library, Harry figured he'd go there now just to add some validity to his story. He checked out the book Hermione had recommended and then made his way back to Gryffindor tower.

By this point, he was really

really

tired, and wanted to just head straight to bed. But of course, to everyone else, it wasn't even 9pm yet, so going to bed this early would look decidedly odd. Harry forced himself to stay up another hour and a half, and when he did finally fall into bed just before 10:30pm, he was so exhausted that he fell asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow.

– –

Tuesday morning brought History of Magic; which meant that Harry took a nap. After lunch, Harry had a single section of Potions, followed by a free period, where Hermione was in Ancient Runes, before he had to go to dinner. Now that he knew he could rely on the time-turner, Harry decided to try visiting the manor during the daylight hours instead of waiting till late at night.

After potions, Harry managed to give Ron the slip, which wasn't that hard these days since the red-head had basically come to accept that Harry would disappear at least once or twice a day and not tell him. Harry slipped on his invisibility cloak, and walked straight across the grounds and towards the path to Hogsmeade.

As soon as he felt himself leave the wards of the castle, he activated the portkey and reappeared in the entry hall of the manor. As he recovered from his temporary disorientation, he stood up straight and blinked in surprise at the man staring back at him.

Wormtail was standing – rather, he was

cowering, in the open door way to the front of the manor. He had a several newspapers folded under his arm, and what looked like a grocery bag, in his other hand. The sight was entirely

odd,

for some reason.

The two stood there, in a tense silence for a very uncomfortable minute. Images of Sirius flitted through Harry's mind. Despite everything that had changed in Harry and his life, he still desperately wished he could clear his godfather's name.

But there was no going back now. Harry knew that. He really and truly had no choice now. If Wormtail were somehow captured by the Ministry, they would use veritaserum on him, and if

thathappened, not only would it reveal that Voldemort had returned, earlier than he wished this to become common knowledge, but he would also tell them about Harry's involvement with said Dark Lord's resurrection.

It was a matter of self-preservation now, too. He wondered if there would be a way to

obliviate

the last year from Wormtail's memory...

Harry shook his head and gave the short repugnant man a confident smirk.

"Wormtail," he sneered in greeting. The pudgy, balding man flinched and jerked back slightly, bumping into the door frame.

"H-h-harry," the man stuttered as he gave Harry a desperate,

pleading

smile. "W-what brings you here so, ah... early, in the day?"

"Paying the Dark Lord a visit," Harry said dismissively before glancing down at the papers under Wormtail's arm. "I'm heading up to see him right now. I can take those with me."

Wormtail blinked in confusion for a moment before his head bent down and he looked at the papers as if he had completely forgotten they were there. Then he stiffened and straightened up some.

"That's quite all right Harry. I can take them there myself," he said as he sniffed the air a bit.

Harry almost laughed out loud at the man's poor attempt at being pompous. As it was,

someone else, did laugh. Only it was a strange, hissing sort of chuckle.

§Ssstupid little man...§

Harry paused and turned just in time to see Nagini slithering down the hall towards them. Harry grinned.

§Hello, Nagini,§

Harry hissed to the snake, and he heard Wormtail give a tiny yelp from the doorway.

§Greetingsss brat. Tell the fat man to get me my food or elssse I will eat him instead.§

Harry laughed out loud and turned back to Wormtail, who was, once again, looking decidedly timid and afraid as he cowered by the door.

"She says that you are to go get her food ready or else she's going to eat you instead," Harry relayed with a wide smirk across his lips.

"W-huh?" Wormtail sputtered for a moment before he looked up at Harry with a confused expression.

Harry rolled his eyes. "She says go feed her, you idiot. She threatened to eat you if you don't hurry it up."

Wormtail gave a startled squeak and began to hurry inside the entry hall, while sticking to hugging the wall with his back and strafing sideways, always keeping his eyes trained on the enormous black snake. As Wormtail came within Harry's reach, his hand darted out and Harry grabbed the newspapers.

Wormtail gave an indignant start and glared at Harry for a moment. Harry glared right back with a sneer on his lips, and the man was instantly cowed.

Harry rolled his eyes in annoyance at the stupid fat little man and turned to make his way up the stairs.

§See you around, Nagini,§

Harry hissed as he climbed. The sound caused Wormtail to yelp in surprise again, and both Harry and Nagini hissed out some chuckles.

Harry reached out with his magic and confirmed that Voldemort was in his study, so he quickly made his way there. He knocked lightly on the door and waited a moment.

"Come in," called the familiar voice of the Dark Lord. Harry pushed the door open, expecting to find Voldemort sitting in the chair behind his desk, but instead finding the man sitting on

the floor

in the center of the room. He appeared to be sitting on a cushion on the floor, with his legs crossed and his arms stretched out in front of him with his wrists laying across his knees. His eyes were closed and he was breathing in slow steady breaths.

He seemed to be meditating or

something. The way he was sitting actually reminded Harry vaguely of the exercises he had performed when learning his sea serpent transformation.

"Stop gawking Potter, you're disturbing my focus," Voldemort's voice cut through the room harshly, shocking Harry out of his stunned stupor. "Now, get in here."

"Sorry, my Lord," Harry said quickly as he took a few steps in and closed the door behind him.

Voldemort let out a slow breath and then opened his eyes, giving Harry a mildly annoyed look.

"Place the papers on the desk. You'll find the book is there as well. Begin reading where you left off," he said shortly before closing his eyes again and resuming his earlier breathing.

Harry foundered for a moment, thrown off by the unexpected turn of events, but he quickly sorted himself out and walked over to the desk. He placed the papers in the center and saw the book he had started reading a few nights ago sitting to the side. He picked it up and turned back to look around the room. Voldemort's desk chair was still the only chair in the room, and he was damn well not about to sit in it while Voldemort was sitting

on the floor.

Harry decided to sit in the same spot he had last time – directly beside the Dark Lord's chair. This put him far enough away from Voldemort's position on the floor that he hoped he wouldn't disturb his meditation.

He sat down and opened the book to where he left off. Harry felt part of himself was yearning to be closer to Voldemort, and he mentally scolded himself for being weird. Despite being a good six feet from the Dark Lord, he still quickly found himself slipping into his comfort zone in the quiet room with Voldemort's steady breaths as the only sound.

Harry lost himself in the book and the comfortable atmosphere of the room, so deeply, that he completely lost track of time. He finished the chapter on the

affinitatem

counter, but didn't want to interrupted Voldemort's meditation to informing him so, so he flipped back to the start of the chapter and started reviewing the material. He felt like he had a pretty solid handle on the theory of it, but it actually sounded like a pretty complex bit of magic. Stopping the spell from working didn't sound too difficult, but it would look suspicious. The tricky part was casting the counter magic fast enough, and with the proper focus to make the spell return a false reading.

While sitting there, Harry could feel variable waves of magic rolling off the Dark Lord. The sense of them was vaguely familiar, but Harry really had no idea what Voldemort might be doing. Harry considered asking him once he was finished, but wasn't sure if it was his business to ask such things... even if he was

insanely

curious.

He'd gotten half-way through the chapter again before Voldemort began to stir from his spot on the floor. The man sighed and relaxed his position. Harry watched with a strange sort of fascination as Voldemort rolled his neck and then shoulders before stretching out his long slender arms. It was just such a

human

thing. Such a

normal

thing. He was surprised, and honestly rather

honored, that Voldemort trusted Harry enough to sit there in such a vulnerable state in his presence. It was honestly remarkable that the man could trust Harry at all, let alone

this much. The realization startled Harry quite a bit.

Voldemort heaved a long sigh and gracefully stood to his feet. He stretched his back before turning and walking back towards his desk and Harry. Harry sat up straighter and watched as Voldemort walked right up to him, and then slid into the chair at Harry's back.

Harry waited for a moment in the continued silence, and started to wonder if he should just go back to reading when Voldemort finally spoke.

"I assume you've finished the chapter by now?"

"Yes, I finished," Harry said as he shifted around and began to push himself to his feet. His back was a bit stiff from having sat on the floor so long, and he gave it a bit of a pop as he came to stand straight.

"You said once that you only have one class on Wednesdays, correct?" Voldemort asked, catching Harry slightly by surprise. "Yeah, that's right."

"When?"

"Second block. Right before lunch."

"Good. Come right after lunch tomorrow. I'll have some something for you to read."

Harry felt suddenly that he was being dismissed and felt rather disappointed by this. He really didn't want to leave yet. Plus he'd been hoping to actually try out the

affinitatum

counter. He couldn't do that without someone to cast the

affinitatum reveleo

spell on him first.

"Alright, sir. I'll be here," Harry said as he began to shuffle awkwardly. He ran his hand through his hair and heaved a sigh as he bent down to pick up his bag.

"Going somewhere?" Voldemort asked as he opened the newspaper on the top of the stack and began to skim through the headlines.

"Er... I thought –" Harry started, trailing off.

"Wait a few minutes and then we can go practice what you have read," Voldemort said as he turned to another page.

Harry was surprised a bit by this, but was then flooded with relief, and he smiled widely. "Great, er... okay. I'll just wait."

Five minutes passed before Voldemort stood up and led Harry to one of the rooms that Harry had never been in before. From what Harry could tell, it might have once been a guest room, but it had been mostly emptied out. There were a few what looked like a davenport, and a couple stuffed armchairs shoved against the wall with sheets draped over them.

Voldemort instructed Harry where to stand and then walked a few feet away from him. They both drew there wands, Voldemort gave some simple instruction, and then cast the spell. Harry called forth his magic, but it took three tries before he had finally got it sorted out enough to properly block the spell. It took considerably more time before Harry was finally able to start getting faked readings to show up instead of nothing at all.

Voldemort's instructions made perfect sense though, and Harry thought that the way the Dark Lord was explaining it made a lot more sense than the book had. Harry doubted he would have had any success at all, if it weren't for the man's instruction.

Voldemort made a number of dry remarks, but he never made Harry feel weak or inferior for taking as long as he was. In fact, Harry found himself shocked at just how patient the Dark Lord was being with him.

Harry was getting pretty warn with all the precise magical focusing he'd been doing, and realized suddenly that they'd been at it for over two hours He was actually panting and he bent over with his hands on his knees.

"Sorry," Harry said between heavy breaths. "That spell takes a lot out of me."

"It should. I don't think you quite comprehend just how advanced this spell is. It's honestly extraordinary that you've come as far as you have in such a short time." Voldemort said dryly as he examined his finger nails absently.

Harry looked up at the man and felt his cheeks and the back of his neck warm slightly with mild embarrassment. Had he just been complimented?

"Er, well... yeah, thanks," Harry mumbled as he stood up straighter and ran his hand through his hair.

"Do try to not act like such an incoherent idiot, Potter," Voldemort said with a sigh and an eye roll.

Harry blinked, ducked his head and grinned. "I'll work on that."

"Do that," Voldemort said as he smirked down at Harry. "I think we should call it an evening. You'll be here tomorrow right after lunch, correct?"

"Yes, I'll be here."

"Good. Feel free to use the time-turner before you leave," Voldemort said as he turned and began to leave the room. Sensing his dismissal, Harry walked over to the wall beside the door where he had left his bag, picked it up, and headed down to the time-turner closet.

– –

Wednesday, Harry left Charms and then hurried his way through lunch. Hermione and Ron were both looking at him curiously, but didn't say anything. He knew they weren't going to put up with his continued secrets for too much longer and that he was going to have to come up with some way to address their growing concern, but he wasn't ready to deal with it yet.

He did tell Hermione that he was going to spend the afternoon trying to get another large batch of pages copied from the Old Aldric book, and that her copy should update as he goes. He figured that once he was done with his visit to the Dark Lord he could just come back and use his second go at the afternoon to do it.

Hermione seemed pleased that he was going to provide her with more to translate, since she was apparently approaching the end of what he'd already given her. She clearly wanted to inquire further about the 'room' he kept going to that had this mysterious book, but they'd had enough little spats over it already, and she tended to avoid bringing it up when they were somewhere public like the great hall.

Harry bid Ron and Hermione goodbye and quickly left. Once again he donned his cloak, slipped out across the grounds, and headed down the path towards Hogsmeade, and the boundary of the castle's wards.

Once he had arrived at Voldemort's manor house Harry instantly sought out his magical signature and headed straight to the study. He knocked on the door, and Voldemort bade him enter. He pushed the door open and, once again, found Voldemort sitting on the floor in the center of the room meditating.

Even after having encountered this yesterday, Harry still found it entirely bewildering. He silently slipped into the room and went straight over to the desk. It was bare except for a single book placed in the center, which he assumed was meant for him. None of the pages were marked on this one, but upon quick examination, he had a pretty good idea why it had been sat out. The book seemed to be written by a magical archaeologist or something. It was all about how to handle, care for, and restore ancient magical artifacts. One section was on how to properly approach ancient items that could possibly be cursed. The following two chapters were on common detection spells, and then spells for temporarily sealing nasty curses until you could get an item back into a safer environment for dismantling the curses.

The last few chapters were all about restoring exceptionally old objects, so Harry skimmed through that part until he came across something dealing with books. He quickly settled himself into 'his spot' on the floor beside Voldemort's chair, and began to read.

Voldemort's rhythmic breathing, and the subtle pulse of the Dark Lord's magic began to lull Harry into a blissful state of relaxation. He almost felt like

he

was meditating right along with the Dark Lord, and it made him wonder, once again, just what the man was doing.

An hour passed, and by that point Harry had long sense finished reading up on the book restoration spells. He had flipped back to the curse detection chapters and found them rather interesting. The magical energy, radiating off of Voldemort had been slowly shifting and growing, and they had increased to a powerful peak without Harry even really realizing it until the intensity made his vision blur and he felt lightheaded for a moment. His eyes rolled back in his head as his whole body began to feel tingly and warm.

He realized with a sudden start that the magical type wasn't really that of dark magic so much as it was

parselmagic. Extremely powerful parselmagic. This realization really only served to make Harry that much more curious as to what Voldemort was up to. He had really only found a couple books in the Slytherin study about parselmagic, and most of them were simpler things like a parselmagic equivalent for locking, privacy, and levitation charms. The only truly advanced book he'd found on parselmagic was the serpentine transformation book, which he hadn't really looked at much since before the second task.

The waves of powerful parselmagic in the air began to ebb and wane, and eventually died down to a simmer. Harry felt his head clearing up again and heaved a sigh as his body suddenly felt like a heavy lead weight. It had been strange and overwhelming, but now that the magic was gone, he felt a bit disappointed. Voldemort's magic was just so...

something...

Harry couldn't really put words to it. But being near the man just made him want to be closer. Made him want

more... whatever the hell that meant. He really wasn't sure.

Another half hour passed before Voldemort stood up and stretched. He was wearing loose, comfortable looking black pants, and a white button-down shirt intended to be worn underneath open robes, sewn in a style that Harry had only ever seen in wizard shops. Harry noticed that the top few buttons were undone, and his eyes were drawn to the bit of bare chest he caught a glimpse of. Harry didn't know why, but he blushed and looked away.

His eyes were drawn back to the man as Voldemort walked over and sat down, heavily into his chair. He leaned back, sighed, and ran his hand through his black hair. It had a soft wave to it. Just as Harry had thought, Voldemort had trimmed it several days ago. He had it slicked back slightly, out of the way of his forehead, and neat. It was layered in the back and reached the base of his neck. Harry couldn't help but stare as the Dark Lord relaxed into his chair and began to sort through a newspaper that he pulled out of one of the desk drawers. You would think that Harry wasn't even in the room by the way the man was acting, and Harry couldn't help but wonder why he'd been told to come right after lunch if all he was doing was sitting there for a couple hours while Voldemort meditated.

The idea that Voldemort would want

company

was just too absurd to even fathom. But Harry found he desperately enjoyed being able to just sit in the quiet, comfortable room, in the Dark Lord's presence, while reading. Even if he was sitting on the floor, getting a crick in his back. The room, and the magical vibrations, and just being

near

the man made Harry never want to leave the room, if he was being completely honest with himself. He knew that was stupid and irrational, but he also knew it was true.

Another fifteen minutes passed in silence before Voldemort stood up from his desk. "Come on Potter. Time for some more practice," He said shortly and Harry scrambled to his feet.

They only spent an hour in the 'practice' room, as Harry was now dubbing it in his mind. He was starting to make a little progress on his

affinitatem

counter, but it was still difficult, and he could only do it if he was prepared and knew it was coming. Voldemort said that he would need to practice it enough that the moment he sensed the magic of the

reveleo

spell incoming, that he would instinctively cast the counter. He would only have a fraction of a second to respond in a real scenario, and only repeated practice would help that happen.

"Alright Potter, that's enough for today," Voldemort said rather suddenly and Harry blinked at him in surprise as a small wave of disappointment washed over him, but he quickly squashed it.

"What is your class schedule like tomorrow?"

Again, Harry was caught off guard, but quickly recovered. "Transfiguration in the morning, then a free block, then lunch, and then double Defense, followed by dinner," Harry said quickly.

Voldemort looked thoughtful for a moment. "Can you come during your free break after transfiguration?"

Harry's jaw floundered slightly, but he nodded his head dumbly. He really didn't understand why, but he certainly didn't mind. He would have a bit of trouble getting away from Ron. Thursday's morning free period was one of the few times that Harry made it a point to try and be social with the ginger outside of meals. But all he really had to do was get away long enough to use the portkey. With the time-turner he could be back with Ron moments later and make it seem like he'd never left at all.

"I'll be here," Harry said, and even

he

was surprised by how eager he sounded.

"Good," Voldemort said as he began to leave. "You can let yourself into the study."

"Alright," Harry said as he grabbed his bag and ran after the man.

"You can also bring one of the older books from the chamber if you would like," Voldemort said as Harry caught up to him and the two walked down the hallway. "I can help you make sure you do the charm properly and don't damage the book.

Harry nodded his head thoughtfully. "Okay, I'll do that. Any particular book I should bring?"

Voldemort sighed and rolled his eyes. "It has been many

many

years since I was last down in the chamber, Potter. I do not remember the entire library. Just pick one and bring it."

Harry ducked his head, feeling a bit stupid for his question. "Right... I'll... do that."

"What did I say about acting like an awkward idiot?"

"To not do it?"

Voldemort turned his head and gave Harry a pointed look.

"Right. Working on that. Swear it." Harry said, trying to put a bit more confidence into his voice, and grinning a bit. Voldemort rolled his eyes.

They reached the study and Voldemort gave Harry a few parting words that made it clear he was dismissed. Harry hurried down the stairs and slipped into the time-turner closet before portkeying back to Hogwarts.

– –

Disclaimer: Don't own Harry Potter. JKRowling does.

First

Beta Pass

by Clemex

– –

Getting away from Ron was easy. Harry simply timed the use of the time-turner really well. As far as Ron could tell, Harry simply slipped away to use the loo, and came back a few minutes later.

In reality, he had gone to the manor and spent two and a half hours reading while Voldemort meditated on the floor. The magic had done that peaking thing again about two hours in, and Harry had found himself sitting with the open book on his lap, discarded, with his eyes closed and head leaning back against Voldemort's chair. He let his mind get lost in the delicious lull of Voldemort's magic and literally lost track of time. It wasn't until the peak in the magics decreased suddenly, that Harry was jerked out of his stupor.

The book he brought was in pretty bad condition, but it didn't seem like it would be a devastating loss if he somehow botched the spell up, so he wasn't terribly worried when the two of them finally got down to actually practicing the spell.

The first few times he tried it, the restoration seemed to be exceedingly slow. Voldemort seemed to instantly understand what Harry was doing wrong and explained it in such a way that just made it all make perfect sense.

"You would have been a brilliant teacher," Harry mused as he cast the spell on the book and it began to mend and restore itself to order.

Voldemort actually snorted. "Yes, well, tell that to the old man," he drawled.

Harry looked up at him with his brow furrowed in confusion. "Dumbledore? What do you mean?"

Voldemort paused and gave Harry a long look as if he were contemplating something.

"I applied to work as a professor at Hogwarts... many years ago. Actually, I applied twice."

Harry gaped at him, stunned by this revelation. Voldemort –

the Voldemort –

had applied to

teach

atHogwarts?

"When?" Harry asked, incredulously.

"The first time was the year after I graduated. Professor Dippet was still the Headmaster at the time, and the old Defense teacher, Professor Merrythought was retiring that year. She had thought I would be a shoe-in for the position and even personally recommended me to replace her. However Professor Dippet thought I was too young and told me to come back in a few years after having had more

life experience," Voldemort finished with a sarcastic sneer.

"And the second time?" Harry asked eagerly. With every word Voldemort spoke, Harry felt like some ravenous monster had reared up inside him, and the monster was starving for information. These little tidbits of information about the Dark Lord's past was like gold to him, and he couldn't even rationally say why.

"The second time was about ten years later. Dumbledore had gotten the Headmaster's job by then. The man

never

liked me. He was the only teacher I had at Hogwarts who mistrusted me. I knew there was next to no chance he would award me the position, but it had become available again and I had to try."

Harry blinked in confusion for a minute before he finally voiced the one word that just kept repeating in his mind.

"Why?"

Voldemort was quiet for some time, and Harry wondered if he would actually get an answer.

"It was the only other thing I ever wanted to do... I suppose... I suppose there was some tiny part of me that considered it as my one and only

out." He paused in thought for a moment before smirking widely. "Ah, if only the old fool had any idea what he missed out on. He was truly convinced that the only reason I would apply for the job was as part of some larger, evil scheme. I had already begun to form the Death Eaters, you see. He was convinced I was up to something. That there was no way that I could possibly ever

want

to teach." He scoffed humorously.

"You would have given it all up, to be a

teacher?" Harry asked in a stunned whisper.

Again, it took an extremely long time for the man to reply, and when he did his voice was very quiet, and yet still rather sure. "I do believe I would have... just maybe." He chuckled. "But I am also a very bitter man, so of course, once he denied me the job, I cursed it."

Voldemort said this in a very flippant way and it took Harry a moment to register what had been said.

"Wait... you mean that

your

the reason that we've never had a defense teacher last more than a year?" Harry guffawed.

Voldemort looked down at Harry with his nose turned up again, and a sly grin on his face.

"Maybe," he drawled.

Harry laughed and shook his head. "Do you have any idea how much that has sucked? I mean, aside from the dark arts, defense is my favorite subject, but aside from bloody

Barty, all my teachers have been rubbish. Well, Lupin was good, but he really only taught us about defending ourselves from dark

creatures, not really anything about the nature of dark magic.

"Ah yes, Barty... I am going to have to figure out what to do about that situation..."

"What do you mean?"

"If he sticks around long enough to return to teach a second year, Dumbledore will get exceedingly suspicious. After all, only someone of whom I approved, could make it past my little curse. Dumbledore will be expecting something to go wrong with 'Moody', or at the very least, for the ex-auror to refuse to come back a second year. I doubt that we can maintain Barty's cover for much longer than the school year anyway. Obviously we cannot risk the

real

Moody getting away either."

"So he

still alive? I've seen his name on the map, but he's always inside Barty's office. I've been in there had haven't seen anyone."

"I believe Barty is keeping him locked up inside a trunk. One with a very large space expansion charm on it."

Harry blinked. "The real Moody is locked up in a

trunk?

And he's been there the whole year?"

Voldemort chuckled darkly. "Yes, marvelous isn't it."

"Why not just shave his head and off him? Seems like keeping him alive just for Polyjuice ingredients is a bit risky."

"Yes, but there have been a few incidents where he was necessary for Barty to bring him out, under the

Imperius

curse, to take care of a few tasks.

"Oh..." Harry said before shrugging and moving on. "So Barty won't be coming back to teach next year?"

"It would look too suspicious," Voldemort said, waving his hand dismissively.

Harry sighed and his lip stuck out a bit in a pout. Voldemort gave him a strange look that made Harry quickly stop and clear his throat; suddenly feeling awkward.

"I wonder what idiot we're going to end up with instead," Harry mused. "I just hope that, whoever it is, isn't as big an idiot as Lockhart was..." Harry paused for a moment before he began to laugh. Voldemort gave him an odd look and waited for Harry's giggles to subside.

"Care to explain what was so funny?"

"I was just thinking about how hilarious it would be if you somehow managed to sneak in as the Defense professor for next year. I mean, you already suck in on the back of Quirrell's head one year, and you got one of your Death Eaters in

this

year... it would just really be a laugh if you could put one over on Dumbledore so much that

you

actually got the job for next year.

Voldemort chuckled and rolled his yes. "Yes, that would be humorous, but I'm afraid that I will be much,

much

too busy. No matter how badly I would enjoy making Dumbledore look the fool for it, teaching is no longer on my list of goals. I have commitments to address, and a war to renew."

Harry sobered up and nodded his head. "Yeah, you do."

"Although it certainly wouldn't hurt to try and engineer who takes up the post for next year," Voldemort mused.

"Well, I certainly wouldn't mind, as long as you find someone who actually knows what they're talking about. Barty's been brilliant, even if he is trying to act like an insane auror at the same time."

– –

Harry's class load was completely full on Fridays, so he had no real opportunity to slip away for another afternoon visit to Voldemort. He only had a few minutes between classes, and no decent opportunities during that time to give Ron and Hermione the slip, since he shared every class with both of them.

When Harry visited that evening, Voldemort was sitting at his desk, scratching away on some parchment. Harry slipped in, realizing suddenly that he didn't actually have any reason to come that night. He hadn't even been told to come to practice the

affinitatem

counter. He had just gotten into the habit of coming every day, that it felt like he just

should

go.

Just as this was going through his mind, and he was suddenly feeling nervous about even being there, now that he realized he had no valid excuse for it, Voldemort interrupted his musings and handed him a book. Harry blinked at it, and then grinned. Not because of the book or anything it contained, but at the fact that he had an excuse to stay.

He easily slid down onto the floor, sitting beside Voldemort's chair and relaxing against it. Being literally inches away from the man seemed to ease the tension that seemed ever present in his body whenever he was close to Voldemort, but not quite

close enough.

He found himself feeling utterly relaxed and just happy to be there. The book was interesting too, but he often found his attention drifting off as he let the feel of the man's magic that always lingered in the air around him, as it lingered around

Harry.

Voldemort heaved a small sigh and pulled out his wand. A simple flick in the air and a moment later a book sailed across the room and into his hands. Voldemort leaned back in his chair, crossed one leg casually over the other knee and let the book fall open in his lap. The two just sat there in the comfortable silence of the room, reading for at least another hour. Harry felt his eyelids growing heavy and caught his head lulling to the side several times before he would jerk himself back awake.

It was one such moment, when his head was falling just a bit towards the right, and his eyes were slowly closing when he felt Voldemort's left hand drape down over the arm rest behind his head, and the gentle,

almost there, brush of fingers in his hair. In his half-dozed state, Harry almost convinced himself that he had imagined it until the fingers brushed through his hair again, but deeper. Three of the long slender fingers seemed to comb lazily through his black nest of hair again and again. They threaded deeper into his hair as more minutes passed, gently brushing his messy locks. Harry's book lay utterly forgotten in his lap as he leaned his head back against the chair and held his eyes closed against the utterly wonderful, foreign, and confusing experience. He could feel the most indescribable magical sensation, each time the man's fingertips brushed against his scalp. It was like some unnameable force had been calling to him.

Pulling

at him with great strength, and that pull had been calmed suddenly by the touch. Like

this

was what he was being pulled to, and now that he was here, everything was right.

A tiny irritating voice in the back of his head pointed out that he was currently sitting on the floor beside the Dark Lord's chair letting the man

pet him, and that this should somehow be humiliating or something, but the rest of him squashed that voice with a violent force. He was enjoying the amazing, comforting

touch

too much to give a damn if he was being 'pet' or not. Besides it was the Dark Lord who was doing it. The Dark Lord could do whatever he damn well pleased to Harry and he would accept it openly... as long as it didn't mean dying. He still didn't want to die by the man's hands, but he readily acknowledged that, outside of death, he would probably do just about anything for the man. And what was happening at that moment was in no way a bad thing for Harry. In fact, Harry felt that the world was more

right

at that moment than he could ever clearly recall. Voldemort was

touching

him, and it felt intimate and caring, and simple, and

right.

Harry never wanted it to end...

He had no idea how long he sat there with his eyes closed just reveling in the sensation, but at some point he must have actually dozed off. He came to with a start as the fingers left his hair and Voldemort shifted in his chair as he set the book aside.

"Come on, Harry. You should head back. You'll end up sore if you sleep against my chair like that," Voldemort said as he stood to his feet and offered his hand to help Harry stand up.

Harry blinked at the hand, still trying to clear his fuzzy head.

Did Voldemort just call him Harry? Had he ever done that before?

Harry shook his head, gave Voldemort a weak, sheepish grin, and took the offered hand. The touch was...

indescribable.

Harry's breath caught in his throat and he had to fight to keep his eyes open as a powerful energy curled up inside him and tingled through every limb. He almost thought he heard Voldemort's breath catch, but it was too quiet to be sure. Harry stood to his feet and reluctantly released the other man's hand.

"Thanks," he said, ducking his head a bit in embarrassment. "Sorry about passing out like that."

Voldemort seemed to be pointedly looking away before he seemed to recover from something and looked back at Harry. "It's fine. You should head back to the castle."

"Right..." Harry said, nodding his head and quickly gathering his bag up. Harry quickly made his way to the door and pulled it open to make his way out.

"Goodnight, Potter," called the soft, smooth voice of Voldemort.

Harry gave a bit of a start and looked back at the Dark Lord with a startled expression, but Voldemort had already turned his attention back to something on his desk and was no longer looking his way.

"Goodnight," Harry replied hesitantly. His dismissals had always been abrupt before. It was the first time that Voldemort had actually said

goodnight

to him. He wasn't even sure why, but this felt... important, somehow. But of course, the Dark Lord had slipped back into using his family name again. He wondered if the man even realized he'd called him Harry at all.

– –

Harry returned after lunch on both Saturday and Sunday. Just like the previous early afternoon sessions, he arrived to find Voldemort meditating on the floor. Voldemort had a book ready for him sitting on the desk and Harry had simply picked it up and taken his usual spot on the floor beside the chair.

Voldemort's parselmagic swirled and peaked and Harry sat there letting himself get lost in it. After an hour or two, Voldemort had stopped and migrated to his desk where he began to read, or began to scratch away at some parchment. Harry kept relaxing and reading. He finished the reading that Voldemort had left for him on Sunday, and switched over to his reading for Charms class instead. They didn't do any practical work either days. No practicing the

affinitatum

counter or repairing old books. They just read and sat enjoying the quiet company. Or at least, Harry sat there enjoying the company. He was still rather bewildered as to why Voldemort would want him there since there really seemed to be no reasonable explanation for it.

Sunday afternoon, after Harry had been reading in Voldemort's study for several hours, Voldemort spoke suddenly, startling Harry out of his relaxed stupor.

"Potter?"

Harry jumped slightly at the sudden break in the silence. "Yeah?"

"What is your class schedule like tomorrow?"

"Oh... well, Mondays are pretty full. First block is Herbology, second block is Care of Magical Creatures, then lunch, and then my last two blocks are Divination. I'm going to make another attempt at getting into Trelawney's head. I slipped in last Monday but couldn't find anything. Anyway, after Divination is dinner. Mondays and Fridays are the only days that I don't have any free blocks."

Voldemort nodded slowly and Harry was surprised to see a mild scowl flit across the man's face for a moment before it disappeared.

"As long as you use the time-turner, you can still come here after lunch and return without missing any classes. I would like you to try and come again tomorrow directly after lunch. Can you do that?"

Harry stared at the man with a rather bewildered expression, but quickly snapped his mouth shut and nodded. "Yes, sure. I'll be here." Harry hesitated at this point. He was absolutely

dying

to ask why. He really enjoyed the time he spent in the study, so he certainly didn't

mind

being asked to come every day after lunch, but he was still incredibly confused as to why Voldemort would actually want him there.

"Um... sir?" Harry began, hesitantly.

"What did I say about being awkward and stupid?" Voldemort said without looking up from his book.

Harry halted a bit, not having expected that. He quickly mustered up his courage and tried to press on. "I'd like to ask a question," Harry said with a bit more confidence than he actually felt.

"Ask away," Voldemort said, still not bothering to look up from what he was reading.

"Why do you want me here while you meditate?"

"Do you mind being here?"

"No! Not at all!" Harry replied, quickly. "I really like it, to be perfectly honest."

"Then, what does it matter?"

Harry went to open his mouth, but shut it again, rethinking what he wanted to ask next.

"I'd like to ask another question," Harry said after a brief pause.

"Proceed."

"What are you working on... with the meditation, I mean?"

"What do you think it is?" Voldemort said, closing the book and setting it down on the desk in front of him.

"I... well, I can tell it's some sort of parselmagic. The meditation that you're doing reminds me a bit of the work I did when I was learning to transform into the sea snake while preparing for the second task, but it's not quite the same as that..."

"Hm," Voldemort made a small, amused-sounding noise. "You're actually quite close. Tell me something, Potter – are you at all familiar with what I

looked

like, during the last war? The face that people associated with the name

Lord Voldemort?"

Harry sat forward a bit and turned his head so he could look up at the Dark Lord who was still sitting in his chair and now looking down at Harry. The man he saw there was attractive. Healthy skin tone, although perhaps a tad on the pale side. Shiny, slightly wavy black hair, slicked back, straight, defined nose, and a sharp, angular jaw. He was really a very attractive man, and Harry was not ashamed at all to admit that thought in his mind. Tom Riddle had been a very striking teenager, and he had only grown into an exceedingly fine looking man. It was obvious to Harry that this man was the adult version of the boy he had seen in the diary in his second year, so the question left him rather confused. Was he suggesting that he

didn't

look like this when his last body was destroyed?

"I guess I

don't

know, actually," Harry said, looking up at the man with a blank expression.

"I did

look like this. Not exactly. There is another transformation that we, as wielders of parselmagic, are able to learn. The transformation allows us to take on certain serpentine qualities while maintaining a humanoid body. I mastered this transformation, and always used that form while dealing with my Death Eaters. I am simply going through the motions of teaching my new body to perform it as well."

Harry puzzled over this information for a moment before he felt like he knew what he wanted to ask next. "Does the transformation give you advanced skills and abilities?"

"There are some mild enhancements, but they are not the real reason that I did it."

"What is the

real

reason?" Harry asked easily.

"Fear and control. The simple fact of the matter is that many of my followers are far too proud to ever be subservient to a 'mere man'. In order to obtain and secure their loyalties, they had to see me as something more than that. More than just a powerful wizard."

"But you are more. You're the

Dark Lord!" Harry insisted as if it were the most obvious thing.

Voldemort looked down at Harry with a curious expression for a moment before smirking slightly.

"Yes, but most wizards alive today are unaware of what that really

means. Most assume it is merely a title I have appointed myself out of arrogance. In order to easily secure the belief of my lesser followers that I am far more than

just a man, I performed the transformation."

"I assume you must look pretty damned intimidating in it then?" Harry said with a grin.

Voldemort raised his chin a big and returned a sly smirk. "Quite."

Harry chuckled.

Voldemort seemed to ponder something for a moment after that, and Harry began to think that the discussion on it was over unless he came up with another question.

"My original plan, for restoring my body would have returned me directly to

that form,"

Voldemort said suddenly, catching Harry by surprise.

"It would have? Then why didn't you do it?"

"Because I would have been

trapped

in that form. With the original resurrection ritual that I had planned, my body would not have been capable of performing the serpentine transformations. I had to chose between returning to my true body," a this, he waved his hand, indicating himself, "or returning in the body in the already transformed state. I was not fond of this restriction, but at the time it seemed I had little other choice and had been willing to sacrifice my true form in order to maintain control over my followers."

Voldemort paused again, and Harry used that moment to truly process what had just been said.

"When you agreed to participate voluntarily, you provided me with the ability to restore my

truebody, and the ability to perform the transformation. I still have to retrain myself, but it is proceeding faster than I had anticipated it would. Once I have successfully trained my body to do the transformation again, I will be calling the Death Eaters to me again."

"That's why you haven't called any of them back to you yet," Harry said, suddenly understanding it. "Even though you're powerful enough that they don't pose a threat to you now, you're waiting until you can look like the 'old you'. Right?"

"Correct. With several of the more prominent wizards who were my followers, if they were to see me like this," again, he waved his hand, indicating his current body, "they would think me nothing more than a weak, mortal, wizard. Defeated by an infant, and left weakened over a decade of years. They could easily refuse to follow me, or even be idiotic enough to challenge my claim as their Lord. I am unwilling to risk showing any sign of weakness."

Harry nodded his head as he finally felt like he understood why the others hadn't been called back yet.

"So how goes the progress on the transformation, then?" Harry asked, suddenly feeling rather eager.

"Surprisingly well," Voldemort mused with a strange grin on his face.

"Does my being here help, somehow?" Harry asked suddenly.

Voldemort looked down at him, with a mildly surprised expression for a moment before he sighed. "As a matter of fact, it does."

"That's why you keep asking me to be here while you meditate?" Harry asked, rhetorically.

"Correct, Potter."

"I wonder why my being here helps..." Harry mused quietly as he looked out across the room, unseeingly.

Voldemort didn't reply right away, and the room lulled back into silence.

"Why, indeed," Voldemort said in a quiet whisper some long minutes later. Harry didn't know what to make of it, and remained silent.

Voldemort didn't speak on the subject again that visit.

– –

Voldemort sat in his office chair, late that night, looking over map of the Riddle Manor estate and his plans for the next layer of wards. He had already laid out the first two layers, but they required some time to settle before applying the next, or else the two would unstable.

Potter had left an hour earlier and he was finding it difficult to concentrate clearly, now that he was sitting in the room alone. It was an entirely irrational and idiotic fact. But fact it remained.

Harry Potter's presence made him feel... better. Or something. More calm? Content? He rarely feltcalm or content. They were not natural states for him. They never had been. Well, certainly not content. He could do calm, when needed.

Whenever Potter entered the manor he could instantly feel the boy's presence. He always knew the moment Potter had portkeyed in, even without the wards notifying him. Potter's magic was wild and utterly untamed. It was like a constantly blazing fire that roared and crackled around him. He really needed to teach the boy to harness and control his magic better. It was no wonder he was effected so strongly by using his magic. So much of the boy's magic had been set aside and reserved to the task of fighting against Voldemort's horcrux that Potter had never become accustomed to controlling and managing his enormous stores of magic. Having it all suddenly available to him, all at once, had probably left him overwhelmed by it.

That much magic, without the gradual build-up that would have normally come with growth and aging, suddenly thrust upon a person, would be

intense. He needed to train Potter to control his magic, or else it would simply control

him

instead.

Voldemort also acknowledged that some part in the back of his mind liked this idea even more because it gave him another excuse to keep the boy coming back regularly, and Voldemort scolded himself for the fact. He was being utterly absurd.

But there was undeniably something more to what he was experiencing that he could quite put his finger on. Best he could figure was that it was related to the boy being a horcrux. He felt the most inexplicable

draw

to Potter. He was drawn to the boy's magic, but also to his presence. As soon as he could feel the boy within the manor, it was as if his very body yearned for Potter to be closer, and when Potter was gone, he missed having his company around. Voldemort had never

desired company. It just wasn't how he operated. He

liked

being alone! But during the ritual that stripped away the Ministry's magical trace, it had been literally

physically uncomfortable

to stay so far away from Potter, while he was so close by.

It was utterly ridiculous, and he was practically furious with himself for feeling such irrational things so strongly. It wasn't like him at all.

He had felt it, mildly, before the resurrection ritual, but it had become even stronger after. He wasn't sure if this was because he was now in a fully functional human body and was better in sync with his magic now, or if it was because they now shared a blood bond and it had managed to magnify whatever connection they had had before the ritual.

There was no question that the two of them were strongly tied together. Voldemort possessed Potter's blood, while Potter possessed a piece of Voldemort's soul. They were, quite literally,

boundtogether. It was because of this fact alone that Voldemort had allowed himself to keep exploring this strange magnetic pull he felt towards Harry Potter.

He had been pointedly ignoring it until Potter had gone and shown up early that one day while he was performing his transformation meditations.

He had felt Potter enter the manor, as he always did. Had it been anyone else who had come and knocked on his study door while he performed the meditation, he would have ignored them, or sent them away instantly. He

never

would have allowed them to enter the room. To interrupt his work. To

distract him.

And he absolutely

never

would have allowed anyone else to

stay in the room

while he sat there on the floor, so utterly vulnerable.

And yet the moment Potter had knocked on the door, Voldemort hadn't even hesitated to call him into the room.

In his meditated state of mind, his more baser instincts took control and he could already sense how much calmer he felt as the boy drew closer, and how much easier he was finding it to slip to his center and call forth the needed type of parselmagic.

He had expected as many as two months of daily meditation before he would achieve the full transformation, but with Potter's company, he was progressing much faster. He suspected he would have it completed in another two weeks at most, at the rate he was going.

This was another reason he had allowed himself to continue pursuing and investigating the strange magic that existed between he and the boy. But he knew it was just an excuse. Teaching him. Talking with him, casually. Sitting in the study and reading... There was no value in the two of them sitting there reading. But he was... what? Enjoying the company? How ludicrous. Part of him knew that as soon as he was done with his meditation exercises that he should have just kicked the boy out and be done with it. And yet he didn't want to.

Potter himself was a bit of an enigma. There were times when he had the most surprising confidence about him when in Voldemort's presence. Like he felt safe and comfortable enough to play at being cocky. Even the proudest members of his Death Eaters had still always remained cowed in his presence. Of course, he never allowed them so much leeway, or to see him in his true human form like he was with the boy. Perhaps Potter just wasn't properly intimidated?

But no... that couldn't be it, because Potter had

come to him

with that cocky attitude. With that irrational confident air about him. While Voldemort was still in his homunculus. Admittedly, not the most intimidating form he had ever assumed, but still not one to instill a sense of calm, either.

Despite Potter's occasional displays of confidence, Voldemort could tell it was somewhat put on. Potter was still hesitant and unsure of himself much of the time. Stupid awkward teenagers. But he was allowing Voldemort to act as a guiding figure, and he was soaking up every bit of information the Dark Lord offered him. Despite his guises, the boy was an open book, and it was blatantly clear to Voldemort that Potter was enjoying their time spent together in an equally bewildering way.

Did Potter have any idea why they were getting pulled together? He highly doubted it. Potter seemed to just roll with whatever life threw at him, and he did it quite smoothly. Very adaptable, that one... But he supposed that given the life the boy had been forced to live, it was understandable.

However awkward, or cocky, or

like a teenager,

the boy acted at times, Voldemort couldn't find it in himself to dislike Harry Potter. He was respectful enough, he was extremely eager to learn, had so far proven himself to be very useful, and...

Voldemort sighed... he was spending too much time thinking about

bloody Harry Potter, lately. But he was still in a holding pattern until he had his transformation complete.

The most disturbing thing, he had to admit, related back to Potter being present during his meditations, was that while It was true that the boy's presence was speeding up his progress, and this was almost valuable enough to nullify any risk in allowing him to remain in the room while Voldemort sat there in such an utterly vulnerable state. But what was truly odd was that Voldemort didn't feel

at all

vulnerable during those times. He didn't feel like there was

any risk. There was no fear or paranoia that Harry Potter would take advantage of his weaker state, or lowered guard. Hetrusted

the boy to behave.

He never trusted

anyone. He never had.

Never.

The only thing he had ever trusted at all, was probably

Nagini.

And he trusted her because he knew she

couldn't

betray him. She was literally incapable of it. She was only a snake, after all. She was a lesser creature, and she would never have any hope of fighting against the much stronger and far more powerful will of his horcrux within her. She could never go against his will. It simply wasn't possible. And so she was utterly loyal to him, and always would be.

But the same couldn't be true for Potter, could it?

He knew it wasn't the same. Potter was a wizard. And not just some common weakling either. He was a powerful, intelligent, and cunning wizard. Barty had told him about the incident at the start of the year where Potter had thrown off the

Imperius

curse, and that had been

before

the boy had stopped wasting all of his magic, fighting against Voldemort's horcrux.

So no... the probability was that if Potter wanted to, Voldemort had no doubt that the boy

could

go against him. He was not so deeply under Voldemort's control that he would be unable to betray him.

So why did he feel as if he could trust the boy?

It was dangerous. Trust was probably the most dangerous mistake he could ever make. He knew that. He had

always

known that. Never fully trust anyone. Always keep your eyes open, and your back guarded.

And yet he had so easily let his guard down around the boy, again and again. What the hell was wrong with him? He had to be out of his mind to be allowing himself to slip so badly. To so easily commit such enormous potential mistakes. It would surely come back to bite him in the ass at some point.

Allowing himself to

enjoy

the boy's company. To actually

look forward

to him showing up each day. What the bloody hell was wrong with him? Had he managed to form some deeper magical bond between the two of them with his blood ritual, without even meaning to?

He had to admit, in retrospect, that he hadn't entirely taken that into account.

He pushed himself away from his desk and groaned slightly in frustration.

Bloody hell, he was wishing that Potter was still there...

He growled at himself in annoyance. He was acting idiotic. He got to his feet and walked across the room to a cabinet and opened it up to reveal some bottles of cognac. He pulled out his wand and conjured a snifter glass and quickly poured some of the liquor into the glass. He swirled it around and slowly drank from the large glass as he strolled about the room, lost in his thoughts.

What

was

he going to do about Potter? He found himself actually

hoping

that the boy would choose to stay with him during the summer, and he wasn't sure how exactly he felt about that. Would the boy be a distraction, or could he be made useful? And what of the Death Eaters? The more people who knew of Potter's allegiances, the riskier things became. They absolutely could

risk Dumbledore discovering what was happening.

He was sure he could convince Potter to assume a disguise of some sort while he was in the manor, once the other Death Eaters began to frequent the place. But his Death Eaters would expect him to do

something

about

Harry Potter. There were some in the lower ranks who might even be stupid enough to try and go after Potter in hopes that their actions would garner them praise, respect, or rewards from their Lord. That could pose to be a real nuisance.

And if Voldemort appeared to be ignoring Potter all together, or ordered them to all leave him be without providing sufficient rational

why, Voldemort could be seen as weak, or even

fearful

of the Boy-Who-Lived, and he absolutely couldn't have that.

He suspected that he was going to have to tell his inner circle, at least, about Potter's allegiances, but he would have to be careful how he revealed it. He would need to spend some time with his old followers to gauge their reliability first. He had been gone an awfully long time, and many of them had moved on to positions of wealth and power. Those with wealth and power were useful to him, however, they had much to lose too. They would be less willing to risk their lives and their livelihoods for him.

He heaved a heavy sigh and set his now-empty glass down on his desk. He would think on it later. For now, he decided to go relax in the bath and clear his mind. He was getting nothing done anyway.

– –

Harry slipped away from Ron right after lunch before Divination, by running off to 'use the loo' real fast. He ducked into an alcove, pulled on his invisibility cloak and activated the map. Just as he was slipping out the front door of the castle, he saw a second dot with the name 'Harry Potter' moving back into the bathroom he had just vacated a few moments ago, and then walking back out to join the dot labeled 'Ron Weasley'. Harry grinned to himself, satisfied that he wasn't going to have any trouble, all thanks to the time-turner, and he quickly made his way across the grounds and towards the path to Hogsmeade.

He spent a total of three hours at Voldemort's manor house that day. For a little over an hour and forty-five minutes, Voldemort sat in the center of the room, working on his meditation while Harry worked on the essay that Professor Sprout had assigned that morning in Herbology. Once he was done with his meditations, Voldemort sat down in his desk chair and pulled forward the newspapers that Harry assumed Wormtail had collected for him.

A half an hour later, Harry was suddenly startled by the feeling on long slender fingers threading into his hair. A wide smile spread across his face instantly at the familiar, gentle touch, and he sighed easily as he leaned back against the chair and turned his head to the side a bit, allowing the Dark Lord a better angle with which to play with Harry's hair.

Voldemort's ministrations continued for quite a while, and Harry just sat there, enjoying it far more than he thought he should. Voldemort was allowing his fingers to deeply comb through Harry's messy raven hair, and he gently dragged his fingertips against Harry's scalp, massaging it and bringing forth little keening noises from the back of his throat.

Harry was startled out of his drunken haze by the sound of Voldemort's deep, smooth, chuckles.

"Enjoying this, are you?" He asked with amusement in his voice.

Harry instantly felt a blush cover his face and neck, and for a moment he simply had no idea how to respond. Finally he decided that there really was no reason at all to lie or try to save face. He

hadjust sat there for who-knows-how-long getting

pet.

"As a matter of fact, I am," Harry said in as confident a tone as he could manage, considering what he was admitting to, and

who

he was admitting it to.

"Cocky brat," Voldemort said with a low quiet chuckle and went right back to rubbing circles into Harry's scalp with his fingers.

Another few minutes passed in silence. At first Harry felt himself remain fairly tense, since he was wondering if Voldemort would make anymore comments on how fundamentally weird what they were doing was, but he didn't. Finally Harry began to melt back into a state of hazy relaxation. He found he never could stay tense or uncomfortable for very long when he was this close to Voldemort. He couldn't possibly explain why, it just was.

As best as Harry could figure, it had to have something to do with the fact that the man felt so similar to what Harry felt from the piece of his soul that resided within him. He was so accustomed to turning to his companion to relax and escape from everything, that it just felt natural to do that around Voldemort.

This explained why

Harry

felt so comfortable around Voldemort, but it didn't explain to him why Voldemort would be putting up with it, let alone reciprocating in the way he was by playing with Harry's hair. But Harry didn't want to question it. He realized that he had been almost terrified to even

think

about the event a few nights prior when Voldemort had first done it. Afraid that if it was spoken of, it would break the spell and it would never happen again.

And yet, Voldemort had done just that and yet the spell hadn't been broken. He was still playing with Harry's hair as if nothing were odd. Then tiny fear and tension that had remained in Harry dissolved away now that the strange thing they were doing had been vaguely acknowledged, and yet

not stopped. He still didn't understand it, but at least they had both admitted it was happening and that neither was going to make the move to stop it.

Harry grinned wider as he let out a slow, satisfied sigh, followed instantly by an appreciative hum as Voldemort's long fingers trailed down to the nape of his neck and back up again.

All too soon, it had to come to an end. Harry heaved a sigh and stood to his feet, stretching out his back before bending back over and picking up his bag.

He bid the Dark Lord goodbye, and his farewell was returned, making him grin to himself.

Harry used the time-turner, returned to the school and slipped back into the bathroom under his invisibility cloak, exiting only a minute after he had originally entered the bathroom, several hours earlier. He and Ron then quickly trudged their way up to the tower for their Divination class.

– –

"That woman is

infuriating!"

Harry growled as he strode into Voldemort's study and instantly plopped himself down onto the floor beside Voldemort's chair. The Dark Lord leaned back and twisted in his chair to look down at Harry with mild amusement.

"Is that so?" Voldemort asked dryly.

"YES!" Harry all but yelled. "She is SUCH A HACK! And it just

pisses me off

that it's because of

herthat so much insane shit has happened to me! I sit there choking in that damned incense-filled tower and all I can think about is how badly I wish I could just curse her into oblivion! She just won't leave me be! Like it's not bad enough that she managed to make some crazed prophecy before I was even born, and get you and Dumbledore on my back, but every bloody week in class she has to pick me out and

prophecize

some new horrible way in which I will meet my gruesome and grizzly end. She just...

URGH!"

"Are you done yet?" Voldemort asked flatly after a few minutes passed while Harry sat there stewing in his own frustration.

Harry mumbled something under his breath before heaving a sign and leaning back against the chair. "Yeah," he grumbled.

"Good. Did you get another opportunity to try and read her mind?"

"Yes, a couple times actually. And I got nothing. I keep trying to sift through the memories using different keywords or images, but I couldn't find a thing."

"What sorts of things were you looking for?" Voldemort said, leaning back in his chair and letting his left hand drape down over the armrest and instantly intertwining his fingers into Harry's hair.

Harry felt the effects instantly and visibly relaxed. "Uh... the bits of the prophecy that we

do

know...dark lord, vanquish... I tried searching for any memories about job interviews, and I did manage to come up with a flash of something, but it didn't seem quite right and then it was gone."

"In what way did it not 'seem quite right?" Voldemort asked.

"Well, you mentioned before that the thing was overheard while she was doing a job interview with Dumbledore, and that it took place at the Hog's Head, right?"

"Correct."

"Well, I got a glimpse of a job interview with Dumbledore, but they weren't at the pub, they were up in his office. It was like the job interview had just started and suddenly it got all hazy and cloudy, and suddenly it went white."

Voldemort's fingers paused in Harry's hair. "It went

white?"

"Yeah... does that mean something?" Harry asked, turning his head to look up over his shoulder.

"I often see altered, suppressed, or obliviated memories get hazy just before turning white..." Voldemort said in a low, contemplative voice.

"Obliviated memories?" Harry echoed with interest.

"Yes... curious. And it was at the start of the interview, you say? But not in the pub, in Dumbledore's office?"

"Yeah. She had just entered his office and he greeted her and thanked her for coming. She blathered on about the honor and how her great grandmum was some great seer or something. She sat down in the chair opposite his desk and they were just about to get down to things when it got all cloudy."

"Very curious..."

Harry sat there waiting patiently through a long silence. Voldemort's fingers resumed their ministrations in his hair and he began to melt into a thick relaxed state.

"I want you to try something next time you get to look into her mind," Voldemort suddenly said, causing Harry to jerk out of his stupor.

"Sure, what should I do?" Harry asked eagerly.

"You said you witnessed one of her other

real

prophecies. It is likely that all of the legitimate prophecies she makes are stored in the same place in her subconscious. Try searching for the memory that you personally witnessed and then look for others around it that are related to it. That might give you better results.

Harry nodded thoughtful as he considered this. "Alright. Sounds worth a try. What do you think is up with Trelawney's memories being tampered with?"

"I cannot say at this point. We need more information."

"Alright. I'll keep digging."

"Good."

Harry nodded his head and eased back against the chair and Voldemort easily resumed petting Harry's hair.

"I didn't expect you to come back again tonight, and certainly not so soon. You realize that you really only just left about twenty minutes before you returned because of the time difference?" Voldemort said after a few silent minutes passed.

"Is that alright? I don't want to be a bother." Harry asked hesitantly. When he had left Divination he had been in such a state that all he could think of was how badly he wanted to be back at the manor that he'd slipped away at the first opportunity he'd had and gone straight there.

"You're not a bother, Potter." Voldemort said dismissively. "Have you eaten yet?"

"Er, no, I haven't. Came here right after class," Harry replied, slightly confused.

"Mixey!" Voldemort called out, causing Harry to sit up straighter in even greater confusion. A second later there was a

pop!

and a small wrinkled house elf appeared in the room. Harry blinked at her with owlish eyes.

"Mixey, Harry will be joining me for dinner. Set a place for him at the table," Voldemort said easily.

"Yes, Master," the house elf said in a timid voice before bowing down so low that her huge floppy ears brushed the floor and then disappearing with another

pop.

"You got a house elf," Harry observed with surprise, while also reeling from the fact that he had just been referred to by his first name again.

"Yes," Voldemort drawled easily. "I completed the magical contract and acquired her two days ago. She seems to be working out so far. Undeniably a better cook than

Wormtail

ever was. Plus I can send her to Diagon Alley to fetch things for me. I could never risk that with Wormtail, lest he be recognized."

"Well that makes sense... you know, I don't even know how one goes about getting a house elf."

"You can often buy their magical contracts through Gringotts. The bank attains control when an estate goes without an heir, or the heir does not desire to claim the house-elf's contract. Wizarding families also often sell them off when their services are no longer needed, or desired. In those cases, it's just a matter of knowing who to contact to find whats available. Mixey, I believe, came from some old witch who died a number of months ago and had no children or heirs. She's been without a master ever since. I acquired her through the goblins."

"You, as in

you personally? Like...

you

went to Gringotts, or did you just arrange it by owl?" Harry asked, his own curiosity preventing him from holding back the questions.

"I did the initial arrangements by owl, but I did have to go in person to finalize the contract. But I needed to visit the bank anyway to sort some things out with my old vault."

Harry twisted around and looked up at Voldemort with a dropped jaw. "You

went to Diagon Alley,

in person?"

Voldemort smirked. "I did. I used a few minor glamors, but not much."

"The Dark Lord Voldemort went strolling through Diagon Alley and visited Gringotts bank and no one was any the wiser..." Harry said slowly before beginning to chuckle. "Why do I find that so funny?"

"Because the fools would be in an utter panic if they knew?"

Harry laughed and nodded his head. "Yes, that's why. You're right." He chuckled and then went quiet. "Do the goblins know who you are? You said you had to sort things out with your old vault? It's all still there?"

"The goblins have special spells that detect when one of their customers is dead. The spells never said I was dead, so my accounts were never closed. My account manager informed me that both Dumbledore and the Ministry made numerous attempts to seize control of my vault and it's contents, but the Goblins are a neutral party and have no loyalty to either the Ministry or Dumbledore. Their loyalty is solely to their customers' gold. I have to admit, I'm impressed by their actions. They easily could have saved themselves a lot of grief by simply handing my things over.

"I'm also sure that Dumbledore found it exceedingly interesting that the goblin's spells stated I was not dead," Voldemort continued with a wide grin. Harry chuckled.

"I'm sure he did..."

"In any case, the account is under my... real name, but the goblins are aware enough to know who I am."

"Aren't you afraid that they may inform the Ministry or Dumbledore that you were there?"

"I'm confident that they will not. Client confidentiality is one of their most prized values. And even if they do go and tell, while it may put Dumbledore on his guard, I highly doubt the Ministry would take the warnings seriously. From what I can tell, Cornelius Fudge lives in a state of constant denial."

Harry laughed,

hard,

which was apparently contagious because even Voldemort chuckled lightly.

Their laugh was interrupted by another soft

pop,

and the sudden reappearance of Mixey.

"Dinner is being readys, Master," the little elf squeaked as she bowed low."

"Good, Mixey. We'll be down in a moment."

"Yes, Master," she squeaked again before popping away.

Voldemort sighed and pushed himself out of his chair while Harry quickly got to his feet. Voldemort led Harry down to the first floor, through a few corridors and into a fairly roomy dining hall. It had a long table, but only two places were set, the seat at the head of the table, and the one right next to it on it's right. The two took their seats and a moment later the food appeared on the table before them.

Part of Harry acknowledged that the situation he found himself in was rather surreal, but a much bigger part of himself felt too comfortable to care, so he just went with it.

"Tell me, Potter," Voldemort began after several quiet minutes of eating, "why the hell are you even taking Divination?"

Harry groaned. "Because I was an idiot at the end of my second year? Which we've already recognized as fact. Basically, my 'best mate' talked me into it. The idea was that the class would be an 'easy O'. A 'light class' that would be easy to take and easy to pass and not have much work. Of course

now

I realize that's an utterly idiotic reason to be taking it, but at the end of my second year, it seemed valid enough. I'm actually looking into switching my electives over to Runes and Arithmancy for next year. I'm planning to talk to McGonagall about it after my next Transfiguration class on Thursday. If I start taking those subjects next year, and get into the same class as the 3rd years, I'll be able to take my OWLs during my seventh year."

"I could tutor you in them over the summer. They could test you and you could end up in class with the 4th years instead of the 3rd years. That way you're only one year behind instead of two. With additional tutoring each summer, you could easily sit your NEWTs on time," Voldemort offered easily and Harry blinked at him with honest surprise.

"Seriously?"

Voldemort rolled his eyes and waved his hand dismissively before taking another bite of his steak.

"I mean... won't you be really busy?"

"I will have enough free time for that. Besides, I imagine things will continue to progress slowly for quite some time to come. My current plans necessitate 'laying low' for a while. I won't be starting active raids for at least a year. There is too much behind-the-scenes ground work that needs to be done before the public becomes aware of my return."

"If you're really sure..."

"Do not make me repeat myself

again,

Potter."

Harry ducked his head and grinned. "Alright. Thank you. Really. That would be really brilliant." Harry said with an air of awe, feeling legitimately overwhelmed.

"This, of course, is dependent on you staying in the manor over the summer. If you choose to go on holiday out of the country, instead, it won't be possible."

"Oh... well, I really hadn't given the whole 'going out of country' thing a lot of thought. Is... is it really alright with you if I stay here?" Harry asked, still feeling rather disbelieving of all this.

Voldemort sighed in annoyance. "Yes Potter,

you're making me

repeat myself Potter."

"Right. Sorry," Harry said quickly and then ducked his head again to hide the huge grin spreading across his lips. He didn't know why exactly, but he felt exceedingly happy right then.

Light, but easy, conversation flowed throughout the rest of dinner. Voldemort asked Harry a few more things about his studies and his interests, but discussion was kept generally minimal during the meal. They returned to the study afterwards and assumed their usual positions, with Voldemort in his chair, and Harry on the floor beside it. Voldemort waved his wand and summoned a stack of Daily Prophets that Harry assumed he must of either sent Mixey out for, or acquired himself during his trip to Diagon Alley. And Harry pulled out his Defense textbook and a half-written essay that he had due for 'Moody's' class later that week.

It was nearly 9pm before Harry finally packed up his things and left after bidding Voldemort goodbye. He used the time-turner to return to shortly before the end of his Divination class, so that he could get back to the Great Hall at the same time that his earlier self had left it.

He wasn't really feeling hungry, but enough time had passed since he had eaten dinner with Voldemort that he was able to eat a bit. He was already feeling pretty tired, but with all the time-turner use lately, his body was beginning to adjust to his strange and erratic schedule.

He slipped away from Hermione and Ron around 8pm and went down to the chamber for an hour to continue copying some more pages out of the book, but found himself too tired to put up with the utter silence of the room. His companion slipped into the back of his conscious mind, but it just wasn't the same as actually being in a room with Voldemort. He was becoming so accustomed to the man's company that he actually felt a bit lonely without him there.

Ron and Hermione's company felt hollow, but it was better than nothing, so he returned to the common room and ended up having a lengthy discussion with Hermione about the Defense essay that was due at the end of the week. Hermione was quite stunned to learn that Harry had gotten it finished already and insisted on reading it over to double-check his work. He found the insinuation that he had 'rushed through it' and as such, probably done a sloppy job, rather irritating, but he humored her and allowed her to read it through. When she was done, and couldn't find a thing wrong with it, he smiled at her with a smug satisfaction.

– –

Disclaimer: Don't own Harry Potter. JKRowling does.

First

Beta Pass

by Clemex

– –

Harry easily slipped into his new routine. Every day after lunch he would slip away to Voldemort's manor house and keep the Dark Lord 'company' while he performed his meditation exercise. Harry would read while he sat there; some days Voldemort would supply him with a specific book, but other days Harry would just read his text books or work on homework for some class.

He was spending almost all of his evenings with Ron and Hermione again, but he still tended to spend at least a half hour a day as he continued working on copying the book down in the chamber. By Wednesday night he had almost finished copying it. He left the chamber with only five more pages left to copy, and a hand cramp. He and Hermione were spending a lot of time in the evenings working on translating it, and their efforts had gained the curiosity of Ginny, who had started 'helping' them – which really meant that she was sitting at the table with them and asking questions that were slowing down their progress.

Ron was clearly very annoyed at their boring little side project and was spending more and more time with Seamus and Dean.

Thursday morning arrived and Harry had Transfiguration during first block and then a free period. Once the class had begun to clear out, Harry turned to Ron and Hermione and told them to go on ahead. When they looked at him with curious confusion, he told them he was going to speak with McGonagall about his classes for next year and they both understood quickly.

Harry stood up from his desk and packed away the last of his books just as the last of the other students left the room. Professor McGonagall looked up to see him still standing there and rose a single questioning eyebrow in his direction.

"Was there something you needed, Mr. Potter?" she asked.

"Actually, yes. I was hoping to speak with you about my elective courses and my options for next year."

She looked mildly surprised by this but quickly stood to her feet and began to walk towards the door to the class room. "Alright, Mr. Potter. Shall we continue this conversation in my office then?"

"That would be great," Harry said with a grin as he began to walk beside her and out of the classroom.

After a brief journey down the corridor, the two of them reached the deputy headmistress's office and sat down on opposite sides of her desk. Harry quickly began to explain to her what he was hoping to do with his classes for the following year.

"This is a very unusual request, Mr. Potter," McGonagall said after he had finished explaining everything.

"I really don't see why it's not done more often. I mean, how many people really know what they're going to be interested in later on in life, when they're only twelve years old? Besides, worse case scenario, I end up in the class with the third year's and take my Ancient Runes and Arithmancy OWLs in my seventh year."

McGonagall nodded her head slowly, but from the thin-lipped frown on her face, he could tell she wasn't convinced.

"I'm also thinking about looking into some private tutoring this summer in both subjects. At least the theory and all the reading. If I can pass competency tests in August, I was hoping that maybe I could get placed with the forth years."

"Private tutoring?" McGonagall echoed with surprise.

"Yes. I've already spoken with someone who is willing to help me. Do you think it would be possible to arrange for a test in both Ancient Runes and Arithmancy?"

"Well, I..." she began hesitantly before huffing a bit and then giving a somewhat resigned sigh. "I'll have to speak with Professors Septima and Babbling to see what they think of all of this. There will also be the issue of making sure that the classes work with your normal fifth year class schedule. There may be timing conflicts."

"If that does become an issue, perhaps I could apply to the Ministry for a time-turner?" Harry asked with big, innocent, puppy-dog eyes.

McGonagall narrowed her eyes suspiciously at him, which only made Harry grin.

Harry ducked his head and then took on a more serious expression. "All fun aside, Professor, I really am serious about this. It's important to me. I made a mistake at the end of second year. I chose the wrong classes. Pure and simple. And I chose them for the worst reasons."

"And what reasons would those be?"

"I chose them because everyone said they were

easy. But now I realize that I'm just wasting a precious, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Arithmancy and Ancient Runes are really valuable subjects, and I'm really interested in learning both of them. Now that I've realized what a stupid mistake I've made, I'm trying to fix it. Surely it isn't too late?" he finished, with a pleading tone.

McGonagall gave another resigned sigh. "I will admit that I would normally tell you no in this situation. However the tremendous improvement in your classwork over the year, and the fact that your other professors have given similar reports during staff meetings leads me to give your request more consideration than I usually would."

Harry blinked. "Staff meetings?"

The teachers had been talking about him in the staff meetings?Somehow this didn't exactly sit well with him.

"Yes, your classwork improvement over the last year has come up several times in our meetings. Even Professor Snape has had no choice but to admit that your work has improved," she said with the faintest hint of a smile on her lips.

Harry choked out a bit of a laugh that he tried to morph into a cough. "Is that so?" he asked innocently. "That must have been quite painful for him."

McGonagall

snorted. She would deny it till her dying day, but Harry had heard it and he would never forget it. He had made McGonagall

snort.

"Yes, well... Mr. Potter... Taking into consideration your improved worth ethics and study habits, and your sincere desire to learn the subjects, I will do my best to help you with this. I cannot guarantee anything, but I will try."

Harry gave her a huge smile and thanked her profusely before bidding her farewell and heading off to find Ron.

– –

By Thursday night Harry had finished copying the last few pages of the ancient elven book and returned to the common room to help Hermione with translating it. The book seemed to be made up of several ancient legends, and the further they translated, the more and more interesting they were becoming. However translating the texts was still extremely slow-going, and Harry found he rarely had the energy at the end of the days to dedicate a lot of his focus towards the task. In contrast, Hermione was becoming down-right dedicated to it, and Ginny was acting as her personal cheerleader.

During the last week, Harry hadn't felt nearly as strong a

need

or deep seeded desire to spend an hour each day practicing the dark arts as he once did. The anxious, antsy, tension that had eaten away at his mind each day up until he was finally able to get down into the chamber, had dulled significantly now that he was spending several hours a day in the company of the Dark Lord.

Harry had absolutely no explanation for why spending time with Voldemort every day would have any effect on that irrational itch he'd been experiencing for months now. Despite not having an explanation for it, the fact that it clearly

had

an effect was obvious. Harry decided that he needed to try speaking to Voldemort about it and see if the Dark Lord had any insight into the matter.

The more time he'd spent in the man's company, the more comfortable he felt with actually asking questions, so the idea of trying to explain his experience to Voldemort and asking the man's opinion wasn't nearly as scary or intimidating as it might have once been. But this would also mean openly broaching the subject of how he was affected so strangely by Voldemort's presence, and

that

still made him feel a little hesitant. Despite the fact that they had

acknowledged

that the two of them were interacting in a way that was probably a bit odd for both of them, they hadn't actuallydiscussed

it.

Unless it was

normal

for the Dark Lord to spend large amounts of time with individual followers andpet

their hair if they sat within reach.

But somehow Harry seriously doubted that was the case. It

really

didn't seem like the sort of thing Voldemort would normally do.

Saturday arrived and Harry portkeyed to the manor as soon as he was finished with lunch. Voldemort was already in his usual meditative position on the floor and Harry took up his usual spot a few feet away.

After an hour, and the most powerful spike in Voldemort's parselmagic that Harry had thus far sensed from the man, Voldemort stood, stretched and sat heavily in his chair. He read a couple muggle newspapers and then went through the Daily Prophet – Harry had learned that the house-elf, Mixey, was going out daily to acquire a copy of the magical paper for her master – Voldemort sighed, set the papers aside and stood up.

Harry turned and watched the man, curiously for a moment without saying anything. Voldemort took a few steps towards the door before turning back and looking at Harry expectantly.

"Coming?"

Harry blinked, but then quickly scrambled to his feet. He followed Voldemort as his long fast strides quickly took them down the stairs and through the corridors towards the ballroom where they had performed the resurrection ritual.

"So what are we doing?" Harry finally asked as he managed to make his strides match Voldemort's and walked beside him.

"I am going to begin teaching you a few important skills during your visits here. The first one is apparition."

Harry's foot caught on the rug and he almost stumbled in surprise at this, but he collected himself and caught back up.

"Apparition? You're going to teach me to apparate?" Harry asked.

"Yes, Potter. I'm going to teach you to apparate," Voldemort echoed while rolling his eyes.

"Can the Ministry detect that? As I understand it, you need a license to apparate, and you can't even take the test until you're seventeen."

"The Ministry cannot detect it from

you

because your trace is gone."

"Oh, well that's brilliant," Harry mused as a grin spread across his lips and the pair of them entered the ballroom.

Voldemort quickly began to explain the theory behind it, and then apparated from one side of the ballroom to the other, and back again, so that Harry could feel his magic during the act. Once he learned that Harry had never experienced apparition

at all, he did a side-along apparition just to make sure Harry would know what to expect.

Harry spent the next two minutes crouching on the floor trying to make sure he didn't lose his lunch.

"I thought portkeying was bad..." Harry grumbled as he finally felt stable enough to stand up straight. "What is with all forms of magical transport being horrifically disorienting? I can't use a floo without falling on my ass, I've only just barely begun to land from portkey travel without stumbling, and now

this. Ugh..."

Voldemort chuckled in amusement. "You'll get used to it."

"So... I'm curious, when

you

apparate, I hardly hear a sound from you. It's almost as quiet as a house-elf's

pop. Everyone else I've seen apparate always makes a loud

crack."

"Again, it just takes practice and power. I'm sure with some work you will also be more than capable of near-silent apparition. You certainly have the power reserves for it."

Harry nodded his head thoughtfully. "You know, I had another question I've been meaning to ask since we started this."

"Yes?" Voldemort said dryly with a sigh of impatience.

"We're apparating inside the manor, but I thought that the manor had anti-apparition wards all around it?"

"I am keyed into the wards, and I have keyed you in as well. So

we

will be able to apparate in and out of the manor, as well as aparate within it's boundaries.

No one else

will be capable of the same thing, however, unless I key them in as well."

Harry blinked. "You've keyed me into your apparition wards?"

Voldemort rose a single challenging eyebrow, and Harry ducked his head to try and conceal the huge grin that was spreading across his face.

"Are you're curiosities sufficiently satisfied now? I would appreciate getting on with the lesson."

Harry chuckled and smiled up at the man. "Yeah, I'm good. Let's get on with it."

Voldemort rolled his eyes at Harry, but quickly slipped into what Harry had deemed his 'teacher mode'. Harry didn't manage to apparate that evening, but Voldemort said he was convinced Harry would get it within a few more lessons with relative ease.

When the lesson had come to a close, Harry casually thanked Voldemort and said 'bye' before heading out to the time-turner room and then returning to Hogwarts.

– –

It was Sunday at lunch, and Harry, Hermione, and Ron were all sitting in the great hall eating. Or rather, Ron was eating, Hermione was working on translating some more passages from the ancient elven book, and Harry was thumbing through a book on occlumency he'd found down in Slytherin's study. He had disguised the book's cover to look like his charms text book, while also casting a mild notice-me-not charm on it, and so far, no one had noticed it.

"Harry, are you sure you copied this part down, right?" Hermione's voice cut into his focus suddenly and he looked up at her with a blank face.

"Hmm?"

Her face was buried in her copy of the bound notebook that he had given her, while the Old Aldric language book sat on the table beside her.

"This part here... I can't find this word anywhere... I almost think you may have copied it down wrong," she said with her brows furrowed as she continued to look back and forth between the two books intently.

"Hm... I suppose it's certainly possible. I've tried to recheck my work pretty thoroughly."

She huffed in frustration and set the notebook on the table with a

thwap!, causing Ron's cup of pumpkin juice to wobble precariously for a moment. Hermione's eyes widened as she watched it in horror for a second before it became clear that it was

about to spill on the notebook. She sighed in relief before returning her attention to Harry.

"Are you

sure

you can't just bring me the original book?" she asked in a pleading voice.

Harry shook his head. "Nope. Sorry Hermione, but I'm not willing to remove it from the room where it's kept. It has to stay there."

She narrowed her eyes and gave him a hard look. "Could I just go to the room then?" she asked after a second in an innocent tone.

Harry gave her a hard look for a long moment. It had been a while since their last spat about Harry's mysterious secrets. He supposed he was due for another. "Sorry 'Mione. I'm not telling."

She huffed, folded her arms across her chest and scowled at him. For a long minute she fumed quietly. Harry assumed she was just going to let it go, but this time, she didn't. "Why!" she cried in a sudden explosion of pent up frustration.

"Why what?" Harry said, taken aback by the intensity of her burst.

"Why won't you tell me where it is you're going! What are you doing! Where are you going? Are you breaking a school rule? Are you leaving the grounds?"

"I'm not breaking any rules, and no, I am not leaving the grounds. Where I go is still within the school," Harry lied easily.

"Then why can't you tell me where it is! Why don't you trust me! You talk about us earning your trust back, but you know trust is a two-way street, Harry James Potter! If you keep pushing us away like this, how are

we

supposed to trust

you!"

Harry had to fight the urge to roll his eyes. He was getting fed up with making excuses to them and realized that he was going to have to give her

something

to hold her off a while. "Maybe I like having a secret place that only I can go to, and no one else can bother me at, did that ever occur to you?" Harry asked with a rather pointed look and raised eyebrows.

Hermione came up short, frowned, and looked legitimately hurt. "So you go there to get away from us, then?"

"I go there to get away from

everyone,

Hermione. You see, during first term, there was this thing where every bloody student in the school suddenly hated the very air I breathed, and all I wanted to do was get away from all the glares, snickers, and snide remarks. I found someplace that I could to to be alone and I got used to it. I found that I honestly

enjoyed

the alone time, and that it allowed me to think clearer and get more accomplished. So even after people decided to do another flip-flop and stopped hating my guts, the fact that I enjoyed the alone time didn't change. I got

used to it.

"Did it ever occur to you that maybe I'm not actually

hiding

anything big? Maybe I just found a secret room in this big crazy castle filled with old forgotten secrets, and that room has some books in it, and I like to go there to read and get my work done? That's it. No big crazy conspiracy. No rule breaking, or devious ulterior motives. I did go there for my animagus practice, but now I just go there to be alone and read in peace."

Hermione still looked rather crushed at this point, and not as convinced as he was hoping, so Harry huffed an annoyed breath and pressed on.

"Maybe you aren't entirely clear on some of my personal history, Hermione, but before Hogwarts, I was

always alone.

I went to school, came home, did my chores, and then I got locked away in my cupboard and spent all my time alone in a dark little space with absolutely no company. When I got to Hogwarts I thought 'This is my chance to finally make friends without them being chased away by Dudley, and to try and be outgoing, and spend my time with people.' But it's always been forced for me. I've been

forcing

myself to be outgoing.

Forcing

myself to be social. I've realized that I'm not a naturally social person. It's just the way I grew up. I've come to realize that I enjoy being able to go someplace and just

be alone. It's like I can breath again. I spend some time alone to recoup, and then I feel the ability to be around people again.

"And it's not like I'm not

trying

here. I mean, you have to acknowledge that I'm spending less time there then I used to! I've been with you guys every evening for the last two weeks! I'm even including you in this project with my book! So come on! Give me a break, will you?"

Ron and Hermione sat there, looking at him with rather stunned expressions for a long, thick minute before Hermione's jaw began to move a bit.

"They locked you in a cupboard?" she asked in a weak voice.

Harry blinked. "I've mentioned my cupboard before, haven't I?" he asked, mildly surprised and confused by her response. Hadn't he mentioned it before? He did suppose he had glazed over it a lot in the past. He didn't want their pity. Plus, he recalled having actually been rather ashamed of it. Like it was somehow

his fault

how his relatives had treated him. He no longer held those delusions though. It wasn't his fault at all. His shitty muggle relatives were just monstrous assholes. For them, it was all about fear of what they couldn't understand or control. Magic scared them, and Harry had personified it. Harry had realized that it was simply human nature to instantly try to destroy anything that scared or confused them. His relatives were scared and confused by him, so they tried to break him.

And someday, he would repay them for their sacrifice and kindness.

Harry remarked, sarcastically, internally.

"What kind of cupboard?" Hermione asked, her voice getting harder and a bit

cold.

Harry sighed and let his head fall into his hand. "Uh... a boot cupboard, I guess. Under the stairs. They put a little cot in there for me. I lived there till I turned eleven and got my Hogwarts letter. The Dursley's panicked when they saw that my acceptance letter was addressed to 'Mr. H. Potter, The Cupboard under the Stairs'. They thought they were being watched and finally moved me into the extra bedroom."

"They had an extra bedroom, but they kept you in a cupboard!" Hermione all but shrieked.

Harry's eyes widened as he glanced around the great hall for a second before he glared back at her,hard.

"Would you keep it down!" he hissed angrily. Harry pulled out his wand and did a few quick movements with it while silently incanting the proper spell in his mind. The sounds of the great hall suddenly muffled into a distant buzzing noise, as the three of them were enclosed in a small privacy ward. "Look... how the hell did we even get on this? Weren't we arguing about me sneaking off to a secret room or something?"

"How could they

do that!"

Hermione said in a horrified, sad voice, apparently not listening to Harry. "They

still

treat you terribly, don't they? Oh, Merlin! The

bars!

The bars on your window!" She turned her gaze to Ron, who was suddenly looking rather pale. "Before second year when Ron and the twins rescued you... oh Harry! How could they treat you like that?"

"Yeah, well I've got a better question for you. How could Dumbledore leave me there as a baby and not once check up on me? Or better still – how can he know about it now and still make me go back? Says it's the only place I'm

safe," Harry sneered sarcastically while rolling his eyes.

Hermione looked horrified. "He couldn't possibly know! Harry, you have to tell Professor Dumbledore! If he knew the truth, he would never make you go back!"

"He

does

know, Hermione," Harry said through clenched teeth. "He knows perfectly well, how they've treated me my whole life. My aunt has written him letters over the years, begging him to take me back and leave me with someone else. He

knows

how much they hate me. How much they wish to be rid of me. And I've

told him

how they treat me. That they don't feed me and that they work me like a bloody house elf each summer.

He knows

Hermione. Honestly, I thought

you

knew. Or at least, I thought you would have figured it out from all the clues."

"No..." Hermione said in a weak little whisper as she began shaking her head back and forth. "No... I never knew... Oh

Merlin

Harry... I'm sorry... I never realized... I..."

"Hermione," Harry said in a hard tone, "Just stop. There's nothing for you to apologize for –"

"Yes there is!" she insisted. "There

is, Harry! I should have realized! I can't believe I was so stupid that I never listened! You have mentioned

the cupboard

before, but it was always in passing and you acted so dismissive about it that it never stuck. I wasn't

listening. I should have... I should have..."

"Should have,

what, Hermione? What could you have done?" Harry said, leaning back on his seat and crossing his arms over his chest.

"Well I should have done

something!

Told a professor, or something!"

"I've told teachers. Back in primary school I tried telling people and it just got me in trouble. The only times my uncle has ever really

hit

me were after I told people at the school and they visited the Dursley's or called them. All the rest of my life they just neglected me. Dudders made a sport of beating the shit out of me, but I got pretty good at running from him and his friends, and he's let up since he found out I'm magical. And

I've told

Dumbledore about all of this and he doesn't give a damn. Telling McGonagall won't do any good because in the end – for some unfathomable reason –Dumbledore

thinks hehas say over where I go for the bloody holidays. Well, fine. Whatever.

Askingto go somewhere else won't work. So I just won't

ask."

"But you can't go back there! They can't treat you like that! It's criminal!"

"Yeah, I'm aware of that now."

"Professor Dumbledore must just not realize how bad it is. Harry, you've got to just

tell them!"

"No."

"But you don't want to go back to the Dursley's right?"

"Correct. And I'm not going to be going back."

Hermione opened her mouth to speak but then stopped, coming up short with a confused look on her face. "Wait... what?"

"I'm not going back. But I'm not asking Dumbledore for

first, either. In what way is ithis

business what I do over the summer? Legally, it isn't. If I get permission from the Dursley's to go somewhere else for the summer, that's all that matters because

they

are my legal guardians. Dumbledore has no say over my life while I'm not in school. So I'm going somewhere else, and I'm not telling him."

"What! But... where? Harry, that's dangerous! You're not thinking of running off with Sirius are you? That's just not safe! You saw how Sirius has to live, Harry –"

"I'm

going to stay with Sirius," Harry broke in.

"But where are you going then? What if someone comes after you! There was that Death Eater attack at the World Cup, and we all know that

wants you dead, because they orchestrated this whole tournament thing. Harry, it's just not safe to run off without telling Dumbledore where you're going."

"If no one knows where I go, then no one can find me. That's why I'm not telling

anyone.

And I'm sorry, but that includes you two. If you don't know where I am, no one can force you to tell them. Nice and simple. And by the way, Hermione – if you run off to the headmaster before the end of the school year, and tell him that I'm planning to run off this summer, I swear I will never speak to you,

ever again.

Do you understand me? You can feel free to go off and tell him that I've been abused and neglected by my relatives and just

see for yourself

how seriously he takes it, but mention that I'm running off, and we're through. I will

never

trust you with a secret,

ever again.

Do you get it?"

Hermione jerked back as if she had just been slapped.

"Harry... I..."

"I want you to understand something here. I'm

trusting you

with this info. Do you see? You know the whole 'trust is a two way street' bit from a few minutes ago? Well, here I am, trusting you. I've just told you something that no one else knows, and I have no intention of telling anyone else. Ifyou

tell someone else, then you're betraying my trust. You've already seriously betrayed my trust once this year Hermione, and in my game, it's two strikes and you're out, not three."

"Harry! Come on, give her a break!" Ron said, speaking up for the first time in ages. Up until this point, he had sat there with a shocked and utterly dumbfounded expression on his face.

"This goes for you too Ron. I don't see you running off to the Headmaster like I see Hermione doing it, but the warning goes for you too."

"Why do you think that

I

would run off and snitch!" Hermione asked indignantly.

"Because you would convince yourself that you were doing it to help me. To

protect me.

To keep me from making a mistake or something. You'd convince yourself that you were being a

good friendby

betraying me, but I will

never

see it like that. As far as I'm concerned, it's just betrayal."

Ron nodded his head a bit and looked thoughtful. "He's got you there, Hermione. You probablywould

run off and tell. It's just like the thing with the Firebolt, last year."

"Ron!" Hermione cried out. She looked back and forth between Ron and Harry with hurt in her eyes before she sunk a bit in her seat and looked down into her lap.

"I won't tell anyone," she said weakly. She paused for a moment and then appeared to make up her mind about something. "But I still want to try speaking to Professor McGonagall and the Headmaster about your relatives! I just can

believe that they would know about how they treat you, and still make you go back there!"

Harry rolled his eyes and sighed. "Suit yourself."

Hermione sat there gnawing on her bottom lip with a look of deep concentration for a few minutes before she looked up at Harry with legitimate worry in her eyes. "You really can't tell us where you're going?"

"Nope," Harry said simply as he returned his focus to his book.

"But how do you know it'll be safe?"

"You can never

know

these things Hermione, but I do know I'll be safer there than I am at the Dursley's."

"But I thought that your relatives house had some super fancy wards or something?" Ron pitched in.

"The blood wards are worthless against everyone except for Voldemort himself," Harry began, and then silently added,

and they're probably worthless against him now too, since he's got my blood in his veins...

"I think Dumbledore threw up a whole bunch of wards on his own on top of them to keep out Death Eaters, but they only work so long as I'm in the actual house. If I leave the house to go to the park, or just down the street, then I'm out of their so-called 'perfect protection'. So to stay 'safe' I have to,

literally, be a prisoner in my own home.

"And while the wards protect me from

Death Eaters, they don't protect me from Vernon, or Dudley, or any of Dudder's shitty friends. I've had a lot more bruises and broken bones at the hands of those arses than I've ever had from Death Eaters. Personally? I'll take my chances with the Death Eaters."

Ron looked pale and Hermione seemed shocked to the brink of tears.

"Broken

bones!"

Hermione gasped. "Are you serious?"

Harry huffed and looked up from his book in annoyance. "Yes, Hermione. Broken bones. My left arm, and my right wrist, to be specific. Ages five and seven. Probably got some fractures over the years too, but they went untreated. Vernon was too cheap to let me see a proper doctor unless there was a bone practically protruding from the skin. I suspect I've got a bit of a magical healing factor because without it I doubt I'd still be alive with all the beatings Dudders and his buddies put me through. In any case, all the more reason for me to stay the bloody hell away from those people. I'm

Not Going Back."

"Alright, Harry. I totally agree that you definitely should not ever have to go back to those horrible people, but are you sure that where you're going is really going to be safe?"

"Yes, Hermione. I really am sure. I mean, technically, I've got two different ideas in mind for what I could do this summer, but I'm definitely leaning more towards one than the other, and

that

option would actually put me behind wards even more powerful than the 'super fancy wards' that Dumbledore put on the Dursley's."

"No way!" Ron gaped.

Harry chuckled. "Yeah, well it's a new residence and the wards are being constructed right now, but it's some seriously high level security. For that matter, I'm not totally sure I'll even be able to receive owls there, because I'm pretty sure that he's adding anti-owl wards in the mix, but I'll make sure to send you guys letters so you know I'm still safe."

Hermione's jaw floundered, helplessly for a few minutes. "I... but... Harry,

how

did you... I mean... this place that you're going to go to, how did this all come about? How long have you been planning this!"

Harry could see the hurt in her eyes at realizing that he had once again been hiding something that she probably deemed as 'a big deal' from them.

Harry sighed, closed his book, and gave Ron and Hermione a long, hard look.

"Have you ever heard of legilimency?"

"Legililiwhuh?" Ron said. He turned and looked over to Hermione, expectantly but she just shrugged, helplessly.

"Wow, really?" Harry said, looking at Hermione with legitimate surprise. "You've

never heard of it, Hermione?

Really?"

"No! What is it?"

"It's a mind magic. Really high level magic and very few people can learn it. It lets you read other people's minds. You can sift through their memories and their thoughts, and they'll never even know that you're doing it, unless they know the counter magic called occlumency. The only thing that a legilimense needs to read your every private thought and memory, is eye contact."

"Blimey!" Ron whispered, looking horrified.

Hermione looked disgusted by this new information, but then she looked very thoughtful. "Harry..." she began hesitantly, looking up at him, "why are you telling us this?"

"I've been teaching myself occlumency, so no one can read my mind. Neither of you have that protection in place. If I had told either of you what I'd been up to, then certain people in the school, could have taken that knowledge from your heads without you ever even knowing it."

"Who! Are you saying that there's someone at Hogwarts who can perform legilimency?"

"I know of at

least

two people in the school who can," Harry said dismissively.

"Who?" Ron and Hermione asked in the same whispered hush.

"Snape and Dumbledore."

Hermione gasped.

"SNAPE!" Ron roared, looking a mixture of horror, anger, and disgust. "Snape can read our minds!" Ron paused, grimacing in thought for a moment before he gasped again. "But Snape's a Death Eater!"

"We don't know that Ron!" Hermione instantly reprimanded. "And it's

Professor

Snape!"

Harry then sat back and watched as the two of them began to bicker about Snape and what it could mean that he was able to read their minds, and all Harry wanted to do was point out that he hardly gave a damn about

Snape, and was far more ticked about

Dumbledore

doing it.

Now that Harry knew the signs to look for, in retrospect, there were a number of instances where he had been sitting with the headmaster and he was

sure

the man had used legilimency on him. First year, second year, even

third

year. If Dumbledore

had

read his mind, in the instances when he suspected the man did, it would mean that Dumbledore knew about Harry and his friends investigating the stone, and that Dumbledore

knew

about Harry having found the diary,

long

before Ginny took it back... hell, Harry had known that the diary belonged to

Tom Riddle, and if Dumbledore read his mind when he suspected the man had, he undoubtedly saw that.

It all just led more and more credence to his theories that Dumbledore

wanted

Harry to keep having run-ins with Voldemort, and Death Eaters, and near-death experiences. The real question, was

why?

Harry refocused on Hermione and Ron, just as Ron was getting all red-faced with his own frustrated insistence that Snape was pure evil and couldn't be trusted, against Hermione's arguments that Dumbledore would never let the man teach if he hadn't earned the headmaster's trust. It was an old argument and Harry rolled his eyes.

"But anyway!" Harry said interrupting them. "The point is that if I tell you guys too much, then someone can pluck the knowledge out of your minds, even without you realizing that they've done it. If you two knew how I came across this place I plan to go, you could figure out what the place was. Anyone who knows legilimency could read your minds and pluck the knowledge right out of your heads and you couldn't do a thing about it. When people realize I haven't got back to the Dursley's like I'm supposed to, and they can't find me, you two are sure to be the first ones that they go to. Any clues I give you two are just going to be clues used by other people when they go trying to find me. The best way for me to stay safe is if

knows where I am. And that means absolutely

no one."

"But what if a Death Eater or someone out to get you finds out, and then none of us know where you are and can't come help?"

"You

really really

don't have to worry about it. I'm not a fool Hermione. You know – Constant Vigilance, and all that? I'm taking Moody's advice to heart. Remember him? Mr. 'You're-not-being-paranoid-if-people-are-really-out-to-get-you'? Trust me when I say that I'm taking

loads

of precautions."

Hermione heaved a heavy, defeated sigh and nodded hear head. "Alright, Harry. But

please

be careful! And you have to promise to write to us at least several times a week so we know you're alright."

Harry grimaced a little, realizing that that would be rather annoying, but it was a fairly simple step to secure their cooperation.

"Fine, but I'm probably going to by cycling owls. Hedwig is too obvious and easy to spot."

"Harry... you mentioned a

'he'

earlier, so you're staying with someone specific?" Hermione began to ask hesitantly.

"Yeah?"

"Well, I mean... how can you be sure you can

trust

this person? I understand that you can't tell us who it is or anything about him, but what do you know about him? What makes you think you can trust him?"

"I know a

lot

about him, actually. And I really,

honestly

do trust him. I trust him with my life. I know he can, and

will

make sure I'm safe. I'll be okay. Don't worry. I really have got this covered."

Hermione frowned sadly and her shoulders sagged somewhat but she nodded her head.

Harry went back to his reading, but paused as he realized that out of everything he had just said to his friends, it was the last statement he made that had the most truth to it.

He trusted Voldemort with his life. He'd already placed his life in the man's hands several times, in fact.

He trusted the most dangerous and deadly Dark Lord in half a millennium with his life, and he felt safer and more secure in that trust than he ever had in placing his trust in anyone else.

He cracked a smile and chuckled to himself at the insanity of it.

– –

Disclaimer: Don't own Harry Potter. JKRowling does.

First

Beta Pass

by Clemex

– –

On Monday, during his visit to Voldemort's manor, Harry succeeded in apparating across the ballroom, once. He was a bit off on his destination – missing his intended spot by about five feet, but for his first successful attempt, it wasn't bad.

As he was preparing to leave, Voldemort informed him that once he had apparition down, the two of them were going to begin dueling lessons and discussing the magical theory behind the dark arts. Harry just stared back at the dark lord with a dropped jaw and stunned silence. The

Dark Lordwanted to teach him dueling and dark arts?

After a scathing scolding about looking like an idiot and being instructed to pick his jaw up off the ground, Harry was dismissed and used the time-turner before using the portkey back to Hogwarts.

Harry used his cloak to slip back into the school, the same as he did every day after his lunch-time visits to Voldemort's manor, and met back up with Ron, only a minute after his earlier self disappeared into a bathroom. The pair made their way up to Divination, and with each step Harry felt his anticipation growing.

He was going to try Voldemort's suggestion today, and he couldn't help the feeling in his gut that he was actually going to get somewhere that day. He scolded himself for being stupid enough to get his hopes up, but couldn't quite manage to squash the feeling away.

As the class gathered in the room, it became obvious that the smoke scrying section was done because Trelawney had rearranged the seats again back to their usual places and the big fire pit in the center of the room was gone.

When she called the class to attention, Trelawney began a long-winded talk about using the inner eye to see into a person's soul that Harry was quickly tuning out.

"The Human Aura is made up of seven main Human aura's which extend up to four feet from the Human body. These aura's all occupy the same space at the same time, each Human aura extending out further than the previous aura. All Human aura's are interconnected and reliant on the others for normal function," Trelawney was saying in that annoying low 'mysterious' sounding voice she used.

"The astral human aura extends about eight to twelve inches from the physical body and appears as brightly coloured rainbow clouds. The astral human aura is the bridge between the physical world and the spiritual world.

"The mental human aura extends about four to eight inches from the physical body and is usually a bright shade of yellow in colour. Within this Human aura are our thoughts and mental processes. The more active our thinking processes the brighter our mental Human aura becomes. Within this Human aura can be found thought forms. "

Harry tuned out her lecture, choosing instead to try catching the professor's eye and see if he could maintain eye contact long enough to slip inside her head for a quick look-around. Unfortunately, Trelawney didn't seem terribly interested in looking at him at that moment, and just kept right on talking and talking about different auras and how many inches they existed from the body, as if that meant something to any of them.

About twenty minutes later, she told them to partner up, and cut off all lighting in the room except for the 'natural light' that came in through the windows, which still had thing hangings draping over them, giving the room a rather dim look.

Harry sighed heavily and turned to face Ron. She gave them instructions and told them what page to turn to in their textbooks before telling them to start.

Ron said he was too confused and insisted that Harry give it a go first. Harry read the page in the book, since he hadn't paid any attention to Trelawney's annoying ramblings. Finally he focused on Ron and gave it a go.

"Let's see... well... I think for the Etheric Aura I'm seeing er.." Harry looked down at the book before looking back up at Ron. "Delft blue? That means you've got strong ethics. A strong deep blue also suggests that you're in good physical health. I think. For your Mental Aura I'm seeing... sort of a sienna color I'd say." Harry looked down at the book and then had to hold back a bark of laughter.

"Whut?" Ron asked, seeing Harry's expression.

"Oh um... well, the book says that Raw Sienna indicates poor thinking process," Harry mumbled through the tight grin he was trying to force off his face.

Ron snorted and rolled his eyes. "Whatever. What's next?"

"Um, well, your Etheric Template Aura looks purple... like grape, I guess."

"What's that one mean?"

Harry looked down at the book and then flipped the page.

"Er... Laziness."

"Pfft," Ron said, rolling his eyes again. "Next?"

"Well, your Ketheric Template Aura looks like Amber," Harry continued and then referenced the book again. "Ah. That one means strong personal courage."

Ron grinned at this one. Another minute and Harry had gone through all the different auras for Ron.

"Alright, alright. Let me do you," said Ron. He sat forward and skimmed over the book page one more time before turning his focus on Harry.

"Alright your er... Etheric Aura issss...kind of maroon-ish." Ron looked down at the book. "That means self empowerment. Your Emotional Aura is sort of like carmine. And the book says... carmine is for people seeking change. You seeking change, Harry?"

Harry shrugged and Ron moved on. "You're mental aura is... sort of like mustard, I'd say." Ron looked back down at the book and flipped to the next page where the list continued. He frowned and screwed up his face. "Well that's not right."

"What?" Harry asked, hesitantly.

"Says Mustard is usually seen on people who are really manipulative. Pfft. This stuff is such rubbish. Moving on," he said dramatically and flipped back a page. "You're uh... Etheric Template Aura is... sort of a light yellow-green. Like lemon-green." Again he consulted the book, and again he frowned at it before rolling his eyes.

"What?" Harry asked.

"Well, it says that lemon-green is for people who are cheats and liars. Maybe it's more like pale green? That's spiritual advancement. It's definitely not iridescent green, and that's for friendly people. Ah, here we go. Lemon yellow, that's strength of direction. That sounds more like it."

"Heh... yeah," Harry said, feeling a bit more wary by the minute.

"Aaandd... your Celestial Aura is..." Ron trailed off before screwing up his face a lot. "I've got to be reading this one wrong. Oh... oh, well maybe not."

"What?" Harry asked, feeling rather unsettled.

"Well it looks...

black."

"What's black mean?"

"It says that there are two types of people who end up with black in their celestial aura. Um... well, murderers, and people who've really hurt other people, or who have it in them to kill people –"

Harry's eyes went wide and for a moment he thought his heart had stopped beating.

"– and people who've been either abused a lot or tortured," Ron finished, looking back up at Harry, hesitantly.

Harry blinked at Ron, holding a neutral expression on his face. "Oh."

"Er... yeah," Ron mumbled before clearing his throat. "Anyway, this aura stuff is rubbish. Think that's sufficient to get Trelawney off our backs?"

"Yeah, just don't tell her that you saw black on mine. I'm sure she'll find some way to interpret that to mean I'm going to die a horrible death under the

cruciatus

or something."

Ron snorted.

Harry and Ron both started to write down the notes from what they'd 'seen' during the class exercise, and Harry sat there, waiting for Trelawney to come over to speak with them.

Harry made sure to write down as much detail as he could from what he'd 'seen' of Ron's various auras so that he'd have a lot of stuff to say to her once she got over. Finally she left Lavender and Padma's group and came over to where Ron and Harry were sitting opposite each other.

She asked them how their reading went and Ron said a little bit, but was vague and mumbly. Trelawney was less than impressed and turned on Harry rather quickly. The second she made eye contact, Harry slipped into her mind and began a furious search for anything pertaining to the prophecy that he had personally witnessed the previous spring.

His search turned up instant results, much to his surprise and elation. He found the memory of her speaking the prophecy about the servant returning to his master and could tell right away that it had a very different feel to it than the rest of her memories that he'd breezed through. It was like it was on a different wavelength, and it was buried under a layer that her conscious mind didn't quite see. Harry slipped away from the prophecy memory, but stayed in the same general location of her mind and began to look for other memories that had the same strange feeling to it.

He was glad to discover that there weren't a lot of them. Trelawney obviously didn't make legitimate prophecies very often, and it was obvious that most of those that she did make were done when alone and there was no one around to even hear them.

Finally he came across one of the prophetic memories that took place in a very familiar setting. Dumbledore's office.

It was

in Dumbledore's office.

Not the pub. In fact, none of her memories of actual prophecies took place inside the Hog's Head. He pulled the one in Dumbledore's office to the forefront and quickly began to watch it. It began with Trelawney going rigid and her voice becoming suddenly very gravely. Dumbledore sat up to attention, suddenly watching her with far more interest than his demeanor a moment earlier had.

She began to speak –

The only one with the power to match the Dark Lord approaches...

Born to those who have thrice defied him,

Born as the seventh month dies...

The Dark Lord will come for him and mark him as his equal.

He will –

"Harry?"

Harry blinked and gave a start at suddenly being jerked from Trelawney's mind.

"Are you alright Mr. Potter?" Professor Trelawney asked as she peered down at him with her enormous, magnified eyes.

He quickly tried to slip back into her mind;

desperate

too see what came next, but she looked away and he cursed her in his own mind, as he wished he could do it in reality.

"You just zoned out there for a minute," Ron was saying, "You were talking and then you just sort of... stopped. Are you sure you're alright?"

Harry fought the urge to snap at the red head and forced a calm smile on his face. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just sort of out of it today. Not getting enough sleep, I guess."

"You're not having nightmares again, are you?" Ron asked in a whisper as he leaned in closer.

"No, no. Nothing like that. I'm fine, really."

Harry turned his head and watched as Trelawney walked over to Dean and Seamus and began to speak with them. He realized he was clenching his jaw in frustrated anger, and he could feel his magic beginning to boil deep within him, furiously. The urge to curse something,

violently, was roaring in his head, and he knew he needed to calm himself down quickly, or he might loose control of himself. He was so

frustrated!

He had been

so close! So fucking close!

He needed to calm down. He needed to relax. He closed his eyes and tried to slow his breathing and push his angry magic back down inside.

It wasn't working.

He took another deep breath, trying to remember what it felt like to have Voldemort's fingers combing through his hair, and as soon as he successfully brought the memory to the surface, he felt some of the tension leaving him.

He continued to focus on the imagined feeling of long slender fingers trailing across his scalp, and the steady sound of the Dark Lord breathing during his meditation exercises and Harry finally felt like his head was clear enough to think again.

One thing was for sure,

that

prophecy was not the exact same as the one that Voldemort had heard. He'd also gotten one more line from it than Voldemort already knew.

And the Dark Lord will come for him and mark him as his equal.

Mark him as his equal? Well, Harry

was

marked. That was probably referring to his scar. And while Harry held no delusions about being a magical equal to the Dark Lord, there was the fact that Harry possessed a portion of Voldemort's soul. Did that make them equal on some level? Since the soul and the scar were connected, perhaps that's what that line was referring to?

He

needed

to get the rest of it! He was going to have to find an opportunity alone with Trelawney and force some sort of situation where she couldn't get away from him until he'd gotten everything he needed from her mind.

Harry decided to visit Voldemort again later that evening and ask him for any advice. He could sense that he was on the brink of something huge, and now that he knew he could actually get it from her head, he wasn't going to give up until he had what he wanted.

The frustrating part was that he was going to have to wait a few hours because his earlier self was still at the manor, at that very moment, not having even apparated for the first time yet. Harry couldn't return to the manor until after his earlier incarnation had left, because there couldn't be two Harry's there at the same time.

Harry refocused, or at least

tried

to refocus on the class work. He spent the remainder of the class trying, repeatedly, to make eye contact with Trelawney, and not once succeeding in getting into her head. It was exceedingly frustrating.

After class let out, Harry and Ron made their way towards the Great Hall; meeting up with Hermione in the hall on the way. Harry stabbed at his food angrily while checking his mechanical wristwatch every few minutes, practically counting down to the time he had left the manor earlier.

"Harry, are you alright?" Hermione's voice came through, drawing his attention away from the mutilated potato on his plate.

"Huh? Oh yeah... just... tired."

"You seem really... distracted," she said, hesitantly.

"I just..." he foundered, his mind was too jumbled and preoccupied to come up with convincing lie to tell her. "I don't know what's up. I just feel antsy," he said, ducking his head and scowling at his watch again.

Fifteen minutes...

"You know... I think I really just need to go for a walk. I need to clear my head and sort out what's eating at me. Do you guys mind?" Harry said, giving them a pleading, apologetic look, hoping it would keep them from getting too suspicious.

Hermione and Ron shared a

Look, but then turned back to Harry and nodded. Hermione looked worried, but didn't say anything else. Harry packed up his bag and stood to his feet. He would start walking around the grounds towards the edge of the wards and portkey to the manor as his watch showed it was the same time that it had been when he'd entered the time-turner room, several hours earlier.

– –

Voldemort watched as Harry Potter disappeared into the time-turner closet and felt the exact moment the boy's magic disappeared from the manor. He had been impressed with how fast Potter picked up on the various lessons he had taught him. Once things had been explained to him properly, he could catch on quite quickly. He still had trouble wrapping his mind around some concepts, but he had an instinctive control over his magic, and once he started to

understand

the ideas, the magic obeyed his will without any resistance.

His development and control was on par with Voldemort's own education during his teen years. Faster even, but of course, Voldemort had had to teach

himself

most of these things when he was younger. Potter had the advantage of a proper instructor, so it was understandable that he would be catching on quicker.

Three lessons and Potter had already managed to appratate.

Voldemort grinned to himself before pausing and frowning. Was he...

proud,

of the boy? He was. How odd.

He turned and began to make his way up the stairs towards his study. Mixey would have dinner ready soon, and he wanted to get a few things done before –

The thought was suddenly cut off by the sudden reappearance of Potter's magical energy and the sound of a portkey popping in from behind him. He turned around and found Potter standing there with that wrinkled pucker in his forehead that he got when he was frustrated. The look was instantly replaced with a huge relieved smile as he noticed the Dark Lord standing there at the foot of the stairs. The intensity of the boy's smile, and the foreign feeling it inspired in Voldemort's chest, shocked him for a moment.

He quickly squashed it and gave Potter a questioning look.

"You're back awfully soon," he observed suspiciously.

"It drove me crazy having to wait until I knew my other self had already left. I got into Trelawney's head today in class! I found the prophecy but the bloody bint blinked and turned away from me before I could hear the whole thing!"

"You found it?" Voldemort exclaimed.

"Yes! It was there! But there is definitely something seriously fishy going on. I found it in the section of her subconscious where her mind stores all of her legitimate prophecies, and it had the exact same

feel

to it that the memory of the prophecy I heard last year about Wormtail, so I know it's real. The thing is that it was

in the Hog's Head! It was in Dumbledore's office! And the portion of it that I did manage to hear wasn't exactly the same as the one your Death Eater overheard. It was really close, but some of the wording was different."

Voldemort had to take pause at this. What did it mean?

"In what way was it different? Tell me the exact wording."

"Okay, it went, 'The only one with the power to match the Dark Lord approaches. Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies. The Dark Lord will come for him and mark him as his equal. He will...

and then I got ejected from her head by bloody

Ron Weasley

yelling at me. Trelawney blinked and then moved on to the next group. I wanted to curse the hell out of both of them."

Voldemort had stopped paying attention to Potter's grumblings as he went deep in thought over the changes to the lines. "The power to

match

the Dark Lord, not vanquish... interesting..."

"Yeah, I know! What the hell do you think is going on? You said you were positive that the one your spy had overheard was legitimate, but this one wasn't in a pub, and the wording is different."

"That last line is interesting too... mark you as my equal... well, I suppose its fairly obvious what that's referring to."

"My scar, and your soul."

"Precisely."

"I need to figure out a way to go digging through her head without interruption and without garnering suspicion. There's no way I can wait till next class. I'll go mental if I have to wait a whole week."

Voldemort looked thoughtful for a moment before speaking again. "Have you ever used any memory charms?"

Potter blinked. "Like

obliviate? No. I've never really had the opportunity try it out."

"Perhaps you can pay her a visit in her office, and use a compulsion spell to get her to sit still long enough for you to have a nice thorough dig through her addled mind. When you've gotten what you need, simply

obliviate

her and tell her that you came and asked her for help with some assignment, she helped you and you're done. Simple as that."

Potter stood there looking thoughtful as he considered the Dark Lord's suggestion. "I could try it. I was hesitant to do anything that extreme against a member of the staff... I was afraid it'd get noticed."

"Were it any other teacher, I'm sure it would, but that woman is an incompetent idiot. The only reason that Dumbledore has kept her in his employment is to protect her from

me."

"Okay, but I've never cast that sort of compulsion charm on someone before. I've cast

Pareo

on someone, but that's a fairly powerful dark obedience spell, and I didn't think I could get away with that one inside the castle wards. I've put some simple compulsion charms on letters that I've sent my

muggle

aunt to force her to actually answer my questions, but that spell only works when cast onto an object, not something I could cast directly onto Trelawney... although, I suppose I could just put that charm on a piece of parchment and hand it to her... then I don't have to have my wand out and put her on her guard."

"Either way. I could easily teach you how to do the other types as well. You really should know how to perform a few different compulsion and control spells."

"I get the theory and I know the spell for a standard compulsion charm, I just haven't had any way of practicing it. I was hesitant to try out any spells like that in a risky situation without knowing if I could properly cast it or not."

Voldemort looked thoughtful for a moment before a wicked grin spread across his thin lips.

"WORMTAIL!" He bellowed loudly. Potter jumped slightly at the sudden yell, but Voldemort noticed that the boy's expression quickly shifted to one of amusement and gleeful anticipation.

A few second later a sputtering, chubby, balding, man came jogging down a corridor looking anxious and worried.

"Yes, my Lord?" He said, as his eyes darted back and forth from the Dark Lord to Potter with suspicion and fear.

"You will aid us tonight. I need to instruct Potter on some spells so he can retrieve something for me."

"Yes, my Lord. Anything you need," Wormtail cowered as he dipped his head.

"Good. Potter, Wormtail, come," Voldemort said as he began to briskly stride towards one of the empty rooms that he and Potter had used a number of times for spell practice.

Potter followed with a rather menacing grin spread across his face, and Wormtail's look of worry only seemed to grow every time he glanced over and saw it.

"What are you smirking about, brat?" Wormtail hissed under his breath as they continued to walk forward. Voldemort was a good five feet ahead of them, but he heard the remark anyway. His eyes narrowed as he glanced over his shoulder as he considered reprimanding his servant for his snark.

Potter's grin only grew wider. "You're going to being playing 'lab-rat' tonight. I just think it's rather appropriate," Harry said, airily. Wormtail bristled and looked as if he were about to try and retort something, but Voldemort reached the door, opened it and turned to glare at the short fat man. Wormtail was instantly cowed by the look and remained silent.

"This shouldn't take long. I suspect Potter will catch on quickly enough," he said as he turned from them and entered the room. The two followed; Potter with a confident gait and Wormtail with a hesitant cowering step.

The lesson progressed smoothly enough. Wormtail was understandably hesitant to allow the two of them to throw compulsion charms and

obliviates

at him, but he wasn't about to go against his Lord's direct orders, so he submitted, just as Voldemort knew he would.

Mixey interrupted them twenty minutes in, informing them that dinner was ready. Voldemort allowed Wormtail a 'break' to told him to go eat his dinner in his room, while he and Harry took their meals in the dining room.

Potter was entertaining in his enthusiasm. He was fascinated with how the different types of compulsion spells worked and the way the magic felt to cast. The more the boy spoke of how his magic 'felt' to him, the more intrigued the Dark Lord was. Very

very

few wizards were as in tune with their magic as Potter was. The way that he, himself, was. It seemed that their magics worked very much the same way, which made the line about being equals from the prophecy that much more curious and intriguing.

After their meal, he called Wormtail back into the room with them and had Potter try his hand at theImperius

curse. He couldn't use it on the Seer, because the school's wards would detect the use of any of the Unforgivables, but it was important that the boy know how to perform it anyway.

The second Potter had cast the spell correctly – which also happened to be his first try at it – the Dark Lord was once again impressed with how adept the boy was the darker spells. He almost always got them on his first attempt. He watched as Potter's eyes glazed over a bit and rolled up into his head as a look of elated euphoria spread across his features for a fraction of a second. Potter recovered quickly enough and his face was covered with a wicked grin.

"Merlin, I love that feeling," he said while a small giggle erupted from his chest.

"Feeling?" Voldemort asked curiously as he watched the boy's behavior. He was beginning to form some suspicions about the boy's magic and it was slightly concerning.

"The Darker spells... they... effect me, I guess," Potter said, pulling himself together and doing a few deep breaths to compose himself. "It's kind of crazy. I mean, in the beginning, when I first started playing around with the Dark Arts, I would totally lose myself to this sort of...

crazed madness.

This... euphoric haze of insanity, I guess. But it feels bloody amazing. It's indescribable. Anyway, your bit of soul inside me? He told me I needed to keep practicing so that I could gain control over it, so it wouldn't control me so much. That's one of the reason I made myself do exactly

one hour

of practice every evening. But no more than that. Only one hour. I wanted to do more, but he – your er... soul – he told me that restraining the amount of time I did it was part of gaining control."

Voldemort nodded thoughtfully. It was still strange to him at times to think that the portion of his soul locked within Potter actively communicated with the boy, but he was glad now that it had. There was no telling what the boy's mental state would be at the moment if he hadn't reigned the madness like that. The boy was clearly addicted to his own dark magic, but he seemed to have it relatively under control. Voldemort himself had had to deal with a dark addiction in his youth, and it took him considerably longer to get a handle on it. He was going to have to take this into account once he really began the boy's dark art's training.

Potter refocused his attentions on the

Imperiused

Wormtail and began forcing him to do various acts of self-humiliation, while giggling maniacally. The boy was extremely amusing to watch.

Potter lowered his wand and his giggles subsided with a content-sounding sigh. "Well, I've now officially earned myself three life sentences in Azkaban," Potter said with a chuckle.

Voldemort looked over at him and rose a single curious questioning eyebrow. "What exactly is that supposed to mean?"

"Well, it's a life sentence for every one of the Unforgivables, right?"

"You've cast an Unforgivable before?" Voldemort asked, his interest peaked.

"I didn't tell you about Skeeter?"

"Skeeter?"

"Ah, I guess I didn't. Do you know who Rita Skeeter is?"

"Isn't she a reporter for the Daily Prophet? There's been several articles in it lately reporting that she's... missing?" Voldemort ended with a slowly appearing smirk.

Potter's grin began to grow again. "Yeah. She's the nasty bint who wrote all those articles on me. She's also the one who outed me to the whole bloody world. Thing was that I just couldn't figure out how the hell she found out. She practically quoted a conversation I had with Fleur Delacour, but she and I had been totally alone at the time, and I read Fleur's mind later on to confirm that

shehadn't been the one to run her mouth off.

"Right after the second task, I saw this big ugly water beetle in Hermione's hair and snatched it up, intending to flick it away or just squish it. But as soon as I touched it, I sensed a wizard's magical aura, so I stuck the beetle into a small magical container and kept it in my pocket till I could investigate it.

"Long story short, it turned out that Rita Skeeter was an unregistered animagus, and her form was that of a small beetle. No one knew she was at the school,

that she could turn into a tiny bug, so I figured there was almost no risk at all of anyone ever connecting her disappearing to

me. So I took the little bug down into the chamber, forced her back into her human form, and used her as my own personal test subject. There were

so many

dark spells I'd been dying to try out on a real, living, person, but I hadn't been able to. Throwing spells at a giant dead snake is only so fulfilling. After a while it's just not very satisfying anymore." Potter ended with a bit of a pout and Voldemort barked a small laugh.

"So you used an Unforgivable on her?"

"Two. I used

crucio

a couple times, and holy shite what a rush! I can't even describe how...

wowthat was. I can see why it's so damned popular."

Voldemort smirked. "Yes, I've always been extremely partial to that one.

"Yeah, well, I basically just kept throwing stuff at her until she was no longer recognizable, and when I was finally satisfied that I was done with her, I used the killing curse. Worked on my first try."

"You're lying."

"Nope. I swear to Merlin, I got it on my first go."

"Smug little prick."

"How many times did it take you to cast the killing curse properly?" Potter asked, with legitimate curiosity in his eyes.

"My second casting."

"That's still bloody amazing. I mean, everything I read made it sound like I'd have to cast it dozens of times before I even got close to casting it properly."

"Most are unable to cast the killing curse. They simply do not have it in them."

"Well, you and I clearly do," Potter snickered.

They resumed the lesson and by the end of the hour Voldemort was sufficiently pleased with Potter's progress. He was sure that Potter would have no problems in getting the prophecy from the Seer now. He dismissed a disoriented Wormtail back to his quarters and walked Potter back to the time-turner room, still speaking the entire way there.

Potter acted as if he were on some sort of sugar-rush and was talking far more than he usually did. It was curious and yet also mildly amusing. His youthful enthusiasm was almost contagious, and Voldemort found himself snickering at the boy's jokes more than he would normally allow himself.

"Hey, if you ever decide that Wormtail has worn out his usefulness, do you think there'd ever be a chance I could obliviate the last year from his mind and hand him over to the Ministry?" Potter said as they walked down the hall.

Voldemort paused and gave the boy an incredulous look. "Why the hell would you do

that?

I thought that if you ever wanted to do anything with him, you would want to just

kill

him."

"Well, I'd love to do that too. Hell, I'd

really enjoy

that. But if I hand him over to the Ministry and can get my godfather cleared."

Again, Voldemort looked at the boy with a sense of confusion.

"And why, exactly, would

I

want Sirius Black cleared? You do realize that he was one of my more annoying opponents, don't you?"

"Was he really? Well, I guess he was an auror, wasn't he?" Potter said. "I guess, it's just that if he was cleared he could get custody of me and I wouldn't ever have to worry about someone trying to force me back to the Dursley's."

Voldemort scoffed quietly. "I sometimes forget that you're still so young. What does it matter if those fool muggles retain custody? They have custody of you now and yet you have no intention of going back to them. What difference does it make?"

Potter shrugged. "I don't know... I guess it's just sort of residual hope from last spring when Sirius first asked me if I wanted to go live with him. I really don't need, or even really want it much now, but it's still there. Besides, you should see how he's living now. It's horrible. He's literally hiding in a cave, living in rags and filth and practically starving to death."

Potter paused and observed Voldemort for a moment before smirking and rolling his eyes. "Okay, okay! I get that you didn't like the man but you don't have to look so smug about that."

Voldemort rose a single daring eyebrow, which made Potter snort and begin to chuckle.

"I

may

take your request into consideration, but I pose you a question –" Voldemort began.

"Alright," Potter responded with a nod and giving the Dark Lord his full attention.

"If Black's name is cleared and he gains custody of you, he would expect you to stay with him during the summers, yes?"

Potter looked thoughtful for a minute and frowned. "Yes, he would."

"You can

persuade

your muggle relatives to permit you to go where ever you please, so you will be able to come stay at the manor this summer, however you would not be able to do such a thing with Black. You wouldn't be able to come here."

"Shit," Potter grumbled and then heaved a heavy sigh. "You're right. Well screw it. Anyway, I guess I should get going. I've already eaten up almost your whole day."

"Yes you have," Voldemort drawled, causing Potter to grin.

"I'll see you tomorrow after lunch," Potter said as he leaned over and hissed the password to open the time-turner closet. "My free period is second block tomorrow; before lunch, so I'm going to try and visit Trelawney then. I don't think she has any morning classes, so I should be able to get in to see her."

"Good. I will expect a thorough report tomorrow."

Potter grinned and nodded his head. "You bet." He turned and slipped inside the closet while waving.

"Goodbye Harry," Voldemort said quietly as he saw the door begin to close. He caught the flicker of surprise from the boy's eyes from the open crack as the door slid closed.

A moment later Harry's magical signature disappeared and Voldemort once again felt that strange empty sensation that something was

missing.

He huffed out an annoyed breath and turned away from the room. He needed to catch up on his tasks, so he quickly strode towards the staircase and up to his study.

– –

Harry climbed up into the Divination classroom and looked around. It was deserted, but he had expected as much. He'd overheard Lavender Brown speaking with her friends on several occasions about how Professor Trelawney refused to have classes before noon because of some ridiculous excuse about the inner eye or auras or something, that was really just an excuse for her refusal to get up before ten am.

He had

also

heard Lavender mentioning the divination groupies gathering in Trelawney's office before lunch for tea and biscuits on frequent occasion.

Harry strode across the divination classroom to the door in the back that he knew led to Trelawney's office. He turned and pointed his cypress wand at the hatch in the floor that was the entrance to the classroom and cast a quick locking spell on it. Next he turned to the office door and gave a gentle knock.

"Come in," came Trelawney's dreamy voice from the other side. Harry pushed the door open and quickly strode inside.

"Morning Professor," Harry said in a smooth, confident tone.

"Mr. Potter?" She blinked at him through her magnifying specs in obvious surprise and confusion before trying to rework her expression. "Ah, I was wondering when you would be coming to see me. I've Seen your desire to visit me for some time now."

Harry grinned. "I'm sure you have." He turned his back on her and pushed the office door closed, As he turned back to face her, he pulled his wand up and pointed it right at her.

"Compellere,"

he said in an authoritative voice as he aimed his wand at her head and focused his will upon her.

It was a relatively mild compulsion spell, that depended a great deal upon the wizard's personal strength and skill to be truly effective. Because of this,

wizards couldn't use it to force a person to do anything outside of their own reasonable will. This also meant that the spell was only just barely on the dark side of gray. Not a neutral spell, but still low enough on the list to not register with the wards as a dark art.

Harry pressed his will upon her with all his strength and watched as her eyes glazed over and a dumb little smile appeared on her face.

"Good, Professor. Very good," Harry said in a calm soothing voice as he walked over and sat in the chair opposite her desk. "Now you're going to sit there and look me in the eye and you're not going to blink until I'm done. Do we have an understanding?"

"Oh, yes, of course dear. Anything for my favorite student."

Harry made a slightly disturbed face, but pushed past it as he looked into her eyes and quickly slipped inside her mind.

– –

Disclaimer: Don't own Harry Potter. JKRowling does.

First

Beta Pass

by Clemex

– –

When Harry arrived in the Manor he was already out of breath from having just raced through the castle, across the grounds, and towards Hogsmeade until he'd finally reached the edge of the wards.

He appeared with a now practiced ease and instantly resumed his fevered race up the stairs and towards Voldemort's study. He burst through the door with clenched teeth, and barely restrained fury. Voldemort

instantly

sensed the boy's anger and stood to his feet just as the other entered the room.

"THAT LYING, MANIPULATIVE, DECIETFUL BASTARD!"

Harry bellowed as he slammed the door behind him and began to pace back and forth across the front half of the room.

Voldemort relaxed against the front of his desk and folded his arms across his chest as he observed the clearly furious boy standing before him.

"HE, HE... ARGGGH! I CAN'T FUCKING BELIEVE IT!" He continued as his arms flailed in the air in angry violent motions. "Everything! Every fucking thing was – was... FUCK! He did it all! It was all fucking Dumbledore!"

"Am I to understand that you discovered the prophecy?" Voldemort said as Harry's ramblings ebbs slightly.

"Oh I fucking found it alright!" Harry snarled. "Both of them!"

Voldemort pushed himself off the desk and rose a single questioning eyebrow. "Explain."

Harry snorted, but not in humor – in disgust. "The one that your spy saw? Fake. Big, fucking FAKE. Dumbledore put Trelawney under the bloody

Imperius

curse. The real job interview happened up in his office a day earlier, and while there, Trelawney made a

REAL

prophecy. But the

real

prophecy didn't exactly sound all that promising to the old goat, so Dumbledore implanted the suggestion that the interview hadn't happened and that she was to come back for the interview the next day and then he used the fucking

Imperius

curse to make her go into a 'trance' and reenact the the 'prophecy' but replace it with one of his own wording. The one your spy witnessed was fabricated by Dumbledore in one of his

elaborate fucking manipulations!"

The Dark Lord's eyes began to glow with a ruby red fury and his rigid posture barely concealed his inner anger. "I want to see everything you've seen. Come with me," Voldemort said as he quickly walked towards Harry and then past him, out the door. Harry followed behind, still fuming in his own right. They went to the room on the third floor filled with the strange assortment of magical items, where Harry had picked out his Cypress wand.

Voldemort went over to one of the cabinets and pulled out a large ornate basin and set it on the table in the center of the room.

"Are you familiar with pensieves?"

"Only vaguely," Harry admitted in a more subdued voice. The powerful raging fury had been stoked and by his swirling angry magic, but now that he was in the Dark Lord's presence, he felt his magic swirling much more tightly around him. He was still angry beyond words, but he felt more in control of it, which was a bit of a relief. He focused on the dark lord as he quickly explained the technique necessary for pulling out a specific memory from his mind and within a minute Harry had his cypress wand to his temple and was extracting his memory of his visit to Sybil Trelawney.

The two dipped their heads down to the pensieve at the same time and were instantly surrounded by the feeling of falling, instantly replaced by suddenly standing in headmaster Albus Dumbledore's office.

The office was very much the same as Harry knew it to be; only a few things were different. A number of the strange silver devices that puffed little wiffs of smoke, and made erratic clicking sounds were absent in this earlier version of the headmaster's office. Harry was pretty sure that at least one of the things he took note of being missing were actually used for monitoring the wards on Privet Drive, so it made sense for them not to exist yet in this memory.

Harry turned to his right and saw the Dark Lord in all his glory standing beside him, looking around the room with mild interest. Sybil Trelawney was sitting in the chair opposite the desk, while Dumbledore sat in his overstuffed chair. Trelawney was already in the middle of going on about her experience and her hereditary qualifications. Dumbledore looked visibly bored, but was putting forth a legitimate effort to feign interest.

"I managed to track this memory down after almost a solid twenty minutes of digging through her mind," Harry said quietly to the Dark Lord standing beside him. "It seems that Dumbledore was hesitant to do any really powerful

obliviations

against her. I think he was afraid if he messed with her head too much he might screw up her gift or something," Harry said, rolling his eyes at the word 'gift'.

"That's a reasonable concern. If she had made one legitimate prophecy, she could be capable of making more. If he cast too many powerful mind altering spells on her, it could easily prevent any future prophetic visions from manifesting properly," Voldemort mused.

They waited for about twenty seconds more when Harry spoke again, "This is it. This is where the memory switches over to the prophetic vision that was stored in her subconscious with her other prophecies."

Trelawney went rigid and her eyes fogged over, completely white. Her voice went down several octaves as she began to speak in an eerie voice.

"The only one with the power to match the Dark Lord approaches...

Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies...

The Dark Lord will come for him and mark him as his equal.

He will have two paths from which to chose. From one path, the End will fall upon us all. From the other, we shall be saved.

The Dark Lord and his Equal will either rule together, or destroy each other.

For either to die, it must be at the hand of the other for neither can die while the other survives...

"

Dumbledore stood there, staring at Trelawney with a stunned, dumbfounded look, rarely seen gracing his features. Trelawney came out of her trance, coughed a few time and looked rather confused.

The memory began to dissolve away then and was slowly replaced by a new one. Trelawney was entering the Hog's Head and speaking loudly to the bar tender that she had a very important appointment with the Headmaster. She introduced herself, loudly, as Sybil Trelawney, great-great granddaughter of the great seer, Casandra Trelawney. She was being about as unsubtle as a person could be.

A rather noteworthy thing about the memory was the strange purple haze that everything had.

"The Imperius,"

Voldemort observed.

"That's what I thought too," Harry said, nodding his head. "The whole memory reeked of theImperius

curse. It just has that

vibe

to it."

The two followed as Trelawney was lead up the stairs into one of the private rooms, where she waited for a minute before Dumbledore himself showed up. Again, they went through the motions of the boring-ass interview and Harry glanced over at Voldemort. "Is there a way for me to fast-forward the memory? Or do we have to stand here through the whole thing?"

Voldemort snorted. "This is not a muggle video recording, Potter. Just have some patience."

Harry sighed and leaned against the wall, waiting for the moment when Trelawney shifted into her trance and began to recite the false prophecy.

"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches...

Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies...

At this point, Harry heard a scuffle from just beyond the door, in the hallway, and if he glanced over at Dumbledore at that moment, he could see a noticeable disapproving frown.

...and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not...and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives..."

As soon as the prophecy was done and Trelawney was coughing herself into clarity again, there was a knocking on the door and the bar keep of the Hog's Head appeared there, with a firm grip on the forearm of a much younger looking Severus Snape who was scowling at the man, angrily.

The bar keep informed Dumbledore that he caught Snape eavesdropping in the hallway, and it was just about that time that the memory began to fade away.

"So Snape was your spy?" Harry asked with absent disinterest as the pair stood there for a moment.

"Yes."

The two suddenly felt themselves 'falling' up and then found themselves back in the room on the 3rd floor, standing before the table with the pensieve on it.

"He orchestrated the false prophecy in a public place with the intent that it be overheard," Voldemort said suddenly.

"He didn't look pleased when that scuffle started in the hallway during Trelawney's performance," Harry observed.

"Clearly not. But I still got enough of the prophecy to take the action he desired of me..."

"He

wanted

you to come after me. To kill me," Harry said darkly as he scowled angrily at his clenched fists.

"Clearly.

The Dark Lord and his Equal will either rule together, or destroy each other.

Obviously he would rather we destroy each other than rule."

Harry snorted humorlessly.

"For either to die, it must be at the hand of the other for neither can die while the other survives...interesting..." Voldemort mused.

"He obviously hoped that if you killed me, it would somehow destroy you, or make it so that you could be killed. The part about you not being able to die while I lived is what probably led him to that conclusion. Although it also sounds like the only way for you to die is if

I

do it... or for me to kill you at the same time that you kill me? Sounds ridiculous, honestly... I'm also curious – I mean, saying that you can't die while I live makes sense because... well,

it's true.

But the prophecy makes it sound like

I

can't die while you live either."

"I've actually been thinking about that a while now. I suspect that there may have been some unintended effects from my using your blood in my resurrection ritual."

Harry looked up with a blank expression. "Unintended effects?" he echoed in confusion.

"I cannot say for sure the full extent of the effects at this time... while I do not think that the protection that your blood existing in me gives you, is quite as potent as the protection I have by a piece of my soul being inside you, however I suspect that it is possible that they may be similar."

"Are you saying I may be immortal?" Harry asked with a stunned expression.

"Slightly

resistance to death, is more likely."

Harry snorted. "Interesting way of putting it."

"Well, it is obvious that he orchestrated the false prophecy in the hopes that my attacking you as an infant would bring about my death..."

"And when

I

didn't end up dead, he must have figured that you couldn't

really

be dead either," Harry added.

"Since you were now 'marked' it only led additional credence to the prophecy."

"And the whole part about me having two paths –" Harry said.

"Yes. He probably saw that you had the potential to being a huge threat to his agenda. However according to the prophecy the only way for me to truly die was by your hand."

"So he tried to orchestrate my entire childhood. Control everything from behind the scenes. He wanted to try and make sure I went down the path that

he

wanted. That I would fight against you and kill you, instead of joining you."

"In his deluded old mind, he's probably convinced himself that the line about 'the End falling upon us' as being the outcome if you join me," Voldemort said then with a scoff. "Blind old fool."

"Yeah, I was wondering about that line," Harry said, turning his full attention on the Dark Lord. "He will have two paths from which to chose. From one path, the End will fall upon us all. From the other, we shall be saved.

I remember you thinking about the End-of-Days a few times during my visions earlier in the school year. That you had some sort of task...?" Harry let the sentence draw out in an unspoken question. The Dark Lord turned and glared at him through narrow eyes.

"Have you had any more of these visions of yours?"

"No. I'd tell you immediately if I had one," Harry said with a slightly annoyed tone at having his question diverted.

"My...

task

is complicated. Perhaps we will speak of it later, but at the moment we have other more pressing matters to discuss. Namely, this

prophecy."

Harry gave a resigned sigh and slouched against the table he was standing beside.

"Alright so... well, it seems to me like most of the important stuff has already come to pass. I was born. You marked me as your equal. I've chosen my path already. I'm with you. Whether that leads to the end of the bloody world or our salvation, I guess only time will tell, although I suspect thatyou

may have some insight on

that."

Voldemort rose a single challenging eyebrow, but did contribute anything.

"So the rest of it... it says that you and I will either rule together, or destroy each other. I... well, I never exactly expected to be ruling by your side. You're the Dark Lord,

not me.

I still don't really buy into this 'equal' business."

"Yes..." Voldemort said in a slow, drawn out drawl as he looked off into the room with a thoughtful expression on his face.

"And finally the last line that goes 'For either to die, it must be at the hand of the other for neither can die while the other survives...'

but we already discussed that,"

Harry finished with a huff before looking thoughtful himself and beginning to scowl angrily again. "Bloody manipulative, lying old bastard.." he muttered under his breath.

Voldemort snorted. "Yes, quite. He even got

me."

"Hmph... Although I wonder if any of this would have ever even started if he hadn't? I mean, if he hadn't made up the fake prophecy and made sure it got to you, somehow, then you wouldn't have come after me like you did. If you hadn't come after me, your soul would have never got lodged in me, and I never would have got my scar. You wouldn't have become immortal and I wouldn't have been 'marked' by you."

"Most prophecies are often, in some way, self-fulfilling. They require someone to know about them, and believe in them, for them to have any real power..." Voldemort said in a contemplative voice.

"Then why the hell did you come after me in the first place? If acting on it posed the risk of giving it real power?"

"It was a risk I was willing to take. It seemed idiotic and reckless to allow someone who was prophesied to be able to

vanquish

me, to go on, when I had the opportunity to destroy him when he was still weak and defenseless."

Harry sighed and shrugged. "Can't fault your logic." Another silent minute passed and with each passing second, Harry found his mind swirling around more and more angrily at the idea of what Dumbledore had done to him.

"ARGH! I just want to fucking

curse someone!"

Harry exploded.

"Don't be so juvenile."

"Oh please! You can't tell me that you never called in some Death Eaters and started throwing around curses just because something had pissed you off and you needed to blow off some steam?" Harry shot back.

Voldemort actually grinned and chuckled quietly. "I

may

have done that a time or two."

"I can't believe you're not more angry!"

"Oh, I'm certainly angry," Voldemort said, airily. "I am exceptionally angry that he attempted to manipulate me into destroying myself. The damned old fool doesn't even have the honor to try and take me head-on. And instead of being

honest

with you, and simply informing you of your supposed destiny and

trusting

you to make what he deems to be the 'right choice', he chose, instead, to manipulate you into choosing his path. Despite how infuriating all of this is, from my perspective, it is far from surprising. This is how Dumbledore has

always

operated. The fact that it is so very

in character

for him, is what has dulled my outward response."

Harry turned his head away and glared angrily at the floor for another long minute. Voldemort watched as Harry's jaw clenched and flexed and his hands made tight, white-knuckled fists.

"I HATE him." Harry hissed out in a deadly, angry voice.

"So do I."

Harry's head turned up and his eyes locked with the ruby eyes of the Dark Lord. "If I go back now, I'm liable to throw a killing curse at him the second I see him."

"That would probably not be very wise."

"How far back can that time-turner go?"

"Twenty-four hours."

Harry's breathing was heavy and he was pulling in long sharp breaths through his nose as he held is jaw tightly shut.

"Can I stay here? I mean... all day? Not go back? I

seriously

suspect that I would end up hurting someone if I went back to the school right now. I just... I can't... I can't go back there right now. I can't... deal with

them

– Any of them. I'll just blow up and curse the daylights out of someone. I can't... I can't... I

need

to –"

"I don't doubt it," Voldemort said as he sensed the violent waves of angry dark magic

pouring and sizzling

off of Harry. He could feel Harry reaching a breaking point, very soon.

"Is that a yes?" Harry asked, shortly, as he looked back up and once again stared the Dark Lord in the eyes.

For the briefest moment, Harry's face softened and took on an almost

pleading

look, and Voldemort felt a strange tightening in his chest The Dark Lord nodded slowly. His response came out in a much softer and understanding tone than he ever used with anyone, but that somehow managed to slip out in that moment. "Yes, Harry. You can stay."

The shift in Harry's face and demeanor at the acceptance of his request and topped off by the use of his first name, and the soft tone it was spoken in, was instantaneous. He couldn't possibly put any sense to the flood of emotions that coursed through him in that moment. The wall that he had built up came crumbling down and everything just poured out. The grief, the horror, the anger, and absolute fury. The tremendous sense of betrayal and deceit. It had been crushing him. Suddenly the wall of emotions was replaced with relief, gratitude, and acceptance. The knowledge that he wouldn't be forced to go back to that damned castle where he had to pretend to be someone he wasn't, and play nice with all the people who did nothing but piss him off. Or at least, that he wouldn't have to go back right away... He knew he just couldn't deal with it. He just didn't have the strength in him.

Not after what he had learned. What was once a a semi-crazed theory in the back of his mind had become undeniable fact, and his mind and body didn't seem to know if it wanted to scream and rage, of collapse to the floor and cry.

He felt like his whole life had been a lie. The whole thing was constructed by Dumbledore with the intent that Harry would end up throwing his own life away in the role of a martyr for a world he had barely experienced and who were constantly turning on him. That he had been grooming Harry with the intention of him just dying in the end. And then there was the fact that Dumbledore's actions had honestly and truly been what brought about the death of Harry's parents. It wasn't just a matter of 'oh, they died and then Dumbledore stuck Harry with the Dursleys' – No, Dumbledore had brought about their demise on his own. They had been sacrifices that he had decided were worth it for his greater good. He had sacrificed Harry and his parents, and when Harry ended up surviving it, he had thrown him to the

muggles

to break him.

It had always remained true that Voldemort had cast the actual killing curse upon Harry and his parents, but it had been Dumbledore – literally – that had painted the targets on their backs and whispered into Voldemort ear that he needed to go after them.

Some distant part of his brain felt his knees giving out as the mental and emotional exhaustion began to take over. He had been operating on adrenaline and some sort of shock. Absolute

fury

had driven him forward like a mad man and suddenly all of that fury drained out of him, leaving him feel weak, tired, and utterly spent.

His knees hit the floor and his body slumped forward slightly, but he did not fall any further. His shoulders shook with silent, restrained sobs that he wouldn't allow to come. Part of him loathed the idea of appearing weak in front of the Dark Lord, but another part of him felt that this was the only man in the world who he could be himself around. The only man who understood him; the only man that he could honestly

trust.

His world was spinning and his head felt heavy and pressured, like it was in a vice. At some point the tears he had been fighting so desperately to restrain had broken free of the dam and were now spilling out over his cheeks.

It was all just too much sometimes. Too much for one young man to handle. Too much to deal with. Just

too much...

Suddenly, and without any warning, the pressure, and the spinning, and the huge heavy weight that had been pressing down upon him vanished with powerful rush of warmth and

rightness

as two arms wrapped around his shoulders and pulled him against the other person's chest. Harry felt himself burying his head into the neck of the other man as his body continued to shake and shudder from the sobs that had at some point, completely overtaken him. The sensation of being held by the other man was so incredibly reminiscent of being held by his companion inside his mindscape, but this was just so much

more.

So much

better.

This was

real. This was warm and soft and comforting. And he smelled so wonderful. His voice was smooth and calming and reassuring.

The other man's hand began to run through his hair in a soft, caressing gestures that overwhelmed him with it's gentleness.

At some point, his own arms had wrapped around the other man's waist and he was clinging to him desperately. Utterly unwilling to release the man who was providing him with such comfort.

To let

Voldemort

go.

His sobs finally began to still and he felt his body calming down as his breathing became slower and steady again.

He sniffed as he pressed his closed eyes against Voldemort's shoulder, and pulled in another deep breath of the intoxicating scent.

Holy shit... what am I doing? And more

importantly... why is he letting me?

Harry stilled and slowly,

very slowly,

released the Dark Lord and pulled away. He rose his head up and hesitantly brought his eyes up to meet the other man's gaze. He had no idea what he had expected to find there, but what he saw startled him. The eyes were surprisingly soft. There was honest concern in the other man's face, although it was quickly subdued as Voldemort sighed and ran a hand through his shiny black hair.

"Better?" Voldemort asked.

Harry slowly nodded his head.

"Can you stand?"

Harry swallowed the thick lump in his throat and nodded his head again. "Er, yeah, I think so," he rasped as he began to shift and stand.

Voldemort offered a hand and Harry reached out and took it, allowing the Dark Lord to pull him to his feet.

"Thank you," Harry said, ducking his head in embarrassment over having so utterly lost control of himself. "That was stupid of me. I should have better control of my emotions than that..."

"You are still young, Harry. I realize that this must be quite a lot for you to be faced with."

"It shouldn't be. It's not like I didn't already suspect things were about this bad," Harry said, shaking his head and scowling lightly at himself.

"Having suspicions and being faced with proof are two different things. Besides, it would seem that reality has proven to be even worse than your previous suspicions."

Harry closed his eyes and focused on pushing all of the thoughts and emotions out of his head and trying to just concentrate on clearing his mind.

"Come on, Harry," Voldemort's voice broke through his focus and startled him again by the casual use of his first name. He opened his eyes and blinked at the Dark Lord. He nodded his head with detached blankness, but felt his whole body relax wonderfully as he felt Voldemort's hand rest on the small of his back and begin to lead him out of the room.

Why was the Dark Lord acting this way? Why was he treating him with such gentle kindness? It was almost confusing enough to distract his mind from the overwhelming insanity of what he had discovered that morning. But not quite.

Harry finally realized that he wasn't being lead towards the stairs, but rather away from them. Another moment later he was standing in front of an unfamiliar door. Voldemort reached out and pressed the palm of his hand on the center of the door. There was a quiet

click

and then Voldemort reached down and pushed open the door.

He took a few steps into the room, still relishing the feeling of the man's hand rested against his back when he finally took in the room and came to an abrupt halt.

"Your bedroom?" Harry whispered.

"You need to rest. You've emotionally exhausted yourself," Voldemort said easily. "I can perform my meditation exercise here while you rest."

Harry turned and blinked at the Dark Lord. That strange concerned worry was still in his eyes, but it was accompanied by a look that told Harry that there was no arguing with this. After a stunned moment passed, Harry nodded his head and allowed himself to be lead forward towards the enormous bed in the center of the room.

"Rest," Voldemort said in a commanding and yet still surprisingly soft tone. Harry nodded his head numbly and found himself mindlessly slipping off his trainers and climbing into the bed.

He lay on top of the covers, but found the bed as a whole to be exceedingly comfortable. His head sunk into the pillow and he was instantly met with the scent of Voldemort, surrounding him. His whole body melted in utter relaxation and calm. He could see the Dark Lord sitting down on the floor in the same position he always performed his meditations in and could hear as the steady, even breaths became the only sound audible through the open, airy room.

Within moments he was asleep.

– –

What the hell was that?

Voldemort huffed quietly and relaxed his position. He wasn't getting anywhere with his meditation. His mind was too busy churning over the prophecy, and his body and emotions were to busy being confused by his powerful reaction to Potter. To Harry...

Damn it.

He could hear Harry's even breathing from the bed. He had fallen asleep rather quickly, but that didn't surprise Voldemort any considering how utterly spent the boy seemed. He wondered how long it had actually been since the last time Harry had allowed himself a good cry.

He'd sensed it coming before even Harry had. He could tell that the young man was on the brink of totally breaking down by his body language and the erratic nature of his magic as it swam around him. He was honestly surprised that Harry had remained coherent and rational for so long before that. He had been able to analyze and discuss the possible meanings behind the prophecy quite easily; but Voldemort suspected that he had just been running on adrenaline at that point. Once the rush died out, Harry had crashed, and he had crashed hard.

It had been shocking to Voldemort how affected he had been to witness the young man's melt down. He could not recall even a single time in the past where he had felt the honest need or desire to comfort someone. But he had felt it with Harry. He had

needed

to do it. Needed to hold him. To try and help calm him down and ease his pain.

Voldemort did not

ease people's pain.

He caused it.

Once again he was faced with thinking about the nature of the connection he had inadvertently created between the two of them. Soul magic, and blood magic were two of the oldest and least understood branches of the dark arts. They were rarely predictable, and use of them was fraught with unintended side-effects.

He realized now that he most definitely felt something for the boy. Something he had never felt for anyone else in his entire life. Terribly protective of him.

Proud

of his progress and achievements. And definitely possessive. He cared about Harry's well-being, and not just because he held a piece of Voldemort's soul. It was more than Harry being a horcrux and wanting to keep that horcrux protected. He wanted

Harry

protected.

Seeing Harry so utterly miserable had filled him with the strongest, most inexplicable need to

make it better. It was so utterly

unlike him

that it was almost frightening. He was growing incredibly attached to the young man, and for entirely irrational reasons. Logically, he knew he needed to put a stop to this. He trusted Harry too much, and trust was dangerous.

But perhaps he

shouldn't

fight it. The prophecy made it sound like having Harry standing by his side would aid him in his task. They would prevent the End of days. Could this young man really make the difference? Could he be what was missing before? Why he could never seem to accomplish his ultimate goals?

The Dark Lord and his Equal will either rule together...

Was Harry his

equal? No, not yet. But he could be. The young wizard had the potential to be everything the Dark Lord was; Voldemort had sensed it within him. And with the piece of his soul, lodged within him, there was even the potential that he could...

Could it have become Harry's destiny to

share

his task? Was that even possible? Never before had there been two at the same time...

He shook his head. He needed to focus on his meditation. He was so close to breaking that final barrier and being able to perform the transformation. Once he could take on his alter-ego appearance he would be calling his Death Eaters back to him, and he could truly begin to set things in motion.

He would deal with his confusion around Harry Potter later.

– –

Harry woke to sunlight pouring across his face. He blinked a few times in confusion, taking in the scene around him. Instead of his four-poster with red and gold hangings, he was in a huge, king-sized bed with ornate mahogany-carved headboard, and an emerald bedspread. The blanket and pillow he found himself laying upon was probably the finest silk he'd ever touched, and it made him just want to bury his face in it and go back to sleep.

He turned his face into the wonderfully soft fabric and took in a deep breath. Despite he having laid on it for however long he'd been there, he could still instantly detect the Dark Lord's distinctive scent in it.

Harry instantly sat bolt upright as it all came back to him in a sudden rush.

He had gone to Trelawney and forced her to sit there in a sort of a trance while he sifted through her mind. He had found the prophecy and then followed a mental strand along to the faked one that Dumbledore had concocted to fool Voldemort's spy.

Voldemort's spy...

Snape!

He had meant to bring that up earlier, but with everything else, it had just slipped his mind.

Not like it really mattered... Was that why Snape hated Harry so much? He knew that Harry was supposedly prophesied to be the vanquisher of the Dark Lord? But that still left the question about Snape's true loyalties. Hermione sort of had a point with her insistence that Dumbledore wouldn't keep Snape around unless he either trusted him, or rather, unless he had a use for him. So what did Dumbledore want with Snape? Was Snape loyal to Dumbledore like Hermione thought, or was he loyal to the Dark Lord? And if he was still loyal to Voldemort, did Dumbledore realize that? Did he still hope to use Snape to feed the Dark Lord with disinformation? Was that why he kept him around?

Harry pushed those thoughts aside. There were far more important matters to worry about.

Harry looked around the large, posh room and found that he was alone. He reached out with his senses and he could sense that Voldemort was almost directly below him. Harry assumed that he was probably in the study.

Harry quickly climbed out of the bed, turned and tried to tidy it up some before striding quickly out of the room. Once he had reached the second floor, he'd determined that the Dark Lord was

in the study, but actually in the library so he made his way there. He felt some hesitation building in his chest as he drew closer. He recalled his melt-down earlier, and how wonderful it had felt to be held by the other man, but now he felt exceedingly embarrassed by the whole thing. Not to mention confused by the fact that Voldemort had actually made the effort to comfort him.

Harry swallowed his nerves and pushed open the doors to the library. It took him a moment to locate the Dark Lord in large room. Towards the back, by a large window were a few overstuffed chairs and a chaise lounge. Sprawled out on the lounge was Lord Voldemort, himself. Harry couldn't help but think that he looked regal sitting there. He was lounging, casually, leaning against the reclined end of the chaise with a book in his hands, one leg bent up while the other was stretched out along the length of the chaise. He looked so relaxed and comfortable sitting there. Harry had long since become accustomed to seeing the Dark Lord as a

man, and not the iconic demi-god of legend; yet still, moments like this always seemed to drive the fact home for him.

He felt a warm feeling in his chest, seeing the man sitting there in such easy comfort. He felt such a strong, and strange affection for the Dark Lord. But he was so much more than just 'the Dark Lord' to him. He wasn't just his lord and master, he was... other things as well. He had become something of a mentor, but also a... friend? That was an odd thought. And it didn't feel quite right. It wasn't sufficient enough a word. It didn't adequately live up to the feelings that filled him when he thought of the man. Harry found himself unable to properly put words to what he felt for the Dark Lord. Everything was happening so fast and it was confusing.

"Don't just stand there and gawk. Get over here," Voldemort's voice called, breaking through Harry's thoughts and causing him to realize that he'd been standing in the doorway of the library staring.

Harry ducked his head and grinned as he began to hurry across the room. As he reached the collection of seating he paused and looked at his options. There were a couple free armchairs free and yet he found the place he

wanted

to sit was actually the floor, beside the chaise. He would be closest to Voldemort there and the Dark Lord would have easy access to Harry from there.

Couldn't he always explain the action away as an act of respect? Submission to his Lord? Sitting beneath him? That was a reasonable excuse, wasn't it? It sounded more sane than of acknowledging that he was doing it because he wanted to feel the man's fingers running through his hair.

Pushing his way past his thoughts, Harry quickly slid down to the floor and propped his back up against the chair.

"Feeling better?" Voldemort asked after a silent moment. His voice had the same, sharp, short tone that it always featured, but there seemed to be an underlying softness to it. As if he honestly cared if Harry was feeling better. And Harry honestly felt that the Dark Lord

did care.

It was strange, but it filled his chest with that warmth again and he found himself smiling softly.

"Yes... much. I'm sorry I had a melt-down. Sobbing on you like some blubbering girl. It's honestly quite embarrassing."

"I'm sure it was," Voldemort said after making a lightly amused noise in his throat. His tone shifted to a far more serious one a moment later, though. "Feeling sorry for ones self is inevitable on occasion. What is important is that you get over it

now.

Self-pity is pointless and it is a waste of time. Do you understand?"

"I do," Harry said with a determined voice. "And you're right. I know. Sitting around and moping about how utterly Dumbledore has fucked me over won't do any good. I can't fix all the things he's screwed up because they've already happened."

"Exactly. Moving forward is all we can do. We take what we've experienced and what hardships we've had to endure, and we learn from it. We grow stronger from it. Self-pity is

worthless. Take your fury and anger and focus it into motivation. Use that to drive you in your studies and in your goals."

Harry sighed and nodded his head. A moment later he felt the long slender fingers of the Dark Lord as they began to run through his hair and he smiled. He felt his body melting into the side of the chair as the fingers rubbed calming waves of the Dark Lord's ever-present magical aura.

"I really needed this," Harry admitted with a relieved breath. Voldemort remained silent, but kept his fingers gently combing over Harry's scalp. "Thank you so much for everything. You do so much more me... I don't deserve even a fraction of the things you do for me," Harry whispered after another long, quiet, moment.

"Oh, do shut up, Harry. You do more for me than you realize."

Harry was startled by the response. He wasn't sure what was more surprising – what the Dark Lord had said, or the fact that he was still using Harry's first name instead of having reverted back to calling him 'Potter'.

"Do you have any of your homework here with you, or do you need me to fetch you something to read?"

Harry blinked and his mouth floundered for a moment. He looked around and realized suddenly that he didn't actually know where his bag was.

"I'm not actually sure if I brought anything with me," Harry admitted slowly. "I was in a bit of a hurry to get here. For that matter, I'm not even sure what I did with my bag..."

"I believe you left it in the study after you exploded in there ranting about Dumbledore being a manipulative bastard."

Harry nodded his head slowly, feeling Voldemort's fingers follow the movement and then smiling when he felt the fingers grip his hair lightly and pull him back against the side of the chaise to pull Harry's head back into a reasonable range of his relaxed hand.

"I could summon my bag to me, but I don't think it's really got anything in it I could work on."

Voldemort sighed and removed his hand from Harry's hair long enough to pull out his wand, give it a quick flick, and summon a book from one of the many bookshelves in the room. It came flying across the room and landed directly in Harry's lap. A moment later, Voldemort's fingers had re-threaded themselves in Harry's hair and Harry was cracking open the book. It was an introductory Arithmancy book and it made Harry smile to think about the Dark Lord's promise to tutor him on the subject that summer to help prepare him for transferring into the class.

It wasn't exactly the most interesting subject, but Harry knew that it could be dead useful in the creation and modification of spells and rituals. A strong understanding of Arithmancy was necessary for setting wards, and was even useful in curse-breaking. Harry had never been a big fan of numbers, but he definitely acknowledged that if he wanted to be a truly powerful wizard, he would need Arithmancy. He cracked the book open and began reading. And with the Dark Lord's help, he would hopefully succeed without too much frustration.