Banging. Banging. Petunia banging on his cupboard, demanding that he get up and earn his keep for once, the lazy freak. Maybe if he went now he could try to sneak something to eat as he made breakfast. But when he'd tried to nibble some extra bacon yesterday, he thought as he quickly pulled up a pair of Dudley's cast-off pants (where was that string he'd been using for a belt?), Vernon had caught him and forbidden him lunch and dinner. September first couldn't possibly be fast enough in coming. (There it was, in the corner under two grubby socks that Grawp should have been using.) At least at Hogwarts there was only Voldemort, Snape, and pretty much everyone else to worry about. But none of them had the power to deny him basic sustenance.

Harry quickly ran a hand through his disheveled hair, trying to smooth it down and make it presentable so Petunia wouldn't try to take her pinking shears and chop it all off. (She refused to use her scissors on his hair after the last time she tried to cut it and they ended up covered in brown gloop. The stuff hadn't come off for a week, despite all her desperate scrubbing with the green Brillo sponge.) His hair wasn't ever going to be good enough, but Petunia didn't seem to notice, as she was busy with Dudley, trying to take his mind off the fact that he couldn't go visit his friends. Today he had to go in to work with Daddy for a father-son-day, now wouldn't that be fun? The answer was a resolute and resounding "No!" Well, Harry reflected, at least Dudley knew how to stand up for himself, if nothing else. Just saying 'No' wouldn't be a problem for him. Ever.

"Boy!" Vernon barked at him from behind his newspaper. "Go out and weed the garden! We've guests coming this afternoon!"

Harry ground his teeth and headed outside, into the foggy, cool air of early morning Surrey. He shivered. It was bound to warm up - the sun would torch Harry's already-tan arms - but until then he was cold. He wrapped his arms around himself and went into the spidery shed to find the gardening materials he'd grown so close to over the past summers. He dragged them out onto the sidewalk in front of the garden. He got to work. At least the plants didn't yell at him.

Except suddenly they were – they were screaming at him and he could hear them faintly through the earmuffs Professor Sprout had given him before he had it buried in a pot of dirt. Ron gave him a grin and a pat on the back as he moved to do one of his own. Mandrakes were awful.

*********

Harry grumbled and rolled over, pulling his scarlet, Gryffindor covers with him. It was late. They'd gotten in from their Astronomy lesson at midnight and everyone had tumbled, exhausted, directly into bed. Harry, too, had been feeling fried, and had collapsed just as gratefully as everyone else. But now he couldn't sleep. It seemed like no matter how he turned, something was always poking at him. Except that couldn't be, because he'd run his palms irritably over his mattress to search for quills, or discarded essays, or whatever, and found only mattress.

There was plenty on his mind. Maybe it just wasn't a night for sleep. Of course, he'd gone through it a hundred times already with Ron and Hermione, how Hagrid couldn't possibly be the person who released the monsters 50 years ago, and where the Chamber of Secrets was or wasn't, and what they were going to do, exactly, when Hermione finished the Polyjuice potion. But for all their talking, arguing, and planning, they didn't seem to get very far. About all they knew definitively, only reinforced by their last defense lesson, was that Lockhart was a moronic mass of oozing drivel and shouldn't be in possession of a wand, ever. One thing Harry and Snape agreed on.

Harry flipped again, sparing a small thought that he wasn't disturbing any of his dorm-mates. He tried to get comfortable. His back itched. He scratched it, moved to lie on his stomach. He twisted. Stretched.

"Bloody hell," he mumbled as he sat up and rubbed his eyes tiredly. He could go to Madam Pomfrey, he supposed, and have her give her some Dreamless Sleep, but she'd ask more questions than he could count before she'd actually give him anything. Hermione would tell him to study, or work on part of their current predicament. He sighed and blinked in the semi-darkness, and then his eyes alit on the journal on his night table. Sure. A chat with Tom was always pleasant, if sometimes frustrating.

Whenever Harry tried to get him to help with Chamber of Secret stuff, Tom either gave him cryptic little puzzles in reply, or clammed up and wouldn't say anything useful. Maybe, Harry thought, Tom was just nervous about it. Merlin knew that all the teachers, who must actually know at least the lore behind it, wouldn't tell them anything. But Harry would bet that if the Chamber were opened in another 50 years, most of the students in his year wouldn't talk about it either. So Harry didn't exactly blame Tom.

And for all that, he wished Tom could come out of the pages of the book. He helped Harry with homework sometimes, and was so bloody good at all of it. Proofreading essays Hermione didn't have time to read, catching mistakes, and making Harry rewrite the really bad ones, sometimes. His marks in Potions had gone up a lot since Tom had started tutoring him.

Carefully, he picked up the journal, muttered a silencing spell, and opened the cover.

Hey, Tom. Harry wrote on the page he had opened to.

Hello, Harry.

******

It was cold. Harry squirmed, trying to wrap the blanket tighter around him and get some feeling back in his toes. The warming charm Hermione had cast on him when he'd gone to sleep had worn off. Harry peered through the darkness to see that Hermione, too, was shivering in her sleeping bag, but a whispered spell had Hermione sleeping peacefully and Harry quite a bit warmer. He wriggled his toes, relieved that the ache was fading.

He sighed, rolled onto his back, and stared blankly up at the roof of their tent. It was early. The sky was lightening, at least enough that the branches of the trees overhead were silhouetted against the dawn. Harry watched as the wind pushed the limbs together, then apart, as if they were all engaged in some intricate, yet inexplicably simple, dance.

How long was this going to go on? Harry felt chewed, like he'd been sent through a mill somewhere and was half ground-up. And, while he was furious with Ron for leaving them, well, he missed him. When they'd started this whole escapade, he'd been the one who would make the jokes, and make them laugh. Harry fingered the locket around his neck. No one had been happy, of late.

"Ouch!" Harry rolled over quickly out of his makeshift bed, trying to find what had bit his back. He rested on his hands and knees and combed the blankets for… whatever it might have been. But there was nothing there. Huh. Harry glanced over at Hermione, wondering if something had woken her up to.

Hermione wasn't there.

Harry found himself face-to-face with a pair of frighteningly familiar grey eyes that stared, unblinking, into his. He leapt back and groped for his wand as his mind reeled. How did Tom Riddle find them? What had he done with Hermione? If he was here, where was Voldemort? But Harry was wearing pajamas, and his wand was nowhere to be found.

Wandlessly, he did his best to throw up a shield. In his confused state, at least he could still do a damn good Protego. He stood behind it, arms crossed, feet firmly planted on the floor as he glared at Tom. He was sitting, watching Harry, mouth pursed – how could he be looking so concerned? – beside where Harry had just lain in the bed.

"What'd you do with Hermione, you filthy, rotten bastard?" Harry looked around as he stumbled backward, panicked, trying to figure out where he was, and where Hermione might be. There was a door, closed. Rain bombarded a window that seemed to overlook green fields.

Tom blinked at him like he was trying to find the right words. Lord Voldemort, speechless! Ha! "Harry, you've been a bit... out of sorts lately." Tom's hands came forward, reaching for Harry. "Everything'll be fine, but you have to calm down."

What the hell? Harry must have fallen asleep when he was staring up at the trees. Merlin, Harry marveled, what was his subconscious thinking to dream about being in bed with Tom?

He fled out the door.

***********

Harry had been dreading this from the moment he realized he was awake this morning. Aunt Marge would be visiting. Accompanied by the loyal love-of-her-life Ripper.

True to form, the instant Ripper got a whiff of Harry's scent, he tore down the hallway and started barking at the cupboard's door. Harry was made to come out, and as soon as he cracked the door to peek around it, Ripper started growling, low in his throat. His teeth terrified Harry, but Vernon's snarl was worse, so he dragged his scrawny form out of his cave and Ripper leapt, snatching Dudley's cast-off shirtsleeve in his mouth. He dangled there for a moment, Harry screaming and shaking his arm and running for the front door, before the dog's teeth ripped the fabric and fell off, dragging the whole shirt with him. Harry fled down the street, looking behind him with every few steps, hoping he could outrun Ripper's yapping jaws. He ran all the way to the street the bus drove down, spurred on by growls and barks and if he could get just a little farther!

Somehow Harry found a small burst of speed and in another moment he found himself perched on a huge stone wall outside of a mansion, or something. Harry wasn't sure exactly what the house was, except that the wall kept him far away from Ripper, who was drooling rabidly and jumping, trying to rip Harry's heel off his leg. Harry pulled his legs up and wondered why there weren't any passersby. And why hadn't Aunt Marge come to get her sweet little dog yet?

Harry was pretty thirsty, and it was hot on top of the wall with the sun brushing his bare shoulders, and he wanted to get down but no matter where Harry went Ripper followed just beneath. Harry lay back on the wall, head pillowed beneath his hands, and shut his eyes, trying to ignore the ferocious barks and howls coming from beneath him. He was relieved when Ripper's barks turned into little whines and the sun went behind a cloud. Yeah, it was almost nice.

At least until he felt a tongue lapping at his face.

He opened his eyes onto bright sunlight, surprised to find himself staring into a pair of black eyes, accompanied by the pink tongue of a giant panting black dog.

"Padfoot!" He wrapped his arms around Sirius's neck and burrowed his nose in his fur. "I'm so glad you're here!"

Except, a minute ago, Harry hadn't been here, lying on plush grass in front of the lake. Had he? Harry sat up and black eyes stared up at him as he carded a hand through messy fur. "Padfoot, I'm kind of confused about things." He shut his eyes and took a deep breath. "I'm worried I'm–"

"–not going crazy, I promise. Relax. Everything'll be fine."

Harry gasped and his eyes snapped open, only to be met by wide grey eyes gazing into his. Soothing fingers brushed through his black mop. Or they would have been soothing, except that they were his fingers – the same ones that had killed his parents, and Snape – the same fingers that had tried to kill him! And now they were stroking his head, and massaging the back of his neck, trying to get him to relax. Harry took a deep breath and squeezed his eyes shut and willed himself away, but the hand stayed where it was, patiently easing the knots out.

Harry bit his lip, squinted to see –

"Hermione!" Suddenly the hand was removed. They were deep in the dungeons somewhere. It was very dark.

"Oh, Harry, I'm so glad you're awake! Can you move your head? We have to make sure your spine's healed properly–" Harry nodded and raised one of his hands.

"'Mione, something awful's happening! Voldemort's inside my head, and he's controlling everything, and I don't know what to do! I've seen you, and Sirius, and him and he touches me and I-" Hermione looked like she was about to cry.

"Harry." She swallowed. "Harry, if we get out of this alive, we can do some research, but... Things are pretty bad right now, worse since you were injured." She shook her head. "Hogwarts's wards still won't let him on the grounds, but the Death Eaters are wrecking everything, and reinforcements have arrived."

Harry didn't really want to know what she meant, but her voice was steady as she continued.

"There's vampires and werewolves, and a whole bunch of giants, and they're slaughtering everyone. And we think there are Dementors coming soon."

Harry blinked, nodded, and stood up. Fine. But too fast, and his head was spinning–

"Too much Legilimency can be... problematic. Drink this, Potter, and we'll start again."

Harry eyed the yellow gloop in the vial offered by pale, too-long, potion-stained fingers. Exhausted. Hating Snape, hating Dumbledore. Hating Tom. Wondering what the hell was happening!?

"Professor, I think-"

"Drink, Potter!" Those eyes and that sneer and the billowing black cloak that somehow managed to swirl even surrounded by the stillness of Hogwarts stone. He reached for the vial, tilted his head back, tried to swallow it all in one go, and ended up choking a little, bent on the floor, coughing. Gasping for breath for a moment or two, before-

"If you're quite through with these histrionics?"

Harry wheezed and stood up on shaking legs, wand out.

"Legilimens!"

Harry keeled over as he tried desperately to Occlude, but Voldemort ripped through his feeble wall and then his memories – flashes of the Dursleys, long chats in the diary with Tom, searching, sleepless and frozen, for the Horcruxes, Ripper chasing him around Little Whinging, and wow had Cho's lips really felt like that, and Harry saw Padfoot's happy face getting closer and closer and goddamn if Voldemort had any right to be doing this, any right to have killed his parents, any right to attack Hogwarts, to kill his friends, be in his head, to be dragging out these memories, any right to be breaking Harry like this, and he was through with putting up with his bullshit but there was no way Harry could possibly push back against him, no way, but Harry sent a part of himself, a desperate wrecked part that was trying to avoid a replay of Ron's head exploding, Harry sent that part around Voldemort's presence and into him instead, and then they were both surrounded by neglectful women at the orphanage, and so much anger, and an ever-jolly (except now he was dead) Dumbledore, saying that he was sorry, but the Defense position was to be filled by another applicant, and oh Merlin Godric's Hollow, and so much pain, and then so much glee when the Dark Mark was on the first arm, and wow having a body again yes, but why was there a noisy stupid bulldog in the graveyard and why was there a balloon or maybe it was a person floating over the gravestone over there and Dumbledore died so beautifully but what was the Mirror of Erised–

Harry sat up, screaming, gasping, batting away the blankets and hands that threatened to suffocate him. He hung his head in his hands, rubbing his eyes with his palms, wondering what the hell was making that squealing as he tried to catch his breath. A moment, one more, and it subsided, replaced by a hand rubbing circles on his back. What the Hell? Harry turned to the hand's owner. Wide grey eyes. His breath hitched.

"You're not real. I made you up. I don't know why I made you up because you killed my parents and you're evil but somehow we're both here, at least some of the time because I must be going crazy, and we have to find a way for us both to not be here because this isn't okay!"

Harry's panicked gaze searched Tom's face for any sort of response. Confusion and sadness, nothing else. The hand kept rubbing loops while the other pressed a flask into his palm. There were other vials on the nightstand behind Tom's head. Harry shifted and Tom's fingers slipped away.

"Drink. It'll help."

Harry glared. "Where are we?"

"Home."

Harry blinked. He'd never had a- "Where?"

Tom looked taken aback. "You don't remember?"

Harry gritted his teeth.

Tom swallowed and took a breath. "The deed was in my Gringotts vault. After my trial I was allowed to have my key back."

Harry snarled. "They should've chopped you up in tiny little bits, slowly, so you could've felt a tiny little bit what it felt like to be tortured until you don't even have the strength to weep, Voldemort."

Tom sighed, reached out, but Harry flinched back.

"Harry... This would be easier if I showed you Pensieve memories. Harry, I was never Voldemort. Sure, I thought about it, and maybe I would have liked to then, but not anymore! I never was, and never will be and..." The pause was so long Harry would have thought Tom had fallen asleep except that his eyes were still open. "Harry, I love you."

Harry recoiled even more at that admission. What the Hell! "H-How long have we, er, been together?"

"Almost a year."

Merlin! How could he possibly have shacked up with the Dark Lord!? He'd have to ask someone about this. Someone who'd know. Like Herm- oh. Or R- no. No. There was no one to ask. Everyone was dead. Everyone was dead because this bastard had killed them! Harry jumped up, hurled the potion at Tom, then followed that with as much wandless magic as he could do. Eyes blurred with tears, he blasted Tom with everything he had. Which was a lot. But Tom had a wand and when it was over, Harry found himself wrapped in Tom's long arms, sniffling into his ear. He smelled like almonds.

"Harry," Tom murmured. "It'll be okay. We'll figure this out, we'll work through it, I promise."

Together they moved to the bed and Tom handed him another potion. Saint Mungo's etched into the glass. This time Harry didn't question it, just swallowed. Sleep came quickly.

*******

Harry awoke in layers, cocooned in warmth and content. Taptaptap! At least he had been. He groaned and called a hoarse, early-morning "Come in."

Molly pushed the door open, holding a tray laden with food and put it on a small table beside the bed. She felt his forehead, rubbed his shoulder gently, smiling. "Feeling any better, today?"

Harry looked up at her blurry form, reached for his glasses on the bedside table. "What's happened?"

"Here, drink some tea." She dumped a heaping spoonful of sugar into it before she pushed it into his hands. "You've been frightfully ill – no one knew why and we were all worried sick! Mediwizards came from Saint Mungo's but they couldn't do anything." She poured syrup all over a plate of pancakes. Harry really didn't think he was this hungry. "Though," she continued, "they left that whole regimen for you to take – one a day." On the nightstand were a bunch of vials filled with various disgusting-looking potions. Molly continued talking and Harry sniffed. That smell. Smelled like...

Almonds.

"Do you smell that?" Harry interrupted Molly, a frantic look in his eyes.

"Excuse me, dear?"

"Smells like almonds."

She gave him a long look. "No, I don't smell anything. Are you still feeling sick?"

Harry shook his head and grabbed hold of her arm. "Molly, I think Voldemort's been possessing me, or something, because I can't stay in anyplace long and-"

She sat at the foot of his bed, brushed a hand lightly along his leg. "Harry, you killed him six months ago. You've been here ever since."

"If you'd just relax, everything's going to be fine." Harry was lying facedown on the bed. Tom was sitting on top of his legs, massaging Harry's lower back. Harry tried to shake him off, to roll over, but couldn't.

"This is not fine!" He flailed with his hands behind him and connected with something squishy. It shifted and grunted. "There is nothing about this that is at all fine!" Harry jumped off the bed and glared at a bewildered Tom, then started roaring again. "I'm going insane, and you're telling me to relax, along with every other person I've MADE UP! You're not REAL!" Harry's eyes got very big and very round as he stared at Tom. Somehow, he was getting taller, and the smooth planes of his face were wrinkling. His hair was lengthening, turning white. Had he had that beard half a second ago?

And then he was looking at a tired, wizened Dumbledore.

"Dumbledore!" Harry cried as he rushed to the Headmaster. "Thank-" But the ancient wizard lifted a hand and Harry halted, gasping. "Dumbledore, please do something! I-"

His white hair swayed as he shook his head slowly, sadly. Nothing to be done. He sighed.

Harry screamed.