The dark lord was angry. He was more than angry, he was sleep deprived. The damn boys nightmares have been keeping him awake for weeks. Why did he have to force the bond open last year? It had caused nothing but problems, and nightmares. Something had to be done.

'Wake up, Potter'

Miles away, at 4 Privet drive, Harry Potter moaned and rolled over on his bed, clinching his pillow over his head.

'I said wake up!'

"What the…!" Harry shot up from bed panting for breath. The nightmares were nothing new, he had been having them since he returned from Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry for the summer. But he could of sworn someone had been talking to him from his dream. But that wasn't possible.

'It was just a dream' he told himself as he laid back down in bed. Not that he would be getting any more sleep that night. He could never get back to sleep after his nightmares.

'Thank Merlin, perhaps I could get some sleep now' someone said from inside his own head. Harry's eyes snapped open.

"Who's there?" Harry called out, his voice verging on panicked.

'No one is there' The voice answered, definitely coming from inside his own head.

"Great, now I'm going crazy too, as if being the savior of the wizarding world wasn't enough."

Voldemort briefly played with the idea of convincing Potter he really was insane, but truthfully he was to tired for any plots right now.

'Not crazy, Potter, but talking to yourself isn't a good sigh. Not shut up, I'm going to sleep. Your nightmares have been keeping me up all night, even dark lords need sleep.' The voice in his mind sounded annoyed, and sleepy, if a voice inside your own head could be sleepy. Wait, did the voice just call itself…?

'What!? IT'S YOUR FAULT I HAVE NIGHTMARES!' Harry shrieked in his head.

'No, not all of them. Who is the fat boy?' Harry sighed, he was to tired to think of the ramifications of conversing with his arch nemesis in his head.

'Dudley, my cousin.'

'The one you live with? Why would you have nightmares of him chasing you a punching you?' There was a tinge of interest in the dark lords mind voice.

'Because that's what he does, okay! I'm a freak, he punishes me for it!' Harry was getting exasperated. This was not a conversation he should be having, and yet he couldn't seem to stop himself from replying. Voldemort seemed to hear his thoughts as soon as they formed and Harry had no way to block him from his mind. But no reply came and Harry had a sense that the uninvited visitor in his head had left to find his own sleep and dreams.

Eventually Harry got out of bed with a groan. There was no use in laying around, he wouldn't be able to sleep again. Out the window he could see the sun starting to poke out over the horizon. He might as well get up and start his chores for the day. It was the day before his 16th birthday, and if he finished everything early enough he might be able to get some sleep before his presents arrived at midnight tonight.

He dropped onto his bed at 8 that night, he had finally finished everything his aunt and uncle had assigned him that day, even the last minute nonsense they had thought up on the spot. He was so tired it didn't take long for him to drift off to sleep.

Harry was running through the graveyard, Dudley close behind him. No matter how fast he ran he couldn't seem to put any space between them. In face Dudley seemed to be getting closer. Harry tried to dodge around a headstone but one of Dudleys giant fists grabbed the front of his shirt and forced his back against a stone monolith. His face twisted in a nasty snarl as he began pummeling Harry.

"You like this, don't you? You know this is what you deserve. You're nothing more than a freak of nature." Dudleys words hurt more than the fist that cracked against his jaw.

'Time to wake up, I think.' A dark figure was striding elegantly across the grass towards the pair of boys, his robes and cloak blowing in the breeze.

'I said WAKE UP!' The last words were yelled so loud they reverberated inside Harry's head. The graveyard flickered out of existence and was replaced but the plain white ceiling of his small bedroom.

'It's very hard to focus when I have you screaming inside my head.'

'I'm sorry, I hope I didn't interrupt anything important.' Harry snapped.

'Only death eater reports. I suppose they have you to thank for cutting the meeting short.'

'I'll be sure they thank me the next time I see them, if they're not too busy trying to kill me'

'Why, I believe you are angry with me, mister Potter. Why might that be?'

'Maybe I don't enjoy you rolling around in my head. Did you ever think I would want you to see my nightmares? Do you think I even want to talk to you!?' Harry was shouting in his mind by the end of his sentence, but he couldn't help it. The nerve of some people. Who was Voldemort to go waltzing around in his dreams and waking him up whenever he pleased.

'Don't you think I would block the connection if I could? Trust me Potter, I have better things to do than be an audience to your pathetic nightmares.' Harry could feel Voldemort's annoyance. At that moment there was a hesitant tap at the window. Harry looked over and saw Hedwig waiting to be let in. She was laden down with packages but she looked almost shy, like she knew she was interrupting something.

'Could she know I'm having conversations with a voice instead my head?' Harry thought. 'God, my life is so weird.' He hurriedly open the window for her when he saw what the owl was carrying.

'Presents!' He thought. He could swear he heard Voldemort chuckle. He had almost forgotten about him in his excitement.

'Open your presents' Voldemort told him. 'Happy birthday.'

Harry spent the rest of the summer at the burrow. His nightmares were lest frequent there and when they did occur Ron usually woke him before they got too bad. Occasionally Harry would see the dark figure in his dreams, or hear his voice prodding him gently to wake. There was non of the annoyance he felt before, getting a full night of sleep seemed to do wonders for Voldemort's mood, but he never spoke to Harry when he woke. When he was first awakened by Voldemort, on his third night staying at the burrow, he had waited for him to say something, but nothing happened. It made Harry uneasy, but he eventually fell back into a restful sleep. And so his new routine began. Ever few nights he would have a dream that either didn't wake Ron up, or Ron couldn't wake him from. It was then that Voldemort would appear, dressed in black robes and cloak, with the hood pulled lower over his face, and rouse Harry from his dream. Harry tried to talk to him, (simply out of curiosity, it could be important in the war, after all) but he received no response. He couldn't even feel the tell tale tingle in the back of his head that he had when they had conversed before. And eventually Harry would grow tired of screening into his own mind, and drift back to sleep. Perhaps Voldemort had grown board decided to leave him alone. But then why did he still wake him? And why did that thought upset him so much? Perhaps he had imagined the whole thing? Maybe he really was crazy. That thought made him so upset Harry hardly spoke with anyone for 2 days. Why should it matter if he had spoken to Voldemort. Why did he care so much?

But the truth was this mystery was the only thing Harry seemed to care about. Sure, he played quidditch and wizards chess with Ron and did his school work when Hermione came to visit, but he couldn't quite bring himself to actually care about any of it. He only partially listened when Ron and Hermione talked and rarely contributed anything to the he never mentioned anything about his conversations with Voldemort to them. He didn't think he could explain how he felt about it, he couldn't explain it to himself, let alone his friends. But no one seemed to notice his mood, or if they did they ignored it. And Harry heard not a peep from Voldemort.

It wasn't until his first night back in Gryffindor tower that Harry heard from the 'voice inside his head' as he had started calling Voldemort.

'I see Dumbledore got you back safe and sound for another year.' Harry started. He had just laid down in his four poster bed and was starting to drift to sleep when he heard the voice.

'So your talking to me again?' He asked

'After our last conversation I was under in impression you didn't want to talk to me.' Voldemort replied smoothly.

'I didn't, and I don't.'

'Ah, and that's why you were so moody all the time. It was almost like you missed me.' Harry could swear Voldemort was teasing him.

'How could I miss you, I hate you.'

'No, you don't Harry. I'm well acquainted with hate and I didn't feel any hate coming through the bond since we first spoke.' That shut Harry up.

'Ah, so the great Albus Dumbledore never told you we have a bond?'

'He might have mentioned it.' Harry replied, quickly trying to think of everything Dumbledore had ever said about his connection to Voldemort.

'When you tried to kill me as a baby, you messed up. Dumbledore calls it a connection.'

'I messed nothing up' the voice hissed in his head. After a moment it continued. 'I don't know why it happened, I researched it for months but found nothing like the bond we share. It seems to be unique.'

'Dumbledore thinks you put some of yourself in me. That's why I can speak parseltongue and see your dreams and feel when you experience a really powerful emotion.'

'That is… an interesting theory.' Voldemort seemed lost in thought for a moment. 'No wonder he calls it a connection, if he believes that's all it can do. But make no mistake, Harry, what we share is a true bond. It is much deeper than what Dumbledore imagines.'

'What, so we can talk through it to? Big deal, it only works one way.' Harry thought back, thinking of all the times throughout the summer he tried to gain Voldemort's attention and failed.

'Ah, but it's not. You can speak with me whenever you want, you just have to use the bond.'

'Very descriptive, and how do I do that?' It's not like Harry cared anyway, this was pure curiosity.

'Look inside your magical core, that's what keeps the bond alive.' Harry sighed. It was useless trying to get anything out of Voldemort. His magical core, what rubbish. But still, just in case, he closed his eyes and took a calming breath, just as Snape had taught him for occlumency. He searched inside him, and sure enough, just beneath his skin, was a burning mass of power.

'That's my magic?' He asked

'Yes, you are quite a powerful wizard, Harry. This is where your magic lives, inside you, waiting for you to call it it. Go deeper now.' So Harry did, and in the center of that mass was a rope. Harry prodded it with his mind.

'Very good, potter! Yes, that is the bond that links us. Now use it to speak to me.' Voldemort instructed.

'Like this?' Harry asked

'How is this any different than what I did before?' And then

'oh'. Harry could feel Voldemort. Where before he had only been a presence in the back of Harry's head when they spoke, Harry could now feel the pride and satisfaction and relief coming through the bond.

'very good, Potter, having to strain to hear your mind was giving me a headache. Talk to me through the bond from now on, it will be easier for both of us.'

'So I can talk to you whenever I want now?!' Harry was giddy with excitement.

'Yes, but that does not mean I will always listen or reply. I am a very busy man after all. Occlumency does not work on bonds, but I can still block you from coming across so strongly.'

So that's why my occlumency lessons didn't help last year, Harry thought. It wasn't because Snape was sabotaging me, it was because Voldemort and I have a bond. Oh shit.

Harry had just realized that Voldemort could probably still 'hear' everything he was thinking. 'Don't kill Snape, please' Harry begged through the bond.

'Why would I hurt Severus? What were you just thinking about?' Voldemort shot back.

'You can't hear my mind anymore?'

'No, I'm not straining to read your surface thoughts, your thoughts are your own, but I can still feel your emotions. So tell me, what has you so panicked about Severus?' The last line was delivered in a slow hiss.

Harry thought quickly and decided on a half truth.

'I was just thinking about occlumency lessons with him last year.'

'Ah yes, he told me he was ordered to teach you occlumency. Apparently you didn't take to it too well, Potter.'

Harry needed to change the subject, fast.

'Well no, and would you stop calling me that.' He snapped. He could tell Voldemort was taken a back.

'Call you what, Potter?' He asked.

'Yeah, that. You've called me Harry before, why did you switch back?'

'Very well, Harry. Go to sleep. I have it on good authority your new defense teacher has it out for you.' Harry smiled at Voldemort's joke. Seeing as Snape was the new defense teacher he knew he was in for a rough year in that class.

'Goodnight, Tom.' Harry teased, feeling lighthearted. He felt the irritation through the bond, but it seemed resigned as well.

'Goodnight, I would wish you sweet dreams, but I'll make sure they are.' And with that Harry drifted off to sleep.

Harry woke the next morning feeling warm and content. He stretched lazily. He couldn't remember his dreams, but they had left him feeling refreshed and happy. Definitely no nightmares. Had Voldemort sent him sweet dreams, as he said? And what about all those nights at the burrow, when he had slept peacefully after being woken up by Voldemort. Had he been sending him happy dreams then, too? But then why hadn't he responded when Harry yelled to him? This was all too strange. It was almost as if Voldemort was looking out for Harry. He must be going crazy. He was hearing voices in his head and he had lost his mind. But when Harry checked the bond it was still there, and he could feel Voldemort sleeping on the other end.