"Can Lethifolds be green?" Marvolo calls through the door.
"Sometimes," Harry admits. "It's rarer though. I used to have a green one before you got to them."
The door is wrenched open and Marvolo jabs a finger behind him at the dark green cloth spread out across the foot of the bed, pretending to be innocently decorative.
Harry lights up. "Oh, wow, the little guy survived."
Marvolo scowls and stomps past Harry, who immediately slams the bedroom door shut when the Lethifold tries to say hello by throwing itself forward.
"I'm sleeping in your room," Marvolo says, already wandering around Harry's bed, his voice floating back into the hallway.
Harry quickly throws up some wards around the Lethifold's new enclosure and hurries into his bedroom. "Okay, let me get my stuff."
"You're sleeping with me," Marvolo orders. "I don't do light spells and only a Patronus can make it stay away… without obliterating it."
"I put up wards," Harry protests, but stops trying to collect his pillow. "It's not getting out."
"Yes, because I trust you," the Horcrux drawls sarcastically, stalking around the room and frowning at the pictures of friends and family up on the walls like he's so above the concept. He lifts one red and gold picture frame and narrows his eyes at a scared looking Weasley family who lean away from his fingers.
"Clearly," Harry begins, tossing the pillow down. "Otherwise you wouldn't want me in the same room you sleep in." He rushes over and rescues the picture, placing it back onto the wall hook.
Marvolo sighs and wanders off again. "I trust you to save yourself, and thus by extension; me. It will be automatic if you wake up and find a creature hovering over you, but if you're on the couch and I call, you can very easily ignore me."
"I wouldn't- "
"Do we honestly need to have a trust talk?" Marvolo says over Harry's protests, flicking a Golden Snitch off a bookcase without any shame. "Because it's always going to be the same answer."
"It'll take time. Rome wasn't built in a day," Harry says with patience he doesn't feel, picking the Snitch off the ground and setting it back onto the shelf.
"It was."
Harry blinks. "Oh. Never mind then."
Marvolo rolls his eyes as he blatantly walks up to the closet and steals some of Harry's clothes to sleep in. He turns to find Harry climbing into the bed and frowns.
"Um, no," the Horcrux says. "Your place is the floor."
Harry purses his lips but he really should have expected that.
Marvolo wakes to heavy body flopped over him and soft snores muffled into his shoulder.
"What the actual Merlin damned Hell?!" Marvolo blurts out, throwing Harry off him and onto the floor.
Harry startles awake when he lands and rolls to his feet quickly, looking around and locking onto a pissed of Marvolo who's sitting up on the bed.
"How is that even possible?" Marvolo snaps, incredulous. "Even if you somehow didn't wake me up from getting on the bed, I would have heard your snoring!"
"Cheated with magic," Harry admits. "It's cold on the ground, but I couldn't leave because I thought you would be scared if you woke up alone."
"Then use a bloody heating charm you incompetent, pathetic excuse for a wizard!" Marvolo snarls. "And I would not have been scared, fuck you very much!"
Harry shrugs and then climbs into his makeshift blanket nest on the floor, sleepy now that the panic is gone.
"Ridiculous," Marvolo hisses and climbs out of the bed, making sure to kick Harry in the ribs when he passes.
Harry grunts and mumbles something about 'rude soul shards' then starts snoring again before Marvolo even leaves the room.
Harry wanders into the kitchen, a few neon feathers sticking out of his hair from feeding the rather excitable creatures upstairs. "Do you know if I watered the Kappas?" Harry asks.
"Hold on," Marvolo mutters, eyes still focused on the newspaper. "Let me just check my 'Harry Potter's Every Movement' diary." The Horcrux is now dressed in Harry's clothes, the high-end ones that Harry was only keeping for formal occasions.
Harry hums. "I think I'll do it again, just in case." He searches under the sink and produces a watering can that he then tucks under the tap and starts filling. "By the way, why call your first Horcrux a diary instead of a journal?"
"Is there a distinction?"
Harry shrugs. "Journal is manlier."
Marvolo pauses and lowers the newspaper to stare directly at Harry. "At that age, I found a centuries old Basilisk, murdered a girl, and quite literally tore my soul in half. The thought of caring whatsoever about 'manliness' in my notebook is so far below me that I'm actually confused as to why I'm even responding to you right now."
Harry shrugs and turns off the water. "I mean I would have called it a journal."
"…Go water your Kappas before I drown you in your own blood," Marvolo orders.
Harry cheerfully lifts the watering can and heads down to the second basement. By the time he comes back up, Marvolo is gone and Harry decides to have a cup of tea while nothing bad is happening.
"Harry!"
The wizard sets down his tea when he hears Marvolo call for him and quickly darts out of the kitchen to hunt for the younger male. He finds the Horcrux pretty easily in the living room, the man standing on a chair that's planted firmly over a squirming piece of dark green cloth.
"I thought you said you had it secured," Marvolo says in irritation, tilting back and forth to steady himself as the chair wobbles from the Lethifold thrashing around.
Harry frowns. "Look, not a lot of study has been done about these guys. I didn't even know if Fiendfyre would kill them until you... demonstrated."
"Then give me the wand I'll deal with it," Marvolo hisses.
Harry opens his mouth to say a firm 'no, I don't want you to burn down my house' but the Lethifold then decides to heave upwards and throws both Marvolo and the chair off it. The chair topples over onto its side but Marvolo leaps off and lands on the back of the couch like a particularly murderous cat.
Harry whips up the wand. "Expec-"
The Lethifold charges and Harry hits the ground, the cloth flying over him. When he looks up again, Marvolo is jumping off the couch and landing beside the coffee table. He lifts the large book that sits there and hurls it across the room.
The Lethifold get Hogwarts: A History to the face -kind of- and sails back under the force, hitting the ground with a loud thump. Marvolo snarls and out comes the dagger, bleeding black in rage, and the Horcrux advances on the Lethifold.
"Whoa, whoa!" Harry cries, springing up and darting in front of the angry Dark Lord, his arms out.
The Lethifold cringes back and flips the book off itself before squirming under a three-seater couch.
"It's fine," Harry says in panic. "You scared it, it's done, please put the knife away."
Instead, Marvolo tackles Harry to the floor and tries to gouge out the older wizard's eyes with a very sharp and very poisonous blade.