(A/n Since there's been some confusion, there are songs at the beginning of each chapter. I'll list song names and artists from now on. This one is something's not right here, by OneRepublic.)

Come, come, my dear
Take flight, come near
I see your fear creeping around you
First love, then hate, then love, no, wait
Your confusion, it's gonna kill me
I broke for you, I woke for you
You taught me through, God love you,
I see the signs are out of line
No fault of mine
Except for don't say his name now

I'm breaking out, something ain't right here
You're falling out something ain't here

The scream, I burn
What's that, you say
Your cloud it's telling you lies now
You hear my voice,
You make some noise
You stole my choice
It's over now

He'd gone on two more raids since the first, and word was spreading that Harry was not in Saint Mungos, but somewhere much more sinister.

Of course it was heartily denied. Everyone was claiming that he was under the Imperious, that it wasn't even Harry but someone using the Polyjuice potion, that he had had his mind wiped, anything to help them sleep at night.

Though it was true that he wouldn't be here if he hadn't been cursed, it wasn't about to change. Voldemort wasn't about to tell him how, if he even knew, and even if he did, the Boy Who Lived didn't think he'd do anything about it anyway.

So he sat in his room between raids and waited.

The Dark Lord would occasionally stop by and stare at him, presumably to see how Harry would react.

And each time, Harry didn't even move or acknowledge his presence.

He didn't figure licking the barrier would help him any.

He'd taken to lying on the floor most of the time, imitating a starfish, staring at the ceiling.

This was once such time, and a voice startled him out of his thoughts.

"This is a sad sight. I'd heard you leave the door open." Harry rolled off the floor and faced the voice.

He recognised it. The mystery man from the raids.

"I know you. I told Voldemort that you need a promotion." He said, and the brown haired man grinned.

Harry thought he was pretty good looking. Dark brown eyes and hair the same shade, which hung just past his ears. His nose was thin and perfect, as if he'd never been hit in his life.

"Did you?" He laughed.

"What did he say?"

"He didn't know who I was talking about, because I pretty much said the smart guy with the mask." The man laughed harder and ran his hand through his hair.

"Well, I'm kind of offended that he didn't know who you were talking about." He said, and Harry could swear that he knew him from somewhere.

"Do I know you? I mean, were we enemies?" He could feel a strange pull to him, as if they had once strongly disliked each other.

"Not personally. We've never met, or anything. But I'm a Death Eater and you're Harry Potter. These wards are impressive," He said, changing the subject.

"I'm good with wards. It's kind of, my thing. But these. The Dark Lord created them?"

Harry nodded.

"With little more than a flick of his wand."

The man whistled.

"So, I'm not really here to have a friendly chat. I'm curious. How is it you came to be here? What changed? It must have been colossal." He asked, sitting on the ground and crossing his legs. Harry mimicked his actions without thinking.

"Something changed. It was colossal. It was fast too, like being hit by lighting." He said, wondering how much he should tell this stranger. He hardly knew the man, but he was drawn to him.

"Have you seen this?" He asked suddenly, pulling a newspaper clipping out of his pocket and holding it out for him to see.

The Boy Who Lived a Death Eater?

He pulled it back before Harry could read any of the fine print.

"I think they might be catching on," He said, scanning the paper himself.

"So something changed and here you are," He changed the subject a lot. Like a humming bird flitting from flower to flower.

"Yeah," Harry said, not really sure he should say anything else.

"What about those two you got around with?" He asked, and Harry shrugged, assuming he meant Ron and Hermione.

"I'm here, aren't I?"

"Well I figured that they'd follow your every move," He continued, still reading the newspaper.

"Uhh, not really. We kind of, fell out." The man blinked at him for a moment, waiting for him to explain.

"It's a long story." He said after a moment.

"Ah. Well I'd imagine it's lonely in there,"

"What do you propose I do? Invite them over for tea? In the Malfoy manor? With the Dark Lord probably wandering around somewhere?" Harry laughed.

"Well you could always meet them somewhere else," The man mused.

"They'd bring the Order for sure," Harry said with certainty. The brown haired man shrugged.

"Just an idea. Do you literally just sit there all day until something comes up?" He asked.

"Yup. I'm totally out of control, remember?" Harry reminded him.

"Yeah. What curse were you hit with, anyway?" He leaned close to the barrier and squinted at the Boy Who Lived.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," Harry said seriously, leaning in as well. He raised his eyebrow conspiratorially.

"Well that's ominous. Anyway. I'll leave you to laying on the floor." Harry felt a pang when he said this. It was the first time in a long time that he'd had a proper conversation. He didn't want to let it go. But he nodded anyway and watched the stranger leave.

It was another two days before the stranger came back. In that time Harry hadn't left his room once, and was going mental.

"Hi there. Just dropping these off. Some reading materials. I've got to get ready for a meeting." He said, throwing a few books through the barrier and not stopping.

"Hey!" Harry called after him, but he was gone.

He picked the books up, three of them. All of them pertaining to potions, which he thought was strange. Strange and useless, he hated potions.

But nevertheless he put them on the desk and flipped one open, such was his boredom.

He hoped that the stranger was headed to a meeting that would later involve a raid, but that wasn't always the case.

A few minutes later, Lucius walked past the room, pausing at the door to glare at the Boy Who Lived, then continuing down the hall at a brisk pace.

Harry had done nothing but raise his eyebrow at the man.

The teen was slowly discovering that it was possible for some of the effects of the curse to be reversed by shear will.

Those that he had come to like, for example. It was possible for him to go right ahead and dislike them again.

Bellatrix and Snape were on that list.

Try as he might though, he couldn't shake his new found attraction to the Dark Lord. He wanted to ask the man about it, ask if it was possible to maybe care about the people he used to, and why, no matter how Voldemort mistreated him, the feeling wouldn't shake when it came to the Dark Lord.

But he hadn't seen the man in a while. Not even in passing.

Sometimes he liked to stand just out of view and watch Harry.

The Chosen One knew he was there. He felt it. But he ignored it. No good could come from saying anything.

The meeting didn't result in a raid, as Harry had hoped, but the night did bring something useful with it.

When he dreamt that night, it was not the Dark Lords face he saw.

It was the stranger's.

When he woke up, everything clicked together.

The way he had never seen the stranger and the Dark Lord in the same room. He'd searched a few times, looking for the tell-tale mask that the man wore. All masks were different. But he had never seen it. Then the Dark Lord would leave, Harry would be removed from the wall and suddenly, magically, the stranger would appear.

Through every raid they fought side by side, back to back. He'd saved Harry's ass more times than he could count, when his rage got the better of him. It made sense for the Dark Lord to personally protect his best asset.

It was impossible to deny that Harry felt a draw to the man, but he hadn't been able to figure out why.

Until now.

The stranger was Voldemort.

And Harry was planning to use this information to make things interesting. He wasn't going to tell the man that he knew. He was going to make him admit it.

He needed to control himself though. If he went on another raid with Voldemort disguised as this stranger, it wouldn't do to forcefully snog him.

But now that he knew, he imagined it would be harder to resist.

He felt fantastic that he had figured it out though, things were going to get a whole lot more entertaining.

Two more days passed before he came back.

"Have you read the books?" The man, the Dark Lord, asked.

Harry was laying on his bed, his arms spread out so they were hanging off the bed. He scoffed at the man's words.

"Maybe three pages,"

"I figured it would give you something to do." He pressed, leaning against the door frame in a very Voldemort manner.

"Oh? Reading potions books? Do I strike you as interested?" Harry said, finally rolling off the bed and wandering lazily toward the wards.

"No, I didn't figure you would be."

"What's your name?" Harry asked.

"I already told you, I can't tell you that."

"Well make something up. Yelling 'Oi you!' During a raid doesn't sit well." Harry said, crossing his arms and leaning against the opposite side of the door frame. He laughed, and Harry was amazed with his acting skill. It seemed genuine, be he knew better.

"Alright. Call me, hmm. Call me Elius." He said, and Harry gave a sharp nod.

"What does it mean?" The Boy Who Lived asked.

"I don't know. Sounds alright though." He laughed again. If Harry wasn't dead certain that this was Voldemort he was speaking to, he might have doubted himself.

He was a brilliant actor, but then he had heard as much. How he had manipulated hundreds into doing his bidding. He was charming, there was no doubt about that.

But the harder Harry looked, the more he could see the thickly veiled disgust in his eyes.

Harry would change that.

He was determined. And not much stood in his way, when he was determined.

He just wondered what it was that the Dark Lord was trying to gain from this. Parading as Harry's friend was a strange thing to do. He didn't know what the man hoped to gain, he hadn't asked many questions, and seemed to only offer him guidance.

Which was bizarre behaviour.

"So what is it you want from me?" Harry asked, cutting to the quick.

"Oh? What do you mean?" His eyebrows raised.

"Well, what's the point in bringing me books? Fighting by my side during the raids?" He pressed.

"I'm curious about you. About the curse. Is that good enough for you?" He smirked.

"Yeah, the curse. It's not really what the Dark Lord says it is." Harry said, gauging the man's reaction. He seemed taken aback for a second, before he recovered.

"And what is it?" He asked. There was a slight warning in his tone.

"Oh, well, for one thing, it doesn't really make me brutal. Well, I mean, it does. But for a different reason." Harry gave another dramatic pause.

"And what's the reason?" He asked, standing up straight and crossing his arms.

"Because I was cursed to want him." He said, grinning.

"Want him?" His tone was clipped now, as if he were angry that Harry was telling him.

"Sexually. In proximity. Whatever. It makes me want him in all sorts of ways."

There was a ridiculously long silence while the Dark Lord's eyebrows knitted together.

"And you're telling me this? Do you tell every Death Eater that walks by?"

"No, just the ones that bring me boring books." Harry smirked. He'd received exactly the reaction he'd expected from him.

"Knowing full well that giving out this knowledge could bring any Death Eater to try to break the curse, so that our Lord will finally kill you and be done with it?" He pressed, his voice now tense with the anger he was trying to hide.

"I've got a feeling you can keep a secret." Harry tried to say this with just the right amount of inflection, to make the man wonder if he knew who he really was.

"You're playing with fire," He said darkly, before he turned and stormed off down the hall.

"Yeah, I tend to do that," Harry told no one.