A/N: No need to get out the pointy sticks, here's your update XP See? More prompt this time, even with the little mutation this chapter went through in the process of getting it from paper to type :3 And beware the upcoming mood!whiplash! Enjoy!

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Chapter 9; Manipulation

That first trip into the hospital's surrounding park was only one of the many times he was allowed to wander there in the next few days, though none of the subsequent outings gave him as much pleasure. He was distracted and irritable, so much that Inoichi -(thoughts grim with the probability of Harry's mind cracking further)- had slackened the intensity of the daily interrogation, barely doing more than talking inanely.

The reason, at its root, was the almost (had to be) memory dream that he had awoken to so many days previous. As many times as he tried, thinking hard of the snippet he remembered, Harry couldn't call up the memory of the event like he could all his other loose memories. Even worse; as the days went by the image faded more and more. It felt like he was being blocked, like there was a force keeping him from searching out his answers.

Harry knew, though, that the memory attached to that image was important. It felt vital, like it would answer so much... What Voldemort had been doing in his attempts to circumvent the Prophecy. What he had done to Harry.

Soon, said the voice, softly insistent. There are other memories to be uncovered, as well; the time is not yet right. Just a while longer... And the voice receded, his magic swirling internally, working at a task he still could not identify. (His magic was out of his control; the knowledge of that terrified him more than anything else.)

Harry whined, hands fisted and tangled in his hair as he shook his head in denial. "No, no, no..." he whispered, painfully aware of the ANBU outside his door, and the fact the ninja would burst in if he became too loud. He didn't want to have to remember any more. The last few memories had left him ill and miserable, without fail.

The first had been another glimpse of his life in the dark little cell. By that point he had long since lost any ability to move, and had begun to hallucinate things trying to drag him into the floor. He had screamed, and screamed, and screamed, and it had done nothing to rid him of the sensation of hands on his wrists, around his throat, in his hair, dragging him into a cold deeper than anything he'd ever experienced. Somehow, not seeing had made everything so much worse.

The next memory was somehow even more disturbing, his sight distorted and warped, his mind a dull haze. There was a sense of horror, as if something very bad had happened, but he just couldn't understand. But he still ached. There was a burning in his chest, alien, unlike anything he'd felt before, and the only color he could see was red.

The last memory was the one he could most do without; wanted so badly to believe that there were no more like it, but knew there were.

Without his conscious control, a hand untangled itself from his hair and snaked up under the sleeve of his shirt, tracing one of the fewer bites just below his shoulder. It was different. It was not his bite.

Voldemort was sick. That had to be the only reason he made Harry bleed every time. The only... good... was that the Dark Lord didn't share.

Harry tugged on his hair and ground his teeth until his eyes watered. Had his magic not been so preoccupied with whatever the fuck it was doing it probably would have lashed out and broken something. As it was, Harry shook silently for a few minutes before he finally snapped, hurling the glass on the bedside table across the room with an open handed slap, where it hit the wall and shattered spectacularly, splashing water everywhere.

"I don't want to remember anymore!" Harry screamed "I don't want to remember!" he tugged harder at his hair, wishing for something else to break, but his room was obviously lacking such things. He screamed again furiously, wordlessly, just barely managing to keep from harming himself in his blinding anger. His arms still jerked, and all he wanted to do was bite..!

His fury burned out, leaving Harry suddenly cold and shaking, his continuous screaming turned to keening wails and then silent sobs. Coughing weakly, throat sore, Harry dragged the hospital-standard blanket up over his shoulders and rested his chin on his knees, and couldn't even remember when he had pulled them to his chest. He stared blankly at the rivulets of water running down the wall, anger spent, absently wiping at the dampness caught by his blindfold.

Only then did the door open, shedding bright fluorescent light into his perpetually dark room; Harry recognized Inoichi's backlit form immediately. It wasn't only the interrogator, though, but the healer-ANBU as well. His only acknowledgement to her words -"The light is coming on now, Harry-kun."- was to grunt and pull the blanket up higher, covering his head completely.

"You worried Sparrow-san with all your screaming." she said lightly as they came in. Harry pulled the blanket tighter around himself and didn't look at either of them.

"Who?" he rasped quietly, after a long stretch of silence he was meant to fill. One of them moved closer to the bed and Harry shifted farther away, towards the window-wall.

"'Birdy'," Inoichi stated, and Harry realized that it was him who had approached. Harry frowned distractedly, finding the fore of his mind foggy as it hadn't been since his time spent in that little rural village, and shoved a spark of magic through, relishing in his ability to sense their presences once more. Interesting, but also troubling.

"Oh," Harry sighed in response, rubbing his eyes through the blindfold and letting the blanket fall, no longer using it to disguise his diminished shaking. He glanced at the medic-nin's dark eyes just in time to catch 'Getting him to say anything lately is worse than interrogating a damn Iwa-nin...'

"Did you have another nightmare?" she asked sympathetically, eyeing the broken glass dubiously. Harry fought down the impulse to spit venom at her for her undue familiarity with him. He sneered instead, but kept his tone absolutely neutral when he spoke to her.

"No." It was only when he turned to face Inoichi that his tone became bitter. "Just remembering things best left forgotten."

Inoichi bowed his head in acknowledgement, a lingering, unspoken apology almost tangible around him, as it was every time the topic of Harry's broken memories was mentioned. Harry sighed and uncurled from the tight ball he continued to find himself in, stretching to release the tension that had built from being like that so long.

Both ninja were by now familiar enough with him to understand when he had no intention to speak further and obliged in moving the conversation along without his input. Harry blinked when he realized that these people -who barely tolerated him and had known him for such a comparatively short amount of time- had learned to manage him better than any of the Order ever had. Just how wrong was that? The Order of the Phoenix were supposed to have been his allies... and yet people who could at any moment decide to kill him were giving him more respect...

"Hokage-sama is pleased with your behavior, and has decided that you may go farther from the Hospital the next time Yamanaka-san takes you out." The healer spoke to him in her usual quiet, emotionally neutral voice. She was losing the nervousness that had clung to her thoughts since she first set eyes on him, her interactions almost familiar, now. Harry found himself almost... angry... with the near-patronizing tone she was starting to take. Like he was a stupid little child.

Something of his thoughts must have slipped into his posture, because both of the shinobi shifted their stances the slightest bit, tense and loose all at once. Harry forced himself calm (a monumental task at the moment) and had to remind himself that these people were, in fact, ninja. They were trained to fight, and he shouldn't provoke them now; not when his magic was occupied- Only for a bit longer whispered the voice- and couldn't be easily called upon to protect him.

Harry sighed and picked at the tangled mess of hair hanging in his face, relaxing back against the headboard if only to get the shinobi to uncoil from their fight-ready stances. He knew that he wouldn't be going anywhere today, could see it in the near indecipherable look in Inoichi's eye; he was too wild today. The interrogator didn't even stay to 'talk', perhaps recognizing Harry's need for solitude to calm himself: Healer-ANBU gave him another handful of vitamins and cleaned the glass and water from the floor, before she too left. She only came in once more that day, to leave another bowl of mineral-rich broth, but otherwise left him undisturbed.

The next day was better from having spent the bulk of the previous in quiet meditation... though perhaps meditation wasn't the correct term. In his desperation to keep away from the dark memories creeping into his consciousness, Harry fell back to habit and completely loosed his mind from his body, attached only by the most tenuous of strings. The memories couldn't touch him in the peaceful ether of his sanctuary, though there was something distinctly wrong feeling, about having to utilize this means of escape again. (A creeping suspicion, one he didn't want to acknowledge, told him that it was this escape that had caused his memories to be locked away in the first place. The mind was a delicate thing.)

Harry wanted to be calm. He needed to be calm; he couldn't afford to snap when Inoichi took him out next. Harry didn't like the implications attached to the allowances the Hokage was making for him. He had been used too long to let himself believe that the leader was letting him in further contact with his citizens for no reason: By all rights, Harry should be hidden away completely if he looked so much like this 'Orochimaru', not let outside in contact with people who didn't know. It was almost like the leader wanted someone to see him...

But still, Harry wouldn't deny the opportunity to go farther from the hospital, so he needed to be calm.

A quick tap on the door heralded Inoichi's entrance, unaccompanied by Healer; Harry saw the man falter at the threshold, his eyes flicking around the room almost frantically until they landed on him, standing beside the obstructed window. Some amusement filtered into his forced calm as he wondered if Inoichi did that little motion every time he came in and Harry was out of sight.

"Hello, Inoichi." Harry said, drifting away from the window to sit on the edge of the bed, trying to ignore his skeletal thinness by tucking his legs up under him. Inoichi stood in the doorway another moment before joining him, though he remained standing. Harry tilted his head; were they not going to 'talk' again today?

"Hello Harry." Inoichi replied in turn, an almost invisible frown tugging the corners of his lips down, darkening his eyes to hardened jade. "You seem to be doing better today." He still was making no move to sit, and seemed so very disturbed.

"I feel better," Harry answered slowly, tilting his head further. Ah. "Are you taking me outside today?" He didn't need to watch for the other's short nod to know he was right; if he'd have taken another moment to think before glancing into the blond man's surface thoughts, he would have figured it out on his own. He remembered how dissatisfied Inoichi had been with having to escort him around the hospital grounds, so of course he would be less that thrilled with the prospect of Harry being near other people.

Inoichi answered in the affirmative, and Harry found a smile creeping onto his lips. Even if he had to endure the sunlight for it, time spent out of the hospital room was the best treat he could be offered. Harry wasted no time in rising to pull his robe from its hanging place over the window, though he took the insisted-on precaution of carefully adjusting his hood once he was swathed in the familiar folds of worn cloth. Again, he had to wonder just what this Orochimaru person had done, that the ninja preferred the suspicion a hood would attract over him simply showing his face.

(Maybe...maybe he would find out before he left Konoha, when he could use Legilimency and dig deep enough to force thoughts to come forward, and no longer have to worry about someone discovering his mind reading...)

As they made their way through the halls, Inoichi murmured reminders to him: Don't talk to the civilians, don't show his face, don't wander off... Harry tuned the interrogator out, as he had the feeling the man was talking more to himself than to Harry, and either way, Harry remembered the rules very well. He'd never seen the interrogator so worked up before, but couldn't catch his eyes long enough to find what was bothering him. The lobby was near empty when they passed though, and though he felt the hum of developed chakra in one of the few people there -always interesting to him- Harry didn't pause on his way out the door.

It wasn't yet mid-morning and the streets outside the hospital's park were only sparely trafficked. Inoichi led them off the main thoroughfare before the hospital was even out of sight, winding through the narrower paths behind residences and shops with the same sort of familiarity as Harry had with the secret passages of Hogwarts. Konoha was a strange place, Harry decided as he looked around him; strange, but in a good way. There were trees everywhere. So unlike the muggle neighborhood he grew up in, where uniformity was expected; every building was different from it's neighbor, be it in color, size or shape. More than one was built around a tree, and still more were completely surrounded by them. It was a pleasant change from what he was used to.

The pace Inoichi set was leisurely, but the fact that he was leading rather than letting Harry wander as he usually did was rather telling, even if they were walking side by side. A sharp smirk stole over Harry's face and stayed there, hidden by the shadow of his low hood; it amused him to no ends to realize that the interrogator didn't want Harry at his back. He could have taken offense, but decided to take it as a compliment instead, though he had to wonder what the man thought he would -or could- do.

Harry contented himself with moseying closer to the high wooden fence they walked beside, basking in the shade cast by the trees standing on the other side. After the first couple times, he noticed with a vague sort of interest that every time they passed another person Inoichi would casually block them from his line of sight. The funny thing was that Harry couldn't tell if the man was doing it consciously, or if it was some ingrained reflex. The sideway glances by his escort made him lean towards it being deliberate, though.

Inoichi kept them out of the densely populated areas, but as the din of voices grew closer, Harry was occasionally treated to the presence of another ninja brushing against the outer edges of his magic. He was never close enough to see -they were, perhaps, a street over- because of the buildings, but it was interesting none the less. When they weren't attacking him (or using chakra against him, or generally pestering him) Harry was rather interested in these shinobi.

More specifically, their chakra. He didn't know why... He just wanted to know.

Harry was pulled out of his pondering when his tongue flicked out -as it had continued to do reflexively when he'd stopped consciously repressing it- and caught the bite of anxiety, of fear, in the air. His eyes snapped to Inoichi, who was the only one close enough for the scent to be so potent, and found the blond just glancing away, focusing on a group of people farther down the alley.

It was with no little amount of interest that Harry looked more closely at the group of four; saw the shine of hitai-ate and felt the chakra in them. Ninja. Three of them were much weaker in presence than the fourth, though; less distinct than Inoichi or any of his ANBU.

Huh... Three of them were children, yet...-You cannot call them children unless you wish to label yourself as one. You're the same age, now... the voice purred, amused- And it was only the fourth -the adult- that appeared to notice Harry and Inoichi observing them, although the distance was too far to see their expression.

Now, what could have Inoichi so worked up? (Though, of course, the man didn't show it much beyond the tensing in his shoulders.) Harry seriously doubted that these were enemies; he didn't get the impression that the blond was the kind of man to fear battle, especially not without overwhelming odds...

It was then that Harry registered that one of the children -You're calling yourself a child! the voice chuckled, prompting Harry to wince- wore their hair in a long tail like the interrogator did, and the color was just a shade brighter.

Oh, how fortuitous. Would this maybe be Ino, Yamanaka Inoichi's only child?

Inoichi had stopped walking, and Harry stopped a second later; a step ahead of the man, a step closer to the group than he was. Harry turned, lifting the edge of his hood with a sleeve-covered hand, just enough to let Inoichi know that he was looking.

"My, Inoichi," Harry began softly, lips twitching up slightly. "Would that be familial resemblance I see?" He would have loved to use the girl's name, but in a land where mind-reading wasn't unheard of it was better to keep his ability hidden. And he didn't even want to consider what they would do about him having information like that, even without discovering his Legilimency.

Harry released his hood, sending his face back into shadow, though he tilted his head to express his continued curiosity. "Do I, perhaps, get an introduction?" (This was still wrong. Inoichi wasn't surprised enough, for all that he wasn't pleased: Was this planned?) Before the last syllable had completely fallen from his tongue there was a surprised call from farther down the alley, from the group that had finally noticed them.

"Dad?" said the girl's high voice, and either she was a very good actor or this run-in was obviously an unexpected thing. Harry was close enough to see the corners of Inoichi's eyes tighten -as if suppressing pain- and he had to try very hard to smooth away the maniacal look he knew he was wearing. Head still tilted curiously, Harry watched silently as Inoichi raised a hand -likely to forestall any approach by the group- and turned to scrutinize him carefully.

The staring was starting to become uncomfortable, and Harry realized that Inoichi was waiting for something... waiting for him to say something. Harry blinked. "I won't do anything to them, Inoichi." He said blandly, the sarcastic humor gone from his voice. With a frown he turned away, watching the Yamanaka spawn shift in her group, her team. "I'm crazy, not stupid."

He still wanted to hurt the girl, even more now than before: Inoichi wasn't hiding his fear as well as he thought he was, the scent of it making Harry sharp as the newer part of his mind screamed preypreyprey! But it was the bitter knowledge (that he would rather live without) that urged him forward... Inoichi was closer, it would be easier to attack him without warning, pay him back tenfold in pain for daring to intrude on the darkness of his mind... But that knowledge. He knew how to hurt the blond interrogator worse, there were so many more ways... and they all culminated in family. Bonds, attachment, love. Hurting the people he cared for would hurt Inoichi more than anything Harry could do to the man's body, with any magic he could cast.

And Harry wanted to hurt Inoichi so badly...

Inoichi was giving Harry a strange look, but Harry didn't care to see what kind of thoughts his blunt statement had sparked within the interrogator's mind. Atop all the things that Harry had said to the man, and everything he must have observed... it must have painted an interesting picture for everyone who made it their business to 'know' him. Maybe he would feel the need to look when he left Konoha, but right now he just didn't care. (Keep the calm, he had to keep the calm; breathe, breathe...) Nonetheless, it must have reassured something of his escort's worries, for the almost-pain look around his eyes disappeared and he led Harry towards the waiting team.

The elder Yamanaka allowed him to linger a half-step behind when they finally came within distance for a proper introduction, and though he kept his hooded head down, Harry's eyes stayed locked on the strongest of them. There was something frustratingly familiar about him, but Harry couldn't place his features; the eyes, or maybe the beard..?

"I apologize if we have interrupted your training." Inoichi said to the man by way of greeting, though his voice sounded oddly stilted to Harry's ears. Harry looked between the two men with a mild frown.

"No, no problem," the dark haired man assured with a slow, dismissive wave of his hand; Harry caught the scent of tobacco smoke when he moved. The children -ninja though they were- didn't look upset at the prospect of missing 'training', either. "Did you need something?" His gaze traveled to Harry and returned to the blond with a slight frown; Inoichi shook his head and rolled his shoulders. Harry was just a little floored to realize that an entire conversation had been held in those innocuous motions.

"Dad, who's that?" Yamanaka's daughter cut in, leaning around her father to get a better look at Harry; he hadn't realized Inoichi was blocking his way to the girl. (Had he done it on purpose; did he know?) Harry took the opportunity to study her face, comparing her features to Inoichi's, and decided that their eyes set them most apart. Almost the same shade of blue-green, striking with the lack of any visible pupil, but Inoichi's held a darkness that Ino's were yet without. As a ninja, one trained to fight (to kill), how long could she keep that light? What would extinguish it?

Harry had to wonder when he himself had lost the light in his eyes. He thought it was sometime before Hogwarts; smothered in the darkness of his cupboard, or quenched from tears of hunger and pain.

He couldn't decide if he hated or envied the younger Yamanaka for still having her light. You could always extinguish it yourself... the voice whispered distractedly, with promise. Harry set the idea aside to ponder at a more appropriate time, when he wasn't so scrutinized, and returned his full attention to the shinobi.

"This is Harry, currently a ward of the hospital." Inoichi glanced over at him, his voice perfectly affable and utterly strange, and Harry frowned again, feeling that this was to be some sort of test after all. "Harry, this is Team Ten; they can tell you their names if they so choose." Suddenly it wasn't just Ino looking at him strangely; the bored-looking one, who had previously been so enthralled with watching the sky, was watching him keenly, and even the large one was looking on with confusion. His thoughts were obvious; why was Inoichi denying Harry something so simple as their names?

"'A ward of the hospital'?" parroted the fat boy; Harry looked at him appraisingly, and saw that he wasn't that flabby kind of fat like Dudley, but simply large. "What's he doing so far from the hospital, then?" It was somewhat strange to have someone ...appearing... his own age talking over him like that. Like the boy wasn't sure if he was allowed to talk to Harry. Ino was still watching him wordlessly, and the bored boy was looking at the sky again; the dark, tobacco man's eyes had never really left him in the first place.

Harry turned his head to Inoichi inquiringly and was met with a bland look and a raised eyebrow that seemed to convey 'Well? Go on, then.'. It was obvious that he wasn't going to answer... that he wanted Harry to say something, again. The silence dragged, and still Harry didn't move, not even when one of the ...genin shifted nervously: Harry narrowed his eyes in frustration and looked. 'Go ahead, say something. Just how aware are you? How much do you know about the situation you've forced us into? You always turn to me, but as an authority figure or otherwise...'

Harry turned away in wary amusement, giving the genin his attention. One of these days Inoichi would learn to ask the right questions out loud; one of these days Harry might actually answer them, if only to see the man twitch. The interrogator should have known better: They never gave Harry any rules about talking to shinobi.

"Inoichi is taking me for a walk." Harry told them, sensing more than anything the way his escort stiffened at his side: Now that his voice wasn't so rough from constant disuse he sounded much closer to the age he looked, albeit sinisterly accented... but the innocent tone still sounded wrong. "I've been a good boy, so I'm allowed to leave the hospital now." Inoichi was most certainly twitching now, but Harry wasn't done; he shot a sidelong glance at the interrogator, the edges of his hood swaying. "He has been taking me quite far, though, so I hope he doesn't do anything bad."

It appeared that Inoichi lost his internal battle; he held a hand over his eyes and groaned, almost like he was in pain. Harry laughed quietly, little more than a subdued chuckle, and then slightly louder when the interrogator started at the sound. The team, unused to Harry's erratic and misleading behavior, reacted far more violently to the ...leading insinuation.

"What!" the indignant shout came from little Ino-girl, and at her side the fat one appeared to choke on his own spit, requiring a smack on his back by the slouching, bored boy to get over his sudden coughing fit. The bored one was looking at him again, though, and out of curiosity Harry glimpsed into his head; he found layer upon layer of fast moving, branching thoughts, too many to track with such casual Legilimency. Smart boy.

The sensei of the team looked more relaxed than bored, but there was a new tenseness to him that hadn't been there before Harry spoke. His dark eyes were sharp with awareness and locked onto Harry's face -what little he could see under the obstructing curtain that was his hood, anyway.

"If I didn't know that you said that just to rile up the team, I would have to take offense." Inoichi said dryly, loud enough for the others to hear; more for their benefit than Harry's. Their faces turned even funnier to watch when Harry only chuckled again in response, more darkly than before.

(Calm, he needed to find the calm. Amused was better than angry, but still worse than calm.)

Basking in the awkward silence he'd created, Harry slunk into the shadow cast by another nearby tree, and Inoichi made no move to stop him. Walking around in daylight while cloaked in such a dark color, regardless of his pathetic lack of insulating body fat, was still too warm to be comfortable. It was a shame that the effects of a cooling charm would radiate, instantly obvious to anyone nearby... though, it could be rather fun for people to feel cold whenever they approached him...

Inoichi sighed, and though he followed Harry's movement with his head he made no move to stop him; Harry kept his eyes on the taller shinobi, the leader of Team Ten. There was something almost hostile in the way the dark man watched him, a wary distrust that set Harry on edge, making the urge to bite and hiss and attack all the more prominent, all that much harder to hide under the tattering veil of forced calm.

He was a little surprised that Ino was the one to break the awkward silence: Her eyes were narrowed in suspicion, an expression that made her look very much like her father. Harry tensed. "Dad, is he why you've been so busy?"

A pointed look in her head told Harry that she knew very well about the use of the Yamanaka family technique for interrogation, and just how proficient her father was. She was more than slightly disquieted with the suspicion that someone her own age -'And so strange!'- was being kept in the hospital and visited regularly by an interrogation specialist. (And there was a small bit gleaned, that Inoichi was so busy as of late that his duties at the family-run flower shop had to be shifted to his wife instead. It meant a lot, because Inoichi apparently took both pride and enjoyment in cultivating his flowers...)

Harry made note that all ninja of that family were taught the chakra form of the Mind Arts, and if he ever had to fight them he should be prepared for something akin to the Imperius Curse... He quickly drew himself out of the younger Yamanaka's mind when a pinched look appeared around her eyes.

A simple glance at the other's faces let Harry know that they all seemed to know of Inoichi's specialty, and the elder Yamanaka wasn't exactly pleased with the turn the almost-conversation had taken. When her father had made no move to disagree, Ino turned back to look at Harry with wide, panicked eyes, while the fat boy at her side seemed to mimic her. The dark-bearded sensei was still frowning, the sharpness of the equally dark eyes making the feeling of familiarity spark even more. Smart-boy took a slouching step in his direction, more curious than his teammates, but was halted by his sensei's heavy hand on his shoulder.

Harry lifted his head, smiling strangely. (Ohh, Inoichi would regret not making any rules for talking with shinobi...) "Inoichi comes to visit me every day." He paused, as if contemplating something, when in reality he was choking down a sudden, inappropriate bout of hysterical laughter. "I still think I like Birdy better, though. He's more fun to play with."

Harry wasn't sure when exactly he had started to enjoy...playing with people, but he couldn't bring himself to care as he observed the quiet disorder he caused. As one, the genin seemed to exude confusion, unsure what to make of his statement: Inoichi was distinctly bothered, chakra sharpening in a way that made Harry shift and pull at his magic. He only realized he was hissing quietly under his breath when the dark man tilted his head, listening, and he snapped his teeth together with an improbably loud click.

"Harry..." Inoichi sighed, pressing his index and middle fingers to his temple in still-evident exasperation. Harry tilted his head and was about to comment -"What? I didn't do anything, Inoichi."- when he felt a familiar presence approaching from close by. Berating himself -he should have been able to feel farther than he was; he would be if his magic wasn't ...failing- he turned to look.

That gesture must have been a signal, after all.

"Birdy!" Harry crowed, and saw a very distinct twitch in his ANBU's shoulder as the man appeared beside him, hand held out, palm open. He frowned a little, then, glancing at Inoichi; so much for anything 'planned' happening. He wondered what it was that made the man call for the ANBU... "Healer is going to be upset that you're sending me back already. She really doesn't like me."

Inoichi looked strained, and had moved himself to stand more obviously between Harry and the Team. "If you didn't go out of your way to taunt her, it wouldn't be a problem. Keep it up and she might decide to just sedate you." Harry ignored the startled reactions from the genin, his full focus on the blond before him, any remnants of his previous humor swept away as his mind ran into a rambling tangent as the last of the interrogator's words hit something dark.

Sedated. Drugged. Just like the potions he was sometimes fed; he could only just remember... The ones to keep him still when all he wanted (needed) was to scream and writhe. There was one that numbed the body and prevented movement, made him so cold...

A barbed, twisting memory emerged from the smoke: When he reached out to isolate it with his magic, it burned, the mere feel of it making him ill. It was a bad one. One of the ones that'd been haunting the edges of his thoughts for days.

"That wasn't a nice thing to say." His voice came out flat and dead, and he didn't even need to look to know that Inoichi realized he'd said something wrong. Harry turned his head to look at the team -(so quiet, so still, were they afraid?)- and felt so sluggish, so weighed down... "Goodbye."

He dropped his wrist into the ANBU's waiting hand, and the next moment he was on the Hospital's rooftop; he would have fallen -too slow to catch his own balance- if the shinobi hadn't kept hold of him. Even his ingrained revulsion at the contact couldn't make him bother trying to remove his wrist from ...Sparrow's grasp as the man led him to his room.

Harry was completely preoccupied with keeping the memory at metaphorical arm's length; he wouldn't have noticed had his ANBU decided to suddenly turn and slit his throat. The problem wasn't that the memory was trying to drift away, oh no, but that it was being drawn in. He didn't want to fall into it before he got to his room, because for all he knew his magic would go haywire and cause harm to the nearby presences.

He was only vaguely aware of the door closing behind him as he stumbled to his bed; he had only just grasped the blanket when he slipped and the memory tore towards him, and he was falling-

Harry knew he must have been lying here, stuck in the same position, for a very long time. If he didn't know better (but did he know better, anymore?) he would think that he was without a body, so numb were his limbs.

It was as dark as his cell had been, but he knew this room was different. It was larger; the walls were far enough away that it took a few seconds for the sound of his labored breathing to bounce back, and it echoed loudly when it did. He vaguely remembered the feeling of stone -not dirt, like his cell- before he lost sensation.

Two red embers appeared over him a second before the walls started to glow softly, and Voldemort was looming over him, serpentine face set in a look of contemplation. Harry groggily realized that he was flat on the floor at the same time that the Dark Lord was crouched beside him, lifting his head with a spidery hand and pouring a potion down his throat.

If Harry thought before that he couldn't feel his body, he was wrong. He relaxed completely. His eyes fell half-closed and his breathing grew shallow, though his heart pounded hard and fast in desperation as it felt like his body was finally failing him.

Pale white fingers ending in long, yellowish claws deliberately pressed his eyelids closed. Harry was ashamed at the relief he felt when their connection expanded, and he raced along the bond to see through Voldemort's eyes.

Harry tried to ignore how much it looked -and felt- like he was dead, just as he tried to ignore Voldemort's feelings filtering in through the connection. He failed on both parts, but kept his anxiety tightly pulled and small to avoid Voldemort's detection, still unsure how sensitive the Dark Lord was of the bond. It was a blessing and a curse; he could be aware of what was happening to him (did he want to know, anyway?) but from this perspective it was like he was enjoying inflicting these... tortures... upon himself. Enjoying them -feeling pride in what he had done.

(So wrong, so wrongwrongwrong...)

He -Voldemort- arranged limp, bite-scarred arms outstretched on the smooth floor, uncurled Harry's legs so he was spread-eagle before forming stone over his wrists and ankles. Harry refused to let his growing despair drown him, instead trying to separate himself from Voldemort and hide in his numbed, unfeeling body.

(This was going to be bad, so bad, so badbadbad, he didn't want to see...)

His inattention meant that he couldn't decipher a word of the slanted, thin scrawl in the small book Voldemort drew from an inner pocket and briefly skimmed. Harry did recognize the script, though; it was the Dark Lord's handwriting, and the feeling accompanying the action was pride laced with anticipation. They must have been notes... there had been a diagram of a person in the same position he'd arranged Harry into...

He really wished that he was more than a bodiless presence right then -he felt the need to curl into a ball for a long, long time.

Voldemort banished Harry's clothes with a negligent flick of his wand, cleaning him of miscellaneous dirt, grime, and blood with another in an unsettlingly routine way. The shallow rise and fall of his thin chest wasn't quite as distracting as the spot in his sunken stomach where he could see his heartbeat fluttering from an unnaturally exposed blood vessel. Then he realized that Voldemort was staring with such rapt fascination, but he couldn't pinpoint why and Harry was staring, more than a little fascinated, too-

The Dark Lord closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, then spoke a string of hissing words that would be impossible for anyone but a Parselmouth to pronounce, but it wasn't the snake language. When his eyes opened he scrutinized Harry again, and this time Harry appeared shrouded fully in a pulsing, bronze colored aura. It was thick enough to obstruct his body from view, but he -they- saw that the area of his chest hid a darker core, buried under the cover of bronze.

Voldemort stared fixedly at the dark area. After a while it seemed to be spinning, almost hypnotically, actually-

Eyes closed suddenly and Voldemort laughed wryly, the sound like nails on chalkboard. "Tricky, Harry, but that won't work on me."

Harry had no time to ponder the other's rambling, for he spoke another string of the strange language and opened his eyes, right hand held palm down over the covered, swirling dark area in Harry's chest. Dark red mist -the color of old rust, of clotted blood- sank from each of the clawed fingers and bled into Harry's pulsing, bronze aura.

Then the aura shuddered and parted around the expanding strings of red mist; two sensations hit Harry at once, and he knew immediately which was his. Ecstasy and agony. (Painpainpain, ripping, tearing, pain.) Voldemort exhaled shakily, eyes falling half closed as rust-red continued peeling back the erratically moving metallic aura, heedless of the wisps lashing back; Harry's body shuddered and twitched as the aura folded away, low reflexive noises of pain escaping his throat.

Harry could barely think, but he knew something now, something base. He shouldn't be able to feel anything physically painful right now, not after that potion. This was not physical pain. Voldemort was attacking his magic, but not destroying it; it felt very good for the Dark Lord to use his own magic in such a way. And there was nothing but blinding, world-ending pain for the recipient. For him.

When the swirling dark was exposed completely the dual, dueling sensations faded to ghosts; the red -Voldemort's magic- held the bronze -his own- back, but stopped actively rending. They examined the vaguely spherical mass with acute interest, Voldemort fascinated and amused and Harry curious, though more than a little apprehensive in response to what the Dark Lord felt.

It was a swirling, irregular sphere that was such a dark green that it appeared black. Voldemort was fixated on the slashes of -Harry would have started in alarm, had his body been capable of it- killing curse green, though Harry felt that -for a reason he couldn't identify- the strings of ghostly, mercurial silver were far more worrisome. There were four strings; one burrowed deeply within the sphere, but the other three only coiled loosely around it.

"So, your mudblood mother's protection wasn't as perfect as our dear Headmaster would have us believe." The other mused, disdain the dominant feeling, though it was likely all for Dumbledore. Harry saw the green slashes actually cut deep gouges into the sphere. If he hadn't been fully protected from the killing curse -if Voldemort was right, but he was a genius in all things magic, and he felt so sure...- did that mean that the dark sphere was Harry's-

Voldemort's wand, wielded in his left hand, touched the silvery strand that was woven inseparably deep into the damaged sphere; satisfaction and dark amusement were thick when he spoke. "How did you manage this? Dabbling in soul magics already, Harry? You make this so easy." He shifted his wand and touched the woven strand with a single finger -Harry was more than a little preoccupied though.

That damaged sphere, that hurt, dark thing was his soul? Harry felt shock, but it quickly turned to extreme disgust when he realized that Voldemort was touching his soul.

He felt surprise that was not his own, and the eyes he was seeing through suddenly turned upward in contemplative thought. Then Harry felt a brush of magic against his being and he couldn't feel anything from the other anymore, though he still saw through his eyes.

"What an interesting trick you have developed, Harry." His voice held none of the amusement it usually did when he spoke to Harry, but Harry knew why even without the emotional insight their connection granted. The Dark Lord valued his privacy, and liked his mind invaded about as much as Harry himself did...

"While it pleases me that you've finally decided to join me, you have the worst timing." It was bad; Harry couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or not. "You will have to just watch for now-" Bad feeling, a very bad feeling. "-We can talk later." Nonono...

Voldemort shifted his wand back into a proper grip and touched it to one of the three loose strands on the surface of Harry's soul. He chanted a short, clipped sentence and jabbed the tip -strand attached- deep into the swirling dark.

Unadulterated agony ripped through his non-being, far outstripping any pain he had ever felt as the mercurial strand came alive and burrowed and twisted itself into his soul. Bereft of all sensations and emotions not his own, Harry was left to his agony and despair alone. He would have cried, screamed, (begged for this pain to stop) if he could, but could only writhe ineffectually from a locked-off portion of the Dark Lord's mind.

The other two strands were woven in, in quick succession following the first, the pain pushing higher each time; Harry saw that even tightly restrained, his body was convulsing violently. Blood was leaking from his eyes, ears, nose and mouth. Barely heard over the static buzzing of Voldemort's raw magic were keening, broken sobs from Harry's otherwise unmoving body.

Voldemort wasn't finished.

He traced a rune into the air over Harry's hypnotically spinning soul and then sunk it in. And another. And another. He pushed in over a dozen runes, though Harry only recognized a few of the most common. Joining, anchoring, protection, focus. None of the runes hurt, or left any visible mark, but tingled like ozone over the pain -in comparison, not unpleasant at all.

It left Harry feeling violated, all the same. He couldn't determine if it was only a feeling, or an actual sensation from the ...work done to his soul.

The other drew a deep breath, sounding exhausted. When he exhaled he drew his right hand back, the rust red magic pulling away with it. Harry was keenly aware of his magic rushing back into place, the sensation euphoric, though it was never one he wanted to feel again. Nothing could ever compare to the feel of his magic cradling and soothing his hurting soul (like a living thing...), but Harry never wanted his magic so stripped from him, so removed...

A touch of the other's magic brushed over him again, and Harry suddenly found himself bereft of sight. He didn't panic -though his most vital senses were still denied him- because he knew what had happened. Voldemort had somehow pushed Harry's presence back along their connection and into his own body. He was similarly unsurprised when clawed fingers pushed his eyelids open, though that was likely because of the emotional vacuum he was currently dwelling in.

Voldemort had just manipulated his soul.

He was somehow aware that Voldemort rid him of the stone bindings at his wrists and ankles, though he was still numb and immobile. He hurt. A red haze clouded his sight, presumably from his eyes bleeding; he still saw when Voldemort came close and cupped his face, and regained enough sensation to feel the thin, icy fingers wipe away the blood.

"What will be Prophecy mean, now?" The sibilant voice mused quietly, almost soothingly. "When I will not kill you, and you cannot kill me?" Harry blinked and shook his head as much as he could while trapped between the other's hands. "Shh, be still Harry. You can rest, now..."

Harry blinked again and saw that not all the red haze was from blood, but whatever spell Voldemort cast was still in effect. The rusted color of the Dark Lord's aura pressed all around him, but this close Harry saw clearly the other color swirling in his chest -what he knew to be the soul. It wasn't so much a sphere as it was a tangled, tattered mess of silvery strings; it glowed with an almost opalescent sheen that reminded Harry starkly of a ghost...

Silver strings.

Harry stopped breathing, staring at the other's soul until he felt an odd, brief pressure behind his eyes and realized that Voldemort had just used the connection in the same way Harry had. He saw through Harry's eyes.

One of the hands left his face, the other shifting to hold his chin tightly, and then Voldemort's wand was leveled at his head.

"Be at peace, Harry." Voldemort soothed. (Wrongwrongwrong!)

"Obliviate."

/-/-/-/-/

A/N: I have too much fun with this, I swear. We have ...four more chapters until the next Arc (so, four chapters and an interlude), and those next four chapters will probably be posted more rapid-fire. They all take place in a 1-2 day span, because the action's picking up. And next chapter, (or the one after, it has been a while for me) there will be no more questions about where we are in the timeline :3

So. Tell me what you think?