The room was precisely three paces by six. The window did not open, and neither did the door. There was nothing to be found inside the little fireplace; Tom knew because he had carefully felt around in there, then wiped his sooty fingers on the carpet.

He looked around, assessing his options. If he couldn't get out by the door, the next things to try were the walls and the floor. These old houses often had secrets under the plasterwork like covered-over openings, crumbly mortar, missing bricks. Tom ran his hands over the internal wall next to the door, tapping occasionally to test for hollowness. When he found a likely spot, he turned to the desk, picked up the wooden chair by its back and brought it down on the floor, hard. He repeated the motion once, twice, three times, until the chair came apart with a great, splintering crack.

Tom smiled. The noise did not matter—he was certain that Dumbledore had charmed the room against sound. It was almost uncannily silent; Tom could hear nothing from the hallway or the rooms above and below. The window, though old and ill-fitted, let in nothing but a warm draft of summer air.

He bent and selected a chair leg from the wreckage. It was finely-carved mahogany, sharp on one side where the wood had split.

Tom walked back to the wall, peeled back the mouldering wallpaper and chiselled away until he met unyielding brick.

No escape there. Tom dropped the chair leg, disappointed.

It was difficult not to give into frustration at that moment. It rose up inside Tom like a great seething tide. He wanted to kick the door, batter at the window, shout for Harry to get back here. But he had done all these things already, in the moments after Dumbledore had left.

Tom breathed deeply, trying to push it down, focus the rage, channel it into something productive. He always made mistakes when he was angry. Tom remembered Voldemort's icy control. Having power over others required power over yourself.

The floor next, Tom decided. He looked around, then crouched in one corner of the room and pulled back the ornate carpet. Beneath lay blackened floorboards. They were close-fitting and held down with iron nails; he would need something sturdier than the chair leg if he wanted to lever them up.

Tom stood, walked back over to the desk and tried the drawers. The top one was locked. Tom jiggled it for a minute and then gave up. In the second one though, he found sealing wax, some yellowed letters about bank accounts and investments, and a fine brass letter opener in the shape of a dagger. Tom applied it to the floor, carefully prying up one floorboard, then its neighbour. It was difficult, time-consuming work, and his palms were red by the time he was done.

The space between the floor joists was filled with hundreds of years worth of soot and rubble. Tom scraped it out of the way until he could see the pale grey plaster of the ceiling of the room below.

Tom grinned and shuffled to the edge of the hole he had made, allowing himself, for one triumphant moment, to imagine dropping down into the room below, finding Harry, dragging him out the front door. Even if his chances of actually escaping were minuscule, there was honour in having tried. He raised his knee, aimed, and then stomped down on the plaster with all his might.

THUNK

Shock reverberated up his leg. Tom fell onto his side on the carpet, holding his knee. The plaster had flared electric blue when he'd struck; there was some kind of invisible magical barrier.

"Fuck!"

Tom thumped the carpet with a closed fist, furious all over again. Dumbledore had anticipated him. He lay there for long moments, fantasising about what he would like to do to the old professor. Pry out his eyes with the letter opener like he had the floorboards. Force the sharpened chair leg down his throat until it pierced his organs. He felt a burst of resentment towards Voldemort too—his counterpart had had fifty years to kill Dumbledore; why had he not done the job already?

Tom thought of the duel he had witnessed. The intervening years seemed to have only made Dumbledore stronger. Not that Tom had ever seen him duel when he was at Hogwarts.

He rolled onto his back, breathing out the hatred. The ceiling was high. Georgian or Victorian. Tom thought of the façade of the house, the posh street it sat on. He had wandered to places like this before, when he'd been a child. He had visited Parliament once, and Downing Street, and marvelled at the wealth of the people, the clean gutters, the absence of beggars and stray cats. Tom liked stray cats. He liked to pick them up and hold them close to his chest and pet them while they yowled. Sometimes he even let them go.

It was boring in the room. Tom tilted his head back further, until he could see the clouds drifting past the window, upside-down. How long had he been in here? It felt like hours and hours, but judging by the angle of the sun, it couldn't be later than mid-afternoon.

When would they come to fetch him? What would happen when they did? It will just be a few days, while we work out what to do, Dumbledore had said. Do what? What if they found some other way to break the bond, that didn't require Harry?

Tom tried to call on his magic, as he had tried on the path leading to Hogsmeade, and when they had Apparated, and at the front door, and in the hallway. It was a habitual response, he knew, to touch it whenever he felt nervous.

But there was nothing there.

Tom hated it. It was horrible, what a missing limb must feel like. He had not realised, before, how very often he called on his magic to do things like open doors and curtains, summon objects or make them lighter when he lifted them. When he reached for it, he could feel the blockage, a perfect sphere around the place he normally went. Tom wrinkled his forehead, trying to push past it.

By the time he admitted defeat, his head was pounding. Tom groaned and rubbed his temples, feeling thoroughly sorry for himself. He was still on his back on the carpet, so he stood up, grudgingly, and kicked the floorboards back into place.

There were no books in the room. Tom sifted through the knickknacks on the desk—they included a preserved spider inside a glass pyramid, an empty inkwell made of some dull, heavy metal, and a very large, very old silver coin that found its way into his pocket—then sat on the conjured bed, gazing absently out the window.

A meal appeared, deep in the afternoon. Tom ate it, then experimented with throwing things into the chamberpot. It had apparently been charmed to make its contents disappear. He tried the remaining knickknacks, the cutlery that had come with the meal, and then, in a flash of inspiration, the offensive duvet cover. That last one did nothing—it sat scrunched in the bottom of the pot, stubbornly refusing to vanish.

When the light outside began to die, the gas lamp in the room flickered off. Tom lay down on top of the now-bare duvet, thinking of Harry.

He had not liked the way Dumbledore and Harry had talked to each other—Harry's obvious admiration and affection for the old professor was nauseating. It was not nice either to think about what Harry might be doing at that very moment. Was he laughing with his friends and godfather somewhere, pretending like Tom hadn't fucked him just two nights ago?

Tom dwelled on that last thought for a long time, turning it over and over in his head. Harry, flushed, embarrassed but defiant, looking over his shoulder while Tom touched him. How tight he had been, how warm inside. The way he had tried to hold back the little helpless noises he was making.

Harry had loved being fucked and hated himself for it.

Tom slid a hand down his stomach, popped the button of his trousers and palmed his cock. If Harry were here, sleeping beside him, Tom would wake him up. Harry would grumble like he always did, but would be too sleepy to really protest while Tom positioned him how he pleased, then slid his cock between his thighs.

He liked Harry fully awake too. Awake and furious and fighting him. Tom liked the fight almost as much as he liked the sex.

His cock jerked in his hand. Tom hissed through his teeth and tightened his fingers, squeezing almost to the point of pain, trying to recreate the feeling of being inside Harry. He wondered if Harry was thinking about it too, wherever he was. Was he thinking about Tom and touching his own cock? Was Harry thinking about how much he liked to be fucked? Because he did, he had, the little whore, just like Tom had known he would—

Orgasm surprised him. Tom came into his palm and panted, chest heaving, body too warm. He wiped his hand on the bedspread and blew his sweaty fringe away from his forehead. It was getting long. He needed a haircut.

Harry had saved his life. How many times was that now? Tom remembered the incident in the forest, the man Harry had killed. The primal delight he had felt at waking up to find Harry covered in someone else's blood.

Something had shifted in his head. Tom frowned, trying to work out what it was.

Curiosity. Sharp curiosity. Every time he thought he knew Harry, he shifted again, did something unexpected. No one else had ever held his interest for so long.

And now Harry was his literal lifeline. Tom needed to keep him on his side. Actually on his side, no just begrudgingly keeping him alive, but an ally of his own free will.

He needed to make Harry fall in love with him.

Tom groaned aloud at the thought and stuffed his pillow over his face. It was far too late for that. Harry knew him much too well for Tom pretend to be infatuated.

There was no point in crying over spilt milk, but Tom felt a rush of annoyance for how he'd handled the potion in the cave. He'd had Harry, and had ruined it, because at the time, Harry's feelings hadn't served a purpose.

No, if Tom tried to seduce him, Harry would suspect immediately.

He should act as he normally did, Tom decided. Harry probably wouldn't help him escape, but Tom couldn't see him breaking the bond and letting him die either, now that he'd committed to it. Harry was decisive.

But there was a clock on that.

Tom worried at his lower lip. While the other Horcruxes were out of the Order's reach, Tom did not matter . . . but if the Order were to find more, and destroy them, Tom's position would become increasingly tenuous.

At some point, they would be forced to kill Harry to kill Tom. Even if Dumbledore didn't do it himself, someone else would. It would be necessary. Tom needed to escape before that happened.

And this time, he was taking Harry with him.

There was no point in planning it—Tom would just have to seize opportunities as they arose. Happily, that was something he'd always been good at.

It was fully dark outside. Tom dragged the duvet over his legs. Harry was no more than thirty feet away, but it might as well have been the other side of the moon.

They came to fetch him two days later. Tom was sat cross-legged on the bed, reading a rather scandalous letter from a halfblooded clerk to Arcturus Black. It was one a bundle he had found in the locked top drawer of the desk when he'd levered off the front with the letter opener that morning. It was a pity—Tom would have loved to have been able to hold this over Orion's head.

Then there came a sound from the door. Tom looked up, startled by the first outside noise he'd heard since being locked in. A moment later, it swung open to reveal Dumbledore; tall, wizened and stern-faced.

Tom was uncannily reminded of their first ever meeting, the time when Dumbledore had come up to his room in the orphanage to give him his Hogwarts letter and found him reading on the bed. And perhaps Dumbledore had the same thought; there was a flicker in his blue eyes, a tilt of his chin. The weight of their history lay between them, a mutual animosity that had only deepened in the intervening years.

Then a rustle broke the silence. Harry was behind Dumbledore, craning his neck to catch a glimpse of Tom. His antics seemed to wake Dumbledore from the haze of memory he'd been caught in.

"Good afternoon, Tom."

Tom did not reply.

Dumbledore nodded as if he had. "We are going to Hogwarts to discuss the bond," he said, gesturing for Tom to stand. "If you would be so kind?"

There was no repeat of the walk. Dumbledore led them down a dingy staircase to an empty basement kitchen, then through the fireplace into the Great Hall.

It was bright. The enchanted ceiling overhead showed a blue sky. Two people stood on the dais, waiting for them; the ugly teacher who had been present at the interrogation and a tall, grey-haired woman in severe green robes.

The woman moved to greet them.

"Mr Potter," she said, mouth twitching into a small, rather stern smile. "I was sorry to miss you yesterday."

"Hi Professor McGonagall," Harry said, scraping his foot.

Tom was almost lost for words. "Minnie?" he demanded. "You're Minnie McGonagall?"

She gave him a look of intense dislike. Tom did not care. She looked so different from the fifth year prefect Tom had known. Minnie McGonagall wore her mousy hair in a ponytail and was always rocketing around, poking her nose into everyone else's business. It felt like he had last seen her a few months ago, when he had been boarding the Hogwarts Express with Abraxas and Rosier. She had caught his eye across the platform and scowled; Tom had smiled broadly and waved, then turned to Rosier and made a joke which made him howl with laughter.

"Riddle," she said. Her voice was absolutely arctic, as it had been ever since he'd covered for Rafe, who had rather stupidly pushed a second year off a moving staircase right in front of her.

"Harry told me you teach Transfiguration here?" Tom said, looking around. "I always thought you wanted to go into the Ministry."

She said nothing. Tom smiled.

"I suppose not everyone can follow their dreams like me."

For a single, delighted moment, he thought she would hex him. Her hand twitched towards her wand; hidden, apparently, in the pocket on the right-hand side of her robes. Then her face soured, and with what was obviously a great effort, she turned away from him and spoke instead to Dumbledore.

"Professor Snape and I would like to speak to you, Albus."

"I thought we had gone over all the options yesterday," Dumbledore said wearily. "Unless you have come up with new objections overnight?"

The hook-nosed teacher—Snape—and McGonagall shared a look. Dumbledore sighed, waved the boys towards the long tables and ascended to the dais, where he was immediately drawn into conversation.

Left to their own devices, Harry and Tom wandered over to the end of the Ravenclaw table and sat across from each other, close enough to eavesdrop. The debate on the dais was quiet but heated—more than once, Snape jabbed a finger in Tom's general direction.

"So, how have you been?" Harry asked.

Tom shushed him. Dumbledore had said that they were going to discuss the bond . . . he did not like the sound of that. What if they had come up with some way to break it?

"Tom? Hey—" Harry waved his hand in front of Tom's face.

"I'm trying to listen."

"I know. I'm distracting you. There's nothing you can do about it."

Tom turned to him. "Do you know something? Why are we here?"

Harry shrugged.

"Dumbledore talked to me before we came to pick you up. He said he wanted to take a look at the bond."

"Take a look at it how? Did he mention breaking it?"

"No—and I think he'd have warned me if that was the plan."

"You think he'd have warned you? Really? Like he warned you about being a Horcrux?"

Harry scowled.

"He didn't know for sure. And there was no point in him telling me, because he couldn't do anything about it."

"You're making excuses for him. Really, you'd have liked to have known."

Harry shook his head but didn't try to justify Dumbledore further. "I saw you'd wrecked your room," he said eventually.

"What did you expect?" Tom grumbled. "There wasn't anything else to do."

Harry hummed.

"What?"

"Oh, I was just thinking that it must have been so terrible, being locked up. I can't imagine how it would feel to not be able to go or do whatever you want."

There was a sly smile playing on the corner of Harry's lips. Tom frowned.

"I never made you piss in a chamber pot."

"Oh right, yeah, you were so much more compassionate."

Harry's eyes were bright and playful, albeit ringed with dark circles. The grey shirt he was wearing was a little too large for him—the neckline gaped, revealing a strip of collarbone.

It shouldn't have been nearly as appealing as it was.

"How are you sleeping?" Tom asked. "You look tired."

"Fine."

It was Tom's turn to hum doubtfully. "Are you in one of the rooms upstairs?"

"Yeah—two floors above you, sharing with Ron."

So Harry's friends were in the house too. Tom scowled—he had already guessed as much, but he didn't appreciate the confirmation.

Harry caught his expression.

"You're not jealous, are you?" he asked incredulously. "I have friends. You knew that."

"Of course not," Tom scoffed.

"Hermione is staying too. And Fred and George Weasley are there sometimes—they're Ron's older brothers."

"I really don't care."

"You're going to be awful to them, are you?" Harry sighed, resting his chin on his palm.

Tom raised his eyebrows.

"Will I get the chance? Did Dumbledore say something about letting me out?"

"Well, you're pretty harmless right now."

Tom soured at the reminder of his blocked magic and turned back to the dais. Snape was speaking, gesturing forcefully with his hands.

"—I don't understand why you will not even allow us to try it! The Imperious Curse—"

"You know how hard it is to use that curse to force someone to do something they know will be fatal—particularly given Riddle's instinct for self-preservation."

"Potter then!"

"Harry is resistant to the Imperious Curse."

Snape gathered himself up. "You are avoiding this, Albus," he hissed. "You said it yourself, mere days ago—Riddle is nothing but a shade, a memory—"

"I have told you already that it will not work. I have asked you here today to explore an alternative—we need to know just how strongly bound the two of them are. I hold out very little hope, but if Tom's soul is less damaged than I think it is, or if the bond is very tenuous, it might be possible to break it by physically dragging the two of them apart."

Dragging them apart! Fear rushed through Tom, thick and cloying like tar in his veins. He wanted his wand very badly, but did not even know where it was. Harry had had it last, but presumably Dumbledore had taken it from him—

"Come on Tom, let's talk about something else."

Tom ignored him. He wanted to batter at the wall separating him from his magic, but was afraid that Dumbledore might be able to feel it somehow. After all, he was the one maintaining the spell—

"My godfather is getting a retrial."

Again, Tom made no response. Harry sighed.

"Fred and George's shop is opening today—right now, actually. Dumbledore came through the fireplace about ten minutes after everyone left."

"—I think a look will be sufficient," Dumbledore was saying. He moved over to the teacher's table and removed a piece of cloth, revealing one of his spindly silver instruments. "It should be immediately obvious—"

"So, I hear you're going to be a father."

There were very few things Harry could have said to draw Tom away from that conversation. This was one of them. Tom turned to Harry, aghast that he would say such an untrue thing.

"No I'm not!"

"You don't think so?" Harry said, smug at having got a reaction. "Bellatrix was pretty convincing."

"That doesn't count—it's his, not mine! I wasn't even involved in the fun part of making it."

Harry's nose wrinkled. "'The fun part'? She's really old, and, you know—" he made a gesture with his hand. "—crazy."

"He's really old too, if you hadn't noticed."

"Do you think it will look like you?"

"No, it will probably be small and wrinkly."

"You know what I mean," Harry said, resting his palm on his chin. "I suppose better it looks like you than like Voldemort. Imagine if it came out without a nose . . ."

"It's not mine," Tom said again. "It's as if my identical twin was having a baby. I'm its uncle, if anything."

"Teenage dad Tom Riddle," Harry marvelled, completely ignoring him. "Who'd have thought it—OW"

Tom had kicked him viciously under the table. Harry bent over and rubbed his shin, grumbling. Tom was annoyed too. Harry's defiance had been more endearing when he was under Tom's thumb.

"You're different," he complained.

"What did you expect? Did you have to kick me so hard?"

"Yes."

They were silent for a few moments. Just as Tom was about to turn his attention back to the professors, Harry spoke.

"Have you been feeling anything through the bond?"

It was an intriguing question. Harry wasn't keen to meet Tom's eyes—the surface of the table had apparently become very interesting to him.

"No," Tom said slowly. "It tugs sometimes, when you move around near its limits. Why? Should I have?"

"Not really."

Tom raised an eyebrow. "Were you trying to sense me through it?"

"No . . . well, okay, yes, a bit. I tried the first night after we arrived."

"I didn't feel anything."

Harry's shoulders drooped almost imperceptibly. "Oh," he said. "I thought I felt something from your end. I guess I was imagining it."

"It's an interesting idea," Tom said, rubbing his chin. "It makes sense that we would be able to communicate—after all, that's how Voldemort sent all those dreams to me."

"That's what I was thinking!"

"I suppose he's a lot better at Legilimency than you are."

"Mmmm."

They lapsed into thoughtful silence.

"There's probably no point in experimenting," Harry said eventually. "After all, it's still temporary." He must have seen the look on Tom's face, because he continued hastily; "I'm not going to help them break it, but I don't want to be attached to you for the rest of our lives. You don't want that either, do you?"

Tom thought about that, then shifted and touched Harry's calf with the toe of his shoe. Harry froze, expecting to be kicked again. But all Tom did was drag his foot up Harry's inseam, slowly, sensuously, enjoying the flush that rose in Harry's cheeks, the way his muscles bunched. It was power, intoxicating—

"Harry . . . Tom, would the two of you kindly step onto the dais?" Dumbledore said loudly, from no more than six feet away.

They both startled. The conversation was apparently over; McGonagall and Snape had taken seats at the teacher's table. Tom took some comfort from their sour expressions—it seemed that they hadn't got what they wanted from Dumbledore.

Harry and Tom stood and climbed the steps at the side. Dumbledore directed them to stand across from each other, then picked up the instrument on the table. It reminded Tom of a child's balloon—a thread dangled from the base of a glass sphere which was about the same size as a football. From the thread, hung a horizontal silver rod, balanced precisely in the air. Dumbledore positioned it between the two of them at about chest height, then let go. Tom, who had been half expecting it to shatter on the ground, was disappointed when the globe bobbed in mid-air, rod wobbling beneath.

"What is that?" Harry asked. "What does it do?"

Dumbledore smiled at him. "This, Harry, is a curious little device that I picked up many years ago, in a country that is now known as Azerbaijan. It was in the possession of a warlock who had been on the run from the International Confederation of Wizards for so long that they had completely forgotten about him. I chose not to reveal his secret, and in return, he gifted me this."

He nudged the rod until it was pointed between the two of them like a spear, then twisted the orb, setting it spinning like a top in the air. Rather than slowing, it picked up speed, spinning faster and faster, while the gas inside the sphere brightened to opaque white.

"It reveals souls," Dumbledore said softly. "Normally, its range is small, but I have spent most of the morning tinkering with it, and am hopeful that it will work on the two of you at once."

And he was right. There was a shadow on Tom's left, like a mote in the corner of his eye. He brushed a lock of dark hair out of the way, only to see it again, from the other direction.

"Splendid," Dumbledore said. "I do believe it is working."

The wisps grew thicker and thicker, until, all of a sudden, something condensed out of thin air around Tom. It was black as the sky in the darkest part of the night, swirling around him like smoke. Tom let out an involuntary gasp and turned, trying to understand the shape of it.

His soul.

Wisps and strands, torn edges where it had been cut. Here and there, there was a join, a piece that was holding very tenuously to its fellows, bound with thin black strands. He couldn't quite make it out; it was a bit like a ragged cloak, formless and ever-shifting.

"Yes," Dumbledore said, voice was very grave. "This is the violence you have done to your soul."

But Tom did not care. He reached out a hand to touch and laughed as his fingers went straight through. There was nothing to feel, but his soul swirled around that spot playfully, then spun, circling him faster and faster and faster. Tom looked to Harry, grinning, wanting him to share in the fun.

Then paused, amazed.

Harry was on fire.

Red and gold flames encased his entire body, licking harmlessly up his legs, his chest, his face. The fire was soft and friendly, the kind that danced behind the grate in the cottage, or kept travellers warm from inside a circle of logs. It was his soul, and unlike Tom's, it was whole; as perfect as it had been on the day he was born.

Harry caught Tom's eye and laughed, alive with energy and amazement and joy.

Tom just stood there, transfixed. He had never really thought of Harry as beautiful before; his face was pleasant but unremarkable, and his eyes, which were arguably his best feature, were normally hidden behind his glasses.

But in that moment, beautiful was the only word that fitted.

And between them, there was a strand of soul.

Tom's eyes caught on it almost by mistake. It was as thick as his arm where it left him, a ribbon of dense black smoke reaching out across space. A similar strand of fire spun from Harry. They met in the middle, twisted so tightly about each other that Tom couldn't even see where his own soul ended and Harry's began.

Dumbledore stepped closer and looked down at the join with pursed lips. Tom heaved a sigh of relief; no words needed to be said—he could tell by the Headmaster's expression that this was what he had expected to see, that it was a lost cause. He would not be splitting them up today.

Harry was still staring at Tom.

"It's a storm," he said softly. "That's what yours looks like. It's like the wind."