A/N hi there. First things first. This chapter marks 100k words. WooHoo! Lets all dance and throw confetti. Second things second, I am one review away from 400 as I m writing this. Hurrah! *throws more confetti* I love you all :P)
Harry stood in front of a door. This door was made entirely of tuna fish.
He knew, deep within himself, that he wouldn t like what he found when he opened it. But he had to. He knew that, as well.
And of course, the tomato plants needed watering.
His hand hesitated on the handle. For to long, apparently, because the fish bit him.
"Wake up, I haven t got all day," The tuna reprimanded him, in a voice that he recognized, but couldn t quite place.
He quickly threw the door open, lest the nasty fish bite him again. Behind it, stood a letter box. The box opened its eyes and glared at him.
"You took to long. You failed the test. I am here to judge you," It's mouth was it's letter slot, and Harry giggled at it.
"You are very rude. For the love of Merlin, get up." It said, and Harry crossed his arms defensively.
"So why are you judging me?" He asked.
"You have already failed the test. You will never know." The letter box leaped forward and shook him by the shoulders, which Harry thought was strange. It didn t have any arms.
It was also completely uncalled for.
"Hey, that was nasty," The Boy Who Lived snapped.
"Wake up, Potter." The letter box growled, and Harry turned away, walking back along the yellow thatched roof. He had had enough of the post box s crap, thank you very much.
All of the sudden, there was an earthquake, and Harry's eyes snapped open.
"Finally," Tom said from beside him.
The Boy Who Lived turned his head to look at the Dark Lord, and hissed in pain. His neck hurt, and it took him a few seconds to figure out why. The bites he had received the night before. Apparently, they had been a lot rougher than Harry remembered. Tom was sitting beside him on the bed, and the Boy Who Lived wondered when he had gotten into it. He was also fully clothed.
For that, he was grateful. If he were still naked and lying on the floor, he would have been incredibly embarrassed.
"Come on, get up. We have a ritual to perform." Tom said, standing.
"What? What ritual?" Harry sat up, and flinched at the pain that was obviously all over him, not just his neck. He sent a glare at the Dark Lord, only to find that he was gone.
The Boy Who Lived got up and poked his head out of the door. He caught a glimpse of Tom s retreating back, and followed as quickly as he could, hating the way he couldn t walk properly.
"What ritual?" Harry asked again when he caught up.
"The horcrux. You re getting it back." Tom replied, and the Boy Who Lived didn't take note of the coldness in the Dark Lord s voice. He was to excited.
"Really? Now?" Harry grinned, but Tom had his back to him. He was walking rather fast, and Harry had to do a weird limping skipping thing to keep up.
"Yes, now." Harry s smile widened so much that his face hurt. Finally, he thought to himself. Not even wondering why it was happening now.
Harry sat cross legged in a circle of what looked like red sand. In the corner, Peter Pettigrew was bound on the floor.
He was surrounded by candles, and Tom stood across from him outside of the circle. Harry wondered why they were using Wormtail for the ritual, but he didn t mind. In fact, it fit rather well.
"Did you do this ritual with all your other horcuxes?" Harry asked.
"Yes. I m still not sure how you even became one. This is supposed to be mandatory." The Dark Lord replied, not looking Harry in the eye. Instead, he dragged Pettigrew toward the circle by his hair. Peter stared at that Boy Who Lived with a pleading look in his eyes.
Harry just smirked at him.
The Dark Lord held Pettigrew above the circle, so that his head was on the inside of the red sand. Peter squirmed, and Harry snapped at him to keep still. He stopped moving instantly.
Tom took a dagger from somewhere in his cloak, and swiftly stabbed it into Wormtail s neck. Blood poured from the wound, and Harry nearly stood in shock. As it was, he was wriggling away from the red liquid.
"Stop moving. It needs to touch you," The older man snapped, and the Boy Who Lived went rigid.
"Gross," He muttered as the blood came closer.
A few moments later, when Tom was sure Peter was dead, he threw the body aside unceremoniously.
He then put his hand in the pool of blood, careful to keep the rest of himself out of the circle.
The blood reached Harry, and he nodded at Tom, giving him the go ahead.
The Dark Lord started chanting in a language that Harry didn t recognize, and he decided he liked the sound of Tom speaking in another language, even better than he liked Parseltongue.
The blood under Tom s hand started glowing bright red, and the glow slowly started moving towards the Boy Who Lived. The teen grinned. Finally. He was getting what he wanted.
The odd light reached Harry, and he got what felt like a kick in the ribs. His eyes slammed shut, and he flinched. Before he could say anything about it though, he heard someone screaming like they were being murdered. The sound overtook every part of him, and he couldn t hear or feel anything else.
The Boy Who Lived tried to force his eyes open, but he found that he couldn't.
"What are you doing?" Harry recognized the voice of his horcrux. It was angry, angrier than he had ever heard it. In fact, he wasn t sure if he had ever heard anyone sound that furious.
What do you mean, what am I doing? Harry reached out with his magic, and tried to pull the horcrux into himself.
"Stop! Stop pulling and listen!"
The Boy Who Lived did as he was told, but that didn t stop him from wondering what the hell was going on.
"You can be mind numbingly stupid, sometimes. Voldemort didn t just remove pieces of his soul, he removed pieces of himself that he though were weak." Harry could feel Tom forcing the horcrux from the other end, and the magic was becoming more frantic.
What does that even mean?
"It means that he is missing a fair few base emotions. And what does that mean? Harry could now feel the Dark Lord s frustration through the newly forming link.
It means that I am his ability to care about someone. To love. To feel concern. And he's trying to get rid of that, again. You cant let him do that, Harry."
It took the Chosen One a few seconds to process that, and when he did, he kicked his legs out. He felt them connect with Tom, and heard the man gasp in surprise. He then opened his eyes and threw his arm out, breaking the circle of sand.
He felt the horcrux leave his mind, and grinned triumphantly. He noticed that he was laying on the ground now, and he didn't recall falling.
The smile feel right off his face when he heard the Dark Lord roar in anger.
"What is wrong with you!"
Harry sat up to look at Tom, only to be tackled back onto the ground, his head bouncing on the stone floor.
He blinked back stars and tried to push the Dark Lord off of him, to no avail.
"What's wrong with me? What's wrong with you?" Harry s speech was slurred, and he wondered whether or not he had a concussion.
"What are you afraid of, Tom?" He asked, blinking hard again.
"Don't call me that," The Dark Lord growled in warning.
"You let me call you that last night," Harry reminded him.
"The horcrux told me what you were trying to do." He added quickly, before Tom could say anything in return.
"Why?" The teen asked.
Tom had Harry pinned to the ground by the arms, and his grip tightened painfully before relaxing.
"Because you make me weak. You know more and see more than anyone else, and trust is never a good thing." To the Dark Lord's surprise, Harry started laughing.
"I make you weak? What kind of bullshit is that, Tom? Together, we're in-fucking-destructible. I'm some sort of super necromancer, and you're the darkest wizard of our time. I don t see how you got 'weak' from that combination." The Boy Who Lived said between fits of laughter.
"I'm serious, Potter. You're getting this horcrux back, whether you like it or not."
Harry laughed again, and brought his face closer to the Dark Lord's.
"No I m not," He whispered.
"And you know it. Are you afraid?" The teen asked.
When Tom didn t answer, Harry asked another question.
"Do you trust me?" Tom looked into Harry's eyes for the longest moment, before nodding minutely.
"Then leave your soul where it is."
(A/N little short, but ya ll got 7k of smut yesterday, so there. :P 400th reviewer gets a parade. And a scratch and sniff sticker. BTW, uploaded with wordpad because every other program I use for writing was being damn strange. So sorry for any mistakes that you found, because I'm sure there are some.)