A/N: I know it's been approximately 300 years and I am really sorry for the long wait, but I promise this story is NOT abandoned, I just hit a writer's block and am also kind of overwhelmed with work. But for now, enjoy this chapter, my friends. Also, just to be clear, these parts here are not in exact chronological order and there will be more explanations in the next chapter!

xXx

It was not as hard to find the darkness as Harry had thought it to be; in fact, he didn't even have to look for it, it was just there in his mind, a pool of shimmering blackness that clung to him like oil when he sank into it. How much of it was real and how much was just an analogy his mind had chosen, he did not know, but he had not been that surprised to find such darkness within himself; there was so much anger inside him, burning hot fury that he had choked down over and over; there was so much desperation, stored in uncried tears; there was so much hatred, caged in unheard screams; there was so much fear, an unending, bottomless pit that he could never hope to escape from.

How much of this was his and how much was the Dark Lord's, he could not tell at this point; and maybe he didn't want to.

xXx

There is a small boy, no older than six or seven, crouched on the ground, and Harry can see his excitement when he realizes that the tiny snake on the ground can understand him, admires him even for speaking its language. He knows something the others don't, he can do something the others can't. He smiles as he picks up the snake from the ground and tells it will let it stay in his room where it is always warm; he has found out very quickly that he cannot lie in these odd, hissing sounds, but that doesn't mean he can't conceal things. None of the older boys sleep this night as he makes the snake crawl into their beds to scare them and to bite them (even if it isn't poisonous, to his chagrin) and to teach them a lesson. They will remember; and this is the first time he understands how much power fear can create. He is punished, of course, but they will remember their lesson. He is sad when they kill the snake, but only because it was a good tool to frighten others.

The boy is older now, ten or eleven, and Harry has already recognized that it is Tom. A much younger Dumbledore sits on the bed next to him, and he sees the same relief on his face Harry has felt when he realized that he is not mad, that there are other people with the same powers as him. Harry takes a step back in surprise when Dumbledore makes the cupboard go up in flames even though nothing is real here, he cannot touch anything. He tells Tom to be a good boy and Harry feels a twinge of disgust – this is just the thing Dumbledore would say, just the most unhelpful thing for an estranged and isolated child to hear

xXx

Harry woke with a gasp when a stinging pain shot through his forearm – Hades was bent over him, teeth bared and blood dripping from his snout onto Harry's forehead. You will not be able to go deeper here, he said, you are still yourself, aren't you?

Am I? Harry asked; his tongue felt heavy and his throat was dry.

You must go closer, you must go inside his mind if you want to find what you are looking for, and you cannot do that here, the wards are too strong.

Will I turn into him? Harry asked.

If you do not know anymore who you are, you might. Hades nudged him with his snout, almost as if to comfort him. Tonight, you might.

We are so similar, Harry said, much more similar than I thought. I didn't know… he was an orphan, too. He tried to imagine a small Tom with parents, but he couldn't – he couldn't imagine someone who might love the child that would later become the Dark Lord – just like he hadn't been able to imagine someone who might love him when he was a child, too – wished for it, yes, believed in it, no. But then he remembered the Boa constrictor he had released from its cage when he was younger – he could have set it on the Dursleys, too, but he hadn't. Maybe he should have.

So I must go… where it all started, isn't it? Where our souls… he didn't want to say touched because it sounded so weird. Hades just nodded and waited patiently when Harry heaved himself onto his back and off they took through the open window, into the icy night.

xXx

When he has stood a few metres away from the scene before, Harry is now almost directly behind Tom, looking over his shoulder. Tom is older now, fourteen maybe, but he doesn't belong yet, he is still different. The other wizards and witches are fools, are weaklings, too afraid to use their powers to their full extent, but Tom isn't. He has learned how to charm others and it is especially easy with the younger students and also with Slughorn; but not with Dumbledore. Harry can feel the already familiar hate burn inside him; Dumbledore watches him, he asks questions, he doesn't leave Tom alone; and so Tom smiles and smiles and plays the good student. It is a special pleasure to him to unleash the basilisk from the Chamber just to see the pain on Dumbledore's face when the Muggleborn gets killed and Hagrid gets thrown out of the school.

Tom knows Dumbledore suspects him when the orphanage he grew up in gets burned to the ground, leaving all inhabitants behind dead. The Muggles claim something about a gas leak, but of course they are wrong and Dumbledore knows that, but he cannot prove anything because Tom is at Hogwarts, has not left the school grounds for weeks. He smiles when his Charms teacher praises him for his special skill in enchanting objects when he makes an entire tea set dance a waltz; and he thinks of the innocent looking floral tea cup that has been sitting in the headmistress' office in the orphanage, waiting to go up in flames since Tom's last summer there.

xXx

"Excuse me, Sir?"

Marcus looked up from a letter he had been brooding over for hours (without getting any further than the greeting) and scowled at the tiny Second Year next to his chair.

"What?" He did not know why younger students called him sir, he was not a professor and he certainly had never told them to, and it was not like he could be impressed by flattery and titles, but, he supposed, it was probably just a way to try and not get onto his bad side.

"Outside the Common Room, Longbottom is asking to speak to you."

"Who?"

"A Gryffindor," the girl said, her face showing distaste.

"I'm not interested," Marcus said, turning back to his letter that was supposed to shape his future – he wanted to play for the Wimbledon Wasps (always assuming the Dark Lord wouldn't have made it back to power when he finished school) and he was still considering the right amount of flattery to open his letter.

"He said it was important," the girl said, wrinkling her nose.

Marcus snorted – as if! "Tell him to go away."

"He said that you would say that and he also said that it concerned a Black Strangler, of all things."

"Wha –" Suddenly, it clicked and Marcus jumped up, narrowing his eyes in suspicion at the young girl whose name he could not be bothered to remember. How did Longbottom know? And more importantly, what did he know? "How come he got you to be his willing messenger?"

"He gave me three Sickles, the fool!" She opened her palm and showed him the shiny coins.

"You are the fool, request a Galleon next time," Marcus barked at her. "Off to bed, it's after curfew already! What even were you doing outside? That's two hours of detention with Filch for you, for plain foolishness!"

She jumped at his sudden anger, but nodded meekly enough before racing off in the direction of the dorms, inspecting her three Sickles.

Marcus vaguely remembered seeing Longbottom hanging somewhere around Harry before, always looking at him with that look of utter adoration that Marcus had seen on many faces before; but now he looked very solemn, almost fierce now. "What is so important that you came to disturb me at this hour?"

"This is about Harry," Longbottom said.

"Harry who?"

"Potter," Longbottom said.

"Why would I care about Harry Potter?"

"Because he's your boyfriend," Longbottom said.

"What potion have you taken that made you come up with this garbage?" Marcus barked at him. "I should put you into detention – just for saying that."

"I know," Longbottom said; and before Marcus could think, he had already slammed Longbottom into the wall, one hand on his throat, the other ripping his wand from his back pocket – not even a wandholster, the fool.

"What. Do. You. Know?" Marcus hissed at him, his bare teeth only inches from Longbottom's suddenly pale face.

"I know that you are… together," Longbottom said – well, he was not as much of a coward as he looked like, that much had to be said; most people Marcus had threatened like this would already have been in tears at this point.

"Harry swore he would not tell anyone," Marcus hissed (at least Longbottom was shaking a little now), "so what have you done to him to make him tell you?"

"He hasn't told me," Longbottom said, "I, uhm, saw you both by accident."

"When?"

"That's not of importance," Longbottom said, his face turning a fiery red, "I came here because I wanted you to ask if you've seen Harry today – or in the last days, that is."

"No, I haven't," Marcus said, slowly letting go of Longbottom's throat; Harry had sent him a short note to tell him that he was preparing for a very hard potions exam and that he would have no time for the next few days; and Marcus had grudgingly accepted that because he knew very well that Snape liked to make exams more difficult for Gryffindors; and probably extra difficult for Harry.

"Because he's been gone," Longbottom said, "I mean he's been to class last week and there have been weekends before when he hasn't shown up in the Common Room at all, but it's Sunday evening by now and no one has seen him since Charms on Friday, not even the House Elves. We have already been searching his typical hiding places in the castle and on the grounds, but I thought he might be… ah, hiding out at yours."

For the shortest moment, Marcus enjoyed the idea of having Harry confined to his bed for the entire weekend, but then he turned his mind back to the situation. "You been looking at the Quidditch fields? Is he with his thestral?"

"We couldn't find him," Longbottom said, "and I don't know how to call a thestral – we asked Hagrid, but he said he hadn't seen the herd for over a week. We will need to alert the teachers if he doesn't show up, and I'm pretty sure that's the last thing he would want – presuming he is hiding out somewhere and not in danger. Do you have any more ideas where he could be?"

"I will search the dungeons tonight," Marcus said, "and a few more places on the grounds."

Longbottom nodded. "We Gryffindors will search the upper floors, systematically. If we don't find him by dawn, we will alert Dumbledore; he will probably call the aurors."

Marcus swallowed; aurors in the castle was the last thing he needed right now. "We will find him," he said roughly.

xXx

"You been successful?" Neville asked although he already knew the answer when Flint showed up at their agreed meeting point outside the Entrance, a deep frown on his forehead.

"No," Flint said. "Maybe he did fly off on his thestral after all."

"Hermione fears he has snuck off to find You-Know-Who and find out how to wake Seamus, but I think…"

"Yes?"

"Are you on our side?" Neville asks, hesitantly – what a stupid question to ask! It's not like he would be able to tell if Flint lied to him.

"Do you think Potter would let me fuck him if I wasn't?"

Neville squinted at him- his rational side screamed at him to not trust Flint because there was no reason to; but his instincts told him to confide in him because Harry did and Neville felt that Harry was probably a better judge of character than he was.

"I think that Harry has got some sort of mental connection to You-Know-Who and I fear that he has gone to a place where he can be sure to be left alone and then try to extract the knowledge of the spell from You-Know-Who's mind, if that's possible."

"Why do you think he has a connection to the Dark Lord?"

"Well, everything points towards it, doesn't it? His nightmares, his mood swings that have become a lot worse, and sometimes he is just not Harry – and at this point I don't believe anymore that a little cut is everything that happened when he tried to kill Harry."

Flint just stared at him with his dark, unreadable eyes. "You are a good observer."

Neville shrugged. "No-one ever pays attention to me, so that leaves a lot of opportunities."

"Where d'you think he went?" Flint asked rather abruptly. "Any places you can think of?"

"Maybe some place in the Muggle world? And how would we get there?"

"I think I know," Flint said.

"What –" Neville's words got stuck in his throat when something cold touched his shoulder and he whirled around, too scared to even scream.

"Thestrals!" he gasped.

"You can see them?" Flint asked, oddly enough.

"I saw my great-great-uncle die many years ago. And you?" Neville said, regretting his question almost instantly.

"My mother," Flint said in a rough, cold voice. One of the thestrals stepped forward, its reptile-like neck bent forward, white eyes gleaming in the darkness and wings spread. The air was like an icy knife, but there were no little puffs of breath over their nostrils, Neville noticed, shivering even more.

"You think they're gonna take us to Harry?"

"There's only one way to find out. You coming?" Flint had already climbed the thestral's back, looking at Neville with narrowed eyes.

"I…" He was alone with one of the most feared Slytherins of Hogwarts, surrounded by the silent messengers of death; and everything inside his mind screamed at him to not do it, to leave, to run, but that would be just the situation, Harry, Ron and Hermione (well, maybe not Hermione) would dive into head over heels. Also, most importantly, he wanted to save Harry.

Ungracefully, he climbed onto the back of a thestral that had stepped towards him, spreading its wings in an obvious offering, and yelped when it soared into the air, taking his breath away; and only when the thestral took off, he realized that he really should not have gone on his own with Flint, but it was too late. The air stung into his lungs so hard he could barely breathe, the howling wind drowning out any sound, the ground beneath him a blur of darkness with the occasional smear of light; and he was just holding on for dear life, wishing with all his might that he would not fall off.

"Godric's Hollow," Flint said in a rough voice when they finally landed, while Neville was still busy trying to not throw up – really, he was not made for flying.

"You know it?"

"Never been here, but there's no way I could mistake it," Flint said and Neville nodded; he had seen the house before, they had walked past sometimes when he and his grandmother had gone to visit the Potters' graves. Neville felt a sudden sting of pain as he wondered if Harry's aunt and uncle had ever taken him here – considering how Harry spoke of them (or did not speak of them), probably not.

The frozen ground crunched beneath their feet as they walked up to the house in silence, its half-torn shadow looming over them. Neville jumped almost a foot in the air when a third thestral stepped out of the shadow silently, its white eyes burning and its snout red with blood, he noticed, swallowing. "This must be Harry's," he whispered and Flint nodded.

"Harry must be here," he said, pushing the door that opened without any sound when Neville had expected it to squeak loudly.

He had never actually been inside, but he had seen all the pictures of the smashed-in house, of the frozen-in-time rooms, without the tiniest speck of dust.

"He'll be upstairs," Flint said and Neville didn't ask how he knew; in silence they walked upstairs and Neville gasped when he saw Harry was there, on the floor, right next to where the floor and the walls had been torn off, an expression of terror frozen on his face. His sleeve was torn, his arm covered in streaks of dried blood. Neville thought of the thestral's snout, feeling ill.

After fruitless tries of shaking Harry, yelling his name and many different spells that really should have woken him up, Flint snorted in frustration. "Any ideas?"

"In the books, the princess gets kissed by the prince to wake up," Neville said, somewhat desperate.

"Potter's not a fucking princess and I'm not a prince," Flint snarled, brushing a strand of hair from Harry's face with such tenderness Neville had to swallow.

"We'll have to take him back to Hogwarts, I just hope Madam Pomfrey can fix him," Neville said. "She's… she's always…"

"Who is this guy he's he doing this for?" Flint asked. "Are they even friends?"

"I don't think so," Neville said; he knew Harry and Seamus didn't hate each other, they just got along, but Neville couldn't imagine Harry would ever call Seamus a friend.

Flint shook his head. "Fucking fool," he cursed, "why would he do this?"

"Harry hates feeling guilty of hurting others," Neville said softly – really, Harry always got the blame even when it wasn't his fault, and still he would always try to fix things – probably one of his most endearing, but also one of his most dangerous traits.

"Gryffindor," Flint said harshly, but there was a weird tone of understanding – and admiration? – to his voice. "How do we –"

In that very moment, there was a loud bang and a voice boomed from outside: "POTTER!" There was a loud crash and heavy steps downstairs could be heard.

"Fuck!" Flint cursed, jumping up from the floor.

"Merlin," Neville gasped – were those Death Eaters? Blind panic overwhelmed him for a second, but then he thought of Harry and how Neville couldn't let him get hurt and he stood up quickly, grabbing his wand as he heard the steps coming up the stairs –

Then, without any warning, Flint pushed him over the edge and for a moment that stretched into eternity, it felt like he was floating in the cold air that blew in from outside, and then the floor hit him so hard everything went black around him and the last thing he heard was the ugly, crunching sound of bones breaking.

xXx

A/N: Yes, there will be more explanations next chapter! Until then, merry Christmas xoxo