"Now that you are of a clearer mind, we can discuss."

Harry stilled, unconsciously bracing himself for the ingrained terror, but nothing happened. His head was still okay. Maybe he was no longer in control, but his emotions were regulated and that was better than nothing. Harry could still think critically about things. He could make decisions free of his fear.

"Okay." A mere agreement didn't feel adequate, however, so Harry added, "What do you want me to do?"

"Do you recall the offer I first made you?" Voldemort asked.

Pause. It took a moment for the memory to surface, for Harry to pull at the threads of the past firmly enough for the recollection to turn solid in his mind.

Months ago, when Harry had been freshly captured, Voldemort had offered the lives of Harry's friends and family in exchange for Harry's submission and willing captivity.

Something fluttered in Harry's head, and the sensation was akin to a butterfly trapped in a cage. As another second ticked by, Harry realized that the emotion, pinned though it was, was guilt. He would have taken that offer then, if he had known what was going to happen to him. He could have saved Remus, Ron, and Hermione—and any of his other friends who might someday fall into Voldemort's hands.

But that had been then. This was now, a different time and place, and Harry would need to make a new choice, though he did not yet know what it was.

"Yes," Harry said, because there was no ache in his heart to stop him from doing so, only an echo of sadness for what could have been.

Voldemort inclined his head as if this had been the expected answer. "I am prepared to offer two choices. You will make the decision of your own accord, and you may have as much time as you wish, so long as I believe you are genuinely attempting to make a decision."

Harry nodded, still mostly calm, still mostly in control of himself.

"Both options will require concessions on your part. I will list those concessions at the end. Is this clear so far?"

Harry nodded again. He could now feel the beginnings of worry pressing at his temples, but the emotion was dull, blanketed by Voldemort's presence.

"Option one. Your friends swear an Unbreakable Vow of neutrality against me. Then they may live in captivity, though their freedoms will be limited, and you will be permitted to see them occasionally."

Harry waited to see if there was more, but Voldemort appeared to be waiting for a reaction or response. "O-okay," Harry said, the word thick on his tongue, his throat working slowly, like it was coated in molasses.

"Option two. I will wipe them both of a majority of their memories. I will alter their appearances, implant new, fresh memories, and send them away, together, to a country of your choosing, where they will live comfortable, oblivious lives far away from my domain."

As Voldemort finished speaking, his hands came together, the fingertips touching, his arms braced on top of his desk. Expectant.

Harry mulled over what he had heard. Ron and Hermione would live either way, he realized. So this had to be a trick, didn't it? Or perhaps whatever concessions Voldemort wanted would be things Harry could not give, so that this entire conversation was doomed to failure no matter what.

But Remus had been allowed to live, so it was not completely out of the question for Voldemort to offer the same out for Harry's closest friends. Voldemort said he was merciful. Voldemort enjoyed the label of magnanimity that came from being kind to Harry. Voldemort enjoyed the exercise of control he had over Harry's life.

Well aware that Voldemort was picking up on every thought in his head, Harry cleared his throat. "And what do I have to do for those options?" he asked.

Voldemort smiled. A real smile, not the one Harry had seen flashed either at the Ministry or at more irritating Death Eaters. This smile was closest to one Harry had witnessed on the night of the Horcrux ritual. Voldemort triumphant; Voldemort victorious. But there was less horror this time. Less darkness to the edges. There was a hint of truth to the curve of Voldemort's lips.

"Harry," said Voldemort. "What you must first remember is there is little I could not take from you by force. What I require—what I have asked for during these past few months—is your willing cooperation. And you have performed impressively, yes, and you have surpassed my expectations."

Harry blinked, shoving aside his discomfort at the compliment. While he had known that Voldemort liked having him around, he hadn't thought there was an actual reason behind his continued presence other than Voldemort's personal amusement. To hear that Voldemort wanted him around specifically to help out—Harry had known that he had been helping, at least somewhat, but to hear this from Voldemort gave the word new meaning.

"You want me to help out more?" Harry asked, confused. He had asked himself this question only minutes earlier, but those minutes now felt like a lifetime ago. It had been one thing to imagine himself as—as Voldemort's court jester, as a plaything to parade about at the Wizengamot and in front of the Death Eaters. Could he be an honest advisor? Was his opinion really so valuable?

"Your views are fascinating," Voldemort answered. "I find that the value of your ongoing moral dilemma extends beyond amusement."

Harry struggled to comprehend this. His moral dilemma? This was his life they were talking about. His fucking immortal life. At the moment, Harry was very sure this entire situation was the universe's way of setting up a grand cosmic joke at his expense.

But no sooner had he thought that did he clamp down on his own anger, knowing it wouldn't make the situation any better. Not for him, and not for Ron and Hermione.

Voldemort continued to speak, his words languid as he said, "The worth of human lives—Muggle or magical. The worth of those you care for. How you balance these, how you justify them. I must confess I have never fully understood the impact of care, despite twisting its results to my own ends."

"Must be nice not to care," Harry said, unable to keep the sarcasm from colouring his tone. Evidently, Voldemort hadn't bothered to stamp out his defiance, because Harry was beginning to get irritated, and the emotion felt very real and present in his mind.

"There are other things to care for. There is order, and with order comes control, and with control comes power. And with power—"

"Comes corruption," Harry finished, cutting Voldemort off. "If you don't care about people, then why bother with any of this at all? Why not just force everyone to worship you, Imperius them all or something. Why do you need a Ministry with a Wizengamot?"

"I do believe I said 'order'," Voldemort replied evenly. "Did I not?"

If Voldemort didn't want a country of slaves, then what did he want? What did Dark Lords want, if not the subjugation of the populace? Voldemort had power over everything in magical Britain. He had this huge mansion full of House-Elves and Death Eaters to serve him. He even had Harry with him, a feat which had secured not only his immortal reign, but his immortal life as well.

But Voldemort also wanted cooperation, Harry reminded himself. There was the stilted dance of politics they had been doing together. Harry was a constant at Voldemort's side, providing advice, providing insight. And Voldemort was much smarter than him, there was no doubt in Harry's mind about that, but Voldemort still kept him around anyways. Harry now knew more things than he wanted to; he knew information that the Order would have killed for.

Additionally, Voldemort had been educating Harry on the ways of his Ministry. Voldemort had said they had time, and that he wanted to convince Harry of his plan for a future utopia.

"You want—you want everyone to be like me," Harry realized. "You want them to cooperate because they agree with you. Because they want to." A reign free of conflict. An empire built by all that was overseen by Voldemort himself, built on the backs of bloodshed and pointless suffering.

"What I want is your loyalty. Nothing less. The lack of hesitation you possess when faced with the option to sacrifice yourself. Your willingness to die for your moral cause. A powerful thing, that. A potent thing. You are my Horcrux, and so a degree of loyalty is owed to me."

"I couldn't," Harry blurted out, and then he cringed at himself. Because the honesty was bad, it was a bad answer, and though Voldemort was holding his terror at bay, Harry was still capable of embarrassment, of all things.

A tingle pressed against his consciousness that signalled laughter, or something close to it, and Harry scrunched his face up in response. Perhaps Harry would play the role of amuser anyways.

Harry waited until the echo faded, until the presence went quiet. Then he said, "That's the concession you want from me? You want my loyalty."

"Ideally."

It was better to be honest, Harry decided. To hope Voldemort would think of something else, or that he, Harry, could come up with a suitable alternative. "I don't think I can do that."

Almost absently, Harry traced a hand over his chest. Though the idea of another scar had once nearly driven him to paralysis, it was easier now to think of offering himself up again, his body a canvas, his bare skin given over to the Dark Lord's sadistic urges.

But Voldemort had a response to this thought as well. "I do not wish to break your spirit. I find your strength admirable. If I were to torture you, to push you over the edge into submission, there would be little satisfaction."

"You do it with others." Harry felt compelled to point this out. "You did it with lots of people."

"Others do not matter to me."

Harry had a piece of Voldemort in him. Maybe it was no longer appealing to torture Harry knowing that. Maybe Voldemort, through their odd connection, could feel when Harry was in pain or discomfort.

"How is it that you… you know, do that with my emotions?" Harry knew he was changing the subject, but he wanted to understand exactly what it was that Voldemort was thinking. Why was it so important to Voldemort that Harry willingly side with him?

"You may employ Occlumency shields, but you do a poor job of it," Voldemort said, but there was no tone of insult. "You have never learned to properly regulate your emotions—a fact which was clear to me as soon as I touched your mind with Legilimency. What I provide are my own Occlumency barriers. They are in place of the ones you should have built for yourself."

Then Voldemort retrieved his yew wand, tapping the top of his desk with it. A drawer slid open, and from within its depths Voldemort withdrew another wand. Harry's wand.

Harry had not seen his wand in months, but the sight of it was enough to set off a fresh ache inside of him. Magic. He had missed his magic.

"I still don't understand all this," Harry said, eyes fixed on the holly stick in Voldemort's hand. "I don't get what you want from me, or why you want it, or why we're doing any of this at all."

Voldemort said nothing. Harry squirmed under the weight of Voldemort's stare, thoroughly discomfited and a bit worried that he'd said something wrong.

"It is difficult to explain," Voldemort said at last. "But I assure you my intentions are genuine. I will let your friends live, should you choose to accept my terms."

So he had to let this go for now? Harry nodded slowly, more to himself than to Voldemort. "What else did you want? You said 'concessions' plural."

Voldemort set Harry's wand down upon the table. There was a faint thrum in Harry's fingertips, as though his magic knew his wand was near. He wanted to snatch it up, to take it away from Voldemort, who had already denied him so much. Had denied him death.

"Your presence at future meetings of the Wizengamot, for one."

Easy enough. Sit through more politics and cast his vote.

"Okay," Harry said. Then, more confidently, he added, "I can do that." He would just have to not think too hard on exactly what he was voting for, if it came to voting for something bad. Whatever it was, it would be something Voldemort would do anyways, regardless if the result of the vote gave him the appearance of legitimacy or not.

Harry could justify this to himself. He would justify it, he would find a way, because this was something he could do to please Voldemort and spare his friends. This was just another mind game.

"And lastly," Voldemort said. "I wish for you to act as a conduit between myself and some of those in my inner circle."

Inexplicably, Harry thought of Nott, who ran around constantly and was obviously an assistant of some kind. But Voldemort didn't have an assistant. He had employees, Death Eaters, and an extra group of sycophants composed of people like Bellatrix that didn't have official titles. Could Voldemort even give up enough control to have a proper assistant? Voldemort struck Harry as the type to deal with everything of import personally, lest his followers mess things up when left to their own devices.

"Like Nott?" Harry asked, trying to imagine what this would all look like. Though he was doing his best to follow along, it was hard to stamp down his burgeoning curiosity. He was supposed to let this go; he wasn't supposed to question things too much. Ron and Hermione could live, he repeated to himself. They could live if he could get through this.

"Somewhat," Voldemort said. "If it helps, you may think of yourself as my aide."

A laugh burbled its way past Harry's lips. Voldemort's aide. This was worse than torture, Harry decided. The agonizing fate of being a willing participant in Voldemort's cause. Of seeing betrayal etched into the faces of those who had once believed in his ability to save them.

"But why?" Harry asked, working past the discomfort wrought in him by the imbalance of power between them, but his desperation to understand was choking the words as he shoved them out one by one. "Why do you want me to do this?"

"Others will come and go, and death will claim them all, even my most loyal. But I will remain eternal, and you will be by my side as a constant," Voldemort said. "To spend years locked in a battle against your pointless resistance is a waste of my time. It is more sensible to recruit you. The sooner you accept this, the sooner you will find your peace here."

To save Ron and Hermione, Harry would do anything. He would sell the little bits of himself that he had left to offer. His dignity, his morality, and—were Voldemort to have his way—his loyalty. A bought man as well as an imprisoned one.

Was it an equal trade for the lives of his friends? Voldemort believed so.

"You have my terms," Voldemort said, "and you will make a decision. Your service for their safety; your loyalty for their lives."

Harry had already told Voldemort that he wasn't capable of offering loyalty. But with the request so bluntly phrased, Harry was now less sure of his previous answer.

"Disregard the conditions I have set," Voldemort commanded, his voice once again disrupting Harry's inner monologue. "And make a decision."

Choose first, wrestle with his own inner demons later.

Harry sucked in a fresh breath of air to jump start his brain into thinking, but he knew what his answer would be. He could not—would not—condemn his friends to a life in captivity. If they were to stay, captivity or no, they would never stop fighting Voldemort, and eventually they would die.

It was better for them to forget about him. They wouldn't have to worry anymore about how he would be trapped in this life forever.

Harry pictured Ron's kind blue eyes and Hermione's warm, toothy smile. Pieces of his friends that would live on in his memory for eternity. Pieces he could carry with him, once they were gone. Gone somewhere safe.

His chest heaved as a soft noise of pain escaped him. He was crying, he knew, but he couldn't quite bring himself to care. If Voldemort wanted him to stop crying, then the bastard could do it himself.

"I see." Voldemort stood, scooping Harry's wand up off of the table. "Have you performed an Obliviation before?"

Harry struggled with his blurry vision. Sliding a hand underneath his glasses, he rubbed at his eyes until he could make out the form of Voldemort standing before him.

"No," Harry said. "Usually—usually Hermione does the Obliviations." The fact slipped out before he could think better of it. But what did it matter, really, when the three of them would never be going out on a mission together ever again? "She used to do them," he added in a whisper.

"I understand this will be difficult for you," Voldemort said, "and so I will aid you with the process."

Aid him? Harry stared, uncomprehending.

Then the implication sunk in.

"You want me to do it?" Harry asked, his pitch rising. "You want me to Obliviate them?"

Harry waited for the calm to wash over him, for Voldemort to strip the panic away. But there was nothing, only the pain, only the deepening horror at what he would be made to do. The product of his own decisions.

"Would you prefer I did so? Clear them of their memories of you? Of their loved ones?"

That wasn't right. It wasn't right. It should be Harry, it had to be him. Harry owed them that much. He owed their families that much—to view the remains of who they were before it was all gone for good.

"Will they be the same, after?" Harry sounded small to his own ears. Quiet, resigned. He gazed at his lap, at the folds of the plum fabric that made up his Wizengamot robes. Robes he would now wear for years to come.

"They will remain themselves. I will change their names and provide a comparable history for them."

Harry wasn't sure how that would work. How could they be the same, once everything was erased? Once the memories of them together that Harry loved and cherished were no more.

He thought of how they would hate him for choosing this, though they would not remember it afterwards.

"They will live," Voldemort said kindly. "And they will enjoy a better life than the one they would have chosen for themselves, for undoubtedly they would have chosen to stay here with you."

It was mercy. It was awful and terrible and wrong, but it was a mercy, a kindness. And it was also selfish of him, because Harry knew he could not bear to witness his friends wasting away in this place, growing old and stagnant. They deserved whatever happiness he could secure for them.

Harry looked up. He was tired, his head was beginning to hurt, and he knew now why Voldemort was holding his wand, because such a deed would require the strongest connection to his magic that he could muster.

"Does it have to be today?"

Voldemort's red eyes were darker from this angle—like a very deep shade of brown made warmer by the candlelight around them. "Will time make it easier?"

It wouldn't. But if he could just spend a moment longer with them, then—

But could he? Could he spend any period of time in their presence without the stabbing guilt?

Harry felt like crying all over again. Hadn't he dreamed of seeing them, of hugging them close? Daydreams of rescue and comfort scattered to the winds, because they would never be his friends again after this. He was condemning them to this eradication, this non-existence.

Others will come and go, and death will claim them all.

Someday, everyone he knew would be dead, either by Voldemort's hand, or as a result of the natural passage of time. When that time came, it would be just the two of them left—him and Voldemort—and so Harry had to make the choice that would see him through to that time without losing himself.

His heart, wounded and starving, would have to be locked away. It had no place here amongst the cruel and the single-minded.

He would be clinical. He would be efficient. He would serve under the Dark Lord, saving however many lives he could, and if he was ever brought to judgement by a higher power, he would plead no mercy, for he deserved whatever retribution he would suffer.

Harry rose to his feet. The top of his head came up to just above Voldemort's chin, and at this range, they were less than an arm's length away from each other.

"You won't hurt them," Harry said. "And they will have a nice house and good jobs and they'll bring Hermione's cat, Crookshanks, with them. And you'll leave them to their lives together without interfering."

"You have my word."

Living with this decision, accepting it—if he could do those things, then there was little else that could shake him.

Harry wiped his hand on his robes and stuck it out. "Then we have a deal."

The hand that grasped his own was firm. There was only Voldemort, Harry told himself. This man would become all he lived and breathed, restrained however partially by Harry's influence, until the end of time and magic.

There was no prophecy. There was no hope. There was only this handshake, this agreement that would mark the last time Harry allowed himself to be weak in front of the Dark Lord.


A/N:

i am sorry to say that we will not be seeing ron or hermione again. we are now moving towards the last two major events of this story, and there eventually will be longer time skips.

i've really enjoyed writing this (more than i thought i would) and i'm excited to see it through till the end. thanks for all the feedback on the last chapter, hope everyone continues enjoying!