That night, Harry slept deeply and had the most amazing dream. He was cocooned inside a warm, strong body but he wasn't alone. Together they slid inside a hot bath, steam rising around them while the scent of lemon and cedar invaded their senses. They sipped a glass of whiskey and it warmed their mouth and burned their throat and the smoky aftertaste tickled their nose. And Harry couldn't remember ever feeling as whole or as complete before. It was as if he'd been missing half of himself but hadn't realized it until he joined with this missing part and finally knew what it was like to be one again.

"Harry, is that you?" The voice was soft and deep and Harry wanted to curl around it. "Are you dreaming, my dear? Then perhaps we'll dream together." They slid inside a large bed with thick blankets while a fire burned in the fireplace, and soon they were gliding through different scenes together, some familiar to Harry and some utterly foreign but it was all peaceful because he knew he wasn't alone.

When he woke in the morning, Harry felt a pang in his chest at the loss of that warm, safe feeling of completeness. He was suddenly utterly alone and aware of it. That was until his senses returned and he realized he must have shared his mind, his soul with Voldemort last night.

No, not Voldemort anymore, Harry reminded himself. Voldemort was dead and gone and not ever coming back.

It was just Tom now. Thomas Gaunt.

Nevertheless, Harry was sure as he woke up completely that he'd connected with Tom while he slept. And it had been the most amazing thing Harry had ever felt. So amazing, even, that Harry was a little embarrassed to bring it up later that night during one of their mirror chats. But he would, embarrassed or not. It was important to understand their connection, especially now that it had returned so unexpectedly.

Ever since Harry found himself back in his eleven-year-old body his scar hadn't given so much as a peep. No pain, no tingles, no visions of any sort. Nothing. And then Tom got his body back and his complete soul found a permanent home again and suddenly their connection came back with a vengeance.

Then again, when Harry thought back to his first life, his scar hadn't bothered him all that much either until Voldemort got his body back in his fourth year. Sporadically he'd had short bouts of pain when Voldemort's wraith was nearby or feeling particularly murderous. When Voldemort had inhabited a homunculus the visions in his sleep had started, but still only on just a few rare occasions. And then Voldemort was resurrected and the headaches and mind melting had really began.

It seemed that the second time around something similar was happening, except their feelings for each other weren't murderous. Quite the contrary, so their connection was now giving pleasure instead of pain.

And yep, Harry was definitely a little embarrassed about this new phenomenon if the blush he felt heating his cheeks was any indication. He still needed to discuss it with Tom that evening, since a connection that just opened up out of the blue, no matter how pleasurable, could be terribly disruptive, not to mention give the game away. Harry wanted to cause Dumbledore a lot of doubt about his shared soul with Voldemort, starting with utterly denying he'd ever felt the man through his scar. And he planned to keep that up no matter what, but that meant he needed to control their connection or else he might just give himself away.

"Morning," Blaise said when Harry opened his curtains and hopped out of bed. Blaise was just changing out of his pyjamas. "You got in late last night. I'm sure Snape was in here looking for you at some point.

Harry groaned and rubbed a frustrated hand across his face. "Yeah, he found me while I snuck into the common room. I've got detention tonight."

"How terrible," Blaise said, utterly without sympathy.

Harry shot him a rude gesture and went to get dressed.

The Daily Prophet made no mention of anything strange happening the evening before, not that Harry had expected it to. But you never knew who could pick up on the kind of necromantic magic they had used last night to park Tom's soul in a brand new body. Besides that, anyone marked by Voldemort would have felt something. Tom assured him it wouldn't be more than a short, slight burn, but you never knew what kind of conclusions someone might draw from it and talk to the wrong person about it.

Harry skimmed through the paper as he did most mornings at breakfast. There was a very short article mentioning it was the tenth anniversary of his parents deaths and the end of the war on Halloween tucked away at the bottom of the front page. It didn't mention Harry at all, for which he was grateful.

So far the Daily Prophet hadn't written much about him, aside from a short mention he'd started Hogwarts, was sorted into Slytherin and was making friends and doing well in his classes.

Rita Skeeter hadn't set her sights on him just yet, but she would at some point, Harry knew. He suspected he was still too young. Very few people would put up with a reporter vilifying an actual eleven-year-old child. But once he was a teenager, around his fourth year like in his last life, Harry was sure Rita would come calling. Harry wasn't sure yet how to handle her. It depended on a lot of things that were still up in the air. But at the very least Harry wouldn't put up with any slander courtesy of the Prophet. Barty had told him weeks ago he could sick a solicitor on them if they started one of their smear campaigns again, and Harry planned to at least do that when the time came.

Another novelty for Harry was all the mail he was now receiving. Most of it were innocent letters or cards penned by children from across the globe who'd read one of those silly books and whose parents must have told them Harry Potter was a real boy who they could write to. Harry conscripted Kreacher to help him with this type of mail. Harry read the cards and letters and replied with a copied form letter in which he thanked the child for writing to him but in which he also gently explained he was just a kid himself and the books written about him were fictional. In the evening he handed the letters off to Kreacher who made sure they were all sent off using school owls. It wasn't a huge distraction as Harry maybe received some twenty to thirty of such letters a week.

The other type of correspondence Harry received was a little more disturbing. Written by adults and meant to hurt him in a some way. These were thankfully sporadic, but they did demonstrate it was a good idea to diligently use detection charms on every piece of mail he received. So far Harry had received one cursed card which he didn't open thanks to the detection charms used, one letter filled with bubotuber pus, which he also caught in time, and one box of chocolate cauldrons filled with love potion, which what the fuck? He was eleven! What sick fuck sent love potions to a child? As Harry studied the accompanying card he got the distinct impression the witch in question, someone named Lucinda Snow, had been sending him spiked chocolates for at least a few years. So perhaps Snape hadn't been exaggerating when he mentioned destroying pounds of spiked chocolate.

After getting the go-ahead from Amelia Bones through Susan, Harry sent the whole lot off to the Auror department. Let them deal with it. It was their job, after all.

"No love potions this morning?" Theo asked cheerfully as Harry folded his newspaper and stuffed it in his book bag. Ever since Harry had received those blasted chocolates his friends hadn't let him forget it.

Harry gave him the stink-eye. "Keep bringing it up and I'll offer the next batch I get to you when you least expect it."

Blaise chuckled while Theo looked a little disturbed by that thought. "You should have kept the ones you got," Blaise said with a casual kind of cruelty which still sometimes surprised Harry. "And the next time Draco or Weasley got on your nerves, just offer them a chocolate and sit back to watch the chaos."

Of course, Blaise didn't know Harry had already seen Ron doped up on a love potion once and it had been kind of hilarious. But it also freaked Harry the fuck out when he really thought about it. In many ways, it was worse than the imperius curse. Only so many people could cast an imperius curse and really control you. But just about everyone could either brew or buy a love potion since most weren't even illegal, and control you that way.

And love potions could control a person enough to really screw up their lives. Just look at Tom's mother and father. No matter Merope had been a victim of abuse herself, what she'd done to Tom Riddle senior was repeated rape and mind-control, plain and simple.

Harry stared at Blaise and shook his head. "I'd rather the Aurors stop whoever is trying to control me than have a few cheap laughs."

"Fair enough," Blaise replied with a shrug and went back to eating his scrambled eggs on toast.

It was a Friday so they only had double potions that morning and the afternoon off. Ever since Harry, Neville and Millicent had been forced together through Ron and Hermione's actions they had stayed partners in Potions. They worked well together and both Neville and Millicent were quiet and hard-working and that suited Harry just fine.

Snape kept glaring at Harry throughout the class, so much so that Neville noticed.

"What did you do to piss him off?" Neville whispered while he shredded seaweed.

"I was out past midnight last night and Snape caught me getting back. I've got detention with him tonight," Harry whispered back.

Neville gaped at him and then swallowed audibly, looking as if Harry had just announced he was diagnosed with a terminal disease. Millicent shook her head at Neville's antics and said, "Be glad that's all the detention you got, Harry. Pansy's cousin once got a week's worth of detention when Snape caught her and her Ravenclaw boyfriend in a supply closet past curfew. They had to help the gamekeeper clean out the hippogriff stables every evening for seven days."

"Yeah, that does sound worse," Neville agreed. "Still, good luck, mate."

"Thanks," Harry said, more than a little amused, but also grateful at least Snape wasn't making him shovel hippogriff shit.

As it turned out, Snape had him disembowel salamanders. A whole vat of them. Harry spent the afternoon in the library with his friends finishing up their homework, as they did every Friday, and after dinner and the Slytherin house meeting, Snape waited for him with a sinister smile on his face.

"With me, Potter," Snape said and stalked out of the common room, Harry on his heels.

Once inside the classroom, Snape pointed at the vat of salamanders and the knife laying on one of the desks. "Disembowel those, Potter. You will not leave this classroom until they are all done."

"Yes, Sir," Harry said, remembering his private vow to not piss Snape off if he could help it and to always be polite to him. So he refrained from saying anything else and simply got to work. Disembowelling anything was disgusting but fairly simple to do, so Harry let his mind wander into an almost meditative state while his hands did the work automatically.

Snape, in the meantime, sat behind his desk with a stack of essays, a quill and a big bottle of red ink. He glanced at Harry from time to time, but otherwise focused on his own work.

It wasn't until Harry was about three-quarters done with his vat of salamanders that Snape put down his quill and leaned back in his chair. He stared at Harry who slowly came out of his meditative trance when he all but felt Snape's gaze on him. Harry tried not to let show how much that unnerved him, to be the focus of Severus Snape's attention like that. Harry was well aware there were two people in Hogwarts who stood a fair chance of discovering Harry's secrets. One was Dumbledore and the other was observing Harry as though he'd never seen anything as fascinating before in his life.

"Are you familiar with the term muscle memory, Potter?" Snape finally asked as he shifted in his seat as though he was trying to make himself more comfortable as he got ready for a bit of pleasant conversation.

Harry was. During his fifth year, while teaching the DA, Hermione had mentioned it while explaining to everyone why repetition was so important when several members had complained about doing the same spells over and over again. "I can't say I am, Sir," Harry said with a faint shrug as he kept working.

"Muscle memory is the ability to reproduce a particular movement without conscious thought," Snape drawled while gesturing at Harry with his hand. "One acquires muscle memory as a result of frequent repetitions. Which begs the question, Potter, where did you learn to disembowel amphibians before today that you can now do it without thinking?"

Harry kept his face blank while his mind raced a mile a minute. Holy fuck. How was he supposed to explain this? "I don't know, Sir," he finally said, remembering Slytherin's credo of 'deny everything, always'. "But I've been cooking meals for my family for years. That's given me all sorts of skills with a knife, I suppose."

"Hm." Snape's lips curled up in a smirk. "And has cooking Muggle meals also given you the experience you have on a broom, Potter?" Snape sat up a little straighter, leaning towards Harry ever so much as he narrowed his eyes. "You see, I was under the impression that you grew up completely in the Muggle world, unaware of your magical heritage until you received your Hogwarts letter. Yet that Wronski Feint you showed us makes me question your Muggle background. Which begs the question... why are you lying about it?" Snape's smirk became downright predatory. "What are you hiding?"

Buggering fucking fuck. Harry had to clamp his jaws together to keep himself from swallowing nervously. This is what he got for showing off, wasn't it? He just had to get his way and play Quidditch as a first year or else he might get too bored or something and now Snape knew something was up and Harry had no idea how to explain this. His mind was drawing a complete blank as his heart raced in his chest and his mouth instantly became dry. How could he explain away his Quidditch skills when he was supposed to be an eleven-year-old Muggle-raised child.

Fucking hell. How to explain this? He had practice. Sometime during last summer he learned how to fly a broom. Someone showed him how to fly and they discovered his talents on a broom.

Yes. That could work. But who did he know who could have done that and who would go along with the story should he be questioned?

"My friend Barty showed me how to fly a broom this summer, Sir," Harry said as evenly as he could. He stopped disembowelling for a moment when he noticed his hands trembling. "He discovered my talent and showed me some moves. He encouraged me to join the team."

"Barty who?" Snape demanded, lips curling up in disdain.

"Bartholomew Crouch."

"Crouch?" Snape's eyes widened ever so much. Harry had to remind himself that no one, aside from Tom, Wormtail and himself knew Barty Crouch Jr was still alive. Everyone assumed he'd died in Azkaban almost a decade ago, so Snape would not immediately suspect it was him.

"Yeah, Barty's related to that Ministry Head who died this summer. That's why he was in the country, to settle the affairs of his second cousin or something." Harry shrugged, some of the tension slowly leaving his body now that he'd found a working story.

"And how did you meet this Barty Crouch?" Snape asked, black eyes narrowed to slits.

"Bumped into him at the Quidditch store," Harry said with a cheeky grin, warming up to the story he was fabricating. "My aunt let me roam around there for half an hour or so after she got tired of hearing me whine about wanting to fly. Barty offered to let me fly his broom," Harry finished with a shrug.

"And you actually went with the first stranger who offered to let you ride his broom, you imbecilic child?" Snape snarled while he slammed his hand down on his desk in sheer rage. "You could have been killed or worse."

"My aunt said it was fine," Harry said, a little taken aback by Snape's sudden anger.

"Your aunt starved you while she kept you in a cupboard. She's not exactly an example to follow when it comes to your care, Potter." Snape dragged a trembling hand down his face and suddenly looked exhausted.

"Look, nothing happened. Barty's a good guy who's become a good friend," Harry said honestly. He remembered the half-squashed salamander in his hand and went on with his work. "He taught me how to fly and recommended a lot of interesting books." Harry decided to ramble on about his favourite subject as a way to hopefully distract Snape away from this topic altogether. "He told me to get some beginner Runes books and they are amazing. And Daphne's mother is a Runes Mistress and she gave me even more titles to read. I cannot wait until third year when we can actually take Runes. It seems a bit unfair, though, that we have to wait this long to take it. Why can't we learn Runes in our first year, Professor?"

"Potter," Snape said with a tired sigh. "Do shut up."

"Yes, Sir. Sorry, Sir," Harry said with small smile he quickly hid by biting the inside of his cheek. Mission accomplished. Snape went back to his essays, shooting Harry occasional disgusted looks that were a clear commentary on Harry's diminished intelligence, but Harry happily ignored those while he finished his work as quickly as he could. He needed to get out of there to get his story straight with Barty and Tom. He hadn't meant to give up Barty's existence so early on but it had been all he could think of with Snape breathing down his neck like that.

"I'm done, Sir," Harry said some twenty minutes later.

Snape rose up from his chair and moved towards Harry. He inspected the disembowelled salamanders with a sneer. "Barely adequate. Next time I catch you out after curfew it will be a week of disembowelling small creatures, just so you know, Potter. Dismissed."

"Good night, Sir," Harry said and left the classroom without a backwards glance. He all but ran back to his dormitory.

"That bad, huh?" Theo asked from where he was sitting on the floor playing exploding snap with Blaise. Both were already wearing pyjamas.

"Ugh," Harry said as he inspected his hands and underarms, all covered in blood and guts. "I had to gut a vat full of salamanders. I need a shower right now."

"Yes, you do," Blaise agreed with a wrinkle of his nose.

Harry showered until the skin of his hands was a vivid pink and wrinkled. Meanwhile he focussed on his breathing to calm down now that the adrenaline slowly left his body, leaving him shaky and tired. Once dried off and in his own pyjamas, he begged off a game of cards with Theo and Blaise, saying he was too tired which wasn't too far from the truth. He was tired, but he couldn't rest before he talked to Barty.

Except Barty wasn't answering his mirror when Harry tried to call him after he'd applied a copious amount of privacy charms on his curtains. And then Harry remembered that Barty was travelling to Lebanon today, so he called Tom instead.

When Tom answered his mirror and Harry saw a handsome, human face with brown eyes, he was taken aback for a second. For months he'd talked to a small, slightly wrinkled and drawn face with red eyes and he'd gotten so used to that, apparently, that seeing Tom whole again took some getting used to.

"Hi," Harry said, a little breathlessly.

"Good evening, Harry," Tom said with a quirked smile. "Did you sleep well?"

At once Harry remembered the shared dreams and the amazing feeling of completeness and his cheeks heated up until Harry was sure he was as red as a tomato. "Yes, I did, thank you for asking, but you won't believe what Snape did!"

"Oh dear," Tom said, more than a little amused. "What did Severus do this time?"

"He caught me sneaking back in yesterday and gave me detention, which is fine. But then he interrogates me, which isn't fine at all," Harry said in a single breath and then he had to pause to breathe in and out a few times. "And he's talking about muscle memory as he's having me disembowel salamanders and then he's all suspiciously asking where I learned the Wronski Feint and stuff so I had to come up with a story quickly, so I said I'd bumped into Barty this summer, and that he was in the country because his second cousin had died or something and that Barty was the one to teach me how to fly."

"That's not a bad story," Tom said with a little tilt of his head. "I'd been meaning to propose we come up with such a story anyway in case anyone discovers our association."

"Huh?" Harry wasn't sure what Tom was saying or not. He suspected his brain may have turned into salamander guts sometime during the evening.

"Think about it," Tom continued, ignoring Harry's confused expression. "We're friends, we communicate regularly, and no matter how well we keep our association a secret, sooner or later someone will find out. They always do. So I'd already come to the conclusion we need a cover story and this one works."

"I met Barty and through Barty I was introduced to you sometime this summer?" Harry guessed, his brain slowly making a come-back as he finally got what Tom was saying. "And we hit it off and kept in touch?"

"Exactly," Tom said with a warm smile. "Barty and I have decided to start a business together, both as a cover and to give us a legitimate source of income."

"What kind of business?" Harry asked, at once burning with curiosity.

"Gaunt and Crouch Warding and Curse-breaking," Tom said with obvious pride. "I'm well-versed in both subjects, and Barty will apprentice under me until he's completely caught up, which shouldn't be long. He's already got a very good understanding of Arithmancy and Runes, and he was well on his way to becoming a Ward Master before his arrest."

"That's awesome," Harry said, genuinely happy Tom and Barty's plans were coming together.

"Once I've brought Lucius and Theodorus up to speed they can recommend our services to their vast social circles, which in turn will give Barty and myself access to plenty of rich and influential witches and wizards and will allow us to cultivate legitimate connections."

"Yeah, who's Slughorn now?" Harry said, feeling more than a little vindicated.

Tom snorted. "I'm merely a Slytherin."

"Yeah, yeah, soulmate, you don't fool me." Harry batted his eyelids at Tom. "Just remember to invite me to your soirees."

Tom choose to ignore Harry's childish antics with an eye-roll and got back to the topic at hand. "So you see, my dear, you needn't worry about Severus and his meddling. You simply met Barty by chance and later me through my business partner." Tom gave an elegant shrug. "I'll give you more of our backstory as I get confirmation from several sources. Don't go announcing our connection just yet, but in case you need to do some explaining, you now can."

"Thanks," Harry said with a relieved smile. The hunted feeling that had been plaguing him ever since Snape's impromptu interrogation finally left him completely and Harry was beyond grateful this crisis seemed to be averted. "When are you and Barty going public?"

"We won't be back from Lebanon until Sunday at least, and then there are a few more affairs to settle, so by the end of next week is my guess," Tom said, and it took Harry a few seconds to catch on to what he'd actually said.

"You're both in Lebanon?" Harry asked, his eyebrows rising higher and higher. "Wait, are you going to change your face like Barty is?" Harry suddenly felt desperate to stop Tom. He couldn't change his face. Harry wasn't sure why, but he just couldn't.

"Yes, if I'm to be my own son, I'll need to change my face," Tom said matter-of-factly.

"No," Harry blurted out before he could stop himself. "Please don't."