Chapter 6

A/N: After checking on the preview of the last chapter, I realized that my paragraphs and spacing may be making the story difficult to read, so I will be making each paragraph a little smaller than usual, though the word count for each chapter will stay the same.

Thank you to Laurie24, daithi4377, Gurgaraneth, and gindensmi for reviewing, I really, really appreciate it.

WARNING:I don't know where the feels in this chapter came from, this isn't the Dark Lord I know.

…Marvolo's POV…

The elation he felt after hearing the words soon tumbled into feelings of loss and confusion and he sent Barty away with the order of grabbing some much-needed sleep.

He had been looking forward to this for quite a while now so why did he suddenly feel as if he had lost something?

His gaze had been set on resurrecting Harry Potter for so long that it had given him a purpose after the boy had supposedly died by his hand.

He allowed his fingers to slightly dig into the cloth before him as he surveyed the trinkets once more.

Only to find out that the hours, days, weeks, and years he had spent trying to bring him back, had all been for naught.

Yet he couldn't even blame the boy, no man, for his choices. It had been the wizarding world that forced him to choose between dying in name or dying in body.

He wasn't blind. The Peverell family tree didn't lie. The existence known as Harry James Potter had been snuffed out and a new one had been created in its place in the name of self-preservation.

The only reason the trinkets still carried a trace of the man's magic was that it was still a part of him, even if it had fundamentally changed.

It wasn't often that the ritual was requested, but the individual going through the ritual would have to endure the excruciating pain of having their existence torn to shreds before being put back together with different parts, depending on the inheritance they chose to accept.

The catch was that a person could only bring forth bloodlines that they already possessed, though the ritual couldn't be used to steal a true heir's birthright as the individual will always retain the position had initially had unless the rest of the bloodline had been wiped out.

In some cases, individuals even died because the ritual had taken more than it could give.

Though Marvolo was still sure that Potter had gone through with it.

House Potter no longer existed and House Black had been passed on to Draco through Narcissa, though the young man had refused to claim it himself and had left it to Teddy Lupin instead.

Had Harry Potter ever truly been a Gryffindor?

He had seen the boy's home life after interrogating the muggles he had once stayed with, and though the boy had been brave, he had clearly belonged to Slytherin house.

The question now was whether he left the young man to his own devices and simply let him go, or did he track him down and try to make amends in some way.

The thought seemed laughable to him.

How did he make amends after killing off the young man's family?

How did he erase the fact that he had doomed the young man to the same hell he had lived through and that he had added to it by constantly hunting down the boy as revenge for his one-time defeat?

Even if it had been in the name of war.

The answer would have been easy to give if it had been anyone else. He didn't care much about people, he cared about magic, and yet he had seen a lot of himself in the boy and that made it personal.

An image of Hadrian suddenly appeared in his mind and he briefly wondered whether the Healer would be able to help him find the young man.

He was sure that Hadrian would have quite the bone to pick with him first though.

The two young men were both very similar in both their temperaments and their behavior, though that was in the past and Harry Potter would surely have changed after the ritual.

The ritual didn't only remove the bloodline and appearance, after all, it also altered the person's innate character to suit the new dominant bloodline.

In fact, the reason Marvolo had finally stopped comparing the two men was not only because of the guaranteed change in temperament but also for the simple reason that no one in their right mind would treat their enemies the way Hadrian treated the Death Eaters and the Dark Lord himself.

Granted, it could all have been an act, but it was clear that the Mind Healer cared for his clients, he had seen proof of that himself.

He suddenly felt the restless need to talk to Hadrian and to continue their previous conversation, simply because his view of the world had been so much simpler an hour ago than it was now.

The empty feeling he had when he wasn't near the man also wasn't helping and so he hurriedly apparated to his room before packing a few basic necessities.

A quick floo call informed him that the ministry had registered the activation of a portkey that had been keyed to Hadrian, and he requested the same, only to learn that the creation of the portkey would take at least a week due to the target location's electromagnetic disturbances.

Thus he either had to wait for Hadrian to return, or he had to use muggle means to get close to the island before flying the rest of the way.

Weighing the two options, he realized that waiting around would only lead to ever-alternating levels of boredom and random bouts of anger, which would place him in a very unpredictable mindset.

Unfortunately, he didn't have the excuse of insanity to fall back on if he decided to get curse-happy with his Death Eaters and he would rather not sow discord among his ranks when things are still working as they should.

He also didn't like the thought of using muggle transportation, but the more he thought about it the more he wondered about the client that Hadrian had been so keen on seeing.

And no that was not jealousy rearing its ugly head, he was above such mundane feelings after all.

With his mind made up, and a little magical manipulation, he soon found himself waiting for his flight at the airport with an additional piece of luggage tucked away in his pocket.

After about an hour of waiting he had creatively managed to imagine the death of almost every single muggle in the area around him and he was actually debating with himself on the pros and cons of going through with some of his ideas when his flight was finally announced.

During the flight, he decided that he had made a huge mistake.

Sure he was flying business-class, but the muggles still irritated him and they were already halfway towards the island (about 12 hours of pure hell) when he realized that he could simply have commandeered a private jet.

Of course, he blamed Hadrian for invading his mind as the man was the entire reason he found himself on the fudging plane in the first place.

Twelve more hours later, the plane finally arrived at the airport, just in time for Marvolo to receive the news that the connecting flight to the next island had been grounded due to technical difficulties and no, they did not own any private jets.

Someone must have sensed the storm building inside him though since he was immediately offered free accommodation as well as a seat on the first available flight.

The plane arrived two hours later and after the usual maintenance checks, Marvolo was finally able to board the much smaller plane.

An hour and a half later he found himself almost reaching his final destination as the plane landed, but he ran into another problem.

He had no idea which island Hadrian's client lived on and asking questions provided no answers as everyone warned him away from his destination in total fear.

Finally, he registered a faint tug on his soul whenever he looked towards the direction that a local woman assured him held the island, after a minor Imperius, and he had to wait for the cover of night to be able to fly towards it.

By the time he managed to reach solid land, which had been further than he had expected it to be, Marvolo realized that he felt more tired than he had ever felt before, but his journey was not over yet as he still needed to find the house that had probably been hidden from plain sight among the lush vegetation around him.

Thinking back, he blamed his exhaustion for not casting a spell that would pick up any lifeforms in the area.

As it was, he sat down against a rock that suddenly looked very comfortable to rest his head against and he was out like a light the moment he decided to rest his eyes for a second.

…Harry's POV…

The alarms alerted them the moment something foreign crossed the boundary lines of the island and Hadrian was up and on his way out a second later, with his client-turned-friend following closely at his heels.

Yet, Hadrian had been extremely unprepared for the sight that met him as he gazed down in shock at a visibly exhausted Dark Lord that seemed to have passed out against a wind-carved rock, only a few meters from the trees that hid the house.

He would have laughed hysterically at how easily the man had been able to find him if it weren't for the fact that the man had clearly pushed himself past his limits for some reason.

His friend nudged him lightly before pointing at the unconscious man next to him.

"This is the Dark Lord you had been telling me about?"

Hadrian nodded and the man grunted before motioning back towards the house.

"Bring him inside. It will be nice to have a kindred spirit to talk to for once."

Hadrian tried to look offended at that, but just the notion of the Dark Lord waking up and meeting the man before having a 'nice' chat over a cup of tea, had him instinctively making plans for a portable atomic bomb shelter.

As the blueprints rushed through his mind, Hadrian cast a feather-light spell on the Dark Lord and helped him inside before laying him down on the guest bed that he usually slept on.

He didn't dare remove anything from Marvolo except his shoes though, and he closed the bedroom door before joining his companion in the kitchen where they had been busy with their meal.

The silence stretched on as the man waited for Hadrian to spill his guts and yet Hadrian was determined to keep this particular secret.

Finally, the man's gaze became too much to bear though, as he knew it would, and Hadrian let out a sigh.

The man had listened to enough of his rants to know who he really was, and he had become a valuable confidente once their Client and Healer dynamic finally came to an end.

He knew he could trust him. Though he was sure anyone else in the world would admit him to a psych-ward if they heard that.

"I had a crush on him after I met his sixteen-year-old self in the chamber. At first, I thought he was stuck down there like us, and but you know how that turned out and you know how my life turned out afterward."

Hadrian pushed the food around on his plate as he spoke.

"Severus warned me that he was trying to find ways to bring my soul back from the dead so I decided to try and talk to the man and to try to make him let go of his obsession with 'Harry Potter'."

A strange sound reached his ears, but he didn't dare look up because he knew he would find his companion silently laughing at him.

The man constantly called him naïve and proclaimed that he was a menace because of it, but Hadrian was really regretting the fact that he had thought things could be resolved so easily.

When Hadrian bit his lip and refused to go on, his companion lightly squeezed his shoulder before removing his hand again.

"I take it that things didn't work out because the obsession turned to you instead and that he had come too close for comfort and that is why I found you on my doorstep a week before the time we had scheduled?"

Hadrian visible deflated before he nodded and the man next to him gave a hum of consideration.

"I doubt you ever got rid of your 'feelings' towards the man, even with everything that happened and I doubt the man would have come looking for you the way he did if something urgent hadn't happened so why not first hear about what the man has to say?"

Hadrian looked towards the man in shock but his companion just shrugged, "Besides, I would just send the man into that early grave he is so keen on evading if he meant you harm. It's not like he would stay dead anyway…"

Scarily enough, Hadrian didn't doubt a word of that statement.

A/N: Good morning all! Hope you had a wonderful night. It seems I am on house-cleaning duty for today so I will only be able to get back to my pc a little later, hopefully, I can write and post another chapter by tonight though.