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"I've thought of something I want. For a Christmas gift, I mean. That's not Ron and Hermione's visit."

Harry grimaced as he stumbled through his request. Great, now it sounded like the puling and moaning of a little child. And Voldemort probably would be less tempted to grant it.

"Tell me."

Voldemort prowled around the small table he had been sitting on the other side of, his attention intently focused on Harry. Harry swallowed and tilted the Runes book back and away from him, so that he could focus better on Voldemort, himself.

"I'd like a new house," he said. "I mean, to live somewhere that's not Malfoy Manor. If you feel that you have to stay here to keep an eye on your servants, fine, you can do that. But I want a bedroom that's really mine, not borrowed, and house-elves that answer my call more than they do the Malfoys'."

Voldemort was silent for long moments, staring at him. Harry stared back. The Horcrux link between them flowed like a transparent stream, the way it often did when they weren't having sex, but at the moment, all emotions had been stripped out. Harry didn't have a clue what Voldemort was thinking.

"Has someone suggested this to you?"

Harry shook his head. "No. Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy keep suggesting other things, namely that I beg you to free Draco Malfoy from his slavery bond. I told them I didn't think you'd allow it. But it does make me feel stifled here, when they're always coming up to me with requests. And I don't think they'll be the only ones."

Lately, some of the other Death Eaters had begun to look at him as if he wasn't a pet or a toy or an incredibly strange fact in Voldemort's life, but as if he was—well, a consort. Or husband. Someone they might be able to appeal to when they thought the Dark Lord was being "unreasonable."

"I will hang anyone who thinks they can impose on you."

Harry held back a shudder as he imagined what that hanging might consist of. He somehow doubted it would be the Muggle version. "I don't want you to do that," he said, as strongly as he could. "What I want is to move somewhere else. Bought from a follower or built or—wherever."

"I have few spaces of the sort that you would consider suitable."

Harry had to laugh. "Suitable? Are you kidding? I lived in a room with four other boys at Hogwarts for six years, and before that, in a cupboard and a tiny bedroom that had dust and broken toys everywhere. As long as it's fairly spacious and private, I won't care what it looks like, or if it's a manor."

Voldemort had come most of the way around the table, slinking as slowly as Nagini sometimes did in the cold, but now he froze with his hands clasping the back of a chair. "That is the first time you have spoken so openly of the cupboard."

Harry swallowed and nodded. Even though he was sure Voldemort would have known about it already, it made sense that he would attach significance to Harry mentioning the word. "I know. But that's what I want. Someplace that isn't the cupboard, and isn't Malfoy Manor. There has to be somewhere in between those two extremes, doesn't there?"

Voldemort paused, staring at him. It reminded Harry of a program he'd once seen about a bird stalking fish. He had no doubt he was the prey.

But if he was, that meant Voldemort wouldn't be stalking anyone else.

He waited, and Voldemort leaned near enough that Harry could feel the chill breath from his lips on his own.

"There is, of course. But I will demand more specifics before I grant you this gift. I want you to make a positive choice, not to say that anything which is not Malfoy Manor would be acceptable."

"Why does that matter so much to you, though? I know that you want me safe and happy," Harry added, before Voldemort could bring that up again. "But I promise I would be happy enough to go somewhere else. It doesn't have to be perfect or the house of my dreams for it to be true."

"A game."

Harry held back a groan. Voldemort had sometimes insisted that they play games in the past month, usually with Harry challenged to remember most of the runes they had studied in a particular afternoon. If Harry remembered them, Voldemort would grant him a small concession, like talking in English at dinner. If he didn't, then Harry would be the one granting the concession, such as spending the night in Voldemort's room instead of his own. "All right, what are your terms?"

"Come up with a place that would make you happy. A true place, not a copy of somewhere else or a house that is simply not this one. If you can do this in three days, I shall free Mr. Malfoy from his oath, as well as making sure you have that place."

Harry caught his breath. "And if I don't manage it in three days?"

"You shall allow me to eliminate your relatives."

Harry swallowed. These weren't like the games they had played before, after all. These were much higher stakes. "I—why do you want to eliminate them? They aren't a threat to me anymore. I doubt I'll ever see them again."

"They are a threat to your past happiness."

Harry stood up and stared at him. "No. I won't let you do this."

The silence stretched more silkily over him than any of Voldemort's hisses. Voldemort asked at last, delicately, "Won't let?"

"Yes, won't let." Harry thrust out his jaw, feeling as though his heart had gone mad in his ears, but also tired of this. He couldn't live the rest of his life in this kind of surreal haze, always afraid of what might come next, always wondering if this was the time that he managed to displease Voldemort and get hit with a Crucio. "You want to control my life. I get that. Our marriage vows kind of gave you that right. But if you think I'm going to give my approval to you torturing my relatives or other people who might have hurt me in the past, then you've lost your mind. Again."

Voldemort seemed to grow, looming, although he only stood there. Perhaps his shadow was increasing. Harry, with his eyes fastened stubbornly on Voldemort's face, didn't know. "And if I do it without your approval?"

"It's the only weapon I have," Harry said. "And you said that you wanted me to allow you to torture my relatives. That suggests my permission is important to you, for whatever reason."

The sensation of a looming shadow and great height disappeared, and Voldemort's red eyes shone at him from his white face. He said nothing.

Harry was the one who turned on his heel, finally, and walked away.

Ron and Hermione were allowed to Floo into a sitting room on the second floor of Malfoy Manor. Harry supposed the Malfoys probably thought the choice of the room an insult, or something. The couches were few and low, and the walls looked as though they'd been hit with Fiendfyre at some point and never mended. The fireplace had chips and cracks in the stone, and the house-elf who came to serve them tea and biscuits kept looking nervously at the ceiling, as if she thought it would fall in.

Harry didn't care. He couldn't express how much he didn't care if someone asked him. What mattered to him was that he could finally visit with his friends again, after almost five months of not seeing them.

"Harry!"

Hermione was the first through the fire, and she grabbed Harry in a hug as painful as it was encompassing. Harry hugged her back, holding her, breathing in the scent of ink and old books that seemed to cling around her, until Ron shouldered her aside and grabbed Harry in turn.

And Ron smelled like broom polish and dried grass. Some part of Harry's seething, rattling stomach, in motion since he'd defied Voldemort two days ago, calmed down. Ron and Hermione would always be Ron and Hermione.

Even if they weren't his friends after today, even if he argued with them, they would always be themselves. That was the kind of calming fact Harry needed to ground him.

He stepped away finally and nodded with a smile to the tray. "Tea?"

Ron flung himself onto the nearest couch, snorted at a scar on the wall, and began serving himself, but Hermione folded her arms. "Did a house-elf bring that, Harry Potter?"

"We're in the middle of Malfoy Manor, and they never do anything for themselves. What do you think?"

"Harry, how could you let—"

"Oh, I don't know, maybe the same way you could let me be married to Voldemort?"

Silence fell between them, nearly the same silence that had fallen between Harry and Voldemort when they spoke about the Dursleys. Ron's hands went motionless. Hermione gave a loud sigh and pushed her hair back from her face.

"We didn't mean it like that," Hermione whispered.

"Didn't mean to let me be enslaved?" Harry collapsed onto the couch across from them. This was already going differently than he'd imagined it. Then again, given the maelstrom of anger and hurt brewing in the middle of his chest, maybe that was a good thing.

"We thought that you would act like yourself," Hermione said. She had an odd tone in her voice, as if she was fighting to keep it neutral while incredible emotions danced under the surface. Sort of like me, then, Harry thought, and met her eyes. She was blinking, slow and steady, as if to fight back tears. "That you wouldn't be cowed. And you would defy Voldemort, and he would hit you with the Killing Curse."

Part of Harry froze, and then shattered. And, oddly, he was calmer after that. Here was the worst possible scenario, and now Hermione was saying it. Whatever happened after today, he would never have to dread this particular awful thing anymore.

"So you wanted me to die."

"No!" Hermione lost the neutral mask and lunged across the space between their couches, grabbing Harry's hand and holding onto it while staring into his face. "Please, no, Harry, please never think that. We were sure that when the Killing Curse hit the Horcrux inside you, it would kill that, and let you be free. That was what Professor Dumbledore said. He showed me the theoretical work he did that confirmed it. We were sure. We wanted you free. But we also had to get you close to Voldemort, so that he would get irritated and strike you with the Killing Curse. He—he wouldn't have done that if you were more distant from him and couldn't irritate him."

"Because he knew about it."

Biting her lip, Hermione nodded. "It was the only plan we could devise. Professor Dumbledore s-said that Voldemort would come up with some way to get you close to him. He didn't know for sure it would be marriage. But he told us that we had to encourage you to go along with it, whatever it was, so that you would get close to him, and—it would happen."

"You couldn't tell me, of course."

"How could we, mate?" Ron whispered. He was leaning against Hermione as if he wanted to give her comfort, and also as if he didn't dare reach out and touch Harry right now. Harry wasn't sure if the thought gave him satisfaction or not. "Voldemort would have read the plan from your mind through the Horcrux connection. And then he wouldn't do it."

Harry closed his eyes. Emotions seeped through him, and he couldn't tell what they were, or even if they originated from his side of the link or Voldemort's side. "Well, your plan didn't work," he said dully. "He figured out what was going on, and he—he made his choice. Or maybe he even made it before that, when he discovered that I was a Horcrux. He's never going to kill me."

Hermione made a soft, pained sound.

And then Harry did know what he was feeling, or at least one of the things. It was a rage so vast that the tea tray started vibrating, and Harry stood up and moved away from the table, his back turned. He didn't want to shatter the tray and get one of the Malfoy house-elves in trouble.

Since I'm apparently the only one who cares about them, whatever Hermione likes to tell herself.

"I know that you don't understand," Harry whispered, staring at the walls and the pattern of odd, dark flowers still visible in the seamed wallpaper. "Because you have no idea what it's like to be sold as a marriage prize to your worst enemy, find out that you hold part of his soul and feel that you're disgusting just like all the other Horcruxes, and then find out that you were betrayed by your best friends, too."

"It wasn't betrayal, mate!" Ron surged to his feet and walked over towards him. Harry knew that, but he refused to turn his head and look into Ron's face. "It was the only plan we could come up with when we knew that You-Know-Who realized you were his Horcrux and he wouldn't ever kill it otherwise."

"You keep saying he'd kill the Horcrux. Did you really expect me to come back to life?"

"Yes." Hermione stood up and walked over to his other side, but didn't try to touch him, which Harry thought was wise of her. "Professor Dumbledore showed me—"

"He had a failsafe, did you know that?" Harry bit out. He swung around to face her and saw her staring at him with the same kind of wariness that the Malfoys sometimes did. It made it easier to say the next words. "Snape was here. He knew about the plan, but he didn't believe that I was loyal to the cause anymore because I didn't kill Nagini. So he tried to kill me with Fiendfyre."

"What happened?" Ron whispered.

"He failed, obviously. But only because Voldemort intervened and saved my life, and killed him."

"Oh, no."

"You're more upset about Snape dying than you were about me!" Harry screamed at Hermione.

Hermione flinched back, shaking her head madly. "Harry, I promise, we never—we never thought you would stay permanently dead! Professor Dumbledore said that only the Killing Curse from You-Know-Who would do it, but we thought you could taunt him into that. You've always been so good at…"

And how her voice trailed off, and Harry smiled grimly at her. "What? Surviving under impossible circumstances?"

"Yes!" Hermione pushed her hair out of her face. "How could we know that you wouldn't do it this time?"

"Because I didn't know the plan? Because I had no idea I was even a Horcrux until Voldemort told me? He thought I knew, did you know?" Harry laughed, and the sound hurt his throat, but it seemed he couldn't stop until he saw Hermione reaching towards him with wide eyes and a face distorted with terror. Then he looked away and swallowed and managed to continue speaking. "You wanted me to pull off a miracle, and you're angry that I didn't. What kind of plan was that?"

"The only one we had! He knew, he was going to be immortal forever, we couldn't let you know for the reasons I told you about, and now he's going to reign forever, and he'll break his word to you sooner or later and start killing people—"

Hermione had broken down crying. Ron put his arms around her while staring at Harry and mouthing, Fix this.

But frankly, Harry didn't want to. All he could think was that Hermione and Ron, for all their faith in him, had been willing to have him go through the experience of death. Even if he'd come back, what would that have been like?

And the experience of rape. Hermione hadn't said anything about it, and Harry himself wouldn't think of the way he'd slept with Voldemort as rape, but surely that had to be in the back of their minds, if they thought Voldemort would break his promises to start killing Muggleborns again? They wouldn't think he was moral enough to refrain from raping Harry.

Harry closed his eyes. It's probably not that bad. If they thought I could pull off the impossible feat of getting Voldemort to kill me when he knew about the Horcrux, they probably thought that I could avoid getting raped somehow.

But understanding his friends, and that it was their faith in him rather than hatred that had made them support his marriage, and probably more than a dash of Dumbledore's "greater good" philosophy, didn't make Harry any closer to forgiving them. They were still free, while he wasn't. They hadn't been forced to marry someone they didn't choose for themselves, like he had. All the losses they were mourning, except for Snape and Dumbledore, were future ones, not the present ones that Harry lived with every day.

A part of him was a little surprised that Voldemort hadn't shown up yet, since he had to be feeling Harry's distress through the Horcrux link, but maybe he was busy with something. After the other shocks of the day, that wouldn't surprise Harry.

"I think you should go," he whispered.

"Mate—"

"Just—no, Ron. I can't forgive you wanting me to marry my worst enemy, and die. And do that without knowing—" Harry's tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth for a second, and he shook his head. "All the time, up until the very end, I was never supposed to know, was I? Just like I wasn't supposed to know the prophecy, and what you were doing in the summer before our fifth year, and that I was a Horcrux, and all the rest? I'm fucking sick and tired of other people making the decisions for me because they think they know better!"

"And you think You-Know-Who is going to be better about that?"

Harry opened his eyes, and barked a dryer sort of laughter than the kind that had overwhelmed him before. Ron was glaring at him with his arms around Hermione, and they were—they were themselves, but that wasn't the comforting realization it had been before. Maybe someday.

But for right now, Harry could feel rage welling out of his skin. The tea tray was vibrating on the table again.

"I don't have any choice but to endure it and hope he is," Harry said, his voice low, venomous, "since I'm bloody married to him."

"This wasn't the way it was supposed to work out," Ron whispered. Hermione had her head turned away from him, as if she was too overwhelmed to speak. "We thought—we thought it would just be a short marriage, over in a short while, and—"

"Yeah, well, thanks to your not telling me the bloody plan and going with this rather than having me face him on the battlefield or something, this is what you ended up with," Harry snapped.

"We had to have time to find the Horcruxes," Hermione whispered, face downcast.

"How many have you found?"

Silence. For a moment, Harry thought that meant they hadn't found any, at least none other than the fake locket that Dumbledore had died for, and then he realized, from the way Ron's lips had pinched shut, that—

"You don't want to share the bloody information with me." His voice sounded dead to him, while his inner world was a sea of floating glass shards, as if he stood in the middle of a broken mirror in a current of water. His hands felt cold, he noted distantly. The flush on Ron's cheeks looked bright and warm. He almost wanted to touch it.

"What you know, he knows, mate. Sorry. We can't risk it."

Harry rubbed his hand over his eyes, and then said, "You know what? It doesn't matter. He could lose all the rest of them, and he'd still have me. And he said that he was invested in keeping me safe and happy, because it keeps his mind clearer."

"And you believe him, mate?"

Ron's astounded pity was the last straw. Harry stood up and said coldly, "Mizzy."

The house-elf who often served at meals in Malfoy Manor appeared without a sound, and blinked at the tea tray before turning to him. "Harry Potter Master is wanting more biscuits?"

"No," Harry said. His voice was clipped, which made Mizzy cringe, which made Hermione glare at him, but honestly, at the moment he couldn't give much of a shit. "I want these guests escorted out of the house and gone. Make sure that they're safe, but make sure that they leave the grounds and don't come back."

Mizzy nodded and snapped her fingers. The tea tray floated into the air, and Ron and Hermione were jerked after it as if they had invisible strings tied around their waists. "Harry Potter Master's guests come with Mizzy."

"Harry!"

"Mate!"

Harry watched with tired eyes as his friends floated away. He felt so numb he wasn't sure what he would have said if he did want to say anything. What was left? They had known all along what he was, they had thought he would pull off a miracle, and now they were disappointed that he hadn't.

Harry turned and left the room. The emotions swirling and crashing through him demanded an outlet, or he was going to break or burn something that the Malfoys would probably make him pay to replace.

Harry whipped his wand to the side, concentrating as hard as he could on casting the spell wordlessly. This was one he'd never cast before, from one of the spellbooks that Voldemort had handed him last week. But he thought he was doing well, given that the spray from the pool on the Malfoy grounds was frozen in a glittering wave mid-leap.

"Harry."

The voice behind him was unexpected enough—well, so was its speaking in English—that Harry jumped, and the wave broke apart and crashed back into the pool. Harry stared at the ice melting on top of the water, and swallowed.

"Where are your friends?"

Still English. Harry turned around to face Voldemort, who was standing on the other side of the marble bench that Harry had spent so much time on. His eyes were fixed on Harry, but there was almost nothing down the Horcrux connection, which should have been itching or buzzing or—something.

"They left. I made them leave." Harry prowled around the bench towards Voldemort, suddenly driven by a reckless, dangerous impulse that he knew he should resist. "Why did you leave me alone with them?"

"What?"

Voldemort seemed wrongfooted, which was somewhat soothing to Harry at the moment. He inched forwards. "You act as though everyone else who causes me to feel any distress has to be killed or tortured, but you didn't come rushing into the room when I was feeling distress about them."

"I had shut down the Horcrux link. I wished for you to have a crumb of privacy."

"Well, it was fucking awful," Harry snapped, resisting the urge to laugh hysterically as he realized that for once, something wasn't Voldemort's fault. He turned around and slumped onto the marble bench, bringing up his hands to bury his face in.

Voldemort stepped up behind him a moment later, a cool hand on the back of his neck. "What happened?"

"I want to make it clear that I don't want you to fucking kill them. Okay? Don't touch a hair on their heads."

Voldemort's hand slid down his neck, and his fingers lightly encircled Harry's nape. "I will not, if you tell me what happened."

"They thought I could pull off the impossible miracle of convincing you to kill me, and surviving, and then they would destroy the rest of the Horcruxes, and—" Harry bit his tongue and shook his head. "I don't even know what the timeline would have been. They wouldn't tell me how many Horcruxes they'd already found and destroyed."

"Because they thought your allegiance was with me."

"Yes. Despite the fact that they were also disappointed that I'd survived, and that I hadn't fathomed their stupid plan, and that Snape was dead, and—fuck!"

Harry broke away from Voldemort and to his feet again, and this time, he called fire. The blaze shifted through his hands and dived onto the snow around them, annihilating it in a hissing puff of steam. Harry stared at the blackened grass underneath the snow, and for once, didn't give a shit what the Malfoys would say.

"Harry."

It was almost comforting to hear Voldemort speak his name in Parseltongue again and know that things were falling into place as they had been for the last few months. Harry turned around to face his husband again.

"It is all right to mourn," Voldemort said, and stepped up close enough to Harry to slip his arms around his shoulders. Harry closed his eyes and wondered what his friends would say if they could see him standing like this.

Well, he knew, didn't he? They already thought he was either corrupted by Voldemort or so weak that he told him everything. Relying on him for comfort was just a small step from there.

Harry shuddered. Relying on Voldemort for comfort was wrong. He should still think that. He'd been forced to get married.

But he was married, and the vows weren't going to end, and even if he ran away and Voldemort didn't pursue him for some reason, it wasn't like people like Ron and Hermione would ever trust him again as long as he carried the bloody Horcrux…

Voldemort's hand smoothed the back of his neck. Harry bowed his head and let himself cry.