Chapter Two

Harry woke slowly, part of his mind was already catching up with everything that had happened before he had passed out while he took in the fact that he was not lying on a cold, hard floor in a cell as he had expected right before he passed out - if he was going to wake at all - instead, he was lying on a comfortable bed, the mattress was soft and perfect under him, the duvet covering him light but warm, and for the first time in a long time his body wasn't aching at all, he was in no pain.

Opening his eyes he looked around the beautiful room he was in, it was in grey shades with a huge crackling fire in a marble fireplace, beautiful paintings of landscapes - pointedly no people - were in the room, a stunning painting of a park full of cherry blossoms that were blowing in the wind was near to his bed and caught his sleepy attention before he turned to look at the sofa, armchair, table, a huge bookshelf full of books. His trunk was sitting by the side of the bed, his wand sitting on the bedside cabinet near to him.

Growing a little confused he reached up to touch his face and realised that he was able to see the room without his glasses on, blinking he waved his hand in front of his face stunned at being able to see without assistance for the first time in memory, and he realised how bad his prescription had been considering how clear things were, he was able to see his fingerprints! He had no clue how he had ever been able to even find the snitch when he was playing quidditch considering how big the difference was. But then it wasn't a shock, the glasses that he wore were just cheap reading glasses that Vernon had picked up at the pharmacy.

Struggling a little he managed to slide his legs out from under the covers, and stand, groaning a little at the small ache in his muscles that came with standing, he wasn't sure how long he had been out for, but it seemed that it had been a while. Walking around the room he stretched out his shoulder where Petunia had decided to stab him, appreciating the fact that it wasn't hurting at all. He stopped in front of a mirror, pulling up the pyjama top that he had been placed in - and he wasn't going to think about that right now - to see that it was mainly healed except for a small, slightly raised pink scar on his shoulder blade.

Lowering his shirt he moved his gaze to his forearm, lifting the sleeve and staring at the mark that was indeed there, sitting there starkly, the lightning bolt in a golden colour that seemed to glimmer as he looked at it, the scales of the snake twining around it were detailed and shining in shades of green and lined with silver, the red eyes blinking calmly at him, it's expression almost warm as he stared at it.

What had Voldemort said before he passed out? It was his protection for Harry? Why would he want to protect him? Why had he gotten revenge on the Dursleys for him, punished them, it seemed, for what they had done to him?

"I should feel bad for what you did to them, but I just feel relieved that they are gone," Harry said out loud, turning to meet the red eyes of Voldemort who was standing in the doorway.

"They can't hurt you anymore, that is something to feel relieved about," Voldemort walked fully into the room and made his way over to the sofa.

"Where are we?" Harry asked.

"Slytherin Manor in Aberdeen," Voldemort answered as he sat down.

"Why?" Harry asked feeling almost as though he was still dreaming with how strange this exchange was.

"This is where I am living, it is the safest place that I could bring you to ensure that you're safe," Voldemort answered.

"Why are you so interested in keeping me safe? You have literally tried to kill me six times," Harry sighed making his way over to the sofa and dropping down onto it, staring at the dark lord.

"Six? I have tried to kill you five times," Voldemort frowned a little.

"Are you seriously arguing over how many times you have tried to kill me?! And it is six!"

"It was five times," Voldemort huffed.

"Six! When I was a baby, in the forest in my first year, over the stone also in my first year, the diary you during my second year, in the graveyard last year and at the Ministry this year!" Harry scowled.

"How did you end up mixed up with my diary horcrux?" Voldemort's red eyes narrowed.

"Horcrux?" Harry repeated confused, the word catching his attention.

"I will explain that in a moment, the diary?" Voldemort pressed.

"Lucius Malfoy slipped it into Ginny Weasley's cauldron when she was eleven, she started writing in it, it possessed her or whatever, opened the Chamber of Secrets, I managed to find the diary, spoke to him for a little while, realised how dodgy it was, ended up in the Chamber of Secrets and…" Harry paused looking cautiously at the Dark Lord.

"I know that it has been destroyed, should have figured it was you," Voldemort snorted amusedly.

"What is a horcrux?" Harry asked.

"Horcruxes are items that house pieces of someone's soul. You do this by committing murder. It is how I survived what happened between us when you were a baby, my body was destroyed, but I was able to survive because of my horcruxes. The diary was one of them, the soul piece returned to me, and gave me the strength to be able to return in that graveyard to a physical form,"

"You split up your soul by murdering people and placed them into objects?" Harry said slowly.

"Yes, an attempt at immortality," Voldemort nodded. "I have reclaimed a good few more pieces of my soul, destroyed a few more of my horcruxes, I did not anticipate the madness that would come with creating so many horcruxes, I was more animal than man,"

"You still are killing people though," Harry pointed out.

"Yes, that has nothing to do with my prior madness. It affected my ability to be able to plan and move forward in my desire to claim wizarding Britain and rule it the manner that I see fit. Once I rule, things will be done a little differently, but I will do what I need to get there, and I will do what I need to protect myself and you,"

"Why?" Harry gulped as burning red eyes stared right through him.

"I thought that I had made six horcruxes, but I had made seven," Voldemort said, and Harry's heart jolted when Voldemort's eyes flicked pointedly to Harry's scar.

"I...I am a horcrux?" He said lowly.

"Yes," Voldemort nodded. "A small part, a slither really. It does not affect you besides the things that you have already seen, giving you parseltongue abilities, joining our minds at times of great emotional strength, being able to sense each other, it actually prevents me from being able to possess you because it protects you,"

"P...protects me?" Harry blinked feeling as though it was getting hard to breathe and as though the room were spinning at the same time.

"Yes, it seems to like being housed within you. You keep it safe and warm, you have unknowingly been caring for it, allowing it to feel accepted, cared for, to feel things that I have never really known. And in return, it protects you as much as it is able, those moments of astounding good luck that you seem to have? The influence of my soul piece inside of you,"

"I have been caring for it?" Harry frowned, confused.

"Yes, it seems that your giving, caring, accepting nature unconsciously accepted a small part of myself. You have given me the chance to feel things that I thought were impossible for me to feel," Voldemort settled back into the sofa and watched as Harry absorbed everything that he had been told so far, waiting patiently as he watched the teen's mind spinning.

He wanted to deny it, he wanted to reject the idea, he wanted to tell Voldemort that it wasn't possible, and he would never accept a part of the other's soul inside of him. But...but at the same time, there was something about it that was correct, something that rang true in Harry.

When he was a little lonely boy in the cupboard, hurting from a beating Vernon had given him, hungry, scared, tired and just sad, there was always something whispering at the back of his mind, not actual words but feeling like an embrace, making him not feel so lonely, making him not feel as though it was just him against the world, sharing just enough warmth to get him through those long, hard days.

And those times that something had happened, the times that he had been in danger when he had been about to be killed or hurt and he had found the right words on the tip of his tongue when he had been lying on the floor and had summoned his wand into his hand without real thought, he hadn't thought that he would be able to do that but something had had him do it instinctively to save him. When he had stood in front of all those Dementors and had just known that he would be able to summon his patronus, the calm that had swept through him, centring him enough to allow him to cast the charm.

"I...what...does it affect you?" Harry asked. Voldemort tilted his head, clearly not having expected that.

"Yes it does, it...echoes I suppose would be the right word to myself. It has created an impossibility, I am the child that was born who would never love," Voldemort said and Harry blinked, straightening a little at the declaration. "You are aware that I killed my father," he stated.

"Bit hard to miss when you told me while I was tied to his grave," Harry nodded.

"Yes," Tom pursed his lips. "I thought that I was righting a wrong that had been done to myself and my mother, that I was avenging the life that I had been forced to live. I thought that he had abandoned us, and returned back to his rich, luxurious life while my mother died with nothing birthing me, and I was left to rot in a disgusting muggle orphanage who thought that I was the devil because of the accidental magic that I couldn't prevent from slipping out, I would be punished for the accidental magic I let out, mainly when I was younger and trying to defend myself before I could make them scared enough of me not to touch me,"

"Like...like me," Harry licked his lips, his mind flashing back to apparating to the school roof to try and escape Dudley and his gang, the other little bits of magic that he had done to try and protect himself and been punished for something that he didn't understand, something that he could not help.

"Powerful wizards let out accidental magic, particularly in moments of emotional distress. When I tracked down my father and found him living in a fancy manor, rich, looked after, and seemingly uncaring of the fact that he had no idea what happened to his wife and unborn child, I was furious, and I blamed the misery of my childhood on him. I killed him and my grandparents to revenge myself. I in fact killed the victim of the story, probably the only victim of the story," Voldemort snorted.

"What do you mean?" Harry asked softly.

"My mother was obsessed with him, she was poor and lived with my grandfather and uncle in nothing more than a hovel, the last of the Slytherin line, mad and twisted with the interbreeding that they had clung to, claiming superiority when they were nothing more than rubbish. She looked to the big manor on the hill, my rich and handsome father and dreamt of escaping her life, dreamt of him falling in love with her and rescuing her from her miserable life. Real-life doesn't work like that though, and my father would never have looked at her twice, were she not a witch and able to bewitch him,"

Harry sucked in a deep breath realising what Voldemort was saying. The Dark Lord's lips were pinched, and he nodded his head a little in confirmation of his thoughts.

"She used a love potion on him, made him fall in love with her. They lived together for a time in seeming wedded bliss while she kept feeding him the potions until she fell pregnant. She believed that upon realising that she was pregnant and remembering their time together he would actually fall in love with her, she was more than a little mad herself," Voldemort said humorlessly. "He of course did no such thing, horrified and probably completely and utterly confused as to what had happened to him. He ran the first chance that he got,"

Harry watched the Dark Lord staring into the fireplace, his red eyes flickering with the flames held within, his mind clearly thousands of miles away, Harry could picture that young man that he had seen in his dreams, Voldemort's memory of going to Riddle Manor for the first time, to kill his father and grandparents, believing them to have abandoned him, he remembered the anger on the younger man's face before he killed them.

"He was a victim of my family's madness, and I killed him. I do not feel regret for a lot of my actions, but I do regret that. My mother ruined his life, and I took it. I found out that he would let no woman near him when he returned to the Manor, he never married, he spent little time with anyone but his parents. Clearly traumatised from what had happened to him,"

Voldemort turned to Harry now, his eyes searching his face before he nodded to himself and carried on talking.

"The children produced because of love potions are few and far between, mainly because those who ensnare a partner through use of love potions ensure that they never have a natural child with the partner. Children born through the use of a love potion feel no love, they are unable to feel it,"

"You…"

"I could not feel love, until I returned in the graveyard. I knew that something was different, something had changed within me, and then it was in the Ministry that I finally realised it, when I possessed you I realised that you housed part of my soul. It took me a few weeks to understand it, there is no precedent for something like this you understand, but I finally did. The soul piece inside of you is being sheltered and cared for by you, and through you, it is able to experience and feel those emotions that I have never been able to feel, and through that piece in you, as you feel my emotions at times, I am able to experience and feel love and caring,"

"And that makes you want to protect me?" Harry breathed out.

"Yes. You and I are connected, you and I are bound together and we have been for longer than we probably understand. I wish to protect you, and care for you, I wish to give you a life that you are happy with, give you whatever it is that you want," Voldemort tilted his head as he surveyed Harry.

"Anything that I want?" Harry frowned.

"As long as it does not affect your safety, I will give you anything," Voldemort nodded.

"I...what if I ask to go back?" Harry tilted his chin in challenge.

"I was in your mind Harry, I sensed your doubt for Dumbledore and what he wanted from you, you fear that he is making you the sacrifice for his great plan, you told him, Molly Weasley and Remus Lupin about the Dursleys and they did nothing to help you, you did not have a happy life with them, not truly, you had a few friends that you truly trusted and cared for, and I will make sure that any you name are never harmed, try and bring them over to my side if possible. But do you truly wish to go back where you are vilified and made the hero in the same breath? Where you are a puppet and a tool for them to use and push around? Where you are nothing more than a name for them to use. What do you think your adult life will be like Harry, do you truly believe that you will be able to have the things that you want, do the things that you want? That they will let you?"

"And if I stay here? With you?" Harry asked quietly. The Dark Lord got to his feet and moved to stand in front of Harry, before dropping to his knees at his feet, taking his smaller hands within his own, stroking his fingers over his palms before enclosing them safely within his own.

"I will do everything within my power to make you happy, I will never hurt you, never harm you, I will do everything that I can to make sure that you are happy and content with your life, that you are safe. I will love you," Voldemort vowed.

"Why aren't I freaking out?" Harry asked.

"Because we are bound together, I would not accept being bound to anyone but you, and you know within your soul that you are safe with me, that I would not harm you now, and that I mean what I say. I will do anything to make you happy Harry, especially if you choose to give me the chance to be the one to make you happy and lay the world at your feet. But whatever you choose, I will always protect you," Voldemort raised Harry's hands to his lips and pressed a lingering kiss to them, before standing. "I know that this has been a lot to take in, I will leave you to think things through. No one will enter this wing, you can go wherever you wish within the manor, but if you wish to avoid seeing anyone else this wing is completely yours. House elves will bring you meals and whatever you want, and if you wish to speak to me simply press your finger to your mark and I will come straight to you. These are for you," Voldemort withdrew two items from his robes and placed them on the sofa beside Harry before turning and leaving the room.

Harry sat there for an unknown amount of time just staring into the fire as his mind spun trying to take everything in that he had just been told, everything that had been revealed to him, and trying to figure out where he went from now. He knew it was foolish to think, but part of him believed Voldemort when he said that he would do whatever Harry wished, it was as though now he was aware of it that part of Voldemort within him, and he could feel the intent of both the man here with him and the part inside of him. Either way, he believed him and his words, and that made him feel even more conflicted.

Turning he looked at the items that Voldemort had placed next to him remembering them all of a sudden, and his eyes widened at the items that he saw there. A wand that was recognisable to him despite the fact that he had only seen it once, the hair that was tied around it keeping the two fractured parts of the wand together was also recognizable as belonging to Bellatrix. Even if he did not guess what had happened to her given that he had been given her broken wand, the sight of the blood still covering the silver hand that was lying next to it confirmed what had happened to Peter Pettigrew and Bellatrix Lestrange.

The two followers of Voldemort who were loyal, Pettigrew had brought him back, and Bellatrix was loyal to an insane level, but both had harmed and took things from Harry, and both it now seemed were dead, for him.

Leaving the items on the coffee table Harry stood and made his way back to the bed, his mind a flurry and spinning, his emotions like a hurricane so much so he could not have named one thing that he was feeling.

But as he fell back into an exhausted, overwhelmed sleep, his eyes were locked on the snake surrounding the lightning bolt on his arm.