The next night, and for the first time since he had regained his body, Tom felt the need to sleep. Although he would never admit such a thing, Voldemort's attack had depleted his energy, and he just wasn't recovering as fully or quickly as he would have hoped. His only consolation was that Voldemort was unable to hide that it had affected him at least as badly.

When Tom fell asleep, he had almost no defenses against the Horcrux in the ring. He found himself in the graveyard straight away, with the Horcrux's hands latched onto his biceps and their faces intimately close.

"What happened?" demanded the Horcrux, worry showing through his voice (or at least a passable imitation of it). "It was him, wasn't it?"

Tom couldn't help but be reminded of the incident with the basilisk venom, when the Horcrux had responded almost the same way. Except then he had been afraid for himself, whereas now he gave every appearance of being afraid for Tom. Tom knew that at least ninety-eight percent of it had to be fear that if something happened to him, then the Horcrux would end up under Voldemort's control and be stashed away in isolation again. Still, he appreciated the thought.

He offered a threadbare smile. "Yes. Voldemort had the same idea you did."

The Horcrux stiffened for a moment, then his posture and expression smoothed all at once.

"Well, I'm glad he didn't succeed."

Tom could hardly have said why he thought it had been a good idea, because objectively, subjectively, and every other possible way, it was an awful idea, but at some point he had grown somewhat… attached to the Horcrux. They had reached an uneasy truce after the Horcrux had accepted that Tom was the only thing saving him from being utterly alone, and Tom had accepted that he craved the Horcrux's company more than anything in the real world. Not that either of them had any choice in the matter, and the peace had been tenuous, of course, formed as it was out of reluctant acceptance and practiced deception.

Maybe it would get easier now that the Horcrux would have to resign himself to the fact that his way back into the real world, if there was one, wasn't through taking over Tom's vessel. Since both he and their maker had failed in their attempts, it didn't seem likely that it was a viable method.

Not that Tom trusted that the Horcrux could ever entirely resign himself to that fact.

It soon became clear that Tom was still too exhausted from Voldemort's attack to maintain any conjured memory or landscape for them. He expected the Horcrux to either bend him over a sarcophagus or send him on his way, so his surprise was great indeed when the other boy guided them to rest in the soft grass next to their grandfather's grave.

"He's a nightmare," Tom burst out finally, after they had settled into a comfortable position and an uncomfortable silence.

"It can't be that bad," asserted the Horcrux half-heartedly.

"He went through my things and possessed Abraxas's body, and he just…"

Tom trailed off with a huff when the other boy laughed from deep within his chest. The fabric of the Horcrux's serviceable secondhand trousers scraped sort-of pleasantly against Tom's cheek when he turned his head in his counterpart's lap to glare up at his face. The Horcrux smirked down at him in return.

"It's just—" began the Horcrux, but he cut himself off abruptly as another burst of laughter escaped. After a few moments, he started again. "It's just that I can't believe you're surprised. You'd have done the same… and he is you."

He wanted to deny that the Horcrux had a point, but Tom couldn't help the twitch at the corner of his mouth. The Horcrux laughed again and threaded his fingers through Tom's hair, alternately tugging sharply and digging his fingers harshly into Tom's scalp.

"He's amazing, though," admitted Tom. "I mean, obviously it is disappointing and disgusting that he has been reduced to a spiritual parasite, but even in his current state his presence is overwhelming. More so even than being around all of the other Horcruxes."

The Horcrux eyed him coolly, although Tom couldn't immediately decipher what his problem was.

"Is that so?" he asked stiffly. "I can't tell."

Tom allowed his eyebrows to rise in silent question at the Horcrux's sudden change in attitude. "Maybe my wearing you interferes with your ability to feel him."

"Maybe."

"Or it could be that you're simply too weak," Tom pointed out cruelly, letting his annoyance get the better of him.

The Horcrux's jaw tightened and he let out a wordless hiss of displeasure, yanking Tom's hair cruelly. Tom thought for a moment that he was going to pull out a great clump of it, but then he tugged upward again. Tom lurched up and crashed into the other boy in a tangle of bruising fingers and sharp teeth. There followed a brief but vicious struggle, each of them pushing and biting and scratching as if they had both forgotten that they'd ever discovered magic. Ultimately the Horcrux was too determined for Tom to withstand, at least not when he was still recovering from Voldemort's attack, and he found himself flat on his back with his pants and trousers Vanished.

"Weak, am I?" hissed the Horcrux.

He leaned over Tom, shoving Tom's legs up as he went and using his weight to pin them in place. Tom's protests at being put in such a position were summarily ignored as the Horcrux lined himself up and muttered a lubrication spell. O

f course, Tom could have blasted the other boy off him or removed himself from the Horcrux's mindscape entirely, but he didn't. He found himself too interested in the look in the Horcrux's eyes and the half blissful, half pained expression on his face as he shoved forward in one thrust and managed to lodge himself several inches inside Tom's unprepared body.

The pain was a distraction, but that was nothing to Tom. His torn skin would heal almost instantly anyway.

More important was the fact that they had never done it this way before, face to face.

Tom felt more vulnerable on his back with his legs up than he had ever felt face down with the Horcrux at his back, but still there was something undeniably attractive about observing the way the Horcrux's jaw clenched and his nostrils flared as he methodically worked himself deeper.

Only once he was fully inside did the Horcrux lean down and press his lips to Tom's. Tom groaned at the sudden, intense burning in his lower back and hamstrings as his legs were pushed even further into his chest, but he returned the kiss hungrily until the Horcrux tore his lips away with a growl.

"He can't give you this," he declared darkly, giving a particularly savage thrust.

Tom blinked. Was this whole reaction because the Horcrux was jealous?

The Horcrux leaned his face into Tom's neck and bit down until Tom could feel the skin tear open beneath his blunt teeth.

"You're mine," he hissed in Parseltongue. "You're mine, you're mine…"

He kept up the chant in rhythm to his thrusts, which didn't last very long before he came with a guttural moan and collapsed on top of Tom.

Tom hadn't come. Although normally he would be furious at such neglect, in this case he couldn't bring himself to care. His mind was otherwise engaged. Moisture soaked into the fine fabric of his shirt from the damp ground beneath his back, and the press of the Horcrux's cold face against his throat felt like something deeply intimate.

Tom's muscles were on fire, but instead of unceremoniously shoving the other boy off like he normally would have done, he ran his hands up the Horcrux's back soothingly and ended with one arm wrapped around his shoulders and the other hand stroking his hair. Though it was painful to move and he felt sure he'd hyperextended something, he rearranged his legs so that one was sprawled gracelessly on one side of the Horcrux's hips and the other was curled low around the Horcrux's legs so that Tom's heel rested in the groove of one of the other boy's knees.

The Horcrux shuddered in this perversion of an embrace.

"You're mine, too," Tom spoke into the Horcrux's hair. "Maybe you're more mine than I am yours. I have to wear you all the time now to keep you from Voldemort."

The Horcrux huffed a breath out against Tom's throat.

Tom smirked, though the other boy couldn't see it. "I don't plan on letting him have you. Maybe I will have to give him some of the others eventually, as a sign of trust or to help his resurrection ritual, but I won't give you to him."

Finally the Horcrux raised himself to look in Tom's face. His expression was neutral, but Tom could read a myriad of emotions warring behind his dark eyes.

"You can't promise that. If you had a choice between him or me, you would choose him."

"Yes," acknowledged Tom, knowing that there was no point in denying it, "but I don't plan on it coming to that. He will eventually realize that keeping his Horcruxes close keeps him saner than he would be otherwise, and then I expect he will want to wear you and the locket constantly. I will insist on keeping at least one of you as extra protection for myself, and between you and the locket I suspect he will choose the one that isn't capable of manipulating him."

It went unspoken between them that they were each capable of manipulating the other as well. Their relationship would likely always be in a strange limbo between trust and distrust. Then again, they were both in a state of limbo between life and death and could only interact in a space between reality and dream, so Tom supposed they would just have to take what they could get from each other and be content with it.

The denizens of Knockturn Alley ranged from the poorest, ugliest hags to the wealthiest, snootiest purebloods this side of the Malfoys. None of them thought that a handsome, impeccably dressed teenaged boy belonged in the alley alone, if the looks Tom was getting were any indication. If he had known that his appearance would draw so much unwanted attention, he would have worn a hood or something. But he hadn't known, because during his life the only times he had come to the alley he had been in the company of Abraxas Malfoy or Rastaban Lestrange.

If he hadn't been trying to minimize the undue attention he was getting, Tom would have cursed his way to some respect. Power was the only thing these people seemed to respect—eat or be eaten, kill or be killed.

As it was, he had limited himself to one discreet flesh-eating curse on a woman, who may have been a hag or just a particularly ugly witch, when she had grasped at his arm as he'd walked past her. She would lose the hand that had dared to touch him, but if she were quick to get to St Mungo's she wouldn't lose the whole arm. Probably.

Tom continued down the steps and stopped on a small cobblestone landing to look around and evaluate his options. The graying wood door of some manner of pub stood directly in front of him, with the street making a ninety degree turn and continuing to his left.

He had very little idea how to go about abducting someone from the wizarding world in broad daylight, even daylight dimmed as it was by residual Dark magic and the grime that seemed to permeate the air. Should he just stun someone and drag the body back to the Apparition point? Ought he use the Imperius Curse, or would even those who frequented Knockturn Alley take exception to that if they witnessed it?

This conundrum was solved for him by a hand that landed on his shoulder from behind. Tom's immediate reaction was to curse this person just as he had the woman, but as he turned to aim the curse he caught sight of the man who had grabbed him and thought better of it. Although it went against every one of his instincts, Tom allowed himself to be dragged into a nearby alley.

For future reference, he thought, if no one around cared to intervene when a boy was being dragged into a dark alley by an adult, they probably wouldn't care to intervene if Tom abducted someone.

The man had stringy blond hair and an unwashed face, and he was eyeing Tom as if he were made of spun sugar.

"Yer a brazen one, aren' yeh?" he mumbled, more to himself than to Tom. "Walkin' around in yer fancy robes as if yeh own the place, without anyone lookin' after yeh."

It had become clear to Tom by that point that this man was not after his money or valuables, or at least not just those. His disgust grew with every step they took, until finally they were far enough down the narrow alley that he judged they were completely out of sight of anyone walking down the street. The man gripped Tom's upper arm harder and shoved him back against the filthy brick wall, right there next to the trash bins, muttering something about Tom's clear skin.

Tom thought of how the Horcrux in the ring felt to him when it wasn't bothering to appear normal, that choking Darkness and icy touch that even Tom found uncomfortable. He wanted this man to experience that; he imagined the man's features alighting with terror and then crumpling in despair, his soul withering in pain…

Suddenly, he felt something come loose inside of him, like a rock breaking free from a dam. It was as if his magic had doubled. Physically, he felt like he had in the Chamber before the transfer of the Weasley girl's soul had been complete—cold, disconnected, only partially corporeal.

The blond man staggered forward with a cry of alarm, his body pressing Tom further into the bricks, and Tom reached out to push him away. His hands grasped unwashed robes and the warm flesh and bony shoulders underneath.

So, he was still fully corporeal then.

"W-w-wha's happenin'…?" croaked the wizard, his teeth chattering.

"You know, I honestly don't know," Tom told him. He pressed his wand into the man's neck, and the man didn't even have the presence of mind to flinch or be afraid. "Imperio."

It was stupidly simple to escort the man back down the street to the Apparition point at the mouth of Knockturn Alley. Everybody seemed to be going more out of their way than usual to avoid eye contact with the pair of them, for reasons Tom probably didn't want to contemplate, and certainly no one tried to stop them.

The most difficult part was the few minutes it took Tom to reverse the effects of whatever it was he had done to himself, so that he had regained some semblance of normality and at least didn't feel like he was a walking spirit anymore. By the time he was escorting his prisoner into the Malfoy's library, he had himself under good regulation.

This afternoon found Voldemort hunched over a table poring over a yellowed parchment that seemed like it would crumble if anyone picked it up. He was surrounded by all description of books and scrolls, some open and some closed.

The studious, intelligent look on his face was hilarious coming from Crabbe, who Voldemort had temporarily re-inhabited after learning about the use that Abraxas could have for him.

Not that Tom would have laughed. The presence of his Horcruxes seemed to be doing Voldemort a world of good, as far as Tom could tell. The man was still quick to anger and prone to mixing his English and Parseltongue at inconvenient times, which probably had more to do with him possessing snakes for years than anything else, but he hadn't tried to kill anyone in several days. And he had only used the Cruciatus Curse on Lucius a handful of times.

They weren't entirely comfortable around each other, but Voldemort seemed to have accepted that Tom had no desire to harm him. Tom didn't trust that Voldemort wouldn't sacrifice him for the peace of mind, though, if he ever caught him without a couple of the other Horcruxes on his person.

Laughing in his face seemed like a particularly suicidal endeavor, even though Tom was wearing the ring and had the diadem tucked safely in his pocket.

"One wizard, as you requ…" Tom trailed off for a moment as he approached Voldemort and noticed what was curled at his feet. "What is that?"

"A snake," replied Lord Voldemort, turning to flip through a book as thick as his forearm without glancing up at Tom.

Tom stood in silence, not bothering to grace that with a response, until finally Voldemort noticed the weight of Tom's stare on him and, with a sigh that probably would have been delicate had it not come out of Crabbe's lungs, deigned to explain.

"She's a hybrid between a female runespoor and a non-magical viper I met in Albania. There was an entire clutch of eggs, of course, but she was the best—the intelligence and magical properties of her mother, with venom that is a mix between her parents'."

Tom eyed the snake with interest as it uncoiled slowly.

"She's enormous."

"An effect of hybridization, I believe." Voldemort reached down to stroke her head affectionately as she began to climb up his chair. He switched to Parseltongue. "Nagini, my dear, I will have to dislodge you in a moment."

She hissed in irritation. "I have not been allowed to have any fun or do anything since we came to this human dwelling."

"You cannot eat Narcissa Malfoy," said Voldemort in a tone that suggested he had already had this conversation with the snake.

"No one would miss such a scrawny thing," insisted Nagini. If snakes could pout, Tom had no doubt that she would have been. She looked over Voldemort's shoulder at Tom and the wizard from the alley. "Can I eat one of them?"

Voldemort turned to look at Tom for the first time since he had entered the library. He briefly pinned him with a look that said he was tempted to say yes, then his eyes slid past Tom and onto the vessel that Tom had procured for him.

"Did you select the filthiest wizard you could find?" he asked in clear displeasure, slipping back into English.

Tom rolled his eyes. "Well, I considered bringing back a hag, but I figured you'd prefer the pervert. You can always clean him."

"Can I eat them or not?" demanded the snake.

Before Voldemort could respond, Tom leveled her with a glare. "No, you may not eat me."

She reared back in surprise. "Another speaker!"

Apparently fed up with both of them, Voldemort stood from his seat, dislodging the giant snake from his lap, and aimed his wand at his new vessel. Several thorough cleaning charms and a haircut later, he was ready to inhabit the wizard. Magic distorted around Crabbe's body for a moment, until finally the amorphous mass of the Dark Lord's spirit emerged as if it were seeping out of Crabbe's very pores. Crabbe collapsed onto the rug, while the spirit moved across the room like a dark cloud and covered its new vessel.

The wizard trembled and gasped, and Tom felt his Imperius Curse strain and, finally, snap under whatever pain the possession was putting him through. His face contorted in agony and he seemed to be fighting a war with his mouth, caught between screaming and snarling.

The whole thing was positively grotesque. And fascinating.

He gave one last shudder and his head drooped down towards his chest, then he was utterly motionless for several long seconds.

Voldemort let out a long breath and twisted his head until his neck gave a satisfying crack. Tom expected him to say something, but the other man didn't acknowledge him at all. Instead he patted his pockets, ultimately coming away with the wizard's wand, which he immediately pointed at Crabbe.

"Avada Kedavra."

Tom took an involuntary step backwards from the bright green light. It was always unnerving to be present when somebody else cast the Killing Curse, even when, like Tom, one couldn't actually be harmed by it.

Voldemort strode towards the chair where he'd been sitting, where Nagini had hefted her enormous mass half onto the seat and arms, though several feet of her still rested on the floor. "Come, Nagini," said the Dark Lord. "You remember what we discussed?"

"Yesss," hissed his familiar. "I am ready for the pain, Master."

Voldemort stroked his hand across her head and down her back. "I am sure you will handle it well, my pet. Nonetheless, it should be brief, and then you will be stronger than you ever imagined."

"What are you talking about?" demanded Tom.

"I'm making Nagini into a Horcrux."

Tom was quite sure he'd never done such a thing in his life, but he gaped at Voldemort.

"You're what?"

"Hmm, no, this won't do. Unicorn hair, I think," Voldemort mumbled to himself. He placed his vessel's wand down on the table and picked up the one he'd left sitting there before leaving Crabbe's body. At Tom's sharp call of his name, he turned long enough to shoot Tom an exasperated glare. "You heard me. I am not in the habit of repeating myself."

"Of course I heard you!" cried Tom. "What I meant to say is that, no, you are absolutely fucking not creating another Horcrux."

Voldemort turned to face him fully. "Who will stop me? You?"

"Yes, if I have to. You'll have to destroy me and the ring and the diadem, or I will keep interfering. I don't think you want to lose three Horcruxes just to create one."

They glared at each other.

Surprisingly, perhaps, the Dark Lord was the first to back down. Apparently misunderstanding Tom's reluctance about the situation, he explained, quite condescendingly, "I do not want to create another so that I could more safely destroy you should the opportunity present itself. I have always desired a seven-part soul. You know this. Furthermore, I have devised a potion using Nagini's venom that will strengthen my vessels and allow them to hold me for longer, perhaps for a few weeks at a time, but it will only work if Nagini is a Horcrux."

"No. Absolutely not. I won't allow it." Tom crossed his arms over his chest. "Splitting our soul into seven parts might have sounded like a good idea when we were fifteen and first studying advanced Arithmancy and determined to delve deeper into Dark magic than anyone else ever has, but you must have noticed that your control of yourself slipped away with each one you created."

"I need the strengthening potion!" Voldemort all but shouted.

Angry scarlet eyes bore into Tom's. This time, it was Tom who gave in first.

"Does it have to be Nagini's venom?"

Voldemort blinked, once. "What?"

"The venom," Tom gritted out between his teeth, "does it have some special property that lends itself to the potion, beyond just being a Horcrux? If it's just that you need some material from a Horcrux, you could use me."

Voldemort looked gobsmacked, much as Tom imagined he had a few minutes earlier. He hoped that he hadn't looked like such a gormless waste of space.

Another irritated hiss from Nagini broke the silence.

"Master," she said, hanging half off the chair and flicking her tongue toward Crabbe's corpse, "if you're going to take so long talking to the other speaker, then can I eat this one?"

Tom had never been the biggest fan of Knockturn Alley, certainly not enough to find himself there twice in as many weeks. Sure, he'd been a great fan of all the Dark artifacts and illegal potions ingredients and banned books that he could obtain there, but the alley itself was a dreary, unenjoyable sort of place. The cobweb-covered bricks and graying wood reminded Tom of the orphanage and its environs, and the witches and wizards, with their unkempt hair and tattered robes, reminded him of his fellow orphans and the other inhabitants of Lambeth during his childhood.

He couldn't hold back a sneer aimed at his general surroundings.

He couldn't tell if Voldemort's matching sneer was because he also held onto some lingering distaste for Knockturn Alley or if it was just an expression of his dissatisfaction with the Muggle vessel Tom had procured for him several days prior.

Tom may have done it on purpose to irk his other self.

But mostly it was that he didn't want to go around snatching too many wizards off the street, if they were going to be going through a vessels every couple of weeks, and it was too dangerous to wear a wizard's body around Knockturn or Diagon Alley where it might be recognized.

Mostly.

The narrow fingers of Voldemort's current vessel wrapped around his elbow and jerked Tom back into the present.

"Come," said Voldemort in a tone that indicated he very much had considered saying "stop woolgathering, you idiot" but had held back at the last moment.

Tom shrugged off his other self's grip and stepped out of the narrow side alley next to Moribund's Pub, which Voldemort had said he usually used for Apparition when he had worked across the street at Borgin and Burkes. Tom couldn't imagine being a yes-man for either Borgin or Burke, but he supposed that he must have gotten most of their pride in his part of the soul, since he wouldn't have been able to endure living beneath a garlic-drenched turban either.

His nondescript black robe and the hood that hid his face drew much less attention than Tom's face had during his last visit.

"I remember them thinking I was an easy target," Voldemort said suddenly, as if he were doing nothing more exciting than reciting entries from a dictionary, "and of being pretty enough that money wasn't what they wanted from me. When I read the mind of that last vessel you brought me, I was surprised that you had enough self-control to bring him to me instead of destroying him."

Tom knew there was probably a story there about some old pervert who had made the mistake of trying to impose himself on a young Voldemort and ended up with his entrails spread across the alley, but Voldemort had kept on walking so apparently he wasn't going to share the details.

When they emerged into Diagon Alley, they both stared for longer than necessary at the gleaming white edifice of Gringotts, then each proceeded to pretend that he hadn't noticed the other looking.

Gringotts was almost exactly halfway down Diagon Alley, and their destination was very nearly the last shop at the end of the alley. They had arrived late enough in the evening that there were few shoppers still milling about to witness them, but early enough that apparently Ollivander hadn't been suspicious to receive a note asking for him to keep his shop open late as a special favor to an Auror who was in desperate need of an immediate replacement wand.

The old man glanced up with an eerie smile when Voldemort pushed open the door to enter the darkened shop, clearly expecting his guest. The smile wavered for a moment at the sight of the two of them, but he was quite cordial when he said, "I'm sorry, gentlemen. We're closed."

"I seem to recall you saying that you would remain open," drawled Voldemort as he ushered Tom into the shop after him and closed the door.

Ollivander stared hard at Voldemort, clearly trying to place whether he had ever sold the Muggle vessel a wand. "I thought the wand was for Ruf—"

"Rufus Scrimgeour, yes," Tom interrupted him. He lowered his hood and offered a cruel smile. "That is what the letter said."

The wandmaker stood frozen and wide-eyed for the space between breaths (He clearly recognized Tom but didn't quite believe what he was seeing.) then he leapt backwards, more out of instinct than deliberate choice, and crashed into the boxes of wands stacked floor to ceiling behind the counter.

Despite the fact that he was wearing the face of a rather unremarkable looking man, Voldemort managed to arrange his features into a strikingly fearsome smile.

"It is so easy to misappropriate Ministry owls these days."

"Dreadfully easy," returned Tom. "Anyone could send anything they wanted."

He felt a frisson of magic, but before he'd had time to work out what Ollivander was trying to do Voldemort had already raised Crabbe's wand and seemingly sucked all magic out of the room. Tom didn't need Voldemort's significant look in his direction to know what he ought to do; he had already pulled out Potter's wand and begun casting every useful protective spell he could think of. He was really more concerned with keeping his expression neutral and not revealing how awestruck he was by Voldemort.

The wandmaker seemed quite awestruck himself. He glanced back and forth between the two of them rapidly, his thoughts racing. The Muggle vessel looked nothing like the Tom Riddle that Ollivander had sold the yew wand to, nor did he look like the monstrosity he had reportedly become in later years, but the man had displayed a feat of magic only Voldemort (and perhaps Albus Dumbledore, if he had mastered the Dark Arts) could have pulled off.

On the other hand, the boy was the spitting image of Tom Riddle, but it had been fifty years since he should have looked that way, and he had let the older man take the lead, which surely Tom Riddle would never have done. Ollivander couldn't imagine how the Dark Lord had managed to use the body that was standing in the middle of his shop, but he clearly had… and the younger one must… there was no other explanation… he could only be the Dark Lord's son.

Tom started. He opened his mouth to retort. He found that he had no words, only a shrill laugh.

Voldemort let out a sound that might have been described as a groan had it come from anyone else and, with a flick of his wand, rendered the wandmaker unconscious and bound him from shoulder to ankle for good measure.

"Tom," he said sharply.

It was the first time Tom had ever heard that name come out of Voldemort's mouth, and he pronounced it with just as much disgust as Tom might have expected. Tom laughed again at the idea that Lord Voldemort would have named his son Tom, even if the idea that he had a son (and that Tom was it!) wasn't enough to boggle the mind.

Voldemort glared at him.

"What did you expect people were going to think? That I broke off a piece of my soul when I was a schoolboy and it created a body for itself a half century after the fact?"

Tom grinned and shook his head. "So who's my mother? And how did she feel about diddling you when you looked like you did?"

"That's enough!" declared Voldemort. A burst of magic knocked Tom backwards and singed his robe and the hairs on his arms, and he wasn't sure whether it was intentional or accidental. "You can stand there making jokes if you like, but I am going to search for a wand to use until I am reunited with my own."

They were, of course, planning to abduct the wandmaker and have him forge them new wands, given that Voldemort had managed to lose their old wand when he'd lost his body. Voldemort was not keen on the idea, but he accepted that he did not have many better options unless he could track down his old wand. Potter's wand worked alright for Tom, but it didn't work as well as it should since it was in many ways the opposite of his own.

"Although, I don't know why you need a wand anyway," said Voldemort, perhaps to distract Tom from the previous topic of conversation. "You should be able to just"—He waggled his fingers in demonstration.—"You are a magical object, after all, not a person."

That gave Tom pause. It was true, if not a little unpleasant to consider.

Rather than let Voldemort know that he was unsettled, Tom snorted and shot him a scathing look. "Are you saying that you do need a wand? Come to think of it, I haven't seen you perform much wandless magic."

Voldemort's lips thinned unattractively. "So long as I do not have my own body, yes. I am extraordinarily powerful, of course, and can access my magic no matter what physical form I take, but I have to use so much of my power to maintain the possession that it is difficult to channel my magic effectively without a wand."

Tom hummed in acknowledgement but refrained from saying anything further for fear of directing Voldemort's attention back to Tom's own trouble controlling his magic. He turned towards the shelves upon shelves of wands to forestall any further conversation, having determined that he would consider these revelations once he was able to gain some privacy.