It turns out Bellatrix was not even remotely pleases with the state of the boy. No one was entirely sure why she seemed to care, and the alarming woman was not to be trifled with or questioned unless you wished a very horrible death. She'd gone to visit when Narcissa had been banishing the blood filling the punctured lung, which the lovely blonde woman wasn't even entirely certain would ever completely heal, and almost immediately called for someone to heal the fat muggle man. She had quite a bit of fun and the man was missing some pieces. Nothing vital, the Dark Lord had been assured. He hadn't bothered to check for himself.

When she wasn't torturing the lump of fat in the dungeons, or taking care of basic functions and needs, she was cooing at the boys still form, running her fingers through his hair and her clawed fingers over his cheeks. Half of what she said was just mad ramblings, torture plans or memories of, and half was little pleas no one really understood when they heard them and mutterings that while insane could almost be deemed as affectionate. Even her sister was more than a little confused but no one was really commenting on it. Not to her face anyways, the first person who had done so was the last, and they were still banishing his entrails from the yard. Yaxley hand found his hand in a bush, and old Nott Sr had had a falling piece of intestine fall right on top of his head and he walked under a tree. The shriek they'd heard sounded less like prominent male Death Eater over the age of 40 and more like small female child ages four to seven.

Apparently no one had bothered to remove the disfigured face of the man from a spike on the front gate. They weren't entirely sure how it had wound up there in the first place, but no one questioned it out of fear they may be used as a demonstration. Bellatrix was a truly alarming woman.

Now the psychotic woman was sitting in the boys room. In her hand was another, significantly bloodier hand that was not attached to a body any longer. There was a knife in her other hand and a smile on her face, and she was singing rather loudly. Her voice wasn't pretty by any means, but nor was she actually a bad singer. Her voice tilted oddly and her entire body swayed with her song, all except the hand holding the knife that was carving rough words and patterns into dead flesh. The fingers were long and narrow with knobby and prominent knuckles, rather than thick and pudgy stubs, so it was likely the hand belonged to the massacred and nameless Death Eater.

"It is night and in this darkness little children want to play, it is night and in this darkness little children come my way..." And she giggled a little here. "I will keep them safe and sound so long as not a sound is made, I will shelter them from harm but here they face my lonely rage. Haunting haunting I am creeping up the stairs I come your way, with a knife held in my hand to keep your silly dreams at bay... It is night and in this darkness old drunkards stumble my way, it is night and in this darkness here his ugly blood does stain, he tried to run he tried to flee but all he ran into was me!"

Cackling a little she chucked the hand out the room's window. A girly scream followed. Not ol' Nott this time. Humming the tune of her made up song she turned to the limp, pale, still bruised form on the only bed in the room.

The dark Lord watched her calmly, standing beside Narcissa.

"Alright Bella what are you doing?" Narcissa's chilly voice was very analytical. The boy was healing slowly, even with magical aid. Much slower than he should. It was likely she didn't want her sister damaging the boy further, as if there was a change the crazy woman would do so. Somehow, in his unconscious state, he'd gained something akin to affection from her and anyone who thought she would hurt him right now would probably suffer for voicing those thoughts. She probably wouldn't damage him further, or kill him, just because it wouldn't be any fun.

"I heard, somewhere, that long sleeping ones can hear when you speak to them, near them." She answered calmly. Her eyes were bright and her fingers, now trailing over his cheeks, left reddish brown smears over his skin. It was unusual for her to ignore the presence of her Lord, yet she appeared to be doing so now. Narcissa looked at Voldemort questioningly.

"I believe she means that there is a stigma, I believe you could say, about people who have fallen into a comatose state. Supposedly they can hear what you are saying, and hypothetically they understand, but I do not think it has ever been proven. I think that originally the stigma came from the muggle world, and upon migrating here no one could really be bothered to test it, or testing was inconclusive. Most of those people involved in testing here never woke again I don't think. If memory serves I think the only ones that did woke with amnesia." Narcissa cast him an impressive look, for someone who he knew feared him. The woman was rather gutsy in her cowardice, he would giver her that. But then again he also knew that for the time being he needed her. A team of healers would likely be less effective in treating the boy if brought on now. He knew that she knew that.

They watched Bellatrix murmur to the child, not really listening to what she was saying.

It had been roughly a week since the boys arrival to the manor, and the woman left mostly to torture the fat muggle. She liked to bring little trinkets in the form of vials of blood or small, severed body parts that Narcissa wouldn't allow near the oy so they were left on a table by the door. There was a cursed necklace too, which was also not allowed in. Nor was the vase she'd filled with Draught of Living Death and roses, which oddly enough seemed to do just fine in their new environment. Or the shrunken heads.

No one knew where or why she'd gotten these things.

Or at least the things that weren't clearly from the overweight screaming lump of a man in Bella's play room.

Still ignoring the mad woman, for the most part, the sane pair of individuals spoke calmly on inane things. The weather, some minor plans and progress, the use of rose petals in some healing potions and moon stone in others. Benefits of bat spleens. And dragons liver. Kinda of dragon livers. Flobberworms were also mentioned. Severus would be proud. And then there was the muggle invention of the television. Severus would be a little less proud. Bella's singing. The pride would likely be dead by now. Nott's screaming. The pride would be pretty dead now, though there would probably be some amusement there now. Fashion. Dead like that kid in the grave yard. So sad.

Severus stormed silently into the room, bowed curtly before ignoring them, and taking a seat beside the boy. Like Bellatrix he's taken to watching over the boy. Curiosity, the Dark Lord thought. Or maybe a sense of duty. Narcissa joked that he may enjoy Bella's oppressive presence. She had earned a sneer of malcontent for her comment.

The Order was crumbling. Order itself in the wizarding world wasn't looking too great either. Crime was reportedly on the rise.

Voldemort couldn't help thinking that it was good. Sometimes though, things were disturbingly easy, which made him unpleasantly uneasy. This did not please him in the slightest. Easy was one thing, but this was like melting wax. Slow going, sometimes, and usually involved fire.

There were two muggle communities, key word there being were, that could attest to the fact there had been fire.

There was a large part of the man that wished for things to go back to what could be considered normal, with both sides battling for dominance over the other in a seemingly endless struggle, both sides certain of their victory. It was ridiculous, how the whole world had put the world onto the shoulders of a child, though at least he seemed to feel shame for that. He'd been killed by a baby, and thwarted again and again by a child, and it was a shame to him that his whole world seemed to revolve around that child. He even followed the news on the boy sometimes, but he regretted that everything fell onto the shoulders of someone less than half his age, and that was something that the entirety of the wizarding world seemed incapable of. It was just sad.

The Dark Lord almost didn't know where to move from this point. Rearranging his plans was one thing but he almost felt lost now, his objective of sixteen years had fallen short. The boys death had almost been achieved, but not in any way that Voldemort had desired it. The damage done to the teenager made his stomach curl. That was not something to be taken lightly.

He liked to think that children in their care, even muggle children, did not suffer. He knew he was wrong, and that even the children of his servants, his soldiers, his Death Eaters, they often suffered. He still liked to think they did not.

In the skeletal man's mind Bella's words kept repeating themselves. Harry Potter's uncle had tired of the child's "freakishness", and the events that sent him into a coma had clearly not been isolated. He hated the thought, loathed it, that any child would suffer. His own suffering had made him a monster, a murderer. He knew that. He knew his Death Eater's children suffered and he wished he could stop it, but he knew that it was unlikely they would halt their actions and the man certainly couldn't stand to lose followers now. Everything that they had worked for could be lost, and even if they were no longer advancing as he's wanted or planned he would not lose all that progress now.

And suddenly the serpentine man felt exhausted. Energy drained, mind slowed, he allowed rigid posturing to fall a little slack and he slouched minutely where he stood.

"Is something wrong?" Narcissa asked him quietly. She was not a harsh woman, exactly, nor was she overly cold, or strict. She was difficult to describe. Fluid. And now she seemed caring. He could see the analytical look, ever present in her eye just as it was in his own Griffyndor crimson gaze, but there was a warm softness about her now almost. A gentle change, one you would have to be around her constantly to notice. He knew very well that she was aware he noticed the change, but he also knew to not draw attention to it and she would return the favour. After all she had clearly noticed his change in stance.

"The whole situation is wrong. Who leaves their saviour to die? To what purpose does abandoning one who should save you all serve?" He half drawled the words. There was a slight shift in the woman's delicate, stiffly graceful pose.

"You are not the only one to think such things." Narcissa murmured. It reminded him that she was a mother, who cared greatly for her son though she may not show it. Voldemort knew her mind was on that son now, off with his father in France. The white skinned man knew she was imagining her boy in the place of the black haired youth that lay prone before them. He knew that she knew it. She knew that he knew that she knew it.

"Does he still not show signs of waking?" Voldemort asked. Narcissa was quiet for a long moment.

"He is trapped, deep within his mind. His body is struggling to heal itself after a great trauma, and his mind will be no better, but the mind is tricky. The mind often cannot heal itself, not without causing what could be considered further damage. Even with aid the mind remains damaged after it receives the initial trauma. My only guess is that if he is not lost in an endless black void, completely unconscious and numb to the world, or stuck somewhere inside of his head, then he is likely trapped in some hellish coma dream, reliving his worst memories or creating new ones. Who knows if he can even hear us now? Or if he can if it helps. Our words."

The words were spoken with brutal honesty, and just like the rest of the situation they made the Dark Lords stomach curl. It was a terrible fate. He left the room wordlessly.

A glance at Bella's presents table proved that yet again she had brought a gift with her. A single black candle with red flecks in the wax. He wasn't sure if he wanted to know if it was just a candle this time or not. It probably wasn't.

He spent hours buried in the Malfoy library. Texts were scored with thorough eyes and abandoned. The wraith-like man learned little of use, much to his dismay. A few potions and spells that could be used as a sort of last ditch effort, but that would not be of any use otherwise, and an interesting curse or two was all he gained from hours upon hours of weary reading. He'd have felt no shame in going to bed now, it was well past three in the morning and he had left the makeshift hospital room around four in the afternoon.

While he would have felt no shame, Voldemort also knew he would not have slept.

Darkened halls did not light up as their winding paths were explored. Structures loomed and the ancient stone home was too silent. Echoing clicks of footsteps and the rare, distant snores were the only sounds disturbing this deathly quiet night. No spells were uttered, no doors opened, just the constant ctick ctick ctick of a hard heel on worn stone and the shushing sound of fabric in motion.

Anyone watching would not be surprised when all sound and movement stopped outside of one door. A door that stood between a man and a large part of what he once thought to be his destiny. One door was all that separated Harry potter from Lord Voldemort now.

That door was warded, but unlocked. He was one of four people allowed to enter this room without fearing layer upon layer of wards. It opened for him easily and almost soundlessly and the room beyond it was empty save for one occupant. A small, unconscious and unresponsive body that lay as if some sort of decoration across smooth sheets. The Dark Lord sat in one of the chairs at the youth's bedside almost without meaning to.

"I wonder if you have realized now, at least some of why I became who I am." He spoke slowly, tone quiet and low. "I don't even know why I'm speaking now, it's unlikely you can hear me. Some sad pair we make. A foolish man who destroyed himself for the sake of a prophecy, and a mere boy trapped at the wizarding world's beck and call just because his mother loved him. Fools, all of us. Every last wizard, witch and muggle."

A pause.

"I wonder what Dumbledore has told you of me sometimes. King of fools, that man. He is not unworthy of respect, however, now when he could kill a man just as easily as I could. It's a little sad that no one fears him and his power, the way they fear mine. Really they're quite the same."

Another pause.

"I can just imagine you asking why. Or shouting it. You being... still... and quiet... it's abnormal and a tad disquieting, to say the least. Even when I first say you you were full of life. Regardless, all magic is just that; magic. It's your intent and how you use it that marks your path in the craft, and that's something no one seems to know anymore."

A third, much more pregnant pause.

"I apologize, Harry Potter, for much of what I have done to you. I can not say I regret it, but I do apologize. I truly hope that you can't hear me now, I sound like a bloody fool. One half dead boy and I go soft. Pathetic!" He snarled at himself, pausing yet again to blink slowly at the boy. Still, quiet, pale in the weak night light. The man sighed harshly.

"Wake up, Potter brat, before I have to finish the job." He made no effort to move away, not yet.

At nearly six o'clock in the morning Lord Voldemort finally returned to the rooms he had been gifted as his quarters. He prepared himself for bed, moving uncomfortably sluggishly, and folded his clothing and robes neatly before abandoning them on a desk. His sharp teeth were cleaned meticulously before he laid down and tried to sleep.

Voldemort tossed and turned, unhappy and uncomfortable, for what felt like years. When he finally did manage to slip into the realm of dreams his sleep was restless and uneasy. Everything felt dark and wrong, foreign almost and horrifically uncomfortable. It was almost as if he was numb, and trapped in a small, dark box. He couldn't feel, couldn't move, couldn't see. There was nothing to smell, or taste, no sounds reached his ears until they began to generate their own low buzz. Shouting yielded no results, his vocal cords were frozen.

Instead of numbness he suddenly felt very cold, as though his body was becoming ice. He struggled to wrench himself free of the oppressive pressure of the blackness, and wrenched himself free of sleep altogether, sitting up stick straight and wreathed in soft, cool silk sheets.

At eight twenty two AM, he was still exhausted. Horribly so, even more so after the sham that was sleep. It wasn't a hard decision to return to sleep, though he had a sinking feeling of exactly where he had just been. This time, Lord Voldemort's sleep was deep and familiar.