So... I'll bet that everyone is wondering where I've been. Well, I've been sick. I only just received an actual diagnosis of what is wrong with me this week; I've been a year with muscle and joint pain, exhaustion, and migraines. Not fun. Anyway, they know what's wrong with me now (fibromyalgia) so they can treat the symptoms. It's nice to know I'm not crazy.

Anyway, what with this and that, and suffering grades, and switching schools, I've not been in much of a mood to write. But I couldn't abandon fanfiction, no atter how much I've tried. Unfortunately, my computer died, and everything was lost. This chapter is absolutely twisted. I love it so. Oh, and you should check out my new fic, Cities of Cain. It's fun. Only the prologue is up, but it's going to be abso-bloody-lutely epic.

Chapter Four

And So We've Come to This

If there was one thing Harry Potter was good at, it was surviving. He was an excellent Quidditch player, brilliant at Defense of the Dark Arts, and a decent student. But the one skill he told himself he had was survival instincts to rival those of an immortal.

Snape, back when he had been alive, had loudly professed that the only reason Harry wasn't dead (and quite unfortunately, too) was that he was too bloody stubborn to stop breathing, and that if he did stop breathing, he probably wouldn't die even then. It was too bad for Snape that the same could not be said of him, and perhaps too bad for Harry that he hadn't died.

The human spirit, except in rare circumstances, will fight to survive no matter what the odds. And Harry was nothing if not human, contrary to all of the rumors that had been circulating since a boy who could barely walk had defeated the greatest dark lord since Herpo the Foul or Salazar Slytherin or half a dozen wizards of chocolate frog card fame. So, Harry fought to survive.

Insanity is, if anything, a defense mechanism. When a person can no longer deal with the world, the mind withdraws from the world, so that he or she no longer has any need to. And Harry's world was very, very hard to deal with.

So, he did the only thing he could. He went really, really fucking crazy.

"Go to bed Tom. Go to bed Tom! Tired or not Tom, go to bed Tom!" Harry cried triumphantly, pushing Voldemort away from him.

Voldemort straightened his robes as he righted himself, glaring at the waif in front of him. "Pretending to be insane will not save you, Harry," he hissed.

"Riddle me, Riddle me, ree; a werewolf in a tree; a stick in hand, some flesh in throat; Aberforth Dumbledore has sex with goats!"

Voldemort could have lived quite happily for the rest of his life without that particular bit of knowledge. "Stop this foolishness at once, Harry. How dare you insult me! I will not be fooled by your wit. I will break you, will make you love me. Soon, Harry, soon you will want nothing more than to please me." His threat went unheeded, as Harry turned capers about the room, looking for all the gold in Gringotts like a fool without his motley.

"A Weasley, a Granger, a ten o'clock scholar! What makes you come so soon? You used to come at ten o'clock; now, you come at noon." Harry paused, cocking his head to one side. He rolled his eyes. "I happen to like rhymes, Hermione! But, fine, I will stop. It has been so long since I've seen you. Too busy studying for the NEWTs, eh? I don't understand why she bothers either, Ron. Quidditch is much more fun, and pays more than some stupid Ministry job. They're all a bunch of fucking morons, anyway. Who'd want to work in that hell hole?"

"The Ministry is gone."

Harry turned towards him, motioning for his two invisible friends to stay while he dealt with this unpleasant bit of business. "Of course the Ministry is gone," he explained in a patronizing voice. "Lucius Malfoy saw to that, all due to your orders, of course. What a mistake that was. He thought he could best you. The power was intoxicating. All those fools at the Ministry, all those idiotic sycophants who loved his money and hated the man. He enjoyed that killing far too much. You should never enjoy killing. That's what ruins you, really. Go to kill a baby boy, rock a bye baby, and find that death is a bastard. She doesn't like so many souls, coming to her all the time, all due to one man. So Death took one more, so that no more would come. She cried when she found the soul shattered, you know. You broke her heart. You broke Narcissa's, too. Killed the man who only wanted to be left alone. Really, is that so much to ask? Why can't you leave me the fuck alone?"

He whirled abruptly. "Don't you lecture me, mother hen! There was an old woman who lived in a burrow, with so many dead children, all in a tableau. I can cuss all the hell I want. It's stress relief. Merlin, I need a cigarette."

He reached into a school bag that didn't exist and pulled forth a slender cigarette. As he brought it to his mouth, a spark flared, and a slender ribbon of smoke curled from the tip.

"Such power..." Voldemort's eyes shone with lust. "A power the Dark Lord knows not, most assuredly. But know it I will.

Voldemort hated shrinks with all the passion of one who has been called insane countless times. And yet here he was, ready to pick up the figurative notepad and settle Harry on the obligatory couch.

Harry had power, and he was not too weak to see it. Magical power, that, to be honest, far outstripped his own. Power that could crush the fools weak enough to oppose him in a single, masterful stroke.

Power that he could, and would, control.

But first, he had to cure Harry. And, in the process, find the proper tools to control him.

"What year is it?" Best to start simply. He had to make the boy stop jumping to the past, had to make him exist in the present.

"The year of our Dark Lord Voldemort three," Harry mumbled around the ever-present cigarette in his mouth. Harry had been smoking for two days straight. He did not sleep, and Dreamless Sleep potions had no effect. Draught of Living Death had merely made him yawn.

"It is 2003."

"Is it really? Curiouser and curiouser. I suppose I don't live with the Dursleys anymore, then?"

"Who are the Dursleys?"

"My last living blood relatives, of course. You should know. You killed them."

"If I killed them, then how are they your last living relatives?"

Harry snorted, blowing out a cloud of smoke that formed several rude signs. "You didn't kill the Dursleys, you great prick. I still have to return every summer, 'for my protection,' as he says. I don't mourn them at all now. I feel a bit bad about it, really. I went to the funeral. Ashes to ashes, fun to funky and all that shite."

Voldemort narrowed his eyes in exasperation. "It is 2003. Your relatives are dead. I killed them. They lived outside of London, in one of the home counties. "

"Gay go up and gay go down, to ring the bells of London town. Here comes a candle to light you to bed, here comes a chopper to chop of your head. Chip chop chip chop, the last man is dead!"

This was more frustrating than listening to Quirrell's incessant, whining stuttering had been.

He couldn't help it. If he was going to play the shrink, he was not going to do a half-arsed job of it. Besides, the damn phrase had been rumbling about in his head for the past quarter hour.

"And how does that make you feel?"

Harry dropped his cigarette as his mouth opened in shock. His eyes grew very wide, and he seemed to be struggling with something. Then, suddenly, his face underwent a change, his eyes narrowing to mere slits and his eyebrows lowering dramatically. The cigarette smoldered on the stone floor, the light matching the flames of anger in Harry's eyes.

"What do you care how I feel? Nobody cares how I feel. Nobody loves me, nobody takes the time to know me. As long as I kill Voldemort, they're happy. Doesn't matter what they do to me, does it? I'm just a stupid little insolent fame isn't everything spoiled prick. I don't know a thing about potions, but potions doesn't matter, for I won't kill with potions. Go ahead, don't tell Snape to treat me fairly so I can actually learn. Hatred's good for Potter, gives him something to focus his magic on. Even better that Snape was a Death Eater. Teach him to hate them, hate them all. Oh, I hate them all. Everyone. So don't pretend to fucking care, don't pretend like I matter. I don't."

Harry's eyes, which had been filling with tears as he spoke, let run a torrent at the same time he opened his mouth in an ear-splitting shriek. The cigarette exploded in a burst of toxic carcinogens. The torches roared to life, filling the room with light and warmth. A wind howled, pulling at his robes and scattering the papers on his desk.

Voldemort stared at the sobbing boy before him with something akin to awe. An explosion of raw magic, uncontrolled, had done this. Imagine what would happen when that power was channeled, when a wand was used to direct and control the magic, when it was intentional.

"I told you once, Harry, that there are many similarities between us. Orphans, looks, Parseltongue, a certain affinity for rule breaking. And the fact that we were supposed to be saviors. I was supposed to defeat Grindewald, you know. There was a prophecy, one that meant I was special. But Dumbledore couldn't have me believing that, not if he wanted to control me. So he sent me to that orphanage, or at the very least insured that I never was removed from it. No one wanted poor little Tom Riddle, the freak. Just like no one wanted poor little Harry Potter, the freak.

"Did you ever think, Harry, why Dumbledore wanted to place you with your relatives? Surely dozens of families clamored to raise the boy-who-lived, the already acknowledged savior. It was so he would be your rescuer, and you would rely on him."

He was extrapolating, he knew, and the whole bit about him and Grindewald was simply ridiculous. But if he could only establish a connection with the boy, make him think he was loved, make him think he had something to be sane for, then, then the boy would be his.

Harry hiccuped loudly, and wiped his nose with the cuff of his robe. "Don't pretend to be my friend. I have friends, true friends. I don't need someone who only wants me for my power, for my fame."

"Of course not, Harry," he interjected smoothly, furiously thinking. "I was hoping we could have a much... deeper relationship than that." A relationship that would mean Harry was enamored with him, and would subsequently listen to whatever he said. A relationship that could invoke certain forbidden rituals, rituals that were never mentioned at Hogwarts. Rituals that were infinitely... pleasurable. "You're beautiful, did you know that?"

"No 'm not," Harry responded desolately. "I'm a freak. An ugly little scarhead freak."

"Oh, no, Harry," Voldemort purred, running a thumb across his cheek gently. "You're absolutely lovely. I've never seen so one as special, as absolutely ravishing as you."

"Really?" The boy's eyes were full of hope.

"Really." Really, his power was absolutely delicious.