So, this is it. The end, the final chapter. I am inordinately proud of this. It's my favourite thing out of all I've written. I can't stop smiling. Your reviews have all been wonderful. For responses, please refer to my livejournal. The link is the homepage in my profile. They're not up yet, but they will be soon; I'm going to write them right now.

Never fear, for though this fic is complete, I will have more Harry/Voldemort action soon. I am in the brainstorming process for an expanded version of my one-shot Prisoners, You Are Free. I do not know what it will be titled, or when it will be posted, but, please, look for it soon.


Chapter Five
Run Through the Raindrops

"Harry."

The boy looked up from his book, emerald eyes blinking in confusion. Voldemort never called him by his first name. He called him his lion or pet or his favorite, little serpent, but he never ever called him Harry.

Harry was the voice in his head, the one that nattered on about Hermione and Ron, singing nursery rhymes learned in the childhood he never had. Harry giggled when sad and cried when happy, and tended to rhyme all of the time, except when he was ranting. He ranted quite a bit. He was not at all happy that the little serpentine lion was sharing his powers, and his bed, with the evil Voldemort. Well, sometimes. Other times, he would cackle madly while he and Voldemort were fucking, urging the little serpent on with suggestions that, when listened to, led to a world of pleasure that neither had ever experienced.

"I'm not Harry." There. That was true enough. He shared a body with him, and a past, but they were two separate people. Harry was crazy. The pet was just slightly demented.

"Yes, you are. Somewhere, deep down, you two are the same." Voldemort was studying him intently, a look of puzzlement in his eyes. "One day, perhaps, you will realize this."

He just shrugged, nonchalant. He didn't particularly care one way or the other. It made as much difference to him as which scoring ring the quaffle passed through: either way, he still had Voldemort.

"Why did you do it?"

Why did he do what? Lose his mind? Kill Dumbledore? Fight so hard, only to completely surrender in the end?

"Do what?"

"Why did you return to sanity? I never promised you anything but love, a false love, and surely you were not fool enough to fall for that. Insanity is safety, and you left it all behind for the unknown. Why?"

The lion nibbled his bottom lip, internally smirking as he felt the lust swelling up from Voldemort. He didn't rightly know himself. "A false love is better than no love at all. To be touched, even if it is lust and not love, to be whispered to sweetly, lies as they are, to have something to cling to that never changes, even if it is torture... that is better than to have no love, no touch, no words, no anchor at all." He lidded his eyes, enjoying the feel of Voldemort's lips on his throat, of his hands on his chest, of his body pressed against his.

"Too true..." he murmured in between kisses, slowly moving down to the boy's chest, sucking and biting. The pet had to hold back a moan, the pain and pleasure mixing and creating something else entirely. This meeting of opposites, this... oh, that felt so good... mixture of adversaries, this fight between matter and anti-matter, the war between fire and ice, and light and dark... He felt like a potion, simmering to completion as the last ingredient was added; they were a combination of ingredients that never should have been combined, and yet here they were. They were the... harder, harder... birth of life from volcanoes and tundras, the inexplicable joining of equals, of master and slave.

This was not making love, nor even having sex. This was fucking, plain and simple. Tomorrow, perhaps, he would kill, or torture, or do whatever else it was Voldemort wanted. He would do anything, so long as there was this...

Hot heat, friction. Their clothes were somewhere else. He didn't know where, or care. He roared, like the lion he was, the wordless cry ending in a hiss, like the serpent he was becoming.

And as they lay there panting, reveling in the mixture of ultimate, burning pain and ultimate, burning pleasure, he spoke.

"Someone told me, once, that you get wetter by standing still in the rain, rather than running, moving forward. That's what I'm doing, what I did. I'm running through the rain drops. I'm not quite so wet, not quite so damaged, not quite so broken. And I reach this- the dryness, the comfort, and the heat- all that much sooner."

And in his head, Harry sang.

Rain, rain go away, come again some other day. If you don't, I don't care, I'm not wearing underwear