Voldemort's head was pillowed upon Harry's stomach when he became aware enough to notice it. The man was unmoving, his arms up, hands still clasped with Harry's, and Harry had a moment of cold fear- recalling "a life for a life" - his stomach dropped a mile in the second before Voldemort took a deep, unsteady breath and squeezed Harry's hands. He squeezed back.

He was freezing and starting to shiver, but Voldemort was obviously too tired to move far. He looked around, saw the witchlights start to glow once more, and spotted Pettigrew's body, still bleeding out on the floor.

He idly wondered if the animagus was still warm.

There was no pain on his end of their connection, but Harry could sense an ache, echoing back down to him from Voldemort. Was this the pain Voldemort had been so worried about?

With a sigh, Voldemort released one of Harry's hands and pushed himself back onto his feet, staring down at Harry. His mouth opened slightly, then curved into a satisfied smile. "It worked." Whatever pain he was feeling, Harry couldn't see it on the man's face anymore, not through the expression of a man who had gotten exactly what he wanted.

Harry nodded numbly, enjoying the warmth of Voldemort's skin against his own. "I-," and oh, it felt strange to talk again. "M-," The words in his mouth felt clumsy. Wrong. He reached down their connection instead. I am very cold, he sent, and Voldemort nodded. Harry felt the man's worry just as strongly as if they were still melded.

"That is to be expected. Talk that way for now- save your energy. Can you stand?"

He hadn't even sat up yet, still trying to reorient himself. With Voldemort's (trembling) hand under his back, he slowly sat. His vision spun for a few moments, the corpse of Pettigrew dancing around as if he had been imperiused to do circus tricks.

Controlling his body seemed to work at least. We need to rest. He sent, realising they were both shaking. Can you walk?

"Yes- lean on me."

Exhaustion echoed between both of them. Magical exhaustion, on Voldemort's part, and physical on Harry's.

Leaning on each other, the pair exited the ritual room and made for the nearest guest bedroom. Harry's heart was pounding, and he could feel Voldemort's pulse too, in their linked hands with drying blood between their skin.

Strangely, his hands did not hurt, and when he looked, he realised the runes that had been cut into them were fully healed.

Voldemort practically fell onto the bed, a huge double with blue bedding, pulling Harry down with him. The man's eyes were long-shut, and Harry simply watched as he fell asleep right there in front of him.

Vulnerable.

Huh. So maybe everything wouldn't change after all. Leaning back against the pillows with Voldemort's hand still clutching his own, Harry wondered what the future held for him, and before he noticed it, sleep swept over him too.

"-...but you have to promise me, Dobby. Don't try to take me out of here out of some sort of misguided 'saving Harry Potter' thing. Dumbledore wants me dead. I cannot safely leave."

Harry's voice washed over Voldemort's tired body like a balm as he began to wake up. The squeaky voice that followed was not nearly as welcome.

"Dobby promises, Harry Potter!"

So Harry's escape plan had been a House Elf.

Not that it sounded like Harry was going to leave anymore, and Voldemort found himself glad of it. He stayed still, noting that he had curled toward Harry in his sleep - normally he slept on his back.

(It wasn't a bad change.)

"Dobby will get Mr Harry Potter some soup! Wait here, please!" There was a crack and Voldemort felt the telltale change in the air that meant the elf had popped away, as they tended to do. He wondered what Harry would do now.

He heard the boy sigh, and felt him shifting on the bed, moving closer to Voldemort's prone form. "...Merlin, my life's fucked if I'm thinking that," he was mumbling, and Voldemort stifled a laugh. "...you awake, Voldemort?"

He didn't really want to wake up, just yet. He wanted to stay in this drowsy, comfortable state, knowing he was safe and Harry was right here (and when had Harry gotten so high on his list of priorities?) so Voldemort kept his eyes shut, and was surprised to feel Harry's hand on his cheek. It was bold of the boy to touch him like this, but he allowed it. It felt nice.

(Nice. What was happening to him? When was the last time he could say that something felt this nice?)

(It felt even more like home than his evenings with Nagini.)

(He was a little scared of that.)

"It's alright, I'll be right here when you decide to wake up." Harry said softly, and pulled away. Voldemort felt the loss of touch like a wound, but didn't dare break the spell and move to follow Harry's hand.

He didn't want to get up, he was still so tired. (Logically speaking, it made sense for him to be exhausted. He had expended a great deal of his magic on the ritual, and torn his own soul asunder as well. Of course he was tired. So it was perfectly socially acceptable to spend the day in bed. Right?) His chest still ached, the feeling of something ripped from him- the place he'd been imagining Harry now hurt in time with his breathing. It would fade, the Horcrux pain always did, but he missed the warmth.

There was another crack before Voldemort could ponder it further, and the sound of Harry eating quickly filled his ears.

"Dobby, what are the origins of House Elves? Were you always enslaved?"

Voldemort was struck with pride for his Horcrux.

While he had offered House Elves alliance before, they had always refused and so he had not planned to include them in his campaigns until later. He knew that it was mainly because of the nature of their subjugation and the brainwashing they perpetuated upon each other but he did not have the time or manpower to focus on House Elves at the present, not when so many other things needed to happen and he still had such a small force. And now Harry wanted to take up that mantle, to be their champion and help them out of their traditional rut beneath the boot of Wixkind.

Their story wasn't one Voldemort knew, but he was sure Harry would learn it and tell him soon.

"Oh, Dobby is so glad Mr Harry Potter asked! Dobby knows elves at Hogwarts have written histories, Dobby will go and find them for Mr Harry Potter!"

There was another crack, and the elf vanished once more. The soup smelled amazing.

"You can have some, if you want to get up." Harry commented, and Voldemort opened his eyes in surprise. Harry was watching him with a faint smile. "Our connection is wide open, you know."

Voldemort had not realised, so used to them being curled around each other that this actually felt normal, their emotions and thoughts flowing past each other like parallel streams. Harry had heard every thought.

He wasn't sure whether to be embarrassed or not.

He… tentatively put up a single Occlumency wall. Before, he had guarded their connection with far more, but now he felt no need to. He just didn't want every single one of his thoughts to overwhelm Harry, now that he had the option. Not because he didn't like the connection, but because he didn't think it would be healthy for them to continue to be so close. They'd nearly merged several times over the past few weeks, and he didn't want to damage Harry's personality or sense of self further.

That didn't make it easier to do, and he didn't miss the slight frown on Harry's face, though. The pout on his lip before he looked away and started back on his soup hurt like a thorn.

Sitting up slowly, Voldemort took stock of his body, noting the dried blood all over his hands and robes and the pounding ache in his chest, just above his heart. He was also hungry and thirsty and wanted to sleep for another week and had a mild headache. All normal. He suddenly noticed that Harry had taken off his white robe, leaving him in a simple white slip that Voldemort had conjured for privacy when dressing the body, and looked away before Harry saw his gaze was pointed at the slim thighs. "How are you feeling?" He enquired, out of purely academic interest, of course.

While he had gone through this with Nagini twenty-nine years ago, the effects of a Horcrux possessing a human had never been fully explored and he was interested to know if anything had changed. It was nothing to do with how he was wondering if the boy had always been quite that thin.

"A bit shaky still," Harry said thoughtfully. "But everything seems normal, you healed me well."

"I may need to have some more Acklees Aftercure made for you," Voldemort's eyes fixed on Harry's hands, which were indeed trembling with the weight of the soup spoon. "The Cruciatas after-effects cause damage down to the cellular level, so I am unsure I healed it all." He could see the healed scars from the runes he had carved into Harry's palms and was pleased to see the wounds had fully closed. "May I see your hands?" He wanted to be certain that the magic had worked.

Putting down his spoon, Harry easily put his hands into Voldemort's outstretched ones. Harry's natural skintone was a great deal deeper than his own, owing to the Potters' South Asian heritage. The temperature was cool, but within the normal human range - far better than it had been during the ritual. The tremors weren't pronounced, luckily, and Voldemort was easily able to steady his Horcrux's hands.

The scars had healed cleanly, marking thin lines that were barely visible beneath the natural crease lines of Harry's hands, which made Voldemort smile in satisfaction at a job well done. "No pain?" Harry shook his head, and Voldemort let him have his hands back. "Good." The runes upon his own hands would have to heal naturally, but they had scabbed over well enough overnight and he was unworried about that, just wanting to ensure everything had gone correctly with Harry. "There was, I admit, a very small chance of me accidentally summoning the original soul of Harry Potter," He said, glancing around for his wand and spotting it on the floor - he must have dropped it in his haste to get to the bed. "I am glad I did not."

Harry let out a nervous laugh. "That would have been- very awkward."

Nodding in agreement, Voldemort summoned his wand and began conjuring breakfast for himself from the leftovers he always kept in the kitchen. Nothing against the elf, of course, he just preferred to eat food he had prepared himself. It harkened back to his time at the Orphanage, a habit he had kept up even at Hogwarts. The elves in the kitchens had always been happy to let him make his own food.

There was another crack, and Dobby reappeared, arms full of a set of dusty books. Instantly, the elf squeaked in fear, eyes fixed upon Voldemort. "Mr Harry Potter sir- Dobby will leave the books here! Please be careful with them!" And the elf popped away, leaving the books on a table.

Voldemort… held back a snort. Harry was laughing outright. "It's- I know he has every reason to be scared, but-," Harry snickered into his hands, muffling the sounds. It was… a strange sight, but Voldemort wondered if it was a habit he had learned from his cruel relatives. Then Harry sobered, looking at Voldemort with apprehension. "You're- you're not angry at me for calling him, are you?"

Oh, Harry.

Shaking his head, Voldemort waved a hand to show his lack of care on the matter. "Having an exit strategy is very smart, but you decided to stay of your own accord, which is worth far more than me imprisoning you."

It meant a lot, that Harry would choose to stay - would reassure his friend that he was safe, even. It meant that Harry trusted him, and that warm feeling of being trusted made the hole in Voldemort's chest ache just a tiny bit less.

Harry looked down, embarrassed, and… paused. "Oh," He said, and Voldemort looked down also to see that their hands had crept together once more.

He hadn't even noticed, but he had been prepping his food one-handed as Harry ate the same way. "That is… new," he replied, joining Harry in staring at their joined hands.

Voldemort hadn't held hands with anyone before today. Not since he was a small child and needed to be led around, but even then he recalled hating it with a passion. Touch wasn't something he seeked out, or something he craved, or so he thought. But seeing his hand held in Harry's smaller one, he wondered if perhaps this was where he was meant to be all along.

Voldemort, having prepared and eaten his food quietly as Harry finished his own soup, turned to him. "I should check and see if you are fully anchored from the inside - may I enter your mind?"

"Do it," Harry responded instantly. He had nothing to hide, not after the last fortnight. "Do you need me to do anything?"

"Just- look into my eyes and relax," Voldemort said, voice oddly soft. Harry remembered the scar visions, all the times Snape had barged into his mind, and tried to relax, but it was not easy.

Voldemort's eyes were a very bright shade of red, he thought absently as he stared. It reminded him of the Philosopher's Stone. Or the rubies in the hilt of the sword of Gryffindor.

-together, apart, Sirius's laugh, Dudley Dursley clomping up the stairs, Hermione going in for a hug- it didn't hurt.

The memories were flickering by in a way that was very familiar, but it didn't hurt. He was beginning to lose himself to the carousel of his past when Voldemort stopped, focusing in on a specific memory in Harry's fifth year-

-walking down the Defence Corridor after a detention from Umbridge, Harry runs into Headmaster Dumbledore. The man looks away, and the memory seems to freeze, and - corrupt-, before a voice - Harry's voice - says clearly. "I need to solve this on my own."-

It was unfamiliar.

The memory ended and Voldemort was still staring into Harry's eyes and he was also clutching Harry's shoulders. "Harry- can you understand me?"

He nodded, confused, until he caught the slight hissing sound, and realised- "I have been able to speak to snakes as long as I can remember."

Voldemort- was he actually frozen? He was staring at Harry like he'd never seen him before. "But- you are not- the Potters? How?" He was muttering, and Harry could feel a note of… confusion? Grief? Pain? Through their bond.

"Voldemort," Harry said, catching the man's attention. "What is it?"

"Parseltongue is extinct in most of the world due to the West's irrational fear of snakes, driven by Christianity. I have never met another Parselmouth, despite us having a natural call to one another. I am certain I am not the last of our kind, there are surely pockets of communities in India, China, Brazil and parts of Greece, but I have never managed to meet one- most keep their gifts close to their chests and for good reason. Parselmagic - any spell cast in Parseltongue - is irreversible without a Parselmouth. It is a dangerous gift to have."

"Dumbledore told me that I had inherited certain gifts from you, the night you killed my Mum." Harry pointed out with a frown. "Surely that's the cause."

"Being a parselmouth is more than magical, Harry. It is biological. In order to speak to snakes, you are born with an extra organ - a thin strip of flesh in your vocal chords that allows you to inflect properly. Parselmouths also are mildly poisonous and venomous, depending on how much venom they themselves have been exposed to in their lives." The man opened his mouth and bared his teeth, showing Harry some pretty sharp canines. "Mine are more pronounced due to how this body was made and my gorgon ancestry, as the Slytherin line immigrated to Britain from Greece. You - the body you are in, anyway, likely has naga ancestry, considering your ancestors, or maybe gorgon or lamia if it comes from further back."

Naga was a new one. Harry thought he'd read about them once upon a time, perhaps in one of his textbooks? He was unsure. "So- I would have been a Parselmouth anyway? Or- the other Harry Potter would have?" He was having trouble keeping it all straight in his head. The idea that he wasn't the original owner of his body was hard enough to get to grips with, but knowing that his parseltongue wasn't from Voldemort, well. He wondered what else Dumbledore had lied about.

"Indeed, and likely every Potter in the last… four Generations was. My immediate guess is since the marrying of Katharni Patel into the Potter family - she immigrated from India to marry your great great grandfather."

Voldemort knew his family tree better than Harry did, which was a little embarrassing.

"Why didn't anyone know it, then?" But Harry could guess why, really. With the stigma of Parseltongue, the Potters would have lost a lot of respect from whatever friends they'd had. "Poor Katharni." He wondered about her, the woman four generations back who had brought in this gift to Harry's ancestors and now to him. He wondered what she was like, if she had Harry's wild hair or green eyes. If she'd been in Slytherin or Gryffindor.

"Indeed," Voldemort had been following along with Harry's train of thought, the Occlumency barrier long-gone. "She would have had a difficult time anyway, but this would not have made anything easier."

"I only found out I was a Parselmouth in my second year- well, I knew I could speak to snakes before then, but I didn't know there was a name for it. Your diary-" Harry's eyes went wide. "He was like me, wasn't he?"

The diary wasn't just a piece of Voldemort's memory, it was a piece of his soul- and Harry had destroyed it- "I-... he was like me and I killed him."

Voldemort frowned. "...my Diary? How in Morgana's name do you know about that?"

Ah, fuck. Well, in for a knut, in for a galleon. Harry launched into an explanation of his second year at Hogwarts, happily throwing all the blame for the situation upon Lucius Malfoy's choices, which, to be fair, was a mainly accurate summary.

Listening intently, Voldemort's hands migrated from Harry's shoulders down to holding his hands once more, the runes on their palms lining up. Harry liked it, quietly in the back corners of his mind where only Voldemort had been. There was no way Voldemort was aware of doing this, and Harry tried not to be too aware either, not wanting it to end.

How messed up was it, that he was enjoying this?

He'd lost his train of thought - "...-and then, the Basilisk lunged in to attack me and I managed to drive the sword through the roof of its mouth. It died, but there was a fang in my arm. I managed to get down to Ginny-"

"That would be the Horcrux protecting you," Voldemort murmured. "The venom from that basilisk paralyses almost instantly, and death follows within ten or so seconds. The Horcrux's natural defences must have come into play. Even for a parselmouth, that is far too much venom for your system to neutralise on its own. "

Voldemort didn't seem particularly upset, yet.

Harry could feel his body beginning to tense as he reached the story's end, though. Would this be the straw that broke this fragile friendship?

"And- I stabbed the diary with the fang. I'm sorry," He hung his head, braced for rage, but there was none.

"Harry, you did what you had to to defend yourself," Voldemort looked… impressed? "Do not apologise. It is not your fault he failed to recognise what you are. But- how did you survive the venom?"

"Fawkes- Dumbledore's phoenix, the one that brought the Sorting Hat cried on my arm and it healed right up. Not even a scar." He was unable to resist a quick glance downward, to the spot on his arm where the scar should have been. The skin was ever-so-slightly darker where the fang had entered, but it wasn't really a scar.

"Fascinating." Voldemort stifled a yawn, and Harry could only laugh. "It appears I need more rest."

"Just a bit," Harry could feel his own yawn coming up. "I could do with some too. Did you mean it, that Parselmouths are drawn together?"

"Yes," Voldemort tilted his head. "I believe it explains why I was so fixated upon the prophecy, and the Potters. Everything came back to that because I felt a damned pull and did not know why. Parselmouths - we do our best in our own company. According to Salazar's writings, our magic thrives when we are together, and becomes more powerful."

"That's interesting to know," Harry remembered the crippling loneliness he'd felt after he had discovered that being a Parselmouth was something that wasn't normal. "So- it wasn't some prophecy, or destiny, just- biology?"

"If you want to think of it that way," Voldemort seemed… put out at the idea. "There was something dramatic about it, though. Our lives, intertwined by fate. It was the stuff of legends."

Ah. Harry understood. "You wanted to go down in history. To be remembered." He was familiar with the thought. In the cupboard, when he had been small and angry at the world, he had sworn to himself that he would become more than the Dursleys ever thought he could be. "I understand."

"I suppose you would."

There was a short, comfortable silence as they both contemplated the complicated mindset of wanting to be better than those who hurt you ever would be. Wanting to be known for more than just what was done to you. Wanting to achieve.

"Do you know, I don't believe you did destroy the diary." Voldemort said after a few more moments. "Your soul shard is far too big. I think you absorbed him after expelling him."

"Is that possible?"

"Very, which is why if any of my horcruxes have to be destroyed it is preferrable to have me in the vicinity so the soul has somewhere to go - rather than just dissipating into the air. Like calls to like, so you probably called to him. You didn't have any strange dreams, sensations or blank spots of memory after your second year, did you?"

Well, that was a whole other story.