"The holiday is almost over," said Tom, as he drew designs upon Harry's skin absent-mindedly.

"We still have a few days," Harry replied, disliking the idea of their time alone being indeed limited.

"But I nevertheless dread the moments when I'll have to remind myself that I can no longer be with you so simply," Tom said, "or talk to you so freely, or kiss you so frequently…"

Harry smiled lightly as Tom's lips pressed against his, though in truth he was a little dispirited with this reminder of how he too felt. "We'll still have some time alone between classes and the Dark Arts," Harry said, perhaps talking to himself just as much as to Tom. "It won't be as bad as before, anyway."

"Indeed," Tom agreed, smiling softly as he gazed into Harry's eyes. "The others will get bored, unlike us." They fell silent as Tom played with a lock of Harry's hair, submerged in thought. Perhaps he had only made this simple reply to put an end to this section of the conversation, Harry mused. Even if that was the case, Harry couldn't say he was offended by it in any way.

He watched for Tom's expressions at a lack of interesting thoughts to dwell upon. Tom's handsome face remained unmoving for the majority of the time, yet occasionally a thought would trigger some whisper of emotion to be put on display. His dark eyes travelled Harry's face, but what he was thinking about, Harry could only guess.

Harry sometimes wished he could amuse himself with reading Tom's thoughts – as he had fallen in the habit of doing with the Death Eaters. Tom would surely be a rather interesting person to listen to… yet Harry knew it would be unwise to ask Tom to take down his shield of Occlumency, for he himself didn't know how to stop being impassive in thought.

He thought of Legilimency for a while after this, mulling over other new pieces of magic when that became a tedious subject. After a few minutes his thoughts reverted back to Tom, and he had a question. "Tom?"

"Yes?"

"Who were you with before me?" This question had been on Harry's mind vaguely for the past month, though he had never found the time to bother asking about it. "I mean, because obviously I wasn't the first person you ever kissed, or had sex with…"

"It wasn't anyone important," Tom said, "merely a girl in the year above me."

"She was the only girlfriend you ever had?" Harry inquired, somehow disbelieving.

"No…" Tom said hesitantly, "yet she was the only one I actually kept for long enough to be deemed a 'girlfriend'. She was dull, even for a Ravenclaw, and not at all as intelligent as one might have expected. We were never close. Our relationship lasted a mere three months."

"Oh," Harry replied. He found that he could think of nothing else to add past this.

"You've had girlfriends before, I'm sure?" Tom suggested.

"Yeah," Harry agreed, "but in the end I never really had any time for it all. None of us did."

Tom gave a hum of understanding, and silence fell again. Harry was thinking about Cho and Ginny vaguely – mostly the latter. He thought back to his sixth year, in the first potions class taught by Slughorn, when he became convinced that he was in love with Ginny. That all felt so far away to him… He could barely remember what she had even been like, and why he had liked her so much. He remembered her personality, of course, but as he lay besides Tom, he couldn't remember how or why he had been supposedly in love with her.

They had talked occasionally, sure, and he had certainly enjoyed her company… but she hadn't been the same as Tom was to him now. Harry felt Tom caress his chin softly as they thought. He remembered, suddenly, how Ginny had gone through boy by boy, always finding a new boyfriend soon. Maybe he had fallen into some common trap or something, and had only imagined his devotion. She was nothing compared to Tom.

"Why do you suppose it feels like this when we touch?" asked Tom quietly, breaking Harry's trail of thought.

"What do you mean?" Harry asked in return.

"I mean that I've never experienced anything as peculiar and wonderful as this," Tom responded. His hand was travelling down to Harry's neck now. "Even a simple touch to and from you is enough to make me crave more – yet not as obviously as with others. I could keep my hand still," he carried on, animating his meaning by resting his fingers upon Harry's jaw, "and I still feel as though all is new. I can't seem to comprehend why that is."

"Maybe it's because I'm the first boy you've ever been with," Harry remarked.

"You've never been with a boy, have you?" Tom asked.

"No," Harry replied. Though Ginny had certainty been somewhat manly, Harry mused. That could explain something… For some reason this thought was vaguely amusing to him, and he suppressed a grin.

"And I feel different than others to you?" Tom asked.

"Yes," Harry replied.

"So it isn't merely you…"

"I'm still convinced that it's just different because we're only attracted to our own gender."

"Yes… " Tom said, contemplating this again. "But that is far less of a satisfying answer."

Harry smiled a little at this, knowing that Tom would only stop when he found some complex yet completely rational explanation. He had a feeling it would all wind back to homosexuality in the end, though.

He continued to try and remember just how different Cho and Ginny had felt in comparison to Tom. He came to the conclusion, after some time, that they merely hadn't been as… connected as Tom was to him. Harry didn't know why this was the only way he could explain it to himself… He couldn't even remember them anyway. He wondered if maybe his memory had been somewhat damaged… Tom felt like the only person Harry had ever really liked. It was as though Tom was his soul mate.

Soul mate…

"How do you suppose we're going to last being homosexual?" Tom asked quietly.

"I… I don't know," Harry said, wondering why his heart was suddenly pulsing with quickly flowing anxiety. He didn't meet Tom's eyes, as a whisper of a thought began to form in his mind. A foreboding thought…

They were soul mates…

"The world will never be ready for people like us, I fear," Tom murmured.

Harry was barely listening. Something was odd about the idea of soul mates. An impending realisation was in his head; he could sense it. Like the gathering of clouds, more thoughts and memories slowly began to form in his mind… There was something important about Dumbledore – not the Dumbledore currently at Hogwarts, but the old Dumbledore… but why?

"Yet we can always hold our silence upon the relationship we're in," Tom carried on, talking to an almost completely deaf Harry. "For now we can tell them that…"

Tell him that on the night when Voldemort tried to kill him, when Lily cast her own life between them as a shield, the Killing Curse rebounded upon Lord Voldemort… Where had Harry heard Dumbledore say this? Snape. What about Snape? He was there, and so was Harry… except Harry wasn't really there.

"Harry?"

It was a memory. One of the memories Snape had left Harry at his death. How had Harry forgotten this? And a fragment of Voldemort's soul blasted apart from the whole, and launched itself onto the only living soul left in the collapsing building…

"Harry, are you alright?"

Part of Lord Voldemort lives inside Harry, and it is that which gives him the power of speech with Snakes, and a connection with Lord Voldemort's mind that he has never understood…

"No…" Harry whispered.

And while that fragment of soul, unmissed by Voldemort, remains attached, and protected by Harry, Lord Voldemort cannot die.

Harry felt sick, dazed. He remembered, now, about that unavoidable fact which had so persistently haunted his mind in the earlier months beyond The Battle of Hogwarts. He shared a piece of Voldemort's soul. He was still a Horcrux. This is why he was connected to Tom.

Before Harry knew what he was doing, he stood up. Tom was watching him as he began to pace the room, stunned in shock. Comprehension was storming inside his head, every thought a bolt of lightning… He shared a piece of Tom's soul. He was trapped, contaminated. This is why he had led all of those people death, because he – too foolish to die – had remained alive, hopelessly and unnaturally alive alongside Voldemort. How hadn't this thought remained in his head, where it surely should have been secured for forever, to remind him about his greatest mistake?

Amnesia, thought Harry, total amnesia… and foolishness. He had forgotten his greatest mistake. He had remembered it once, when he saw Hermione, Ron, Lily and Sirius again in the ring, but he had blocked it out. Foolishly and blindly blocked it out.

His friends – what about the friends he had had in the past? Harry suddenly realised, with a horrible jolt of shock, that he hadn't spared one thought for any of them in weeks. Even Tom had noticed this before him, he remembered. Harry, you aren't avoiding the people you have lost, are you? Of course he was avoiding them all. Why wouldn't he, when he had Tom as a perfect excuse to forget his past?

To forget his past… Was Tom some sort of bad influence upon the strength of Harry's memory, or was Harry himself allowing everything to be forgotten? He couldn't bring himself to blame Tom, somehow. It had to be his own stupidity in getting lost in Tom's existence, and in the present. It was as if some wonderful enchantment had been smashed into a million pieces. Tom had been his first and only source of happiness since the Battle of Hogwarts, but now he saw of wrong he was in seeking that glee.

"Harry?"

More thoughts were coming to him in his stupefied state. This was the result of attempting to block everything off, he knew. It was the downpour crashing through a badly mended wound.

He suddenly understood more than ever that he should have died. He should have died happily rather than risk that hopeless risk of chance again. How had he expected to win, to keep his friends safe when his mere existence put a date upon their gravestones? He had been in shock, he knew. He didn't know what to do at the time anymore than he knew what to do now.

But here he was, alive and doomed once again. All of the hope he had built up since loosing everything had suddenly vanished. He wished he were dead. He wished he had died before those who had depended on him. He wished he had never met Tom. Memories of Ron and Hermione came flooding back to him. His best friends…

"You're scaring me."

Tom's voice pulled some part of Harry's conscious back to the present, and he stopped walking. He didn't turn around. From where Tom's voice was coming from, Harry guessed he was standing. He sounded concerned, which caused Harry to feel sorrowful.

"What's wrong?" Tom asked.

Harry made no reply.

He didn't know what to do. Was everything he felt toward Tom some sort of terrible lie fuelled by the connection of souls, and nothing more? Harry wondered suddenly why Tom didn't burn him with touch, as Voldemort had. Maybe the fact that Harry possessed a piece of Tom's soul not yet separated from him currently had something to do with it. Harry held a part of the exact piece that Tom still had. It was a simple answer. But if the answer was this logical and plain, why was it causing Harry to feel so painfully sad?

"Are you scared of what the world will think?" Tom asked.

Harry still didn't answer.

He didn't know what he was going to tell Tom. He wasn't fond of the idea of telling the truth here… unless he wanted to die tonight. Tom would surely kill him if he explained how and what he knew about his Horcruxes alone. If he added in his knowledge of the Chamber of Secrets, the encounter he had at the age of twelve with Tom's diary, a recollection of Dumbledore's memory of the orphanage, and finally a brief overview of how Tom's entire life would go, he would be buried in the forest by morning, and Tom would be gone from Hogwarts forever. It would be a simple way out…

But I've come this far, said a quiet, sly voice inside Harry's head. There is still a hope for revenge at the very least. Harry scowled. He didn't believe in hope anymore. Then make it your ambition. You've never tried that before… Harry couldn't help but contemplate this thought. It was true that he didn't want to die, especially not when the present holds so many hidden possibilities.

"Is it what I've done?" asked Tom. His voice was little over a whisper, and yet completely audible within the silent room. "Is it the people I've murdered?"

"It's everything," Harry stated. With hearing his own voice, he realised he was crying. Yet that wasn't surprising, on reflection…

"What can I do?" Tom asked. Harry was taken aback that Tom had inquired this so bluntly. He had expected Tom to think of some clever plan to make him change his opinion or views on the problem.

"I… I don't know," Harry replied truthfully.

Harry mind suddenly thought back to the conversation they had held in February, talking about the possibility of Dumbledore and Grindelwald being more than just friends: Endearment could probably make him lose consideration for his siblings, Tom had suggested. His mother dying could have made him somewhat isolated, thus the moment Grindelwald walked into his life he could have been willing to forgot completely who he was, and what his previous priorities were initially telling him to do…

Had Harry fallen for Tom in the same way that Dumbledore surely fell for Grindelwald? Did he only feel attached to the other Slytherin because he had suffered so much in the past?

"What are you going to do?"

Leave him? Harry shook his head in reply to this thought. Tom seemed to take this gesture as a sign that Harry was still disoriented. To confirm Tom's likely assumption, Harry added, "I don't know."

Tom was silent for a few minutes after this, allowing Harry to think. At the sound of his footsteps, Harry remained still. Tom seemed hesitant on deciding what to do when he was near Harry. Harry didn't look at him even now.

"I knew you would distrust me soon for my secrets," Tom stated quietly. "Yet I cannot say I regret telling you…"

He's thinking of killing you, said the same sly voice in Harry's head. He doesn't want to – not any more than you want to leave him – but it's still an option. There's no way he'll let you walk away with this secret, even if it isn't his most important one. He told you about who he's murdered, and he regrets that deeply…

"Everyone has secrets," Harry whispered.

Tom didn't seem to know what to do with this reply at first. He seemed surprised that Harry had taken back some of what he blamed him for… Yet this didn't stop him from continuing. "I don't want to lose you."

Harry closed his eyes. He didn't want to lose Tom either…

"You told me that you loved me," Tom whispered.

Harry opened his eyes again, and gazed up at Tom. Great despair came over him as one more thought came to mind: did he still love Tom? If their souls being bound was the only reason for this all… But Harry couldn't bring himself to end that sentence. He couldn't imagine everything he had ever felt about Tom being false. He couldn't bring himself to believe that he was suddenly out of love with him merely because they shared this unfortunate bond.

The souls could merely be a side effect, Harry thought desperately. He felt another tear drop from his eyes as he gazed at Tom, taking in his familiar and handsome face. For once, Tom looked somewhat desolate in contrast to his usual calm and impassive expression. They looked at each other for a long moment as Harry thought.

He realised, suddenly, that he was going to have to kill Tom one day. When Tom became Voldemort, and Voldemort took over the Wizarding world, causing all the pain and suffering in Harry's life, Harry would have to murder him. Harry felt his hands began to shake, and his throat was uncomfortably contracted. He was going to have to kill the man that he knew that he loved even now. The only way this would end was in death, and Harry could do nothing about it.

Unless you join him, suggested the sly voice inside Harry's head. Properly join him, and stop this careful ruse of skimming your feet upon the sea of Dark Arts with the other Death Eaters. You've done well in only learning only what you must, and I have to congratulate you on that, for you've done well, but do you truly want to give up on love? Love, moreover, that is evidently far stronger than what you felt with the forgettable Ginny Weasley?

Harry thought back to all those long days he had spent in Tom's arms, forgetting everything but their own existences. He thought of all the times they had shared secrets with each other, and related to parts of their pasts, however dismal or depressing. He remembered watching Tom's smile appear so delicately, and all those nights when he had craved to be near him again. All of those weeks he had spent wondering if he liked Tom, and what their first kiss had felt like…

"I do love you," Harry managed in a whisper. He could barely think about how to express his full sincerity behind these words. He was so confused as to what he was going to do about the attachment of their souls. All he knew was that he didn't want to leave Tom tonight, or anytime soon. He felt terrible about his lack of consideration towards the people he had led to death, and he knew he was going to think about them more now, but he couldn't stand it idea of leaving Tom.

Something in his expression seemed to tell Tom of his integrity, for he took a few steps forward, and placed Harry's hand within his own. He didn't look much happier than before as he looked at Harry, in fact, perhaps the opposite. Harry gazed into his eyes, revelling in the joy that filled him at Tom's touch, but nevertheless searching for how Tom might be feeling.

"I love you too, Harry," Tom said softly. He made no further actions, so Harry guessed he was about to say more. "I would never allow my past to effect you. I'm never going to hurt you."

Harry dropped his gaze. "I know… It's just…"

"A lot to take in?"

"Yeah."

"You don't fear me for it though, do you? Or resent, or hate me?"

"No," Harry replied truthfully, looking up at Tom now. "I just… I've just seen so many people die… It overwhelms me sometimes."

"You can talk to me about it, you know," Tom said.

"I know." Harry replied.

Tom took his free hand to touch Harry's face, wiping away any hint of tears. "You're beautiful you know," he said quietly.

"So are you," Harry replied.

They gazed at each other for a moment, before they kissed. Harry could barely believe how wonderful it felt, perhaps as a result of him knowing about souls now or perhaps as a result of the general relief from the previous strain of choice. The feeling of Tom's lips and the sound of his breath seemed more desirable to Harry than ever before. What was more, Tom appeared to feel the same way, for he kissed Harry with a rivalling wave of passion. Even Tom's smell was irresistible to Harry, who found he was losing himself in the arms of his lover yet again.

~&~

Author's Note: I just want to thank everyone for the reviews I've been receiving for all of my chapters. They more than anything brighten my days, no matter how corny or as much of a cliché as that may sound.