Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

With the last chapter, we have just passed the 500 reviews threshold! Thank you very much, my dear readers! Thank you to the passionate, the enthusiastic, the sceptical and the critical, the squealing and the analytical, the pessimistic, the optimistic, and everybody in between! I want to know what all of you think of this story! And remember, reviews are a fanfiction author's best friends! ;) (I felt poetic today...and I visibly suck at poetry, so I'll stick to prose. :P)

FanFictionLover: Who knows? I like to let the possibility hanging in the background. That way, you'll always be suspicious of the Dark Lord's cousins popping over now! ;) I'll say this much though. I'm not writing any OC in this fic. There are enough characters in the books without having to add my own extra-duper powerful and cool problem-solving down-to-earth genius beautiful sexy characters. Not to mention that I'm really really bad at making up original names.

Enjoy!

§ Parseltongue §

Chapter 25: 1st to 14th of September 1997: The Muggle problem

Despite the eventful beginning of my sojourn here and my quip at the Dark Lord's age, I soon discovered that he was about the furthest one could be from an idle man.

On the evening of the first, he told me that I wouldn't see much of him in the next few days because the approaching ICW meeting was taking most of his time as of late and that he had dallied with me too much that day to delay his work and research any further.

I lifted a brow at the man. It wasn't as if I expected him to entertain me anyway. I said as much to him, adding that I would be fine as long as he showed me where his library was.

He graciously agreed and, after dinner that night, showed me his precious treasure. It was obviously the biggest room of the fortress at the basis, but it had also clearly been extended by the Dark Lord over time to accommodate his ginormous collection.

The British Magical Library, as it turned out, had copied a great part of its books from his own private collection and he had taken advantage of the completion of the project to glean the few interesting books he didn't already have. Apparently, under the guise of gathering the Library copies, he got precious books with which greedy owners had refused to part before, objecting that he would use the knowledge for his own personal advancement. Which he totally had or would, by the way. But well, the final result was this cathedral dedicated to the written word, and he gave me free access to it!

To my greatest embarrassment, my comment on how it was even better than the British Library sparked some interrogations from the Dark Lord, and, as I couldn't really explain why I left the first time without checking any books without explaining about the thrice accursed tongue-happy librarian...well...I ended up sharing the whole thing with him (except for whom I thought of during the actual kiss). He was surprisingly incensed by Cedric's behaviour and it prompted another rather intense session of kissing, the second that day, which started again by a great shove on the closest wall. I was already too far gone to care about it and even found his possessive behaviour unbelievably arousing, but, in hindsight, it was quite funny how he seemed obsessed with pressing me against the closest flat surface he could find.

We hadn't gone further than that in the following days, however, thankfully for my nerves. I couldn't deny that I wanted him, but really, it was all moving so fast. Not two months ago, I had never even met him in person! I barely had any time to get used to his presence and his intoxicating magic that we had already started this peculiar, but pleasant, arrangement. Not to mention that there was suddenly a whole new 'soul mate' component to the equation.

In the days that followed, I had taken to scour the Dark Lord's library for any mentions of soul mates. With the help of an index spell, I barely found some mentions of it in popular magical fictions (Voldemort had that kind of books here?). The only serious books that talked about it said that it was a myth and that such a thing didn't exist. After a few days, I did find a few mentions of soul mates in non-fictions, but the way they were written was oddly choppy and, upon closer examination, they seemed to contradict themselves in their chapters other than the ones entitled 'soul mates'. I didn't know what to think of it. I was suspicious of their sudden appearance.

If the Dark Lord thought he had a soul mate, wouldn't he have done a lot of research about it, as he seemed to always do for other subjects? Wouldn't there be a lot more books about soul mates in here if that were the case? Nothing said in those books (even in the dubious ones) was conclusive evidence confirming the existence of the phenomenon, after all. But, if Voldemort and I weren't soul mates, how could I explain our weird connection? It seemed even more acute those days. Whenever he felt a spike of annoyance or delight, I'd get an echo of it. It felt centered around my scar. That was another mystery. Why was my scar reacting, and not...my magical core, for instance? Why didn't I feel it in my head, but more at the surface of my forehead? How to explain this?

One day, when I was growing increasingly frustrated and it was getting closer to dinnertime without having found anything of significance after a whole day of research, I thought that I could have done the index spell wrong and decided to give it another shot. I had verified the spell and its wand movement in an old book covered with dust. It was a variation of the spell that allowed references of the books that mentioned a subject to be written on a provided piece of paper. After double-checking everything again and closing the cover of the old book a bit too fast, a cloud of dust came up and made me sneeze in the middle of my spell. My research, instead of being about soul mates, came out as about "soul ma*tschihh* end of word incomprehensible, please choose between the following subjects: soul madness, soul mages, soul magic, soul matter, soul mates, etc. "

My eyes stopped on the unknown term 'soul magic'. I intrigued me but, before I could do anything about it, one of the Dark Lord's Elves popped in the library to signal that it was time for dinner. It couldn't do much more than simply bow and indicate the door, but from time to time, I could hear a few comments from them indicating that they might not be as void and brainwashed inside as the Dark Lord wanted them to be. That day, for instance, the Elf whispered § Young Master, please, dinner is served. Nice, polite young Master... §

Okay, maybe not the revelation of the century, but it was quite surprising of them to call me 'young Master' since it's a title normally granted to the heir of a family, or so had Draco told me when I owled him about it.

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o0o0o

I sadly didn't have the chance to research soul magic after that. That night at dinner, the Dark Lord told me he needed the library for his research. I replied that I had been quite surprised not to see him there in the past few days and asked him if I could still be there at the same time. After that evening, it seemed like a new routine was found where we would both work in the library together, him at a massive desk in the middle of the place and me on the comfortable sofas not far from there. From time to time, I'd take a break and watch him for a while. If he felt my gaze, he would ignore it, send me a quick smirk or start a conversation with me.

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I found the answer to the famous 'Muggle dilemma' I had after such an exchange. As it turned out, Muggles indeed didn't have much more rights than animals, but it was only because the Dark Lord hadn't cared enough to change the laws that had been put in effect by the previous government.

Muggles, he claimed, were vermin and, as such, below our notice. To grant them enough attention to actively persecute them was not only contradictory; it was also counter-productive and potentially dangerous. We had a long discussion about the subject of the ICW conference coming up (how the new 'Internet' technology could affect the Status of Secrecy) and the different ways to keep the Magical World separate from the Muggle World.

I didn't know much about how Muggle technologies worked, but I had come in contact with more of it than the majority of modern wizards when I was studying for my driving license. Telephones, televisions and even computers didn't scare me and I knew the basics of how to use them. It turned out that the Dark Lord knew even more than I did, having kept up with the scientific advancement through his years, despite his well-publicised hatred for all that was Muggle.

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One evening, he told me of the sheer terror he had felt when London was bombed in the Second World War. His orphanage hadn't been touched, thankfully, but he had stood there, waiting for his death, the explosions shaking the thin walls of the building as his fate was put in the hands of total strangers, and he had promised to himself that he would never feel this vulnerable again in his life.

He had listened in silent horror as news of the atomic bombs came to Britain in 1945 and had kept a close eye on the Cold War throughout its duration, ready for drastic measures if a globalised conflict erupted again.

As far as he was concerned, war was in human nature and it wasn't surprising that Muggles would create such weapons if they had the capacity and drive to do so. But, in this world, it was a survival of the fittest and he wasn't about to let himself be beaten by meagre beings that didn't have one ounce of beautiful, sweet magic in their body. If intellect and innovation were their weapons of choice, he'd beat them with that as well.

His fight to the top of British Wizarding Society wasn't purely to justify his selfish ambition, but also to enable change, to 'kick-start' a new age of magical innovation and prosperity and to revolution this world to give it the tools needed to face the Muggle menace when it would come down to that. His policies with Muggleborns were determined with the objective of buying the Magical World time to form good defensive and offensive strategies against the Muggle World should the secret be revealed to them.

Throughout the whole conversation, I had sat there, shock still, my ears and eyes wide open taking everything in. How could the Rebels have missed all that? I asked as much to the Dark Lord. He replied that these justifications were not widely known because it would create panic in the Magical World and, when in fear, Wizards were more likely to commit fatal mistakes that would reveal their existence to the Muggles, by going Muggle hunting or doing raids on random populations, for instance.

I asked him whether he did condone Muggle hunting and Muggle baiting, as Moody had said and he answered that they did hunt down specific Muggles who knew our secret when he felt that they were a threat. The strange serial killer who had assassinated all the former Prime Ministers of Britain, for instance, had been working on his orders, since apparently Muggle Prime Ministers used to be informed of the major events of our world. It was a monumental breach of security, in Voldemort's opinion. To consider that the Ministry of Magic was but a branch of the Muggle government was also a travesty of the worst sort, according to him. I must say that after hearing him describe the visceral fear he felt in the face of such tremendous mass killing weapons (and that was fifty years ago, so I could barely imagine the destructive power the Muggles had now), I was inclined to agree with him.

The nature of a wizard's wand and magic was such that spells that targeted a large group of people at a time were particularly difficult and straining. Usually, affecting the environment around the group was much easier than bewitching all of them at the same time. If you wanted to kill a group of 30 people, for instance, you should make the ceiling collapse on them instead of trying to send Killing curses and such left and right.

Nevertheless, the fact that you nearly had to attack everybody one by one to hurt them was a reassuring reality of the Wizarding World. In a Muggle gunfight, one only had to fire a gun at a crowd of people and some would die independently of who they were or how competent they were. For wizards, the nature of magic meant that you usually had a chance to get away from a combat alive depending on your abilities. In theory, if you trained well enough, or had some luck, you could beat the opponent or survive a general attack. Death seemed less meaningless and random in the Wizarding World. Violence was more personal here.

That is not to say that we were powerless against Muggles, however. In the past twenty years, in great part thanks to the Dark Lord himself, in fact, we had developed all sorts of spells to defend ourselves against most of Muggle weapons. But atomic bombs and weapons of mass destruction remained an insurmountable obstacle.

The conversation had shaken me to the core that day. It made me feel paranoid and jittery, as if waiting for a bomb to drop on the Dark Lord's Fortress.

He seemed to understand, because he hauled me to my feet and directed me to my bedroom, pushing me inside and closing the door with a short "Put on your sleepwear". I did so mechanically, in a daze, my eyes darting to every shadowy corner in the room nervously, my hands shaking slightly. When I was done changing, I opened the door again and felt him pull me by the arm toward his chambers.

I tried to get out of my state of numbness and vaguely knew that some part of me was shouting me to pay attention, that something important was happening, but its voice didn't reach my brain because I didn't snap out of it before I was shown to a massive bed and directed to lay on it under the covers. I lied in there curled on my side, unmoving, frowning and blinking slowly, wondering when I had changed into pyjamas and where I was exactly.

I only remembered the Dark Lord's presence when I felt the bed dip behind me and heard him sigh. I jerked when arms suddenly surrounded me and I was pulled back into a warm and lightly muscled chest. Calming magic soothed me, and a wave of calm and relaxing energy immediately submerged me. It made my previously taut muscles become lax and my magic hum in contentment. I released a sigh and fell asleep.

That night was the deepest sleep I ever had.

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Muggles are scary, right?

Next chapter, things will be moving a lot more: Meeting a new Death Eater character, a small fight, a big revelation and a plot development!

Thank you in advance to everybody who will review! You guys are awesome! :)