Chapter 111: (hehe)

They sat on the hill leading up to the Graveyard, though it was hidden from view by the Riddle House. It may have been a bitterly cold night, with the dregs of winter still clinging to the overcast sky, but they were so wrapped up in heating charms that they couldn't really tell.

Harry was just glad it wasn't raining.

Tom had slid the ring on his finger, straight after he'd adjusted the decaying curse upon it only to harm anyone who he didn't want to take it. The ring also wouldn't affect anyone who came in contact with it while it remained on Tom's skin, and the Horcrux appeared dormant, or Tom had, at least, made no attempt to communicate with it.

Silently, Harry held out a hand in request.

Tom glanced at him, a taunting gleam in his gaze and, smirking mockingly, he took Harry's offered appendage and lowered their hands to lie, fingers still entwined, on the grass between them.

Harry yanked his hand free, scowling.

"I meant give me the ring, not your hand," he snapped, though his lips twitched slightly with amusement.

"I know, that's why I took your hand instead," the smirk vanished. "I did say I'd stop you. You can't have it, and I wouldn't recommend trying to steal from me a second time."

"So, you're just keeping it to spite me?" Harry accused, the anger overtaking any amusement.

Tom simply stared at him, and eyebrow raised as if to ask 'your point?'

"I'm trying to help - you said you hadn't given up! Why won't you let me even try?" Harry demanded.

"I'm not stopping you from trying, feel free to try and take it from me…" Tom drawled. "I just don't expect you to succeed and I doubt you would like the consequences of your attempt."

"If I can get it off you, will you let me keep it?" Harry asked, carefully. "If you're so sure I'll fail." The Slytherin Heir was still, thinking it over, but Harry knew he loved a challenge. He thrived on them. He would accept…he had to. "Unless," he added slyly, "you're scared that I'll manage it?"

Tom spread his hands as if to say go ahead, and flopped back down on the grass with a vaguely entertained, part wistful, part fascinated and 100% determined expression.

There was a silence.

Harry resisted the urge to immediately lunge, knowing Tom was currently prepared for such an attack. This wasn't a Gryffindor game they were playing.

Instead, he lied back too, looking up at the stars.

On this hillside, it could be anywhere in the world, and it was easier to forget where exactly they were.

"Freedom and bravery," Tom mused, quietly. "High praise from the prince of the lions."

Harry flushed slightly, embarrassed. "Don't tell me I've inflated your horrendous ego further," he said. "I can roll in your bad qualities too-"

"-if you could, would you start over? Let everything go?" Tom asked suddenly, studying the sky above them as if he could read its secrets, but turning to flash him a quick, beguiling grin. "No expectations. No Boy-who-lived. Just exploring the world, never look back."

"I-" Harry paused.

In a way, it sounded wonderful, in another…how could he just leave everyone? His friends, Sirius…his expectations. He hated the expectations, but, he wasn't brave enough to actually do it, flee them.

He'd miss everyone too much, and miss the good stuff. And yet, it would be an escape from the bad. So much bad sometimes…

"I don't know."

"What if I knew a way you could?" Tom questioned. Harry looked at him sharply, sitting up.

"What do you mean?" he demanded. "Do you know a way?"

"It was a hypothetical question," Tom said, before flashing him another smirk. "Why, that sounds like you are interested? We could go anywhere, do anything that we wanted…"

"We?" Harry enquired, cautiously.

"Well, considering you can't walk more than ten metres away from me..," Tom replied lightly. Harry snorted, but a grin tugged at his lips, albeit a slightly sad one.

"Oh yeah, we could start with Paris, work our way around the world. Our grand future."

"You know you'd have fun with me," Tom winked. Harry laughed, before shaking his head, mirth gone.

"No doubt," he murmured. "But I couldn't leave everyone and you're currently hightailing it down a path I have no desire to follow you down." He looked over once more, seriously. "You could, of course, change that and give me the ring."

"I could," Tom said, in a thoughtful tone of voice. "But I won't."

"Why not!" Harry demanded, frustrated beyond belief. It was the logical course of action.

"Because it's so much more fun watching you struggle," Tom replied flippantly. Harry narrowed his eyes, looking away.

"Are we heading back to Hogwarts, then?" he asked, tightly. Tom studied him, intently, eyes piercing.

"This really bothers you, doesn't it?" he asked, softly. Harry started.

"The Graveyard…? Don't start, you know it does," he replied tersely. Tom shook his head.

"Not the Graveyard…I mean all of this…this whole situation. My being here, my becoming Voldemort. Horcruxes. Fate. Everything."

Harry swallowed.

"You're only just picking up on the fact that you becoming Voldemort bothers me?" he questioned, incredulously, perhaps evading the bigger question.

"No, I know you're not happy about that-" Understatement. "-But, do you…is it worth it, to you? All of this? Or would you rather have never met me?"

There was no accusation in the other's voice, only curiosity. Harry bit his lip.

"I don't know," he said, honestly, not sure how to express his answer.

When things were good between them, he wouldn't have ever dreamed of giving whatever they had up…but when it was going bad it was really bad and he genuinely hated the other boy sometimes, and would rather never have even heard his name.

"It…depends on my mood," he said finally, perhaps feebly.

"And what's your mood at the moment?" Tom's head tilted.

"Confused. Irritated. Curious. Same question back at you - do you regret meeting me?"

"Every day and never," Tom replied promptly, causing another laugh to startle out of Harry's mouth, but he kind of found himself agreeing with the answer in a way, even if the answer made no sense while being the perfect answer simultaneously.

"Yeah," he murmured. "I guess that's pretty accurate." He couldn't imagine not meeting Tom, and not having Tom around anymore.

Salazar.

If things went wrong Tom wasn't going to be around in a couple of months, not really, not truly. He…what would he do?

Tom had somehow snuck so far into his life that his absence left huge, gaping abysses in both routine and spontaneity. That really wasn't good.

"We're so screwed up…" he muttered.

And then he leapt for the ring.

Tom abruptly clenched his hand into a fist again, making sure that even if Harry could somehow keep him still, he wouldn't be able to slide the ring off.

The wind was knocked out of his chest at the weight of impact, and for a while it seemed Harry was winning, the more dominant…and maybe in a fair fight, Harry would win.

If they fought fairly, Harry would probably have a lot more victories on him, especially in their few physical fights considering the other was the better muggle fighter.

This wasn't a fair fight, and he couldn't risk losing. His magic lashed out, pinning Harry's left arm to the spot, and then the rest of him.

The other glared at him, ferociously, with enough venom to almost make him want to inch back several metres.

"That's cheating."

"I never promised to play fair," he hissed in return, settling to sit next to Harry's frozen form.

He looked down, studying, restraining his amusement at the sight. He could see Harry's muscles were straining with the effort to move, and he managed to lever himself into a half sitting position, but both forearms were well and truly stuck to the ground, as if snakes had wound round them like manacles from the ground.

"Nice try though. You almost had it for a second or two."

"You're a bastard," Harry stated, flatly. Perhaps, but he was a bastard with plans at any rate. Nonetheless, he didn't want Harry to start sulking again. Even if it was, possibly, justified sulking.

"You know I haven't given up, perhaps you should trust that I am not preventing your idiotic actions solely out of spite…?" he suggested. Harry returned his gaze warily, assessing the truth of his claims.

"The problem with that is I don't trust you, and the implications that you do have an over-arching plan isn't all that reassuring either as apparently I wouldn't like it and would never go along with it."

"Now you know how I feel," he remarked dryly. "I have no fondness for your schemes either, the only difference is that we're just more open with your plan and my trying to stop you."

Harry had suddenly gone very quiet, with a thoughtful, distant glaze in his eyes.

"You don't plan to become Voldemort, do you? All that's just to stop me looking further into what you were actually doing behind the largely defeatist attitude."

"Clever boy," he smirked. Harry appraised him shrewdly.

"So why are you admitting to the façade now?"

"Because I want to give you time to accept it, I wasn't lying about that," he replied, easily, watching for the reactions, and keeping a mind out for any particularly strong emotions.

"You said you wanted me to join you, willingly," Harry stated. His smirk broadened. He had indeed. It wasn't his fault that Harry had taken that to mean in terms of Dark and Light sides rather than time periods and time streams…not that he wasn't trying to convert Harry to the Dark side as well.

Harry's brow furrowed.

"But that makes no sense, because there's no me to join you if there's no Voldemort, and if there's a Voldemort there's no you for me to join."

He surveyed Harry with a small measure of entertainment, Golden Boy really didn't seem to realise how fascinating his thought processes were when he deigned to go through them aloud.

"Are you going to explain what your plan is?"

"No," he said. "You'd try and stop me."

"Then why are we having this conversation?" Harry asked suspiciously, before his eyes widened. "You're trying to assess my reactions and what I think your up to, and the direction I believe they're taking."

His mouth promptly clamped shut, disappointedly.

Tom said nothing in response.

The truth was, this whole conversation, from freedom and fresh starts to more obvious plans, had been designed to test how receptive Harry would be once he won, and what measures he'd have to go to once Harry was back in the time period he should have been born in.

He'd got that part correct.

Currently it was mixed signals.

Harry would be okay with the vague, broad aspects of his plan, but thrash and struggle against the details and the specifics. It was an improvement.

Before, Harry would have just completely thrown the whole idea out the window as an atrocity. Still, even if Harry was outwardly accepting, he probably wouldn't tell him - one, because of false hope, and two because Harry was unlikely to fully accept it on an inner level so it was best to just drag him along to the point that he no longer had the option of doing anything about it.

He'd get over it. And if he didn't, his memories could always be altered just a little bit, to make him accept it.

Harry had accepted a life in the past before, after all, when he thought he wouldn't be able to return.

What was the difference this time? He wouldn't be able to go to a future that didn't exist so ultimately he would have no choice but the deal with it. Of course, getting the spell right would be difficult, but he could do it….

The winner takes all, after all.

"Are you going to let me up?" he asked, when Tom gave no reply.

He hadn't truly expected one, but now that he had confirmation of a plan, he would find out what it was and stop it.

If Tom was refusing to reveal what it was, it most definitely wasn't going to be anything good for him, even if in Tom's psychopath logic there were no problems in the idea. He repressed a shudder.

Was it something to do with the Horcruxes? Perhaps the ring specifically, as he seemed protective of it to an extent he hadn't been with Marvolo.

"Are you going to attack me again?" the Slytherin Heir returned. He wasn't going to make any promises.

"Does it make a difference? Considering we can't get more than ten metres from each other, you're going to have to allow me movement at some time, unless you want to sit on this hillside forever?"

"I can still move without you having free movement…you know I hate limitations," Tom smirked. "You'd just be dragged along the floor behind me."

Harry grit his teeth.

"Are you going to let me up or not?" he asked once more, praying for patience.

"Are you going to attack me again?" Tom returned once more, eyebrows arched. Harry glared. Tom smirked."It's adorable how you think you can intimidate me."

Harry repressed his temper with great difficulty, his jaw clenched.

"I won't attack you," he said, finally, though he was careful not to swear of promise to anything.

Plans were piling once more in his head; find a way around this restriction, and hunt the other Horcruxes free of Tom's interference.

Find out how Tom had got to the future, and study and revert the spell with Hermione's help so that he would be able to send someone back when the time was right.

Figure out how to get Voldemort to express remorse.

Get the ring off Tom.

Show down.

The other studied him for a moment in silence, then he felt the pressure on his forearms ease.

"I'm going to ignore the lack of sincerity there," the young Dark Lord said. "Because I want to get dinner, and this is a muggle town so as amusing as dragging you behind me would be, it would attract the wrong type of attention."

"As you're not forcing playing cards into my hands, should I presume we're eating out?"Tom shot him a dazzling grin.

Voldemort stared at the prisoner that writhed beneath his Cruciatus, and the brunt of his emotions. The screams were music to his ears, a sweet echo of his bad temper. He calmed down just hearing it, feeling himself gain control again as they lost it, pleading for the scraps of sanity. He'd reached his conclusion. Clearly, he had forgotten, and Tom and thus become him, because things went badly. He had to get Tom to hate Potter, hate him like he did, and see what a despicable, pathetic creature the Gryffindor Golden boy truly was. Potter was a Horcrux, so he wouldn't be killed (and Tom, the emotional child, would lynch him if he tried) but, if Tom withdrew that protection…the world was right again. And he would surely exist, because he knew himself well enough to assume that if things did go badly, his younger self would become his current self just to spite Potter. There was no other reason he wouldn't, was there? It wasn't like Tom actually cared; it was obsession, nothing more. An obsession he would cure. Then he would deal with Potter, the brat would thwart him no more, and would suffer eternally for the trouble he wrought. He could scarcely think of little else. Once that was done, he would take his rightful place as the God of his new world, and no one, not even Albus Dumbledore, would be able to stop him. Now, how to break the Slytherin Duo in two…?

A/N: Enjoy =) And remember to send me your challenge entries!I got to dash…will update the AN later…thanks for the reviews. I find it amusing that most of you favour Tom's plan, when it's completely evil. and I finish formatting...