Author's Note: Sorry for the delay again. As you might expect, writing fic for the HP universe has been increasingly difficult these past few years. As a transmasc myself, seeing JKR, who wrote a world that felt so accepting and loving to me, a world that served as escapism for my reality of being ostracised, turn around and go against every message she was aiming to send in her work, shattering that escapism… well, it hasn't been fun. This series has meant so much to me over the years, and it honestly kills a part of your childhood innocence to see a treasured creator end up like this, to be real with you. Anyway. Now I see this project as a form of subversion. JKR has aligned with traditionalism and conservatism, so I'm continuing to make this fic unabashedly sex positive (and smutty), queer, and literally about deradicalisation from hateful ideologies through the power of love LMAO. And everyone's bi, poly, and genderqueer by default, just because she would hate it. Peace.

Predictably, Harry awoke away from the safety of Hogwarts' dorms. The sprawling mental landscape took a moment to place, but the loud, unpleasant squawk of a peacock soon clued him in. The grounds of Malfoy Manor.

He sighed and trudged on. Of course he had to be here, wandering around like a chicken without a head.

It was dark. Cold, too. The chill of the fog swirling around him bit at his cheeks, and he could feel the light drizzle of rain. He couldn't make out the shape of the Manor itself; the air was too misty, too thick. He could only see the flock of birds, looking wet and bedraggled. He was glad this was just a mental reconstruction, because they seemed miserable, and Merlin knew he wouldn't be able to talk himself out of staging a hare-brained rescue operation if this were reality. Something something Gryffindor sensibilities.

Why was he here? Not in the dream, he knew why Voldemort had called him, but why the grounds of the Manor? Why not inside, where it was warm?

His socked feet squelched in the grass as he made his way closer to the shadowed area he thought might, vaguely, have the outline of a building. He drew his pyjamas closer to his chest, but it didn't make a difference. He shivered. Rain ran from his cheeks. He empathised more and more with the poor, prissy, soggy peacocks.

Eventually, he stumbled his way onto the path leading to the front entrance. Leaning against one of the stone support columns, there was a dark, robed figure. Harry couldn't see their features clearly, but he didn't need to. A pair of eyes glowed a deep crimson, their slit pupils aimed off somewhere in the middle distance. As Harry's soaked heels crunched against the gravel, the gaze was redirected squarely his way.

It was not pleased.

"Harry," Voldemort said.

"Cold night to be out on the doorstep, don't you think?" Harry returned.

"I find the chill of the night air is good for gathering one's thoughts."

Each time Voldemort blinked, slow and considering, the world was momentarily pitch black. As disturbing as Harry found two bright, floating red eyes, as primal a fear as it was to spot the telltale sign of a predator lying in wait, they were also his only guiding lights, his only way of orientating himself in the blackness. The moon was hidden behind the trees and the lanterns long since blown out. All he had was that gaze. He began to long for Voldemort to stare harder.

In a way, he hated himself for it.

"What are you thinking about?"

"Earlier, I returned to the manor to find its halls empty of its owners. The Malfoys have left their ancestral home. An unprecedented choice." The eyes drew closer. "This is your doing, isn't it, Harry?"

"You hate them," Harry said, reasonably.

"They are continuously disappointing," Voldemort agreed.

"Your patience has been running thin."

"They try it with alarming regularity."

"So I took them off your hands," Harry finished.

Another series of slow blinks. "To spare me? I think not, Harry. To spare them? Now, that I find more believable. You have a fondness for taking in the weak and the miserable. How else shall you sate your drive for heroics? Certainly not by doing things for my benefit."

Harry scoffed. He was so, so tired. Tired of justifying himself, tired of being watched and scrutinised. "Everything I do is for your benefit these days. Ever since I met him."

Voldemort didn't ask whom he was referring to. "I would disagree."

"You're looking at it from the wrong perspective." The glowing eyes narrowed slightly at his audacity, but he ploughed forward. "Really, I just removed the most annoying thorns in your side from the equation. How is that anything other than a benefit?"

"They need to be supervised," Voldemort hissed.

"I'm supervising them."

"They're untrustworthy."

"I don't trust them."

Voldemort's eyes narrowed even further. He grabbed Harry by the worn collar of his pyjamas and reeled him in until their noses were almost touching. Or, they would have been, if Voldemort had a nose to touch. They were close. Too close. Harry could feel warm breath on his cheeks. The proximity felt intimate, uncomfortably so. Harry tried to turn away, but only managed to bury his nose at the junction of Voldemort's neck and the line of his jaw. He smelled, oddly, of expensive aftershave.

Harry's thoughts pulled to a halt.

To smell like that, even in a dream… Only absent-minded, ingrained habits showed up in dreams, which meant Voldemort must have been shaving regularly. And if Voldemort had been shaving regularly, then there'd been more times that escaped Harry's notice where he'd returned to human form.

Was the transformation random? Was there some sort of trigger?

"Are my forces now yours, Harry? Are my Death Eaters to be freely plucked from my grasp, simply because you wish it? You claim to be my ally, and so this naturally means that what's mine must also be yours?" Voldemort asked dangerously. Now his breath was against Harry's ear. His hair stood on end at the feel of it. "You didn't do this to please me. This isn't a gesture of good faith. No, this behaviour is entirely pathological for you. Even though you hate them, you still see to their safety. You consort with the enemy because you are unable to resist your bleeding heart. Precious saviour, precious Chosen One. So virtuous. Is it virtue that sends you here, into my arms?"

The wording made something squirm in the pit of Harry's stomach. "Not virtue." As much as Dumbledore professed it, none of this was borne out of a sense of virtue. He wasn't going to lie to himself, pretend he didn't have selfish motivations. He wasn't a saint, he just didn't want to give up Tom's company. He'd begun to crave him. "Empathy."

Voldemort made a disgusted noise. "Don't patronise me. You don't worship our similarities, you fear them."

"No- well, not always. On some things I do, absolutely. But on the whole, I've been learning I'm much more like you, like a lot of 'enemies', than I'd thought," Harry said. "We've had similar beginnings. Not similar endings, though. At least not yet." At that, Voldemort openly scoffed. "Can't I feel sympathy, if I have such a bleeding heart? Can't I want to shoulder your burdens when it's safe enough? Who cares if it's pathological? Why spend time with people you hate, especially when you have other options?"

Voldemort froze. His eyes widened, just a tiny fraction. Anyone else would have failed to notice, but not Harry. Harry knew Tom too well. And in that knowledge, he realised that Voldemort had never considered such an option before. He'd never considered it because he'd never known any different. Voldemort had always been surrounded by people he hated, and who hated him in turn. Or worse, idolised whatever mask he wore. Critics or sycophants. Never friends, never people who cared for him. Loved him. Not really.

That was... deeply sad.

The surprise was washed away in the space of a single heartbeat. "Feel for me? Shoulder my burdens?" Voldemort crooned, as if nothing had happened. For a moment, Harry wondered if he'd actually imagined it all. But, no, no, he had good instincts for reading people, an empathetic sixth sense accurate enough that he actually might attribute it to magic, now that he thought about it more closely. He'd had to hone the skill, living with the Dursleys. Every minute detail, every tiny tell that their patience was drawing thin, that something he was saying was beginning to set them off, he'd needed to learn to recognise them off by heart. No. He was right. Voldemort let go of Harry's shirt, but didn't step away. Harry had to be right. "You speak like a wife, not a reluctant ally."

He felt his cheeks heat. His stomach squirmed uncomfortably again. He swallowed. Ignore it, ignore it. You know he thrives on this. "I want you to know I'm not reluctant to help you. Merlin knows you wouldn't think of that by yourself. I just don't help in ways you always like."

"That is certainly true." Voldemort smoothed a hand over Harry's rumpled collar. In a sudden, bizarre impulse, Harry reached for it.

"But I am helping," he insisted. "I wish you'd see what I'm doing. What Tom and I are doing. So much has changed, I know so much more now-"

Voldemort stared down at where Harry's palm rested on the back of his hand. His eyes were impossibly wide again - incredulous.

His face was human.

"You confuse me, Harry Potter. You deliberately seek to thwart me, provoke me, enrage me, and then claim it's for my eventual gain. You defy me, and yet you act the blushing bride. You say you flirt with death for the thrill, not the virtue. Then, whose side are you on but your own?" His lips brushed against Harry's cheek as he spoke. Harry shuddered. Voldemort's eyes were fixed to his own. "Do I thrill you, Harry?"

"Not in the way you think," Harry said.

And woke up.

Tom sat on the edge of his bed. His head was not in his hands, but he had that air about him. "The more you toy with my other self, the more he'll hunt you."

Harry shrugged. Tom's eye twitched, a vein in his forehead pulsed. "He's already hunting me."

"Puzzles must be solved, Harry. That is what I've always believed."

"I'm not going to stop you from trying."

Tom was quiet. Then, softly, "You are an endlessly confusing boy, Harry Potter."

What an echo. Harry shot him a grin. "So I've been told."

"He won't tire of you. We do not grow tired. He won't let you go, or show mercy. We do not show mercy. Our constituents become yours, if only to keep an eye on you. We will never stop watching."

"Sounds like devotion," Harry said. Needling, again, just as Voldemort had accused. "That's awfully romantic of you."

"Don't joke about this. He knows romance only in the way we 'romanced' Hepzibah Smith, or Bellatrix Lestrange. We have no soft, aching heart for you to cling onto. None of your new allies do, Harry. It is a rite of passage for Slytherins to tear out their hearts and eat them whole, break them before someone else has the privilege." Tom turned his head to stare with his mismatched eyes deep into Harry's soul. Could he see himself there? Where did one begin and the other end? "Be careful what you walk into."

"All my life, I've been fixing things," Harry mused. "And I think I'll be fixing things until I die." He didn't quite know how to feel about it. "So, I might as well embrace it."

"He's not going to let you die. Not as long as you're the reason he won't. That I don't."

"You can't run from Death forever, Tom. Nobody ever has."

"Nobody who ever tried was as powerful as I am," Tom said simply. "That I exist within you proves it is possible to conquer Death."

"You're cheating, not conquering."

Tom smirked. "A pact all the same."

"A loophole, you mean."

The smirk faded. That argument was already old and tired. Thanks to small miracles, Tom didn't tug any further at the fraying thread. "You're playing with fire, Harry. I'm only warning you about the burn."

Ron and Malfoy dragged themselves into class with bags under their eyes and slow, stilted movements. Hermione was as peppy as she ever was when learning was in the picture. Harry mostly felt lost and out of his depth.

He had been for a long, long while.

Dumbledore sat with his fingers steepled regally at one of the desks. He hummed some melody, happy enough, just under his breath, and peered down his half-moon glasses at the parchments strewn about. Snape was at the board, scribbling frantically away. He looked haggard, as usual. His hair obscured most of his face, leaving only the occasional peek of his aquiline nose and a flash of tired coal-grey eyes. His hands did not shake, but his grip was white-knuckled.

The war took its toll on everyone in different ways.

Harry wished he could dive in like Hermione or distract himself like Dumbledore, but he was bound by his very soul to the reason this war kept raging on. There was no escape. Tom Riddle, in some way or another, was always watching, just as he'd promised he would be. He had a never-ending vigil, a duty he held sacred, and it was Harry Potter. Their fates had been irreparably intertwined from the moment Harry took his first breath. Perhaps before.

He knew why Snape was tired.

Sometimes he wished he could rest easy, but there was always a Riddle in his dreams to greet him. He didn't have the luxury of sleeping draughts.

All he had was the luxury of compassion, of empathy. Love and Light, things which he only seemed to have through sheer luck of the draw. Everyone else in similar circumstances had let bitterness consume them. But not him. And that was the lone hope they'd bet everything on.

Snape slowly lowered his arm. "We covered basic healing potions in our last session. This next potion is more specific, at the cost of being more advanced. Broadly, it treats nerve pain. But most often, it's brewed to cure the unique agony that lingers after the Cruciatus Curse." Malfoy flinched. "I'm sure we are all well aware the Cruciatus is a particular favourite of the Dark Lord and his followers. No doubt most of you have encountered it already."

Too many times between them to count. With Malfoy in the pool, possibly triple digits.

"They say the use of an Unforgivable damages the soul," Snape continued. "Both for the curse wielder and the cursed. This potion only works on the latter."

Another way Tom couldn't be healed, then. Only remorse could do it, they said. Only by suffering for your sins could you undo their damage to your soul. You had to feel the pain you'd inflicted on others.

Did Voldemort have that capacity? Did any of the Horcruxes? Harry had made Tom Marvolo Riddle more human, that was undeniable, but was it human enough?

Dumbledore had bet a considerable amount on that being the case. But Harry often worried he didn't - couldn't - live up to expectation. He felt stupid, out of his depth. Unprepared.

He was lucky enough today that the instructions to brew a nerve tonic for Cruciatus were written in the Half-Blood Prince's familiar scathing tone, something that, disturbingly enough, had become soothing and routine.

Crush, don't cut!

Three stirs COUNTER clockwise. Keep them brisk.

Ignore what the book says here, it's more efficient to shred the Dittany lengthwise. And for the love of Merlin, do NOT try this step out of order. If you're lucky, the cauldron will explode. If you're unlucky, you could cause a chain reaction that scorches the entire classroom. Potter. Weasley. Don't try that luck today, or my patience.

Rude, but thankfully specific. The textbooks themselves were often vague and inefficient, requiring leaps of logic Harry was too exhausted to try and puzzle out. The Half-Blood Prince's copy had been refreshingly precise, and the insults directed towards the original author somewhat validating. Harry wasn't the only one with complaints.

Of course, now he knew the book belonged to Snape, he felt a little bad for agreeing. All Snape did was complain, really, and hand out unforgiving judgement after unforgiving judgement. He didn't give out compliments nearly as freely. Or... at all.

Harry still couldn't tell if he was shit at Potions for needing the Half-Blood Prince's specificity or if the books truly were rubbish. Maybe they were fine for everyone else, and he and Snape were actually just snobs with exacting standards.

Merlin forbid.

Snape finished scribbling at the board and turned to face the class. "Any questions?" Not even Hermione raised her hand. Snape seemed surprised. "I hope this means you have a full grasp of the material, and aren't simply too busy dithering to pay any attention."

"No, sir, you covered everything." Harry raised an eyebrow at the board, which was covered from head to toe in Snape's spidery scrawl. He'd practically written them an essay. "The books don't usually go into this much detail."

Snape scowled. "The Board always denies my requests for updated material."

Dumbledore looked up from his own parchment. "That's because they're worded more as demands than requests, my dear," he said. "And your suggestion to replace the curriculum with your own publications seems to them rather self-serving."

Snape scowled impossibly harder. "I'm not to blame for being the only competent author willing to write for the beginner's level."

Harry fought down a smirk at Snape's sheer arrogant indignance. "Why's that a problem? They let Lockhart teach his own curriculum in Second Year," he said.

Snape looked bewildered that Harry was coming to his defence. Dumbledore just smiled. "I'm afraid the Board was somewhat swayed by his celebrity status."

"'Somewhat'," Snape muttered bitterly.

"That doesn't seem fair." Just another of many things in the Wizarding World that were. The more he learnt about the society he'd been taken from, the more he realised everyone in it had a remarkable dedication to doing everything as backwards and as steeped in their own traditionalism as possible. "Or that smart, really."

"Indeed it isn't," Dumbledore agreed. "But if I raise too many complaints, I risk being replaced. Possibly by someone more sympathetic to Tom's cause. That's why I'm holding these classes in secret. There are many things you need to know, Harry, that the Board doesn't want to tell you."

"I gathered that last year," Harry said. Merlin, now he sounded as bitter as Snape.

"Ah, yes. Dolores Umbridge. Certainly an... interesting woman."

"Miserable old hag, more like," Ron whispered.

Dumbledore heard anyway. "I suppose I can't chastise you for that opinion," he conceded. "Her approach to running this school is antithetical to my own. After spending most of your time here under my oversight, it's understandable you'd have some bias."

"'Bias'?" Ron repeated. "She was off her trolley, sir. Respectfully. At least Snape is up front about hating us."

"Obliged," Snape said dryly.

"And he doesn't use blood quills," Harry added. Just rolled up newspapers. That, he didn't add.

"Snape's been my favourite teacher since First Year," Malfoy said snottily.

"Excellent!" Dumbledore clapped his hands. "I'm glad to hear attitudes have changed since last class."

"Wait, that's not-" Ron started.

"Then, shall we begin to brew?"

Harry didn't argue. He was destined to work with every broken Slytherin who ever hated him, after all. Why not get a head start on infecting another one?

Harry wiggled his socked feet in bed, feeling warm and cozy and content. It was rare he had a moment of peace, a place to simply stop and smell the roses, so to speak. Being snuggled up in the dorms was a particular favourite way to unwind.

Tom sat on the edge of the bed, his back to Harry. He stared blankly at the curtains, the hollow gaze he always wore when deep in thought. Harry eyed the stray, fuzzy strands of wool that stuck up from the jumper of Tom's outdated Slytherin uniform. He looked so real. So whole.

Almost like he wasn't the fractured shard of a Dark Lord's soul.

"What're you thinking about?" Harry asked.

"You criticised the Hogwarts Board of Education in class today," Tom said. "You've been criticising a lot of the Wizarding World recently."

"There's a lot to criticise," Harry said defensively.

"There is, yes." Tom tapped his fingers against the sheets. "Dumbledore doesn't eye you with suspicion for your criticisms."

"I'm not suggesting the solution is world domination, for one," Harry shot back.

Tom didn't seem amused. "He's always been suspicious of me, though. From day one."

"Don't get me wrong, I think that was unfair, too. But you were using Dark magic from, what, age five? He knew you were a lot stronger than most of your classmates, and that you weren't afraid to use that to your advantage."

Tom nodded his head in concession of the point. "I scared them. My peers. They were afraid of me." He said this contemplatively rather than regretfully, but there was still something a bit empty in his eyes.

"You wanted it that way."

"It was better than the cruelty I was shown if I didn't assert myself," Tom corrected.

"You didn't go looking for better friends? I get that options were limited at Wool's, but Hogwarts has always had hundreds of students coming in and out each term."

Tom's fingers tapped harder. "I didn't think there were any, so I never bothered to go looking for something that wasn't there. I distrusted everyone, and that was on precedent. Usually I was right to - kindness almost always had an ulterior motive. And if it didn't, chances were that the person showing it was gullible. Vulnerable. A liability who could bring me down." He frowned, perfect brows furrowing. Never a hair out of place on a living ghost. "I'd learnt to see social interaction as more of a wilderness, populated by animals. There was a food chain. If you weren't a predator, you were prey. I never had friends like you did. That symbiosis, that compatibility, where strengths complement instead of compete. An entirely different ecology." He rested his chin in one hand. It was as frustrated as it was contemplative. "I've been analysing how those differences have affected us. Why we have similar origins, and yet such different progressions. You see injustice, corruption, but you don't feel alone in fighting it. That's why you don't want complete control, complete domination, like I do. You have an innate feeling that you can trust others with your work, your goals and vision."

Harry couldn't disagree with the assessment. Tom's memories were all very much reflective of this particular difference. The lone wolf in the cold, feral world, only relying on himself. Hunt or be hunted. The only one who could be trusted to serve your self-interest, protect you, help you, was yourself. It was a grim view of things, but Tom had full reason to believe it. Harry couldn't blame him. The only reason Harry himself hadn't grown to share the same mindset before coming to Hogwarts was perhaps because he was a natural idealist. He saw beauty in things, even when he struggled and hurt. When he was lonely, he talked with snakes.

Made friends with them.

"You can trust me," Harry said.

"Perhaps that's why my soul chose to latch onto yours," Tom went on. "Is it symbiosis or parasitism to you, I wonder?"

"The first one," Harry said firmly.

"Even though I'm a shade of your worst enemy? Your parents' murderer, your torturer and tormentor?"

Harry shook his head. "That's missing a lot of context, though. You're a lot different to the Voldemort that killed my parents that day. Being attached to another living soul has let you grow, I think. Evolve, I mean. None of the other Horcruxes have anyone else, so they end up in a kind of stasis. Usually, you only have yourselves. Stuck in your own head for eternity." He bit his lip, daring to presume. That natural idealism rising to the surface. "Maybe now each version of you has a connection to my soul, they can use it to grow, too. Like a ladder to climb on." Tom raised an eyebrow. "Or something." Harry shrugged.

There was a pause. Then, Tom said, "A fascinating prospect." It was slow and measured, and there was a tremble of something like eagerness in it. Harry felt a bit surprised he wasn't bucking away like a stallion feeling the first brush of the reins. "I can see you're taken aback." Tom smirked, a flash of pearly white canines. "Many wizards fear change, it's true. But I am not many wizards, and I did not secure my immortality with the intent to sit stagnantly and learn nothing. One must be able to adapt if one wants to stay powerful, exceptional... I am perfectly willing to evolve, Harry, if it means I grow stronger." Harry blinked. "And you do help me grow stronger. I've seen so much, had so many new magical pathways opened up to me, all thanks to our partnership. And you've learnt a great deal yourself." There was a manic glint in Tom's eyes. "Symbiosis." He said it with reverence. Harry shivered.

Grow and evolve. It sounded an awful lot like get infected. Dumbledore's plan seemed more grounded, more possible than ever. But Harry worried.

Was he good enough?

As Harry entangled himself with all these evils, tried to right all these wrongs, would he truly make it all better? Would they touch him and become better versions of themselves? Or would his Light, his idealism, be consumed in the process? After all, it was bitterness and resentment that drove all his enemies. Malfoy, Snape, Voldemort, they had all been raised in that lone, cutthroat wilderness, and it had shaped them with cruelty. Would that bitterness cause him to lose sight of hope? Could he make it through their wilderness without succumbing to cruelty?

Was he good enough? Not in terms of skill, but in terms of virtue?

Was he really as pure as Dumbledore seemed to believe?

Symbiosis or parasitism? Which one would win out in the end?