The cocky grin fell from his face as soon as he crossed the threshold of his dorm. It felt as if all the energy had been sapped out of him, slowly and painfully, and briefly, he wondered if he should ask Riddle if he could possibly be responsible. But Riddle would probably just smirk, or laugh at him mockingly, or tell him exactly what he didn't want to hear. Which was, of course, "Yes, that's exactly what I'm doing. How do you like watching yourself drain away, Harry? Are you happy? Draining away like I did? Fading, like the ink in that diary?"

He could hear Neville snoring lightly, Seamus and Dean whispering to each other about the fantastic pranks they could pull, the soft rustle of sheets as students slept peacefully. And he wanted so much to be like them, with their only worry the scores on their exams, or the amount of food they ate last night when nobody was looking.

The castle was always looking.

He went to bed jumpy and tense, and only slept when he'd drained a fresh bottle of Calming Draught. And another.

He opened his eyes and found himself again somewhere he hadn't seen, let alone fallen asleep in, in his entire life. There was a fireplace, flickering over the walls, elegantly designed. The bed was draped in silk, and its post engraved with intricate, wooden-scaled dragons. At the window, out at empty black, stood Voldemort, looking like the living dead. Tired, angry, empty.

"Haven't we already talked enough tonight, Tom? I mean, it's great to have the pleasure of your company, but what more is there to go over? Unlike some, we mere mortals actually have to sleep, you know."

Voldemort shot back, and looked, for a moment, horrified, before composing himself immediately. "Lord Voldemort does not recall having talked to you recently, Harry Potter." A pause. "Have you finally lost your mind, boy? Why would you try to find sanctuary here?"

"Tom? What're you-? You're the one finding 'sanctuary' here! I only just said-"

And then his throat closed against rising bile, and he stepped back against the fireplace, letting the flames lick almost too close to his robes. An inch farther, and he'd have more to worry about than just Voldemort. "Nevermind," he said quickly. "That's right, I've gone entirely mad. Nice to see you again. Thought I'd come over for tea, say hello. Mortal enemies should get to know each other once and a while."

"You're a poor liar, Potter. Tell me, why are you really here?"

"I don't know! Like I'd voluntarily seek you out to spend the evening with, looking pensively out windows. I can do that in my own time."

"What did you mean? That you'd only just spoken to me?"

"I'm seeing things, as usual. Troubles of being the Boy Who Lived. It's all very tragic, but honestly, I should get going. Your private time is not something I need to witness, and frankly, as lovely as the house is, I've better things to do than stand around-"

"Potter. Do not play games with me."

"Why, 'cause you have poor sportsmanship?"

A spindly hand reached for a concealed wand, and Harry backed away half an inch more. "I'm joking! Don't you have a sense of humour, Oh Great Dark Lord?"

"Do you find this particularly humorous?"

"Okay, very good point, can I leave now?"

Voldemort looked through him. "How could you communicate with me without my knowing?" Slowly, his eyes narrowed, barely-there lips turning down into a sharp scowl. "I know about the diary, Potter. Have you come across something similar? Do not think of concealing this from me, I assure you I will find out-"

"I'm completely innocent in all this, thank you. I told you, spending time in your intellectually-nourishing company is not at the top of my bucket list. Living life to the fullest doesn't mean, well. It doesn't mean this, is what I mean."

Voldemort hissed, like an actual snake, vicious, and suddenly there were fingers scratching at his mind, and he was screaming, and everything felt narrow and colourless, and then there was nothing except a sharp-toothed smile. "A wise lord does not underestimate his enemy. You cannot hope to keep me away entirely. I know you've found something, Potter."

"Maybe I just really like having fantasy conversations with past versions of you-" He coughed. "Using blood as ink, sacrificing my soul for your return, the usual. Reliving old memories. I haven't found a bloody thing."

"You put up an admirable effort, but you cannot win, here, in my own mind. Tell me, or I will retrieve the information personally. From anyone I choose."

"Fuck, alright, alright. I found another 'diary'. Stop looking like that. Don't bring other people into this."

"Very good, Potter."

"Honesty is the best policy," he spat, and to his surprise, Voldemort began to laugh.

"You have no chance of destroying another of my... possessions. The Basilisk is dead. He has no venom left to give."

"Well, that's good, 'cause I don't want to destroy it."

Voldemort blinked.

"Yeah, in fact, I'm planning on keeping it. Your past self is just so charming and irresistible. Not like now."

"You still believe now is a good time to joke, do you? Where have you taken it?"

"It's always with me, and there's no way you can get it back unless I decide to give it to you. So you can just- you can just deal with it like the good little snake you are. That's what all the rest of us useless, brainless plebeians do."

Pale fists began to shake, sharp nails drawing blood. "You-!"

"Relax," said Harry. "I'm going to help you. You'll see."

"Unless you wish to switch sides, you are of no help to me."

"Actually, I think you'll find I am." He'd run. From the castle. Keep him away. He could bait him, this was the perfect opportunity. Anything to stop him. Anything to protect them. "Or at least, one seventh of me is."

The shock in Voldemort's eyes turned to blinding white, and there, Harry woke up. In the cupboard under the stairs.

"We're safer in your own mind," said Riddle. "I can sense my counterpart is... beyond surprised. What have you done? You should be thankful I managed to pull you away from a place so close to our link! My other self has no awareness of your importance yet, he has no reason to keep you alive-"

"Yeah, he does. The same reason you do, actually."

"You told him," said Riddle. His left eye narrowed to match a pair he'd been watching only minutes earlier. "You are a fool, Harry Potter. He will come after you. He will steal you away and hide you, so that no-one can ever touch you again."

"Catch me if you can," Harry said, and Riddle clenched his fists. Not drawing blood, not as angry as his future self, but so very close.

"I know his every move. We are one and the same. He will not stop until he has found you. We intend to use everything in our power to keep you away from the wrong end of a killing curse."

"Well, all the more reason to bind you together, am I right? You'll come to your senses and stop hunting me like some kind of dog once you realise."

"We must find the other Horcruxes," Riddle said. "Immediately."

"So, he's going to be looking for us," Harry said, and everything in Hermione's face tried so hard to keep up her smile.

It didn't work. "Harry, you let Voldemort know about the Horcruxes?"

"I had to. He was going to figure it out either way, 'Mione. You know he would've."

"So you just told him preemptively! Harry! You know better than that."

Harry turned away, craning towards the window, spattered lightly with rain, hair falling into his eyes to obscure the view anyway. His stomach sunk. He'd known it was stupid in the beginning, the first moment he'd realised which Voldemort he'd been speaking to, and yet he always fell for it. Getting riled up, letting Voldemort unsettle him like he did everyone else. Only, Harry would never show it. Not on his life. "Not when he's around."

"So, what you're saying is," Ron began, and he was remarkably composed for someone learning of their impending doom, "we're completely and utterly dead. And it's your fault, mate."

He wouldn't let it happen. Here, curled in the burgundy parlours of Gryffindor Tower, it was so easy to forget what he could do, what he could do to them, but Harry wouldn't have it. "I can try to get through to him," he offered.

"I doubt you'll be successful, Harry. Whatever's left of him in there, I don't think it's much." Hermione shook her head. "All the humanity in him is with you, right here, Harry." She pointed to his heart. "That's all."

"We don't know that," he protested, desperate. But Hermione only shook her head a second time.

"He killed your parents. Mercilessly. To tie up loose ends. Do you really think that can be reasoned with?"

Harry shrugged. "No, yes, maybe- I don't know. I want to think he can. I want to think we have a chance."

"Why don't you just ask him yourself?" Ron asked, and Harry balked. "No, no, not him him, him!"

"That could probably not make any less if it tried, Ron. What are you on about?"

"The young You-Know-Who. In your head." Ron cringed. "Merlin, that sounds like you've lost it."

Sometimes Harry felt he had. "I can try."

Silently, he withdrew into himself, as if searching for a memory on the tip of his tongue, just out of reach. He'd come to recognise the dark, quiet part of his mind, the landing floor just before the bridge to Voldemort's own, where Riddle lurked. He'd said he would come when called. But would he? He could easily imagine it, Riddle slipping away into the shadows, crossing the bridge himself, abandoning them after Harry had revealed about the only advantage he had over Voldemort. He wouldn't trust Riddle, not even after an eternity, but he did trust that it was in both his and Harry's self-interest to remain allies.

That was about his only hope, a tiny tether of a guarantee. Barely enough to stake his own life on, and yet that was exactly what he had just gone and done. Like an absolute moron.

Slowly, another presence unfolded, and Riddle's figure shimmered into view. "You needed me?"

"I didn't think this through," Harry admitted, wincing. "Ron, you ask. It was your idea."

"I'm not bloody suicidal!" Harry glared. "Yeah, then my death is on your hands. And I'll rewrite my will to take you out of it." There was only quiet. "Alright, fine, I'd have to write it in the first place. It was a nice try, though, wasn't it?"

Riddle looked disdainful. "Did you invite me here to babysit your infant of a friend, Harry?"

Ron scowled. "What twisted his knickers? We asked you here to, well, ask you something. About the other you, y'know, the present one. Can we reason with him?"

"Has he gone entirely mad?" Riddle asked, stepping closer towards Harry. "I knew Gryffindors had a penchant for blindly rushing into things, but attempting to reason with my counterpart? That's not just reckless, that is 'bloody suicidal'. He'd listen to you only if you managed to convince him not to kill you right there on the spot, before you could so much as get out a word. And you're not very good at communicating things wordlessly, are you?" He looked around. "Any of you? No, that's what I thought."

"I think that's the biggest tantrum I've ever seen him throw," Ron said. "Worse even than the time I technically beat him at chess, or when you told him you pitied him. Now, that was a big one."

"I would very much like to stay alive, Weasley," Riddle spat. "And infuriating me, in any form, is not conducive to that end. In all possible ways. I will kill Potter myself, and sacrifice my own soul, before any of you do something so rash."

"We're only trying to meet!" Harry snapped. "I'm not getting on one knee and proposing, for Merlin's sake."

Riddle stared at him, annoyance seeping out of every pore. "A marriage proposal from you would make about as much sense. Trying to arrange some sort of negotiation, on the assumption that he might purportedly deign to listen to your ridiculous, ludicrous ideas for more than a single second? That's the move of someone with absolutely no mental faculties whatsoever-"

"You really like to pull out the twenty point words when you're mad, don't you?" Harry asked, stopping Riddle's rant dead. "You talk a lot more than your snake-faced version. He's given up at this point, I think, at even trying to explain why the rest of the world is so incredibly dimwitted, and how everybody should just listen to his genius before they ruin the Wizarding World. But he still sounds like a walking dictionary."

Riddle quieted. Finally, he said, high and cold, "You have quite the mouth on you, don't you, boy?"

Harry sighed. "It's good you're alike enough to predict your own movements. Because, honestly, I don't get you half the time. Trying to figure you out, even if I actually lived in your mind, would be pretty much impossible."

Eventually, in a move eerily reminiscent of his dream only hours ago, Riddle began to laugh. The same tinny, mocking laugh as his counterpart, a touch less condescending, and just a slight bit more amused. "Nobody's ever dared to talk back to me before," he said. "But you just can't seem to stop, can you? I remember, you were uncooperative even when I had you dangling above my father's grave. Strange, I'd have my Death Eaters executed if they said anything near what you have. Why aren't you dead already?"

Harry frowned. "Funny, that. It's not for lack of trying."

Soon, Riddle began to unwind a fraction. He turned back to Ron and Hermione, and in his most charming voice, sickly sweet like it had been for Slughorn, he said, "Forgive me. I seem to have lost my temper."

Ron looked sick, and Hermione unimpressed. She crossed her arms tightly. "You don't like that any of us would speak out of turn, do you?"

"On the contrary," Riddle offered, "I've never been more entertained. Of course, if I could cast Crucio, you'd all be screaming on this very floor, but still, this is really quite the pleasure to watch. Not as simpering as my other acquaintances. That's very impressive, for someone so young."

"Alright, enough!" Harry raked a hand through his hair, down over his face. When everyone was quiet, he asked, "What if I met with him in a dream?"

"He couldn't kill your physical body, then," said Riddle, chilly. "But he could destroy your mind. And I think we're all aware the latter is more important."

"If I can reason with him," Harry begged. "He's probably halfway to Hogwarts by now, or planning to take us all hostage, and I can't. He can't do that. I won't let him kill everyone else for my mistakes."

"It still constitutes a risk we cannot afford to take."

"Well," said Harry, looking at the paling faces of his greatest friends, draped in red robes. He could see the red getting darker, mixing with inky, blotchy bloodstains, defacing students innocently showing off house pride. His stomach flipped like a time turner, churning bile rising, ears ringing. "We're going to have to take it. I can't let him win."

Harry saw in Riddle's eyes when he realised he had no choice. A slow, burning fury, an icy kind of disappointment. Harry's love for his friends, for every being in the castle, was weakness. And Riddle had no difficulty in telling them just how weak they truly were. "I don't usually help the witless fulfill their unchanging, doomed-to-fail plans. But as your death is mine," Riddle spat this hatefully, "I will teach you the Legilimency necessary to manipulate your own dreamscapes."

Harry opened his mouth to argue. Legilimency never blended well with his magic, he could never master it, get a grip. It went too far or not far enough. But Riddle hissed, "Absolutely no negotiating. You will learn Legilimency, and I will teach it to you."

Harry held up his hands. Let Riddle see for himself just how shite Harry was with any and all forms of mind-altering magic. "Alright," he said. "But I'm not very good."

"It's your funeral, mate," Ron added.

Riddle narrowed his eyes, complementary colours dark and brimming, and regarded Harry. "I will make you good."

Author's Note: I was away in China for a while, but I'm back now! Sorry for the late update.

Enjoy tho? Hopefully? I was incredibly jetlagged as I edited this, so I've probably missed eVERYTHING ever. And I was also incredibly jetlagged as I wrote the next chapter, so I don't even know if that one's actually coherent. I'm sorry ;a;;;