By the time he returned to the Dorms, Hermione was pacing back and forth, worrying at the sleeves of her robes. Ron was sprawled over the sofa, an arm draped over his eyes, face pale and skin clammy.

"He's taking me there," Harry announced. "To the Horcrux. I don't have much time before I have to get back."

Hermione stopped dead. "You're going alone?"

"I have Dumbledore. And Tom."

"Yeah, until you run into the bigger, scarier, fanged Tom and he and junior decide to have a little chat, where they decide to kill Dumbledore, and then kidnap you, and probably roast you and eat you for appetizers at the next Death Eater soirée," Ron said, all in one long, shaking breath, and Harry realised his friends were probably in a worse state than he was.

"That's very detailed," Harry told him. "But really inaccurate. If anything, Voldemort would probably keep me and turn my hair into violin strings or something. No eating. Doesn't seem like the eating type."

"That's even worse!" Ron cried. "Oh, Merlin, he's going to play you as an instrument to accompany his singing voice, and he's going to make your teeth into a necklace and thread your eyelashes into a friendship bracelet and turn your toenails into a backscratcher and-"

"Stop, stop!" Harry begged. "He won't do any of that, because... I'll, uh, well, I'll- punch him... in the face... with our mental link. I'll slap him with his own mind powers before he - did we do skin? I don't think so. Before he weaves my skin into a jacket."

Hermione ground her teeth. "If you two could be serious for a minute."

"I am serious!" Ron pointed to Harry's scar. "He's gonna walk out of this with ten more of those, and we're going to have his tooth jewelry sent to us in the post."

"Your faith in me is very reassuring, thanks."

"He's going to be brutally murdering you while you tell him about the time you accidentally turned your hair purple in Potions. Or how Fred and George convinced you Malfoy was a Veela for a whole month."

"Why do you have to be right? That is a very weird and uncomfortable level of accuracy, Ron. With that and the tooth necklace, I'm starting to get concerned."

"You should be!" Ron snapped. "You-Know-Who is a very concerning individual."

"Who intends to destroy you both if Harry doesn't return to saving my soul, like I told him to in the very beginning."

Tom's voice had come from directly over Harry's shoulder. He could almost feel the steady rhythm of breaths against his neck. "One day I'll die of shock and you'll regret it," Harry said to him. It was honest truth.

"I'd celebrate by serving you with fine wine and cheese at my next soirée."

"This is all very witty," Hermione cut in. "But aren't you the least bit concerned about being completely unprepared?"

"Dumbledore told me to take my Invisibility Cloak. That's preparation."

"Hardly. What about Dittany? Any other basic first aid? Food and water? A spare set of clothes?"

"I think if I needed that, I'd have been told." Harry paused. "Also, why would I be getting out of my clothes?"

He could just sense the grey hairs forming on Hermione's head. "You know what I mean!"

"I promise, I'll do everything I can to keep out of harm's way. I'll even stay under the Invisibilty Cloak the whole time, and make no daring rescues. Well, I probably won't do that, but you get the point."

Hermione gripped his wrists. "Harry, please."

He sobered. "I know, but I have to do this. Alone. After all, in the mean time, you'll have to be guarding the castle."

"From what?"

"Malfoy's planning something big tonight, I can tell. He got caught in the Room of Hidden Things earlier. You have to make sure he doesn't succeed at whatever it is he's trying to do. Him, and Snape, too."

Ron balked. "What's Snape got to do with anything?"

"I know he's in on it. Listen, it's imperative you don't let him get away with this." Not that Harry had a clue what 'this' was. But Malfoy had been so dedicated, so dead set on fixing the object in the Room of Hidden Things, that Harry was certain the Death Eaters were involved. He was either trying to impress them, or too piss scared to raise a fuss. "I admit, I haven't got any ideas what he's going to do, but trust me when I say he's going to do something. And it has to do with whatever it is he's fixed in that room."

"How can you be positive, Harry?"

"I can't be," Harry told her. He could've lied, it's what Tom would've done, and arguably his best bet at getting Malfoy stopped. But the bond he had with her and Ron, he couldn't tread on that lightly. That was part of what made him and Tom different, part of what helped him sleep at night, reassured him he wasn't destined to the same fate. He had friends he could be loyal to. "But if anyone's got the most credible hunches when it comes to the Death Eaters, it's me, right?"

Hermione, rightfully, didn't look at all convinced. "I'll look after the room for you," she ceded. "But for the record, I'm not sure we'll even find anything. It's honestly a ridiculous idea in the first place."

"I don't know how I know, but I know. Something's going to happen tonight."

"I trust your instinct," she said. "If anything shows up, Ron and I will take care of it. I promise."

"Thank you. I have to run, but stay safe, alright? Punch Malfoy like in Third Year again if you have to. Even if you don't have to, actually."

"You're telling us to stay safe?"

"I'll keep him safe," said Tom, in place of what would've been Harry's pathetic excuse. There was a lot of irony in that statement, really.

"Forgive me if I find that a little hard to believe." And really, Harry wouldn't have either, in any other circumstance. But it was in Tom's self-interest to keep Harry alive, and that wasn't a motivation he could pass up, even if it weren't tied so intimately to his own death, nevermind Harry's.

Tom was unmoved. "You don't have to believe it."

"I know he will, 'Mione. If I die, he dies, yeah? He won't let that happen."

Ron raised a hand from his spot draped like a rug over the sofa. "Watch your back nonetheless, mate."

"I'm always watching my back," Harry lied. The fact that no-one believed him was probably not a testament to the chances of this mission's success.

Descending and ascending the moving staircases to get back to Dumbledore's office seemed to make him dizzier than usual. The patterns on the stone walls looked like faces again, the whispering of the portraits sounding far too much like his name. He hated it, the paranoia, the creeping feeling of dread. He didn't know how Tom could ever stand it.

Not that he had with any particular grace. It felt like there were ants under his skin, like his mind was buzzing, humming like a hive of bees. He had the urge to scratch at his skin and tear the crawling insects from beneath it. If that was what Tom had felt every day, then Harry understood completely why he'd - in a certain sense - shed his old skin entirely.

"What if Voldemort shows up?"

"Voldemort is right next to you," Tom told him, facetiously.

"I can't believe I gave you that smartarse habit."

"Or did I give it to you?"

Every Tom wanted to see himself in Harry. He expected it, and yet it sent chills through his spine every time. The terrifying feeling that nothing about him was truly real, that he was just some strange, half-baked, watered-down form of Voldemort. Nothing truly original, a shoddy counterfeit painting. It was an indescribably awful feeling. "I don't think it matters either way," he lied. Tom raised an eyebrow. "Existential crises aside, you're still a smug shit."

"To answer your question," Tom said, brushing smoothly over the insult Harry had just thrown in his face, "Voldemort will show up, if your connection is as I suspect it is. Which is to say, increasingly more intimate-"

"Phrasing," Harry interrupted.

"-and very much not something he intends to ignore."

"So what do I do? He can't kill me, but he can kill-"

"Dumbledore is already dead," Tom dismissed. Harry dug his nails into his palm. "He sealed his fate when he destroyed my Horcrux, Harry."

"How convenient for you."

"It was," Tom admitted. "It was also not my choice, precisely."

"Precisely," Harry repeated, dry.

Tom huffed. "I don't understand your fondness for him."

"It's different for you." He wasn't so young as to ignore Dumbledore's every flaw, but he'd been Harry's guardian angel these past years, as much as he spent the half of it lying through his teeth. For Tom, all Dumbledore had done was to take him from one world of suffering to another.

"He's still the same man."

"I am known to be magnanimous," Harry said, poking an accusing finger to Tom's chest.

To this, there was no rebuttal.

Dumbledore seemed entirely unsurprised to see only Harry's head appear in the entrance of his office, waving his healthy hand and beckoning Harry farther. Harry looked to his side, only to find the spot Tom once occupied entirely empty. It was odd to see Tom's hatred run strong enough that he couldn't bare to set eyes upon his own enemy. Voldemort, even before the apparition of Riddle had manifested, was always too eager to observe. He'd watched Harry like a hawk, all hungry eyes and strange little half-smiles. Part of it convinced Harry that Voldemort had a streak of blue and bronze in him, so desperate for knowledge that he would prey on it.

"Looking for someone?" Dumbledore asked.

"Apparently not."

"Come, then." Dumbledore held out an arm, and Harry immediately felt ill simply from the thought.

"We're Apparating? In Hogwarts? To- where exactly to?"

Dumbledore waved his arm again, expectant. Harry looked at it and grimaced. "I suppose I'm permitted to break a few rules," he explained, without really saying anything at all. "You get used to the feeling over time."

Yes, because that would soothe him. "I might even not be sick."

"As to our destination," Dumbledore continued, cryptic, and Harry felt, in that moment, if it weren't already true, that his soul would have connected with Tom's in sympathy, "that will become apparent."

Reluctantly, Harry took his arm. The world turned upside down, and he felt his insides twist, the disgusting sick feeling of being too big to fit in his own skin welling up within him. As soon as it started, it was over, and Harry opened his eyes to a churning current below. He stumbled, and fell back onto cold, wet rock, soaked with rain and seawater. "The place is trying to bloody kill me already."

"Welcome to Tom Riddle's most beloved vacation spot."

"Fitting," Harry said, despairing.

Dumbledore pointed to the nearby cliffs, where Harry could vaguely make out what looked like the opening of a cave. "I regret to inform you we're in for a little swim."

Could this even manage to get even more unbearable? Of course, compared to Voldemort, left unchecked, Horcruxes untouched, wreaking havoc upon Wizarding Britain, an icy bath was an absolute gift. But the turmultuous water beneath him seemed momentarily a worse fate. Dumbledore had already jumped, unaffected in a way that was both admirable and incredibly disturbing. Harry plunged in after him.

And rose to the surface again, spitting saltwater. "Why not a tropical island?"

"Not as close to home," Dumbledore called. "Too pleasant perhaps for the victims he would drag here from the orphanage to accompany him."

Tom had mentioned as much, once. But Harry had - perhaps foolishly, naïvely - assumed he made them escort him places like bodyguards. Maybe use them like taste-testers for whatever awful experiment he had cooked up. But to force them down a cliffside, through a whirlpool, and into a dark, sharp-cragged cave was a different story. How young had they been? Had Tom even needed Imperio, or had the threat of whatever sick punishment, whoever would be next to hang bloodied from the rafters, been enough all on its own?

Dumbledore swam on, until he reached what Harry soon realised were a set of steps. There, he climbed, elegant for someone of his indeterminate, expansive lifespan, up into a small alcove, like it were a nice welcoming hall where he could wipe his shoes on the doormat and come in for tea.

Harry was shaking and dripping all over the floor. It smelt somewhat metallic, but Harry hoped, likely in vain, that this was an aftereffect of the salt stinging his nostrils. Dumbledore was entranced by the rockface before him, and Harry more than ever envied his ability to seem completely unruffled by everything and anything. "Aren't you cold?"

"Oh, forgive me," Dumbledore said, absently, and Harry was dry immediately. He'd not even taken his eyes off the foreboding incline of the walls that surrounded them.

"Is it too much to ask for a door?"

"I'm afraid so."

Harry could sense there was a puzzle to this, but that was about as far as his intuition brought him. Dumbledore seemed precisely aware of whatever intricate design Tom had no doubt lain before them. He briefly indulged in the absurdity of the situation, and imagined the lock to their much-wanted door was a riddle. It was a good pun. It didn't require ritual sacrifice. Dumbledore could certainly figure it out.

But Tom had - to their misfortune - gained his sense of humour long after hiding a piece of his broken soul here. Harry would not be surprised to find they needed to return with the warm corpse of an innocent lamb, or something else appropriately nauseating. "So," he began, awkwardly.

Dumbledore held his withered hand to the rock, presumably to commune with it, and then slowly shook his head. "Surely not something so overdone."

"What?"

"I find- I might even be a little disappointed." Harry was about to ask if the stones had personally betrayed him, when Dumbledore said something that made him freeze, despite being charmed warm. "Blood payment."

Harry held his head in his hands. "Oh, that's absolutely classic. He would. He would."

Dumbledore had a knife to his palms before Harry could blink. Stupidly, he rushed forward and knocked it from Dumbledore's grasp. "Your blood is far too valuable, Harry."

"Metaphorically speaking," Harry started, uneven, "Voldemort already has my blood. What, with the bond and all." And his idiot decisions. Not that this needed to be said. "And given that I'm a Horcrux, wouldn't the cave be more likely to accept me? And maybe not try to kill us because that would be a form of slightly poetic suicide?"

Dumbledore considered this. "I fear what could be done with your blood once he has it, Harry."

Do you want the good news or the bad news first? Harry thought, hysterically. "I mean, before, he used it to resurrect himself. What could be worse than that? And," he searched desperately for a reason, "he could bite me," he finished. Dumbledore looked rightfully confused. "Anytime! He could bite me. There's nothing stopping him from having my blood, at all. So, why not spare us all the trauma of that and go ahead with it now?"

Of course, Dumbledore hadn't risen to his position of headmaster by being imperceptive. "Is there something you'd like to tell me?"

"No," Harry said, hastily, and grabbed the knife, gracelessly swiping it over his hand. Then he smacked it against the wall, watching as his blood dripped paths like raindrops down the craggy, dusty rock. "There. Less chance of murder."

Courteously, the wall opened into a nice, horribly confining tunnel. At the end of the tunnel was a boat, lined in gold. "Luxury treatment," Dumbledore said. He still appeared suspicious, and likely Harry would get confronted about this entire incident later in time, but now they couldn't afford to delay. Not even when Harry, admittedly, was doing a pretty shite impression of a deceptive Tom.

"It probably thinks I'm him." Harry stared intensely at the boat, which was very good at appearing harmless, and cautiously set one foot inside. Nothing happened. The boat rocked in the water, and then settled very peacefully. He got in, and sat somewhat stupidly, waiting for something to rise from the water and eat him. Nothing did.

Dumbledore waved a hand and they were off into the middle of a vast, black lake.

But that was all it was. Just a lake. Harry knew Tom - he knew him - like the back of his hand, and he was an unmistakable presence. Harry would never have missed him. But here, in the dead centre of suspiciously calm water, the only part of Tom to exist was the one nestled against his soul. The cave was empty, in a way that was far more unsettling and dangerous than simply a lack of Tom's supposed Horcrux. It was entirely devoid of life. It was filled to the brim with the stink of rot. The sinking feeling that lately had been a constant presence in the back of his mind suddenly rose like bile, and Harry was swiftly aware that there were magicks darker and more disgusting than even the cloying feeling of terror a Horcrux inspired.

"Fascinating," Dumbledore said. "A fascinating choice of guard."

Harry kindly did not ask him to elaborate. He was too busy staring at the hand rising slowly out of the water. Mangled, mummified skin peeling from bone like a cut of boiled meat. The smell of death intensified a thousandfold. He had seen no shortage of terrible things in his relatively short lifetime, and the dread he was feeling now rivaled the worst of them. When Voldemort had first risen from that cauldron, pale and skeletal and ghoulish, Harry had at least felt a sickening sort of clarity. This was how it was always meant to pan out, he'd thought. This has been what I've been waiting my whole life for. But nothing about this seemed clear. Everything felt wrong, wrong and twisted. "What is that?"

"They are the Inferi," said Dumbledore, too conversationally. "Reanimated corpses."

"Zombies?"

"Quite distinct from zombies. The Inferi live to do their master's bidding, not to feed on flesh."

Many more hands were surfacing, pallid, cracked skin and curling nails. A few fingers had rings, little flashes of gold and silver reflecting in the dim light, beautiful jewels still sparkling stars, even when nestled so closely to the dead. "But they were people once."

"Yes, but they are people no longer. It's best to remember that."

"And Voldemort, what, dug them up from graves to protect his Hocrux?"

Dumbledore looked at him, unspeakably sad. "Voldemort never had to search for bodies, Harry. An excess lay just within his reach. His own victims."

"He- he used them, the very people who dedicated their lives to fighting against him, as his own personal army?" Harry started, despite his rising horror, to laugh. "Why am I still surprised?"

"Cosmic irony. A concept I believe Tom has always been quite fond of."

"How do we stop them?"

"Come," Dumbledore said. "To the island."

The little outcropping of rock just meters ahead, so close Harry could trace the elegant moulding on the altar that sat within it. It seemed a lifetime away.

As the boat glided forward, the hands reached to catch their nails on wood to pry from its mossy underside. Harry cast Sectumsempra on reflex, terror clawing at his throat at the pale little stubby fingers. But there was no blood, no living flesh to be targeted, and Sectumsempra wouldn't cut through bone. "It's useless!"

"They're not too fond of fire," said Dumbledore.

But burning the boat would strand them in a lake of monsters. Hence, the outcropping, Harry realised.

Its bow smashed unceremoniously into the island's bank, groaning and creaking and giving a great shudder. Harry was tripping over his own shoelaces in his attempt to fling himself from it and crawl onto the grit and rock. But where Harry flailed and scraped his hands bloody, Dumbledore was graceful and elegant, stepping out from the boat to perch regally by the altar. Harry watched as Dumbledore sighed, closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and then twirled the Elder Wand in his hands. A protective wall of fire was birthed like a phoenix around them, encasing the island and trapping them with the Horcrux. Harry flinched, expected heat at his cheeks, but found none.

Sometimes he forgot just what level of power Dumbledore had cultivated over the years.

And then sometimes he didn't.

At the altar, Dumbledore made various considering noises. Harry peered in but saw only murky water. Something about it made him uneasy, something more than the stifling atmosphere, something beyond the Dark Magic. When Harry had found the diadem, he had felt - counter to all intuition - an overwhelming sense of peace. The diadem had been, if anything, pleased to see him. But here, here there was nothing. No peace, no anger, no sadness.

Had it already been destroyed? Was that even possible?

It couldn't be. To the Order, this was fantastic news. Their work, already done for them? Imagine. But to Harry, the thought made him unexpectedly sick.

Oblivious to Harry's inner turmoil, Dumbledore cupped his hands in the water and raised them to his face, but found them empty. Resting at the altar's edge was an ornate-looking seashell, which Dumbledore picked up and dunked instead of reattempting with his hands. It came back full. "I think I'll have to drink," he said, eventually. "Whatever happens, you must make sure I finish. Is this understood?"

"No," Harry blurted. Dumbledore raised an eyebrow. "No, wait. Something's wrong."

"One would expect, in a place like this."

"No, I mean-" What did he mean?

Honestly, he couldn't be sure he wasn't completely delusional. Merlin knew this wasn't a trick specifically designed to throw him off, knowing his luck and Voldemort's obsessive paranoia. Yet everything in him screamed that there was something off about this place. About the altar, specifically. He coughed.

He settled on, "Uh, I- it isn't- it doesn't really feel like a Horcrux."

"No?" Dumbledore asked. "You can feel them so acutely, can you, Harry?"

"Yeah, it's like he's suddenly there with you, you know? But there's... there's nothing here. Is it- did it die?"

Dumbledore hummed. "I would very much doubt that, considering their greatest trait: their resilience. If you, indeed, are right, Harry, which it is entirely possible you are, then it's far more likely the Horcrux simply... isn't here."

"Someone moved it? Who would do that?"

"Therein lies the question."

How could he tell the difference between selective muteness and death? How could he reach out to the Horcrux without Dumbledore touching whatever liquid encased it? Was there a counter curse? Legilimency? The best person to ask was Tom himself, but the one he carried with him now ran the risk of being outdated, and the diadem had spent some thirty years in the Room of Requirement.

But as he reached out, a metaphysical hand grasping at the wisps of his own soul, he felt a sudden terrible sinking sort of dread. Along the dark line of the Inferi in his senses, there was a splash of an all-consuming emptiness. Orbiting its event horizon, a deep, throat-seizing sort of fear.

"Voldemort."

Indeed, the fire protecting them parted like the Red Sea, revealing a tall, thin, cloaked figure.

With a snakelike face.

"Harry," Voldemort replied. "Imagine my surprise when I heard you were coming here."

Heard? From whom?

Merlin, he thought, in sudden terror, what if it was me? What if it was me he heard it from? He could hear his blood in his ears, an instinctual cocktail of regret and horror tearing its way through him like acid in his veins. Oh, fuck, I've botched it all up. Our only chance, and it's gone-

But it was so empty. It was so empty here, and what if that meant he was right? If he played Voldemort, he'd be risking everything on a tiny little chance, a half-formed thought like a tadpole twitching away in the back of his mind. But if he stood by, no doubt whatever explosive rage Harry thought Tom might ever have had the chance of mastering would come seeping out in Dumbledore's presence, like it always had. It seemed, in fact, like gravity, the immutable laws of physics. The one kitten claw that would unravel the spool of yarn Tom had neatly spun out of his own chaotic mind.

Could he honestly hang the fate of the world on something so uncertain? Or was certainty impossible now? The face staring him down proved that enough. Nothing he had thought to be true ever seemed to work out that way in the end. He had a Horcrux on his side, a facet of Voldemort that supported him. He'd let his greatest enemy and life's greatest threat lap blood from his hand. And yet here they still were, like nothing had changed, facing each other on two opposite ends of an equivalent expression.

From the outside, nothing had changed. It wasn't something he really had any right to be surprised over, considering the generally mystifying turns his life had been taking recently, and yet he was reeling, and Voldemort knew it. Soon, too, Dumbledore would glean that Harry's shock wasn't all that connected with the presence of a Dark Lord in the end, but rather in the specifics of how that presence manifested. Or chose to manifest.

"How'd you hear about that, then?" Harry posed, faux-conversational, warm tones and pretend manners, the other side of Tom's same coin.

"I have my sources," Voldemort said, but there was something off about it, something in the flicker of his eyes that Harry thought he found familiar.

Holy shit, by Merlin, he's lying. It's bollocks, a complete fabrication, and he knows it. No sources are that fast, and I've not even slept, or had much time to think, let alone about our exact location. Harry blinked. He guessed, then. An educated guess, but not too educated. How many locations has he flipped through by now in trying to find us? How many does he have yet to check?

How reliably can I tell what's part of Tom's elaborate grandstanding and what's based in fact? Is it just because he thinks I'm about to destroy the Horcrux that's supposedly in here? Does he know whether it's a fake?

"So, how do you plan to stop me?" Harry asked, instead. Anger was familiar, at least. An offended Voldemort he knew how to handle. A threatened Voldemort was arguably a worse beast.

Voldemort smiled, humouring. "What makes you think I need to stop you?"

"You're going to make your dead do your dirty work for you?"

"Really, Harry." The patronising way Voldemort's tone flowed through the room made his skin crawl. Though Voldemort and Dumbledore probably shared the same opinions on Harry's relative level of intelligence, the latter had never lorded the fact over him. And Harry always put together the pieces in the end. He couldn't ward away the Inferi in one flick of his wand, or waltz through fire, but he'd come to know Voldemort better than anyone else alive, even - when, on the few occasions he got the feeling - better even than the man himself. "They are my dirty work."

He said it as if it were something to be proud of. Grand sweeping gestures at the room around them, like these walking corpses were an achievement. Even in the basest sense, they fell flat. None of them moved with poise or grace, or on anything other than instinct. Wouldn't successful Necromancy get you a perfect replica?

Or was the success in that he got to defile his enemies one last time? To crest the ultimate totality of death and raise them still to defy all they had once believed in in life, to snuff out the very meaning of their deaths, distort their sacrifice, and leave what remained to obey the being who they'd died to disobey?

"You can't have it," Harry said. Voldemort blinked at the non-sequitur.

"It's of no use to you," Voldemort dismissed. "If you destroy it, many still remain. Indeed, only by destroying yourself could you destroy me. Is that something you're willing to do, Harry?"

Harry shrugged. "How would you know?"

"Because we are a great deal alike, you and I. And to waste precious life to soothe an old wound that could be healed... what impiety." The last word was soft, venemous, dripping in disgust.

"Healed?"

"We could join together. Think of our shared power, of all the things we could do."

Harry spat on the floor beneath him. "And all the 'mudbloods' we'd kill."

"So you let the wound fester... in the name of nobility."

"No," Harry said. "I'm going to heal it another way."

And then he plunged his hand into the potion in the basin on the altar on the island in the cave in what was quickly becoming his own personal hell, and so, to the Horcrux within.

Author's Note: fROM MY OWN GODDAMN NOTES: "and that's chapter 11 of my masterpiece which would make jk PROUD"

ALSO FROM MY FUCKING OWN NOTES, PROFESSIONAL HERE FOLKS TOTALLY PROFESSIONAL, HOW TO,,, OUTLINE A CHAPTER (the next one actually wow guys spoilers): "then he's like oh no i tremble at ur feet i am at ur mercy ... im completely here spread out defenceless for you what are you gonna do to me? and voldemort is like wHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE ACTUAL SHIT and like apparates them to iceland and leAVES HE LEAVES he too uncomf thAT TOO MUCH FOR HIS POOR HEART and harry is like anyway so apparently i can use my oWN GAY against HIS GAY in the ULTIMATE GAY OFF. and thus we learn that seduction techniques are a two way street and voldemort is weak for some ass i M EAN."

DE. STROY. M E ,.

on a more serious note, more adapting from the books! not as directly as last time, but it's still a whole thing with me. i spent a long time on this chapter, deliberating and chewing my fingernails off, so, it's probably counterintuitively unpolished bc i feel like the longer i work on something the more it seems like a first draft,,, wHAT EVEN IS LIFE RIGHT

that's why it's like a billion months late j2lyk