His hand was engulfed in a mind-numbing sheer, like gripping ice and lightning, searing through his veins. He screamed his throat raw. He'd never felt a greater pain in his life, not even when Voldemort's clawed finger had dug crescent moons into his scar, or when he'd seen the light leave the eyes of his friends. Distantly, that felt wrong; the loss of Sirius had ripped him apart like a feral animal, and no physical pain could ever match that. But it seemed this pain wasn't just physical, but emotional. It felt as if he was tearing the beating heart from Ron or Hermione's chest and sinking his teeth into the still-pulsing flesh. Maiming something he loved with his whole soul.

He registered the feeling of tears dripping down his cold cheek. He didn't know what it said about him, but suddenly the agony was exquisite, like pulling teeth, and he plunged his hand down farther, all the way to the elbow, despite the bowl of the altar appearing shallow from the outside, and snagged his fingers around a metal chain he felt at the bottom. He closed his eyes and yanked until it pulled free, until he fell, shaking, onto the floor, tasting gravel.

He'd done it.

And he knew, now, for certain, staring at a locket in his burned and gnarled palm, that this Horcrux was a fake.

He could never let Voldemort know it.

Faintly, through the haze of pain, he could register shock on both Dumbledore and Voldemort's faces. Like they hadn't expected him to actually go through with it, to go so far as to genuinely bleed for the cause. He thought he might feel insulted, but honestly, he hadn't expected to burn his hand beyond recognition either. He could see the glint of the metal in his bloodied palms and it still didn't feel real. Truthfully, his life hadn't felt real in years. Maybe not since receiving those thousands of letters all that time ago.

Voldemort leant down, and Harry clutched his fingers around the locket, despite the agony. "You can't have it." His voice was hoarse, raw, sounded like it had been dragged out of him kicking and screaming. "You can't have it," he repeated. "You can't. You can't. You can't."

"And who's to say that I cannot?"

Harry curled around himself, a dragon protecting its egg, but the spasms that wracked his body were too violent for him to properly protect what he'd just scarred himself for. So he settled on mumbling emptily, holding the locket against his chest like a child. "I say- I say you can't, I- I-"

Voldemort's unnatural eyes stared down at him, the colour of the raw flesh crawling up Harry's arms, the colour of the pain that had him shaking, salty tears dripping onto the dirty stone floor. "A boy who can barely talk is meant to stop me?"

"M-maybe he is." Harry looked directly at him, vision wet and swimming. He blinked away the blur until he could count Voldemort's eyelashes, the same ones he could count lying next to him at night, framing the same much too pretty shape. The one part of Tom Marvolo Riddle still left in Lord Voldemort's face. From behind hot tears, they almost looked the same. He could fill in the missing nose, the full mouth instead of thin scales, the waves of dark hair. Pretend for a little while.

Voldemort leant closer. "Be a good boy and hand over your prize, Harry."

"I'd rather die."

"What a powerful statement!" There was a titter. "It's a shame I'll never allow that to happen, now. Pass it over and I'll leave you only with the injuries you have at the present."

Harry crumpled in on himself farther, hugging the lie he so desperately had to act was truth. He could do this. He could do this, he could do this, he could do this. "Make me, you coward. Make me!"

Fury lit in Voldemort's gaze, and a spindly hand reached toward him, and Harry knew this was it, the turning point, that he might shatter like glass under the onslaught of pain that came every single time from Voldemort's touch, and that he might just sell the pitch along with it. He might just do it. But then blood spattered his face, thick and dripping, and Voldemort tore away, clutching his fingers, all in ribbons from Dumbledore's hex. "You-!"

A flurry of spells were uttered then, each in turn deflected, skittering away uselessly through the flames and across the dark water. Blood flowed sluggishly down his cheek and into his open mouth, and for a second his heart seemed to skip a beat, his world going as white as the flash of a camera, blinding him. More and more slid down his throat, through panicked gasping, and he thought, Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken- forcibly taken- and he was crying harder, this time from relief.

Voldemort was sick with rage, Harry could feel it, insulted so deeply that Dumbledore could make a single mark. He could never face it, that Dumbledore was stronger than him, that even crippled with Voldemort's own curse he still had the jump on the Dark Lord himself. Or rather, perhaps he could, and that was what fueled his seething hatred. But Voldemort played Dark and dirty, and though Dumbledore shot to incapacitate, he shot to kill. Anything to gain the upper hand.

Voldemort's bare foot came down on Harry's wounded shoulder, and Harry screamed, sobbed out pleas to stop. Dumbledore was momentarily distracted, horrified to see Harry's arm mangled any further. Then, Voldemort took his chance. He recognised the pitch of his screams increasing as Voldemort sent out a curse, something awful and black, that Dumbledore couldn't properly dodge, that he could only roll to the side of. His cursed arm went flying, ripped off above the elbow, clean as a surgeon's cut. Voldemort choked out a strangled laugh, lipless mouth stretched uncannily wide in a victorious Cheshire grin. Dumbledore's expression was cold with shock, and Voldemort took another chance, turning to pry the chain from Harry's panicked grasp.

Surely the pain would send him mad, surely having the Dark Lord's fingers gripping his torn and weeping skin would drive him to insanity, the heights of which he could only imagine. His screams died in his throat, and it was this - this of all things - that seemed to shock Voldemort, and he went still. For just a second, Harry thought he might have seen concern, the same concern so often in Tom's eyes, but it was gone as soon as the thought could even flit through his mind. And then those fingers, journey momentarily halted, retook their path and landed, curling around his wrists like vines.

And Harry felt nothing. Nothing at all.

There was the white flash again, and when Harry's sight returned, Tom's face was staring back at him, slightly older, slightly speckled by blood, and Harry's arm was once again the golden tan it was supposed to be, dusted even by dark hair and a blemish or two, lying in a pool of now-phantom blood. For a time, nobody moved, and then Voldemort dug his nails into the healthy arm he was now holding, and ripped the locket from Harry's grasp. Anger flooded him, and he swiped for the chain, just the last dregs, but missed, watching it slip away like sand. So, too, did Voldemort's human features, and in a snap the creature who lay beneath Apparated away, leaving Harry and Dumbledore alone in the cave, listening to the growl of Inferi and the roar of the flames.

Harry smiled.

"I've done it. I did it." All of this and he'd come away with only the crescent moons of sharp nails imprinted in his skin. The headmaster had lost his arm, but it was, coincidentally, the very same arm that had been trying to kill him this past year, so it could still possibly be counted as a victory. Besides, the Rat had his arm regrown, so this was hardly beyond the reach of magic.

"Done what?"

"Tricked Voldemort. I did it, I played him for a fool. How's that for a taste of your own medicine, you great snake-like little-"

Already light was beginning to gather at Dumbledore's arm, some strange and unknown healing magic, but the man himself looked unhappy. "Tricked him?"

"The Horcrux was a fake, sir. I'm sure of it."

There was a great sigh of relief. "At least the knowledge didn't cost both an arm and a leg, wouldn't you say?" But Dumbledore still seemed conflicted, despite a battle solidly won. Before Harry could ask, he continued, "There is, of course, the matter of my death."

Harry sat back, perplexed. Any untimely demise had been swiftly prevented, as far as he was aware. "Your death, Headmaster?"

"It's no longer imminent."

"I'm sorry, sir?" He blinked. "You're upset you're not dying?"

"With me out of the way, Voldemort would have let his guard down, just slightly." More golden light began to swirl at Dumbledore's elbow. "And cemented trust with people who, indeed, must be trusted. There is still a chance, yet, but it may not be so set in stone as I'd like."

Harry had absolutely no idea what a word of that meant, but it sounded far too suicidal for comfort. "You can't just die."

"Everybody must die, Harry. Denying that leads you down dark paths, dark paths into dark caves such as this one."

"The phoenix can't die," he protested. He could still picture Fawkes' small form peeking out from his own ashes, the tiny little cries that signified breath and life. It was the first time he'd realised the true enormity of magic. The Philosopher's Stone promised immortality, but he'd never actually seen it. Not until he saw Fawkes shake off the remains of his previous body.

"A phoenix must first die to be reborn." Dumbledore laughed. "Be that as it may, there still remains the fact - and I won't blame you if it has escaped your notice - that I am not a phoenix."

To Harry he had seemed so. Untouchable. All-powerful. Free. The arm cast to the side like an old book was a direct contrast to that very sentiment. He'd had a great many ideas of the world torn down and stomped on in his life, but watching the Great Headmaster of Hogwarts display any sign of fragility was one of the worst. After all, who did that leave to stand against Voldemort?

Only him, the little runt of a boy from Privet Drive. And the mirror image of a deranged maniac shadowing his soul.

"I don't know how to face him on my own," Harry admitted.

"Oh, Harry, but that's exactly what you've been doing all this time."

"No, it's not!" He threw his hands up, the worn thread of his control finally snapping. "You've been conveniently ignoring it, but I'm winging this! All of it! I'm clearly lost on what makes a good plan; you just had a limb torn off and somehow that counts as a win, for how terrible our luck is. I don't know what the hell I'm doing, and people are dying for it!"

"Do any of us?"

Cryptic statements were not particularly soothing at this moment. Dumbledore was doing a damn sight better than he was in the general planning department, if having contingencies hinged on his own bloody death said anything. Harry just ran into it and hoped for the best. He'd only been given assurance he wouldn't actually find the wrong end of the Killing Curse at Voldemort's hand in the past school term. Before then, he sort of didn't know how many more suns he'd see set. "You do," he mumbled, petulant.

Dumbledore raised a greyed, weathered eyebrow. "Evidently I do not."

Yeah, thanks to the Boy Who Lived jumping head-first into his own peril, again. Not thanks to any of Dumbledore's mistakes, unless you counted Harry one of them. Which you might, depending. "That's my fault."

This earnt him a scoff. "I asked you here, dear boy. I destroyed the ring that cursed my hand. I failed Tom Riddle when he was just a frightened young boy looking for a home and a place of understanding."

"He knew what he was doing." The cave around them was evidence enough.

"So he did. But what is made can be unmade." Dumbledore eyed him. "That is why we are here in this very spot in this very moment."

Harry sat back, took in the salty air and the stench of rot and the distinct lack of weight in his palm. "What are we going to do now?"

"Apparate back to Hogwarts, I should think. You have a great many friends waiting anxiously for your return." Dumbledore stood and held out his remaining arm. "Come, and let's deliver the good news."

Harry had a few moments of trying not to be sick before he could reorient himself. He was in the Gryffindor Common Room again, as if he'd never left. Ron and Hermione were, as promised, not there, but Ginny was, curled into herself on the sofa. Her eyes, half-mooned, were dark and ringed, and she stared without seeing at the small flames still flickering in the fireplace. The crack of Apparition had her jumping half out of her own skin. "What the fuck?" she said. Then, "Oh, shit, sorry, Headmaster- wait, Merlin, I mean- erm-"

"I'd say the language is to be expected when the headmaster appears suddenly in your Common Room," Dumbledore replied, unbothered. "Harry, you must inform your friends you are safe. Go up to your dorms and tell them quickly while I talk to Severus. A great deal more has happened than I could ever have predicted, and I must keep him safe."

Keep Snape safe? As if he would ever consent to being helped, or even having his own competence questioned. Harry could practically feel the long fingers curled around his neck and the spitting fury for daring to think someone else would have reason to, if for only the briefest of seconds, consider questioning his competence. "Ron and 'Mione aren't in the dorms, sir," said Harry, twitching slightly. He hadn't a clue how this would end, but knowing anyone had been working against Dumbledore's explicit instruction under his nose would probably not bode well.

"Aren't they?" Dumbledore's fang-sharp gaze descended heavily upon him. "Where, then, have you asked them to be?"

"Guarding the Room of Requirement, sir," said Harry. "From something that both you and I know is there."

"I'm supposed to know of something worth guarding in the Room of Requirement? Well, I could count a great many things, but perhaps not any of them warrant such special treatment. Sending your most beloved and trusted friends to keep it safe on arguably one of the most dangerous nights you've ever faced..."

"I don't know what it is," Harry interrupted. "Malfoy's been at it all year, and we all know he's been sucking up to Voldemort, just like his father. I can't leave it alone in the castle. He's going to use it to kill someone."

Dumbledore made a tutting noise at this. "No, I daresay Draco isn't the type to murder in cold blood. I've been relying on that truth all year, in fact, and I think I shall continue to do so."

Harry bristled. "What? You can't just let him-"

Twinkling eyes went darker, clouded by something almost like disappointment. It was a uniquely awful look to be pinned by. "Really, Harry, you should realise after all these years of knowing me that I'm not one to sit back and 'let' anything happen. Am I?"

He begged, "They're my friends. If Malfoy does something to them I'll never forgive myself. Not ever. I'd rather spend the rest of my life under Cruciatus."

Dumbledore grabbed his shoulder. He could feel the imprint of the flesh palm, but also the one shimmering and golden. "Malfoy will not do anything to them. I've known boys like him, boys who make all the wrong choices, and I won't make the same mistakes in judgement for a third time. Do you understand my meaning?"

"Yes." Harry lowered his head, thinking of the Dark Lord who had once also taken, in a way, a fragment of Dumbledore's soul. "Yes, sir. Let me wake the others. News of my disappearance must've gotten 'round by now."

"I'll wake the girls," said Ginny. "Though they're probably not sleeping at a time like this."

Harry's limbs ached, but he clambered up the stairs into the dorms. Immediately, he could feel the Diadem calling to him, like a baby asking to be picked up, invisible cold hands grabbing through the shadows. Neville was wide awake, wringing the sheets in his hands. "You're alive," he whispered.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence." Not that he could blame Neville for doubting him. He'd doubted himself. He still doubted himself.

Neville didn't react. "What's going on, Harry? Is it really true Voldemort is working with you?" He had wide eyes, lamb's eyes. Harry wondered what his life would've been like if Voldemort had mistaken Neville as the Chosen One. Would Harry have been truly happy? Would he have made the same friends? The same enemies? Been placed in the same House? Would Neville have a shred more confidence? "Everyone keeps saying you've got him on your side. But that's not possible! Is it?"

"I mean, probably not," Harry admitted. "He's on his own side. Anyway, I've only got half of him working with me. Less than half."

Neville looked ill. "What's that mean? Have you- have you duplicated him somehow?"

"That's actually kind of a good way to put it."

This got him two frantic hands on his shoulders, iron grip digging into his collarbone. "There's more of him? Harry!"

"Ow! I- it's hard to explain." Harry winced. That would bruise later.

"I can handle it."

"I know you can," said Harry. "You know how he's afraid of dying? Turns out, You-Know-Who is quite the go-getter. Back in school, he went digging. And he found what he was looking for - a way to stop himself from dying." Neville, who was already pale as milk besides, went ashen. "But, there's a way to counteract it. A few ways, actually." He swallowed. Only Hermione and Ron knew just why Tom was tethered to his side, and he wasn't sure he was ready to give out that particular piece of information yet, but he knew he had no choice but to explain. He needed his friends' support. "What he did was- he transcended needing a physical body. He split his soul and hid the shards in precious objects, so that he'd always be preserved."

Neville's hands began to shake where they were grasping Harry's shoulders. "How?"

"Murder. You have to kill someone. Or some-seven."

"Seven! There are seven- but you've found some way to defeat him? You can stop him?"

"Only five are left," Harry said. "And I've got to find all of them and put Voldemort's soul back together again. Without him realising I'm not just destroying them." He laughed, half hysterically. "I have to trick him. Lord Voldemort. I have to."

"Why not destroy them?"

He sighed. "Because they're helping me find the others. The two I have already."

Neville shook him, desperate and panicked. Harry could feel the tremors wracking the boy's small body. "Why? Why would they help you?"

Harry closed his eyes. "Because I'm one of them. One of the objects."

Everything went quiet. Then, "The night your parents died. Their murder."

"Yes."

"He hid his soul inside you? And you'd- oh, Merlin, you'd have to die to destroy it."

"And I would," Harry implored. "You know I would. But I don't know who else would be lost, how much we'd have to sacrifice to destroy the other objects - the Horcruxes. But if I reform his soul, he'll be able to feel remorse again. He'll be able to feel again, something beyond rage and paranoia and- and his need to kill. Nobody would have to die for me, not anymore."

"Oh, Harry." Neville pulled him in for a bone-crushing hug. "I'm so sorry. To have that hanging over your head all the time, waking up every day knowing there isn't a way out. You're never free of him."

"I don't know," he said. "Maybe, when he has what's left of his soul back, we'll all be free. Even him."

Author's Note: HOLY FUCK IT'S BEEN A YEAR I'M SO SORRY. I've been so incredibly busy with university, and I got wrapped up in a whole ten thousand other new fandoms. But I promise I haven't forgotten about this story! My heart and soul is always weak for Tomarry/Harrymort. Hopefully you guys can forgive me for leaving you on such a bloody cliffhanger for a whole 360-ish days. Please enjoy, despite the fact that I'm terrible. I'm nervous about this one, the plot is really trying to actually make an appearance now for real, so let's hope I can wrangle it into something that makes some fucking sense.

Thank you all so much for your patience and sticking with me xx