Author's Note: I've been packing up for a move, so I'm super busy, but I've been trying my best to also work on my WIPs at the same time. Hopefully this will sate some appetites!

xx Tom (yes, my name is Tom lmao, but not that one)

Windows to the soul though they might be, Tom's eyes peering out at him disturbed Harry down to his very bones, and he insisted on keeping the Locket shut after that.

He'd told Dumbledore in hushed tones about Regulus's grim fate, and about the fruits of his sacrifice. Dumbledore had been very pleased, complimented Harry on a job well done, and sent him off to bed.

Which was a little underwhelming, honestly.

Here, Harry lay, with the Locket unnaturally warm against his chest, looking so inert and unassuming without two disembodied eyes to pierce him to the core. He was nervous about sleeping, because he knew what he would find in his dreams.

The Locket would have questions, and Harry would have to answer them. Granted, that compulsion extended both ways, but Voldemort always was more adept at rolling with a disadvantage. It was always Harry who ended up the most humiliated and unnerved at the end of their chats.

"Horcruxes can't lie to one another," Harry warned it. "Not in dreams, anyway. So don't bite my head off if you find yourself being more truthful than usual."

The Locket rumbled. Harry didn't know if that was a good or a bad thing.

"I'm counting sheep now," he continued. "See you soon..."

One sheep, two sheep, three sheep. A pair of grey eyes.

Harry gasped as he flew awake. Or, flew asleep, he supposed.

The Tom Riddle of the Locket was staring at him curiously. Harry looked around and found himself in a pleasant, quaint kind of sitting room. It seemed familiar. He was curled up on a very comfortable sofa, which was a soft yellow colour, somewhere between dandelion and daffodil. Tom himself didn't seem concerned by his surroundings, but Harry was.

It wiggled and nagged in the back of his mind. He'd seen this room before.

"Hello," Tom said. His tone was warm, smooth. All demure charm. One sheep, two sheep, three sheep, one wolf in sheep's clothing.

"Hi," Harry replied. "Where are we?"

"In your dream, but my memory. It was here that I was birthed, so to speak."

Harry's eyes widened. "This is Hepzibah Smith's house."

"Indeed," Tom agreed.

His stomach turned. Hepzibah hadn't been the most charming woman, certainly, but she was fairly innocent. The crime of not refusing a good deal when it presented itself on a platter was hardly worth punishment by death.

Cold, green light. It truly did rule both their lives, however different that rule was for each.

"You like it here?" Harry questioned. Surely Tom couldn't. The victory would have flooded his veins like intoxicating poison, no doubt, his very own twisted Amortentia, but the lengths necessary to achieve that victory... well, they were below Tom's own estimation of himself, weren't they?

"It reminds me of the sacrifices I have made in order to achieve greatness," he said, tone thoughtful. He rested his chin serenely on his hands, regarding the room with careful neutrality. "And it is the last thing this part of me ever saw."

Harry accepted this warily. "What do you know about what's happened?"

"Nothing beyond what the part of my soul within you has told me. You are ours. I am to be free. We cannot lie to each other. That is all."

Harry fought back an uncomfortable flush. "I mean, yeah." He chewed his lip, felt sweat prickle at the back of his neck like needles. Tom's gaze had too physical a form recently. "We're going to reunite the rest of the Horcruxes." Tom's brows drew together, a flash of anger like the flash of sickly green light, and then beyond that, so quick Harry almost missed it, a flash of fear. Not just fear, but pure, unadulterated terror. "Not like that. The connection with me should still remain, I think," Harry clarified. "It won't kill you."

"It will make me more vulnerable," Tom hissed.

"That's the price you've decided to pay."

Tom's eyes narrowed. It was almost catlike. Animal. Just a touch too far from human to sit right. "For what?"

"Sanity. The main version of you, the original, he's..." How was he? Mercurial, at best. That was the word Hermione had used to describe him. Bouncing back and forth between two extremes, his cloying pleasure in suffering and his blinding rage at everything else. Both tasted like blood in the back of Harry's throat. Moments of calm in the eye of the storm, when he charmed and beguiled and served tea, and the rest of the hurricane, where Harry ended up pinned by the neck against the wall or bloodied on a cave floor.

"He's...?" Tom prompted.

"Not all there," Harry settled on. Tom wouldn't care to hear about maniacal acts of cruelty; he still revelled in them at this age. At all ages. He would only care about seeming... diminished. Not fully capable of achieving his true potential, reaping what he had spent so many decades trying to sow. Not appreciating the nuances of things.

Tom's ghost white skin went whiter. Almost the sickly and corpse-like pallor of the body he'd gained that night in his father's graveyard. He got up immediately and began to pace. "The effects of insanity you incur when you begin to continuously fracture your own soul... Yes, I had suspected, but I thought the power of Seven would dampen them enough to be manageable. I thought the Arithmantic theory was strong enough..." He reached absently for his ring finger, which he found bare. The pacing stopped. "I suppose that's what happens when you invoke the power of something so shrouded in mystery. Did you know the rune for the number seven is called the Unknown?"

Harry shook his head. Magical theory wasn't exactly his strong suit. He mostly relied on Hermione to point out if anything to do with runic symbology or numerology seemed relevant.

Tom hummed. "They say Bridget Wenlock was mad," he continued. "It was she who discovered the powerful properties of the number seven. I wonder, did madness allow her to formulate the theory? Do you have to lose your sanity to truly understand?"

Harry stared anxiously and said nothing. He felt abruptly out of place. Out of his depth.

Stupid.

"Many great wizards have fallen prey to insanity," Tom said. "Even Albus Dumbledore seems to process reality quite differently from the rest of us. Have you noticed?"

"Yes," Harry agreed. He had. It was a source of constant bemusement to him, really. "But, he, erm. He seems to keep a lid on it most of the time."

Tom's voice was flat. "More than I do, you're implying."

Harry held up his hands. "You were the one who decided, not me."

Tom was silent for a moment. Perfectly still, statuesque as a sculptor's masterpiece, eyes fixed unseeingly on some vague point at Harry's chest. Perhaps, his heart.

Then, he sprung back into action, brought to life again, Pygmalion's dream come true. Harry thought back to the books on mythology Hermione often read when she couldn't sleep. Harry had read over her shoulder in the Common Room so many times. It felt like a lifetime ago.

Apparently the Ancient Greeks had no statutes of secrecy.

Though Tom was no Galatea. More like Hephaestus' automatons, at times. Partly dead inside.

"Very well," Tom said. "I suppose I'll soon see for myself, regardless. I will decide then if the judgement is erroneous."

Harry figured this was as good a victory as any. Best not look a gift horse in the mouth, after all.

He'd been thinking that a lot, lately.

He awoke to more eyes, but these were two familiar pairs of blue and brown. "You got one? Here?" Ron stared at the Locket, where it lay over Harry's beating heart. "Blimey, that's it. The real thing."

Harry blinked. "Kinda feels a bit too easy, doesn't it?" He scratched his head. "But we have it. Apparently Sirius's brother had it."

"So we heard," Ron said. "Talk about a happy coincidence. Well, I say 'happy'..."

Snape came bursting forth, Malfoy on his heels. Despite being tall and pointy, it seemed even Draco couldn't keep up with Snape's long strides. Harry's mouth twitched at the image. "You've found one?"

Harry held out the locket, still attached to his neck. "It's here, sir. Apparently Regulus Black found it before me."

Snape's long fingers grasped it tight enough to choke. There were burns along his fingertips and scars on his palm. "Regulus Black," he repeated, eyes widening.

"Did you know him, sir?"

"Yes," said Snape. Then, he did something quite unexpected. He volunteered information about his past. "He was the only Potions partner I could tolerate throughout my school years. He was keenly intelligent and had a good eye for detail, but... easily swayed. Something your godfather hated him for."

Anything to disparage the Marauders, it seemed. Though in this case, Harry couldn't blame him. If only someone had looked into Regulus's disappearance sooner...

Harry frowned. "It explains why Sirius never checked his rooms. The Locket was inside Grimmauld Place this whole time."

"It's extraordinarily fortunate that you stumbled upon it when you did, Potter. Any later, and the Dark Lord may have stolen it away forever. No doubt he intends to keep the remaining Horcruxes..." Snape gave the Locket a considering look. "...close to his side."

"It's a good thing I felt it, then." Snape froze. "Sir," Harry added quickly.

"How well can you feel them?"

"Uh." Harry shifted. "Very well."

"From how far away?"

"Only a short distance, sir. I'm sorry."

Snape sighed. He still hadn't dropped the chain of the necklace. He was close enough that Harry could smell his breath. Valerian and lavender. Sleeping Draught. It figured. "A shame. Still, you can sense the Dark Lord before he decides to make his presence known. That may buy us a precious few seconds in case of an attack."

"It also means he doesn't know when we take them. They can't communicate with him unless they're in range, either."

"Good." Snape dropped the necklace. "He cannot find out how many we've taken. When he feels cornered, the Dark Lord behaves more like a crazed animal than a man of rational thought and sound mind." From behind him, Malfoy whimpered. "As many of us know."

"Yes, sir."

Snape turned away. "We should return to the castle. Lucius and Narcissa should be safe here. And we have no time to waste."

"Yes, sir," Harry said again.

Malfoy seemed reluctant to leave his parents behind, but Snape's furious glare cowed him into the Floo. It was still early enough that no-one was up and about yet, which left the castle eerily quiet but blessedly free of watching eyes.

Harry was sick of watching eyes.

Dumbledore whistled a jolly tune to himself as he walked down the hall, his robes billowing behind him. He was happy as a clam, but he was the only one.

Harry was too nervous about having three Horcruxes in one place. Four Voldemorts in total to whisper sweet nothings into his ear. It would've been bearable if those sweet nothings didn't sound quite as good as they always did.

That cold, high voice singing songs of death and destruction and pain and lust in the back of his head. It had been his constant companion since fifth year, and only worsened once Voldemort had slithered into his head while he lay on the floor of the Department of Mysteries.

And then he had met Tom. The angel to Voldemort's devil on his shoulder.

Comparatively speaking.

Two sides of the same coin. One of which he hated. The other of which enraptured him.

Every day the line between the two blurred further.

Maybe it had never been there at all.

"I'll take my leave of you now," Dumbledore said. Harry blinked to find himself in the corridor to the Astronomy Tower. "I'm sure you'll all want to rest before class this evening. I'll have the house elves send you up some tarts, shall I? I always find they clear my mind of anxious thoughts."

He'd wandered off before anyone could answer.

"I'm going to bed," said Malfoy. "If there's nothing else needed of me." This was part begrudging and part tentatively relieved.

"Good night," Harry offered weakly. "Or, erm. Morning."

Malfoy was too worn down to roll his eyes, or huff, or even so much as twitch. He turned and trailed like a ghost down the hallways until he rounded a corner and disappeared from sight.

Harry dithered. "I can't help but feel like we've used up all our luck."

"Honestly, I don't blame you," Ron said. "I could hardly believe it when I heard you found one in Grimmauld Place. I mean, of all the places to find one, it's the one right under our nose? That's our lottery won. Now we have to really work for it."

"Voldemort is a creature of habit," Hermione said, with much more confidence than the two of them put together. "He can be unpredictable at times, yes, especially when he's mad, but in the end, some things just aren't going to change. How many people he trusts, for example. It's always going to be low." She quirked a bit of a smile. "Even lower after the incident with the Diary, and now he's realised what happened to the Locket. There are only a few people who could have access to the Horcruxes."

Harry laughed a little. "Well, that's more than I've got."

"Not that it's going to be easy for us to sneak past any of those people," she added. She ran a hand through her messy hair, making it even frizzier than usual. And still it wasn't half as frazzled as she was. "But it's a start, isn't it?"

"Plus," Ron said, "at least we know where You-Know-Who keeps the snake. It's always around his neck. And I reckon Harry will be seeing a lot more of him now he knows we're looking for the same things he is, so his neck won't be hard to find."

"Yeah, it's attached to his chin," Harry said smartly.

Ron snorted, and Hermione tried valiantly to keep her mouth from twitching. After so much heaped on their shoulders, laughter soon broke through the dam keeping their hysteria at bay, and all three of them cracked up hard enough to wheeze. Despite being a little unhinged, it felt good to let loose. Times like these were precious, few and far between. Times like these kept them sane.

Harry wondered if Voldemort ever laughed. Not in cruel amusement at some intricately-crafted torture, or during the throes of some blood-soaked victory, but because he felt some genuine humour. Even the Tom Riddle in Harry's soul seemed most entertained by sarcasm and dark wit, never anything as free or as joyous as the kind of laughter joking with friends could elicit. Deep in the belly, pricking tears in your eyes, causing a stitch in your side.

The only things Voldemort felt that intensely were anger, hatred, fear, or desire. Greedy, envious desire, too, not the innocent desire of a first-bloomed crush, or even the kind of needy yearning Harry had felt alone in the cupboard under the stairs.

Though he had probably yearned like that once, a long time ago, in an empty room at Wool's Orphanage. Bare walls, floorboards uneven and coming unseated, rafters creaky and dusty, so starved of life that Tom had thought to liven it with the bloody corpse of his bully's beloved pet rabbit. That was as close to living Tom got, holding death in his hands while he himself felt his heart beat on. That sharp contrast between states was what seemed to remind him how much he needed to cling to the earthly realm, even though it tormented him so dearly.

Harry's laughter began to fade at the thought. "I guess we should head to sleep, too, yeah?" he suggested. "I don't know about you, but I only caught a few hours last night."

"Bad dreams?" Hermione asked knowingly.

"You could say that, yeah."

"Ron and I got a bit more sleep than you. I think I might study before turning in, practice that healing potion Professor Snape mentioned." She gave Ron a teasing glance. "I don't know about Ron, though. If it were possible to have an allergy to studying, his would be deathly."

"Oi!" said Ron. "You're right, but oi!"

"Alright. We'll reconvene for the class from Hell, then. Merlin help us all."

Hermione huffed, amused and exasperated in equal parts. "Your allergy is nearly as bad. Sleep well, Harry."

"Thanks. I'll be needing it."

The dorm was blessedly empty. Harry loved his friends, his house, but he was tired so often now, and all he longed for was sleep. Real sleep, where visions of Tom didn't haunt him or tempt him or chase him. The chance of it was slight, but it was tantalising. Harry couldn't stomach explaining it to his housemates right now, couldn't stomach the jealous stares that he could skip classes and rest while they had to study until their eyes ached. Never mind that his exemption was for a far worse class, or that he had shards of the Dark Lord's soul to be searching for, or that the Dark Lord himself was his competitor in that cursed scavenger hunt.

They would understand eventually, of course, but it took patience Harry no longer had in order to explain. Every ounce of that patience was already in use, draining away bit-by-bit as each clue to the mystery was revealed slower and slower, and the noose of responsibility clung to his neck tighter and tighter. He might as well have been the one wearing Nagini, for all the air he could breathe in.

It wasn't that he resented the responsibility, it was only that he felt so helplessly underqualified for it. He wasn't ashamed to ask for help, or to rely on those who answered, but support could be taken away all too easily. He wanted to know that, in his darkest, loneliest moments, he could find something within himself strong enough, smart enough, fast enough to keep everyone safe. It was why his complaints about his newest, toughest class were only a tribute to the adolescent whining expected of a student his age. It was lipservice to a brighter time, where Harry's worries began and ended at the marks on his papers, and not at saving the Wizarding World from its own self-made problems.

Maybe his responsibility could be a blessing, if he could use it to change minds. If his story could inspire others to see the warning signs before it was too late, see the young Tom Riddles who needed help nobody was willing to offer. Dumbledore had said proximity to his soul could cure Voldemort, and Harry had his doubts, but the thought behind it was a comfort to him. Kindness, not as an infection, but as something willingly shared.

A chance for Voldemort to taste the free, joyous laughter he had always lacked.

If the Dark Lord was going to tempt Harry Potter, then he was going to return the favour a thousandfold.