Harry had finally collapsed into a grief induced slumber, after his pleas had turned from desperate yelling to rasp begging, to praying whispering. Before even those misted out, unheard, along the cold corridors of the fortress.

Bellatrix tucked around him the ragged blanket that someone had managed to give her ages ago in the beginning of her sentence. It had had colours. Now it was stone and dirt grey.

Shadows shifted and seemed to grow closer before morphing into ragged human shapes. They had kept quiet as the boy called, but now eyes of all sorts, sunken and dark, lost and sharp where hungrily taking his sunken shape.

There had been whispers, running from one cell to another, like a dark curse. The boy was special. Their master's magic was running under his skin. And he saw things, very special things. Rookwood said, it seemed like the boy was dreaming of the Department of Mysteries.

And Rookwood had a fair idea of what their master was after. Men like Rookwood didn't go insane in Azkaban, the Dementors only acting as a grinding stone to the blade of their mind. You see, most people fashion sanity as a two-end spectrum thingy, when it is rather more of an anulus. Rookwood was, by too far, a sane man. With a sharp mind.

Voldemort was after the prophesy. Which meant that Potter, even shackled down, remained a source of either concern of fascination to him.

Harry's nightmares took a turn for the worse after the incident with Mr. Weasley. At first, he tried to hang on to the hope that he had not witnessed an actual death and that perhaps, someone had made it in time. But the Dementors soon siphoned his hope, and all he was left with were festering regrets and guilt.

He had been the snake.

He had struck.

In his dreams, he was bathed in blood, the sticky, tangy substance covering his face and his hands, soaked his clothes. His mouth felt to big, as if he could swallow the world. Sometimes the mangled body would be Mr. Weasley's, sometimes it would be a fair woman. After a few nights, the quality of the dream twisted and the corps started to be Ron, Hermione… his friends and classmates. McGonagall's. The horror tasted like blood on his tong and his mind twisted, curling on itself and bending unnaturally not to break. There was a monster coiled in his soul, relishing his torments and begging to be set free, watching hungrily the straining string of sanity that refused to snap.

So close to admit it. That he was a murderer. A dangerous freak.

Asleep, there was a sort of darkness, the rich colour and scent of blood and the corpses. And sibilant whispers coming from the edges of his vision, like tendrils of thought trying to reach him. They coursed along the same feeling that pulled at his mind, like a hand patiently stretching a thin line at the back of it.

The whispers were slowly ever more bleeding into his waking moments. Even as Bellatrix held him, it was getting harder to focus on her soft voice. They were pressing, demanding his attention.

Voldemort.

The impossible thought had finally bloomed into existence, after he woke up shaking and shivering from a particularly vivid dream.

He'd been back to the graveyard. To Him. But this time, Voldemort's snake had climbed onto him before he could break away and toward the cup. It had clenched the breath from his chest and collapsed him to his knees. It had pressed against him until he could not make their two bodies apart.

Harry had gazed into its eyes and seen himself reflected in their depth.

'We do not run, brothers-ss.' She had whispered.

He was connected to Voldemort. Voldemort could wrap his thought, his mind. Harry looked down to his thin, dirt encrusted hands.

Voldemort could control him. The darkest wizard of their times coursed like a disease under his skin, like a rot in his soul. He crumbled in a sobbing heaps on the floor, hugging his knees against his chest.

Dumbledore must have known. He'd fought Voldemort for so long. That's why he allowed Harry to be taken.

He belonged in Azkaban. He was a freak, and he needed to be locked up like one.

Away from normal, clean people.

The cell was dark, and the flickering lights from the corridors were hardly enough to make out the body. She was pretty, Harry thought, in a daze. Her face was covered in the blood that bled from her ripped throat. He could feal reality trying to syncope, to rip him from the scene. To protect his mind. But it held, shaking before settling in place. A sickening excitement got to his throat as he raised his hands to contemplate the vibrant red painting them. The same blood that painted his arms and face, that tasted on his tong.

Soon people would be rushing in. Soon he would be thrown to the pit of the world.

Like he deserved for being the little freak he was.

His hands were shaking but he couldn't tell wherever from fear, or excitement. He felt wrong.

He folded on himself, as a deep sob wracked his body.

'Harry-y.' He heard a voice course against his skin, like the touch of a feather and a whisp of cold air.

He kept his eyes tightly shut, afraid and resolute not to give in. To stay alone.

'Harry…' The voice sounded from right behind him. A comforting hand came to rest on his shoulder. 'Why would you grieve for those who hurt you?'

Harry refused to answer, keeping his lips resolutely shut and turning his head away. He heard the rustle of robes as the figure circled him slowly to face him.

'You feel so terribly. With your childhood, how comes that you still care so deeply for those who hurt you,' the words were laced with wonder and puzzlement, like someone indulging in figuring out a peculiarly odd puzzle.

A cold hand reached out to lift his chin. Harry's eyes finally snapped open to find crimson. He shivered, wanting to spring away or strike. But it felt like his limbs were weighted with lead.

'Harry Potter. The boy who lived.'

Voldemort looked just like he had in the graveyard, if only better robed. It looked odd, and as Harry tried to focus on the oddness, it looked like Voldemort's features were blurring between his snake face and the very much human version he had met two years ago. The man smiled thinly.

'You and I are surprisingly alike,' Voldemort thumb grazed smudge of blood on Harry's cheek in a slow, contemplative arc. His eyes were transfixed by the sight. 'But you've been brought up to hate me, and what I stand for. The saviour of the Wizarding World. Shaped by Dumbledore as his weapon.'

'That's not true!' Harry spat, his temper flaring hot for the first time in ages. 'You are lying. I hate you because it's right, you are vile and need to be stopped. Dumbledore, he never wanted me to, too…' but his voice faltered, uncertainty flickering the flame of his resolve.

The monster that was facing him raised a brow, which was both the elegant arch of Tom Riddle and the cruel and mocking gimmick of Voldemort. He left time ticking a few, heavy seconds before driving the knife deeper.

'But he did, didn't he? He wanted you to fight. To be ready to die for his cause.' Voldemort took a step back and circled the corps on the floor, nudging the woman's face with his foot. 'And when his little toy soldier came out too broken for him to use freely, he discarded you.'

'You were the one to do this to me,' Harry seethed, trying to fight life into his limbs. He wanted to rise, to… to strike to man. Images of the blond woman trying to push him away, crying and desperate for help crashed against his eyes. Bile rose up to his throat, and he chocked. Tom closed up on him, taking Harry in an embrace he didn't want, and yet couldn't find in himself to reject.

'You did this to me… You've turned me into a monster.' Harry felt himself shatter, his voice coming out broken as a dry sob wreaked him. His mind felt like a shattered mirrors with its many, uneven reflections.

Tom's arms were warmer than Bellatrix's, stronger.

'No Harry,' Voldemort answered bitterly, petting the soft and blood matted hairs away from his forehead. 'No. Those who destroyed you were the ones that pretended to love you. Until they found out you really were.'

Harry bristled, feeling like so many knives as people who had sworn to care for him were nailing him to the fortress' stones. Azkaban's cold seemed to seep into his bones like a frost, and his breath came out in a shaking mist.

'But Magic has gifted you to me, Harry.' Tom caressed Harry's scare hungrily. 'And I will protect you,' his grip tightened possessively. 'You are powerful. I'll make sure you grow into your power. We will achieve things unfathomed by all others.'

'I don't believe you.' Harry whispered. 'You are a liar, like the rest of them.'

'I don't lie to you, my soul.' Voldemort answered, drawing himself away from the teenager.

A part of Harry wanted to claw him back close again, but Harry steeled himself. He gathered his strength to stand up to the other man, defiantly. Voldemort peered into his eyes, before adding slowly, like every word that passed his lips were chiselled into stone.

'Tell me Harry. What would you give to be taken out of Azkaban?' He asked.

Harry's heart missed a beat.

They were right. Bellatrix mad, whispered hopes were true.

Voldemort was powerful enough to break into Azkaban. To make them free.

A painful hope fluttered against his chest, his mouth going dry. His desperate thought vanishing like shadows in the sun.

He could be free.

'Anything.' He answered in a damning whisper.