(TW: Bit of light non-graphic murder in this one, guys gals and non-binary pals. From here, you can expect the themes to get heavy, particularly from chapter 29.)

Woke Up a Rebel, Reuben and the Dark

And the sun disappeared
Through the hole in the sky
Oh, they made me a shadow
And blackened my bones
But I will rise

I died like a saint
Was reborn a devil
I slept like a slave
And woke up a rebel

I am wild, I am lost
I am sick, I am damned
But I am holding redemption in the palm of my hand
So I tighten my fist
And sharpen my teeth
It's a promise I made
It's a secret I keep

Two things happened after Harry had understood what he was and tried to fight Voldemort about it. He was not left alone for a moment, passed between Narcissa, the Slytherins and Cassiopeia, under constant guard. Secondly, he was pretending Tom didn't exist. He refused to acknowledge him when he tried to speak to Harry and when he spoke to others. The Boy Who Lived made it known that he didn't want any of the thoughts he had about Tom to be registered, that they weren't an invitation. If anything, they were a warning. He'd get so angry he could barely breathe. The energy had nowhere to go, the few times he did head-butt a wall he resented Tom more so.

"When you said that he had changed…" Tom said with Harry's mouth, making Cassiopeia put her book on her lap and smile absently.

"I- what does that mean?" Tom sighed as he asked, realizing immediately that she wouldn't answer him. He looked away from her and closed their eyes.

"You tell me, you little brain invader," she muttered. Harry heard her turning pages.

"I should be practising. The trial is less than a month away," Tom said, looking at her, agitation aimed at Harry when he said this. He'd told the Boy Who Lived that if he'd kept his cool, they would be far more free to move, that trying to attack the Dark Lord had been reckless; that the consequences could have been far worse.

Harry had told him to get fucked.

"Mmm. Would be a shame if they," she mimed locking a door, "Threw away the key."

"I am more concerned…" Tom began, summoning the blackness with ease, sending tendrils swimming into the air while Harry hissed at him, "…With decimating the Wizengamot."

"Reckon the whole Ministry?" Harry added, the pain fuzzed between his ears; making him forget he was mad.

"We could try," Tom hissed, ending the curse.

Cassiopeia sighed and Harry remembered he was angry, his face red as he resumed ignoring Tom.

"I'll see what I can do."

He turned the locket over and over in the palm of his hand, the initials R.A.B. taunting him. He knew the name, and so he could hazard a guess at its location. It hadn't been destroyed; he would have felt it. Nagini read at his feet, cross-legged and folded over herself, the book on the floor, her face centimetres away.

He threw the locket with force, hitting and shattering a vase atop the mantle of the fireplace, raining porcelain on the tiles. Nagini didn't look up from her book. He pinched the bridge of his nose, irritated with her, with the Horcruxes, with the Boy Who Lived…

"He is dangerous—more than I anticipated. You will stay here," he told her, though she had said nothing. She turned a page, silent.

Cassiopeia's voice ran through his mind then, telling him to just kill the brat, get it over with… He winced, stood up and kicked the chair out from behind him before he stormed out of the sitting room.

Harry refused to acknowledge the dream or Tom when he woke, taking a potion woodenly as he sat up, staring blankly at the bed coverings. Cassiopeia watched him, still as a statue in the white armchair. Harry ignored her too.

"Will you get out," Tom did not ignore her.

She chuckled but said nothing. Harry wasn't sure why his heart was pounding, why Tom was suddenly furious. Rage washed over him as he stood them up.

"Out," he snarled, dark seeping from his hands.

She got up, curtsied, and fled the room.

"How can you possibly be so blind? So stupid? How could you not suspect it from the beginning? From the moment you saw that memory with Slughorn?" Tom hissed at Harry once she was gone, pacing the floor, "You would need it spelled out for you?"

"Does it matter? What does it matter?" Harry hissed back.

"Exactly! What does it matter?! What does it matter what I am? What's done is done."

"Oh yeah, good, now that I know, it suddenly doesn't matter, no worries that you were trying to hide it the whole damn time, never mind that you're…" Harry realised he was having a furious argument in Parseltongue with a Horcrux and groaned, gripped his hair, and pulled.

'Don't. Don't. I am not just a- a Horcrux… I'm not- I wanted to tell you. I wanted to tell you when- and I would have, but I knew-'

The thought 'that you would react this way' wasn't finished, but Harry finished it. He sat down on the edge of the bed, and it was his turn to control their breathing as Tom struggled with the panic and anger he'd worked up, while Harry deflated.

"You're a piece of his soul," he said it like it was damning, like there was no way past it.

"What did you think I could possibly be?"

"I don't know… A part of his magic? I-"

"Oh, so, useful to you? Not so bad if you could use me?"

"What is he doing with me? Right now? What are YOU doing with me, right now?" Harry hissed.

"What comes naturally."

If Harry had only heard Tom's words and not what he was feeling as he spoke them, he might have taken the sharpness for the truth. The Boy Who Lived sat in silence, while they both felt disgusted and guilty.

The next morning Narcissa collected Harry before sunrise so that he could follow her around the manor until the Slytherins were awake. He watched her direct the menu for the day, organize the maintenance of the manor, delegating tasks to the house elves as she read through a stack of letters as tall as Harry's forearm, using her wand to sort them rapidly into piles based on importance, and, she said, whether or not they were cursed, so, 'do not touch that pile there.'

When Narcissa requested that a bottle of Dom Bénédictine be served with dinner, the final house elf disappeared with a crack, and Harry ducked his head. They were sat in the library, Narcissa behind a heavy dark-wood desk surrounded by towering shelves that Tom kept staring at. Harry kept them in their seat across from the Malfoy Matriarch and trained their eyes back down when they returned to the shelves.

Narcissa hummed affirmatives and negatives at the letters as she read them until a bird-like chime made her stand abruptly and motion for Harry to follow her out. She put him in the small dining room with Malfoy and Parkinson, then floated away at high speed. He sat down, not looking at them as he picked up and held a piece of toast. The Slytherins hadn't asked about what had happened in the foyer three days prior, but he could feel it in the air like a physical thing. Blaise joined them after a few awkward minutes, and Tom immediately tensed, already sneering at the tabletop.

"Ah, Golden Boy, was beginning to think you'd locked yourself in your tower forever after that little episode," Zabini said as he pulled a chair free and sat down.

Harry and Tom had both put effort into not engaging with him while they were semi-rabid at each other, knowing that no good could come of being provoked.

They couldn't attack each other, but they could certainly hurt someone else. Tom lifted a hand and slowly, deliberately, summoned the curse -hissing and spitting from his fingertips, ink-black tinted green- and sent the thin threads floating lazily across the table toward Zabini while he paled, frozen.

"It would not be an accident," Tom said, barely a whisper as he snapped the curse back in.

Zabini stood up and knocked his chair over as he escaped. Pansy nibbled at her toast, eyes wide and averted, while Draco watched him.

"Cassiopeia said that we'd be training alone tonight, that she'd be taking you further afield," the blonde said conversationally, not acknowledging what had just happened.

There was a question in his tone, and his brow was furrowed, but he made no other indication that he was uncomfortable.

"Good," Tom said, biting the toast with force, clacking Harry's teeth.

Both of them ignored the singing pain shooting up their left arm with a tight jaw.

That night Cassiopeia side-along Apparated him to a forest of yew trees, all dead; or dormant, Harry couldn't tell. A fog had rolled in and he felt like it was familiar somehow, though he could see nothing but trees as Cassiopeia summoned a silverly blue ball of light to hover above their heads.

'These woods are just outside Little Hangleton,' Tom told him.

Harry had wanted to ignore that he'd said anything, but, 'Oh, great, I love it here. Such a scenic graveyard. Loads of history in the real estate.'

Tom snorted a laugh then frowned, lips and eyebrows twitching while he fought the smile. Cassiopeia shot him a look then summoned a fairly solid shield around herself.

"If you even get close to nuclear, I don't give a shit, I'll leave you here," she warned.

They didn't waste any time, turning away from her and trying a basic stun -non-verbally in hopes of dulling the reactivity- and blew four yew trees out of the ground by the roots, showering them in clods of dirt.

Tom tried Liquida Tenebris, and it flowed freely, easily. The volume and intensity as simple to control as breathing. He swung the tendrils out in a widening arc and sliced a tree in half as though it were butter. Harry pulled it back, the pain becoming too much for him to downplay. He wordlessly Accioed a stick and it splintered into sawdust as the cork had. Tom summoned the darkness again with their free hand, which made Harry hiss in annoyance. He shot the tendril out, picked up a stick with it, and brought it to their hand within the same heartbeat.

Then Tom sent a great wave of it into the forest without warning, laughing as he forced it from both hands in a flooding torrent until they collapsed to their knees, -Tom cackling- until Harry made him stop. The forest was cleared of its trees and their remains in their field of view, nothing but bare earth. The painful pleasure had built while they held the curse, and it mixed with the thrill that Tom couldn't or wouldn't conceal at the power they were wielding.

Harry, on the other hand, was less than enthused. If he needed to rely on the curse to use his magic, then he'd almost rather not use it all. Regular spells didn't come out right.

"Lumos," he tried, blinding the three of them with the full power of the sun.

Tom cancelled it, flinching, while Harry dug his fists into his eyes.

"Absolutely no warning!" Cassiopeia growled at him as she cancelled her own Lumos, plunging them into darkness while she recovered.

'Well? What are we supposed to do if we need light?' Harry snapped in his head.

He felt Tom think about it, then he summoned a swirling, growing, florescent green bubble that spilled hazy but workable light into the clearing.

'And the Occlumency?' Harry asked, more curious and less snappy as he watched the emerald light ripple into the clearing, giving the illusion that they were underwater.

'I think we are going to be just fine,' there was a drunken quality to him, he smiled and un-smiled with Harry's face.

Adrenaline came in waves, jolts that increased in size until his hands shook. Harry raised them to his face and summoned the curse again, small tendrils snaking around his fingers, making his stomach somersault as they stung. He held his breath as he watched them, heart hammering low.

The vampire returned them to their room not long later and they'd been unable to sleep. Harry had resumed being angry, but Tom didn't seem to care. Instead, he thought about how the magic had moved and felt on repeat, fascinated. Harry could feel that he wanted to summon it right then and there, but he kept stopping him over and over like he was an over-eager child on Christmas morning.

'It's like you forgot- that it…' he'd started the thought strong then trailed off before he could mention anything about the pain.

'The pain you will not cease thinking about?'

Harry groaned, rolled, and pretended he'd never broached it as he jammed his eyes shut.

"…And this is-" Draco said, gesturing to the fiftieth portrait of a blonde man with shady eyes Harry had seen that day.

Tom finally interrupted the Slytherin's tour of the manor, "That is Armand Malfoy. He came with the invading Norman Army under William the Conqueror in ten sixty-six. Traded his magical abilities behind closed doors for a desirable piece of land in Wiltshire, to later establish the Malfoy Manor, where we are standing now. Let me know if I missed something."

"Blaise is gonna love this," Pansy said, grinning at Tom.

Malfoy watched him warily, almost as though he'd scared him for the first time since his arrival, and he sat down heavily in a nearby armchair, lips curled in a sneer as he shook his head.

It was the twenty-seventh of July, his seventeenth birthday just days away, the trial not far behind it. Cassiopeia had told them the night before that the Dark Lord wanted to see them later that evening, and a stone had formed in his gut since. She'd also left him dragon-hide boots and a robe that Tom said were enchanted with shielding charms, anti-detection wards, and tracking and silencing spells.

He hadn't laid eyes on Voldemort outside a dream since the day he'd realised he was a Horcrux.

'Why does he look so… Young?' Harry wondered intentionally for the first time.

'The first Horcrux slowed things down, slightly... The second more so… What would the point of immorality be if you continued to age? That was part of the reasoning behind-' Tom hesitated, then continued, 'Behind there being seven.'

Harry didn't say anything for a moment, lips tight, 'So… If he made seven on purpose… What about- what about you? Are you… Eight?'

'I don't know.'

Harry got the sense he really hated not knowing.

Pansy and Draco escorted them back to their room when it was nearly time to meet the Dark Lord. Tom had speculated that he was finally going to broach the topic of the headmaster, but the gear Cassiopeia had left them to wear had stumped him.

Harry examined the robes again, deep black with silver buttons, heavily enchanted. He cautiously pulled it over the top of his white button-down shirt to find it fit like a glove. The boots were the same.

'Why would we need this?' Harry asked for the second time, 'Are we fighting?'

The Boy Who Lived examined himself in the mirror. He was paler, thinner, but not unhealthily so. Cassiopeia's boot camp every other night combined with the work he'd put in while still at Hogwarts had made him faster, lithe. His eyes were sunken from the perpetual lack of sleep; the dark rings making the green of them pop, particularly against the heavy black robes. His hair had grown past his ears, desperately needing a cut.

'…I don't know…'

Narcissa collected them and brought them to the double doors that led to the usual dining room when the time came, and he held his breath as Tom pushed them open, the thread in his abdomen pulling them into the room.

'Is… Does it feel like that because you're a Horcrux?' Harry sat down at the table without looking up, he knew Voldemort was in the room. His peripherals told him that Nagini wasn't.

There were objects on the table, but he didn't look directly at them.

'I think so,' Tom finally answered.

"No fight in you today? Unfortunate…" The Dark Lord tsked and stood up, which made Harry flick his eyes to him -already robed and masked- then at the objects on the table.

He recognized the Invisibility Cloak immediately, and it made him rise from his chair before Tom sat him down again. Everything of value that he'd arrived with had been confiscated. The Time-Turner, the cloak, his wand, and the Marauder's map. He'd wondered several times, -angry and nervous- if he'd lost those things forever.

Beside the cloak, closer to the Dark Lord, was a long, thin blue box, which he opened as Harry watched. Inside it was an old iron key.

"You will keep that cloak on until I tell you to remove it. If you fall behind, I will leave you. Cloak on. Hand on the Portkey in three, two-" Voldemort began to count and Tom threw the cloak over their head and stood, "One."

Harry snapped his hand to the Portkey and was met with the insane gut-wrenching sensation of being flung across the globe.

It was slightly darker where they landed, the sky purple with twilight and obscured by heavy fog. Their high altitude put them in the clouds, making it difficult for Harry to understand where they were. He spun on the spot, avoiding looking at the Dark Lord, who seemed to know where he was standing despite the cloak. He put the box with the Portkey inside his inner robe pocket and started walking, a jerk of his chin the only indication that Harry should follow.

The heavy fog lifted slightly, and Harry saw the outline of a tower against a mountain not far from them. As he followed Voldemort in that direction, he felt a jolt of recognition from Tom that set their heart pounding.

'What?' Harry asked.

'Nurmengard.'

'What? He repeated.

'What… Do you not ever pay attention? You HAVE heard of Nurmengard, you know.'

The Dark Lord was taking the numerous steps carved into the mountainside -to what Harry could now see was a fairly large castle- at high speed.

'Remind me?' He asked as he took the stone stairs two at a time to keep up, panting.

'Nurmengard is the prison- it was Grindelwald's centre of operations, He built it to hold his enemies and his supporters. He is now- He is now the only prisoner,' Tom told him, and Harry suddenly shared his adrenaline.

'Grindelwald is in there?'

'…Yes, Harry.'

He read the words 'For the Greater Good,' on several plaques and the gate as they approached. The Dark Lord moved to the massive front doors as though he'd been invited. A short old woman with deep black eyes appeared on the other side of it as they swung inward. She raised her chin at him as though this was her usual evening guest and ushered them in. Voldemort placed a hefty coin purse in her hand and she bounced it, nodded, and walked away.

They followed the Dark Lord up several winding staircases and didn't see another soul in the empty stone halls, the silence deafening.

They stopped in front of a door that Tom guessed had to be at the top of the single circular tower. Voldemort blasted the door open and was immediately met with laughter from within the cell. Harry entered behind Voldemort into the narrowed room, sure his breathing would give his presence away.

Sitting on the floor, shackled, dirty, missing teeth and emaciated, was Gellert Grindelwald.

Giggling at Voldemort as though he'd just told a joke, "I have been expecting you… Little Dark Lord. You will not find what you seek here-" He stopped to laugh again, wheezing, then continued, "The Hallows will never be yours."

"Take it off," the Dark Lord told Harry in Parseltongue, and Tom obeyed, removing the cloak, hands shaking.

Grindelwald stopped laughing as he looked at Harry, eyes flicking between his face and the cloak he'd just removed, a range of emotions flitting across his face like a slideshow. Shock, realization, fear, sadness, confusion.

The Dark Lord hissed, "Show him."

"Show him what?" Tom quickly said, feigning ignorance.

The Dark Lord looked at them, and though they couldn't see his face; they could feel his ire.

Tom summoned the curse, let it rip from their chest as Voldemort shielded Grindelwald and himself while they howled, the blackness whipping the few objects in the room into the fray; smashed into the walls until the stones themselves gave in, a great ripping, tearing sound as the roof came free and disintegrated, tendrils of the blackness whipping into the darkened sky while he fought to stay upright, pain splitting his head and racing his heart.

When he stopped the curse they stood -Harry trying to catch his breath- with no walls or ceiling, looking out at the Austrian Alps. Grindelwald had buried his face in his hands, his shoulders shook. The Dark Lord was close to his ear, kneeling, whispering, while Grindelwald repeatedly told him no.

"Für das höhere wohl, Grindelwald,"Voldemort stood, wand raised, "Avada Kedavra."

The green light engulfed the broken wizard at their feet.