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It stirred for the first time after a hasty, fleeting grab at the center of its host’s soul. It lay where it was, a puddle of consciousness in the center of a sea of blackness, and listened to the sound of a familiar soul rattling past it.

The soul that had once been its.

His. The identity returned to the soul in slow pulses of dark knowledge, and as the identity grew—as he spent endless moments and hours of time passing in the outer world contemplating the possession attempt on his host—he remembered whom he had been, and knew whom he must be.

A Horcrux. The last made.

As he carefully explored the thoughts blazing past him in the outer whirl of his host’s mind, he revised that opinion. No, the second-to-last. It seemed that his elder self had made his snake familiar a Horcrux as well.

He had doubts about the wisdom of that. Yes, a living Horcrux was possible, as his own existence proved, but a snake could only communicate with his elder self and couldn’t defend herself as readily as a wizard or a witch. Lord Voldemort would be better-served by luring the Horcrux’s host to his side.

Of course, there was the hitch that his host was his elder self’s mortal enemy.

I shall take care of that, he thought, the first time he noticed that he was able to reach out and touch one of his host’s dreams.

*

Although he thought the form his elder self had adopted preferable, there was no chance that his host—Harry—would react to it favorably. Therefore, he made a dream-form for himself that more resembled his younger self, handsome face and human body and all, and waited until Harry was involved in a nightmare of the Department of Mysteries to step in.

In an instant, the endless repetitive motion of Sirius Black falling through the Veil stopped. Harry whipped around and stared at him with wide eyes. Then those eyes narrowed.

“Tom Riddle,” he snarled. “What are you doing here?”

He was startled that Harry appeared to recognize him, but the memories evoked by that name were heaving around them like ocean waves, and when he reached out to them, he realized that Harry had already met one Horcrux and defeated him. The diary, that arrogant sod. He hadn’t even had the foresight to conceal his true nature.

“I am no longer precisely Tom Riddle,” he said, and smiled to see Harry’s suspicion. “You know that you have a connection to Lord Voldemort.”

“Yes,” Harry said slowly.

“I am the embodiment of that connection,” he said. It was even the truth. “You might call me Tom Riddle if you want, or Voldemort. Either is a name for a part of who I am. But I am also part of you, having spent time connected to your mind and your soul.”

“Why should I trust you?”

He shrugged, a motion that felt odder to him than any his human body had adopted so far. “You shouldn’t. But I can offer you insight into Lord Voldemort’s mind that you would not get elsewhere.”

“In exchange for what?”

He smiled. This would be more fun than he had anticipated. “That you listen to that insight. Did you know that not everyone who surrounds you has your best interests at heart?”

“As if Voldemort does?”

“Of course he does not. But that just means that you have one side you can definitely distrust. It doesn’t make the other pure good.”

Harry frowned as if he wanted to disagree, but this time, the memories flying past them centered on desperate grief and fury. The Horcrux touched them and found bloody lines cut into Harry’s hand, the prophecy being spoken by a wavering shape above a Pensieve, Harry’s resentment that Dumbledore had spent a year not looking at him.

Well. We can do something with this.

“I can also help you with Occlumency,” he offered, as the memory that showed Harry’s utter failure to learn it from Severus Snape soared past. “I will be a much better teacher than a professor who has unfairly tormented you and a man who refused to look into your eyes.”

Harry stood there, stiff and suspicious. But he knew—this being who had been Tom Riddle and Voldemort and a Horcrux, all three—what he was doing. He went on, spinning the words that Harry needed to hear, the ones that agreed with him and validated his anger and perspective.

When Harry accepted his tutelage, he had to swallow a smile.

*

Harry’s mind was full of delightful things.

Bad memories that the Horcrux could point to, and point out that his friends hadn’t suffered when they disagreed with Harry.

They didn’t endure a childhood like yours, he breathed into the back of Harry’s mind. They never had to deal with sleeping in a cupboard, or running from Aunt Marge’s dog, or being nearly hit with a frying pan. Ron complains about chores, but what is a bit of light cleaning or scrubbing next to what you had to do? Hermione cautions you to be careful, but what kind of care did she have to take with her parents? What did care ever avail with the Dursleys? They punished you anyway.

Harry’s opinions hardened, much as his Occlumency shields did the same thing. The storm of memories that flew past them grew less frequent, but it didn’t matter. There were always more, other things that Harry hadn’t thought to shield from him and which he could find.

Dumbledore is giving you “lessons” this year, but how useful are they? What does he actually tell you? Not even the full purpose of sharing the memories. I could tell you more.

You can’t tell me more, would come Harry’s weary, irritated thought. You don’t even know for sure what he’s aiming for. What he wants me to see.

But you don’t know either, do you? He talks about understanding and fighting Lord Voldemort, but if he meant that, he would be showing you dueling spells.

Can you show me dueling spells?

He smiled.

*

Meeting in Harry’s mindscape was pleasant, and not only because of the memories that usually encircled them at some point. The Horcrux could feel and touch and taste the way that Harry’s attitude to him shifted over time.

Harry was cautious, of course. He wanted the Horcrux’s knowledge without believing the Horcrux’s opinions about power. But by then, Harry had shared the memory of Voldemort explaining about power in his first year, and it came back and floated around them again and again as they practiced the spells.

Hexes and jinxes he shared with Harry quickly, but the real prize was curses. Harry couldn’t help opening up like a mirror when he saw the curses. And he was good at them. The representation of Tom Riddle’s body went sliding backwards more than once, lost limbs, lost fingers, screamed in pain as fire scorched him.

It didn’t matter, because he could always shed that form, and shed the pain with it. And it gave Harry a sense of triumph that only made him more vulnerable.

The Horcrux was with Harry almost all the time now, riding his mind, watching through his eyes, making sure to stay far away only during Harry’s lessons with Dumbledore. He whispered and he pointed out the way that Hermione and Ron had more time for each other than for Harry, even as Ron snogged Lavender. They cared about each other in a way they would never share with Harry.

The Horcrux, too, was the one who noticed that Ginny Weasley still followed Harry with her eyes. When he brought it up, in one of their midnight dueling sessions, Harry replied dismissively that Ginny had got over her crush on him years ago.

“How do you know that?”

“Well, she’s dating other boys, isn’t she? Why would she do that if she really liked me?”

The Horcrux leaned back and watched Harry as he stood near the wall of the conjured room they shared here. The wall was stone, given that it was based mostly on Harry’s memories of Hogwarts, but it shone blue-black like the night sky. And like the night sky, it had stars. The subtle light played over Harry’s muscles and shone through the shirt that was nearly transparent in any case with the sweat soaking through it.

“Voldemort?”

The Horcrux jolted back into consideration. He shook his head a little. “She does it because she knows that you wouldn’t want to date someone who regarded you with simple hero-worship. This way, she can look like she’s moved on and got over you. And when she makes a move or you notice her, you’re more likely to respond with honest attraction yourself.”

Harry’s eyes narrowed. “That’s a ridiculously convoluted plan.”

The Horcrux laughed. “Convoluted” was a word he had taught Harry, after all.

Harry used his words just as he used the Horcrux’s spells. He spent more time talking to the Horcrux than anyone else, what with Ron and Hermione dancing endlessly around each other. He listened to him.

It was only a matter of time before he yielded completely, and let the Horcrux possessed him, and they became one.

“Watch her,” the Horcrux suggested. “If she’s really ignoring you, then she shouldn’t be looking at you more than your friend Thomas, should she?”

“Maybe I will.”

*

Harry watched, and saw what the Horcrux had seen. A part of him chilled.

No one loves you unconditionally, the Horcrux whispered to him. Ron sought you out and has remained your friend because you’re the Boy-Who-Lived. Hermione became your friend because you saved her life.

That’s an unselfish motivation! And Ron’s loyal.

Loyal, yes. But what do you think would happen if you rejected his sister? What do you think would happen if you told him about me?

Harry had the sense not to respond to that. But he did watch Ginny. And the Horcrux lay in the back of his mind and laughed and laughed as that chilled part of Harry grew colder, and when Ginny did come up to him after a Quidditch match, having broken up with Thomas a week prior, Harry rejected her resoundingly.

Ron yelled at Harry with his ears turning red not to be “mean” to his sister. The Horcrux watched and reveled.

*

It was not enough to sever Harry and Ron’s friendship. The Horcrux had not thought it would be. But he smiled when he saw how long Ron took to apologize, and how Harry only pretended to accept it without a grudge.

It had occurred to the Horcrux that there was something more pleasant he could do to bind Harry to Lord Voldemort’s cause, and when Harry joined him that night, he had rearranged their usual dueling room into a bedroom. That much control over Harry’s mind, he had gained.

Harry’s jaw fell as he stared around at the dimly lit room with a fireplace in the corner and a large bed in the center. The Horcrux had created a naked body for himself this time, one without blemish and handsomer than his mortal form had ever been. Why should he let such limitations stop him, an immortal creature?

Harry looked at him and swallowed. The Horcrux stroked himself idly. He had been hard from the moment he assumed this form. But he was used to waiting.

He did not think Harry would be, he had who never had anything like this.

“You said—I know what you’re doing,” Harry said in an unconvincing voice. It would have been much more convincing if he had been able to take his eyes away from the Horcrux’s erection. “You’re trying to seduce me and turn me against Dumbledore.”

“Or I am trying to provide an outlet for your inconvenient frustration.’

“What?” Harry croaked.

“I know you’re jealous of them, your Housemates who get to snog each other without worrying about being the target of a madman and the student of a man who will only show you memories with no conclusive purpose,” breathed the Horcrux. He shifted and spread his legs, and Harry’s gaze slid between them as if nailed. “You are growing distracted in our duels, less precise. If we do this, it’s not real, no. No real mess is left behind. No one will even be aware that you are here with me. But you will be calmer and less frustrated. And I’ll enjoy it.”

Harry stood there, and stared. And the Horcrux thought that he might muster enough resistance to be inconvenient, after all.

But then Harry made a shuddering, croaking noise, and lumbered over to the bed, taking off his robes as he went.

The Horcrux took care of that by vanishing Harry’s robes with a thought—so close were they grown that he could control the interior of Harry’s mind that way now—and drawing him down on the bed. Harry kissed like a desperate, hopeless thing, and tore at the Horcrux’s shoulders with nails like blunt claws.

But was he not a desperate, hopeless creature in all the ways that mattered?

His broken breath when he came was like a song in the Horcrux’s ears.

*

Dumbledore had made the lessons that he was giving Harry more open now, had told him the name of Horcruxes. So when Harry appeared in the dreamscape the next night and demanded, “Are you one of them?”, the Horcrux wasn’t surprised.

“Yes,” he said, and smiled. He was stretched naked on the large bed now, as they always met, knowing the way his pale skin gleamed against the dark sheets. Harry’s eyes were drawn to him. The Horcrux arched his hips and rolled over. “The hidden seventh one. The one that Dumbledore almost certainly knows about.”

“What?” Harry whispered.

“The one that he wouldn’t want to kill, oh, of course not,” the Horcrux said. He stood up and stalked across the room to Harry, sinking his hands into place on Harry’s shoulders. Harry shook under his touch, helpless and hating and wanting. “Otherwise, he could have taken care of you long ago. But this hinting, this drawing you into a quest, this conviction that only when all the Horcruxes are gone can Lord Voldemort be defeated…what do you think he’s planning?”

Harry stared off into the distance with dark eyes. No memories shifted around them, but the Horcrux had become used to that. Harry was both growing as an Occlumens and was surrendering more and more control of the area in this part of his mind.

“He’ll have me find out,” Harry whispered. “Reason it out, or be told. He’ll have me walk to my death.”

“Yes. The only guarantee that could destroy a Horcrux like this is a Killing Curse. Basilisk venom didn’t do it, after all, when it flooded your body, did it?” The Horcrux’s hands slid up and down Harry’s shoulders and arms, adding to his words, making Harry doubt that it was simply the phoenix’s tears that had saved him. “And Dumbledore probably thinks that a Killing Curse cast by Lord Voldemort himself is the only effective way. The poetic way, even.”

“He—he loves me,” Harry said. “Dumbledore loves me.”

“I told you, didn’t I, Harry, that no one loves you unconditionally? He loves you, but not sternly enough. He won’t kill you himself. He won’t even tell you the truth outright. He’s leaving it up to you, making you suicidal just so he doesn’t have to do it—”

Harry broke down.

The Horcrux took him, cradled him, held him close, and continued speaking the truth, like poisoned honey, into his ears.

*

After that, Harry was as good as his.

The Horcrux had decided that he would wait to try a full possession. For one thing, if he moved too quickly, Harry would recognize the sensation from the Department of Mysteries and fight back. He might even manage to send the Horcrux back into dormant sleep and really walk to his death.

No, the Horcrux had to maintain a delicate balance where Harry was full enough of despair not to confide to his friends or Dumbledore about what he knew but full enough of hope that he would find another solution not to hurl himself along the path to death. The Horcrux had to share insights about the other Horcruxes that would keep Harry chasing them and destroying them.

Why not? The notion of a perfect set of seven had already been shattered when he was created, and then further by the deaths of the diary and the ring. Others could die, as long as he lived, and as long as his elder self had some Horcruxes left.

If the Horcrux had his way, those remaining would be him and the snake, with his elder self as the third piece. Three was also a powerful magical number.

Harry listened. Harry spoke to him more than anyone else, including when he was sitting around the fire in the Gryffindor common room with his friends and appeared to be laughing and listening to them. The Horcrux pointed out all the times Ron acted jealous, all the times Hermione acted insecure because Harry was doing better than her in Defense and Potions and Charms, thanks to a combination of the Half-Blood Prince’s book and the Horcrux’s knowledge.

Harry had to be distant from them. He had to distrust them. He had to know their weaknesses so they didn’t drag him down.

And it was working.

Harry spent the days listening to him, the nights in his arms, and the Horcrux was well content.

*

The locket Horcrux turning out to be a fake was more an annoyance than anything else, since it meant they would have to spend more time hunting for it. And then the Horcrux had to wait through the chaos of Dumbledore’s death and Snape’s apparent betrayal—which he and Harry both knew wasn’t real, was another of Dumbledore’s plots—to breathe the relevant information into Harry’s mind.

R. A. B. Regulus Arcturus Black.

Harry went outside the Hogwarts wards with a secret passage whose location the Horcrux had revealed to him, his mind glistening with the glassiness of complete Occlusion. He Apparated to Grimmauld Place and bullied the house-elf into giving up “Regulus’s locket.”

And then he went down to the Chamber of Secrets and found a basilisk fang.

The Horcrux laughed as his brother died, and Harry stood there and listened.

*

Harry told Ron and Hermione limited things about the Horcruxes and the task that Dumbledore had left to him. He never revealed anything about the Horcrux in his head, or the dreams he had more and more often.

What would they make of you, for having kept such a secret from them? he whispered, when they lay in the bed Harry had imagined together and Harry was spent. The Horcrux’s hands slid up and down, up and down, and Harry shuddered and groaned. What would they say, if they knew how often you spoke to me?

Shame and guilt kept Harry silent, and devoted to his one best friend in the world, the only person who would want him to survive if they knew the truth.

The Horcrux was well pleased.

*

The Horcrux had another task, too, and he played it well. He began to whisper thoughts with a hesitation when it came to talking about Harry’s survival, letting his voice tremble and shake.

I would—if you died—if I lost you—

He would end at strategic places in the sentence and retreat, until Harry could feel only a soft thrumming around his temples, like a crown of smoke hidden beneath the skin. And then he would come back, and laugh, and play at playing it off.

Of course, if you die, I die, too. And you know how much survival matters to all the many pieces of Lord Voldemort.

He wound hope and desire into the gestures that he made in Harry’s dreamscape. He let his hands rest on Harry’s shoulders and waist for longer. He cradled Harry close and let his lips rest on his chest. He would touch his hair when Harry was on the verge of drifting to sleep and whisper, “I never thought I would find anyone who understood me.”

He had to make Harry believe he was loved. And that the Horcrux cared not only for his own survival, but for Harry’s.

It was the only way to keep him from walking to his death, in the end, to counter all the old self-sacrificial instincts and the feeling of shame at carrying around a piece of Lord Voldemort’s soul that might still make him do it.

Harry would sacrifice himself without hesitation for those he loved, but to sacrifice someone who loved him? That was beyond him.

The Horcrux held him, and made him come, and whispered all his promises.

*

Harry found the diadem, going off information the Horcrux provided, before he left school. Then he took Ron and Hermione with him to Grimmauld Place—he had told Minerva McGonagall bluntly that people from the Order would have to take his relatives into hiding before he was seventeen—and pretended to find the diadem there after a long “hunt” through the house.

The scream of the ancient treasure dying from a basilisk fang made the Horcrux writhe in quiet celebration. Particularly since he had felt his brother trying to reach out to Harry and possess him in the moments before he died.

This one is mine.

Hermione and Ron were pleased about the destruction of the diadem, but they watched Harry with cautious eyes when they didn’t think he was looking. Harry noticed, and his bitterness deepened, almost the only emotion the Horcrux could feel now with how good Harry’s Occlumency had become.

The Horcrux embraced it, and breathed passion and understanding back.

You see how they look at you? How they wonder where you got the basilisk fang, how you knew the diadem was supposedly here? They distrust you.

I don’t. I would never distrust you. I would—

He cut off, but Harry came to him in the dreamscape that night and they fucked until they were torn with pleasure.

*

The Horcrux knew that Bellatrix Lestrange had kept Hufflepuff’s cup in her vault at Gringotts, but no way to break into the bank. Annoyingly, his elder self had apparently managed it while possessing Quirrell; Harry had fed that memory to him. But Harry had no more notion than the Horcrux of how it had happened or how Lord Voldemort had escaped being caught.

So there were months that went past while Harry and Ron and Hermione stayed in Girmmauld Place and discussed how to assault Gringotts. Months of Ron and Hermione staring at Harry with dubious eyes when he claimed to have found the location of Hufflepuff’s cup among the “papers” in the Black library. Months of their whispering behind their hands, and the Horcrux teaching Harry how to break the anti-eavesdropping spells they had put up so he could listen.

Hear that, the Horcrux whispered to him. Hear how they hate you, how they doubt you, even though you have never been anything but friendly to them. Ron has never recovered from your rejection of his sister. Hermione has never recovered from your fulfilling your true potential and surpassing her marks in classes.

Neither of them would ever recover from the revelation that you carry a Horcrux of Lord Voldemort entwined with your soul.

*

It didn’t take long, finally. Not after they had come up with a plan to lure out and then kidnap Lestrange, and take hair from her head for Polyjuice, and use the Imperius Curse on the goblins.

Harry did that last. His friends huddled beside him in the guise of random Muggles as he stalked through the bank, and they watched him all the time with harsh, suspicious eyes.

They hate that you care enough about your cause to cast an Unforgivable, sang the Horcrux to Harry. They hate your power.

They were stripped of their Polyjuice disguises by one of the bank’s defenses, but the Horcrux told Harry how to aim a Conjunctivitis Curse at the eyes of a dragon, and how to counter the curse that was operating on the items in Lestrange’s vault. They pulled the cup out and fled, with the Horcrux’s help.

Harry drove the basilisk fang through the cup, once they got back to Grimmauld Place, with such force that it embedded itself in the floor beneath it.

The Horcrux laughed, hiding his laughter in the back of Harry’s mind, behind the glimmering Occlumency walls that were always there now.

*

In the aftermath of the cup’s destruction, there was no reason to wait.

The Horcrux slipped gently out of the dreamscape with the imagined bed where Harry lay motionless in the aftermath of fucking, and grasped hold of that dreamscape, of its connections to the rest of Harry’s mind, and pulled.

In a few seconds, he was no longer floating around the back of Harry’s mind, or around the crown of his skull. He was standing in Harry’s body, seeing with annoyingly blurry eyes. He smiled and picked up the basilisk fang.

It was time to find his elder self. Time to hold out the prizes of a living Horcrux under the full possession of a shard of his soul and the weapon that had destroyed the others, and propose that they be immortal, together.

*

He found his way to Malfoy Manor easily, and he found his way past the wards. They were not meant to keep out Lord Voldemort, and he was a piece of Lord Voldemort, like this. He Disillusioned himself and walked past the confused house-elves, up to and through the endless corridors to the throne room.

Lord Voldemort was waiting.

He began to laugh when he saw Harry’s body. “Do you mean to yield yourself, then?” he asked in Parseltongue, which someone must have told him Harry spoke. “Have you despaired of survival and come to give yourself up?”

The Horcrux smiled and opened his mouth—

And screamed as the glittering walls of Occlumency he hadn’t even noticed hovering around him broke apart, and Harry shoved himself forwards, grabbing possession of his own body back and hurling something that turned over and over through the air at the snake. In seconds, the basilisk fang had sunk into her neck, guided by an aiming spell that the Horcrux had taught him.

Harry turned back to Lord Voldemort and spoke in English. “Get fucked, Riddle,” he said.

The Killing Curse from Lord Voldemort’s wand struck the Horcrux, struck them both, and they were gone.

*

The Horcrux opened his eyes.

He was separate.

He had never been separate. He had been part of a larger soul, part of his elder self, and then he had been unconsciously entwined with another soul, and then he had been consciously part of his host’s body. He was—

He screamed.

A face appeared above him. The Horcrux looked up. He was lying underneath a bench, in what seemed to be a train station, although with the endless, merciless blaze of white beyond that, he couldn’t see any other detail.

Harry looked down at him.

And smiled.

“You said it,” Harry whispered. “You said that no one would ever love me unconditionally. I knew what you were doing, trying to make it seem like you would.” He took a deep breath. “More fool you, to think I would trust a piece of the man who killed the only two people who ever did love me unconditionally.”

The Horcrux screamed. Harry waited through the lingering echoes of it, and spoke with a soft, vicious crackle in his voice into the silence.

“And you were the one who taught me Occlumency. Didn’t you notice that you weren’t seeing the same kinds of memories after a while? That I only showed you what I wanted you to see? That I was the one creating the bed in the dreamscape? Well, no, I know you didn’t.” Harry’s lips cracked and bled when he smiled. “Thanks, Riddle.”

The Horcrux screamed.

“And now…” Harry looked around the white blaze of nothingness. “I know I can go back. Because the Killing Curse killed the Horcrux, not me. You were always separate from me. Especially lately.” He smiled again. “If we had been intertwined the way you planned on when it hit us, we probably would have died together. But I pushed you to the forefront of my body and held myself back, which is why the curse hit you first. And now?” He lifted his shoulders in a shrug.

The Horcrux screamed and tried to struggle towards him. Its body was a tiny thing, the size of the baby it had once been a part of. Harry neatly sidestepped its grasping hand.

“I’m going to go back, and I’m going to kill him,” Harry said softly. “Thanks again for all the curses you taught me. And for the knowledge you gave me of him. He’s going to be insane with fear. Not in the best condition. And with the wards on the Manor preventing Apparition and Portkeys.”

He shrugged again. He said, “Bye, Voldemort.”

And he vanished.

The Horcrux screamed, and screamed, and screamed. It listened to the dying echoes, and knew it would always be here, always be screaming in pain and despair and the long hopelessness of separation.

World without end.

Immortality.

The End.