– – – – – Rebirth Chapter 24 – – – – –

There was a whole week spent, still at Hogwarts, after the end of his last exams, before the end of year feast and the day they all departed on the Hogwarts Express. During his first youth, he had always been desperately grateful for the extra week. It was one less week he'd had to spend at the orphanage, and as an added bonus, it was a week spent at Hogwarts without classes or exams. But at this particular time, he was actually a bit more eager to just leave then he was to spend more time then necessary at Hogwarts.

To ease his annoyance at having to stick around longer then was really needed, he slipped away to the Chamber, and to the Room of Hidden things several times during that last week to get a few more books or little items to take away with him.

The second to last day, they all got their exam results – except for the fifth years and the seventh years, since they would have to get their OWL and NEWT results from the Ministry during the summer. Harry had top marks in every one of his classes. The person in second place for the first years varied between two different people, depending on the class. It was either Hermione, or Draco, swapping between second and third place, and one or two where they'd basically tied in their marks. Draco had been clearly incensed that he'd been topped by a muggleborn in some of his classes, but didn't seem the least bit phased that Harry had topped him with such ease. Draco seemed to expect it, really.

Hell, everyone seemed to expect it. It was no secret that Harry Potter was considered a Prodigy among his peers.

The end of year feast was... a feast. Nothing especially noteworthy as far as Harry was concerned, especially since every meal at Hogwarts tended to be rather impressive. Harry had all of his possessions packed away the night before leaving and ready to go. The following morning he shrunk down his trunk and slipped it into his pocket before the rest of his dorm mates had even gotten up. The house elves would be taking everyone's trunks down to Hogsmeade Station for the students, and Harry didn't want his stuff going down with everyone else's luggage seeing as how he wasn't going to be getting on the train.

He attended breakfast with his housemates and bid his farewell to all of his 'friendly acquaintances' and to his 'friends' from the study group. He rode down to Hogsmeade in a carriage with Draco, Crabbe, Goyle, and Theo, but parted ways with them as they headed towards the train and Harry instead walked over to meet Sirius, who was standing just to the side of the station already waiting for him.

"Hey, Harry!" Sirius said as he greeted him with a wide excited smile that had Harry smiling in return.

"Hey, Sirius," Harry replied easily.

"Well, we've got two choices at this point. We could head back to my flat and take the floo to the new house, or I can apparate the pair of us to the front and go in through the front door. Got a preference?"

"Hmm... I think I'd like to apparate," Harry said.

"Sounds fine with me."

"How much longer have you got the flat for?" Harry asked as they began to walk away from the front of the train station to the designated apparition point.

"Just to the end of the month, so just over a week," Sirius answered easily. "I've already got it emptied out though. I'll probably just turn in the key early and call it good."

Harry nodded and the pair came to a stop and Sirius offered his hand to Harry who took it without hesitation. He hated side-along apparition, but it wasn't that big a deal as long as you weren't doing it with excessive frequency. Plus it didn't leave soot all over your clothes like Floo travel did.

Sirius gripped him firmly and Harry felt the uncomfortable sensation of being squeezed through a tiny tube and tugged, hard. A moment later a crack sounded and Harry stumbled slightly before recovering his balance and looking up to find himself in front of the familiar two-story house that he and Sirius had picked back during the spring break.

Sirius looked up at the house with a wide smile before looking down at Harry.

"Welcome to Number Fifty-Two Pentwin Road, Lower Thornhill! Our new home!"

Harry chuckled at Sirius' enthusiasm and smiled up at the house.

"New home," he said lightly under his breath, and at that moment it really truly sunk in. He was never going to have to see the Dursley's again. It wasn't like dealing with them had been all that difficult or painful over the last few years since he'd had them trained so well, but it was still a slight relief to know he'd never have to set foot in their damned snooty little house again. No more returning every two weeks to maintain the wards. No more sleeping in that ruddy little bed. Never again would he even look upon Number 4 Privet Drive. He was done.

He wondered if he should bother sending them a letter informing them that he'd never be coming back. The idea of letting them stew in fear was amusing. Never knowing for sure, if he might show up some day... But, no. He was done with them. Still, he didn't consider them worth his time. Oh! He'd have Dobby tell them! That would be a lovely fright. A house elf in the Dursley's pristine muggle home. Oh, that was an amusing image.

And that way he wouldn't even have to bother himself with writing them and wouldn't have to even consider stepping back in their home.

He gave a determined little done, having settled on his decision and was turning his attention back on his new home when a small gasp escaped his mouth and his hand flew up to his forehead. He staggered slightly in surprise and had to blink his eyes several times to refocus them.

Sirius heard the little gasp and looked down at Harry with concern in his eyes. Harry didn't appear to be in pain though. Mostly he just looked bewildered and possibly a bit dizzy.

"You alright, Harry?" Sirius asked.

"Yeah, I think so," Harry said as he lowered his hand. Now it was Sirius' turn to gasp. Harry's eyes widened as they locked on his hand as it passed down in front of his vision and he saw a bit of blood on his palm.

"Harry! You're scar's bleeding!" Sirius exclaimed.

Harry looked owlishly at his hand. "I see that," he said quietly.

"Lets get you inside and get that cleaned up," Sirius said, quickly ushering Harry through the small wooden front gate and up the small path to the front door. They passed through the foyer, down the hall to the left and into the small bathroom beside the dining room-converted-library.

Sirius grabbed a small hand towel from a hook mounted to the wall and ran some water over it before gently dabbing at Harry's forehead. Harry frowned in annoyance at the man babying him. He was certainly capable of cleaning himself up, but sighed and let his godfather finish up.

"Well, it looks fine..." Sirius said hesitantly after a few minutes of examining Harry's stupid scar. "You gasped... did it hurt?"

"Uhm... sort of a zap, I guess." Harry admitted hesitantly. It had been like something had just given way and a small flood of magic had been released from behind a dam. Some magic just just left him in a powerful woosh, while another bunch of magic had sort of let free. But it wasn't really painful, and only mildly overwhelming for a moment before he was able to recover from the shock of whatever it was that had just happened.

Sirius was frowning deeply with obvious concern. "Maybe I should call a healer..."

"No!" Harry exclaimed quickly. "No, really Sirius, this isn't a big deal."

"Not a big deal? Harry your scar from where you got hit with a killing curse more than ten years ago just started bleeding for no apparent reason. I would consider that a big deal."

Harry rolled his eyes. "It's not like its the first time it's happened."

Sirius' brow furrowed with concern again. "This has happened before?"

"Well, not exactly like this... the last time my scar bled it actually hurt... like a lot. This was just a little woosh and a zap."

"When did it happen last?"

Harry huffed in impatient annoyance before giving a resigned sigh. "Uh... I guess it was when I was eight."

Sirius continued to frown and looked contemplative for a moment. "I'm going to fire-call Remus and ask his opinion."

Harry rolled his eyes. "You don't need to bother him," Harry groaned. "It's really not a big deal."

Sirius shook his head and turned, heading out of the bathroom and towards the fireplace in the foyer. Harry shook his head at the man's distracted retreat but took advantage of his isolation in the bathroom to finally take a look at himself in the mirror.

He leaned over the sink and peered closely at his scar, using his Sight to examine it for any abnormalities. His eyes widened and his mouth slowly dropped open as he realized what was different.

The Light magic was gone. The magical protection left over from his mum was... gone.

But... why?

He took a step back from the mirror and frowned, deeply in thought as he tried to figure out what could have caused it. He had only ever seen that magical signature in three locations. One was around his scar, the second was around Privet Drive, and the last was just residue in his nursery back in Godric's Hollow.

He wondered suddenly, if he were to go back and visit Privet Drive if the magic would be gone from there too.

But was that it? He had just been thinking about Privet Drive. He'd just decided that he would never be setting foot there again. That he was done with it and would never go back. He has just mentally committed himself to utterly abandoning it and any connection to his blasted aunt and her family.

Was that it?

The excuse for him having been at the Dursley's had something to do with blood wards, right? That he was protected there by being near a close blood relation of his mother, who's sacrificial magic had laid the foundation for the protective magic. Dumbledore had explained the blood wards extensively to Sirius in his letters to give him an example of how well 'protected' Harry had been in his muggle relatives home and how important it was to establish very powerful wards around their new home. By mentally and emotionally severing all ties with the Dursley's, had he just destroyed the last thing holding that ridiculous Light magic protection in place?

A sudden and unexpected laugh escaped Harry's mouth as he realized that all that work and all that research he had done while attempting to find some way to get the damned Light magic in his scar to just go the hell away... and all he'd had to do was mentally and emotionally give up on the Dursley's?

He wanted to bang his head on a wall in exasperation. But there was little point in doing such a thing. Plus Sirius would wonder if he'd lost his mind.

Harry wondered suddenly if Dumbledore had known at all that this might happen. Well, he probably knew that the wards around Privet Drive would fall, but he wondered if the man was aware that the Light magic around the horcrux was gone now, too? Dumbledore would be more apt to suspect him if he did know it. Without the Light magic there, it was more likely that Tom's soul fragment would begin to effect Harry mentally and emotionally. At least, it would, if Harry were not more than powerful enough to keep it at bay on his own. Plus his relationship with Tom would also play a role in what his horcrux tried to do to him. It could very well choose to remain dormant.

The horcruxes had a teeny bit of free will. Tom's first horcrux – his childhood diary – for example, was capable of possessing someone who wrote in it long enough and using them to re-enter the Chamber at Hogwarts and release the basilisk to attack muggleborns. Tom had set it up that way so that he could finally fulfill 'Salazar Slytherin's Great Work' without putting himself at risk, and so that it would happen when he was no longer there to have to suffer if the school was forced closed. Tom had thought it was a brilliant idea back when they were sixteen. Now, it just seemed silly.

Harry wondered suddenly if he would be able to converse with the soul bit stuck inside him. You could converse with the diary horcrux by writing in the diary. You could converse with the locket horcrux if you were able to open the locket. Inside was a small portrait of Tom and you could speak with it. The others didn't really have a method for communication with them though... but considering that this one was inside him...

For that matter... he wondered if he'd have an easier time trying to contact Tom over their link, now. He wouldn't be splitting his attention between holding the Light protection magic back at the same time he tried traveling across the link. He could focus all of his energy towards trying to break through Tom's stupid Occlumency wall.

A surge of hopeful excitement soared through him and Harry found himself grinning at himself in the mirror.

After a moment, he managed to get his expression back under control and went back out into the hall to find Sirius. The man had his head in the fireplace and Harry could hear half of the conversation, but wasn't really paying it much attention. Sirius finally pulled himself out and stood back up just as Remus came through looking concerned. Harry huffed in annoyance as the two men set to looking him over again with obvious worry on their faces. The three went into the family room and the two older men grilled Harry for information on every odd for inexplicable thing his scar had ever done. Of course, most of what he told them was bull, but he had to give them something to satisfy their concerns.

He tried to reassure them, and managed to dodge a trip back to Hogwarts to have Madam Pomfrey look him over, and also managed to flat out refuse a trip to St. Mungo's. They concluded the talk with Harry promising that he would tell them right away if anything else weird happened and he was finally allowed to go up to his new room to begin unpacking.

Sirius and Remus came upstairs with him and Harry could hear the two of them down the hall as Sirius showed Remus one of the two guest rooms that he then began to insist Remus make use of as soon as he was ready to leave the castle for the summer. Remus appeared to be protesting, but Sirius was making some persuasive arguments and Harry found himself chuckling quietly to himself as he pulled his clothes out of the wardrobe compartment of his trunk.

He really was surprised sometimes that Sirius had been sorted into Gryffindor instead of Slytherin. The man clearly still had plenty of Slytherin traits in him, he just kept them subtly hidden. Of course, Harry had realized by now that Sirius ending up in the house of red and gold had most likely been an act of rebellion against his overly strict and old fashioned family. He probably could have gone either way though. The hat probably even gave him a choice. He'd have to ask him sometime if his suspicions were correct.

He was fairly sure they were when he heard Remus finally giving in and accepting the room. But only for a few weeks. I can find myself a flat, Sirius. I'm not a charity case.

Harry chuckled.

–

Remus stayed for most of the day, Flooing back to Hogwarts just after lunch to finish up some paperwork he had to do, and then coming back later that evening for dinner. The three chatted easily over the meal that Sirius had managed his way through. The man wasn't a bad cook, per se, but he certainly wasn't a good one either. Harry was debating between offering to do the cooking himself, or trying to figure out a way to introduce Sirius to Dobby. He wasn't sure how he would explain to the two wizards that he'd come into the ownership of a house elf, but if the cooking situation wasn't resolved soon, he would force himself to figure something out.

After food they retired to the family room where conversation was light for a bit. Sirius at one point noted his shock that nothing horrible had happened to Remus all year and wondered if the werewolf had managed to dodge the curse.

"If looks like you may have gotten off, Mooney. Lets hope I'm not jinxing you and something nasty is going to happen in the next couple days. All the more reason for you to move in right away."

Remus chuckled weakly and shook his head.

"But you're coming back for next year, right?" Harry asked, looking up at Remus hesitantly.

Remus looked thoughtful and Sirius frowned as he looked between the two.

"You can't seriously be considering coming back, are you?" Sirius asked, looking a bit worried. "It was always worse for those that tried to come back a second year."

"Dumbledore has asked me to return..." Remus answered hesitantly.

"You were lucky, Remus! You got through a whole school year teaching Defense without ending up dead, maimed, or imprisoned! You should count your blessings and call it quits," Sirius said with a determined nod.

Remus looked torn and was looking down at the small coffee table in front of the couch where his tea was currently resting.

Harry scowled lightly and huffed before running a hand through his hair. "I think you should go back," he said finally.

"Harry, you don't know how bad it can get," Sirius said in a slightly pleading voice. "I've seen what's happened to some of them. It was bad."

"But Remus wants to teach, right?" Harry asked looking at Remus who blinked at him for a startled moment before looking away again.

"Yeah, but he's not going to get to teach very long before the curse comes in and blows something to pieces in a spectacular display of life fuck-uppery!"

"Sirius!" Remus reprimanded.

"Oh, Harry doesn't care if I curse," Sirius grumbled. "Do you Harry?"

"You're setting a bad example!"

Harry shook his head and snickered for a moment before turning serious again and looking at Remus with a thoughtful expression.

"I still think you should go back. I think you'll be fine."

Remus frowned slightly and sighed but Sirius' eyes suddenly narrowed and zoomed in on Harry with a contemplative look to them.

"'Think he'll be fine'?" Sirius echoed curiously, piercing Harry with his eyes.

Harry blinked back at him blankly, not responding in any way.

"What makes you say something like that? That you 'think he'll be fine'?" Sirius repeated.

Harry shrugged. "Nothing, really. Just a gut feeling, I guess."

Sirius gaze grew suspicious for a moment before a sly smirk curled his lips. "A gut feeling. Sure."

Harry narrowed his own gaze and stared right back at Sirius for a moment, practically daring the wizard to accuse him of something or question him further. The man chuckled after a moment and leaned back in his armchair, looking relaxed all of a sudden.

"Yeah, maybe it would be okay. Why not give it a shot?" he said to Remus, who looked shocked by the sudden switch.

"Excuse me?" Remus said, bewildered.

"You heard the kid. He's got a gut feeling. Maybe you will be okay."

Remus looked back and forth between Harry and Sirius with a slight frown. "What am I missing?" he asked cautiously.

Harry rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest as Sirius' grin grew wider. Fucking cocky ex-Auror. Harry wondered what exactly the man thought he'd figured out, but wasn't about to ask.

"Nothing, Remus. Never mind. So, did Sirius tell you about the room in the basement beside the potions lab?" Harry asked, effectively changing the subject. It was only a week until the next full moon, and discussion easily shifted to the arrangements the three would be making for Remus' next transformation.

– –

"Hey, Sirius, I'm heading to bed!" Harry called out down the hall from his open doorway. Harry heard a muffled reply from somewhere inside Sirius' bedroom across the hall and then ducked back into his own room to dig through his new dresser where he stored his sleep pants.

He'd just pulled them out and closed the drawer when a light tap came on the open door behind him. He turned and looked over his shoulder to find Sirius standing there, giving him a small, hesitant, smile.

"You need something?" Harry asked.

Sirius twisted his mouth slightly and looked as if he were contemplating his words. "I... suppose. It's not that I need something, I just..." Sirius trailed off and sighed slightly.

Harry turned around fully and looked at the man with mild curiosity.

Sirius looked pensive for another moment before he looked up with a slightly more determined expression.

"You know you can trust me, don't you Harry?"

Harry blinked. "Yeah, of course," he answered calmly.

"No... really. You can trust me."

"I know that Sirius," Harry said, giving him an amused yet curious look.

"No. Clearly you don't, or you wouldn't feel the need to hide things from me."

Harry's expression became guarded and he leveled Sirius with an utterly blank expression as he wondered where this conversation was going to go.

"You see?" Sirius said, pointing at Harry, suddenly. "Like that. You're closing yourself off from me. You don't need to do that, Harry! I mean it. You can trust me. I..." Sirius huffed and ran his hand through his wavy shoulder-length black hair and sighed. "You're my best mate's son. My godson. But far more important than any of that? You saved me, Harry. You saved my life. Everyone else in the world was content to forget about me and leave me to rot in that awful place until I died. But you got me out. I owe you my life for that."

Harry didn't even blink. He just continued to level Sirius with a blank stare, which only seemed to frustrate Sirius further.

"Harry..." he began again and took a step inside the 'younger' wizard's room. "Being locked away in Azkaban for ten years... well, it gives a person a lot of time to think," Sirius said with a rather humorless bark of a laugh. "It gives a person a lot of time to go over their mistakes. Their choices in life... to think about what they wasted. It gives you time to realize what's really important. Not just the stupid petty things that you thought were important, but what's really important..."

"Is this going somewhere?" Harry asked in a flat tone that seemed to startle Sirius.

The wizard frowned slightly and ran his hand through his hair again. "Yes... Look, like I said; you saved me. Even if you only did it just so that you could get out from under Dumbledore's legal control, it doesn't change the fact that you saved me."

Harry's brows rose into his forehead slightly, and he had to mentally give the man credit for having realized his ulterior motives for having freed him... and also for not taking it badly as Harry would have expected him to.

"I owe you, Harry. And..." Sirius shrugged and grinned, "I like you."

"You don't even know me, Sirius," Harry said, pointedly.

"Then let me get to know you," Sirius pleaded. "Let me get to see the real you. You don't have to pretend with me, Harry! You don't have to put up some false facade and act like someone else in order to fit some expectation you think I have of you. I... I want to be here for you. But if I'm going to help you, you have to trust me."

Harry leveled Sirius with a very long, very speculative look and Sirius just stood there waiting without so much as flinching under Harry's sharp gaze.

"What exactly do you expect me to tell you, Sirius?" Harry asked aver a very long few minutes.

Sirius sighed and sort of weakly threw his arms into the air with exasperation. "I... I don't know, Harry. Anything. Just... give me something? That's all I ask. Just... consider trusting me?"

Harry sighed, finally breaking a little from his blank stoic mask. He turned away from Sirius as he engaged in an internal debate. There was no way he was going to come completely clean with the man – that was without question – but... perhaps he could tell him something. He'd already acknowledged that he was going to have to address Sirius' tendency to see through his act more often than just about anyone else.

"Tell me something, Sirius," Harry said without turning around. "What first made you start to figure I was hiding things?"

Sirius chuckled slightly. "Well... some of the stuff that Remus was telling me from the start really got me wondering... I mean, an eleven year old kid caught Pettigrew on his own and got me out of prison all on his own. But I guess it was that meeting in Dumbledore's office just before the Easter holiday that really made me start to look a bit deeper with you."

"Ah..." Harry said simply, still looking away.

"I mean, I knew you had to be acting, just because of what Remus had told me about you, and how you felt about Dumbledore – how you didn't trust him and didn't seem to like him much. But I never would have guessed you were acting from what I witnessed that day in his office. So... well, it made me realize right then and there that there was obviously a lot more to you then you showed people."

"So, from then on, you always questioned and second-guessed everything you saw from me," Harry concluded and Sirius shrugged and nodded.

Harry sighed again and slowly turned around to look at Sirius who was standing just inside Harry's room and looking rather nervous. Harry took a few steps to the side and pulled the chair out from behind his desk and sat down.

"Sit," Harry said, waving his hand towards another chair sitting against the wall beside the door.

Sirius pulled it forward a bit and sat opposite Harry.

"I can't tell you everything," Harry began. "But I'm willing to tell you some things. Will that be enough?"

Sirius' eyes lit up with hope and he nodded. "I'd take anything at this point."

"Do you know anything about reincarnation?"

Sirius blinked at him and his eyes widened with apparent surprise and confusion. "Reincarnation?" he echoed somewhat incredulously.

"Yes. Rebirth. Soul-recycling. Life after death, after life, after death. Reincarnation. Do you know anything about it?"

"Er... well, I guess not, really. I mean, I understand the theory. The idea is that after a person dies, they're born again as someone else, right?"

"Yes."

"Alright... so?"

"It's true. I mean, that's how it works. Souls are re-used again and again. There's different terminology depending what you read or who you learn it from, but the ones I generally go with is calling the... the place that you go after you die – let's call it the Astral Plane. And all sentient life that exists in our world exists there first. That's your astral body. We all have astral bodies, and that's our real body. This bag of water and flesh that you're in right now is just a temporary vessel that the real you is connected to through what I call an astral 'tether'. You body is just what your astral mind is temporarily connected to until the body dies. When your body dies, the tether detaches and your consciousness will return to the astral plane where it will rest and wait until another compatible physical body is conceived that needs an astral soul to run it, and your astral body is tethered to it.

"And that's how it works, over and over again. It's an endless loop, really. There's next to nothing that will destroy an astral body, as far as I can tell. Your soul will live on, forever. You just keep getting reborn."

Sirius was looking at Harry with wide, semi-stunned eyes and he blinked slowly. "Okay... so... how do you know this, exactly?"

"I studied it. A lot, really. In my last life, that is."

Sirius' eyes widened. "Your last life?"

"Yes. You see, I'm a bit of an anomaly. I have a very young astral body. My soul was born quite recently. Since astral bodies just get reused again and again, there isn't demand for new ones all that often, but it does happen, and when there is demand that cannot be immediately met by current supply, a new soul comes into existence. Don't ask me how, even I don't know that one. But anyway, my previous life – as in, the one before this one – was my first life. And during that life, I studied life and death and the astral plane, a lot. During those studies, I discovered a... ritual that... okay, first you need to understand something else. The astral body remembers everything. Every bit from every life you've ever lived is stored with perfect precision in your astral body's mind. But when connected to a physical body, we only have access to the chemical memories in our physical brain, and thus, only have access to the memories from this life.

"There is this filter in place between our physical mind and our astral mind that prevents us from accessing the knowledge and memories of all our previous lives. The ritual that I performed destroyed this filter. Permanently. What this means is that no matter how many times I die and am reborn, I will always have access to my astral mind. Access to all of my knowledge and memories from every life that I will ever live."

Harry paused to give Sirius a moment to absorb what he'd said. Said wizard looked a bit overwhelmed and clearly still fairly confused.

"I'm... not sure I quite understand," Sirius admitted after a long moment. "You... alright, so you remember your previous life – is that what you're saying?"

"Right. I was born into this life, still completely remembering my last one. So, when I told you and Remus that back when I was a babe and I witnessed Dumbledore casting the Fidelius that I didn't understand what any of it meant, but I was able to look back at the memories later and understand it in retrospect... in reality, I understood perfectly well what was going on at the time. I was in the body of a baby, but I still had all of the knowledge and memories from the forty years I lived in my last life."

"Merlin..." Sirius breathed out in disbelief. "That's why you know so much magic. Why you can cast non verbal magic... Oh! That's why you're an animagus at age eleven!"

Harry chuckled and shrugged. "Interestingly enough, my animagus form didn't change from my last life to this one. I brewed the potion during September just to be sure, and knew right off that my form was the exact same. After that I went ahead and gave it a go and it just worked."

Sirius gave a strangled laugh, looking utterly shell-shocked. "So you... I mean... okay, wait... this previous life of yours, obviously you were magical. Were you still in Britain? How long ago was it? You said... what, forty, right? I... how old are you, really?" Sirius trailed off, looking overwhelmed by his own confusion.

Harry smiled and ran his hand down the back of his head, pulling the tie out of his hair as he went and then running his fingers through it, smoothing it a bit. "Uh, yes. I was a wizard, and yes I was in Britain. Fourteen years passed between my death in my last life and my birth into this one. Time passed oddly in the astral plane. It felt like only a few years passed between my death and my next life, so when I finally realized what year it was after I was reborn, I was rather shocked. I was forty years old when I was murdered, so if you take that, plus the eleven years I've lived in this life, and I'd say I'm fifty one. I suppose you could add a few theoretical years to that for the time I experienced while I was dead, but like I said, time passed oddly in there, because it's all about perception, so I'd have a hard time really counting it."

"You're fifty-one," Sirius deadpanned.

"Uh... yes."

"And you were murdered?" Sirius asked, his eyes going a bit hard.

"Yes. Although, I wasn't really the target. I jumped in front of a killing curse aimed at my lover, during a battle."

"Wow..."

Harry made a noncommittal noise in his throat and shrugged at the awestruck look in Sirius' eyes.

Sirius blinked owlishly as he seemed to go over things in his mind again for a moment before he laughed lightly and shook his head. "You're older than I am."

Harry snickered. "Yup."

"I think I can see why you kept trying to warm me up to the idea of you being rather independent and not wanting a babysitter."

"Yeah, that gets real old, real fast. There are times when I like to actually act my age. You know, for about four solid years between the ages of six and ten I made regular trips to Diagon Alley under a glamour almost every day?"

"You did, what?" Sirius exclaimed with a bit of amusement. "How did that work? A glamour can't change your height and can only do so much to mask your muscle and body mass."

"I made myself look like a part-goblin half-breed," Harry said, snickering. "That way, it wasn't so odd that I was so short. Quite a few of the shop owners down Diagon and Knockturn knew me by name – although it was an alias, of course. I was quite the regular. Basically, I was desperate to escape muggle Surrey. Once I managed to get my old wand back, I didn't really hold back."

"Your old wand?" Sirius asked, his eyes widening slightly and then traveling over to the bedside table where Harry's wand currently rested.

"Right. My partner – the lover I died protecting? Well, obviously he knew about the things I'd done in an effort to make myself pseudo-immortal. He and I had an arrangement. If I died, he promised to put my wand into my Gringott's vault. I had arranged this set up with the goblins where, upon my death, my vault was frozen and put on hold until someone was able to come along and meet all of the criteria to lay claim to it. The criteria needed to claim it were all very specific and rather odd, so no one would ever be able to just guess it. Basically I set it up so that whenever I was reborn, I could find my way to Gringott's and reclaim my old vault, and thus, get my wand, my money, and all my stuff back."

"And that's the wand, right there?"

"Right."

"Wow..." Sirius looked thoughtful again for a moment before he looked up at Harry, speculatively. "He?"

"Huh?"

"You said this lover of yours was a he? And you were male in your previous life, right?"

Harry's brows flattened and an annoyed expression graced his features. "Is that a problem?" he asked in a clipped tone.

Sirius laughed and quickly shook his head, waving his hand. "No, no! Oh Merlin, no. Just making sure I understood everything. Believe me, that's not something that's going to bother me."

Harry cocked a curious brow but didn't feel inclined to ask for clarification on that statement.

"So, does anyone else know?"

"About me being reincarnated?"

"Yes."

"Lucius Malfoy does."

Sirius made a choking sound and gaped at Harry. "What? Why him?"

"I know you're not going to like this, Sirius, but I knew the Malfoy's in my last life. I trusted Abraxas and his sister Astraea – in fact, when I attended Hogwarts in my first life, Astraea was in my class – and when I realized I had a familial relation with Lucius' wife, I took that, combined with my general trust for the family, and decided to come clean with the man. I needed someone in a powerful position on my side in case anything came up."

"Trust? You trust the Malfoy's?" Sirius exclaimed, looking utterly dumbstruck.

"I trust that I understand what motivates them. Money, power, influence, political gain. They're easy to predict. And since I've got this ridiculous 'Boy-Who-Lived' title and the fame that comes with it, I knew that Lucius would likely be willing to assist me in exchange for the perceived political influence that would come with a positive relationship between us."

Sirius blinked at him blankly for a moment before he snorted and began to chuckle. "You were a Slytherin in your last life, weren't you?"

Harry rolled his eyes but grinned. "How did you guess?" he asked with playful sarcasm. "You know, I was good friends with your dad."

Sirius stopped his chuckling and looked at Harry with obvious surprise. "You were?"

"Yup. I really liked your dad, actually. He was a couple years below me... lets see... I was in my 3rd year when he started his first. He and Cygnus started that year. I like your aunt Lucretia a lot too, but you mum Walburga was a bitch. No offense."

Sirius snorted. "None taken. She was an awful wretched woman." Sirius stared off into space, appearing rather stunned for a moment. "That's very... odd... to think that you were around with all of them when they were younger."

Harry laughed and shrugged. "Yeah, I suppose so. You know, when I was around six or seven and I started sneaking my way back into the wizarding world to get away from the muggles, I looked up the Potter family tree, and I can't even tell you how stunned I was when I saw that my grandmother was Dorea. I just couldn't fathom how she ended up marrying Charlus Potter." Harry shook his head and chuckled weakly before shrugging.

"Did you know Charlus?"

"Yeah, but not closely. He was in Gryffindor and I was in Slytherin. He was also older by a few years."

"Didn't get along, huh?"

Harry snorted. "Understatement."

Sirius laughed weakly before sighing heavily. "This is so insane."

Harry gave Sirius a soft smile and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "I'm still Harry Potter, just as much as I was the person in my last life. I still think back very fondly on James and Lily. They're really the only people I associate as 'parents'. I was an orphan in my first life. My father died before I was born and my mum died when I was just over three months old. Lily was... she was wonderful." Harry paused, looking down sadly. "It hurt... a lot... to watch her die. More than I had really expected it to. I thought I could be detached enough from it all... that I'd seen enough death..." he sighed and sat up straighter.

"She and James meant a lot to me, even if I only knew them for fifteen months. And the time I spent with you and Remus during that time... it was nice. It was a good time, even if I was frustrated by being trapped in the body of an infant. After everything happened and Dumbledore ditched me on the Dursley's doorstep and neither you nor Remus ever came for me... well, I actually thought you were both dead. That the only reason that I would have ended up in the Dursley's custody was if everyone else had died. Although I did understand that Remus would never be able to get guardianship over me because of his 'condition'. But you... I really didn't know that they'd locked you away in Azkaban until I was seven and found it while researching the Blacks.

"I even did a bunch of digging, trying to get court transcripts from your trial that didn't exist, but had a hard time getting through the red tape since people had gone to a lot of trouble to bury the evidence. The thing is that at the time, I thought you'd actually killed Pettigrew. I had no idea he was still alive. I realized they'd locked you up, thinking you were the secret keeper and a Death Eater and while I knew that wasn't true, I still thought you were guilty of murder. I knew I could try and clear you on some of the charges, but the big one would still be there and you'd still be stuck in Azkaban. I didn't think it was worth the risk of exposing myself and how I knew what I knew if I wasn't even going to be getting you out of prison."

Harry looked at Sirius, slightly apologetic, but Sirius waved his hand in a dismissive manner.

"Don't worry about it, Harry. I doubt you could have done anything back then anyway. What matters is that you did do something about it now, and for that I'm eternally grateful."

Harry nodded and the room slipped into silence for a minute.

"So... are you really okay with this?" Harry asked hesitantly, watching Sirius closely.

Sirius gave a weak laugh and ran his hand over his face roughly. "Yeah... yeah, it's just... it's a lot. Wow. I still don't think I've really processed it completely."

"There's a lot more, obviously..." Harry said cautiously, still eyeing Sirius.

The man groaned slightly, but then laughed and sighed. "Yeah, I can imagine there is..."

"You're a smart man, so I have the distinct feeling that you're going to connect a lot of dots on your own..."

"Yeah..."

"And you're still going to be okay with this? With me?"

"You mean the fact that you were a Slytherin, you were buddy-buddy with the Malfoys and the Blacks, and the fact that the only sort of magic I can possibly imagine being able to make a person retain their memories after death has got to be some seriously Dark shit...? Yeah, Harry. I'm okay with you. Like I said, you saved me. I owe you my life. I'm not going to turn on you."

"You can't tell anyone else what I've told you. Not even Remus. I'm not ready for him to know yet. Especially if he's going to be teaching at Hogwarts."

Sirius looked a bit disappointed but nodded his head. Suddenly his eyes lit up and he grinned at Harry. "Did you do something about the Defense Against the Dark Arts curse?"

Harry chuckled, ducked his head and shrugged. "Maybe. But only until Remus is done teaching. The curse will bypass him, but it'll probably come back and attack the next guy who comes along."

"How?"

"It's complicated." Harry replied with a grin.

Sirius snorted. "Fine, don't tell me." Sirius stood up and stretched his back. "Well, I think I'll head to bed."

"Sounds like a good idea," Harry agreed, standing up and returning his chair to his desk.

Sirius pushed the chair he'd used back against the wall beside the door and turned back to look at Harry. "Thank you," he said sincerely and Harry looked at him with mild surprise.

"Thank you... for not, you know... freaking out about it." Harry replied with a grin.

"Goodnight, Harry."

"Goodnight, Sirius."

– –

Harry hopped down the last few steps and headed into the kitchen while running his hand through his still-damp hair. He pushed the door open and made his way over to the cozy little table in the breakfast nook where Dobby already had breakfast waiting for him, and Sirius was sitting reading the Daily Prophet while occasionally sipping from a mug of coffee.

It had been just under one week since Harry had left Hogwarts and he had partially 'come clean' with Sirius about his unusual origins. Sirius had at one point asked him what his name had been in his old life and Harry had considered simply refusing to tell him. Instead, he told Sirius that his name had been Lucan Valerius, since it was true – it had been his middle name, and his real family name, after all. It had the added benefit of next to no one from his old life having known it. Everyone had known him as Herakles Jude.

Tom had always wondered why he kept his ties to the Valerius secret and Heri had never been able to give him a good explanation for it. Really, he couldn't even come up with a logical reason for himself. He just liked keeping his 'real identity' a secret between he, Tom, and the few he trusted with it.

Now, he was making use of the name again, but in a subdued way. It was the name he had used as an alias during his trips to Diagon Alley a few years prior, and it was the name he still used on his private post box where Lucius and the goblins sent his correspondences to.

Dobby was still retrieving his mail from said post box every week, but the elf no longer had to hide to bring Harry his letters. Harry had told Sirius about the elf the morning after their talk, when Harry came down stairs to discover Sirius cursing over some burned bacon, and a skillet full of what Harry suspected was intended to be an omelet of some sort.

Dobby had moved into their home, taking up residence in a large walk-in panty that was connected to the laundry room. The little elf seemed entirely too happy to have wizards to look after more regularly. Harry knew the little guy had to be bored off his crazy little rocker spending so much time at Godric's Hollow alone.

Harry had gone to the Godric's Hollow house his second day of summer holiday to fetch some of his things. A few of his books, a few trinkets, and one Philosopher's Stone. He now had it safely hidden away in a highly warded wall safe in his bedroom that he had transfigured and placed himself.

Remus hadn't moved in yet, but all the professors stayed in the castle for at least one week after the end of term as they finished up things. The werewolf was actually supposed to be coming to stay with them that evening. The following night was the full moon.

Harry and Sirius had slipped into a very easy, relaxed routine over the last five days. They had talked a few more time about Harry's past, but nothing too deep, but Sirius was finally getting to know Harry a bit better, and Harry was getting to know his godfather. From what Harry had seen of the man, he seemed entirely sane and in full control of all of his faculties. Harry wondered about the times Remus had seemed concerned, noting that Sirius had seemed confused about what year it was since nothing like that had happened to him directly yet.

Perhaps Sirius had simply still been early in his recovery and his head had still been a bit overly muddled at the time, and it had cleared up since then.

Harry and Sirius chatted lightly through their breakfast and Harry asked his godfather if there was anything interesting in the Prophet, but there really wasn't much. The results from the latest match between Puddlemere United and the Chudley Cannons – the Cannons had lost, big surprise.

"I'm going to go into Diagon Alley today," Harry said absently as he finished off the last of his toast.

Sirius looked up at him from over his paper. "Want some company?"

"Nah. I'm just running in to pick up a object I ordered from a shop down there," Harry replied easily.

"Dobby could go collect it for you, Master Harry!" Dobby offered excitedly.

"No thanks, Dobby. I want to get out of the house for a bit," Harry said with an easy smile. "Maybe do a little window shopping, while I'm at it."

"You going under a glamour?" Sirius asked, as he turned back to his paper.

"Yup," Harry replied easily.

"Knockturn Alley?"

Harry smiled and chuckled. "Yes."

"Just be careful."

"Always."

Harry stood up and Dobby snapped his fingers, levitating Harry's plate off the table and across the kitchen into the sink.

Harry jogged back up the stairs to grab his knapsack and to set up his glamours. His wand was already in the wand holster attached to his wrist where he always kept it. He had told Sirius about his removal of his magical traces and the man had gone with him to a park to test to make sure it had actually worked. Harry cast a couple spells and then they'd waited around for an owl to show up with a warning from the Ministry, but nothing had come.

Harry had to admit to himself that he was glad things had worked out the way they had. It was nice not having to sneak around and hide everything from Sirius. Plus the man let him go off and do his own thing without putting up a fight as long as Harry was under a glamour when he went out on his own. He knew, however, that once Remus moved in, he'd have to be a bit more cautious again.

Harry got to his room and began to apply the glamour he had only just first developed earlier that week. It was a departure from the half-goblin look he'd gone with in years past. He was still short for a normal human adult, but not so short that it was unreasonable. He went with very short, dirty-blond hair, blue eyes, and a slight, but fit build. The over-all appearance came off as someone in their mid twenties who just happened to be a bit on the short side.

Once he was all set up, he shouldered his bag and made his way back down the stairs towards the fireplace in the foyer. Sirius came out of the kitchen holding his coffee and gave him a quick nod and a smirk as Harry tossed some Floo powder into the fireplace, turning the fire green, and stepping inside. He called out 'Diagon Alley' and was whisked away a moment later.

It was nice being back in the alley, free and anonymous. He got some simple shopping around Diagon done first and then made his way down Knockturn Alley. The shopkeepers were cautious and overly suspicious of him at first, as was their nature. He was a new face and they didn't know if they could trust him. But a few galleons and a few intelligent, informed questions about certain wares and they relaxed slightly.

He'd been working his way through the stores and street vendors for a few hours and was getting ready to head back home to have lunch. His hand came up and he unconsciously rubbed his glamoured scar. It had been sort of itching every now and then for the last twenty minutes or so. It was quite odd, really, and he was tempted to head back just so that he could look into a mirror and examine it with his Sight to see if there was something weird going on with it. Now that the Light magic protection was gone, he'd been keeping an eye on it. The horcrux seemed to be completely dormant and had made no moves to try and leach from his magical core or try to influence his thoughts.

It didn't seem to be doing any at the moment either, but there was definitely something weird going on.

He was just about to turn and head back towards Diagon Alley when a small black blur caught Harry's attention out of the corner of his eye. He turned his head and saw a small black cat darting out from one of the narrow alleys between buildings and then slipping inside Borgin and Burkes as the door was held open by a witch who was leaving the store.

Harry stared after the cat for a stunned moment. It had looked so... familiar. But no... it couldn't be...

It's not like black cats were rare. It was probably just someone's familiar. And yet he couldn't ignore the nagging at the back of his mind and quickly jogged across the cobblestone road and slipped inside the shop.

"Ah, back again, sir?" Borgin asked from behind the counter. Harry had been in there less than an hour before and actually bought a few things so the man was looking at him with a greedy, welcoming expression.

"Yes, but I'm just looking to something I think I lost. I'll just be a moment," Harry said as he began to look around.

Borgin looked a bit disappointed and went back to polishing something. Harry scanned the room with his Sight, which was a bit disorienting since there were so many objects in there that were cursed, or simply charmed with powerful Dark magic. But then he caught sight of the magical signature of something alive and bent down onto one knee and peered under a small table.

There, glaring at him with angry, piercing, red eyes, was a strikingly familiar, little black cat.

Harry felt as if his heart had just jumped up and lodged itself in his throat. He almost gasped, but refrained. The itching in his scar increased several fold as he held the feline's eyes for another moment, and he was almost sure that his heart would burst from his chest with as fast as it was racing at the moment. Shock and hope soared through him and before the feline had a chance to react, Harry had twisted his wrist just so, shooting his wand out of his holster and into his readied hand, catching it and shooting a stunner out.

The cat seemed to realize what was happening, but it was too late. The stunner just barely caught the cat before it had fully dodged out of the way and Harry reached out and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck.

Harry cradled the unconscious cat in his arms, feeling his adrenaline shooting through him as part of his mind still reeled in shock and denial, while another was raving with excited hope. He stood up and quickly left the store with Borgin looking at the cat in his arms with confusion and then shrugging it off.

Harry didn't know how long he'd have before the stunner wore off so he ran, with the cat in his arms, to the nearest apparition point. Knowing that he was going to want complete privacy for this encounter, he spun on the spot and apparated to Godric's Hollow.

Once in the house, he went into the study, set the still-unconscious cat on the floor and began casting a few wards around the room. He knew Tom would be able to get past most of them if he had a few minutes to work at it, but hopefully those few minutes would give Harry the time to explain to the other wizard who he was and keep him from running off.

Finally secure in the belief that Tom wouldn't be able to simply run from the room, or apparate or portkey away the moment he woke up, Harry waved his wand to finite the glamours over him and sent an enervate at the cat.

The cat shook his head and stood groggily before apparently clearing his head enough to realize that something was definitely not as it should be. The cat looked up, saw Harry and hissed angrily, baring his sharp teeth, flattening his ears back against his head and arching his back.

Harry felt the itching flare angrily in his scar and could only smile wider at the small verification that pain gave him that he was right.

"Hello Tom-Cat," Harry said, unable to squash the enormous smile on his face.

The cat seemed to get even more angry with that and began to inch around Harry in a circle, searching for the best escape route.

"Sorry, but you're going to find that the room is warded. You can't just get out through the door. You'd have to be a wizard with a wand to get past the protections and it would still take you a few minutes," Harry teased and the cat narrowed his eyes, glaring angrily at Harry and hissing again.

"Come on! Don't make me force you out of your animagus form! Transform back, I don't want to stand here talking to a bloody cat!"

The cat's head, which had been cautiously turned to look around and examine the room for the best escape route, swung back and nailed Harry with a very wide-eyed stare.

Harry rose his hand slightly in the air, drawing the cats attention to the wand held there. The cat eyed it and hissed again. Harry held the wand up in an appeasing gesture and then held the wand between his two hands so that the cat could see it.

"See my wand, Tom? Does it look familiar to you?" Harry asked, still grinning.

The cat finally stopped it's hissing and studied the wand for a moment before a glassy look came over it's large, slitted, red eyes. The cat looked from the wand, up to Harry's face and back at the wand again.

And then suddenly the cat was morphing and growing in size as it transformed back into a human. The human in question, however, was not exactly what Harry had been expecting.

"Where did you get that wand?" a boy who looked to be probably the same physical age as Harry, with short, neatly trimmed, dark brown hair, pale blue eyes, and very sharp, angular features, asked him in a harsh voice.

Harry gaped at the person standing opposite him. "Holy crap."

"WHERE DID YOU GET THAT WAND?" the boy bellowed, clearly growing angry in his impatience.

Harry swallowed, gathering himself back up and letting a somewhat shocked little laugh escape his throat. The boy opposite him glared angrily and Harry realized suddenly that the boy was now holding a wand as well. His eyes widened as he recognized it.

"You got your wand back too!" Harry exclaimed pointing down at the familiar yew wand. His eyes traveled back up to the strangely pale blue eyes that were looking back at him with an expression of shock and disbelief. "Bloody hell, you're a kid! How the heck did this happen?"

"Who are you..." the boy whispered.

Harry smiled softly. "I'll give you a clue. Non mortem timemus, sed cogitationem mortis" he said with a soft, reassuring voice.

The boy-Tom sucked in a sharp gasp and his jaw was floundering in shock and disbelief.

"You've got a line to say too, Tom. Don't tell me you're memory's slipping in your old age... or your young age as it would seem..." Harry teased.

"Impossible..."

"I don't blame you for thinking it hadn't worked," Harry said softly. "It took me longer to come back then I'd expected it to. I'm really sorry for that... I can't begin to tell you how sorry I am that you had to wait so long..."

"Heri?" Tom whispered.

Harry grinned and nodded his head.

A shuddering breath escaped Tom slowly and he seemed to collect himself, somewhat. "Omnia mutantur, nihil interit" he said with as sure a voice as he could manage given how shocked he seemed to be.

We do not fear death, but the thought of death.

Everything changes, nothing perishes.

A strangled, elated, laugh escaped Harry suddenly, and he wasn't sure which was the more overwhelming urge – to laugh or to cry.

"I finally found you," Harry said in a weak voice through his enormous smile.

And before he even realize he'd moved, Harry had surged forward and wrapped his arms around the waist of the stunned 'boy', burying his face in his neck and holding on as if his life depended on it.

Tom seemed frozen for a moment longer before some of the stiffness began to leave his shoulders and his arms slinked around and wrapped hesitantly around Harry's shoulders. Harry felt a deep, shuddering breath slowly leak out of Tom's mouth as the rest of the tension melted away and the arms suddenly tightened around him.

"You're really my Heri?" he asked again is a shockingly emotional voice.

Harry laughed weakly into Tom's neck and nodded his head. "Yes, Tom. It's me. It all worked. Just like I said it would, it just took longer then I'd expected to get back."

Harry sighed and pulled back hesitantly so that he could meet Tom's eyes. It was strange looking into the face of this strange unknown boy, but he imagined that it was equally weird for Tom to be looking into his face.

"I was aware while I was in the astral plane, but time moves oddly there. The forth dimension intersects with perceived reality in a way I hadn't entirely expected. When I felt myself being pulled back to the physical world and reconnecting with a new body I thought that it had maybe been a few years since I'd died. Three or four at the most. After I was reborn and I finally managed to figure out the date and I realized it was nineteen eighty, I nearly fainted. I had no idea it had taken me fourteen years to be reborn. I..." Harry sighed heavily and let his head fall forward, resting it on the other boy's shoulder. "I'm so sorry I left you alone for so long. I'm sorry I wasn't able to get back sooner."

"You should be sorry," Tom said, but it had no malice to it. It was almost weakly teasing. Harry rose his head up and smiled at the other, and Tom's eyes were actually shining slightly with tears he knew the other would forever refuse to admit had been there.

"I've missed you... so much..." Harry said.

Tom's young, sharp jaw tightened and flexed slightly as he appeared to clench and unclench his teeth in his closed mouth. His face appeared conflicted for a moment before his eyes softened and focused down at Harry's shoulder.

"I missed you too," Tom whispered back.

A smile brightened Harry's face and Tom looked up at it and the corner of his mouth hesitantly curled into a tight smile. Then Tom's eyes traveled a bit higher up and the smile disappeared from his face and his eyes widened almost comically.

He took a sudden step back, pulling away from Harry and staring at him with a stunned expression.

"Tom?" Harry asked, hesitantly.

"Harry Potter," Tom whispered.

Harry blinked for a moment before realization dawned on him and he almost smacked himself, but refrained. Tom had just spotted the scar.

"Uh... yeah... heh." Harry said, giving the other a sheepish, apologetic grin.

"You're Harry Potter," Tom repeated, still clearly shocked.

"Er... yup. I'm Harry Potter. I forgive you, by the way. The whole, killing my parents thing. And believe me, there's a lot to forgive because after you offed them, I got dumped on muggles who made my second childhood almost as miserable as the first. Only the second one I had to deal with on my own, without you to help keep me sane, which sucked." Harry paused, but Tom just continued to look dumbstruck and slightly horrified, so Harry continued. "Oh, and by the way... what the hell were you thinking? Putting weight behind a prophecy? Were you out of your mind? You know prophecies are meaningless unless the people involved believe in them. You were dooming yourself by acting on the damn thing! Especially since you hadn't heard the whole thing!"

Tom's face suddenly sharped with annoyed defensiveness. "Excuse me?" Tom hissed angrily.

"You heard me!"

"Dumbledore knew the whole thing and was acting on it quite aggressively. I couldn't just do nothing!"

"Sure you could have! You could have at least waited until you had heard the whole damn thing. Or you could have just realized that it was nothing more that divination nonsense and ignored it!"

"I couldn't risk that! Even if I didn't believe in it, Dumbledore was clearly putting weight behind it. If I had allowed him to continue on unimpeded he could have raised some sort of... Light savior or something. The stupid brat was just a helpless baby, how was I to know..." Tom suddenly trailed off. "Did you do something? That night? When I... when I attacked you?"

"No. I didn't do anything," Harry said softly. "I knew that I could make sure I came back faster the next time I died and was convinced I could make sure I was reborn almost instantly. I was just going to take the curse, die, and get reborn. It would have only been about two years wasted..."

Tom nodded his head and looked as if had expected his answer. "He... you... you looked like you had accepted it. Like you... ready to die," Tom said quietly, looking contemplative. His eyes suddenly lit with determined revelation. "It was the Life Debt."

Harry blinked. "Live Debt?"

"When you saved my life and died taking that bastard's killing curse for me, I suddenly owed you a Life Debt. It must have stuck with you even after you were reborn. When I attacked you with the killing curse, I was directly defying the Life Debt. That's why it rebounded on me."

Harry blinked. "By Merlin, I think you've nailed it right on the head."

Tom coughed out a humorless laugh and his hand came up and pinched the bridge of his nose. "All these years of trying to understand what the hell happened... it was the Life Debt. It was you... You're Harry Potter." Tom lowered his hand and scoffed. "The child of prophecy," he said bitterly.

Harry snorted and rolled his eyes. "Prophecy. What a bunch of stupid rubbish. They're always up to interpretation and introducing different facts can easily totally change the whole perceived meaning. From one point of view 'the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord' sounds like a threat or a warning, or a beacon of hope to your enemies. From another point of view, it's a statement of fact describing the one person you ever trusted with that sort of power of you. I'm the only one you ever trusted enough with the very specific information necessary to 'vanquish' you. The only one that you ever loved. Loving someone means trusting them with the power to destroy you. That's how it works. But that's the point. It's a matter of trust. And I would hope that you still trust me enough to know that even though I hold that power, I would never use it. The stupid prophecy says I have the power, but that line doesn't say anything about me using it, does it?"

"Are you saying you know what the entire prophecy says?" Tom asked.

Harry scoffed. "No, I haven't a bloody clue what the rest of it says. When I was a baby my parents refused to talk about it when I was awake. Something about me picking up on their stress." Harry rolled his eyes. "I pretended to be asleep a few times and managed to overhear a few conversations regarding a 'prophecy' and going into hiding, but never got any worthwhile details. The only reason I know the first three lines of the prophecy now is because Lucius Malfoy told me."

"Lucius!" Tom exclaimed.

"Yeah... oh hey, did you know that Dorea Black married Charlus Potter? Can you believe that? Well, they're my grandparents in this life – fancy that. My relation to the Blacks makes me Narcissa's second cousin and I got involved with the Malfoy's that way, but I went ahead and revealed my real identity to Lucius because I was hoping he could help me find you."

"I haven't spoken with Lucius," Tom said quietly.

Harry rolled his eyes. "Or any of your Death Eaters. Merlin, Tom! Where the bloody hell have you been? I know you've had a body since Halloween of '89... wait, is this why?" Harry said as he waved his hand at Tom's youthful body. "How the hell did this happen, anyway?"

"How do you know how long I've had a body back?"

"Where did you think that magic power you used was coming from? The magic that was being sent to you several times a day for a year and a half before you got a body?"

Tom's eyes widened and his brows shot into his forehead. "That was you?"

Harry grinned smugly and gave a little mock bow. "Guilty as charged." he stood upright again. "I sent it along our link."

"Link?" Tom echoed in confusion before a speculative expression suddenly covered his youthful face. "Wait..." he looked up at Harry curiously. "How did you establish this link to me while I was still a spirit? I detected it after you started sending magical energy to me and I tried going back along it numerous times, but there was a rather... violent bit of defense magic whenever I tried."

Harry grumbled to himself. "That was the protective Light magic Lily Potter so graciously left me with. I learned how to hold it back so that I could send magic to you, but unless I was actively suppressing it, it was always in place. I tried to catch you when you were trying to reach back to me along the link, but I never managed to get the Light magic suppressed in time."

"Alright, but how did this link get established in the first place?" Tom asked.

"Actually, I believe that was your doing. Oh, Merlin, Tom – you will not believe it..." Harry paused for a moment before pulling a hair tie out of his pocket and reaching up to secure his hair back into a low ponytail. He pointed his finger at the scar on his forehead. "Cast the Seola identité spell on my scar."

"What?" Tom exclaimed incredulously.

"Just do it!"

Tom hesitated for a moment, his brow furrowed in confusion before he raised his wand, pointed it at Harry's forehead and quietly spoke "Seola Identité".

A blue glow swirled around Harry's whole forehead like wispy clouds. The clouds started to thicken around the scar and turn sort of purple-ish in hue before shifting to a bright vibrant red, right over the scar. A thin red thread began to appear at the center of it, stretching through the air, connecting directly to Tom's chest.

He gaped at the thread with a loot of utter disbelief on his face. "Impossible!" he whispered hoarsely as he stared at the tiny thread connecting the two of them together.

"Apparently not. Were you intending to use my murder to create another horcrux?" Harry asked.

Tom nodded his head, looking numb. "I had prepared some of the rituals ahead of time... but I didn't bring the vessel. I was going to do that part after I had returned from..." he trailed off and his eyes were still locked disbelievingly at the thread."

"I suspected it was something like that," Harry said with a small sigh that then shifted into a mildly amused chuckle.

"I don't see anything funny about this," Tom snapped at him as his eyes came up and locked on Harry's face.

"Oh, I know. It's definitely not funny. You've gone and put a bit of your soul into a living vessel. If my body dies, that bit of your soul gets destroyed. Definitely not funny. Fortunately I'm young, and I'm not stupid, so I'll be doing my best to not end up dead until we can figure out a way to get this bit merged back in with your central soul, or at least moved into a less vulnerable vessel."

"I'm not worried about that. Well, okay, maybe I am a bit, but what I'm really worried about what it's going to do to you! Has it... I mean... you mentioned some sort of protective magic from Lily Potter?"

"Right. It was actually encasing the bit of your soul and keeping it separate from me. It was some rather powerful Light magic, actually. I had to spend a couple years study Light magic just to start figuring out how to work around it – crazy huh? Light magic! Me!" Harry chuckled. "You'd be surprised how valuable I found some of that knowledge, I've got some books you've got to look at –"

"Heri!" Tom snapped impatiently.

"Right, right. So anyway, it's gone now, as you can see since the Seola spell worked. I think two things played a role in it dispelling. The first thing was that the Light magic was connected to the wards on my Aunt's house. She was a blood relative from my mum's side, so as long as I could call her house my home, the wards stayed in tact. But I think that the Light magic around my scar was also locked onto me personally by my age. Both things had to fail for the protection in my to finally dissolve."

"Your age, but how would it fail in relation to your age? It should have remained until you reached physical maturity, wouldn't it?"

"Right. A few months ago I had a high level aging potion brewed so that I could get rid of the magic Trace that was cast on me when I started attending Hogwarts. I was temporarily aged to twenty, and I think that weakened the protective magic right there, but since the magic was still in place around my aunt's home, it was confused. It probably realized I wasn't really seventeen yet, so it was still trying to hold on. After I made the mental decision that I would never be returning to Petunia's home ever again, it finally broke, so no more Light magic in my forehead."

Tom frowned and looked away. "We need to get the horcrux out of you as soon as possible. Without anything holding it back it will probably try to start sapping your magic or try to possess you."

"I'm not terribly worried about it. It's remained dormant so far – granted it's only been a week. However I think that it realizes who I am, and that I want to protect it, so it's not being hostile to me. I think we've got time to figure out how to deal with it."

Tom still looked worried – which was actually rather touching and it made Harry smile at him. This seemed to be enough to snap Tom out of his mood because he rolled his eyes and grimaced slightly.

"So!" Harry said, clapping his hands together once. "You're a kid! How'd this happen?"

Tom sighed and his hand came up and he pinched the bridge of his nose. "You are rather frighteningly chipper right now. Have been consuming an odd excess of sweets or something?"

Harry laughed. "No, I'm just extraordinarily elated. I have been trying to find you for... well, years, obviously. Today was a total fluke. I still can't believe you're really here. I think I'm in some sort of shock, to be honest. I keep thinking that this is all just going to turn out to be a dream and I'll wake up and still not know where you are, but then I know that I'm not dreaming and this really is real, and I just feel all giddy and crazed so... yeah! How did you end up in the body of a kid?"

Tom sighed but he smiled at Harry softly. "It's a rather long story."

"I've got time. How about we sit. The living room is the most comfortable place for such things."

Harry waved his wand, deactivating all of the wards he'd set and the two left the room. Tom froze as soon as he set foot in the living room, his eyes wide as he took in the familiar place and he realized precisely where he was.

"You brought me here?" he asked, incredulously.

Harry shrugged. "I own it. It's been my sanctuary of sorts. No one has any idea that I use this place. It's sort of like hiding in plain sight, really, since everyone knows where the house is. Hell, there's a bloody shrine to my parents noble deaths and my heroic defeat of the Dark Lord just down the street. Bloody idiots." Harry scoffed and rolled his eyes.

Tom seemed to take another annoyed look around the room, grimacing at it before he huffed out a breath and sat himself down on the couch that Harry had motioned him to. Harry didn't even hesitate as he sat himself down directly beside Tom, leaned back into a relaxed position, resting his arms along the back of the couch and crossing one leg over the knee of the other.

"Alright. Long story time! What's the deal with the kid's body?" Harry asked.

Tom sat stiffly for a moment before pulling in a long breath, letting it out and slowly relaxing back into the couch.

"Back in '89, I'd been slowly growing more and more powerful thanks to the energy that you were sending me. I decided to start working towards regaining a legitimate body for myself. Up until that point I had been relying mostly on possessing the bodies of small animals or simply floating around in a non-corporeal form, which was entirely disorienting and uncomfortable. After my body was destroyed that night, I eventually retreated to Albania. I went to the Shebenik mountain, not far from Lake Ohrid – you remember the place?"

"Just north of Lbrazhd, of course. The ley lines around there were incredible. The Dark magic in those mountains was intense."

"Yes, precisely why I went there to recover and try to build up some energy. However, whenever I tried to possess an animal I would drain it rather quickly. If I didn't leave them after a brief stay they would grow very ill and die and it was rather unpleasant to be in them when they died. When you were sending me magic I was able to stay in my host bodies longer since I didn't rely entirely on draining them of their own energy, but I was sick of possessing the bodies of animals.

"I was able to possess a few muggles over the years, who happened to wander into the forest, but once again, I drained them rather quickly and they would end up dead before I could get much use out of them... plus they were muggles," Tom grimaced at that, but then continued. "I needed someone who was magical if the body was going to last long enough for me to be able to make any progress on gaining myself a permanent body of my own, and a magical body was also necessary since I wouldn't have access to my own magic if the body I was in was unable to handle or wield magic. So around the end of the summer in '89, I finally decided to venture away from the forests and search for a witch or wizard who could be of use to me. Magical, but weak enough that they wouldn't be able to fight me off.

"It was very near the end of October and I was traveling through Greece just outside a muggle city. It was an early freeze that year and I was passing by a large river with a bridge over it at the same moment that some sort of automotive accident occurred. One vehicle skidded into the opposite lane and another car had to swerve to dodge it. Their tires skidded and the car went over the side of the bridge and into the frozen river.

"I suppose you could call it a mix between morbid curiosity and simple boredom, but I went to investigate the accident. The car had two occupants in it, a woman and her son. The car san very quickly and filled with water. The woman drowned in the accident and it looked as if the child was just as doomed. However in what must have been accidental magic, the child burst the door off the car and escaped. The escape was short lived because then he was trapped beneath the ice and was disoriented enough that he was unable to find his way to the open section caused by the car's initial crash through the surface.

"By this point, the other muggles in the area had gathered at the side of the river and someone had alerted the authorities. None of the stupid fools tried to venture into the river to rescue the boy and he basically drowned. An ambulance showed up along with a fire engine and they cut through the ice and pulled his lifeless body out of the water. I would have left right then, but the fact that the boy had displayed accidental magic made me curious. I thought that perhaps his father was a wizard and I could possess the man while he was grief ridden at the loss of his wife and son.

"But then I heard one of the emergency medical muggles say that they'd gotten a pulse out of the boy. They rushed him into their vehicle to take him to the hospital. I followed, still intent on my plan to possess the child's father. On the way to the hospital the child's heart stopped again. In the hospital they resuscitated him and he ended up on life support. The machines were breathing for him and pumping his blood for him. They conducted more of their tests and at one point one of them said that the child was brain dead and if they were to disconnect the machines he would die. I have to admit that this got me curious. I remembered you talking about how one's astral spirit disconnects from the body, it can no longer live, even if the body is still perfectly capable of operating.

"I checked over the boy's body with every sense I could manage given my frustrating limited form and was able to determine that he was nothing more than an empty shell. The boy's soul had left him."

Harry's eyes lit up with apparent understanding of the significance of this revelation. A fully-functional, magical, body, with no soul attached.

"What luck," Harry observed.

Tom smirked. "I thought so as well. But I wasn't entirely convinced that I would have the power to take full ownership of the body as I was. Samhain was the following evening, and I knew I would have a better chance at success if I tried to take the body on that night over any other. So everything relied on the muggles leaving the boy connected to their machines until I was fully prepared.

"Fortunately, they were dedicated to waiting until they had located a next of kin before they disconnected the body and allowed it to die. The police began an investigation to try and figure out who the child and mother were. In the end they effectively found nothing. The woman had no living family and had never been married. The child's birth certificate did not list anyone as the father. As far as I've been able to determine, the woman was a muggle, so this boy was either.." he heaved an annoyed sigh and grimaced distastefully, "muggleborn, or a half-blood and the absent father was a wizard. In any case, no one was found and they made plans to disconnect the body from life support for the first of November."

"But you took control of the body before that," Harry supplied with a grin.

Tom smirked back, smugly. "Of course. Since the body was completely unoccupied, I was able to take over it completely and managed to get my 'astral tether' properly attached it it, and my consciousness fully lodged inside it. Without a soul already occupying it, there was nothing there to fight me, it was simply a matter of mustering up enough raw magical energy to sieze control. It took me a few weeks to fully recover from the magical exhaustion and the child's accident and the effects of hypothermia, relying on the muggle's pathetic medical practices. They were, of course, utterly stunned when I woke up since they were fully prepared for me to die the next day when they disconnected the machines. At the first opportunity, I ran away to the nearest magical village, stole a wand to make use of temporarily until I was able to get back to Britain and recover my own wand."

"How'd you do that, by the way? Get your wand back, I mean?" Harry asked, legitimately curious.

"I created a spell the year after you died that would automatically relocate my wand to a specified location if it were out of my direct possession for more than a week."

"Ah. Smart."

"Of course," Tom replied with a smirk.

"Okay, so that explains the body, and I suppose the body explains why you haven't contacted your Death Eaters. You didn't trust any of them to respect you in the child of a body – am I right?"

"Yes," Tom admitted easily.

Harry rolled his eyes. "It amazes me how little you trust your own minions. You could have gone to Malfoy. He's helped me out. Even Snape's been useful."

"Severus?" Tom echoed with a bit incredulity.

"Yeah, he teaches potions at Hogwarts. It was useful to have someone I could somewhat rely on within the castle."

"He's still there, is he?"

"Yup. We can talk about that more later though. So what happened after you got your wand back? Where the hell have you been?"

Tom turned to Harry and his face suddenly took on an extremely smug look. The fire of proud accomplishment burned in his pale blue eyes and Harry's brows rose into his forehead as his curiosity spiked even further.

"You're going to love this, I just know it." Tom said with considerable haughtiness and an arrogant smirk. "In fact, I imagine you are one of the few people who can truly appreciate my brilliance in this..."

Harry laughed lightly. "Okay, so get on with it!"

"I have been traveling the world. During the last two years, I have visited every country on the planet."

Harry's eyes widened slightly but his brow furrowed. "Okay... why?"

"Several years after you died, after I had already made considerable headway into my efforts to overthrow Britain's wizarding government, I came across the most fascinating curse. I began to research it, pull it apart, and I modified it to serve a very specific purpose that I had in mind. However at the time, it was no longer something I had the time to pursue since I would have only trusted myself to do it personally, and decided to hold off on using it until a later time. The curse in question could be placed on a location and would remain there, effecting the entire location and quite a reasonable radius around it, until it was properly deactivated by the caster. Disabling it any other would be extraordinarily difficult, and it would be exceedingly difficult to detect in the first place."

"Okay... what does it do?" Harry asked, with amused impatience. Tom was drawing it out for dramatic effect but Harry was too thrilled to be sitting beside Tom, experiencing his antics again, to be annoyed by it.

"Any human being of a non-magical origin, born within the radius of the curse, is born completely sterile," Tom said with a very gratified, self-satisfied smirk.

"Sterile?" Harry echoed, rather stunned.

"Yes. Sterile. It only effects muggles. Muggleborn children are unaffected, but I suppose I can accept that given the other benefits. If I made any attempts to make it effect muggleborns it would run the risk of accidentally effecting other magical children and I was unwilling to take that chance. It doesn't effect squibs, interestingly enough. I suppose that sort of confirms what you had said years ago about squibs being magically compatible bodies with the souls of muggles in them so they had no magical core to run the magic of the body."

"Right," Harry said, nodding his head slowly, still trying to process what Tom had just revealed.

"So, over the course of two and a half years, I made my way to every country in the world, traveling to every hospital, birthing center, and birthing doctor's office I could find and cast the curse on every one of them. Fortunately it's actually a very simple and quick curse for me to cast – especially knowing it as well as I do – and I got very efficient in my work. I was often able to get an entire city taken care of in a single day. I know that I won't be getting all of the muggles this way. There will always be muggles who choose to birth their children at home, and in many of the smaller nations and little villages, they have no hospitals or birthing clinics at all. In many of those cases I merely picked a building at the center of the residential district and cast the curse there. But all of the more civilized and advanced muggles rely on their hospitals and they are the ones who are the real threats to us, so I consider this a general win."

Tom leaned back, crossing his arms across his chest and looking very, very pleased with himself.

Harry snapped his gaping mouth shut and a small shocked laugh escaped his throat.

"It's exactly what you wanted," Tom said a bit softer. "We can destroy them without having to actually kill a single one. No mass murder. We just sit back and wait. Let them grow old and die off while their children are unable to continue breeding like rabbits, no longer constantly growing their ever-massive population. No longer consuming the world and all of it's resources as if it were all placed here just for them. It'll take time, but I have it. You have it. We naturally live longer then them, so I imagine our youngest generation of wizards will likely get to see some of the results of my efforts. I know many wouldn't think it of me, but can be patient. Being trapped in non-corporeal form for eight years has given me a new appreciation of patience," he sneered and looked away for a moment before continuing.

"They won't even start to notice that their children are being born sterile for at least another ten to twenty years," Tom resumed, "by which point there will be twenty years worth of sterile muggles populating the world. And it won't stop there because they'll have no idea how to stop it. Eventually they'll start to realize that those who were born outside of the hospitals are still fine, and they'll start to avoid the places, but the damage will already be done and we can begin to cast the curse on other locations as well.

"And best of all, this way we will never have to face them in open warfare. At least, not until they are significantly fewer in numbers and we will finally have a legitimate chance. They will no longer outnumber us, and their pathetic muggle weapons will be meaningless against our magic!"

Harry nodded his head slowly, still looking rather stunned. And then slowly – ever so slowly – his lips turned up into a wide grin and he looked up at Tom in awe.

"It's brilliant," he whispered and Tom's visible elation grew several fold.

"I knew you would appreciate it," Tom replied haughtily, grinning wickedly.

"I can't believe you've done so much, just in the last two and a half years! It's... it's incredible, Tom!"

Tom tipped his nose up, smugly. "Yes, well, it's amazing how easy it is for a young child to sneak about unnoticed. No one suspects a child of anything truly devious."

Harry snickered. "Oh yes... I've been enjoying that as well."

"I bet you have," Tom looked at Harry with amusement in his eyes. "Since I did not feel comfortable gathering my old followers while in this youthful body, I decided to attempt resurrecting my old plans regarding this curse. I had always known that I wouldn't trust anyone else with the task, but had been far to busy managing my efforts in Britain to do it before. Of course, the more people who know of the existence of the curse, the greater the risk that some of the magical governments would get wind of it and try to put a stop to it. The way it is now, until the muggles start to notice and start to make a stink about it, it's unlikely that any wizards will even realize it exists, let alone take actions to counter-act it."

"And so," Harry picked up, "until anyone notices it, it'll continue to go on doing it's job, leaving the next generation of muggles completely incapable of breeding."

"Precisely," Tom said lightly and smirked.

Harry's eyes were unfocused as he thought for a quiet moment, but suddenly a giggle escaped his lips, quickly followed by another, before he erupted into a full-out cackle that left Tom to watch him with smug amusement.

"Bloody hell, Tom! You've really topped yourself this time!" Harry exclaimed as he finally began to reign in his devious delight. His eyes locked on Tom's and his smile softened and he felt himself fill with admiration, awe, relief, and so damn much love for this man... even in a child's body. Because it was surprisingly easy to look past the foreign, youthful face, and still see Tom behind those eyes. "I missed you so damned much," Harry whispered.

Tom's face softened as well. "And I you."

The moment lasted for a long minute before Harry's smile turned back into a smirk. "The world will never know what hit it. You and me... they'll never see us coming."

"Not till it's far too late," Tom replied smugly.

"We're going to do it this time. For real. No one will stand in our way. No one will think to! We..." Harry trailed off and got a glazed look to his eyes for a moment before he turned his attention back on Tom, full force and his mouth formed into an enormous grin. "I've got it!"

"What?" Tom asked, hesitantly.

"Come back to Hogwarts with me!"

"What? Why the devil would I do that?"

"Just think, Tom! You always said that there were only really two successful methods for taking over a country. You work your way up form the inside, get yourself into the ultimate position of leadership and then abolish the old system, instating yourself as a dictator, or you build an army and tear the system down by force from the outside. Well we both saw how much of a pain the in ass the force option was, and how long it was taking, but the other option was sort of taken away from us because of Dumbledore's suspicious nature regarding the two of us, and the fact that we disappeared off the map for a decade while we traveled to continue our education. By the time we got back to Britain, neither one of us wanted to bother with working our way up in the Ministry the hard way.

"But we could do it this time! Hell, we could use our contacts with your old Death Eaters to speed our progress in the Ministry even faster. And I'm the bloody Boy-Who-Lived. They already worship the ground I walk on. We spend the next six years at Hogwarts making connections, gaining the awe and admiration of all our peers, getting the best marks anyone has ever gotten out of Hogwarts – hell, we could probably take our NEWTs a year early and get out even faster. Then we go right into the Ministry, jumping into a high position and within a few years thanks to Lucius and whatever other connections we make, either one of us could easily become the youngest Minister of Magic in the history of the Ministry!

"And while we're doing all of that, we could secretly restart our efforts with your Death Eaters – grow our base in secret, orchestrating their activities from the shadows... just imagine, Tom! It would be so simple! No open warfare. No messy frontal assault. We could do it like Slytherins are supposed to! Sneaking in from behind and slitting their throat when they least expect it! Using our cunning and intelligence to control wizarding Britain from the shadows and then take control in a swift, powerful move that no one ever saw coming!"

Tom was looking at him speculatively and Harry could see the moment Tom made his decision. He smirked deviously and chuckled. "I must say, Love... you're suggestion has legitimate merit."

"Of course it does," Harry replied cheekily and Tom chuckled. "We both look young... how old is your body, exactly, anyway?"

"This body is currently twelve, although I will turn thirteen on the fifth of September."

"Still puts you in my year at Hogwarts, age-wise. I turn twelve at the end of July. You could start with the second years on September 1st. We'd just have to come up with a cover story to explain where you came from and why I know you. Also why you missed first year."

"That part is easy enough. We can say that when I was eleven, I was in eastern Europe and the only sizable magical school that considers that region it's jurisdiction is Durmstrang and they don't accept muggleborns. Since I have no proof that this body's father was a wizard or not, I would be considered a muggleborn. They would have never sent me an invitation."

"You would be willing to go to Hogwarts letting them think you a muggleborn?" Harry asked, honestly a bit surprised.

"If the goal is to go under certain people's radar, it would be an effective deterrent."

"Valid point," Harry conceded, thinking about Dumbledore and his eternal love for the muggleborns.

"Besides, I think that a valid reason for my sudden return to England would be some sort of childish desire to try and find my father. According to this child's birth certificate, he was actually born in London and lived here for most of his youth. My knowledge on exactly what brought them to Greece is spotty... I'll discuss some of it with you later...

"As for a motive for returning to London, we could say that I hoped to discover more about my father and that I was here to consult with a wizard who was going to help me get my ancestry information so that I could find out if my father was a wizard or a muggle."

"Who knows... maybe this kid's father was a wizard," Harry said speculatively. "Would be something if he were an old pureblood or something. Of course that seems a bit slimmer since whoever the bloke was, he was willing to sleep with a muggle."

"He could very well have been one of my followers and he raped the woman," Tom said, off-handedly.

Harry rolled his eyes. "I always hated that you let some of them do shit like that."

"I was not their keeper," Tom sneered in annoyance. "It was not my job to babysit them."

"Yeah, but if you'd thrown around a few crucios and made examples of those who you caught doing that sort of stuff, the others would have seen that it wasn't acceptable. Instead you just turned a blind eye."

Tom sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "You know how it was, Heri. I didn't exactly have a lot of room to be picky. There were only a few different sorts of wizard who were willing to serve me, and one of those sorts would do anything for me if it meant having the chance to do certain other things as well. I needed skilled followers who would serve me without a fight."

"Fine, fine. I don't see a lot of value to getting back into this. It's an old argument and it's really not important anymore, anyway," Harry said.

Tom looked minutely revealed that Harry was letting it go and relaxed a bit into his seat. After a moment he turned and smirked at Harry.

"So, you've heard what I've been up to – traveling the world and cursing an entire generation of muggles... what have you been doing?" Tom asked, grinning smugly.

Harry narrowed his eyes playfully, seeing the challenge for what it was. He took on an airy, disinterested look and smoothed his hair a bit with his hand. "Oh, not much, I guess. I mean, after I spent a year and a half sending you magical energy so you could revive yourself, I didn't do much for a while. Certainly nothing as ambitious as what you've been up to... But I did get in contact with Lucius and a few other Death Eaters... and more recently... let's see... I made buddy-buddy with the Minister of Magic, got my godfather out of Azkaban so that I could get out from under Dumbledore's legal control and... Oh yes! I almost forgot! I stole Nicholas Flamel's Philosopher Stone."

Tom almost did a double-take, but of course, Tom would never do something so plebeian as that.

"No!" Tom gasped in disbelief.

"Yes," Harry said with a smug grin and a upward tip of his chin.

"How? We tried for years to find a way through Flamel's securities! It was impossible!"

Harry's face remained smugly stoic for all of one minute before he burst into chuckles. "Oh, you will never believe it! It's just so utterly absurd!"

And Harry went on to describe to Tom his arrival at Hogwarts and his eventual discovery that the Stone was being kept there as bait to either lure in Tom to reveal himself, or simply to provide Harry an opportunity to be a 'hero'. He described all of Dumbledore's attempts at messing with his mind and the two had a nice laugh over that.

The story about the so called 'protections' around the stone, and the fact that it took Dumbledore five weeks to realize that it had been taken got an even bigger laugh.

In the end, they spent the entire rest of the daylight, sitting there talking about how they had spent the last few years, and making plans for what to do next.

– – –