I

"I've warned you!" Harry snapped, violently kicking and thrashing under heavier form, which happened to fall on top of him, the Dark Lord's robe covering them both. "My eyes!" Harry screamed, squinting said eyes in disgust: as it happened, Voldemort was wearing nothing beside the black robe, which was now lying half on his head and half beside them on the ground. "Do you mind?!" Harry exclaimed, when the Dark Lord did nothing to cover himself.

"Actually I do not," came the indifferent reply. "You, on the other hand –" the Dark Lord trailed off, when he righted his clothes and looked at Harry, who was in the similar state of undress: his robe tangled around his collarbone and only underpants beneath it.

Harry went red in the face, quickly shuffling with his own clothes to cover badly healed scratches and old bruises covering his thin form.

"Whatever those are from?" with mild curiosity inquired Voldemort.

"None of your business," Harry mumbled darkly. "Dress yourself already, will you?" he added, wincing and not too gently dragging the Dark Lord's robe closer to the man, not minding if it caught on any twig or sharp stone on the way.

"As you wish, Harry," Voldemort murmured suavely with almost seductive smirk on his face.

"What's gotten into you?" Harry asked nervously, peering into Voldemort's red eyes intensively.

The Dark Lord gave out a graceful shrug, then finally stood up and put his robe on in one fluid motion not unlike that of a snake.

"Absolutely nothing, boy. You may rest assured I do not take to fancy skinny scrawny bony teenagers with bird nests on their heads and dirt under their fingernails," Voldemort responded with strange undertone to his voice.

Harry scrambled to his feet and, eyeing him warily, moved away from the oddly behaving Dark Lord as quickly as he could without being seen as scared as he really was.

"So, what now?" Harry asked after a long moment of pregnant silence between them.

Voldemort cocked his head to the side in contemplation, looking at Harry with strange glint in his eyes.

"I may not possibly know," he supplied in low tone of voice, still pondering over some thing bothering him. "It seems some power forced us both to come here, wherever this might be, for some reason beyond my understanding."

"Are you so sure this is not afterlife or something?" Harry inquired. "Because for me it certainly looks like it –"

"Quiet," the Dark Lord suddenly ordered in the undertone, grabbing Harry by the shoulder for good measure and squeezing it with force.

"Wha –?" Harry's question was cut off by pale cold bony hand on his mouth.

'Do not speak up, boy,' Harry looked at the Dark Lord with wide eyes, hearing the familiar ghostly whispering in his head. 'Someone… No, something approaches. It has unkind intentions towards one of us. I do not know, towards whom exactly, but I am not ready to risk it. I will shield us both, if you only keep silent and allow me to bleed you,' before Harry could protest, the Dark Lord grabbed his hand in his own and made a slicing motion with his sharp index fingernail across Harry's palm, bringing out a thick drop of blood out. Harry tried to take back his own appendage, but his attempt was futile: Voldemort took Harry's hand to his own mouth, then licked and lapped at the wound. It immediately closed, but not before Voldemort acquired a drop of dark-red liquid from small scratch and swallowed it with seeming difficulty, making a face at the taste.

Harry somehow managed to get a glimpse of his sensations: Harry's blood burned the Dark Lord's tongue, its sweet coppery taste almost unnoticed behind the discomfort of the burn.

Voldemort shuddered and put a hand around Harry's shoulders.

Harry felt the other's magic surrounding him, no them both in a warm wool-like blanket of a shield.

'That was… ugh...' Harry never managed to finish the thought.

'Silence. You're not trained to converse mentally, you might be overheard by the approaching thing,' Voldemort's silky voice inside Harry's mind sounded a bit off.

Harry looked at his face, which was quickly draining of all color, red eyes darkening, then going glassy and bleary. Voldemort staggered and squeezed his hand around Harry's shoulders tighter in an attempt to stay upright.

'What's with you?' Harry hoped he would be heard, preferably, by the Dark Lord and not by the strange thing coming to them, and he thought that shorter phrases would be less likely to be overheard by it.

'Your blood,' Voldemort responded in clipped tone. 'I'll manage,' he added. 'Just be quiet.'

Harry, for once, did as he was told.

About quarter of an hour went by in silence.

At last Voldemort sighed heavily and released his grip on Harry's shoulders, staggering away in a rush. He managed to go only couple of steps away though, before he was caught in coughing fit, which instantly ended with Voldemort bending, clutching his stomach with a groan and a snarl and throwing up rather violently, letting out small moans of distress in the process. This, too, ended quickly. The Dark Lord straightened his back with a grimace on his face being the only sign of his discomfort, and calmly wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, glaring at Harry, who was staring at him in return.

'Has it left?' Harry asked tentatively.

"Indeed it has," Voldemort responded aloud.

"What was it?"

"To put it in your words, 'I have no idea'," with a hint of a smirk answered Voldemort.

"What was it with the blood and all?" Harry made a circling gesture to indicate what he meant by 'all': the shield, strange spell based on his blood and later sickness of the Dark Lord.

"Are you interrogating me?" raising his nose in arrogance inquired Voldemort with one brow raised in surprise.

"Should I?" Harry returned the gesture.

"I had had no knowledge of what was coming and whom it was going to target and I had no wish to risk it being me, so I did what I thought was best to hide both me and by proxy – you. Your blood, however poisoning it may be for me in particular, nevertheless has great potency due to the sacrifice your unwise woman of a mother made when died in your stead." Harry bristled, but waited till the end of the explanation. "In addition the strongest shield magic there is is the one built on blood. It is as simple as that. I simply perused both these aspects to our mutual aim – shielding us in all ways possible from the imminent danger."

Harry opened his mouth to reply to the scathing comment about his mother, when suddenly realized, that Voldemort was still slightly pale and wavering on his feet, the almost unnoticeable shudder shaking his slender body at odd moments.

"Are you – unwell – I mean sick, or something?" Harry asked instead unsure and made a step towards Voldemort. He was not certain if he was going to help him stand on his feet or rather kick him in the ribs, when the man fell. All of this was very confusing.

"I may have underestimated the danger," with pursed lips admitted Voldemort. "And had spent too much energy supporting that shield, it seems," he added in an undertone, but Harry still heard him. He took another careful step – and caught Voldemort, who went down with a faint sigh, his eyes rolling back in his head.

Harry tried to support the man's weight, but despite his slimness Voldemort was rather heavy, so Harry and Voldemort both went to the ground, with the Dark Lord's head ending in Harry's lap somehow.

"Just what I needed!" Harry sighed in exasperation, but allowed the Dark Lord to rest for a bit, before starting to prod hollow cheek with his finger, attempting to wake him.

Good fifteen minutes later Voldemort let out a loud sigh and opened his eyes. Harry was just about ready to start slapping his cheeks to wake him.

"You know, I think I feel that thing from earlier now, too," Harry confessed. He was indeed feeling something: slight hint of terror, still distant, but coming closer with any moment, collecting like a cloud of horror around him, steadily overwhelming him, bit by tiny bit, and threatening to engulf him any second.

"My hand," came a ghostly whisper.

"What?"

"Take my hand," said Voldemort lowly. "The blood."

"Will it burn, too?" While asking this, Harry was already taking thin pale appendage to his mouth, though, he was not fully confident what exactly to do with it.

"Bite it," ordered the Dark Lord.

Harry squinted his eyes shut – partly in terror, which was growing more and more intense now, and partly in disgust at what he was going to do. This was blood magic, after all, and this was his mortal enemy, at least, had been up until this moment. It seemed, they were on one side in this, at least for now.

"Harry," that did it: Harry bit on the soft silky skin of Voldemort's palm with force in attempt to draw blood. The Dark Lord hissed and shuddered. Harry felt warm sweet liquid on his lips and tongue.

It didn't burn him, he felt almost nothing, aside from warm wetness and sweet coppery taste, not unusual to him: after all he often bit his own lip in pain or nervousness hard enough to split the delicate skin, getting his own blood on his tongue.

"Don't waste it, boy," the Dark Lord hissed harshly and Harry realized, that he'd dragged out enough liquid from the small wound to get drunk on it, his mouth full with the thick blood of the Dark Lord Voldemort, thin wet lines going down from the corners of his mouth to his chin and neck. He felt disgust swiftly clouding his mind to the point where he was ready to just spit it all out and wash away all the traces of taste, and possibly go throw up too for good measure. With strange detachment Harry understood that he was steadily working himself up to hysteria.

Right at this moment he felt the other mind right there in his own head, murmuring to him insensible calming nonsense. The feeling was familiar, just hours before the same mental voice brought him to the Department of Mysteries with false promises and threats.

That shook Harry enough for him to return to his senses and remember what he was doing and why. He opened his eyes and looked at the man in his lap, his bloodied hand still in tight grip of Harry's. Voldemort's blood in Harry's mouth still felt awful and totally alien, this was still not right, but he understood that they both didn't have a choice.

'Swallow,' came mental urge. Harry obliged, gulping heavily. The other man's blood felt hot, going down his throat, Harry almost gagged on it, but managed to keep it down with difficulty. 'Feel it in you,' Voldemort continued to issue instructions in tight and dry mental voice. 'Let it fill you. It's just power. Let it energize your magic. Raise your wand. Circle us with it. Put your magic to work. See the shield.' Voldemort caught Harry's gaze with his own and held it. 'It's impenetrable. A wall. Of stone. Metal. Fire. Ice,' Voldemort drawled mentally, hypnotizing Harry, adding his own still weak magic and what's remained of his power to the shield, his mind guiding Harry.

Somehow Harry managed to envision the spell enough for it to work without any words and almost no wand movements. At least, he hoped it worked, because that terror still lingered at the edge of his senses, him and Voldemort being just out of reach of the thing, but still too close for comfort.

'Is it gone?' Harry thought, not sure he was reaching the Dark Lord's mind and not certain if he wanted to reach him mentally.

'Hold the shield up,' Voldemort commanded, his mental voice harsh. 'It's still here.' He shuddered and finally closed his eyes, some of their combined concentration wavering. The wave of terror washed over Harry, but it suddenly became clear to him, that most of that terror was coming from close proximity – from the Dark Lord, and not from the invisible unknown enemy at the distance.

Harry looked at the pale face, snake features twisted in some indecipherable emotion, red eyes shut and brow creased – either in concentration, or in distress, Harry could not be certain.

'What's wrong?' Now Harry made deliberate effort to be heard.

'It's familiar. I don't like it,' Voldemort answered curtly.

'Do you know what is it?' Harry asked surprised.

'Might,' Voldemort supplied even more tightly.

'So –?'

'Not now. The shield,' the Dark Lord reminded him.

Harry returned his attention to the crumbling shield.

~8~8~8~

He didn't know how long the thing remained nearby before it finally left, having lost track of time after half-hour passed in complete silence, not even a stray thought from the Dark Lord in Harry's head breaking it. The Dark Lord's terror slowly dissipated, as did Harry's sense of danger, which had previously told him that the thing was still near, still threatening one of them.

Harry was surprised to hear the familiar snarl of "Potter!" out loud and realized that he must have fallen half-asleep at some point. He startled at the shout and widened his eyes, seeing very human, though very pale face of Tom Marvolo Riddle right in front of him, awoken nose to nose with the man.

"Wh-what happened?!" Harry exclaimed, recoiling from the Dark Lord's face.

"You felt asleep on me, that's what happened!" snapped Riddle harshly. "Get away from me!" he barked out, pushing at Harry's chest with his hands. Or rather only one hand, as the second was still held by Harry tightly and it was still covered in dry blood. Then Riddle noticed that something was not right and squinted his eyes at his absolutely human palm and fingers.

"Potter!" the Dark Lord barked. "What did you do?!"

Harry shook his head in negative and finally released the other's hand, as if scalded.

"I have no idea," came his favorite reply. "You do know that you have a nose now, right?"

Harry realized his mistake only, when familiar yew wand was brought to his face with force, the other familiarity being the uttered curse: "Crucio!"

Though, instead of feeling lots of pain, Harry felt nice warmness enclose him, energizing his drained magical core, while the Dark Lord's hand twitched and his handsome features twisted, low moan managing to escape his lips, before he collected himself, only the gnawed lip showing that he was in pain. He dropped his wand, ending the curse, quickly, but not before Harry had seen him struggle with it, unable to move his slightly trembling hand, its muscles contracted with pain.

"How did you do it?" asked Riddle after a while, his voice still rough.

"What? I didn't do anything," Harry replied surprised. "Your spell backfired without my help," he shrugged. "Better not try again though," he added, seeing as the Dark Lord's wand hand twitched to rise again, while his face lost all of its color completely and his eyes became glassy and bleary again.

Riddle's nostrils flared in anger, but he followed the advice, to Harry's surprise.

"So what exactly had transpired while I was, er, asleep?" with fake indifference asked the Dark Lord, carefully sidestepping the issue of him being unconscious from magical drain.

"Don't know. I was out cold, too," Harry admitted with ease. "Seems, like the thing had left, though. I don't feel it anymore. And neither do you, I gather," Harry noted as he still sensed Voldemort's mind at the edge of his own.

Riddle sent him a nasty glare in response, his mind retracting, but the smallest part of it remaining still, just in case.

Harry smirked and shrugged nonchalantly.

"I suggest we call for truce," Riddle said abruptly, interrupting similar thought dancing on the tip of Harry's tongue. "That is, until we leave here. We certainly do not need to argue among ourselves with this dangerous thing out for our blood."

"You are right," Harry agreed easily. "And that reminds me: you've mentioned earlier that you recognized it. What is it then?"

"You do not want to know," with a nasty smirk and a raised brow replied Voldemort.

"Maybe I don't want, but I need to," calmly returned Harry. "So –?"

"It was Death himself, I think," provided Voldemort.

Harry gaped.

"You 'think'?" he inquired.

"I am almost certain," the Dark Lord corrected himself. "As certain, as one could be in such matters, at the least."

"You mean you've met him before," Harry said affirmatively. "Which one of us does he target, then?"

"That should be me. Though, I do not think the possibility of you being his target can be ignored either," Riddle admitted. "In this case our truce is more than useful for both of us."

Harry snorted.

"You just don't want to admit that without me you don't have enough strength over him," he snickered.

Riddle gave Harry a snide look.

"Do not overestimate your usefulness, boy!"

"Maybe it is you, who overestimates his own power, huh?" Harry smirked crookedly. "Or you may underestimate the danger," he added thoughtfully. "Why should any one of us be the target of this guy?"

"Your aversion to certain death may very well be the reason," offered Voldemort, grimacing. "After all, I tried for how many years to put you out of your misery, five?"

"If you count this one," Harry made a grimace of his own. "And don't count the first, when I was a baby. But what about you? Didn't you say you've managed to gain immortality? Couldn't it be the reason for him to target you?"

"It might," Voldemort admitted quietly, lowering his gaze. "Though I wonder," he added in a whisper under his nose pensively.

"What are you saying?" Harry leaned in closer.

"Do not come closer!" Riddle suddenly gritted, rose spots appearing on his cheeks.

"What?" Harry asked incredulously. "What happened with hugs and all?" he added mockingly, gesturing to Riddle's hand, which was still covered in flakes of dried blood.

Riddle bared his teeth in a strained parody of a smile.

"I do not take fancy in sharing private space with others," he issued through still gritted teeth. "You especially. That was necessary for the shield to work. Now we don't need a shield."

Harry raised an inquiring brow.

"Is the Dark Lord Voldemort touchy?" he snorted derisively.

Voldemort just glared at him, red eyes burning furiously.

"Okay-okay, I won't laugh," Harry put his hands up in the air in mock surrender. "There's no need to burn a hole in me with your glare!"

Riddle rolled his eyes at him.

"You said yourself that we need to work together," Harry reminded. "So, what do we do now? If this is realm of Death, can we even leave here at all?"

"As we are alive I believe that yes, we can. We just need to find the way back to the entrance, so to speak. To the Arc."

"That sounds too simple," Harry noted. "What about the local boss? Won't he interfere?"

"He certainly would," Voldemort nodded. "And this can provide a minor complication at the most. If we peruse the shield you are already familiar with, we should be able to leave without so much as a scratch on us, I recon."

"You mean, stop every other ten steps drink each others' blood and hug under the invisible shield? I don't want to become a vampire," Harry grimaced. "Don't think you'd be glad either, if my blood is like poison for you."

"I suppose, next time it shall not be. That first time it was given reluctantly, and also you now have my own blood in your system and my magic in your core… hmm," Voldemort again acquired a pensive look. "I think I have missed something vital here," he thought out aloud. "I've already felt as if you have something of mine even before we shared blood and magic for the first time here," he appraised Harry with a strange look. "And this mental connection is too out of the ordinary, as well."

"What of it?" Harry asked suspiciously. "I thought it is the product of you trying to kill me in my crib and all that jazz. No?"

"I believe you surviving Avada should not be the reason here. Certainly, the fact itself is unusual, as no other wizard is known to survive the Killing Curse. But I do not think these two are related."

"What of Parseltongue?" Harry offered in said language.

The Dark Lord froze.

Harry couldn't help it – he snorted, then snickered and finally started to laugh in honest, when the expression of the Dark Lord still remained the same of incredulity for the next several minutes.

"You speak the language of snakes?" hissed Riddle slowly at last.

"Yesss," Harry responded in kind. "That's how I found out about the basilisk and the Chamber of Secrets."

Voldemort's eyes glinted dangerously.

"You found out about it, didn't you?" The Dark Lord took a slow threatening step towards Harry. "Did you like my pet?" the suave smile, which appeared on his lips, promised lots of pain and misery.

"Didn't you say something about the truce?" Harry asked, fidgeting nervously under the death glare of the Dark Lord. "You need me as much as I need you… at least," he added.

"What did you do to her?!" roared Voldemort enraged.

Next instant he was at Harry's throat, foregoing his tricky wand in favour of simple bodily strangling.

Harry only coughed in response, Voldemort's hands cutting out his air supply.

"You killed her, didn't you?!" thrashing Harry by the throat, growled Voldemort. "Remember, I can see in your mind! I know you did it!"

"It stabbed me!" at last managed to grit Harry. "I almost died there!"

"Have you been to Salazar's library, too?!" snarled Voldemort.

"No!" Harry wheezed. "Only Chamber!"

"You're lying!" seethed Voldemort, still thrashing Harry by the throat.

"Let… go..." Harry let out in weak voice. "Can't... breathe..."

"I know you are lying! I feel it!"

"Look..." Harry managed to raise a had to Voldemort's eyes, showing him thin scratches on the back of it, forming the sentence 'I must not tell lies'.

Voldemort abruptly dropped him, but grabbed the offered hand instead, scrutinising it with squinted eyes.

"That's looks like the Blood Quill," he observed, his demeanour changing in a heartbeat to more calm and collected one. "I did not know they still use it in this times," he murmured in pensive, almost sympathetic tone, the knowing look in his eyes telling that at some point in life he, too, had the same experience.

Harry raised a brow in disbelief, tentatively rubbing his sore throat with his free hand.

"Had the model student Tom Riddle," Harry started in scratchy voice and coughed, then continued, "been subjected to detentions?"

"No," not elaborating on the matter, replied Voldemort in clipped tone.

"It looks like you know how it's been made," Harry gestured to his hand, still remaining in Riddle's under his attentive gaze. "And I am truly sorry for your, erm, pet." He coughed again. "Truly. She was something, for sure," he admitted. "If she didn't try to kill me, I might have spared her."

Riddle finally let go of Harry's hand, instead again going for his throat. Though Harry was surprised when instead of strangling him, Voldemort simply stroke his throat with cool fingers, the feeling of his magic leaking through them tingling the sore skin and soothing it.

"I, too, am sorry," Riddle abruptly offered. "If your mother didn't try to stop me, I might have spared her," he said in a low tone. "She was a remarkable witch, Harry. Even for the Mudblood."

"Pff!" Harry scoffed. "You just had to go and ruin perfectly good remorse speech!" He pouted.

Riddle gave out a crooked smirk.

"That's my forte, isn't it?" He snorted mildly. "Let us move on and move out of here already, before you dragged the true remorse speech from me. I don't think I survive that one," he confessed.

Harry gave a hoarse chuckle at that, not sure what the Dark Lord meant by the statement.

"Let us," he agreed, his voice still raspy. "But where to?" Harry looked this way and that, evaluating the possible paths.

There were none, really, they could have gone any way, even further up the hill and beyond it, as beside the hill there was simply nothing: only something akin to the solid ground under their feet and something similar to skies above them, neither of them of any certain colour or texture, just 'below' and 'above', or floor and ceiling, if you'd like.

"I am not certain," admitted Voldemort, "but we can try going back there," he pointed in the rough direction of their inbound flight. "That should not, of course, mean that the exit is at the same place as entrance. If it is indeed the realm of Death, we're playing by the alien rules here and do not even know them completely. The exit may very well happen to be inside this hill, for all I know," he offered, gliding his hand in pointing gesture towards the mentioned hill. "Or up there," the pointing hand went skywards.

Harry grimaced and, grabbing Voldemort's hand in his, dragged him around the foot of the hill and further beyond it, ignoring the angry yanking of his hand.