On the Other Side

~III~

 "The offer of shoulder still stands, you know," Harry said after half-hour of slow silent walking. "You still cushioned my fall, I owe you at least for this."

"You do not 'owe' me anything," Voldemort refused, "That's me who is indebted up to my eyeballs to you, Harry."

Harry huffed in disbelief.

"Up to your eyeballs, you say! Whatever for? Because I am your soul-piece?"

"Because you caught me just now, when we fell," Voldemort corrected. "Though you being my Horcrux adds to the debt either."

"How many of them did you make?" Harry asked out of the blue. "Who else is your life-debtor?"

"I should hope no one aside from you. Human Horcrux is not common, to say the least. I believe, our case is the special one in more than one sense."

"You're again avoiding the question," Harry noticed. "How many soul-pieces of you are there? Or are you afraid to tell me? I am one of them, so why are you scared?"

"I. Am. Not." Voldemort let out through gritted teeth.

"No? For me it certainly looks like you are," Harry remarked snidely.

"Seven," spat the Dark Lord. "I was planning to create six, plus the one soul-piece still left in me. Satisfied?!"

Harry shook his head in negative. All this time he was not turning to Voldemort, opting to carefully watch where they were going instead.

"I am not, but that's out of the question. I still find it gross to kill and to cut your own soul up in pieces for the sake of a doubtful prospect of living forever. Why seven, then?"

"It's magic of the number," muttered Voldemort reluctantly.

"Which was spoiled by accidental creation of eighth piece?" Harry snickered. "Looks like I am your party-pooper even without my own consent, huh?" He at last spared a brief glance over the shoulder at sulking Voldemort. The view of pouting Dark Lord made Harry giggle even more merrily.

"What's so funny?!" the Dark Lord growled, but Harry laughed even harder at that.

"I can't help it, sorry," he managed to say through the tears of mirth, "You look like a five-year-old with this cute pout of yours!"

"So my pout is cute?" despite his resentment Voldemort's lips twitched in a hint of a smile.

"So are you going now to turn my every word into innuendo?" Harry asked exasperated. "What's with you and sexual allusions?!"

"I think that's the byproduct of me returning to my human form, actually," Voldemort said. "I still do not understand how and why that had happened, by the way," he squinted his eyes in suspicion, looking at Harry.

"Don't look at me like that, I have nothing to do with it!" Harry threw his arms up in surrender. "Maybe that's just this place' influence."

"I do not think it to be true, though," Voldemort remarked in thoughtful tone. "From my perspective, it was exactly your influence, which somehow returned me my human body."

"How so? I didn't do a thing, not that I remember at least," Harry raised a brow.

"We shared blood and magic, and not only one time, but twice."

"We exchanged blood and magic," Harry corrected him. "By your logic I should have become snake-like in your stead."

"That is different. I acquired my snake-form through that ritual a year ago."