Bound To You

Chapter 2: Chicken Massacre

When Harry woke up, he felt slightly lightheaded. He wondered what exactly happened as he sat up and looked around. Everyone else was still sleeping, and the sun hasn't completely risen yet when he glanced outside.

But he was already awake, and he couldn't possibly get back to sleep--living with the Dursleys had that kind of effect on him. As he got ready for the day, in an extremely rare occurence, Ron woke up.

"Where have you been?" he asked, rubbing his eyes groggily as he stared sleepily at his best friend. "You weren't here when we got back, and we were so worried too..."

"Sorry, I went out... for a walk," Harry shrugged, picking up his toiletries and clothes before entering the bathroom. He wondered what had happened last night--his memories were foggy at best. He remembered the creepy stare of Ron's little sister and swore that she wasn't as creepy when they went to Diagon Alley together. It was quite disconcerting. His head throbbed a little bit, and something niggled at the back of his mind, but he just couldn't place it.

But he felt that it wasn't something to be concerned about, so he dried himself off and pulled on his clothes and steeled himself for the day.

Tom was amused.

He'd had experience on possessing a human being--namely Quirell--and he wasn't really someone he'd want to... bond with. Too cowardly, too weak. He was too easy to take over, but at that time he was also too weak to take full possession of him, not to mention the insanity side-effect that came from creating horcruxes was still gripping him tightly when he first possessed him.

When he'd possessed the snake, he knew that the snake was dying, but it was a formerly bonded snake and had magical residue within it, so he could retain some sort of sense until he found the boy wonder. He didn't know what compelled him to get close to him, but he was warm. Somewhere within the snake's mind, it wanted to feel warm in its' last moments, so its body went to coil around Harry and for some reason he couldn't control it anymore.

Talking with Harry and ending up in his mindscape wasn't his plan before, but after bonding with him, he felt himself gradually getting back his sanity and kept himself from the urge to take over the boy's body. Funny thing was, something he'd never knew before, was that when Harry was awake, the Harry within his own mindscape was asleep. Tom watched the form in his arms, sleeping peacefully as he listened to the boy's musings from within--which was quite loud and who knew that Harry thought about a lot of things?

He was currently listening to him thinking about Severus' dour personality, and wondered why he'd hate him because of his father. Tom shook his head as he kept on listening, not having anything to say about the boy's thoughts. He could hear the irritation when he heard about why he'd have to dice some dried roots for a phase while he'd have to put in the same dried roots, only chopped, after stirring the cauldron five times clockwise.

'Isn't this almost the same as cooking?' he thought, and he could feel that it was a question he'd been asking since first year.

"Potion brewing isn't the same as cooking, Harry," he whispered, and felt his thoughts jerk in surprise.

'Um... what...?' he thought, bewildered. But then he dismissed his voice as his inner thoughts and went back to chopping the dried roots. Tom shrugged and just chuckled to himself and held the body in his arms tighter towards him. He the tuned out the boy's thoughts and looked around the mindscape. He was fairly surprised that the first time he'd arrived, he'd come upon the small storage-like space and had seen the small boy huddled on top of some sort of rug on the floor, eyeing him with suspicion.

It indicated that something was wrong--seeing how young he is and how he seem to not even know of Occlumency--his mindscape would've given him a visual of a place in which had the most impression to him. Did he have some sort of childhood trauma? Because the storage place had some mops and brooms, dusters and a rickety stool.