A/N: Hurray! I actually managed to write a chapter that did not consist only of conversation. By the end of this story, it may actually become readable! :P

I think we're on about one eighth of the story itself, if my plot summary doesn't lengthen itself in the next few days as it tends to o'.

--

Harry awoke next day to a fuming Hermione and a grumpy Madam Pomfrey who was shooting disapproving looks at his best friend, a very rugged Seamus Finnegan, wearing a patch over his eye and holding his arm in a sling, and an otherwise white, empty Hospital Wing.

His heart clenched when he could see no sign of Ron.

"Harry! Madam Pomfrey says that you should rest some more, but if you really have to, you are good enough to go, so let's go. There's so much we have to tell you and you have to visit Ron too, so do you think you can walk?"

The black-haired boy perked up and was just about to ask after Ron when he blinked back into existence.

You named your pet Ron?, Tom said disbelievingly.

Harry Potter groaned.

--

Ron was in a bad condition, he learned later, but would survive; he had endured several shots of Cruciatus, had his left hand chopped off by a hex that was meant for his neck, and had all the hairs on his body turned into spiders - a very unpleasant experience even if you are not terribly afraid of the little beasts. He still twitched at every sound that even slightly represented crawling, could not stand anything that had more than four legs and would probably never get rid of the trembling of his hands.

But he was alive and that was all that mattered to Harry at the moment.

However, the names of those who have either died in battle or later in the Hospital Wing from their injuries sobered Harry quickly; besides Dumbledore, there were two other dead Professors, McGonagall and Sprout, many members of the Order, including One-Eye Moody and Tonks, and fourteen deceased students, one of them Harry's own schoolmate Dean Thomas, another few Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws, and surprisingly, six Slytherins.

Late in the school year when Voldemort's massacres had become known to public - he had wiped out whole villages, Muggle and magical, taking special care to torture the young and make sure the old had seen that before their own death - many older students of the Slytherin House had declared their alliance with the otherwise not well liked Dumbledore. Harry, Ron and Hermione, along with the rest of the school, watched with disbelief as even Draco Malfoy turned to the Headmaster, rebelling against his parents and openly defying the Dark Lord.

Even more surprising was the following announcement from Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy; Lucius, upon persuasion by both Draco and Severus Snape, had left the Death Eaters and sought cover and safety within the very walls of Hogwarts. Dumbledore had declined the notion and, much to Harry's chagrin, sent the Malfoy patriarch and his wife to Grimmauld Place where most of the Order of The Phoenix lived at that time.

Needless to say, the Malfoys were not accepted very warmly, but helped the side of Light nevertheless. And in the last battle, Lucius Malfoy had been ganged up by several of his former companions and later killed; Seamus told Harry, however, that Lucius had managed to take down most of the attackers before getting killed himself.

Draco Malfoy, he was told, was in St. Mungo, also in an extremely bad condition - the Death Eaters have tried hard to get him killed, but Dumbledore himself protected the boy and together, the two made a fearsome team.

The losses that the Golden Trio mourned the most, however, were those of one Neville Longbottom and - Ginny Weasley.

Ron had gone almost mad with grief when Hermione told him of the death of his little sister, and would not speak up for days. As soon as he was able to leave the bed, they visited the Burrow where she was buried, and Harry was shaken to see the state of the Weasley family after the death of their youngest.

The war might have ended, but he soon learned that battles were still being fought off the battlefield; struggles to live with the loss and sudden freedom of the Wizarding world, reparations of the destroyed villages, towns and homes, and the general confusion about what those who have dedicated their lives to the war were supposed to do now that it was all over.

The Boy Who Lived had another pressing, worrying matter on his hands; the continued existence of Tom Riddle's soul.

--

Through the next few days after he was released from the Infirmary, Harry had spent long hours explaining to Tom exactly what happened in the last twenty years. In the end they had reached a tentative relationship where Tom was not allowed to insult anyone and everyone anymore or start choking Harry at any given point, and could only take control of his body if Harry explicitly allowed him to.

In exchange, Harry did not tell Hermione or anyone else about the new companion in his mind. Why he had agreed to that, Harry didn't know - but he did know that it felt rather... Nice, having someone to talk to when everyone else was too busy trying to settle their own lives and he was left alone to find his way in the new world.

--

They named me the Dark Lord?, Tom blinked.

You named yourself the Dark Lord.

I thought I claimed I was Lord Voldemort.

Well, yes, but you wanted a special name just for your followers.

And a special name for those who feared me. How silly.

Tom was pleased to hear that sweet laugh that left his bodiless soul tingling with delight. He had grown to like making Harry Potter laugh in the past few days... After that argument on their first day, that is, when they almost killed each other - mentally, at least, if not physically.

Perhaps we should make an interview and publish it as the Secret musings of one Dark Lord, Harry? Imagine. 'What were your plans for the future when you were younger?' 'Oh, I don't know... I wanted to climb poles and string wire for the Muggle electricity companies.'

Harry laughed again. They - when had he started thinking of Tom and himself as 'they'? - were sitting on the stairwell of Grimmauld Place, shooting off cleaning spells each time one of them spotted a spiderweb, a rat's hideout, or, in Tom's case, Kreacher. It would be boring and dull work, cleaning up the big house haunted by memories of Sirius - and even Ginny - if Tom wasn't there to laugh at Harry's own stupidity every time he attempted to do anything with his own hands instead of with magic - like cleaning the dishes or sorting the books in the Library - and chase off Kreacher with creative magic every time the elf tried to sneer at Harry for taking his house over. Tom knew many, many spells and curses that Harry had never heard of before and he was taking an advantage of Tom's knowledge with pleasure.

Tom was also able to stop Harry's nightmares about Cedric, Sirius and especially the last battle, to some degree. And every time Harry got haunted by the lives that were lost to his cause and the innocents that died on the hands of Voldemort because Harry didn't manage to kill him earlier, the left-over part of Voldemort's soul that was not Voldemort would start mentally poking Harry until the boy lost his nerves and attacked Tom back - and so, got distracted at least for a short time.

Sometimes at night when they were lying in the bed and talking, Harry felt like Tom was laying next to him. He liked the feeling; it made him forget how lonely he actually was, with Weasleys still grieving, Ron recovering and Hermione trying to set the Wizarding world on its legs again, while most other people he could otherwise turn to were dead.

The manipulative, power-hungry lunatic who Riddle was before he split his soul for the first time proved to be a nice companion in a day-to-day life where those things didn't matter much.