Chapter Text
‘What was that? How could she have known my name?’
He was panting, his heart still hammering his ribs desperately. He hoped that they had not followed him, that he’d run too fast for them to see the direction he had taken. The flat was the only thing they had right now, he could not have led them here.
Tom was taking his sweet time answering him, which often meant he was ignoring Harry in favor of his own train of thoughts. Confused rage topped up Harry’s frightened panic, shaking the tentative trust he’d started placing in Tom. Because he was not an idiot. He knew Tom was hiding things from him. Harry had let him, afraid to upset their fragile balance. And also because so far, he had no reason to believe any of it could have concerned him. Suddenly, a lot of their sneaking around made a lot more sense.
‘Answer me,’ he seethed between his teeth. ‘What was that bit about Dumbledore? Hiding me?’
Exhaustion suddenly hit him, unnaturally rolling over him like he had just gone through a week of sleepless workout. He bit the inside of his cheek to try and fight off Tom’s influence. He refused to be put out, Tom would not escape their conversation that easily.
‘Go to sleep Harry,’ Tom’s cold voice ordered softly. ‘I will address your questions. But I wish to speak to you face to face.’
Harry hesitated, before slowly making his way up the stairs. He was not exactly thrilled, but speaking with Tom face to face would be easier. Gauging Tom’s meaning from his words alone was always difficult, especially if he was in a fickle mood. On the other hand, the shared dreamscape Tom had taken to pull Harry to every night could be deceptive too. Both options were equally unsatisfying, but he did not think fighting Tom on this would be wise. So he got in the narrow grey bed and let his head fall to the pillow. Sleep got him so fast it was like he’d keeled over into the dark, twiggy and leafy forest ground Tom had summoned for them. A canopy of thick twisted grey branches occulted most of the light, letting only a dusty pale glow hit the knotted roots of the trees. Tom was sitting a few feets away, his back to an old oak’s trunk and his fingers running through the carpet of rotting leaves surrounding him. Harry sat up, taking in the unusual surroundings. Tom had so far exclusively favored interiors, old classrooms or comfortable places where they could talk by a fire, always with a bit of architecture in them.
‘I spent eleven years of my life in this forest,’ he offered tonelessly, answering Harry’s silent question. ‘I haunted this place as a wraith, barely holding on to life or sanity.’
‘What happened to you?’
‘Circumstances very similar to what happened this time around,’ he said, gesturing between himself and Harry, ‘a spell hit me that severed myself from my body. I was drawn to one of the magical tethers I had created if the worst were to happen, and hidden here.’
‘Do all wizards live a life as dangerous as yours?’
‘I have made a number of dangerous enemies. People opposed to my ideas and methods. Leading a revolution makes you the target of all that seek to put an end to it.’
Something ground to a halt in Harry’s brain. Tom had never hidden the fact that he had fought to bring change to the magical world but had never let it slip that he had been anything more than a member of a larger group so far. A group that, if the Prophet’s minutes of the trials of its members was anything to believe, saw gruesome violence as nothing more than a tool to be wielded for their cause.
‘You were one of these Death Eaters?’
‘I was their leader Harry. The world knows me as Lord Voldemort.’
‘You-know-who…’ Harry whispered.
It was too much to process at once. Bits of articles and eavesdropped conversations rushed back to him, twisting his guts. Talks of death and murder and torture… The man had been so feared that they barely dared to print his name in the paper let alone speak it. Tom observed him patiently, his gaze not shifting from Harry while he twisted and turned the information around in his head.
‘That girl today, she recognised me. What does all of this have to do with me?’
Tom nodded, like he was satisfied with Harry for working something out. Slowly a great sneak, far larger than any Harry had ever seen, crawled from the forest floor behind Tom and started coiling around his shoulders. Tom barely paid it any attention, shifting only to accommodate the mass of the great beast.
‘You have to understand that I have kept most of the disturbing truth from you so far of necessity. I needed to be sure you would not react rashly to my words.’ Tom let his hand run pensively on the smooth scales of the snake, gathering his thoughts. ‘When that curse hit me during the battle of Hogwarts, severing me from my body for the second time, I had no idea that you even existed. Rumors told you dead, and I found nothing to disprove them. I never thought anybody would go so far to hide you as to completely deprive you of your heritage and legacy as a wizard. I was as disoriented as you were to be bound to you in the aftermath of the fight. But yes, I knew of you. Our destinies have been interwoven from before the day of your birth and putting you into hiding seems only to have delayed our reunion.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Harry whispered, frowning.
‘Seventeen years ago, as I was pouring my magic and strength into overturning the ways of the magical world, I was informed of a prophecy that could doom all my efforts. It spoke of a soon to be born child that would grow to defeat me. My mind at the time was entirely taken by my cause, and I must say a little broken by some powerful feats of magic I had undertaken. I set off to kill the child before it could ever menace me.’
Harry’s breath stuck in his throat, forming an odd lump there. He did not like this story. But Tom was delivering it in such a cold, detached way that it did not sound real. Harry kind of knew where this was going, yet it almost felt like he was a passenger on a train ride, watching the landscape pass through the glass.
‘I set off to kill you that night Harry. I failed, because when your mother died, she put a powerful protection on you. I could not harm you, and when I tried my curse rebounded on me, severing me from my body. Turning me into an errant wraith. That’s why your name is widely known in the magical world, as the one who vanquished me seventeen years ago.’
‘I am prophesied to kill you?’ Harry asked, cold dread freezing his limbs.
Tom, or Lord Voldemort, rose slowly, the giant snake pouring from his shoulders onto the ground with a hiss of displeasure. His eyes were sharp and calculating, considering Harry with attention as he slowly crossed the distance between them. Harry gasped when Tom grabbed his jaw, turning his head slightly to the side to better observe him. Harry stayed still under the scrutiny, too afraid to move with Tom in such a strange mood so close before him.
Tom had never really hidden his vicious tendencies from Harry, and some of his teaching methods were harsh. Harry had learned that it was sometimes smart to tread carefully around Tom, so far as he could when they were sharing the same mind. But now Tom had just admitted to cold blooded murder. Of his parents. Of wanting to kill him as a baby. And so Harry kept very still, barely daring to breathe while Tom towered above him. Slowly his great snake started crawling across Harry’s lap and chest, resting there as it had against Tom and hissing contentedly.
‘No. I don’t believe you are,’ Tom finally said. ‘There was another boy that could have fitted the terms of the prophecy. I meant to dispose of him after you. No. Look at us, Harry Potter. I don’t think we are meant to kill each other. It seems to me we work rather better as allies.’
‘You killed my parents,’ Harry rasped.
‘But I did not condemn you to the seventeen years of suffering that followed. The other boy lost his parents too, quickly after you did. Yet he was brought up a wizard, taught to wield his magic. Someone, I suspect Dumbledore, hid you away in the muggle word to be forgotten. They left you to rot with these disgusting muggles while an obscurus feasted on your magic, turning you into a monster.’
Harry wanted to bat Tom’s words away, but there was a strange quality to them. They dripped into his ears like a poison directly staining his soul, tugging at memories buried here. Dimly, he could feel the obscurus raging under his skin, but Tom’s cold touch on his face was keeping it there, bound despite the raving madness that threatened to overwhelm Harry.
‘I did not lie to you Harry, I merely held back what you were not ready to hear. I have not made you into what you are. You have rampaged and killed, and they would hunt and kill you like the dark creature you are. I would protect you.’
‘Just because you need me,’ Harry bit back.
Tom’s eyes flashed red and his hand tightened punishingly on Harry’s jaw. He clicked it shut, biting his tongue to keep it from running again in anger.
‘I have come to appreciate your intelligence, and I respect your power. What you don’t know may yet be taught to you. It is true that I need you, in my present diminished form, but I have also come to care for you. Don’t let the past make a fool of you and blind you to the present.’
Harry kept his jaw set, not trusting himself to answer. Tom’s face seemed to twitch in irritation and he let go of Harry, pulling his hands behind his back and taking a step away.
‘Sleep on it. Speak to me again when you have seen the truth of my words.’
And before Harry could make sense of his words, the dreamscape cast him out.