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Perhaps it meant something that Harry’s soul touched Voldemort’s on Halloween. Perhaps there was a glowing sphere deep in the Department of Mysteries containing a raspy voice detailing the moment when Harry would finally, after fighting his whole life, succumb.
I know who you are, Tom Riddle, he told the locket around his neck as he and Ron and Hermione burrowed in various forests like starved mice away from a circling hawk’s gaze. And I will destroy you.
The young Riddle in the locket did not speak to him like Harry suspected he spoke to Ron. Days in the forest, his hair wet and matted with rain and dirt, his trainers pinching his toes, and nothing. Hermione and Ron didn’t speak to him, either. The Chosen One was no more prepared to save the world than they were.
I will destroy you, he told the horcrux over and over, picturing handsome Tom Riddle in plain black robes, charming Hepzibah Smith with empty eyes until his cold, bony hand held the prized locket in its palm. Harry hated Riddle more than Voldemort, who had killed his parents, because Riddle was right: They were alike. Every exercise in doing good was held up against Tom Riddle, trying to avoid becoming him. But strip down their respective struggles, and they were the same. Voldemort had marked Harry, made him into his younger self, but he hadn’t molded him. Yet.
Don’t you grow tired of fighting, dear Harry?
In the tent deep in the middle of nowhere, Hermione and Ron slept and Harry lay awake. It was Halloween. Sixteen years ago, a baby was given a fragment of the soul of the most powerful sorcerer in the world. How could it not have had an effect on him? How could he be expected to fight, especially now without Dumbledore?
I am. I am tired.
His eyes filled with tears. He raised his hand to wipe them away and found he couldn’t move. The locket ticked alongside his heart, encouraging him. Voldemort, not Tom Riddle but Harry’s present-day nemesis, whispered in his head.
You do not have to die. No one else has to die. Together, we can both have what we want. I am capable of benevolence, Harry. You can have the normal life you’ve always wanted under my rule.
So you’d just...leave me alone?
Bile crept up his throat. Up until this very moment, he’d thought that’s what he wanted. To be left alone, for Voldemort to vacate his mind and disappear from his life. Why couldn’t he bear to imagine it?
Is this not what you want?
I don’t know what I want. I’ve had you in my head for so long—who am I without you? I have been raised to defeat you. But how can I defeat you if you are a part of me?
You are me, Voldemort corrected. Harry blinked away tears in the darkness and found himself facing the pale, snake-like face of his supposed rival.
“I can secure your safety, dear boy,” he said, reaching up with Tom Riddle’s long, slender hands he’d somehow kept through all the rituals. “And that of your friends. It doesn’t have to be so difficult.”
Harry’s eyes fluttered closed as the hands pressed gently into his cheeks, his fingertips at the nape of his neck. It didn’t have to be so difficult. He opened his eyes and looked into the slits, into Voldemort’s own soul. He wondered if, on that Halloween sixteen years ago, he looked into Voldemort’s eyes and saw the same as he was seeing now. If he felt the same calm, the recognition he experienced now.
“You cannot fight who you are, Harry,” Voldemort told him, pulling their faces closer. “You are me—I have made you into me. I will protect you, but you must let me.”
Overwhelmed with something he couldn’t understand, Harry squeezed his eyes shut. Logic told him he should wrench himself out of Voldemort’s grip, to find his way back to the tent and rip off the locket, but he couldn’t move. He didn’t want to move.
“Let me, Harry.” Something firm and cool against his burning skin—Voldemort’s forehead was touching his. His soul, overriding all else, burst out of his mind and clung to his nemesis, his rival...his elder, his mentor. All this time, he’d thought the hole inside him was from missing his parents. But now it was filled, and his parents were not here.
“Let me, Harry.”
With a sigh, Harry moved his face away until it met the crook of Voldemort’s neck while the rest of him sagged into the wizard’s open arms. His mind, after years and years of duress, sank into a cloud of white. Like a pillow but all-encompassing, with the promise of eternal protection.
Perhaps there was an upside to being the horcrux of the most powerful sorcerer who ever lived.