Chapter Text
"You have no wife," said the cold voice, very quietly. "Nobody knows you are here. You told nobody that you were coming. Do not lie to Lord Voldemort, Muggle, for he knows... he always knows..."
"Is that right?" said Frank roughly. "Lord, is it? Well, I don't think much of your manners, My Lord. Turn 'round and face me like a man, why don't you?"
"But I am not a man, Muggle," said the cold voice, barely audible now over the crackling of the flames. "I am much, much more than a man. However...why not? I will face you... Wormtail, come turn my chair around."
The servant gave a whimper.
"You heard me, Wormtail."
As Wormtail clumsily turned the chair around, disrupting Nagini curled up on the rug, Voldemort sensed someone else in the room, and yet not exactly in the room.
Frank screamed when he saw him. He raised his wand and with a flash of green light the Muggle was dead. He didn’t pay him attention anymore. He closed his eyes, taking in the feeling of connecting with his particularly special Horcrux from afar.
“Harry,” he breathed softly.
Two hundred miles away, the boy called Harry Potter woke with a start.
~*~
He lay in his bed, breathing hard and pressing his hand to his burning scar. His first thought was that Voldemort has come for him. The only reason why his scar ever hurt, was that Voldemort was somewhere nearby.
But he couldn’t be. Harry just saw him in that old house. Saw him… Harry realized at once the dream he just had was no dream at all. He tried to remember the details, but his memory was failing him already. He couldn’t recall the exact form of Voldemort, but he was no man just yet, that much was clear. But he would rise again, according to professor Trelawney’s prophecy from the last school year.
Harry couldn’t decide how he felt about that. He hasn’t really thought about Voldemort since their encounter in the Chamber of Secrets in his second year at Hogwarts. He never told anyone the full story of what happened there, not even Ron and Hermione. What Tom Riddle had told him back then were surely lies, and yet his words still lingered in his mind. He closed his eyes and the memories flooded in.
He remembered when he first saw Tom Riddle. It was in a diary – his diary, full of dark magic. Harry only had it for a short while, but he remembered how addicting it was to write in it and to be answered by that intoxicating presence contained within those pages. He really couldn’t blame Ginny for losing herself in it.
When Tom shared one of his memories with him, Harry couldn’t help being taken with that magnetic, handsome sixteen-year-old boy. His eyes expressed intelligence; his posture seemed to emanate power. Harry was drawn to him more than he dared to admit.
Meeting him in the Chamber of Secrets was even more intense. He was but a blurred memory, and yet his piercing gaze made it difficult to focus on Ginny, lying half-dead on the floor. He couldn’t believe that charming boy and the horrid thing he saw the previous year are one and the same.
Well, to be fair, they weren’t just yet. The Tom Riddle standing before him had no memory of anything that happened after the day he had preserved himself in that diary.
“Ginny told me all about you, Harry,” said Riddle. “Your whole fascinating history.”
He wanted to know exactly what happened, because he didn’t remember any of it. But that was changing. The weaker Ginny got, the stronger he was becoming. The memory of Tom Riddle was gradually turning into real and living Lord Voldemort.
“Phoenix tears…” said Riddle quietly, visibly fighting his confusion, when Fawkes saved Harry’s life after his encounter with the basilisk. “Of course… healing powers… I forgot…” He looked into Harry’s face. “But it doesn’t matter. I actually prefer it this way.”
He raised the wand, but then he froze. Harry sat on the floor, waiting for death, for the second time in mere minutes, and once more it didn’t come.
Riddle was frowning; his gaze was distant, almost frightened. He lowered the wand.
“I remember now,” he whispered. “Godric’s Hollow. Your mother dying to save you… yes, a powerful countercharm indeed…” he raised his eyes to Harry again. “And you… You’re my Horcrux, Harry.”
“Your what?”
Riddle crouched down, so he could be on Harry’s eye level.
“Horcrux. Just like my diary,” he pointed toward the little black book, lying next to them. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? I put a part of my soul into it, so that if anything happened to my body, like it did, I could be reborn.” Harry blinked in horror. Riddle went on. “When the curse rebounded off of you and hit me instead, it tore my remaining soul once more.”
Harry shook his head, terrified. He was beginning to understand what Voldemort was getting at, but he refused to believe it.
“You and I are very much alike, Harry. You must have noticed that.” Harry clenched his jaw. Of course he noticed, even though he’s been trying to ignore it. “Why do you think you can speak Parseltongue?”
“No,” Harry breathed stubbornly.
“Yes, Harry,” Voldemort hissed. “You’re the Horcrux I never meant to make. A part of me lives in you.” He stood up again, looking down at him. “We mustn’t fight anymore. We’re soulmates, Harry. Literally.”
Harry’s heart was racing worse than when he fought the basilisk.
“You’re lying,” he spat through gritted teeth. “I don’t believe you.”
“Of course you do,” Riddle smiled kindly, boring his gaze into him “I know you can feel it too. You are drawn to me, as I am to you.”
Harry looked up at his handsome face. He couldn’t deny how enchanted he was by the older boy. But how many others have been charmed and fooled by him?
“Even if it’s true,” he said, his chest heaving, “I will never be on your side. Dumbledore will find a way – ”
Riddle laughed coldly.
“Dumbledore? You think he doesn’t know exactly what you are?” he snorted with disdain. “He’s always known. That’s why he insisted on you being raised by the hideous Muggles. He’s made it his business to make your life miserable, so that you would die willingly, when the time came. He’s only keeping you alive, so that you can die at the right moment. He’s raising you like a pig for slaughter!” Riddle’s eyes were full of burning hatred, but they softened, when he looked at Harry again. “But you don’t have to worry. I will protect you.”
“You just tried to kill me!” he pointed out incredulously “Again!”
“I didn’t know… I didn’t remember…” Riddle took a deep breath. He wasn’t blurry around the edges anymore, as he had been when Harry entered the Chamber. There was much more sharpness and color to his features now. “Let’s leave the past in the past and look forward to the future.” He raised his hand and examined it carefully. “The process is nearly complete... In a few minutes I will cease to be a memory and Lord Voldemort will return… very much alive.” There was a glint of excitement in his eyes, and a smile lit up his pretty face. “Join me, Harry, and we will rule the Wizarding World together.”
Harry shamefully realized a part of him couldn’t resist the offer. But that part was crazy. He found he couldn’t say no, but he wouldn’t say yes either. He looked to Ginny instead, lying on the stone floor, paler than ever.
“What about Ginny?” he asked.
“She must die, so I can live,” Riddle stated coldly.
“She’s my best friend’s sister.”
“She’s a necessary sacrifice.”
There was no emotion in his voice. Harry breathed heavily. What his heart wanted right now was insane, so he ignored the strange feelings towards his enemy and made the only right decision. He reached for the diary.
“What are you doing?” The worry in Riddle’s voice told him his idea would work.
“I’m sorry,” he said and, surprisingly, he meant it. “But I can’t let you have her.”
With that, he plunged the basilisk fang into the book. Tom Riddle’s screams shook Harry to his core. He watched him twisting and withering, and it pained him. Then he was gone and Harry felt like there was a large hole in his heart.
~*~
When Harry was telling Dubledore what had happened, he skipped the conversation he had with Tom Riddle. He was convinced the things he said to him were lies, but still, he kept silence on the incident. He was afraid to let it slip what he felt; what was going on in his head, or – even worse – in the depths of his heart.
But Dumbledore surprised him.
“And so you met Tom Riddle,” he said. “I expect he was very interested in you…”
Harry’s heart started beating faster.
“Well…” he swallowed “he said that we are very much alike.” Then he remembered what’s been bothering him the whole year. “The Sorting Hat wanted to put me in Slytherin. And I can speak Parseltongue…”
“Yes, Harry. You can speak Parseltongue, because Lord Voldemort can. You see, I’m quite sure he unintentionally transferred some of his own powers to you the night he gave you that scar.”
Harry felt his stomach twist. Did Dumbledore just confirm what Riddle had told him?
“So Voldemort put a bit of… himself… in me?” Harry said carefully.
“It definitely appears so.”
Harry just stared at him for a moment, thunderstruck. Was all of it true? Was he really that thing – a Horcrux – containing a part of Volemort’s soul? Dumbledore evidently knew, he was just putting it in pretty words for him. But then, was the other part true as well? Was putting Harry in the care of the Dursleys a vile plan to make his life miserable, so that he would come to die, when Dumbledore said so?
He dared not voice his thoughts. Instead, he just whispered:
“So I should be in Slytherin.”
Dumbledore began to convince him, that he was a true Griffindor. He showed him that the sword he had pulled out of the Sorting Hat had Godric Griffinor’s name on it. But the seed of doubt has been planted.
“Our choices define us far more than our abilities,” Dumbledore said.
A terrible fear started rising in Harry. A fear, that he has chosen wrong.