Chapter Text
Voldemort, or the fraction of a fraction of Tom Marvolo Riddle... was mortified. And if he had the ability, he would hide himself away and starve himself to death.
Which, unfortunately, was likely because the infant who had caused his plight hadn't been fed in over a day.
"Freaky babies who cry and make noise don't get fed." The horse woman had shouted slamming the nursery door shut.
How did it come to this? Being stuck inside of the mind of a baby who was supposed to be *dead*. But instead the insolent Mudblood had cast some sort of sacrifice ward on her making her the first half of an equation he could hardly predict next.
It had felt so satisfying to see her limp lifeless body fall to the ground. In his own thrill of the kill, he hadn't noticed anything awry like, perhaps, an unnatural glow around the baby meant to be his downfall. He had been unwise to assume it was moonlight.
He didn't even hesitate to cast the curse.
The next he knew he was burning- fracturing- searching for something, *anything* to hold onto to stay on the mortal plane. And what was there, pulsing with a still settling ward with a hole that was quickly closing up? So he took his chance to latch onto his new host.
And was quickly caged by said annoying spell.
We will make her pay. Voldemort speaks to the babe. All we must do is play her game until the time is right. Then she will be the one sobbing.
'You will not kill my son.' The spell commanded and if he had eyes to role he would. The seniment would have to be enough. It had hardly been a month of this routine and already he could feel the boredom building up.
The babe, Harry, quieted in his crib and sucked on his fingers. Quite the miracle really.
It was most likely the attention from the horcrux rather than the actual words, but regardless the Potter boy was quiet.
Waiting for the boy to grow old enough to manipulate for his own goals was going to take a long time. But having that time meant there was time to strategize and make contingencies against the boy. Hopefully the muggles would warm up to the boy.
The abuse that Harry endured did not stop when he grew older. He would have bursts of magic in distress and was punished for it. And Harry wasn't stupid, he knew there was a connection to turning the lock on the fridge into sand and the iron pan swung at his head luckily missing when Harry darted out of her reach.
There was a wildness in her eyes when she called him a freak and grabbed his arm and threw him into the cupboard. But he was only three, how can a three-year-old be a freak? Tom did his best to mitigate the emotional damage, but a voice inside the child’s head could only go so far.
Harry tried so hard not to be a freak. Maybe if he wasn’t, and proved himself, Petunia and Vernon would love him.
Every time a flower bloomed, or a color changed when it shouldn’t, he felt out the ‘freakish’ part of himself and tried his best to hold it back, to choke it like Uncle Vernon tried do to Harry after Harry had, apparently, cursed Vernon's car to not start.
You shouldn't suppress yourself so harshly. It could hurt us. Harry’s imaginary friend scoldded.
"You're not the one who gets punished for being a freak..." Harry mumbles back, weeding the garden. The day was hot on the back of Harry’s neck and sweat pooled and dripped down his back.
I'm hardly imaginary.
Harry couldn't help the smile; his friend was playing dumb again! He fished out another weed and threw it in the compost bucket.
"All imaginary friends think they're 'hardly imaginary'."
He likes his invisible friend. He said funny things like coming up with ridiculous ways for the Dursley’s to die. Traps they could set up and magical spells they could use to make them suffer.
But magic wasn't real, so it was only pretend plans. He was six years old and old enough to know the difference between real and not real.
He pushed aside some more plants to check for anything that didn’t belong and uncovered a grass snake. It was curled up and still like it was sleeping.
“Hello little grass snake.”
“Hello speaker.”
Harry smiles and pets the smooth scales of the snake, “I’m sorry to ask this, but could you find a different place to sleep in? If my aunt or uncle saw you it…wouldn’t be good for you.”
The snake moved and lifted it’s head, “You need not underestimate me. This one is fast. But this one would be no better than a slow mouse if one did not take a Speakers head.”
“Thank you.” Harry whispered after the snake as it slithered away.
He couldn’t pretend that the snake didn’t speak to him. Which definitely wasn’t normal. Pretty Freakish by his relatives standard. He had long ago learned the virtue of keeping certain things to himself. However, since he gardened more than anyone else taking to snakes was very useful. Sometimes he took longer to weed just to enjoy the quiet. Even if occasionally, he had to nurse a sunburn.
When he was outside, he could pretend everything was okay!
However, what wasn't pretend was all the pots he was needing to use to get dinner ready. He was braising some stew meat and candying carrots... potatoes were boiling, and he just couldn't do it all! He really shouldn’t have taken the extra time to weed the garden…now he was behind with preparing dinner! The current problem was that the pot was too heavy for him to dump out the water and Dudley hated his potatoes being too mushy... if only it could dump itself out into the sink!
Frustrated, he tried to find a slotted spoon to fish out the potatoes but the carrots needed stirring.
He lowered the heat on that burner and stirred the carrots carefully. He heard water being poured out and he turned. Aunt Petunia said he had to do this himself, but did his Aunt come to help him after all?
But, no, the pot was pouring the water out of the pot and into the collider in the sink by itself. How was that happening...?
"What are you doing with that pot, boy?" Aunt Petunia shrieks and Harry startles turning to face his aunt. His arm bumped into the meat pan and he pulled away with a cry. The step stool he was tipped over and he was on the floor. He landed on the hot water.
Something ripped in his shoulder when he landed on it and his other arm stung from the burns.
Aunt Petunia grit her teeth and turned to her special pans she hung on the wall. She grabbed the frying pan and walked to Harry.
"Aunt P-Petunia, I'm sorry I don't know what-"
"Shut up! I have had it. I took you in.” Slowly she made her way towards Harry, the frying pan firm in her grip as her face flushed with a fury Harry had only ever seen Vernon do, “I gave you a bed to sleep on, and let you live in my home. I let you go to school, I let you get seen by the neighbors. All I have ever asked in return was for you to be normal. But I knew it was too much to hope for. I've had it. I have had it! I’ve had it with you and your freakish MAGIC!" To punctuate the word, she struck Harry with her frying pan.
The next time Harry woke he was back in his cupboard. Everything hurt. That part inside of him that liked to ruin everything wriggled and bucked to be let out to do whatever it wanted!
Harry wouldn't let it. He had a name for it. Magic. Magic made the pot pour itself, and the flowers bloom. Magic makes his relative hate him and hit him.
The magic needed to go away. If he didn't have it anymore, and proved it they might love him!! He used all his strength to try and strangle and rip apart the well of magic inside of him
Harry! Whatever you're doing stop it!
Harry didn't listen. He didn't care anymore. He just wanted it all to end! So as hard as he could he clawed and ripped at the freakish part of himself, magic, that made him unlovable. And it was working! It was like pulling up a weed, all he had to do was pull up all the roots.
He would make it so the Durlsey's wouldn't hate him. Even if it all felt like he was turning himself inside out in the worst possible way.
Anything was better than this.
--
The boy was insane.
Scratch that. The boy was smart and had a desperate inclination for any form of acceptance from the muggles.
He had done his best to keep the boy in brighter spirits. There was only so much a voice could do to entertain an observant and longing child. He attempted distractions the most, and plans for the future. The boy didn’t really know life beyond surrey and school but Tom had promised to take him to the sea when he was old enough. Painted pictures of one of the more fond memories he had of his childhood. The sand crunching beneath his feat and the cave that house bats in the stalactites on the ceiling.
No words were going to fix this. The muggle had gone too far with hitting his host with a frying pan after naming Harry’s “freakishness” as Magic. Harry’s ignorance to the nature of what ostracized him from the others had been the only thing protecting the boy from deteriorating into an obscurial.
Now Tom had to deal with it, or face destruction.
But Tom barely had a presence as a fraction of a fraction of a soul. And all these years the spell that the Mudblood had cursed him with prevented him from really doing anything more than speak to the boy.
It chanted the same thing it always has, 'You will not kill my son.'
Listen to me- there is an obscurial forming inside the boy. Your son will die if I don’t interfere. Let me save him.
'You will not kill my son.' It warbled back as he pressed against its barrier to find a crack, or bend that would allow him to slip past to reach the blackened thing that Harry was making. It was like seeing stirred up sediment and coalesce into a ball of pain and misery.
I want to be loved, it cried.
They were running out of time. He would have to try to appeal to the directive of the spell, but who knew how much flexibility it even had. It may be only useful for quarantining him!
I do not wish to kill Harry but if you let the obscurial fully develop all the things that make Harry HARRY. Will. Be. Devoured. Let me save him!
The spell waves around him in the awful bubble of lazy thought.
'You will save Harry?' It whispered in the echo of Harry's wretched mother.
Yes Tom insisted.
'At a cost?'
Dammit living it better than dying!! If you have a price, I will pay it. And try to find a way around it. But that thought he kept in the deepest parts of his fraction of a soul.
'Save Harry.' It said and wrapped around him- in him- filled out the starved parts of himself he didn't remember missing.
The comman of ‘save harry’ filled him to the brim. And with energy he hadn’t felt in six years he shot off into the depths of Harry's soul. He raced for the torrent of darkness and loneliness at his center. But how to stop it?
'At a cost.' Something repeated and resonated inside of him.
He was a horcrux, designed to assimilate objects to the soul’s will. They set traps for interlopers and ensnare victims to feed them magic. And he was now wearing – was combined with- the shell of a protection spell woven with pure maternal affection fueled with sacrifice.
If he wanted to live in any form, he needed to sacrifice something. A horrible something.
If he saved Harry the way he thought this spell was urging him to, he could never fulfill his purpose.
But Harry was dying.
So, he lunged at the obscurial, opening a maw he... was just learning that he had.
The obscurial was not easy to consume. It rippled and writhed thrashing back and forth. It tasted of stale wood and salty tears.
The manifestation of Harry's misery. His magic literally fighting its host trying to fufill a wish that was impossible without mutual destruction. But Tom would change that, because he was a horcrux. And they were excellent at surviving.
So, he kept going and took it all in to change its purpose- and even himself. Assimilate, and adapt.
He forced Harry's magic to settle back in the veins and channels it belonged in and washed Harry's mind with as much love as he could manage.
I'm sorry you've suffered so much, Harry. But you're not alone. Go to sleep now.
His inner voice had changed. He didn't have time to think about that. He needed to heal up Harry. And come up with a plan.
He needed to heal the child... enough so he wouldn't die, but not so much that the evidence was hidden. Muggles were stupid but the child's head clearly taking a hit combined with the burns..? It might be enough to convince the muggles to do something. However, this child was the savior of the wizarding world. If he could get the child on the Knight bus, or better yet Diagon Ally... he knew what he needed to do.
He needed to teach Harry his first spell.