Chapter Text
Harry’s fingers were scraped raw from the tiles of the school roof, but he didn’t dare let go. His heart hammered in his chest like it was trying to get out, and his breath came in sharp little gasps. One second he’d been running from Dudley and his gang, and the next—
He was up here. Clutching onto the rooftop like startled cat.
He pressed himself flat against the slates, his skinny arms shaking. The ground below looked a long way down, far too far for him to jump without seriously injuring himself. His mind kept trying to work out how it had happened, but it made no sense. He couldn’t have climbed. He hadn’t had time, let alone the strength. It wasn’t possible.
He didn’t have time to ponder on it for long as his blind panic was unexpectedly interrupted by a disembodied voice.
It was cold and whispering, curling round the back of his mind like smoke.
“At last…”
Harry’s stomach dropped. He squeezed his eyes shut and clapped his hands over his ears as he wobbled dangerously on the tiles. The voice didn’t stop.
“Foolish child. Do you think you scrambled up here with your pitiful arms?”
Harry’s breath hitched. “Who’s there?” he whispered, though he knew without a doubt no one else was on the roof.
“Accidental magic,” the voice hissed, the sound of it dry and sharp, like a snake moving over dry leaves. “You panicked and tore yourself from one place to another. Crude and uncontrolled, yes… but powerful.”
Harry’s eyes snapped open. His heart pounded harder. Magic? That was nonsense. Things happened around him sometimes, strange things he could never explain, but magic?
He pressed his forehead against the cold tiles. “I’m going mad,” he whispered to himself. “I’ve gone completely barmy.”
The voice gave a low, cruel chuckle.
“Mad? No. Not yet. I have been with you all along, caught in the cage of your mind, until now. I know what you are, even if you do not.”
Harry shook his head fiercely. “Stop it, stop it, stop it,” he muttered, as if saying it fast enough could shove the voice away. But he couldn’t ignore the truth of it. He was on the roof with no way up or down. He hadn’t climbed. It wasn’t physically possible.
And that left only what the voice said.
Magic.
The voice slid through his mind again, stronger now, like it had found a crack and wormed its way in deeper.
“At last… at last I am heard. How long I have waited, festering in silence. And now you cower like a cornered rat. Get over yourself, boy.”
Harry flinched, pressing his palms harder to his ears, though it did nothing. His chest was so tight it hurt. “You’re not real. I’m hearing things. I’ve gone—”
“Insane?” the voice cut across him again, almost gleeful. “No, no. This is real. You did this. You pulled yourself out of their reach, snapped yourself through space itself. Pathetic in form but promising. You will not fall and break your neck like a useless little squibling. You will do it again. Properly this time.”
Harry’s nails dug into the tiles. His head was spinning.
“I can’t just… do it again,” he whispered.
The voice hissed with what sounded like laughter, cruel and delighted. “Of course you can. Feel it. The need. The desperation that flung you here. Grasp it again. Picture where you wish to be—down, on the ground and draw yourself to it.”
Harry blinked rapidly, his throat felt bone dry. His eyes darted to the drop below. Dudley and his gang had long gone, bored of searching for him, but the ground was still as far as ever. If he jumped, he’d break something for sure. If he stayed, someone would spot him and Uncle Vernon would… well, Harry didn’t even want to think about that.
That left… the voice.
He swallowed hard. “I’m… I must be absolutely batty,” he muttered. Talking to something in his head. Believing it. But mad or not, it was either listen or throw himself off and hope for the best.
“Hope is fake and foolish, child,” the voice whispered silkily. “You either do or do not, use your power or accept failure.”
Harry screwed his eyes shut. He thought of the patch of grass at the edge of the playground, just by the bins, where he’d been running before. He thought of being down there, on solid ground, away from the dizzying drop. He clutched at the feeling, the desperate want to be safe again.
The world twisted around him.
For a heartbeat, everything squeezed tight as though he’d been shoved through a narrow pipe. His stomach lurched, and there was a horrible crack like a whip snapping right next to his ear—
—and then he was down.
Harry staggered, his knees buckling as he hit the patch of grass he’d been aiming for. He dropped onto his side with a grunt and clutched at his leg. A hot sting burnt through his shin, and when he glanced down, he saw a raw serpentine gash twisting around his lower leg, as if a strip of meandering skin had been peeled away.
His breath came in short, panicked bursts. It hurt. It really hurt.
He didn’t have time to dwell on it for long before the voice was interrupting his panic once again.
“Yes,” the voice breathed, sharp and triumphant. “Yes! You did it. Crude and inelegant. But you did it.”
Harry pressed his hand against his leg and tried not to cry. His eyes were wide, fixed on the spot of roof he’d been on only seconds before. “I—I really…” His voice cracked. “I did that?”
“Finally, you grasp it,” the voice hissed, almost savouring the words. “Not a hopeless squibling after all.”
Harry blinked at nothing as he still clutched his stinging leg. He couldn’t quite believe it. Him. Freak Harry, the boy everyone said was good-for-nothing. He’d wished himself down… and he’d done it.
The voice stirred again, sharper still. “Remember this, boy. You are capable of more than you know. Next time, you will do better. Next time, you will not waste flesh for lack of focus.”
For the first time in his life, Harry heard someone—something—tell him he’d done well. The words were barbed and cruelly given, but they still warmed a place inside him that had never been warmed before.
His shin still stung bitterly, and he could feel blood soaking his sock. He sat there in the grass, trembling, staring at the school roof.
He’d done it.
He’d really done it.
Later that evening Harry lay curled on the thin mat he slept on in his cupboard, and his shin still throbbed from the strange wound, now wrapped in a strip of cloth he’d torn from an old shirt. Every so often it sent a sharp sting zinging through his leg, but he didn’t dare make a fuss.
Uncle Vernon had barked at him the moment he’d stumbled through the door after school, “Where’ve you been, boy? Lazing about again? Into your cupboard, now!” No one had noticed the blood or cared enough to mention it, thank goodness. No one ever looked too closely at him.
Harry pulled his knees to his chest and tried to keep quiet. That was the rule. Don’t be seen and don’t be heard. The Dursleys were sat in front of the telly just a few paces across the hall, he couldn’t cry no matter how much he felt like it.
Just as Harry was starting to think that he had made up the odd voice he heard earlier, it spoke again.
“This…” it hissed, low and furious, “is where they keep you?”
Harry jolted, smacking his head against the low ceiling. “Ow—!” He clapped a hand over his mouth to stay quiet.
“Answer me, boy. This filthy hole—this cage—it belongs to you?”
Harry’s heart thudded. “It’s not mine… it’s just where I sleep,” he whispered.
There was a sharp silence before the voice returned, this time filled with loathing. “Wretched vermin! To stuff a wizard into the dark like a rat. They are beneath you.”
Harry’s skin prickled. He swallowed. “They’re… they’re my family.” The word tasted sour even as he said it.
“Family?” The laugh was harsh and mirthless, as it cut through Harry like a knife. “Fools who starve you, beat you and chain you in this box—they are not family. They are cattle. If I were flesh and stood in this house, they would not live to take another breath. I would see their throats cut before they laid a hand on you.”
Harry froze as his breath caught in his chest. He knew he ought to be terrified. The voice was cruel and frightening, promising death as if it were nothing. Yet something twisted inside him. Strange and small. The Dursleys never protected him. Never cared if he was hurt. But here was a voice, wicked and cold, saying it would stop them. Saying he didn’t deserve this.
He whispered into the dark, “You… you’d do that? For me?”
There was a pause, and then the sibilant reply, dripping with disdain and still tinged with venom. “You are my vessel. Mine. No one defiles what is mine. Remember this, boy. You are wizard. They are nothing. And one day, you will crush them beneath your heel, as is your right.”
Harry hugged his knees tighter despite the pain in his shin and his heart raced. He was frightened. Of course he was. But curled there in the dark, with that terrible whisper curling through his mind, he felt something else too. Something he had never felt in this cupboard before.
He wasn’t safe. But he wasn’t alone, either.
Harry lay awake, staring at a spider dangling from the ceiling. The house was silent now, only the occasional creak of heating pipes and Uncle Vernon’s snore rumbling faintly through the walls. He turned the word over in his head again and again. Wizard.
Finally, he whispered into the dark. “Wizards a-are real, then?”
The voice returned at once, cold and curling with contempt. “Ignorant brat, of course. What do you think you did earlier, clambering through space in an instant, if not magic?”
Harry winced. “I just— I thought maybe it was a one-off. A fluke.”
“There are no flukes. You are born magical or you are not. You have magical blood coursing through your veins. Wizards bend the world to their will, while pitiful muggles scratch about in the dirt. Yes, boy, wizards are real. More real than those dull creatures you call family.”
Harry swallowed hard, his chest tight. “And there’s… a whole population of wizards? More than just me?”
“Of course,” the voice snapped, but with a strange relish, as if it enjoyed telling him. “A whole other world concealed behind a veil of secrecy. There are hidden settlements, ancient families and schools where children are taught to harness what you have already tasted. It is concealed from muggles because they fear what they cannot match. They would burn us, drown us, hang us from their gallows if they could.”
Harry’s eyes went wide. A whole world. Hidden and waiting. It was more wonderful, and more frightening, than any dream he’d dared to have. He hung on every syllable, hardly daring to breathe.
After a long pause, he asked the question that had been clawing at the back of his mind since the voice first spoke. “Who… who are you?”
The voice seemed to swell as cold pride seeped from every word. “I am Lord Voldemort.”
Harry’s skin prickled at the name, though he didn’t know why. It sounded ominous. “And… why are you in my head?”
“Because you are mine,” Voldemort hissed, his voice low and dangerous. “Once, I ruled the wizarding world. I was the Dark Lord and feared by all. Yet there was a prophecy made that a child born as the seventh month dies would be my downfall…. You. But your mother gave her life to save yours—her blood and her sacrifice—ruined me. Magic most ancient and protective tore me from my body and scattered me into nothing. Yet I clung on and endured. My spirit fastened itself to yours….”
Harry’s breath caught. His chest felt hollow. “You… you’re the one who killed my mum... it wasn’t a car crash?” His voice was barely audible.
“Yes.” There was no hint of hesitation or apology in Voldemort’s voice. “It was my hand that ended your parents. Your father fell first like the fool he was. Your mother stood longer, but her defiance cost me dearly. Her magic shielded you and tore me apart. And so, I remain—a shadow. Within you.”
Harry curled tighter into his threadbare blanket as his stomach churned. He wanted to scream, to claw the voice out of his skull. The murderer of his parents was inside his head.
And yet… he couldn’t forget. That same cruel voice had taught him how to escape the roof. Had praised him when no one else ever had.
Harry bit his lip hard enough to sting. He was frightened sick with it. But somewhere deep, in the loneliest corner of his mind, he couldn’t push aside the thought that maybe, just maybe, he needed the voice.
Harry learnt quickly that Lord Voldemort didn’t chatter.
He spoke when it pleased him, sliding into Harry’s mind like a blade finding a familiar sheath. Sometimes he watched in silence for hours, just judging. Other times he cut in the moment Harry did something he found particularly stupid.
“Do not flinch,” Voldemort snapped one morning as Aunt Petunia cuffed Harry round the ear for not clearing the breakfast dishes away fast enough. “Pain is information. Learn from it instead of whimpering like a beaten dog.”
Harry bit back the sting in his eyes and nodded almost without thinking. He was used to worse. Voldemort didn’t frighten him the way he probably should have. Cruelty, after all, was familiar ground to him.
What startled him, what made his chest ache in a way he didn’t understand, was when Voldemort approved.
Later that day the cut on his shin had come to itch dreadfully.
Harry ducked into his cupboard and rolled his trousers up, staring at the dark scab. It was red and slightly puffy around the edges and Voldemort’s attention settled on it like a weight.
“Magic can heal you,” he said. “I doubt you will manage it perfectly. But you will not let your wounds fester like an animal.”
Harry pressed his fingers around the injury, concentrating as Voldemort instructed him on how to use magic to heal himself. He told Harry to focus on the warmth of his body, on drawing the edges of his skin together. The pain flared for a moment and then dulled.
The scab hardened and shrank, then peeled off, and the irritated redness bled away like it had never existed. Underneath was a silvery scar that twisted around his leg like the ghost of a serpent.
“Interesting,” Voldemort murmured. “You must have been doing this for years to achieve such a result, subconsciously perhaps.”
Harry frowned. “I always thought I just healed fast...”
“No,” Voldemort said flatly. “Your magic must have been reacting instinctively your whole life to heal this well on your first purposeful try. Most adult wizards would not be able to heal a splinch wound as cleanly as you have.”
When Harry looked back down to his shiny new scar Voldemort spoke again.
“Well done.”
The words dug into Harry’s heart like a barbed arrow. He replayed them in his head until he fell asleep later that night.
Weeks later, Harry was locked inside his cupboard again as his hollow stomach ached with hunger, the Dursleys had been even more neglectful than usual. Harry sat there wishing that the door would swing open and let him out so he could fetch some food.
The cupboard door clicked softly and trembled in its frame.
He froze, heart racing, staring at the wooden door as if it might scream in protest. He hadn’t touched it. He’d just… wanted it open.
“Focus, idiot,” Voldemort hissed. “Do not beg the world. Command it.”
Harry swallowed and tried again, picturing the latch on the outside sliding free. The lock gave another quiet click as it obeyed his will.
He grinned before he could stop himself.
“There,” Voldemort said, his tone was sharp but pleased. “You’re not entirely useless.”
Harry’s grin grew, warm and foolish on his face at the praise.
He crept down the hallway barefoot, every step a careful thing and Voldemort guided him on what to take from the fridge without hesitation.
“Take a few slices of bread from the middle of the loaf they’ll notice if an end goes missing… One carrot—yes, from the bottom. They won’t have counted them. Drink some of the milk and top it up with water. Those dull creatures won’t taste the difference.”
Harry did exactly as he was told, hands shaking the whole time. When he slipped back into the cupboard with his stolen feast, Voldemort gave a low, satisfied hum.
He ate slowly, savouring every bite like it was a decadent dessert.
“Sir?” Harry whispered one night, staring at the cupboard ceiling.
“Speak,” Voldemort replied.
“Aunt Petunia says I deserve it,” Harry said slowly. “Being locked up. Being hit. She says I’m a freak.”
There was a pause as Voldemort seemed to mull over what to say.
“Most families cherish their children,” Voldemort said coldly. “They feed them, protect them and teach them. They wish for them to flourish. What is done to you is abuse and unnecessary.”
Harry frowned at the word. It felt strange. “I’m not… bad?”
“You are unlucky,” Voldemort corrected. “And they are small, vicious people.”
Harry’s throat tightened. For a while, anger burnt inside of his chest, hot and sharp. Voldemort had killed his parents. Stolen that potential other life from him.
But the Dursleys were still the ones who beat him, who starved him.
And Voldemort—terrible, cruel Voldemort—was the one teaching him how to survive.
As the months passed Harry learnt to control his panic and under Voldemort’s tutelage, to pull at his reserve of magic instead of letting it explode uncontrolled. He learnt small things like warming his hands without a fire, nudging objects just out of reach, locking and unlocking his cupboard quietly.
“You are powerful for your age,” Voldemort told him one evening. “Do not let it make you careless.”
“Yes, sir,” Harry said, automatically. The backhanded praise warmed him regardless.
He didn’t know what the future held. He didn’t know what it meant to carry a Dark Lord in his head.
He only knew that for the first time in his life, someone was watching him closely.
And telling him, sometimes, that he was doing well.