Chapter Text
The first flicker of awareness that Lord Voldemort managed to adopt showed him a nursery room with two children in it.
Lord Voldemort remained still, for all that he wanted to cling to something so that his wraith wouldn’t float away from this and back into the mindless turmoil that had consumed him since—
Since when?
Since he had confronted these children.
Yes, he remembered now. Not everything, not enough to be sure what had happened after he’d struck Lily Potter senseless in deference to Severus’s wishes, but enough to know that he had aimed his wand at the twins, one sturdier and with red hair, the other smaller and with green eyes, and had cast the Killing Curse.
It was what came after that that had turned him bodiless, he knew. And his memory of that night was far more tattered than even his consciousness.
But he knew that remaining near the Potter twins was giving him a light surge of strength, enough that he hadn’t drifted away from his anchoring spot, somewhere high on the wall, for more than five minutes now.
The children were playing.
So Lord Voldemort watched them.
*
“Adrian! Harry! Come on!”
Lord Voldemort had discovered, after nearly a year of trial and error, that he could, if he were careful, drift down and anchor himself in one of the twins’ scars. It wasn’t ideal, because it meant that he essentially saw the world from the face of the twin involved, and gave him a surge of immature emotions. He preferred to hover where he could watch every flicker of their expressions.
But it was far more ideal than having them both depart the house at once and his access to strength and consciousness be cut off, the way that had happened before he found out he could ride in the scars.
The Potter parents would briskly hit their children with all kinds of protective spells when going to Diagon Alley or the Longbottom house or Hogwarts, or even just the house Sirius Black lived in. If Lord Voldemort had managed to cling to a cloak or skin, he thought he would have been discovered.
But the scars radiated their own (miniscule) amount of Dark magic that repelled the protective charms. So he was sheltered.
Lord Voldemort settled into young Harry’s scar. Harry was more congenial than Adrian, he had learned. Harry’s emotions wavered back and forth, but not as often as his brother’s. Adrian Potter had a hot temper and a tendency to demand things he wanted right away.
Harry would watch and think before he asked for something. Much like another child Lord Voldemort had once known.
It was a thing he had thought before.
So he bathed himself in the cool emotions flowing through Harry Potter, and went with the family on yet another inane journey to Diagon Alley, where they were introducing yet more people, including incoming Mudblood students, to Adrian, their savior.
*
The belief behind such melodrama, as well as Lord Voldemort could make it out when he wasn’t often able to listen to the Potters’ adult conversations, was that the Mudbloods would feel more hopeful and integrated into the magical world if they received personal attention from the Savior. Lord Voldemort sneered at the very notion. Perhaps if they were instead told how superior they were than the muddy Muggle families that had produced them…
But that was yet another plan that Lord Voldemort had had no time to implement. Securing his immortality had seemed so much more important.
And it had been. He would not have survived the banishment, or the vanquishing, as the Potters and Dumbledore chose to call it, otherwise.
He watched from between Harry Potter’s eyes, in contact with Harry Potter’s mind, as his parents and brother climbed up on a stage in front of the wandmaker’s shop. Ollivander. Tales of great and terrible things tumbled through Lord Voldemort’s mind. Ollivander was a strange one. Someday Lord Voldemort would grip his mind and tear through it and uncover the secrets he was hiding.
But not today.
Instead, Lord Voldemort tasted of the cool currents swirling through the mind of the child hosting him. It was always interesting, watching from one of the twins’ foreheads, and feeling the difference between their emotions. Adrian was, yes, all fire, and impatience, and demands.
Harry Potter did feel some jealousy towards his brother, who got the majority of the attention when they went anywhere. But he mainly felt something else, something Lord Voldemort touched with expectant fingers.
Contempt.
Harry Pottter thought it was stupid, how his parents and Adrian stood on the platform waving to all the Muggleborn students, and how they launched into the story that none of them had been awake to see. They had added all sorts of twists and flourishes to it to make themselves look better, Lord Voldemort mused, and Harry had noticed. Details like Adrian’s body supposedly glowing with pure white light as he banished Lord Voldemort, and shielding his sleeping brother.
Harry had supposedly slept through the whole thing.
And Harry despised his brother not for claiming that, but for pretending to know that. He would have accepted it if it were bound in fact.
This one, Lord Voldemort thought, not for the first time. This one, I can use.
And if Adrian could spend days and weeks and months and years with his brother, never seeing the contempt shimmering beneath the surface?
Then Lord Voldemort doubted he would see the knife coming for his ribs, when it was time.
*
Sometimes, however, Lord Voldemort doubted the whole story. Not that he had been banished from his body, but that it was Adrian Potter who had done it.
Harry, after all, was the one who could speak Parseltongue, a sign of powerful magic.
Lord Voldemort discovered that for the first time when he was out in the garden with Harry alone. Most of the time, he tried to be with both twins; that was what kept him from fading and being pulled away. But that time, Adrian had been called inside to speak with a visitor whom the Potters hoped would donate large sums of Galleons to St. Mungo’s if personally persuaded by the Boy-Who-Lived. Harry had been asked to stay in the garden.
In the meantime, Harry had found a small grass snake and crouched in front of it. Lord Voldemort had been amused, wondering if he was attempting to show his bravery despite being alone.
“Hello,” Harry had hissed.
Lord Voldemort had been so startled he had almost lost his hold on the child’s scar. And of course he ought to have paid more attention to the emotions swirling and dancing in Harry’s mind: excitement bright as a star, sharp interest. The kinds of feelings withdrawn and reserved Harry Potter so rarely allowed himself.
“Hello,” the snake hissed back, lifting its head. “Have you created the sunbathing place you promised me?”
“Yes, it’s this way.”
Lord Voldemort was carried along on an impromptu tour of the garden’s flowerbeds and Potion ingredient beds, all the while pondering dazedly. Harry must have spoken to the snake before, alone. When? How had it happened?
Lord Voldemort was ravenous to know.
“Here you are!”
The “sunbathing place” was under a small hedge which Harry had clumsily trimmed with what must have been a Muggle implement, out of sight of the house but still receiving a strong ray of direct sun. The snake slid into it, hissing with happiness.
“This is my place. Leave me now.”
“All right.” There was a smile in Harry’s voice and presumably one on his lips, although from his current place, Lord Voldemort couldn’t see it. He seemed to approve of the snake’s attitude, or at least be amused by it. “I’ll leave you to your sunbathing, then.”
Harry turned and departed, his steps light. Lord Voldemort tasted his mind-currents like a snake tasting the currents of air, and discovered it was because Harry had done something by himself, without his family’s knowledge, that would please someone he liked. Harry could be powerful, but he wanted above all to be kind.
What I could do with that, Lord Voldemort thought to himself.
“Hello?”
Lord Voldemort had focused his attention on the present again. Harry was turning in a slow circle, his breathing uneven. Lord Voldemort looked with him, but there was only sunlight and plants.
“Hello? Is someone here? I heard you. You said that you could do something with that, whatever that is.” Harry turned his head cautiously back and forth, the currents of his mind dancing with anger. “Adrian? Are you playing a prank? It’s not funny!”
Lord Voldemort had caught the mental equivalent of his breath. By then, he had spent perhaps five years with the Potter twins—he was unsure of how old they had been when he caught his first glimpse of them, or how much time he had spent wandering before that—and neither of them had ever caught a glimpse of him.
But now…
Can you hear me? he asked softly now. I am the voice of a man who was caught and trapped away from his body. My wraith has been wandering for years. I never expected to find someone who could hear me.
Harry closed his eyes and seemed to concentrate for a moment. The currents of his thoughts were slower and cooler than ever. Lord Voldemort was impressed that he wasn’t either rejecting the claim outright or jumping to support it.
A pity that some of my followers weren’t that smart.
“You had followers?” Harry asked, and Lord Voldemort could feel the slight pull in the skin around the scar that must mean his eyes were as wide as they could go. “What was your name? Who are you?”
My name is Tom.
Lord Voldemort knew as he spoke the words that they were a gamble. Although he didn’t think the Potters had ever told their children the name of Tom Riddle—he’d spent too much time around them to have overlooked that—there was always the possibility that it had been mentioned in some other context and Harry would combine the puzzle pieces.
But he didn’t say it, and his mind didn’t reveal that he had, either. “It’s nice to meet you, Tom,” Harry said quietly. “Why are you talking to me?”
I’ve never found anyone else who can hear me. I’m used to simply thinking on my own and not getting a reply. Why do you think you can hear me?
“Well, I don’t know. Maybe because I can speak to snakes?”
It was always easier to work with theories and thoughts that people came up with themselves, and Lord Voldemort seized on this one gratefully. Yes, that might be it! I could speak to snakes when I had a body. And I could understand your Parseltongue. It’s an impressive talent.
“You really think so?” Harry was lowering his voice and turning towards the house, probably to make sure that his parents and brother didn’t come out and catch him. “I’ve kept it a secret ‘cause I know some people think it’s evil.”
It’s not evil, Harry. No magic is evil.
“Well, I think the Killing Curse is pretty evil.”
Lord Voldemort couldn’t help the mental snort that escaped him then. It’s not as evil as something like the Cruciatus Curse, is it? Or other pain spells, he added, because he could tell from Harry’s confusion that he hadn’t heard of the Cruciatus. Or spells to control someone’s mind. It’s a flash of green, and then it’s over.
“Easy to say when you’re the one using the spell,” Harry said, and now his skin was pulling as if his eyes had narrowed. “You used the Killing Curse, didn’t you, Tom? Why?”
To defend myself, Lord Voldemort murmured, which was perfectly true. He hadn’t been sure which twin was prophesied to be his doom at the time, which made killing both of them a practical means of self-defense. But I do have a different perspective than you. I was much older than you when I died. And I’m not a sheltered child.
“I’m not sheltered! Not the way Adrian is!”
Why is your brother more sheltered than you are? Were you not raised by the same parents?
Harry laughed, and the sound was cold and thrilling. Even more contempt than Lord Voldemort had thought, then.
“Yeah, I suppose I do despise him,” Harry said, and swept his hand through his hair. “He just—he’s so soft. He gets upset so easily. Like this time that we went to Diagon Alley and the crowd kind of mobbed him, right? Because they wanted to see him. Anyone would have been scared. But he wasn’t scared, he was just upset, because he didn’t think that they should have crowded around him in the first place.”
And you don’t agree?
“He’s the one who went around showing off his name and status and doing all these events in the first place. What does he think’s going to happen as a result? Of course some people are going to come up and fawn over him and act stupid!
“It would have happened even if he was just the Boy-Who-Lived. But he’s the one who went along with Mum and Dad playing up the Savior angle, and reaching out to Muggleborn firsties and Ministry politicians and—the whole group.”
Harry sat down abruptly on the ground, staring toward the hedge where he’d created the resting place for the snake. He took a deep breath.
Can you hear me if I think to you like this?
Lord Voldemort startled. The voice was stronger and clearer than Harry’s spoken one had been, and flavored with all the blues and greens of his cool emotions.
Yes, Lord Voldemort thought back a second later.
Good, because I don’t think it would be a good idea for me to be walking around ranting about this aloud and have everyone thinking I’m crazier than they already do.
They think you’re crazy? That was something Lord Voldemort had never picked up on.
Maybe not crazy, maybe that’s the wrong word. But weird. Reserved. So quiet. “Why don’t you ever say something, Harry? Why do you always stand in the back of the room being quiet and watching things?” Yeah.
Lord Voldemort could work with this. Indeed.
He was also relieved to discover that not as many thoughts seemed to pass between them when they were both speaking in Harry’s head as when Lord Voldemort replied with thought and Harry aloud. It would have been only a matter of time before Harry sensed Lord Voldemort’s thoughts about his real name, with that in place.
You are not crazy, Harry, he said soothingly. You simply prefer to go about the world with not as much chatter and more common sense.
And jealousy over Adrian, of course.
It would only be natural if you were a bit jealous. But that’s not the emotion I sense most often from you.
No, Harry agreed after a moment. I’m not—I don’t really want to be him, you know? Just want him to act more sensibly. I get frustrated when he can’t see the consequences of his actions.
Lord Voldemort feigned a warm chuckle easily. You do sound a great deal more adult than your twin.
Do you ride around with him sometimes?
Only occasionally. I can access his scar.
Oh, yeah. His special scar.
The currents around Harry grew sour and bitter yellow. Lord Voldemort sampled them with delight. They were warm and congenial, and that was the only thing he required to assure him of a welcome in Harry’s mind, in truth.
Would you feel better if I told you that your scar is also special? It was how I accessed your mind in the first place.
What? But—I know Adrian’s is the real curse scar. Mum and Dad just told me that my scar happened because of the backlash of some of the Dark magic when Voldemort cast the Killing Curse. Not the actual spell itself. And Adrian’s magic shielded me from the worst of it.
Do they know what happened that night?
I mean—I don’t think for sure? Dad and Mum were both unconscious, and when they woke up, Adrian and I were scarred and crying. Or I was crying, and Adrian wasn’t. Another sour blast of emotion. I think they just have theories about what happened. But since I didn’t get hit directly by the Killing Curse, my scar can’t be that special—right?
If nobody knows what really happened, Lord Voldemort said smoothly, riding and taming his rage at the mention of that night, then how do they know that you didn’t get hit directly by the Killing Curse?
There was a long enough silence that Lord Voldemort wondered if he would have to coax the boy to the correct conclusion, but finally Harry whispered, Oh.
Yes. Exactly. It seems to me that no one really knows what happened, and their theories might have chosen the wrong boy as the champion.
I don’t want to be the Boy-Who-Lived, though!
You don’t have to be, Lord Voldemort hastened to reassure him. This was also excellent. It would have been much more difficult to turn the boy to his side if Harry was set on fighting him. But it might mean that your scar is more special than you think. Maybe it’s even where you get the power of Parseltongue. None of your ancestors had it, did they?
If they did, they hid it. Mum and Dad never…
Lord Voldemort sent the impression of a soothing nod. Yes. You don’t want them to find out. That’s fine. I can teach you things about being a Parselmouth that no one else knows or needs to know. It will be well.
Harry floated in silence for a moment. His body was at least curled up in a meditation position. Lord Voldemort was glad that they wouldn’t need to answer questions that were too awkward if someone else came out of the house.
Then Harry whispered, I need to think about this.
Take the time you need. Lord Voldemort had long since bridled his impatience. Years as a wraith who might have turned into tattered, howling nothingness had done that to him.
All right. Thanks. Harry hesitated. Then he said, You don’t think I’m weird, do you, Tom?
No, Lord Voldemort said with perfect truth. I think you are ambitious and yearn for a place for yourself. The boy might not be that jealous of his brother or want the exact same status, but of course he yearned for someone who would protect him and cherish him for their own reasons.
And Lord Voldemort could do that, if the boy proved useful and helped him return to a body and power. The Parseltongue was already something far more interesting than he had ever thought he would find in the Potter twins, as was Harry’s ability to have hidden it for so long.
Thanks, Harry repeated, and slipped back into his body and towards the house, where someone was calling him.
Lord Voldemort flowed out of Harry’s scar and into Adrian’s as soon as Harry got close enough to his brother. He tested whether Adrian could hear him by shouting into the boy’s mind, but there was no response. It was a quirk of Harry’s scar or Parseltongue that he could, then.
Good enough. Lord Voldemort did not want to accidentally reveal more than he had to.
For now, he had the beginnings of a plan, and that was more than he had thought he would have for years, perhaps decades. He could afford to wait.