Chapter Text
The last thing he saw was the green of his spell rebounding once more.
So it was true, then, the Potter brat was indeed the master of the Elder Wand and his words from before were not merely a desperate attempt at manipulation.
Strangely enough, the thought of his defeat didn't bother Voldemort as much as he once thought it would.
The place he was in, it was warm. Warm and dark and so oddly perfect despite everything; it was a welcoming nothingness in its purest form– or so Voldemort's addled brain comprehended this state of just being, with no purpose or want or need outside merely existing.
Rationally, he knew he must be in some sort of purgatory; the price of his ambition so to speak, an eternity stuck in a tight place with no possibility to do anything but feel the time passing by him.
Sometimes, there were voices. Distorted, as if underwater voices. He couldn't quite make out the words, not really, but there seemed to be conversations between them. Talks he was obviously not part of, yet any distraction from the never-ending silence was welcome.
Sometimes, there were lullabies. Wordless, hummed, out-of-tune melodies that he recognised solely on virtue of having been a small boy once and the orphanage not yet cruel enough to withhold this small comfort from the dreaded devil-child.
This version of Hell perhaps meant it as a mockery; he couldn't move, he couldn't feel his magic, he couldn't see a thing. So why wouldn't it play a distorted record of the few kindnesses he experienced in a life long buried and forgotten?
Over time, he came to distinguish between the voices. There were two, a man and a woman's. Both whispering sweet words and promises of eternal love in some sort of dark, tasteless parody of what he imagined as a kid that his parents felt about him.
A foolish assumption, all things considered, but it meant the world back then to the orphan Tom Riddle before reality caught up with him. What child, no matter how dim, doesn't dream of being wanted and loved unconditionally at least once, after all?
Voldemort will admit, he never considered his version of Hell to focus on reopening these specific old wounds; although it shouldn't surprise him, wasn't digging through the most deeply buried things the biggest part of the appeal?
Hell, Voldemort decided, was indeed a complex torture device.
At first, he did not even notice it.
His prison cell was already small, with barely enough space to stretch his limbs, but over time it began to shrink even more. He was, once again, reduced to the tiny, useless homunculus. He couldn't see, couldn't move freely and definitely couldn't feel his own magic – and wasn't that the most terrible thing for a wizard? The horror of being denied the simplest joy of feeling one's magic flowing through their own blood, only to be greeted with this... ugly hollowness, somehow worse than the pain of ripping one's soul apart.
He would know the feeling, he made too many horcruxes not to be intimately familiar with the sensation.
The prison walls were coming closer; slowly and steadily, Voldemort was running out of space. Interesting, he mused, he never considered himself to be claustrophobic.
But Hell obviously knew better, so maybe being crushed alive was secretly the most dreadful punishment his mind could come up with indeed.
All he hoped was to at least not have to hear the raid sirens when the inevitable happens.
Thankfully, there were no blasted sirens announcing death and destruction.
Much to his surprise, there were shapes and colours. His vision was poor and blurry, no doubt struggling to adapt after spending however long he was captive in complete darkness. The air felt sharp and chilly, harsh and unforgiving in a strange way it wasn't mere moments ago; there wasn't anything wrong per se with it, merely his body responding to the suddenness of it after months of absence.
The torture was changing its focus, then; from little stimuli to quick environmental overstimulation. Something Voldemort refused to bend to, this… humiliation his tormentor wanted to impose on him with this elaborate psychological warfare. Because what else could it be, forcing the most feared dark lord in recent history into absolute helplessness at seeing his most basic senses waved in his face like the proverbial carrot on stick?
So he'll prevail. He'll maintain his composure, his earned right at holding his head up and proud and…
"Tom, would you like to hold him?"
Hold who, Voldemort wanted to ask, then remembered being called by that ordinary Muggle name he despised his whole life and suddenly felt the need to strangle the giant lady towering over him menacingly for this offence.
A shadow moved then towards him from the opposing corner of the room; something his useless vision only realised due to the contrast it made against the pink wallpaper. Ah, so Hell had very unimaginative names for its devils and one was either about to lunge at him or shrink to fit in his hands before morphing in whatever poisonous to touch creature he'd have to touch and…
The shadow did indeed hold him with shaky hands, as if it were scared to drop the Dark Lord. An understandable fear, if the demon were one of his useless minions rather than a being created literally to torture him but Voldemort was willing to let the matter slide.
Mostly because he learned something important: the floor must be a secret door to escape this iteration of Hell, so he had to wiggle out of the demon's grasp to reach it. Unfortunately, said demon had a very strong hold of him – which really shouldn't surprise the Dark Lord, it would have been easily laughable if all he had to do was to worm his way out of a giant's arms.
"Are newborns supposed to wiggle this much?" the demon asked Voldemort's previous handler, faking an odd mix of concern and amusement at the display of the apparently energetic homunculus. "Not even here for five minutes and you're already trying to run away from your father?"
Voldemort paused. This was definitely going to be problematic, if his chosen tormentor was impersonating the very last person he wanted to see in this sham of afterlife. Perhaps even worse if there was no impersonation and the filthy muggle himself came to have his bit of revenge, which was also entirely possible and positively dreadful, especially considering Voldemort had used a Crucio or two on his father before murdering him with his uncle's wand.
Merlin, just put him back in the cell, he was so not going to be able to deal with this in a dignified or rational manner.
Unfortunately, neither Merlin nor Circe nor any other superior being listening to his pleas decided to entertain them. Why would they, and Voldemort agreed, why would they lessen the burden of the very soul they wished to torment? As someone who used to be a very knowledgeable torturer while alive, the Dark Lord was aware his plight was nowhere near finished; if anything, he was currently stuck in a very long warm-up session.
His previous hesitation forced him to still, thus he had no choice but to focus on his stupid sire. He looked exactly as Tom Riddle himself used to, not a day over twenty, except his chocolate eyes were replaced with a pair of icy blue ones on the older man. The child – because apparently this was Voldemort's newest punishment, to physically regress into a useless infant while his former victim held absolute power over him – did not intend to dwell too much on their resemblance, nor on the soft Mahogany-coloured material the man's suit was made of. And most definitely he didn't enjoy being cradled by some rich fool smelling of vanilla and cinnamon instead of more normal, expensive colognes.
Odd choice of perfume, but rich people in general had questionable tastes so whatever. At least he could add "not wanting to smell like a bakery" to his mental tally of things he thankfully did not inherit from the blasted muggle.
Voldemort didn't catch the midwife's answer, this grotesque simulacrum of his own birth was unsettling enough to consider the small mercy of having the midwife not share Mrs Cole's sour face. He decided to close his eyes; he knew very well what was coming next and didn't need to see his mother dying nor his father chickening out at the very last moment and fleeing. This small rebellion was all he could do in his pitiful conditions, but he wouldn't give his tormentor the satisfaction of reacting to this exposed nerve.
"So, have the two of you decided on a name yet?"
Strangely enough, the midwife's question fell like a boulder instead of what Voldemort knew it had been known for ages; a hasty and poor thought choice on his mother, he'll admit, but nonetheless he knew his name was chosen long before the fool even entertained the thought of running away.
"Well, you see…" his father began to stutter nervously.
Voldemort did not like that hesitance. It felt too much like someone decided to punish him even more by attaching an even stupider name than Tom Marvolo Riddle to him before disaster inevitably struck. He swore, if the imbecile names him something stupid like Mahogany Cinnamon Riddle, Voldemort will find a way to make sure his suffering in Hell is long and painful.
Vanilla Custard Riddle. A pleasure to meet and dominate you. Screw it, he'd take even his old name back if it meant avoiding this horrendous fate.
"We are still debating his first name," an unknown woman, from the wrong side of the room to be mistaken as his mother (not that he could see how either female looked like) replied somewhat bored. "Because someone," she said accusingly and Voldemort knew instinctively, even without looking that she pointed at the Muggle moron, "keeps having strong opinions and rejecting any proposal."
"I did not do such a thing!" Riddle defended himself. "There is nothing wrong with making sure my son isn't named after some… ruffian or shitty relative everyone dislikes! I'm sorry, Cecilia, that you of all people feel offended I'm taking the time to analyse this properly."
Cecilia sighed. "And I'm sure your wife appreciates the dedication, but you wouldn't be stuck in this loop for six months if you didn't insist on documenting each person with a mildly interesting name in your combined genealogies."
"Not my fault that all the good names in the family are hoarded by the most insufferable people in existence. Of course I'll be careful with that, a name following my son his whole life can't be just randomly chosen with zero consideration..."
"Ugh, god, you are hopeless. Merope, would you mind terribly if I punch your husband? Not while he's holding your newborn, of course, but he deserves a reminder to behave."
Say yes, fake mother, please let the Cecilia woman beat him up.
This awful version of Hell must have decided it wasn't enough to reduce Voldemort to a defenceless baby physically but to also trick his brain into starting to act like one, because there was no logical explanation for the infantile though that just crossed his mind.
However, weird Hell manifestation or not, Voldemort wasn't going to deprive himself of seeing his father being put in his rightful place. Especially not on his or the behalf of his mother, not after all they endured because of the coward.
The universe had different plans, in the shape of a very unimpressed midwife who still had to give the newborn one last checkup before leaving him with his birther and her pack of indecisive morons for longer amounts of time. Voldemort fully agreed with her assessment, people like those were a nightmare to work with when one's having such a demanding position. It was honestly embarrassing to reach the stage of holding your child in your arms and still not knowing how to call them.
As the baby and the midwife were about to exit the room, a muffled "ouch" followed by a barely contained snort from his mother could be heard. The universe had decided, then, that Voldemort would not be able to see his wish materialised; but at the very least he had the confirmation his father had been kicked down a peg.
Vaguely, he recalled Cecilia's exasperated pleas for Riddle to put down "the blasted notebook" and the midwife hoping he won't repeat this pathetic display if and when he becomes a father himself.
Lord Voldemort obviously neither planned for nor needed heirs. Yet in the impossibly unlikely scenario he'd have them one day, he'll make sure to have the name issue sorted long before said children come into the world.
It only occurred to him much later that he wasn't in a muggle hospital and that the midwife only opted to check his vitals the muggle way to give the fools a few moments to compose themselves and hopefully came up with a name for the damned birth certificate before they returned.