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edenfallingThis is an AU in which, shortly after being disembodied at Godric's Hollow, Voldemort noticed his link to Harry. And then things went wrong.
Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lasultrix for beta-reading this chapter. Any remaining canon goofs, grammar mistakes, continuity errors, implausible characterizations, bad dialogue, boring passages, and Americanisms are my fault, not hers.
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Strange Likenesses: Chapter 5
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He picked his way through shattered coils of memory, searching for Potter. Dream-walking was an inexact art at the best of times. When both minds in question occupied the same brain, and when one had willfully smashed through the barriers separating them, the visualizations became... odd.
Tom glanced down at the replica of his eleven-year-old body -- nearly as small and weak as Potter's, though at least wearing school robes over his drab Muggle clothing -- and grimaced in distaste. He supposed this was Potter's subconscious attempt to bring him down to the boy's own level, or to make clear that he was an interloper in this body, but theoretical understanding did nothing to reconcile him to his situation.
"It's a pity someone stole the watch from its original home," he mused, sending the illusion of his voice outward through the dreamscape. "I would have enjoyed watching Dumbledore drink the protection spell, or torture himself with guilt for sending someone else to face that ordeal."
"He would have sent Snape," said Potter. The boy's voice echoed off the ruins, giving no accurate trace of his hiding spot.
Tom hissed under his breath. Yes, Snape, the traitor, might well have been able to circumvent the mind-trap potion. Snape had the soul and inclinations of a poisoner, but he could brew antidotes with equal facility, if not equal interest.
"In any case, you've managed to destroy three of my anchors in less than two months. Congratulations; only you, the ring, and the diary still hold me on this side of the veil." He stirred a glassy pile of thoughts with his shoe, letting the memory of Dudley Dursley's eleventh birthday wash over him. The shards swirled into mist and coalesced into a lumpy spire. It was webbed with cracks, and it connected oddly to nearby spires -- to memories of his own childhood -- but it was solid.
"If you want me to leave, why not use the diary? It has the power to hold a personality and a lifetime of memories, and it's already linked to us. You might be able to separate me without increasing the damage to your mind." Tom picked up another shard of thought -- the taste of fried eggs and the smell of bacon on a hot summer morning -- and joined it to the castle he was building.
"I know how that diary works. I won't give you a new body," said Potter, leaping down from a promontory of unbroken memories and glaring across the rubble.
"You could destroy the diary before I had a chance to reorient myself," Tom said. A burst of seething anger and five strokes with a ruler across the palm of his hand joined to a fleeting glimpse of Dudley's new easel and paint set lying broken in the middle of the fat idiot's spare bedroom.
"You'd know if I planned to do that, and then you wouldn't leave. Stop trying to twist me around," snapped Potter, shoving back the sleeves of his oversized shirt. "And stop touching my memories!"
Tom smiled. "If you can tell mine from yours without picking them up, please, show me the trick. I find it particularly fascinating that even after I touch them, I'm still often not sure which hours of loneliness, which injuries, which nights of hunger, and which flashes of rage belong to you or to me. In some ways, we're a lot alike."
Potter leaned down and smashed the memory castle Tom had built. Thoughts slashed his hands, leaving echo wounds on Tom's own fingers, but Potter didn't seem to care. He drew a breath, held it while he visibly counted to ten. "I am not like you."
Tom held up his bleeding hands and shrugged. "Oh, I admit that we have a fundamental disconnect in our thinking. You assume that shoulds and oughts govern the world, while I know that only desire -- and the strength and will to achieve that desire -- is real. That's how your mother saved you, you know. She wanted you to live, and she wanted that badly enough to use her life and soul as the fuel for a protection spell. I wanted power and immortality -- you know what I paid for those desires. You want to destroy me... but not quite enough to pay the price."
Potter had gone very still, his green eyes glittering as bright and sharp as the memory shards at his feet. "Are you done?"
"Done with what?"
Tom had hoped to make Potter lose his temper -- maybe to shake his resolve, maybe just for entertainment -- but Potter apparently took that as whatever affirmation he'd been looking for, and stalked off, his ratty trainers flapping with each step.
After a minute, Tom picked up another shard of memory -- "We'd hoped for a more cheerful boy, maybe blond rather than dark," a woman's voice said as yet another set of potential parents found him wanting -- and began piecing together a new castle.
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The Thestral-drawn carriage rumbled along the country lane, between hedges thick with summer foliage. Birds called back and forth in the young woodlands to the left, and scattered butterflies danced in meadows to the right, but no sign of human habitation broke the green stillness.
"The last I remember, there were Muggle farms all along this road, not wilderness. What has Lucius been up to?" Tom murmured, borrowing Potter's voice for a moment.
"I believe the Muggle term is 'money laundering,'" Dumbledore said as their carriage approached the Malfoys' ancestral home. "A number of your followers died without formal wills, or left everything to your cause -- Lucius was one of the few people still alive and free to deal with their estates. He has made something of a name for himself as a benefactor and an influential donor to political causes. This seems to require him to host lavish dinner parties, one of which I was somehow talked into attending. I, of course, found myself rather lost in such a large house, and I believe I recall stumbling across several likely hiding places for Dark artifacts." The old man's eyes twinkled above his broad smile.
"That isn't exactly playing by the rules," Tom observed.
"Nonsense! I stayed entirely within the bounds of decent behavior, which is more than I can truthfully say of some of my erstwhile dinner companions," Dumbledore said, with a meaningfully raised finger.
Tom smiled, rolling Potter's wand between his fingers. "I admit that I didn't recruit wizards for their mastery of dinner etiquette. I was more interested in their ability to fight... which might explain why I was defeating you." Reminder sent, he ceded control before Potter could shove him aside.
"Ah, Harry, welcome back," said Dumbledore, relaxing slightly in his seat. "Now, here is our plan: if Lucius and Narcissa are not home to receive me, I daresay I shall stay in the parlor until they return. You, however, are young, and the young are not known for being models of good behavior. If you should happen to leave the carriage, follow me invisibly, wander through the house, trip over the loose floorboard in the library, and reveal the hidden compartment under the desk... why, I'm sure that would be no fault of mine."
"Yes, sir," Potter said. "Erm. I still think this is a bad idea -- I know I'm the only one who can feel the Horcruxes, but you shouldn't let me go anywhere alone, especially not with a wand. I can't always keep him pushed down." And it's stupid to worry about keeping up appearances around a Death Eater.
"Your concern does you credit," said Dumbledore, "but unfortunately, Lucius has enough influence that it is quite impossible to get a warrant to search his house. Even if I did, by chance, manage to acquire legal permission, he would have more than enough warning to shift all his secrets elsewhere. And we only have one Invisibility Cloak."
The old man is senile, Tom informed Potter. You're right -- we all know Lucius was my creature, so there's no sense treating him with respect. If you insist on destroying my diary, the simplest method would be to burn the entire mansion to the ground with Fiendfyre.
For a handful of seconds, the image of flames wreathed through Potter's thoughts, tinged with longing and a cold rage. Then Potter locked up his emotions and shoved his wand into his pocket.
Mr. Malfoy might not be completely evil anymore, though, said Potter, even if he's still corrupt, and I won't act like you. He has house elves and he used to have human servants. A fire might kill them, especially if we set wards up to make sure nobody carried the diary out to safety.
Tom laughed, startling Dumbledore. "Yes, my boy?" the old man said, raising his eyebrow. His hand shifted a fraction of an inch closer to his wand.
"I am not, never was, and never will be 'your boy.' I doubt Potter will be either -- he refuses to act on his thoughts, but his mind follows the same paths--"
He choked, breathless, and Potter hurled him back into the limbo of their dreamscape, away from control of the body.
"He's lying, sir," said Potter. "I'm sorry."
But deep in the hidden corners of his mind, flames leapt for a moment, and Tom laughed.
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Dumbledore didn't destroy the diary. One week later, Potter could still feel it, and Tom could feel him feeling it, though he couldn't sense any of his Horcruxes directly.
"I wonder why that is?" he mused, building another castle. This time he sorted the memories first, leaving Potter's in a shapeless pile by his side.
"Because I have a whole soul -- yours is shriveled and torn up," Potter said, scuffing up behind him. "I can feel you, too. I bet you ripped up that part of yourself when you made your first Horcrux, because otherwise you'd never have made another. They're slimy, and frozen, and they itch and burn like they're going to eat right through me."
An interesting theory. "You picked the wrong question to answer," he told Potter. "The important point is that Dumbledore hasn't done anything with my diary." And also that Potter was learning to pick through Tom's surface thoughts -- that was advanced, delicate Legilimency, something far beyond a normal first or second year student.
Potter had never been one of the sheep-like masses, no matter what he'd thought in his ignorance, but it seemed he wasn't hiding from himself anymore.
"My friends are not sheep!"
"Granger and Weasley?" Tom considered for a moment. The Mudblood did show admirable intelligence and drive, and the Weasley boy, lazy though he was, had flashes of hidden potential. They hadn't found the nerve to visit Potter before the end of term, but if they confronted him in September... that might be interesting. "Perhaps those two are exceptions. But I notice you didn't defend anyone else. Admit it: all that most people do is mill around, bleat in ignorant fear and anger, and get in your way."
Potter scowled. "No! I didn't mean-- that's not-- stop twisting what I say! Maybe a lot of people don't pay attention or try to do anything, but that doesn't mean they're not important. They're still people, and you can't treat people like things."
"Ah. Let me see if I understand," began Tom, holding a memory shard in his hands. "Suppose I decided to do something -- say, to sneak out of a common room after curfew -- and I encountered a person who, though useless and annoying, generally tried to do the right thing. If that person tried to stop me from breaking the rules, I'd have to take a minute to explain my reasons or bring him along, yes? Because he's a person, not an obstacle, I couldn't hex him and leave him lying on the floor like a piece of rubbish, simply for my own convenience. Am I getting this right?"
"Hermione did that, not me!" said Potter, and then clamped his lips shut, flushing scarlet.
"You see? You talk about friendship and trust, but power and self-interest are the truth underneath those lies. Pretty words are only a way to get people to do what you want -- and not a very effective one, since you have to obey your so-called friends in turn."
Potter clenched his hands, trembling -- Tom braced for another attack -- and then he shook his head once, violently. "You're wrong. Maybe that's what friendship and trust look like to you, but that's just because you don't have enough of a soul to feel anything anymore. I mess up a lot, but it doesn't mean I don't care about my friends. Ron and Hermione and I help each other because we want to, not because we have to. If you can't understand that, I'm sorry for you, because that's about the most miserable thing I can imagine."
He faded away, rising back to consciousness, leaving Tom alone on the plain of cold, broken memories.
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End of Chapter Five
Back to chapter 4
Continue to chapter 6
Read the final version at ff.net
---------------------------------------------
I do, in fact, have a plot of sorts (which I finally figured out last week -- the lack of a plot or a point, other than making both Harry and Tom annoyed/miserable/furious, was one reason I kept delaying work on this chapter), and things are going to continue going wrong for at least another several months of in-story time. I don't think they're ever going to get all the way better. But whether it ends in tragedy, or in a sort of gray area... well, that I have not yet decided. *evil smile*
Thanks to
lasultrix for beta-reading this chapter. Any remaining canon goofs, grammar mistakes, continuity errors, implausible characterizations, bad dialogue, boring passages, and Americanisms are my fault, not hers.---------------------------------------------
Strange Likenesses: Chapter 5
---------------------------------------------
He picked his way through shattered coils of memory, searching for Potter. Dream-walking was an inexact art at the best of times. When both minds in question occupied the same brain, and when one had willfully smashed through the barriers separating them, the visualizations became... odd.
Tom glanced down at the replica of his eleven-year-old body -- nearly as small and weak as Potter's, though at least wearing school robes over his drab Muggle clothing -- and grimaced in distaste. He supposed this was Potter's subconscious attempt to bring him down to the boy's own level, or to make clear that he was an interloper in this body, but theoretical understanding did nothing to reconcile him to his situation.
"It's a pity someone stole the watch from its original home," he mused, sending the illusion of his voice outward through the dreamscape. "I would have enjoyed watching Dumbledore drink the protection spell, or torture himself with guilt for sending someone else to face that ordeal."
"He would have sent Snape," said Potter. The boy's voice echoed off the ruins, giving no accurate trace of his hiding spot.
Tom hissed under his breath. Yes, Snape, the traitor, might well have been able to circumvent the mind-trap potion. Snape had the soul and inclinations of a poisoner, but he could brew antidotes with equal facility, if not equal interest.
"In any case, you've managed to destroy three of my anchors in less than two months. Congratulations; only you, the ring, and the diary still hold me on this side of the veil." He stirred a glassy pile of thoughts with his shoe, letting the memory of Dudley Dursley's eleventh birthday wash over him. The shards swirled into mist and coalesced into a lumpy spire. It was webbed with cracks, and it connected oddly to nearby spires -- to memories of his own childhood -- but it was solid.
"If you want me to leave, why not use the diary? It has the power to hold a personality and a lifetime of memories, and it's already linked to us. You might be able to separate me without increasing the damage to your mind." Tom picked up another shard of thought -- the taste of fried eggs and the smell of bacon on a hot summer morning -- and joined it to the castle he was building.
"I know how that diary works. I won't give you a new body," said Potter, leaping down from a promontory of unbroken memories and glaring across the rubble.
"You could destroy the diary before I had a chance to reorient myself," Tom said. A burst of seething anger and five strokes with a ruler across the palm of his hand joined to a fleeting glimpse of Dudley's new easel and paint set lying broken in the middle of the fat idiot's spare bedroom.
"You'd know if I planned to do that, and then you wouldn't leave. Stop trying to twist me around," snapped Potter, shoving back the sleeves of his oversized shirt. "And stop touching my memories!"
Tom smiled. "If you can tell mine from yours without picking them up, please, show me the trick. I find it particularly fascinating that even after I touch them, I'm still often not sure which hours of loneliness, which injuries, which nights of hunger, and which flashes of rage belong to you or to me. In some ways, we're a lot alike."
Potter leaned down and smashed the memory castle Tom had built. Thoughts slashed his hands, leaving echo wounds on Tom's own fingers, but Potter didn't seem to care. He drew a breath, held it while he visibly counted to ten. "I am not like you."
Tom held up his bleeding hands and shrugged. "Oh, I admit that we have a fundamental disconnect in our thinking. You assume that shoulds and oughts govern the world, while I know that only desire -- and the strength and will to achieve that desire -- is real. That's how your mother saved you, you know. She wanted you to live, and she wanted that badly enough to use her life and soul as the fuel for a protection spell. I wanted power and immortality -- you know what I paid for those desires. You want to destroy me... but not quite enough to pay the price."
Potter had gone very still, his green eyes glittering as bright and sharp as the memory shards at his feet. "Are you done?"
"Done with what?"
Tom had hoped to make Potter lose his temper -- maybe to shake his resolve, maybe just for entertainment -- but Potter apparently took that as whatever affirmation he'd been looking for, and stalked off, his ratty trainers flapping with each step.
After a minute, Tom picked up another shard of memory -- "We'd hoped for a more cheerful boy, maybe blond rather than dark," a woman's voice said as yet another set of potential parents found him wanting -- and began piecing together a new castle.
---------------------------------------------
The Thestral-drawn carriage rumbled along the country lane, between hedges thick with summer foliage. Birds called back and forth in the young woodlands to the left, and scattered butterflies danced in meadows to the right, but no sign of human habitation broke the green stillness.
"The last I remember, there were Muggle farms all along this road, not wilderness. What has Lucius been up to?" Tom murmured, borrowing Potter's voice for a moment.
"I believe the Muggle term is 'money laundering,'" Dumbledore said as their carriage approached the Malfoys' ancestral home. "A number of your followers died without formal wills, or left everything to your cause -- Lucius was one of the few people still alive and free to deal with their estates. He has made something of a name for himself as a benefactor and an influential donor to political causes. This seems to require him to host lavish dinner parties, one of which I was somehow talked into attending. I, of course, found myself rather lost in such a large house, and I believe I recall stumbling across several likely hiding places for Dark artifacts." The old man's eyes twinkled above his broad smile.
"That isn't exactly playing by the rules," Tom observed.
"Nonsense! I stayed entirely within the bounds of decent behavior, which is more than I can truthfully say of some of my erstwhile dinner companions," Dumbledore said, with a meaningfully raised finger.
Tom smiled, rolling Potter's wand between his fingers. "I admit that I didn't recruit wizards for their mastery of dinner etiquette. I was more interested in their ability to fight... which might explain why I was defeating you." Reminder sent, he ceded control before Potter could shove him aside.
"Ah, Harry, welcome back," said Dumbledore, relaxing slightly in his seat. "Now, here is our plan: if Lucius and Narcissa are not home to receive me, I daresay I shall stay in the parlor until they return. You, however, are young, and the young are not known for being models of good behavior. If you should happen to leave the carriage, follow me invisibly, wander through the house, trip over the loose floorboard in the library, and reveal the hidden compartment under the desk... why, I'm sure that would be no fault of mine."
"Yes, sir," Potter said. "Erm. I still think this is a bad idea -- I know I'm the only one who can feel the Horcruxes, but you shouldn't let me go anywhere alone, especially not with a wand. I can't always keep him pushed down." And it's stupid to worry about keeping up appearances around a Death Eater.
"Your concern does you credit," said Dumbledore, "but unfortunately, Lucius has enough influence that it is quite impossible to get a warrant to search his house. Even if I did, by chance, manage to acquire legal permission, he would have more than enough warning to shift all his secrets elsewhere. And we only have one Invisibility Cloak."
The old man is senile, Tom informed Potter. You're right -- we all know Lucius was my creature, so there's no sense treating him with respect. If you insist on destroying my diary, the simplest method would be to burn the entire mansion to the ground with Fiendfyre.
For a handful of seconds, the image of flames wreathed through Potter's thoughts, tinged with longing and a cold rage. Then Potter locked up his emotions and shoved his wand into his pocket.
Mr. Malfoy might not be completely evil anymore, though, said Potter, even if he's still corrupt, and I won't act like you. He has house elves and he used to have human servants. A fire might kill them, especially if we set wards up to make sure nobody carried the diary out to safety.
Tom laughed, startling Dumbledore. "Yes, my boy?" the old man said, raising his eyebrow. His hand shifted a fraction of an inch closer to his wand.
"I am not, never was, and never will be 'your boy.' I doubt Potter will be either -- he refuses to act on his thoughts, but his mind follows the same paths--"
He choked, breathless, and Potter hurled him back into the limbo of their dreamscape, away from control of the body.
"He's lying, sir," said Potter. "I'm sorry."
But deep in the hidden corners of his mind, flames leapt for a moment, and Tom laughed.
---------------------------------------------
Dumbledore didn't destroy the diary. One week later, Potter could still feel it, and Tom could feel him feeling it, though he couldn't sense any of his Horcruxes directly.
"I wonder why that is?" he mused, building another castle. This time he sorted the memories first, leaving Potter's in a shapeless pile by his side.
"Because I have a whole soul -- yours is shriveled and torn up," Potter said, scuffing up behind him. "I can feel you, too. I bet you ripped up that part of yourself when you made your first Horcrux, because otherwise you'd never have made another. They're slimy, and frozen, and they itch and burn like they're going to eat right through me."
An interesting theory. "You picked the wrong question to answer," he told Potter. "The important point is that Dumbledore hasn't done anything with my diary." And also that Potter was learning to pick through Tom's surface thoughts -- that was advanced, delicate Legilimency, something far beyond a normal first or second year student.
Potter had never been one of the sheep-like masses, no matter what he'd thought in his ignorance, but it seemed he wasn't hiding from himself anymore.
"My friends are not sheep!"
"Granger and Weasley?" Tom considered for a moment. The Mudblood did show admirable intelligence and drive, and the Weasley boy, lazy though he was, had flashes of hidden potential. They hadn't found the nerve to visit Potter before the end of term, but if they confronted him in September... that might be interesting. "Perhaps those two are exceptions. But I notice you didn't defend anyone else. Admit it: all that most people do is mill around, bleat in ignorant fear and anger, and get in your way."
Potter scowled. "No! I didn't mean-- that's not-- stop twisting what I say! Maybe a lot of people don't pay attention or try to do anything, but that doesn't mean they're not important. They're still people, and you can't treat people like things."
"Ah. Let me see if I understand," began Tom, holding a memory shard in his hands. "Suppose I decided to do something -- say, to sneak out of a common room after curfew -- and I encountered a person who, though useless and annoying, generally tried to do the right thing. If that person tried to stop me from breaking the rules, I'd have to take a minute to explain my reasons or bring him along, yes? Because he's a person, not an obstacle, I couldn't hex him and leave him lying on the floor like a piece of rubbish, simply for my own convenience. Am I getting this right?"
"Hermione did that, not me!" said Potter, and then clamped his lips shut, flushing scarlet.
"You see? You talk about friendship and trust, but power and self-interest are the truth underneath those lies. Pretty words are only a way to get people to do what you want -- and not a very effective one, since you have to obey your so-called friends in turn."
Potter clenched his hands, trembling -- Tom braced for another attack -- and then he shook his head once, violently. "You're wrong. Maybe that's what friendship and trust look like to you, but that's just because you don't have enough of a soul to feel anything anymore. I mess up a lot, but it doesn't mean I don't care about my friends. Ron and Hermione and I help each other because we want to, not because we have to. If you can't understand that, I'm sorry for you, because that's about the most miserable thing I can imagine."
He faded away, rising back to consciousness, leaving Tom alone on the plain of cold, broken memories.
---------------------------------------------
End of Chapter Five
Back to chapter 4
Continue to chapter 6
Read the final version at ff.net
---------------------------------------------
I do, in fact, have a plot of sorts (which I finally figured out last week -- the lack of a plot or a point, other than making both Harry and Tom annoyed/miserable/furious, was one reason I kept delaying work on this chapter), and things are going to continue going wrong for at least another several months of in-story time. I don't think they're ever going to get all the way better. But whether it ends in tragedy, or in a sort of gray area... well, that I have not yet decided. *evil smile*
