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edenfallingWhat if, shortly after being disembodied at Godric's Hollow, Voldemort noticed his link to Harry? A dark AU.
I posted chapter 5 in January 2008, so if you have any interest in reading chapter 6 (which is completely unbeta'ed, by the way; I just very badly wanted to finish something and my remix is giving me fits at the moment) you will probably want to read the previous chapters for context. They aren't very long -- each one averages about 2,000 words, for 10,000 words total so far.
Anyway. Story. (Fair warning: this chapter is where I start killing people. Also, Harry is currently all kinds of fucked in the head, for obvious reasons.)
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Strange Likenesses: Chapter 6
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At the beginning of August, Harry got a new room.
Dumbledore swept into the infirmary one morning carrying a bowl of porridge and a glass of pumpkin juice, and wearing a brilliant smile. "Harry, my boy, you've languished in here long enough," he said. "We can maintain wards on other rooms just as easily, and I am sure you will be pleased to regain some privacy."
Harry let a lump of porridge glop slowly from his spoon back into the bowl. "Okay," he said. "Thanks."
"Consider it a slightly belated birthday gift," said Dumbledore, neatly tucking his robes around his ankles as he sat beside Harry's bed. "I only wish I could do more for you."
"It's all right. I think I'm getting used to him," said Harry, stirring the porridge a bit more.
"I am so sorry, Harry."
Dumbledore's cheerful tone had dropped away. Harry stared at his breakfast, not wanting to see Dumbledore looking guilty or pained. It wasn't anybody's fault -- well, it was obviously Voldemort's fault, and whoever had hypnotized Quirrell -- but Voldemort would have woken sooner or later, whether Dumbledore had used the mirror as a trap or not. Harry was tired of the headmaster trying to take blame for everything.
"You didn't make him do any of this," Harry said. He stood the spoon upright in the porridge and watched it slowly tip sideways and slide across the bowl. "It's all right. Nobody's died so far."
"Whether I am to blame or not, I'm still sorry," said Dumbledore. "Voldemort's fall from grace and rise to power were the third great failure of my life. I doubt I could have changed his mind, but I lived through Grindelwald's war, many years earlier. I knew Gellert Grindelwald in his youth and I saw the flaws that led him astray. I should have recognized the signs in Tom Riddle and acted sooner."
He knew Grindelwald? Personally? Voldemort felt and sounded genuinely startled. Strange. Though I suppose a prior friendship might explain why he delayed so long before challenging Grindelwald to their final duel. Loyalty is such a limitation.
Some limitations are there for a reason, Harry thought back. Just because you can do horrible things doesn't mean you ought to.
Voldemort laughed. Haven't we already talked about 'should' and 'ought'?
Harry thought he ought to be getting angry. He would have been angry, before, if anyone had treated him like Voldemort did. But he couldn't seem to call up anything more than weary annoyance, as if Voldemort were an old friend or relative too familiar to actually hate.
Harry thought that ought to scare him a lot more than it did.
Okay. Try this -- just because you can do horrible things doesn't mean they make sense in the long run. Look where you ended up. If you hadn't tried to do Grindelwald one better, you wouldn't be stuck in my head with your soul all cut up and rotten.
In the back of his mind, Voldemort went silent, but Harry knew better than to take that for agreement or surrender. He returned his attention to Dumbledore. "Sorry, sir. He can be distracting."
"Voices in one's head often are," Dumbledore agreed. "Now, as it seems you have no interest in breakfast, let me show you to your new home away from home."
---------------------------------------------
Harry's new room was more like a flat: a bedroom twice the size of Dudley's room, a private bathroom with a tub nearly big enough to swim in, a little room with a desk and a bookcase for studying, and a front room with a fireplace, a sofa, and several armchairs scattered about. The paintings were mostly landscapes, but the one on the door was a stern, elderly witch who wouldn't let anybody in or out without a whispered password and an authorized fingerprint on the bottom left corner of her frame.
A nicer prison, then. That was all right. Voldemort needed to be locked up.
"Minerva, Severus, and I are working out how to deal with your lessons in September," Dumbledore said as Harry finished looking around and returned to the front room. "For obvious reasons, it would be unwise for you to attend classes with the other second years, but we don't want to make this harder on you than absolutely necessary."
Harry shrugged. "I probably know the curriculum anyway," he said.
Or rather, I know it, and you have no compunctions about profiting from my work, said Voldemort, sounding both annoyed and amused. I should build a wall across your mind, if only to see you fumble and fail at infant-level magic.
That won't work anymore, Harry told him sourly. He'd broken their memories far too thoroughly, buying time to tell Dumbledore about the Horcruxes. But go ahead and try separating my memories from yours. I don't want to know half the things you know.
He just wanted his life back. Except he'd never really had his life, had he? He'd only ever been borrowing it.
"I believe Severus and I should begin teaching you Occlumency," Dumbledore said abruptly, breaking into Harry's thoughts, "if only to give you practice holding two trains of thought at once. It will make your life simpler if you are not constantly distracted by conversation with Voldemort."
Occlumency being... oh, right, the defensive technique to counter Legilmency. Both of which Harry apparently knew, now that he thought of it -- and had been using without noticing. He couldn't have blocked Voldemort without them. He didn't think Dumbledore would take it well if he said he could probably read minds, though.
Dumbledore cleared his throat and Harry realized he'd been ignoring the outside world again. He made a noncommittal noise that Dumbledore seemed to take as agreement.
"Professor Quirrell is working with Severus to hunt down any clues about the person who put him under Imperius," Dumbledore continued. "With a bit of luck, that mystery will soon be resolved, and the guilty party sent to Azkaban. Meanwhile, I will be leaving tomorrow morning to retrieve the final Horcrux. When I have destroyed the ring, we can begin to consider our options for mitigating your situation."
So he is planning to make use of the diary, Voldemort said.
Harry ignored him. "Good luck, sir," he said to Dumbledore. "Don't forget the ring has a death curse. It shouldn't go off if you only handle the stone or the outside of the band, but if you slip and even touch the inner band -- it would be ugly. I'd use pliers if I were you."
"Or a levitation spell, perhaps?" suggested Dumbledore, his eyes recovering some of their amused twinkle. "I thank you for your concern, and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow evening."
He unlocked the door and walked out, closing Harry in alone with only Voldemort for company.
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Professor McGonagall came to eat dinner with him the next day -- "since the Headmaster seems to have been slightly delayed," as she said -- and she and Harry ate in awkward silence. Finally she pushed her plate aside with a resigned sigh.
"I haven't the slightest idea what might be keeping Albus, but we might as well make use of the time. I brought my final exams for first through seventh years, and I would like to run you through the exercises to see where you stand in Transfiguration. Over the next weeks, we'll do the same with your other subjects."
Harry nodded his agreement and waited for Professor McGonagall to remove the charms that would, among other traps and failsafes, set his wand on fire should he try to use it without permission. When she handed it back, he flicked it, once, to get the feel of it back in his wrist. There were no sparks, of course -- that sort of thing was a symptom of uncontrolled magic -- but he felt a warm hum as the phoenix feather inside the wood responded to his power.
I wonder what would have happened if your wand weren't a brother to mine, Voldemort whispered. Would you still have been able to use it, or would my presence have interfered with the resonances?
You were always here, Harry told him. Any wand I could use would have to be compatible with you. Aloud, he said to Professor McGonagall, "What should I do first?"
Voldemort's amusement curled through Harry's mind, poisonous and cold, while Harry breezed through spell after spell. Every question Professor McGonagall asked about Transfiguration theory seemed as though he'd known the answer forever. Every change she asked him to make came easily. Harry felt like he was sleepwalking, as if his hands and mouth were acting on their own.
He wasn't good at magic. Nothing had ever come easily to him except flying -- but this was nothing like flying. Flying made Harry feel alive. Flying made his breath come fast and his blood rush, and every last bit of it was his.
This new knowledge and skill belonged to Voldemort. He wasn't controlling Harry right now, but he might as well have been. The wrist motions were his, copied into Harry's body. The words were his, sitting strange and sour in Harry's mouth. Even the magic was his, or at least the patterns into which it flowed.
And yet it wasn't borrowed skill. If Dumbledore found a way to rip Voldemort out of Harry's mind tomorrow, Harry would still remember everything.
So it was stolen power. A poisoned gift from the man who killed his parents. Who killed his own father. Who killed, and killed, and killed, and laughed while he worked, as if his slightest whim meant more than all the dreams of all the other people in the world, forever.
Harry wanted to be sick.
Finally, Professor McGonagall sat back in her chair with a slightly perplexed expression. "You just finished several NEWT level exercises," she said. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised -- Voldemort was an extremely skilled and powerful wizard, abhorrent goals notwithstanding -- but I do wonder if we have anything left to teach you."
Harry shrugged. "He can't have been perfect at everything. Besides, Dumbledore will probably want to know how far the memory sharing goes." He looked down at his wand, then reluctantly slid it across the empty table toward Professor McGonagall. She reapplied the warning and protection charms and handed it back.
"Would you like to come with me to the Headmaster's office?" Professor McGonagall asked abruptly, as she gathered her papers. "It's not good for you to be caged day in and day out, and you have as much stake in this Horcrux hunt as he does."
Surprised, Harry nodded.
Professor McGonagall led him through the corridors and up a flight of stairs until they reached a griffin statue. She leaned in and whispered a password -- Harry covered his ears and looked away while she spoke -- which made the statue spring aside, revealing a narrow, twisting flight of stairs. "Step on; they'll carry you up," Professor McGonagall said, gesturing Harry to go first.
At the top of the stairs, she drew a small key from her sleeve and unlocked the door. As she opened it, however, there was an immediate uproar from the dozens of portraits hung on the walls, and the professor stepped in front of Harry to shield him from whatever had upset the paintings. "Silence!" she ordered. "One at a time!"
The portraits began to hush each other, leaving only a dour, black-haired man to clear his throat with a meaningful cough. "Minerva McGonagall, we regret to inform you that Albus Dumbledore has passed away. You are now the interim headmistress of Hogwarts, until the Board of Directors shall make a more permanent appointment. Also, Madam Pomfrey requests that all staff present in the castle convene in the hospital wing for an emergency meeting."
Professor McGonagall's hand dropped to her side.
Harry ducked between her and the doorframe, sure he had misheard something. Perhaps this was a bad joke, and Dumbledore was simply waiting to stand up and announce that he had recovered the ring. But he saw no sign of the headmaster in the jumbled office, just books and scrolls and a dirty teacup on the desk.
The portraits frowned down from the walls, and the dour man cleared his throat again. "The young man should be returned to his rooms," the portrait said.
Professor McGonagall stirred to life again. "No," she said. "Whatever-- whatever happened to Albus, it was most likely connected to Harry. He has a right to know the details." She glanced into a corner of the office, where a large bird with glowing red-gold feathers huddled on a perch. "Fawkes, would you care to accompany us?" she asked.
The bird lifted its head and peered sadly across the office. Then it launched itself into the air, its wings hardly seeming to beat before it landed on Harry's shoulder. It trilled softly, before turning to rub its beak against Harry's hair.
The warm weight, the song, and the touch, seemed to bring the portrait's words home.
Dumbledore was dead. He had gone to fetch the final Horcrux, and he had died doing it. Now who would figure out how to remove Voldemort from Harry's mind? Now who would protect the school from the person who had cast Imperius on Professor Quirrell?
In the back of Harry's mind, Voldemort was laughing. Game over, old man. I win.
---------------------------------------------
End of Chapter Six
Back to chapter 5
Continue to chapter 7
Read the final version at ff.net
---------------------------------------------
Right. Back to remixing now.
I posted chapter 5 in January 2008, so if you have any interest in reading chapter 6 (which is completely unbeta'ed, by the way; I just very badly wanted to finish something and my remix is giving me fits at the moment) you will probably want to read the previous chapters for context. They aren't very long -- each one averages about 2,000 words, for 10,000 words total so far.
Anyway. Story. (Fair warning: this chapter is where I start killing people. Also, Harry is currently all kinds of fucked in the head, for obvious reasons.)
---------------------------------------------
Strange Likenesses: Chapter 6
---------------------------------------------
At the beginning of August, Harry got a new room.
Dumbledore swept into the infirmary one morning carrying a bowl of porridge and a glass of pumpkin juice, and wearing a brilliant smile. "Harry, my boy, you've languished in here long enough," he said. "We can maintain wards on other rooms just as easily, and I am sure you will be pleased to regain some privacy."
Harry let a lump of porridge glop slowly from his spoon back into the bowl. "Okay," he said. "Thanks."
"Consider it a slightly belated birthday gift," said Dumbledore, neatly tucking his robes around his ankles as he sat beside Harry's bed. "I only wish I could do more for you."
"It's all right. I think I'm getting used to him," said Harry, stirring the porridge a bit more.
"I am so sorry, Harry."
Dumbledore's cheerful tone had dropped away. Harry stared at his breakfast, not wanting to see Dumbledore looking guilty or pained. It wasn't anybody's fault -- well, it was obviously Voldemort's fault, and whoever had hypnotized Quirrell -- but Voldemort would have woken sooner or later, whether Dumbledore had used the mirror as a trap or not. Harry was tired of the headmaster trying to take blame for everything.
"You didn't make him do any of this," Harry said. He stood the spoon upright in the porridge and watched it slowly tip sideways and slide across the bowl. "It's all right. Nobody's died so far."
"Whether I am to blame or not, I'm still sorry," said Dumbledore. "Voldemort's fall from grace and rise to power were the third great failure of my life. I doubt I could have changed his mind, but I lived through Grindelwald's war, many years earlier. I knew Gellert Grindelwald in his youth and I saw the flaws that led him astray. I should have recognized the signs in Tom Riddle and acted sooner."
He knew Grindelwald? Personally? Voldemort felt and sounded genuinely startled. Strange. Though I suppose a prior friendship might explain why he delayed so long before challenging Grindelwald to their final duel. Loyalty is such a limitation.
Some limitations are there for a reason, Harry thought back. Just because you can do horrible things doesn't mean you ought to.
Voldemort laughed. Haven't we already talked about 'should' and 'ought'?
Harry thought he ought to be getting angry. He would have been angry, before, if anyone had treated him like Voldemort did. But he couldn't seem to call up anything more than weary annoyance, as if Voldemort were an old friend or relative too familiar to actually hate.
Harry thought that ought to scare him a lot more than it did.
Okay. Try this -- just because you can do horrible things doesn't mean they make sense in the long run. Look where you ended up. If you hadn't tried to do Grindelwald one better, you wouldn't be stuck in my head with your soul all cut up and rotten.
In the back of his mind, Voldemort went silent, but Harry knew better than to take that for agreement or surrender. He returned his attention to Dumbledore. "Sorry, sir. He can be distracting."
"Voices in one's head often are," Dumbledore agreed. "Now, as it seems you have no interest in breakfast, let me show you to your new home away from home."
---------------------------------------------
Harry's new room was more like a flat: a bedroom twice the size of Dudley's room, a private bathroom with a tub nearly big enough to swim in, a little room with a desk and a bookcase for studying, and a front room with a fireplace, a sofa, and several armchairs scattered about. The paintings were mostly landscapes, but the one on the door was a stern, elderly witch who wouldn't let anybody in or out without a whispered password and an authorized fingerprint on the bottom left corner of her frame.
A nicer prison, then. That was all right. Voldemort needed to be locked up.
"Minerva, Severus, and I are working out how to deal with your lessons in September," Dumbledore said as Harry finished looking around and returned to the front room. "For obvious reasons, it would be unwise for you to attend classes with the other second years, but we don't want to make this harder on you than absolutely necessary."
Harry shrugged. "I probably know the curriculum anyway," he said.
Or rather, I know it, and you have no compunctions about profiting from my work, said Voldemort, sounding both annoyed and amused. I should build a wall across your mind, if only to see you fumble and fail at infant-level magic.
That won't work anymore, Harry told him sourly. He'd broken their memories far too thoroughly, buying time to tell Dumbledore about the Horcruxes. But go ahead and try separating my memories from yours. I don't want to know half the things you know.
He just wanted his life back. Except he'd never really had his life, had he? He'd only ever been borrowing it.
"I believe Severus and I should begin teaching you Occlumency," Dumbledore said abruptly, breaking into Harry's thoughts, "if only to give you practice holding two trains of thought at once. It will make your life simpler if you are not constantly distracted by conversation with Voldemort."
Occlumency being... oh, right, the defensive technique to counter Legilmency. Both of which Harry apparently knew, now that he thought of it -- and had been using without noticing. He couldn't have blocked Voldemort without them. He didn't think Dumbledore would take it well if he said he could probably read minds, though.
Dumbledore cleared his throat and Harry realized he'd been ignoring the outside world again. He made a noncommittal noise that Dumbledore seemed to take as agreement.
"Professor Quirrell is working with Severus to hunt down any clues about the person who put him under Imperius," Dumbledore continued. "With a bit of luck, that mystery will soon be resolved, and the guilty party sent to Azkaban. Meanwhile, I will be leaving tomorrow morning to retrieve the final Horcrux. When I have destroyed the ring, we can begin to consider our options for mitigating your situation."
So he is planning to make use of the diary, Voldemort said.
Harry ignored him. "Good luck, sir," he said to Dumbledore. "Don't forget the ring has a death curse. It shouldn't go off if you only handle the stone or the outside of the band, but if you slip and even touch the inner band -- it would be ugly. I'd use pliers if I were you."
"Or a levitation spell, perhaps?" suggested Dumbledore, his eyes recovering some of their amused twinkle. "I thank you for your concern, and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow evening."
He unlocked the door and walked out, closing Harry in alone with only Voldemort for company.
---------------------------------------------
Professor McGonagall came to eat dinner with him the next day -- "since the Headmaster seems to have been slightly delayed," as she said -- and she and Harry ate in awkward silence. Finally she pushed her plate aside with a resigned sigh.
"I haven't the slightest idea what might be keeping Albus, but we might as well make use of the time. I brought my final exams for first through seventh years, and I would like to run you through the exercises to see where you stand in Transfiguration. Over the next weeks, we'll do the same with your other subjects."
Harry nodded his agreement and waited for Professor McGonagall to remove the charms that would, among other traps and failsafes, set his wand on fire should he try to use it without permission. When she handed it back, he flicked it, once, to get the feel of it back in his wrist. There were no sparks, of course -- that sort of thing was a symptom of uncontrolled magic -- but he felt a warm hum as the phoenix feather inside the wood responded to his power.
I wonder what would have happened if your wand weren't a brother to mine, Voldemort whispered. Would you still have been able to use it, or would my presence have interfered with the resonances?
You were always here, Harry told him. Any wand I could use would have to be compatible with you. Aloud, he said to Professor McGonagall, "What should I do first?"
Voldemort's amusement curled through Harry's mind, poisonous and cold, while Harry breezed through spell after spell. Every question Professor McGonagall asked about Transfiguration theory seemed as though he'd known the answer forever. Every change she asked him to make came easily. Harry felt like he was sleepwalking, as if his hands and mouth were acting on their own.
He wasn't good at magic. Nothing had ever come easily to him except flying -- but this was nothing like flying. Flying made Harry feel alive. Flying made his breath come fast and his blood rush, and every last bit of it was his.
This new knowledge and skill belonged to Voldemort. He wasn't controlling Harry right now, but he might as well have been. The wrist motions were his, copied into Harry's body. The words were his, sitting strange and sour in Harry's mouth. Even the magic was his, or at least the patterns into which it flowed.
And yet it wasn't borrowed skill. If Dumbledore found a way to rip Voldemort out of Harry's mind tomorrow, Harry would still remember everything.
So it was stolen power. A poisoned gift from the man who killed his parents. Who killed his own father. Who killed, and killed, and killed, and laughed while he worked, as if his slightest whim meant more than all the dreams of all the other people in the world, forever.
Harry wanted to be sick.
Finally, Professor McGonagall sat back in her chair with a slightly perplexed expression. "You just finished several NEWT level exercises," she said. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised -- Voldemort was an extremely skilled and powerful wizard, abhorrent goals notwithstanding -- but I do wonder if we have anything left to teach you."
Harry shrugged. "He can't have been perfect at everything. Besides, Dumbledore will probably want to know how far the memory sharing goes." He looked down at his wand, then reluctantly slid it across the empty table toward Professor McGonagall. She reapplied the warning and protection charms and handed it back.
"Would you like to come with me to the Headmaster's office?" Professor McGonagall asked abruptly, as she gathered her papers. "It's not good for you to be caged day in and day out, and you have as much stake in this Horcrux hunt as he does."
Surprised, Harry nodded.
Professor McGonagall led him through the corridors and up a flight of stairs until they reached a griffin statue. She leaned in and whispered a password -- Harry covered his ears and looked away while she spoke -- which made the statue spring aside, revealing a narrow, twisting flight of stairs. "Step on; they'll carry you up," Professor McGonagall said, gesturing Harry to go first.
At the top of the stairs, she drew a small key from her sleeve and unlocked the door. As she opened it, however, there was an immediate uproar from the dozens of portraits hung on the walls, and the professor stepped in front of Harry to shield him from whatever had upset the paintings. "Silence!" she ordered. "One at a time!"
The portraits began to hush each other, leaving only a dour, black-haired man to clear his throat with a meaningful cough. "Minerva McGonagall, we regret to inform you that Albus Dumbledore has passed away. You are now the interim headmistress of Hogwarts, until the Board of Directors shall make a more permanent appointment. Also, Madam Pomfrey requests that all staff present in the castle convene in the hospital wing for an emergency meeting."
Professor McGonagall's hand dropped to her side.
Harry ducked between her and the doorframe, sure he had misheard something. Perhaps this was a bad joke, and Dumbledore was simply waiting to stand up and announce that he had recovered the ring. But he saw no sign of the headmaster in the jumbled office, just books and scrolls and a dirty teacup on the desk.
The portraits frowned down from the walls, and the dour man cleared his throat again. "The young man should be returned to his rooms," the portrait said.
Professor McGonagall stirred to life again. "No," she said. "Whatever-- whatever happened to Albus, it was most likely connected to Harry. He has a right to know the details." She glanced into a corner of the office, where a large bird with glowing red-gold feathers huddled on a perch. "Fawkes, would you care to accompany us?" she asked.
The bird lifted its head and peered sadly across the office. Then it launched itself into the air, its wings hardly seeming to beat before it landed on Harry's shoulder. It trilled softly, before turning to rub its beak against Harry's hair.
The warm weight, the song, and the touch, seemed to bring the portrait's words home.
Dumbledore was dead. He had gone to fetch the final Horcrux, and he had died doing it. Now who would figure out how to remove Voldemort from Harry's mind? Now who would protect the school from the person who had cast Imperius on Professor Quirrell?
In the back of Harry's mind, Voldemort was laughing. Game over, old man. I win.
---------------------------------------------
End of Chapter Six
Back to chapter 5
Continue to chapter 7
Read the final version at ff.net
---------------------------------------------
Right. Back to remixing now.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-16 03:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-16 03:27 am (UTC)Harry will get a bit less emotionally blank as time goes on, especially once he's back in contact with Ron and Hermione; they won't let him mope. But he's looked at the situation and he's pretty sure the only sure way out is for him to die, thus taking Voldemort with him. Using the diary to give Tom his own body is just asking for trouble, not to mention it won't dissolve the Horcrux link between Harry and Voldemort. Staying with the status quo means there's always a chance Tom can sneak around Harry's defenses and wreak havoc while in Harry's body. And redeeming Voldemort is frankly absurd. Hence self-sacrificial death.
That conclusion is not going to do anything good to anyone's mind, and since Harry has something of a savior and martyr complex already, well, yeah. There are reasons I've been writing him so flat affect.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-16 12:02 pm (UTC)Anyway, I love the moments where Harry and Voldemort talk, it's interesting interaction.
But he couldn't seem to call up anything more than weary annoyance, as if Voldemort were an old friend or relative too familiar to actually hate.
I don't know why this is giving me the prrts, but it does. XD;;
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-16 05:07 pm (UTC)I have ridiculous fun writing Harry and Voldemort talking to each other, so I'm glad those parts come off well.