Betaed by rambkowalczyk
Chapter 25 – In Essence Divided
The first thing Tom became aware of was the cold floor under his body and a slight headache. His tongue was dry and felt cottony. Then he noticed the soft cold thing under his fingers and he remembered where he was and why. Suddenly alert, Tom sat up and opened his eyes.
The drawing room was dimly lit and chilly. The weak light coming from the tall windows was grey; rain pelted against the glass. A look at the cold fireplace confirmed that at least a day had gone by since he had killed Alphard and completed the soul splitting.
Tom looked at the body. His hands had still been curled around Alphard's neck when he woke and he could see dark bruises on the pale skin. It disgusted him. He turned away and got up.
The stack of cards and the last will still sat untouched on the table. Tom picked up his travelling cloak from one of the chairs, ignoring the stiff muscles in his arms and neck. He cast a last glance around the gloomy room. Slowly, he felt joy and pride rise in his chest.
He didn't feel any different now than the night before, but he knew that everything had changed. He was now immortal, invulnerable. He would never be the body lying on the floor.
*
"Listen to this wizard!" Abraxas Malfoy laughed, raising his glass to the man he knew as Lord Voldemort. "He's got the right things to say about those Mudbloods!"
Everyone raised their glasses and drank. Since his return to Britain, Tom had spent most of his time establishing relations to influential purebloods who agreed with his agenda. He had always been good at charming and impressing people. At first he had expected his new looks to be a hindrance, but in most cases it wasn't. It always amused Tom how determinedly these wizards tried to be blasé about his unusual appearance. No one ever asked questions or doubted that he was anything but a pureblood wizard of great power. Some already were calling him the Dark Lord.
Next to Abraxas sat his son, Lucius, smiling thinly at his father's enthusiasm. But the spark in his eyes told Tom that while his father would talk at length about how those Mudbloods and Muggle lovers had to be purged from the wizard society, Lucius would actually do something. Yes, this young wizard was definitely a candidate to be a Death Eater.
To his left sat Hecate Black, a rich and recently widowed witch who didn't hide her admiration for his cause – and his person - in the least. She was accompanied by her sister and a wizard with short grey hair and severe features whose name was Nott.
Abraxas Malfoy launched into another tirade about the Minister of Magic. Hecate Black bent forward.
"What is your opinion of the Ministry?" she asked Tom. He smiled, setting down the glass.
"Well, if you're so interested, Mrs Black, my opinion is that the Ministry of Magic has served our society well for many years – but maybe it is time for a - ," he smiled, "a new way of doing things."
As he said this, Tom looked up and caught Lucius Malfoy's eyes. There it was again, that willingness to go further than mere words.
It was then that it happened the first time, or maybe it was only the first time that Tom noticed it. He wanted to turn back to Hecate Black to say more about this topic, but he didn't. Instead he continued to look at Malfoy for at least another five seconds before his body obeyed his command.
The feeling of displacement in his own body didn't leave him that evening and haunted him all through a sleepless night.
*
It began as tiny motions that his body wouldn't perform even though he willed it to do so. One day he picked a different robe from the one he had wanted to pick. No matter how hard he tried to put it back into the wardrobe, his body continued dressing and walking out of the room as if it were a puppet pulled by somebody else's strings.
There followed a dozen days in which nothing like this happened and he was able to forget or at least ignore it, until it happened again.
Two years after the soul splitting he couldn't deny it anymore. Something was wrong with him. He was losing control over his own body. He decided to look into an ancient text that had guided him through many of his transformations, Dark Magic For the Gifted. But nothing happened. He continued to live and act as if he had never made that decision. His attempts to get back into control grew more and more frantic until he had no choice but to admit it: he wasn't in control anymore and someone else had been living his life for some time. But this other person was so much like him that Tom could anticipate every word and every choice of this other person. They were like two people singing the same song only with the slightest of dissonance. It could be none other than the copy of himself he had constructed.
And while Lord Voldemort rose to power, while his name became feared everywhere in Britain, while every dream of Tom Riddle was fulfilled, Tom himself was caught inside the monster he had created, unable to free himself.
If he listened very hard, he could now hear the whisper of thoughts that weren't his; he could feel the other's mind coiling around his own mind like a twin snake choking him slowly.
He had split his essence into two identical copies, one soulless and immortal and one with a soul, human and mortal. He had deliberately made the soul weaker than the soulless copy, to keep the soul from interfering with him. What he hadn't anticipated was that he would end up with the soul and not be the soulless copy.
*
He tried every known kind of magic that he could access without a voice to speak or a body to wield a wand. He tried to concentrate hard enough to overwhelm the other. He waited for a moment of weakness in the other, but no matter how distracted or exhausted the other was, Tom couldn't push through. He was caught in a prison of his own making.
Tom wasn't even sure if the other knew he was there. Perhaps the other Tom – whom he called Voldemort in order to distance himself from him – didn't even notice the feeble soul and its struggle to get back into control. No matter how hard he tried to break into the Voldemort's mind, Tom couldn't breach the Occlumency of his copy. Only now and then he heard a murmur of thought and could guess at the other's feelings and motives. It was a bit like listening to a very faint recording of his own voice saying things he had never said. He could never bear to listen very long.
As the years went by, he grew weaker, his own thoughts became erratic and slow, and his mind seemed to decay in its captivity. The only thing that he could do was maintain a bitter loathing for his own creation, Lord Voldemort, and an all-pervading fear began to poison his every thought. He knew that his attempt to escape death had failed horribly. He had incapacitated himself and the state he was living in now was less than a shadow of life.
As if he wasn’t feeling despondent enough, there was more disquieting news from one of his younger Death Eaters who had overheard Dumbledore interviewing a witch about a Divination position at Hogwarts. During that interview she went into a trance and started prophesying. She said that the one who would defeat the Dark Lord would be born at the end of the seventh month to parents who had thrice defied him.
Immediately Tom panicked. He didn’t want to die and now the thought that he might die as early as August awakened his mind although not his will. And he didn't trust Lord Voldemort to do the right thing and eliminate this threat quickly. What if his copy failed? What if Voldemort did something that would not kill him, but risk the life of his soul?
*
"Avada Kedavra!"
The house fell suddenly silent after the flash of green light. But it was only a momentary illusion of calm. Before the Dark Lord, the young wizard, draped over the lowest steps of the staircase like a crumpled rug, lay dead. In the dim reflection of the mirror at the end of the hall, Lord Voldemort could see Pettigrew stirring behind him. The short man looked like a paper ghost with his round ashen face, Tom thought.
“Remove this,” Voldemort ordered, pointing his wand at the body of James Potter.
Potter had fought bravely and skilfully, and with the wild desperation of a man defending the lives of his family. They're like animals when their families are threatened, like lions defending their cubs, Tom thought as Voldemort waited impatiently for Pettigrew to compose himself.
Pettigrew cowered in the shadows, frozen by fear. Perhaps the past hours had broken the whimpering parody of a man and he would be of no more use to the Dark Lord. Kill him, Tom thought. Don't waste your time with that pathetic wreck.
But Voldemort didn't kill Pettigrew. Instead he stepped over Potter's body and climbed the stairs. They creaked slightly and even Tom, in his powerless state, could feel the protective magic in the air, touching Voldemort's body like invisible cobwebs of power. Tom, grateful that Voldemort was acting at last, hoped Voldemort wouldn’t make any mistakes. Like cobwebs the charms clung to him, a weightless trap – did Voldemort feel it, too, or was he too excited, to caught up in his triumph over Potter?
At the top of the stairs Voldemort turned right. Every door sprung open as he passed, revealing dark and empty rooms. And then the final door opened and he entered the room.
There she was, barely more than a girl, pretty, with a shock of dark red hair and eyes of startling green. She stood, unarmed, in front of a cot. Tom could see a glimpse of the baby, a round cheek and a tuft of black hair on the white pillow.
"Give me the child," Voldemort demanded coldly.
She was trembling, her face white from fear, but her eyes were calm and determined. Something about that pale face was familiar. She looked not unlike the image of his mother that he had dreamt up as a child, a pale and beautiful woman in the face of death.
"Never," she said. It was almost a shout in the eerily silent room. "Not Harry. You've got to kill me first!"
Lord Voldemort sneered, and Tom wondered why. Was he amused by her futile resistance? Or had he also noticed her resemblance to their dreamed up mother and did he appreciate the irony, that she, too, would die for her child?
Voldemort raised his wand, but he didn't say the curse. He was thinking. Tom could almost hear it: my mother would have known to choose her own life over mine, had she had a choice at all, Voldemort reasoned. Wouldn't it be amusing to give her that choice? … to see her twist in agony… me or my child? …she'll choose her own life, as she must… she'll watch me kill the boy, but she will live, knowing that…
"Stand aside, you silly girl," Voldemort demanded again. "Stand aside and give me the child. You needn't die…".
Tom was surprised that Voldemort would actually do this. Of course it was a delicious way to torture her, but it was also a waste of time in a serious and important situation.
To Tom's surprise, the witch didn't waver in the slightest. Lord Voldemort raised his wand pointing it at her child. "Not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead –" she pleaded suddenly.
Tom could feel it, Voldemort was losing his patience with her. "Alright, you wanted it like this," he hissed. And Tom thought he saw something in her eyes, a gleam of hope, and he felt the spider's web of magic tighten around them, but Voldemort didn't hesitate a second.
"Avada Kedavra!"
The curse had been aimed past her at the child in the cot, but she threw herself in front of it. Green light ignited the room like a bolt of lightning and the next moment her body lay on the floor.
Lord Voldemort moved closer, studying the baby. It was just an infant, weak and defenceless. This was supposed to be the one with the power to vanquish him? He laughed.
But Tom couldn't feel amused, not when he knew that he was just as weak and defenceless as the child in its cot. He, too, couldn't do anything but watch as the events around him unfolded. Bitter hatred for that other part of himself engulfed him.
"Avada Kedavra!" Lord Voldemort called once more and the room was bathed in green light. Tom could feel the rush of magic leave the wand, the sudden surge of power – but then something went wrong. The magic reflected and he felt ice-cold, it hit him like a wall of pain beyond anything he had ever felt. It was only comparable to the sense of being ripped apart that he had felt when he severed his soul from the rest of himself, but that much worse. He could feel his body burning away in a matter of seconds and he felt the presence of the other being ripped away from him and then he was blinded by pain, nothing but pain.
The next thing he felt was a soft warmth, like a soothing blanket being wrapped around himself. He felt a powerful emotion, something that consisted in equal parts of sad longing and joy. He couldn't name it, because it took away all the words from his mind. It washed away his consciousness layer by layer until nothing was left of him but a core of raw feelings.
Suddenly he remembered how tired and weary he was, how much he longed to sleep and forget.
Thick sheets of longing and gentle sadness curled themselves around him, choked him gently until he lost everything, his memories, his name and finally even the unbearable pain.