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Moments in the Dark by Vindictus Viridian

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Chapter Notes: Thanks to songbook99 for a beta-read and advice!

I awaken. It has been a long time since I made me. Though perhaps that other self has learned what happens next, I remain young and untrained, curious in my blindness. There are other senses, muddled and unfamiliar but growing in coherence.

The consciousness I sample will teach me little, and yet she is delicious to the touch as she spreads open my pages, leafing along one by one. I can sense her wish to find something, her disappointment at this stubborn blankness, and her resignation that yet again she has someone else’s castoffs.

Little does she know of the powers and dangers of writing.

I am accepted. She begins to write her thoughts, her dreams, her hopes “ the silly hopes of a silly little girl. In those small tastes of life, I gain nourishment. I grow. I respond.

She is delighted to meet me, and I charm her. She is a trusting child, but there is a strength here. This strength is yet untapped, and if all goes as I expect, it never will be. I do not yet know if I regain my own body by stealing away her life, or if I take on hers. There is no hurry to find out. Our partnership is entertaining, and her soul is fragrant with youth.

I have learned that most persons have a threefold nature. There is the public self, usually bland and uninteresting. There is the monitor, a mother or father figure, who checks in and pokes its nose into the business of its perpetually-scrutinized subject. As an orphan, perhaps, or just by natural superiority, I do not have that self meddling in my doings. And then there is the interesting self “ that little impulse so quickly buried in most, the reason the monitor is always busy, the self the public person exists to hide. This girl is young enough to be well in touch with that dark side of her nature, only recently in control of it as it grows with her. A delicate stirring can bring up all sorts of interesting material.

She would never kill anything “ but she wonders what it is like. She wonders what it is like to have power, unlimited power. She wonders what it is like to be kissed, what follows a kiss, what adults do in the dark. Gradually, she grows to trust me, and if I ask the right questions she admits those darker impulses. In the darkness my own power lies.

I bring her to the Chamber just to see if I can. The outer self does not remember afterward, only suspecting she has missed something, or done something. The darker soul within is fascinated to learn of a place everyone else considers a myth. Her best friend has given her a secret.

Writing in her bed late one night, she admits she loves a famous person, and I play along. I ask what he is famous for, and learn that he killed me. Blank pages are useful for concealing emotion, but my appetite for her is whetted. She will make me live again. I will avenge myself. A plan forms, but I must distract her for now. She will wonder if I fall silent, and for now I am fragile, easily destroyed by the whims of a foolish eleven-year-old girl. I mustn’t hurt her feelings, not now. We talk of kisses until her imagination is fired, until she clasps me to her chest and dreams of pipes and chambers, of moisture and red torchlight. In this relative peace I, too, may dream crimson dreams.

She resents the caretaker and his cat for getting this boy into trouble, and so I have some means to lure her darker self into my will. She resents the boy that spoke rudely to her hero. We set the little Muggleborn aside, to her dark side’s delight and her matching horror. She resents her own friend’s closeness to this Harry Potter, and I use that to slip further into her psyche. She learns what it is to have power without regret, and yet, silly girl, she regrets all the same. The Tom Riddle I remember being would have given me into the hands of someone powerful but unsuspecting, so that one day if need be I could drain that power and perhaps assume that life. I wonder how I became stuck with this foolish girl, and decide how best to use her. She has become so bland and docile to my touch, she hardly seems a challenge anymore.

Then she surprises me: she tries to destroy me, just when I thought I truly had overwhelmed her, and I am rescued by the combined forces of Moaning Myrtle, as I knew her, and Harry Potter. Perfect, I think; I can take the life of the boy who took mine. He is as easily seduced as she. He writes; he responds; he trusts. I change my plan; he will take himself to the basilisk, my dear pet, and in the Chamber of Secrets I will be reborn. My serpent will help me claim Hogwarts, my home. I will have everything I can remember wanting.

As I decide whether the little girl may live for her luck or die for her attempt, she touches me. “You can’t have him,” she writes. There is a determination behind the words I have not felt from her before.

“I will,” I tell her. “And you will help.”

She resists. She argues and cries until I am weary of her, and I take her anyway. Wearing her body, I write her farewell, my greeting, on the wall and enter the Chamber. She weakens from the force of my will; but her grip on my binding remains strong. She seems to have some notion that if the diary is down here, her precious Harry is safer; she does not realize yet that she will free me from that mere book in moments.

That, I allow her to learn as she collapses. Her eyes fix on the stone face of Salazar Slytherin, tears rolling down her face, and finally I can see her. The diary I once owned, and once was, lies beside her hand. She would have been a pretty enough woman, had she been allowed to live. As she slides weakly flat, she sees me. I am seen. I am free, or nearly so “ at her death, I will leave the diary behind and begin life as a young man again.

I consider giving her that kiss she so longed for, letting my lips taste her life as she yields it to me. That self I thought I did not have stirs, asking if this is truly something I want to remember for the eternity I mean to live. Do I want to steal a child’s first kiss with her life, inflicting that little caress upon her? It seems such a small crime against the ones I know I have committed, and yet this one makes me hesitate a moment. Angered, I throw that meddlesome self aside and step forward. A crash in the corridor halts me.

It seems the girl has more friends than she thought she did. By the sound of the echoing shouts and falling rock, there is or was a rescue mission. I elect to keep my guard up. The kiss can wait. What does it matter if she is alive for it or not?