The air was cold in a way that made sure to reach your bones and freeze you from inside out. He was sure his tormentor had caused it. He did not , from his intimate knowledge with dank and dusty dungeons, recall any sort of air this cruel. Though, he had always been on the other side of the bars. Had always been the cause of terror and screams that he could lap up and feel as though he had finished a Hogwarts Feast. Shoulders unfurled and righted themselves on the once proud and indestructible man.
Hogwarts.
Sure, he had struggled at first, had to claw his way out of the endless depths of the snake pit with tooth and claw, had sweat blood until he proved himself. But there, he has once been king. Oh how he missed the lording over pathetic weaklings that dared to think them purer than him. His thrice accursed father may have been muggle, but had that blood not reinvigorated the line from which his squib mother came? He had been all powerful. And everyone else had known it. His memories from the time had long lost their specifics - only associations and feelings came to him now. But for that moment, it was enough.
Until he remembered where he was.
It was the taunting sound of her heels across the floor that brought him back to where he was. He wanted to take those monstrosities and drive them through her eyes to the back of her head, heal her, and do it all over again. He had delighted in anger and violence and murder all his life but her, she had caused the deepest and truest feeling he had ever felt. Pure, unfettered hatred.
Even that goat from Hogwarts - what was his name? He was too tired to think upon it. But no, even that beard and those twinkling eyes had caused a feeling that only barely scratch the surface of what he felt now.
The heels were coming closer.
Never in his first creation of a soul shard had he imagined it be turned against him. A piece of his soul - something tangibly still him in all the himness that could be, used to bind and restrict him. He did not know how it was possible.
And the ringing laughter that reached his unused ears, making him cringe away from the harshness, told him he would never know.
"And today Tom? Have we thought upon the question we last spoke of?"
There is was. Her voice - too sweet and innocent. It was an angel's voice hiding the demon below. He tried to swallow but his throat had not had food nor water pass it in many moons and it stuck. He knew it would, it always did. Not for the first, and certainly not the last, he cursed the humanity of himself, he could have been more, could have been better. He had been better.
Some things were never to pass and others never to last.
"Yes you demon" he said, "as every day for every day I have been here. And I still know not why you seek such vengeance upon me."
"You tried to kill me."
"I tried - and did - kill a great many people." Remember, he thought viciously, that i was not some docile Hufflepuff before and when I escape, I will certainly not be then.
"Ah yes." This was usually when she would walk away, leaving his body to wither even more while his soul remained anchored, unable to let him pass on.
It seemed something today was unique.
"You know, Tom-" She started, he snarled. God, that name. That plebeian, filthy, muggle name. She used it because he hated it. He hated her even more every time.
"It's an anniversary for us both."
He raised his head for the first time.
He looked upon her, and despised his eyes. An immaculate woman of noble breeding looked down upon him, beautiful in the way stained glass was until you cut yourself on a sharp edge.
He looked back down.
"An anniversary?"
"Oh yes"- oh no. She sounded delighted. No. That was unacceptable.
"Don't care." He interrupted, determined to at the least get under her skin.
"I rather think you will.
You see, 250 years ago, you tried to kill me for the first time. Slaughtered my family, but were defeated. Oh yes Tom, 250. I have kept you here for 233 years. The first 100 were of no matter to you - I never came to see you. You started to wither away, slowly but surely."
He tried to recall those years but could not. Unsurprising. His memory had failed him for many years now.
"I came on the 101th night to ask if you remembering wronging someone so much you deserved this. Deserved seeing that immortality was worse than any merciful death. You didn't remember then, you didn't remember now."
He had tried, had strained his mind all he could, had spent days jnto months into years trying to rebuild his mind. He had failed.
"But you see Tom, 250 years is a long time. I grew weary of this game we played-"
He lunged. He did not know what came over him; he had not made a move against her in what felt like eons, he knew futility went he saw it. He retreated immediately, thinking it too late. She'd resume punishment.
She merely laughed.
Huh, that was new. He recognized that laugh. Could not place it, no, but it stirred something deep within him.
"It is time for you to pass Tom. On a Hallow's Eve Night, just as you thought I would 250 years ago, from a prophecy from a fraud."
Was that a brick wall he just felt himself slam into? It must have knocked something loose in his brain because the half-formed thoughts came tumbling in one after another. The Prophecy, his crusade, Death Eaters, Dumbledore and -
Hadria Potter.
It all went black.