Chapter: 1/?
Author: Bleeding Star Goddess (aka BSG)
Pairing: Voldemort(Tom)/Harry Potter, Pansy/HermioneRating: R
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Brothers Inc. No money is being made and no copyright infringement is intended.
Warnings: This story and those that follow in this series shall contain elements of child abuse, character insanity/mental instability, abstract ideas, and attempted suicide. This story shall also contain large amounts of violence and murder. This is post Order of the Phoenix and is slightly AU as it will not follow the sixth book. There are strong sexual situations between Female/Female pairings, Male/Male pairings, and Male/Female pairings.
Summary: Every true hunter knows that they must stalk their prey; every true killer knows that they must know their prey and all of its habits; every true tactician knows that the saying "divide and conquer" holds true. And all of these things are exactly what Voldemort intends to do.
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Chapter 01: Cutting Strings
He was beautiful. He was beaten, shattered, and utterly destroyed and that is what made him beautiful. He was possessed with the beauty of a marionette whose strings had been severed; the handcrafted body had fallen to the stage and upon impact, its head ruptured. The shards from the battered skull wedged into the stage, slicing into the other marionettes that paid no heed to the collapsed comrade.
Oh, Harry was such a beautifully and cunningly made puppet. He had been made and formed by Albus Dumbledore, the unsurpassed puppet maker that ever lived. Harry was a masterpiece, a work of art, and a spectacular tool. In fact, Harry was the king of tools and the epitome of the used.
And what truly made Harry the artwork that surpassed all others, was that he wasn't even aware that he was a puppet and that he held his creator in complete and utter devotion and trust.
When I had first seen the Boy-Who-Lived, I had wondered what Albus had made his life's work (for Harry was far too exquisite a creation to have been a mere whim of fancy) out of. I had - at one time - thought something frail, breakable, but striking. He had been so very delicate looking when I had first seen him at eleven. I had foolishly thought, "What could this mere child do to me?" of course, I remembered what he had done as an infant, what he had reduced me to, but still he had looked so feeble yet pretty.
I had, of course offered him a place by my side. I had not intended to keep it at the time, something the marionette was aware of on a baser level and thus acted upon that instinct. And when he had destroyed my own little pawn, I had to alter my opinion. He was not made from something frail, but something that could still be molded and sculpted easily to Albus' touch and no one else's.
In Harry's second year, I was still without body. So I, myself, could not do anything to the puppet. But a memory of my younger self had caused the puppet some problems. Even then - in my younger weaker days - I could recognize excruciatingly intricate masterpieces… though… my eye for such artwork has refined with age and power. Harry, in his second year, had disappointed his creator, for Harry had revealed himself to be tainted.
Oh, Albus recovered from such a shock fast enough, though I have no doubt in my mind that he finished a bottle of brandy over it. Albus was and still is a master craftsman, and Harry's revelation, the grazing of my contamination, was configured into Harry's further creation. Harry was… is made of something that will bend easily to his master's hand.
I can easily imagine Albus' reaction to the curse his masterpiece wielded. I could see him mulling over his life's work being despised, possibly cutting the strings early and starting anew. Then Albus would realize that he would never be able to create another magnum opus like Harry. And oh how disappointed he must have been, to apprehend I had touched and marked his marionette, his precious puppet who was made with material he thought only he could influence. And then, because Albus is not a master craftsman for nothing, realized how he could use the blemish as a focal point, as the beginning of a purpose for his favorite pawn.
He used the gift that all considered a dark curse to fuel his puppet's loathing for me. All it needed was the right suggestion, the right bending of words, the right touch, and Harry's material manipulated accordingly. His marionette hated not the gift - the gift that his creator encouraged him to support and seemed to support as well - but how the gift was received and its history.
Of course, Albus controlled the stage as much as he controlled the puppets, and while the curse-turned-gift was unplanned, Albus could set the rest of the stage accordingly.
His puppet's friends, while nowhere near the artistry of Harry, were easily influenced because of their age, their material easily flexing to the will of the kind and illustrious Albus Dumbledore.
He had his marionette defeat my memory, something I am grateful for, as that foolish schoolboy would have disrupted any plans I developed. Even if my memory had succeeded with whatever he had intended to do, he would have complicated matters when it came to us. I certainly would not allow him to destroy all I had produced, even in my non-bodied state, and my younger self certainly wouldn't have allowed me to have complete control of the body should I have chosen to possess it.
I believe that Albus was aware of the favor he did for me and I am satisfied that it irked him greatly.
Again, in third year, I played no major hand in Harry's performance upon the stage. I had, in fact, enjoyed the show from the audience. Black, the marionette's godfather, had escaped from the "inescapable" prison, a fact that interested me significantly, as now the morale behind that unbreakable image was broken. A man had gotten out, they didn't know how, but it had happen, and he had not been caught.
Understand of course, that both Albus and I are well aware of how thoughts and stigmas affected morale and beliefs. I had a name no one could utter except the most "powerful" wizards, Albus had an image of omnipotence that all turned to in hope, Harry had a name that all revered and coveted. And Azkaban had the impression of steadfast and impenetrable, however sanity-destroying it may have been.
And the disillusionment of any belief is so much more shattering to the psyche than a truth revealed.
And Albus had played upon the illusion surrounding Black like the master he was. Albus was well aware that Black was never amongst my fold. He knew because like Harry; the Potters and the disowned Black were his puppets. Oh, they were not his works of art, mere sketches, ideas, prototypes and practice for the work that would come, but they were still his to control. Lily Potter was always aware of this; of course, it was why I had offered her a chance to live. It would have been such a shame to see a puppet's strings being cut when the puppet is aware of its own cords.
But I digress; I had sat back in the audience, watching the year's play in the silence a performance in a theater requires.
So when, in the play, Albus' little marionette was disillusioned, his wise, kind, and understanding creator was there to offer him the advice he needed to set to right the horrible wrong.
The fact that Peter had been returned to me and sat in the audience near the end of the show was a minor consequence.
In true artistry, Albus had brought the play to a close with his favorite marionette saving his fugitive godfather and revealing just how powerful he would become with the glowing stag at his side.
Of course, a small explanation was necessary to his little puppet, Albus needed to bend the material just a bit more as he coaxed his favorite tool not to be depressed, that Peter now owed him a life debt and it was not wrong to value life.
And like the perfect puppet he was, Harry accepted, loathing for Peter growing perhaps more than it did for me. It was upon seeing this that I had to act, because I would not allow myself to be upstaged by a mere rodent.
It was in Harry's fourth year that I returned to the stage Albus had set. And in my own arsenal was a collection of puppets, whose strings though thinned, I could strengthen easily.
I had sent one of my own to infiltrate Hogwarts, Albus did not, in fact, know about this one. And I both watched and waited as Harry, Albus' life's work, was almost destroyed in the tournament.
Oh, perhaps I should explain, I didn't want my pawn to destroy Harry physically, that would be a waste of perfection and would ruin any arrangements for what I had planned. But slowly I had my own little pawn pluck at the strings holding Harry up, trying to find the weaker ones.
It would just be my luck that there were so many damned strings that my own puppet couldn't get through all of them.
But this made me curious, this I knew I could exploit.
Harry had thick ropes attached to nearly everything, his desires, his hates, and his pains. And the thicker the rope, the more hates or needs were there.
Not all of them were controlled properly of course; for example, a mere flimsy string was attached to his fears, something that showed that Albus was getting sloppy. My pawn had found that the fears the boy held were vast and far more in numbers than any other of his emotions.
He feared abandonment, he feared for his life and his friends, he feared getting too close, he feared our link, to name just a few.
That Albus didn't have a strict hold on these was worrying, I'd hate to see someone of Albus' talent start to lose his touch.
But his loss, his… sloppiness… was my gain.
Oh? You didn't think I'd use it? Come now, you know me better than that. Just because the master creator Albus Dumbledore had made the magnum opus marionette that was Harry Potter didn't mean that there wasn't a single flaw. And it would be the very flaw Harry had revealed in his second year, the flaw in his material that I had caused that I would utilize.
I would exploit and broaden Harry's contamination. The mere scratch that I had caused in that perfect material, I would nick and scrape at it until I would get through the surface and gain entrance to his core. I needed to get to the gears and the cogs, the strings and most of all, the soul.
And all of this I could only have done if I could get at Harry directly.
So my little pawn, my own loyal and abandoned puppet, infiltrated Hogwarts and gained direct access to the magnum opus, the tournament just allowed for a faster trust to be built between the two of them.
Harry's perfection and true artistry came into play in the tournament,
be it his commandeering of the golden egg or his ability to answer the
riddles and get through the maze, and - no matter how sickening - his
rescue of the Weasley and the other child from the lake was also
impressive. The rescue was also sadly predictable with how Albus had
molded Harry's material. It also helped that Albus had seen to it that
Harry's information was extremely vague.
It wasn't however, until the play was near an end that I made a reentrance, body and all on the stage.
When I first gazed upon Harry for the first time in my new form, I have to say I was… disappointed…
Harry - though still magnificent - was untrained, unskilled, his powers were being wasted, and worst of all, the tour de force insult of all insults was that Dumbledore had done nothing about my contamination.
He mocked me with the puppet that was Harry Potter, not removing or eradicating my link, thinking it was not a hindrance, that I was not a threat. And even if I had intended to use it to gain entrance to the core, I had expected it to be eliminated, that I would have had to once more make the mark upon the material. That it had remained untouched and intact was Dumbledore's way of telling me that he was not scared of me.
That I could have dealt with, I long ago stopped fearing Albus, though I worried from time to time what the master artisan's newest creation was, but that was not what offended me. No, no what Albus had also conveyed was that he would no longer take me seriously.
This I could not tolerate, and on the stage set in a scene of my choice, I had dueled the magnum opus, losing not to him but to his ghost. He escaped me, an unfortunate incident, but now the real fun would begin.
I was given form once more, the blood of perfection coursing through my veins. And with the contamination untouched and intact (one of the biggest mistakes I planned on making Albus pay greatly for) I would be able to attain Harry's core almost as fast as I could obtain my own.
The fifth year stage was set, Albus once more controlling the play. But this time, I had stripped control of his life work from his ageing hands. I tore the strings from his grasp, laying them into my own palm.
Harry Potter, the magnum opus, was mine.
And Albus, foolish, thoughtless, Albus Dumbledore who was so sure in his control, of his art was left with his minor arsenal, his mere sketches while I dictated the actions of the world's greatest masterpiece.
I had decided that the master artisan-- that Dumbledore's time was up and his reign in the craftsman world was to come to a fiery end.
I used Harry.
I entered his mind and was given privy to all his workings, his thoughts, and especially his dreams.
And even though I would destroy Dumbledore, his work was still perfection. Gazing into Harry's mind, which was far more intricate than any I had ever seen, I saw the greatest flaw in his material, something that he had been born with.
It was not just a mere scratch; it was a large gaping hole. And the
definitive humor of it was that because of who Albus was, he wouldn't
be able to see it until it was far too late.
Why couldn't Albus see it you ask? Was it because he didn't know what to look for? Was it because he was an innately light wizard? No, it is none of these.
Albus would never see it until it struck him because he was not born with it.
The chasm in Harry's material, the great defect that would never be fixed by one like Albus, was riddled and lined with ancient magic.
The magic was ancient and forgotten; it was magic that was too wild and utterly chaotic for even the normal wizards of today, for ones even such as Albus or myself to wield.
It was magic with such intensity that those who had utilized it were called gods. The magic held no limits, all was possible, all was probable, and anything that one wanted one could have.
When I had discovered the fissure, I knew that Harry's power would surpass us all; he would gain the power that would make him a god like those of history.
And Albus wasn't consciously aware of it. Oh, on a very minor level, one that Dumbledore no longer listened to (his instincts) he was aware of the defect. Power, after all, is drawn to power. And Albus had attempted, unknowingly, to block up the hole, though how he explained it in his own mind I shudder to try and consider.
To me, the play had transformed from a drama, one that would have probably become a great tragedy, to a great comedy, with Albus as the joke.
The prophecy was not important to me. Or rather, it was, but it was only a minor whim compared to the new development, the immense discovery. But I truly had to see how far I could push Harry before his power would push back.
I had gotten my answer when I confronted Albus on the stage in the setting of the Ministry, using his own puppet after a short duel between us.
When I had tried to force Dumbledore to kill Harry (something even I wasn't quite sure if he would do), the ancient magic rose and pushed me out.
Of course, it had started to rise when the boy's godfather had died as well, having heard it's master will to bring him back to life but it recognized that the body was not yet ready for such power and that the block that Albus had attempted would only cripple Harry if it responded.
I was pushed out and my Death Eaters (those that were not captured) and I retreated, a strategic move that I was sure Albus would misinterpret.
It would be his own folly for no longer taking me seriously.
And now the play for sixth year was set, only this time, I controlled the scenes and the characters. I had been pushed out of the magnum opus, but I had made my corruption even greater and now I could gain faster entry.
This time, I would not allow Harry out of my sight, and this year's play would not remain within the setting of Hogwarts.
But to gain complete entrance to the king of tools, whose strings were frayed and near snapping, I took on the semblance of one of my own puppets.
And for a month I would not be Lord Voldemort, though I would certainly hold all the strings even in my disguise. No for a month I planned to observe and then attain Harry Potter in the construct of one Draco Malfoy.
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This one, unlike Existing, will be updated slower and in lesser quantities, because writing from Voldemort's perspective isn't exactly easy, but I shall endeavor to make each chapter worth your wait.
