I think I just had a crash of whatever crash it can be called. French is stupid. At least then when you don't know the bloody grammar and start writing depressing things and your french teacher offers you a cup of tea. "No thank, this isn't really my cup of tea, thank you," -Would be the polite answer but since when have Finns been polite. I just drank it.
I'm referring Death as 'it' in here, just so you know.
Summary: Voldemort has a small talk in Limbo with Death over a cup of tea and makes the other realize something in the end. Post-DH, no pairings, just depressing stuff.
Not made to be a hero.
Even though Voldemort had been in here for a very long time, he never really got used to the same view in front of him. Also the habit of waking up on a bench (where he didn't remember sitting on) to watch the trains go by wasn't very inspiring. In fact it drew one's brains to mush and thinking had become a depressing waste of time since there was really nothing to think about. Sometimes a distant voice or two tried to reach out to him but they never really succeeded since the trains made an awful lot of noise (or so he liked to think) but since the distant whistling didn't really bother him but took his mind off from things, he didn't make any attempts to stop it.
The dark lord's gaunt form occupied a bench at the very middle of the station. The wailing soul piece was under him, making him irritated and keen on throwing it onto the rails.
"You seem depressed." A dark form commented right next to him. Voldemort's empty eyes watched the endless train station that should have had the sign of 'King's Cross' somewhere. Letting his eyes wander from one thing another Voldemort didn't really acknowledge the thing's presence until it touched his shoulder to remind the dark lord that it was truly there.
"I've been thinking about this. You know I could let you out from here. Be reborn and do something wise." Death commented and sat down next to the dark lord.
"Isn't it a bit of hazard to show favoritism for me? There are others who have made horcruxes."
"Who I have offered the same deal and they have taken it with open arms. I think you're just being too keen on keeping your body." Death said again. He leaned back and Voldemort turned his head towards the black cloaked figure right next to him. A smudge or two were on that cloak and the invisibility cloak was hanging off from its shoulders, the ring containing the resurrection stone proudly on one of those bone fingers and the elder wand made into a mocking crown on top of its head.
It looked like a Dementor gone mad. -Very unfashionable- Lucius would've said but Lucius wasn't here now. No, he had passed about...Voldemort didn't even remember when.
"You know it's already been 500 years. I think you've done too well to scare everyone and anything off from this platform but you might want to go on."
"Death isn't really my business."
"It's no one's business but it just happens. Sucks doesn't it?"
Very, -Voldemort would've liked to answer but shut his mouth since he didn't feel inclined to react at all. The cornerstones and rails were shaking again. Not even a minute after, a white train was coming, followed by one with golden carvings. The station was very cold but Voldemort had long ago lost those kind of primitive feelings. His fear for death seemed like a silly thing from yesterday. How simple it had been to just rampage around, try to find every secret there is to magic, to rule the wizarding community and try to catch Potter. He missed mortal life.
"Thinks a man who claimed to be immortal." Death snorted and stood up. Voldemort had never seen its face but somehow he knew it wasn't that much worse from a skull or a Dementor's empty features. Until he noticed what the thing was looking, Voldemort gave it a passing glance and lowered his black hood. The black cloak and white visage fitted into these halls but not really. They just blended in really well. "I think you could use some happiness. I've never met such a gloomy guy. Even your grandfather was more jovial."
"I wouldn't exactly call him jovial. Salazar was a very strict man bound by codes and etiquette. His thinking made him-"
"-a person who was feeling slightly alone. But let's not speak about your ancestors. They seem to make you more depressed." Death said and walked to the middle of the platform. Death took the crown off from its head and it returned to the shape of the Elder Wand. 'Blasted thing...' Voldemort cursed but looked at it curiously before he saw Death wave it and conjure a table and two chairs out of thin air. The space changed somewhat too - presented as a tea room. Different incense was being burned and it made the snake man feel dizzy.
"Dear me, my bad," Death waved his wand again and made the incense disappear,"Would you care for a cup of tea?"
"I'm not thirsty." Voldemort answered and stood up. His robes were smudgy, rumpled and full of dust - all leftovers from the final battle. He walked behind the pillar which the bench was in front of and laid down. A snake appeared right next to him and hissed something into Voldemort's ear and he responded, "You can stay here." Closing his eyes he seemed to doze off with the snake on top of him for a very few seconds before being hauled up. Angry vibes were oozing off from Death as it kept dragging him back to the table and tea set which had been laid on it. Chinese porcelain cups which the British wizards had taken from the muggles and Death probably taken from the wizards, were next to each other, each emitting a scent of wonders.
"I thought I told you not to bring her here." Death said tiredly as if it had given this lecture many times over again and threw Voldemort onto the other chair. The dark lord gave Death a long glare and went to tidy his robes.
"She keeps coming back with the trains." Voldemort answered and Nagini slithered towards the duo, climbing up the chair up to Voldemort's shoulders. Her presence took his mind off from things and it was relaxing.
"You know, I find it weird that you don't want to see your relatives, technically only your mother, or even you archenemy who so kindly sends me back every hundred years to check up on you, but you still bewitch those trains to bring your snake back. Don't you find that ironic?"
"I don't love her. I only care for her." Voldemort let his nostrils bump with Nagini's and raised the cup with his fingers. The steam warmed his face and the warm cup his fingers.
"Well that's too intimate to only be put into the 'caring' folder." Death said and picked up his own cup. He took a sip, drinking the substance very ungracefully and just dipped the whole thing into his mouth. Voldemort gave the act an raised eyebrow as he sipped his own tea. The station's dullness seemed to dissipate for the moment and he eyed around the tea room, noticing the pots and pans and the carpets on the floor. The way the floor was deep brown wood and the green-blue design in the interior.
"Why a tea-room though?" He asked while eying the windows that showed nothing beyond them. This made him frown. "You have no imagination."
"Would you have preferred the hovel your mother inhabited? Or maybe a Slytherin common room with you horcruxes on display? Honestly stop complaining. It's like this because I wish to be so. Now to more important business, have you given it a thought?"
"My answer is still no. I don't wish to leave here." Voldemort curtly answered and offered Death a look of utter boredom. "What's in this?"
"That, my dear, is the draught of living death. This one is cure for depression, this one creates acne. And don't touch that, there's mucus in it." Death stopped Voldemort from opening the firewhisky bottle for his own good. Voldemort looked disgusted and threw his cup at Death who simply got drenched in tea. "I'm kidding. But there's really mucus in that one."
"Forget it! Get out and let me be. I have had enough of pranks when I was alive."
"You could return there and live again. She misses you, you know. Always complains about how I took you."
"Who?"
"Magic."
Voldemort was quiet and he looked solemnly at the thing in black. He seemed to ponder something before going to explore the room. Death took no heeding when his pillows and furniture were being inspected and turned around. Some memories were hidden in the golden locks and clocks of the room and surprisingly Voldemort encountered a memory of Harry along them. In there were the news how Death Eaters were being executed without trials, the Malfoy line was ending and it didn't really look that bright. Rita's articles flashed in the memory and he saw masses of people celebrating on the day he had fallen. The date, May 2nd, had been made a holiday in the Wizarding calendar. Placing the clock back, he looked at the paintings and noticed a painting of Merope trying to feed herself with a big belly on some street. He walked past it and a suit of armor moved out of the way. Death poured himself and Voldemort another cup of tea.
"I find your lack of reaction disturbing. Doesn't that shake you at all? She's almost dead you know." The bone fingers pointed towards the painting where Merope looked like she could drop dead at any moment.
"I don't sympathize with people I don't even know. Plus she isn't really my mother if she can't get out of that." Voldemort gave the picture a blank look and knocked the suit of armor twice. It jumped and ran off. Death stared the dark wizard for a while, letting the tea in its hand cool.
"That's very cold of you. Come to think of it, she's still there with the other spirits. Doesn't want to leave before you come. Says she forgives you and that this time she wants to raise you up properly. Shame that if you reincarnate you'll not be her child. I wonder if she knows that you can be the mother to one specific child only once?" Voldemort wandered back to the table and sat down.
"I don't wish to be a child of such a weak woman." He said simply and took a sip of his tea. "The only good thing she ever did to me was to pass on her talent of parseltongue."
"Everyone seems to wish you show some remorse. You know you could go back in time and start again, in the nineteen forties. Of course you won't remember this conversation but if I were to send you a teacher who you could rely upon and trust then maybe you could turn out differently. Everyone wants to be with a pretty little boy who's powerful." Death twirled his left hand around and cocked his head to the side. If Voldemort heard this, which he undoubtedly did, he didn't show any signs of it.
"Then again you're pretty hazard and paranoid and I think you'd just kill the teacher and redeeming you could take years. Maybe a loving figure in life at some point? I could arrange someone to swoop down and take you away from the orphanage. Perhaps to strengthen your good side I should give you a child? Ah, no. That won't do. I promised her I wouldn't do that." Death mulled over and drank his tea again. It was becoming cold already so he just waved his wand and reheated it.
"Promised who? Do you have a partner in crime?" Voldemort asked sardonically. Death seemed to smirk even though he had no flesh.
"Would it be a surprise if I said magic? I mean if I give a loving figure and family, then you obviously will have some morals in the end and that will end up you not getting into dark arts. Well you'd practice them but not so much as you've done now." It shrugged and snorted,"She's pretty keen on keeping you the all knowing bastard I've come to know with no remorse. Did you know that she enjoys the fact that you discovered and learned very much all that there is to her?"
"There's no end to magic. It's never ending with possibilities if one can just harness it in the right way."
"I know, I know. For the love of...You say the same thing they all do!" Death shouted and flung his arms up, revealing bone. Quickly covering them he shot Voldemort an apologetic look and continued when the other looked puzzled, "I mean Merlin, Salazar, Herpo, Dumbledore, Potter, Flamel etc, - whoever you can come up with. The thing is I don't need a lecture. I know her fairly well and believe me, nowadays not a lot of people know even half the stuff the runts in your time did." Death leaned back in its chair and snorted,
"I could probably say that you were right about muggles and muggleborns. But at that time your ideals sounded more like a fairytale or a madman's idea. In the end the term mudblood proved to be very descriptive. Wizards married to muggles and their magic weakened. Hereditary brilliance and arts were forgotten since they could not be performed, the purebloods didn't remain purebloods and now there are only halfbloods around. You know what happens to a child that has two muggleborn parents? It becomes a squib. Not really fair, truly, but it's only right. If there are particularly strong wizards born in some country, who'll be able to teach them? If they have potential and skill then who'll be able to guide them? No one. Many children have died because their magic started affecting their health. Muggles think their children are crazy and send them to those nice little houses of theirs where the situation gets out of hand. Truly a vicious circle."
"They got what they deserved..." Voldemort blew into his cup and sipped the last contents in it. "Technically what you're saying is that I have no place in there. That I'd die again."
"Exactly!" Death jumped up and pointed his long skeletal finger at Voldemort who looked skeptically at the other, not sure what would happen. "There's no place for you there and there's no place for you in the spirit plane where your mother is waiting for you, and you definitely don't belong in here."
"Excuse me but you're making it sound like you're driving me out," Voldemort stood up too, the kettle got knocked over in the process and sprayed its contents onto the floor but neither of them seemed to care. "Your efforts may look like they work but you can't drive me out. You can't get rid of me that easily, you despicable thing! I don't recall you ever stopping me splitting my soul."
"I have no power over what you do down there, that's your own business but I won't tolerate insolent little dark wizards staying here for eternity, only to hinder the passing between life and dead. Do you have any idea how many souls you've condemned to just disappear by just being here? I propose to send you back so that I have one thing less to worry about and I don't want to waste my anger on you who'd just enjoy it." Death spat and waved the Elder Wand again. The cozy tea room seemed dissipate to thin smoke and the usual train station was around them again. The quietness however was broken by Voldemort's barking laughter.
"I'd imagine it to be quite frustrating to try to appeal to me seven times! Have you already talked to Tom? Riddle? I can imagine what it would be like to talk to that at least." Voldemort pointed towards the wailing baby on the ground, beneath the bench. The scarred and bloody horcrux seemed to shrink away and lower its wails as if it sensed its creator's disgust towards it.
"You-!" Death swept past him and pushed Voldemort aside. It didn't seem to mind the acid glare he received when kneeling and extending his hands towards the wailing baby. The child shrank away and its wounds seemed to reopen again, blood gushing out. Voldemort hissed in pain as he felt the torturous pain too.
"What have you done..." Death whispered. His hands retreated away from the soul piece as if they had been burned. Only now could it see the extensive damage on that ripped soul. Its wailing was truly more quieter than the last time he had visited and its wounds didn't heal even though the baby was in Voldemort's presence, which should have healed some of the injuries. Never had it been in this state before. Harry Potter's own soul had nursed it a little when it had been inside the boy but now it wasn't attached to anything nor anyone. Now it was just slowly disappearing. This was an ill fated omen.
"I need to go, now. But before I do, have you went to see your other pieces?" Death stood up and eyed Voldemort who scowled.
"Oh yes. The diary seems to think it's somehow better than me by owning half of my soul. You can throw that under a train if you wish. One me less to worry about, wasn't it?" Voldemort replied scathingly and brought up his black hood again. He walked over to the bench and sat on it. The feared dark lord looked more like a ragged old man and didn't have his threatening aura anymore. It seemed to have gone away when he had lived here the first two hundred years.
"When are you going to just leave it be. Go away, you can't make me change my mind." Voldemort sighed and relaxed against the wooden and highly uncomfortable white bench.
"I think differently. In the end you have to agree since otherwise you'll disappear. One by one your horcruxes will be destroyed, this will be the first," Death glanced at the scarred horcrux,"and soon you'll notice that you'll be the last one left. The great lord Voldemort will be nothing in the end. Very pathetic if you ask me."
Voldemort didn't answer. He motioned for Nagini to come closer and wrapped her around himself. The light in the station burned his eyes. It was too bright. He wished it to be dark again, like 500 years ago. Everything was dark then. Voldemort silently smiled at himself for the small pun. He let his head rest against Nagini's strong body, her scales smelt of earth and morning dew and sometimes the dusty stairs in the Riddle manor. Although the manor must have rotted away and was down in the ground. Maybe it was demolished for being dangerous to local people? Who knew.
"No one will mourn for you." Death said straightforwardly, "Doesn't that make you sad? What's the point to live and then just disappear?"
"Ahh...trying to make me see my mistakes and agree upon your deal...very clever of you." Voldemort stroked Nagini's scales as she fell asleep. The coldness of the station didn't seem to bother her at all and she didn't seem to even want to go back to the spirit plane.
"In the end, you're just trying to use me to make order come back to the world. Trying to save up humanity?"
"I have to. Otherwise I'll be the one to disappear." Death shrugged. It didn't like the way the dark lord's eyes glinted in an amused way as the next words rolled over his tongue,
"So you'll need someone here in limbo to be sent back in time and correct the happenings. Sounds like you're threatening with this deal of yours." Voldemort closed his eyes and stopped stroking Nagini.
"Go ahead. Try to talk my other Horcruxes around. I'm not doing it. I'd recommend Potter but that boy doesn't have Horcruxes. Shame since he'd be the perfect sacrificial lamb for you." Voldemort laughed, "I'm not made to be a hero. I don't want to save people. I want to rule. I want power. Even if I went back in time and corrected things to the way they should be, I'd still die in the end. You know I'd still make horcruxes and I'd still disappear. In the end it's only a good deal for you."
The silence confirmed Voldemort's thoughts and he let a mean smirk form onto his lips. Death looked at him for quite a while.
"You're dooming us all."
"I know. But I'll be the first one to flee from Death and in the process destroy the whole conception." Voldemort shrugged. He seemed pleased with himself and positioned himself more comfortably. He was ready to fall asleep, the conversation already being over. Maybe he'd hibernate to the end of the world. Would his soul last till then? Who knew but it was worth a try.
"I don't know what she sees in you. In my opinion you're just another self-centered bastard among the others." Death growled and whipped his cloak around, he was ready to board the train that could be heard coming and it truly did. A black train with golden letters but the words were not of any language any could read. Giving one last glance at the Dark Lord who was waving at Death in a mocking manner, the thing made from bones boarded the train in silence. Death pondered how he'd tell magic about this change of events but perhaps that answer he had just received was just what she had expected.
Truly depressing stuff. Voldemort is, by the way, going to sit there till the end of the world. In the end, I think he deserves to have fun to the detriment of death. I know you'll probably think me weird giving magic such a biased opinions of missing Voldemort and how she thinks the dark lord can't have family but hey, he truly did come to know magic better than anyone because he didn't have love and family (except he still can't understand the love factor but he knows it exists.) Review if you want.