Disclaimer: This thing. I do not own it.

Author's Note: So, I'm alive. I think? Voldemort gives the best self-help advice.

Lesson I

How to Love the Body You're In

or

Possession is Nine Tenths of the Law

Everyone makes mistakes.

Making the wrong choice can cost you a soupçon of pride or pick clean the crumbs of your existence. As children, we clutch our errors tight – hiding them from the world – but failure kept so close throughout the years would drive anyone to madness. Therefore, take possession of your faults, but do not let them rule you. Admit that you were wrong and begin again.

Of course, sometimes beginning again is not possible, and this is where the rot can set in. Regret gives way to the canker of despair; putrid emotions which offer nothing but hopeless self-indulgence. Even I, Lord Voldemort, am not immune to such maladies.

While Quirrel's flesh burned – it was impossible to separate his screams from Potter's or my own – what could I see but my own flesh reborn, immortal, and my powers restored? That final, cruel taunt of Dumbledore's glass of desire; the barb lodged deep as I drove myself from his body into empty air, determined to leave before his heart stopped.

I cannot go back to Albania. That was my first disembodied thought. But I needed to hide, I needed somewhere safe. The forest had been my desolate bastion for a decade. Footsteps in the next room – their sound leashed to power – and I knew I could not stay here, weak as ever I had been, less than a ghost and naught but prey for the wizard on the stair.

I swirled, caught in indecision over the bodies of Quirrel and the boy. The wizard was dead, still clutching Potter's arm, while the boy was merely unconscious, exhausted by his mother's magic. I will not go back to Albania. That was the thought that kept me, so unwisely, in the path of my greatest foe. I could not accept that it had all been for nothing. I had come so close, only for Harry Potter to –

A spell scalded the very air, Professor Dumbledore rushed into the room, and I fled.

Through stone ceilings, dusty floors, warm June sky, and back again, I sought the seventh floor of the castle, flinging my meagre essence back and forth down the corridor, as I prayed with silent voice, as I had when a child: Please, I need a place to hide. I am the Heir of Slytherin. Please, help me.

And the door opened.

Dust and magic: the smell was lost to me, but I recalled it well from my days at Hogwarts and Borgin and Burke's. Books, bottles, brooms, and broken things; valuables jumbled together with debris. I could not touch them, but the more potent artefacts tingled when I drifted through them. I chose for my particular nook, not the circle of the diadem, making my bed – not that my wretched state permitted sleep – within the wood, wool, wire and assorted stuffing of an enormous, taxidermied troll. This was for no petty reason, but because the skin of the animal, moulded so artfully to hold what had been its living form, was resistant to most forms of magic. Spells designed to hunt down dark wizards such as I, should they penetrate the room, would bounce off the dead troll's hide.

I dwelled there for longer than I can say, waiting for them to think that I had fled once more across Europe or further afield; waiting for them to forget how close I came to resurrection. No one disturbed my secret place, except for a few squeaky house-elves, who did not notice my presence. They seized a few pieces of furniture and left as quickly as they came. Still, it disturbed me that there were others who knew of the room, especially vermin at the beck and call of Professor Dumbledore.

I wished for sleep, for the luxury of its profound pause, but I possessed no eyelids to close, no body for slumber. That had been my favourite thing about my parasitic existence beneath Quirrel's turban. Weak as I had been, sustained only by unicorn blood, I slept a great deal of the time – particularly while the ridiculous fool was teaching his classes. There were dreams too, which I had missed in my decade of sleeplessness: I cherished the nightmares just as much as light, velvety imaginings.

I shivered in fury – this too had been taken from me by Harry Potter! I was not going to stand for this, this ignorant child thwarting my plans – taking everything from me, yet again. Had I been capable of it, I might have demolished the room in the throes of my grief for what had almost been returned to me.

But despair did not devour me. I had elected to remain in the mysterious kingdom of my youth, stubbornly refusing to allow one failure to be an end to this venture. I was not going to return to the safety of distant exile. What difference would the addition of one more secret make to Hogwarts? I, Lord Voldemort, would triumph in the end. True, the stone was now out of my reach, but I could be content with first reclaiming my old body and my old strength, before seeking further glories.

But first, I needed a new helper. Someone weak, like Quirinus Quirrel, and well-adapted for possession…

A shift took place within the room, a sensation like the cold rustle of a draught of air, setting even my weakened senses buzzing. I peeked out from inside the troll. There was no one there. I drifted up towards the ceiling. There appeared to be no difference between now and a moment before, and yet I felt… unsettled. I checked the safety of the diadem and it too was as it had been. Something had happened, even though I could not discern what.

A rustle of movement. I billowed and swirled anxiously.

"Ridiculous unbeliever! Who is a, a fop like Gilderoy – sniff – Lockhart to judge the efficacy of the Inner Eye?-!" A woman came stumbling around the corner of a mountain of discarded furniture. She wore large spectacles and jangled with cheap jewellery. I watched her from above like a disbelieving hawk, as she drew nearer to my Horcrux. "The mysteries of the Sight – sniff – are not to be – sniff – not…" If even this drunk knew the secret of the Room of Hidden Things, then I had made a truly terrible mistake placing the diadem here…

The witch began to dig through a cupboard lying on its side. "Yes, still here, still – sniff – how dare he…?" She pulled out two bottles of sherry and one bottle containing a clear spirit – perhaps gin. Either way, she was a mewling, pathetic excuse for a witch and I could never stand tears. "I would have thought that the wizard who wrote Year with the Yeti would know b-better than to – sniff – scorn the wisdom of a prophetess…"

Sybill Trelawney… I slid closer, curling through the dusty, jumbled furniture. I too should have paid more heed to her prophecies. I had not given the words Severus had recited to me enough thought, but had rushed ahead, eager to disprove the mere implication that anyone could vanquish Lord Voldemort. I had likewise scorned the seer herself; a desperate charlatan attempting to impress in a job interview – it did not take a genius to see that the woman was a fraud telling Dumbledore what he wanted to hear. But now I had been twice thwarted by Harry Potter… perhaps I needed to change my opinion of this so-called seer and her prophecy.

Sensible of the risk I was taking, yet exhilarated at this further proof of how fate favours Lord Voldemort, I drew even closer. Hogwarts had answered my prayer.

Sybill wears a very pale shade of lipstick. I smack my – her – lips; bangles clang and jangle. She is very thin, like me, under all of this glittering armour. The sharp scrape of ribs when I run my hands down my sides is oddly comforting. The witch is not nearly as tall as I would prefer, but that is to be expected. Her eyes, without the thick lenses of her glasses, do not see very well. I can feel what remains of her, memory and impulse, shattered beneath me. Now we are one.

I had possessed snakes like this before, never a witch or wizard. I had been content to be a mere parasite, resting in Quirinus' flesh. There was little point risking the breakage of his clever, duplicitous little brain, when my plan was to make off with the stone much sooner than events had dictated. But now, alone without a reliable servant, I could not say for how long I would need Sybill Trelawney's body. There were other ways, safer ways, but none of them were available to me in that moment.

It turns out that seers, the bearers of true prophecy, do not recall their words in the ecstasy of revelation; Apollo speaks beneath the waters of the Lethe. But all things leave traces, trails in the mind… and if you follow those paths and hunt, and hunt, and hurt… you can uncover all the wriggling remnants that lurk beneath the stones of the conscious thought. Sybill's mind was now damaged beyond repair, of course, but her body was still well-adapted for possession.

So, here I am. All of Tom and Sybill's insecurities writhing away beneath this flesh, but that is the way of it. Sybill wants control and a drink and Tom is sickened by the pathetic nature of our entire predicament. I put a palm flat against the solid chill of the mirror. The urge to vomit and drink sherry at the same time is not encouraging. But I am here, and I am in charge, and there is nothing wrong with this form, except the eyesight. I steady myself and examine her.

Gossamer shawls over her bony joints, a wispy-waspy voice, and robes that glitter with cheap crystal. Sybill is a joke, but she is gaunt, pale, and raw – she hurts – yet she won't let the pain interfere with her performance and that – that, I understand. My breath clouds against the mirror. You are mine now, little witch, and their scorn will never touch you again. The fluttering of her in my gut quiets and I breathe a little easier.

She's cold and I leave the bathroom to light a fire in her sitting-room. The North Tower has a lovely view of the Forbidden Forest - summer had deepened and withered into autumn without me - and, for a moment, I can rest; real rest against the softness of her favourite armchair and the heat of a fire that does not go through me, but plays against my skin. I feel like the wolf wearing grandmother's shawl and lace mittens: all the better to eat you with, my dear. I laugh and her voice is tingly and a little hoarse. Maybe one glass of sherry would not be amiss…?

The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches ... born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies ... and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not ... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives ... the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies...

Well… the mark is the scar; that much is obvious now. But the child is hardly my equal… could it mean that I will never regain my true form until Potter is dead? But Potter is healthy, as far as I know – more's the pity. And power I know not, inevitably Professor Dumbledore will interpret that as love, but is it? Ought I to just kill the boy as soon as he returns from his summer holidays? And then there is the lingering doubt as to whether to believe in this clap-trap at all. It certainly didn't benefit me last time I acted on it. So many questions…

I have the body of a seer, no pressing concerns, and access to the Hogwarts library. Perhaps my interpretation would benefit from a little study of prophecies as a whole? But I find it difficult to rise. The bottle is empty, lying on the floor. Oh my, but this woman can drink. I form a fist with my left hand. This is my body now, Sybill. Obey Lord Voldemort and you might get it back. This is what happens when I get distracted. What a lush. But a lush with a fine job and a wand.

When you grow up with nothing, you learn to make do with the resources at your disposal.