Posted: 5 November, 2015

Author's notes: Just a little idea that came to me. Stands as a one-shot at this point. I see it as a very versatile jump-off point for several different plot directions however, so I won't rule out more if ever I'm so inspired. No promises though!

In Limbo

When Voldemort came to, he was blinking up at a glittering glass ceiling. It took him a moment to place it.

"King's Cross?" he wondered aloud, sitting up, confirming the guess. "How did I— Potter!"

The boy … or rather man —how much time had Voldemort lost?— didn't react much to Voldemort's attempt to brandish a wand at him. Perhaps because there was no wand in his hand at all. He hurriedly searched for it, which was about the point he realised he was completely stark naked … in the middle of King's Cross Station … which was illogically silent and empty save for himself and Potter.

Stranger still, the other man was grinning at him, of all things.

"This is one of those bizarre dreams, isn't it?" Voldemort concluded. "Never had one myself, but Avery used to be far too candid about his, and everything else under the sun, whenever the boys smuggled Firewhisky into the dorms."

Potter looked amused. "As fascinating as tales of your boyhood mischief are —no, but really, hearing the Dark Lord himself indulged in a little illegal underage drinking like the rest of us peons is fascinating— we're rather short on time here. I've managed to patch together your soul, finally. Now we need to get to the reason I bothered."

Voldemort stared with seeming incomprehension, but inside his genius mind was whirring. Whirring with more speed and precision than it had in a good long while, now that he considered it. He frowned. He'd grown quite mad in recent years, hadn't he? Was that possibly … a side-effect of the Horcruxes?

He swallowed hard. Right. Horcruxes. His Horcruxes which were destroyed. By Potter. The fact that he wasn't trying to kill the other man for that, blind to all else, but rather listening and gathering information and being logical… That could well be proof that he was indeed whole in a way he hadn't realised he'd ceased being.

But for that wholeness to involve soul-patching… How was that even possible? He reiterated: Horcruxes which were destroyed. You couldn't patch together that which no longer existed.

"Maybe you could put some clothes on?" Potter suggested idly.

Voldemort glared. "Well I would, if there were any about."

"Just … wish them up."

That sounded dodgy, but he tried it and it worked. Fully dressed once more, and feeling a bit more composed because of it, he said, "You claim to have 'patched up my soul'." It was incomprehensible, but the evidence…

"Yes." Potter nodded, twirling a rather familiar Wand of Elder. Then he pointedly adjusted the silvery Cloak flowing from his shoulders, followed by rubbing a Stone in one hand.

Voldemort resisted the urge to gape as the clues clicked into place. "You're joking," he said flatly.

Potter grinned. "'Fraid not. You're looking at the Master of Death. I have free reign to come and go around here —here being Limbo, or In-Between, or something alike— so I've been popping in and out, searching out your incoherent, semi-catatonic soul bits for the last several decades."

Voldemort felt the blood drain from his face. Except … not blood at all, apparently? If this was really some Limbo, if he was really dead —he shuddered at the thought, eyes darting around fearfully— then his body wouldn't be real in that case. More a metaphorical construct.

He forced himself to take calming breaths —psychosomatic breaths, a corner of his mind twitted— and be logical about this. Yes, dying was his boggart, but it was merely a symptom of a deeper fear, a greater terror. More than anything, Voldemort feared to be nothing. Nothing and no one and powerless and gone. He certainly existed right now though. But if he was both dead and existent at once…

Voldemort scowled. He'd rather firmly rejected all religious and spiritual ideas as rubbish at a very young age, after that time Mrs Cole took him to be exorcised. It had been a harrowing and psychologically scarring experience for a young child. It had also probably done the opposite of what the woman hoped —serve the bitch right— by making his heart colder and his magic more savage.

He'd thereafter rejected religion, and the concept of life after death, in exchange for the idea that only oblivion awaited the dead. It was part of why he'd been so unafraid to mess with soul magic. After all, the soul wasn't really immortal, right? Not without some tampering.

But now here he was, dead and existent at once, as previously stated. That rather scuppered all his long-held beliefs. Voldemort hated being wrong. But perhaps just this once, since it meant he wasn't gone and nothing, he could endure the indignity.

Something else occurred to him then. How long had Potter claimed it took him to put Voldemort's soul back together?

"Decades?" Voldemort's eyes scanned the other man. "You don't look a day over twenty-five, thirty at most."

Potter huffed. "Damned long-term effects of childhood malnutrition," he muttered. Then more clearly, "I'll have you know that I was thirty-four when I stopped aging. Which was when I became Master of Death, incidentally.

"Some arsehole had broken into Dumbledore's tomb," he explained to Voldemort. "Stole the Elder Wand from where I returned it. I was an Auror and was sent out, and I never went on a job without the Cloak. Holdover habit from the war.

"The only witness to the theft was Moaning Myrtle, who'd been perving on some skinny-dipping students in the lake, but she wasn't keen to answer questions. Still bitter over me not dying and sharing her toilet, I suspect," Potter mused. "Resurrection Stone's pretty handy at making spirits cooperate though.

"Anyway, there I was, Cloak and Stone still on my person, when I eventually found the culprit and grabbed the Wand." Potter shook his head, wincing. "I'd owned all the Hallows at various points before that, but it was only then that I first held all three at once. And bam! That was it. Master of Death. No refunds, no returns.

"Point of the whole story being … I'm older than I look. So yes: I spent decades putting you back together."

Voldemort took a moment to assimilate this. "So what you're saying," he drawled with a glare, "is that you achieved my life's ambition —immortality— entirely by accident?"

Potter looked toward the ceiling a moment, then nodded. "Pretty much."

Voldemort hissed. "You're very lucky I have no wand on my person, you unmitigated bastard."

Potter just laughed at him.

"You said time was short," Voldemort reminded testily.

"Right. See, as your soul is whole again, the 'moving on' bit is supposed to kick in soon."

Voldemort's heart skipped a beat with fear. Because, okay, he'd conceded there was existence after death here in this Limbo place, but that didn't mean there was anything beyond that.

Coaxingly, hiding his fear, Voldemort said, "You say your … status, lets you visit here?"

"That's right."

"What about … Beyond. Do you visit there often?" Is it real? he silently begged to know.

But Potter shook his head. "No," he said heavily, looking on the verge of tears for some reason. "All magic has a cost. Magic as powerful as uniting the Hallows… I can never go On. I'll never be with my loved ones ever again." Potter's face twisted in a pathetic attempt at a cheerful smile. "But I see them once a year. If I only call them with the Resurrection Stone on Halloween night, when the Veil is thinnest, and just for a short time … it doesn't hurt them too much. They've given me permission for that. It's a regular ghost party."

It would be clear even to a blind man that this was not enough to soothe Potter's heart, that he still missed them terribly, that somehow —incomprehensible to Voldemort— Potter hated his unsought immortality.

Voldemort only noted this peripherally however, as a new fear welled in his heart. This time it wasn't that moving On was a trap which would lead to his non-existence after all. No, now he was trying to rearrange his whole belief system to accommodate the new data. But his damned mind kept flashing back to memories of those foul muggles, the priests and Mrs Cole and others, and their claims that he was wicked and evil and doomed to Hell.

If there was life beyond death, more than just this Limbo even … were Heaven and Hell real? Because even if those muggles had been spiteful, fearful, jealous liars when he was younger, there was no denying that, as a man, Tom Marvolo Riddle had become sin incarnate as the Dark Lord Voldemort.

"I won't," he found himself saying. "I refuse to go … On," he sneered the word.

Potter looked surprised, then pleased. "Ah, good! I'd rather hoped you'd say that."

"Oh?"

"What I wanted to speak about before that happens, was the possibility of you returning to Life instead."

Hope welled up in Voldemort. "How?" he choked. Then his eyes narrowed, because life had taught him early that nothing was free, that true charity was an illusion. "What's the catch?"

Potter chuckled and held his hands up. "Oh, nothing terribly bad. I think you'll like it, even," he said, sounding hopeful. "See, I've been searching for a way out of this immortality business for a long while. Useless though, I'm thoroughly stuck. So then I was hoping there might be others like me." Potter winced guiltily. "Well, not hoping precisely —I wouldn't wish this existence on my worst enemy— but if they existed all the same … well, it might be nice, to have some company without an expiration date, you know."

"Reasonable, I suppose," Voldemort said, though really, he'd never much cared for company himself.

That wasn't quite true though, he realised. He distrusted humans, both muggle and magical —and for good reason— and other races besides, but he'd always been rather fond of animals and had a very close relationship with his familiar. He'd made Nagini a Horcrux, for Merlin's sake! Madness, in hindsight, a living Horcrux —what point of an immortality anchor tied to a decidedly mortal container?— but the implied expression of esteem and trust was undeniable.

Dumbledore, Voldemort knew, claimed Voldemort was incapable of love. Mostly that bizarre emotion did indeed elude him. Sometimes he even pondered that it wasn't real, just something people imagined, like children playing make-believe, to give their pathetic existences some deeper meaning. But his bond with Nagini … had that been love?

Thinking of his familiar, he remembered how Longbottom slew her, how it had felt. There had been outrage at the boy's gall, and fury that one of his Horcruxes was gone … but also an inexplicable agony of loss.

So alright, maybe Potter's self-pity over his lonely immortality was a little reasonable after all. Though personally, for the ability to live forever himself, Voldemort would think it a small price to pay.

"Perfectly reasonable," Potter agreed. "So I searched for others, but … it was no use. There's a lot of races and individuals who are longer-lived for one reason or another, but the only beings that hint towards actual immortality like me are certain magical animals —phoenixes for instance— or amortal non-beings —Dementors, poltergeist and boggarts, you know, which I'd sooner avoid— or else ghosts." Potter tilted his head thoughtfully. "Maybe, with some exceptionally careful spellwork, portraits could be preserved indefinitely. But as with ghosts, they're just poor copies of people when you come down to it. Two-dimensional. Unsatisfying company in the long-term."

Voldemort nodded. "Yes, very well. But the point?" His eyes darted around nervously, his lack of wand becoming more and more unnerving as the minutes ticked by. "You said time was limited. You said I could return to Life, rather than being forced On. I'd rather us not overrun that time limit," he said tensely.

"Right. Okay. So, my research into immortal company was a bust, until I came across this tiny passage in an ancient tome about soul mates, and certain magics that allowed them to share lifespans."

Voldemort blinked. "Soul mates," he repeated flatly. That was the realm of saccharine romance novels and insipid, giggly witches. And what did it have to do with— Oh Merlin. No. "You have got, to be kidding," he said with great depth of scorn.

Voldemort raised a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. Briefly, inwardly, he marvelled at the ability to do so, since he'd quite long been without that facial feature. Another sign that perhaps Horcruxes weren't the best idea, especially considering he hadn't the sanity to realise the … repulsiveness of his rebirthed form at the time.

To Potter, he said, "If you're trying to suggest you and I are… That we're…" He couldn't say it. He just couldn't!

"Soul mates?" Potter chirped and grinned impudently at him. "Yeah, that was pretty much my reaction at first. Apparently genuine soul mates, the sort you're imagining, or even platonic variations thereof, do in fact exist. Extremely rare though. Don't worry," Potter added reassuringly. "We're not among them."

"Thank Merlin," Voldemort muttered.

"But, as a side-effect of the whole 'me being your Horcrux' thing—"

"What!?"

Potter looked briefly startled. "Oh! Oh, I suppose you never did find out about that." He hummed thoughtfully. "By the time you came to Godric's Hollow that Halloween, you'd mutilated your soul so badly, rendered it so unstable, that it's not entirely surprising the rebounded Killing Curse managed to splinter a bit off. That splinter latched on to me, hence the scar. It's why I gave myself up in the forest without a fight: I found out I was a Horcrux, so there was really only one thing for it."

Voldemort felt vaguely queasy. "I destroyed one of my own Horcruxes?"

"Yes."

"That's…" He swallowed hard.

"Yeah. I suppose." Potter shrugged. "Doesn't matter now. All your bits are back in place, including that one."

Voldemort found himself patting his chest, as if he could feel the lack of missing parts. "Right. I see."

"Back to my earlier point: As a side-effect of me being your Horcrux, and from such a young age, our souls became somewhat … attuned, for lack of a better word. We're not soul mates in the traditional sense. But in a more unconventional one?" Potter shrugged and grinned, not without irony.

"That's … the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard."

"Consider for a moment my bizarre luck," Potter suggested. "I'm sure you have me investigated quite closely. Probably had a folio on the things I got into, the twists of luck and misfortune and what-the-fuckery."

Voldemort did indeed consider it, and felt his heart sinking. "Faux-soul mates," he said flatly.

"Yep."

"You and I?" There was a faint tone of pleading —he would deny it to the death … er, beyond death— as Voldemort hoped Potter would recant and claim it was all a prank in very poor taste.

"'Fraid so," Potter said with sympathy.

Voldemort sighed heavily. "Right." And then he considered the implication, and felt his mood swiftly rise. "Shared lifespans you said?"

Potter smirked. "I thought that would change your perception of our situation." He nodded. "Yes, as my 'soul mate', I can indeed tie our lifespans."

Voldemort's eyes narrowed. "Does that mean I would be immortal … or that you would no longer be so?" he asked perceptively.

"Honestly? There's no way to be sure which way it'll go." Potter sighed wistfully. "I admit it, I'm hoping for the latter. But if it's the former instead, at least I'll have company in my eternity." Potter paused to eye Voldemort speculatively. "Not who I would have chosen for it, but beggars can't be choosers."

"I share your feelings," Voldemort drawled. "Utterly. But for possible immortality…"

Potter nodded. "Exactly. And for the possibility of company, I'm willing to make a great deal of allowances as well. Even unleash the Dark Lord Voldemort back on the world. Between you and me," Potter confided sotto voce, "I think the long spans of solitude and multitude losses have rather worn down my capacity for empathy."

Voldemort eyed this odd, new version of Potter and wondered, for the first time, just how old he was. Voldemort wasn't sure how long it had been since his death. In his soul-severed state, in this Limbo place, he hadn't felt the passing of time. Potter had said it took him decades to put Voldemort's soul bits together. Tellingly however, he'd not said how long it took to reach such a point of desperation that his mortal enemy looked like a good lifetime companion. If Potter was truly unaging, he could be hundreds, even thousands of years old.

Unaware of his companion's musings, Potter continued. "I wasn't entirely truthful before, I guess. I said I wouldn't wish this existence on my worst enemy. Except … you sort of claimed that role for a good portion of my youth, and here I am. I suspect you actually like the thought of forever though."

"I do," Voldemort admitted, and made his choice. "Yes, alright. How do we do this?"

Potter all but beamed at him and reached out. "Take my hand."

Voldemort eyed it distastefully. The whole 'soul mate' thing was bad enough. But to combine it with handholding? Nonetheless, for true immortality —to avoid oblivion, or Hell— there was little he wouldn't stoop to.

Voldemort took Potter's hand…

…and breathed Life once more.

The End

More author's notes: Why does Voldemort see Limbo as King's Cross Station too? Either: a) because Harry's the one controlling the metaphorical representation, being Master of Death; or b) because I enjoy the eerie similarities between Harry Potter and Tom Riddle, so this is just one more. Chose whichever you prefer.

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