Standing amongst fallen bodies and crumbled stone were two figures. One was a boy of average height, with wild black hair turned gray with crumbled stone.
The other was a tall, dark figure. Cloaked in a grey mist that twisted around like malicious tentacles, the figure would've been intimidating were it not for the spindly gait that reeked of a rigor mortis-like fragility- its gait too stiff and slow, its angles to sharp and brittle. Still, the figure's crimson eyes were unfaltering as they glared- first at the boy standing across from him, and then along the battlefield laid out before him, almost like a chessboard but one filled with far too many broken pieces.
Voldemort watched as the bright green bolts of spell work were carried with the wind. The curse was being thrown by both sides now- a desperate move by one and a habit by the other. The desperation was not of a losing side, however, but of a side who simply couldn't afford to lose. Either way, it had paid off for them; there were more black cloaks and white masks amongst the fallen than not.
Voldemort had been many things- a murderer, a master, an enemy, a fiend, a monster even. But a fool? No. He knew, and admittedly had known for some time now, that he was fighting an unwinnable war. He supposed the madness that had overtaken his mind- one of the more unpleasant side effects of a split soul- allowed him to ignore it, instead keeping him subdued by promises of unprecedented victory and limitless bloodshed, tinting his mind until he could see little else but a red-tinted haze and black figures kneeling before him.
But as his torn soul gradually began to knit itself together in a lackluster show of attempted wholeness, the red began to fade and his mind began to clear. When his final horcrux tore free of its vessel and Nagini died, Voldemort was angry. No, not angry. Furious. Fury, however, was something Voldemort was quite familiar with, and he knew that fury hadn't ever been accompanied by the deep, thrumming pain in his chest. It was as if there were hands reaching up his ribcage and pulling at whatever they could grasp- wrapping his intestines around their wrists, holding his stomach and a lung in a vice-like grip before finally clutching his heart and sinking their nails deep into its chambers and arteries. It was a mix of throbbing pain and devastating emptiness, and Voldemort had to wonder if this was what grief felt like.
A fragmented memory from his childhood was suddenly brought forth into the front of his mind.
"What's that you're playing with, Riddle?"
Seven-year-old Tom Riddle Jr., dressed in a too-short, threadbare uniform and scuffed shoes, was crouched in the garden, staring intently at something just past the edge of the large shrubbery whose gnarled branches twisted around the orphanage's yard to clutch it in its thorny grasp.
He didn't respond to the gathered group- three boys, each donned in a similarly ill-fitted uniform, and a girl with cartoonishly thin eyebrows and a patched skirt.
"Do you hear that?" One of the boys questioned.
The others listened to the faint, but ever more audible, hissing sounds as they neared the crouching boy.
"Riddle!" The leader yelled, causing Tom to startle. "I asked you a question, y'know."
"I think he was ignoring you, Billy." The girl said, looking down at the boy who now sat on the ground with his hands tucked firmly behind his back, squirming closer to the brambles.
Billy leaned down. "Is that true? Were you ignorin' me?"
Tom shook his head, eyes narrowed but flighty.
"What'cha hiding behind your back, Riddle?" The other boy urged, walking up so as to complete the semi-circle they'd created and thus pinning Tom to the bushes.
"Nothing." He answered quickly, narrowing his eyes further in what he hoped was a convincing glare.
Apparently, it wasn't. The boys, the youngest older than him by two years, pushed him aside with ease.
"A snake?" One of them exclaimed as the girl shrieked. "You're out here playin' with a snake?"
Tom scrambled forth in an effort to grab the small, green snake in his still-chubby fists, and for his efforts he received a rather well-placed kick. Physically unable to protect it, he began urgently hissing at it.
"Are you, are you trying to talk to it?" One of them asked, before all three dissolved into laughter (the girl, too unnerved to laugh, merely smirked as she eyed the snake suspiciously).
"Guess it makes sense, not like he has any other friends or anythin'."
"Guess he's desperate."
"Is the 'widdle snakey' your friend?" Billy questioned, leaning down as if to speak to a toddler.
Tom reached for it again, fingers almost grasping the tiny, scaled body before they were crushed under Billy's shoe. Tom cried out in pain, and then again when the shoe lifted and revealed that his fingers hadn't been its only target.
"Guess that's the end of Riddle's friend."
The next morning, Billy's rabbit was found hanging from the rafters.
That little green snake had indeed been Tom's first friend. He had discovered her one afternoon out reading by the bushes, and had made a habit of visiting her every time the children were allowed into the yard. He had even tried to bring her into his room, but found that the snake preferred sleeping in the moist dirt far more than the small, old wooden crate he had lined with a few stolen socks and one of Mrs. Cole's scarves. He didn't find it all that odd that he could understand her, and vice versa- rather, he felt quite relieved to have someone to talk to at all.
Losing her had been devastating to young Tom. Voldemort could remember the panging sense of loss and the bubbling fury that pounded in his chest. He could remember how seeing the tears run down Billy's freckled cheeks had dulled the fury but not the grief.
Like the little green snake, Nagini had been Voldemort's friend. Likely his only friend. He would never wish to delude himself into thinking that any of his followers were his friends- if only that in doing so he would be giving them far more credit than any were due. But Nagini? She had been his constant companion, filling his days with snarky commentary, animalistic bloodlust, and surprising insight. At night, she would wind her enormous coils around him with the excuse that his body heat helped maintain her own, and he allowed her with the excuse that he desired the protection that sleeping with a twelve foot, man-eating snake provided. The excuses were just that, excuses- and thinly veiled ones at that. Both knew that they were more to each other than either cared to admit aloud. To Voldemort, Nagini was far more than a horcrux or weapon; she was his closest friend, truest confidante, and greatest comfort. And to Nagini, Voldemort was more than just her owner; he was her dearest master, her hatchling, her treasured thing.
So great was his grief over losing Nagini, Voldemort found he could spare little concern as to the loss of his final horcrux. Yes, his last horcrux was gone and with it his chances of surviving this battle had plummeted drastically. But instead of becoming frozen in the face of his greatest fear, he merely reveled in the fact that he could feel something, anything, other than rage and its derivatives.
And it was in these moments of grief-tinged nonchalance that he realized something remarkable.
Death wasn't his enemy.
In his youth, he had believed death to be his most feared and most unconquerable adversary. He had believed this so totally, in fact, that he had gone to irrational, inhuman lengths to avoid a confrontation he had been sure to lose. If he could avoid death then he couldn't lose to it, after all.
He had feared it. He had hated it. He had been shaped by it and hurt by it and sought to overcome it. He had cursed it when it took the little green snake and failed to thank it when it took all those felled by his wand and hands- preferring instead to think of their defeats as his own.
He had held himself aloft so high, with six hidden slivers of his soul to reassure him that the only power that could possibly defeat him was held at bay, that he failed to see the way that death followed his steps not as a menacing shadow, but as a companion that trailed quietly along after him. He failed to see the way that it attempted to embrace him as he fought to distance himself from it with a frenzied, maddened limp. He failed to hear the way it whispered soothingly to him, as if to call him out of the darkest corners of the world where the soul is left gasping and struggling, and back into blackness that was, while impenetrable, comfortable.
His mind was drawn back to the present- not suddenly but as though it had simply meandered back- to find himself with his wand pointed towards the bespectacled green-eyed boy. His hand, outstretched, was shaking slightly. The boy's, outstretched, was shaking as well- for different reasons, he suspected, than his own.
Regardless, a certain kinship flashed between them as their eyes met, and both paused to wonder, in that moment, how easily their positions could've been reversed.
The moment passed, their spells were cast, and it became a battle not of pure power but of pure will. Harry Potter fought with everything he had- after all, he was fighting to protect everything he had. He was fighting to protect his family (or what remained), his friends, his home, the preservation of the wizarding world, the light.
Voldemort fought, but out of mere obligation. After all, he could hardly let the boy simply win, could he? Merlin knows what that would do to his confidence.
Voldemort chuckled at his joke. And then paused to wonder how long it had been since he had make a joke and then laughed at it himself.
And then that his wand failed, and his own spell recoiled against him once more in an almost tedious show of irony.
He looked up to see something akin to regret in the boy's eyes, and couldn't hold back an internal scoff at the weakness Potter displayed at his moment of victory.
But as he watched as the killing curse green of his eyes was replaced with the zig-zagging form of the curse itself, he felt regret as well. For what, he wasn't sure. Perhaps there was too much for him to regret to feel anything other than a general sense of it.
And then, with one final flash of green, it was very, very dark.
He was somewhat surprised to find that, while dying didn't hurt. Instead, it felt like he was being pulled- not downwards or upwards but forward- into a soft, dewy bank of black mist.
When the blackness finally broke, a small figure was there to greet him.
She was young- no older than ten or so- with curly brown hair and a threadbare blue dress. Unlike Voldemort, who had donned a monstrous, scaly veneer, death needed no disguise to inspire respect, if not fear.
"Hello, Tom."
The name seemed to fit him far better in death than it ever had in life.
He met her eyes, and discovered them to be merely large, dark orbs framed with fragile eyelashes. They were nice, he decided. Far better than his own red ones.
"Hello." He replied, in the same way one would greet an old friend. He supposed, in a way, she was.
She reached out a small hand and he grasped it in his own larger one. As he locked his fingers into place- while trying to think how long it had been since he had done so- he felt something cold trail along his uncovered forearm. Glancing down, he saw the small, green snake wind herself around his elbow. He smiled- while trying to think how long it had been since he had done so.
And with that, the two figures- one a tall, handsome man with dark hair and dark features, and the other a slight girl whose darkness far exceeded that of the man beside her- walked into the fog and beyond the scope of any mortal observer.