Disclaimer: I do not own harry potter. This is a set of drabbles telling a large story I want to tell, but I'm not particularly interested in writing 400,000 words of a large fic.
It began on his tenth birthday, mere months after he had met Lily Evans. First he picked it for a nightmare, but when he pinched himself it was real. He decided to muffle the screams of shock that followed, but the distance and lack of love his parents provided ensured this would be no real issue if he did. The voice in his head was obviously that of an adult's. First he assumed it might be the dark lord, but he was a 10 year old boy with no connection to the wizarding world beyond his blood traitor mother. He was not that special.
Do not, under any circumstance, become a Slytherin.
The voice repeated in his head for many nights until one day he answered it. Mother would be proud of me, perhaps it would be the only time she ever was proud of me. Then he heard an unexpected reply.
She has never been proud of you. And even if she was proud, boy, do you think it would mean she loved you? That she did not ignore you, perhaps that she might even cherish you as she should? Do you have no thought of your own? Have you even bothered to think about what you want in life?
Whoever it was saying these things to him was someone who understood his life all too well. He wanted to ask, who? Why? But he knew the voice in his head already knew those questions and there was no point in asking it more. All it did was rub salt in a wound. He realized then and there he'd never really thought he wanted anything to be loved and accepted by his family, or by someone, and by practicing the dark arts and becoming a Slytherin he would be accepted by force. No one could defy him if he was strong, and everyone would respect him if he could serve the Dark Lord his mother spoke of.
This time it was not the voice who responded, it was himself.
But is that really love?
He rolled over in his bed and thought of a sweet young girl with red hair who smiled at him like no one had ever done before.