Author's Note – God, Damn it Brain! Why am I posting this?...
This story is mostly what my headcanon consist of. I'd like to think that there was something else that forced Tom and Harry to fight each other, other than the prophecy. Like their souls were always fighting even before they became Tom Riddle Jr and Harry Potter.
Got the title from Theatre of Tragedy by Epica and Rammstein. I mean the story to act like a play (we all were forced to read Shakespeare, we know all about Comedy and Tragedy).
Warnings – Mentions of blood, some cursing, and mentions of incest. Plus it's a T. You might not need Sherlock to figure out how bad this will be.
How this came about? – Drove Through Ghost To Get Here by 65 Days of Static. Listened to the song as I thought of other universes that could deal with Harry Potter. Didn't expect this, though.
Disclaimer – I write fanfiction, not books (Though I'm almost done my first draft of my psychopath book) so Harry Potter isn't mine. The only thing I own are the twins, Theresa and Theodore (the former of which I've fallen in love with). However, the first line Harry says is from the Deathly Hallows.
No Beta. Mother of Bad Grammar and Storytelling is my name (going to continue saying it until one sticks)
* ~ "Oh so aware...What should be lost is there..." – Nightwish: Beauty of the Best ~ *
"Tell me one last thing," said Harry. "Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?"
Dumbledore beamed at him before his face quickly changed to confusion. Harry felt the shift as well, or rather the temperature. It wasn't hot, to be said, more so it was warm.
Harry saw something form out of the sudden mist, their head bowed as they took a step closer to stand next to Dumbledore.
Dumbledore looked up at this new person, his demeanor calm, like he was waiting for this person for a while. "Are you sure?"
"I won't be able to forgive myself if I don't talk to him," the woman said with a tight voice.
"Well, my boy, do you wish to speak with her now?"
Harry looked at Dumbledore's twinkling eyes, hearing the rest of his unspoken question, then he looked to the tense woman covered in a red cloak.
"Who are you?" he heard himself ask.
The woman tilted her head a bit before pulling her hood back, sitting on the bench Dumbledore disappeared from. The whimpering creature seemed to take on a curious tone before continuing its pitiful sounds.
The woman's hair was dark brown and tightly curled, falling a bit over her shoulders. Her skin was pale yet healthy. She had a handsome face, with subtle cheekbones and a pointed nose with a round tip. Her almond shaped eyes looked exactly like his, but the shade of green was darker, yet somehow it seemed to have a flame inside.
She seemed to examine him down to his eyelashes, before refusing to meet his eyes. "My name is Theresa," the woman began, "twin sister of Theodore, whose soul resides in the one you call Tom Marvolo Riddle Jr."
Harry blinked in confusion, 'does she mean...'
She tilted her head to stare at his face. "His reincarnation..." she answered before growing a tighter voice, "I wanted to apologize to you for what has happened in your life. It is my doing."
Harry stared. He heard thousands of questions in his head, something he thought wouldn't happen where he was. He picked one, "how is it your fault?"
The woman bit her wormy lips, "I must ask you to not interrupt me while I tell my story. I know that I shouldn't ask this of you, but I wish to speak of the past quickly." She finally looked him in the eyes and he saw how broken they looked, clouded with something hidden.
She brought her hands together and began, "it was the Golden Age. Theodore and I were born to a tanner and work our lives there without incident, until we were eleven, where a traveling nobleman, who happened to be our second cousin, took an interest in me.
Not surprising, given the age. I hadn't bleed yet, so he told my family that in a few years he would pass by again and, if I grew into beauty, I would leave with him to his manor.
I didn't want to go with him, I didn't to be a horse ridden when he desired until he grew bored and left me in the streets. Theodore didn't want me to go either, but I suspect that he didn't want someone else having something that he labeled as his. His own sister, nothing more than an object to possess..."
Harry saw her eyes fall down and tears well up before they were gone as quick as they came. "When the nobleman came back, Theodore and I were well learned from the books we 'borrowed' and managed to convince him to take my brother as well.
Our parents were well paid, of course, more than enough for them and our younger siblings to live comfortably. I don't blame them for not putting up a fight. No one denies a noble and gets away unscathed.
I tried not to cry as I was taken to the estate and used like I knew I was going to be. Ted comforted me, telling me of the knowledge he found in the library. How crossbows work, the cities of the world, the types of poisons, things like that.
By the time I was sixteen, I had three children killed in my womb. I would have lost my ability to have children entirely if my brother hadn't told the nobleman, in subtler words, that I would need to be able to give the next man I wed children."
The red woman sucked in a breath, looking as if the words hurt her physically.
"That time came quicker than we both anticipated. I was to be wed to a marquis, I was told I was to be shipped to France before the month was over. My brother would stay and continue to be the nobleman's favorite project, an intelligent lower class that he himself rose out of the slums.
We were in a panic. We were never separated, never. We grew in the womb together, we came into the world together, we belonged together!"
The red woman suddenly looked to the side with fist grabbing the cloth of her dress, her lip dangerously close to bleeding from her white teeth. Harry felt a chill go through him as he figured out what she meant by those words.
He looked over to the quiet creature, which was close to the red woman. He saw that she looked as well, humming in sympathy at it. She bent down and reached, but it quickly yowled in pain as her fingers barely brushed it.
"I caused you all a lot of pain," she said mostly to herself as she straightened.
The red woman sighed, "my brother killed the nobleman before I was meant to leave, laying the blame on a servant. He sent a letter to the marquis that since our cousin died the deal was off. I was so relieved when the letter came back with condolences and understanding. We were so happy, I jumped into my older brother's arms and we laughed like we were children again, but we were older..."
Harry watched her dark eyes glance at him before moving back to the floor, "with that sinful act of happiness behind closed doors I birthed our first child, Maria. She had her grandfather's hair but my eyes, and never was there a girl so beautiful. However, she had the curse of our sinful union, splitting a pregnant bitch open so she could see the puppies inside..."
Harry winced as the image was put inside his head, his lips sealed shut in what he knew was a grimace. "I couldn't help but love her," she told him. "She was created within my crying womb, the result of the love my brother and I had for each other."
She suddenly laughed bitterly for a moment, "a story I told myself over and over until I forgot that it was a lie. I could see that my brother cared only for the rising power he was gaining, with the business that his new title and name that he took from our cousin gave him. What love he had for me died as soon as we stepped foot in our cousin's manor."
Harry watched her place a hand over her stomach, seeming to hug herself with her other arm as her bright eyes stared far off in the distance. "I won't deny that I didn't love the feast the power gave us. The parties, the dresses, hunting with my brother and our new friends...it was paradise. A tainted, black paradise..."
She closed her eyes for a moment before looking up at him. Her eyes seemed to hold a steady flame as she spoke slowly, "he married a noblewoman. He told me it was for company purposes. Most of it was, I could tell. But I could also see the way he saw me. He started to become a Christian you see. Not surprising, given our friends, and he saw our daughter as sin incarnate...
After the noblewoman gave him a son, I gave her a painful rest in a jealous, spiteful rage. Jealous that she gave my brother a son while I gave him a damned daughter. A son was one of the many things he wanted more than anything...
I knew that my brother knew it was me, but he didn't say anything. This was a side he hadn't seen before, and he wanted to know that side of his little sister, wanted to see more of her. A son grew in my belly from those nights of curiosity."
She took a breath and shivered from something Harry couldn't identify. She closed her eyes so tight her lids shook as if in a rage, "after the knowledge of my pregnacy came out he came to me one night, told me he wanted our baby killed. We couldn't afford another slight on the family name just because I 'couldn't learn to close my legs to any man I come across'."
She gave a breathy laugh, full of anger and unbound malice. "Our little bird was a black mark, and I was a temptation that he couldn't afford. I refused to kill our child. I told him if he so much as made a grab at me I would bring all of his dirty laundry into the light...
He took offense. I was a woman, the only woman, who dared to defy him, straight at his face. Any other night we would have stumbled onto a bed and...before I knew it I had his dagger in my belly. I swear I could hear my unborn son scream in agony when he took it out.
I remember falling to the floor as he only looked down at me, telling me that he didn't hit any major organs, that I would live if he called a doctor soon, which he would do once he was sure I wouldn't tell a soul that it was him who stabbed me.
I don't think tears fell from my eyes at the betrayal, at the hurt that poured out of my stomach. I only knew anger, and anger was what I cursed him with.
I told him that if he wanted me gone so bad I'll grant his wish. He will be alone. When he is reincarnated he will be born alone, he will live alone, and when he dies he will die alone, and the precious name he took will die with him. Killed by the personification of his unborn son he murdered...
If I knew that my son would have been condemned to a similar fate, of being born and raised for so long alone, I wouldn't...I would have reincarnated and killed him myself."
Harry felt cold at those words. He saw the lovingly way she looked at him, the same way Mrs. Weasley looked at her children. He looked down and managed to say, "I'm Tom's...Theodore's reincarnated son?"
"Your soul is my son's," she corrected.
Harry chuckled, finding the situation hilarious. "Not even my own soul is mine."
"Oh but it is. Your soul is him and he is you." Harry looked up as his brain worked out what she said, her smiling face made her skin glow. "There is so much you don't know about the other world, things that are hidden even from one as old as me."
Harry stared at her, remembering her earlier words. "Why haven't you...come back?"
She looked to the ground, at the quivering creature. "Not while my brother's soul would have been reincarnated either with me or during my lifetime. It's only a few years that have to pass and..." She closed her green eyes, "I'm so spiteful. A wicked, spiteful woman who condemned her beautiful son's soul to become as twisted as his parents' souls. You should have been like your birth parent's souls..."
He watched her bring her hand back to her stomach and let out a mournful moan that quickly hiccupped into a cry. Tears filled her eyes but they disappeared once more, her back straightening.
"But," she said with a strong voice, "it is far too late to cry over this empty crib, isn't it?" Theresa gave him a closed lip smile that spread her wormy lips.
Harry felt himself try to return the smile, but his head was filled with too much information. He looked away before asking, "what did you do after cursing him?"
"I took his hand and made him stab me. I felt the blade move up my mouth and into my brain."
Harry turned to stare at her, his eyes moving to her chin. He saw a flash of torn flesh as she tilted her head a bit to glance at him before straightening her head, "you made him kill his own sister?"
"He killed his own son," she reminded him with a harsh voice.
She stared hard into his eyes before looking down, "I thought I saw a hint of regret on his face as I died. But that might have been because he didn't expect me to kill myself, thus making him come up with a plan that wouldn't point fingers at him and have him executed.
He always feared death, ever since he learned that the man who would pass by our shop every day would never pass by again. The concept, the finality of it, frightens him so much..."
Harry heard the miserable tone at the end that spoke volumes about her relationship with her brother.
"You still love him," he stated.
The red woman shook her head in despair, "I wish to all the gods of this world that I didn't."
Harry felt compassion take control of him and brought a hand up to her, placing it on her covered arm, feeling a strong heat come from her that he hadn't before. She glanced over and tried to smile at him as the heat seemed to burn his palm. He tried to smile too as he brought his hand down and laid it on the bench. The skin on his hand felt tender and raw.
"You try to find someone who makes you happy," the red woman suddenly said, "someone who can make you smile, make you cry, make you angry to the point of murder, make you think 'how did I live without this person until now'.
If you live after your next encounter with your father, I want you to try to find that happiness that I thought I had." Harry watched her smile sadly at him before she flicking his nose with the pad of her finger, "you have my bad eyes..."
Then her form seemed to disappear in smoke, as if she never existed.
He looked to the ground at the silent creature. The desire to touch the disgusting creature rose inside him and he bend over. His fingers hovered over the creature before he remembered how it yowled in pain when the red woman touched it.
'But I'm not burning with fire,' he heard himself reason as he built up his courage.
He felt his fingers touch the skin and almost recoiled at the touch. It felt like the meat under uncooked chicken skin, slimy and rough, like a brick covered in mucus. The creature moved away from his fingers but didn't make a wounded sound.
Harry felt something as he watched the creature move from his hand. It wasn't pity, though from the sounds it made he couldn't help feeling that way. He followed the moving thing with his hand and moved his finger over his sickening skin again.
Harry took a deep breath as he recognized the emotion. Abandonment. Harry felt that he was abandoning the raw thing. It made sense, if he was guessing right.
'Beyond our help,' he remembered with remorse as he stared at the broken figure. "I wonder if you even know I'm here," he mused. "You felt us, but do you know what you felt?"
He felt his thumb move over his repulsive skin one last time before moving his hand away. It was his punishment, after all.
He felt a form of guilt rest in his stomach at his last thought as mist formed around him, the curled body disappearing. Harry moved him out of his mind.
"Could you do what I can't?" a female voice asked from far away. "Could you offer the devil a road to avoid his fate?"
Harry answered without hesitation, "I'll offer him a hand."
He could almost feel her emotions as her voice slowly faded, "maybe, in another...try not to move, crow..."
* ~ "The influence of a mother in the lives of her children is beyond calculation" – James E. Faust ~ *
(So twisted that quote up to hell) End of One Shot. Good? Bad? Ehh? Forgettable? Annoyed? That? I'm? Still? Typing?
Feel free to take the concept and make a series or something out of it. Even the twins (I do like reading fics instead of writing...K, that's a lie. Should start favoring and reviewing more. Damn I'm lazy)
Fun Info – Eyes of the Devil by Seether was what I listened to while editing. It's a nice song that I might use in my next one shot, after I upload Summer (for Cas sake I suck at keeping my mind on one task. You have one job Hand, One Job!). Won't say what I will use it for, though.
Summer Summer, rhymes with Bummer.
