Summary: It's the beginning of the summer before sixth year. Harry has started to look beyond the masks of both foes and friends. But can he except what truth is revealed to him or will secrets from the past seal his fate? In order too deal with his future Harry sets off on an adventure to explore his past. This leads to a new Harry that no one could have predicted. Friends and foes alike will notice the change in the Boy-Who-Lived but who will stand with him in the end.

Spoilers: Books 1-6.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything except the plot. So don't sue me. All Harry Potter™ characters and settings are the sole intellectual property of JK Rowling, Warner Bros. and various others who all aren't connected to me in any way. No money is being made with this fan fiction and no copyright infringement is intended.

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Power of the Serpentine Eyes

Chapter One - Mind Cage

It had only been 24 hours since the incident at the Department of Mystery as Harry Potter made his way down the empty corridors of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry at 6 o'clock in the morning. Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Neville were still recovering in the Hospital wing from their injuries. Other than him, Luna was the only one that had not been injured during the battle. Harry still felt numb by all that had happened that dreadful night.

He hadn't told anyone what had really happened to him when Voldemort had tried to possess him and he was dreading the reaction of the truth when it would finally come to light, hopefully he could hold off on telling anyone for a while. It was still all too fresh in his mind, Harry knew he would have to come to terms with it himself first before he was able to share his thoughts with the others. It was not like any of his friends could possible understand the situation he now found himself in anyway. Somehow when Voldemort possessed him he had managed to break into the Dark Lords mind by means of the link that connected their minds, which allowed him to gain all of Riddle's knowledge and memories. All in a matter of minutes; if that long.

- Flash Back -

Sure it was over, sure Voldemort had decided to flee, Harry made to run out from behind his statue guard, but Dumbledore bellowed,

" Stay where you are, Harry! "

For the first time, Dumbledore sounded frightened. Harry could not see why. The hall was quite empty but for themselves, the sobbing Bellatrix still trapped under her statue, and the tiny baby Fawkes croaking feebly on the floor-

And then Harry's scar burst open. He knew he was dead: it was pain beyond imagining, pain past endurance-

He was gone from the hall, he was locked in the coils of a creature with red eyes, so tightly bound that Harry did not know where his body ended and the creatures began. They were fused together, bound by pain, and there was no escape-

And when the creature spoke, it used Harry's mouth, so that in his agony he felt his jaw move...

" Kill me now, Dumbledore..."

Blinded and dying, every part of him screaming for release, Harry felt the creature use him again...

" If death is nothing, Dumbledore, kill the boy..."

Let the pain stop, thought Harry. Let him kill us... End it, Dumbledore... Death is nothing compared to this...

And I'll see Sirius again...

And as Harry's heart filled with emotion, he could feel the creature's coils loosen somewhat. He gathered all of the feelings inside of him and pushed it towards the creature. The coils loosened completely and the pain stopped. But Harry barely noticed. He kept pushing. He took every feeling, every emotion he had and pushed as hard as he could. A creature that was bigger and more powerful than the one that had just tortured him was born from the effort. Fiery green eyes blazed as the creature lashed out at its enemy, Harry felt himself leaving his body...

Harry and the creature born from his emotions were one, its presence felt very familiar somehow, almost like a forgotten friend now reunited. He could hear an unearthly, blood-curdling scream as he pushed through a barrier of some kind. The scream of someone suffering in hellish agony. The same sort of agony those moments before had been consuming him.

Then he entered someplace else. Somewhere new. Harry soon realized where he was. He recognized the feel of it, somehow. It was the void between his mind and Voldemort's. At one end of the void was a massive blackish gray cancer like ball, patches of a sickening dark yellow and blood red roots of energy ran rampant all over it.

On his side of the void was a large cage in the shape of an egg, its bars made of a bright, yellow light, while thin green vines of some kind weaved its way around and into each bar. Inside the cage was a large thick cotton white cloud with multi-color swirls of light dance across its surface. With a jolt, Harry's senses recognized that the caged cloud was his own mind; somehow it had been trapped inside a cage here. He reached out with his creatures senses, trying to reach through the barrier, he recoiled instantly when the green vines tried to ensnare him when he touched the cage; the vines burned with a disguised malice, radiating a powerful, sickening hatred that made Harry disparate to fine a way to free his mind from its clutches.

Looking closely Harry noticed the bars of light had fine cracked lines running through them, which allowed the vines to feed its own power to the cage directly, making the bars themselves more fragile against attacks. He braced himself and attacked the bars repeatedly, making sure his attacks were to quick for the vines to catch hold of him. Each strike made the void around him roll and twist. Harry attacked harder, causing larger cracks formed in the bars that were caging his consciousness that connected him to the real world. And he could feel... something... it was a vaguely familiar sensation, a slight throbbing. Then it clicked when he noticed the vines seemed to join together at the bottom of the cage, forming a rather thick jagged cored. It was the same throbbing sensation he got in his scar right before a vision- a sort of agitated pain, not agonizingly painful, but by no means pleasant either. As he continued to assault the cage the cracks he aimed for grew larger and more defined, the cage seemed to tremble under the righteous fury that was fueled at the thought of any part of himself being imprisoned against his will or knowledge. The throbbing grew in its intensity with each and every strike making his whole being throb in time with it.

Becoming frustrated Harry extending his senses once again, he was able to pick up the source of the cages main power, its was the thick bright green cored the vines grew from. Running energy to his mind's prison. Feeding it power. The cored reached all the way across the void to the blackish cancer. It was the remains of the once failed Arvada Kedvara he realized, it was the link that bonded him to Voldemort. The link reeked with an ancient darkness. So much that it almost completely overwhelmed him. But without hesitation Harry attacked it, trying to sever its connection. Later, Harry would realize he really needed to reign in his impulsive behavior, because as soon as he attacked it the void seemed to churn and writher as if in agony. The throbbing only escalated in its tempo. Darkness, death, and a hellish malice composed the cores existence that for some reason seemed to blend with a devoted love and fearsome protectiveness of which he couldn't even begin to understand.

Harry ignored the throbbing, ignored the darkness that he now found himself in; he concentrated solely on destroying his link to the Dark Lord. He pushed his mind, his magic, and his soul against the link. With only one sole propose in mind, Harry did not realize the scream of agony becoming louder as he pushed harder.

Harry was suddenly blind-sided as a horde of foreign feelings and emotions came to him. Smells, tastes, sounds, and textures. Things he had never felt or experienced before. So much that it nearly blinded him.

A rush of feelings and emotions came with it, becoming implanted into his mind. He saw a young Tom Riddle meeting Professor Dumbledore for the first time, thinking he was a doctor from the mental asylum that had been summed to try and take him away.

He saw a young Tom Riddle as he put on the Sorting Hat, and take his place in Slytherin. He saw Riddle as he discovered his heritage. Spending almost all his time in the library in his quest for knowledge and power.

Being beaten up by the upper class men students in Slytherin for being a half-blood. learning, becoming stronger.

Humiliation. Determination.

Riddle begging to stay at the school. Headmaster Dippet refusing, not even paying attention to the young Slytherin. He confided in his Head of House, nothing. Dumbledore nothing. All the teachers he asked, and nobody would even listen. Nobody cared.

Anger. Despair.

Dark secrets uncover. He saw Riddle as he drowned himself in the Dark Arts. Learning the unforgivable and kill his father and his family with malicious satisfaction. Voldemort was born that night.

Betrayal. Rage. Satisfaction.

His whole life and experiences. Dreams, desires, like, dislikes, pet peeves and deepest secrets; everything Tom Riddle was and is, was transferring to Harry. He tried to push it away but it was coming at him to fast, too strong for him to stop. No matter what he did the memories just kept coming.

Spells. Potions. Simple ones at first. Matches to needles. Banishing and Summoning Spells. Calming Draft. Then more complex ones.

Patronus Charm, Strengthening Solution, the Wolfs bane Potion, Transfiguration. Every magical lesson from Hogwarts. All of it mixed in with knowledge he found outside of Hogwarts curriculum.

The Chamber of Secrets. A hidden library? Darker Spells.

The memories kept coming. More information then he could possibly imagine. Human Transfiguration, Advanced Charms, Arithmancy, Ancient Runes, and Magical Creatures. Polyjuice Potion, the Draught of the Living Dead, Veritascrum. Subjects he had never studied before. Spells, Potions, and Ritual Instructions that would never be found in the library of Hogwarts.

He learned the Unforgivable in an instant. He learned hundreds of charms, hexes, jinxes, and curses. All in the blink of an eye. He learned advance forms of the Dark and Black Magic. Legilimency and Occlumency. Ancient spells long forgotten by most wizards. Things that only Voldemort knew.

There seemed to be a general theme Harry noticed. Anger. Hatred. Bitterness. Determination.

He learned how to make portkeys, how to apparate, how to duel, how to kill. The basics of Alchemy, Healing Magic, Warding Magic. Poisons and Antidotes. Languages he had never heard of, much less spoken. He knew all that Voldemort had learned throughout his life.

Much to Harry's horror the memories of the first war flowed into him from all sides. Torture, murder, rape. Whether it be men, women, or children. Muggle or Magical. It didn't matter. Voldemort's malicious glee at the destruction and mayhem he and his Death Eaters caused. The fear and despair that blanketed the wizarding world gave the man a kind of twisted pleasure that was hard to describe. The amount of powerfully sadistic arousal Voldemort got from hearing and causing pain to those he considered enemies and allies alike was revolting too the extreme. It sickened Harry to his very soul at what that monster took pleasure in.

The names and faces of all the Death Eaters along with the names and faces of their allies and their victims. Meeting places and strong holds were now known to the young Gryffindor. And the foreign memories continued to flow. Harry's anger and fury rouse to new highest that he never knew he was capable of feeling at the full scope knowledge of Voldemort's sadistic nature.

A spark ignited from within his soul that burned brighter than any sun, a purplish-silver flame burst from his soul. It raced down the green link like a bolt of lighting, the throbbing sensation matching its speed. When the flame finally reached the black cancerous (I have no idea if that's a real word) mass at the other end of the void the unearthly scream raised to a deafening pitch. The void that surrounded him seemed to gather into itself tightly before exploding outwards destroying the link in its wake. The fiery cage also started to break apart but not completely falling away.

Voldemort's screams of agony faded and Harry felt himself being pushed out of the void. He felt himself returning to his own body. It was over. He alone had won.

Harry found himself lying face down on the floor, his glasses gone, shivering as though he lay upon ice, not wood...

- Flash Back Ends -

He hadn't told the Headmaster what happened when Voldemort tried possessing him, and he wasn't going too. While the Hogwarts Headmaster was giving his " old men are stupid" speech to Harry in his office yesterday morningHarry noticed that the creatures heighten senses were still with him, they felt a light fog trying to encase his mind but it was unable to do so fully because the cage surrounding his mind was heavily damaged and falling apart.

Harry than became aware of a faint ghost-like whisper coming from the fog, trying to persuade his mind to do what the fog wanted. At first Harry feared it was Voldemort trying to control him again. But as he continued to rant and rave at Dumbledore the fog tried to grow stronger, commanding him to submit to what the Headmaster was telling him. In the beginning Harry fought against the fog, resisting the command like he had always resisted the Imperius Curse. That is until his heighten senses felt a light presence in his mind, Harry was more than a little shocked and confused when he realized that the presence wasn't Voldemort, but Dumbledore and the old man was trying to strengthen the fog by lending power to the cage.

Harry quickly realized that Dumbledore controlled the fog than he was the one who controlled the mind cage. He stopped fighting instantly, pretending to follow the fogs commands. He didn't want the old man to discover the mind cage was basically destroyed. Harry knew there would be no way in hell he could even hope to stop Dumbledore from rebuilding the mind cage and the link to Voldemort's mind if the manipulative coot discovered it broken. He was already trapped inside the office because of this man; he wasn't going to risk getting his mind trapped again too. So Harry did the only thing he could do to save himself, he submitted, playing along with the fogs commands, careful to only show anger when it was truly needed. After confirming that the prophecy said it was either him or Voldemort to the death, he sat quietly in stunned silent for a minute or two to help give the impression of shock (which he didn't really have to fake all that much), while the Headmaster shed his crocodile tears over what was to be his destiny. Harry then simply asked to return to his dorm room, which the Headmaster allowed.

As he left the Headmasters office the fog lifted completely along with Dumbledore's mental presence. What the old wizard had done was worst than possession. At least when he was possessed he knew someone else was controlling his actions. Dumbledore had no right. Harry had felt more violated and betrayed in that moment than Voldemort's earlier possession could have ever hoped to accomplish. He felt dirty from the touch of the Headmasters mind. Voldemort was an evil, cruel, manipulative bastard but at least he was up front about it. He did not hide behind kind words, twinkling eyes, and a grandfather's smile.

' If I could have, I would have ripped him apart with my bare hands... He cared about me to much indeed... who the hell was he trying fool with all that crap anyway,' Harry thought bitterly. As he traveled down the more obscure passageways that most students never bothered to find or take, Harry gave a small snort at the memory of him raging and screaming a storm at the old wizard for locking him away at Privet Drive last summer. ' I should have added the previous ten years and four summers prior onto that accusation.'

Harry didn't believe for one moment that Dumbledore had told him the truth about everything when he was in his office yesterday morning. The manipulative Headmaster had only told him enough to pacify his anger for the moment. Harry now understood that he couldn't trust anyone to tell him the truth about what he needed to know, or wanted to know for that matter. The past year had proven that, and the events with Dumbledore in his office had firmly stamped out any other notions.

It wasn't fair, but when has his life ever been remotely fair, he reasoned with himself. He had grown up knowing he wasn't wanted or loved. For the first ten years of his life he had no other choice but to live with his muggle relative, made to sleep in a cupboard (with only trash and spiders for company), only given meager meals (which he was denied even that more often then not), made to do the majority of the house chores (which was forced salve labor). So it came as no surprise that the Dursleys had lied about what he was and what had really happened to his parents. They had never hidden the fact that they hated him and his parents. So lying about who and what they really were was to be expected.

Foolishly he had hoped that the wizarding world would be different, he thought he had finally found his place in the world and too an extent he had placed his trust in his magical saviors. His salivation was short lived however, it had quickly become apparent that wizards were just as human as muggles and they too wore false faces that hid their true selves and motives. It really shouldn't have come as that great of a surprise when Albus Dumbledore unwittingly revealed what hid behind the false face he showed to the world. But even this past year Harry hadn't seen the extent to what Dumbledore's mask concealed.

He was seeing all too clearly now though.

His jaw tightened as he tried to contain the rising betrayal. Dumbledore had been the first parental figure he had ever trusted; Merlin knows Vernon and Petunia never deserve that courtesy. This was the person who always served as his guide in the magical world when he was younger. He might not trust him anymore but he still respected him on some level. How could he so easily violate him in such a way? He had relied heavily on those closest to him, those he thought he could trust to actually tell him about his families history or the workings of the wizarding world it's self, and for the last five years it was getting him nowhere.

Harry had started to question what had really saved him that night. He had stopped believing the prefect little fairy tale about his mother's love alone saving him that Halloween night. He somehow knew there was more at play then some damn prophecy and a mother's love that stopped Voldemort's killing curse. Harry admitted that at the time it was the perfect fairy tale story that any orphaned child would have loved to hear in regards to the love they could not remember from long died parents carrying for them. The only problem was that Harry had never truly thought of himself as a child, and since he had lived with the Dursleys since the age of one, was never allowed to believe in fairy tales either.

In truth his mother's love being the only factor that saved him from the Killing Curse didn't even make any sense at all. From what he had learned about the first war his mother obviously wasn't the first too die trying to protect their children from being killed by Voldemort and his Death Eaters.

Surely there were many other parents that loved their children just as much as his mother and father loved him. So the power of love couldn't be the only one. And he was determined to find out what the other factors were. Harry knew part of the key laid within the memories he had gained from Voldemort, the only problem was shifting through over 70 years worth of foreign memories, emotions, and knowledge wasn't exactly an easy task.

Harry understood that for the most part he would have to get through this and Sirius' death alone. He would mourn, as he had mourned the few hours after he had spent the morning trapped in Dumbledore's office, however he would not let his godfathers death drag him down into despair. Sirius had died with honor in a blaze of glory, and it would only dishonor him to fall into a deep depression. And Harry was certain Sirius wanted him to go on and kick some death eater ass for him. Neither would he blame himself for Sirius' death, he had just spent the past year feeling sorry for himself, he had never wanted Sirius to be harmed. It wasn't his fault for being fooled by Voldemort.

No, there were far better people to blame for what happened then him. Snape... if it weren't for that greasy evil spiteful bastard need to settle old scores he would never have quit learning occulmency, Kreacher... that traitorous house-elf had lied to him about Sirius being captured, Bellatrix... that sadistic bitch had been the one to push his godfather through the veil, and Dumbledore... that manipulating bastard had been lying to him from the moment he met him, controlling his mind with that evil cage. Each one would suffer his revenge in do time, but for now he would not dwell on those who had caused him to lose so much. No, he had much more important things to do at the moment.

Harry soon came to his destination, a cove located on the first floor near the back staircase. Checking the Marauders Map to make sure no one was coming his way or following him, he stepped into the dark cove, removing his invisibility cloak. He had already removed the tracking charm he had found on it before he left his dorm room. He figured Dumbledore would be watching him closely after telling him the prophecy and he was right in this case.

" Open," He hissed quietly in Parseltongue while looking at a small carved snake. Finding it less of a hassle than the last time.

The back wall of the cove slide aside reviling a small circular room, inside was a slightly raised circular platform that had many odd shaped symbol all over it surface. Harry knew from some of Riddle's memories that it was a teleport pad the young Slytherin had used in order to travel down to the Chamber of Secrets without having to slid through the piping every time. Stepping onto the pad Harry hissed the word "Chamber'" and in an insist disappeared from the cove.

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Next Chapter: Breaking Free