In the moonlit park in Little Whinging, fifteen-year-old Alyssa Potter was approached by a girl.
Alyssa eyed the girl, first with wariness, then with curiosity, and then with total and absolute shock. She was a witch, the girl (for she held a wand), and she was around Alyssa's age. And she was also extremely, ungodly beautiful. She was tall, thin, and pale, with long, lustrous, curly-tipped black hair, dark eyes, and an air about her like she was used to...to COMMANDING. To ordering. It wasn't arrogance, exactly, it was just...the way she stood, the way she held herself. The way her chin was raised just so, and her jaw was set and hard as stone. She was clad in what looked like an extremely expensive (and extremely soft) long-sleeve top, and an equally expensive looking pair of jeans, rounded off by some heeled boots. Alyssa also thought she could see the tippy top of a lingerie bra peeking up over the ruffled neckline of the girl's top.
"Who...who are you?" Alyssa finally managed to say, still unable - and unwilling, for that matter - to take her eyes off the girl.
"Oh, that's right, I haven't introduced myself." said the girl, raising a delicate but powerful hand to her cheek in a motion of mock surprise. "So sorry. Who am I? Well, I'm Taylor Riddle. But you can just call me Taylor." she added, in suddenly hard tones, as if daring Alyssa to argue the point of her identity.
"Riddle?" Alyssa repeated, that last name jarring her from her reverie, and causing her to point her wand directly at Taylor's (admittedly prominent) chest. "Who the hell ARE you?" she demanded, eyes narrowing.
"Well...I suppose you'd know me - but then, NOT me - by another name." Taylor said coldly. "Tom Riddle. I am him, and I am not him."
"Start making sense already!" Alyssa snapped. "If you're Voldemort polyjuiced as some girl, kill me already! If you're like, I don't know, his daughter or something, then just tell me if you're for him or against him so I know how to treat you."
Taylor let loose with a surprisingly, decidedly GIRLISH peal of laughter, high-pitched and loud, as if Alyssa had just told the most hilarious joke, and Alyssa startled so bad she nearly pulled a Lockhart and dropped her wand.
"Oh, all right then, I'll just...go to the beginning." Taylor sighed, shaking her head in no small amount of exasperation (like Alyssa was the one frustrating HER, and not the other way around). "I don't suppose you've heard of a very powerful pair of rival Dark wizards named Malgus and Kion?"
"Never heard of them." Alyssa bit out. "What do they matter at all to whoever the hell you are?"
Taylor smiled very, very widely. "They matter EVERYTHING to me and who I am, Alyssa!" she actually SQUEALED, clapping her hands together in an annoyingly girlish way that reminded Alyssa of Lavender Brown, her housemate who could never get enough makeup, OR squeal enough in a day over some cute animal - or a cute boy. "You'll understand after I tell you everything. Now, listen closely, becaues I'll only say it all once." Taylor's demeanor suddenly changed from girlish and casual, and back to hard and cold. "Over fifty years ago, Malgus and Kion, like most Dark wizards, were searching for a viable way to live forever - there are actually a very surprising number of ways, though few have the strength of will to really go through with them - and, after years of searching, they finally found a method that would work for them. The SAME method, ironically. It was simple, really. Just transfer your soul, your consciousness, into the body of an infant - a blank slate, ready and waiting." Taylor paused, her face filled with clear admiration and pelasure, her chest heaving with excitement. The sight simultaneously repulsed and attracted Alyssa.
"Malgus, who had been living in seclusion in the village of Little Hangleton at the time he discovered this technique," Taylor continued on. "found his lucky break turning into a lucky STREAK, as he heard that a young woman, a young Merope Gaunt, had become pregnant with the child of one Tom Riddle - Senior, that is. It was simple enough work for Malgus to test his technique, to turn himself invisible one night, to sneak into Merope's home, to put his wand to her bulging belly, and..." Again, Taylor paused, but this time, it was not because she was relishing the tale she was telling. She shivered, and her face twisted with an almost palpable disgust. "That was ME!" she spat, actually stamping her foot in the grass. "That baby was ME! But when Malgus transferred himself into me, his magic, his mind - obviously being much more powerful than anything a still-developing baby could possess - steamrolled me and my conciousness! He altered my sex, altered ME, grafted his own traits and features onto me! His very SOUL melded with mine! MELDED, not OVETOOK, not REPLACED! MELDED! Because that, THAT was what he had not understood, what he had not read all too clearly about that little transfer process of his!" Taylor smiled in a self-satisfied sort of way, but the smile was not what Alyssa was focused upon. Rather, the clearly insane glint in Taylor's dark, pretty eyes.
"We were both there, both inhabiting my brain." Taylor whispered, almost conspiratorially in her tone of voice. "Our two souls had become one, our two minds had become one, and I still existed, deep down in there. But she was in an abyss, a darkness, trapped in the deepest recesses of our mind, and I..." Taylor looked down at herself, at her own two hands, and her lower lip wobbled. "I couldn't see, I couldn't touch or feel or taste. I- I was...she was...I do regret it, sometimes...still I..." she swallowed, hard, and a tear rolled down her cheek. "For years I was trapped in my own head, and for years so was Malgus. We were BOTH there, NEITHER of us having control over the body we shared! We were...we existed only in the subconcious, I suppose. We were floating in darkness, no real body, no substance. And all the while, the body developed its own, surface conciousness to control it. But it was...was unstable, unstable and damaged. And we were influencing it, both of us. It, he, Tom, couldn't love, because Malgus and I couldn't love each other or the situation we were in. And Tom couldn't feel anything but the rage Malgus had felt at his experiment going so horribly wrong, and the terror of death, of NOTHINGNESS that I had felt when Malgus had first entered me and begun to change me, overwhelm me, before the melding process had become complete."
"When Tom - the body, the conciousness that asserted itself while Malgus and I were locked away in the subconcious depths of the brain - began to search for answers about his past, about his life, about Merope, he wasn't really searching for HER, for THEM, but for US!" Taylor cried, tears splashing in full force now. "He wanted to find US! MALGUS AND I! HE WANTED TO KNOW, TO LEARN THE EXPERIMENT, TO DISCOVER WHAT I'M SURE HE COULD FEEL GOING ON IN THE DEEPEST PARTS OF HIS MIND WHERE MALGUS AND I EXISTED, AND WHERE WE STRUGGLED TO FIND A WAY OUT FOR SO LONG! TOM DIDN'T EVEN REALIZE WHAT HE WAS LOOKING FOR, BECAUSE IT WAS LIKE US, LIKE US: SUBCONCIOUS!"
"Could you calm down, I don't want the police to-" Alyssa started, in what she HOPED was a kindly tone; she really couldn't be sure, seeing as she was dead certain that the "instability" Taylor had mentioned also applied to HER.
But Taylor interrupted Alyssa by continuing her screaming, her roaring and ranting. She was pacing back and forth, stomping her feet, and even tugging on her own hair as she did so.
"YOU TAKE TWO SOULS AND FUSE THEM TOGETHER, THEN YOU TEAR THE FUSED SOUL APART, PIECE BY PIECE, OVER THE COURSE OF YEARS, BEFORE FINALLY BLASTING WHAT REMAINS INSIDE THE BODY APART AGAIN AND SEE HOW FUCKING CALM YOU CAN BE!" Taylor roared, rounding on Alyssa. The wooden table Alyssa had been seated at before suddenly decided to explode into a million pieces. "BECAUSE THAT, ALYSSA, WAS WHAT HAPPENED THAT NIGHT WHEN YOU REFLECTED THAT CURSE BACK AT TOM! THE MAGICAL ENERGIES, THAT FORCE, WAS ENOUGH TO UNDO THE FUSION! BUT WHAT WAS LEFT?! WHAT WAS...what was..." Taylor trailed off into sudden silence, and put her hands together at her waist and wrung them, looking like nothing but a girly schoolgirl again. Like a very NORMAL girl who was upset about some drama or problem in her life. "What was left?" she asked, in a quivering voice, terribly sad eyes fixed on Alyssa. "What was left of us to even separate?"
"So you're...yourself alone, again?" Alyssa said, her mouth dry, trying for a winning, happy kind of smile, like she was glad it had all worked out for Taylor. "After that night...your soul and Malgus's were separated, and you got your own...your own bodies, all to yourselves?" she ventured, gesturing to Taylor's physical being.
"I did, at least." Taylor said proudly, nodding, and jabbing a thumb to her chest. "This, this body is all me, all mine. Well, not MINE MINE, because it did belong to someone else, but they died, so now it's mine." she rushed to clarify, with another of her high-pitched, girlish laughs. "It's a really funny story, honestly! After the separation of my soul and Malgus's, our souls were just...floating free in the world, and, as you know, souls just can't DO THAT without dying in a matter of seconds. They depend on their containers, you know." She gave a lengthy, pleased look up and down her arm that she held out in front of herself, critically examined her nails, then gave one of her fingers a long suck. "Anyway, something of an irony was that, even though we were apart, we still had a good bunch of each other's memories, thoughts, feelings, and even traits and habits! Guess what I got? No? Oh, well, okay then; I'll just tell you. I got the knoweldge on how to perform the technique, even though Malgus never would have wanted me to have known how to do it. So when spirit me was floating around, I did it, and there just so happened to be a newborn witch in Godric's Hallow that night who had been dead at the time. She hadn't survived her own birth."
Taylor wiped her tearstruck face with a sleeve, and looked to Alyssa with nothing but pure, childish horror and sadness at her own words. At her own knowledge of a dead baby. "She was only dead for a minute, maybe, but it was so fortunate, so lucky, so COINDENTAL, and I couldn't...I couldn't pass it up. She was dead, her own soul had gone from the body, so when I made to transfer into it...well, there was no other soul for me to fuse with, so instead, by pure chance, really, I had accomplished what Malgus had thought he would with ME. My soul, my mind, my thoughts, my feelings, have been the only ones inhabiting this body. That girl was dead, there was nothing of her in her body, it was just a shell. And I really did her a favor." Taylor added, looking suddenly very happy with herself. "You see, if my soul hadn't gone into her body, the body would have STAYED dead; it was only my entering it that gave it life, started it up again."
There was a very, very long silence in the dark, foggy park.
Alyssa had to admit, she believed Taylor's story. It made an insane, twisted, and very fantastical kind of sense. But assuming it was true...questions remained.
"What happened to Malgus's soul? And how does Kion fit into all of that?" she said quietly.
"Don't know, don't care - about Malgus, anyway." Taylor waved an absent hand, such airiness in her voice she was almost sighing. "As for Kion," she said, her voice going as suddenly harsh as a snapping bear trap. "well, I'm sure you've noticed, being at Hogwarts as you have been for the past couple of years," She eyed Alyssa with only coldness now, for reasons Alyssa could not even begin to fathom. "that its headmaster is a little...strange."
"You're not serious!" Alyssa burst out. "It was hard enough to swallow what you just told me, even though I DID swallow it, but you seriously think Albus Dumbledore is possessed by some old Dark wizard?"
"Not possessed." Taylor snapped, with a dirty look at Alyssa. "Not fully, anyway. I don't honestly know whether he is, or wether they're melded, as Malgus and I were, or if they're somewhere in between. But I do know that Kion is in there, somewhere, whatever the degree. I also know," she added, slipping out of her cold, hard state - literally, really - as she glided over to Alyssa and placed a relaxed, warm hand on her cheek. Taylor's dark eyes were soft, warm, lonely, and...hungry, as she gazed into Alyssa's emerald eyes. They were almost touching noses. "that you have a little piece of me inside of you right now, and I..." Taylor cocked her head, gently pressed her lips to an unresisting Alyssa's, and held the kiss for a good five seconds before finally pulling away. "would very much like it back."
"What?" Alyssa was so shocked by this revelation that she couldn't even give thought or feeling to the fact that she had just been kissed by this girl, this Taylor, this...original Voldemort, as Taylor claimed to be. "I don't have a piece of Voldemort's- I mean Tom's- I mean-"
"MINE!" Taylor screamed, spitting in Alyssa's face with her sudden rage. "It's MY soul, MINE, it was ALWAYS mine! MALGUS invaded me as a baby, and then that TOM conciousness, that PLACEHOLDER that became Voldemort, was formed AFTER - as a RESULT of what Malgus did to me!"
"Okay, okay, your soul piece!" Alyssa hastily agreed. "But how is that even possible?"
"It's simple: when things get blasted apart, little pieces tend to splinter off." Taylor said sweetly, patting Alyssa's cheek, in a jarring return to calm. "When mine and Malgus's melded soul was oh so violently separated, little fragments remained behind. And since even little fragments of soul have to obey the same rules as the BIG soul pieces - the rule that they can't exist for very long outside a vessel - one of these little fragments, instead of fading away into nothing like the others did, found its way inside you."
'Wow. This actually makes sense.' Alyssa thought, marveling in the ensuing silence. THIS was the reason she could talk to snakes, why she could sense Voldemort through her scar when he was angry, and even have dreams about his activities from afar. And the reason why she didn't have any dreams of burning scar feelings about Taylor or Malgus (if his soul had survived, that was) was because Taylor and Malgus's souls were...were PIECES, small, and obviously - as Taylor herself was proof of - incredibly, terribly and very horribly mangled, tattered and damaged. Obviously, the piece of soul still inside of Voldemort was much, much larger and more complete than Taylor's, which was why Alyssa got...feedback from it.
It made sense, because, after all, Alyssa had never gotten anything from the...from the...
'Oh shit.'
Something ELSE made an incredible kind of sense to Alyssa now, from Taylor's own words. Taylor had said that Voldemort had been ripping his soul apart, piece by piece, over many years, and- and-
And the diary...capable of thought, of reasoning, of planning...how it had possessed Ginny, had...flitted between her body and the diary...so similar to all this talk of transferring souls and fragments...
The diary had been a container for a - likely big and sizable - piece of Voldemort's soul.
A big piece of TAYLOR'S soul. That Alyssa had destroyed. When all Taylor seemed to want to do was recomplete herself, recompile her soul (which, Alyssa mused, would likely result in the girl becoming more stable and sane, since it was all that ripping and melding and blasting that had made her such an insane little thing to begin with).
'Shit, shit, shit!'
"Is something wrong?" asked Taylor, peering intently at Alyssa, her dark eyes holding nothing but innocent concern.
And now, finally, Alyssa understood Taylor's strange threefold set of behaviors. Childish, girlish and pure. Cold, hard, and demanding. Rageful, violent, and just plain twisted and insane.
The first three had to be a product of Taylor's having lived the nice, normal life of the girl whose body she had inhabited. With a mother and a father, perhaps even siblings, friends. But that could all only do so much to combat the rage, the need to strike out and hurt - to MOVE and DO, which found its expression in violence - and the insanity that had come from all those years of her FIRST life she had spent trapped in the dark recesses of Tom's subconcious, with no actual, physical body and no senses or sensations about anything around her.
And the cold, the harsh, and the demanding nature had to be Malgus's, all those thoughts and traits and even memories that Taylor had said she had gotten from him due to the melding process, and then later, from their very violent separation, where their souls, undoubtedly, had not been at all EVENLY split.
With this understanding in mind, a thought came into Alyssa's head. An idea, a notion. One that never would have even occurred to her, had she not been enduring misery on Privet Drive, of a kind she had not since before learning she was a witch, and had her friends not been at the Burrow together, having fun and laughs without Alyssa, and not even being willing to tell her anything about anything at all.
This idea was, well...here was Taylor, here was this girl her own age, a witch her own age, who was as gorgeous as a magazine Cover Girl, who had just kissed Alyssa, who was no doubt attracted to Alyssa (or, at least, the pure, normal girl part of Taylor was), and Alyssa was currently friendless, alone, and suffering from depression and PTSD on top of that over Cedric's death just a couple of weeks ago...so why shouldn't Alyssa befriend Taylor? Spend time with her? Perhaps even...more than?
Alyssa would have to contend with Taylor's insanity, and the other part of her that was all that Dark Lord stuff of Malgus's, but Alyssa thought she could very well weather it all for the sake of the pure, normal girl part of Taylor. The part of Taylor that was worth it. The part of her that had been so visibly upset at the thought of a dead infant, and the part of her that was so terribly sad about all the things she had been through, and the part of her that had looked so warmly, so softly upon Alyssa as she had kissed her, yet with such a loneliness it had almost broken Alyssa's heart. And the part of Taylor that had just been so wholly concerned for Alyssa's wellbeing, so purely and so totally, those dark eyes wide, her body leaned in so intently as she had been.
Yes, Taylor the girl would be worth contending with the parts of her that were the insane, enraged creature born of years trapped, and the cold, hard female of ice and stone that had all the makings of a Dark Lord (or Lady, in Taylor's case).
And, Alyssa thought, once Taylor reabsorbed into her soul the fragment that Alyssa held within her, Taylor the girl would become that much more prominent when compared to the other two parts of her. This in mind, Alyssa actually regretted destroying the diary, which could have even further mended Taylor's small, mangled soul.
But wait...Taylor had said PIECES, plural, so that meant...that meant that there were other, very large chunks of soul still out there somewhere for her to find and absorb into herself.
Alyssa opened her mouth, and said all of this to Taylor, right then and there, voiced those thoughts she had just been having. About how she, Alyssa was so depressed and PTSD-ridden, and about how the Dursleys treated her, and how she would love it if Taylor would be her friend, and then about those other soul pieces which would heal Taylor's soul and make her that much better. The effect of Alyssa's outpouring on Taylor was...startling.
But pleasing.
Taylor threw her arms around Alyssa's neck, was practically hanging off of her, and started bawling endless thanks and gratitude into Alyssa's chest, and pledges and vows to forever be there for Alyssa, to be her friend, and that Alyssa could tell her anything, and discuss her nightmares with her. It went on for several minutes, before Alyssa pried Taylor off and held her at arms length. Taylor, who was beaming at Alyssa, all sincere and innocent. And then she suddenly wasn't beaming, and that look of sort of naive horror had come over her face again, and she looked...guilty. So very guilty.
"I need this." Taylor whispered, looking down at her boots. "I hurt my mom, once. She homeschools me, you know. There are study packets and materials, for kids who can't...who can't go to Hogwarts. Anyway, I was frustrated, I was upset, I couldn't...do this spell and I...I just threw myself at her and...and my little sisters, I..." Taylor's head snapped up, and she was cold, hard, Dark Lady Taylor again. No regret, no remorse, no sadness. "Anyway, doesn't matter, does it?" she went on carelessly. "Look, I don't actually know where all the pieces of my soul are. When Malgus and I were trapped inside of Tom, and Tom was ripping his soul apart over those years, I felt it. We both felt it, but that was all. Besides our own thoughts...that was all." she finished, and Alyssa felt a tremble run through Taylor's body (Alyssa was still grasping her shoulders).
Alyssa slid her hand down along Taylor's arm, and gently guided the insane girl's palm to the center of her chest. "Well," Alyssa smiled. "you do know where ONE is. Now, how do I give it back to you?"
Taylor's hard eyes narrowed, her gaze on her hand, on the middle of Alyssa's chest, and she practically melted. Melted back into Taylor the girl. Alyssa actually FELT Taylor's hand become less rigid, become relaxed and even gentle in its pressure against her sternum. "Do you trust me?" Taylor asked, with eyes that were once again soft and warm, and even now glinting with some very heavy hesitation.
'I trust Taylor the girl.' Alyssa thought to herself. 'Taylor the Dark Lord, who might kill me if I refuse her a cup of tea, and Taylor the angry, insane THING that I saw stomping around and tearing her own hair out, while she screamed at the top of her lungs...not so much.'
Aloud, Alyssa just said, "I trust you."
"All right." Taylor let out a shaky breath and raised her wand. "Then I need you to lay down, and take your shirt off. And maybe your bra, too, depending on how frilly it is." she added, with a high giggle.
"What does getting me half naked have to do with the process of removing a fragment of soul?" Alyssa replied, even as she complied, and pulled her shirt up and off.
"Everything." Taylor said, surprisingly seriously. "I can't draw on your bare skin if your clothes are in the way. The bra has to go." she added, though giving it an appreciative flash of a smile.
Alyssa didn't fail to notice that little smile, and that made her hesitate. "Are you SURE?"
"Don't you trust me? You SAID you did." Taylor retorted, looking hurt.
"No, I do, I do." Alyssa said quickly. "I just...we're moving a little fast in this relationship." she tried to joke. Surprisingly, it worked.
Taylor stared at her, then doubled over in her mirth. Loud, shrieking laughs that rang though the whole park. And probably several blocks distance in every direction. "Oh, god, you're so funny. Funny AND cute." she said, after recovering. "And you taste really nice." Taylor ran an idle finger across her grinning lips, then stepped up to Alyssa and quickly kissed her lips for the second time that night. "You have nothing to worry about." Taylor said, all warm assurance. "The extraction process IS going to hurt, but...I...I can't do anything about that. I don't exactly have any numbing potions on hand, do I?"
Alyssa gazed at Taylor for a long moment. She looked incredibly, honestly apologetic about the pain she had just said she was going to inflict on Alyssa...
"I can handle a little pain." said Alyssa finally, reaching behind herself and unclasping her bra, letting it fall to the grass with her shirt. After all, she thought, nothing could hurt worse than when she had burned Quirrell with her bare hands, or when she had taken a big dose of Basilisk venom and had been seconds away from death, or when Voldemort had used the Cruciatus Curse on her in the graveyard.
"I know." Taylor said quietly, unecessarily helping Alyssa lay flat on her back in the cold nighttime grass. She lowered herself to her knees alongside Alyssa, smiled down at her, and cupped her face in both hands for a brief moment. "We do get the Prophet in Godric's Hallow, my mom and my sisters. I've always admired you, you know. Liked you. You're so pretty, so strong, and...and it's really because of you that I was able to get free of Tom's mind, and enter this body and this life. It's been so nice, so wonderful. My sisters are cute, and great, and my mom is...she's a good mom. I'd have washed my hands of me a long time ago, especially after I...after I took her eye...but she's still here for me."
"Isn't she worrying about where you are?" Alyssa questioned, gesturing to the dark park in general.
Taylor bit her lip, looking suddenly, incredibly guilty, then shook her head. "She doesn't know I'm out. She usually keeps me locked in my room. But especially this evening, I...I'd had a bad...a bad time again, so she had to. I don't mind - it's for my sisters' safety." she added, with a small smile, at Alyssa's look of shock and anger. "I'd rather be locked up and knowing my sisters are safe, than roaming free and knowing I could hurt them like I did my mom."
"Now, please try not to move too much." Taylor said, bringing her wand tip to press right against the bone at the very bottom of Alyssa's esophagus, high above her pitiful apple-sized breasts (god, Alyssa HATED having an as good as flat chest). "I very much would like to avoid cutting these off before I get a chance to eat them." Taylor giggled. On "this" she tapped a finger to the very tip of Alyssa's breast.
"Cut them off?" Alyssa echoed, feeling a little alarmed (while her breasts could hardly even be considered breasts, they WERE breasts, and, moreover, they were HERS and she didn't want to lose them). "You're removing a soul shard, not an internal organ. Why would you be literally CUTTING any part of me?"
Taylor gave her a pure, Dark Lady look that said: are you stupid? "That's like saying, oh, how can a cutting charm cut anything, it's not a metal blade, it's just magic! I have to cut a physical border around the soul shard to isolate it for the magic to pull it out. If I tried to just extract it without marking any borders, I could yank out your entire soul along with it. It's like wards around a house; you still need the rune stones to mark the perimeter for the magical barrier."
"Okay." Alyssa said slowly, relaxing as much as she could back into the cold, damp grass. "Cut away, then."
"Oh, just shut up and don't move." Taylor said, with cold irritation, still stuck in Dark Lady mode, as she bent over Alyssa's body. "If you cause me to mess this up, and I lose the chance to enjoy these later, I'm going to be pissed." Three guesses what she was referring to by "these".
Alyssa, on noticing the persistence of Dark Lady Taylor, decided that it was in her (and her breasts') best interests to obey, and she did not say another word, nor did she move even an inch, despite that the grass was really, really cold to her bare back.
After a few moments of Taylor muttering strange spells that Alyssa could not even guess at the purpose of...their purpose became very clear, as a brilliant, glowing green halo of magic appeared in mid-air, several inches above her chest. Then Alyssa's entire chest started glowing with a blue magic that seemed...strangely muted, like it was just below her skin. Like putting a flashlight to the palm of your hand and seeing it shine through the other side. And amidst all that blue was a single, red sliver, glittering and shimmering, like a piece of a crystal, positioned just below and to the right of Alyssa's right breast. It was really pretty, Alyssa thought. Like a ruby...fragment.
"Is that it?" Alyssa said softly. Taylor nodded, and then Taylor the Dark Lady melted into Taylor the girl.
"That's it." Taylor choked, eyes shimmering, lips parting. Her eyes were transfixed on the soul fragment, like it was a long-lost friend, or pet, that she had, finally, found again. "I'm going to cut, now, so please, please, PLEASE...please try not to move." Her voice went very high at the end, and caught, and Alyssa knew Taylor was holding back more than a few sobs. "I don't want to hurt you, and...what's more...I really don't want to screw up and cut this fragment sma- sma- smaller...more than it already is." she finished, in a rush, sobs breaking loose, and tears also, splashing down to land on Alyssa's stomach. "Oh, god..." Taylor moaned, briefly shutting her eyes. "Oh, god it's so..."
"I think we should worry more about YOU moving." Alyssa spoke gently, reaching up to take Taylor's badly shaking wand hand in both of her own. Taylor simply knelt there, bent over Alyssa, wand poised for incision, and sobbed over her for many minutes, a wide, watery smile on her face.
Eventually, Taylor regained herself. Her hands steadied, and she used one of them to smear her tearstruck face, do away with them, leaving her face a blotchy mess, pink, Alyssa could see, in all the light from the spells, from the light of her own SOUL shining up through her chest. Taylor pressed her wand tip to a point just below the shard, and began to cut. Slowly, carefully, she dragged her wand left, left, up...around...
And all the while, Alyssa hissed, she gasped, but she did not move, she resisted her urges to sit bolt upright, to tremble...because it hurt, it wasn't just a cut, she could feel that. It was magic, it was...more. The line Taylor cut into her glowed, glowed a deep, beautiful purple.
"Can I ask you something, Taylor?" Alyssa whispered, as Taylor continued to cut into her.
"Anything." Taylor replied, whispering, too, focused on her cutting.
Alyssa hesitated, and Taylor lay her free hand on Alyssa's stomach, silently reassuring her, silently telling her...say it. Ask me. And so Alyssa did. "How do you feel about him? About Voldemort? About...all the things he's done with your...original body? All the massacres, all the murders? All the tortures? The men, the women, the children...the families torn apart...the lives destroyed, cut short...all of it..."
"I've always had a fascination for the Dark Arts, for Dark Magic." Taylor began, in soft tones. "In this life, this body, as far back I can remember, I was always...reading about it. There was even a time when I...when I wanted to go to Durmstrang. God I...I tried to convince her, my mom, to let me go there. She never did, of course. Never would, never will. I can't go to any school, can't be around people. Not the way I am now. Later, when I'm complete, when I'm...a person again...maybe. But..." Taylor drew in a breath, a breath wracked with burgeoning sobs. Not yet released, yet...verging on, once more. "It's sickening." She continued, in a high voice. "It's sick, it's gross, it's...what Voldemort's done, what he DOES, and what he plans to do...it's horryfing, it's...I hate him, so much, I hate all the things he's done, and I wish...I wish I could fix it all, save those people, bring them back to life..." Taylor gazed right into Alyssa's eyes, then, and said, "I wish that curse had killed me that night. Killed me, Malgus, and Tom. Destroyed all our souls, wiped us from the Earth. Even more, I wish...I wish I could have done SOMETHING to STOP HIM! I wish I could have stopped him from killing your parents, I really, really do. I feel so HORRIBLE, so TERRIBLE, I can't even...can't even SAY how bad I feel for it. For everything he's done, because that was MY body, and that means I share the blame for every single crime he commits. For every person he kills. That's me out there doing it all, too...and I..."
"Please!" Taylor gasped, bending so low she was touching noses with Alyssa, like she was trying to get lost in Alyssa's emerald eyes. Emeralds that were now, too, swimming with so many tears. "Please forgive me, please! Forgive me for your parents, for YOU, for THEM, for EVERYONE and EVERYTHING! PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE! You know how I feel, do you? Do you? Every time I hear someone's story about how Voldemort took a friend, a relative, torturd or killed, or, or I read about it in a history book, or a biography, or in old Prophet editions! Forgive me, all of them, everyone, this world...forgive me, please...please, god, please forgive me..."
"Taylor..."
Taylor suddenly straightened, like a whip being cracked, and both girls realized that Taylor had completed her cutting, unconciously, somehow, and that her wand was glowing a pure white. And floating a centimeter above the tip of her wand, slowly revolving, was that red shard of soul.
"Taylor..." Alyssa repeated, gazing at Taylor's glowing wand, and that soul fragment. "I don't know about...about anyone else, about those families, about those people, or about the world...but me? Just me? I know I forgive you." As if triggered by her words, the white glow of Taylor's wand shot up to envelop the soul fragment, and when it washed away, the fragment was no longer red, but pure white, as well. White and gleaming, and glowing brighter than anything else in the park that night. Alyssa almost had to shut her eyes against it. Before either girl could do or say anything, the soul fragment shot off from the tip of Taylor's wand, and entered Taylor's body, right between her breasts.
Taylor went completely rigid, her head snapped back, looking to the stars, and the shard continued its incredible, eye-watering glow even from within her body.
Alyssa could tell from the way Taylor's eyes had gone wide, from the way her body was shaking like a leaf, from the way her mouth was gaping open, that she was in unimaginable pain. And yet, Alyssa did not move. Did not sit up, did not even speak. She felt...sensed...something...she could not. She was not SUPPOSED to. Not here, not now. Not this moment. Alyssa obeyed that feeling, that instinct, and did not move a muscle. She just stared, and stared, and finally...
Finally that light faded, slowly, and Taylor fell to her hands and knees, her long, curly black hair curtaining her face, behind which Alyssa could hear deep gasps and heavy breaths.
"Taylor?" Alyssa found her voice to be so small, so very small. This, what she had just seen, she knew, had been something...monumental, and not...not for the obvious reasons.
"One down," Taylor's whispered, awed, joyful tones came to Alyssa through that veil of dark, soft hair. "six to go."