It is with a certain finality that we began...
*
Cold wind. The smell of the burning leaves acts like an incense that tingles my senses. The lake's salt mixes with the air and induces labored breathing and a sting in my eyes. My sight blurs and yet my mind is clear. How ironic is it that my path is so vivid in front of me and yet my tattered body cannot walk it? Why am I still walking here along this small stretch of beach trying to find him? Why?…
*
You crawl along the broken path. I can see you from afar, crying, moaning in misery as your eyes fail you…as your hopes leave you….as your spirit breaks. I will win this amusing war and regain my power, my control. I will vanquish my enemies and claim what is mine. Now you will crawl instead of me. You will become the animal, the swine that others detest. You will run and hide. You will rely on the instinctive need for survival spurred by fear and a chase. Now they will hunt you instead of me, and I will laugh when you turn you battered voice to my and scream "Why?!"
*
I can hear him in the back of my consciousness, in my mind's blackness and colors. He thinks he has won. He believes I will give up and accept defeat. He truly has lost knowledge of humanity then, for we do not give up easily. How could he not know that I will not stop crawling on my broken, bruised knees until he shows himself? I act, I deceive, I dominate, and will win. You will fall again, you will fall once and for all.
*
Fall again? I never "fell" to begin with. Your hopes are your own, however false they may be. You cannot deceive me, because we are joined at the mind. I can hear your every cry however voiceless it is, however deep in your subconscious it lays. You only have what I gave you, and your magic, your power, your greatness was created from me. You cannot, will not, win. Lay down. Let the salt stop burning and the pain ooze into a sensation of nothingness and pleasurable sleep. Numb the thoughts that pry into your mind, give in little boy, give in.
*
Why would I ever succumb to your desires? It's not unlike you to claim I'm you. You've done it countless times before. I too can hear you in my mind. I speak with your voice, I dream your dreams, I relive your actions and memories every day. I fail at school because of you, I'm thought to be insane because of you, and everything I've ever loved died because of you. I blame your for everything, absolutely everything, you snake.
*
Blame all you want, child. You are me. I created the wizard you are, so all my actions are in turn truly yours. You killed them all, by mistakes, by stupidity, and barely kept the ones who aren't dead alive, if only by sheer luck. My dear child, you draw closer to me with each struggled movement over the pebbles with your bloody knees. It's amusing. Your lungs gasp for breath, your lips crack from deprivation, and slowly, your green eyes fade. The deep evergreens and right vines inside your eyes are shriveling up into dead leaves and dried roots. You're slowly dying, and I am both enthused and cheerless. Your life to me is comparable to a play that stretches on through many acts. It brought hilarity, misery, and embarrassment to me, but it also gave me strength. Every time you used your powers I grew stronger, discovered and learned all that you learned. I am me, because of you, just as you are you because of me.
*
It doesn't matter who you or I are anymore. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. I labored to find you, and defeat you. And I will, I will. I can feel you on the breeze; fell your power, your vibration pulse in my mind. I exert myself, forcing my dim eyes to see you in all your horror and wickedness. You lift your wand and I can feel you murmur, can feel the life suck out of me…
And suddenly I'm in whiteness, I can't feel you, a soft voice tells me to return, and I do. You've moved on. I can't feel your pulse but perhaps it's because I cannot feel. I try to move my limbs and discover I can move, but without weight. I believe I'm dead, but alive. And once again, I have no explanation of how it happened, but… it did, it has…
I walk with a speed I didn't know I possessed, I see you there, in front of the castle, its great walls springing up from the misty Scottish ground with an exuberance I can relate to. Spires I thought I'd never see again lie above, and you look in the same direction and laugh. I move to point my wand at you, and feel nothing yet again, and as I look-I am nothing. I am a consciousness outside the corporeal. Perhaps I am an invisible ghost, for you turn to my direction but see through me without noticing. I see my giant friend, looking down with wet eyes upon my crumpled body, and I am suddenly drawn to it. It's bleeding, bruised and blackened, and yet it is mine. I close my senses, and I open my eyes into a gloomy face. He doesn't see my sight. He drops to his knees and the weight of my body turns to the ground. He stumbles a little and I use the moment of weakness to cover myself in the invisible world once again. Under the cloak's cloth, I can see everything without everything seeing me in return. It gives me courage, and strength. I turn and see you, and the battle now raging over a dead snake's body and blackened blood oozing and burning the grass under it.
I can see your most beloved Bellatrix and the only mother I ever really had cursing and rolling in a powerful, magical brawl. The darker falls, and you aim at the other. However, I love her as only a son can love a mother. You won't kill my family anymore. I aim, and my cloak falls.
*
How? I don't know, and I know you, foolish, lucky boy, probably don't know either. I can't hear your child thoughts anymore, can't feel your child breathing in my ears. Our connection is broken, or weakened, and I believed you gone, finally gone. But resurrected, like some new age Christ, you've risen from darkness to reveal a new light. Damn you, for though you've survived twice now, the third time you won't, I swear by the bones of my father, by the desecration of his grave, that you will not live again!
*
Your face shows your weakness, your surprise. You scream internally and writhe in the suspense. The crowds around us dwindle in noise, the air tightens with silence. You and I begin our slow circle, cautious and continuous around and around as we face each other for the last time. You hold out your hand pointing at me, expressing nothing. Our circle is like the endless circle that Buddhists meditate on, that life revolves on, that continues to spiral until we pause for death. We are finally broken of our bond, free of each other's thoughts.
*
I will kill you once and for all, you bothersome child.
*
You'll never win.
*
I tell you my secret, for all to hear. How your wand is mine, and your power was never yours to give to me, I merely let you borrow mine. I quietly tell you, only you, that no, you would be the one to lose everything. You were always the fool, Tom, always the fool. I am the master now. I am no savior, no messiah. I am merely the bringer of your death and the end of your thoughts. Good bye Tom, goodbye. I watch as your shock cements, your anger fades, and your eyes grow dim as Death covers them with his shroud. The light from my wand ignited the fire that brightened your darkness and killed it. You believed you were immortal, but nothing is ever immortal. You said I would lose everything, and guess what? I did loose many things, all the people I loved, the things I treasured, but you cannot, will not, ever be able to break me. I am me, never you, never ever you.
*
Even though I am dying, I can quietly hear bits of your thoughts. I yearn to smile, but have lost the strength, the will, to do so. You are correct, we are very different, but we are also similar, and always will be. Indeed, this is farewell, until next time…
*
Until next time…
*
...and it was with the same finality we ended.
For those of you who read this, I spent a good 45 minutes during a study hall writing this one time, soon after I read the last Harry Potter book. I personally wasn't happy with the final battle, but what's done is done.
A week ago, I found the forgotten copy book that I'd written this in and decided to 'fix' it up and post it, just in case maybe someone else besides me liked the idea over Harry and Voldemort's seemingly similar and overlapping thoughts. It was one of the few things that I wished JK Rowling would have gone into more depth on in the books... If you had a mind connection with someone would you become like them? Who would be who, after a while?
Thank you for giving it a chance to be read.