Title: Penance
Author: Winter Ashby (rosweldrmr)
Disclaimer: Harry Potter © J.K. Rowling
Rating: M
Timeline: Last scene of Deathly Hallows (AU)
Summary: Tom saw a moon-lit sky and the face of a girl he never really loved. Because he couldn't love, not as he was. It was just an echo, the imprint of a piece of his soul he lost 17 years ago reflecting back on the monster he became. (Riddle & Ginny)
Authors Notes: This is a rewrite of the last scene in DH. Instead of trying to kill Harry, Voldemort relives each of the lives of his horcruxes and in so doing, manages to revert to his 16-year-old-self and with the help of a certain red-headed girl, pieces himself back together in a moment of mistaken regret. I have no idea where this came from. It's weird and a little twisted, but so am I, so... I guess it makes sense that I'd write something like this. My first Ginny/Voldemort (Tom Riddle). But I wanted to stay true to canon, and Voldemort was a monster. He could never love. But maybe, Tom Riddle could have, before he split his soul. That's where I drew inspiration from.

"But before you try to kill me, I'd advise you to think about what you've done… Think, and try for some remorse, Riddle… It's your one last chance," said Harry, "it's all you've got left…I've seen what you'll be otherwise…Be a man…try…Try for some remorse…"

Harry Potter - DH, p. 741

Years, decades passed in those moments. The time from when the words, still echoing inside the shield charm, to when wands were raised, poised to strike. It was an eternity in which Lord Voldemort thought of nothing and no one. It was a hollow, vast, empty space full of nothing but the deafening absence of thought. And the connection between the two, broken in the forbidden forest, almost seemed to spring forth again. Instead of replaying his own life, his own mistakes, and whatever could have passed for emotion in the lifetime of the Greatest Dark Wizard that Ever Lived, it was the life, lives, of his many, oh so many, horcruxes that sprang forward.

Latent images, memories that weren't quite his, but almost. Clouded in a veil of pensive-like mist he watched, lived each life of his fragmented soul, one at a time.

He could see Nagini, a small slithering wisp of a snake, the pale moon-lit skin the night she slithered forth from her soft-skinned egg. Fangs tender as cartilage, bent against the scales of her mouth. He could feel her, the life she lived, the vulnerability of a life so easily taken. He could feel the slice, the sting of the Gryffindor sword, see the world, the same still moon-lit sky as the night she was born, reflected in her glassy eyes as optical nerves severed from her brain. The last thing he saw, felt, knew was the open sky and bright moon.

And the other lives, the life of his grandfather's ring hidden for so long in that dusty cabin. Only to be found, pried from the floor by shaking, gnarled fingers. And the shocking, brilliant blue of Dumbledore's eyes as he gazed at the ring. The moment, the exact moment he slipped it on his finger, the way the spark that had henceforth so characteristically defined his former teacher was replaced by an unmistakable horror. The spell that split the stone and shattered the bindings was numb in comparison to Dumbledore's pain and charred skeleton hand.

Ravenclaw's diadem glinted against the moon the night he pried it from its hiding place. He lived as the jeweled thing as its life began anew, tucked haphazardly against the rumpled wig in the room of requirements, full of other lost treasures. There it sat, undisturbed, and saw the change in seasons and years punctuated only by the occasional student lucky enough to stumble into the vast treasure-trove. It wasn't until that night, slick hands and muffled voices woke it from a slumber, only to be burned. He could feel the fire, a beast of a thing, eating away at it, stripping the jewels, the beauty of it. The fire consumed, licking at the proud heirloom.

Hufflepuf's cup shown under the lights of the cramped warehouse of useless trinkets he'd plucked it from. Saved it from a life of mediocrity, its life began the night he killed Smith for it. And the cup sat tall, shimmered in the dim light it seemed to reflect from the inside out. Its life was short, only existing in those fleeting moments from enchanted creation to basilisk fang when it was held, cradled against the heat of skin. But for so long it dwelled in the darkness of Gringott's vaults, buried deep in the earth, cold and dark. Until it was stolen, painfully, with the aid of a failing dragon and Potter. Its life ended at the tip of the Basilisk's fang, his own legacy sealed also in the depths of the earth, under Hogwarts.

And his locket, his sweet locket. Strong, heavy, full of dark, ill-pleasure. It stole dreams, bits of people it touched, lost in a sea of potion, plucked out by a sputtering, dying Regulus, handed off to an elf of infinitely ugly stature. Guarded, stolen, pilfered, its life passed in and out of so many dreams that they blended together. All hatred, jealousy, love that was slowly, deliberately twisted until it wasn't recognizable. The Dark Lord could hear the fears, see the secret dark dreams that haunted the ginger boy whom Potter stood alongside. He saw the nightmares, the contorted fantasies this boy envisioned. Potter, bound around a girl. Plain face and bushy hair. Her lithe frame pulled taunt in the unholy images this boy conjured in the darkness his lovely locket created. It spawned hopelessness, promoted separatism, divided the great Harry Potter from his companions. And all for a silly girl. All for love. Until the last. Until the metal of the familiar blade pierced the heart of it.

Then there was Harry Potter. A baby, the burning of a scar and the chill of the cool night against his face. Tears dried as he flew into the moon-lit sky, roaring motorcycle, and a monstrously huge man tucked around him. The Dark Lord lived as Harry Potter. Felt the sting of a life forgotten, subjugated by lesser beings. He lived as the boy he created, marked as his equal who knew powers the Lord knew not. There were flashes, blips of magic first occurred, the first glimpse of Hogwarts. Dark silhouetted castle against the star-strewn sky and the love – the absolute love – welling up in him, in Potter. The connection to the castle, the sensation magic stirred in him. Like memories from a previous life, like a limb he'd never known he was missing regrown. Magic that was so innate, so instinctual that it lived and breathed inside the boy, inside the Lord who lived as the boy in these strange in between moments as time halted for the impossible. The Lord watched threw green eyes at the world as dark shadows crept and bonds – deep, heart cutting, suicidal bonds were forced in the boy. An awkward, ginger boy and a plain, bucktoothed girl soon surrounded his every sense. But there were slowly replaced, bit by bit, piece by piece, with the shinning, incandescent face. Ginny. A name to accompany the face. Red hair, ablaze, with something… something. Life, spunk, spirit, something the Lord knew not, couldn't name, couldn't understand, couldn't comprehend. But she had it, carried it in her, it surrounded her, she was this feeling. She was everything to this boy. Her freckled face, a broom tucked between her knees, bright brown eyes that pervaded, seeped into everything. Her hands were soft against his face, sliding through his hair. Lips pressed against his, sweet oblivion found in her arms. She encompassed the world, took hostage the life of this boy, a secret, accidental horcrux. The Lord wept as the boy, who made his solemn way into the forbidden forest, and stood defiant, achingly so, ready to die for this girl who made the whole world turn. Lord Voldemort stood in the darkness, and taunted the sacrifice the boy had already resigned himself to making. Darkness came on swift wings, and the Lord was torn from the life of this boy. The sole horcrux he, himself, took from life.

The diary shuttered into existence as the body of Myrtle was still resting on the lavatory floor. The pages of it, the flutter of them against his fingers. He was both the diary and the memory of himself at age 16. Locked in the prison of the pages, doomed to a non-corporeal faded form. Until the leather of the spine was cracked, once again, the delicate, young hands framed it against her desk. Fingertips grazed over it. Like a lover's caress or paint from a brush. The fingers turned blank pages, a connection formed. And the memory of him squirmed through. Caught hold of this girl, pulled her down and back. She fell into the memory. A captive to the seductive power of anonymity. She allowed her heart to well up with his younger self. To be enthralled, body and mind, with thoughts of him. Tom, to her. She lovingly shielded him/it, made sure she held the diary tight against her tiny, budding chest. Overwhelmed with the want of love. She begged for it, surrender to it. It was the same hair and eyes that Harry Potter loved, the Lord (independent from these visions) recognized. Her heart broken, pieces shattered, littered over the pages of his book. He possessed her, stole her hands for himself. Formed words with her mouth, invaded her mind. Planted distractions, longing endearments, suggestions of hidden desires she harbored in her. Shards, splinters of her darkened under his guided watch. She bent like a blade a grass, yielded to him. And the life of the diary twisted with hers, entwined, gathered up and forced to mold into the same existence. The Lord read her words, felt her hands against the paper of him, ink scribbling desperate pleas to be accepted, as she was. Dark and confounded, she was supple to mold. Her mind, so clouded by unrequited love, she all but quivered for the chance to be wanted. Hidden, unspoken thoughts, unbidden, some false, some real took shape in the pages of him. And when he was in control, when she completely surrendered to him, let the memory free from the book, to swim in her mind and use her hands, he gave her what she couldn't ask for. And she wept, wept for it. He watched her dying, the life pulled from her frail body in the Chamber of Secrets with an apprehensive sort of glee.

And everything was so jumbled. He was a locket and a cup, a diadem and book. A snake and a man. The memory of himself, in love with the girl he was killing. The parts of him that existed outside, autonomous from the Lord blended together into a great mass of things he didn't understand.

It was only then, as the years of false memories blended, that his wand was raised. A smirk twisted on his snake lips and the image of a red-haired girl seared into his mind that he pulled air to his lungs. Reeling from the intensity of it, the moon-lit sky, something that might have passed for love, demonstrous, putrid memories that his fractured soul couldn't stop from flowing over, mixing with his own. It tossed him, rattled his mind.

'Avada Kedavra' was slick on his lips, ready to kill. But mistaken, unbeknownst to him, to anyone at all in the world, those weren't the words that escaped. His heart constricted as words failed him. And he turned from the boy, the bane of his existence, his nemesis, his not-quite equal and eternal enemy that was, in truth, until very recently, a part of him. Stupid child and his so called love, his mother's love – that flowed through the boy's veins. The blood that now flowed threw the great Lord's veins as well. It was a promise, protection, redemption. And he'd taken it into himself. Killed that part of his soul that ricocheted onto his destined opponent.

He turned from him and sought a face in the crowd. Red hair and freckled face, blood streaked, tear stained. Bruised and brutalized, his cold, dead, unfeeling red eyes locked with her brown, shimmering ones. And in that moment, Lord Voldemort became all the pieces of his soul. They assembled, fell into place so easily, and he was everything – cup, crown, locket, snake, boy book and Lord. But the boy who was in love with this girl dominated all others. And in that instant, that reflexive moment, he spoke. Instead of the killing curse it should have been, he was so well versed with, nearly loved, it was a garbled, parseltongue response, gut reaction from the memories, lives that were still swirling in him.

"Ginny."

The high, shrill sound that he made was unlike anything any of them had ever heard. It was a blinding, painful thing. Full of wretched remorse and dying desperation. Voldemort folded up on himself, wand drawn tight in his hand, snake-like nostrils flared as he gasped for air. A light began, started at his bald, scaly head and slowly engulfed him. Fearful, the occupants of the great hall shielded their eyes from the blazing ancient magick. Voldemort cried out, a scream, half-hoarse, half-child-like as his body buckled under some unforeseen force. It drove him to his knees, the wand slipped from his fingers as his body collapsed to the cold, stone floor. He pulled his hands to his head, now covered in thick, black hair. A vision from his youth. 15 or 16, before his first horcrux, before it all began. Tom Riddle, once again.

And in those few seconds when thoughts could form, in-between the excruciating pain, Tom saw a moon-lit sky and the face of a girl he never really loved. Because he couldn't love, not as he was. It was just an echo, the imprint of a piece of his soul he lost 17 years ago reflecting back on the monster he became.

He reached a hand out, in the direction of the crowd. Like he was searching for someone, tying to plead for something. With one, last shuttering breath, he fell still and silent.

Harry approached him, cautiously. Wand drawn and eyes slimmed. He hovered over the body of boy younger than himself for several moments before he turned his face away, to the sun-streaked windows, tears glistening on his cheeks.

"What happened?" McGonacall asked, the only one coherent enough to speak. She recognized the body of her classmate, the true identity of the Dark Wizard finally revealed. She felt sick at the sight of his lifeless body.

Dazed, Harry glanced back at her. But his eyes only flickered over her for a second before traveling on to land on Ginny. "He said 'Ginny.'"

Years later, Harry would tell people that Tom Riddle, in the end, had pieced together the fragments of his soul by invoking ancient magicks when he showed true remorse. He calmly explained what Hermione had discovered about what it takes to reverse the effects of a Horcrux. How, even though Riddle repented, the matter of piecing back together parts of his soul was so painful, it'd led to his death. And when asked, by the several thousands of reporters who undoubtedly did, why He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's last word was that of his (current) wife, Harry would frown, as he was so prone to do after the conclusion of the war, and calmly explained about the mental connection he shared with the Dark Wizard.

Some would gasp, others would nod, a glazed, unresponsive expression on their face, and still others would shake their head and sympathize with the Boy Who Saved the World.

It was only Hermione who approached him, sometime later, and asked him what really happened.

"You're connection to him was severed when you sacrificed yourself in the forbidden forest." She pointed out to him. He didn't bother asking how she knew, he was well aware that she'd deduced that conclusion all on her own. "So there's no way your love for Ginny could have 'overshadowed his hate' and made him repent." She even managed to quote his preferred line to reporters who asked. "He had to have repented all on his own; otherwise it wouldn't have been genuine."

Harry just smirked, a half smile he was used to giving her as praise for thinking of what everyone else managed to overlook. "I know." He told her, still smirking and wrapping a scarf around his neck as he prepared to leave The Burrow.

"Then, why? Why did he say Ginny's name?" Her brown eyes sparkled, a mystery, a challenge all laid out for her brilliant mind to solve.

"I don't know." He shrugged and pulled open the door. The question he'd asked himself so many times, wrestled with in his sleep, tried to bring logic to and failed over and over again. The one question he'd always wanted to ask Ginny, but he knew NO ONE ever would. It would always be a mystery.

Ginny sat on her bed, fresh from the shower, hair still dripping. Clothes strewn on the coverlet, waiting to be packed for her next match in against Wimbourne Wasps. She held a blank scrap of parchment in her hands. Just a piece of a page, torn and crumpled. She ran a fingertip over it, watched the creases of it straighten out, align to her hand then shift back again. A spot of ink appeared, and slowly spread into letters.

Ginny? The page asked.

There should have been a Basilisk Fang straight through the heart of the paper, had she not torn it from the book months before. In her first year, she'd grown accustom to always carrying him with her, a piece of the enchanted parchment in her pocket, only capable of saying two things.

"Why?" she asked the paper, like it could answer her. "Why me?"

Because, the page responded, I love you.

The same answer it always gave, still didn't make sense. She folded it up and slipped it back into the moleskin pouch Harry'd given her last Christmas. Along with the pieces of her first wand, and a picture of Harry in his Quidditch Uniform from Fifth Year.

Ginny resigned herself to never knowing, and tried not to dream of Tom at night. Tried not to think about 'what if' he survived reassembling his soul, tried not to feel that pang of horror at seeing Tom at just her age reaching out to her in howling pain.

It was a losing battle. Ginny never learned how to fall out of love.

This was fun to write. Being inanimate objects powns!
:dork: