AN: This is a reupload. I purged my account in October 2018 when the profile hack happened. Originally posted in May 2017.
Eternity Spoiled
The spell took hold of the lazily bubbling potion and Lord Voldemort felt truly alive again. The flesh of his feeble proto-form sloughed from malformed bones. They seemed to explode, growing to accommodate his renewed, immortal body. He rose, taking a searing first breath as the cauldron fell apart beneath his feet.
Wormtail, the pathetic, weak, loyal rat, weaved a robe around him and handed over the wand of yew. Voldemort ran a pale hand down his chest and side, appreciating the smoothly sculpted lines. He bore a superficial resemblance to the human shape, but possessed the strength of ten men - his exile was paid for with this perfected vessel.
Wormtail's pitiful pleading drilled unpleasantly into his ears, so he gathered the remains of the cauldron and transformed them into living silver. The rat's new hand was not far worse than Voldemort's own. There. A just reward for his service, however lacking. The goal had been achieved.
Voldemort turned in place and his eyes found the boy lashed to his father's gravestone. Harry Potter met his gaze with defiant despair. "Harry... I forgot you were here. I would make a poor host if I failed to recognise the guest of honour."
He approached, still quite apprehensive - old fears yet lingered - but as he came closer, he swelled with confidence, sensing that success was his.
"Your mother's sacrifice was old magic. I should have foreseen it. She bought you thirteen years... but no matter. I can touch you now."
He placed a finger on the boy's scar and his soul sang when he drank in the screams.
Death Eaters came to his side when he summoned them, some less swift than others, but they came nonetheless. They had been waiting for hours, no doubt, feeling the Dark Mark grow stronger throughout the day. He swept along their ranks, painting a vision of the future before them - a society where his principles elevated those deserving of recognition and cast down those who failed. A true meritocracy, unblemished by the impure and other-minded.
The night went on and his triumph was assured - until he dueled Potter, determined to unmake the boy in front of his Death Eaters. In the space of a spell everything went horribly wrong.
He identified Priori Incantatem, but the spectres that emerged from his wand he could not explain. His uncle, his father - weak and deplorable as he remembered them, but daring to lecture him. Then, a mousy, piteous woman he had never met.
"My son," she whispered, floating close to his ear, "what have you done?"
His mother? How was this possible? A spark of uncertainty shot through him and he found himself believing her, all be damned.
The spirits lingered, laying down more accusations, while his Death Eaters watched, and their doubt was palpable. Voldemort raged inside, but the bond between wands seemed immune to his mastery of magic. At last, Potter broke the connection and escaped in the chaos. Voldemort stood in silent humiliation when the first Death Eater left without permission.
Most of them died before they could have moved, but those who escaped with their lives had still denounced him. Voldemort executed Wormtail where he stood, vowing the same for the others.
He hunted them down, one by one, but inevitably found himself faced with Dumbledore, Potter always lurking at his side, ever growing stronger while his teacher fought duel after duel. New recruits to the Serpentskull banner weren't forthcoming, their defiance bolstered by their proclaimed defender, the paragon of fools.
Deprived of followers, Voldemort solitarily waged a war across Britain, collecting far fewer traitors' heads than he would have liked. The Order of the Phoenix grew in prominence, drawing recruits to fall in droves before the Dark Lord. He was timeless, and so was the bloodshed. He lost himself in it, mind clouding over, its sharpness dulled, his imagined future unattainable. His fury spent, he slid into apathy.
And when he thought things couldn't be any worse, he collapsed, wracked with pain of the kind he only remembered experiencing once, when his soul was rent from his body on the night of his defeat. That pain permeated all senses - it was a banshee's mournful moan made feeling, distant and immediate, short and piercing, drawn out and enduring.
A horcrux had been destroyed.
He flew to the nearest vault, the seaside cave where he had once terrified other orphaned children, only to find the locket missing. The ferry had taken him halfway across the lake, back toward the cavern's mouth, when the same cruel pain struck again and he fell. The undead, risen by his own wand, pulled him to the bottom. He choked on foul water, undying, waiting for his strength to return while the inferi gnawed on his flesh. It was a changed Dark Lord that emerged from the cave at last - deathless, yet fearing for his life.
He ensnared a horde of Dark creatures and mounted a solitary assault on Malfoy Manor, escaping in the nick of time before Dumbledore arrived with his cursed pupil, assured that the diary he had entrusted to Lucius was gone. He didn't find the cup in Gringotts, the ring had been stolen from the Gaunt house. Each discovery was followed by another attack, pieces of his soul being snuffed out. Nagini remained safe with him, but he had to know at least the diadem hadn't been found.
A fool's hope.
He must have lost the count of days in his pursuit of traitors, because it wasn't the boy from the graveyard that met him in the Room of Hidden Things at Hogwarts. Dumbledore had passed on the mantle to a man. Harry Potter had grown to be older than his father had ever been.
"This is where you end, Tom," Potter declared, with a boldness that set Voldemort's blood to boil.
"Is it, now?"
"Yes," Potter said, lowering his wand. "Just look."
And Voldemort looked, because he had no choice. He no longer controlled his body. He could only stand there, frozen, as the Room transformed around him into an amphitheater brimming with spectators. Potter summoned a pensieve, and from it rose a memory spectre, recounting Voldemort's failures for all those people to see.
"You were beaten lifetimes ago, Tom," Potter said, leaning in closely, like Merope had years before in the graveyard. "But you got what you wanted. Immortality. Watch yourself fall, over and over, until the universe is shattered into nothingness and magic itself dies. Only then will you have peace."
When the spectacle was done, the Room shifted, becoming the graveyard. Voldemort's body twisted and contorted, and he was back in Wormtail's arms, being carried to the cauldron.
His mind blanked.
The spell took hold of the lazily bubbling potion and Lord Voldemort felt truly alive again.
~~oOo~~
The wizard who entered the ancient tomb knew Harry Potter more as a legend than his ancestor. The Bane of Voldemort had lived so long ago that he was rarely more than a footnote in modern historical texts. His bloodline endured, however, and continued their sworn duty, laid upon them by their forefather.
He approached the sarcophagus set on the central pedestal. It was of smooth black stone, featureless but for two elements: a sigil etched into the top plate - a snake slithering from the mouth of a skull - and a Time-Turner, set into the stone next to the sigil itself. As he watched, the Time-Turner slowed its revolutions, almost coming to a stop. Before it did, he lightly tapped the golden hourglass, sending it into a mad spin whose momentum would gradually deplete until he came to give it another push tomorrow.
His task complete, he exited the tomb, never sparing a thought for the one resting in it.