A/N: Found this on my computer, ready to post after a few tweaks.
I'm actively working on my other stories, but will not post until they are fully written. This decision is as much for you as it is for me.
Thanks for all the follows, reviews, and faves! Hope you enjoy this little Voldy one-shot.
The first time it happened, he was quite sure he'd imagined it. He was drifting about, incorporeal and angry and vengeful, when he suddenly felt... larger? Greater? More... more.
And for the first time since he departed the back of that idiot's head, he felt something strangely like hope. A plan formed in his mind, and the shade chuckled madly.
The second time, all he could say was the sensation was familiar. That brat had beaten his best, so surely the Old Fool was searching harder for other methods to defeat him.
He was surrounded by idiots, so it was no surprise when he roused from his meditations feeling more intelligent than any of his Death Eaters.
A horrid name, in his opinion, but necessary. If he were capable of caring for others, he would long for the days of the Knights of Walpurgis, and the intelligent men that comprised that group. His peers, his equals, who had traveled Hogwarts with him.
(He was, however, a sociopath and incapable of love.)
(That's what they'd always said, anyway.)
The third time was unpleasant. He was in the middle of a secret meeting about their success infiltrating the Ministry when he felt that unsettling sensation of wholeness overtake him. Memories previously suppressed flooded him, and an overwhelming wave of regret swept through his heart.
"My Lord?" Lucius asked in a quavering voice.
"What is it, Lucius?" Voldemort asked, cradling his head. Again he saw the face of his filthy Muggle father, and his grandparents. Stuck-up no good pieces of dirt who weren't fit to be related to him in the slightest.
"Well, my Lord, I mean no disrespect, but your nose..."
He gestured for the compact mirror that he knew Lucius carried at all times, red eyes widening when he gazed upon his reflection.
Something was going on, plain as the newly resurfaced nose on his face.
He was prepared for the last handful of times, which happened in quick succession. He wondered who had betrayed his secret, and to what depths Dumbledore had descended to find the instrument of his destruction.
Turning to Nagini, he whispered his condolences as he severed her head from her body.
He took some small comfort in thinking the old man would have called it "salvation."
When Harry Potter finally fell, Tom felt something suspiciously like regret.
He was whole now, and the world was his.
Strangely, he no longer wanted it.