Title: Let's Conquer the World
Summary: Things did not go as planned when the Light gathered to chase the Dark away. Under the might of the Dark Lord and his followers, they fell. Now, the few that are left find themselves imprisoned by none other than Lord Voldemort himself, with Harry among them.
Warnings: Will eventually be slash of the HP/LV(TR) variety. For this chapter: violence, mention of torture, mostly sane Harry.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Unbetaed for now, all mistakes are my own.
A/N: So I just realised that, during the previous two chapters, I changed from first person to third person. Oops? Haha and that right there is why I desperately need a beta. Anywho, this chapter is back to proper first person Harry POV, and I'll change chapters 5 and 6 at some point.
Enjoy!
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Chapter 7: Confrontation (Part 2)
I feel my muscles lock in place as Voldemort stops talking. I'm on the floor at his feet, and I don't even try moving away from the kick he sends my way. Time slows to a crawl around me.
(No.)
That can't be right. I, Harry James Potter, cannot be one of the Dark Lords Horcruxs. I can't be one of those vile things, can't have a piece of the man's soul inside of me. I can't.
(It's just not possible.)
Time starts again as I take a gasping breath and push myself to my knees. I painstakingly drag myself away from him towards the wall.
Voldemort watches in silence. He seems a little less unnerved, a little more at ease with the situations, knowing how much it hurts me, seeing the fear and the disgust and the hate in my eyes.
I don't say anything or look at him until my back is pressed harshly against the unyielding wall, wishing and hopping that it'll swallow me whole and never spit me out. I press myself as far back as I can until I can feel the painful edges digging into my spine, rejecting my plea and grounding me to reality.
"You're lying!" I can hear the hysteria in my voice and so can he, as I gasp out what I so desperately want to believe. He narrows his red eyes at me before answering, surprisingly calmly.
"What reason could I possibly have to lie about this, Harry Potter?" He spits out my name like a curse, with a sneer worthy of the vilest of creatures.
"Wrong then," I gasp out, desperate, "I can't be… I'm not… I'm not like you!"
"Of course you're not. You are far too weak to be anything like me." He sneers again, with a look of utter disgusted on his serpentine face as he watches me shudder in the corner, disheveled after three years in his care.
As I look up at him, I don't see the angry Dark Lord that's been taking pleasure in my suffering for the past years.
Because behind his hate and his rage, I can see his fear. The same fear that's driven him to collect his Horcruxs these past few weeks.
I remember instead a dark haired boy in an orphanage, all alone because he dared to be different. (I see myself as a child, a lonely little boy living amidst those who hate him, forgotten in a cupboard. Surrounded by uncaring people who gave me nothing but cruel taunts and jibs, blows and too little food.)
I see a Slytherin Prefect, immaculate robes and snide smile, hiding behind a mask as he desperately tries to fit in. (I see myself at twelve, fourteen, fifteen, isolated and ostracised for things that where entirely out of my control.)
I see a bitter young man give up on humanity.
(But that's not how this story goes, that's not how it ends.)
I see our similarities, but I see our differences as well.
Regardless of all our similarities, regardless of our common past, I am not like him. I choose not to be, I refuse to be.
I could have gone to Slytherin ("You could be great, you know.") but I chose Gryffindor. Begged and pleaded my way into the den of Lions where no Snake would willingly go. And I didn't simply live through it, a snake in lion fur, I succeeded, I made it my home.
I could have hated my relatives for what they did to me ("Freak. Worthless. Waste of Space. Burden.") but I still saved them, I still made sure they got away from the Death Eaters. I chose to be good in the end, to perhaps not forgive, but to forget. I didn't build my entire existence on hatred for sins long since committed.
I could have hated the Wizarding World for what it did to me ("Dark Lord in training. Evil. Liar.") but I still tried my best to protect all those mindless sheep. I didn't simply give in to the hate, I didn't do the easy thing, I did what was right.
I could have blamed them all for what happened to me, what they made me into, but I don't.
I could have hated them all for what they did or for when they chose to look away, but I don't.
Where his hate is directed at the whole world, mine is direct solely at him, and the fools who follow him.
I am not like Lord Voldemort, and I am not weak for it.
While saying that I am like Tom Riddle is accurate enough, it doesn't matter because Tom Riddle is long gone, little more than a faded memory.
(But it could be.)
"How do you know, then? How can you be sure?" I'm calmer now, as close to in control as I can be, considering. As they say, with understand comes knowledge, and with knowledge comes power.
And if these past years have given me anything, its understanding of Voldemort. (In between the fog and the haze of pain, of course.)
Be that as it may, I'm more that a little tired, more than a little fed up with his games. With his taunts. With simply laying down and taking it because I'm too afraid, too much of a cower, too busy wallowing inn self-hatred and pity. Too weak.
I am not weak.
I've had enough. I won't let this be the end. I won't let him win, not now, not ever. I refuse. I won't submit, just like I didn't when I faced him all those years ago at age eleven, and then again at twelve, and thirteen, and fifteen, and seventeen. I will not bow to him.
It's a little upsetting that it's taken three years and the revelation of my status as a Horcruxs to shake me from my shell when the deaths of my friends couldn't do it, but what's done is done.
Luna at least, will be please.
Provided I make it back to her in one piece. Which doesn't seem entirely likely considering what I'm about to do, Horcrux be damned.
"I can feel it," he finally answers, almost petulantly.
And then I do something I haven't done in a very, very, long time. I taunt the Dark Lord.
"Did you feel it when Nagini died then?" I ask, with the beginning of a smirk, almost teasing. "Did it hurt to have a piece of your soul disintegrate? Or are you too far gone, too much of a monster to even feel it?" I finish, gleeful in the certainty that I've made him angry, that I'm no longer simply reacting on autopilot and that he knows it.
His rage is, as always when properly provoked, spectacular.
It's worth it. Every moment of pain, all the anguish he gives me for that little bit of snake is more than worth it.
Because for the first time in a very long time, I'm not entirely helpless. I'm still a prisoner, the situation is still as dire as ever, but I'm not the only one with something to loose now. And he knows it as well.
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A/N: Yay it's not as abysmally short as last chapter! Unfortunately, my midterms have begun, so I shan't be able to update next week.