At the sound of music, Tom slowed his steps. He was heading to the library to get Harry ready for the ritual, but had to pause at the door, his head cocked to the side in confusion about what he was seeing.
"Don't go 'round tonight, It's bound to take your life. There's a bad moon on the rise." Harriet's voice was woefully off key, but she gave it everything she had as she sang along to the music.
He supposed what she was doing could be called dancing… there was spinning… there were legs hopping around and arms flailing about… there was a good chance she was possessed…
"Hope you got your things together. I hope you are quite prepared to die. Looks like we're in for nasty weather. One eye is taken for… oh Tom!" She stopped (what he was beginning to think was a demon summoning ritual of some kind), when she noticed him in the doorway. "Look what I found!" She held up a white conch that seemed like any normal shell, except it had muggle music blaring from it. "Tom, come dance with me?" What in all their time together made her think that was going to happen?
"No, we need to get ready." He didn't like the way her face lit up when he said that.
"Oooh!" She said dramatically. "Tom can't dance!" She sing-songed.
"No my dear, you can't dance." He shook his head. "Perhaps I'll have Narcissa teach you."
"I can dance just fine." Harry grumbled under her breath.
"Enough. Go have a bath and then come down to the ritual room." He took a moment before continuing. "Harriet, you don't have to do this, you know? You can back out now and I won't be mad or upset." He was almost hoping she'd back out. Merlin, how far he'd fallen! He didn't want her to do this just about as much as he did.
"Shut up, Tom." It was a good-natured tease, and she pushed past him to go get ready.
"You're lucky I need you." He called after her in the same light tone. 'Need.' It was such a foreign word to him. Voldemort never needed anyone, but it came so easily with Harry. There were a couple of other rituals he could use, but this one was by far the best and only her willing participation made it possible. And maybe that was what was so hard to except. A sacrifice of love. He'd felt the love flowing from her for years, and it was easy to ignore, but this would be irrefutable proof, and that in turn proved the influence she'd had on him.
He'd always scoffed at the idea of love, and in the past would have never even considered a ritual like this. People claimed he had been born devoid of love and nothing in his life had ever given him reason to believe in its existence. But now he knew it did – because he could feel it from Harriet. No, it wasn't a feeling. It transcended that. Whatever it was, he could recognise it now, and that was only because of her. She'd forced it into his emotional repertoire. He'd let her emotions into his mind and they'd carved out those pathways in his brain, deeper and deeper until he could recognise it in himself. Love was indeed real and it was powerful. It grated on him that the old man might have been right after all, but then love was such a weakness generally that it should surely have some significant power to make up for it. At least he had the satisfaction of knowing just how Dumbledore would feel about the power of love being used in such a dark ritual, though he should have known better: love, after all, had no boundaries.
Well, he'd soon find out if he was right. He'd seen to every aspect of this ritual personally, and he was a perfectionist so he knew it was all in order. The success of the ritual rested solely with Harry. It called for her life's blood to be willingly sacrificed. But not her life, he'd checked that a dozen times.
Rubbing his hands over his face in one last attempt to quell his fears, he turned and headed downstairs.
The room was dark and Harry thought it altogether spooky, but it was ok, because Tom was here with her. The only light came from five tiny fires burning at seemingly random points on the floor. The room was full of what she knew to be runes, though she didn't recognise any, and there were so many it seemed more like some kind of language.
Tom stood in the middle of them all in a plain black robe. He looked at Harry – she seemed so fragile and so small in that white dress that he had to steel himself, steel his resolve. He would let her do this.
He guided her to sit down and quickly started chanting. He'd already briefed her on what would happen and was pleased to see she only flinched a little when he impaled his wrists, ankles and abdomen with ten inch naga scales. He needed to infuse their transformative powers, not to mention the water element that they so brilliantly represented. It seemed a body needed a whole lot of water, it was almost funny, to have to gather so many dark ingredients and then throw in something as pure as water. He supposed the same could be said for Harry's contribution. He wanted to groan but was fine and carried on – he'd never had a low pain threshold, though it was probably a good thing that he was about to use the flesh of his host as part of the ritual as he certainly wouldn't have survived it.
After what felt like an eternity it came time for Harry's bit. He took a silver bowl, tarnished with time and took a handful of the ash it held. – he hadn't told her what it was made up off; there were some things she just didn't need to know – and threw it viciously in her face. She squirmed as she fought not to react when she breathed it in, when it hurt her nose and stung her eyes and the urge to cough was almost unbeatable. He then repeated the process on himself and fleetingly applauded her self-control. He poured the rest onto the ground, his wrists bleeding the whole time and finally picked up the unicorn horn, freshly harvested and handed it to Harriet.
This was the moment of truth. If it didn't work, all this preparation would have been for nothing.
She didn't hesitate. It was almost pathetic how much she trusted him, but it didn't feel pathetic, it felt like the weight of the world. She put the sharp end of the horn to her wrist and dragged it down hard and fast. And she let out a terrible scream, but quickly bit her lip, biting straight through in an effort to stop herself saying anything.
The runes started to light up, one after another as her blood poured out, mixing with the ash and his host's blood and he kept chanting until every rune was lit and the room was full of blinding light and the blood and ash flew through the air in a small but violent tornado.
When the runes and fires died and the dust settled, the room was left in complete darkness and all was silent for a few moments.
Voldemort cracked his neck and flexed his fingers, but gave his new body no more consideration than that – not now at least. Finally a gentle glow lit the room as he cast a lumos and as soon as his eyes fell on Harry, all thoughts left him and he acted on instinct. His little girl lay on her side, unconscious, her white dress, skin and hair soaked in her own blood. He hadn't expected to react so strongly at the image and immediately flew into action, tearing his robe to wrap her wrist and stem the flow of blood, before gathering her up and rushing her up to where Narcissa would be waiting with all the necessary balms and potions. She better have a whole load of blood replenisher.
Harry's eyes blinked open, before quickly closing again as the light ignited fires and pounding drums in her head.
"Looks like someone finally decided to wake up." Her eyes still screwed up, Harriet was confused. That sounded like Tom, that same smooth baritone, but it wasn't in her head. Or was it? Memories of how she came to be here came to her all at once and she sat bolt upright at the revelation that it had worked. It had to have worked if he was talking to her.
"Ah!" As soon as she was up the pain intensified and a wave of nausea hit. A hand roughly pushed her shoulder and she fell back.
"Lie down." Came the stern instruction.
"Ow, Tom, you're making it worse!" She cried.
"No. 'Worse' is what happens if you even think about sitting up again." She groaned in response to the threat and carefully cracked one eye open. Standing beside her was a man, about 6'2, with black hair, sharp, aristocratic features and red eyes that seemed to be laughing at her. This suited Tom much better than his previous body.
"It worked." Her voice came out in a whisper.
"Indeed. How do you feel?" He moved on quickly. Oh, he was overjoyed to have his body back. At first he'd actually been concerned about just how well the spell had worked. He'd sacrificed his looks to further his power, in the pursuit of greater magics and he would have been enraged to find he'd have to start from scratch. Thankfully that hadn't been the case. It seemed the old fool was right and in the end the ritual had been so powerful that it gave him a body, his own body at its physical peak and he'd lost none of his powers as compromise. It was his lucky charm working for him again. Good looks and charm were powers all of their own and he was fairly certain he could still inspire fear easily enough.
"That's better; your voice. It's you." He ignored her words, instead helping her take a drink to sooth her croaky voice. He had a lot of patience for her today.
"How do you feel?" He repeated.
"My head hurts." She grumbled. "I feel sick, and really tired." Tom sighed. Of course she did; she was 8 years old and slit her own wrist last night.
"Drink these." He ordered, handing her pain relief and nutrient potions.
"Do you feel better now?" Harry asked and it took him a moment to realise she was taking about having his body back.
"Of course, Possessing someone is like wearing an ill-fitting suit: uncomfortable and restrictive."
"So having your own body is like wearing pyjamas?" He sighed again, but couldn't supress his smile. He was in much too good a mood.
"You have your own body. What does it feel like to you?" Her face screwed up in thought. Having your own body didn't feel like anything. "Exactly." Her glare lacked energy so he told her to go back to sleep. The hard bit was done now and she would be fine.
The Dark Mark had returned to its previous glory with his rebirth, so if Snape was a traitor the old man would know of his return by know. He needed to move quickly to get Harriet back to Surrey and then break his people out of Azkaban. After that everything could be done from the shadows for a while and the public would go back to believing that everything was normal. Maybe he could even find a subtler way of getting his people out, but he felt so full of energy at the moment he felt like he could take the fortress himself.
He watched Harriet drift off to sleep. She was probably the only person on earth that would dare fall asleep in his presence. He scoffed at himself and stood. She was fine, and he had things to do.
Loving Tom is going to be the death of Harry (not really, don't panic), lol.
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