Disclaimer:  J.K.Rowling owns the Harry Potter world.  Sigmund Freud owns himself. 

Chapter the Second:  In Which Voldemort Meets Dr Freud, and Learns All About… Cigars.

Sometimes a Wand is Just a Wand…

There have been many theories, over the years, as to how environment and genes influence childhood development.  There are tales told of twins separated from birth; one to an impoverished life where he is beaten and starved, the other to a luxurious and caring environment.  One became an axe murderer, the other a politician.  Such different circumstances… why did both go wrong?

How did Tom Marvalo Riddle change from a handsome, likeable Head Boy into the psychopathic Lord Voldemort?

Many questions could be asked concerning that individual.  Yet, Doctor Sigmund Freud reflected, as he glanced nervously at the wizard reclining on his couch, he for one would not like to learn the answers.  There are some things that are better not known.  Some lives simply should not be delved into.

"So…" he said.

"Yes?"  Voldemort sat up.

"So… well… how is it that you find yourself here?"

The Dark Lord shrugged.  "I killed my last psychiatrist, and Mother said that I had to get another one.  She said you were the most famous psychiatrist in the world, so I used a timeturner to travel eighty years into the past, and then I Apparated into your waiting room."

"No, I mean, why have you come here?"  Freud said, in-between scribbling down: …mother… time travel… 'Apparate'… hallucinations?…

Voldemort gave his psychiatrist a particularly evil glare.  "My mother told me I had to."

"Ah.  And, er, why is that?" After all, when a strange man with red eyes appears in your office and threatens the secretary with a wand for chewing gum… well, that just screams sanity, doesn't it?

"Mother says I have 'unresolved issues' and need to confront them to grow as a person."

"Really?  What sort of issues?"

"She thinks the lack of a stable father-figure has led me to indulge in aggressive and reclusive behaviour."

"Well, er.." Freud glanced at the paper in his hand.  "…Tommy?"

The red eyes burned with an evil glow.  "Tommy?  TOMMY?"

"That's what's written here!"

Voldemort whipped out his wand and burned the paper to ashes.  "You shall address me as 'my Lord Voldemort'.  Understand?"

The doctor stared transfixed.  "Perfectly!"

"Good."  The diabolical flash in the eyes faded to normal… as normal as red eyes could be.

Freud took the opportunity to scribble down some notes.  Dominating mother… delusions of grandeur…'wand' fixation …

"So, ah, my Lord, why don't you tell me about your childhood?"

"I grew up in an orphanage."

"Ah.  How did that make you feel?"

Voldemort gave the psychiatrist a puzzled look.  "Like an orphan."

"But you are not an orphan…?  Your mother is obviously still alive."

"I'm half an orphan.  My father's dead."

"How did he die?"

"I killed him."

"Oh.  And, ah, how did that make you feel?  Guilty?  Angry?  Sad?"

"Um... tired."

"Tired?  World-weary, you mean?  Regretful?"

"No, tired.  It was the first time I ever used the killing curse.  It took a lot out of me."

"I see.  Well, Lord Voldemort, since you don't have any feelings of remorse you'd like to discuss…" 

"No."

"…ah, perhaps we should talk about the orphanage instead?  How were you treated there?"

"Like a freak."

"Really?  How odd," said the doctor, against all the evidence.  "Why was that, do you think?"

"Well… one summer, the other orphans saw me practice flying my broomstick."

"Flying your broomstick?" The bushy eyebrows shot up an inch.

"Yes.  My broomstick was nothing special… a bit small, rough, bristly… but it was all I had.  I blame my father for not having a better one, like the other boys at Hogwarts."

"And what was your father's, er, broomstick, like?"

"The bloody Muggle didn't have one, of course!"

"Ah," said Dr Freud, scribbling down notes madly and determining to look up 'Muggle' as soon as he had the chance.  Probably another word for 'eunuch', he supposed.  "So the other boys at the orphanage picked on you?"

"Yes.  They already knew I was different.  Not just because of my broomstick, but because one of them saw me talking to a house elf once."

"Elf?  You mean like… a fairy?"  Freud inquired.

"Similar, I suppose."

Again the notepad came out.  Embarrassed about 'broomstick'… grew up in entirely male environment… was friends with, quote, 'elves' …

"And how did the adults at the orphanage treat you?"

"They didn't like me much either.  They thought I was subversive and evil."

"Really?  Any particular reason?"

"Well…" Voldemort said, stroking his bone-white chin… "Brother Lawrence was very angry when he caught me playing with my pet snake."

"I see."  Freud's expression grew very serious.  "Did Brother Lawrence ever play with your… pet snake… too?"

Voldemort snorted.  "Of course not!  He said that all snakes were the instruments of Satan.  He would never have touched one."

"Ah."  Freud devoted himself to scribbling down notes. 

Voldemort tapped the back of the couch impatiently.  "Can we hurry things up a little, please?  Mother says I'm not allowed to leave until I've been diagnosed."

"Of course, of course," Freud said, relieved at the thought of his patient's departure.  "Well, ah, my Lord, let's go back to your father.  I sense that you still feel a lot of resentment towards him."

"What's there to say about him?  He was a Muggle bastard, he abandoned my mother, I tracked him down and killed him."

"Right, fair enough.  So you were taking revenge on him for the way he treated your mother?"

"Yes."

"And your mother?  How did she feel about your father's death?  Are you the one who told her?"

"Yes, I sent her a letter just after I did it.  I wrote it with my father's favourite fountain pen."

"His pen?" A few notes were scribbled down.  "Dear me, writing to the mother with the father's pen…"  Freud circled 'pen' and linked it to 'wand', 'broomstick', and 'pet snake'.  There was a trend here, he was sure.

"So?  Is that it?  Can you diagnose me now?" Voldemort said impatiently.

"Almost.  I'd like to do a word-association exercise with you first.  Just say the first thing that comes into your mind:  "Mother?"

"Son."

"Wand?"

"Weapon."

"Snake?"

"Friend."

"Ahem.  Muggle?"

"Kill."

"Right, well, enough of that.  Last thing, then you can go."  That seemed to be a source of relief to both parties.  "Describe to me your standard day?"

"Well… I wake up and play with my snake- Nagini.  Then I talk to mother over breakfast, before flying my broomstick.  She usually watches me."

"Ai!"  Freud exclaimed, his eyebrows climbing to his hairline.   "Ahem.  I mean, do go on."

"Then I might go and torture some Muggles for a bit before lunch.  It's a good way of working up an appetite."

Muggles?  That's right…  …Strong dislike of eunuchs… Freud wrote.

"After lunch, mother and I will have a chat.  Then I'll call a Death Eater meeting before dinner.  Mother and I will have dinner together, and then she'll go to bed, and I'll go meet my Death Eaters."

"Death Eaters?  And they are…?"
"My followers.  To a man, they are loyal to me alone."

…'To a man'… Freud noted.  "So I suppose all of you have… wands, correct?"

"Yes.  We usually get good use out of them too."

"Ai!"

"Yes, nothing like a spot of Muggle torture after supper.  Then after we've tortured them to death, we leave their bodies under a Dark Mark."

"A Dark Mark?"

"Basically a giant snake."

"Ah.  Well, my lord Voldemort, that's quite enough."

"You're ready to diagnose me, then?"

"Yes.  Quite.  I believe you are a psychopath.  And suffering from severe sexual repression.  And an Oedipus complex."

"Pardon?"

"Practically a textbook definition of each.  Once I've written the textbooks, that is."

"Oedipus complex?"

"It's this Greek man who killed his father and married his mother…"

"I know the classics.  And I am not-"

"I really must thank you.  As disturbing as this session has been, it has certainly given me some fascinating case evidence for my research."

"And sexually suppressed?  What by Merlin do you mean by that?"

"Lord Voldemort, it is quite clear that you are homosexual.  Gayer than a circus of clowns on laughing gas.  Open-and-shut case, very useful for my books."

"Merlin's testicles!"

"Oh dear," Freud said, scribbling another note down.

"Stop writing!  Let me see that!"  Voldemort snatched Freud's notes.  He scanned through them.   "You've just written down things I've said!"

"Y-e-s?"

"So how did you decide that I was homosexual and wanted to marry my mother from that?"

"My dear lord Voldemort, the psychiatrist's profession is complex, and my methods of diagnosis would be far too intricate to explain…"  Freud trailed off.  Voldemort had a particularly nasty look in his eyes, and Freud suddenly remembered that his patient hadn't felt it all necessary to dispute the charge of 'psychopath'.  "It's just… you made all those comments.  About wands.  And broomsticks.  And snakes.  And pens.  And 'elves'."

Voldemort's expression did not change, but without a word he stood up and left the room.  In a blink of an eye he had returned.

"This is a House Elf," he said, pushing forward a pathetic little creature with a nose of a size that made Freud's eyes water.  The creature was holding a long length of wood.  "And this is a broomstick," the Dark Lord said. 

A hiss was suddenly heard in the neighbouring room, followed by "Help, help!  Good snake… stay back… no!  no! aaaaarrrggghhh!"  And a crunch.  "That would be Nagini, my snake," Voldemort said.  "I think she just ate your receptionist."

"Well," Freud said, backing away from his patient, "I may have been just a little premature in my diagnosis…"

"Yes."  The red eyes were fixed upon him.  "And do not forget this-" a slender length of polished wood was whipped out "-my wand.  Avada Kedavra!"   

Freud's pet budgie fell off its perch.

Freud gulped.  The wand was now being pointed at him.  "Ah.  Well, taking this new evidence into account, we'll just forget the sexual suppression and Oedipus complex?"

"I think so."

"So we'll leave the diagnosis as 'Your son is a dangerous, psychopathic criminal?"

Voldemort smiled happily.  "Mother will be so proud."

"I'll just write up my report then," the good Doctor said, doing just that.  This case had certainly been an eye-opener.  His eyebrows had almost shot right off his head.

Voldemort paced around the office as he waited, examining Freud's credentials, and flipping through a thesis on the significance of phallic metaphors.

"Finished," Freud said, handing his patient a piece of paper.

"Thank you.  All done then?"

"Yes."

"Do I require treatment?" the Dark Lord asked suspiciously.

"No.  Oh no.  It is my professional opinion that you are completely untreatable."

"Good."  Voldemort paused for a moment, looking at the thesis in his hand.  "You know, sometimes a wand is just a wand."

"Really?  Dear me.  Cigar?"

Voldemort took one suspiciously, wary of any associations his phallic-fixated psychiatrist might make.  "And sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

"I'll have to remember that one," Freud replied.

~fin~

Thank you to everyone who read and enjoyed my first chapter.  Extra thanks (with hugs and smiles) to those who reviewed.

And now for The Pigeon Poem… 

Pigeons are birds that are really quite twisted

Their many oddities are bird-lover-listed

A lesser known fact's that they're quite the connoisseurs

Yes, pigeons are sculptured art appreciators.

And when they enjoy, the let the world know

Through a gift left behind on the head, heel or toe

But you, O reader, are of the human race

So if you enjoyed, well then please grace

The box below with a sentence or two

Come, Dearest Reader, please leave a review!