"Avada Kedavra!" A flash of green light, and the woman fell to the ground like her husband before her. Her body lay in front of a crib, inside which sat a baby staring at him. Its green eyes were wide, guileless, and utterly unaware of what had just happened. He stepped closer, red eyes narrowing. This was the one prophecy declared could defeat him? He snorted, casting a regretful glance at the woman. A muggleborn, so his followers would never have accepted her, but intelligent and powerful nonetheless. It was a shame he'd had to kill her. Her husband, less so. Skilled, yes, and moderately powerful, but also arrogant, like so many purebloods, and Dumbledore's blind follower.
He raised his bone-white wand once more and pointed it at the child. The last of the Potter line. Killing this child would eradicate yet another family, but if he did not, the child would, supposedly, eventually kill him instead. What was one more family lost to this war?
"Avada Kedavra."
"Harry! Harry! Oh, please, open your eyes."
A woman's voice. His brows furrowed. It felt like he'd been asleep for ages. Hazy memories of his dreams drifted just out of his reach.
"Harry?"
He opened his eyes, head pounding, and found himself lying on the ground. Cement. Why would he be in a muggle area? He groaned and pushed himself up to sitting, but everything about his body felt wrong, and then a woman - the one he'd been hearing - gasped and flung herself at him, sobbing. She had gray hair and smelled, of all things, of cabbage. If he'd had his wand in hand, he'd have killed her, but even he couldn't cast the Unforgivables without a wand.
The woman pulled back and handed him a wand. Not his, and yet it felt right. He examined it. Holly perhaps? He focused on the woman. She was babbling something or other.
"-thought you'd been Kissed for sure, like your cousin there. I could kill Mundungus! Leaving his post at a time like this-"
Kissed? And was she actually talking to him?
"Hurry, Harry. We need to get you home safe behind the wards, and then I'll contact the Order. They'll need to know what's happened. Honestly, dementors. Here! And your cousin. Well, hardly a loss to society, as I'm sure you'll agree, but still, for one so young..."
"Ma'am," he began, tone polite for the sake of expediency, but she ignored him and began hurrying away, beckoning impatiently when he didn't move. He rubbed his throat. His voice sounded wrong.
Merlin, his hand felt wrong. He stood shakily. The entire body felt off, but now the woman was back, grabbing his hand and dragging him along. He stumbled after her with a curse, and it wasn't long before he was being shoved through the door to a muggle house. The door shut behind him, and he felt the odd tingle of wards. Why should there be wards around a muggle home?
"Dud- oh. You." A thin woman with a pinched face stepped into sight, drying her hands on a towel. With barely another glance, she disappeared into whatever room she'd stepped out from again.
What in Morgana was going on? The woman was almost certainly a muggle, so it wasn't surprising that she didn't recognize him, but after the number of Dark rituals he'd completed, he hardly looked human anymore.
An impressively round man appeared next from some other room. "Stop standing there like an idiot and get up to your room, boy." He followed the woman into the room she'd entered.
Voldemort stood for only a moment longer before stepping toward the stairs. Whatever was going on, he'd rather have time to figure it out without strange muggles popping out every few seconds. The walrus of a man had said to get "up" to his room, so presumably the stairs came first.
At the top, he stopped. There were four doors. One stood ajar and was clearly a toilet, and two looked like perfectly normal doors, but the fourth had all manner of locks and bolts and chains on it, all of them undone at the moment. A sinking feeling started in his gut. There was a cat flap on the door. He stepped into the toilet and looked into the mirror.
Black messy hair and brilliant green eyes stood in front of him. He brushed his fingers against the thin, pale, lightning-bolt shaped scar on his forehead.
"Avada Kedavra."
He knew this face. It may be significantly older, but it belonged to the child. Harry Potter.
He left the bathroom in a daze and turned automatically to the room with the locks. When he entered, his suspicions as to its purpose were confirmed. A broken-down bed with a thin mattress and ratty sheet occupied one corner. The rest of the room was filled with miscellaneous items, all of them broken. The only thing that seemed to get regular use was a desk next to the bed, upon which sat an owl cage. The owl inside hooted softly, studying him. Her feathers ruffled, and she shifted nervously, but when he did nothing more than cross the room and sit on the bed, she settled.
Hedwig.
The name rose from his subconscious, and he frowned. This was the boy's body. Memories were, for the most part, stored within the brain, though the soul could maintain them to some degree for a time. Perhaps he could still access the boy's memories? There was only one way to find out. He laid back and closed his eyes. His Occlumency was in tatters. If it was merely gone, that would be one thing, but the aspect of his mind that accompanied his soul was at odds with the brain he found himself occupying, creating a distorted mindscape full of cracks and warped versions of the shields he should have had.
The memories were there though. How old was the boy now? A teenager for sure. Third year? Fourth? He was scrawny enough, but as Tom Riddle, he was familiar enough with the effects of malnourishment. Harry Potter could well be a fifth or sixth year for all he knew. Luckily, there was an easy enough way to check. He called forth the information, and the mindscape shifted around him until he found it. His fifteenth birthday would be in just a few days.
He spent a few more minutes poking around. It would take ages to review all these memories. He needed a better plan of attack than to just wade through randomly. First off, he needed to know what had happened to him.
Searching for memories of Voldemort brought a disconcerting series of images. A skeletal form rising from a cauldron. "Bow to death." A strange man in a turban. An older Barty Crouch Junior. Peter Pettigrew. The moniker He Who Must Not Be Named.
Voldemort withdrew from his mindscape with a sigh and stared up at the ceiling. He had no memories of his own beyond those from that Halloween. That suggested that the Voldemort in the boy's memories wasn't him, and yet it was undoubtedly the same magic, the same voice, the same eyes and wand and followers… There was no avoiding it. He, the Voldemort possessing Harry Potter's body, was a horcrux. He frowned. He could hardly claim the name Voldemort while there was another, much more convincing Voldemort out there already. He didn't much want to think of himself as Harry Potter either though. He supposed, grudgingly, that the name Tom Riddle was at least somewhat better than Harry Potter.
What had happened to Potter though? Based on the old woman's ramblings, he could make an educated guess. The Dementor's Kiss. It fit. There was no trace of the boy's consciousness within that mindscape, only memories.
A tap at the window and a screech from Hedwig caught his attention. It was an owl. He opened the window and took the offered letter before it flew off.
Harry,
Dementors were sighted in Little Whinging. They Kissed your cousin. Do NOT leave the house, whatever you do.
-Padfoot
He stared at the parchment. Padfoot. An alias, no doubt.
He had no intention of going anywhere until he had a plan, so he crumpled the letter and threw it in the waste bin. After a moment, he peered in and saw that it was filled with crumpled copies of the Daily Prophet and other letters. These would probably be a faster means of getting information on the current situation in Wizarding Britain. He glanced at the owl. Hedwig. "Your master is gone," he said quietly. "I don't believe he will be returning."
The owl stared at him and hooted quietly. Perhaps the boy had had a familiar bond with it, perhaps not. Either way, he had no way of understanding the owl himself or knowing if it understood him. Even so, he had a certain sympathy for familiars, so he tried once more. "I'll be occupying this body for now. I will release you if you'd prefer to leave."
The owl gave him a look and ruffled her feathers once more before tucking her head down and closing her eyes. His lips twitched. "Fine." He settled himself at the desk with the contents of the waste bin and began to read.