Perhaps it had finally been too long. Too many years spent floating in isolation alongside the alien intelligence of the diadem. Too many an hour upon undifferentiated hour reaching out with every shred of his consciousness for someone to communicate with, for any hint of human magic, and finding neither. Too long an interminable, disembodied age without even the touch of his own soul to sustain him. He had never been one to crave company, preferring his own above that of any other, but being condemned to this splintered existence had changed many things.
Including, apparently, his level of sanity, because the only explanation for this entire affair was that it had been too long, and he had finally gone mad.
The alternative, that the tale he'd just been told could have any semblance of truth to it, was ludicrous. Everything the boy had said was beyond belief, beyond imagining.
"You," he repeated slowly. "A scrawny thing with no extraordinary magical talent. Escaped the greatest wizard of all time with nothing but a scar, while he himself was destroyed. When you were an infant." Said scrawny thing gave an obscenely unconcerned shrug.
"You know, I think that's exactly what you said to me the first time we had this conversation? Yeah, I did, and yeah, he was. For a while, anyway. You did come back. He, rather. Took him nearly fourteen years, but he's just managed it last summer. That's why I need to practice fighting you, you see, because he won't rest until he's finally killed me. Even the Order seems sure of it. And he's found a way past my mother's protection—that's what got him the first time, my mother's love when she sacrificed herself for me. That's what you and Dumbledore say anyway. I mean, he. This is bloody confusing."
Vol—no, To—well. He was forced to agree. He had the feeling he was missing a significant amount of relevant information, but even so, his mind staggered from thought to thought unable to make sense of disparate details he would normally have no trouble grasping. Unsure if he could even make sense of himself. Perhaps he was still recovering his equilibrium after being so abruptly and unexpectedly manifested. One moment, there was only unending darkness and solitude, and the next, this strange bare room and even stranger boy.
He had not expected his Self to leave him here for so very long a time. Perhaps that was foolish of him, thinking on it now. But they had kept the locket close, the ring and the cup; they had even spent time writing to their childish aspect in the diary now and again. When the ritual for the diadem was complete and he found himself awakened within it, he had anticipated a similarly close relationship with his originator. And for a while, that is what he'd had. Then he was taken to Hogwarts, and fine, that made a certain sort of sense. Hogwarts was unquestionably a safe place, the safest they'd ever known. If his Self had come to teach here as they had planned, the castle might even have been secure enough to allow the horcruxes to be away from the guardianship of the main soul.
But his Self must not have achieved the Defense position, or He would surely have visited this hiding place, would He not? So why then had he been left here alone? Were the other pieces of soul kept close while he'd been exiled, or were they similarly banished?
These thoughts had plagued him as he drifted in the nothingness that was his existence in the diadem, though it was hard to grasp them for very long when he lacked the boundaries and structures of a true mind or the body to hold one. It was a sort of torture, the wondering and the waiting; so distant from the glory and triumph he had labored after before he was reduced to this shadowed parody of life. Why should his Self have such things, when he did not? Currents of resentment and desperation swept him up in turn. Sometimes he felt certain that when his Self returned, he would kill Him. Other times, he suspected he would do anything, promise anything, to be close with Him again. His every wisp of thought had begun to revolve around what might occur when at last he was reclaimed.
One outcome, though, he had not considered. Sure as he was that the secret of this vanishing room was known only to them, he had never thought, never imagined, that someone would call him forth who was not his Self—or even that they could. He had no plan prepared for this.
His instinct, of course, was to kill the boy and leave this prison at once… but he could not. That chilled him to the bone—or did he have bones, soul projection that he was? He had magic, of course, could feel his power blazing within him as it had all his life. Becoming a horcrux could not take that from him. That he held no wand should not have stopped him, had not stopped him since he was a schoolboy like Potter, in fact. But when he'd crept close and raised his hand to blast the whelp away from the door, the magic had sputtered and faded in his palm, sparking invisibly over the skin with no effect. He'd tried again during Potter's garbled recitation, this time with a probe of Legilimency, only to meet with similar results. What caused the issue, he did not know, nor could he spare a thought for the solution when still faced with the immediate issue of Harry Potter's presence and what it meant.
He studied the messy-haired runt before him, trying to parse his half-baked and insulting tale of attempted infanticide. Potter: the name was only vaguely familiar. His Self before the split had no interest in the Potter line one way or another; an old pureblood family, but one of no political sway and a history of sympathy for Muggles. Consisting in its entirety of a retired older couple who lived in the country with a young son not yet Hogwarts age when last he was a part of the world. Their sphere of import had been purely commercial—hair potions, wasn't it?
But the boy before him spoke ignorantly and wonderingly of magic as no pureblood scion ever would. And it must be decades, now, that he'd spent here locked in the diadem. So, this could not be that child who'd lived with elderly parents in the countryside—was it his son? His grandson? How long had the diadem been left to languish here in Hogwarts?
More pertinently, what could possibly have happened to raise this utter nobody to the personal attention of a Dark Lord as powerful as his Self must certainly have become since they'd parted from each other, when by rights such a child should be no more to him than dirt under his shoe?
A sense of kinship with his Self surged within him then, overcoming for the moment the confusion and pain and doubt of his shapeless days. He was Lord Voldemort, of course he was, a fragment that belonged to a whole. Lord Voldemort's goals were his own, surely, even now. He must learn what they were and work to further and pursue them.
It seemed not killing the boy had been for the best, as it now presented a beautiful opportunity. It would likely prove unwise to venture forth from this place before understanding the nature of what he would face beyond it and how things stood for the Dark Lord, particularly since the child's brazen claims indicated that all had not passed as it should over the last several decades. Luckily, it seemed Potter would happily fill him in on both the years he had missed and the movements of Voldemort's enemies. Despite a token physical wariness, Potter dribbled forth information like a sieve leaked water. Already he had made references to Dumbledore's private thoughts, described the old man's secret Order and given a sampling of its membership, had even hazarded guesses as to the plans of his Self with a thoughtless surety that spoke of true insight—or at least a personal belief in it, since the child's assessment of his Self's priorities was clearly not entirely accurate. (After all, if Lord Voldemort wanted him dead first and foremost, he would already be dead; that much could not have changed during his sojourn here.) While his stories might not all be true, it would only take some careful listening to separate the wheat of useful information from the chaff of Dumbledorian propaganda and delusions of grandeur on the part of the teller.
So yes, he might be bound for the moment, to this boy and to his purpose, but he would take as much advantage as he could. And he would not remain bound forever. With glee, he realized that training him was in fact the perfect cover—he ought to thank the boy for making it so easy. It gave them every reason to discuss Potter's weaknesses, and those of Dumbledore and his allies, in great depth. By the time he reunited with his Self, he would know all there was to know about what was doubtlessly a pitiful opposition. The existing level of knowledge of Lord Voldemort the boy had hinted at meant any advice he gave would have to be at least somewhat useful, else he would be discounted as obviously lying and unhelpful and Potter would stop coming. But really, that hardly mattered. It was true, what he'd said before: the best teacher in the world would give this child no hope against the greatest sorcerer to ever live. He could afford to be gracious.
Therefore, it was time to ingratiate himself to Potter and make up for his previous resistance and scepticality. He would become the boy's tutor on the subject of the Dark Lord, maintaining the charade that he himself was nothing more than a magical imagining. The thought made him want to laugh, but he schooled his face instead into something thoughtful, perhaps a bit impressed.
Potter had grown restless while he'd been lost in contemplation, and was now shifting from foot to foot, tapping his wand against his thigh and glancing about the room. All it took was a small clearing of his throat to bring the boy's gaze snapping back to his own, however. He held back a nod of approval; that was an appropriate level of deference, and could almost make up for the sin of looking away in the first place.
He stared into those disgustingly unguarded eyes and tried Legilimency once again. Nothing; the power fizzled out before it left his own mind, unable to reach across the space between them to touch the boy's. No matter. He did not need to know the insignificant details of the boy's thoughts to endear himself to him. Lord Voldemort had always been able to charm the people he needed.
He gave Potter a broad, admiring smile.
"You must be quite the warrior, to be so determined to take on the Dark Lord yourself. There's no doubt you're a true Gryffindor. I must admit myself impressed. There may be something I can teach you after all." Deciding the boy really was a true Gryffindor and therefore subtlety would be lost on him, he even reached out a hand as if he'd like to shake on their new partnership.
The teen's response was not what he had expected. All the tension that had slowly drained from him as he told his story came rushing back in an instant, until he was nearly vibrating with it. Far from seeming flattered, Potter looked ready to flee, or perhaps fire off a hex.
"Don't do that," he practically snarled, raising the wand he'd previously allowed to sag in his grip.
"Do what, Harry?" He eyed the boy's wand and considered grabbing for it, but decided he would likely only have one chance at that and it was still better to wait; the situation wasn't unrecoverable yet. He took a conciliatory step back instead.
"Well, don't call me Harry, to start. But don't pretend to be nice either. I've been here before Riddle—I know what you are. Your act won't work on me."
"What act?" he murmured, with a calculated widening of his eyes and carefully earnest tone. "I really do think—"
"The perfect prefect, here to help you, definitely-a-good-person act!" Potter cried. "I'm not a little kid anymore, to fall for that sort of thing. You're Voldemort. Do you think I'm some sort of idiot? That if you put on a friendly voice, I'll just forget? That I won't notice the look in your eye? No version of you is nice, not even an imaginary one, and we both know it. So don't even pretend." The boy turned away then, fisting a hand in his hair and breathing heavily, though his wand remained steadily pointing at the jewel in the facsimile of the diadem.
Well. This was an annoyance. Even Voldemort's followers preferred the genial veneer to any alternative, and they had all been Crucioed at one time or another. They longed for his smiles, his approving looks, just like his little classmates in Hogwarts had once upon a time. It made them feel important, valuable—just how false it was they never realized, and maybe did not want to. They liked believing in it. There was no real reason it should not work on a child like this, even one who considered himself his enemy. Nonetheless, it seemed he would need to recalibrate. How did he treat someone he did not want to intimidate, but who wanted no part of his charm? Gracious, but he was terribly out of practice.
He considered quickly what course to take next, cursing the rusty edges the years of isolation had left on his mind. But before he had an answer, Potter shook himself all over like a dog and glanced in the direction of his face, though he did not meet his eyes this time.
"You know what? I'd better leave, actually. The feast will be starting soon, and my friends will be looking for me—Halloween and all. Always makes us nervous, after the whole troll thing… anyhow. I'll, uh—right." The boy waved his wand a little, stepped back, and reached for the door.
He was truly leaving? That was unacceptable. He could not be permitted to leave, not without assurances that he would return.
"What about your training? I think I know how I can help you fight Lord Voldemort. Surely that is more urgent than a holiday party?" He resisted the urge to leap forward, and kept his voice smooth and his face open but without undue warmth.
"Oh, right. Er, yeah, I'll—I'll come back another time for that, maybe, shall I? I mean, you're on no schedule, are you?" The boy chuckled nervously. He was fumbling about for the handle now, unwilling to turn his back until the last moment.
He wanted to sneer with disgust at the fact that this bumbler was likely his only chance at escape, but so it was and he would not lose it.
"I have secrets I could tell you, the key to the Dark Lord's psyche. I can tell you what he fears, what he loves, how to trick him. How to counter his favourite spells. Perhaps the spells themselves, if you are powerful enough." Surely that was a lure none could resist.
But the boy only nodded absently, then spun around, having found the ring at last, and threw himself against the door. It began to open, and he felt what might have been a pang of nerves in the stomach of a lesser wizard. He dismissed it. Potter would come back, he knew it—the promise of power and secrets would echo in his mind until the child would doubtlessly be unable to help himself. And when he did, Voldemort would discover the things he wished most to hear, and make sure he heard them. He would entice him to return again and again, to turn to him, to trust him.
When at last he'd learned all he could, had plumbed the well of information dry, he would guide Potter to the diadem—and where was the true diadem? Why was the Room so empty? No matter, he would find it. And when the brat donned it, he would have him, mind, wand, and soul.
Whatever the truth of his history with Lord Voldemort, the Potter child would die then; for his disrespect and shameful foolishness if nothing else. And he himself would at last be free. He would rejoin his Self so that they might work together to bring the world to its knees, as Lord Voldemort was always destined to do. He felt tempted to smile, but refrained lest the boy look over his shoulder as he left and catch sight of the expression. It was an unnecessary precaution; Potter went striding out without a backwards glance.
The door slid home with a click and he—