Notes:
My apologies for the delay! I was working super hard on a couple projects with deadlines, and I didn't really have the chance for a break. I tried to get back to it as fast as I could once those projects were done! I hope you're still interested in reading, even so!
In addition to other things occupying my time, this chapter itself wasn't easy; for some reason, for a good while I had no clue what I'd do for the interrogation scene, add to that to the fact that I picked a very difficult perspective to write for here and it wasn't the easiest XD I hope I ultimately did a good job, and that you guys enjoy it!
Comments are always extremely appreciated! And as always, a huge thank you to those who have commented! (And an extra thank you to Mgielka for your review on the last chapter! I can't dm you, but I'm super honored my fic was your first HP fic, and that you're enjoying it, and think everyone's in character! Your review made me super happy!)
Snape didn't think his day would go like this.
One must keep a sense of preparedness about them, still, he didn't think it remiss for not expecting a day that started with Neville handing him a bottle of goop that would be poison in a better context, would middle with the message that the Chamber of Secrets had opened and a student would be killed, and end with Potter standing in his office with Veritaserum conducting his tongue, telling him said student was dead, and the Dark Lord was back, but without memory, and in the body of his sixteen-year-old self.
And said day wasn't even over yet.
They still had an interrogation to enact—(which would be a lot harder with the aformentioned truth-serumed Potter…Though, to be fair, a lot easier with a mute Potter)—to make sure the missing-memory-claim was unequivocal fact.
He was about to walk into McGonagall's office to see a sixteen-year-old Dark Lord. And he was expected and required to act like the boy was an ordinary student—(though the boy himself probably already knew he wasn't).
The person most feared in the wizarding world, most dangerous, most dark, most hated, who'd killed so many he lost count.
Not the least of which was—
It wouldn't be a problem.
There was a spiteful look in Potter's green eyes as they ventured through the halls.
The silencing charm was proving enjoyable in addition to practical...But the small pleasure he gained from Potter's plight had a fly's life span:
As they approached the door to the office, his grip tightened around the veritaserum in his hand. From a glance out of the corner of his eye he saw Potter had a similar tenseness about him.
He hated this boy, no question…but he'd be a monster if that story didn't incite some form of empathy in him.
—(In another time there was another redhead lying dead on Halloween, killed by the same person. Empathy wasn't a choice.)—
They opened the door, and the sound was like a conversation being snapped in half.
"We're not interrupting, I presume?" Snape's voice carried across the room—(sure they very much were)—calm, as if Dumbledore really was speaking to an ordinary student.
He let his eyes flick from Dumbledore to the boy in the chair in front of him, who had turned to them.
Annoyance may have flared in Potter's eyes, but this boy bought his annoyance from an entirely different factory, one where they manufactured all sorts of other, far more gruesome emotions.
The eyes were brown, and human, but they were an echo—(What's an echo before the real thing sings off the cliff edge?)—of the red ones he'd later possess. Red sitting behind the brown, like adult teeth in the skull behind the baby's, ready to force childhood out bloody, for something as worthless as a couple coins.
"Thank you for coming, Severus."
"Of course. I wouldn't miss it for the world," he sneered as he stepped to Dumbledore's side to face the boy once more, setting the bottle of mead in front of Dumbledore.
He knew he'd be young, but a hex wasn't entirely out of the question. Seeing this, this thing that once murdered thousands without blinking, this thing that shrieked the words of death with a high, cold voice over countless muggles and muggle sympathizers, Muggle-Borns, and even some Purebloods, and whose eyes held no form of remorse, or sympathy …sitting before him, young and handsome, and perhaps even human—
His left arm itched.
"Well, unless anyone can offer a viable reason to continue dilly dallying, I suggest we begin." Dumbledore spoke pleasantly, after pouring himself a glass of mead.
Snape glided over to the boy and held up the Veritaserum.
"Do you have any idea what this is?"
The boy's eyes flicked from the bottle to Snape wordlessly, and his mouth only twitched a little. Odds are it physically pained him to admit he didn't know something.
A smirk tugged at Snape's lip.
"I presume you are aware that if you don't wish to drink it willingly," Snape spoke, setting it on the desk in front of him, "we have several methods of making sure you do so unwillingly."
The boy raised an eyebrow. "Will you at least have the courtesy to tell me what it is first?"
"It is truth serum," Dumbledore answered. "If you truly don't remember anything, and have nothing to hide, it will prove to us you are indeed telling the truth. It will not do much, other than allow us to ask you a few questions about what happened earlier in the Chamber of Secrets."
The boy scoffed. "You hear one of your students has lost his memory, and the first thing you do is refuse to believe him?"
"The situation is more complex than you are currently aware of, Tom," Dumbledore spoke gently. "Knowing for certain the truth—as is so often the case—will simply help us avoid any further complexities."
The boy sighed, reached forward, grabbed the bottle, hesitated, and drank the potion. (Snape supposed this was easier, though he also thought he would have rather enjoyed forcing it down his throat).
"Yes. Would you mind filling us in the details of what happened in the Chamber?" Dumbledore asked, still pleasant.
The boy reluctantly and almost bored-ly detailed his waking up in the Chamber without memory to see Potter crying over the dead Ginny, about how they exchanged words, how they got out…nothing that would betray the idea that he had lost his memory.
"Thank you for telling us that." Dumbledore replied simply when he was finished—though something flickered behind his eyes when he spoke of Ginny.
Potter fidgeted in the back of the room, and likely would have asked why he had to stay if he could. The boy was about to speak up, but Dumbledore asked before he could:
"Are you certain you remember nothing prior to that?"
"Did I not just explain to you how I didn't?"
"Yes. I am simply trying to discern if there's anything buried in your mind that might show itself with questioning.
Do you remember your name?"
"I know my name is Tom Marvolo Riddle,"—the words made his face twitch— "but, I already told you, that's only because Harry told me."
"Do you remember your parents names?"
The boy didn't reply.
"Do you recall any...friends?"
Nothing.
"What about our names?"
"Once again, I don't remember your names. But yours, Harry's, and my names all make me feel..." He tried and failed to bite back the word: "angry."
"Angry." Dumbledore blinked. "Now that is interesting. Anything else of note?"
"I—" He winced, looking away. "Hatred," he said softly.
"You mean you feel hatred at the sound of our names? I'm sorry you feel that way. I don't imagine that's very pleasant. This is helpful information, nevertheless. This hatred does not come with any concrete memories?"
"No." He sat up straighter. It clearly pained him to admit the information, but once he did, curiosity seemed to overtake him: "Why do I hate you? And Harry? And...me?"
"I don't think you truly hate any of us, least of all yourself. But I imagine you were not overly fond of us in the past."
"Why?"
"I would like to phrase this delicately…" Dumbledore continued. "In your time here, you could be a bit of a…a bully. This is of course why Harry here isn't particularly fond of you either. He has been subject to your bullying on more occasions than one. Isn't that right, Harry?"
Potter froze, as if surprised they asked him a question, then nodded.
"Harry and I were two rather large roadblocks in your path of bullying."
The boy paused. "…Why did I bully him?"
"Troubled home life, perhaps? As difficult as it may be to believe, you did not divulge the contents of your personal life to us. But I imagine you were dealing with quite a bit of internal strife to take it out on your fellow students. I do hope you will choose a different path in this...new life you have been given, so to speak."
The boy tapped his fingers on the armrest. "…What are you going to tell my family?"
"Your family?" His eyebrows raised. "About what?"
"About the fact that I don't remember them."
"Oh. Well, in that sense you are both particularly lucky, and particularly unlucky, in that your family is dead."
"Dead?" He blinked.
"Dead."
The boy paused, his gaze falling to the ground as he thought. "So where is my home?"
"I think, perhaps, Hogwarts was more home to you than anywhere else."
"...Where will I go, then?"
"Go?"
"When I'm not at this school. You yourself said you might not let me back. If I have no home but here...where else can I go?"
"That's a good question. I suppose that is what we will have to discuss over the next few days."
A look of surprise crossed Potter's face, as if he hadn't realized the sixteen-year-old Dark Lord would be any sort of permanent fixture.
To tell the truth the thought was rather jarring, but Snape hadn't ruled out disposing of him just yet.
"What about my friends?" the boy asked.
There was a small indication of surprise in Dumbledore's eyes at the question, but it faded quickly as he answered. "It pains me to inform you that—to my knowledge at least—you did not have any. I had hoped my earlier question would prove this wrong but...alas."
The boy raised an eyebrow. "None?"
"None of whom I'm aware."
The boy looked down at his hands in his lap, as if pondering.
"Does that sadden you?" Dumbledore asked softly.
"Sadden—?" He paused. "I'm not sure, exactly. ...I don't know if 'sad' is the right word."
Dumbledore nodded. "Such a potion cannot always help discern the truth of one's emotions. That is, if they do not know them themselves.
Dumbledore continued to ask several more questions about the boy's life and memories, with no more luck than before.
After apparently exhausting his list, Dumbledore's gaze flicked to Snape, a meaningful glint lighting upon his eyes as he asked: "Severus, do you have any more questions?"
"You are completely certain you don't remember anything prior to a few hours ago?" Snape asked.
Imperceptibly, Snape flicked his wand at his side.
"Do I really have to keep repeating myself?"
Scenes flashed before Snape's eyes. A darkened chamber, a tattered diary, a sword, a phoenix, a boy crying, a dead girl, red hair like flames on the stones—
The boy blinked, shook his head. "What was that?!"
"To what are you referring?" Dumbledore asked.
"That—That—Those visions!"
"Merely a side effect of the potion." Dumbledore answered as if they were having a conversation over afternoon tea. "Nothing to worry about. Please, proceed."
"I said I don't remember anything!" His temper was rising.
Snape tried again, and more of the same scenes that they had already described flashed by.
After exiting the memory, there was something wild and fiery in the boy's eyes, darting between the two of them.
"Is that all the information you need?! May I leave now?" He shot up.
"Class has not been dismissed, Tom." Snape spoke, stepping over to him, placing a hand on his chin, forcing him to look up at him.
"You said so yourself. Where would you go?" He whispered. "Would you wander the halls like a lost, little boy without his mommy?"
Tom's eyes flashed, and Snape would have swore he saw something red there.
Another flick, behind his back, and this time he concentrated very hard at breaking past the scene only an hour earlier.
It was as if he hit a wall in the boy's mind. Snape never thought of people's minds as books to be perused by any passerby, but the harder he tried to break through, the more the boy's mind looked like the ripped pages of a book too old to hold itself together. Like walking into a dream where the dreamer stopped imagining the world, so reality just…tapered off. The world in his mind, ripped, hazy, rotted and congealed.
Tom grimaced, a slight hiss escaping his throat. His patience was wearing thing.
Snape tried his luck just once more, attempting very hard to break past the shards of his memories. It appeared like nothing more than yellowing pages—
Then he saw something.
Wall was the more apt descriptor after all. More than that, it was like a thick pane of ice through which all the prehistoric creatures behind it could only be seen blurry and discolored. Reality may not taper off into a void, perhaps it only seemed that way from afar.
There was something trapped in that ice indeed. He could see something small. The red—or was it orange?—blotch on it was the most noticeable, but there were other blocks of color there too, both dark and light. He tried to get closer, as if to put his hand to that ice, or else try to crack it. He swore he saw the thing make a small motion towards him too—
He came back to reality. Though he wanted to keep trying until he discerned what that thing was, he knew from the look in the boy's eyes he knew had pushed his luck, and the boys limits, enough.
"That concludes my questions." Snape pocketed his wand and turned to Dumbledore.
"Finally," the boy muttered beneath his breath, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"What about you, Harry?" Dumbledore asked gently. "Anything to ask?"
Potter glanced between the two of them, surprised his opinion was of any worth in this situation—(and, if he was frank, Snape wasn't altogether sure it was).
"I think you'll find Potter is disinclined to speak for the next few moments." Snape tried not to smirk.
Dumbledore looked over his half-moon spectacles at him.
