The Body (Pt. II)

by Philip Kent

The celebrations in the Great Hall were just a memory here. Here, at the far end of the Recluse Room where Harry sat next to the dead body of his nemesis, nothing penetrated the thick oak door and stone columns. The room was filled with the silence that only the dead can make; a nothingness, still and unnatural.

For the first time Harry was able to study Voldemort's features minutely; despite his face haunting his nightmares since childhood and coming face-to-face with him on multiple occasions, he had never before had cause to really look at him. His red eyes glistened dully in the torchlight. His mouth lay agape, revealing a row of blackened, odd-shaped teeth and a dark, oily tongue. His skin had the look of snakeskin stretched over marble; translucent and pearly. What must he have done, Harry thought to himself, to have annihilated his soul and deformed his looks so completely?

"Dumbledore always told me," Harry began, his throat dry as he forced his lips to move, "that the reason you could never be truly all-powerful was because there was too much you just didn't understand. Like love," he said, leaning back against the cold stone wall. "When you possessed me back in the Ministry of Magic, I could feel how much it hurt you. And I could feel you, too, you felt so…damaged," he breathed, shaking his head as he remembered the sensation.

"And then I saw you," he went on, "in King's Cross, with Dumbledore. It took me a while to realise what you were. I just felt like I should…help you," he said bitterly, his words loaded with spite. "Even after I realised, I still wanted to help you," he spat through grit teeth, his fist clenching with frustration at his own sensitivity. "I don't know if you…heard us, or felt us, or if you remembered anything from that, but I saw you. I saw what kind of a soul you'd left for yourself." Harry breathed steadily. "I told you back then, back in the Ministry, that I pitied you," he told the corpse, turning his head to look it in its unblinking eye. "I still do," He added a little sadly. "More, I think. I pity you for not having the wisdom to turn back when there was still a chance…or to take my offer," he mumbled, burying his forehead in his hand, remembering the offer he had made Voldemort just seconds before his death.

Try…try for some remorse…be a man… He'd taunted Voldemort as they stalked each other in the Great Hall. There is one way... He heard Hermione tell him from a lifetime away. There is one way someone with a shattered soul might mend themselves. Remorse...you've got to really feel sorry for what you've done...

I've seen what you'll be otherwise…this is your only hope… But he just hadn't listened. Tom Riddle, Voldemort, the Dark Lord; ever the wisest and greatest of wizards. What could Potter have known about what lay beyond; what could he have told the great Voldemort, he who had conquered death?

Harry pulled his knees up under his chin as tears began to drip down his dusty cheeks. His anger swelled and threatened to burst inside him; why was he crying? Was it self-pity? Was it pity for Voldemort? Emotion ran unchecked through his body as he pushed his glasses up his face, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Why did you have to do this?" Harry asked, almost petulantly, through tears. "Why? You were clever - you were more than that, you were brilliant! You could have been every bit as famous and loved as Dumbledore, you could have done so much!" Harry barked, his voice bouncing off the stone walls. This was an entirely new sensation; as he looked down at Voldemort Harry could, for the first time, begin to make out beneath the ghostly visage the thunder-faced child he had once watched a younger Albus Dumbledore rescue from a Muggle orphanage.

"You were never alone, you know," he whispered, his voice regaining his strength as he wiped away a tear and went on. "You always thought you were so alone, so…isolated, but you weren't. Dumbledore was always there; he never gave up on you. Wasn't that enough for you? Or were you just incapable of feeling love from the beginning?" He shot the last words like an accusation, his eyes tearing away from Voldemort's as he realised he wasn't going to get a rebuttal. He suddenly recalled what Dumbledore had said to him in his Pensieve last year; how Riddle's mother had seduced his father, Tom Riddle Sr., with Amortentia, only for him to abandon his pregnant wife when the potion had worn off. As the product of such a one-sided, twisted love, how could Voldemort ever hope to understand what love truly meant?

Harry still bristled and burned with anger for Voldemort, but another, less welcome sensation crept its way up his throat as he began to look past the serpentine face. A real sense of despair, of hopeless loss for the man Riddle could have been. As Harry's green eyes glanced sideways to look at Voldemort again he could almost see the handsome nose he'd seen on him as a younger man, dark brown eyes fade in to replace the inhuman red slits and his bone-white flesh inflating to become pink, wrinkled skin, every line telling the story of a year.

This wasn't Voldemort. This was Tom Marvolo Riddle, Jr.; last living descendent of Salazar Slytherin. Prefect, Head Boy, Head of Slytherin House and Professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Former protégée and now dear friend to Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, and trusted teacher and confidant to James Potter, Remus Lupin, Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew, and their friends Lily Evans and Severus Snape. And in time their children would know him too, and he would teach Harry Potter how to cast a Patronus, as much a part of the school as the stones in the walls or the ghosts that roamed the corridors endlessly.

Harry roared as he slammed a fist down on Voldemort's chest, sending his limbs jerking eerily. "Why did you - become - this?" He yelled in the grip of a fury he had never felt before, his fists crashing into the dead wizard's ribs, hearing them snap sickly beneath his pounding before gripping his robes and pulling him up to face him. "WHY DID YOU TAKE THEM AWAY FROM ME!" He bellowed into Voldemort's ear, his voice becoming a hoarse, strained whisper as flecks of spittle stained the dark robe in his hands. Burying his face into the fabric Harry roared again, muffled, as he shook Voldemort's body violently. "W-why," was all he could eke out as his breath gave out, the black fabric becoming soaked through as he wept into it.

The two stayed locked together, as they had in life, while Harry's body shook and he hurled every foul name and curse he could muster, Wizarding and Muggle, at his parents' murderer, dead in his arms. After what seemed like an age Harry exhaled, feeling the last of eighteen years' worth of rage finally leave his body. His arms went slack and he tumbled backwards, sitting back down gracelessly as Voldemort's body slipped back to the floor with a heavy thump. Once more sitting on his own, Harry removed his glasses and wiped his eyes, as red and bleary as his old enemy's.

"You killed my mum and dad. I can't forgive you," he blurted out, suddenly uncomfortable at the absurdity of talking to a corpse. "And no matter what you'd say, I don't think Dumbledore would 'want' me to, either." He shifted his position to kneel more stably at Voldemort's head, before continuing, "But, for what it's worth…I'm sorry." He stretched out his hand and closed the dark wizard's eyelids and mouth respectfully, absent-mindedly smoothing out the stained creases he'd formed with his grip. Slowly he got to his feet and backed away from the body, never tearing his eyes from it.

"You're right," came a familiar soft Scotch brogue, cracked and whispering. "He would never have asked that of you."

Harry didn't even bother to turn around. It seemed Professor McGonagall had always had his back, in some form or another. "What's going to happen to him, Professor?" He mumbled, nursing a hollowness greater than any Dementor could hope to inflict.

"Ministry officials will be here any moment," McGonagall replied, her voice slowly regaining the same sense of delicate authority Harry had come to expect from her. "They say they want his body on display," she told him quietly, stepping forward to place a hand on his shoulder. "To prove he's really dead."

"No," Harry replied instantly, his mind utterly made up on the matter. "Absolutely not." He registered a small twitch of surprise out of the corner of his eye and turned. "That's what he'd do."

McGonagall tightened her lips impatiently, trying to convince Harry to come around. "He came back once before, Harry…to those of us who lived through his first reign, let me tell you, that was…" She swallowed slowly before finishing, "unpleasant. And besides, this is an official decree from the very highest level-"

"And who's the Acting Minister for Magic?" Harry asked, waiting for McGonagall to relent. She did; she well knew that Kingsley would very likely grant Harry that one wish in his moment of triumph.

"What would you have them do with him, Harry?" She asked him, leveling her hawk-like gaze at him. "Bury him and raise a temple for whoever will follow him - and they will - to worship at?"

"Bury him in secret," he replied, "somewhere on the grounds. No marker, no headstone. Hogwarts is the only ever place he felt at home," he explained softly, knowing all too well how his former nemesis felt. "And you don't have to worry about him coming back as a ghost…there wasn't enough left of him for that."

McGonagall coughed tersely, clearly none too pleased by the thought of having Voldemort's remains mouldering on Hogwarts property. "Well, Potter, I expect you shall have to bring that up with Mr. Shacklebolt when he arrives," she told him smartly, the air of the teacher having once more settled upon her. Harry knew that she was not-too-subtly telling him it was time to leave.

"I will," he replied, smiling thinly. Silently the two turned and set off back down the room, and Harry came to a stop one last time before Fred, Remus and Tonks. They were just the same as he left them minutes ago. With one final glance to the end of the room where those white feet protruded in the distance, Harry turned and stepped back into the Great Hall, closing the door behind him.

The End