/thoughts/
:Parseltongue:
OooOOoooOOOO
"Harry."
"Albus."
Weak twinkles sparked in the corners of Dumbledore's eyes, before he turned serious again. "You have convinced me that you are relatively harmless and probably a child..."
"That's generous of you." Harry muttered sarcastically.
"Harry, stop interrupting the man." Tom scolded as he bounced his adoptive son on one knee. "He's trying to apologize." Tom smirked at his mentor.
Albus sighed theatrically. "If you two are done." The other two waved magnanimously. "Thank you. As I said, you have convinced me to let you back into the school. This was, of course, a somewhat traumatic process..."
/:Where we had to drag him kicking and screaming to our point of view.:/ Voldemort commented, but fortunately, only Harry could hear him. Though the two adults could probably guess some of the content from Harry's snort of amusement and rolling eyes.
Dumbledore ignored him. "It is a process which hopefully the rest of the board will not be subjected to, thus they still have heavy reservations about allowing you back to class."
"But..." Harry started to protest, feeling two hopes die in his chest.
Albus raised one hand in the air, forestalling further comment. "In light of what you have been getting up to recently, they are willing to give it a shot."
Harry grinned, showing his canines like his werewolf friends had taught him. It worked extremely well on the Ministry officials. Especially coming from a child, though most seemed to be becoming immune to that creepiness. Harry wondered sometimes if that would lessen their enjoyment of horror movies in the future, but probably the wizards would not have watched Muggle movies anyway. He tried not to think about it, like he tried not to think about all the other things that he could (or likely should) feel guilty about. It made for a much more peaceful mindscape. Especially consiering the new form of his parasi... Harry felt a flicker of protest... his cohabitant.
"They didn't appreciate our generous offers for modeling for the new fountain?" Harry asked innocently.
"It was certainly a generous offer..." Albus began.
"Harry." Tom sighed. "Let him get to the 'but'."
Harry giggled. "What sort of 'butt'?" He asked, grinning in a less creepy, more mischievous way.
The Headmaster ignored him again. "So to appease everyone, you will be living in Tom's quarters." Dumbledore finished, rather more quickly than usual in order to get it out.
"Woohoo!" Harry jumped off Tom's lap and started jumping about the room.
/:You're not even trying to be dignified anymore.:/ Voldemort sighed.
/Why should I?/
/:So they don't think we are completely immature?:/ Voldemort offered.
/All the better to take over the world, my dear./ Harry replied smugly. He jumped extra high in the air when he felt the surprised delight from the other soul. And then again when the delight turned into a wary caution.
"Harry." Tom groaned, obviously regretting that he had already agreed to this idea.
"This is great." Harry grinned. "I really want to go to school." He stopped and blinked. "Did I really just say that?"
/:Yes.:/
"I'll be damned." Harry smiled sadly, stilling his romp. Of course he was...
/: I see your plan, now.:/ Voldemort mused. /: Bipolar disorder will make people constantly wary in our presence, thus keeping us from world domination...:/
Harry smacked the other soul lightly. It didn't hurt either of them, both because Harry had given up on being masochistic for no real gain in that regard and because he was somewhat relieved. Disturbed... but relieved. It was becoming a fairly common feeling.
"Tom has told me that you have been reading and are caught up. Therefore you will stay with your original class and House, and will therefore be a third year Slytherin." Dumbledore said hurriedly into the contemplative silence. "Classes start Monday."
"Thank you Albus." Tom smiled ruefully as he scooped up his adoptive son and backed out of the office. "I'll see you later at the meeting."
OoooooOOOooO
Harry paced in front of the closed door. He was dressed in his school robes, the Slytherin badge affixed and tie (relatively) straight. "Why am I so nervous?" He asked the air.
/:Because you can't just beat them into submission, kill them, or hex them to silence?;/
"I could..." Harry muttered. "But it is probably not a good idea." He smirked at the raised eyebrow from Voldemort. "Yes, I know that means I am falling to the Dark side and that your evil ways are influencing me. But it's sadly true. Killing is easier."
/:Yes!:/
"But we must work on doing what is right, not what is easy." Harry intoned, managing to keep a straight face for ten seconds before the disgust coming from the other soul made him burst out laughing.
/: Are you feeling better?:/ Voldemort asked sarcastically. Mostly.
Harry didn't point out the potential twinge of concern. He had read books on psychology and behavior modification on his forced long vacation. The Dark Lord had read the same books at the same time, so it was by this point something of a complicated game as to who would train whom. It was fun. Sort of. Harry was pretty sure they were both going a bit mad.
"Let's get out there, I guess."
/: Remember to use singular pronouns.:/ Voldemort smirked.
"Right." Harry said, determinately opening the door to Tom's rooms and hurrying down the corridor. Harry's unexpected burst of nerves had served to make them almost late for the Sorting. He ran at slightly faster than normal speeds toward the Great Hall, squeaking into his seat just before the large doors opened to let in the new first years.
"Hey, Harry!" Jeff smiled at his sort-of-brother.
"Hey." Harry smiled back, feeling grateful for the friendly face. Especially considering the glare he was getting from Marfic on the other side of the table. Not because it was a particularly intimidating look, but he wasn't sure what he could say to the boy, and dueling him was probably a bad idea. /It is pretty pathetic that our combined socialization skills are confined to fighting./
Voldemort shrugged, for once tactful enough to not comment. There was nothing he could say that would not soon devolve into a silent argument. The Dark Lord was directly responsible for Harry's problems, though he was not totally responsible for his own. They had both needed to learn a certain amount of tact to avoid chronic debilitating head/soul-aches from fighting with themselves. They could survive it, of course, but having chronic migranes for eternity appealed to neither of them. At least... not now that Harry had given up on being totally self-sacrificial. After all, the gods were literally working against him.
"So they finally trapped you back at school, then?" Jeff asked, his eyes crinkling in amusement.
"So it seems." Harry replied wryly, looking at the first years and sighing to see that most of them were actually larger than him. They were about half way done being sorted.
"You could take up you campaigning here." Jeff suggested. "Petitions about rights, protests about unfair treatment..."
"We're not bloody animal lovers." Marfic snapped.
"Not even if you could skip all your classes for the protest?" Jeff asked, leaning forward. "We could do it during the double Transfiguration with the Gryffindors."
Marfic looked surprised. "Do you think that would work?"
"Sure. They can't make us go when we are being politically responsible." Jeff gestured emphatically.
/:Slytherin has been good for him.:/ Voldemort commented in approval.
"Don't be an idiot. Letting us skip classes for non-humans? That would never happen." Marfic argued.
"Ah, but aren't you always bemoaning that the teachers are all soft and have no sense of tradition." Jeff rebutted. "And what could possibly be more soft and progressive than non-human rights?" Harry almost snorted- with a different inflection, this was a good argument to give to the progressive members of society.
"Huh." Marfic looked intrigued by the thought.
"Hey, Jeff." Harry whispered. "You want to be one of my speech writers or promotional assistants? You can do summers until you graduate."
"Harry." Jeff whispered back. "I'm not helping you take over the world."
"Not take over! Improve diversity and tolerance!" Harry protested in a fierce, almost Parseltongue whisper.
Jeff gave him a sidelong look that showed the two-souled boy that he was not going to fool his young friend. "Uh huh." He humored Harry. "I'm only arguing for it because Marfic is getting more annoying the longer he has to deal with that crazy cousin of his."
"Sirius?" Harry asked.
"Oh, it's very serious." Jeff nodded.
"Hah bloody hah." Harry drawled.
"And now for a few words before we get to our most excellent feast. Hoola, gittrip, doot." The Headmaster said loudly, causing the golden plates to fill with food.
Being surrounded by teen boys, this caused a minor feeding frenzy. Harry didn't even bother to try to muscle his way through all the others. He pulled out his wand and levitated some choice foods to his plate.
/:You forgot the incantation.:/
Harry cursed silently and muttered Wingardium Leviosa to snag some peas.
/:Still showing off. The peas are not in a container. You are having to control several dozen objects at the same time.:/
/You're not helping./ Harry grumbled.
/:Oh. Was I supposed to?:/ Voldemort asked innocently. He did it entirely too well for Harry's piece of mind. It was sometimes not all that surprising that the man had gotten away with becoming a Dark Lord. One would have thought that so soon after toppling the last Dark Lord, the authorities would have been more on the ball about things.
"Well that's that I guess. You want to play some video games before you get locked up with Tom?" Jeff asked Harry once the last crumbs of desert had disappeared in pockets or gullets.
"I don't know..." Harry felt so retro playing the Atari games. Even though he hadn't really played any in the future beyond what he could sneak during summers at the Dursleys.
"They have Duck Hunt." Jeff coaxed, miming shooting the beam gun.
Harry paled, flashes of remembered lights coming in front of his eyes, people screaming by his feet as he cackled.
"Sorry, Harry." Jeff said mournfully. "We could play Pong or something."
"That's ok." Harry tried to sound positive. "I'm holding out for Tetris."
"Harrrrrryyyy!" Jeff pouted.
"Hey, let me have a little bit of fun. Perhaps the only part of being some sort of inter-dimensional time-traveler is pretending to be a mysterious seer from time to time." Harry said haughtily, standing up and striking a noble pose.
"Hah!" Jeff scoffed. "And defeating the most powerful wizard in the world, doing stunts on a broom that make professional Quidditch players green and inciting a political frenzy with your pack of werewolves are what then?"
Harry sniffed and let Voldemort reply. "Practice."
Jeff sighed. "And you can't seem to figure out why I don't want to help you."
Harry chuckled. He skipped a couple steps. "You know what I would like to do?"
Jeff looked afraid to answer that question.
"I want to play chess." Harry said decisively. He had been playing a lot of chess against Voldemort, when they got too bored with reading to do anything else. But it was only slightly better than playing with Ron- he never won. The reminder of his lost friend was a familiar but distant pain by now. It rarely snuck up on him anymore. Especially when Jeff made a face like that.
"Ew, Harry! Why would you want to play chess when you could play... well, anything else?"
"I'll play you."
Harry turned around with a blink of surprise. The much taller Marfic Black was standing there, looking sour. "Why do you hate me so much?" Harry asked, curious.
"I don't need a reason. I've disliked you from the second I heard your name and the first time I saw your pathetic face." Marfic replied stubbornly.
Harry had to laugh at that. "Yeah, ok. Let's play."
"No cheating." Marfic grumbled as he pulled out the chess board.
"Cheating?" Harry asked, cocking his head to the side innocently.
"I'm only playing one of you." Marfic clarified, looking up at the smaller boy through his frowning eyebrows.
Harry blinked in surprise again. It was rare that someone spoke of him as two separate people. "Ok." He replied, subdued.
"So." Marfic snapped. "Choose!"
"Oh, I am definitely playing you."
Marfic smirked. "If you are too pathetic, then I'll play him, too."
/: ! :/ Voldemort perked up. /: Throw the game! :/
/I'm not throwing the.../ "Ow!" Harry protested as he got smacked. He felt off balance until he realize he had been physically hit. He focused on Marfic, growling and showing his canines.
"I told you I was only playing against one of you." Marfic smirked.
"I was telling him I wasn't going to throw the match!" Harry protested.
"If he wants to play that badly, I will defeat him, too." Marfic shrugged.
/:That little punk!:/
Marfic looked up into Harry's eyes. "But he has to agree to stay quiet the entire match."
Voldemort buried himself deep in Harry subconscious, but Harry could still hear a faint hissing of Parseltongue insults. It made him feel like he had just fainted and was now coming out of it.
"Ok, we agree." Harry said, plucking the white king from Marfic's hands and putting it down on the board. "Let's go!"
OoOooooOOO
Dumbledore waved his hand over the mirror with a sigh, banishing a view of Harry with eyes burning red gleefully massacring the young Black. He was only mildly comforted that the two boys were playing chess and not seriously dueling.
"I did the right thing, didn't I, Fawkes?" He asked his familiar, stroking the feathers and feeling the tingle of heat familiar in his finger tips.
The phoenix let out a soothing thrill.
Albus sighed. He had gotten a little out of hand there for a while. He could see that now. But one of the huge problems with becoming a well known, powerful and respected figure was that people tended to not mention right away when you were getting drunk on power. He smiled ruefully, remembering Tom's admonishments. And sometimes even if they did tell you, it could be rationalized away. "Well, perhaps young Harry and I can be each other's reality checks."
Fawkes made a dubious piping noise.
"Hmm." Dumbledore mused. "You're probably right."
OoOOoOooO
/I'm so bored!/ Harry protested, his soul sitting with crossed legs in the depths of Voldemort's psyche (though not so deep he couldn't regain control if the Dark Lord tried anything./
:No talking.: Voldemort muttered, tapping a finger against the remaining bishop contemplatively.
"What?" Marfic muttered back, forgetting he couldn't understand as he was also concentrating.
:Not you, the nuisance.: Voldemort replied absently, as he took his finger off the bishop and glared at the board. :How best to crush you, mite...:
/Just do it quickly.../ Harry pouted. Voldemort's subconscious was dark and sort of misty. It was quite boring. In fact, his attention couldn't even quite focus on it. Harry narrowed his eyes. Wait a minute... He thought privately. That seemed suspiciously like Oclumancy.
Harry focused intently, moving through the mist. Suddenly he was through. The mindscape was still dark, but now it also had a lot of sharp and spiny bits woven together in a rather threatening way. "Hmm." Harry mused. He darted amongst the mesh, smirking when he easily was able to squeeze through. The strands waved a bit, as if to attack, but then settled. The holes were also large enough that his tiny body could fit through easily. Harry vaguely wondered if the defenses were not reacting to him because he and Voldemort had this weird 'thing' or if it was his child-like size.
Harry came across a pool of silvery liquid and grinned. Then frowned. A memory, or a trap of devious nature?
He skirted around the pool cautiously until he ran into an invisible wall. "Curiouser and curiouser." Harry muttered. He felt along the edges until he found something that felt suspiciously like a snake head. "Ouch!" He gasped, pulling back his hand and sucking on his bleeding finger. How did a spectral hand even bleed?
Now the snake head was filling with a brilliant crimson and was waving its head at him.
:What do you want?: it hissed grumpily.
:Uh...:
:Nice. Eloquent.: It sighed. :Too bad you're not dying from the poison.:
:Poison!?!?:
:And you're not reacting to it.: The snake reminded him, yawning.
:Ok...: Harry muttered.
:Well, what do you want?:
:I guess I want to see Voldemort's deepest, darkest secret so that I can hold it over him like he tends to hold things over me.: Harry mused. :Oh... er... and so I can prevent him from taking over this world.:
"Damn.: The snake grumbled. :And he spoke the truth.:
:So?: Harry asked. Why he should lie to some weird apparition in Voldemort's mindscape he wasn't sure. Voldemort knew basically all of Harry's deep, dark secrets already.
:So that was the password.:
:The password to Voldemort's mind is telling the truth?: Harry asked in disbelief.
:In Parseltongue, after surviving my venom, which is the mental equivalent of basilisk venom.: The snake sighed, before dissolving and revealing a cave of scrolls and books.
:Well, I guess that would work for basically anyone else. But I would have thought he would have updated his defenses since that particular combination was pretty easy to pass for me. Almost... molded just for me...: Harry trailed off, disturbed. Well, he had defeated all of Voldemort's soul bits. So maybe it was just a side effect of that?
"Well, whatever." Harry muttered, moving forward. He looked at the shelves and sighed. Only someone like Hermoine would find the prospect of looking through any of this as anything but a huge chore. "Yet another clever defense." Harry muttered, mentally taking a few notes. Though Harry had no idea how to actually implement this sort of mental defense. Which was sort of the problem with passive Occlumancy. Harry shrugged. Offensive Occlumancy worked just fine for him.
"Let's see..." Harry pulled out the slimmest book he could find. It had been ssquished between two large books labeled 'Torture and You' and 'The Language of Screams'. Harry shook his head that even the titles of Voldemort's books had to be flamboyantly evil before he cracked open the slim book. "This looks sort of like that diar...bloody hell!" Harry cursed as he got sucked into the paper.
OooOOOOoo
Voldemort gasped, his fingers going limp and dropping the queen. She cursed him roundly, but he ignored her.
"What the hell?" Marfic asked. "Well, you won, so..." He looked at the tiny hissing boy and frowned. He looked around, but his dorm mate Jeff wasn't anywhere to be found. "Argh!" He growled. "Play chess with the enemy, get sucked into their madness."
Voldemort was in no shape to hear the muttering of his opponent. He was too busy trying to deal with the feeling of having his soul ripped into pieces. :No...: He gasped weakly, collapsing onto the table. He could feel all the good feelings being pulled from him, all the happiness that he had unexpectedly found in this past year, the compassion he had once found weak pried from his grasping fingers, remorse, grief... :No!: He hissed frantically, even as he began to smirk at the patheticness of even trying to keep hold of those foolish things. :Harry!: He panted in realization.
Voldemort squinted his eyes closed and concentrated with the last bits of his will, fishing for the other soul in the depths of his soul and ignoring the pain as he slammed through his own defenses. He grabbed hold of the familiar energy and pulled it forcibly out of himself and shoved it away.
Voldemort lay gasping on the table, slowly becoming aware of his face being stabbed by tiny chess piece swords and spears.
/Voldemort?/ Came a faint question.
:Why did you do that?: The Dark Lord gasped. :It was bad enough living through it once.:
/I'm sorry./ Harry replied mournfully. Voldemort shuddered when he felt Harry's soul lean on his own. It was comforting, but it was also showing him that Harry had shared the entire experience.
Voldemort sighed unhappily.
/I didn't know.../
:Of course you didn't.: Voldemort scoffed. :That was the point.:
/But that really hurt! And you ended up so.../
:Evil? Sociopathic? Unable to control all my dark impulses and choose good?:
/Uh... that would probably cover it, yes./
Voldemort scoffed and flicked the black king off the board.
/You want to... talk about it?/ Harry asked dubiously.
:No.:
/Alright./ Harry replied with no small measure of relief. /Well, if I ever go crazy enough to actually want eternal life, then I shall remember that experience and not make a Horucrux./
:Don't worry. You wouldn't turn into a Dark Lord. You would probably try to expel your negative emotions, not the positive ones. You would end up more like Dumbledore when he's on a "Greater Good" power trip.:
/Merlin's hairy balls!/ Harry gasped in horror.
Voldemort snorted, his lip twitching up a bit. :Don't open any more of my memories without me.:
/Does that mean that you will open them and show me?/ Harry asked in surprise.
Voldemort frowned. :No.:
/Hmm... that book labeled 'People I Love' looked interesting. Maybe we should revisit your teen flings?/
Voldemort could feel their heart racing. :If you tried to split the evil from your soul, you would exorcise yourself.: He grumbled.
/Ha!/ Harry scoffed. /Says the one whose best part still tried to kill a young girl./
Voldemort cursed being in a physical body as his cheeks heated up.
/What?!? You pedophile! She was eleven!/
Voldemort pushed Harry back into control of the body and slunk deep into their mind.
/Don't ignore me, you wanker!/ Harry tried to dig the Dark Lord up, laughing.
OooOooOoO
A/N: Yay! An update. This chapter inspired by all the lovely reviews, Hikaru no Go, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Less Wrong, the Labyrinth, Fallout 3 and um... the letter Z.
Hopefully Dumbles is more sympathetic in this chapter. I never intended for him to be a total jerk, but it sort of happened that way, and on re-reading I can see I overdid it a bit. (And found a ton of things I wanted to edit, but putting out a new chapter is more important).
I also apologize for any brutalizing I am doing of British characters by using American slang. I only know British slang from HP and maybe from Snatch or something (though I totally needed those subtitles). I try to err on the side of American-isms rather than get stilted and not use British-isms properly. Eg- the difference between bullocks and bollocks was recently explained to me (maybe spelled wrong and I don't know which is the animal, which the organ haha).