The boy hadn't screamed and that had been significant and different, but now that he is not being tortured, Voldemort can't seem to pinpoint anything truly special about him. Perhaps it had been mere luck? Perhaps it had merely been his more feral brain? Perhaps he had destroyed the significant and different part?
If the boy wasn't of value, he should be killed. But he had to be certain. So for the first time since lifting the curse, Voldemort approaches the boy.
"Leave us," he says to the Healer that that has been watching the boy around the clock. The man bows and walks quickly to the door, shutting it behind him. The boy had been sitting comfortably against his pillows, staring at his hands. He looks up.
He's running a fever and sweating. His hair is slicked back against his skull and Voldemort realizes how much he looks like him. Yes, there are notes of that Mudblood Lily Evan's in his eyes and freckles, but the shape of his face is Tom Riddle. The way which his eyes move, intelligently and analytically, unnerve Voldemort for their similarity.
Yet there is no gauntness to his cheeks; he has been well fed. There is no paranoia; he knows why he is 'different' (if he knows he is different at all). He has never been called the devil by Muggles, or a freak, or an abomination. He is a healthy child with an awareness of who he is – mostly. Perhaps they look more alike than anyone can know, because Tom Riddle hadn't appeared how he would have, had he been well cared for.
For a moment Voldemort wonders. He wonders what he would have been like, if he hadn't grown up around filthy Muggles, if he hadn't been kept just-well-enough fed, if he hadn't been ridiculed but encouraged in his magic.
…but first he has to know if the boy is intelligent enough, both magically and mentally.
"Can you control your magic?" He asks softly, calculatingly. The boy blinks, obviously surprised by his words.
"Too well," he says automatically. "That's what everyone says." He wants to please him, because he is afraid. Voldemort doesn't really care what the boy feels – he can sense his honesty and that is all that matters.
"An example?" Wasn't the boy intelligent enough to surmise that he would want an example?
"I can make things come to me, like grown-up's do with their wands, but I don't need to say its name. I just have to think it. I can tell Zee what to do, and he understands me. I can cheat at hide-and-seek."
For a moment he is taken aback by the child's answer.
"How do you cheat?"
"When someone is about to find me, I can disappear to a new hiding spot." So he can use Apparition.
Is this what he would have been like, if he had grown up among Wizard's and not Muggles?
"What about when you are angry?" He is half-expecting the boy to say, "I can make bad things happen to people who are mean to me." Instead he frowns and wrings his hands, as if ashamed.
"I break things, but I don't mean to. They shatter. Sometimes they turn to dust and then the dust spins around – like a hurricane." So the boy hadn't learned violence. Where in his little life had it been necessary to learn that you couldn't appear weak, and causing pain to others seemed to scream 'I am not weak'? Because he hadn't been raised among filthy Muggles.
"Can you speak to snakes?" The boy's lips turn downward, not in the negative, but in the uncertain. His eyes are mirroring this emotion.
"I donno…" he says, and Voldemort expects to see fear in his eyes, because he must know he isn't pleased with such an answer, but instead he merely sees worry. There is not much difference between worry and fear, but the latter is slightly better. He looks the boy up and down. There are many a grown Wizard or Witch that would not have come through what the boy had looking as well as him, or speaking so sanely.
Just when he is about to turn around, the boy starts shaking in fear. He realizes he hadn't replied to the boy's unsatisfactory answer, and opens his mouth to say: "It is easy enough to find out," when the shaking becomes so pronounced that he knows it isn't caused by fear. The boy looks like he's under Crucio. He strides over to the door and yanks it open, calling for the Healer, who comes rushing into the room.
"What is happening?" He tries to keep his voice calm and his wand in its holder (lest he curse the Healer in his impatience), but both are difficult. He'd just decided to spare the child and here he is obviously dying in front of him!
The Healer turns around, pale and looking like he's resigned to die. "The boy has seizures, My Lord, from the Cruciatus Curse."
"So fix it!" Voldemort shouts. He has cast this curse numerous times, seen bodies twitch and spasm even when it has been lifted before, and killed them hours or days later – never once has he considered whether the effects would continue inevitably.
"My Lord, there is no cure…"
Voldemort turns to the boy, watching his back arching, his eyes swerving back and forth beneath their eyelids, his muscles going through spasms, and frowns ever-so-slightly.
"How painful is it?" The boy isn't even moaning, perhaps it merely makes the body re-act what it had been like, without the pain. He isn't sure why that matters, but since his brain is demanding the answer, he knows it is of importance.
"Each seizure is like another dose of the original curse." Voldemort turns once more to the boy and the convolutions take on new meaning. It is one thing for Voldemort to torture him, but it is another for the torturing to happen outside of Voldemort's control. It is not that he cares whether the boy feels pain, because he doesn't, but Voldemort likes control, and this is not within his control.
"If there is no existing cure, then make one," his tone of voice leaves no room for argument and the Healer slinks out of the room, certain of his death and the death of all of Voldemort's Potion Masters.
Voldemort transfigures a book into an armchair and sits down, watching the boy. He feels no need to comfort the child – he is not concerned about the pain, merely that it is out of his control. It is a long time until the boy falls still, beads of sweat covering his body and making him almost shimmer. He is unconscious. Voldemort approaches him and brushes the hair out of his face, unclenches his fists, and lays him out flat on the bed once more. He regards him for a long moment, remembering every detail. Finally, he sweeps out of the room and into the prison tent. They must have another boy about his age – he needs to make a copy to send to Potter. He wants Potter to think his son is dead.
"My Lord!" The Guard says, stopping in his tracks. It is rare for him to come to the prison tent and he knows he's surprised them.
"I need a boy, about four or five, or near that height. If you do not have one, go find a Muggle fitting the description. Bring him to me alive, no later then sunset." With his demand given, he sweeps out of the room and back to Headquarters, where he waits.
OoOoOoOoO
"Do you have anything you want to ask me?" His father says, as if he isn't the least bit anxious about what Devlin has shared with him. Devlin sees through the mask.
"Yes, sir, there is."
"Go ahead, whatever it is, I'll do my best to answer."
"Who was he if he wasn't me?" His father's brow furrows and his mouth purses, as if he doesn't quite understand what Devlin means to say.
Then dawning horror reaches his eyes, his brows, his mouth and finally his shoulders, which slouch in half-defeat.
"I don't know," he says softly.
"Do you think…you'll know?"
"I hope we will. I would like to offer the boy's family some closure, be they Magical or Muggle. In all honesty, though, we were never able to figure out that it wasn't you. Without a lead to go on, we'll probably never be able to figure it out."
He feels his world swarming around him, making him dizzy. His heart is beating roughly against his chest. He opens his mouth to speak.
"Harry?" He spins to look at the fireplace, now an emerald Green with a ladies head in it he hasn't met before. She looks an awfully lot like Ron.
"Hey, Ginny. What's up?"
"I, ah, need some papers that you have on file."
"Oh, right. Come on through."
She is pretty in that matter-of-fact way. Nothing about her dress or hair says she's tried to look pretty or wants someone to think of her as 'beautiful' but she just is. He smiles hesitantly back at her when she smiles at him.
"The file Alex talked to you about."
His father opens up the large trunk behind his desk (it looks like an old beat up school trunk) and rummages around. Devlin watches him with a half-focus as he gets the file out from the trunk. Right now his sense of smell is eating up the majority of his focus. Him. He smells himself, and Grandfather, and Geoffrey and dry, abused, parchment. He smells his journal. He'd know the smell anywhere. Suddenly he knows what that shrunken book had been. And suddenly he remembers his father had never returned the item to him. He also knows where it is.
"Thanks, Harry." The trunk snaps shut and his father bids her goodbye.
"Bye, Devlin!" She calls out, waving nicely at him. He nods, too shocked.
His father seats himself behind the desk again.
"Where were we?"
"You wanted to offer closure to the family."
"Mmmhmm, then you opened your mouth. What were you going to say?"
"…that I would like that too…" Except that hadn't been what he was about to say. The momentary interruption had let him catch himself. It was better his father never know.
Now he just had to get that journal before he read it!
OoOoOoOoO A Few Weeks Later OoOoOoOoO
Devlin feels as if he is in a trance. His feet have carried him to this door, but his heart keeps telling him to turn around. His arm reaches forward, even as his heart thumps loudly over and over again: don't do it…don't do it…don't do it…
And now he is staring at the books and the three comfy chairs and the large cherry desk. His feet move him forward into the room and he stands at its center, staring at the large wooden truck behind the desk. He had noticed it when his father had opened it while they had been talking and Devlin had smelled it. The thing his Grandfather had sent him. That musty smell; part barrack's, part Headquarters, part Geoffrey, Grandfather, tutors and most of all himself. His journal. That must have been what Grandfather had sent him, his journal. He had to get it before his father found out its secrets.
He is afraid if he waits any longer, he'll discover all the secrets.
No…no…no his heart thumps, urging him not to break the rules. They trust him.
But they don't trust me…
If they had, they would have given him the journal. They would have at least told him what his Grandfather had given him. They would have at least said 'we won't read this, we promise'. It didn't have good things in it. It hadn't been a true journal – Devlin had always known his Grandfather was reading every word. There was no mention of Maria or the Muggle village. There is no empathy inside of those pages. There is only what Grandfather would have been proud to see.
He reaches a hand out to the chair next to him, feeling weak in his knees.
'Don't leave'
'Never, ever'
His blood is rushing behind his ears, pounding in his head, and drumming against his ribcage. He takes another step forward. He can reach it now. He touches the trunk. The polished wood is warm and cold at the same time. It makes him shiver a bit.
'Devlin, I wish you trusted me.'
'I can't tell you. I just can't. I can't talk to you. I don't want you to hate me.'
'I would never hate you Devlin.'
He backs away quickly and climbs into one of the chairs, curling up and crying silently.
Mere moments later there are footsteps in the hallway and lights flickering on above him and his father is opening the door, his wand out before him, ready for a fight. Devlin, crouched so that he can just look above the back of the chair, cringes.
"Show yourself," his father demands, his voice booming and strong in a way Devlin has never heard it. "Show yourself now."
He doesn't know what to do. He cries silently, wishing he could just disappear.
"This is your last verbal warning."
"I'm sorry," he sobs. For a moment relief spreads across his father's face, then it drowns itself in worry.
"Devlin, are you alone?" And suddenly Devlin understands the worry – that someone had broken into his father's home for him again.
"Yes," he whispers.
"Devlin, I'm sorry buddy but I need to see you're alone." His wand is still perfectly angled, his body tense and poised. Devlin realizes how much of an opponent his father must make. It makes him shiver.
"Oh…okay." He slinks out from behind the chair and comes to stand, shaking, in front of his father. He keeps his eyes cast onto the floor and his shoulder's hunched.
"Devlin why were you breaking into my trunk?" There is no anger in his voice, merely disappointment and curiosity, as if he hasn't decided which one to truly let himself feel. He tucks his wand back up his sleeve. Devlin realizes he wears it even when he's sleeping.
"I…wanted to know what was in there." Now the curiosity is paired with worry and doubt. Devlin isn't sure why.
"It's all private. It's not things for little boys to know about."
He sniffles.
"I'm not little," he says automatically. His father laughs a bit.
"Yeah, you are. It's for grown-ups."
"You mean it is Order Stuff. I remember all about them." His father has gone pale.
"If you suspected as much, Devlin, why would you have attempted to open the trunk?"
"Because you had something of mine in there," he says softly. His father is even more pale, the pallor making him look ill. "Don't you think a book that I've had for years wouldn't begin to smell like me? You opened the truck while we were talking…I smelled it. It's my journal."
"It's a journal from him, Devlin."
"But it's still mine. It's private stuff." But his father doesn't look too curious and that is when Devlin knows that he knows and his whole world, so new and fresh and shiny, crumbles around him. "You read it," he chokes out.
His father swallows.
"Not all of it," he defends.
"But enough," he growls, feeling his wolf rear up in defense of this mental-attack.
"Enough to know that he filled your head with horrible things about me? Yeah. But Devlin, I knew he would have done that. I expected that."
So he didn't know. Surely it would have been his example.
"I want it back," he says firmly, feeling hope spread through him like a pepper-up potion.
"No."
"It's mine."
"You don't need to relive any of those memories, Devlin."
Except Devlin didn't want to relive them, he wanted to hide them.
"I don't want you to read them," he says venomously.
"Your mother already made me swear," his father says.
"I want it later," he adds, so that he father knows he isn't relinquishing power. "And I want to make sure the password is working."
"There was no protection on it whatsoever," of course there hadn't been, his Grandfather had wanted him to open it even if they had taken his wand from him. "But I can lock it for you and you can set the password." Devlin nods.
His father walks over to the truck, rummages around and pulls out the journal. Devlin's breath catches at how close he is to his most prized possession. His father taps the leather and murmurs a sophisticated locking charm.
"I'll give you a minute to choose the password," he says, leaving the journal on the desk and going to stand in the hallway. Devlin knows he has only moments. He scrambles towards the paper and opens the journal for what he knows will be the last time in a long time. With a shaking hand he nicks one of his fathers quill and turns to a blank page and writes: Dear Journal, I'm so sorry I can't keep you. And he closes the cover and whispers his new password: "The Dark Prince."
His father won't guess that one, he's pretty sure.
He leaves it on the desk and goes to his father out in the hallway.
"I'm done."
"Okay." He watches him put the journal away. "You can ask me whenever for it back, but your mother and I will decide when you're old enough to relive those things." Devlin nods. He can't act more suspicious.
"I understand," he says. "As long as you can't read it, that's okay." It really wasn't, but right now Devlin couldn't be weak, he had to be cunning and strong.
"Let's get you back in bed."
Does anyone sense some sub-plots hatching in this chapter? Hear them now? They're going 'cheep' 'chirp' 'squeek'.
Not all is how it seems.
Do you honestly think an eight year old would tell their father everything they should know? Yeah, right! Although, he came pretty close, didn't he. No, Devlin is smart enough to tell his father the things that his father might suspect and the things that he thinks will make his father proud. Don't you think four years with Lord Voldemort would teach anyone a bit of manipulation?
By the way, I'm actively seeking a beta reader. Anyone interested? You'd get to know the inside plot points before anyone else! :)