A/N: So, there seems to be a distinct sense of 'wtf Daniel?' in the The Damned. Seeing as I'm still putting in loads of hours at work, I've decided to take a couple hours every morning to... add some DLC into our new journey. One chapter a day. I won't be removing parts, but I will tweak things and flesh out our character's interactions. A story can never be wrong, by its very nature, but the person telling it should do their utmost best in conveying it. And I am notorious for rushing a story. PiC was written in like... 5 months, if memory serves. And like in PiC, I had a new idea and have taken off with it, eager to experience this new tale. But I've learned that things can slow down.

To Simeon Smythe: Relax, this revision has been in the works for a while. I just had to finish the new Pokemon: Legends of Arceus before I decided to start. Which I really enjoyed, btw. Nowhere near done with the post-game, but I'll get there one day.

Act 1: Saving the Damned

Chapter 1

You Are My Sin

Fire. It was the last thing he could remember. Well, that and the pain. But now the burning was over, and he could feel he was laying down on a hard surface. The cool temperature of the stone did nothing to ease him, however. Even with the fire gone, pain still radiated from his body. With a groan he tried to move. His action was unsuccessful, but apparently it had alerted someone near him as he heard footsteps approach.

Hearing the creaking of a hinge, the person had arrived. "Who are you?" An almost panicked yell grated against Harry's ears. He was certainly unexpected and more than likely extremely disliked.

The voice was painfully familiar, though it was just a hair different than what he remembered. The haughty, but shaky tone demanded an answer. A tone that was soaked with an almost imperial privilege, but the wavering in it reeked of fear. Opening his eyes, he found himself face to face with his least favorite person.

"Emily fucking Riddle. Why am I not fucking surprised?"

Voldemort, or as he enjoyed calling her Emily Riddle, stood over him. A standard set of black robes covered her body and she held her yew wand directly above his face. Harry knew that soon a bright green flash would fill his vision, and as he couldn't really move, he felt powerless to stop it.

"You have an awful amount of contempt in your voice, especially for someone whom I've never met. Who are you? How do you know my name?" Her voice was piercing, but uncertain, as though she had no idea what he was talking about. Hell, every word out of her mouth sounded so... unnatural to him. Where was the monster that lurked in the shadows of his life? It was the small waver that still remained, however, that betrayed the weakness that he'd never heard from her before. It reeked of humanity, something that Emily Riddle didn't have an ounce of. She was born a monster, she lived as a monster, and one day she would die a monster's death.

Her statement confused Harry and he opened his eyes again. He saw that he was no longer in Malfoy Manor. Rather, he recognized the place to be Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. Looking back at the woman standing above him he noticed subtle differences as well. She was younger and her normally vibrant red eyes we're now a soft shade of brown. In fact, her appearance almost mirrored that of the young woman he'd met in a diary several years before. Her hair was shorter than it had been in the past and it was bound behind her head. The Voldemort he knew always let her hair flow around her head freely. What was alarming was the fact that her face looked sickly and her whole body shook with tremors.

These details gave Harry a bad feeling, so he asked, "What year is it?"

"1943." She answered him without pause.

Harry couldn't help but laugh. Was this even reality anymore? He didn't bother questioning the validity of it. There was no other way he could be lying before Voldemort herself and not have already perished. She'd been dogging him for too long, and after exterminating so many of her horcruxes, she'd have removed his head from his body by now.

"Of fucking course it is. Let me take a wild guess, you're in your fifth year of Hogwarts as well." He watched as it seemed the young woman was regaining control of herself. Her face, thankfully, remained the iron fortress he remembered. The one that gave nothing away.

The woman looked at him shrewdly, leaving Harry to only guess at what she was thinking. As she adjusted her grip on her wand, she replied with a much firmer articulation, "I am, yes. Do we know one another?" Her question reaffirmed the notion that this was not the Voldemort he knew. Her body language screamed power, as though the situation was completely under her control, but it was her voice that revealed her curiosity to him. This was no longer an interrogation; it was an honest question. One that, if Harry's assumption was right, she didn't have the time to be asking. She should be far busier hiding a murder.

Harry tried to shrug, but the pain all over his body made the motion more of a jerk. "Don't we all know one another? The magical world's not that large."

"Don't play coy with me, answer my questions." Finally, he was starting to see more of the familiar fire that Voldemort had. The anger that would lead to rage, which would then lead to death. He'd seen it a hundred times. Now that the conversation was entering familiar territory for him, he shelved his questions. There was no doubt that the woman before him was still his enemy.

"I can promise you; my name wouldn't even come close to answering any other questions you have. So, there's no point in it." Harry closed his eyes, feeling for more tired all of a sudden. He didn't have the strength to fight, he was battered and broken. He'd been tortured for hours before he ended up here, and though he had magic to spare, it was his physical state that would hinder him when things turned violent.

"I've never met you before, but you certainly know my name. Hell, it sounds as though you know me well, though you certainly don't like me. I'm certain you know nothing about me, so why do you dislike me?" The wand never wavered, and Harry was not at all surprised. Her curiosity was to be expected, a person had just appeared from nowhere, after all. But he knew this was all a game to the girl. Voldemort loved playing games, prying information out of people. She'd been doing it even at her current age, when she convinced her head of house to explain horcruxes to her. Perhaps she'd been doing it even longer.

The sight of a young dark lord had already put Harry off something fierce. Especially considering he had a very good idea of what she had only just recently done. Her current age and her appearance in the girl's toilet likely meant that she was fooling around with the Chamber of Secrets. "You don't know me, but I know more about you than you could imagine. I can't believe this." His last sentence was said under his breath, but the woman still heard him regardless.

"I strongly doubt that." Her snide rebuttal immediately pissed him off. But it also unnerved him. If she was closing the conversation here, then she'd move in for the kill right after. He wasn't ready for that. Taking a deep breath, he decided to play her game, but he knew just how to throw her off of her high horse. Emily Riddle hated being shown up or proved wrong. And the Voldemort he faced off against now, was nowhere near the threat that the one from his time had been.

"Emily Riddle, Half-Blood, daughter of Tom Riddle and Merope Gaunt. Has lived at Wool's orphanage since her mother passed right after birth. Has always been special, even for someone with magical abilities. You have a knack, a penchant for hurting people, and you enjoy it even more. Sometimes you wonder if you were left at that orphanage because your father knew you were a monster. Exceptional in every class here, and extremely brilliant. But we both know what you are deep down, don't we Emily? You're nothing more than a bad egg."

Emily stared at him in what Harry could only assume to be shock. He wasn't done yet though, he knew far more intimate details about her life, and he was going to lay it all bare for her. If he was going down here, then he would go down swinging.

"You see, Emily you come from a family line of shit. Your mother was practically useless, being the worst product of inbreeding possible meant her magical power was almost negligible. The rest of her family were even lower, at least until your mother showed her true colors. You see, your mother was in love with a muggle. But he wouldn't even look her way. So, she slipped him a loved\ potion and got knocked up with you. She kept dosing that muggle for months, taking away his will as she slowly nurtured you within her body. But, because she's as much of a psychopath as you are Emily, she actually stopped giving your father his daily dose of amortentia. She actually believed that after so long, your father would actually truly love her."

Harry broke off at this point to laugh as scornfully as he could. "Can you believe that? She thought that after forcing this man away from his home and family, after months of raping him, that he'd suddenly realize his love for her? Your mother was the biggest shame the Gaunt family ever produced, Emily Riddle. Be glad for the small favor of being saddled with your estranged father's name. If Merope's father or brother had ever even known of you, they'd have killed you long ago." Giving another sick laugh, he drove home the final point.

"Emily Riddle, you're just the stain that never washes out. You ruin all that you touch, don't you?"

Harry let loose on her, the good and the very bad. Harry watched as the woman lowered her wand slowly. Having fought this woman bitterly for years, her expression now gave him pause. Instead of anger, rage, or perhaps even hurt; she showed him a look of hope. Which was extremely strange, considering how he had just torn into her so ferociously.

"I have no way of even knowing if half of that is true. I never knew my father's name or my mother's maiden name. They told me she was a gibbering wreck, the matrons. Kept asking to die, they said. But you know so much about my mother. How?"

He laughed. "I know more about your family that anyone on this earth, Emily Riddle. The how is unimportant. The interesting bit might be why. but there's no way I'm spilling that secret."

The hope in her eyes didn't fade as she discarded half of his words. "No one here has any idea who I am. But you know me by name. I've never met you, but you know me. That means you know my parents. My father. If my mother had no family, then you know where my father is?"

Harry laughed. Did the woman not hear him tell the woman that her father was a muggle? Or perhaps her hatred of them wasn't as deep, yet. Though if she ever met the man, he was certain that it would grow into an unfathomable trench. Tom Riddle hated Merope Gaunt, and his feelings for the young girl standing above Harry could only be described as worse.

"I know far more about your mother than your father, Emily. But yes, I know who your father is. I even know exactly where both of your parents lived. Been to both of their family houses. Of course, everyone inside was long since dead."

Emily's expression took a turn from hopeful to pained, and when her eyes fell to the floor, Harry understood completely. He'd just told her that all her family was dead, after all. In his timeline, they had been, though in the present, her father was alive, even if he wasn't really living. And her Uncle should be alive as well.

Her downcast eyes snapped upwards and she stared at him intently. She knelt down and reached a hand towards his face. He recoiled at her touch, but she ignored his reaction as she touched his face gently.

"Black messy hair. Pale complexion. Prominent cheekbones. You and I clearly have a resemblance to each other. Are you related to my mother? Are we... family?"

Harry wanted to immediately shut her down. Tell her that, in no uncertain terms, were they even remotely related. But her eyes pierced into his very soul. How often had he showed those very same eyes when he was a child at the Dursley's? How badly had he wished for someone to whisk him away to a magical place he'd never known? Home. However, this didn't mean he had to show this woman any kindness or mercy.

"I know even more about you, Emily Riddle. Lately, you've taken to terrorizing other students with the legend of the Chamber of Secrets, that you just so happened to discover. And finally, this evening while taking your little snake out for a bit of fun tormenting muggleborns, you killed Myrtle Warren. If you were me, would you admit to being family to you?"

It was almost physically painful for Harry to see his greatest enemy's face twist into a pathetic look of desperation, even as he completely ignored answering her question. What was infinitely more surprising however was the woman's sudden rush to explain and defend herself. Voldemort never answered to anyone, but this young girl nearly fell over herself to do so.

"It was an accident. I swear. I didn't even know that stupid girl was in here. I called out as a prefect before I even opened the Chamber. I just... I finally had something to myself. I found my legacy. I acted foolishly. It won't ever happen again. Please, I just... I just need to know who you are."

By now the girl's wand had fallen to her side, almost forgotten. Her pleas pained Harry in a way that surprised him. Though it shouldn't have, because the pain was so very familiar to him. The need to belong to something, and she had come to the insane conclusion that he was her family. Now that she had hold of the idea only his words could change it.

She'd murdered his family, tried for almost his entire life to take him out as well. Dogged him for years. He had no reason to pull her from her despair. He should end her here and now. Finally put his demons to rest and do the world a favor with one single action.

"They tracked down your father. Did anyone ever tell you that, Emily?"

He watched the girl shake her head, hanging off every word he spoke. As though he were a prophet to some strange religion and she was a zealot, taking in her fill. Harry let out a dark chuckle.

"Oh yes, they found him not long after you were born. They took you to his house, his front door. He took one look at you, and do you know what he said?"

Harry looked at her waiting for some kind of response to his question, but once again, the girl stood frozen, not knowing how to respond. But it was clear that she was hanging on every word that left his lips.

"'That is not the child of a woman, but the spawn of a demon.' Go figure, Emily, you knew it all along, didn't you? No one, not even your parents, could love a thing like you."

With this, the dam finally broke. Harry watched as the tears fell out of the woman's eyes in front of him as she fell to her hands and knees, wand rolling to the side. With a sigh of relief Harry finally had done the one thing he'd struggled to do his entire life.

He had defeated Voldemort.

He watched her fall completely apart with a sickened look. Was this the monster that everyone had feared? The unkillable devil that had almost toppled his country's civil order? The tears stopped and Harry watched as the woman took in a sharp breath. As she raised her head, Harry expected to see the look of a broken woman. But what met his gaze was a twisted smile and she let out an even more disgusting little laugh. Her eyes were opened so wide it would have looked comical if it weren't for the circumstances, and her breaths came out in short bursts.

"But..." He watched as she swallowed as she tried to form her thoughts into words. "But... You're here... You came here, when I needed someone the most." Harry watched as the girl crawled, not stood and walked, but crawled on all fours to reach him. Placing her hand on his arm, she almost begged. "You came to help me, didn't you? You're my family, right? You... You love me, don't you?"

In a surge of motion, Harry catapulted upwards, completely ignoring his body that cried in pain. In the breath of a moment, he was on top of her, and his hands made to wrap themselves around her throat.

"LOVE YOU? You stupid cunt!" He squeezed harder, denying her body the air it needed to survive. "Did nothing I just say to you even register? You're a murdering sack of filth Emily Riddle. A waste of a human soul that should have never made it. But you don't have to worry anymore." Harry felt his lips turn up into a grin. "I'm going to put an end to you, so you never hurt anyone... ever... again."

"Please... It was... an accident. I... swear." As the words barely made it past her constricted throat Harry knew he was about to take everything from her. Just as she had done to him. Harry felt her body lurch as she struggled for breath. But that was all the movement she made. As Harry looked into the eyes of the woman whose life he was extinguishing, he still saw it. The look of hope. Even as he was killing her, she still begged him to give her that one thing she needed.

"Please..." Her voice could barely be heard, but it was the moment that her hand gently touched his face that everything became too much for Harry.

"ARGH!" With a roar, Harry lifted her head up and slammed her skull into the stone floor. Anything to stop her from looking at him like that. To stop her cries from resounding in his brain. To stop her from looking so... human. It changed nothing. He did it again. And again. And again.

When the banging came to an end, Harry finally saw it. For the first time ever, he finally saw the young, still face of Emily Riddle. Not the face of Lord Voldemort. The pool of blood from behind her head had already spread far past the stall of the bathroom the two were in and the reality of what just happened finally dawned on him.

With a deep, shaky breath, Harry let her go. But the breaths didn't stop. He kept inhaling deeper and deeper, but it felt like his body couldn't retain the oxygen. His heartbeat was erratic, and he furiously wiped at his face, only to pull back his hands when they touched the river of tears flowing down his cheeks.

"Oh God." He looked again at the body in front of him and had to turn away as he wretched. What had he just done? With his bare hands he had choked her life away. Even as she begged him for help. She had pleaded with him, and he had... he had...

"ARGH!" Harry slammed his fists into the floor beside her head. As though he were performing a sick recreation of his earlier actions of breaking her skull. Over and over, he slammed his fists into the bloody floor, flecks of red covering his face in a horrendous reminder of the monstrous act he had just committed. "I'm sorry. Oh God, I'm so sorry."

Laying his head onto her chest, he broke down, sobbing. Who was he? Who was Harry Potter to judge this girl like he had? Who had ever given him the right to kill a child? He was barely more than a child himself, and yet...

With a strangled gasp he looked back at the girl's face. "Oh my God. You're just a girl... what did I do?"

He stayed like that for minutes before raising his head and shouting towards the ceiling. "Please, let me take it back. Please, whatever magic sent me here. Give me one more chance!" He felt like a writhing mass of magic that was on the point of exploding. He needed to lash out. He needed to-

"Who are you?"

With a strangled gasp, he lowered his gaze. His face, a mess of tears and blood, locked eyes with the soft brown eyes of Emily Riddle, who was no longer laying frozen in death below him, but stood in front of him, wand pointed at his face.

"Heh," It was possibly the weakest laugh that anyone had ever given. Thanking everything from a God he wasn't sure if he believed in, to magic itself for what had happened to allow him to fix his mistake. Taking a deep breath, he offered the scared young woman a shaky smile. "You know, Emily, you'd think that after living in this world of magic for so long, we'd stop being surprised."

Harry could tell that the girl was still emotionally unstable from Myrtle's death. However, it was as though he was a blind man given sight. Now, the woman before him was nothing more than a foolish girl playing with things she had no business even having. With a pained grunt, Harry slowly pushed himself to his feet.

"Stay where you are, I don't trust you." Clearly, she wasn't ready to face a mobile unknown. Harry never let his smile fall from his face however, and slowly walked towards her. Despite her bravado, she failed to make a move against him, frozen in place. For a moment, he wanted to place a comforting hand on her shoulder, but then he realized just what his hand had been doing moments ago and pulled it back.

"It's okay, Emily. Relax. I'm not here to hurt you." Slowly, he looked around them. There wasn't much to indicate that a death had taken place here. But a missing student would not be glossed over, and certain things needed to be dealt with. "Go back to your dorm. I'll take care of things here."

He watched as her hand dropped her wand and stayed still when both her hands moved to fist themselves in his robes. In a voice that felt like knives across his very soul, she began to speak.

"I'm so sorry. I swear, I-" He cut her off, hearing her plead in the same small voice she had just been begging him in was unbearable.

"I already know." He sighed. "Look, it's not okay, what happened here." Her eyes met his and he watched her lips tremble, her eyes almost overflowing with tears. Shoving every emotion he was feeling to the side, he focused solely on her. "But we'll talk about it later. Let me handle it, okay? I don't want you to think about it anymore tonight. You need to rest."

The girl's hands squeezed his robes even harder, but he gave her the time she needed to come down from whatever state she was in. With a deep, shaky breath, she nodded her head and turned to leave. Before she got too far, Harry watched her sway, but managed to get to her side to stabilize her. Even something such as touching her side filled Harry with a sense of self-loathing, but he didn't think he could handle letting her get hurt again.

She weakly tried to push him away, muttering that she was fine. He ignored her and gently draped her arm over his neck, and he held on to her waist and supported her out of the bathroom. He would have picked her up, but the very thought of holding her like that made his body shudder almost violently. Wrapping an arm around her waist as he had done was already far beyond what he thought he could manage. He didn't trust his mental state to levitate her successfully.

"No, you're not. You're going into shock. We're stopping by a place I know to get a vial of dreamless sleep potion. When we get there, if you don't feel up to it, there's a bed you can use as well."

Harry gently guided the witch to a passage that moved them to the seventh floor, and from there it was a short walk to a very special room in Hogwarts. He'd learned of it in his fifth year. Leaning the young woman against the wall, Harry made quick work of summoning the room of requirement. It was bare, with little more than a bed and a nightstand, on which sat a single dose of the potion he'd asked for. Harry gently guided her to the bed, had her sit down, before offering her the potion.

"How are you so familiar with the castle?" After downing the potion Harry had given her, she asked him a question.

He shot her a smirk. "Six years of trouble making, a handy little map, and little friends prepared me well." He watched as she tried to move on the bed and quickly give up to immediately lay down. She didn't even bother with the blankets.

"You wuhur... You were a student?" The potion was kicking in faster than he'd anticipated, and the poor girl was already slurring her speech.

"Yeah, though I never graduated. Sleep. Come tomorrow, this will all just be a bad dream."

"Who... you?"

Though he'd already made the decision on what he planned to do, he didn't quite know how to convey or say what he needed to here. He wanted to show her some small sort of affection, but anything requiring touch he knew to be beyond him. His hands and face were still covered in her blood.

"My name is Harry Gaunt, Emily. We're family." In the end, he settled for a small smile as he looked down at her. It was a strange sight, to see a sixteen-year-old girl's face break out into a look of pure bliss. As though she'd finally found everything she'd ever been searching for.

Moments later, nothing could be heard except her soft breathing. Harry gave a sigh. During the walk he had debated many things. Should he memory charm Myrtle's death to the depths of her mind? What was he even going to do about Myrtle's disappearance? He knew he had to get rid of the basilisk. This was far too much for him to handle by himself, he was barely an adult in the magical world. He had a mountain of problems and no one to turn to... except for one person.

Harry gently rose from the bed and quietly closed the door. As he made his way to the Transfiguration professor's office, he wondered just what he was going to say to enlist the man's help. Would he even be able to get the words out, seeing his old mentor alive and well? Or would he break down for a second time tonight.

Coming to the old wooden door, Harry took a deep breath, before rapping sharply against it.

Remember back to his headmaster's words from the end of his second year, he spoke, hoping the man could hear him.

"Albus, I need help."