Memories, possession, and desire for the truth.
Harry Potter does not belong to me; it belongs to Jo Rowling (Whose views I do not support.)
Extract from hp-hbp
The fog cleared as suddenly as it had appeared, and yet nobody made any allusion to it, nor did anybody look as though anything unusual had just happened.
Bewildered, Harry looked around as a small golden clock standing upon Slughorn's desk chimed eleven o'clock. "Good gracious, is it that time already?" said Slughorn. "You'd better get going, boys, or we'll all be in trouble."
Voldemort, however, stayed behind. Harry could tell he had dawdled deliberately, wanting to be last in the room with Slughorn.
"Look sharp, Tom," said Slughorn, turning around and finding him still present. "You don't want to be caught out of bed out of hours, and you a prefect…."
"Sir, I wanted to ask you something."
"Ask away, then, m'boy, ask away…."
"Sir, I wondered what you know about…about Horcruxes?" Then Slughorn's voice boomed out again, just as it had done before. And it happened all over again: The dense fog filled the room so that Harry could not see Slughorn or Voldemort at all; only Dumbledore, smiling serenely beside him.
"I don't know anything about Horcruxes, and I wouldn't tell you if I did! Now get out of here at once, and don't let me catch you mentioning them again!"
"That's... all there is?" Ron said blankly.
Dumbledore had said that this was the most important memory of all, but he could not see what was so significant about it-
"Sir, that memory had been tampered with!" Hermione bellowed rather loudly, making both Harry and Rom jump; Dumbledore simply nodded.
Of course, Hermione had already figured out its importance.
Harry, however, could not see how it had been tampered with. It all seemed relatively uneventful.
"It all seemed terribly unnatural, the fog, the way they spoke- and You-Know-Who leaving willingly, it doesn't make sense; it's all too rushed." She didn't even draw a breath, her words tumbling out rapidly.
"Correct, Miss Granger. Professor Slughorn has meddled with his own recollections."
"But why would he do that?" Ron inquired, sitting back down.
"Because, I think, he is ashamed of what he remembers," The wise man concluded slowly, sadly. "He has tried to rework the memory to show himself in a better light, obliterating those parts which he does not wish me to see. It is, as you all will have noticed, very crudely done, and that is all to the good, for it shows that the true memory is still there beneath the alterations." He finished, retiring to his own bejewelled seat as the tense silence settled again like stubborn dust.
"Harry?" The bookworm nudged him lightly, having noticed his silence. "Are you okay?" She urged again, gaining only a hum in response.
"Harry," Albus echoed Hermione, "I have one more thing to show you." He promised, reaching for the handle of his desk draw and revealing its contents. The noise forced the boy's eyes up; he was met with a somewhat mutilated leather book Harry thought he would never see again. "Do you remember it, dear boy?"
"Tom Riddle's diary, sir." He whispered, finding his voice. Dumbledore nodded.
"When you destroyed this book four years ago in the chamber of secrets, you witnessed a memory of Tom Riddle deteriorate, yes?" When the Gryffindor mimicked his previous motion, the professor continued. "We have hypothesized that you may have destroyed a Horcrux, Harry; a part of Voldemort's soul."
The second the word Horcrux was reused, Hermione gasped, covering her mouth. Ron didn't jump in surprise; he simply looked surfeited at the news. Harry again was left confused.
"A Horcrux, sir? That thing Voldemort was asking about?"
"Yes, an object in which a Dark witch or wizard has hidden a fragment of their soul in order to become immortal. Horcruxes can only be created after committing murder, the supreme act of evil. Despite this, we cannot be sure. It is known that Tom had heard of Horcruxes, but we have no knowledge regarding what he came to learn-"
"-But Voldemort killed Myrtle, the ghost- in the girl's bathroom!" The raven-haired boy interrupted, only to receive a solemn shake of the head.
"Alas, Harry, there is a fatal flaw-"
"What do you mean a fatal flaw? The murder, an item, and a piece of soul, how could there be a flaw?"
"Because if the book you destroyed was a Horcrux, Harry," This time, it was Hermione who spoke, "Voldemort wouldn't have been able to come back."
"If I may rephrase, Miss Granger. If Voldemort was able to return that night in Little Hangleton graveyard," The man halted to preset a small box from his already open draw, placing it beside the book. "and the book was a Horcrux; which could be anything. A ring, perhaps." He suggested, lifting the chest lid and revealing a small clumsily made golden ring topped with a wide cracked stone; its engraving split in two. Harry felt the strangest urge to put it on despite his immediate repugnance toward the object. "It could not have been the only one constructed."
"That's mad, sir!" The youngest Weasley spluttered, pointing an assaulting finger at the two articles.
"Sir, you can't possibly think a lone wizard would be able to create more than one Horcrux without it going unnoticed. Even Herpo the Foul was only capable of making a single Heran." Her voice had raised in pitch now, sounding utterly exasperated as she frantically tried to process the situation, hand gripping her boyfriend's knee painfully.
"I cannot confidently state that Voldemort was able to produce more than one Horcrux; my only intention is to eliminate any possibility of being unprepared again..."
The group's discussion fell on deaf ears, fading too far for Harry to hear. His scar twitched, almost irritated by him focusing so abundantly on the piece of jewellery in front of him. Reaching a cautious hand toward the aged metal, he inched closer.
"Magic..." He caught, echoing in the distant, hand a fingerbreadth away, moving to enclose his fist around the circlet, "Especially dark magic-"
The man's appeal silenced sharply as Harry's suffocating scream was engulfed by a force-filled vapour that erupted from the chest, submerging everything in the office and violently propelling his body undeviatingly into the shattered gem. The seeker's chair was ripped from under him, sending him colliding face-first with the ground. Pain blasted through his chest at the impact, sending a searing agony that overwhelmed his body faster than he could blink, winding him as he cried out in distress.
The boy immediately thrust his head back, heaving, lungs desperately trying to seize the remaining oxygen around him. Slamming an aching hand beneath his head, he attempted to steady himself.
"Not again." He pleaded inaudibly, attempting to push himself up; the floor was oscillating beneath him, making the task utterly impossible. When he managed to thrust himself onto his knees, his eyes were met with a visibly unfamiliar interior at first glance. He desperately attempted to take in his surroundings; Is he in danger, or is this all in his head.
It was the overwhelming sense of awareness and dread that tried to convince Harry otherwise; what if he had touched a portkey.
No pensive memory had ever been this aggressive; he was positive he had been here before.
All was eerily quiet; mere teasing creaks and whistles of wind had Harry's ears straining. He didn't dare move. Tensing his muscles, he forced his shaking limbs to still, terrified he may trigger somethi-
CRASH!
A sudden clash of lightning had him whirling around so fast he thought he'd collapse.
Wand in hand, he sought out the cause of the sound, the lingering luminance washing over the antique furniture, their shadows crawling towards him.
They reached his battered school shoes, pausing for a moment before crawling up his jeans - he could smell smoke.
There was a downcast on his face, growing and shrinking with every lightning bolt; the sound was becoming unbearable.
He wanted to move, run, escape; his feet wouldn't let him.
He could feel something coming.
"MARY!"
Someone else was here.
"You monster! YOU MONSTER!" The voice roared; it sounded too close. "You're the Devil! The Devi-!"
"AVADA KEDAVERA"
No. No no no NO!
"FATHER!"
He knew where he was- that nightmare, that warning, where his blood marked a rebirth.
He was in little hangleton.
"Please... please, please no." He whimpered, spinning around and scanning for an exit. The star seeker spotter a door and immediately bolted towards it, leaping over a coffee table and throwing himself at the handle. It didn't budge, merely jiggling derisively.
"Get away from me, you Demon!"
"Let me out, let me out, let me out-"
He frantically began ramming the door with his shoulder, just like Tonks had shown him, completely forgetting his wand in his panic.
"MISS ADAMS? MISS MAYBERRY?! SOMEONE CALL THE POLICE!"
He rammed it again, hearing the wood split.
"MAIDS? HE'S GOING TO KILL ME!"
"COME ON, YOU PIECE OF SHIT-" The door burst open, forcefully sending Harry stumbling through the opening. Shielding his head, he braced himself for impact with the floor, but it never came.
"Hello, Father."
He felt his insides contort within him as the voice he had recognized earlier leaked from his own lips.
"Remember me?"
He knew he was no longer standing beneath that broken doorway before his eyes opened; he knew he was no longer observing through his own when he met
the older man's gaze.
The elders terrified expression was held by features that had a striking resemblance to the 16-year-old boy he had met In the diary all those years ago... but this was not the Tom that had made a hobby of destroying his life; he had never allowed himself the chance to age this gracefully.
"You..." Riddle sr breathed, staring back as realization struck. "They told me I had made you both up. The woman."
Voldemorts mother.
"I was bewitched. BEWITCHED BY THE DEVIL! AND HERE YOU STAND BEFORE ME AS LIVING PROOF-"
"CRUCIO!" The unforgivable left his lips and gushed from the unfamiliar wand, slicing through the air and erupting within the old man's chest.
It was... glorious; the feeling of pure giddiness flooded his veins and muted his true feelings. His pounding head subsided, allowing clear access to the mind he was trapped in, viewing its thoughts as though it were happening at this moment. The warping ribbon that weaved its way through Riddle made him feel-
No, no, no no no no no- get out of my head get out of my head.
Riddle Sr. let out a pained breath upon being released from the curse, inarticulate sounds issued from his mouth, presumably words of hell and God. You-Know-Who cleared his throat to speak, causing the trembling man's mumbling to silence. "My mother may have been a witch- but no other was brainwashed more than her." He watched helplessly as the dark wizard crouched down, tilting his vision and observing the writhing father curiously; Harry could feel only Riddle's pleasure as it mixed with his own feelings of fear. The Gryffindor could feel his enemy's hatred, sense his own denial as he inched closer to the lump of flesh below him. "You left a woman and your child out to die- a coward. A true worthless mudblood. I'll finish what she was too weak to start, a weakness you poisoned her with, father."
And there, as the puppet murmured the body-bind curse, abandoning his bone-carved wand and producing a diamond-encrusted blade, Harry knew why he was here. Why the ring had brought him here and why it had trapped him in the body of his preditor.
This was how the Horcrux was created, and it wanted him to see.
Dumbledore was right.
Dumbledore had known.
The captain strained his limbs to try and halt his host as he raised the weapon above their head, the theatric storm that composed the act doing nothing but mimick the boy's internal struggle: ripping at his mind and gnawing at his heart. He fought to shove his hands over his ears, to scream, even in his own mind, and block out the noise.
I WANT TO GO HOME, he begged, but none of it mattered.
Everything slowed the moment the dagger penetrated the man's skin, his blood-curdling scream dying on his lips as the scarlet liquid enveloped Voldemort's hands that he viewed as his own. Harry fought to squeeze his eyes shut and obstruct the scene, cover his ears like a scared child and wait for the torture to be over, but his efforts were futile.
He could only watch in terror as the light drained from the rich man's eyes.
And to his absolute horror, he felt powerful.
CRASH!
Another strike of lightning, paired with the now hardly necessary killing curse, sent a wave of foreign memories in place of the murder the hands had just committed.
An ocean guarded island.
A snake curling around his feet.
A locked vault door.
A room filled with everything and nothing.
Himself.
And then it was gone.
He swore he felt something crack as his head collided with the floor again, the jewellery that had projected him backwards now spinning rapidly on the desk. His name echoed through the room at the sound of his cry of pain.
"Harry? Harry! Your nose is bleeding- your scar is bleeding" He heard Hermione's tear-filled voice first, running around her chair and kneeling by his head, hands cupping his face.
"Jesus Christ Harry-" Ron swore, the incorrectly pronounced muggle term was followed by the sound of wood hitting the deck as he leaped over his body and tried to assist his friend in sitting the quidditch captain up; Harry simply shrugged them off and pushed himself back into a sitting position, the unbearable pain from earlier transferring to his stomach that was already swirling with repulsion. To his absolute horror, he retched, his spinning head giving him little control over its direction as he attempted to lean over himself. The high-pitched shriek accompanying his now soaking trousers told him he hadn't done a great job.
"Harry, dear boy, what did you see?" Dumbledore door breathed at his feet, waving his hand and vanishing the pile of vomit before it could reach his nose and turn his stomach again.
Harry's eyes rose to meet his headmasters, nose oozing with blood, paving a path for the warm trail that trickled down his forehead. He knew his glare was laced with fire when Dumbledore flinched. The Gryffindor swore he sensed the man's occlumency barriers rise.
"Swear." He hissed, burning a hole through the man's glasses.
"Harry?"
Choking slightly on the bile that lingered in his throat, the boy continued, "Swear to me that everything you've said to me today is all you know."
His order was met with nothing but the sound of alarmed breathing beside him.
"Swear, sir," He pressed, unable to stop the sob laced in his voice.
Whether he hesitated or was simply on edge, Dumbledore straightened his posture.
"I swear, Harry."
The scarred boy gave him a moment to lock his gaze in his mind, give him a chance, to tell the truth, if he was lying.
The man did not speak.
Harry's stance deflated, dropping his defense and adopting the stance of a scared little boy. "Okay then." He sighed. "I've got lesson." And with that, he rose from the floor and slipped from the room, three concerned and completely baffled eyes following him out.
Hello everyone, Happy new year :), for 2021 and 2022. A lot has been going on (I started university!), and I apologize for leaving you all through last year. I wish I could show you my 'convince me otherwise' notebook; I've been working on these few chapters for a very long time, and the longer I worked on them, the more protective I became of them. There is little harmony (I intend to rectify that), but I think it was time to delve deeper into my idea of the half-blood prince and what I wish it could have been (had it been a bit more mature and realistic in Harry's trauma, not that I'm a master of writing such things!) I was afraid I would receive flames for possibly going too far or that I would create a significant misunderstanding if I didn't write this perfectly, but this is simply what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it- constructive criticism is always welcome but be nice!. And, before I get overly deep (this is JUST a fanfiction at the end of the day, SJ), I wanna say I am excited to share what I wrote last year with you all! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas, and I'll see you in the next chapter (which will hopefully be posted this week!)