I'm not sure what I expect to learn from seeing Voldemort kill my parents. I know nothing about what they were like beyond a few stories told to me by Hagrid. I didn't even know what they looked like before Hagrid put together a photo album for me. I don't know much about what they were really like, or even where they lived.

Part of me suspects that there would be more pleasant ways to see my parents in life than this. The other parts of me just want to know what happened.

Tamelyn pulls me into the memory. Unlike the last time, where I was sucked in, this feels like gently falling from one area to another. I focus on Tamelyn's advice about remembering myself, not wanting to relive another memory. I give an involuntary shudder at the thought of the bombing. I don't think I'm going to be coping with that memory any time soon.

The gentle falling sensation stops, and I open my eyes to see several small cottages resting on a road that ends in a cul-de-sac.

"Took you long enough." Tamelyn's distinctive voice calls out from behind me. I turn around to see her leaning back against the fence of the yard we landed in. Her face and body language are back to her usual closed-off apathy.

"Where are we?" I ask.

"I have no idea." She replies. "I never had much of an opportunity to explore the greater wizarding world, let alone residential areas like this one." She looks around at the scenery. "It looks to be a mixed area, though. See? There are some muggle telephone lines over there." She gestures to some telephone poles mixed in among the trees lining the street. "That at least rules out purely magical settlements…" She loses herself in thought for a moment before shaking her head. "But I digress, that's not what we're here for. What we are here for is… her." She points to a figure covered in a dark cloak, waving her wand at the edge of the yard.

Oh. "Is that… her, then? Is that Voldemort?"

Tamelyn nods her head in reply. "She is indeed."

"Oh." I watch the cloaked figure continue to wave her wand. "What is she doing?"

"Dismantling the wards, I imagine. Whatever protections are on this house are clearly plentiful." Her gaze wanders off to the street, where several children are moving about in Halloween costumes. Tamelyn's face contorts into a sneer at the sight of them.

"Oh my God, Tamelyn, they're just kids! Are they really worth hating?" I say, exasperation overcoming me.

"Bah. It's the bloody costumes I'm mad about. Vampires and skeletons and witches. Muggles are all too willing to indulge in the idea of magic up until they're forced to confront that it's actually real. After that, all the wonder is gone and it's quickly replaced with fear and exorcisms."

I can't come up with a reply, so I remain silent. After another few minutes of wand-waving, a brief shudder fills the air as a shimmering dome fades into view over the house before dissipating into shreds. Another shimmer fills the air as several new fields appear from Voldemort's wand.

"Alright, she just shredded the wards on your family cottage and placed some temporary ones of her own. Come on, then, let's watch."

Voldemort moves into the yard in a manner more reminiscent of gliding than walking. Halfway down the walk, she raises her wand, and a dull orange bolt shoots from the tip, blasting the door to smithereens. I instinctively pull my arms up to protect myself against shrapnel, though when a few seconds pass without feeling anything hit me, I remember that this is a memory.

"That was a silent, gestureless blasting curse." Tamelyn comments. "Frankly, it was an unnecessarily flashy move. There's no need to use tier III½ casting to destroy an obstacle."

"I'm sorry, what?" I ask. What the hell does she mean by tier III½?

Tamelyn tuts in irritation. "Right, I forgot that spell tiers aren't covered until N.E.W.T. level Defence class. I'll give you a rundown later, probably after you wake up. Now come on, I'm probably already dueling your father."

I feel briefly confused at her talking about herself before remembering that, in a sense, she is Voldemort. I've been aware of that fact that they are technically the same person, but it's still difficult to equate the adolescent girl with the monster I can see trading spells with my father. I step into the house itself just in time to see my father stumble. Voldemort doesn't waste the opportunity and quickly lashes out.

"Avada Kedavra." She intones, causing a sickly green light to strike my father.

The vibrant green nearly gives me flashbacks to the nightmares I had as a child. I wonder if they were the result of some faint recollection of this night being pulled to the forefront of my mind as I slept.

"What… what was…?" I try to ask, but Tamelyn predicts my question before I can finish asking it.

"That was the killing curse. An unblockable curse than rips the target's soul from their body. It can only be stopped by solid objects, making it very effective in combat, though the fact that it's an esoteric spell combined with its high magic cost helps to offset that."

"How disturbingly clinical of you." I say as we follow Voldemort up the staircase. I can't bring myself to keep the bitterness out of my voice. Not right now.

I'm not looking at Tamelyn's face, but I can hear the sneer in her reply. "Oh, I'm sorry, would you care for something more graphic? Like how it's an absolutely disgusting curse to use? That it feels like having a rotting corpse pass through your magic when you cast it? That if it wasn't for the extreme dark magic euphoria that comes from casting the spell, I doubt anyone would use it at all? That in order to cast it you need to want someone dead and really mean it?" We arrive at the top of the stairs and Voldemort starts gliding down the hallway. When Tamelyn next speaks up, her voice is calm and level again. "I'm clinical because it lets me maintain control. I can't afford to let my emotions get the better of me. I was never afforded that luxury." Voldemort raises her wand and blasts apart one of the doors in the upstairs hallway. "I suppose I should have realised this would be distressing for you to see." Tamelyn comments. "This memory is far more personal to you than it is to me."

Well, she's definitely not wrong about that. I don't say anything in response, though. I doubt my voice would come out with a level tone even if I tried.

I turn away from the unfolding scene as my mother starts begging for my life. It's too much to watch, and I don't think I could hold the small remainder of my composure if I was to watch it.

"This is the part I don't understand…" Tamelyn adds. "My core self is willing to spare her. Why? Why does she only want to kill you? A mere infant? And why would she willingly spare said infant's mother? Surely she knows better than to leave people alive when they'll hold grudges…"

"I'd still rather my mother be alive." I choke out.

Tamelyn glances down at me, obviously picking up on the distress in my tone. "If it makes you feel any better, I don't think your mother planned on living through this…" She says, her voice softer. I look up just in time to see the flash of green light. Voldemort glides over to the crib where my infant self is lying. Her back is turned, preventing her from seeing the golden glow that surrounds my mum's body and faintly trickles towards my infant self.

"Sacrificial magic of some sort." Tamelyn explains. "I'm not familiar with the specific ritual, though. The only rituals I had a chance to study were soul magic rituals, which are almost exclusively based on runic arrays. This is a more primal form of magic, invoked through pure intent and symbolism, an area which I never had much time to study."

I expect Voldemort to lash out at my infant self the same way she did with my parents, but instead, she begins meditating.

"This is the part that I found most interesting. In a way, it's where our current predicament began." Tamelyn says.

"What… what is she doing?" I ask.

"She's performing the first step in making a horcrux. There are four necessary components to the horcrux ritual. First is the meditation process. It requires you to draw all of your memories out of the half of your soul that will be split off." She grimaces. "Technically, this step can be done after then next two, but it's a lot less pleasant that way."

"Does it have to be half of the soul?" I ask.

A smirk ghosts across Tamelyn's lips. "A quirk of the soul results in it always splitting in half when it breaks. I tried to find out why, but I was never able to get a real answer. We're getting off topic, though. The next part of the ritual requires intent to kill. You have to mean it. As a result, the killing curse is the best way to do this part and the next part, since it requires very similar intent." Voldemort finishes her meditation and draws her wand as Tamelyn continues talking. "The third step is simple: kill someone. Someone has to die for the soul to be split."

At that moment, Voldemort points her wand at my infant form as casts the curse again.

"Avada Kedavra."

The flash of green light speeds towards my younger self, lancing him in the forehead before being reflected back and blasting apart Voldemort's body. A dark, smoky form remains behind where the body once stood before it speeds off into the night. Half of the smoke lingers, though, before gradually seeping into the fresh scar on my younger self's forehead. Shortly thereafter, the scene fades away into familiar blackness.

"A funny quirk about the horcrux ritual is that the intent to kill and the person killed don't have to be the same." Tamelyn says, drawing my gaze to her. "When I created my first horcrux, that is to say, me, Myrtle was not my intended target. I was hoping to kill that arrogant ponce, Abraxas Malfoy. Alas, Myrtle caught Tessie's gaze first, and I didn't want to risk killing two students, so I used her death instead." A frown crosses her face. "It was rather foolish to use the death of an unintended target, at least in retrospect, but again, I'm getting off topic. When you became a horcrux, all of the components were there. Memories were drawn out of half of my soul, I intended to kill you, and someone died by my hand, in this case, myself. The fourth step was inadvertently accomplished when my body was destroyed: the split off soul fragment was unbound and directed into a magically saturated object." She shrugs. "Few things are more magically saturated than a fresh curse scar, and since the scar was seeping with my magic, that counted as directing it. Technically, the soul fragment should have been bound afterwards, but that's not actually a required step. Besides which, I bound the soul fragment when I entered your head, so it's a moot point anyways."

I feel too overwhelmed by everything that I've just seen. I need time to stop and sort through the absolute mess that is my emotional state.

"Can you just leave me alone for a bit?" I ask. "I need time to process this."

Tamelyn looks at me for a bit. "Sure, I suppose I can. This experience could have been worse, though. You could have lived through that memory the same way you did my memory of the blitz."

"I think I would have preferred that, honestly. I doubt seeing it from a child's perspective would have been as traumatic."

Tamelyn shakes her head. "Oh, oh no, that wasn't your memory. If it was your memory, then we would have started out in the nursery rather than in the yard. No, it seems my core self botched part of the meditation. That was her memory of that night. Seems there was a little information left in your scar after all."

And with that final comment, she fades from view as I feel her close herself off from me. Once I'm sure that she's gone, I collapse to my knees. I need time to feel and time to think, but I don't even know if I can handle that at this point. Even hearing her talk about Voldemort as being herself, I still can't mentally equate them. I can't equate the monster who cut down a family like it was nothing with the girl my own age who fled through a burning city while fearing for her life.

I feel like I could think this over for days, but consciousness claims me far sooner than I would have liked.

When I first smell the telltale odours of the hospital wing, I groan in frustration. I am not emotionally ready to deal with things right now. Unfortunately, the voices surrounding me didn't get that memo.

"Harry, are you alright!?"

"Stop crowding him!"

"I can't believe he fell out of the sky like that…"

I groan again. "Would you all shut up!?"

A blurry form that I can readily recognise as Hermione hands me my glasses, letting me see the crowd around my bed. Ron, Hermione, and the entire Gryffindor Quidditch team are huddled around my bed, though Madame Pomfrey quickly bustles through and begins running her usual diagnostic routine. I roll my eyes, but don't protest. I just need to sleep — for a few weeks, ideally. Unfortunately, I doubt that will be possible. Snape would have my head, and there's no way McGonagall would accept "existential despair" as a valid excuse to miss class. As Pomfrey finishes her routine, she hands me a bar of chocolate and a pepper-up potion, telling me to consume both of them before doing anything else. I down the pepper-up and then quickly bite into the chocolate to drown out the burning aftertaste. As I chew on the chocolate, my eyes flit about the anxiously awaiting crowd. As I take in the presence of the Gryffindor Quidditch team clad in their full gear, I remember that I was in the middle of a quidditch match when I passed out.

I suppose the traumatic memories kind of pushed my thoughts about the match to the wayside.

Once I finish chewing on the chocolate, I down the glass of water next to my bed and ask the obvious question.

"What happened?"

Ron and Hermione exchange a look before Ron speaks up. "The dementors swarmed the pitch. They just appeared out of the rain like a swarm of nightmares…"

"I've never seen Dumbledore so furious." Hermione chimes in. "He looked angry enough to split the earth open…"

Ron nods. "A lot of people fainted this time, but you were the only one on a broom who passed out."

Well that's just great. "What happened to the match?" I ask. Gotta keep up the pretence of normalcy.

Everyone seems to avert their eyes at my question. Whatever happened, it clearly wasn't good.

"Out with it." I say. "There's no need to spare my feelings." Because nothing they say would be worse then what I just experienced.

Oliver Wood speaks up. "Malfoy overtook you the moment you started to pass out and grabbed the snitch out of the air. He was really obnoxious about it, too. At least, he was once he stopped pissing his pants in fear of the dementors."

That actually gets a laugh out of me. "Malfoy never had the stomach to back up his boasts. If he actually pissed his pants, then I'd say losing the match was worth it. Well, besides us losing the match, did anything else of note happen?"

Everyone starts averting their eyes again, instantly annoying me.

"Well?" I say. "I asked a simple question, and your act isn't fooling anybody."

Hermione takes a deep breath before she starts speaking. "Well, the rainstorm was really intense, and the wind was quite strong. While Dumbledore was able to cushion your fall when you lost consciousness, your broom was sort of… blown away."

"Into the whomping willow." Ron adds.

"Ronald!" Hermione hisses.

Oh. Oh. That… really sucks, actually. That broom was the second present I ever got, and the first one that I ever felt that I had earned. Sure, I got on the quidditch team by breaking the rules and having an enthusiastic head of house, but I still earned it because of the actions I took. It was fast, powerful, and exhilarating.

And now it's a broken pile of splinters.

I am far more upset about this than I am losing the match, though I don't find this as surprising as I initially thought I would. After all, quidditch is just an excuse to fly. I like winning just for the exhilaration. But without a broom…

"Fuck."

"Language!" Hermione chides.

I did not mean to say that out loud. Not that I think that Hermione would particularly care if my swearing was intended to be internal rather than external.

I let my head fall back into the pillow. "Can you guys leave me alone for awhile? I need time to process this." And isn't that the understatement of the year. The match is the last thing on my mind at the moment. Not that I'm about to everyone else that. There is no way that I'm geing to let them know that I need to process what it's like to live through a Nazi bombing.

After everyone files out of the room, I pull the pillow out from under my head and shove it into my face, with every intention of screaming into it. Once I close my eyes, though, all I can see are the bombs and rubble. I try and push that thought out of my head only for it to be replaced by the cloaked figure that killed my parents and tried to kill me as well.

I pull the pillow off my face and groan loudly. I think I'll ask Madam Pomfrey for some dreamless sleep potion for tonight. I wouldn't want to see what my imagination comes up with otherwise.

I shift around in the hospital bed, turning my body to stare at the pile of splinters that Hermione left behind.

Magical objects are very hard to repair. So hard to repair that it's normally easier just to buy a new one. I should just let it go, but dammit, that is my broomstick! The Nimbus 2001 is only going to be in my price range if I buy it used, which means it won't be as well cared for as my old 2000 was, and there aren't likely to be many new 2000's in stock most places. The Firebolt is so outrageously expensive that it's not even worth joking about. That thing costs more than a new car, unless one has a very expensive taste in cars.

I brood for a while until Madam Pomfrey comes back over and scans me again, thankfully clearing me to leave once she finishes. I waste no time walking up to the seventh floor and making my way to the Room of Requirement.

'I need a place to forget about my worries.'

The door fades into view, and I walk right in. Immediately, my nose is filled with the sharp scent of wet pine and the sweet smell of decomposing leaves. I look around to see that the room has generated as a misty mountain path in the middle of a forest.

I shrug and start following the trail. Time to see if I enjoy hiking, I suppose.

I lay in my bed in the Gryffindor dorms later that afternoon. While hiking was fun, I didn't have enough energy to do it for the rest of the day.

So instead, I just lay in my bed, too awake to go to sleep, yet too tired to do anything else. With nothing else left to do, I pull out my trunk and start looking for something, anything to read. As I sort through them, the journal of Salazar Slytherin that Tamelyn copied from the Chamber of Secrets catches my eye. I ponder it for a moment before picking it up and opening it to a random page.

Said page is a list of casualties and abductions from Hogsmeade.

Unlike what Binns drones on about when it comes to the founders' era, there is no mention at all of witch burnings. Which I suppose makes sense. From what I can recall of muggle history, those didn't really come until a few hundred years later. Instead he talks about how young wizards and witches were abducted for use in armies. Slytherin then goes on to talk about how the Muggle royalty at the time preferred to kidnap children, as they were easier to mold into loyal servants and soldiers.

Reading through his exceedingly detailed accounts, I begin to understand why Hogwarts is a fortress. It held hundreds of magical children, and to many rulers at the time, that was an incomparable prize.

Hogwarts was a fortress because it had to defend the prize it held within.

I continue skimming through the pages, reading various passages that catch my eye. He was wary of muggleborns because he didn't want their connections to the muggle world to lead royal armies to the castle gates.

There is some genuine blood supremacy mixed in with his concerns, though it's much milder than I would have expected, especially given the current state of Slytherin house.

As I read through, though, a question comes to me. Hogwarts is clearly unfindable by muggles now. Why did they not simply use that magic back then?

The next morning, I make a vow to dearly thank whoever invented dreamless sleep potion, assuming they're still alive. It was not hard to convince Pomfrey to part with the potion, so long as I agreed not to ask for any additional doses for the next month.

As I make my way back up to the common room an hour later, I realise that I still haven't heard from Tamelyn. When I asked her for some time, I didn't expect more than a few hours. Then again, I haven't exactly been making good use of my time away from her…

My train of thought is interrupted when Lupin intercepts me in the hallways, putting a piece of parchment into his robes as he steps into view.

"Harry, I was wondering if you might be willing to spend a few hours catching up with me? I meant to check in with you yesterday after the match, but I was… ill at the time."

I'm about to decline when I think better of it. I have a lot of stuff I need to get off my chest. There are some things I know I can't talk about, but I'm sure I can talk about some things, right? So long as it's information I could reasonably have come across without Tamelyn's help, I should be in the clear…

Lupin guides me into his office and we each take a seat on opposite sides of his desk.

"Are you suffering any longer after-effects from the dementors?" He asks. "I know you were far from the only person to pass out, but since you've already done so once before, I wanted to make sure…"

Before I'm even thinking about it, I blurt it out.

"I saw Voldemort kill my parents."

Lupin simply stares at me, wide-eyed, at my admission.

"Yesterday, when I passed out, that was the memory I saw." It's technically true. I only saw the memory — I didn't relive it. "I just… She was merciless and powerful beyond belief. My father only lasted as long as he did because she was toying with him, and mum… mum didn't even have her wand, so she just begged for my life…"

Lupin manages to regain enough of his composure to respond. "I… I'm sorry that you had to relive that."

"That part that I don't get is that Voldemort didn't want to kill her. She said she was willing to spare my mum and only killed her because she refused to get out of the way. Voldemort really wanted to kill me. Why? Why was I the target, but my mum was safe?"

The tears start coming out for the first time since this ordeal started. I just… I just can't hold it in anymore. Keeping Tamelyn a secret was one thing, but I can't deal with that on top of everything else. I can't deal with jumping at every loud noise because I'm afraid it's a bomb that's about to blow me to pieces in a way that can't be healed. I can't deal with knowing I'm sharing my head with someone who becomes feared the world over for commiting unspeakable acts. I can't deal with wondering if I'm the reason that my parents are dead, and if I am, then why?

I can't deal with the conflicting emotions between frustration at not having privacy even inside my own head, but at the same time, not wanting her to leave because unlike everyone else, she at least understands. And I can't deal with the ramifications that the only person who can really understand me is, to put it bluntly, evil.

I can't deal with it.

And I can't even talk about it.

…Except with her.

At some point during my breakdown, Lupin came over and embraced me. I was so busy being lost in my own misery that I didn't even tense up at the contact the way I normally do.

"I'm sorry you had to see that Harry." Lupin says. "I don't know why Voldemort was after you. Dumbledore simply told us that your family was in danger and encouraged them to go into hiding."

I clench my fists at the mention of Dumbledore's role in this fiasco. Of course he was involved somehow.

Lupin doesn't notice my tension, though, so he continues talking. "I know that I haven't been here throughout your life as I should have been, but I'm here now. I was one of your father's best friends, and I owe it to you and to him to be here if you need me, alright?"

I nod weakly. I don't have the energy for anything else at the moment.

I just sit there for a while with Lupin trying to comfort me, when I blurt out another question.

"Why is Voldemort… like she is? Cruel and vindictive and ruthless. Why is she like that? She was a person, once. She was a normal person who attended school like me and had hopes and dreams and fears like everyone else." Hopes of relevance, fears of death, and dreams of power. I know that I'm rambling at this point, but I can't stop myself. I need answers, and Tamelyn is too cagey to tell me anything about herself. I feel like I need to know that just because we are as similar as she constantly says doesn't mean that I'll end up like her.

Lupin just sighs. "I'm not sure, Harry. I didn't know her."

I do know her, and I'm still not sure.

"But I think that the answer would change depending on who you asked. I think that if you asked Dumbledore, he would talk about people's ability to choose their lot in life, picking between doing the right thing and doing the easy thing. Charlus, your grandfather, probably would have talked about strength of will and the ability to resist the corruption of power. On the other hand, I think that some people just have more darkness in them than others, and eventually they get tired of resisting its pull."

Tamelyn and I are so similar in so many ways. Hearing Lupin's explanation makes me wonder if someday I'll get tired of resisting every urge to hex everyone who looks at me funny. If someday I'll just kill everyone who gives me trouble that same way Tamelyn killed Marge.

I don't like that. I don't like that at all.

I pace in front of the entrance to the Room of Requirement.

'I need a place to let off steam.'

The door fades into view, and I wrench it open. The room is filled with all sorts of targets, dummies, and obstacles, with a lone piece of parchment lying on the ground. I read the parchment, which details how to cast a fourth year disintegration curse — the Reductor.

Cheeky little bugger of a room.

The curse is easy enough to learn, and I quickly get to work demolishing as much stuff as I can. The room reassembles the dummies, but leaves the scenery in pieces as I smash my way through it. After a few casts, I try and start adjusting the power of the curse. All of the occlumency training I've done has allowed me feel the magic flowing through me. I put a little less into one spell, a little more into another, anything to keep it from becoming predictable. Predictability is a weakness.

It doesn't take me long to realise that I have less magic to work with now than I normally do.

Which makes sense. Normally, I can draw on Tamelyn's core, but since she's shut herself off from me… Well, I guess I can't really draw power that I can't access.

I groan and slump down to the floor in frustration, or at least I would have if the room didn't create a chair underneath me the moment I sank down. I am not doing myself any favours through this. I'm just… hiding my issues behind a mask of indifference. Just like she does. I wonder if Voldemort pushed herself so far down that path that eventually that mask was all that was left.

I have the room dispel all of the current objects and reconfigure itself to the room I used for mediation. I pull myself into the same manifestation of my mind that I use when I'm unconscious. It's easier to talk that way, to have actual bodies, even if they're just representations.

Once inside, I walk up to the barrier between us and start banging on it.

"Tamelyn! Open up! It has been almost twenty four-hours and We need to talk!"

The barrier doesn't respond, so I ram into it with my shoulder a few times. On the third try, though, the barrier opens up, and I find myself tumbling in once again.

"§Hello, Miss Snake!§" I hiss at the green garden snake in the orphanage's yard. "§How are you doing today?§"

Snakes aren't very smart, but they're much nicer than people. People are mean. Especially when they see people that are different from them. Then they turn extra mean. They try and hurt you with words and when the words don't work they use their fists. Snakes aren't like that. Snakes are always happy to have someone to talk to, even if they don't have much to say. Unlike people, snakes listen.

This snake isn't very good at speaking, so she's probably young. Young snakes never speak very well.

I hold out my arm and she curls around it and starts climbing my body. Snakes like doing that. They say I feel warm, even when I feel cold. I'm just glad I can be nice back to the snakes. Snakes are the only things that are nice to me, so I get to be nice back to the snakes. It's fun.

"Hey, freak!" Someone shouts from behind me. "Talking to snakes again?"

I tense at the sound of Herbert's voice. Lots of people are mean, but Herbert is the meanest. He takes everything he wants and hurts people if they don't give it to him. I hate Herbert.

"The snakes are nicer that you are!" I shout back, stomping my foot on the ground.

"Snakes can't talk, dummy. They're just stupid animals." Herbert sneers. "Just as stupid as the people who think they can talk."

"You're the stupid one!" I shout, pointing at him. "All you do it take things, and someday, you're going to take something from the wrong person, and then you'll be sorry!"

Herbert's face enters a frown, and he walks towards me, towering over me. At times like this, I hate being small. It makes me feel weak. I hate feeling weak.

"Oh? And who do you think that person will be, runt?" Herbert asks. "You?"

I try not to cower under his glare. "Maybe…"

"Wrong answer, runt." Herbert says as he punches me hard in the stomach. I keel over and wheeze as I lose my breath. Once I'm on the ground, he starts kicking me. "Think you're something tough, runt? You can't hurt me. You can't do anything except talk in your stupid snakes in your stupid made-up language. Maybe someday the matron will realise what a freak you are and kick you out of here."

"No, you…" I try to say before he kicks me again.

"What was that, runt?"

I clench my fists, feeling the anger drown out my thoughts. "I said you should STOP!"

The moment I say the word "stop", Herbert is thrown backwards across the yard, tumbling in the grass when he lands. I stop, gaping at what I just saw.

Did I do that?

I walk up to Herbert, intent on seeing if I can do it again. I focus on the feeling I had when I pushed him back, and try to make him float in the air in front of me. I see Herbert's body lift off the ground. By the time he realises what's happening and starts flailing, he's too late to do anything about it.

"You like to hurt other people." I say. "Let's see how you feel when you get HURT!"

At the word "hurt", Herbert starts screaming in agony.

I watch him scream and flail, trying to make the pain stop, but he can't do anything.

I am not weak, and this is what proves it.

"I think you need to hurt more, Herbert!" I say, making his screams become louder.

I find myself grabbed and pulled out of the memory, only to come face to face with Tamelyn's angry glare. She's holding me up by the back of my robes, putting her height to good use.

"Just because you saw one of my memories doesn't give you an open invitation to see the rest." She says with a frown upon her face.

"And I didn't mean for it to happen either time." I retort as I squirm out of her grasp.

With my feet firmly planted on metaphysical ground, I stare back at her.

"We need to talk." I say firmly.

Tamelyn sighs. "I suppose we do."

Despite the admission that we need to talk, neither of us says anything for a while. Just as I open my mouth to break the silence, Tamelyn speaks up first.

"I suppose I owe you an apology."

Whatever words I was about to say die in my throat.

"We are… similar." She continues. "Eerily so. I suppose that in the heat of the moment after finding out you relived one of my memories, I forgot that just because we are similar doesn't mean that we are identical."

She pauses for a moment before speaking again.

"I am… not fond of my parents. I only got one good thing from each of them: the legacy of Salazar Slytherin from my mother and my good looks from my father."

"How modest." I chide gently.

She smirks at me. "Beauty is a power of its own, you know, and it's one I'm proud to have. Honestly, if you put more effort into your appearance, you could have it, too."

I fight away the faint blush tingeing my cheeks. "Uh, thanks."

Tamelyn doesn't notice my embarrassment and turns away again, continuing her explanation. "I have no fondness for my parents. My mother was a coward who lost the will to live just after she gave birth, and my father was a muggle who tried to kill me when he found out I was a witch."

She pauses for a moment before continuing in a quieter tone. "That was what made me really give up on muggles, honestly. If a father couldn't love his daughter in spite of her magic, then was mugglekind really worth saving…?" She shakes her head. "But I digress. Since I was neither close to nor fond of my parents, I would have felt very little from seeing their deaths. In truth, I killed my father myself, even if it was done in an act of self defence. I suppose I should have realised that you would feel differently about your parents, since yours actually… cared about you." She finishes, bitterness seeping into her voice at that final admission.

I take a moment to sit and think before I speak up. "That's… part of the issue. Your attitude towards the whole ordeal was also irksome. Most people would find the ability to maintain a level head while watching the slaughter of an entire family to be… concerning."

Tamelyn raises an eyebrow. "I'm an occlumens, Harry, and a very, very good one, at that. Maintaining my composure in stressful situations is what I do. Besides which, there was vital information in that memory that would have been far too easily missed if I got caught up in the moment."

I pinch the bridge of my nose. "And while I will acknowledge that you have a point, there, I will also point out that giving me clinical details about my parents deaths is not something that should be done while I am witnessing the event for the first time! I would rather not have the oddities of Voldemort's fighting style pointed out to me the first time I see my parents outside of a photograph."

Tamelyn stares at me. "Noted."

"Again, though, that wasn't the thing that bothered me the most. It's that… you talk about Voldemort as being you."

Tamelyn blinks. "She is me, though. A different part of me, and a part that definitely confuses me, but a part of me nonetheless."

I groan in frustration. "Do you not see any issues with identifying with a ruthless killer!?"

Tamelyn slumps against a nonexistent wall, just like she did last time. I take that as a sign that her facade is cracking for the first time since we viewed the memory of the night my parents died, so I wait and see how things play out. "I'm already a killer, Harry. Myrtle Warren died to create me." She pauses to let out a sigh. "I will say that infanticide seems like a bit of a stretch even by my admittedly dubious standards of morality, though… "

"Why did your core self want to kill me? Do you have any ideas?"

"No! And that's the part that's annoying me most of all! What in the world is so potentially dangerous about an infant that they need to be killed!? The only halfway sensible idea that I can think of is that she was trying to send a message, but even that theory doesn't hold up! Why did she only want to kill the infant, but let the mother live? Why not just kill the whole family and leave them for the aurors to find!"

Time to bring up my longstanding suspicion. "Has it occurred to you that your core self may not be… totally sane?"

She stares at me in disbelief. "That just feels like a cheap explanation, like an easy way out. Just because her actions don't make sense doesn't mean that she's insane. It just means that we're missing information. Sure, there were some… less stable moments after my creation, but she's had half a century to recover from that."

I shake my head at her. "And I think you're in denial because you don't want to admit that a part of you lost control."

Tamelyn sneers at me. "Shut up."

I push her further. "You're obsessed with maintaining your image of strength and composure. You went out of your way to get rid of every weakness you had. You split your soul to overcome death and you mastered occlumency to protect your thoughts and emotions. You don't want to admit that your core self could be insane because that would mean that you possessed a weakness that made it possible."

"SHUT UP!" Tamelyn snarls, throwing me backwards with a wave of mental force. She storms over to me as I start to pull myself up and grabs me by the neck of my robes, yanking me upwards and holding me eye level with her.

"I am not weak." She says with barely restrained anger.

"No, you're not." I acknowledge. "But you also aren't perfect."

Tamelyn drops me and flops backwards, splaying herself out on the nonexistent ground.

"Fuck." She swore. "Fuck fuck fuck. Is this what it's like having someone be able to relate to you? Because if it is, I can't say I like it."

I shrug. "I can't answer that question any better than you can."

"Damn."

Silence stretches out between us before I ask the obvious question.

"So… what now?"

"Now?" She asks. "Now… I don't fucking know. I still say we try and relay information back to my core self. I'm sure you'd be glad to have her off of your back. Even if she has, through some means, lost her sanity, then she should still have enough self preservation not to kill me. I have a great deal of nasty and unsavoury traits, but suicidal is not one of them."

"It's not exactly suicide…" I point out.

She shrugs. "It's close enough to being suicide. We share a soul, so we are technically the same person, even if our memories diverge at age eighteen. We each anchor the other to the mortal plane. There's no reason for us to fight each other."

I scoff. "Right, because saying that won't jinx the entire thing."

Tamelyn's face contorts in confusion. "I'm talking about soul and ritual magic, not jinxes. What in the blazes are you talking about?"

I roll my eyes. "Nevermind. It's a muggle phrase."

A frown crosses her face. "Oh. Ew."

Another pause fills our mind.

"So, what do we do in the meantime?" I ask. "I doubt that contacting your core self is something we'll be able to plan. In all likelihood, we'll have to wait for an opportunity to arise. What else needs to be done?"

"Hm… Well, for one, I still need to get a body of my own. That means I have to make a body, which means that I have to start getting much better at alchemy. We should also start looking into why my core self wanted to kill you. That sort of agenda doesn't come out of nowhere."

"While you were blocking yourself off from me, I asked Professor Lupin about it. He said that Dumbledore gave my parents intel that 'their family' was being targeted. Unless we ask Dumbledore, I doubt we'll be able to find much."

Tamelyn scowls. "Great. So our only guaranteed source of intel on this is Dumbledore. There goes that plan. I suppose you should start working on learning how to defend yourself, then. It would be a pity if you died."

I pull myself out of my mind and back into my body. I find myself sprawled out on the floor instead of sitting where I started.

'I blame you for this.'

You can't blame all of your problems on me, Harry.

'No, I can't. But that doesn't change the fact that a lot of them are your fault.'

Well, that fact that you skipped lunch certainly isn't my fault.

'I wouldn't have had to skip lunch if you didn't show me that awful memory then hide from me for twenty four hours! What took you so long, anyways?'

I have no sense of time when I'm shut off from you. I did try bothering you at one point, but your mind was empty.

'Oh. I, uh, took a dreamless sleep potion last night. That's probably why.'

Yes, that would explain it. Now let's see what we can find out about what happened before your parents went into hiding. Asking Dumbledore anything is absolutely off-limits. We don't want him thinking you're sticking your nose where it doesn't belong.

'Our first source should be Lupin. He may not know much, but perhaps he can direct us to people who do.'

Sounds good. Time to subtly manipulate people into giving us information.

A/N (Tendra): This chapter just… did not want to be written. I thought I had a decent plan, and then next thing I know, Harry's having a mental breakdown and my entire plan is derailed.

(Don't look at me. I just write the thing.)

On the bright side, this chapter finally goes into the process of how to make a horcrux and introduces the concept of spellcasting tiers. I intended to actually explain them in this chapter as well, but, like I said, things got away from me. I also considered going back and adding a description in, but Harry and Tamelyn's conversations are extremely flow-heavy. It's borderline impossible to direct them in any way.

I introduced a lot of other ideas in this chapter that will be brought up later. I look forward to seeing if any of you start to piece things together.

Poor Lupin is trying to be a good adult role model in Harry's life, but both of them are way out of their depth, here.

E/N (Xgenje): So HOLY CARP THAT'S A THING. I was not expecting this chapter to be like this when I started reading it. I honestly don't have much to say so…

Yeet?