章 1083: Reforged by SleeperAwakens
(Harry's encounter with Voldemort in the end of the first book didn't end like we thought. Riddle didn't pass an opportunity to screw with the boy's brain. In the end, that small difference ended up changing Harry into someone who would become so much more than merely "Dark Lord's equal"...)
Chapter 1: The New Me
Harry Potter knelt on the floor, staring at the mortal remains of the professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts. He felt weak and sluggish, staggered by the weird burning in his veins that had started the moment Quirrell touched him and had grown stronger as the boy, encouraged by the consequences of this action, grasped the professor's head, making it crack and glow like the burning embers of the fire in the common room.
Harry's vision started to darken a bit and he shook his head, forcing himself to stay awake. This action did nothing but summon a bout of nausea. He groaned quietly. Great. Just great. After a heroic confrontation, throw up and/or faint. The Harry Potter patented method to avoid the inevitable clean-up. All rights reserved.
It was when he defeated the urge to introduce his dinner to the floor that he noticed the thin wisps of smoke that were rising from the burned husk on the floor. They slowly gathered together, forming a horrifying likeness of a mask surrounded by smoky tendrils that slowly swirled in the air currents. The "mask" was eerily similar to the face that had been sticking out of the back of Quirrell's face not five minutes before that. Harry stared at the abomination in horror, not knowing what to do. It opened its mouth and with a furious scream launched itself at the boy. He didn't have time to even blink before the wrath entered his head.
That hurt.
That hurt a damn friggin' lot.
Harry thrashed in agony while that thing was tearing into his mind without a care. As it often happens when it comes to the Mind Arts, the unlucky first-year instinctively knew what Voldemort was trying to do. Either he'd control him in order to make a last attempt at the Philosopher's Stone or, if that proved to be impossible, reduce him to a vegetable-like state. He felt the monster pick at his own thoughts, memories and feelings, discarding them after a brief glance as unimportant. After a while Voldemort stopped and Harry felt a distinct tinge of shock, followed by pensiveness and then a dark glimmer of amusement, which somehow made the pain in his head even worse. After that, the process sped up, the presence in the boy's head only "touching" the contents of said head before continuing.
Harry did not know for how long he was lying there, shuddering and whimpering in pain. It surely felt like hours, but Legilimency contact usually speeds time for the participants, so it could be just a few seconds. Finally, he felt Voldemort reach a decision, pausing in his search. The pause gave him a chance to breathe and blink a few times, before the Dark Lord began to tear into his brain with renewed vigour. In the first second of the torture Harry decided that the wraith was going to cut his losses and finish him off.
Afterwards he would say that the feeling was not unlike being lobotomised without anaesthesia with a dull spoon. The boy could feel that his consciousness was being torn apart. He even stopped caring about it, the only thing that he wanted was to dull the pain. Harry tried to focus on the surroundings but to no avail. Then he tried to concentrate on the not-quite-burning in his veins, with moderate success. With every second, the headache was lessening while the awareness of this strange feeling was intensifying.
At last, the agony that he was in just a couple of minutes before vanished without a trace. He tried prying his eyes open and managed to notice the wraith leaving his head and fleeing the room. Maybe even screaming.
The last thing that Harry remembered as he was falling into the warm, comfortable embrace of unconsciousness was seeing a fiery bird flow into the room, an old wizard right behind it.
The boy survived that, all right. He always did. However, the aftermath of the confrontation showed that Voldemort wasn't as unsuccessful as Dumbledore would believe.
Harry wasn't the same after that day. Granted, the differences were faint, easy to miss if you didn't know what to look for and equally as easy to mistake for the after-effects of a close brush with death. However, the changes were there.
Before, Harry was a quiet kid, only speaking up when in the – admittedly – small circle of close friends. Now, he spoke much more often, but sometimes had periods of prolonged thoughtful silence, not saying anything at all. When he was like that, people tended to leave him alone for some reason, as if he was holding a big, red 'Do Not Disturb' sign over his head. After the silent spell passed, he tended to have some sort of crazy idea or a paradoxical thought in his head.
The new regime of noise production, however, was the least of the changes, even if the first to be noticed by the ever-vigilant Hermione. She also noted the fact that he was rather more absent-minded than when they first met.
During the summer Harry was barely holding back from doing something, anything, to escape the Dursleys. After a house-elf appeared with a warning of something terrible coming to Hogwarts and landing Harry in a heap of trouble, the boy was literally itching to act like a wizard for once and do a runner. However, Harry knew that he was forbidden to cast magic outside of school and was reasonably sure that if he did, the Ministry would know and kick him out of Hogwarts, so he braced himself and prepared to wait until September. Someone will notice if I'm not at the train. I'm the Boy-Who-Lived, somebody will wonder. After that, it's only a matter of time.
He didn't like it – children of his age aren't patient by their nature and Harry wasn't that different from the others, sudden bursts of heroic valour notwithstanding – but he was stubborn and set to follow his plan, not listening to the occasional impulses to try and do some wandless magic to free himself. Fortunately, not very long after Harry's incarceration Ron and the Weasley twins came car-a-flying to his rescue. The freedom soothed him, not to mention the fact that he was greatly encouraged by the loyalty shown to him by his friends.
The new Harry wasn't that different in his likes and dislikes, though. He still hated Malfoy, even if he was slightly more verbal in expression of said emotion. When Harry was walking away from another confrontation with the blond ponce in which they almost came down to hexes in the beginning of the new term, Hermione started ranting at him and Ron.
"Honestly, I still can't understand why you don't simply ignore him! And even if you don't, it's no reason to point wands! Violence isn't the answer!"
"She's right, it's not. Violence is a question, and the answer is 'yes'!" Harry said in a snarky tone, making Ron snort and comment in a faux-thoughtful tone.
"Well, unless the question is 'What do we do with Malfoy?', then violence is a perfectly suitable answer..."
After Halloween of that year Harry decided that his second year sucked worse than a leaky vacuum cleaner.
It started off with the disaster that was his and Ron's unorthodox arrival at Hogwarts. Harry let himself be talked into flying to school on the Weasley family car despite being sure that it was a monumentally bad idea. Needless to say, he was right, as a month of detentions could prove.
Then, they found out that their new Defence teacher was somehow even worse than Quirrell. Usually, Harry kept his snarky comments rare and out of classroom (the only lesson that could inspire him was Potions, and he wasn't suicidal enough to provoke Snape). However, in the Defence classroom, the boy seemingly decided that he was morally obligated to mutter disparaging and sometimes hilarious remarks almost non-stop. Ron, of course, decided to show such a noble calling his heartfelt support.
"So when the hag saw the amulet I was wearing, she turned and ran! I, of course, let her be – live and let live, I say…" the obnoxious professor was regaling the audience with yet another tale from one of his numerous books, causing the male half of said audience to glare at him with boredom and/or contempt, while female contingent was staring at him with adoration. Even Hermione, whose brilliance was never questioned, just like the fact that water is wet is never doubted, was staring at the blond fool with something akin to hero worship.
"More like you ran from the hag screaming like a little girl. You would never remember to Apparate – if you even know how to do it in the first place," Harry muttered, drawing on the parchment. After he finished, he poked Ron with his elbow and showed the result. The redhead bit his lip hard, trying not to laugh as he looked at the magically animated picture of Lockhart running from a vague small figure, his blue robes flowing after him a-la Snape, his flip-flops squeaking with every stride, barely noticeable over the continuous and extremely high-pitched screams.
At least the two friends were learning something, even if it was drawing animations and subtly casting one-way silence charms on their table.
"I continued my journey and after three days I reached the mountains, where, from the tales of the locals, I was able to find the banshee I sought," Lockhart glanced at his watch. "Well, it seems that our time is over. The rest of the story will be told next time, but you could always read it in my magnificent book," he gave the class his best award-winning smile, causing a couple of girls to sigh.
"Magnificent, my non-existent arse," Harry grumbled, standing up and creaking his neck with a loud crack. "Ah, that's better. I'm telling you, those books are nothing more than hard cover autofellatio..."
Ron smothered his laughter, turning it into an enormous coughing fit as Parvati Patil, who was sitting nearby, squeaked and went red. Yes, the ginger decided, it's not all bad to have such a ponce for a professor at times like these, even if I spend half of the DADA lessons red from trying to suppress my laughter to levels manageable by the silence charm. There are worse ways to go than burst a blood vessel trying not to laugh at a joke about the similarities between Himalayan kittens and blood-sucking hyenas.
The attacks that occurred that year set Harry on edge. The trio spent countless hours trying to guess what exactly was happening in the castle. They were researching with a determination that was slightly scary. It only increased after Hermione got petrified herself, as if the boys tried to make up for her share of books scanned.
They even followed Hagrid's suggestion to 'follow the spiders', as vague as it was. They did get almost eaten for their trouble, but it was worth it, as it gave them the last clue they needed. Aragog said that his kind didn't dare speak its name, whatever the unknown threat was. Only one creature was both regarded as a mortal enemy of spiders and had an ability to petrify (under certain conditions, according to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them): the basilisk. The King of Serpents.
Yeah, that certainly qualified as a Name-To-Run-Away-From-Really-Fast.
Unfortunately, the boys didn't exactly have a choice in this, or so they thought. Ginny had been taken to the chamber. Harry and Ron, in a final attempt to get enough bravery to go and search for the chamber where a certifiable monster lived, visited Hermione. In her fist, they found a book cut-out with the description of basilisks along with a hastily written word.
Pipes.
A simple leap of logic gave them the location of the Chamber. They quickly got some cannon meat in the face of Lockhart and took a literal leap of faith.
What followed, though, was a disaster.
The 6th of June, 1992, the Chamber of Secrets
The blinded basilisk thrashed in pain. In its fury, it managed to land a glancing blow at the firebird, which was quite small in comparison to the hell-knows-how-many-feet snake. With a surprised squawk the phoenix was thrown into a snake-shaped column. The bird fell to the floor and didn't move anymore – unconscious or dead, Harry didn't know.
"Fawkes!" he yelled. "Damn it!"
Harry swore loudly and ran towards the farthest statuesque column, his heart thumping loudly from the adrenaline in his veins.
"Kill the boy! You can still smell him!"
"Run, run, run, run like hell!" Harry chanted to himself, panting from exertion and influx of adrenaline.
Judging by the sounds, the sodding snake had slithered after him. Harry gritted his teeth after assessing his chances of survival. I have next to no chance of running away, not with the wet floor and the speed of the basilisk. A split-second decision caused him to stop by the closest column and after gathering his courage, he turned around, raising the sword of Gryffindor. Hopefully, the snake will miss and will be stunned by collision with the column. Merlin, Morgana and Maeve, help me...
The snake stopped no further than five meters from the tired boy, slightly swaying and turning its head, searching for him. After a couple of seconds, it struck without any warning. Harry stumbled back a bit at the snake's strike – miraculously avoiding the teeth by a couple of inches. Regaining his footing, Harry slashed at the snake's nose, trying to hinder as much of its capability to smell him as possible. Unfortunately, the blade made very little damage – a flesh wound at the most. The basilisk roared and reared back – a scratch it may have been, but it did aggravate the monster further. Not pausing to confirm the boy's whereabouts, it struck again. This time it didn't miss. But... neither did Harry.
The basilisk reared back again, shrieking in agony – its brain was pierced by the blade that the boy somehow managed to hold on to. Harry fell to his knees and shuddered violently. He could feel blood in places that it wasn't meant to go into at all. It was as though liquid fire had formed in his veins. The floor shook when the titanic serpent, finally surrendering to the clutches of death, fell, providing the force to drop Harry to the wet floor. His vocal chords seemed paralysed – every part of him was begging for the pain to cease.
Riddle was saying something – Harry didn't listen to him. His vision was blurring- his senses were slowly shutting down, rendering him blind, deaf and mute. He knew instinctively that he was dying, but he just couldn't bring himself to care. The pain will finally stop. I will see my parents. Yeah, that will be nice. Harry smiled.
With half-closed eyes Harry managed to see a red flash.Fawkes? What are you doing here, buddy? Go to Dumbledore, get him to return, he'll make it all better. Oh, are you crying? Why? It is not that sad that I'm dying...
…
Hold your basilisks.
His vision regained its focus. Suddenly, Harry could see Fawkes crying on the wounds in his shoulder and arm. He could hear Riddle gloating.
After a moment of processing the scene before him, Harry lifted his still weak left arm and pulled out the broken fang that pierced it. The staggering pulse of pain that followed this action forced him to yelp, summoning the attention of the Dork-Lord-To-Be.
"What? You blasted bird!" Fawkes was thrown against the wall – again. Riddle was fiddling with Harry's wand and frowning at him.
"Ah, yes. Phoenix's tears. I forgot about them. There's too much poison in you for them to work completely, but I won't risk it. You managed to kill my basilisk – an incredible feat … especially with the hand you've been dealt."
Harry gritted his teeth. Fire in his veins, cooled for a moment by Fawkes's tears, was burning again. He looked around to find something – anything – to help the situation. Thoughts about giving up and dying left his head completely, vanishing like a mirage after a glass of water, as if they were never there. Harry wanted, no, needed to fight on. And at that moment, near his wounded right arm he saw Riddle's diary.
Harry would readily admit that he wasn't very smart, but he did have his moments of brilliance, and fortunately it was one of those. The young wizard gripped the basilisk fang with his now somewhat functional left arm and raised it over the black book.
"What are you doing?"
He ignored Riddle – which was very easy, as at the time all of his focus was on the fang and the Merlin damned pain that was encompassing his whole body. He dropped his arm with the fang on the diary.
The last thing Harry heard before falling into the blessed embrace of unconsciousness, satisfied with his last little trick, was a soul-piercing shriek of agony, and to him it sounded like a choir of angels.
Riddle screamed and convulsed, frothing at the mouth, growing paler and more translucent with each cry. Riddle was ending.
And he realized it.
Tom Marvolo Riddle was not a fool by any means. He knew he would die if he didn't do something drastic, as his anchor to this plain was destroyed and his soul, as frail and torn as it was, was experiencing an undeniable pull of the Other Side. Riddle had nothing to lose and everything to gain, so he went all in.
He cut the magical line that connected him to the remains of the diary and concentrated on retaining his current form. The pull wavered.
Riddle envisioned himself as a cloud of energy and willed himself to lose all tangibility he earned from siphoning the magic from the Weasley girl to conserve the energy. From his admittedly limited study in true soul magic he knew that he had only one option – to become a wraith and seek out his elder counterpart, assimilate him and thereby anchor himself with all the Horcruxes that were created after the diary.
With a soft "poof" Tom Riddle Jr. coalesced into a wraith and immediately left the Chamber. He had someone to find.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Fawkes slowly crawled from the corner in which he was thrown. He steadily pulled himself over to the prone form of the boy he set out to save earlier, his wing no longer obeying his orders and instead dragging on the wet floor, accumulating a cover of millennia-old grime. The phoenix pulled, pushed and finally sat at the barely-breathing boy's chest. Not paying attention to the awakening girl nearby, the bird inhaled deeply and set itself ablaze.
The hatchling is barely alive, Fawkes thought, the poison of the Great Serpent is nearly done with its task. And his mind is wounded as well, nearly split into two parts. I have to correct that. Such bravery cannot go without reward.
The flame surrounded Fawkes and Harry both. And then there was light.
Fifteen minutes prior, Headmaster's office
Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore was not having a good day.
It began with him being summoned back to school, about which he was both relieved and wary. While it was good news that he was suddenly being reinstated as the headmaster, he was afraid of what could have caused it.
He was right to be afraid.
The youngest of the Weasley family was taken to the Chamber of Secrets, and judging by the morbid message on the wall, she was not likely to escape it alive. And if that wasn't enough, her youngest brother and with Harry Potter were nowhere to be found. If they had somehow guessed the location of the entrance to the Chamber, he was afraid for their lives despite their ability to escape life-or-death situations relatively unscathed, as shown previous year. Albus frowned.
If he was honest with himself, his inability to find the Chamber was greatly vexing to him. He was one of the most powerful wizards of Europe! He had single-handedly kept the political situation in the whole region stable. He had manipulated, persuaded, and bribed to protect the people in all of Britain – and Albus knew that most of the time, he was the sole barrier that has stood against the Darkness. It has been so for a long, long time, and by Merlin, he was good at it.
Then came the attack on the Flamel residence while both Nicolas and Perenelle were away. His good friend, and mentor, was not amused. The attacker retreated after seeing a couple of documents, which stated that the stone was locked in a Gringotts' safe. Fortunately, said vault was a part of the trap that Nicolas created to deter those who would wish the wonder that was the Philosopher's Stone for themselves. The real stone was somewhere else, in an unspecified location in the wilderness of Ural, in the middle of a cave warded to high heaven, so it was not threatened. The scary part was the magical signature that the wards "remembered".
Albus immediately recognized it as belonging to one Tom Riddle, although it was rather dim and nearly completely masked by another signature that after a couple of minutes of thought he realized belonged to his previous Muggle Studies professor that just the day before applied for the DADA position.
It was decided that together, Nicolas and Albus would make a trap for the wraith of the Dark Lord. The headmaster sent Hagrid to the vault to collect the fake stone, knowing that he would inevitably make a show for those in the know. Hagrid was a good man, loyal, simple, brave, and not without his own brand of wisdom, but subtle he was not. The break in still occurred, as Voldemort seemingly did not connect Hagrid coming to the bank with the Stone at first, but Dumbledore knew that he would know what's happened when presented with an empty vault.
The fake stone was to be planted at Hogwarts so as to lure Voldemort out. At the first staff meeting before the school year Albus cheerfully told his professors about the presence of The Stone in Hogwarts and requested them to create a set of defences around it. He himself made sure so that the protections would not harm anyone – not seriously. It took a couple of sleepless nights, but Albus had personally charmed the Cerberus not to injure anyone who was younger than twenty years old, only scaring them away. The Devil's Snare would restrain without killing because professor Sprout regularly fed it with bovine blood, the keys would issue a non-lethal electrical shock, the chess figurines would knock out anyone who tried to pass them and the troll would do the same. The poison vials contained the Draught of Living Death and the flames were also enchanted to put whoever went past them to sleep.
The protections were designed to stall, delay and frustrate, along with some truly ancient and subtle defences that would stump any but the most powerful and experienced wizards but wouldn't really harm anyone who didn't possess any malicious intent. Albus would always look after Quirrell, and when he couldn't, he'd asked Severus to watch over the poor misguided boy. Unfortunately, Albus, in his quest to redeem Quirrell, had forgotten that Voldemort, despite being quite insane in his later years, was still a man of great intelligence. Getting to the stone, therefore, was easy if time consuming. Getting out, though... that would be much, much more difficult, as anyone who would attempt to leave the room with the fake in their hands (an unlikely event, given the difficulty to overcome the intent reading ward on the mirror, but still possible) would have to face all the previously 'easy' obstacles, empowered to a ridiculous degree and really going for the kill. And should it be done, all the staff in the castle would be already converged on the third floor, ready to attack en masse.
Yes, it was a good plan. But as the common saying goes, barely any plans survive contact with the enemy.
One day, not a week from the end of the school year, Albus received a letter from a German colleague of his. It hinted that there was a serious need to talk about a recent development and stating that it was a very grave matter, to the degree that Claudean, the man he was supposed to meet, had come personally to the ministry. He would have Flooed to the castle, the letter said, but unfortunately the Floo network was down for maintenance. Seeing that Quirrell was currently sick and couldn't leave his quarters, Dumbledore alerted Severus and Minerva and immediately took a Portkey to the Ministry. However, Claudean wasn't in the Ministry. When Albus finally found him in the Leaky Cauldron three hours later, they quickly found out that someone had somehow forged both the letter to Albus calling him to the Ministry and the letter to Claudean to summon him to Britain and not specifying the place.
Tom had always been a brilliant student.
Quirrell easily distracted both Severus and Minerva (not that it was hard in a castle full of students) and immediately went for the stone. As Albus wasn't in the castle, the obstacles didn't serve any purpose other than to annoy Voldemort. The revered Headmaster felt himself an utter fool that day. The only benefit this fiasco was that now he was sure that Harry had some degree of protection against Tom. If only this knowledge didn't come with the price of Quirrell's life and Harry's innocence. The poor boy was heavily shaken by the whole situation, but didn't show it overtly. The Flamels, in the meantime, had used the destruction of the fake stone to fade into the background of the wizarding world. Albus knew it wasn't likely that he'd see them again in his lifetime and he doubted that young Harry would either.
Then came the events of this year. No matter what Dumbledore did, no matter where he searched, he could not find the Chamber. The ghosts didn't see anything suspicious, there were no portraits at the attack sites, and the sweep of the castle during the winter holidays was unsuccessful. Whatever or whoever directed the attacks was also elusive. Albus knew that to truly close the Chamber he needed to find the culprit first, and concentrated on this task. Looking back, it probably would have been better if he decided otherwise.
And now, because of his failure, a young girl was dead or dying. It was in these moments that Albus felt as old as he really was.
The Headmaster sat stiffly in his chair, waiting for the Weasleys to arrive. They needed to know what happened, as much as he hated to be the one who brought this kind of news. He tiredly cleaned his half-moon glasses and turned to his familiar.
"Whatever should I do, Fawkes?"
A solemn trill was his answer. Albus sighed and almost turned away, but a sudden movement drew his attention. The venerated warlock watched, stupefied, as Fawkes suddenly, took flight, snatched the sleeping Sorting Hat from its place and vanished in a flash of flame.
"Where are you going, my friend? And why did you need the poor Hat?" Dumbledore muttered to himself as he rubbed his forehead and popped a lemon drop into his mouth. "Alas, I am much too old for these antics."
Approximately an hour later, when he was consoling the sobbing Mrs. Weasley, Andrew McGraffet, the Head Boy of this year, entered the room with a bewildered look on his face.
"Professor? There's a…" he struggled for the right word. "Situation?"
"What happened, Andrew?" the old Mugwump looked at him, secretly hoping that he had any kind of good news. The Head Boy coughed, glancing at the Weasleys, and said:
"Well, it's Moaning Myrtle, sir. She's pestering the professors and saying that Miss Weasley sent her."
"WHAT?!" was the shocked answer of the whole room. Andrew shrugged.
"She says Miss Weasley, her brother, Professor Lockhart and Harry Potter are in her toilet for some reason. Says they need us to get them out of… well, she never quite specified. Oh, and from her wailing Potter is unconscious."
Twenty minutes and not a second longer – that was all it took to retrieve the children and the… slightly unhinged professor. Albus didn't feel particularly sorry about his situation: he'd hired the man specifically to expose him for what he was… well, and because nobody else had applied. Being unaware of his previous actions was better than Azkaban, anyway. Unfortunately, Ginny and Harry were another story entirely. Harry was out of it, and even though the scanning spells showed absolutely no damage to him, it didn't mean that no damage occurred. As evidenced by his lack of clothing and the young form of Fawkes on his chest, the boy was harmed enough that the Fire Rebirth was needed. He must have been almost dead! Well, not surprising, considering the truly titanic dead basilisk in the main chamber and the charred book near Harry's arm. Said book still had a fang impaled in it. Miss Weasley was quite inconsolable about being the cause of so many injuries, especially to Harry. After a stern talking-to, she was eventually taken home by her parents. Albus recommended for her to see a Mind Healer to deal with the stress of being possessed and asked the family to be together as much as they could this summer for the sake of their daughter.
Young Mr. Weasley told Albus how they were able to find out where the Chamber was located and what exactly the monster inside was. Dumbledore shook his head in astonishment – Filius was the one who'd checked that toilet, how could such an entrance elude the Charm Master? After the talk, he inspected the sink that contained the entrance and found a subtle concealing ward that worked on everybody who didn't know the location of the Chamber and wasn't a Parselmouth. It was quite ingenious.
Now, all that remained a mystery was what transpired in the Chamber. He could guess, of course, and already had a most probable estimation of those events, but he needed to seek a confirmation. Something only Harry, reluctant to wake up, could give.
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