Chapter Text
The moment the curse passed through his lips, Voldemort knew that something had gone wrong. The child, standing and holding onto the edge of his crib, didn’t seem to realize the gravity of the situation, and even tried to raise a tiny fist to to touch the green light. Voldemort supposed that in a magical household, it did make sense that children would be a bit more trusting of spontaneous lights.
However, the child was too slow, and the green spell went from Voldemort’s wand directly to the child’s forehead. The curse stuck, and instead of the more familiar crumpling of the body, magic, as green as the curse, leached from the spot it hit on the forehead, cracking the boy’s forehead and glowing green. Voldemort watched the green light glow brighter, and the child seemed to realize something was going wrong and started to fuss.
When it was almost too bright to look, the green light seeping down the child’s forehead burst out, hitting Voldemort in the chest.
Voldemort took one step back, before a pain in his chest erupted. He clutched his heart, his wand falling to the floor as his fingers lost the ability to grip anything. The green light seemed to be coming from his chest now, too deep under his skin to see the source, but a familiar burning pain deep in his soul made him realize what was happening.
Even with his eyes closed, Voldemort saw the green light erupting from him, and crossing the room one last time. He opened his eyes, seeing the child’s bleeding forehead and green eyes wet with tears, before he collapsed to the ground and knew no more.
The light erupted from his very soul, and all Voldemort could see was green. The pain of it caused him to lose all feelings in his limbs and he couldn’t even open his eyes. Did he even have eyes? It didn’t seem like it. He tried to scream but there was nowhere for the voice to come from, so it just echoed around his thoughts.
The pain was gone as suddenly as it had started, and Voldemort found himself staring at what must be his own face. While no one had ever accused him of being vain, at least not within the past forty years, he was extremely familiar with his own reflection in the mirror.
His body appeared to be in the same room, the Potter nursery, but his own perspective was switched. He watched what must be his old body, kneeling on the ground and clutching his chest and looking up at where he was now. The red eyes rolled back, and the body fell to the ground.
A dark midst like substance left the body, and Voldemort tried to reach out for what must be the rest of his soul, but the body he was in refused to obey his commands. He could feel arms and legs in an abstract way, and a distant pain around his head. Even as he tried to focus on that, Voldemort found his grip on even that sliver of awareness leaving him.
Unable to gain any control of the body, he focused on the senses he could still access. The view of the nursery, while blurred with what Voldemort could only assume was tears, was still something he could perceive. The effort to attempt to take control of that only made it harder to grasp and Voldemort found himself slipping further away.
Awareness didn’t come back all at once. It came in small bursts and was snatched away just as quickly. Although Voldemort was finding his grasp on time tenuous at best.
It started as flashes of emotion. An ache that he recognized as sadness. A breathlessness that must have been fear. A burning heat of anger. Without a body the sensations were odd, but still distinctly recognizable.
While he had been no stranger to anger in any form, it had been quite a long time since he had felt anything resembling fear or sadness. Even the anger or frustration he had felt recently, if anything could be considered recent, had been dull and lacking any real heat. It had turned out that ripping one’s soul had some consequences after all, if what he was feeling was an accurate representation of what human emotions should be.
The unfamiliar and foreign emotions started as small flashes, but they grew deeper and lasted longer as time went on. Or at least he assumed time was going on. His grasp on reality was fragile.
In his more aware moments, Voldemort made an attempt to send some sort of response. Emotions hadn’t been his strong suit and he didn’t want to immediately alienate who or what ever was on the other end of this connection. So rather than mustering up his rage at his current helplessness, Voldemort made an effort to instead focus on his confusion with the current situation.
Generally there seemed to be no impact, but occasionally he would receive some sort of confusion back.
Voldemort was really trying to be optimistic about who could be on the other end of the connection, but his only guess was rather damning. His last interaction with the physical world had been looking out the eyes of young Harry Potter and watching his own death. While there was perhaps a chance that circumstances had changed significantly while he had been disconnected from reality, more likely he was feeding off the emotions of little Harry Potter.
There had been some sort of magic leaving his body, in the moment Voldemort had assumed it must be his soul, but had not processed the implications of that. Without a doubt, the dark vapor resembled what his soul looked like when completing his horcruxes. But if that was his soul, what exactly did that make him?
Voldemort wished for nothing more than eyes to close, and perhaps for a head to bang against a wall. In all the research he’d done, no where did it suggest that Horcruxes had any degree of sentience. It would have been fascinating if it wasn’t so damn inconvenient.
Voldemort, while willing to claim his genius in most things, was willing to admit that he was perhaps not an expert in children. He had, of course, been a child many many years ago, but he was self aware enough to admit that the combination of his upbringing and personality was more of a hindrance than a help when it came to knowledge of any actual children.
However, even with that shortcoming, he was relatively sure that most children usually felt more positive emotions than what he received from presumably Harry Potter.
At first, he convinced himself that these emotions must be the reaction from what he had done. Even at one year old, having a strange man break into your home, murder your parents, and attempt to murder you must have been tramatizing in some sort of way, Voldemort assumed. Having come to that conclusion it seemed that fear, sadness, anger, and a smattering of other feelings made sense coming from the child. But surely they should stop at some point?
While Voldemort was unsure how much time was passing, surely it must be passing in some capacity? Perhaps the child was kidnapped after the whole debacle? Voldemort had followers left who might attempt to get some sort of revenge against the family that killed him. Or the child could be in ministry custody while they attempt to place him into a new home. Merlin knows the ministry was incompetent at everything they did, and Voldemort is sure that their ineffective policies most likely would extend to handling a lost child.
However, as more emotions were coming through, Voldemort had to come to the conclusion that time must be passing in some significant way. He refused to believe that any person could have this many feelings all the time. It was mildly disturbing and made Voldemort crave a hot shower.
Attempting to concentrate too long on the emotions caused Voldemort to lose his grip on even that. It wasn’t quite like falling asleep, considering he had no eyes to close and no body to rest, but it was comparable. Each time he “awoke” from this state, he was positive that time must be passing somehow.
The change happened so slowly that Voldemort didn’t realize what was occurring at first.
He only realized that there was a change when a moment of fear he received from Harry was accompanied by a flash of sound. Someone was yelling. The words were indistinguishable, and Voldemort found himself too surprised by the interruption of his usual silence that he didn’t attempt to make sense of the words. It was a male voice. Unfamiliar, loud, and unmistakably angry.
He attempted to follow the feelings, back towards the source of the voice, but his eagerness must have bled through the connection. There was another pulse of fear, and Voldemort found himself pushed out of the child’s mind.
It was hardly what he would consider a success, but considering the odd limbo he was currently trapped in, Voldemort was thrilled.
More flashes of reality followed that. It seemed as if some sort of dam had been broken.
Sounds or visions of whatever the child was experiencing started happening more frequently. Other senses bled through their connection less frequently, but anything was better than nothing.
At first these brief glimpses to reality were only accompanied by the emotions. A flash of fear with the vision of a red faced man towering over him. A sense of pride following as he smelt what must have been a roast with all the trimmings. A deep sadness as he felt a hunger in his non existent stomach.
In these moments it was hard to tell if Voldemort was any different from the child, but considering he had nothing else to do with his time, Voldemort spent most of his time in awareness exploring the connection.
It was clear with that exploration that he and the child had separate consciousness, which Voldemort was thankful for since he did not want to have to live through childhood again. There was a connection which Voldemort had never seen before in his own mind, and that was what caused the communication between them. Applying what he knew of occlumency made it simple to block the connection, but considering this was his only connection to reality, Voldemort rarely used this skill.
The connection in their minds must be due to his partial soul latching onto such a young one. Rather than a power struggle that might have happened if Harry was older and more established, their souls were sharing the space rather peacefully. Voldemort could, if he really tried, feel the child’s magic. He couldn’t wield any of it, and there was hardly any considering the boy was so young, but it was comforting.
Voldemort was unsure if the snatches of reality were getting clearer because he was learning more about his connection with the child or simply because the child was getting older and could actually process things now. Perhaps it was a bit of both.
Either way, being able to perceive the world without needing to ride whatever emotional wave was currently flowing down the connection was incredibly helpful. Voldemort was getting more used to these emotional flashes, but they were often confusing and exhausting, and he didn’t enjoy dealing with them.
Now that the connection was more solidly established, it appeared to be less of a drain on Voldemort to attempt to interact with the child. He found himself pushing forward his own calm when the child was angry or scared, and something warm that he couldn’t quite name when the child was lonely.
Unfortunately, with this easier connection, he was also able to confirm that the child was definitely Harry Potter when he saw an image of a reflection of the child wiping down a mirror with a sharp smelling towel. Cleaning, Voldemort would realize later, when he wasn’t focused on the child he had accidentally bound his soul to.
The boy was a bit older than last time he had seen him. Harry Potter had been a chubby toddler when Voldemort had broken into the Potter home, and now the lines of his face were sharp and he was a gangly child. Having rarely interacted with children since he was one himself, Voldemort couldn’t say how old the boy was, maybe 6? Definitely not at Hogwarts age yet, which was both a relief and a shame.
The green eyes were one of the last things Voldemort had seen before being ejected from his own body, and those were as bright as ever.
There was a deep scar over the boy’s left eyebrow, and Voldemort remembered the killing curse striking there and failing. Hair fell over the scar again and it was hidden, but it reminded Voldemort that he still had no idea what exactly happened that night. Clearly he created some sort of horcrux accidentally, which was concerning. Well he had time to think about that.
Through Harry’s eyes and ears Voldemort managed to gather more information about where exactly they were.
From what he gathered they were in a muggle house in the most boring suburb to ever exist. There was a loud man, that according to Harry’s perceptions, must be about 10 feet tall, who did not like Harry and was not one to hesitate to tell him that as loudly and as often as possible. There was a sharp woman who, while less physically imposing than the man, was quick to criticize everything Harry did and yet still had the child cleaning and cooking. The last occupant of the house was a boy who might have been similar to Harry’s age, but the adults in the house actually liked him and he was allowed to do whatever he wanted. Whatever he wanted seemed to mostly be screaming, whining, and being a general nuisance to Harry.
It was not a pleasant place to live by anyone’s standards. And that was even before Voldemort realized that they made Harry sleep in the cupboard under the stairs rather than in any of the bedrooms on the second floor.
It took Voldemort a while to realize that Harry was their nephew. Clearly on his mother’s side, since these people were muggles and the older Potters had been taken by Dragon Pox a few years back.
At first Voldemort assumed that Harry’s family didn’t know about magic. However, after longer observation it was clear that the uncle and aunt knew. They referred to him as a freak and anything strange happening was met with even harsher punishments than usual.
Voldemort was positive that if he had blood it would be boiling.
While trying to contain his rage at the muggles raising Harry, and he used raising in the loosest sense, Voldemort found himself falling back onto his occlumency training. Meditation helped keep his thoughts in order, and him from going insane.
It was clear to Voldemort as he went through his thoughts that he was still missing large amounts of time. While he was able to stay ‘awake’ longer, he was still drifting in and out of whatever consciousness he inhabited. Perhaps horcruxes were supposed to remain dormant but the magic tying him to another soul was waking him up? Whatever the cause, it was unclear and relatively unimportant considering that he was still making progress.
Now that he was somewhat able to access the outside world and keep track of time passing, Voldemort had two goals. He needed to attempt to talk to the child and he needed to be able to access his magic.
If he could speak to Harry, he could get the boy out of the house and to one of his followers. This could both save the child from his despicable family and be a way to get Voldemort a body back. A win/win.
Voldemort’s own magic was still there. He currently had very little magic to call his own, and with the small shard of his soul he had left, he wasn’t able to produce anything like what he used to be capable of. Even with the slow trickle of magic he could produce, without a body it was impossible to store any substantial amount.
The only benefit that could come from having a human horcrux was using their magic, but Harry’s horrible relatives left the child in such a state that his own magic was barely keeping him alive, never mind the soul parasite he had. Missed meals and too much hard labor was keeping any of the boy’s magic hard at work maintaining his physical body.
As the boy grew, his capability for magic also grew, but it seemed his relatives' capability for cruelty and mistreatment also grew. More chores were added, the list going beyond what anyone would be capable of. They seemed to be fine giving the child less food as well, presumably since there didn’t seem to be any consequences.
Voldemort found himself hating Harry’s relatives. He hated them more than he had hated anyone in a long time. He was careful not to push this hatred towards the child, as he had seen the consequences of what happened when Harry lashed out at his relatives and did not want to encourage that. It would come with time.
Voldemort started his attempts to communicate with the child through dreams. Even untrained wizards had natural occlumency barriers when awake, so the time when it should be the least effort to actually communicate thought to thought should be while Harry was sleeping.
Of course, Voldemort realized once he was in the child’s dream that the boy would be too young to have any sort of coherent dreams or know enough about the mind arts to control them. It was bright even without any physical light and emotions were bouncing around even more than normal. Amidst all the chaos it would be impossible for the child to even realize there was someone else in his dreamscape, never mind make contact.
Overwhelmed and disappointed, Voldemort realized this was going to be harder than he thought. He would have to have his own ‘dream space’ so to speak and bring Harry’s consciousness to him. And that all assumed that Harry would remember what they spoke about when he woke up, never mind be willing to act on it.
Well, Voldemort found himself with nothing but patience these days.
In between carefully building up his magic in order to have enough energy to pull the child into his dream, Voldemort found himself contemplating his next steps.
Voldemort needed to get the child and himself away from here. He and Harry were bound by more than just fate as the prophecy suggested, they were bound by magic and souls now. In the eyes of magic, Voldemort was perhaps more of a parent to Harry Potter than James Potter and Lily Evans were.
Of course, that was rather cruel of him. They had been so young. Such a waste of magic. So many lives had been lost near the end of the war. When he was younger Voldemort had made an effort to go about things the legal way. Well mostly legal.
The Ministry had many issues, and when he had been Tom Riddle, he had many changes he dreamed of making. Changes from child welfare, to creature legislation, to law enforcement regulations.
Of course, it had taken Tom Riddle very little time to realize that if he wanted to make changes, he needed to be in a position of power. In the wizarding world, power was dictated by magical power, which he had plenty of, and family name, which he was lacking. Knowing people in the right places was as easy as knowing what to say to them. Some he was kind to, some he threatened, and some he led. It was easy enough to calculate how to act around each person.
Then he had gotten older. The wondrous world of magic showed itself to be cruel and he matched that cruelty. As he had grown, he also dabbled in experimental magics. The darkest of course was ripping his soul. Guaranteed immortality, but the price he was now realizing had been his humanity. Before accidentally finding himself attached to Harry, Voldemort didn’t realize how far he had fallen from Tom Riddle.
Tom Riddle would never have been considered a nice boy, by anyone's standards, but he was not unnecessarily cruel. He had done what he needed to get results. When exactly had that changed?
Voldemort often found himself drifting. The child’s life was simultaneously horrifying and painfully dull. In his aware moments, he tried not to push himself too much to communicate. Instead he worked on accumulating his magic to pull Harry into his own mind so he could talk to him. It left him with plenty of time to think, which was both a curse and a blessing.
His current musing was interrupted by a sharp spike of fear from Harry’s end of the connection. While Voldemort rarely blocked the connection completely, he often only left it partly open. The full force of the child’s emotions was exhausting, so only feeling the stronger ones was better for Voldemort’s own mental health.
This sharp pulse of fear was stronger than anything he had felt from Harry. If Voldemort had a body, he was sure the intensity of it would be making him nauseous, but it still left his thoughts jumbled.
The connection he shared with Harry was difficult to navigate, but approaching it made Voldemort aware of a deep pain in his non-existent left hand.
There were sudden forced flashes of awareness. An image of a door slamming and of Harry’s cruel cousin laughing as an explosion of pain erupted in his hand. The booming voice of Harry’s uncle shouting about something unintelligible, sounding more panicked than angry for once. Large hands grabbed Harry around the middle, and there was a brief thought of it feeling something like a hug must feel like, before Harry was shoved roughly into the closet that his family made him use as a bedroom.
Voldemort wished the child would look at his own hand, so he could see the damage. But Harry was too scared of what it might look like, and crying much too hard for his watery eyes to make it out in the darkness of the cupboard anyway.
Voldemort was unsure if it was due to his own pushing on the connection or just the confusion of Harry’s own emotional distress that let the boys' thoughts leak through.
Harry’s thoughts were a confusing jumble of pain and distress. Navigating through it was easier than attempting to navigate through his dreams, but more heartbreaking in their clarity. Harry didn’t even know his own name. In his own head Harry referred to himself as a freak and he was so used to his mistreatment from his relatives that he wasn’t even surprised they locked him in the cupboard when he was in pain and distressed.
It was difficult to hold back his own anger at the situation, but his own occlumency barriers stayed firm as he attempted to project calm to Harry while restraining his rage.
Voldemort had very few options in this scenario. He could continue to do what he was doing, which was nothing more than attempting to calm the child, or he could actually use the meager amount of magic at his disposal.
He hesitated for a moment. This magic could be used to help them both get out of here. He could tell Harry where to go and get them both to a safer place. But that was all in the future, and Harry was hurt and scared now. So, there really wasn’t a choice to make at all.
Healing magic was a trickier art than most expected, but Voldemort had studied it as a young adult and was more than proficient. Most of his studies had focused on healing the body from darker magics so a natural break, no matter how devastating, should be relatively straight forward. He would need a fair amount of power, but not anything too precise. Thankfully without a body Voldemort was closer to his magic than he had ever been. While he wasn’t able to produce a wand movement or even say the spell outloud, he was confident that he could still direct that magic well enough.
Voldemort wished he could block the connection he had with Harry, as the boy’s pain and fear was incredibly distracting, but he couldn’t afford to lose his connection with the outside world. He wasn’t able to completely ignore Harry’s feelings, but after a few moments he was able to work around them.
It was exhausting work trying to heal the child. Harry was right to be afraid and Voldemort made a mental note to have an actual healer look at the hand once he and the boy left this hellhole. His magic had helped fix Harry’s hand to some extent, but he wasn’t sure how much. He could feel the pain from Harry diminishing and the exhaustion starting to take over. Although he wasn’t sure if the latter was his or Harry’s. Well, both of them had good reason to be tired.
With the connection between them so open, Voldemort had one last idea. He was unsure when exactly he would come back to awareness after exhausting himself like this, nevermind how long it would take to gather enough magic to pull Harry into his mind like he wanted. But at the moment he could communicate, and there was something he desperately needed the child to know.
“Harry,” Voldemort pushed the thought forward as the child was falling into a restless sleep. Voldemort could feel the darkness pulling on him as well, and fought to get the thoughts across their connection. “Your name is Harry.”