Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Splitting Souls	By : N2vivaria Category: HP Canon Characters paired with Original Characters > Het - Male/Female Views: 1367 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Obviously I do not own Harry Potter or any of the characters from the story. I do not make money off this fanfiction.

Chapter List
- 2
- 3
AUTHOR’S NOTE: It may seem weird that sometimes Voldemort thinks of Sia as a ‘child’ or ‘little girl’ when I stated previously that she is about 20 but this isn’t a mistake, I didn’t forget her age. It’s kind of a joke, a stab at Voldemort’s age, which if I recall correctly is around 70. Basically, every time he calls her a little girl that’s actually me calling him an old man :P Enjoy!

After taking a significant pause, necessary for comprehending how the Dark Lord had just played her, Sia was left damn near speechless. But she did have one thing to say and she felt it prudent to keep things short and to the point, lest she could make any more grave mistakes today.

“Bastard,” she spat but this only increased his smirk ten-fold into a full-blown toothy smile. She wanted nothing more than to spin around and stomp out of the cozy nook that he was infesting with his presence but she knew that she couldn’t afford such irresponsible antics. After all, he still had two hostages even though he’d let them go unharmed so far.

Sia reached a hand out to Gollum, collecting him from the coffee table without leaning any closer to the Dark Lord sitting across from them than necessary.

Placing the sturdy bug on her shoulder, she glared next at the python. It was much closer to him than what she was willing to get so now she was frozen by an internal battle between guilt and fury, trying to decide if she could bring herself to approach him for the sake of the snake.

Even setting aside those emotions, her logical mind wasn’t helping either. She knew how childishly stubborn her motives were for refusing to go near Voldemort, it was nothing more than a defiant tantrum, but she could also see how much she’d risked already for just the snake and a bug and it worried her. She couldn’t afford to weaken herself this much for two complete strangers. Sia had never gone to such lengths for people before, so why start helping others now?

It eased her conscience somewhat to see that the snake seemed perfectly comfortable around Voldemort just as he was with it, and he was still immensely pleased with himself for besting her yet again which seemed to put him in a non-violent mood so it was with considerable reluctance that she was finally able to turn and abandon it.

She’d never felt so guilty in her life and that was disturbing her. She had coldly sat through the brutal revel without even flinching while prisoners that she had spent weeks with (she couldn’t be certain how many since there was never any indicator of the time there) were tortured in manners most foul, screaming and wailing for all they were worth to no avail, and he couldn’t even get her to give her name to spare them. Then she meets two animals and within minutes he had used them to ensnare her. No, she was giving him too much credit, she had ensnared herself for him. This kind of weakness was unsustainable; she would have to give them up.

‘thank you’

Sia came to a dead stop in the kitchen. Had little Gollum just said what she thought he did? She looked down at the precious invertebrate and was instantly filled with the most pleasant warm and fuzzy feeling…how cliché. But she bathed in it none the less; it was like a beautiful high. When was the last time she felt so strongly for anyone?

Never, or at least not that she could remember.

‘you’re welcome,’ she started, unsure of what else to say. Conversing wasn’t her strong point, in fact, she’d said more to Voldemort now than she had to anyone else since her recent return to the wizarding world from hiding amongst muggles. That brought her back to the problem at hand. ‘but you must leave, not safe here.’

She took a moment to admire her own success, the tongue barbell was working wonders. As odd as the speech may sound to her, the words always came out the way a stick bug would say them. It did more than just translate her words, it guided her on how to express herself.

Bless his heart, she suddenly got the impression that Gollum was saddened by the news. Something about him just wilted. Struggling to come to terms with how strongly this affected her own mood, she barely noticed the hissing of the approaching snakes although technically only one was literally a serpent.

‘Are We Interrupting Something?’ hissed the Dark Lord who was standing where the hallway opened up into the kitchen. Sia was so startled that she nearly jumped out of her robes, which started off two sets of hissed snickering. She glared at both Voldemort and the python, feeling somewhat betrayed by the latter.

He spoke up when he noticed her attention shift to the snake.

‘I Call Him Sagnheten, He Does Not Seem To Mind’

Sia immediately turned her glare back to Voldemort, furious and confused by so many things that she didn’t even know what to address first so she just hissed it all out at once.

‘How Is It You Can You Speak With Sagnheten? And What Makes You Think He Would Want To Speak With You At All, That Either Of Us Would For That Matter? You Were Going To Hurt Him! But Why Didn’t You? And How Did You Know That I Would-’

He cut her off with an exasperated hiss, only to realize that this increased her temper. He didn’t know whether to attribute her mood swings to her gender or her young age, all he knew was that Dark Lords shouldn’t have to put up with this kind of disrespect from little girls.

“Let’s carry on this conversation in English, unless you wish to continue alarming our guests unnecessarily.”

Sia was forced to acknowledge her blunder. The python did seem to be coiling up upon becoming the topic of a heated argument which revolved around his life being threatened and Gollum, though unable to understand what was being said, could certainly feel the hatred rolling off her in waves.

Once she had adequately regained her composure, he began addressing her concerns as if it were an uninteresting and tedious task.

“I’m well known for my ability to speak Parseltongue, the language of snakes, as it proves me to be the heir of Slytherin. Your ignorance of this is astounding, and is no doubt due both to your muggle heritage and flight from school. You don’t know enough magical history.”

His condemnation of her mud blood was to be expected but it struck her sorely that he had a practical excuse for it instead of just bigotry. She also wasn’t ready to hear him cite knowledge of her academic history or lack thereof. He ignored her festering mood though, continuing with, “I didn’t get the idea to use them [gesturing to the animals] against you until I saw how worried you were for the New Guinea walking stick after it stabbed me.”

His displeasure for how easily she’d been able to identify the local fauna seeped into his speech when he emphasized their no-longer-secret location. He seemed to think that it was the bug that had given it away. She was tempted to rub it in his face that it was actually his snake which had betrayed that information, but turning him against the one hostage he seemed disinclined to harm would have been her dumbest move yet, so she exulted in that error silently and found a different slip up to rub in his face.

“Well to be fair, I wasn’t completely sure whether or not we were in New Guinea as we could have been on one of the surrounding islands, but your little tantrum confirmed it,” she interrupted, ignoring his glare. “But that still doesn’t explain why you let them live. You aren’t exactly known for your mercy after all.” She was pushing it, and that was unwise, but the look on his face was arguably worth it.

“Hurting them was never necessary, all I had to do was storm out of your room with them roughly in hand and let my reputation do all the work. Though I would love to smash that bug of yours, I figured that if it worked as leverage against you then that would be a waste, and although I only need one hostage to control you, I’d actually been looking for a D'Albertis’ python without luck so you were really only doing me a favor by finding this one.”

He looked tenderly upon the python at the same time that she glanced fearfully toward her stick bug.

He regained her attention by snickering, “It’s always especially gratifying for a Syltherin to out-wit a Ravenclaw.”

Ok, so now he was just flaunting how creepy he could be.

“What are you, some kind of stalker?” she spat, losing her temper again. “What else do you know about me?”

“Well,” he sneered, “I know that you only attended Hogwarts for one year before getting thrown out and I know that in that year your grades were terrible. I know that you were caught dabbling in the dark arts but I do not know what specifically scared Dumbledore enough to turn his back on a student.”

Voldemort thought back to how hard the good professor had fought Hagrid’s expulsion only to be overturned by the outcry of worried parents who thought that his blasted Acromantula was to blame for the death of one measly mudblood.

“Not only did he deem you too dangerous to help, but he called in a favor from Karkaroff to get you admitted to Durmstrang Institute.”

Sia couldn’t help it as the corners of her mouth twitched up into a slight smirk, which didn’t go unnoticed by a certain Dark Lord.

“You wouldn’t mind enlightening me as to why the champion of the Light forged a false background for you with a former death eater so that a mudblood could attend a notoriously dark school when there are perfectly good alternatives for continuing your education such as Beauxbatons Academy of Magic.”

Sia wrinkled her nose at the mentioning of the French school.

“He wanted to, we fought for a week over it actually, but I convinced him that despite the institute’s standing on blood purity, the curriculum fit me better.” Now she and Voldemort shared devilish smirks, encouraging her to continue.

“You sound just like him actually,” now that wiped the smirk off his face, “but despite your obvious points, once you think about it, wouldn’t it be more plausible for someone kicked out of Hogwarts for ‘dabbling in the dark arts’ to go to a school renowned for its liberal teaching of those arts than it would be for me to go to the beautiful-wand academy?”

It was her turn to sneer. ‘It’s especially gratifying for a Ravenclaw to outsmart the greatest Gryffindor and Slytherin Hogwarts ever produced’ she thought to herself. Voicing it was not only too risky but she felt as though even a back-handed complement was too much praise for snake-face.

As usual though, neither could let the other savor happiness for long before ruining it so right on cue Voldemort gave his rebuttal.

“Despite your withstanding argument, I must point out that you only lasted two years at Durmstrang.”

Sia’s face fell. She had really liked Durmstrang and the memory of things going sour in her third school year was not a happy one.

“Again, the reason for your expulsion is cited ambiguously as ‘illegal use of the dark arts’ without any of the juicy details,” Voldemort fished. Sia was growing too tired to keep her temper in check, something she was afraid to see becoming a pattern.

“Awe, is Voldy asking for story time now? Well let’s just tuck you into bed first-ack!”

There they were, those familiar fingers around her throat again. At least he’d gone back to attacking her instead of Gollum.

“Tell ya what, Lord of my nerves, I’d readily exchange the full story of my expulsions for food right about now. Do you think you could perform another kitchen miracle?” Sia strained to say under his choking grip.

The Dark Lord almost groaned. ‘Fuck, I knew I was forgetting something,’ he reprimanded himself. He came here specifically to feed her and instead he had, well let’s just go down the list shall we, pierced her ears, stolen another horcrux, imperiused her, pierced her tongue, given her horcrux back, chased her through the jungle, caught her speaking in tongues, tricked her into accepting his shackles, discussed her school schedule and now he was choking her for the umpteenth time today. Oh, and somewhere in there he had been compared to Dumbledore. Gross.

Voldemort carried Sia over to the dinner table by her throat, placing her in one of the chairs before releasing his harsh grip, all the while attempting to calm his own temper which she seemed to have a knack for flaring.

Turning to the fridge, he had to admit that he was in the mood for a snack as well which was odd because he normally didn’t eat this often. He figured that following her through the woods had probably worked up his appetite. Having 7 horcruxes made eating more of a guilty pleasure than a necessity, so he usually forgot to eat at all. The result was unpleasantly slimming; someone of his power should not have such a frail frame.

He stared back at Sia. Did her horcruxes have a similar effect? It had taken her this long to ask for food and running was much more physically strenuous than flying. It would appear from her drooping eyes and paling skin that she was actually starving right now though, and she had just eaten this morning.

That’s when he remembered her imprisonment again. Of course she was starving, he had no idea how long she’d been kept in the Malfoy dungeons but he could presume that she wasn’t fed enough even for someone with their light dietary needs.

Stepping up to the fridge, he thought about what he wanted and opened the door, pulling out a bowl of dates and apricots which he placed on the table in front of her. Barely sparing him a glance, she attacked the food voraciously.

“You’ll want to go easy on those, we wouldn’t want to spike your sugar levels now would we?” He chuckled at her nearly inaudible growl in response but noticed that she did in fact slow down. Now to get her some protein.

“Would you like eggs?” he asked. There was no need for a verbal confirmation, her eyes said it all. “Then I’ll make us some omelets,” he tried to say without laughing, “What would you like on yours?”

Answering required Sia to stop eating so she made record time with her reply.

“Just mushrooms,” and with little pause she added, “and as many cheeses as you can stuff in there.”

He chuckled again, she was much more complacent when presented with food. She was kind of dog-like in that respect. Well he would take her cheese request as a challenge, and began summoning more kinds from the fridge than she had ever known existed while the frying pan floated over to the self-lighting stove top.

He glanced over to see her expression, expecting one of awe or delirious craving, but found a calculating look being shot at the fridge instead. It occurred to him that her request had more purpose behind it than settling her stomach and he cursed himself for falling for the Ravenclaw’s tricks again.

Sia stared at the fridge which had paraded out at least 16 different kinds of cheese in addition to eggs and butter and mushrooms. He had also retrieved the ready bowl of fruit for her to snack on prior and then she considered everything he had summoned from it for the soup earlier. Did he really maintain such a random spread inside it at all times or was there more to that refrigerator than meets the eye?

“You could call it the Fridge of Requirement,” he joked, interrupting her thoughts. She was going to figure it out soon enough anyway now that it caught her attention, so what was the harm in telling her? “Whenever I’m not here and you find yourself hungry, all you need to do is summon whatever food you want from the fridge.”

“So will it provide a completed dish or do I need to ask for the ingredients and make it myself?”

“It will provide the food in whatever form you wish it in, I just prefer to make my own,” he answered. She wasn’t nearly as shocked by this as when she’d first seen him cook, so he figured the Ravenclaw must have figured that much out on her own.

Once their food was ready, they ate in silence. This was mostly because Sia had a habit of eating like a ravenous animal that was afraid of having her food stolen. There was simply no room between bites for speech. Although they’d have to be curbed in the future, Voldemort decided to forgive her poor table manners at the moment. At his mercy she would be allowed to enjoy food, a commodity that in recent years of her life had not been guaranteed, so he waited patiently until she finished scarfing down her omelet before questioning her. When that time came, he made a real nuisance of himself.

“So when do I get to hear about your pitiful academic history?” Not really a question, he was going to get what he wanted now. That was simply a polite way to prompt her to begin, which she did.

“I was caught making horcruxes,” she offered meekly.

Had he been drinking something at that moment, he would have spat it out.

“During your first year at Hogwarts?” he half shouted at her. He hadn’t managed to trick Slughorn into discussing the creation of multiple Horcruxes until his last year at Hogwarts and now she was claiming to have made one in her first year…and then another in her third year? This was astounding! The surprise must have showed on his face too, because she went on to explain.

“As you’ve noticed, I did terribly my first year of school despite my proficiency with magic before turning 11 and getting my wand. I know that most witches and wizards are excited to receive their wands and start performing real magic with them but I’d already been doing that without one. I felt like it trapped my magic, caged it up in that damn stick, and required me to learn passwords of sorts to use what I’d grown up having free access to.”

Voldemort had some grasp on his abilities beyond that of normal magical children when he was young, as well as an unusually high degree of control over his magic, but what she was hinting at was a power even more enthralling. A power which her extensive ministry records could attest to. As a boy, Tom had manipulated animals, levitated objects and even hurt other orphans but he had never performed enough magic to bring ministry aurors down on him.

And as she said, he had been thrilled by the power of his yew wand with phoenix feather core. While it was normal for underage magical children to experience infrequent expulsions of magic in accordance with their mood, wands tended to curb these outbursts. They carry enough magic on their own to be practically sentient, and once bonded with a compatible witch or wizard will seek to channel said person’s magic by acting like a magnetic gun. Magic expelled from the wizard is drawn to the wand where it serves as ammo waiting to be directed rather than acting independently on their surroundings, a service which it appeared everyone but Sia appreciated.

“What kind of wand were you issued?” he asked, wondering if she’d somehow been given a weak wood or core.

“An eight inch hazel wand with dragon heartstring core.”

Such a wand would have been anything but weak, but they were temperamental, much like the witch herself. If she had been distressed by the loss of her ability to perform wandless magic then the hazel wood would have picked up on that and malfunctioned frequently. Both the wood and the core were capable of exceptional magic though. He found it somewhat distressing that her memories indicated that the wand had been destroyed although he wasn’t sure how, but it was something which she had curiously not been upset about. Its length was short, but she preferred to draw upon inner magic with as little wand use as possible so that seemed to fit her as well.

“How did you learn of horcruxes in your first year of school?” he inquired, “They are a banned subject at Hogwarts, and Dumbledore is quite possibly the only one there now who knows anything about them. He certainly didn’t tell you how to make one.” Maybe he was being petty but for Lord Voldemort to have been beaten in the race to immortality (even though he had technically made all 6 of his decades before she made her first) was unthinkable.

“I didn’t learn of them until after I made one,” she sighed. Now that set him off. He had worked and researched diligently for the knowledge and she’d made one without any of it?

“Did you know that your victim doesn’t have to be human?” she asked, dampening his temper. “I was practicing transfigurations in the forbidden forest when a centaur scared me.”

“Practicing. In the Forbidden Forest.” He repeated incredulously.

“My wand had a tendency to act up if it worked at all,” she growled. This was obviously not the first time she’d been through the ringer for this choice and Voldemort hated to think that he might again be mimicking Dumbledore so he let her continue.

“Damn seers, the lot of them!” she spat hatefully. “First he comes up bellowing about my being in their territory, completely unappeasable when I tried reasoning with him, and then he zones out all of a sudden. Gives me some speech about how I needed to destroy myself in order to fulfill my destiny, something about ‘shattering’ and then ‘picking up the pieces’ in order to ‘remake myself.’”

Voldemort considered this. Clearly the beast had been referring to her making horcruxes, as she had split her soul to create them and altered them to strengthen herself instead of hiding them.

“The whole experience was really creepy in any case, he went from bellowing death threats at me to…well, have you ever experienced a prophecy being given first hand? The Seer starts babbling in this other-worldly voice, it sounds like they’re speaking and gasping at the same time,” she seemed to blanche just thinking about it but continued, “and he just kept going on and on about how my horrible life would require me to betray and restore power…and…and he said something about the pain of remorse being both my death and my savior.”

That caught Voldemort’s attention. He knew remorse to be the only way to heal a split soul. It was rumored to be both excruciatingly painful and potentially fatal but it was the only way to prevent yourself from getting stuck mutilated in limbo should your horcruxes be destroyed. He could see where she was at risk of that happening by carrying all of her soul fragments around on her person and it alarmed him.

“I just wanted him to stop,” she barely whispered. “I knew what I wanted more than anything else at that moment was for him to stop his scary mutterings, I was only 11 you know, and somehow I was able to manage my fear into the decision to act. Once I did that, my wand worked for me and I cast the only spell I could think of that would make me feel safe.” She paused then said, “I cast the unforgivable.”

He understood that she meant the killing curse without her having to elaborate. It wasn’t unusual for first years to know of the unforgivable curses, but it was impressive that she’d been able to cast one. It was demanding and powerful dark magic for an adult wizard to conjure, but she and her wand had accepted the challenge while young and proved to be competent.

“But how did you learn the incantation for sealing your soul into an object?” Voldemort had learned the spell from Secrets of the Darkest Art, but if she had read that then she would have known about horcruxes prior to making her first.

“Incantation? I don’t think I said anything, it just sort of happened,” Sia replied.

Again, how could all of the hard work that he had put into becoming the dark lord he was today be sidestepped by some bloody little first year who couldn’t work her own wand?

Seeing the resentment in his eyes, Sia decided that some self-depreciation was in order.

“Let me explain from the beginning,” she huffed. “In transfiguration class that day I’d failed my assignment to turn a fox into a ring, so after my classes I snuck out to the forest and practiced. I had a ring that I was trying to turn into a fox but the transfiguration was tricky and my wand was backfiring even more than before so I was becoming too stressed out.” Voldemort snorted, the girl had been setting herself up for a fail. If she’d been struggling to turn an animal into an object then she surely wasn’t ready to perform the reverse since inanimate-to-animate transfigurations were much harder. Add to that the sensitive nature of her wand and you had a recipe for disaster.

“Look, it wasn’t like I had a fox on hand to use outside of class, so I just went with what I had!” she spat, glaring daggers at him. Oh, she had clearly already been over this with the old coot and was in no mood to be graded on her mistakes a second time around. “In any case, I knew that forcing myself to keep going would do more harm than good so I took a break, during which I just played around with the ring. I just transfigured its appearance for fun so that I could calm down and regain control over my wand.”

Voldemort looked at her right hand’s fox ring and could see where this was headed. Sia noticed and could appreciate that she wouldn’t have to spoon feed him the entire story. Not like she had when trying to explain things to Dumbles, the old coot was an insatiable interrogator.

“Yeah, changing its shape to that of a fox was easy once I put my emotions aside and just focused on what I wanted. I only added the glasses because struggling with transfigurations had made me feel unintelligent, like a failure as a Ravenclaw. Instead of getting upset about it, I just kept working on the ring and voila,” she held up her right hand as if showing off an engagement diamond.

Voldemort hoped she had overcome such insecurities, because someone who had tricked the death eaters and their Dark Lord was not allowed to think of herself as stupid.

She continued, “That’s when the centaur showed up. I channeled the same calm logic into killing him that I had used before to easily manipulate the ring. I put everything I had into that spell, and that’s when it happened, a piece of me broke off…” her expression took on a rough maturity. “It felt awful, like I had lost something essential. It wasn’t just the painful full-body tearing sensation that racked me to my core but the simultaneous, overwhelming sense of loss that brought forth a previously incomprehensible depth of misery. I was irreparably broken, worse than the emotional monster you met at the revel, until I picked up the ring.”

She smiled for the first time during her recount. “My life went to hell in a handbasket that night for casting an unforgivable curse and creating a dark object, and I have never felt pain comparable to having my soul torn but…it was still the best night of my life. Once I put on that ring, for the first time since becoming involved in the wizarding world it felt like everything would be okay. It was like my stars had aligned and I could suddenly take on the world.”

Voldemort knew the feeling. Nothing could compare to the creation of your first horcrux, not even your other horcruxes. It was the feeling of overcoming mortality, beating death.

There was a heavy silence as the only two living people with horcruxes simultaneously reminisced, sharing what they had once thought was a private feeling.

“Of course Dumbledore, in all his undoing mercy, would have you merely expelled rather than turn you in to the aurors,” Voldemort scoffed, seeing an immediate change in Sia’s demeanor. It was like watching the hackles rise on an animal’s back.

“Once we cleared the initial confusion of what had happened, what my ring was, he immediately tried making me regret it” she snarled, caressing her fox ring protectively. “His worthless guilt trips became unbearable. As if I would ever take back killing someone that threatened me?” The resentment she held for Dumbledore was just icing on Voldemort’s hypothetical cake. He was outraged at the ‘good’ professor as well, because the man could have only been trying to prompt Sia to take back her soul through feelings of remorse. How could the Light justify trying to trick an immortal student into risking her life by undergoing agonizing remorse just for the sake of regaining her mortality? The hypocrisy was sickening.

“You didn’t convey nearly as much conviction in your retelling of the creature’s death though,” he pointed out. Sia clearly hadn’t fallen for old Dumbledore’s ploys since the ring was here in all its immortal glory, and she had already proven that she was no bleeding-heart, so why wasn’t the memory sparking a feeling of pride? She should be proud of her accomplishment, however undeserving of her feat she might be. She had better not be regretting the loss of one worthless beast.

“Each of my horcruxes were worth killing for,” she said, her face relaxing to a hardened grimace, “but the actual tearing of my soul has never been a pleasant experience. It’s something I couldn’t bear to perform again.” She locked eyes with him, deadpan, before asking “Just how many have you made?”

Silence. He didn’t break eye contact with her but he refused to answer all the same. Horcruxes insured your immortality only so long as you insured theirs, so secrecy was a must. None of his death eaters even knew about Horcruxes and, thanks to Dumbledore, neither did members of the light. Voldemort had always felt that knowledge was power and that the old fool’s vehement censorship of the dark arts left the light blind to the threats against them.

“Should I take your silence to mean that I’ve outdone the Dark Lord?” Sia said, her face relaxing into a bit of a sneer.

Voldemort just laughed.

“Not hardly,” he managed between chuckles, his mind supplying ‘I’ve made twice as many.’ She seemed unperturbed by this, so she didn’t truly believe that she’d surpassed Lord Voldemort at anything. Good, it wouldn’t do well for her to get that haughty.

The ensuing silence seemed to place a heavy burden on her though, as Sia sank into a melancholy stupor which was threatening to ruin the Dark Lord’s rare pleasant mood.

“Well if you aren’t regretting killing the centaur and making your Horcrux then why are you being so depressing?” he demanded.

It was annoying to be unable to just delve into her mind every time they made eye contact, securing the answers himself, but he refused to get into another fist fight with her to demand that she lower her occlumency. He’d gotten into too many since meeting her already and they were just so…so…muggle, yuck! He was no mere abusive man, going around hitting children with his hands, he was a wizard with a wand! And Salazar as his witness, he would solve his problems with magic. He’d already bound the girl about as many ways as he could think to, so now it was her turn to accept her position and cooperate. If all else failed, he could go back to threatening the bug.

“Well it’s hard to think about the first one without remembering the second,” she murmured, surprised that he’d noticed her mood but even more shocked that he could give a damn. “As you saw fit to point out earlier, I got kicked out of Durmstrang.”

Ah yes, she had indicated that both expulsions were caused by creating horcruxes.

It didn’t take a legilimens to see how she felt about that. Clearly Durmstrang had been the home for her that Hogwarts had been for him. He remembered how murderous he felt when Dumbledore had denied him the DADA teaching position and imagined that she must feel similarly about being cast from her rightful place.

“My only regret,” she snarled, with the unmistakable impression of hackles returning “is failing to kill that bastard Karkaroff.” Voldemort smiled. Again, she managed to unwittingly side with him. Karkaroff was a wanted man on both sides of the war, a traitorous death eater whose head the Dark Lord wanted served up on a silver platter.

It was funny how often they wanted the same things out of life.

“He never liked admitting a mudblood into his preciously pure institute, but Dumbles must have had something on him. I suspect it had something to do with how an ex-death eater managed to obtain the position of headmaster at such a prestigious school.”

Voldemort nodded in concurrence. Shouldn’t the parents sending their kids there have been more opposed to that? It was true that Durmstrang had a reputation for being dark and promoting bigotry so it appealed to pure bloods who savored the old ways but still, his servants were not the type you would want to hand your children over to.

“He was barely willing to overlook me from the start but then I started surpassing his top students. My ring gave me incredible control over my mental state, so my wand functioned normally and my grades significantly improved. I was a glaring beacon for the hypocrisy of blood purity and he couldn’t stand me roaming his great halls, even if nobody knew besides us.”

Voldemort hated to admit it but he agreed with Karkaroff’s decision on this one. That’s what he would have had the death eater do, get rid of any opposition to the beliefs popularized by himself and his organization. She was, without a doubt, blatant evidence against them. His own blood wasn’t pure but that was of no matter when you considered that he hailed from the great Salazar Slytherin himself. That alone made up for the interference of his muggle father on his purity.

“Cowardly as he was, he didn’t dare do anything to me himself but let the nature of my parentage slip to multiple students and teachers. It seemed as though overnight everyone knew that I was a muggle born and didn’t belong.”

Her bitterness was infectious. Again they shared indignant resentment of those who wronged them and Voldemort couldn’t deny a sense of camaraderie with the little fool.

“The effect was immediate. Can you imagine what it would be like for a mudblood to get sorted into Slytherin house, the uproar and attacks that would be instigated by their peers? It was like that, except it was almost the entire school against one little me,” she sighed. Of course he wouldn’t understand, he commanded fear and respect in his wake. Who would ever be foolish enough to ‘pick on’ the Dark Lord? Well, besides herself that is…

Voldemort remembered some initial resentment in Slytherin over his background but he had established early in his house that his half-blood status was to be overlooked. Through excelling in his classes and torturing those unwise enough to offend him, by the end of his first year he had convinced them all of his supremacy. He wondered whether or not he could have pulled off the same feat as a full blown mudblood, and had it been the entire school he was pitted against. Probably not without more of the professors noticing, and one suspicious Dumbledore had been enough of a bane to hinder Tom.

“I was getting hexed and cursed, not daily, but hourly. Karkaroff of course did nothing to the students brought before him for attacking me, not that many of them were caught since only a few of the professors valued rules over blood. I have never been a skilled duelist,” Voldemort disagreed with that that analysis but let her continue, “and I needed constant vigilance to protect myself, in the hallways, during class, in the dining hall, even staying up because it wasn’t safe to sleep! Needless to say, I knew something would give sooner rather than later. I was attending all my classes, yet for all intents and purposes missing every lesson, losing sleep and losing weight from nerves. I tried maintaining a shield at all times.” Now Voldemort snorted, such an endeavor was impossible as you simply drained all your energy performing constant magic and it required at least some of your attention to stay up. “Well you seem to have guessed how well that went,” Sia grumbled. “Which is where this horcrux comes in,” she said, flipping him the bird with her left middle finger adorned by the scarab ring.
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Splitting Souls