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The First Horcrux	By : magentasouth Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Tom Views: 27244 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 2
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It was, in retrospect, an ill conceived plan.

He had needed to know it would work; his opus magna; his great ploy to cheat death, should he fail in his future endeavours and somehow be killed.

He couldn't let himself die, you see.

No... He had thought about it at great length in the summer of his twelfth year as he lay on the hard pallet bed in his tiny stuffy room in the orphanage.

Of all the things he could dedicate his attention and effort to now that he was a wizard, the only truly worthwhile one, as far as he could tell, was the pursuit of immortality. If that was given, then he had as much time as he needed to spend on all the other things.

By the end of third year he had finally found something that sounded like what he needed in a dark arts book that Abraxas had brought him from the Malfoy library.

He wasn't very welcome at Malfoy manor. Abraxas' father did not approve of his blood. He was quite used to that kind of thing in the meantime. It had been frustrating initially to learn that he was to be despised in this new world just as he had been despised in the orphanage - A freak there and a mudblood here.

Not that any would dare use that name in reference to him now.

At least not in earshot

But he was certain it was still used by those who considered themselves safely remote from him.

The book referenced something called a horcrux.

It was apparently something so vile and...Yes...it was actually referred to as evil, infernal, corrupt, depraved it was considered so dark that virtually all reference to it was destroyed or ministry controlled. Merely seeking to learn about the topic was highly prohibited.

It was worse than necromancy, apparently.

He had had a terrible time getting more information, having to piece it together from dozens of sources.

The incantation had taken the longest because it needed to be exact. This was not an area to risk approximate experiments.

He had had to insinuate his way into favour with almost all of the ancient families to get access to their libraries and it had not helped at all. Slughorn had known a little but the man was altogether too nervous and suspicious and in the end Tom had had to abandon him as a source.

The breakthrough had come when he had discovered the location of Slytherin's chamber.

Funnily enough he had dreamt about it. He had been very discouraged that evening and when he had finally fallen asleep he had dreamt a voice was calling him. It was high and breathy and strange.

It had called him down to the lowest level of the dungeons, to the end of a dead-end corridor and there it had commanded the way to open.

There were stairs... darkness... he had walked on in the sublime confidence one has in dreams on occasion, and found himself in the vast stone cavern of what he would later come to recognise was the chamber of secrets.

The voice had spoken further commands and the stone mouth of a great head at the end of the long damp chamber had opened, issuing forth an enormous serpent.

It's eyes were closed but faint yellowish orbs were visible through the skin even so. The voice had told him to enter the head and he had awoken.

Certain that it was far too exact... far too real to be an ordinary dream he had the next night searched out the corridor in the lower dungeons... he had spoken the words..exalted as the door appeared and it became apparent that everything else from the dream would be equally valid.

There were rooms beyond the serpent's antechamber in Slytherin's great stone head.

Many rooms.

But he had only succeeded in opening one. It was sufficient.

The room he opened was a library.

It was there he found the incantation.. the full description of the creation of a horcrux.

The actual idea for the object of his first horcrux had crystallised at the beginning of his fourth year.

He had always had a small amount of pocket money. Dippet said that it wasn't right for a boy in Slytherin to be entirely without means and as an orphan the school provided all of his resources.

The self-expanding diary had been the first thing he had ever bought for himself independently.

It had caught his eye in the first week that he had begun school at the age of 11 and after a lot of hesitation, running the pads of his fingers over the thick brown buttery leather of its cover, he had given in to temptation and spent a quarter of his pocket money acquiring it.

He had intended to use it for notations and spells but after only a week it had become a kind of external memory of sorts; and, in another sense, an object of devotion - The finest thing he had ever possessed.

Obviously diaries were dangerous. It was never a good idea to let others know what one was thinking.

At that point he had not yet known very many serious warding charms but he had done his best with what he could find in the library and had started to write in a language he made up.

It had come strangely easy at the time. It was made of curling lines and dots.

Years later, as he read through the books in the chamber of secrets he had discovered that this was not an invented language at all but the written equivalent of the serpent tongue.

The idea had come to him while reading Slytherin's books on soul magic - whether it might not be possible to create a sentient horcrux that could function autonomously...

could perhaps even communicate... persuade others to perform the rites to reanimate it to flesh..

It seemed quite useful.

After all, he couldn't know whether he would have anyone in the future trustworthy enough to rely upon to bring him back, should he be killed somehow.

He had thought of his diary.

It had been one evening as he was writing in it. he had written something about Cygnus Black's sinfully tempting lips that definitely should not have been immortalised in print in any language whatsoever, irrespective how many lethal wards and charms might protect it and it had occurred to him, as he was poised to remove the words, exactly how open and trusting one was with such a book.

How easily one revealed intimacies and secrets in the belief that it was safe to do so.

He had wondered whether such a thing might be twisted into a means by which a horcrux might reanimate itself.

By the middle of fourth year he was ready to make his first attempt at the creation of a horcrux.

He remembered the weeks leading up to it in excruciating detail.

He had written chapters in the diary. He had written about his entire life. He had written everything he could think of... thoughts... hopes... dreams... but most of all memories. All of them.

Good and bad although most of them were bad, admittedly.

The plans for who was to be his victim were almost an afterthought and it had happened rather suddenly in the end on a Hogsmeade Saturday which he was technically not supposed to be allowed to take part in anyway, lacking the guardians to give permission.

He had been in the shrieking shack, looking through the rooms, trying to decide whether it would be possible to take a random witch or wizard from Hogsmeade and perhaps bring them there for the rite or whether it would be better to try to abduct a student and drag them into the chamber of secrets, when someone had entered the shack.

It was growing late and the shadows were long and blue on the dry dusty boards.

He had crept downstairs under a silencing charm to find that a tramp had entered the building and was making himself comfortable on the old burst-spring sofa in the downstairs sitting room.

He had frozen in place, all his senses on full alert, trying to determine whether the repulsive hairy man was alone.

There did not tend to be hobos in Hogsmeade, generally speaking. He had never seen one before.

This was therefore an anomaly.

It had been dark by the time he had allowed himself to believe that the man was in fact alone and that no one else was likely to disturb them.

His heart had been beating ten to the dozen as he considered whether it might not be the perfect opportunity to create his first horcrux. In subtext... whether this might be the first person he would ever kill... currently lying on the couch and snoring full throat.

He crept closer.

Unwilling to cast a lumos and perhaps wake the man, he had enhanced his own eyesight instead.

The man did not stir.

He seemed to be in his late forties, perhaps early fifties. Not all that old, relatively speaking. He had a head full of thick clotted light brown curls and a full beard that looked like some kind of furred animal trying to eat his face. It was disgustingly filthy.

The man seemed to be wearing layers of stinking clothes and his boots were cracked and holey.

He did not appear to have a wand and attempting to summon one from him failed.

It had taken another quarter of an hour before Tom had finally made the decision to do it... to perform the spell now...rather than later.

He had silenced the man, which caused him to wake with a start, but by then Tom's incarcerous already bound him tightly.

The first time he had tried the killing curse... which he had only ever performed before on spiders and mice he brought into the chamber of secrets... he failed. His wand emitted only a pitiful pale green glow.

The fear on the man's face was vivid and he struggled as frantically as he could against the bindings, but it was of no use to him.

The next attempt at the curse did not fail.

A vivid green flash hissed from the tip of his wand and knocked the life right out of the tramp's eyes.

He had held still for a moment, focusing inward, trying to sense what the books had told him would happen if he killed. But he could not, by best will, feel any difference that might suggest to him that he had just torn his soul.

He pulled the shrunken diary from his satchel and returned it to full size.

In the last minute it occurred to him that his spell might fail... just as the killing curse had... and that this book had cost such a considerable effort to create that it would be a shame if it were rendered useless by some unforeseen error.

So he had duplicated the diary.

It was the copy he had then used as he cast the fateful incantation; The words that would take the torn fabric of his soul and tear it loose... imprison it in an object, making him immortal.

It had not gone at all how he had imagined.

Perhaps it was simply bad luck.

After all... if there were to be two parts to his soul then it was obvious that he would be one of the two and...Another version of himself would be the other.

He had never considered what might happen if he was not the part that continued to occupy his tangible form...

He had wanted to create a sentient horcrux... and had in fact succeeded, but the satisfaction of that success was rather marred by the realisation that he himself WAS that sentient horcrux and was now encased in a still, silent tomb of Hogwarts, a world without weather, without change, without other students or teachers, that he had in fact crafted a prison for himself.

From the moment he had opened his eyes and found himself on the school grounds looking up at the castle set against a steel grey sky, with light that was not exactly light but more the pure awareness of form, he had known that he had made a terrible error.

He had raced inside the castle, run from room to room; the empty great hall... the empty Slytherin common room.

It was silent as the grave. The only sounds his footfalls on the stone and even those were faint and dull as if the mere memory of sound.

Only then had he begun to truly panic.

What if he were trapped here forever... without any marker of the passing of time but the ticking over of his own thoughts?!

Could he sleep?

Did he eat?

Was he able to leave the grounds?

How was he to get out of here?!

He had not intended to use the diary horcrux unless he himself died; it was a fallback option - not even his first choice for a horcrux to reanimate - for if he had more (and he intended to have many more) he would not choose to reanimate the self activating horcrux ever. That was the point of it - to serve as a last ditch save if his own plans all failed.

And what if they didn't...

what if he found other better ways to become immortal.

What if he never used the diary at all?!

The panic was so great that he actually lost his mind for a time.

He tried to sleep and found that he could not.

He was ransacking Slytherin's library and had been for what seemed like a long time, when the contact came.

A diary had appeared... simply condensed out of the air and appeared before him... opened and then words had scratched themselves into its pages. It was his handwriting.

Hello

He snatched up a quill and ink from Slytherin's desk and scrawled in the book

Hello -

You have to get me out of here!! This was a mistake!

There was no response. He grew increasingly frantic and wrote again

HELLO?!

Look... I'm in Hogwarts. It's empty. I can't stay here! You don't understand!! You need to get me out! We can find another method. Creating a sentient horcrux was a flawed idea!

The diary remained quiescent. Tom wished there were something... anything...alive... that he could curse here.

Finally the response came.

The spells on the diary failed. I believe it was due to the duplication. The compulsion and energy transfer charm was not duplicated with the book. I have been unable to apply it retroactively. The horcrux resists any new magic now.

I cannot reanimate you.

The quill slipped out of his fingers as he stared at the words. NO!! It wasn't possible! He couldn't accept that! That could not be it!! He would never let that be the end of it.

FIND A WAY!!

I cannot do much about it. I will ensure that the next attempt does not fail.

WHAT ABOUT ME?!

AND WHAT NEXT ATTEMPT?! Didn't you listen?! You can't make another sentient horcrux! You CAN'T!! Listen to me!! It's inhuman! I can't sleep... this place is not REAL...I can't...

The book dissolved into air beneath his fingertips.

He screamed in fury and disbelief. He had closed the diary on himself. FUCK!!!! What was he supposed to do now?!
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The First Horcrux