Chapter Text
When Voldemort closes his eyes for what he thinks is the last time, he opens his eyes again, only to wake up in the body of a ten year old girl.
A muggle child.
The date is May 2, 1998, and he lives with the girl's mother, in a typical white suburban house in Phoenix, Arizona.
In America.
Horrific, truly.
Perhaps a normal person would attempt to blend in with one's surroundings in a situation such as this. Perhaps they would even try to run away, or freak out and panic, and blow their cover.
But Lord Voldemort is no ordinary man.
"Don't touch me, wench," he hisses out, when the muggle woman tries to initiate contact with him.
Unfortunately, his voice sounds a lot less threatening than he intended, coming from the vocal cords of a prepubescent girl.
The muggle woman furrows her brows at this, clearly troubled by the strange way her child is speaking.
"You alright, Bells?" She frowns, reaching out a hand once more to check her forehead. "Do you have a fever?"
Voldemort smacks her hand away, perhaps a bit weaker than he had hoped, as the muggle woman only looks more worried.
Thankfully, the woman ceases her attempts to physically touch him, as she continues to stare at him thoughtfully.
Then, suddenly, as she presumably comes to her own conclusion of the situation, she gasps in horror.
"Oh God, you do have a concussion! I knew I should've taken you to the hospital yesterday." She continues to murmur under breath, as she drops everything she'd been doing, grabbing both the keys, and a very reluctant (former) Dark Lord by the arm.
Even more unfortunately, the muggle woman beats him in strength by quite a lot. Being stuck in this weak receptacle of a body is proving to be far worse than he had first feared.
Voldemort sighs, watching with detached interest as the girl's mother quickly straps him in with a long, belt-like material, trapping him in his seat.
Some type of modern muggle device, naturally. The realization only sickens him further at his predicament.
Glumly, Voldemort stares out the glass window of the vehicle with as blank an expression as he's able, and tries to empty his thoughts.
As soon as they arrive at the hospital, Voldemort is set to sit on a cot of some sort, while the muggle woman and the muggle physician of sorts talk with one another.
He reluctantly follows the doctor's directions, as he doesn't want to end up in a psych ward or worse, if they do find something to be wrong with him.
The doctor tells the girl's mother that nothing is wrong, other than that her daughter's pulse is a bit slower than a kid her age should be, much to the woman's displeasure.
In the end, they're sent back home with nothing learned and nothing gained.
A pity, that.
But thanks to that visit, Voldemort has come to his senses of the potential dangers he faces, acting unusually or out of character for a little girl his age ought to be.
It isn't any different from the previous life he's lived, as Tom Riddle.
So he waits patiently for the perfect opportunity, and pretends, pretends, pretends.
Over a week after he feigns sickness, he climbs to the top of a tree in their backyard, and jumps.
He recovers in the hospital, with his anguished mother--and yes, it does put a bad taste in his mouth to even think that word--until he asks the woman who she is.
His mother pales considerably, and immediately informs a nurse of this discovery.
A few doctors come to visit, and eventually diagnose him with post-traumatic amnesia, assuring the woman that this is normal after a traumatic head injury like the one he received.
They say, based on the severity of the brain injury he had, that he should likely regain memory within the next twenty-four hours.
His mother reluctantly settles down, with no other way to help her daughter.
The doctors start to get worried when a day passes and there are no signs of any recovered memories.
Several more days pass, and he still claims to have no memories.
After a week passes, and Voldemort is physically recovered, still, he says no memories have returned. Not a single one.
Such a shame that is, he thinks sardonically.
With nothing else to it, the doctors put it on his medical file, and send him on his way home, despite his mother's vehement pleas that he stay for just another night.
The muggle woman shuts herself in her room for the rest of the day, while he recuperates in his own room, filled with meaningless, miscellaneous items decorating the wall.
The next day, he takes them all down.
Voldemort calls the muggle woman Renée currently, because when he called her Miss Higginbotham earlier she nearly cried, and before that, he referred to her as ma'am, which actually caused her to tear up.
Every time they talk, however few times he tries to make it, there's a clear gap between them now.
Eventually, the muggle woman gets the hint, and stops trying to initiate conversation with him.
Unfortunately, he does have to take tests and make up for past assignments that accumulated while he had been stuck in the hospital, and is pleasantly surprised to find out that the previous host that inhabited this body at least got decent marks.
Voldemort decides to continue that streak and more, signing up for some extracurriculars for the next year.
If there was one thing he missed about his youth, it was school.
While walking through the parking lot one day, Voldemort spots the slight glimmer of what looks like scales, hiding in the grass nearby.
Only a few feet away, he finds a rattlesnake, suntanning while sleeping peacefully.
Voldemort bolts to his mother's car.
He lays in bed that night, thinking, planning, hoping.
It never occurred to him that he may never speak parseltongue again.
He's too terrified to try.
Voldemort holds his breath, as he cautiously approaches the rattlesnake carelessly suntanning out near the school's parking lot once more.
With a heavy heart, he parts his lips and lets out a weak hiss that sounds pathetic even to his own ears.
"Hello? Can you hear me?"
The snake doesn't react.
Voldemort is yet to be discouraged, however.
"Little one," he hisses louder, desperation creeping in his voice. "Speak now, if you can understand me."
Again, the rattlesnake continues to ignore him.
Voldemort feels his breath stutter, and his volume rises involuntarily. "Answer me!"
Then, the snake shudders, or perhaps more accurately, rattles quite frighteningly, as it coils in on itself.
Voldemort tenses, holding his breath and--
The snake hisses back, "Who's there?" with that unaccustomed yet familiar condescending tone.
He'd cry tears of joy if he could.
Instead, rather dramatically, he steps into the rattlesnake's peripheral vision, and ominously bellows, "Me."
Within the last few weeks of school, Voldemort gains one loyal, non-muggle ally.
And of course, after nearly a month of radio silence from his mother, she finally makes, simultaneously, the best and worst decision she ever could've possibly made for him, though he had no way of knowing at the time.
"I know we haven't really gotten around to talking about this, but--oh god yes we're having this conversation again--you don't remember your father, right?" His mother says out of the blue, just as Voldemort finishes 'buckling' himself up in the back of the car.
The (former) Dark Lord shakes his head.
"Well," she continues, sounding every bit like she's biting into a lemon, "I know you're a smart girl and that you're mature, and very wise for your age..."
Voldemort decidedly clocks out of the conversation, trying his best to look attentive and not look so obviously like he was spacing out.
Which he was, for the record. He politely refrained from yawning, but only barely.
Voldemort only snaps back to attention as the woman finally gets to the heart of the discussion, "...which is why you'll be visiting him in his hometown, Washington." The muggle woman takes a moment to breathe, who thankfully looked as though she wouldn't be crying anytime soon. Especially since she's the one driving this blasted muggle vehicle.
A couple months ago, he wouldn't have even the slightest clue as to whether Washington was the name of a muggle alcohol brand, or a state, but fortunately, he is in fact up to date with the geography of this country thanks to American primary school.
Hurrah.
Feeling far more depressed than previously, he replies with a rather lackluster, "Okay, Renée," and doesn't even smirk secretly to the side when he hears a defeated sigh coming from the front of the car like he usually would.
As he thought, reincarnating into a muggle, not to mention, the body of an insignificant prepubescent girl, had to be the worst possible thing that could have ever happened to him.
Voldemort finally meets his father for the first time, which is just as trivial and boring as he thought it would be.
But then, he introduces his friend, Billy Black, and that's when he first realizes--
He's not a muggle. He's magical, and so are his children. And then he freaks out internally, because he could only sense them if--
I'm not a muggle. I'm also magical.
The (former?) Dark Lord grimaces, as he's reintroduced to his father's friend's family, who include far too many children interacting with him for his liking.
I'm a squib.
"Hey, Bella. Wanna make a mudpie together?"
One of the insipid little Black children (and don't all these familiar names just pour salt in the still-fresh wound) keeps chattering to him far more than the others, insisting he do this or that with him.
If the boy has a crush on him, then he will soon find that Voldemort will crush him instead.
Well, he muses silently, let's test out a theory while I'm here, why don't I?
What was his name again..?
Ah, right.
"Jacob. Come here for a moment, will you?" He does his best not to sound too domineering, though it unfortunately sounds more like a command than a request.
Thankfully, the stupid child either doesn't recognize or ignores the dangerous undertones in his speech.
"Okay! Didja need something Bells?" The boy trounces over with a little pep in his step, only highlighting his naiveté.
Voldemort graces him the most genuine smile he can, staring deeply into the other's eyes. "Legilimens."
...
He waits a while longer, though still nothing happens. No memories, no thoughts, not even errant surface level thinking comes round his way.
Voldemort tsks with his not-so-snake-like-anymore tongue, and releases the now terribly flushed boy.
The experiment ended as he hypothesized, though he did note (disinterestedly) that the boy's pupils have expanded a great margin while sharing eye contact for so long.
Not that that's particularly helpful, but at least one of his predictions turned out to be true.
Unfortunately, as a result of this experiment, the little whelp trails after him like a lovesick puppy for the rest of his stay at Forks.
When they return from their trip, Voldemort asks the muggle woman if he can move in with his father.
As expected, she refuses, which still manages to infuriate him beyond belief, as rejection typically tends to do, regardless of foresight. He's never dealt well with rejection.
But he won't act out. He won't retaliate.
Instead, he plans, plans, plans, like he always does whenever things don't go his way.
He does well in school--the best, in fact. He does well academically, in all his extracurriculars, and even works a few pet projects on his own time, involving new muggle technology.
Teachers praise him, peers respect him, the snake he befriended natters to him whatever is on his little reptilian mind, and his mother drinks herself to sleep every night that her daughter refuses to talk to her.
Rinse and repeat.
The easy days slip by, slower than molasses, but just as sweet.
Voldemort has a plan.
It will take a few more years, maybe even longer, if he wants to stay scott free and absolved of the crime he's planned for.
He steals ingredients from the science lab, little by little. Just small amounts, small enough that you wouldn't be able to tell just by looking.
And nobody is looking.
For him to be free to do whatever he wants to do, he needs to be rid of this muggle woman who, truthfully, is more of an annoyance than something truly detrimental to his life.
But she could be.
If Voldemort slips up again, this wretched muggle could diminish his freedoms and rights, could send him somewhere he has no hopes of escaping. And for that, she must go.
Not to mention that she is particularly strong-willed, far more than his pathetic muggle father. (and doesn't that just rub more salt in the never-healing wound?) Just thinking of the slight comparison to his past life makes his teeth itch, and his vision go red with the need to hurt, and rend, and tear something asunder.
But he mustn't be hasty. He will be patient.
Voldemort will play the role of a good, perfectly normal girl his age ought to act.
He just has to wait.
His birthday passes without much fanfare.
His mother still drinks, but she pretends like she doesn't, as she hands him his present along with the rest of the boring, nondescript presents he received from others.
There's cake, candles, birthday wishes, friends, family, and gifts galore.
But there's no owls. There's no letters of acceptance to any boarding schools in Scotland. Not even the no doubt rubbish boarding school he's heard about in (what he now knows as) Massachusetts.
And he had hoped.
He hoped that despite him being more muggle than magical, that despite his being a squib, despite all evidence to the contrary of him being accepted, he would still get to go to Hogwarts.
But Voldemort should have never hoped.
Happy birthday to me.
Months pass, and nothing changes, other than maybe his mother's liver, if she keeps up the heavy drinking.
Perhaps Voldemort needn't do anything, and the muggle woman will simply drink herself to death.
A pleasant thought, but not very realistic.
She would likely only end up in the hospital, eventually recover, and potentially die in another thirty years.
But Lord Voldemort isn't that patient.
He continues to steal and prepare ingredients as always, with everyone none the wiser.
Truthfully, he never had a problem inhabiting the body of the opposite sex before now.
But that was before puberty started. And hormones.
At first, it was the long hair that was both bemusing and irritating to take care of, and grew at an exponentially faster rate than he remembered. He'd completely forgotten how difficult it was to take care of any amounts of hair, long or short, for nearly two decades before he inhabited the girl's body.
He'd seriously debated the merits of simply cutting it all off, but while bald women weren't entirely unheard of in America, he decided that it'd be far too eye-catching and out of character, especially for a girl at his age to do.
Perhaps in later years he will consider it.
In time, he got rid of the slight dysmorphia (not necessarily related to his sex specifically) regarding these little aspects, but then he started his menstrual cycle, and that was a whole different experience for him.
Voldemort has never been as thankful for having been born with a cock in his past life than he was in that moment. How would he have even coped with the vast bleeding from his uterus, back in the late 1930s? Not very well, he'd imagine.
He shudders at the thought. Did pads even exist back then?
He doesn't know. He never had reason to care.
The thought only sends him into a familiar spiral, one where he contemplates what on God's green earth he did for his fate to end up such as this.
Suffering the bodily changes of a now pre-teen aged girl.
Truly, the worst.
At least he'll get to vent some of his frustrations when his overbearing muggle mother finally kicks the bucket.
Hopefully.
Much time passes, as it waits for no man, not even Lord Voldemort.
Not that he wants it to, in this particular case.
Nearly five years have gone by, and they did not pass so easily, nor as quickly as he would have liked.
For all intents and purposes, Isabella Swan is just your average fifteen year old girl.
She is a well-behaved, if quiet child, brilliant in all her subjects, top of her school, excellent at all her extracurriculars, and isn't too much of an eyesore to look at. Voldemort likes to imagine she looks like what Tom Riddle would look like, if he were a girl instead.
But of course, he mustn't forget the most important thing.
Isabella Swan is now motherless.
Voldemort wakes up on his birthday of all things, when he realizes the muggle woman is still sitting in the living room, motionless.
And not the birthday of the body he's hosting. His previous birthday. His original birthday.
December 31st.
The end of the year. The very last day before the new year. Only six days after Christmas.
There's a bottle of some kind of hard liquor spilled out on the carpet. The woman's body is blue and pallor, not a single ounce of life left in her. Her eyes are wide open, unblinking, lips chapped and dried out.
She looks beautiful like this, Voldemort thinks, and she'll look even more stunning after rigor mortis sets in, and her smooth skin turns leathery and decayed, joints and muscles turned stiff and unmoving.
He takes a few minutes to simply bask in the presence of the muggle woman turned corpse. To bask in the physical form of his victory.
Then, he dials 911.
Acting is a skill he hasn't had much use for after he shed the name Tom Riddle, but a skill that is hard to shake off, even dusty with disuse, nearly fifty or so years later.
Besides, he's been subject to lying since he had first awoken in this weak receptacle of a body, with nothing other than his superior mind and intellect to protect himself.
Simply put, he gets away with the painfully long, premeditated murder easily.
The muggle woman's death was caused by the excessive heavy drinking, the medical examiners say. Her heart just couldn't handle the stress of her daughter's unfortunately timed amnesia, and her unfortunate hobby of steeping too deeply into her cups of liquor.
His father comes immediately, dressed to the nines in black. In mourning.
But Voldemort thinks he's been in mourning, ever since his mother took both her love, and their baby with her. Nothing has changed for him. He only showed up for his daughter.
How laughable.
Fortunately, Voldemort manages to squeeze out a few tears when the time calls for it, and the funeral goes as planned, with no further obstructions.
Hiding a smile into the sleeve of his shirt, Voldemort leans against the window of his father's car, and watches as Phoenix grows further and further away, until it's no more than a spot in the distance.
"I'm hungry," Rafael, his rattlesnake familiar hisses out from inside his bookbag, sounding awfully put out.
His smile shows teeth, as he lets out a breathy little laugh. "Soon, little one. There will be plenty of tasty morsels for you to eat, soon."
Soon, indeed.
He arrives at Forks, Washington, a little more worse for wear than he thought he'd be. But it's only to be expected from a girl who just lost her mother.
At least his father is susceptible to manipulation. And meek.
The man allows him his space, after showing him to his now newly permanent room, rather than the temporary one he used to share with his mother, which he's fairly certain was deliberate.
No doubt trying to spare him the grief of his mother's passing.
Voldemort wants to laugh at the absurdity of it all, the sheer irony, but then his father might really send him to a mental facility, weak-willed or not. Better not to push it, regardless.
At least, not yet.
Once the man is busy doing something or other, he lets out Rafael into the backyard, near where the forest is.
"Go find yourself a tasty morsel," he hisses to the rattlesnake. "I'll be around here if you want to chat." He gestures to the small suburban house he and his father will be staying at, for the intermittent future.
The snake hisses his assent, slithering away into the dark forest, as Voldemort waves him off.
Now then, he thinks with a vicious grin, walking back to his brand new home, with a brand new welcoming mat to walk all over, called Charlie Swan. Time to do some research.