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Dying is the most humiliating experience Voldemort has ever had.
He falls over dead, no better than a disgusting mortal.
When victory was so close within his reach, the Potter whelp manages to yet be a thorn in his side. Voldemort has hated many things and many people in his life, but he has never and will never despise anyone or anything more than he reviles Harry Potter.
“Are you quite done sulking?”
Voldemort could scream. Instead of doing something so uncouth, he turns and fixes his own face with a burning glare.
Death.
An actual physical entity representing the nebulous cosmic concept, and it’s wearing his face. Tom Riddle, circa ten years old, with sunken cheeks and ratty donated clothes. It looks exactly as he did back then, the little star of incandescent rage that he was. Apparently, they prefer to take the shape of someone their visitor trusts – to ease the way, as it were – but of course, the only person Voldemort has ever trusted is himself.
But even he failed him, didn’t he? He lost his marbles and went positively batty, which is painfully obvious in hindsight now that his sanity has been restored. He can only guess it was an unforeseen side-effect of making so many horcruxes. Indeed, with a clear mind like this, it seems obvious even to him that tearing one’s soul to shreds would entail some unsavory aftereffects, but he was a foolish child when the idea affixed itself in his mind. After creating the first horcrux, he was just crazy enough to fully attach himself to the thought of making more because more horcruxes must mean he’s that much safer, yes?
Foolish.
Childish.
He trapped himself in an unfortunate downward spiral aimed squarely at disastrous failure and he has no one to blame but himself. Hm, that’s not quite true – he has plenty of people to blame for his downfall, it’s just a shame that he himself is perhaps chief among them.
“What’s all this about then?” Voldemort asks, gesturing both to Death and himself, because unfortunately, he is being portrayed as Death’s mirror image – Tom Riddle, ten years old. “Intending to laugh at my failures, is it?”
“Not at all.”
Tom’s skin itches, because that is what he is. He’s Tom again. Gone is Voldemort – dead and buried – and all that remains is Tom.
This strange foreign place he’s been trapped in is, unfortunately, neither strange nor foreign.
Wool’s.
It’s his old room at Wool’s, rendered in perfect, brilliant, inhuman whiteness. He wonders if the door is sealed or if it leads out to the hallways as it should. If the other rooms are there. The crowded bedrooms, the dusty classroom, the bare kitchen.
Death sits on the edge of the bed, the picture of his nightmares. There is nothing but more whiteness outside the window.
“Have a seat, Tom. This might take some time.”
Death gestures to the white desk with its white chair.
On the desk, there lay even the stubby, chewed-on pencil scrap Tom was stuck using, as sparingly as possible. The alarm clock sits on the top left corner, nearest to the bed. It’s unnervingly silent. Its face is blank and white.
Tom pulls out the chair, turns it towards Death, and sits.
“Go on, then.”
Death huffs an impudent little laugh that looks revolting on Tom’s pale face, gaunt and grey under the eyes. “Very well.” They become deathly – ha! – serious in an instant, fixing Tom’s own clever eyes on him. “You broke something that should never be broken.”
Tom scoffs. Of course that’s what this is about. “Oh, please. It’s only taboo because small-minded fools are too afraid to explore what discomforts their narrow perception of the world.”
“Then you won’t mind if I erase you from existence, yes?”
Tom stares at them.
“Broken things are thrown away, aren’t they? Broken souls can’t move on to the After, but they can’t stay in Limbo, either. The only choice is to erase them. That means you, if you’re not following. Poof. Gone. Like you never existed. Like you were never born. Forgotten. Actually, never even known in the first place, is more accurate.”
Forgotten, that… Tom could make peace with that, in the end, with some time, maybe. History keeps going and everyone is forgotten in the end; that’s simply a fact. At least he would have been known. For many long years, all of Britain would remember him. The world would know him. He would exist in history books and be talked about, his accomplishments would be known, he would be a mark across the country, the people, and it would be many, many years before he would move out of the zeitgeist.
But to never be known at all? To be so fully erased, that no one would ever have even known his name, his face, his great accomplishments…
No.
No, he will not allow it.
Death laughs again, so mockingly it makes Tom itch with rage. “Here’s the deal, Tom. It’s my job to maintain the balance. I protect the three stages. The Before, that’s life and the living. Limbo, that’s here, the stop-over where souls recover from the trauma of dying, of living. The After, that’s where they go next. Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, whatever you prefer to call it. But the thing is, broken souls can manage alright in the Before. It’s not healthy, it’s not good by any stretch of the word, but it’s passable. You should know. But only complete souls can make it to the After. Once a soul is in Limbo, I can’t do anything for them. I can’t fix you, repair you, staple you back together.”
Rolling their eyes – Tom’s eyes – and sighing, Death drapes themselves over the bed, fluffing up the flat pillow and laying down, sliding their hands under the pillow to let their head rest in their palms with the pillow in-between. They pull one leg up and rest the ankle of the other on that knee.
“That means you’ll spend eternity here, and I mean eternity. This place exists beyond time and space. Even after the Universe is destroyed, this place goes on. It services the next universe, and the next, and the next, like it serviced all the ones before. I think you can imagine how long of a time that’s going to be. All alone. Trapped in that form. In this room. For all eternity. Until you fade away, that is. It’s the fate of all broken souls. It might take a million years, a billion, a billion-billion, or maybe, since there’s so little of you left, you’ll be gone within the week. Who knows?”
If Tom could rip this impudent little shit limb from limb, he most certainly would and with his bare hands, at that.
“So? You said there was a deal? Get on with it or get out. Shit or get off the pot, why don’t you?”
Death laugh. It's chilling. “It’s so funny how impatient all you mortals are. Truly, it is! Then again, if my lifespan was at an average of 70 years or whatever it is, I’d be precious about my time too. But very well, let’s get to shitting, shall we?”
Tom grits his teeth.
“You get one more chance, Tom. One single chance. I’ll toss you back into the Before and pull together all your soul pieces for you. You get to live. My only rule is no bloody horcruxes or whatever you call them.”
Tom stares at them. He gets another chance? He gets to live? And with his soul intact?
This changes everything.