Hostile Takeover

Chapter 2

The next few weeks proved to be the most interesting Harry ever had at Privet Drive. He learned loads of magical theory and spent quite a lot of time wondering about Tom.

"Tom, you said as a horcrux, you can absorb other horcruxes...how do you know that?"

"Because I've done it before." The surprise Harry felt must have shown on his face. "When you went into the Chamber of Secrets and you saw me appear in front of you-that was another one of my horcruxes. It had gained enough strength to leave its vessel for a short period of time, a rather foolish idea, and whilst it was outside of the vessel-the diary, if you recall-you destroyed it. You didn't kill the horcrux, only the home in which it resided. It recognized me, a fellow horcrux from the same soul, and merged itself with me. I've told you before that when you reabsorb horcruxes you become the younger version of yourself." Harry was shocked. He had no idea what was happening at the time, but in theory it made sense. A horcrux can't simply live on its own. And why wouldn't it be attracted to another? The two horcruxes shared the same soul, just different parts of it.

"Is that why you're so much more reasonable than Voldemort?" Tom looked up from his tea and shrugged.

"I imagine it's a variety of things, but that would probably be a larger one, yes."

"A variety of things, like what?" Tom put down his teacup and elegantly crossed his legs before speaking.

"Madness ran through my mother's family. Inbreeding can cause deformities in both the mind and body. While I was perfectly sane through school, My grip on sanity did slip quite a bit through the years after creating the first horcrux. I regret making as many as I did; one would have done the job perfectly. But I was selfish and thought, perhaps foolishly, that I could stop myself from falling into madness. Unfortunately, that's not the case." They both remained quiet for several minutes before Tom started talking again.

"Do you know why I wanted to lead our world?" Harry shrugged and motioned for him to continue. "I grew up in an orphanage-a terribly bad one. Not enough food to go around, the children were bullies and the caretaker for us all was constantly drowning herself in drink. She couldn't care for us, we couldn't care for us, and no one wanted to adopt a kid during the blitz. Most families didn't want to adopt prior to that either, but the bombs didn't help. It was uncertain times, and to be frank I wasn't exactly what families were looking for at the time. No one wanted the kid that sat in a corner and studied their books, they wanted kids that would run 'round the neighbourhood with the other children. The other children whispered about me being 'odd' around new families so they'd have a higher chance of going home with them than I did. And no one really wants the child that's grown up at an orphanage-it makes them think that something must be wrong with that child since no one else wanted him earlier. It was madness.

"But when I entered our world, more problems began to pose themselves to me. Only the rich purebloods, the elite of society, could succeed. Anyone else was shunned out of good positions in the ministry and were given lower wages than owning a shop no one shopped at would give them. I saw people claiming to be 'light' and putting down education on different forms of magic. I saw people in the ministry preach to the citizens that soul magic was hurting pureblood marriages instead of helping them. The narrative was spun that soul bonding would allow abuse to go on unquestioned, but the truth is that a soul bond would never allow one to willingly harm the other-without consent, at any rate. It prevented abuse from happening, not causing it. But the damage was done. From then on, magic started becoming less about what it can do to help us and more about what spells you can and can't perform.

"That was when I started my group of followers. They all saw the issues with the new propaganda and wanted to find a way to stop it so we joined forces. Eventually, we started to make a small mark with lower level laws and finding ways to restore the way things were without rocking the boat too much. But then we were labelled dark, and soul magic was suddenly a dark magic that no one should ever even talk about. It shut down our laws faster than you could possibly imagine. I snapped one night and let my own irrationality get the better of me. I poisoned a client and created another horcrux.