Dysfunctional

66 - True Colours

Voldemort clasped his hands behind his back, deep in thought as he contemplated the unlikely circumstances surrounding his well-laid plan. The revelation that the soul in his Horcrux had somehow latched onto Potter was beyond astounding and deeply concerning.

The locket could not be separated from Potter's person, which meant that the bonding was stronger than he had first assumed.

The boy had somewhat realized that the locket was trying to take over his mind. He had been putting up a fight for the better part of the past few months, but he was hardly succeeding.

Voldemort smirked at the knowledge and the conviction, that he had in effect, beaten Potter. He would no longer need to put himself in agonizing pain to take control of Potter's mind. His Horcrux was succeeding and with little damage to itself.

He remembered the memory he had witnessed inside the boy's head...

A miserable house-elf was bawling its eyes out, hiccupping, "And he ordered... Kreacher to leave... without him. And he told Kreacher... to go home... and never to tell my Mistress... what he had done... but to destroy... the first locket. And he drank... all the potion... and Kreacher swapped the lockets... and watched... as Master Regulus... was dragged beneath the water..."

White fog covered his vision and he pressed harder wanting to know how-

The fog cleared. Dumbledore and Potter were in the Headmaster's office... discussing the Horcruxes... Potter was counting on his fingers, "So, the diary's gone, the ring's gone. The cup, the locket, and the snake are still intact, and you think there might be a Horcrux that was once Ravenclaw's or Gryffindor's?"

"An admirably succinct and accurate summary, yes," said Dumbledore, bowing his head.

He had no longer been able to maintain the connection, not with the abject horror he had been facing inside him. He had slipped out of Potter's mind, seething.

Somehow, that old fool had figured out his secret! How had he done it? And he had ensured to pass it down to Potter before he had died too. He, Lord Voldemort, had been certain no one could know... had been so confident... had grown... complacent.

He shook himself out of the reverie, trying to bring himself back to the problem at hand.

He would need to find a way to release and re-encase his soul back into the locket, a task which was hitherto unheard of.

Voldemort had always been a pursuer of knowledge, priding in the fact that he was beyond all of his contemporaries and would be that way. Undoubtedly, everything about the situation now was enticing him with curiosity.

Merely removing the locket from Potter did not work as he had witnessed with his own eyes, which meant that he would have to find a way to break apart his soul piece which was clinging to Potter's. Killing Potter to save his soul seemed a plausible idea to him.

But if his soul was already too attached to his, would it die as well?

That was a risk he could not take. Not when he knew that already three of his Horcruxes were gone.

Of course, he could always make more. But the last attempt with Nagini had been nearly disastrous. He closed his eyes for a moment, grieving the loss of his pet snake.

He had always known that he was pushing the boundaries, warping the known limits of magic. Many before him had theorized that there were only a finite number of times that the soul could be divided before it became too unstable and would result in the annihilation of all of them at once - a counterintuitive process for the maker of the Horcruxes.