Seventh Summer

Author's Notes: I always think Voldemort/anyone is an interesting concept, so here's my spin on the Life and Times of You Know Who. I must admit, it's one of the darker ones I've written-- but duh. It's Voldemort. A million thanks to my betas, Saja_Natalia and Liz.

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Seventh Summer

She wrote him letters.

Every morning, after she washed and ate, she wrote one letter and sent it by post. It cost a pretty penny, but she was old enough to work, and hired herself out for odd jobs in the village. Usually, she even had a few coins left to save.

He never sent her anything, but that was to be expected; he was busy with his new school, his new friends. The first year was the hardest; she didn't know how she could live without seeing his face every morning over their bleak breakfast, how she could go on without a quiet conversation or a sharp argument before lunch, how she could choke down the orphanage's horrible supper without him there beside her. She'd built her sorry life up around him, and it was no small task to rearrange the floorplan of her existence. When he came back for the summer, she cried. She flung her arms around his neck and cried. He pushed her off, as he always had and always would, his hard eyes unflinching in their cruelty. But later that evening, when he'd unpacked and everyone else had gone to bed, he sneaked into her dormitory and told her all about it. She listened, wide-eyed, hanging on every word as if it were his last. She adored him.

"There's so much power there, Annie. You have no idea... the teachers there, they could--could make a thunderstorm happen, or make people do whatever they please. The power...."

He spoke on and on, about the wonderful things he could do at school, and she listened for hours. Finally, her eyelids drooped, and she fell asleep with her head on his shoulder, his monologue racing through her dreams like sweet nectar.

The next year was easier, and the years after that. She never asked him if he got her letters, but she wrote them nonetheless. The years passed, the seasons changed. She waited every day for his return, and as it grew imminent she fairly quivered on the doorstep of their asylum, straining her eyes into the distance. Perhaps he would come early, she prayed at night. Perhaps...

She grew into a young woman, and he into a young man. Now she sent fragrant flowers with her letters, snippets of lavender from the herb shop where she worked, a drop of perfume she borrowed from a girl in town. She found a broken locket and fixed the hinge; when he came back for the summer she stole a lock of his hair and tucked it between the silver hearts. The tarnished locket hung at her neck like concrete thereafter, and although he must have noticed it, he never asked about it. Perhaps he thought she had another beau. More likely he never thought on it at all.

Now her longings were of a different sort, but she never acted on her fancies. They snuck into the broom cupboard when he returned after his fifth year at school, and this time it was finally different. He spoke, as usual, about his school and the people there; this time, however, his tone was one of derision, of loathing for the weakness among the faculty. He hated it that they would not use their power to its full potential; it ground against his nerves, set him ablaze. He laughed manically when he spoke of what he could do with his own power--what he had done. She was frightened by his words, scrambled back from him. But he looked at her then, really saw her for the first time in a long while; he reached over and pulled her head close to his chest and held her. She thought it was the first time he had ever been truly human, and she cried for that. His fingers brushed the tears from her cheeks and his lips rested on her forehead until her own sought them out.

He never spoke of that night, never repeated the experience. She thought him a little less frosty toward her; sometimes he touched her hand, or his face became a little lighter when she looked to him--but perhaps, then, it was just a fancy. Another year passed. She loved him. She would follow him to the ends of the earth, if he would let her. Her letters grew longer, her voice more wistful. Never once in her writing did she mention a future; but the dreams were there, dormant until the nighttime that brought dreaming.

He was different, that last summer. The seventh summer.

He'd come back later than usual, leaving her to worry and fret over his not coming back at all. He had to come back. To see her.

When he did return, there was a strangeness in his eyes. If she'd been old enough, if she'd understood it, she would have given it its true name: murder. He did not tell her the story, but they sat together that night in the broom cupboard and he spoke the hate in his soul. He'd learned about his parents, he told her. He'd learned it all and he hated. She forced herself not to be frightened of him, and kept herself in contact with him the whole night through. His flesh, his arms, himself. He was real, he was home, there was no more need to be frightened...

He left her. It was a stormy night, as such nights must be, and he simply walked out of his dormitory and did not come back. She discovered him missing in the morning; that day she left as well. The time had come to move on from the orphanage, to move on to her own life. There was a box full of coins upstairs, and a sturdy pair of hands at the end of her arms. Her feet took her out the door, out of the village, away from her childhood. She did not look back, and she did not write letters anymore.

It was more than a year before she found him again, in a dirty alley in a damp city. She almost missed him; he hurried past in the street with his dark collar turned up and his hands in his pockets, but it was he. She almost dropped her basket of bread and potatoes, so stricken was she by his reappearance in her life.

When he heard the cry of his name, he whirled around, anger and the smallest edge of fear in his eyes. The fear was not completely gone by then, but it was close--so close. She could hardly see it, she who had watched his eyes for years and years and could tell his every mood. She hurried to him and reached for his hands; he placed them in hers, bewildered.

"Your hands, Tom! They're so cold!" He tried to jerk them away, but she held firm. Thirteen months as a seamstress in a factory gave her strong hands. "I don't mind, Tom. It's just... it's good to see you again."

He didn't say anything for the longest time, but his eyes dropped from hers. Was he ashamed? Suddenly: "Anne. Your locket. Your locket, Annie, where did you get it?" His voice held a trace of strange panic.

She shook her head. "Tom! I found it--oh, I don't know how long ago. But Tom, it's so good to see you--I've missed you, Tom..."

He withdrew a hand from her grasp and reached for the locket, gently tugging it to break the chain.

"Tom!"

He inspected it carefully, bringing it close to his eyes. "Did you know--" He stopped.

"Tom, please give me my locket!" Without meaning it, she began to cry. It had been so long, and so hard, and now she'd finally found him, and he didn't care at all--

"Give it back!" she screamed, and snatched it out of his hands. She turned and fled, racing away down the street. He stood alone on the pavement, a flurry of snow spinning down around him, and watched her flight. His stone-heart gave a jump, and he listened to it, for a while. Then he pushed it from his mind and continued on his business.

Tom lived for her in the locket. She kept it close to her heart, night and day, as she had since the day she rescued the relic. It was more years before she saw him again--and then quite a surprise; she had not expected to encounter him until her death.

He came with the night, invaded her little cottage like a wraith. She woke to the sound of his knock on her bedroom door, and nearly screamed when she opened it to find him there. Her hand flew to the locket at her throat of its own accord. He laughed dryly.

"Don't worry, Annie, I'm not here for that."

He was dressed in dark robes--black, she observed, when her eyes adjusted to the dark. His face was pale, his expression almost hideous in its warped cruelty. But now, just now--there. His eyes held some softness in them, buried under his piles of hard stone and ice; but it was there, and she knew it only lived for her.

"Tom--"

"No, Annie. I'm Lord Voldemort now. Remember the stories I told you about school? I've grown, Annie. My power is greater. I've started a war, Annie, against the fools who don't believe in power. A war."

"Tom--"

"No--Voldemort."

She felt her cheeks flame. "You are not some fancy Lord. You are Tom. Tom Riddle, from the orphanage, the one who went away to school and came back with crazy ideas. Give up the charade, Tom."

He pleaded then. She had never heard him plead for anything in his life. The ice melted, the stone shifted, and his eyes were full of the only softness left in his soul.

"Join me, Annie." A whisper. "Join me, and we'll ride together at the forefront of a revolution! It will change everything, Annie. You and me, together with my followers--against the world!"

Her heart broke. She was surprised it had not happened sooner. It broke, and it crumbled into dust.

"I loved you once, Tom," she said, bittersweet, to the strange, ferocious man in black. "I loved you, Tom, but this? You're not the Tom you once were. Not to me. Not any more." She reached behind her neck and slowly unclasped the silver chain. Her breath caught in her throat, and the dust of her heart turned to saltwater to fall from her eyes. She held out the locket to the man she had dreamed would be her husband, her lover.

The softness in his eyes froze, and the walls of ice and stone rushed back like angry storm clouds. "So be it," he hissed in a low voice. "So be it." He took the necklace and flung it back in her face.

It struck her hard--not the necklace, which bounced off her nose and crumpled to the floor, but his anger and hurt, lethally infused with the power he so cherished. It hit her as the most deadly spell could not hope to hit, and she gasped for air and fell forward into Tom's arms.

He was a young man again--a young man who had just made a horrible mistake, a young man without a thought in the world except for the young woman in his arms. The softness returned for only an instant, and on the inside of haughty, cruel Lord Voldemort, the young man cried as he had not cried since he was very small. "I did love you, Annie," the young man whispered. Lord Voldemort melted away for the time it took to press a kiss to cold, dead lips and gently lower the body to the floor. "Why couldn't you see that?"

The young man bled away, like water evaporating in the harsh noon. He left the locket lying on the floor beside her body, and swept out of the house dry-eyed. The transformation was complete. He was Lord Voldemort now.

And such did Lord Voldemort descend upon humanity, leaving the woman who had been the world's only hope lying dead in a lonely cottage, cold as stone.

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Author's Notes: What did you think? :) No, Annie's necklace is not a horcrux, nor is it Merope's necklace. (Originally it was going to be, but Merope pawned her locket.) However, the necklace gives Tom the *idea* for horcuxes. Comments make me smile!