Rebirth

AN: Spoilers for DH. This fic branches off in AU at the beginning of Chapter 28 of Deathly Hallows. Thanks to my beta, rainpuddle13!

i.

The last thing Harry saw was the Dementor's face - terrible and gruesome as he'd imagined - pressing down on him, and the Kiss...

The Kiss, bizarrely, reminded him of Ginny and a sunlit room and laughter and the sensation of flying and being surrounded by his friends (a sickening flash: what will they do, he can't fail, he can't), before his stomach dropped and everything went dark.

Harry saw no more.

ii.

It is like waking up after the longest, deepest sleep of his life, though he can't quite remember...

He stands cautiously, looking around. The surroundings are familiar - Hogsmeade. He is in Hogsmeade and something is happening on the street.

There is a strange stiffness in his body, and every movement feels awkward, as though his limbs are different lengths than he is used to, and when he moves long strands of hair falls in his eyes, which he pushes back, annoyed.

He has a bad feeling about this, and he's learned over the years to trust his instincts above all else, so he hurries into nearest building, performing a quick unlocking spell - his wand is different, though it works well enough - and shuts himself inside.

There is something wrong, something he should remember, but he can't, and he presses himself against the door, though he can't hear anyone. He didn't dare cast another spell, not now that he's thought of the dangers of using an unusual wand when he himself isn't sure of the situation.

He moves deeper in the room - it is the quill shop - and catches sight of himself in the mirror.

The boy in the mirror is not - and had never been - Lord Voldemort.

iii.

The last thing he can remember clearly was the Potters', that woman and that accursed baby standing in its crib.

There are newspapers behind the counter, and it is the future. He has been... missing... for over sixteen years, and the face he is wearing....

He is in the body of Harry Potter, who apparently lead to his downfall, who is currently hunted by the Ministry that he controls.

Lord Voldemort - this other Lord Voldemort, who has accomplished what he has only dreamed of - desires nothing more than killing this body. He cannot present himself to - himself, because he knows how he would react.

Remove the threat. Eliminate the competition.

It is the only sensible thing to do.

iv.

Neither of Potter's friends have any notable skill in either Legilimancy or Occulmancy, and it is breathtakingly simple to slide into their minds - they are shocked, astonished that Harry is alive, that he hasn't been Kissed, they had been sure, they had seen....

The girl's mind is razor sharp and as labyrinthine as his own, and he pulls from it the necessary practical knowledge - his fellow Horcruxes mangled, his downfall predestined, the urgent need for a conclusion to this war.

The boy's is less complex, yet harder to cull knowledge from, ruled by emotion rather than logic. He sees, however, hints that the other Horcruxes are likewise capable of sentience, and he cannot allow them to exist.

He regrets this - they were his immortality - but he knows his intentions, and knows any of the others, given the chance, would do the same.

v.

He has flashes of recollection from the boy, things he had been putting together.

Deathly Hallows.

Potter knew of the Hallows, knew where- the wand belongs to him. The wand and the cloak, and the Resurrection Stone, the thing of myth and beauty...

It was his all along, and it is inside the Snitch that Potter could not open. I open at the close, it had said. He has culled all the knowledge from Potter's friends' minds, and the shades of memories imprinted on this body...

The close, he thinks, and laughs wildly, because that is the thing he has feared the most.

"I am about to die," he says truthfully - he will follow Dumbledore's plan - and presses his mouth to the Snitch.

Immortality drops into his hand, cracked and familiar.

vi.

When he stands over the corpse of Lord Voldemort with an unbeatable wand grasped tight in his hand, he cannot help it. He laughs, laughs, laughs, and only stops when he realizes people are watching, brows furrowed, worried.

"Has the boy gone mad?" whispers the crowd, and he shakes his head and then drops to his knees, cooling blood pooling in the grooved stones to kiss against his knees, and Potter's friends rush up to him and wrap their arms around him in friendship and love and reassurance, none of which he needs.

"I did it," he whispers, and the girl nods, tears streaming down her face while the boy claps him roughly on the back and yells in agreement, overloud and excited.

And then everyone is there, and they are all crowding around him and cheering Harry Potter's name, and he sees the joy and gratitude on their faces and knows his plan will work.

vii.

The papers recount the story - how Harry Potter had surprised Lord Voldemort, had hissed something to him in Parseltongue, had disarmed him, had cast the spell that sent Lord Voldemort to his knees lightning-fast.

How Harry Potter had stabbed Lord Voldemort with the Sword of Gryffindor, and then knelt in the spreading pool of blood, surrounded by friends with triumph and grief on his face.

(He hadn't been willing to chance a Killing Curse, not when he had glimmers of Dumbledore's plan twining through his mind, not when it had rebounded on him before and left him in this state. He learns from his mistakes, and the shock on his own, malformed face as he'd murdered himself had been strangely gratifying.)

The papers sang his praises, and everywhere he went people gazed at him as though he were their savior.

He regrets the loss of his body - he is no longer Heir of Slytherin, and he still has dirty Muggle blood pumping through these stolen veins - but he can see already the potential.

He will abandon the pureblood line of rhetoric, it has accomplished all it can. This he does not regret. All he has done has only ever been about one thing:

Power.

viii.

Love and adulation are obscenely simple to manipulate.

He has abandoned Potter's friends - allowed them to drift apart, away, because he does not need them the way that the boy had. He thinks they suspect, sometimes, when they look at him as though he were a stranger and a monster.

He lives in the Blacks' family house, and he thinks Bellatrix would be pleased by this, had she survived the battle. The decor pleases him, and when he looks in the mirror the differences between this face and his own - eye color, the shape of the jaw, the texture of the hair - seem less and less until they are insignificant, and the face he sees is only his own. His forever, because he has the tools with which Death can be cheated.

He has become a Ministry spokesman of sorts, and if he slightly alters what they ask him to say...

Well, no one argues with the Boy Who Lived, the boy who defeated the Dark Lord, the boy who has such a promising future.

It is such a simple thing, making the masses love him. Lord Voldemort is dead, and their gratitude.... Their gratitude overwhelms. Everything Harry Potter tells them is truth and gospel, and they bend over backwards to do his bidding.

Harry Potter is seventeen years old and holds more power than the Minister of Magic himself.

Voldemort is pleased.

ix.

"We need to make precautions," he tells them, "so that this atrocity will never happen again."

The masses nod, agree, submit. He saved them from tyranny and war, and Harry Potter would not lead them astray. He is reforming the government, stronger than ever, free from corruption.

He does not make magical education mandatory; it is unnecessary. The Mudbloods look at him with idolization lighting their dim eyes. It is simple enough to assure that the Dark Arts are not taught; that is what the Order strove for.

They are kept weak and controllable, and they think it is their own idea. They cannot see their chains. Cannot see what he can, the slow way the strongest magics will be forgotten by all but him. (He has achieved immortality.)

He recalls an old party line that has not lost its truth, and smiles when asked for a comment on his policies, his good deeds, his help in restructuring the very foundation of the world.. His reply is always the same:

"I do everything for the greater good."