What is a Name?
The nightmare started with Cedric dying in front of him. The flash of green light. The chilling absence of life in those once vibrant eyes. The body, collapsing to the ground in a heap. Motionless. Empty. Lifeless. Harry stood over the body, expecting to feel the wave of sorrow and anguish that followed this moment in his nightmares. Instead, all he felt was rage.
He hot anger spiraled from his chest, spilling out into his limbs, fueled by the thoughts coursing through his mind. The unfairness that yet another person had to suffer because of him. That another life was cut short because of things beyond his control. That he had to bear the weight of yet another innocent life because of the cruelty of a single man and his attempt to secure immortality. A mistake that gave birth to him.
The rage felt foreign in its origin, Harry feeling far more detached from his sense of self than he had in dreams before. Everything felt muted and distance, as if it were all buried under a filter of some kind, separating him from it all. His body clenched his fist tightly and Harry felt nothing more than a dull pressure followed by the faint sensation of liquid warmth trickling down his arms.
Harry had this nightmare before, and every time it went the same way. Cedric’s dead body before him, lifeless and empty. The cold, cruel laughter of Death Eaters echoing in the distance. Then, Cedric rising up to strangle him, forcing him awake. Instead, his body looked outward, beyond the rows of tombstone, finding the laughing figure of Peter Pettigrew standing atop the graves of his parents.
That same baleful flame of rage began to consume him once more, his hand moving beyond his will to send a jet of green spell fire into the figment of Peter. It merely went through the man, his laughter never stopping, only becoming deeper. The simpering tone becoming almost wizened as the faux body began to morph before his eyes, taking the shape of Albus Dumbledore.
“Such a disappointment you are,” dream Albus intoned, “So much potential and raw power, wasted. I should have killed you the moment I saw you,”
“You said you’d protect me. That I’d be safe,” Harry yelled in a voice that was very much not his, “I begged you to stay and you casted me aside,” more deadly curses were flung from Harry as he mentally tried to fight against the actions of his own body.
Albus was not fazed by the barrage of spells but drew his knotted wand out all the same. With a simple flourish, walls were erected around him, pressing tightly and confining him. Panic gripped Harry as well walls rose higher, almost impossibly high above him. His arms were pinned to his sides, unable to lift his wand to even attempt to free himself. Not that he could, as the fear of being back here again was overriding his mind.
I’ve never been here though, Harry thought to himself, trying to find some sanity in this mad dream.
His eyes looked at the wall in front of him, the wood warped and damaged. A knob made of tarnished metal didn’t yield as his body desperately tried to find some escape from the near darkness of his confinement. The only light came from a singular crack in the wood. It was barely enough to see the inside of the tall box, as flashes of memories that weren’t his burned into his eyes.
Memories of being thrown in here by a scared-faced woman. Of the loud bangs and jeers of other boys mocking him, reminding him that he was a monster and a freak. Of trying to make this small little box his own, a place he could go to whenever things got too difficult. Harry felt his arm moved, reaching out to trace letters he could just faintly see in the low light.
T.M.R.
Before Harry could even contemplate the truth of what he was seeing, he heard the echoing laughter of Albus, the pale blue eye of the man peering in through the crack in the wood,
“I’ll find a use for you yet Tom, but you have to learn I will not be disobeyed,”
There was the sound of a wand slashing through the air and without warning, the small box they were trapped in ignited. The flames consumed the rotten wood quickly, Harry and what he now knew was his mental double, screaming as the fire consumed them.
Only then did Harry wake up with a yell.
His face was slick with sweat, his stomach feeling off queasy. He threw off the cover, panting his body down to look for stray flames, his mind still trying to peel itself away from the nightmare. Only once he was sure, did he pull his legs under his chin to hold himself tight.
“What…was that,” he asked out loud after sitting in the dark. He knew that the other one in his head was listening.
If he focused, he could almost feel the double in his mind thinking, repeating words over and over and he also tried to calm himself.
“Nothing. It was nothing”, the voice eventually answered.
“No, that was not nothing,” Harry ground out between his teeth, “That wasn’t my nightmare, that was yours. One that was very fucking specific. Once again, tell me what that was or-,”
“OR YOU’LL WHAT POTTER”, the voice roared in his mind, spiking a migraine in an instant, “I have been in your mind for years and you never noticed. Do you really think you could get rid of me so easily?”
“Oh, I’m sure I could find a way. Once I figure out what you are it would be child’s play,” Harry retorted
“Figure out,” the voice snorted, “You already know what and who I am. You’re just too much of a frightened child to admit it to yourself,”
There was nothing in those words that Harry could refute. Ever since the trial, when he was in the bathroom and the locket tried to calm him down. That was when he suspected what the locket truly was. Just like the diary, it was a fragment of Voldemort. They both felt the same. An odd connection that made him feel at ease. A connection he couldn’t truly explain at the time. Keeping the locket just comforted him, as did the diary when he found it.
It was as if a part of him that was missing had come home.
The voice in his head, the doppelganger that he had become aware of after Not-Sirius had trapped him in his own mind. It felt just the same.
“T.M.R stands for Tom Marvolo Riddle,” Harry responded quietly, “You are a piece of him. A piece of him that has been in me since that night,” Harry stated
A long stretch of silence was his answer, though he could still feel the fragment thinking in his brain. Or was it their brain?
“Yes. I’ve always been here, lurking in your subconscious. That voice in the back of your mind, trying to keep us alive in that house with those…monsters. I was nothing more than that, just a voice. When you had the diary I became stronger, but not by much. The locket though, that is what helped me become so much more…whole,”
“How long were you going to keep this from me? That you were a part of…him,” Harry asked, unable to hide the disgust from his voice
“You say that as if you haven’t been cozying up to the man himself. I am still in OUR mind Harry. I can see what happens in that dreamscape you share. If anything, the only reason you two can is because of me,”
“T-Tom isn’t the same as Voldemort,” Harry tried to rationalize, “He isn’t the monster that you came from,”
The laugh that echoed in his mind was throaty and devilish, chilling Harry slightly,
“Just because that part of me claims to be better, doesn’t make it true. We are a Dark Lord, Harry. We lie. Trick. Cajole. All to get what we want. Have no doubt, the ‘Tom’ you speak of is merely playing you,”
All Harry could do was sit there, unable to think of anything to refute those words.
For a while, that was all either one of them could do. Sit there in the silence of the night, occasionally catching the faint sounds of animal life just outside the Mansion. The soft and familiar hoot of Hedwig reached Harry’s ears every now and again, his owl enjoying the freedom that their new home provided them,
“Aren’t you going to ask,” the voice finally broke the silence
“Ask what,” Harry shot back,
“What exactly am I. You know I can feel your burning curiosity up here too,”
“Considering you said it yourself, that you lie, I figured you wouldn’t give me a straight answer,”
“So, you are capable of paying attention. And you are right, I probably wouldn’t give you a straight answer normally. Seeing that things have changed between us though, I am feeling…generous,
The voice paused for a moment, trying to compose himself before speaking again
“When I was younger, I became obsessed with death. Not in the morbid sense, but more in the idea of avoiding it. You got a peak of what my childhood was like, those memories flooding your mind in the nightmare. I was frail. Weak. Afraid that one day they would kill me. Then, like a savior, Albus Dumbledore swooped in to take me away,” the name came from the phantom lips dripping with venom
“And I’m guessing he offered to show you a world beyond all your pain,” Harry grimly uttered
“Promised that I was meant for more. That he could teach me magic and help me become more. I just had to listen to him. Foolishly, I did. For three years I kowtowed to that man, wanting to know more and more magic. Wanting to gain the power to be free of my torment. Torment I begged Albus not to send me back to. Year after year I told him what happened. And begged the most powerful wizard I’d ever known to save me from that place. To let me stay in the castle. To stay home. Everything changed when I went back after third year,
“The matron of the Wool’s had found my trunk one day, when I had left to go out for the day. She was a contemptuous woman and greedy at that. She had caught sight of some of my money once and was convinced she could get at it in my trunk. Obviously, I kept it locked, even if I was surrounded by Muggles who wouldn’t be able to see or understand its contents. In her frustration, she tried to light it on fire. I had come back to find several of the boys tending to the boils that had sprung out on her skin from a curse on placed on it. Since they couldn’t destroy the box, they instead tried to destroy me,”
There was heavy pain in those words and Harry could feel the backlash of emotions that were coming from the double. Ones he knew all too well.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. Talking about this stuff isn’t easy,” Harry admitted as much to himself as he did to the voice
“Who else would I talk to about this? You’re the only one who can hear me,” the voice was somber and hollow
“Go on…I’ll keep listening,”
The voice of his mental double sighed in Harry’s head, as if trying to muster up the courage to continue. A tiny part of Harry felt pride that the double was able to do this at all. He had only ever talked to Hermione about his less than stellar childhood, even then he left out a lot of details.
“After they beat me, they tossed me into my wardrobe. I used to hide in it when I was younger, but it was an impossibly tight fit at the age of fourteen. I thought that would have been the end of it, that they would eventually grow bored and leave. Instead the matron doused the wardrobe with liquor and set it aflame,
“Magic was the only thing that stopped the flames from killing me. It took hold of the fire and spread it outwards. In moments the room I lived in at Wools was engulfed in flames and in time so was the rest of it. Took ages before it was put out, Muggles methods being useless against Fiendfyre. Eventually it was Albus and a few folks from the Ministry that put an end to it. They pulled me from the burnt wardrobe and took me to the Ministry. Once they saw the memories of what happened, they gave me a warning and I was taken in by the Malfoy’s. Albus…well he never spoke to me again, beyond calling me a monster and far too dangerous. That was the moment I swore to become greater than Albus, more powerful. And for me, that first step was being rid of death,”
Harry lifted a finger to his eyes, feeling a tear starting to form as his eyes misted over. He didn’t know if it was from his doubles pain or from his own. To know that someone shared in his misery of a shitty childhood was heart-wrenching in a way Harry couldn’t understand.
“I’m guessing you figured it out then. The diary, the locket and you are just fragments split from the whole. What were you broken from, his, well your mind,”
“No, nothing so easy. Dark magic like the one I used exacts a heavy toll. We are fragments of my soul,”
Harry felt his sense of awareness shrink away at those words, everything becoming distant and numb.
“Y-you’re his so-soul,” Harry stuttered, trying to keep his heart from thundering too loudly in his ears
“Yes, we are,” the voice continued on, “The diary was the first I made, which was why it was so fully formed. The locket was the last one I knowingly made, which is why it is so basic and fragmented in its personality and intellect. More instinct than anything,”
“And wh-what about you? What does that make you,” Harry was unable to stop his mind from filling with images of Not-Sirius. Of his body becoming nothing more than a puppet for a parasite of a soul.
“An accident. The smallest fragment of the whole. One that latched onto the only living thing left that Halloween night in a bid for survival. You are right to think of me as a parasite, because that is what I feel like. At least that is what I should have continued to be. Just a parasitic thought in the back of your mind. And yet, here we are,”
Here we are indeed. Harry was finding it hard to keep his thoughts collected, part of him now worried if they were ever truly his thoughts. He could feel his mind spiraling, wondering if every last thought he ever had was just the fragment of Voldemort directing his life. What would that make him? Was he always just a puppet? A host for something far more powerful than himself? If he was still himself, could the fragment ever take over? What if it had and he just never realized it? Every time he ever felt angry or almost murderous could have just been the soul fragment exerting its pressure on his body.
The room was spinning just like his thoughts, his breaths shallow and shaky. He couldn’t get enough air. He couldn’t stop his mind from spiraling. He couldn’t stop the soul fragment from taking him over. He was going to become just like Not-Sirius, unable to do anything more than watch as his body moved without his consent.
“-otter. POTTER,” the voice broke through the frantic madness that was Harry’s inner thoughts.
Said boy was no longer in his bed. At some point during his spiral Harry had ended up on the floor, pushed into the corner. His fingers were scratching into the soft carpet of his room, his body desperately trying to ground itself before it spiraled fully out of control.
“Stop panicking and over thinking Potter, you are just going to make yourself ill. I have no intention of taking over your body, nor subjecting you to anything remotely like what happened to your Godfather, so you can stop thinking that right now,”
“You could by lying,” Harry rationalized, “You said it yourself, you lie, trick and cajole,”
There was a frustrated sigh from the voice in his head, one that was followed by what could only be described as ‘grounding silence’. It gave Harry a much need chance to breathe and actually think past the barrage of emotions. Even if it was a fragment of Voldemort, the voice had been right about him over-thinking. His brain was impossible to turn off, especially when it has been given rather important news.
“You…you still up there,” Harry muttered after a while, having allowed himself to relax properly
“Where else would I be? It’s not like I can just waltz into someone else’s mind,” the voice responded with a slight bitter note in its voice
“Right. Sorry. Wait, so if you are a fragment of Tom does that mean he can see inside my head,” panic rushed right back into Harry at the thought of that man having access to his thoughts
“How do you think he has been visiting you in your sleep. He can only do it when your mind is at rest. That and we share a body, it would be rather poor of me to allow him free reign of your mind,”
“So…you have been watching all those conversations we’ve had,”
“Just the memories of them. I kept to my side of our mind. That and the longer he goes without knowing of my existence, the better. I’m disembodied Harry, not stupid,”
Despite the sharp nature of the words, Harry heard a bit of amusement in the words. It wasn’t as heavy as when he spoke with sarcasm, but it was there. Honestly, there were a lot of differences between himself and the soul fragment. Despite having been in his head for so long, he seemed to have his own personality. The way he spoke was slow, as if every word had weight that he needed to consider before speaking. And he had this almost grandiose flow to his speech.
There were shades of the Tom Riddle that Harry had seen in the diary, but muddled with aspects of himself that made the voice wholly unique.
“Do you have a name,” Harry asked
“Pardon,” the voice responded, and Harry could feel the curious emotions bleeding through
“Your name. You’ve been there, in my head all this time. I’m certain that really doesn’t make you Tom anymore and I think calling you my doppelganger would just be rude. And a bit self-serving,”
“ A bit he says. Save me from Gryffindor’s and their understatements,” the snark was thickly laid on and Harry let out a small chuckle, “A name. Only you would find out the voice in your head is the fragment of a man that has tried to kill you, and ask of its name,”
The voice muttered slightly, barely loud enough for Harry to hear, which was an odd concept that Harry couldn’t fully wrap his mind around. All the same, he lived in a world with magic and gods, so nothing should be too far out of the realm of possibility.
“Well, if it is a name you are looking for, I suppose it should be one that honors both parties that contributed to my existence,” the voice finally said, stopping short of actually saying it
“What? Are you waiting for something? I swear, you and Tom both have a love for dramatics,” Harry sniped
“Silence. I am merely giving the proper weight to such a thing. A name is important, and to have one truly of my own deserves the extra,” the voice ignored the echoing thought from Harry about him being a drama queen, “Marvolo. James Marvolo is what I wish to be called,”
Harry turned the name around in his own mind, considering the picked names and their importance to both him and his mental companion. He supposed there were worse names that could have been picked. That, and he wasn’t overly attached to his own middle name as one would think. Perhaps that was the same for the actual Tom as well.
“I like it,” Harry eventually said, and he swore he felt a bit of preening from his mental passenger, “James Marvolo it is. Could I call you Jimmy,” Harry joked
“No,” James growled darkly
“How about Marv? Marv is a great nickname. Also, would that be Stark, Potter or Lokison? I mean, we have enough last names to pick from,”
“If you utter one more nickname I will find a way to cause you a migraine Harry,” James uttered
Still laughing to himself, Harry eventually got himself off the floor and back into bed. As he settled one more under the covers, he felt something tugging at his heart. It wasn’t a bad something, rather it was a warm feeling he couldn’t truly described. All he knew was it reminded him of when he was around the twins. That feeling of comfort and familiarity that Fred and George constantly radiated, born from their connection.
As he began to drift off to sleep, Harry wondered if James felt the same way, his question going unanswered as they were both claimed by sleep.