Chapter Text
Chapter 1
Voldemort was surrounded. Even he knew his abilities. Fifty opponents against one. It was too much. He started back off. He had to block deadly spells coming from all sides and didn’t have a chance to attack.
In the corner of the eye, he saw Bellatrix dueling Molly Weasley. Both fighting to kill. Rodolphus came to aid. Bella pointed at her Lord and hissed to her husband. “Not me! Don’t help me you fool!” It was last thing Mr. Lestrange heard because few second later he got hit by the killing curse aimed into his wife.
In terror, Voldemort saw Death Eaters in a fallback position. He swore under his breath. It took him months to figure out how to take off the apparition restriction around Hogwards and it backfired. The Malfoy family escaped. So did Yaxley, Travers and several others, but he didn’t have a chance to notice who else deserted. Some kind of exploding spell hit him, but he didn’t even had the time to check what exactly it was because he had to pair two Avada Kedavras coming from behind. He conjured stone wall and made a dodge. He avoided the green light, but not the flying fragments of the wall hitting everything in radius of ten feet. At least a protego slowed down the deadly objects. He felt few other spells hitting him. Not with the full force, but enough to make him stagger. Voldemort’s magical shields were damaged. They only partially blocked the curses. Suddenly, he felt his wand slipping from his hand. Someone disarmed him. He didn’t saw who it was, but he knew only one person casting “Expeliarmus” in the fight to the death. And this person was very dead. He didn’t stand a chance with only wandless magic. Something was happening to his glamour. It was time to evacuate.
***
Hogsmeade. Why was he here? He was supposed to be nearby Albanian-Greek border and somehow he landed only few miles away from the battlefield. He stood three dumbfooled for a second. He tried again. Nothing. After a moment, it hit him. He realized how reckless he was when he tried to apparate wandlessly thousand miles away. He was lucky he didn’t splinch. It wound have been the least epic end of things.
Voldemort couldn’t afford to panic. He was running out of time. He couldn’t stay there. Members of The Order must have already started searching for him. He couldn’t travel on long distances, so the short ones must have sufficed. This time he landed in the forest. He made a few more jumps until he couldn’t keep going.
When the adrenaline went down, the pain was overwhelming. His vision was blurred and doubled. It was like somebody tried to split his head in half. He felt dizzy and thew up. He realized he went half deaf. Hopefully only temporary. He didn’t even had time to examine his wounds when he left the castle. He looked down and realized his glamour was completely gone, but he couldn’t care any less. He casted a quick scanning spell. It was really bad, but had been worse. At least he still had a body. He tried to wandlessly get rid of the worst injuries, but with a very little success. The blood loss was even more serious than he thought. He hoped he didn’t leave red traces all the way from Hogsmeade. For now, he couldn’t do anything with the scent. Somehow, he managed to stop most of the internal bleeding in his stomach, but he didn’t feel confident enough to heal the head. Not without the wand. One wrong move and he could end up as drooling doll with a mush for a brain.
He looked around. He wasn’t sure where exactly he was, but those must have been the mountains surrounding Hogwarts. He needed to find a wand or at least ingredients for a healing potion. Quickly. He tried his best to remember what useful plants and fungi grew so high in the mountains but he couldn’t. It was really hard to think straight with a concussion. He got an Outstanding from Herbology, he had to remember something… He was sure there was a very simple solution. It was like the answer was behind the glass wall straight in front of him. There was a big, well-known animal whose blood had a healing properties. Pegasus? No. Close, but not quite. He had to keep going… He knew he couldn’t stay there, but didn’t have strength to move... Just a minute of rest and…
***
He heard some voices. It took him a while to realize some dark-haired wizard was aiming a wand into him. His senses were dimmed, but he wasn’t going to give up without fight. He didn’t think he could survive another battle. Not in this state. His thoughts were too foggy. He wasn’t even sure he could stand up. He had to. Fight or go down. He was a disembodied soul once, he could deal with it twice. He was immortal as long as he had his horcruxes... Wait. They were discovered. Some of them even destroyed. Where was Nagini? He couldn’t remember. Did she escape? Everything depended on her. Could Lord Voldemort fight and risk death? A real death?
He hesitated for too long and it was too late to change his mind. He felt something metallic and cold being put on his wrists. He wanted to take it off, but his magic didn’t work. He realized in terror what those were. Magic-blocking cuffs. He felt shivers down his spine, not because of a several head injury.
His vision was coming dark again. He wanted to do or say something, but he couldn’t. The wizard didn’t petrify him, but Voldemort felt like he did. He couldn’t move. He struggled to keep consciousness. He heard only the fragments of aurors’ conversation.
“ ’Tom Marvollo Riddle’. He isn’t at the list.” How did they know his name?
“Snatcher?”
“No, he is marked”
“He looks so young. How old is he? Who on Earth turn minors into soldiers?”
“You-know- …”
“Don’t make a pun!”
The dark-haired man babbled something about ‘ the lacking of the sense of humor’ and finally said seriously “No Trace. He’s above 17.”
“It still makes me feel sick when I have to arrest a child.”
“He must have done something horrible to earn the place among He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named’s followers in such a young age. He’s dangerous. Don’t let him fool you Jane. Let’s get him to the others.”
“In this state? Just look at him. What will we become when our prisoners start dying out of lack of medical attention?”
“Why should we bother? We have hundreds wounded in Hogwarts to heal. We would have had one less problem without him. Do you really think he would even think about healing us if we swapped places with him?”
“Dorian!”
‘Fine! You know I was only joking. Merlin, he really looks like he is about to breathe his last. Vulnera Sanentur”
The wizard flicked his wand again and everything was dark again.
***
Voldemort lied at the cold stone on his back. He felt the smell of the must. It must have been the dungeon. The ringing in his ears stopped. His head still hurt terribly, but he could think much clearer. He wasn’t healed completely, but he wasn’t about to bleed to death. Some sixth sense told him not to get into a murderous, kicking and screaming rage and stay still and calm. At least until he could learn something more.
He opened his eyes. First thing he did was looking at the cuffs. He took his time to examine them and make sure there weren’t any weak points on them. Taking them off without magic was impossible. Even amputating his own hands wouldn’t work. He knew how they were designed. Unspeakables in the Department of Mysteries explained him precisely their project. But they said it was a rough draft, not even in the testing phase. No chance for a prototype in next five years. They must have lied to him.
He looked around. It was a small the cell in the Azkaban. No windows, so he couldn’t tell on which floor he was neither what time it was. Surprisingly, he didn’t feel the presence of the dementors. It was beneficial to him. He never really trusted them and treated them like necessary evil. At least there was a one thing he agreed with Dumbledore. Not only because dementors undercut the morale among his soldiers. The creatures swapped sides as they pleased. They could easily sense and recognize his mutilated soul. They kept claiming it never looked appetizing to them. Although, he heard the silent ‘We would still enjoy a small snack anyway’. Ministry must have finally listened the sense of reasoning and get rid of them. Voldemort suspected, they wouldn’t eliminate them all in a day. They probably kept one or two for scientific purposes and executions. Like a Death Chamber with the Veil in the Department of Mysteries.
He was examining the door and the walls when he heard the voices at the corridors.
“For now we have three hundred seventy two people and there will be more. Aurors are still searching. Azkaban has never been full before. The trails will take months with Wizengamot working 24/7. How is situation here? Anything abnormal?”
“The Sleeping Beauty just work up.”
“Great, another hearing. Call Sanchez. He wanted to be present. Remind me what do we know about him?”
“Tom Marvolo Riddle. Marked. Found half-dead in the mountains surrounding the Hogwarts few hours after the Battle. He looks like a minor, but doesn’t have a Trace. We have nothing more.”
Lord Voldemort blinked. Didn’t he misheard? Have they really taken him for an unimportant Death Eater? It was… unexpected. But useful. Very useful in his unfortunate situation. The Dark Mark on the inner part of his left forearm indeed sold the story. Lord Voldemort put it on himself many years before. Nobody knew about it, because it was hidden under the glamour. He used it to conjure and control Death Eaters. It was very unwise to need at least a one follower to summon the others. Sometimes he used it to torture them for the entertainment. The spell on his forearm was a obviously different. It didn’t cause him any pain, neither had any nasty curses. But visually it looked like a regular Dark Mark.
Very few people knew how Lord Voldemort really looked like. Most of them were the older Members of Order. Usually, his former classmates and teachers from the school. When he made his first horcrux, in the age of sixteen, he stopped aging. To avoid suspicions, he cast a glamour on himself and changed it subtly with the following years. First he used it only to look older. But when he learnt about his origins in the Little Hangleton, he did everything he could to never resemble his disgusting muggle father again. As he started gathering followers and preparing for a war, he quickly came up with the conclusion he would earn the most respect and power in the form of a snake-like monster.
He wondered how exactly the aurors knew his name. He was barely conscious when a wizard casted an unknown spell checking his identity. He suspected The Quill of Acceptance and The Book of Admittance had something to do with it. Those were the powerful magical artifacts conducted the census in the British Wizarding World. Voldemort took a quick glance at them in his schoolyears when he wanted to learn about his origins. He didn’t have time for more research, because he didn’t want to risk Dumbledore finding out. Later, he heard of a group of the students who casted a simple tracking spell on them during their detention when they had to copy the notes from the archive. They combined it with the Homonculous Charm and created a self-updating map of Hogwarts. Voldemort was really impressed when he heard about it. The Members of The Order must have done something similar. Probably to verify each other’s identity and minimalize the risk of impersonating them. [1]
The door opened. He saw the male wizard from the forest and two others walking in.
“All right, Death Eater. Let’s talk. Don’t play fool. You weren’t under Imperius. We are not stupid.”
Yes, you are. Honestly, who hired those incompetent idiots? Why to bother with The Quill and The Book, when they didn’t check the names in the archive? They had the bloody Lord Voldemort on the silver plate and nobody realized who he was. How on Earth The Department of Magical Law Enforcement still stood? It was an auto-destructive institution and didn’t even need a Dark Lord to shatter it into pieces. Now he knew how Harry Potter managed to hide himself for last few months. Voldemort used to wonder how the most wanted wizard broke into Ministry, run away and kept hiding for the months. Apparently, the kid didn’t have to even try very hard if that was all the aurors got.
Unfortunately, the idiots can be brute. This one could become a decent Death Eater. Interrogation wasn’t pleasant, but they had to try much harder to break Lord Voldemort. Fortunately, nobody dared to use Veritaserum on him. Ministry of Magic must have already realized, it was poisonous to all Death Eaters. After the Barty Crouch Junior incident, Voldemort modified the spells on their tattoos. It was better to have a dead follower than an alive source of problems. It was only a temporary solution. The cowards still could betray their Lord and reveal his secrets, but at least not unwillingly. Voldemort knew he couldn’t trust them completely. He was still working on the anti-tracery spells. They were too unstable to use them on a massive scale. Wormtail was his very literal lab rat and paid the ultimate price.
All the Death Eaters were used to torture every few days. Standing on two feet after a few rounds of cruciatus wasn’t anything extraordinary. It would be suspicious if he gave in so easily. But sooner or later, he had to start talking. He had to come up with a good backup story. Otherwise, they might investigate and bring somebody competent. He pretended to be a scared kid who had no idea what he signed himself to. He tried to take them on pity. He kept claiming, he couldn’t give them anything. Otherwise he would be killed by “his Lord”.
Obviously they didn’t believe a thing.
That was to be expected. Voldemort knew too well his followers. All of them tried to sell this story. “The Dark Lord made me do it! I had no choice!” Another Death Eater was probably telling this fairytale in the next interrogation room at this very moment.
Aurors offered him a deal. Not a good one. Plead guilty and keep your damn soul. Sell someone out and get a chance to leave the jail as a very old men. But he had to avoid Wizengamot, for all costs. He could have even agreed the sentence in Azkaban. Too many old and well-informed wizards worked in the Wizarding High Court. He couldn’t risk that somebody would recognize a young Riddle in him.
As a Lord Voldemort would be killed for instance, but even as a Death Eater, he was in danger of not getting out of the prison alive. For wearing a Dark Mark alone, he could get a life sentence, if not The Kiss. He had no choice but to cooperate and wait for an occasion to run.