Voldemort let her finger brush against his scar, with her sharp eyes undoubtedly tracking each and every branch of the lighting that broke his skin. The softness of her skin felt unlike anything he had felt before. Perhaps it was because his senses were high on adrenaline and picked up on each and everything he came into contact with now.
"Fascinating," she uttered barely over a hoarse whisper. The words tickled on his face as he stilled, waiting for her to make further utterings.
"To have been bested is something I have experienced many times," she spoke to no one in particular. He wasn't even sure she realised he was even awake and listening to her observations. "I have been hurt. I have been beaten and humiliated," she continued with her silky smooth voice that came from the mouth that was guarded by soft and sensual lips. Each and every word evoked a sense of promise.
'A promise of what?' he thought, his mind drifting with the waves of his heightened senses.
"But I have always been whole and complete. For every defeat I've suffered, I've never given an inch or an ounce that I couldn't take back tenfold," Voldemort spoke, still seeing another world through his scar.
"Except for you," she finally eyed him, the red hue in her iris glistening in the shine of the moon reflected off his battered glasses.
He tried to speak but couldn't. He found his voice couldn't even form. The breath wouldn't leave his lungs, except for a silent exhale.
A small, brief smirk grew on her face, the upturn on one of her lips' corners a ghost of a motion. "Don't tire yourself on my account. I won't harm you."
She dropped the hand that had been massaging his scar, letting it disappear into the sleeve of the long dark raincoat that had been brought to her earlier.
"I can't very well attempt and destroy one of my unintended creations, after all," she finally mused aloud.
'What do you mean?' he tried to demand but couldn't bring his voice to bear.
"Exactly as my words imply," she replied, disregarding his frightened frown. "I made you. On that fateful evening in October 1981, when I fell to your dear deceased mother, I didn't simply turn into a puff of smoke."
She paused, her gaze changing into that of slight tenseness. "When the killing curse rebounded, it carried over an intent I had had in mind at that moment." Harry couldn't follow what she was saying, the words didn't make sense to him. 'What else is there to a killing curse? Do people murder other people while thinking of buying groceries?'
Voldemort couldn't help but snicker. The action drove a renewed sense of fear into his bones. 'Can she–'
"I can," she supplied curtly. "But don't let it worry your young mind. Right now, it's of no consequence to you, either way."
The leisurely way she observed him with her piercing sharp eyes reminded him of an apex predator toying with their food. The image didn't inspire the same kind of amusement in him, so he reacted in the only way he could. With his mind doing the talking.
'What do you want from me?' He pushed to the forefront of the empty landscape in his inner eye.
"Clever boy," she said, her lips forming a wider smile now, the brief shine of white teeth peeking through the gap of her mouth. "Yes, why am I playing with you? Why not just end you, right here, right now?"
Moments past where no words were exchanged.
"Because," she finally sighed, "I actually can't kill you. If I did, it would put me in a tricky predicament."
His eyes grew thinner. 'Can't kill me? After all this time?'
The absurdity of her statement left him speechless. The irony wasn't lost on either of them.
"Quite," she nodded to his unvoiced confusion. "when the spell backfired on me, and effectively rendered me an angry wraith, it also left a mark on you." [4:09 PM] He weighed her words and slowly and surely, a thought occurred to him. 'The Scar.'
"Bravo," she said with a smile, giving him a few short singular claps. "Exactly."
'What did you do to me?' he thought in accusation.
"Willingly? Nothing," she replied flatly, her demeanour that of pure innocence. "All blame ought to be put before Lily Potter herself. I had no part in the mechanisations of this particular outcome."
'Bollo-'
"Language, Harry," Voldemort reprimanded him, like an instructor at school would. The brief image of Professor Voldemort in the appropriate attire of an educator seemed as bizarre as it sounded.
A chuckle escaped from the Dark Lady. "In another life, maybe, it could have been."
A look of nostalgia crossed her ruby eyes before she squared her shoulders again and let her focus return on him. "That will never be now. But let us return to what I was trying to get to with you."
He swallowed, still in his uncomfortable position by the grave.
"When your dear departed mother cast whatever spell she'd come up with, my curse rebounded off of you and attacked me, instead. But as you can see now, I was never really 'dead'."
'Evidently.'
She seemed to appreciate his candour and gave him a look of amusement. "You see, I had already been messing with my soul, long before your mother had thought to kill me with my own methods, by my own hand, no less. But no matter her genius, you can't kill something that isn't quite there."
'What?'
"What I'm about to tell you, is a secret I haven't spoken to anyone outside of my inner circle. It's what has kept me alive all this time."
'Why is she telling me then?' It didn't take long to dawn on him.
"For the killing curse to kill someone, it needs an intact soul. A living being that is whole and complete. Knowing my own tools and my own methods, I have always pondered how to avoid falling victim to my own hubris."
"I have studied soul magic, arcane magics, fae magics, anything that would allow me to circumvent a trap of my own shortcomings. And I have found it."
'What did you find?' He goaded her. If that was wise, he wasn't sure.
"I found a way to anchor my soul to this world, regardless if my body is destroyed. Even if I had died of old age, I wouldn't have passed on. I would have become a wraith regardless. So, in all honesty, your mother has done me a favour."
His brows furrowed at the implication. 'Really? A favour?'
"Yes, I would sooner or later have had to face the impossibility of keeping my body. The only way to have been able to try that, you destroyed in your first year. Imagine my frustration when you unwittingly turned it to dust. A priceless object."
He remembered vividly, the scarlet weight in his pocket when he was eleven and a frightened child.
"But I digress, it's past and can not be undone,” she waved with her hand. "My new body is that of a homunculus, an artificial thing, purely made of magic, only for those who can wield it. It's quite poetic in that sense."
"I can no longer age. After I have achieved unending life in the soul sense of the word, I have now achieved immortality of the flesh. And all thanks to you, Harry. Both you and your mother have made all this possible."
'No.' He rejected those words of gratitude, this couldn't be what his parents died for.
"But they did," she said with seriousness underlining her insistence. "But do not think them dead for naught. They have granted you the same gift that I have received."
Her words left him even more confused than he had been when she first stepped before him, nude as the moon was in the sky.
"When I was defeated by my own spell, the magic that I have used before, to ensure I would survive, has unintentionally done to you what it had done for me." (edited) [4:12 PM] At first, her words echoed no sense in his mind. They seemed like empty platitudes and nonsensical pleasantries of a Dark Witch drugged on her own legend. But then, with some consideration, the same words rang true to past thoughts he had pondered, experiences he had had, and the words of others that had fallen on his head.
'You speak with snakes.'
She nodded with a very wide smile. "Yesssss. I see you're slowly seeing where all this is going."
'No. It can't be.' He was losing his grip on reality. 'This can't be.'
"But it is," she insisted. "A part of my soul has latched onto you and when the curse rebounded back on me, you sent a part of your soul into me."
She spread her arms apart and began to laugh. "You see now, the irony is uncanny. You cannot kill me. And I cannot kill you. We stand at an impasse from which we cannot step back from, only press forward to."
Voldemort waved her wand at the statue holding him, and he dropped to his knees before her. His breaths were ragged and his sweat burned in his eyes, as the world turned around him.
He felt her kneel before him, the slit of her long skirt exposing a beautiful, smooth thigh. Her palm moved to his chin and raised his head to meet her eyes. He could feel her puff of breath touch his cheek.
"I look forward to an eternity with you, Harry."