Life after death was nothing like I expected, I was in a new place that defied description. It was filled with impossible colors and windows into worlds where the laws of the universe were looser than what I remembered. Some were worlds full of magic and technology filled with endless wonders. Others were torn apart by the chaos and destruction the inhabitants had wrought. Most however only had small differences that caused large ramifications, leading to worlds filled with adventure.
So I spent time exploring this new realm and looking into the different worlds. Many were similar to stories I had read in my last life but none were exactly the same. The first time I saw a world I recognized I tried to enter but there was a barrier blocking me. Eventually I grew lonely, I had never seen another like me in this new realm and it was starting to wear on me. So I stopped exploring the windows and looked for others. It did not take long to find them as once I looked I noticed that they would catapult between portals.
I was never close enough to see what exactly happened as the movement between portals was still rare. But eventually a portal near me launched something and I followed close behind it as I entered the new portal. I was excited as I recognised some of the scenes in the window. The portal sent me hurtling forward until I was jarred to a stop.
Having a body after so long was an overwhelming experience at first. Being bombarded with all sorts of sensations. The sounds I could hear, the colors I could see, and the things I could feel almost overwhelmed me. I could hear birds chirping, see the multicolored light streaming through the stained glass windows, and smell candles burning all around me. But after a few moments I got used to living again. I started to look around myself to see where I was.
I was laying on an altar in the middle of a wooden room, I could tell I was in a church due to the cross behind me. There was a damp cloth on my lap that had been laid over my forehead when I had first awoken. I heard someone talking beyond the only door I could see, "...should be waking soon. It had a very good hold on him so he will be disoriented. Once he is ready we can start to ask questions to see how long the demon had been in control."
The door made a creaking sound as it opened. A man with priest robes and an old woman in worn clothes walked inside. They saw me sitting up and gasped for a moment before the priest held a cross before him and started to mumble in Latin. When the older lady started to pray as well I looked at them strangely and wondered what they were doing. It took a moment to remember how to speak but I managed to force it out.
"What are you doing?" I asked after he stopped. He looked at me for a moment and then nodded to the old lady and stepped back. The lady stepped forward and seemed to gather herself. "Do you remember me?" She asked, looking like she would rather be anywhere but in a room with me. She looked terrified. What had I done to make her look at me like that. When I shook my head she seemed like there had been an enormous load lifted from her shoulders. She then stepped forward and sat down next to me.
"My name is Matron Mary, do you remember anything?" She asked and I shook my head again, I could already tell what kind of person I was talking to and wanted to stay under her radar. I could vaguely remember that they thought I was a demon and tried to exorcize me, in reality they killed the child and I took their place. While the memory was dreamlike in its quality I knew it would be impossible to forget what they had done.
The priest stepped forward after that, "Most likely he was too young when the demon took over. He won't remember anything besides maybe some very vague memories, things like how to read and write, and maybe some basic arithmetic. He will most likely need to relearn everything else." The matron nodded and looked back at me. "I guess the first thing you should know is your name. After that we can fill in the rest." I nodded again, eager to see what my name would be in this new life. "Your name is Thomas Marvolo Riddle."
It took a while for me to get used to this new world, just having a body after so long was hard to get used to, never mind all the new information I had to deal with. I had woken up in Voldemort's 8 year old body, I was excited as that not only meant I could have magic but it also meant that I could be very good at magic. I needed to try and learn wandless magic as soon as possible, that would prove I had magic. I needed to make sure that no one saw me performing any magic or the matron might think I needed another exorcism.
So for the first week whenever I went to bed I would wait for everyone to fall asleep before trying a simple levitation under my blanket. That way it would look like I was shifting in my sleep, didn't work well at first cause I kept falling asleep but after a few nights I grew frustrated with my progress. Unfortunately that gave me a clue to my first step, emotions. I hated that, I knew that in my last life I hated to be out of control so I searched my mind for a solution.
So for about a month after I woke up I tried to think of something that would help. All of a sudden it hit me like a lightning bolt. Occlumency, the art of protecting the mind. Maybe practicing this would help with my magic. If I could learn how to bring forth certain emotions then practicing wandless magic would be much easier. But I knew that if I was going to do this then I wanted to do it right, so I put off practicing wandless magic and focused all of my attention into building an elaborate mind palace.
First I practiced meditation, focusing on emotions and following them back to their source. I also tried to visualize what I wanted my mind palace to look like. After about six months of no progress I suddenly had a sensation of falling, I found myself in a chaotic storm very similar to the realm after death. Only the portals led to memories instead of worlds, and as I entered the storm and collided with the now more recognizable colors I was bombarded with intense emotion.
I snapped out of my meditation gasping for breath and tears streaming down my face. The intense burst of emotion quickly faded and I was left panting. That was intense, once I recovered I decided to wait until tomorrow to try again. The next night I was not able to enter the storm again as I was too nervous, I was a little afraid to experience such intense emotion again. It took three nights to succeed again, and this time I made sure to only skim the raging torrents of emotions. After a week of exploring my mind I started to organize my thoughts, meanwhile I started to plan out my mind palace.
When I started to think about what I wanted my mind palace to be, I had a lot of ideas from the Death Star to Rivendell. But none of them seemed to be enough, I was dealing with magic so why should it follow logic? So I choose to model it after Perplexahedron and the hypercube. A giant cube made out of ever changing rooms, each room would hold some part of me but I have a lot of work ahead of me to accomplish everything I want to.
I started immediately and soon I could see a problem. If I did this I would have to start small. First with one room housing the entirety of my mind then two rooms, it would take years to do this. But I would stay the course, because once it was completed no one would be able to navigate my mind without permission. Once I had the rooms set up I would try to incorporate the emotion streams.
So as the years passed, I just waited for Hogwarts to come calling. I wasn't idle by any means. During the three years I had I basically never stopped practicing with my magic. By the age of ten I had a hundred rooms in my mind. By this point I had also figured out how to incorporate the emotion streams. I spun a web connecting each room with the emotions experienced during whatever the room held. It not only helped me with controlling my magic and emotions, it had an unexpected benefit. To move between rooms I needed to follow along the emotion streams.
About a year after I started I noticed that my emotions were being suppressed with my room method. By this point I had made thousands of rooms, eager to continue with more exciting magic. But when I tried to incorporate the emotion streams it became disjointed and stunted. So I had to start over and this time I made sure to connect the emotions to the rooms, that meant it took longer to add every emotion. As time passed and more rooms meant connecting it to every other room with the same emotion took even longer.
During the last year before Hogwarts I also grasped the basics of telekinesis. My control was still a bit intermittent, but I was getting better. Once I had ten rooms I had started on Legilimency as well. I had gotten good at turning people's attention away from me and reading emotions. I had also been able to hear surface thoughts once in a while. It was difficult to move past that much less actually changing anything as the only time I could do it was with eye contact.
A week before my eleventh birthday something a bit different happened. I was outside during one of the few clear days, just sitting in the front yard playing with the leaves in the tree above me making them sway like there was a breeze. As I was sitting there I saw a man standing in the middle of the street, the people around him didn't seem to notice him at all. He was dressed in a blue suit and had a pale complexion and black hair. As soon as I started to pay attention to the man he turned towards me, like he felt my eyes. I met his gaze, that was a mistake.
As soon as our eyes met he was in my mind. He smirked as he tore through every part of my maze not looking at any of my memories, just showing me that he could. When he finished he simply left a message, "Keep practicing young mage. If you're good enough, maybe I'll come to collect you someday." When he withdrew from my mind and disappeared I rushed to my room and sat on my bed. I was too arrogant, I thought a hundred rooms would be enough. I need more; I need to make guardians and traps, and I need to make the movements more complex. I had organized my mind but I had made no defenses besides its complexity, I would not be caught unaware again.
And so I did. For the next six months I started to work on my mind during every free moment. I added some puzzles and questions that needed to be solved before you could move to a new room. I also started to add guardians, everything that I could think of, and since it was my mind they could be as powerful as I could imagine. Especially useful for a fan of fanfiction, I had plenty of material to draw possibilities from.
The most complex thing however was basing the movement of my mind on the irrational number phi. Starting with my first room, each room moved independently from each other, sometimes even occupying the same space. This was only possible because the organization of my mind vastly increased my thought processes. I would be ready the next time someone tried to enter my mind and they wouldn't know what hit them.
The day that Dumbledore came I had been working on my new defenses and had made significant progress. It was mid July and I was once again outside under my favorite tree when I heard footsteps approaching. As I opened one eye I saw a middle aged man with a rather nice beard. I saw the infamous twinkle and wondered how he did that, which seemed to make him smile.
"You know, strange adults aren't supposed to be back here." He chuckled at this. "Do not worry, I am here just to talk. The matron said it would be alright. Do you mind if I sit with you?" I nodded as I sat up. I knew he hadn't been in my mind so he must find humor in entertaining children. "So what are you here for? Because I am getting too old to adopt and that is pretty much the only reason adults visit." He gave me a sad smile. "I apologize, but I am not here to adopt. I am afraid I would make a rather terrible father." I laughed at that.
"May I ask what you find so amusing." He asked with that same smile. "Sure, I guess it couldn't hurt. By sitting down with me and not talking to me like I am a particularly slow child, you're already a better parent than most that visit here." He thinks on that for a moment before shaking his head. "I seemed to have gotten off track. I am here to offer you a place in a special school. A boarding school in Scotland for gifted children. The matron has already given her permission but I would like to hear your opinion."
I was surprised that I had any sort of choice, so I took a second to think before asking some questions. "Why me?" He answered without hesitation, "Why not you?" I looked around before giving him a look, he just smiled. At that point I decided to stop fooling around. "So can you tell me about the school I'll be attending?" That started a long conversation about all the houses and all the classes I would be attending. The conversation eventually moved on to the different types of magic and I was blown away, it seemed like every ancient culture before the Statute of Secrecy had a different form of magic.
Many had been lost over the years and various disasters but there was still an endless amount of applications. When the sun started to set he finally rose, "Here is your letter, you can look it over tonight. I will be back tomorrow morning to take you to get your supplies." I take the letter and open it, after taking a moment to read the letter he spoke up. "You can not keep anything to do with magic until you get somewhere to store it." I was reluctant to give it up and he gave me a soft look, "You will be able to have it back tomorrow."
I nod and stand up as well. He dusts off his clothes and starts to walk back, I follow him to the gate to say goodbye. "I will see you tomorrow morning Tom." We shake hands as we both smile knowingly. He takes a step back into the street and with a smile turns around and walks away. I watch him until he disappears into the crowd, then I turn around and walk back inside for dinner. But when I arrived the dining room was almost empty so I decided to sit next to the Matron.
"Was he a nice man?" The matron asked as I sat down. "Yeah, he is going to be one of the teachers at my new school next year." After I finished eating I exchanged some more pleasantries with the matron before I head to bed for the night. After I finished my nightly meditation, going over my day and sorting the memories and emotions into the respective rooms, I went to sleep. I dreamt about the endless possibilities the magical word offered.