Chapter 12: Voldemort

"Well, well... It looks like I underestimated your strength." Said a soft voice from his left.

"It seems I have to do this personally." The voice continued.

"Like always..."

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"Harry Potter... the boy-who-lived." Voldemort started.

When his voice sounded in the hall, all fight came to a pause. The professors also stopped to see the owner of a familiar tone.

He had a pale aristocratic and angular face, a well-shaped body dressed in a gallant black robe. His eyes were dangerously red, and his hair was completely black. Bellatrix, seeing who this person was, let out an excited cry.

"I suppose I have to thank you for this." Voldemort said, signalling his body. Syrme looked at him in surprise.

'He has a body...?' Syrme thought alarmed.

'I still can take him...right?'

"When your mother protected you from me, I did not expect from her to go to such lengths. Nor did I prepared myself from what happened that night." Voldemort continued, walking around.

"Imagine my surprise, when six years ago I recovered something I lost that night. She used my ritual against me, and she... succeeded." Voldemort admitted.

"You... you somehow knew, what I did to myself to become immortal. You also knew I would be here in Hogwarts last year. Dumbledore memories were very clear on that." Voldemort said slowly.

Realising what he was saying, the teacher and students still conscious let out a gasp of anguish.

"You are strong. Stronger than any twelve-year-old boy I came across." Voldemort declared.

"I don't know how you could become this strong. But I know one thing about you after looking at you for a long time..."

"You know the future." Voldemort said.

Syrme was beginning to believe he needed to escape this fight and think his chances of winning this encounter carefully. Voldemort suspected what he knew, and if he knows about that...

'Did he knows about Sebas and the rest?'

'No, I made sure of it. He couldn't possibly know about the black knights.'

"Well, more like... you know a Future. So the only solution I could think was very simple. Fidelius." Voldemort explained. He looked at Syrme one more time.

"Harry Potter, join me, or die." Voldemort gave Syrme his ultimatum. His wand was drawn from his holder.

And the fight around him resumed.

Syrme knew that he had a lot of powers and skills. He even mastered one or two, but he needed something essential against someone like Voldemort. Something Voldemort had, and he lacked.

Experience. Experience in combat. Experience in life. Experience with magic.

Decades of training. Decades of studies. Decades of continuous planning and duels against the likes of Dumbledore.

Syrme could be fast as lightning, think and see like someone with a Sharingan. But he still couldn't come with a plan C or D or F. Or predict his movements like some old monk with an enlightenment about life. His chances of winning this encounter weren't looking good.

'Is this the same proud and angry psychopath from the books? The same person that in the books decided to play with Harry, instead of finishing him?'

'Did he regained his sanity?'

Syrme knew what a Horcrux was. Maybe...

When you make a Horcrux, you take one part of your soul and put it into an object — making you anchored into the world. When your body dies, you cheat to the world telling him that your soul is still in this realm, and the world corrects it by giving you the body again.

You lose an arm or a leg?

You recover it.

It has a downside, like anything from magic. You lose a part of your soul, and you lose a part of yourself. Like when a good-sighed person suddenly loses the colour from the world. When you lose that piece from yourself, you become more erratic, more... angry-like.

He did that ritual six times before going to the potters. Six times he split his soul. Each time, he was losing a part of himself, an discovering he couldn't make more after the sixth, he decided to stop. He didn't plan to make a seventh that night. Lily Evans did... like she knew his body couldn't support the strain of splitting his soul once more.

With her death.

But when Syrme came into this world. The soul in his scar didn't die with Harry.

The soul came back to Voldemort. Made him able to think clearly, even for just a second.

Voldemort took care of his sanity soon after.

"You... you took back all the Horcruxes and made yourself whole again. That is why you were in Hogwarts last year." Syrme said, with eyes like saucers.

The response of Voldemort came back in the form of the Killing Curse.

"Avada Kedavra!" Voldemort casted. Fast as lightning, he started to cast a good number of curses.

Syrme rolled to the side and regained his foot. Quickly drawing his katana out again, he ran straight ahead to Voldemort. One foot after the other, he got close to Voldemort, stomping into the ground with immense strength.

"Glacius!" The spell from Voldemort hit the floor, and the floor became ice. Making Syrme slide a little. Syrme jumped high with Reinforcement with eyes locked into him. He saw from the corners of his eyes several statues holding torches.

"Inanimatus Conjurus!" Syrme yelled and aimed at the statues. The statues started to move a little.

Soon enough the statues went directly to Voldemort with good speed.

"Fiendfire!" Voldemort raised his wand high.

A massive fire in the form of a basilisk melted all the statues and directed itself right into Syrme.

Fiendfire is a spell that creates an enormous quantity of fire. This fire can eat anything from the physical matter to even the magic itself. The downside would be that it is complicated to control. Once the fire is casted, it becomes like a living creature, uncontrollable.

Like a living creature, it has thoughts of his own.

"Legilimens!" Syrme quickly said. But not before some of the fire latched into his left arm. In the mind of the Basilisk, it had the order of attacking him.

'REWRITE: ATTACK YOUR OWNER!'

The Basilisk suddenly turned around and went straight to Voldemort. In the meantime, Syrme tried to distract Voldemort and avoid he retained his foot and launched several charms and curses. Transfigures several tables into spears and flew to Voldemort.

"You impertinent boy!" Voldemort raged against his own spell. Making it disappear from a wave of his wand and transfigures the spears into water. He then threw a torrent of water to Syrme. In the middle of the trajectory, he changed it into something thinner, waterly sharper. Syrme created a grand firewall, and the water blades evaporated into a thick fog.

The hall turned into a blind battle.

"Crucio! Mutatio Skullus!" Voldemort continued to launch nasty curses, not caring some of them were hitting his Death eaters.

The duel was so swift and quick that the rest of the hall couldn't follow their movements and the number of spells were casted, even if there was no fog. The professors and the Death eaters were still fighting, but they paused from time to time because of the large scale of damage the hall suffered from the fight between Voldemort and Syrme.

Syrme put his breathing mask and transformed the fog into a sleeping gas. Voldemort noticed sooner than expected and cleaned his organism with a spell. In the confusion-

"Orbis!" Syrme launched his spell. Hitting the floor.

The floor from down Voldemort became hollow as he fell into the cheap trap. Voldemort quickly reacted, transfiguring the floor again. Then he responded launching even more vicious curses, reaching a point where his wand was a blur.

Tired of the fog, he created a gust of wind and the mist cleared.

'This is very taxing to the mind, but I have to do it if I want to win.' Syrme thought resolutely. Concentrating.

'Thought acceleration x15!' Throwing himself into the floor mixing slashes with kicks.

With his katana, he danced around Voldemort with finesse, making a show of his style of Kenjutsu.

The Champuru Kendo was a style that use movements around the floor and around the opponent to use it against himself and confuse him. It also played with the rhythm of the fight, making it impossible to follow the next movements.

"Stop moving and DIE ALREADY!" Voldemort said, exasperated. An overpowered killing curse let his right side open. Syrme dodged the curse with subtlety, and when he saw the open space from the right angle of Voldemort's move, he slashed to his shoulder and took the opportunity to try and cut his leg too.

But Voldemort reacted with an inhuman speed at the last moment.

"YOU...!" Voldemort exploded, picking his wand with his left arm. His eyes were murderous, and his killing intent was reaching his peak.

"I WAS GOING TO HAVE MERCY AND KILL YOU WITHOUT PAIN! I WAS GOING TO SPARE YOU, AND YOUR LOVED ONES, ALL THE SUFFERING!" All the hall stopped to see the state of Voldemort. His wand arm was on the floor, and a torrent of blood was dropping into the floor.

"I will find who was dear to you... and I will take a looong time catching up with them." Voldemort said, venomously.

"I was going to kill you from the humiliating defeat YOUR MOTHER PROVIDED TO ME!" Voldemort was apocalyptic at this point.

His arm wasn't recovering.

'I was right then...'

"I have no other option then..." Voldemort closed his eyes and took an orb from his pocket.

A violet orb.

"I'm done with you... I hope you end up on some desertic planet and starve yourself to death. Or maybe end up in a happy-one instead, but... remembering who is having fun with your precious people. And you, trapped there, and no means to stop what I'm planning in Magical Britain." Voldemort laughed at the last part.

"At first, I was interested in what happened to the boy I tried to kill. Then I was considering you would join me. Then this... mess."

"I know where this fight is going. Beaten from a twelve-year-old boy..." Voldemort shook his head.

"I can't kill you? Then..."

'What..?'

"You were strong, a little more time and I would be done for. A pity..."

Voldemort turned on the orb and launched it right next to Syrme.

Syrme tried to-

'MANA BURST-'

"NO!" He screamed in the last moment.

31 Of October 1992. Syrme disappeared from Universe Nº: ??000003450691.