harry.exe has stopped working ━ hp x tmr || lv

chapter one

just in case some of you didn't read the title 👀
this is a tom riddle||voldemort x harry potter fic so... if that ain't yo cup of  🍵 there's the 🚪

Chapter One:

Harry is shaken to reality by a chorus of sharp knocks against something wooden and hollow. His gaze is bleary and the room that he's in is cramped and dark. It makes his back straighten up, his heart tries to escape through his throat as he feels around. There are shelves and clothes, a book and ah — his glasses. He forces them over his nose.

Harry's pretty sure that neither heaven nor hell are supposed to be a tiny, dark room. But then again, Harry had taken his own life, so maybe this was his afterlife. Forced to sit in a pitch black room with no one but himself to keep him preoccupied; to stew between his thoughts and his emotions. A recipe for madness if you asked him.

Blinking a few times, Harry furrows his brows when he can finally make out a few things in the dark. There's a thread hanging above his head and he hesitantly raises his hand and pulls on it. There's a little 'click' sound and then the room is flooded with fluorescent light. It makes him screw his eyes shut tight. After a few seconds, Harry slowly flutters them open and gapes.

He's, he's—

"Wake up Potter!" An all too familiar voice shouts from somewhere above him. There's a set of thumps as if someone's jumping up and down on the stairs. It sends a trail of dust onto Harry.

"Mum!" The same voice shouts a few seconds later, their feet thumping loudly against the ground as they run. "Harry isn't making breakfast!"

He's back in the cupboard under the stairs.

Harry all but scrambles around and stumbles out of the cupboard, hitting his arm on the small door in the process, green eyes wide and breath caught in his throat. He frantically eyes everything. The hallway is the same, filled with pictures of Dudley throughout his years. The staircase is painted white, not a speck of dirt to be seen. The carpet is the same, boring shade of creamy white that it was all those years ago.

It makes him sick to his stomach.

Harry doesn't want this.

He'd rather be under the illusion that he was in a cramped room with minimum to no space without anyone but himself, descending into madness as the years would go on.

"Get on with it, freak." Aunt Petunia hisses from the kitchen. "Don't burn anything." She glares at him from her seat at the dining table, thin lips twisted into a scowl. It's so normal, so familiar, so bitter that it makes Harry move on autopilot. He goes through the motions, moves around the kitchen like he's done it a thousand times before because he has. Dudley snides at him a few times and so does Uncle Vernon, but Harry's so, so out of it that he doesn't even register it.

Not until Dudley starts shouting about his presents.

"Thirty-six?" Dudley raises his voice, face turning pink with rage. "But last year, last year I had thirty-seven!"

Harry pours Uncle Vernon his morning coffee, holding back a sigh.

"Yes, well," Uncle Vernon wears a smile, "some of them are quite bigger than they were last year." He tries to reason.

"I don't care how big they are!" Dudley yells.

Moving away, Harry stops paying attention at that point, knowing very well what happens next. By the time they make it to the zoo, Harry is tired. Not in the usual sense either. His shoulders are weighed down by such a heavy weight it makes him drag his feet behind the Dursley's. It's like his tiredness had once been a heavy jacket and now was just heavy bones. Harry had lived, survived, endured. He wasn't, he isn't ready to do that again.

"He's boring," Dudley makes a face, heaving an annoyed sigh that fogs up against the glass he's leaned against.

Harry waits until the Dursley's collectively turn and leave to go torment some other poor animals.

"Are you alright?" Harry asks, slipping into parseltongue. He holds his gaze on the beautiful serpent inside the reptile exhibit. "I'm sorry about him. He doesn't understand what it's like. Lying there day after day. Watching people press their ugly faces in on you."

The snake slowly raises his head and gives him something equivalent to a wink. It makes Harry give a shaky grin, glad that he's still able to speak the language of snakes. "Can you understand me?"

Raising its head higher, the snake slithers out its tongue to taste the air. It stares at Harry with intelligent eyes and nods.

"Good," Harry nods his head back. He moves his gaze to the side and reads the sign there. It says a simple 'bred in captivity.' It makes Harry slump his shoulders. "You know," he starts off, turning his gaze back to the snake, "me and you aren't all that different. I've never gotten to know my parents either."

"Mum! Dad! Come here! You won't believe what this snake is doing!" Dudley exclaims in excitement, elbowing Harry out of the way and effectively sending him down to the ground. Dudley presses himself right up against the glass of the reptile exhibit.

Just like last time.

Irritation sparks quickly within Harry. He glares up at Dudley with anger in his green eyes and wishes the glass would disappear and — and it  does. He smirks when Dudley yelps and falls forward, splashing into the pond and yelling when he realises that he's face to face with a dangerous snake.

Harry can't help but laugh quietly. He watches with glee as the snake slithers itself over the railings and onto the floor in one smooth movement. "Brazil here I come!" The snake flicks its tongue out once more. "Thanks amigo."

"Anytime," Harry grins.