100Title: Beggar to Beggar Cried
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Rating: R
Content Notes: Angst, violence, manipulation, underage (no actual sex, but sexual moments and thoughts), suicidal thoughts, AU
Wordcount: This part 5500
Pairings: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle, one-sided Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley
Summary: AU. Harry has been raised from the time he was five with full knowledge of what he was, a Horcrux, and how someday he would need to die to avenge his parents. Thus, when he finds Tom Riddle's diary in his second year, he recognizes it. Horcrux speaks to Horcrux, a game of persuasion and manipulation.
Author's Notes: The title of this story comes from W. B. Yeats's poem "Beggar to Beggar Cried." This is a dark fic, the sixth of my July Celebration stories for this year, and will be posted in two parts.
Beggar to Beggar Cried
Harry takes the slender little black book out of his bag once he's alone, with the curtains drawn tight around his bed in the Gryffindor boys' bedroom, and looks at it.
He has felt something strange and off for months now, around Ginny mostly, but also just in the school. That's why it's taken him so long to find it. On the one hand, he wanted to track down the strangeness. On the other hand, there was the voice speaking in the walls, and the Heir of Slytherin business, and although he knows the voice in the walls must be a snake, no one has found a way to stop it or shut it up. Harry has warned Professor Dumbledore, and that's all he can do. He's under strict orders not to tell anyone about Horcruxes, or the reason he's a Parselmouth. He wouldn't even have showed people that he was a Parselmouth if he'd been able to think of another way to save Justin.
Harry sighs and shuts his eyes. He's already talked with Professor Dumbledore about that, and Professor Dumbledore has said he doesn't have to feel sorry for it. It was unfortunate that people would know, but none of them would suspect.
And that's the important thing.
Harry runs his hand down the book's spine and then nods. Yes, there's the same feeling from it that he gets from his scar when it's night and everything is quiet and he puts his hand on his forehead and really concentrates. The diary is a Horcrux.
The odd thing is that Harry doesn't know why anyone would make a book into a Horcrux. He can see why someone like him, who can move around and talk and run away, might be useful. But a book would just sit on a shelf somewhere, and it might not get opened for years. What was Voldemort thinking?
Then Harry shakes his head. Sometimes he thinks like that. Professor Dumbledore says it's only natural. Harry is just twelve, and not used to things. He may be different from other people, but he's a lot like them, too. Harry will keep forgetting that he's an accidental Horcrux, and that Voldemort probably liked the ones that didn't move around on their own. It means they will still be where he put them when he goes back for them.
In the meantime, there's a Horcrux to figure out.
It seems most likely that you would communicate with a book by writing in it. Harry opens the book and picks up a quill. The pages are perfectly smooth and blank, but that doesn't surprise Harry. The Horcrux would probably want to trap somebody, to grow stronger. Professor Dumbledore has warned Harry about that danger.
Harry hesitates. Shouldn't he take this Horcrux to Professor Dumbledore? He knows the professor is slowly collecting all of them. He isn't going to destroy them yet, because Voldemort is still a spirit and they don't know what effect that would have on him. It might even make him come back another way, a way that isn't under Professor Dumbledore's control.
But then Harry shakes his head. He does want to talk to this one, just to see what it's like, what it'll say.
And…he might be like other people, but he isn't the same, exactly. He wants to talk to someone like him, for once. It's probably the only chance he'll ever have to do it. Professor Dumbledore has figured out that an important ring is a Horcrux, but it isn't like a ring can talk back to you.
It'll only be once. Then he'll take the diary and give it to Professor Dumbledore the way he's supposed to.
Hello, he writes on the book's page, and watches the ink disappear.
There's a little jump in the book's magic. Harry smiles until he starts wondering if that means the book can sense him back. He bites his lip. He doesn't want that. The book might try to kill him. Can a Horcrux be jealous of another Horcrux?
Hello, appeared on the book's page while he was debating. Harry looks back down at it, hesitates, and then scribbles recklessly.
My name is Harry Potter. What's yours?
The words seem to take longer to disappear this time, and Harry has to let go of his breath in a painful rush. It feels like the book has been sitting on his chest.
Sure, it's small and probably wouldn't be that heavy. But Harry bets this book could be heavier if it wanted to.
My name is Tom Riddle, and this is my diary.
Harry closes his eyes a little. He's right. Professor Dumbledore told him once that that was Voldemort's mortal name, and it's all right to call Voldemort that, because he'll hate it, and getting Voldemort angry is okay.
He should close the book and take it to the Headmaster's office right now.
But it's still the only Horcrux that will ever be able to talk back to him, so Harry writes, What is it like, being a Horcrux?
It's his imagination, he knows, but the diary seems to shake and then still under his hands. It's not his imagination that the book's magic spikes again. Harry sits, watching it. He wonders what kind of defenses this Horcrux has. Professor Dumbledore had to be really careful when he was getting the ring Horcrux. Can this book snap shut on Harry's finger and give him a paper-cut that makes him bleed to death or something?
That makes Harry smile. He's not afraid of death. If he dies, then the Horcrux dies, too, and then his parents will be avenged. And Professor Dumbledore has told him that he'll see his parents in the afterlife. After years of looking at their faces in picture albums—seven years, since Professor Dumbledore took him from the Dursleys—Harry is ready to see them in person.
Where did you learn that word?
Harry rolls his eyes a little. He supposes he should have realized Voldemort would lie and deny it, but it's a little tiresome.
I've known it since I was five years old. I'm a Horcrux, too. Your older self made me on the night he tried to defeat me when I was a baby. Professor Dumbledore still doesn't know what happened, not for certain, but apparently his soul was so unstable from making multiple Horcruxes that a small piece of it split off and attached itself to me. So that's what I am, that's what you are, and we both have to die to get rid of Voldemort. I just want to know what it's like, being you. I know what it's like being me.
Tom has not felt fear in so long that it takes him endless moments to realize what the winter wind rushing past him is. He certainly never includes memories of winter among the ones he dwells in in the diary.
He controls the urge to burst out of the diary and try to drain this Harry Potter's life-force right away. He doesn't have enough magic left from draining little Ginny to do that. Instead, he tries to reach out with senses that have atrophied in the years since the diary did nothing but sit on a shelf in Malfoy Manor. He tries to sense the power of the wizard writing in him, instead of simply that he is a wizard.
The magic sings to him, surprisingly easy to sense. An hour ago, Tom would have dismissed that as just a sign that Harry Potter is strong. From all that Ginny has babbled about him, he must be.
But there's a dark aftertaste to the magic that makes Tom shudder and slump back against the memory of a Transfiguration desk. Yes, that is magic like his.
His, the diary's, not magic like Lord Voldemort's. It's difficult for Tom to think of himself as the same as his creator, after so long a separation.
The boy is not lying.
Revelations burst like fireworks in his mind as Tom lets the memory dissolve and simply stands in darkness. Dumbledore knows. His creator is so unstable that he can create Horcruxes accidentally. There are more objects like Tom, whereas he always thought he would be the only one. Yes, now and then his creator had a thought of making many, but that always seemed so self-evidently stupid to Tom that he dismissed it as a childish fantasy.
There must be a way to stop this. There must be a way to survive. He may not be Voldemort, but he's Tom Riddle, who found a way out of his every dilemma at Hogwarts.
It's boring, being a book, he finally responds, when he realizes the boy is just sitting there holding the diary, instead of closing it. I can't communicate with anyone except when people write in me. And the world inside here is made of my memories, which I've seven over and over again in the last fifty years. What's it like being you?
Oh, it's being a boy. You were a boy, too, so you probably know about that.
I didn't mean that, Harry, Tom says, and wonders if he can project reassurance and soothing feelings through the words. Normally he wouldn't bother trying, simply relying on the book's innate defensive magic to ensnare his writer, but it's different with another Horcrux. You know what you are. You know you have to die. What's it like, living with the foreknowledge of your own death?
Harry blinks, and wonders for a second why Voldemort would ask that question. Then he shrugs. It doesn't really matter. Voldemort can't do anything. Even if he's been controlling someone so that the Chamber of Secrets will open, Harry has him now, and he'll take him to Dumbledore right away after he writes this conversation out.
It's hard, sometimes. But I know that I'm going to see my parents when I die. You killed them the night you made me a Horcrux.
And seeing two people you've never known is enough for you? Enough reason to die?
I can't live. We can't live, Harry says, and underlines the word as hard as he can, wondering if it will make ink rain on Voldemort's head. We'll be keeping him alive.
But why should I care about that? Why shouldn't I want to live as hard and as richly as I can? There's a long pause, but Voldemort's writing starts again before Harry write a retort. Why don't you want to live as hard and as richly as you can?
Harry says nothing. He knows the reasons, but he would feel stupid writing them down. Voldemort would just mock them.
It's reasons like Dumbledore coming to the Dursleys' house when Harry was five, and taking him aside, and explaining, quietly, the story of magic and his parents' death for the first time. He had to work harder to make Harry understand the concept of a Horcrux. Harry was only five, after all. And he doesn't think that he's a genius or anything. Hermione would have got it right away.
But after Dumbledore talked about the Horcrux, it made sense. Harry has a slight negative energy all around him. It takes really determined people to break through it. It's why he has so few friends; only Ron and Hermione being incredibly determined let them get through. And it's why the Dursleys hated him.
It's why he has to die. It's not fair, no, but it's the way it is.
Harry?
Harry shuts the book and tucks it under his pillow. He doesn't know who abandoned it in the first place, but he doesn't want it going anywhere.
Tom doesn't know what happened, but it seems like a long time until Harry writes back. He's got used to the rhythms of day and night again, since Ginny started writing in the diary. He can, if he concentrates hard, feel himself being carried around and now and then set down on a desk or on something soft that feels like the bottom of a bag.
It's infuriating to know that Harry isn't treating the diary with dignity. The one reassurance of it is that he hasn't taken the book to Dumbledore yet. Tom knows he would just be shut away in a desk or cabinet until he was destroyed.
Tom waits until he thinks Harry probably won't write back again, and then he extends his magic as far as he can outside the book. It makes his inner black-and-white world bow and tremble, on the verge of breaking. Tom's not sure, because he's never pushed himself this far before, but he thinks it might make him actually die and bleed black ink all over the pages.
Luckily, he doesn't have to push as far as he would with anyone else. Harry is too similar to him. Tom catches hold of the faint, churning Dark magic from his body and aura and pulls himself into Harry's dreams.
"Hello, Harry."
Harry rolls over slowly. He appears to be on his bed in the Gryffindor boys' bedroom, but he knows that isn't true. It's too dark and quiet, and a handsome teenage boy bends over him, his dark eyes almost glowing.
Harry isn't afraid, though. He doesn't think Tom can get control of him. He can't hurt Harry. And if he kills him…
He's only killing a Horcrux. A part of Voldemort.
"Hello," Harry says, and sits up.
Tom looks him over slowly. He wears Slytherin robes, and he's taller than Harry's ever going to get. Harry sits with his hands in his lap, looking at him. Try as he might, he can't feel any separate magic from another Horcrux. Maybe it's because they're so close to each other in the dream.
"You're so small," Tom says. He sounds shocked.
"Yes, my relatives starved me before Professor Dumbledore took me away to live at Hogwarts," Harry agrees.
Tom sits down on a chair that appears from nowhere, and waves his wand to light a fire that likewise appears from nowhere. Harry watches him critically. So far, he's not really scary or evil.
"They did that, and you can still defend Muggles?"
"I don't think a lot about Muggles." It's true. Harry still remembers the Dursleys, but they feel more like a dream or a nightmare now. "I'm thinking about dying to defend all the people in the wizarding world from you."
"Surely you can see that I'm not Voldemort."
"You don't look much like him from last year, no."
"Last year?"
"When I defeated him and he made the Horcrux, he turned into a wraith. He was possessing one of the professors last year so that he could sneak into the school and steal the Philosopher's Stone."
Tom pauses. "Why was the Philosopher's Stone here?"
"Professor Dumbledore was hiding it in Hogwarts to lure Voldemort here."
Tom leans forwards and speaks in a soft, rapid, convincing voice. "Harry, you ought to be able to see what's really going on here. Dumbledore made mistakes. He's told you that you have to die, but you don't have to. He set up a plot to lure my—elder self here, and he did it in a school full of children, where anyone could have been hurt. He made me go back to the orphanage where I lived every summer, even though I told him again and again that I would rather stay to do menial labor in Hogwarts. He's the enemy, not my elder self."
Harry just sighs. He supposes it makes him stupid, but he can't even follow all of Tom's arguments. "No, it doesn't. It means that he doesn't want me or you or any of the other Horcruxes to hurt other people. He doesn't want Voldemort to hurt them, either."
"Why would you hurt them?"
"The Horcrux in me poisons people. It turns them against me. That's why my relatives kept me in a cupboard and didn't feed me enough. And that's why a lot of people have decided that I'm evil the minute they found out I was a Parselmouth."
Tom's quiet, except for the way he clenches his fists. Then he says, "Why would you be—that's the most ridiculous theory I've ever heard."
"Really?" Harry looks at him. "Horcruxes do poison people. Professor Dumbledore found one that was guarded by a powerful curse. And you were reaching out and controlling someone here, weren't you? Making them open the Chamber of Secrets? That means you were poisoning their mind and spirit."
"Big words for a little boy," Tom whispers.
"Horcrux."
Tom just stares at him, his face slowly tilting as if he's trying to balance a book that keeps sliding off his head. "You really mean that, don't you? You think that you're evil. A boy, not a Horcrux."
Harry kicks his feet up and lies on the bed. It's oddly comfortable. He supposes it's because he doesn't have to worry about Tom getting hurt or twisted by the magic he carries around inside him. "Professor Dumbledore told me that I'm not the same child my parents loved, not really. My mum died for me before the Horcrux happened. You—I mean, the Voldemort-you—killed my mum with the Killing Curse before you—I mean, the Voldemort-you—turned your wand on me. Then the Horcrux happened. So before that I was innocent. Now I'm not. The boy my mum died for isn't really alive anymore."
Tom turns pale for some reason. Harry wonders if it bothers him, to hear Harry talk about killing. Harry doesn't know why. His mind has been working on the puzzle of the Chamber, and he's pretty sure that Tom must have been created when Voldemort killed Moaning Myrtle. So there's death in him right from the beginning.
Harry can see why he would be afraid to die, and not want to, but he shouldn't be so shocked by it.
Dumbledore's convinced him of that. I'm dealing with a fanatic.
But Tom refuses to give up. For one thing, it's not in him. He'll keep fighting for survival until someone actually manages to destroy him.
For another, he thinks that innate will to survive might be in Harry, too, whether it's his or the Horcrux's.
For a third…
"If you really believe that, why haven't you given me to Dumbledore yet?"
Harry flinches. He must have been wondering that himself. Tom pounces on the weakness as quickly as he can.
"You think I'm evil. You think you're evil. Which is ridiculous, by the way." Tom scans the boy from head to foot. Other than the curse scar on his forehead, there's no outer sign of the Horcrux. He's wearing a Gryffindor tie, and his hair is tousled and his face flushed from sleep. He couldn't look more innocent if he tried. "Why not give me to Dumbledore so he can destroy our evil? For that matter, why are you still alive?"
Harry hesitates again. Tom leans forwards and takes a gamble. He reaches out and catches one of Harry's hands. If he believes that rot about the Horcrux being evil and poisonous to others, then he won't be used to being touched. It's harder to ignore or dismiss a person touching you, too.
Tom isn't prepared for the rush of pleasure and compassion that spins through him like a torrent, making his mouth fall open as he gasps. Harry flushes bright red and snatches his hand back. Tom stares at him and forgets the arguments he was going to make.
Is that what's it like, when Horcrux touches Horcrux? It's not like I was ever near another one before this to know.
"What did you do?" Harry whispers. His voice is as powerful as a shout in the silent, darkened room that Tom supposes must be a room shared by four other Gryffindor boys, based on the number of beds. The fire flares for a second and then falls back.
That only confirms it, for Tom. Harry's magic is playing along with his, making his breath come swift and short. The torrent of sensation died the minute Harry's hand left his, but he can still remember it. It's the first physical sensation he's felt since he went into the diary.
"It's not me," Tom says as calmly as he can. "It's us in contact. Have you touched another Horcrux before?"
"No." Harry lifts his head, eyes for once bright with defiance of his fate. "But I touched the diary, and I didn't feel anything like that."
"The diary is only an outer case for my inner essence, not the essence itself," Tom says shortly. His mouth is dry with excitement, and he can feel that, too. He can feel the warmth of the fire. Everything suddenly feels as if he's already escaped from the diary, as if he already has a body back.
Merlin. He can't kill Harry, and he can't let his older self kill him. What happens if he never feels that again?
He stands up and moves a foot towards Harry. Harry only watches him with suspicious eyes. He doesn't yield an inch as Tom sits down on the bed, and Tom finds himself glad of that when he takes Harry's hand again.
Harry gasps and closes his eyes. A steady blush creeps its way up his cheeks. Tom lowers his head and draws Harry close, wrapping his arms around him. Now his body feels like a candle flame of pleasure and happiness and acceptance.
When was the last time I was truly happy?
"This is only happening because we're both evil," Harry mutters, almost inaudibly, when Tom chooses to pay attention to him again. "The Horcrux repels most normal people and makes them feel hatred towards me. So it makes sense that it would feel good with another Horcrux, something else that can—"
Tom chuckles, cutting him off. He gathers Harry closer, into his lap, and says into his ear, delighting even in the same brush of breath against Harry's ear, "Harry, why are you still alive? What justification did Dumbledore give you?"
Harry fights his eyes open. "You should call him Professor Dumbledore."
"I'll do that if it makes you happy," Tom agrees complacently, sliding his hand deep into the boy's hair. He groans as it brushes past his fingers, as he feels the flat, ordinary, blessed existence of Harry's scalp under his fingers, as the happiness edges towards something more like joy. "What did Professor Dumbledore say when you asked him?"
Harry stares at him open-mouthed. Tom shivers and lies back on the pillows Harry occupied at first. Harry perforce comes with him, until they're lying face-to-face, with their lips only a feather's length apart.
"Tell me," Tom says. "Please."
Harry doesn't understand. He doesn't think anyone's touched him like this since his parents, and he really can't remember them. It feels better than Hermione's hugs, better than Ron pounding him on the back after a Quidditch game, better than flying.
He never thought he would say that.
Harry shudders and manages to get back a little bit of control. "He says—he takes me around Britain, you know, so I can see the wizarding world and the people I'm going to die to save. He introduced me to goblins and centaurs and said—Voldemort would kill them all." He doesn't want to keep gasping like this, but Tom's hand is moving absently up and down his chest, and it feels like trails of fire are following it. "I meet people and their children. I walk down Diagon Alley. I've lived at Hogwarts for seven years. I know—I love it here. It's home."
"It is."
Tom's voice is so soft that Harry starts. Dumbledore never told him that Voldemort thought of Hogwarts as home. Like Harry does.
Harry pushes the thought aside, though, because this isn't Voldemort. So Tom is different. "And he doesn't want to try and kill me and you and the others until he figures out a way to do it all at once. He thinks that maybe Voldemort-you would sense it if he started killing us early."
"Not much can harm a Horcrux, that's true." Tom goes silent and pulls Harry close, into his chest. Harry just lies there. He doesn't know what to do, what to say. It's true what he told Tom, that he only feels this good because it's a reversal of the way the Horcrux usually makes people feel.
"And tell me," Tom says after enough time has passed that Harry's not sure how much it is, "do you want to die?"
"I know I have to."
"That's not what I asked. Do you want to die?"
"The part of me that doesn't want to doesn't matter. Because that part's the Horcrux, and as long as it's alive, then the murderer of my parents is alive."
"Still not what I asked for," Tom murmurs, and withdraws his arms, taking away enough of that delicious heat that Harry opens his mouth to mourn it. Then he closes his mouth again. How can he mourn something he's had for—well, an hour at most? Tom tips Harry's chin up, his fingers firmly in place on the pulse of his throat, and smiles at him. "Do you want to die?"
Harry opens his mouth, and Tom continues, voice flowing like silk, the way Dumbledore told him Voldemort's voice would flow. "There must be a part of you that's not just the Horcrux. Otherwise, why would Professor Dumbledore bother discussing his plans with you? Why would he take you to visit people under the assumption that you could care for them? Find that part of you. Do you want to die?"
Harry shudders. Nightmares are coming to life inside his head, nightmares he's had for years.
Of dying and not meeting his parents. Of drifting in darkness forever. Of finding out it was all for nothing. Of waking up and finding out he's still at the Dursleys, and being a wizard and a Horcrux and someone who can do something great by dying to defeat evil was the dream.
"I don't think you do," Tom breathes, staring into his eyes.
Harry looks away. "But what good does it do for me to want to live?" he bursts out, the words he's battled his desires and his dreams with so many times. "I can't. Because then Voldemort stays alive. And I don't want him to live, either."
"What about if you cared less about him living than about whether you lived?"
"But that's selfish. Professor Dumbledore, he said—"
"Is it selfish for the children and the families he showed you to want to live? To want to feel the sun on your face and taste hot chocolate in your mouth? Why did he introduce you to all those families and children, if it's so selfish to want to live?"
Harry brings a hand to his forehead, to his scar. He needs to feel the source of his difference from other people and concentrate on the evil magic. If he doesn't do that, then he's not sure, he doesn't know what's going to—
But Tom catches his fingers and kisses them. Harry just stares at him with his mouth open. It's so far from anything he thought could happen to him.
"We're different, yes," Tom agrees with a dark intensity, and he pulls Harry closer. "We're Horcruxes, yes. That's different. But that's no reason for us to die just because Professor Dumbledore says so. Or because Voldemort says so. He intended for me to remain in a book for the rest of my life. A book." Tom shudders, and his voice deepens. "It could easily have driven me mad. I don't matter to him except as a way of extending his life. If I get a body back, the way I'm trying to do, he'll hunt me, oppose me, kill me if he can. Why do we need to remain under the control of either of them? Why can't we go away and leave them to destroy each other if that's what they want?"
Harry has never heard an argument so compelling. Maybe it's only compelling because it's another Horcrux making it, maybe because he's evil, maybe because he resents Dumbledore more than he knows. But he does shake his head and try to pull himself back to solid ground.
"But Voldemort wants to take over the world. How do I know you won't do that if—"
"He wants to take over the world," Tom interrupts. "Do you know why he made me?"
"To escape death."
Tom nods. "Insomuch as I am him, my desire is to live. To survive. I was making Ginny Weasley open the Chamber of Secrets, yes. But what matters more to me is living. If Professor Dumbledore has figured out a way to destroy the Horcruxes, then I need to escape that. I'll go as far away as I can, once I have a body, and live that way."
Harry sucks in a sharp breath. So it was Ginny. He's wondered. Sometimes, the way she stared at him was disturbing, not the way anyone should look at a Horcrux.
"But you could go on your own. You don't need me."
It's working. Oh, God, it's working.
Tom clutches Harry so close that it feels as if their magic is melding, sliding into each other's, like overlapping pages. Tom closes his eyes and speaks as honestly as he can, the same honesty that made him give up Ginny's name a minute ago.
"I think we should go together. I've never touched anyone else like this and felt this, you know. I didn't know that I knew how to be happy until today. And I might forget if you don't come with me. You want to be good? You want to change the world? Come with me. Remind me of what happiness is."
"Professor Dumbledore said Voldemort was never happy."
"Maybe he isn't. I don't know." Tom forces his eyes open and stares at him. "I'm happy right now."
It's the perfect bait, perfect because it's absolutely and one hundred percent true. Tom knows he won't get this with anyone else. Even if he finds another Horcrux, there's no guarantee it would talk with him. Or feel the way Harry does. All the others would probably be shards of an older Voldemort, the one who wants to take over the world and has forgotten what survival means.
"And I'm—I can make you feel that way."
Tom brushes the back of his hand down Harry's cheek, and listens to their twinned gasps. "Exactly. You're the only one who can remind me of what it's like. You can keep another Voldemort from walking the world."
"That doesn't do anything about the one who killed my parents."
Tom only smiles and cocks his head. "Dumbledore has figured out lots of things, hasn't he? He can come up with a way to defeat my elder self. If he's a wraith right now, then it would be easier than ever to trap him. Maybe that's even what he was trying to do with the Philosopher's Stone last year," he adds generously. He can afford generosity, with Harry all but melting in front of him. "But we don't have to be part of it."
Harry's trembling, his eyes shut tight. "I always thought I was going to die."
It's time for Tom to back off. He's planted the seed. Now he can only hope it flowers. Chastely, he kisses Harry's cheek, although the flare of pleasure, as strong as the Cruciatus in the opposite direction, makes it hard to stay chaste. "I know. Think about it. Get used to, maybe, living."
He pulls back from the dream, fades back into the diary, and adds, "But always remember that it's your choice. I'm still just a book."
It's agony to return to that book, to remember what he's been missing. But at least he can conjure the memory and play it in front of him, not exhausted by doing it or making it, because he's drawn on the magic of another Horcrux.
When he is finished, he leans back on a conjured bed and closes his eyes.
He was made to survive. But he'd forgotten what life was really like.
Even if Harry somehow overcomes the temptation and decides to die and gives the diary to Dumbledore, Tom is going to hold onto the memory of life as he goes to his death.
