Harry Potter:Diamond Heart.

The pale wand flashed up impossibly fast and the graveyard around him dissolved into a hail of curses. Voldemort had been playing with him, testing him and toying with him, but the games were over now.

His shield charm shattered only moments after the tombstones disintegrated, and the first red beam of light hit him.

Searing pain wracked his body, and he crumpled into a ball. Voldemort's Cruciatus Curse was far beyond Cedric's, there was no space for thought or anything but the pain.

'A taste of the pain I endured that night at Godric's Hollow, Harry,' Riddle announced cruelly, ending his torture so Harry could hear him.

Harry rolled himself over and pushed himself to his feet, unwilling to die on the floor at Voldemort's feet, not when there was still a chance of escape and survival.

'Again, Harry?' Riddle asked coldly. 'For the pain I suffered at your hands when you killed my servant Quirrell, perhaps.'

The yew wand came up, but this time Harry was ready for how unnaturally fast Riddle had become.

'Papilionis,' he cried, and Voldemort's Cruciatus Curses burst harmlessly into wisps of black smoke around him.

'Avada Kedavra,' Riddle hissed, furious at how successful Harry's shield had proved against his torture curses.

There was another wisp of black smoke and an expression of utter outrage crossed the face of the Dark Lord. Harry would have laughed if he were not close to death, but it would take only seconds for Riddle to figure it out and use something as simple as the blasting curse to break his defence.

He flicked his wand, transfiguring a single butterfly into a steel spike, and sending it flying across the circle at Voldemort.

Riddle side-stepped, sneering fragment hissed past him.

and the steel There was a small gasp of pain behind Voldemort and Bertha Jorkins collapsed holding her neck. Bright, crimson blood spurted out past her shining, silver fingers as she blinked desperately.

'Master,' she pleaded, her entire left side soaked in blood, 'master, please.'

Riddle never even turned around to look at her as she died.

'I told you,' Harry reminded her, smiling coldly. He had no sympathy for Bertha Jorkins, she had earned her fate.

The curly-haired witch giggled slightly hysterically, paling rapidly as her blood pooled across the ground, then she blinked one last time and slumped still.

She's the third person I have killed. Harry felt no guilt for any of them, he'd never felt much to begin with, only worried about what being capable of the act made him.

'Now,' Voldemort's cruel smile returned, 'you are no different from us, Harry.'

The ice spread across his chest in fury, Riddle had no right to compare him to any of them, not after everything he had done. The glowing red eyes of the Harry the boggart had become gleamed in memory. Something stirred in the ice.

'Now,' he responded icily. 'She is the third servant of yours I have ended, Voldemort. I felt no pity for her and I will feel no pity for you.' His wand snapped up, summoning the portkey cup to him. He caught it in his left hand, but there was no jerk, no magic.

'I would have to have very foolish followers to leave such an obvious avenue of escape open,' Voldemort laughed in his unnatural, high way.

'Avada Kedavra.' This time the bright flash of green came from Harry's wand.

It missed Voldemort by inches, hissing though one of the gaps in the circle behind him when he apparated away, and spattering harmlessly against one of the stubs of the tombstones.

He apparated.

Something had changed, the wards that kept him here were gone. All he needed was a moment.

'So you do have the desire to kill,' he hissed, surprised. 'Who then of my followers have you killed, for whom else's sake shall I kill you?'

'Barty Crouch,' Harry told him, feeling nothing but pride, 'and revenge against Peter Pettigrew.' It was foolish of him to declare it before all the Death Eaters and he knew it, but he couldn't reign in his pride and anger enough to stop himself. It was not like they could do anything with it, not hearing it under these circumstances for someone supposedly dead thirteen years and a madman killed in the chaos of the World Cup.

'Pettigrew, perhaps,' Voldemort considered, deflecting Harry's bone splintering curse with a shining silver shield composed of thousands of tiny serpents. 'He was a poor wizard, useful, but pathetic. Barty Crouch, on the other hand was talented, no fourteen year old could have beaten him in a duel, how do you claim to?'

Harry's lips twitched, a dreadful temptation overwhelming him. He couldn't resist, and he could always apparate immediately afterwards.

'Like this,' he smirked, and slashed his wand across his chest towards Riddle. There was a shimmer in the air between him and Riddle, a hazy basilisk maw of nothing that slammed into and shattered Voldemort's shield like it was glass, sending him staggering backwards and down to his knees.

The conjuration took almost everything Harry still had to spend, but he managed to remain on his feet, swaying as Voldemort picked himself up from the floor, raising his wand.

The incantation was already on the lipless mouth of the dark wizard, so Harry dragged whatever magic he could imagine from within him, and pictured where he wanted to be most, with the girl he had left behind.

'Legilimens,' Voldemort spat, as Harry twisted.

His apparition was too slow and even as the world swirled back past him he felt Riddle's mind crash into his own, tearing the intent and emotion of the spell he had cast from him. He struggled to clear his mind and force Voldemort out, but no matter how much he tried to empty his head he couldn't push the dark wizard from it. Riddle followed the thought pattern back. There were glimpses of his childhood, eleven years of memories with the Dursleys stolen in seconds, but alongside them he gleaned others, moments Riddle could not disassociate from Harry's recollections. An orphanage, with sneering children who hated him because he was different, disdainful peers who abhorred him because he was a muggleborn, a nobody, and then the pain ended.

I was nothing once too.

The thought was not Harry's.

The connection broke, and the voice of Riddle, the real voice, the one of the young man from the chamber, was torn away. Harry saw a flash of silver before his eyes, then he hit something very hard and the world swirled to a halt, bursting into darkness with an explosion of bright, white sparks.

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