HP ficlet: Compassion [Harry, infant!Voldemort, general]
Title: Compassion Author: celandineb Fandom: HP Characters: Harry, infant!Voldemort Rating: general Length: 261 words Summary: Harry can't turn his back on the infant. Note: For quill_it, 100.3, prompt 23, "just". For cruisedirector, who said, " I would love to read something in which Harry tells Dumbledore to stuff it and does NOT leave warped!baby!Voldemort!soul to die."
All the while that Dumbledore was talking to him, Harry's thoughts kept straying back to the bloody infant Dumbledore had urged him to abandon.
He knew who -- or perhaps what was the better term -- it was. Voldemort. The embodiment of Voldemort's final Horcrux, created unexpectedly in Harry himself. He understood that this place wasn't real, that it was just his brain's way of visualising the peculiar half-alive state he was in, and that therefore the infant wasn't precisely real either... but that didn't matter.
To defeat Voldemort in the real world, Harry knew that all the Horcruxes had to be destroyed first, but he couldn't bear the thought of leaving a helpless infant to die. Surely there had to be some other way?
When Dumbledore stopped talking, Harry nodded at him. "I understand what has to be done, and I accept the burden... and the consequences of my actions." Then he turned his back and hurried to where the infant lay, still feebly kicking.
He crouched down and awkwardly picked it up, straightening with an effort. It quieted at his touch. Harry stroked its cheek with one finger, ignoring the blood and mucus that still smeared the tiny body. "After your mother died, there was no one to love you, was there?" he whispered, a surge of compassion running through him. "I could so easily have become like you, poor thing, poor Tom. Perhaps, with love, you won't have to remain what you became."
Holding the baby close, he took a deep breath, and let his consciousness return to his body.