Harry Potter and the Silent Guardian

"Horcruxes?" Voldemort's voice, though touched with forced amusement, wavered. A crack appeared in the carefully constructed façade he had maintained for so long. His calm began to unravel, a subtle tremor betraying the unease gnawing at him from within. "Ah, the diary… Lucius. If he weren't dead already, he'd wish to be—" He cut himself off, the lie faltering mid-sentence, dying in his throat.

His crimson eyes, once blazing with cold confidence, darted anxiously across the ruined landscape, searching for denial or escape. Yet all they found was Harry Potter, calm and unyielding, standing like an immovable force.

"The diary?" Harry interrupted, his voice calm and almost dismissive. With a casual flick of Gryffindor's sword, he deflected a curling tendril of dark magic. The shadowy coil disintegrated into harmless wisps.

"That was just the appetizer, Tom. You didn't think I wouldn't figure out you made more than one, did you?" Harry paused, as though sifting through a mental list. His eyes never left Voldemort's, every word landing with precise, calculated intent. "Even Dumbledore suspected as much, so why wouldn't I? Let's see…"

He raised a finger, counting them off like it was a trivial task. Each Horcrux named was another blow to Voldemort's claims of immortality.

"There was the ring, of course. In the Gaunt shack. A nasty curse on that one—it ended up killing Dumbledore, didn't it? Though, I destroyed the piece of your soul in it long before that." The mental picture of Dumbledore's shriveled hand and painful death flashed, a testament to that curse's potency.

A burst of pure hatred erupted from Voldemort's wand. Raw, untamed dark magic—potent enough to vaporize solid stone—raced toward Harry. He sidestepped with effortless grace, letting the curse obliterate a rock formation behind him into glowing dust. He didn't so much as blink.

"The locket from the cave," Harry continued relentlessly. His sword sliced through Voldemort's next spell, reducing a bone-shattering curse to harmless sparks. "That was the first Horcrux I got my hands on. Regulus Black retrieved it from that lovely Inferi-filled lake as his final act of defiance. He sent it to the Black house via the elf express before he died, so I took care of the destruction for him."

Harry's expression hardened further. "Then there was the cup from Bellatrix's vault. Don't worry—Bella isn't dead. I merely subdued her, and Lord Black pulled a few strings to get me the cup."

Each Horcrux mentioned was another nail in Voldemort's coffin. His carefully constructed sense of invulnerability fractured with every detail. Even the revelation that Bellatrix still lived, yet had failed to return to his side, struck him like a physical blow.

"Impossible!" Voldemort hissed, his composure shattering like ice beneath a crushing weight. His voice rose in pitch, raw and frantic. The dark energy swirling around him, fed by the island's unnatural power, flared erratically—jerking, twisting, flailing—reflecting the turmoil roiling within him.

Every calm, measured word from Harry tore into the Dark Lord's arrogance, peeling it away layer by layer, exposing the raw panic beneath. For the first time in decades, Voldemort—the self-proclaimed immortal—looked truly vulnerable.

"Ravenclaw's diadem," Harry continued, his voice steady. The purple lightning crackling around him flared brighter—a visible manifestation of his growing dominance. "You left it in the Room of Requirement, which turned out to be the easiest Horcrux to access once I started school. I found the room in my first week, so… thanks for that."

He paused, a faint smirk tugging at his lips. "I even used the diadem quite a lot—still do, actually. It's remarkably useful if you use it for learning instead of keeping fragments of your soul hidden. It helped me advance my magic faster… as you can probably tell from my current strength."

Harry's tone dropped to a near whisper, soft yet cutting through the storm's howling wind and crashing waves like a knife. His next words carried the final blow.

"And then, of course," he said, his eyes gleaming, "Nagini… in the graveyard."

Voldemort froze, his entire body going rigid, breath catching in his throat. His already pale face seemed to drain of what little color remained, leaving it almost ghostly beneath its serpentine contours.

"The graveyard?" he rasped, barely audible, his voice raw with disbelief and dawning horror. "You… you were there that night? You killed Nagini?"

For a fleeting moment, silence reigned, the weight of the revelation crashing down on him. The confirmation of his worst fear pierced him like a dagger.

Harry's expression shifted—subtly at first, then unmistakably. A wave of transformation washed over him. His emerald eyes flickered, then hardened into an electrifying shade of blue, cold and unrelenting.

"Surprised, Tom?" he asked, his voice deepening, every word carrying a commanding authority that was wholly his own. "Yes, Tom. I was the mysterious wizard who saved Charles that night. The one who obliterated your inner circle of Death Eaters."

Voldemort's eyes widened in recognition, the name slipping from his lips in a fractured whisper.

"Blue Eyes?" His tone cracked under the weight of rage and disbelief. The Dark Lord's usual cold menace dissolved into something raw, something closer to fear. "You… you're the one who disrupted my resurrection ceremony… the one who slaughtered my followers and saved Charles Potter. The same Blue Eyes I suspect to be behind the assassinations of my strongest supporters this past year?"

"It has always been me," Harry confirmed, his smile cold and predatory, utterly devoid of warmth or mercy. It was the smile of a hunter who had finally cornered his prey.

"I've been there, unnoticed and unheard, every single time your oh-so-perfect plans crumbled to dust. Every grand design you hatched? Reduced to rubble by me. I was the one who stopped you from taking the Philosopher's Stone—remember poor Quirrell? Messy business, that. I ended the Lestrange brothers, too.

"Those random vigilantes at the Quidditch World Cup? Me in disguise. And if you still haven't pieced it together from our little battle tonight—the Knight who's been hunting your creatures, purging your darkness? Also me.

"Oh, and the vigilante who's been dismantling your forces over the past year? Every thorn in your side, every failed venture, every unexpected disaster? Always me, Tom. Every. Single. Time."

These revelations didn't simply register in Voldemort's mind—they struck like physical blows, shattering his carefully constructed reality. His rigid sense of superiority crumbled, the illusion of invincibility splintering into countless fragments.

"One boy?" he snarled, his voice cracking under the weight of the impossible truth. Wild denial clung to every word. "Some… teenager has been tearing down everything I've worked for—everything I've built—for decades?"

"All while attending school, in fact," Harry said lightly, a mocking grin curving his lips, the glint of cruelty unmistakable in his newly blue eyes. "You focused on the wrong Potter, Tom. Obsessed over the wrong prophecy. You never noticed the real threat—the one standing right in front of you, observing, waiting, always ready."

It was the final insult, the ultimate blow, a dagger driven deep into what remained of Voldemort's pride.

A sudden snap echoed in his mind, a breaking point. Something vital tore loose—rational thought collapsed, sanity unraveling like frayed threads, leaving nothing but raw, consuming madness.