Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Alright, class, settle down!" 

Harry was only dimly aware of his new teacher's voice. Mrs Blanchard seemed nice enough, having greeted him with a warm smile when he filed in behind his cousin Dudley, but it could only possibly last until the first parent teacher meeting. It happened like clockwork every year – his teachers would treat him kindly, even pitying him sometimes, no doubt on account of his small frame and obviously pre-owned uniform – and then his aunt Petunia would strike. He wasn't privy, of course, to exactly what she would tell them, but he had heard snippets over the years. "...troublemaker..." "...attacking our poor Dudley..." All patently ridiculous – Harry spent most of his time at home in his cupboard with very little time to make any trouble, and Dudley dwarfed him in height and general size. If anyone was doing the attacking, it was him, not Harry.

The teacher had apparently finished introducing herself, because she was calling roll now. "Kelly Applegate?"

"Present!"

"Dudley Dursley?"

Dudley grunted.

Harry sighed. At the very least, he had only one more year of dealing with Dudley's nonsense while they were at school – his cousin would be heading off next year to attend the same prestigious boarding school his father, Vernon, had, and Harry would be continuing in the state school system. He wondered vaguely whether they still held parent teacher conferences in Secondary school, and if he might actually be able to stand on his own merit in the eyes of his professors instead of fading away in Dudley's shadow.

"Harry Potter?"

Oh, right, roll call. "Present."

"Tom Riddle?"

"Present."

Riddle? Harry was certain there hadn't been a Tom Riddle in his class the year before, he would have surely remembered such a curious surname. He glanced to his left and found his desk-mate was a boy who definitely hadn't attended St Grogory's prior to this year, and yet seemed oddly familiar. The boy, Tom apparently, noticed him staring and sent him a slight smile. Harry flushed and looked away – he was all too familiar with how uncomfortable it was to be stared at.

Tom, evidently, didn't mind. Sitting at the same table, they could hold a quiet conversation without Mrs Blanchard noticing, so he leaned in slightly and quietly asked, "She said your name was Harry, right?"

"Er, right," Harry whispered. "Harry Potter."

"I'm Tom – but you've probably already gathered that." There was a glint of humour in the boy's dark eyes as he extended a hand for Harry to shake. "Very pleased to meet you, Harry Potter."

Harry took the proffered hand and gave it as strong a shake as he could, remembering something that his uncle had said about firm handshakes and good first impressions. "Nice to meet you too, Tom. You're new this year, then?"

"I am, yes," Tom replied. "I've just moved in with my aunt. I lost my parents not long ago."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Harry said gently, feeling a pang of sympathy for the dark haired boy sitting next to him. "I lost my parents too – I was just a baby though."

Tom shrugged, as though one's parents dying were really not all that bad. "It's okay," he replied. "We weren't very close – Father – my stepfather, actually – was always away on business trips, and Mother spent most of her time socialising with her friends. I'll miss the house, though – it was out in the country, and Aunt Bella's is much smaller and not nearly as lovely."

Mrs Blanchard chose this moment to pass out the first assignment of the year, effectively cutting their conversation short. Harry frowned as he looked down at the questionnaire on the desk – it was essentially the same thing they did at the beginning of each year, a little "get to know me" worksheet, and he'd rather keep talking to Tom instead. As short as it had been, it was the most any of his classmates had talked to him in years. He was desperate to learn more about Tom before Dudley inevitably convinced the quiet, rather regal looking boy that Harry was no good, and that he should stay away from him. Then again, maybe it was better to ignore him rather than set himself up for a greater disappointment later on.

Harry scowled and let his messy hair fall in his face, obscuring his view of Tom as he dashed through the worksheet, giving only basic answers to each question and avoiding anything that might make his new teacher question his home life.

Harry spent recess alone, hiding in his favourite spot between a few bushes behind the building and making up a story with a few of Dudley’s old cast off action figures that he had swiped when no one was looking. In it, the blond-haired man from that movie Uncle Vernon wouldn't let him watch "because it might give him funny ideas'' was going on a magical adventure, and the toy dinosaur was actually a wise, old, talking dragon who was a guide to the blond man – who Harry named "Tom," because even though they shared no resemblance, Tom had been the only kind presence in his life in months. It couldn't hurt to pretend, just for a minute, that he had a friend, even if his friend was made of plastic and couldn't really talk.

"What are you doing here, Harry?" 

Harry's head shot up, and he dropped his toys. Tom had found him and crawled right into Harry's hiding space, and he hadn't even noticed. "Oh, I er –" he stammered. "I was just playing alone."

"Why aren't you with your friends?" Tom demanded, frowning.

"I don't really... I don't have any friends." Harry thought for a moment that Tom might laugh at him the way the other kids did, for being that weird kid in the baggy uniform who had no parents and no friends at all, but Tom said something surprising instead.

"I'll be your friend, Harry."

Harry stared at him for a moment. "You don't want to be my friend," he finally replied. "All the other kids will make fun of you."

"I don't care what the other kids think," said Tom. "I care about what you think."

"But... why?" Harry asked, baffled.

Tom shrugged. "You're more interesting than them, I can just tell. But if you don't want to..." Tom turned as though he were about to leave.

"No!" Harry said quickly "I want to be friends. It's just – my cousin Dudley and his gang..."

"Dudley?" Tom's nose wrinkled in disdain. "Is he the big blond one I saw steal one of the younger kids' toy aeroplane and smash it?"

"That sounds like him, yeah," Harry replied.

"They're just stupid bullies, Harry," Tom said dismissively. "They can't hurt me."

"But – they're bigger than us," Harry protested. 

"And we're smarter, Harry. I won't let them bother you anymore."

Something in Tom's voice sounded so confident and assured that it bolstered Harry's spirits. "Okay then," he said, smiling at Tom. Tom smiled back, and for the first time since he could remember, Harry felt as though something in his life was finally going right.

Being friends with Tom was unlike anything Harry had ever imagined having friends to be. Tom didn't care for playing what he considered "silly little kid games" like tag or catch (though hide and seek was an exception), nor did he enjoy climbing on the jungle gym or playing on the swings. That was fine with Harry, as he had never been included in the other kids' games anyway, and Dudley shoved him off the playground equipment even if there was plenty of space to go around. Tom preferred instead to spend their recesses studying books he had checked out from the local library and explaining them to Harry. Most of it went completely over his head, but Tom's voice was gentle and soothing, and he found he loved just listening to him.

It took less than a week for Dudley to notice that the new kid was hanging out with his weird cousin and steadfastly ignoring him.

It was Friday afternoon, and Harry found his cousin ambling up to him where he sat on the steps of the school building, Tom sitting next to him and reading aloud from a book on astrophysics that made very little sense. He could sense Dudley approaching before he saw him, the hair on the back of neck rising, a little voice in his head screaming "danger!" He still had almost no time to react before Dudley shoved him to the side, standing between him and his new friend.

"New kid," Dudley demanded, "what's your name?"

"Perhaps if you paid attention during class a little more often, you would already know it," Tom replied, not even looking up from his book. "Mrs Blanchard does call it every day during roll. Now, be a good lad and apologise to Harry for acting like such a brute."

"You little –" For a moment, Harry was certain that Dudley was going to strike Tom, his face turning a similar shade of purple as Uncle Vernon's did every time he dragged Harry to his cupboard. But Tom chose that moment to look Dudley straight in the eye, and Harry swore for a moment that his eyes flashed red. Even more amazingly, Dudley froze, his arm pulled back for a punch that never landed.

"My, you are quite the violent little oaf, aren't you?" Tom drawled, his eyes narrowing. "How our dear Harry here has survived unscathed for the past nine years with you around is a mystery. Now apologise to your cousin, and know that if I find out you've been giving him more trouble, you will regret it."

To Harry's great surprise, Dudley actually turned to him, quivering, and helped him up off the ground. "I'm s-s-sorry, Harry," he gasped. "I won't do it again, I promise." And with that, he took off running faster than Harry had ever seen him move.

"What'd you do to him, Tom?" Harry mumbled, returning to his spot on the steps.

"Nothing," Tom shrugged. "He simply recognised that he was in the company of his betters, and learned his place. You will tell me if he forgets the lesson, won't you, Harry?"

"I guess so," Harry said. "Just, please don't hurt him or anything."

Tom chuckled. "You are far too kind for your own good, dear. Promise me you won't ever change?” Harry didn’t quite know what he meant, but nodded anyway.

With Tom at his side, the days went by in a flash. School had never been more enjoyable, and true to his word, Dudley and his gang backed off. None of the other kids talked to him, still, but that didn't matter because he had Tom, and Tom had him. Far too quickly, it was time for Christmas break.

Harry didn't relish the idea of spending the next few weeks with only the Dursleys for company and no chance to see Tom. So far, they had yet to meet outside of school, and Harry wasn't sure where he lived. He hadn't seen the point in asking when his relatives surely wouldn't let him out for a playdate anyway, so there was no reason to get either of their hopes up.

Tom must've noticed his dark mood, because the day before school let out, he led Harry to the hiding spot they had shared on the first day and pulled him into a fierce hug out of sight of the other children, slipping a piece of paper into his hand after letting go.

"This is my phone number and address," he explained. "If you can slip out for a few hours you'll know where to find me, or you can ring me up if you can't get away from the Muggles." Tom always called his relatives this, but he hadn't explained what it meant. Harry thought it was a rather funny way to refer to his aunt and uncle – it sounded a bit like "muddled," which was rather fitting with the way they seemed to think he was some kind of danger to them.

Harry looked at the paper in his hand. "Wisteria Walk!" he exclaimed. "But Tom, that's just around the corner from me – how come I never see you out?"

"I spend most of my time at home studying," Tom stated.

Harry frowned. "You spend most of your time at school studying too," he argued. "Why don't you ever come visit me?"

"You haven't given me your address, Harry," he replied.

Harry flushed, embarrassed. Of course – he hoped Tom didn't think he had been rude, he had just forgotten that Tom didn't already know where he lived. Sometimes it felt as though they had known each other forever, like they had grown up in the same cupboard, even. He had to remind himself that they had only met a few short months prior.

"It's Number 4, Privet Drive," he mumbled, staring at his feet. Tom just smiled.

"Thank you, Harry," he whispered as he pulled Harry in for another hug. "If you don't visit by the end of the week, I'll come find you.”

As it turned out, Harry was unable to make an escape for Tom’s house for the first week of Christmas break, as the Dursleys practically threw him into his cupboard the minute he arrived home, snapping the lock firmly in place. Harry sighed. It wasn’t like he hadn’t expected it, this was practically a holiday tradition. Oh, they’d let him out for meals and to use the bathroom, but sharing Christmas, a family event, with Harry of all people – it was unthinkable. 

And so it was Tom who came for Harry on the following Friday.

Harry, of course, was still locked in his cupboard when he heard the knock on the door. He ignored it at first, assuming it was perhaps a business associate of his uncle’s, or one of Aunt Petunia’s friends. He was therefore surprised to hear Tom’s gentle and articulate voice.

“Good afternoon, madam,” he was saying. “You must be Mrs Dursley. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Oh, what a precious gentleman!” Harry’s aunt said. “You must be one of Dudley’s little friends, I’ll just go fetch him for you, shall I?”

“Oh, no,” Tom replied. “I’m actually here to see Harry – is he in?”

“Harry?” Aunt Petunia echoed. “I’m sorry, there must be some mistake –”

“There’s no mistake, Mrs Dursley,” Tom said smoothly. “I’m Harry’s friend from school. He told me he lived with his cousin Dudley and his aunt and uncle. We promised we’d keep in touch over hols, but I haven’t heard from him once – he’s not been ill, has he?”

When Aunt Petunia spoke again, it was with that same quavering tone that Dudley had had when apologising to Harry at the beginning of term. “Oh, no, of course, of course… He’s bound to be around here somewhere… Harry, dear, you’re not hiding in the cupboard again, are you?”

He heard the snapping of the lock on the outside of his door, and squinted as light suddenly poured into the cramped enclosure he called a bedroom. “I’m sorry, Aunt Petunia,” he said, uncurling his limbs and stumbling up and out into the hallway. “I s'pose I was.”

The sight of Tom standing in the front doorway made him want to cry. For a week now he’d had to go without seeing his best friend – his only friend – and that was a long time in the life of a young boy who had only recently attained such a joy. “Hi Tom,” he said weakly. “I’m sorry I haven’t rung you up.”

“It’s quite alright, Harry,” said Tom. “Do you like hiding in the cupboard?”

Harry glanced at Aunt Petunia, who gave him a sharp look and a barely perceptible nod. “I suppose I do. It’s nice and quiet in there.”

“Oh, good.” Tom had an odd expression on his face, and Harry’s insides churned. Surely this would be the moment when Tom decided Harry was just too strange, too odd to keep being his friend – after all, who liked hiding in cupboards? But Tom continued.

“I was worried for a moment that you might’ve been locked inside,” Tom said. Aunt Petunia’s face drained of colour. “But that would just be unthinkably terrible, now wouldn’t it? Don’t you agree, Mrs Dursley?” Tom’s words were polite, but his tone had the same sharp quality he had used on Dudley.

“Oh,” Aunt Petunia gasped. “Oh, yes, it would be. Why don’t you come in? Tom, was it? I’ve just prepared tea.”

And so Harry found himself seated for the first time in his life in the parlour to share afternoon tea with his relatives – and Tom, who kept smiling slyly at him, as if sharing some inside joke. Dudley had perched himself on the very edge of the chair furthest from Tom, and kept squirming as though trying to put more distance between them. Aunt Petunia’s face was still stark white, and Uncle Vernon seemed very confused, his eyes darting between his wife, son, and the sofa where Tom lounged comfortably next to Harry.

Tom had impeccable manners, sipping his tea lightly and taking small, careful bites out of a scone generously spread with raspberry jam and clotted cream. Harry tried to follow his example, but was so hungry from days in the cupboard without adequate meals it took all he had to stop himself from shoving an entire scone directly into his mouth.

“I’ve been so grateful to Harry,” Tom was saying. “I only just started at St Grogory’s this term, but he’s made me feel so very welcome. I suppose he understands, having lost his parents as well.”

“Oh, you poor dear,” said Aunt Petunia, though Harry thought she sounded less sympathetic and more rattled, “to be left all alone like that.”

“Yes,” Tom agreed, “I’m quite lucky to have my dear aunt. She was all too happy to take me in. It’s very kind that you’ve done the same for Harry here. There’s too many of us orphans out there who end up forgotten.”

“Quite right, quite right,” Aunt Petunia replied, shivering into her tea. Harry glanced between the two of them – there was something off about this whole conversation, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

The clock chimed four.

“Oh dear,” Tom said, setting his plate down. “Is that the time? I really must be going, my aunt must be wondering where I’ve gotten to.”

“Yes, of course, let me walk you to the door…”

Harry found himself trailing behind Tom and Aunt Petunia, still wondering exactly what was going on, when Tom spoke up.

“Oh, right,” he said, as though just remembering something he had meant to bring up much earlier, but something in his tone made Harry think he had planned it as a last minute addition. “I meant to ask – is it alright if we have Harry over for Christmas?”

“Christmas?” Aunt Petunia echoed distantly. “No, no, Christmas is a time for family…”

“Precisely,” Tom said, his tone suddenly rather cold, “which is why I thought Harry might enjoy spending the day with those who would be more willing to accept him as family. After all, it’s just my dear Aunt Bella and myself, and it would be ever so lovely to spend the day with my dearest friend as well.”

“Bella… Arabella?” Aunt Petunia asked. “You’re Mrs Figg’s nephew then? She had mentioned something… Yes, I suppose that’s fine, if Harry would like to.”

“Yes, Aunt Petunia,” Harry exclaimed. “I’d love to spend Christmas with Tom!”

“Well, that’s settled then,” Tom said, smiling at Harry. “I’ll come get you Christmas Eve, you can stay the night. Don’t forget now!”

“I won’t, Tom!” Harry replied, waving to the other boy as he stepped out the door. “I can’t wait!”

The door shut behind Tom, and for a long minute there was silence in the front hall, Aunt Petunia standing stiff and wooden. Finally, she rounded on Harry.

“Right, boy, get your stuff out of the cupboard.”

“Aunt Petunia?” he asked, wondering for a wild moment if she were about to cast him out onto the streets or ship him away to an orphanage as she had promised so many times.

“You’re far too big to be sleeping in that silly little closet anymore,” she blustered, as if it had been Harry’s idea to make the cupboard his bedroom. “Go on now, you’ll be sleeping in Dudley’s second – in your bedroom from now on.”

“Aunt Petunia, why –”

“Just go!”

Harry turned tail and gathered up his meagre belongings from the cupboard and raced up the stairs, flinging himself into what had, moments before, been Dudley’s second bedroom. Now it was his. It was only when the door had closed behind him and he settled onto the smooth covers of the twin bed usually reserved for Piers Polkiss or one of Dudley’s other friends for an overnight stay that he realised – something Tom had said had scared his Aunt. It was ridiculous, really – Tom wasn’t scary, he was perhaps a bit intimidatingly smart, but otherwise he was sweet and kind, at least to Harry. Maybe that was it – Tom actually cared about him, and his relatives, who certainly did not, were reminded that, as their nephew, their cousin, they should also care about him. 

Yes, that might just be it.

Harry was roused late that same night by the sound of an argument between his aunt and uncle – he had often heard them bickering in the wee hours of the morning, but had never had the chance to listen in, as the stairs were too creaky to hazard the trip. Now though – Harry slipped out of his new bedroom’s door without a sound, coming to rest just outside the master bedroom. 

“I’m telling you, Vernon, that boy scares me. There’s something wrong with that one, I’m sure of it.”

“Don’t be daft, dear, he’s just a boy. An odd boy, to be sure, but nothing to fear.”

“You weren’t there,” she snapped. “You didn’t see the ice in his eyes. I’ve never seen such an unnatural look on a child.”

“Do you think he could be – one of them?”

“Oh, I can’t say for sure.” Aunt Petunia sounded about on the edge of a nervous breakdown. “It didn’t seem like he used any – you know what. He didn’t have a, well, you know, a wand –”

“Shut it, woman,” snarled Uncle Vernon. “You know better than to go talking about their nonsense in this house.”

“Oh, calm down you silly man,” Aunt Petunia hissed. “As if you’d know what to look for if one of them showed up in our home. You won’t even let me tell you what they can do –”

“No, because it’s unnatural and wrong,” Uncle Vernon grumbled. “Just tell me, was he one of them or not?”

“I told you, I don’t know. He just looked at me, and in that moment I could tell that he knew we’ve been neglecting the boy.”

Uncle Vernon snorted. “Neglecting? Haven’t we fed and clothed him these last nine years? Haven’t we sent him to school and made sure he’s not got cavities?”

“You know that’s not enough, Vernon – think about what would happen if that boy ran off and told his teachers that we’ve been keeping Harry in the cupboard. Why do you think I had him move all of his belongings into Dudley’s second bedroom today? We have to think about our family, Vernon – if the state decides to take him away, they might take Dudders too. It doesn’t matter if that boy is one of them or not, if Harry is one of them or not. Our own people could ruin us, dear, with just one word from a concerned teacher.”

Harry had heard enough. He raced back to his new bedroom, diving under the covers and shivering. For all his aunt and uncle had threatened him with foster homes and orphanages, it had always been a lie – they could not have him removed from their care without risking everyone finding out exactly how badly they treated him, and if there was anything the Dursleys hated more than Harry, it was appearing as anything less than a normal, loving family.

And what had Aunt Petunia meant, that Tom might be "one of them?' Why would Tom have a wand? Wands weren't real, because they were magic – and magic wasn't real. And hadn't she said something about Harry being "one of them" as well? One of what? Whatever he was, was that why they hated him so much?

Harry fell into a fitful sleep, questions still whirling in his mind.

The weekend crept by, and at last it was Monday – Christmas Eve. Harry spent the day pacing the short length of his small bedroom, waiting for Tom to show up and wishing they had agreed upon a specific time so Harry wouldn't have to sit with all this nervous anticipation building up in him. The longer the day stretched on, the more his doubts grew – what if Tom had changed his mind? What if he had never been serious about the invitation in the first place, and it was all just a cruel joke? No, Tom wouldn't do that, Harry told himself. Tom was kind and polite, and he didn't play pranks. Besides, who would go out of their way to pretend to be friends with someone for four whole months just to betray them in the end?

Harry still launched himself down the stairs when the doorbell rang at four in the afternoon, taking them two at a time. Wrenching the door open, he flung himself onto the front step and buried himself in Tom's waiting arms, the two of them both laughing breathlessly.

"Not hiding in the cupboard this time, I see?" Tom asked with a sly smile.

"Definitely not," Harry replied. "Oh, I've got to get my coat, hang on –"

"Don't forget shoes, Harry," Tom said, indicating the ground with a nod of his head. Harry looked down. Oh – he was standing in a wet dusting of snow in only his socks.

"Er, right," he said sheepishly. "I'll just – be a minute."

Harry dashed back upstairs to change out his wet socks for dry ones, grabbed his coat by the door (an old puffer of Dudley's) and slipped his ratty trainers on. Tom, who was dressed in a dark knee-length pea coat, shiny lace-up leather loafers, and a soft navy scarf that brought out the warm tones of his dark eyes, frowned at him. 

"The wardrobe your guardians supply you with is simply appalling, Harry."

Harry cringed – he knew the other kids laughed at him for his old, worn out clothing, and he didn't want Tom to join them. "It's mostly Dudley's old things," he muttered. "Aunt Petunia doesn't see the point in wasting money on me."

"You deserve so much better," Tom hissed. "Come along then – we're going out tonight, but I have some early presents for you first."

Harry waved goodbye to his aunt, who was standing by the kitchen door with a hand pressed to her mouth in horror, and followed Tom out into the street. "You didn't have to get me anything, you know," Harry said as they made their way around the corner and toward Wisteria Walk. "I don't have any money to get you a present."

"It was my pleasure, Harry, and having you join us for Christmas is the only gift I need," Tom replied with a wave of his hand. "Besides, I am certain that you'll be able to repay me in kind soon, if you want."

Harry seriously doubted that – well, maybe when he was an adult, if he and Tom were still friends. He certainly hoped they would remain friends that long, but he didn't even know if they'd end up at the same secondary school.

"Hey Tom," he ventured, "d'you think we'll get to go to the same school next year? That we'll have the same classes?"

"Of course, Harry," Tom answered. "I know for a fact that we're both going to the same school."

"Oh, good," Harry smiled. "I was afraid I wouldn't have any friends there."

Tom stopped and looked at him very strangely. "Of course you're going to have friends – Harry, everyone is going to want to be your friend."

Harry frowned. "No one wants to be my friend now, except you," he said, puzzled. "Why would next year be any different?"

"Because you're Harry Potter," Tom said simply, as if that explained everything. "Now let's get inside before you catch cold – that coat barely looks warm enough."

Mrs Figg greeted them and took their coats at the door, and the first thing Harry noticed was that the house – which had previously smelled of cabbages – had been greatly tidied up and that a number of her usual cat photos had been taken down and replaced with small portraits of people – her and Tom's family, he supposed, added to make the young boy feel more at home. Staring at the changes around him, Harry found himself being gently steered into the sitting room, where a cup of hot cocoa was thrust into his hands.

"Drink, Harry, it'll warm you up," Tom demanded, holding his own cup on the seat next to him. Harry did so, and found it to be fantastic. He tried to remember if the Dursleys had ever allowed him hot cocoa, but the answer was probably not. He savoured it slowly, unsure of whether he would be able to have more, while Tom left and returned a minute later with a veritable stack of brightly wrapped packages, which he deposited on the coffee table in front of them. 

"Go ahead, Harry."

Harry stared at the pile – these were all for him ? When Tom had mentioned presents, he had assumed he meant a few small things, maybe a book or a new toy just for him, not a dozen or more boxes, each at least a foot in length.

"It's – it's too much, Tom, I don't need all this –"

"Not at all, Harry," Tom insisted, plucking a gift from the pile. "You'll understand when you see what it is – why don't you start with this one?"

Harry took it and tentatively began to disassemble the wrapping paper, taking care not to tear it. His breath was coming in short, panicky gulps, and it seemed to help to work as carefully as possible. When the paper was finally removed, he took extra time to fold it and set it on the table, even though he knew it was likely to be thrown out or burned in the gently crackling fire across the room from him. Harry now had a narrow, nondescript box in his lap. He worked the lid off and opened it to find – a pair of shiny black loafers that perfectly matched Tom's.

He gaped up at his friend, seeing that crafty smile that played about the boy's mouth so frequently. Oh. Oh. That comment about his wardrobe earlier, insisting he deserved better. Oh!

Harry tore through the packages, ripping each one open to reveal garment after well-tailored garment. New pairs of slacks that he wouldn't need to hold up with Uncle Vernon's old belt. Polo shirts and jumpers that weren't stained, torn, or two sizes too big for him. Tom had even added some thick woollen socks, as though he knew how icy Harry's feet could get in the winter. There was even a brand new, perfectly fitted school uniform – Harry really wanted to know how Tom had determined his size. And the pièce de résistance – a pea coat like Tom's own, though significantly shorter, and a soft green scarf that matched his navy blue equivalent.

Harry was in shambles.

"Tom, this is – it's – how long have you been planning this?"

"Since Elise Caraway said you looked like some muddy tramp, and you had to go to the bathroom so everyone wouldn't see how upset you were," Tom replied, his tone even but his eyes dark with unconcealed disdain for their classmates.

“But the Dursleys –“

“If your Muggle relatives even think about touching any of these, they’ll sorely regret it.”

"Tom's been so meticulous and secretive about the whole thing, dear," added Mrs Figg, who had just joined them with a little tray of mince pies. "He picked out every piece, I was just along for the ride. I didn't know until tonight they were all for you, Harry. I've always worried about the state of the clothes those relatives give you, but well..."

"Aunt Bella, you already knew Harry?" Tom asked, wide-eyed.

"Oh, yes," she replied. "The Dursleys used to drop him off with me when they had to go out and about. I must say, it's wonderful to see the two of you getting on so well. I hope you'll come by more often, Harry dear – this old house will be so quiet with the two of you off at Hogwarts next year."

Tom nodded in agreement. Harry just stared at the two of them.

"What – what's Hogwarts?"

Mrs Figg's eyebrows shot into her bangs. "Hogwarts! You know? The boarding school you and Tom will be attending? Have your relatives not explained all this yet?"

"No," Harry insisted, "I'm going to Stonewall. Uncle Vernon said they weren't going to bother with boarding school for me.”

“Well of course they wouldn’t have anything to do with it – I doubt they’d know how to contact The Ministry, anyway. No, dear – your parents made sure you were registered.”

“But – my parents died in a car crash when I was a baby!” Harry protested. “How would they know what school they wanted to send me to already?”

Tom and Mrs Figg were both staring at him in undisguised shock. “Harry,” Mrs Figg said slowly, “Hogwarts is the only school for –”

“Aunt Bella!” Tom interrupted. “I don’t think Harry knows about any of it. I don’t think he even knows about magic.”

“Magic?” Harry echoed. “What are you on about, Tom? Everyone knows that magic isn’t real.”

Mrs Figg shot out of her seat as though it had been suddenly lit aflame. “Oh dear,” she muttered. “Oh dear heavens. Wait here, boys, I must owl Professor Dumbledore at once.”

“But Aunt Bella,” Tom implored, “shouldn’t we explain?”

“I, er – I’m not sure that’s our place, dear.”

“But obviously the Muggles aren’t going to tell him – and he can’t go off to Hogwarts like this, the other students will be miles ahead of him, even the Muggle-borns!”

“Yes, yes, I suppose you’re right… Go on then, Tom, you can explain – this letter absolutely cannot wait.”

“Tom, what’s going on?” Harry was starting to realise that his proclamation of “Magic isn’t real,” had caused a profound shift in the atmosphere, and it was making him increasingly unsettled. Tom sighed and took his hand in his own.

“Harry, Hogwarts is a school for witches and wizards,” he explained. “People like us.”

“What’re you talking about? I’m not a wizard.”

“Of course you are, Harry,” Tom insisted. “Haven’t you ever done something you couldn’t explain, like blow something up when you’re angry, or make someone hurt when they were bullying you?”

“No,” he replied. But that wasn’t quite true, was it? “Well, I suppose there was that one time I was running from Dudley and his gang, and somehow ended up on the school roof. But I’m pretty sure that was just the wind –”

“No, that’s called Apparition, Harry!” Tom sounded genuinely excited about the fact that Harry had ended up looking like a prat who liked to climb school buildings. “That one’s really hard, even for some grown up wizards. What else have you done?”

“Well,” Harry thought back, scratching the back of his head. “I talked to a snake over the summer, and it looked like it understood me. I thought I heard it apologise for startling me, but I couldn’t be sure…”

“Harry!” Tom exclaimed. “That would make you a Parselmouth, just like me. Let me try something – can you understand me?”

“...Yes?”

“Oh, Harry,” Tom enthused. “This is wonderful, we have our own secret language – you’ll have to practise a bit, it takes a while to get used to using it when you’re not talking to a snake. Oh, and I’d not mention it to anyone else, people can get funny ideas about certain types of magic.”

“Tom,” Harry cut in, suddenly feeling a little upset, “If you knew all this, why didn’t you say anything?”

“I thought you knew, Harry,” he replied. “We’re not allowed to talk about it around the Muggles – people without magic – so I thought you were just following the rules. You never even questioned it when I called your relatives Muggles either, so…”

“Why didn’t Mrs Figg ever talk about it though?”

“Aunt Bella is what we call a Squib – her parents and my mother, her sister, were all magical, but she didn’t get any of it. It’s not her fault, of course, but she probably wouldn’t know what to tell you.”

“Prove it,” Harry whispered. “Show me something magic.”

Tom’s hand twitched toward the plate of mince pies, and to Harry’s amazement, one of them floated up from the table and sailed the short distance to him, where he caught it out of the air. He stared down at the pastry in his hands in wonder.

“I can do that?”

“And so much more,” Tom replied. “That’s just the beginning. Oh, Harry, you should have learned all this years ago. I’m sure your relatives were meant to tell you.”

“Maybe they just didn’t know, though,” Harry reasoned. “They don’t believe magic is real.”

“I’m sure they’ve known all along,” Tom countered. “Your mother was a witch, after all, there’s no way your aunt wouldn’t have known she attended Hogwarts every year.”

“Maybe my mum wasn’t a witch. Maybe it was just my dad.”

“No, Harry – Lily Potter is one of the most famous Muggle-born witches in Britain, and your father is famous as well. And you, well –”

“Wait a minute,” Harry was thinking furiously. “You said when we got to secondary school – I guess you meant Hogwarts – that everyone would want to be my friend just because I’m Harry Potter. I’m not famous too, am I?”

“Of course you are,” Tom replied. “I thought you were just being humble when we met, I had no idea –”

“Is that why you wanted to be my friend, then?” Harry demanded, feeling rather betrayed. “You said I was… more interesting. Did that just mean ‘more famous,’ Tom?”

“No, I promise,” Tom said, suddenly sounding distressed. “You are, Harry, you’re the most interesting person I’ve ever met, and not because you’re famous. You were the only one out of all of our class to actually care that my parents died and not just write me off for being the new kid. There will be a lot of kids at Hogwarts, though, who only care about how famous you are – that’s why I had to tell you, as soon as I realised you didn’t know.”

“Oh,” Harry said, feeling somewhat mollified. “Well that’s okay then. Can you tell me about my parents, Tom? Why they’re famous? And can you show me that floating trick?”

“I don’t know if I’m the right person to tell you about your parents,” Tom sighed. “I was just a baby when they died, so I only know what I’ve been told by grown ups. You could ask Aunt Bella when she comes back, I’m sure she knows about some of it, at least – but I can definitely show you how to levitate a pie.”

Chapter Text

Lord Voldemort floated, insensate, for what seemed like hours, years, seconds, fleeting moments, decades. There was nothing here, just fear and dark and cold. This was death. His Horcruxes had failed, and he was dead. He had been right – all those fanciful stories about moving to a new plane of existence and understanding, meeting your loved ones again, being reborn to start anew, they were nothing more than fairy tales. Death was endless, indescribable loneliness. And yet… there was something – a light, perhaps, or a warmth. He reached toward it, craving something, anything other than this bleak existence.

And then he opened his eyes. 

The moment before his death and the moment of his rebirth came crashing together, like two walls that should have forever remained upright and apart being pulled against one another in a terrible, ground-rending earthquake. The void was gone – it had never even been, even if he could still feel the tendrils of memory surrounding him. He wasn’t dead, he was alive, on his back, staring up at an endless sky through the broken beams of the house he had entered with the intent of killing his prophesied nemesis.

The next several hours were a blur – the giant oaf, Rubeus, came inexplicably to scoop him from where he lay and fly him off into the night to the Leaky Cauldron, where several dozen people oohed and aahed over him. It made no sense, these were his enemies – they should be cursing him into the ground, but instead they cooed at him as if he were some great victor. He struggled against Rubeus’ grip, but could barely move in his massive arms. He wasn’t sure he could move at all, if he were honest with himself.

Then, after a day of sitting up with Rubeus in a spare room at the Cauldron, intermittently having strange, mushy foods popped into his mouth (which opened against his wishes, he began to notice), the man scooped him up again and before he knew it, they were flying off into the night once more. They landed at last on a street of row houses – almost certainly Muggle, as there was not even a tingle of magic in the air. This was just as confusing as all of the day's events, he pondered, looking out across the identical units under heavily lidded eyes – why bring him here, of all places, to a Muggle-infested suburb where he would almost certainly rain down death and destruction?

But as Rubeus carried him, he realised suddenly just how very small he was. Of course the half-giant dwarfed him, but this was different. And hadn’t he seen his own hands, reaching out eagerly and unbidden as the man spoon-fed him? Those weren’t his hands, those were the hands of a child – of a baby. Had he been wrong about death? Had he been reborn, a new life in a new world, with new purpose? Why then couldn’t he seem to move of his own volition? Why was he, apparently, a passenger within his own body?

The answer came tantalisingly close as he saw Albus Dumbledore and a vaguely familiar woman – another professor at Hogwarts, he thought, maybe a member of the Order – bending over him, looking rather sad and worried. Whoever he had become, he was someone important to them – to his opposition. But they fretted over a scar on his forehead, not who he was, not who he had been. 

And then, Rubeus, in what was not his finest hour (if he had ever had one) nearly smothered him with what Voldemort supposed was meant to be a kiss goodbye, and broke into a wordless howl. It was rather annoying to see that the boy who had wailed over the loss of his pet Acromantula felt the same way, apparently, about him. Voldemort did not want to be cared about by the half-giant, he wanted the man to revile him, as he did him. But then Rubeus said something that revealed the horrible truth.

“...And poor little Harry, off ter live with Muggles!”

This was not his body. He was not reborn. He was not Lord Voldemort. He was a mere fragment of soul, the one he had intended to syphon off into a Horcrux after Harry’s murder, somehow rent asunder and attaching himself to the child’s own soul after something had gone terribly wrong. Hadn’t he heard those at the Leaky Cauldron giddily discuss something about “defeat” and “freedom” and “an end to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named?” Yes, Harry was his Horcrux, he was his prisoner, and Voldemort was… gone.

Not-Voldemort dove back into the void, fleeing from his captor, seeking that strange beacon of warmth and light.

He resurfaced now and then over the years. At first it was curiosity. The half-giant had said Harry was going to live with Muggles, after all, and he had to see for himself if they would treat the boy any better than he had fared at the hands of the women who ran Wool's Orphanage. It was for research purposes only, he told himself. He had only lived with one type of Muggles, probably the worst type, and perhaps these Muggles, being Harry’s own family, would be better.

To his disgust, they were worse.

“Mama, mama,” the boy cried, bouncing on his toes in the crib that held him prisoner in the living room. “‘Arry, ‘arry, ‘arry!”

“Yes boy, that’s your name,” a thin, pinched woman snapped, carrying a jar of mushy vegetables over to him. “And I’m not your mother. Now open your mouth and eat, so that horrible man doesn’t come down upon us and turn us all into toads.”

Not-Voldemort – no, Harry – grimaced at the sensation of a spoon loaded with mashed and boiled carrots being forced into his mouth. The flavour was both sweet and savoury, not to mention enjoyable – but since the woman hadn’t waited for Harry to be ready, most of it ended up on his face, and Harry raised his arms to wipe it away, spreading it further and painting his hands orange.

The thin woman scowled.

“Now look what a mess you’ve made, Harry,” she seethed. “And I’ll have to be the one to clean it up, won’t I? Your mother should be the one tidying up after you, but she had to go and throw her life away for her silly, stupid, magic war – and now I’m the one who has to pick up the pieces.”

She left for quite a while after that, and when she finally returned with a warm washcloth, her face blotchy and stained with tears, Harry had already licked most of the mushy carrots off his own hands ineptly, leaving only the remaining mess on his face to be cleared away.

Not-Voldemort fled once again into the darkness.

The second time he returned from his chase after that strange, beguiling light, it was to a sea of inky darkness. Not-Voldemort pulled back in fear – there were things in the dark, bad things, things which he could not control. But Harry, three years old now, was calm and unafraid in the dark. This was his space, the place where no one else went, where the big loud adults and the mean other child who lived with him couldn't touch him.

It was when the light streamed back in that the fear began.

Big hands reached for him, yanking him out of that soft, easy darkness and shoving him through the doorway into the kitchen. "Go, boy. Eat your breakfast and make it quick." Harry winced away from the hands, and Not-Voldemort found himself flooded with rage. How dare they, these Muggles, raise their hands against a magical child? No matter that this boy was his prophesied downfall – the child was a wizard, and these animals were not fit to clean his boots, let alone treat him so abhorrently.

The child finished his paltry meal of beans and toast, and was again locked unceremoniously in his cupboard – because that was the source of the all-encompassing darkness Not-Voldemort had surfaced into. These Muggles shoved Harry around and fed him sub-par meals and kept him locked, out of sight, out of mind, in a cupboard not fit to house an animal. And he had done this to him. He had killed his parents and left him to the mercies of people who would never understand him, never treat him as human, never offer the kind of care a child needed.

He should never have tried to kill him. No, what he should have done when he was still Lord Voldemort was take the boy, raise him steeped in power and darkness, and create in him a towering adversary for Dumbledore and his followers. Oh, the glorious irony that might have been, for the Order of the Phoenix to engage him in battle and see, facing them, the very same boy upon whom they had pinned their salvation so many years before. As it was, he could not even seem to influence the child, the way he knew his counterparts could others, flitting into their minds when they came too close to one of his Horcruxes. Neither could he seem to influence the Muggles who were supposed to be raising Harry, not keeping him in a cage.

So he did the only thing he could do – he fled.

But he would return, again and again, each time to a new horror – Harry, standing on a wobbly stool and trying to flip a piece of bacon that he wouldn’t be allowed to eat, rewarded for his efforts with burns from splattered grease. Harry, being punched repeatedly in the face by his cousin until his glasses broke. Harry, trying valiantly to tear up a weed with his too thin hands and arms, his aunt tutting unappreciatively from a garden chair. With each new revelation, Not-Voldemort’s previous determination to kill the boy fell away, replaced gradually by a strange draw toward the child who had unknowingly become refuge for an errant piece of the Dark Lord’s soul.

But this change disturbed him as much as it intrigued him, and so each time, he let the void take him away.

"Why are you always chasing that light?"

Not-Voldemort looked up. He had surfaced again, without intending, and he was seated across from Harry, now maybe four or five years old, at the other end of his cupboard. The boy had grown tall enough to reach the thin chain that controlled the light bulb, so it was no longer pitch black and Not-Voldemort could actually see him.

"What?"

"The light. Sometimes when I dream, I dream about you. It's always the same dream. It's dark, and you're trying to catch a bright light that keeps getting away."

"You've seen me?"

He could no longer bring himself to hate the boy – the child who had been predicted to kill him but had instead become his home for the past half decade. He couldn't even bring himself to employ his usual tactic of cold, charming manipulation. He was tired, he was lonely, and he was talking to someone again, for the first time in years. He may have been alive, but in a life alternating between living as a silent passenger in someone else's head and an endless exhausting chase, any variation was welcome – even a conversation with a child.

Harry nodded. "What do you think will happen when you catch the light?"

Not-Voldemort stared at him. "I don't know."

"Then why are you chasing it?"

"It's warm."

"Are you cold?" Harry fretted. "You can have my blanket if you're cold. That robe looks warm though."

Not-Voldemort looked down at himself. Indeed, he was wearing the same robes that he wore the night he had tried to kill the child sitting across from him, though they absolutely swam on him now. He looked at his hands – they were those of a child.

"Harry, what do I look like to you?"

"Huh? You're my age, or maybe older because you're taller than me. You have black hair like me but it's combed better than mine. How come you're in my cupboard? And how did you know my name?"

"We're not in your cupboard, Harry – this is a dream."

"Oh. I wonder if I can get out, then."

"You can always get out, even when you're awake."

"But Aunt Petunia locks it."

"Look at the back of the lock, Harry – do you see that little slot? It's just a simple latch, if you put something thin and flat in that slot and turn it, it will open the lock. Watch." Not-Voldemort brought a coin into the non-existence of the dream and used it to jimmy the lock open. "There, see?"

"I don't have a coin, though."

"Look for one, next time they let you out. Or anything that will fit into the slot." Everything was starting to go hazy. "You're waking up, Harry. Don't forget. And they can't lock you away forever, you'll be starting school soon. Make sure they let you. It's illegal for them not to."

"Thank you. I will. I hope I see you again. Do you have a name?"

But the dream faded out and once again he found himself in the void, the name "Tom" lingering, unspoken in the air.

The light was closer than ever.

The next time he surfaced it was the middle of the night. Harry had successfully let himself out of his cupboard, and was sneaking toward the back of the house. Not-Voldemort felt a strange swell of pride within him, for the boy who had remembered, or had been clever and figured it out. He made his way through the kitchen, stopping by the fridge to fetch a bottle of milk, but instead of feeding himself he slipped out the back door and into Aunt Petunia's moonlit garden.

Harry made his way to the hedges, crouching down next to them and lifting some branches out of the way to reveal an absolutely tiny kitten, surely too small to be away from her mother. Harry poured some of the milk into a shallow plate he must've left out earlier and gingerly lifted the helpless creature to the plate, encouraging her to drink.

"Go on, little kitty," he whispered. "You need to drink more milk if you want to grow up big and strong." Harry's emotions for the kitten were overwhelming and heady – there was sadness, fear, hope, and something Not-Voldemort couldn't pinpoint, something warm and restorative, something that made the ragged edges of his soul feel almost whole again.

Whatever it was, it was clear it was the core emotion that defined Harry, just as anger and lust for power had always defined him, even when he was still just Tom and locked away from the magical world in an orphanage. Harry's inner world was so much warmer and fuller than his had ever been, and he hated it. He despised that this child who was mistreated so badly could still be driven by something pure and good, a feeling he suddenly secretly craved to be directed at himself even as he hated, hated, hated it.

In the end, the closest he had come was being on the receiving end of his Death Eaters' slavish devotion to him, of Bellatrix's unwelcome lust and desire. He had always thought that it was everything he could ever dream of, these people who would kneel before him and swear Unbreakable Vows and throw their lives away if he commanded it. Now, awash in Harry’s… devotion? to the kitten, he realised it all paled in comparison.

Sickened by it, by the realisation that he was as good as dead and he had never even come close to securing the one thing he now wanted more than anything, he slipped back into the void, and the light – the light was practically on top of him now, so close he could almost touch it.

He surfaced again in a dream, and this time he noticed Harry before Harry could spot him. The boy was curled into a ball, his knees tucked up to his face, and he was sobbing bitterly, the sound of one who has just lost their entire world. Not-Voldemort crawled the short length of the cupboard to him, careful not to stumble over the vast lengths of cloth tangled around him, and placed one hand on the boy’s head. Harry gasped and looked up.

“It’s you again,” he whispered.

Not-Voldemort nodded. “The kitten died.”

Harry’s face screwed up in agony, and fresh tears cascaded down his cheeks. “How did you know?”

Not-Voldemort could feel his sadness – no, his grief, he realised. It was not an emotion Lord Voldemort had ever experienced, not having cared enough for anyone or anything to truly feel bereft over their loss, only experiencing rage when those few things he did feel some level of connection to were lost, damaged, or destroyed. It was almost as heady as that other emotion, the one for which Not-Voldemort had yet to decide on a name, and it carried a shadow of that same warmth as well. Awash in Harry’s grief, Not-Voldemort also realised that any shadow of enmity he had felt for the boy had faded long ago, and was now replaced by the frustrating need to protect him as Harry had tried to do for the kitten.

“I saw you trying to care for her,” he replied. “You did very well, Harry.”

“I didn’t. She died anyway,” Harry sniffled.

“You did everything within your ability to keep her safe,” Not-Voldemort insisted. “She was just too little. Kittens aren’t supposed to be without their mothers so young.” He resisted the urge to tell Harry that it was just an animal, because something told him he wouldn’t understand that. Harry had valued the kitten’s life, even though it held no intrinsic meaning. His Horcrux did not think or feel in the same terms as he did.

Instead, he did something unthinkable.

Not-Voldemort dragged himself up next to Harry and looped an arm around him, tucking him in against his shoulder. Harry froze for a moment, but then leaned in, sliding his own arm around Not-Voldemort’s back, clinging to him. And if it felt like coming home, holding his crying, shaking Horcrux in his arms like this, he would never tell another soul – not that he ever could, of course.

“I found her in the bushes a few nights ago,” Harry told him between sniffles. “I didn’t know where her mummy went. She was all alone, like me.”

“You’re not alone, I’m here.”

Harry nodded into his shoulder.

“They let me go to school, just like you said they had to,” Harry said. “I’m learning how to read now.”

“You’ll be the fastest reader in your class before you know it, Harry.”

“I wish you were at school with me. The other kids don’t like me. But you never even told me your name,” Harry sobbed. “I woke up too fast last time.”

“It’s... Tom,” he replied hesitantly. “You can call me Tom.”

“Tom,” Harry repeated. “That's a nice name. Tom. Have you always been here?”

“Yes Harry,” Not-Voldemort said. “I’m a part of you. I’ll always be here.”

“Sometimes I don’t see you for ages and ages,” Harry whined. “And even when I do, you’re always running. You almost catched the light, last time. What if you go away when you do?”

“I promise, Harry,” Not-Voldemort reassured him, “even if I caught the light, I would still be with you. Even if you didn’t see me for a very long time.”

“Tha’s good,” Harry mumbled, clinging to Tom fiercely. And as he did, that same feeling of warmth and light and joy surrounded him, pulling him out of Harry’s arms and back into the void. Harry reached for him in terror.

“Tom?” he cried. “Tom!”

“Harry!”

But he was gone, floating once more and ripped from the dream.

Harry shot up in his cupboard, awake, heart racing, the dream fading, the name “Tom” on his lips. Then he laid back down, to dream, to forget, and to wake the next day with no conscious memory of a dark haired boy who had held him and taken care of him in his saddest moment.

Not-Voldemort floated untethered in the void once more – but now it was no void, it was awash with colour and sound and life. He had caught the light, or rather, the light had caught him, and he finally understood, grudgingly, that Dumbledore had been right.

The light – the warmth that the boy felt for first the kitten, and now him – was Harry’s love.

There truly was no greater power – not the Killing Curse, not the depths of the Dark Arts he had so thoroughly studied, not even the creation of Horcruxes, thereby conquering death itself. Harry’s love of life, for himself, for the people he barely remembered who had once held him so tenderly, and now, apparently, for a boy named Tom – it surpassed all, for it never ran out.

Not-Voldemort basked in it, bathed in it, drank from it – and yet it never needed replenishing. For an unending age, it seemed, he simply floated, nourished and sated by that love. It hurt as much as it soothed, but that was the nature of healing, wasn’t it? A scab would itch, a broken bone would ache, but that only meant that the body was being knit back together.

Could a tattered soul be healed too, let alone a tiny fraction of a whole? The answer, apparently, was yes: awash in so much love, Not-Voldemort felt himself be restored, inch by scathing inch. At times he struggled against it, as a small child might do against the warm waters of a bath. At other times, he leaned into it, yearning to be made whole and healthy again. 

And finally, what seemed an eternity later, he resurfaced.

He came back into existence gasping and panting in the dark, leaning against a rough wooden door. He stood there for a long minute, waiting to see what Harry meant to do next, but the sensation of being carried away in a body that was not his own never came. Experimentally, he took a shaky step forward, and his legs – his legs – obeyed. He had been resurrected, as Horcruxes were meant to be. He was back, Lord Voldemort once again, presumably having successfully consumed the life and soul of the person who was closest to his Horcrux, that person being – 

No, please, not Harry.

He turned shakily and opened the cupboard door – for that was what he had found himself leaning against – preparing for the worst: Harry, who had cradled him so gently for so long, dead on the floor. But with the lock turned, the door opened, he found the now ten year old boy sound asleep but still breathing, against all odds, against any logic. The boy lived on, having restored Lord Voldemort to life via love alone. 

And that should have been the end of it. Harry had served his purpose as a Horcrux and indeed would continue to, as Voldemort could still sense the connection between them: a tiny piece of his new self, as small as he had once been, was left behind in the boy, destined to sleep forever in a sea of endless warmth and love. He could leave now and reunite with the other part of himself as a Horcrux-created body was meant to do. He could call his Death Eaters back to his side, raise the forces of his army, and begin his campaign against Dumbledore and the Order anew.

But that would mean leaving Harry. His Harry, the one who had nurtured him back to life, the one who he had once thought he should take to raise as his own right hand man. He could still do so, but it would naturally raise complications – his counterpart wouldn’t understand the need to care for the boy, nor would his Death Eaters – and yet he couldn’t bear to leave him at the mercy of his relatives. His decision made, he reached out, intent on secreting the child away – and then he saw his hands.

The hands of a child.

He was no longer Not-Voldemort, nor was he Voldemort himself. He was Tom Marvolo Riddle, age ten. The reality of his new life swirled around him – he did not just look like a child, he felt like a child, all of the youthful impetuousness revived within him, his lifetime before dulled and blunted at the edges. He could recall the magic he learned, the Dark Arts he had so tirelessly sought out, but it was just shadows of it all with none of the detail. He could not even remember the specifics on how to create another Horcrux, something he had once done with ease so many times before. He had been reborn in Harry’s image, a boy, the same age, just like him.

Tom shuddered.

Gone in an instant were any plans to steal him away. Gone were the plans to rebuild his following. He was just a child – a cunning, clever child, with more knowledge and understanding of the world than a ten year old should probably have, but hadn’t that been the case for him the first time he was ten? Yes, even then he had known how to survive, as he would do now, in a world so violently opposed to his existence. In a way, it was freeing – he could begin again, and if he plotted carefully, he could do so with Harry by his side, his Horcrux, his friend, the only one he had ever cared to have. 

Even as he pondered this, the beginnings of a plan were starting to form. He closed the cupboard door quietly so as not to rouse Harry, and slipped soundlessly from number four, Privet Drive, taking great care not to trip on the still-over large cloak.

The first part was ludicrously simple. Having nicked some appropriately sized clothing from a drying line in a neighbour’s yard, he made his way around the corner to Wisteria Walk. He had picked up snippets of Harry’s life while being nurtured back to health by his love, and recalled that he was often looked after by a widowed Squib who lived nearby, no doubt placed there by Dumbledore to keep an eye on the boy. She was not very effective as a tie between Harry and the magical world, but with a little manipulation, she would serve well as Tom’s “guardian” and a means by which he could remain connected to Harry.

The first time around, Tom had already been adept by age eight at manipulating people just by willing them to do what he desired of them. Now, with a faded but still better grasp of the laws of magic and Legilimency, he ripped into the Squib’s mind with ease and found exactly what he needed to reinstate himself in this new world. The woman had had a sister, a witch, who was married to a Muggle. The two had died at sea just a few months ago, and with some careful manipulation, Tom inserted himself in her memories of them – the sister’s illegitimate child, born shortly before she met her future husband and fathered by a terrifying dark wizard who she would not describe, but for whom she named her son, Tom Marvolo Riddle – the Second. 

It was a shame to keep his name, such a common, Muggle name, but it would put fear into the hearts of those few who had known him long enough to still remember who the old Tom Riddle once was. He relished the anticipation of meeting Dumbledore again – the look of terror in the man’s eyes as they fell upon a boy who could not possibly be anyone other than Lord Voldemort reborn. It would no doubt be a nightmare that he could not share, for Tom was certain the fool had never told another soul who Lord Voldemort used to be, jealously hoarding his secrets as though they made him special.

With the modifications in place, he pulled himself from the woman’s mind and waited to see whether he had been successful. To his satisfaction, his new “aunt” looked down at him fondly and pulled him into a crushing hug.

“Oh Tom,” she whispered sadly. “I’m so pleased you’ve come to stay with me. I can’t bring back your parents, but I’ll do my best to take care of you.”

The next bit was tricky, but with care he pulled it off seamlessly. He had “Aunt Bella” write a letter to the Ministry, relieved to find that despite having no magic, the woman did have an owl and could keep in touch with wizarding Britain. The letter explained that her nephew, Tom Marvolo Riddle II, had come to live with her, that his mother had kept him homeschooled and never intended to send him to Hogwarts out of fear the biassed community would not accept a child of such mysterious parentage. Now that Arabella Figg was his guardian, however, she wished for her sister’s son to live a more normal life. They received word back quickly that Tom had been successfully enrolled at Hogwarts, and that he should receive his letter the following summer.

Then came his placement within the Muggle world. Over the following days, Tom used his powers over the mind to influence countless Muggles and forged document after document, weaving a careful web that tied him back to his “parents,” – a birth certificate, hospital records, even a “miraculously” discovered updated will in which his “stepfather” had left a tidy sum to Tom and future control of the estate when he came of age. It wasn’t a strictly necessary addition, as Tom knew more than enough ways to secure funds and housing, but he wasn’t about to let such a fortuitous opportunity go to waste. Besides, while he was quite certain that Harry would gain access to the Potter fortune within the next year, he already knew that he was going to want to provide for the boy what those filthy Muggles had so long denied him.

And that was the final step – securing a place in Harry’s life. With his machinations complete, all done in secret right under the oblivious Squib’s nose, he had her trot him down to the local primary school, St Grogory’s, and enrol him in Harry’s year. Slipping into the administrator’s mind was easy, and with a simple twist he had the man place him in Mrs Blanchard’s class, his name on the list right after Harry’s. Perfect.

His work complete at last, Tom could finally rest. The final days of summer flew by in a blur of giddy anticipation and the doting attentions of “Aunt Bella,” and before long it was the first of September. Tom stood in front of the wall mirror in his guardian’s former guest bedroom, the one that had become his, for a long while, smoothing the lines of his uniform and making sure his hair was perfectly coiffed. First impressions were important, and not just on Harry – he wanted the other students to look at him and know, instantly, that here was a young man of impeccable breeding, aloof, cold, and powerful. He was not to be bothered, and by extension, once he had established himself in his life, neither was Harry. His older self had been a fool, he thought, to forget the tools of charm and allow himself to turn into, both mentally and physically, a monster.

He was the first to the classroom, greeting the teacher with a genteel, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs Blanchard,” and an outstretched hand, and the woman practically melted at the impeccable manners coming from a child so young. She showed him to his seat, and by the name tags on the table, Tom noticed with a thrill of glee that he would be sharing it with Harry. 

Harry himself finally filed in a while later, trailing behind the obnoxious lump that was both his cousin and tormentor. It took all of Tom’s resolve not to jump from his seat and introduce himself – he would let Harry come to him, they would be sharing this desk for the entire year, after all. It did rankle slightly when he didn’t even react to Tom, but he supposed that Harry must not have remembered the dreams they shared, the years of watching him run for that beautiful light – and Harry shied away from his classmates in general.

Eventually though, Tom caught Harry staring at him and smiled in triumph. He leaned in and whispered, “You’re Harry, right?” and by the expression on Harry’s companionship-starved face, he knew he had already won him over.

Within days the boys were inseparable.

Chapter Text

Thirty minutes after leaving to write to Dumbledore, Mrs Figg returned to the sitting room, where Harry had begun to master the levitation trick Tom had shown him. He couldn’t send the pies soaring gracefully through the air like Tom had, but he could get one to float for a couple of seconds before it went crashing back to the tray.

“That’s very good, Harry,” Tom congratulated him when he managed to hold the pastry up for more than ten seconds. “You’ll be an amazing wizard in no time at all. Remember though, once we’re in school, they don’t let you do magic over summer term anymore.”

“Was it magic?” Harry asked. “What you did to my aunt and cousin, I mean? How you scared them into being nice to me?”

“Well,” replied Tom, “I suppose so, yes. It’s something I figured out when I was younger, that I could make people scared of me if they were mean. I didn’t know it was magic back then.”

“Can you teach me how to do it?”

“Harry,” Tom chided, “You’re far too kind to want anyone to think you’re scary. I don’t think you’d like it very much.”

“And you do?” Harry marvelled.

Tom shrugged. “Sometimes. With some people. Not you though, I’d never try to scare you.”

“Alright boys,” Mrs Figg said, stepping away from the window where she had sent her letter off with an owl (a real life owl). “Do we still want to go out on the town tonight?”

Harry bit his lip. He was feeling rather exhausted from the whirlwind of a day he was having, but he didn’t want to let Tom down. Luckily, Tom answered for him.

“I think our dear Harry is a bit overwhelmed, Aunt Bella. Maybe we should stay in tonight and let him get used to the idea of magic.”

“Of course, dear,” Mrs Figg said kindly. “Oh, I’ve just had a wonderful idea – why don’t we go out tomorrow and show Harry around Diagon Alley? Everything will be closed of course, but the festivities will be in full swing.”

“What do you think, Harry?” Tom asked, smiling.

Harry, who had never even been included in a regular Christmas, felt excitement flood through him. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what a magical Christmas looked like. “Yes!” he answered quickly. “Oh, yes please!”

“Well that’s settled, then. Now, why don’t we play a nice game of charades to pass the time before I tuck you two in?”

“Actually, Aunt Bella,” Tom cut in, “I think Harry has some questions that I wasn’t able to answer for him.”

Harry shuffled his feet nervously against Mrs Figg’s fraying persian rug. That’s right – he had wanted to know more about his parents. Now, with the reality of everything setting in, he was feeling rather trepidatious about the whole thing. What if his parents were famous because they did something bad? He knew his aunt didn’t like to talk about her sister – maybe it was because she was actually a terrible person, like that Wicked Witch from that one movie Harry had managed to watch a few minutes of before Uncle Vernon had caught him and given him a bellowing earful. On the other hand, if he wanted to know what he was famous for, he was going to have to ask…

“Er – Mrs Figg?” he finally said. “Tom told me I was famous, but he didn’t say why.”

“Oh dear,” Mrs Figg sighed, scratching her chin. “I’m not sure Dumbledore would’ve wanted me to be the one telling you about that, Harry. I’m not even sure he wanted you to know you were famous. It’s hard to tell with that man.”

“But that’s not fair!” Tom protested in indignation. “Why should Harry go off to Hogwarts not knowing what happened when everyone else will know his name? He's in our history books, for Salazar’s sake!”

“You do have a point,” she conceded. “Well, it’s a bit of a grim topic for Christmas Eve, but you’ll have to learn about it sooner or later. You see, Harry, when you were just a baby, there was a very bad wizard who wanted to rule the world...”

Hours later, in the dark of Tom’s room where Harry lay on the lower portion of his friend’s trundle bed, dressed snugly in new green cotton pyjamas and ensconced in a fluffy duvet, Harry found himself unable to sleep. “Tom,” he finally whispered. “Are you still awake too?”

“Mm,” Tom murmured in confirmation, sitting up in the darkness above him. “Are you alright, Harry?”

“I can’t stop thinking about Volde – I mean, You-Know-Who.”

“Voldemort, Harry. You can say his name, I’m not afraid of him.”

Harry snickered. “You’re not afraid of anything .”

“Are you afraid of him?”

“I dunno,” Harry replied honestly. “I mean, he killed my mum and dad. He tried to kill me. What if what your aunt said was true, and he is still out there, just waiting to get strong enough and come back to try again? What if he does, and I’m not ready yet?”

“If Voldemort does ever show up to try and kill you, I’ll just make him scared of me and then he’ll run away and never come back.”

“Tom!” Harry gasped. “You heard what she said, he’s a very evil, very powerful wizard! I don’t think you’ll be able to scare him like you did my cousin and aunt.”

“No,” Tom agreed, “he’ll be much more terrified of me than your relatives will ever be.”

“Tom!” Harry launched himself up and over the edge of the bed, seizing his down pillow and using it to wallop his friend in the midsection. Tom stared at him in shock for a moment before his brows furrowed and his jaw snapped closed with a click. He grabbed his own pillow and proceeded to smack Harry over the head with it, and the momentum had them both tumbling onto the floor, tussling and laughing, collapsing at last in a tangle of limbs and feathers that had escaped during the fight.

“I can’t believe you hit me with a pillow,” Tom said, plucking a soft feather from Harry’s nose. “No one has ever had the audacity.”

“You were being a prat, Tom,” Harry replied. “I’m serious, I don’t want you getting yourself killed just because some evil wizard has it out for me for some reason.”

Tom took one of Harry’s hands in his own and squeezed it. “I’m sure that if Voldemort does return, you’ll be strong enough to defeat him again – and this time I’ll be there to help. I’ll do my very best not to get myself killed, though.”

“You promise?”

Tom wound his arm around Harry, tucking him against his side, and Harry had never felt so warm and protected. “I promise.”

Dumbledore paced his office, his brow furrowed and his jaw set as he re-read the most concerning letter Arabella Figg had ever sent him. They had kept in frequent correspondence over the years, mostly to keep him updated on how Harry Potter was faring. Unfortunately, Arabella had never been able to provide much insight into the boy’s well-being, as Harry was reportedly quite tight-lipped about his home and school life. She had reported misgivings now and again over the years – Harry seemed too thin, all of Harry’s clothes were ratty old hand-me-downs from his cousin, Harry’s glasses were broken again – but there was nothing to directly indicate that the boy was being horribly mistreated, as she also reported that he was outgoing, kind, and had an overall happy demeanour. Yes, he was aware that children of abuse could be perfectly capable of hiding it, but occasional misgivings weren’t enough to send someone out to investigate, not when it could too easily draw the attention of those who still supported Voldemort.

The letter he held now, dropped on his plate the night before in the middle of dinner, changed everything.

“Albus,” she wrote, “you may not be aware, but my nephew Tom has been staying with me since his parents died. He’s a few months older than Harry – he’ll be starting at Hogwarts in the same year this coming September, and I was delighted to find out that the two of them are in the same class in primary school and have become fast friends.”

This was his first concern – as far as he knew, Arabella didn’t have a nephew. At the very least, she had never spoken of one. He did know that she had a sister who had married a Muggle man and stayed mostly separate from the rest of the magical community, even more so than Arabella did. It wasn’t inconceivable that she had had a child, but he was certain she had never registered one to attend Hogwarts – he would have to double check his own personal records later. And the name – Tom. It was a common name, to be sure, but even all these years later it gave Albus pause. The fact that an unknown child named Tom of all things had suddenly surfaced and was best friends with Harry Potter was almost too neat and tidy, too coincidental to be brushed off.

“To my surprise,” the letter continued, “Tom invited Harry over for Christmas – apparently his Muggle relatives don’t include him in the holiday and barely consider him family. I am now highly concerned for the boy’s wellbeing. While I didn’t realise at first that the boy my nephew had befriended at school was Harry, Tom’s told me more about him in just the last few months than I’ve been able to get out of him in years. I’ve told you before that the Dursleys don’t provide him with properly fitted clothing, but I didn’t know that this extended to his uniform, for which he’s bullied terribly at school by his classmates. Tom is convinced his relatives are starving him as well, or at the very least not providing near enough food for a growing boy. But Albus, perhaps worst of all, they’ve never told him he’s a wizard. The boy knows nothing of our world.”

That was damning . Albus knew the moment he read that sentence that he had made the wrong choice so many years prior. He had hoped the Dursleys would take Harry in as one of their own, or at least provide him with shelter and make sure he was fed and clothed, but while he never expected them to connect strongly with the world Harry belonged to, he had left explicit instructions that, when appropriate to do so, he be made aware of exactly how and why his parents had died. That Harry might enter magical Britain without even the faintest idea of who he was to them and the danger he might still find was unthinkable.

And they hadn’t even told him he was magic.

“Tom’s explaining Hogwarts and magic as I write this letter. But Albus, someone’s going to have to tell him about You-Know-Who, and I don’t know that I’m the right person for the job. Tom was just a baby too when it all happened, so he doesn’t remember the terror of it all. This is, simply put, a disaster.”

And it was, wasn’t it?

Albus had a long day ahead of him. He had to owl Arabella back, assuring her that it was fine to tell Harry about Lord Voldemort, that he was meant to be told long ago, and that he would attend to the situation with the Dursleys posthaste. Then, he was going to have to contact the Board of Governors and inquire about reviewing the list of new students registered for the upcoming school year, even if the answer was likely to be no – aside from the names of Muggle-born students, records were routinely sealed by the Ministry, a decision made years prior at the behest of the older families to maintain their privacy. And all this was on top of the normal activities for the day, which of course included the festivities and the Christmas Feast. 

It was at this moment his window opened of its own accord, and an owl dropped a second letter into his waiting hands. He unfurled it to find just a single line.

Albus! The Dursleys have been keeping Harry locked in a cupboard!

 ~ Arabella Figg

Albus sighed. It wasn’t often he felt all of his 109 years, but today was proving to be an exception.

It was Christmas morning at last, and Harry found himself being fussed over by Tom, who was convinced he could do something about those wild locks on his head. Harry was less sure, but enjoyed the attention – the last time his aunt had bothered to do anything about his hair she had practically shaved him bald, so to experience someone trying to tame it in a more affectionate way was rather pleasing.

“I don’t understand,” Tom grumbled, working a comb through a particularly stubborn curl, “why it won’t lie flat. It just springs back up like it has a life of its own.”

“It’s always been like that, Tom,” Harry said. “It even grew back overnight once when my aunt cut it too short.”

Tom snickered. “You used accidental magic to make your hair grow?” he asked, incredulous. “You are positively unbelievable.”

Harry flushed. “You should have seen how terrible it looked, what was I supposed to do?”

Tom just smiled and hummed, attempting and failing to comb another lock into submission.

He fussed over Harry’s shirt too, a soft cream button-up, making sure the lines were crisp and smooth. Harry wasn’t sure what the use was, since he’d be bundling up in a sweater and that lovely pea coat on top of it, but it was nice being pampered for the first time that he could recall. He wondered if his parents had doted on him like this – he supposed they probably must’ve, but he couldn’t remember it if they had.

“Boys!” Mrs Figg called from below. “Come on down, now, I’ve got breakfast ready!”

The two of them trotted down the stairs, hand in hand, surrounded by the gently wafting scent of toast and bacon. They entered the dining room and Harry’s stomach growled emphatically when he saw a plate already made up for him, loaded with fried eggs, bacon and sausage, and paired with a glass of cold orange juice. Tom snickered and led Harry to his seat.

“That’s right, Harry, eat up,” Mrs Figg said. “I know those relatives of yours can’t possibly be feeding you enough, I hope Dumbledore has a strong word with them…”

“Why’d Dumbledore leave Harry with the Muggles anyway, Aunt Bella?” Tom demanded, cutting into a slice of bacon. “If Voldemort’s still out there –” Mrs Figg shuddered – “then wouldn’t he be safer living with a wizard family?”

“I couldn’t possibly say for sure, dear,” she said. “All I know is that he didn’t want our Harry here to grow up burdened with fame – it can do funny things to the head, you know. As for why he left him with those… Well, Dumbledore’s mind works in strange ways. I’m sure he had his reasons.”

Tom frowned at his plate, but didn’t push the subject further. Harry, tucking into his breakfast, looked up at Mrs Figg eagerly.

“What’s it like?” he asked. “Dia – Diamond Alley?”

“Diagon,” she corrected gently. “It’s the hub of the wizarding world in London. You’ll be heading back there this summer to purchase school supplies – well, I suppose you might come with us, I’ll have to take Tom of course. It’s full of magical shops, from Flourish and Blotts, where you’ll find all your schoolbooks, to Ollivander’s, where you’ll get your wand.”

A wand! Harry suddenly remembered the argument he had heard between his aunt and uncle just a few nights prior. They had been talking about how Harry was “one of them ” and how Tom might be too, and the disdain in their voices had been palpable. That was it, he realised, that was why they treated him so poorly. That was why they never let him watch the same movies Dudley watched, about people using magic, or the force, or any of it. He suddenly felt rather sick, and dropped his fork onto his plate.

“Harry, dear,” Mrs Figg said, “Are you quite alright?”

“The Dursleys,” he mumbled. “They don’t want me to be a wizard. That’s why they didn’t tell me, they want me to be normal like them.”

“Harry, you’re better than normal,” Tom declared. “You’re special, like me.”

Mrs Figg tutted. “There is no ‘normal’ or ‘special,’ Tom,” she chided. “There are only different people with different strengths and weaknesses. Look at you and me – there’s no questioning that you’re a powerful wizard, dear, I’ve seen you command magic without even thinking about it. I doubt, however, that you’d ever be able to handle breeding kneazles – the poor dears run away at the sight of you. You, I’m absolutely certain, will be Minister for Magic by the time you’re thirty – but there will also always be a demand for kneazle crossbreeds. We’re both important, just in different ways.”

Tom scowled. “I could breed kneazles if I wanted to,” he insisted. “I could figure out how to make them like me.”

Mrs Figg smiled knowingly at him. “But you wouldn’t want to, and that’s the point. As for you, Harry, dear – you are a wizard, there’s no doubt about it. Don’t think I didn’t see you floating those pies around last night. There’s nothing the Dursleys could say or do to make you any different, and if they had any sense, they wouldn’t even try. Merlin knows, we don’t need an Obscurial running rampant around Little Whinging.”

“What – what’s an Obscru – what does that mean?” Harry stammered.

“An Obscurial, dear, is what happens when a young witch or wizard is forced to suppress their powers,” replied Mrs Figg. “I don’t fully understand it myself, but they can… become dangerous.”

Harry looked at his friend in terror – everything the Dursleys had done to him had been to stop him being magical, and it could have turned him into a monster? “Tom,” he confessed quietly, “I wasn’t actually hiding in the cupboard.”

“I know, Harry,” he said. “Do you want us to tell anyone?”

Harry shook his head. “No. I don’t want people to know. They finally gave me my own bedroom, anyway. It’s okay now.”

“Harry!” Mrs Figg’s eyes were wide with anger. “Do you mean to say that your aunt and uncle made you sleep in a cupboard?”

Harry just stared at her, suddenly unable to speak.

“That’s it!” Mrs Figg slammed her hands on the table and stood. “I have sat by for too long as those beastly relatives of yours treated you like dirt – oh, I wish you’d told me this years ago, I must owl Dumbledore again, straightaway!”

“No, please, Mrs Figg,” Harry begged. “If I go to Hogwarts and everyone knows the Dursleys have kept me locked in a cupboard…”

Mrs Figg drew in a furious breath. "Locked," she echoed. “No, my dear, don’t worry – Dumbledore isn’t going to tell anyone, he's very discreet. But he must be made aware, he’s the only one who can sort this out.”

“O – okay,” Harry said meekly, looking back down at his breakfast plate.

“Right,” said Mrs Figg. “I’ll be right back, and then it’s presents, and Diagon Alley after that. I may not be a witch myself, but I’ll be damned if your first proper Christmas isn’t magical, Harry.”

Chapter Text

To Harry’s relief, the stack of presents under the tree in Mrs Figg’s sitting room was much smaller than the veritable mountain Tom had pressed on him the night before, and there were only a few small gifts for him. He was grateful, of course, that his friend had so generously provided for him something that he had been denied his entire life, but he was also still feeling rather embarrassed that he had nothing to give in return.

As it turned out, the gifts meant for him today were more practical in nature – a book on dinosaurs, one of Harry’s favourite topics, a small orb that would open any Muggle lock within a few inches in case the Dursleys decided to shut him in his new bedroom, and a magical two-way alert device and communicator, of which Tom had the other half. When he asked what it was for, Tom gave him a stern look and explained that Harry must let him know at once if his relatives were giving him any trouble.

When all the gifts were opened, Mrs Figg took Harry aside and pushed a hastily wrapped package into his hands. Harry turned it over in his hands and looked up at her questioningly.

“It’s just a little something I dug up from the attic last night that you should have – and I want to apologise, Harry, for all the miserable times you’ve had at my house over the years. I didn’t know how much you’d been told, and I wasn’t sure the Dursleys would let you come over if it turned out you liked it here. I knew they weren’t treating you right, I just didn’t know… Well, I’m sorry, Harry.”

Harry shook his head. “It’s not your fault, Mrs Figg,” he insisted. “If there’s anyone to blame, really, it’s Voldemort for killing my parents and leaving me nowhere else to go.” Mrs Figg winced, and oddly enough, across the room he thought he saw Tom do the same.

“I’m afraid a fair number of us have failed you Harry,” Mrs Figg responded. “But go on, open it. It’s precious little compared to what you should have, but still…”

Harry tore the paper off the package she had handed him to reveal a framed photograph of a woman with flaming red hair and green eyes and a man who looked rather like himself, both waving cheerily up at him. Harry glanced between the picture and Mrs Figg, his mouth agape in awe.

“Is this – are these my parents?” he asked in hushed wonder.

“That they are, Harry,” Mrs Figg confirmed. “I fought alongside them, you know, in the war against You-Know-Who. It’s a shame, what happened – they were so young, so full of promise.”

“But the picture’s moving!”

Mrs Figg chuckled. “Of course it is, all good magical photos and paintings can move around. Some of them can even talk – you’ll see once you get to Hogwarts. Oh, what’s this now…”

There was a tapping at the window, and Harry looked up to find that the owl had returned. Mrs Figg crossed the living room to let it in, retrieving a roll of parchment tied to its leg and unfurling it.

“Oh, good,” she said. “It’s just Dumbledore – he says it’s fine to tell you about what happened to your parents, thank Merlin. And he’s eager to meet you, Harry – he’ll be coming round in the next few days to make sure you’re doing alright, and he’ll probably give your relatives a piece of his mind while he’s at it. Now, let’s get ready to head out, you two. We’ll be taking the Floo, much quicker than driving.”

While Mrs Figg gathered up her things, Tom explained Floo travel to Harry. “You’ll need to speak clearly,” he said, winding Harry’s new scarf over him and smoothing out his coat collar. “If you don’t think you can manage it, step out of the fire and try again – it’s better to waste a little Floo powder than to end up somewhere unexpected. I’ll go first so you can see how it’s done.”

“But what if I do end up in the wrong place?” Harry was feeling rather apprehensive – this seemed a great deal trickier than levitating a small mince pie.

“Then we’ll come find you,” Tom reassured him. “But as long as you say where you’re going with confidence, you’ll be fine. It helps to take a deep breath before you step into the fire.”

Mrs Figg rejoined them, taking a small box of glittering powder from atop the mantle of her fireplace and holding it out to them. Tom stepped forward and took a small pinch, scattering it into the fire. He stepped into it, declared, “Diagon Alley!” and as Harry stared he was whisked out of sight.

“Are you ready, dear?”

Mrs Figg was offering the box to him now. Harry nodded shakily and took his own pinch of Floo powder. Just as Tom had done, he walked up to the fire, tossed his small handful in, and, taking a deep breath as his friend had advised, he stepped into it.

“Diagon Alley!”

At once the world seemed to spin around him. Mrs Figg’s sitting room disappeared from sight, replaced by a quick succession of other spaces, each one gone within a flash. How was he supposed to know when to step out? Tom hadn’t warned him about the horrible spinning sensation; with each new fireplace in front of him gone, he felt himself be twisted round again and again, until he was so dizzy he felt he might faint.

Just when he thought it might never end, the spinning stopped, and he stumbled out of the fireplace and into Tom’s waiting arms.

“Are you alright, Harry?” Tom asked. “It’s always rough the first time – here, you’ve got a bit of soot in your hair.”

As Tom reached up to brush away the soot from the crown of his head, Harry stared at the room he had dropped into. It was not at all what he had expected – instead of transporting into some magical place, they had arrived at what seemed to be a dingy, mostly deserted tavern. A few people milled about, wearing odd robes and sipping from large tankards, and one lone old man stood behind the bar, scrubbing at a dish and grumbling under his breath. As Harry took all this in, the fireplace behind him roared to life and Mrs Figg stepped through, looking decidedly more festive than their surroundings in a red overcoat and gold scarf.

“Ah,” she said, striding up to the bar, “Good to see you again, Tom – would you be a dear and let us into Diagon?”

“Good to see you as well, Arabella,” the man behind the bar replied. “S’been a while since I last saw you about. Here to enjoy the revelry?”

“Indeed,” she said. “Thought I’d treat these two to a proper Christmas.”

The bartender’s eyes slid over the two boys. “Wasn’t aware you had kids, Bella,” he replied.

“Well, I don’t of course, but this is my nephew, also named Tom, and this here is –”

But the old man’s eyes had caught on Harry and widened in surprise. “My word,” he said. “Is that – Harry Potter?”

“Er – hello,” Harry said tentatively.

The old bartender rushed around the counter to greet him, which he did by shaking his hand vigorously. “Goodness, what an honour,” he enthused. “Welcome back, Mr Potter, and Happy Christmas.” 

It seemed as though all eyes in the tiny pub had suddenly turned on Harry, and in the next moment he found himself surrounded by the few patrons who had decided to forgo the Christmas festivities, all clamouring to meet him. If it was a bit overwhelming, it almost didn’t matter, because Harry had never had the chance to experience being around so many people who were actually pleased he was there. Tom on the other hand seemed a bit put off, clinging tighter and tighter to Harry’s side each time a new person bustled forward for a handshake.

They managed, at last, to shake off the crowd, and the bartender led them out to a small courtyard with a brick wall, Tom still clutching Harry’s left arm possessively. “Are you alright, Tom?” Harry whispered.

“I don’t like it,” Tom answered. “The way they all crowded around you like you were just there for their entertainment. Like they owned you.”

“It’s okay,” Harry said. “No really, it is. It was kind of nice being the centre of attention for a good reason, for once. And look, if there’s anyone I really don’t like, you can just scare them away, right?”

Tom finally eased up on his arm, smiling slyly at him. “Of course I can, Harry,” he replied.

Harry made to respond, but now something incredible was happening in front of him. The bartender had tapped the wall three times with what must’ve been a wand, and a great stone archway was growing out of what had just moments before been solid brick, revealing a long cobbled street full of people dressed in garish robes and strange pointed hats. Decorations that must surely have been created by magic festooned the buildings: giant, hovering snowflakes, garlands that sparkled and shimmered even in the dim light of the cloudy afternoon, and massive trees bedecked with glowing baubles, frosted with a thin layer of snow that did not melt despite the relatively warm winter weather. Tom chuckled at Harry’s astounded expression and tugged him forward, leading him and Mrs Figg into Diagon Alley.

Harry had always privately thought that Christmastime held a magic all its own, even though he had never been allowed to participate. It was a time of year when people came together, when even the neighbours who believed the Dursleys’ insistent lies that he was a delinquent were kinder to him. But now, here, with magic on full display all around him, Harry felt utterly transported. Further down the alley, a few teenagers were setting off magical fireworks that whizzed about in the air, one of them flying right past Harry’s face. A group of carollers passed by, singing a Christmas song he had never heard before that included references to gnomes and unicorns. Amongst the crowd, several decidedly non-human people also joined in the festivities, some in tailored waistcoats and neat trousers, others, bafflingly, in strange garments that seemed to be handcrafted out of towels or old pillowcases.

“Tom,” Harry whispered, clutching the arm that was still wound around his own. “What are – Who are – What is all this?”

“It’s magic, Harry,” Tom replied, beaming at him. “Most of these people are witches and wizards, like us, but those are goblins.” He pointed to a group of men, a bit shorter than Harry, laughing about something privately and clutching steamy flagons of some kind of ale in their long fingers. “And that’s a house-elf, over there – must be running an errand for her master.” He indicated one of the tiny creatures haphazardly dressed in what looked like a toga made out of an old curtain. “Just wait until we get to Hogwarts, there’s ghosts and talking portraits and centaurs and so much more.”

Harry was trying to process all this new information when Mrs Figg, who had disappeared into the crowd for a moment, returned and thrust two warm bottles into his and Tom’s hands. “Some Butterbeer for the two of you,” she explained. “The shops might be closed, but someone’s set up a stand with hot drinks. Now go on and have fun, but don’t wander too far!”

As Harry sipped his drink, which was really rather delicious, Tom pulled him into the crowd, excitedly pointing out everything and explaining. “So that’s Eeylops, over there – see the owls in the window? You can get your own if you want. And over there’s Ollivander’s, which Aunt Bella told you about. And up there, that’s – oh, pardon me.”

They had bumped into another boy about their age, with pale blond hair, blue eyes, and a haughty, pinched expression. Tom’s eyes narrowed and he stepped forward, tucking Harry behind him.

“Do watch where you’re going,” the boy drawled. “These robes are brand new, I don’t want you mussing them before my family’s ball tonight.”

“You must be a Malfoy, then,” Tom replied. “Your family’s Christmas soirees are legendary.”

“That’s right,” the boy sneered, “Draco Malfoy. And who might you be?”

“Tom Marvolo Riddle II,” Tom answered, extending his hand. “A pleasure, I’m sure.”

Draco cringed back from Tom’s proffered hand. “Riddle, is it? That’s not a wizard family I’ve ever heard of.”

“You wouldn’t have, my father apparently disappeared from public view years before I was born. My mother was Lucinda Button, née Rowle.”

“A Rowle? Alright then.” Draco finally shook his hand.

“Tom,” Harry cut in, “what’s so important about being from a wizard family?”

Draco’s nose wrinkled. “Is your friend a Mudblood then? Even half-bloods and blood traitors like the Weasleys still understand the importance of family legacies.”

“He is not,” Tom replied, “and even if he was Muggle-born , I would ask you not to address him with such crass language.” He turned back to Harry. “Some witches and wizards consider it important who your parents are, Harry. Your father’s family, I believe, were all pure-bloods, though they did not share this belief. It’s all nonsense, anyway – your mother was a Muggle-born, and was obviously powerful enough for Voldemort to consider her a threat.”

Draco’s eyes had gone wide. “You’re Harry Potter, aren’t you?” he marvelled. “I’ve heard you're going to Hogwarts next year. They say you live with Muggles, though, what are you doing here?”

“Harry is my friend,” Tom answered before Harry could say anything. “My best friend. My aunt and I brought him to Diagon Alley for Christmas.”

An imperious voice floated through the crowd. “Draco!”

Draco rolled his eyes. “I’d better go, that’s my father calling. We were only here to drop off a gift for one of his business associates. I’ll see you two next year at Hogwarts.”

Harry watched as Draco made his way through the crowd to a man with the same platinum blond hair, gesturing wildly in his and Tom’s direction. The man glanced over at them, his eyes sliding over Harry before catching on Tom and, strangely enough, widening in barely perceptible fear. Even stranger, Tom smirked.

“Be careful of that one, Harry,” Tom whispered as they continued through the crowd. “The Malfoys have a reputation for attaching themselves to those they consider powerful. They say they used to be close with Voldemort before you defeated him.”

“How do you know all this, Tom?” Harry asked.

Tom shrugged. “My mother wanted to keep me away from all this, but she made sure I knew who was who in case I ever ended up running into any of them.”

“What for?”

“I think it had something to do with my father,” Tom said. “I told you I was raised by my step-father, but my real father left before I was born. I’m not sure my mother ever even told him about me. She didn’t like to talk much about him, but from what I gathered, he used to run with that crowd.”

“What – your father worked for Voldemort?” Harry was aghast. Tom seemed strangely unbothered.

“It’s possible,” he said casually, as if they weren’t talking about the man who had murdered Harry’s parents. “Like I said, I never knew him. I only know that at one point, my mother loved him enough to name me after him, but by the time she told me, it seemed more like she was afraid of him.”

Harry paused for a moment to process this new information. Okay, so Tom’s father had been, and maybe still was, a Dark wizard. He may have even been close to Voldemort before he vanished. But did any of that matter? Tom wasn’t his father, and he certainly wasn’t a Dark wizard either – he had been nothing but kind and gentle to Harry, even if he did have some mysterious power to scare people off.

It was then that Harry realised they had strayed far from the crowd, and the Christmas cheer that had infested the air just moments before was gone, replaced by a creeping sense of dread. Tom seemed to have noticed it too, because he was peering around and frowning.

“Harry,” he said, “we should get back. I think we’re getting close to –”

“What are you boys doing over here?”

Harry turned – a large balding man with an enormous moustache had appeared from behind them, reaching out with one hefty hand to rest on Harry’s shoulder. “It’s dangerous so close to Knockturn Alley, no place for young boys to go off alone.” The man’s eyes narrowed. “But you – you’re – Merlin’s beard, Harry Potter?”

Harry nodded. “I’m sorry sir,” he said quickly. “We got a little carried away in the crowd, and I’ve never been to Diagon Alley before.”

“No need to apologise, lad,” the man beamed down at him. “And it’s a pleasure to meet you, yes, a pleasure indeed! Horace Slughorn, at your disposal. Let’s get you and your friend back to…”

Tom had turned to face Slughorn as well, and upon seeing him, all colour drained from the man’s face. 

“It can’t be – you – how can you –” Slughorn stammered. 

“Tom Marvolo Riddle,” Tom said, extending a hand in greeting. “The Second. Are you alright, Mr Slughorn? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”

“A son,” Slughorn mumbled weakly. “He had a son.”

“Did you know my father?” Tom asked, and for a brief moment Harry could have sworn his friend's eyes turned red again. “Harry and I were just talking about him, incidentally. I’m afraid he wasn’t a part of my life.”

This seemed to reassure the man, and some colour came back to his features as he shook Tom’s hand. “No, he wouldn’t be, I suppose. All for the best, if you ask me. Your father – no, it’s better you don’t know. No need to have that hanging over your head, not so young. And seeing as you’re friends with Harry here… Well, let’s just get you back to your guardians, shall we?” 

Slughorn firmly guided them back to the crowd, where they reunited with Mrs Figg, who thanked Slughorn profusely and chided them for getting lost (“Knockturn Alley! Didn’t I tell you boys not to wander far?”). As the two adults chatted, Tom turned to Harry.

“Well, I suppose that confirms my theory about my father,” he murmured.

“Yeah,” Harry agreed. “But who was he? The way Slughorn talked about him, you’d think he was Voldemort himself.”

Tom smirked. “That would be something, wouldn’t it?” Harry shuddered. “No, don’t worry, Harry. It doesn’t matter who my father is or was, it won’t stop me being your friend. Not even if he was the Dark Lord.”

Something about the way Tom said this, with such confidence and determination, filled Harry with warmth. On impulse he hugged his friend, tucking his head under the taller boy’s chin and sighing happily at the bubbly glow that surrounded them. 

“Me neither Tom,” he whispered. “I’ll never stop being your friend.”

Tom hugged him back tightly, and this, Harry thought – this was a perfect Christmas.

It really had been perfect, Tom thought much later, curling under his soft, warm duvet and recounting the day's events. In fact, he was sure he had never had a better Christmas, though of course his strongest memories now were of those miserable Decembers at the Orphanage, when food was scarcer than usual and no one ever felt warm. Everything that had come later – the festivities of Hogwarts, the lavish balls at Malfoy Manor – was dim and blunted, as if it was all something he had watched in a Muggle movie or read about in a book. Even so, he was certain not a single one could compare to his triumphs over the past day and a half.

He had anticipated Harry's joy when he unveiled the surprise he had been preparing for him, but he hadn't been prepared for how deliriously overwhelming the experience would be. With each gift opened, Harry had practically vibrated with excitement and warmth, and to Tom's satisfaction, he felt the same. Perhaps it was the connection between them, created by the tiny piece of himself still carried within Harry's own soul. Maybe he had just spent so long bathed in Harry's love that he had grown to love him in return. If that was the case, he was also happy to find that the idea didn't disturb him as much as it once would have. Feeling the same for anyone else, of course, would be horrifying, but this was Harry. This was the boy who had cradled and nurtured him, the only one who deserved his affections.

The serendipitous meetings that day with the young Malfoy boy and former Professor Slughorn could not have gone better if he had planned them. In one fell swoop, he had established himself with the youngest Malfoy and gotten word of his name back to one of his former Death Eaters, for he was certain the boy had been breathlessly telling his father he’d just met Harry Potter and some boy named Tom Riddle. He had seen the fear on the man’s face when their eyes met across the crowd; no doubt Abraxas had told his son all about the young man with whom he had attended Hogwarts, and now here he seemingly was again. The thought of his rumoured resurrection spreading like wildfire amongst the traitors who had renounced him almost left him giddy.

And then there was Slughorn. The man had recognised him immediately, of course. It had been the perfect opportunity to begin cementing his identity as the son of Lord Voldemort in the minds of those who had once known but not followed him – coupled, of course, with a strong compulsion placed in his thoughts not to tell anyone unless directly asked. Best to let the story go out slowly, let Dumbledore remain ignorant until the last possible moment, when he was already safely ensconced within Hogwarts’ walls as a student again.

Oh, he had missed this kind of scheming while still trapped in Harry’s mind.

Two days after Christmas, Albus made his way up the path to the Dursleys’ residence, apprehension coiling within him. He knew that Harry was being mistreated, but he wasn’t sure what to expect from the boy – Arabella’s letters had been informative as to his material state of being, but had said little of his emotional health beyond that he seemed outgoing during their time together. He was every bit prepared to find either a shivering waif or, perhaps worse – an angry, malicious young boy as he had once found in an orphanage so many years before. 

He rapped on the door sharply, expecting one of Harry’s two guardians to open it. He was therefore surprised when a small boy with wild, jet black hair and brilliant green eyes threw open the door instead and stared up at him breathlessly. 

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the boy said. “I thought you might be Tom.”

“That’s quite alright, my dear boy,” Albus replied. “You must be Harry Potter. My name is Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, and I’ve come to talk to you and your guardians.”

“Oh, right, yes,” Harry said, glancing down and intertwining his hands in a sort of nervous anticipation. “Mrs Figg said you’d be by.”

“No!” Petunia Dursley had appeared in the hallway, her eyes wide in horror. “I know what you are – we don’t want people like you coming round! You’re just here to twist the boy’s head with nonsense and fairy tales, and I’ll not have it! We swore we would never let such rubbish into our house!”

“And yet,” Albus replied calmly, “I seem to remember a letter you wrote me as a child, begging me to let you learn such ‘nonsense and fairy tales.’”

“I woke up long ago to the reality of how dangerous you people are. You’re not to tell him anything,” Petunia declared. “Harry, get away from him and go to your room.”

Harry, to Albus’ surprise and relief, straightened up and shook his head, looking his aunt square in the eye. “No, Aunt Petunia. I don’t think I will. It doesn’t matter, anyway – I already know I’m a wizard.”

The boy’s aunt gasped in disbelief. “Who told you that, you silly boy?” she demanded. “Don’t you know there’s no such thing?”

Harry, not to be shut down, simply pulled a biro from his pocket and sent it flying toward his aunt on magic alone, where she shrieked and batted it from the air. Two more figures appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, no doubt Harry’s cousin and uncle, both staring at Albus in confusion. 

Albus chuckled. “That was an impressive Hover Charm, Harry,” he said.

“Thanks!” Harry replied brightly. “My friend Tom showed me how to do it. He’s loads better at magic than I am, though I suppose he’s had more time to practise.”

“I’m sure he has,” Albus said carefully. If his concerns were warranted, then of course, the newly resurrected Voldemort would have had decades of prior experience – and if not, then he was just a normal magical child who had grown up in an environment that wasn’t opposed to his learning how to control his powers from an early age. “Harry, perhaps it’s best if we talk privately. Your relatives don’t seem very receptive to the idea of magic.”

“They’re not,” Harry confirmed. “We can go upstairs, my room isn’t big but there’s an extra chair – well, it’s Dudley’s old chair, but he didn’t want it anymore. It’s this way.”

Albus followed Harry up the stairs and into a cramped bedroom, filled halfway with broken toys and Muggle electronic devices. Harry pulled an old desk chair from the pile, offering it to him. 

“Sorry about the mess, Mr Dumbledore,” he said. “It’s Dudley’s – my cousin’s – old things that he didn’t want anymore.”

“Professor Dumbledore,” he corrected gently as he took a seat. “And it’s quite alright, though I must say I’m sorry you have to live surrounded with cast off toys.”

“It’s okay,” Harry replied, perched on the edge of his bed. “At least I have an actual bedroom, now.”

“Yes,” Albus said gravely. “After my correspondence with Mrs Figg, I must confess that I was afraid I would find you still living in the Dursleys’ boot closet, wearing cast off clothes that belonged, as these toys once did, to your cousin. I’m pleased to see that neither of these are the case.”

Harry plucked at the soft blue polo he was wearing. “Oh, this?” he beamed, smiling fondly. “Tom got me this. He didn’t like the way the kids at school made fun of me for my clothes, so he bought me a new wardrobe for Christmas. Well, he says it’s not a full wardrobe, really, but it’s enough for me.”

“Tom again,” Albus murmured. “Harry, can you tell me about your friend?”

“Tom?” Harry echoed. “Why do you ask?”

“Well,” Albus replied, “I was surprised to hear from Arabella that her nephew would be attending Hogwarts next year. As far as I was aware, there was no ‘Tom’ on the applicants list when it was first drafted, which would have been when you were but an infant. His application must have been submitted very recently, which is odd for us. As Headmaster, I like to know a bit about the students who will be under our tutelage for the next seven years, which is why I was hoping you could tell me about him – and about yourself, of course.”

“Oh!” Harry brightened. “Well, Tom’s just wonderful. I’m sure you’ll love him when you meet him. He’s the only one who’s ever wanted to be my friend. He even stopped Dudley from shoving me around anymore. Actually, I’m pretty sure he’s the reason I have a bedroom now too. Something he said frightened Aunt Petunia enough that she stopped making me sleep in the cupboard – you didn’t tell anyone about that, right? I know Mrs Figg told you, but I didn’t want anyone else knowing.”

“Of course not, Harry.”

“Good,” Harry said, looking relieved. “I didn’t want to go to Hogwarts with everyone feeling sorry for me that my bedroom was actually just a tiny cupboard.”

“Understandable,” Albus said. “I must ask you, though – you said your friend ‘frightened’ your aunt – has he ever made you feel frightened, or convinced you to do anything you didn’t want to do?”

Harry looked up at him in confusion. “Of course not, Professor Dumbledore,” he replied. “Tom always makes me feel safe, like he’d do anything to protect me. Before him, I never met anyone who actually cared about me.”

Relief washed through Albus. “I’m glad to hear that, Harry,” he replied. “Now, I must remedy a mistake I have made consistently throughout the past decade – I want you to tell me about yourself.”

When Albus left, nearly two hours later, he was sure of three things – First, that Harry was an intelligent, outgoing boy who had, thank Merlin, come out of years of neglect somehow thriving and happy. The boy loved dinosaurs and animals of all kinds, and was excited to begin his education at Hogwarts. Second, after dressing down the Dursleys for their treatment of their nephew and assuring them he’d be keeping a close eye, they would no longer treat him as an animal, something beneath their concern. And third, the mysterious ‘Tom’ was likely just an ordinary boy – a wizard, to be sure, and with great potential – but in no world would a reincarnation of Lord Voldemort would ever reach out to his prophesied downfall and take care of him, nor could he possibly reach Harry at the Dursleys while Lily's blood protection still held. It was, after all, just a strange coincidence.

Everything would be fine.

Chapter Text

The days turned into weeks, and before Harry knew it, the school term was over and summer had begun. It was a balmy time, filled with happiness as Harry dragged Tom out into endless explorations of the neighbourhood and as Tom pulled Harry back home each afternoon to practise Parseltongue and study endlessly over cups of tea and plates piled high with sandwiches.

“I’ve told you, you need to be prepared,” Tom explained, the two of them sitting cross-legged on the ancient persian rug, the scant collection of Mrs Figg’s books pertaining to magic between them. “I’ve heard that most of the teachers won’t expect you to have read the coursework ahead of time, but there’s always exceptions. If you want to get ahead, it’s best to memorise as much of this as possible.”

“Reading makes my eyes hurt,” Harry complained. “Why can’t you just read it to me?”

“Because whenever I do, you tune out and start daydreaming.” Tom frowned and plucked Harry’s glasses from his face to inspect them. “Harry, these lenses are ancient. When was the last time you had your eyes checked?”

Harry pondered. “When I was six, I think. The school nurse had us all come in and read letters off a board. She gave me a note to take home saying I needed to visit an opto-thingy, but my aunt and uncle never took me.”

“Where did you get these glasses, then?”

Harry shrugged. “Aunt Petunia took me to a store when I was eight, I think? Oxfam? She found them there.”

Tom stared at Harry in horror. “Harry,” he finally said, “that’s really bad for your eyes. You need a specialised prescription or your eyesight can get even worse. It’s a good thing we’re going to Diagon Alley tomorrow, there’s a Healer there who can make sure no damage has been done and make you a pair of glasses meant just for you.”

“Damage?” Harry blanched. “Do you mean my eyes could be permanently broken, just because my aunt didn’t bother getting me the right glasses?”

“Hush, Harry, no,” Tom assured him. “If there is any damage, there are potions that can get your eyes back to where they would normally be. When you’re older, you can get them fixed permanently, if you’d like.”

“I dunno,” Harry sighed wistfully. “I kind of like the glasses. My dad had them in the picture your aunt gave me, too.”

“They do look rather nice on you,” Tom said, sliding them back onto Harry’s face. “A magical pair will look even better, they use charms on the lenses instead of thick glass, so they won’t distort your features. Now, you’ve got your list ready for tomorrow?”

“Of course!” Harry enthused, sliding the Hogwarts letter he had received a few days prior from an old bookbag of Dudley’s. “There’s so much we need to get though, I’m not sure I’ll be able to carry it all, let alone afford it. It’s not like the Dursleys would give me anything.”

“Don’t worry, Harry,” Tom said with a wave of his hand. “We can get you an expandable trunk in Diagon Alley, and I’m sure your parents left you enough of a fund to last you well throughout your Hogwarts years, to say nothing of the rest of the Potter estate.”

“...Estate?”

“Yes, Harry,” Tom answered breezily. “Knowing what little I do of your lineage, you stand to at least inherit from your grandfather, who was a well known Potioneer. But the Potter family is old, one of the oldest in Britain. I’m sure there’s all sorts of surprises waiting for you in the family vault.”

“Tom!” Harry exclaimed, leaning forward on his hands. “Are you saying I’m famous and wealthy?”

“Don’t let it go to your head now, Harry.”

“I won’t!” he insisted. “It’s just still all a bit much. You need to tell me these things, Tom.”

They arrived in Diagon Alley the next day at ten in the morning, and after a quick visit to the Healer’s to schedule an afternoon appointment for Harry, they made their way to Gringotts. Tom grinned in delight at the dumbfounded expression on Harry’s face when the door to his vault opened and he saw that he was, indeed, wealthy. Tom was too, of course, having inherited a small fortune from his “stepfather,” but it was all Muggle money, which meant a boring affair of changing notes for galleons, not nearly as exciting as opening your own vault and seeing stacks of meticulously counted and stacked gold coins.

They were now in Flourish and Blotts, having already purchased two matching, expandable trunks and clad in new daywear robes that, at Tom’s insistence, they had purchased along with their school uniforms. They were going to be living in the wizarding world, for Salazar’s sake, and he would not have them dressing like Muggles. Harry had protested at first, insisting that Tom had already purchased him a perfectly suitable wardrobe, but relented when Tom pointed out that everyone else would be dressed like proper witches and wizards, and Muggle clothing would make him stick out like a sore thumb.

At Harry’s insistence, Tom had allowed him to pay for both their new sets of clothing.

They had just finished combing the shelves of the bookshop, and both Harry and Tom each carried a veritable stack of school books for the coming year. It was truly wonderful, being able to buy them new and unsullied. The memory was vague and half-formed, but Tom could still recall going to Hogwarts with his dusty old secondhand books, the other wealthy Pureblood Slytherins sneering at him for his obvious poverty – one more thing to rub in the filthy little Mudblood’s face.

"Oh, hello there!" Tom hadn't noticed, at first, the bushy-haired girl standing near them in Flourish and Blotts. Now, he couldn't miss her, as she crowded up to the two of them with her own stack of books, prompting him to cringe back. "Are you two starting Hogwarts as well, then?"

Harry smiled and nodded. "We are. I'm Harry by the way. This is Tom."

The girl offered him a hand, which Harry shook awkwardly, balancing his books with one arm. "Hermione Granger," she replied. "A pleasure, I'm sure." 

Tom reluctantly shook her hand as well, hoping that was the end of the conversation. Hermione, however, kept going.

"I'm ever so excited, you know,” she prattled on. “I’ve only just learned I'm a witch."

"You're Muggle-born, then?" 

Hermione looked at Tom in confusion. 

"Your parents – they're both Muggles?"

"I'm not sure what you mean," Hermione replied, frowning at the unfamiliar word.

"It means they're non-magic," Harry explained.

"Oh!” Hermione’s eyes brightened in sudden understanding. “Yes, that's right. Sorry, there's so much to take in, I'm sure Professor McGonagall mentioned it at some point. Have you met her? She's around here somewhere, helping my parents figure everything out."

Harry shook his head. "We haven't met any of the professors yet, is she nice?"

Hermione pondered for a moment. "She seems... strict, I think, but she was very kind to my family. I'm looking forward to her class the most – the best teachers are also the strictest, don't you think?"

Tom found his mouth twitching toward a smile in spite of himself. "It sounds as though you take your education seriously, Hermione."

"Oh yes." She nodded resolutely. "Very seriously. I always thought I'd be a doctor, or a dentist like my parents." She frowned, her eyebrows knitting together. "I don't suppose the magical world has doctors, though."

"On the contrary," Tom replied. "The magical equivalent would be a Healer, though I believe you'd need to study for years beyond Hogwarts to be qualified." There was a gleam in Hermione's eyes as he told her this, and he found his previous discomfort with her fading away. A moment before, she had been infringing on his time with Harry – now, he began to consider that she may be a valuable asset. "I've just had an idea," he said. "Why don't you help me convince Harry to take his education at Hogwarts more seriously as well?"

Hermione lit up. "A study group? Oh, that sounds excellent! What do you think, Harry?"

"Tom," Harry complained, flushing slightly, "you know I just don't like reading because of my eyes."

"All the better that we're taking you to the Healer's next," he shrugged. "Harry has the wrong glasses prescription," he explained as Hermione’s expression turned to one of curiosity.

"Oh! Could I come along too?" Hermione chirped. "I'd love to learn more about what it is they do, exactly. Is that okay with you, Harry?"

"Er – sure," Harry replied, shrugging. 

"Well, I think I have all my books," Hermione said. "If you've finished up as well, we can go find my parents and let them know where I'll be."

The trio made their way to the front of the shop with their school books to find that Arabella Figg was happily chatting with an older woman and a middle-aged couple. She waved them over, and the three of them deposited their books on the counter to be rung up.

"These are my boys, Harry and Tom," she said, introducing them. "Well, Harry's not mine, strictly speaking, but he's been staying with us quite a bit over the summer. Boys, this is Professor McGonagall; she'll be one of your professors this year."

"And I see they've already met our Hermione," the middle-aged man interjected, smiling broadly. "I'm happy to see she's making friends already."

They exchanged a quick round of "how do you do's," and "pleasure to meet you's," after which Professor McGonagall looked down at Harry with a rather misty expression. “It’s so good to finally have you back, Mr Potter,” she said. “You don’t remember, of course, but I knew your parents quite well before they…” She trailed off. “Well. It’s wonderful to see you again, all grown up.”

“Is that how you know Mrs Figg as well, then?” Harry asked. “She told me she fought alongside them against Voldemort. Did you fight him as well?”

The shopkeeper winced so hard he knocked one of the stacks of books over. Arabella shuddered. The Grangers looked at each other in mild confusion.

“I did indeed,” McGonagall responded, her voice stern, yet somehow still warm. “I should warn you, however, that saying his name aloud can still have quite an effect on others. Those were very dark days, Harry, and greater witches and wizards than myself found themselves dead – or worse – at his hands.”

Tom wrinkled his nose and looked away – what could be worse than death?

“But that’s enough of this grim talk,” McGonagall said firmly. “After all, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is no longer among us, and you’ll be off to Hogwarts soon enough. I look forward to having you in my class, Mr Potter.”

After explaining to her parents where she was going and obtaining their permission, Hermione followed Tom and Harry out of the shop, their books packed away in the trunks rolling behind them, the adults left behind to catch up with each other. As they walked, Hermione chattered on about magic and Hogwarts, engaging Harry in her enthusiasm and annoying Tom somewhat. He pushed the feeling aside, recognising that if he snapped at the girl, it would only serve to alienate Harry.

“I just can’t wait to find out what house I’ll be sorted into,” Hermione was saying. “I’m rather hoping for Gryffindor or Ravenclaw – Professor McGonagall is head of Gryffindor house, you know, and she seems ever so clever. Which houses are the two of you hoping for?”

“Slytherin,” the boys said in unison. Tom smiled to himself – it was a topic he and Harry had discussed into the night once, vowing to end up together in the same house. Tom, of course, had insisted they both must end up in the house of the ambitious, and Harry had so happily and easily agreed.

“Oh, both of you?” Hermione asked. “I suppose it makes sense, you’re obviously very close friends. If we end up in different houses, do you think they’ll still let us study together?”

“Of course, Hermione,” Tom said smoothly. “It’s not as though the professors are going to break up a group of friends studying together just because we happen to be in different houses.”

“No, I suppose they wouldn’t.” Hermione smiled, her cheeks turning a bit pink at the mention of friendship. “I’m so glad I met the two of you, I was a bit apprehensive about going to Hogwarts not knowing anyone.”

They reached the Healer’s at last, and Tom settled into a cushiony armchair in the waiting area as Harry was ushered into a back room. Hermione pouted, obviously disappointed at not being allowed to witness magical healing, but perked up as she began peppering the shop assistant with questions. Tom shook his head in amused disbelief and retrieved A History of Magic from his trunk, flipping to the section on modern events.

He had been looking forward to this, the chance to finally read about his exploits in his previous life and pinpoint where he had gone wrong. His soul having been healed and his sanity restored, he knew logically that at some point he had made one too many Horcruxes, and the damage had left him increasingly mentally unstable over time. What Tom wanted to know, however, were the specific details he could no longer recall, the tipping point at which public perception of him had turned from “intimidating independent Lord with heavy political influence” to “murderous and terrifying madman whose name we dare not speak.” He had a second chance, after all, and this time he intended to do things right.

To Tom’s great disappointment, however, Bathilda Bagshot had not included any of his accomplishments prior to the war, making it out instead as though one day, a dark wizard had simply popped into existence in the early 70’s. Of course - history was written by the victors, after all, and they wouldn’t dare include anything that made Lord Voldemort look like a rising authoritative force who simply took things too far. Frustrated at the erasure of his legacy, Tom scowled and snapped the book shut, returning it to his trunk.

Hermione, to his chagrin, was still pestering the Healer’s assistant, who grew increasingly frazzled at every question posed to her. “But if you don’t have surgery,” she was asking, “what do you do if, say, someone breaks a bone too badly to be healed just by setting it?”

“Setting it?” the young woman echoed in confusion. “My dear, a simple bone knitting charm will work in nearly all cases –”

“But what if that’s not enough?” Hermione demanded. “What if the bone needs pins?”

“Hermione,” Tom said, catching her eye and willing her to be calm. The effect was instant – Hermione’s shoulders dropped, her breathing slowed, and the intense expression on her face softened. “I think she has important tasks which need attending.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” Hermione sighed. “I’ve done it again, haven’t I? My parents always tell me I get too enthusiastic, but I just can’t seem to help it.” She stumbled back over to Tom and slumped into the chair next to him, leaving a very relieved assistant behind her.

“It’s alright, Hermione,” Tom assured her.  “Why don’t you take a look at your potions textbook while we wait for Harry? I’m sure it has all sorts of information on healing draughts.”

Hermione brightened at the suggestion and did exactly that. Half an hour later, the two of them reading quietly side by side, they were interrupted by a very excited Harry bursting out of the Healer’s office.

“Tom!” he gushed, racing over. “The Healer said there was no damage! And look, I got better glasses, everything is so clear now.”

Tom smiled, placing his book down and standing to get a better look. The new frames were a delicate silver, set lower on Harry’s nose and more stylishly shaped than the old, outdated pair. “You look wonderful, Harry,” he stated. “Do you like them?”

Harry nodded breathlessly.

Next it was time to head to Ollivanders. For a brief moment, he could tell the man recognised his face, the same one that had appeared in his shop fifty-four years prior – but then the man shook his head and focused his attention on Harry. Garrick Ollivander might remember every wand he ever sold, but he couldn’t possibly remember the face of every child, particularly not when said child knew how to slip into his mind and place an ever-so-subtle suggestion that he was unremarkable looking, unfamiliar.

He ended up with another phoenix feather core, this time housed in a beautiful wand and handle carved from Hawthorn. It wasn’t the same as his first wand, but he felt it would suit him perfectly – that is, until Harry’s wand turned out to be the brother wand of the yew and phoenix feather counterpart he had lost ten years prior. Tom was going to have to track down what happened to it when he had the chance, the thought of sharing brother wands with Harry, his Harry, too tantalising to resist.

Hermione received her wand last, vine and dragon heartstring, and the three of them left the shop to reunite with their respective guardians. On the way, Harry fell in love with a snowy owl in the window of Eeylops Owl Emporium, and Tom convinced him to buy her. In turn, he led them further down the road to the Magical Menagerie, where he purchased a young black adder against the shopkeeper’s protests. It would serve him well to have a familiar who could slip about unseen and report back to him.

“Tom,” Hermione argued, “the letter said we can bring an owl, OR a cat, OR a toad. I don’t think they’ll allow a snake, particularly a venomous one.”

“They’ll have to find out about her first,” Tom replied, smiling slyly. “I think Scitalis can keep herself hidden, don’t you?” And as if on command – because of course, it was – the tiny snake slipped under the cuff of his shirt, where she wound herself around his arm. Hermione scoffed at such a blatant disregard for Hogwarts rules, but Tom ignored it. She would have to get used to skirting around such petty restrictions sooner or later if she wanted to remain friends with him.

Meeting back up with the adults, the three of them finished their shopping and bid their farewells at the Leaky Cauldron, promising to meet up in two weeks’ time on the Hogwarts Express. After that, it was a quick Floo trip back to Aunt Bella’s house, and time for dinner. When the dishes were cleared away and the boys had retired to Tom’s bedroom, he gave Harry a mischievous smile and opened his trunk, retrieving his stack of books.

“Alright, Harry,” he teased, “let’s put those new glasses to the test, shall we?”

Harry groaned.

Chapter Text

Over the next two weeks, Tom quizzed Harry relentlessly on their school books, covering topics from Transfiguration to Potions to Magical Theory. He could tell from Harry’s restless attitude that he was somewhat disappointed to spend their last, dwindling days of summer on endless hours of reading and reviewing. Nevertheless, it was clear he was excited to be learning about magic, and before long Tom was certain Harry would earn top marks once they began their studies at Hogwarts

On the night before September first, Harry arrived at number seven, Wisteria Walk, with his trunk in tow and his owl, now named Hedwig, perched atop his shoulder. While the Dursleys had been treating Harry fairly well after Dumbledore’s visit – which, for them, meant ignoring him entirely and leaving him to his own devices – neither Tom nor Arabella Figg trusted them to make sure Harry arrived at King’s Cross Station on time for the Hogwarts Express. Therefore, Harry spent the night curled up in the lower half of Tom’s trundle bed once more, the two of them whispering excitedly about what Hogwarts might be like. In the morning, Tom took great care to make sure Harry’s hair and clothes were neat and tidy, just as he had done at Christmas.

“Tom,” Harry complained, “we’re just going to change into our robes once we get on the train, why do I need my shirt to look perfect?”

“First impressions, Harry,” he reminded him, straightening his collar. “We’re bound to meet some more of our new classmates at the station, do you want them to think that Harry Potter doesn’t care about his appearance?”

“No?” Harry replied. “I dunno, I don’t really care what they think of me. Besides, I look perfectly fine already.”

“Mm,” Tom hummed vaguely. “I suppose I just enjoy fussing over you then.”

“You’re like a mother hen sometimes,” Harry quibbled. “Let’s go, Tom, I can smell breakfast and I’m hungry.”

They bounded down the stairs to the dining room, where they quickly tucked in to plates of bacon and eggs. Then it was out the door to King’s Cross, their trunks packed into Arabella’s old Ford Granada. If the Squib was a bit batty in other ways, it turned out she was a complete madwoman when it came to getting them to the train – Tom found himself on more than one occasion crashing against the door and Harry alike as she whipped around curves and corners as though the three of them were being chased by dementors.

She parked them about a block away from the station and helped the boys hoist their trunks and Hedwig’s cage from the boot of the car. The three of them made their way into the station and over to platforms nine and ten – and then Arabella abruptly stopped.

“It should be here somewhere,” she muttered to no one in particular. “Oh, I really should have written Albus for instructions…”

“Aunt Bella,” Tom interjected with a sudden sense of unease, “do you not know how to get to platform nine and three-quarters?” He recalled well enough, of course, how to access it, but to reveal that would certainly prove suspicious, and he couldn’t seem to catch her eye in order to plant a suggestion in her mind. They were going to miss the train, simply because he hadn’t had the damned foresight to think of such a possibility.

“I’m sorry, Tom,” Arabella confessed. “It never crossed my mind that one day I’d be seeing one of my own off to Hogwarts. There must be someone we can ask…”

Providence prevailed – at that moment, a voice came floating through the air: “...packed with Muggles, of course…” Harry’s eyes widened and he swung round, his face splitting into a grin as he gestured for Tom to follow him. Tom grabbed his own cart and dashed after Harry through the crowd, Arabella following with a choked, “Boys, wait!”

They were chasing after a plump woman with five red-headed children in tow – an older boy with an air of confidence Tom recognised as similar to his own, a pair of what had to be identical twins, snickering privately to each other, a boy about their own age with a smudge on his nose and a rat poking its head out of his pocket, and a tiny girl begging to go to Hogwarts as well, although she had to be too young. They approached the barrier Tom knew to be the entrance to platform nine and three-quarters, the oldest boy stepped forward with his cart – and then he vanished. 

Perfect.

Harry stepped forward first, approaching the woman. “Er, excuse me…”

“Hello dear,” she replied. “First time at Hogwarts? Ron’s new, too.”

“Boys!” Arabella had caught up to them. “There you are, thought I’d lost you in the – oh! Hello Molly.”

“Arabella!” the plump woman, Molly apparently, exclaimed. “Why, I haven’t seen you in an age. Is this one yours? I didn’t think you had any children.”

“Oh, no,” Arabella chuckled. “This is Harry, and this here is my nephew, Tom. They’re both starting Hogwarts, of course.”

“Harry!” Molly gasped. “You don’t mean –” Arabella nodded, and Molly smiled fondly down at him.

“Problem is, Molly,” Arabella continued, “I haven’t the foggiest how to get them on the platform. Never in all my years did I think I’d one day be escorting two children to their first day at Hogwarts.”

“Ah,” Molly replied. “Well that’s easily solved then.” She turned to the boys. “All you have to do is walk straight at the barrier between platforms nine and ten. Don’t stop and don’t be scared you’ll crash into it, that’s very important. It should work fine for you as well, Arabella – after all, it lets the parents of Muggle-born students through.”

“Right,” said Arabella, a little nervously. “You two go on ahead, I’ll be right behind you.”

Tom smiled at Harry to boost his confidence, then stepped through the barrier with his cart, arriving in the glory that was platform nine and three-quarters. Magic permeated the air around him, and the sight of the great scarlet steam engine made his heart nearly burst with giddy joy; Tom was going home at last.

Harry burst through the barrier behind him a moment later, eyes screwed shut and out of breath. He had apparently, as many did on their first try, gone at it with a run, nervous that he wouldn’t make it through. Tom laid a hand on his arm, and Harry opened his eyes.

“Oh, wow,” he breathed.

Arabella followed shortly after, also clearly dazzled by the magic space in which she had never had the need to step foot, and the three of them made their way along the train, looking for an empty compartment. They found one near the end, and she helped the boys hoist their trunks into it.

“Now, you two be good at Hogwarts,” she lectured. “I don’t want to hear from Dumbledore that you’ve been getting into trouble. And be sure to write! I want to hear all about it.”

Tom nodded and moved to board the train, but found himself enveloped in a tight hug instead. He forced himself to hug his “aunt” in return, hating every moment of it, and silently thanked the universe when she finally let him go. Arabella then subjected Harry to the same, though he didn’t seem to mind. Finally, their goodbyes complete, Tom climbed onto the train and extended a hand for Harry to help him up as well.

They nestled into their compartment side by side, Harry still clinging to his hand. At some point, the awe and wonder must have worn off, because Harry was chewing his lip nervously and staring at his shoes.

“What’s wrong, Harry?”

He looked up at Tom. “All these other kids grew up with magic, and I didn’t even know it existed a year ago. What if I’m loads behind? I bet I’m going to be the worst in class.”

“Of course you won’t be,” Tom insisted. “We’ve been studying all summer, you’re going to be just fine. Besides, there’s plenty of other people who grew up with Muggles – remember Hermione? I’ll bet she’s top of the class in everything. Well, after you and me, of course.”

Harry snorted. “I’m pretty sure Hermione’s much smarter than me, Tom.”

“Mum, was that really Harry Potter? Can I go on the train and see him? Mum, oh please…”

Tom peeked out the window as a voice floated into their compartment. The red-haired family had caught up with Arabella, and the tiny girl was staring up at the train, starstruck.

“You’ve already seen him, Ginny, and the poor boy isn’t something you goggle at in a zoo,” Molly replied as a whistle sounded. “Honestly… Now, go on boys, hurry up – and don’t you dare bother Harry about You-Know-Who on his first day of school.”

“How do you manage, Molly?” Arabella said as the boys clambered onto the train and leaned out the window for their mother to kiss them goodbye. “I’ve only had Tom since last summer, and I don’t know what I’m doing half the time. It’s a good job he’s so independent.”

“To tell the truth, most of the time I feel like I’m just making it up as I go along,” Molly replied. “Especially with the twins.” The train began to move then, and Harry and Tom got up to lean out the window and wave goodbye. Arabella waved back, but the train was picking up speed now and rounding a corner, and she and the other woman were gone. Harry sighed and settled back into his seat.

“So, this is it.”

Tom squeezed his hand. “It is. Still nervous?”

“A bit,” Harry confessed. “I’m excited, though.”

The door to the compartment slid open and the youngest of the red-headed boys peeked in.

“Mind if I sit here?” he asked. “Everywhere else is full.”

Tom very much did mind, but Harry shook his head before he could voice his disapproval. “Of course not,” Harry replied. “There’s plenty of room.”

“Thanks,” the boy replied, sitting opposite them. He glanced up at Harry, then looked back out the window, pretending he hadn’t.

“Hey, Ron.” the twins had joined them, each craning their necks around the door of the compartment. “Listen, we’re going down the middle of the train – Lee Jordan’s got a giant tarantula down there.”

“Right,” the younger red-head, Ron apparently, mumbled weakly.

“Are you really Harry Potter?” one of the twins asked.

“Er – yeah,” Harry confirmed, his cheeks turning slightly pink.

“Wicked,” said the other twin. “Allow us to introduce ourselves – Fred and George Weasley, and this is our brother, Ron. And you are?”

“Tom Riddle,” Tom replied, wishing they would all just leave so he could enjoy the ride in peace and quiet with Harry. 

“Nice to meet you, Tom Riddle,” said the other twin. “Well, see you later then.”

“Bye,” said Harry and Ron. Tom just stared back out the window. The twins slid the door to the compartment shut, leaving the three of them in silence.

Ron was the first to break it. “You’re really Harry Potter? I didn’t know you were my age. Do you have the – you know.” He pointed at Harry’s forehead.

Tom sighed. He knew this was bound to happen – once they got to Hogwarts, all kinds of other students would be vying for Harry’s attention, diverting them from spending as much time together as Tom would like. So long as they ended up in the same house, everything would be fine, he reminded himself. Harry’s best friend would first and foremost always be him.

“The scar?” Harry asked, pushing his fringe out of the way for Ron to see. Tom wasn’t sure he’d ever seen someone look so much as if their eyes were going to fall out of their sockets.

“So that’s where You-Know-Who – ?”

“I suppose so,” Harry replied. “I don’t remember any of it.”

“Nothing?” Ron asked. Tom frowned, his nose wrinkling. No one should have sounded so eager to hear someone discuss the day they nearly died.

“Well, sometimes I think I can remember a lot of green light, but that’s it.”

“Wow.” Ron stared at Harry for a moment, then quickly looked back out the window, his ears turning pink.

“I bet you know loads of other kids going to Hogwarts,” Harry said, his eyes alight with curiosity. 

“Just my brothers,” Ron replied. “But I haven’t met many other wizards my own age – Mum home-schooled us. My little sister has a friend who lives nearby, but neither of them will be at Hogwarts until next year.”

“Oh,” Harry said. “Tom and I went to Muggle primary school, that’s where we met. I didn’t even know I was a wizard until he told me.”

Ron’s eyes went wide. “I heard you went to live with Muggles, but surely they knew.”

“They did,” Harry confirmed. “They just didn’t want another wizard in the family.”

“They sound horrible.” 

“They were,” Harry said. “Most Muggles aren’t too bad, but my aunt, uncle, and cousin… Wish I’d grown up in a big magic family.”

Ron shrugged, looking somewhat downcast. “I’ve got five older brothers,” he sighed. “They’ve all already gone to Hogwarts – Bill and Charlie already graduated, and Bill was head boy and Charlie was the Quidditch Captain. And now Percy’s a prefect, too – he’ll probably be head boy in a few years. Fred and George mess around a lot, but they still get really good marks and everyone thinks they’re really funny. It’s just… it’s a lot to live up to.”

“I know what you mean,” Harry said. “Everywhere I go, people meet me and seem to think I’m some incredible wizard because I defeated Voldemort, But I’m just, you know, Harry.”

Ron’s eyes were dangerously close to popping out of his head again. “You said You-Know-Who’s name!” he gasped. “I’d have thought you, of all people…”

Harry shrugged. “It’s just a name,” he countered. “Anyway, he’s supposedly dead, isn’t he?”

“Well, yeah,” Ron said, “but still.”

“Tom’s not afraid either, right?”

Tom grinned. “Of course not, Voldemort doesn’t frighten me.”

Ron glanced between the two of them in stunned silence, then went back to staring out the window.

The atmosphere lightened shortly after when the door slid open again and revealed the trolley witch, pushing her cart of confectioneries. Tom picked out a few choice items, while Harry, who had never eaten wizard candies, bought a little of everything, insisting to Ron that he have some as well. Before long, Harry and Ron were laughing over Chocolate Frog cards and Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans, and Tom couldn’t help smiling as well, infected by Harry’s lighthearted mood. He wasn’t even bothered when a teary-eyed boy showed up, wailing about a missing toad.

A few more minutes went by, and the door slid open once more. “Has anyone seen a toad? Oh, Tom! Harry!”

It was Hermione. She slipped into the compartment with them, taking the empty seat next to Ron. “I meant to find you earlier, but then Neville lost his toad and I’ve been helping him look for it. I’m Hermione, by the way,” she said, turning to Ron. “Hermione Granger. And you are?”

“Ron Weasley.”

“Pleased to meet you, Ron. You’ve got dirt on your nose, by the way.”

Ron flushed and rubbed at his nose, though it did very little good.

“How was the rest of your summer, Hermione?” Tom asked, genuinely pleased to see her – anything was better than listening to Ron ramble on about the famous wizards on the Chocolate Frog cards or his family.

“Oh, it was wonderful,” she replied. “I’ve been studying everything I can before we get to school – I want to be prepared, you know.”

“That’s exactly what I told Harry,” Tom smirked. “Thankfully, I was able to impress upon him how important his education is.”

“You’ve all spent the summer studying?” Ron gaped, dumbfounded. “Blimey, aren’t we going to get enough of that at Hogwarts?”

“That’s what I said,” Harry grumbled. “We didn’t even get any more time to explore the neighbourhood.”

“Little Whinging is dull and lifeless, Harry,” Tom said in a bored tone. “But now that you’re familiar with all our subjects, we’ll have more time to properly explore Hogwarts.”

“Huh, I hadn’t thought of it like that,” Harry said. “Is it really a castle, like A History of Magic said?”

“It’s much more than just a castle, Harry!” Hermione exclaimed. “I picked up a copy of Hogwarts, a History in Diagon Alley and it’s incredible. There’s dungeons, and towers, and staircases that move around! It’s supposed to be full of hidden passageways and rooms that can’t possibly exist because they’d be too big to fit properly. It says that the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw common rooms each have their own tower – oh, I hope I get to see one of them.”

“You’ll be Ravenclaw for sure,” Ron said, reaching for another Pumpkin Pasty. “They’re all bookish types like you.”

“Where’s the Slytherin common room?” Harry wondered aloud. 

“In the dungeons – I know it sounds depressing, but apparently it has windows underneath the lake! There’s supposed to be mermaids and all other kinds of magical creatures living in it, it’d be like living in one of those underwater domes some aquariums have, but magical.”

“Ugh, who’d want to be in Slytherin?” Ron grunted, his mouth full. “My whole family’s been in Gryffindor, I think I’d die on the spot.”

“I want to be in Slytherin,” Harry interjected. For what must have been the hundredth time, Ron stared at him in shock.

“Harry, you can’t!” he insisted. “You’re Harry Potter, you defeated You-Know-Who - and he was a Slytherin. Everyone knows that Dark witches and wizards always come from that house.”

“Most Dark witches and wizards are Slytherins,” Tom corrected. “And of course they are - you don’t study the Dark Arts except to seek power, and Slytherin is the house of the ambitious. It’s only logical. Of course, there are also plenty of Slytherins who never even think to dabble in that kind of magic.”

Ron was frowning deeply now, as if Tom had just told him that pixies should be allowed wands. “Well,” he finally said, “I still wouldn’t want to be in Slytherin, even if you do get an underwater window.”

“No one said you had to, Ron,” Hermione pointed out.

“Ron,” Harry said, rather stiffly – it was clear the conversation was making him uncomfortable, “you said your brothers already graduated - what do they do now?” Hermione perked up at the change of topic.

“Charlie’s in Romania studying dragons, and Bill’s in Egypt doing something for the goblins,” he replied. “Did you hear about Gringotts? It’s been all over the Daily Prophet - someone tried to rob a high security vault.”

Tom frowned - anyone who would try to rob Gringotts would have to be mad in the first place, but a high security vault? “What happened to them?”

“Nothing, that’s why it’s such big news – they haven’t been caught. My dad says it must’ve been a powerful Dark wizard to get around the security, but they don’t think they took anything. ‘Course, everyone gets scared when something like this happens in case You-Know-Who’s behind it.”

Tom scoffed. Voldemort was floating around somewhere as a wraith, he was pretty sure, and besides – robbing banks wasn’t his usual approach. If he needed funds, there were myriad other ways to obtain them.

The door to the compartment slid open once more, revealing Draco Malfoy and two large boys flanking him like bodyguards.

“I thought I’d find you here, Harry,” Draco said. “They were saying all down the train that you were in this compartment. We never got to finish our conversation at Christmas.”

“Wasn’t a very friendly conversation, if I recall, Malfoy,” Harry snipped. Tom smirked – he had explained to Harry later on what words like “Mudblood” meant, and Harry had immediately decided he didn’t like the boy. Ron snickered at the name, trying to hide it with a cough and failing.

“Think my name’s funny, do you? No need to ask who you are. Everyone knows the Weasleys all have red hair, freckles, and more children than they can afford. And you? Who are you?”

“Hermione Granger,” the girl said, rather coldly. 

Malfoy scoffed. “Haven’t heard of the Grangers. I’m surprised to see Harry Potter spending time with such nobodies – no matter what Riddle thinks, some wizarding families are better than others, Potter. You don’t want to go making friends with the wrong sort.”

“I think I can tell who the wrong sort are for myself, thanks,” Harry retorted.

“And all this time I’ve heard tales about the famous Malfoy etiquette,” Tom yawned. “Shame it hasn’t seemed to pass down to you.”

Malfoy scowled, and the two boys next to him stepped into the compartment. Tom’s hand went for his wand, but he didn’t need to use it – the next moment, Ron’s rat leapt from the seat next to him and latched onto the bigger of the two’s index finger knuckle. Malfoy and his other crony backed away as the boy tried frantically to shake the rodent off, finally sending it flying into the window before he disappeared down the corridor after his friends.

“Wow,” Ron said, retrieving his rat from the floor. “I’ve never seen Scabbers act like that before, wonder what’s gotten into him.”

Tom stared at the rat for a long moment. He hadn’t even paid it much attention before, but now he was struck with the growing sense that the animal was somehow unpleasantly… familiar. He was sure it had something to do with Harry, all his previous life’s memories about Harry came with a flavour of regret, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. It must’ve been very near the end, when the details grew foggier as his mental state had deteriorated.

But the train was coming to a crawl now, and an announcement rang out that they would be reaching Hogwarts soon. Hermione, who had already changed into her robes, stepped out into the corridor while the boys got theirs sorted, swapping their Muggle clothing for sleek black Hogwarts robes. Then, it was off the train and onto the boats, led by none other than Rubeus Hagrid, to Tom’s annoyance. That Hagrid had been allowed to return to Hogwarts as an adult, and he had not, was an affront – but that was in the past, and before he had found himself with this second chance. Tom comforted himself by watching Harry as Hogwarts came into view, the sudden look of awe and wonder on his face more enrapturing than the sight of the castle could ever hope to be.

Then it was off the boats and into the castle, where Professor McGonagall led them into the Great Hall. This was it, the moment he had been waiting for since he’d sprung back into life leaning against Harry’s cupboard door and his subsequent realisation that he was a child again – tonight would be the night Albus Dumbledore learned that Tom Riddle was somehow, impossibly, back. He kept his head down, not wanting to be recognised until the moment struck.

The sorting hat sang its song, as it did every year, and then McGonagall began calling names from a long scroll. If it was as Tom hoped and vaguely remembered, the list of students would be somewhat of a mystery to the staff, so as not to engender any bias against the students ahead of time, Muggle-born students aside. And it had to be, because there was no way Dumbledore already knew – if he had, he certainly would’ve visited, and probably tried to kill him on the spot. 

The crowd was dwindling around them now, with more than half the students sorted. Hermione would have her dream of living in a tower, as she had been sorted into Gryffindor just minutes before. Malfoy became a Slytherin, and Harry groaned. Tom squeezed his hand for reassurance. Finally – “Potter, Harry!”

Tom squeezed his hand once more. “Good luck,” he whispered.

The hall was suddenly filled with shocked whispers as students craned their necks and even stood up out of their seats to get a look at him. “Did she say Potter?” “Is that really him?” “Oh, he’ll be in Gryffindor for sure!”

But the hat was only on his head for a few short moments before shouting, “SLYTHERIN!” A hush fell over the crowd – clearly no one had expected this. After a moment, the table at the far end of the hall burst into applause, the house overwhelmed that against all odds, they had landed the famous Harry Potter, and he dashed over to join them, where he was given a warm handshake by what must have been one of the Slytherin prefects.

Then: “Riddle, Tom!” There it was – a minute creak of a chair that no one else would have noticed. Albus Dumbledore, ever stoic, shifting ever so slightly in shock and terror. From his periphery, he could see the man’s eyes widen, losing that damned twinkle they always seemed to hold. The line of his jaw was rigid, his fingers steepled in front of his mouth, his hands shaking ever so slightly. But Tom didn’t have time to revel in the fear he could instil in his greatest enemy – he had a hat waiting for him.

Tom made his way up to the stool, where McGonagall dropped the sorting hat onto him. He waited in the darkness for the hat to begin.

“You’re back,” said a small voice in his ear. “And yet… not. You’re not supposed to be here, how you slipped past the school’s defences I’ll never know.”

“I’m not who you think I am,” Tom responded. “I’m Tom Marvolo Riddle II.”

“We both know that’s a lie,” the hat whispered. “And yet… you are correct, you’re not Voldemort, nor are you the same small child who sat here fifty-three years ago. You’ve changed… yet so much about you is still the same. So hungry to prove yourself, such determination… But along the way you’ve learned loyalty and friendship…”

“You know where I want to go.”

“Of course, some things never change – better be SLYTHERIN!”

Tom took off the hat to a fresh wave of applause from the Slytherin table, none of it so eager as from Harry himself. He made his way across the hall with smooth confidence, his head held high – and was immediately swept into a crushing hug by Harry.

“I was so worried for a moment,” Harry whispered. “The hat was taking so long, I thought it might sort you somewhere else.”

“Never,” Tom assured him. “There’s no other house I could possibly belong to.”

Finally taking his seat, Tom and Harry both found themselves shaking hands with all those around them, the other Slytherins thrilled to have a celebrity in their house and taking more of a shine to Tom than his original classmates had, given that it was obvious he was said celebrity’s best friend. Only Malfoy and his two cronies, apparently named Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle, were ignoring them, Malfoy scowling jealously at the attention the two of them were receiving. 

“Tom,” Harry suddenly whispered, “I think Dumbledore is staring at you.”

Of course he was. There was no way that Tom’s unexpected appearance hadn’t completely consumed Dumbledore’s attention, diverting it from the rest of the sorting. He chanced a brief glance at the High Table – indeed, Dumbledore was watching him with ice cold eyes. And then there was Hagrid, further down the table, goggling at Tom in confusion. Of course, there was no way the half giant would have ever forgotten the boy who got him expelled, but Tom was reasonably certain he wasn’t aware of who he had become.

It was too perfect: here he sat, once again in the Great Hall of the castle that had been his first real home, ready to spend the next seven years studying and gathering a new generation of followers, and there was nothing the old man could do to stop him. Oh, he could descend upon Tom and throw him out on his ear, demand his expulsion, seek him out in the night and kill him, but he wouldn’t. Because Tom was just a child, an eleven year old boy with a name that time had forgotten, that only a few people recalled and fewer connected to the man who had nearly taken over wizarding Britain decades after he had left school. Do anything to him now, like this, and Dumbledore would be labelled a madman.

“Ouch!” Next to him, Harry had clasped his hand over his forehead, wincing back in pain. Tom’s eyes widened in alarm.

“Harry, what’s wrong?”

“N-nothing,” he replied. “I was just looking at that teacher, the one with the black hair, and… my scar hurt.”

That certainly wasn’t nothing. Harry’s scar, a perfect replica of the wand movement used to cast the Killing Curse, was a remnant of Voldemort’s failed attempt to kill him, and so too of himself, the damage left behind as his broken soul had fled toward Harry’s own. If a single glance from one of the professors could cause it to hurt…

He looked up in panic toward the High Table, seeking out the person Harry had described. Ah, yes, Tom recognised the man – Severus, he thought he recalled. He had been one of his Death Eaters, hadn’t he? What was he doing teaching at Hogwarts – unless he had betrayed him? Yes, he realised, the man had loved someone, someone Voldemort was going to kill – and Tom understood that now, how love could make one turn from their convictions and vows? for hadn’t he turned against his very nature? Hadn't he too betrayed his former self, abandoning his purpose because he could not bear to be apart from the boy at his side, the one who had loved him right back into existence?

But something was wrong, and it wasn’t Severus – no, it was the professor next to him, a man wearing a large, purple turban, and practically dripping with familiar, oily, utterly Dark magic. He could feel the connection between them, as twisted and vile as the connection between him and Harry was now gentle and pure, a link that could only mean one terrible, heart-stopping thing.

As sure as Tom was back at Hogwarts, so too was Voldemort, his shattered, bleeding soul having attached itself to another human. He seemed to be dormant for now, probably sleeping in the void as Tom had done for so long, but sooner or later he would resurface. He would learn of the young Tom Riddle who had just started at Hogwarts, Harry’s closest friend, and if he worked out exactly what he was – and he was almost certain to do so, to feel the tug of Tom’s soul on his own as keenly as he could – well, both Harry and Tom would be in grave danger.

Chapter Text

Harry nearly danced down the steps to the dungeons, excited to start the class about which he had been most curious – Potions. He had gotten a strange sense upon seeing the professor in the Great Hall – Snape, his Head of House, he had discovered – that the man for some reason disliked him, but that didn’t deter him. After all, most of his teachers in Primary school had either disliked or been suspicious of him, but that had never stopped him from enjoying chemistry, and Potions was sure to be a similar subject – although perhaps a bit more complicated than making a volcano from bicarbonate of soda and vinegar.

The entire week so far had been complicated: Harry couldn't seem to go anywhere in the castle without whispers following him or several pairs of eyes tracking his every move. To make matters worse, the attention grated at Tom, who seemed to think that their classmates ought to have more decency than to openly gawk at him in the hallways, and had taken to escorting Harry around as if he were some kind of bodyguard. Truth be told, Harry was starting to wish they could go back to the easy days of primary school when no one wanted to be around Harry and he and Tom could just be two normal kids again.

Despite being sorted into a different house, Hermione remained fast friends with the two of them, and they had indeed started their study group, meeting after classes each day in the library. Some of the other Slytherins had baulked at their housemates spending time with a Gryffindor, and a Muggle-born no less, but Harry had told them firmly that the three of them had already been friends prior to being sorted, and he wasn’t going to let house rivalries and nonsense about family lineages or blood purity get in the way of that. The others had grudgingly let it go – it seemed celebrity status had its perks after all, even if it was for something he couldn’t even remember doing.

Ron, on the other hand, had grown distant since the sorting, and Harry regretted it greatly. Tom and Hermione were wonderful friends, of course, but there was something about the red-headed boy that had made Harry’s life feel complete. Tom always made Harry feel safe and warm and wanted, and now Hermione kept him grounded and connected to his Muggle upbringing – but Ron had been easy and carefree, and had shared with Harry a life growing up with hand-me-down clothes and never having quite enough, and he didn’t think either Tom or Hermione could really understand that. Still though, Ron would give him a conflicted smile when they passed in the hallways, or move to sit near him in classes they shared, so Harry figured it was only a matter of time before he came round and the two of them could be proper friends again.

And all of that was before magic.

As it turned out, learning magic was a great deal more difficult than simply willing a pie to float into the air – there were wand movements and incantations to memorise, and if not performed properly, a spell would just not work. Harry wondered at first why they even bothered with wands when the methods Tom had taught him worked fine on their own, but the first time he managed to partially transfigure his matchstick into a needle, he understood – the wand somehow channelled bolstered his powers, requiring him to use far less focus than he would need if he wanted to transfigure the stick on sheer willpower alone. He wondered if they might learn Hover Charms soon, and if he would have the chance to compare how it felt to use a wand for the spell versus merely willing something into the air.

Their classes, too, had felt rather chaotic, passing by in a bit of a blur – though perhaps it was a side effect of it only being the first week, and all of it being so unlike the maths, and reading, and science, and history, and everything else he had studied thus far in life. Harry wasn’t sure he understood the difference between a charm and a spell, let alone a jinx or a hex. And then there were the teachers – Professor Sprout was an eccentric old lady who seemed more comfortable with her plants than with other people, and Flitwick was a tiny man who bore a striking resemblance to some of the goblins Harry had seen in Diagon Alley. Professor Quirrell had turned out to be a bit of a joke, as in spite of running the Defence Against the Dark Arts class, he was nervous to a fault and could barely keep his composure – and oddly enough, Tom had gone sullenly quiet during their first class with him, steadfastly refusing to engage. As for McGonagall, she was a completely different person in the classroom than the kind-hearted woman he had met only a few weeks prior. Hermione had been right: she was demanding and strict beyond belief, insisting that anyone caught messing around in her class would be removed and would not come back.

Professor Snape, on the other hand, had been rumoured to favour the students in his house, Slytherin. Harry was interested to find out if this were true, and if he would extend this favouritism toward him as well, despite the intense look of dislike the man had directed at him during the feast. And so he found himself outside the Potions classroom, escorted by Tom, with a bubbling sense of nervous excitement brewing within himself.

He filed into the classroom, sitting between Tom and Hermione and pulling out his textbook. Ron, he noticed, entered a minute later, and after hesitating, sat on Hermione’s other side, looking very much as though he was trying hard not to catch Harry’s eye. It wasn’t until the rest of the class had filed into their seats that Professor Snape himself billowed in, beginning immediately to call roll.

He paused at Harry’s name. 

“Ah, yes,” he murmured. “Harry Potter. Our new – celebrity."

Harry felt his face grow warm. It was one thing when his peers pointed and gawked at him in the corridors, but it was an entirely different experience coming from one of his professors. Below the table, he felt Tom’s hand slide into his own, gripping it fiercely. Harry focused his attention on Tom’s presence as Snape finished calling out names and launched into an explanation of the class.

“Potter!” Harry jolted back in his chair, yanked back into reality by Snape’s harsh tone. “What would you get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?”

Harry thought hard as Hermione's hand shot into the air next to him, his new friend practically leaping from her seat. His heart hammered in his chest – he was fairly sure he recognised the names from One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi, but couldn’t recall anything from Magical Drafts and Potions that used both. “I’m sorry sir,” he said. “I don’t know.”

 “Tut, tut – clearly, fame isn’t everything.” Snape sneered at him. “Let’s try again. Potter, where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?”

Harry’s nose wrinkled – he vaguely remembered this one, and it wasn’t particularly pleasant. “Er – the stomach of… a cow?” he ventured. “No – wait, I know it was a farm animal… Oh! A goat. I think.”

“Hmm.” Snape paused, eyeing him with the same look of resentment he had seen so many times on Aunt Petunia’s face. “And what is the difference, Potter, between monkshood and wolfsbane?”

Harry pursed his lips, trying to remember Tom’s quizzes from the past few weeks. He could practically see the diagram of monkshood, the little purple flowers that looked so much like the foxglove his aunt had made him rip from the garden when a patch of it had choked out her daisies, the exposure to the plant leaving his head swimming for hours afterwards. But didn’t the entry in his textbook mention that it went by several different names? Yes, he was sure of it.

“It’s the same flower, sir.”

Snape glowered at him.

“For your information, Potter, asphodel and wormwood contribute to a sleeping potion so powerful it is known as the Draught of Living Death. A bezoar is a stone, taken as you said from the stomach of a goat, and it will save you from most poisons. And you are correct – monkshood and wolfsbane are two names of a particularly poisonous plant, also known as aconite. Well? Why aren’t you all copying that down?”

Harry’s classmates fell into a flurry of activity, rushing to pull their quills and parchment from their bookbags. Snape looked away, his cheeks suddenly blotchy. “And a point to Slytherin, for your preparedness,” he said, though it sounded reluctant.

Tom’s hand shot into the air.

“Yes, Mr – Riddle, was it?” Snape snarled.

“I was wondering, sir,” Tom said, ever so politely, “why you would ask Harry a question about the Draught of Living Death. Isn’t that a rather advanced potion?”

If looks could kill, Tom would have been dead on the floor next to Harry. “You will find, Riddle, that I have very little patience for students who question my teaching methods.”

“Of course, sir,” Tom replied. “It merely strikes me as odd that your first question would concern a potion which isn’t covered in our first year books – one might think you wanted Harry to fail.”

Harry saw the malice in Snape’s eyes as they locked with Tom’s, only to vanish and be replaced with shock and… fear? Harry didn’t think Tom would dare to use his magic against a teacher like that – but then, his eyes hadn’t turned red as he had seen them do before, so maybe this was something else. Professor Snape drew back, his expression suddenly incomprehensible, his face hardening once more.

"Of course not," he snapped. "Now, wands away. Today you will be learning a relatively simple potion – though I have no doubt most of you will manage to make an absolute mess of it..."

"Ah, Severus, thank you for joining me." 

Albus sat behind his desk, carefully observing the younger man lowering himself stiffly into the chair opposite his own. Severus was tense, more so than usual, his brows knitted together. As was his custom, he would not meet Albus' eyes, but the headmaster did not need to use Legilimency to know that something was wrong. After all, it wasn't often that something left Severus this shaken.

"I believe," he continued, when it became clear Severus wasn't going to answer, "that you've just held your first Potions class with young Mr Potter. I would like to inquire what you think of the boy – his sorting was quite the surprise, after all."

"Potter," Severus said slowly, "is... unexpected."

"Oh?" Albus said lightly. "Might I assume that upon seeing how closely he resembles his father, that you believed he would be like him in attitude as well?"

"Yes," Severus ground out, his jaw clenched tight. "I am forced to admit that he is not. He is well-read and polite, and alongside his partner the two managed to brew a flawless Cure for Boils."

"And yet you do not sound pleased, Severus," Albus sighed. "One would think you would be relieved the boy is not the thorn in your side you had anticipated – he is, after all, in your own house."

"I've spent the better part of the past decade dreading the day James Potter's progeny would arrive at Hogwarts, Albus," Severus snapped. "I'm not going to start singing his praises now, just because he answered a few questions correctly."

"Of course, of course," Albus said kindly. "Give it time, Severus. I had the fortune to meet Harry myself over the summer, and I believe in due course you will come to appreciate him for the kind and engaging young man he is – not unlike his mother, I think."

Severus looked away, scowling.

"Now, if you will indulge me but a minute more, I must ask after another one of your new students."

"Oh, of course Albus," Severus drawled. "It's not as though I have anything else to which I must attend as a professor and Head of House."

"I mean to take as little time away from you as possible, Severus," Albus replied. "I simply wish to know your thoughts pertaining to Harry’s friend, one Tom Riddle."

Severus froze and shuddered, the scowl slipping from his face, replaced with an expression of disquiet. "The child is unnatural," he said, his voice almost a whisper.

Albus frowned. He had been afraid that might be the case – since the moment Minerva had called his name during the Sorting Ceremony, he had been worried, and his fear had certainly not abated when he had seen the small boy properly, a carbon copy of the Tom Riddle he had found at Wools more than half a century prior. After researching the boy's background, however, and discovering that he was apparently Tom Marvolo Riddle II, he had hoped that perhaps he was, in fact, a son, and not Lord Voldemort himself. The thought that the Dark Lord had somehow been restored to a physical form and was disguising himself as a child in order to get close to Harry was... well, disturbing to say the least. But if Severus, of all people, found Tom to be unnerving...

"Please, Severus, elaborate."

"There was... a moment, in the classroom," Severus replied. “Riddle accused me of being unfair to Potter, of asking him a question too advanced for him to answer."

"Judging by your feelings for Harry, I suspect he may have had a point."

"Perhaps," Severus conceded reluctantly. "But it was not the accusation itself, Albus, it was how he made it. Riddle did not act like an impulsive child, complaining that I wasn't being fair. He was... smooth, almost charming, though I'm certain it was entirely superficial. And his eyes... they were cold, Albus. I have seen that same look many times on the face of another, though not for more than a decade now."

Albus exhaled slowly. "Severus, there is history here of which you must be made aware," he finally said. "You see, the name 'Tom Riddle' is not unfamiliar to me – in fact, there was another who went by the same name, who also attended Hogwarts more than fifty years ago. When this new Tom was revealed during the Sorting, I immediately looked into the boy, finding him naturally to be the son of the original."

"I fail to see why this is relevant, Albus."

"Patience, Severus," Albus chided gently. "The Tom Riddle of the past, as I said, attended Hogwarts. He, too, was sorted into Slytherin – I believe Horace Slughorn would remember him well. You see, Riddle was a highly gifted child, controlling his magic with ease well before he ever stepped into these halls. But he wielded his magic ill, using it to control people – to hurt people. When he arrived at Hogwarts, he was scorned at first by the other students, being presumed a Muggle-born and surrounded by pure bloods. Very quickly, however, he began to gather a following within his house – a cult of personality in miniature, if you will. Interestingly, after graduating, he vanished rather quietly, and aside from a few older professors and those still surviving peers, the world has quite forgotten Tom Riddle. The man himself, however, did not stay away."

"Albus," Severus murmured, his face frozen in horror, "you are describing the Dark Lord."

Albus nodded solemnly.

“Preposterous!” Severus scoffed. “Impossible! The Dark Lord would never have fathered a child.”

“Perhaps not knowingly – but there were women, as you’ve told me. Voldemort was never one to deny himself pleasure. And as for the boy’s parentage, there can be no doubt – our Tom Riddle looks so like his father did at that age that for one terrible moment, I thought we had found ourselves in the presence of Lord Voldemort reborn.”

“Even so, who would name their child after him?” Severus argued. “Who would even know to do so?”

Albus pondered. “Lucinda Button, née Rowle – I’m afraid I don’t know much about her, but she did attend Hogwarts, a Slytherin as well, just a few years below Voldemort. She would have known him long enough to be one of the few to piece together the puzzle of the missing Tom Riddle and the newly appeared Dark Lord. I suppose it is plausible – even probable – that she was taken with him when they were students. Before his descent into the Dark Arts, Voldemort was both strikingly handsome and wickedly charming, and as I understand he had many admirers. It’s no great stretch to believe that, upon finding herself pregnant with his child, she decided to name her son for the promising young man he had once been rather than the Dark wizard he became – all speculation of course.”

“As I’ve come to learn over the years,” Severus said drily, “your ‘speculation’ often turns out to be correct.”

“I’m telling you all this, Severus,” Albus continued, “because based on what you’ve told me, and a comment Harry made to me several months ago concerning an incident where Tom ‘frightened’ one of his guardians, I’m afraid the son might be destined to repeat the sins of the father. Many years ago I made a grave error – an orphan came to Hogwarts, a child in whom I saw perhaps a bit too much of myself and my own faults. The boy had been terribly neglected, and instead of reaching out I turned from him as well, leaving him in the hands of a Head of House who was only too happy to neglect the boy’s emotional well-being in favour of nurturing his ambition – and we both know the sad ending to that particular tale. I would ask you to check in on Tom – and Harry as well – and make sure the two are happy, healthy, and adjusting well to Hogwarts.”

Severus rolled his eyes. “If I must,” he replied. “You do realise, Albus, that with his child now at Hogwarts, whatever remains of the Dark Lord is bound to be made aware of his existence at some point and either come for the boy, or, more likely, use his friendship with Potter against his prophesied nemesis? Do you still believe it is prudent to use the Philosopher’s Stone as a trap, with not one but two vulnerable children in the castle?”

“I am certain that Voldemort will, as he always has, maintain a singular focus on that which he has decided will be of most use to him,” Albus replied. “It will not be until he has attained the Philosopher’s Stone that his attention will turn elsewhere – and if all goes as we have planned it, we will have him cornered before he has the chance to consider how Tom might be of use to him as well.”

“Yes, because we’ve all seen how successful your past plans to defeat the Dark Lord have been,” Severus quipped. “However, I must raise a concern myself, Albus. I hadn’t thought to mention it, but with what you’ve told me I feel it might be pertinent – there have been… whisperings, among the old crowd, those who evaded judgement, that the Dark Lord has returned. Just idle rumours, of course – but the claim is that one of them saw him, in corporeal form, no less.”

Albus leaned forward, brows furrowed, fingers steepled in front of him. “Severus. The details, please.”

“There are no details, just what I’ve now told you,” Severus said. “Had there been more, I would have brought this to your attention sooner. All I can tell you is that there is an air of fear about them – Narcissa seemed rather reluctant to send Draco to Hogwarts, so much so that she almost considered capitulating to Lucius’ desire for the boy to attend Durmstrang instead.”

“And your mark?”

“Not even a tingle,” Severus replied, presenting his nearly-bare forearm to Albus. The Dark Lord’s insignia was but a ghost of white upon the man’s pale skin, only visible if one knew to look for it. “Believe me, Albus, if I had put any stock in these whispers, I would have informed you. Now, knowing that his son attends Hogwarts, that he is friends with Potter – a terrible irony all things considered – I have reevaluated the potential severity of the situation.”

“I thank you for your candour, Severus,” Albus replied. “However, given that Voldemort attempted to pluck the Philosopher’s Stone from Gringotts when supplied with the vault number, I think we can be certain he remains in a relatively harmless, non-corporeal form. I trust, though, that you will inform me of any other new developments?”

“I shall, as you well know,” Severus stated. “Will that be all?”

“I believe so. I release you to your duties as professor and Head of Slytherin House.”

Severus stood and swept toward the door of Albus’ office. Before he could leave, however, Albus raised his hand. 

“Ah – I apologise, one final question,” Albus hastily ventured. “Based on what you have witnessed thus far, do you have any reason to believe Tom might ever hurt Harry?”

Severus looked at him strangely. “Albus, based on their camaraderie, I believe Riddle would be more likely to burn down Hogwarts if he thought Potter might be threatened by it.”

“I see. Thank you, Severus.”

“Good night, Albus.” The door swung shut behind him as he left.

Albus sank onto his desk, his thoughts racing too fast for his Occlumency barriers to quell them. He had hoped that discussing the matter with Severus would put his mind at ease, would chase away the fears he had that this young Tom Riddle was not merely the son of Voldemort, but the Dark Lord himself somehow reborn. There was, after all, no magic he knew of that could not only restore a disembodied soul to physicality, but also restore youth and vitality – the greatest minds had been seeking a solution to the ravages of time for centuries, after all, and the closest anyone had come was Nicolas Flamel, with a stone that could halt the ageing process. A stone, in fact, that was currently serving as bait for what they had assumed was a wraith, the last remnants of the Dark Lord's living soul. Surely Tom could not be, must not be, Voldemort himself.

And yet, Albus found he was not reassured.

Chapter Text

The days flew by at Hogwarts, each dawn bringing a new gallery of wonders. Harry had flying lessons, unfortunately interrupted by a boy named Neville Longbottom breaking his wrist, and then again by Malfoy stealing the boy’s Remembrall – but Tom called him a boor and chastised him for making Slytherin look like a house of bullies and thieves, and he gave it back to Neville’s housemates, scowling the entire time. Thankfully, Madam Hooch returned quickly and they took to the air, Harry discovering unexpectedly that he’d finally found something he was good at without the long hours of study Tom demanded of him. After he flew a perfect loop in the air, screaming in delight and touching down upon the grass with a grace he never knew he had, Madam Hooch clasped his hand in hers, awarded him ten points to Slytherin, and, beaming, recommended he try out next year for the Quidditch team, as he had the perfect build and flying skills for a Seeker.

(Tom did not have the same success, his broomstick bucking underneath him as he tried to take to the sky, but despite his displeasure at not mastering the task instantly as he did in all other classes, he still hugged Harry tightly in breathless congratulations at his instant mastery of flight.)

The study group, too, was going well – he, Tom, and Hermione studied alone for a few weeks, joined finally by Ron, to Harry’s delight. At first, Tom seemed opposed to Ron, deeming him a “dung for brains Gryffindor,” but then Ron challenged and soundly beat him at chess, and Tom grudgingly accepted him as one of the group. 

A few days later they found themselves unexpectedly joined by another of their own House, Pansy Parkinson.

“Draco and his two brutish friends aren’t taking their studies seriously enough,” she told them primly. “I was hoping I could review with you instead.”

Harry watched as Tom regarded her for a long moment, studying her curiously with his wine-dark eyes. Finally he nodded. “That’s fine by me,” he decided.

“Really?” Hermione asked incredulously. “You’re fine sharing a table with two Gryffindors, not to mention a Muggle-born?”

Pansy looked at her appraisingly, staring at her down her upturned button nose. “I’ve decided I don’t care,” she said haughtily. “You do get some of the best marks in class after all. Besides,” she continued with a sigh, “Draco’s been absolutely insufferable about Potter since we got here. It’s been nothing but ‘Harry Potter this’ and ‘Tom and Harry that.’ He sleeps in the same room with you two but can’t even talk to you. This way, if he wants to keep spending time together, he’ll have to stop being such a prat and come make friends with him properly.”

It did the trick: after only two days of looking longingly after Pansy as he passed their usual table in the library, Draco Malfoy bit the bullet and joined them, abandoning Crabbe and Goyle and sitting across from Harry and Tom.

“I would like to… apologise,” he said haltingly, “that our initial introduction started us off on the wrong foot. I want to amend that.”

“You mean you’re sorry you acted like a lout towards Harry and now you’re sore that he doesn’t want to be your friend,” Tom said, not even troubling to look up from his parchment. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

“Tom, it’s fine,” Harry said amicably, as Draco flushed a brilliant scarlet. “If Draco wants to study with us, he can.”

“What?!” Ron yelped. “Harry, he’s a Malfoy! Everyone knows the Malfoys are nothing but a bunch of underhanded, sneaky, blood-purists who –”

“Ron,” Harry said warningly. “He’s fine, it’s not like he’s Voldemort. If he were as terrible as you thought, he’d’ve offed me in my sleep by now. You’re welcome to join us, Draco.”

Ron sighed heavily as Draco hesitantly set his bag on the table and started unloading his books. “I’m surrounded by Slytherins!” he lamented. “At least I’ve got you, Hermione, to keep me from going mental.”

And that was that. Draco and Ron bickered endlessly for days, revealing a family history of antagonism and mistrust between the Weasleys and the Malfoys. It wasn’t long, however, before the two of them discovered a shared love of Quidditch and began a new form of argument – a lighthearted, increasingly friendly battle over which team was better, the Chudley Cannons or the Falmouth Falcons.

So there they were – Harry, Tom, Hermione, Pansy, Draco, and Ron. An odd and unexpected group, but a team nonetheless. But while Harry was fond of his new friends, Tom was still his favourite – and Tom made no secret of the fact that he felt the same towards him, always placing himself at his side, his hand frequently curling possessively into Harry's. Perhaps it should have bothered him how clingy and single-minded his friend could be toward him, but there was something between the two of them that Harry didn't have with the others. Being around Tom, holding hands, and more lately leaning against each other in the evenings by the fire felt like coming home, like a spark of warmth had ignited deep within him. Harry began to wonder if their friendship had some element of magic to it, if they had been destined to meet. 

Time continued to fly by – Harry watched his first Quidditch game, enthralled by the fliers in their rich green and bright red robes, confused by the rules but cheering along with the crowd in victory every time the Slytherin chasers made a goal. When his House’s Seeker swiped the snitch right from under the Gryiffindor Seeker’s nose, he screamed in joy as his heart burst in shared triumph, and privately vowed to try out the following year. Tom smiled down at him indulgently, despite having no apparent interest in the game.

Before long, it was Hallowe'en. The atmosphere in the castle was festive, the Great Hall filled with live bats and impossibly huge pumpkins, carved into jack-o-lanterns and lit by candles charmed to never burn out, but Harry spent most of the day angry at Voldemort. This was the day his parents had been killed, a book had told him. What should have been a happy day was marred by this knowledge, but Tom seemed to understand, quietly holding Harry's hand as he frowned at the revelry of his fellow students.

And then Quirrell burst in and informed them of a troll in the dungeons before promptly fainting.

The hall exploded into pandemonium, students running for the doors, screaming, some younger classmates bursting into frantic tears. Dumbledore calmly fired off several firecrackers above the crowd, startling and stopping them in their tracks.

“Prefects,” he rumbled, “lead your Houses back to the dormitories immediately!”

Harry rose from his seat, only for Tom to tug him back down again. “What’s wrong?” Harry asked. Tom didn’t answer, but shot his hand into the air.

“Professor!” he shouted. “Professor Dumbledore!”

Dumbledore frowned down at Tom in what Harry could only describe as disapproval, though he couldn’t understand why. “Yes, Mr Riddle?” the headmaster asked coolly.

“Sir, our house is in the dungeons,” Tom appealed. “And what if the troll starts wandering about? Wouldn’t it be safer to stay put and get head count? Make sure everyone is accounted for?”

Dumbledore drew himself up, inhaling sharply as he nodded. “Very well reasoned in the face of danger, Mr Riddle – five points to Slytherin,” he replied, flicking his wand and sealing the doors shut, causing several panicked students to slam into them. “Prefects, please ensure all members of your Houses are present, and report to Professor Sinistra when you have finished. Heads of Houses, pair off and begin searching for the troll – and Rubeus, please alert Madam Pomfrey that Professor Quirrell requires medical attention.”

“N-No.” Professor Quirrell was awake now and staggering back to his feet. “I-I’m fine, sir. I can h-h-help with the search.” 

“No, Quirinus,” Professor Dumbledore said softly, “you stay and help Aurora with coordination. Report back to me if any students are missing – Severus, Minerva, with me please.”

“Wow,” Harry breathed, watching the professors leave the Great Hall. “Tom, that was really smart, even Dumbledore didn’t think of that.”

Tom smirked. “Adults often make foolish mistakes, Harry,” he replied. “I’ll bet Dumbledore didn’t even remember our House was in the dungeons. He probably stays locked away in his office all day, too busy to be bothered with the day to day affairs of the school.”

Harry frowned. “That’s not very fair,” he argued. “I know your parents didn’t pay much attention to you, but not all grown ups are like that. Just look at your aunt.” Tom didn’t talk much about his parents, but from what Harry had gathered he had lived a rather lonely, isolated life before coming to live with Mrs Figg, much as Harry had before they met.

Tom just scowled and shrugged, and they sat in uncomfortable silence until the professors returned, Dumbledore announcing that they had removed the troll from the school, and the feast began in earnest once more.

A few days after the troll incident, Tom found himself summoned to Professor Snape's office, the sallow man watching him warily. Tom avoided his eyes – he had tried to slip into the man's mind that very first Potions class to determine where his loyalties lay but found only darkness instead. An Occlumens that accomplished was likely also to be a master Legilimens, and so he stared around the room to avoid meeting the man’s eyes, picking at the sleeve of his robe as though bored. 

In reality, the entire experience was stimulating – he didn't need Legilimency to tell that his professor was rattled by him, though he was certain Snape had not become a Death Eater until well after Tom had shed his Muggle name and good looks. Even though he couldn't possibly recognise him as resembling Voldemort, Tom had still struck some fear in the man's heart, and all without having to plant a suggestion in his mind of his impending doom. Delightful.

"Riddle," Snape finally said. "You're probably wondering why I've asked you here."

"Oh, yes," Tom replied, centering his gaze on Snape's chin. "Have I done something wrong, sir?" He kept his tone even and polite, thick with childlike innocence.

"No," Snape stated. "Professor Dumbledore requested that I speak with you, as your Head of House."

"The headmaster, sir?" That was mildly concerning, but not unexpected. He was certain the old man had immediately tracked down all information pertaining to Tom Marvolo Riddle II, of which there would be frustratingly very little. Of course his next step would be to send his spy to gather more information – how enchantingly ironic it should be the man who had done the same for Tom, once upon a different lifetime.

"Yes," Snape replied. "He is concerned for your well-being – I understand that your parents recently passed away?"

So that was how Dumbledore was going to play the game, was it? Dumbledore would assume that if Tom was Voldemort resurrected, he would be unable to muster up the expected emotional reaction a normal eleven year old boy would have upon being reminded of his parents' recent deaths. Frustratingly, Dumbledore was correct – he could no more fake grief over his false mother and stepfather than he could over his real parents, who had abandoned him and died, leaving him to the Muggle world. Thankfully, he didn't have to.

"Yes sir," he replied. "Unfortunately, we weren't very close before they died – I spent most of my childhood raised by governesses. I don't quite know how to feel about my parents dying." He couldn't manage melancholy, but a look of confused contemplation would do the trick.

"I see." Snape stared at him for a long minute before speaking again. “I can understand having conflicting feelings toward one’s own parents. Did they mistreat you?”

Interesting. So Snape had had a turbulent relationship with his own parents as well, and was as good as admitting it to him. He wondered if he had known this his first time around, but decided that he probably hadn’t – as Lord Voldemort, he didn’t think he had cared much to learn his followers’ life stories. Now, as Tom, a child in need of the support of adults, it would be a useful tool. “No,” he said, and if it was perhaps a bit too quickly, if Snape’s eyebrow raised in doubtful surprise, he pretended not to notice. “They just didn’t seem to care very much. My father in particular – I’m grateful he left me what he did, but he was never very fond of me, because I wasn’t – he wasn’t…”

“He wasn’t your birth father,” Snape finished for him.

“Yes, sir,” Tom confirmed.

“Tell me, Riddle,” Snape continued, “do you know anything of your real father?”

“No,” he replied, “I never met him.”

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t have,” Snape said rather distantly. 

Tom had to fight to suppress the wicked grin that threatened to creep over his face. So Dumbledore had told him, had he? In his previous life, Voldemort surely would have been furious that the meddling old man had shared his origins, but now it only served to further entrench the lie that Tom was the Dark Lord’s secret, illegitimate son. Perhaps even Dumbledore was beginning to believe it.

“Did you know my father, professor?” he asked quietly.

“I did,” Snape replied, “if only for a short time. In the few years I knew him, he was… as a mentor to me.”

“A mentor?” Tom asked innocently. “I had gathered an impression that my father was a Dark wizard. Sir,” he hurriedly added.

“Indeed, he was.” Snape’s expression darkened. “I made the terrible mistake, in my youth, of aligning myself with him, a man from whom I thought I could attain power of my own. I am telling you this now, Riddle, for your own benefit – there are those who no doubt would rather you didn’t know, but as you are within my House, you are my charge, and I believe it is necessary for you to understand. The things your father achieved were great – and yet terrible. The temptation to follow in his footsteps can be… intoxicating, consuming, and yet must be resisted. You will not find his name in any history book, and I advise you not to go looking. Do you understand?”

Tom nodded solemnly. So, his one time follower had renounced the Dark Arts, at least in name, and now sought for the son of Voldemort to do the same. Dumbledore had tasked Snape with gathering information, but it was he who came out of their conversation the victor. He understood the man better than he was sure he ever had when he was still Lord Voldemort, and in understanding came the ability to twist and manipulate. He had forgotten that, hadn’t he, in those final years? He had stopped caring about subtlety and relied solely upon shows of force and power, but not this time – this time he would keep a tight hold on his sanity and build a strong following, one who cared less about the deaths of Muggle-born witches and wizards and more for power. He already had Granger, who was quickly overcoming her Muggle upbringings, and Malfoy, who would someday inherit his family’s influence – and Harry, of course, the supposed saviour of the Wizarding world, but he would have had Harry by his side regardless of who he was to the people. And now there was Snape, a man who had been swayed by love and Dumbledore to betray Voldemort, but who could surely still be tempted by power, if offered properly.

Ah, but he was getting ahead of himself, wasn’t he?

“I understand, professor,” he said, as meekly as he could manage. “Thank you.”

“You’re dismissed, Riddle,” Snape said. “If he’s paid any attention to his letters, you’ll find Potter in the corridor – please send him in.”

“Of course.”

He did indeed find Harry in the hallway, nervously tracing the cracks in a flagstone with the toe of his loafer. As Tom emerged, Harry looked up at him with a grimace.

“What did Snape want?”

Tom rolled his eyes for dramatic effect. “He just wanted to check in on me, ask me about my family,” he sighed. “I think he wants to ask you the same.”

Harry’s hand shot out, seizing his. “Come with me, Tom?” he asked. “Snape hates me, I know he does. I don’t want to be alone with him.”

Harry’s panicked expression might’ve tugged at his heartstrings, but even if it hadn’t he would have never allowed him to go alone into the office of Dumbledore’s spy. “Of course, Harry,” he smiled. “I’ll be right next to you.”

They made their way into Snape’s office, Harry’s hand still tightly curled around Tom’s. Snape looked up from his desk, frowning deeply as he saw the two of them together.

“Riddle, I thought I dismissed you.”

“I’m sorry, Professor,” Tom replied. “Harry didn’t want to be alone.”

“Be that as it may, Riddle, this is meant to be a private conversation between myself and Mr Potter,” Snape growled.

“Please, Professor,” Harry entreated, “Tom’s my best friend, he’s the one who told me about magic. I want him to stay with me.”

Something in Snape’s expression softened, to Tom’s surprise. “Not unlike his mother…” he whispered, before schooling his features back into the grim facade he draped over himself like a familiar blanket. “Very well. Riddle, you may remain – but I will not tolerate interruptions.” He flicked his wand, and a second chair flew across the room to join the one Tom had been sitting in not minutes before. The boys settled into their seats and waited for Snape to speak.

“Potter,” he said slowly, “I’d like to know how you are faring in Slytherin.”

“Oh, Slytherin’s great!” Harry enthused. “Some of the others have funny ideas about blood purity and family lines, and a few of the older students seem to think I’m going to be the next Dark Lord just because I defeated Voldemort as a baby.” Tom had to hide a smile as Snape cringed. “But mostly, everyone’s been very nice.”

“I must be honest, Potter,” Snape replied, “your sorting into Slytherin was somewhat of a surprise to all of us. You may have gathered that our House carries a certain… reputation – one not anticipated for the ‘Boy Who Lived.’”

Harry grimaced, and Tom fought the urge to reach out and smooth out the little wrinkles that appeared on his nose. “I thought so, yeah,” Harry grumbled. “Ron said that Voldemort was a Slytherin, too, but it’s just a House. I just wanted to make sure Tom and I were in the same one.”

Snape’s eyebrows shot skywards. “You chose to be sorted into Slytherin?” he asked faintly.

“Well, the hat agreed it was a good fit, but yeah.”

“Potter, you are a mystery,” Snape barked. “Your devotion to your friend should have landed you in Hufflepuff, but you found yourself in Slytherin because you asked nicely. If such a thing were possible, I would have you re-sorted immediately.”

 Harry frowned. “I’d still choose Slytherin,” he said rather grumpily. Snape scoffed. “I’m telling the truth! I wouldn’t be happy in another house without Tom there. I never even had a friend before we met.”

“And yet you seem to have had no problems in that arena since starting school,” Snape pointed out.

“Before Hogwarts, my cousin didn’t let me have any friends,” Harry muttered darkly.

Tom didn’t miss the sharp inhale from the Potions Master. Ah, so he hadn’t known, had he, who exactly raised the famous Harry Potter? He had noticed in the past several weeks that the fact that Harry had been raised by Muggles was common knowledge, but no one seemed to know exactly who they were. Dumbledore had kept the secret of Harry’s upbringing very close to the chest indeed, if he hadn’t even told his spy.

“Your cousin?” Snape demanded. “Potter, who exactly are your guardians outside Hogwarts?”

“My Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia,” Harry answered. “They hate magic.”

The thunder in Snape’s eyes was unmistakable. “Petunia,” he hissed. “You’re dismissed, both of you. Get out!”

Tom grabbed Harry’s hand and tugged him toward the corridor, unable to hide the triumphant grin that spread across his face as he heard the distinctive crackle of floo powder being added to the fire and an enraged “Albus Dumbledore’s office!” as the door swung shut behind him. It had gone perfectly, and he hadn’t even planned it. Unbeknownst to him, Snape clearly had had prior experience with Harry’s dreadful aunt, and was furious that Dumbledore had placed him in her care. Someday, he decided on the spot, when he had risen again to power he would secure the loyalties of the former Death Eater. Driving a wedge between him and the headmaster was a fantastic first step.

“Tom,” Harry breathed, “what was that about?”

Tom shrugged. “Clearly, he knows who your aunt is, though I can’t imagine how,” he replied. “It’s not as though she would ever willingly step foot in our world.”

Harry’s eyes grew wide with sudden understanding. “Tom! What if he knows her because he knew my mum?”

Oh. Of course – she was the woman for whom Snape had betrayed Voldemort, wasn’t she? And that would explain his initial hostile behaviour toward Harry, and why he remained icy around him even now – Harry was the child of the woman Snape loved and another man. So too, though, he was all that remained of her, and it surely wouldn’t take much convincing for Snape to turn his loyalties away from Dumbledore if he realised the old man didn’t have Harry’s best interests at heart.

“Tom?” Harry asked. “Why are you smiling like that? You look creepy, stop it.”

Tom didn’t answer. This was going to be a delightful takeover indeed.

Chapter Text

Before long, Tom and Harry found themselves alone in the Slytherin dorms, the rest of their Housemates having returned home for Christmas Break. Tom had offered that he and Harry stay at Arabella’s house for the weeks school was no longer in session, but Harry hadn’t wanted to be in such close proximity to the Dursleys, and that was fine – Tom had always preferred to remain at Hogwarts. It was wonderful, having the space to themselves, being able to explore the castle without worrying about classes or exams. Hogwarts was always an enjoyable place to be, but Tom had missed having Harry all to himself, rather than having to share him with the four other members of their study group.

They had grated on Tom’s nerves at first, with no small reason for it being that Harry liked having the others around, and Tom wanted himself to be the only one he cared for. It was childish and irrational, he knew, because that was not Harry’s nature. Everything that had made Harry capable of nurturing him back to a full, mostly healthy soul would of course also spur him to reach out and befriend others, even pompous little twits like Draco Malfoy and simpletons like Ronald Weasley.

Ah, but perhaps he was being unfair. Tom had never been one to enjoy associating with his peers, and had always done so out of necessity rather than preference. Most children his own age were, simply put, boring. They lacked manners and grace, they very seldom had opinions of their own, and they wanted such silly, flighty things – a new toy, a trip to the beach. An “old soul,” Mrs Cole had once called him, before she started calling him “devil's spawn” and “unnatural.” 

But Harry saw something worth reaching out to in the others in their study group, and so as he awoke on Christmas Morning, Tom tried to consider them through his lens – Hermione, of course, had proven to be a marvellous asset, with excellent magical instincts, a drive to succeed, and an ability to explain complex topics to the others in a way they could easily understand. Pansy, too, was valuable – not only as the heir to a well-connected family, but as a source of gossip and news about the magical world as it was today. Draco was terribly uncouth for a Malfoy, but was slowly learning to temper himself, reigned in by Pansy’s meticulous etiquette and Hermione’s refusal to tolerate any of his nonsense. The Malfoy boy had slipped up early on and called Hermione a Mudblood; once Ron had finished tearing into him and explained to Hermione what it meant, she had actually slapped him in rage right in the middle of the library. After that, Draco had stopped strutting around and trying to impress them. And then there was Ron – the youngest boy in a family of blood traitors, desperate to prove himself, and yet so terribly dull. But then, he did possess a wicked sense of insight, whether it was shown when beating Tom at yet another game of wizard chess, or pulling a difficult answer seemingly out of nowhere.

Tom sighed as he sat up in bed. It was impossible – Harry didn’t think of them like this, he saw them all first and foremost as friends, not assets. Try as he might, Tom would never be able to experience that effortless, almost unthinking affection for those around him. He supposed, however, it was enough to feel it for just one person – Harry, his Harry.

“Oi, Tom!” Something was sailing toward him where he sat, pulling back the curtains, and he caught it deftly from the air. “Happy Christmas.”

Tom looked down at the package in his hands. It was poorly wrapped, the paper held together loosely with spellotape, but he didn’t care. The hastily scrawled, “From Harry” across the decorative wrapping made him smile. He tore off the paper with abandon.

“Oh, Harry…”

It was a journal on someone’s personal explorations into Parselmagic, a branch of magic which he could recall but no longer remember how to summon up. It had to be ancient, too, judging by the delicate yellowed pages and dated language. Flipping through it delicately, he found magics that ranged the gambit from healing, to protection, to compulsion. Much of it was not his usual style, but the whole of it symbolised the connection he had with Harry, the Horcrux tether between the two of them. Tom couldn’t prevent his lips curling into a mischievous smile as he glanced over at Harry.

“Do you like it?” Harry asked anxiously. “I got it from Draco – he caught me talking to Scitalis a few weeks ago, and I accidentally let it slip that you could too. I hope you’re not mad, he promised not to tell, and said he’d send me a book about Parseltongue he found in his family’s library. I thought you’d like it more than I would.”

“Mad?” Tom echoed. “Why would I be mad? This is lovely, Harry, thank you. Don’t worry about Draco knowing we’re both Parselmouths – eventually, we’ll make sure all of our Housemates know, they’ll see it as an honour to share a common room and dorms with us.  After all, our founder, Salazar Slytherin himself, was also gifted with Parseltongue.”

“Was he?” Harry’s eyes were wide in amazement.

Tom smirked. “Hermione’s right, you really do need to read Hogwarts, a History," he replied. “Here, this is for you.”

Harry easily caught the package Tom hovered over to him, ripping it open in excitement. “Tom!” he gasped. “You got me a golden snitch?”

“For practice,” Tom explained, “so you can make the team next year.”

“Where did you even get this?”

Tom shrugged. “I found it.”

Harry’s eyes narrowed. “You mean you nicked it,” he accused. 

Tom sat forward, his eyes locked on Harry. “Why would you think that?”

Harry laughed, shaking his head. “Don’t think I didn’t see you eyeing Neville’s Remembrall, even as you told off Draco for stealing it, or slipping Pansy’s fancy quill into your bag when she wasn’t looking.”

Tom’s eyes widened in alarm – he thought he had been stealthy enough to avoid scrutiny, but Harry had noticed – of course he had noticed. “You won’t tell, will you?”

Harry sighed. “No, I won’t tell,” he replied. “I used to nick things from my cousin all the time when I was able to get out of my cupboard. But you don’t need to do that for me, you have plenty of money.”

“I know, but where else was I going to get you a snitch?” Tom argued. “Besides, Hogwarts has dozens of them, who’s going to notice a single one missing?”

“Oh, I suppose,” Harry conceded, letting the golden ball fly up from his hand and snatching it from the air. “I do like it, thank you Tom.”

Tom sighed in relief, vowing silently to be more careful next time he took something he coveted. He had a feeling Harry wouldn’t continue to be so lenient, and if Dumbledore found out…

“Look, Tom!” Harry exclaimed. “More presents!” Indeed, there was a pile of packages at the foot of each of their beds. Tom dove onto the floor, greedily tearing into them. He and Harry unwrapped matching emerald green jumpers, clearly handknitted, and two boxes of homemade fudge. Also for Tom was a nice new pocket watch from Arabella, a fitted wand holster from Draco, and a variety of candy from both Pansy and Hermione. He looked up at Harry just as a light, silvery cloak spilled across his lap and onto the floor.

“Harry,” Tom breathed, his heart clenching in both wonder and envy. “Do you know what that is?”

“Er – no?”

“That’s an Invisibility Cloak,” he replied in awe. “I’m sure of it, try it on.”

Harry stood and wrapped the silvery material around his shoulders, Tom watching in glee as his torso and legs vanished from view. Harry gaped down at himself in amazement and a moment later rushed forward, draping the cloak over Tom as well, his face lighting up as it was confirmed that the cloak could, in fact, cover the both of them entirely. Tom nearly vibrated with joy – Harry had just received a powerful magical artefact, and his first move was to make sure they could share it.

“This is incredible, Harry,” Tom exclaimed. “But who would send you something so rare?”

“Hang on, there was a note.” Harry turned the paper over in his hand. “Oh. Oh,” he whispered. “It was my father’s. He left it in someone’s possession, but it doesn’t say who.”

Tom frowned, looking down at the letter. The handwriting was familiar, he was sure of it, but he couldn’t quite place it. “I’m sure you’ll find out someday,” he replied, frustrated by the lack of instant recall.

Harry’s stomach chose that moment to growl angrily.

“Breakfast time, I think,” Tom smirked, tugging the cloak off of the two of them. “We’ll have plenty of time later to work out what kind of mischief we can get up to with that marvellous cloak of yours.”

A sly grin spread across Harry’s face. “What if we snuck into Gryffindor?” he suggested. “We can scare the living daylights out of Ron.”

“A capital idea, Harry,” Tom replied, adjusting the collar of his friend’s new jumper. “But first, you need to eat.”

Ron groaned as the two of them entered the Great Hall and made their way towards him, hand in hand and wearing their identical jumpers. Tom hadn’t wanted to, at first, the items of clothing too Muggle, too mundane. The idea of the two of them matching so perfectly, however, was too tempting in the end to resist. 

“I told mum not to bother,” Ron complained as the two of them took their seats next to him and his older siblings – since there were so few students remaining at Hogwarts for the holidays, the House tables had been merged into one. “Every year she makes us all jumpers, and mine’s always maroon. I can’t believe she made them for the both of you anyway”

“Your mum made this?” Harry wondered aloud, picking at the edge of his sleeve. “That’s very nice of her.” It did look very nice on Harry, Tom agreed, even if it was homemade and didn’t come from a respectable shop like Twillfitt and Tattings.

“Fred, George, look!” Ron’s older twin brothers had just joined them at the table. “Tom and Harry got Weasley jumpers too!”

“Hmm,” one of the twins hummed in response, eyeing their sweaters. “Well, she obviously makes more of an effort if you’re not family.”

Halfway through breakfast, an owl dropped a letter on Harry’s plate, and he plucked it from atop his bacon before the grease could stain the parchment. He opened it and frowned, as though confused by the message.

“What is it?” Tom asked curiously.

“Letter from someone named ‘Hagrid,’” he replied. “Says he knew my parents and would like to meet me. I can bring my friends, if I want.”

Trepidation crept through him – while Tom was reasonably sure that Hagrid did not know who Tom Riddle had grown up to become, they had been students together: peers, almost. If there were one person in this castle aside from Dumbledore who would recognise him as the same boy who had attended Hogwarts more than fifty years prior, it would be Rubeus Hagrid. 

And yet he could not allow Harry to go, unattended, into the home of a man so obviously in Dumbledore’s pocket.

“Hagrid’s the groundskeeper, I think,” Tom said, forcing his voice to be calm and even. “I’ll go with you, if you like.”

“Can I come too?” Ron butted in between bites of sausage. “I’ve seen him about, he seems like an interesting type.”

“Of course, Ron,” Harry smiled. 

They made their way across the lawn in front of Hogwarts after breakfast, tromping through the snow in heavy winter boots. Tom’s hands were clenched into tight fists inside his pockets, turmoil bubbling within him. Hagrid’s continued presence at Hogwarts still angered him, that the boy who had been expelled had been allowed a position at the school when Tom had not, no matter that he was merely a lowly groundskeeper. No matter that it was his own fault the boy had had his wand snapped.

They arrived at Hagrid’s cottage, and Harry knocked on the door.

“Ah, Harry,” the giant man beamed, swinging the door open. “There yeh are, I was hoping you’d come down. And these are yer friends, are they?”

“Yes, Mr Hagrid,” Harry politely replied. “This is Ron Weasley and Tom Riddle. We’re very pleased to meet you.”

“Tom Riddle, eh?” Hagrid’s eyes were upon him immediately. “Thought I caught yer name at the sorting – named after yer father, are yeh?”

“That’s right, sir,” Tom said, his voice somewhat strangled. “I never met him, though. He left my mother before I was born.”

Hagrid’s expression softened. “Tha’s alright then. I knew him, yeh know – we were in Hogwarts together. Wasn’t the nicest bloke, but you seem alright. Look just like him, don’t yeh?”

A wave of relief washed over him. Hagrid, too, was happy to buy the story that he was Tom Riddle’s son, not some bizarre reincarnation of him. But then he was giving the oaf too much credit - Hagrid surely lacked the intellect to know what a Horcrux was, let alone how it functioned.

(Never mind that Tom had been resurrected in a manner entirely divorced from how Horcruxes were meant to function.)

“Well, come in you lot!” Hagrid beamed. “Yeh must be freezin’ out here, I’ve just put the kettle on and made cakes.”

The cakes in question turned out to be more like rocky, shapeless lumps that would probably work well as weapons in a pinch, if you didn’t mind doing things the Muggle way. At least the tea was perfectly adequate. Ron and Harry pretended to enjoy their cakes while Tom sniffed in disdain and sipped from his cup.

“So, Ron – another Weasley, eh?” Hagrid was asking. “Not surprised to see the hat put yeh in Gryffindor. Gotta say though, Harry, yer sortin’ was a bit of a shock to all of us.”

Harry frowned. “I’ve gathered as much, sir,” he replied, “but aside from Slytherin supposedly being full of Dark witches and wizards, I can’t really see why.”

“Ah, enough of that ‘Mr Hagrid’ and ‘sir’ nonsense,” Hagrid replied, waving one dinner plate sized hand in the air. “It’s just ‘Hagrid.’ I guess none of us expected the boy who vanquished You-Know-Who would end up in the same house as him – but if yer in it, I suppose they can’t all be bad, can they? It’s just, well, Harry – the Potters have been Gryffindors for generations now. Yer mum was too.”

“Really?” Harry’s eyes were wide with hunger for more information about his family. “Did you know them too, when you went to Hogwarts?”

Hagrid chuckled. “Nah,” he replied, “yer parents were a good deal younger than I was. Met them after I took the position of Groundskeeper. Must’ve been in my forties by then. They were good kids – well, yer dad was a bit of a troublemaker, but Lily straightened him out by the end of it. It’s a shame, what happened to them.”

Tom’s chest clenched, unbidden. It was a shame, wasn’t it, that in another life he had listened blindly to a half-heard snippet of some sodding prophecy and robbed Harry of a normal childhood? He had acted on impulse and madness and condemned him to a life all too similar to his own, raised unloved and unwanted and without a mother or father who would shield him away from the cruelty of the world.

With a sickening jolt, Tom suddenly realised he once again resented not being raised by his own parents, a feeling that had faded by the time he had been nine. The environment at Wool’s had not been conducive to such sentimentality, and so he had excised the feeling with brutal efficiency, forcing himself to hate them for leaving him behind. Now here it was again, a longing to know how his life would have been different if his mother hadn’t died or his father hadn’t hated magic too much to seek out his lost son.

“Tom?” Harry was asking, “are you alright?”

“Yes,” he answered quickly, draining his cup. “I agree with Hagrid. It’s terrible what happened.”

“Ouch, Tom, you stepped on my foot again.”

The two of them were safely tucked beneath the Invisibility Cloak, wandering the corridors after dark. It had taken them two days to track down where they thought the entrance to Gryffindor might be, but in the dark of the night the castle was a brand new labyrinth. The stairs had shifted sometime during the day, and without a gaggle of Gryffindors to stalk, retracing their steps to the tower was proving more difficult than either of them had expected.

“Sorry Harry,” Tom whispered. “It’s a little hard to see with the torches out.”

“I told you we should have brought a lantern,” Harry hissed. “I still can’t get my Lumos to stay on.”

“And what if the edge of the cloak lifted?” Tom argued. “Anyone would be able to see the light from underneath it. This way, the most they’ll see is our slippers, and it’s too dark to make them out properly.”

“Shh!” Harry hastened. “I think I heard someone.”

The boys stilled in the corridor, but no one appeared to admonish them for being out of bed so late – it had likely only been a suit of armour snoring.

They resumed their frankly aimless search, climbing endless staircases and examining countless portraits, none of which seemed to depict the fat lady Ron had described earlier in the term. At last, however, they came upon the spot they had decided was the most likely entrance.

“What now?” Harry asked. “We don’t know the password, and it’s too late for anyone else to be out of bed.”

“Let’s just wait a while,” Tom replied. “There might still be prefects finishing their rounds.”

But it quickly became clear that no one was going to show up, and as the minutes ticked by, the two boys grew colder and colder, the chill air of the castle sinking into their skin and leaving them shivering. Tom at last had to admit defeat, and they began the slow and careful trek back to their own dormitory.

“It’s okay Tom,” Harry whispered. “We can try again tomorrow. We should be able to find it faster next time.”

“Harry, hush.” 

Tom had stopped short, throwing out an arm to keep Harry from moving any further. In front of them sat Mrs Norris, the caretaker’s cat. She might not be able to see them, but she sniffed the air knowingly before taking off into the night.

“Harry, we need to hide – Filch’s cat is a kneazle, she’ll lead him right to us.”

“What exactly is a kneazle?” Harry grumbled. “Your aunt kept talking about them, but no one’s ever explained what they are. They just look like cats to me.”

“Technically, they are,” Tom replied, guiding Harry quickly around a corner. “Or, rather, they’re a magical species of cat that can be bred with non-magic varieties. Strictly speaking, Mrs Norris is probably only half-kneazle at most. It’s the same thing though, all of them can sense when someone is being suspicious.”

“Oh, so that’s why your aunt’s cats all hate you,” Harry snickered. “You’re always up to something.”

“I am not,” Tom griped.

“Yes you are,” Harry replied. “Scaring my aunt and cousin into being nice to me? Sneakily buying me a whole new wardrobe? Nicking silly things from our classmates when you think I’m not looking?”

“Like you’re any better,” Tom argued, “wanting to sneak into Gryffindor tower to scare Ron.”

“What can I say?” Harry said, laughing. “You’re a terrible influence. You’ll probably be roping me into taking over the world by the time we leave Hogwarts.”

Tom smirked – of course he would be. 

“Quick, in here,” he said, pushing Harry through a door that was slightly ajar. “We’ll wait here until we know for sure Filch isn’t looking for us anymore.”

It was an empty classroom, unremarkable and covered in dust. The desks had been pushed aside long ago, stacked against dingy walls and long forgotten, chairs scattered about them in a distinctly hasty manner. Footsteps echoed through the corridor behind them.

“They’re here somewhere, my sweet, they can’t have gone far…”

But Filch passed by the door and continued on down the corridor, the sound of his footsteps fading away into the distance. Tom exhaled, a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding let free at last.

“Hey Tom, what’s that?”

He followed Harry’s gaze to the other end of the classroom, spotting a tall mirror against the far wall. It was ornate, framed in gold, and utterly out of place in the dusty classroom. Harry tugged him forward.

“It’s just an old mirror, Harry,” Tom whispered insistently. “We should get back to our dorm.” But Harry was shivering now, standing in front of the mirror and staring at what could only be his non-existent reflection. “What’s gotten into you?” he hissed.

“You don’t see them?” Harry’s voice was broken and hushed, and Tom moved instinctively to hold him, pulling the Cloak off of the two of them to better see what Harry was seeing. But there was nobody else in the mirror, only Harry.

“See who?” Tom asked. “It’s only you there.”

“I… I think it’s my family,” Harry breathed, reaching out to touch the glass. “That’s my mum and dad, and other people too. And you’re there with me, they all look so happy to see us. You can’t see them?”

Tom felt a burst of jealousy explode in his chest. Why should all these people matter to Harry? Yes, it was terrible that his parents had died and he had had to live with the Muggles, but they were gone and they didn’t matter anymore, not when Harry had Tom right here with him. “Move over, I want to see.” He didn’t of course, he just wanted to pull Harry away from this useless, meaningless illusion of love and family. Harry, of course, obliged, and Tom moved in front of the mirror, feeling his jaw drop as the image of himself rippled and swirled into something new. 

“Oh.”

Albus had agonised for the past several weeks, his mind waging war with itself as he struggled to come to a decision – give Harry his father’s Invisibility Cloak or not? On the one hand, it was his rightful property, a family heirloom passed down for centuries – to deprive him of it would be downright criminal. On the other hand, placing such a powerful magical relic into the hands of a child who would no doubt share it with his best friend – a boy who Albus could still not say with absolute certainty was not Lord Voldemort reborn in a clever disguise – was a terrible risk, and he could always wait until Harry reached the age of majority.

In the end, his more trusting and compassionate side won out, and he was eternally thankful that it had.

“Move over, I want to see.”

Albus had come to check on the Mirror of Erised one final time before it would be moved into the trap meant to ensnare the wraith that he suspected remained of Voldemort. What he hadn’t expected to find were the two first years, gleefully taking the Invisibility Cloak for a spin in the dead of night. He’d hastily Disillusioned himself, curious to see what Harry and Tom would make of the ancient Mirror propped against the far wall.

He watched as Harry tore himself away from the Mirror, still obviously enchanted at having seen his family. His declaration of what it had shown him was unsurprising, particularly now that Albus knew he had been denied any information regarding them for so many years – though it was unsettling to learn that his heart’s deepest desire included Tom as one of those who loved him. But now Tom was stepping in front of it, and Albus stilled himself as he sent a silent plea to whatever higher power might be listening that the boy would see something, anything other than the terrible sight of destruction, immortality, and his own power Lord Voldemort would surely find in the Mirror of Erised.

The boy’s jaw fell open in amazement. “Oh,” he whispered, almost reverently.

“Well?” Harry asked. “Can you see all your family standing around you?”

“No,” Tom answered breathlessly, pressing his hands against the glass as Harry had done the moment before. “It’s us.”

“Us?” Harry echoed. “But that’s just… a normal reflection.”

“No, it’s us, but we’re older.” A hungry smile spread across the boy’s face. “We’ve graduated Hogwarts, and I’m being sworn in as the Minister for Magic – and you’re right by my side. We both look so happy.”

A wave of relief washed over Albus as he dropped his disillusionment.

“So, boys – out of bed so late?” 

The two children turned in shock to face him, horror at having been caught and fear of retribution etched across both their faces. 

“I’m sorry, sir, we were just –”

“We didn’t see you, sir –”

Albus raised a hand to silence them, smiling gently. “Neither of you are in trouble,” he interrupted, “after all, wandering the halls of Hogwarts after dark is a time honoured tradition.” 

“Oh,” Harry said faintly.

“Now, I see you two, like hundreds before you, have discovered the delights of the Mirror of Erised.”

“The Mirror of – what, sir?” Harry asked.

“Erised,” Albus replied. “As you’ve seen, it showed you your family, Harry – and for you, Tom, it showed you receiving the highest position within the Ministry. Now, can you think what the Mirror of Erised shows us all?”

Harry shook his head. Tom’s brows knitted together as he considered the question.

“Let me explain. The happiest man on earth would be able to use the Mirror of Erised like a normal mirror, that is, he would look into it and see himself exactly as he is. Does that help?”

Tom turned round and stared at the inscription on the gold-wrought frame. “It’s backwards!” he exclaimed. “‘I show not your face but your heart’s desire.’ It shows us what we want!”

“Very astute, Tom,” Albus replied, “but not quite – the heart’s desire goes beyond mere wanting. For Harry, who has never known his family, it shows them standing around him, filled with love. For you, it shows you achieving what are no doubt your deepest ambitions. And for the both of you, it shows each other.”

“But sir,” Harry said, “Tom and I already have each other. Why would the Mirror show us that?”

“An excellent question, Harry,” Albus replied. “I suspect that the two of you have formed such a deep connection as such that there is no desire to be fulfilled for either one of you in which the other is not present. Such a strong bond of friendship is rare, and should be treasured. I truly hope for the both of you that it stands the test of time.

“Now, I must inform you both that the Mirror will be moved to a new home tomorrow, and I ask you not to go looking for it. If either of you do run across it, you will now be prepared. Remember, Harry, Tom – it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live. Now, why don’t you two slip back beneath that admirable Cloak and get off to bed?”

“Sir,” Harry said, retrieving the Cloak from the floor, “can I ask you something?”

“Obviously, you’ve just done so,” Albus replied, smiling. “You may ask me one more thing, however.”

“What do you see when you look in the Mirror?”

Thoughts of Ariana, of Aberforth, of his mother and father swirled in Albus’ mind. Gellert, too, and young Tom Riddle, the child he had failed, and even Harry, for whom he had done the same, all coalesced into a whirlwind of regrets and guilt. “I?” he said, a slight quaver in his voice nearly belying his calm composure. “I see myself holding a pair of thick, woollen socks…”

He watched the boys leave the classroom a minute later, only allowing himself to relax his composure once the door had snicked shut behind them. His fears were alleviated at last, struck down after over a year of waning and waxing, for Tom surely could not be Lord Voldemort in a child’s guise. Sure, the Tom Riddle he had once known had been an expert at lying even at a very early age, and had the boy in front of him only spoken of seeing himself sworn in as Minister, Albus might still have found that suspicious. It did indicate the boy was wickedly ambitious, just as Voldemort had been, but the Tom Riddle of the past had never, as far as he knew, understood true friendship, and the first thing this new Tom had said in astonishment upon seeing his desires revealed in the Mirror was, ‘It’s us .’

Fate, it seemed, had decided to be kind for once. Instead of marking the son of the Potters and the son of Lord Voldemort as enemies, it had linked them as fast friends, two boys who could lean on each other through the adversity of the past and the future alike. And they would surely need each other, wouldn’t they, as events began to unfold – were even now unfolding – around them?

Because Quirinus had begun acting more and more suspicious. Tasked with providing a trial for the trap set for Voldemort, he had provided a troll – and then another troll had mysteriously found a way into the castle on Hallowe’en. Severus had found him more than once skulking about the third floor corridor, fleeing upon sight. All that was left was to complete the final enchantments upon the Mirror and encase the Stone within it, and Voldemort, aided no doubt by Quirrell, would find himself trapped, defeated once more.

And prophecies be damned: If Albus could help it, Voldemort would never lay a finger on Harry, nor upon his own son.

Chapter Text

Tom found himself haunted by Dumbledore’s words for days after encountering the Mirror of Erised. Not the bit about Harry – he had already been sure the moment he came into physical existence that there was no future worth bearing if Harry was not at his side – but about his deepest ambitions. He recalled having dreams of achieving greatness in the world of politics once upon a time, but hadn’t his true desire been to overthrow the Ministry via pure force alone? Had that truly changed?

It disturbed him, the idea that his ruthlessness and hunger for power might have somehow been blunted and dulled since his previous life, along with his memories. And it had, hadn’t it? Instead of building alliances among his Pureblood housemates, he had devoted his time to forming a study group that included a Muggle-born and a blood traitor. Aside from during a few petty squabbles with insignificant classmates, he hadn’t felt the need to hurt or compel anyone since he had arrived at Hogwarts. Something had clearly happened to him while he was healing within the warmth of Harry’s soul, something that had robbed him of the edge he had had as Lord Voldemort.

Except… that wasn’t quite true, was it? For just as he had taken great pleasure forcing Amy Benson and Dennis Bishop to make the terrifying climb down to the seaside cave, so too had he relished in the look of utter fear in the Dursley boy’s eyes as he planted a vision of him slowly bleeding out, Tom towering over him, when he'd so rudely shoved Harry aside. Similarly, he had exulted in the pleasure washing over him at Petunia’s latex-gloved hand pressing to her mouth in horror when he had forced her to witness the image of her son being removed from her care, her scrawny wrists slapped into manacles. No, he was still himself, thank Salazar, but something had changed.

The answer came to him in bits and pieces. There was no reason to use compulsion or harmful magic on anyone around him because no one had tried to harm or annoy him first. His original first year had seen the efficient and judicious application of both, his classmates dead set against sharing a dorm with some insignificant Mudblood. This time, with a mother who was originally a Rowle and a best friend who was a celebrity and still somewhat of an unknown element, he was favoured within his house despite the company with which he surrounded himself. And while Ron and Draco in particular could grate against his nerves, he also knew that Harry wouldn’t approve of him retaliating against them in such a disproportionate manner. And so too, the loss of the desire to topple the Ministry in a grand display – Harry would never have it.

It was not that Tom no longer cared about power, about lording over those he saw as insignificant – it was that Harry would hate him for it, the boy who loved so freely would turn away in disgust if he realised Tom’s true nature. And so, unwilling as he was to lose that one guiding star in his life, Tom’s ambitions and desires had altered to allow a place for Harry, a safe compromise in which the two of them could remain, happily, together.

And with a sudden lightness he wasn’t sure he had ever experienced, Tom realised he wanted his own life, a life of power shared with his only friend – and no longer cared about being Lord Voldemort.

“Psst – Harry, Tom – are you awake?”

Harry was awake, but only just, and in no mood to be roused. “What ‘dya want, Draco?” he mumbled.

“Come with me, I have to show the two of you something!”

In the bed next to Harry, Tom checked his watch. “Draco, it’s past midnight,” he admonished, even as he sat upright. “Can’t this wait until tomorrow?”

Draco shook his head wildly. “It might not be there tomorrow – it has to be right now!”

Tom sighed and pulled the covers back. “Fine,” he sighed. “I wasn’t sleeping well anyway. Harry get the –”

Harry shot him a look – they had agreed not to share the fact that Harry had an Invisibility Cloak, not when Draco would inevitably want to go sneaking out every single night.

“Er – get your wand,” Tom faltered. “Can’t be too careful if we’re going to be out after curfew.”

Harry was stunned. Tom was a stickler for the rules, at least on paper. He would steal, but only when he was entirely certain that no one was looking. He would sneak out with Harry, but only under the impenetrable guise of the Cloak.  That Tom was willing to slip out into the corridors so late after dark without a failsafe was almost unthinkable. “Tom, are you sure?” Harry whispered.

Tom shrugged. “I’m bored, and Draco’s captured my attention. Are you coming?”

Harry leapt out of bed, suddenly very alert. If Tom wanted to go on an adventure around the castle after midnight, of course Harry was coming. He stepped into his slippers and tucked his wand up the cuff of his nightshirt, out of sight but easily retrievable.

They slipped through the common room and into the corridor, silent as shadows. For one wild moment Harry thought that Draco too had found the Mirror of Erised, but no – Dumbledore had said it would be moved, right? Besides, he was leading them away from the corridor where Harry and Tom had first discovered it, moving toward the Great Hall instead.

“Draco,” Harry hissed, unable to contain his curiosity any longer. “Where are you taking us?”

Draco smirked at him in return. “It’s Hagrid,” he said. “That giant oaf is up to something.”

“Hagrid?” Harry echoed in surprise. “What on earth would he be up to?”

“I’ve been watching that dingy hut of his,” Draco replied in a hushed tone, “and he’s got something in there. There’s been banging noises against the walls, and this morning I saw a fireball through his window. Harry, I think Hagrid has a dragon .”

“What?”

“I know!” Draco smiled triumphantly. “We just have to catch him with it and tell the professors – the Board will send him away for sure, and good riddance!”

“Tom,” Harry whispered in their shared language, gripping his friend’s hand in sudden despair. “I don’t want them to send Hagrid away – he might be a bit… odd, but he’s nice.”

“If Draco is correct,” Tom replied, “I’m afraid to say I agree with him. Dragons are extremely dangerous, and anyone who would bring one onto school grounds has no place at Hogwarts.”

“You brought a dangerous snake onto school grounds,” Harry accused.

“Hardly – an adder bite is nearly harmless to humans, and as you well know I am completely in control of Scitalis. A dragon is in a completely different class of creature.”

“But still,” Harry insisted, “what if Hagrid is arrested?”

“What are the two of you hissing about back there?” Draco demanded. “Merlin, as undeniably incredible it is that you both share Salazar Slytherin’s gift, it’s still creepy as hell to actually hear.”

“It’s nothing, Draco,” Tom responded. “Harry’s simply having a crisis of morality.”

“Is that what you call it?” Harry grumbled. “Just because I don’t want to see someone I like get in trouble –”

“Potter! Riddle! And you too, Malfoy?” The three boys froze in their tracks, Harry’s heart sinking like a stone. He knew that icy tone. “Out of bed, in the corridors at this hour? Well? Explain yourselves!”

Snape had materialised out of the shadows, drawn, no doubt, by voices that they hadn’t been bothering to keep down. “Sir – Professor –” Draco stammered. “We were going to catch Hagrid, he’s been keeping a –”

“So you thought not only to wander the corridors after curfew, but also to traipse around the grounds?” Snape snarled. “You foolish child! Do you not think these restrictions exist for anything but your own benefit? That will be ten points from Slytherin – each – and detention for all of you.”

“Professor – you can’t!” Draco begged.

“Don’t tell me what I can or can’t do, Mr Malfoy,” Snape was saying, but Harry barely heard him. Tom’s hand was clenched painfully tight around his, and he swore he could feel the fury at having been caught pouring off of him.

“Tom,” he hissed quietly. “Tom, are you alright?”

Tom visibly jolted in the pale light emanating from the windows high above them, seemingly coming back to himself. “Yes,” he replied, his voice quaking. “I’ll be fine, thank you Harry.”

“Now, I will escort you three back to your dorms, where you should be.” Snape’s tone was low and dangerous. “And make no mistake, if I catch any of you pulling a stunt like this again, Slytherin or no, you will be out on your ear. Am I understood?”

Harry nodded meekly, tugging Tom along as he followed his Head of House back to the dungeons.

Whether Hagrid did or did not have a dragon, they never found out. Their detention, to Tom’s displeasure, was to be held with the man himself – but when they met him at the edge of the forest, the hut in sight, there were no strange noises, puffs of smoke, or telltale fireballs. If Hagrid had ever housed a dragon, it was long gone now – though truth be told, the oaf’s beard did look a little singed.

“Right then,” Hagrid was saying, “now listen carefully, ‘cause it’s dangerous what we’re gonna do tonight, an’ I don’ want no one takin’ risks. Follow me over here a moment.”

Tom listened dimly as Hagrid explained that the four of them would be searching for an injured unicorn in the forest. For all the caretaker, Filch, had made it out as though the punishments in prior generations had been far stricter, Tom was fairly certain no one in his original run at Hogwarts had been hung up by their wrists for breaking curfew, let alone been forced to wander the Forbidden Forest after dark. The forest was a death trap, and while Harry, being a Horcrux, could almost certainly not be physically destroyed by normal means, he could still be injured beyond repair. Furthermore, Tom knew he could easily find himself a bodiless soul again upon being attacked, tethered by his bond to Harry, and did not relish the idea of having to once more restore himself to physical form and the complications that that would introduce.

“Right, now,” Hagrid said, “we’re gonna split inter two parties an’ follow this trail in diff’rent directions. Harry, Tom – take Fang. He’s a coward, but his bark’ll scare off anything particularly nasty. Draco, yer with me. If anyone gets in trouble, send up red sparks – green if yeh find the unicorn.

The four of them split into their groups of two as they neared a fork in the path. As Tom and Harry moved further and further away from the other two, their voices becoming distant and muffled, he clung to Harry’s hand tighter and tighter. There was something in the forest, and the deeper they ventured, the more he could sense it – a presence here beneath the trees with them, and definitely nothing good. If only he weren’t so secretly terrified, he might be able to just focus and figure out what it was. 

“Tom,” Harry whispered, “I don’t think we’re alone in here.”

“No, Harry,” Tom agreed. “We’re definitely not.”

So Harry could sense it too, but that didn’t exactly narrow things down. At the very least, however, it calmed Tom’s paranoia that he was imagining things – though perhaps it would be better if he were. At least Fang didn’t seem to be too perturbed, ambling along and sniffing every so often at a stray patch of silvery unicorn blood.

“Tom, why would anyone hurt a unicorn?” Harry asked, shivering.

Tom pondered. “Well, it could be another creature,” he replied. “Something mindless, just hunting for food and choosing a poor target. If it’s a human, however… there are very few reasons someone would seek to harm a unicorn. Both the horn and hair can be harvested without injuring them, and the meat is reportedly inedible. Only the blood is of any use, but only someone completely insane would consider…” He trailed off, listening for footsteps, a rustle in the bushes, anything that could help him identify what it was that shadowed them, even as a dark suspicion grew in his mind.

“What is it Tom?” Harry asked. “Why would someone need unicorn blood?”

“It’s one of the few substances that can keep you from imminent death,” he replied softly. “But they say to do so leaves you with a terrible curse.” It was coming together quickly now – Fang’s seeming indifference to a Dark presence of which both he and Harry were acutely aware, a mysterious something or someone that was so desperate for life they would consume a substance only a madman would consider. “Harry, this is bad. We need to get back to the others, now! ”

But Harry had thrown out an arm in front of him, and he walked right into it with a soft “Oomph.” Just ahead of them, laying on a soft mossy patch in a clearing, was the unicorn, legs splayed out across the forest floor, blood spattered across the leaves. Beautiful even in death, the great creature seemed to illuminate the trees around them, its mane spread artfully across the ground.

They stood there, rooted to the spot, even as a dark, cloaked figure made its way out of the shadows and knelt to drink from a wound in the unicorn’s side. The pressure in Tom’s head was increasing, and he knew he was right – what he had been sensing wasn’t the presence of a mindless creature or some dark magic, but the soul connection between him and Voldemort itself. He seized Harry’s hand and moved to take a step back, throwing the world into chaos as a twig snapped beneath the sole of his shoe.

The cloaked figure rose and turned to stare straight at Harry, and suddenly Tom’s head was on fire. Fang bolted away from them, and Harry fell to the ground next to him, shrieking and clutching at his scar. Tom understood immediately. Harry was in agony, his scar aflame due to being the conduit between their souls, alight from Voldemort’s rage, and Tom was sharing in that horrible, nausea-inducing pain. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t think. Voldemort – or was it Quirrell, or both? – was moving toward them, and he was completely frozen even as the hooded face turned away from Harry and toward him.

Something flew over their heads.

A centaur, young, and bold, was charging at Voldemort, driving him back into the shadows. As he fled, the pain dissipated, and Tom found himself finally able to move again, helping Harry back onto his feet and pulling him into his arms.

“Are you alright?”

The centaur, having successfully driven off Quirrell and/or Voldemort, was standing over them, looking down with an impassive but not unkind expression on his face. 

“Yes – thank you – what was that?” Harry stammered. 

“You are the Potter boy,” he answered. “And you… you do not belong here,” he continued, turning to Tom, frowning. He looked back and forth between the two of them for a long moment, as though trying to come to a decision. “You had better get back to Hagrid,” he finally said. “The forest is not safe at this time, especially for you. Can you ride? It will be quicker this way.”

The two of them scrambled onto the centaur’s back – who introduced himself as Firenze – and they were away within seconds, darting through the trees and underbrush. Tom’s arms were wrapped tightly around Harry, for balance, to be sure, but also to reassure himself that they had both left the ordeal unscathed. “He’s awake,” he murmured, his voice little more than a whisper. “He saw me.”

“Tom?”

“It’s… nothing, Harry.”

“Firenze,” Harry ventured. “What – who was that that you saved us from?”

Firenze slowed to a walk. “Harry Potter,” he replied, “do you know the use of unicorn blood?”

“Tom told me,” Harry answered. “It can save you from dying, but it comes with a curse.”

“A half-life would be a more accurate term,” Firenze returned. “Your body and soul, trapped forever on a precipice, unable to die, but also unable to feel, to touch, to eat or sleep. The unpleasant consequence of having slain something defenceless and pure to save yourself.”

“But who’d be that desperate?” Harry asked. “If it leaves you with nothing, death’s better, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Firenze said, “unless you are so terrified of death, of being forgotten by the world that an insensate life appears to you as a better option. Can you think of nobody who has waited many years to return to power, who has clung to life, who would give up almost anything if he believed he could be reborn?”

“Do you mean,” Harry croaked, “that was Vol –”

“Harry!” Hagrid boomed, crashing through the underbrush, dragging Draco behind him. “I thought I heard yeh, screaming back there a minute ago. Yer alrigh’ though? He’s alrigh’ Firenze?” The man lifted Harry off the centaurs back, pulling him out of Tom’s grip.

“No harm done to the boy, I’m thankful to say,” Firenze replied. “If you would, Hagrid, I must speak with Harry Potter’s friend.”

“O’ – O’ course,” Hagrid replied, bewildered. “Harry, wha’ happened?”

“The unicorn’s dead, Hagrid,” Harry said weakly. “It’s in that clearing back there.”

Firenze cantered away from the others, Tom still atop his back, before kneeling and allowing him to slide off. “Tom, I believe your name is?”

“Yes,” he replied, meeting the creature’s eyes. There was no Legilimency that could allow him to slip into the centaur’s mind, the thoughts so alien and unfamiliar to his own. And yet he could feel the centaur’s mind pressing against his, attempting to push through his Occlumency barriers.

“I know what you are,” Firenze said in a shockingly gentle manner, “perhaps even better than you understand it yourself. You were initially created out of the darkest of magic, and yet you were restored to this world by a power so pure even the greatest minds, man and centaur alike, struggle to understand it. You are something new, something unique – perhaps untouchable.”

Tom stared up at him. He had been told that centaurs possessed a strange insight into the world around them, something like Divination, but beyond, yet he had never cared to understand what that meant. “What are you saying?” he demanded. “What do you think I am?!”

“I think you are not ready,” Firenze sighed, “but understand this, Tom, soul of the Dark Lord – while you tether him to this plane of existence, you have become separate. You have wished for a life of your own, and you have gained it. You are no longer for him. Farewell, Tom.”

Tom stared at the centaur, wordless, as he galloped back into the forest, disappearing amongst the trees.

“Tom!” Harry’s voice broke through his stupor as he stumbled through the deadfall toward him. “Tom! Are you alright? What did he say to you?” Harry’s arms wrapped around him, and he felt himself automatically return the gesture, clinging to his friend in need of something solid, something real.

“Nothing really,” he said hollowly. “Something about…” he swallowed hard. “Voldemort.”

“But why tell only you?” Harry asked, confused.

“I don’t know,” Tom lied.

“So what happened back there in the forest?”

They were back in the Slytherin common room, lounging on the soft green couches under the glass globes that kept the space alight. Draco, who had had a considerably more mundane journey, was quizzing Harry and Tom for answers. 

“It was Voldemort,” Harry said flatly. “Voldemort’s been killing the unicorns to drink their blood.”

“The Dark Lord?” Draco scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous, Harry. You should know better than anyone that he’s dead.”

“It’s true, I swear!” Harry insisted. “At least, that’s what Firenze said, I couldn’t get a good look at him… My scar felt like it was on fire.”

“Your scar?” Draco gaped. “But what would your scar have to do with anything?”

“Think, Draco.” Tom finally spoke up, shaking himself out of the sort of numb paralysis he had been sitting with ever since they had returned from the forest. “Who was it that gave Harry his scar? Doesn’t it make sense that if Voldemort is back, the wound he gave Harry might be affected?”

Harry nodded emphatically. “It’s still prickling even now. I think it’s a warning… It means Voldemort is about to do something – I just wish we knew what.”

Draco sat forward, his eyes wide and gleaming in the dim light of the common room. “The Dark Lord really is back, then?” he whispered. 

“Do try not to sound so awed by the man who attempted to kill our friend, Draco,” Tom snapped. He could feel it too, the connection between him and his former self coming back to life, slowly growing in strength. If Voldemort hadn’t already realised who and what he was, he certainly would soon – and there were still two weeks left in term.

“Of course – I’m sorry Harry,” Draco said, sounding appropriately chastised. “But if the Dark Lord really is back, what do we do? We’re just first years.”

An uneasy silence fell over the group that lasted until morning.

Chapter Text

They made it through their exams, but only just. Harry was restive and jumpy, as though he might turn a corner and find Voldemort standing there at any moment. Tom had also been affected, growing quiet and sullen since their detention in the Forbidden Forest. The others were nervous as well after Harry explained what had happened and that Voldemort was trying to return, but they hadn’t been there, hadn’t seen the Dark wizard himself, and so they didn’t really understand why the two of them were acting so strangely.

The only time Harry really felt safe anymore was late at night in the quiet of the Slytherin dorm. He had started having nightmares, visions of his parents disappearing into a flash of green light while a hooded figure stood over him, cackling with cold, high-pitched laughter. Each time he would wake with a start, it was as if Tom already knew, as he would slide from his own bed and crawl into Harry’s, holding him tightly until he slipped back into an easy slumber. He always remained until morning, and every time Harry woke up to the warmth of his friend’s embrace he felt momentarily at peace – until his eyes met Tom’s, dark with worry and fear, and he remembered why Tom was there in the first place.

“It just doesn’t make sense!” Pansy exclaimed. The six of them were sprawled out across the grass after their final exam, basking in the warm sun and breathing a collective sigh of relief (aside from Hermione, who was fretting over the impending release of their examination results). “If the Dark Lord has returned, why is he just hanging out around the Forbidden Forest? You can find unicorns anywhere!”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Hermione argued, rather scathingly. “He’s clearly here to try to kill Harry again – er, sorry,” she quickly added as Harry blanched.

“That’s not going to work,” Draco added, idly tearing up some strips of grass and sprinkling them across Pansy’s robes, earning himself a scowl as she brushed them away. “He might be able to get into the forest, but Hogwarts itself is too well protected; there’s a reason the Dark Lord never took it before he fell. I may not like Dumbledore much, but you have to respect the man – since he took over as Headmaster in the forties he’s made the castle damn near impenetrable.”

“Exactly!” Pansy replied. “If the Dark Lord wanted to kill Harry, he’d be better off waiting for summer. There must be something else that he wants, something that won’t leave Hogwarts next week.”

Tom’s hand tightened around Harry’s, prompting him to look over. As always these days, his friend’s expression was unreadable, save for an anxious tightening at the corners of his mouth.

“Wait!” Ron cut in. “I’ve got it – do you remember when someone broke into Gringotts but didn’t steal anything, and they all thought You-Know-Who was behind it? What if he didn’t take anything because it was already here !”

“That’s great, Ron,” Hermione quibbled, rolling her eyes, “but that doesn’t exactly tell us what it is.”

Harry thought hard – what was it Firenze had told him? “It’ll be something powerful…” he said slowly. “Something that can replace the unicorn blood, restore him back to life properly…”

“Well, there are several magical artefacts that can extend or restore life,” Hermione offered. “For example, there’s Ariadne’s Diadem, supposedly given to her by the Greek God Dionysis when he took her hand in marriage and granted her immortality. There’s the Philosopher’s Stone, crafted by Nicolas Flamel, which –”

“None of us should even be trying to figure out what Voldemort is looking for,” Tom interrupted, his expression stony. “If there is something in the castle he wants, it’s Dumbledore’s job to protect it, not ours.”

Harry leapt to his feet, wrenching his hand away from Tom’s. “You’re right ,” he gasped, “and we didn’t even tell Hagrid what we saw during detention. I’ve got to go to Dumbledore – no, you don’t need to come with me, I’ll only be gone a minute.” And he was off, before anyone could protest.

He raced up the lawn toward the castle, ignoring the summer heat and the sweat starting to drip down his forehead. If Dumbledore was protecting something from Voldemort, the least Harry could do was tell him that the man was hiding somewhere in the forest, killing unicorns and drinking their blood to survive. And if he couldn’t find the headmaster, then one of the professors would surely be able to pass on his message.

“Mr Potter.” Harry had just made it into the corridor that led to the Great Hall when a voice behind him had him spinning in place to see who it was. “Exactly the boy I was looking for.”

“Professor Quirrell!” Harry managed, gasping for breath after his flight across the grounds. “I need to talk to Dumbledore, it’s urgent!”

Professor Quirrell smiled at him. “What could be so urgent that it would have you inside on this beautiful day?”

“It’s about Voldemort, sir!” Harry exclaimed. “He’s hiding in the Forbidden Forest, I need to tell the Headmaster –”

“I’ll be sure to pass the message along. Now, why don’t you come with me? I have a question regarding the essay you turned in this morning.”

Harry hesitated - something wasn’t quite right. What had happened to Quirrell’s usual stutter? He had never seen the man look so confident. “I – I should really get back to my friends, sir.”

“It won’t take long, Harry.” Yes, something was very wrong. Quirrell’s smile had widened, and something about it looked predatory, inhuman even.

“Really,” Harry insisted, stumbling back. “I told them I’d just be a minute. They’ll be missing me soon.”

“Yes, I do believe they will,” Quirrell replied. He raised his wand, which Harry hadn’t noticed him holding a moment before. “Imperio.”

Harry flinched, waiting for the impact of the unknown spell, but it never came. Instead, his fear and anxiety floated away, replaced by a sea of calm and happiness. Why had he been trying to get away from Professor Quirrell again? He couldn’t seem to remember.

“Walk with me, Harry.” Yes, that seemed right. His professor had a question for him, didn’t he? Quirrell turned to walk down the corridor, and Harry happily trotted after him.

They arrived at the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom, but instead of entering it they walked on by. That was odd – Harry should find that suspicious, right? Normally he would, but the haze of happiness urged him onward, told him to ignore his concerns and follow Quirrell, and so he did.

They made their way through the labyrinth of the castle, down corridors and up endless winding staircases. They were quite close to where Harry and Tom had located what they thought was the entrance to Gryffindor Tower, so many months ago. But Quirrell led him further on to a stretch of blank hallway, and Harry dutifully stopped as he knew he was supposed to and watched as the Professor paced up and down the length of it three times, muttering under his breath. To Harry’s astonishment, a doorway suddenly came into existence about halfway down the corridor. Quirrell opened it, smiling beguilingly at Harry.

“Go on in, Harry.”

Harry obliged, finding himself in a very strange room full of many things, both mundane and wondrous: stacks of chairs were piled high to the ceiling, dozens of cabinets crammed full of trinkets, books spread across desks and tables, and it all seemed to stretch endlessly into the distance. Quirrell stepped in behind and closed the door.

And the joyous feeling of calm washed away.

Harry whirled around, panic immediately setting back in as he realised the door had vanished. “You!” he shouted at Quirrell. “What did you do to me?!”

“Nothing damaging, I promise you,” Quirrell replied, smiling nastily. “Though it hardly matters in the long run. I’ve waited a long time for this, Potter.”

Harry’s throat felt constricted – what was Quirrell talking about? 

“I didn’t think I’d be presenting you to my master so soon, of course,” Quirrell continued. “The plan had been to retrieve the Stone, use it to restore him to full health, and then capture you. And what a delight that would have been, snatching you from right under Dumbledore’s crooked nose, laying siege to Hogwarts from within – but plans change, Harry”

“Tom’s going to come looking for me when I don’t return,” Harry said, willing his voice not to quaver. 

Quirrell laughed, and it was cold and cruel. “Oh yes – in fact, I’ve made sure he will. You see, Potter, it’s not just you the great Lord Voldemort wants, it’s that little friend of yours. He won’t tell me why, but I understand his reticence - my master must keep many secrets.”

Voldemort. Quirrell was working for Voldemort. Harry’s hands went into fists at his sides. “Don’t hurt Tom!” he cried, sounding a lot braver than he felt.

To his horror, another voice answered him, high and cold and laced with venom. “Don’t hurt Tom…” it mocked, as Harry's scar arced with pain. “Your devotion to your friend is touching, Potter – one wonders if he feels the same for you.”

“Wha – where?” Harry staggered back, stammering in confusion and casting his gaze about for the source of the voice but finding nothing. Quirrell laughed again.

“My master is always with me, Potter,” he sneered. “You won’t find him lurking around a corner.”

“You – you brought him into Hogwarts?!” This was very bad. Harry had to get out of here, and fast, but the only way out had vanished. He could make a run for it into the piles of bric-a-brac around him, but that would only begin a deadly game of hide and seek, and he wasn’t sure how long he would last before Quirrell found him. 

“Of course, Potter,” Quirrell replied, as if allowing Voldemort into Hogwarts were a perfectly normal thing to do. “My master’s demands are very exacting – therefore, he has had to keep a very close eye on me that I do not fail him.”

Harry’s hand crept toward his pocket, toward his wand. But Quirrell noticed this and swiftly levelled his own wand with Harry’s face. “There’ll be none of that, Potter,” he snapped. “In fact, I believe you remaining conscious has run out its usefulness. Good night, Harry – when you wake again, it will be to meet death. Stupefy!”

Harry’s world went black.

“Where on earth can Harry be?” Tom demanded, receiving only blank looks from the rest of his study group. Something felt wrong – Harry had been gone well over fifteen minutes. “He should be back by now.”

Draco shrugged, his eyes closed as he lay with his head in Pansy’s lap. “Maybe Dumbledore had questions for him. I’m sure he’ll be back soon.”

This was foolish – Tom didn’t want to be lazing about on the grass with his classmates, he wanted to spend this time with Harry, particularly when they would be leaving Hogwarts soon and their time together would be limited by how often Arabella allowed him to stay over. He really should have insisted upon accompanying him in the first place. Scowling, he rose from his spot and headed toward the castle.

“Tom, where are you going?” Hermione called from behind him.

“I’m going to find Harry,” he shouted back. “You can come or not, I don’t care.”

A moment later, Ron and Hermione were panting, out of breath beside him, having run to catch up. “Of course we’re coming with you,” Ron said. “Harry’s our friend too.”

“And Draco and Pansy?”

Hermione shrugged. “I think they’re just happy for a little alone time,” she replied. “It’s always the six of us, and I think those two are, well…”

Tom scoffed. He’d have to be blind not to notice the two of them making eyes at each other across the tables in the library. It didn’t matter, the only important thing was finding Harry.

And that was when an owl swooped down and dropped a note on the ground in front of him before flying off with a screech.

Tom bent to pick up the note and unfurled it hastily – was it from Harry? Had he realised how long he had been gone and sent a missive as a means of apology? But no, the handwriting was not his; it was someone else’s entirely, familiar but ultimately unrecognisable.

I have your little “friend.” If you truly care for him, he can be found where one keeps all hidden things. You have one hour. Do not be late.

Tom felt the blood drain out of his face, his stomach dropping in horror. He re-read the letter once, twice, his hands shaking. It was no doubt from Quirrell – or rather, Voldemort, acting through him. He turned to Ron and Hermione, who both looked back at him in bewilderment.

“What’s it say, mate?” asked Ron. Tom shook his head. 

“Change of plans,” he hissed through gritted teeth, crumpling the parchment in his fist. He hated this, but there was no choice – he was going to have to involve Dumbledore. If Voldemort suspected what he was, he would in turn rely on him not to involve their most reviled enemy, and doing so anyway would give Tom the element of surprise. “I know where Harry is. You two, find the headmaster – it has to be him, no one else will do. Tell him to go to the seventh floor corridor, the one with the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy. He needs to walk past the opposite wall three times, asking for the Room of Hidden Things. This is very important, repeat that.”

“Barnabas the Barmy,” Hermione said, her eyes wide. “Walk past the wall three times. Room of Hidden Things. Tom, is Harry in danger?”

“Yes,” he snapped. “Now go! Every second you waste is another moment Harry could be killed. I’m going to where he is, Dumbledore can meet me there.”

Hermione whimpered, but Ron nodded firmly. “Let’s go, Hermione,” he said confidently, seizing her hand and steering her away. No sooner had he done so than Tom took off running.

He raced into the castle, moving as fast as he could convince his legs to pump. The seventh floor was a long way up, but it wouldn’t take him nearly the entirety of the time limit Voldemort had given him to arrive. The question was what state he would be in after traversing the entire length of the school. Tom was better than the rest of his peers at wielding magic, but his skills were laughable compared to those he had developed in his previous life. He had no way of knowing whether he would be fighting Quirrell or Voldemort himself, and exhausted from running, he would be at a disadvantage either way.

Still, he had to keep going – Harry’s life depended on it. He pushed himself up staircases and around corners, gripping his wand tightly in his clenched fist. Almost there now – he was slowing, his legs screaming from the strain of running so fast and for so long. But there was the tapestry, and there was the wall. Forcing himself forward, he paced back and forth along the length of the hallway three times.

I need the Room of Hidden Things. I need the Room of Hidden Things. I need the Room of Hidden Things.

The door appeared. Tom wrenched it open with as much strength as he could muster, and –

"Harry!" 

Harry was lying, as though dead, on the floor in front of him, Quirrell on the other side of him. "You!" Tom cried, forcing a note of shock and betrayal into his voice. "What have you done to Harry?!"

Quirrell smiled, all pretence of his usual nervous disposition dropped. "I see that you do know of the Room of Hidden Things," he said. "How very interesting."

"I found it earlier this year with Harry," Tom lied. "If you've hurt him –"

"Calm yourself, child," Quirrell snapped. "He merely sleeps – though I dare say he won't survive the night. Once we've determined exactly who you are and if you can be an asset to us, his life is forfeit – and if all goes as planned, you will be the one to kill him."

"I won't!" Tom cried. "I would never hurt Harry."

Quirrell ignored him. "I still don't understand the rage and confusion my master felt when he first heard your name – Tom Riddle – I only knew that you held some meaning to him, that you may be of use to him. I must confess, I find it hard to understand how a mere child could be useful to the Dark Lord. Perhaps you could enlighten me, Tom."

"Voldemort," Tom spat, though he had known the truth about this for months. "You're working for Voldemort, aren’t you? He's wrong, I am nothing to him."

"You dare to say his name?!"

"Silence..." Tom felt a shiver run up his spine as an all too familiar voice rang through the air. "Let me see the boy..."

"Master, no! You are not strong enough!"

"Have I not been nourished these past weeks on the blood of the innocent? I have more than enough strength… for this…"

Quirrell's fists clenched at his sides. "As you wish."

Tom watched in mute terror as the man in front of him reached up and began, slowly, to unwrap his turban. With the wrapping discarded on the floor beside him, he stepped over Harry, walked straight up to Tom and turned on the spot. What was revealed horrified Tom; he had been right – Quirrell was, in fact, a Horcrux. Unlike with Harry, however, Voldemort had physically manifested on the back of Quirrell’s head, his features as distorted and ravaged as Tom's had once been before he split off from the whole.

"Absolutely identical," Voldemort assessed. "I had wondered, when I first heard your name, just how close the resemblance would be. As it turns out, you are an exact replica, right down to the last strand of your perfectly coiffed hair."

"You must mean of my father," Tom said scornfully. "I never knew him, and from what I've heard, that's for the best."

Voldemort's lipless mouth curled into a wicked smile. "And just as adept at lying, I see. Do you know, Tom, just how strange it is to awaken to the appearance of a son you couldn't possibly have fathered? Oh, there were women, of course – but none that would be inclined to name their progeny after me.

"There is, of course, another possibility, but it's one that doesn't quite fit. You see, you are young, far too young to logically be a manifestation of any of the safeguards I created to ensure my immortality. And yet... "

He trailed off, looking Tom up and down appraisingly. Tom, not trusting his own voice or words, stood stock still, wand at the ready as Voldemort circled him, forcing Quirrell’s long legs to walk in an uncanny, reverse fashion as he tried to decide who, or indeed what , he was.

"Do you want to know what I believe, Tom?" Voldemort hissed. "I believe you are some echo of me, restored in an unanticipated form, no doubt by one of my most faithful – and perhaps tasked with getting close to the Potter child in order to bring about his downfall? An interesting tactic, and one clearly doomed to fail, as it seems your loyalties have shifted. It is of no matter, of course – Lord Voldemort has used your feeble plan to his own advantage.

“And see how it has paid off in the end, my little wayward soul? How ironic, that I have spent the past year resting and regaining my strength whilst Quirinius fruitlessly attempted to seize the Philosopher's Stone, when you, a far more viable route to my resurrection, have been right here the entire time. I must remember to thank whichever of my followers brought you to life, for supplying me with a renewed body, restored to youth, ready for me to take that I might finally finish what I began so many years before."

He lurched toward Tom, his arms thrust out in front of him, snapping and cracking unnaturally in the wrong direction. He was fast, faster than Tom had expected, and before he could raise his wand to defend himself, Voldemort was upon him, seizing his shoulders in a painful grip and looming over him.

"The time has come, Tom, for us to be one again. Now be a good boy and let me in..."

"No!" Tom screamed. "Get off of me, I don't want you!”

“You would resist me?” Voldemort seethed. “You, nothing more than the scantest piece of my soul, would refuse me that for which I created you?”

“Yes!” he shrieked, the words Firenze had spoken to him only days prior in the Forbidden Forest bubbling into his mind. “I am not a part of you! I’m not for you!”

But it was of little use, he could already feel Voldemort pushing into his mind, slowly wresting control of his body. Tom went limp in his powerful grip, wand clattering to the floor, as the edges of Voldemort’s madness brushed against him, the bloodlust and rage and hatred threatening to pool back into him once more – horrid things, numbed to but a whisper long ago while basking in the warmth of Harry’s love. Soon, he would be subsumed by his older counterpart, reduced to little more than a memory, and he would be forced to watch, helpless within his mind, as his own hand raised his wand to kill his best friend.

A burst of grief bloomed in his chest at the thought.

“Harry!” he cried out, his voice quavering. “Harry, I’m so sorry!”

Voldemort pulled back with a hiss of pain. “What is this?!” he hissed. “You dare to try and harm me? And disarmed, wandless – how?”

Tom knew the answer, but his strength was leaving him. He had exhausted the last of it in that explosion of grief and regret and yes, love for Harry, a love that was anathema to Voldemort, that burned him in the same way Tom had burned as he slowly healed. He tried to call on that same feeling, but he was tired and worn thin and so, so new to this, love coming in fleeting glimpses, not endless cascades like Harry’s did. Voldemort would surely begin his assault against his mind anew, and he would be gone.

“Tom?” A weak voice called through the gloom. “Tom, what’s going – no, stop! Get off of him!”

Voldemort screamed in agony, ripping himself from his mind. Tom felt himself fall back against the stone floor of the Room of Hidden Things, his limbs twitching as he slowly regained control of them. Above him, Harry, awoken at last, had launched himself at Voldemort, one hand on his arm, the other reaching up to seize his neck, his face alight in fury as he tried to wrestle the man to the ground, Voldemort’s – or Quirrell’s, he supposed – skin burning and blistering on contact.

But the world was swimming around him now, even as his fingers scrabbled against the floor, reaching for his wand. He had to help Harry – he could just make him out, his hands losing their grip on Voldemort – but the air was rent with the sound of terrible screaming, and another voice, perhaps in his own head, crying “Harry! Tom!”

He thought he saw, in his last moments of consciousness, someone wrenching Voldemort from Harry’s grasp, but then darkness surrounded him, and he fell back down, once more, into the void.

The void was warm, and soft, and inviting. Tom nestled into it, as he had done so often over so many years, seeking that healing light that nourished him. But something was wrong – the void was scratchy against his face, and his throat was parched and dry, something that had never happened during his time here before.

Tom opened his eyes.

He was in the hospital wing, tucked neatly beneath white linen sheets. To his left, he thought he could hear quiet voices, and to his right was a table with a few gifts and what looked like cards from well-wishers. Tom struggled beneath the sheets, pushing himself into a more comfortable seated position. Where was Harry?

"Ah, I believe your friend has awoken. If you'll excuse me, we shall continue this momentarily." The conversation to his left stopped abruptly, and Dumbledore came gliding into view around the screens between the beds. "Hello, Tom," he said, not unkindly. "I'm happy to see you awake at last."

"Professor!" Tom gasped. "There's no time, we need to get Harry –"

"Ah," Dumbledore interrupted, raising his hand. "You'll find there's no need to worry, Harry is –"

"Tom!" There was a great blur of motion at the edge of the screen, and Tom found himself quite suddenly enveloped in a tight hug as Harry leapt onto the bed next to him. Relief washed over him as his arms curled protectively around the smaller boy, rocking him gently and trembling.

"Harry, oh Harry," he whispered into his friend's wild locks. "I thought you were dead. I thought I'd lost you."

"Harry, I do believe Madam Pomfrey wanted you to stay in bed and rest." Dumbledore’s voice was gentle but chiding, and Tom’s arms tightened around Harry in response

"I'm sorry, sir, I can't do that," Harry replied. "I'm never letting go of Tom again. Besides, I am in bed, technically."

Dumbledore sighed. "I suppose we can make a temporary exception, given what the two of you have been through. I commend you, though, on your quick thinking, Tom – Miss Granger and Mr Weasley were able to get your message to me, and I arrived in the Room of Hidden Things, as you called it, just in time to pull Quirrell off of Harry."

"Professor," Harry chimed in, "you didn't tell me why Quirrell had a face on the back of his head."

"It was Voldemort, Harry," Tom murmured. "That was the face of Voldemort."

“I thought so,” Harry whispered.

"Quite astute, Tom," Dumbledore said, sounding mildly perturbed.

"Quirrell said he was working for the Dark Lord, I assumed that's who he meant."

"I see," Dumbledore replied. "I must ask you, Tom, if you know what it is Voldemort wanted of you. I had been under the impression that he spent the past year at Hogwarts trying to steal a powerful magical item, but it seems his attentions turned to you instead."

"He said something about my father," Tom lied, then shuddered, "and then he tried to... tried to..."

"Take your time."

"It was like he was trying to crawl inside my mind," Tom whispered. "Like he was trying to erase me and take over my body." Harry hugged him even tighter. "It was horrible, I could feel all of his anger and obsession and... insanity."

Dumbledore drew in a sharp breath. "I am sorry to have to tell you this, Tom – this is a burden no child should have to carry, but you must understand why Voldemort attempted to possess you, as he will certainly consider it a possibility in the future. Had I known of your existence before you arrived at Hogwarts, I would have made it a priority to ensure you were better protected from him. You see, Tom, Voldemort no doubt considered you a far better candidate for possession than Quirrell, because you… are his son.”

"I see," he replied, at the same time Harry cried out, "Oh, Tom!"

"You're taking this better than I expected," Dumbledore said, eyebrows raised. Tom shrugged.

"I was already fairly certain my father was one of his followers,” he explained. "This isn't that much worse. Besides, I'm not my father."

"That," Dumbledore replied, "is clear. Based upon your actions the other night, it is obvious that you are a far better man than Voldemort. You see, the Tom Riddle I knew as a child fifty years ago at Hogwarts would have never risked his life to save a friend, nor would you find him holding another close as you and Harry are now. It is your ability to love – both of yours – that sets the two of you apart from Voldemort, who has never loved anything, least of all himself.

"It is also why,” he continued, “he burned at the touch of your hands, Harry – as you carry the protection of your mother's love, the love that led her to sacrifice herself for your sake when you were an infant. And it is why, Tom, I believe that Voldemort will ultimately be unsuccessful in any future attempts to possess you.”

But Dumbledore didn’t know. He had at last come to believe that Tom was not the Dark Lord come back to life, but he didn’t know that he had been created by Voldemort, albeit unintentionally, for specifically that purpose – to resurrect as a new host body for a disembodied soul. Love or no, if Voldemort returned to make a second attempt at seizing his body for himself, Tom would surely fail to resist.

And yet, what were Firenze’s words? “Perhaps untouchable,” he had said. Well, “untouchable” sounded nice, but “perhaps” was too vague of a word for comfort. “Professor,” he said, suddenly feeling annoyingly vulnerable, “what if he does come back for me?”

“I understand your concern, Tom,” Dumbledore replied. “I’ve already sent an owl to your aunt, and she’s agreed to have your house concealed by the Fidelius charm, which will make you untraceable within the home. Outside of the Muggle world, as well, you should be safe – I doubt Voldemort will dare try to return with a show of force now that he knows we are aware of his continued existence. The Dursley’s residence is safe also, protected as it is by old magic, much more ancient and unbreakable than Voldemort can fathom.”

Tom scoffed privately to himself, curling his hand protectively into Harry’s hair. There was very little that Voldemort couldn’t fathom, let alone that which he could not break. But perhaps, with the man’s mind addled as it was, it would be enough. 

“Now,” Dumbledore continued, “I will leave you two to rest – yes, Harry, you too. Far older and more powerful wizards than yourselves have been more gravely injured by Voldemort. You both need ample time to recover.”

He moved to the edge of the curtain, but Harry made no move to unpin himself from Tom’s side – not that Tom would have let him, still not believing this wasn’t all a very realistic dream. Dumbledore, however, did not press the issue, and just before disappearing out of sight, he turned back, that damnable twinkle in his eye.

“Before I leave, given everything you’ve been through, the bravery you’ve both exhibited, and the intense loyalty you’ve shown for each other – I award fifty points to Slytherin. Each.” And then he was gone.

The train again. Tom stared up at it in frustration, knowing that very shortly he would have to board it and be whisked away from Hogwarts, back to a house that would now also be a prison. Oh, there would be occasional trips to Diagon Alley, and both Ron and Draco had invited him and Harry to spend some time at their houses, which would both be heavily protected as well, but the loss of the easy freedom of the summer prior rankled. 

With a heavy sigh he lugged his trunk onto the train and into a compartment large enough for their entire group. Harry, behind him, did the same, wedging his own luggage onto the rack above their heads with some difficulty.

Thirty minutes later they were off.

“So you’re telling me Quirrell was the Dark Lord all along?” Pansy shrieked.

Tom sighed. They had not yet had a chance to properly explain what had happened, only having been released from the hospital wing the day prior, just in time for the Leaving Feast. “No, Pansy,” he replied. “Voldemort was just possessing Quirrell, and not all the time. Though I believe it was mostly him by the end.”

“And he tried to possess you instead, because you’re his son?” Malfoy was staring at him in a sort of feverish wonder. Pansy was too, come to think of it, and Ron was cringing away from him. Only Harry and Hermione were unaffected by this revelation.

“Stop that, all three of you,” Tom snapped. “I am aware that Voldemort has had profound impacts on all of your families, albeit in different ways. But I am not my father, and from what I’ve read I can’t say I agree with his actions. Seeking power is one thing, aimless slaughter for slaughter’s sake alone is another.”

“Right,” Ron mumbled, his face resembling a tomato, “sorry mate, it’s just… it’s a lot, y’know?”

“It is indeed,” Tom replied. “I would ask that we keep the knowledge of my parentage between the six of us. As you have just demonstrated, it is likely to inspire bias in those who learn of it, particularly in those he harmed.”

“Father says he wasn’t always like that,” Draco pondered. “Before the war, the Dark Lord was sort of a politician – never actually a part of the Ministry, but he used his wealth and influence to control things. He did a lot of good, actually – easing restrictions on what would be considered the ‘Dark Arts,’ pushing for Muggleborn children to be identified earlier so they could be educated on our society and not just stumble in blindly and muck things up.” Hermione scoffed. “Er – sorry Hermione. You’ve done a fine job of catching up. But my point is, at some point he changed, and decided to take the Ministry by force instead. I suppose he thought his changes weren’t fast enough, or maybe he just got bored working from behind the scenes. He involved the giants and werewolves, and eventually even his closest followers were terrified – too scared to leave, but desperate to get out.”

“How come I’ve never heard any of this?” Ron argued. “My dad’s always said that You-Know-Who came to power in the seventies when he started the war. He never mentioned anything about what came before that.”

“That’s because your family are a bunch of Muggle lovers,” Draco smirked, “and admittedly, some of the laws he supported were… less than ideal for the Muggle world. But if he’d told you about those, he’d have had to tell you about all of it, including the good he tried to do.”

“There’s nothing wrong with caring about Muggles,” Ron grumbled fiercely.

Draco didn’t agree. “Muggles are little more than animals, Ron,” he sneered.

“That’s my parents you’re talking about,” Hermione snapped.

“I’m serious!” Draco exclaimed. “Haven’t you been paying attention in History? They fear us and try to kill us, and just end up killing each other instead. They’re nothing more than stupid, weak-minded –”

“Stop this,” Tom commanded. His year at St Grogory’s with Harry had tempered the horrid view of Muggles he had developed during his deplorable stay at Wool’s, if only slightly. “You’re both wrong. Muggles are perfectly capable of being intelligent, rational, human beings. They may not have the superior power that we do, but their technological advances in the past fifty years alone are stunning in their own right. However, by and large, they do not belong in our world, save for those few who find themselves related or married to a witch or wizard and can be proven as trustworthy. There are far too many Muggles who view us as something to be hated or feared, who abuse their children when they start showing signs of magic. When I’m in control of the Ministry, I will put all of this right.”

“You want to be Minister?” Ron boggled. “Blimey, we’ve still got six years at Hogwarts, and you’ve already figured out your life plans.”

“Of course I have – I intend to be the most powerful wizard in the world someday, being elected Minister for Magic is only one part of that,” he replied. “Which is why, if you wish to join me on my path to greatness, you need to put aside your silly black and white notions about things like Muggles or the Dark Arts.”

Draco and Ron just stared at him.

The train ride concluded in a somewhat stony silence, with both Ron and Draco staring out the window in silent contemplation. With a sigh, Tom retrieved his trunk from the luggage rack and stepped off the train, scanning the crowd for his makeshift aunt.

“You’d better come stay with us, Harry!” Ron exclaimed, as the Weasley’s gathered round. “You too, Tom, if you’d like.”

“I asked first!” Draco snapped. Harry laughed.

“We have two whole months,” he pointed out. “Once Dumbledore lets us know it’s safe, we can visit the both of you. Anything, honestly, to get away from the Dursleys.” Draco nodded and sniffed pompously at the Weasleys before striding away to meet his own family.

“Friends with a Malfoy,” Molly Weasley said faintly. “Fred and George told me in their letters, but I thought they were pulling one over on me.”

“Yeah, well,” Ron mumbled, “he’s not too bad, when he’s not harping on about his family or how terrible Muggles are.”

“Mum,” said the tiny girl who had been with them at the train station nearly a year ago, “can I say hi to Harry Potter? Please, can I?”

“Well, the boy’s right there, Ginny,” Molly replied. “Go on.” 

But Ginny, upon looking up at him, just gave a squeak and dove behind her mother’s robes.

“Ah, there you boys are.” Arabella had found them at last. “And Molly, wonderful to see you again!”

“Arabella! Ron’s just invited Harry and Tom to spend part of their summer at the Burrow - you don’t mind, do you?”

“Of course not – and I’m sure Harry’s guardians won’t mind giving him up, either.”

Harry laughed bitterly. “No, they really won’t.”

“Now then, boys,” Arabella said, “we’ve got to get going. We’re to check in with Dumbledore the moment we arrive home. You’ve got your papers with the address? You won’t be able to get in the house without them.”

Tom and Harry both nodded. Molly’s eyes widened.

“A Fidelius Charm?” she wondered aloud. “What could possibly have happened that you would need something like…”

Arabella sighed. “Quite a great deal,” she said, “none of which should be discussed in public. I suggest you owl Dumbledore, particularly if you’ll be having Tom and Harry over this summer. He can explain what you need to know. Now, come along boys.”

Tom followed her off of the platform and back into the Muggle world, Harry close behind. In the car, Tom pressed his nose to the glass, watching King’s Cross fall behind them, growing smaller and smaller as they sped toward Little Whinging, until they turned a corner and it was finally gone.

Chapter Text

Tom and Harry stared at the spot where number seven, Wisteria Walk, had been prior to this summer. On one side was number five, and on the other, number nine. It was as though the space Arabella’s house had occupied had simply ceased to exist, sucked right out of the universe.

“Mrs Figg,” Harry asked, “where…?”

“The papers Dumbledore gave you two,” Arabella replied, “quick now, read them so we can stop standing around gawking.”

Tom fished the little scrap of paper Dumbledore had handed him just after the Leaving Feast from his pocket and unfolded it. There, in the same writing that had been on the note left with Harry’s Invisibility Cloak – Dumbledore’s writing, he finally realised – it read:

The residence of Arabella Figg and Tom Marvolo Riddle II may be found at number seven, Wisteria Walk.

Tom looked back up. To his astonishment, another door had appeared between numbers five and nine, expanding swiftly into a full front step, followed by windows and shutters and brickwork. That’s right – this was the magic of the Fidelius Charm, he recalled. In just seconds, it was as though Arabella’s house had rematerialised out of nothing, shoving the other houses aside in its rebirth.

“Right, you two – inside. Until we get the all clear from Dumbledore, it’s not safe for you to be standing around in the open like this.”

Harry and Tom found themselves shepherded into Mrs Figg’s house, where a trio of kneazles scattered at the sight of them – or, more likely, Tom specifically. He set his trunk by the stairs and slipped his shoes off to avoid tracking mud across the already delicate, cat and kneazle-claw torn carpets and followed the others into the sitting room.

Arabella had already taken down the box of Floo powder from the mantle, and for a moment Tom wondered where she might be planning to go – but his unvoiced question was answered almost immediately. She knelt in front of the fire, tossed a handful of the glittery powder into it, and bent over and stuck her face right in the flames, shouting, “Headmaster’s office, Hogwarts!” Tom suppressed a laugh at the odd sight of his ersatz aunt, half engulfed in green flames, crouched on the floor as if supplicating herself to some higher power.

“Albus! Thank goodness, I was worried you’d be out… No, of course… The boys are safe, both back at home with me. Harry will be staying the night before I bring him back to his Aunt and Uncle’s… Oh, yes, you can come through, let me just –”

Arabella yanked her head out of the flames and stood up, moving to the side just as Professor Dumbledore stepped out of the fireplace. He dusted off the front of his robes and drew himself up to full height, smiling gently down at Harry and Tom.

“Albus, you said you had news,” Arabella said nervously. “Please, what have you learned?”

“Not to worry,” Dumbledore replied. “I am happy to report that all of it is good. My sources indicate that Voldemort has not attempted to rally any of his old followers as of yet, and it is my suspicion that he has returned, in wraith-like form, to hiding in Albania, where he was last seen before possessing Quirinus Quirrell – rest his soul. I shall contact you again at the moment I learn anything more – until then, I believe both Tom and Harry will be safe, so long as they maintain vigilance in Muggle spaces.”

“Oh, thank goodness,” Arabella sighed, pressing a hand to her chest.

“Professor,” Tom demanded, “what sources are you talking about?”

“I see you’ve inherited your father’s impetuous nature,” Dumbledore said, smiling. Tom scowled. “I apologise,” the man said swiftly, schooling his features into severity, “perhaps this was not the time to remind you of your parentage. I do understand, however, your need to ensure your own safety. While I cannot share with you the exact details, I can tell you that I have informants, some who infiltrated your father’s following of their own accord, and others, who defected when they realised Voldemort’s ideology did not align with their own. I assure you, Tom, I will do my utmost to see both you and Harry protected from him.” 

Tom felt his scowl deepen at his words, almost involuntarily. “And yet you let him walk around the castle freely, while both Harry and I were right there. You could have done something, but you didn’t!”

“Tom!” Arabella reproached.

“No, Arabella,” Dumbledore said gently. “Tom is right to be upset. Please, let’s sit, so I may address your concerns.” 

Tom sat down reluctantly on the sofa, and Harry did the same, tucking himself next to Tom and taking his hand gently in his. Dumbledore sat in a chair adjacent, and Arabella hurried off to prepare some tea.

“Now then, Tom,” Dumbledore began. “You are correct – I’m afraid I was rather remiss in ensuring Hogwarts was adequately protected this past year. You see, I was more or less aware that Professor Quirrell was working for Voldemort, and suspected that Voldemort was able to possess him intermittently. What I didn’t fathom, however, was that he had taken up permanent residence within Quirrell’s body, allowing him free rein to run amok in the castle.”

“But if you knew he was working for Voldemort, why did you hire him in the first place?” Tom grumbled.

“To be quite honest, I was not quite sure he was when I offered him the Defence position,” Dumbledore replied, “However, it became quite obvious that my suspicions were correct about him shortly into the term. Perhaps it was a foolish idea to do so, but I had hoped that the combination of Harry’s presence and a powerful magical object – The Philosopher's Stone – would draw Voldemort out of hiding. I devised, with the help of several of your professors, a series of puzzles to intrigue him, with the Stone serving as the prize at the end – an end that would be a trap, inescapable, and also an alert to myself, allowing me to intervene and subdue him. Knowing Quirrell would be incapable of completing each step of the trap, I assumed that Voldemort would possess him in order to reach the stone, but instead…”

“Instead, he saw Harry and me in the Forbidden Forest while we were in detention,” Tom spat. “We could have died.”

“Yes,” Dumbledore said, a troubled expression passing over his face. “Rest assured, I will be having a strong discussion with Argus Filch about the types of punishments he deems appropriate, and I will never attempt again to use Hogwarts as a trap. I can admit to my failings – and I did fail to properly estimate the danger doing so posed to the both of you.”

“Well,” Tom said, feeling rather put out that Dumbledore had confessed to his own flaws, rather than maintaining the lofty sense of superiority with which he had always associated him, “fine, then.”

“I can see I have not fully gained your trust in this matter, and this is understandable,” Dumbledore replied kindly. “Words often mean very little in the face of great danger.”

“I trust you, Professor,” Harry piped up. “I know you wouldn’t put us in any real danger if you couldn’t help it.”

“I thank you for your vote of confidence,” Dumbledore replied, “but I am afraid I have failed you as well. I should have taken more of an active role in ensuring you grew up knowing who you were – who your parents were – and what dangers awaited you in our world. I mistakenly believed your aunt, who once wished deeply to learn the same magic your mother did, would raise you with the knowledge of your powers. Therefore, while it is imperative that you return to your home with her in order to keep you safe, at least in the short term, I request that you notify myself or Arabella immediately if they mistreat you in any way.”

“Right,” Harry replied, looking rather crestfallen. “I will. I still trust you, though. But Sir, why did Voldemort –”

“Boys!” Arabella was rushing back into the room, carrying a steaming kettle and only two cups upon a platter. “It’s getting late, time to retire – Albus and I have much to discuss. If you’re done with them, of course?” She looked to Dumbledore for confirmation.

“For now, yes,” Dumbledore sighed. “Tom, Harry, I must bid you goodnight – we have far more to talk about in the future, but at this juncture I must ask that we leave things where they lay. I promise that I will tell you both more in time.”

Harry tugged at Tom’s hand. “Come on, let’s head upstairs,” he said, and Tom reluctantly followed.

A half hour later, though, draped beneath Harry’s Invisibility Cloak, his friend finally fast asleep, Tom trod silently to the door of Arabella’s sitting room, listening carefully and willing his breath to be silent.

“So you’re sure then – Tom really is…”

“Voldemort’s son, yes.”

“Good lord. I knew Lucinda had an interest in the Dark Arts before she found herself besotted with that rich Muggle, but I never would have imagined she would… well. You know.”

“You mustn't blame her – Voldemort has always been adept at seducing those who have something he covets, whether that be power, knowledge, or simple pleasure. Now that he is aware of his son’s existence, he will no doubt attempt to sway the boy to his side as well – if he does not outright wish to kill him. Indeed, he has already attempted to possess him once to aid in his resurrection.”

“What can we do, Albus? He’s just a boy, he doesn’t need this burden.”

“Tell me about your nephew, Arabella. I’m sorry to say I haven’t had very many opportunities to speak with him.”

“Oh, he’s very like his mother was. You must remember Lucinda – studious, aloof. I was so worried those first few weeks he came to live with me; wouldn’t leave his room save for meals. And then he met Harry – well, a ‘friend at school,’  he said, he didn’t tell me who he’d been spending time with for weeks – but it was like a light had suddenly turned on within him.”

"Do you think he has the same inclination toward the Dark Arts that your sister once had?"

"Oh, Merlin, I wouldn't know – he rarely talks about his life before he came to live with me, so I can't be certain Lucinda didn't share that particular branch of magic with him. Somehow I doubt it, though; she withdrew heavily from the magical world after he was born. I find myself wondering now if her encounter with You-Know-Who prompted this."

There was a long silence. When Arabella finally spoke again, her voice was trembling in fear.

“How on earth can he still be alive, Albus? After what Lily’s sacrifice did to him on that night, how is it he still remains?”

“I confess, I do not know.” Dumbledore sounded tired, defeated even. Tom smirked. “I have tried and failed for a good many years to discover the means by which Voldemort secured his seeming inability to die, although I have my suspicions. After the events of the past few days, I will be revisiting a number of old contacts, those who knew him in his youth and who may be able to shed some light on the mystery. I intend to meet as soon as possible with Horace Slughorn, Voldemort’s former Head of House, and to my understanding his original sounding board for topics related to the Dark Arts.”

That was bad – Slughorn had been the one Tom had approached when he was still Voldemort, having already made one Horcrux, to inquire if more could be made. In hindsight, he should have undertaken the research himself, as the man hadn’t even been particularly helpful, more aghast at the thought of murder than interested in the obvious benefits of tethering one’s soul to the mortal plane. Now, Slughorn might even prove to be his undoing. If Dumbledore ever came to suspect that Harry was a Horcrux himself, then Tom…

He shook the thought aside. There was no precedence for a human Horcrux, let alone one created entirely by accident. There was no precedent for Tom, a resurrected soul who had not had to parasitically leech away his host’s life and soul. Surely he would be safe – Dumbledore would never make the connection, something too ludicrous to even consider. Still though, he didn’t relish the idea of the other Horcruxes being discovered and destroyed, as they tethered him to life as surely as they did Voldemort.

A tinkle of dishes from the sitting room – it sounded as though the two of them had stood, signalling Dumbledore’s imminent departure. Tom moved silently and slowly toward the staircase; it would do no good to be caught eavesdropping. 

"One last thing before I take my leave – I will likely be generally unavailable as I attempt to unravel exactly what Voldemort has done to ensure this deathless state he has created for himself. In my absence, I would like you to contact as many of the old crowd as possible – Remus Lupin, Mundungus Fletcher – anyone who still lives."

"Sure you don't mean – not the Order again?

"Not yet, no. There will surely come a time for the Order of the Phoenix to rise once more, but for now I merely wish our allies to be alert and made aware that Voldemort has made an attempt on the lives of two young children in his aims to resurrect himself. I recommend against explaining who Tom is, exactly – it will only sow the seeds of prejudice in the minds of adults who have not met him."

"Right. I understand – take care, Albus,"

Tom heard the sound of the Floo just as he crested the landing of the stairs and slipped through his bedroom door, pulling off the Cloak and tucking it back away. In the trundle bed in front of him, Harry’s limbs twitched fitfully beneath his blanket, and Tom could tell by his expression that he was in the grips of yet another nightmare.

“Tom,” he whimpered. “No, not Tom.”

Without a word, Tom slipped under the covers next to Harry, pulling him flat against his chest and tucking Harry’s head under his chin. Harry slowly went lax in his arms and his breathing evened out, and eventually his arms came up to encircle Tom as well. He smiled – these moments of easy, warm contentment between the two of them were easily his favourite, so reminiscent of that night he had surfaced in Harry’s dreams and had held him in his arms, bathed in his love for the very first time.

Very quickly, he too drifted off to sleep.

Tom drummed his fingers against the small desk in his room in frustration. He was bored, his homework for the following year completed, his school books for the following year all read and re-read from cover to cover. It had been four weeks since the summer term started, and he had barely seen Harry at all. Despite Dumbledore’s insistence that Tom and Harry were, more or less, completely safe for the time being, Arabella had grown fearful and refused to allow him to wander freely in Little Whinging. Atop this, the compulsions he had placed upon Harry’s deplorable aunt and cousin had apparently faded over the year, as Petunia too refused Harry the freedom he had previously enjoyed, and the boy had taken to tormenting him once more. Harry didn’t think any of this was enough to alert Dumbledore, and had asked Tom not to as well, claiming it wasn’t nearly as bad as what he had lived through before Hogwarts. All of this had been communicated in whispers over their Gossip Glasses, the two-way magical communicators Tom had purchased for them before they ever left for Hogwarts, which both had now taken to carrying at all times.

The worst of it was that Tom, like Harry before him, had also started having nightmares. He dreamed of Harry on the floor of the Room of Hidden Things, at the end of a wand and Quirrell’s mercy, of Harry being set upon by Voldemort in the Forbidden Forest, the Dark Lord forcing his way into his mind as he had done to Tom. Most horribly, he dreamed of Harry cowering beneath him, screaming, “Tom, why?!” before he spoke the words that ripped the life from his body. Each time he woke up gasping in terror, reaching out for Harry and finding nothing but empty air. And every time without fail, the Gossip Glass would then crackle into life with a whispered, “Tom, are you there? I had another one.”

Tom reached toward the small, concave device sitting innocently on the desk in front of him. It had been silent all day, and he desperately wished to talk to Harry, if only to hear his voice and alleviate some of the twitchy restlessness bubbling under his skin from being cooped up all the time. But Harry had asked him not to call – his aunt and uncle were hosting a dinner party for some insignificant Muggle and his wife, and he’d been instructed to stay in his room, make no noise, and pretend he wasn’t there. It was truly despicable how his relatives treated him, on his birthday of all days, as if his very existence was a burden, as if they shouldn’t be greatly honoured to share their home with a wizard. Worse than that, they were utter fools – if they only realised that they had but to share a fraction of the simpering affection they gave their son, Harry would care for them in return, and what would be better to gain the respect of some businessman and his wife than to boast that they had taken in their poor, orphaned nephew out of the pure goodness of their hearts? But no, they had been left short-sighted by their bigotry, and as a consequence had to shut Harry away and hope nothing bad came of it.

As if Harry had heard his thoughts, the Gossip Glass sparked to life in his hand. “Tom?” came Harry’s voice. “Tom, are you there?”

“Of course I am,” Tom replied, alarmed. If Harry was calling on him now, when he was supposed to be quiet and silent and still, something must be wrong. “Harry, are you alright?”

“Tom, I need your help – there’s a house-elf in my bedroom.”

Tom leapt from his seat. Fuck Arabella’s restrictions – if a house-elf had made its way to Little Whinging just to visit Harry, it could mean nothing good. He raced down the stairs and threw open the front door, ignoring Arabella’s cry of “Tom! It’s not safe!” to take off into the fading light.

“Harry, I’m on my way,” he gasped into the communicator, his legs pushing him down the pavement of Wisteria Walk as fast as they could.

He rounded the corner into Privet Drive, his lungs screaming for air. Number four was just ahead of him now, coming into sight, a lavish car that certainly didn’t belong to the Dursley’s parked in front. Tom fought the urge to punch out the wing mirror and punish these people, these stupid rich Muggles, who had unknowingly sentenced Harry to spend a miserable night barricaded in his bedroom, choosing instead to race past the car and dash up the front steps to the Dursleys’ house, flinging the front door open and letting it crash against the wall.

“Who’s there?!” Vernon bellowed, ignored by Tom as he took the stairs two at a time, bounding toward Harry’s bedroom. “What is the meaning of this?! You! Get back down here, boy!”

Tom crashed into Harry’s room, taking in the sight before him – Harry, flabbergasted, on the edge of his bed with the Gossip Glass still in his hand – a house-elf, distraught, with Harry’s desk lamp in his knobby hands, about to beat himself around the head, staring at Tom with a look of horror in his bulbous eyes.

“You!” the elf whispered in terror before Disapparating with a loud crack. Tom moved toward Harry, but thick, strong arms wrapped around his midsection, lifting him off his feet.

“Figg’s boy?” Vernon shouted. “I should have known, Petunia warned me about you! You’ve just ruined the punchline of my Japanese golfer joke, you little delinquent!” Tom squirmed in his arms, kicking at the air and trying desperately to meet the man’s eyes so as to place a terrifying suggestion in his mind, but Vernon gripped him too tightly. “That’s the last time you ever step foot in this house – you hear me boy?!” He rounded on Harry. “You’re never seeing your little friend again!”

“Uncle Vernon, please –” But the man kicked Harry’s bedroom door shut and proceeded to carry Tom bodily down the stairs and toss him out the front door, where he bounced off the front step and rolled onto the drive. Rage welled up within him as he peeled himself from the ground – he would kill these Muggles, hold them under the Cruciatus until the last of the light left their eyes and then send them off to meet their maker one by one. He would start with the boy – forcing his parents to watch in horror as their child’s life and mind were drained, then the man who had dared to put his filthy hands on him. Finally, Harry’s aunt, tortured again and again to the brink of insanity, until she was begging for mercy, not from him, but from Harry, and –

The street lamp above his head exploded.

No. He had to calm himself. Killing Harry’s family was not an option – not if he wanted to stay in his friend’s good graces, and certainly not if he wanted to continue under the guise of Voldemort’s son. And he was a child, for Salazar’s sake – the Ministry would absolutely be alerted if a twelve-year-old suddenly began casting endless streams of Dark curses. In fact, he wouldn’t be the slightest bit surprised if the exploding lamp had already been registered as an improper use of underage magic.

He didn’t have to wait long to find out – as he watched the house, unwilling to leave until he was sure Harry was safe, a ministry owl swooped down and through the living room window, prompting a loud shriek from one of the Muggles. The insignificant businessman and his wife then burst from the house and scrambled into their ostentatious car, zipping away into the evening. Tom cringed as this prompted another round of Vernon’s rage, his voice booming in the still air around him.

He quickly hid himself in the bushes across the street after that, waiting for Harry to contact him through the Gossip Glass again. Arabella passed by several times as he watched the house, clearly looking for him but bereft of any magic that would help her find a hiding child. Finally, after half an hour, the device crackled to life. 

“Tom, are you still there?” Harry’s voice was little more than a whisper.

“Of course I am, Harry,” Tom replied. “Are you alright? The brute didn’t hurt you, did he?”

“Uncle Vernon?” Harry asked. “No, he just yelled a lot, threatened to keep me from going back to Hogwarts when that letter about underage magic showed up, and… well, I’m locked in my room right now. I didn’t even do any magic, Tom!”

He winced. “I’m sorry, Harry, that’s my fault. I was just so furious at your uncle – I blew up the street lamp.”

“So that’s what that noise was.”

“An accident, I promise,” Tom replied earnestly. “Harry, we have to tell my aunt about this. The Dursleys have you locked up and your uncle attacked me. I don’t care if Dumbledore thinks you’re protected by some ‘old magic,’ it’s not safe for you here.”

Harry sighed. “I know, Tom,” he said wearily. “Can it wait until my uncle’s cooled down a bit, at least? If Dumbledore shows up while he’s still in a rage, it’ll only make things worse.”

“Harry, that could take days.”

“I know, but please, Tom,” Harry begged. “You know he locked up my trunk first thing when I got back – I wouldn’t put it past him to set fire to it if Dumbledore shows up right now, even if it ended up taking out the house as well.”

“Dumbledore is much too fast to let that imbecile of an uncle set your belongings on fire,” Tom countered, “but I understand wanting to avoid another round of mindless bellowing. Let me know as soon as you’re ready.”

“Thank you Tom,” Harry whispered. “I’m going to turn in for the night, I think. This whole evening has been… a lot.”

“Of course, Harry. You’ll have to tell me about that house-elf later.”

“I will. Goodnight, Tom.”

“Goodnight.”

He reluctantly ambled back to Wisteria Walk and slipped into the dimly lit house, finding himself alone – Arabella must still be out looking for him. He slipped a note to her owl and sent it out to find her, letting her know that he was home safe; there was little reason to allow the Squib to wander the streets without any means of protection, and if anything happened to her, he would find himself without a guardian. Then, suddenly rather tired himself, he headed to his bedroom and collapsed into bed, asleep before his head hit the pillow.

When he awoke in the morning, it was to the sound of the Gossip Glass, buzzing and crackling with Harry’s voice.

"Tom?” Harry sounded absolutely panicked. “Tom, are you there? Please, I need you to contact Dumbledore immediately. Can you hear me?”

Tom wrenched himself out of bed and seized the device from the nightstand where he had deposited it the night before. “I’m sorry, Harry, I’ve only just woken up,” he said quickly. “Are you in danger? What’s happened?”

“It’s the Dursleys,” Harry hissed. “I’m hiding in the bathroom so they can’t hear me, but if they find me with this… Never mind, it doesn’t matter – I need to leave immediately.”

“What is it?” Tom demanded. “What have they done?!”

“Tom, they’re putting bars on my window.”

Tom saw white.

Chapter Text

Albus strode furiously up the walkway to number four, Privet Drive, his wand in hand, Arabella and Molly and Arthur Weasley behind him. He did not knock, he did not wait – he simply forced open the front door with a slashing of his wand, sending it crashing into the inside wall. There was a yelp followed by a loud smashing sound, and Petunia Dursley came into view, her face turning sour when she saw who darkened her doorstep.

“It’s you again,” she snapped. “Get out, now! We’ve had enough of your type interfering with our lives.”

Albus did not move. “Am I to understand that you have threatened Harry with the notion that he will not be returning to Hogwarts?” he asked, his calm tone belying the fury that sizzled underneath.

Petunia scoffed. “Returning?” she asked, incredulous. “After what your mockery of a school has done to him in only a year?! The boy now deems it fit to threaten my son with magic, he struts about as if he owns the place, and he lets that terror, Tom, barge in here with absolutely no decorum –”

“That ‘terror,’” Arabella barked, stepping out from behind Albus, “is my nephew. The only reason he barged into your house, Petunia, is because he thought his best friend was in danger. Do you happen to know anything about that?”

“Danger?” Petunia spat. “How could the boy possibly be in danger?”

“You’ve installed bars on his windows,” Albus observed, his voice deadly quiet. “I’m told you’ve put locks on his door and fitted it with a cat-flap, though I notice you have no cat. You've forced him to cage his owl, and your husband assaulted Tom last night when he was merely attempting to ensure his friend’s well-being.”

“We were hosting a very important businessman in the construction industry.” Petunia sniffed. “That boy ruined the entire dinner party.”

Albus continued as though she hadn’t spoken. “You’ve returned to a pattern of behaviour regarding Harry, of which I hoped I had broken you when last we met – you shut him away and pretend he doesn’t exist. I sent him back to your home this summer for the sole reason that, as you well know, he is protected here, safe from the Dark wizard who would see him dead. And yet, upon my return, I find I am forced to conclude that Harry’s safety is in far greater danger from yourselves than any of ‘our type,’ as you put it.”

“Then take him!” Petunia snarled. “I never wanted the boy in my house to begin with! If you think we’ve been such terrible guardians, take him, and never let him step foot in this household again!”

“I intend to do precisely that,” Albus stated. “I have also alerted the Muggle authorities – they should be here shortly.”

Petunia blanched.

It took only minutes for the car to roll up, exited first by a policeman, who was followed by a young woman, undoubtedly a social worker, here to question Harry on his home life. Petunia had no choice but to escort the woman upstairs to Harry’s room while the policeman hovered by the front door, and Albus felt a grim satisfaction at the young woman’s cry of disapproval as the sound of several locks being snapped open echoed through the house.

“We have to keep him in here…” he heard Petunia saying, desperately. “He’s a danger to my son, terribly violent…”

An hour later, they found themselves in the parlour, Molly blowing her nose intermittently into a handkerchief, Arabella fidgeting restlessly with her overlarge carpet bag, and Arthur wearing a grim expression that no doubt mirrored Albus’ own. It was a distressing situation to be sure – Albus hadn’t wanted to involve the Muggles, but Arabella’s insistence had quickly outweighed his own. And it made sense, he supposed – if they simply took Harry, there would be no recompense for the harms he had suffered at the Dursleys’ hands. As tired as the idea of vengeance left him, Albus could not bring himself to pity them. He only found himself wishing that some avenging angel might descend from the heavens to blight him as well, party as he was to Harry’s suffering.

“Right, now, here he is.” The social worker’s voice was light and chipper, but her expression betrayed a deep discomfort as she led Harry into the parlour, his aunt trembling in fear in the front hall behind them. “Go ahead Harry, have a seat, I’m just going to speak with your aunt for a moment.” Harry stumbled over to the sofa and sat between Albus and Arabella, his face haunted. A great wave of guilt washed through Albus – no doubt Harry had had to recount endless recollections of abuse at the hands of his relatives over the past hour – abuse he would have never faced had the man simply made a better choice a decade prior.

Albus reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a bar of Honeydukes' Best. “Chocolate, Harry?” he asked gently. “Most often used as a remedy against Dementor attacks, but suited in general for easing the reliving of terrible memories.” Harry took the bar gratefully, tearing it open and breaking off a piece.

“Thank you, sir,” he said quietly a moment later, swallowing his mouthful of chocolate. “This is nice. What’s a Dementor?”

Albus sighed. “Something which I hope you never have to encounter,” he replied. 

“Right.” The social worker was back, Petunia Dursley in tow, her face tight and pinched. “I’m afraid to say I have to recommend Mr Potter’s immediate removal from the household. You said you had another home lined up for him, Mr… Dimbledone, was it?”

“Dumbledore, and yes.” Albus withdrew from his coat a stack of papers. “You will find that after the Dursleys, Molly and Arthur Weasley here are named by Lily and James Potter as alternative guardians for Harry.” It was a lie, of course, the papers forged and the Muggles confunded – but the real will read that Harry was meant to be placed with his godfather, the man who had betrayed his friends and found himself in Azkaban, with no secondary placement mentioned. The Weasleys had their hands full, but certainly offered a better home for Harry than the one in which he had grown up, and they had enthusiastically accepted when he had contacted them regarding Harry’s housing earlier in the day.

“It’s all lies,” Petunia snapped suddenly. “The boy lies. He’s pulled the wool over your eyes as easily as he’s always done his teachers. He was meant to be sent to St Brutus’ –”

“Then isn’t it fortunate,” Albus said, rising from his seat, “that his registration at the boarding school I run was found, and we were able to track him down and ensure he was enrolled and educated per his parents’ wishes? As his Headmaster, Ms…?”

“Grantham, sir,” the social worker replied. “Abigail Grantham.”

“Ms Grantham, thank you – as his Headmaster, I’ve heard nothing but complimentary reviews of Mr Potter’s progress at school, both in his marks and his social development. Despite his relatives’ poor treatment of him, Harry has truly blossomed and come into his own.”

“You needn’t worry, Mr Dumbledore,” Ms Grantham replied. “In the time I’ve had to speak with Harry, I’ve found him to be a bright, outgoing young man, in spite of the hardships he has faced. I’m sure the Weasleys will be a much better placement for him. Now, there’s just a little bit of paperwork to fill out, and all of you can be on your way.”

 The minutes crawled by as Harry, hardly daring to believe it, watched Mr and Mrs Weasley sign form after form, cementing themselves as his new guardians. He had the vague sense that it was all for some ulterior motive – if Dumbledore had simply wanted him out of the Dursley’s household, he surely could have just taken him. It seemed to Harry, however, that he did not want his aunt and uncle to think they could escape the consequences of neglecting and shutting him away for so many years.

“There we go, last one,” Ms Grantham said, her tone just as light and friendly as it had been during their entire interview, even as he had detailed every last horrible thing his aunt and uncle had done to him over the years. “And – done. Congratulations, Mr and Mrs Weasley, you are now the legal guardians of Harry James –”

“What are these people doing in my house?!” Harry cringed as Uncle Vernon’s voice boomed through the parlour, back from fishing with Dudley. “Petunia, what in God’s name is –”

“You must be Mr Dursley,” Ms Grantham said, her voice suddenly ice cold. “I’m here on behalf of Harry, and I’m afraid I have some questions for you, your wife, and your son.”

“Can we... ?” Mrs Figg muttered, wrapping her arm around him tightly and hugging him to her side. “Surely Harry doesn’t need to be here for this.”

“Of course,” Ms Grantham replied. “The five of you are free to leave. Do make sure Harry gets a proper meal and a good night’s rest. We’ll be in contact should we need anything more.”

Harry felt himself being scooped from the sofa and led to the door by Tom’s aunt. Once outside, he turned to look at her.

“Mrs Figg, what’s going to happen to them?”

“It’s none of your concern, Harry,” she stated grimly. “You’ll never have to worry about the Dursleys again.”

He nodded mutely, feeling numb. “Tom,” he finally said. “I want to see Tom.”

“Of course, dear,” Mrs Figg said gently. “Molly, Arthur, a quick detour to my house before you take Harry to The Burrow. Albus, I’ll see you once you’ve collected Harry’s belongings.”

Harry plodded alongside Mrs Figg down the road, dimly aware of the presence of Ron’s parents on his other side. “Er –” he said nervously, “so you’re my guardians now? Officially?”

“Well,” Mrs Weasley said, “according to the Muggles, yes. It was Arabella’s – Mrs Figg’s – idea, to avoid the possibility of you ending up in the ‘faster system,’ I believe she called it. According to our world, though, you don’t exactly… have a guardian.” Harry got the sense that she was avoiding a more complex issue, but didn’t press it. “Dumbledore would like you to come and stay with us, but if you would rather stay with Mrs Figg, since you already know her, that’s fine as well.”

“Can Tom come with me?” Harry asked hurriedly. “If I stay with you, I mean?”

“Well, since Ron invited the both of you at the end of term, I don’t see why not,” Mrs Weasley replied. 

“Then I’ll go with you – I want to be as far from the Dursleys as possible,” Harry said darkly.

“Well, that’s that then,” Mrs Weasley said. “Mind, it’ll be a bit of a tight squeeze, we’ve only got the one extra bedroom right now.”

“That’s alright, Mrs Weasley,” he replied. “Tom and I are used to sharing.”

“Thick as thieves, those two,” Mrs Figg murmured fondly.

They rounded the corner onto Wisteria Walk and made their way up to number seven. Harry, suddenly forgetting the stress and horrors of the day, wrenched himself out of Mrs Figg’s gentle grip and flung himself through the door and into the hall, where he found Tom waiting for him on the staircase, engrossed in a book.

“Tom!”

“Harry!”

Tom launched himself off the stairs and onto Harry, wrapping him tightly in his arms, the book cast aside. And there it was – the warmth that came only from Tom’s touch and no others, the glow between them that Harry was increasingly sure must be magic. He curled into Tom’s embrace, his own arms reaching up to pull him closer.

“You’re alright?” Tom whispered against his ear. “The Muggles didn’t hurt you?”

“No, they just locked me up. I didn’t think Dumbledore would be able to get me out so fast.”

“Nothing a little magic couldn’t solve, Harry. And Tom, don’t smother the boy!” Mrs Figg had entered the house as well, followed by Mr and Mrs Weasley. “He’s had a rough day, let him breathe.”

“‘S’alright, Mrs Figg,” Harry murmured, content in his arms. “I haven’t seen Tom in weeks.”

“What did I say?” Mrs Figg sighed. “Completely inseparable. You’d better keep an eye on those two, Molly, lest they disappear into their own world together.”

“Aunt Bella?” Tom asked, pulling away from Harry, much to his disappointment. “What do you mean, she’d ‘better keep an eye on us?’”

“The two of you are headed to the Weasleys’ house – if you’d like to, that is,” Mrs Figg replied. “I’ll miss the sounds of little feet scampering around the house, but you’ll undoubtedly have more freedom there – and I’ll still come to see the both of you off to Hogwarts, of course.”

Tom glanced at him, and Harry nodded. Tom smiled in agreement.

“That’s settled then,” Mrs Figg said. “Harry, you go ahead and take the Floo with the Weasleys. Tom, let’s get you packed. We’ll meet the three of you at the Burrow shortly.”

Harry followed the Weasleys to the fireplace, and after Ron’s father had stepped through, shouting, “The Burrow!” Harry did the same. He felt a little more comfortable with Floo travel since his first dizzying attempt, and so arrived with slightly greater ease as he merely stumbled instead of collapsing entirely, emerging into the most magically and chaotically decorated kitchen he had ever seen. A clock on the wall seemed to be enchanted not to tell the time, but to remind the viewer of their chores and schedule. Several haphazardly arranged family photographs along one wall tittered as they noticed him. The flames on the hob were a bizarre, brilliant purple, and the pot simmering above them was stirring itself.

Mrs Weasley emerged from the fireplace behind him and strode toward the pot, sampling a bit of the contents, which looked like a hearty stew. “Perfect,” she declared, summoning a bowl from a nearby cupboard with a wave of her wand and ladling a healthy portion into it. “Go on, Harry,” she added, setting the bowl on the table along with a spoon and a crusty portion of bread. “I somehow doubt those relatives of yours have been feeding you well, you’re looking rather peaky.”

Harry was absolutely starving, and he tucked into his meal with relish, finding it incredibly delicious. He was halfway through the bowl when Ron walked into the kitchen, bleary eyed and messy-haired.

“What’s going on, Mum?” he mumbled. “I heard noises – oi! Harry!”

“Hi Ron,” Harry said, grinning between bites of his dinner.

“They got you away from the Muggles, then?” Ron asked. “I mean, permanently?”

“Yup,” Harry replied. “You should’ve seen Dumbledore, he was furious.”

“Is Tom coming too?” Ron asked hopefully. “I’ve been waiting for a proper rematch after he beat me last time at chess. Besides,” his voice dropped to a low whisper, “I’ve been meaning to ask him more about what he meant by everything he said on the train.”

“What do you mean?” Harry asked.

“You know, about becoming the most powerful wizard?” Ron replied. “It sounds a bit like what You-Know-Who wanted, but er – more sane, I guess.”

The fire roared to life behind them.

“Well, you’ll get your chance,” Harry said. “It sounds like he’s coming through now.”

Indeed, only moments later, Tom came stumbling out of the grate, unbalanced by the large trunk he had in tow. He glanced around at the kitchen, taking in the sights and blinking hard.

“Ron,” he said, “is this your house? It’s –”

“Tiny, I know,” Ron grumbled.

“No,” Tom countered. “I mean, it is a bit cramped, but it’s absolutely brimming with magic. I’ve never lived in a house like this.”

“Oh?” Ron queried. “Wasn’t your mother a witch, though? She was a Rowle, right?”

“Yes,” Tom replied, “but my stepfather was a Muggle. He didn’t mind magic, but didn’t want it paraded about the place. Our house was beautiful, but boring.”

Ron clapped a hand on Tom’s shoulder. “That’s rough, mate.”

“Mum!” a small voice whined. “What’s going on? I can’t sleep with all this noise.”

Mrs Weasley turned from where she stood at the oven, smiling down at the tiny girl who had just appeared in the kitchen. “Ginny!” she said. “I’m sorry, we didn’t mean to wake you up. We’ve just brought Harry home, and this is –”

Ginny squealed in panic and fled from the kitchen. Ron chuckled.

“My younger sister,” he explained. “You might’ve seen her on the platform when we got back from Hogwarts. You’ve been her hero for years now. Don’t worry, she’ll calm down around you once she gets to know you properly.”

“Right then,” said Mrs Weasley. “Harry dear, are you finished? You can always have seconds if you’d like.”

“Oh no, Mrs Weasley,” he replied, “I’m fine. That was delicious, thank you.”

“Tom?”

“No,” Tom replied. “I’ve already eaten, thank you.”

“Bedtime then, I think, unless you’d like to wait up for your aunt to come through?” Tom shook his head. “Alright then – Ron, can you show Harry and Tom to Charlie’s old room? And lend Harry some pyjamas, if you will – Dumbledore won’t be by with his belongings until the morning. Leave your trunk, Tom, I’ll levitate it up when I come to tuck the two of you in.”

“That’s Mum,” Ron grimaced, as he led Harry and Tom up a narrow, winding set of stairs. “Dotes on us like we’re still toddlers. She’s bound to be even worse with the two of you.” He stopped at a door on the third landing. “You’re in here. My oldest brothers share when they’re both home, but they’re both abroad for work right now.” He opened the door to reveal a small but cosy room with two identical, steel framed beds. Harry crossed the room and took the one in the far corner, while Tom sat down upon the other. “Well, good night.”

Later though, when they’d changed into their nightclothes and brushed their teeth, when the only light left was the soft glow of the moon and the house was silent, Harry slipped from beneath the sheets. He crept like a shadow to the other bed and slid in next to Tom, who scooted over and wrapped his arms around him without a single remark, resting his chin atop Harry’s messy locks. The two of them drifted off like that, ensconced in a warm, gentle quiet, content in the knowledge and relief that they were no longer separated.

There were no nightmares that night.

“A house-elf?” Ron was dumbfounded, his jaw slack with surprise. “Harry, what was a house-elf doing in your bedroom?”

It was the next morning, and Harry was recounting the events that had led to his abrupt removal from the Dursleys’ care. Ron was rapt with attention, but Tom was only half-listening – he had been there for some of it, after all, and was more interested in puzzling out exactly why everything had happened. It was rare for a house-elf to leave the household to which they were bound, let alone leave the magical world at all. If someone had sent theirs to Harry Potter’s house, it meant they likely had a message they could not rely on an owl to send.

“He came with a warning,” Harry explained. “He said that I would be in grave danger if I were to return to Hogwarts, that there was a plot to make terrible things happen this year. It was odd, though, he couldn’t say who was behind it, and he kept having to punish himself. Even his being there wasn’t allowed – said he’d have to shut his ears in the oven door as punishment.”

So a disobedient house-elf then. Interesting. Someone – probably one of Voldemort’s followers from his previous life, if he were to be honest with himself – was plotting something horrible, and their house-elf had taken it upon itself to warn Harry. He would have tracked down the elf to thank it in person for holding Harry’s life in such high regard, had its tactics not put him in even greater peril at the hands of Harry’s own relatives. 

“Terrible things?” Ron echoed. “Blimey, we’ve already had terrible things happen at Hogwarts. What more do we need, You-Know-Who himself waltzing through the front doors, properly resurrected?”

Tom stifled a giggle.

“No,” Harry said. “Dobby said it wasn’t Voldemort – I think. He was being rather odd about the whole thing though, like he was trying to give me a hint.”

“What exactly did he say?” Tom asked, suddenly interested. “If you can remember, I mean – what were his exact words?”

“Oh, er –” Harry stammered. “I asked him if it had to do with Voldemort, and he replied, ‘not He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, sir.’ I think. After that, I told him Dumbledore wouldn’t let anything else happen at Hogwarts, and Dobby said something about him not using powers any decent wizard would use, and then he grabbed my lamp like he was going to hit himself with it – and that’s when you came in, Tom.”

“Well, that’s rubbish,” Ron said. “‘Not He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named’ – that could be anyone then. Well, anyone aside from You-Know-Who, I suppose. Do you think it could just be a prank? Someone who wants to scare you away from returning to Hogwarts? I mean, I’m not one to accuse my housemates of anything, but the two of you did basically steal the Hogwarts House Cup out of Gryffindor’s hands when Dumbledore awarded you each fifty points for going to each others’ rescue.”

“No,” Harry replied firmly. “Dobby seemed genuinely worried, like he really didn’t want me to go back. And if it was just about the Cup, wouldn’t Dobby have visited Tom as well? But when he showed up, Dobby practically fled. None of it makes any sense.”

That was right, the house-elf had Disapparated in terror when it saw Tom. He had attended many an event at pure blood manors in his life before – was it possible that the house-elf was old enough to have recognised him? It was hard to tell with them, and they lived just as long as witches and wizards could, if not longer.

“This is pointless,” Ron sighed. “Come on, let’s go flying – I know you want to try out for the Slytherin team Harry, and as much as it hurts me to know you’ll probably destroy us, I can’t just let your dreams go to waste. You too, Tom – you’re rubbish on a broom, but I can guarantee the results are worth the practice.”

Tom followed them out the door, scowling.

Ginny sat on her bed, feeling very neglected and alone. It wasn't easy being the youngest, especially when you were the only girl after a line of six older brothers. Normally, Ron would play Quidditch with her on these warm summer days, but from the day his school friends arrived, the three of them had taken off to do their own thing, leaving her behind at every possible turn. These days, she had only Luna to spend time with, and she couldn't come over every single day.

Worse than that, Harry Potter had already spent the last two weeks at her house, and she hadn't even been able to say two words to him. She wanted so badly to work up the nerve to talk to him, but it was as though she was paralysed whenever they found themselves in the same room. Not that that was a regular occurrence, anyway; Harry always seemed to be sneaking off with that other boy – Tim, she thought he might be called, or some other, boring, pedestrian name, certainly nothing so lovely as Ginevra – when they weren't out flying with Ron.

She sighed. Well, she had her schoolbooks now, she might as well start looking through them. From what Ron had told her, Harry had some of the best marks in their year – maybe if she applied herself and did very well, Harry might notice her on his own. She retrieved one of her secondhand books from her trunk, wrinkling her nose at its poor condition, and opened it.

Ginny gasped as a thin, leather bound black book fell out of A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration and onto her lap.

She opened it tentatively, noting the name "T. M. Riddle" on the front page. It wasn't a name with which she was familiar, she didn't think – but then again, it could have belonged to anyone, sitting hidden in Flourish and Blotts for years, maybe even decades. She wondered why it had been left behind, flipping through a few pages for any hints as to its history – other than the name on the first page, though, it was completely blank. A diary then, that had never been used.

Ginny felt a little thrill of excitement run through her – she had always wanted a secret diary of her own, but had been too afraid Ron or one of the twins would find it and use it to take the mickey. This year, however, she was going to be at Hogwarts, in her own dorm her brothers couldn't access. Grinning, she fished a quill from her trunk.

Dear Diary, she wrote, then paused. What did one write about in a diary, anyway? I feel a little silly – I've never had a diary before and I don't know what to write. Well, I suppose, my name is Ginny Weasley, I'm eleven years old, and I'm going to start school at Hogwarts soon.

This summer has been just awful. I was so excited when my parents told me Harry Potter was coming to stay with us, but he doesn't even seem to know I exist. He's always running off with Ron and that other boy. It's just not fair, I've wanted to meet him all my life, and now that I have the chance, I just can't!

Also, the trip to Diagon Alley was one of the strangest I've ever taken. First, that author Gilderoy Lockhart was there, and insisted on a photo with Harry. Apparently he's going to be our Defence Against the Dark Arts professor. Ron said the old one died when he tried to kidnap Harry, but that I was too young for the details – as if he’s not just a year older than me. After that, my father got in a fight with Mr Malfoy. It was a real fight, too, not a duel with wands. I've never seen Dad actually punch someone!

I can't wait to get to Hogwarts. Harry and his friend are leaving to visit someone called "Draco,'' soon, so I won't have another chance to see him until September. I wonder what House I'll be in. My whole family thinks I'll be a Gryffindor just because Weasleys always are. But everyone thought that about Harry for years, and look where he ended up. Mum was so surprised, and even more so when Ron still wanted to be his friend, but she said it was good for inter-house unity or something. I’m not sure what that means, but I guess I’ll find out when I get there.

Ginny leaned back, smiling in satisfaction at her first entry. It had felt nice to work out some of her feelings on paper, even if she didn't have anyone to actually talk to. A moment later, however, her hard work started to fade as though it were sinking into the page. She gave a small cry of despair as her words vanished entirely, as though they had never been written at all. Only moments later, however, new words began to appear in a delicate, practised script.

Hello Ginny Weasley, my name is Tom Riddle. How did you come by my diary?

Ginny hesitated. "Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain," her father had always said. On the other hand, the diary didn't seem to be trying to hurt her or hex her, it was just talking, and besides – her mirror talked to her all the time, and she didn't know where it kept its brain, either. What could be the harm in responding?

I found it in between the pages of my Transfigurations book, she wrote. It was second hand.

Interesting that someone would choose such an unlikely place as a safeguard for this diary, Tom wrote back. Tell me about yourself, Ginny – you said that you would be attending Hogwarts soon? That your family are all in Gryffindor?

Yes, it's only a few weeks from now, Ginny replied. And Weasleys always end up in Gryffindor.

Do you want to be in Gryffindor?

I don't know, she answered truthfully. I thought I did, because I wanted to be like my brothers. But I was hoping to be in Harry Potter's house, and he was sorted into Slytherin...

Who is Harry?

Who was Harry? How did Tom not know who Harry Potter was? Everyone knew who Harry Potter was. Then again, she didn't know how old the diary was, nor how she was even talking to somebody through it.

Tom, she wrote, are you a real person?

In a manner of speaking, yes, Tom responded. I am a memory from many years past, placed in the diary when I still attended Hogwarts. Not unlike a talking portrait, you might say.

Well, that made a lot more sense. And if Tom was like a portrait, but in a book instead of on canvas, then it was safe to keep talking to him.

Harry is well – Harry, she wrote. He's been my hero ever since I learned about him. He's only a year ahead of me but he's just incredible. He defeated You-Know-Who when he was just a baby!

Tom's reply was slower this time. You-Know-Who?

Oh dear. How was she going to explain You-Know-Who to Tom? She'd only ever heard stories, and only vague ones at that. She put the quill back to the paper slowly, leaving a blot.

So, years and years ago, there was a very bad wizard. He hurt and killed a lot of people, and everyone was very afraid of him. He had a real name at one point, but people were too scared to say it and still are now, even though Harry defeated him. Some people call him the Dark Lord, but most of us just say You-Know-Who, or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named if they want to be posh about it.

Interesting, Tom replied. Are you perhaps speaking of Grindelwald?

Ginny recognised that name. She thought hard, back to the history lessons her mother had given her and Ron over the years. No, she finally wrote. Grindelwald was before him. You-Know-Who was only thirty or forty years ago, I think.

It has been a very long time since anyone held my diary, Ginny, Tom responded. What year is it now?

1992.

Tom took a very long time to respond to this. When he did, his lettering was slow and deliberate.

Ginny, do you mean Lord Voldemort?

Ginny shuddered. Merlin, even seeing his name written down was chilling. Please don’t say his name, she replied.

I apologise, Ginny, Tom wrote. When I was preserved in this diary, the Dark Lord was only just beginning to rise to power. He was feared by many, but none did not dare to speak his name yet. I did not realise that it would frighten you so.

It’s okay Tom, she scribbled. I know you didn’t mean to.

Tell me more, Ginny. Tell me about the world of 1992. Tell me about Harry Potter.

And so she did. She wrote, and wrote, and wrote, her anxiety and gloom disappearing with each kind word from Tom, each clever comment he inserted between her lines. Harry may not realise she existed, but Tom did – and when she went off to Hogwarts he would come right along with her as her closest companion. She could even fail all her classes and not make a single friend and it wouldn’t even matter, because now she had Tom – and he could come with her wherever she went, a new best friend she could carry in her pocket.

Whatever happened this next year, she would be fine.

Chapter Text

The balmy days at the Weasley household came quickly to an end, and Tom found himself packing up once again. To his chagrin, Harry’s belongings had ended up scattered all over the Burrow, and he was quickly enlisted into the hunt across the house to find and collect every last wayward sock, quill, and schoolbook. Several items of clothing were found, predictably, in the laundry, Harry’s old spare glasses had somehow made their way into Ron’s little sister’s room, and his new Nimbus 2001, which Harry had bought as a Quidditch hopeful, was found, rather mysteriously, in the chicken coop.

Finally, they were all packed, and it was time to depart. Molly Weasley met them in the kitchen, fussing over both boys and hugging them tightly in turn. 

“It’s been so wonderful having the two of you here – I hope you can return next summer,” she said, squeezing Tom far too tightly for his comfort. “I just wish the two of you weren’t headed off to spend the rest of your break with the Malfoys – particularly after that nasty fight between Arthur and Lucius.”

“I know you don’t particularly like the Malfoys, Mrs Weasley,” Tom replied, finally breaking away from her stifling embrace, “but we’ve already accepted Draco’s invitation. It would be the height of impropriety to reject it now.”

“Yes, yes,” Mrs Weasley said airily. “Pureblood notions of etiquette and propriety, of course. You sound just like my dear uncle Caspian, always fixated on manners and decorum. Had to write him a thank you letter for every gift he sent me – but I suppose I’m glad I did, he was a sweet old man beneath all those layers of Pureblood perfection.”

She gave the two of them a long, searching look.

“Right,” she said at last. “You two be careful now. The Malfoys may have disavowed their connections to You-Know-Who, but make no mistake – that family have spent their lives steeped in the Dark Arts. You boys find any trouble, you owl me straight away, you hear?”

To the side, Tom could just make out Harry rolling his eyes. “We’re only going to Malfoy Manor to spend time with Draco,” Harry said, “not for a crash course in Dark magic. I appreciate the warning, though, Mrs Weasley. See you next summer, maybe?”

Mrs Weasley nodded, somewhat tearily. “Of course, dear,” she said. “Now go on you two, you’ll be late. We don’t need to give the Malfoys yet another reason to sneer down their noses at us.”

Tom nodded and grabbed a fistful of Floo powder from the pot Mrs Weasley was offering him and tossed it into the fire before stepping onto the grate.

“Malfoy Manor!”

The world spun around him, and a moment later he stepped into a lavish parlour, brightly lit and drenched in sunlight, a wide bay window looking out onto an expansive lawn. It was a bizarre feeling, ending up in a place that at once felt intimately familiar and brand new to him – a feeling he predicted he would experience with increasing frequency as he explored more of the wizarding world.

The fire roared to life behind him, and he spun around just in time to catch Harry, who as always stumbled out rather inelegantly, soot in his hair.

“I don’t know why I can’t quite get the hang of Floo travel,” Harry grumbled while Tom attended to the crown of his head. “Mind, it doesn’t help having to carry this trunk at the same time.”

“Luckily, you’ll always have me to catch you on the other end,” Tom replied, and Harry’s cheeks were suddenly tinged with pink. “There, you’re presentable now. Are you ready to meet the Malfoy family, properly this time?”

Harry rolled his eyes again. “Merlin’s beard,” he muttered, “that whole scene in Diagon Alley was a bit of a nightmare, wasn’t it? You’d think Mr Weasley and Mr Malfoy could at least be civil around each other, if not for themselves than for their kids’ sakes.”

They didn’t have long to wait for the Malfoys to make their appearance. Lucius appeared first, followed by Narcissa, and finally Draco, trailing along behind his parents and beaming when he spotted Harry and Tom.

Tom stepped forward and inclined his head toward Draco’s father, smiling slightly at the irony of the situation and at the little shudder that ran through Lucius’ frame as Tom extended his hand. He took it, however, and gave a firm handshake. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr Malfoy,” Tom said in his most genial tone. “I cannot express how grateful I am that you’ve opened up your house to myself and Harry.”

Lucius nodded. “Mr Riddle,” he acknowledged, his voice tight and features pinched. Harry stepped forward to repeat the gesture as Tom moved to the side to brush his lips against Mrs Malfoy’s knuckles, which Harry also copied. 

“I shall fetch a house-elf to bring up your belongings,” Narcissa said imperiously. “Please, be seated – tea will be served shortly.”

Tom and Harry moved to sit on a long, delicately upholstered sofa, with Draco to their left, perched on an ottoman, and Mr and Mrs Malfoy in high-backed armchairs with a table between them. A moment later, a tiny elf scampered in carrying a tray far too big for it, piled with finger sandwiches and dainty petit fours, accompanied by an exquisitely crafted porcelain teapot and five matching cups. She set it on the table between the Malfoys and fled the room as quickly as she had appeared.

“Draco,” Lucius snapped. “Feet off the furniture.” Draco, who had drawn up his legs to sit cross-legged on the ottoman scowled, but obeyed his father’s command. “So, the two of you have been staying with the Weasleys, I believe?” There was just a hint of a sneer on his face, and Tom enjoyed watching the man struggle to reel in his distaste. Etiquette demanded that he not openly insult the family who had hosted Tom and Harry previously – after all, Tom had set the tone of their conversation with his initial formal introduction.

“Oh yes,” Tom replied. “The Weasleys were such gracious hosts, though I confess I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of Ron’s siblings.” It wasn’t even close to a lie – the Burrow had been chaotic in comparison with serene Malfoy Manor, and there was always someone in his space, whether it was Fred and George trying to crack through his aloof demeanour with an endless string of practical jokes, Percy lecturing them on the benefits of keeping their knowledge sharp during the summer term (of which he was already quite aware, thank you very much), or little Ginny, glaring at him every time she caught Tom holding Harry’s hand or fussing over him.

“Mm,” Harry hummed in agreement. “The Weasleys were lovely. I can’t wait to see them again – did Draco tell you they adopted me? At least according to Muggles, that is.”

Narcissa’s tiny gasp and Lucius’ raised eyebrow told Tom that Draco had indeed not told his parents that little tidbit of information Harry had sent to him with Hedwig. Oh, this was a perfect opportunity to start dispelling this silly little blood-feud and discredit Dumbledore at the same time.

“That’s right,” Tom said gleefully. “Poor Harry was treated so terribly by his Muggle relatives, in the end even Dumbledore realised he had made the wrong choice in placing him with them. The Weasleys were so kind to take him in as one of their own. I can’t understand, though, what Dumbledore was thinking when he left Harry behind on their doorstep – he must’ve known they would never accept him.”

“Don’t be so mean to Dumbledore,” Harry argued. “He made a mistake, we all do it.”

“Perhaps,” Tom replied, glancing at Lucius Malfoy briefly, “but Dumbledore does seem to make more than his fair share.”

“You really are your father’s son, aren’t you?”

It was a statement, not a question. Tom looked away from Lucius and down at his cup of tea, his gaze lost in its depths. He hesitated just long enough to sell the moment, to paint himself as the fatherless boy, troubled in his knowledge of from whom exactly he was descended.

“Did you know my father, Mr Malfoy?” Tom asked, meeting his eyes again. Lucius, unaware that the twelve-year-old boy in front of him was a master Legilimens, did not trouble himself to mask his thoughts, and so Tom was able to see his apprehension, his doubt, and his failed loyalty. To anyone else watching, however, he was the perfect picture of composure and refinement.

“I did,” Lucius said slowly. “Tell me, Tom – do you know exactly who your father was?”

“If you refer to the fact that I am Voldemort’s progeny, then yes,” Tom replied. “I am well aware.”

“I see,” said Lucius, his mask slightly shaken by Tom’s casual use of the Dark Lord’s name. “Yes, I knew your father. He attended Hogwarts the generation before mine, and was… good friends with my father, who went on to become one of his earliest and most vocal followers. When I came of age, I was – quite forcibly, I assure you – entered into his ranks as well.”

“You don’t subscribe to Voldemort’s ideology then, Mr Malfoy?” Tom asked, smiling innocently.

Lucius hesitated. “It’s not necessarily a question of ideology, but of tactics,” he finally replied. “I agree with many of the Dark Lord’s policies, but as he rose to power he began resorting to methods which placed us out of favour in the eyes of the public.”

“Yes, Draco told us some of this on the train home,” Tom said. “I can understand why one would not wish to support such an unnecessarily brutal takeover of the Ministry. I find it is far preferable to influence the direction of an organisation from the inside, don’t you agree?”

Lucius stared at him, and Tom read in his eyes his shock, taken aback as he was by this child who spoke with the words of a politician. “Y – yes,” he said softly. 

“Mr Malfoy, what was my father like? Tom asked, and Lucius blinked at the sudden shift in topic. “Before he became so violent, I mean.”

Lucius shook his head. “I’m afraid I didn’t know him before he attempted to take the Ministry by force,” he replied. “However, as my father would tell it, he was viciously cunning and demanded strict loyalty from his followers – the Knights of Walpurgis, as they were called in those days. He controlled magic with merely a thought long before his peers could, and it was said to be a sight to behold – indeed, even in his later years the Dark Lord commanded such impressive feats of magic you forgot you were looking at a man and not in the presence of a god. However,” he amended, glancing at Harry, “it must be acknowledged that he was capable of supreme cruelty, even in his youth.”

Tom had to fight to contain the gleeful laugh that was bubbling up within him – he hadn’t expected such a glowing and poetic description of his former self from a man who had all but turned his back on him. Perhaps Lucius, like his son, could be useful once more in his second rise to power. “He sounds impressive,” he said, “terrible crimes notwithstanding, of course. It’s a shame that he lost sight of his vision and, reportedly, his sanity. If not, we could be living in a very different world, and Harry would still have his parents.”

“Indeed,” Lucius said faintly, rising from his seat. “Actually, if you would follow me, I have something to show you.”

The three boys also stood, trailing behind Lucius Malfoy as he led them down a long stretch of corridor and into a study that clearly hadn’t been used in quite some time, going by the layer of dust across every surface. Lucius grimaced as they stepped inside, little clouds rising from the carpet under their shoes. 

“It appears the house-elves have been neglecting my father’s study again,” he drawled. “Mimsy!”

With a pop, the tiny house-elf from earlier appeared in the study, looking rather distressed. “Yes, Master Malfoy, sir?” she squeaked, shivering.

“This room is filthy,” Lucius admonished. “See that it’s put to right, immediately.”

“Sir,” she said, wringing her hands, “that is being Dobby’s job, and Mimsy is not seeing him all day.”

Harry’s eyes went wide and he glanced at Tom, mouthing, “Dobby!” Tom gave him a tiny nod. Very interesting, that the elf who had disobeyed its master to warn Harry of danger at Hogwarts just happened to belong to Lucius Malfoy. What exactly was the old traitor up to?

“That insubordinate little…” Lucius muttered. “Mimsy! Find Dobby and tell him he’s earned himself a week’s worth of punishments.” Harry winced – right, Harry, who had spent his entire life being pushed around and thrown into his cupboard and made to do the Dursleys’ chores, was obviously going to sympathise with the house-elves, and Lucius was notoriously cruel to them. It had never bothered Tom before, but if it bothered Harry… Well, there was little he could do about it as he was, he would simply have to keep Harry as engaged as possible and far away from the man.

As the house-elf popped back out of the room, Lucius turned to the desk in the middle of the room. “Right then,” he said. “Accio photograph!” From the middle drawer of the desk shot an old, slightly faded photo, which flew into Lucius’ outstretched hand. He stared at it for a moment before handing it over to Tom.

It was slightly grainy, but the detail was still good. There was Tom, age eighteen, shoulder to shoulder and crowded into the frame with Abraxas Malfoy on their final day of school, next to the boats that were about to take them away from the castle for the last time. Abraxas was waving enthusiastically, eager to put his childhood behind and begin his adult life, whereas Tom looked more withdrawn, only the hint of a smile on his face.

“My father,” Lucius explained, “and yours.”

Harry and Draco peered over his shoulders to get a look for themselves. In his periphery, he could see both of their jaws drop simultaneously.

“That’s Voldemort?” Harry asked incredulously, at the same time that Draco said, “Tom, you look exactly like your father.”

He ran his thumb over the photo, reminiscing – he could remember that day, the day everything had changed and he’d taken the wrong turn in life. He could have gone on to the Ministry, travelled the world, or gotten his mastery. Instead, denied the Defence Against the Dark Arts post at Hogwarts and with no backup plan in mind, he had taken a job as a shopkeeper and eked out a meagre existence while waiting for the right priceless artefact to fall into his hands. Abraxas, on the other hand, had gone on to Ministry work, rising swiftly up the ranks due to his connections and family name. 

Abraxas Malfoy, the only one before Harry who had been anything close to what Tom might call a friend, a companion even, no longer thus, but a mere follower...

“Mr Malfoy,” he said softly, “do you have a copy of this? I know it’s strange, with my father having been the Dark Lord, but…”

“Keep it,” Lucius said. “It did not belong to me, but its owner is gone from this earth. And you should have something of your father, particularly from before he travelled down a dark and treacherous path.”

Hours later, stretched out on one of the large, ridiculously opulent four-posters in the room Tom and Harry would be sharing for the next two weeks at Malfoy Manor, Harry brushed his hand over the photo, staring at eighteen year old Tom Riddle.

“It really is incredible,” he said in a hush, “how much you resemble him. You could be twins, if he weren’t older than you.”

“You also look incredibly like your father,” Tom pointed out.

“Mmm,” Harry hummed in agreement. “Voldemort was so handsome, though.”

Tom smiled. “Are you saying you find me handsome, Harry?”

Harry blushed furiously, only making Tom’s smile widen further. Merlin, he was so pretty when he was flustered.

“I – I just mean,” Harry stammered, with all the grace and subtlety of a fledgling bird, “that I wonder what happened. That face on the back of Quirrell’s head…” he trailed off and shuddered.

Tom shrugged. “The Dark Arts, I assume,” he said, schooling his expression into something of a grimace. “He probably did some foolish ritual one too many times without considering the consequences.”

“You think?” Harry asked. “I didn’t know Dark magic could change your appearance like that. I mean, Quirrell himself looked relatively normal, aside from the face on the back of his head. Voldemort, though…”

“Voldemort was literally called the Dark Lord, Harry,” Tom yawned. “He probably had ten times the experience with Dark magic that Quirrell had. Now, you need to get to bed – your own bed, Harry – the Malfoys are going to expect a sense of decorum that the Weasleys don’t care about, and that means sleeping separately.”

“But – if I have another nightmare?”

“Then I’ll hold you until it’s over, and you can do the same for me,” Tom replied. “But come morning, we must be in our own beds when the house-elves come to wake us.”

“Fine,” Harry said unhappily, hopping out of Tom’s bed and crossing the room to his own. “‘Night, Tom.”

“‘Night, Harry.”

Harry awoke, blinking hard in the dark, to a gentle yet incessant patting against his arm.

“Alright, alright,” he said, his voice thick with sleep. “I’m up, Tom, wha'd'ya want?”

“Shh!” whispered a vaguely familiar, rather squeaky voice. “Harry Potter must be quiet and come with Dobby. He does not know the danger he is in!”

“Dobby!” Harry hissed, suddenly awake. “What are you on about now? I’m not in any danger.”

“No, no,” the elf lamented. “Harry Potter is in more danger than he ever could have imagined. Come, you must escape with me, sir – before He Who Must Not Be Named –”

“Voldemort?!” Harry whispered fiercely, interrupting Dobby. “He’s back again?”

“Please, sir, Harry Potter must keep his voice down,” Dobby begged, “before He Who Must Not Be Named is awoken.” He waved a hand toward the other side of the room, where Tom slept,

“Wait, Dobby,” Harry said. “You don’t mean Tom, do you?”

Dobby nodded fervently. “Dobby has served the Malfoys for many years and seen many things. Dobby recognises him, sir – he is the same boy Dobby once served a glass of champagne at Master Abraxas’ birthday. He is here to kill Harry Potter!”

Harry laughed, causing Dobby to squeak in fear. “Sorry Dobby,” he said. “I’m not laughing at you, it’s just – Tom’s not Vol – sorry, You-Know-Who, he’s just –”

“Harry?” Tom whispered through the darkness, roused by Harry’s laughter. “Harry, what’s going on?”

“It’s Dobby again, he’s –”

“You shall not harm Harry Potter!” Dobby cried, leaping onto Harry’s bed and placing himself between him and Tom.

“...Harm?” Tom asked, bewildered, flicking his lamp on. “Why would I ever harm Harry?”

“Dobby knows who you are!” the elf declared, pointing at Tom. “You has lured Harry Potter here to be killed, even before terrible things happen at Hogwarts. You are He Who Must –”

Tom broke out into laughter, effectively cutting Dobby off. “Really,” he gasped. “You think I’m Voldemort? Isn’t he quite a bit older than me?”

“Tom!” Harry cried. “Don’t make fun. It’s just that Dobby met your father once, and he seems to think you’re him.”

Dobby whipped around to stare at Harry. “His father? ” he boggled. “Oh, no, Mr Tom,” he cried, flinging himself off of Harry’s bed and landing on his hands and knees before Tom’s. “Dobby is so sorry, he was so sure Tom was He Who Must Not Be Named reborn. Dobby never even considered he is having a son.” He leaned forward and smashed his tiny head into the floor. “Bad Dobby! Bad Dobby!”

Harry’s eyes went wide in alarm and he leapt from his bed as well, hauling Dobby up and away from the floor, holding him tightly by the shoulders. “Dobby, you made a mistake,” he said, “but you haven’t hurt anyone. I don’t care what Mr Malfoy says, please stop punishing yourself.” Dobby slowly went still in Harry’s grip until he was only shivering, and when Harry released him he did not try again to hurt himself. “Thank you,” Harry breathed.

“Dobby,” said Tom. “I know you travelled to Harry’s house – I won’t tell, I promise – to warn him of grave danger at Hogwarts should he return. Tell me, is Mr Malfoy planning something?”

Dobby shivered violently, though he stayed rooted to the spot, shaking his head. “Dobby can’t say! Dobby mustn’t!”

“I will take that as a yes,” Tom replied. “And you told Harry that it did not have to do with Voldemort, yes?”

Dobby winced at the name, but shook his head again. “No, not He Who Must Not Be Named, sir.” Those were the same words he had used when he appeared the first time in Harry’s bedroom.

Tom’s eyes narrowed. “That’s an odd way to answer a simple yes or no question,” he said slowly. “Dobby, to your knowledge, are there any other rising figures to whom my father’s former followers might be drawn?”

“Not that Dobby is aware of, sir,” he replied.

“Alright then…” Tom tapped his chin, humming thoughtfully. “Dobby,” he finally said, “is Harry specifically in danger, or is it a general threat?”

“All who is in the walls of Hogwarts this year be in danger.”

“Then why warn only Harry?”

Dobby bounced on the balls of his toes, his ears flapping wildly. “Because Harry Potter is too important to lose, sir!”

“While I agree,” Tom replied, “I don’t think Harry appreciates his life being protected while others remain in danger.” Harry nodded his head in agreement. “Is there anything you can tell us that will help us prevent Hogwarts being in danger?”

Dobby shook his head wildly, stopped, and began nodding just as vehemently, his eyes wide. “The diary, sir!” he exclaimed. “You have to find the diary!” 

For a single moment, Harry swore he saw a look of understanding mixed with horror on Tom’s face, but then it was gone, replaced with a frustrated confusion, “The diary?” he demanded. “What in Salazar’s name is that supposed to mean?”

“I’m sorry sir, Dobby has said too much!” He squealed, tugging on his ears in despair. “Dobby mustn’t say anything else!” 

And he was gone with a pop.

“Well that was completely bloody useless,” Tom grumbled.

“Not entirely,” Harry countered, thinking hard. “We know that Mr Malfoy is planning something, and that it threatens all of Hogwarts. We know that he used to follow Voldemort, and I’m fairly certain that it was not as unwillingly as he claims.” Harry gasped. “Tom! What if Mr Malfoy wants to become the next Dark Lord!”

“And attacking Hogwarts would help him achieve that… how, exactly?” Tom asked dubiously.

“He could be planning to take out Dumbledore, since he opposed Voldemort, and the rest of us might get caught in the crossfire,” Harry pondered. “In any case, we should definitely tell the headmaster when we get back to Hogwarts.” 

“Tell him what, Harry?” Tom asked. “That a house-elf made some vague claims about Hogwarts being in danger and that Mr Malfoy may or may not be planning to attack the school? That’s hardly enough to go off of – let’s get to school, and if anything happens, we can tell him what we know.”

“Well, okay,” Harry agreed. “But you promise we’ll tell him?”

“Yes, Harry, of course.”

Tom kept coming back to the events of that night over the next few days, and he found himself thinking it over once more as he watched Harry and Draco whip around in the sky above him, both on their brand new Nimbus 2001s. Was it really possible that Dobby could be referring to his diary? Well, Voldemort’s diary, really, though he was feeling rather possessive of it now that the idea it could be in another’s hands had been planted in his mind. There were, of course, many diaries in the world, and it was a little egotistical, even for Tom, to think that only his could be at the heart of dangerous goings-on at Hogwarts.

On the other hand, it was connected to Lucius, and Lucius was connected to Voldemort – and Voldemort had had a particular and highly dangerous diary which could no doubt be used to wreak all manner of havoc. The question was, did Lucius have the diary? He thought back to the protections Voldemort had given each of his Horcruxes – the locket and the ring he remembered well, having both been placed in locations highly significant to him, and the diadem was at Hogwarts. The diary and the cup, however… Tom was fairly certain they had both been placed with high level followers who had been given strict instructions to hide them well. 

If Lucius had been in possession of the diary and done something with it against Voldemort's orders, he had certainly proven himself to be a worthless follower. Tom would keep him around, sure, but only for his poetic descriptions of how incredible he was. Draco was a far more useful man to have at his side, particularly as he was still young and eminently mouldable to Tom’s point of view. 

Okay, so Lucius was an idiot who had probably had Tom’s diary at some point, and was going to use it somehow to attack Hogwarts. Maybe. But what exactly was a Horcrux supposed to do in the castle? The soul it contained wasn’t like Tom, who had been nourished by the light and love of another human soul, it was simply a fluttering spark of life entombed within a blank diary. Had Voldemort intended the diary for a secondary use? This memory was more hazy, but Tom thought that just might be it, though he couldn’t remember what, exactly.

He considered what he remembered of the diary and of Horcruxes in general. He had created that very first Horcrux at only age sixteen, not long after killing Myrtle Warren. It had really been somewhat of an accident. Oh, he had planned to kill, and soon – no reason to put it off, not when he would be returning that summer to a war zone – but opening the Chamber of Secrets, despite what he told the others, had not been an exercise in cleansing the school of Muggle-born students. It had been, rather, a show of power: look at me, I am truly the Heir of Slytherin, kneel before me. But then Myrtle had interrupted him as the Basilisk, Apophis, had carried him up the tunnel and into the girls’ bathroom, and before he could react the girl was dead on the floor. 

Well, waste not, want not. He had made his first Horcrux only days later.

So, that was the diary in a nutshell, but aside from housing his soul, what else could it do? Horcruxes, he knew, were capable of letting the fragments within flit in and out, to observe the world, to try and influence and take over the minds of those who came in close contact with them.  He vaguely recalled this from personal experience, having written back and forth to his soul for several weeks after the diary’s creation until he realised that the piece within it was hungering to be reunited with the whole; he had stopped after that day and hidden the diary deep within his school trunk.

But Voldemort had written in the diary again, hadn’t he? It had been shortly after Dumbledore had denied him the Defence Against the Dark Arts position, when in a fit of pique he had retrieved the diary and given his younger self a very specific set of instructions, to be fulfilled only when one of his followers had successfully passed the diary into the hands of a Hogwarts school child. Tom’s thoughts ground to a halt, a chill flooding him despite the warm summer sun.

Sweet Salazar – someone was going to open the Chamber of Secrets.

Chapter Text

“Are you and Tom going out?”

Harry stopped patting the giant, winged horse in the Malfoy Manor stables and stared, wide-eyed, back at Draco,. “Er – what?”

“You and Tom,” Draco repeated, his eyes boring into Harry. “Are you going out? You know, are you two together?”

Harry laughed awkwardly. “No?” he replied. “Why would you think that?”

It was early morning, and Draco had dragged Harry, who was up before Tom for once, across the grounds of Malfoy Manor with the promise of showing him the Abraxan horses his family kept and bred. Harry hadn’t been sure exactly why Draco hadn’t waited for Tom to be ready to join them, but he thought he had a pretty good idea of the reason now. 

Draco sighed and rolled his eyes. “Why wouldn’t I think that?” he asked. “The two of you – you’re completely inseparable. Half the time you’re all over each other – holding hands, playing with each others’ hair, cuddled up on the sofa together and reading the same book – and don’t think I’ve never seen the two of you sleeping in the same bed at Hogwarts.”

“Oh,” Harry said, nodding. “That’s because of the nightmares.” Draco looked at him blankly. “Oh, er – I have nightmares about Voldemort sometimes, and Tom holds me until they go away. I’ve been doing the same for him ever since – well, you know, the end of last year.”

“And the rest of it?” Draco demanded. Harry stared at him in confusion.

“That’s just… normal?” he asked. “Don’t Pansy and Hermione hold hands sometimes, or play with each others’ hair?”

“Well, yes,” Draco said, “but that’s girl stuff, Harry. Boys don’t do that kind of thing unless they’re going out.”

“Oh,” Harry said, feeling a bit silly for not realising that sooner. “I didn’t know. Tom was the first friend I ever made, that’s just how we’ve always been.” He shook his head as the full weight of what Draco had said sank in. “Wait – are you saying boys can go out together? Like – like that? ”

“Yes?” Draco replied, looking rather dumbfounded. “Why would you think they couldn’t?”

“Oh, well,” Harry replied, his face growing warm with shame, “I didn’t think it was allowed. The Dursleys, Uncle Vernon especially, always said that kind of thing was unnatural. I never really questioned it.”

Draco scoffed. “Harry, you’ve got to stop thinking like a Muggle,” he chided. “No one in our world cares if you fancy girls or boys, not unless you’re expected to produce an heir – and even then, there’s surrogacy potions now to work around that sort of thing.”

“Oh.” Harry felt rather stupid, as he always did when someone revealed a detail about the magical community he had just assumed was the same as the Muggle world. It was a small mercy, in this case, that he simply hadn’t cared enough to wonder if two boys could date in the wizarding world – he hadn’t given much thought to dating at all until Draco had posed him that question.

Now though, his head whirled with the possibilities. 

“So?” Draco asked, leaning in conspiratorially.

“So what?” Harry replied, not knowing what on god’s green earth his friend was on about.

“So do you fancy Tom?!” Draco huffed in exasperation.

Harry’s eyes went wide. Did he fancy Tom? What a question . “I, er – I don’t know,” Harry said, in utter disbelief at the realisation that he truly didn’t. “I don’t even know what that would be like.”

“You know,” Draco explained, “you see a good looking girl – or boy – and it makes you feel all… funny inside. Like you really want to be around them, but they make you nervous at the same time.”

Was that what he had been feeling around Tom recently, that little fluttery feeling deep in his chest when he gave Harry one of those breathtakingly bright smiles that seemed to be reserved only for him, or when Tom took his hand in his and ran his thumb over Harry’s knuckles? It had always been nice, their shared casual intimacy, the warm glow between them – but over the summer, Harry now realised, it had started to become something more. He shoved the rather alarming thought aside, staring at Draco in utter bewilderment.

“Merlin, you’ve really never fancied someone before, have you?” Draco breathed.

“No!” Harry exclaimed. “All the kids at my primary school hated me, when was I supposed to start even liking any of them? Anyway, aren’t we a bit young to be thinking about girlfriends or boyfriends?”

Draco’s eyes narrowed at him. “Harry,” he said strangely, “Pansy and I have been going out for weeks. ”

“What?!”

“Calm down, it’s not like we’re having sex,” Draco argued. “We just… you know, wander around the castle together, sit together at meals, and partner up in class.” 

“But Draco,” Harry insisted, “those are all things you do with Pansy anyway.”

“Yes, but it’s different, because we fancy each other,” Draco replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Besides, she er – she kissed me on the last day of exams,” he added, his ears turning slightly pink.

“Hey!” Harry accused. “That’s the day Quirrell abducted me!”

“Well, I didn’t know that at the time!”

But Harry wasn’t listening, because his brain had suddenly seized on the thought of kissing Tom. Would his lips be soft against Harry’s? They certainly looked like they would be. Would they be warm, or would they be cool to the touch? Would the kiss be gentle, as Tom was so often with him, or would he be kissed by the Tom he saw so often in class, his magic ripping out of him and moulded fiercely to do his bidding?

Harry leaned against the stable wall and groaned unhappily – how could he ever look Tom in the eyes again, now that Draco had planted this seed of curiosity in his head? And there was no way – no way – that Tom shared that curiosity, that fluttery excitement that curled somewhere between Harry’s ribs. 

“I knew it!” Draco crowed in triumph. “You do fancy Tom, don’t you? Harry, you should tell him.” 

Harry sighed, pushing himself up and off the wall. “No,” he said firmly, not quite meeting Draco’s eyes. “Tom and I are just friends, that’s all. Just very good friends.”

The summer term came to a close, and on the final day Tom found himself, for the first time in both his lives, side-along Apparated with the Malfoys and Harry directly onto platform nine and three-quarters. It was rather nice, not having to deal with the hassle that was the Muggle side of King’s Cross station. As expected, Arabella Figg and the Weasleys were waiting for them on the platform, and Tom was pleased to note that while chilly toward each other, the Malfoy and Weasley elders did not exchange open hostilities as they had earlier in the month. He endured two horrible hugs, one from Mrs Weasley and one seemingly unending one from Arabella, brushed his lips against the back of Narcissa’s hand once more, and then it was onto the train, off for a second year at Hogwarts.

They quickly located Ron and Hermione and began the search for an empty compartment. When they ran into Pansy, however, she and Draco broke off from the rest of their group to find their own space, prompting an eye-roll from Hermione and a very confused grunt from Ron.

“What’s with the two of them, then?” he wondered aloud.

“You didn’t know?” Harry replied, sounding slightly wistful. “Draco and Pansy are going out now.”

Tom glanced down at Harry – when had he figured that out, exactly? But Harry blushed and looked away, an action that had become increasingly common ever since Draco had dragged Harry out on his own to see the winged horses – what exactly had they talked about that had left him so ruffled?

“Oh well, more room for us,” Ron said, shrugging. 

“I’m not exactly displeased Draco won’t be joining us,” Hermione remarked as they settled into an empty compartment. “The things he had to say about Muggles at the end of last year… Not that you were much better, Tom.”

“Draco has been raised his entire life to believe in pureblood supremacy, Hermione,” Tom replied, stowing his trunk. “It’s a wonder he’s even begun to cast aside those notions, let alone his beliefs about Muggle inferiority. And can you really say I was wrong?”

“Yes!” Hermione exclaimed. “Muggles aren’t a danger to us – they don’t even know we exist!”

“Hermione,” Tom said in a serious tone. “In America, in 1692, three girls our own age were so desperate for attention from their guardians that they managed to convince an entire town of people that they had been bewitched. What followed was a period of mass hysteria in which over two hundred people were accused of witchcraft, dozens were jailed, including children, and nearly twenty were killed, one man via torture which lasted days, pressed to death under the weight of rocks.”

Hermione’s face had gone rather white, her hand pressed against her mouth in horror. “That’s horrible,” she replied. “But – but that was three hundred years ago! Surely today –”

“Today,” Tom interrupted, “Muggles have access to far greater technology. Imagine the harm the people of Salem Village could have done with an electric chair, the gas chambers employed by the Nazis during World War II, a nuclear bomb… The Salem Witch Trials may have been three hundred years in the past, but the Holocaust, in which the German government oversaw the sanctioned massacre of two thirds of the European Jewish population, not to mention countless others, was less than five decades ago. What do you think would happen if Muggles, with their superior numbers, discovered our society hiding right under their noses?”

“I – I don’t know,” Hermione whispered. “My parents would never…”

“I’m sure your parents are wonderful people,” Harry assured her.

“Of course,” Tom conceded, though he did not truly share the sentiment. “However, what if they had discovered the magical world not through their daughter, whom they love, but entirely by accident – say, by seeing a spell cast in front of them?”

“I think they would be frightened,” Hermione said slowly. “I think, if Professor McGonagall hadn’t been there to explain everything to them, they would have been terrified to learn I was a witch.”

“Precisely,” Tom said, “and there are far too many people – Muggle and magical alike – whose first instinct in the face of fright is to attack. Yes, we may have the advantage in possessing magic, but take away the wand and most of our kind are unable to draw upon our powers with any great amount of strength.”

“Blimey, well this is depressing,” Ron interjected. “Harry, you’ve been keeping up on Quidditch practice?”

“Huh? Oh – er – yeah.”

The conversation lightened after that, turning to the events of the summer term, their upcoming classes, and whether this year would be less eventful than the year prior. As they chatted, the countryside flew by, the afternoon sky dimmed into evening, and the train began to slow.

Soon, they were at Hogwarts.

The four of them piled out of the compartment, hoisting their trunks alongside them and following the crowd of students not headed for the boats. They soon found themselves at the line of carriages that would take them up to the castle, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione all climbed into one. Tom however, stared for a moment at the thestral pulling the cart. Of course – being reborn had not been near enough to cleanse him of the lifetime of death with which he had surrounded himself. On the other hand, Tom had always been able to see the thestrals, long before any of his peers. He had been one of the lucky ones – babies left at Wool’s had had a nasty habit of dying rather suddenly, and he had seen it happen on more than one occasion. At first it had horrified him – that slow, lingering process, the light fading from their eyes drop by steady drop. It could just as easily have been him. Later, it had filled him with a clinical curiosity to try and pinpoint the moment the infant’s soul left the body, that instant in which death took hold and nothing could be done to bring the child back from the brink.

“Tom, are you coming?”

He looked up and away from the thestral. Harry was leaning out of the carriage, his hand reaching out for Tom, a lifeline to pull him away from the oppressive cloud of death hanging over him. He smiled, the joy engendered in him by Harry’s earnest and untainted care flooding through him like a restorative draft.

“Yes, Harry.” He took his hand and allowed himself to be tugged up and into the carriage.

He spent the sorting glancing through the crowds, his eyes skimming over the first years, each house table, and finally the staff table. There was, thankfully, no tug on his soul to indicate that Voldemort had found his way into the castle yet again, though he did scowl at the sight of that horrid man who had forced Harry into taking a photograph with him at Flourish and Blotts. He was no danger, however, and so Tom focused deeper, letting himself slip away from the raucous clamouring of the students and into his own mind.

He felt around tentatively for the connections to his own soul – there was Harry, bubbling with life and love, keeping that tiny, fragile little piece of himself sleeping safe and warm within him. Floors and floors above him was something angrier, something bitter and scathing and waiting for the right moment to lash out: the diadem, of course. Given that Voldemort had breached the Room of Hidden Things only weeks prior, Tom was going to have to find a chance to slip back in and secure it; he did not particularly relish the idea of his wraith-like counterpart regaining access to an item which could provide him with a new physical form.

And then – there it was: a third presence, a child not much older than himself, lonely and cold and frantically craving companionship and physical form, lost in the dark labyrinth of his own mind. Was this what Voldemort – no, Tom himself – had done, to condemn a young man, a teenager, his own soul, to fifty years of darkness and isolation? Tom had had Harry to cradle him, but this other Tom – he had nothing.

Tom swallowed the lump of what tasted unpleasantly like guilt rising in his throat.

So – Dobby had been right, Tom’s diary was close by, maybe even within the Great Hall. But where? Harry was easy to pinpoint, the presence directly to his right, laughing and clapping and so very alive , but the diary was… inert. The soul within fluttered at the edge of his consciousness, teasing him with its existence, but there was no spark of real, human life to trace. It could have been fifty feet away or right across the table, there was no way to tell.

“Tom!” A hand was patting his, trying to get his attention. Harry. “Tom, look – Ron’s little sister is being sorted!”

Tom pulled himself back to consciousness – there was little reason to pay attention to Ginny Weasley’s sorting, as she was bound to follow her brothers into Gryffindor. The Hat, however, did not make its expected proclamation, sitting instead upon her head in quiet contemplation for several long moments as students all across the hall began to glance at each other in silent disbelief. A Weasley, a potential hat stall? Unthinkable.

Finally, the hat’s mouth ripped open wide along the brim. Everything seemed to move in slow motion, the silence in the hall unbroken, the eyes of the Weasley brothers at the far table wide in anticipation, before –

“ SLYTHERIN! ”

Whispers broke out across the hall – Salazar, it was somehow worse than Harry’s sorting. “A blood-traitor, in our house?” “Is she really a Weasley? Can’t be, right?” McGonagall lifted the Hat off the tiny ginger’s head, but she didn’t move, paralysed on the stool as she stared around the space, shivering at all the faces looking up at her, no doubt hearing every last cruel word being spread across the Great Hall. For a brief moment, Tom felt something flicker inside of him, remembering the cruelty he had faced among his fellow Slytherins his first few years, when they still thought him a Mudblood because of his name – but then it was gone, replaced with confusion and mild annoyance, because how could a Weasley find herself sorted into Hogwarts’ greatest of houses, coming from such a family as she did?

Beside him, he felt Harry leap to his feet, and before he could react he had raced to the front of the Great Hall, helping Ginny, who was now hiccuping in terror, to her feet. He tucked her under his arm and guided her, even as she stumbled, to the Slytherin table, rubbing her shoulder comfortingly. Tom felt a great burst of jealousy explode within him.

It subsided as Harry reapproached the table, steering the Weasley girl, whose face was wet with tears, into her seat. “It’s going to be okay, Ginny,” he was saying, sounding, to Tom's relief, more like an older brother than a friend. “My sorting was a bit of a surprise to everyone too. Here, you can sit next to me – scoot down, Draco, Ginny’s just had a bit of a shock.” The Weasley girl having been the last to be sorted, the feast shimmered into existence before them. “Perfect,” Harry said. “Here, have a bit of chocolate, you’ll feel better in a moment. I’ll go get Ron.” 

Tom felt rather dizzy as he watched Harry, who seemed to know exactly what to do in the moment to comfort Ginny, as he raced off again, this time to the Gryffindor table. He was followed back not only by Ron, but the twins as well. The Weasley girl looked up at them tearfully as they approached, shrinking back into her seat as if she expected to be scolded for the sorting hat’s choice. But Ron reached down and hugged her, and her hiccups calmed and ceased.

“It’s alright, Ginny,” Ron said. “So you’re a Slytherin – isn’t Harry a Slytherin as well, and still my best mate? You’ll be okay.”

“Dunno if we’ve ever told anyone this,” one of the Weasley twins said – Tom couldn’t tell them apart, “but the Sorting Hat wanted to put us both into Slytherin.”

“That’s right,” said the other. “Something about sneaking about and flagrant rule-breaking. Only reason we ended up in Gryffindor was because we both asked for it. Isn’t that right, Fred?”

“One hundred percent true, George.”

“Really?” Ginny squeaked, colour slowly returning to her face. “Oh, but I didn’t think to ask – I should’ve asked. Everyone in Slytherin is going to hate me.”

“No they won’t,” Harry replied fiercely. “And if they do, I’ll sort them out.”

Tom smirked – of course he would. At the end of the previous year, between Harry’s celebrity and their combined secured win of the House Cup, the two of them had become something of Slytherin’s darling boys. If Harry wanted to be the tiny girl’s protector, he would easily manage it, and Tom would help – so long as Ginny understood her place in Harry’s life: his ward, not his friend, and certainly not anything more.

As the autumn term began, Tom found himself on high alert, waiting for any signs that the Chamber of Secrets had been opened yet again. However, there was little of note that occurred within the first few weeks – Harry easily made Seeker on the Slytherin Quidditch team, and Draco managed to slide in as well as a Chaser. Ginny Weasley was reluctantly but quickly accepted by most of Slytherin, as Harry told off anyone who spoke out against her inclusion. By the end of the first week, only a few of their classmates, namely Theodore Nott and Blaise Zabini, resisted the idea of a Weasley in Slytherin. Professor Lockhart was an absolute joke, charming most of the school with a fake, toothy smile, even more of an obvious mask than the smile Tom had perfected in the mirror over the years at Wool’s. 

As far as returning to the Chamber of Secrets, though, Tom had a problem. The bathroom that hid the entrance was haunted by the ghost of Myrtle Warren, and Tom had shot up nearly four inches in the past year, the soft lines of his face giving way to a sharper jaw and cheekbones. Aside from a few inches of height, he was quickly becoming indistinguishable from his fifth-year self, and as strongly as he might’ve liked to delve back into the Chamber, he couldn’t risk Myrtle, the girl he had killed, recognising him as her murderer.

So he waited.

Before he knew it, Halloween rolled around. Harry, like the previous year, fell into an angry, depressed silence despite the air of frivolity. Tom, with a pang of unwanted guilt that ravaged the scarred edges of his soul, found suddenly and unpleasantly that he understood – hadn’t he too once dreamt of a world in which his father hadn’t abandoned his mother, in which he had grown up loved and wanted? Hadn’t Harry’s vision in the Mirror of Erised been his family, the one Tom had robbed him of in his previous life? 

And Harry’s reflection had also included Tom, so on All Hallow’s Eve, he found he was able to raise his goblet of pumpkin juice to Harry’s, and choke out, “To Lily and James Potter.”

Harry smiled hesitantly back at him, his eyes watery. “To my mum and dad,” he replied, taking a sip from his goblet and scooping up a second serving of treacle tart. “Thanks, Tom - it always feels like everyone leans on me to be some great hero, but they forget my parents ever existed.”

“Well,” Tom said, uncomfortable in the irony of it all, “I’ll never forget how important your parents were.”

It happened then, a strange sense of foreboding that rose with the spirits of the crowd around him – something was about to happen, Tom was sure of it. The energy around them was too similar to the previous year, when Quirrell had burst through the doors and declared, in a fake panic, that a troll had managed to find its way into the dungeons. Any moment now, he was sure – 

“… soo hungry… for so long…”

Harry’s head snapped up from his plate, dropping his fork with a clatter. “Tom, Draco, did you hear that?” Tom nodded, recognising in horror the sound of Apophis’ voice. Draco just looked confused. Tom seized Harry by the arm.

“Come, Harry,” he hissed against his ear, “we have to follow.”  

Tom raced from the Great Hall, tugging Harry along behind him. He could not allow the Basilisk to be set free upon Hogwarts once more, not when it would cast undue suspicion onto him, Voldemort’s supposed child, the new Heir of Slytherin. He ran along the corridor, Harry beside him, hoping against hope he was heading in the right direction.

“…kill… time to kill…”

“What is that?” Harry gasped, his shorter legs struggling to keep up with Tom’s long strides.

“A voice only you and I can hear, Harry,” Tom answered, making a sharp turn down another corridor. “What else can it be?”

“A snake?” Harry asked.

“Yes,” Tom confirmed. “A snake that’s apparently going to try and kill someone. Luckily, we can stop it if we get there in time.”

“…I smell blood… I SMELL BLOOD!”

“Harry, hurry!” Tom yelled, dashing down a set of stairs. They were very close to the bathroom in which the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets was hidden now – if they could only move a little bit faster, if he could only stop Apophis before it killed someone – 

They skidded round the last corner into a nearly flooded corridor, and Tom’s heart sank into his stomach. There, on the wall, written in what looked like blood but was probably paint, were the words:

THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED. ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE.

Below that, dangling by her tail from a torch, was Filch’s cat, maybe dead, maybe just petrified. Tom couldn’t tell which, his stomach turning in knots, the damning knowledge that he hadn’t prevented the Chamber from being opened once more sinking into him.

“Tom, maybe we should go.”

But it was too late – the thunder of footsteps had started, their classmates pouring out of the Great Hall to make their way to bed. Within moments, a crowd started to gather round, people staring up at the cat, at the words, at Tom and Harry. Behind them, Draco pushed through the crowd and made his way to Tom’s side.

“Tom!” he whispered, his tone a strange mixture of horror and awe. “Harry! You opened the Chamber of Secrets?”

“Don’t be daft, Draco,” Tom snapped. “We just found this here.”

“What’s going on? Why are you all milling about?!” Tom cringed – Mr Filch had come upon the scene, and at any moment was going to see the stiff body of his companion dangling on the wall. He stumbled as the man pushed him aside and took in the scene, gasping in horror.

“My cat!” he shrieked. “My cat! What’s happened to Mrs Norris?!”

He rounded on the crowd, his eyes sliding over Harry and Tom. 

“What have you done?!” he screamed. “You – you – you’ve murdered my cat!”

“Argus!”

Dumbledore had finally arrived, Professors Snape, McGonagall, and Lockhart in tow behind him. The crowd parted before him silently, and he approached the wall with the writing, studying it for several seconds before turning his gaze on Tom and Harry. His eyes lacked their customary twinkle, and Tom recognised instantly the way he had looked down at him so many times during his first life’s attendance at Hogwarts.

“Oh dear.”

Dumbledore detached Mrs Norris from the wall and handed her to Filch. “Severus,” he said, “if you will, please take Argus and attend to Mrs Norris – it’s quite possible she can still be saved. Harry, Tom, with me please.”

With little choice but to follow, Tom trailed along behind the old man, Harry’s hand in his. Dumbledore led them from the corridor, up several flights of stairs, and to the gargoyle which he knew concealed his office. This was it – Dumbledore was going to unfairly accuse him of opening the Chamber like his supposed father before him, have him removed from the school, and perhaps banish Harry as well for acting as his accomplice. 

“Sherbet lemon,” Dumbledore said quietly, and the stone statue leapt aside, the wall opening to reveal the revolving stone stairs that led up to the tower. “In here, boys, if you will…”

Tom reluctantly stepped onto the staircase, Harry beside him, allowing himself to be carried up to his certain doom. 

Once inside his office, however, Dumbledore did not begin to admonish the two of them – instead, he sighed, trailing his fingers along the edge of his desk as he made his way to his seat, gesturing for the two of them to sit as well. They did, and he gazed at them for several seconds before speaking.

“Do either of you know of the legend concerning the Chamber of Secrets?” he finally asked.

Tom quickly shook his head, his eyes down, as Harry did the same beside him.

“The story goes,” Dumbledore said contemplatively, “that not long after the founding of Hogwarts, Salazar Slytherin, your House’s founder, had a falling out with the others – Godric Gryffindor, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Helga Hufflepuff. As history has recorded, Slytherin wished to be more selective in the students Hogwarts accepted – children from pure-blood families only, to be specific. He is said to have left the school shortly thereafter, the rift between him and the other founders growing too deep, but not before building the Chamber of Secrets, in which he concealed a creature he intended to fulfil his desire to purge the castle of those he deemed not worthy of learning magic. Much of this is conjecture, of course – the historical records from the time of Hogwarts’ founding, more than one thousand years ago, are but in bits and pieces now – but it is a well kept secret that the Chamber does, in fact, exist.”

“So it’s actually been opened then, sir?” Harry asked. “That wasn’t just someone’s poor idea of a joke?”

“It certainly seems that way, and I’m sorry – I’m afraid I must ask if you had anything to do with this, Tom,” said Dumbledore gravely. “You see, the Chamber of Secrets was last opened by the only remaining Heir of Slytherin, and –”

“My father,” Tom spat. “Am I right?”

“Yes,” Dumbledore replied. “Therefore, you are now the Heir of Slytherin. Despite this, I would ordinarily dismiss any notion that you were involved – however, it is also said that only his heir could possibly open the Chamber and let loose the creature that slept there.”

“No!” Tom cried, indignant. “I didn’t – I wouldn’t – it wasn’t me, Professor!”

“I believe you, Tom,” Dumbledore said, and from his serene expression, Tom almost allowed himself to trust the old man. “I only ask you to explain why you were seen, the both of you, leaving the Hallowe’en Feast early, not minutes before Mrs Norris was found.”

“It was the voice!” Harry exclaimed.

“Harry!” Tom admonished, begging silently for him not to continue.

“No, Tom, we have to tell him,” Harry argued. “There was a voice that only Tom and I could hear, looking to kill someone – Tom thought we might be able to stop it in time, but…”

“Allow me to ease your mind, Harry,” Dumbledore replied. “Mrs Norris is not dead – she has merely been Petrified. She can and will be restored, as soon as a potion can be prepared to reverse the effects.”

The look of relief shining on Harry’s face was staggering.

“This voice, however, that only the two of you could hear –” Dumbledore continued, “it troubles me that the two of you took it upon yourselves to investigate, rather than alerting the staff.”

Tom scowled. The last time he had revealed himself as a Parselmouth to Dumbledore, it had been a mistake. He had hoped to impress him with his gift, but instead the man had merely regarded him with curiosity and, he was sure of it, disdain. The fact that not only he, but Harry as well, could speak the language of snakes was only going to engender suspicion in their headmaster, perhaps even leading him to the awful truth that Harry was a Horcrux. Well, it couldn’t be helped – there was no other explanation that would possibly make sense.

“I’m sorry, Professor.” He had to force the words out, tasting like bile on his tongue. “I didn’t think it prudent to advertise the fact that both Harry and myself are Parselmouths.”

An odd expression settled on the headmaster’s face, something between surprise, contemplation, and fear. “The both of you?” he murmured faintly. “How curious… I am not surprised, Tom, that you can speak to snakes, given that your father also possessed this ability… But Harry…”

“When I heard the voice,” Tom continued, desperately hoping to turn Dumbledore’s attention back to himself, “I knew it had to be some kind of snake, and that if I caught up with it I could control it. I can, you know. They listen to me. Sir… Do you think it came from the Chamber of Secrets?”

“Of that I have very little doubt,” Dumbledore said gently, his eyes back on Tom. “Control over the actions of serpents or no, Tom, hunting down whatever kind of creature Slytherin left in the Chamber of Secrets was a very dangerous thing to do.”

“Well, I didn’t know it came from the Chamber at the time," Tom lied unhappily. He’d just done his best to put a stop to a rampaging Basilisk, and Dumbledore was chastising him for doing so. 

“Even so…” Dumbledore looked down at him in quiet contemplation for a moment. “Tom,” he finally said, “I must impress upon you not to go looking for the Chamber of Secrets, no matter how tempting it may be to claim that piece of your heritage.”

Tom folded his arms across his chest and looked away, frowning. “Of course, Professor,” he replied. “I’m not planning on hunting down some magical snake whose sole purpose is, apparently, to slaughter my Muggle-born friends and classmates.”

“That’s very good to hear,” Dumbledore said, a touch of mirth in his voice. “Now, was there anything else you’d like to tell me?”

“Oh!” Harry said, nearly leaping from his seat. “I’d almost forgotten – over the summer, Mr Malfoy’s house-elf Dobby tried to warn us that terrible things were coming to Hogwarts. This must have been what he meant.”

Tom tensed; the less Dumbledore knew about who had planned to open the Chamber the better – for himself, at least

Dumbledore steepled his fingers in front of him. “Oh?” he replied. “Interesting, that one of the Malfoys’ house-elves would warn you of a plan to open the Chamber of Secrets.”

Harry nodded. “We think Mr Malfoy might be involved somehow.”

“That certainly would be something, wouldn’t it?” Dumbledore pondered. “Thank you for bringing this information to my attention, Harry. Now – it is quite late, and we are nearing curfew. The two of you should head back to your dorms, I’m sure your friends are missing you.”

Tom let out a quiet sigh of relief – Harry had forgotten Dobby’s cryptic clue about the diary, it seemed. He leapt to his feet. “Thank you, professor,” he said quickly. “We’ll let you know if we hear anything else.”

And before Dumbledore could say another word, Tom was out the door, Harry’s hand in his once more.

Chapter Text

Draco was waiting for them, seated at one of the small study tables, when they arrived in the Slytherin common room, his platinum hair and pale face illuminated by the dim moonlight filtering through the depths of the lake. He looked up as they approached, flinching at the look of disapproval Tom wore.

“Draco,” he said, taking a seat across from the Malfoy boy, “you knew the Chamber of Secrets was going to be opened this year.” It was a statement, an accusation, a challenge issued to see if the boy would continue to conceal his father’s secrets or fall in line behind Tom as he began his first steps in his rise to power. To his delight, Draco nodded stiffly.

“My father told me this past summer,” he admitted, glancing away. “It was shortly before you arrived; he said that the Heir of Slytherin would return and claim his inheritance.”

“Draco,” Tom said slowly, “do you know what the main purpose of opening the Chamber is?”

Draco fiddled with the edge of one of his sleeves, twisting the cloth back and forth in his fingers. “To… to purge the school of all the Mud – the Muggle-born students…”

“Does your father know that one of your closest friends at Hogwarts is Muggle-born?” Tom demanded.

“No!” Draco exclaimed, biting his lip and flushing a deep pink. “How was I supposed to tell him? How was I supposed to say, when he told me what he was doing, ‘Father, please don’t – I don’t want Hermione to die!’? He’ll disown me for sure when he finds out – he’ll label me a blood-traitor like the Weasleys!”

Tom sighed. “Calm down, Draco,” he commanded. “Your father will have to find out sooner or later, but for now, tell me exactly what you know so that we can try and devise a way to put a stop to it before someone is murdered.”

“I don’t know much,” Draco admitted. “He only told me because I overheard him talking about it with Mother. She didn’t seem to approve of the plan, either, from what I could tell. When I asked, he simply said that the Heir of Slytherin would be returning to Hogwarts this year, and I would know it had happened because he would announce that the Chamber of Secrets had been opened, just as he opened it fifty years ago. He told me not to get involved and to just let the Heir do what he needed to do.”

“But Draco,” Harry interjected, “whoever opened the Chamber of Secrets is lying! They’re not the Heir of Slytherin!”

“What?” Draco gasped.

“No,” Tom confirmed. “I am, and I have no desire to see a significant portion of our classmates dead.”

“You are?” Draco’s eyes boggled. “But that means… the last time the Chamber was opened was…” Tom could practically see the gears turning as he pieced it together.

“Yes, Draco,” Tom stated, drawing himself up in his seat. “My father was responsible for opening the Chamber of Secrets, presumably during his own time at Hogwarts. Dumbledore confirmed it when we spoke with him tonight.”

“But my father thinks he’s dead,” Draco replied. “I didn’t tell him about – you know, him possessing Quirrell, trying to possess you – how would he think he’d return to Hogwarts?”

“Possibly,” Tom ground out through gritted teeth, “via some enchanted object, smuggled into Hogwarts with one of the students, designed to influence them into acting as the heir of Slytherin’s proxy.”

“Proxy?” Harry asked, his eyes wide.

“A person working on behalf of another,” Tom explained. “Though in this case, it would likely not be of their own free will.”

“That sounds horrible,” Harry muttered.

“Yes,” Tom agreed, trying not to think of his own nearly successful possession only months prior.

“Well, what do we do?” asked Draco.

“We’ll have to figure out who it is,” Harry replied, his brows knitted together, obviously thinking furiously. “Was anyone missing from the feast tonight? I was… well, I was a little distracted.”

Tom frowned. There had been someone missing from the feast, hadn’t there? Draco and Pansy had been in attendance, and they had nodded at Ron and Hermione as they passed the Gryffindor table on their way in, but there had been an empty space at his own table, a familiar presence missed. His focus, however, had been so intently tuned to making sure Harry felt recognised in his grief and anger, Tom had spent very little attention on the rest of the crowd.

“I’m not sure,” he said in frustration. “I believe so, but I cannot recall who.”

“We’ll keep an eye out, then,” Harry said fervently, “see if anyone is acting dodgy, or – or speaking in Parseltongue! If the monster from the Chamber is a snake, whoever opened it must be able to control it.”

“A snake!” Draco exclaimed in horror. “There’s a great bloody snake that can Petrify cats just wandering around Hogwarts?!”

“Surely not, Draco,” Tom replied. “I doubt whoever has opened the Chamber is allowing it to just ‘wander around,’ as you so eloquently put it. But Harry is right, they’ll no doubt be able to speak Parseltongue as well.”

“So it’s a plan then?” Harry asked. “We figure out who’s opened the Chamber of Secrets, and we stop them?”

“I suppose so,” Tom said faintly. Salazar knew he didn’t want to see Harry in danger at his older self’s hands again, not after what had nearly transpired at the end of the last year, but whoever Lucius had chosen to enact his designs had to be stopped, and without involving the staff if at all possible. Apophis was an ally, a friend, even, if one could call a fifty-foot long Basilisk that. Dumbledore would surely have it killed – a beautiful, thousand-year-old legendary creature, destroyed at the whim of a foolish old man. No, Tom could not let that come to pass.

“Then it’s settled,” Harry said, grinning and balling his right hand into a fist, sinking it into his other palm.

Tom waited long into the night, fighting his exhaustion, listening as his dorm mates fell into sleep one by one. Harry was the last one to slip into slumber, his steady breath replaced by the quiet snuffles with which Tom had grown familiar over the last two years. As soon as he did, Tom slid silently out of bed, casting a Muffling Charm over himself. 

He checked his watch – thirty minutes after midnight – and with an unwelcome twinge of guilt, aimed his wand in Harry’s direction and muttered a soft “Somnius,” deepening his sleep and ensuring he would not wake up in the throes of a nightmare without Tom there to comfort him. Brushing aside the knowledge that he was betraying his only true friend’s trust, he proceeded to unlock Harry’s trunk, silently retrieve the Invisibility Cloak, and cover himself with it before leaving Scitalis to watch over Harry as he slipped out of the dorms.

Tom’s first stop on his midnight escapade was the Forbidden Forest, where he found and quickly stunned a few rabbits snuffling about in the underbrush, tucking their limp forms under the cloak and fastening them to his belt. Stunned as they were, they still struggled futilely against his grip, their limbs twitching. It would have been far more convenient to just kill them outright, but Apophis would want fresh prey, something that it could chase. 

He slipped back into the castle as quickly as possible, aware of the danger of the forest at his back and not taking the risk to find a more adequate meal for the Basilisk – these rabbits would simply have to do. He made his way up the staircase to the second floor, stilling his breath as he approached the girls’ loo. He stood by the door for a long minute, listening both for approaching footsteps and Myrtle Warren’s activity within, and when he was sure of neither, he silently opened it and entered.

“Open,” he hissed, striding toward the row of sinks along the opposite wall. The effect was immediate – the tap he knew to be carved with the symbol of a snake began to glow and spin, and within moments the sink was replaced with a cavernous pipe, more than large enough for him to enter. Tom took off the cloak, tucked it into the deep pocket of his robes, and stepped into the pipe. He let himself slide away down the long pipe, awash in the memory, clearer now than it had ever been, of opening the Chamber of Secrets for the first time.

At the bottom, he picked his way through the gloom, his wand alight before him. He knew the way through the tunnel, but kept his eyes firmly on the ground before him in case the Basilisk had not been properly sent back into its sleep. In his first life he had made that mistake once – once – and the creature had been left to its own devices, exploring the castle and seeking out food as he slept. As far as he could tell, after interrogating the Basilisk, it had eaten a wayward house-elf but caused no further harm. He had not made that mistake again, but also did not trust whoever was being influenced or possessed by his diary not to be so careless.

At last he found himself within the Chamber itself, the statue of Salazar Slytherin barely visible in the dim light of the low, green firelight from the torches placed upon the pillars. Yes, someone had certainly been here, and very recently – the first time Tom had visited this room, he had had to light every last damned torch one by one, having found the space charmed to be impervious to most magic and not yet knowing the Parseltongue incantation that would illuminate the entire room. He crossed the room in long, deliberate strides, coming to a halt just before the statue of his ancestor and looking up at the ancient, wizened face above him.

“Speak to me Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four!”

He shut his eyes as the wide mouth of Salazar Slytherin opened and the distinctive sound of Apophis’ scales sliding over the rough stone filled the air. Tom was gratified to find that he still didn’t need to see the Basilisk to sense it, having long since attuned himself to the magical aura the creature exuded. It slid elegantly down the long beard and onto the floor, coiling between the statue’s enormous feet.

“I am called again… so soon?” the great serpent asked. “But you are not the one who woke me earlier…”

“No, Apophis,” Tom concurred. “It is I, your true master. I have returned at last.”

The Basilisk unfurled itself and slithered up to him, winding up around his legs and settling its immensely heavy neck atop his shoulder. Tom did not flinch as the beast’s tongue flicked lazily from its mouth and brushed against his cheek, tasting him – testing him – to see if he spoke true.

“Yesss,” Apophis sighed contentedly, resting its massive head atop Tom’s, “it is you, little master. You have returned to me at last. It has been many newskins since last we spoke.”

“I regret that I was not able to come sooner,” Tom replied. “I was… kept away.”

“It matters not,” the Basilisk replied. “You are here now. Is it time to hunt again?”

“Yes,” Tom confirmed, “but not for humans.”

The snake atop his head hissed indignantly. “Not humans?” it echoed. “But master knows my purpose, I must fulfill my creator’s vision to cleanse his domain of all those not worthy.”

“Am I not your creator’s descendant?” Apophis hissed an affirmative. “And do I not decide who is and is not worthy of walking Hogwarts’ hallowed halls?” The Basilisk agreed once more. “Then believe me when I tell you that there are none at Hogwarts currently who do not deserve their place.” It was not strictly true – Tom had every reason to want to see Dumbledore removed from both the school and life itself, but not allowing a killing spree to take place within the castle’s walls was far better suited to his plans.

“Then what am I to hunt, little master?”

Tom pulled open his robes to show Apophis the three fat rabbits he had tied onto his belt. “They are merely sleeping,” he explained. “I will wake them so as to give you something to chase.”

Apophis hissed happily. “Shall I close my eyes as I hunt, that master can watch?”

“Yes, I would enjoy that, Apophis.” Tom felt the giant snake glide back down his shoulder and onto the ground – not that most of its length wasn’t already on the floor, coiled around his feet in great, undulating loops. After receiving confirmation that Apophis had closed its eyes, Tom set the rabbits on the floor and woke them with a quick “enervate” before he settled down on Slytherin’s left foot to watch the chase.

The rabbits, now conscious and terrified of their unfamiliar surroundings, immediately scattered, but Apophis was faster – the giant snake cornered one of them in mere moments, trapping it against the wall with its giant coils. Even hindered by its lack of sight, Apophis’ hunt was glorious to behold, the Basilisk descending upon the helpless rabbit with its needle sharp teeth, pumping deadly venom into its veins as the creature screamed in pain and writhed feebly in the grip of its powerful jaws.

It was over depressingly quickly, the rabbit dead in seconds and disappearing down Apophis’ throat before Tom could blink. Of course, rabbits weren’t exactly the appropriate prey for a creature as large as a Basilisk – he would have to find something bigger next time, something that would take longer to die while still screaming just as prettily. A pig, perhaps, if he could find something like that in the forest – or maybe one of those lovely unicorns Voldemort had been killing last year. Getting it in the castle would prove to be a logistical nightmare, but after a few more rabbits Apophis would be sated well enough to wait for Tom to iron out the wrinkles in his plan.

The other two rabbits went down just as swiftly as the first, and Tom closed his eyes for a moment, allowing himself to pretend that the screams of pain and terror filling the chamber were actually those of Albus Dumbledore, serving his punishment for daring to suggest that Tom not claim this Chamber, not take what was rightfully his. It wasn’t a particularly realistic fantasy, as the old man would be far more likely to face his death with a stoic silence than shriek like a gormless baboon as the Basilisk venom tore through his veins, but it was enough to make him smile. When finished, Apophis returned to him.

“Are you sated, Apophis?”

“Yes, master,” the Basilisk hissed, a bit sleepily. “Master must bring more prey.”

“I will,” Tom replied. “Apophis, before I let you rest, I have questions for you. Before I arrived, there was someone else with you, was there not?”

“Yes, master,” it confirmed. “The red child woke me and took me from my nest, just as you did so many newskins ago. It smelled like you, but also not like you. It claimed it was the Heir.”

The red child? That could mean almost anything – any one of the Gryffindor students, with their crimson ties and underpinnings. They could be a ginger, perhaps, or even just someone a little more ruddy in the face than average. “I see,” Tom replied as he mulled over this information. “Apophis, this ‘red child’ is an imposter.”

“An imposter!” the Basilisk hissed angrily. “I will eat the red child when it returns.”

“No, Apophis, listen,” Tom said. “This is very important – the red child must not die, and they must not learn of my existence. My being here is a secret.”

“Then I will no longer obey the child.”

“You’re going to have to – doing otherwise would look suspicious,” Tom argued. The sixteen-year-old version of himself in the diary might be more willing than Voldemort to believe that he might have a son one day, but he would not take kindly to that supposed son trying to circumvent the plans Tom had given him for the Chamber of Secrets in his previous life. “These orders may be confusing, but what I need from you is to obey the red child, while attempting not to harm anyone if possible. They very nearly closed the school last time when we killed the girl in the bathroom. It is only through sheer happenstance that an Acromantula was discovered in the castle, and the child raising it took the blame.”

“An Acromantula?” the Basilisk asked in disbelief, its laughter emanating as a series of shuddery hisses. “They believed a giant spider capable of my greatness?”

“Yes, humans can be quite silly sometimes when encountering that which is beyond their grasp,” Tom replied. “Now, do you understand what it is you must do?”

“Yes, master,” Apophis nodded, as if bowing before him. “Pretend to obey the red child. Do not disclose your presence. Do not kill unless you order it.” Well, that last one wasn’t exactly what Tom had said, but it would do.

“Very good, Apophis,” he said. “Now, if you will kindly carry me out of the Chamber, you may sleep again when you are done.”

Chapter Text

The school resumed its usual cheer only days after the attack, with most students coming to the conclusion that the entire thing had been a nasty Hallowe’en prank, probably played by one of the older Slytherins who knew the level of Dark magic needed to Petrify an animal. Only Tom, Harry, and Draco knew the truth at first, though they quickly shared what Dumbledore had told them with Pansy, Hermione, and Ron. The three of them stared, pale-faced, as Harry repeated Dumbledore’s words to them during their next study group gathering.

“So there’s a mad snake loose in the castle?” Ron fretted, when Harry was done. “And the two of you can talk to it? Blimey, Harry, that’s – that’s – well, there’s a reason you ended up in Slytherin, I reckon.”

“What I don’t understand,” said Hermione slowly, “is why someone is pretending to be Tom, if he’s the true heir of Slytherin. You don’t suppose you have a cousin, do you, Tom?”

Harry snorted. “That would mean Voldemort had a brother or sister,” he said, “and oddly enough, Dobby already told me that he didn’t when he visited Privet Drive this past summer. That was just before you arrived,” he nodded to Tom. “I’d forgotten about that ‘til now.”

“It’s highly likely that whoever is pretending to be the heir is not aware of my ancestry,” Tom interjected. “It is also possible that they are not aware of their own actions – there are many ways in which the mind can be influenced to behave according to the will of others.”

Draco shot him a look – they had not shared the knowledge that his father was ultimately the one responsible for opening the Chamber of Secrets.

“Oh, but that’s awful!” Hermione cried, missing the silent communication between her two friends. “You don’t think that You-Know-Who is possessing one of the students, do you?”

Tom nearly laughed. Hermione, predictably, had arrived at the right conclusion well before the others, though she couldn’t possibly fathom the mechanics of it.

“I seriously doubt that,” he replied, though he couldn’t prevent the very corners of his mouth quirking upwards in amusement. “Dumbledore will have greatly increased security since the events of last year. Perhaps one of his former followers, however…” 

Draco shot him another look.

“It could be the Imperius Curse!” Pansy exclaimed. “My father was held under the Imperius and forced to work for the Dark Lord during the war – he’s told me so himself.”

“Yes, my father as well,” Draco said quietly.

“It could be,” Tom said, faking contemplation. It was a perfect cover story – to an untrained eye, the Imperius Curse looked nearly identical to a successful possession. For the others, who were not to know that Lucius Malfoy had decided to go rogue and let a vulnerable Hogwarts student take the fall for opening the Chamber of Secrets, it was the perfect explanation. “If it is, you’ll need to look for the right signs – someone not acting like their usual self, doing things they wouldn’t do, having no explanation for their actions.”

“Don’t forget speaking Parseltongue,” Harry added.

“That as well,” Tom allowed, “although whoever opened the Chamber is not likely to be running around hissing and spitting like a snake everywhere they go.”

“No,” Draco agreed, smirking despite himself. “That’s just the two of you.”

The first Quidditch match of the season was soon upon them, and beside Tom at the breakfast table, Harry was barely picking at his food.

“You need to eat, Harry,” Tom chided, scooping another helping of eggs onto his plate. “You can’t afford to run out of energy halfway through the game.”

“What if I’m rubbish at it?” Harry asked despondently. “I’m going to let everyone down, I just know it.”

Harry, don’t be ridiculous,” Tom said, curling his arm protectively around his shoulder. “I watched you practise all summer, you’re a natural born flyer. You’re going to be incredible out there, I’m sure of it. Now, eat your breakfast, I won’t have you fainting and falling off your broomstick.”

Harry did manage a few bites of his breakfast after that, and before long Tom found himself escorting Harry down to the Quidditch locker rooms, Harry clutching his hand. 

“Are you sure?” Harry asked for what had to be the hundredth time. “I’m not going to ruin the entire game?”

“Of course I’m sure, Harry,” Tom replied. “Don’t think about the game, just focus on catching the Snitch.”

“Catch the Snitch. Right,” Harry said dully, his eyes glassy. 

“You’re going to do just fine.”

“Am I?”

Tom pulled Harry into a tight hug, resting his chin on Harry’s head and running a hand through his hair. “Yes, Harry, that’s what I’ve been telling you all morning. Now go and get changed, the game starts soon.” He pulled away from Harry, holding him by his shoulders, and on a whim placed a kiss right against his hairline. “For luck,” he said, smiling fondly down at him.

Harry blushed a deep pink, glancing away. “Er – thanks,” he blurted, before breaking off and dashing into the locker room, leaving Tom, blinking in the dust kicked up by his Quidditch boots. What on earth had that been about? He liked occasionally teasing Harry and leaving him flustered, but that had been a genuine gesture, a true wish for him to do well, and Harry had run off like a nervous colt.

“Oi!” Draco’s voice came from behind him, tinged with annoyance. “Good job winding up our Seeker like that. We’ll be lucky if he even manages to spot the Snitch, let alone catch it, now that he’ll be thinking about you the entire game.”

“Draco,” Tom sighed, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Draco huffed. “The two of you, I swear to Salazar,” he said, rolling his eyes. “You’re both more oblivious than a bloody Flobberworm. Tom, Harry fancies you.”

“No he doesn’t,” Tom snapped automatically. “Don’t be ridiculous, he’s just anxious about the match.”

“Oh, really?  Draco drawled. “You kiss him on the forehead and he runs away like a terrified virgin bride, and you don’t think he fancies you? Good lord, you’re thick.”

Tom felt paralysed, his feet rooted to the spot as he felt his own blush creeping over his face. Harry… what? No, there was no world, no universe, in which Harry Potter fancied him. They were friends, best friends, but nothing more, nothing less. Tom didn’t need more than that. Tom didn’t want more than that – did he?

“Oh, Merlin,” Draco sighed, looking him up and down. “I wish I hadn’t said anything, now you’re a mess too. I’d better go get ready.”

Tom stood there for a long minute as Draco disappeared into the locker rooms, denying his words. He wasn’t a mess, he was simply amused by the foolish notion that Harry might fancy him. And if Draco thought that he might fancy Harry in return, he was wrong, he was stupid, he was downright –

“Oh, there you are!” Hermione came running up to him, a Slytherin green scarf hung around her neck. “We’ve been looking for you, aren’t you going to join us in the stands?”

Tom smirked. “Supporting Slytherin, then, Hermione?” he asked, glancing at her scarf.

“Supporting Harry and Draco,” she sniffed, “as are Ron and Ginny.”

Ron groaned. “I suppose,” he said rather reluctantly, waving a Slytherin pennant with lacklustre enthusiasm. “Ginny’s in Slytherin, though, so she’ll be fine – we’re never going to hear the end of it.”

Tom frowned in detached concern as the tiny redhead peeked out from behind her brother. She was far too pale, a shaking wreck even compared to how nervous she had been around Harry during their stay at the Weasleys or after the ordeal that had been her sorting. Come to think of it, he had scarcely even seen her since the Sorting ceremony, save for at mealtimes and in passing between classes. The girl didn’t sit up with her dorm mates in the common room after dinner, nor did she sit with Harry anymore, though he always offered a seat to her. Instead, she chose to spend her meals alone at the end of the table, isolated and curled into herself.

Tom would have to mention it to Harry – his friend would surely want to reach out and make sure the girl was adjusting well to Slytherin.

“Well, come on then,” Hermione’s voice lifted him from his reverie, and she tugged at Tom’s hand when he didn’t respond. “We should find seats in the stands before they all fill up. I want a good view of them flying!”

They made their way up into the stands, squeezing in beside some third year Ravenclaws who seemed pretty neutral about the match and were just there to watch the action. Only moments later did the Quidditch teams take to the sky, Harry looking glorious and windswept atop his Nimbus 2001.

“Oh, I wish I’d brought binoculars,” Hermione lamented as the players began to soar in earnest, the Quaffle tossed high in the air between them. “I can barely see a thing.”

Tom smiled slyly, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a pair. “I thought just such a thing might be useful,” he said. “We can all take turns.”

“Oh Tom, you’re a saint!” she exclaimed, taking the binoculars and fitting them to her eyes. “This is incredible! I had no idea Harry could fly so well!”

“He is a marvel, isn’t he?” Tom asked fondly, taking the binoculars and finding Harry in the whirlwind of Quidditch players. He smiled broadly as he watched Harry dip into a dive and spin around Ron’s older brothers, the Gryffindor Beaters. Tom had never cared for Quidditch before, but watching Harry he could see the strategy and care that went into each move – by buzzing the opposite team's Beaters, he had successfully distracted them from sending a passing bludger toward one of his teammates.

“Here, Ginny,” he said, lowering the binoculars, “would you like to – oh, hang on, where is she?” The tiny redhead had disappeared from her seat next to Tom at some point in the few minutes they had taken their seats. “I didn’t think she’d want to miss this.”

“Said something about needing to use the loo,” Ron replied. “Let me see them, mate.” Tom handed the binoculars over. “Oh, wicked,” Ron whispered.

“And Slytherin scores again!” The voice of the commentator, a boy named Lee Jordan, echoed across the stands, and a cheer rose up from the crowd. “That’s twenty – ten, Slytherin in the lead… and uh-oh, it looks like rain.”

Thick raindrops had indeed started to fall around them, Tom bristling in annoyance as one hit his forehead, soaking through his perfectly curled fringe and plastering it against his skin. He quickly threw a shielding charm into the air, covering him, Ron, and Hermione.

“Thanks mate,” Ron said, shivering in the sudden chill that had come with the rain. “Blimey, I hope they can keep playing in this.”

The match went steadily on despite the rain pouring heavily around them. Now though, even with the binoculars, Tom could no longer properly make out what was going on, and so he relied on the commentator to keep him up to date: “fifty–thirty, Slytherin,” “eighty–seventy, Gryffindor!” This was the part of Quidditch he didn’t understand – if catching the Snitch gained a team one hundred fifty points, why were there any other players at all?

It was only when the commentator announced, excited, that the score was now “one sixty–seventy, Gryffindor!” that he realised – Slytherin hadn’t scored a goal in more than half an hour. The rain was, annoyingly, giving the Gryffindor team an advantage, as it was much easier for them to spot their teammates in order to coordinate in their bright red uniforms. If Harry didn’t catch the Snitch, they would surely lose.

“Look!” screamed Hermione.

Harry was racing directly past them, a blur of silver and green on his broomstick. Tom quickly raised the binoculars again to his eyes, watching as Harry dashed off through the storm, the raindrops bouncing off of him and creating what almost looked like a halo around his form. He had his arm outstretched, reaching toward something Tom couldn’t see. He leaned forward – his broomstick tipped – he flipped in the air, and – 

“And Harry’s got the Snitch!” Lee Jordan cheered. “An incredible display, despite it being a Slytherin victory –”

“Jordan!” growled Professor McGonagall.

“Sorry Professor,” Jordan said. “A brilliant catch by the Slytherin Seeker wins them the match – two hundred and twenty to one hundred and sixty!”

Beside him, Hermione cheered recklessly, screaming Harry’s name. Ron also cheered, despite his obvious disappointment that Gryffindor had lost. Tom just clapped politely, a smile spreading over his face in satisfied joy at Harry’s triumph.

“Why don’t we go find Harry?” Hermione asked breathlessly. “We can be the first to congratulate him when he gets back from the locker rooms.”

“A capital idea, Hermione,” Tom responded, frowning. Honestly, anything to get away from the crowd, which was now surging and swaying with emotion following the match. “This way, I think.”

The three of them slipped back down the staircase that led to the stands, unnoticed by the rest of the students aside from the other Slytherins pounding down the staircase to congratulate their fellow Housemates, and headed toward the centre of the Quidditch Pitch where they could see Harry being hoisted into the air by the rest of his team. Unfortunately, the rain had made the ground soft and muddy, so the trek across the wide field was slow going, particularly as Tom had to concentrate to keep his shield big enough to cover all three of them.

By the time they made it to the centre, a large crowd had formed. 

"Oh, this is utterly ridiculous," Hermione snapped, attempting to push through a group of much taller fifth years and failing entirely. "You think they'd let his closest friends through."

"I have a better idea," Tom said. "Why don't we head back up to the castle? I can let the two of you into the Slytherin common room, and we can call a house-elf to bring in some butterbeer and provisions for the celebration."

"Hogwarts has house-elves?" Hermione frowned. 

"Probably the largest population in the British Isles, actually," Tom answered. "Don't worry, they're quite happy here."

"How can they be?" Hermione gasped. "Harry said that Dobby was basically treated like a slave, and –"

"Do you believe Dumbledore would ever allow house-elves to be treated poorly at Hogwarts?" he interrupted. 

"Well, no," she admitted. "But are they at least given wages?"

"Most house-elves would be deeply offended if you attempted to pay them," Tom replied. "Well, perhaps some of the younger ones wouldn't be, but servitude towards humans is a long-standing house-elf tradition."

"That just sounds like they’re brainwashed!" Hermione cried.

Tom shrugged. He didn't much care for the plight of the creatures, not now and certainly not in his previous life. Hermione, however... An idea struck him. 

"If it bothers you," he said loftily, "then you'll just have to follow me to the Ministry when we graduate. When we're adults and in charge, we can change the rules as we see fit."

Hermione nodded in fierce agreement, her jaw set.

"In the meantime," Tom continued, "when we get to the common room you can ask the house-elf any questions you have. If you want to ever go about improving their lives, it has to be what they want.”

They trudged their way up through the mud to the castle, spirits high as they walked.

“Where d’you think Ginny went?” Ron asked as they approached the courtyard. “I would have thought she’d come back to sit with us.”

“She likely just found another place to sit, Ron,” Hermione replied. “We were on the far end of the pitch, after all.”

“You’re probably right,” he sighed. “I’m just worried. She’s been… different, ever since the Sorting.”

Something tingled in the back of Tom’s mind. “Different?” he asked. “How so? I did notice she seemed rather pale today.”

“That’s part of it,” Ron replied. “She’s always been a bit shy, but this is… well, I don’t think she’s even been spending time with Luna, and they used to be good friends. I don’t think she’s gotten over the shock of being sorted into Slytherin – no offence, Tom”

“None taken,” Tom said coolly. “Unexpected sortings, especially those contrary to what one has always thought of themself, can be jarring. I imagine I’d have felt the same if the Sorting Hat had gone ahead with its implication that I might do well in Hufflepuff.”

“Hufflepuff? ” Ron gasped. “You? Seriously?” He broke down in laughter, doubling over as his shoes sank into the mud. “Sorry,” he chuckled, wiping a tear from his eye. “You’re just such a perfect Slytherin, I can’t see you sorting anywhere else, let alone Hufflepuff.”

“Well, it never named the house specifically,” said Tom, feeling mildly offended that Ron didn’t even consider Ravenclaw as a potential secondary house for him. “It only said that I was very loyal, I just guessed what House the Hat meant by that.”

“Yeah, you’re loyal – to Harry,” Ron said, still wheezing with laughter. “Don’t get me wrong, mate, it’s great being your friend; you’ve given me the best chess matches I’ve ever had, and you keep us all on our toes in class – but we all know that if Harry decided he didn’t like any one of us, you’d kick us to the curb in an instant.”

Tom scowled. Ron wasn’t wrong, but it wasn’t the kind of knowledge he had meant to engender in his future followers. “I… apologise if I’ve made you feel like less of a friend,” he said, trying his best not to let his voice sound bitter.

“Nah, don’t apologise,” Ron said, smiling. “For what it's worth, I’d do the same to you if you ever hurt him. From what Harry’s told me, he deserves friends who care enough about him to chase off anyone who hurts him. And you’re weird, and Draco is… well, Draco – but neither of you want to hurt him, so that’s good enough for me.”

“Right,” Tom said, his throat suddenly clenching in some unknown but oddly appreciative emotion for the Weasley boy. “I’m gratified to know we’re on the same page.”

“If you two are done being weird about Harry,” Hermione interjected, “I’d like to go inside now. Tom’s shield is starting to fail.”

It was, the rain passing through in spots as though the shield had developed swiss cheese holes. Tom cursed, dashing through the courtyard and into the castle, Hermione and Ron behind him. Once inside, he paused for a moment to catch his breath, as did the other two as well.

“Right,” he said at last. “The dungeons are just two floors down – unless either of you would like to change into fresh robes.”

“Oh no,” Hermione said, looking around. “I’m fine, Gryffindor tower is up another six flights of – of –”

And then she screamed.

Chapter Text

The professors came and took Colin Creevey's small, Petrified body away, the first year Gryffindor's hands still frozen in front of his face and clutching at his camera. He had left the Quidditch match shortly after it began, a friend of his friend told them, because he had forgotten he'd wanted to take pictures of the game. Hermione watched, pale and shaking, as the staff manoeuvred Colin onto a stretcher, and Ron awkwardly held her and rubbed her shoulder in comfort. When Harry showed up and witnessed what had happened, Tom took him in his arms and turned him away from the dreadful sight.

“Was anyone missing from the Quidditch match?” he asked, his voice muffled against Tom’s shoulder.

Yes, Tom thought darkly, Ginny Weasley. Honestly though, he had a hard time imagining his sixteen-year-old self would consider possessing a first year with very little control over her magic to do his bidding, or that Lucius would think planting the diary on her could bring Voldemort’s plan to fruition. On the other hand, by placing the diary into Ginny’s hands, it might just serve as a means by which the Malfoy head of house could humiliate the Weasleys as a whole, were she ever to be caught. There had been that strange altercation between Lucius and Mr Weasley on their trip to Diagon Alley, and that had been before Tom had sought to start planting the seeds that would end their families’ silly little blood-feud.

Still, the evidence against Ginny was circumstantial at best, and so he said nothing.

In the following days, Tom felt certain that another attack was going to happen, and soon. When he in his first life had opened the Chamber of Secrets, he had conducted his attacks with a vicious sense of urgency, seeking to prove his worth among his housemates as the Heir of Slytherin. By the end of the year, over half a dozen beds in the infirmary were filled with the stony, silent forms of those who had glimpsed the Basilisk in the hazy reflection of a window, through a cloud of mist, in a pocket mirror as they reapplied their rouge, and so on. Truth be told, Tom hadn’t exactly wanted to kill anyone, not yet, and so he had carefully arranged for the series of increasingly unlikely happenstances, knowing that outright murder was too much of a risk while still in school.

The piece of his soul in the diary, however, had been given explicit instructions by Lord Voldemort himself to kill as many Muggle-born students as possible – the fact that Creevey was alive was surely a fluke.

So when weeks passed and nothing out of the ordinary occurred, Tom began to grow restive. He found himself making excuses to slip away from the group and check the second floor corridor, just to see if anyone was lingering around the girl’s loo which concealed the Chamber of Secrets, but no one, Ginny Weasley or otherwise, seemed to want to approach it. He couldn’t exactly blame them – Myrtle’s ghost was supremely miserable in her death if the regular noises from within were anything to judge by, and he didn’t imagine using the toilet with a ghost caterwauling two stalls away was exactly a pleasant experience.

When not investigating the second floor corridor or doing his best to focus on his studies, Tom spent a great deal of time within the confines of his own mind. Despite there not being another attack, he could feel the link between himself and the diary Horcrux growing stronger. This was alarming in and of itself, because it could only mean that the fragment of his soul within it was growing stronger, day by day. Whoever had the diary must be writing in it constantly, talking to his older self – and he, in turn, was writing back and sapping their life away in increments. It would only be months, maybe even weeks, before someone would die and a sixteen-year-old Tom Riddle would appear in their place, ready to give his new body in service to host Voldemort’s soul, as Tom was meant to have done. Whoever it was, Ginny Weasley or not, they needed to be stopped.

The final week of November, it finally happened – Tom, alone in the second year dorm and focused inwardly, felt a strong tug on his soul as the piece of him that resided in the diary suddenly flickered into life, surging and flaring as it wrested control of a body that was not its own. This was it; his older self was about to open the Chamber of Secrets once more. He followed the connection, almost floating out the door to the common room as his other self made its way through the castle. He turned automatically to make his way to the second floor, but to his surprise they did not head towards the girls’ loo. Instead, the presence of his soul was moving outside, heading across the lawn.

He raced to catch up to it, but kept a fair distance once outside. His wayward older self may not be on the lookout for him as Tom was, but would certainly notice the connection if he came too close. He followed the presence slowly and casually down the snow-sprinkled lawn now, glancing about and looking for any sign of his soul’s possessed individual, but the few students who had decided to brave the cold weather were vibrant and full and utterly disconnected from him. He paused by a tree and pushed his mind just a little further along the connection between himself and his older self, stilling suddenly as he recognised an all too familiar sensation.

The older Tom Riddle was engulfed in the same paroxysms of delight, an echo of the bloodlust Voldemort had indulged in far too often, that he himself had felt just weeks earlier while watching Apophis hunt down and slaughter the rabbits he had released in the Chamber.

He could pinpoint it more clearly now – the presence was close to Hagrid’s hut. Had older Tom Riddle possibly have decided that the groundskeeper was a threat, and murdered him before he could come forward about who really was at fault for the Chamber of Secrets being opened in his third year? There was no time to debate with himself about it, not if he wanted Hogwarts to remain open – Tom had to ensure no one died this time. He dashed as fast as his legs would take him down to the hut at the bottom of the hill, hoping to find the person his older self had possessed, but instead he found the open door of a chicken coop – and the broken, limp body of a rooster.

"The Basilisk flees only from the crowing of the rooster, which is fatal to it."

The words of a textbook he had once read while studying the creature with which he had suddenly come into mastery of flickered through his mind. He could almost laugh at the absurdity of it – older Tom, possessing a student, had decided the best next course of action was to strangle a rooster that lived nearly a quarter of a mile away from the castle and had very little likelihood of ever coming into contact with the Basilisk. Instead, he collected himself and walked the few metres it took to reach Hagrid’s doorstep and knocked urgently.

“Who’s that then?” Hagrid asked, swinging the door open. “Ah, hullo Tom, what can I do fer yeh?”

“I’m sorry Hagrid,” Tom said, fixing his expression into one of worry and concern, “but I was just passing by this way, and I think someone’s strangled your chicken.”

Hagrid frowned, pushing his way into the yard where the rooster’s body lay broken upon the new snow. “Yer right, Tom,” he said, picking it up and turning toward the castle. “Thanks fer lettin’ me know.”

If Tom had hoped that a dead rooster would alert the staff to exactly what was terrorising the castle, he was soon to be sorely disappointed. There was no flurry of activity, no warning the students of precautions they could take against such a creature, just silence – silence and blatant staff incompetence, as they failed to protect the castle against his older self’s machinations. Where in his previous life he had found it freeing, he now found it infuriating. If his older self made it back to corporeal existence, then Basilisk or no, Harry would be in danger. Furthermore, even if he found it, Tom could not destroy the Horcrux without causing irreparable damage to himself. It did still hold part of his own soul, after all.

Halfway through December, a notice appeared outside the Great Hall advertising a Duelling Club. Harry, like most of the other students, was greatly interested in attending. Tom, having a sneaking suspicion about who was behind it, held Harry back.

“Let’s just wait to see who’s running it,” he told him. “If it’s anyone good, we’ll attend. If not, we’ll just practise ourselves. I’m sure we can find an empty classroom.”

They stood next to the doors that evening as the Duelling Club commenced. As Tom had suspected, it was Lockhart who had decided to run the blasted thing. He and Harry slipped back out the doors and ran off to find their own place to practise duelling, both glad to be away from the disaster that was sure to be Gilderoy Lockhart.

The next day, Hufflepuff Justin Finch-Fletchley and the ghost of Nearly Headless Nick were found petrified in the second floor corridor.

“We have to investigate,” Hermione said firmly as their study group milled about in the same empty classroom Tom and Harry had used for duelling practice, her hands pressed together in front of her face. “As much as I hate to admit it, our professors don’t seem to know what’s going on. Dumbledore knows Tom is the true heir of Slytherin, and that it’s some kind of snake attacking the school, but you would think by now they would have issued some kind of warning, or at least figured out where the Chamber of Secrets is to keep students away from it.”

“Why should we even care?” Pansy asked, rolling her eyes. “Clearly the ‘heir’ is only going after Mud- I mean, Muggle-born students. Why shouldn’t we just let him get on with it?”

Hermione’s eyes flashed with rage.

“Have you forgotten,” Tom asked coldly, “that our own dear Hermione is Muggle-born?” Pansy paled. “You did, didn’t you?” he accused. “You wished so hard to forget that your new best friend was the product of Muggles that it actually came true. You forgot that she is in more danger right now than the rest of us. And yet isn’t she one of the best of us? Despite her upbringings, she has some of the highest grades, the best understanding of magic. Would you see her dead at the hands of some imposter heir of Slytherin, who clearly has no idea how magical ability works?”

Pansy shook her head, her eyes wide. Beside her, Draco was shivering.

“Despising Muggle-borns for something over which they have no control is a foolish endeavour,” Tom said dangerously. “I understand that it is an ideology with which you were raised, but it will only serve to alienate you from an entire segment of the populace. You are not better than Hermione, Pansy.”

“I know,” she replied in a very small voice.

“Either way, Hermione’s right,” Harry said, his brows deeply furrowed as he considered everything she had said. “We need to put together what we know if no one else is going to. There has to be some connection between the attacks, right? Beside the victims being Muggle-born – the ghost and the cat aside – there has to be some common thread. They were all found near the same corridor Filch’s cat was Petrified in, right? So the Chamber of Secrets might be near there.”

“And if Tom’s the actual heir, he could probably find it!” Ron exclaimed. “We could get into the Chamber and stop anything worse from happening!”

“Are you actually that stupid?” Draco snapped “There’s some kind of horrible snake in there, and Parselmouth or no, we don’t know if Tom – or Harry for that matter – could control the bloody thing. We don’t even know what it is.”

“Magical snakes,” Hemione muttered, her brows furrowed. “There’s the Horned Serpent, but they were hunted to extinction in Europe ages ago, and their main weapon is their venom. The Runespoor, but they don’t tend to live long, and besides, you two heard only one voice, right?”

Tom and Harry both nodded.

“The Runespoor has three heads, so that can’t be it. There’s the Basilisk, but that kills anyone who looks into its eyes, and obviously that hasn’t happened. There has to be something else.”

Harry looked away for a moment, then, deep in thought, lifted his hands toward his face as if holding some kind of box. “Hermione,” he said slowly, lowering his hands, “what do you think would happen if someone saw the eyes of a Basilisk, but indirectly? Say, through a reflection, or maybe a camera viewfinder?”

Hermione’s jaw dropped. “Harry, that’s brilliant!” she exclaimed. “I’d have to read more on the subject, of course, but I’d dare say you’re right – the effect would likely be diminished, perhaps even to mere Petrification.”

“Alright,” Draco said, pulling an aggrieved expression, “so there’s a Basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets. A fifty-foot, one thousand-year-old snake that can kill you with a single glance. Still think it's a good idea to go looking for the Chamber of Secrets?"

"I'm sure I would have no trouble controlling it," Tom said coolly, "particularly seeing as it's my Basilisk."

"Your Basilisk?" Pansy scrunched up her nose in distaste.

Tom shrugged. "Salazar Slytherin placed the Basilisk, if that's what it is, in the Chamber of Secrets for his heir, I'm the heir of Slytherin – therefore, my Basilisk."

"You're absolutely mad, Tom," Draco muttered.

"He is, isn't he?" Harry said fondly. "Come on, let's go see if we can figure anything out about that corridor."

They didn't find anything that day, however, nor the next, nor for the rest of the week, as Tom kept steering them well away from the girls' loo. He insisted they thoroughly check each and every room along the hallway, and between classes, end of term homework assignments, and holiday preparations, it was slow going. Still, they were going to make their way to the bathroom at some point, it was simply inevitable.

Thankfully, the Christmas holiday came along first. Most of the group were going to remain at Hogwarts, but Draco and Pansy had family events to attend, and they made the rest of them promise not to keep looking for the Chamber of Secrets until they were back. Well, Pansy did – Draco didn’t seem to have it in himself to get too excited about the prospect of finding a hidden room in which lay hidden a massive, extremely lethal serpent.

And so, with little else to do, Tom found himself spending most of his time in the common room with Harry, playing idle games of Exploding Snap (which he found he enjoyed a great deal more than he had initially anticipated), reading quietly, or curling up together in front of the fire, blissfully away from Draco’s smirking face. Harry, however, had definitely become rather shy around him, and each time he jumped as Tom’s arm curled around his shoulders, the Malfoy boy’s words, “Harry fancies you,” floated through his mind.

He began to wonder in earnest if it were true.

On Christmas morning, Tom, Harry, and Ginny were surprised to enter the common room to a rhythmic clanging against the wall that led out into the dungeons. Tom opened the wall to find Ron, grinning madly and wielding the helmet from a nearby suit of armour, which was wandering aimlessly about looking for its head.

“Happy Christmas, you lot!” he said, his arm still raised as though about to bring the helmet down upon the wall yet again. “Get your presents and come with me, we’re making a proper day of it up in the tower.”

They did as he said, and before he knew it Tom found himself for the first time in both his lives in the Gryffindor common room, surrounded by a gaggle of flaming-haired Weasleys all clamouring about, exclaiming over the presents they had received. Gryffindor tower was both everything and nothing he had expected it to be – all garish reds and golds, lion symbolry everywhere he looked, but warm and inviting at the same time, flush to the gills with family and camaraderie. When Hermione hugged him fiercely after handing him his present, he almost didn’t want her to pull away.

“Happy Christmas, Tom,” she said, smiling. “I hope you like it.”

Ginny looked at him oddly. “Tom?” she echoed dully. “Your name is Tom as well?”

He reached within himself for the connection to his soul, seeking out its location – the diary was far off, the soul not currently within Ginny Weasley, and yet he was sure he could feel the traces of the boy he had once been. His suspicions all but confirmed, he resurfaced into the Gryffindor common room.

“Do you know another Tom, Ginny?” he asked casually. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you did. It’s a very common name, you know.”

“Ginny!” Ron exclaimed. “You’ve known Harry’s best friend for almost six months now, and you didn’t even know his name? The two of you are in the same house, for Merlin’s sake.”

Ginny just stared at the ground, flushing brilliantly.

“Think nothing of it, Ginny,” Tom said kindly, plastering the smile he had taught himself in the mirror across his face. “I know you’ve had a difficult and tumultuous year so far, I’m not upset that you forgot my name.”

Ginny just stared back up at him in a horrified sort of confusion.

The presents were just as lovely as the year prior – he and Harry both received new matching jumpers from Mrs Weasley, this time in a dark slate blue, and Pansy had gifted them both a package of Drooble’s Best Blowing Gum. Hermione’s gift turned out to be a rather appreciated serpentine bestiary – not that he needed it, he was well versed in the world of snakes, but it was a thoughtful gift nonetheless – and for Harry she had picked out a lovely eagle-feather quill. Draco’s gift turned out to be The Founders’ Legacies, a book on magical genealogy that traced the known lineage of the Hogwarts founders, and for Harry a book about the Falmouth Falcons, hilariously mirroring Ron’s gift of Flying With the Cannons. Ron’s gift for Tom, it turned out, was a wizard chess set of his very own, fresh and new and ready to learn his playing style. 

The best gift, of course, was from Harry – a cloak pin in the shape of a snake.

“It’s not much,” Harry explained. “I haven’t learned enough Parselmagic to do anything bigger, but it’ll only come off if you ask it in Parseltongue. I thought you might like it.”

“Harry, it’s perfect,” Tom replied, marvelling at him. “Do you know how hard Parselmagic is to even understand? I’m so proud of you for being able to manage this enchantment.”

Harry beamed, blushing to the roots of his hair.

“And this is for you, Harry,” he said, handing his own gift over. Harry tore into it, revealing the small, mokeskin hip bag Tom had owl-ordered a few weeks prior. “You can keep your Invisibility Cloak in there, or anything else you like that will fit, and no one but you will be able to access it.” It was practically a sacrifice, letting himself lose the ability to use Harry’s Cloak whenever he wanted to, but when he saw Harry’s expression at having someplace safe to store his treasures, something he had never experienced at the cruel, seizing hands of the Dursleys, he knew it was worth it. 

“What if you need it, though?” Harry asked.

“What?”

“What if you need the Invisibility Cloak, and I’m not there to retrieve it for you?” Harry explained. “What if something happens to me, and you need the Cloak or something else I’ve stored away?”

Tom stared at him, suddenly effuse with unnamed emotions. Harry, who had no idea Tom had lifted it off him only a few months prior, trusted him with the Cloak. Harry wanted him to be able to use it, even if he couldn’t hand it over himself.

“You just need to give me permission,” Tom said, finding that his voice sounded rather thick.

“Alright then,” Harry said. “I give you full permission to access the contents of this pouch at any time. Did that work?”

Tom took the bag from Harry’s hands and opened it, finding it malleable in his hands. “Yes, Harry, I think that worked.”

“Good,” Harry said.

As Tom handed the pouch back, his thoughts lingered on that first Christmas he had spent with Harry in Diagon Alley – that first, perfect Christmas. Somehow, this one, and the year before, were no better, no worse, only different. Perhaps perfection wasn’t seeing his plans come to fruition, but only that wonderful feeling of sharing time with the one person who he treasured above all others. Perhaps perfection could be something simpler than Tom had ever considered.

Six days later, he found himself alone in the Slytherin common room, staring late into the night at a birthday letter sent to him by his supposed aunt. For the first time, it left him a little bit numb, what he had done to her mind. If Harry knew what he had done, he would hate him, despise him for his trespasses. It made him feel a bit sick, staring at the parchment and reading the well-wishes, knowing they were a product of his own manipulations, but he couldn’t exactly take it all back.

“Tom?”

He looked up in alarm - Harry had stumbled into the common room, bleary-eyed and frazzled. “There you are,” Harry said. “I had a nightmare and couldn’t find you – what’s that?”

“It’s nothing,” Tom said, casting the parchment aside and rising to embrace Harry. “Just a happy birthday note from Aunt Bella. It must have been a bad one, you haven’t needed me to get you through a nightmare in weeks.”

Harry hummed in agreement into his shoulder. “It’s your birthday, then?” He asked, “How’ve I known you for two years and you’ve never told me when your birthday is?”

Tom held Harry for a long minute, thinking of his mother, heavily pregnant and appealing to the matron of Wool’s Orphanage to give her shelter. His mother, rapidly weakening but using what remained of her strength to bring him into the world. His mother, giving him the first and only birthday gifts he would receive for the next decade and then some: a Muggle name and his middle name, the only clue to his lineage issuing from her lips in her dying breath. He could tell Harry none of these things.

Tom swallowed hard. “I just don’t like my birthday very much.” He said instead.

Chapter Text

Pansy and Draco returned to the castle the following week, and so the fruitless hunt for the Chamber of Secrets began anew. They were focusing on an old, disused Charms classroom now, combing over the cool stone walls with their wands and casting a wide variety of secrecy-detection charms Hermione had compiled during her many trips to the library. Since their initial search had begun, they had found three secret alcoves, a concealed window that looked not out onto the grounds, but into the depths of an underwater cavern, and a very ancient liquor stash hidden behind a false brick in the wall, but, by Tom's design of course, no Chamber of Secrets.

"This is useless!" Hermione suddenly exclaimed, slamming her palm against a wall which she had said she felt sure was concealing something. "We've checked this room three times, there's nothing here!"

Pansy sighed. "I hate to say it, but I think it's time to check the one room we've all been avoiding." Tom glanced at her, wary – the others had been avoiding the girls' loo as well? He hadn't even realised. "I know none of us want to deal with her, but it's the last place we haven't looked."

Draco groaned. "I will not be caught dead in a girls' bathroom."

"Oh relax, Draco," said Hermione. "It's Moaning Myrtle's place, no one's going to see you except us. And Pansy's right, we've exhausted every other option along this corridor. If the entrance to the Chamber isn't in there, we're back to square one."

"I suppose," Draco sighed, sounding very put upon. "Well, lead the way."

Tom gritted his teeth and followed Hermione out the door. Well, he had known it would come to this eventually, and he didn't exactly have a good excuse as to why checking Myrtle Warren's haunt was a terrible idea. He was just going to have to make sure none of the others noticed the tiny snake carved into the copper tap near the back of the room, that would be a dead giveaway. Otherwise, all the detection charms in the world couldn't reveal the Chamber of Secrets – that was a feat reserved for those with the rare gift of Parseltongue. 

"Here we are," Hermione proclaimed as they reached the door to the loo. 

"Eurgh," Ron grumbled. "What's with all this water on the floor?"

"There was water the night the Chamber of Secrets was opened too," Harry said excitedly. "Do you think –"

"That we're about to catch the false Heir of Slytherin red-handed?" Pansy interjected, her voice laced with sarcasm "No. It's just Myrtle. Every few weeks she throws a tantrum because she's dead, or because someone said something vague that she interpreted as an insult, or simply because she wants to, and every time she ends up breaking the plumbing and flooding the entire bathroom. You learn very quickly in first year to use any loo except Moaning Myrtle's"

"It's impressive, really," Hermione added. "Ghosts don't usually affect their environment to that degree, poltergeists such as Peeves aside. She must be truly miserable."

Whoops. That was Tom's doing, wasn't it? He grimaced as he followed Hermione into the bathroom, hoping Myrtle wouldn't recognise him. 

"Ugh," Pansy grunted as they made their way in. "I didn't think it would be this bad – maybe we should come back later, actually."

"No," Harry replied with determination. "We're already here, let's at least take a quick look around."

"Who's that?" Myrtle's thin voice rang through the air, and Tom turned away in case she emerged from her cubicle. "Come to throw something else at me?"

"Why would we throw something at you?" Harry asked, wading across the bathroom toward her.

From the corner of his eye, Tom could see Myrtle emerge, bringing with her another great wave of water. His heart hammered in his chest, but she wasn't paying attention to him. "Don't ask me," she shouted. "Here I am, minding my own business, and someone thinks it's funny to throw a book at me..."

"A book?" Harry asked. "You mean that one?"

Myrtle sobbed and nodded as Harry retrieved something from the floor. Tom could see him turning it over in his hands, but he refused to turn back and let Myrtle see his face. "Tom," Harry finally said, a note of disapproval in his voice, "Have you been throwing things at Myrtle?"

"What?!" Tom cried, indignant – he had far better things to do than harass a thirteen-year-old girl who refused to move on from her time on earth. "Why, in Salazar's name, would you think I'd do that?"

"This book's got your name in it," Harry replied. "Well, your initials."

Tom spun around. There was no way it could possibly be what he hoped – but oh, it was, and it was possibly the most beautiful sight Tom had ever seen. Sitting in Harry's hands was the diary the Tom Riddle of the past had worked so hard and carefully to craft, the culmination of months of research and study. How strange, to see Harry standing there holding another of his Horcruxes, two little pieces of soul carefully trapped in two beautiful vessels.

"Harry," he breathed. "I've been looking everywhere for that. Thank you."

Harry shrugged, handing Tom the diary – and oh, how his soul sang under his skin at the simple contact, the little fragment of himself very nearly coming home at last. “It’s nothing,” Harry said, “I just found it over there.” He gestured toward a sink.

Tom didn’t care – in that moment, Harry was his saviour, the solution to a months-long problem that he hadn’t known how to solve. The diary was now safely with its rightful owner and the Chamber of Secrets would remain sealed, his older self no longer having access to Ginny Weasley. He held it close to his chest, revelling in the flood of emotions that poured between him and his Horcrux, so similar and yet so different from the joy and peace that radiated around them whenever he held Harry close to him.

“You look like that boy,” Myrtle said, staring at him. “You look like that Prefect from before I died, but you can’t be him. You’re too young.”

“You’re probably talking about my father,” Tom snapped. “Pansy’s right, we’re not going to get anything done whilst wading about in ankle-deep water. We can come back later. Anyway, I need to dry out my diary and make sure it’s put away safely.”

“I didn’t know you kept a diary,” Harry said as they made their way back toward the dungeons. “I’ve never seen you writing in one.”

“That’s because it’s a secret diary,” Tom explained, as if that weren’t the understatement of the entirety of human history. “I usually keep it hidden in my trunk, but it went missing earlier this year. I’m so relieved you found it.”

“But… why did someone else have it?” Harry asked. “That almost sounds like someone stole it.”

“I’m not sure,” Tom lied, “but I have it back now, and that’s all that matters.”

They entered the common room, Tom still clutching his Horcrux against his chest, and too late he realised his mistake – Ginny Weasley was sitting by the fireplace, a look of serenity and relief clear on her visage, an expression not seen on her since the summer. Tom angled his body away quickly as she looked up, but from the horror that replaced her calm he knew: she had seen the diary, how he cradled it tightly in his arms. It didn’t actually matter – Tom was going to store it safely out of sight, deep in his school trunk where no one would ever find it. Even so, he knew it would raise questions in the girl. How did Harry’s friend find Tom Riddle’s diary, and why did he cling to it so possessively? 

He practically ran the rest of the way to the dorm, desperate to get away from the girl’s terrified, searching eyes.

He kept the diary there for a few weeks, ignoring the deep temptation to write to his older self and explain why he had taken him away from his thrall and why he refused to allow the Chamber of Secrets to be opened yet again. He could hear the whispered siren calls of his soul late at night, sometimes, desperate to be held and spoken to and to fulfil the orders given by Voldemort, but Tom knew instinctively that he could not possibly convince his older counterpart to go against the Dark Lord’s explicit command. So too, he knew that communicating with himself, as Voldemort had once done, would only incite the soul within the pages to hunger for physical life anew, and he would be just as in danger as he had been when Voldemort himself had sought to subsume Tom and take his body for his own. And so, even as he began to have nightmares one more of losing his life and will to Voldemort, Tom kept the diary hidden under layers and layers of books and school supplies, a secret he wished to keep even from himself.

It helped, of course, that Harry still sensed his night terrors, sliding in next to Tom each time he awakened with a strangled scream in his throat, his arms slipping around him to provide comfort and strength. But he had grown shy with his touches, his fingers dancing away from Tom’s when he tried to slide his hand into his, ghosting over his arms instead of holding him tightly the way he had done before. And infuriatingly, Tom found himself increasingly paralysed by Harry’s presence, his own hands hesitant to reach out for him despite the need to hold him close and assure him that they were safe, they were protected, they had each other. He couldn't explain the change in their behaviour, even to himself. Whatever this strange feeling was, it was something new, something as of yet unexplored, both in this and his previous life.

And then everything changed on Valentine’s Day.

“Right,” the cupid wing bedecked dwarf said, sitting on Harry’s ankles, “here is your singing Valentine.”

Harry looked around wildly at the crowd surrounding him – Draco looked horrified, frozen as though he too had been Petrified by the basilisk, Ginny had gone a bright red, her hands spread across her face to cover her humiliation in vain, and Tom – Tom looked furious, a hungry, possessive expression blooming over his features, a look that made Harry’s heart stutter.

The dwarf cleared his throat.

His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad,

His hair is as dark as a blackboard.

I wish he was mine, he’s really divine,

The hero who conquered the Dark Lord.

The crowd around him burst into giggles and Ginny ran off, her hands still pressed tightly against her flaming face, but Tom strode forward, pushing the dwarf Professor Lockhart had conscripted into his poorly planned “morale-booster” off of Harry’s legs and helping him to his feet.

“Of all the foolish, unwanted things…” Tom was muttering as he collected Harry’s spilled books from the floor. “That boorish man thinks having students be assaulted in the corridors to be good for morale, lucky for us he won’t last the year…”

“Tom?” Harry’s voice faltered. “What are you talking about?”

“Hmm?” Tom hummed looking up at him. “Oh, it’s nothing Harry – the Defence Against the Dark Arts position is rumoured to be cursed, that’s all. No one’s lasted more than a year in decades. Come now, we’re going to be late for Charms.”

“Tom, wait,” Harry said, a growing sense of urgency blooming inside of him. “I wanted to ask you something.”

“Is it quick?” Tom asked, grabbing Harry’s hand and tugging him through the dispersing crowd and onto the staircase.

“Er – no,” Harry said, feeling a bit feverish. “But it’s important.”

“Can it wait until after class?”

“Oh,” Harry replied, his heart sinking. “I suppose.”

He had been sitting on it for weeks now – months, really, ever since Draco had suggested that his and Tom’s relationship was more than just friendly. In the past few weeks, though, it had become unbearable. Something inside him burned with jealousy each time he saw Draco and Pansy sneaking off to be alone, and every time Tom held him his heart would begin hammering in his chest. He had tried desperately to squash down the feeling, not wanting to risk ruining their friendship, but then Tom had looked at him with that smouldering, possessive glint in his eye, and he had known instantly that it wasn’t ever going to just go away. Harry was going to have to tell him. 

Harry found himself unable to focus in Charms, his wand stubbornly refusing to produce the same floating purple flowers Tom’s was beside him. It was no doubt because of the jitters that were still running through him, initiated by Ginny’s Valentine and then fed by Tom’s reaction, leaving his mind tangled and running ragged. He needed to get Tom alone, to ask him –

“Oh!” Flitwick exclaimed. “Excellent job as usual, Mr Riddle – five points to Slytherin.” He hummed over the sad, incompetent, dead buds littering the table in front of Harry. “Not your finest work, Mr Potter,” he concluded. “I know you can do better.”

“Sorry sir,” Harry stammered. “I have… a lot on my mind.”

"Ah," said Professor Flitwick knowingly, "no doubt you've become the latest to fall victim to one of Professor Lockhart's roving gang of romance-spouting hoodlums." Harry nodded. "Having trouble deciding how to respond to your unexpected paramour?"

"Er –" Harry faltered. "Something like that, sir." Beside him, Tom frowned in disapproval.

"Well, conflicting emotions can certainly interfere with your ability to cast," Flitwick replied. "I'll overlook it this time, given the situation. However, I'd like you to put in some extra practice once you've, well, resolved the issue, and show me next class that you've mastered the Floribundus charm. I'm sure Tom here can help catch you up to speed."

Harry felt a blush rise into his cheeks as Professor Flitwick moved onto the next table, and he looked away, suddenly terrified to meet Tom's eyes. He could still, however, feel Tom's quizzical gaze fixed on him.

"Harry," Tom started, and his voice was low, dangerous in a way that made Harry shiver. "You don't actually fancy Ginny, do you?"

Why on earth was everyone so interested in whether he fancied someone or not? First it had been Draco, now it was Tom, and well... he really didn't want to give Tom the wrong impression. He forced himself to meet his eyes and shook his head.

"No," he insisted. "I mean, Ginny's very nice, but she's Ron's little sister. And besides, there's..." There's someone else hung, unspoken, on the tip of his tongue. Harry shook his head again. "It doesn't matter. I just don't want to upset her."

Tom frowned at him as if he were a puzzle he couldn't quite figure out.

Harry avoided Tom's gaze for the rest of class, trying in vain to think of anything but him, but ultimately gave up on his attempts to conjure any magical flowers and let himself be consumed by the required reading instead. At least the dense text in front of him distracted somewhat from the unrelenting awareness of Tom sitting directly to his left, moving on from the basic purple blooms and conjuring a veritable floating garden of different floral varieties that floated through the air and made his classmates 'ooh' and 'aah' over their artistry.

At long last, class was finally over and Harry followed Tom out to the corridor among the throng of students. Once free of the Charms classroom, Tom turned to him smiling, though his eyes were still searching.

"Alright then," he said, "what is it you wanted to ask me, Harry?"

Harry shook his head and took Tom's hand, leading him away from the crowd. "Not here," he hissed. "Need somewhere quiet." 

He led him down the winding corridor, the voices of his classmates fading into the background. When he was reasonably sure they would no longer be overheard, he stopped and turned to Tom, curling his hands into fists to stop them shaking.

"Harry," Tom asked, a note of amusement in his tone, "what's all this about?"

Harry's brain seemed to have short-circuited now that he finally had the chance to talk to Tom alone. "It's – it's Valentine's Day," he blurted before he could stop himself.

Tom frowned. "It is," he replied. "You're not still thinking about Ginny, are you?"

"No," Harry said, his heart beating out of his chest. "I mean yes – I mean, the singing Valentine, it made me think – and I just – I just wanted to ask –"

"Slow down, Harry," Tom said. "You're hyperventilating."

"Wilyougooutwime?" It came out all at once as one long, rushed word, exploding out from wherever Harry had been hiding the question deep inside for so long. As he waited for Tom's response he finally allowed his fists to uncurl, though he was still shaking like a leaf in a tornado.

Tom froze, his lips parting in surprise. "Go out..." he echoed, "with you?"

"Like – like Pansy and Draco," Harry mumbled. "But you and me."

For a moment, Harry thought for sure Tom would laugh in his face, bringing all his hopes and dreams crashing unceremoniously to the ground. Instead, his mouth stretched in a wide smile and he stepped right up to him, cupping Harry's face in his hands and tilting his head back.

"Of course, Harry," he breathed. "Of course I'll go out with you."

And then he kissed him.

It was everything about which Harry had been dreaming and more – Tom's lips were so soft on his own, and while the kiss was brief and chaste, Harry didn't think he'd ever tasted anything sweeter than the lingering feel of Tom's mouth pressed against his. When he broke away, it was to look down at Harry in breathless wonder, his pupils blown so wide that his dark eyes were almost black.

"What brought this on, darling?" he asked softly, tracing his thumb against Harry's cheekbone.

"It's er – something Draco said, over the summer," Harry replied, wondering if he looked as awestruck as Tom did. "I wasn't ever going to say anything, but today when I got Ginny’s Valentine, you just looked so… It was like you were furious that anyone but you had the gall to send me one. I knew then I had to tell you how I… how I felt.”

“I’m so sorry, Harry,” Tom said in a hushed tone. “I made you wait all through Charms to tell me. You were so flustered , and I thought it was just because of Ginny.”

“No,” Harry chuckled weakly, “that was all you. Happy Valentine’s Day, Tom.”

“Happy Valentine’s indeed, Harry.” And then Tom kissed him again.

They made their way back down to the dungeons after that, hand in hand and basking in the warm glow between them, growing even stronger now than it had been before. Harry was oblivious to the glances from the other students, the whispers and nudges as the two of them passed, only having eyes for Tom. They made it back down to the Slytherin common room and opened the blank wall, hands still intertwined as they passed Ginny, whose face fell as she saw them, and sat down at a study table across from Pansy and Draco, Harry letting his head fall onto Tom’s shoulder.

Pansy goggled at them and, eyes wide, nudged Draco in the side. Draco looked up from his essay and stared at the two of them, eyes glancing back and forth between Harry and Tom, a slowly growing smile spreading across his face.

“Sweet Salazar,” he sighed at last, smirking triumphantly as he leaned back in his chair. “Finally.”

Chapter Text

Tom could have never, not in a million years, expected Harry’s rushed and awkward confession of his feelings toward him. Oh, he had known that Harry felt more connected to him than any of their other friends – Tom was the one he turned to, after all, when he needed more than just a friendly word of advice or a kind pat on the shoulder. Tom was the one he curled up to when the crushing weight of being Harry Potter, of being targeted by Voldemort, became too much to bear upon his thin shoulders alone. But that he might want something more, something special and sacred between only the two of them? That had never once crossed his mind as a possibility, not even when Draco had so blatantly spelled it out for him before the Quidditch game. 

Of course, that hadn’t stopped him from immediately accepting when Harry had finally, in a burst of words and emotion, asked Tom to go out with him on that initially disastrous Valentine’s Day. As soon as he had said it, something had clicked inside Tom like a key in a lock and he had welcomed the change in their relationship with open arms, taking to it in much the way he did when discovering a new and intriguing branch of magic. Kissing Harry for the first time (well, second – he had kissed his forehead before the Quidditch match, hadn’t he?) had only further proven that his decision was correct, their magic and soul connection alighting between them, stirring something in Tom he had never felt before, not even for Harry.

It took him a few days to put the pieces together, but in the end the puzzle became clear. In his previous life as Voldemort, he had never experienced attraction – oh, Voldemort had experienced how the presence of Veela could make his mind fuzzy with lust, had taken pretty girls and boys alike to his bed and witnessed firsthand how his own good looks and carefully practised charm could sway someone to his side, but the Dark Lord had never truly felt it himself, never personally understood what it was that could draw two people together both in body and soul. Tom had learned, long before reawakening as his ten-year-old self, what it meant to love, even if it had still not come easy to him – but his primary focus had been to protect Harry and see to it that he was no longer terrorised by his horrible Muggle relatives. He had not thought that those initial desires would ever develop into anything more.

But he was thirteen now, and with each new day it seemed that so too he developed new feelings, strange and alien to him – shame for how Voldemort had been so quick to write off Muggle-born witches and wizards, guilt for Voldemort’s slaughter of Harry’s parents, and now, having seen Harry gloriously twirling in the air as he caught the snitch, nearly five inches taller than he had been when they met and his features beginning to sharpen much like his own, a strange fire had flared within him as his feelings for him shifted from ‘protector’ to ‘equal,’ from friend to… something more. No longer did he want to keep Harry safe at his side, he wanted them to share their lives together, the two of them both each other’s most important person.

And so that, he finally concluded, must be how Harry felt as well.

It was a strange revelation to Tom, but as the days and weeks wore on it began to settle on him like a familiar cloak. It helped a great deal that nothing much changed between the two of them aside from the dissipation of the nervous energy that had begun to build up, their previously close relationship only growing stronger as their mutual attraction was finally recognised. If the rest of Slytherin noticed their darling boys snuggling tighter together in front of the fire, their eyes darting toward each other during meals or quiet moments, a kiss stolen now and then, they said nothing. And during this period of bliss, as well, the rest of their friends stopped bothering them to seek out the Chamber of Secrets, as with Tom’s diary safe within his trunk no new attacks took place.

Only Ginny Weasley seemed out of sorts about these new developments.

The first incident happened a few weeks later. Tom had accompanied Harry to Quidditch practise purely for the thrill of watching him fly, and as they crossed the grounds the sun slowly dipped below the horizon, alighting the sky in a brilliant display of red and gold. They took their time to savour the beauty of it, meandering slowly up the path to the castle.

Tom had never stopped to watch a sunset, to marvel at the radiance of a rainbow or be soothed by the calming dark of a forest. He had found joy and beauty in other things – in the fear flashing across someone’s face as they realised with finality that he had no mercy to spare, and in the heady scent of despair as the damning truth of betrayal set in, Tom’s hand around his victim’s throat. In cruelty, and in destruction, too – these were all things in which he delighted and revelled, long before Dumbledore had ever appeared and set his wardrobe on fire. But as he held Harry’s hand, basking in the glow of the swiftly fading sun, he accepted with a bittersweet sense of peace just how small his world had been, to say nothing of how much better his new life could be.

He barely even registered as Draco tore across the grounds, screaming his name.

“Tom! Tom!” Draco shouted, seizing his free hand. “Salazar, are you deaf? I’ve been trying to get your attention for ages!”

“What is it?” Tom snapped. He didn’t appreciate his time with Harry being interrupted, not on such a glorious day. “What do you want?”

“Tom!” Harry chided.

“Don’t worry about it, Harry,” Draco said, catching his breath. “He’s going to be even angrier when he sees what’s happened. It’s the dorms, Tom – someone’s been going through your things. It’s – well, you’ll see it when we get there.”

Tom froze, an icy mixture of rage and terror flooding through him. Then, without thinking, he began to race toward the castle, dragging Harry along behind him.

How could Ginny have gotten into the boy’s dorm? He wasn’t able to access the girls dorm, that was the first thing he had tried when he realised where his diary had ended up. Surely the founders wouldn’t have built such a double-standard into the charms and runes that made up the protective barriers around their bedrooms – unless, of course, they had held with the archaic notion that girls were more trustworthy than boys. Tom scrunched up his nose in distaste. Of course they would have.

“Tom,” Harry gasped, his shorter legs working hard to keep up with Tom’s long, coltish limbs, “do you reckon it’s the same person who stole your diary? Do you think they’re looking for it again?”

“Of that, Harry,” Tom snarled, “I have no doubt.”

“But why?” Harry asked.

“Harry,” he replied, thinking fast, “I make it no secret that I intend to rise through the ranks of the Ministry when we graduate. For that, one needs connections and preferably a well-known bloodline. I am afforded the air of respect that they believe I am due because of my mother’s name, for all that she ended up with a Muggle. On the other hand, my father’s surname – Riddle – cannot be found among the Sacred Twenty-Eight, nor among any other known wizard families, and as Voldemort obviously shed the name we share long ago, there are likely few who remember him as Mr Malfoy did. This makes me an enigma – am I a half-blood with a Muggle father? Or is my father an unknown wizard who disappeared, as I tell people?”

He slowed a bit, allowing Harry to catch his breath. “There are undoubtedly those in Slytherin who, while adopting a facade of respect toward me, consider me unfit to take my place in any Ministry position. There may also be those very few who are aware of my parentage, and wish to cast suspicion upon me. In either case, what better way to discredit me than to use the one place I keep all my secrets?”

Harry’s eyes were wide as dinner plates. “But that means… someone might already know what really happened with Quirrell last year. They might know that Voldemort isn’t actually dead.”

“Luckily,” Tom replied, “I’ve charmed my diary to appear blank without the correct password. It’s not going to stop someone who’s determined to learn my secrets forever, though.”

They had reached the Slytherin common room at last. Gritting his teeth, Tom made his way into the second floor dorm, preparing for the worst.

“Oh, Tom!” Harry cried. The room was a disaster – the contents of his bedside cabinet drawer were strewn across the floor, several quills broken and pages torn from his books. The bedclothes had been ripped from his four-poster and the mattress left askew, as if Ginny thought he might be hiding the diary beneath it. Scitalis was cowering in a corner, hissing and spitting madly, though saying little of anything coherent. Only Tom’s trunk, which he had sealed with a locking charm stronger than could be lifted with a simple Alohomora, sat untouched at the end of his bed.

He retrieved Scitalis first, letting her slide into his sleeve and wrap herself around his arm. Then, taking a deep breath he unlocked his trunk. He was almost certain that Ginny had not been able to access it, as its contents were not scattered across the room like everything else. Still, he had to be sure – he dug through his books and clothing until he reached the bottom, breathing a sigh of relief when he spotted the familiar sight of his Horcrux.

“You’re staying with me, now,” he whispered to the diary as he retrieved it from his trunk, slipping it into the pocket of his robes – there really was no better way to protect his soul than to keep it with him at all times, apparently.

The second incident happened shortly after the Easter holidays. Exams were quickly approaching and Tom and Hermione had drafted up a rigorous study schedule that had the six of them spending nearly every free period in the library, pouring over their notes and quizzing each other on subjects likely to be included. To Tom’s delight (and Harry’s disappointment), Marcus Flint had cancelled Quidditch practice due to a large and dangerous thunderstorm, so they found themselves with extra time on the Friday following the Easter holidays to gather in the library once more.

“Hermione,” Tom said, reading from his Transfigurations textbook, “what is the first of the Five Principal Exceptions to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration?”

“Easy,” Hermione answered, matter-of-fact. “Food. While it can be increased, or summoned from another location, food cannot be transfigured or conjured out of thin air – or rather, food with any nutritional value cannot. You may conjure a simulacrum of it, but it will taste of nothing and do little to sate your hunger.”

“Excellent answer,” Tom replied. “Ron, the second?”

“Money,” Ron answered gloomily.

“Professor McGonagall is going to want specificity, Ron!” Hermione interjected. “To be precise, one cannot conjure certain pure metal elements, such as gold, copper, or silver, from which our money is created. It’s one of the reasons the Philosopher’s Stone is so incredible – technically, it shouldn’t function at all. In fact, out of the one hundred and nine elements discovered by Muggle scientists, only twenty-seven can be successfully conjured in their pure forms, and many of them are highly reactive to oxygen and therefore prone to explosion upon being created.”

“Very thorough,” Tom noted, “though I doubt you found most of that in any texts from the library.”

Hermione smiled as she blushed. “I found a list of what could and could not be conjured, then had my parents send me a copy of the periodic table from one of the scientific books we keep at home to do some extra research.”

“Professor McGonagall will appreciate the initiative,” Tom replied. “Harry, the third?”

Harry chewed on his lip as he pondered. “Potion ingredients, right?” he finally answered. “Or, er, that was one example listed – anything needed to craft a magical item, whether that be a potion, artefact, or other physical object?”

“Correct,” Tom smiled, reaching over and squeezing his hand for encouragement. “Technically speaking, it is possible to transfigure or conjure many ingredients or components, but they would lack the magical energy needed to imbue your potion or artefact like their natural equivalents.”

“So, similar to transfiguring food, then,” Harry replied. “What I don’t understand is, if most pure elements can’t be transfigured, and elements make up, well, everything, how someone can conjure something like a teacup out of thin air. Isn’t it likely that some of the non-transfigurable elements would be part of the porcelain that it’s made out of?”

“That’s a good question, Harry,” Hermione said. “Unfortunately, the textbook doesn’t explain that, but I would guess that, given the combined nature of the molecules which are found in porcelain, that –”

She was cut off by a sudden, very loud explosion under their table, and the air filled with a thick, acrid smoke. Coughing and choking, the six of them shoved back hard from the table, their chairs scraping on the floor as they each made a desperate bid for freedom from the noxious cloud. Madam Pince was upon them in seconds.

“What’s the meaning of this?!” she screeched, reaching for her wand. “What have you miscreants done to my library?!”

“It wasn’t us, Madam Pince!” Pansy choked out. “Someone must’ve rolled some kind of smoke bomb under our table! We were only trying to study for exams.”

The librarian scoffed in disbelief, clearing the smoke away with a wave of her wand. Tom’s blood ran cold and his brain suddenly stopped processing as the table came back into view. It couldn’t be – it simply couldn’t be –

“Out!” shrieked Madam Pince. “All of you, out! And don’t think about coming back before the weekend is up!”

“My bag…” Tom murmured, shaking. “My book bag is missing…”

“Er, sorry, Madam Pince,” Hermione said, looking very apologetic indeed. “We’ll just gather our things and be on our way.”

“Harry,” Tom faltered, “my book bag – it was right by the chair, and now it’s gone.”

“Tom, are you okay?” Harry asked, reaching out for his hand. “You’ve gone as pale as the Bloody Baron.”

“It’s over here, mate,” Ron called, poking his head out from behind a bookshelf. “One of us must’ve kicked it in all the confusion.”

Tom snatched the bag from Ron’s arms the moment he was in reach, but before he could check its contents, he and the others were unceremoniously shooed from the library as Madam Pince lectured them on decorum and proper library usage. As soon as they were in the corridor he dropped to the ground and began to furiously rifle through it.

“Tom, what’s going on?” asked Draco. “We just got kicked out of the library and you’re concerned about your books?”

Tom ignored him. “It has to be here,” he muttered. “It can’t be gone… can’t be…”

Harry fell to his knees in front of him with a look of sudden, horrified understanding on his face. “Tom, surely you don’t mean – your diary?”

It wasn’t there. Tom knew it wasn’t there, knew he couldn’t feel that fizzling light of connection between him and the piece of his soul, but he tore through the contents of his bag anyway, desperately searching for that small black leatherbound book that was so undeniably precious to him.

His hands shook as they stilled on the last scrap of parchment – there was no denying it now. He looked up, his eyes meeting Harry’s and his teeth chattering as his terror bled away into anger.

“They took it again, didn’t they?” Harry asked softly.

Tom’s screams of rage were heard all the way down to the Great Hall.

The third incident was undeniably the worst.

The storm had broken overnight, and the sun rose high above the grounds, illuminating the dew-damp grass with a glossy sheen. There was to be a Quidditch match today between Gryffindor and Hufflepuff, and while normally Harry would have gone he had insisted on dragging Tom out of bed and into the warm spring air to “cheer him up.”

It was pointless. Nothing was going to lift Tom’s mood other than retrieving his Horcrux from the Weasley girl and finding a better, far safer place for it. He ran through his options – Legilimency could be used to force her to return it, but she would surely question later why she had so willingly given what she undoubtedly thought of as “her” diary to Harry’s friend, the boy with the same name as the boy in the book. He couldn’t break into the girls’ dorms, and asking Pansy to go rifling through the first year’s possessions would be extremely suspicious. He wasn’t sure if Ginny carried it on her person, and even if she did it wouldn’t help much – a Horcrux couldn’t be affected by a Summoning Charm.

“You know,” Harry said, squeezing his hand as they meandered by the lake, “you really gave everyone a scare last night.”

He truly had – people, students and professors alike, had come flooding into the corridor, expecting to see that yet another person had been petrified. When all they found was a group of second year students and Harry Potter tightly hugging an infuriated Tom Riddle on the ground, most had lost their interest, but Snape had dragged the two of them to his office and insisted that he explain himself. Tom had been vague, stating simply that he had lost an old family heirloom that was very important to him during the explosion in the library, and that Madam Pince would not allow him back in to search for it. It was all technically true, too, if a diary that housed a piece of his soul and that had once belonged to the person he was calling his father counted as an heirloom, of course.

In the end, Snape had let them go with a sour, pinched expression, promising that he would speak to Madam Pince about overriding the weekend-long restriction on library usage – they did have to study after all. 

Tom’s heart softened a bit at Harry’s words though, and he returned his gesture with a slight squeeze of his own. “I hope I didn’t scare you , Harry,” he murmured.

“Well, a bit,” Harry replied. “I’ve never seen you so angry before. But I understood, too – I know how important your diary is to you. I don’t understand why you didn’t tell Snape what really happened, though.”

Tom couldn’t, of course – if it were found, Snape would be able to tell in an instant that the diary was a powerful Dark object, not the kind of thing a normal twelve-year-old boy would be carrying around. He would no doubt turn it in to Dumbledore, who would want to investigate it thoroughly. He would discover exactly what it was, destroy it, and then Tom would be – would be –

Tom swallowed hard – he didn’t want to contemplate the implications of possibly dying without his soul intact.

“I’ll tell them only if I can’t find it myself,” he said flatly. “I wouldn’t want to give whoever took it the impression that I’m not capable of handling them on my own.”

Harry laughed. “Of course,” he said. “You really are the perfect Slytherin, you know? Sometimes I wonder if I was missorted – you really sold me on our house before we ever got here.”

“Oh?” Tom asked, feeling his spirits lighten. “And where do you think you would have ended up if not for my gentle persuasion?”

Harry hummed, thinking. “Ravenclaw, maybe,” he said. “Though it was you that convinced me to be more studious. So maybe Hufflepuff.”

Tom outright laughed at that. “ You ?” he asked incredulously. “In Hufflepuff? After launching yourself at Voldemort to pull him off of me last year and spending half your time this year trying to track down the deadliest serpent in existence? No, you’d be in Gryffindor for sure.”

“Stop that,” Harry chided. “The ‘Puffs aren’t that bad and you know it. But I suppose you’re probably right. Hell, maybe the Hat would’ve put me in Slytherin anyway due to the whole, you know, Parselmouth thing.”

“Well, I still think it’s the best house for you,” Tom said.

“And the Hat agreed, so maybe it is.”

“Potter!” A familiar voice rang out across the grounds. “Riddle! There you are, I insist you come with me immediately.” Tom and Harry turned to see Professor Snape striding toward them, his billowing black cloak incongruous in the bright morning sunlight.

“Sir?” Harry asked.

“You weren’t at the Quidditch match,” said Snape. “It was feared that the two of you might be… well, follow me. Don't look at me with those troubled face, neither of you are in trouble.”

They followed Snape back toward the castle, joining a large crowd of students being escorted back inside by what looked to be the entire staff population of Hogwarts. Tom frowned. “Sir,” he said, “is the match over already? Has something happened?”

“Quidditch has been cancelled,” Snape answered, “as have all remaining matches until the individual responsible for opening the Chamber of Secrets has been apprehended.”

“What?!” Harry cried, his voice raw with disbelief and disappointment. “That’s not fair, we were going to win the Cup for sure!”

“I don’t like it any more than you do, Potter,” Snape growled. “It is, however, simply not safe for things to continue as they have been.”

“But nothing has happened for weeks!”

“Mr Potter,” Snape said slowly, dangerously, “do you think that the match would have been cancelled if nothing had happened? There has been another attack.”

Tom’s heart sank – not one day had gone by since Ginny took possession of his diary again and his older self had already sought out and Petrified – or maybe even killed – another student. “Who is it this time?” he asked, his voice thick with despair.

“Like I said, Riddle – follow me.”

They trailed behind him up the staircase to the first floor, where he led them into the infirmary. They passed by the Petrified body of an older girl they didn’t know and around a curtain where they were greeted by the pale, shaken faces of Ron, Draco, and Pansy, surrounding a bed in which lay –

“Hermione!” Harry cried, surging forward.

“She stayed behind,” Pansy said quietly. “The rest of us wanted to hurry down to the Quidditch stands, but she insisted on waiting for you. None of us knew where you were, we just…” She trailed off, staring at Hermione’s frozen face, at her lips parted in unmoving surprise.

Tom could hear Harry choke back a sob, and he moved forward to wrap his arms around him. “This isn’t your fault, Harry,” he whispered against his ear. “You didn’t cause this.”

“I insisted that we take a walk by the lake,” Harry argued, shivering. “If I hadn’t…”

“Then the Basilisk still could have done this,” he replied. “Or it could have found a different victim. You can’t blame yourself.”

There was a sharp intake of breath behind him. “A Basilisk? ” Professor Snape blanched, his already sallow skin bleeding what little colour it held. “What makes you think that the creature behind these attacks is a Basilisk? ”

Pansy shrugged. “It’s just one of our theories,” she replied.

“Hermione’s theory,” Draco mumbled, trying to push a curl of her fringe away from her eyes, still wide and staring. “Salazar’s stave, even her hair’s gone stiff.”

Professor Snape was not impressed. “A Basilisk kills, Mr Riddle,” he said, “it does not Petrify.”

“Harry figured that one out, sir,” Pansy replied. “If no one actually looked at the Basilisk, just at its reflection, or through something like a camera, then maybe it wouldn’t actually kill you.”

Snape stilled. “Ms Granger and Ms Clearwater were found with a mirror lying on the ground between them,” he muttered. “Perhaps your theory holds some water after all. I take my leave – I must speak to the headmaster at once.”

But whether Snape ever had the chance to speak with Dumbledore about the possibility of a Basilisk roaming the castle, Tom never found out. The headmaster was apparently removed from Hogwarts that very evening, at the same time Hagrid was arrested for the attacks. The professors began shepherding the students around in large groups, and curfew was moved up to directly after the end of evening meals, restricting the students to their houses. Rumours of Hogwarts’ upcoming closure flew wildly about the castle, even though no further attacks took place.

It was his fifth year all over again, but this time Tom had nothing he could do to stop it.

Chapter Text

Tom opened his eyes and smiled. 

He stretched his legs and flexed his fingers and toes, finding everything in working order. He sat up in bed and extended his arms over his head, enjoying the satisfying feeling of his muscles tensing and releasing, the blood rushing to his extremities. Today was going to be an incredible day – one for the history books, even. 

He took his time getting out of bed, smoothing out the soft green duvet and fluffing the pillows, leaving the bedclothes perfectly neat and tidy, just the way he liked them. He dressed carefully as well, ensuring that his blouse and robe had nary a single wrinkle in them, smoothing out the green of his collar and twisting his tie into a perfect double-windsor knot. Everything had to be just so, just right – just perfect for his plans to all come to fruition.

He could even ignore the little nagging voice in the back of his head begging him not to do it.

He made his way down to breakfast, escorted with the rest of the house by Professor Snape and no less than four Prefects. It was silly, really – there hadn’t been an attack in weeks, and they hadn’t adopted this attitude until Dumbledore had been banished from the castle. Were they really so frightened of what might happen in his absence, when the old man rarely descended from his distant tower to begin with? Tom almost could have laughed at the theatrical nature of it, but he had to maintain the image of an average Hogwarts student, twitchy and nervous, afraid the monster in the Chamber of Secrets could appear at any moment and devour them all.

He tucked into his breakfast despite having little appetite – he would need the energy for his plans – disengaged from the conversation around him but still observant. To his amusement, the students at the Slytherin table seemed to be just as terrified as the rest of the school, Heir of Slytherin behind the attacks or not. Hadn’t they realised by now that they were safe? By virtue of their house alone, they would never find themselves on the receiving end of the Basilisk’s stare. They had already proven themselves worthy during their Sorting, after all.

Midway through the meal, Professor McGonagall stood, tapping her glass with her spoon to catch the attention of the uneasy crowd.

“I have good news,” she said, and the Great Hall, instead of falling silent, erupted.

“Dumbledore’s coming back!” shouted several people at once.

“You’ve caught the Heir of Slytherin!” a shrill voice squealed from the Ravenclaw table perhaps. 

“Quidditch matches are back on!” roared the Gryffindor captain. 

The Slytherins were far more subdued. Whatever McGonagall’s “good news” was, it meant less to them than the rest of the school. Dumbledore’s return would be unwelcome, as biased as the old man was toward them. Catching the Heir of Slytherin – well, it would mean an end to the attacks and the fear that had gripped the castle, but it would cast a blight upon their house, one of their own expelled and sent to Azkaban. And Quidditch – well, Slytherin would welcome the return of Quidditch as much as any other house, even if Tom had never understood his peers’ captivation by the sport, but their other fears weighed them down.

McGonagall cleared her throat, silencing the uproar. “Professor Sprout has informed me that the Mandrakes are ready for cutting at last. Tonight, we will be able to revive those people who have been Petrified. I need hardly remind you all that one of them may well be able to tell us who, or what, attacked them. I am hopeful that this dreadful year will end with our catching the culprit.”

Tom grinned broadly as the Great Hall exploded into cheers. This was perfect, the exact mood he had hoped the student body would be in as he finalised his plans. Draining the last of his pumpkin juice he stood from the table and made his way to the doors. Before he could leave, however, he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, are you alright?” an all too familiar voice asked. Tom turned and saw Harry smiling at him, his eyebrows tight with concern. “You’ve been looking pale recently.”

“Perfectly fine,” he said, affecting a light tone to his voice. “I’m ever so happy our friends will be restored to us tonight.”

“Er – right,” Harry said. “You know, if there’s anything you need to talk about, I’m always here. Ron is too, of course.”

“Of course,” Tom echoed. “Thank you Harry.”

“It’s a lovely day,” Harry said. “Why don’t you get some sun? There’s bound to be a teacher on watch outside, and it’ll do you good.”

“That’s a capital idea, Harry,” Tom said. “I think I’ll do just that.”

“...Okay,” Harry replied slowly, an unreadable expression crossing his face. “You be careful, alright?”

Tom nodded.

It hadn’t been part of the plan, but Tom found himself outdoors anyway, soaking up the sun and lazing about on the grass. There was no point in denying himself this pleasure – he hadn’t been able to do this in ages, and it wouldn’t be until hours later that he properly brought his designs to fruition. And after tonight…

Tom stopped his thoughts in their tracks – there was no need to think about that now, not when he was enjoying such a warm and lovely morning.

He supposed, as the morning went on, that he really should be attending classes. His absence would be noted, after all, but with all this wonderful warmth about him he just couldn’t bring himself to trudge down into the dungeons and mix up a potion that he had mastered years prior, or trot up to Charms and whisk a feather around in the air. It was all so meaningless, so trivial.

He arose shortly after, quickly growing bored of the sunlight and warmth that surrounded him. He made his way down to the edge of the grounds, disillusioning himself as he passed behind some bushes, and, small as he was, he slipped unnoticed through the bars of the gates with ease. It was about a mile to Hogsmeade, but he wanted to relive some nostalgia before everything changed. He pressed along the road, unseen, unheard, his tiny legs straining to make their way up the path.

To his delight, it was much as he remembered it – Zonko’s, where he had nicked many a nasty trick with which to frighten his classmates, still existed, as did Honeydukes, where he had first experienced the proper, sumptuous taste of well made chocolate and discovered he had a sweet tooth after all. Even Madam Puddifoot’s was still present, the overly garish tea shop in which he had spent his first and only ill-fated date with Lucretia Black, recklessly set up by one of his Knights when Tom had made an off-handed comment about not caring to accompany anyone to Hogsmeade. There were differences as well, of course, but the sleepy little town was familiar enough for him to lose himself within it until it was time to return.

He lingered for a long while within Honeydukes, still disillusioned and savouring small bites of candies from the shelves, dark chocolates in particular. After all, who could say when, or even if he would ever experience this again? He saved his favourite for last, a rich, bitter chocolate lined with treacle, his teeth snapping through the pilfered treat like a viper snatching a rare and favoured meal, the sweet honeyed syrup sliding down his throat.

His trip to Zonko’s was, if nothing else, eye opening. Gone, apparently, were the days in which they sold such delightful things as Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder or powerful love potions such as Amortentia – they had been replaced with silly, nonsense items like Nose-Biting Teacups and Dungbombs, hardly the kind of thing anyone could use to make real trouble. Clearly reforms had been made since Voldemort’s downfall, perhaps even before. It was not surprising – this new era was neatly divorced from the one he had been raised in – but it was disturbing, seeing his fellow witches and wizards so meek and disconnected from the power they had once held, shying away from anything that might be considered dangerous.

He left the shop, scuffling his feet against the cobblestone road and trying to quell the deep seated sense of disappointment and anger gnawing within him.

Tom walked the path back to Hogwarts – it was almost time now – allowing himself to linger by the lake. How many times had he sat by these waters, allowing Abraxas to run his fingers through his perfectly combed hair, letting him believe he returned his affections? How many times had he sat beneath that tree, endlessly absorbing some new text he had liberated from the restricted section? He couldn’t say anymore, the memories bleeding into each other, decades old at this point. He wished he knew what had come next.

But it was time now, wasn’t it? The sun was high in the sky, and he felt certain it would take several hours to complete his work once he started. Tom’s one balmy morning in the late spring air was quickly coming to a close. He hurried toward the castle, knowing that at last the time was right. As he entered Hogwarts once again, making his way to the second floor corridor, he conjured a bottle of red paint and a brush, sweeping a few strands of long ginger hair off his shoulders and raising his hand.

GINNY WEASLEY HAS BEEN TAKEN

HER SKELETON WILL LIE IN THE CHAMBER FOREVER

Tom smiled up at the words he had forced Ginny’s hand to paint. She had struggled against him as he did so, but her presence was little more than a nuisance at this point, a tiny, biting insect that could be ended with a single stroke of his palm. The next step was easy; he patted the diary hidden inside his robes – Ginny’s robes, really – the whisper of himself still alive within its pages, and guided his feet down the corridor and into the girls’ bathroom. 

As he slid down the pipe toward the Chamber of Secrets, he began to feel himself truly coming back to life at last.

“Tom, please help me.”

Ginny Weasley sat on the floor of a vast and empty chamber, her only company her blank diary and a giant statue of a rather intimidating man with a beard that reached the ground. She had woken up here what must have been hours ago at this point, and she was growing weary of walking in circles, trying to find a way out.

The diary remained blank, taunting her with its endless pages of nothingness.

“Please Tom,” she begged, a tear sliding down her cheek and splashing onto the page. “I’m sorry I tried to throw you away. I’ll never do it again, I promise.”

Tom remained as silent as ever.

Sighing, Ginny slipped the diary back into her pocket and stood, her legs shaking violently underneath her. Her stomach was tight and positively aching with hunger, and she felt so incredibly tired. The desire to just lay down and go back to sleep was overwhelming, but she knew she had to try and find a way out of here – wherever “here” was.

She made her way to the edge of the wall once more, passing between the torch-lined columns that supported the ceiling high above her, and groped along the wall. There were many different ways someone could conceal a doorway via magic, but if you concentrated hard enough, sometimes you could feel it – Fred and George had taught her that. The thought of her brothers, however, of never seeing them again, brought a fresh wave of tears, so she focused on the wall instead.

Unfortunately, her third trip around the room didn’t yield any different results. Sighing, she returned to the spot in which she had woken up and sat back down, retrieving her diary from her pocket once more. She opened it, hoping for any sign of Tom, but the pages remained frustratingly unmarked.

“I’m so scared, Tom,” she whispered. “I don’t know how I got here. I don’t know where I am. I might be in the actual Chamber of Secrets, for all I know – it’s definitely Slytherin-y enough. I wish I could just go back to when everything was normal, when I wasn’t acting strange and losing my memories. I wish someone would show up and take me home. I wish – oh, this is stupid – I don’t know if you can even hear me!”

“I can hear you, Ginny.”

Ginny sat up straight, her mouth parted in surprise. “Wha – who said that?”

“I did.” A misty figure came into view from the shadows between the statue’s feet. “It’s so nice to be able to speak with my own voice again. I have you to thank for that, Ginny.”

“Are you a ghost or something?” Ginny asked. She was sure she recognised the voice, but she couldn’t quite place it. “Why do you sound so familiar?”

“Do I, Ginny?” the figure said. “How very odd. I am sure you would remember me had we met in the physical world.” His voice was laced with mirth, as though Ginny were missing some kind of joke.

Ginny squinted. The figure seemed to be growing clearer, but maybe that was just in her head. She was ever so tired now, and thought fondly of her green four-poster back in her dorm. “Whoever you are, can you help me find my way out?” she asked, her voice thick with sleep. “I don’t know how I got here, and I can’t find the door.”

“Haven’t you realised?” the figure asked. “I brought you here, Ginny. This entire year, I’ve been waiting for the moment to arrive when I could finally whisk you away to the Chamber of Secrets, restore myself to my former glory, and fulfil my role in restoring the Dark Lord to power.”

Ginny shivered. “You mean… You-Know-Who?” she whispered.

“Oh yes, Ginny,” the figure replied, looming over her. Ginny leaned back on her hands to get a better look. In the dim torchlight she could start to make out some details on his face – a smooth, sharp jawline, high aristocratic cheekbones, wine-dark eyes and jet-black hair that tumbled in a perfect curl down one side of his forehead. This was – but it couldn’t be –

“But you’re Harry’s friend,” she gaped. “Why would you bring You-Know-Who back? And why are you here? Why are you all… cloudy?”

“Harry’s friend?” the figure said with a touch of amusement. “Now, whyever would you think that, Ginny?”

“Because you are!” she exclaimed, summoning her strength. “I’ve been sitting just down the table from you in the Great Hall all year!”

The figure smirked. “I assure you, Ginny, that would be quite impossible,” he replied, “since you’ve been writing to me in that ingenious little diary of mine since last summer.”

Ginny stared down at the book in her lap. “You’re… Tom?”

“Took you quite some time,” Tom laughed cruelly, “but you got there in the end. Oh, poor, stupid Ginny. Didn’t your parents ever teach you not to talk to strangers? Not to play with strange magical artefacts you know nothing about? Oh, but that’s right – you have so many older brothers, they must have just forgotten about you. They’ve all forgotten about you. They’ve left you all alone down here, trapped and afraid, slowly slipping away.” He reached down to caress her cheek in what should have been a comforting gesture but was instead a taunt. “Now, before you go to sleep, tell me, Ginny Weasley – what is Harry’s friend’s name?”

She was fading now, her head spinning as she tried to process everything Tom had just said. Tom had come out of the diary, somehow identical in every way to the boy who was Harry’s constant companion, a perfect copy even in – no, that was far too much of a coincidence.

“Tom,” she said, her eyelids drooping. “His name is Tom.”

She heard him laugh, a high, cold cackle that did not suit the kind and friendly boy she had come to know from the diary, and then she knew nothing.

“Tom, where on earth are you taking me?” Harry hissed. “You heard McGonagall’s announcement, there must have been another attack.”

“Precisely,” Tom whispered back, “which is why we need to put a stop to this.”

Hours had passed since the professor’s voice had rung throughout the entire school: “All students to return to their house dormitories at once. All teachers return to the staff room. Immediately, please.” There had been another attack, Tom had been sure of it – at first. But as the day had worn on in the Slytherin common room, Harry pacing nervously and Tom unable to concentrate on his schoolwork, his foot bouncing impatiently against the smooth green rug, he had developed a growing sense that something was extremely, incredibly wrong.

When he finally realised what was happening, he took Harry’s hand and dragged him to the dorms, fetching the Invisibility Cloak and pulling it over the both of them. They had managed to slip out the entrance to the common room just as Professor Snape entered.

“To tell the truth, Harry,” Tom murmured, “I think something worse than another Petrification has taken place. Didn’t you see the look on Snape’s face as we left?”

“You mean – do you think the Basilisk’s actually killed someone?” The horror and despair in Harry’s voice was evident, and Tom’s stomach clenched at the forlorn sound of it.

“Maybe,” he said evasively, “I just have a bad feeling about all of this, and I’d like to investigate.”

“You mean, look for the Chamber of Secrets again?” Harry asked. “Do you really think we’ll find it now?”

“Please, bear with me, Harry,” Tom replied, steering him into the second-floor corridor. “If I’m wrong about this we’ll head straight back to the common room.”

“Wrong about what, exac – oh.” The exclamation left Harry’s lungs in a rush as he stared up at the new words scrawled across the wall, just below the initial proclamation that the Chamber of Secrets had been opened. “Oh no, not Ginny.”

“I was afraid of something like this,” Tom said, wrapping his arms around Harry’s shivering form. “I haven’t seen her all day, not since you spoke to her at breakfast.”

“She was acting rather oddly, come to think of it,” Harry replied. “I’ve never seen her so… articulate, I guess – she’s never spoken more than two words around me. Honestly, she sounded like you.”

So his older self had been possessing Ginny all day long. They had very little time, then if they were to stop her death, not to mention Voldemort’s resurrection. “Right then,” Tom said. “We’re going in after her.”

“We are?” Harry gasped. “Tom, we don’t even know where the entrance to the Chamber is.”

“I do,” Tom confessed. “I found it, finally, a few days ago. I went back to Myrtle’s bathroom to look around and, well… I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, but after what happened to Hermione, I didn’t want to put anyone else in danger, least of all you.”

“I understand,” Harry said, leaning up to kiss his cheek, “but you’re right, if there’s any chance she might still be alive, we have to at least try to save her. Do you think you’ll be able to control the Basilisk, even if whoever is claiming to be the heir is there as well?”

“I’m certain of it,” Tom replied. “Follow me.”

He led Harry into the girls’ bathroom and to the sink where the snake had been carved into the tap, pointing it out. Tom smiled as Harry ran his finger over the tiny serpent, his lips parted in awe. He had wanted, after all, to bring him down to the Chamber someday – a pity it was going to be under such unfortunate circumstances.

“Why don’t you do the honours, Harry?” he asked.

“How do I…?”

“Just ask it,” Tom replied. “You know what to say.”

Harry looked back at the sink. “Open,” he hissed, the sibilant tones falling so beautifully from his lips. The tap began to glow and spin, and the entire sink fell away into the tiled floor, revealing the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets.

“Oh, wow.”

Tom stepped from under the Cloak, tugging it off of Harry as well. “I don’t want you to lose it on the way down,” he explained, tucking it into Harry’s mokeskin satchel. “We’ll use the Cloak again when we get to the bottom, in case the false heir is skulking around.”

Harry nodded. “You first?” he asked.

“Naturally,” Tom replied, lowering himself into the pipe. “Though we may both share Salazar Slytherin’s gift, as his heir, I will be more likely to be able to control the Basilisk, should it be present.” He smiled up encouragingly at Harry. “See you on the other side.” And then he dropped.

He allowed himself to be whisked away once more down the long, oh-so familiar slide, travelling deep into the earth below the lake. He anticipated it when the pipe levelled out and braced himself for the moment he reached his destination, landing gracefully on his feet as he did. Tom turned just as Harry shot out of the pipe as well, falling right into his waiting arms

“Just like Floo travel, huh?” Harry smiled weakly up at him. “You’ll always be there to catch me.”

“Always,” Tom replied, running his thumb over Harry’s cheek. 

“Come on, Tom,” Harry said, retrieving his Cloak. “Not now. We have to save Ginny.”

Right. Tom had gotten so caught up in his anticipation to show Harry the Chamber of Secrets, he had nearly forgotten the reason behind their being here. “I think we just have to follow this tunnel,” he said, Harry draping the cloak over the both of them once more. “Remember to close your eyes if you see any kind of movement.” The Basilisk was undoubtedly asleep, of course, but Tom shouldn’t know that.

They made their way through the gloom slowly, both wands alight in front of them. The only sound in the dark tunnel was the occasional crunch of an animal bone and their own shuddering breaths as they each contemplated what lay ahead.

Harry, no doubt, was thinking of Ginny, and possibly some faceless unknown enemy who controlled the Basilisk. Tom’s thoughts were darker. The Tom Riddle he had become by his fifth year was already a master of the Dark Arts, able to rip and twist into people’s minds with an unrepentant ease, a boy who was not yet ready to kill but had done so by the end of the year anyway. If they were lucky, he would not have manifested in a physical form yet. If they were not… 

Tom wasn’t sure how he would fare in an outright confrontation between him and his older self. In fact, he hadn’t really come up with a plan for what they would do once inside the Chamber, outside of securing Apophis’ loyalty and getting his diary back from Ginny. He also wasn’t sure how a sixteen-year-old version of himself would react to seeing him, a child identical to who he had been at thirteen, somehow at Hogwarts as though ripped through time. Perhaps Tom would be more likely than Voldemort to accept him as a future child, but the chances weren’t high. Tom had known by the time he discovered Horcruxes that he never wanted progeny of his own – why waste time on child-rearing when he was going to be immortal? He would be his own legacy.

Tom would just have to hope and pray, then, that the piece of his soul stored in the diary had not yet had enough time, not taken enough of Ginny’s life, to begin physically materialising. When he had been resurrected, it had been sudden, jarring as he stepped, blinking, back into the world. But he had been created differently, of love freely given rather than life and soul sapped away. He had been healed, and then he had awoken, simple as. Normally, it was supposed to take a great deal of time. The sliver of soul was a parasite that stole life drop by drop, an unwilling sacrifice that could take hours, maybe days depending on the strength of the host.

But Ginny was young and untrained.

They reached the end of the tunnel, the two entwined serpents framing the stone wall that led into the Chamber proper. Tom took a deep breath, willed his nerves to settle and raised his chin. 

“Open.”

The chamber wall parted, the stones grinding away from each other across the floor, and Harry and Tom stepped tentatively through. They made their way forward through the gloom, wands still raised to illuminate their path. In the light of their wands and the torches along the walls, the statue of Salazar Slytherin slowly came into view, as did –

“Ginny!” Harry raced forward, leaving behind the security of the Invisibility Cloak as it clung to Tom. But Tom did not move, did not rush forward and drop to the ground in front of Ginny Weasley’s prone form, because he saw what Harry had not. 

Because he saw there, standing next to the feet of Slytherin himself and grinning madly, Tom Marvolo Riddle, sixteen-years-old and looking just as alive and nearly as solid as he had been at the end of his fifth year. For all intents and purposes, Voldemort was back.

Chapter Text

Tom crept slowly across the Chamber, extinguishing his wand. There was light aplenty now, if a bit dim, and he did not want anything that might alert his older self to his presence. Harry was on his knees in front of Ginny, oblivious to the older version of Tom slipping up quietly behind him and fetching his wand from where he had thrown it recklessly to the floor.

Tom cursed inwardly.

“Oh, Ginny,” Harry murmured, scooping her from the ground and cradling her in his arms. “Please wake up.”

“She won’t wake,” said older Tom.

Now that he was closer, Tom could see that his older self was still not fully realised, his edges softly blurred and colours muted. It would not be long, however, before he sapped Ginny of her life.

“What d’you mean, ‘she won’t wake,’ Tom? She’s not – she’s not –”

“She’s still alive,” older Tom replied, “but only just.”

“How can you possibly know that?” Harry cried. “You haven’t even looked at her.”

“The real question is, Harry Potter,” older Tom said, “how can you possibly know my name?”

Harry looked up in surprise. “What are you talking about, Tom?” he asked. His eyes widened as he took in Tom’s blurry form. “Wait – are you okay? You’ve gone all… fuzzy.”

Older Tom smirked. “You speak as though we’ve met before, Harry,” he replied, “and yet I’ve only ever heard stories about you. The great Harry Potter, vanquisher of Lord Voldemort.”

“What do you mean?” Harry asked, his eyes clouded with confusion. “Of course we’ve met before. You’re my – my –” His eyes narrowed and he cringed back as he fully took in the older boy’s features. “No – you’re right – you’re not Tom.”

Older Tom smirked. “Why Harry,” he said mockingly, “haven’t we just established that I am?”

“No,” Harry insisted, standing and attempting to pull Ginny away. “You’re not my Tom. You’re… you’re him. But how?”

“Him who, Harry?” older Tom taunted, striding toward him. “Who is it that you think I am?”

“Voldemort,” Harry spat.

Older Tom’s face split into a wide grin, and Tom found himself in the strange position of feeling cornered by the same smile he so often used to intimidate those he did not like. “Very clever, Harry,” he said, beginning to pace around him, “very clever indeed. Tell me, how did you figure that out, exactly – has Dumbledore been whispering my secrets into your ear? And where is that friend of yours, the one Ginny seemed to think I was when I first showed myself, the one you seemed to think I was? I was so hoping to meet him as well.”

Harry’s eyes flickered briefly to where he had left Tom under the Cloak, but, blessedly refusing to answer older Tom’s questions, he simply snarled at him. “How can you possibly be back?” he demanded. “You should be a wraith, hiding somewhere in Albania. The last time I saw you, you were just a face on the back of Professor Quirrell’s head. I stopped you from killing Tom then, and I won’t let you kill Ginny now!”

Older Tom’s smile was turning rather crazed. “Twice, then, you’ve defeated the great Lord Voldemort,” he marvelled. “Tell me, Harry Potter, how it is that you – a skinny little boy with no extraordinary magical talent – managed to defeat the greatest wizard of all time? How did you escape with nothing but a scar, while Lord Voldemort’s powers were destroyed?”

“I won’t say anything unless you tell me what you’ve done to Ginny!” Harry cried, his eyes alight with righteous fury.

“A trade then?” older Tom replied. “I can accept this, as there’s nothing that can be done to save her. Ginny simply put her trust in the wrong person, that’s all. Now it’s your turn.”

“That’s not an explanation, Voldemort!” Harry snapped.

Older Tom exhaled, a long, beleaguered, utterly fake sigh. “Fine,” he said. “I suppose I can spell it out for you. After all, you won’t be leaving this chamber either – and do put her down, it’s a long story, and there’s nothing you can do for her now.”

He circled around Harry as Ginny was slowly lowered back to the floor. “Where to begin?” older Tom pondered. “I suppose at the beginning, five decades ago. I was not much older than you, Harry, when I discovered a rather ingenious method of preserving myself within a diary – that diary.” He pointed, and Harry’s eyes flashed with recognition as they landed upon the thin black book that had sat in Tom’s trunk and then his bookbag for weeks before Ginny stole it back. Tom’s heart began to hammer in his chest. “I lived in nothing but darkness and cold for nearly fifty years, a mere memory within its pages. I thought myself to be long abandoned – a lonely thought, to be sure, but one I had expected when I was created. But then little Ginny appeared, pouring her heart into my diary, telling me all about her sad, pathetic life – how her brothers teased her, how she had to come to school with second-hand robes and books… How the incredible Harry Potter was always running off with that friend of his – your Tom, I think – and how she thought he would never pay attention to her.”

“I did!” Harry cried defensively. “When she was sorted into Slytherin, I made sure she wasn’t bothered.”

“Oh yes, Harry,” older Tom purred. “No one bothered her, thanks to you. And no one befriended her, either. Poor little Ginny was left with only me, her only friend. And so, as she poured out her heart to me, I grew stronger. I fed on her fear, her sadness, her loneliness. I fed on her very soul, the one thing I needed to overpower her, to start pouring myself into her as well…”

“I don’t understand,” Harry said shakily. “Your soul – you –”

“I think you do, Harry.” Older Tom’s smile had shifted from predatory to outright cruel. “You’ve noticed her, alone and withdrawn, distancing herself from her classmates and family alike. I saw it in your eyes this morning, when you suggested she spend some time in the sun.” Harry blanched. “Yes, that was me – ‘that’s a capital idea, Harry,’” he mocked, laughing coldly. “Who do you think opened the Chamber of Secrets? Who do you think set the Serpent of Slytherin on those Mudbloods? Poor little Miss Weasley – she never stood a chance. Now she dies, and I live once more.”

“I won’t let you!” Harry insisted, his hands resting on Ginny’s shoulders protectively.

“Now now, Harry,” older Tom replied. “Haven’t I told you that there’s nothing to be done for her? Now, as I said before – it’s your turn. How exactly is it that you defeated Lord Voldemort – myself – not once, but twice now, apparently? Tell me everything.” He took Harry’s wand from his pocket and twirled it in his hand. “The longer you talk, the longer you stay alive.”

Underneath the cloak, Tom crept closer. He needed only to snatch the wand, unseen, from his older self’s hand and they would be on a level playing field once more. But older Tom was circling again, moving slowly around Harry, waiting for him to talk. Tom held still and waited for his moment.

“It was my mother,” Harry said finally. “She sacrificed herself when you came to kill me as a baby. My common, Muggle-born mother. Her love for me destroyed you, so that I would live. Dumbledore told me as much.”

“You’re lying, Harry,” older Tom said, smiling. “I can see it in your eyes.”

“I’m not lying,” Harry snapped. “Alright, so maybe he didn’t say exactly that, but I’ve come to my own conclusions. My mother died to save me, and somehow that prevented you from being able to kill me.” 

“Of course,” older Tom breathed, his eyes alight. “Old magic, very old.” He frowned. “I’m surprised Lord Voldemort didn’t anticipate it. Then you’re nothing special, after all. I had wondered, when Ginny told me about you – there’s strange similarities between us, don’t you think? A half-blood in Slytherin, like me. An orphan, as well, raised by Muggles. A Parselmouth too, judging by the fact you’ve managed to enter the Chamber of Secrets. But no – in the end it was only your mother’s foolish sacrifice that saved you. Tell me – do you think her death will save you again, Harry Potter?”

Older Tom paused behind him and raised Harry’s wand. “I’ve not had the pleasure of using this on a human yet – how delightful that you get to be the first. Avada –“

“No!” Tom screamed, throwing the Cloak off of himself and dashing toward the two of them with his wand raised, startling older Tom into drawing away. Something awful was blooming in his chest, a sickly feeling that crawled up his throat and into his limbs, flooding him with the knowledge that he had been the one to set this terrible chain of events into motion. He had killed Myrtle, he had opened the Chamber of Secrets, he had left a piece of his soul in the diary that had been instructed, years later, to continue his work – in earnest this time. He had done all these things, and now his actions were going to culminate in Harry’s death. “Speak to me Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four!” he shouted, casting a wordless Feather-Light Charm on Ginny. He scooped her into Harry’s arms as the statue’s mouth began to grind open.

“Take her and run,” Tom commanded. “The further away from him, the better. I’ll deal with Voldemort. Now go!”

“Tom, what –” 

“Just GO!” he shrieked, his heart threatening to pound right out of his chest. He couldn’t be sure that distance would save Ginny from succumbing to the other piece of his soul that was blooming in front of him, but it just might save Harry.

Harry gave him a quick nod and dashed back into the gloom, Ginny cradled in his arms. Older Tom’s face twisted into a snarl as he lost his target, but he turned back and quickly schooled his expression into one of curiosity as he stared at Tom himself, Harry’s wand still raised. Above them, Apophis was beginning to stir.

“Hello there, little one,” older Tom said to him, the corners of his lips curling into a mocking smile. “I had hoped to meet you as well, once Ginny told me about you. You could almost be my child, but no – the similarities between us are too glaring. I had rather thought you would be older, though – a mentor, possibly, to Harry, not a peer. I so dearly desired to make more of myself, you know, and I thought if you showed yourself, it would be proof that I had. But yet here you are... Twelve? Thirteen? Too young to be anything like me. What precisely are you, Tom?”

Tom hissed, curling his fingers around his wand and levelling it at older Tom’s face. “Oh, I’m exactly like you,” he snarled, “aside from the fact that I happened upon a better way back to a physical life. Tell me, Tom, just how lonely were you in that diary, no followers to order around, no friends? ”

Older Tom’s expression soured. “Friends?  he spat. “I have no need for friends, only allies – and look, here comes one now.”

Apophis slithered toward the two of them, its eyes closed. “Master, I am… Master?” The great serpent’s head swung between the two of them as it tasted the air. “Which one of you is Master?”

“I am!” older Tom declared, raising Harry’s wand above him. “Kill the imposter, Apophis!”

Tom slammed his eyes shut as the Basilisk turned toward him, hissing angrily. “Don’t listen to him, Apophis!” he commanded, dodging to the left as Apophis’ deadly fangs snapped toward him. “I am your master. I am the one who gave you rabbits, who gave you the hunt.  Do you remember?”

The Basilisk paused. “Yes,” it replied, sliding up his side to scent him. “I remember.”

“He is the imposter, not me,” said Tom, slowly opening his eyes again. “Chase him, but do not kill. I need him alive.”

Apophis rounded on older Tom, its eyes still shuttered but fangs bared. “You would ask me to go against my master’s wishes,” it accused. “Just as the red child did. You do not command me.”

“The red child?” older Tom asked incredulously, backing away as the Basilisk snaked toward him. Tom used the momentary distraction to lunge for the diary, seizing it against his chest with his free arm. “Do you mean Ginny? You foolish beast – that was ME, the girl was but a puppet. I, your true master, have given you a proper hunt, and you will soon receive your reward.”

Apophis waved in the air, swaying back and forth between the two of them in confusion. It may have been the most powerful, intelligent snake ever to grace the world, but it was still just that – a snake, unable to grasp the strange nuances of human-wielded magic. Perhaps Tom could turn this to his advantage – he had the diary now, but no idea what to do with it, so incapacitating older Tom had to remain his priority.

“Apophis,” he began, approaching the great snake, “in truth, we are both mere images of your true master, but I am clearly the superior version – I, after all, am alive, while he is not. Taste him – you will find my words to be true.”

“Superior?” older Tom spat derisively. “You are weak. A child. Blinded by your slavish devotion to Harry Potter. He destroyed Voldemort, and yet you let him continue to draw breath.”

“You’re wrong, Tom,” he replied. “We were wrong. I have learned many things in the years since your creation, in the decade following Voldemort’s downfall. I have learned that loyalty does not have to feel like giving up a part of yourself. I have learned that a soul can be healed without sacrifice. I have learned that love is not a weakness, but power – true power.”

“Is it, Tom?” older Tom hissed. “Will love save your little friend as he dies, screaming in agony, venom pouring through his veins?”

“Tom, are you alright?” Tom glanced toward the entrance in horror at the sound of his name; there, between the columns, stood Harry, blinking in the gloom, tears streaming down his face. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t just leave you behind!”

“Harry!” Tom shrieked. “I told you to run!”

“Apophis, kill!”

Tom screamed in wordless terror as the Basilisk, finally given a basic, simple command, slid across the floor toward Harry. That awful feeling was bubbling in him again, rising like bile in his throat. He should never have done it. Any of it. He should never have opened the Chamber of Secrets, so eager to prove his heritage. He should never have killed Myrtle Warren, leaving her trapped on this plane of existence. He should never have made his first Horcrux. But he had, and now he was never going to talk to Harry again, never cradle him through the throes of a nightmare or kiss his forehead as he woke up, those bright eyes, so alight with life, the first thing to greet him in the morning. He would never again watch in stunned admiration as he soared through the air, commanding his flight with an ease which even Voldemort had never achieved. In just moments, his first friend, his only friend, would be gone, and it would be no one’s fault but his own.

“Stop, what are you doing?!” Older Tom was walking back toward him “I order you to stop, right this instant!” The words were for Tom, but he thought he saw the Basilisk still as well. His vision, however, was fading, a ring of black at the edges. The diary, strangely, had grown hot against his chest, burning into him like the brand of a hot iron – even so, he clutched it tighter against himself, compelled by some mysterious force to not allow his older self to take it back.

“That’s my diary,” older Tom snapped. “Give it here. You can’t – you can’t do this! You can’t just unmake me!”

That was what was happening, wasn’t it? Older Tom was starting to fade back out of existence, and as he reached for his diary the outstretched fingers dissolved into a mist. Instead of stumbling back he continued reaching out, his eyes growing wide in horror as he realised, at the same time older Tom did, that he was being pulled back – not into the diary, but into Tom himself.

“No!” older Tom screamed “No! This isn’t what I was intended for! You can’t make me –“

He never finished his sentence, however, because he was quite suddenly entirely noncorporeal, reduced to a glowing greenish mist that was slowly but surely pouring into Tom, settling against the edges of his scarred soul and knitting itself back into place. And Salazar, how it hurt  If Tom had thought the diary burned him, thought the Cruciatus was the height of pain, then he was wrong. Every nerve ending in his body was being dipped into the molten core of a volcano, his bones ground into dust and his skin flayed off. He gritted his teeth as he collapsed to the ground – Voldemort did not yell out in pain – Tom would not yell out in pain –

Tom screamed. 

It tore out of him entirely against his will, a raw, broken sound that echoed around the cavernous chamber as he writhed upon the Chamber’s floor. Through his haze, he felt the familiar smooth body of the Basilisk, instinctively curling up next to him to protect its master, and a moment later, the soft warmth of Harry’s hand in his, the glow of his love for Tom pouring through their bond.

It crashed over the pain like gentle waves on the shore, ebbing and flowing, slowly washing it away. As the searing hot agony was reduced, slowly, to a dull throb, Harry’s love enveloped him, nurturing him just as it had done for so many years before he had reawakened. Tom opened his eyes to see Harry’s, emerald green and sparkling with tears that splashed onto Tom’s own face.

“… Oh,” said a small, awed presence in the back of Tom’s head – and then it was gone, fading away into his subconscious.

“Master is uninjured?” Apophis hissed. 

“Yes,” Tom replied quietly.

“Then Apophis does not need to kill?”

“No, Apophis,” he agreed emphatically. “Please don’t kill Harry, he’s my… mate.”

The Basilisk swung its head blindly to taste in Harry’s direction. “Harry?” it asked.

“Er – hello, Apophis,” Harry replied nervously.

Harry helped him to his feet, which earned him a disapproving hiss from Apophis, but Tom insisted he was alright and the Basilisk settled again. He looked down at the now empty diary in his hands and held it out to the great serpent.

“Apophis, bite this please.” The Basilisk obeyed, sinking one giant fang through the diary and leaving a neat, smoking hole that went right through it, covers, pages, and all. 

“Tom,” Harry said in confusion, “isn’t that your diary?”

“Yes,” Tom confessed, “well, no. When you told me you found a diary with my initials, I knew immediately that it must have belonged to my father. You’ve met him, you know how dangerous he is – I didn’t want to risk it hurting you with some Dark magic. Just look at what it did to Ginny, can you imagine what that ‘memory’ would have done to you, darling? So I planned to hide it away until I could work out exactly what it was. Now that we know… well, I think it’s better off like this, don’t you?”

Harry nodded in agreement. “What was that glowing light that Voldemort turned into? It sort of… surrounded you.”

My soul coming home.

“A final attack by Voldemort, I can only assume,” Tom lied. “Ginny must’ve woken up in the tunnel, thereby severing his connection to her. Knowing he was going to be sucked into the diary, he turned on me instead.” Tom glanced at his former Horcrux. “Can we leave that part out of the official story, Harry? Dumbledore already believes that I’m a prime target for possession by Voldemort, I wouldn’t want anyone to think that that’s what actually happened.”

“Of course, Tom,” Harry replied. “You’re not, though, right? Possessed, I mean.”

“No, darling,” Tom said, smiling and pressing a kiss to his forehead. “I’m still me.”

“Hello?” A thin voice emanated through the gloom. “Is – is s-someone there? I heard s-screaming.”

“Ginny!” Harry exclaimed. Indeed, Ginny Weasley was picking her way across the Chamber of Secrets, looking rather worse for wear. “You’re up – are you feeling okay?”

“H-Harry – oh, Harry! H-how did you find me? And is that – a giant s-snake?!”

“It’s the red child!” Apophis hissed. “Shall I kill her for pretending to be Master?”

“No, Apophis,” Tom replied. “You are not to kill Ginny Weasley – the red child – either. I will bring you your reward for the hunt soon,” he added at the Basilisk’s disappointed sniff.

“Tom was the one who found you – er, our Tom, that is, not the one from the diary,” Harry said. “Don’t worry – he can control the Basilisk.”

“A B-Basilisk?” Ginny shrieked. “Is that what I’ve b-been using to P-Petrify students? And w-why does Tom look like R-Riddle from the d-diary?”

Tom looked her in the eye. “Can you keep a secret, Ginny?” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously, as if she’d been asked that question quite a lot lately – which, to be fair, she probably had. “It’s not a bad secret, I promise – it’s just something about me I’d rather not be widely known. Not yet, at least.”

Ginny stared at him for a long moment, sizing him up, and then nodded mutely.

“Good,” Tom said. “Then allow me to formally introduce myself as Tom Marvolo Riddle – the second. You’ve been chatting with the teenage version of my father all year.”

Ginny’s eyes went wide. “B-but – how is that a s-secret? Y-you have the same n-name.”

“The secret isn’t that Tom Riddle is Tom’s father,” Harry said with a nod to Tom, catching on. “The secret is who Tom Riddle ended up becoming. Did he ever say anything about his future self to you?”

“N-no,” Ginny replied.

Tom lifted his wand. “I figured this out over the summer,” he lied, tracing the letters of his name into the air. “I noticed after Dumbledore told us – I have all the right letters in my name, and the rest was easy to figure out from there…” His name spelled out in glittering light, he waved his wand, and it rearranged itself into that old, now-regretted anagram his past self had decided upon at age fourteen.

I AM LORD VOLDEMORT

Ginny paled, her eyes somehow growing even larger. “I – I’ve been writing to Y-You-Know-Who this whole time?”

“It’s alright,” Tom said, holding up the diary and showing her the hole Apophis had punched through it. “He’s gone, whatever he was. We’ll get you out of here and up to the hospital wing in no time, right Harry?”

“Right,” Harry agreed, wrapping a comforting arm around Ginny’s shoulder before he stilled, his brow furrowed. “Tom, exactly how are we going to get out of here?”

Tom gestured to the Basilisk. “Apophis will take us, of course.”

Apophis, just thick enough to carry the three of them on its back, waited patiently as they gathered Harry’s wand and Cloak and then situated themselves (Ginny none too happily) atop it. When they were more or less comfortably seated, Tom leaned forward to issue his final commands.

“Take us back to the school now,” he said. “When you return to the Chamber, sleep. I will come back for you when I have an appropriate meal.”

The massive serpent did precisely as it was told, carrying the three of them, clinging tightly to each other, up the long, winding pipe that served as entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. It left them in Myrtle’s bathroom, hissing a farewell and disappearing back into the entrance, the sink sliding back into place just as the end of its long tail slipped away into the darkness. Harry’s hand wrapped around Tom’s as his other arm came to rest, encouragingly, on Ginny’s shoulders. It should have left Tom burning with jealousy, but the gesture was so brotherly, so kind, so very Harry, that he couldn’t bring himself to care.

“Where to now, Tom?”

“Snape’s office, I think,” he replied. “They’ll have contacted the Weasleys that Ginny was taken into the Chamber – with Dumbledore gone, they’ll be sent to her Head of House.”

They made their way into the dungeons, tears streaming down Ginny’s face. “I’m going to be expelled!” she cried. “After everything I’ve done – I've wanted to come to Hogwarts ever since B-Bill, and now I’ll have to leave, and – w-what’ll Mum and Dad say?”

“You mean after everything Voldemort’s done,” Harry replied soothingly. “You won’t be expelled for being possessed, I promise.”

“B-but what if –”

“We’re here,” Tom said softly, stepping up to Professor Snape’s office. “Harry’s right, Ginny, you’ll be fine.”

He knocked on the door and pushed it open.

Chapter Text

At first, it didn’t seem like anyone noticed the three of them stepping through the door. Mrs Weasley was slumped in front of the fire, sobbing, Professor McGonagall holding her tightly. Snape was standing stiffly next to Mr Weasley, who was sitting at the Potion Master’s desk, his face buried in his hands. Tom, however, was most shaken by the sight of Professor Dumbledore, somehow back at the school, standing by the mantle and beaming at them.

Harry cleared his throat.

Mrs Weasley looked up from the fireplace. She stared for a moment, overcome with shock, then screamed, “Ginny!” and raced toward her daughter, gathering her up in her arms. McGonagall, Snape, and Mr Weasley all looked up slowly, as though not daring to trust their eyes, surprise and wonder crossing their faces as they took in the sight of the three of them, covered head to toe in muck from the Chamber of Secrets. 

“Ginny, oh – Ginny!” Mrs Weasley, overcome, finally detached herself from her daughter as Mr Weasley came to embrace her as well. Tom suddenly found himself and Harry clasped in a tight hug as well, and… it honestly wasn’t that terrible, if perhaps a bit smothering. Tom briefly wondered, had his own mother not been too weak-willed to raise her wand to save herself during his birth, if he too would have grown up with this kind of doting, motherly affection.

“You saved her!” Mrs Weasley cried, and Tom felt the warmth of her tears sinking into his hair, just as Harry’s had fallen against his face in the Chamber. “You saved her! How did you do it?”

“I think, Molly,” Snape said flatly, “that we would all like the answer to that.”

Mrs Weasley finally – finally – released them, and Dumbledore conjured a comfortable sofa for the Tom, Harry, and Ginny to sit upon while Mr and Mrs Weasley took their seats in the hard-backed chairs in front of Snape’s desk. Ginny attached herself to Harry’s side as they sat, but Tom still found he didn’t mind, Harry’s hand warm and vibrant in his own.

“It was Tom,” Harry finally said. “Well, it was all of us really – Ron, Hermione – Draco and Pansy – we had a general idea of where the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets might be, but in the end, it was Tom who found it.”

Harry launched into the story, Tom helping him at times, explaining how the attacks seemed to centre around that one corridor, the days and weeks spent combing through every room only to come up empty handed, those final moments when Tom had revealed he had found the entrance. Tom took over then, crafting a story about returning to the hunt not long after Hermione had been petrified, searching every inch of the bathroom until he finally found the spot that concealed the entryway. He even looked Dumbledore dead in the eye, keeping his memories shallow, as he described the feeling of unease he had felt upon McGonagall’s announcement, the urgency he had experienced to rescue Ginny Weasley from the Chamber. By the gentle smile and open gaze Dumbledore gave him, he knew his Occlusion had worked – the old man had entirely missed his terror at the possible resurrection of Lord Voldemort, seeing only a child who wanted, desperately, to keep his classmates safe.

And maybe – just maybe – there was a kernel of truth to that fabrication.

“This is all very fine and well,” Snape said, when Tom had finished, “aside from the fact that the two of you – the six of you, rather – have broken dozens of school rules: breaking into empty classrooms, boys in the girls’ bathroom, leaving your dormitories during a school-wide emergency. However, you have yet to explain exactly who abducted Ginevra Weasley, not to mention how it is you managed to survive.”

Tom hesitated – he had expected this was going to come up. He reluctantly pulled his diary from his pocket and placed it on Snape’s desk, from where Dumbledore gingerly picked it up and flipped open the front cover, examining the first few pages.

“Tom,” he said, after several long moments, “I have told the Weasleys that you are as in grave danger as Harry when it comes to Voldemort, but as I believe it is generally at your discretion to reveal, I have not explained why. Do you mind if they are told what exactly has happened to their daughter?”

“No,” Tom replied, the bitterness at having to reveal one of his Horcruxes fading somewhat at Dumbledore’s earnest tone. It was mildly infuriating, however – Dumbledore had never afforded him such clemency in his previous life. “That diary belonged to my father,” he said slowly. “He apparently managed to preserve a memory of himself inside of it.”

“A memory strong enough to possess Miss Weasley, to drive her to open the Chamber of Secrets and set loose the monster within it.” Mrs Weasley gasped in fear at Dumbledore’s words. “The memory of Tom Riddle – the first, that is – a brilliant student, probably the most brilliant Hogwarts has ever seen, save for his son, I think.” Tom tried not to scowl as Dumbledore looked down at him with a glimmer in his eye. “There are very few now who remember the boy he was before leaving Hogwarts. There are even fewer who connect him to the man he became – Lord Voldemort.”

“But – but Ginny – how?!” Mr Weasley sputtered. 

Beside Tom, beside Harry, Ginny began to sob anew. “His d-diary! I’ve b-been writing in it, and he’s been w-writing back all year – I didn’t know. He t-told me he was just like a talking portrait!”

“Ginny!” Mr Weasley said. “Haven’t I always told you? Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brain? Why didn’t you –”

Dumbledore raised his hand.

“Arthur, if you will, I would ask you not to ascribe any blame to your daughter,” he said calmly. “After all, she has grown up with portraits, mirrors, and other talking objects that would otherwise be inanimate. And, as we all know, far older and wiser wizards have been swayed by Lord Voldemort.” Dumbledore paused. “Now… as to what happened in the Chamber…”

“Voldemort came out of the diary,” Harry cut in. “Honestly, I thought it was Tom still talking to me at first – but he was older… and he was cruel. He was trying to use Ginny’s soul to come back to life, and I think he would’ve succeeded if I hadn’t gotten her out of the Chamber.”

Tom’s heart stuttered at Dumbledore’s sharp intake of breath. “Harry,” he said quietly, “do you mean to say that Voldemort managed to obtain a corporeal form?”

“Corporeal?” Harry echoed.

“He means ‘solid,’” Tom explained, squeezing his hand. Harry gave him an odd, searching look.

“Er – no, not quite,” Harry replied. “He was solid enough to take my wand, but he was blurry and slightly colourless. I think, if we had gotten there any later…” He cleared his throat again. “Anyway, Tom distracted him just as he was about to kill me and helped me get Ginny out. And then…” He looked up at Tom expectantly.

All eyes were on him again. He recounted the story, albeit a mildly edited version, of the struggle between Voldemort and himself, how they had each held valid command over the Basilisk, and how it had very nearly killed Harry. He explained how Voldemort’s attempt to resurrect himself had unexpectedly failed, and that he had been sucked back into the diary, and with now complete control over the Basilisk, Tom had had the book destroyed.

The adults looked on with rapt attention as he concluded the story, telling of how Apophis had carried them up and out of the Chamber of Secrets before returning to sleep. As he trailed off, there was a long pause, silence settling heavy over the room. After a moment, Dumbledore cleared his throat.

“The two of you have, once more, shown commendable bravery, as well as a rather touching concern for the safety of your fellow students. Now, Tom, I must ask if you –”

“No,” Tom interrupted.

“No?”

“You’re going to ask me to open the Chamber of Secrets again so that the Basilisk can be destroyed, and the answer is no,” Tom said defiantly. “It’s a beautiful, sentient, one thousand year old creature, and with the Chamber closed and it under my command alone, it is of no danger to anyone in Hogwarts. I won’t let it be punished for Voldemort’s crimes. Besides,” he grumbled, “it’s my Basilisk.”

Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled in that infuriating manner with which he had never looked at Tom in his first life. “I appreciate your concern for the sanctity of life, Tom,” he replied. “However, I was not going to ask for your assistance in destroying the Basilisk.”

Tom looked up in surprise. “No?”

“No,” he confirmed. “Rather, I was going to propose that we contact an old friend of mine who would no doubt be more than delighted at having the opportunity to study such a rare and legendary creature.”

“Oh.” It felt like all the air had suddenly rushed out of him, leaving his chest hollow and tight. “Yes, Professor, I would be amenable to that.” Tom frowned. “We’ll have to bring it something to eat, though – I promised Apophis I’d feed it if I had the chance to return.”

“I’m sure that can be arranged,” Dumbledore replied. “And I think this merits a feast for us, as well! Minerva, if you would alert the kitchens? Severus, please accompany Miss Weasley and her parents to the hospital wing – she’s been through quite an ordeal. Harry, Tom, if you would remain a moment longer…”

The adults swept out, Ginny at their heels, leaving Tom and Harry alone with the headmaster. There followed a long moment as Dumbledore considered them.

Finally, he spoke. “I seem to remember, Tom,” he said quietly, “asking you specifically not to go looking for the Chamber of Secrets.”

Tom’s jaw dropped – he had just saved Ginny Weasley from certain death, and Dumbledore was going to punish him for it?”

“Which goes to show that the best of us must sometimes eat our words,” he continued, smiling gently. “You will both receive awards for special services to the school, and – let me see – yes, I think two hundred points apiece for Slytherin.”

Now Tom felt as though he’d really had the wind knocked out of him – two hundred?

“Now,” Dumbledore said, his expression growing more serious, “the two of you have both met Voldemort twice at this point – first as a wraith, and now as he was at age sixteen. I find myself wondering what you think of him.”

“He was… different than I thought he would be,” Tom replied, affecting an air of contemplation. “The first time we met, my father seemed… unstable, insane even. As a teenager, he was dangerous, powerful, a bit… obsessive, maybe, but not nearly so broken as he apparently became.”

“Broken…” Dumbledore pondered. “An interesting word choice. And obsessive?”

“Before he decided to kill him, he was rather single-mindedly focused on exactly how Harry managed to survive as a baby,” Tom explained.

“Of course,” Dumbledore nodded. “Yes, I imagine he was quite interested in you, Harry.”

Beside him, Harry frowned. “He said we were similar, sir,” he responded. “Both Slytherin half-bloods. Both orphans. Both Parselmouths.”

“Indeed,” Dumbledore acknowledged. “You’ll find, Harry, that Voldemort always had an inclination toward surrounding himself with those things which reminded him most of himself – people with a desire for power, magic such as Parseltongue which tied him to his ancestry. I see a hint of that same tendency in you, Tom, if your attachment to the Basilisk is anything to go by – of course, as you have demonstrated again and again, and most particularly tonight, you are still a better man than him by far. No doubt, however, that he was greatly intrigued by what he saw of himself in the both of you.”

“Then…” Harry faltered, “he was right? Are we really that similar? I don’t exactly see myself wanting to kill Muggleborns, but the rest of it…”

“All superficial similarities, Harry,” Dumbledore smiled. “In all ways that count – the strength of your character, your empathy for others – you differ greatly. And as for your shared ability, well – you can speak Parseltongue for much the same reason Tom here can – because Lord Voldemort can speak Parseltongue.”

“Sir?”

“Tom, of course, inherited it from his father, who inherited it from his mother before him,” he explained. “As for you – well, unless I’m much mistaken, Voldemort transferred some of his own powers to you the night he gave you that scar. Not something he intended to do, I’m sure…”

“Voldemort put a bit of himself in me?” Harry looked thunderstruck. Tom shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“That certainly seems to be the case.”

Dumbledore knew. He had taken one look at the diary and had known exactly what it was and what it used to contain. And now, his eyes piercing through them, he surely suspected Harry to be the same.

However, Dumbledore didn’t comment further on the matter, instead retrieving a bottle of ink and a quill from Snape’s desk. “Now,” he continued, “I think that what the two of you need is some food and sleep. Go on down to the feast, while I write to Azkaban – we need our gamekeeper back. And as Professor Lockhart has disappeared –”

“Lockhart’s gone, sir?” Harry gasped.

“Oh yes,” Dumbledore replied. “Evidently, it was suggested to him that he be the one to rescue Miss Weasley from the Chamber of Secrets. It appears he didn’t have the fortitude needed for the task and has, as Professor McGonagall so eloquently put it, ‘done a bunk.’ As I’ve said, what the two of you have done tonight is incredibly brave indeed. However, we will be needing another new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor for next year. Now go on – enjoy the rest of your night, while I put out an advertisement for the position.”

Before they could move from their seats, however, the door to Snape’s office flew open, revealing, as they turned in their seat, a very furious Lucius Malfoy, trailed closely by Dobby. The elf was almost completely covered in bandages, and was trying desperately to shine Lucius’ shoes as he strode forward, leaping back each time one of them threatened to connect with his face.

“So!” Lucius snapped. “You’ve come back. The governors suspended you, but –” he stopped, seeing exactly who was sitting with Dumbledore in Snape’s office. “Tom. Harry. What are the two of you doing here, and why on earth are you covered in muck?”

“Ah, Lucius, how good of you to join us,” Dumbledore said genially. “Tom and Harry have just returned from fetching Miss Weasley from the Chamber of Secrets – it’s a very good thing indeed that Tom has inherited his father’s penchant for bonding with snakes, otherwise we may never have recovered her. As it happens, when the news broke that Arthur Weasley’s daughter had been abducted, I received somewhat of a hailstorm of owls from the other governors. It seemed they thought me the best man for the job after all – but to hear the stories some of them told…”

Lucius went, if possible, even paler than usual, his eyes flicking between Tom and Harry before landing, Tom noticed, on the ruined diary on Dumbledore’s desk. “Yes,” he said. “Right. You mean to say that these two children rescued Miss Weasley from the Chamber of Secrets?”

“Yes, Mr Malfoy,” Tom chirped innocently, meeting the man’s eyes and sliding into his mind where he planted the barest glimpse of the confrontation between him and his older self – Lucius would register it as having come from his own subconscious, a wild flight of imagination. Beside him, oddly enough, Harry stiffened.  “There was a Basilisk in the Chamber, but I was able to control it easily enough. Did you know that I am the heir of Slytherin?”

“Yes,” Lucius replied faintly. “I suppose I did…”

Next to him, Harry wasn’t looking up at Lucius Malfoy, but near the floor. Tom followed his anguished gaze toward Dobby, who was still trying to polish his master’s shoes, muttering apologies as his injured fingers trembled around the rag he carried. A flash of inspiration hit him.

“We were rather lucky,” Tom said, meeting Lucius’ eyes yet again. “Harry and I were warned ahead of time that something terrible might happen at Hogwarts. It was a house-elf, sir, if you can imagine – he took it upon himself to ensure that whatever his master’s plans were, we would be prepared. It was rather fortuitous for us, but I must say, I don’t envy whoever it is whose servant is so eager to turn against them.”

Lucius’ eyes flashed in rage. “No,” he said slowly. “I can’t imagine you would. Such a betrayal would be worthy of the harshest of punishments.”

“Oh yes,” Tom replied, pressing further into Lucius’ mind. “Clothes. I can think of no greater dishonour for any house-elf.”

Lucius paused a moment. “Right you are,” he finally replied. “The shame would be absolutely unbearable.”

During their conversation, Dobby had gone from simpering at Lucius’ feet, to fearful, and now to wide-eyed, goggling up at Tom in disbelief. Tom met his eyes and gave him the briefest smile, just a faint quirking of the corners of his mouth that would go unnoticed by Malfoy Sr, and Dobby broke into a helpless grin.

“Well then,” Lucius said, his attention on Dumbledore once more, “if the board of governors have seen it fit to reinstate you, and the danger in the Chamber of Secrets has been neutralised, then I suppose I have no further quarrel with you. I take my leave.”

He strode from the room, as furious as he had been as he entered.

“That was very clever, Tom,” Dumbledore said quietly behind them.

“Clever?” Harry cried. “Now Dobby’s going to be punished even harder! Tom, why would you all but tell Mr Malfoy that he betrayed him?”

“I understand your confusion, Harry,” Dumbledore said gently. “The truth is, that for many house-elves, being given clothing is seen as an ultimate act of punishment – something for which our own people will no doubt have to atone someday. As it has been for many generations, the giving of clothing to a house-elf is done to symbolically and magically release them from their servitude – an act that would, to most elves, be a mark of their failure, but to Dobby, who has been greatly mistreated, it will almost certainly only mean freedom.”

“Oh,” Harry breathed, mollified and yet, for some reason, still frowning. 

Dumbledore looked kindly down on both of them. “Now, as I said before – go enjoy the feast.”

They left Snape’s office in relative silence, making their way down to the dungeons to clean up before making their appearance in the Great Hall. To Tom’s dismay and confusion, Harry pulled away when he reached for his hand. About halfway to the Slytherin common room, Harry paused. 

“Why did you convince Mr Malfoy to give Dobby clothes?” he asked, his back to Tom.

“He was miserable,” Tom replied easily. “He doesn’t deserve to be so ill-treated by Draco’s father.”

“You didn’t seem concerned with his treatment when we stayed at Malfoy Manor.”

Tom froze. Had Harry picked up on his previous indifference to Dobby’s state so easily? “It’s – it’s expected of house-elves to obey their masters. I suppose I didn’t realise how poorly he was treated until I saw him so grievously injured in Dumbledore’s office. And I saw how badly it distressed you, Harry. I had to do something for him – he did try to protect us, after all.”

“Hmm,” was Harry’s vague answer. “Well, come on, Tom.”

They entered the Slytherin common room to a great deal of clamour. Their classmates, apparently having been informed about the feast, were full of nervous excitement, chattering wildly.

“I heard that the heir finally killed a Mudblood!” 

“Are you stupid? You think they’d hold a feast for something so awful? I heard that someone slew the monster in the Chamber of Secrets!”

“Don’t be daft, it’s just because they’ve finally Unpetrified all those people!”

Harry led Tom into the dorms, away from the hustle and bustle of the common room, but he still did not turn to face him. Instead, he stood there for several seconds, his hands balled into fists at his sides.

Finally, he spoke.

“You’ve been lying to me, Tom,”

“Lying?” Tom asked in a quavering tone, his heart beginning to hammer in his chest. “What could you possibly be referring to?”

“You know what I’m talking about.” Harry stated, his voice thick with betrayal. “You’re not Voldemort’s son at all, are you? You are Voldemort.”

Chapter Text

Tom was shaking, terror ripping through every fibre of his being. Harry had finally turned to face him, and the look of betrayal and hatred on his face was worse, far worse than the disembodied soul of Voldemort attempting to take possession of his body, than seeing the gleam in older Tom Riddle’s eyes as he prepared to kill Harry. He had lost the boy he loved, the only person he had ever wanted to love, and unless he somehow fixed this, he would never get him back. 

“I’m right, aren’t I?” Harry demanded. “You’re Voldemort. You’re a memory of him, just like the Tom that came out of the diary.”

“No!” Tom insisted, his voice quavering. “I’m not, I swear Harry – I’m just Tom.”

“Yes, you are,” Harry replied, raising his wand and pointing it directly at Tom’s chest. “I knew you resembled him, but god, Tom – you’re identical, right down to that beauty mark on the tip of your cheekbone. You sound like him, you walk like him. You are him.”

“No, please Harry, how can you believe that?” Tom pleaded. “I’m your friend, you know me.”

“Let’s see.” Harry held up his free hand and started counting off on his fingers. “The way you clung to that diary like it was precious to you? How you knew exactly where to find the Chamber of Secrets? The fact that you spoke to the Basilisk as if it were an old friend? That your eyes aren’t actually brown like I thought they were, but dark burgundy, and that they flash the same exact shade of red as Voldemort’s every time you do whatever it is you do to manipulate people? I’m not an idiot, Tom.”

“No – no – no –” Tom’s breath was coming in gasps now, rattling in and out of him. “I can explain – it’s not what you –”

“What was the plan, Tom?” Harry asked, as if he hadn’t said anything. “Get close to me? Pretend to be nice and wait for the perfect moment to kill me? Merlin, I let you kiss me, hold me while I slept. Three years, Tom. For three years you’ve been lying to me.”

“No, Harry, no!” His voice had risen to a fever pitch, frantic and desperate as he was to turn this situation around. “I would never hurt you! I couldn’t!”

“Of course you could,” Harry spat, “you’re Voldemort.”

“YES!” Tom shrieked, finally admitting the awful, horrible truth. “But I don’t WANT to be!”

Silence settled heavily over the room around them.

Harry’s wand arm dropped to his side, his expression slowly morphing from rage to confusion. “What?” he said, his voice hollow.

“I’m supposed to, you know,” Tom cried. “I’m supposed to want to be him, to help him return to power, but I don’t! I just want to be Tom Riddle, who goes to Hogwarts and is Harry Potter’s best friend and maybe more, who holds him when he’s having a nightmare and cheers for him at Quidditch games. It’s not what I was meant for, what I was made for, but I don’t care!”

“What are you talking about, Tom?”

Tom, exhausted both physically and emotionally, collapsed to the ground, his legs splayed out in front of him. “You’re right,” he admitted in a whisper, drawing his knees up to his chest. “I’m a memory of him, just like the Tom in the diary. Or I used to be, I don’t know what I am anymore.”

Harry hesitated a moment before pocketing his wand and joining Tom to sit cross-legged on the floor in front of him. “Explain.”

Tom took a deep breath.

“Before you were born, Voldemort created these… vessels, called Horcruxes. They were houses, nearly indestructible, for pieces of his soul. He made them, that in the event of his death, he had a means of resurrection. You see, Harry, if the soul is not intact when the body perishes, it cannot move on to death. This is why Voldemort exists as a wraith now, why he was able to possess Quirrell last year. The diary was one of them, and I was born out of… another.”

“Pieces of his… soul?” Harry pondered. “But how? How can your soul just be… split up like that?”

Tom hesitated - Harry would not like the answer, but he had to be truthful. “Murder,” he finally said. “When you kill someone, it tears your soul apart. The broken piece can then be placed in an item of the killer’s choosing, and, as you’ve already seen, that piece of soul can then take on a life of its own, providing a new body for them to inhabit should the need arise.”

“That’s why Voldemort attempted to possess you last year,” Harry gasped. “Because you’re his Horcrux.”

“No, Harry,” Tom corrected, “I’m not a Horcrux, the vessel I was in is a Horcrux. But we’re both different from the others as well – I was created accidentally. Until last year, Voldemort didn’t know I existed, and he still doesn’t understand how I came to be.”

“How is that possible?” Harry asked.

“I’m afraid the answer might distress you, Harry.”

“Tell me, Tom,” he demanded. “If you want to still be my friend, my – my boyfriend, you need to be honest with me.”

Tom closed his eyes, hope stirring within him at the thought that Harry might even consider forgiving him. “By the night Voldemort came to your house with the intent of killing you, he had already made five Horcruxes. As a result, his soul was damaged beyond belief, and he had gone completely insane. It was his intent that night to use…” Tom swallowed hard. “To use your murder to create his sixth and final Horcrux, but because your mother sacrificed herself that you might live, his curse rebounded, and he was destroyed. His soul – my soul – already so damaged, was torn apart again… and when you opened your eyes, I saw through them as well. I had attached myself to you.”

Tom blinked hard and looked up to judge Harry’s reaction – he was looking rather green, but he did not shy away from him.

“I had a piece of Voldemort’s soul in me?” Harry blanched. “I had – you? That’s what Dumbledore was talking about? And Voldemort doesn’t know?”

“Yes, but Harry – that’s not meant to happen,” Tom exclaimed, leaning forward. “You already have your own soul, you were never meant to house another. As you grew up, and as I saw snippets of your life through your eyes, I stopped hating you and began to profoundly regret what I had done. I wanted more than anything to go back and undo my mistakes, to take you away from the Muggles so they could never hurt you again. And more than that – Harry, your soul is brimming with something Voldemort never experienced. Before you, Dumbledore told Voldemort many times that the greatest magic on earth is love. He never believed it, but Dumbledore was right. You’re so full of love that you fixed me, Harry. You healed me.”

Harry was still looking rather unsettled, and a little bit sceptical, so he continued.

“I’m telling the truth, Harry. Do you remember the kitten, the one you tried to save?” Harry nodded. “I was there with you when she died. I woke up in a few of your dreams sometimes, but I don’t think you remember. You were so distraught over her loss, I could feel how much you loved her. I held you and comforted you, and your love wrapped around me as well.”

“I do remember that dream, now that you mention it,” Harry said slowly. “You disappeared into a bright light, but when I woke up the next day, I felt so much better – like someone was there to protect me, even if the Dursleys continued hating me. I didn’t understand why at the time.”

“That was me, Harry,” Tom replied. “That’s all I wanted anymore. I couldn’t be Lord Voldemort, I couldn’t even be a person, so all I wanted to do was keep you safe. I never imagined that your love was so powerful, it would eventually resurrect me as a ten-year-old boy, just like you were at the time.”

“Do I still have – you know,” Harry asked, wincing and gesturing to his scar.

“Yes,” Tom sighed. “It’s impossible for a soul to completely separate from their Horcrux – I left a tiny piece of myself behind when I came into existence. It’s why your scar hurts when Voldemort is around, but also why it feels so warm when we’re together – because it’s not just a piece of him anymore, but of me.”

“I knew it was magic,” Harry said. “I thought it might be something like destiny, that we were meant to be together – but it was just Voldemort again.”

“It wasn’t just Voldemort, Harry – you took one of the Darkest, most reviled pieces of magic ever conceived and made it pure. I don’t think I can express how incredible that is – how incredible you are.”

Harry pondered this silently for a moment. “Tom,” he said finally, “how much of your old life do you remember?”

“Not much,” Tom admitted. “I remember my life up until I went to Hogwarts, growing up in an orphanage called Wool’s during the lead up to World War II. I remember most of my magic, though I still have much to relearn. I can remember moments as they are presented to me – for example, when we first met Draco, I recalled that his father had been one of Voldemort’s most esteemed followers. And I remember the big things, like discovering I was the Heir of Slytherin, my final day at Hogwarts, the creation of Horcruxes. Most of the details are gone. Like I said, Voldemort had lost his mind by the night he tried to kill you – I’m not sure even he remembers all of it.”

“Right,” Harry said. “We need to tell Dumbledore.”

Tom panicked. “No, we can’t!” he insisted. “Dumbledore will want to destroy them, since they're all that’s keeping Voldemort tethered to life.”

“But isn’t that a good thing?” Harry asked. “If we want to defeat Voldemort, we need to destroy his Horcruxes.”

“Think, Harry!” Tom pleaded. “You’re also a Horcrux. He’ll have to kill me, not to mention you, and when he does, I won’t die, I’ll just be… stuck. I may have healed, but I’m still technically incomplete. I don’t know what happens after death, and I’m highly averse to the idea of experiencing it, but I don’t want to just… I don’t know, float around disembodied or sit in limbo for eternity while you move on without me!”

His breath was coming in shuddery gasps again, and his face felt oddly wet. With a jolt, Tom realised that he was crying. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had cried, not at Wool’s and certainly never at Hogwarts. Harry, kindhearted as he was even in his angriest moment, scooted forward and reached up to wipe the tears from his cheek, and Tom leaned into the warmth of his touch.

“Okay,” Harry said shakily. “Okay, Tom. I’m not done being angry with you for lying to me, but you’re still everything to me. I don’t want you to be stuck in limbo, all alone for the rest of time. But if we don’t destroy them, what do we do?”

“I’m going to find all of Voldemort’s Horcruxes, and do to them what I did to the diary,” Tom replied, scrubbing his tears away.

“What did you do to the diary?” Harry asked. “I couldn’t really understand what happened – you were holding it, and then Voldemort sort of… dissolved into you. You said it was an attack but…”

“I absorbed him,” Tom replied. “Granted, the circumstances that allowed me to do so were very unique, and I’m not sure I will be able to recreate them – let alone want to, since you were about to die – but there must be another way to reintegrate my soul. Once I’ve done so to the Horcruxes, I will do the same to Voldemort himself.”

“But – won’t that make you just like him again?”

Tom shook his head. “Absorbing what was left in the diary didn’t come with any of his thoughts or feelings, as far as I can tell. It’s just a piece of my soul, slotted back into a place it never should have left.”

“And you can do it again? You said that what allowed you to do so was… unique.” 

Tom looked away, his nose scrunching in distaste. “Yes – I felt remorse – the only known way to unmake a Horcrux other than destroying it. When my older self set the Basilisk on you, the shame I felt for killing Myrtle and for putting the whole set of events that was leading to your death into motion crashed over me like a tidal wave. Apparently it was enough to knit that piece of my soul and myself back together. It was… unbelievably painful.”

“Can’t you do the same for the others?” Harry asked, and his tone was so earnest it made Tom want to wither away to dust on the spot.

He shook his head, unable to meet Harry in the eye. “I don’t believe so,” he replied softly. “Two of the people Voldemort killed to create his Horcruxes were random strangers. One was my father – my real father, a Muggle, who I still despise for leaving me to be raised in an overcrowded, underfunded orphanage. One was an old woman who undeservingly claimed an heirloom of Salazar Slytherin – my heirloom. I cannot bring myself to be saddened by their deaths.”

“Tom, that’s horrible,” Harry lamented. “You say you don’t want to be Voldemort, but you’re just like him – you lie, you steal, you don’t care about others, and you don’t think it’s wrong to kill people. You claim that I healed you, but you’re really no better than he is.”

“That’s not true,” Tom snapped defensively. “If anything happened to one of our friends, I would be… extremely upset. If something happened to you, I’d… I’d…” He swallowed hard again, unable to finish the sentiment. “And I know that it’s wrong to kill people – I decided long ago that I wasn’t going to indulge in murder if I can help it, even if there are some who truly deserve it.”

“Who, Tom?” Harry demanded. “Who on earth do you think deserves to die?!”

Tom frowned, his brows furrowed so deeply it almost hurt. “Voldemort,” he replied, “for ruining your life. And…” he hesitated a moment, glancing up at Harry. “Your relatives, for treating you like dirt beneath their shoes.”

“Even Dudley?” Harry asked. “He’s just a stupid kid, like us.”

“Even Dudley,” Tom confirmed, sighing. “I’m not perfect, Harry. I said you healed me, I didn’t say you turned me into a saint. I have been angry and hateful since I was six years old and the women who ran the orphanage strapped me to a bed and called in a priest to exorcise me when I accidentally set a boy’s hand on fire because he tried to steal my food for the third time in a day. But I’m trying, because you grew up in a similar nightmare and somehow came out of it without wanting to burn down the world around you. Yes, I still want to rule over the wizarding community of Britain, and yes, I still want to be the most powerful wizard in the world someday, but I want to try and do it the proper way, not like Voldemort, because it’s… it’s a better way to live.”

Harry looked stricken. “They did what to you?” he gasped.

Tom frowned, his nose wrinkling at Harry’s unwanted pity. “They exorcised me. The orphanage in which I grew up was state-run, but the matron, Mrs Cole, was a devout Catholic. She was terrified of me even before she witnessed me perform magic. Once I did…” He shuddered. “Well, the consequences were what they were.”

Harry surged forward and wrapped his arms around Tom in a fierce and unexpected hug, his warmth and love washing over him. “Okay, Tom,” he whispered, and Tom suddenly recognised that Harry did not feel pity toward him, but actual, true empathy, something that had never been afforded to him in his previous life. He blinked hard, denying the prickle at his eyes that was coming anew. “I can accept that you want to be a better person. I’m glad you’re trying. But you have to be truthful, at least with me. Can you do that from now on? Promise?”

“Of course, Harry,” Tom breathed, his throat hitching and his arms encircling him tightly. “For you, I’ll promise anything.”

They stayed like that for a long while, just clinging to each other in this new and confusing reality that was unfolding between them – Harry Potter and the wayward healed fragment of Voldemort’s soul. Two boys, two abandoned orphans, who for too long had had no one else, leaning into one another and soaking up the warmth that flowed between them.

Harry was the first to pull away. “Alright then, ‘Voldemort,’” he said, smiling nervously. “Shall we get changed and head to the Great Hall?”

Tom recoiled. “No, please don’t call me that,” he croaked. “Not even in jest. I don’t – I don’t want –”

“Oh god, I’m sorry,” Harry said, looking properly abashed. “You really don’t want to be him, do you?”

Tom grimaced and shook his head. “He did everything wrong. He was so obsessed with immortal power, he broke himself badly enough to create me. He completely lost sight of his own goals, and to be honest, I’m not even sure what they were anymore. I’ve carved out a place of my own in our world – and I really hope you won’t judge me too badly for what I’ve had to do to find it –"

“Tom,” Harry interrupted, taking his hand. “It’s okay, you can tell me when you’re ready, and I’ll do my best to understand. Let’s head down to the feast, yeah? Just Harry and Tom.”

Something new blossomed, soft and warm, in the bond between them, and Tom realised with a jolt that it was forgiveness. He pulled away. it was all a bit much, really – Harry’s love he could bask in, his empathy he could tolerate, but his forgiveness, so swift on the heels of betrayal, felt undeserved no matter how much Tom wanted it.

“Sure,” he said, his throat tight. “Just Harry and Tom.”

They cleaned up quickly and changed into pyjamas, as the rest of their house had been dressed as they had made their way through the common room. Then, after allowing his hair to be fussed over for a minute, Harry took Tom’s hand and dragged him bodily from the dorms and into the corridors. Tom’s heart quickened, and he squeezed Harry’s hand to reassure himself of his continued presence.

They arrived at the Great Hall to a cacophonous explosion of cheering – Dumbledore must’ve given some kind of explanation as to their actions earlier in the evening, because they were immediately descended upon by what seemed to be the entire student body of Hogwarts. Apparently, defeating the monster in the Chamber of Secrets was prone to making one a school hero, even to the Gryffindors who were, as a rule, icy to Slytherins in general, if not outright hostile. The two of them were swept over to their table in a sea of handshakes, pats on the back, and teary hugs.

 “So,” Draco said quietly, when the hubbub had at last died down and the students had begun to tuck into their feast, “what really happened down there?”

“Well,” Tom said carefully, “what did Dumbledore tell you?”

“Not that much,” Hermione replied. She had dragged Ron over from the Gryffindor table to sit with them, seizing Harry and Tom in such a fierce hug that he had had trouble breathing. “He mostly expounded upon your bravery and selflessness, but he did say that you had managed to subdue the monster in the Chamber and bring Ginny back to the school. The monster… was it what we thought it was? And who actually opened the Chamber of Secrets?”

So, Dumbledore had left the story vague enough for him and Harry to fill in only the blanks they wanted. Tom glanced around the table – the entire house was rapt with attention, waiting to hear their version of events. Well, no time like the present to spin a thrilling story and cement his position within Slytherin.

“Unfortunately, I can’t tell you who opened the Chamber of Secrets,” he replied. “To do so would be unfair to them, as they were bewitched by Dark magic prior to the start of the year.”

“The Imperius Curse!” Pansy gasped. “I knew it.”

“Similar, but not quite,” he acknowledged. “Suffice to say, they were not in control of their own actions, but their story is not mine to tell. All I can say is that they were forced to pretend to be the heir of Slytherin, even though they certainly are not – and yes, the creature in the Chamber of Secrets was a Basilisk.”

There was a collective gasp around the table as the other Slytherins began to whisper back and forth, shooting glances at both him and Harry. “A Basilisk!” an older boy to whom Tom had never spoken exclaimed. “You’re full of it, there’s no way a couple of second years took on a Basilisk and lived to tell the tale.”

“Of course I did,” Tom said smoothly. “After all, once face to face with the true heir of Slytherin, the serpent recognised my claim over it and swiftly bowed down.”

The whispers around them grew. “You, the heir of Slytherin?” Theodore Nott scoffed. “Prove it!”

“Certainly,” Tom smiled. “Scitalis,” he hissed, raising his right arm, “would you be so kind as to introduce yourself to my friends?”

The not-so-tiny-anymore adder slid down his arm and poked her head out of Tom’s sleeve, nodding to the students around them. 

Nott rolled his eyes. “A trick,” he said. “You probably just charmed it to do that.”

“Not a trick,” Harry smiled. “Watch.” He held out his hand. “Scitalis – come here,  lovely.” The adder happily slithered along the table and into his hand, winding up along his arm and onto his shoulder. The rest of their classmates stared in abject wonder.

“Parselmouths, the both of you?” the older Slytherin marvelled.

“Yes,” Tom replied, “although I have no idea how Harry came by Salazar’s gift, Professor Dumbledore told me earlier in the year of my heritage. I rather think he suspected me of opening the Chamber of Secrets at first – but I, of course, would never do such a thing.”

“So – what?” another classmate asked. “You’re telling me the heir of Slytherin is a Muggle and Mudblood lover?”

Tom stared directly into her eyes, and at his glance and subtle push into her mind, her mouth snapped shut. “I would ask you not to use such foul language to describe my friend,” he commanded. “I myself have no great love for Muggles, but to deny that their magical progeny are just as powerful as pure-bloods is utter folly.”

“But –” Nott stammered, “but your mother was a Rowle! A member of the Sacred Twenty Eight!”

“Yes,” Tom replied, “and my aunt is a pure-blood Squib. Harry’s mother was Muggle-born as well, as is Hermione, who consistently scores top marks in our classes. My own mother married a Muggle after I was born. Despite what Salazar Slytherin supposedly believed, I see no reason why blood status should matter.”

“‘Supposedly?’” Blaise Zabini was incredulous. “We all know exactly how Slytherin felt about Mud – I mean, Muggle-born witches and wizards. He wanted them removed from Hogwarts, isn’t the Chamber of Secrets proof of that?”

“Is it?” Tom asked, taking a slow swallow of his pumpkin juice. “When I spoke to the Basilisk, it was only concerned about removing those who were not ‘worthy,’ and as my ancestor’s writings have been lost to the test of time, who knows exactly what he meant?” In all honesty, Tom himself didn’t know – he vaguely remembered uncovering a tome Salazar had written, struggling through the Old English writings and coming away with the sense that his ancestor had meant those who didn’t appreciate their magical gifts should be removed from Hogwarts. Whether that meant Muggle-born students or those who took their gifts for granted, however, he couldn’t say. “In any case,” he continued, “it hardly matters – I am the heir of Slytherin, and I do not deem any student in the castle to be unworthy, nor do I wish for my family’s legacy to continue standing on the wrong side of history.”

By the wide-eyed looks of his house mates, he could tell that his words were making an impression. “Bloody hell,” Nott finally said. “Malfoy, did you know all this? I’m starting to see why you went rogue on us.”

Draco nodded faintly. “More or less.”

The feast went on and on, into the night and early hours of the morning. The sun was gleaming high in the sky by the time the Great Hall finally emptied out, the students rubbing at their eyes and trundling off to their dorm rooms to catch an early morning nap before the day began in earnest. Tom and Harry, exhaustion from their ordeal in the Chamber of Secrets finally catching up with them, did not even make it that far, opting instead to curl up together on one of the sofas in front of the fire.

The days that followed were some of the most eye-opening Tom had ever experienced. In his previous life, he had had to claw and scrabble for power, submitting himself to the archaic beliefs of his housemates and only truly gaining their respect when he had opened the Chamber of Secrets and taken Apophis on a rampage. In this life, the true heir of Slytherin had opened the Chamber not to kill, but to save, and he did not ascribe to blood purity nonsense – the school was soon buzzing with the news.

The one downside to revealing that he didn’t care for blood politics was that some of the older Slytherins, particularly those from very old, very pure family lines began to regard him warily. It hardly mattered, most of the school was in awe of the fact that they walked the halls with not only Harry Potter, who had proven himself a hero twice over, but a boy who not only claimed a direct lineage to one of the founders but also had the means by which to prove it. So too were the Slytherins from newer family lines, the few half-bloods, and most of the younger students. It made Tom almost giddy, how well his second chance at life was going – securing himself a position of power was so easy.

As with all things, term finally came to an end, and so it was that Tom found himself aboard the Hogwarts express once more, alone with Harry this time, his fingers running through messy black hair where Harry’s head lay cradled in his lap.

“So,” Tom said, rather gloomily, “back to the Weasleys for you then, I suppose.”

“Oh, no – Professor Snape didn’t tell you?” Harry asked dreamily. “He pulled me aside after the leaving feast – apparently Mr Weasley’s won the Annual Daily Prophet Prize Draw. They’ll be heading off to Egypt to visit Bill soon, so I get to stay with you and Mrs Figg this summer.”

A thrill coursed through him. His brain was spinning instantly, whirling with the endless possibilities this summer would bring – they could spend their days Flooing to Diagon Alley for ice cream at Florian Fortesque’s, meet up with Hermione to prepare for third year, sneak off to the Malfoys’ to play Quidditch with Draco – and through all of it Harry would be at his side.

“That’s wonderful, Harry,” he breathed.

“Mm,” Harry agreed sleepily. “Tom?”

“Yes Harry?” 

“Can you tell me about your life before Hogwarts?” Harry asked. “Your real life, I mean. I want to know who Tom Riddle was – who you were – before you… well, you know.”

So Tom told him. He described the miserable days at Wool's, where the staff frequently referred to them with numbers, rather than their names. Where food was scarce and clothing was inadequate, and never actually your own. He told him how the lack of care brought out monsters in them all, but in Tom, who had magic, the monster was far worse. He told the story of that first awful visit from Dumbledore, where initial fear had turned to hope and excitement, only to be instantly dashed by betrayal.

He was shaking slightly as they finally rolled into the station, his tale come to a close and Harry sitting up beside him, holding him tight. It would have been shameful, in front of any other, to exhibit such weakness at reliving his horrific upbringing – but Harry would not judge him nor use it against him. Harry would never, not being the one person in the world who could understand.

He collected himself as they retrieved their belongings and departed the train, joining the bubbly crowd. They exchanged farewells with their friends, promising to contact each other and arrange times to meet up, their eyes glistening with excitement for the summer. Try as he might, Tom could not feel the same exuberance – Arabella’s house was not his home, Hogwarts was. But then he looked at Harry – his first friend, the boy he loved, his would-be vanquisher and defender both – who would be with him every day while away from school. Perhaps the house on Wisteria Walk might actually feel like home after all with Harry by his side.

With one last, longing look back at the brilliant scarlet of the Hogwarts Express, Tom lifted his luggage, took Harry’s hand, and stepped with him back into the Muggle World.