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Chapter Text

The castle was too quiet.

Harry lay stiffly in the narrow hospital bed, staring up at the canopy above him. Every muscle in his body ached, but it was a distant kind of pain, dulled by the fog clinging to his mind. Somewhere nearby, Madame Pomfrey was bustling about, clinking glass bottles together. Somewhere even closer, he heard the low murmur of voices.

The Triwizard Cup. The graveyard. Cedric.

The killing curse. The cauldron.

The rise of Voldemort, flesh and bone restored.

Harry squeezed his eyes shut, willing the memories away, but they pressed against him, thick, suffocating.

The footsteps approached. A chair scraped quietly against the stone floor.

He opened his eyes.

Dumbledore sat beside him, hands folded neatly on his lap, a strange tightness in his weathered face. For a moment, he only looked at Harry, as if searching for something in the lines of his face.

“Harry,” Dumbledore said, voice low and roughened by something that sounded suspiciously like sorrow. “I am so very sorry.”

Harry said nothing.

There were no words big enough to hold the weight he carried now.

After a pause, Dumbledore continued, voice gentler, almost hesitant.

“You survived,” he said. “In doing so, you accomplished something few ever have: you faced death, and came back.”

Harry turned his head away, staring at the darkened windows across the room.

“I shouldn’t have,” he muttered. “Cedric!”

“Cedric’s death lies at Voldemort’s feet,” Dumbledore said sharply. “Do not carry blame that is not yours.”

Harry swallowed hard, his throat thick.

But he said nothing.

Dumbledore’s expression softened again.

“There are… things you must understand,” he said. “Matters I had hoped to delay discussing until you were older. Stronger.”

Harry looked back at him, hollowed out by too much too soon.

“I’m listening,” he said.

The old man sighed, deeply.

“When Voldemort returned,” Dumbledore said, “he used your blood to remake his body.”

Harry nodded once. He remembered the sharp pain, the sickening sight of his blood feeding the dark magic.

“This,” Dumbledore went on, “changed the protections your mother left you. They no longer prevent him from touching you. He carries a trace of your mother’s sacrifice in his veins now. Ironically, it tethered you more closely.”

Harry felt a chill race through him.

“So… he can touch me now,” Harry said, voice flat.

“Yes,” Dumbledore said. “But it also means…” His eyes gleamed behind his glasses. “There is a bond between you he cannot sever. And that bond, Harry, is love.”

Harry stared.

Love? Against Voldemort?

How could that possibly matter?

But Dumbledore was not finished.

“I must show you something,” he said, rising slowly.

At that moment, Madam Pomfrey appeared as if summoned. She immediately began poking and prodding Harry, waving her wand over him and muttering under her breath about teenagers, underage nonsense, and irresponsible adults making children play hero

“I’d like to speak with him,” Dumbledore said gently.

Madam Pomfrey turned, clearly not pleased. “He needs rest, Headmaster. At least another hour. The potion hasn’t even had time to settle.”

“I promise not to keep him long,” Dumbledore replied. “And I will bring him back to you.”

She huffed, folding her arms. “You always say that, and they always come back worse off.”

Dumbledore offered her a faint smile. “Not tonight.”

Still grumbling under her breath, she stepped aside. “Ten minutes, no more. And if he collapses, it’s your fault.”

Harry stood slowly, his legs a little unsteady. Madam Pomfrey moved to his side at once, checking his pulse, pressing the back of her hand to his forehead.

“I’m fine,” Harry said, though he didn’t feel it.

“You’re not,” she muttered, “but off you go then. Honestly.”

He followed Dumbledore into the corridor. The castle halls were dim, the torchlight dancing over the walls. They walked in silence. Dumbledore’s robes whispered as he moved. Harry stayed close behind, each step echoing in the quiet.

The gargoyle shifted aside without a word. The spiral staircase turned gently beneath them.

Inside the office, Fawkes dozed in silence. The instruments on the shelves murmured and clicked.

Dumbledore moved to a cabinet and lifted out a shallow stone basin etched with ancient markings. The Pensieve.

“I must show you something,” he said, his voice low.

He raised his wand and flicked it once. Silver mist spilled from the tip, curling in the air as it poured into the basin. It swirled, deepened, and began to glow.

“Look,” Dumbledore said quietly.

The mist sharpened into a scene.

A dingy, gray orphanage.

Rain lashed the windows.

Inside, a small boy sat stiffly on a thin mattress, dark hair hanging in his eyes, arms crossed defensively over his chest.

Harry leaned forward.

The boy, he must have been no older than Harry had been when he first learned he was a wizard, had a hardness to him, a cold watchfulness that made Harry’s stomach twist.

“You’re Tom Riddle,” Dumbledore’s voice said from the memory, calm but firm.

The boy’s mouth curled into a cautious, wary sneer.

“You’re from the school,” he said.

“Yes,” Dumbledore said. “Hogwarts.”

For a moment, the boy’s expression cracked. Wonder, raw and hungry, flickered through his face.

It was gone in a breath, replaced by suspicion.

The scene shifted, fragments of memory bleeding into each other:

Tom stealing from the other children.

Tom making a rabbit hang, lifeless, from the rafters.

Tom speaking to a snake, words slipping out in a hiss, Harry somehow understood.

And over it all, the unbearable loneliness.

The mist faded.

Dumbledore lowered his wand.

“He was not born evil,” Dumbledore said, voice rough. “He was born unloved.”

Harry sat very still.

“There is a power in you, Harry, that Voldemort never knew,” Dumbledore said. “A power he fears because he cannot comprehend it. Because he has never felt it.”

He leaned forward, his gaze piercing.

“That power is love.”

Harry swallowed.

He thought of the graveyard, of Voldemort’s fury, his need to force the Death Eaters to kneel, to obey, to call him ‘Lord.’

Not loyalty.

Not friendship.

Not love.

Just power.

Because it was the only thing he had ever learned to seek.

Harry’s heart ached with something he couldn’t name.

“So what do I do?” Harry whispered.

Dumbledore’s smile was sad and terribly old.

“You must find your own way,” he said. “But know this: love is not weakness. It is a strength greater than any magic Voldemort has ever known.”

Harry didn’t sleep that night.

He lay in the hospital wing, staring up at the dark ceiling, the echoes of Dumbledore’s words gnawing at the inside of his skull.

"He was not born evil. He was born unloved."

 The image of the boy in the orphanage— small, sharp-eyed, alone —burned behind his eyes.

A boy who could move things without touching them. 

 A boy who spoke in strange tongues.

 A boy who hoarded secrets like armor.

Harry clenched his hands into fists against the stiff sheets.

He had known that kind of loneliness too.

The cupboard under the stairs.
The hunger.
The desperate wishing for someone, anyone, to notice him.

The aching silence after nights spent crying into his pillow so the Dursleys wouldn’t hear.

He had been that boy once. Maybe he still was, in the deepest parts of himself.

But someone had seen him.

Someone had reached out a hand.
Hagrid, with his warm smile and clumsy affection.
Ron, shoving sandwiches into his hand on the Hogwarts Express.
Hermione, throwing herself between him and a troll without hesitation.

Someone had loved him.

Tom Riddle had never had that.
Not even once.

Harry pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, breathing hard.

He didn’t know if Voldemort could be saved.

He didn’t even know if he should want him to be.

But in the quiet hollow of his heart, he knew this:

If he turned away from Tom Riddle, he was turning away from himself.

And Harry Potter had spent too long fighting to live, to love, to let that happen.

Not for Voldemort.
Not for Dumbledore.

Not even for the world. 

For himself.

Because he knew what it felt like to be a boy in a dark place, waiting for someone to see him.

Harry let out a long, shuddering breath. The decision settled over him like a cloak.

Heavy.

Final.

He would reach out.

He would love.

Even if it cost him everything.

Harry wasn’t sure how it started.
Maybe it was the scar burning in the night.
Maybe it was the memory of Dumbledore’s voice.
Maybe it was the heavy, aching knowledge that if he didn’t reach out, no one ever would.

But lying stiff in the hospital wing bed, the castle silent around him, Harry closed his eyes. Instead of blocking the pain out, he leaned into it.

He opened the connection.

At first, it was only darkness.
Heavy. Suffocating.
The taste of iron in his mouth.

Then..
Light. Cold and green.
The sharp crack of a body hitting the ground.

"Kill the spare."

Cedric.

Harry flinched, curling in on himself.
He knew this place.

The graveyard.
The grave where Tom Riddle Sr. lay beneath a crumbling stone.
The cauldron steaming with sickly vapors.

Voldemort stood before him, tall and skeletal, triumphant.

Mocking.

"You see, Harry," Voldemort purred in the dream, circling him like a vulture,
"you are nothing without the protection of others. Nothing without your mother's blood. Nothing without your friends."

Around them, Death Eaters laughed—shadows with no faces.

Harry stumbled backward, hands clenching.
Pain lanced through his forehead. His scar seared.

He wasn’t ready.
He wasn’t ready.

The dream tightened around him, squeezing until he could barely breathe.
He heard Cedric’s body hit the ground again and again, like a heartbeat.

"Kill the spare."

Harry gasped and wrenched himself awake.

He sat up in bed, chest heaving, cold sweat slicking his skin.

Harry pressed his palms to his scar, willing the echoes away.

He had failed.

He had reached out, and found only hate, only death, only horror.

Just like always.

Trembling, Harry wrapped his arms around his knees and rocked slightly, staring into the darkness.

Was this what Dumbledore had meant?
Was this the "love" he was supposed to offer?
Against this?

For a long time, he sat there, shivering.
But deep down, under the fear, a stubborn ember still burned.

Try again.
Not tonight.
Not yet.
But he would.

Because he had seen the boy in the orphanage.
Because he had seen himself.
Because someone had once chosen to love Harry Potter when he was nothing but a lonely boy in a cupboard.

And because if he didn’t try, that boy in the memory, the boy who had become Voldemort, would stay lost forever.

Chapter Text

The end of term blurred past Harry like a fever dream.

Classes, exams, endless whispers about Cedric's death. It all washed over him without touching.

He walked the halls like a ghost, feeling the burn of his scar deep in his bones.

At night, he tried.

Tentatively at first. He reached for the connection, the thin silver thread that pulsed between him and Voldemort.

Each time he opened it, it was like stepping into a nightmare.

The first dream:
Green light flashing.
Quirrell screaming as his skin burned away under Harry’s hands.

Harry woke up gagging on the taste of ash.

The second dream:
The Chamber of Secrets.
Ginny pale as death, her body crumpled on the wet stone.
The basilisk’s corpse steaming nearby.

The young Tom Riddle smiling at him from across the room.

Cold, beautiful, triumphant.

Harry jerked awake with a sob trapped in his throat.

The third dream:
The shrieks of Dementors.
The shriveling pull of happiness being torn from him.
The echo of his mother’s scream.

"Not Harry, please, not Harry!"

He pressed his face into his pillow, shaking, refusing to cry.

The fourth dream:
The graveyard.
Again and again.
Cedric falling.
Voldemort rising.
Laughter like broken glass.

Each time Harry reached out, he found only pain.
Each time, he pulled back, panting, sweating, empty.

By the time the Hogwarts Express pulled into King’s Cross Station, Harry was hollowed out by exhaustion.
He didn’t tell Ron or Hermione.
He didn’t know how.

What could he say?
That he was chasing nightmares?
That he was trying to love the thing he hated most?

They wouldn’t understand.
Maybe no one would.

The Dursleys barely acknowledged him when he dragged his trunk back to Privet Drive.

No greetings.
No questions.

Uncle Vernon barked an order about keeping out of sight.
Aunt Petunia wrinkled her nose and muttered about "freakishness."
Dudley sneered and slammed his door.

Harry didn’t bother unpacking.

He didn’t cry.

There weren’t enough pieces of him left for crying.

The connection pulsed under his scar, low and steady.

Harry closed his eyes.

He didn’t reach this time.

He didn’t force it open.

He just let himself feel the loneliness.

Let it bleed into the space between him and Voldemort like smoke from a dying fire.

And the dream came.

Not the graveyard.

Not the Chamber.

Not the blood and the screams.

A gray stone corridor.

Long. Endless.

Rows of narrow beds, each one empty except for a small, still figure.

A child sat on the edge of one bed, legs swinging above the floor.

Thin. Pale.
Dark hair falling into wide, wary eyes.

Tom.

Not the Dark Lord.

Not the monster.

Just a boy.

He sat there, silent, as the world passed him by.

Just waiting , hands folded tightly in his lap, as if he believed, if he sat still enough, quiet enough, someone might finally see him.

Harry stood at the far end of the corridor, frozen.

He didn’t dare move.

The dream was fragile as spun glass.

But Tom didn't see him.

He just stared at the floor, waiting.

Waiting for someone who would never come.

When Harry woke, there were tears on his face.

He wiped them away roughly, heart pounding.

For the first time since the graveyard, he hadn’t woken to horror.
For the first time, he hadn’t seen Voldemort.

He had seen Tom.

And Harry knew: deep in his chest, like a hand closing around his heart.

This was where he had to begin.

Not with the monster.

With the boy.

The boy no one had ever chosen.

The dreams did not come with violence anymore.

No green light.
No graveyards.
No screams.

Only silence.

Only Tom.

Each night, Harry slipped into sleep with a knot of fear twisting in his chest, bracing for the worst.

Each night, he found himself standing in the cold corridors of the orphanage again.

The beds were neatly made, thin blankets pulled tight across narrow mattresses.
The windows rattled faintly in the wind.

And there, always there, was Tom.

Small.
Solitary.
Staring at nothing.

He did not weep.
He did not rage.

He simply waited, as if the world might remember him if he stayed very, very still.

At first, Harry stayed far away.

He pressed himself against the edges of the dream, barely breathing.

He didn't dare speak.

The connection between them was too fragile, like a spider’s thread stretched thin across a chasm.

Harry knew if he startled Tom, if he reached too soon, he boy might vanish altogether, or worse, wake the monster sleeping inside him.

So Harry waited too.

Silent.

Present.

The days at Privet Drive were long and suffocating.

The Dursleys ignored him as if he didn’t exist.
Meals left outside his door, cold and half-hearted.

No letters from friends.

Just silence and stale air and loneliness.

Harry didn’t mind.

The longer he stayed invisible, the longer he could slip back into the dreams at night.

Where Tom waited.

Alone.

Just like him.

Slowly, things changed.

Small things.

Tiny cracks in the endless gray.

One night, Tom shifted on his bed and glanced toward the doorway where Harry stood, frowning slightly as if sensing a disturbance in the stillness.

Another night, Harry sat down cross-legged on the cold floor, still across the room. Tom’s gaze lingering on him, uncertain but no longer dismissive.

No words passed between them.

Not yet.

Only the weight of being seen.

The air in the dreams was different.

Heavier.

Full of unsaid things.

Harry would find Tom sitting by the window, forehead pressed against the cold glass, watching the rain.

Sometimes Harry sat on the floor nearby, reading a book that didn't exist.

Sometimes he simply rested his chin on his knees and waited.

Waited for Tom to be ready.

One night, the dream shifted.

Harry found himself not in the dormitory, but in the orphanage courtyard.

A broken swing creaked in the dark.
The high stone walls pressed in.

Tom sat alone in the middle of the yard, his arms wrapped tightly around himself, small shoulders shaking, though whether from cold or something deeper, Harry couldn’t tell.

This time, Harry didn’t linger at the edges.

He crossed the cracked stones.

Slowly.

Cautiously.

He knelt a few feet away.

Waited.

Said nothing.

Tom lifted his head.

His face was pale, blotchy, furious, and terrified .

"Who are you?" he demanded.

His voice was high and brittle, a cornered animal daring to bare its teeth.

Harry swallowed hard.

He had imagined this moment a hundred times.
A thousand.

He had never thought it would feel like this:
so small.
so real.
so unbearably human .

"I'm Harry," he said softly.

He didn't offer a hand.

He didn't move closer.

He only spoke, voice low, like one might speak to a skittish bird.

"I'm just... here."

Tom stared at him, breathing hard.

"You shouldn't be," he said, not quite a snarl.

Harry smiled, sad and true.

"Neither should you."

For a long, long moment, Tom said nothing.

Then,

Almost too quietly to hear:

"Will you stay?"

Harry felt something twist painfully in his chest.

He nodded.

"I'll stay."

And he did.

All night, he stayed.

Sitting beside a boy no one had ever stayed for.

Until the gray light of dawn pulled him back into the waking world, and the world of magic and war and death closed in again.

But in the dream…

for the first time…

Tom Riddle was not alone.

Chapter Text

The dreamscape was gray as always, the endless corridors of the orphanage, the peeling

paint, the leaking windows, but there was a strange stillness to it, like the breathless moment before a storm.

Tom sat cross-legged on his bed, his dark hair falling into his eyes, his small fingers tracing circles on the threadbare blanket.

Harry sat nearby, not close enough to threaten, but close enough to be felt. For a long time, there was only the sound of the rain against the glass. Then, without lifting his head, Tom said:

"Why are you here?"

His voice was small. Raw.

"I don't know," Harry said quietly. "I just... I thought you shouldn’t be alone."

Tom looked up then, sharp gray eyes flickering with something Harry couldn’t name. Hope. Fury. Fear.

"No one stays," Tom said.

"I will," Harry said.

Simple. True.

Tom stared at him for a long, long moment, as if weighing the truth of it.

And then, small, so small Harry almost missed it, Tom nodded.

The dream shattered like glass.

He was back in the graveyard.

He was on the floor of the Chamber.

He was under the cold, blind gaze of the basilisk.

He was choking on the laughter of a boy with red eyes.

And in the dream, a third presence. Coiled, furious, familiar.

Voldemort.. The true Voldemort.

Not the boy. The man. The monster.

He hissed and tore at the walls of the dream, striking Harry across the mind like a whip.

"Mine," Voldemort spat into the connection. "Mine, mine, mine."

Harry screamed.

The world burned.

The morning after the dream shattered, Harry woke late, his head pounding. The house was silent around him.

The Dursleys had already left for the day, leaving the house still and cold, the air heavy with dust and the faint smell of burnt toast.

He sat on the edge of the bed for a long time, trying to steady his breathing.

His scar throbbed with a low, sickly pulse. The connection was thin now, like a frayed wire humming somewhere deep in his skull.

Tom was gone. Or hiding.

And Harry, he didn’t know what to do anymore. He felt hollow, brittle, as if one wrong breath would crack him in two.

He needed air.

Still in the oversized clothes he had thrown on half-blind, Harry slipped out of the house and onto the baking asphalt of Privet Drive.

The sun was too bright.
The sky too blue.
The world going about its business, oblivious to the fact that somewhere, somehow, something had broken.

He walked aimlessly. Past clipped hedges and perfect gardens. Past neighbors who turned their eyes away.

His feet carried him to the small, half-abandoned park near Magnolia Crescent, the one with the broken swings and rusted slide.

He sat down on the cracked curb, elbows on his knees, head hanging.

And thought.

Why had the dreams turned violent after so many quiet nights of simply sitting beside Tom?

Harry clenched his fists in his lap. Maybe Dumbledore had been wrong. Maybe love wasn’t stronger than hate after all. Maybe some wounds went too deep. Maybe…

He didn’t hear Dudley until the boy's heavy footsteps scuffed the pavement behind him.

"Where d’you think you’re doing, freak?" Dudley jeered, swaggering closer, a cruel grin twisting his face.

Harry didn’t have the energy to respond.

He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and started walking, staring straight ahead. Dudley snorted and fell into step beside him, muttering under his breath. They cut through the narrow alley shortcut back toward Privet Drive. Halfway through, the world changed.

The air turned to ice.

The shadows lengthened unnaturally.

The smell of decay wrapped around them, thick and suffocating.

Harry stopped dead.

Dudley stumbled, cursing, rubbing his arms against the sudden cold.

"Wh-what…?"

Two cloaked figures drifted toward them, black robes billowing though no wind blew.

Dementors.

Harry’s heart slammed into his ribs. He yanked out his wand.

"EXPECTO PATRONUM!" he cried, but only a thin mist sputtered from the tip.

The Dementors glided closer. Harry’s knees buckled as the familiar screaming rose in his ears.

"Not Harry, please!"

Beside him, Dudley whimpered and dropped to his knees, clutching his head. Harry fought to stand.

"EXPECTO PATRONUM!" he shouted again. A silver wisp shot from his wand, weak, flickering.

The Dementors’ rotted hands reached out.

With a final desperate cry, Harry forced the spell through his veins.

"EXPECTO PATRONUM!"

A stag exploded from his wand, bright, shining, blinding, chasing the Dementors back into the shadows.

Harry staggered. His knees gave out. He heard Dudley’s choked sob somewhere behind him.

The last thing he saw was the silver stag galloping into the night.

And then darkness swallowed him whole.

He dreamed.

Not of Tom.

Not of the boy waiting by the window.

He dreamed of the Dementors.

Of one turning toward him, its hood falling back, revealing not decay but a familiar, terrible face.

Voldemort.

Mouth curled in a smile.

Eyes glowing.

And as the Dementor bent low over him, Harry felt the last light inside him flicker, and nearly go out.

He woke gasping.

The ceiling above him was wrong, cracked and high, dark with old water stains.

The air smelled of dust, mildew, and old wood.

He wasn't at Privet Drive.

He wasn't anywhere he knew.

The bed under him was stiff and unfamiliar.

The blankets smelled of mothballs.

He tried to sit up, and nearly collapsed again.

A hand caught his shoulder, firm but gentle.

"Easy," came a low voice.
Lupin.

Harry blinked up at him.

"You’re at Grimmauld Place," Lupin said quietly, easing him back against the pillows. "You’re safe."

Safe.

The word felt heavy, almost meaningless.

Harry’s mind spun, trying to make sense of it.

He heard voices downstairs, angry, panicked.

Sirius shouting, hoarse and wild, something he couldn’t understand.

Lupin sighed and wiped Harry’s forehead with a damp cloth.

"You were attacked," he said gently. "You conjured a Patronus. You saved yourself. And Dudley."

Dudley.

Harry swallowed thickly.

"Is he…?"

"He's fine," Lupin said, smiling faintly. "Just confused."

Harry closed his eyes.

He remembered the dream, the Dementor’s kiss hovering over him, the way Voldemort’s presence had filled the darkness.

And he remembered, the faintest thread of warmth, still there.

Still alive.

The connection hadn't been severed completely.

It was frayed.

It was bleeding.

But it was still there.

Somewhere deep inside the ruin Voldemort had tried to leave him, Tom Riddle was still waiting.

And Harry would find him.

The letter arrived the same night Harry woke at Grimmauld Place.

Lupin found it tucked under the heavy front door, sealed in thick parchment, bearing the ominous black stamp of the Ministry of Magic.

Sirius read it first, his hands shaking with fury.

"This is a bloody outrage!" he roared, crumpling the letter in his fist. "Summoning him to court like some criminal!"

Across the room, Lupin was already smoothing the summons flat against the table, his face tight.

"August twelfth," he read aloud, voice grim. "Disciplinary hearing for underage magic. At the Ministry."

Harry sat quietly on the battered sofa, feeling strangely detached from it all.

Sirius was still raging, his voice echoing through the gloomy halls of Grimmauld Place.

"You did nothing wrong, Harry," Lupin said, quieter but no less fierce. He came to sit beside Harry, placing a firm hand on his shoulder. "You defended yourself. You defended Dudley. That's more than justified."

Sirius turned from the fireplace, face pale with anger.

"We’ll fight this," he said. "You won’t be expelled. I won’t let them."

Harry nodded numbly.

But the words barely touched him.

It didn’t matter.

Expelled, not expelled, free, imprisoned.

It didn’t matter.

All that mattered was Tom.

The frayed connection. The dreamscape left cold and broken. The boy who was slipping away from him.

The next few days blurred.

Grimmauld Place groaned and shuddered with the sounds of cleaning, dusty cabinets flung open, cursed objects hurled out of windows, shrieks from portrait frames.

Ron and Hermione were always nearby.

They hovered awkwardly, clutching buckets and cloths, scraping doxies from the ceiling and peeling wallpaper that muttered insults under its breath.

They tried to talk.

Tried to make it normal.

"Told you Mum wouldn't let us write" Ron muttered one afternoon, his ears pink. "Dumbledore’s orders. Said it was for your own good."

"We wanted to," Hermione added quickly, glancing over from where she was scrubbing a moldy cabinet. "We did, Harry. But, it wasn't safe."

Harry shrugged, dusting off an old book without really seeing it. He didn’t blame them. He didn’t blame anyone.

But he couldn't seem to reach them anymore. Their words washed over him like rain on stone.

All his waking thoughts curled inward now, toward the wounded thread between him and Tom Riddle.

How do I find him again?
How do I make him trust me?
How do I save him before it’s too late?

At night, Harry tried.

Every night, he lay in the creaking bed at Grimmauld Place, surrounded by the dusty weight of old magic, and closed his eyes.

He opened the connection carefully, gently, like one might approach a wounded animal.

The dreamscape returned, flickering and uncertain.

The orphanage corridors.
The rain-streaked windows.
The small, thin figure sitting curled in the corner of the room.

Tom did not run from him.
But he did not move toward him either.

He watched Harry with wary, hollow eyes.

Harry spoke sometimes, soft as the falling rain:

"I'm still here."
"I'm not leaving you."

The day of the hearing arrived heavy and gray.

Mr. Weasley came early to collect him.

Sirius hugged him tightly at the door, hands rough against Harry’s shoulders.

"Be brave," he muttered. "And remember, you did nothing wrong."

Lupin nodded solemnly from the hall, his arms crossed tight.

The Ministry was a blur of marble and whispers and judging eyes.

Harry barely heard the charges read aloud.

He stood stiff and cold before the council, feeling the eyes of the Wizengamot burning into his skin.

But none of it touched him.

He was thinking of Tom. Of the boy who had waited, and waited, and waited for someone to see him.

And when Dumbledore entered, tall, composed, indifferent, Harry felt something shift inside him. Dumbledore barely glanced his way. He spoke on Harry's behalf, precise, clinical, detached.

No warmth.

No loyalty.

When the council finally ruled Harry cleared of all charges, Mr. Weasley clapped him on the back, beaming.

Harry smiled faintly.

That night, back at Grimmauld Place, Harry fell into sleep without meaning to.

And he dreamed.

The orphanage again.

The cold corridors.

The leaking roof.

Tom Riddle sat alone in his room. No other children. No staff. Just him and the silence he had learned to command.

Then Dumbledore walked in.

“I’m Professor Dumbledore,” he said. “I’ve come to offer you a place at my school called Hogwarts.”

Tom stared, his expression blank.

“I don’t believe you,” he said flatly.

Then Dumbledore asked Tom to explain the things he could do.

For a moment, Tom said nothing. Then, slowly, he began to list them.

Tom told him about how he could make animals obey him without speaking. How he made a boy’s nose bleed without touching him. How he could hide things in places no one could ever find.

Dumbledore listened carefully, and when Tom finished, he said something that made the world shift under his feet.

“You’re not mad. You’re a wizard.”

“Prove it.”

The man raised his wand.

Fire roared from the wardrobe behind him. Tom flinched. It was real. Flames danced and twisted up the wood, then, just as quickly, vanished. The wardrobe stood untouched. The man held out his hand and conjured fire again, this time in his palm. Then he made the chair move without speaking a word.

“At Hogwarts, you will be taught to use your abilities. But stealing, bullying, and using magic to harm others will not be tolerated.”

Tom bristled.

Still, he kept his voice steady when he spoke again.

“I can speak to snakes. I found out when I was small. They find me. They whisper things. No one else can hear them.”

Harry woke with a gasp, sweat cooling on his skin.

His fists clenched the blanket, trembling.

How could he?

Dumbledore.
The man he had trusted.
The man the world revered.
Had looked at a broken boy and seen only a problem to be managed.

Not a soul to be saved.

Not a child to be loved.

Harry stared into the darkness.

And for the first time, truly and fully, he questioned whether Dumbledore had ever understood at all.

Chapter Text

The days after the trial slipped past in a dull, colorless blur.

Grimmauld Place groaned and whispered around him, the old house never slept, not really, and neither did Harry.

He went through the motions: helping clean, scrubbing ancient grime from cursed doorknobs, stuffing old robes and brittle scrolls into dusty trunks. He nodded at Hermione’s endless worried chatter, smiled at Ron’s clumsy jokes about doxies and screaming portraits.

He packed his trunk for Hogwarts.

He went to Diagon Alley, trailing after the others as they bought books and supplies, letting Sirius thrust gold into his hand, letting Mrs. Weasley fret over the fit of his robes.

And all the while,

Inside…Harry was somewhere else.

The connection to Tom was still there.

Thin. Trembling. Alive.

At night, Harry slipped into dreams with trembling fingers and found the orphanage again: the cold corridors, the leaking ceilings, the boy sitting alone in the shadowed corner of a narrow room.

Tom no longer looked furious.

Just wary.

Just tired.

Just small.

Harry sat on the floor across from him every night. Sometimes speaking. Sometimes just breathing in the same thin, gray air.

"You're not alone," Harry said once, voice breaking the silence like a prayer.

Tom didn’t answer.

But he didn’t leave.

During the day, Harry planned.

He sat through long, dreary afternoons in the gloomy drawing room of Grimmauld Place, pretending to study his spellbooks while Sirius and Lupin whispered worriedly in the hall.

He thought about the dreams.

He thought about the moment Dumbledore had burned Tom’s treasures. Those small, stolen things that had meant everything to a boy no one had ever loved.

Harry would not make the same mistake.

He wouldn't destroy Tom’s trust.

He would build it.

Stone by stone.

Word by word.

He would meet Tom at the orphanage again, but this time, it would be Harry.

Not Dumbledore.

It would be Harry who told him he was a wizard. It would be Harry who promised him that one day he would have his own treasures, his own place, his own name shining in gold.

It would be Harry who said:

"You don’t have to steal love, Tom. You don’t have to be alone. I will stay.I will never leave you."

And maybe, maybe it wouldn’t be too late.

Maybe even now, even after everything, the boy Tom Riddle could be saved.

Everyone noticed Harry changing.

Of course they did.

They noticed the shadows under his eyes, the sharpness of his cheekbones, the way his hands sometimes trembled when he reached for his wand.

They murmured over dinners he barely touched.

"The Dementors must have done more damage than we thought."
"Maybe the Dursleys starved him again this summer."

They fussed about feeding him more, about letting him rest.

But they never asked. 

None of them did.

Not Sirius.
Not Mrs. Weasley.
Not even Ron and Hermione.

And Harry didn’t offer them the truth.

How could he?

They wouldn’t understand.

They wouldn’t understand that every breath he took now was for a boy they would have left behind without a second thought.

His birthday had been loud. Cakes, laughter, half a dozen presents, and Mrs. Weasley’s teary-eyed insistence that he was "so very loved." Everyone had tried so hard. Harry had smiled, said thank you, even blown out the candles.

But all he could think about was Tom. Had he ever had a birthday cake? A gift? Would anyone have noticed if he hadn’t made it to eleven?

Sometimes, Harry felt like a fraud in his own skin.

September came. The first of the month dawned cool and misty.

Harry woke early, dressed without speaking, and carried his trunk down to the front hall.

Mrs. Weasley fussed over breakfast he couldn’t eat.

Hermione wrung her hands.

Ron jabbered nervously about Quidditch and O.W.L.s.

Harry only nodded, his mind far away.

His dreams had been strange the night before, not sharp, not broken, but soft.

Tom had almost smiled.

Almost.

At King’s Cross Station, the crowds pressed thick around them.

Mrs. Weasley hugged him so tightly he thought she might never let go, and a great black dog lurking near the far end of the platform, slipping through the legs of the crowd like a shadow.

Padfoot.

Sirius.

The dog's yellow eyes met Harry’s across the mist and noise.

And Harry felt something in his chest tighten, painfully, achingly.

He lifted his hand, just a little.

Padfoot dipped his shaggy head once, solemn and proud, before melting back into the crowd.

Gone.

Harry boarded the train.

He found a compartment near the end, slid the door shut, rested his forehead against the cool glass.

The train lurched forward.

Smoke and steam curled past the window, swallowing the platform, swallowing London.

Swallowing everything he had ever known.

Harry closed his eyes.

He thought of Tom Riddle sitting alone by the window of the orphanage, clutching a battered box of stolen treasures.

He thought of the boy the world had failed again and again.

And he promised, silently:

This year, I will not fail you.

No matter the cost.

No matter what the world thought of him.

Harry Potter was going to save Tom Riddle.

Even if it killed him.

The Hogwarts Express rattled northward under a pale, brooding sky.

Harry sat by the window, his forehead pressed to the cold glass, watching the gray hills unspool. Ron and Hermione sat across from him, murmuring over a stack of books and parchment.

He barely heard them.

The train compartment buzzed faintly with the chatter of other students, nervous, excited, suspicious.

Harry heard his name hissed once or twice from behind doors. He didn't react. He already knew what they were saying.

He had seen it in their eyes at the station, in the way they stepped back, as if he were something contagious.

"He’s mad, they say."
"Says You-Know-Who’s back, but where’s the proof?"
"Cracked up after Diggory died, didn’t he?"

At the castle, the tension sharpened.

Umbridge sat at the High Table in her lurid pink cardigan, a toadlike smile pinned to her wide face. Her speech was syrupy and false, dripping with promises of "order" and "discipline."

Harry didn’t listen.

He watched the candles floating above the Great Hall, imagined each flame a promise:

"I will stay. I will not leave him."

He felt Tom’s thin, trembling presence somewhere deep inside the hollow ache where his heart used to be. That was what mattered.

Not this.

Not them.

The days that followed blurred together.

Classes began.So did the rumors. So did the punishments.

Defense Against the Dark Arts became a mockery. Theory, not practice. Read, recite, memorize, but never cast. Harry endured it all in silence, his face carefully blank, his eyes dull.

It drove Umbridge mad.

She baited him in lessons, waiting for the anger, the rebellion, the fight. But Harry did not fight.

He barely spoke. He simply obeyed. That made her furious.

And so, came the Blood Quill.

He sat in her office one evening. 

The quill glistened in the lamplight, black and sharp and waiting. "No need for ink," Umbridge said sweetly. "You’ll find it... works of its own accord." Harry took it without comment. He pressed the tip to the parchment and began to write.

"I must not tell lies."

The quill bit into his hand, carving the words into his skin, blood welling into neat, crimson lines.

He did not flinch. Not once. He wrote until the room blurred around him. Until the pain became something distant, irrelevant.

That night,Harry slept. And dreamed.

The orphanage again.

The cold, damp smell of stone and mildew. Tom sat on his bed, knees drawn up to his chest, arms wrapped tight around himself. Harry sat across from him, silent.

Watching.

Waiting.

Tom lifted his head slowly.

"You didn’t cry," he said.

His voice was small, almost grudging.

"You didn’t let them break you."

Harry swallowed the sudden tightness in his throat.

"I won’t," he whispered.

Tom watched him a moment longer, then looked away, hiding his face in his arms again.

But he did not vanish.

And when Harry woke with the dawn bleeding through the dormitory windows, his hand still aching from the blood quill's bite, he smiled.

Small.

Broken.

Victorious.

Chapter Text

September bled into October. Hogwarts grew colder. So did Harry.

He moved through the castle like a ghost, his footsteps soft, his presence barely touching the world around him. He drifted through lessons. Missed them sometimes entirely, lost in dreams he couldn’t remember.

When he was there, he sat still and silent, staring blankly ahead, the quill in his hand forgotten. His grades slipped. His spells faltered.

Professors exchanged worried glances in the corridors.

Some blamed Umbridge.

Some blamed the Ministry.

None blamed themselves.

None looked closely enough to see that Harry wasn’t fighting anyone anymore.

He was fighting only for a boy no one else could even see.

The days blurred.

The dreams deepened.

Every night, Harry returned to the orphanage, to the boy waiting in the dark. Some nights Tom spoke, small, halting things:

"They don’t know you."
"They can’t hurt you if you don’t let them."

And Harry answered back:

"I'm not leaving you."
"I promise."

Quidditch practice became a test of willpower.

Harry dragged himself to the pitch, climbed onto his broom, pushed himself into the air.

The cold wind cut through his robes.

His limbs ached. His scar barely throbbed anymore.

Only the dreams mattered now.

The sky blurred around him. A bludger came too fast.

He didn’t see it. He didn’t move. The crack of impact echoed across the pitch.

And then he was falling.

The ground hit him like stone. Pain exploded in his side, his shoulder. Shouts. Rushing footsteps. Hands grabbing at him. The world spun, blurred, dimmed.

Madam Pomfrey was furious.

"Broken rib, broken arm…, what were you thinking, Potter?!"

He didn’t answer. He watched the cracks in the hospital wing ceiling instead, counting them slowly as the pain potion dulled his mind.

Ron hovered nearby, pale and frightened.

Hermione twisted her hands in her robes, whispering that it wasn’t his fault.

The news spread like fire.

Potter’s crashed. Potter’s cracked. Potter’s cursed.

And worst of all… Umbridge, smiling her syrupy, poisonous smile, declared Quidditch officially banned at Hogwarts.

"Too dangerous," she said sweetly. "Too savage for civilized education."

And the school turned their anger toward Harry.

"If Potter hadn’t lost it…"
"If he weren’t cursed…"
"We’d still have Quidditch."

Harry heard them. He didn’t care. He closed his eyes in the hospital wing and dreamed instead.

The orphanage again. The rain against the windows. The boy sitting on the bed.

Waiting. Always waiting. And Harry whispered into the dark:

"I’m still here."

The days after the Quidditch crash grew darker. The sky over Hogwarts hung low and bruised. The corridors felt colder, even when the fires blazed.

Harry moved through it all like smoke. Half-there, untouchable.

The students whispered.

The professors frowned.

The portraits glared.

But Harry barely noticed. He wasn't there for them anymore.

He was dreaming of someone else.

Halloween came and went without fanfare for once. No trolls in the dungeon, no cursed tournaments, no death creeping in through fire or fog. For the first time in years, no one, or nothing, tried to kill Harry Potter. 

And yet, he had never felt closer to the edge.

One night in early November, when the castle was asleep and the mist clawed at the windows, Harry finally found the strength to try.

He closed his eyes in the hospital wing and reached out, carefully, deliberately, to the dreamscape.

And the dream bent.Not by accident this time.

By will.

The orphanage hall stretched before him again, leaking rain from the broken roof. Tom sat alone at the end of the corridor, his back straight, his arms wrapped tight around himself.

Waiting for the inevitable.

Waiting for the cruelty.

The door creaked.

But it wasn’t Dumbledore who entered.

It was Harry.

He crossed the room slowly, sinking to one knee before the boy. Close enough to see the bruises of loneliness beneath Tom’s guarded eyes. Close enough to offer something no one else ever had.

Acceptance.

Hope.

Love.

"You’re a wizard, Tom," Harry said softly. Tom flinched, suspicion flickering across his face.

But Harry didn’t scold. He didn’t destroy. He smiled.

Small. True.

"And that's something beautiful," he whispered. "You don’t have to steal anything to matter.
You’ll have your own treasures. Your own name. Your own place."

Harry reached out, hand open, steady.

"And you'll have me," he said. "I’ll stay."

Tom stared at him. Long and hard. Then, slowly, painfully, he unclenched his fists.

Just a little. Just enough.

And Harry knew he had planted the first seed.

The weeks that followed blurred into a quiet, fragile rhythm.

During the day, Harry moved through Hogwarts like a ghost. The teachers blamed Umbridge for his hollowed cheeks, his sunken eyes. The students blamed him for Quidditch.
The Order whispered about the pressure on him.

No one asked what he needed. No one dared look closely enough to see that Harry wasn’t fighting the world anymore. He was fighting for a boy who had once been abandoned by it.

At night, Harry found Tom in the dreams again and again.

Sometimes they sat in silence. Sometimes Tom asked small, broken questions.

"Is it real?" 

"Will it last?"

And Harry answered each one with patience:

"Yes."

"Yes."

He didn't rush. He didn't push. He simply stayed.

And the bond between them grew, quiet and strong, like a root under winter soil.

When December snow dusted the castle roofs, Harry knew it was time.

He couldn’t ask Tom to trust him completely without giving something of himself.

Something real. Something raw. So he chose his most hidden memory.

That night, in the dreamscape, Harry took Tom by the hand, and led him not to the orphanage, but to an abandoned, ancient room.

A mirror waited there: The Mirror of Erised.

Together, they stood before it.

Not as wizard and boy. Not as savior and monster.

Just two lonely boys, side by side.

They looked.

And in the reflection, they saw not glory. Not conquest. Not fear.

They saw family.

They saw themselves, laughing, arms slung around each other’s shoulders, not heroes, not villains,just family.

And behind them, blurred but bright, the outlines of faces who would love them, and protect them, and call them their own.

Tom stared.

Frozen.

Breathless.

Harry squeezed his hand, grounding them both.

"You don’t have to be alone anymore," Harry said softly. "You have me."

For a long, shuddering moment, Tom said nothing.

Then, in the mirror, Tom smiled.

Small.

Tentative.

Real.

The dream faded like mist.

And Harry, exhausted, emptied, filled with something too big for words, slept.

And slept.

And slept.

Madam Pomfrey found him two days later, still unconscious in his bed.

Panic spread like fire through the Order.

"Collapse from stress," they said.

"Residual effects from the Dementors," they insisted. "The Ministry’s fault."

 "Umbridge’s fault."

Everyone had someone to blame.

Except Harry.

He wasn’t broken. He wasn’t sick. He was healing.

They decided, panicked, terrified, to send him away.

Back to Grimmauld Place.

Back to safety.

Away from the cold castle and the colder whispers.

Chapter Text

Harry said nothing as they packed his things. He said nothing as he was led from the castle like a ghost.

Because it didn’t matter. None of it mattered.

In the deepest corners of dreams, where magic stitched itself back together, Tom Riddle was waiting for him.

And for the first time, he was smiling.

Grimmauld Place welcomed Harry back like a wound pressed under bandages.

Heavy. Sore. Not healing, just hidden.

Sirius hovered, restless, half-mad with worry he pretended was anger. Molly Weasley swept through the kitchen and corridors in a flurry of casseroles and hand-knitted scarves. Tonks dropped in sometimes, bright and awkward, breaking things as if to remind them they were still alive.

And Harry…

Harry smiled when they spoke to him. Nodded when they asked questions. Ate when they pushed food into his hands.

But he was somewhere else entirely.

He drifted through Grimmauld Place the way he drifted through his own life now: quiet, empty, full of a different kind of purpose.

At night, he closed his eyes and slipped into the dreams. Into the orphanage halls.

Into Tom’s silent world.

The trust between them was growing. Slow as ice thawing in the winter sun.

Fragile. Real.

December deepened.

The walls of Grimmauld Place groaned with cold.

Snow fell thick against the blackened windows.

Christmas lights flickered half-heartedly in the drawing room, wrapped around a lopsided, ancient tree Sirius had bullied Kreacher into dragging upstairs.

Presents gathered in crumpled paper piles under the crooked branches.

Bright and colorful. All carefully labeled. All carefully meaningless.

Harry sat by the fire on Christmas Eve, a cup of cocoa cooling in his hands, his scar quiet for once.

Sirius watched him from the door, worry etched deep into the lines of his face.

Molly hugged him extra tightly that night before she left, promising to visit on Christmas morning.

Others offered clumsy pats, stiff smiles, as if kindness could stitch up what none of them understood.

Harry thanked them softly. And waited for night.

That night, before he closed his eyes, Harry thought about the first real Christmas he had ever had.

At Hogwarts. Waking to find a pile of gifts at the foot of his bed.

For the first time in his life, he had been given something that was his own.

Not borrowed. Not stolen. Not handed down in pity.

Something his.

Tom had never had that. Not once.

Not ever.

Harry knew what he needed to do. In the dreamscape, the orphanage was still and cold. The wind rattled the windows. The night pressed close around the building.

Tom sat on his bed, staring at the cracked floorboards, a thin blanket wrapped around his narrow frame. Harry stepped into the room.

Tom looked up. Wary, tired, but he didn’t move away.

Harry smiled.

A small, true thing.

And from behind his back, he pulled out a simple robe.

Deep green, soft and thick, stitched carefully with a silver thread along the edges.

Slytherin colors. A belonging.

He knelt and offered it without a word.

Tom stared. Disbelieving.

As if afraid it would be snatched away the moment he reached out.

"You matter," Harry said softly. "You always have."

He hesitated, then added, voice sure and steady:

"You’re the Heir of Slytherin, Tom. And you deserve to be proud of who you are."

Tom’s hands trembled as he reached for the robe. He clutched it to his chest, eyes wide, uncomprehending.

No one had ever given him anything before.Not without price.Not without cruelty. Not without lies.

And Harry sat with him, silent,  until the wind outside faded into peace.

Until the night felt less cold.

When Harry woke on Christmas morning, he could still feel the softness of the robe in his hands. Still see the stunned, quiet hope on Tom’s face.

It was the best Christmas gift he had ever given.

And the best one he had ever received.

The house bustled with life downstairs.

Sirius shouting at Kreacher. Mrs. Weasley singing off-key in the kitchen. The smell of cinnamon and roasted chestnuts filling the air.

The tree glittered weakly under the gray morning light.

Presents waited in neat little piles.

But Harry sat quietly by the window, watching the snow fall thick and silent beyond the glass.

And smiled.

A real, aching, perfect smile.

Because somewhere, in the deep, secret corridors of dreams, Tom Riddle was smiling too.

Christmas passed quietly in Grimmauld Place. The tree in the drawing room stayed lit long into the nights, casting soft golden light on peeling wallpaper and worn carpets. 

Ron and Hermione were both staying over the break, and their presence brought something familiar, something steady. 

They tried to keep things normal, laughing over stale chocolate frogs, playing half-hearted games of Exploding Snap, but there was a weight pressing down on everything. A silence beneath the laughter.

Harry drifted through the days like a ghost in the house. Ron gave him space, unsure of what to say, and Hermione respected the boundaries Harry didn’t know how to explain. 

No one spoke directly about what had happened, or what was happening still, but they all felt it. Something was changing. Not just around them, but inside him.

By the time New Year’s Eve arrived, Grimmauld Place was quieter again. 

Ron and Hermione had retreated to the library to play chess and review essays they claimed to have been assigned over break. 

Upstairs, Sirius slept late and Lupin read by the window in soft light. And Harry, caught between one year and the next, stood at the edge of something he could not yet name.

Harry barely noticed.

He sat by the cracked hearth, listening to the creak of the old house settling around him, feeling the steady thrum of dreams pulling at the edge of his mind.

Waiting.

Calling.

He closed his eyes.

And drifted.

The dream took him easily now, not through violence, not through fear, but through something warmer.

Through trust.

Through something like hope.

He found himself standing in a familiar corridor.

The orphanage.

Long and cold and dimly lit by a flickering lamp.

The air smelled of dust and rain.

He followed the corridor without thinking, his footsteps soft against the cracked floorboards.

The dining hall appeared before him.

Long, scarred tables stretched like scars across the room.

At the far end, under the weak light of a single hanging bulb, Tom sat alone.

Small.

Wearing the green robe Harry had given him. The silver trim glinted faintly against the shadows.

Harry hesitated in the doorway.

There was a stillness to Tom he hadn’t seen before. Not wariness. Not anger.

Something quieter.

Heaviness pressed around the boy like a second skin.

Harry approached carefully, pulling out the bench beside Tom and sitting without a word.

Tom didn’t look at him.

Just stared at the cracked wood of the table.

"Why do you look sad?" Harry asked softly.

Tom’s shoulders stiffened. "I’m not," he said quickly. Too quickly. He pulled the robe tighter around his thin frame, the green fabric almost swallowing him.

Harry didn’t press. He just waited, patient as snowfall. The silence stretched long and fragile between them.

Until finally…

Tom muttered, voice so low Harry barely caught it:

"It’s my birthday."

The words sat between them, raw and vulnerable. Tom’s hands tightened into fists against the table. As if he regretted saying anything at all. As if expecting laughter.

Mockery.

Cruelty.

Harry’s chest ached.

He remembered birthdays at the Dursleys.

Remembered silence and smallness and pretending he didn’t care.

Harry swallowed against the burning in his throat.

And smiled.

"Well," he said lightly, "everyone deserves a birthday cake."

He reached out, and because it was a dream, and because magic was love, if nothing else, a cake appeared between them on the battered table. It wasn’t perfect.

It leaned slightly to one side.

The icing was uneven, a little lumpy. Looking almost like Harry’s own when he turned eleven.

But it was real.

Warm.

Bright.

Twelve tiny candles flickered on top, dancing in the dim air.

Tom stared. Wide-eyed. Frozen.

Harry laughed. Soft, almost shy.

"You have to blow them out," he said. "Make a wish."

Tom’s lips parted, a soundless breath. He looked at Harry, at the cake, and back at Harry again.

And for the first time in this dream,or maybe in any dream, Tom Riddle smiled.

He leaned forward and blew out the candles.

The flames winked out, and for a moment, the room felt warmer, brighter, fuller. Harry grinned. "And," he said, standing and offering his hand, "you deserve a treat too."

Tom hesitated only a moment before taking it.

Harry's fingers closed around his, thin, cold, still trembling, and the orphanage melted away.

The world shifted. And they stood in a small, sun-drenched shop.

Walls lined with towering shelves of every flavor of ice cream imaginable. Bright bunting hung from the ceiling. The scent of sugar and vanilla filled the air.

Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlor.

A dream version, but real enough. Real enough for magic. Real enough for love.

Harry led Tom to a little round table by the window. They sat. And Harry ordered towering sundaes piled with fruits and fudge and sprinkles.

The kind of silly, extravagant thing no orphan boy would ever dream of asking for. The kind of thing every child should have once.

They ate. Quiet at first. Spoons clinking softly. Tom’s eyes darted around, suspicious of the happiness at first.

But slowly, he began to relax.

He took bigger bites. He laughed once, startled, when ice cream dribbled onto his robes and Harry tossed him a napkin.

The sound was rough and awkward, like a violin played by clumsy hands, but it was music all the same.

For an hour, maybe more, they were just two boys eating ice cream under a sky too blue to be real.

No Dark Lords. No wars. No loneliness.

Just Harry and Tom.

Family.

When the dream began to fade, Harry caught Tom’s hand again and squeezed it once, firmly.

"You’re not alone anymore," he said. "You never have to be."

Tom didn’t answer.

He just squeezed back.

Harry woke with the taste of sugar still on his tongue, the warmth of laughter still echoing in his chest.

Snow still drifted against the windows of Grimmauld Place. The world was still cold.

But Harry didn’t feel cold anymore. Not where it mattered.

Because somewhere, in a dream stitched out of love and stubbornness and impossible hope, Tom Riddle had blown out the candles.

And somewhere, deep in the places no one else could reach. He had wished for Harry.

Chapter Text

After the birthday dream, Harry Potter never truly returned.

He moved through the old house like mist, silent and slow.
He answered when spoken to. Soft, automatic replies that never quite touched the moment.
He nodded when Sirius tugged at his arm or when Molly pressed a warm cup into his hands.
He sat when guided, ate when food was set in front of him.

But he was not really there.
Not in the way they needed him to be.

He didn’t speak unless someone pulled the words from him.
He didn’t smile unless someone brought the laughter close enough to reach him.
He didn’t weep. He didn’t rage. He didn’t tremble.
He simply existed.

A boy caught halfway between one world and another, drifting in that quiet space where even pain cannot follow.

Sirius paced the halls like a storm bottled inside a man. He shouted. He pleaded. He tried to shake Harry out of it, to will him back from wherever he had gone. But Harry only blinked at him, slowly and distantly, as if looking through fog.

Molly cried in the kitchen when she thought no one was near enough to hear her. She baked too many pies, knitted too many scarves, filled the house with too much noise in a desperate attempt to chase away the silence. But nothing she did could reach him.

Remus sat by the fire most evenings, quiet and still, his gaze resting on Harry with the endless patience of someone who had lost everything. He rarely spoke. And when he did, it was never to Harry. Not directly.

As if he already knew.
As if he could see what the others couldn’t.
That Harry’s soul wasn’t sitting in the chair beside the fire anymore.

The Order whispered behind closed doors.
They argued in corners, murmured in stairwells.
Should they take him to St. Mungo’s?
Should they summon the Healers?
Should they call in the Unspeakables?

But no one said love.
No one said loyalty.
No one asked if maybe Harry wasn’t lost at all.
If maybe he was exactly where he meant to be.

And then Dumbledore came.

He arrived at Grimmauld Place with a soft crack of magic, his robes heavy with snow, his face more lined than ever. He walked through the front door without a word for the others.
He passed Sirius’s anxious greetings, passed Molly’s frantic questions.

He did not stop until he reached the hearth, where Harry sat curled small on the old sofa, eyes fixed on the fire.

Dumbledore stood in silence.
Long enough for the snow to melt from his shoulders.
Long enough for the fire to shift and pop and settle.
Long enough to see the truth.

Harry wasn’t gone because he had broken.
He wasn’t cursed.
He wasn’t mad.

He had simply gone somewhere no one else could follow.

And Dumbledore, for all his wisdom and power, could not reach the boy who had once trusted him completely. Because Harry had given that trust away. He had given it to someone Dumbledore had never seen as worth saving.

The old man’s throat tightened.

He could not understand it. Not truly.
He mourned the loss of Harry.
He mourned what Harry had once been, what he was meant to become.

But he did not know how to mourn the love that had taken Harry away.
Because Dumbledore had never known love like that.

Not patient.
Not whole.
Not selfless.

Sirius nearly shouted. “We have to take him to the hospital. He’s not right. He’s slipping away.”
Molly’s voice broke. “He needs care, Albus. Potions. Help. Please.”

Remus, ever steady, ever watching, simply said, “He’s somewhere we can’t reach.”

Dumbledore shook his head.
“No,” he said quietly. “No hospitals. No potions.”

The room fell silent.
They thought he was being wise.
Measured.
Merciful.

But the truth was simpler. And sadder.

Dumbledore was afraid.

Afraid to touch the wound he had made.
Afraid of what he would find if he looked too closely.

Because if he did, he would have to admit what he had done.
That he had broken the boy who was never meant to be a weapon.

And Harry…

Harry had simply let go.

Not dramatically.
Not with anger or speeches.

Just quietly.

He had found somewhere warmer. Somewhere better.

The world outside howled with wind and snow.
Inside, Harry sat still as stone, the firelight flickering in his eyes, his breath soft and slow.

Waiting. Dreaming.

And somewhere, just beyond the veil of sleep and waking, stitched together with stubbornness and love and a birthday wish, Tom Riddle was waiting too.

This time, he was standing alone in a long corridor, damp with age but aglow with quiet magic. The walls curved gently around him, the stone cool beneath his feet. 

The Chamber of Secrets.

Tom stood in the center, small in his dark robes trimmed with green, his figure framed by the echoes of centuries. He looked not angry. Not dangerous.

Just alone.

Harry stepped forward. His steps were silent against the stone. He stopped a few feet away, not reaching, not pressing. 

Only offering.

“This place wasn’t made for a monster,” Harry said quietly. “It was made for a legacy.”

Tom turned toward him, cautious. His expression was unreadable.

Harry glanced at the carvings, the markings etched in languages long forgotten. 

“All this... it’s history. Not a curse. Not a weapon. It could be yours, still.”

Tom frowned, eyes narrowing.

Harry met his gaze and didn’t flinch. “You don’t have to carry on the pain. You could carry on the name.”

Tom blinked. Slowly.

“You could fill this place with light,” Harry said. “With truth. With memory.” He took another step, softer now. “You could bring the House of Slytherin back into honor. Not with a basilisk. Not with fear. But with understanding. With strength. With pride in who you are.”

Tom said nothing, but his breathing had changed. Not fast. Just careful. As if the wrong word might shatter the moment.

Harry reached into his robes and pulled out a small, familiar book.

A black diary.

Tom stiffened. The air between them changed. His hands flexed at his sides, remembering what this thing had once done, what he had once done.

Harry held it out. Not as bait. Not as proof. But as a gift. “This is for you,” he said. “And it’s not a weapon.”

He opened it slowly, revealing the first page. Written in soft, steady ink:

To Tom
You are not alone.
You are loved.
You will always have me.

Tom stared down at the words.

The chamber around them seemed to hum, faint and steady.
Not with threat, but with promise.
A whisper of what could be.

The shadows along the walls quieted. The air grew warmer.

And for the first time, the Chamber felt like what it was always meant to be.
A hidden heart.
A waiting home.
A place for someone to begin again.

Tom, still silent, stepped forward.
Just one step.
But enough.

The Chamber glowed a little brighter.

The serpents on the walls softened their fierce gazes, no longer guardians of fear but sentinels of memory. 

And somewhere deep inside Tom, so deep it had been buried beyond even Horcrux magic. Something shifted. Something unraveled. Something let go.

The Chamber was no longer a lair. No longer a tomb for monsters or a throne for fear.
It had become what it was always meant to be, a cradle of legacy, a quiet echo of belonging. A place not of conquest, but of remembrance. And in accepting that, Tom had done what Voldemort never could.

He had looked upon something he once twisted into a weapon and seen it for what it truly was.

And for the first time, he felt regret.

That was the difference. That was the key.

Destroying a Horcrux breaks the anchor. It stops the magic. But it does not heal the soul.

It’s like closing a wound with a bandage, not cleansing it. Not stitching it. Not healing it.

That takes something else. Something harder. 

It takes remorse. It takes looking back. It takes the unbearable ache of wishing it had gone another way.

And here, in the quiet of the Chamber, surrounded by softened torchlight and ancient stone, Tom Riddle felt the first, fragile tremor of that ache.

The diary Horcrux had been destroyed long ago. That piece of soul had returned to Voldemort, broken and bleeding. But it had never been healed.

Not until now.

By reclaiming the meaning of the Chamber, not as a place of death, but of heritage, Tom had begun to mend the scar where that fragment had once been.

He didn’t pull it back into Voldemort. He didn’t reforge the weapon.

He healed it. Made it whole again. Made it his.

And it was no longer a wound.

Harry woke gasping, the warmth of the dream clinging to him like smoke. The walls of Grimmauld Place pressed in, cold and heavy, but he didn’t mind.

Because something had changed.

The bond between him and Tom had strengthened. Not just in power, but in truth.

The Resurrection had begun in earnest.

Not as a storm.
Not as a spell.
But as a boy finding the courage to regret.

And outside that dream, the world began to feel thinner. More fragile. More distant.

Because something long thought irreparable had quietly begun to heal.

The sleepwalking began slowly.

At first, it was only the creak of floorboards in the middle of the night, the soft brush of bare feet against cold wood. Harry would wander the halls of Grimmauld Place with vacant eyes and steady steps, a ghost in his own skin.

He spoke sometimes. Low words, half-formed, like spells or secrets breathed into the dark.

Sometimes he laughed.

 A quiet, broken sound, thin and private, as if someone had whispered something just for him.

He would sit at the kitchen table for hours, unmoving, fingers tracing invisible patterns across the scarred wood.
His lips moved with the rhythm of promises. Vows to someone who wasn’t there. Someone no one else could see.

Sirius found him once, curled up in the drawing room, clutching a battered notebook to his chest like it was a lifeline.

It wasn’t the diary.

Just an empty book, torn and forgotten. But he held it with a desperation that frightened Sirius. Held it like a child might hold a beating heart. As if letting go would mean falling into nothing.

Remus came across him another night, standing barefoot before the frozen window, his breath fogging the glass. He was whispering into the frost.

"I’ll stay," he said.
"I’m not leaving. Never again."

Sirius tried shouting. He grabbed Harry by the shoulders and shook him hard. Harry only blinked, slow and unfocused, nodded once, politely, and let himself be led back to bed.

Remus tried softer things. A hand on the arm. A gentle voice in the stillness.

"Harry," he whispered. "Are you with us?"

But Harry only smiled. Thin. Remote. The kind of smile someone gives when they are already somewhere else. And said nothing.

The house began to change. The walls seemed to breathe with unease. Every shadow stretched longer. Every silence hung heavier.

Sirius and Remus started whispering in the kitchen when they thought Harry wasn’t listening. They talked of St. Mungo’s. Of healers. Of dark enchantments that couldn’t be named aloud.

But Dumbledore did not come. And no one else knew what to do.

Because Harry Potter, the boy the world had once wrapped in prophecy and fire, was no longer fighting their war.

He was saving someone else instead. Someone the world had written off as lost.

And in that quiet, relentless descent, something had begun to shift.

A Horcrux, long shattered, had loosened its grip.

Not through spells or battle, but with a single, handwritten promise cradled in the folds of a dream.

You are not alone.
You are loved.
You will always have me.

And for the first time, the soul began to remember what it meant to be whole.

Chapter Text

The house at Grimmauld Place grew quieter as January deepened. Snow pressed heavy against the windows. The floors creaked at night. The walls held their breath.

And Harry sleepwalked through it all.

He moved like a ghost, up and down the corridors, out into the courtyard where snow swallowed his bare feet, through the kitchens and bedrooms, murmuring soft things to a boy no one else could see.

At first, Sirius and Remus only watched, helpless and horrified.

And then came the night of the serpent’s tongue.

It began, as always, in the dreamscape.

The Chamber stretched before Harry and Tom once again. The stone serpents gleamed in the torchlight, and the echoes in the air were filled not with fear, but with warmth. Tom stood at the center, clutching the black diary Harry had gifted him.

He looked stronger now. Taller. His robes cleaner. His eyes less hollow. But something inside him still trembled. Something raw and fragile beneath the surface.

Harry stepped closer. The golden light wrapped around them both. In that moment, he felt a sudden certainty, he knew what he had to give next.

“You know,” Harry said softly. “I can talk to them.”

He nodded toward the serpents carved into the chamber walls.

Tom’s eyes widened. His body stilled.

“You...” he breathed. “You are a Parselmouth?”

Harry gave a small, genuine smile.

“Yes.”

For a moment, Tom only stared, as if the world had cracked open and shown him something he never dared to hope for.

Someone like him. Someone who spoke the secret tongue of snakes. Someone who wasn’t afraid.

The air between them shifted. They were no longer boy and rescuer, no longer orphan and savior, but something else.

Tom took a step forward, hesitant but hopeful. His eyes flickered with light, like a match about to catch flame.

“Show me,” he whispered.

Harry turned toward the nearest serpent carved into the stone and hissed a soft greeting. The words curled through the air like smoke. For a moment, the serpent’s eyes gleamed brighter.

When Harry turned back, Tom was staring at him. Not with fear or worship, but with recognition.

“You’re like me,” Tom said.

Harry smiled again. This time, the warmth reached into the coldest parts of the dream.

“I always have been,” he replied. “And you,” he added gently.

“Have never been alone.”

The Chamber glowed brighter. The walls seemed to breathe. The diary pulsed with warmth against Tom’s chest. Somewhere deep inside, another Horcrux thread frayed. Another fracture spread through the soul that had once been so carefully, cruelly splintered.

Harry woke with the taste of ancient words still burning on his tongue.

That was the night everything changed.

He sleepwalked again, but this time, he spoke.

Softly at first. Hissing sounds curling through the corridors. Whispered lullabies in a language no human was meant to speak.

Sirius was the first to hear it. He woke in the middle of the night to the sound of something sliding across stone. Something sibilant and wrong. He stumbled into the hallway, wand drawn, heart pounding.

And there was Harry. Barefoot, hair tousled, standing in the middle of the corridor. His eyes were closed, and he was whispering. The words meant nothing to Sirius, but the sound of them made his blood run cold.

Parseltongue.

Sirius stood frozen, listening to the language of serpents pour from Harry’s lips in slow, steady rhythm.

“Harry,” Sirius called out. His voice cracked.

Harry didn’t move. His eyes remained closed. He kept speaking.

Softly.

Dreamily.

With quiet devotion.

Remus came running moments later, drawn by the sound. He stopped beside Sirius, pale and wide-eyed. He said nothing. He didn’t need to.

The horror was shared.

Sirius stepped forward and grabbed Harry’s arm. “Harry,” he said. His voice was rough with fear.

Harry blinked. Slowly. Distantly. He smiled. Soft. Vacant.

And responded in that same twisting, curling tongue.

He let Sirius guide him back to bed without a word of protest. He lay down quietly, closed his eyes, and drifted into dreams where another boy waited for him.

Smiling now. Reaching out with steady hands.

Sirius sat beside him, trembling. Remus leaned against the doorway, his face ashen. Neither of them spoke for a long time. There was nothing left to say. Because now they understood.

Whatever war they thought Harry had been fighting, he had already chosen his side. And it wasn’t theirs. After that night, the dreamscape changed.

It was no longer cold corridors and hidden chambers. No longer orphanage floors and shadows. It became soft and warm. A sunlit room filled with battered books and worn armchairs. A kitchen with chipped mugs and a kettle that always stayed warm. A crooked garden where wildflowers bloomed untouched.

Harry built it piece by piece from memory. Tom added to it. A great oak tree in the back garden, a moonlit pond with slow ripples, carved snakes coiled lovingly along the stair rails.

They moved through this new world together. They built a life that never was. They lived a childhood that had been stolen from them both.

Mornings at the kitchen table with their feet swinging from too-tall chairs. Afternoons spent sprawled on the grass, faces tilted to the sun.

Evenings curled up by the fire, sharing stories across worn pages.

Harry laughed more in dreams than he did awake. Tom smiled more in sleep than he ever had in life.

No fear.

No war.

No pain.

Just the two of them.

Together.

Each night, the bond between them deepened. Each night, another Horcrux thread dissolved. Not through curses or destruction, but through love.

Back in the waking world, Grimmauld Place sagged under the weight of silence and winter. Sirius and Remus searched, frantic and desperate.

The library tables were covered in scrolls and ancient books, some so old they crumbled to the touch. They studied curses of possession, soul-binding magic, forbidden rites.

Nothing explained Harry’s slow departure into a world they could not see.

Sirius tossed a heavy volume aside, hands shaking.

“It has to be possession,” he said.

Remus, quieter and paler than before, turned another page in an old grimoire. He shook his head.

“There’s no trace of external magic,” he replied. “No curse signature. No bindings.”

“Then what?” Sirius shouted. His voice cracked. “What’s happening to him?”

The truth was clear in the way Harry wandered the halls like someone dreaming. In the way he clutched the battered diary like it held his heart. In the way he smiled sometimes, distant and soft, as if listening to a voice no one else could hear.

The truth was unbearable.

Harry had found something stronger than fear. Stronger than duty. Stronger than death.

He had found love.

And he would not come back from it.

Not for them.

Not for the Order.

Not for the world that had broken him again and again.

The house grew silent once more. The only sound was the fire crackling in the grate.

And somewhere upstairs, in a cold bedroom, Harry turned in his sleep and smiled.

In his dreams, Tom waited beneath the oak tree. He held a book in his hand. Sunlight glinted in his dark hair.

The diary rested in Tom’s pocket. A quiet promise stitched into every page.

They had built a world of their own.

And nothing, not war, not curses, not even death, could take it away.

Chapter Text

Tom waited for him beneath the oak tree. His expression was unreadable at first, caught between caution and resolve. He looked older, not in years, but in gravity. Harry stepped closer, drawn to the hush in Tom’s voice when he finally spoke.

“There’s something I need to show you,” Tom said at last, his voice low. “I should have told you before, but I was afraid you wouldn’t understand.”

Harry didn’t move. He didn’t speak.

Tom glanced away. “At the time, I meant for them to save me,” he said. “But they’ve destroyed me. Piece by piece.”

His voice caught on the last word, quiet and brittle.

Harry felt a cold thread of memory stir in his mind. He remembered Dumbledore’s voice, years ago, telling him that the diary hadn’t just been a cursed object. It had been something else. Something alive.

A piece of Voldemort. Part of him. Living, thinking, waiting. Ready to kill him.

Harry's heart began to pound.

“The diary,” 

Tom went still.

Harry took a step closer. “Is that what you’re about to show me? More of them? More pieces?”

Tom hesitated. Then, without looking up, he said, “Yes. Not just my essence or my memories. My soul.”

The dream shifted. It melted at the edges and reformed into something vast and dark. Harry stood in a space that had no floor or ceiling. Shadows curled around the edges like thick smoke, but in the center, suspended as if underwater, were objects.

First, a small golden cup appeared. It glinted faintly, etched with the badger of Hufflepuff, and pulsed with a pale, sickly light.

Then came a diadem, elegant and cold, set with a sapphire that shimmered like a frozen tear. The feeling it gave was sharp and wrong, like wisdom bent into cruelty.

Next, a serpent emerged. It was massive, coiled, and watching. Its eyes gleamed with old hunger, but not malice. There was something deeper, more ancient, about the way it turned toward him.

And then the final shape spun into view.

A locket. Black and gold. Cold as a grave.

Its chain twisted in the air like a living thing. Darker than the others, it seemed to bleed malice into the dream itself. Harry felt it in his chest like a hook in his ribs. He knew this object. Not from dreams, but from memory.

It was real.

It was here.

In Grimmauld Place.

The vision cracked. The tree shriveled. The garden behind them turned to ash. The sky split into shards of gray light.

Harry staggered backward. He gasped.

And woke.

The waking world hit him hard. Cold air rushed against his damp skin. The scent of ash and old wood filled his lungs. He sat upright in bed, chest heaving.

“Where is it?” he shouted. “Where is it?”

The door slammed open. Sirius entered with his wand raised, Remus right behind him.

“Harry,” Sirius called out. “Calm down, you're safe.”

But Harry was already pushing out of bed, knocking over a stack of books as he tore past them.

“It’s here,” he said breathlessly. “The locket. It’s here somewhere.”

Sirius grabbed his shoulders, trying to steady him. “Harry, listen to me. You’re not well.”

Harry shook him off. His eyes were wild but clear, and for the first time in weeks, he was fully awake. The dream had sharpened everything. He knew exactly what he was looking for.

Remus stepped forward cautiously, placing himself between them.

“What locket?” he asked.

The question hit Harry like a splash of cold water. He froze. He looked between the two men. They didn’t know. Of course they didn’t. Not about the objects. Not about the soul fragments. Not about the bond in the dark. Not about Tom.

His fists clenched. He had been careless. He had let himself be lulled into comfort, into warmth, into laughter and dreams.

But the war wasn’t over. Voldemort was still out there. Waiting. And parts of him still lived in shadowed corners of this house.

Harry drew in a breath. When he spoke, his voice was steady.

“I’m fine,” he said. “It was just a nightmare.”

Sirius’s expression cracked with confusion. He stepped forward and wrapped Harry in a fierce, trembling hug. Remus clapped a hand on his back, smiling weakly.

“You’re awake,” Sirius said. “You’re really awake.”

Harry nodded, smiled faintly, and said nothing more. Because he needed them calm. He needed time.

And he needed the locket.

The next day, while Sirius rested near the fire and Remus busied himself with old books, Harry began to search. He wandered through hidden stairwells and half-forgotten storage rooms. He slipped through Grimmauld Place like a shadow.

Days passed in a strange rhythm. In the waking world, Harry searched without a clear sense of where or what he was looking for, only that something was missing. In the dreamscape, he no longer arrived with urgency or fear. The nights had grown quieter. 

Tom rarely mentioned the pieces, and Harry did not bring them up. He did not want to stir old pain or give Tom any hope that he might be able to find them, not when he was still uncertain himself. Still, he kept searching.

After days of getting nowhere, Harry realized there was only one creature in the house who might know more than he let on.

He just kept moving through the house, combing through dust-choked corners and long-forgotten drawers. But it was no use. Every time he thought he remembered something, it slipped from his grasp like smoke.

Finally, one evening, he crouched beside Kreacher’s nest of old rags and moth-bitten blankets.

“Kreacher,” he said quietly, “I’m looking for something. A locket.”

The elf froze.

His bloodshot eyes snapped up to Harry’s, wide for only a second before narrowing with suspicion.

“Nosy Mudbloods,” he muttered, backing into the shadows. “Always digging. Always prying where they don’t belong…”

“Kreacher, please.”

But the elf hissed softly through his teeth and vanished with a crack.

The next day, Harry tried again.

And again the day after.

And the next.

Sometimes Kreacher ignored him. Sometimes he glared. Sometimes he muttered under his breath about nosy Mudbloods, disloyal traitors, and the fall of great houses.

But he never answered the question.

Harry didn’t give up. For two weeks, he persisted. Calm, patient, unshaking. He asked with steady words and lowered eyes. He searched without destroying. He didn’t yell. He didn’t command. He only waited.

Until one night, Harry found Kreacher in the kitchen, crouched near the stove and feeding a low, blue flame.

“I’m not asking for me,” Harry said, sitting down slowly on the stone floor. “I’m asking because… there’s a boy. He made some wrong choices. Lost his way. I think... I think I can help him.”

Kreacher didn’t move.

“Destroying the locket, it’s the only way,” Harry said. “It’s hurting him. It’s part of what’s keeping him from coming back. Back home.”

He didn’t know if Kreacher understood everything. He wasn’t even sure if he believed him.

But something shifted.

Kreacher turned, slowly. His face was unreadable, stiff with years of bitterness and memory. But his eyes, wet, faraway, searched Harry’s face for something.

And whatever he saw there must have been enough.

The elf rose stiffly, without a word, and shuffled to the far pantry. He reached behind the stacked jars and broken tins, and from a hidden crevice, he pulled out a small, wrapped bundle.

He placed it on the counter and stepped back.

Harry approached carefully.

His hands shook as he unwrapped it.

The locket lay inside Dark, ancient, wrong.

Kreacher’s voice came at last, cracked and low.

“Master gave it to me to destroy. But I couldn’t. I wasn’t strong enough.”

Harry looked up.

“You are.”

The locket was heavier than it should have been. It was cold and hard, like river stones left to freeze in winter. It pulsed faintly in Harry’s palm.

It felt alive. Watching. Waiting.

He did not tell Sirius. He did not tell Remus.

Instead, he climbed the stairs to his room with the locket clutched tightly against his chest. Once inside, he locked the door behind him.

His heart pounded. His skin tingled with something deeper than fear, something ancient and electric.

He did not think. He did not hesitate.

He looped the chain around his neck and fastened the clasp.

The locket reacted immediately. It seized him like a snake striking its prey.

A rush of memories that did not belong to him surged through his body. He felt blood, betrayal, ambition, and a loneliness so sharp it burned.

Whispers echoed in the walls. Screams writhed under his skin. It was Tom’s pain, raw and twisted, turned into something monstrous.

Harry staggered backward and slammed into the wall. He clawed at the chain, but it was no use.

The metal burned into his flesh. His lungs locked. His vision went hazy.

Moments later, Sirius and Remus burst through the door. Sirius grabbed Harry’s shoulders and shouted his name. Remus tried to tear the locket free.

But it would not come off.

It pulsed brighter now, feeding off Harry’s panic and their fear. Harry’s knees buckled. He collapsed into Sirius’s arms. The room spun violently as the locket dug deeper into him.

And then a voice rang out, cold and sharp and furious.

"Let go, foolish boy. You cannot fight it like this."

It was Tom.

Harry obeyed.

He let go.

He stopped resisting and surrendered to the pull.

The world faded to darkness.

And he fell into the dream.

The dreamscape was stormy.Wind howled through the branches of the oak tree. The grass thrashed and hissed. The sky churned with gray fury.

Tom stood by a pond, his robes snapping in the wind. His hands fisted at his side, but his eyes betrayed the fear he could not hide.

"You idiot," he said the moment Harry appeared. "You almost let it kill you."

Harry struggled to catch his breath. The locket still burned against his skin, even in this place.

"I had to," he tried to say.

But Tom silenced him with a glare so fierce that the words died before they reached his lips.

"There are rules to this magic," Tom said. His voice was clipped and harsh. "You cannot throw yourself at it like a martyr. You have to open it properly. You have to invite it."

His voice cracked slightly on the last word.

Harry stood straighter, still breathing hard. He reached for the locket again, this time with care. This time with intention.

The chain slipped free from his neck. The clasp opened.The locket unfolded.

A flood of darkness spilled out. It was not fire or screaming. It was grief. Endless, crushing grief.

The grief of a boy who had never been held. Who had never been chosen. Who had never been loved.

Harry stumbled. Tom caught him.

Without thinking, without questioning, Harry threw his arms around him and held on.

Tom froze.

For one long moment he remained rigid, trembling with fear that had no name and no age.

Then slowly, he leaned in. He pressed his forehead to Harry’s shoulder. And he held him back.

No one had ever embraced Tom Riddle.

No one had ever stayed.

No one had ever whispered, "You are not alone," and meant it.

And in that single, shaking moment, something long broken inside Tom began to heal.

The soul fragment twisted in the air, trying to escape.

But Tom held firm.

He drew it in.

He accepted it.

He forgave it.

And the darkness faded into light.

A part of Tom Riddle’s soul, lost for years, finally returned home.

Far away, in the waking world, Voldemort screamed.

In his hidden fortress, the Dark Lord clutched at his chest, overwhelmed by a pain he did not understand.

Something was wrong. Something had changed. His Horcrux had shifted. His immortality trembled.

And he did not know why.

In fear and rage, Voldemort lashed out.

The magic he released burst into the world, blind and furious. It was a surge of hatred, a wave of terror, a curse without aim or mercy.

Harry, still connected to Tom and exposed, took the full force of it. His body convulsed once on the bed at Grimmauld Place, then fell still. He did not wake again.

Not that night, nor the next.

He was not asleep, and he was not dreaming.

He lay with his eyes open, unmoving, breath shallow and quiet, as if caught somewhere far beyond reach.

Suspended between worlds.

No spell could reach him. No voice could draw him back.

Not yet.

Sirius and Remus remained at his side, silent and devastated.

Sirius leaned forward, voice raw and broken.

"Harry," he whispered. "Please. Please come back."

But Harry did not speak.

He did not blink.

He did not stir.

Because he was not lost.

He was choosing to remain in the place where broken things could be made whole.

Where darkness could be met with compassion.

Where Tom Riddle still had a chance to be saved.

And Harry Potter, with the burn of the locket still seared into his throat, was closer than ever to finishing what he had begun.

Chapter Text

The days slipped by like snow melting against stone.

Harry lay still in the great cold house.

Sometimes awake.

Sometimes sleepwalking.

Sometimes speaking soft, broken words Sirius and Remus couldn't understand.

Other times, he opened his eyes and smiled faintly,b whispering promises into the empty air,
as if someone waited just beyond the reach of waking.

The dreams, though, the dreams were full of life. In dreams, Harry and Tom lived together.

They built a small life, piece by piece.They sat by the hearth with books scattered at their feet. They raced brooms across blue summer skies over a golden Hogwarts. They wandered fields where wildflowers grew taller than their heads.

Tom laughed now. Not often, not easily. But when he did, it filled the dream-world with a warmth Harry had never known he needed.

And Harry…

Harry taught him things.

How to hold a broom properly.

How to skip stones across the surface of the pond.

How to play chess without tipping over the pieces in frustration.

And Tom taught Harry, too.

How to dream bigger.

How to believe in himself.

How to want things without fear.

Each night, they stitched themselves tighter together.

Friend.

Brother.

Family.

Something nameless and ancient, older than blood, stronger than magic.

And beneath it all, the gathering began. It started quietly.

One night, beneath the silver branches of the dream-oak, Tom turned to Harry and said, “I have three.”

Harry looked at him. “Three?”

Tom nodded. “The Cup. The Diadem. And Nagini. They’re here. It’s time.”

His voice was steady, but his hands trembled slightly as he held them out,not to command, but to offer.

Harry reached into the mist beyond the garden, and something heavy answered.

The Cup came first.

It limped from the dark like a wounded creature, flickering with the last light of something long abandoned. When Harry caught it, Tom stepped forward slowly. He hovered beside it, fingers brushing the rim.

He didn’t speak.

But in the dream, something shifted. The Cup pulsed once, then softened. No resistance. No fight.

Only a surrender.

As the fragment slipped away, the light grew warmer. It soaked through the dream like dawn.

Far away, in the waking world, Voldemort screamed in pain.

The next night, the Diadem arrived.

It glided toward them like a ghost of ambition, sharp-edged and proud. Harry touched it first. It was cold.

Tom didn’t flinch this time. He stood still as the brittle, brilliant fragment reached for him.

He wanted, so deeply, that it had been different. That he had not split himself to stay alive. That he had known this warmth before he tore himself apart.

The Diadem dissolved into him like breath into still air.

In the waking world, Voldemort cursed a world that no longer bent to his will.

And then came Nagini.

She slid out of the mist, thin and slow. Her body trembled. Her eyes were dull. She did not strike. She only lay down at Tom’s feet and waited.

He crouched beside her. Harry did too. Neither of them spoke.

The quiet wrapped around them like a promise. No more cruelty. No more fear.

Tom closed his eyes.

If the world had been kinder,if he had been braver,maybe it could have always been like this.

 Maybe he could have lived instead of just survived.

The last fragment inside Nagini slipped into him without protest.

The dream brightened. The garden pulsed with warmth. Something whole had come home.

And in the waking world, Nagini stirred.

Her scales dulled. Her eyes lost that predatory gleam. The magic in her blood unwound itself quietly, leaving behind something simpler. Slower.

A snake.

Not a Horcrux. Not a monster. Just a creature.

She curled beside Tom with no command, only instinct. She still listened. Still understood, in some way. But the darkness had gone.

Voldemort never noticed.

He held her closer, blind to what she had become, too consumed with what he believed he still possessed.

He thought he had the relics,Cup, Diadem, Snake,but they were empty now.

Shells without light.

He didn’t know what he had lost.

Because the pieces that had once made him Tom had already gone home.

They had not been taken.

They had been returned.

In the dream-world, Harry and Tom sat side by side under the oak tree.

The sky stretched endless and blue above them.

The pond rippled softly nearby.

Tom leaned his head against Harry’s shoulder.

No words were needed anymore.

The Resurrection was almost complete. The soul was almost whole.

And for the first time in either of their lives, they were not alone.

The days grew longer.

The sun set later and later against the grimy windows of Grimmauld Place.

The house filled again, heavy boots on the floors, murmured conversations behind closed doors, the familiar, heavy smell of cooking filling the halls. The Order had returned.

Harry Potter watched it all from a distance.

Quiet.

Patient.

Drifting at the edges like a ghost no one wanted to acknowledge.

Molly fussed around him sometimes, pressing food into his hands, patting his hair, murmuring soft encouragements about "getting stronger every day."

Kingsley clapped his shoulder, a heavy, awkward touch.

Even Moody, gruff and suspicious, muttered that it was "good to see the boy sitting up at least."

They all said the right words.

They all pretended.

Because it was easier to believe that Harry was recovering than to ask why he never smiled, why he never looked anyone in the eye, why he never spoke of the things he had missed.

Ron and Hermione visited too.

But it was different now.

Ron rambled nervously about Quidditch, about how bad the Cannons were this season. Hermione tried to ask careful questions about healing charms and ancient magical theories, her voice brittle and too-bright.

But neither of them mentioned the war, or the dreams of rebellion that had once bound them together.

Because Harry had missed all of it.

And somewhere inside, they knew he didn’t care anymore.

He smiled sometimes.

Nodded at the right moments.

Ate when food was pushed in front of him.

Slept through the nights.

Did everything a boy on the mend was supposed to do.

And no one looked too closely.

What they did not know , what they could not know, was that Harry had simply shifted the line between waking and dreaming.

During the day, he stayed awake.

Still.

Polite.

Empty.

And at night, he crossed back into the only world that still mattered.

The dreamscape had changed too.

It was quieter now.

Softer.

As if Harry and Tom both knew the world was waiting to come undone. They spent their evenings together in the little house they had built. They read by the fire. They flew lazy loops over Hogwarts at dusk. They wandered fields heavy with summer.

And sometimes, in the hush between one moment and the next, Harry asked the question.

"Tom," he said one night, lying beside the oak tree, watching the stars drift across the velvet sky,
"is that...all of them?"

The question was casual.

Almost careless.

But Tom stilled beside him.

He didn’t answer.

Instead, he pointed out a star overhead, spoke of the constellations, of ancient names whispered into the dark by men who had long since turned to dust.

Another night, Harry asked again.

By the pond, while skipping stones across its silver surface. "Are there more, Tom? Are you sure?"

Tom smiled that soft, fleeting smile he reserved only for Harry.

But he said nothing.

He changed the subject.

He laughed at some old Hogwarts memory. He teased Harry about his terrible chess moves. He brushed it all away like cobwebs from an old door.

And Harry felt the weight behind the silence.

The shape of something Tom could not, or would not, name.

Something shameful. Something fragile. Something so old and buried that even now, after everything, Tom could not bear to look it in the face.

Harry knew.

But he said nothing more.

He would not force it.

He would not shatter the fragile, aching trust they had built.

If Tom was to give him the final piece, the final truth, it would be freely.

Or not at all.

Love, Harry had learned, was never about force. It was about waiting. About choosing. About  being there when the walls finally broke.

And so Harry waited.

He lived his days quietly among the Order,  listening to their laughter, their plans, their shallow words.

He drifted like mist through their well-meaning hands.

And at night, he crossed back into the only place that mattered. Into the only hands that had ever truly held him.

He let Tom lead.

Let Tom heal.

Let Tom be ready.

Because Harry had already chosen. He would stay.

Whatever came.



Dumbledore arrived on a gray morning heavy with mist.

The house at Grimmauld Place, usually tense and sluggish with too many heavy-footed visitors, seemed to buckle under the pressure of his presence. The old magic in the walls recoiled. The air thinned.

Harry sat at the long kitchen table, untouched tea cooling at his elbow, when the door creaked open.

He didn’t need to look.

He knew.

The air vibrated with Sirius’s rage almost before the words broke free.

"You cannot be serious!"

The scrape of a chair against stone.

"You haven't let him see a Healer for months! But now, now you want to drag him out into Merlin knows where?"

Remus’s voice followed, quieter but sharper.

"He's barely eating. He's barely awake. You refused help when he needed it most. Now you expect him to be strong enough for... for what, exactly?"

Dumbledore’s voice, when it came, was untouched by anger.

Cool.

Detached.

"It must be done."

Harry listened.

Still.

Silent.

The words washed over him like winter rain.

He watched them fall through the fog that had long since settled between him and the world.

And somewhere deep inside the mist of his mind, he understood something he had been too tired to admit before:

Voldemort was still out there.

Still dangerous.

Still clinging to life with bloodied, broken hands.

Even as Tom grew stronger in the dreamscape, the outside world remained untouched by that gentle resurrection.

Harry pressed his fingers against the rough wood of the table.

The only thing that still felt real. He stood up.

The argument cracked to a halt.

All heads turned.

Harry looked at Sirius, his desperate anger.

At Remus, his quiet heartbreak.

At Dumbledore, his cold expectation.

And he made his choice.

"I’ll go," Harry said, voice rough but steady.

Sirius opened his mouth.

Remus half-reached toward him.

But Harry only shook his head.

"I have to."

No fight left.

No protests strong enough.

Dumbledore only nodded, already turning.

Opening the door to mist and cold.

Not waiting to see if Harry would follow.

Harry did.

He didn’t look back.

The journey was silent.

The path winding through country lanes Harry didn’t recognize, didn’t try to.

Dumbledore didn’t ask questions.

Didn’t ask if Harry was ready.

Didn’t ask anything at all.

He simply expected obedience. The way he always had.

Harry followed without resistance.

But it wasn’t obedience anymore.

It was something colder. The slow, inevitable march of time toward endings no one could escape.

They arrived at a small, crumbling Muggle house. Wards shimmered faintly against the bricks.The scent of burned candles and spilled wine clung to the air.

A hideout.

Temporary.

Half-abandoned.

Dumbledore rapped on the door once. It swung open with a soft, suspicious creak.

Inside, chaos. Furniture pushed against the walls.Mismatched rugs covering splintered floorboards. Trunks half-packed, half-unpacked, spilling silk robes and broken glass.

Horace Slughorn waddled into view.

Round, pink-faced, and already nervously dabbing at his forehead with a handkerchief.

"Dumbledore," he wheezed, half in greeting, half in protest.

"I told you, I’m not interested…"

Then his beady eyes landed on Harry.

And everything changed.

“Harry Potter!” Slughorn exclaimed, nearly choking on his own breath. “My boy, what an honor, what a privilege..”

He surged forward, arms spread wide like he meant to engulf Harry in an embrace.

Harry instinctively stepped back.

Slughorn didn’t seem to notice. His eyes were gleaming, calculating.

“But of course, what are the chances?” he said, voice high and eager. “Harry Potter, under my roof! And me, well, imagine that, retired! Out of the game!”

He chuckled nervously and turned back to Dumbledore.

“Still, it’s lovely to see you, Headmaster, and I’m terribly flattered, but I’m afraid I’m rather enjoying my quiet life. No students to manage, no essays to grade. Just my books, my jam, and the occasional crystallized pineapple.”

Dumbledore smiled mildly, adjusting the brim of his hat. “Of course, Horace. No one would dare disrupt your retirement.”

“Well, good!” Slughorn declared, straightening his spine. “I should think not!”

He looked at Harry again, his eyes lingering too long on the scar. “You know, I taught his mother. Brightest witch in her year. And his father! A bit of a show-off, that one, but talented. Terribly talented.”

“I remember,” Dumbledore said quietly. “I also remember what you used to say about teaching. 

That you only needed one student, one remarkable mind, to make it worthwhile.”

Slughorn blinked.

Dumbledore went on, almost idly, “But perhaps such minds are behind us now. Perhaps you were right to retire, after all.”

Slughorn bristled. “Well, I didn’t say that. I didn’t say that at all.”

“No, of course not,” Dumbledore said, his tone light but edged with something knowing. “Still, it’s quite rare these days to find students worth the trouble.”

There was a pause. A twitch in Slughorn’s jaw. He looked at Harry again.

“Well,” he said slowly. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to visit. Just to see who’s about. For old time’s sake.”

Harry didn’t smile. But Dumbledore did.

“Splendid,” he said, as if it had been settled all along. “I’m sure the Boy Who Lived would be grateful to have someone like you, as a guide, and as a teacher, at Hogwarts.”

He laughed, a thick, wet sound.

Harry blinked.

The words washed over him in slow, painful clarity.

Returning to Hogwarts.

Classes.

Feasts.

Homework.

Quidditch matches.

As if the world was still spinning on the same axis. As if Harry Potter was still one of them. As if he could pick up a textbook and simply fall back into place among children who still believed in a future he had already abandoned.

The idea was so alien it almost didn’t register as real.

Harry didn't answer.

Didn’t smile.

Didn’t even nod.

He simply stood there, watching Slughorn prattle on about curriculum and House points and dinner parties,  watching Dumbledore’s calm, calculating silence, and realizing, with final, aching certainty…he would never belong to their world again.

He was already half gone.

Already lost to another boy under an ancient oak tree, in a house of dreams stitched together from broken pieces and stubborn hope.

He was already free.

Now all that remained was the finishing of it.

Chapter Text

Dumbledore didn’t take him back to Grimmauld Place.

They traveled in silence, the world slipping past in a blur of gray mist and ancient roads.

And when they reappeared, the heavy gates of Hogwarts stood waiting.

The castle rose out of the mist like a dream half-remembered.

The turrets.

The windows.

The flags snapping against the stone in the late spring breeze.

For a moment, Harry stood frozen.

It felt wrong.

As wrong as a song played backwards,  as wrong as a body walking without a soul.

Students laughed in the distance, their voices light and easy.

The scent of cut grass and warm stone filled the air.

A teacher crossed the courtyard, arms full of books, muttering about exams.

Life had moved on.

The war brewing beyond the hills.

The fear clawing at every doorstep.

The boy who had disappeared into dreams and silence.

None of it mattered here.

Hogwarts breathed on.

Unchanged.

Unbothered.

Harry realized, sharp and cold, the world did not need him anymore.

Not the boy.
Not the hero.
Not the broken thing he had become.

And still, he followed Dumbledore.

They moved through the halls without speaking.

Old portraits turned to watch them pass, whispering behind painted hands.

The walls seemed narrower than Harry remembered.

The ceilings lower.

The doors heavier.

It was not that Hogwarts had changed.

It was Harry who had.

They reached Dumbledore’s office.

The stone gargoyle moved aside without a password.

In the office, nothing had changed.

Silver instruments ticked and spun on high shelves.

The pensieve glowed faintly in the covered cabinet.

Fawkes slept on his perch, his bright feathers dulled in the misty light.

Dumbledore gestured wordlessly to the seat before his desk.

Harry sat.

It was mechanical now.

No trust.

No rebellion.

Just movement through a script whose ending had already been written.

Dumbledore said nothing as he retrieved a vial from his robes.

A swirling, murky thing, thick as smoke, fragile as spider’s silk.

A memory.

Without ceremony, Dumbledore poured the contents into the pensieve.

The surface rippled.
And Harry leaned forward into the past.

The room around him shifted.
The walls narrowed. The ceiling dropped.
Furniture thick with age. Heavy curtains. The air tasted of brandy and pipe smoke.

Cracked like broken mirrors.

Horace Slughorn sat behind a broad desk, pink-faced and self-satisfied, swirling a goblet in one pudgy hand.
Around him, a half-ring of students laughed and chattered, voices rising and falling like leaves in a breeze.

And there, 
Tom Riddle.
Sixteen, perhaps seventeen.
Beautiful and terrible.
Dark eyes gleaming with something too sharp to be hunger.

“Sir, I was wondering…” he said, velvet-voiced, polite.
Too polite.

Slughorn went still.
The room held its breath.

“I don’t know anything about Horcruxes, and I wouldn’t tell you if I did!” he snapped, too loud, too sudden.
“Now get out of here, all of you!”

A flurry of movement. Laughter breaking off. Chairs scraping.
Faces blurred. Footsteps fading.

Slughorn wiped his brow with a shaking hand.
The goblet clinked against the desk.

The memory faltered.
Twisted.
Slipped sideways.

And the lie sat there, glistening.

Slipped away.

Harry gasped and pulled back.

The stone office swam back into view.

The pensieve stilled.

The instruments ticked.

The world continued.

Dumbledore folded his hands neatly on the desk.

His blue eyes glittered, sharp and cold.

Harry didn’t move.

Didn’t speak.

He already knew

Dumbledore’s voice cut softly through the silence.

“You understand now, I think, why Horace’s return was necessary.”

Harry didn’t reply.

He stared at the pensieve, watching the last shiver fade from its surface. The ripples had stilled. The lie had settled.

“I need you to find the truth,” Dumbledore said. “The real memory. The one he’s buried. I believe he knows more than he let on.”

Still, Harry said nothing.

Because Dumbledore didn’t know that Harry knew more than he should. More than Dumbledore realized. More than he could admit.

But not everything.

There was something missing.

Something Tom hadn’t shown him.

Something even he was afraid to name.

Dumbledore leaned forward.

“We still don’t know how many, Harry. That’s what matters most. The number. If it was just one, or two, or more. We need to know how far he went.”

Harry nodded slowly.

But inside, his mind was elsewhere.

Because the path he had chosen led elsewhere now.

To an oak tree under a silver sky.

To a boy rebuilding himself from the ashes of who he had been.

The Resurrection was nearly complete.

And Harry was ready.

The world blurred into mist again.

Harry barely remembered the walk back from the gates of Hogwarts, barely remembered Dumbledore’s perfunctory words of parting, barely remembered the way the mist clung to his skin like cold, damp hands.

When he stumbled back into Grimmauld Place, the house heaved around him like a living thing.

Dust. Creaking floorboards. The faint, sour scent of damp stone and old fear.

Sirius was there.

And Remus.

Their faces lit up when they saw him, a fierce, desperate relief that cracked through the heavy silence like thunder.

They surged forward.

Hands reaching.

Voices overlapping.

"Harry…"
"Where have you been…"
"Why didn’t you…"
"We thought…"

But Harry barely heard them.

Their words were thin, far away.

Their hands, their fear, their anger, they barely brushed against the hollow place where he used to live.

All he wanted, the only thing that still mattered, was to go back.

Back to the place where the world had stopped spinning madly without him.

Back to the only soul who still waited for him.

He slipped past them without answering.

Their hands fell away.

Their voices faltered into helpless silence.

He climbed the stairs, one heavy step at a time.

His body exhausted.

His soul burning.

He found his bed in the half-light.

Closed his eyes.

And fell.

The dreamscape rose up around him like warm earth after endless winter.

The little house was waiting.

The oak tree bowed its silver branches in greeting.

The garden buzzed with soft, drowsy light.

And Tom was there.

Standing in the clearing, his hands clenched tightly at his sides, his face drawn tight with something like fear.

Harry crossed the distance between them without thinking.

"Tom," he said softly.

Tom didn’t answer at first.

He swallowed hard.

Turned away slightly, as if ashamed.

"I want to show you," Tom said, voice low and strained. "But I'm afraid."

Harry reached out.

Lightly.

Carefully.

His fingers brushed Tom’s wrist.

"I'm not leaving," Harry said.

Simple.

Certain.

Tom shuddered once, then raised his hand.

The dreamscape blurred around them.

Melted.

Reformed.

They stood now in a heavy, low-ceilinged room.

The smell of brandy and pipe smoke thick in the air.

Candles guttered in heavy sconces on the walls.

A memory.

A memory Harry already recognized.

Slughorn’s office.

The night Tom Riddle first asked about Horcruxes.

But this time, Tom didn’t recreate the scene from afar.

He stepped into it.

The dream-Tom sat before Slughorn, beautiful and cold, charming and terrible.

Asking questions no child should know how to ask.

Harry watched.

Silent.

Still.

It wasn’t about Horcruxes now.

It was about what the memory concealed.

Tom turned to Harry, his face pale, his hands trembling.

"You know there’s one left," he said. "You know."

Harry nodded once.

No judgment.

No fear.

Just waiting.

Tom swallowed hard.

His voice broke when he spoke again.

"I killed them," he whispered.

The memory trembled.

The candles guttered lower.

"My father," Tom said. "My grandparents."

"I thought…"

He squeezed his eyes shut.

"I thought if I destroyed them... if I severed every tie to them... I wouldn’t feel anything anymore."

"But I did," he choked.

"I did."

The dreamscape wavered.

The floor seemed to tilt under Harry’s feet.

"I wanted…"
Tom’s voice shattered.
"I wanted a family."

"And I killed them."

The weight of it hung between them, thick as blood, heavy as stone.

Tom's shame was not the murders themselves.

It was the betrayal of the desperate boy inside him who had once, just once, wanted to be loved.

Harry stepped forward.

Tom flinched.

But Harry only reached out.

Wrapped his arms around him.

Held him tightly.

Tom stiffened.

Shuddered.

Collapsed into him with a broken, gasping sound that barely qualified as breathing.

Harry pressed his face into Tom’s hair, whispering soft, steady things that had no words.

Only meaning.

Only truth.

"I’m here," his arms said.

"I’m not leaving," his hands promised.

"You are loved," his heart whispered against the ruins of Tom’s soul.

The dreamscape brightened around them.

The house steadied.

The oak tree lifted its silvered arms higher into the sky.

A piece of the broken soul,  the one forged in murder and loneliness and desperate, wasted hope, slid back into place.

Harry felt it like a breath against his chest.

Tom shuddered once more.

And stilled.

They stood together in the warm quiet.

The last secret laid bare.

The last wound opened to the light.

And still,

Harry stayed.

Chapter Text

In the dreamscape, the world was brighter than it had ever been.

Harry and Tom sat side by side under the silver oak tree, their shoulders brushing lightly with the careless ease of boys who had learned how to trust.

The pond shimmered in the late evening light.

The garden breathed with slow, steady life.

The little house they had built stood strong and warm behind them.

It felt finished.

It felt whole.

Tom leaned back against the tree, arms folded behind his head, a rare, easy smile curving his mouth.

Harry watched him, heart full in a way he hadn't known was possible.

The soul was home now.

All the lost pieces stitched back into place.

There was nothing left to fear.

Or so they thought.

Far away, in the waking world Harry no longer cared for, another story was playing out.

Dumbledore stood alone in the ruins of the Gaunt shack.

The air stank of mildew and ancient dust.

The floor sagged under his feet.

The broken remains of a cursed bloodline clung to the walls like rot.

In his hand, he held the ring.

It was heavy.

Cold.

Unremarkable.

No whisper of dark magic.

No coil of soul-wound.

No trap waiting to spring.

Just gold and stone.

Ancient.

Dusty.

Dead.

Dumbledore turned it over once, twice.

Held it up to the sick light filtering through the cracks in the boards.

Nothing.

He set it on the palm of his hand and whispered every curse-breaking charm he knew.

Nothing.

He pressed it against every dark-detection ward he carried.

Nothing.

He dropped it onto the floorboards.

It made a small, pitiful clink, like a coin dropped into a forgotten well.

Dumbledore stood very still.

The old magic in the walls seemed to sneer at him.

Everything he thought he knew, about Horcruxes, about Voldemort, about Harry, began to crumble inside him.

The plan was gone.

The map was burned.

The war was slipping through his fingers like ash.

He had believed, fiercely, foolishly, that he understood the enemy he faced.

He had believed the soul would be where he left it.

But it wasn’t.

The soul was gone.

The magic was gone.

The darkness was hollow.

He didn’t know where it had gone.

He didn’t know what it meant.

And for the first time in a very long time, Albus Dumbledore was afraid.

Terrified.

Not for himself.

Not even for Harry.

But because he knew,  in the marrow of his old bones, that the world had changed without him noticing.

And he was no longer its master.

In the dreamscape, Harry and Tom laughed quietly over a game of wizard’s chess.

The sunlight slanted golden through the trees.

The grass was warm under Harry’s fingers.

The world was healing.

He did not know that far away, in the ruins of a dead family’s home, Dumbledore stood in silence with a useless ring in his hand and the weight of a dying war pressing down on his shoulders.

And even if Harry had known, he would not have cared.

The Resurrection was nearly complete.

And the world that had broken him once, the world that had made Tom into a monster, was slipping away at last.

The world held its breath.

Dumbledore searched,

and searched,

and searched.

He moved like a ghost through old battlefields.

Through ruins.

Through burned-out houses where Death Eaters had once gathered in dark whispers.

Through tombs, through marshes, through crumbling ancestral manors.

Everywhere he searched for Voldemort.

For the next war.

For the next terror.

But the world was silent.

No raids.

No massacres.

No burning Dark Marks suspended over dead families.

Nothing.

Even the Death Eaters, scattered and afraid, had no word from their master.

No summons.

No orders.

No sign that the monster they had worshiped still breathed at all.

They whispered among themselves that he was planning something enormous.

Something devastating.

Something final.

And Dumbledore believed it too.

Because it was easier to believe that the darkness was gathering strength than to see that it had already begun to rot from within.

In truth, Voldemort lay nearly dead. Silent and forgotten, buried in the decaying heart of Riddle Manor.

His magic flickering.

His body unraveling.

But not into ash.

Not into nothing.

The monster was dying, but something else was taking shape.

Bone by bone, inch by inch, the body that had once held a fractured soul was changing.

With every breath, the remnants of Voldemort withered, and the boy he used to be, the boy named Tom, rose in his place.

Younger. Human. Whole.

As if the soul had finally begun to knit itself back together. Not into the Dark Lord, but into the child he might have been.

And in the silence, it was not Voldemort’s name that echoed in the dark. It was Tom.

And the boy he had once tried to destroy was quietly finishing the work without ever raising a wand.

At Grimmauld Place, Harry Potter lived through a different kind of summer.

Slow.

Quiet.

Strangely peaceful.

The bruises under his eyes faded.

The sickly thinness hollowing his cheeks filled out again.

His hands grew steadier.

His breathing easier.

Each morning he woke to Sirius’s barking laughter in the kitchen, Remus’s quiet voice correcting spells at the breakfast table, the strange, warm comfort of home without fear lurking in the shadows.

Sirius and Remus took turns tutoring him.

Spells.

Duels.

Magical theory.

Endless afternoons spent in dusty sitting rooms,hurling cushions at each other and laughing when the old curtains tried to swallow them whole.

Sometimes Tonks would drop by, bringing ridiculous new hexes to practice.

Sometimes Kingsley would sit silently in the corner, observing, nodding once in approval when Harry hit a particularly complex shield charm.

The Order, it seemed, had started to believe in the future again.

And Harry…

Harry let them.

Because it was easier to let them believe he was healing than to explain what was really happening.

He was healing, because Tom was healing.

But not because the war was over.

Because every night, under the silver branches of the oak tree in the dreamscape, Harry sat with Tom Riddle.

And together, without words, they stitched the world back into something new.

The soul was whole now.

The lost pieces gathered.

The old wounds scarred over.

Sometimes Harry thought, maybe, when the last thread was tied, Tom would fade.

Maybe the dreamscape would dissolve into mist.

Maybe Harry would wake one morning and the world would be ordinary again.

But Tom stayed.

He grew stronger every day.

Brighter.

More real.

His laughter was lighter.

His footsteps heavier against the dream-grass.

His magic crackled in the air like a summer storm, wild and warm.

And Harry stayed too.

Through the long, soft days of June.

Through the whispering, golden afternoons of early July.

Through the quiet, sacred evenings where nothing needed to be said anymore.

He didn’t know the final truth yet.

Didn’t see the shape of it.

Didn’t realize how close they stood to the edge of everything.

And then another birthday came.

This time, Harry was living in it a little more than the year before.

The Order had come.

Loud voices and warm hands. Hermione had hugged him first, Ron had passed him a poorly wrapped gift with a grin, and someone had conjured confetti that stuck in his hair for hours.

There was cake. Laughter. Plates passed around the table at Grimmauld Place like offerings. The fire crackled with soft light. No one mentioned how much time had been lost. No one said the word “sleep” or “missing” or “dreams.”

They only said “happy birthday,” again and again, like a charm to keep the dark away.

And maybe, Harry thought, maybe this was the beginning of something. Maybe he could let it be.

He smiled. Ate two pieces of cake. Let himself feel full.

Outside, the rain had stopped.

Inside, it felt like coming back.

But he knew, somewhere deep inside him, that the end was near.

That something old and terrible would have to break before something new and beautiful could truly live.

And he would not run from it.

After the cake, the laughter, and the wrapping paper left in soft crumples, Harry fell asleep with a full belly and warm hands.

In the dream, the garden greeted him with golden mist and lavender sky.

Tom was waiting by the bench beneath their tree, holding something wrapped in deep green cloth.

“You didn’t have to get me anything,” Harry said.

Tom didn’t answer at first. He simply handed him the bundle.

Harry unwrapped it slowly.

Inside was a picture frame.

Wooden, a little old, like something found in a cozy attic. And inside, a photograph.

A little boy.

Black hair. Bright eyes. Laughing.

He was sitting on the grass between two smiling adults. A woman with red hair, a man with glasses. Someone older held a birthday cake. Someone younger clapped along.

Harry’s breath caught.

“That’s not real,” he whispered.

Tom shook his head. “It could have been. It should have been.”

The photograph shimmered faintly in the golden light, but the boy didn’t fade.

“You’ve always belonged somewhere,” Tom said. “Even before me.”

Harry closed his eyes, the frame held tightly to his chest.

“Thank you.”

Tom stepped closer.

“Happy birthday, Harry.”

And in the dream, he didn’t feel like the Boy Who Lived or the boy who was broken.

He just felt… home.

The summer died slowly.

The leaves began to turn.

The Hogwarts letters arrived, carried by tired old owls and stuffed into Remus’s careful hands.

Harry opened his without feeling.

Without expectation.

Without fear.

He packed his trunk.

Accepted Sirius’s fierce hugs and Remus’s quiet, worried smiles.

Promised to be careful.

Promised to write.

Promised to be strong.

The train whistled in the distance.

The station filled with shouting children and crying parents.

The world spun on.

And Harry Potter, who had already left it behind once, stepped forward to finish what he had unknowingly begun.

The final act had already started.

And none of them even knew it yet.

Chapter Text

Hogwarts looked the same.

The wide green lawns.

The great stone towers reaching for the sky.

The glittering black lake under the late autumn sun.

And yet, as Harry crossed the threshold into the Great Hall, he felt like a stranger stepping into a story he no longer belonged to.

The chatter of students.

The clatter of cutlery.

The laughter at the House tables.

It washed over him like rain against a window.

He moved through it.

Sat with Ron and Hermione, who smiled too brightly, spoke too quickly, pretended too hard.

He answered questions when he had to.

He smiled when it was expected.

He ate when food was placed before him.

And all the while, the only real thing was the faint, steady heartbeat of the dreamscape waiting for him behind closed eyes.

Tom.

Still there.

Still whole.

Still his.

Dumbledore watched him from the staff table.

Blue eyes sharp behind half-moon spectacles.

Measuring.

Calculating.

Waiting.

The first summons came only a few days later.

A folded note passed to him during breakfast by a stern-faced prefect.

“Come to my office after your classes.”

Harry tucked it away without reaction.

He already knew.

Dumbledore’s office smelled the same.

Beeswax polish.

Ink.

The faint sulfur of old spells.

Harry sat in the same chair as last year.

Watched the same silver instruments whir and click and spin aimlessly.

Listened to Fawkes shift quietly on his perch.

Dumbledore folded his hands on the desk.

Smiled thinly.

"Tell me, Harry," he said, voice soft, almost kind, "have you had any unusual dreams recently?"

Harry kept his face blank.

"No, sir," he said.

A beat of silence.

The faint ticking of a crooked clock on the wall.

"No...visions?" Dumbledore pressed lightly. "No feelings of anger or fear that seemed...not your own?"

Harry shook his head.

Steady.

Silent.

Lying.

Because he had dreams every night.

Dreams full of warmth and silver light and the sound of Tom’s laughter.

Dreams full of love and peace and the slow, steady healing of something once shattered beyond repair.

And he would not let Dumbledore take that away.

Dumbledore's smile tightened.

He nodded once.

"As you say," he said lightly. "Still, for your safety, I think it would be wise to...fortify your mind."

Harry's stomach dropped.

He knew what was coming before the words left Dumbledore’s mouth.

"I've spoken with Professor Snape," Dumbledore continued, "and he has agreed to give you lessons in Occlumency."

Harry stayed very still.

Not because he was surprised.

But because the wave of fear and anger and helplessness that crashed over him was too deep to surface.

Occlumency.

The art of closing the mind.

Of sealing away dreams.

Of severing connections.

Exactly what he could not afford.

But as always, Dumbledore gave him no choice.

The first lesson was scheduled for later that week.

The dungeons were quiet that evening.

Cool and heavy with the scent of old stone and older spells. Shadows clung to the corners. A candle flickered.

Snape stood by the far wall, arms crossed, wand at his side. He didn’t sneer, not quite. His expression was unreadable.

“You are on time,” he said flatly. “Good. We will begin with discipline.”

Harry said nothing. He dropped his bag to the floor and stood waiting.

Snape watched him for a long moment, then finally raised his wand—not to strike, but to direct.

“Clear your thoughts. Focus. Do not speak.”

The first session was slower than Harry expected. Snape didn’t shout. He didn’t lash out. His voice, when he gave instruction, was sharp but restrained. He explained the concept of mental defense, of walls, of focus.

But it still felt like peeling skin from bone.

“Legilimens.”

The spell crept in. Not like a hammer, but like cold water.

Still, it hurt.

Memories flickered behind Harry’s eyes.

Not blood. Not fire.

Tom.

A garden in mist.

A silver oak tree.

Laughter.

Warm grass beneath bare feet.

A boy with dark hair and careful hands.

Snape blinked.

The images rippled through his mind. Not Voldemort. Not anything he expected. There was no cold, no cruelty. Only something strange. Foreign. Unsettling.

He saw the boy clearly.

Dark eyes, pale face, gentleness in every movement, but the boy meant nothing to him. A student, maybe? A figment?

He said nothing.

But it made him pause. Just for a second.

Then he drew back and cast again.

And again.

Each time, Harry clung harder to the dream. To Tom.

By the end of the lesson, Harry could barely stand.

He didn’t mention the boy. Snape didn’t ask.

But the image stayed with him. Quiet and unplaceable.

Somewhere, deep in the back of Snape’s mind, something itched.

Harry fought.

Fought harder than he ever had before.

Fought not to push Snape out, but to pull Tom in tighter.

Hold him close.

Keep him safe.

But every time Snape’s magic tore through his defenses, it left Harry weaker.

Shakier.

Fraying at the edges.

The lessons became a torture he bore in silence.

By day, he stumbled through classes, pale and hollow-eyed.

By night, he clung to the dreamscape, to Tom, to the only thing that still felt real.

But it was getting harder.

The door between worlds, once wide and golden, began to splinter.

Sometimes he woke up gasping, unsure where he was.

Sometimes he drifted through days half-dreaming.

Sometimes he found himself speaking aloud to no one, words meant for Tom slipping through the cracks.

Sirius and Remus sent worried letters.

Hermione pressed study schedules into his hands.

Ron clapped him on the back awkwardly, as if hoping to jolt life back into him.

But none of it mattered.

Because every day that passed, Harry could feel the dreamscape slipping farther away.

And he knew, with a cold, sinking certainty, that he would not survive losing it.

That he would not survive losing Tom.

They had promised each other it would be enough.

Each night, after Occlumency, when Harry staggered back to the safety of his bed, he would close his eyes and slip into the dreamscape, and Tom would be waiting.

He would kneel in the grass under the silver oak tree.

He would open his arms without speaking.

And Harry would fall into him like a drowning boy catching hold of the shore.

"I’m still here," Harry would whisper against his chest.

"I’m still here," Tom would whisper back.

But it was getting harder.

Every night, harder.

The silver light in the dreamscape flickered now.

The colors bled and blurred at the edges.

The air smelled sometimes of smoke, sometimes of blood.

And Tom…

Tom, who had become so warm, so solid, so alive…

had started to feel distant again.

Like a ghost.

Like a memory.

Harry could see it in his eyes.

The fear neither of them would name.

Still, they pretended.

Still, they clung to the fragile illusion that they could survive this.

Just a little longer, they told themselves.

Just a little longer.

On October thirtieth, Harry climbed down to the dungeons with legs like lead.

Snape was waiting, black-robed and cold-eyed as ever.

The room smelled of damp stone and burning oil.

The torches spat and hissed against the walls.

"Potter," Snape said, his voice as sharp as broken glass.

"Prepare yourself."

Harry gripped his wand tighter.

His palms were slick with sweat.

He had learned a few tricks.

Small things.

Enough to hold onto the dreamscape at night.

Enough to survive.

But tonight…tonight something inside him was already cracked wide open.

Snape raised his wand.

"Legilimens."

The spell hit like a blow to the chest.

Memories flashed like lightning:

Sirius laughing in the kitchen.

Tom’s hand brushing his cheek in the dreamscape.

The first time Harry realized he was loved.

Harry shoved back.

Not carefully.

Not skillfully.

Just desperately.

He felt the magic twist.

Felt the spell invert.

Suddenly he was not the hunted but the hunter.

And Snape’s mind tore open before him like a wound.

A boy.

Small.

Afraid.

Shoved into cupboards too small for breathing.

Shouts and fists.

Shattered glass.

The stink of beer and broken promises.

Loneliness like a living thing, growing teeth and claws inside a fragile ribcage.

A girl with red hair laughing by the river.

Hope.

Bright and unbearable.

Then darkness again.

Always darkness.

Harry staggered back, gasping.

Snape’s face twisted into something monstrous.

Rage.

Horror.

Shame.

"OUT!" Snape roared, his voice a whipcrack across the stones.

The spell snapped.

Harry reeled.

The world tilted.

The floor rushed up to meet him.

Somewhere far away, he heard Snape shouting.

Felt rough hands shoving his books into his arms.

Felt the cold breath of the hallway as he was pushed out, staggering.

He made it as far as the wall outside the dungeons before he collapsed against it, sliding down into a boneless heap.

The world spun.

His scar burned.

The dreamscape, the silver oak tree, the boy waiting under it… was slipping.

In the real world, Harry’s body trembled uncontrollably.

Sweat poured down his face.

His hands clawed weakly at the stones.

He couldn’t catch his breath.

He couldn’t find his footing.

The soul inside him, the final fragment, was pulling loose.

And with it, the peace he had fought so hard to build.

He clutched at the connection blindly, like a man drowning in the dark.

Stay with me.

Please, stay.

But the dreamscape flickered, dimmed, twisted.

And in the farthest reaches of his breaking mind, he heard Tom crying out his name.

Halloween was here.

And so was the end.

Chapter Text

Harry crawled into bed like a man carrying his own funeral on his back.

The castle breathed around him, warm and familiar.

The Gryffindor common room glowed gold and red.

The fire cracked softly in the hearth.

None of it mattered.

His head hit the pillow.

His eyes closed.

And for the first time in longer than he could remember, there was nothing.

No dreamscape.

No silver oak tree.

No Tom waiting with open arms.

No nightmares.

No warmth.

No terror.

Just blank, endless silence.

When he woke the next morning, he knew something was terribly wrong.

His limbs were heavy as stone.

His head pounded with every heartbeat.

His mouth tasted of ash and metal.

His scar prickled painfully.

He moved like a ghost through the motions of the morning.

Dressed.

Ate a few bites of toast he couldn’t taste.

Ignored Ron’s cheerful chatter.

Nodded absently at Hermione’s worried glances.

There was no dream to return to.

No thread of silver light to guide him.

The silence inside him was louder than any scream.

The castle was decked out for Halloween.

Jack-o'-lanterns floated through the halls, grinning down at the students.

Cascades of golden and black ribbons dripped from the ceiling.

The air buzzed with excitement.

Harry felt like he was walking underwater.

He barely noticed when Hermione pulled him into the Great Hall.

Barely heard the roar of students settling at their tables.

Barely tasted the food that appeared in front of him.

The noise of the feast spun around him, bright, dizzying, unbearable.

At the staff table, Dumbledore watched him with narrowed eyes.

Snape’s mouth twisted into a grimace of suspicion.

Harry tried to breathe.

Tried to smile.

Tried to pretend.

But the silence inside him was widening, splintering, howling.

And then it happened.

The pain struck like lightning.

Harry gasped, doubling over, clutching his forehead.

The scar burned like molten iron.

Blood burst from his nose.

Spilled from his mouth.

Poured from his ears.

And then, his eyes.

Crimson tears spilled down his cheeks, staining his skin, splattering the floor.

The Great Hall erupted into screams.

Students shoved back from the tables, chairs crashing to the stone.

Teachers surged to their feet.

McGonagall shouting.

Flitwick darting forward.

Snape already drawing his wand.

But Dumbledore…

Dumbledore’s face had gone white.

Frozen.

Horrified.

Because he knew, or thought he knew.

Voldemort was taking Harry.

The grand entrance he had feared was unfolding before his eyes.

Harry crumpled to the floor.

Blood pooling under him.

His body trembling violently.

Somewhere, someone was shouting spells.

Calling for St. Mungo’s.

Calling for Pomfrey.

Calling for Dumbledore.

But Harry barely heard any of it.

In the spinning wreckage of his mind, he was reaching blindly…

For Tom.

For the dreamscape.

For anything.

But the connection was sealed.

Closed.

Silent.

Tom was gone.

Dumbledore’s orders came fast and sharp.

Get him out.

Now.

Before Voldemort could finish what he had started.

The teachers gathered him up roughly.

Flashes of cloaks.

The cold, wet rush of displacement.

When Harry opened his eyes again, he was lying on a narrow bed in Grimmauld Place.

The old house groaned around him.

The windows rattled.

The walls seemed to lean in.

Sirius was pacing.

Remus was sitting with his head in his hands.

Molly Weasley was weeping softly in the next room.

No one spoke to him.

No one dared.

Because no one knew if he would live until morning.

And in the deep, sacred heart of the dreamscape, Tom Riddle knelt alone under the silver oak tree, his hands pressed against the soil, his body trembling with grief and rage and love.

Waiting.

Praying.

The silence was unbearable.

It gnawed at Harry's bones, hollowed him out from the inside.

The world was blurred at the edges, blood in his mouth, pain behind his eyes, voices far away.

But the worst part wasn’t the pain.

It was the silence.

No dreamscape.

No silver oak tree.

No Tom.

He reached for the connection.

Found it closed.

Walled off.

Sealed tight with a terrible, trembling love.

Tom had done it.

Tom had severed them to protect him.

And Harry…

Harry didn’t understand..

He couldn’t accept it.

He couldn’t live without it.

Not after everything.

Not after choosing him over the world.

Harry gathered the last scraps of himself, the broken pieces of magic and soul and love, and shoved them against the walls Tom had built.

He forced the connection open.

The dreamscape slammed back into place, but it wasn’t the garden.

Not the oak tree.

It was night.

Cold and sharp and terrible.

The wreckage of a house burned around him.

The shattered remains of a crib.

The stink of smoke and broken magic in the air.

Godric’s Hollow.

The night it all began.

Harry staggered forward through the ruins.

The grass was wet with dew and blood.

The sky stretched overhead, empty and uncaring.

And there, in the rubble, a child.

Tiny.

Broken.

Alone.

Baby Harry.

Curled up among the ruins.

Clutching a scorched blanket.

Green eyes wide and silent with shock.

Lightning scar bleeding slowly.

Harry’s heart broke open inside him.

He fell to his knees without thinking.

Reached out, but his hands passed through.

A shadow.

A memory.

And then, another figure moved through the smoke.

Tom.

Not Lord Voldemort.

Not the Dark Lord.

Not the monster the world had named him.

Just Tom.

A boy in dark robes, his face pale and drawn tight with grief.

His hands trembling.

He crossed the ruined nursery slowly.

Kneeling before the shattered crib.

Reaching out, with the gentlest hands Harry had ever seen, and lifting baby Harry into his arms.

The child whimpered once.

Nestled against him.

Tom cradled him close.

Closed his eyes.

Tears slid down Tom’s cheeks.

Silent.

Steady.

He pressed his forehead against the child's.

And spoke.

"I’m sorry," he whispered.

Voice breaking.

Heart breaking.

"I’m so sorry."

He pulled back slightly, cupping the tiny face in his hands.

Looked into those wide green eyes.

"You carried me," he said, voice shaking.

"All your life. You carried the last broken piece of me."

"You suffered because of me. You were hurt because of me."

"I never deserved it. I never deserved you."

"And I’m so, so sorry."

The dreamscape shuddered.

The air vibrated with ancient, sacred magic.

The scar on baby Harry’s forehead glowed softly.

The crack in Harry’s soul, the Horcrux, warmed.

Not burning.

Not shattering.

Healing.

Tom hugged the child tighter.

Whispered one last time:

"You are loved. You are free. You are mine, and I am yours."

The dreamscape burst into light.

The ruins faded.

The darkness fell away.

And in its place, the silver oak tree bloomed again.

Full.

Radiant.

Alive.

Tom stood under it, still holding the child, but when he looked up, he saw Harry.

Not the baby.

Not the broken boy.

Harry, whole and shining, green eyes bright with tears, love burning in his chest like a second heart.

They reached for each other.

No more barriers.

No more silence.

No more pieces missing.

When their hands touched, the last fragment of broken soul slipped back into place.

The Resurrection was complete.

In the waking world, Harry’s body stilled.

The bleeding stopped.

The trembling ceased.

The scar, once so violent,  so cruel, so cursed, faded to a soft, silver line.

The final Horcrux was gone.

And in the quiet sacred dark of Grimmauld Place, Harry Potter breathed once more.

Not as a weapon.

Not as a savior.

Not as a boy doomed to die.

But as himself.

Loved.

Forgiven.

Alive.

Chapter Text

The world outside moved on without him.

The days bled into each other like spilled ink across a ruined page.

The sun rose and fell.

The clocks ticked and struck and stuttered.

The seasons shifted one hesitant footstep closer toward winter.

And Harry Potter did not wake.

In the dim, crumbling halls of Grimmauld Place, the air was thick with waiting.

Sirius prowled the corridors like a trapped animal, his boots scuffing long, angry marks into the ancient wood.

Remus sat at Harry’s bedside, silent and unmoving, his hands clenching and unclenching in his lap.

Molly Weasley came every morning with fresh food no one touched.

Arthur whispered words of comfort no one heard.

Ron and Hermione crept in once,  hovered awkwardly near the door, and left again, pale and shaken.

Harry slept on.

Breath slow.

Skin pale and cool.

Hands still.

No twitch of a finger.

No flutter of an eyelash.

No murmur of dream or nightmare.

Just stillness.

A boy carved from marble.

A life hanging by a thread thinner than spider’s silk.

Dumbledore came on the third day.

He stood in the doorway for a long time, his silhouette sharp and lonely against the gray light.

He said nothing.

Did nothing.

Only watched.

And in that watching, something inside Albus Dumbledore, something old and proud and terribly certain, finally cracked.

He had thought, Merlin help him, he had thought, that Harry could bear it.

He had thought the boy’s stubborn heart, the iron thread of his spirit, would endure whatever was required.

He had thought he could mold him, break him, forge him into the weapon the world needed.

And now, watching the boy lie motionless and pale, his scar a faint, silver whisper against his brow, Dumbledore saw the truth.

Harry Potter was not a weapon.

He was a child.

A child Dumbledore had armed with prophecy and pushed into the fire.

And now the fire had consumed him.

Dumbledore bowed his head.

The weight of all his choices crushing his bones.

They began to prepare, quietly, for the end.

Order members whispered in the halls.

Arguments flared and died over funeral arrangements, over what to tell the Ministry, over what to tell the world.

No one said the words outright.

But everyone felt it.

The boy who lived was dying.

And with him, all their hopes.

Sirius sat by Harry's bedside through it all, his hand resting lightly on Harry’s wrist, counting every faint, fragile heartbeat.

Remus sat beside him, silent, his eyes hollow.

They would not leave him.

Not now.

Not ever.

Even if the world outside had already given up.

Even if Dumbledore, in the secret, silent chambers of his mind, had begun preparing to bury the only hope he had ever truly believed in.

The seventh day dawned, cold and bitter.

The house groaned against the wind.

The fire guttered low.

The windows wept condensation against the gray sky.

Harry Potter slept on.

And somewhere far beyond the reach of fear and grief and despair, in the hidden, sacred place where love had stitched the broken soul whole again, something stirred.

Something bloomed.

Inside Harry Potter, there was no time.

No dreams.

No nightmares.

No drifting images of lost faces or broken promises.

Only stillness.

A sacred, endless quiet.

The kind of silence that exists only between heartbeats.

The kind that cradles a soul too bruised for noise, too fragile for memory.

Days passed.

Nights folded over one another like dark wings.

And Harry knew none of it.

In the waking world, Grimmauld Place sagged under the weight of grief.

Molly Weasley wept in the kitchens.

Arthur wrote meaningless letters to the Ministry with shaking hands.

Sirius paced until his voice was hoarse from shouting at no one.

Remus sat vigil, the shadows beneath his eyes deepening into bruises.

Dumbledore lingered in the hallways, his presence a ghost of pride and regret.

No one spoke of hope anymore.

They spoke only in hushed, broken murmurs about time.

How much Harry had left.

How they would mourn him.

How they would survive after the light was gone.

And far away, in a place no one living dared to enter, the ruins of Riddle Manor stirred.

The house still rotted.

The gardens still withered.

The stones still whispered curses to the empty sky.

But inside, in a crumbling, abandoned chamber, the boy who had once been named Tom Riddle breathed.

It was not Voldemort anymore.

The monstrous half-life was dead, unseen, unlamented.

What stirred now was something older.

Something purer.

A boy born under a bloodred sky.

A boy abandoned, unloved, unclaimed.

A boy who had built monsters to survive, and now, at last, was being given another chance.

His flesh knitted itself back together.

His magic rekindled like a slow, stubborn ember.

His heart, battered and cautious, began to beat stronger.

Tom Riddle had come back to life.

Neither Harry nor Tom knew it.

Neither needed to.

Some truths moved deeper than knowledge.

Some healing required only trust.

In the narrow bed in Grimmauld Place, Harry Potter stirred for the first time in seven days.

It was not much.

A flutter of breath.

A soft twitch of fingers.

A faint, almost invisible sigh.

But Sirius saw it.

Remus saw it.

And for the first time in a week, hope cracked through the heavy grief that blanketed the house.

They didn’t dare speak.

Didn’t dare move.

Only waited.

And somewhere very far away, under the silver branches of an unseen oak tree, a boy who had once been a monster smiled through his tears and waited too.

It was here.

Chapter Text

Grimmauld Place emptied slowly.

One by one, the world peeled itself away.

Dumbledore was the first to go.

Duty called him back to Hogwarts, and he left with a grim set to his mouth, and a heavy, trailing silence that no one wanted to fill.

The Weasleys followed, reluctant but resigned.

Work, family, the relentless pull of ordinary life.

Molly kissed Harry's still forehead with trembling lips and Arthur squeezed his motionless hand before they disappeared.

Ron and Hermione lingered longer.

Standing in the hall, hovering in doorways, pretending they had somewhere else to be.

They left, too.

Because the world never stops for broken things.

And so Grimmauld Place settled into waiting.

Only Sirius remained, pacing worn tracks into the floorboards, his hands clenching and unclenching until the skin split at the knuckles.

Only Remus remained, sitting silent by the bedside, reading the same page of the same book over and over again without ever seeing the words.

Only Kreacher remained, muttering dark prayers in corners, hovering between hatred and devotion.

And Harry.

Sleeping.

Still.

Silent.

It began with a breath.

A shallow gasp that rattled out of him, sharp and wet and violent.

Then another.

Then Harry’s whole body seized, arching off the bed, every muscle locked and trembling.

Sirius leapt forward with a shout.

Remus rose so fast his chair toppled behind him.

Harry's hands clawed at the sheets.

His head thrashed from side to side.

Magic crackled off him in wild, uncontrolled bursts.

The lamps flickered and shattered.

The windows shuddered in their frames.

The floor groaned as if the house itself was trying to breathe with him.

"Sirius…" Remus barked, half command, half plea.

But Sirius was already there, grabbing Harry's wrists, trying to anchor him, to pull him back from whatever edge he hovered on.

"Harry…Harry, stay with us," Sirius gasped, his voice breaking in panic.

For one terrible heartbeat, they thought they were watching him die.

And then…

Harry stilled.

All at once.

His body fell limp against the mattress.

His breathing evened.

And slowly, slowly, his eyes opened.

They were the same green they had always been.

But something inside them had changed.

Something new.

Something whole.

Sirius froze, still gripping Harry’s wrists like he could hold him to life.

Remus stared, the book he had been holding forgotten at his feet.

"Harry?" Sirius choked out.

Harry blinked once.

Slowly.

Then he smiled.

Small.

Sure.

"I'm here," he said, voice hoarse but steady.

"I'm home."

Sirius let out a shuddering, broken laugh.

Collapsed forward onto Harry’s chest, clutching him so fiercely it would have hurt if Harry wasn’t already too overwhelmed to feel anything.

Remus sank back into his chair, burying his face in his hands, shoulders shaking with silent, grateful sobs.

And Harry lay there, blinking up at the cracked ceiling, feeling the strange, stunning weight of being alive settle into his bones.

The dreamscape was gone.

Closed.

Silent.

Because it didn’t need to exist anymore.

Tom wasn’t a dream now.

Tom was real.

Alive.

Waiting.

And Harry would find him.

Not because the world demanded it.

Not because prophecy whispered it.

But because he wanted to.

Because he had chosen him.

Harry didn’t ease back into life.

He slammed into it like a meteor falling from the heavens.

One moment he was lying still, breathing soft and slow, Remus and Sirius daring to believe he was safe, and the next he was up, wild and shaking, tearing the blanket from his legs, staggering toward the door with no plan, no balance, no sense.

"Harry…Harry, lie down!" Sirius shouted, grabbing for him.

Harry shook him off with surprising strength.

He was pacing already.

Back and forth, back and forth, like a caged thing just remembering it had wings.

His hands fluttered at the air, grabbing at nothing, muttering frantic words under his breath:

"He’s alone…he’s waiting…"

"Don’t worry, I’m coming…"

"Please…please wait…hold on…hold on…"

"I’m still here. Tom, I’m still here."

The words tumbled over each other, broken and breathless, half in English, half slipping into a soft, sibilant hum of Parseltoungue.

Sirius froze.

Remus rose to his feet slowly, eyes wide but calm.

"Harry," Remus said quietly, carefully, as if approaching something sacred and wild.
"Who’s waiting?"

Harry spun toward him, his eyes fever-bright, desperate.

"I have to find him," Harry rasped, voice catching. "I have to…he’s alone…I promised…I promised!"

Another burst of Parseltongue spilled from his mouth, liquid and sharp, a sound not meant for the ears of men.

Sirius flinched.

Remus did not.

Remus watched, heart thundering, as the boy they thought they had lost tore through the room with the kind of desperation that only the living can carry.

Not dying.

Not possessed.

Alive.

More alive than he had ever been.

The magic rippled off Harry in waves, bright, fierce, crackling with a force that was not destruction but rebirth.

Remus understood it before anyone else could.

It was over.

Whatever had haunted Harry, whatever had hollowed him out from the inside, was gone.

What stood before them now was something new.

Not broken.

Not lost.

Reborn.

Sirius moved forward again, hands reaching out to stop Harry, to tether him to earth.

But Remus caught his wrist.

Sirius turned on him, furious and scared, but Remus only shook his head once, firmly.

"He's not running away," Remus said, voice thick with awe. "He's running toward something."

Harry didn't hear them.

He was grabbing for a satchel, half-packing without thought.

Clothes.

His wand.

Anything.

His fingers shook with the urgency of it.

"I'm coming," he muttered again and again. "Just hold on. I'm coming."

The words wove between English and Parseltongue.

And somewhere out there, Harry could feel it, Tom was waiting.

Not a dream.

Not a memory.

Alive.

Real.

And Harry would find him.

No matter what.

No matter who tried to stop him.

Because he had chosen him.

Because he had crossed death for him.

Because in the end, there was never really any other choice.

The room was still vibrating with the aftershocks of Harry’s awakening.

The floorboards buzzed.

The shattered lamp flickered weakly.

The heavy curtains shifted in a breathless, waiting wind.

Harry stood in the center of it all, barefoot, wild-haired, eyes burning with fierce, unwavering light.

And Sirius and Remus watched him like men staring at a star that had fallen into their hands.

"I’m leaving," Harry said, voice steady now.

No panic.

No confusion.

Only certainty.

Sirius opened his mouth, a thousand protests bubbling on his tongue.

But Harry raised a hand, not in anger, not in command, but in simple, quiet authority.

"You can come with me," Harry said.

Soft.

Certain.

Unshakable.

"I want you to come."

Sirius froze.

Remus’s breath caught in his throat.

Harry paced once, the movement restless but sure.

He wasn’t pleading.

He wasn’t begging.

He was offering.

"I’m going to find him," Harry said, still not meeting their eyes, as if the enormity of what he was asking could only be spoken to the room itself.

"And when I do…” he swallowed hard "I want him to see what family looks like."

He turned then, green eyes bright and open and unbearably young.

"You’re the only family I have. The only ones who ever loved me without wanting something in return."

The weight of the words fell between them, heavy and sacred.

Remus stepped forward first.

No hesitation.

No doubt.

"I’m coming," he said simply.

Sirius hesitated.

Just a breath.

Just a heartbeat.

Still so scared.

Still so tangled in the past.

But then he looked at Harry.

Really looked.

And he saw not a weapon.

Not a prophecy.

Not a broken boy.

He saw the stubborn, reckless, infuriatingly brave child he had loved from the moment he first laid eyes on him.

"I’m coming too," Sirius said, voice rough and low.

Harry smiled then.

Not wide.

Not triumphant.

Just grateful.

Bone-deep grateful.

"Kreacher," Harry called softly.

The old elf appeared with a crack, wringing his hands, his large, bat-like ears drooping miserably.

"Kreacher," Harry said gently, "we’re leaving Grimmauld Place. We need food. Supplies. Whatever we can carry."

Kreacher whimpered, wringing his hands harder.

His beloved mistress’s house.

His last tie to the family he had served all his life.

He opened his mouth to protest, to rage, to beg, but Harry knelt down, eye-level with him,
and spoke very softly.

"There’s a boy we have to save," Harry said.

And that was all.

Kreacher’s mouth snapped shut.

His hands stilled.

And in his mind, he saw Master Regulus.

He saw the boy no one had saved.

The boy who had died alone.

And something inside the old elf shifted.

A soft, painful click, like a door finally swinging open after a lifetime of being locked.

Kreacher bowed deeply.

"As Master wishes," he croaked.

They packed in silence.

Simple things.

Food.

Warm clothes.

Wands tucked into sleeves.

Blankets rolled tightly against shoulders.

No war cries.

No grand speeches.

Only the quiet, sacred preparation of those who had chosen love over fear.

When they left Grimmauld Place, it was not in flight.

Not in defeat.

It was in hope.

The door swung shut behind them with a soft, final click.

The old house sagged into itself, whispering memories to the empty halls.

And the four of them, Harry, Sirius, Remus, and Kreacher, stepped into the gray morning light together.

Not running from something.

Running toward someone.

Toward Tom.

Toward life.

Toward everything that had been broken and was waiting now to be made whole.

Chapter Text

The world twisted sharply around them as Harry grabbed Sirius and Remus and Kreacher in a single fierce motion and apparated them all away.

There was no hesitation.

No fear.

Only the pure, burning need to find him.

The ground reappeared under their feet with a crack of displaced air.

The smell of wet earth and cold stone filled their lungs.

They were in Little Hangleton.

The sky hung low and gray overhead.

The ruins of the Riddle house loomed in the distance, a blackened skeleton against the dying light.

Magic still clung to the broken stones, old, brittle, and poisonous, but it receded from Harry as he walked.

As if even the house itself recognized what was about to be undone.

Harry led them without a word.

Past the shattered windows.

Past the crumbling garden.

Through the hollowed-out shell of what had once been a monument to arrogance and cruelty.

And beyond it…

At the edge of the grounds…

Under a single, stubborn tree whose branches bent low to the ground, he waited.

Tom.

He was sitting beneath the tree, one knee drawn up to his chest, his chin resting lightly against it.

He looked up as they approached.

And Harry’s breath caught painfully in his chest.

Tom looked…young.

Human.

Fourteen or fifteen, at most.

No red eyes.

No twisted features.

No monstrous air of death clinging to him.

Just a boy.

Pale.

Thin.

Hair messy from the wind.

Eyes wide and dark with hope and terror.

And beside him, curled small and harmless, was Nagini, no longer monstrous,no longer terrifying, just a snake, frail and quiet.

Tom rose slowly to his feet as Harry crossed the clearing.

For a long, unbearable moment, they only stared at each other.

And then, in a voice barely more than a breath, Tom said:

"You're here."

Harry's chest burned.

His vision blurred.

But his voice was steady as he answered:

"I'm here."

He ran.

Tom ran.

They collided in the middle of the clearing, arms locking around each other so fiercely it stole the breath from both their lungs.

Neither cared.

They clung to each other as if trying to fuse their hearts together.

As if afraid the world would tear them apart again if they let go for even a moment.

Harry buried his face in Tom’s shoulder.

Felt the real, solid, living warmth of him.

And for the first time in longer than he could remember, he felt whole.

Behind them, Sirius and Remus stood frozen.

Watching.

Trying to understand what they were seeing.

The boy in Harry’s arms looked at them, shy, wary, afraid.

As if expecting hatred.

Rejection.

Condemnation.

Sirius shifted uncomfortably, glancing sideways at Remus.

Remus, ever steadier, nodded once.

Accepting.

Understanding.

Finally, Sirius cleared his throat awkwardly and asked the question trembling on his tongue:

"Who is this, Harry?"

Tom stiffened in Harry’s arms.

Waiting for the blow to fall.

Waiting for everything to be ruined.

But Harry…Harry only smiled, small and fierce and sure.

He pulled back just enough to meet Sirius’s eyes.

And with the clarity of someone who had walked through death and come back bearing light,
he said:

"This is Tom."

"Voldemort’s first victim."

"But he has come back."

"Come back to us."

For a long moment, the world held its breath.

And then Sirius, with a look halfway between bewilderment and wonder, let out a sharp, broken laugh.

"Well," he said, scrubbing a hand through his hair, "looks like we're gonna need a bigger kitchen table."

Remus smiled too, soft and tired and full of hope.

And Kreacher, bless him, broken and loyal to the end, bowed low to Tom without a word.

Harry turned back to Tom.

Took his hand.

Laced their fingers together.

They had come back to each other.

And this time, they would never be torn apart again.

Chapter Text

When the Order returned to Grimmauld Place, they found nothing.

The house was empty.

Silent.

No Harry.

No Sirius.

No Remus.

Not even Kreacher.

The rooms were stripped bare of anything but the bones of old magic and dust.

The fireplace was cold.

The curtains drawn.

The great black tapestry of the Black family sagged on the wall, torn and fading.

It was clear they had packed.

It was clear they had gone.

Whispers grew.

Dark, trembling things.

"Harry must have died," some said quietly, when they thought no one was listening.
"Sirius and Remus must have taken his body away. Hidden him. Buried him in secret."

Because what other explanation could there be?

Sirius Black and Remus Lupin were still criminals in the eyes of the Ministry. They would have no funeral.

No ceremony.

Only silence.

Only absence.

The world moved on, as it always did.

They searched for Voldemort in the months that followed.

Dumbledore sent out scouts, spies, messengers.

The Order waited for raids, for killings, for darkness to rise again.

But nothing came.

No Death Eaters.

No attacks.

No signs of movement.

Only silence.

Only peace.

A peace that grew so long and so still that even the Order began to doubt themselves.

When Peter Pettigrew’s body was found in the ruins of a crumbling shack near Hogsmeade, the Ministry had no choice but to clear Sirius Black’s name.

It was quiet.

Almost no one celebrated.

The papers printed a few lines.

The public, who had never truly cared, turned the page and forgot.

The Order dared to hope that Sirius might return.

That Remus might appear with him.

That maybe Harry had survived, hidden, healing somewhere.

But they never came back.

Not to Grimmauld Place.

Not to Hogwarts.

Not to the world.

In secret, Dumbledore continued to search.

Late one evening, long after the world had given up its watch, he stood in the ruins of Riddle Manor.

The house was deathly quiet.

The walls sagged inward.

The earth smelled of rot and broken magic.

But there, in the dust and silence, he found it.

A wand.

Voldemort’s wand.

Abandoned.

Cold.

Silent.

Dumbledore picked it up with trembling hands.

Felt no life stirring in the wood.

Felt no pull of soul or power.

Only emptiness.

Voldemort was gone.

But without proof, without a body,  without a grand defeat the world could celebrate, Dumbledore could not announce it.

And so the world moved on.

Blind.

Content.

Years passed.

The wars that might have been were forgotten.

The prophecies were rewritten into myths.

The boy who lived faded into a whisper, a curiosity, a legend.

And on a quiet night, in a room filled with the faint smell of old parchment and lemon drops, Albus Dumbledore lay dying.

His breath was shallow.

His hands, once strong and sure, trembled against the white sheets.

He had lived long.

Longer than he had expected.

Long enough to see the world rebuild itself, never knowing how close it had come to burning.

He closed his eyes, ready to let go.

And then there was a soft knock at the door.

Fawkes, silent and fading, lifted his head once.

A nurse entered, carrying a single envelope.

No crest.

No Ministry seal.

Just plain, thick parchment.

The nurse placed it trembling in Dumbledore’s hand and left.

With effort, Dumbledore opened it.

Unfolded the letter inside.

It was short.

Simple.

The handwriting was steady.

Clear.

It said:

You were right, Professor.
The answer was love.

At the bottom, two signatures:

H.J.P.
T.M.R.

Albus Dumbledore smiled.

A real smile.

Small.

Soft.

Full of peace.

He closed his eyes.

And let the world go.

Somewhere far beyond the reach of wars and crowns and death, two boys walked together under a silver tree.

Alive.

Together.

Home.