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.