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Chapter Text

Chapter One: Project Cerberus 

The first time Harry heard about Project Cerberus, it sounded so barmy that he thought it was a rather poor joke.

"Are you taking the piss?" he asked the mousey middle-aged witch who had knocked on his door. "The Department of Mysteries wants to do what?" 

"It's a specialty time mission," said the woman, who had introduced herself as Unspeakable Cobsworth.

"A specialty time mission? What the hell is a time mission? Haven't you heard that messing with time is a horrible idea?"

"It was," said Unspeakable Cobsworth. "But that was before."

"Before what?"

"The infinity measure. It changes everything."

Harry did not know what the infinity measure was, nor did he want to. What he wanted was for Unspeakable Cobworth to go away so he could leave to meet Ron at the pub. 

After another agonizing forty minutes, which did not give Harry any clearer idea what Unspeakable Cobsworth wanted from him or what an infinity measure was, she excused herself, informing him she was due back for a very important relative time anomaly.

"Right," said Harry, "best be off then."

"Unspeakable Wordsworth will be in touch," she said brightly. "He'll be very happy to hear about your cooperation in this very important project."

"Wait! I'm not cooperating!" 

It was too late. Cobsworth touched something around her neck that glowed in a rather alarming green-tinged light and vanished. 

"What's the matter with you?" asked Ron when Harry slid into the worn leather booth across from him. 

"Very weird day," Harry replied, sucking the foam off the top of his beer. "An Unspeakable turned up at my door about five minutes before I was due to leave." 

"Oh, bloody hell, what did they want? God, they give me the creeps — you know Hermione is still trying to get that apprentice position." 

"I know she is, and I still think she should reconsider." 

"I'm not arguing, but she thinks it'll help her find her parents."

Ron looked at Harry with raised eyebrows, making it very clear what he thought of that. "So what did the Unspeakables want?" 

Harry tried to tell him. Really, he did, but every time he opened his mouth, the words he wanted to say vanished from his brain. After staring at Ron open-mouthed, gaping like a fish for over a minute, he gave up. Chugging his pint and slamming the glass on the table.

"I hate the Unspeakables," he said vehemently, tugging absently on the fine gold chain around his neck.

It was a bad habit. Harry knew it was a bad habit, and whenever Hermione saw him doing it, she liked telling him it would break one day.

"What are you going to do if it falls off and you lose it? It's not like you can ever replace it."

She was right. It had been his mother's, and he really didn't want to lose it. But that didn't stop him from tugging on it when he was annoyed.

"Wow," said Ron, "must be important if they won't let you talk about it."

"It's not just important. It's ruddy irresponsible, and probably dangerous. No, not probably, definitely dangerous." 

The more Harry thought about what Unspeakable Cobsworth had told him, the more it made him seeth. He may not have understood much of what she'd said, but he knew enough to know that she wanted to play with time and wanted him to be the one to do it. 

He'd had his fair share of running around doing stupid, dangerous things, and he was not interested in running off to do something dangerous and probably — definitely stupid on behalf of the Department of Mysteries and the Ministry. 

And that should have been the end of it. Only it wasn't, because the letters started the very next day. The first one was waiting for Harry when he came down for breakfast. He tossed it into the fire without opening it. The second arrived after lunch. It also went into the fire. By dinner, Harry had burned a total of twelve letters from the Department of Mysteries.

He went to bed dreading the letters he was sure would arrive in the morning and had, for the first time, a pang of sympathy for the deluge of letters his aunt and uncle had experienced when he was eleven. They might be terrible, but it was a massive pain to keep receiving letters you didn't want, and it was even worse when they kept multiplying. 

By the end of the week, the letters had started following him wherever he went, and he got three while sitting on the balcony drinking a beer with Ron.

"Fucking hell," he said when the third letter landed in his lap. "I'm not bloody interested."

"Obviously," said Ron, looking over the top of his bottle at Harry. "But have you told them that?"

"I'm not answering. Isn't that enough?"

"You tell me," said Ron as the fourth letter floated down, landing on the metal table between them.

"Do you have a quill?" 

"Just a mo'," Ron said, flicking his wand once, and a quill and small bottle of ink came rocketing out of the open window into his hands. "There you go."

"Cheers," said Harry, dipping the quill into the ink and scrawling messily on the back of the last letter. After that, the letters stopped for the rest of the evening. But in the morning, a fresh one was sitting on the table when Harry came down for breakfast. 

"God damn it," Harry said, slumping over the table. He sighed, rubbing his eyes. He was going to have to open one of them, wasn't he? The only way to get them to stop was to write a proper reply and not just scribble, "Fuck off" fifteen times on a roll of parchment like he wanted to. 

Unfortunately, writing a proper reply didn't work either. But at least the letters had stopped following him out of the house, even if one was dutifully waiting for him every time he came home. 

"I don't understand how to make it any clearer that I'm not interested," said Harry, stabbing at his potatoes. He had met Ron and Hermione for dinner at a pub down the street from Number Twelve for their weekly catch-up, and so far had spent the last ten minutes complaining. 

"You could keep sending them back," Ron said, pointing with his fork. "Maybe make each one a little ruder than the last. I'm sure they'd get the message eventually."

"Will the two of you be serious?" said Hermione. "This is an academic endeavor. I'm sure they only want Harry to help sponsor it-"

Harry started laughing a little too loudly, and people turned to stare. 

"I wish," he said, leaning forward on the table, "more than anything, I could tell you what this was really about because if you knew, you would tell me to take it to the Minister."

"So why don't you?" asked Hermione, her eyebrows raised. "If it's that unethical, I'm sure he'd want to know."

"And tell him what exactly?" Harry asked and shoved a spoonful of peas into his mouth. "Kingsley, my man, one of your departments is doing something very naughty, and I'd love to tell you all about it, only they've conveniently made it so I can't. Maybe you should ask them about it? Oh, by the way, they've been harassing me with letters. Could you ask them to leave me alone?"

"Sure, why not? It couldn't hurt – or are you worried that he might think you're overreacting just a smidge?"

Harry was afraid, but not for the reason that Hermione was thinking. Project Cerberus had the potential to end the world as they knew it, and whether or not anyone else wanted to acknowledge it didn't change the fact that it was true.

After seeing the pinched look around Hermione's mouth and how Harry gripped his silverware a little too tightly, Ron swiftly changed the subject. "Did you hear the Harpies won their last match? That bludger Medina took to the skull put her out for the rest of the season, so Gin's going to be starting next week."

"Shame about Medina," said Harry, "she's a damn good chaser. But good on Gin. She deserves it."

"There are already rumors about her taking Helen's spot next season. Everyone knows she wants to have a baby," said Ron.

Harry yawned, shaking his head. It was late, it had been a long day, and he very much wanted to already be in his bed. 

"Right, you lot," he said, finishing his drink with a flourish, "I best be off. I probably have a whole pile of letters to burn."

"You know," said Hermione, "you could just go to the Ministry and talk to them."

Harry stood and paused next to the booth. "I don't think that's a good idea. I don't want to encourage them." 

"Suit yourself, then you can keep getting letters every day for the rest of your life."

"Oh, come off it," said Ron. The cost of the parchment alone would get ridiculous. I've seen those letters; they're all fancy and embossed – they must cost a small fortune."

"I'm just saying I think they might be willing to listen to you if you show up," Hermione said. "Otherwise, they are just going to keep sending you letters until you get so sick of it that you show up out of spite or they run out of funds. I would be willing to bet I know which will happen first."

"If I go, then they win," said Harry sullenly.

Hermione just looked at him over her glass of wine, eyebrows raised. "Win what exactly?" 

Harry couldn't tell her what they would win. He just knew that they would. Going would prove that the Ministry still had ways of getting him to cooperate, which was a notion that Harry wanted to discourage as much as possible. 

But in the end, it didn't matter what he wanted because two weeks later, Harry had very reluctantly scheduled an appointment with Unspeakable Wordsworth. Hermione had been right. The letters kept coming, and they were driving him postal. It had not mattered how often he took the time to sit down and politely declined their offer of collaboration; they had not stopped. 

He'd even written to the Minister in a fit of rage. It was the first time Harry had tried to use his name to get into a room, and it hadn't worked. The Minister was in America for the next six weeks for the bi-annual Leaders of the Magical World Summit. 

So that left Harry with two choices. He could go to the Ministry, or he could wait, and he had never been very good at waiting. He turned up ten minutes early for his appointment and took the lift down from the visitor's entrance to the Atrium. The moment he stepped out of the lift, he was met by a young, round-faced witch, her dirty blond hair slicked back into a neat bun.

"Mr. Potter," she said brightly, "how nice of you to be early!"

"Er-" said Harry, taken aback. 

"I'm Merrill, Unspeakable Wordsworth's secretary. Now, if you'll just follow me, I can take you to the round room downstairs," she said, clutching her clipboard. 

She led the way across the expansive marble floor, and they rode the lift down in silence. The cool female voice told them they were now entering the Department of Mysteries. The grate opened, and they stepped into a long, plain stone corridor. 

"Unspeakable Wordsworth wanted me to tell you that he will be arriving in a few minutes," said Merrill, opening the plain-looking door at the end of the corridor. She held it open for Harry, closing it once she had stepped through. "There is a critical time anomaly analysis that he's finishing right now – step this way, please."

They stopped on a small white square stone set into the floor, and while the walls whirled around them, Harry wondered if he had made a mistake coming here. It would be very hard to leave on his own. Finally, the walls stopped, and Merril confidently crossed to one of the identical doors. She tapped it twice with her wand, and it opened. 

"Welcome to the round room, Mr. Potter," she said, beckoning for him to enter. 

The round room was, as its name stated, round. It was a huge, circular stone chamber with a large dais in the center. Harry stepped into the room, looking around the expansive, empty space. Merril did not follow him, "Unspeakable Wordsworth should arrive shortly," she said, closing the door. 

"Wait-!" said Harry, but it was too late. She was already gone, and the door had melted back into the wall. 

So far, Harry's trip to the Ministry had not gone well, and he had a feeling that it wouldn't get any better. He waited much longer than a few minutes for Unspeakable Wordsworth to arrive, and right when he was frustrated enough to try and leave, the door swung open. In came Unspeakable Wordsworth. He was a short, round, balding man with thin wireframe glasses and a turned-up nose. 

"Mr. Potter, how wonderful for you to come. Please do sit down," he said, gesturing at the sofa. Harry felt compelled to sit, and so he did. 

"Look, I'm not going to stay long. I'm just here to tell you-" said Harry, already annoyed, 

Unspeakable Wordsworth wasn't listening and cut Harry off mid-sentence. "Now," he said cheerfully, "I expect you are wondering why you are here. This is a very exciting day in a very exciting time, and I'm thrilled to have you be part of this historic project."

"That's the thing-"

"Where should I begin?" Wordsworth muttered, walking further into the round room, the door closing behind him. "Ah — yes, we will begin with the measure."

"Look, if you'd just listen-"

Wordsworth had no intention of listening and continued on as though Harry hadn't spoken. "The measure was something of a recent discovery, and I think you'll find that it changes everything as we know it! Everything! It may be our most important discovery since Merlin first harnessed magic. But what does it do, you ask? I'll tell you, it's amazing is what it is, and it shows you the future. But not the whole future, and more importantly, not just one future — the true discovery of the Infinity measure is the possibility of infinite futures."

"Wait, what did you just say?" said Harry, because he couldn't have heard that correctly. 

"Ah, see, I finally have your attention! As I was saying, there is an infinite number of  universes with infinite possibilities for each of us."

"That's mad, how could you possibly know that?"

"Because we can see it!" exclaimed Unspeakable Wordsworth. "That's what the infinity measure does. It allows us a glimpse of the potential of our future or futures! And it's how I know project Cerberus will be a success." 

"I would like to leave now," said Harry, getting up from his seat and walking to where he thought the door might be.

"Not just yet, Mr. Potter," said Unspeakable Wordsworth.

"Yes, just yet," said Harry.

"But don't you want to know why you're here?"

"No, not even a little bit" 

Unspeakable Wordsworth was not deterred by Harry's abrupt attempt to leave and continued talking as if he was still seated on the sofa. "If you could only see the possibilities,  I think you might be a little more agreeable to the nature of the situation. After all, words can only say so much. I think you'll just have to see it for yourself. Infinium metimur."

There was a noise like a thousand metallic wings, and Harry's vision blurred as thick bluish fog billowed around him. The world shifted like he was on a stage, and a hundred mirrored panels towered around him, each one filled with a scene, flicking from one moment to the next so fast he could hardly take them in. He opened his mouth to shout, but the fog filled his lungs, and nothing came out. 

There was no order to the scenes. Each one was a possible moment in Harry's life, spread all across time. He was at Ron and Hermione's wedding. Ginny won the Quidditch World Cup. George dipped Angelina, kissing her as whooping cheers rang out around them. Harry had a house in the country and a dog. 

He was working in a bakery, his hands covered in flour. He was greying, with crow's feet around his eyes, smiling at a small ginger girl.

Each scene flicked by so quickly that Harry could hardly make out half of them. But there was a common thread he couldn't help but see. A lump formed in his throat, making it hard to swallow. These scenes confirmed something he'd always thought about late at night but had tried to dismiss.

In every scene, he was alone. 

His friends got married and had families, but even as he aged or changed professions, Harry was always alone. No matter how homey the place he lived, no one was with him. 

And then, just for a second, he saw it. The curve of a jawline, sharp, bright eyes, pale skin, and a wicked grin. He took Harry's breath away, and then he was gone, and Harry was back in the round room, swaying on his feet, trying to keep his balance. 

"Now that you understand a little better," Wordsworth said, his high voice booming in the cavernous space. "Let us discuss project Cerberus."

"What is it?" asked Harry sullenly, sure that it didn't matter how much he argued; he wouldn't be able to leave until Wordsworth was satisfied the discussion was over. 

"It's an opportunity for things to be different."

"Why?" said Harry, "different from what?"

"I know you may not fully understand the impacts of the recent war."

"Excuse me?"

"Our world has suffered irreparable losses. In some ways, we are a people who may never fully recover."

"That's what happens when there's a war," said Harry 

"But what if it didn't have to be that way? What if we had a way to make things better?"

"At what cost? We won. Why would you want to risk the possibility of that changing? Can you imagine what life would be like if we hadn't?"

Unspeakable Wordsworth looked at Harry, annoyed, "I don't think you understand what I am proposing."

"I don't, at all. Spell it out for me."

"With the infinity measure, there is proof of a better future," said Wordsworth. "A future where all of this could have been avoided. We want to pursue making that a reality."

"With me?" Harry said slowly, starting to grasp what Wordsworth was talking about.

"Yes, with you. It has to be you."

Of course, it did.

"You can get fucked," said Harry. "There is nothing in the world that could make me agree to getting involved with disturbing time. Now, let me out of here, or I'll blast my way out."

The door appeared in the wall, and Harry was out of it before Unspeakable Wordsworth could say anything else. Harry wanted to get out of the Ministry as quickly as possible. Nothing good ever came from going into that building. It was a lesson he hoped he'd really learned this time. This whole thing was mad. It was mad and reckless and dangerous, and Harry knew that no matter what he did, he wouldn't be able to say a goddamn word about it. The Unspeakables had to keep their secrets somehow, didn't they? 

Harry didn't want to go home. He was wound too tight for that. He'd end up pacing the length of the front hall until he made himself sick. So he went to Ron's. Hermione wouldn't be home yet. She had meetings until the evening, but maybe it would be better this way. 

Ron opened the door on the second knock.

"You look like shit," he said, holding the door open for Harry. "The meeting went badly then."

"You have no bloody idea," said Harry. "For a moment there, I was certain I wasn't going to be able to leave without a fight."

"Merlin's Beard, you're serious."

"I really just want to sit down and maybe have a pizza. Can we do that?"

"Of course, we can. Double pepperoni?"

Harry nodded, crossing the kitchen and dropping into the large, squishy armchair in the corner of the living room. Ron ordered the pizza, double pepperoni, and double cheese. 

Then the first letter arrived. 

"You have to be joking," said Harry when it landed in his lap. It was addressed in the same looping gold script as before. 

To: Harry James Potter, on behalf of the Ministry and the Department of Mysteries. 

When the pizza arrived, there were two letters piled on top. Harry set them both on fire. 

"This isn't normal," said Ron, brow furrowed. "There has to be something you can do. Surely, this counts as harassment?

Harry shrugged miserably and ate his pizza. Later that evening, after Hermione finally got home, she stuck her head in the front room. "Ron, why are there a bunch of letters for Harry in the kitchen sink?"

"Bloody hell, there's more of them?" 

"Ah-," Hermione said. "So the meeting went poorly then?"

"That's one way to put it," Harry grumbled. 

Harry went home late that night. Later than he should have, for fear of the pile of letters that would be waiting for him when he got home. And when he finally got in, instead of going to the kitchen to make a cup of tea like he did every night before bed, Harry went straight upstairs. He would deal with the inevitable pile of letters in the morning. 

He climbed into his big four-poster, flopping onto his back. If he was very quiet, he could hear the sound of the cars outside on the street. Unbidden, the face he saw at the Ministry kept flashing through his mind. There was something about him, something painfully familiar. Harry wanted to see the rest of this face. Because all he had now was a flash of pale skin, dark curls, and bright, warm eyes. They filled his mind, no matter how much he tried to push them away. 

Harry knew himself well enough that he'd be looking for that face everywhere he went. Hoping to find those warm auburn eyes.

In the morning, he woke feeling uneasy but no less rested than on any given night. He couldn't remember his dreams, but they were strange. Not nightmares, but maybe something close. 

When he went down for breakfast, Harry hovered just outside the kitchen door, considering whether it was worth it to just go out to avoid facing the letters he knew were waiting on his kitchen table.  

"Stop being a prat," he muttered, pushing the kitchen door open and skipping down the three steps into the kitchen. 

The pile waiting for him was smaller than he'd expected. It felt ominous somehow, like the Unspeakables were biding their time, waiting for the right moment to spring a new and even more irritating way to get Harry's attention. 

He'd just sat down to breakfast when the new and the new and irritating way to get his attention arrived: an official summons to the Ministry. This time, it wasn't a request, and that made it slightly harder to ignore. And while Harry was tempted to try, he didn't; he opened it, and opening it was a mistake. 

Chapter Text

Chapter Two: The Worst Idea 

Going back to the Ministry was a bad idea, but Harry did it anyway, and when he arrived, Merrill was waiting for him. 

"Unspeakable Wordsworth and a representative of the Minister's office will be here shortly," she said, leading the way through the Atrium.

"Fine," Harry said, already regretting his decision to come. Merrill led him back into the depths of the Department of Mysteries and into the round room. She tapped her wand once on the wall, and the door opened. As soon as Harry stepped inside, things went a bit funny. He was immediately met with a deafening metallic hum and a load of eerie green smoke. He pulled his shirt over his face to try and keep it out of his lungs, but it got in anyway, clogging his throat and making it hard to breathe. 

There was a shift. A great jolt, like everything on earth, slid off its axis for a moment before settling back into place. The hum started to fade, and when Harry's vision cleared, he was no longer in the Ministry. He was standing about halfway down an alley, and while he had a bad feeling about what had just happened, he was really hoping he was wrong. Only when he stuck his head into the street, his suspicions were immediately proven true, and a tight ball of panic formed in his chest.

Harry was in London, only this wasn't his London. This London was from a long time ago. 

Stepping back into the shadow of the alley, Harry cast a strong enough 'notice-me-not charm' that he'd be able to slip through the Muggle crowds without much trouble as long as he was careful not to bump into anyone. Thank Merlin that he at least had his wand.

Harry quickly learned that moving through a crowd when no one could see you wasn't easy at all, and two hours later, he dropped exhausted onto a bench under a tree at the edge of a small park. In the hours he'd been here so far, Harry had confirmed a few things, none of which were good. The year was 1945, and the date was May 31st, which meant that for better or worse, as far as the Ministry was concerned, Project Cerberus was a go. 

Only he had no intention of playing along. Wordsworth and the other Unspeakables might have been very keen on the idea of killing Tom Riddle, but Harry wasn't interested. In fact, he'd far prefer if he never saw Riddle at all and planned on avoiding him at all costs. 

Besides, it wasn't like he would be here forever. At least, he hoped he wouldn't. As far as Harry knew, this was the first time Unspeakables had tested this particular piece of technology. So, unless something went seriously wrong, he expected they wouldn't want to leave him here, if for no other reason than to collect data when he returned. 

Should things go the way Harry thought they might, his time in the past would probably run out near the end of the summer. Giving him just over two months of lounging around and reading before he'd be sent back home, no harm done. He could treat it like a vacation. Then once Harry was back where he belonged, he'd give Wordsworth a piece of his mind and possibly blow up the round room — one foray into messing with time was more than enough.

Harry tipped his head back and closed his eyes. Just that morning, he'd been in his kitchen eating toast, and now he was decades in the past. He sighed, a great exhale all at once. It would be nice if, for once, this kind of thing happened to someone who wasn't him. 

Harry slumped a little lower, and something in his pocket clunked against the bench. There was a weight in Harry's left pocket, and he was sure that it hadn't been there this morning. How kind of the Unspeakables to give him something after they'd sent him here. 

Whatever it was, Harry didn't want it and was tempted to walk to the river to chuck it in. But he didn't because whatever they put in his pocket was his only link back home, and as much as he resented it, it might give him some kind of explanation as to what the fuck was going on. 

He was unimpressed once he'd pulled it out of his pocket. It was a watch, and that was all. 

"Lovely," he grumbled. "Thanks for that, real useful, a watch." 

Still, he clipped it around his wrist. After all, his only connection to home, and maybe it would give him some insight into when he'd be able to leave. If he'd had the option, Harry would have liked to have spent the rest of the afternoon, exactly where he was, watching the people walk by. 

Unfortunately, he had things to go. There were accommodations to find, clothes to buy, and money to exchange. All of which sounded exhausting, and now more than ever, Harry wished that he hadn't gotten out of bed. 

But wishing wasn't going to accomplish much of anything. So Harry got up and set off across London, in search of the little Muggle money exchange that was hidden behind a large, mostly dead bush next to the Ministry. Ron had first shown it to him sometime the previous year, and apparently, it had been there for over three hundred years. 

He rounded a corner and spotted the bush. It looked just as dead as it had the day before, when he'd changed a handful of knuts for dollars to buy a coffee at the Starbucks on the corner. At times like this, Harry was incredibly grateful that nothing really changed in the Wizarding World. 

Soon, he had a pile of Muggle bills folded in his pockets, and then all it took was a bit of luck and a probably illegal compulsion charm to find a place to stay. By five, Harry had the key to a small flat over a bookshop. A grey-haired woman in a light blue house dress led him up a narrow flight of stairs at the back.

"It's small," she said, "but it's clean, and you'll have it all to yourself."

She opened the heavy door and gestured for him to go inside. It was small, a single room with a bathroom in the corner, but Harry didn't care. He was happy to have found somewhere quiet and out of the way. Somewhere, he could keep away from people as much as possible. 

The less he changed here, the better. Even the idea of renting a room made him nervous. He was displacing someone, and who knew where they might end up. Even a small detail could snowball into something huge and alter the course of history.

Harry lay back on the narrow bed, looking up at the plain white ceiling, and tried not to think about it. He could do this. All he had to do was avoid one person in a huge city for two months. 

It couldn't be that hard; after all, for once, no one was trying to kill him.

Only things did not go as planned. After a simple breakfast of beans on toast at a cafe on the corner, Harry took a book he'd bought at the shop below his little flat and returned to the bench from yesterday, only to find that it was already occupied.

Tom was sitting on Harry's bench. 

"Bugger," Harry muttered, turning quickly and walking in the opposite direction. Once he was back in the safety of his overly warm flat, he flopped back on the bed, feet hanging off the end.

Harry had seen Tom, and that meant he was real, and this wasn't just some fun little vacation. Before this, everything had felt a bit like make-believe. But it wasn't, and there would be consequences if Harry wasn't careful, even if he had no idea what they might be. He'd just have to be more careful; avoiding Tom in a city this large couldn't be that hard, right?

As it turned out, it didn't matter how careful Harry was; Tom was everywhere. 

On the fourth day since he'd arrived, Harry sat down to eat lunch at a cafe over an hour's walk from where he was staying. It was a blatant attempt at avoiding Tom after almost running into him twice the day before. 

Harry had taken the first bite of his sandwich when Tom walked into the cafe. Sliding easily through the crowd, he made his way to the far end of the counter and took a seat. The pretty waitress with cherry red lips smiled when she saw him. Although thoroughly annoyed, Harry would not give up a perfectly good sandwich to avoid Tom. 

But now that he knew Tom was there, he couldn't ignore him. Harry's eyes were glued to his back for the rest of his meal, and in the end, he'd hardly tasted his food. Before leaving, he went to the counter to buy two thick slices of banana bread for his breakfast tomorrow. 

After he'd paid, when he turned to leave, Tom met his eyes, just for a second. It was strange seeing him like this. Like he was real. An actual person, not a boogeyman in the dark or a haunted boy in a memory. 

Harry walked away before he could give it any more thought. He was not here to watch Tom Riddle or talk to Tom Riddle. He was here to avoid Tom Riddle, and so far, he was doing a piss poor job of it. 

But it didn't seem to matter what he did or where he went; inevitably, Tom would show up. That morning, Harry had gone to the library. He'd sat at one of the long tables reading the newspaper, trying to get some kind of understanding of current events in the Muggle world, so he could make conversation without sounding like a total idiot. 

While Harry knew the Muggle war had ended, he didn't know much else. After all, he'd only had Muggle schooling until he was ten, and he hadn't been any better of a student at ten than he was at eleven. 

But reading the paper wasn't like school. It was far more interesting. It was almost reminiscent of when Harry had first learned about magic. Here was this whole world he knew nothing about, lying at his feet to explore. 

He shook the paper, flipping to the second page. A family disappeared, their house had burned, and strange symbols were scorched into the grass. Harry's stomach clenched. He'd forgotten that the magical world had faced its own challenges at this time. Now more than ever, he was grateful he could get by without getting involved. 

That would bring about all kinds of complications he didn't want, like the possibility of meeting his grandparents. Even the thought of that possibility sent shivers down his spine because what if he did something and then his father was never born? 

Then what would happen to him? Would he fade away? Turn to dust? Would everything he'd done to rid the world of Voldemort be undone?

Harry had no idea and didn't intend to risk it to find out. He would stick with the Muggle world where no one knew him, and there were fewer risks of him accidentally ruining his own future. 

Harry leaned back in the hard wooden chair, shuffling to try and get more comfortable, and then he saw him over the top of the paper. Tom was here. He'd come in the tall double doors and had stopped at the reception desk, speaking softly to the thin woman with narrow wire glasses on the end of her nose. 

He must have noticed Harry watching him. He turned, tilting his head, and their eyes met for a moment before Harry quickly ducked behind the paper. He desperately hoped that Tom hadn't recognized him, but why would he? 

Harry wasn't anyone to Tom. He was just some guy in the background, and if he had his way, they would never see each other again. But since they kept ending up in the same places, he really needed to get better at ignoring Tom, or else he might catch Tom's attention, and that was something he desperately didn't want. 

Harry sighed, sitting up a little straighter so he wasn't cowering behind the paper. He laid it flat on the table, hoping it would make him less conspicuous, only to find that Tom had sat across from him.

What Harry wanted to do was to get up and walk right out the front of the building to never come back again. But he didn't do that because no matter what he did, this kept happening, and he would have to get used to it.

He really did try to keep his eyes on his paper. It wasn't easy with Tom right there. He was so close. Seeing him like this was shocking, so different from Dumbledore's Pensieve with its carefully curated memories. There was something about him, something much more human than Harry had ever expected. 

Tom sat back from the table, his legs crossed at the ankles, holding the book at an angle that made Harry wonder if he needed glasses but was too proud to say anything. Sitting in the dim light of the library, he was just as beautiful as he had been in the memories.

Tom looked up, catching Harry's eye. He smiled, raising his dark eyebrows and holding Harry's gaze until he folded, looking away. A burning blush crawled up his neck, and he forced himself to keep his eyes on his paper. 

When he dared to look again, Tom was gone. 

The next day, Harry went back to the library. He shouldn't have, not now that he knew Tom frequented the place. He'd tried to make a list of places he'd seen Tom to avoid them, but it only took a few days before it was so long that it was useless, and Harry gave up. He returned to the library because its thick stone walls kept the inside cool, and he liked the dim lights and heavy silence in the halls. It reminded him a little of Hogwarts when he used to wander the corridors at night. It was a familiar, comfortable feeling; maybe that was why Tom came here, too. 

Tom was already sitting in one of the armchairs under the tall windows when Harry arrived. It was easier ignoring him today; maybe Harry had just gotten used to him being around. Besides, it wasn't like Tom was doing anything interesting. He was just reading.

Harry yawned, shuffling through the piles of papers for one he hadn't read the day before, and took a seat at the long table. His resolve to ignore Tom lasted until he realized halfway through the morning that instead of him watching Tom, Tom was watching him. 

The little hairs on the back of Harry's neck stood up, and even though he was sure it would only make things worse, he got up and left. He did not want to deal with this today, or any other day, for that matter. He needed to double down on his Tom avoidance if this continued. 

It did continue, and no matter where he went, there Tom would be. If Harry had believed in fate, he might have thought it was a great cosmic joke, trying to shove them together, but he didn't. 

Still, it felt too unnatural to just be a coincidence.

Tom seemed to agree because, after almost two weeks of watching each other, he sat across from Harry at the long table in the library. 

He smiled, the corners of his mouth twitching, but his eyes were cold, "Are you going to tell me why you're following me, or am I going to have to make you?"

He met Harry's gaze with his big burgundy eyes. Harry purposefully didn't look away, 

"I'm not," he said, "are you following me?"

"Why would I?"

"The same reason I would be following you," said Harry, shrugging. 

Tom frowned but didn't leave.

"Did you think I was?"

"No, but it doesn't hurt to ask."

"I could be lying."

"You could be, but I don't think you are."

"You'd never know if I was," said Tom, his smile thin, but he'd lost some of the ice in his gaze. He didn't stay. Getting up smoothly, he disappeared among the stacks. 

Harry didn't see him again for the rest of the week, the longest he'd gone since he'd arrived. While it should have been a relief, it became unnerving because as long as Harry could see Tom, he knew what Tom was doing. If he were missing, he could be doing anything, and even though Harry had already come to terms with the fact, he couldn't change the past without making a mess for himself and everyone else; it was hard letting Tom run around and potentially wreak havoc without interfering.

So when Tom appeared out of the blue outside Harry's favorite cafe that Saturday, it was something of a relief. One that almost immediately turned into panic when he sat down opposite Harry. Tom looked at him, eyebrows raised as if to challenge him to object. Harry didn't, now too curious to complain.  

Tom pulled a thick book out of his bag, opened it to somewhere in the middle, and started to read. Harry returned to his breakfast. There was a glamour on the book, hiding its cover, and Harry nearly asked about it, but decided that some things were better left unsaid. If he had any hope left of getting Tom to leave him alone, telling him that Harry was magical was not the way to go about it. 

They spent the rest of the morning sitting in the shade at the cafe together, and when the waitress asked if Harry wanted anything else, he ordered Tom eggs. With the way their lives mirrored each other, Harry had no doubt Tom spent most of the summer hungry, as he had, and if he was in the position to do something about it, he would. He couldn't help it. 

While Tom didn't acknowledge the gesture, he did eat the eggs, and when Harry paid their bill a little later, he got up and left without saying a word. 

That night, Harry lay on top of the duvet with the windows open to try to air out the stale summer air. He didn't know what this thing with Tom was, and he'd gone and made it worse. 

Harry should have never spoken to Tom. But he had, and now that he'd opened this door, he desperately wanted to know what Tom was thinking. Was this his idea of friendship? 

Did Tom have friends? 

Dumbledore had been clear that he didn't. But the image of the boy in the pensive was already so vastly different from the one that had sat across from him at the library that Harry had wondered how much of the old man's biases had clouded his vision when it came to Tom. Memories could be altered after all, even if it had been unconscious on the part of the alterer. 

Still, something drew Tom to him; some kind of curiosity had been sparked from somewhere, and in the back of Harry's mind was a little voice that whispered that he'd shared a soul with Tom once. Once upon a time, there had been a small piece of Tom in Harry, but it had died, so that wasn't true anymore. 

Or was it? How much did Harry trust an apparition of a dead man who had never told him the entire truth? 

Did he really trust that man's word? He had. All this time, he had, but now this thing with Tom. It planted a seed of doubt, and he wasn't so sure. 

But there was no future here, and he had to remember that. 

Harry needed to pack away all his questions about Tom. 

Because he would leave, and Tom would stay here, and they would never see each other again, and now was the best time for Harry to stop interacting with him. 

So when Harry saw Tom the next morning, instead of continuing to play the weird game they'd been playing, he turned and walked the other way. But that only worked for so long before Tom caught on. He was, after all, very clever, and he tracked Harry down under a tree in the park. 

"You're avoiding me," he said, sitting next to Harry. "Why is that?"

Harry wasn't going to tell the truth, but if he lied, Tom would know. He seemed to always know when people were lying.

"There's something about you," Harry said, picking at the dry grass, refusing to meet Tom's eyes. "There's something that isn't quite right, isn't there?"

"Ah," said Tom, standing. "And here I thought you were different. My mistake."

He left Harry sitting under the tree in the park, picking at the dry grass, feeling like he'd just said something terrible and it was too late to take it back. 

Chapter Text

Chapter Three: An Even Worse Idea

Harry had hoped he wouldn't see Tom again for the rest of the summer and that whatever had been building between them had been broken. His optimism only lasted until the end of the week.

He had taken a table outside his favorite little cafe and was waiting for breakfast when Tom walked past. He ignored Harry, and that suited Harry just fine. The last thing he needed to do at all was to somehow get involved with Tom Riddle. Even if in person, Harry found something about him deeply intriguing. But he supposed that was part of Voldemort's illusion, wasn't it? 

He was this great immortal being that felt no pain or fear and was far above death. How did one go from a too-thin boy like Tom, with his huge haunted eyes, to something like that? 

Dumbledore always said Tom had been born that way, but Harry had never really believed it. People weren't born bad. They became bad. Things changed them until it was all they knew and all they could remember. As far as he could tell, in Tom's seventeenth summer, he was still just a damaged person, leagues away from the monster he would become. 

But it didn't matter how curious Harry was. He wasn't supposed to be here, and when he went home, Tom was already dead. 

Once Harry was gone, time here would keep moving, and everything would happen exactly as it already had. Or that's what would happen as long as he stopped poking around in places he didn't belong. He'd already done enough damage to the timeline by just being here; he didn't need to make it worse by poking around in Tom's life. There was nothing good to be found there. Harry was sure of it. 

Tom found him again the next morning. It was a grey, muggy day and promised rain in the afternoon, and Harry was the only person brave enough to sit outside. He'd already ordered when Tom sat beside him and stole half his toast. 

"Oy-" said Harry, "get your own."

"Why would I when I can eat yours instead?" Tom said, smiling blandly. "Why do you look at me like that?"

"Like what?" 

"Like I'm some kind of puzzle and you can't work out what kind."

"It's your eyes.”

"Is that really the best you can come up with?"

"You're the one who asked," Harry grumbled, stabbing his potatoes sullenly; his morning was not going at all the way he'd wanted. 

"Fair enough." Tom finished the half slice of toast and stood. "Thanks for breakfast," he said, vanishing into the crowded sidewalk, leaving Harry sitting at the cafe table, feeling perplexed. Then it started to rain. 

"Bugger," said Harry, as large drops fell into his half-finished coffee.

He didn't want to return to his little flat, not when the air was so hot and heavy that walking through it felt more like swimming. With heat like this, his little room would be miserable. Hot and sticky, full of still, oppressive air. Harry had had enough of that when he'd been at the Dursleys, thank you very much. Now that he was an adult, he had the option to avoid it, so that's what he would do.

He went back to the Library. The wallet he'd brought with him had slowly started to empty, and while Harry was sure he'd have enough Muggle money to last him until the end of the summer, if he could spend the day somewhere for free, he would. 

He just made it inside the towering stone building when a gentle drizzle turned into a downpour. Harry shook the rain out of his hair in the entryway and tried to move as quietly as possible, his shoes squeaking on the polished wooden floors with every step. He took refuge in the big room with the long table, taking one of the empty armchairs along the wall where he'd seen Tom the last time he'd been here. 

Harry sank into the plush chair, unfolding yesterday's paper on his lap. He opened it without really looking at it. He slumped lower into the chair, holding the paper up to cover his face. Just in case Tom decided to make a second appearance today. 

Harry was still perplexed by the first one — what the hell was that all about?

He hadn't the foggiest because, at the end of the day, when he set aside what Dumbledore had told him, Harry didn't know anything about Tom.

Did anyone know anything about Tom? Surely someone must.

He wasn't nearly as cold as Harry had pictured him being. Tom was cautious, yes, closed off even. Still, he looked at things with far more curiosity than Dumbledore had ever given him credit for, and it made Harry wonder what exactly Tom Riddle wanted out of life at seventeen. 

He still hadn't killed anyone yet — and the first time had been an accident anyway — supposedly, according to a ghost in a diary. Although Harry didn't think diary Tom was the most reliable narrator. Still, Tom wasn't a murderer yet, so what did he want?

To annoy the absolute daylights out of Harry, apparently. 

Harry really ought to give up his pretense of avoiding Tom. It wasn't working, and now that Tom had taken some sort of interest in him, the chances of successfully avoiding him had gone into the negatives. 

This left Harry with the dilemma of weighing which of his limited options would cause the least damage to the future. He could either keep trying to avoid Tom, which inadvertently might make him more interested in Harry. Or he could just give up and hope that Tom would get bored with him once he realized that Harry wasn't very interesting. 

He knew what his friends would have wanted him to do. But they weren't here, and since what he'd been doing obviously wasn't working, he might as well try something else.  

When the Library closed that evening, Harry didn't go straight back to his flat. It wasn't dark yet, and the rain had cooled the air enough that it was pleasant walking, so he went through the park. 

The shop below Harry's flat had closed, so it was dark when he went around the back of the building. Harry let himself in the back door, humming to himself, and started up the narrow, creaky stairs, two at a time. 

Someone was waiting for him in the shadows of the first landing, just out of sight. Harry should have noticed. After a war, those were the kinds of things he couldn't allow himself to miss, but he'd let his guard down. He was supposed to be safe here. No one knew who he was or had any reason to be concerned with him. 

Except maybe Tom. 

Harry startled when Tom stepped out of the shadows, and nearly stepped backwards off the edge of the top step. Tom caught his arm, steadying.

Then Harry made his first mistake of the night.

Tom,” he said, “you startled me.”

"You know my name," replied Tom, grinning like a shark in the dark.

His second mistake was when Tom yanked him forward into the deep shadows of the hallway, his hand wrapped tightly around Harry's shoulder, he didn't pull away. 

Then Tom kissed him. It was an awkward kiss; the angle was wrong, and they bumped noses. Harry let out a small noise somewhere between surprise and panic while Tom held tightly to his shoulder.  

While Harry had wondered what drew Tom to him, he'd never in a million years guessed it was this. Tom's grip on his shoulder softened, and he stepped back, looking at Harry through long lashes.

"You should invite me in,” he said. “You don't want people to see us like this." 

But the worst mistake Harry made that night was that he let Tom in. He held the door open, letting Tom go first, and when Harry closed it behind them, he muttered, "muffliato," without thinking because the last thing he wanted, besides someone seeing them, was an eavesdropper outside his door. 

Tom's eyes lit up, and any hope that he would get bored with Harry and leave him alone disappeared.

"You're like me," he said breathlessly, and through Tom's veneer of unspeakable confidence lurked something vulnerable. He could see it in the way Tom stood a little too tall, his chin tipped up in defiance, because Harry did the same thing when he wanted to look more important than he felt, which was always.  Maybe that was why, instead of doing anything sensible like sending Tom, Harry reached to brush a loose strand of hair out of his face. 

It could have been Harry's burning curiosity that allowed Tom to walk him back toward the bed. To touch his face, tangling his long fingers into Harry's wild hair while Tom kissed him like he was drowning. It could have been, but Harry knew it was a terrible excuse.

Later, when it was so late that it was early, Tom lay next to him, his head tucked under Harry's chin. He said, "You're going to let me stay tonight, aren't you."

It was more of a statement than a question, but either way, it was true. 

Harry let Tom stay, even if he couldn't necessarily verbalize why. 

He didn't like the idea of Tom wandering off in the dark. Even though he was sure to get home alright. 

But Harry wanted Tom here, in front of him, where Harry could see him and try to puzzle out who exactly Tom Riddle was and how he got that way. 

They stayed that way until they both fell asleep that night with the windows cracked to tempt a non-existent breeze with Tom tucked into his side. 

It had been a hot week, in a hot summer, and in the morning, Tom sat at the end of the bed, his white shirt unbuttoned. In the early morning light, the scars dappling his right side looked like shiny little fish scales. 

He caught Harry looking.

"They pushed me out a window," he said, "but I was alright in the end."

That was the thing about Tom; Harry only learned about him in bits and pieces and by offhand comments, all of which made him more real. More human. 

"How old were you?" 

"I don't remember — I don't remember much from that summer. Mrs Cole likes to tell me I should have died, but the devil didn't want me."

Harry had so many questions that he didn't know where to start. Who pushed Tom? How far did he fall? Didn't anyone care that a small child fell out of a window?

"There were a lot of sick children that summer," Tom continued. "A fever went around, and by the end, I was the only one left in the infirmary."

"You all got better together," said Harry. "It's nice that you had company."

"No, they died. But I didn't, even if everyone seemed to think I should have,” said Tom. “They always said I was a strange child, but it was after that when they decided I was the devil's child."

Those words struck something in Harry's chest, and they lingered long after Tom had left. What had little Tom done to deserve to be pushed out a window? Could a child that young do something to deserve such a fate?

Harry didn't think so. 

How many children had Tom watched die by the time he was eleven? 

Harry didn't know much about Muggle history, but last year, there had been a report about an orphanage in the city and the bodies they found under it. Hermione had told him about it over breakfast. Her eyes had welled up with tears, and her voice wobbled as she told him about what she had read. 

"I shouldn't have looked," she'd said. "It's just the article didn't give much backstory, you know, and I wanted to really understand how this happened, but now I wish I hadn't – to think we used to treat people like that. Children, can you even imagine?"

Harry could imagine quite clearly, but he wasn't going to say that. Instead, he’d taken her hands and said, "And you're going to make sure it never happens again, aren't you?" 

She had nodded. "Or I am going to die trying."

That article could have been about any orphanage in London. Harry couldn't remember the name, and even though he was sure it hadn't been where Tom had grown up, he felt a stab of something sharp and protective. He’d already made enough stupid mistakes, letting Tom into his life. Harry didn't need to get attached to him; that wouldn't help anyone. Least of all, Tom. 

But things in practice weren't as easy as they were on paper, and it was far too easy to get attached to Tom even when Harry knew he shouldn't. Tom was charming when he wanted to be; when he wasn't, he was sharp, clever, and always ready to point out something Harry would have never noticed. He was a watcher, taking in all the tiniest details around him, cataloging them for later. Harry didn't know how he did it, keeping all of that straight in his head, but he did, and he did so flawlessly. 

But that wasn't what Harry liked most about him. Nor was it how charming and clever Tom was or his strikingly beautiful face or how, after he'd started to trust Harry, he'd lean in when he spoke, dropping his voice low so that every word felt like a secret. 

What Harry liked most was the way, when they'd sit under the big tree in the park, eating sandwiches when the weather allowed, Tom would read out loud. His smooth voice rolled easily over the words until he reached a point that was incorrect or that he disagreed with and would veer into an impassioned speech on why the author was, in fact, an idiot. 

It always made Harry laugh and wish very much that the moment would never end. 

But that's not how time worked, and as much as Harry wanted to capture all these moments, like lightning bugs in the bottle, they always slipped away.

One morning, sometime in August, when Harry returned from the shower, he found  Tom sitting on the edge of the bed, his back to the door. He turned to look at Harry, and it was as though time froze for a single moment. Because Harry had seen this before, it had been for only half a second back when he'd been in the department of mysteries. And now the face he'd desperately hoped to find was in front of him.

"Are you alright?" Tom asked, tilting his head. "You look haunted. Headache again?"

Harry nodded, rubbing his forehead.

"Something like that," he muttered, trying to keep his voice steady. 

He hardly remembered what happened that day, drifting through it in a thick fog. Late that night, he lay awake long after Tom had fallen asleep, his cheek pressed into Harry's shoulder. The images from the Infinity Measure played back in his head over and over. Harry was alone in all of them. All of them but one. 

Destiny was a fickle thing, and Harry hated it. 

Maybe he was meant to come here. Maybe he wasn't. Maybe it was all made up and didn't mean a damn thing.

Shouldn't someone else have some destiny? It shouldn't all go to Harry; that wasn't fair to anyone. 

Whether this was destiny or a cosmic coincidence didn't change anything, and when Harry thought about the future, it scared him. He'd changed so much coming here that he wasn't sure he even had a home to go back to. 

Or that going back was even going home. 

Because if he went back now, would he recognize his home and friends? Would they even still be there at all?

There was no way of knowing. 

All Harry knew was that he was here now and that he was here with Tom, and part of him was tempted to see just how much he could change. 

There were still so many steps until Tom reached the place where he became Voldemort. If Harry stayed, he'd never reach that place at all. 

Maybe this was Harry's future. 

Harry groaned, rubbing his tired eyes. The very thought of time travel made his head hurt. That was something he'd have to worry about in the morning. There was no point in mulling it over further now; he had no answers, and all he'd accomplished was giving himself a headache. 

In the morning, Harry quickly forgot all about his existential time travel woes because in the center of the silver watch he'd been diligently wearing, a set of numbers in bright red had appeared.

He paused after putting on the watch, and the numbers flashed. Once, twice, three times, and then they started counting down. 

As the tiny red numbers flashed by, all the tentative plans and ideas, and thoughts Harry had the night before were gone.

Harry was leaving, and now he knew exactly when. 

His stomach lurched as reality shifted around him. Harry was going to leave, and Tom would stay here, and there was nothing either of them could do about it. 

It was like everything was moving around him, and he was a drift in the sea, looking for something, anything to cling to. But there was nothing. 

He had no one to blame but himself. He'd done this, and worse, he'd done this to Tom when he knew all the while that he'd leave, and yet he'd done it anyway. 

He had made a mistake, hadn't he? A terrible, terrible mistake. 

Chapter Text

Chapter Four: The Bitter End 

It was almost too easy for Harry to become obsessed with the little red numbers on the face of his watch. The number never stopped moving, and every second that passed was one less he had here with Tom. 

Harry tried to push it away, back into a dark corner of his mind for later, when the numbers on the watch were lower and his departure felt more imminent. But they were hard to ignore, constantly spinning as they were, and Harry spent whole nights lying on his back in the dark watching them, counting down, and down and down. 

Tom noticed, which wasn't surprising. Tom noticed everything.

"What is it about your watch you find so fascinating?" he asked over breakfast. 

"There's something wrong with the time," said Harry; it wasn't entirely a lie. There was something wrong with the time, but only he could see the problem. 

Tom accepted his answer with raised eyebrows, but Harry knew he'd ask again because that was a terribly unsatisfying response. Even if it was the best that Harry had at the moment. 

As he saw it, he had three choices of what he could tell Tom, and none of them were good. 

Harry could do the smart thing and tell a half-truth, telling Tom that at the end of the summer, he had to travel somewhere and would be away for a long time. Then he'd leave and spend his last few days alone in a hotel. He imagined he would go to Paris; he might as well make it as romantic and cliché as he could. His heartbreak was inevitable anyway; he might as well make it dramatic, poetic even. 

But Harry didn't want to leave. Not until he had to, and although he knew this was by far the best, most kind option, he still resisted taking it. That left the other two options. The one where Harry told Tom nothing and vanished into thin air, or the one where he told Tom everything, giving up his pretense of not changing anything and instead trying to change everything. 

Harry wasn't sure which one was more cruel. 

He hated all of his options, so he kept putting off the decision, telling himself that he still had time and would make the right choice when he needed to.

But not just yet. 

Time kept ticking, and the day Harry would leave kept creeping steadily closer. 

Yet he still hadn't left.

Every morning, he'd tell himself that he'd just stay one more day and that he'd tell Tom tomorrow. But there were very few tomorrows left, and Harry was nearly out of time. 

He had to tell Tom. He didn't have a choice anymore. Time made the choice for him. It didn't make telling him any easier. But, now, the only other option was to leave, having told him nothing, and Harry didn't think he'd be able to live with himself if he did that. 

"What's wrong? Why are you being like this?" asked Tom. He was wearing Harry's button-up and little else and lay in the middle of the big bed on his back. His dark curls spread against the duvet. 

"Nothing," said Harry, "just thinking."

"You're lying," said Tom, voice flat, as it always was when he was annoyed. "Why do you do that?" he asked, flipping around onto his stomach, his eyes burning holes in Harry's back, "you know I always know, but you do it anyways. Why?"

"Because I want it to be the truth." 

"I know that," said Tom, "but why? What's the point of hiding the truth? It doesn't make it any less untrue."

"There's something that's going to happen at the end of the summer," said Harry, "before you go back to school, and it's unavoidable-"

Tom sat up, his eyes burning a bright crimson. "This is the part where you tell me you're leaving, isn't it?"

It was. That was exactly what Harry was about to do, and it didn't matter how much he didn't want to. It didn't matter how much hurt he saw in those eyes and how much he wanted to lie because Tom was right. It didn't matter how pretty the lie was; it wouldn't change the truth. 

"Yes," said Harry, sitting on the end of the bed, "but also no-"

Tom moved away from him. 

"It can't be both. You're either leaving, or you're not."

All Harry had to do was tell Tom that he was leaving. That's all he had to do. It would hurt, and Tom would never forgive him. But it wouldn't matter because Harry would walk out the door and never see Tom again. Because in six hours and twenty-five minutes, he was going home, and at home, he'd killed Tom years ago. 

But he didn't. Harry told him the truth instead. All of it came pouring out in a jumbled mess of contradictions, poor explanations, and confusing misremembered timelines. But he couldn't stop, even watching the horror dawning on Tom's face, his eyes went dark and sad, and he pulled away. Backing further and further away until he was pressed against the headboard and had nowhere else to go. 

Harry should stop. He should stop and do something that wasn't this. Anything that wasn't this, but he couldn't, and words kept coming until he'd used them all up, his voice gone hoarse. 

And then there was silence. 

The way Tom looked at him hurt. It hurt even more when he spoke. 

"If you were supposed to kill me," he said, "you've done a piss poor job of it, haven't you."

"Yeah," said Harry, "I certainly have."

"You weren't supposed to tell me any of that."

"No, definitely not."

"That's not the outcome I wanted, that future — that wasn't how it was supposed to go," said Tom, tilting his head. "You know that, right?"

"I wouldn't still be here if I didn't." 

"What the fuck do I do now?" asked Tom. He'd started laughing, his fingers twisted into the duvet, "Harry, what the fuck do I do?"

"Whatever you want," said Harry. He leaned forward, desperately wanting to pull Tom to him, knowing it was a terrible idea. "You can do whatever you want, Tom; you're better than that, smarter than that. You can be anything, do anything, go anywhere-"

"I can't," he said, his voice breaking. "I can't, because if I do, then you'll never come here, and I'll never meet you, and this will never happen."

There was a truth in those words that Harry didn't want to face. If he had never come here, he'd never meet Tom, and then they both would be alone. 

There was no doubt in Harry's mind that the face seen in the smoke at the Ministry was Tom. At first, he'd tried to rationalize that it wasn't, that it couldn't be, but he could see it now every time he looked at him. 

In the line of his jaw, the curve of his neck, the way his eyes danced when he laughed. And without this, without being sent here, Harry would never have known him or loved him. But he had, and even when he went home to spend the rest of his time alone, it would be alright because he'd had this. Even if it was just for a moment, it was enough. He'd have a good life without Tom; Harry knew he would because he'd seen it. 

He'd have his friends and find ways to keep himself occupied. But after this, what did Tom have? A lifetime fighting against the tide of something he'd been told had been written in stone by fate.

And a fear that if he strayed too far off the path and changed too much, maybe Harry would never be, and then what? Would time fold in on itself? Loop back to the moment they met- but which moment, which time? 

There was no way of knowing and far too much to lose. 

But if Tom didn't change, he was on a slow path marching toward unavoidable death. Every step was towards the misery and madness that had tied them together, Harry's entire life. Harry hated it. Everything about it. 

Every limited choice they had was worse than the last, but there was no going back now. This genie wasn't going back in the bottle. Tom knew, and Harry knew him well enough that it didn't matter how much the truth hurt; Tom would always prefer it to a lie, even when it was as painful as this. 

"What do you want to do?" Harry asked. 

Tom smiled tight and bitter. "We do it, as it's been written in the stars," he said, gesturing towards the heavens. "God forbid we step off the path of expectation." 

He looked down at his hands, balled into the blankets. "You will go home," he said, "and I will stay here, and I will do everything as you've said I will. And then, years from now, when there's nothing of me left, and you aren't even you yet, you're going to kill me, and that will be the end." 

Harry wanted to argue, to rage against the idea that nothing could be done. But with so little time left, what else were they to do? 

Harry couldn't stay, and Tom couldn't come with him. They had been boxed into a corner by the Department of Mysteries, and Harry felt a rage building he hadn't felt since he'd been young. 

It was the kind of rage that tore rooms apart, and where he'd scream until his lungs ached. Rage that was born out of the choices forced upon him, choices he never would have made on his own. 

There would be time for that rage later, but not now. Not when the time Harry had left here was so little. He would save it, tuck it away until later when he could unleash it all at once in a blinding fury. 

Harry sat on the edge of the bed in the dark early morning. It had been a hot summer where the sun never let up and was so dry that the earth cracked in the bright sun. Today, the rain came; a whole summer's worth lashed the windows. 

"How long have you got?" asked Tom from the far side, where he'd pressed himself against the wall. 

"A little over two hours." 

Tom sighed, scrubbing at his face, "I know why you waited to tell me," he said, "and I don't know if I hate you for it or if I'm glad of it."

"Probably both," said Harry, smiling ruefully.

"Probably. I'm sure I'll hate you when you're gone."

"I hope you do."

"Do you really?"

"No, but it would make leaving easier."

Tom looked at him a long time before he shuffled across the bed, leaning his head on Harry's shoulder. "I think, perhaps, being angry with you is not the best use of my time.”

Harry wanted to wrap his arms around him and hold on with all he had, but he didn't know if he dared. So instead, he let his cheek rest on the top of Tom's head while they watched the delicate little hands on the watch ticking minute by minute closer to when he would go home. 

Tom took his hand, curling their fingers together. It was hard to breathe, knowing that this was the last time Harry would ever have this. That this was the last time he'd ever see Tom like this, curls loose and falling against his pale skin. He wanted to burn it into his mind so deeply that it would be all he'd see whenever he closed his eyes. 

"What do you think will happen when you leave?" asked Tom; he yawned, his long lashes fluttering against Harry's neck. "Do you think you'll fade away or just vanish. Will you feel it, do you think? Do you remember when you arrived?"

"I don't really remember; there was a load of smoke; it smelled funny."

"Your descriptions are riveting; please do tell me more."

Harry smiled, "Sorry, I wasn't really paying attention. I'd gone to the Ministry to have an argument with an Unspeakable-"

"Never a good idea."

"I know that now," said Harry, "I didn't get the chance to say much, I walked in, and then I don't know — I was here."

"You were here, and that was it?"

Harry nodded; that had been it. One minute he'd been in the Ministry, and then he hadn't. 

"I wonder," said Tom, "when you're gone, will I forget that you were real and not just something I made up. 

There wasn't much time left now. Harry watched the clock tick tick tick closer. All he could think of was leaving Tom here alone and everything he would face now, knowing that every step was one closer to his death. Harry had an idea, it wasn't a good one, but it was something. Something he could give Tom so that at least he'd always know that Harry had been real. That this had been real. 

He unclipped the fine chain around his neck. He'd miss it. It was the only thing he had from his mother, and he'd always kept it close, but now it would serve as a reminder that Harry had been here and he'd cared for Tom. 

He strung the long chain around Tom's neck, letting the small, round charm fall against his chest.

"So you'll know it was real," he said, leaning back against the headboard. 

Tom rolled the charm in his fingers. "It will be a good reminder," he said softly, tucking it down the front of his shirt.  

They waited together, sitting still in the early morning light, and then he was gone. 

It was funny how anticlimactic his departure was for something that hurt so deeply. One moment, he was in his little flat in London, then he blinked.

It was only a second. Maybe even a part of a second, but there was a shift like the floor had tipped sideways, and Harry slid off the edge. When he opened his eyes, Tom was gone, and he was in the center of the round room of the Ministry. 

Now was the time for the rage that Harry had bottled up for the past two months. It poured out of him, oozing from every pore, building into a miasma filling the room around him, waiting to be unleashed. 

A door opened behind him. Footsteps echoed on the stone floor. "Oh, there you are-" said Unspeakable Wordsworth jovially from behind him. "We've been worried about you."

"Worried? About me?" Harry whirled, his voice rising until it boomed, filling the cavernous space around them. "Do you have any idea what the hell you've just done? Everything I've worked for, my whole life's sacrifice, could have been gone — gone for what? Your science experiment!"

The air crackled around his wand, clasped tight in his fist. Harry stopped, his chin raised, poised to attack. When he walked out of this room, he wanted these godforsaken people to fear his name for the rest of their miserable lives. 

He wanted them to regret what they'd just taken from him. For them to feel the pain he felt in his bones. Let them think that his ire was born from the potential disaster they could have set on their future because there was no way he could ever tell anyone what he'd truly lost. Let them think it was misdirected rage; let them think him insane. 

No one would ever know what he'd lost, and his presence in this room in the Ministry only moments after he'd left was proof enough that Tom had done just as he'd said he would. His lover was dead at his own hand, and now here he was, and no one would ever know. 

This must be what it felt like to go mad. 

Chapter Text

Chapter Five: Building Tomorrow

Time did not stop for Harry's grief. It never had before, and he hadn't expected it to now. 

It had been a mistake. All of it had been a simple mistake. 

Even the Unspeakables weren't reckless enough to send someone back in time on purpose, at least without doing tests first. That's what Unspeakable Wordsworth had said once he'd silenced Harry to keep him from shouting. 

"You are scaring my interns," he had said, his thick eyebrows furrowed into one long line. "I'm afraid I can't have that. I understand you're angry, but I must tell you nothing done to you was done on purpose, and," he continued, regaining some of his former cheer. "Just look at you! You're back where you belong, and everything is as it should be. It's a very good job you've done. Not many people would have made it back — you know, time can be a funny thing." 

The fact that it had all been an accident made the hurt sting all the worse. An accident had changed everything. It wasn't the first time and wouldn't be the last.

Finally, Harry left the Ministry and went home. He turned the lock in the door at Number Twelve, jiggingly it twice before it gave, letting him swing the heavy door open and step into the foyer. But it didn't feel like home. Not anymore. Harry wasn't sure what home meant now. What was home, a place, a time, or a person? Did it matter? 

Maybe it was something you made, and that with time, this would be his home again. Then again, maybe not. He'd have to wait to see. Time, they say, heals all wounds, but time, Harry thought, was the cause of them as well. 

Everything was muddled in his head, and he sat in his house in the dark, trying to make sense of what had happened, untangling each knotted memory until he could string them all up in a line and keep them close. 

Three days after the incident, Harry met his friends for dinner. He couldn't tell them what happened even if he'd wanted to; the Unspeakables had taken care of that. The moment the words formed on his lips, they were gone from his mind. It brought back the rage from the night he tore the round room apart. The gouges in the stone from his wand would remain for centuries to come.

"Are you alright?" asked Hermione. She tilted her head, and her long, loose curls framed her narrow face. "There's something about you, it's — I don't know," she paused, sipping her beer. "Something sad," she said finally. "Did something happen? Were you seeing someone, and it went south?"

Harry laughed and hoped it wasn't bitter.

"No, I had a nasty run-in with the Unspeakables. I'd tell you if I could."

She smiled wanly. "But you can't. I know how it is.”

"You shouldn't work for them, Hermione," said Harry, "you're so much better than their crackpot science. You're clever, and you're kind. Don't get swallowed by that machine. There's no ethics there; they don't care about people. Not the way you do."

"You've said," said Hermione; she sighed. "I've thought about it a lot and decided to turn down the position."

For the first time since he'd been home, Harry felt something other than numb. "Did you really?" he asked, feeling lighter than he had for days. 

She nodded tersely. "I did. You don't make accusations like that lightly, I know you, and I know what kinds of things you believe in, and if whatever it is they're doing makes you this angry-" she shook her head. "Then I want nothing to do with it, and I hope for your sake it fails." 

"I do, too," said Harry, "I do too."

"If it's that unethical, can you take it to the Minister?" she asked, "I know you can't say what it is, but can't you request an investigation? I'm sure if you're the one who brought it to Kingsley, he'd take it seriously."

That was an idea. Harry wasn't above considering it. The Unspeakables may not have planned to mess with time the way they had, but now that his trip had been a success, who was to say that they wouldn't try again? 

He'd do everything in his power to make sure that they didn't, including swallowing his pride and talking to the Minister. 

Ron swung himself into the booth. "Sorry," he said, slinging an arm around Hermione's shoulder. "Busy day at the office, you know how it is." 

Hermione pushed a pint at him. "Oh, do I ever," she said. "Don't worry, we expected you to be late."

Harry laughed at Ron's indignant face as he spluttered about work, being on time, and the traffic, while Hermione smiled into her glass. Her big brown eyes danced in the low golden light of the pub. 

This was what Harry needed to be doing. He needed to be laughing over a pint in a pub with his friends. Not locking himself up in his house with memories that felt like they had been only moments ago but were really decades away.  

He had a life here to build. Now that he knew a little about what was coming- at least little glimpses of the possibilities — he needed to focus on making a life he thought was worth living, even if it would be mostly alone. 

There was a moment over breakfast one morning in the cold basement kitchen of Number Twelve, where he had to decide if he really believed what the infinity measure showed him or if he was setting himself up for a self-fulfilling prophecy.

After all, he only saw a dozen or so moments of what the unspeakable told him were infinite possible futures. Who was to say that he wouldn't find someone new in some of them? 

Harry didn't care either way. Maybe one day he'd entertain the idea, but now, the idea of being with anyone but Tom felt impossible. Until then, he'd just have to do his best with what he had and try to build something just for himself. 

That evening after dinner, he sat at the long, rough kitchen table with a mug of tea and a book when the fire in the corner flashed a bright green. A ghostly pale Ron stepped out of the fire, wobbling on his feet.

"You alright?" asked Harry. "You look ill."

"I've just done something potentially very stupid," said Ron, dropping onto the bench across from Harry.

"What is it? Are you okay?"

"I dunno," Ron said, burying his head in his hands. He groaned, heaved an enormous sigh, and pulled a little black box out of his pocket, pushing it toward Harry. "Here, have a look.”

Harry opened it. In the middle sat a dainty gold ring, a string of diamonds in the center shaped like tiny glittering stars. 

"She's going to hate it, isn't she?" 

"What! No!" said Harry, "Ron, you prat — Merlin, you had me worried. This is lovely. She's going to love it." 

"What if she says no?" 

Harry started laughing. His head tilted back and chortled. The idea of Hermione saying no had to be the most absurd thing he'd ever heard. The only person who didn't realize how mad she was for Ron was Ron. 

"Yeah, yeah, alright, yuck it up," grumbled Ron, a blush creeping up his neck, the tips of his ears already a cheery red.

"Sorry," Harry said, trying to catch his breath. "It's just she's mad about you, mate. Honest. Always has been."

Ron swallowed, taking the box back and cradling it in his big hands. "So you think it's alright then?" 

"It's perfect."

"Right. Well, I just have to ask her, then, don't I?" said Ron, going slightly green. 

"I believe in you!" said Harry cheerfully as Ron stood woodenly and shuffled back toward the fire. He vanished in whirling green flames, leaving Harry alone in his kitchen. 

He shook his head. "Honestly, what an idiot." 

In the morning, when he came down to make his coffee, a slip of parchment sat in the middle of the table, written in Hermione's looping scrawl, demanding that he come over for dinner. ‘I'm engaged!" it read, "you have to come celebrate!’

Harry showed up outside their flat at half-six with champagne and flowers. Hermione shrieked when she saw him, barreling into him and throwing her arms around his neck. 

"Hullo, Hermione," said Harry, smiling into her hair. "Congratulations." 

She squeezed him so hard that he could hardly breathe. "I'm so bloody happy I could scream," she said, stepping back and patting him on the arm. "Sorry, I'm just so excited!"

Harry led the way into the kitchen to fetch a vase for the flowers. He stood at the counter, turning on the tap.

"So, have you told anyone yet?"

Hermione sighed. "Other than you? No," she bit her lip. "I wanted a minute to celebrate before the onslaught began."

Harry glanced at the clock over the sink. Ron wouldn't be home for at least an hour. 

"Cup of tea?" he asked, moving easily around the kitchen.

"More like a glass of wine," said Hermione, her chin resting in her narrow hand. "I just want to be excited. I've wanted this for so long, and it's perfect, it really is."

"But-" said Harry, sliding her a glass of red. 

"But-" she said, taking a sip. "You saw what Mrs. Weasley was like about Bill and Fleur's wedding."

"You don't have to do anything you don't want to," he said, leaning on the counter. 

"I know that, but there will be consequences if I do, and I just-" she sighed. "I suppose I have to decide if it will be worth it or not to just go along for the ride."

"What do you want?"

"Something small and quiet, maybe in the morning. I don't like the idea of all those people staring at me. I want it to be about us, not some kind of attraction — you know?"

"So do that, and then do the other thing if you have to, but don't give up the wedding that you want to make everyone else happy."

"How are you always so smart when I've lost my head?" she asked, smiling over the rim of her glass.

"Maybe because you're so smart the rest of the time?" 

She laughed, and the last of the worry vanished from her face. "I suppose we'll figure something out, we always do."

"Cheers to that." 

Ron arrived not long after, and the three of them stood together in the kitchen. Harry didn't think he'd ever seen Ron so happy, and with his arm around Hermione's narrow shoulder, the three of them toasted to a joyous future. Ron raised his glass, and it was for a moment like time had stopped; Harry had seen this before. 

It had flashed before his eyes when he'd been at the Ministry, and now he was here, and it was real. Would Harry have moments like this for the rest of his life? Moments when the swirling images became real, and instead of watching them flash by like a film, he was suddenly standing in the middle, living the moment. 

Harry found it a comfort. Something to look forward to. After all, his life had been good, at least in the flashes he saw. There were only good things to come. That's what he needed to remind himself. Good things were coming; he didn't need to dwell on the past. There was nothing but pain there. Pain and things he couldn't change. 

Later that night, after they'd finished dinner, they moved outside onto the balcony. Sitting huddled together under the stars. 

Harry yawned, pulling at his collar, and stretched. 

"Harry?" asked Hermione.

"Hmm?"

"Where's your necklace?"

Harry's hand instinctively went to his throat, where the fine gold chain had hung for the past three years. But he didn't have it anymore. He left it around Tom's neck, but he couldn't say that. 

"I've lost it," he said, smiling ruefully. "The chain must have broken, and I didn't notice."

"Oh, Harry," said Hermione, setting her small hand on his arm. "I'm so sorry. I know how much it meant to you."

He shrugged. "I'll live. It was only a necklace; there are more important things in life."

Ron returned from the kitchen with a big bowl of chips and sank between them, grinning.

"We're going to get married," he said.

Hermione giggled. "Yes, we are." 

Late that night, when Harry lay in bed watching the lights from the cars on the corner paint bright yellow flashes of light across his ceiling, his hand lay on his chest, looking for a chain that wasn't there. 

He'd been so busy trying to live in the moment and not dwell in the past that he'd forgotten he'd given the necklace to Tom. It was an impulsive decision and definitely not his smartest. He wasn't supposed to change things, and now a piece of the future sat somewhere in the past. Or it had. It wasn't the past anymore. Tom hadn't worn it as Voldemort; there was no way Harry wouldn't have noticed. Not when every detail about that monster of man took up his every waking second. 

And that meant it had to be somewhere. After all, Tom had always been very particular about his things. He wouldn't have lost it, even if, as he chipped pieces of himself away, he no longer remembered its significance. No, it was his, and he would have protected it, done something with it, and Harry wanted to know what, and more than anything, he wanted it back. 

The next time Harry saw Hermione was over coffee at a cafe near her office. It was sunny, and they sat outside under one of the big, brightly colored umbrellas. It was almost reminiscent of how Harry had spent his time with Tom, but the sound of the cars and people on their mobiles kept him grounded in the present. 

"Are you sure you're alright?" asked Hermione. She ripped the top of her croissant open, pulling it apart into thin, flaky layers. 

Harry nodded. "Yeah, I'm alright, promise."

She didn't look convinced, "I don't think I believe you," she said primly, "you've been down for weeks, Harry, and if you don't want to tell me why, that's alright, but if you need anything, please ask." 

He laughed, swirling the end of his coffee in the tall mug. "I dunno," he said. "It's nothing concrete, you know; just feeling a bit adrift right now."

"You might not believe me, but I know the feeling."

"Yeah?"

She nodded, "I'm getting married, but I don't want to tell anyone because God forbid they want me to plan a wedding." She sighed. "And all I can think of is how it doesn't matter what I do, my dad isn't going to be there to walk me down the aisle."

Hermione had been looking for her parents since the war ended, but finding them had proven harder than she'd expected. 

"I suppose," she had said tearfully when nothing had turned up after months of searching, "I should be pleased I did a good job protecting them. I just never thought I was protecting them for me, too."

Harry swallowed hard. “Is there anything I can do?"

"Yeah, distract me."

He chuckled. "This is going to sound lame."

"I bet it won't."

"I've been researching my mum's necklace. I found out it wasn't the only one made. There were two others."

That was a lie. According to the note Harry had found with it, his mother's necklace had been a custom gift from his father's parents. But Hermione didn't need to know that. 

"Are you looking for one of the others?"

Harry nodded. "I want to, but I don't know where to start."

If Hermione wanted a distraction, he'd give her one, and he'd fulfill his selfish obsession with finding the necklace. If anyone could help him find it, it would be Hermione.

Chapter Text

Chapter Six: Whispers in the Dark 

Harry sat at the counter in Ron and Hermione's flat while Hermione shuffled around in her robe, making eggs. "I'm really sorry I haven't been more helpful. I feel like I've let you down."

While Hermione had been diligent in helping in the search for his mother's necklace, nothing had turned up in the six months they'd spent looking. 

"It's a necklace," said Harry, leaning on his elbows. "It's not like it's going to expire. I could find it fifty years from now, and I'd be happy. It might take a while; that's okay."

He took a handful of chips out of the large bowl on the counter, scooping up the salsa Hermione had made with the tomatoes and peppers from her little window garden. 

"I know that," she said, sprinkling a generous handful of cheese over the eggs and folding them neatly into an omelet. "Still, you've been such a help with listening to me moan about the wedding. I wanted to help you, too."

Hermione cut the omelet in half, slid it onto two plates, and set one in front of Harry.

"I thought wedding planning was supposed to be fun," he said, cutting a piece off the edge.

"They keep telling me that it is. But it's so hard, and there are so many details, and I just don't care about half of them — but Merlin, it seems like everyone else does."

She sat beside him at the island, her long robe swishing around her legs. 

"This is it," she said, shoving a handful of chips into her mouth. "I'm only doing this once. If this one doesn't stick, I'll just be unmarried."

Harry laughed. "Don't let Ron hear you say that. He's nervous enough you're going to suddenly change your mind as it is."

She rolled her eyes. "Honestly," she said, shaking her head. "The fact he can't see I'm mad for him can be endearing, but sometimes I have to wonder if he's just thick."

"He can't help it. He's blinded by your beauty."

"You're sure a flatter," she said, smoothing the front of her robe. "Isn't it about time you started seeing someone? I hate thinking of you being alone."

"I'm alright," said Harry. He'd worried this would come up; it was inevitable, really. 

Hermione looked at him for a long time, over the rim of her orange juice, before she nodded.

"Okay," she said, "you're alright."

A warm feeling bloomed in the center of Harry's chest. While she was, on occasion, just as pushy as she had been in school, Hermione was also observant enough to know when not to be. She wouldn't ask again, but if Harry ever wanted to bring it up, she would happily resume the conversation. 

He leaned to bump her shoulder. "So, what riveting details are we planning today?"

"Well, considering last week was so painfully boring, I thought we might do something at least a little bit more fun. We're looking at flower arrangements."

"For you?"

"No, for the tables, but it's better than looking at stationary, isn't it?"

Anything would be better than looking at stationery. That day had been truly a test of patience for both of them. 

"They all look the same," Hermione had moaned, shuffling through stacks and stacks of thick cream sheets of paper. 

Ultimately, she'd gotten so annoyed that she'd closed her eyes and picked one. It was a simple design with hardly any embellishment around the edges. 

Hermione had held up the winning sheet. “This one will be fine, I suppose."

"Are you sure?" 

She’d glared at him. "This is the one I picked, and this is the one I am using, and we are never going to look at stationery ever again. Are we clear?"

"Just making sure," he’d said, grinning sunnily at her. 

Harry had thought that was the last of the stationary talk, but Ron had brought it up again two days later when Harry had met him on his lunch break at a sandwich shop. They’d sat in a booth in the back, away from the other Muggle customers. 

Ron had yawned, stretching his long arms over his head. "I owe you one, I think," he’d said, rubbing his chin. "For the other day."

"For what?" Harry had asked, eyeing the huge sandwich in front of him, and wondered how he was supposed to fit it in his mouth. 

"For the thing with the stationery. And you know, for planning half my wedding. It should be me doing it, but Merlin, this new job, I haven't got a moment to breathe."

After the war had finished and things had started to calm down, Ron had started at the Auror Academy. But after the first eight weeks, he’d been pulled for an assignment as a junior analyst. He'd been thrilled. 

But Ron wasn't just a junior analyst anymore. He'd been promoted so many times that he'd ended up with his own team and barely had a moment to sit down. 

"You're not missing much, I think it would be a problem if this was something Hermione was excited about, you know? But she just wants to get it over with, so I wouldn't worry about it too much."

"Still," Ron had said, poking his sandwich. "Blimey, these are massive, aren't they? How are we supposed to eat them? I feel like it should be me, you know? Like, I'm not keen on wedding planning either, but I'm half of the wedding, so I should have to suffer too."

"Fair enough. We can save something really dull for the weekend for you if you'd like; maybe you can help pick out table runners or help sort out the seating chart — because we've tried twice, and it's a bloody nightmare."

Ron had picked up half of his towering sandwich and managed to shove the corner in his mouth. "How hard can it be to pick a bloody table runner?"

Harry had just laughed. "That's what I said about the stationery."

As it turned out, picking out a table runner was harder than Ron expected, and then the following week, when they’d gone to lunch again, he said, "why is every part of this so bloody complicated? Makes me wonder why anyone bothers. I think Hermione had the right idea; we should get married in a backyard and go out after, fuck the rest."

"I think it's a bit late for that. Didn't you pay the deposit on the venue?"

"Did I?"

After that, most of it was left to Hermione — and Harry, who mostly showed up as her emotional support. Not that he minded, it was something to do, and right now, he needed things to do.

He started to think Hermione had been right when she told him he'd go mental if he didn't get a job. At the time, he'd laughed her off. He'd been knee deep in hoeing out Number twelve, a process that at the time felt like it would never end. But now it was nearly finished, and soon he wouldn't have a wedding to help plan, and after that, he didn't know what he'd do with himself. 

Maybe he'd take up baking. According to the flashes of the future, he seemed to like it an awful lot. 

He'd even started to look into classes. Then one day, after months of dead ends, Harry got a letter about his necklace. 

It was written on old, splotchy parchment and came from Cork. 

Mr. Potter,

I've had word that you have been looking for something very particular, and I think I have what you are looking for. It came into my possession by accident a number of years ago, and since then, I've kept it in a box in the basement. I've regretted keeping it since I got it, but I just can't seem to get rid of it. 

I'm not sure why you're looking for it, but I'd be happy to give it to you. I know you've offered a very generous finder's fee, but it would be enough for me to no longer have the damn thing in my life. 

I don't have a camera, but I've included a sketch of what I think is the most important part: the initials on the back. 

If you think this is what you've been searching for, I'd be happy to arrange a pick up at your convenience. 

Yours,

D.R.M

He'd gotten letters before, and they had all turned into nothing, but this one felt different, even before Harry turned the page over to see the sketch on the back. It was done in charcoal and depicted his mother's necklace exactly, down to the twin scratches on the front and her initials on the back. 

He wrote back almost immediately, wanting nothing more than to go to Cork right that second so that he could hold it in his hand. But things didn't work like that, and he had to wait until the following day to get a reply, suggesting he come around four days later in the mid-morning. 

The wait felt impossible, like it would never end, and then it ended all at once, and it was time for Harry to leave, and somehow he'd ended up late. He arrived outside the house's gate and stood in the street, looking at the tall, dark building. It reminded him a little too much of the most noble and ancient house of Black. 

He'd already been curious about who D.R.M. might be, but now, looking at the old stately building, he wondered if perhaps he should have told someone where he was going. It had been a long time since the war, but not long enough that no one was still harboring a grudge against him. 

On the whole, he should probably have been more cautious, especially in searching for something that had been Tom's; after all, his own followers were the most likely to have ended up with something of his. 

An old man opened the door. "Mr. Potter," he wheezed, "you came."

"I did, you said you have something I'm looking for."

"I do indeed," said the man, holding the door open. "I've brought it into the front room for you."

It wasn't a smart idea to walk into that house, but Harry did it anyway. He'd come this far; he wasn't about to turn back now, and he'd hoped that even now, he'd be able to take a single old man in a duel if he had to. 

The house was indeed very much like number twelve, only far less rotten. Harry looked up at the towering ceiling as he walked through the dim front hall. This is what number twelve would have been like years ago, before the fall of the Blacks. It was beautiful in its own haunting way. Harry wouldn't want to live like this; he preferred sunlight and big windows. 

But he appreciated the glimpse into what his godfather's house looked like before it fell to ruin, all the same. 

The front room was larger than it should have been and had the same impossibly high ceilings as the hallway, although it wasn't as dark. The curtains were opened, letting in the morning sun. 

"It's just here," said the man, walking around the ornate sofa to a long, low coffee table. In the center sat a plain black box. 

"Can I?" asked Harry, slightly breathless. He had quite wanted to believe it before, but now he was here, he knew this was what he was looking for. 

The old man nodded, his lips thin. 

Harry sat on the edge of the sofa and lifted the box. It was small and square and fit in the palm of his hand. He didn't want to open it for fear that he'd be wrong and that he'd gotten his hopes up for nothing. 

But he did because deep down, he had a feeling that this was it. And he was right. 

Wound neatly in the center of the box sat a dainty gold necklace. A small round pendant on a long, fine gold chain. It was warm when Harry touched it, like it had just been against someone's skin, and when he turned it over, his mother's initials were carved into the back. 

Harry didn't put it on right away. It felt too personal; he wanted to wait until he was alone. He waited until he got home, and when he hung the fine chain around his neck, it was just as warm as when he'd touched it the first time in the front room of the old man's house. 

It was a nice feeling, like home. 

That night, he dreamt for the first time since the war had ended. It had been a shock at first; it had been so long that he'd almost forgotten what it felt like. 

He was in the hall outside the flat he'd rented in London. Something told him he needed to go inside, but he didn't want to. Not with the way all of his dreams had always gone in the past. He did not want to see something horrible in a place like this. 

Harry wanted to turn away, to walk down the narrow staircase and out onto the street, but he couldn't. Something wouldn't let him, so finally, after standing in front of the door for a long time, he pushed it open. 

The afternoon sunlight dappled across the floor, and sitting in the middle of the bed, leaning against the headboard, was Tom. 

"You have made me wait a very long time," he said. 

Harry didn't dare speak, not yet. He'd wanted this too badly, and it set him on edge like it was a trick or a trap. The longer Harry looked at Tom, the more differences he noticed. His hair was a little too long, the curls framing his face. His jaw wasn't as sharp; it was more square now, like he was older. But that was impossible because Tom was dead, and this wasn't real, 

Tom tilted his head. "You know I expected you to be happier to see me."

"I don't — you're here."

"I am."

It was too much and not enough all at once, looking at Tom like that. Sitting in the sunlight, rumbled and perfect and real. Like if Harry reached out to touch him, he'd be warm. Harry wanted so many things, like for this moment to last forever, and to end, and to never happen again or happen every night for the rest of his life.

He sat on the edge of the bed, still not daring to touch.

"I've missed you," he said. "It's been — I've just missed you, is all."

"Then aren't you going to kiss me?"

Harry wanted to so badly that he didn't want to at all, in case somehow it wasn't what he'd thought it would be. But he did anyway, pushing down the fear that something was wrong; it would crumble around him at any moment, leaving him in the middle of a nightmare. 

He pushed it all down and leaned across the bed, cupping Tom's cheek. It was warm and soft under his thumb, and when Harry kissed him, pulling him in close, it felt so real that it hurt. It was bittersweet, and enthralling, and terrible all at once. Harry never wanted it to end. 

But it did because it was only a dream. Harry woke in the morning alone in his bed at Number Twelve, and Tom was still dead, and Harry was still alone. But a fine gold chain hung around his neck, and Harry planned never to take it off again.  

Harry spent the day off balance, dwelling on his dream from the night before, and when night finally came, and he was back in bed watching the headlights flash across his ceiling, he wanted so very badly for the dream to come again. 

And it did. 

It came every night. Night after night, Harry spent in London with Tom, in the flat or the library or sitting in the park, and every morning when he woke up, it got harder to tell what was real and what was a dream. 

It set Harry on edge; even his friends noticed. He brushed off their concern; the wedding was rapidly approaching, and they didn't need to waste their precious time on him and his obsession with Tom. Because that's what it had turned into, an obsession. Harry spent the day counting the minutes until he could lie down, close his eyes, and see Tom again. 

This wasn't what he'd wanted when he'd looked for the necklace. He'd wanted a reminder and anchor that Tom had been real, that Harry had loved him, and it wasn't all in his head. 

He didn't think it would bring this deep need he had now to see Tom, and every morning when he woke up, Harry had to remind himself that Tom wasn't here, wasn't real, would never walk through the kitchen door so that they could have coffee together. Because Harry had killed him, and his body had turned to dust.  

It was time to take the necklace off. It was hard. Harder than Harry wanted it to be. He gave himself one last night, and while he lay under the bright stars in the park with Tom's head on his chest, he had such a hard lump in his throat it was hard to swallow.

"What is it with you tonight?" Tom asked. He blew against Harry's neck. "You're sad, but you're pretending you're not. Why's that?"

"I have to say goodbye to someone, and I don't want to.”

"Then why are you doing it? What's the point if it makes you this unhappy?"

"Sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do because it's the right thing to do.”

Tom laughed. "What does the other person think? Do they think it's the right thing to do?"

"They don't know."

"Well, that's a bit selfish, isn't it? Choosing for them and not letting them have a say."

"Maybe," said Harry, "maybe I'm just selfish."

"Well, as long as you'll admit it, then that's fine then, isn't it. But you don't get to be mad when they try to curse your balls off for not giving them a choice."

"After tomorrow, it won't matter.”

"I think you're vastly underestimating how determined a person can be under the right circumstances."

Harry wanted to say that none of it mattered because Tom wasn't real and couldn't be mad, and there would be no consequences for anyone except for Harry. But he didn't because he knew Tom well enough to know that arguing, even with a figment of his imagination, pretending to be Tom wasn't a good idea.  

So instead, he tried to enjoy every moment he had here in this soft, sunlit fake life until he woke up in a world without Tom. He took the necklace off after he'd had his coffee, put it back in the little black box, and tucked it in the back of the top drawer of the old writing desk in the library. Somewhere, he knew it would always be safe, but also out of sight and hopefully out of mind. 

He closed the drawer with a renewed sense of purpose to live in the now, to focus on what was in front of him, and stop looking into the past. Nothing good came from dwelling on memories; all it did was prevent him from building a future for himself, and that's what he wanted. He wanted a future full of new memories, experiences, places, and things. Tom's life may have ended, but that didn't mean that he had to. 

With the necklace safely in its box in the desk drawer, the dreams ended just as Harry had expected them to. He didn't know where they'd come from, maybe some kind of subconscious importance he'd placed on it during his desperate search. Now that they were gone, the longer he went without them, the easier they were to forget until they started to feel hazy around the edges, like something closer to an old memory than a present experience. 

Days turned into weeks and months, seasons passed, and Harry lived his life. He went out with his friends. He finally finished the last of the renovations on the house, at least until Hermione talked him into replacing the horrible, narrow shower in the second-floor bathroom with an enormous soaking tub. 

"Give me three good reasons you shouldn't," she’d said, "I bet you can't."

With every day that passed, Ron and Hermione's wedding crept closer until it was the night before, and Harry was on his way to their flat to spend a cozy night in with Hermione while Ron went out for a night on the town. 

Hermione's idea of a good party included eating ice cream and pizza and watching Pride and Prejudice in her pajamas. Ron's was vastly different. 

"Ron can go do whatever he likes tonight, within reason, but I want to do something nice too," she'd said when she'd suggested it a few weeks before. Ron hadn't argued, knowing that Harry would much rather stay in with Hermione and watch the movies that made Ron fall asleep than go out and get drunk with Dean and Seamus. 

"Sometimes there are downsides to having the same best friend as your wife," he said, scratching his nose. "Merlin, I can say that now-" he turned to Hermione, facing lighting up. "Tomorrow you're going to be my wife!" 

"Yes, I am," she said, smiling softly. She sat on the end of the couch, in a huge fluffy robe, with a faintly purple face mask on and all of her hair piled into a messy knot on the top of her head. "I'm rather looking forward to it. 

Ron's cheeks went a cherry red, spreading all the way to the very tips of his ears.

"Right, well," he said, trying to hide his shit eating grin. "Best be off then, got a long night ahead of me."

Once he left, Hermione bent double, giggling. "Oh my god," she said, "he's never going to stop being adorable. It's going to kill me, Harry; what do I do?"

"You’ll have to marry him, I guess," said Harry, cracking open one of the beers she'd left for him on the table. 

They sat together in the dark while the movie played. After it ended, while Hermione refilled her wine and searched for another, she sat next to Harry on the long sofa and touched his shoulder. "You stopped wearing your necklace. Is everything alright? I've been meaning to ask."

Harry's smile was tight, his eyes trained on the floor. "It wasn't the right one," he said, "it didn't feel right."

In truth, he'd forgotten about it until now. He was so focused on living and his friends that it had slowly slipped from his mind like a dream, but it was back now, and it plagued him. All throughout the wedding, when he should have been paying attention to his friends and how in love they were, his mind was on a little black box pushed all the way into the back of a drawer. 

Watching the two people he cared about most in love was beautiful and painful, and he wanted that so badly for himself. So very badly that he didn't stay at the hotel like he'd planned. Harry went home, stumbling in the door of number twelve, so late it was almost early. He went to his office, dug the black box out of the desk, and took it upstairs. Harry fell asleep on top of the cover with the chain clasped in his hand. Now he wanted the dreams. 

Chapter Text

Chapter Seven: Something Tangible 

The dreams came as soon as Harry fell asleep, but they weren't what he wanted. He wanted what he'd had before, picturesque sunny summer days spent lolling around with Tom. He wanted warm breezes and soft touches and safety and warmth. 

What he got was wrath. 

Rain lashed the flat windows while Tom stood, fists clenched at his sides, his eyes glowing an eerie red in the low light. Harry had never seen him angry like this, and for the first time since he met him, he saw a flash of Voldemort in his rage. 

His voice dropped low, hissing as he spat every perfectly enunciated word at Harry. "Do you know what I've done for you?" he said, eyes narrowed. He paced the length of the room. He spun on his heel. "Do you have any idea of the sacrifices I made, and this — this is how you repay me? You shut me in a drawer, and you leave me?!"

"Leave you? Tom, I'd never leave you on purpose," Harry said. He sat on the edge of the bed, confused as to what the hell Tom was on about. "But Tom, you aren't real. None of this is real. I'd never abandon you, but this is just in my head. I've made you up."

Tom froze, lifting his chin in defiance. "I'm not real," he said, voice cracking. He started to laugh, high and horrible. "Not. Real. Oh, Harry, but I am real. Just as real as you are. Don't know what I am? I thought you were smarter than this."

"Sorry-" said Harry, not understanding, still tipsy from the wedding, and then things started to click into place. 

There had always been something strange about the necklace. Harry had been happy to ignore it, too glad to have it in his hands. He should have paid more attention.

He looked at the necklace in his hand and back to Tom.

"You didn't."

"Of course I did. You said I was clever, didn't you? Did you really think I wouldn't try to find a way out? Do you really know me that poorly? I waited for years for you. Years and years, and then you finally came. Finally, and I thought-" he bit his lip and looked at the floor before locking eyes with Harry. His gaze was blank and heavy now. "But you didn't want me, you shut me away, and you left me. And now, look at you — now that you finally know what I've done, you're horrified." 

"I'm not." 

"Don't lie to me," hissed Tom, "I am so tired of people lying."

"I'm not. Look at me."

Tom did, holding his gaze. "I'm not lying, Tom," said Harry, "now tell me what you did."

He sat on the edge of the bed next to Harry. "I was going to do what I'd said," said Tom, "I was, but the more I thought about it, how there was the course I had to follow, and I didn't have a choice, the more I hated it. I wanted to do something that changed things just enough so I'd get to see you again. I had your necklace and thought maybe I could use it to get back to you."

He shook his head.

"It wasn't easy. It was like I was on a track, and there was a wall every time I tried to step off. I could break through the wall if I wanted, but it felt wrong. I did it anyway. I made this one just for you, just before Christmas break in my seventh year." 

Tom turned to look at Harry, cocking his head. "Was it a mistake?"

"No," said Harry, lifting his hand, wanting to reach out, to touch him. Pull him close, but it wasn't the time yet. Not now, when Tom still sat like a wounded cat, his eyes narrowed like he didn't trust Harry not to strike him. "How do I get you out?"

Tom's face softened then. "You're going to let me out?" he asked softly.

"Did you really think I wouldn't?"

"At first, I was sure you would, but then — well, I thought this would go differently-"

He moved slowly, shifting closer until he could rest his head against Harry's shoulder, "I thought you didn't want to see me."

"I did. That's why I put you in that drawer because I wanted to see you so badly. But I didn't know it was real. I swear, I didn't know. I just thought I was going mad."

"There's only one way I know of to get me out," said Tom, "I wrote it in a book, and you're going to have to find it."

"I found the necklace. I'm sure I can find a book.”

When Harry had said it, he'd been confident it was true. But things in practice are often much harder than they are in theory, and these days, finding anything that once belonged to the Dark Lord wasn't easy. There were, of course, still collectors- there always were, but when you're Harry Potter, finding them isn't an easy task. 

But Harry had done impossible things before, and he wasn't going to let something like a lack of connections stop him now. Not when he had a reminder around his neck of what he was working toward. 

He didn't have to build a life alone anymore. Tom was right here. All Harry had to do was let him out. 

His friends noticed his new obsession. It would have been hard for them not to, considering that it consumed almost all of Harry's waking hours.

But he couldn't tell them the truth. He'd never be able to tell them the truth. No one would ever believe him that what he was about to do wasn't the biggest mistake of his life, and sometimes, when he was waiting to meet someone in another dark alley, he started to question it too. 

Was he making a horrible, irrevocable mistake?

He didn't think so. After all, Tom was not Voldemort. And now, given a chance to be someone else, he never would be. 

It was a chance they could take together; whatever life came out of this, neither of them had to be alone.  

"I know I keep asking you," said Hermione. "But are you sure you're alright?"

"I've never been better," said Harry. She raised her eyebrows at him like she didn't believe him.

"Promise," he said, "I'm working on something really important. I can't tell you the details yet, but it means a lot to me."

"But you're going to tell me what you're doing, right?"

"Eventually."

That was a lie. Fortunately, she wasn't Tom, so she didn't know that. He'd have to get used to lying to her if this thing with Tom was going to work. They had been working on a story about where Tom had come from, but the details were still fuzzy, and Harry knew it wouldn't hold up to scrutiny. At least not yet. 

And none of it would matter until he found the book. It took months longer than he'd wanted, but he finally found it that winter. 

Arranging the meeting hadn't been easy, and it had taken rather a lot of persuasion to get the older witch to come meet with him. It would have been infinitely easier if he had Tom's help, but he didn't, so he had to muddle on the best he could alone. 

She was a tall, severe woman with heavy eyes, wrapped in a thick black wool cloak. A proper lady. They met in an alcove halfway down Diagon Alley, near one of the new cafes. Much to the old woman's displeasure, Harry opened the book before he'd paid for it because he had to be sure. It was filled in neat rows of familiar script, and the old witch might not know it, but he'd have been happy to pay twice the exorbitant fee that she had requested for it. 

The price would have made another man weep. But Harry didn't care, shoving the bag of gold into the witch's hand and apparating out of the alley. 

Later, when he'd properly warmed up, Harry sat at the table in the kitchen with the book and a mug of tea, flipping through until he found what he wanted. 

Tom had left notes in the margins, explaining what needed to be done, and if Harry ignored the flowery text and only focused on the notes, the ritual sounded like something he could accomplish. But he would need time. 

That night, Tom was waiting for him on a hill in the park.

"Did you find it?"

Harry nodded, dropping onto the grass next to him.

"I did," he said, grinning. "And I actually understood what most of it meant since you left me notes."

"I'm glad they were helpful. I was worried you'd think I was being patronizing."

Harry laughed. "Never," he said, "I need all the help I can get. I'm not clever like you."

"I think you sell yourself short. You can understand the things you give yourself permission to understand."

Harry had hoped that after that night, it wouldn't be long until this would be finished, and Tom would be here with him. But it wasn't until late spring that things finally started to fall into place.

"It always takes longer than you think," said Tom when Harry would complain to him at night. His face tucked into Harry's neck. "Everything takes longer than you think." 

"I don't want to wait anymore," Harry said. "Aren't you tired of waiting?"

"If I can wait this long, what's a few more weeks? I'd rather this work, wouldn't you?"

Harry really did. That's why he continued to wait. Even when every cell in his body wanted to just do it already. Tom was right; he needed to get this right because he only had one chance. 

When it was finally time, it was mid-summer, only days before Harry's birthday. Now that the moment he'd been waiting for so long was here, he hesitated. The consequences of this going wrong were at the forefront of his mind. 

"You've been working on this for months," said Tom, "I have faith you will do everything perfectly."

"But what if I don't? What happens to you if I fuck up?

"I don't think there is anyone who can answer that question. No one has ever tried this kind of magic before. We're in uncharted waters. You have to have faith. That's half of what magic is anyway."

"So you don't know if it's going to work?" asked Harry, panic rising in his chest. 

Even if he did everything exactly how he needed to, he could still fail; there was no guarantee that Tom's theories were correct. 

"If you think it will work, then it will work."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm willing to bet my life on it, aren't I?"

Tom meant it as a reassurance, but it only made Harry feel worse. But he wouldn't let fear stop him now, not when they were so close.  

Harry sat on the floor in the old bedroom where Buckbeak had lived, sketching runes on the floor. He'd have felt better if Tom were here to make sure he didn't fuck anything up, but then if Tom was here, he wouldn't need to be doing this in the first place. 

He placed a kumquat in one of the five small silver bowls sitting around the inside circle he'd drawn on the floor. He was supposed to use a mandarin, but the shops had been out, and if they didn't do this tonight, he would have to wait at least another fortnight. 

Tom had laughed and told him it was close enough. All he needed was a small citrus fruit. 

"A lemon would have done in a pinch," he said, "but I appreciate your dedication to getting the details right."

Harry had put in the time and the effort, and now, theoretically, everything he needed was laid out in front of him.

Honey, citrus, bone, and thyme. 

All he needed now was blood, the right words, and faith. At least that's what Tom kept telling him.

"You have to believe it will work, or it won't. That's how magic is. It listens to your will. Will me into existence, Harry. I know you want this bad enough; you just have to make it so."

All he had to do was believe, and he did. Not in himself but in Tom, and in Tom's clever, creative mind, and all of the time he'd poured into this meant that it was perfect and would work just as he said it would. And with this thought firmly held in the front of his mind, Harry cut his hand, letting the blood run over the necklace and herbs and bone, and he whispered the words, closed his eyes, and waited. 

He sat, heart pounding in his chest. Waiting for what, he didn't know until he heard it. A gasping, like someone breaking through the waves to the surface. When he opened his eyes, Tom lay on his side where the necklace had been. He was pale and drawn, his hair falling into his eyes, but he was here and real, and when Harry touched his cheek, he was warm. 

"You did it," he said, his voice hoarse, his warm auburn eyes fixed on Harry. "I told you, you could if you wanted to."

Harry cupped his cheek, choking on a flood of emotion. "You're here. You're really here."

What the future held no longer mattered; nothing mattered, except that Tom was here, and real and in Harry's arms. Harry could feel the flutter of Tom's heart under his palm as they sat on the floor, wrapped around each other, soaking in a moment that neither of them had been sure would ever come. 

Somehow, even after all the odds had said no, Tom had found a way back to Harry's side. He'd always been such a clever boy. Not even time could stop him, not when he believed he could. Belief, after all, is half of what magic is anyway. 

The End. 

Chapter Text

Tom lay on his side on the narrow bed with his trousers undone. Harry lay next to him, his hand tucked into Tom's waistband, running his thumb over one of his sharp hips. It was oppressively warm in the small flat. The air was heavy and humid, and this was as close as they could stand to be for any extended period of time. 

Harry had started to drift off to sleep, head tipped back against the pillows, when Tom rolled over, his gaze sharp. "Don't you want to fuck me?" 

Harry sputtered for a moment. Of course, he did, but with how often Tom still flinched away from his touch, he didn't want to assume that he was allowed. 

"I do," said Harry. Both because it was the truth and considering all the secrets he still kept, it was better not to lie unless he had to. Besides, Tom always knew when he was lying. 

"Then why haven't you?" 

"I'm not entirely convinced you want me to." 

"I'd let you," said Tom flippantly, pressing his cheek into Harry's shoulder. 

"Letting me and wanting it aren't the same thing."

Tom huffed, but he didn't bring it up again that night. That, however, didn't mean he wasn't still thinking about it. Harry wished that he wouldn't, because every day the number on the watch ticked lower, and sleeping with Tom and leaving was in Harry's mind the worst possible thing he could do. 

He should have stepped away as soon as he realized Tom was interested. Or he should have stepped away when he first thought that Tom might be the person he saw in the infinity measure. Harry definitely should have stepped away before now, but he hadn't.

And when Tom followed him up to his room three days later and crawled into his lap, his soft lips against Harry's throat. "I want it," he said; Harry shouldn't have listened. 

But he did, and now it was far too late to walk away.