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Chapter Text

It was after a failed attempt at searching elsewhere for information that Tom finally returned to the Restricted Section in hopes of gleaning something new from the book that he had initially found the mention of a Horcrux in. He knew this was likely going to be a fruitless search as well—his memory was not poor, so he was well aware that the book only contained a single sentence about horcruxes—but all the same, he figured he was better off searching anywhere than waiting helplessly for the information to fall in his lap. 

Tom rounded the corner, entered the Restricted Section without so much as a blink from the librarian (who had long ago stopped denying him entry or asking to see his permission note), made his way quickly to the appropriate aisle, and stopped short in his tracks.

There was another student here. 

Tom recognized him vaguely—while transfer students were not necessarily uncommon due to the war, they were rare enough to at least make an impression. This particular transfer student was in his year, if he remembered right, sorted into Ravenclaw after an impressively long hat stall. He looked like he might be descended from the Potter line with his thick, curly black hair and his strong jawline, but he did not share the surname so his lineage was of no particular interest to Tom. Nothing about him was of particular interest to Tom, in fact, and yet here he stood, holding the book that Tom had come here to find. 

It would be a good time to turn away. The Restricted Section was restricted for a reason—only books documenting extremely dangerous or extremely advanced magic were stored here, and although students were given access from teachers for “personal” or “research” projects, no one in their right mind actually wanted anyone else to know what they were reading up on. For one thing, knowledge was power. For another, students rarely stuck to only the topics they had been approved to look at, so blackmail was nearly always in play. Tom was no exception to these rules. He knew nothing about this Ravenclaw—not even his name—but he did know that he himself was not supposed to be interested in reading material on dark soul magic, and if this Ravenclaw let that slip to someone he shouldn’t (Dumbledore, for instance), that would do very bad things to his reputation. 

Tom’s feet, however, suddenly felt as if they were made of lead. It wasn’t magic keeping him tied down, but something far more mysterious like curiosity or even fate. In any case, the delay was all it took for the Ravenclaw to lift his chin and pause when he met Tom’s eyes. 

This Ravenclaw, Tom realized, had eyes as blindingly green as the Killing Curse. 

Tom did what he did best, and decided to play this interaction off as coincidence, aided by his considerable charm. “My apologies,” he said, smiling generously at the Ravenclaw who was still watching him with his furrowed brow and his deadly eyes. “I was just passing by. I don’t believe we’ve met.”

The stranger looked away—finally—and ran a finger down the spine of the book in his hands. The gesture was curious and strangely sad, like this book and this boy were old friends. “No,” he said, his voice hollow. “I suppose we haven’t.”

They were the sort of words that were usually followed up by a name, but there wasn’t one forthcoming. It was an interesting social faux pas, but no matter. “Tom Riddle,” Tom introduced himself, offering a hand to shake. 

The Ravenclaw eyed him with an unreadable look in his eye. A second passed, and then another, until the point where Tom began to wonder if he was going to have to withdraw his hand awkwardly because this boy would not take it. Then he snapped the book shut with his left hand and clasped Tom’s with his right. His palms were rough, like he spent a lot of time riding a broom or wielding a sword, and his grip was strong. 

“Peverell,” he said, and Tom did not miss the implications of leading with a surname. “Henry Peverell. Harry, if you want to be familiar.”

“Do you want me to be familiar?” Tom couldn’t help but ask, smiling in a way that he knew frequently caused girls to swoon. Some boys, too, though Henry Peverell didn’t seem to be one of them. 

“I think,” he said with a dry look, “that’s something you’re better off asking yourself, Riddle.”

Interesting.

“What do you mean by that?” Tom asked innocently. 

Peverell let go of his hand, but reached out unexpectedly, the tip of one finger landing accusingly against the prefect badge on Tom’s robes. Normally, Tom would jinx the hand that dared to touch him so brazenly, but something about this moment stayed his hand. “Slytherin, aren’t you? Isn’t it all about connections with you lot?”

“Are you implying you have something to offer me?” Tom asked, unendingly intrigued by this stranger. It had been a…truly long time since anyone had been able to hold his attention like this. 

Peverell moved again, dropping his right hand and bringing up his left. It took Tom a moment to realize he was presenting the book to him. The book Tom had come here for. The book this mysterious Ravenclaw had just been reading. “I have this, don’t I?”

He wore a ring on the smallest finger of his left hand. A signet ring, black, with a curious symbol engraved on it. A triangle, split in half vertically, with a circle sitting just above the base of the triangle and equally split by the line running through it. 

With some effort, Tom refocused back on Peverell’s face. “Oh, I don’t want that.”

“The mouth says one thing,” Peverell said, rolling his eyes. The nerve. “The eyes another.”

And then he shoved the book at Tom’s chest none too kindly, fingers splayed over the back cover to hold it in place. Tom reached up out of some minor form of shock more than anything else, but as soon as he held the book Peverell let go, taking one step back and then another. Before Tom knew it he was gone, the aisle empty and undisturbed. For a moment, he had the strangest sense of unease. He found himself wondering if Peverell had been there at all, or maybe even if Peverell was real at all, or maybe even like he had spoken to him a thousand times before. But of course Peverell had been there, and unreal things could not shake hands, and Tom knew for a fact that those had been the first words they ever exchanged. 

It was all so terribly interesting. 

And that was what he thought before he opened the book that had been shoved into his hands and found a scrap of parchment tucked neatly between its pages. Not just any pages—but the one that mentioned Herpo the Foul’s Horcrux—and on that scrap were seven words written in the most atrocious handwriting Tom had ever seen. 

Ritual in Secrets of the Darkest Arts.

It had been a long time since Tom had been made to feel so many things at once. Curiosity, intrigue, fear, suspicion, anger, desperation, mistrust, curiosity, curiosity, curiosity. He wasn’t sure if this note was meant to be helpful or if it was meant to be threatening, but. But. 

He wanted to find out. 

“Alright, Peverell,” Tom said, tapping his fingers against the back of the book’s cover. “You have my attention.” 

“I must admit,” Abraxas Malfoy said as he lounged in a corner of the Slytherin Common Room across from Tom, “that this was already something of an independent research project of mine.”

He played with one of Tom’s captured chess pieces with long, pale fingers, slender and thin. There was a ring on his right hand, nestled on his fourth finger. It was silver, though the band had been studded with small diamonds. The stone set in it was large, bordering on gaudy, and swirling with the cloying magic of the Malfoy family. It was not a ring of Lordship but rather one of Heirship, as Abraxas was not yet seventeen and his father was not yet dead, but he would wear the Lordship ring on this finger one day and then his son would wear it after him and so on and so forth. 

Tom did not have one of these rings. Nor did he have one to sit on his left pinkie to press into wax on sealed envelopes. 

“Why is that?” Tom asked Abraxas as he lifted his gaze back up to his opponent’s pale face. 

Abraxas smiled, but Tom did not miss the curl of his lip that was ever-so-slightly condescending, the gleam in his eyes that spoke of his intentions. Abraxas knew better than to outright insult Tom, but he would always push the boundaries of what he could and could not say. It was something that Tom admired about him and hated in equal parts. 

Not one to stray from tradition, Abraxas’s next words were indeed suitably pitying without being blatantly rude. “Oh, Tom. It escaped my mind that you wouldn’t realize…” Tom grit his teeth and refused to rise to the bait. Not yet, in any case. Abraxas lost interest in trying to unnerve Tom quickly and leaned forward, holding the chess piece in his hand up by its head. It had once been a bishop, but it had been cleaved clean in half. “The Peverell name is dead. Or it was . Any… pureblood would have been startled to hear it spoken in conversation in this day and age, let alone attached to a new face.”

Tom raised an eyebrow as he took one of Abraxas’s knights. “You only said the name was dead, not the line.”

“The Peverells married into other families ages ago,” Abraxas said with a lazy wave of his hand. He studied the board with his piercingly blue eyes, hunting out his next move. It would ultimately be fruitless—Tom had not lost a game of chess to Abraxas in years, and he would not start tonight. “The Gaunts, for instance. The Potters. No one carries the name, but the blood is still the same . ”

The Gaunts, Tom’s thoughts echoed. The Potters. 

Had he not thought earlier that Henry Peverell looked like he might have been a Potter?

“I had that thought as well,” Abraxas said, with a knowing look at Tom. Tom was disappointed in himself—he knew he had not spoken out loud, and Abraxas was certainly not a Legillimens, so the fact that he could speak to Tom’s thoughts meant that he had telegraphed them with his face. “This new Peverell looks quite a bit like the Potters, doesn’t he?”

“Could he be one?” Tom asked. “Perhaps…illegitimate?”

Abraxas smiled like Tom had made a mistake. “The Potters are not nobility. Besides, the Potters stem from a younger brother—a Gaunt would have a claim to the Peverell name sooner than a Potter would, and if not, it would fall to a legitimate Potter long before it would an illegitimate one.” Abraxas sniffed. “No, I’ll tell you what most likely happened. This newcomer is a mudblood, and is falsely claiming a pureblood name to avoid detection from Grindelwald. It wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened.”

Tom took the barb blankly, though fury reared up inside of him all the same. He was not a mudblood—had never been a mudblood—but when he was eleven and carried a name as ordinary and Muggle as Tom Riddle, it had been what everyone thought all the same. In fact, as Abraxas very well knew, the only thing preventing Tom from taking up the Gaunt name now was the fact that anyone that knew him would think the very thing Abraxas had just said. 

It was one of the many, many reasons why it was better to just start over anew. Claim a new name. Claim a new face. Leave Tom Riddle in the past, where it belonged. But for that—Tom had to be patient before he could do that.

“That is all well and good,” Tom said, silently vowing to punish Abraxas suitably at a later time, “but Henry Peverell wears a signet ring on his left pinkie.”

This gave Abraxas pause. Tom watched him carefully as his eyes slid down to his own left hand, finding his finger lacking. This was a crucial aspect of Abraxas’s personality—he wanted to feel like he was the most powerful person in a room, but only in the most inane ways. He wanted the nicest clothes and the most jewelry, the prettiest date and the best-styled hair. Peverell had a signet ring while Abraxas did not, and it was a loss that he felt keenly. 

“What did it look like?” Abraxas asked. “This ring?”

Tom had been prepared for this question, so he removed the parchment on which he had sketched the symbol he had seen from his pocket and passed it to Abraxas, who studied it for only a few seconds. Tom once again stifled a familiar spark of jealousy—of course Abraxas, who grew up amongst wizards, would recognize it immediately while Tom was left with only the option of asking. 

“The Deathly Hallows,” Abraxas said, sighing through his nose like he was trying to restrain himself from having any reaction at all. “I suppose that settles it. This Ravenclaw is acting head of the Peverell family until he turns seventeen.”

Tom noted the reverence with which Abraxas named the symbol and stored it away for later thought. 

“What does that mean, exactly?” Tom asked Abraxas. 

“There is no one alive that can hold that lordship except for that boy,” Abraxas said, drumming his fingers against the tabletop. “Which begs the question…”

“Why would that be so, when there are multiple family lines with countless possible heirs that likely could have claimed it previously, based on blood and age?” Tom finished, tapping his own fingers against the tabletop now. 

“Precisely,” Abraxas concluded. “I’ll write to my father for any information he might have on how the Peverell Heirship is decided.”

“You will inform me of anything you find,” Tom commanded. 

Abraxas bowed his head, just a dip, really. It was enough for now, but one day…one day Tom would have him on his knees. “Of course.”

In the meantime, Tom had something he needed to look into himself.

Tom put a temporary halt on his plans to find the Chamber of Secrets and unearthing the location of any of his magical family members, and instead turned his attention towards figuring out what the Deathly Hallows were. He scoured the library for books mentioning death or hallows with very little promise of success on either front. He also looked into the Peverell line, as much as one could look into a magical family publicly. 

The whole chase was frustrating, maddening, made worse by the feeling that he was missing something simple because of his Muggle background. He’d been devoting all of the free time he could for the last week to finding what he was looking for and making minimal progress. The closest he got to a lead was a brief mention in a gossipy article— some say the Deathly Hallows are engraved on the cellar door of Durmstrang Institute— but there was no explanation of what they were. 

Tom was just about ready to throw every book on this godforsaken table into the fire when a hand that was not his own landed on the page of the book he was currently reading—or more accurately, staring at. 

The hand was familiar, all honeyed skin and short fingers, knobby knuckles and a wide palm. The fingernails were rough with use, and the nail beds jagged like their owner picked at them—a disgustingly telling habit that certainly indicated something lesser. The real giveaway was the ring worn on the pinkie finger, taunting and mocking Tom with the very knowledge he was trying so hard to obtain. 

“The Peverell Curse,” Peverell read, as he dragged his fingertips down the page contemplatively. “Many have speculated before that the Peverell family has been touched by death, as men die young and the blood of the women lacks the strength to carry the family magic on— well, that’s sexist— never more so than now that Cadmus Peverell has—” 

Tom snapped the book shut abruptly, only barely missing Peverell’s fingers as he snatched them away. “Peverell,” he greeted neutrally, turning to greet the blue and bronze clad thorn in his side. He looked the same as he did before, with his burning green eyes and his wild black hair, though there was a set to his smile that wasn’t there before, something a little more smug and a little less guarded. 

“Riddle,” Peverell greeted him back, giving an exaggerated sort of half-bow that grated on Tom’s temper for how mocking it clearly was. “Not going to call me Harry? You are researching my family.”

Tom smiled as pleasantly as he could. “I thought it was you that said I should only call you such a thing if I wanted to be familiar?”

Peverell raised a single eyebrow, questioning and defiant, and before Tom could react he’d snatched the book Tom had been reading out of his hands and began flipping through it. “The Peverell Family and the Tale of the Three Brothers, The Peverell Family Curse, The Peverell Legacy, The Lines that Carry the Peverells, The Peverells and Death—”

“Enough,” Tom hissed, rising out of his seat so he could snatch the book in Peverell’s hands. Peverell danced away from him, flipping the page. “Stop reading chapter titles out loud.”

“Would you prefer I read quotes instead? The mysterious Peverell family, thought to be entrenched in the darkest of magical practices, necromancy, met their early end when the son of Ignotus Peverell—” 

“You are making a scene,” Tom interrupted with another hiss, noticing they were drawing an audience from other students at other tables. “Give that back.”

“Suit yourself,” Peverell said with a shrug. He snapped the book shut and tossed it at Tom nonchalantly—tossing books, a Ravenclaw— before inviting himself into the seat across from Tom’s original one. He lounged in that seat like it was a throne, legs extended, an elbow hooked over the back of the chair, fingers drumming a pattern on the table. 

Tom took a deep breath. Fine, it was fine, he could work with this. He was going to have to talk to Peverell sooner or later anyway, though past and present experiences were indicating it was going to be difficult to get any sort of information out of him. 

“Please, have a seat,” Tom said, smiling dangerously as he reclaimed his own. 

Peverell seemed just as immune to this smile of Tom’s as he had been to his charming one. “Let’s not do that.” He made eye contact with Tom, suddenly somber, suddenly intense. “Let’s be frank with one another instead. For instance—you said that you don’t want to be familiar with me, yet you have books on my family.” A corner of his mouth ticked upwards. “The mouth says one thing, the evidence another.”

Tom sighed. “What is this? Is this a thing for you?”

Peverell smiled, but it was small and strangely sad. “I’ve learned to enjoy being mysterious, I suppose… But that’s not really what you want to ask me, is it?”

Tom pursed his lips. “What is it you think I wanted to ask you?”

Peverell studied him, his expression taut and weary. He flicked his eyes away with a sigh, and in the blink of an eye, there was a wand in his hand. It was a darker wood, with a deep grain and a thick hilt that matched with his wide palms. Tom eyed the wand curiously for only a moment, but Peverell was not pointing it at him so Tom did not draw his own. A flick of the wrist and a whispered word Tom didn’t catch later and a spell settled over them like a bubble. The magic was faintly soothing as Tom brushed a finger against it. He realized what it must be doing a moment later when he noticed he could no longer hear the sounds of pages turning and quills scratching. 

Tom raised his eyebrows at his companion. “Impressive. I don’t think I’ve seen a silencing spell quite so airtight before.”

Peverell shrugged half-heartedly— modest— and tucked his wand up his sleeve. He must have a sheathe strapped to his wrist. How very pureblooded of him. 

“I was…surprised by your reading material,” Peverell said, like he was choosing his words carefully. “I thought that after the hint I gave you, you would be interested in a different…book.”

Tom felt himself stiffening minutely before he forced himself to relax, but he had a feeling the reaction hadn’t gone unnoticed by Peverell. “I had other priorities,” he told Peverell coolly. “I’m sure you can understand.”

“Like looking into me?” Peverell asked, eyebrows raised in challenge. “And public execution records? And…hallowed ground.” He picked up one of the other books on Tom’s table before casting it aside, eyebrows going incredulous instead of challenging. “And death in various mythologies, Deadliest Magical Artifacts , Sacred Death Rituals …oh.” The last word was soft, on the verge of understanding. “The Deathly Hallows. You’re trying to figure out what they are.”

Tom supposed he could allow that maybe Peverell was Ravenclaw for a reason. He had come to that conclusion—the correct conclusion—rather quickly. 

Tom leaned forward, snagging Peverell’s wand wrist and squeezing slightly. Peverell, the unnerving bastard, merely gave Tom an unimpressed look. “You wanted us to be frank with one another, yes? Let’s clear something up. You, Henry Peverell, are a transfer student from a family line that should have been long dead. No one knows anything about you—not where you came from or who your parents are or how you are even a Peverell—and you think you can just approach me, and slip me a threatening note, and sit at my table, and not come under suspicion? I don’t think so. You’re hiding something—you are likely hiding a lot of things—and I intend to uncover them all.”

“Do you, now?” Peverell asked, looking amused. “That’s nice.”

Tom had never wanted to curse an expression off of someone’s face more than he did now. “You—” 

“Hey, Riddle,” Peverell interrupted, his voice deceptively soft as he flipped their grip expertly so that it was Peverell holding Tom’s wand hand and not the other way around. Tom twitched in an attempt to get out of the hold, but Peverell’s grip tightened like a vice. Tom met Peverell’s unforgivably green eyes, and Peverell stared back at him with a hardness to his jaw that spoke of battles to be had. 

Peverell squeezed. “I’ve found that withholding information from others very rarely accomplishes anything good for anyone, even when that information is dangerous. So, next time you want to know something about me…try asking.”

He released Tom’s wrist and stood all in one motion, the strange silencing spell he cast popping as he did. Had he even gotten his wand out? He had not. Wandless, wordless magic…not even Tom could perform at that level. 

Not yet, anyway.

“The Tales of Beedle the Bard,” Peverell said inexplicably. “Wizarding fairy tales. Read them—I think you’ll find them more enlightening than you’d expect.”

He gave Tom one last hard look, and then strode out of the library with an easy gait.

As much as Tom hated to admit it, he did actually read The Tales of Beedle the Bard. He read it cover to cover, more than once, caught up in a strange sort of delayed fascination. 

Prior to Peverell informing him of its existence, it had never occurred to Tom that wizarding children had fairy tales that they grew up with just like Muggle children did. He’d put in so much effort to belong in this world, to cast everything that made him less aside, and yet he’d never bothered to think of things that would be essential to a magical childhood. 

On top of that, he had an answer. A plain answer. The Deathly Hallows were from a children’s story. Fictional items, as real as Cinderella’s slipper or the spindle Sleeping Beauty pricked her finger on. 

As to why, exactly, the Deathly Hallows would be the symbol of the Peverell family, he wasn’t sure. But he had an idea, at least. 

Armed with a copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard in his bag and some spare time before he had to start working on some of his essays, Tom set out to find Henry Peverell. He was a Ravenclaw—and it was the only place he’d seen Peverell outside of classes and meals anyway—so Tom started with the library, with no results. He recalled rough palms and thick calluses and walked down to the Quidditch Pitch next, but it was unoccupied other than a couple snogging in the stands. 

Tom left that well alone and continued on his search.

He checked the Great Hall, not really expecting to find Peverell (which turned out to be a fair expectation), and a few of the more popular alcoves for studying or snogging. He was beginning to think Peverell was holed up in his common room or someplace otherwise barred to Tom and he had better things to do than search a castle for someone he barely knew anyway, when he finally found Peverell. 

The Astronomy Tower wasn’t nearly as popular of a destination during the day as it was during the night, where it was the number one date spot for couples interested in romantic cliches. Peverell sat near the railing, one arm hooked over the lower safety bar and the other around one of his knees. His forehead was pressed against one of the bars, and he stared down at the ground in a vacant way. Because he had apparently spawned into existence just to annoy Tom, he didn’t turn to look at him when he came in, either. 

“Peverell,” Tom greeted coolly. He had not warmed up to the concept of having to earn the other boy’s attention one bit. 

Peverell still did not look at him. 

Tom cleared his throat. “Peverell.” 

No response. 

At this point Tom took stock of the situation—vacant eyes, blank face, white-knuckled grip on a kneecap, faintly quivering muscles. This was not intentional ignorance—no, something was wrong. 

“Henry,” Tom tried, taking a step closer. “Henry Peverell. Harry.” 

He touched Peverell’s shoulder, and he jerked back to life. Peverell released his knee, flailing slightly as it unbalanced him. He caught Tom’s forearm to steady himself, his grip tightening to an unbearable degree. His eyes met Tom’s, deathly green and full of anger, and for just a moment, Tom thought he was going to get hexed. 

No sooner had he had the thought, Peverell seemed to school his expression into something a little closer to calm. Tom did not miss the way he dropped his arm like he was disgusted by it, though. 

“Tom Riddle,” Peverell said, in a blank way. “ Just Tom Riddle.” He ran fingers through his hair, riling it up in the worst way. It seemed to be all he needed to collect himself, though, because when he looked at Tom next, he looked just like he had the last few times they’d met—like he didn’t particularly care for Tom, but in that way certain personalities left a bad taste in one’s mouth. 

Not like he fervently hated him. 

Which had been the expression on his face a moment ago. 

Interesting. 

“What are you doing up here?” Tom asked. He was nothing if not courteous, so he shuffled back another inch to offer Peverell some measure of comfort. 

“This place is close to—the sky.” He had most certainly been about to say something other than that. “Reminds me of flying.”

Tom raised an eyebrow. “You could always just…fly.”

“No,” Peverell said, shifting so he could lean back slightly, resting his temple against one of the bars in a way that spoke of deep-seated exhaustion. “I don’t have a broom.”

“That is what the school brooms are for,” Tom pointed out sardonically. 

“Do you need something?” Peverell asked, instead of responding. 

To figure you out. 

To know what your interest in me is. 

To have an explanation for why you seem to hate me, but told me where to find the ritual I was looking for. 

To ask why you knew I was looking for that ritual in the first place. 

Tom held up the copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard that he had checked out from the library and brought with him. “To ask you why items from a fairy story make up your family crest.”

Peverell didn’t lift his head, but he raised one hand in a silent request for the book. Tom didn’t see a reason not to comply, so he set the book in his hands. Normally Tom would have chafed at the lack of an immediate answer, but watched Peverell with interest. He flipped to the Tale of the Three Brothers as if he had done it a thousand times. He ran a thumb along the edge of the page while his eyes flicked slowly over the words. There was something about how Peverell held himself that was familiar. Something in his posture, something in his face, something in his eyes. 

“The Peverell brothers are thought to be the original inspiration for the story,” Peverell said at long last, lifting his gaze from the pages to glance at Tom. Thoughts ran out of Tom’s head as he met that gaze, new ones forming before he could identify them and running again just when he thought he might. “Whether the symbol is something they devised themselves or something they adopted out of irony, I don’t know.”

“How do you not know?”

A flicker of irritation passed over Peverell’s face before he smiled cheekily. “I can’t exactly ask them, can I? Not unless you’ve got the Resurrection Stone in your pocket.”

“Ha,” Tom commented dryly. “They aren’t real, anyway.”

“Realer than you’d think,” Peverell said in a soft voice. He passed the book back to Tom. “Well, the Invisibility Cloak and the Resurrection Stone are lost to history, but there are some that have tracked the supposed Elder Wand. It changes allegiances depending on whoever bests the previous wielder in battle. If the legend is to be believed, though, it doesn’t have to be battle—the eldest brother was killed in his sleep. That’s true, by the way. I can confirm that.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Tom said, but he felt a thrum of curiosity echoing through him anyway. “It’s just a children’s story.”

“It’s my family history,” Peverell said with a shrug. “And even if it wasn’t…is it really so hard to believe? Here, in a world where dragons exist? Here, in a school where staircases move of their own accord and portraits talk? Here, where someone has created a Philosopher’s Stone?”

It…was an intriguing concept, if nothing else. Tom would allow the conversation to continue, if only for that reason. There was nothing wrong with engaging in a theoretical debate with an intellectual. 

“Alright. So, say the items are real. What’s the point of them? Why would an entity like Death want to share his powers with mortals?”

“Why wouldn’t they?” Peverell asked rhetorically, cocking a challenging eyebrow. “Don’t they share something with us all already—death itself, for no one is truly immortal?”

“There are ways,” Tom said. “There are ways to be immortal.”

“There are always drawbacks,” Peverell said. “Think of known practices to achieve immortality, or pseudo-immortality. There are vampires, but they have to live only off blood and avoid sunlight, and there are still ways to kill them. You could drink the blood of a unicorn to sustain a life-force that would otherwise end, but your existence would be cursed.” Tom…hadn’t realized that was an option. “If you could create a Philosopher’s Stone, you could drink the Elixir of Life…but that doesn’t prevent you from being murdered. Even Horcruxes have drawbacks.”

Tom felt as if he could scarcely breathe. “Why do you know what those are?” he asked. “Why do you speak so freely about them?”

“I have an invested interest in immortality,” Peverell said, his lips quirking up like it was a joke that only he understood. Then, apropos of nothing, he asked, “Do you ever wonder what the Sorting Hat is really judging people on?”

Tom wanted to push about the Horcrux comment…but at the same time…

“I do, as a matter of fact.”

“I’ve always thought…” Peverell trailed off. He shot an unreadable look at Tom. He glanced away. “It’s peculiar to me that so many of the houses have overlapping traits. Are cunning and wit all that different? Bravery and determination are essentially the same emotion applied to different situations. Tell me hard-work and ambition don’t really go hand-in-hand, or that wisdom isn’t a kind of fairness.”

“I see your point.”

“On top of that, it’s not as if someone sorted into Slytherin can never be brave, or someone sorted into Hufflepuff can’t be cunning, or someone sorted into Ravenclaw can’t be loyal, or a Gryffindor can’t be wise. They aren’t mutually exclusive traits. I suspect, in fact, that most people carry all of them within them in near equal measures.”

“I wouldn’t think so, listening to you now,” Tom pointed out dryly. “You seem all Ravenclaw and not much else.”

Peverell curled his fingers in the blue and bronze of his scarf, expression twisting slightly. “I do, don’t I? Merlin, maybe the Hat had a point.”

“I think the point is that the Hat always does have one,” Tom said, tapping his fingers against the cover of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, as it was still in his hands. “That was where you were going with this, yes? The Hat sorts us where it does for a reason. Yours is that you dabble in philosophy.”

Peverell shot him a glare. “The point is about your question, actually.”

“My question? Which question?”

“The one about why I’m telling you things that could further your evil plots,” Peverell said.

“Evil,” Tom objected. 

“Yes, evil. Murder is evil, Tom.”

Tom? Tom thought, bemusedly. 

Then, Murder?

“Anyway,” Peverell continued, blissfully oblivious to Tom’s inner thoughts. “I think the sorting has a lot less to do with who we are, and a lot more to do with how we are. I’m not sure that really makes sense, but…think of it this way. If I asked a Hufflepuff what the best way to further their career was, what would they say?”

“Hard-work,” Tom said. “That’s one of the traits of the House that you just spent so long trying to tear down.”

Peverell sighed. “They would say it’s about what they do, Tom. Pose the same question to a Gryffindor, and they would say it’s about who they are. A Slytherin, who they know. A Ravenclaw, what they know.”

“Hm,” Tom allowed. “Clever. I can’t actually say I disagree.”

“Imagine that,” Peverell said, looking out over the grounds. Tom couldn’t help but think he was looking away to hide a smile. “Tom Riddle agreeing with me . The horror.”

“Sorry, have I done something to you?”

“Your reputation precedes you, I suppose. In any case, that’s the answer. I’m telling you things because it’s important to me that I know them at all. Why have knowledge if I’m not going to use it? Share it? My approach is Ravenclaw, so to Ravenclaw I went. I think.”

“That doesn’t explain why you knew I was looking into…Horcruxes,” Tom said, feeling a thrill run down his spine at saying that word aloud to another person. The whole point of making a Horcrux was to ensure no one knew he had one, but…if Peverell already knew… Well, it wasn’t like he couldn’t dispose of Peverell later if it came to that. 

“Invested interest in immortality, remember?” Peverell said, eying Tom. Several moments passed like this, thoughts passing behind the green of Peverell’s eyes and Tom resisting the temptation to dip inside so he could know what they were. 

“Have you looked at the ritual yet?” Peverell asked, at the end of this silence. “Do you even know what it is?”

“No,” Tom said, feeling like it was a dangerous thing to confess. “I haven’t. I don’t.”

Peverell took a deep breath, and looked out over the grounds. He clenched and unclenched his fist. A muscle in his jaw jumped. “When you kill someone, it tears a rift in your soul. That rift will heal naturally with time, but if you don’t let it… That’s what the ritual is for. That’s what the Horcrux is. You use a murder to rip half of your soul out of your body, and then you place that half into an object.”

“And…that makes the soul immortal,” Tom finished, his mind whirring. This was progress. “If your body is killed, then a piece of your soul will live on…you could reclaim life again, using the container, you could—”

“The downsides,” Peverell interrupted quietly, “are perhaps the most extreme, of all the options one has to pursue pseudo-immortality.”

Tom scoffed. “It hardly seems worse than having to drink blood and avoid the sun.”

“Aside from the murder, you mean,” Peverell said, rolling his eyes. “Though I suppose you probably view that as a non-issue.” He eyed Tom appraisingly, Tom refused to do anything with his face that would confirm Peverell’s assumption was true. “It’s painful to split one’s soul. Housing part of it outside of your body makes you…vulnerable, to things worse than death. It’s harder to think. It’s harder to feel. Madness is not just likely, but inevitable. You could say it’s a different kind of half-life. The only thing that makes it better than drinking unicorn blood is that there’s no explicit curse, I suppose. Assuming murder is a non-issue.”

Tom paused. 

He played the words over in his head. 

“You’ve made one?” he whispered as he realized it. “You have a Horcrux?”

Peverell didn’t look at him. 

Tom breathed out a long exhale. “You do.” 

This took some of the fun out of it, he thought. If Peverell had already made a Horcrux, then Tom wouldn’t have been exceptional for doing it at a young age. If Peverell had already led him to all the answers about Horcruxes, then Tom didn’t have the satisfaction of discovering them for himself. If Peverell had already killed someone—no, sacrificed someone—then Tom’s ruthlessness wasn’t anything particularly special. 

Tom sat back, suddenly disgruntled. Had this been Peverell’s play all along? Just…take all of the fun out of making a Horcrux by doing everything for Tom? It was horribly conniving if that was his plan, and oddly competitive for someone Tom barely knew, but Tom had seen worse from people. 

Not to mention…part of him, a not insignificant part of him, couldn’t help but respect it. 

“I haven’t made a Horcrux, Tom,” Peverell said quietly. “That’s not the kind of immortality I’m interested in.”

What a curious, captivating stranger Peverell was. What a tapestry of odd threads to unravel. What an enigma.

“What kind of immortality are you interested in?” Tom asked, breathless yet again. 

Peverell tapped the cover of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, lying where Tom had set it between them. “This kind,” he said. 

It made absolutely no sense, and somehow, it also made all the sense in the world. 

“Who are you?” Tom asked. 

Peverell smiled. “Henry James Peverell,” he said. “Harry, if you want to be familiar.”

Maybe Tom did.

Chapter Text

At eighteen years old, Harry stood in an empty and blindingly white Kings Cross Station for the second time in his life. There was no horrific baby form of Lord Voldemort to greet him this time around, but there was the familiar flutter of the white robes he’d worn in this place before settling over his skin. For a moment he thought he would be alone, truly alone, but then some of the blinding light parted to reveal the silhouette of a man, familiar for the long beard and the billowing robes, with his bony hands folded neatly in front of him and his twinkling blue eyes once again sparkling. 

“Dumbledore,” Harry gasped out like a prayer. He clutched at his heart with one hand, he clutched at the memory of this man’s guidance and kindness with another. “What happened?”

A silly question. Harry knew the circumstances under which he had arrived at this place in the past. He knew they were not different now. 

“Harry, my boy,” Dumbledore said, his voice laced with sadness and pity in equal measures. “It’s wonderful to see you, but…how I longed to think it wouldn’t be for many years yet.”

Harry’s grip on his white robes tightened. As did the pressure in his chest. “I’m dead,” he realized. “I died.”

The again went unsaid, but it hung in the empty whiteness between them all the same.

“I’m afraid you are,” Dumbledore said. Then softer, “I’m afraid you did.”

Harry sank to his knees, white robes pooling on the white tiles beneath him, and he tried to remember how. Battle? No, he hadn’t been an active Auror in a while. He’d been too busy with rebuilding, and helping, and—

Poison. 

“In your drink,” Dumbledore agreed, speaking to Harry’s thoughts. “At the gala. Slow acting.”

“Who?” 

But in the end, it didn’t really matter who. Harry knew his own story better than anyone else did. He defeated Voldemort at age seventeen. He joined the Aurors and threw himself into capturing what was left of the Death Eaters. His relationship with Ginny fell apart. He got more and more careless in battle, until he was suspended from field duty indefinitely on cause of ‘reckless endangerment.’ He attended more and more public events instead in an attempt to help in whatever way he could. He stopped checking his food and drink for tampering because he didn’t care. 

He knew he had enemies, and he didn’t care. 

“My boy,” Dumbledore said, his voice soft and pitying. “Harry.” 

Harry closed his eyes. “It’s alright,” he said. “I—I wanted…” He swallowed. That wasn’t really true—he hadn’t wanted to die, but he also hadn’t particularly cared about living. “It’s alright. It was my time.”

The Boy Who Lived, the Man Who Conquered, Savior of the Wizarding World, who shook off two Avada Kedavras like they were nothing and then died because someone poisoned his drink. The papers would have a field day. Or maybe they wouldn’t—maybe they wouldn’t even notice. Any respectable poisoner-to-be likely would have made sure they used something on Harry that wasn’t easy to trace. 

Maybe—maybe he could finally see his parents in the afterlife. Maybe Sirius and Remus would be there too. Maybe he could have one last laugh with Fred, pose for one last picture for Colin. Hell, maybe even Voldemort would be there. Harry wouldn’t even turn down one last bitter fight with the so-called Dark Lord at this rate. 

His fights with Voldemort had always been when he felt most alive, after all. 

“Was it?” Dumbledore asked, with that twinkle in his blue eyes that had never once meant anything good for Harry. 

He recalled his last tryst in this place almost a year ago now. A query about his sanity, a confounding answer, a question about the future, a statement about trains and ‘onwards’ or ‘back.’ 

“You’re mental,” Harry said, channeling his inner Ron. His heart twinged at the thought of Ron—of all his friends, back in the world he left behind—but he shoved the feeling away. “Again? I already killed Voldemort! Shouldn’t that be enough for you?”

“Is that enough for you ?” Dumbledore asked. 

Harry’s breath hitched, but no tears came, not in this perfect land. “Don’t—you’re so—what does that even mean?”

Dumbledore gave him a long, sad look, one hand coming up to stroke his beard. “I’ve always wanted you to live a full, happy life, Harry.”

Harry looked away, suddenly finding it too hard to look at Dumbledore while he said that. He wondered if it was true—Dumbledore had always seemed like he cared, but Dumbledore had always been distant, too, sitting in his office and not avoiding Harry’s eyes.

But Harry also didn’t know how to say he didn’t want to go back to his life. He was tired. He had been tired. He didn’t want to watch his back in fights anymore. He didn’t want to have to check his food for potions. He wanted to see his family again—if that was even possible—but more than anything else, he just wanted to rest. 

The silence stretched on between them, so long that Dumbledore finally broke it lest it continued forever. “Do you think, Harry, that anyone that dies before they turn twenty really got a chance to live a full and happy life?”

Harry paused. 

He looked at Dumbledore. 

He wasn’t sure what exactly tipped him off. It wasn’t like anything in this place was really right . Kings Cross shouldn’t be void of crowds, Harry shouldn’t be able to see without his glasses, he shouldn’t be able to just get on a train and hop back into his dead body like nothing had happened. It would make sense if Dumbledore was off too, and he was, but this was Dumbledore being off in a way that was different than misremembering the exact shade of someone’s eyes or forgetting they had a mole on the side of their neck. 

“You aren’t Dumbledore, are you?” Harry asked. 

The being that wore Dumbledore’s face smiled a knowing smile. “No, I am not,” they said. 

The robes changed first—not in color, despite all the images of the Grim Reaper in black—but they grew longer. Long enough to cover hands and trail along the floor. A hood sprouted at the collar, then dropped over the face to hide it in shadow. Flesh melted away last, leaving only bare, skeletal hands. Harry couldn’t see beneath the cowl, but he was sure the face it hid would look the same. 

“Death,” Harry guessed on his exhale. 

The being inclined their head. 

“Why were you pretending to be Dumbledore?” Harry asked suspiciously. 

“I take the form most likely to comfort a soul during their passing,” they replied. “If that being is Albus Dumbledore to you, then that is your business to puzzle through, not mine.”

Harry took a deep breath in, then let it out. Well. It wasn’t like that didn’t make sense. Dumbledore had comforted Harry through many things in the past.

It wasn’t as if Harry had parents to do that for him instead. 

“What would—why would you want to send me back to my life?” Harry asked. “Shouldn’t you… want to collect souls?”

“Come now, Harry Potter,” Death said, reminding Harry of McGonagall, strangely, with their tone. “You of all people know that you are different to me. Aren’t you, Master of Death?”

Harry resisted the urge to snark at ancient, all-powerful beings. 

He failed. 

“What does Death even want a master for anyway?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Death asked, in an even, reasonable way that seemed like Remus Lupin’s exact tone when he was lecturing in Harry’s third year. “We are intrinsically tied together, mortals and I. You all must come to me eventually—why shouldn’t I come to you as well?”

“What do you get out of it?” Harry asked, still suspicious. He’d been fooled by mysterious magic one too many times. He had learned caution, when lack of it had nearly cost his friends their lives. 

“That depends,” Death said, “on you, Master of Death.”

“On me,” Harry repeated flatly. 

Death stretched out a bony hand. “You long for a reason to live. What if I told you I could give you one? What if I told you that you could spare more souls than just those you already saved?”

“And if I want to go on?” Harry asked. “To…the afterlife, or whatever? To rest and enjoy myself?”

“Then you would go on,” Death said, with an easy wisdom that had once belonged to Sirius Black. “I’m afraid you might find it wanting, however.”

“And if I take your hand?”

“Then you would go,” Death said, with a raspy voice and a dramatic sweep of the arm that echoed Tom Riddle’s shattered soul. Harry flinched, but only minutely. “To where you need to go.”

“And where is it I need to go?” Harry asked. 

Death remained silent. 

“Where is it,” Harry repeated, through gritted teeth, “I need to go?” 

“Where you can learn to survive while the other lives,” Death said, with the raspy vacantness of Sybil Trelawney. “For otherwise, either must die at the hands of the other.”

Harry closed his eyes. He pressed his fingers into his eyelids. 

He had a feeling he knew what that meant. He also had a feeling that this was most certainly a very bad idea.

“Ah, what the hell…” he whispered, and he took the hand of Death. 

Tom was already watching Henry Peverell, but after that day at the Astronomy Tower, it became something of a full-time ordeal. 

He watched Harry sitting alone at meals. He took up one end of the Ravenclaw table and he ate with one hand while he eyed whatever essay was due later that day and made corrections. In classes he was quiet, hardly ever raising his hand if he indeed did it at all, and still alone. He sat by himself in every class that wasn’t so full that everyone needed a seat partner. His grades were on the better side of average, but they were certainly nothing to write home about…in all but two subjects. 

One was Potions, which Tom was fortunate enough to share with the Ravenclaws. He watched Harry whenever he could—noticing that he rarely followed the recipes exactly and instead did curious things like crushing ingredients instead of slicing them. More strange was Slughorn’s reaction to him, though, since Slughorn was the sort of person that pounced on even a sliver of talent and tried to use it for himself. Harry certainly had talent, and Slughorn certainly saw it—he tested every potion at the end of every class, but Harry always received the same, almost pitying, “Perfect as always, there, Peverell.” Sometimes, Slughorn would reach out as if to pat Harry on the back before seemingly thinking better of it and withdrawing his hand. The action always drew a sad, knowing smile out of Harry and a slight nod, and then Slughorn would scurry off to the next desk looking ashamed. 

Harry never once received an invite to the Slug Club.

The other class he supposedly excelled in was Defense. Tom shared Defense with the Gryffindors, so he couldn’t watch, but he heard. And he heard a great deal. 

Harry got top marks in every Defense assignment, even outscoring Tom himself. His in-class behaviors weren’t any different than they were for any other class, according to the Ravenclaws that Tom asked as casually as possible. He didn’t raise his hand, he didn’t bother to earn them any points for their house—Tom noted with amusement that this was said with a certain amount of exasperation—but he knew everything about every dark creature they discussed, he aced every practical, and he got top marks on every test. 

Tom wanted to know more. 

“Father said,” Abraxas informed him in low tones, “that there’s a rumor about the Peverell lordship—that all those that attempt to claim it die mysteriously before they reach their thirties. It’s why the title, the properties, and the gold all went out of circulation, and the name itself followed soon after.”

Harry knew Tom was watching him. Tom knew he did, even if Harry was very good at pretending it wasn’t happening. He never met Tom’s gaze across a classroom, but still his shoulders tensed every time Tom looked at him. Harry didn’t change his routine or make any great effort to avoid Tom’s watching, but neither did he offer to talk to him again. It wasn’t for lack of trying on Tom’s part—he had once sat directly in Harry’s line of sight with the copy of Secrets of the Darkest Arts that Abraxas had obtained for him (though he’d charmed the book to look like a potions textbook to anyone that wasn’t Harry) but the Ravenclaw had only afforded Tom and his dangerous book the briefest of glances. 

It was infuriating. Shouldn’t have Harry been trying to…stop him, or something? Why go through all the posturing that came with giving him the clue if it was neither an attempt to help him, as Harry claimed, nor some kind of threat?

Confusing, confusing boy. 

“I heard it’s a blood curse,” Abraxas said, flicking dirt out from under his nail boredly. “Someone cursed the Peverell name, and it’s why they all die so young.”

“Henry Peverell hardly looks like he’s dying,” Tom pointed out, shooting a look across the stands at Harry himself. They were watching the Ravenclaw-Gryffindor game, from the Ravenclaw stands, of course. Harry was a few benches in front of him and several spots to the left, watching the game with an odd expression on his face. For once, he didn’t seem aware of Tom’s gaze. 

“No,” Abraxas agreed, shooting a disdainful look towards Harry. “It would be nice if he was. It’s bad enough that I lost the top spot in everything to you, to get knocked to third in both Defense and Potions by some unknown Potter bastard is practically criminal. Father is very displeased. Malfoys are meant to always be the best, as you well know.” He scoffed. 

Tom should be focusing on the Chamber of Secrets. On finding the last surviving Gaunts. On hunting down his disgusting Muggle father. On figuring out a way to get out of Wool’s early. On his grades, even. On anything other than some mysterious new Ravenclaw transfer student. 

Yet. 

Harry spent exorbitant amounts of time outside, despite it getting colder and colder. Tom often saw him pulling blue gloves on his hands and wrapping a blue and bronze scarf around his neck and trekking out of the castle and into the unknown. He didn’t know where he was going or what he was doing or why, so he could only watch and wonder. Occasionally, not that he would ever mention it to anyone (not even himself), Tom followed only to find Harry had practically vanished into thin air. It had to be a Disillusionment Charm, he thought, or maybe…maybe it was an Invisibility Cloak. He had talked up that silly story enough that his interest in an Invisibility Cloak wouldn’t be unfounded. 

“I spoke to Fleamont Potter,” Abraxas said. “This Peverell is a point of interest for him, too. Apparently, we aren’t the only ones that noticed he looked like a Potter, but Fleamont said there were no loose ends he could find. He checked his family registry, of course. That’s what real power is, Tom—having people throw themselves at your feet just because your name is so noble and your reputation so infallible that they know they must ingratiate themselves to you early so you might favor them later.”

One morning, Harry went on a walk around the lake. 

Tom saw him from an upper window of the castle. It hadn’t been a conscious thought, but the next second he was down the stairs and racing down the steps of the Entrance Hall, heading straight for the lake himself. He hadn’t grabbed his cloak or gloves or scarf and he suffered for it as the cold air bit at his cheeks and his nose, but he was done, he thought. Done with what, he wasn’t sure, but he was done. 

“Harry!” he called—snapped really—when he caught sight of black and blue ahead of him. Harry paused, turning slightly over his shoulder to look at Tom. His green eyes were wide with surprise behind his wireframe glasses. 

“Riddle?” Harry asked, his eyebrows climbing up his forehead. 

“Tom,” he corrected, once again not entirely sure why he did. Something about hearing his incriminating Muggle surname coming out of such an enigma’s mouth when he’d already heard himself called something marginally better once before. The whole thing was ridiculous, and yet here Tom was, being ridiculous anyway. 

Harry’s eyebrows, if possible, climbed even higher. “Okay. Tom.” He grimaced slightly, perhaps at the awkwardness. “What’s wrong with you? Did you run here?”

What’s wrong with me, indeed. 

“I walked,” Tom said, between deep breaths. Harry gave him a dubious look. “Very fast.”

This seemed to amuse Harry somewhat, since his lips quirked up into the first steps of a smile before he aborted the expression before it was born. “Okay. Why?”

Why, indeed. 

“I wanted to ask you something,” Tom said, but even as he said it, he had no idea what. “And I expect you to answer.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “Of course. Because we are all beholden to the whims of Tom Riddle.”

Things would certainly be better if everyone listened to him unquestioningly, but it wasn’t as if Tom was going to admit that out loud. 

“Ha,” he said instead, giving Harry a dry look. “It’s important.”

Was it? Tom still wasn’t even sure what it was.

“By all means,” Harry said, gesturing for Tom to go on before he folded his arms across his chest. “Ask away.”

Who are you?

Where did you come from? 

Is there really a blood curse on your family name? 

Why has no one heard of you before you claimed the Peverell heirship?

“Are you staying at the castle over break?”

What. Where had that come from?

If it was any consolation, Harry at least seemed as equally surprised by the nonsense coming out of Tom’s mouth as Tom himself was. “That’s your important question?”

Well, he wasn’t going to back down now. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“I’ll tell you when you answer me,” Tom said, stalling for time. 

Harry eyed him oddly. “Yes,” he confirmed slowly, like he was very suspicious he was being led into a trap. If only Tom had thought far enough ahead for that to be the case. “I’m going to stay. Why?”

Tom drew himself up. 

He straightened his robes. 

He noticed Harry had a freckle on his left earlobe. 

“Slughorn is having a Christmas Party,” he found himself saying. “We are allowed to bring a guest. Of course, it’s on the last night before everyone leaves for the break, so though it certainly wouldn’t interfere with most holiday plans, it could.”

Harry stared at him. “Okay,” he said. “Good luck?”

Tom hadn’t felt so much embarrassment since he was eleven and trying and failing to get out of a locked closet the older Slytherins had trapped him in. “You’ll go with me,” he said, because phrasing it like a command made him feel better about this hare-brained scheme than phrasing it as a question did. 

Harry continued to stare. “You want me to go to Slughorn’s Christmas Party with you. As your date.”

“Yes.”

Harry stared blankly at him. 

Tom stared back. 

After a moment, Harry tilted his head to the side, almost like he was listening to something on the wind. Before Tom really had a chance to question it, though, Harry slapped a hand over his face and let out a sigh that bespoke suffering. 

“Why?” he asked. “What for? We’ve spoken to each other three times.” 

“Perhaps,” Tom allowed. “They were interesting conversations.”

Harry pushed his round, wireframe glasses up on his forehead, placed both hands over his eyes, and shook his head. 

Tom took a step closer. He hadn’t planned to do this, but now that he was here he had to admit that it was a good idea. He wasn’t one for dating, and he was fairly certain this nonsense hadn’t spawned from some innate desire to date Harry, but there was nothing like forced proximity to get to know someone better. And having Harry accompany him to Slughorn’s Christmas Party—where he would know virtually no one and so would be best off sticking by Tom’s side—would force proximity like nothing else could. And if he could solve enough of the mystery that was this bizarre young man, then maybe he could get back to other things. Things that were actually important. 

“Harry,” Tom said, trying to be persuasive. “I’m trying to do you a favor. You’re a Potions prodigy, and I’ve heard you’re even better at Defense. Slughorn’s parties are a networking opportunity like no other—a networking opportunity you’re being wrongfully denied presently. Attend with me, and—”

Harry held up a hand. “These are all things that supposedly help me,” he said, eying Tom reproachfully. “The key word being ‘supposedly.’ Tell me what it does for you.” 

“Why does it have to do anything for me?” Tom asked, perhaps a bit brazenly. “Maybe I just want an attractive date.”

Harry made a strange noise, but it seemed born out of irritation rather than embarrassment. “Only you would think a necromancer makes an attractive date.” A what? “Tell me your real reason. I know you have one. You wouldn’t just…do something spontaneously.”

For a moment, Tom was torn between asking what exactly Harry meant by calling himself a necromancer and feeling flattered at his perceived preparedness—it was only human to derive joy from others thinking you’re in some way better than them even when it wasn’t true—but the hard look in Harry’s eyes discouraged that line of thought quickly. 

Tom sighed, trying to think of something to say. Honesty was out of the question, since ‘I don’t know’ was an unacceptable answer to any question. 

“Just between you and me,” Tom said, leaning even closer. Harry, blessedly, did not back away, even if he also didn’t exactly look at Tom. “Slughorn’s parties are something of a bore, even if they are necessary. I have a feeling that you would make things more…interesting.”

Harry was quiet for several long moments, gazing at a point over Tom’s shoulder. Then, he turned his head and met Tom’s gaze with burning eyes. “I’m a curiosity to you. You’re trying to figure me out.”

Tom grinned. “All of that doubt just to agree with the first reason I gave you?”

“The first reason? Oh, the—”

Tom gestured at Harry with one hand. “Attractive date,” he said smugly. 

Harry seemed neither impressed nor flustered, which was a true shame. Tom wanted nothing more than to crack his exterior. 

“Fine,” Harry said suddenly, and Tom, convinced he would have to do a little more convincing at least, found himself caught a little off-balance. 

“You mean you’ll go?”

Harry sighed. “I can hardly believe it, but…yes. Fine. I might as well go to a party as Tom Riddle’s date.” And then he scoffed under his breath, like this was some great cosmic joke. Tom was a little insulted. “When is it? What do I wear?”

“Friday night,” Tom answered, allowing the scoffing to slide. For now. “Wear dress robes. I’ll pick you up from Ravenclaw Tower.”

“If you must,” Harry said, with another sigh. 

“Seven o’clock,” Tom said, taking a step backwards. “Don’t be late.”

Harry only flapped a hand at him in an incredibly insulting request for him to shoo, but Tom let this slight slide for now too. 

It was only when he got back to the castle that he realized he still had a smile on his face.

It was in the wee hours of the night when Harry dug himself out of a shallow grave.

He was sure it made for a picturesque moment. A hand, grasping, emerging from the dirt, followed by a body, followed by a boy gasping for air in previously inoperative lungs. 

“What—” he started to ask, before he was taken over by a coughing fit. Dirt had gotten in his lungs, perhaps, or maybe just his throat.

“Well, would you look at who it is,” a familiar voice said, grin evident in the tone of the voice. “Ickle Harry-kins, back from the dead.”

Harry spluttered, shaking his head to clear some of the dirt out of his eyes, and looked with a certain amount of trepidation towards the speaker. He saw the grin first, the freckles, the vibrantly red hair— “Fred?”

Fred grinned wider. “There he is. Everyone always said Hermione was the brains of your little three-headed operation, but you’ve always been the most clever.”

It was Fred, except—no. Harry knew what this was. Fred was wearing one of those brightly colored and intensely patterned suits that he and George favored after they left Hogwarts—maybe even the one that he had died in—but it wasn’t colored at all, instead washed out to white and shades of very pale gray. He knew who this really was. “Death?”

Fred, or Death, winked at Harry. “In the flesh. Well, not really.”

Harry wrinkled his nose, trying to puzzle this oddity out. “I get that you’re probably doing that ‘person of my memories’ thing again…but why’d you change?”

Fred tapped the side of his nose, a mischievous glint in his eye. “Come on Harry. Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten who gave you the Map in the first place. Who told you where all the trick stairs and secret passages were. Who guided you like I would my own brother.”

Harry raised his eyebrows, figuring it out. “You’re shifting based on my…mood. And my expectations. I felt like I needed someone to guide me through a change in my life, so you switched to a different form.” He eyed Fred-Death up and down. “Should I call you Fred? Or Death?”

Fred-Death grasped Harry’s hand in his own, using it to pull him the rest of the way out of the grave. It was a peculiar sensation, since although Harry could see the hand in his and be lifted by it, he couldn’t feel any skin there at all. “Call me George,” Fred-Death said, with a cheeky grin. 

Fred it was, Harry supposed. This…was going to take some getting used to. 

“You’ll never guess where we’ve found ourselves, ickle Harry,” Fred said, leaning in conspiratorially. “The date is March 21st, 1941. Can you believe that? Looks like that body of yours is fifteen. Imagine being fifteen again. All that business with escaped mass murderers and dementors—how terrible.”

“Body?!” Harry demanded, but the force of it summoned a coughing fit. “Am I inside a dead person?”

“It’s not like he’s been dead for long!” Fred responded, with a laugh. “If you must know, he was killed earlier tonight in a skirmish amongst friends. Buried here soon after. Your soul likes it—look, it's already shaping the flesh.” 

That was a distinctly horrifying thing to say, but then again, Fred would be infinitely more likely to say something like that than Dumbledore would be. Harry was starting to suspect there were more reasons that Death was Fred than just him being a guiding hand of some kind when he was alive. It wasn’t every day you crawled out of a grave that was yours and wasn’t, after all, and a little humor could make any situation seem less terrible…

Harry quickly found he had more important things to worry about, though, as his skin started crawling like he'd just taken Polyjuice Potion and everything burned. He felt a familiar twang on his left hand, the itching sting of words he'd carved into his own flesh what felt like ages ago. When he looked down, those same words were carving themselves anew on the back of his hand. His fingers were shortening, his skin tone changing, his eyes burning.

“What the bloody hell—” Harry gasped, rolling over onto his back in his freshly disturbed grave.

“You’re practically your own horror story,” Fred agreed cheerily. “Look at you, all grown up and terrible. The flesh reflects the soul, did you know?” There was a gleam in his eye that wasn’t entirely Fred-like, but the rest of the illusion was so good that Harry’s brain was more than eager to pretend he hadn’t noticed it. “So if it must, the flesh will change to match the soul.”

“Don't tell me that's why Voldemort lost his nose,” Harry muttered, still twitching from the pain of his transformation.

“Why, Harry,” Fred said, terribly amused. “That is exactly why Voldemort lost his nose.”

Harry laid back on the patch of uneven ground that was once his grave, stared up at a sky full of blurry stars, and thought about the enormity of what he had done and where he was. Fifteen again, inhabiting the body of a recently dead boy, over fifty years in the past. The only people he knew here were Tom Riddle and Albus Dumbledore, and neither man had ever been a great source of comfort for Harry. He was fifty six years displaced from his time. Fifty six years displaced from his family and friends, with only these illusions of them Death conjured up to keep him company. It was not the sort of decision that should be made in a single moment after death. It was not the sort of decision that should be made at all, really, but Harry supposed it had always been too much for him to ask to be normal.

“What am I supposed to do now?” he asked Fred, in the rasping voice of the newly stranded. Or perhaps, it was the rasping voice of the newly alive. 

“I reckon you’ll want to go back to Hogwarts, won’t you? Good news is you’re a fifteen year old wizard, so you qualify for schooling no matter what, by the laws of magic. The bad news is that the registry updates itself every week,” Fred explained in a faux pitying voice. “So, that’s only a week to figure out how you’re going to not be Harry Potter anymore.”

“I need to change my name, then. Where do I do that?” Harry asked, bewildered. “What do I even change my name to?”

Fred was silent for a long moment. The quietness reached out in front of him, stretching its dark skeletal fingers, touching Harry’s stolen heart with their blackness. 

“Listen, Harry,” he whispered, his expression and his tone reminding Harry of how Fred and George used to comfort the first and second years during Umbridge’s reign of terror. “There’s only one name you can take that will provide you with all you need, you see. And as boring as it is, there’s only one place you can go to claim it.”

“Peverell,” Harry said. It wasn’t a guess—he knew. 

“That’s the one,” Fred said, grinning sharply. “You’ll have to make your way to Gringotts in order to claim the name. It would probably be in your best interests to legally alter your first name and formally renounce your place in the Potter family and all that shite too. Don’t want any stray Potters to notice your name appearing in the family registry, do you?”

Harry figured it was best to not even question the logistics of how he would have made it into a family registry at all when his parents hadn’t even been born yet. Or what was going to happen when he—or Harry Potter, he supposed—was born. If he was born at all. 

Fred clucked his tongue. “I can hear you worrying from all the way over here. You’re the Master of Death, aren’t you? Collected all your silly trinkets—so sad you never let me borrow that Cloak, by the way—told Death to shove it, the whole shebang.” He smiled, and that was a little less Fred-like too, for how sad it was. “You exist apart from mortality now, Chosen One. The Master of Death might always begin as Harry Potter, but Harry Potter does not always become the Master of Death.”

Harry stared up at the stars. He raked his fingers through his hair. 

“That’s confusing,” he said.

Fred chuckled. “Isn’t it? Your former vessel will be alright. That’s all.”

Former vessel. 

“Good,” Harry said. “Yeah. Alright.”

He felt tears forming at the corners of his eyes. 

“Oh, and Harry?” Fred said.

“Yeah?”

“There’s one teensy tiny little thing I should tell you before I go,” Fred said. “About the name that is about to be yours.” 

Well. That was something no one ever wanted to hear either Fred Weasley or Death say, probably. 

“What is it?” Harry asked. 

Fred licked his lips nervously. “Don’t you think,” he whispered, “that there might be a reason I was drawn to your ancestors in the first place?” 

“I can’t believe you’re bringing a date,” Orion said, as he fixed his robes in the floor-length dressing mirrors. 

“Is it really so hard to believe?” Tom asked, as he adjusted his robes—the nicest of his three sets of casual robes, transfigured in private to look like an entirely new set of formal robes. He had chosen the most fashionable cut he could have, kept the overall color black, and added gold embroidery in the form of subtly slithering snakes at the sleeves and on the collar. 

“You’re Tom Riddle,” Orion pointed out, with a cool eyebrow. “You don’t have dates. To anything. You never have.”

“You should just be glad that you have a date,” Tom sniped. 

It was true. As the second son of the Black family and master of no particular skills—or at least no skills that Slughorn could see and put value in—Orion was not worthy enough of collecting to receive an invite to the Slug Club. Fortunately for Orion, Druella had taken pity on him, and extended him her own plus one invite. 

“More mysterious,” Abraxas drawled, from his own mirror, “is the fact that Tom has apparently asked someone outside of Slytherin House.” 

Tom rolled his eyes tolerantly. “Connections are important. We will graduate Hogwarts one day and our Houses will no longer matter, so it is best to be known by our other classmates now.”

“Being known and taking them to a party are very different things, Tom,” Orion said. 

“Oh, well,” Abraxas said, with a glint in his eyes. “Keep your secrets. It will make it more exciting when I win my bet on who you’re taking, anyway.”

“As you say,” Tom said, flicking an imaginary speck of dirt off his shoulder. “You’ll have to excuse me, gentlemen. I have a date to fetch.”

“Well, we certainly wouldn’t want to keep you,” Orion said, with a mocking bow. 

He was lucky Tom really did have somewhere to be. Otherwise he would have had to punish him for his cheek. 

Tom left the Slytherin Common Room without a fuss, and made his way quickly to Ravenclaw Tower from there. He passed a few Ravenclaws in formal wear as he approached—no one he knew, though they gave him looks that indicated they definitely knew him and wanted to know why he was here. Tom tried not to preen too obviously at the attention; that was an unexpected benefit to bringing Harry along with him. There was nothing better than being at the forefront of everyone’s mind. He had grown complacent in routine, which meant he had been robbing himself of opportunities to be talked about and looked at. 

All thoughts of being talked about fled from his head, however, when he turned the corner and saw Harry. He had been looking at a portrait, but he half turned towards Tom as soon as he’d laid eyes upon him. It was almost as if some invisible force had alerted him to Tom’s presence, as if that same force drew his eyes to Tom and Tom alone. 

That air of exhaustion that tended to hang around Harry was still there tonight, though it was overrun by a dying fire that smoldered beneath his skin too, crackling and warm. His green eyes looked so alive, his wild hair tamed into something artful instead of something that was only messy, his honey skin practically glowing compared to the soft white of his dress robes. The robes were embroidered in silver at the hems and the lapels. Silver stags circled the end of each sleeve, shaking their proud antlers and stamping their noble hooves. On his lapel, a silver lily bloomed then died then bloomed again. 

“Well,” Harry said. “I almost wish we had planned it. The fact that we’re a perfect inverse of one another would be less embarrassing if we had.”

“We will pretend like it was intentional,” Tom decided, because he was right. There was something mortifying about the situation. Something that, if pressed, he would likely define as the horrible sensation of being known. 

“Fine,” Harry agreed, then made a strange motion with his arm before he paused to look at Tom oddly. 

When he stayed like that for several more moments, Tom began to suspect he’d committed a social faux pas he shouldn’t have. 

“What?” he asked. Demanded. Defended.

Harry raised his eyebrows. “All your friends are purebloods.”

“Why does that matter?”

Harry’s face cycled through several emotions too quickly to identify even one of them, and then closed his eyes tightly for a moment at the end. Tom wasn’t sure what it meant, but when Harry opened his eyes again, there was a determined light in them. So strong was it, in fact, that when Harry took a step towards him, Tom instinctively took a step back. Harry winced, which somehow made everything worse. 

“Offer me your arm,” Harry said in a soft voice. “Crooked, so that I can—yeah, like that. Well, not quite. Offer me your right arm.”

Tom switched arms, feeling the keen burn of embarrassment under his collar as Harry settled a hand in the crook of his elbow. They paused for a moment like that before Harry gently pressed against his arm, urging him to take a step. 

“The asking witch or wizard always provides the escort,” Harry explained as they began to walk. His voice was barely more than a murmur. How Tom loathed and loved it in equal measure right now. 

“I’m aware,” Tom said, in a clipped tone. 

“Knowledge is free, Tom,” Harry said. “When it comes from me, it’s free.”

Tom remained carefully quiet, and the next few steps passed in stilted silence. 

“When you ask someone to accompany you somewhere, you offer them your non-dominant arm,” Harry continued after a while. “It’s so the wand can be drawn quickly to protect your companion, should danger arise. Of course, that means most people would carry their date on their left arm.”

“You knew I was left-handed?” Tom asked, startled into speaking by the revelation.

Harry gave him a tight-lipped smile that seemed…pained, almost. “Hard not to notice. This is a simple but important tradition—I think it’s horrible, personally, since in the most basic sense it implies that other people are a form of property—but I understand why you dragged me along tonight, and as much as I hate these stuffy formal things…I wouldn’t intentionally sabotage you.”

“Wouldn’t you?” Tom asked snidely.

“Don’t be like that,” Harry chided quietly. “You said it yourself—I’m a good look for you, aren’t I? Long lost heir of a wealthy, mysterious family. A Ravenclaw, which proves you can establish connections outside of your social circles. I’m not bad at magic either, so there’s skill there, too.” Harry gave him a look out of the corner of his eye, one corner of his mouth lifting in a half smile. “All of that, stuck on your arm. Relying on your protection. Some might say you scored well above your station, if they didn’t know you very well. So really, for those that it won’t be lost on, it really is quite good for you that I’m here, isn’t it?”

“Truly,” Tom agreed, after fighting a losing battle with his lingering anger. Something about Harry’s delivery made it difficult to be upset in the usual ways he was upset when someone was informing him of his own ignorance. “Though I would hardly say you need protection, considering one of us can cast both wandless and wordless, and it is not me.”

Harry tapped a finger against his lips, his expression almost…playful. “Shh. You don’t know that. Finite Incantatem is a basic spell. It’s not as if you’ve seen me do a wordless, wandless Protego.” 

“I suppose I haven’t,” Tom allowed, eying Harry appraisingly. Could he ask? What power would he be giving away? “I must admit, I’ve never brought a date along to one of these things.”

Harry’s face did something strange again. “No? Any particular reason why not?”

“Nobody is interesting enough,” Tom said carefully, keeping a close eye on Harry’s face. “Nobody was interesting enough.”

“Well. Hopefully I don’t disappoint you, then,” Harry said, but there was an edge of bitterness to his voice. 

Tom took a bracing breath. “I’m sure you’ve heard about my… parentage from somewhere already, considering you asked me if my friends were purebloods earlier, not if I was one. Keep me…filled in on your customs and traditions, and I’m sure you’ll remain more than interesting enough.”

The ghost of a smile touched Harry’s face, a strange mix between sad and fond. “You’re such a Slytherin.”

“I don’t see how that’s a bad thing.”

Harry let out a belabored sigh. “It’s a bad thing for me,” he said, with a half-hearted glare. “Means I have to give you everything freely to keep you on your toes before you come up with a way to manipulate it out of me. You could just ask, you know. Instead of implying I’ll fall out of your good graces if I don’t explain why purebloods do all that stupid shite purebloods do.” 

“It’s not stupid,” Tom defended. “It’s their tradition. It’s your tradition.”

“It’s not,” Harry said softly, while glaring a hole into the tops of his shoes.

“I beg your pardon?”

“It’s not my tradition,” Harry said, lifting his gaze to meet Tom’s head-on now. A challenge. “I’m a half-blood.”

Tom felt his breath catch in his throat. “Your name—”

“Henry is the name of my Muggle grandfather,” Harry said. “James is the name of my pureblood father. Peverell is the name of an ancient ancestor I’ve never met. That is my name.”

Tom pulled them to a halt just outside the entrance to Slughorn’s party. “You knew. You didn’t just know. You expected I would…” 

Tom trailed off as he noticed Orion and Druella a few paces away. Both were openly staring at him. Orion’s hand was nestled in the crook of Druella’s left elbow. 

“Cast your fancy silencing charm,” Tom commanded. 

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“Just do it, Harry,” Tom said, gritting his teeth at his companion. Harry raised a stubborn eyebrow. “Please,” Tom added, feeling every bit of pain the word brought him.

Harry sighed. He didn’t reach for his wand. “Muffliato,” he whispered, and the magic flowed out of his fingertips and settled around them. 

“Who are you?” Tom asked, as soon as he felt the magic settle into place. He had asked Harry this question before. He had a feeling he would ask this question over and over again until he got an acceptable answer. 

Harry gave him a smile, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “My legal name is Henry James Peverell.” 

“Harry.”

Harry gave him a reproachful look. “You have a lot of flaws, you know. Nosiness and disrespect of personal boundaries are only two of them.” 

“Tell me who you are,” Tom commanded. “And what you want with me.”

“Funny. As I recall, you’re the one that asked me here tonight.”

Tom made a frustrated noise. “Why is it so hard for you to answer this question?”

“Because it’s a vague question!” Harry argued, with an exaggerated, one-armed shrug. “What do you really want to know? Where I’m from? What my favorite food is? What?” 

“Where are you from?”

“Surrey.”

“Your favorite food?”

“Treacle tart.”

“Why do you know pureblood customs and have a pureblood name if you aren’t one yourself?”

Harry ran fingers through his hair, only succeeding at making it more artfully disheveled. “You greedy bastard. Fine. I know them because I studied them obsessively, alright?”

“Didn’t you just call them stupid?”

“Yes! Because they are!” Harry started to say something else before he cut himself off, pinching the bridge of his nose carefully. “Alright,” he said, softer. “Alright. My parents were murdered by…a Dark Wizard. I was one at the time. I grew up with my Muggle aunt and uncle, but I couldn’t stay there anymore. When I left, I had only the clothes on my back…so I went to Gringotts out of desperation. That was where I got the lordship. That was where I changed my last name to Peverell. I studied everything I could about wizarding culture because I had to. Finite Incantatem. We’re going to your party now. I insist.”

Then he seemed to forget everything about who was leading whom, and hauled Tom towards the entrance using the hand he had on his elbow. 

Tom lengthened his strides, quickly coming up beside Harry so that he was at least walking in tandem instead of being dragged, even if he seemed to have permanently lost the lead. 

What was your name before it was Peverell? he wanted to ask, but he had pushed too far too quickly already. 

Besides, hadn’t he asked Harry here to learn more about him?

Goblins wore confusion in a strange way. It was less obvious—there were no furrowed brows or squinting eyes. Instead it was a blankness where normally there would be a sneer. A tap of the fingers against the desktop, and then another when the first didn’t manage to solve anything.

“Harry James Potter,” the goblin said, staring at the sheet of paper between them.

“Yes,” Harry agreed with a wince.

“Son of James Fleamont Potter.”

“Yes.”

“Son of Fleamont Henry Potter,” the goblin finished. “Who presently has no living children.”

“Yes,” Harry said as quietly as possible. As if not being heard would make it any better.

“And you, Harry James Potter, are somehow both eighteen and fifteen at the same time.”

“Right,” Harry said.

“And you, Harry James Potter, were born both on July 31st of 1981, and October 31st of 1926.”

“Well,” Harry said slowly, “if that's what your paper says, it must be true.”

Privately, to Death, he asked, Why was I born on October 31st of 1926?

That's the day of birth of your vessel, Death replied in Harry’s mind. They sounded far away, though, like they were speaking through a bad phone connection. It's part of why your soul liked this flesh so much. An important day for you both to anchor yourself with.

Harry grimaced at the reminder that his soul was currently inhabiting the body of a boy that had died less than twenty-four hours ago. This whole thing was so creepy.

I'm not going to need a new flesh vessel, am I? Harry asked.

If you get this one killed prematurely you will, Death said, with that casual nonchalance Death used to say absolutely horrifying things. Though I suppose I could put you back into it, if no one is watching.

Harry grimaced.

Rockfang witnessed this grimace with his blank confusion, and then continued with his line of questioning. “And you came here today to do…what exactly?”

“Claim the Peverell lordship, as I am the uncontested lord. And of age,” Harry said, with practiced ease, as he had already said it several times. “Update my legal name to match such a thing. Formally renounce my place in the Potter family, and all associated inheritances. And claim the key to the Peverell vaults and all associated estates. In that order.”

Now, Rockfang let out a long, exaggerated sigh. “Mr. Potter,” he said, like he was talking to a small child. “I am not sure how you came to be here—”

“Time travel with a side of necromancy, I’m pretty sure,” Harry explained dutifully.

Rockfang gave him an unimpressed look at the interruption, but didn’t look particularly surprised. “I am not sure why you came to be here, then, Mr. Potter, but the point is—I cannot allow you to claim the Peverell lordship. I am sure you understand why.”

Harry went silent for several seconds. “I don’t have another option,” he whispered.

“Go home, Mr. Potter,” the goblin said blandly, though Harry could detect the edge of fear in his eyes. “Dangerous things happen to those that disrupt time.”

“Dangerous things happen to time,” Harry countered, reaching for his left sleeve, “when no one bothers to disrupt it.”

He turned his arm over, pressed white sleeve of a dead boy’s shirt rolled up, and showed Rockfang the mark that rested on the inside of his forearm. The mark had appeared with all of Harry’s old scars and his skin tone and his wild black hair and his mother’s green eyes. The flesh reflects the soul, after all, and Harry’s soul apparently had the Deathly Hallows tattooed on his left forearm where Death Eaters had Dark Marks.

“As you can see,” he whispered, as he presented the mark to Rockfang, “I have been chosen, and it’s too late to refuse.”

Rockfang eyed the mark on Harry’s wrist somberly for several moments. Just as Death had said, the goblins would know what it meant. 

“Very well, Mr. Potter,” Rockfang said. “We pride ourselves on our ability to stay out of the affairs of wizards on all matters that do not concern their gold.”

“In that case,” Harry said with a sly grin, “you should probably call me Mr. Peverell instead.”

“Mr. Peverell,” Rockfang acknowledged, with a dip of his head. 

This was all very surreal. 

“What will your name be for these next few years?” Rockfang asked, baring his teeth at Harry in what less observant people might call a smile. 

Harry smiled back, but his was a genuine one. “Henry,” he said. “Henry Peverell.”

“And the middle name?”

“I’d like to keep it,” Harry said. “Surely I can be allowed that much.”

“As you wish,” the goblin said, with a practiced sneer. “It is not as if you have very long to accomplish your…goals, is it, Henry James Peverell?”

“I have plenty of time,” Harry said softly. 

And it was true. He did have plenty of time. He had once gotten through Umbridge, Sirius’s death, lessons on Tom Riddle, Dumbledore’s death, Horcrux hunting, and his own death in three years. This was nothing compared to that.

Nothing at all.

Harry turned out to be a natural at the party scene, despite all his claim that he was a half-blood raised amongst Muggles. 

“Introduce me to everyone we speak with,” Harry whispered as they walked into the party. “Everyone that I don’t already know, anyway. If they don’t address me by name, assume an introduction is required, even if I should know them.”

“Why?”

“Something to do with respect,” Harry said absently, his tone of voice at odds with how his green eyes flicked over the room sharply. “It puts us on equal footing—you brought me here, so it’s only fair that you offer me all of your acquaintances. Assuming I had any acquaintances of my own, I wouldn’t introduce you to them here. Instead, they would be expected to ask your name themselves if they wanted it.”

Tom frowned. “Perhaps wizarding tradition is a bit…ridiculous.”

“Stop agreeing with me about things,” Harry said with a frown. “It upsets my delicate moral sensibilities.”

“Pardon?”

Harry gave him a look, green eyes glinting with amusement. “It was a joke, Tom. It’s okay to laugh every now and then, you know.”

“I laugh plenty,” Tom protested. 

Harry patted his elbow condescendingly. “I’m sure you do,” he said. 

Tom opened his mouth to continue the argument, but Slughorn chose that moment to greet Tom with a hearty slap on the back. “Tom!” he exclaimed, joyous. “You made it! And who’s this?” Harry lifted his head enough that Slughorn apparently caught his face, since Slughorn reeled back slightly. “Why, is that you, Peverell?”

“Sir,” Harry said, voice a little strange. “It’s good to see you.”

“So it is, lad,” Slughorn said, with that damnably confounding look of pity he always directed Harry’s way. “And with Tom here, no less! I didn’t know you two were—” He glanced between them, clearly trying to divine their relationship from their complimentary robes and Harry’s hand on his arm. “—friendly,” Slughorn decided. 

“Harry and I have a number of interests in common, Professor Slughorn,” Tom said smoothly. “I thought he would make good company for an event such as this.”

“A number of interests?” Slughorn asked, shooting a look at Harry that was almost suspicious. It was an odd look on the old professor’s face. 

“Potions, for instance,” Harry offered. 

Slughorn relaxed marginally. “Ah, yes. Two bright young lads such as yourselves—”

“Then there’s raising the dead, of course,” Harry continued. Tom choked on nothing. “A number of dark rituals. The pursuit of immortality, soul magic, wandlore…”

Tom couldn’t help but give him a horrified look, only to see the edge of Harry’s mischievous grin. That little—

“I’m kidding, Professor,” Harry said, after letting Slughorn pale considerably. “As if Tom would be interested in any of those things. No, we’ve just had a few interesting conversations, is all. Tom offered to bring me along with him tonight and I agreed.”

It took Slughorn a moment to recover, but recover he did, going back to his full laugh as if nothing had happened. “Of course, of course, my boy. Tom is one of the best, naturally. Well, I’m glad he brought you along with him. I suppose you deserve a little joy and carefree fun in your life, eh?”

Harry’s smile turned brittle at the edges. “I think I’d say we all deserve a little joy, regardless of our circumstances.”

“Wisdom beyond your years, there, Henry,” Slughorn said, and clapped Harry on the shoulder. “You lads enjoy yourselves—I see a few guests I ought to go greet.”

He waddled away after that, humming an errant tune to himself. Tom watched him go for a moment, and then turned his head so he could watch Harry instead. He felt like he learned a lot in that moment of scrutiny—the conflict written between Harry’s brows, like he was both glad he wasn’t one of Slughorn’s pets and disappointed, the angry press of Harry’s lips, like Slughorn had said something to offend him, the panicked jump of a muscle in Harry’s jaw, like he was afraid. 

“Harry,” he said. 

Harry looked at him. 

“Why does Slughorn treat you like you’re broken glass?”

Harry smiled. “Because in a way, I am.” 

Tom didn’t press him farther. This was, in part, because Tom felt like he understood what Harry meant by that. Even if he only barely understood. 

Tom took Harry with him around the room. They met politicians whose names Tom memorized and academics whose works Tom had read. Everyone had the same bizarre reaction to Henry Peverell—raised eyebrows, a hesitation to shake his hand, a furtive glance between the two of them. He was inspiring fear in them, just because of the name he carried, but he was inspiring some kind of judgment from them too, though Tom wasn’t sure what it was for. 

“It’s because I’m here with you,” Harry said in response to Tom’s question, as they took a breather at the edge of the party, drinks in hand. 

“Why does that matter?”

Harry made a face into his glass, then tipped it back pointedly. “It could be any reason, really. You’re perfectly charming and pleasant, so they could be wondering how I managed to seduce you. Peverells are all mysterious and ancient, so they could be wondering what secrets I’m whispering in your ear. It could even be because we’re both men, and—”

“Homosexuality isn’t discouraged in the Wizarding World,” Tom interjected sharply. He knew that to be true—he’d been too shocked by some of the older years’ openness with their relationships when he was younger to not investigate it. 

“Sure it is,” Harry said darkly. “So long as you’re the heir of a family and expected to pass on your bloodline, it is.” He squinted at the wall for a second, thinking about something. “Hasn’t Alphard Black lost his heirship recently because of it?”

Tom raised his eyebrows. “You know about that?”

Harry sighed. “I heard about it from someone.”

Tom hummed. He was fairly sure the Blacks were keeping it hushed for now. There were a few that knew—Alphard’s marriage to Druella had just fallen through, which meant the Rosiers had decided to pass Druella along to Cygnus instead, as Orion was already betrothed. The only people that really knew anything about it were the people that lived with someone who was affected by it, of which Harry was not. 

“So, I’m preventing you from having children because I brought you along to one little party, am I?” Tom asked, carefully avoiding the topic of Blacks and inheritances until he had an opportunity to look into it later.

Harry gave him an amused look. “Well, in their defense, we did show up in complimentary robes. Nothing says long-term commitment like matching outfits.”

Tom couldn’t help the bark of laughter he let out at that. 

Harry blinked once in surprise before looking over at Tom, lips slightly parted for a moment. Shock was a lovely expression on him, softening features that Tom hadn’t realized were usually hard. He looked his age, all at once, instead of years beyond it. He smiled next, a genuine smile that put all the smiles Tom had seen him give before to shame. 

“I told you that you should laugh more often,” Harry said. “You’re less perfect that way.”

Tom pursed his lips in distaste. “That is precisely why I should laugh even less often than I do.”

Harry sighed.

Tom studied him for a moment, drinking in the edge on his jawline, the tiredness in his eyes, the distance in his body language. Tom was someone that calculated everything he did and everything he said. He didn’t blurt things out or say something without meaning too, not unless he had lost his temper in a thousand separate ways. 

Harry had a way of lowering all his inhibitions.

“Why stags?” he asked, quite randomly.

Harry glanced down at his own robes as if to verify the stags still circled around his flowing sleeves. His robes were double-sleeved, Tom noticed, with the tight inner-sleeve covering the backs of his hands. He had hardly seen skin on Harry at all, now that he thought about it . Tom couldn’t even confidently say he had ever seen  the backs Harry’s hands. 

“My Patronus is a stag,” Harry said. 

Tom thought he misheard him. “Pardon?”

“My Patronus is a stag,” Harry repeated, running a thumb over one of the silver stags embroidered on his sleeve. The stag in question preened under the attention, tossing his antlers. “I got it from my father, I think.”

“You can produce a corporeal Patronus?” Tom said. “At fifteen?”

“Sixteen, technically,” Harry corrected. “And I could produce a corporeal Patronus since I was thirteen.”

“What reason would a thirteen year old have for learning the Patronus Charm?” Tom asked, doing his best not to gape. 

Harry lifted one shoulder in a shrug and avoided eye contact. “I don’t think you would believe me if I told you.”

If anything, that only made Tom want to ask for the story more. 

“Well, well, well,” a familiar voice drawled. “Tom Riddle. You really did bring a date along.”

Tom glanced at Abraxas, slightly peeved at the interruption. “I said I would.”

Abraxas cut his eyes over to Harry, who had stiffened beside him, before looking back at Tom. “I suppose I can forgive you for dating outside of our noble Slytherin house. His eyes are a lovely shade of green.”

Outside of Abraxas’s line of sight, Harry nudged Tom’s foot with his own. Inside of Abraxas’s line of sight, Harry rolled his lovely green eyes irately. 

Tom got the hint, though. “Abraxas,” he said, gesturing to Harry. “This is Henry Peverell. Harry, this is Abraxas Malfoy.”

“Peverell,” Abraxas said, with a cool nod. “Sanctimonia Vincet Semper.”

“Malfoy,” Harry said, half-sighing the name. “Death Becomes Us.”

“How interesting your family saying is,” Abraxas said, with a wicked grin. 

“Is it? I’m pretty sure it’s only pointing out that people die eventually. Which seems obvious,” Harry said casually. The line of his body, however, was tense. 

Interesting. 

“Do you think so, really?” Abraxas asked. “It has nothing to do with the rumor that only someone with an affinity for death magic can claim the Peverell name?”

“Malfoy,” Harry said, then sighed. “It’s not a secret that I’m a necromancer.”

Abraxas blinked. “What?”

Harry sighed again. “Tom. Hold this for a moment.”

He passed him his drink. Too intrigued to protest, Tom accepted it without a thought. 

“Slughorn won’t miss one of these sprigs of mistletoe floating around, will he? No. Accio mistletoe.” Tom spared a glance at Abraxas, delighted to see his eyes actually widen when he realized Harry had done that without a wand in his hand. The mistletoe closest to them shot happily into Harry’s waiting fingers, and he grasped it. “Pass me a galleon, Malfoy. I know you have one to spare. Think of it as payment for my so-called secrets.”

Abraxas passed him a galleon wordlessly. 

“Here’s a party trick for you,” Harry grumbled, as he cupped both items in his left hand. Now he finally drew his wand, pointing it at the mistletoe. He completed a complicated wand motion. Life drained out of the leaves as they grayed and shriveled up, a trail of light following at the end of Harry’s wand. It looked a bit like a strand of memory, but golden instead of silver. He tapped the tip of his wand to the galleon in his palm, and the light slithered inside of it like a little snake. Next, Harry cast a neatly done transfiguration on the galleon. Tom felt his lips quirk slightly as he realized what it was. 

The most impressive thing, though, was that the tiny golden dragon that used to be a galleon lifted its neck and flapped its wings. 

“There you go,” Harry said, grabbing Abraxas’s wrist and turning his hand around so he could place the dragon in his palm. “Life force transmutation. This dragon will live for as long as the sprig of mistletoe would have, if left undisturbed.” His lips quirked into that mischievous half-smile Tom had gotten to know tonight, and he added, dryly, “Please, whatever you do, don’t insist on naming your grandson after a dragon in honor of this moment.”

“This is incredible,” Abraxas said, clearly too transfixed to have heard the last thing Harry said. “Peverell. Absolutely do not show this to anyone else.”

“Don’t worry,” Harry responded with an impressive eye roll. “I’ll only make galleon-sized dragons for you from now on.”

Abraxas, apparently, took him at his word. “Good,” he said, very seriously. He looked at Tom, who took the opportunity to try to convey with his eyes that Abraxas needed to leave five minutes ago. Abraxas swallowed visibly and looked back at Harry, setting his tiny dragon on his shoulder. “I have more people I wanted to catch up with. It was a pleasure to meet you officially, of course.”

“Of course,” Harry repeated, but Abraxas missed the mocking tone to his voice. Tom did not. 

“Tom,” Abraxas said, by way of parting, with a nod in Tom’s direction. “Henry.” He offered the same nod to Harry, and then he was on his way. 

“Henry,” Harry repeated, like he was scandalized. Tom had to swallow another laugh. “What a pretentious brown noser. Do you think he gets it from his father?”

“Most definitely,” Tom replied with mirth. He paused for only a moment, and then grabbed Harry by his upper arm in order to lead him to a more private corner of Slughorn’s party. Harry didn’t protest—at least, he didn’t protest with words— but he did scowl impressively once Tom had maneuvered them where he wanted them to be. 

“What?” Harry asked crossly. 

“You really shouldn’t tell people what you can do,” Tom murmured, still holding onto Harry’s arm. “I know you were making light when you said you would only make galleon dragons for Abraxas, but you really should conceal the ability. If the wrong person found out what you could do, they could—”

“Tom,” Harry interrupted, prying Tom’s hand off his arm. “I know what you probably think the word necromancer means, but I don’t have the power to raise the dead. Not in a…meaningful sense. Granted, I could raise Inferi easier than any other wizard in Europe, but Inferi are the sledgehammer of necromantic magic. Anyone can do it, if they have enough power and poor enough morals. Necromancy—the utilization of death in magic—that’s much subtler, much harder, and oftentimes, too specialized to be useful.”

He eyed Tom for a moment, then nodded towards where Abraxas was chatting with one of the members of the Wizengamot that Tom and Harry had spoken with earlier. “The galleon dragon will only live as long as the mistletoe would have, for instance. That’s hardly useful, when there are charms out there that can do the same thing and last a lot longer. It’s just something that I can do. Imagine meeting a Metamorphmagus, for instance. They likely wouldn’t keep it a secret that they can change their shape, would they?”

Tom thought of his own status as a Parselmouth, hidden from everyone outside of Slytherin House, where sharing had been necessary for garnering respect. “Yes. There’s always a reason not to trust others.”

“Tom,” Harry said evenly, something about his voice demanding eye contact. “It’s different for me. I claimed the Peverell name. Everyone already knows what I can do.”

“Then why…?”

“People like Abraxas Malfoy,” he said, before pausing. “People like you derive your power over others by subtly extracting information from someone else that they are unwilling to give up. Information freely given is information that can’t be used against you.”

In between those words, Tom heard a secondary message: Information freely given is information that can distract someone from finding any real secrets. 

He’s dangerous, Tom decided with a thrill. 

He recalled all the information Harry had freely given him. The Horcruxes, the Deathly Hallows, the fact that he could produce a corporeal Patronus, the supposed uselessness of necromancy. 

All red herrings, he concluded. There was hardly a reason to pursue them any further. 

At least, not until he had uncovered exactly what Harry was trying to hide. 

The Hogwarts letter arrived at Peverell Manor at the end of July, just like in Harry’s time. It was thicker than usual, though not as thick as it had been when Harry’s letter had come with the Quidditch Captain badge in his sixth year. The reason turned out to be because there were two letters contained in the envelope—a perfunctory one that informed him of what course material he would need (though, alarmingly, he was presently signed up for every single class available to fifth year students), and a longer, more personal one from Albus Dumbledore, Deputy Headmaster. 

Harry read through the second letter while he ate his breakfast. It could be organized into three sections, Harry thought. First was an opening section, full of gentle prodding (masked as surprise) for what was sure to be a grand explanation of why he, a fifteen year old, was only appearing on the Hogwarts Registry now. Next was the section of over-explanation, where Dumbledore told him, at length, what all of the classes were, how to get onto Platform 9 3/4 , what the Houses were and what values they represented, and also several recommended texts on wizarding culture in Britain, should he need them for any reason. This section was four pages long. One-sided. It was followed by the last and briefest section, that was an assurance that Harry—or Henry, he supposed—could write Dumbledore himself with any questions he might have prior to the start of the school year (which he once again reminded Harry was September 1st) and visit him in person once he was actually at Hogwarts at any time. 

P.S., Dumbledore wrote at the bottom, If it would be no trouble, kindly meet me at my office upon your arrival at Hogwarts, so that I can offer you a more personalized welcome prior to introducing the first years and sorting you all at the Welcoming Feast. 

P.P.S., Dumbledore added, I have sent along a map of Hogwarts, so that you can find my office. 

P.P.P.S, Dumbledore added, in a different color of ink, You will have to take placement exams for your classes. We will discuss that in more depth when we speak face-to-face.

The last sheet of paper was the promised map of Hogwarts. 

“Merlin’s beard,” Harry said, as he set all seven sheets of paper down on the dining table next to him. “I’m going back to school.”

The realization hung heavily in the empty dining room. 

He was going back to Hogwarts. As a student. In his fifth year. In the 1940s. 

He was going to have to be sorted again. In fact, he was probably going to have to get himself sorted into Slytherin, since he was supposed to…something. Stop Riddle from making Horcruxes or amassing minions or opening the Chamber of Secrets. And it would be very difficult to stop Riddle from making Horcruxes or amassing minions or opening the Chamber of Secrets if he was in Gryffindor. 

On the bright side, at least it probably wouldn’t be hard to get sorted into Slytherin. Repeatedly trying to sort Harry into Slytherin was practically the Hat’s favorite hobby. 

Yeah, the sorting would go fine, Harry decided. 

The tests were the real problem.

Harry grimaced at the exceedingly long list of books on wizarding culture that Dumbledore had sent him and the exceedingly long list of books for his classes. Though likely only recommended because Dumbledore suspected he had been living in a different country for the last fifteen years…Harry had to admit that studying those with near-religious fervor was probably a good idea.

“Pippy,” Harry softly commanded, and there was a crack as the house elf popped into existence beside him. She was a sweet, elderly elf, and she generally regarded Harry with the same kind of intense devotion Kreacher held for Regulus Black. Which, Harry had learned, was a bit disconcerting to be on the other end of. Dobby had always been free even if he had also been exceedingly fond of Harry, and Kreacher’s first love would always be the Black family (though Harry liked to think he was at least tolerable to Kreacher by the end there). The worst part, though, was that Pippy had a daughter and a granddaughter that had also blinked back into life when Harry clumsily undid a stasis spell that had kept them and the manor preserved for the last century or so, and all three of them were the exact same way. 

“Master Harry!” Pippy cried, prostrating herself on the ground before his feet. 

“It’s good to see you too,” Harry said, with a grimace. Try as he might, and he had certainly tried, he could not actually convince Pippy to stop all this short of ordering her around.

“Master Harry be saying it is good to see Pippy!” Pippy wailed, rose to her knees, and then bowed again. “Pippy is being honored!”

“I have a request for you,” Harry interrupted, since Pippy could and would do this forever if he let her. 

“Pippy is happy to help Master Harry!”

“I need some books,” Harry said, handing over both sheets of paper. “Do you think you could get me all of these?”

Pippy scanned the lists quickly, and nodded sharply, all business and no bowing now that she had been given a task. “Pippy can get the books, Master Harry, sir. Pippy be getting the books right now!” 

She popped away immediately, and Harry sighed when she was gone before scrubbing a hand down his face. 

“I might as well just resign myself to doing nothing but reading for the rest of the summer,” Harry muttered. The empty echoes of the hall mocked him. “Hermione would be proud.”

He stood shakily, breakfast only half eaten, and caught himself on the edge of the table when his legs threatened to give out. The pain was blinding for just a moment, the cold unbearable, but Harry pulled through it with a few deep breaths. 

It wasn’t like he could do much with his summer other than read, anyway.

The castle halls were fairly empty as Tom walked Harry back to Ravenclaw Tower at the end of the night. Most other party guests had cleared out before them—Tom had hung behind to talk to Slughorn, as was custom. Harry hung back with him, with a twisted expression on his face, though that expression had relaxed by now.

All in all, it had been a successful night. Tom had learned new things about Harry, which had been the point. He had also been left with more that he wanted to learn, however, which was admittedly counterintuitive to the point.

More surprisingly, Tom had enjoyed it.

Harry’s hand slipped out of Tom’s arm as they approached the entrance to the Ravenclaw Common Room, and Tom surprised himself by missing the feeling of its weight for just a moment before he pulled himself together and banished the emotion.

“I hope you enjoyed yourself,” Tom said, as Harry took a few steps away from him. “Harry.”

“It was better than I expected it to be,” he said, pretending to contemplate it for a moment. “I’m afraid I will probably decline your next invitation, though.”

Tom felt a pang in his chest that he refused to acknowledge as regret. “I suppose that’s fair," he said. "The Slug Club isn’t for everyone. You’re too different for them.”

“Oh, stop. I’m blushing,” Harry deadpanned before rolling his eyes. A moment of silence passed between them, still and awkward due to neither knowing how to bid goodbye to the other. “Well, I’ll see you,” Harry finally decided on, and turned to approach the bronze eagle knocker that would grant him entry to his Common Room. 

“Harry,” Tom called, taking one step after him before he stopped himself. Harry turned back to look at him, that tired look finding its way back onto his face. 

Why do you look so resigned? Tom wondered. Is talking to me a chore for you?

“I won’t invite you to any more of Slughorn’s parties,” Tom said. It was the truth—he wouldn’t. Not when there were better ways to get Harry’s past out of him, in any case. “But that doesn’t mean we have to stop associating with one another, does it? Hogsmeade, next trip. What do you say?”

“Hogsmeade,” Harry repeated. “With you. As a date.” 

“If you’d like,” Tom said, with his most pleasant smile.

“And if I wouldn’t like?”

“Then we could go as friends,” Tom said easily, though he was surprised by the tiny pang of rejection he felt. Maybe it stemmed from not being used to being denied anything at all in this world he’d fashioned for himself instead of being denied something in specific. He could hope, anyway.

Harry smiled. Most obviously, it was an apologetic smile, but Tom could see an edge of it that seemed like mischief. “I’m not authorized to go to Hogsmeade,” he said. 

‘“Not…authorized?”

“No,” Harry said.

He didn't offer an explanation as to why, and Tom had to refrain from asking. Pushing too far too quickly never worked out well.

“Tell me something,” Harry said, taking a step back towards him. “Be honest when you do. I know it’s challenging for you.”

Tom bared his teeth in not quite a smile. “What would you like to know?” he asked, his voice perfectly pleasant despite his wariness.

“I gave you the information you were looking for,” Harry said. “Why aren’t you pursuing it?”

“I have better things to do with my time right now,” Tom said, relieved that honesty was actually a viable response.

“What better things?” Harry asked. “Whatever it is you’re doing with me?”

That, exactly. “Of course not,” Tom lied smoothly. “Schoolwork, prefect duties…those things.”

“Sure,” Harry said disbelievingly. “And after you unearth enough of my secrets to your satisfaction? After you’re done with me, or after I stop indulging you, what then? Do you just go back to trying to split your soul into little pieces so that maybe you can live forever?”

“Lower your voice.”

“Nobody is in this hallway, Tom. Just us. It’s always just us.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Tom asked, with a low thrum of danger in his voice, danger that leaked out of him, darkening the lights in the hall and settling thickly on his skin.

“Will you or won’t you, Tom?” Harry asked, with a sudden urgency. 

That urgency dragged honesty out of Tom, surprising them both.

“No,” he whispered. “They don’t interest me. Not anymore.”

Tension that Tom hadn’t even noticed was there bled out of Harry’s frame. He released Tom’s arms—Tom hadn’t even noticed he had grabbed his arms—and took one step back, then another. 

“Maybe I’ll see you next Hogsmeade weekend,” Harry said, as he grasped the bronze knocker in a white-knuckled grip. “Maybe I won’t.”

“I thought you weren’t authorized to attend Hogsmeade.”

“I’ve never been too fond of rules. They get in the way more often than not.” He knocked on the door. “Write that in your diary, eh? Dear Diary, Harry Peverell is not actually a pureblood. Also, he’s a necromancer and dislikes the rules. It’ll be an intriguing entry, I’m sure. Here’s to your endeavors to add more to it.”

“Two in a corner, one in a room, zero in a house, but one in a shelter. What am I?”  the knocker asked.

“The letter ‘r’, ” Harry replied softly, and the door swung open. He looked back at Tom one last time, his green eyes glinting as they caught the light. “Goodnight, Tom Riddle,” he said, and closed the door before Tom could reply.

“Goodnight,” he said into the empty hallway anyway. “Henry James Peverell.”

Chapter Text

Harry had thought for sure that all his plans had gone tits up the moment he landed himself in Ravenclaw, because really, there was no way he could have foreseen himself ending up in Ravenclaw . 

Now isn’t this interesting, the Hat said as soon as it landed on Harry’s head. He could feel the eyes of every student in the Great Hall watching him curiously. Which was fair, he supposed. He was a lot older than the small army of eleven year olds that had sat on this stool before him.

You’ve been sorted before, but not by me, the Hat mused. Or not by me yet, I suppose I should say. You’re both Henry Peverell and Harry Potter and neither at the same time…It is a confusing thing, time travel, isn’t it?

Harry sighed inwardly. Will you just put me in Slytherin already instead of making a hat stall out of me?

Slytherin? the Hat repeated incredulously. Ah, I see. The version of me you know already thought that you would do well there.

Wouldn’t I? Harry prompted. I’m all…desperate to prove myself and all that, right?

The Hat chuckled, like Harry was the most amusing thing he’d ever found sitting beneath him. You aren’t eleven anymore, are you, Mr. Peverell? And neither, it seems, are you the Boy Who Lived.

Harry groaned. Don’t tell me that nonsense is the only reason you thought I would do well in Slytherin. 

Not the only reason, the Hat said, but if I know my future self, and I think I do, I suspect it must have been a large contributing factor. Think of it this way, Mr. Peverell—in your original time, there were a lot of people going into Slytherin that could have been helped by your influence. Piped full of self-preservation but with a strong sense of justice, possessor of a biting wit and no small amount of willingness to do that which no one else would do…you would have been good for your Slytherins. You could have shown them a better way.

The Hat turned his head towards the Slytherin table, and Harry looked at the students sitting there. He could spot Voldemort—or Tom Riddle, he supposed—rather easily, looking at him with vague interest and surrounded by distantly familiar loyal subjects on all sides.

What a terrible thing he became, the Hat whispered, evidently noticing Tom through Harry’s eyes. I often wondered if I made the wrong choice. I prioritize the students, you see, and what they think will be good for them. Had it been up to me and me alone, Tom Riddle would have been placed in Gryffindor.

Gryffindor? Harry repeated, shocked. 

Just like you, Mr. Peverell, eleven-year-old Tom Riddle was full of bravery and cunning in equal measures, and such a black and white way of thinking that alienated him as a suitable candidate for the other two houses. The Hat trailed off, sighing softly. He wouldn’t have been happy in Gryffindor, though. Like you, he preferred to make things hard for himself.

What does that mean? Harry asked.

It means, the Hat said, that Gryffindor was the more challenging of two paths for you, and Slytherin was the more challenging of two paths for him. The Slytherins of your time would have adored you, Mr. Peverell, and you would have hated it. The Gryffindors of this time would have been so fiercely fond of him, and he likely would have hated that too.

Harry shifted uncomfortably at this, thinking of a world in which Tom Riddle had been a Gryffindor. Still just as smart and good with people as he was now, but surrounded by the easy affection that Harry sometimes still struggled to accept in his old life. The Hat was right, he thought. Tom Riddle would have done well there, just like Hermione Granger and Neville Longbottom did well there. Tom would have brought value to the House with his academics, and he could outwardly shed the more prickly parts of his personality in a way Harry had never managed. The Tom Riddle he knew through a series of fifty year old memories collected from others had always wanted acceptance first and foremost—he would have had it easily there. In time, the virtuous front he was used to presenting to the world might have even become permanent.

It would have been a very different world.

And had Harry, at eleven, gone along with Slytherin instead of hating the House blindly…things likely would have changed for the better, too. He was sharp in a way that distanced him from the others in Gryffindor, self-motivated in a way they never understood. He already knew that Draco Malfoy, prior to the rejected handshake, wanted to befriend him for the value behind his name if nothing else. The rest of the house likely would have been the same way. They wouldn’t have minded his mercurial personality so long as they got something out of it, and they would have gotten a lot. Harry could have changed their minds. He could have changed their fates, some of them.

You see it now, the Hat said, just a touch smug. You see what could have been.

I turned out alright, though, Harry argued. I was happy in Gryffindor. 

Not always, the Hat said sadly, and Harry couldn’t even deny it. 

You came here to try and save Tom Riddle, the Hat noted, abruptly changing topics. Didn’t you?

Yeah. That’s why—

Why you sat on this stool and asked me for Slytherin? the Hat finished.

Harry swallowed. Yeah.

That’s a concrete goal, I suppose, the Hat said. And Slytherins are known for their goals. Alright, Mr. Peverell, entertain an old hat for a moment. Say I go along with your suggestion—how is it you plan on helping Mr. Riddle? You must know you’ll have to claw your way to his side within the walls of Slytherin House, so you must be prepared to offer quite a lot to get there.

Knowledge, Harry answered decisively, because he had thought about this a great deal since coming back. How differently he would have done things himself, if only he had been told what he needed to know sooner. Dangerous things happened to wizards that messed with time, but in Harry’s opinion, that was because those wizards tried to do too much, interfering with their own lives without realizing it. Harry’s approach was different—it had to be. He would offer Tom Riddle everything he already wanted on a silver platter, and hope he was smart enough to change his mind when the time came. Perhaps in the past, if given the opportunity to travel through time, he would have advocated for such extreme changes as friendship and the power of love (or breaking his godfather out of a tower and helping him escape on the back of a Hippogriff that should have been executed) but Harry knew better. Those were long-term changes, and Harry didn’t have the long-term to work with.

Besides, he’d always thought Dumbledore’s spiel about the power of love was a great steaming pile of Hippogriff dung, anyway.

The Hat laughed. The power of love is a pile of Hippogriff dung, you say? Well, you certainly wouldn’t do well in Hufflepuff, Mr. Peverell.

You don’t need to tell me that, Harry said. I’ve known I wouldn’t last in Hufflepuff since fourth year. Fairness is a virtue I’ve definitely never had.

I wouldn’t say never, Mr. Peverell, the Hat said, but it’s true that after your third year you made use of it far less often.

I suppose, Harry agreed, because in hindsight…it had been very fair of him to try to capture Peter Pettigrew instead of killing him outright.

It had perhaps been the last time Harry had been fair.

Well, in any case, the Hat said, I better get on with your sorting. Keep in mind, Mr. Peverell, that I always try to have the best interest of the student I sort at heart when I place them. Now, let me tell you what I see in you, young man. Your days of bravery are not over, but you grow tired of them all the same. You have ambitions that you are trying to accomplish, but you do not have an involved approach. You do not have a Slytherin approach.

Wait— Harry tried to interrupt with alarm as he sensed where this was going. 

I see a young man who has been saved by knowledge more than once, the Hat continued. A young man who left a war with an appreciation for information gained. Was it not your knowledge of Tom Riddle that allowed you to find his Horcruxes? Was it not your intel on the Elder Wand that allowed you to defeat the man himself?

I’m not a— Harry started again. 

Did you not just read your entire booklist and then some just to aid your goals? the Hat pressed. 

I’m not an academic! Harry protested. 

Perhaps not, the Hat said, with a dry chuckle. But you are a… “RAVENCLAW!” 

And so, as the Sorting Hat was lifted off his head and Harry took his place amongst the sea of blue and bronze more than a little stunned, he couldn’t help but think that everything had gone to shit. Surely it would be challenging to get to Riddle while sleeping in another House, with how insular Slytherin House always was. 

The worry was unfounded, though, because as it turned out, Riddle was easy to find. And in turn, Riddle found Harry again and again. 

Almost to an irritating degree, if he was being honest.

Something changed after Slughorn’s Christmas Party. Tom wasn’t sure if it was because the lack of classes and fellow students over winter break meant Harry was easier to spot, or if Harry had been avoiding him before and their conversation after the party had changed that. 

For instance. 

“Harry,” Tom greeted, two mornings after the party. He hadn’t seen Harry at all the day before, which meant he’d likely spent the day in Ravenclaw Tower. Harry looked a little worse for wear this morning than when he had last seen him, with bags under his eyes and a persistent shake to his hands. Tom filed that information away for later, snapping his book closed and spinning around backwards on his bench to better converse with Harry, who had just walked into the Great Hall. 

“Tom,” Harry replied, sighing. 

It was not a good sigh. 

Tom smiled wider. 

“Sit with me,” he said. 

Harry sighed again. “Sit with you.”

“Must you always repeat everything back to me disbelievingly once I say it to you?” Tom asked. 

“Only when you say things that should be questions like they’re demands,” he said. But he also cast his eyes skyward and sighed impressively and finally, finally sat down. 

Victory never tasted so sweet. 

“You know,” Tom said, as he nudged a plate of food towards Harry, “we’re allowed to mingle at meals. There’s no reason you have to keep sitting all by yourself at the Ravenclaw table.”

Harry snorted. “And what? Sit here with Abraxas Malfoy instead? No thanks.”

Tom smiled. “But Harry,” he said sweetly. “I sit here.”

“The verdict is still out on whether you’re any better,” Harry grumbled. He snatched a pot of coffee, sniffed it, and then shrugged before pouring some into a mug. 

“Not a morning person, are you?” Tom asked, propping his chin on his hand to better watch Harry. 

“Shh,” Harry said. “It’s too early in the day to deal with you.”

“I’ll take that as a yes, then,” Tom said. 

Harry grunted. “Quit staring at me, you creepy bastard. Eat your toast. Eat.”

Tom picked up a piece of his toast placatingly, but he didn't actually take a bite. He watched Harry eat for a few more seconds, and then looked away when he felt something prickling at the back of his mind.

Harry ate like he expected someone to take his food away from him.

Which was to say, Harry ate like Tom used to, before Tom trained himself out of the habit.

“Tom,” Harry said. 

Tom hummed in response, glancing back at Harry, who jerked his chin towards the head table. “Does Dumbledore always twinkle ominously at you?”

Tom turned to look at the head table. Dumbledore was indeed looking their way, blue eyes keen. Tom smirked, thinking he knew exactly why that twinkling was taking place. 

“He’s been known to do it on the odd occasion,” Tom told Harry. “Tuesdays and Thursdays, you know, whenever he thinks I’m up to no good, when Ravenclaws sit with me at the Slytherin table…”

Harry hummed. “You’re more trouble than you’re worth,” he told Tom, looking back at his plate of food. Harry also ate lightly, apparently, which was another observation of interest. “I spent so long trying to get him to stop twinkling at me ominously, and now here he is, doing it again because of you.”

“What was he twinkling at you for?” Tom asked with an amused tone he didn’t feel, snapping his gaze up to Harry’s eyes quickly to gauge his reaction.

“I’m very mysterious,” Harry said flatly, before putting a piece of bacon in his mouth deliberately and standing. Tom watched his ascent, vaguely confused, and then watched as Harry stole his book, even more confused and now indignant too.

Tom caught Harry’s wrist. “What do you think you're doing?” he asked in a low voice.

“I’m pants at Occlumency,” Harry said, “so we better go before he gets more than the galleon dragon out of me.”

It was one of those moments where Tom had to pick his battles, he supposed. “...Dumbledore can use Legilimency from across the Great Hall?” he asked, as he got to his feet and followed Harry down the length of the Slytherin table.

Harry passed his book back to him as he walked. “He’s a very powerful wizard.”

“Yes, but across the Great Hall,” Tom insisted. 

“There’s a reason everyone says he’s the only person that can take on Grindelwald.”

Hm. If it was true, then Tom needed to be more careful. He could maintain Occlumency barriers with barely a thought, but that didn’t mean he never dropped them in times of duress or emotional intensity. Try as he might to be perfect, he knew he still had his flaws. If Dumbledore could read his thoughts across the Great Hall, then…

“Where are we going?” Tom asked, as he realized he was still following Harry. Outside, apparently. 

“Well, I’m going to the forest,” Harry said. “I don’t know about you.”

“The forest!” Tom exclaimed. “What are you going to the forest for?”

“Collecting,” Harry said shiftily. “You probably don’t want to follow. I can assure you it’s a boring practice.”

Well, he definitely didn’t want to walk out into the Forbidden Forest in the freezing cold, but he was very curious about what business Harry had out there…and something about Harry’s mannerisms indicated this was something of a challenge…

“I’m coming,” Tom said.

Harry gave him a very knowing look, knowing to the degree that it was unsettling. How Tom hated and adored it, that look.

Harry drew his wand and cast a warming charm first over himself and then over Tom, then strode off towards the treeline with his wand still in hand. Tom drew his own as he followed—as much as he might dislike it, he wasn’t on the same level as wandless, wordless casting Henry Peverell—as the Forbidden Forest was so named for a reason.

Harry remained silent as he led the way into the trees, and for some reason Tom felt it important that he maintain the same quietude. 

He watched with hungry eyes as Harry stopped in front of a particular tree, and waved his wand. The golden light Tom remembered from his necromancy demonstration slipped from the tip, falling in loose light around the tree. He listened with greedy ears as Harry began to whisper to the tree, soft and quiet, making gentle requests for some wood to be spared. He watched with a quiet wonder he hadn’t felt since he was eleven as the tree seemed to listen, branches rattling with a wind that wasn’t there. It took minutes, or maybe hours, but Tom watched as the tree reshaped itself, its smallest branch dropping softly into Harry’s hands as the bark regrew around like the branch had never been there. Harry conjured a bag—likely his own, since it already had an extension charm on it—and tucked the branch he had earned into it.

He carried on without a word, and Tom followed. They stopped at three more trees—different species of trees, judging by the bark—where Harry repeated the process and Tom watched, the wonder neither diminishing nor growing old as he witnessed it. After the third tree, Harry finally spoke.

“I have a friend,” he said, then corrected himself. “I had a friend. Neville. He taught me how to speak to the trees.”

Tom took this scrap of information he’d been given and tucked it away to use for something later, even if he didn’t know what.

“Why did your friend Neville teach you this skill?” Tom asked, folding both hands behind his back and traipsing after Harry quietly.

“Because—” Harry stopped. He took a deep breath. “Because I couldn’t keep fighting, and if I didn’t do something with my hands…it was going to kill me.”

What were you fighting? Tom wanted to ask, but didn’t.

“And this equates to taking branches from trees, because…?”

Harry cast a small but genuine smile over his shoulder. “Stop talking,” he said. “You’ll see.”

Tom wasn’t someone that anyone could order around, but he followed these orders all the same. He didn’t talk, trodding behind Harry as silently as before. They weren’t looking for more trees this time—that much was clear from how Harry kept checking the ground. He paused to move a fern out of the way with the tip of his wand, studying a pile of dung with unexpected  intensity. Tom wrinkled his nose in distaste at first, and then studied Harry. He clearly had experience in this, Tom realized. He was tracking something, and he knew exactly how to do it.

He studied hoofprints in the mud and then changed directions. He kept track of north and south with fleeting casts of a charm with his wand. He paused behind trees right before beasts Tom didn’t recognize passed, and held up a hand to halt Tom’s footsteps when he needed to listen for something on the wind. 

He found the unicorn herd in less than ten minutes. Tom had been keeping track.

Harry stopped Tom before he could step out into the clearing, though he kept his eyes fixed on the unicorn herd. Several of them were watching them. All of them were keeping a wide berth from where they stood. Tom watched their white coats catching the afternoon sunlight through the tree branches, eyed the way their horns nearly sparkled. He had seen a unicorn before and been unaffected, but there was something about this moment, deep and rich and laden with magic, that made him reconsider.

Harry slipped out into the clearing, and the unicorns did not run away, even if they did not approach either. He did not approach any of them in particular, just walked into the clearing and stood, wand held like he was about to cast a Lumos. He did not, but magic pulsed around him, wild and pure. Tom could feel words on his fingers like water in a creek, slipping past his thoughts meaninglessly.

I repent. I never wanted to kill. Kings Cross is as white as your coats. Dead things can be pure. 

None of it made sense, and all of it did at the same time.

It took seven minutes before the first unicorn approached. It was a foal, with barely a stub of a horn, and it allowed Harry to run his fingers through its mane and pluck a hair from its tail. He tucked the hair in his extendable bag, and another unicorn approached. The process was repeated and then repeated again, and Harry slipped hair after hair, freely given, into his bag. 

“Thank you,” he heard Harry whisper. “Thank you.” Over and over again.

The herd left him there once all of them had approached him, disappearing between the trees in a shroud of mist and leaves. Harry fell to his knees like a puppet with cut strings once the last of them disappeared. Tom approached slowly—he knew instinctively that it was safe for him to do so now that all of the unicorns were gone—but Harry seemed a bit like a wild beast to him right now too. 

Tom wasn’t one for physical comfort, but he settled a hand on Harry’s shoulder all the same, slowly sinking into a crouch beside him. There were tears streaming down his face. His cheeks and nose were red, from the crying or the cold he didn’t know, as Harry’s initial warming charm had faded long ago by now. Tom watched these tears with hungry eyes, even as he took his wand awkwardly in his right hand to cast a warming charm over them both so he did not have to move his left from Harry’s shoulder. 

It felt wrong to break this silence first.

“That’s the first time it actually worked,” Harry whispered, after several minutes passed like this. He reached up slowly, giving Tom plenty of time to move away, and clasped ice cold fingers around the hand Tom still had on his shoulder when he didn’t. “I think it’s because you’re here.”

Harry’s sleeve had slipped down over his wrist. On the back of his hand, thin and so pale they were barely visible, were the words ‘I must not tell lies’ sitting there as if they had been carved into Harry’s skin.

“Why would I make any difference?” Tom asked.

“You’re alive,” Harry said simply, before closing his eyes. He squeezed Tom’s hand once before letting go, and then magically—wordlessly, wandlessly—vanished the tears from his face. “Come on. If we head back now, we’ll be able to catch the tail end of lunch.”

Tom didn’t question it. Instead, he just did as he had been doing all day, and silently followed behind Harry.

It was when he remembered his wand, as it still sat uncomfortably in his right hand, that he put it together.

“You make wands.”

Harry, who had started walking beside him instead of in front of him at some point without Tom even noticing, smiled without looking at him. “Yes.”

“Did you make your wand?” Tom asked, eying the wand still in Harry’s hand with renewed curiosity.

“No,” Harry said, with a small shake of his head. “I’m not very good at wandmaking. Not yet, anyway. I bought this wand from Ollivander.”

“What is the make of your wand?” Tom asked. “I’ve been wondering.”

Harry stopped walking abruptly. Tom took a few steps and then looked back when he realized Harry had stopped. His expression was…odd. Frozen. “It’s holly,” he said, his eyes snapping to Tom’s. “Phoenix feather core.”

“My wand,” Tom said, unable to look away even if he wanted to, “also has a phoenix feather core. Yew, and phoenix feather.”

There was a moment, heavy and thick. The next thing Harry said was going to be important, maybe even life changing. Tom didn’t know how he knew, but he knew it in his very bones.

“I went to Ollivander’s specifically to get this wand,” Harry said. “Ollivander told me it had a brother. A wand that shares a core from the same phoenix, the only other feather given by that phoenix. A wand he sold five years ago.”

And then Harry did the inexplicable for any wizard—he turned his wand towards Tom hilt first. Willingly.

Tom was a thief at heart, stealing trophies from the kids at the orphanage, stealing influence from the kids at Hogwarts. His fingers had always been greedy for things that were not his. Harry had allowed so much to be taken from him already today. Tom should step back, before he got too used to this easy thievery. Before it became impossible to show restraint.

Tom closed hungry fingers around the hilt of Harry’s wand.

It thrummed to life beneath his palm, instant and hot, just as comfortable in his hand as his own wand was. He knew with the utmost confidence that he could do anything with this wand, anything at all. It was maybe even—

“Accio Tom Riddle’s wand,” Harry whispered, and Tom’s wand slipped from the lax fingers of his non-dominant hand, where it still rested. Harry caught it neatly, his hand sliding just as easily over the hilt as Tom’s had slid over his. Harry lifted it up, holding Tom’s wand between his unforgivably green eyes, expression grave.

Harry turned on his heel, a precise ninety degrees to his other side. He pointed Tom’s yew wand at the trees, performed a flourish Tom didn’t quite recognize, and chanted, “Expecto Patronum.”

Silver mist poured out of his wand, solidifying quickly into a shape. Harry’s Patronus was a stag after all, silvery and proud, and Harry and Tom watched him prance in a loop around them three times before he faded away. Harry’s expression was serious. Tom, if he could see his own expression, was sure it was probably embarrassingly awestruck.

Harry smiled strangely at Tom's wand, and then at him, and then he slipped Tom’s yew wand up his sleeve where his wrist sheath was.

“The wand chooses the wizard, Mr. Riddle,” he mock quoted.

Tom’s fingers tightened around the now familiar warmth of the holly wand in his hand. He knew it just as much as Harry did—the wand in his hand whispered to him, settling against his palm like a warm hug, like home. The wand’s allegiance shifted the moment Tom took it, the only thing he didn’t understand was…

“Why?”

Harry lifted one shoulder. “I can think of at least ten reasons, and I don’t like a single one of them,” he said, neatly dodging the question. “Let’s just go to lunch. We’ll be saner that way.”

Tom, for once not desperate to unearth any knowledge he possibly could, couldn’t agree more.

Three nights after Slughorn’s Christmas Party, Harry sat in his bed in Ravenclaw Tower and he stared at the yew wand in his hand, and he thought about the question Tom had asked in the forest.

Why, indeed.

Harry, in both his previous life and this new one, had grown comfortable without a wand. It hadn’t been an immediate change. Nor had it been something he understood quickly, since he'd left the Elder Wand in Dumbledore’s tomb and thought that had been the end of it. It was just…spells he used to struggle with suddenly came with ease. Simple spells were suddenly horrendously overpowered. And then it was Harry casting quickly in battle and realizing later he hadn’t even drawn his wand. And after he’d been dismissed from the Aurors, it was that sometimes he left his house and realized hours later he had forgotten his wand at home, but he hadn’t noticed because he hadn’t felt the loss.

He didn’t need one anymore, so he’d grown used to not having one. He was so used to it that he had almost forgotten to buy a wand before he came to Hogwarts. Well. He could have pretended to use one of his faulty, hand crafted wands for a while, if push came to shove. It wasn’t like it would matter that the wand didn’t work so long as it was in his hand, but it would be inconvenient to explain if anyone found out.

So, Ollivander’s it was. 

He’d walked in hesitantly, a day before he was meant to leave for Hogwarts. Ollivander was younger—there was less gray in his hair and more straightness to his spine—but he was no less creepy. Harry tolerated his measuring and his disconcerting staring and his shuffling about towers of boxes for a while, but after the third wand that worked fine but just felt wrong in Harry’s hand, he got tired of it.

“There’s a wand over there,” he said, pointing to the stack he remembered his own wand came from in his first life. “It’s holly with a phoenix feather core.”

Ollivander’s bushy eyebrows were very intrigued by this casual precision, but he shuffled away to retrieve the wand Harry had requested. It was only when he opened the box with Harry’s wand—his old wand—in it reverentially that Harry realized this might not have been a very smart move. This wand had liked him originally because of the piece of Voldemort he carried inside of him—Harry no longer had that piece, and this wand no longer carried that attachment. And, if Harry failed here in the forties and Tom Riddle went on to be Voldemort after all, he would be depriving Other Harry of a potentially life saving wand by buying it now.

But Harry had already made a spectacle, so he took the holly wand, and he watched with grim acceptance when he was able to produce fine golden sparks with it, just like last time. 

And just like last time, Ollivander told him all about it.

“Interesting,” he said, peering at Harry. “Very interesting.”

Harry swallowed and did his best to act casual. “Why is it interesting?”

“The wand chooses the wizard, Mr. Peverell,” Ollivander said, eying the wand in Harry’s hand like it might bite. “Except in this case, it seems the wizard has chosen the wand.”

Was that what had happened? It was certainly possible. Weirder things had happened to Harry since he became the Master of Death.

“Did you know, Mr. Peverell, that this particular wand you’ve chosen happens to have a brother?”

“How exactly does a wand have a brother?” Harry asked, to avoid answering the question.

“The phoenix that gave the feather for this wand gave one other,” Ollivander said, still eying the wand in Harry’s hand as he placed it back in its box. “Just one other. I sold the brother to a young man five years ago. I thought that he was destined for greatness. I can’t help but wonder if the same could be said about you, Mr. …Peverell.” And then he passed Harry the wand box, and told him the price.

And now the holly wand obeyed another, and Harry was holding the wand that would kill his parents in another life. The wand that would kill him in another life.

“Do you remember it?” he asked the wand in a whisper. “Do you remember what you haven’t yet  been asked to do? Is that why you came to me?”

The wand thrummed happily between his fingers. 

He thought that it did . He thought that this wand recognized death. It had orchestrated several in the future, after all, including Harry’s own. It recognized death, and there was nothing alive more closely associated with death than Harry.

It was fitting, in a way. This wand had always meant more to him than his own.

As to why his former wand was so eager to jump into Tom’s hands…

That was a different mystery.

Harry laid back on his pillows, resting the yew wand on his chest. He stared up at the blue canopy over him for several long moments, not sure what he was even thinking.

“I have no idea what I’m doing, do I?” he whispered to an empty room, as he folded his hand over the wand of his former enemy.

There was no other explanation for it. Tom had gotten a taste of Henry Peverell, and now he wanted all of him.

And Harry continued to allow it. 

He sat separately from Tom at lunch and never showed up for dinner, but when Tom called out to him at breakfast the morning after, he came. He sat. He acted like nothing had changed, like Tom wasn’t holding his lightning quick wand in his hands, like he didn’t have Tom’s wand tucked away in his nifty little wand sheath.

It was infuriating and fascinating in equal measures.

Harry went often to the Forbidden Forest, sometimes just to walk in a winding path that ended in a clearing that seemed irrelevant to Tom, sometimes to collect items for his wand making hobby. He showed Tom some of the wands he had made too when Tom asked, like they lived in a world where everything was so simple you could ask people for things and not have to expect a favor in return. 

He noticed Tom sneaking one of the broken wands he had made— a trophy— and he said nothing at all about it.

Tom remembered Dumbledore telling him that Hogwarts didn’t tolerate thievery on that day he came to tell Tom what—who—he was. He thought Harry was making a liar out of his least liked professor.

And though it started with Tom seeking Harry out to take, it quickly turned into Harry seeking Tom out to give. 

He sat a stack of books down by Tom while he was at the library, trying to get some of his over break work done. He eyed the titles curiously, greedily, and then looked up at Harry. 

“These are the best resources on wandlore I could find here,” Harry explained, without Tom even needing to ask. “You’re curious, aren’t you?” And he tapped Tom’s yew wand against the top book for emphasis.

“You aren’t going to just tell me everything I want to know this time?” Tom asked, as he sat back in his seat and folded his fingers together.

“Would if I could,” Harry said, with an accompanying eye roll. “But wands are deeply personal. I can guess why your wand wants me, but I don’t know you nearly well enough to guess the inverse.” He nudged the stack of books closer to Tom. “Chop chop, Mr. Riddle. Pull your own weight for once instead of leaving all the obscure reading to the Ravenclaw.”

Tom hadn’t given a real smile to anyone or anything in years possibly, but one pulled on his lips now. 

“Later,” he said. “I have a Charms essay to finish.”

Harry sighed in response and sat down next to him.

Tom felt his very real smile widen, and he didn’t know what to make of it.

And for as much as he saw Harry, there were days where he was just gone , too. The day before Christmas Eve passed without Harry in sight, and then Christmas Eve itself. He was gone for both breakfast and lunch on Christmas Day as well, and only put in an appearance for the feast, looking haggard and weary. He sat alone at the end of the Ravenclaw table, saved from Tom’s ire only by the fact that it was a rule to sit at your own table for feasts.

He must have sensed all the glaring Tom was doing, though, even if he didn’t acknowledge it, because he came up to him as soon as he was done eating. 

“Where—”

“Come with me,” Harry murmured, and then strode out of the Great Hall. 

Tom subtly gripped the hilt of the holly wand and talked himself down from casting the Cruciatus Curse at irritating Ravenclaws in front of all of Hogwarts. 

He settled for a stinging hex in the privacy of the hall, though, which Harry deflected with a wave of his hand. Spoil sport that he was, and all.

“Don’t be dramatic,” he said, looking at Tom just so he could roll his eyes. “You’ll thank me later, I’m sure.”

Tom followed him begrudgingly and indignantly, but he followed him. He followed him up several flights of stairs and along turns made seemingly at random. They stopped at a hall on the seventh floor where Barnabas the Barmy's tapestry was, and Tom finally lost the last strands of his already frayed patience.

“Peverell, I swear to Merlin, you better—”

Harry held a finger to his lips, then paced seven steps down the hall, seven steps back, and seven down the hall again.

A door appeared where there hadn't been a door before, and Tom stared at it. He saw Harry’s smug look out of the corner of his eye, but ignored it in favor of running his fingertips along the wood grain, verifying that it was real. Verifying that it was there.

“The Come and Go Room,” Harry said grandly, before reaching around Tom to open the door. “Otherwise known as the Room of Requirement.”

“I’ve been looking for this place,” Tom confessed, too stunned to remember to not be forthcoming with his own secrets. “For five years, I’ve been looking, and you—”

He looked back at Harry, who gave him a sly grin. “Bet you never thought to ask a house elf where it was.”

“A house elf?” Tom repeated, incredulously. “One of those creatures? They’re nothing but a bunch of—”

“Sentient beings, with thoughts and feelings like you or me,” Harry finished. “And if you ask them nicely, they’ll do anything within their power to help you, as their relationship with wizards is a mutually beneficial one.”

Tom wanted to say that he’d seen how many purebloods treated house elves and how the way those house elves took that treatment could hardly be called beneficial, but he feared that it would prompt a debate with Harry over it. And a debate with Harry would distract him from more important questions. Questions like—

“Where are we, anyway?” Tom asked, eying the blank whiteness of this room Harry had conjured for them. The walls were white, the upholstery white, the wood white. The only spots of color in the whole room were the silver embroidery on some of the pillows and the log in the fireplace.

Harry sighed. “It’s the White Room.”

“Yes, I can see that,” Tom said, rolling his eyes. “I meant, where is it from?”

“I asked the room for something comfortable,” Harry said, sitting down heavily. Something about it reminded Tom of Abraxas after his Quidditch practices, like there was a deep exhaustion permeating through Harry’s bones. Through his soul. "It pulled this from my memories. It’s one of the sitting rooms at Peverell Manor.”

Tom felt a familiar pang at that, the jealousy of these nice things other wizards had that he would never really grow out of. He pushed it down, though, sitting calmly in the blindingly white armchair across from Harry. “It’s a bit stark, isn’t it?” 

“That’s why I like it,” Harry confessed quietly. “It’s simple. It’s clean. It’s pure.”

Tom didn’t know how to respond to this, so he considered the room instead. Truthfully, he didn’t mind it. There was something unassuming about all the white. The furniture was comfortable, but not up to date with the most recent styles. The chairs were positioned for easy conversation, not as an attempt to make the room seem bigger than it was. The excessive amount of white seemed truthful—it would hide no stains nor spare no eyes from its blinding brilliance.

Tom was perhaps thinking about it too deeply, though.

“Are white and silver your family colors?” Tom asked.

Harry nodded. 

“Is that why you wore those colors to Slughorn’s Christmas Party?”

Harry grunted noncommittally. “All of my formal robes are in some combination of the two colors. If you can call white a color at all, I suppose.”

“Can’t you?”

“White is an absence of color,” Harry said. “That’s why it is the color worn traditionally for both death and birth rites. It represents both the passing of a soul, and the blank slate upon which a new life can be written.” He made a face. “Morgana’s tits, I sound like Hermione.”

“Who is Hermione?”

Harry’s expression twisted into one of sorrow. “A friend. She’s gone now.”

“Do you have many friends that are…gone?” Tom asked.

Harry laughed bitterly. “All of them are gone, Tom. Why do you think I’m here?” 

“I—”

“Don’t answer that,” Harry said, running a hand through his hair. “It’s not really fair to you, is it? You don’t know.”

There were a thousand questions Tom wanted to ask. A thousand questions he could ask. 

What don’t I know?

If you’re from Surrey, why didn’t you start at Hogwarts until your fifth year?

Where did you really come from?

Why do you look at me like I’m the saddest thing you’ve ever seen? Don’t think I haven’t noticed.

“Where have you been the last few days?” Tom asked instead. 

Harry gave him a long look. It was a powerful look, stealing the breath out of Tom’s lungs and trapping it in the expanses of white between them.

“The infirmary,” Harry said.

Tom breathed. 

For all that Harry obfuscated and diverted, Tom could say with a confidence that he didn’t quite understand that Harry never lied. So, he knew that this was the truth, even if he didn't understand it. Even if he didn't want it to be.

“Why?” he asked.

“Nothing that’s news to me,” Harry said. “Nothing pressing.” 

Some kind of chronic condition, then. Tom thought of white knuckles at the top of the Astronomy Tower and blank eyes, fingers of ice and constant trembles, the way Abraxas’s voice dragged over the words ‘blood curse’ in his naturally posh accent.

What kind of blood curse do you have? Tom wanted to ask, but he knew it wasn’t the time. Harry didn’t lie to him, but that didn’t mean Harry wouldn’t simply refuse to answer.

In the silence Tom left, Harry unsheathed his wand—Tom’s old wand. Tom eyed the paleness of the wood, the near white where it was taken from the lightest part of the tree, and he understood with a bone deep, aching clarity why exactly his wand left him for Harry. 

And then Harry whispered, “Incendio,” with his wand pointed at the log in the fireplace. Whatever realization Tom had been on the cusp of having was gone, up in flames just like that log was. 

“Happy Yule,” Harry told him, before tossing something at him. “Even though it’s not really Yule anymore. All the stuffy purebloods still follow paganistic traditions, though, so I figured you would appreciate the sentiment more than ‘Happy Christmas.’ I like Christmas, though. Most holidays I think I could do away with and be fine, but Christmas…there’s something special about it.”

“Perhaps because most modern Christmas traditions were stolen from paganism in the first place,” Tom said, “and actually have very little to do with the birth of Jesus Christ, like the holiday claims.”

Harry’s lips quirked upwards briefly. “Jesus Christ wasn’t even born in December, did you know? He was born in the summer.”

Tom eyed him quickly and subtly. It wasn’t that he had forgotten that Harry claimed to be a half-blood, it was just that he so rarely acted like one that it had long since slipped from the forefront of his thoughts about Harry. “I wouldn’t know,” Tom said. “I never really paid attention to anything to do with Christianity.” Except, perhaps, the exorcisms. He had been forced to pay attention to the exorcisms, since they presented a direct threat to him. 

With that, Tom quickly concluded that he needed something else to focus his attention on, lest he grow violently angry very quickly. Which would be counterintuitive, since, against his own better judgment, he actually wanted Harry to like him. Or at least, continue tolerating him. 

He turned the object he had caught earlier over in his hands instead, staring at the poorly wrapped edges of plain brown paper with a sinking feeling. He hadn’t expected—he’d already gotten gifts for all of his Knights, who he knew to expect gifts from—he didn’t have enough money left from his summer job to be able to comfortably buy something for Harry, too. And what could Tom buy him, anyway? Harry could do anything with magic, buy anything with money—

“Harry—”

“I didn’t expect you to get me anything,” Harry broke in softly. “You’ll understand, anyway, once you open it.”

Tom cast a searching glance in Harry’s direction, and found unyielding steel. Not opening this gift was out of the question, apparently, so Tom slid his fingers under the edge of the wrapper and lifted it as neatly as possible. He found leather underneath, brown and supple but not worn, like it was no stranger to use but still was fairly new. 

“They bond to specific wands,” Harry explained, as Tom finished unwrapping the wrist sheath. “Form around them, you know? You can undo it if you want, but, well. I’ve only had it for four months anyway, so I figured it might as well just stay with the wand it got used to. And I’ve got my own already, so don’t try to give it back to me.” Harry rolled up his sleeve, flashing a wrist sheath at Tom before he holstered the yew wand in it. His new sheath, Tom noted, was bleached white. 

Receiving someone else’s cast offs as a gift would have been the highest insult, if it had been coming from anyone else. From Harry, though, it was almost…preferable. It wasn’t charity, but it wasn’t just a gift either. It was a thought—there was nothing stopping him from just buying a new wrist sheath altogether for Tom, and yet he offered him the one that his wand was more familiar with anyway. And yet he offered him the one that he’d worn on his own wrist anyway. 

Besides, he had offered something else, too, for Tom could glimpse the round pucker of a scar beneath his right elbow with the sleeve rolled up as it was. A scar, another one, just as mysterious and inexplicable as the one he had spied on the back of Harry’s hand.

“Thank you,” Tom said, as Harry rolled down his sleeve. 

The words came out more sincere than he thought they would have.

“It’s no trouble,” Harry whispered, his gaze locked on the fire, as he sat back in his chair.

And so, the rest of their break passed.

Chapter Text

The ease of his winter break—of studying and wandering the castle and Harry— passed with the New Year, and soon his housemates were back with stories of their grand adventures over the holiday. Orion talked about a French holiday home and Abraxas would not stop talking about a cousin in Germany and Yaxley had apparently met the Minister of Magic. It served as a reminder—a reminder that Tom hadn’t realized he needed—that these were snakes in a pit. They were a different kind of predator than Harry was—not made of talons and a quick beak, but venomous, poised, and waiting to strike.

It was easy to not miss Harry on his first night back, with his time preoccupied with fending off vipers. He spent his break researching, Abraxas, thank you for asking. He found many things, Lestrange, so many that everyone else should be worried about falling behind. He was not jealous of France, Orion, and he was frankly lucky Tom was in a merciful mood, for asking such a thing at all.

The real reason for the mercy, though, was that he did not want them to see the holly wand. His wand.

Not yet. 

It was easier to miss Harry in the morning, when Tom looked up right as he walked in and made eye contact. He nearly opened his mouth to call out to him—and what a thing that might have ended up being—but he choked on the words. He choked, and Harry smiled forgivingly, even though the last thing Tom wanted was his forgiveness, and he went to the Ravenclaw table. He sat by himself, ate his small meal by himself, stood up sooner than anyone else by himself, and left the Great Hall by himself. 

It had no reason to, but the whole thing put Tom in a bad mood. Which did not bode well for him, not really, because his first class of the day was Transfiguration.

With Ravenclaw.

And Dumbledore.

And Abraxas Malfoy.

“Henry!” Abraxas called out, as soon as he spotted Harry. 

Harry had his back to them and still Tom saw his sigh deflating his shoulders as he half turned to wait on them to catch up. “Malfoy,” he said.

“Call me Abraxas, please, Henry.”

“Must I?” Harry asked.

Abraxas laughed like he’d just been told a very funny joke. Tom shared a commiserating look with Harry over the top of Abraxas’s giant head. 

“Walk with us, Henry,” Abraxas said, before clapping a hand on his shoulder and forcing him to do just that.

Harry sighed.

“So,” Abraxas said. “What do Peverells get up to on their holiday breaks?”

“Their hobbies, I imagine,” Harry said, and Tom saw his sharp sideways glance and the glint of his metaphorical talons. “As their lack of living members for the last few decades alleviates them from such responsibilities as nonsensical social calls or romancing cousins.” He ducked out from under Abraxas’s hand, using his smaller frame to his advantage, and smiled genially. “Good luck today. I heard that Dumbledore twinkles twice as maliciously when he senses weakness. Weakness like a holiday spent without any revising, for instance.”

And then he scurried inside the classroom, took his customary seat at the back, and smiled tamely at Tom like he knew he had just condemned him to a period of hearing nothing but complaints from Abraxas and did not care even a little bit.

To make matters worse, Dumbledore did indeed twinkle twice as maliciously when he sensed weakness, and there was a lot of weakness to be sensed in a room full of purebloods that had spent the last two weeks vacationing and blowing off their classwork. Which was to say, he set them a practical exam without forewarning to make sure they hadn’t grown complacent in their time off.

Which was to say, Tom still was not Henry Peverell.

Which was to say, he had to use the wand, the wand that was very clearly not the bone white wand he had used for the last five years.

He turned around in his seat to glare at Harry. Harry, despite having no way to know the precise cause of the glaring, seemed to take a particular delight in glaring back. 

“He’s a prickly sort, isn’t he?” Abraxas asked, propping his chin on his hand and glaring at Harry with Tom. 

Give me your wand, Tom mouthed at Harry.

Harry, who was seemingly deriving great joy out of antagonizing Tom today, cupped his hand by his ear pointedly.

“Did your little date not go well?” Abraxas asked, amused.

“Stop talking,” Tom hissed, “before I make you stop talking.”

Things went relatively smoothly from there. Dumbledore chose his victims at random—or based on how much weakness he sensed was available to prey upon—and Tom could sit back and silently panic in peace as he watched his classmates flounder with Dumbledore’s tests. Dumbledore would know Tom’s wand was different, he knew if anyone noticed it would be that problematic bastard, but the question was whether he would comment on it or not—

“Mr. Riddle,” Dumbledore said smoothly. “Perhaps you would like to go next?”

Tom stood. He walked to the front of the classroom. He stared at the sheet of paper he was supposed to turn into crystal disparagingly and thought that perhaps if there was ever a time to be as good at wordless, wandless magic as Henry Peverell it was now.

He drew the holly wand.

“Mr. Riddle,” Dumbledore said sharply, his gaze falling heavily on the wand in his hand. “Forgive an old man his curiosity, but that is not the wand you had before the break, is it?”

“It is not,” Tom said, cursing silently. He should have known. Dumbledore always said something. 

Behind him the classroom shifted excitedly, the scent of gossip in their noses as they tried to see Tom’s new wand for themselves.

“Why have you changed your wand, Mr. Riddle?”

And here was the problem. Tom was a fantastic liar, but even he had no lie good enough to explain this. Especially not when Harry was inevitably going to walk up here and use Tom’s old, very distinctive wand in front of the entire class.

“I…” Tom started to say, but the truth seemed unacceptable as an answer, too.

But Dumbledore’s gaze shifted to a point behind Tom, with an intensity that begged Tom to look too. He was not surprised by what he found, and yet he had never been more surprised.

“Mr. Peverell…?” Dumbledore asked, just as disbelieving as Tom himself was. 

Because for the first time in four months, Henry Peverell had raised his hand in a class.

“The fault is mine,” Harry said, smiling sharply. He flicked his wrist, and everyone gasped as one at the bone white wand that appeared in Harry’s hand. “They say all is fair in love and war, and all. Tom won my old wand’s allegiance.”

Dumbledore blinked, for once surprised by something—and not just surprised a little, but surprised a great deal. What a marvelous creature Harry was, honestly, to finally drag such an expression from the man. “You dueled Mr. Riddle, Mr. Peverell? And somehow managed to win his wand after he took yours?”

“There was no duel, professor,” Harry said, grinning even wider.

“Then how…?”

Harry coughed delicately. “I gave my wand away, sir. It didn’t want me back afterwards, so I improvised.”

“You improvised?”

“Yes, sir,” Harry said. “I’m very adept at wandless summoning charms, sir.”

“I see.”

“All is well that ends well, right?” Harry said, gesturing lazily with Tom’s wand like he was enjoying himself. “What’s a little wand exchanging amongst friends? Believe it or not, sir, this is actually the fourth time I’ve engaged in the practice. Though one time I won two wands at once without realizing it, so I do wonder if it really counts as four or if it counts as three. In any case.” He coughed again, rather fakely. “My delicate sensibilities suddenly aren’t doing so well, Professor. Could I be excused to the hospital wing, perhaps? Yes? Grand.”

And he left. He actually left, without further word from Dumbledore. Or completing his own quiz. Or anything at all, really, considering his bag still sat beside his desk. 

That mad little bastard, Tom caught himself thinking. 

He hated, just a little, that his thoughts sounded fond even to himself.  

Tom cleared his throat pointedly as he stood behind Harry at the Ravenclaw table, two school bags in hand. 

Harry turned on his bench, eyes already glinting with some kind of mischief. The glint only increased when he saw what Tom was holding.

Tom cleared his throat pointedly and held his bag out to him. “Here you are, Peverell,” he said, the bag’s strap hanging off of one finger like he was trying to touch it as little as possible. “You left this behind in Transfiguration. As any good prefect would do, I’ve brought it to you.”

“Shouldn’t one of the Ravenclaw prefects have done that?” Harry asked, the curve of his lips knowing.

“I volunteered,” Tom said with a pleasant smile that was also a pleasant threat.

“I see,” Harry said, faux seriously. He finally reached out to take the bag back. “Well, thank you very much. I hope you had a good time looking through everything in it.”

Tom smiled even more pleasantly and even more threateningly. “I would never go through the bag of a fellow classmate.”

It was a bold faced lie, of course. Tom had gone through the bag the second he was alone. Whether he had a good time doing it or not was up to debate, as the bag had not been very insightful. Or at least, it had not offered any insights Tom didn’t already have. Though, had he gone through it a month ago, he would have been very curious about the clumps of unicorn hair. As it was, he was still a little confused about the seven smooth pebbles he found…but Harry was an eccentric collector, just as much as Tom was a thief, so if odd objects could be excused in anyone’s bag it was his.

More interesting was that Harry knew him well enough to know he would go through the bag at all.

“Yes,” Harry said, blatantly popping the bag open and checking for missing items. “You’re very honorable that way.”

“I am a prefect,” Tom said, unable to keep the corners of his mouth from twitching upwards in amusement.

“So you are.” There was a moment of silence where Harry studied his bag and Tom studied Harry, and then Harry looked back up at him. “The white quill?”

Tom retrieved it from his pocket with quick fingers, echoing Harry’s mischievous grin. 

“Bugger,” Harry said, eying it sadly. He made no move to reclaim his stolen object.  “My favorite quill too.”

“I know,” Tom said, placing it back in his pocket for safekeeping. “Think of it as my return fee, for keeping your bag so safe.”

Harry sighed, dropped his bag on the floor without a care in the world (or for the items inside), and while gesturing to the empty space next to him said, “You might as well stay.”

Tom glanced at the rest of the Ravenclaw table. They had already attracted notice—mostly from the girls—and Harry was getting more than one jealous look for associating so easily with Tom. A glance to the Slytherin table showed more subtle displays of intrigue and jealousy, but not by much. 

Jealousy was so easy to use against people.

“I suppose I can afford to sit here for one meal,” Tom said, making himself comfortable on the bench next to Harry. “I’m so very concerned for you, after all. You and your…delicate sensibilities.”

Harry snorted. “Yeah, sure. We’ll call it concern.”

Tom smiled tolerantly, and ignored the smaller, squirmier part of him that whispered, I really am concerned, though.

“What is your condition, anyway?” Tom asked instead, helping himself to a few sandwiches from the Ravenclaw table. Most of the food was sandwiches, actually. And…nuts. And dried fruit.

“It’s all portable,” Harry said, noticing Tom’s gaze. “And can be eaten with only one hand. Even during feasts.”

“How…quaint,” Tom said, eying his sandwich warily. 

“How necessary, you mean,” Harry said, gesturing down the table. Tom followed his gaze, spying Ravenclaw after Ravenclaw with a book open or a quill in hand. “Look at them. Tom Riddle himself is sitting at their table and they can’t even be bothered to stare.”

Tom wrinkled his nose at the prospect of being stared at by a bunch of acne riddled fourth year Ravenclaws, and then realized something with aching suddenness. He snapped his gaze back to Harry. “You didn’t answer the question.”

Harry’s smile took on a shy edge. “Noticed that, did you?”

Tom eyed him appreciatively. “You should have been in Slytherin,” he decided. “Your tactics of diversion are wasted in Ravenclaw.”

Harry let out a breathless laugh. “Maybe in another life,” he said airily.

“Harry,” Tom murmured. “What is it?”

Harry sighed, pushing his grapes around on his plate with a finger. “Knowledge is free, right? That's what I said. Bollocks.” He rubbed absently at his forehead, disturbing the fringe there. Tom felt his breath catch as he noticed another scar for the first time, faded and hidden by hair as it was. A rune scar, he thought, like someone had taken a knife and carved a sowilō rune into his forehead. Curiouser and curiouser.

Harry flicked his wrist, snapping his wand into his hand. He cast his neat little silencing spell once again, heightening Tom’s intrigue even before Harry turned his deathly green eyes on him.

“The Tale of the Three Brothers,” he said, “is about the three Peverell brothers: Antioch, Cadmus, and Ignotus.”

Tom hummed, captivated by this storytelling Harry.

“When their mother was young, she broke an engagement contract with a powerful wizard so that she could marry the man that she loved: the Heir to House Peverell. In retaliation, he placed a curse upon her blood—may no sons of Peverell live long lives, may they die of their own weakness, may they know only loneliness, may they see tragedy at their ends and may they be forced to greet it warmly." 

Harry shifted, magic practically crackling around him as he spoke. “For Antioch, you know the story. His curse took the shape of his own folly, and he died when his boasting of the Elder Wand led another to kill him and claim it. He had no children. Cadmus was cursed to never know love. To always see it—” Harry reached out with one of his hands, desperate and grasping, then closed it around nothing in front of Tom’s nose. “—but never to have it. Maddeningly, desperately close, but always a step too late. It was why Cadmus asked Death for the Resurrection Stone.” Harry opened his hand, his intoxicating green eyes trapped over his palm, twin omens of death in the pale light of a winter afternoon.

“And the third brother?” Tom asked, surprised by the breathlessness of his own voice.

Harry smiled sadly. “Ignotus walked hand in hand with death. He grew up sickly and weak. When he coughed, his spittle was red. When he touched you, his hands were like ice. He grew up with nothing—not a promised title, or promised gold—nothing except a will to survive.” Harry paused here, breathing deeply. “So, when he met Death, he asked for that which would allow him to live a little longer, survive a little better. And that was precisely what he got.”

Tom sucked in a deep breath. “You—”

Harry nodded. “The third variation of the curse. It’s an illness that no one knows the name of, a curse with no counter, a disease with no long-term treatment.”

“Surely every curse must have a counter,” Tom said.

Harry shook his head, sitting back along the bench. “Not this one.”

“So, what, then?” Tom asked. “You’ll just…die before you're thirty?”

Harry shrugged. “Fifteen more years doesn’t sound so bad.”

Unacceptable, Tom thought.

“Fifteen years. Harry, we’ve only been alive for fifteen years. That’s hardly…that’s hardly a full life.”

Harry folded his arms across his chest, all stubborn reticence. “It’s fine, Tom. I’m fine.”

It’s not, Tom hissed. It’s not fine. You—not you.

“I don’t see how you could think that,” Tom said, trying to be calm and reasonable. “It’s your life, Harry.”

Harry set his jaw. “Exactly. It’s my life. I knew what I was getting into when I took this name and I took it anyway.”

“Why would you even take the name?” Tom asked, surprised by the desperation he heard in his own voice. “Don’t tell me it’s the money? Or perhaps…the mystery?”

“I had no other option,” Harry said flatly, stubbornly.

“That is not true,” Tom hissed. “You had a name before. You just said as much.”

“Tom,” Harry said softly, sadly. “I’m not a Parselmouth.”

“What does that have to do anything?” Tom snapped, not registering what it really meant for Harry to say such a thing to him.

“You spoke in Parseltongue,” Harry whispered, looking away. “I don’t understand Parseltongue.”

Tom stared.

He had never slipped enough to use the language of snakes in front of someone from another House. And even if he had, he never would have expected the person that overheard him to act as Harry was now—nonchalantly, as if he wasn’t even surprised. As if he wasn’t impressed, or afraid, or anything at all except for maybe a little bit sad.

“You weren’t born a Peverell,” Tom said, careful to make sure he was using English. “That means you have another name. That means you could have chosen to live, and yet you’ve made amends with your death.”

“You’re right,” Harry whispered. “I wasn’t born a Peverell. But I didn’t have another option.”

Tom snarled, words lost to him in the face of his anger. He needed to get out of here, probably, before he did something that would permanently damage his reputation.

He stood abruptly, slung his bag over his shoulder, and stormed away, barely even noticing when Harry’s silencing bubble popped and the outside world drowned him in sound.

Harry left his dormitory in the middle of the night. 

Beneath his sleeve, where no one could see it, the portion of the Deathly Hallows that was shaped like a triangle glowed softly. He held the yew wand in his right hand, remaining unnoticed even as he walked directly in front of a Gryffindor prefect doing rounds. Walking silently, unseen and unheard by even Death themself, he arrived at a corridor on the seventh floor, across from the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy, where he paced three times. Back and forth and back again.

The door appeared, and on the other side…was a familiar clearing in the Forbidden Forest, trees reaching up to the skies. Harry fell to his knees on the patch of ground he once had died on, and he allowed himself to feel the enormity of what he had done for the first time. He missed Ron, and his easy humor. He missed Hermione, and her relentless knowledge. He missed Ginny’s fire, Luna’s mysticism, Neville’s quiet bravery. He missed Remus’s wisdom and Sirius’s wit, Molly’s hugs and Arthur’s muggle junk. He missed the way the twins had made life seem less horrible during his original fifth year with laughter and light. He even missed Percy’s sharp tongue and his strict nature, his austerity like a familiar too-small sweater that restricted your arm movements but still kept you warm. 

He would even say he missed Voldemort, for surely even Voldemort was better than Tom Riddle, who looked at Harry with ravenous eyes, who had given up the Chamber and Horcruxes in favor of chasing after Harry’s secrets instead. 

“It wasn’t supposed to be this way,” Harry whispered into the empty air. 

If only he could talk to someone— anyone— that was kinder or wiser or funnier than him. They could tell him what he was doing wrong, why nothing was going right, why he always had to be the one that saved the world, why he always had to be the one destined to die. 

But the stone tattooed on the skin of his left forearm mocked him, for just as he could do all magic as if he held the Elder Wand in his hand and disappear as if the Invisibility Cloak was wrapped around his shoulders, he could also call the spirits of the dead to him with only a thought. But the Resurrection Stone only called upon the dead , and as such the not-yet dead were unavailable…and everyone Harry loved hadn’t even been born yet. Except for Hagrid, he supposed, but Hagrid was a child that had never so much as met Harry in this life. And maybe Dumbledore, but Harry wasn’t sure he loved Dumbledore. His feelings towards his former headmaster more closely aligned with respect than fondness. 

There’s always me, little Master, Death whispered in him, around him. And you need not march to your place of death any longer if you wish to share some words.

The cold preceded Death’s physical manifestation, freezing the air in Harry’s lungs and making his breath mist on every exhale. Harry breathed in the sudden chill of the air, feeling strangely comforted by the presence of the indifferent being that had caused his most recent bout of suffering in his life. But then again…that thing about greeting Death as an old friend held true. 

And it helped, more than Harry wanted to admit, to look up and see that Death had put on Sirius this time. He was dressed in the battle robes he wore the day he died, though white, endlessly white, and perhaps a little silver too. Sirius’s wavy black hair was pulled back in a half-tail, his high cheekbones were just as unforgivably sharp as they had been in life, his smile just as warm and kind. 

“It’s not working,” Harry whispered, finding it easy to confess his mistakes to Sirius and this empty facsimile of a forest. The trees took his words and held them amongst their spindly branches, keeping them safe and secret in this invented world. “He’s not trying to find the Chamber of Secrets or make Horcruxes anymore, sure, but what’s stopping him? It’s me. I’m stopping him. And when I die…”

Sirius was silent as the unfinished sentence hung in the air between the two of them. 

“If I wanted to bow out,” Harry started slowly. He licked his lips. He swallowed. “If I wanted to do the most practical thing, and just…die. For real. And go back to my own time or my own afterlife or whatever…could I?”

“You could. You can do whatever you put your mind to,” Sirius whispered, after a moment of contemplation. “But would you be happy? You’re your father’s son. You’ve always been brave. You’ve always been so…kind. So full of light. So full of love. You’re Harry Potter.”

“Harry Potter,” Harry repeated, somewhat manically, as he buried his hands in his hair and curled in on himself. “I’m not Harry Potter. I gave that up. Everything I was, everything I would be, the family I have—would have—I gave all that up. On a whim. On a sliver of a chance that some other Harry Potter, some other me… ” He swallowed, the sentence suddenly hard to finish, but he knew he had to get through it. He had been a Gryffindor once, after all. He needed to hang onto that. “I gave it up so that some other me could live a better life.”

“That’s not really true,” Sirius said, after a long moment of deliberation. “Is it? You’re Henry Peverell now too, there’s no denying that, but you’ll always carry that piece of yourself inside you, so long as you’re here. All of us—me, Remus, your mum and dad—we’re with you to the end, remember? And it’s not the end yet.” He was silent for a moment, his gray eyes stormy but understanding. “My question is still the same, Harry. Would you be happy if you gave up?”

Harry closed his eyes. 

It wasn’t a question, not really. “No.”

“Then keep going,” Sirius said, forcing Harry to ponder what exactly had gone wrong in his life that had led to him getting comfort from an undead entity dressed up as his godfather. “You’re strong, Harry. You wouldn’t be here if you couldn’t do this.”  

Harry closed his eyes. “But Tom—”

“Don’t be thick,” Sirius said, with his broadest grin. “Didn’t you just have a conversation with a magical hat about how resilient Tom Riddle is?”

Harry took a deep breath, pulling himself together with the drag of air into his lungs, and released his hair. “Yeah,” he said. “I mean, that was a few months ago, but yeah. He really is a bit of a Gryffindor, isn’t he?”

“He is as much of a Gryffindor as you are a Ravenclaw, I’d say,” Sirius joked lightly. “Imagine my surprise at that one. Guess that’s just the Lily Evans in you rearing its head, though, yeah?”

Harry laughed breathlessly, for lack of anything better to do with his body. “Yeah. It’s not just her eyes I have anymore, right?”

“Oh, Harry,” Sirius whispered fondly. “You’ve always had so much more of your mother in you than just her eyes. I should have told you that when I had the chance.”

Harry nodded, not really sure of how else he should respond to that. Logically, he knew that this wasn’t Sirius so much as it was a memory of him, fashioned from all the things that resided in Harry’s head. But it still felt real. 

“I guess that means I should stick to my plan, then,” Harry said instead. “My exceedingly Ravenclaw plan of plans.”

“It is a very good plan,” Sirius offered with a cheeky grin. 

Harry tilted his head back, staring up at imagined stars. “I really do have to wonder sometimes,” he murmured, “if I’ve just lost it and am lying catatonic in a bed at St. Mungo’s somewhere while all this goes on in my head.”

“It’s real,” Sirius said, with the frank honesty that only he had ever really offered Harry. “But even if it weren’t—would it really be so bad, as long as the experiences felt true?” 

“Maybe not,” Harry allowed, smiling a little at the reflection of the sentiment Dumbledore-Death had offered him in that first trip to Kings Cross said in a different tone, a different voice. “There’s something to be said, I think, for the importance of dreams.”

Harry would know. So much of his life had felt like one, after all.

It was easier than Tom thought it would be to cut Harry out of his life and carry on like he had been doing before he came into it. It wasn’t a perfect return to normalcy—Horcruxes had permanently lost their shine, for instance, and his research into the Chamber of Secrets was half-hearted at best—but the rest? That was easy to return to. 

Maybe, though that was only because Harry allowed him to go. He watched—Tom knew he watched—with his knowing green eyes and his stubborn jaw as he stood far, far away, pain in the tint of his eyes and the set of his mouth. He did not interfere with Tom’s withdrawal, didn’t reach out a hand to him or explain himself, just let him keep himself as far away from him like everyone before him had done. 

Tom ignored the part of him that wanted him to reach out. 

And he could do that, too, if only because Harry allowed it. 

What a horrible web of humanity Tom had found himself trapped in. 

Winter bled into spring in Tom’s fifth year, but the leaves and the buds brought no new excitement to his life. He still got straight O’s, but it wasn’t as if that was hard. He still searched for the Chamber of Secrets, but his efforts were half-hearted at best. He still ran meetings with his Knights, but it wasn’t as if he’d ever stopped. He tried to stop thinking about Henry Peverell, but he had never really succeeded at that before, either. 

All in all, it was a recipe for the kind of erratic behavior Tom usually spent so long beating out of him. Boredom made him rash, snappy, and on occasion irrational…which was how he justified his presence at this Quidditch game, in any case. 

Quidditch was the sort of thing he spoke often and disdainfully about. Like all sports, it was impractical, illogical, and needlessly dangerous, as it proposed no rewards that outweighed its risks. As such, Tom only went to Quidditch games when it was socially important to put in an appearance, despite Abraxas being on the team, and despite Abraxas arguably being his closest confidant. But this was the last game of the season, Slytherin was slated to win, and they were up against Ravenclaw. 

Really, just like the last time he’d gone to a Quidditch game this year, he had only come because Harry would be here as well, but even that proved to be a disappointment. Tom searched the stands without paying a lick of attention to the first half of the game, but found no spots of wild black hair amongst the sea of blue across from them. He paid begrudging attention to the game afterwards, which meant he at least saw Abraxas’s arm getting broken by a bludger as he attempted to catch the snitch right at the end. 

And as previously established, it was more than clear that Tom didn’t really have anything better to do, and he wanted to paint himself as a merciful and giving lord outwardly, at least…so he followed the Slytherin team to the Infirmary afterwards and listened to Abraxas’s heightened tales of his suffering as he devoted equal theatrics both to his near miss of the golden snitch and the extreme and unbearable pain that he had gone through only to fail at catching it. 

Tom endured approximately two minutes of this whinging before he determined that he needed to make his polite exit as swiftly as possible…

Which was also when he noticed that one of the beds in the back corner had the curtains drawn. 

He wasn’t sure exactly what drew him to the back corner—maybe it was just the dull drone of Abraxas’s voice, or maybe it was something grander, more magical, something a lot like fate— but it drew him, so he went. He slipped away unnoticed by his fellow Slytherins, but the drawn curtain gave him pause as some delayed moral development finally kicked in to helpfully inform him that it was wrong to spy on people. But Tom had never been one for morals—not even his own—so in the end, he pulled aside the curtain. 

It was Harry. 

Of course, it was Harry. 

Harry was short, but he was not really in the practice of looking small. He looked small now, though, swathed in the bleached sheets of the infirmary and sleeping so peacefully he could be mistaken for dead. For a moment, Tom feared he was dead, but his chest still rose and fell, if fitfully. His hair had fallen back off his forehead, revealing the pale lightning-shaped scar that resided there, and the collar of his pajama shirt had been pulled away far enough to the side to reveal another scar on his collarbone—one that looked rather like the kind of scar that was made by the fangs of a snake. 

I’m not a Parselmouth, Harry had once said, with a strange sort of sadness on his face. 

Was that emotion…the result of nearly being killed by a snake?

It was a ridiculous notion, really. There hadn’t been any fear on his face when he said that, or when he heard Tom speak the snake tongue. But then again, this was Harry. Strange Harry, with his half-formed wands and his deathly eyes. This was Harry, who talked about the Deathly Hallows like they were real, who even now was marching stubbornly to his own death without a care in the world. 

This was Harry, who loved Quidditch, who had spent his House’s final match and underdog victory here, in a hospital bed. 

“Oh?” a voice said, and Tom turned his head to the side to look at Madam Foster, whom he never had cause to see himself but who he knew to be the school’s matron. She had paused by the foot of Harry’s bed, several potion vials in her hands. She stared at Tom uncomprehendingly for a moment before she blinked and smiled warmly. “Forgive me, young man. You startled me, is all. I’ve never seen a visitor here for Mr. Peverell before.”

Tom started to say that he wasn’t here for Harry at all, but paused. “No one?” he asked. “Not any of his Housemates?”

“No one,” Madam Foster clarified, moving to set her armful of potions on Harry’s bedside table, presumably for when he woke up. “He’s terribly alone, I fear. Sometimes, it’s a miracle he even makes it here when he gets like this.”

Tom wondered what like this really meant. Asleep? Pale? Near-dead?

“Will you be around for a while?” Madam Foster asked.

There was an empty chair by Harry’s bed. There were no flowers or boxes of candies on his bedside table. Nobody knew he was here. 

Nobody cared that he was quietly dying. 

Would people sit at Tom’s bedside, he wondered, if their positions were reversed? He felt that people would visit, perhaps, but none of his acquaintances were built on something so fickle as friendship. They were built on power, whatever Tom had scavenged for and fought for over the years. Would Abraxas sit by his bed if Tom took ill? Probably not. 

Would Harry?

“No,” Tom said. “I just wanted to make sure he was alright, is all. I’ll be going soon.”

Madam Foster pursed her lips, but she didn’t push. “Alright, dear. Come back some other time, perhaps. Excuse me, please.”

She left, going to tend to Abraxas and his arm, but Tom found his feet unwilling to follow, his eyes unwilling to look away. He remembered the fleeting, near nonsensical, quickly dismissed thought he had when Harry told him about his condition. Not you. 

It wasn’t that Tom was a stranger to death. He’d seen it before and never been bothered enough to care, so long as it wasn’t his own death he was contemplating. To look at someone else and think not you, to stand here now and find himself unable to move, that was something different. 

It was easy to return to normalcy when Harry’s condition was just some abstract but terrible thing he had done to himself. It was easy to cut Harry out of his life because Harry had allowed himself to be cut. 

This, though, whatever this was—it was real. 

“Fine,” Tom whispered furiously, at the side of the bed of a boy that could not hear him. “If you won’t do it, I will.”

He strode out of the Infirmary without so much as a backwards glance for the person he actually came there for, his feet determinedly carrying him to the Hogwarts library. 

Tom still did not go back to talking to Harry. 

He didn’t need to, he assured himself. They weren’t really friends. They weren’t really anything, it was just that Harry was a mystery and Tom was a thief with a proclivity for odd things, and that meant that their paths crossed for a while. But Harry could be a mystery from an arm’s length away and Tom had never been a hasty thief, so they did not need to talk. They didn’t. 

He couldn’t say why. He didn’t know why. 

But he often thought of the second brother in Harry’s story, the one who could never know love. He wondered if that was maybe the real curse after all.

Harry’s plan had three major parts to it, after he got himself to Hogwarts in the first place.

The first and most important step—Horcruxes. 

This step had gone startlingly well, too, especially considering Harry had taken a risky gamble with it. He knew he was too much of a no-name to be able to convince Tom to drop it outright. But he also knew that Voldemort and Tom Riddle by extension loved nothing more than a power play here or there, so that was exactly what Harry gave him. He showed off his knowledge, heavily implied he had a lot more, and then hoped that would be enough to convince Tom to seek him out at least once more. From there, it was just a matter of striking where he knew it would hurt most, as subtly as possible. Tom Riddle was a self-made man. He taught himself everything that made him a Dark Lord. He chose his name, he chose his visage, he chose exactly what people did and did not know about him.

He would never do something he hadn’t felt he earned. Or so Harry hoped, anyway.

The second part of the plan was not so much a plan as it was a half-panicked thought. Do not let him open the Chamber of Secrets. 

And since Harry was fairly sure to lead Tom Riddle to the Chamber of Secrets in any capacity was to invite him to open it, he knew he couldn't approach it the same way he approached the Horcruxes. The Chamber wasn't academic curiosity for Tom, it was family. And Harry, more than anyone else, understood what that word meant to someone that grew up without one. 

So, he took a different approach: monitoring. And after several wasted days and nights of sitting invisible by the second floor girls’ lavatory, it became clear to him that whatever Tom had done to find the Chamber in the first place…it had probably started in a book, not with random exploration of the castle. Which should have been obvious, considering he’d already noted that Tom Riddle was perhaps the only person he’d ever met that could rival Hermione for hours logged at the library. So, Harry went back to the library, too.

It was around this time that Harry noticed Tom was no longer looking into the Chamber of Secrets.

This is not the plan, was Harry’s first, panicked thought, when he saw the books on the Peverell family.

I can work with this, actually, was the second thought he had.

And it was true. It was the sort of insane escalation of his original plan that he felt had always been his specialty in his, Ron’s, and Hermione’s brainstorming sessions. It was their job to be reasonable, it was his job to steal a herd of Thestrals from the school and fly across the United Kingdom with his friends so he could break into the Ministry of Magic.

And this new idea…wasn’t a bad one, Harry didn’t think. It was maybe even better than his first idea. 

Which was how Harry found himself hovering in the crowd of happy families on the Platform after they’d all been released from Hogwarts for the summer. He wasn’t invisible right now even if he might as well have been, thanks to the certain brand of anonymity he enjoyed in 1942 that he had never experienced in his first life. Hardly anyone noticed him at all—not at Hogwarts and not here—and the one person that usually did was preoccupied with trying to make the fact that he was lingering look casual to all his rich, pureblood followers.

Harry wondered how this normally went for Tom Riddle. It was clear that no one had come to pick him up from the station. Would he catch a cab to Wool’s? Did he sometimes have the chance to leave with a friend, like Harry did with the Weasleys? When he was younger, had a teacher taken him home?

Unlikely, the part of Harry that had never quite stopped resenting any and all adults for leaving him at the Dursleys whispered. Hogwarts professors have never had that kind of personal involvement in their students’ lives. Remus was the only exception—and that was because he was friends with my father. 

The Platform had cleared considerably, with only a few lingering chit-chatters. Tom’s wealthy friends had all left, which meant it was time.

This would have been so much easier if they were still friends. Or whatever it was they had been, he supposed, since friends wasn’t a good word for them and never would be. 

Tom shifted minutely as Harry approached, finally noticing he was there. His shoulders straightened (though he didn’t quite iron the defeat he was feeling out of them— how much of himself had he lost with his Horcruxes, really— ) and his head turned, and he smiled pleasantly at Harry. 

He hardly ever smiled genuinely, but this was the worst attempt at a believable smile Harry had ever seen.

“Peverell,” Tom greeted him stiffly. 

Harry resisted the urge to sigh or fidget, folding his hand around the handle of his trunk tightly as he came to a stop. "Riddle," he returned, after a moment.

“Waiting for someone?” Tom asked, sounding perfectly pleasant so long as you weren’t paying attention.

Harry paid attention. He might as well, considering he had gone through all the trouble of time traveling just for him, in a way. He knew that Tom wasn’t as distant and disinterested in him right now as he was pretending to be. He had seen the books he had been reading on blood curses.

Harry reminded himself that he had been a Gryffindor once for a reason.

“You, I suppose,” Harry said.

Tom stared at him.

It was a good thing, Harry thought, that Tom had slipped up and spoken Parseltongue in front of him. It made this easier, since they weren’t friends. Or whatever it was they were.

“Me,” Tom repeated flatly.

Harry smiled, remembering a time when Tom had picked a fight with him over doing this exact echoing thing. He wondered if his usage of the tactic now was on purpose—Tom was unlike Voldemort in that he rarely did anything he didn’t intend to. “I never did return the favor,” he said slowly, “for inviting me along to Slughorn’s party.”

“Where are you going with this?” Tom asked, suddenly wary.

Harry looked pointedly away from him. “Every good pureblood has their entire bloodline memorized.”

“I thought you weren’t a pureblood.”

“I’m not, but I want people to think that I am,” Harry said. “Most people, I mean. So, it should come as no surprise that I memorized mine. My family tree. And some other family trees too, just to be in the know.”

Tom was silent, so Harry took it as an invitation to continue. “There is only one bloodline in Britain that carries the Parseltongue ability. A rather notorious one, with a well documented history. A history that ends in just one family. The Gaunts.”

Tom breathed slowly but fervently, in a way Harry had found that he did. It was like…it was like he had forgotten to breathe for a long time, and now was sucking in air as desperately but as quietly as he could. It was not a Tom Riddle exclusive—Harry could very clearly remember that it was something Voldemort had done too.

“The Gaunts go back and back,” Harry continued. “All the way back to Cadmus Peverell.” He finally looked at Tom. “Riddle isn’t a wizard name. You call yourself a half-blood—I see no reason why your mother couldn’t have been a Gaunt. I expect it, actually. That means some of my history is your history too, and I have a place where you can learn about it if that’s something you want to do.”

This was enough to break through Tom’s stony silence. This was enough, Harry noted with satisfaction, to surprise him. 

“Are you really inviting me to your home?” Tom asked. “We’ve barely spoken in months.”

Harry shrugged. “It’s a big home," he said. “Lots of rooms. If I try hard enough, I doubt I’ll even see you.”

“Just…exactly how long are you inviting me there for?”

“However long you want,” Harry said, giving Tom a considering look. He only took well—where well was an arguable term, since experience seemed to indicate a fair amount of stalking and attempts at blackmail were included—to people mysteriously knowing things about him when the things known were magical, which meant that Harry shouldn’t let on that he knew about the orphanage. Even if he had more than enough evidence to conclude that whatever Tom’s living arrangements were, they weren’t great.

“Look,” he said, adjusting his trunk like he was about to go. “It doesn’t have to be today. Or at all, for that matter. But I wanted to offer anyway, alright?”

Harry turned, and got two steps away before a hand caught him around the wrist.

I really should have been in Slytherin with master manipulator skills like these, Harry thought smugly.

“Why are you offering?” Tom asked sharply. “What do you get out of it?”

Harry smiled winningly. “The more concerning question, I think, is what do you get out of it?”

And the answer to that was everything. A place to belong outside of Hogwarts. A link to family, however distant. A chance to spend a summer surrounded by magic.

The final step of Harry’s plan was to leave something permanent behind for Tom Riddle. Something that he hoped could ease some of that ache of being cast out that Harry, more than anyone else, knew never really went away.

Tom’s face twisted. He didn’t want to accept without knowing Harry’s presumed ulterior motive. But he didn’t want to refuse either.

“Just a day,” Tom said eventually. “Just the rest of today.”

Harry grinned.

Chapter Text

For all that Tom had friends in high places, he had never had an experience like Peverell Manor. He’d toured Malfoy Manor on the multiple occasions he found himself attending a party there, but those tours had been showy and to the point, and riddled with locked doors. 

Harry, by contrast, was a meandering and honest host. He knew how to apparate—somehow, considering he apparently had no guardian and the Hogwarts lessons didn’t start until sixth year—and had taken Tom neatly to the edge of the wards, where he paused for only a moment to key access for Tom. The property was surrounded by a forest with reaching trees and dark foliage not unlike the Forbidden Forest. It was dim and cool, and Harry casually informed him that the forest’s only magical occupants were Thestrals. And that they would absolutely take a chunk out of your hide if you let them get close enough to do it, but he was doing his best to tame them. Somewhat.

“How do you even tame a Thestral?” Tom asked, voice rife with incredulity. 

“You feed them by hand and hope you don’t lose one in the process,” Harry said. 

Tom wasn’t sure if he was being sarcastic or not. 

The winding path through the treeline finally opened up into a cleared area, though trees still closed in tightly around the manor. It was smaller than Malfoy Manor, but not by much, and obviously used to be blinding white in color, though the stone had darkened with grime and age, and several vines climbed up the walls. It was overgrown, but not decrepit, and besides—

“It’s fitting, isn’t it?” Harry asked. 

When Tom looked over at him, he found Harry was already looking back, eyes sharp and keen. 

Tom quickly averted his gaze back to the manor. “Yes,” he said. 

“Pippy hates that I won’t let her trim them back,” Harry said, and then there was the familiar crack of house elf apparition. “Oh. Hi.”

“Master Henry has returned!” a small, wrinkled creature said, immediately throwing itself into a deep bow at Harry’s feet. Harry immediately seemed deeply uncomfortable with the display. 

“Yeah, I’m back,” he said. “It’s good to see you too—oh, two curtsies today? Thank you—um, Pippy—”

“Master Henry has brought another wizard with him?” Pippy asked, suddenly turning round, protuberant eyes fixed on Tom. Tom fought to keep a sneer off his face.

“Yeah. This is Tom Riddle,” Harry said, gesturing to Tom. “Tom, this is the head house elf here. Her name is Pippy.”

“Pippy is honored to be meeting a friend of Master Henry’s,” Pippy said, bowing deeply. 

“There are two other elves bound to the property,” Harry continued. “Peppy and Poppy.” Two more cracks followed the names, and Harry winced. 

“Master Henry!” two high-pitched voices yelled, and the bowing started anew. 

“Well,” Harry said, clearly somewhat out of his element. “Tom, this is Peppy, and that’s Poppy. If you need anything while you’re here, I’m sure they can fetch it for you.”

“Guest Master Tom be staying for the night?” Pippy asked, before anymore wailing and prostrating could go on. She eyed Tom with a keen expression not unlike Harry’s, which—

Actually, that was a deeply unsettling expression on a house elf. 

“No,” Harry said. “If you could take his trunk for him, though, and maybe leave it in the entry hall…?”

“Pippy be doing it, Master Henry,” Pippy said, and held out one wrinkled hand towards Tom’s trunk. 

Tom only very reluctantly allowed it to be taken from him, and then Pippy and Tom’s trunk both disappeared with a snap. 

“Peppy, if you could take mine to my room, please,” Harry said, offering his trunk to the second house elf. “Thank you. Poppy, erm…tea, perhaps? And leave it in the White Room under stasis?”

“Poppy be making the tea for Master Henry and Guest Master Tom,” Poppy said, departing with a curtsy. 

Harry breathed out a sigh. 

“You thank your house elves,” Tom said, as soon as they were alone. “Even though they’re already more than paid with the top-off they get from a wizard’s magic.”

Harry waved Tom off, continuing up towards the main double doors. “Thinking and feeling, remember? Treat the Peverell house elves with respect, by the way. This isn’t Malfoy Manor—abusing them in any way will have consequences.”

Tom scoffed. “Consequences? From a house elf?”

“Salt and sugar don’t look very different,” Harry said pointedly. “I know you’re a snake at heart, but surely even you don’t like salty tea?” 

Tom paused. “Just tell them to treat people properly. You’re their master.”

Harry snorted. “Keep it up and I’ll tell them to do it just because you’re bigoted .” 

Tom clenched his fists tightly but remained silent. Harry was his host, even if he was infuriatingly good . Even if he had been the one to invite Tom here out of the blue. 

Harry pivoted swiftly, though, back to showing Tom around. He showed him the dueling hall and the ballroom and the dining room. He pointed out the door that led to the kitchens but didn’t take him through, but did show him a study with a trick bookcase that led to a collection room. 

“I’m willing to bet they kept artifacts here once,” Harry said, as he revealed his manor’s secrets to Tom like they weren’t secrets. “And that they were probably transferred to a Gringotts vault after all the Peverells were gone.”

“You mean you haven’t looked at your own vault?” Tom asked with no small amount of surprise.

“No,” Harry said, giving him an exceptionally odd look. “No—Gringotts Vaults—I…I don’t like them.”

“No? And why ever not?”

“Once upon a time,” Harry said, in his storytelling voice, “I nearly died in one.”

“Excuse me?” Tom spluttered, but no story followed. Instead he just got not so gently herded out of the empty artifact room. 

Harry pointed out two bathrooms and ignored only one door on the first floor, before leading Tom up a white marble staircase. They stopped on the second floor, where Harry showed him a room full of antique musical instruments, all white, a library, with all white sitting chairs, and a large open room that he claimed to not really be sure of the purpose of, with no furniture, no stages, and no art on the walls. 

“It could have been a showroom,” Tom said, as he stood in the center of the space with Harry at his side and listened to the way his voice echoed back to him. “It could have once been full of art and weaponry and wonderful trinkets, all ushered off into Gringotts Vaults or the hands of descendants.”

Harry spun in a slow circle in the middle of the floor, eyes bright and head tilted back. “Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe they brewed potions here, before they moved the lab to the cellar.”

Tom hummed contemplatively, holding a hand up. “It’s drafty enough for it,” he noted. “You’d be less likely to do harm to yourself from the fumes, but it’s bright, which could be problematic for storing ingredients.”

They shared a look, some strange comradery sparking up between them over problem-solving for a mystery room, of all things. 

Harry smiled secretively. “I’ll turn it into a wand making room, maybe,” he said. “I’ll put tables in here and buy little stands for all my failed attempts and I’ll pretend not to notice when you nick the prettiest ones.”

“Sounds…lovely,” Tom said, pleased when his tone came out suitably sarcastic.

Harry laughed, softly and briefly, before continuing the tour. The third floor was where all of the bedrooms were, but that didn’t stop Harry from showing some of them to Tom anyway. There was one decked out in gold, with splotches of black that drifted along the walls and on the rug that turned into different forms the longer you looked at them.

“I call it the Twilight Room,” Harry declared, something wistful and nostalgic about his voice. 

The next room was deep blue, with silver accents and black wood on all the furniture. It was darker than any other room in the house, Tom thought, and something about it called to him. “The Midnight Room,” Harry said, like it was a very sad joke that Tom was not in on. 

He showed Tom another room, with furniture upholstered in black leather and red paint dripping down white walls a bit like it was blood, all the wood bearing an antique look, with odd little knobs sculpted into the legs of the bedframe and the chairs. 

“This is a little bit disturbing,” Tom said, unaffected.

“The Elder Room,” Harry said. “It has some of the worst interior design I’ve ever seen.”

If Tom were the sort of person that snorted in amusement, he might have done so at that. 

“There’s a greenhouse out back,” Harry said, as they closed the door on the Elder Room, “but it’s a bit overgrown. And the cellar is a bit unsafe with all the old potions stuff in there. That just leaves the White Room.”

“That’s not true,” Tom said, giving him a challenging look. “There’s another floor.”

Harry raised his eyebrows. “The fourth floor is my room.”

“All of it?”

“It is the master suite,” Harry said. 

“Am I or am I not here for the grand tour?” Tom asked, folding his arms. 

Harry sighed. He went to the staircase, though, beckoning Tom with one hand, and led him up the stairs. They opened up to a small sitting area, in an alcove nestled by the windows, and a beautiful pair of double doors opposite, which Harry opened and gestured Tom through. 

The room, like most rooms in this house, was predominantly white. The bed sat in the middle of the room, far too big for just one person, with a white comforter and fluffy white pillows, but there was some personality here as well. There was a red blanket thrown across the end of the bed, looking hand stitched. There was gold trim on some of the white furniture, a few personal effects sitting out here or there, like the well-loved copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard sitting on a nightstand, or the golden snitch that appeared to hover about their heads. Most impressive, though, was probably the ceiling—open, and letting in light. As close to the stars as man could get, without actually going outside. 

Harry snatched the snitch out of the air absentmindedly, propping open a door on the left. Tom had to tear his gaze away from the skylight to give the interior a curious look. 

It turned out to be the most ridiculous bathroom Tom had ever seen, maybe excluding the prefects’ bath, with white marble everywhere and a bathtub so large it could definitely host swimming lessons. Tom stared at it, and then stared some more, and then continued to stare. 

“Nothing says old money like a swimming pool for a bathtub,” Harry said, staring around the room with Tom. Then he tapped Tom on the arm lightly, friendly. Tom was surprised by how much he didn’t hate it. “Come on. Let’s head down to the White Room.”

Tom nodded, knowing better than to refuse a host’s direct suggestion, and allowed Harry to lead him back down to the first floor. 

The rest of the first day at Peverell Manor went like this:

Harry led Tom back to the White Room, where they took tea and made some stilted conversation. They had been acquaintances of a sort once in this lifetime, but months of no conversation had left them with very few things to talk about now. 

After tea, they took a jaunt to the overgrown greenhouse after all, where Harry whipped out his wand—the yew wand—and cast several vicious cutting spells at several greedy vines that just would not die. He had never better understood why Moody shouted ‘constant vigilance’ at random times than he did in that moment.

“Aren’t you worried about the Trace?” Tom asked, with innocent curiosity that was anything but genuine.

“I’m emancipated,” Harry said. “I’m legally an adult.”

“Are you?” Tom asked. “How does one accomplish that?”

If one was Harry, they got a Death Eater to illegally enter them in the Triwizard Tournament when they were fourteen. Or, if one was Harry, they just turned eighteen, died, and then realived themself fifty odd years in the past in the body of a fifteen year old. 

“Paperwork,” Harry said. “Probably.”

“What do you mean probably? Did you do it or not?”

“Anyway,” Harry said, deciding to throw Tom a bone in the hopes that it would end this line of questioning. “This is a magical property in the middle of a magical forest. Do all the magic you want—the ping from your Trace will be lost in the chaos.”

The bone did indeed distract him from his line of questioning, especially when he cast his own cutting curse at one of the vines and a thousand Ministry owls didn’t swoop in to ruin his life. 

After the greenhouse, they went to dinner. Which was significantly less awkward than tea had been, but only because Tom was interrogating him about how he performed wandless magic so easily. Harry couldn’t exactly tell him that it was because he had all the power and control of the Elder Wand literally engraved on his soul, but. 

There was a time when Harry didn’t have the Elder Wand and he could cast wandless magic, even if it was much more limited than his current repertoire. If he thought hard enough back to that time of his life—and did a considerable amount of skirting around all the Voldemort fighting and Horcrux hunting memories—he could recall what it had been like. 

“Imagine your magic is a well inside you,” Harry said. “And your wand is a pulley that you can use to lift a bucket out with.”

“Alright,” Tom said, but dubiously. 

“Now,” Harry said, very pointedly setting the yew wand on the table. He shot a glare at his left arm, too, for good measure. Stay out of this, he thought very firmly at his inner Elder Wand. A muscle in his arm twitched in a way that made it seem like the wand was laughing at him. “Jump inside that well. Forget the pulley, forget the bucket. You’re getting water out, and you’re getting it with your bare hands if you have to.”

He held up his hand, cupping his magic in his palm without the Elder Wand’s aid, and whispered, “Lumos.” His fingertips lit up from within with pale light.

Tom eyed his fingers greedily. “How primitive,” he said. 

“How instinctive, you mean,” Harry said, smiling. “Wandless magic isn’t Traced either, by the way. You’ll have it down within the week.” 

“Such confidence in my skills,” Tom said, but Harry could see very clearly that he was very pleased. 

Some things never changed. 

“I can afford that confidence,” Harry said, rolling his head to one side and then the other. “All wizards and witches can do magic without a wand. They’ve just trained themselves out of it because the wand is convenient. It’s a tool—a very valuable and sometimes very necessary tool—but a tool all the same.”

Tom only hummed in response, but that was all Harry needed to know that he would be awake tonight until he could get through the entire first year spellcasting curriculum without his wand.

After dinner, Harry very reasonably suggested that perhaps Tom should leave, if he wanted to make it home before the day was out. 

Tom asked to see the library one last time, just to scan the titles for anything of interest. 

So, Harry took him to see the library. He followed Tom through a few aisles of shelves, mildly amused as he watched him caress spines with naked longing. He told him that the books were charmed to stay within the Manor’s wards—which was true—just to see the annoyance and rage and determination flick across his face before he remembered he didn’t like it when his face showed emotion and pulled himself together. And then Tom had actually opened a book, and Harry promptly left. 

He amused himself with turning the empty room into a wand workshop, having liked the idea when he mentioned it to Tom earlier. All three of the elves helped him with the process—bringing tables over from who knew where and setting little stands for his dysfunctional wands on them. They stuck other stands on the walls, where Harry could hang his wands by the hilts, and placed little tags on all his projects to keep track of what they were. They moved in a chair from somewhere and a workbench and Harry unpacked his sander and his polish and all of the wood samples and unicorn hairs that he had collected from Hogwarts, which he placed in neatly labeled organizers. 

The sun set and the elves left him as Harry lit all of the candles in the room and cast a Lumos too and spun in a slow circle to take in the space. 

When he finished, he was facing Tom Riddle, who stood in the doorway, grinning in such an unguarded way that Harry couldn’t help but return the smile, even knowing who this boy was, what he had done, who he would be, what he would do. 

“Lumos,” Tom said, and the fingertips of his left hand lit up with light. He didn’t use a wand. 

Harry laughed. “I told you,” he said. 

“So you did,” Tom said, ending the spell. His face was still open, though, bright and pleased. It was easy to look at him right now and think that things weren’t so hopeless, that whatever Harry was doing was working. Maybe he wouldn’t become Voldemort after all. 

“I might need a room,” Tom added, tearing his gaze away from his fingertips to look at Harry. “Just for one night.”

And so it began. 

Harry smiled. “I sent Pippy to get the Midnight Room ready for you an hour ago.”

Tom would allow himself one night in this haven of magic and knowledge. He went to the Midnight Room—the very same that had called to him earlier, and now he couldn't help but wonder how Harry had seen— and had the best night of sleep he had ever had, even at Hogwarts. He woke up early and ate with a groggy Harry, who wandered off without so much as a word to Tom as soon as he was done. 

Tom followed Harry out into the woods, trailing after him as he tracked wild Thestrals with all the same tactics he had used to track unicorns once upon a time. He watched as Harry tried to feed them by hand—and nearly lost his hand in the process—and then dragged Harry back to the manor afterwards, arguing all the while.

He took a bath to wash the forest off of him, intending to leave and go back to Wool’s afterwards, but when he found Harry sitting in the White Room, blank and white-knuckled like the Astronomy Tower all over again, Tom found it impossible to disturb him just to tell him he was going. 

It was unusual. Empathy…was not really something he was used to experiencing. 

One of the house elves eventually disrupted Harry when it was time for lunch, and Tom stayed for that too. He stayed afterwards, letting Harry show him all of the renovations he’d made to the empty room while Tom had tried to devour the library the night before. 

He stayed for dinner, and then he slept in the Midnight Room another night.

He woke up, convinced he was going to leave today, even if he had to do it right now, but Harry was nowhere to be found. The oldest house elf served him breakfast alone, and mid-morning tea alone, and lunch alone. He finally asked the elf afterwards.

“Master Henry is being in bed,” the elf said, shaking her wrinkled head. “Master Henry is being in bed the rest of the day, at least.”

Tom thought about Harry, all small and lonely in a hospital bed at Hogwarts, and something strange and foreign unfurled inside him like a cobra spreading its hood.

He stayed another night in the Midnight Room. 

And then he stayed another, when Harry didn’t appear after the second day either. 

Then, when Tom came down for breakfast the third morning, Harry sat there in a thick white sweater despite the summer heat, looking small and sheepish as he blinked at Tom and offered him a smile. He was already scrawny, but he looked worse now with his hollow cheeks and bags under his eyes. There was a spot of blood on the collar of his sweater, probably entirely unnoticed by him. It was a place that blood would appear at if coughed up.

Tom was filled so suddenly and so quickly with a maelstrom of emotions that he had no chance of picking out a single one and identifying it. He knew this, though: if he stayed in that room for any longer, he would kill Harry himself instead of letting the curse have its way with him.

And killing fellow students was contrary to Tom’s goals, even if they were already dying.

He went to the greenhouse, looking for a fight. The greenhouse did not disappoint him, lashing out with vines and tendrils. The Peverells were a dangerous bunch if the plants in their overgrown greenhouse were anything to go by. Tom fought them viciously, under the guise of attempting to clean up the place, and they retaliated tenfold.

All in all, it ended up being a surprisingly efficient workout, when Tom re-emerged from the greenhouse a few hours later covered in blood and plant innards. 

He came face to face with a pair of green eyes, near glowing, almost as if they had been imbued with the light of an Avada Kedavra as well as the color. Tom found himself unable to speak, struck down by the fire in those eyes. 

“We have to move quickly,” Harry whispered, and then pushed past Tom and back into the greenhouse. Tom followed after only a moment, too intrigued to remain behind (though that was certainly nothing new), and watched Harry closely.

Harry drew his wand with a flick of his wrist, and then proceeded to make his way around the greenhouse. He poked every single still twitching strand of a vine with the end of his wand, and gold light trailed after him from each one. The plants decayed into dust with each touch, all of the golden light collecting into a ball that followed after him. When all was said and done and all that was left was a normal greenhouse and a thin layer of decay coating the ground, Harry stood in the middle of the greenhouse and consumed the light, for lack of a better word. 

“What in Merlin's name…?” Tom breathed.

For just a moment after he opened them, Harry’s eyes were ringed with gold. He smiled, and somehow, it was a haunting smile. “There’s another party trick for you to think back on fondly,” Harry whispered. “A little bit of necromantic healing. It’s super illegal, by the way. Not that I’d be particularly affected by Aurors hauling me off to a jail cell, but I wouldn’t like it, either.”

Tom could suddenly identify the maelstrom of emotions inside him, because all of them were pointing towards one thing— anger. 

“You can heal yourself?” Tom asked, his wand suddenly tight in his grip as he wrestled with his arm to keep from pointing his wand at Harry. “You could heal yourself this whole time and you just…what? Prefer to be weak?” 

“Not exactly,” Harry said, eying him. 

“Explain what you just did then.”

“Willing transfer of life force,” he said, meeting Tom’s gaze evenly. “The plants were already dying. I can’t take their lives from them to use for myself—they have to be given.”

“So, what?” Tom said, folding his arms. “If someone was willing to die for you, you could consume their life force, too?”

“Yes,” Harry said, so quickly that it surprised Tom. “I have done so before, actually, so that I could survive something I otherwise would not have.”

“Could it cure you?” Tom asked, suddenly interested. “If someone died for you?”

“No,” Harry said. “I know what you’re thinking—no. You can’t just ask someone to die for my curse to be lifted and expect it to work. I wouldn’t allow it, for one thing, and for another, neither would the Ministry. Besides—it’s not possible in the first place. The original curse’s caster took necromancy into account when he laid the curse. I can use it to treat the symptoms, but I’ll never be able to break the curse. Ease and delay, but never break.”

Tom glowered, but Harry, by contrast, seemed to soften, smiling sadly at Tom. “Remember when I said it’s not some grand, end all, be all ability? This is what I meant.”

Tom tapped his wand against his arm. “You just said that what you did was necromantic healing.”

“It was. I take the remaining life of your choppings, and in exchange, I get approximately a day of relief,” Harry said. “I could kill this whole forest and buy myself a few years of no symptoms. It’s not sustainable, Tom. Death and its related magics never are, so long as it’s real.”

Tom didn’t like it. He was still angry, and—and—something else. He would call it concern, if he was anyone other than himself. 

Harry sighed. “Let’s just go have lunch.”

It was only when Tom tucked himself into the Midnight Room for the fifth night in a row that he realized he had failed to leave yet again.

“Where are you going?” Harry asked, sounding legitimately curious as Tom rolled his trunk and himself swiftly down the hall and towards the front door. He poked his head out of the dining room, eyes lighting on Tom and his trunk. Infuriatingly, he looked amused. 

“Home,” Tom bit out. “I would like to not be delayed any more.”

He met Harry’s gaze, expecting a challenge. 

Harry only shrugged. “Alright,” he said. “I’ll apparate you there. I look Muggle enough, right?”

Tom blinked. “You’re allowing it?”

“You aren’t my prisoner,” Harry said, stepping out of the dining room a moment later. He did indeed look plenty muggle today, despite usually wearing robes about the Manor, with his black trousers rolled slightly at the bottoms to accommodate his shortness and his white button up. 

“How did you know you needed to dress Muggle?” Tom asked. 

“You’re dressed as a Muggle, aren’t you?” Harry responded in kind, stopping by the entrance way to pull on his dress shoes. 

“Yes,” Tom bit out, because it was true, as much as he hated it. “But why are you?” 

“I was going to go collecting today,” Harry said. “I didn’t want my robes catching on the underbrush.”

It was a lie. 

“You knew I was going to try to leave,” Tom accused.

Harry opened the door and held it for him. When Tom didn’t budge, he gestured with his hand for him to go. When Tom still didn’t budge, Harry sighed. “Yeah, I figured you might.”

“You know I live with Muggles,” Tom continued, eying Harry like he’d never seen him before. “How?”

“Seriously?” Harry asked, raising his eyebrows. “Your last name is Riddle and you didn’t know about the escort thing.”

Tom had to admit that he might not have thought that question out as much as he could or should have. 

And now, he realized he had another problem he needed to deal with.

“You are not going to apparate me home,” Tom told Harry firmly, snatching his trunk and proceeding out the front door. 

“What?” Harry asked, following him. “Why not?”

“I won’t allow it,” Tom said, instead of actually answering the question. 

“How are you going to get home, then?”

“I’ll figure it out.”

“Tom,” Harry said, still dogging his steps. “We are not in London.”

“Apparating can’t be that hard,” Tom said. “If you can do it, surely I can too.”

“No,” Harry said, with more force than Tom would have expected. “You can not do that.”

Tom kept walking. 

Harry snatched his wrist, tugging him to a stop. Tom had his wand in hand in an instant, pointing it at Harry’s forehead. Harry glanced up at the wand, but appeared neither fearful nor upset, disappointingly. He let go of Tom. “Tom.”

“I don’t want your charity,” Tom said, feeling the honesty pulled out of him entirely against his will. “I know what this is now. I don’t know how you figured it out, but I don’t need saved, least of all by you.” 

“Tom,” Harry whispered. “No one picked you up from the station. You didn’t ask to borrow an owl to write home the first night, or the second, or even the fifth. You’ve never mentioned a mother or a father, or even a parental figure at all.”

“I am not something to be pitied.”

“I didn’t invite you here out of pity!” Harry suddenly exploded, throwing his hands up in the air. “I’m not trying to keep you here out of pity either! Look at who you’re talking to, Tom! Do you see my parents here? Do you see anyone that gives any kind of damn about me anywhere here? Other than the house elves, but these house elves love me out of obligation.” 

“What do you want from me?” Tom asked, equally as frustrated. “I am not your friend!”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Harry asked. “Whose wand is pointed at me, Tom?”

Tom slowly lowered his wand, tension bleeding out of him as he did, because this was something he understood. Not affection, or fondness, or anything positive, really. This was just Harry’s loneliness, and maybe Tom’s too. In front of him was just a boy, who didn’t want to spend a summer with only house elves for company, and across from that boy was one that didn’t want to spend a summer with only frightened Muggle orphans for company, and between them were all those lonely expanses of white that made up this Manor’s landscape. 

“I can’t stay,” Tom said. “It’s probably not legal. I could get in trouble with Hogwarts, or…”

Harry’s eyes were so full of understanding it was suddenly hard to look at him. “Would anyone there really care that you’re here? Would anyone at all care, except for you, and except for me?”

They stood there for a moment, chests heaving like they’d just gotten out of a duel, eyes burning. 

Tom snatched up his trunk and headed back to the house.

Harry had gotten into wand making after he lost his job with the Aurors. Or maybe, it was more accurate to say that Harry got into wandmaking after his breakup with Ginny, since losing the job had made him twitchy which made him gloomy which led to him being single and then to him realizing something had to be done. Which led to making wands. 

At the time, he hadn’t really known why he was doing it. Maybe it was because he had to look into wand lore to get the jump on Voldemort and the Elder Wand. Maybe it was because the twin cores in the holly and yew wand had saved his life more times than not. Maybe it was because of Malfoy’s hawthorne wand—a wand that should have hated him just as its wizard did—and yet chose to fight with him instead, because Harry needed it to. 

Perhaps it was just because it was ironic. He had already realized he didn’t need a wand at all anymore. There was something poetic about someone that didn’t have use for a wand deciding to make them for those that did. 

Not that Harry was actually making any wands back then. Or even now. 

Wand making was a complicated, secretive subject, and no one person was willing to tell anyone outside of their family exactly how they did it. Harry had to figure it out for himself…but Harry had never minded a challenge. And neither, it had turned out, did he mind the process. 

He had a lot of unicorn hair to work with, thanks to the herd in the Forbidden Forest. He didn’t have any phoenix feathers and had no idea how to get heartstring from a dragon, but he figured…he could work it out with what he had. Maybe next year he would take a jaunt down to the Chamber of Secrets and politely ask the basilisk if she was willing to part with any wand core material, just for fun. And only if he could shake his Tom Riddle shaped shadow long enough to do it inconspicuously, too.

He ran his fingers over individual strands of unicorn hair, feeling for one that felt warmer than the others. He found a sample from one of the colts that seemed willing—as much as a piece of hair could seem willing, he supposed—and then eyed his wood collection. One in particular was calling to him, but it was hard to say if it was because Harry had just been thinking of a particular wand a moment ago or not. 

“Hawthorne, really?” he said with a huff, but he grabbed it all the same. 

He opened the branch up delicately, without magic. All of the wands he’d used magic on had turned out so horrendous even Harry could see that maybe magic was the problem. He didn’t cut all the way through the branch, however, just enough to get inside. He wove a strand of hair through the wood, using his fingers, feeling the wood vibrate with happiness. He had a good feeling about this one, he really did. 

Once the hair was placed, Harry reached for the wood glue, and then stopped.

“Harry,” Remus’s voice said behind him. 

“Christ,” Harry breathed, before turning to look over his shoulder. Death stood there, sheepish and scarred and wearing Remus’s face and one of his oversized secondhand cardigans, bleached to white along with his trousers and his open front robes. 

“Sorry, just me,” Remus said, raising both hands and cutting Harry a crooked smile. Harry had to give it to Death—it was a very Remus Lupin brand joke. 

“Very funny,” Harry said, giving his old and most favorite professor a look. Remus only smiled innocently at him. “What’s this about, then?”

“Can’t I just come see an old friend’s son whenever I please?” Remus asked, leaning against the table with open curiosity. “What’s all this, Harry?”

It was hard not to answer a question, when it was Remus asking. “A bit of wand making,” Harry responded, more eager than he would like to admit. “Not exactly something you probably ever thought you would see me doing, huh?”

“On the contrary,” Remus said, fingering one of the cypress samples with academic intrigue. “I always thought you would do extraordinary things, Harry.”

“I would hardly call all my failed wands extraordinary ,” Harry said, knowing he was blushing slightly and hating it but being unable to stop himself all the same. “So many have exploded in my face. I have no idea how.”

Remus hummed, leaning against the work desk in a very Remus-like way, working through the problem presented to him with a Remus-like expression on his face. 

Maybe Remus is just suited to Death’s natural personality, whatever that is, Harry thought. Then, more sadly, Maybe Remus was just suited to Death, actually. 

“Probably a volatile reaction between different magical signatures,” Remus proposed. “I’ll admit I never had much of an interest in wand lore in my life. That was more of a James thing, you know?”

Harry startled. “Was it? My dad was interested in wands?”

“Oh, sure,” Remus said. “Never to the point of making them himself, mind, but it was something he read up on more than once.” His eyes cut sharply to Harry. His eyes, sometimes, had such a way of reminding Harry that Remus was once a werewolf. “He was looking for the Elder Wand, you know. At the end.”

“He…was?” Harry asked, bewildered. 

“He thought that it could have protected you,” Remus said, tapping his fingers against the workbench. He sighed. “James loved stories, you know. He would come up with all of your bedtime stories when you were a kid, and they would get wilder and wilder the more he told. More than that,” this part was said in a conspiratorial whisper, “James Fleamont Potter could have been a Peverell too. He knew the truth that lies behind some stores.”

Harry inhaled sharply. “He was…like me? He was a necromancer too?”

Remus smiled softly. “We didn’t exactly have Necromancy as a class in school, you know,” he said. “But Transfiguration was always his best subject.”

Harry gasped a little with understanding. He had never been bad at Transfiguration before, per se, but he had definitely noticed an increase in his skill level between his Transfiguration results now than in the past. At first he had thought it was another Master of Death side effect—in the ‘having the Elder Wand’s attributes ingrained on his soul’ kind of way—but now he understood. It was because he’d learned necromancy, from a number of dusty books he pulled from the Peverell Gringotts Vault, and the two…weren’t all that different. 

Remus looked off into the middle distance, eyes faraway. “In another world, James Potter could have been my master. Clever and warm, but not always kind. Ambitious but altruistic, not seeking power to conquer the world, but power to protect another. Like you, your father had a tendency to think of his own life as the least valuable one in any particular room he walked in. He would have done well as my master, but you…” Remus looked at him, expression fond in that way that once confused a thirteen year old Harry so terribly. “You’re one of a kind, Harry.”

Harry swallowed. “You—you can be anything, can’t you?”

“I’m a bit like a boggart like that, aren’t I?” Remus joked, before seeing Harry’s expression and sobering. “It doesn’t work like that, Harry, I know what you’re thinking. I mimic forms because I don’t have a personality and way of speech that belongs to me alone. I pull those from your memories—you never knew your parents well enough for me to ‘wear’ them, as you call it.”

Harry swallowed and nodded, closing his eyes for just a second. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.” 

Remus reached out, just as hesitant while being worn by Death as he was in life, and placed a comforting hand on Harry’s shoulder. “Never feel bad for asking something. There’s no other way you can learn.”

Harry pulled himself together, nodded once again, and then opened his eyes. “You came by for something?”

“Right,” Remus said, dropping his hand from Harry’s shoulders and coughing into his hand. “I did. As it happens, there’s a young man in your library learning something I think you ought to know about.”

Harry hummed curiously. “What’s he up to?”

“Go see for yourself,” Remus said, with a glint in his eye. “You weren’t given your dad’s old cloak for nothing, you know.”

“Right,” he said, feeling his left arm warm slightly as he activated the Invisibility Cloak. He could feel it settling on his shoulders, almost like it was really there, as his hands disappeared from view. The real Invisibility Cloak, of course, was still with the Potters. 

He wasn’t surprised when Remus followed him out of the room and down the hall, his hands clasped behind his back and his expression unassuming. The strangest part of interacting with Death like this was when Death produced direct copies—and this was exactly how Remus had looked when Harry had run into him late at night in third year while he was following Peter Pettigrew's name on the Marauders’ Map.

Tom had left the library door open, which worked out for Harry, invisible as he was. It turned out to not be much of an issue, though, since Tom was so absorbed in whatever he was reading that Harry doubted he would have been noticed even if he dressed in neon robes and did ballet. 

Harry held his breath as he leaned over Tom’s shoulder, though, his eyes glancing over the page. Tom made things easier for him once again, by tracing over the letters that had so captivated him with a finger.

“The diary of Iolanthe Potter neè Peverell,” Remus breathed, stepping into Tom’s direct line of sight (without Tom even noticing) and bending to read the book. “What I wouldn’t give to get my hands on a resource like that…”

Over and over again, Tom was tracing the words ‘Little Hangleton’ on the page. Reading back a sentence, Harry saw everything he needed to know. ‘Cousin Camille has married the Gaunt boy after all. I fear she'll be taken away to Little Hangleton by him, never to be seen again.’

“Harry,” Remus said beseechingly, his honey eyes gone golden with the wolf. “I don’t need to tell you that this is an important milestone for Tom Riddle. He needs to go there sooner rather than later, but if he succeeds at killing his father…”

I get it, Harry thought, but Remus heard him all the same.

Remus smiled. “Remember,” he said slowly, “that night in the Shrieking Shack? ‘My father wouldn’t want his best friends to become killers,’ I believe is what you said. I never thanked you for that, Harry.”

An empty platitude, coming from Death, but—

“No,” Remus said, with keen eyes. “It’s true. I collected Remus Lupin once before, or have you forgotten? I know everyone I collect.”

Harry closed his eyes. 

Thanks, then, Harry thought. For putting him on today. 

“Oh, Harry,” Remus said, fading away with a smile. “It’s always a pleasure to see you. You know that.”

Harry didn’t, but it wasn’t really worth arguing over.

Not when he could worry about whether Tom was going to let him tag along to Little Hangleton or not instead.

Tom sat on his discoveries for three days and two nights. 

The first one was easy to dismiss as too delicate to bring up randomly, considering what all of his and Harry’s past arguments had been about. 

The second, though…

For all that Harry claimed Tom wasn't a prisoner and for all that it was true, that didn't change the fact that Tom couldn’t leave without Harry’s assistance in some way, shape, or form. Whether it was a Side-Along to the train station or a Side-Along to Little Hangleton itself, Tom required assistance getting there.

And saying he wanted to go there to confront his potentially long-lost family (and maybe even murder them, if the mood was right) hardly seemed like an acceptable explanation for convincing Harry to take him.

Maybe if he left out the homicidal tendencies when drafting his plea…? Harry had guessed at Tom’s possible connection to the Gaunts a lot quicker than anyone else he had met to date, Tom himself included. 

That left him with the problem of getting Harry to leave him alone once there, though, and that didn't seem likely, knowing Harry.

Which left him the option of taking the train to Little Hangleton, though figuring out how to get home afterwards would be—

Home?

Tom shook his head. Peverell Manor, he meant. It was just a slip of the tongue—Hogwarts was his only home.

That settled it then. One option and one option alone. He would have Harry take him to Little Hangleton, and if he would not leave Tom alone, he would Obliviate him and call it a day. 

Which, he supposed, left him with one last issue—the Trace. He could work around that, though. For all he knew, he was already immune to it after swapping wands with Harry.

Mind made up, he set out to find Harry. The sooner he proposed leaving the sooner he could actually leave, and the sooner he could feel like some cold thing in his chest wasn't trying to consume him whole. 

Harry, ever the enigma, was not in any of his usual haunts, however. Not in the White Room or the wand workshop or out on the grounds (unless he was out in the woods). Tom didn't check every room, granted, but he checked every room he had reason to suspect Harry was residing in.

Every room except one.

What's the worst that can happen, really? Tom reasoned with himself, staring up the staircase to the fourth floor where Harry’s rooms were. He might catch Harry in the midst of a nap or half undressed. It wouldn't be anything worse than what he had seen in the dorms countless times. 

Tom climbed the stairs. He was courteous enough to knock, at least, but when he heard nothing on the other side, he let himself in. It was Harry’s fault, really, for not locking him out. 

He looked around at Harry’s room with all the interest of an intruder, now that Harry wasn’t beside him to monitor where Tom’s eyes wandered. He saw the bed, made crisp with house elf magic, though the red throw snaked haphazardly across it like it had recently been used. He saw the snitch, flitting around aimlessly like it had before. There were no pictures on nightstands or jewelry or…anything, really.

It was the room of someone that was used to having next to nothing. Tom would know.

“Harry, Harry, Harry,” he murmured, shaking his head with each utterance of the name. How it had slipped Tom’s notice that he still knew next to nothing about Harry’s past was a mystery.

It was that thought that made him immediately aware that there was someone using the bathroom.

Harry. There was no one else. 

This is a very bad idea, his brain informed him. Entering an occupied bathroom is definitely not the same as entering an occupied bedroom.

Who said anything about entering? Tom argued with himself. I’ll knock. 

And he did, waiting an expectant thirty seconds. 

“Harry?” he called out hesitantly. 

If he focused, he could hear the soft lap of water in the bath which had alerted him to Harry’s presence in the first place, and not much else. 

“Harry?” he called louder, accompanying the name with a much louder knock. 

Still there was no response. 

Tom didn’t think any further about the repercussions—he just tried the handle. The handle jiggled—at least Harry had the good sense to lock his bathroom door—but all the same, the holly wand was in Tom’s hand in an instant. 

“Alohamora,” he whispered, and the lock clicked open. Tom opened the door quickly, taking in the expanses of white marble, the bubbles in the bath, the residual pools of water on the floor. Harry wasn’t here, unless—

Tom stepped forward and peered into the bath, some all-encompassing emotion he couldn’t name overriding any of his common sense. He spotted Harry’s ebony hair first, curls drifting languidly back and forth in the waves of the pool. He saw his face next, his shoulders—Tom’s gaze lingered, just long enough to see more marks and scars than any one person should have and catalog them—before he looked back up at Harry’s face. He was submerged underwater. He was not moving. It was entirely possible that he had already been like this through a minute and a half of Tom knocking and calling. 

Tom reached out, intending to grab Harry and haul him out before he drowned. The water was cold, burningly cold, and Tom jerked away for just a moment before gritting his teeth and diving back in. The water bit at him, cold and unpleasant, as Tom snagged one of Harry’s arms and dragged him over so that he could more easily lift Harry the rest of the way out of the water. 

Tom got a hand under each of Harry’s armpits, and then an arm around his chest, and then full-body hauled him out of the water. Harry sprawled out on the marble, limp and pale, one leg still in the pool. He was very still. Was this one of his fits? One of the ones that resulted in a lonely bed in the hospital room or two days of nothingness while he stayed up in his room?

“Harry,” Tom said, shaking him. “Harry.” 

He was fairly sure his chest wasn’t rising and falling. Tom snagged one of his wrists—pausing for only a moment as he noticed Harry had a tattoo on his left forearm, and pressed fingers against it to look for a pulse. He found one, slow, but steady. Harry was still alive, but he wasn’t waking up. What was it then? Water in the lungs? Tom clutched at his wand, feeling for sure like there had to be some kind of life-saving spell he could perform at this moment that he had never bothered to learn. 

Harry suddenly sat up. It was quick enough that Tom scrambled back slightly, despite how undignified it was to scramble across a bathroom floor. Harry looked down, first, one palm slapping against the ground curiously, another coming up to pat at his face oddly. Next, he looked slowly to where Tom was, and then he too was scrambling backwards, nearly back to the water. 

“What the hell are you doing here?” Harry demanded. Something went sailing past Tom’s head and into Harry’s hand—the yew wand, Tom realized, from a pile of clothes. He pointed it at Tom with one hand, the other reaching, clumsily, towards the other end of the bath. A towel came soaring over at Harry’s wordless and wandless Summoning Charm, which he held over his lap. 

Tom raised his hands, but he did not let go of the holly wand. “Show a little gratitude, Harry. I just saved your life?”

“Saved my life? Saved my life? From what, the bathroom?”

Tom ignored the attitude. He could forgive it just this once, since Harry was probably traumatized. “You were drowning.”

“I was drowning?!” 

“Yes,” Tom said, fighting to keep his voice even. 

Harry stared at him, green eyes wrought with some emotion that Tom couldn’t identify, his chest heaving up and down like he had been running a marathon instead of drowning himself.  Though, Tom supposed that the two things likely elicited the same reaction. The longer they stared at each other, the more Harry seemed to deflate, until eventually he grasped a corner of the towel in his lap, unfolded it slightly, and buried his face in the part he’d lifted. When he dropped the towel, he couldn’t meet Tom’s gaze. Something was different about him.  

“You were worried,” Harry said, voice whisper-soft, “weren’t you?”

Tom scoffed on reflex. “No.” 

But as soon as he denied it out loud he knew it was true—that desperate thing in his ribcage that had led him into this room even though he knew it was a violation of privacy and boundaries not even he was comfortable with…that thing was named concern. Tom wasn’t supposed to feel concern. Not for anyone except perhaps himself, and even then, he was too effortlessly good at everything to ever need his own concern. 

Or maybe it was just—

“It’s different,” Harry said in that same voice. “It’s different to watch someone die than it is to watch someone who is dying. The first doesn’t require concern, or worry, or any emotion at all,  really, if you don’t want it to require that emotion. It happens, and then it’s over. To stand beside someone that is in the process, though—that is akin to walking hand in hand with death. There’s nothing wrong with being afraid of witnessing that.”

And suddenly, Tom understood what was really bothering him. Not Harry’s death, no. This was about Harry’s attitude about his death, the fact that he could sit over there after nearly drowning, perfectly composed and calmly wise, while Tom had to sit over here with his fear and his concern. 

“I don’t understand why you aren’t,” Tom bit out. 

“Why I’m not afraid?”

“Why else?”

“Death is like an old friend to me,” Harry said. “I was born to die, Tom. I came to peace with that years ago.”

The thing that was really bothering him was that though he wanted to call Harry reckless, or careless, or foolhardy, he knew that this was not a weakness of Harry’s but a strength. He was strong in a way that Tom was not—he could face down Tom’s oldest and most debilitating fear, and instead of fearing that thing himself, he could stand beside it like he was some kind of equal. To death. 

“I wasn’t drowning.”

Tom snapped his gaze to Harry sharply. “You were—”

“Submerged, probably looking dead, I know,” Harry said. “But I wasn’t drowning. This is a potion, not water. That’s why it’s both freezing and burning to the touch at the same time. It puts you into a stasis state when you’re fully submerged, lasting for three hours. It…helps. With the pain. I wouldn’t have done it today if I knew you needed something.”

“I don’t need anything from you,” Tom said, unable to keep the bitter edge out of his voice.

Harry only smiled. “Don’t lie to yourself on my account, Tom. We both know that you wouldn’t have sought me out at all if you didn’t want to take from me.”

Take from me. 

That was what he was doing, wasn’t it? All of this, every last bit… Tom was still just a thief, and Harry was still just a particularly giving target. 

Tom had never felt so seen. 

He sighed. “I was wondering if you could take us to Little Hangleton.”

Harry’s lips pressed into a thin line. He knows, Tom thought, but there was no way he could know. 

“Let me get dressed first,” Harry said. “There’s enough light out that we could get a few hours in if we left soon.”

“You aren’t going to ask any questions?” Tom asked, raising his eyebrow. 

Harry gave him a strange, knowing look. “I don’t need to.”

For some reason, it was easy for Tom to accept that.

Chapter Text

Tom’s magic thrummed in his skin as he walked beside Harry towards the edge of the property. The holly wand that had once belonged to Harry was a heavy weight at his wrist, alight with the same anticipation that lit up the rest of his magic. Beside him, Harry had the yew wand in his hand, bone white and as pale as Harry himself. He hadn’t put it away since he stepped out of his room wearing crisp muggle clothes earlier.

Tom, as he often did, couldn’t help but wonder what Harry knew. But for once, Tom didn’t want to ask. If he asked, Harry would tell him, and…it wasn’t time.

They reached the end of the property line, the warm comfort of the wards slipping off of them like water over their shoulders. They hovered there for a moment, Tom looking down to meet Harry’s eyes, dark on green. He wasn’t sure what he saw there, but if he had to guess…

He would say Harry looked afraid.

Harry offered Tom his arm, not breaking eye contact. 

Tom took the arm offered to him as Harry stepped, pulling and squeezing them through the same tube until they landed, quite abruptly, in a patch of open air. A heavy breeze lifted a coil of black hair off of Tom’s forehead, so strongly in contrast with the calm serenity of the forest Peverell Manor was in.

“A storm is brewing,” Harry announced, his voice an omen.

Tom opened his eyes, looking around at where they were. It was a graveyard, rows upon rows of stones retreating into the distance. The plot of land Harry had brought him to was empty of a grave. 

“A cemetery, Harry?” Tom asked, trying for levity. “Really?”

"Sorry if it's not to your liking," Harry responded. The sarcasm wasn’t new, but the way he opened his mouth and then bit his lip to keep from saying anything else was. The way he didn’t quite meet Tom’s eyes afterwards was new too.

He’s wary of Legillimency, Tom realized, with the utmost certainty. But why? I’ve never used it on him. He shouldn’t know to be on guard for it around me. 

“What now?” Harry asked, no trace of his previous irritation left.

“You go back to the manor,” Tom said.

Harry scoffed. “And leave you here without any of your stuff and no way to get back? No thanks.”

“You can come back for me in, say, two hours time,” Tom offered.

Harry gave him a look. It was long and hard and calculating. “No,” he said.

“I’ll make it up to you,” Tom said, though he was fairly confident he had nothing Harry wanted. “Any favor I can reasonably fulfill for you, now or later, is yours in exchange for your departure.”

“I’m not making a deal with you,” Harry said, his jaw set stubbornly. “Whatever you’re here to do, I’m here to do it with you. If you can’t accept that, we can both leave and you can find your own way back here some other time.”

So interesting that he knew Tom was here to do something.

For a moment, he considered it. He hadn’t gotten this far without knowing how to get by on his own. Harry had already shown him this graveyard and this town—Tom would have no trouble apparating back here on his own time once he learned to apparate. 

But this place was right. Tom’s so-called family was here somewhere, he could feel it. And Tom had already waited sixteen years to get answers. He didn’t want to wait even a second more.

He could place Harry under the Imperius Curse…but no. The Trace and the wand were both still an issue, and though Tom could do a lot of spells wandlessly now, he wasn’t sure that Imperio would be one of them. 

He could still wipe Harry’s memories of this day. That was enough of a safety net for Tom to operate with.

“Don’t get in my way,” he warned Harry.

Harry only nodded once—which was suspiciously accepting of him—though his white-knuckled grip on his wand did not slacken.

“We’re going to talk to the Muggles.” Tom twisted his face up in disgust over the word. “Put your wand away so as not to draw attention from them.”

Harry looked at the yew wand still in his hand, almost like he was surprised to find it there, and then slipped it up his wrist without a complaint. That was significantly less suspicious, considering Tom knew for a fact that he didn’t need it. 

“And these Muggles?” he asked. “What will we be talking to them about?”

“We’re going to be asking them,” Tom paused for a dramatic effect, “if they’ve met anyone by the name of Marvolo Gaunt.”

He expected Harry to ask a thousand different things.

How do you know that name?

Is that what the ‘M’ on your trunk stands for?

What are you going to do if you find Marvolo Gaunt? 

Why are you looking for him when he never looked for you?

Or maybe that last question was just something Tom wanted to ask himself.

“Lead the way,” Harry said instead.

Tom eyed him suspiciously. He needed to ask how he knew so much—he needed to be concerned over how he knew so much—but he couldn't bring himself to do either. 

Instead, he led the way, and Harry followed silently behind him.

Harry remembered his sixth year very well. 

Sirius had just died, public opinion of Harry was at an all-time high, and Harry was doing his best to pretend that none of it was happening at all. He buried Sirius’s death behind a smile. He’d done the angsty, brooding teenager thing for Cedric and it hadn’t done him any favors, so he was determined to move on. Sirius wouldn’t have wanted Harry to stop being happy on his account anyway. Sirius would have wanted him to be as normal as he could be—to hang out with his friends, play Quidditch, and try dating, so that was what Harry did. 

The only blip on this otherwise flawless ‘be happy for Sirius’ plan was the lessons with Dumbledore. 

Part of Harry felt like he knew, as soon as he stuck his nose in the second memory and dropped into a pool of water to see a small Tom Riddle. He knew what he saw when Tom asked about being able to understand snakes, all casual and easy. Look at me, Tom whispered, in the words he didn’t say. Look at me, a younger Harry whispered, in all the things he did. Protecting the Philosopher’s Stone, saving Ginny from the Chamber of Secrets, trying to bring Pettigrew to justice himself, helping Cedric through the tournament, fighting against Umbridge. As much as he denied it when Draco Malfoy called him egotistical or attention seeking…it was true, to a degree. Harry did want attention. It just wasn’t the world at large he wanted attention from, it was a few people. Dumbledore, the other teachers, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, Sirius, maybe even the Dursleys. Harry wanted to be told that he was special, that he was doing well, that he was good. He didn’t think Tom was all that different in that regard. At least, not when he was still a kid.

If Harry didn’t know by the first memory, he knew by the second, by the third. He saw Tom pinning the Chamber of Secrets on Hagrid and he knew he would have done the same to Malfoy, if given half an opportunity. He saw the way Tom hunted his family down and he thought about the Dursleys. Was it so hard to believe that a different Harry, maybe a Harry that didn’t meet Ron on the train or save Hermione from the troll, wouldn’t one day return to harm the Dursleys? He wanted to say it was, but Harry knew the truth. He knew what he had been through. He knew, better than anyone, what it had done to a part of him.

He had always known. He had always understood. 

He kept his word as he followed Tom into town. He stayed silent and passive as he watched him interrogate Muggles in the street, until he’d used enough wandless Compulsion Charms on enough people to get the truth out of them. It was as good as being in the pensieve for a second time; he shadowed Tom and he did not interfere to the point where Tom had virtually forgotten Harry was still behind him as he headed through the overgrown gate that led to the Gaunt shack. 

“Hiya, Harry,” Cedric’s voice said beside Harry. Cedric materialized only a moment later, wearing the battle robes he’d worn into the Third Task. They were Hufflepuff yellow and black no longer, though, cast in the white and silver of Death instead. “You’re handling all this remarkably calmly.”

Harry closed his eyes. Of course it would be Cedric. Who else would Death look like, here near the graveyard Cedric had died in? Who else would Death look like, when Harry felt he was so close to failing?

“You hardly fail anything, Harry,” Cedric said, as he followed behind Harry. “We were tied for first place right up to the end, remember?”

Barty Crouch, Jr. was manipulating everything in my favor, remember? Harry thought back. 

Cedric laughed his good-natured Cedric laugh and grinned his good-natured Cedric grin. “Barty Crouch, Jr. wasn’t the one out there outflying dragons, now, was he?”

Harry did not sigh, but only because Tom might have heard. 

“You have a bad habit of underestimating yourself, you know,” Cedric continued conversationally. “You always have. It really is too bad we never got our Quidditch rematch—I bet if you would have gotten a chance to catch the Snitch fair and square you might have started to believe in yourself a little more.”

Harry took a deep breath. Cedric’s death was still a touchy subject for him, even after all these years. Even when talking to a copy of Cedric himself. Quit it. 

Cedric fell obligingly silent, following beside Harry as he followed behind Tom. The shack had come into view by now, and Tom was practically vibrating with anticipation even as he sneered deeper and deeper with unbridled disgust at the state his relatives lived in. 

“Do you think,” Cedric asked, in that soft voice he had once used to tell Harry to take a bath with his golden egg, “Morfin is going to die today?”

He didn’t die the first time around, Harry responded. Killing purebloods was a…more recent development, for Tom. 

He glanced at Cedric, then quickly looked away. He heard a cold, high voice— ‘Kill the spare’ — and a flash of green light. 

“It’s the amount of Horcruxes he made, I figure,” Cedric said, sounding incredibly saddened by this. “He wasn’t himself at the end. Souls aren’t supposed to come to me torn apart like that. It wasn’t fair to judge him.”

Harry wanted to ask if that was the real reason he’d been sent back to the 40s, but he refrained. 

“A bit, yeah,” Cedric said in response to Harry’s thoughts anyway. 

Harry once again did not sigh. 

“Hey, Harry,” Cedric said, voice catching with a bit of hesitancy at the end of Harry’s name. “The Resurrection Stone is in there.”

I know. 

“You’ll get it for me?” Cedric asked, with wide eyes. “You’ll bring it back?”

‘Take my body back to my father, will you?’ a ghostly version of Cedric asked, in a graveyard not too far from here, while gold light showered all around them and Harry fought for his life. 

Tom would never leave that ring behind, Harry whispered in his mind. 

“Good,” Cedric breathed. “That’s good. He’ll need it.”

Harry’s breath hitched as Cedric faded away into mist. There was only one person that Harry could think of that the Resurrection Stone could summon that Tom might need to talk to, and—

And he had no idea how that would go. 

“This is it,” Tom said, as he stood on the stoop of the Gaunt shack. “This is the family home. Some legacy this is, this—this— filth. Here you are, rolling in luxury after inheriting your family riches, and me—” 

If this was anyone else, Harry might have laid a hand on his shoulder to comfort him. But this was not anyone else, this was Tom Riddle. 

“This is not your legacy,” Harry said instead, looking at the shack. There was no snake nailed to the door like in the first memory Harry had seen of this place, nor any deranged wizards dropping from trees and acting just as proficiently with a knife as a wand (which wasn’t very proficient at all). Harry felt eyes prickling at the side of his neck, though, so he tore his gaze away from his surroundings to look instead at Tom’s darkened gaze. Harry remained steady, and as he had done since the first time he had spoken to Tom here in the past, he toed the line between what Tom wanted to hear and what he needed to hear and hoped Tom would somehow persuade himself to make better choices after hearing it. 

“Your legacy,” Harry said, knowing he was stepping dangerously close to encouraging Lord Voldemort behaviors and stepping there anyway, “is what you build for yourself, isn’t it?”

Tom breathed in as if he had been holding his breath for years, and without another word, burst through the door. It was so weak, it didn’t even require magic to do so. 

Morfin sat exactly where Harry remembered him sitting in the memory, slumped in an armchair like the dead. The Gaunt shack was coated in filth—swimming in it, practically, with grime on the floors and dust covering the furniture and moldy food sitting out on the table. Tom was equally as unimpressed as Harry was judging by his face, though he only had a second to take it all in before Morfin was out of his chair and shouting at him. This part, at least, was in English. 

“You!” Morfin bellowed, wildly pointing his wand at Tom. “YOU!” 

Harry might as well have not even been there as Morfin began to advance on Tom with little regard for his companion. 

Tom hissed out a word, and Morfin froze in his tracks. 

Harry recognized it, even if he no longer spoke Parseltongue himself. Or maybe he just remembered it—remembered the cloying feel of Tom’s leaking magic, embedding itself in that single word as much as it was embedding itself in the air around them. The Pensieve memory hadn’t done this moment justice, though. Tom’s anger wasn’t just tangible, it was all-encompassing, seeping into the floors and the walls. 

It was no wonder, really, that Morfin obeyed. That he stopped. Harry had a hard time not stopping everything he was doing himself, even without the words directed at him. 

Morfin’s responding hiss was quiet, tempered with the low caress of syllables that likely frightened most people that were not Tom Riddle and Harry Potter. Harry himself had to admit that Voldemort had been much better at this—using Parseltongue in a way that always sounded menacing. Tom was doing a good job of it right now, even with his silkier voice and his wickedly human good looks, as he responded to Morfin in the same tongue. 

Harry fanned out slightly, walking further into the shack, completely unnoticed by both parties. He took in the window that Merope Gaunt had once stood in, the stretch of floor a pot she dropped had once rolled across. He stood in the corner she cowered in after her own father nearly strangled her to death, rubbed at his own neck as he imagined the chain of a familiar locket strangling hers. 

It was no wonder Merope had been what she was, that she had done what she did. Harry had struggled to understand her the first time he was sixteen and he was watching her through another’s memory of her. He had understood the urge to leave—he understood the urge to leave better than most—but he had never understood why Tom’s father had to go with her. Why she had been willing to spell him or potion him to get what she wanted, instead of trying to find someone that could love her for who she was instead. 

The Parseltongue conversation broke into English for just a moment, Harry’s ears latching onto one word and knowing, Instinctively, that this conversation was coming to a close. Slytherin. If Morfin had mentioned Slytherin, then that meant he was talking about the locket, which meant any moment now—

Tom was the picture of rage as he raised the holly wand and cast a wordless stunner at Morfin before the elder could react. Everything after this was new territory, as this had been where the memory in Dumbledore’s Pensieve had ended. It was a good thing, too. If sixteen-year-old Harry could see what he was seeing now, he might not have been able to point his own wand at Voldemort a year later…

Because Tom was not angry, not now that the magic had already left his wand. His magic was no longer hanging thick and heavy in the air, but retreating inside of him like it had been whipped into submission by an unforgiving hand. He shook, not with rage but with fear, or sadness, or shock. He stared at his own hand like he hadn’t meant to cast the spell at all, and he quivered. He quivered . 

Harry knew this look. He’d never seen it on Voldemort—he’d never even seen it on Tom—but he’d seen it on himself, more than once. More often than not, Harry was shaking, upset only because someone else had insulted or harmed someone he knew, itching to cast a spell, any spell, just so he could direct that nameless nebula of emotion at something else, anything else. 

Maybe this is why the holly wand wanted him, Harry mused, feeling a peculiar spike of fondness for his old wand. Maybe the holly wand is for the extremely short-tempered and I no longer fit the bill. 

“What did he say?” Harry asked, soft as he could manage. 

Tom’s grip on his wand tightened. “The Trace—”

“They won’t know it was you,” Harry said. “You’re in a wizarding household. They’ll expect it to be Morfin that cast the Stupefy.” 

Tom was wooden, strangely statuesque, all of the fluidity gone from his body. “Alright,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. “Yes. I knew that.”

“What did he say to you, Tom?”

“Nothing,” Tom said, tone clipped. “Nothing that wasn’t true, anyway.” He lifted his gaze to Harry’s mechanically, his eyes dark and haunted, his lips twisted into a cruel smile. “Apparently, my filthy Muggle father came back to Little Hangleton after leaving my blood traitor of a mother, as she supposedly deserved.” His wand twitched minutely, another gesture Harry knew well. He’d garnered the same response many times standing at the wrong end of Voldemort’s wand himself. 

“If your father came back,” Harry said, because it wasn’t time to push these things, “then is he still here?”

“Is he?” Tom mused, voice still turning over syllables cruelly. “I suppose he should be, unless he got himself abducted by yet another wayward witch.” He scoffed, as if it wasn’t already clear what he thought of such a thing from his tone.

“Where, then?” Harry prompted. 

He knew where, he knew Tom knew where, he knew they were going there regardless, but if he could trust Harry—

“The big house over the way,” Tom said. “Figures that it’s my Muggle father that’s got all the wealth, all the prestige, all the land. Figures.” 

Harry took a deep breath, and he began to move. Tom’s eyes followed him, hungry and anguished at the same time, as Harry led his gaze on a seemingly random tour of the shack they stood in. He ran fingertips down a broken piece of wood in the wall. He ghosted past a cracked pan in the kitchen. He lightly tapped a broken armchair, sending dust up in the air in a cloud. He slid the toe of a shoe over a stain on the floor that had to be from blood. He stopped by where Morfin laid sprawled across the floor, and crouched down, lifting the hand that held an old ring in a golden inlay, the only thing of value anywhere in this place. 

“If you grew up with this,” Harry said slowly, “wouldn’t you want to steal everything nice you ever saw, too?”

Tom’s breath hitched. 

“I can’t imagine wizards ever showed your mother kindness,” Harry continued, as he began to work the ring off of Morfin’s hand. It thrummed happily with every brush of Harry’s fingers, the magic in the Resurrection Stone recognizing him as the Master of Death. “I doubt a man that sleeps with a knife in one hand and a wand in the other ever showed kindness to anyone, even his family. I know for a fact that our fellow wizards wouldn’t be kind to the Gaunts if this is how they lived. They sure as hell wouldn’t respect them. They sure as hell wouldn’t love them.

“The world of magic is different for you, I think. You and your Muggle last name and your dead mother and the way you look at Peverell Manor like you’ve never wanted to steal any one thing more in your life than that, man-eating Thestrals included. You were raised by Muggles, I’d say. An orphanage, most likely, considering you didn’t seem to know your father was here and that rules out his family. And Muggles never did you any favors, did they?”

Harry finally freed the ring, and lifted his gaze to meet Tom’s. He was staring back at him, face carefully blank, eyes undeniably expressive. “It’s alright,” Harry said, feeling his face soften into a smile as he said the one thing out loud he would have never dared to say to anyone in his first life. “The Muggles that raised me never did me any favors, either. It’s okay to hate them, I think. It’s okay to fear them, with their bombs and their guns. Maybe Muggles and magic were never meant to mix—but that doesn’t mean one is superior to the other, either. They can kill us. We can kill them.”

Harry stopped in front of Tom, and held out the Gaunt ring. Tom opened his hand numbly, watching with a faraway look in his eyes as the ring dropped into his palm. 

“This symbol,” Tom whispered. 

“I told you,” Harry said, as he gently folded Tom’s fingers around the ring. “You’re a Peverell too. Very, very distantly, but still.”

Tom met Harry’s gaze, something different in his eyes than before. He didn’t say anything.

Harry swallowed, overly aware of the fact that he was still cupping the back of Tom’s hand, that neither of them had pulled away or seemed like they were going to any time soon. “I don’t blame your mother for wanting what she couldn’t have. You shouldn’t either. You’re a thief and a liar. You take and you take, and then you hide behind mask after mask, ever-changing and numerous, so everyone sees only exactly what you’re willing to show them. 

“I know you want the magical world to fall into place behind you. I know you want to reshape it with your own hands. I know that you want purebloods to bow to you because they once scorned you. I know you want to live in all the luxury all of your acquaintances have wallowed in for all their lives. I know what you want, Tom Riddle. I know what you’re willing to do to get it. And I think—I don’t know, but I think— that’s something you got from your mother.” 

Harry finally took a step back, letting his hand drop. “I left you Peverell Manor,” he confessed in a whisper, “in my will.”

Tom, usually so keen to keep all of his emotions bottled up inside, looked for once like he had just been backhanded. “What?” 

“Every last tree,” Harry confirmed. “The books in the library, the ballroom, the dueling hall, the greenhouse. Even the house elves. It’ll all be yours in less than five years.”

Now, Tom looked angry. “Why would you—?”

Harry lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I won’t be doing anything with it, will I? Nor will I have children to leave it to, family members to divy up the items amongst, or friends to will my belongings to. It’s either leave it to you or put everything back under stasis, and I know what I prefer.” He smiled, a little sad, a little sharp. “Besides, I think it’ll be interesting to see who you’ll be, when you’re given something before you have the chance to take it.”

Hopefully, someone a little less lonely.

Tom stood, struck still by Harry’s words, still trying to process everything he’d just been told. Harry could forgive him this—he could still remember how it felt to wake up one day and realize he owned Number 12 Grimmauld Place. 

“Are we going to go to the big house over the way to meet your father?” Harry asked.

“Yes,” Tom responded swiftly, automatically. 

“Take this man’s wand, then,” Harry said, nudging Morfin’s wand hand with his toe. He couldn’t believe he was about to say something like this, but…well. Morfin, at least, was horrible too. “You’ll want to be able to pin anything you do on him, won’t you?”

Tom only managed a nod.

Harry thought about Dumbledore as he followed Tom down the road and towards the Riddle house. 

He imagined failing his ambiguous mission. He was already taking a backseat approach to this whole thing—it wasn’t so difficult to imagine that he wasn’t an active enough presence in Tom’s life to be able to stop Tom from killing his father and his grandparents today. Tom already had all the information he needed about Horcruxes, so it wasn’t hard to believe that he would go back to Hogwarts next year and find the Chamber and make a Horcrux out of Moaning Myrtle. And then, one thing would lead to another, and Harry would be dead from his incurable blood curse and Tom would be a Dark Lord. 

And then maybe Dumbledore would come along, collecting memories from Ogden and Morfin and Slughorn. He and Other Harry would poke their noses into his Pensieve and watch some strange, sixteen year old Harry standing in that shack and letting Tom Riddle do whatever he wanted. Dumbledore would put it all together, probably—he would remember Henry Peverell, thanks to Harry’s accidental status as ‘possibly Lord Voldemort’s one and only romantic interest’ (he really shouldn’t have gone to that party of Slughorn’s with him), and he would know that Potters are descended from the Peverells, and recount Harry’s sudden and mysterious appearance. He’d probably be stumped over how a different Harry Potter managed to time travel to the 1940s, though.

Or maybe Other Harry wouldn’t be the Boy Who Lived at all. Maybe Voldemort of the future would hear half of a prophecy and know that it referred to two children. He would hear that one was named Harry Potter and he would think of another Harry he knew once and decide for whatever reason that this meant Harry Potter wasn’t the one that was meant to die. It wasn’t impossible, Harry didn’t think—Tom seemed rather sensitive to the fact that Harry was dying, even if Harry couldn’t understand why—and it certainly wouldn’t be the first time Voldemort had gone about things the weirdest way possible due to whatever convoluted version of sentimentality it was that guided his nonsense actions. So maybe it would be Neville instead, poking his nose into the Pensieve and seeing Henry Peverell who looked like his classmate Harry Potter with more scars and tired eyes, and wonder why or maybe how.

Or maybe, far less likely but still possible, maybe Tom Riddle wouldn’t kill his own blood tonight. 

They had arrived. 

It was strange to see this house standing tall, neither overgrown nor falling apart, after spending a whole summer frequently dreaming of it at its worst with darkened halls and a baby golem of Voldemort holding court inside it. It was stranger still to see light coming from the windows, to pause where Tom paused to look inside one and see a small family all seated around an elaborate dining table. There was Tom Riddle, Sr., easy to spot thanks to his similarities to his son, though his hair was a few shades lighter and his cheekbones were a little less sharp where they carved their place out beneath his hollow blue eyes.

Voldemort has his mother’s eyes, Harry thought, somewhat deliriously. 

It was like Fate loved pointing a finger and laughing at him.

Harry gently nudged Tom towards the door, not wanting to dwell on his own thoughts. He wouldn’t put it past Tom to blow out the window and start throwing around Avada Kedavras , and he figured, at the very least, it would be easier to cover up any potential crimes they were about to commit if they left behind as little evidence as possible. 

It said something pretty horrible about himself that he knew he was probably assisting in multiple homicides and he was going along with it anyway. 

They stopped at the front door, Tom staring at the knocker like it had personally wronged him. They stood and Tom stared, and stood there some more while Tom stared some more, and then Harry reached out to knock on the door for him. Tom shot him a look, but in the fading light, it was difficult to tell if he was annoyed or if he was grateful. Probably annoyed—this was young Voldemort, after all. 

The door opened. 

Harry was not even a little bit surprised to learn that the Riddles had a butler. What had become of this butler the first time around? Dumbledore had only said three Muggles were found dead in this house—maybe Tom really had gone through the window firing Avada Kedavras at everyone in the way in Harry’s first life, and then left through that same window unnoticed by the staff. 

…He wondered what was about to become of this butler now that he was staring at Tom with wide eyes, recognition clear on his face.

“You,” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper as he stared at Tom. “You—”

The words of the day, apparently. 

Tom raised Morfin’s wand. 

Harry ran through a list of possible solutions preferable to watching Tom murder an innocent Muggle right in front of him and very quickly decided on the most insane one. 

Well, Potter. Time to pull your weight as an accomplice to homicide, Harry thought, and snapped the yew wand up before Tom could manage a spell of his own. 

“Imperio,” Harry intoned, and cast an Unforgivable Curse at a Muggle without a second thought. 

The curse landed. It had been a while since Harry had cast an Unforgivable and even longer since he cast this particular Unforgivable, but the heady rush of the magic flowing up the curse to him and back to the target was as strong as ever, tingling along his wand arm as the yew wand thrummed happily in his hand. He could see as much as feel the glazed look in the butler's eyes as his thoughts drifted quietly past Harry, muted and foggy and oh-so-open to suggestion. 

He could feel, too, Tom’s surprise. It was in the way Tom stared at him, eyes slightly wide and lips parted, like he hadn’t thought Harry was capable of casting an Unforgivable with ease. To be fair, Harry hadn’t really given him any indication that he was. To be extra fair, it was a particular skill that Harry himself wished he didn’t have.

“Let us in,” Harry suggested, using his voice for Tom’s benefit. The butler stepped back, then back again, leaving the door wide open for Tom and then Harry to step over the threshold. “Good. Now, go somewhere out of the way and get very absorbed in your work there for the next few hours. Forget that you saw us.”

The butler nodded jerkily, turned on his heel, and marched down the hall. 

Harry lifted his chin and met Tom’s gaze. “What?” he challenged.

“You can cast the Imperius Curse,” Tom breathed. “You will cast the Imperius Curse. On Muggles.”

“Don’t get used to it,” Harry whispered, as he nudged the front door gently closed with a toe. “It’s not exactly a favorite pastime of mine.”

“Why did you do it then?”

“I told you already. As long as you’re here, I’m here. I’m going to see this through to the end.” 

And he was, whether he failed this mission or not.

Tom breathed out, eying Harry consideringly. It was not a look Harry was particularly fond of. 

“They’re in the dining room,” Tom said, like he was testing Harry. “My Muggle family.”

“Then let’s go to the dining room,” Harry bit out.

“And once we’re there? What will you do then?”

“I already told you I wouldn’t interfere.”

“Except,” Tom said, finally breaking his thoughtful gaze to stride away, “you just did.”

Harry grimaced after him, but followed. 

Tom found the dining room with ease, mostly because it was the first room they came across once they left the entrance hall and the Riddles had left the door propped open. Harry came up behind Tom just in time to see the elderly man that had to be Tom’s grandfather half-stand out of his seat. 

“You!” he bellowed, staring at Tom like he had just seen a ghost. “You!” 

“I’m getting a little tired of this,” Harry muttered, without really processing that he was speaking out loud. 

He didn’t think the Riddles by large heard him, but the corner of Tom’s mouth quirked up a bit like he did. 

“You look just like—” Tom’s grandfather continued, pointing an arthritic and crooked finger at Tom. “You must be—”

“You said,” Tom’s grandmother said, in a screeching, grating tone that was all too similar to Aunt Petunia’s, “that your witch wasn’t an issue!”

Tom Riddle, Sr. was catatonic, staring vacantly at Tom. He might as well have been seeing a ghost, for how pale and slack-jawed he was. 

“What are you doing here?” Tom’s grandfather barked at him. “What do you want? Money?”

This broke through to Tom, in some way. “Money,” he scoffed. “You think I want your money?”

He was burning alive with pain. 

“You said the child wasn’t going to be able to find us!” Tom’s grandmother screeched, bringing a flinch out of Harry for how similar she seemed to Aunt Petunia. “You said you took care of it!” 

Tom Riddle, Sr. sat there and stared at his son with his hollow blue eyes. 

“Get out!” Tom’s grandfather roared. “Get out of our house! You aren’t welcome here, you—”

Tom started to raise Morfin’s wand.

“Silencio,” Harry whispered, pointing the yew wand first at Tom’s grandfather. His lips kept moving but no sound came out of his mouth, his eyes bugging out of his head as he realized what was happening. Tom’s grandmother opened her mouth, and Harry turned his wand on her, too. He cast silently this time, watching as her jaw clamped shut with wild fear, eyes as round as an owl’s as she stared at Harry frightfully.

“Harry,” Tom admonished. 

“Did you come here to listen to them?” Harry asked, a little huffy. “Or did you come here to talk to him?” 

Tom cut his eyes over to Harry, blazing with fury. “I didn’t come here to talk to anyone, Harry. Didn’t you know? Isn’t that why you told me to take this wand?”

Harry set his jaw stubbornly. “So what? You were just going to kill them, no questions asked? Don’t you want to know, Tom? Don’t you want to hear what they have to say?”

“They don’t matter,” Tom hissed. “They’re beneath me. Beneath us, Harry.”

“They are not,” Harry insisted. “They can kill us, remember?”

“And we can kill them,” Tom said. “You aren’t the only one that can cast Unforgivables, Harry.”

“No!”

“Crucio!” Tom enunciated, his wand still pointed at his grandfather. The curse connected, blood red and sickly violent, smashing into the man and sending him careening. Harry’s silencing spell held, but that only stopped them from hearing the man screaming, not the act of screaming itself. His wife stood, hands over her mouth, her chair clattering noisily to the floor behind her. 

Tom Riddle, Sr. continued to stare silently at his long lost son. 

“Tom!” Harry shouted. “Tom!” 

Tom lifted the Cruciatus Curse after only a second or two, but Harry was anything but relieved as he pointed the wand next at his grandmother and cast again. She fell too, screaming silently, limbs thrashing about and eyes wide open. Once again, Tom lifted the curse after less than ten seconds. Once again, his grandmother laid silently where she fell, tears streaming down her face. 

Tom turned his wand, at last, onto his father. 

“Tom,” Harry whispered. “Please.” 

“Please what, Harry?” Tom asked. “He’s my father. He gave me life. I should be the one to decide if he gets to keep his.”

“That’s fucked up, Tom,” Harry said. “You aren’t judge, jury, and executioner. You’re just a person. We’re all just people.”

“I am not,” Tom said, his jaw tense, “just anything.”

“Tom?” a voice cut in, quiet and afraid. “She named you Tom?”

Both Harry and Tom snapped their gazes to Tom Riddle, Sr., still sitting in his chair and staring as his son tortured his parents. Harry took in the planes of his face, trying to catalog and understand this unfamiliar expression he was making. Was it fear? He wasn’t sure that was right. 

For all Tom claimed that he wasn’t here to talk to anyone, he drew himself up when his father addressed him, and though he didn’t lower his wand, he answered the question. “Yes. Tom Marvolo Riddle.” He sneered. “That’s what she named me.”

“She—” Riddle, Sr. licked his lips, his eyes glassy with whatever emotion it was that was thinning his lips and paling his cheeks. “She—she bewitched me.”

Tom was silent, his wand still raised and pointed at his father. Riddle, Sr. swallowed visibly. 

“Are you—are you going to do it too?” he asked, his voice a whisper. “Put me—put me under your control? Are you?” 

Tom’s grip on Morfin’s wand tightened. 

Something about that phrasing…seemed wrong. 

Back when he had gone through Pensieve memories of Tom Riddle and the Gaunts with Dumbledore, they had emerged to talk theories after the first memory in which Merope’s crush on Tom Riddle, Sr. was revealed. Harry had been confused over why Tom Riddle, Sr. had left with Merope when he seemed to detest the Gaunts in the memory, Dumbledore had asked him what reason a person might behave suddenly and erratically different, Harry had proposed love potions…or the Imperius Curse. He had only seen Merope do magic once in those memories and it had not gone well for her, which was why the love potion seemed more likely. That and what Dumbledore said—it would be easy to slip into a drink for someone. 

But it was the way that Riddle, Sr. was looking at the wand— the wand—

“Mr. Riddle,” Harry said, surprised to hear his own voice. “How—how did she bewitch you? Tom’s mother, I mean.”

Riddle, Sr. licked his lips again, persuaded for only a second to glance away from Tom at Harry. “She—I was riding one day, and she—she was hit, so I got down to help her up and she pointed—she pointed this stick at me—and—and—”

Harry felt his eyes widen as the implications hit him. 

Not a love potion. 

The Imperius Curse. 

Which meant—

“What, Harry?” Tom snapped, intercepting the gaze that Harry cast his way. “Why does any of this matter?”

“I don’t want—I don’t want—” Riddle, Sr. closed his eyes, but no tears escaped from beneath the lids. “Do you have any idea what it’s like? Do you? To live every day trapped in your own mind? To watch yourself do things you never wanted to do?”

With that, Riddle, Sr. seemed to have found his fight. He stood abruptly, jerkily, like a marionette whose strings had been yanked. His chair clattered to the ground behind him just like his mother’s had before, and he took one jerky step towards Tom and Harry. Tom reflexively took a step back. 

“I won’t allow it!” Riddle, Sr. shouted. “I would rather die than—than—”

He took another step forward. 

Morfin’s wand jerked, the beginning of a familiar, lightning bolt shape. “Avada—”

It was like they were actors moving in slow motion, one Tom Riddle moving to protect himself against his own son with his fists if he had to, one Tom Riddle to moving to protect himself from his father with his wand if he had to. Mist pooled and swirled at the table, taking shape into someone else—Snape, with his hands clasped tightly on the arm rests and his legs crossed, looking hook-nosed and wrong in his pure white robes. 

“You foolish boy!” he snapped, hateful and angry and still the best in the world at getting a rise out of Harry. “Are you Lily’s son or aren’t you? Do something!”

Harry stepped, pulled himself through a straw, and landed on the other side with a crack. Right in front of the Killing Curse. 

Tom froze. Behind Harry, Tom’s father froze too. 

Harry reached for his left sleeve with his right hand. He yanked, first on the jacket sleeve, and then on the sleeve of the button up beneath it, uncaring of the button at the cuff that snapped off as he did it. He recalled, somewhat oddly, Snape doing this exact same thing at the end of the Triwizard Tournament, pulling up sleeve after sleeve to expose a writhing Dark Mark to Minister Fudge. 

“Henry James Peverell,” Tom hissed, with all the rage of ten Lord Voldemorts. “What do you think you’re—”

On Harry’s arm, the circle that represented the Resurrection Stone glowed with a soft golden light. 

“Merope Gaunt,” he said, calling with all the power of the Master of Death and the holder of the Resurrection Stone.

She came. She appeared just like Harry remembered, hazy and transparent but there, with wide eyes and hollow cheeks. Now that he was looking at her up close, maybe there was more of her in her son than just her eyes. She was there in the way he carried himself, lithe and graceful, but worn and wary too. Like a string pulled taut and close to snapping. 

“Who…?” she asked, looking at Harry, before gasping at the mark still displayed on his arm. “The Peverell coat of arms…just like…”

Harry didn’t say anything, just nodded pointedly towards Tom. 

Merope turned slowly, putting herself in profile as she did. Harry took in her thin nose and her small, pointed chin. Gaunt, he thought, Gaunt suited her. 

“Tom?” Merope asked, her voice barely more than a breath. “Tom Marvolo? Is that you?”

Harry felt Riddle, Sr. moving behind him and turned himself, just in time to catch him on the cusp of shouting. He closed his mouth when he saw Harry looking at him, though, and he sat quickly in one of the still upright dining room chairs when Harry poked him in the chest with his wand. Harry summoned ropes wordlessly, careful not to make them too tight as he coiled them around Riddle, Sr.’s wrists. 

He stared up at Harry with fearful eyes. 

“Who is this?” Tom asked, frantic, eyes darting between Harry and Merope. “Who are you?”

“Merope Gaunt,” Harry whispered. “Your mother.”

“It is you,” Merope gasped, and reached out a hand to touch Tom’s cheek. “My son.”

Tom skittered backwards, away from her reaching hand. “How…?”

“The Resurrection Stone,” Harry explained, showing his mark to Tom again. “I used it to summon her.”

“I can’t believe it,” Merope whispered, her hand hovering around Tom’s face while he watched her with guarded eyes. “You look just like…”

“My filthy Muggle father?” Tom spat, and Merope flinched. 

“He’s not—” she started, a knee-jerk reaction. “He isn’t, he’s not filthy, he’s the handsomest man I’ve ever—he’s your father!”

“He left me,” Tom hissed, some of his syllables dropping into the soft caress of Parseltongue involuntarily. “You left me. You were weak, and pathetic, sniveling after some Muggle like he’s royalty. You were supposed to be a witch. You were supposed to be stronger than that.”

“I loved your father,” Merope protested. “I loved you. I didn’t want to leave, I just—”

“Liar,” Tom snapped. 

“Tom—”

Harry made himself comfortable on top of the dining room table while Riddle, Sr. continued to watch him fearfully. He ignored him tactfully. “Imagine,” Harry said, in a low but cutting voice, as everyone in the room fell silent, all faces turning to look at him, ghostly and otherwise. “Imagine holding an Imperius Curse consistently for months straight.”

“That’s enough out of you,” Tom said immediately, but he did not point Morfin’s wand at Harry. 

“It is by no means a weak curse,” Harry said. “It eats at your power supply, the longer you keep it up. Even right now, holding an Imperius without a lot of bite to it, I can feel it. It’s hardly a strain, but it’s there, like a minor leak in a pipe, pulling one drop of my magical power source away from me every couple of seconds. Imagine it, Tom. Imagine maintaining that.”

Tom went very silent, but his eyes were loud, practically screaming. What, Harry wasn’t sure. 

“And imagine, in turn, being under the Imperius Curse for so long,” Harry continued. “I knew someone else, once, someone that lived under the Imperius Curse for years. I don't know what he was like before, but he was never exactly complete afterwards. There was always time missing in his life.  Years spent doing nothing other than surviving.”

Tom scowled at him. “What do you want, Harry? What do you want from me?”

“What you should have always had,” Harry said. Harry pointed first at Merope, who was watching him with the same pale fright she used to watch her brother and father with. “A mother that burnt her magic up just so she could have you.” He pointed at Riddle, Sr. “A father that left as soon as he could because he didn’t even know you were there.” He gestured last at the grandparents lying on the floor behind them. “People you never knew, who would rather throw money at you than talk to you. People who, I bet, nearly disowned their own son over you.”

A quiet sound from Riddle, Sr. told Harry it was true.

“What’s your point, Harry?” Tom asked, his voice a near whisper.

“My point—” Harry pushed himself off the dining room table. “—is that killing these people won’t make you feel better about what they’ve done to you. It will only scratch the surface of a deeper problem. You want to make an impact on their lives—these rich Muggles with their silver spoons—even if it’s only as they die. But why should you, Tom? Why are we here at all? Why do you need them now, even if it’s just for this?”

Tom was silent, but he was wavering. Harry could see it in the way his wand was drooping, his bottom lip quivering.

“You can do so much more with yourself than killing your father.”

“Like what?” Tom asked, and for all that he was Lord Voldemort—for all that he postured and posed and did everything alone—he was a teenager too, and he was legitimately looking for guidance. It was perhaps the first time in his life he might have done so—Harry could give Dumbledore that assumption at least—but he was asking, and he meant it.

“Like making things better for the kids that come after you,” Harry whispered. “Like coming home, instead of looking for one where you’ve never been welcome.”

“Home,” Tom said, with a breathless, humorless laugh.

Harry held his breath, not wanting to disturb this moment.

Tom closed his eyes. “Fine,” he said, and it was over just like that. Harry was surprised he hadn’t put up more of a fight.. “Let’s go home.”

Beside him, Snape stood, having watched all of this so silently that Harry had nearly forgotten he was there. He swooped upon Harry just like he was eleven and brewing a potion again and sneered impressively from beneath his hooked nose. He hesitated for just a moment, just long enough to inspire a raised eyebrow from Harry—Snape was still Snape, even when he was Death—but his old Potions professor only rested a ghostly, not-there hand on Harry’s shoulder.

“Adequate, Potter,” he said, very begrudgingly, and then faded away into mist with Merope Gaunt. Harry was left with no one standing between himself and Tom. He felt vulnerable all of a sudden, laid bare, with everything but the truth laid out in the space between them. 

“How’s your memory charm?” Harry asked, just for something to say in the moment.

Tom’s lips quirked, like something about this was cruelly amusing. “Excellent,” he confessed.

“That’s good,” Harry said, more than a little awkwardly, before turning to cast the first one on Tom’s grandmother.

“Harry,” Tom called out.

Harry paused, catching Tom’s eye over his shoulder.

“If you could,” he said, his eyes full of an emotion Harry would call sorrow on anyone else, “take all memories of me, will you?”

Ah.

Harry nodded, taking in the wide fearful eyes of this woman in front of him. Hermione had done this to her own parents once, he remembered. How terrible. How drastic. Now that he was about to do it to someone else, he couldn’t help but wonder why this was what she had resorted to.

He couldn’t help but long for a world where Hermione would have no reason to leave her parents.

“Obliviate,” he whispered, and watched the silver trail of memories leaving this woman’s head in favor of his wand.

If the holly wand had gone to Tom for his short temper and quick casting, then maybe the yew wand had come to Harry for this reason. It was a wand accustomed to hard choices and dangerous spells. It was the wand of the enforcer. The holly was for the dreamer.

He couldn’t bring himself to be upset over that loss.

Chapter Text

Tom eyed the stiff line of Harry’s shoulders as he led the way back up to Peverell Manor, and he thought.

He thought about the graveyard they appeared in, the convenient way they landed precisely on a patch of unused land and the way Harry had stared ahead like he was seeing something else entirely. He thought about Harry’s silence, his ghost-like presence as he followed Tom through the village and back towards the shack the Gaunts lived in. He thought about the way Harry slid the ring off Morfin’s finger, the casual thievery behind the action that spoke of practice, the way his palm had felt when pressed against the back of Tom’s hand.

He thought about the walk up to the Riddle house, the easy way that Harry cast the Imperius Curse, seeming for all the world like he had done it a thousand times before. He thought about the silencing spells, the rolled up sleeve of his left arm, the glowing tattoo beneath it and the way his mother’s name sounded when spoken by Harry’s lips. He thought about what Harry said to him, the words playing over and over again in his mind.

But most of all, Tom thought about how he had listened. 

Tom had never listened to someone else before. He had needed no counsel except for his own, and nary followers nor adults had ever held sway over his actions before. And yet Harry managed to convince him to lower his wand. Harry managed to convince him to lower his guard.

Tom’s fingers twitched around the hilt of the holly wand. Morfin’s wand had been returned to him and a faulty memory planted in his mind, just in case the Ministry came to investigate the magic cast at the Riddle residence. Morfin would take the fall. Tom wasn’t worried about that, but Harry—Harry worried, and in turn, Tom worried about him.

Tom knew what this was now, this strange feeling unfurling in his chest. He ought to kill Harry, to eradicate this weakness in himself before it had a chance to take root like it had in his horrid mother. He ought to be strong. Stronger. Ever superior and capable of greatness, just like he had been before. 

He ought to kill Harry, but no matter how he bid his wand to point itself at Harry’s unguarded back, his arm wouldn’t budge from his side.

Or maybe, Tom just didn’t want it to.

Harry got to the door first and opened it. He was in a stir about something—maybe his use of an Unforgivable, maybe the revelation that he could summon spirits, maybe something else—but even so, he still managed to spare a thought for Tom to hold the door open.

“Fuck,” Harry swore, as he listed sideways into a wall, propping himself up first with one arm and then with his back and both hands. “Fuck.”

Tom could allow him this, as it was reasonable to be concerned. After all, there was a very good chance that they could both go to Azkaban for what happened tonight, if Tom’s backup plan with Morfin fell through. They had both cast Unforgivables. They had both cast Unforgivables on Muggles, which would be even worse, in the eyes of the Ministry of Magic. 

“Harry,” Tom whispered, but he wasn’t sure of what he wanted to say, or what he wanted to do. 

Press Harry up against that wall he was leaning on and show him what happened to people that interfered with his plans, maybe.

Press Harry up against that wall he was leaning on and demand all of his secrets, probably.

Press Harry up against that wall he was leaning on and kiss him, definitely.

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever done,” Harry said, almost like Tom wasn’t there. “And I’ve done a lot of stupid things.”

“Harry,” Tom tried again, but he still wasn’t sure what he wanted. 

That wasn’t true. He knew exactly what he wanted from Harry right now, he just didn’t want what it meant. 

“I can’t believe it worked,” Harry said, his voice breathless. He looked at Tom now, with his eyes that were the color of the curse Tom didn’t get a chance to cast tonight. “You’re fine, though. You’re—”

Tom didn’t find out what else he was other than fine, because he swallowed whatever Harry’s next words were going to be with his lips. Harry was stiff at first, the only indication that he was a living human at all the heat coming from his body and the soft sound he made in the back of his throat. The next moment, though, Harry loosened, his lips sliding against Tom’s and one hand slipping into the hair at the back of Tom’s neck. 

Tom pulled away for a moment, just long enough to grab air and see Harry’s blown wide pupils, and then Harry was pulling him back in, kissing him again. 

And then Harry seemed to come to his senses. He placed both hands on Tom’s chest so that he could shove him back to arm’s length. Harry slid out from under Tom’s arm, escaping a few paces down the hall with one arm held slightly out in front of him, the other bracing himself on the wall. 

“No,” he whispered.

“No?” Tom challenged, more than a little hurt. “You seemed interested enough a moment ago.”

Harry closed his eyes. “No, Tom, I—I shouldn’t.”

“You shouldn’t?” Tom asked, raising his eyebrows. “You shouldn’t what? Enjoy yourself?”

“It’s not supposed to be this way,” Harry said, taking another step back. “You shouldn’t—but it’s only the love potions that…and Merope didn’t use a love potion…”

“What are you talking about?” Tom asked, before he decided it didn’t matter. “What’s wrong with taking something you want?”

“Tom.”

“No, tell me. For once, tell me something . Why shouldn’t—”

“I’m dying, Tom,” Harry said, his voice filled to the brim with sorrow and regret. “You know I’m dying.”

Tom couldn’t deny to himself that he did feel a twinge of…something, at that. But out loud, he said, “So?”

“What happens, Tom?” Harry said, finally meeting Tom’s eyes again. “What happens when I die and you don’t? What will you do then?”

“It’s just a bit of fun. It’s not that serious,” Tom scoffed.

It was.

“It is,” Harry whispered. “Isn’t it?”

Tom clenched his fist around the holly wand, and he found, for perhaps the first time in his life, that he could not lie. “It is.”

“You nearly killed people today,” Harry said, suddenly accusing. “People you didn’t even really know. What would you do for someone you actually care about? Merlin, I didn’t even think…”

Tom snapped his gaze sharply to Harry’s eyes. “You didn’t think what?”

“I didn’t think it was possible,” Harry whispered, like it was a secret meant only for the darkest hours of the night. “I didn’t think you could care about people as more than just…objects.”

Tom considered this, and he decided he could forgive Harry this former belief of his. After all, Tom hadn’t exactly thought it was possible for him to actually…want someone before either.

He took a step forward. Harry took a step back.

“We can’t,” Harry said, his voice breaking. “We—we should call it while we’re ahead of ourselves. It was just one kiss—you’ll get over me in no time, right?”

“Harry,” Tom said, and this time Harry stayed put when he took a step forward. “You don’t have to die.”

Harry closed his eyes. “There isn’t a cure.”

“There is,” Tom said. “The curse is tied to your bloodline, but it only activates when you take the name, Harry. All you have to do is change yours to something you have a legal claim to. Adoption, for instance, your mother's maiden name, whatever your name was before." Harry shook his head minutely from side to side, as if willing Tom not to say anything else. Tom did not heed him, if that really was his wish. “Marriage. A distant inheritance. Something.”

“I can’t,” Harry protested.

“You can,” Tom insisted. “Harry, why not?”

“I don’t deserve it.”

“Of course you—”

“I don’t belong here, Tom!” Harry shouted, the outburst sudden and ringing in the entrance hall. “I don’t belong. Three years, Tom. That’s how long I was given. That’s how long I’m supposed to have.”

“I don't understand,” Tom said, very carefully.

“Tom,” Harry said, before sliding the rest of the way down the wall to sit in a crumpled heap on the floor instead. He looked so small and defeated in that moment, like he had already lived a thousand lives. Tom sank to his knees beside him, slower, and with a lot more caution. He didn’t know what Harry was going to say next, but he felt like it was going to be big, whatever it was. 

Harry did not disappoint.

“Have you messed around with anagrams of your name yet, or is Lord Voldemort something you started working on after you opened the Chamber of Secrets?” Harry asked, with tired eyes.

Tom stilled. 

It wasn’t possible. No one knew—not even his Knights—not even Abraxas, and yet…

“How do you know that name?” he asked, his voice dangerous. 

“Because,” Harry said, “everyone does, where I’m from.”

Tom was silent, not knowing what he could possibly say to that.

“My name,” Harry said, “or my original name, I suppose, is Harry James Potter. Son of James and Lily Potter, born on July 31st of 1980.”

“That’s not possible,” Tom whispered.

“It is,” Harry said, his voice as quiet as death. “You know it is. Explain how I was able to claim the Peverell name, if I wasn’t descended from the line. Explain how I might know everything I know—this eclectic mix of knowledge about you that I should not have—in a way that's more believable than time travel.”

Tom couldn’t. He knew he couldn’t.

“My mother’s name,” Tom realized. “You knew it, even though I’ve never told it to you. Even though you couldn’t have heard it mentioned in my conversation with Morfin.”

“I heard it for the first time fifty or so years in the future,” Harry confessed, “when Dumbledore told me what it was while researching your past.”

Tom was silent for a moment. “Everyone knew my name, you said. Does that mean that I was…successful?”

“I think,” Harry whispered, “that depends on how you define success. If you’re asking if you managed to achieve immortality, I can tell you that you successfully made seven Horcruxes, but all seven Horcruxes were eventually destroyed. If you’re asking if you managed to gather support for your ambitions, I can tell you that you successfully did—but only the most insane of your followers were legitimately loyal to you. If you’re asking if the history books remembered your achievements, I can tell you that you successfully made your name feared and known by all, but history mostly documents your failures.”

“I don’t believe you,” Tom whispered. “It’s not possible to just travel fifty years to the past on a whim. It’s one thing there isn’t magic for—it’s not supposed to be possible.”

“A great many things are possible, when you’re the Master of Death,” Harry said, turning his left arm towards Tom to show him the mark still displayed there. “The Invisibility Cloak,” he intoned, tracing a finger over the triangle, “was originally owned by Ignotus Peverell and was passed to his eldest son. His son, childless, passed the Cloak to his sister’s son, a Potter, who passed it to his son, who passed it to his. All the way down until it came to me, given to me by Dumbledore in my first year at Hogwarts, who had been borrowing it from my father at the time of his death.”

His father’s death…supposedly at Tom’s hands. 

“The Resurrection Stone,” Harry said, tracing the circle on his mark. “Originally owned by Cadmus Peverell, and passed onto his children and his childrens’ children until eventually it ended up in one dwindling family line—the Gaunts. Until it eventually ended up here.” He pointed to the ring sitting on Tom’s finger. Tom was too shocked to properly respond. The symbol of the Deathly Hallows engraved on the stone set into the ring mocked him. “You placed a piece of your soul in this ring, in another life. Dumbledore destroyed it, and upon his passing, he left the stone to me, hidden away inside the first Snitch I ever caught until I was ready to die.

“The Elder Wand,” Harry finished, tracing the line on his mark. “Originally owned by Antioch Peverell. Taken, and taken again—it changed hands and then changed hands once more. Right now, in this life and in mine, it sits in the hands of Gellert Grindelwald. When Albus Dumbledore eventually defeats him, it will pass to him. With him it will stay until Draco Malfoy disarms him in my sixth year—under Lord Voldemort’s orders, I might add—and then with Draco it stays until its allegiance changes when I claim it in a bid to escape Malfoy Manor. In a bid to escape you.

“Then, like a good little Horcrux,” Harry said, “I marched willingly to my death—greeted Death with open arms, if you will—and in doing so became Death’s master, just like in the story. And the Master of Death is not bound by time. I was given the option to come back and save a lot of lives, magical and otherwise. It wasn’t a choice for me—not really.”

Tom couldn’t help but stare, his gaze snapping up to Harry’s. “You—a Horcrux? My Horcrux? Why?” 

Harry shifted his weight, as if getting comfortable for a long tale. “At some time before or around my parents’ death—if I was told the exact date, I don’t remember it—Dumbledore conducted a job interview with a candidate for the Divination position in a private room in the Hog’s Head Inn. The woman was named Sybil Trelawney, and though a fraud by and large, she occasionally delivered true prophecies. Towards the end of this interview, she gave one to Dumbledore.”

Harry took a deep breath, and recited: “The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches… Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies… And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not… And either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives… The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…” 

Tom connected the pieces, and he did not much like the finished puzzle. “Your birthday is July 31st, you said?”

Harry laughed bitterly. “Yes. Unknown to Trelawney and Dumbledore at the time, they had been overheard. The spy was caught by Aberforth Dumbledore after hearing only the first two lines, but it was enough. He carried the message to Lord Voldemort, and Lord Voldemort acted. He came for me on October 31st, 1981, after a friend of my parents betrayed the location of their hideout to him. He killed my father first, and then my mother when she tried to delay the inevitable by jumping in front of the spell meant for me. Last, he turned his wand on me.” Here, Harry lifted up his fringe, revealing an all-too-familiar lightning bolt scar on his forehead. “Recognize that symbol? It’s the wand movement for the Killing Curse. It rebounded .”

Tom sucked in a breath and held it, as Harry leaned forward, something intense and predatory about his eyes that he hadn’t seen in a very long time. 

“Voldemort took everything from me, Tom,” Harry whispered. “He took a lot from a lot of people—the casualties were numerous, on both sides. Multiple pureblood families died out in the process. Many more muggleborns lost their lives or got their wands snapped. I was given a chance to come back and fix it before it could happen. I’ve done that, I think.” He reached out unexpectedly, one hand cupping Tom’s cheek, the other sliding across his jaw, and he looked sad, so sad, always sad. “So, I can’t, Tom. I can’t risk undoing what I’ve already succeeded at.”

He pulled Tom forward so that he could press his forehead against his, a gesture that somehow managed to be more intimate than their kiss of not too long ago. 

“Look, Tom,” he whispered, holding Tom’s face and staring into his eyes. “Look.” 

Part of Tom didn’t want to. He wanted to turn away without irrefutable proof, paint Harry as a liar and a madman, create eight Horcruxes out of spite, and redouble his efforts to find the Chamber of Secrets…not necessarily in that order. It would be easier that way, to just go back to what he had been before, to return to what he would be. But the other part of Tom, the bigger part that was a thief first and foremost—that part could never refuse to take something that had been offered to him. 

So, for the first time since he met him, Tom looked into Harry’s eyes and dove into his mind. 

He saw a graveyard—a familiar graveyard—with a statue and the name ‘Tom Riddle’ engraved on a tombstone. “Kill the spare,” a high, cold voice said, and there was a flash of green light. A young man sprawled on the ground wearing Hufflepuff colors, handsome and very dead. There was a man, pudgy and grimy, carrying a horrifying child, with sickly thin arms and blistered skin, pale and awful, who was dropped into a bubbling cauldron and emerged again with blood red eyes, clawed fingers, and a flat, lipless face. 

A girl was lying on a cold stone floor, water seeping into her robes from the leakage on the floor around her, her red hair splayed around her head like a halo of blood. A young man stood over her, with a cruelly beautiful smile and perfectly coiffed hair. He twirled a wand in his fingers, a familiar wand—the holly wand. “Give me my wand, Tom,” a familiar voice said, higher without puberty to lower it but achingly stubborn. “I don’t think I will,” another voice—his voice, but somehow not—responded. There was a basilisk and then a phoenix, the Sorting Hat fell from the sky and from it dropped the Sword of Gryffindor. Harry grabbed it, wielding it inexpertly, but he was adequate enough to put it through the basilisk’s brain. There was a basilisk fang, a leather bound journal, ink pouring out like blood, a phoenix’s tears. 

Ice spread along the door of a train compartment, followed by a scabbed, hideous hand. A dementor opened the door, its breath already sucking, its face seeking. Harry collapsed, screaming, as he heard a woman screaming and saw a familiar green light. Silvery mist flooded the compartment a moment later. A man, a werewolf, a friend, a professor offered a piece of chocolate, before making his way out of the compartment with a Patronus wolf on his heels. 

In the atrium for the Ministry of Magic, a woman with bouncing black curls ran. “I killed Sirius Black,” she chanted, over and over, and behind her, Harry ran too, holly wand in hand. He tripped the woman, eyes alight with adrenaline and grief, reflexes quick and snappy, and at once Tom saw the origin of the boy that could cast Unforgivables without a moment’s consideration. The woman faced Harry, nothing but madness in her eyes, a smirk curving her lips. “Kill her, Harry,” a voice whispered— his voice, but older—and it was inside, not out. “You know the spell.” Harry did know the spell. Tom could see it in his eyes, in the faintly green tip of his wand. He could have cast the Killing Curse in that moment and succeeded. “Crucio!” Harry shouted instead, and the woman laughed, and laughed, and laughed. 

“We’re so proud of you, Harry,” a woman said. She was pretty and red-haired, with green eyes so like Harry’s, though off, just a little. She was vaguely transparent, just like Merope had been. In Harry’s hand there was a familiar stone. “We’re with you till the end of the line,” a man said. He was handsome, with a square jaw and oval glasses and wildly curling black hair. Harry’s father, he had to be. 

He saw a mirror, tall and proud, with a gold frame. It stood in the center of a room, and in front of it stood a young man in purple robes, with a turban wrapped again and again around the back of his head. Everything smelled like garlic and fire. The man paced in front of the mirror, desperate and frightened, until he unwrapped the turban concealing the back of his head and turned to show it to Harry, revealing a horrifying half-face on the back of his own. Slitted nostrils, red eyes, living like a parasite on the back of another wizard. 

In the cave he once led easily influenced orphans to for his own cruel amusement, Harry and a very elderly Dumbledore rode on a boat across a lake. They arrived at a pedestal, where Dumbledore and his strangely blackened hand drank poison, over and over again, until a locket appeared where the poison once was. The lake came to life, Inferi climbing out of its depths to drag the intruders under, and there were rings of fire, burning and strange, and in Dumbledore’s hand was a knobby wand Tom knew didn’t belong to the Dumbledore of his time. 

There was a hook-nosed man with lanky hair standing beside a monster of a man, as a large snake twisted around his feet, tongue flicking out periodically to test the air. “You have been a good servant, Severus,” his voice said, the words laden with the stronger s’s of Parseltongue. “Nagini.” The snake lunged, then lunged again—

And then the same snake was lunging at Harry, sinking fangs into his collar as he raised his arms to defend himself. There was a scrabble for a wand, and then a female voice casting a spell Tom couldn’t quite make out. Harry was waking up in a tent, a girl with wild, bushy hair standing over him. “You were sick, Harry,” she said. “My wand, Hermione. Where’s my wand?” Harry demanded. “I’m sorry, Harry. I must have grabbed it by accident—I didn’t—” There was the holly wand, broken in her hands. 

There was dust raining from the sky, falling on Harry while he sat in this uncomfortably cramped space, surrounded in darkness. “Get up, freak!” a gleeful voice bellowed from above. “Get up!” A grate was opened, letting slivers of light in, and then the door was unlocked. “Get out of bed, boy! Make breakfast.” A cupboard, Tom realized, as Harry moved to follow the orders of a skinny, screechy woman. He had been locked in a cupboard . 

Harry ran to the hook-nosed man’s side. He hated him, Tom could practically taste it in this memory state. Yet, Harry went to help, pressing against the man’s wounds with his bare hands, trying fruitlessly to save his life. “You have your mother’s eyes,” he whispered, and dropped a silvery tear into an empty potion vial. 

Harry stood in the Forbidden Forest, and the monster of a man stood across from him. He wasn’t alone—there were people behind him, a man so blond he had to be a Malfoy, the black-haired woman from Harry’s earlier memories. The monster laughed as Harry emerged, and Tom could still recognize his laugh, as twisted as it was. “The Boy Who Lived, come to die,” he whispered, toying with the knobby wand Dumbledore once held. “Well…Harry Potter.” And he could not avoid noticing how his voice lingered unpleasantly on that name, so full of hatred. “Any last words?” 

Harry walked through the Grand Hall, but holes had been blasted in the stone and the tables were gone. There were people standing in clumps—one red-headed family with tear tracks on their faces got a particularly long glance from Harry, as did the red-headed boy lying on the ground at their feet. Another long glance went to a boy with sandy hair, young, younger than any of these other bodies, but Tom couldn’t pick up any clue about who he was from Harry’s muted feelings. He paused in his march to look at a couple, holding hands in death, and Tom recognized the man from the train with the wolf Patronus. 

Harry stood in a ruined courtyard, backed by the sunrise. That knobby wand he had last seen in Lord Voldemort’s hand was now in Harry’s, and he eyed it with a mixture of relief and regret and anger, so much anger. The Elder Wand, Tom realized. It had to be. But the Elder Wand didn’t matter, not when there was something else demanding his attention across the courtyard, someone else. He looked small in death, with his black robes pooling around him and his paper-white skin appearing sickly and translucent in the sunlight. He looked hardly a man at all, and yet he died all the same.

There are better ways to get what you want, Harry’s voice said, echoing all around them, than a war that leaves a thousand more orphans. 

Tom slipped out of Harry’s mind, unsettled and shaking, covered in a thin sheen of sweat.

“If it’s any consolation,” Harry whispered, “I never expected to like you either.” He was silent for a moment, still, as if he was the Legillimens reading Tom’s thoughts instead of the other way around, and then added, “It’s not that I want to die, Tom. It’s that dying is all I know how to do.”

And then he let go of Tom as quickly as he had grabbed him, stood swiftly, and disappeared down the entrance hall. 

Tom did not follow.

For the last two weeks of summer, Tom only saw Harry in passing. Peverell Manor was large enough to make it a more than easy task to accomplish, though in the past he and Harry had always taken meals together, or sat in the White Room together for tea, or gone down to the greenhouse together to tend to the plant life. 

Tom hated how much he felt this loss. 

But at night he fell asleep dreaming of red eyes. Sometimes he remembered the feeling of basilisk venom seeping into his veins from the memory of the Chamber of Secrets Harry had shared. Sometimes he remembered the rows of dead bodies, lined up in the same Great Hall that held some of Tom’s fondest memories. Sometimes he remembered the faces of his future followers, pale and terrified as they stood behind him, the voice of a woman that existed only in Harry’s memories of the future as she lied to protect the one person that could possibly free her from her servitude. 

Sometimes, he dreamed of just one dead body, crumpled and small at the opposite end of the courtyard. Tom ran and ran, but the distance felt longer and longer the more he moved, until at last he arrived at the body’s side and rolled him over. And then it was not red eyes and a bald head and a noseless face looking up at him, but rather perfectly coiffed black curls, even in death, and high cheekbones and a charming smile. And then Harry would be beside him, the Elder Wand held in his hand like it was nothing special, not really, and he would give Tom that sad look, so sad, always sad.

“I can’t fail you,” dream Harry would whisper, and Tom would wake up with the ghost light of a toxic green Killing Curse embedded on the back of his eyelids. 

And then Tom would find himself standing outside the White Room, knowing Harry was inside drinking tea and thinking about death, and it was only midmorning—

And Tom could not open the doors and go inside. 

He was Tom Marvolo Riddle, a thief, a liar. Everything he had ever wanted he had taken, no matter what he had to do to get it. But on this one front, for this one person, he could not open the doors and go inside. 

Because for once— for once— Tom could look at another person and come away feeling sympathetic, of all things. And try as he might to ignore it, and he did try, he knew. 

Harry deserved better than this. Harry deserved better than him.

Tom walked away from the door every time.

Harry finished the hawthorne wand. 

Hawthorne and unicorn hair. Ten inches. Smoothed down and given a sleek black hilt, with two neat little ridges to frame either side of the palm, contrasting nicely with the brown of the rest of the wand. All of these design choices were intentional, but…

“Son of a bitch,” Harry said, when he held the wand in his hand, and for the very first time, it worked. Properly worked, instead of just working because of his ambiguous Master of Death privileges. 

And it felt exactly like Draco Malfoy’s wand, because, Harry suspected, it was. 

Or, it would be. 

Of all the wands Harry could have made, of course it would be this one. He knew it well, after all, after using it for so long. Springy and easily influenced, but most responsive under stress. And of course, he would make it now, when…

Harry closed his eyes, hawthorne wand still in hand, and sat down on the floor of his workshop. From there, he slowly pressed his knuckles into his forehead, right into the scar that once burned with pain whenever Voldemort was there. 

I’ve done enough, he reminded himself. I’ve done enough. 

But as always—

As always, he wanted to do more.

Cadmus was cursed to never know love.  

Tom thought about it often, that day he sat with Harry at the Ravenclaw table. A move Tom had never performed prior to that moment or afterwards—giving his time to another, instead of demanding they come to him—which perhaps, more than anything else, indicated that Harry had always been special to him. Or at least capable of captivating his attention in a way most people would never be able to replicate. 

He thought about the way Harry told stories, like they were the most important thing in the world, even when they seemingly had very little to do with him. 

He thought about the look in Harry’s eyes whenever he talked about the curse, the sadness, the longing, the nostalgia.

To always see it—

Did Harry want to die? He seemed convinced it was something that had to happen—like he didn’t belong in this timeline he found himself in, simply because he started in another. It seemed so unfair to demand that Harry gives up not just one life, but two…

But then again, Tom had been the cause of that lost life in the first place, so was he really one to tell Harry what to do with his second life? He didn’t think so, but Tom had never been one to refrain from making unreasonable demands of someone else. 

Though normally, Tom did not have to live with nightmares of red eyes and dead bodies. 

—but never to have it. 

Maybe, Tom caught himself thinking, this wasn’t about Harry’s curse at all. 

Time travel or not, impending doom or not, complicated history or not, Tom felt something for Harry that he’d never felt for anyone else before. Something, he suspected, he likely wouldn’t feel again. He wouldn’t call it love—he was neither stupid nor romantic, so he knew better. He knew he wasn’t in love with someone he had known for less than a year. But he could be, one day. 

He could be in love, if only Harry weren’t destined to die. 

He could be in love, if only Harry would—

If Harry would—

Maddeningly, desperately close, but always a step too late.

The Gaunts were the end of Cadmus Peverell’s line. And maybe the Gaunts carried Cadmus Peverell’s curse with them—generations of arranged marriages amongst cousins, perhaps because nothing else was available, that led to the destitution of the last of the line. His mother, so desperate for love from a Muggle, that she was willing to burn her magic away keeping him bewitched and trapped, only to die alone in the end anyway. Maybe the last dredges of that curse survived in Tom himself, bringing Harry close to him only to send him away. 

If that was the case, then maybe it was wrong that Tom’s only possible person was his time-traveling future nemesis, that in order to care about someone he required them to already know everything about him, that he was apparently attracted to the kind of person that had bested him in battle multiple times.

No—it was wrong. It was unfair to them both, these curses that plagued them. Why should they still be weighed down and trapped by the curses cast upon their ancestors? Why should they be left with no one but each other, when they were possibly the most ill-suited pair ever to exist? Why should neither of them get a chance to be happy, just because—just because—

Tom stopped, the curse he was aiming at a dummy in the dueling hall dying on the tip of his tongue and his wand. 

When had he ever let something being unfair stop him before?

He was better than this curse. Harry was too, even if Harry didn’t want to believe it right now. But he would, Tom knew he would. He was Tom Marvolo Riddle—he wasn’t going to spend the rest of his life reaching for the one thing he could have never had. He was going to take it. 

No matter what he had to do to get it. 

Tom turned on his heel, sheathing his wand, and for the second time went on a hunt of Peverell Manor searching for its mysterious second occupant.

Seven days were left of the summer. 

For seven days, Harry had been avoiding Tom. 

It was a strangely nice split, Harry thought. Seven years at Hogwarts. Seven Horcruxes. Seven days of silence. Seven more to go. Harry almost wondered if he should even go back to Hogwarts to finish his schooling—he had already done his sixth year once, he had already saved magical Britain from Voldemort twice, he had already come to terms with the fact that he was always going to die young. 

It seemed as good a day as any to sit in the White Room and hold the hawthorne wand that had defeated Voldemort in one hand and the yew wand that used to be Voldemort’s in the other. 

The yew wand was powerful, that was undeniable. Wands usually had power levels that matched their owners—strength and duress, power and completion. It was the wizard that was the ultimate deciding factor, that much was true, but there was a difference between a good wizard with a bad wand and a bad wizard with a good wand. 

Harry created a ball of light with the yew wand in his right hand, then repeated the spell with the hawthorne wand in his left. Both lights drifted in front of him, bobbing mindlessly, joining dozens of other lights he had already created this way. 

The hawthorne wand was not nearly as powerful—proven by the consistently less bright lights it produced, even when Harry cast with his wand arm instead of his nondominant hand. But it was more versatile, perhaps. More delicate. Made for fine, precise work instead of the bulldozing blitz of power that was the yew and phoenix feather wand. 

In another life, the hawthorne wand would technically defeat the yew wand. 

Seven days of silence. Seven more days of silence to go. 

The doors burst open. 

Harry turned quickly, already pointing the yew wand at the intruder even though logically there was only one person it could be. He lowered the wand as soon as he made eye contact with Tom, not wanting to send him the wrong message when he already had such a murderous look in his eye. 

Which wasn’t necessarily a good sign for Harry and his mission, come to think of it.

“What—?”

“I’m not doing this,” Tom announced to the room, his jaw set stubbornly and his eyes blazing. He said nothing else, only that, with his suddenly very alive-looking eyes.

“...Not doing what?” Harry asked, after it became clear Tom was not going to just tell him. 

“This,” Tom said. “Whatever it is you’re trying to do right now, I’m not doing it. I refuse to participate.”

Harry glanced at the lights floating around him and at the wands in his hands, and then tucked the yew wand away in its sheath and the hawthorne wand away in a pocket. “I wasn’t asking you to do anything, Tom,” he said, somewhat bewildered. 

“Yes, you were,” Tom said. “You were asking me to give up—I refuse.”

Harry’s breath hitched. 

No—what— no. He had stopped Tom from making Horcruxes, opening the Chamber, killing his father. He hadn’t stopped him from committing all crimes, necessarily, nor did he expect him to never commit a crime again—he was Tom Riddle, after all—but to say that he refused, that he was going to go back—

“You can’t, Tom,” Harry said, taking quick steps towards his…friend, he supposed. “Lord Voldemort kills so many people—not just his opposition, but people that follow him too. I thought you understood, you can’t go—”

“Not that,” Tom snapped, striding forward now where Harry had stopped. Harry felt the sudden urge to start taking steps back. “This, Harry. You. Me. I’m not going to do this— I can’t. You can’t make me.”

Harry paused in his steps backwards for a moment, which had the unfortunate side effect of carrying Tom closer to him. Harry quickly redoubled his efforts to get away, even though part of his heart still stung. Sure, he had been the one to tell Tom first that he wasn’t going to pursue a romance with him—as utterly baffling as it was that Harry would even consider such a thing in the first place—but did he really have to…salt the wound, so to speak?

“I’m not making you do anything,” was all Harry managed as a protest, though, before his back hit the far wall of the White Room. 

Tom stopped in front of him, not touching him, but close enough to. “Harry,” he whispered, his voice bizarrely hoarse as his eyes bored into Harry’s. “I’m going to explain something very clearly to you.”

“Please,” Harry snarked, one eyebrow rising in irritation. “By all means. Explain something clearly.” 

“I get the things that I want,” Tom said. “I’m not some seventeenth century maiden that sits up in an ivory tower wishing and waiting and accepting. No, when I see something, I take it. So, I refuse—I refuse— to sit here, a room or two away from something I want, and ignoring it. I’m not going to do it.”

Harry took a sharp breath in, but Tom wasn’t done. 

“You will live, Henry Peverell. You will live for five years, for ten, for fifteen, for twenty. You will live, you will stand right here—” He pointed emphatically beside him. “—and you will stay there. Forever, preferably, because I have absolutely no intention of not trying to cheat death just because you said no.”

“Hold up for just a moment—”

“No,” Tom said, his jaw clenched. “I don’t care that you think you deserve to die because of some curse, or some time travel, or whatever it is you think you have to die for. You won’t do it, because for whatever reason I’ve decided I like you, and I keep the things that I like.” 

He stopped at last, his chest heaving, his eyes wild. Harry stared at him, and he stared back.

It was like dueling with Voldemort. Like somehow this sterile room had come to life with color when Harry wasn’t looking, and then trapped all of that color in this quandary of a boy in front of him. It was the light of a thousand Killing Curses burned permanently into his memory. It was  like coming home. 

“You don’t get to order me around,” Harry said, instead of any of that. 

Tom scoffed. “Yes, I do. I’ll give you whatever orders I want to give you. And in return—”

“That hardly seems like a good basis upon which to build a relationship.”

“— in return, you will order me around. You will give me orders until you’re blue in the face, if that’s what you want to do, and I might listen to some of them.”

It was the warmth of a fire on a cold winter’s day. It was the edge of a threatening smile hidden behind a pleasant face. Like a bag full of stolen odds and ends, an eclectic mix of items spilling their stories all over the floor. It was something to do, something to think about, like blood spilling out of veins and mingling with the cold water of a dozen busted bathroom sinks. 

Harry reached out and pressed his palm against Tom’s chest. His heart beat beneath his fingers, rapid and quick, like a rabbit running from a wolf. Did Voldemort’s heart ever beat like this? Harry wasn’t so sure. 

“If I say no?” Harry asked, as softly as possible.

“Then I’ll make fourteen Horcruxes, just to spite you,” Tom said, closing his fingers over Harry’s hand and holding it there, against his heart. “I’ll open the Chamber of Secrets and kill every mudblood in the school. I’ll find my way back to Little Hangleton and murder the Riddles. I might even murder my uncle too, just because I can. I’ll stage a hostile takeover of the Ministry of Magic. I’ll use the Cruciatus Curse on every person that looks at me funny, and I’ll acquire at least three man-eating snakes and feed them appropriately.”

Harry couldn’t help it—he laughed. It was hardly the most romantic love confession he had ever heard, but he had to give it to Tom. It was definitely the most unique. 

“Stop that,” Tom said, but he was smiling just a little too, cruel and smug like he knew he’d already won. Some things, Harry supposed, would never really change. “This is a serious moment. I meant everything I said.”

“I know you did,” Harry said, and finally met Tom’s kinetic eyes. 

“Harry,” he said, voice whisper-soft. “Survive for me, Harry. Survive so that we can live together.”

Ah, bollocks. 

And wasn’t that exactly what Death had said at the start? Go where he was needed, where he could learn to survive while the other lives, because if he didn’t either must die at the hands of the other…

“I think,” Harry confessed, “I might have been going about this time travel thing all wrong from the start.”

“Oh?” Tom asked, blinking once. 

“Yeah,” Harry said, swallowing. “Why bother going back at all, if you’re not going to do anything drastic to the timeline, like romancing your future enemy?”

For all that Death claimed they couldn’t do it earlier, Lily Potter suddenly stood in front of him, with fiery red hair and an all white version of the clothes she must have died in, beaming so brightly it was almost like looking at the sun. 

“Well done, Harry,” she said, and pressed a kiss to his forehead. It felt remarkably like a goodbye. “You’ll stay out of my grasp for a long time yet, okay, Harry? I knew you could do it, my brilliant boy. I will always love you.”

She pressed a sensationless hand against Harry’s left arm, fingers curling around the mark that resided there. Harry gasped, slightly, as he felt the mark tingle—not painfully, but enough that he was very aware of it. Then, curiously, she pressed her other hand to the same place on Tom’s right arm.

Tom hissed in either pain or surprise. “What the hell—?” 

Lily cast Harry a mischievous grin, tying it all off with a cheeky wink. “One of the many privileges of being Master of Death, you’ll find,” she said conspiratorially, “is that you can share.” 

She pressed a finger into her lips, and then faded away into mist. 

Tom let go of Harry’s hand so that he could pull up his sleeve quickly, staring at the mark there. Harry peered at it too, curious, and tried not to laugh again as soon as he saw. 

“The Deathly Hallows,” Harry said, because right there they were, cast in silver ink. 

“Just like…” Tom trailed off.

Harry grabbed his sleeve, rolling it up. Sure as the sun would always rise, his mark was still on his skin, but faded to silver instead of stark black. He held his arm out next to Tom’s, comparing the marks, but there was nothing to compare. They were exactly the same. 

“What does this mean?” Tom asked, his eyes boring into Harry’s. 

Finally, Harry did laugh, grinning up at Tom. The teenaged, slightly less murderous version of his former worst enemy just frowned back. It was endearing, strangely. 

This was absolutely, without a doubt, easily the stupidest thing Harry had ever done. 

“The Master of Death is supposedly immortal, you know,” Harry said, and then he kissed Tom Marvolo Riddle on the mouth. 

He had to give it to Dumbledore, if begrudgingly. Maybe the power of love wasn’t complete Hippogriff dung after all. 

Chapter Text

Harry Potter watched with a morbid kind of fascination as Ron’s furry goblet wiggled a little rat tail at him dejectedly. The sight brought forward thoughts of Harry’s Uncle Peter (who was not his uncle by blood but might as well have been), which then brought forward thoughts of the last time Ron had spoken to Peter. He felt bad for Peter, honestly, but he couldn’t help but feel like there was something about this situation that screamed poetic justice, for Peter was the reason Ron’s wand was broken in the first place. 

As with most disasters, as his mum liked to say, it began with Quidditch.

Ron had been staying with him for a week over the summer—a week in which Ron had been equal parts intrigued by all of the Muggle odds and ends Harry’s mom kept about the house (and Ron still thought he wasn’t a mini version of his dad, honestly) and impressed by his father’s mildly problematic tendency to hoard everything that had anything to do with Quidditch, possibly that he had ever seen in his entire life. Which meant, coincidentally, that his father had not one, not two, but seven broomsticks—“Enough for a whole team!” he would proclaim proudly, to anyone who would listen…which was mostly just Uncle Remus, because he tolerated anything and everything Harry’s father did for reasons unknown to Harry himself—and Ron had said he’d never ridden on a Nimbus before, any Nimbus, so they had dug a three year old Nimbus out, and a two year old Nimbus, and the Nimbus that had just came out, and a broom for Sirius too (because Sirius was always there) and they took to the Quidditch Pitch. His father’s Quidditch Pitch, naturally, because his father was the exact brand of eccentric that kept a carefully concealed Quidditch Pitch in the backyard of his four bedroom cottage in Godric’s Hollow. 

It started off great. Ron loved the Nimbuses— all of the Nimbuses, because there were now four in play—and even though he wasn’t much for catching Quaffles and Bludgers were more likely to beat him than get beaten and Ron spotting the Snitch was simply out of the question, he could Keep like no one else Harry had seen, except every professional player ever and Oliver Wood. But Oliver Wood, as his dad theorized, had actually sold his soul to a devil to transcend to Quidditch godhood, and so was immune to judgment and comparisons from mortals such as them. 

Harry’s dad, as he often reminded his easily charmed friends that had a tendency to overlook  the truth, was weird. 

And then, Peter had burst into their home, as his dad’s friends all did, all the time, in a right tizzy, because Peter—innocent, round-faced, easily flustered Peter—had knocked up that big-titted lass from the Leaky.

His words, not Harry’s. Shouted very loudly. To Sirius, with no heed of who else might be on his father’s (nice, but unnecessary) backyard Quidditch Pitch. 

And Ron had promptly crashed the Nimbus 2001. 

Harry, who was used to this sort of thing, had landed to help Ron up like a champ. His dad landed to help too—trying to be charming again, even though everyone present knew James was useless at everything when he was panicking (and he was definitely panicking)—and Harry had grimaced when Ron took a wand that used to be whole and together out of his pocket and discovered that it was now snapped clean in two. 

“What have you got a wand on my dad’s backyard Quidditch Pitch for?” Harry asked, but sympathetically. 

“What have you got a wand on my backyard Quidditch Pitch for?!” James also asked, but anxiously. “Bad Things Happen on my backyard Quidditch Pitch!”

And this was true, undeniably, because as Harry’s mom so eloquently put it when telling stories—as with most disasters, it began with Quidditch. 

Sirius, because he was useless all the time instead of just when he was panicking, was off merrily making everything worse for Peter’s poor nerves, completely by accident. 

It was alright, though, because Harry’s dad gave Ron double the amount of money he would need to buy a wand right there on the spot, and then Harry’s mum gave him double the amount of money again when she heard what had happened, and then after Sirius had made everything worse and Remus had burst into their home (as all his dad’s friends did all the time) and made everything better, Peter came and offered Ron half the galleons it would take to buy a wand since it was his fault in the first place. In his defense, he thought that was how much wands cost. And Ron could buy four and a half wands at this point, since Ron had a tendency to just keep anything handed to him, so really, it was fine. 

Why Ron hadn’t actually managed to get a new wand after that point was beyond Harry, but if he had to guess, he suspected it had something to do with his dad’s chaos. It was like a disease, James Potter’s chaos. It infected any and all beings that interacted with it. Only Harry and his mum were immune. And maybe…Remus. Remus was something of an enigma, Harry suspected, even to Remus himself. 

“Hey, Ron,” Harry said, in the present time. “Why didn’t you end up getting a new wand, after Dad broke yours?”

Strictly speaking, the breaking of Ron’s wand was not technically his father’s fault. But strictly speaking, Harry felt like his dad should be responsible for any and all nonsense that happened in the world. Especially when that nonsense happened on his backyard Quidditch Pitch.

“Oh,” Ron said, and turned the color of his hair. 

Oh, no, Harry thought. He’s going to say something endearing and wholesome, isn’t he? 

“I gave the money your parents gave me to Fred and George—”

Harry sighed. 

“—so they could use it to buy items for the joke shop thing they’re trying to open, and also convince them not to use me as product testing ever again—”

Harry sighed deeper.

“—and the wand was fine after I taped it together, so I figured…I didn’t really need a new one anyway?”

“Ron,” Harry said, clapping his best mate on the shoulder, “never change.”

Gryffindors, honestly. 

Speaking of Gryffindors—but the brand of Gryffindor that spawned the Lilys and Hermiones and Remuses of the world instead of whatever lunacy produced Jameses and Siriuses and Rons—McGonagall had caught sight of Ron’s…creature. His attempt. A very good attempt, considering Ron was the kind of good little brother that gave his wand money to his conniving older brothers. All the same, the look on McGonagall’s face indicated that Ron’s grade surely was going to pay for this blight upon McGonagall’s eyesight. 

Things could be worse, Harry mused, as McGonagall descended upon them. Uncle Severus could teach a class that requires ‘foolish wand waving,’ for instance. I would never find Ron’s body then. 

“Mr. Weasley,” McGonagall said, giving Ron a very unimpressed look from over the rim of her glasses. “What is the meaning of this?”

Ron held up his Spellotaped together wand as an answer. 

McGonagall, at least, was just as horrified by this solution as Harry had been when he’d first seen it himself. And she, at least, didn’t even know Ron could have had four and a half wands that weren’t this wand, if he had just held onto his own money like a reasonable person. 

“Mr. Weasley,” McGonagall said, but like Ron was in real trouble now. “You will see Professor Riddle at once.” 

And for Ron, that was the very definition of ‘real trouble.’

Harry perked up at the mention of his favorite professor, though. “I can escort him, Professor?” he offered, trying not to sound too eager. He thought he did a good enough job of it, considering his brain was not so quietly chanting Defense Against the Dark Arts Defense Against the Dark Arts Defense Against the Dark Arts on loop. 

Ron groaned very, unfairly, loudly. 

McGonagall smirked. 

Wasn’t that…a disconcerting expression. Nightmare fuel, if you would. Harry was suddenly grateful she wasn’t his Head of House, but then again, he was usually grateful she wasn’t his Head of House, because he liked his own quite a bit. 

Favorite professor, and all. 

As much as it chafed Severus’s delicate sensibilities to lose out. 

“Professor Henry Riddle, Mr. Potter,” McGonagall said. “Not your Head of House.”

“Huh?” Ron asked. 

“Huh?” Harry agreed. 

McGonagall, if possible, smirked even more. “If you paid attention to introductions at the Welcoming Feast, or even, perhaps, anything other than Quidditch—” Unfair, Harry protested, but silently. He only had one room stacked with Quidditch paraphernalia. His dad had three. “—you would know that there are two Professor Riddles on staff at Hogwarts. The one you will be seeing, Mr. Weasley, is the Magical Crafting professor, not the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.”

“Magical Crafting?” Harry repeated, wrinkling his brow. 

“Riddle’s got a brother?” Ron all but shouted.

“An elective, Mr. Potter,” McGonagall said, unhelpfully. And then, significantly more helpfully, “And no, Mr. Weasley. They are married, not siblings.”

“Married,” Ron repeated, dumbfounded. 

“Married,” Harry echoed, raising his eyebrows. 

Professor Riddle. His awesome, awe-inspiring, absolutely terrifying Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. Married . 

“Yes, Mr. Weasley, Mr. Potter,” McGonagall said, clearly getting frustrated with them. “Married. You will see me after class, Mr. Weasley, and I will give you instructions to Professor Riddle’s office.”

She retreated, rather stern even in her departure, and Harry looked at Ron, wide-eyed. 

“I can’t believe it,” Ron said. “Riddle’s got a husband.” 

“I’m going with you,” Harry said, very firmly. “I’ll never believe it if I don’t see it with my own eyes.”

Behind them, Hermione Granger cleared her throat. 

Hermione Granger was a particular specimen of witch that was hard to describe in any concise way. Harry wasn’t close to her—a very good argument could be made saying no one was really close to her—and though normally talking in class was beneath her (aside from raising her hand to answer questions, all questions), she occasionally deigned to speak with the plebeians that did. Usually only when something of great interest came along. 

She was like the amalgamation of all of Remus’s worst traits and all of his mother’s worst traits rolled into one. Harry loved her from afar in a weird, impossible-to-explain-to-adults-in-a-satisfactory-way, way. Which was really just his way of saying he valued his own ego far too much to actually have a conversation with her, but when given the opportunity, would do just about anything to hear what she had to say. 

“You’ll take me with you,” she told Ron, in her no-nonsense way. “If Potter can go, I should be allowed, too. I’ve been wanting to talk to the Magical Crafting professor for ages.” 

“What?” Ron responded, indignant. “No way are you—”

Harry stepped on his foot, and Ron cut off with a yelp.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” he said, in Ron’s stead. He even offered her a cheeky little bow he was fairly sure his dad would be proud of. “Shall we carry you upon our shoulders like the lowly life forms we are while we’re at it, too?”

Hermione rolled her eyes at him. Four out of ten, he decided. He’d seen her do better. Especially since the effect was ruined by her trying not to laugh. “You’re so immature, Potter.”

Harry shrugged. She wasn’t necessarily wrong, he supposed. After all, if he’d learned anything from his dad, there was no power so strong as the one that could make outcasts laugh. 

“You’re the weirdest best mate I’ve ever had,” Ron informed Harry, like this was something he did not already know, and then sighed. “Alright. Whatever. It’s not like it’s my appointment. Maybe I should just invite all of Gryffindor Tower along too…?”

“Invite the Slytherins too,” Harry said, tapping the snake badge on his chest. “Inter-House unity is important, Ronald.”

Ron only sighed and, in a show of true despondency, banged his head against the table.

He was trying not to laugh, though. 

Harry smiled. 

As with most things, it started with Defense Against the Dark Arts. More specifically, it started with an advertisement in the Daily Prophet for the Defense Against the Dark Arts position at Hogwarts. 

Things had been going well for Tom. He had traveled Europe, establishing connections and learning about the Dark Arts wherever he could. Harry had traveled with him, collecting materials for his now relatively successful wand making hobby. Harry was also establishing connections, but with the wandmakers of the world instead of politicians and people of power—though Harry had pointed out, smugly, that being a wandmaker gave you considerable power, an argument Tom had been forced to concede—and though witches and wizards of other European countries were just as close-lipped about their family wand making tactics as English wizards were, Harry was piecing together his own how-to guide from what they were willing to share. 

Afterwards, they returned to Britain. Tom was all set to start pushing whatever legislation he wanted around the Ministry, operating from the shadows and through his web of native and international people of influence, except the advertisement. His old dream of influencing the hearts and minds of young school children reminded him it hadn’t exactly died, except there was one problem.

Dumbledore was headmaster. 

Harry hummed, leaning over Tom’s shoulder with a cup of tea and skimming to discern whatever it was that had gotten Tom in a mood. “Ah. You should go for it, Tom.”

“You said Dumbledore refuses to hire me,” Tom pointed out, careful to neither pout nor glower over it. 

“Right, but that was a different life. In this life, you haven’t killed a fellow student, got another fellow student falsely convicted, made multiple Horcruxes, and amassed an army.”

Tom hummed, unconvinced. 

Harry cleared his throat. “You also didn’t elope with a sweetheart the day after you turned eighteen the first time around.”

“That was only because—”

“I was dying and I needed to change my name, I know,” Harry finished. “And that’s true for us . But from an objective standpoint, Dumbledore has no reason to suspect we only eloped suddenly because you wanted to rub it in my face if it did end up being enough to break the curse and I had nothing better to do. He likely thinks it’s touching and romantic.”

“Hm,” Tom allowed, considering it. “It’s true that being married has done nothing but boost my reputation in the past…”

“Exactly,” Harry said, patting Tom’s shoulder before going to sit down. “Nobody knows me very well, so they just imagine me as some sweet object of your devotion to fit their idea of an average couple. And I gave up my pureblood name to take yours, which is some kind of statement. And normally people only elope when they are very in love, so…”

“Are you saying we weren’t?” Tom asked, but his smile undermined his serious tone. 

Harry smiled back, green eyes glinting. “Reckon that’s the only time we’ve ever been normal.”

And Harry’s hunch turned out to be correct, because for all that Tom despised Dumbledore, the man himself no longer seemed to feel the same way about Tom. He twinkled and smiled and offered candy and marveled over all of Tom’s experience and connections and then said, “Well, Tom. You’re certainly the most qualified of the applicants, and it would be wonderful, simply wonderful, to have you back at Hogwarts. We’ll have to meet again to go over your lesson plans, of course, but what do you say?”

“I would love to accept,” Tom said, smiling in a pleasantly threatening way. 

And then there were some parting pleasantries and a lot of smiling and firm handshaking and Tom was halfway out the door when Dumbledore said, “Oh, Tom. I forgot to ask. How is Henry doing?”

Harry, Tom suspected, was a genius in all matters concerning people . “He’s doing well,” Tom said, making sure he looked extra pleased and sappy to be asked about his life partner. “He’s rather the accomplished wandmaker these days.”

“Is that so?” Dumbledore said, twinkling all the while. “I had heard something along those lines. Do you think Henry would be interested in a position at Hogwarts as well? There is a course I’ve been thinking of adding that I think he might be just the man for.”

“I’ll be sure to ask him,” Tom said. “Though I’m sure he would appreciate it if you could send over an owl with more details over what course it is you’d like to add…?”

“Of course,” Dumbledore said, and twinkled Tom out of the door. 

“I think he’s under the impression you keep my worst tendencies in check,” Tom said, as Harry eyed the rather extensive letter that had arrived by owl earlier that day, three days after Tom’s interview. 

“Don’t I?” Harry asked, but Tom could tell he was horribly amused. 

“In a manner of speaking, I suppose,” Tom said. “I have very little opportunity to act on my worst tendencies when you beat me to them yourself. What’s the course?”

“Magical Crafting,” Harry said. “A workshop class that teaches basic skills used in broommaking, wandmaking, and other enchanted objects.”

“Well,” Tom said, humming pleasantly. “He was right. You are perfect for teaching such a class.”

Harry lowered the letter, his green eyes gleaming with mischief. “I am, aren’t I?”

“And it would be easier to enact our plans if we lived and worked together, naturally.”

“Your plans.”

“Ours,” Tom corrected pleasantly. “Besides, there is one other benefit.”

“Mayhem,” Harry agreed. “Two Professor Riddles running about. We can confuse all the poor school children.”

Tom paused, as this had not exactly been a consideration of his, but he could admit it had merit. “Well, yes. But I was referring to the people. I’ll get to meet all the youngest and brightest and endear them to me, and you—” He reached out, though not far, and pressed a kiss against Harry’s knuckles and then his wrist. “—get to see your family again.”

Harry shifted, casting the letter to the side with a sigh and scooting closer to Tom. His eyes were sad, so sad, always sad…but hopeful, too. “Let’s not talk about that,” he said. Which was fine by Tom. He didn’t need to talk about it with Harry to know that it was just as important to him as it was true.

He knew him well enough to know those things now.

The Magical Crafting classroom and workshop took up half a floor. Harry had made sure he picked out the closest available space to the Defense Against the Dark Arts corridor, and had spent a summer converting the largest, most expansive room into a workshop for his students. The adjoining room was a classroom, complete with desks and chairs and blackboard, which was used for lecturing on theory. The second largest room in the corridor had been converted into his personal workshop, and beside that, tucked away in a door that could easily be mistaken for a closet, was Harry’s office. 

He was the only professor that had been allowed to demand so much space for one class, which was a fact he rubbed in Tom’s face whenever he could. 

Even though it often made it difficult to discern where the knocking was coming from when students came to see him.

Harry finally found the students responsible—all three of them, apparently—small in that way only first and second years could be. There were two Gryffindors and a Slytherin, judging by the robes—a ginger, a girl with bushy hair, and…

No way.

“Looking for me?” Harry asked, leaning against a wall casually and trying not to sound too choked up all of a sudden. Three children spun around in alarm, eyes wide like they’d been caught committing a prank and not knocking on a door a hall away from where any of Harry’s numerous classrooms were. 

And it was them, undeniably so, like three little memories come to life. Well…not exactly. Hermione was the same with her pristine robes and her wild hair and her lively eyes. Ron was the same, complete with a smudge on his nose and a set of second hand robes. Harry Potter was different, though. He was taller than Harry had ever been when he was twelve, and his glasses were significantly less awful than what Aunt Petunia had forced upon him. There were the Slytherin robes too, though that wasn’t a surprise—Harry had been there for the Sorting, and dealt with Tom’s smugness afterwards. This Harry was still lean, but he wasn’t scrawny, and most notably—his forehead was devoid of a scar. 

“That depends,” Hermione said, drawing herself up in the same way she always used to when she was trying to impress adults. Merlin, having that directed at him was going to be weird. “Are you Professor Riddle?”

“The one and only,” Harry said. 

He could always appreciate a little irony. 

“Sweet Salazar,” Harry Potter whispered, eyebrows rising incredulously. “You are? You really are? Professor Riddle has a husband?”

“I do,” Harry said, smiling innocently as he deliberately misinterpreted the question. 

Harry Potter blinked once like he didn’t know how to react to a teacher being as snarky as him. Harry only smiled a little sadly at him before broadening his attention to all three students. 

“Well?” Harry asked, folding his hands behind his back to hide how they were shaking. “You aren’t in any of my classes, so you three must be here for some other reason, yeah?”

“Professor Riddle,” Hermione said, enunciating very clearly. Harry still wanted to laugh at the weirdness of this, but still refrained. “I was hoping I could ask you a few questions about the class you teach. Like, what exactly is it you—”

“Bloody hell,” Ron interrupted. “Don’t listen to her! It’s my wand we’re here for, not any of that.”

Harry couldn’t help the amused twitch of his lips. Some things never changed, he supposed, and Ron and Hermione would always fight like cats and dogs. “What seems to be the trouble with your wand?”

It was very easy to see what the trouble with Ron’s wand was as soon as he dug it out of his pocket. It was just like Harry remembered from his second year—Ron’s old wand, Spellotaped together and likely barely functional. In that life, Ron’s wand had snapped when they crashed Mr. Weasley’s flying Ford Anglia into the Whomping Willow. He doubted that was the case in this life. For one thing, teachers were horrible gossips (and Tom the worst of all) so Harry absolutely would have heard about it if a student attempted such a thing. For another, Harry Potter and Ron Weasley should have had no reason to fly themselves to school, since there were no errant house elves trying to stop the diary Horcrux from possessing children and unleashing a basilisk on the castle to murder all muggleborns. 

“I see,” Harry said, taking in his friends from another life. He held out a hand, still minutely shaking, but Ron didn’t seem to notice as he passed the broken wand over glumly. “And how did this happen?”

“My dad broke it,” twelve year old Harry offered immediately, before somewhat remembering his manners when Harry looked at him and added, “Sir.”

And if that wasn’t something Harry himself used to do all the time, too. 

“Your dad snapped his wand?” Harry asked, confused. That didn’t necessarily sound like the James Potter he knew—especially since in some weird twist of fate James had always been one of Harry’s best and brightest students—but James also got into all kinds of things he shouldn’t, and everyone else usually ended up getting dragged into those things after him. 

“Well, not on purpose,” Small Harry said. “It was my dad’s chaos field that broke it. Ron brought a wand onto his backyard Quidditch Pitch.”

Harry couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Alright, then,” he said. “You three better follow me.”

“Where to?” Ron asked, wrinkling his nose in confusion. 

“The room you were actually supposed to be looking for me in,” Harry said. Then, something occurred to him. “What are your names?”

There. Better he ask now than get questioned about why he mysteriously knows them later. 

“I’m Hermione Granger,” Hermione said, with all the same posturing she had used to introduce herself to Harry and Ron on the train compartment in their first year. 

“Ron Weasley,” Ron added glumly. “Oh, I have a note from McGonagall to explain to you…”

“Professor McGonagall,” Harry corrected, because he knew Small Harry would hate it. True to prediction, Small Harry snorted behind him. Harry took the note Ron handed him all the same, though, reading it through. Professor H. Riddle, it read, because Minerva usually refused to participate in Harry’s brand of double name chaos, Mr. Ronald Weasley’s wand has been affecting his performance in class. Please accommodate him in whatever way you can. Signed, Professor McGonagall. P.S. Mr. Weasley will be accompanied by Ms. Hermione Granger and Mr. Harry Potter. 

“You’d be Harry Potter, then,” Harry said to Small Harry, like he didn’t already know this. “That figures. You look just like your parents.”

Small Harry blinked at him. “You know my parents?”

“Just how young do you think I am?” Harry asked, amused. 

Small Harry eyed his graying hair contemplatively. “Forty?” he proposed. “Forty-five?”

Harry barked a laugh at that. “I’m sixty-six, Harry,” he said. And it was a good thing, too. When he had actually been forty-five, the resemblance between them would have been undeniable. Now it was at least masked by crow’s feet and graying hair and salt and pepper facial hair. James had noticed their similarities back when James was a student, actually, and much to Harry’s amusement, had spent all of his third year combing through his family tree trying to find a mention of his ‘long-lost uncle.’ 

Small Harry looked comically traumatized by this revelation, though. Harry wondered why…

But. He had other things he had to attend to here besides his uncannily young and happy not-quite self. 

Harry turned Ron’s broken wand over in his hands, listening to the magic humming through it. It wasn’t quite dead yet, but dying. It had been broken for a long time, which was why Charlie had replaced it when he graduated Hogwarts in the first place. “Ash,” Harry commented, as he ran a pinkie finger down the oddly conical wand. “And unicorn hair…twelve inches, right?”

“Yeah,” Ron confirmed. “It was—”

“Charlie Weasley’s wand,” Harry finished. “It still is Charlie Weasley’s wand, as a matter of fact—you haven’t won it from him.”

“Won it?” Ron questioned. 

“Not that you would,” Harry continued, but kindly. “Unicorn hair wands are rarely won over by other wizards after they make their first choice.” Which was something Harry hadn’t known when he’d taken Draco’s hawthorne and unicorn hair wand from him at Malfoy Manor. “I figure the same kind of core will suit you, though, considering this wand presumably worked reasonably well for you prior to being snapped.”

Harry sat the wand down on his work table and moved among his stores, three inquisitive children following behind him and eying all of his wand making ingredients. He ought to have told them to stay put in the part of his workshop that didn’t contain valuables, but…oh well. It was Ron and Hermione, after all. And himself. It would be strange to tell them they couldn’t follow him somewhere. 

“Do you teach your students how to make wands, Professor Riddle?” Hermione asked curiously. 

“Seventh year,” Harry answered. “Only about one student a year successfully makes a wand by the end of the course, though.” He turned over his shoulder just in time to see Hermione setting her tiny jaw, and couldn’t help but laugh. “That’ll be you then, Hermione?”

“Do you really think I can?” she asked, eyes glinting with determination. 

“I think you can do anything you set your mind to,” Harry said, reaching where he kept his willow samples. “That goes for all three of you, of course. You’ll find, though, that some people are better at certain things than others—for instance, my husband, though well-versed in wandlore and crafting tactics, has never actually made a wand. And as for me, though well-versed in dueling, warding, and dark creatures, I have perhaps a sliver of the knowledge that he has. The important thing is always being happy with what you do.” Harry held up a willow branch to Ron, comparing the magic within them both, and grinned when he found it was a near match. “That’s willow for you, Ron.”

Ron looked at the branch Harry was holding with a mixture of curiosity and awe. “Wait…are you making me a wand?”

“Of course,” Harry said. 

“Can I watch?” Hermione asked, practically vibrating. 

Harry laughed. “I’m afraid not. It’s not something that’s done in a day, you know.”

Small Harry reached out with curious fingers, running a pinkie down a twig just like Harry had done to Charlie’s ash wand a moment ago. “My mum’s got a willow wand,” he said. 

“She does,” Harry agreed. “It suits her.”

“What’s it mean?” Ron asked. “Having a willow wand?”

“Well,” Harry explained, as he began leading them over to where the unicorn hairs were kept. “Willow wood is more conducive to healing arts, as well as more advanced charmwork. They supposedly improve nonverbal casting, and are somewhat unusual. Unusual enough that I’ve only ever made one without matching the branch to someone specific first. I think Ollivander mentioned once that a lot of people come in looking for them because of that—he might have just been prompting me to make more since my only willow wand had been sold, actually—but the wood tends to be peculiar—”

“It’s your wands that are on sale at Ollivander’s?” Hermione asked, her voice sharp.