Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tom did not often get bored. He had a very rigid schedule in which there was no room to idle, after all.

Breakfast of muesli and yogurt and a tall glass of water. Wash face. Teeth cleaning charm. Slick hair. Don robes and hat. Take suitcase. Leave immediately.

Linger in Knockturn Alley. Keep head down so the brim covers most of the face. Give the impression he belonged there in the crevices, on the edges of whatever dark machinations were brewing in the shadows. It was important to take care of his appearance, so he looked like he might be a client.

At six on the dot, begin shift at Borgin & Burkes.

The store was always open, and typically received its clientele after four in the afternoon. There wasn’t much work to be done on his shift besides house calls, which tended to happen every other month until they landed a benefactor. He may do all manner of things, then; archive the products, maintain his studies, tidy up, and during the slowest hours, practice spellwork. He mastered wordless casting of even the most difficult offerings of the Hogwarts curriculum, so he had recently been courting the possibility of wandless magic. His failures so far had grated on his nerves, so he hadn’t yet dedicated himself to it.

Lunch of corned beef sandwich.

Remainder of shift.

When he first got the job, he was terribly sick, and constantly seeking out news of the war, either war, picking at it like an itchy scab. The wizarding world had no idea how bad it had gotten; what it meant for Grindelwald to plan on securing over a million inferi. Tom was sick after the diary too, but at least then he had Hogwarts as scaffolding for his life. The ring left him not only brittle, but hollow. As if he’d been scooped out. He had been scooped out, hadn’t he?

Tom was aware that he’d become quiet, waspish, and withdrawn. His whole body felt scalded that summer. By the time he had gathered himself, it was simply who he was, and who he was still got him places. All he had to do was retract his teeth, and it was enough to dazzle the kind of dreck that frequented the shop until they had nothing left to sell. He didn’t have to fix a smile, even for the buyers; they treated each uptick of the corner of his mouth like it was holy.

Mr. Burke arrived in the last two hours of Tom’s shift. Tom could no longer practice magic after this, because he was expected to stay at the front during these two hours. Sometimes Mr. Burke would provide a book for him to read, though these texts mustn’t leave the shop.

Gather things. Depart shop. Address affairs.

Affairs could be groceries. It could be a meeting with the Knights of Walpurgis, who were at this point distant enough that two or three hadn’t realized Tom still resided in London. It could be collecting new lab animals to experiment on.

Mail. Ordering copies of the latest wizardry journals for new developments in the arts. Take tea in Diagon Alley with the daily paper. he was clean and well-groomed, walking with a straight back and elegant purpose. He did not stand out much in Diagon Alley.

Return home. If anything of note occurred, report to diary.

The diary was such an ugly bit of ritual craft. Elegant only in execution. It slept until opened; was not coherent unless written to. It was eager to learn. Monotony had left Tom in a fog over time, and the eagerness was like a beam of sunlight piercing through. It liked the wizardry journals.

Home affairs; housecleaning, laundry, maintaining the garden which housed a few snakes.

Make dinner according to nutritional needs; serve with cider. On weekends he made bangers and mash. Feed the snakes. On weekends they got whole embryo eggs.

Continue self-study until nightfall.

If anything of interest occurred during previous street visits, go to Knockturn’s pub to pursue leads. If not, continue self-study.

Shower. Teeth-cleaning charm. Nightclothes. Bed. Sometimes he would need a sleeping draught. Sometimes he would need a dose of dreamless sleep. It had been three years, and no part of him could forget that agony. It had been one year, and he felt as if he were still experiencing it.

Efficient and no room for error.

Tom had to fight to maintain this. To remember to shower, or brush his teeth, to be willing to put in the effort to cook his own dinner, to even manage going outside. Most of his schedule was defined by work, and when he did not have work, the company of his Knights. The necessity of being composed for an audience was the only thing that could overcome the inertia. He once used the diary daily, because the diary was familiar with his schedule and held him to it.

He was fine now.

Breakfast. Morning routine. Shift. Lunch. Shift. Afternoon affairs.

He skimmed the paper as he sipped. London was still under orders for rationing, but the war seemed long-forgotten, even though it hadn’t even been half a year since it ended. Any lasting scars of that devastation were for those in Europe to address. There was a new journal in transfiguration coming tomorrow he was particularly looking forward to.

He was being watched.

Tom blinked slowly, jarred by the sudden spike of his own fear and hostility. He was a little annoyed with himself; he hadn’t done anything that needed hiding, and he often turned heads.

But he could feel it. The gaze was…searching.

The back of his neck prickled. Tom slowly looked up, as if enjoying the scenery. His gaze did not linger, but there was a young man, ambiguously of the orient; impossible to tell at a distance. A mess of dark hair, sharp face, thick circular glasses, unusually light eyes, focused intently on Tom.

Tom rather hoped he was about to be robbed. It had been a long time since he used Dark magic on a person.

He proceeded through his day as if he hadn’t noticed. He made use of his usual disillusionment and subterfuge to melt into the crowd. His skin burned until he was certain he was no longer being looked at.

When he returned home, he cleaned his kitchen, and then his desk, and then tended to his window garden, using the chance to check the streets. Then he reported to the diary.

Transfiguration journal tomorrow.

I hope they eat Whitely alive for that last essay.

I was being watched.

Pause.

By whom?

No one I knew.

Show me?

It was always making up reasons to receive memories from Tom. In this case, though, it was a good idea. He gently drew the memory from his temple and let it sink into the pages. With only the imprint left to haunt him, Tom realized how tense he’d been.

He looks your age. Very striking. I would have known him in Hogwarts, but I don’t recognize him.

I will update you if I see him again.

He slammed the diary closed. Under the bubbling frustration, the insecurity of not knowing something, and brooding too much to focus on the text left open on his desk, he found himself finally, at last…

Restless, and so terribly bored.

⎯ ♢♢♢ ⎯

The furthest someone can go back in time without the possibility of harm to the traveller or time itself is five hours.

Time itself. Hermione had gone through all the rules of her time-turner when she explained how she’d been using it during third year. Harry barely thought about it back then.

Time itself.

Logically speaking, if you were to see a loved one…hit by a car. And used your time turner to before it happened. You would see your past self on the other side of the street, winded and terrified, helpless to stop the car, the loved one, themselves. Time is inevitable and unchangeable.

If you were to go back in time and actively kill a very, very bad person, because of the very, very bad things they did, then there would have been no reason to use the time turner to begin with.

Which might technically constitute harm to ‘time itself’.

Perhaps this would not have occurred to Harry had he not had a blowout fight with Ginny, who was trying so, so hard to start a life again after the war but was held down by all that Harry was – he was prepared to die, and could not lift that weight from his soul once it had settled.

Or maybe if he hadn’t wandered into the basement of Number 12, Grimmauld Place and found a mass of time-turner sand swirling in what looked like two rooms vertically gutted open to be converted into a gigantic hourglass.

Or if he hadn’t been saved by becoming Master of Death, which after extensive cross-referencing seems to be a very fancy way to say he wouldn’t die until he chose to die, and then read a very curious way of referring to the irreparable harm that would be inflicted on the traveller, ‘the death of existence’. 

Which led to a thought that felt inevitable, at the time: he was breaking down, and it was possible everything that happened didn’t have to happen, and if it didn’t work, he was always ready for death. He may as well try.

Several weeks later, Harry Potter fell into the sands and came back to the world burning.

His skin burned and crawled like it was going to slough off, even under the shelter of his cloak, which quickly turned to ash on his skin; some rational part of his brain that could still bear to think understood that it was because the Deathly Hallows existed in this era, and he was very lucky to make the decision to go back this far.

Harry’s throat burned, his eyes would not stop watering, he was sitting under hills of glowing sand that sat like hot coals, and his stomach felt like it was being rearranged, a little like after an apparition. Every moment he could still breathe was a denial of time itself trying to kill him.

The sand gradually cooled. The burn became an unpleasant sting. He laid on a road in development around a small house he knew on some level was 12 Grimmauld Place, though it was an old manor made of ancient stone. There was no muggle suburb to blend into yet; they hadn’t even paved the area.

His wand was scorched, covered in the sandy texture burned into the stone around him, but intact. His skin was coated in a thin sheen of blood, but wherever the wound was, it seemed he was no longer bleeding. He suspected it came from every single one of his pores.

Harry had mastered the death of existence. He had, to put it simply, conjured himself into 1946.

Ideally he would go back even further, but he’d relied on the math that was already there in the room, and that math only accounted for this distance. Anyone he could ask to help him work through it would have chained him to the wall to stop him.

He assessed his things. Half the coins he had brought with him had melted under the contradiction of existing twice over without the shelter of a closed loop. The other half were scalded but intact; the ore existed, but the coin did not. The wand was likely burned for the same reason. Two of his dress robes had been reduced to ash too, the ones he’d salvaged from his godfather’s estate. But he had enough to situate himself.

It will be a kinder world, he promised himself.

He was going to kill Voldemort.

Chapter Text

Harry did not get a good look at Tom Riddle for a long while.

He saw him on his first day in London of course, emerging from the store with ironed black work robes, an understated coat, and a briefcase. The world seemed crisper when he entered it. It was unmistakeable. He had his hat tilted low over his eyes, and he would wear his hat that way every other time he saw him.

As soon as Harry was sure that he had accurately gauged the time period and Tom’s location, he got his budget in order with his own vault. Luckily he only needed a wand to register one.

“Name?”

“Evans,” Harry said. And as he was apparently named after his great-grandfather, “Henry Evans.”

He was planning on setting up base in the Leaky Cauldron, but he had forgotten about inflation. He had more than enough to buy his tiny one-room flat outright, though it left him with a much smaller starting budget. Still plenty, but he didn’t exactly have a lot of resources at the moment.

Most of his atomized belongings barely registered as an obstacle, but losing his cloak itched at the back of his mind. He comforted himself knowing that fate would try to scrape its way back from the edge Harry had pushed it to, and one day his father will be born to inherit that cloak, and then live to pass on that cloak to a future Harry. The thought sat in him like a dull flame, warming him in his meagre home with only one couch and a mattress on the floor.

Perhaps, when the true Harry was born in this timeline, the Harry of the old world would burn into ashes. He would be in his fifties then, and he imagined his future self not caring too much about it, if he were even still alive.

He made sure his wand had survived the trip by practicing his disillusionment for an entire day, until he felt he could cast it wordless and half-asleep. It didn’t feel strained or malfunctioning. Normally he felt very fatigued after casting at length, but once he was satisfied, he felt more alive than he had been in weeks.

He needed to know more about Tom.

He would have to destroy the horcruxes before he vanquished Voldemort. The diary and the ring at the moment; Tom Riddle fled London after the murder of Hepzibah Smith, which was probably somewhere this year or later. Harry had no tools with which he could destroy a horcrux, though. He would need to open the Chamber of Secrets to access the venom and do so without alerting Tom Riddle (and hopefully anyone else). Having a plan energized him.

Tom left the house at five in the morning, when it was dark, and did not have a static route to Borgin & Burkes. He would drift aimlessly on whichever road had more people and would approach alleyways sheltering filthy tramps more often than not. He never spoke to anyone. He would stride purposefully in no particular direction at all until six.

Tom spent his lunch inside the shop. He would leave at two in the afternoon – an eight-hour shift that sounded unbearable to Harry, who remembered it as cramped and musty with barely enough room to move single-file anywhere that wasn’t the front desk.

Tom took a half-hour tea in Diagon Alley after work, and then would go straight home. There would be no sign of activity besides an owl. After watching him receive the post for a few days, Harry realized Tom did not have his own.  

For the first week, Harry thought he was chasing an illusion, or someone under imperius and a glamour while the Dark Lord had better things to do. His flat looked so small and unassuming. Harry knew Lord Voldemort, knew how being overlooked had haunted him so terribly that he destroyed himself with his hubris.

Harry would have walked by that flat twelve times if he were to guess where Tom might live. It was odd.

The schedule didn’t deviate once. Literally the only thing irregular Tom did was his inconsistent journey to work. This would be all Harry would know from a distance. He had to get closer, or he wouldn’t learn anything.

For the first time, Harry tried to get a good look at the enemy. He was exposed and stationary during the tea break. It was unwise to disillusion himself in a crowd, so he tried to be subtle.

Finally, as if he could feel Harry’s gaze on his skin, Tom looked up.

Harry wasn’t close enough to glean much, but he could clearly see it was Tom; pallid, deep dark eyes, chiselled cheekbones. His expression was carefully blank.

Tom scanned the crowd, folded his newspaper, and left.

 The comfortable heat of Harry’s motivation rose powerfully at the sight of him, roaring in his stomach. Just as he remembered when he was twelve. God, that was what, eight years ago? Yet the memory was still fresh.

Tom Marvolo Riddle.

Harry needed to get closer.

⎯ ♢♢♢ ⎯

Harry went to Knockturn Alley just before lunch. He wanted to clarify some missing information; namely, what Tom was doing in a curio shop filled wall to wall with dark artifacts.

It was far easier to be disillusioned in Knockturn Alley during such early hours. Through the grimy windows, he saw a surprisingly orderly shop, with carefully tiered displays so no item was hidden or obscured. The floor plan was far more open, with larger obstacles laid flat against the wall and used to display even more of their wares.

Tom was at the front desk, reading a book, practically on display; the desk was better hidden in Harry’s time. His beauty was being used as a billboard for the shop.

The hour turned. Tom took the book into the back, still reading. Harry waited a few minutes before slipping into the shop. The air was heavy with age, but there was no sign of dust or anything that could be described as an odour.

Tom did not return with the jingle of the door. Harry kept his hat tilted low over his face, even with the disillusionment still in place. He paced the shop, fascinated by the order and the reverence with which each item was presented.

He was struck, then, by the surety that this must be Tom’s handiwork.

Voldemort did love his dark objects, didn’t he? Harry circled the shop, imagining the care and caution those bony white fingers gave each item, each potential horcrux, and paused at the vanishing cabinet, open and displaying more baubles hanging inside. He hadn’t expected it to be here 50 years ago. It looked to be in slightly better straits in the 40s, but not by much. He tilted the door and found a label: Broken Pairing; Function Lost.

Harry was still learning the cost of things in 1946, but even by the standards of the era, it was not going for much. It would be for the best to buy it now, so it wouldn’t cause problems in the future.

He returned to the desk. He could see a little into the back room. If he stood right at the opening next to the desk, he could make out the rigid line of Tom’s back, his arm, the book hovering in front of him.

He risked stepping further in. There he was, taking lunch. Tom Riddle was holding a sandwich, no crust. Harry watched carefully as Tom’s long white fingers pinched out a small bit of the sandwich which he then placed in his mouth, as if it were a piece of chocolate he had broken off.

…Why was he doing that?

Harry found most of the unexpected things about Tom’s living situation mysterious. Tom’s rigid schedule was a mystery. His small, unassuming flat was a mystery. The idiosyncratic routes he took on the way to work was a mystery.

The way he was eating that sandwich was just strange. Harry had been carefully cataloguing everything he saw Tom do, and he couldn’t stop his brain from picking at it. It would have been an uncommon but ordinary habit if it were a bread roll, but it was a sandwich. How did he break off the ingredients? Wouldn’t it get under his nails?

Tom Riddle abruptly stood.

Harry jumped back, dropped the disillusionment charm, and looked like he was an impatient customer checking for a shopkeeper. His heart thundered in his chest, humanizing oddity completely forgotten with the tension of meeting his mortal enemy face-to-face once more.

Tom Riddle was proud and purposeful out on the street, but when he came out to the shop front, he did so in a manner Harry could only describe as slinking seductively. His hands ran over the walls, every movement was telegraphed, and he made almost no noise at all.

Harry Potter lifted his gaze and looked Lord Voldemort in the eye.

Harry had always gotten the impression Tom was simply pale, in the dark of the Chamber of Secrets, or the alien glow of a pensieve memory. But no; his sharp, handsome face was completely bloodless, down to his lips. The only colour was the violet bruises under his eyes. He looked a strange combination of vaguely ill and Greek statue.

And he was unsmiling. Tom Riddle did not look charming or charismatic, the way he did in all the memories Harry had seen. He did not look boyishly open, or coaxing, or tense, or sharp, or calculating, or even all that focused.

He just looked.

Harry shook himself free of the surreal staring contest and indicated further into the shop. “I’d like to buy your—”

“Why were you following me?”

Harry’s gut twisted.

“Sorry?” He asked to the floor.

“Following me. I saw you. In Diagon Alley. You were watching me.” Harry had never heard him speak so flat and low, half his words grated with frying. Tom’s voice was naturally high and thin, and the contrast was strange. It was impossible to tell what Tom felt about Harry watching him.

Harry was not a particularly good liar, but the thought of Voldemort in his prime detecting weakness in him gave him a contrarian confidence. He smiled, showing teeth.

“Yeah, I wasn’t sure it was you. Tom Riddle, right?”

Tom Riddle blinked very slowly. He looked Harry up and down, studied his face. He was drawing the silence out on purpose. Harry tried to look good-natured about it. I’m just some idiot nostalgic for the past wanting to catch up. Nothing worth noting.

“I did not go to Hogwarts with you,” Tom said, that familiar high, chilly tone that Harry was so haunted by finally lifting into place. “Where exactly do you know me from?”

Oh fuck.

Harry stumbled too obviously to even dream of doubling down. He did not have a backup lie. Harry did not know Tom’s inner circle well enough to claim distant relation, and Tom might actually kill him on the spot if he claimed to have connections to his muggle life.

He had to accept being caught. This was suspicious to lie about. He needed it to not be suspicious to lie about this. If he failed, Sirius would die again. Remus would die again. His parents.

Harry caressed the optimistically manicured beginnings of his beard with a sheepish look. “Well, that was supposed to be my opener. Ideally you wouldn’t know I was looking into you first.”

“Looking into me,” Tom repeated slowly.

What did Tom find uninteresting? A transaction he didn’t want, Harry guessed. Someone who desired something from him he couldn’t be bothered to give. A useless toy with obvious buttons he didn’t care to push.

Harry leaned on the desk, close enough that he could smell the sandwich was corned beef. “I mean, you’re quite the picture. I thought you wouldn’t mind a coffee.”

 Tom studied him. He hadn’t made a facial expression once since he came into the room.

“Are you a shirtlifter?” He asked with such careful speculation Harry could tell he was expected to be humiliated by Tom asking.

1940s London. Of course. Harry hadn’t even considered the politics might have changed. He didn’t have much experience with homophobia – for obvious reasons – but he’d been given the impression that to wizards, it wasn’t so much unsightly as a dalliance. A thing schoolboys did, a pleasure you might chase before going home to your wife. Even among purebloods. Should he be humiliated?

No, he realized. The word Tom used was a lot more posh than ‘poof’, but also—

“Oh, are you muggleborn then?” Harry asked brightly.  

Tom’s mouth narrowed into a white line, nostrils flaring. He looked so unbelievably like Petunia in that moment that Harry had to purse his lips too, so he wouldn’t laugh.

“Why do you ask?” Tom replied in a brittle voice.

“Shirtlifter. I mean. Wizards don’t exactly wear shirts. Linenlifting kind of rolls off the tongue better anyway.” Harry winked at him.

He could practically feel Tom’s flash of rage blazing over his skin, though it was barely a flicker in his eyes. It was a strange feeling to be able to humiliate Voldemort and see that humiliation so clearly. The closest he’d ever gotten was that final battle.  

Harry realized it was spring, and Tom was freshly nineteen. He was older than him, by seven months.

“I’m not. I hadn’t thought of the etymology,” Tom said tightly, “As prefect, I was often in the position of caring for muggleborn students. It seems they have had their influence on me. Would you like to purchase something?”

“Yes, actually.” Harry dived off to the side, feeling flushed and light-headed. Here was little shopboy Voldemort, trying to shake off an awkward conversation with the man who was going to kill him one day. It felt so electric, unreal.

 He showed Tom the cabinet. Tom raised a single dark eyebrow. “I don’t normally upsell, but an ordinary cabinet is not the purchase one would typically make in a shop of this…nature.”

“But it’s not ordinary, is it?” Harry slapped it cheerfully. “Random chance of opening to a mysterious location, for half the price of any cabinet in the second-hand shop at Diagon Alley.”

“If the other half is at the bottom of an ocean, you will only have yourself to blame.” Tom pulled the displayed items free with a wave of his wand, slammed the cabinet doors shut, and shrunk the whole thing. He pinched it like it was a piece of dirty laundry and brought it to the front to ring up.

Harry paid, and his fingertips grazed Tom’s hand as he took the cabinet. They were freezing.

Tom’s deep black eyes flicked from Harry’s hand to his own, then up to Harry’s face.

“I’m not interested. In coffee or linens. My apologies for disappointing you.”

“I doubt you’ve ever disappointed anyone,” Harry replied silkily, on cloud nine, buzzing like he’d taken felix felicis. He watched those long, ghastly white fingers vanish behind the desk.

It wasn’t until Harry left the shop that he realized he had gleaned almost no information from that conversation and presented his face to Tom, which dampened his good mood as swiftly as it had been lifted.

Chapter Text

I met with the man I mentioned. It appears he hoped I would be his paramour.

My goodness. Regaled by wayward queers in broad daylight. It seems I’ve still got it. Did you humiliate him terribly?

No. Tom had been the one humiliated.

He’d thought himself very keen about it all, carefully cataloguing all the man’s features. After getting a good look at him, Tom realized why the diary knew with such surety that they hadn’t attended Hogwarts together; he had a truly unforgettable face.

Tom had been right about him being of the orient, of course. Either Roma or Indian, he ventured, with skin that had natural warmth. Swarthy, maybe. The pale eye colour was green. He stood a full half-head shorter than Tom, though most people were shorter than Tom.

His hair was long – a cut that was beginning to be dated to a wizard and would be totally unacceptable to a muggle – barring the fringe, which barely covered a white sowilo-esque bolt-shaped scar carved into his forehead. Judging from the cobwebs of scarring around it, it was a curse scar. Impressive to survive a curse directly to the head.

The stalker’s beard was not very full, but well-groomed. Despite this, his hair looked like he just pulled it into a ponytail while running out the door. Careless. Rogueish.

The dark red overcoat he was wearing was unusually utilitarian in its style for a man as vividly eye-catching as him. He’d likely put it on to not draw attention in Knockturn Alley. While he was looking into Tom.

Finally, while his words were flirtatious, his gaze was analytical. Predatory. Hunting.

Overall, Tom would have pinned him as an auror. He’d gravely miscalculated.

Muggleborn. A muggleborn. Muggleborn? Tom had carefully curated his word choice, his dialect, his manner of dress, all of it to look like a man ensconced in elite wizarding culture, and none of it was conveyed because he forgot about fucking shirts? The frustration pierced through the fog in his head the way only the diary’s simple pleasures had seemed to be capable of. His blood was boiling.

That this man made himself so comfortable with him, not prying, enjoying the fumble. Oh, no, he was no auror. It was personal interest. Tom hadn’t attracted the affection of some lonely queer off the street or a cunning enemy. He’d been judged as appropriate prey for a playboy.

He could see himself from the outside with horrible clarity. A sickly beauty in the slums, living like clockwork, no hobbies, no social relations. Someone who was small in the world. Nothing of value. Exploitable.

Tom Riddle, exploitable! He could have dressed that man down, were he in better health. Made his life hell for fun. Tried out one of the spells he’d found in his research, crumpled his joints so his bones writhed within his flesh and pressed against his nervous system, let him scream in agony for days and days. He could make his stomach melt into a bezoar, which would certainly save Tom on expenses. The things he could do to that man were indescribable.

Tom closed the diary and went to make dinner. He felt strange and ill, and craved the deferential companionship of Abraxas; a great pureblood heir of one of the most powerful families in Britain and two years older besides, and he still thought Tom his better. Tom was his better, better in every way, in magic, in charisma, intelligence, creativity, even the character of his bloodline. For anyone to treat Tom Riddle like he was something so small was unthinkable. Abraxas would understand.

It was alright. A playboy enjoyed play. The man would be back to toy with him, and Tom would then swiftly dispose of this annoyance. He was the predator, lying in wait under the tall grass, camouflaged until he struck. He would not be stolen away by some uppity hawk casually flying by.

Feeling more clear-headed than he had in months, Tom made vegetable stew with the rest of his soup stock and opened his diary to begin transcribing the transfiguration journal it had been waiting on. Four entries had indeed torn down Whitely’s entire thesis from the previous journal, some even basing an entirely new line of research on the debunking of his idiotic ideas. It was uplifting to see the field of wizardry still had its great minds.

Tom would one day count himself among them.

⎯ ♢♢♢ ⎯

Harry put the cabinet in his vault, mostly because he was wary of leaving it sitting out somewhere when he didn’t have the other half on hand, but also because it might be convenient for him to have a secret entrance to Gringotts. Having plans like that comforted him; much of his worst experiences were the result of being grossly underprepared.

He’d gotten a good case on Tom’s temperament, though he was really regretting introducing himself so blatantly. Tom Riddle was surprisingly… buttoned-up? Lord Voldemort was obsessed with the theatre of being a dark lord, and his diary form had shared that hunger for a grand stage on which to display himself.

He must be very annoyed at having to linger backstage in Knockturn Alley.

And there Harry would leave him. He had to put some elbow grease into existing in 1946.

The upside of World War II and reign of Gellert Grindelwald ending roughly four months ago was that, regardless of the job market, it was now perfectly reasonable to have no personal records. A fleeing muggleborn, a foreign national who had his life destroyed by Grindelwald, any number of excuses would work.

He hadn’t ever imagined himself working a regular job. Being recognized in a public-facing career and binding himself to monotony after living on the run? He thought he might actually go insane. People were saying he ought to be a politician.

Now that he was unrecognizable and spent a gap year after quitting his job, he found he had a stronger sense of direction. Part of crashing after his school years was the desperation that rose out of him like acid reflux from an over-rich meal eaten after starving; all the fear and paranoia came when he needed it the least, no longer crowded out by bravery or duty. He’d gotten really into hexes. Really into hexes.

It had been the healthiest stage of his spiral. His girlfriend was, after all, also really into hexes, and had been quite liberal with them in that final year. She taught him the gamut, and she had a talent for making the matter erotic, and he felt alive. He’d become an auror, he decided, because if he worked anywhere else, they’d see he’d gone barking mad.

But being an auror had only caused new and more difficult problems, and nowadays it quite literally was not possible. He was not a British citizen, did not attend one of the ICW’s charter schools, and opened his bank account two days ago. Harry wouldn’t even want to become an auror in a government that would genuinely consider him for employment.

But there were other jobs in which it would be useful to cast a lot of hexes and be too conscious of building exits. Bodyguards and bouncers, an Unspeakable, an understudy for a cursebreaker, hell, he could head back to the bank to investigate career options.

Actually, the bank was a nice thought. He’d come around on goblins while being carted around assorted factions to give rousing speeches mostly penned by various combinations of his friends. The goblins sheltered many house-elves during both wars, giving Harry a slight popularity boost underground. Every single one of them had a viciously competitive spirit, but it seemed that Griphook was simply …‘traditionalist’ among goblins.  

Say he got that old bastard the sword back. It might win him some favour. Hermione had convinced everyone and their dog that actually, it was perfectly reasonable for each inheritor of a piece to renegotiate the ownership, and managed to clarify that Godric had not stolen the sword, his descendants had, and the sword ought to be in goblin possession until such a time it was returned to the hat, at which point it would be wielded and then sent swiftly back to the goblins, which was probably the existing deal Godric’s descendants had violated, if King Ragnuk had let it be summonable at all.

Harry was no Hermione, and did not have Bill Weasley as a liaison, but he thought he was Gryffindor enough to steal a sword for some goblins, after which they might think to hire him on matters on other goblin thefts, which would get him information on a lot of purebloods he would otherwise have trouble keeping track of. He already needed the basilisk, and what was one more stop?

Harry did not have the map, but he doubted he needed it, with the number of entranceways he knew of. With the vanishing cabinet, he had an exit already prepared. All he had to do was get a lay of Hogwarts. Staff, schedules… easter holiday was the following month, so he’d look up what he could until then.

It was all an incredibly roundabout way of discovering in the morning news that the current Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher was about to retire.

He shot up like a bullet. It was seven in the morning, and he had seven hours to get that job before Tom Riddle saw the classified.

It was doubtful Tom would even apply, as he was still in his teens and had been soundly rejected a year previous. Tom had instead set his sights on a job that would have him injected into the homes of every wizarding family with a relationship to the Dark and forbidden, and that was its own kind of value.  

But the important thing was not being seen getting the position. If he was hired before Tom even knew it was an option, they wouldn’t cross paths and Tom wouldn’t have an opportunity to take special interest, and thus Harry could go back to being an annoying flirt who took a liking to the Borgin & Burkes shopboy because of his line of work.  

…Harry could also steal goblin artifacts, should he need the extra money and a reason to be suspiciously interested in cursed antiques.

Harry rushed the most cordial politician Hermione-and-Ginny-and-wait-ten-minutes-I’ll-fetch-Percy letter he could muster and ran it to the owlery to send off to Hogwarts. Then he immediately splurged on the most dashing robes someone expected to run in the woods might wear, and put genuine effort into combing his hair, though the back still stubbornly stood up against the force of hair gel and a ponytail, as if it had decided the top of his head needed vents. It irritated him so much he mussed his fringe so it at least looked intentionally ruffled.

He considered shaving, but he decided he’d best carry himself with the swagger of Sirius Black into all his impulse decisions, and simply paid extra attention to his beard grooming.

Harry hadn’t even noticed he skipped breakfast until he started getting hungry around lunch, and he forced himself to get something from the Leaky Cauldron, only to realize that the letter would likely take a good five hours and he’d wasted valuable relaxation time because five hours was just about now.

He was debating taking his food back with him to his flat as people milled in and out of the building when he spotted a truly impressive mane of red hair.

Albus Dumbledore stood tall – very tall – in the Leaky Cauldron, his robes as vivid in colour as his later wardrobe, yet somehow very stately. His long auburn hair was shot through with grey and reached the small of his back, though the curls of his beard had barely reached his collarbones. He was quite like what Harry had always imagined a wizard academic might look like, and bore himself with pristine pleasantness, and Harry was filled all at once with a deep yearning and nostalgia.

In Dumbledore’s hand were three letters in creamy envelopes. Harry narrowed his eyes at them, realizing what he might be looking at. Dumbledore had come to expedite the mail, to save time on the reply.

He took his eel pie and darted between the tables, trying to look casual but knowing that Dumbledore will probably notice him and check his tail through the mind of a passerby. Harry affected a look of eager curiosity, because honestly, he really was just excited to see him. Everyone was; the man was turning heads left and right. Ending a war not four months ago!

Not four months ago, he killed his closest friend.

The glow that had been so fiercely burning in Harry’s chest dimmed a little. Maybe, like Harry, he might hate the spotlight, the expectation, you ought to go into politics, and that niggling feeling that made one very occupied with where the exits were.

Harry dropped back a little and took his time entering the owlery. Dumbledore watched as the owl holding his letters shook its head and took off through the great window.

“Blimey,” said Harry, “I hope one of those are going to my house.”

Dumbledore did not startle. He turned and raised his eyebrows, which had gotten long enough to dangle a bit from his face. “Ah. I should have expected to find hopefuls awaiting a timely missive.”

“Can’t waste a second, sir. It’s an honour to meet what might be the finest defender against the Dark Arts who ever lived.”

“I dare say I have yet to unseat Illyius,” Dumbledore said with a twitch of a smile, “not the least because I am a scholar of transfiguration, not the dark arts.”

“Would my patronus be a field mouse, so that I may be handed the job in very short order indeed,” Harry said, wryly taking on Dumbledore’s own affect. He held his hand out and beamed. “Henry Evans.”

Dumbledore’s eyes crinkled into a smile that made all the muscles in Harry’s back abruptly relax. “A pleasure, Mr. Evans, though I must disappoint you when I say that it is up to Headmaster Dippet, not I, to bring on new staff. I’m glad to see such eager prospects, however. Professor Merrythought has been threatening to retire for quite some time. She is a woman of great experience; I have high hopes for any who follow.”

“Well, you’ve already got three to get through, so it looks like you’ll get what you want. When were you planning on meeting?”

“Dippet had scheduled easter holiday for interviews,” Dumbledore mused, “but it appears you are quite free this evening, doesn’t it?”

Harry grinned with bared teeth.

“So it does.”

Chapter Text

Tom Riddle spent so long staring at his newspaper that his tea went cold, even in the warmth of the sunlight shining down over his table.

Of course he—

He breathed in deep through his nose as his eyes scanned the classified, again and again.

Of course, he didn’t want or need the Defence Against the Dark Arts position.

What guarantee would he have of finding a worthy horcrux while grading essays, all with Albus Dumbledore breathing down his neck? He’d found likely candidates within the first week at working at Borgin & Burkes. For the Founder’s Relics? As far as he knew, none remained at the school.

It was also easier to leave for the diadem, whenever he deigned to do so. A departure from Hogwarts would be so terribly public. Not to mention, how would he even kill anyone and get away with it in a school? Would he be forced to wait over winter break? With those symptoms? Making a horcrux was an act of unfathomable violence on his own body. Literally and spiritually. He’d felt barely alive for a month and a half after the diary. At the time, he had credited his lasting short temper and lethargy to the mood that summer had left him in, all cleared up just in time to ace his O.W.L.s.

But it had not been a mood. The Gaunt ring had made him twice as ill, and after nine months he was still feeling its effects. He could only imagine that the next horcrux would be four times as agonizing, and so on and so forth. Such was the burden of greatness.

Committing murder and then half-killing yourself was really such a difficult thing to do unnoticed when you were grading papers, in a castle full of ghosts and paintings and Dumbledore, who had slain the greatest dark lord in recent history over Hogsmeade bloody weekend. Being a teacher was an obvious and awful and utterly useless path for him to take. He managed his own schedule quite well so far. He did not want the position in the slightest.

…Tom could kill the next teacher and come back when he finished his horcruxes.

It was only that thought that snapped him out of that hanging discomfort. He sniffed at his cold tea, shoved it aside along with the paper, and went straight home.

⎯ ♢♢♢ ⎯

Harry did not have warm feelings towards Dippet, though he pretended it was an honour to meet him as soon as he walked through the fireplace that evening.

“Henry Evans,” Dippet greeted with an incline of his head. He looked just like he had in the diary’s memory, old and brittle with only the faintest hints of brown in his thinning silver hair. “It appears you did not attend Hogwarts.”

Dippet liked Hogwarts, and liked it more than he liked anything else. Not being a Hogwarts student was a huge mark against Harry. “It’s a shame, yeah. I used to study Hogwarts itself in class because I was so sour about it. Out of the country, out of the admittance book. Is it true the quill is an augurey feather? How does that work? They don’t dip well.”

“An augurey can repel most spells that strike it, and its quills can resist nearly all enchantments, as well as the ink. It required a ritual of tremendous power that gave it the ability to record, and is impervious to forgeries as a result,” Dippet said, already looking very pleased. He made the whole thing sound so grandiose and holy. It was just a feather. No wonder he got on with Voldemort so damn much.

Dippet drilled Harry on Hogwarts the entire walk to the grounds, and Harry obediently recited all sorts of information that Hermione once recited to him. He looked awed when he felt he was supposed to, smiled like every bit of information on Hogwarts was a gift, and when he looked out at the quidditch pitch, his yearning was very genuine.

“I like to see practical applications,” Dippet told him. “We shan’t discuss placement until I know you can cast as well as you grade.”

The anxiety after Grindelwald, of course. The bright young minds of Hogwarts would want to feel confident in their ability to protect themselves from the next dark lord. The war against Voldemort was far more vicious the first time around, and it left the Order a shambling skeleton by the time Harry got involved. Grindelwald was mostly operating in Europe, but the effects were probably similar.

“What house did you see yourself in, by the way?” Dippet asked conversationally.

“Gryffindor. I’ve always been stubborn,” Harry said, taking in the nostalgic hills, the pitch, and even Hagrid’s hut, which had yet to form a garden, but still stood as it would 50 years later, tiny and pleasant.

When he looked to Dippet, there was heady approval in his eyes. “Well? Plenty of room. Give us some spells.”

The fact there was nothing to strike here meant that if he wanted to cast anything requiring a target, he needed to make his own. Fine by him. Harry raised his wand and whipped it in circles around his head, which he’d found to be the most natural way to call forth a patronus without an incantation or a specified wand movement.

A stag danced out from his wand, saturated with the memory of the ghosts of his family weeping with pride as he faced Voldemort.

He followed it up with a simple substantive charm – imprinting a superficial behaviour onto a target, like in paintings. It was a fourth-year spell, but he assumed being creative with his work and being able to split his attention were useful here.

The cloak took on the behaviour of pacing, and when lifted with a levitation charm, began moving back and forth, occasionally dashing forward to attack. Harry used it as a way to show off the timing of his protego, which was another spell he had learn to do as easy as breathing.

 “You’re a duellist,” Dippet noted.

Was that bad? Harry gave him a quick smile, barely paying attention to the coat. “Aren’t most people, given the war?”

“Merrythought is an academic. For many generations, the most important thing to teach children was how to navigate the magic wilds safely and securely. Your average wizard would sooner encounter an imp than a crazed attacker.”

“Imps are pretty fast,” Harry ventured, though he had stuck to muggle roads for most of their travels in his aborted seventh year, and only had to get rid of two or three in the entire trip. “I think duelling is something one would learn in their later years.”

Dippet smiled to himself. “Yes…Which reminds me, I would quite like to hear your plans for yearly curriculum.”

Harry didn’t have one. “Of course!”

Dippet opened his mouth with a question ready, but Harry was saved by a new voice.

“I must say, I’m impressed with your practical skill,” said Albus Dumbledore, appearing out of nowhere and making Harry whirl on him with his wand raised.

Harry cleared his throat awkwardly. “It’s an honour, sir.”

Dumbledore touched the coat gently, checking how it reacted. It did not react at all, because it wasn’t an enchantment and Harry had to split his attention to use it as a target, but he didn’t look disappointed. “Did you fight in the war?”

Now was the time for Harry’s cover story. “I was apprenticing in Europe, travelling to rural areas between countries. My teacher died when the schoolhouse she was working in was destroyed. I couldn’t speak the language, so I had to do a lot of practical application after that.”

“Who’s your teacher? A Hogwarts graduate?” Dippet asked with interest.

“Not sure. Her name was Dora Creevey.”

Dippet’s eyes dimmed, but Dumbledore remained steadily focused on Harry’s face, studying him. Harry was still pants at occlumency, so he let his mind idle on vague smears of his horrible camping excursion. “…Was that when you received the scar?”

“Ah.” He smiled weakly. Harry had seen the spell cast enough times to know why it intrigued Dumbledore. “The killing curse. No, I was a toddler.”

Dippet sucked in a sharp breath, and Dumbledore’s gaze was suddenly so desperately hungry, greedily yanking the green light and high, airy laughter of Voldemort to the top of his mind with the kind of force Dumbledore had never exerted before. It felt strange and alien and at odds with the soft over-cautious habits Harry had remembered him by.

“How?” Dumbledore asked.

“…My mother was skilled with enchantments. Everyone said she was basically a genius at charms in general, you know … She gave her life to protect me. Her love was so strong it caught a killing curse. It must have been something amazing.”

In 1946 Harry was no boy-who-lived. The entire world only had his word to go by now, and every person who heard the tale of his scar would treat it as one tragedy among countless. They would be forced to associate his survival with Lily Evans’ love for her son, and they would have to mourn her instead of celebrate Harry for being born, and they’d say my condolences, a thing Harry was sick to bastard death of hearing by now but could never tire of when it came to his parents.

Dippet lit up. “Then did your mother—”

“I don’t know anyone who went to Hogwarts, Headmaster Dippet,” Harry interjected. “That’s why the school has always fascinated me. Its mysterious allure.”

Dumbledore closed his eyes, looking a little like he was tasting the profile of Harry’s tale. After a moment, he opened them again. “…I am sorry for your loss, Mr. Evans, and for prying. I’ve developed a…passionate interest, I will say, in the very phenomenon that saved your life. It is nearly impossible to study, and manifests in many ways, as fluid and mystifying as all magic once was in the time of the founders.”

“The concept of Light magic,” Harry said, mostly to look intellectual, as he had absolutely no idea what the history was for this sort of thing. He hoped he sounded warm and commiserating enough for Dumbledore’s taste. “Magic born from an absolute desire to protect, shelter, and express one’s self.”

“Express one’s self…That’s not one I heard,” Dippet said to Dumbledore, who’s eyes hadn’t left Harry’s face, even though Harry had refocused on the tip of his crumpled nose.

“The patronus. An expression of joy, but it reaches the height of power using the love of the caster.” Harry’s stag had faded over the course of the conversation, so Dumbledore whipped up his own patronus. He whispered in its ear, and the shining phoenix flew a lap around the three of them before declaring, in Dumbledore’s voice, “which can be used more practically.”

“My word. You ought to teach that trick to Mr. Evans! So many students slack on the spell because they think they’re never going off on holiday in the tropics. They weren’t slacking when the dementors started escorting prisoners across the country!” Dippet scoffed.

Harry raised his eyebrows. “…Is that a job offer, then?”

“Oh. I…” Dippet glanced at Dumbledore.

Dumbledore finally tore his eyes away from Harry to give Dippet a reassuring smile. “It might be. You are a very remarkable young man, Mr. Evans. It would be a great loss to lose someone of such unique circumstances.”

Harry beamed at them.

⎯ ♢♢♢ ⎯

Tom had put together a plan. He hadn’t planned ahead for a task in months, but the feeling of his mind sharpening to a point was heady, and he could clearly envision the many ways he could dominate an impetuous oaf who expected something soft to bite into.

It was a good thing, too, because it meant he was in his right mind when the impetuous oaf in question burst into the shop.

Tom was prepared for the casual slink, leaning too far in, being leered at, but the would-be Casanova was instead searching the store, methodically scanning each shelf. He was looking for something specific.

“Can I help you?” Tom asked lightly.

“Do you carry any Hands of Glory?” He held a clawed hand up to indicate how he might wield it. Tom watched his pantomiming for a long, carefully measured moment.

“The proper way to use a Hand of Glory,” he finally said, “is with a long stick, three fingers around for support, base on the pinky, thumb resting against the candle. Unless you’re using it to pop down to the kitchen for a midnight snack.”

The man carefully copied Tom’s instructions, curiously popping his pinky in and out. Tom rolled his eyes and opened one of the drawers next to him. One of their three Hands of Glory floated out. “Would you like to make an addition of Peruvian instant darkness powder for your purchase?”

“Please. And…That ring looks special,” the man finished. He was pointing at the display, but Tom self-consciously touched the Gaunt ring hanging between his robes and his linens. He’d been forced to wear it this way; direct skin contact filled his entire body with a horrible yearning and made his head swim, but being apart from it caused him to sick up and bleed from various orifices. Tom had been able to separate from the diary eventually, so he was due to try leaving the house without it again, but he couldn’t yet bring himself to make the attempt.

The display ring’s stone was a small bezoar, an ugly lumpy rock melted into the cheap pewter. An unfortunately good find. The man went back to searching, and Tom scooped the instant darkness powder into a drawstring purse.

Another customer came in and paled at the sight of a witness to whatever she was about to do.

Tom fixed a smile. “Buying or selling?”

“S…Selling,” the plump woman rasped.

“We have a private room.” Tom revealed the hidden door with a flick of his wand and turned to the contemptuous lout. “Do not touch anything you aren’t buying. No fiddling, enchanting, or thievery. If you try to leave without paying there are measures to have you executed. Am I understood?”

“Perfectly,” he said without looking back.

Tom’s lip curled, but he escorted the woman into the side room without further comment.

She was selling controlled potions. Beautification potion, befuddlement draught, and muffling oil, the kind of potions that weren’t difficult or pricy to make, but weren’t considered worth the time in Azkaban to sell. The shop had set prices for each, and Tom could identify the quality at a glance. The woman worried with her hands, but looked progressively more comfortable as Tom notated each item with bland business-like focus.

He slid the final list to her. “These are our prices.”

He could see her becoming greatly disheartened by whatever she saw there, and his lips twitched. “If there is a potion you were hoping to sell for more, I’d find a buyer who doesn’t know where else to get it.”

“Awfully risky,” she muttered, but took the beautification potion from the selection and slid it back into her bag.

The rest seemed to be what she expected, and she took the money gratefully. Tom always preferred the sellers who weren’t comfortable with doing something illegal. Very malleable. He could have ripped her off if he wanted, but that would require leaving the man in the main store far longer than Tom was comfortable with.

When he emerged, he saw that the man had gotten a hold of their sole invisibility cloak, not slowed at all by their healthy stock of cloaks charmed invisible that were sold for more than they were worth (to give the impression they were discounted demiguise weaves). Compared to those hardy-looking pieces, the cloak wasn’t that impressive; it was ratty with age and there was a hole close to the edge from a spell shredding the fabric. He had known what to look for.

Among the items he’d collected were a boline made from human bone (designed to harvest dangerous ingredients that reacted to human touch), a dowsing rod, a string of nazar amulets, an Eavesdropping Planchette, a foeglass, and a set of four Eye-Spier eyeballs.

Tom blinked slowly at him. The man smiled expectantly back.

“Robbing someone, are we?” Tom asked, and he began ringing it all up.

“When you’re as nosy as I am, you need the equipment to back it up. Lost my invisibility cloak recently. I’m naked without it.”

Was that flirting? Tom opened his mouth to strike him down, but the man was fidgeting with the foeglass, barely paying attention to Tom at all, which was equally annoying. Tom had mentally rehearsed how to ice him out, how to make each gesture seem repulsive and laughable. He’d played with a few ways to bait him into his own humiliation. It was starting to irritate him that only now was he being cordial.

…After being firmly rejected. He must have anticipated Tom being tetchy with him, and probably wanted to get the shopping done more than he wanted to push his luck.

“134 galleons, four sickles,” Tom concluded.

The man wrinkled his nose, unhappy with the cost. Sadly, this was an extremely handsome discount; after the war, many clients finally felt safe shedding their dark artifacts to rebuild their lives. Often these clients were loved ones pawning the earthly possessions of the countless dead. It would be another few months before they could bring the prices back up. It would have been 100 times this price in 1941.

The man signed a receipt to have his funds pulled from Gringotts, charmed to check in advance if those funds existed. It was interesting he had 134 galleons to burn on such frivolities. Something for Tom to shelve for later.

“Would you like a bag?” Tom asked blandly.

“If you’ve got one not hexed to hell and back,” the man said idly, watching the shelves, which he clearly recognized to be full of some nasty pieces of Dark magic.

The corner of Tom’s mouth twitched up. “It is a bag.” He carefully transfigured a piece of sparse-but-firm burlap from the bin full of scraps behind the counter. His eyes flicked up to see if the man was adequately impressed by his skills with transfiguration; turning multiple items into an independent woven item was a N.E.W.T.-level skill and would take a lesser wizard twice as long to perform.

The man looked blandly interested, but there– the slight crease in his brow as he realized the threads were being pulled into the weave as opposed to a common shape transfiguration, like he wasn’t sure that’s what he was looking at. Tom allowed himself a smile and handed him the completed bag.

The man rubbed his thumb across the fabric, confirming the weave. After a moment, he glanced up. “You kill someone?”

Tom’s heart jumped. His brow didn’t so much as twitch. “Sorry?”

“A Hogwarts prefect, doing transfiguration of that level, sitting here as a shopboy? Albus Dumbledore should be singing your praises. Did you kill someone, that he won’t have you as the next great leading mind in wizardry?”

Tom had planned, very carefully, how to disassemble and deflect the man’s needling, but years of hurt and rage lurched in his gut, and he knew in an instant he had made a hideous face and given the man exactly what he wanted. But how could that reaction be what he wanted? How would he know how much hatred Tom held for Dumbledore?

And yet his seaglass-green eyes were bright and greedy, devouring the snarl Tom had just choked back. Tom tried to skim his mind, but he wasn’t making eye contact, instead staring after whatever awful shape Tom had unconsciously made with his mouth.

“The things I know about that man,” Tom chuckled harshly, sounding a little manic to his own ears, “I would follow him nowhere, and celebrate at his funeral.”

“Really. After Grindelwald?” The man asked with false innocence.

“At least we were making a profit under Grindelwald. Will that be all?” Tom snapped.

“I think that’s enough for the next few years.” The man bounced the purse of instant darkness powder between his fingers, smiling blankly. “Might come back for refills though.”

Tom did not want to play games anymore. “What is it you want from me, Mr…”

“Did you think I wanted something? I’m here to shop,” the man said breezily, ignoring the prompt.

“How much did you look into me, I wonder? Did I do something to you? Got an evil-doer off a prison sentence? Bully a beloved family member? I find it difficult to understand what it is you expect from these interactions, because I cannot empathize with the mindset of a petulant child pulling pigtails for attention because he has not yet reached the age to use his words,” and the venom felt good, it felt like sweet home, vivid power sending electricity singing up his spine.

“I’m here to do the shopping, mate,” the man said casually, hoisting the burlap bag over his shoulder. His smile showed teeth. “Sorry if you were offended. Big fan of Dumbledore myself, is all. Do you get personal attacks a lot?” He leaned close, looking a little pitying. “I wouldn’t take it too seriously. Figure they’re just jealous you get to be gorgeous. Chin up.”

The electric leap of rage slammed into Tom’s brain.

He whipped his wand and sent the man flying out of the shop so hard he hit the window of the pop-up shop opposite Borgin & Burkes upside-down. Tom shuttered the security enchantments with a savage slash and stormed into the back room. He found a nest of doxies, trapped them on the table, and burned them alive with a bombardment of small explosions until he no longer wanted to scream, or cast a fiendfyre just to visualize how angry he was. They shrieked and fluttered wildly and their wings caught fire first, making them limp right into each blast.

Tom stared at the pile of ashes, chest heaving, his lungs unable to fill to capacity and giving an awful rattling wheeze. As his rage finally ebbed, he was suddenly so dizzy he had to sit down, and then nauseous, and then horribly cold.

He calmed his mind. He built his mental shields. He touched his ring, just in case it had been somehow pulled from under his robes and disagreed with the extra layer. It was still just where he left it. But just as his teeth started buzzing from lack of oxygen, the frenzy passed, and he could inhale deep and slow.

Finally finding a tenuous sort of calm, Tom threw his head back to glare at the ceiling.

He needed to bitch to Abraxas.

Chapter Text

Tom Riddle did not need to ask to drop by the Malfoy manor; he could simply apparate at the door and a house elf would escort him to the drawing room, or directly to Abraxas if he were free.

Of all his entourage, he liked Abraxas the best. He wasn’t satisfied on becoming a minion like Avery or Lestrange, or an extension of Tom’s influence like Nott, Rosier, or Mulciber, yet he still knew his place and was eager to help him with his studies. It was with Abraxas’ help Tom found the Chamber of Secrets, and in repayment Tom rewarded him with first pick of enemies for their basilisk attack. They had bets on whether the snake would succeed in its kill, and Tom was barely bothered at all at having to write his essays for a week, so heady was the rush of power he felt from successfully controlling the beast.

 Tom hadn’t had much use for him recently, so it was nice to catch up. It seemed he was making moves in politics lately. That would be useful in the future; Tom did not particularly like the thought of political theatre and would need an aide to run his ideal government, should wizarding society become malformed enough he’d need to step in to conquer it. The banal bureaucracy of Mordred to compliment the greatness of Merlin and Morgana.

Abraxas burst into the drawing room after only five minutes. Tom had barely begun sipping his tea. He did know how to jump to attention, didn’t he?

“Bloody hell, Tom, I was starting to worry you’d died,” Abraxas cried.

“And yet here I sit,” Tom said tartly.

Abraxas grinned wide, his cheeks rosy and joyful like twin apples. He was handsome enough, though not strikingly so. A soft round classically Briton sort of face that Tom liked standing next to when he wanted to attract attention. “So? Any advancements in the world of the dark arts?”

 “Well—” Tom almost proceeded with his planned whinging, but…it had been so very long, and Abraxas was fascinated by Tom’s inheritance. He could show a little of what he was working on. As a treat.

“Spare a house elf?” Tom asked with a smirk.

Abraxas’ eyes lit up. “Cardy!”

An old, shrivelled house elf popped into the room. “Yes, master…?”

Tom frowned. “Good lord. That thing looked mummified. What about the other one?”

“Busy with chores by now. Cardy’s spawn is almost full-sized, so we’ll get proper service soon enough,” Abraxas sniffed.

Did house elves spawn? Tom had thought they were some sort of homunculi wealthy wizards made from expensive ingredients. How fascinating.

Tom confidently led the way to the study, the elf hobbling behind them. “Not to worry, your elf won’t be due for a sarcophagus just yet. It’s just a little…trick.”

 The Malfoy manor was magnificent, and even its study had ample room for rituals. Tom walked in languid circles around the centre, laying out the foundations of his enchantment. With all his spells fixed in place, an inkstick plucked from a nearby desk filled in the rest of the details.

“That’s some magic circle,” said Abraxas.

“I’d been experimenting with more elaborate spells that do not require my full attention. This one in particular would go catastrophically wrong if it required casting.” He split the whole thing into four quadrants and gestured to the elf. “Stand in the centre.”

The ugly little thing looked up at him with its grotesque watery eyes and shuffled inside the circle.

“Corpus separatum,” Tom commanded, and he used the four-quadrant wand gesture to match the circle.

The elf peeled apart.

It yelped in pain, and there stood the skeleton of an elf and all its meat, perfect and whole, not a drop of blood spared. The elf’s eyes bulged, watching the skeleton float opposite it in abject terror.

“From my experiments, the separation appears to be painful,” Tom noted, circling the enchantment once more. Abraxas’ mouth was hanging open, which put Tom in a terrific mood. “But the pain doesn’t seem to last enough to be a problem. It’s perfectly safe.”

He prompted with his wand, and suddenly the organs were separate from its shrivelled, leathery skin.

“Good lord. And it’s alive? You can put it back together?”

“Easily. Ideally one stage at a time, as reuniting with the rest of the body is also…quite painful.” Tom smiled unkindly at the elf’s floating eyes sitting in front of the network of gore and split it again, brain and nervous system parting from the organs and muscles.

Abraxas leaned in to squint at the white fronds coming from the brain. “What is that?”

“Nervous system.” Tom recalled Abraxas liked ruling through pain, and tilted his head at him with a slow, easy smile. “You can pluck it if you want. Just grazing an edge with the tip of your finger would be an exquisite torture.”

The eyes flickered in a panic, rolling wildly in non-existent sockets and focusing on Abraxas pleadingly.

“Can’t do that. Mother said Cardy’s not well enough to punish anymore. Besides, it’s not as if it’s done anything wrong.”

“Yes…we should reserve such things for punishments, shouldn’t we?” Tom’s eyes danced over the organs, the seizing lungs, the rapid pulse of the heart. “Though this was designed for the medical field. Not that St. Mungo’s would ever allow dark magic in their halls.”

“Oh, they’ll soon regret it, won’t they? You’ll swan in with the power of your many years of spellcraft, and they’ll all say ‘oh, My Lord, if only we listened! If only we had your great inventions to save wizardkind!’” Abraxas swooned theatrically into an armchair.

Tom sat down himself and let the elf spin around the circle in fourths. It had begun to settle and submit to the grotesque exposure. It was quite well-trained, despite being so feeble; he’d been right to try it on an elf.

“Imagine the surgeries,” Tom hummed. “Nothing so barbaric as cutting people open, simply excising the unwanted flesh. Plucking organs like fruit from the vine and transplanting just as easily. Extracting lifeblood without the need to be wary of veins and muscles…”

He planned on using this trick for making horcruxes. He would not have the energy to clean up so much blood and viscera if the pain escalated each time. With this enchantment, he could make the nauseating task a little more manageable. Less primal. Worthy of a modern wizard.

“It would be revolutionary.” Abraxas jiggled his foot, an obvious tell of his excitement. “I’m still too young to exert pressure, but say I invite the director…”

“Not yet,” Tom snapped. “It can’t be traced back to me. I use it to harvest ingredients for some very unpleasant rituals.”

“Ooh. You know what? I bet they’ll all fall desperately in love with you. Lord Voldemort’s first offering being something that revolutionizes modern medicine, they’ll let you do anything after that. They’ll roll out the red carpet for the Department of Mysteries. You can rule the entire division. We’ll finally cede ourselves of muggles, and off the mudbloods can go to be cannibalized by the animals they’re so pleased to kneel to.”

And no muggle men would seduce destitute and disabled pureblood women, and no wizards of supreme lineage would have to grow up in orphanages.

The magic community had tried this, once. They’d practically succeeded. There were great swaths of land that did not receive signals and were nestled inside of muggle neighbourhoods, little asylums inside and outside their world. And all Tom would need to do is figure out which ward of world-altering power they had used, and teach it to everyone, and just get rid of every idiot who ever said their communities should mix. If they want to mix, they can fuck a squib. End of.

He’d been a bit more violent about this in his childhood, but the war had matured his thinking. Grindelwald’s catastrophic failure, spiralling from the catastrophic failure of his muggle scapegoat – hell, Raczidian and Ekrizdis’ defeats and notoriety as little more than sadistic madmen – had taught Tom that just lashing out and killing the undesirables was only going to doom him, no matter how satisfying it would be. People didn’t know Slytherin’s brilliance, but they didn’t think he was a lunatic who revelled in rending the unworthy either, and everyone still respected him enough that his name on the house has never been questioned. His legacy was too important.

It was alright if Lord Voldemort was primarily a legacy. A great scholar-king who scooped the wizarding world from damnation after he saw the horrors of the war. He would prefer the actual body of his work to only be passed down to the worthy anyway. Some 100 years from now, a passionate academic would come to him – and here Tom imagined himself ascended from his humanity, some sort of fey snake creature like the naga of India and Vietnam, which Salazar had expressed some envy of in his day – and beg his apprenticeship. And that wizard would die in time, as all men do, and 100 years after that another would follow in his footsteps.

This eternal cycle of being able to keep the practice of Dark magic alive was what helped Tom bear pain so awful he couldn’t even scream, sobbing breathlessly on his bathroom tile in a puddle of his own blood, vomit, and viscera, his magic feeling as if it were trying to tear free of him for torturing it so horribly. Someday this would be hundreds of years in the past, and you would have saved wizardkind.

“You’re in a mood,” Abraxas noted.

Tom’s eyes flicked up dangerously. “Am I?”

Abraxas gave him an apologetic smile. “No…It’s good. Rarely have I seen milord in the right mind to brood. You’ve been…”

“Sick,” Tom finished. How embarrassing that even Abraxas had noticed, despite Tom barely interacting with him at all. The fact Abraxas had been able to see how completely vacant his head had been…

“I’ll probably be ailing for another month or two, if I don’t get pneumonia, or dragon pox,” Tom said with a roll of his eyes. “…I am in a bit of a strop. Indulge me?”

“Naturally. Gilly!” Abraxas called, and in popped the elf Tom was more familiar with. It had ear hairs twisted into little braids and the big silver eyes of a dead fish. Foul little things.

Gilly screamed at the sight of the gored elf still floating between the two of them. Abraxas snorted. “He’s fine, master Voldemort shall put him back to rights once we’re done. Can we get some alcohol? Brandy?”

“I’d love brandy,” Tom agreed.

Gilly nodded slowly, watching the gently spinning fourths of her fellow elf. Cardy looked at her, and then its enormous bulbous eyes turned back to the floor in meditative silence.

Gilly retrieved the brandy and served it without questions or begging, so Tom began merging Cardy back up. First the skin to the meat, then the brain to the body – which made Cardy let out a guttural little cry – and then the bones to the whole.

The elf dropped out of the air to collapse onto the circle with a creaking moan.

“Lasting pain?” Tom asked.

Cardy stood on trembling limbs and shuddered violently four times in a row, and by the last shudder it looked a little less like it was about to cry. “It only aches, sir. Putting Cardy back hurt badly, but it is not terrible anymore, sir.”

Tom sipped his brandy with a little frown. “What hurt more, taking the brain out or returning it?”

“Returning it, sir,” the elf squeaked.

“The nerves…It could use some refining. That will be all.” Tom waved his hand, and both elves popped away.

“Amazing. Just amazing, oh milord, he could walk! Completely healthy!” Abraxas beamed.

“It took some attempts. Transfigured animals don’t have all the bits, so I went through an unpleasant number of live mice. At least the snakes were happy,” Tom smiled, and Abraxas laughed with him.

“So? What has inspired your dark visions?”

Tom hesitated, not having a clear idea of how much he would share, but decided he could start small and elaborate where necessary. “Some fucking queer harassing me in the shop.”

Abraxas sneered. “And what school year is he in, hm?”

Tom didn’t understand the joke, only understanding it was a joke because of how Abraxas had said it. He smirked anyway. “He’s my age, you know. Quite shameful. Didn’t even go to Hogwarts, and he’s got a settled English accent, so you of course know what that means.”

“Squib?”

Tom hadn’t even thought of that. He could not even conceptualize what he might do if he was being spoken down to by a squib. “…No, which is all the more pathetic. Had to be home-schooled. Suppose he might be as good as a squib, though, he seemed awfully interested in magical devices.”

Abraxas delighted in the gossip. “Oh no. They should prosecute home-schooling families in the courts. Could you imagine? I’d run away!”

“He’d been flirting. I call him a queer to be literal, but he was one of those swaggering types. He’d been taking great pleasure in baiting me. He saw me as something… conquerable.”

Abraxas screamed with laughter, and some of the sting of that confrontation was soothed. Yes, it was very silly, wasn’t it?

“He said to me, did you kill someone? Because he could not imagine Albus Dumbledore rejecting a perfectly good student,” Tom pressed, incensed all over again, “Oh no, the great and mighty hero, saviour of the wizarding world, his judgement is impeccable in all respects. He shows up quite a lot in Grindelwald’s early notes. I bet they were fucking and made a theatre production out of it.”

Abraxas wailed. “Oh by grace of Merlin, please! Please, I hope so! He’ll break Grindelwald from his cell—”

“And they’ll go gallivanting in the night after their fairy tales, as grown children do. Actually, I was thinking, I should just take some of his inferi. Store them somewhere for when I need it. Not like he did much with the lot.” Tom sipped from his brandy irritably. “There’s some left in Britain still?”

“There is. Department of Mysteries matters, I think. We can get them for you. Now tell me—he couldn’t have gotten away with it, what did you do?”

“I swept him from the store like sweeping out dust. Crashed against the wall! Landed clear upside-down! Like Charlie Chaplin!”

Abraxas wailed with laughter. “Oh no—if only I could see—who’s Charlie Chappin?”

Tom was too worked up to be self-conscious. “Chaplin. Muggle comedian. The muggles invented sound film, they love to see a dumb monkey fall over.” He drunk deep from his cup and pointed at Abraxas. “You know what? They’ve got sound films all over. Like a Eye-Spyball, Eye-er. Spier. They record things. It would be so easy, the DMLE has got recording devices that project, you know? They need to give those fucking things to everyone. Studios and such. They’re letting muggles invent sound films before us! We’ve reinvented the telephone already; we should master film.”

Abraxas raised his cup. “Here here! The wizarding world needs to see some horny idiot fall on his head!”

“Put that on your political agenda. Film. The mudbloods would kiss the feet of your robes.”  

Abraxas looked like he would enjoy that very much.

They drank, and laughed, and spoke passionately of the future, and when Tom left blazing and warm the ancient elf was well enough to polish windows, which meant his magic was more superb than most wizards before him. He swanned into his cramped flat, charmed a broom to sweep up for him, and flopped onto his bed with the diary.

I’ve escalated the body sectioning enchantment, he told it with a little flourish.

Good news, I take it.

Used it on his elf. The old one. Horrible little thing, it looked like an old apple doll. Roaring success.

Can I see?

Of course it could see. Tom drew out the memory, a bit bleary after the alcohol, and fed it to the book. The blue blossomed over the pages.

Fantastic. He looked really impressed. We will give it to St. Mungo’s, won’t we?

Isn’t it in the memory? We have to wait. I need it for the horcruxes.

A pause.

How exactly does one make a horcrux?

Tom gut-laughed. He’d forgotten, the book only remembered what he’d written in it! What a summer that must have been!

Oh, it’s awful. The organs. Disgusting. It doesn’t involve the body of the murder, you can just kill an animal for all the bits as long as it’s magical. Why didn’t you ask before?

I didn’t need to know, but a spell like that A pause. Your writing is sloppy. Are you drunk?

Very. Do not tell Burke.

Ha ha. Give me the memory and succumb to your future hangover.

Tom drew out the distant memory of him uncovering the horrific ritual and sank it into the book. There was a meaningful silence as the memory was digested.

Then, I will vomit with you in solidarity.

Isn’t it just so vile? I’d love to know how they came up with it. Starking mad.

Which organ did you need for me? I’m picturing shit all over my hands. I don’t feel honoured by my birth.

Tom covered his face to wail with laughter just like Abraxas and took great relish in his response. Liver. It was bile.

I’ll be the first ever book to sick up. I hope you’re very impressed.

Tom felt warm again after laughing, and he had to peel off his heavy black robes, and then he put his nightshirt on, and he had the thought to make dinner or wash the product from his hair or all manner of things, but he felt so heavy and pleased, so he crawled into bed and fell dead asleep the instant his head hit the pillow.

Chapter Text

Tom awoke to his charmed broom slapping him in the face.

It took a moment to orient himself, and even longer to understand what position he’d woken up in. Facedown on the floor (hence the broom), his lower half uncomfortably twisted in the opposite direction, as they were tangled in his blankets. His mouth was dry and syrupy, and the sliver of sunlight streaming through the room felt like an icepick to the temple. He squeezed his dry eyes shut. He hadn’t gotten blackout drunk; he remembered the entire night very clearly. Had he always had hangovers this terrible?

Tom rose unsteadily on his arms, and his back screamed in complaint at the contortion it had been left in overnight. The rest of his body resisted being upright; his stomach roiled, and his heartbeat was a hammer being drummed against his skull. He could barely stand.

His thoughts felt like they were seeping through a river of molasses, but it finally registered that his entire body was cold except his face, and yet he was still sweating. He touched his forehead. It felt very hot.

…Fever. How embarrassing.

Tom had consistently fallen victim to all kinds of infections from living in Knockturn Alley,  but it annoyed him that he’d caught another when he’d been in such good health. Now he needed to waste his valuable money buying a cleanse from the apothecary.

Tom did not think he would be able to leave the shower if he took one, so he ran the kitchen tap over his head, moaning in relief at the cool water. He lapped it up eagerly, desperate to get the tacky feeling out of his dry mouth. The back of his throat ached, and the water barely helped.

He drifted uneasily to his dresser, but he didn’t see any clean linens there. Tom sniffed thickly and picked up his wand with his toes to give himself a shamefully underpowered scourgify. He ran his fingers through his hair and winced at the clumps of dried hair gel rendering it crunchy and sticking up at odd angles. He didn’t have it in him to restyle it, so he simply stripped the product out and left it that way, even though his trimmed nape looked horrible when left natural, and it looked especially appalling on Tom, who had curls that sprung straight upwards with his hair at its current middling length.

He pulled his hat down and practically fell out of his flat. The afternoon sunlight reflecting on the street felt like a Zonko flashbomb directly to the face. He pulled his hat lower. The stairs…he could walk stairs. Did it very often. Without thinking. When about to collapse, even.

Tom made it all the way to the bottom, and could maintain a very slow, ambling pace uphill. And then the blinding, searing glow of open air, with no buildings to shelter him, marking greater Diagon Alley. He squeezed his eyes shut, and when he bumped into a lamppost, did not know how to orient himself.

Tom fell, heavily, as if the ground was pulling him, and—

He jolted into awareness in front of his usual tea and newspaper.

Instantly he gutted his own mind for confirmation he hadn’t lost time, though he got the impression he’d been slowly rousing himself at the table before he had enough brain to think with. At first there was lost time—but then he remembered, vaguely, he’d actually made it to the apothecary, and the café was just down the road, and bleary events dotted in between. He glanced at his knees, which were dirty, and decided he didn’t want to remember collapsing in broad daylight after all.

…He was holding an empty bottle. He’d already taken the medication with his tea.

Tom needed to go lie down for a thousand years. He stumbled to his feet, ignoring how woozy he still felt, and did his best to simply look tired. His consciousness was murky on the trip back, but somehow his feet took him all the way home.

Tom sprawled on the bed fully clothed. The diary was still resting on the blanket next to him, half-obscured in the snarl of blankets. He dipped his quill in the still-open ink bottle on his side table.

Ill again.

What the diary said in response was: It seems each time I move I must be ravaged by a new ailment. I fear our adventures in Europe may end in me dying of consumption.

But Tom had fallen dead asleep before even the third word was written out.

⎯ ♢♢♢ ⎯

Harry spent the following few weeks finding his curriculum.

He had to reread the dated tomes Merrythought used to teach first; he used later editions in his time, but they were the same books from Quirrell and Lupin’s school years. They operated under the presumption that all students needed to know were dark critters around the world and the best charms to be rid of them, going into progressively more obscure beasts, like a sort of evil Care of Magical Creatures class. Culling of Magical Creatures. That’s what aurors were before wartime, weren’t they? High-grade Dark magic cleanup crews.

Harry had personal experience with an unstable DADA curriculum, so he thought he might pick all the spells Merrythought would have taught in previous classes, and then apply them to duelling along with an expelliarmus in fifth year. In sixth and seventh years, he could go into more depth with ways to protect oneself. So he needed spells on magical combat, and a book to add to the reading list.

But there were so many books, and a lot of them seemed like they might be too expensive, or no longer in print, or were half-full of useless page-fillers, or written with such irregular English he wasn’t sure his students would be able to make anything of it. He didn’t have access to a library, so he ended up cycling through a second-hand bookstore to waste his own time.

He had…five months before the next term. Even less time before Dippet would bring him back and confirm what his curriculum even was. And he did not like wasting time. So Harry started taking notes.

He did so at the café the young Voldemort frequented, inside the building. Tom was looking peaky again, and somehow had yet to notice that Harry was inside, watching him, literally every day.

Harry took notes on the piecemeal books, the awful books padding out a single good idea, and the books that looked to be written in 1799, and put together their spells, their gestures, the footwork, the counter-charms and counter-curses.

It would be such a waste of time trying to find the perfect book for the final two years, so he would simply write his own.

Pulp novels had yet to decline in both wizarding and muggle communities. He could walk up with his notes, say ‘well, I’m a professor about to put this in my curriculum’, and get a thousand copies each in an instant. The staff might not approve of adopting Lockhart’s future techniques, but Dippet and Dumbledore seemed excited about his ‘unique insights’.

Separating 6^th and 7^th year…6^th year should be for practical combat, he thought, and 7^th year should be for professional duellists. Spells that were satisfying and titillated crowds. He’d rarely gone to a duellist event, but he thought serpensortia was the sort of thing that might appeal to a crowd, which was probably the exact reason Snape told Malfoy to cast it in his 2^nd year.

Some selections were natural; backfiring, silencing, and impediment jinxes were perfect for 6^th year, and knockback, quicksand, and the classic knee-reversal hexes were best for 7^th year. Breaking and laying of enchantments were also 7^th year, as Bill said that after aurors, curse-breaking used to be the main ‘pure DADA’ type of job, before they failed to break the curse on the DADA position itself.

But some of these techniques were useful enough Harry wanted to introduce it early, or were only the domain of duellists, yet required applied theory back in 6^th year.

He desperately missed Hermione, but even before he went on this latest crazed quest, she had been a busy woman, with a thriving career, and activism, and then her pregnancy. The work was a little less lonely when he imagined Hermione, while excited, would only have time to tut at choices she felt were too obviously wrong in one direction or the other, or note a spell she found and quite liked and thought other students might benefit from, and she’d only have thirty minutes a day to spare on those little nitpicks. 

Ron, however, would have time to test every one of these spells, and would be able to review the whole thing and cut out great swaths of them at once. His insight would not be in how useful the spells were, but how practical it would be to teach them. Bill had taken the DADA position, as absolutely nobody who had the academic experience wanted to try their hand at it, and he needed to be readily available to help with Fleur, who had also gotten pregnant.

They’d go out for drinks after work and find a yard to work through all the spells Harry had left, and then Harry and Ron would team up against Bill, because Ron was faster and Harry more accurate, but neither were particularly creative, a devastating weakness when duelling for sport.

But here in 1946, Harry did not have anyone to double-check his work for even half an hour, and he had no friends to do practical experimentation with, and he never would again. Harry had known Ron and Hermione ten years, longer than he has ever known another person, and if he hadn’t gone back Bill would have to wear that eye mask to hide the most grotesque of his scars and the twins would be torn in half and Ginny would be in the very unenviable position of breaking up with the Chosen One, so it was alright to do it himself. It was perfectly alright.

But Harry was really starting to empathize with Voldemort for breathing down Snape’s neck when he was a fresh recruit. Having someone to bounce off of who could keep up with what you were working on must have been a bloody godsend. Harry was tempted to paint a rock and charm it to totter around so he had someone else to talk to. Honestly, Harry Potter wouldn’t be born until 1981, so he had at least enough time to pick Snape up and hoard that horrible little brain of his, and then Harry could repay Snape by letting him be the one burying him this time. If there was anything left to bury.

…Tom Riddle really did look terrible. The man was staring at the paper with glassy indifference. At this distance, Harry couldn’t tell if he was even reading it. Occasionally, his annoyance with something built up enough for him to cast a spell on himself. Harry wished he knew where the horcruxes were; Tom looked very temptingly murderable right now.

The daily ritual of tea ended the same time it always did, though Tom had not made much progress through the newspaper. Harry returned home to his flat, which had not changed almost at all save for a desk and the vanishing cabinet, which he’d decided to take out of his safe because he had emptied 3/4ths of his remaining savings at Borgin & Burkes and all the decently-sized second-hand cabinets he saw had very menacing price tags.

He made himself a snack for a late lunch and sorted through his notes. After some thought, he decided to add a third book of all the spells he didn’t have the time or inclination to teach Hogwarts students. Basically any enchantments that took longer than 3 days of setup would go into that one, and he was already applying a lot of them to his meager home.

Harry spun his quill idly in one hand. Where would he even stop? He wished he could have read what Lupin had taught the later years. Not like he could ask him even if Harry was in the right time. Harry should hunt down and execute Fenrir Greyback. When did he come of age? Some time in the 60s?

Hmm.

Harry realized then that being frugal meant he didn’t have any distractions, or anything to help with keeping track of the work he needed to pull into an acceptable pitch by next week, which would be when Dippet would introduce him as a teacher and ask more specifics about his curriculum, and then turn that pitch into a manuscript by June, and have published by the beginning of August. Why the fuck had he thought this was a reasonable thing to attempt?

He'd start drinking by now, but Ginny had said not in front of Teddy so sharply and so often it hadn’t even occurred to him to buy any.

At the end of his rope, Harry grabbed one of his two bowls and transfigured it into a stone snake, so if anyone overheard him ranting to it they would think he was an evil dark wizard instead of crazy.

Harry placed the little snake – a pretty white thing patterned with the flowers from the bowl decoration, with painted green dots for eyes – onto his desk.

“Okay. So here’s my notes today,” he told the snake. “This book deals entirely with hand-to-hand combat and the best spells to cast, which is obviously a combat curriculum, because duelling is a bit more of a theatre and wouldn’t tolerate roughhousing. Sinking charm in a backwards headlock, good right? But would Hogwarts let me teach 6^th years to roughhouse? These techniques would require some muscle memory. That’s a lot of time I could spend teaching spells. Worth it? Yes or no?”

The snake slid underneath the papers. Based on the lump, it was curling up in there.

“Thank you. That was very helpful,” Harry said flatly. He thought about it, and decided, “this can be the third book too. I shouldn’t teach something and just drop it the very next year. Had that happen to me enough I know how terrible it can be for a kid. I mean, these will be the leading fighters against Voldemort.”

The snake peeked out from under the papers. Harry raised his eyebrows and nodded. “Yep. Lord Voldemort. What if I get myself killed on this mad quest? I need to teach the next generation. Molly Weasley will be born in what, three years? Got to get myself figured out early, I heard she was a spitfire in school.”

The snake retreated again.

“You’ll probably betray me for him in the event of my death. Very sad,” Harry lamented.

He collapsed into his chair and began languidly throwing an entire day’s worth of notes and illustrations and citations into the pile of shit that did not matter and was wasting his time. He tapped his finger idly on the armrest, wondering if he might just ask Dumbledore if he had any recommendations, or maybe access to the Hogwarts library. Harry suspected the hand-to-hand combat tome was the only thing of true worth he found so far, and he couldn’t even use it.

He just had to—

And then Harry forgot what he had to do, because his wrist was all at once livid with heat.

He jumped up, clawing at it, and his fingers caught on—no—

His watch. The one Molly Weasley had gifted him, the watch that had once belonged to her brother. Harry’s coming-of-age was scorching on his wrist.

It was being crafted in 1946.  

He unfastened it, and it fell to the ground in a cloud of glowing gold dust. He finally saw that it had been giving off sand this entire time, but none of it was hot, so he hadn’t noticed at all. It was all over the desk. His watch was all over the desk.

“No, no, stop,” he begged, trying to touch it again, but it seared his fingertips as time devoured it. He’d been reluctantly resigned to the invisibility cloak burning up because Harry Potter would inherit it someday, but this was his watch, and once he succeeded it would stay on Fabian Prewett’s wrist, and Harry would never touch it again, never be accepted as a part of the family by Molly, because he would already have a family, and his family would never fight in an Order against a Dark Lord because Harry would one day kill him, and he would never see the watch again, not like this, not like it was his.

Nothing he did stopped it from being unmade, no cooling charms, no stasis charms, and in his panic he couldn’t think of any other charms at all. None of them would work, and no part of it being something he carried with him would ever happen again, and he could barely see how much of it was collapsing because his eyes blurred with tears that burnt almost half as much as the sands.

Harry was too ashamed and grief-stricken to watch it fall apart, so he pressed his forehead against the cool floorboards. The whole world was spinning, and it was difficult to breathe, and he felt like he’d felt when he’d plunged off his broom when the dementors came after him, like he had no control over how horrible the whole world was, and his body couldn’t bear such an awful existence.

His fingers tingled and his teeth buzzed and he tried to recall Snape’s venomous clear your head, but Harry no longer remembered what Snape sounded like. He imagined King’s Cross, and it was empty, and he was alone there.

And someday, people would file in. People who he once loved would be born, and they would grow up, and they would learn, and love, and one day he would be born, and burn. And Harry Potter, the boy who was simply alive, would meet Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger, and he would remember Snape’s voice.

And he would shake Fabian Prewett’s hand, alive because of the mysterious Henry Evans, and his little fingers would graze the watch. Would he know? Would he be able to feel himself, future and past, inheriting the love of the Weasley family? Would he notice the watch at all? Maybe he would. He would, because he’d see it in so many of the men in his life, and he would ask his father (alive, a good man), and his father would tell him, we all get one when we graduate into the world. And one day, I’ll be giving you yours.

And he would. One day, Harry Potter would wear his own watch. A symbol of his parents living to raise him to adulthood, and of how proud they were of him for doing so.

Henry Evans raised his head.

The watch was mangled to the point of unrecognizability. The band was almost entirely gone, eroded into the pockmarks of termite-eaten wood, with swirls of sand-patterning seared into the metal. The clock had collapsed, broken into jagged-edged pieces shaped like something eroded by rust, but there was only cooling lumps of melted metal and those scars of sand, chewing into its existence.

Harry picked up all the little pieces, and put it into the vanishing cabinet, and he would have just started crying then and there while he still had it in him, but he saw his coat hanging on the chair and realized.

Oh fuck, my wand.

Chapter Text

Harry had run out the door so quickly he had to go back to fetch his coinpurse, and then halfway down the street he had to go back to leave his current wand at home. Why had he thought he’d be the only thing that would eventually be burnt out of the timeline?

Harry’s wand had been badly scorched when he arrived. That meant Ollivander was in the process of crafting it but wasn’t so far along that they were in direct contradiction. He was sorely tempted to buy it again once the date passed, but it was Harry Potter’s wand. He wouldn’t take it from himself.

Which meant he’d need a wand for the turnover. He couldn’t even conceive of what kind of wand would want to bond with him. His best guess was sycamore, a wand-wood popular with post-war aurors.

The wand shop was like a snapshot through time. The shelves were all sitting in the same spaces, the boxes were all the same style, and the lighting was the same atmospheric dimness. The only difference in Ollivanders was Ollivander himself, who looked to be in his mid-thirties.

“Ah. An unfamiliar face,” Ollivander greeted.

Harry gave a one-shoulder shrug. “Got my wand second-hand.”

“I see…always easier to measure a second wand. What was your last?”

“Er…Holly and phoenix feather. Kind of supple?”

Ollivander stared at him, mouth slightly parted. Alarm tingled at the back of Harry’s mind.

Then he looked very excited, almost bashful in his glee. “…Very difficult pairing. You know, I’m glad to hear it’s been achieved. I’ve got one in the works as we speak. You may get a direct replacement yet! Supple, you said?”

Harry nodded mutely.

“I shall keep that in mind. Oh, but—how did the holly wand suit you? It is not a wand that chooses an owner easily, particularly when passed down.”

“Like an extension of my arm,” said Harry, already mourning it.

“Fascinating. Though unsurprising, what with a war on. I thought it might be a good time to craft one, but it had all ended when I’d barely even begun the process. Well, there are always exciting new combinations,” Ollivander nodded.

With that, he began sizing Harry up, measuring his arm and his height, and pulling the stock off the shelves. He started with sycamore, just as Harry was thinking, and it did tingle and give off sparks, but Harry felt unsatisfied by the paltry result and Ollivander snatched it away. He had a pretty impressive breadth of sycamores, actually, but none of them fit, and only the phoenix cores would spark.

“That narrows it down,” Ollivander said with barely restrained glee.

Acacia did not fare much better. A luxurious silver lime, also a phoenix feather of eleven inches, squirmed out of his hand like a startled garden snake. Maple felt warm and pleasant, but did not cast. Ebony felt so frigid Harry dropped it. Yew went the way of the sycamores, functional but awkward and ill-fitting.

“Oh, very interesting, very interesting! I never thought I would have a customer so responsive, moments like these are why I took on the family business, you know!” Ollivander was practically skipping to his next wand. “Try this, vine and phoenix feather, thirteen inches. A bit more unyielding.”

The wand flew out of Harry’s hand and imbedded itself in the wall.

Ollivander’s eyes gleamed. “…Yes…very interesting…Veeery…Oh…I ought not to, it would be such a grave disappointment if you weren’t a match…even so…” He left the front of the store entirely, leaving Harry surrounded by boxes and feeling a little nostalgic.

Ollivander returned with a box that did not have the same design as every other wand in the shop; it was a fine, polished wood casket. “One of my masterworks, technically not for sale. ‘Wands of elder never prosper’ is a saying for a reason. In the business, you make elder wands for the love of the craft.”

“An elder wand?” Harry asked in alarm.

“Oh, yes, they’re endlessly fascinating, a favourite of those who yearn for something greater than themselves. Elder wood pairs exceptionally well with non-standard cores, giving them properties one would see only in myths and legend, but Ollivanders only works with the supreme cores. Now, here we are, elder, phoenix feather, thirteen inches, very springy.”

And he lifted the lid.

The elder wand Harry knew, the Death Stick, was a long, wicked thing, carved thin and lacquered brown, with membrane-like chambers that reminded Harry of skeleton bones, or a long organ. Ollivander’s masterwork was, in contrast, pure white. Like Harry’s wand – and now that he thought about it, very like the other wands Harry suspected were of Garrik Ollivander’s own making – the handle was tree bark, and the length a natural, twisting sanded-down branch. The transition and handle were wound in white string, with a little pinhole at the base to hold a white tassel. It was very plain, but gave off the impression of being sculpted down to expose its natural power.

“You see it, don’t you,” Ollivander whispered, looking at the wand with reverence. “A blank canvas…the infinite potential…it’s frightening to think of what might happen should you try to wield it, isn’t it? The heights of ecstasy from your connection, or the anguish of being unworthy of something so beautiful…”

Harry did not think very highly of mythical objects, as hunting for them had caused quite a lot of stress in a very short amount of time, but he had to admit there was something electric in the air just looking at it. It was craving to be touched. It didn’t know what it was, and wanted someone to seize it, prove themselves deserving of giving it its new purpose.

Harry reached out, hypnotized, and took it in his hand. He felt the heat, blossoming all the way up his arm, more beautiful and vivid than even his holly, a dangerous snap of interest, asking what will you make of me? And the rush of desire. He flicked the wand, and the air was sucked from the room. Glowing white light bounced from the tip. His patronus? No, another figure joined it. Another, and another, a stream of vague figures, until he finally saw his stag, and a beautiful horse rising up to join it. They enveloped the shop, leaving the feeling of warmth and protection wherever they went.

A facsimile of fiendfyre made of satisfaction, and truth, and glorious purpose.

“Oh!” Ollivander cried, falling back in watery-eyed awe. “Oh, this is—oh, I was right, with how poorly the vine reacted, and you seemed to be crowding out the lesser wands, yes, this one especially…my word, sir, my grandfather used to bait me into his workshop with tales of customers like these! Ha!”

Harry looked warily at his wand, the fact he couldn’t bear to part with it now that he had it making his trepidation even worse. “…Is there—I mean, do normal people use elder wands?”

“Ah…no interest in legends and glory, then?” Ollivander chuckled lightly. “Well, of course there are no normal people who use such wands, as they by nature only select the extraordinary. But they’re used for very normal careers, yes. The Head of the Department of Mysteries must be able to wield an elder wand, either their own or the Ministry’s – unicorn hair, 9 inches, quite rigid, my great-grandfather’s work. Gringotts curse-breakers must have an elder wand on hand as well. It is necessary when manipulating an existing enchantment, you see. Most spells struggle to hold on something already of magic, but casting with an elder wand is as if…everything in the world is as inert as a rock you might find on the shore.” Ollivander leaned in with a conspiring smile. “If you don’t care for power or glory, you may think of it as a wood that won’t be used by someone it could easily treat like a rock.”

That did make Harry feel better. Being a literal self-conjuration in defiance of time itself had to be impressive to a wand that breezed through most magic it interacted with. It was not like the Death Stick, which Harry suspected was to the concept of ‘elder wands’ what the cloak of invisibility was to a demiguise-hair cloak. And no one would kill him for this one, because the wand only liked him for his time travel, a very difficult thing to replicate.

Harry readjusted his grip on the wand. He casted with intent, this time; a levitation charm on one of the boxes. The movement was silky and perfect, and it did flips and spins without any concentration at all. He could duel really well with this.

“This is great then,” Harry laughed.

Ollivander beamed and went to the counter. “Of course, of course. You know, I’m still young, I crafted that very recently, but…curious, isn’t it. Very curious.”

Harry had a very bad feeling. “…What’s curious?”

“Well…It’s unsurprising a supple holly wand of phoenix feather would enjoy the company of a man who could take a curse to the head, of course, but it’s very unusual, I think, that the silver lime and phoenix feather was so repulsed by your touch.”

“Did the silver lime have a special feather?”

“No, but it’s quite popular among sooth-sayers and diviners. In the last century, wandmakers would claim their silver lime wands touched the fate of those that wielded them. Nonsense sales-talk, of course, a wand being useful for certain magic does not give it innate properties. However…”

Ollivander fixed Harry with a careful eye, and his gaze travelled down to his elder wand, and for a moment Harry could feel the weight of the man’s fascination and curiosity. Ollivander of 1991 knew exactly why Harry Potter was sold a brother wand to Tom Riddle, but this Ollivander did not understand Harry’s affinity, and dearly wanted to.

“…I don’t normally disclose my sources, but…the feather I used in that wand was from a phoenix belonging to Brunor Dumbledore, an Astrologian who first mapped the End of All Fates.”

Harry was hit with a fear so dizzying he almost fell into the shelves.

“…Sorry. The what?”

“End of All Fates. A bit hyperbolic, in my opinion, but…from about twenty years ago, I think, there hasn’t been a single prophecy in the British Isles. It’s a gap that could be seen from centuries in the past. ‘As if the fabric of fate itself had been torn asunder’, if I remember correctly. Brunor Dumbledore was the one who determined it was not a hole, but a crease. You would have to ask an actual Seer on its significance, of course, but quite curious, all the same. Perhaps your fate is also something that seeks…mapping.”

Irreparable damage to the user or time itself…

“Ten galleons, right,” said Harry.

He couldn’t get out of the shop fast enough. Torn asunder? A hole so large people could scry centuries in the future to see it? Or if it was a crease, was it a lump in the fabric that had been pushed into a massive hill by time riding backwards, pulling something with it?

Did people know about this?

Harry, stupidly, went straight to the newspaper stands, where there was a paper for just about every type of wizardry there was, as if the Diviner’s Daily Weekly would be reporting on a several-hundred-year-old theory he learned about just now.

And yet, against all odds, it was.

THE END OF WAR, THE RETURN OF FATE
By Celestina Wraithbone, Senior Correspondent

After months of speculation, whispers, and half-seen signs, Britain’s long-standing Shadow of Fate is finally lifting. While our readers may be weary of the wait, the Divination community now brings concrete news: according to the latest cross-referenced findings in Arithmancy and Astronomy, war has settled into peace, chaos into order—and the cycle of prophecy is set to resume within the coming year.

Seer Medea Hope, recipient of the Order of Merlin (Third Class) and renowned for her pivotal role in the fall of Grindelwald, has issued a formal statement: “As Fate realigns,” she warns, “we can expect an influx of what we call petty prophecy—minor yet essential foretellings concerning romances, births, inheritances, and familial disputes. These events, while seemingly small, restore the intricate threads of the world’s True Order.”

The Ministry is urging any witches or wizards who feel their Inner Eye drawn beyond the veil to report to the Ministry for a voluntary memory extraction, ensuring all visions are properly documented and cross-validated for historical accuracy.

From Hogwarts, Cassandra Trelawney II—Divination Professor and heir to the legendary Seer’s legacy—continues her work mapping the shifting constellation of prophecies. She assures us that…

The war. The seers thought the crease was because of the war. That amount of death and strife, spreading everywhere from the Americas to the Middle East, was determined to be enough chaos to disrupt fate.

Harry kept skimming. Medea’s theory was based on the common phenomenon of prophecies slowing, followed by a surge of them. Apparently this happening in Greece was the most famous century in all of divination. It was considered a little scary, but something that would ultimately pass, like winter before spring.

But those were just academic guesses. Not a single summary in the paper – and in the previous three papers Harry skimmed through – mentioned prophecy outright stopping the way they did in Britain and only Britain, thousands of miles away from where the tides of fate should be slowing.

They didn’t know what Harry had done.

On the bright side, ‘petty prophecies’ implied just what he wanted it to; Fate would push the major players to be born, to prevent further chaos. As horrifying as it is that he almost turned off an entire type of magic, professional Seers who went to school for that sort of thing agreed that a very fate-relevant person like, hypothetically speaking, Harry Potter, would of course be born, and everything would be as it should. That was nice. Good also. Very encouraging.

Harry massaged the sand burns on his wrist. Then the only problem was…What if Fate tried to bring Voldemort into power again?

‘Around twenty years ago’ sounded an awful lot like ‘the year Voldemort was born’.

Chapter Text

It was the middle of Easter holiday, and Harry’s pitch looked like shit.

He simply did not have enough time to organize properly. If he had to sort curriculum for the other five years, he would have had to drop out entirely. Even so, the material itself was good, so Harry would just have to operate based on the presumption that he could teach a class.

Harry was invited to floo to the Headmaster’s office, as before. Dippet stood proudly, hands behind his back, looking silently approving of Harry’s teacherly robes of plain black open coat and a pleated robe. Good, it would be the last time he’d see it outside the holidays. Nearly all of Harry’s robes were second-hand Y-necks, and half of those were linens he just wore around the house with muggle trousers. What scandal.

“Headmaster,” Harry greeted.

“I do not mean to inflate your ego,” said Dippet without a word of greeting back, “but I must say, we’ve spoken to quite a number of highly esteemed scholars, individuals whose contributions to the field are frankly extraordinary. And yet…not a one of them had the faintest idea what to do in a proper wizarding duel, and only the rarest few have ever come within spitting distance of an actual curse, let alone interacted with one.”

“Oh,” said Harry. “Well. Like I said, I’m not doing much interesting, just…”

“Adding much-needed structure to the curriculum that has defined Hogwarts’ approach to Defence Against the Dark Arts for the past 60 years? I don’t care for self-important self-proclaimed revolutionaries trying to uproot centuries of folk knowledge myself,” Dippet sniffed.  

Harry smiled in a way he hoped was winning and adjusted his grip on his briefcase. “Oh, yeah. Well, I got as practical as I could. Seventh years would have careers in mind if they went out of their way to get an O and kept on after. Aurors, Unspeakables, duelists, curse-breakers, and patties.”

“What on earth does a curse-breaker need with Defence?”

Harry recalled the job only needed muggle studies so they could navigate mundane communities, especially when the target was a tourist trap. “I mean, most of the objects they take are Dark. That’s why they’re allowed to take them.”

Dippet’s eyes were alight. “Yes…The Ministry heavily regulated the teaching of Dark Arts while I was still a student, I thought it was truly such an oversight…perhaps we might reintroduce the counter-spells, Dark artifact control…they can’t just pretend such things do not exist, and really, they had no business interfering to begin with…”

He muttered under his breath as he approached the gargoyle, and Harry supposed he was meant to follow. He was rapidly beginning to see what about Tom had appealed to Dippet; a perfectly innocent little angel, friendly and generous, who thought that the Dark Arts needed more defining and agreed with his vision for the school. He probably laid it on thick. Oh, Headmaster Dippet, if only I went to school in your day. I was born in the wrong era! If only I could see your Hogwarts.

And what a Hogwarts it was. Timeless and exactly as Harry had left it. Dippet was leading him deeper into the castle instead of out into the grounds, and Harry was free to admire how the only thing that had changed were the contents of the classrooms they passed. It was something beyond just tradition; a feeling that it would always be this way, because this way was as natural as the formation of the mountains and the rivers. No matter what era Harry was in, this was his home.

They stopped in front of the staff room.

“Just to be clear, you are taking me on?” Harry prompted.

“Oh, yes, but of course. We need to put that fire back into our curriculum!” He shoved the door open decisively.

Every single Hogwarts professor was inside.

Honestly, more. There were definitely more people here than there ever were working in his time. They were sitting around the fire, at the table, Dumbledore was just standing by the door patiently waiting for them. Harry felt suddenly nervous. He’d baited Dippet and Dumbledore based on their biases, but he didn’t know nearly anyone in this crowd.

“Er. Hello. I’m Henry Evans,” he told the group.  

“He’s rounded us up to show you off. The way he puts it, you defeated Grindelwald yourself,” a very refined elderly woman chuckled.

“Nope, just a really impressive scar.” He ran his thumb over his forehead.

“So I’ve heard. Galatea Merrythought. You’ll be working under me until my long-awaited retirement.”

Harry straightened. Working under…? “Oh. Wonderful to meet you at last, ma’am. Your textbooks are the best I’ve read, will be really happy to continue your work.”

“Of course. I hope the adjustment period won’t be too difficult. Going from local tuition to a boarding school is quite the jump.” She tilted her head at him, her dark eyes searching.

“Well, yeah. To be honest, I thought I was just going to outline my curriculum today.”

“And you will. Albus, I believe you’ve met?”

“Quite fortuitously, yes.” Dumbledore smiled, and before he could add anything else, a short pudgy blonde man muscled his way closer to shake Harry’s hand.

“Horace Slughorn! I’m the potions professor, and the Slytherin head of house. Must say, never quite saw someone catch Albus Dumbledore’s attention, and after all that mess with the war, you ought to know what a high honour that is!” He chuckled in a conspiring manner, as if only he and Harry were in on a joke. They had literally just met.

“Sure do,” said Harry.

“Now, Henry – can I call you Hank?”

“No?”

“Henry. How’s it been returning to Britain? All treating you right? Any connections? Supports?”

Slughorn was obviously hoping to lend his considerable influence to ply Harry, who he thought was now a way in with recently-famous Dumbledore, but Harry did not feel particularly charitable at the moment. “That sounds like something someone who was looking for a murder victim would ask.”

The plying smile dropped off Slughorn’s face so quickly it was a wonder the moustache didn’t drop with it.

It had the knock-on effect of making the other staff very uneasy about approaching, all except a young woman with a halo of wispy white-blonde hair – which looked remarkably like a teased perm – and enormous green eyes, so pale they took on an opalescent quality from all the colours in the room.

“Hello, I’m the divination teacher, Cassandra Trelawney,” she said in a soft, vague voice. “I don’t know if I can say Cassandra the 2^nd if there’s a parent between.”

“Oh. Well, it’s nice to meet you,” Harry said, offering a hand.

She blinked at it and gave him an apologetic smile. “I don’t touch people.”    

Harry opened his mouth, closed it, adjusted his footing, and tried, “I saw you in the paper.”

“Oh. They’re always putting me in the paper. I don’t know why…I don’t have the Sight at all. I suppose they all miss my grandmother. Miss Hope got her job now.” She tucked some hair behind her ear. “I’m sorry. My class isn’t terribly interesting for most people. A bit like a history of magic course, unless you’ve got the nature for it…”

“No, it’s fine,” Harry said quickly. “I mean, it’s important to find Seers early. Especially with the, erm, End of the ‘End of all Fates’, right?”

She smiled at him, blinking those huge eyes. Harry was reminded strongly of Luna Lovegood, and the thought made his heart ache a little. “Yes. Though minor predictions haven’t been affected much by the crease. If you hold fabric very close to your eye, you can see through it just fine, you see. That’s how Brunor Dumbledore mapped it.”

“Brunor Dumbledore. Any relation?” Harry asked Dumbledore brightly, trying to restrain how unnerved the topic made him.

Dumbledore gave him a similarly vague smile. “My great-great-grandfather.”

“Come now, we have places to be,” Dippet pressed, and pushed Harry forward.

Cuthbert Binns was of course the History of Magic teacher and still alive, though clearly getting on in years. The charms teacher Araminta Xu was the Ravenclaw head, but Harry was intrigued that the Hufflepuff Head of House was Casimir Ridgecarver, the pleasant-looking Care of Magical Creatures professor, whose dark twin braids trailed nearly to his knees.

“But you’re an elective?” Harry wondered out loud.

“Leaving my schedule more open for the students. I’m often fielding children from all four houses,” Ridgecarver chuckled.

Harry was carted from Herbology teacher Dandelise Saltpeter to Ancient Ruins teacher Cuimin Keane, and it was at this point, being shoved to the Herbology department and Ancient ruins department with unnamed teachers lingering behind the ones being introduced, that Harry realized that all the extra people had to be teaching assistants.

Which made sense. The war was frightening and deeply involved the British government, but very little of it affected civilians the way Voldemort’s reign of terror had. There were simply more students in Britain’s magical community, and that required more staff.

Harry felt a building trepidation as he shook the groundskeeper Ogg’s hand. More students sounded a lot like a very hectic work schedule. Keeping track of the 30-odd students in the double blocks had already been something he was working himself up to. All that paperwork…

He’d positioned himself in Hogwarts for access to the basilisk. And then the grounds, Dumbledore, yet-to-be-born students, and a way to integrate into this era, but…The entire reason he came back in time was to take out Tom Riddle. It had seemed so immediate and true at the time, that all his needs could be met if he were to take this position, but now that he had it, Harry was struck with an odd feeling that he was being constricted. Was he? How easy would it actually be to nose around Hogwarts, with twice as many students and staff hanging around?

In the crowded lounge, talking casually about getting right to work to inherit a job he was expected to keep up for the next twenty-or-more years, Harry felt less and less like he was politely going through the motions of a new workplace and more like an insect on a pin, or a cornered animal.

“I’m glad we’ve finally got this matter cleared. We were about to have Dumbledore teach the class,” Dippet chuckled.

“I mean,” Harry said with a wry smile he didn’t really feel.

“I believe I have done quite enough defending from Dark Arts, and must sadly retire to my much less impressive career of thirty years,” Dumbledore nodded with an air of put-upon disappointment.

Harry rallied himself. If Tom Riddle could unleash a giant fucking snake, it couldn’t be that hard to move around. “A shame. You would make an excellent auror. Imagine the saviour of the wizarding world fetching a troll out of your back garden!”

That got a genuine laugh out of Dumbledore.

The teachers were on the most part awkward and restless at having to be contained in the room just for greetings, and Dippet freed them in short order. Cassandra meandered to the table and took a muffin from the basket in the middle and stared at it as if it held all the secrets of the universe before picking at it with her fingers the way Tom did his sandwiches.

“Now then, Mr. Evans. We should get you all sorted, which is what we should have done before all this fanfare,” said Merrythought, arching a brow at Dippet.

“Well, he already had teaching experience, so the most important thing now is the environmen—”

“How old are you, Mr. Evans?” Merrythought asked Harry sharply.

Harry cleared his throat. “Er. Twenty.”

Dippet’s mouth dropped open. Dumbledore’s brows furrowed. Understandable; if Harry was caught up in Grindelwald’s rise to power, he would have been 15 when it started, and barely 17 when it was first getting truly dire. A shockingly accurate timeline line-up, actually.

“I’m very sorry to hear that,” Dumbledore said softly.

“Well. Not like you could have done anything about it.” Also accurate was that Dumbledore knew about the problem and circled the situation for years, unwilling to completely take charge but doing his best to orchestrate a workable plan, inevitably fucking up in the process. Harry genuinely had no idea if Dumbledore was right to be cautious of his own control issues, and he’d never know, not even with time travel. Dumbledore hadn’t known either, and so as far as either of them could tell, the result of his war was as good as could be expected; Harry alive, Voldemort dead, horcrux cleansed. The only way to decisively make it better were if Tom Riddle never went on his rampage to begin with. That’s why Harry went back this far, so he could be sure, without a shadow of a doubt, that what he was doing would work.

But here in 1946 Dumbledore’s eyes lost their light, and he dipped his head, looking as if he were attending to a funeral.

“Twenty. Morgana take us,” Merrythought cursed. “We’d best start with checking your work.”

She opened the door, and paused when she came up against an enormous chest.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Professor Merrythought. Wasn’t sure if I was meant to come, am I too late?” Asked a low west country accent. Harry’s heart soared.

A huge, bushy mane of dark hair ducked into the room, and there, round-faced, lightly freckled, and just as enormous as he was in Harry’s day, was Hagrid.

He didn’t have a beard yet, though it was fighting to build up, especially around his sideburns. He looked so, so unbearably young, looking around the room with that agonizingly familiar way of his, like he felt wrong standing there, and was trying his best to act like he didn’t mind how very wrong he felt. He was wearing a slightly dirty tunic that struggled to fit his body, and his hair was an explosion of frizz despite his attempts to wrangle it all into a ponytail.

“Oh. Hagrid,” said Dippet, sounding like he dearly wished he did not have to greet Hagrid.

“Hi. Mr. Evans? Wow, you’re really going to be the professor. I heard you fought in the war, and know all about that, people-fighting. And it was the war, so you can do it and not just talk about it in books. Back in Headmaster Dippet’s day, they taught all of us how to do that, but now it’s only auror apprenticeship, and you got to call aurors for just about anything, even though the war’s got everyone so tied up and busy, and no one probably has time to master apprentices. Sounds horrible now that we’re talking about it,” Hagrid said all of this very quickly, getting progressively redder and sweatier as he went. Dippet’s demeanor warmed a little at Hagrid’s unintentional pandering to his sensibilities.  

Dumbledore rescued Hagrid by joining him and squeezing his shoulder. “Rubeus Hagrid is Ogg’s understudy. You’ll see him quite often from now on, I’d imagine.”

“I’m only just 17 now, but Ogg’s been teaching me since I was 14. There’s a lot of grounds keeping in Hogwarts, you know. It’s a really big job, but I’m good at, you know, the—gardens, and pastures, and Care of Magical Creatures was my favourite class since I was a first year.”

“Wow. Starting young,” Harry said, his smile gleeful and unrestrained. Hagrid, Hagrid, the first ever adult to ever genuinely want to take care of Harry, the first person to truly rage at Harry’s upbringing, his first introduction to magic, still giddy to welcome him even as a young man.

“Well. There was—I brought summat out of the forbidden forest, and it…It was bad. A big part of understudying is all about not doing something like that ever again,” here he carefully looked between Dippet and Merrythought. Dumbledore had clearly coached him on how to talk about Aragog in front of these two.

 “That’s excellent. Big sturdy man like you, you’ll be running the grounds once you take over!” Harry slapped his arm jovially, and Hagrid flushed and smiled bashfully at his toes. Dumbledore squeezed his shoulder again.

“We really are wasting your day, Mr. Evans,” Merrythought pressed.

“Oh. Yeah, Professor Merrythought is going to look over my work. I’ll likely be understudying just like you, so maybe we could get some tea. Drinks. See you!” Harry waved as Merrythought pushed past.

Merrythought did not make any comments as she marched through the school, straight-backed and elegant. She reminded Harry of McGonagall, prim, composed, and exuding a sense of benevolent authority. Her braided up-do looked very complicated from the back, in contrast to McGonagall’s utilitarian bun.

“What house were you in when you were a student?” Harry asked to break the silence.

“Slytherin,” she said. “A family trade.”

Harry’s eyebrows raised. “Being Slytherin?”

“You will find those of the Slytherin house are split into distinct factions; those who are, indeed, taking to their house like a family career…and those who need to be surrounded by peers who understand a language only they speak.”

“Parseltongue,” Harry offered.

She chuckled. “Guile. The hat is an irreplaceable tool when sorting children who see the world in terms of potential transactions and potential…threats. You don’t want the nasty ones in Hufflepuff, even if they need the support. I can tell you were put off by Horace, but he is a snug fit for the head of house. He wants to nurture these children, and will never fault anyone for an ugly approach to the world. I hope you can come to respect his methods.”

He hadn’t done a very good job, in Harry’s opinion. From Tom Riddle to Harry himself, Slughorn was interested only in the status and skill of his students, and the only time he’d go out of his way to help someone was if they impressed him in some way. Harry didn’t doubt he was a good man to his Slug Club, but he wasn’t exactly head-of-house material.

Merrythought saw his frown and laughed again. “Well, alright, I will admit that Horace himself has very little to do with it. Slytherin is stable while he’s around, though. Every child a star trying to shine their brightest, learning that isolating themselves only makes things harder for them. It works. In my absence, I hope you can learn a thing or two from how they react to him.”

Harry craned his neck back towards the lounge. Horace looked to be in his 30s, and Merrythought old enough all her hair was silver. “Did you teach him?”

“Of course I did. Horrible little brown-nosing bastard. Here we are, now.” She swung open the doors of a completely unfamiliar classroom. Inside was a massive lecture hall, with a very large square dais at the bottom. This was the room that the gobstones and duelling clubs used for their final tournaments in the 90s.

She did not descend to the dais, instead walking behind the seats to a side door, which held her office. Harry felt a tickle on his skin as he entered. Her office was tidy, brightly lit, and featured quite a few of the strange little devices Dumbledore kept as a headmaster, glittering like jewels in the light of the enchanted window. Every piece of furniture had some sort of patterned fabric on it, and it smelled of herbs, though Harry couldn’t see an incense burner.

Merrythought sat at her desk and laced her fingers together. “Can you show me what you were hoping to teach?”

Harry hurried to show her his outline. She remained chillingly silent as he explained his notes, why he wanted to teach it to the year he wanted to teach it to, and intermittently talked about practical applications for the earlier years, modelled off Lupin’s techniques. He did his best not to sound insecure as he explained he wanted to publish two books, supplementary for her Advanced DADA textbooks.

She studied his face, and then the notes. “Did you learn all these practically?”

“Oh, uh, no. There wasn’t much Defence, back then. I haven’t had anyone to practice with yet, so these will be pared down for—”

“Follow me.” She strolled out of the office.

Harry wasn’t sure if he should take the case and his pitch notes, but decided it was a waste of time to clean it all up, and left it behind in the office. Merrythought was headed down to the dais. As she descended, she waved her narrow black wand, and the whole thing began stretching out even larger and growing short walls. Another wave, and a row of three mannequins slid out on a rail to be set on the edge of the newly enclosed ring.

“Woah.” Why didn’t his DADA classroom do this?

She tapped her wand on one of the mannequins, and it began imitating a wizard, miming holding a wand. “I am aware Dippet and Dumbledore only took you on because they are ambitious and egoistic academics who see you as a pretty bauble that reinforces their views of the world, as different as those views are, but I am also aware that they saw something in you. Your notes are unrefined, bloated, and unfocused, far too sloppy for the timeline of when you want these textbooks published. However, they are all techniques well-chosen for the direction you want to take, and your attention to career application was very impressive.” She left the dais and looked him up and down. “In one week, easter holiday will be over and classes will begin. I would like you to sit in and learn my teaching methods directly. In the afternoons, you will mark the essays of the younger years, and after you are finished, you may use the training enchantments to pare down that bloated mess of a manuscript. Once you find spells that are effective and practice them thoroughly, we will duel until we are sure what is and isn’t an appropriate thing to teach a Hogwarts student.”  

She did not ask his opinion on this, and she didn’t need to; Harry could have collapsed with relief that he’d have any help at all. “Yeah, no—no problem, of course.”

“You are about to be the youngest teacher in two hundred years simply by nature of the fact they didn’t ask. I do not envy your position, but I will be strict. Please do be on time.” She gave him a patient smile, and he nodded like a bobblehead.

This sense of structure and assurance helped him swallow his previous nerves. He realized he did want this to work out, even if it didn’t offer anything substantial. Being an auror in the post-war ministry wasn’t something Harry could stomach, but he wanted to make an impact, he desperately needed for all the horrible things he had to go through to survive to mean something. It had been his childhood dream job, but towards the end of the war he craved the DADA position. In 2001 that didn’t matter, because they basically handed the auror position to Harry, and Bill was older, more secure, better educated, and needed the job.

But Harry selfishly wanted the job.

“I won’t let you down,” Harry said firmly.

She tilted her head, still patient. “I wasn’t expecting you to. Come now, let me give you a walk around the castle. I need you to be able to navigate from the floo to the classroom, and the stairs are a nightmare.”

Chapter Text

It was by sheer force of will Tom overcame his illness and stubbornly stood at the step of a manor home, refusing to act as if simple fatigue was enough to ruin his entire life.

After their last guileless rube Tom had cleaned out, it had been months since they had a new benefactor. Most sellers came direct to the shop and only had two or three relics, and Tom would take them to the back room and negotiate breezily over tea. He did not earn much commission on those sales.

But at last, they’d attracted someone with a catalogue.

He felt like his skin and flesh were misaligned, all his insides slowly sagging down in their desperation for rest. Tom pressed the tip of his wand to his wrist and cast a stinging hex.

The manor was owned by one Mr. Ramon Day, a ministry employee of some renown, but Tom would be speaking to his elderly mother Alda Day. Tom had always been a hit with older women; there was no greater opportunity than this.

Alda Day was a tiny woman in comfortable robes, only adorned in a thumb ring and understated necklace despite her enormous wealth. She beamed at the sight of Tom. “Oh, wonderful, you’re just on time, dear! Goodness, aren’t you looking peaky? Let me feed you, won’t you?”

“I don’t mean to impose,” Tom said gently.

“Not at all. You look like you might keel over on my doorstep. Nipsy!”

A house elf popped in. It was dressed in a luxurious velvet pillowcase and was the darkest elf he had seen yet, the deep grey-blue of a stormy ocean. It made it look a little less vile.

“Make Mr. Burke’s boy something to put the colour back in his cheeks. And tea. Do you mind camomile?” She asked him.

He twitched a smile. “That sounds lovely.”

Tom kept his eyes firmly locked to her and did not inspect the lavish decorations of the manor. He did not want to be seen as covetous. He’d tipped his hand a little too far in the summer after his fourth year, when Abraxas first invited Tom to visit, and he did not want to ever be seen taking special interest in someone else’s wealth again.

There was a bowl of squash soup and tea waiting for him at the tea table when they reached the sitting room. He drank as if Alda Day was giving him some great relief.

“I’ll get you what I know we can sell, dear, and we can talk about all the mess in the vault. This really is such a great help, I must thank Mr. Burke for lending you.”

It was always nice when little old ladies said please and thank you for getting fleeced for all they were worth.

By the time she returned, Nipsy had refilled his tea and prepared a second course of eggs royale, which he ate as carefully as possible despite having no witnesses. It felt like the type of dish where you were expected to take a bite out of it and get yolk all over your face, but it was served in the home of someone of Old Money, so he stubbornly tore it open with his knife and ate it like steak.

Alda Day had a box haphazardly stuffed with artifacts floating behind her. She set it by the loveseats and began spreading them all out for display. Tom dabbed his face with a napkin for the fifth time and came to see what he was working with.

“Quite a bit of goblin-made jewellery. This was all before the War of the Wands, so the deal of ownership was that you must be able to name who’d made it. Can’t say ‘goblin-made’. They’ve got little nametags in their settings, see?”

“I heard goblins treat inheritance like thievery,” Tom said softly.

She laughed a little. “Well, the War of the Wands made a mess of goblin and wizard business. Horrible stuff. They couldn’t trust wizards as far as they could throw them after that. But such things come in phases; after the Sword of Gryffindor, it was the same. Soon enough we’ll be buying lovely trinkets and saying ‘it’s a Lugraff original’ once more.”

Tom’s back straightened, and he had to try very hard not to react too strongly. “The Sword of Gryffindor?”

“Oh yes. I think it’s in most books? Goblin society is a bit like a workshop hierarchy. Their king is the most talented craftsman, and Ragnuk was named king for his silversmithing. He created a sword from silver, a holy blade that could cut through all evils in the world.” She spoke with a relish Tom recognized in himself. “My History of Magic class made this all sound very exciting; they say Merlin – the first apprentice of Slytherin, mind, even if all the chocolate frog cards act like he was taught by all four – lured Arthur Pendragon from those Romano-Christians that were killing all the wizards, using Gryffindor’s sword. That was apparently the most important bit to the muggles. Slytherin and Morgana wanted to hide the magic world entirely, but Gryffindor hoped our worlds could be united and backed Merlin the whole process. Silly, of course, and a bit sad. The Romans wouldn’t accept a wizard like Mordred as Arthur’s heir, and went right back to trying to slaughter us, so that was a wash, wasn’t it? But Merlin had inspired such a revolution Ragnuk said that the sword was stolen so he could gloat about it, and they skirmished with the castle for a century.”  

Tom blinked very slowly. “Mr. Binns seemed more occupied with the founding and the betrayal of succession. He didn’t mention the sword was Gryffindor’s.”

“Oh, one of those professors. My Divination class was just like that,” she laughed. “Put me to sleep talking all about drugged-up priests in Greece pretending to see the future. No, my History of Magic professor taught nothing but the Matters of Britain to the first years; it helps the muggleborns, since they know Merlin and King Arthur already, just the wrong way. Mordred is called the usurper because he dared to take the throne without the Roman Empire’s say-so. They tried to retroactively disown him, calling him some idle cousin who stole Arthur’s crown, bedded his wife, and made a mess of his halls with his wanton revelry. Isn’t that distasteful?”

Tom did not have a strong understanding of the Matter of Britain, so he had learned about Mordred exclusively as a footnote in wizarding history; the muggleborn son of a great king that was denied and betrayed by the muggles, and the vector through which Merlin neatly cleaned up his own mess. Mordred appeared primarily in extremely dry explanations of what a thankless slog it was to completely separate two societies.

These two approaches to teaching – both of a great folk tragedy and the most mind-numbing and poorly-documented political rat’s nest in Britain’s history – conveyed the same result; desegregation, while possible, was bound to end in catastrophe.

But King Arthur’s sword being the Sword of Gryffindor changed everything.

Tom had thought of the Founder’s Relics as his ideal horcruxes, and he liked the shape of it, a callback that proved his power and inheritance; the heir to Slytherin’s teachings taking something from each house to become the greatest wizard who ever lived. Ever since he had cajoled the Bloody Baron into confiding in him about his death, Tom had a rough sketch of how he might find them all. The sword had been the one he cared for the least, an inevitability to set aside until the time was right, likely to be his Sixth. But if this was all true, the sword was perfect for Tom. He could not ask for a better symbol. He could make the decision Merlin couldn’t, and no child would be ever bored to tears by further territory disputes.

“What happened to the Sword of Gryffindor?” He pressed. “Was it thrown in the lake? Did Mordred inherit?”

“Well it wasn’t Arthur’s sword, was it? No, no one knows what happened to it. Though it appears in Hogwarts’ history sometimes, so it must be around. It really is sad they don’t teach you these things anymore, would you like my old textbooks?” Alda Day asked brightly.

“I would like that very much.” He looked as sad and fragile as he could muster when filled with this much energy. “I couldn’t live with my relatives, so they left me with muggles when I was young.”

She gasped. “Oh, how horrible! They shouldn’t leave boys of good breeding with the ignorant, it’s a crime! I’ve got plenty of books, you know, there’s so much they don’t teach anymore.”

“I do have to return to the shop,” he said. “…Perhaps we could extend our visits even after our business concludes…?”

She smiled at him, making her wrinkles deepen. “I would love the company, dear.”

⎯ ♢♢♢ ⎯

One of Tom’s Knights had thought to write to him, so he could no longer ignore his followers. It didn’t matter; he was in a wonderful mood, and didn’t mind going out for drinks as he used to.

I hold council tonight, Tom told the diary. Did you know King Arthur’s sword was the Sword of Gryffindor?

King Arthur had it all of ten minutes, if that were true.

I theorize he borrowed it in campaigns to win the favour of the muggle Britons. Pureblood historians weren’t interested in Arthur at all, I completely missed it. It’ll help with my search, I think.

Are you feeling better?

Had it noticed? Tom had tried to hide the fact he’d backslided on his health, but the diary was him, after all. He’d always been clever.

It’s only fatigue this time. Were you concerned?

There’s no escaping our illness. It wastes our time, though. Bring potions for when we go to Europe. Not just pepper-up.

That seems wise. Two days until potions journal release, Tom wrote to cut that particular conversation off.

Not a week’s warning? You’re so cruel to me. Lord but they’re starting to sound like herbology texts lately. I hope there’s actual brewing.

Tom was not bringing the diary to Europe, because he planned on bringing the ring, and didn’t want his horcruxes all clustered in one place like that. He would entrust it to the follower he liked the most – currently, Abraxas – and feed it all the memories of the trip when he came back. Perhaps he’d bottle each day.

Now, his Knights.

They were probably headed to a pub, so Tom simply styled his usual robes with more elegance. A cravat tucked under his collar and a simple cut made from quality fabric.

Tom inspected himself in the bathroom mirror before he left. His naturally pale face hid how heavy he felt. He stared himself in the eye, pressed the tip of his wand to his wrist, and cast a stinging hex so intense his vision swam.

Feeling more settled, he took the Gaunt ring from his dresser, tucked it into the folds of his cravat, and went to see what his followers were up to.

His school friends had all gone on to be very successful, just as Slughorn had hoped. Castor Avery and Donatus Lestrange, once his minions and muscle, went on to rest on their laurels in cushy management jobs. Owen Rosier was quite high-ranking in the ministry thanks to the promised engagement between his little sister and Cygnus Black, though the future couple were both currently eight years old. Gareth Mulciber had gotten his start as an auror, and Finangus Nott, the most powerful of Tom’s followers, did not have a job, but did know a lot of people. Tom wished he was a woman so he could marry her and have her host for him. It was all he was good for, and he wasn’t even expected to do it because he was a man. Wasteful.

When they graduated, Tom had granted him an opportunity to apply his skills with a new job: leading a band of curse-breakers to further their understanding of the Dark Arts.

It was a mercenary and extremely illegal operation, so they couldn’t exactly call themselves the Knights of Walpurgis in public. After much discussion, they’d eventually referred to themselves as the Death Eaters in public company. Nott was to use his connections to learn about dark artifacts, and any items they couldn’t steal or loot would then be funnelled to Borgin & Burkes for Tom to target directly.

The fact he hadn’t gotten any commissions lately implied Nott may be slacking. Useless slag of a man.

The group was waiting for him in the Leaky Cauldron, already drinking. Tom raised his eyebrows when he saw a very sweaty Lavrenti Dolohov at their table.

“Do we have a guest?” Tom prompted.

“The lord arrives!” Rosier cried, and the whole table cheered. Tom narrowed his eyes at Dolohov. This little sliver of a man was the first of his family to ever study at Hogwarts, and the Slytherin students interested in Dark Arts tended to go to him instead of Tom, as his parents attended to Durmstrang, a school that was much more liberal about the subject.

“You remember Lav, don’t you, my lord?” Nott grinned, shaking Dolohov, who’s pink face was getting progressively greener the longer Tom stared at him. “His family has been talking with mine for ages, my aunt’s thinking of marrying my cousin off to him. She’s only fourteen, so Lav’s been twiddling his thumbs waiting on her to graduate at our place. Say hello, don’t be rude.”

“A pleasure, my lord.” Dolohov’s eyes skittered around.

Tom wished he’d been wearing the Gaunt ring so he could make Dolohov kiss it. He looked like he would.

Instead, he arched an imperious brow at Nott. “And why is he here?”

“Lav’s been talking with the boys. He’d be a sporting fit for the…you know.” He gave Tom a cheeky smile. “But I said that I’m middle-management, and everything to do with the operation goes through you.”

“Mm.” Tom’s eyes flitted back to Dolohov, who had turned his nerves to his glass. “He’s a good fit. Have him run the Devouring Vaults.”

“The what?” Dolohov asked as the rest of the table all let out very ominous whooping.

The Devouring Vaults were the cellar of a castle in northern England that had the most complicated defences they’d seen in their short career as curse-breakers. It was impossible to actually break any of the enchantments, so you had to white-knuckle through all the deadly traps. If Dolohov could survive it, he had staying power.

It seemed this was the only matter they wanted to report on, so they picked up an oak barrel of alcohol and apparated to the site. The group spent the night heckling Dolohov from above on comfortable transfigured sofas as corridors grew teeth and tried to eat him.

“Any luck in your own ventures, my lord?” Nott asked Tom.

 “Lord Voldemort has cloistered himself to pursue greater learning, as you know. It’s hardly been a year; do you think the secrets of wizarding history are so easily disseminated?” Tom asked imperiously. “I’d like to look further into the Founder’s Relics again soon. Any useful younger cousins or siblings in school?”

“Most are too young, and Dumbledore’s a bastard and a half to anyone I’ve spoken to,” Nott sniffed. “We’d need another approach.”

Dolohov escaped the hungry corridors and narrowly avoided decapitation by swinging axe. To his knowledge. They charmed the blades so he’d only get a concussion; no need to ruin family dealings for a hazing.

“Has Merrythought retired yet?” Tom asked conversationally.

Rosier lit up. “Oh, that’s right, they sorted interviews. You’re thinking to use the new DADA professor?”

“Defence Against the Dark Arts does invite a lust for power and mastery over that beyond mortal ken…” Tom mused. He didn’t plan on going for the sword until he came back from his trip, at which point he’d kill the DADA professor and take his place, but it wouldn’t hurt to have someone with unrestricted access to the school chase leads for him so he didn’t have to waste any more time.

“They’ve announced it in the paper, if you haven’t seen. Sensationalist rubbish. The grand-daughter of the most famous seer in twelve generations getting a job got page six, but they’ve made some random wanker front-page news so they could suck Dumbledore off for another few paragraphs,” Rosier groused. Avery and Lestrange cackled at this.

“I’m sure he’s enjoying the attention,” Tom sneered.

“I got it here,” said Mulciber, digging through his bag. “Really is some random wanker, he’s about to start and not a word about his credentials. They’re scraping the bottom of the barrel after the war. Don’t know why they wouldn’t pick you if this is what they’re going with.”

Tom snatched the paper and unfolded it to reveal the front pages. He’d missed lunch with the paper because of his meeting with Alda Day, and may as well catch up now.

NEW DEFENCE AGAINST THE ART PROFESSOR AT HOGWARTS RECEIVES ALBUS DUMBLEDORE’S PERSONAL ENDORSEMENT

The picture showed Dumbledore shaking the hands of a man that appeared to be trying to hold a conversation with the headmaster behind him, so only a mess of dark hair was visible. Tom began skimming the article detailing Henry Evans’ very tragic backstory, which they had to take at face value because he came out of fucking nowhere.

It’s clear he’s faced no small amount of Dark Arts himself, the paper gushed, with its mark upon his brow…

Tom went very still.

His eyes slid back to the photograph, the dark head of hair trying to keep up a conversation with Dippet, lightly touching Dumbledore even after they finished shaking hands as if the old bastard were a security blanket he was hesitant to part with. At the end of the looping image, the unruly mop finally turned, exposing his face towards the camera.

The walls around Tom cleaved in two. The ceiling rumbled and dropped a portion of the floor above, waking up the mouth-corridor, which redoubled its efforts to kill Dolohov. Tom was barely cognizant of the harried repairing charms of his Knights. He was unable to break eye contact with the front page of the Daily Prophet.

It was the lout from the shop; well-groomed in all but hair, in fine classical robes, and giving Tom a handsome smirk.

The photo began its loop again. The man’s face vanished, leaving only the back of his head and Albus Dumbledore personally endorsing him. Tom threw the paper to Mulciber so hard it nearly knocked his chair back.

“Get me everything you can find on Henry Evans. Now.”

Chapter Text

After reading the Daily Prophet Harry decided he would rather die than be looked at by large groups of people again, and he prepared accordingly.

Merrythought had him wait an extra day after classes began so that his first ever class would be with first years. From now on he was obligated to adhere to the school schedule, which meant he couldn’t watch Tom anymore. It bothered him more than he thought it would.

He knew, with the length of Tom’s hair and the muted way he dressed himself, it was currently safe to leave him alone. It wasn’t as if he’d suddenly slip through Harry’s fingers and leave the country if left unobserved. But monitoring him had been a core part of Harry’s routine for weeks, and not being able to watch Tom struggle to read a newspaper felt like being torn away from his sole source of security.

On the other hand, he was back at Hogwarts, which may be the only place he had ever considered home.

So Harry stubbornly put on his nice robes, tied his hair back, went to the Leaky Cauldron to floo to the DADA office, and immediately hid under an invisibility cloak.

Merrythought heard him coming and had to study the stairs for a full fifteen seconds before she finally determined where he was. She squinted disapprovingly. “Not a fan of the Daily Prophet’s reporting methods?”

“I hate being a celebrity,” Harry admitted. Also, safety. The Prophet had blown away any hopes of subtlety, and now Tom was probably planning his public execution.

“Is that demiguise hair?” Merrythought asked.

“Yeah. Pretty ratty, but it won’t wear out like an enchanted cloak.” Harry could tuck it in more, but that meant pulling it up to show his feet. He had to bend his knees a bit to keep it down, and for the first time in a while he was grateful that his impressive growth spurt at fourteen was also the last time he would ever gain a centimetre, leaving him just short enough he didn’t have to do a full crouch.

“They’re always ratty. You could buy a house with what a new one costs, but moths eat the invisibility, the holes leak…Everyone’s always selling their ruined cloaks to get some money back. You’re better off with an enchantment.”

Harry’s entire Borgin & Burkes purchase was half the price of his tiny flat, so he had gotten a better deal than he thought.

He plopped down on the stairs. “But check it out. If I’m not moving it resettles and you can’t see the light bending.”

“Cast better disillusionments,” Merrythought dismissed.

Harry scowled. It was true his disillusionments weren’t very impressive; he’d been spoiled by having a deathly hallow on hand since he was eleven.

Students began filing in, and he shuffled to the seat closest to the office while Merrythought stood on the dais, as elegant and composed as a Greek statue. He was right about the teacher’s assistants implying more students; the students were all Gryffindor, but there was a double block’s worth of them.

Those sitting at the back row sat close to the door, leaving him safely hidden.

A child raised their hand. “Professor Merrythought?”

“Yes?”

“Where’s the new teacher? Mum said you learn from old teachers, like how there’s two groundskeepers.”

She raised her brows with a wry look. “Not always, if they have work experience. However, Mr. Evans is indeed learning from me until the end of the year. He’ll be here all day.”

All the first years looked around wildly. Harry sat perfectly still so the demiguise cloak wouldn’t warp.

Another child raised his hand. “Where is he?”

“Who’s to say. Essays out, pass to the person below.”

 The children all pulled out their essays while swivelling their tiny little heads in hopes of catching sight of Harry. One of them even snuck right behind him to check the office. Merrythought saw the girl crawling back to her seat and closed her eyes, fighting back the smile threatening to crawl onto her face.  

She collected the essays and placed them on the table lining the back of the room. “Now that your easter break is over, we’ll be reviewing your coursework. Your practical exam will be weighed more heavily than written segments, so I want your wands to be an extension of your arms. If you feel your current wand will affect your grades, you may ask myself, Professor Dumbledore, or Professor Xu for supervised periods with a wand supplied by the school.”

Wow. Hogwarts didn’t supply Harry’s era with wands. Life would have been a lot easier for Neville and Ron if they had. What happened to them all?

The students looked very nervous. She gave them a pitying smile. “Like I said. Review. Classes will be very easy for the next week.” She activated the dais, but instead of person-sized mannequins, there were squat little puppets that resembled imps. “Notice-me-not. Who remembers the spell?”

The notice-me-not charm was the crudest possible version of the N.E.W.T.-level attention-repelling charm, and wasn’t normally useful, but it was in the very first pages of Merrythought’s textbooks as an opening salvo for any interaction with a Dark creature. It worked better on beasts than beings.

All the baby Gryffindors were ordered down in sets of three to practice their casts, which was certainly better than what Quirrell had to offer, despite using Merrythought’s textbook.

“Recidite!”

The imp puppet ambled vaguely back and forth, unable to detect all three. But then it seemed to feel something and toddered up to wave experimentally near the tiny blonde of the trio. She moved back very slowly, and the group made it a full minute without getting caught.

“Functional, Ms. Downing, but unlikely to hold up under stress. Give it some practice,” Merrythought said. The blonde girl turned pink and nodded.

The class unfolded to that effect; some students completely failing, others pushing their luck with the imp and making fun of it to amuse their yearmates. Everyone was focused on the front.

Everyone except two students in the row directly below Harry.

“You’re going to get caught!” One of them hissed.

The other sniffed and held his bag close to him. “I couldn’t get them out of the dorms if I didn’t bring them now!”

“You’re not allowed Zonko’s in Hogwarts, you’re going to dock us points!”

“Plenty of Zonko’s stuff is allowed.”

“Are those allowed then?”

The boy was pointedly silent at that.

Ah, youth. Too young to know how to be subtle when doing some illicit rule-breaking. Harry waved his wand, and mist seeped over the back row. He whispered under his breath.

Through the door walked his patronus, full of fond memories of his own adventures.

The little first years jerked around to gawp at the giant shining beast. Merrythought put her head in her hand.

The stag dipped its head over the back desk to the seats of the boys below and took the Zonko’s bag in its mouth. Patronuses were meant to go through things, so the bag sagged and dangled half-way through the jaw. “No rule-breaking in front of your teachers. What cheek,” the stag hissed derisively, and it strut right out the door.

The classroom was struck dumb. He thought it might look impressive to 12-year-olds, though the stag had to leave the bag on the windowsill right outside the class before it slipped through the neck onto the floor.

“Was that Henry Evans?” A student managed to ask.

The Zonko’s boy was white-faced and shaking. He turned to his friend. “Is Professor Evans a ghost?”

⎯ ♢♢♢ ⎯

“Well? What do we know about Henry Evans?”

Tom sat at the head of the table, spinning a cheap glass-stone ring on his thumb just to have something to fidget with. His Knights quailed before him. The pub was active that night, but the rowdy drunks were unable to pierce the glacial silence at their table.

It had been a little over a week. What right did they have to look so sheepish? How hard was it to collect basic information on one man?

“Rosier,” Tom prompted.

Rosier cleared his throat. “Oh. Yeah, yes. My little sister, Odessa, she’s in fourth year, you remember…” He slowed when Tom’s eyebrow conveyed he did not. “…Well, girls gossip. She didn’t see him in her Defence class, and no one’s seen him all week, but he sends his patronus down. Seems to always know what’s going on. Everyone’s trying to figure out how he’s doing it.”

Tom straightened. “He can cast a corporeal patronus?”

“Stag. It’s huge,” Rosier nodded. “It’s strong enough it can pick things up, but only for a few seconds. And it talks.”

A tangible corporeal patronus? The patronus was so difficult it wasn’t even on the N.E.W.T. exam! Where the hell had he learned that?

It took incredible self-control to not turn that question onto his Knights. Tom’s bewilderment would just make Evans out to be someone worthy of respect. Which he was not. What use was a patronus, anyway? Was he living in fear of Azkaban? Laughable.

Mulciber’s eyes watched the impatient tapping of Tom’s finger on the tacky ring. “…Doubt the Daily Prophet’s lack of sources backing up his story was from want of trying. As far as anyone can tell, he popped into existence just this March.”

“He must have used an illegal international portkey. No one’s got the country he lived in yet?”

Rosier shrugged. “All he’s said publicly is ‘Europe’. Students haven’t gotten anything out of the other teachers, and he’s hiding from all his classes, so they can’t ask directly. Bit suspicious, isn’t it, my lord?”

“Of course it is,” Tom snapped. “What else?”

“He clocks out around five, and comes in through the Leaky Cauldron,” said Lestrange, “but he casts a disillusionment before heading out.”

Tom narrowed his eyes. “He’s hiding something.”

“From the press?”

“Well it’s not like he vanishes completely. Folks see him in the café, a bit before it closes. Looks like he’s working on school stuff,” Avery offered.

“…What café?”

Avery scrunched up his nose thoughtfully. “The. Uh. The one on main, isn’t it?”

Tom’s fingernail viciously dug into the soft flesh just under his knuckle. Evans knew Tom frequented that café. Tom was always home by half-past three at the latest, but the implied proximity made his skin crawl.

“I figured he had a fake identity, but I checked the charter school registries anyway. No Henry Evans. No ‘Dora Creevey’ – that’s the teacher he said he apprenticed under – in any of the schools either. If they didn’t go by any other names, that means they were either both home-schooled or taught at a school outside the ICW jurisdiction,” Rosier said quickly.

Tom took a steadying breath, absolutely simmering in his frustration, but still had it in him to lift his head in approval of Rosier accessing such sensitive information so quickly. That would have been Tom’s follow-up suggestion.

“I don’t understand,” Lestrange said slowly, “has he done something to us?”

“He’s taken special interest,” because Tom had only told Abraxas that Evans was a trifling vamp and Abraxas was not a Death Eater, so he would not be contradicted on this matter. Nott might consider Evans like-minded company if he explained that particular interaction. “He’s got interest in dark artifacts and money to spare. The exact kind of man we need to keep an eye on. Isn’t that right?”

“Of course, My Lord,” Lestrange nodded. “Are we to rob him?”

Mulciber clicked his tongue. “Nothing to rob, you idiot. If he’s just appeared, he won’t have an estate. It’s going to be all in his vault.”

“If he hasn’t even been to a charter school and no one’s heard of him, where’d he get the money?” Asked Rosier.

Mulciber considered this. “That implies he’d been doing good business during the war without making a name for himself.”

“Reckon he was one of Grindelwald’s? Grindelwald moved a lot of money around. Came with the bureaucracy.”

“Evans never specified what side of the war he was on,” Mulciber agreed.

Tom was sick of this.

He took an unbecoming swig of his wine. It seemed that this man, who had at first only revealed himself to Tom, had suddenly become the new main character of the world. Mysterious war survivor with a tragic backstory, master-level spellcasting, and Albus Dumbledore’s special interest. Tom had survived a war – he flourished in London during the Blitz! – and had tragic beginnings. He could cast at the level of a master easily, in Dumbledore’s own field of study, even. It was just that people like Dumbledore didn’t like the spells he was casting.

Henry Evans was the youngest Hogwarts teacher in two centuries with no credentials at all, and Dippet, who told Tom he was one of his favourite students, said that Tom was too young.

To be honest, Tom doubted Evans’ story was all that interesting. It was easy to profit off conflict, and plenty of people emigrated and changed identities in the chaos of post-war cleanup. It would make sense for someone to take stock of London’s dark magic and find themselves drawn to Borgin & Burkes.

He just wanted to break Evans apart for making Tom a second choice.

Tom leaned back and let his Knights rabble-rouse and drain the pub of its ale stock. He sipped the remainder of his wine slowly; he’d learned his lesson from the hangover-induced fever that triggered the second round of illness. It made him feel more mature and composed when they were roaring and flailing around him, anyway. At least Tom had grown up since graduation.

At the end of the night, Tom went to his flat only slightly buzzed. He started towards his work desk, then paused.

Well, it wasn’t as if anyone but the snakes could see.

He waved his wand with perfect delivery, and declared, “expecto patronum.”

A silvery whisp slid through the air.

He remembered the hat, welcoming him as if he were a long-lost child arriving home.

“Expecto patronum.”

Mist.

Finding the chamber. Telling them he found it. The worship in their eyes.

“Expecto patronum.”

Leaving Mrs. Cole’s little rats in that cave with the finest spellwork a wandless child had ever harnessed, and seeing their insufferably smug faces completely cowed, saying no ma’am, we hadn’t seen anything. He hung Billy’s rabbit and they said no ma’am, we hadn’t seen anything because now they knew he was special.

“Expecto patronum.”

 A bomb dropping right next to the evacuated home Tom had moved into specifically to test his abilities, and the shielding taking so well he barely felt the shockwave. Perfect, as all his magic was, withstanding the force those pathetic, monstrous muggles were so very proud of.

Not even a whisp, then.

Waking up, bloody and disoriented, his body aching but his diary next to him, immortal, immortal for the rest of time, impervious to scarlet fever and tuberculosis and dragon pox and anything that could be done to his flesh, because his flesh no longer mattered.

Lord Voldemort, forever.

“Expec— expecto patronum.”

A joylessness so complete it was as if he’d cast it in reverse.

Tom threw his chair at the wall with a scream of rage, and was so galled that it was cheap enough to shatter that he just left it that way.

It did not make him feel better. He finished his reading in bed.

Chapter Text

Harry had officially sat in on every single Hogwarts class. Maybe it was because Merrythought was on review, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as he thought it might be.

The later years were fun; she turned the dais into a swamp and had them dodge flying paper swooping evils and the like. The seventh years got an entire obstacle course in the hall. It wasn’t that intense, just cycling through the right spells to avoid a confrontation, but Harry was impressed. Disillusionment was apparently a third-year charm. Harry hadn’t learned it until fifth year, from Umbridge’s textbook; he suspected Lupin had re-taught at least half of second year, and Moody (Barty?) had skipped ahead.

His DADA education really was a mess. The teaching assistant role was saving him. Harry couldn’t imagine having to just guess what to teach from the textbooks.

After classes, Harry would take tea with Hagrid, who was flattered to have the company. The hut was very new and built by Ogg, who had his own little hut nestled between the greenhouses that was much too small for a half-giant.

“I’ve been going into the Forbidden Forest since I was just a first-year,” Hagrid explained over his forever teeth-cracking rock-cakes. “Well. I wasn’t supposed to be doing that. But I had a prefect with me usually! And a Groundskeeper got to keep the grounds of the forest too, so Mr. Ogg let me live right here! The centaurs are good neighbours, though they don’t care for people much.”

Hagrid told him all about Hogwarts. Most of the people Hagrid was friendly with were older, and he didn’t have much opportunity to make new friends, so he wasn’t too familiar with the students. He tended to gush about Ridgecarver, who always seemed to find extra large wizarding equipment and clothes just lying around and taught his favourite subject.

He had a lot of positive things to say about most teachers, actually. Hagrid was determined to make sure Harry had a good impression of the entire Hogwarts staff, even people Hagrid had barely spoken to. Except, of course, Slughorn and Pringle.

“Honestly, I hope you’ll be saving the kids from Pringle. His canings make your bones hurt for days,” Hagrid told Harry very gravely.

Harry’s association with Hagrid ended up being a necessity. The other assistants had an established work culture and regarded Harry with either distant fascination or frigid disinterest, and he couldn’t escape fast enough from their prying eyes. Neither faction asked him questions; they didn’t need to. The Daily Prophet told them everything they thought they needed to know.

And so every day for that week and a half, Harry would practice his curriculum-to-be. Some spells, like the cauliflower hex (misleading to a comedic degree; it was a hex that distorted the target’s sense of gravity, similar to the sensation of having one’s ears boxed, and boxed ears result in cauliflower ear), were very useful. Others, like the fleetfoot charm, were more likely to have students slipping and breaking their noses than escaping a would-be attacker.

 Introduction to the world of a Hogwarts teacher complete, it seemed inevitable that Harry would be stopped in the hall by Dippet.

“A moment, Mr. Evans?”

A ‘moment’ turned out to be a ‘meeting’. Harry followed him all the way up to the Headmaster’s office, with the password of ‘Rowena’. If all his passwords were related to Hogwarts, it would be very easy to break in.

Dippet sat Harry down. “How have you been settling in?”

“Great! It’s amazing, being able to work here at all. Did you see Merrythought’s classroom? My school didn’t have anything like it, we had a whole other hall if we needed to duel anything. The pitch is incredible too. I might buy a broom. Was a seeker when I was a boy,” Harry gushed, trying to look like he was living a childhood dream.

Dippet preened. “Of course. Very few schools compare to ours. Of the ICW’s charter schools, I dare say even Beauxbaton and Durmstrang struggle to capture even a fraction of our legacy.”

Hogwarts’ legacy was impressive, and was only really comparable to ICW schools that were not charter schools, like Japan’s—well he forgot what Japan’s was called in Japanese, because it was absurdly long. The Minami Library of Magic Rites. It got its start in a similar way to the Great Library of Alexandria, which wasn’t part of the ICW at all, but was one of the few Ancient schools that didn’t get dismantled by the Romans.

…Well, they did blow up the muggle part. But it was still standing, still a library, still in Alexandria, and practically all of Bill’s mates were graduates, so it was great for small talk during international meetings.

“Ancient schools are a treasure. I don’t think there’s a proper school out there that’s lasted as long as Hogwarts has. Everyone needs to rebuild eventually,” was Harry’s line of pandering.

“Time had been unkind to the legacy of China and Sumer,” Dippet nodded solemnly.

He circled the table to fetch something from the shelf. He hid it behind his body as he moved, looking inordinately pleased with himself, like a parent about to present a birthday present.

“As you have spent your youth pining for the halls of Hogwarts, I thought you might want to try it,” said Dippet, and he revealed his prize.

It was the Sorting Hat.

Harry went ramrod straight. Now this is what he needed. Direct access to the sword. Well, he couldn’t actually pull the sword with a witness, but perhaps he could talk to the hat about it?

Dippet laughed good-naturedly. “You’ve taken to the school like a fish to water. I dare say you would have been a student, had you been in the country when you began manifesting your magic. We may not be able to turn back time, but at least you can know for sure where your fate might have led you.”

Harry did his best to look emotional and not hungry. He knew it might have a few more words about Slytherin. Harry might not be a good fit for his house anymore. It might not even give him the sword, and it would instead reveal how underhanded and warped he truly was. But there was no way of knowing until he tried it.

He stood and gingerly took the hat. Its worn cloth was firm and leathery, made of decent enough fabric to survive centuries. He swallowed, and dropped it down over his head.

“GRYFFINDOR!”

Harry yelped and fell back into the chair.

Dippet’s laughter was muffled behind the infinite blackness of the inside of the hat. Harry looked around even though it was on his head. “Sorry, what?”

“Gryffindor, didn’t you hear?” Said the small voice of the Sorting Hat.

‘It can’t be that simple. You tried to put me in Slytherin before. You said it would help me prove myself and learn to be great— I’ve got an elder wand now!’

“Oh, and you believe your greatness makes you inherently more Slytherin?” It cackled a laugh. “Just as an unkind and mercenary child must be isolated in an unkind house no matter their needs, you, Harry Potter, must be isolated from any other houses, for you endanger everyone around you with your Gryffindor spirit. It is a miracle you hadn’t pursued that curse-breaker job first and gotten your head blown off.”

 Harry jerked back in offence.

‘I’ve had plans,’ and he hadn’t even said it out loud, but it still came out as a whine.

“Plans. Ah, plans. What was your process for finding the…what are these awful things in your mind here… Horcruxes?”

‘Well, I—'

“And the murder of Tom Riddle. Has he done something? You’ll surely be arrested for vanquishing a shopboy.”

‘He killed Myrtle, for one, and his family—'

“Difficult thing to tie back to him. Why did you buy the cabinet?”

‘Because they used it to break into the school in the future!’

“A method you never tried. Because you couldn’t have this job in your own time, and it was available, and you wanted it. You have a surprising amount of kinship with that great Slytherin, for such an outrageous Gryffindor.”

Harry flushed.

“Oh, I remember him…His ambition defined him. It had been a long time…such a long time, since I last felt a mind like that from one so young. Many are destined for their houses, but few so thoroughly.” It sounded a little melancholy at that. “Say we get a good and pure Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff sorting. You can put together a new council of founders.”

‘The sword. Please.’

“Ah, but of course. You would have done great in Slytherin, Harry Potter, but had you been sorted there in your youth, you wouldn’t have this damning urge to rampage after whatever feels right to you, unable to see the forest for the trees. How did you plan on retrieving the venom without a vessel that could stand its poison? And were you to infuse Gryffindor’s sword, how would you then slay the horcruxes binding your Dark Lord to this world, if you were to give it to the goblins?”

‘I would…I’d…’

“I have sat upon the brow of Merlin himself to ask such questions, and sort them into matters of loyalty, of justice, of intelligence, and of guile. In my opinion, you’ve applied none of these. The success of your ‘plans’ are up to luck alone. And so, luck I shall wish you. Goodbye.”

And with that, it slipped right off his head.

“What the fuck was that,” said Harry.

Dippet was sitting at his desk, looking intrigued. “It enjoys the philosophy of placing houses, though I’ve never seen it go on for quite so long after a sorting. What did you talk about?”

“It was making fun of me, I think.” Harry gave the hat back. It took a lot of effort to not throw it aside.

“Took a lot of risks to get here, I’m guessing,” Dippet chuckled. “Albus was certain you were one of his, and he’ll be pleased to hear how quick the hat was to confirm it.”

“…Did it really advise Merlin?”

Dippet looked so excited by this comment that Harry suspected he might have done a jig were he still standing. “Oh! Now that is something Bathilda Bagshot hasn’t got in her history books! Yes indeed, we’ve long suspected remarks of Merlin ‘holding council within the brim of his hat’ was in fact a wry reference to the Sorting Hat, and it personally confirmed my suspicions when I became headmaster! True wizarding history in this school, I’ll tell you.”

“That. Is definitely amazing,” Harry said flatly, and did his honourable Gryffindor best to not fantasize about burning the damn thing.

⎯ ♢♢♢ ⎯

As much as the hat’s derision annoyed him, it had a point. He needed to organize his resources better. He didn’t have plans so much as a sequence of useful objects. He blamed both Dumbledore and Voldemort for instilling this mindset in him. 

He needed actual resources. Instead of turning in for the day, Harry went up to the seventh floor and summoned up the Room of Hidden Things.

It looked just like it did before, vanished furniture and books piled so high they looked like cramped city streets. It seemed insanely dangerous to use an accio without a defined target in this room, but he figured it should be fine if it was rare enough.

Harry pulled out his elder wand from where he had hidden it in his boot. “Accio goblin silver phial.”

He was pelted with six phials, one of which was glass but decorated with goblin silver, and had to scramble to catch that one before it cracked against the wall.

Venom reciprocals in hand, Harry peered at the room.

“Aparecium,” he cast. A few invisible objects burned back into reality, almost all of them cloaks. “Revelio.” Four brightly coloured chairs changed back to teak brown.

What was something he could really use?

Oh, duh. “Accio mokeskin pouch,” he said, picturing the purse Hagrid had gotten him for his seventeenth birthday. Ginny had taken it when she went back to the Burrow after the fight, and he couldn’t get it back without tipping his hand he was about to do something very ill-advised. It would be useful in the future.

A whopping eighteen bags came flying at him, and he was resigned to being battered with them. A lot of them were unenchanted and looked nearly as old as the Sorting Hat. He took the worst-looking offerings. “Reparo.”  

The little bag didn’t manage to look like new, being so old, but it certainly looked like it was put together by a professional. He smoothed out the inside. “Capacious.”

The expansion charm was regulated to hell and back, but Hermione had explained her technique; by holding the capacity parameter and slowly pushing inward, you could get an uneven and lumpy bit of expanded space without pinging the Ministry. Then you’d just cast a second charm to hide it from any checks.

Harry kneaded it so deep his shoulder was engulfed and released the charm. Just like storebought. He dropped his goblin silver phials into his new treasure.

As for the other seventeen… Harry sat in a decrepit armchair and repaired the ancient coin purses, adding in a rolling fist to give them some spending room. It might be fun to plant them around the Room of Hidden Things for some future student to find.

“Oh, my. This might be the fastest turnaround on finding this room yet.”

Harry jerked and almost raised his wand to the newcomer, only to remember how incredibly conspicuous an elder wand was. He instead made out like he was rebalancing himself on the chair so he could swap back to the holly and gave a hopefully charismatic and welcoming smile to…

Casimir Ridgecarver, the Care of Magical Creatures teacher and Hufflepuff Head of House.

“Professor Ridgecarver! What brings you to…” Harry looked around. “Whatever this is?”

“The Room of Hidden Things. Hastily vanished items from around the castle reappear here. Most of this was before the 18^th century, when the technique for reparo was perfected. Before that, people had specific spells for every kind of damage, and it was hard to find the right one for…” Ridgecarver gestured to a wardrobe, which was ostensibly intact, but half of it was upside-down. “…Whatever that is.”

“Smart to have in a school. Kids will vanish anything,” said Harry.  

“Nothing living in here, luckily enough.” Ridgecarver jumped with surprising dexterity from one piece of furniture to the next, and cast an enchantment that sent three points of light over a large section of room. “Accio plain black work robes.”

Only ten or so robes came flying at him, and he swiftly caught them all with his wand. Ridgecarver spun on his heel and presented them to Harry with a big smile. “There’s a fund for poorer students, but it’s not enough for all their needs. Part of my job as the head of house is to supply them with amenities they could not otherwise afford. Such as spare robes.”

Harry felt abruptly terrible for the Weasley family, who proudly budgeted and tried their best to show self-sufficiency.

Ridgecarver saw it in his face. “…Yes, there are certain…kinds of underprivileged students. The ones accustomed to their straits only ever come to me if they’ve ruined one of their only belongings. When they do, I can usually chase after them with a proper trunk. Sometimes they ask for more, sometimes they don’t.”

Harry glanced over the room. “Can you summon wands?”

“Merlin’s beard, no. Only a wand you’re familiar with. When you do an accio for multiple magic items, the spell sort of ping-pongs instead of a big pull.”

Harry looked curiously at the pile of unenchanted mokeskin bags at his feet. Did the elder wand override the magic properties of the moke’s hide and summon all eighteen, or did it ignore an unfathomable number of properly enchanted mokeskins?

“What are those, anyway? Snakeskin?” Ridgecarver approached curiously.

“Mokeskin. Almost no new ones at all, and none of them have expanding charms left, I think. Don’t tell anyone I know how to do that.” Harry showed off a coin purse that could swallow past his wrist.

“Wow. You must have put some real kick into it, this place gets stripped for valuables every five years.” Ridgecarver admired the tiny bag. “How’d you find the room, anyway? It’s been half a month since you got here.”

“Got pointed this way while looking for something of mine I lost,” said Harry, and with a stroke of inspiration, offered the bag he just repaired. Ridgecarver inspected it and looked suitably impressed by the extra depth.

“It’s good you found it, but probably bad form to point the room out to you this early,” Ridgecarver chuckled.

“Probably. Am I allowed to take furniture? There’s a lot in here.”

“Oh, I insist, in fact. This place is a death trap, but you’d have to open a furniture store to dump it all. Actually—there’s an urban legend in Hogsmeade that a student shrunk an entire store’s worth of furniture to smuggle out, but kept making them smaller and smaller in his greed, until they were so small he couldn’t unshrink them. Blew his graduation money on a shop with nothing in it.” Ridgecarver shook his head.

“Whuff. I’ll try to control myself.” Harry hunted down the first object that wasn’t load-bearing; a nice writing desk. Hell of a lot nicer than the one he bought. He shrunk it down to the size of a fist and plopped it in his bag. Next a proper cabinet, so he wouldn’t have to hang his clothes in the vanishing cabinet, and a chest of drawers. After some speculation, he hopped up a scaling tower of shattered bookshelves to fetch a very handsome-looking bird cage.

“I don’t have my own owl yet,” Harry called down to Ridgecarver. “Any of the books worth taking?”

Ridgecarver shook his head. “They’re almost always failed copying charms. Often starts decent and devolves into gibberish.”

“Damn.” Harry plucked chairs from a haphazard tower and stashed them away, and then plucked up several chests that didn’t feel very magical, but were space to put things.

“All this damn furniture, and I can’t see a table anywhere,” Harry sighed.

Ridgecarver furrowed his brow, opened his mouth, closed it, and after a long, uncomfortable silence like that, carefully asked, “do you not have any furniture in your home?”

Harry gave him a blank smile and resolved to not look for a bedframe until he was alone.

They did find a table, as well as a broom, which did not turn to Harry’s tastes but helped Harry scour the room for a sofa, some lanterns, and a carpet that didn’t look like it was meant for a common room.

“I’m going to have to recruit you for lost and found hauls, I think,” Ridgecarver called out upon his return.

“I love helping the underprivileged, it’s true. Is it alright if I keep this?” Harry waved the broom. “I think it’s a little newer. Pretty fast.”

“Well, I don’t think anyone’s going to miss it. Er…” He pursed his lips at Harry. “If you…need anything…?”

“Oh! No, I got... I actually got plenty of money, but it’s for emergencies. Furniture is just pricy when you don’t have a job.” Harry gave a one-shouldered shrug.

Ridgecarver’s expression cleared. “Oh, that’s a relief. Well, if you do need help, it’s in my job description to lend a hand. No house bias, at all, if it’s a student you’re worried about.”

“Yeah, I figured…” Harry trailed off, lost in thought. It was a dangerous question to ask, but he very dearly wanted to ask it. “…You know—I saw some fantastic alumni just languishing in hovels after graduating. You never know who’s got money until they’re tossed out into the world.”  

“Always sad to see.”

“I saw—a shopboy. He said he was a prefect? Imagine being a prefect and trying to make ends meet.”

“Tom,” Ridgecarver said grimly.

Harry swivelled around to stare at him, and Ridgecarver pressed his fingertips to his mouth, clearly ashamed of how he’d just blurted it.

“You know him? I mean—knew he’d end up like that?” Harry asked.

“Morgana take me, I shouldn’t have even assumed…Yes, I know Tom. I’m certainly not telling you his circumstances,” Ridgecarver warned. “It only came to mind because—Tom had applied to the DADA position before you. He was qualified enough, but he was eighteen, and the usual practice is over twenty-five. Dippet never would have hired you, had he asked how old you were.” Harry really wished everyone would stop rubbing it in. “I approached him before the end of the school year, hoping to send him off with as many amenities to get him started as I could. He was—well, he was furious. Tom is an incredibly gifted student, mind. He was more than capable of handling the job, and I understand his frustration. But, well, I was the one to talk to him about it.”

Ridgecarver grimaced. Harry suspected he may be the only teacher besides Albus Dumbledore who had ever bore the full brunt of the real Tom Riddle.

“After he got it out of his system, he declared he’d go off to be a shopboy, I think to guilt me about it. Of course, Tom is the kind of man who attracts attention wherever he goes. If you just got here and stumbled into a fantastic prefect that lined up so keenly with that whole disaster…Well, I shouldn’t assume, but I thought it must be him.”

“He’s got an awful attitude nowadays,” said Harry, just for the luxury of being able to complain about Tom to someone.

Ridgecarver looked like he wanted to argue, but then gave Harry a once-over and wrinkled his nose. “…Well, I suppose…If he knew where you were headed, I suppose he repeated similar vitriol to you. It was, er. Rather creative, I’d imagine. Normally he’s a perfect gentleman, I promise you, it was just—a very personal matter for him.”

That was pretty funny. “Did he get help from you a lot?”

Ridgecarver sighed and rubbed a hand down his face. “Almost never, unless he needed something on very short notice. I knew he was being self-sufficient, and he’d mostly succeeded. Wasn’t just prefect; Tom made Head Boy.” He gestured to the room with a fond smile. “When he came to school with that badge, I just showed him the room and suggested helping the younger students. And of course, if he took something for himself, no one would notice.”

And then, ten years after his disappearance, Tom hid the diadem here.

Harry scanned the dim towers of junked furniture and vanished book copies. Tom had spent years trying to find a hidden room in the castle, and his ‘self-sufficiency’ was likely because he’d found this place long before he made Head Boy.

He imagined Tom, like him, painstakingly picking apart towers of chairs and desks to fill his tiny, unassuming rental in that grimy little slum that Tom only tolerated, Harry realized in a sudden rush of insight, because it was nothing more than an interim base between his true home of Hogwarts and his long-awaited journey to find the diadem in Albania.

It was, as many things about Voldemort were, unimaginably pitiful.

Chapter Text

The time for review had passed, and with May came the final lessons before exam season took over the school, which was much trickier for Harry to juggle. It was no longer possible to leave the school by five if he wanted to get any training done, and he ended up taking the essays he was marking to tea with Hagrid just to have time to review them.

Hagrid was fascinated by Harry’s work, and asked things like, “Are you really going about the whole school invisible?”

“I don’t like being looked at,” said Harry, circling an incorrect wand movement—counter-clockwise, not clockwise—in red ink.

Even with the extra workload, Harry started hunting for names he recognized. His first major find was Filius Flitwick, who was in fifth year and had dropped DADA in his fourth. Harry had yet to meet him, but he was the Ravenclaw prefect, so those in the lounge often mentioned him. It was sad Harry didn’t get to teach him, but it might have been a little weird. Probably for the best.

Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank – surprisingly not a hyphenation she married into – had graduated two years prior, which came up in a conversation with Hagrid about Flitwick because people kept saying she was half-hag, and he had to fluster to cover why that would have anything to do with Flitwick at all.

Silvanus Kettleburn—who Harry exclusively knew as a face at the head table in his own time, as his first Care of Magical Creatures class was with Hagrid—had dropped DADA only this year. Rolanda Hooch on the other hand had only just started DADA, though Harry hadn’t been able to pick her out of the class yet, because she had yet to gain her yellow eyes.

It was at this point Harry learned that most everyone was dropping DADA because the charms teacher, Araminta Xu, offered a duelling club. It explained Dippet’s reaction to Harry being a duellist; he was desperate to get butts in classes. Harry needed to get in on that if he wanted to retain students.

In terms of surnames, there was Lucretia Black in second year, two Prewetts (one in sixth year, another in second), a Longbottom in seventh year, and Septimus Weasley in sixth year. Orion Black—Sirius’ dad—was still in DADA, but his seventh year, so Harry would not have to suffer the indignity of personally teaching him.

Fleamont Potter had graduated twelve years ago. Harry found his name in the trophy room for, of all things, a wizarding chess tournament. The following weekend, Harry had found Sleekeazy’s hair potion boldly advertising Fleamont’s name on the label in Diagon Alley, and bought three bottles, which he could not bring himself to open.

It was a lot to keep track of, and all his note-taking made him look very busy when he took longer hours. Longer hours meant people were more accustomed to seeing him later in the day, and Harry made an effort to push it just a little more, until he was working in the lounge during the feast. A little bit more, and he was eating late.

A little more, and he was walking invisibly through the halls straight to the second-floor girl’s bathroom, with no one to question him.

Harry listened carefully for Myrtle, but heard nothing. As swiftly as he could, he hissed “open” to the serpentine tap.

The pipe was so much smaller than he remembered it. He had to bend down a little farther than his usual squat with the invisibility cloak to fit in the slimy passage. It smelled overwhelmingly of petrichor and the metallic twang of ancient copper turning the limescale to green sludge.

“Lumos,” Harry said, and slid right in.

The black circles of countless pipes zipped by in the endless plunge stretching below the castle, to below even that, to the abyss underneath the lake. He slid to a stop in a smear of fresh algae, mixing with the green limescale to create the worst slime in history.

Harry cast a quick cleaning charm on himself and proceeded down the tunnel. He could see shoe imprints around the particularly gummy sludge; Tom’s footprints.

The emerald eyes of the chamber door glinted hungrily at him in the light of his lumos, looking as if they had been waiting for him, past and future, to return. Harry cleared his throat.

“Open.”

The walls parted to dry floor, and the light scattered across the chamber’s odd green haze, illuminating the room like the night sky in the dead of winter. All the stone snakes wound around the columns appeared to be staring at him. There, at the end, was the statue, with his long toe-length beard forming a slide for the basilisk. He’d thought of Salazar Slytherin as monkey-ish when he was 12, and Marvolo Gaunt certainly matched that description, but after facing Voldemort Harry thought his head also resembled a skull.

What had Tom said when siccing that thing on Harry? He kept an eye on one of the ominous snakes to maintain his parselmouth. “Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four.”

The hiss echoed through the chamber, and the mouth slid open. He could hear the beast sliding up through the throat of the statue and stirring through the mouth. He kept his gaze fixed firmly on the stone snake. “Do not look upon me with your eyes.”

“My eyes will not rest on the worthy,” the beast replied.

Harry let out a shaky breath and dared to look. Stupidly, to the eyes. Its yellow gaze was unfocused, hidden behind a translucent lens, and fixed to the ceiling.

“Kill…I must kill…” It insisted.

Harry felt suddenly annoyed with himself and the hat all over again, because the obvious thing to do before going down to the chamber would be to research what people do with basilisks. Surely the skin alone meant there was some sort of protocol on making a sanctuary? Putting it to sleep for hibernation and letting it run around and shed every 20 years, maybe?

Harry cleared his throat. “Allow me to take drops of your venom, and you will be brought prey. You can chase it through the pipes.”

“To hunt,” the basilisk said rapturously, “to hunt, to conquer, to feed…”

Harry fished out one of the goblin-silver phials and floated it to the basilisk’s mouth. “Open your mouth.”

It obediently opened its massive jaw. Its breath smelled strangely of stone and algae. He placed the phial on the tip of one of the rapier-like fangs, and a bead of pure black liquid accumulated there until it dropped inside. Twelve drops were enough to fill it to Harry’s liking. He stoppered the phial and did the same to the other fang.

Venom collected, Harry stepped back. “You’ve done well. Return to slumber, and the hunt will begin the next we meet. What do you want? Deer? Wolf?”

“A big stag,” the basilisk said lazily as it slid back up Slytherin’s beard. “A big, fleeing stag. Afraid. Lost. Thick with blood. A soft, crispy spider. Thick with juices.”

A spider certainly sounded easy to eat for an animal that ate prey whole, but if Hagrid had yet to get Aragog a wife, there might not be any spiders on hand. “I can get you a stag. No spiders big enough. A crispy fish.”

“Crispy fish,” the basilisk repeated, pleased, and it vanished inside the statue.

Harry fished into his pouch again and looked around. He wasn’t sure if he remembered it correctly, but yes, the air in this place was dry and freezing.

Satisfied, he began pulling out furniture.

A chaise lounge, a couch, an armchair, a loveseat, four beds, an entire dinner set, six cabinets of varying size and purpose, and a bunch of benches. He rolled out a massive carpet that somehow did not cover the length of the entrance to the statue and laid down plenty of rugs before doing some decorating.

It was obvious, from scuff marks and dust prints, that this place had been ransacked ages ago, probably before Tom’s time. The only thing left was the stone bookshelves literally built into the walls by Slytherin’s feet, with pitifully few scrolls left. The Gaunt family had to have drawn deep from this well long before deciding they were too good for Hogwarts, and there was almost nothing of value left. Seemed an awful shame.

Harry used a collection of crystal balls he collected over the course of several hours in the Room of Hidden Things as light sources. They may not be any good for seeing the future, but they glowed ominously, and the light scattering through the green smog meant Harry didn’t have to maintain his lumos.

After shrinking and unshrinking and shuffling and repositioning, Harry managed to create what looked like a vaguely evil council room, with ample space for the snake to slither behind the columns. It reminded him a little of if 12 Grimmauld Place was more haunted than it already was. 

Harry threw up some magic candles he stole to get some more height on the light. With the ceiling barely illuminated, he saw it was…flat green. Brow furrowed, Harry pulled out his broom and drifted up, scooping the highest candle with him to investigate.

At first, he thought it was a window into the lake, like in the Slytherin dungeons. But the chamber was supposedly below the lake. He reached out to touch the ‘window’ and found rough-hewn stone.

It was like the great hall, he realized. It was charmed to capture what was happening in the bottom of the lake. Why the hell would they do that?

Nevertheless, he left the candle up there, and arranged the rest in a sort of spiral so at least the heart of the chamber was well-lit. It was looking very magical and homey. He might invite a friend over, were it not for the giant deadly reptile.

Tom was way too obsessed with Slytherin’s legacy to make the chamber his base. He coveted the secrecy and superiority of his blood too much to do something as banal as redecorating; it existed to be a sacred place for him to reinforce his beliefs, and nothing else. That’s precisely the attitude that kept the Gaunts interbreeding.

Harry recalled his lack of concrete use for the vanishing cabinets, and decided the most logical place to put one would be in the chamber. He could then shrink the other half and bring it with him; normally this wouldn’t be possible, but his elder wand cast enchantments that sat thick and sticky like tree sap on whatever he cast it on. Completely refurnishing both his flat and the chamber was effortless and toting a shrunken magic cabinet should be just as easy.

…But he had to find the other half first. ‘Accio vanishing cabinet’ did nothing, and none of the large black cabinets he found were the right one. Though if Peeves dropped it on Filch’s office in his second year, it was probably still in the school.

Harry used his broom to fly back up the tunnel and zipped all the way up the cramped pipe to shoot into the girl’s bathroom. He kept his invisibility cloak on just in case of Myrtle, but he could hear her glub in the pipes somewhere below the far cubicle. Harry fumbled with the edges of the sink and was relieved to see a snake embedded in the frame. With some difficulty, as it didn’t look nearly as haunting and alive, he whispered, “close up.”

And then it was just a sink. Harry pocketed the broom, readjusted his cloak, and strolled out into the hall.

He’d finished his work, so he was free to leave. Harry strolled cheerfully through the silent halls; it was past curfew, so the only people out now would be the teachers and—

“Homenum revelio.”

Harry looked up first to the firefly light doddering over his head, then behind him, to see the most threatening man he’d ever seen that wasn’t a Death Eater.

His face was so severe and expressive in its snarl that it was impossible to tell how old he was beyond ‘older than 40’. He was melting out of the shadows in his impeccably ironed black robes, and he wore a short brimmed pointed hat despite it being indoors, in late spring, at night, possibly for the sole purpose of casting menacing shadows over his features.

The man whipped his wand, and Harry’s cloak flew straight up in the air.

“Hi,” greeted Harry, “you must be Caretaker Pringle.”

“Skulking around like vermin in search of crumbs,” Pringle snapped. Harry raised his eyebrows. He had never received that degree of venom on first meeting before. Usually there was some theatre about how dislikable Harry was, or perfectly understandable attempted murder.

“Sorry?”

“Your point of entry is the office of your classroom, and your sole places of interest have been the grounds and the lounge. The classroom and the lounge are on the first floor, as is the exit. What, pray tell, might you be doing on the second floor past curfew, then?” He seemed almost feverish in his need to convey each word into a perfectly parcelled, crisp recitation, as if he were clear enough each syllable would be a lashing. “I find this very unusual behaviour for our mysterious returnee, who jumped on a job and Dumbledore’s coattails the moment they were available to him. One might inquire after the motivations for his skulking.”

“Dumbledore duelled Grindelwald in November, so I’d think the soonest a person would jump on would be winter hols.” Harry paused. “Must have been beating them off with sticks.”

“I have quite the experience with beatings, and in my opinion, we were not. Hitting. Hard. Enough.” Pringle ground out.

Hang on.

Harry had dealt with every category of person who had a bone to pick with him, and they all had their unique ways of expressing their ire. Pringle, however, was strangely familiar. Not just the way he talked, but his whole demeanour.

He would rather die than use his facial muscles, sure, but…had Snape modelled his student-facing persona on this guy? Hysterical. Explained a shocking amount about both him and the Marauders, actually, not to mention Filch’s longing attitudes towards child torture. Harry kind of wanted to get into ulcer-inducing mischief after only a few seconds in the man’s presence.

Harry cocked his head at him. “Teachers don’t have curfew, do they? Thought Dippet might have said as much. Shall I find a prefect to walk me back to my bed and tuck me in?”

 Pringle whipped his wand out threateningly at Harry. It was exceptionally long and thin with a simple black handle, making it indistinguishable from the whipping cane his aunt Marge kept trying to graciously donate to his Uncle Vernon. Harry knew that Pringle also used it that way, and he was filled with a sudden and intense animosity.

Pringle lifted his chin. Harry did not break eye contact.

“I have no fondness for mysteries and obfuscation, nor do I have a tolerance for secret-keeping, riddles, and otherwise undisclosed plotting. I do not care for you, and I am not charmed by your charismatic swanning about supposed expertise duelling unspecified dark wizards.”

“We all have our likes and dislikes, Mr. Pringle,” said Harry.

The beginnings of a snarl began on Pringle’s face, but he couldn’t get another word out, because someone turned the corner and cried out at the sight of Harry.

“Henry! Oh, what good fortune!”

Harry had never been so happy to see Slughorn. He side-stepped Pringle, picked up his discarded invisibility cloak, and gave the potions professor a jaunty wave. “Horace! Got turned around, old Pringle here was just giving me some directions. Are you headed somewhere?”

Pringle watched Harry pass by with a baleful glare, but did not stop him, instead marching down the hall. Slughorn chuckled, pleased at the informal address. “I’m impressed you went this long without him accusing you of nefarious deeds. Don’t mind him, he won’t go so far as to hex an employee. Just a miserable demeanour, sadly.”

“Sadly,” Harry agreed. “You don’t suppose he wants the Defence position?”

“Oh no. He suspects you of being paid off by the Daily Prophet.” Slughorn’s straw-coloured moustache twitched. “Your mysterious past has been a matter of some contention among the entire staff, actually. Not me, of course, but the others wondered why you were hired on such…unverifiable information. You have to understand, it isn’t that we don’t think you can do the job, it’s just strange for the headmaster to hire off so little, and Albus especially…”

Harry fell in step next to him, if only to avoid being caught slinking alone at night again. “Oh, my history didn’t actually have anything to do with it. Beyond the fact I know combat magic practically, I mean. He had me show I could cast, that was it. The Daily Prophet just made it sound…” Harry made an exaggerated face of displeasure.

“Oh, sensationalism, sensationalism!” Slughorn slapped Harry on the back. “Then is it true that Albus Dumbledore had some personal interest in you?”

“Well, he’s left me to my devices so far, but I’m not sure I’d have any spare time if he hadn’t. There’s more children per class than I taught per year,” Harry said. If he hadn’t had experience with Dumbledore’s Army, he wouldn’t have survived till this point.

“Well, I’ll tell you now, Albus is a good man to have personal connections with. He kept to himself even before, you know, always pleasantly elsewhere, but nowadays…You know, if you’d like an opportunity to speak to him, there’s this lovely gala coming up.”

‘Gala’ implied it wasn’t one of Slughorn’s parties, which is the only reason Harry did not sneer at the suggestion. He could still feel himself tilt away from the very thought of going to a fancy event and present himself as anyone of importance to a bunch of people doing the same. “A Gala.”

“Quite the party, the Minister for Magic is coming! Spencer-Moon’s schedule is very tight, I’ll tell you, but he’s managed to take time off to keep up with the state of things. I went to school with the man, a few years behind of course, and he was always efficient, no wonder he’s done so well in this war. Albus is of course coming as well, and I’m sure he’ll prefer your company.”

The implication was obvious. Pretty please come to this party so Albus Dumbledore doesn’t leave early.

But Harry hadn’t really had much opportunity to speak to Dumbledore, and the temptation of spending time in his company, with the only secrets between them being Harry’s, made him yearn so hard it ached.

Harry allowed a smile. “…Never been to an event before, hope that’s okay.”

⎯ ♢♢♢ ⎯

Borgin was normally the person who trussed up the purchases for reselling, but Tom luckily did not have to deal with his particular genre of slime when bringing home the treasures he’d managed to plunder from the Day household.

“Nice old lady with a collection like this,” Burke whistled when Tom unloaded his bag.

“Technically speaking, her husband had a collection like this, though she didn’t seem particularly bothered,” said Tom.

“Half our sellers,” Burke laughed. He picked through each item, scribbling rough worth versus what Tom bought it for, effortlessly doing the mental math to get the percentage. Burke was frightfully good with numbers; there were spells for calculating, but he didn’t appear to need them. Borgin would inflate the price later. He’d been excited at the customers coming back, and might want to try a little extra cost, test the waters with it. Henry Evans was lucky to order everything when he did.

The tentatively hopeful mood he’d developed from having Alda Day recite the oral history of ancient British political exchanges with muggles – the reason it wasn’t in his History of Magic course, he quickly learned, was because these were things covered in Muggle Studies, a class he’d never taken – was swiftly extinguished by the reminder of Evans.

After the failure of his Death Eaters, Tom had pushed Abraxas and the newly recruited Dolohov to look more into Europe. The problem about vague allusions to fighting ‘in the war’ is that while Grindelwald was chewing and spitting out all of Paris, his loyalists and his inferi were in every corner of the world. Which was, of course, part of why Grindelwald was so difficult to take down.

It was impossible to prove a negative, so Tom instead sought out the other direction. Records of Grindelwald’s supporters were suppressed in many countries, but the right people could unearth the right information. How wonderful it would be to find description of a curse-scarred man within those records?

And then what?

Tom scowled at the skeletal hand hexed to choke people to death in their sleep, which Burke marked as ‘auction’ for their private buyers. If Henry Evans was a follower of Grindelwald…the temptation to out him to all and sundry and see him lose his job was there. But Tom was more mature now, and he had to consider other perspectives.

The main thing that occupied him was the timeline. The moment Henry Evans stepped foot on British soil, he’d begun looking into Tom Marvolo Riddle. His life in the British Isles began all at once, and not even a week had passed before he’d zeroed in on Tom.

If he was Grindelwald’s, he might have done so because of Tom’s obvious significance. It was possible – and the very thought made his heart beat faster – it was possible that word of his heritage had reached Grindelwald’s ears, and he’d pinned Tom as a nascent ally in Britain. While he was in school, Tom was the Heir of Slytherin, handsome, popular, well-connected, kept up with Grindelwald’s progress, and was in possession of a lifetime fascination for the Dark. He would rather like Tom, wouldn’t he?

But no sooner had Grindelwald set up in Paris had Albus Dumbledore come rampaging across Europe to duel him into submission. His war did not last long enough for Tom to go to Europe, to learn the arts he would need to be a worthwhile Dark wizard to know. He would never mature into Grindelwald’s ideal ally. He remained one irrelevant teenager amongst many.

But perhaps he was still worth testing. Perhaps it wasn’t that Evans was a fan of Dumbledore, but that he needed someone who wasn’t. He’d been joking with Abraxas, but hardly two weeks after the war ended Tom had thoroughly reviewed what little writings there were that could be copied from Grindelwald’s personal archives (and thus copied again by all the people interested parties paid off). What it contained was not a record of his successes in the Dark Arts, but a lot of hand-wringing fluff about Albus Dumbledore.

In the 1890s, the Tom Riddle of the era was Albus Dumbledore, darling of the wizarding world, charming every academic to ever exist. His fascinations were not Dark, so he was allowed to devour every class of magic and was venerated for that passion. He was a beloved feather in Grindelwald’s cap, lost to the winds, and lord if it didn’t drive him mad. If Albus is partial, if Albus could be convinced, if I returned to speak with Albus, if Albus, Albus, Albus, Grindelwald would not shut the fuck up about Albus Dumbledore. He treated any movement towards Britain as something that he must consult with Dumbledore about, as if he must ask Albus Dumbledore if he could stay up past his bedtime if it were in Britain. Fucking insufferable.

It was not that Albus was a particularly outstanding wizard – though the kind of magic he was willing to use in a duel was admittedly impressive – but that Grindelwald had at some point made a commitment to Dumbledore as his nemesis.

If Evans was indeed on the other side of the war, perhaps he’d heard word of Grindelwald whinging about how he’d have to snivel oh please Albus just to step foot in London. And perhaps he’d been interested in Tom Riddle, who would rather die than beg at Albus Dumbledore’s feet.

Tom had to sit down after a death rattle of a cough – Borgin had been furious at him getting so sick he missed work, but Burke eyed him carefully, looking more cautious at his health than anything – and so Tom looked over the prices to bring himself out of his theorizing, which he knew was becoming distorted by his own personal fantasy. The plainest option – that Evans was invested in Dark magic and already knew someone who could point him Tom’s way – was infinitely more likely. The only truly strange thing Evans had done was distance himself from the Dark Arts when speaking to Tom, not to mention his rudeness.

And if Tom were entertaining such likely possibilities…both must be insults. Tom had met with many people who wanted his knowledge yet did not have the grace to play nice with him, and all of them pissed him off nearly as much as Evans did.

They all saw Tom as below them, and sought to subjugate him. They didn’t realize Tom wouldn’t give up the fruits of his labour unless they got on their hands and knees and begged.

It was well past his usual hours when he finally left the shop. He still took his tea and newspaper. Evans had vanished after his first appearance; it was difficult to get an interview when the man was quite literally invisible. It seemed no one the Daily Prophet could get a hold of had anything new to say about him.

Tom glanced at the shop windows, as if he would see Henry Evans glowering over a teacup just beyond them. No one.

Page three boasted an upcoming gala celebrating shit that did not matter, just an arbitrary excuse to get everyone even slightly famous to come together and moon over each other. Tom would have to come; he’d made an impact as a prefect, and then Head Boy, but the older generation needed to be reminded he was influential too. Abraxas or Nott could easily obtain an invitation for him. If nothing else, he could find new customers for Borgin & Burkes.

Tom finished reading the paper, went home to report the release date of the next charms journal to the diary, and stewed. The restlessness of not knowing things itched at him, crawling under his skin, but he knew to be patient. The failures of others were lessons learned on his behalf.

The immediate future first. The locations of the Founder’s relics, building personal associations with the families which were most open about their interest in Dark magic, ingratiating himself with potential clients, and furthering his learning.

And later, he’d pick Henry Evans into pieces, until his every secret was bare in the bloody smear left behind.

Chapter Text

Nott was not only happy to get Tom an invitation, but handed it over as if it were cause for celebration, ranting about how happy he was to see Tom finally talking to people again and inviting him over to his horrible home despite the fact the only family that would be less happy to host would be the Blacks – though Tom thought it might be a bit fun to visit anyway, just to watch them blow a blood vessel.

He couldn’t afford an entire outfit for this kind of event when Alda Day was the first commission he’d gotten in months. Abraxas threw something that would have been chic in the 1800s at him; a tight-fit tailed jacket with a straight front and a matching cravat. Tom didn’t even own an overcoat for this style. It was a dinner party outfit at best.

Nevertheless, Tom wore his best underrobes, made sure not a hair was out of place, and grazed a pinky of light lip rouge over his mouth because his bloodless lips often gave the impression that he had been recently dying of hypothermia.

I’ll be going to a social event today, he informed the diary.

Oh no. Has Slughorn finally hunted you down?

No, it’s held by someone else. Celebrating the opening of something-or-other after the war. If I’m lucky, he won’t be there at all.

You’ve changed. I have never been so optimistic.

Tom gave the diary a wry smile. I’m Nott’s companion for the night.

No you’re not. You’re hardly going to be his companion for the door. He’ll be off to wet his dick within minutes of setting his sights on an unattached woman.

Oh dear. Then who shall stop me from ingratiating myself with the very influential patriarchs in attendance? Tom grinned at it.

Snipe them from Slughorn. Do it in front of whatever poor bastard he’s trying to sell off. The diary’s penmanship was vicious and cutting. He hadn’t told it the details of Slughorn’s offer after that disastrous final meeting with Dippet, but Tom had been stewing on his resentment towards the man since he was 16, and it wasn’t surprising that being treated like a charity case aggravated him even through a second-hand account.

Shall I snipe the poor bastard as well?

A long pause. Then, slowly, They should know that the ministry doesn’t want them. That they’ll be abandoned and forced to roll around with the muggles, the only ones to have them. They should know they have a future with me.

Tom felt a swell of fondness, or perhaps pride in himself. It felt as if he’d become a good influence, imparting some of his maturity and clarity onto a younger version of himself. The impotent rage he’d been weighed down by had been artfully refined into a wicked edge.

I’ll bring back some memories for you to chew on, Tom wrote back, to reward it for its capacity to learn.

Rosier and Nott were waiting for him at their meeting point. The current trends were catching up to the muggle 1910s, with ankle-length pencil skirts with long slits so it was possible to walk at all, which meant suit trousers. Tom’s eyes glanced jealously down at their ankles and back up. “How long are we torturing ourselves?”

“You may be torturing yourself, but I’m revelling. Three hours at least. They’ll scrape me out from under the tables,” Nott sniffed.

Rosier kicked Nott’s heel good-naturedly. “You can only say that because you can’t tell when someone wants to get rid of you.”

“Anyone who wants to get rid of me just hasn’t talked to me long enough. Tom’s been planning my mysterious death for ages.”

Tom glanced at Nott with a smirk. “Incredible how you managed to evade my best assassins.”

“Oh, yeah. Fucked them all,” Nott said solemnly.

Tom let out a strangled, yipping laugh and quickly covered his mouth to keep from making such a sound where strangers could hear.

But Nott had already heard it, and he was inordinately pleased with himself on the way to the party. Rosier updated them on those not in attendance; Mulciber had work and didn’t want to bother bumming an invitation from Rosier, while Lestrange and Avery were not the kind of company a government official would keep, and were thus entertaining Dolohov, who was still much too soft for their group.

The gala was being held in a public event hall. Tom still didn’t remember what it was even for; it seemed to him that they were throwing them in perpetuity, craving the touch of the society ball that most of the sacred twenty-eight had no trouble maintaining. It was an obvious attempt to drum up some optimism as the Ministry scrambled to clean up after the war, and failing businesses tried to adjust to the new normal.

The three of them glided through without being checked; Rosier and Nott’s faces made Tom’s acceptance a given. As ordinary as the venue was, it certainly was opulent inside.

“Have you ever been to one of these?” Nott asked Tom.

Tom quirked his head. “Can’t be much different from the balls your families hold.”

 “More or less, though you can’t party as hard and no one’s trying to marry you off,” said Rosier.

 No one was ever trying to marry someone off to Tom, as much as he preferred it that way. Mostly the same, then.

The hall itself was more lavish than Tom was expecting; expanded space that was significantly bigger on the inside, to fit upwards of 400 guests. Tom’s scalp prickled when he saw most of those guests were dressing much the same as Rosier and Nott. He stood out, and he didn’t know how his appearance was being interpreted.

 Nott sucked in a breath at the sight of his family lingering nearby. His father narrowed his eyes hatefully, and his elder brother looked infuriated as soon as their gazes met. Tom rolled his eyes at the incoming blowout.

“Fuck’s sake, Finangus,” his brother snapped. No one called Fin Nott Finangus except his own family, and Braggan in particular seemed to only say it to aggravate Tom. “Is this who you brought? Your pet mudblood?”

“Oh come off it, Bags, you know Fin’s the pet in this relationship,” Rosier sneered.

Fin made an insufferable duck face. “Jealous he takes me on walks?”

“You’re lucky father doesn’t hear you talk like that. You think Pringle’s bad with the cane?” Braggan Nott yanked his younger brother away. “You’re not in school anymore. You can’t be embarrassing our family by hanging out with his kind.”

Tom had effortlessly won over Slytherin within days of arriving at Hogwarts, with some exceptions. The sixth and seventh-year purebloods, conscious of their impending futures under the heel of their families, had not been willing to hover over a half-blood first-year, even with the parseltongue.

And the Nott, Lestrange, and Black families, because lineage meant less to them than blood. To be succinct, he wasn’t popular with cousin-fuckers.

Tom was far too beloved for it to mean anything, but these families were a constant spectre of sneering derision. Nothing he ever did was good enough for them, because he wasn’t an inbred exotropic monkey like his uncle.

His Lestrange wasn’t a problem, of course; he’d picked Donatus up from the Slug Club, and his family just turned their noses up and left it alone. Tom was surrounded by the kinds of men it would pay to know, so they lost no face by having him tag along.

The Notts, though. Practically the arbiters of blood legacy. Their father, Cantankerous Nott, quite literally wrote the book on wizarding heritage; Tom had used that very book to trace the Gaunts. They were called the Sacred Twenty-Eight even outside pureblood aristocracy because of the Pure-Blood Directory, so thorough it had a section on the squandering of the Dumbledore line with Albus Dumbledore’s mudblood mother.

Finangus Nott was simple to befriend. They were in the same year, and he was an idiot who loved to be doing what everyone else was doing if it seemed fun and easy. He always had a hedonistic tendency to him, even as an 11-year-old. Tom had been very smug that he’d gotten a Nott under heel so quickly.

Braggan Nott, who had been sorted to Ravenclaw, had then sworn to destroy him.

Insane little gnat. Tom had teachers and older students – particularly Mulciber and Abraxas – to protect him, but had to do a lot more studying than he felt was strictly necessary just to keep up with the constant searing judgement. Tom’s every fault was a fundamental failure credited to his filthy muggle father, and he used Tom’s own name like it was a slur.

Tom detested him, of course, but in the way he detested a pervasive itch. A part of him wanted to pull Braggan under his influence the way he had so easily collared Finangus. The Blacks coasted by on generations of favourable investments, but the Notts had some sway. Braggan was the heir.

Even so, he would never beg for favour. Tom straightened and lifted his chin. He was already taller than most, and he’d chosen a generous heel; in a single decisive step, he towered over Braggan. Tom tilted his head at him like he was an unsightly insect.

“My kind,” Tom tutted. “I heard your sister was born recently. I suppose you can’t wait until she turns 17, so you can be wed at last. That is how your kind does it, isn’t it?”

Nott covered his mouth and looked between them with thinly-veiled delight.

Braggan went scarlet, immediately too angry to go for the obvious retort. “You don’t talk about my family like that, filthy—”

“Not the company for that kind of language, is it?” Tom’s lip curled. He snaked a hand out to take his own Nott by the neck, letting one long, pale finger scratch just behind his ear, as if he were, in fact, a dog. The scandalized look Braggan gave him was delectable. He tried to pull his brother away, but Tom’s Nott loved a good ribbing and kept firmly put. Tom smiled confidently and leaned down to Nott’s ear, eyes firmly locked on Braggan. “Why don’t you go play with your brother for a bit? Your father is ever so worried, isn’t he?”

Cantankerous Nott was, in fact, apoplectic with rage in the background. The only thing keeping him from screaming was all the witnesses. How fun.

“Come on Bags, you heard the boss,” said Nott, and he shoved his brother away, ignoring his red-faced spluttering with practiced ease.

“I don’t know how you get him to debase himself like that,” Rosier muttered.

Tom snorted. “Pride doesn’t get him the things he wants.”

“Well, my normal father and sensible uncle are just over there. I must consult them on important matters, such as common sense, and,” Rosier waved vaguely, “beans on toast. Things of that nature.”

Tom rolled his eyes. “Go. Toast beans, or whatever it is the average do.”

His companions lost, Tom found someone serving champagne and took a flute for himself. It had a sour edge, as was his preference.

Tom scanned the ballroom, looking for a suitable mark, but he simply didn’t recognize most of the people around. No one he could easily ingratiate himself with, anyway. He did know some faces from Slughorn’s Christmas party, but he was hesitant to show how far his star had fallen to people who had that fat walrus in their ear for years. Orion Black was still in school, but he was already eighteen and looked insufferably smug at getting to come to one of these events and chatting up those very people.  

Tom was on the verge of spinning his wand on this thumb and walking in whatever direction it pointed when he felt a hand firmly clasp his shoulder.

“As usual, milord can pull off anything,” said Abraxas.

Tom relaxed into the hand and gave a wry look. “This robe ill-fits the event.”

“A little. But look, the elbow’s been patched.” Abraxas tugged at it suggestively.

Tom detested having to ask about aristocratic beliefs Abraxas took to be common sense, but he detested not knowing how he was being framed even more. “Is that meant to help?”

“A jacket that’s a century out of style, old enough to absorb some damage? It telegraphs that you’re wearing heirloom. A member of your family rich enough to wear a coat this nice and far enough up the tree to be wearing the hottest styles of the 1800s means you’re not one of those nouveau rich,” Abraxas explained. “Anyone worth speaking to will notice.”

It was a rather narrow-minded view of Tom’s greater aspirations. The Sacred Twenty-Eight tended to lean towards business, not politics; only half the seats of the Wizengamot were inherited, and of those inheritors, only Prewett and Abbott were true pure-blood elite. Barely a quarter of the people here would be impressed by his illustrious hand-me-downs.

But, he noted, Abraxas was wearing a very similar style. In fact, the older the wizard, the more frequently such styles appeared. Then he didn’t look out of date, but unusually mature. He liked that thought.

“Bags is up my arse again,” Tom groused.

Abraxas wrinkled his nose. “Oh no, another one trying to bugger you already?”

Tom choked on his laugh. “He does seem jealous his brother gets to be my dog, doesn’t he?”

“That reminds me, you should come to a society ball sometime. Their parents may not trust you, but a halfblood of your lineage is going to be famously popular in the marriage market. The women will be crawling all over you.”

And whatever would the parents of those women say? “Ah, but I’ve yet to travel Europe. It’ll have to be an insultingly long engagement.”

Abraxas scoffed. “Like they care, as long as you’re still good-looking. They can moon over your photos.”

“Giving me nightmares of my school years,” chided Tom.

“Olive Thornby,” Abraxas said, and made an exaggerated gagging noise that had Tom pursing his lips around his glass to avoid whatever sound threatened to come out of his throat.

 “Oh, right. I wanted to go pry a potential sycophant out of Slughorn’s grubby mitts. Have you seen him?” Tom asked.

“He’s with the teachers,” Abraxas gestured to the corner of the room, near the table.

Tom tilted to get a better look. “Is that Ridgecarver? Who let him in?”

“Slughorn’s charity cases get coddled by him, he’s always around. Is this really your first big party? You used to go to social events all the time in your last two years.”

“Needed to lie low to shake Slughorn and Dumbledore off,” Tom lied. He finished his champagne and grabbed another glass. “I’ll go hunting, then. Go terrorize Bags for me, won’t you?”

“His father is a nightmare, it’ll be tricky,” Abraxas said, but he looked like he was tempted by the challenge.

Tom pushed his way through the chatting groups, sipping his drink perhaps a little faster than he strictly should, until he could see the entirety of Slughorn’s group. He was with the teachers alright; Ridgecarver, Cassandra II, and a politely disinterested Albus Dumbledore in the middle of making an escape. As for the poor fool dangling from his apron strings…

Henry Evans.  

He was dressed haphazardly enough that Tom felt less self-conscious about his own borrowed clothes, chatting openly, hair pushed back to display the handsome sowilo on his brow. From this distance, the electric scarring around it gave the impression of a golden glow.

Evans’ eyes turned away, and their gazes met.

Tom wasn’t prepared for a confrontation, but he couldn’t exactly run away now that he was seen. He finished his glass all at once and tossed it aside. It bounced and rolled under the table. He approached with a confident stride.

“Mr. Evans,” Tom said icily, “what a wonderful coincidence.”

⎯ ♢♢♢ ⎯

Harry did not care enough about his own appearance to worry about how poorly he was dressed for the event.

He had a great start with the coat. It was luxurious black velvet embroidered with gold, and he was pretty sure the red scarf he had being made of silk meant it was supposed to be worn as a drape. It broke down from there. His best vest was red suede, his only tie that went with the vest was shiny silk gold, and the only robe Remus Lupin wouldn’t wear was an obnoxiously glossy silk black with wrinkles that refused to smooth out.

When he looked at himself in the mirror, all he could determine was that he was wearing a lot of individual items that were probably expensive, and the colours mostly went together. Which was honestly the best he could hope for without going out to buy new robes. Wizards in the 1940s wouldn’t be acquainted with what a cheap Halloween costume looked like anyway.

He cracked open a jar of Sleekeazy’s and went to war with the stubborn lumps formed along his whorl. While getting them to lie flat was a lost cause, he could push them back, and then push back the rest of his hair, so they formed a bit of a pompadour. The small pompadour also looked terrible, because he didn’t know what to do with the rest of his hair. He kind of looked like if Petunia oversaw his appearance for a church event, barring the lack of trousers.

On the bright side, he’ll make Slughorn miserable.

Harry flooed to Hogsmeade, as the public floo access to Hogwarts was only open during commute hours. Slughorn was there in the Three Broomsticks in expensive-looking tweed. His mustache twitched at Harry’s wardrobe, but he didn’t frown or make a comment.

“A pleasure to have you, Henry,” he chortled. “Have you ever been to an event like this?”

Harry grimaced. Oh, has he ever. He’d been dragged through one ostentatious celebration after the other, presented himself as a man who was currently alive for all to see, bowed under the weight of all those eyes hungrily seeking his pulse, and found dedicated walls to plaster himself against for the hour he was forced to be there. Harry thought Snape would find it all very funny.

“Not a fan,” he said.

Slughorn was a short man, but as soon as he was in spotting distance of rich people, he broke into a fairly impressive glide. He greeted everyone by name as he zoomed right into the building, spitting single-sentence platitudes about marriages and births as natural as breathing.

Finally Harry was pushed into the ballroom, which was magically expanded, though not as generously as the worst of the galas he’d had to attend in the past. He would choose to view this as a good sign.

“I’ll keep an eye out for Albus. You can… there! Casimir! Go get settled in with him, I’m sure he’ll enjoy a peer. Just say my name to keep conversations going, I’ll be back before you know it,” Slughorn chortled, and he vanished behind incoming attendees.

“Thanks,” Harry said dully, and went off to mingle with Ridgecarver, who was indeed loitering around the refreshments, wearing a very ordinary tweed suit that made Harry quietly envious. He should get tweed robes.

He plucked a piece of cheese on a toothpick off a tray and leaned into the teacher’s line of sight. “What’s the gala even for, anyway?”

“Oh, hello, Henry,” Ridgecarver greeted. “I believe it heralds a new office opening. The, erm…damn, I just heard it. Something to do with law enforcement. They’ve been stretched thin after the war, you see, so having enough staff for a new department is a big deal. I’m sure they’ll announce it in a bit, give a speech.”

“Wonderful.” Harry plucked three more toothpicks off the charcuterie board.

“I suspect Horace has a hand in dragging you here,” Ridgecarver said apologetically, as if it were his fault.

“He baited me with one-on-one chit-chat with Albus Dumbledore. But what he was really asking was if he could use me as bait for Dumbledore. Am I bait-worthy?”

“You’re a difficult man to get a hold of,” Ridgecarver allowed after some thought. “He uses the portraits, you see.”

Oh, yeah. Harry did, in fact, go about his entire shift invisible. “He should come to the classroom.”

“I thought he might be trying to avoid a second newspaper headline for you. It was a bit funny seeing them try to make an event out of basic duelling experience. I suspect half the people in Europe know their way around a hex,” Ridgecarver laughed.

Harry held his tongue around a comment that would not make sense without a lifetime of fame, and gave an awkward chuckle instead. “And I’m glad we did. Inferi are no joke.”

 “Galatea has been nobly defending your honour at the head table, of course. A possible contributing factor to Albus’ unwillingness to linger in her classroom.”

“Oh. That’s nice of her.” It’s not as if they talk much; her presence was mostly felt in her intense gaze as she watched him practice all the spells in his manuscript, which she did with zero commentary or expression. Extremely humbling.

“Galatea is practical, but she is a Slytherin. She admires ambition and determination. Of course, we have all heard Dippet gloating of your extreme Gryffindor leanings.”

“Yeah! The hat made fun of me!” Harry snorted, happy to finally complain about it to a willing ear.

Ridgecarver plucked his own toothpick of olive. “It made fun of me for being spineless when I was eleven. Said ‘but how will you lend your much-needed aid from those big towers?’ Bit mean, isn’t it?”

Harry nodded emphatically and was about to tell Ridgecarver how he really felt when there was a spiderweb-gentle tap on his shoulder. He turned around to see Cassandra Trelawney and her cloud of frizzy blonde hair.

She was wearing…Well she was wearing what looked like a black negligee over blue robes, but it wasn’t a negligee; it was one of those sleeveless chiffon babydoll dresses. Except it wasn’t, because the 1960s hadn’t happened yet, and even if they had, wizard fashion trends and muggle fashion trends were completely out of sync. Her own eccentric sensibilities?

She blinked her big round eyes at him and worried with her hands. “It’s wonderful you’re here, Henry. I wasn’t sure what I could do.”

Harry frowned. “Is something wrong?”

Her eyes skated around just about everywhere but Harry’s face. “I need to know. Does the table have any dark magic? Could you check?”

“…Dark magic.”

“It’s just there’s so many important people here, and I was wondering,” she tugged on the back of her hair nervously, “I was working it out in my head, and since it’s public for everyone, it wouldn’t be anything actually bad, and the food comes straight from the kitchens so it would be difficult to tamper with, so if there was anything bad at all, it would be, it would be a little jinx or something.”

“Do you think the table is jinxed?” Harry asked slowly.

Her eyes danced from Harry’s face to the floor to the table like spinning ping-pong balls. She resembled a shivering chihuahua.

Ridgecarver cleared his throat. “Why don’t you give Cassie some piece of mind, so she doesn’t…worry over it.”

“Uh. Sure. Am I allowed to wave my wand over the food in public?” Asked Harry.

Cassandra held her hand to her mouth in horror.

“You don’t need to wave your wand to do a detection charm, do you?” Ridgecarver prompted.

True.

Harry stuck a hand in his pocket to touch his wand and cast a few dispelling and detection charms while Cassandra hunched behind him, watching intently.

“…Refilling, alert charms, preservation charms, cooling charms. Nothing that shouldn’t be there,” Harry concluded.

“Okay. I didn’t really think there was any dark magic. I just think it’s good to be aware that people could cast dark magic,” Cassandra said quickly. Her cheeks were burning red.

“Must be a wonder on your nerves to know for sure. Olive?” Ridgecarver offered a toothpick. Cassandra took it and appeared to swallow it whole.

“She doesn’t like events either. Nerves get her paranoia going,” Ridgecarver whispered in explanation.

Harry glanced down at Cassandra. “What are you here for?”

Cassandra swallowed one of the three toothpick servings of ham she had picked up after the olive. “It’s just that my grandmother was very important, because there’s so rarely a powerful seer. Seers that have the gift of prophecy and the Sight are so uncommon, everyone said she could do prophesies on command, very important. And you know, they all believe good magic worth having is passed through blood, they think— they think I’m a pureblood witch who has her grandmother’s blood and I work in divination so I must be very important, like her, which I’m not. My father is a lawyer. I wanted to go into interpretation for actual seers, like having them dig through entrails and I tell them what they just scried, but they would all lie about having the Sight because I’m such a very important granddaughter, so nobody was getting any honest work done. I think everyone’s trying to marry me and get me pregnant.” She then stuffed two sponge fingers in her mouth, likely to shut herself up.

“Oh…wow,” Harry said lamely.

“Luckily, Albus is still dazzlingly famous, so all those brown-nosing types will get sucked up by him,” Ridgecarver assured her gently.

She blinked at him and swallowed most of the mouthful. “…But they’re not trying to get him pregnant.”

“I should hope not,” chuckled Albus Dumbledore.

He was wearing handsome red robes with a sharp-looking black tie, appearing stately and worthy of his position, which Harry thought was a very strange look on him. Cassandra scuttled off to the side and offered the refreshment table to him.

“Thank you, my dear…Quite the selection of little treats they have.” He took a sponge finger and dipped it in the chocolate fountain. Dumbledore made it look like it tasted like heaven on earth. “Mmm…Now, I am more partial to boiled sweets, but I will never turn down a dessert well made.”

“Watch out. Slughorn’s trying to lure you into mingling,” Ridgecarver said with a good-natured elbow to Harry.

“Ah. Very inauspicious circumstances for us to have a conversation, then,” said Dumbledore, giving Harry a pitiful smile.

Being in front of Dumbledore gave Harry a strange, stuffy feeling in his chest. He didn’t know what face of Dumbledore’s he yearned for more; the joy and relief that he had guessed correctly and Harry had triumphed over Voldemort’s horcrux, or the despair that his faith in Harry’s inherent goodness had led him to satiate his curiosity about the Hallows, something Harry did not need to be folded up in given the circumstances, yet that very overstepping soothed Harry when he was at his lowest, and it allowed Harry to face him now, so far into his past.

The man before him, in his finely crafted and unpatterned robes, was not that Dumbledore. How heavy did fifty years weigh on him? How did it change him? Harry had no idea how he would inspire the man to cry out in exaltation or bow his head and weep. He didn’t even know how to hold a polite conversation.

It was entirely possible that pure white King’s Cross was made up as his body was going through shock, and he was succumbing to his own personal madness.

“We can talk later,” Harry stiffly offered.

“Oh, Albus, excellent!” Slughorn called, and he yanked a young man closer. Several people spun around, not realizing Dumbledore had even showed up. “I’ve been meaning to introduce you! This is—”

“Bertie!” Ridgecarver interrupted with a plastered-on grin. “Miss Charlotte Weatherford has spoken the world of you! Merlin’s beard, how have you been?”

Dumbledore used that as an opening to shuffle off to another table in search of a beverage, giving Harry a sly wink as he did so.

Slughorn visibly deflated at not being able to sell his connection to Dumbledore, and even more so when Ridgecarver began quietly and insistently gassing Bertie up to go up to miss Weatherford and ask her if she would like a dance this evening.

“Well, have you gotten the opportunity to speak to Albus?” Slughorn asked hopefully.

“Er. Yep. Great to talk to him,” Harry offered.

Slughorn nodded, but seemed unconvinced. He scanned the ballroom. “A lot of my star graduates were hoping to get some insight from Albus, it really is something else, being able to use transfiguration in a duel, plenty of upstart academics…”

Harry looked around too, fighting back a grimace. All he’d gotten out of this event was a half-hearted ‘see you later’. Could he escape now, before some of Slughorn’s ‘star graduates’ catch on and try to grease his palms for a crumb of Dumbledore’s assumed approval?

He was not actually anticipating any familiar faces, so when he looked straight into Tom Riddle’s eyes, he didn’t have the mind to glance away.

What was he doing here? Tom was supposed to have vanished after school, never to be seen again. If he was attending socials, he wouldn’t have ‘vanished’. Harry’s timeline for the murder of Hepzibah Smith had been some time after the following year, enough for his hair to grow out that far; was it even further than that?

Tom did not look happy to see him.

The man tossed the glass aside and strode purposefully forward. Unlike most of the guests, he was wearing a voluminous under-robe just like Harry’s, if a little less shiny, and it billowed around his feet. He was wearing heels.

Tom came to a stop in front of Harry. Harry looked up. And up. He was wearing heels.

Harry finally remembered that while Tom must have very strong opinions after seeing him in the newspaper, Tom was not yet a Dark Lord, and might actually want to confirm the context for himself. Harry was no longer a mysterious stranger, but some arsehole who took his job and made fun of him for Dumbledore loving him more.

A lot went unsaid between the lines, and he might want it to be said now.

“Mr. Evans,” Tom said icily, “what a wonderful coincidence.”

Chapter Text

Of all the people here, it was Ridgecarver who had seen the worst of the vitriol Tom was capable of without a cruciatus, and so it was Ridgecarver who sidled in to intercept them.

“Mr. Riddle, it’s wonderful to see you! No one’s heard from you in nearly a year! You worried me,” and he shot a look to Harry that said it would be for the best if neither mentioned the conversation they had in the Room of Requirement.

“I’m in Diagon Alley every day. It seems to me that no one had been looking,” said Tom. His eyes did not leave Harry’s face.

“Oh. Well…” Ridgecarver looked deeply uncomfortable. After a moment, he rallied himself. “Er…that must be frustrating. Well—I’ve been getting to know Rubeus better!  He’s turned seventeen, so he’s permitted to go catch specimens in the forest alone…”

This sounded like a complete non-sequitur to Harry, but Tom’s cordial façade splintered, and he finally deigned Ridgecarver with his full attention. His face was split into a wide, cruel grin, tauntingly curious. “Really? I’m amazed he’s had the time between sucking Dumbledore’s toes.”

He seemed to realize he’d overstepped the moment it came out, and his face returned to the schooled, aloof disapproval of a model in a magazine ad. The sudden switch made Harry realize just how surprisingly wide his mouth stretched when he smiled all the way, striking because Ginny’s mouth did that too.

But when Ginny did it, she showed her teeth, straight and full save for the slight snaggletooth fangs that made every grin look like she was taking a bite out of the world, and felt very interesting when she was taking a bite out of Harry. On Tom it just looked ugly and awkward, and it had been shuttered so quickly Harry got the impression that ugliness embarrassed him.

Ridgecarver’s face was carefully blank. After a moment, he said, “That’s very unkind of you, Mr. Riddle.”

“I didn’t realize I owed anyone kindness,” Tom said softly. His eyes turned back to Harry. “I’ve been doing my best, haven’t I?”

“Well, no, you’ve been nothing but nasty. I thought I was being pretty kind though,” said Harry.

Tom raised his eyebrows, not in a way that was insulted or surprised – ‘is this the way we’re going to do it?’ – and Harry felt a surge of anticipation, like electricity suffusing his entire being, and a premature mortification that whatever the man said next would excite Harry so much he’d just blurt out the first thing on his mind, and that thing would probably not be suitable for polite company.

Harry broke eye contact by looking to Slughorn, who was very pale and squirming like a waterlogged, moustachioed earthworm. Harry wasn’t sure how the end of their pseudo-mentorship shook out, or how much of Slughorn’s dislike of Tom was from the fact he unwittingly contributed to the rise of a dark lord, but it looked like they were on bad terms at the moment.

 “Tom here was a Prefect! Wasn’t he one of yours?” Harry asked brightly.

Slughorn looked like curdled milk. “Ah…yes, well…not everyone is willing to take the opportunities offered to them.”

“Not everyone is willing to beg for scraps at your tall table,” Tom said with the slightest curl of his lip, and Ridgecarver covered his face to hide his resigned grimace. This must have come up when Tom let him have it. Harry dearly wished he was there to hear the whole rant.

“I—a sponsorship isn’t a handout, it’s—”

“It’s philanthropy?” Tom said with great pity. He took an extra step to draw closer to Slughorn, who was a very tiny man, and was thus dwarfed by Tom in all his heeled glory. “Weren’t you just so excited to make me a teaboy. Just like Spencer-Moon! I’d practically be Minister for Magic already!”

Slughorn looked genuinely unnerved by this degree of derision. “You have to—you yourself acknowledged how difficult it is for someone of…of your background…”

Tom drew himself up. Harry was wary that he was about to give Slughorn a black eye. “Tell me, Evans, are you a mudblood?”

 “Alright, let’s not use slurs at a public event,” Ridgecarver interrupted.

“Mr. Riddle, you really believe I would—”

“You certainly got a good laugh out of some very low-brow jokes of that nature during club meets. Slurs weren’t below you, if I’m remembering correctly,” Tom said with an unsettling calm.

Slughorn turned pink. “You—you were children! I may have been—I was only…”

“Legal adults, quite a lot of us. Much to reflect on.” He snapped his gaze to Harry. “I did ask you a question, didn’t I?”

“Uh. Both wizards.”

“Pureblood?”

“Dad was.”

“My, how lucky. You may even get to be a desk jockey. If you do your job dangling off Dumbledore’s arm, I’m sure someone really valuable might entrust you with their paperwork,” said Tom.

Harry wrinkled his nose and held up a toothpick of cheese. “Well. Cheers.”

“Luckily, I have been doing fine with my own opportunities. Miss Alda Day has been a lovely host to me thus far. It truly puts it into perspective what real generosity can get you.”

“Oh…Day, is it…?” Slughorn asked faintly.

“I was surprised, in fact, how easy life could be when not resting on the laurels of others,” and here Tom looked to Harry, indicating he was, in fact, here to start a row with him, and Slughorn had just had the bad luck of setting him off first.

Harry skewered an olive. “Not me. Love to cheat my way to the top. They didn’t even ask how old I was, worked so well. Merrythought was fixing to rip them in half when I told her.”

The look Tom gave him truly made it all worth it. He was going to turn Harry into a meat smear anyway, may as well get the most out of it while conversations like this were still on the table.

“I don’t think escalation is a useful reaction to conflict,” said Ridgecarver, carefully stepping in front of Cassandra, who was anxiously peeling a little pepperoni with her teeth.

Tom took a breath and held it, quirking his head and looking Harry up and down like he was about to unleash an absolutely vicious barb, but no sooner had his voice creaked on the first syllable that another person came to harass their group.

“Oh, look at that. Even now, you’re always doing your best to help out your poor little mudbloods, aren’t you, Sluggie?”

Harry recognized the young man instantly; Orion Black, who was in his final year. It was obvious from the direct eye contact he made with Tom that this was meant to be a jab at him, which struck Harry as odd; Tom was supposed to be fantastically popular with both students and professors during his time at Hogwarts. Who would have the temerity to call a guy who could summon a basilisk a mudblood?

“I must inform you with the heaviest of hearts Bags has already made great theatre of his blood supremacy, and so you remain, as ever, boring and slow to catch on,” Tom said blandly.

Ridgecarver pinched his nose. “Slughorn, why don’t you go get some air?”

“Oh. Excellent idea, yes. Well, you have fun catching up, boys!” And with that, the man vanished back into the crowd.

“Now, I do believe a wand-measuring contest between today’s youths is no place for a lady. If you’ll excuse us.” Ridgecarver gently guided Cassandra in the opposite direction, leaving Harry all alone to fend for himself. He took another olive and a bit of cheese.

Orion watched them go with a sneer. “Oh, apologies for chasing everyone off. It does seem like no one is willing to keep you company nowadays…” His eyes landed on Harry. “Professor Evans! You have taught at least four of my classes, yet this is the first time we meet.”

“Your spell choice could use some work,” Harry said through a mouthful of cheese.

“Well, it’s not as if I’ll go into duelling professionally. We’ve got many properties to manage, and I have secured an accomplished fiancée for my household. Walburga Black. You may have heard of her; she won quite a few duelling trophies herself.”

Tom rolled his eyes.

Harry had an equal dislike of Orion, for completely different reasons. “Black? God, you must be really proud of her. What is she, your older sister?”

Orion’s eyes narrowed. “How pitiable. Not of robust family history, are you? It should be common sense that a family that pays respect to their clan will have many branches, meticulously pruned and proudly standing as one under our crest. If you want to make glib comments about that kind of incest, there are far more obvious targets.” And there he looked to Tom again.

That was an unexpected sideswipe, and Harry could see it was as surprising to Tom as it was to him. Tom’s look of bored disinterest surged into genuine rage, and Harry saw the tell-tale flicker of red blazing in his eyes, like hellfire pouring out from between the cracks of his shattered soul.

Wow. Harry would really prefer it if Sirius had time to be successfully born. “Does it not stack?”

Orion’s attentions slid back to Harry. “Sorry?”

“You tried to use mudblood as an opener, but now you’re saying he’s vanilla extract pureblood. So does all the incest not stack? Just one muggle or muggleborn, and it’s,” Harry made an airy ‘bhoof’ sound with his hand stretching wide in a mimed explosion. “Doesn’t seem tenable.”

Orion tilted his nose up at him. “Oh, I suppose you’re motivated to see it that way. How is your breeding?”

Harry raised his eyebrows. “Why? Want me to freshen up your clan and give your wife a good breeding?”

There was a sharp yip, clear and vivid as a struck bell, and Harry swivelled to look at Tom, who was staring off into the distance with a fiercely repressed grin. That was him. He’d laughed.

Orion took the front of Harry’s shirt with a snarl. “Now see here, you—”

A wine glass was tapped at the front stage, ringing across the entire room. The three of them turned to see the Prime Minister standing in front of a wizarding microphone – a plain wooden circle, enchanted to amplified sound that went through the middle – with a whole host of people sitting behind him. Dumbledore included.

“A word, before we indulge in festivities,” Spencer-Moon called out. “We are brought here today over the founding of the Cross-Practice Intelligence Office, and we would like to speak on what an honour it is to establish such an unprecedented feat of bureaucratic cooperation.”

Oh! The CPIO! Wow, Harry didn’t know it was founded so recently. Basically every other department cross-referenced with their archives once a case, and Hermione got an internship with them while also redoing her seventh year. Foundational stuff. Harry drifted close to hear more about it.

Tom Riddle grabbed his wrist.

Harry looked back at him. Tom had managed to school his expression back into camera-ready coolness, but Harry could see the cracks around the edges. His eyes snapped to Orion, realizing that he didn’t want him to sit in on whatever fight he’d been gearing up for, then to Harry, dark with an emotion other than naked dislike for once.

Finally, he decided on a casual, “I would suggest watching how you speak in certain company,” and released him.

Orion glared at Harry. “Perhaps he won’t learn his lesson unless someone teaches him.”

“Er. I’m the professor, actually. Would be a shame if you ended the year with a Troll, wouldn’t it,” Harry simpered, and slipped away before he got punched.

Minister Spencer-Moon was going on about the nature of bureaucratic nightmares, the impact complex dark magic had on Britain when overrun by Dark wizards with inferi as their enforcers, the process of fielding Grindelwald’s legal requests without half the experience. This was how Albus Dumbledore had gotten involved; his knowledge base was one of the most diverse out of anyone, and he was instrumental in bringing these fields together to talk at last.

“I do not anticipate many people to be impressed with the feat of collaboration,” Dumbledore said with a pleasant little smile, “but in my personal opinion, it was just as difficult as the defeat of Grindelwald himself.”

There were ripples of laughter through the crowd, but Harry didn’t think he was joking.

“And now, I shall introduce our consultants. We would have never managed without them. First, myself. You will find many of those who covet the art of transfiguration simply do not have the time to waste on greasing the wheels of bureaucracy, and so I doomed myself in their stead. Secondly, the diviner and seer Medea Hope, whose readings helped anticipate great upheavals in the Ministry, in absentia of the capacity for prophecy in Great Britain.” He introduced a drowsy-looking black woman with hair curled into victory rolls, which Harry thought must be a very modern look in this era.

The applause was light and half-hearted. It seemed even in the 40s people were sceptical of divination. Well, except very fierce clapping on the other end of the hall, where Harry could see a head of frizzy blonde hair.

“In potions, forgive me for my transgressions towards the realm of academia; it is similarly populated with those with no patience for politics. We instead sought the young blood of the business world, Fleamont Potter.”

Harry’s stomach did a flip.

He could barely hear the applause over the roar in his ears. His granddad had helped found the CPIO? Why hadn’t he heard? He got to learn all about Sleekeazy’s when he was provided a practical lifetime supply for all the fussing with his hair he had to do when accepting his accolades. But Sleekeazy’s had to be a lasting brand for a reason; his innovations in potions must have been impressive.

…Also surprising was that Fleamont Potter was a white man. Harry felt a little bad for assuming all the Potters looked just like him just because his looks came from his dad’s side. It was hard to know for sure with the handsome beard and distance from the stage, but he did still strongly resemble James, and thus resembled Harry, round glasses and all. Harry felt if he looked into the Mirror of Erised again, it would be with horrible clarity.

Dumbledore went through Charms and Muggle Studies and Arithmancy and Herbology, none of the experts being people Harry knew. So many fields, practically a Hogwarts staff table full of the finest minds in wizardry. He topped it off with fucking Bathilda Bagshot for the field of history. Harry was already a huge fan of the CPIO, but now his heart swelled with pride at the sheer achievement of it. It reminded him of the Library of Alexandria, and how much Bill seemed to know off the top of his head after working in Egypt just because how smoothly theories bounced between disciplines.

 “We will not hold you hostage any longer. I know the true excitement of a gala is the gossip and the gallivanting.” Dumbledore waved to them all, and the whole crowd burst into applause again.

Spencer-Moon closed with how to apply for the information handled by the CPIO and which departments currently had access, and the lights finally came on again. Those on stage were replaced with a band, and the crowd dispersed into loose clusters to leave room for those who wanted to dance.

Harry was unpleasantly surprised to have four separate women make a beeline for him, and he quickly escaped through the throngs of chatting attendees towards the far end, where he saw Cassandra’s impressive hairstyle.

“Help. I didn’t bring my invisibility cloak,” Harry whined.

“You should have made for the stage and asked Dumbledore for his hand. I’m sure he’s feeling just as terrorized,” Ridgecarver suggested with good humour. “The boys didn’t kill and eat you?”

“They got distracted by each other. God but he’s in a snit, isn’t he,” Harry grimaced.

“I can’t believe he’d just go after Horace like that. Not sure if I should be relieved or not that he’s decided against bottling it up. He came with friends, I hope they’ve been supporting him.” Ridgecarver craned his neck to look at a round-faced young man who was also fielding four separate women, but certainly looked a lot happier about it.  

Harry was strongly entertaining the possibility of leaving, and jumped at a tap on his shoulder. A very pretty young lady in a sparkling dress batted her eyelashes at him. “Mr. Evans! I’ve seen you in the paper, gosh, a Hogwarts professor at twenty!”

Harry clenched his teeth. “Yeah. Can’t believe they accepted me in.”

“Do you plan on dancing with anyone tonight?”

“Well…” Harry spared a hopeful glance to Cassandra.

She gave him a blank look. “You’re too famous right now. I’ll throw up on you.”

“Okay. Noted. Thanks.” He turned back to the girl and spread his hands. “I…don’t know how to dance. Haven’t tried since I was fourteen. Sorry to disappoint!”

He should have known better, with how hectic this night had been already. Harry felt a firm hand grip his wrist, and his feet were kicked out from under him. He reached for his wand automatically, only to realize he wasn’t wearing his standard holster, and it was somewhere in his inner coat pockets, leaving him helplessly folded back over a strong, bony arm.

Tom Riddle looked impassively down at him. “How unfortunate. Shall I help you with remedial lessons?”

“Prefer not to, honestly,” Harry grunted. He wobbled back upright, but Tom did not release his arm. It seemed he did not plan on giving up tonight. Harry shrugged helplessly at Ridgecarver and Cassandra. “Well, I suppose I’m off to have a screaming row with this one. Seems like he needs to get a lot off his chest tonight.”

Tom’s fingers bit into him hard enough to bruise, and a muscle jumped in his jaw, but he surprisingly managed to keep his expression blank.

“I had hoped we could have a polite dialogue. You did not, after all, personally wrong me. Did you, Mr. Evans?” Tom said in that airy and high voice, as delicate as spun sugar.

“You’re having me on if you’re saying you’re not even a little miffed,” Harry smiled, obediently letting Tom pull him away from the sidelines to the dance floor.

“Oh, a little. You know, we never got to introduce ourselves to each other, have we? Very impolite, I think.” Tom forcefully yanked him into dancing position, with Tom as the lead. He was more experienced and much taller than Harry in those heels, but it felt like a veiled insult anyway. He forced them to move in simple, easy-to-follow steps, which also felt a little patronizing.

“Really? Sorry. Henry Evans. Just got back to Britain, huge fan of Dark magic, that sort of thing,” Harry said casually.

“Care to explain how you knew I would be a little miffed?”

“I mean, Dippet said the most qualified person was too young, and I’ve got barely two years on half the seventh years, can’t be fun to find that out,” Harry lied smoothly. “No introduction?”

“Oh, how remiss of me. Tom Riddle, as you seemed to know quite well. Tell me, which country did you return from?”

“Not sure. Had to travel after my teacher died. Got a way back in Amsterdam, at least.”

“And where were you teaching before she died?” Tom’s eyes were deep black, glinting with the barest edge of brown around the edges of the catchlights, and demanding Harry’s full attention.

He could feel the probes in his mind scrape for something that didn’t exist. Wordless legilimens already? It was a rough job, and Harry realized that the wordlessness might be a problem; Tom might not yet be good enough to clearly delineate between lies and absent information without a hand on his wand and an incantation to help him.

Harry pulled up the memory of him and Hermione, sick and huddled, and opening the tent to the alien shapes of winter and frowned up at him. “Sorry, do I owe everyone my life story just because I’m an impulse hire? I’m not that interesting, am I?”

“I just find it quite mysterious,” the probe gained an edge of irritation – it pulled again, and this time Harry fumbled to get a snapshot of Dumbledore’s Army in the Room of Requirement, a space which Harry was relatively certain Tom did not know existed in that form. The students there were dressed down in plain black work robes, without house colours. “No accent, no foreign language experience, an ambiguous timeline on when, precisely, you left the country at all, but certainly no record of your existence.”

Harry broke eye contact to roll his eyes. “Ohh, you’re looking into me now. I love a little reciprocity, don’t get me wrong, but you made your opinions on linens pretty clear. Is it alright for two blokes to dance like this, by the way?”

“I do not think the Daily Prophet was making an enormous leap to speculate on your relationship to the Great Wizarding War,” Tom continued as if Harry hadn’t spoken, “I do not believe a rural assistant schoolteacher for petty household charms would have much opportunity to fight the forces of an enemy as prone to theatre and self-aggrandizement as Gellert Grindelwald.”

“Theatre and self-aggrandizement, huh,” Harry said with a lopsided smile.

“In fact, it is strange to me that you sought me out almost as soon as you stepped foot on British soil,” Tom continued, and Harry’s stomach lurched. Tom’s expression lifted at that slightest glimpse of Harry’s insecurity. His handsome face was luminous in the golden lights of the ballroom. “Oh yes, I did notice that. Quite the unusual manner of entry. If you were truly interested in Dark magic, it would have come up, would it not? You seemed awfully occupied with making your interest in me seem completely above-board. A chat over tea, a few meaningless purchases, an aversion to the personal. If I had to venture a guess, I’d say it feels rather characteristic of a continuous investigation. Tell me, Mr. Evans, what about me might you find worthy of investigation?”

Harry’s head felt full of cotton. He mechanically met each step, and did not wince when Tom’s fingers dug into the small of his back, which was the best he could manage. He’d barely done anything at all, and Tom had identified almost all of his motives. He hadn’t even needed to poke around in his head to guess that far. Dumbledore had shown Harry those memories to teach him Voldemort’s horcrux philosophy, yes, but also to warn him that he was always a budding Dark Lord, and Harry was too self-centred to take that warning seriously.

He hadn’t even broken into his flat yet. Why the fuck hadn’t he broken into his flat? Sure, he doubted both horcruxes would be just lying around, but he didn’t even case the place? Why, because it was illegal? He’d been learning about enchantments; he should be able to break most rudimentary safeguards. Was it too late?

What now?

Tom’s eyes were burning with triumph and the beginnings of hostility. He was going to guess Harry wanted the horcruxes. That was bad. If he knew Harry wanted to kill him and destroy his horcruxes, then it was over. He’d never find them. Tom might even shy away from the locket, or the hiding places he eventually settled on. He’d certainly try to get Harry killed as soon as possible.

Harry was not a great improvisor. All he could think was that Tom obviously didn’t like him, and the alternative was a battle to the death with a man who needed to be killed three times.

It wasn’t a continuous investigation. That’s what Tom needed to believe. That Harry did not need to investigate him.

“Where were you on the night of Myrtle Warren’s murder?” Said Harry.

Tom stumbled. “What?”

“That was a rhetorical question.” The music swelled. Just like Tom had done to him, Harry kicked in Tom’s unstable footing, made worse by those stupid heeled boots, and his arm snaked out to hook Tom’s back. It was surprisingly difficult to dip a man who was currently a head taller and 90% limb, but Harry managed. His other hand slid up Tom’s wrist and yanked him back up, this time with Harry in the lead, thumb playing with the decorative chain trailing from the jacket button to his angular hip.

Tom’s already bloodless face was chalky white. Harry may as well have slapped him. Good sign!

“You really like a mystery, don’t you? Reciprocity, yeah. You’re fun, you know. Love picking you apart. You can’t help yourself, it leaves fingerprints everywhere. You really expect anyone with half a brain to believe a spider could kill a girl without leaving any marks at all?” Harry whispered theatrically. “That’s funny. Not sure why they didn’t guess a basilisk. I suppose the indirect paralysis isn’t much known, not a lot of reflective surfaces in ancient Greece. A little disappointed you found a basilisk and your first thought was terrorism though, I mean, think of the ingredients.”

“What?” Tom repeated numbly. He struggled to keep up, even with Harry leading, and his breath was coming in short.

“Thought there’d be more in there, but the Gaunts really cleaned it out,” Harry circled them away from the other dancers with a dramatic flourish so he could add, “is that why you got rid of them? Picking through what they had left?”

Tom opened his mouth, and nothing but a broken creaking noise came out.

“I don’t want you to think I’m one of Slughorn’s, of course. You chose a great position for yourself. I reckon you’re after the Founders relics, classic choice, need access to people’s collections to pull it off. Don’t think I could find those things myself, but you’re crafty, aren’t you? That’s really what I like about you, Voldemort, you always seem to get what you want.”

Harry’s hand slid gradually down Tom’s wrist, down his arm, and up his chest to grip his neck firmly, feeling that felix felicis sort of high, nothing but raw instinct and words tumbling out of his mouth faster than he can consider them. Tom’s voiceless creaking crumbled into a muffled cough. He was barely breathing.

“I get what I want too. I didn’t mean to insult you or anything, I promise. Really wanted that job, is all.” Harry’s eyes searched Tom’s face and found nothing but vacant fear. This is not a continuous investigation. “Isn’t that ambition? The hat named me Gryffindor before it was fully on my head, felt a little insulted. A born Gryffindor as the Heir of Slytherin, doesn’t feel right.”

“No you’re not,” Tom croaked.

Harry pressed his thumb in the soft underside of Tom’s angular jaw. Tom’s breath hitched. “Well, I’m not a Gaunt, so honestly, yeah. I really don’t want to step on your toes, I mean it. I like you, you know? You’re so suspicious, I don’t understand it. You’re crafting these crazy theories about me, getting so worked up, I didn’t think I could be any more direct.”

Tom took in a horrible wheezing death rattle of a breath and bowed his head to cough, muffled at first, and then like he was trying to scrape out his lungs. His feet dragged on the floor. Was hyperventilating setting him off? Blood pressure? That meant it was working.

Harry pressed his thumb in hard, digging his blunted fingernail in a little, and tilted Tom’s head back up so he could look him in his damp, glassy eyes.

“I just have a really personal interest in linens, you know?”

Just because Tom didn’t believe him the first time didn’t mean that Harry was wrong to use it as an introduction. The connotations were just a little different now.

Tom yanked himself away so suddenly Harry couldn’t catch him, and his escape was interrupted by another violent cough that had him doubling over. Harry watched on, bemused, as Tom was arrested by a violent fit that sent spittle flying over the floor. Harry thought he might support him to really sell it, but just as it occurred to him, someone else beat him to it.

Tom collapsed heavily into a blond man as soon as hands were offered, clutching desperately at his arms as his coughs ripped through him. The man looked at Harry with broiling anger. He looked like if someone ran a nail file over every edge in Lucius Malfoy’s face until it was as rounded as a tumbled river rock. Abraxas Malfoy.

Abraxas was livid, but he turned to Tom first, speaking with surprising tenderness. “Never seen you this far gone... Come on, outside.”

Tom was hoisted upright, still heaving with each cough between the staccato wheezing, and he shot one last look over his shoulder.

Blotchy red cheeks, a line of spittle connecting his lips, tears sliding down his flushed face, black eyes gleaming like jewels. Afraid of him.

“Woah,” said Harry.

A glove hit him in the face.

Harry blinked, a little slower on the uptake now that he wasn’t force-feeding Tom the idea he was stalking him because he was crazy.  He still felt a little like throwing out a few more outrageous statements, and he looked around in hopes he could get the rest of it out of his system.

An absolute fop of a man with a narrow moustache and beard more optimistically groomed than even Harry’s was seething at him. “A duel,” he snarled. “I don’t know who you think you’re dealing with, but it’ll be an honour to dispose of you before he has to trouble himself with the effort.”

Harry kept looking. Literally everyone was looking at him. Probably a bad idea to stay crazy then. He shook his head and composed himself the best he could, giving Tom’s croney a winsome smile. “My bad, mate. I don’t mind a duel, though, sure.”

Chapter Text

Tom threw up in the shrubs outside.

He had hoped it wouldn’t reach that point, but the coughing didn’t stop. He should have anticipated as much; it rarely reached the point of a cough to begin with. His face burned with the combination of strain and humiliation that Abraxas could hear the way he was breathing.

Abraxas said nothing, simply holding the branches back so they wouldn’t scratch his face as he emptied all the alcohol he’d been drinking along with his meagre supper into the dirt, just like he did when Tom was thirteen and Abraxas was his Prefect.

The coughing slowed, but he still felt numb and dizzy. He took the branch Abraxas was holding and ran it just under his tongue to catch the thread of syrupy saliva, so he could pull away without drooling all over the borrowed jacket.

“Was that him? The homeschooled playboy?” Abraxas asked. “He’s the one from the paper?”

The back of Tom’s neck burned hot. “I wanted to attack him—”

“I’ll bet. Rosier will get him. No doubt Evans’ work experience is teaching a class of six Polish children scourgify, what are they doing giving him a job at a boarding school?” It was an obvious bait to get Tom to whinge to him, because Tom always felt better after a whinge, but Tom felt a second spell of dizziness when he attempted to collect his thoughts enough to respond.

How had he known. How had he known?

Evans had spoken too quickly for Tom to even properly digest the first attack. How had he known it was Tom? How had he known the Gaunts—that he was the Heir of Slytherin, a secret to two thirds of even the Slytherin house—his name, a title he had decided would become his new self when he returned to Britain—that it was the basilisk—

Tom would have assumed that was why he had gotten the job, to investigate Tom. But how the hell did he get into the Chamber? He said he saw what the Gaunts had left. He easily could have used the pipes to reach the entrance, but the Chamber was sealed. The pipes were damp and wet and filled with calcified sludge, and yet the Chamber remained pristine, watertight and hidden to all but the heir. There was no way in.

You needed to be a parselmouth to open the Chamber. He said it, that he wasn’t a Gaunt, he couldn’t have opened it. Had he fucking blasted the door open?

Ingredients. What had he done to the basilisk?

No, no, he must have guessed. He must have seen the state of the Gaunts and assumed what would be in the chamber. Gotten rid of them, that was wrong! Tom had only used his uncle as a scapegoat for the murder of the Riddles. Surely Evans had only guessed that Tom was to blame? But he had to suspect, then, that the cleansing of the muggles was Tom’s doing. Marvolo was dead by the time he got there. He couldn’t prove anything. He couldn’t.

…Would Evans even want to?

Tom tipped back towards the hedge as the dizzy spell hit, in anticipation of the nausea that often followed. Abraxas quickly took the branch back. All Tom could think of were the green of Evans’ eyes, the same colour as the ethereal glow of the windows of the Slytherin common room.

Evans had to tilt his head up towards the lights to look at Tom in the ballroom. Pale as sunlight shining through seawater, enough that Tom could see his pupils were blown just a little too wide.

It was more coughing this time, not vomit, which suited his aching ribs.

The man was obsessed with him. Covetous. Love picking you apart. All this time, he had been amusing himself by prodding the source of his fascination. That’s really what I like about you. Evans had been gauging him, not as something pathetic and exploitable, but as the subject of a long-standing fixation, a worthy object of his attention. I like you, you know?

I didn’t think I could be any more direct.

Tom ended up dry-heaving after all.

“When the fuck did he get here?” Tom asked hysterically, even though Abraxas hadn’t heard a word of the Death Eater investigation. “When the fuck did he—he had to have been here before.”

“The gala?” Abraxas looked around. “You don’t mean Britain?”

“He’s lying. He’s following me,” Tom rasped.

Abraxas sucked in a breath. “Is he trying to use you for something? Or the Death Eaters?”

The Death Eaters made the most sense—it would be Tom at his most impressive, his most capable—but he seemed to know so much about Tom’s school life. “I don’t know, I don’t—”

 “Easy,” Abraxas hushed, carefully tipping him back so he didn’t fall into the puddle of champagne and stomach acid.

Would Evans want to…

He wanted Tom. Tom couldn’t fight the horror of so much of what he’d done being exposed like that, he wanted Tom. Would he start demanding things of him? Tom didn’t want to kill him without knowing just how much he knew, how he had found out so much. If he had prepared anything in event of his death. Tom didn’t want to give him anything. Evans’ dilated eyes were like the seaglass shining between the rocks on his beach in East Sussex. He didn’t seem to care about anything at all. But he didn’t like that Orion had derided Tom. He’d defended him.

Instant Gryffindor. What about the Sword of Gryffindor? Tom didn’t want to give him anything.

“I’ve never seen you sick up during an episode. You really are ill, aren’t you?” Abraxas said softly. “My family has access to good healers—”

“I’m fine,” Tom snapped.

“If It gets any worse,” Abraxas continued lightly. “If you get dragon pox while you’re already ill, your lungs will burn out your chest. You will come if you catch a bug, won’t you?”

Tom felt both disgusted and comforted in equal measure by Abraxas treating him like his vulnerable young underclassman. He pulled the saliva from his tongue again and sniffled. “I’m not suicidal, of course I will.”

He reached up to mop the tears, snot, and drool left on his face, and Abraxas quickly took his hand before he could dirty it. “Hold on. Charm for everything, you know. Visage propre.”

With a tap of Abraxas’ wand, he felt a prickle cover his face, and peel away even the salty burn in his eyes, leaving a damp sheen impression of his face floating in the air. Abraxas let it drop in the sick.

“…That’s just French.”

“And Scourgify is muddled-up English. Phonetically, it just needs to be a steady and a strong hook. Press and peel. The timing’s all wrong if you say it in Latin.”

“Pamper look-ss,” Tom wryly recited in the same inflection.

Abraxas smiled. There was a thread of relief in it. “Wouldn’t that be a laugh to try out?”

Tom rose on unsteady feet, and Abraxas had to brace him to keep him properly upright. He stubbornly cleared his mind as if he was under mental attack, reducing every horrible catastrophizing thought to an unfocused mist.

He made it to the entrance successfully. Nott was at the top of the stairs waiting for them.

“Alright then?” He called down.

“I’m going home. Go scrape Rosier off the pavement,” Tom croaked.

Nott looked nonplussed. “He duels professionally though? Don’t think Evans can do much against private tutors.”

“I don’t think Rosier’s private tutors can do much against someone who casts to kill,” Tom snapped.

“Does he? Whuff. You sleep your craze off, yeah? Tell your boss to fuck himself.” Nott gave him a cheerful thumbs up and ran back inside.

Tom let out a quiet cough that had been itching in his chest for the past two minutes. It did not devolve into a fit, but Abraxas didn’t look impressed at Tom’s newfound physical control. “I could side-along you.”

“I can apparate myself,” Tom snapped. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.” Abraxas paused. “In the centre of the street, yeah? Nothing too narrow, you might tilt and splinch.”

“I’ll do it to Diagon, mother,” Tom sighed. He stepped back, held himself up straight to showcase that he could, and pulled himself through space. He was glad that he did not take Abraxas up on the side-along, because he immediately toppled over and banged his head on a nearby building.

He was not so dizzy he couldn’t walk home from there, though by the time he reached the cramped stairs up to the second-floor suite his body had broken into cold sweat from being disoriented for too long. He had to yank his boots off with his wand, as he was certain if he bent over he would pass out on the floor.

Tom conjured a glass of water and pried open his saltine tin to get something in his stomach. He ended up conjuring two extra glasses before he could taste something other than bile.

His routine. He’d had dinner with the planter snakes and cleaned his kitchen already. Laundry…? Tom pulled the jacket free and peeled off his dress robes. The accessories clanked in complaint as he tossed both across the floor haphazardly.

The diary. The diary would put him back to rights. It was experienced with him at his worst, and had already noticed his failing health. He collapsed into his chair in only his linens and underwear and dipped the pen.

I’ve fallen to frenzy right before bed. What am I to be doing tonight?

What happened? What time is it?

Late. I had been, he focused just enough to remember the way Evans had slid a blade of ice into his heart with his words, threatened. What am I doing?

Can I see?

See? See what? Braggan Nott and Orion Black leaping onto him like starving wolves, as if their reason for being was to tear into him and prove themselves as different, the only purebloods who were too fucking stupid to fall in line?

The anger helped, brought life back into the haze, but he couldn’t stop it once it had cut through his thoughts. Should he share the praise Dumbledore was being showered in, as if the man would keel over if he wasn’t being presented with an Order of Merlin once per month? Share his inability to network at all for the shop, pulled instead by the gravitational force of Evans, his firm hands like a vice on the small of his back, his hip, stumbling steps becoming sweeping and familiar, dripping with intention…

I just have a really personal interest in linens, you know?

He held onto the anger just to keep himself conscious, and with nowhere else to direct it, he pressed his quill firmly into the diary. I gave you a schedule.

The response was waspish and scratched out.

You promised you’d let me see. I hadn’t even asked and you said you would.

Tom reeled back and felt the slightest heat of satisfaction that the diary had put itself in the position of deserving the rage. You’re being petulant. I gave you a purpose, and all you can think of is yourself. Can you not answer a simple fucking question?

The diary paused, and Tom felt an inane urge to scribble all over it.

I am thinking of myself. I am you. Understanding the current state of affairs is important. I can’t even tell the time, and you deprive me of basic context?

I gave you enough context for you to function. Without boundaries you gorge yourself and do nothing with the information but indulge in your own adolescent idiocy. You pride yourself in being part of Lord Voldemort, but all you can think about is how nice it would be to attend a party. You’re pathetic.

You promised, the script was rougher, larger, and Tom’s fingers dug into the parchment in his fury at being shouted at.

You only play at hating Slughorn because I told you I’d outgrown him. You love his little Christmas parties, don’t you? Doesn’t the little orphan boy feel special?

Don’t try to turn it all around me.

I’ve always known he thinks I’m nothing, hes a worm

You are nothing, Tom practically carved into the diary, you’re not even a pitiful little orphan, you’re a memory, you are a THING, and you are NOT DOING YOUR JOB

The ink sank into the paper, and seconds later, the impression he had dug into it with the sharp tip of his quill faded.

The diary did not respond.

It only made Tom angrier, because all he wanted to do now was argue viciously enough to taste blood, and as a part of him the diary must know that and was tormenting him by depriving him of that release, and he hated the fucking thing so much in that moment he tossed aside the quill and heaved it at the wall with a scream of frustration.

It lay limply on the ground, inert without an author.

He took heaving breaths through his nose, rubbed the burning in his eyes, and fiercely reminded himself he needed his schedule—

A shower. He’d forgotten his shower.

He stormed to the washroom, throwing off his linen layer and tearing his underthings off, and the water always ran too weak and too cold, but he didn’t even bother trying to coax warmth from it now. He scratched at his scalp in his effort to shed the product, and shivered violently, but allowed himself to freeze.

In the ice water he couldn’t think of the humiliation, the weakness he’d shown, or what he’d do about Evans, if anything. He imagined the catchlight in that hungry gaze as the glint of the Sword of Gryffindor drifting to the bottom of the lake through the common room window.

Use him, probably. Use him somehow, that’s all. Tom was excellent at using people. Even people who think they had something on him. They never had enough on him. He couldn’t prove anything.

Tom came out of the shower as white as marble and shuddering uncontrollably. He stepped over his underlayers, dried himself with a wave of his wand, and crawled into bed naked, wrapped up in a tight little ball, because he was cold, and needed to be curled so tightly to warm himself.

And in the morning, he would tell Borgin to fuck himself.

⎯ ♢♢♢ ⎯

Harry blinked at Tom’s foppish minion, who was dangling from a tree after a single blast.

He turned to the small audience who had come to the back gardens to watch. A lot of them looked impressed, but no one clapped, and the rest of them seemed kind of at a loss, despite Harry straightforwardly winning the bout.

Slughorn reappeared with a sorry look. “Erm…very impressive, Henry…However…”

“I didn’t break any etiquette, did I?” Asked Harry.

“Well, not as such…An expelliarmus with that kind of force is certainly impressive, it’s just…it’s not exactly sporting, is it?”

Harry stared blankly at the ponce’s efforts to disentangle his leg from a branch.

“…Oh!” He realized. “Oh, it’s like, duelling! As in the sport, duelling. I figured since he was angry it was like a fistfight with wands. He’d declared we do the sport, I get it. Sorry.”

“Yes, I’d imagine schoolboys would be quite a bit more violent about it, but among polite company, you duel to compete,” Slughorn said with obvious relief.

“That is completely my bad. Sorry,” he repeated to his opponent. The man finally freed his legs and lashed a cutting curse that neatly severed the branch he was caught in, and he landed easily on both feet, which Harry was reluctantly impressed by. “We can go again and do it properly.”

“Barbaric hick,” the man snarled, and he took his place on the rectangle they’d outlined.

Harry bowed, and Tom’s henchman dipped his head a little in answer and took position. Harry took the same pose, just in case that was duelling etiquette. He hadn’t done the sport since Lockheart’s club, and Lockheart’s primary objective of that club was to look better than Snape.

There was a hanging moment of anticipation, reading if the other would make the move first, before Harry sent his first hex, a crowd-pleaser; his opponent’s robes turned invisible.

The effect was stymied by the fact his opponent was also wearing trousers, but he whipped his hands over his undershirt with an indignant squeak of anger and cast a shaving hex at Harry. Harry cast a wordless protego and returned with a levicorpus, which was deftly blocked with a wordless finite, a very fine response. He answered it with a quicksand jinx and backfire jinx in rapid succession.

His opponent threw out a frenzied knockback, which was a waste of the backfire, as his feet were safely secure in the ground that was slowly swallowing him.

Harry’s opponent instead cast a knockback on the ground to throw himself out of the quicksand jinx, and as soon as he was free Harry cast another diabolical pair; a sardine-sneezing and slug-vomiting hex.

Harry folded his hands politely as the man sicked up and sneezed all manner of slimy critter, barely managing to breathe between each grotesquery manifesting out of his face. Tom’s lackey managed at least one finite and shot an unexpected volley of curses while sardines continued to fly out of his nose.

Harry dodged and shielded, and used some of the newest hexes he learned for his textbooks to create a bubble of pure darkness over his opponent’s head and whip out a second levicorpus, this one succeeding, as the bubble had to be neutralized before another finite could be cast. In that spare moment, Harry simply flung Tom’s minion out of bounds by his ankle.

This time Harry did get applause, though it was a pretty underwhelming match in his eyes. Real duels could get much uglier than that. He beamed and raised his arms to the crowd anyway. “And I am teaching your children to cast like that! Beware!”

“Getting two double-casts off wordlessly,” he heard. “And what was that hovering spell?”

Harry supposed rapid casting was how pro duellists got points, though rapid-fires were pretty much mandatory as an auror. You could rarely check if the first one took, so it was good to pre-determine the best pairs and practice that combo for when you really needed it.

Well, the sardine-slug spew combo he practiced specifically for inviting Draco over to establish neutral territory after he was cleared of all charges, just so he could get his long-awaited licks in during a ‘friendly duel’. But that was for fun. Even if Draco was not laughing.

Harry dispelled the hexes and his opponent sucked in a big grateful gulp of air not choked with slime or smog. Harry bowed again, and the man, flushed and wearing an ugly pinched expression, bowed just as deep.

The audience clapped again. Harry danced back cheerfully. “Well, that was a good time. I think I ought to head out now.”

“Oh, I thought—” Slughorn gave him big hopeful eyes that made him look like a pitiful baby seal. But you were supposed to keep Dumbledore from leaving early…

Alas. “Thanks for inviting me, it was great to hear about the CPIO, and to talk to Dumbledore. Galas have a lot to offer.” He gave him two thumbs up and strolled back up the stairs to the back entrance.

Dumbledore was hovering on the other side of the door, arms folded behind his back and barely restraining his smile. “A sower of chaos.”

“He started it.” Harry paused. “Well, Riddle started it. Absolutely demented at getting blown off for the job, though I guess he’s right to be a little mad about it.”

“I hoped you would never be acquainted,” Dumbledore said solemnly.

“Miserable cunt,” Harry nodded, and Dumbledore’s eyebrows shot up. “Sorry. Polite company. I’m heading out, though. Suppose I’ll see you at school?”

Dumbledore inclined his head. “If you can be found.”

That felt a little more concrete. Harry hustled through the ballroom and burst out the front to greater Diagon Alley. Abraxas Malfoy was still outside, but he just snarled at Harry and apparated away, saving Harry from starting what felt like his dozenth passive-aggressive argument that night.

Harry walked home, taking brisk confident strides even though his confidence was seeping out of him with each step.

He’d really cocked everything up. Harry was far too assured in his heterosexuality to have faith in his ability to pretend he was a predatory homosexual. Of course, he’d laid it on thick with things that would appease Tom’s sensibilities; that it was his machinations, his proud lineage, and his clever mind that had attracted Harry. Harry suspected if Tom thought he was stalking him because he was fit, he’d have kickstarted his Europe career by jumping Harry on the street and skewering his head on a pike. He sounded pretty homophobic, to be honest.

So Harry should just lean on it. Their interactions – and he desperately hoped they would never interact until the moment Harry had to kill him – should be coloured with that kind of pandering. Weird Dark Arts loving professor salivating at the coolest Darkest guy in London. Seemed reasonable. Might be able to manage.

And Tom…

Was still so unbelievably murderable. Fuck, he was practically unconscious when Abraxas hauled him out. What exactly was he sick with? It hadn’t ever come up in the memories Dumbledore had shown him, and even at his weakest, the Voldemort Harry had known had shown no sign of illness worse than fatigue and loss of consciousness.

Maybe his shit flat had given him a chest infection.

Harry fell through the door. “I’m home!”

His transfigured snake raised its head from the coil it had settled into on top of his papers. He’d used the elder wand to spruce up the enchantments, both to make it more lifelike and to make it more interested in what Harry had to say.

“Oh, it’s horrible, Bowl. They didn’t serve us any supper at all,” he sighed.

Bowl, who did not need to eat, simply rested its glossy porcelain head onto its topmost coil and watched him.

“That’s right. They starved us. Definitely unrelated to the fact it started at seven. They did have a charcuterie board, at least.” Harry hung up the fancy jacket and tossed the silk dress robes over a chair. He took a few digestives from the tin on his counter and collapsed into bed, heedless of the potential for crumbs.

“I may have ruined everything and ensured Voldemort’s rise to power,” he told Bowl through a mouthful of biscuit. “However. Harry Potter will still destroy him even if I am dead. And…I suppose I could try to kill him early to teach him a very valuable lesson about how awful it is to die when you got horcruxes. I mean, he wasn’t exactly at his peak after ten years as an evil ghoul in the woods, was he? Struggling to exist, I think he said? Really horrible stuff. Imagine Tom going through that. He’s still only a teenager, would drive him actually mad.”

The snake buried its head into its coils, as it often did when Harry went too long without asking a question that wasn’t rhetorical.

Harry ignored Bowl’s disinterest and finished off his digestives. “Maybe if I traumatize him good enough he’ll be too scared to be a Dark Lord. Problem solved, yeah?”

The question was rhetorical, so the snake did not emerge.

“I think so too,” said Harry.

Chapter Text

“One-two-three…There we go, you’re doing fine.”

“Technically the one practicing dancing should be you.”

“When have you last danced at an event?”

Harry thought about it.

“The yule ball.”

“The yule ball,” Ginny gagged. “God, they ought to have strung you up. You’ve been getting venerated as the saviour of the wizarding world for a year and you’re going off the yule ball?”

“McGonagall is a very skilled instructor.”

“I heard she went bonkers for dance club after she got a quidditch injury.” Ginny paused, the living room still save for the gentle ticking of the metronome. “Please don’t let me get weirdly into dancing if I break something out there.”

“You’re mean enough to be an announcer,” Harry assured her, and she laughed. The way she snorted was adorable, and he wanted to press himself all against her in the sudden wave of fondness.

He couldn’t describe how wonderful it felt after so much time spent grieving, arguing, and trying to find security in a relationship built on gossamer thread, to finally just be in love. Being with Ginny felt like being a part of the real world again, all his irrational fears as distant as the stars in the sky.

He thought he’d ruin her. Wasn’t that stupid? He really thought the world, which had gone out of its way to pick off everyone Harry cared about save for Ron and Hermione, would also see fit to circle back and tear Ginny out of his life too. She had been so angry, but how could Harry ever express to her what it felt like, the almost methodical way death seemed to work in his presence, lingering only in his footsteps? The fact he loved her was enough to kill her.

Ginny was too sensible to believe that she would die because he was haunted by death itself. The only thing haunting him was Voldemort. Everything he cared about died because he was the main target, and thus everything he cared about was a target of Voldemort. Simple as.

Voldemort was dead. Ginny was sublimely alive, safe, calloused fingers in his, the light practically glowing over her copper hair. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

“You’re losing your footing again,” she sighed. “You’re going to take me to a fancy ball, and whisk me off to dance, and immediately fall on your arse in front of all and sundry.”

“I’ll probably take a few tables out with me,” Harry agreed.

She grinned, wide and genuine enough he could see her blunted, crooked little fangs. “Oh, yeah, shattered dishes everywhere, food splattered underfoot, and I think we might expect it all to be set on fire.”

“Afterparty in Saint Mungo’s.”

Giggle-snort again.

“Okay, Mr. Potter, keep tempo. To the metronome, you’re dragging your feet again. You should be able to hold a conversation and shuffle around at the same time, alright?” Ginny laughed.

“Aren’t we supposed to dance to music?”

“Your fault for missing the beat and tripping when I put it on. You get music when I can trust you to not break your nose.”

The palms of her hands were rough, but when Harry ran his finger over the back of her hand, he felt soft skin between her knuckles. He watched her warm brown eyes flicker up to him through her lashes.

“And stop mooning,” she said with a wry smile.

“Stop being…lovely as moonlight,” Harry tried.

She kicked his ankle and pulled him back into tempo. Her cheeks were a beautiful, rosy pink, and she could no longer look up at him. Incredible results for such a mediocre return. Harry could hardly imagine what he could get if he tried a little harder.

“Maybe the eery quiet is making me stumble too,” Harry whispered.

“Make some noise, if you think it’ll teach you to dance any better.”

Harry considered as they circled around, socked feet sliding against the hardwood, and he began singing under his breath, “The boys are back in town, the boys are back in town…”

Ginny threw her head back and cackled. “You really expect them all to be ballroom dancing to Thin Lizzy?”

“You know Thin Lizzy? That’s a muggle band.”

“Bloody hell, I know every muggle band that ever charted I think,” she palmed the tears from her eyes, “what dad would do, is that he had his muggle wireless and he’d make notes on just…every muggle song, and then he’d—he’d look for anything he recognized and steal the records from the office, like he’d read the backs and if it had a song he knew he’d just take it. And we got to listen to whatever he had lying about. Charlie loved Thin Lizzy.”

Harry laughed, shocked. “Ron’s never said!”

“I don’t think Ron can tell the difference. Mum doesn’t like muggle music that much, but she puts Memory – the one by Streisand – on every single Christmas. It’s not even Christmas music! But Charlie’s always been the only one really into that stuff.”

Harry raised his eyebrows. “What was your favourite?”

“I was crazy about Blondie. This is so stupid, I actually tried to play it for T—” Her smile died.

The metronome ticked.

Ginny looked more startled at herself than horrified, as if she was shocked she could speak about it so casually, which is why Harry made a risky comment.

“Did it work?”

She screamed and whapped him on the shoulder. Her snorts clustered together so frequently she could hardly breathe. “It’s a fucking book, of course it didn’t!”

“Always wondered how paintings manage it.”

“I tried to—I tried to describe—have you heard The Tide is High? ‘I’m not the kind of girl who gives up juuust like thaaat’, that one? I tried to describe it. The trumpets, and the… I said it was ‘you know, ocean music.’”

Harry doubled over laughing. “Ocean music?!”

“It was the marimba, I think. When I was little I’d only ever been able to open up to Ron, because he’s always extra sweet with me if I say something stupid,” Harry barked out a laugh just as he was catching his breath, “And I just knew it would be like with Percy or the twins if I didn’t say the right thing and he’d be so smug and then I said…It’s like ocean music. I think I would have broken character if I were an evil book.”

“Please.” And then, before the following silence could decay into melancholy, “I didn’t used to know Thin Lizzy wrote Boys Are Back In Town.”

“What? You just said—”

“I only heard music when Dudley was blasting it, and it was usually through the walls. Or, you know, a warning signal that the titan approaches, there, on the horizon,” Harry held his hand out to some unspecified distance. “He listened to music on cassette, and CD. Lot of Greatest Hits. I don’t know who did Hotel California either.”

 “Eagles. How’d you know then?” Ginny peered at him curiously, clearly expecting a story at least as funny as hers.

It wasn’t. “I found it in a closet. When I was clearing out Snape’s place. Massive stack of records— not even rock, he’s got ABBA, Fleetwood Mac—”

He could barely keep going over Ginny’s disbelieving laughter. “Snape listened to Thin Lizzy?”

“No,” Harry said, followed by, “I don’t know, maybe. Probably not. He had a collection by the record player, mostly freeform jazz, blues rock, bossa nova – that’s ocean music to you, missy,” giggle-snort, “anything that didn’t have lyrics. About half of it was wizard-made, I think he just wanted the noise.”

“What’s the ones in his closet for, then?”

Harry hesitated, unsure how saying it would make him feel. Ginny hated when he hid things from her, though, so now that he brought it up, he had to say it out loud. “I think they were for my mum.”

They stopped rocking in place.

“Or they were mum’s. I don’t know.”

Or maybe Snape had seen her collection and bought his own copies and let them rot somewhere out of sight, the same way he let everything else rot. Some of them were still in their packaging. Some of them looked well-used. Harry had gauged which ones she probably listened to as a little girl by which tracks Snape saw fit to play for himself.

Sometimes, he recognized a song from the memories Snape had left behind. He hadn’t truly thought about what that meant until he heard Black Magic Woman and realized that he recognized it as the song 10-year-old Snape had playing on his battered old record player by the tree, and his mother came sprinting up the hill, auburn hair flying every which way, screaming ‘that’s me, that’s me!’, and Harry was sick with how hard he cried.

“So you had plenty of time to know how it goes,” Ginny said softly, rousing him from his thoughts more gently than he did her. “You know that chick who used to dance a lot…Every night she’d be on the floor shakin’ what she’s got…”

Harry laughed, and laughed harder when Ginny remained pointedly silent after that. He righted himself, carefully making the steps in time to the metronome, and sang it. “Man, when I tell you she was cool, she was red-hot,” he smirked down at her triumphant smile, “I mean she was steamin.’”

She rejoined from there, and they sung together as they danced, chins tilted up and postures rigid, as if it were the most refined and elegant sound for the occasion: “…Man we just fell about the place, if that chick don’t wanna know, forget her!”

He spun her, and all in time to one-two-three, they sang The boys are back in town, the boys are back in town, both back-and-forth and together, laughing, dazzling, orange strands of hair flying free from her ponytail, the way her whole face went red in her joy, tears of laughter beading on her lashes, and he could see the lovely curve of her nape when she stumbled because she had forgotten at which point you were meant to go ‘ow-ow-ow-own’ and had tried stepping to the wrong thing.

She sang the guitar solo too when they got bored of the chorus, and her voice was as beautiful as a heavenly choir.

The doorbell rang. He dipped her dramatically, with a hand clutching her head, and gave her a kiss. “I think that’s the boys back in town.”

“Ron? I hope he brought dinner, I’m starved.”

He hoisted her up and practically skipped to the door. The lights were off, sun low on the hills, and it was dark and blue and lonely.

Harry paused, and he said, “yeah.”

It made him feel weird. That was why he went back to Grimmauld Place. At least there it felt like it was meant to look that fucking miserable. He opened the door and took the pizza he had ordered. He’d been cooking the first two weeks, but then he had gotten so many dishes dirty, and realized he didn’t have the energy to clean them every day anymore.

Kreacher would have a conniption. Harry brought the pizza back to the living room.

The sofa leg-rests were permanently popped. Harry had been sleeping in the living room the entire time, as if he’d wake up one morning and there Ginny would be, standing in the fireplace. He couldn’t sleep in his own bed. He wasn’t used to the extra space, and all he could think about was the absence when he laid down without her. He used to lie on Sirius’ bed before she finally dragged him out of Grimmauld Place. Maybe they started dating for real because she thought it would rouse him from his moping. It had worked, for that brief window.

He cleared the coffee table of papers and trash to put the box, and found the records he had left there, a collection of songs he’d been leaving on to keep the quiet away. His mouth quirked at the black-and-white striped cover of Ginny’s favourite Blondie record. 1978. She described going through Arthur Weasley’s collections as going on expeditions, selecting a few at a time and playing them until she and her older brothers decided whether it was worthwhile. Arthur would put a piece of tape on each one with the song from the radio that made him take it. This one said One Way or Another.

He lifted it to put it on again, and underneath was a yellowed Fleetwood Mac record. The Pious Bird of Good Omen. He was sure he hadn’t heard it in ages. He was sure it was his own copy, but it must be Arthur’s, because it had tape too, reading in the same scrawl, Black Magic Woman.

He should listen to Blondie instead.

Harry got up and put it on.

Morose strings, guitar, and bass filled the house. He knew the record was a choice. A childish one. It’s been nearly a month, she’d given him plenty of direction on pulling himself together. It’s been a month, and here Harry was, with his delivery pizza.

“I need someone’s hand, to lead me through the night,” Harry sung along, off-key. He imagined Snape slouched in his seat with a slice of delivery pizza listening to sad blues music and snorted under his breath.

There were upbeat songs on this album, weren’t there? With harmonicas. He just had to wait it out to the good parts.

This time, when he imagined Snape listening to this, he did not laugh.

The pizza was soon gone, the house remained empty, the metronome went tick-tick-tick, even though that was two years ago, and the sad blues played on endlessly, echoing inside his skull, When the lights are low, and it’s time to go, that’s when I need your love so bad.

The doorbell rang.

“The boys are back in town,” he sang tunelessly over tell me that you love me.

He heaved himself upright, and padded through the empty blue halls. In one more week, Kreacher would break into his kitchen and drag him back to Grimmauld Place to rot, rot like Spinner’s End rotted, isolated and outliving its master, and he was sure this flat would rot too.

He opened the door, and there was no one standing there, but there! At the bottom of the stairs, the boys! Death Eaters, all in black robes like the nun on the album, waiting for Harry, like they always waited. Lingering in his shadows, waiting for him. He existed for them.

“I need a soft voice to talk to me at night…” Harry continued, hopping down the stairs two-by-two. The Death Eaters were here for him, but they were not looking at him. Their white masks all faced the bonfire, which crackled like a dozen metronomes out of time.

“Happy Samhain! You guys celebrate Samhain, yeah?” Harry called. “Fuck, it was Beltane, though, wasn’t it?”

They were all silent. There was no noise except the guitars and sad strings. He had brought the song with him in his head. Voldemort stood tall, taller than he ever did as a human man, staring into the fire. Harry stepped heavily up to stand next to him.

“Happy Beltane,” he corrected himself again.

Voldemort’s red eyes were lit by the fire. They were luminous and alive.

Harry stared into the fire too.

“I thought she would come,” said Harry.

Voldemort did not move or react. It was like a moving picture. Harry was standing in a little picture, a little cutout of past perils pasted on his neighbourhood street.

“I was mistaken,” he said conversationally. “Actually. I actually was. I was mistaken, not you. That was the problem, right? That’s how you kept getting them all.” He threw a stick into the fire. It was the elder wand. “You knew me better than I ever knew her.”

Voldemort was a statue cut in harsh shadows, skin glowing almost human from the warmth of the fire. Harry would vanquish him by morning.

“You’ve got to kill me,” Harry whispered.

It’s in his head. Surely they could hear it, sad, sad blues like heavy luggage on the way to King’s Cross. I know we can make everything alright…Listen to my plea, baby…

Harry’s heart pounded so desperately, trying to keep him alive even under the crushing weight of the way things were and had to be. He should be dead by morning. Something like horror filled him.

“That’s how it has to work. You have to kill me, or it won’t be over. Please. I know you can, please.”

She was so beautiful. In the firelight, just before the floo powder turned rich emerald green, she was so beautiful. It cast across her hair like flames licking across a halo, the whole of her blazing.

“Harry, just tell me,” she said to him, though she was resigned, like she knew it was pointless to ask, but she had to anyway, just so he knew it was why she was leaving him, “were you trying to kill yourself?”

⎯ ♢♢♢ ⎯

Harry woke sobbing.

Bowl was a cruel mistress, but even her frigid stone heart could move when Harry didn’t climb out of bed. Harry’s head ached, and he could feel his pulse all through it, right to the tip of his oozing nose. It slid right over his face, cool porcelain soothing hot tears. It only made it worse. Harry was choking on snot and sobs and his saliva felt thick and sour on his tongue, and everything made it worse, that he was alone, that Ginny had stayed gone, that she was 50 years in the future, that everyone was 50 years in the future, and that the only one who was around to care about Harry was his stupid fucking bowl. He only had the two, and the other one had oatmeal grains dried onto it he’d only half-heartedly picked at with his thumbnail before deciding to just eat at the Leaky Cauldron.

He cried, which he hadn’t managed to do in months. It would make it real the same way recognizing the sound of Black Magic Woman made his mother’s unforgivably short time being a living girl real, and after it was real, he didn’t know what to do next. It was hard enough to try to exist in the same way he existed before Ginny was gone, just without her next to him. It was hard enough.

His throat was so tight that when he tried to wail all that came out was a tight, squeaking hiss, and Harry caved in on himself, and he replayed it a thousand times in his head, and each time he said no, of course not, and each time she didn’t believe him, and each time he could understand that just because that wasn’t what he was trying to do didn’t mean there wasn’t something wrong, and each time he’d let her go anyway.

He curled into a tight ball, and he had his knees firmly underneath him, the cool surface of Bowl’s body laying lazily on his hot neck, and he seeped tears and drool on the hardwood next to the mattress which had a cover but still no bedframe, and he could sense a great black chasm in his mind that would suck him into a spiral that would make him want to kill himself.

But he didn’t, which is what he told Ginny. What he wanted was, and he had no one to tell this so he clumsily swept Bowl from his neck and dropped it onto the floor and squeezed it with fierce determination so he could look it in its green-paint eyes, “I have got to break into his house.”

It was 1946, and now Voldemort had begun putting together a shaky picture of his identity, and if Harry stepped out of line, he would die. Harry wanted to live. He was a crazy stalker and he needed to break into Tom Riddle’s house.

Harry showered for much longer than strictly necessary, and when he came out his head felt like it had been cleaved through with an axe. He took two of his eye-spier eyeballs, which he only tenuously recalled the function of.

He got dressed, told himself he wasn’t going to look any better than he did now before Tom got home, and headed out.

It was the weekend, so Harry’s half-day, but Tom did not take half-days. He worked the exact same hours during the weekend, and thus at 11AM he was busy fussing with Dark objects in Borgin & Burkes.

Harry returned to Tom’s flat like he was returning home. It seemed like eons ago he had just travelled back in time and hunted down this unassuming little building, which looked like an already-cramped townhouse that had been carved into fourths. He remembered that he was trying to be cautious. Harry didn’t want to tip Tom off that someone was after him, and there was no bigger tip-off than a B&E.

It was okay to do now. At last.

The building boasted four homes from what he could tell; one per floor, two in front, two in the back, with the entrance to Tom’s upstairs flat tucked away in one of the narrow squeeze of an alleyway. Tom had a very optimistic planter box hanging off the window that overlooked mostly red brick, though Harry mused that it was close enough to the front it had a decent view of the street if he poked his head out.

Harry took his broom from his pouch and urged it to rise. It lifted him up by the arm, slowly at first, and then picking up speed.

Harry dangled in front of the planter. He shook his sleeve down to reveal Bowl. He still couldn’t use parseltongue without a snake. “Anyone home?”

As he expected, two snakes emerged from the planter. Voldemort didn’t strike him as a gardening type, after all.

“I’m hungry.”

“Smells bad.”

“Smells bad, will we get food?”

“Food, yes.”

He narrowed his eyes at them. “You’ll only get food if you don’t tell him I was here.”

“We only talk about food.”

“Magic things. I don’t hear them because I am digging.”

“I talk about food. She is digging.”

Common garden snakes were not compelling conversation partners.

Harry used the elder wand to check for traps, not really bothering to check for witnesses. Everyone in Knockturn Alley was dead asleep around this time, either because they sleep during the day or they keep late enough hours that they were only just starting to wake up.

Magic lock. An alarm.

…That’s it.

That couldn’t be right.

Harry disabled the protection measures and hoisted himself inside. It was, if such a thing was even possible, even more mediocre inside, though he could have guessed as much from the fact Tom had raided the Room of Hidden Things for furniture. There was a writing desk just under the window for Harry to climb onto, a small table and chair, and absolutely nothing else. The kitchen was closer to the door, and wasn’t even a kitchen, just a line of countertops and a cabinet-like stove that looked straight out of the 18^th century all set against the wall.

He checked for enchantments again. The door was guarded far better, but not anything Harry couldn’t unwind if he wanted to. The kitchen window was warded the same as the window he came through.

Harry peeked into the bedroom, which he was surprised existed, considering the place was much smaller than his own little bedsit. Same two wards as the other windows. The bed was narrow and unmade, blankets crumpled into a pile at the end.

In a fit of possible insanity, Harry collapsed face-first into the bed to rate the conditions Lord Voldemort slept in. It was a decent mattress, but far too firm for Harry, who grew up with a sagging camping cot, a sagging mattress, and the plush four-posters of Hogwarts.

He turned his head and took a deep breath, practically anticipating a cloud of condensed evil to coat his lungs like cigarette smoke (though what he was actually expecting was a foul sort of snake musk, to assure himself the Dark Lord still lived here and may soon return).

Harry jerked back off the bed, ashamed by the fact it smelled like nothing but Sleekeazy’s and human sweat.

Sneaking around wasn’t how he usually did things; he would have preferred it if Tom had been the one to duel him last night, and they could handle matters face-to-face. It was strange that he hadn’t. It was strange he was so sick. Harry remembered the way Tom looked so disoriented trying to read his afternoon newspaper; he’d been that sick for weeks. Why did he attend the party? He sounded like he was dying when he left.

But he wasn’t. He’d lived to seventy. Technically speaking.

Tom’s tiny bedroom did not have a closet, and his clothes were kept in a chest of drawers so fancy it ought to be referred to as a chiffonier, though it looked like it had personal experience with both world wars, with a nasty-looking crack thtough the top. It was covered in little baubles of unclear purpose, reminding him strongly of Dumbledore’s shelves – or in this era, Merrythought’s. Strewn among them were little trophies, so proudly displayed that Harry could tell in a single sweep there was no jewelry – and thus, no ring.

The most incongruous item was one of those vintage Tinker Toys, the kind Harry only saw in playset instruction manual illustrations. It was a bunch of wooden orbs in the shape of a man, with a chipped paint face. It was incongruous in that Tinker Toys were obviously muggle.

Harry fished out an Eye-Spier eyeball and tucked it behind a brass corner accent that was practically falling out. It wriggled until it completely vanished.

Harry wandered back out into the main room, narrow and cramped like the living space was built from nothing but a single wide hallway. He couldn’t imagine Lord Voldemort suffering such a claustrophobic and pitiful living space, but he supposed he could picture Tom Riddle brooding as he coughed ominously in his handkerchief, irritated at being held back from his grand adventures in Albania.

…How long until then? Harry only knew he’d lost his baby fat and grew out his hair. It hadn’t occurred to him that he might suffer this tiny flat for multiple years, frozen in its mediocrity by the thought that any moment now he’d need to pack the lot up and never return. It all seemed very sad.

Harry poked his head into the bathroom, which was just as cramped as he expected. The toilet was sat so close to the wash basin it was threatening to shelter underneath it, all to give some leg room to the space around the shower, which was built into the tiled wall and had a thin curtain that wouldn’t be blocking so much as the morning dew if it weren’t for the water-repelling charm cast on it.

There were clothes piled on the floor. Harry stared at them, and hesitantly lifted them to his face. They didn’t smell of anything nefarious like graveyards or Dark potions or blood. It was just Sleekeazy’s, that weird old people smell – likely from Borgin & Burkes – and sweat with a slightly sourer edge that indicated worse health.

A weight sat heavy in his stomach as he dropped the clothes, and his skin crawled and crawled until he abruptly stood up and strode to the kitchenette. Harry took deep breaths through his nose, taking in the slightly musty smell of decrepit housing instead of the indication that Tom Riddle was a human being, with bodily functions that could fail.

He scanned the room again. From this angle, he could see that on one side of the desk were scattered shards of wood underneath an ugly dent – a more familiar and welcome sight in the home of a Dark Lord – and on the other was a book that appeared to have met the same fate as whatever piece of furniture had been hurled against the wall.

Harry picked it up, and went very still.

T.M.Riddle was written on the first page in smudged ink, so faint and warped Harry could not discern how much control Tom had over his pen when he wrote it. It was cool to the touch, but it may as well have been burning, for all his blood roared through his trembling fingertips.

The diary. The horcrux.

He felt dizzy, and abruptly sucked in a breath. He hadn’t realized he stopped breathing.

It was good, wasn’t it? He needed to destroy the horcruxes before he could kill Tom. He needed to find them. He needed to…

Why had Voldemort thrown a piece of his soul at the fucking wall?

Gingerly, Harry placed it on the desk and smoothed it open. He could feel it calling to him, which made him extremely uncomfortable, because he had talked to Ginny about the diary. It was part of building their relationship back up, addressing the way her misfortune was interspersed with his. He told her the nostalgia that overcame him when he touched it, as if T.M.Riddle was a half-remembered friend, and an urge to dig deeper, to scratch the itch of a story untold and unfinished. The compulsion charm it used to make people write in it, he reasoned.

Ginny told him she never felt anything like that. She’d only written to him because he was kind to her, and the compulsion felt more like an anxious attachment, as if she were the unfinished story, and if only she spoke to Tom, he would complete her.

It waited, expectant, almost pleading.

Harry carefully unscrewed the ink bottle on the desk, dipped a quill, and let it hover over the diary. His heart felt as if it were being slowly squeezed. He thought he might cry, or burst into hysterical laughter, anything that let this awful energy escape his body.

The ink splattered against the blank surface of the diary, and vanished.

He waited there, arm hovering over that awful book. He thought of the basilisk venom in his pouch.

Words emerged.

Don’t bother coddling me. I can see reason.

Harry’s breath hitched, and he finally registered what had been filling him with such creeping horror, why he wanted to crawl out of his skin just looking at it.

Lord Voldemort had been writing to his own diary. Of course he had! It was his fucking diary!

I was just a little cross. Are you alright?

Harry stared at the words blooming out from his silent droplets. He hadn’t managed to take a second breath yet.

Something happened, didn’t it?

He’d been—he’d been arguing with his own diary. It didn’t know what happened at the gala. Harry’s eyes danced to where he found it on the floor. Tom had an argument with himself and threw himself at the wall. This was so fucked up.

Another droplet.

Voldemort?

Harry gently took the quill away, resting it in the ink bottle, his thoughts lingering on Ginny still, the way she tried to explain Blondie to Tom, that it was already a given he’d have tastes and behaviours, and beliefs about ocean music. His scalp felt numb, and his vision was beginning to swim. He forced himself to breathe. He closed his eyes and made himself breathe, in, and out, and in, and out, and then he took the quill and the bottle both, brought it to the diary, and slashed viciously through the air so a harsh line of ink splattered across its pristine pages.

This time, Harry did not have to wait for a response. The letters were immediate and scratched out.

Imsorry

Harry slammed the diary shut and tossed it against the wall in a panic before the letters even faded. “What the fuck,” he gasped.

And before he knew it, he was climbing through the window, stumbling over the planter to retrieve his broom, and he needed to throw his legs out to skid down the walls because the broom could sense his haste to get the fuck out of there. He stumbled out into the street and ran and ran until he was in Diagon Alley and there he stopped and pressed his eyes with his palms.

…He needed the ring.

If he destroyed the diary then Tom would hide the ring, and he needed the ring, if he destroyed the ring and the diary went missing he could guess it would have gone to the Malfoys, but what about the ring? Harry told Tom that he knew about his family, he wouldn’t hide it in the shack again, which meant he couldn’t destroy the diary and he needed the ring, and so he shouldn’t think about the diary.

Harry did not think about the diary. He went straight home and made himself a hot cup of tea and looked out his window at the cheerful sunshine, until his hands finally stopped shaking.

Chapter Text

Perhaps Tom’s health was finally on the upswing, because despite coming right off a frenzy, he did not wake with a fever.

The awful sluggishness and misalignment was back though, and he had no appetite. He forced down half his usual oats and put the rest in his enchanted chilling drawer, which he’d set up because his flat didn’t have a fridge.

Tom glanced back at his diary still on the floor. It sat there, pages splayed but uninjured, looking as pathetic as was possible for a book.

He’d been uncharitable, he knew, and must be the one to apologize. Tom had been vindictive and prone to emotional outbursts as a teenager; if he made the diary out to be the one in the wrong, it would resent him and go back to terrorizing him. Children were so occupied with what was fair.

He would apologize and give it all the mediocre memories it asked for, regardless of the risk. And it would certainly have some questions when he did; the diary was the one who pointed Evans out to him, after all. He’d have to string a narrative about that when he got back. The diary would wonder why Tom had not mentioned his stalker had returned to bait him, had sniped his job, had been trotted out as sublime fiction for the sake of a few extra sold papers…

Could—would it be reasonable if he isolated the first half of the dance, to showcase he initially had the situation under control? It would have been, if Evans wasn’t—

Sleeping on it had been a mistake. Without his righteous fury, the thought of Evans left him cold and uneasy. Had Tom been sixteen, this kind of undivided attention would have set him ablaze. He’d been at a crossroads in his fifth year, everything sure about his life reduced to horrifying uncertainty; his mother being the source of his magic, Abraxas’ imminent graduation, and Rubeus’ faithlessness.

If he showed the memory to the diary, it would dedicate itself to presenting bad advice of the likes only the hormonal and the insane could conjure. It was better that Tom addressed it alone. He was now mature enough to be suspicious of such easy flirtation.

Why should he worry? Evans had yet to present himself as anything but a perverse philanderer, and he was a homosexual besides. What value did his fascination have to Tom? Access to Hogwarts? Tom could just kill him if he wanted that. He’d fielded obsessive fans who regarded him with something approaching piety before. Tom was only confused, because he thought of those stalkers as desperate and pathetic, while Evans was…

He didn’t know what Evans was, and when he tried to compose an opinion, he instead abruptly decided he would go to work to argue with his boss instead of thinking any longer on the matter.

When Tom arrived, Borgin was putting up a lovely set of dress robes cursed by the previous owner’s father to dance for exactly 3 hours without stopping, to prevent her from canoodling. Borgin had written a placard two paragraphs long that almost certainly contained an exaggerated fairytale storyline that justified it being worth nine times the original price.

Tom cleared his throat and did the closest approximation of telling Borgin to fuck himself:

“I am attending to Alda Day today.”

Borgin frowned. “How much more does she have?”

“Plenty. Her family is ancient, no matter what Cantankerus Nott has to say on the matter of their lineage,” he sniffed.

“It’s tricky selling marked jewellery, get some real relics. Though some of the goblins aren’t known to most wizards,” he held up a gorgeous necklace as an example. “This one doesn’t react to dating charms. Thinking of saying it’s been passed through Rowena Ravenclaw’s family for generations.”

“Start it with Rowena’s daughter, who hid her mother’s vast wealth,” Tom suggested, remembering the tale the Bloody Baron had weaved of the diadem’s loss before he had asked the Grey Lady herself.

“You in any state for a house call?”

Tom raised his eyebrows, pressed the tip of his wand to the back of his wrist, and unleashed a stinging hex so vicious his skin glowed with residual energy. In comparison to the horcrux and the crutiatus – Nott teaching it to him had involved first-hand experience – the pain was negligible. It had the desired effect of making Borgin look uncomfortable and reluctantly impressed.

“I think I can manage to stay lucid,” Tom said crisply. He gave Borgin a jaunty tip of the hat and went off to send a message to the Day household.

Tom was welcomed in to floo. Now that he was allowed direct access, he was careful with his presentation, which was a difficult feat. When he stepped into the fire and felt the world stretch out infinitely, hundreds of pinpoint lights from hundreds of fireplaces pulling across his eyes until the one he wanted rushed to meet him in a disorienting swirl.

He stepped elegantly through, as if he were simply emerging from the other side from a short doorway, impeccably composed. It required a lot of skill, though all the Slytherin boys entertained themselves by practicing in their early years.

“Oh, there you are, dear. You look a little better, thank goodness,” Alda greeted, her house elf following silently behind her.

“I’m grateful to have people to take care of me,” Tom simpered without missing a beat. “You said you had more in your vaults?”

“I do! Nipsy, get the gentleman a snack, won’t you?”

The house elf popped away, leaving Alda Day to get swindled for the rest of her belongings.

While the first box she gave him seemed to be all her old jewellery and knick-knacks, this latest box seemed to be Ramon Day’s most eclectic objects. Tom mentally calculated their budget against the range of items she carefully laid out between them. Decorative claws, a tiny gargoyle statuette, a collection of quills with fancy metal bases, tomes encased in preservation spells, and even an eavesdropping planchette, which she must not realize the purpose of if she hadn’t sold it the last visit.

“Anything worth buying?” She prompted.

He would have to work her over. Tom tapped his fingers as if worried if he should buy anything at all. At his hesitation, she held up a finger and opened one of the little boxes off to the side. It had an expansion charm, a good one, likely before such tidy work became outlawed to private citizens. He needed it.

But she wasn’t showing him the depth of the box; she was taking something out. A long, ancient-looking staff, encased as tightly as possible to fit in the confines of the box’s opening. There were sprigs growing from it.

“I don’t want to sell this to your shop, mind, but I did want your opinion, as you’ve been so interested in the tales of Avalon,” she said. “This has been passed through the family for ages. They said it was the staff of Morgana.”

That it was a staff was already promising. In the 6^th century, they did not use wands; to reduce a conduit of magic power to something that could be wielded in one hand was an art that had been refined over fifteen centuries. Back then, they would simply whittle their nurtured tree down to its core, which was no less powerful, but certainly unwieldly and difficult to bond with.

Tom gingerly took the staff and looked it over. Completely bare. Another habit of counterfeiters was adding ancient runes. When futhorc was a contemporary writing system it was used for notation, and that coincided with the founding of Hogwarts’ educational system, where knowing notation was useful. Knowing which objects tended to bear notation in which eras was key in identifying a fake.

A wand – or staff, in this case – required little to no notation, and indeed, he saw none.

The carving style was contemporary with records. He cast a dating spell, which confirmed it was older than the 9^th century. It bore the marks of ancient carving tools, and was unglazed, which no wandmaker would dare risk.

“Morgana’s, you say…” He hummed.

As gently as he could, he opened the casing and took the staff in his hand. It radiated the warmth of a wand welcoming a wizard’s touch. He cast as he once did as a child, pure force of will with no consideration of what was or wasn’t possible, urging the table to turn colour.

The table became yellow. It felt imprecise and required multiple commands, as if it wasn’t sure this was what it was meant to be doing.

Morgana was a sorceress; her expertise was in magic borne from pure force of will. She was considered one of the first Dark witches, unscrupulous in her research to the point she made an enemy of Merlin, at least until he was forced to bend the knee to her superior wisdom.

(Like Tom, she had been raised by muggles. She knew that a wizard was stifled in such an environment. One’s power would be reduced to a tool for the inferior when they opened their homes to the menagerie.)

The staff certainly bore all the hallmarks of an item of great importance from the correct era, but it did not react organically to magic cast through pure intent. Perhaps one of Morgana’s apprentices, if the Day family had reason to believe in its authenticity.

He carefully replaced the casing and gave it back. “Not Morgana’s, but contemporary. Intact casting staffs from Merlin’s time are incredibly difficult to come by. I wonder…is this related to your interest in the era of Avalon?”

“We used to gossip over history class,” she murmured, smiling to herself. “He lured me to his home with his oldest heirlooms. A conniving man, but a clever one. Knew what he was doing and still couldn’t resist.”

“How…romantic. I can see you treasured these items,” Tom said softly.

“Not many care about what was going on around Merlin. Even expressing interest in Morgana is thought of as a little passé,” Alda nodded. “I’ve always been a been a dry person, I think. My granddaughter is certainly of the opinion that it’s droll. Ramon was looking to try again for a son, so his nephew wouldn’t inherit. I’d like to be a little more involved, share what little legacy our family has.”

“It’s not droll at all,” and the earnestness in Tom’s voice surprised even him. “…Avalon is in the heart of every British wizard. Morgana and Merlin worked together in the end. Dark magic is messy, yes, but beautiful as well. My job allows me to enjoy the myriad of ways it manifests.”

“Though I doubt you care much for Mordred,” Alda said lightly.

“To be honest, I don’t care much for Spencer-Moon either,” Tom whispered conspiringly, and she tittered.

With that, Ramon Day’s collection was open to him.

⎯ ♢♢♢ ⎯

Harry was picking up speed on his spell practice. He could practically smell the textbooks he was about to put to print. He didn't even like book smell.

He was admittedly coasting on his leftover frenetic energy, assuring himself that rushing into things wasn’t going to fix anything, and he needed Tom’s plans, his associates, that stupid cabinet, and most importantly, a finished book to teach 16-year-olds with, so he could keep his job.

Luckily, casting so many strange hexes and charms had the knock-on effect of making him better at it in general. Where he was haphazardly copying bits and bobs that sounded reasonable when he started, he could now tell from a glance whether the spells were functional, or feasible for a student to manage.

Harry felt proudest of himself when learning a new trick from good old practical application. He came from incredible natural talent, after all. James was famously prodigious – honestly, Harry should have realized as much from how fast he and Sirius chewed through their OWLs, or the fact that he’d become an animagus in school – but spellwork came naturally for his mum too. She learned the fidelius in fifth year. She’d tutored Snape in charms in exchange for potions lessons. In retrospect Snape had rather snottily thought of it as sponsoring her by connecting her with his head of house, but the fact of the matter was that he was getting the long end of the stick, and she was instrumental to him learning to make his own hexes.

…Regardless, Harry was always an awful student, as he didn’t care much for theory, so he was actually behind many of his O-scoring peers. But there was still raw talent. All his life, he was told he was just like his parents, and that included his magic.

By third year, he was convinced he’d be an auror straight out of school. By sixth, he was convinced it was as good as in his hand. After the war, he looked at what the auror office was doing, what the ministry was doing, and for the first time realized how little he considered what kind of force he was joining.

Back when he was trying to figure out what he was going to live for after the war, he spent his eighth year mining his friends for spells and hexes, keeping himself going by mastering them one-by-one. He’d acted like he was just preparing himself for adulthood. Hermione probably knew he was gearing up to try the DADA position, but wisely didn’t comment on it.

And then Bill reached his second year in the position unscathed.

Harry needed the books published before the final week of August, so it was for the best if they were on the smaller side anyway. Exams had begun, and he didn’t have time to think about presentation.

He’d gotten used to Merrythought’s keen eye overseeing his progress after each class, and barely paid any attention to her presence as he worked. She was true to her word that she’d only interject once he’d gone through the entire outline and selected his spells, and while finding a spell useless under her watch made him cringe, he’d otherwise grown used to her.

So he jumped out of his skin when she cleared her throat meaningfully. 

“Ma’am?” He squeaked. 

“That spinning spell. Let's see it again.”

“...Circumversio.” It took effort to keep the revolving going, so it was a little advanced for a student, and it did basically nothing in comparison to befuddlement hexes or a good robust flipendo.

“What do you make of this?” She asked him.

“Erm. Actually, I think I'd have to design my own version if I wanted to add it, I don't know how hard that's going to be—”

“Generally, even a student can manage spell creation as long as they have a base spell to work from.”

“Excellent! Yeah, so the problem is that it needs to be maintained. Uses…I mean, it literally makes the target turn around. If an animal is lunging at you, for sure.”

“Indeed…how much do you know about magical creatures that have been crafted artificially?”

“Uhhh. Just the ones that breed. I mean, obviously, it's been illegal for centuries, so those are the only ones left. I'm not sure what they have in common, they’re all made for different reasons, right…?”

“I'll make it easy for you then. Why must you spin a gnome before tossing it?”

“So it gets too confused to return to the nest,” Harry started, and gaped at her as soon as he said it. “Oh! Ohhh!”

“Wizard-forged species are all easily disoriented. It was once said you could identify a true magical beast by whether it could navigate a maze. There is a reason so much of my curriculum amounts to ‘run away’; not because the creature is too dangerous to fight, but because at least half of the beasts I cover will become confused within two minutes of a chase and wander off.”

“Wait— wow. No one else tried a flipping spell?”

“Of course people have tried flipping spells; such is the nature of something as flexible and infinite as wandwork. But they have not, in my tenure nor my school years, been taught at Hogwarts.” She raised a speculative brow. “In fact…if you do manage to simplify it, I would hope the younger years would have the opportunity to use it.”

“Younger…but I thought I'd be teaching with, you know, your textbooks?”

“Textbooks can be revised. That's why we release a fine little thing called editions,” she smirked. “In fact, I've been plodding through my sixth edition for the past five years. I had hoped to make time for it after retiring. I think, given your approach to acquiring this job, teaching new material might suit you.”

“Oh. Well it's all thanks to…” He squinted at the author of the spell, scrawled in his margins. “Barnaby Quirrell. No way.”

“I'm sure Barnaby Quirrell would be elated to have his work taught at this great institution. Have you owled any of your other sources?”

Harry looked up from his notes. “Er, I haven't. Should I?”

She leaned back, stretching her fingers. “It would be courteous to do so, and to invite them to your launch. You are a man with very few connections at the moment. Recruit Horace in finding your errant spellcasters, if you must.”

“Or Dumbledore,” Harry mused.

“For god’s sake, you can call him Albus. He's about to be your coworker.”

Harry recalled Ridgecarver saying that she'd been defending his honour at the dinner table. Did she not like Harry deferring to others? Harry certainly didn't like deferring either, but he wasn't sure he had it in him to treat Dumbledore so casually. And maybe Dumbledore deserved to be deferred to. Even if Dumbledore himself disagreed.

“I'll call you Galatea then,” Harry offered cheekily. 

“You may,” Merrythought stated with a cool incline of the head.

“Is it allowed to get a part-time job, by the way? It's just that I won’t be making money over the summer…” He said quickly, as unnerved at the idea of referring to her by name as he would be to do the same with Professor McGonagall. 

“If it wasn't, Albus would have gotten sacked for all his work in Europe. He portkeyed every single night. Specifically asked — this was all over the papers, it was so audacious — that the final battle in Paris, which would run overnight, could be scheduled for Hogsmeade weekend, so he wouldn't have to cancel his classes.”

Harry laughed. 

Dumbledore hadn't shown up to see him in person, so at the end of his shift Harry decided he was free to begin yet another long trek through all the abandoned classrooms, in search of that damn cabinet. He had drawn a map from memory, and went through the halls corridor-by-corridor, starting from those directly above what used to be Filch’s office. 

He was already up to the Third Floor Corridor by now; he’d never been since Fluffy moved out, and the classrooms inside were in various states of half-use, much like the other empty spaces. Some bore the marks of duelling practice, others were chalked up with simple playground games, and one had an unusually low ceiling completely splattered with gobstone juice.

There was no trapdoor, but he had been to the second floor last night, and knew below Fluffy was a checkered hall that looked suspiciously like the one that had the flying keys in his first year. Weird how they were all rearranged. 

Rearranged…

Harry tilted his head at the map, crudely corrected for the 1940s, and tried to use basic spatial awareness to plot which rooms he recognized as moved, how far, and in which direction. His hand tracked the checkered room, which was at least one floor down, and turned…and had he seen a room like the one that held the transfigured chess set…?

He had. 

Harry discarded the first version of his map and dropped to the floor, redrawing it again, this time proportioning the entire second floor to capture what he’d realized: 

A geometric flower.

The classrooms could turn, then drop into compressed space, so other second floor classrooms could take their place. The entire layout could change. Had changed. He could see the fold would have snapped them into the layout he saw on the Marauder’s Map. 

He touched the spot that was above Filch’s future office. It would need to move four places for this layout. Four places reversed put it…

On the first floor!

Harry gathered his parchment and sprinted down the hall, heedless of his legs exposed under the invisibility cloak. He didn’t bother descending properly, because the longest staircase from the second floor to the third was beginning to slide away, which means there was about to be a cross-section below, give or take two random stairs. He jumped right off the empty landing, soared over a spinning stair, and landed with both feet on either of the bannisters of one of the turning stairs. He slid backwards, dropped off the side, and swung right past a Gryffindor prefect, making her scream in surprise.

He landed bodily on the ground floor and kept running. “Please please please—”

“Am I hearing my name?” Peeves crooned from where he was attempting to remove a tile from the ceiling for no doubt malevolent reasons. 

Harry was on a mission. He whipped his wand out and turned the entire row of ceiling tiles orange to appease the poltergeist. Peeves cackled.

Harry skidded into a room two doors down from Filch’s future office and burst inside. It was full of stacked chairs, and had also fallen victim to Peeves, with a collection of rude illustrations on the blackboard. Harry squeezed past the forest of chairs, craning his neck to see at the back of the shadowed room.

There, in the corner, was something tall and black.

“Yes, yes, yesyesyes!” Harry crowed, and practically toppled onto the ground in front of it. The vanishing cabinet, tall and unpleasant and angular and black, unmistakable. He kissed its doors. “Oh, you have no idea how long I’ve been looking for you!” 

He opened it to find an assortment of tools, seemingly for woodworking. He tore all of it out, climbed inside, and closed it behind him. It was bigger on the inside. He rapped the worn black wood backing with his wand, and pushed it. Pushed, and pushed, until he was crawling forward into a long tunnel, and a crease began forming under his palm.

The wooden backboard parted, and he was in the eerie green of the Chamber of Secrets. 

Harry landed on his hands, did a somersault to right himself, and leaped with his fists pumped in the air. “Yes!”

He could finally access the school at all times, access his own secret lair without being seen in a girl’s lavatory, set up all the equipment he’ll need to follow Tom into suspicious alleyways, and most importantly of all, grade essays in a cool and relaxing private space that was not Hagrid’s hut, a school desk in Merrythought’s classroom, or his flat back in Diagon Alley.

To be honest, he’d been craving a place as private as 12 Grimmauld Place. There was something very comforting about living in a place only his friends could access. For nearly a full year after the war, Harry felt neurotic leaving the confines of its peeling wallpaper, in a parody of Sirius’ cabin fever. Maybe it made sense. The house only had one ghost for Harry, after all. 

Likewise with the Chamber, though he knew for a fact where that ghost was. He’d hooked up the eye-spier eyeball to a crystal projection glass, so the entire back wall was lit up with the feed of Tom’s bedroom, which Harry had to admit was a pretty poor vantage point in comparison to the writing desk. He did get to see Tom owned hideously unflattering underwear and was not completely hairless, despite his chin being as smooth and pristine as a baby’s bottom.

Tom was also emaciated. Sunken ribs, sharp shoulder blades, unnaturally long, bony limbs. Brittle. He slept by draping his blankets over his shoulders like a cloak and winding himself into a spiral around a pillow clutched to his stomach, like a nestled snake. Or the foetal position. Or a child jealously guarding a stuffed animal. 

Well, not right now. Right now the projection showed Tom was getting dressed after a shower. Harry saw him put on wooly socks and turned away. He’d try to think of a way to aim an eyeball on the desk.

Harry had turned to the statue of Salazar, and realized there was one more thing to do. He promised to feed that poor creature, hadn’t he?

Harry climbed back into the cabinet and pushed it back until it parted to the classroom. He spun on his heel and used his elder wand to shrink the entire thing to the size of his fist, so he could stick it in his purse.

Oh that felt so good. 

Harry pulled the invisibility cloak draped over his shoulders over his head and squeezed back out to the corridor. Peeves had taken divine inspiration from Harry’s stripe of orange and was methodically turning the entire area into the most grotesque colour combination possible. Technically not his fault. Technically. 

Harry stepped out to the cool night air and set his sights on the treeline of the Forbidden Forest.

He might not know how to hunt, but he knows someone who does.

Chapter Text

The chimney on Hagrid’s hut was merrily puffing away, and Harry knocked with both fists, buzzing with excitement. 

Hagrid looked elated to open the door to find Harry. “Mr. Evans!”

“Hagrid!” Harry crowed, gripping both his arms. “You know what? We’re going to be coworkers soon, you can call me Henry. No, Harry!” 

“Oh! Really?” Hagrid turned red and rolled onto his heels a little. “Oh, I suppose you can call me Rubeus then!”

Harry opened his mouth, and realized that Rubeus Hagrid, too, was younger than him. Much more than 7 months, even; by at least two and a half years. He’d always been so open with his feelings and eager to share, Harry hadn’t been conscious of the difference. “Yes. I will. Because we’re very good friends, aren’t we?”

Hagrid — Rubeus — giggled and went even redder, and then his giggles became tense breathing, and then, all at once, he began to sob.

He let out a little cry when Harry stepped back in alarm. “Oh, I’m sorry! I just was really hoping we were friends for sure, even though you kept coming to visit and all…I’ve got such rotten luck with making friends, practically only Professor Dumbledore has really stuck by me…”

“No…What about…Mr. Ogg? Or Professor Ridgecarver? Ridgecarver’s been good to you, hasn’t he?” Harry soothed.

“Oh, he has, he has,” Rubeus wailed, burying his face in his enormous hands. “But after what To— I mean, what I brought into the school, he’d never trust me with no creatures!”

Harry’s eyebrows shot up. So Rubeus knew it was Tom specifically who framed him. No wonder Rubeus had so adamantly warned Harry against Slytherin by saying Voldemort was among their number— he knew Voldemort had been a Prefect, Head Boy, and the culprit behind his wand being snapped. It must have left quite the impression.

“Ridgecarver thinks highly of you,” Harry promised, squeezing Hagrid’s elbows. “In fact, I’ve just been to a gala, and he was talking about how well you’re doing. I think he’s got to be really proud of you, Rubeus. He was praising you to Tom Riddle’s face.” 

Harry only partly expected the sudden incandescent fury. “Tom! Tom was there?”

“Yeah, he was—”

“Tom Riddle is— he’s rotten to the core, Mr. E…er…H-Harry,” Rubeus ground out, flushing again. “Everyone says he’s as nice as can be, even Professor Ridgecarver does, but I know, Professor Dumbledore does too, that he’s foul! He may act perfect and do things for you, but he’s doing it to play you, and make you not think he’s up to no good, but he is!”

“Oh, yeah,” Harry agreed easily, pleased yet again to find someone to complain about Tom to. “Awful, awful personality. I saw him in a shop and he threw me out upside-down. Called me a mudblood at the gala as well. Accused me of stalking him!”

Rubeus looked amazed that Harry was capable of saying a single word against Tom Riddle. He quickly mopped away his tears with his sleeve, only for them to brim over again, this time in frustration. “He’s always talked about how he’s going to make himself someone important. He must be fuming that his Special Service to the School didn’t get him anything, after all that effort.”

“Yep. Shopboy,” Harry said agreeably, leaning against the doorframe. 

“Serves him right, you know! All he does is lie to people and give them what they want so they think of him better! He’d do favours just so they’d do favours for him, even the h-house was another one of his awful lies!”

“House?” Harry asked, trying not to beam. 

“He got this house…” The anger went out of Rubeus suddenly, and despite him being three heads taller than Harry, his posture closed until he was the smallest and youngest he’d ever looked. “...After my dad went…I had these awful relatives I had to live with, they said there’d be no point of me going to Hogwarts— and then, Tom— he said he’d be living alone in London, which isn’t allowed, but he said no one needed to know, and I could live alone too. He spent all his Hogsmeade weekends up to something, and at the end of the year we snuck away from the train and there was a whole empty house there in Hogsmeade… He told me I don’t ever need to go back if I don’t want to.” 

Harry’s good mood popped like a soap bubble. 

Faintly, he asked, “He bought you a house?”

“He— no he didn’t!” Rubeus regained some of his previous fire. “He didn’t even have money to do something like that! He stole it, he didn’t tell me that he had me squatting in there! And, well, the person who did live there never did come back, but he lied to me and had me steal someone’s house!”

“He got— he went out of his way, to get you…” Harry’s thoughts felt all gummed up, resisting the obvious conclusion. Tom was a Prefect, but for the Slytherins. Hagrid was a born and bred Gryffindor. If this was a year before he was expelled, Tom might not have even been a Prefect at all. Even if he was, there was no way he’d be able to get away with paying special attention to a half-giant… Yet Ridgecarver had tried to calm Tom down by bringing up Rubeus, because he thought Rubeus was someone Tom cared about. 

In the memory the diary showed him, Tom had called him by his first name. Tom had waited for almost two hours at that spot because he knew Rubeus was out of bed, and why. 

Harry ran his hands down his face. Rotten luck with friends indeed. 

“You two were mates.” 

Rubeus went stiff. “Shouldn’t have told you that.”

Harry remembered, in dazed realization, how much derision Hagrid had for muggles. It was uncharacteristic of him, but he’d only ever been that nasty to the Dursleys, so Harry had thought almost nothing of it. But why would Hagrid – who faced so much discrimination himself, who was a proud member of the Order of the Phoenix – feel so comfortable talking so poorly of muggles, if not because a half-blood had been filling his head with assurances that being half-subhuman didn’t matter if the other half was a wizard? Why else would he deny being a giant, despite how blindingly obvious it was, if he did not take those lessons to heart?

“It’s alright. You were telling me he only does that sort of thing to use people. What did he want out of you?” Harry reassured him. 

“I’m…I’m a half-giant, actually,” Rubeus said in an exaggerated whisper. “People like me are real durable. I’d go into the Forbidden Forest all the time as a first year, you know, and he wanted to go in there too. He made me his— his bodyguard,” he said wretchedly. 

And here Harry was, so smug about getting to take the piss out of Tom Riddle. Rubeus was too raw to laugh, or even to talk about it. Tom had betrayed him, crushed his heart into pieces, and would have ruined his entire life if Dumbledore hadn’t stepped in.

Harry felt a lump rise in his throat. He gently reached out and slid his hands under Rubeus’ arms to pull him into a hug. The tears started all over again, now accompanied by ugly wails, and the way Rubeus squeezed him so tightly made his ribs hurt, but Harry still let him.

“That was rotten of him,” Harry agreed. “He was really rotten to you.”

“I didn’t want to believe it, not until P-Professor Dumbledore,” he took a great heaving sob. “T-Tom said not to let anyone call me stupid, not ever, because I’m not, and then you know what he did, when Professor Dumbledore saved me? He screamed at me for ages, called me all sorts of horrible names, and maybe I wouldn’t have minded, but he called me ‘the worst kind of stupid’. Wasn’t useful to him anymore so he stopped pretending he ever liked me!” 

“That’s,” Harry clenched his teeth. He was about to cry too. Why was he about to cry? He was supposed to be the shoulder for Rubeus to bawl on. “Horrible.”

“I hate him. I hate him.”

And for just how long had he hated him?

Until Voldemort turned into a dark lord, proving Dumbledore right. Until Rubeus Hagrid could bring Harry Potter to the wizarding world for the first time and warn him about people like Tom. To try to push him away from Slytherin because he wanted to protect him. Until Voldemort hunted him down and made him watch Harry’s execution, just to hurt him one last time.

Harry went back this far so he could save everyone he loved, but he couldn’t go back far enough to at least save Rubeus Hagrid, who’s life was defined by what Voldemort did to him. He was the first person to be truly kind to Harry, and Harry couldn’t be the first person to be kind to him. It had to be Tom.

“You know what,” Harry struggled out, “I think we should walk this off. Get some fresh air.”

“Really?” Rubeus sniffled. “It’s dangerous at night.”

“Not with you! And honestly, not with me. I don’t need a bodyguard at all.” Harry stepped back, cleared his throat, and squared his shoulders. Tried to look older than he felt. “We should go hunting. Together. As equals. You’re not hired muscle, you’re my friend. And tonight I, your friend, want to catch a stag.”

⎯ ♢♢♢ ⎯

Rubeus brought his crossbow, but he was far less comfortable with it than he seemed to be 50 years from now, and he kept sniffling and damping his face with a handkerchief. He was likely to scare off any deer they found.

“There are deer out here?” Harry asked.

“Yeah. Hunt with Groundskeeper Ogg all the time to feed the beasts, especially with Aragog—” And with this name he burst into tears again.

“Hey, now,” Harry rubbed his back soothingly. “Who’s Aragog?”

“My a-a-acromantula friend. Tom never liked any of my names, so he named Aragog himself, seeing as he was so special. ‘Arachnid agog’. He named Aragog himself and betrayed him, Harry! He blamed all that mess in the school on him, even though it was his fault, whatever it was!”

Wow. Harry assumed Hagrid got the name from whoever he bought it from. “That’s cruel.”

“It was! He told the headmaster that his Slytherin friends were only writing on the walls about the Chamber of Secrets to get me caught because they thought Aragog wasn’t safe, even though Tom had always been going on about how he was going to find the Chamber before he graduated. I bet anything he did, Professor Dumbledore won’t say it outright but it’s only sense.” Rubeus paused. “Don’t tell him I told you that.”

“I’d never betray your trust,” Harry assured him, which for some reason only made Rubeus cry harder.

They made their way through the endless pillars of trees until they reached the uneven ground of the old growth. Shadows danced around the edges of the trunks, and Harry drew his wand cautiously. Rubeus looked more concerned with his hurt feelings than the shadows, however.

“Oh, those are the nogtails. I don’t got a white dog, but the hidebehinds will get those, don’t worry.”

“The hidebehinds,” Harry repeated flatly, just as a spray of silvery hair burst into existence, grabbed one of the shadows, and tore the poor demonic pig in half. Blood and guts sprayed everywhere.

“Keeps them full. They don’t touch people unless they’re hungry, don’t worry,” Rubeus assured as the invisible silver-edged figure dug into the gore, creating a floating bloody outline of a bear-like muzzle.

“Aren’t those a quad-X category danger?” Harry asked softly.

“There’s only two in the whole forest, I think, and they’re not so bad. Kind of cute, actually, with their little snouts,” Rubeus beamed.

Bears were kind of cute too, but Harry would not enjoy being charged at by a hungry grizzly, and the hidebehind was two categories of danger above that harrowing thought.

He didn’t even have any Defence techniques to hit it with. The hidebehind was so rare it was a single paragraph in the back of Merrythought’s textbook about the dangers of beast breeding.

“Oh, you know, they’re basically great big demiguises! I could catch one of them to help you patch your invisibility cloak!” Rubeus offered suddenly.

“NO! No. No thank you. That’s very kind, but no,” Harry said quickly, and ushered them along while the beast feasted.

They circled around a patch of devil’s snare, bringing them closer to the edge of the forest, and after some thought Rubeus kept going parallel to the old-growth region. Animal trails began forming on the forest floor, and a few spots of tall grass grew where the light could pierce through the break in the canopy, often full of lovely wildflowers. At last he seemed to find what he was looking for, and pulled Harry across one of the clearings.

“Look! Can you see them?” Rubeus asked hopefully.

Harry peered through the gloom, and realized that he could. Many large, square-ish figures were on the edge of the clearing, some lying down, others pacing lazily.

“Thestrals!” Harry realized.

“You can see them?” Rubeus beamed like the face of the sun and pulled him all the way over to the nearest undead horse, bringing Harry’s hand up to pet its leathery skin. “They look scary, but these are some of the sweetest beasts in the whole forest. Great sense of direction, they always know where to beg me for treats.”

Harry stroked the horse’s skeletal face, heart brimming with bittersweet fondness. They were docile, weren’t they, easily acquiescing to Harry’s harebrained scheme to save Sirius. They didn’t know why a bunch of stupid kids wanted to ride them, only that that they knew where to take them. He wished they hadn’t.

“…After my dad died…” Rubeus took a huge steeling breath, looking like he was going to pop with the effort it took not to sob again. “…After that I was really scared…wasn’t sure what I’d do next year. Knew nothing good was waiting for me at home for the summer. Knew no one thought I ought to be at Hogwarts, great big half-breed like me.”

“Rubeus—”

“What makes me mad is,” he took a shuddering breath and squeezed the sob out of that one too, “is that Tom took me to see the thestrals, after I got back. Couldn’t see them before. They’re really…they’re all about death, but they’re sweet as anything. And it was nice, that even if it was horrible what happened to dad, now I could see them.” He twitched his nose. “What makes me mad is the very next night Professor Dumbledore took me out to look at them too, and said basically the same thing. Which meant it was good of Tom to do that. Don’t understand why he did something so good.”

“Well he could see them too,” Harry offered. “So someone did that whole thestral visit for him, right? And so he repeated it to you.”

Rubeus’ dangerously shiny eyes steeled with newfound clarity. He stroked the thestral and nodded to himself. “Em. Thank you, Harry. Really good of you too, to listen to me rant all this time. I didn’t have anyone else to talk to about it, seeing as everyone else loved him, and I am how I am. You’re worth a thousand of Tom Riddle, and Professor Dumbledore is right to like you so much, definitely.”

“You’re worth ten thousand of Tom Riddle,” Harry softly replied.

They returned to the old wood, and Rubeus made a little too much noise for a hunt, until they came upon a dark blotch in the earth, and Harry at last saw why Rubeus was so careless; a doe was stuck sideways in the muck, eyes rolling.

“Inkwell-water,” Rubeus said, pointing at the sludge. “Sits there all clear until something tries to drink from it and then turns to tar.”

“Oh, that’s handy!”

“Sure is. I’ve been feeding Aragog easy since my wand was snapped.” Rubeus splashed through the tar and began hauling the deer out. Harry helped him get it to land, and when it thrashed, knocked it out with a stupefy. Rubeus went even further and stuck both his hands in to begin hauling out pigs – no, nogtails again. Whatever entrapped these animals had no effect on him.

“Is that safe?” Harry called.

“Oh, yeah, the magic that makes it stick doesn’t work on me, centaurs ask me to get things out of these pits all the time,” Rubeus said easily.

Harry stunned Rubeus’ living prizes, until they had one live deer, two dead ones, three living nogtails, and a dead one of those. Rubeus put his hands on his hips triumphantly, and so Harry huffed a laugh and did the same.

“The best hunt is an easy one, Ogg always says,” declared Rubeus.

“How do you get these out of here?” Harry wondered.

“String them up on a tree and lug it back. Bit hard to move around, mind…” Rubeus gestured to one of the smaller trees that were growing in the light allowed by the clearing. He was certainly big enough to use it as a pole.

“You know what? Let’s make it easier.” Harry took out his elder wand and cast a reducio on each of them, shrinking them small enough to fit in the palm of one’s hand.

“…Will that hold the whole way?”

Harry grinned. “Not only will it hold, the weight’s fully shrunk too. Light as air.”

He pocketed the live doe he needed. The rest they walked back to the cabin; Harry was not allowed in centaur space as a wizard, and he was needed to unshrink the animals. Rubeus could butcher the lot and prepare some nice venison stew.

“I don’t know anything about butchering,” Harry warned when he started unshrinking them all at the hut.

“Oh, don’t worry about that, Harry, Ogg can help me with the rest!” Rubeus dismissed.

Using the doe waking up soon as an excuse, which was, in fact, why he was so quick to escape, Harry ran back to the castle and quickly commandeered the defence classroom to set up the cabinet. He pushed into the Chamber of Secrets and unshrunk the doe before the giant stone toes of the statue.

“Salazar, open up!” Harry called.

Despite his crude address, the statue’s mouth opened. The basilisk rolled its head and breathed deeply.

“Food…”

“I couldn’t get you a male deer. Do you want me to wake it up to hunt?”

“Yesssss…”

“Okay. Do not leave the pipes unless the deer does, if you see a person turn your gaze away and do not hurt them. Come back after you eat,” Harry told it.

“I will obey, now let me kill! Let me tear and rend!” The basilisk demanded.

“Fine, tetchy. Ennervate.” The deer jolted awake, and immediately began running. Harry called after the door to open it, and it escaped into the caverns beyond. Harry pointed after it. “Go fetch!”

The basilisk slid lazily behind the pillars. The projection of Tom sleeping in his tornado of blankets gleamed on its scales as it passed by. Harry followed along until the centre table and leaned back to sit there, eyes skimming over the exposed curve of Tom’s neck bare to the ‘camera’, the way his hair curled up at the ends to create a ring of half-circles on the pillow he was tucked into. Harry unconsciously matched his breathing to the slow rise and fall of Tom’s shoulders, and felt a comfortable serenity come over him.

Another reason he felt nervous sleeping in a bed after Ginny left was that he’d gotten accustomed to watching her sleep. He probably would have been in his right mind if he’d offered a piece of the mirror – some form of continuity to assure him that it wasn’t that they were breaking up, but that she didn’t want to be pulled into the death spiral.

Back then, he was dedicating himself to a life with Ginny. Now Tom was his objective, and he could feel his entire body relax with the assurance that this objective was still tangible and within his reach.

Feeling settled, Harry headed back through the cabinet. He shrank his prize and headed to the teacher’s lounge; it was too late to use the office fireplace.

Hogwarts at night was pleasantly quiet, and the only people Harry came across were ghosts, who didn’t tend to notice him. So long as he was on the first floor where he should be, he wouldn’t catch the attention of Pringle.

Harry turned the corner, and bumped directly into Dumbledore.

Chapter Text

Dumbledore very gracefully stepped back, making room for Harry, and blinked once, as if he’d only felt a stiff breeze and not a full-body collision.  

“Oh. Hi, sir,” Harry said stiffly.

Dumbledore looked both at and through him.

“Er, sorry,” Harry pulled the invisibility cloak off.

“I was hoping to catch you before you left. Back from visiting Rubeus?” Dumbledore asked pleasantly.

“Oh, yeah! We went on a night hunt. I barely had to do anything though, since we went to the inkwell-water spot. He showed off the thestrals too, they’re gorgeous,” Harry said cheerfully.

“I’m pleased you’ve become such close companions! He speaks very highly of you.” Dumbledore began walking down the hall, and took Harry with him with a gentle hand on his back in silent invitation. “I often find myself worried for him. He is a boy of unique generosity and loyalty. You could find no heart larger than his.” He paused, lips curled in humour. “Including those rare few of larger stature.”

“He’s had it hard, hasn’t he,” Harry agreed, allowing Dumbledore to guide him up the stairs. “But it’s a nice place he’s got now. I prefer quiet and cozy when working. Big empty houses set my nerves on end.”

“Considering your background, I am sure such austere environments were never a source of comfort.” Dumbledore paused at the top of the stairs and smiled down at him. “Could I interest you in a cup of tea before you turn in for the night?”

“Since I’m already here,” Harry shrugged.

Pleased, Dumbledore continued walking with his hands behind his back. “How has Hogwarts been treating you then?”

“Oh, it’s great! It’s fun seeing kids learn the ropes. I think I might stay invisible once I go full-time, they seem to really like it. Drives the little ones nuts,” Harry laughed.

“How goes your curriculum?”

“They’re going to be pretty small books when I’m done with them, but Merrythought promised me it’s normal to release in editions, so it’s not like it has to be perfect. I was worried I wouldn’t have time with how many students there are, but I get a lot of my grading done during class. Actually, I have a third volume planned for rituals and enchantments, but that isn’t the sort of thing you teach a Hogwarts student, so I’ve had that shelved for after publishing the schoolbooks.”

He carefully did not mention he was still eyeing Gringotts for reference material.

“I’ve heard you’re set on a pulp publisher. Hogwarts is the lynchpin of wizarding culture; you could have it printed just about anywhere, if you truly wanted to,” Dumbledore mused.

“Well, yeah, but these are brand new books everyone needs to buy on short notice. It’s easier on them that way, isn’t it? Actually, thought I might as well order a bunch of extras, since there wouldn’t be much to borrow, the assistant teaching position finally gave me a budget for expendables.”

“That’s very considerate,” Dumbledore beamed.

Harry shrugged. “I’m a teacher. I need to have students who can make it to my class to be taught.”

“Armando has many strong opinions about the sanctity of this school, but I find that this reverence for the past leads to stagnation. It had been a risk to hire you, yet I see signs that this risk promises excellent returns,” Dumbledore remarked.

Harry felt his face warming a little. “I mean. I think ‘not everyone has a lot of money’ is an obvious one.”

“So one might think. Ah!” They stopped in the corridor that held his office, where Harry was surprised to see Cassandra Trelawney.

She looked between them in vacant distress, though that seemed to be her default state of being, so Harry could assume nothing from it.

“Good evening, Cassie. Care to join us for a spot of tea?” Dumbledore offered kindly.

This form of address stood out to Harry; he’d rarely heard Dumbledore refer to someone by a diminutive, and in fact he usually biased towards the full-name address. But he did use the Weasley’s preferred names, and Harry realized that even though she introduced herself by full name, ‘Cassie’ might be preferred for her too.

“Oh…I didn’t mean to interrupt…” She looked between them with her chihuahua-like fretfulness.

“Nonsense! You’re always welcome, and it would benefit Mr. Henry Evans to be better acquainted with his future coworkers.”

“Well if I’m not imposing…it’s only a small thing, I can go right away…” She clutched a wad of paper to her chest and stared vacantly at the floor.

“I’m sure whatever it is will be absolutely fascinating,” Dumbledore assured her, and ushered the two of them inside.

Despite the number of devices in Merrythought’s offices, Dumbledore was no slacker in terms of collecting baubles. He had shelves upon shelves of mysterious knick-knacks, and more interestingly, a number of awards on proud display. Dumbledore had a few in Harry’s time, but there was a quiet pride in the attention-grabbing layout of this era, though some had begun collecting dust.

Dumbledore poured them both tea. “How wonderful it is to finally make time for a chat.”

“Sorry for, erm. Vanishing. Every day,” Harry stiffly offered.

“I do not blame you for it. In fact, I find myself quite jealous, in my newfound fame.” Dumbledore stirred sugar into his tea with a pleasant smile. “I suspect most of the staff at this school find themselves adverse to scrutiny, so we are in good company. Some time ago, I came to Hogwarts as means of escape…Though it seems my reputation has caught up to me.”

He spoke as if he was always beloved by the people, but Harry knew he was referring to the scandal that hovered over his family from the day the Dumbledore patriarch was arrested. His mouth felt dry, uncomfortable with such proximity to Dumbledore’s dark history.

He shouldn’t know about this history, so he shouldn’t look uncomfortable. Unable to think of a lie that would explain his mood, Harry instead turned to the woman sitting next to him. “Can I call you Cassie, by the way?”

“Oh. Would you really? Most people aren’t willing to, I didn’t want to assume,” she whispered.

“I…think a nickname is something you offer,” Harry said cautiously.

“It’s just that if I offer, they don’t do it anyway. They do try to impress on me that legacies are important. I suppose by going into my grandmother’s field, I’m making the choice to inherit my grandmother’s legacy, and so being Cassandra is in of itself a statement on my dedication…It’s all very complicated, and I don’t quite understand, and I think it’s very good Albus is a homosexual so that he will not have any grandchildren named after him to experience this.”

Harry paused in the middle of stirring his own tea. His throat caught on a thousand insufficient ways of bridging that impressive conversational guillotine, unable to overcome this extremely new information.

Dumbledore, to his credit, only leaned back with raised brows. “Then there is a bright side to everything.”

“I…was named after my great-grandfather, and I didn’t know a thing about him,” Harry offered, “though I will keep all that in mind if I get really, fabulously popular, since the fame sounds like the problem here.”

“It is,” Cassie nodded.

“Cassie is, of course, a woman of incredible skill, and the lack of a natural Gift is irrelevant to her expertise. Her methodic way of thinking gives her great insight as often as it ails her. Tell me, is there something of interest you’d like to share?” Albus offered.

“Oh!” She almost spilled her tea in her eagerness to grab her papers. “Yes, actually! There’s this child in Wales who couldn’t keep attending Hogwarts after third year, but has the Gift. We’d been working through divination methods that best suited her over the year, and she decided on bone dice on a scapula casting board. She wasn’t familiar with runes and honestly their inconsistency is, frankly speaking, unforgivable in divination, so we used actual objects as dice. I have her sheet here!”

She offered a piece of parchment. Harry leaned over to look, and his jaw steadily dropped as he went.

Old Sickle – Age 5, found under leg of chair, first interaction with the concept of ‘treasure’, often used as setpiece for ‘treasure’ in play-acting

Seashell – Age 9, stolen from friend’s seashell-decorated casket, which held marble collection. Often kept in collections instead of on display out of guilt.

Glass Bead – Age 7, from mother’s bracelet, which snapped while doing labour outside. Was carried on a necklace until interest was lost, as the loose strings used in the necklaces tended to snap too.

Needle – Age 12, expressed strong dislike in sewing due to repeatedly poking fingers hard enough to draw blood, despite using a thimble.

Paper Finger Puppet – Age 3, used as a distraction while mother busy cooking, rendered impervious to all damage in a fit of accidental magic after it fell into the soup stock.

Vitamin – Age 10, fell under the bed when ill and having difficulty swallowing, discovered when ill again.

Burnt Clothespin – Age 11, set fire to a favourite dress due to accidental magic, which led to a week-long malaise only ended by Hogwarts letter.

Hogwarts Logo cutout – Age 11, cut from Hogwarts Letter for display and treasure, first cast of an intentional preservation spell and pasted to a bit of cloth.

“Aren’t divination dice supposed to say stuff like ‘destruction’ and ‘celebration’, and all that?” Harry asked sceptically. He remembered a few basic tenets from his textbook.

“Well, most like to say that, because it sounds very austere and professional and easy to understand, but in actuality Fate is a matter of predictable context, so it’s trying to contextualize the way things are, or were, or will be, based on how we have, do, and will behave. Osteomancy has always involved throwing die with trinkets, and the die are specific to each person, which creates a sort of lens of specificity. It also lets us increase the amount of language usable in a divination.”

Cassie lost almost all of her nerves in her passion, looking for the first time clear-eyed and driven.

“So the seashell she took from her friend – this could mean ‘theft’, but it could also mean ‘betrayal’, or ‘hiding’. As you can see… random draw has gone out of fashion for a very good reason, but that does not mean we should rule it out, because people like Anwyn Caddell can have very strong bias towards it, and I don’t think it’s a good idea to force someone to operate against their nature, even if it means their divination is difficult to work with.”

“Well said,” Dumbledore nodded with a warm smile.

“So,” she shuffled her papers and paused. “Sorry, you must not know modernized osteomancy well. Em…So there’s the bone, which acts as the ‘topic’. The divination is cast when the diviner infuses their will into the bone and then casts the die. We also do the same with the scapula board, to increase accuracy. And then a three-sided die. An actual die, for selecting a number.”

“Three?”

“The absolute most precise thing in Divination, the Three Tenets Of Fate; One is the ‘locus’, that which all things lead to. Two is the ‘dyadic’, that which is both mirrored and opposed. Three is the ‘cyclic’, that which is repeated and iterated. I think it’s the only thing about divination which is always the same, though it’s hard to interpret too; for example, a prophecy about three people will often be a ‘locus’. Sorry, it’s a very vague art even when it’s not. Anyway, here’s her first cast.”

On the next piece of parchment was an ink copy of a bone surrounded by all the little objects pointing at it, with the three-sided die – which was a strange triangle pressed into petals – exposing two wings displaying the number ‘three’.

“And her second…”

All objects pointed towards the bone. Die cast to cyclic future.

Harry felt cold.

“Third…”

All objects pointed to the bone, and again, die cast to cyclic future.

“Is that normal?” Harry croaked.

“Oh, yes! The return of prophecy is going to be a bit of a cataclysm, so if you’re too far away from your subject – that is, you’re not close enough to look through the fabric of the crease – you’re just going to keep divining the End of All Fates resolving. It’s actually very sad that we will get prophecies again soon, because for the past ten years this was a consistent method of identifying those with the Gift. So, Anwyn reported about fourteen casts of ‘resolution to the End of All Fates’, which— which isn’t relevant, of course, but she did not narrow down her divination, resulting in…”

Cassie lay the final cast down.

This assortment looked truly random, clumped together in a way that suggested they fell that way because they were dumped in the same spot, and yet Dumbledore’s brow immediately furrowed at the result as if it had serious meaning.

“Yes, I will—I will address that very worrying bit at the top, in a second,” Cassie vaguely indicated the only striking thing about it, which was the tangent of the beloathed needle and the tragically scorched clothespin lining up almost perfectly, with the bone laid on top.

Instead, she touched the objects the furthest away from the bone. “So, distance from the bone means lack of relevancy. We have the puppet, which is ‘youth’, ‘distraction’, ‘protection’, ‘food’. Then there is the sickle, which is ‘metal’, ‘treasure’, ‘value’, and ‘load-bearing’. And the Hogwarts letter, which is ‘Hogwarts’, ‘joy’, and ‘success’, that one is pointing at the bone, so there’s some continuity.”

Harry nodded, though upon hearing ‘lack of relevancy’ absolutely none of what she just said stuck.

“The three is centred and maintained through all fifteen casts, so this is still about cycles. So, from the top, what I’m really worried about is the bone – the topic – is laying on top of the needle, which means ‘blood’, ‘pain’, ‘failure’, and ‘craft’. It is the most relevant item, and, well, not a good thing you want the future to be about.”

There was definitely a lot of blood, pain, and failure in the future. It seemed like everything in the world bent to cause the most pain, to violate the most trust.

Though this should be about Anwyn Caddell’s future. He’d been working to change everyone else’s.  

“So, the, erm, most worrying bit, is here,” she pointed to the clothespin. “It is— well it means so many negative things you could call it the ‘Tower’ in a tarot deck. So a lot of pain and failure pointed at ‘destruction’ and ‘sadness’, I don’t— I don’t really like that very much.”

Harry could almost hear the strings from the first track of The Pious Bird of Good Omen in the back of his head.

“Nor do I,” Dumbledore mused.

“Okay. The needle is also pointing at the vitamin, which is, pretty simple in meaning, it’s ‘health’ and ‘illness’. What’s interesting is that the medicine and the clothespin are evenly spaced, implying a choice, which I think is a strange cast for a cyclic divination.

“And then the puppet, despite being so absent from the overall storyline, it’s even turned away, but it’s still lined up with the medicine-needle-clothespin string. And on the other side, lined up with the clothespin…destruction and treasure is a very common combination.”

Almost immediately, Harry thought of the horcruxes. Illness, to craft, to destruction, to treasure. It felt impossible it could be read any other way, to the point that he began to suspect it was a divination of general future. Dumbledore would not look so grim if it weren’t.

But Cassie had already moved on, pointing to the bottom of the topical bone. “So, there’s an interesting cluster here. The seashell, which I told you already is ‘theft’, ‘betrayal’, ‘hiding’, that’s touching the bone. Highly relevant. What’s touching the seashell but not the bone is the bead, which is ‘love’, ‘motherhood’, ‘breaking’, and ‘legacy’. Erm. A tricky one, yes. So, the bead describes the shell. I’m thinking…Hiding a theft—”

The locket.

“Or betraying for love—”

Snape’s bloody fingers around the bottle.

“Or stealing a legacy.”

Voldemort, who had eroded himself until there was nothing left but legacy.

The room was silent for a moment.

“Ah… So the seashell is not parallel to needle, but in fact pointing at it. Which indicates, well, again, continuity, cause and effect.”

The fall of a dark lord. The rise of a dark lord. Voldemort’s past, present, and future, a birth so cataclysmic that he seized fate by entangling himself with Harry. Harry had defied the future by going back, the past was warped by the impact of his arrival. This was his present. All that remained.

The photograph seemed to mock him, an assortment of little baubles not unlike the 11-year-old Tom Riddle’s collection of stolen prizes.

“Henry?”

Harry jerked his head up to see Dumbledore, face set in concern.

“Sorry,” Harry ground out, “this is really hard to follow, I’m not sure…”

Cassie’s previous passion died out so quickly he regretted saying anything, replaced with a hunched, trembling vulnerability. “No, it’s alright, I know it’s not for everyone. It could mean a hundred things, very difficult…”

“If I may lend my reading,” Dumbledore said softly, igniting some of Cassie’s previous fervour with his words, “I think this casting implies one’s reaction to a period of great strife. A choice between destruction and healing in the eye of the beholder, the seashell.”

“Yes…! The seashell both pointing and touching the subject does feel like that, doesn’t it?” Cassie nodded quickly.

“The most difficult thing to ascertain is the seashell and bead pairing. All of your suggestions are quite powerful statements. My only offering…is to not discount the presence of ‘mother’ among your readings.”

Harry allowed himself to relax at Dumbledore’s deviation from his own interpretation. While he had the entire context of the time travel, it could just as easily be about Anwyn Caddell’s future, or the future that would unfold after Harry changed the past.

Maybe he was being hopeful in making it all about his own time period. He did not want to know what it meant to have such a dire-sounding future in store for some distant Welsh girl, or worse, himself in the present, after all he’d done to escape the pain and sadness Voldemort had caused.

“Maybe it’s about a failure to craft medicine,” Harry offered, and he let the conversation wander off into distant abstracts that had no relevance to him at all.

Chapter Text

Tom could no longer deny he’d been avoiding the diary altogether.  

The latest charms journal would be next week, and by then the first thing the diary would bring up would be how long it took him to reply. They did not maintain a constant dialogue, but abandoning it for a week after a fight would be enough to arouse its suspicions.

Even so, every time he reached for it, he remembered he had no excuse for how the gala ended and fell to total incoherence. He had never been at a loss for words for several days in a row. It was unlike him.

Finally, he became so frustrated with himself he decided he would simply act on whatever the diary had to say.

I’ve escaped illness. Excuse my frustration; your stubbornness had nothing to do with the quality of my night.

There was a long pause, which Tom chose to interpret as considering.

You’re still cross with me.

Tom clicked his tongue. It was difficult to keep his writing measured. You cannot honestly tell me that were you in my position you would be capable of extending your trust again. You were lucky not to be shelved, and you remain open by only my grace.

I’ve been careful. I’ve been taking care of you since.

Thank you, Tom wrote slowly and deliberately, and then, with gritted teeth, As I am well now, you can have the memories. I did promise.

Am I going to see what frustrated you so much? I could help.

An idea struck Tom.

I’ll give you most of the night. I’d like your prediction on what happened next. It was, after all, incredibly unexpected.

And he began extracting that night, all the way up to the end of the laughably brief CPIO announcement, in which they grovelled for the attentions of an audience who found the whole affair agonizingly uninteresting and a rude interruption to their conversations.

For that brief window in the dark, Tom had drunk in Henry Evans, watched how he appeared totally enraptured by Dumbledore’s meagre summary. How he lit up at Fleamont Potter, to whom he shared a passing resemblance that night – a personal hero?

Watching Evans full of horrible, obvious fondness for someone who was not Tom had been…At the time, Tom had been stewing on his annoyance and bewilderment that Evans had sought him out so passionately only to take the piss, and he felt slighted that the shameless rogue was capable of a modicum of honest affection.

Which he could not be blamed for thinking. Who flirts by annoying and demeaning the object of their affections? Was he a masochist hoping to be tossed out on his ass?

Tom glared sourly at the diary as it digested the memories.

I can’t believe Bags is still at it. He’s twenty-two by now, isn’t he? What a prat.

It’s good to see Fin’s loyalty is, as always, well in hand.

Tom realized that as he had been neglecting in-person visits with friends, the last time the diary had seen the Death Eaters was directly before graduation. It only had the implied association through the records of his continued visits to Abraxas. He didn’t remember if he’d even mentioned that Nott and Rosier had been writing him, because he rarely found those letters interesting enough to comment on.

Old money hand-me-downs? Why didn’t we know that? We could have nosed through the Lost and Hidden Room before we left. God but Abraxas never tells us these things when we need to hear them.

Tom, remembering exactly what point in the night he caught sight of Evans, felt abruptly light-headed in his anticipation. He leaned back and folded his arms, glaring at the book intently.

The stalker

You know him now? Since when? Why’s he with Slughorn

With sudden viciousness, what right does he have to say that he should be glad I didn’t toss that ungrateful little leech off the astronomy tower

More calmly and in cleaner script, so elegantly it was obviously in compensation for what he’d just written, Thank god you still had the mind to dress Slughorn down. I’ve had fantasies of that.

Tom shifted in his rising discomfort.

A pause.

What?

He’s the new defence professor?

Are you serious why. how old is he

He is. How is he teaching classes without being there? I don’t understand

Invisible, Tom wrote lazily.

What?

A long pause.

He defended me

You

He seemed to dislike Orion quite a bit, Tom wrote back, feeling uncomfortably warm.

No, he was looking at you. He only said that to Orion because he upset you. How do you know him?

Tom’s stomach swooped. He ignored it. From the papers. We hadn’t interacted after the last time I wrote you.

What is he in the papers for??

Parasites trying to squeeze out another front-page Dumbledore story.

It sat with this information, and what little remained of the memory. Tom’s foot bounced impatiently. A headache was beginning to form, and he was wondering if he should have shared so much after all.

Finally, ink began spreading across the pages again.

Does he like me?

In Tom’s head this question was pathetic and unsure and the trigger for a spiral of delusion, but the diary’s writing was frank and confident. It was assessing the information it was given, seeking a factual answer.

It seems he does, Tom wrote back.

Well, he is a homosexual, I suppose it’s only natural. Dots prickled next to that sentence; an old habit of tapping the parchment with the quill while thinking. He seemed quite cavalier; I can see what you found so frustrating. But I noticed that he was very reserved and attentive while you were speaking to others. I get the impression he did not know much about my personal life, and was interested to learn.

Tom finally allowed himself to relax. The diary’s ability to view memories of the entire scene, not just his point of view, was irreplaceable. It was as he thought; Evans had simply guessed, based on an admittedly impressive investigation.

How old is he?

Twenty. He used Dumbledore to get the job, just in time for Dumbledore’s newfound fame to be enough for it to succeed, Tom’s lip curled.

Hence the newspaper, I see now.  A line of pricks. Okay. I think I am ready to guess.

Tom straightened.

I like to revel in complete victory. You are obviously annoyed he has schemed his way into the Defence position that should have been ours. After conquering Slughorn and shaking off that insipid twat, you would continue your hunt and thoroughly eviscerate him. He is unafraid of you, so I can only imagine it did not work. That was why you argued with me, he wouldn’t give you the satisfaction.

Tom tapped the book with his quill. That’s just the thing, wasn’t it? It had worked. Evans looked extremely shaken by Tom’s intuition. There was a moment where he had appeared, for the first time in their limited interactions, truly uncomfortable. It seemed that Evans was both genuine in his erotic delusions and uneasy with Tom knowing the depth of his depravity…

No, he was far too shameless for that. Uncomfortable with…Of course, he had to have gotten that information somehow. He didn’t want Tom knowing his sources!

Feeling heartened for the first time in several days, Tom wrote back. Excellent analysis, and almost entirely correct. He ignored all prompting and revealed that he knew I used the basilisk to kill Myrtle Warren.

What, and he liked that?

Tom’s face warmed. I believe he was more impressed with the fact I didn’t get caught.

Are we to kill him then?

Hogwarts teacher, chummy with Dumbledore, and a sycophantic homosexual. Naturally we can squeeze some use out of him. I’d prefer not to have any murders tied back to me. He’d already guessed I was responsible for the pruning of the Riddles.

I see

Leave the diary open so I can review each memory for Slytherins who knew of my involvement in the attacks.

Excellent. Charms journal next week.

Oh, don’t tease while you’re leaving me open, I’m going to be half-mad pining for all the case studies they’re going to write after that last one.

I’m going to wake you day-of and close you seconds after copying it out if you keep complaining.

:(

Teenage self successfully disarmed, Tom got ready for work in a much better mood. He felt more himself with a plan, as well; instead of collapsing into gibbering paranoia, was it not more productive to find the leak and practice his vivisection enchantment on them? He would very much like to know how surgery would play out on a magically separated body, after all.

Energized at last, he felt confident enough to leave the Gaunt ring at home, to experiment with being away from his latest horcrux. It had been a year, and he’d at last recovered from his frenzy. He picked it up with a handkerchief to avoid the hollow ache – a symptom that had become almost entirely unnoticeable with the diary, so will soon be a nonissue – and hid it in a little box.

When he stepped out  the door, he felt strong.

⎯ ♢♢♢ ⎯

Alda Day had gotten increasingly comfortable with Tom, and he had in turn learned how to open her up.

She was much like Dippet, nostalgic for traditional teaching methods, pining for her school days, and pleased with herself for knowing trivia about wizarding history. Like donning an old skin, Tom became shy, curious, and deferential to her superior knowledge, making her feel as if she were imparting some great secret with each new inane detail.

She had accurately pinned down his interest in Morgana when he was still feeling her out, and would point out her favourite Morgana chapters in the history books her husband collected.

“She’s an icon for young women, they should be teaching her as foundational to the first great separation,” Alda tutted after one of the more impassioned accounts of the woman’s disagreements with Merlin, which included the many times she had thwarted him.

Tom had also read up more on the legends to better pander to Alda’s tastes. “What do you make of Le Morte D’Arthur?”

“Well it’s muggle, isn’t it, a big self-important Norman text that’s nine centuries off! You’d just as well ask what a German thought about Grimm’s! Oh, but the push it gave to preserve old records, I can’t say it wasn’t foundational. The Norman conquest was key to the formation of Hogwarts as a proper school, but the archives weren’t preserved as well as they should have been. When it all became trendy in the 1500s, it made the history of Avalon so popular that it became the curriculum! Bathilda Bagshot has a section about it in Hogwarts: A History, but if you want details I have just the thing…”

Tom learned all manner of minutia; Morgana, mistaken for a squib, replaced Nimue, a muggleborn witch, an exchange that was common in those days. Morgana had unexpectedly come into her power and flourished in the mostly instinct-based Dark Arts without stringent guidance, while Nimue took her position as a servant of magic with quiet nobility, up until her mentor Merlin had expressed his sexual designs upon her, at which point she imprisoned him and impersonated him in the proceedings. He then invented the entire field of charms, possibly as penance for being such a tremendous fucking failure.

Tom had begun bringing things from Borgin & Burkes to the Day house and gently guiding the discussion to different eras roughly parallel to his baubles. With only a few well-timed words, he had her opening her wallet. He was, after all, a friend, a fellow hobbyist in history, and not at all covetous of her collection; why wouldn’t he want to be practically giving away priceless historical artifacts?

He got rid of most of them at significant markup from the already-overpriced numbers Burke had outlined. Tom had a budget for expendables for the first time in months. Borgin smiled at him when his shift started now.

And Alda was so pleased with his work that after only a week, she had decided to invite him to one of her socials.

The elderly women of the most powerful pureblood families in Britain sat in a circle, chatting amicably. He immediately zeroed in on the richest among them, Hepzibah Smith, though she gave him a dismissive little coo and turned back to her gloating when he greeted the group.

No matter. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither did it fall.

“You simply must see what Tom has sold me only two days ago,” Alda chuckled. “Nipsy? Nipsy, the circlet!”

Nipsy obediently popped in with the jewel-encrusted Byzantian circlet, gratingly tacky by modern standards but most definitely to Hepzibah’s tastes. “Look, look at this. The detailing, it was from Merlin’s age. Before goblin inscriptions, even!”

“Oh, how lovely! Could it be the Diadem of Rowena?” Hepzibah Smith cried.

“Not so. The diadem of Rowena was silver, and noted for its simplicity. This is more likely to be the circlet of Nimue. She was known to be showered in treasures that she would not wear – many of them would have been in storage, to later be sold as antiques in stores such as ours,” Tom said smoothly.

The old women all ‘ooh’d and tittered over his delivery. He eyed each of them for signs of weakness. Any one of them could be his next customer.

“Goodness, your young man is well-informed. Borgin would have told me it was worn by Merlin himself,” Elmira Rowle chortled.

“Our philosophies on customer trust depart in certain respects. In his opinion, we should constantly play up our inventory, so as to tempt customers to our robust private selection. I, however, think our public items have their own charm,” he told her, airy-soft and head bowed.

“Very cunning aren’t you? A Slytherin?” Wilhelmine Macmillan squinted at him.

“And thus, a traditionalist.” He straightened and cleared his throat.

Woe, the pain cradled by Hocg-Wyrt, shelter to the unwanted kin,

To be a shadow cast by the light of God, in anguish, we are heretics unending,

The light of God which inspires no love, no power, no vision, but fills with great might those frightened animals who bear our bones,

My joy is resplendent as a magic mien touches my tongue, inherited from the earth that cherishes,

Under the elder tree we hide from the fierce light of Heaven, and should it lead us into darkness, I bear that sin,

For I cherish the earth that sheltered me, and my children shall cherish Hocg-Wyrt in turn!

“The Cry of Salazar Slytherin,” Hepzibah Smith realized, suitably impressed.

“1937 translation, yes,” Tom said with a quirk of the lips. “Salazar Slytherin’s more…romantic tendencies are oft forgotten in discussions of his legacy. Actually, I have a volume that might interest you…a very ancient copy of his writings, ‘The Cry of Salazar Slytherin’ included, of course…”

It was, in fact, one copy of countless collected several centuries later, but it wasn’t as if they knew how to date these things, and the only woman he needed the unquestioning trust of was Alda.

They did readings from the book and argued over who would buy it and for how much, a miniature auction in their tearoom. Nipsy refilled their teapot twice. He remained quiet with his hands gently folded in his lap, harmless as anything.

Lovie Selwyn was staring intently at him. He pretended to shyly avoid her gaze, hoping to draw her in so she would tell him what her fucking problem was.

“I have to say…we were talking to Melania, weren’t we, Wilhelmine, your sister? Were you there for the business during the gala?”

Tom froze.

“Oh, yes,” Wilhelmine scoffed in an exaggerated fashion. “Yes, she babies that idiot boy, so proud to raise herself an heir, to the Black fortune no less. Don’t know how anyone has the patience for her ranting, tiresome to keep up with her. If I’m correct, young Tom ended that night just as harassed.”

“I…did indeed,” Tom said through clenched teeth.

 “Hexing a poor little shopboy at a public event and duelling so crudely, what an embarrassment,” Lovie huffed. “What could have possibly possessed him?”

Tom’s scalp prickled. So he was assumed innocent, but treated as lesser. How should he feel about that, exactly?

“…I had…stumbled upon the techniques he used to get his job,” Tom dismissed. “He sought to intimidate me.”

All the women leaned forward in interest, and Alda pressed a hand to her breast. “Techniques, you say?”

“A greased palm, a special order of pineapple, and the mystifying tastes of Albus Dumbledore,” Tom ventured.

All the women looked at each other meaningfully. How intriguing.

“…Though I couldn’t possibly know what that might be,” Tom said leadingly.

“Well, everyone knows Albus Dumbledore is a…a confirmed bachelor,” Lovie sniffed.

Tom’s stomach plummeted very unpleasantly.

“…Is he?” He somehow managed to say without sounding strangled.

“Oh, yes, common knowledge. You should have seen him in school, flaming queer he was, the hottest property amongst the experimental. All his little bent friends trailing after him for a crumb of his attentions, though he wouldn’t touch anyone who didn’t have twelve Os,” Wilhemine chuckled cruelly.

Tom swallowed and took a very delicate sip of tea. “…Sexual favours. Then.”

“Shame to confirm that bachelor, that Defence professor could be a delight with some polishing,” Hepzibah simpered. He barely heard her.  

Could the source be Albus Dumbledore? Evans’ uncharacteristic discomfort, that he was afraid Tom would find out—could it be that Albus Dumbledore spied on Tom throughout his youth, and Evans had…had offered his body, sold himself for Dumbledore’s obviously biased opinions, which would be not-at-all accurate, considering how little attention he paid Tom in those seven years?

He’d gotten his job so quickly, so slyly, that even Evans’ predecessor who was tasked with training him didn’t know of his hiring. Was it worth it, sucking Dumbledore’s elderly cock to hear his fanciful lies about a boy who hadn’t been worthy of thinking about until he went so far as murder? Was the murder of the Riddles Dumbledore’s guess as well? He’d sit on his knees for such an unreliable account? He’d—He’d debase himself— allow himself to be— and who the fuck told Dumbledore about Voldemort?

A quiet tinkling was the only warning Tom got before the handle of his teacup broke clean off, spilling tea all over his robes.

The women shouted in alarm, and he seethed in pain at his burning legs. Wands went every which way in their eagerness to rescue him, and he ended up with a tutu of soap suds, which he carefully cleaned away with a grim smile.

Tom swallowed dryly and quirked his head, presenting an eerie calm maintained only by the rigidity of his occlumency. “What brittle cups…my apologies for the panic. Excuse me for the imposition, but…you know, we actually have this darling teaset, in much better condition…”

If the diary had nothing for him, he would tear its fucking pages out.

Chapter Text

Harry no longer had time to work on his textbooks. The exam crunch was upon Hogwarts.

The final essays were to confirm the students had understood the full breadth of the material before exam week started, which meant they were longer, contained more topics Harry had to skim back to confirm, and had significantly worse handwriting than previous homework, which already wasn’t great.

It was mind-numbing work that made his eyes water, and so overwhelming he didn’t even have any spare time to be bored by it. Merrythought assured him that this was because he wasn’t very good at grading essays.

“Thinking maybe I had too much of an ego about the work,” Harry muttered as Merrythought marched the seventh year Slytherins and Ravenclaws to the duelling hall. “Thought if I taught practically, I wouldn’t have as much to mark.”

“Unfortunately, you can’t trust children by their word that they’ve understood what you taught them. You may be lenient with your essays, of course, if you’re willing to make up for it with rigorous review.”

Harry wrinkled his nose at the backs of their students. “Can you help me with the syllabus as well as the textbooks?”

“Of course. I would never let my students suffer an upstart youth who has no idea what he’s doing.”

Harry gasped dramatically, as she couldn’t see him make faces under the invisibility cloak.

Of all the duelling classes he’d sat in on, Harry had never seen students so miserable, no doubt stressed from cramming for their upcoming N.E.W.T.s that would define the rest of their careers. Harry was careful not to bump into anyone as he followed Merrythought, though he could hear whispers whenever a student was close enough to see the light distort around the invisible fabric.

“Rest assured, there will be no more essays, and the remainder of your lessons will be to make sure you can comfortably repeat every technique I’ve taught you,” Merrythought said, as she said to every class the past week. Much like the fifth years, they all practically collapsed into each other in relief, and much applause was had.

“Form pairs. I want you to conjure a basic obstacle for your partner to defend against. You can replicate the dummies if you like. Take turns, and don’t be afraid to heckle your partner.”

The students began drifting into pairs, but before anyone could move into place, a hand shot up.

“Will we be seeing what the new professor is capable of?”

It was Orion Black. Of course it was Orion Black. He was probably still sour about Harry threatening to sabotage his grades and wanted to pre-emptively tear him down. Did he really think Harry could get away with doing that to a student?

Orion looked at Harry with an imperious little tilt of the chin, smug he knew where he was, as if it were not blatantly obvious with this much direct light and Harry moving all around.

Merrythought raised an eyebrow. “The new professor has shown himself to be very capable, and I’ve long deemed him worthy of the job. I don’t see how it is at all relevant to you, Mr. Black, or indeed anyone in this room, as none of you will be returning to the school to receive his instruction.”

“Not to offend, professor, but some of us have family to worry about. My little sister will be the one growing up with this stranger who’s barely graduated himself. In fact…where did you graduate, sir?” Orion made a big show of looking around as if he suddenly had no idea where Harry had gone.

That’s it. Harry cast a disillusionment spell, stepped backwards, and carefully sidestepped behind Merrythought with as little movement to the fabric as possible. The students, as expected, continued to stare at the obvious invisible ripple still hanging there. It was difficult to disillusion empty air, and Harry really had to fight with the spell in the past, but it was a useful trick for people who didn’t realize the Potter invisibility cloak wasn’t just demiguise hair.

Orion refocused on the disillusioned area, totally oblivious to Harry circling the crowd. “I hear rumours you didn’t even have a full education. Teaching household charms to impoverished children in Lithuania or something like that, were you? Or were you personally doing battle with Grindelwald himself? The things people say to get some time in the papers.”

Harry ripped the cloak off with a swirl of his wand once he was behind the students. “Well, it is a Defence Against the Dark Arts class, Mr. Black.”

The whole class whirled around, and Orion looked visibly off-kilter at having his confidence in Harry’s invisibility challenged. Harry strolled right up through the crowd with his hands behind his back so he could better tuck the shrunken cloak away.

When he reached Merrythought again, he swatted his hand through the distorted spot with a speculative little moue. “…And I don’t think there’s a defence against a dark art much more impressive than blocking a killing curse.”

He enjoyed the ripple of dawning realization through the students as their eyes followed his fingers up to his forehead, pushing aside his long fringe to expose the electrified imprint of the curse on his brow.

Orion’s lips twitched downwards. “...How impressive, Mr. Evans, but the subject of my complaint was your capacity to teach. If I recall, you made a public affair of not knowing the rules to duelling. Though it certainly gave the Prophet something to gossip about, didn’t it?”

God, it’s like he was home. “Did it really? I don’t have a Daily Prophet subscription.”

“Why, couldn’t afford it?”

Harry pointed at him. “Five points from Slytherin for your cheek.”

Orion scoffed and turned to Merrythought. “Oh, he can’t honestly be allowed to—” 

“Ten points from Slytherin for disrupting the class,” Merrythought added crisply, and the other Slytherins all groaned in agony. 

Orion wasn’t one to be deterred. “My question stands, Mr. Evans—”

“Professor Evans,” Harry corrected solemnly. “One point from Slytherin for disrespect.”

“Black, will you cut it out?” One of the Slytherins whined.

“I want to see him at work. If Professor Merrythought vouches for him, he’d be a perfect fit for a demonstration,” Orion boomed, audibly flustered at his audience’s annoyance. Tom would have kept up respectable address and quietly sabotaged Harry. He’d have rolled with being antagonized, only expressing enough to make his annoyance clear, and pinpoint a weakness to target later. Orion was trying to play the same games, but was simply not very good at them.

Merrythought look sceptically at Harry, who gave a one-shouldered shrug. He glanced at Orion. “Don’t see why not.”

“Merlin’s arse and Morgana’s teats,” Merrythought muttered under her breath, which surprised a laugh out of Harry.

The students stepped back as Merrythought brought together a centre stage. Harry bounded up and rolled on his back heels, giving the students a cheerful bow. This was the first time nearly all of them had ever seen Harry in person; if the Prophet didn’t take pictures for whatever the gala article was about, the only frame of reference they’d have would be the split-second turnaround on that hack front page article. 

He was admittedly unimpressive, wearing plain robes and a plainer cardigan, and he hadn’t bothered brushing his hair before tying it back. He hadn’t expected to be visible today.

Orion folded his arms and regarded him with a contemptuous smirk. See, again, Tom wouldn’t have made it nearly so obvious he planned on publicly undermining Harry. Just how are they raising the Slytherins of yesteryear? Worse than Draco, he was.

Merrythought stepped onto the duelling platform, looking fatigued. “Better now while I’m still here, I suppose.”

“Aww. The kids are just wound up from exams, give them some grace.” He outstretched his wand arm and bowed. She did the same, even though they weren’t duelling. 

With a wave of her wand, three mannequins burst forth into the air, two of them landing heavily in front of Harry. 

“Begin.”

Harry immediately tried his flipping charm timed exactly to the bigger mannequin taking a swing at him, which knocked the flying mannequin straight out of the air. He hadn’t figured out how to make something spin continuously, but momentum was momentum. A simple fog spell to limit the mannequin’s movements, and then a series of stunners that made the entire cloud shine vivid red. The flying mannequin clattered to the ground, and he followed up quickly with a slipping charm underfoot. 

As the fog cleared, he could see Merrythought conduct her effigies like an orchestra, adjusting the specifics of the animation spell as she went, which was genuinely impressive. Wordlessly, even more so. 

The bigger mannequin slipped, but used that momentum to rush Harry, who stopped it dead with a protego and twirled behind it, where he gave the smaller one a good kick that kept it off him.

He deflected a few more blows with protego, and then used a tripping jinx to get the big one to fall. 

And just as he was thinking of a good way to disarm a troll, he saw the snake.

It was a hell of a lot better of a serpensortia than Draco cast in his second year. The snake was massive, about as big as they get before getting into the territory of zoo animals, and gunning straight for him, likely with the goal of tripping him.

He deflected the little mannequin and scanned the crowd. It wasn’t Orion who cast it — he was still standing in the exact same spot, arms folded — but one of the Slytherin boys who was standing behind Orion. He’d circled all the way around the duelling ring. 

Harry pointed the boy out. “Five points to Slytherin for paying attention to your teachers and applying yourself.” The boy made a gargled noise and ducked out of sight. 

While the snake wound closer, the larger mannequin picked up the smaller one to use as a weapon. That made things easier. 

Harry whipped his wand upward, and the little doll jerked into the air. He slashed his wand down, and it slammed into the larger mannequin’s head. It dropped like a stone. The crowd went wild.

“Oh my lord,” Merrythought declared faintly.

Harry beamed and stepped back just in time to avoid the snake, careful not to look too closely at it lest he lapse into untimely parseltongue. “Learned that one in my first year!”

The snake snapped at his feet, and he leaped backwards over the fallen mannequins. The students, who had all been annoyed at Orion causing trouble, were evidently willing to tolerate it if it meant they could watch Harry do something cool.

Harry cupped his mouth to his wrist and hissed into his arm. “Get rid of the snake, no killing.”

And then he threw out his arm and said for all his students to hear, “engorgio!”

In a flash, the middle of the ring was taken up by a long white body, and as he repeated the final movement, it grew larger and larger, until Bowl was a floral-painted wall between him and the snake. Students shrieked in delight. 

“That is excellent work,” Merrythought noted, and turned to her class. “When faced by an imposing threat you cannot be sure you can cast around, making the illusion of a larger threat is always the safest option. It does not need to be animated to do its job of scaring off your average demon.”

“This one came pre-animated,” Harry added. He hopped up onto Bowl’s tail and walked up her spine as she began lifting her head, until his hair grazed the ceiling. The conjured snake, bewildered, bumped up against Bowl’s belly. When Bowl moved in reaction to it, the snake quickly slid off the stage towards the crowd, eliciting more screams. 

Bowl caught it with the tip of her tail and flung it into the air. Harry leaned forward and just managed to catch it in one hand. The crowd whooped, and he did his best not to preen. 

“Sshhh, don’t struggle,” Harry hissed to it, out of view of the students. 

“Running to magic, running. Bite?” The snake responded. Conjured snakes were even less coherent than natural ones. 

“You did your job, don’t move anymore,” he assured it. The tip of his wand tapped the end of its tail, and he said the dispelling spell loudly. An ocean of young adults stared at the snake burning up in his hands. 

“Well, don’t do that to a dark creature,” Merrythought added tartly.

“Do not repeat that!” Harry confirmed. “I am a trained seeker!”

She pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. “Now that you have seen a demonstration… will you all please pair up.”

Harry slid down Bowl’s back on one foot and shrunk her back to her previous size. She climbed right up his palm back into his sleeve.

Orion stood there, gobsmacked, in a crowd of his applauding peers. 

“I hope this serves as a resume,” Harry said with his arms outstretched. “Ten points from Slytherin for disrupting the lesson. Again.”

⎯ ♢♢♢ ⎯

After safely returning home, Harry dropped his essays heavily on the table that sat at the heart of the Chamber of Secrets. The looming spectre of marking two hundred essays in a week and a half could not cast a shadow on the glow of pride in his performance. Anyone still alive to remember him would have said that he was worse than James in that moment.

Harry should have become a duellist. That would have suited him better. It was still sports, and would have satiated his hunger to cut his teeth on a challenge. Wouldn’t his life be better if he got into duelling? 

But it was the artform of the elite. Harry knew he wouldn’t have been able to stomach sportsmanship with Voldemort’s old sycophants. At least when he duelled Draco, Draco knew he deserved at least some of it.

…Now that he thought about it, he hadn’t spoken to Draco in nearly a year before he left. After clearing the bad blood, their relationship had emptied out. 

A lot of things had emptied out.

“Open,” said a voice behind him, and Harry spun around to see he had a guest. 

…Or rather, someone had come home.

“Have you been in the pipes this whole time?” Harry cried as the basilisk slithered past him, its covered eyes locked to the ceiling of brackish water above.

“It is cold, and I seek nests.”

“This is your nest, you little idiot! What if you bump into a poor house elf?” Harry leaned forward in his chair to watch it pass the pillars, trailing green slime the whole way. “And it’s much warmer in here than the pipes.”

“Not warm enough,” the basilisk dismissed, winding its way up Salazar’s body. “The warmth of my master has long died. I will sleep like this. Sleep until I hunger! No longer!”

“Listen, I can pop by the restricted section to see about basilisk care, and we can figure that out together.” The snake’s belly was slimy, but the scales were brighter in the lantern light. Fresh skin. “Did you shed? Where did you shed.”

“In the highest towers!” The basilisk smugly declared.

“No, don’t— what tower?” 

“Above lake waters! I hid from the eyes of the unworthy and cast off my casing on the roughest stones!”

“Oh, Gryffindor tower. Of course. Great.” Harry ran his hands down his face. It was only an animal. This was on him for letting it loose like that. 

“Worthy successor, do you grant warmth?”

“Did the last worthy successor grant you warmth?” Harry snapped.

“No warmth, no food!” The basilisk snuggled on top of Salazar’s monkey-like head. “Many hunts. I revelled. Will we hunt?”

“I will work on that too, but I’m not going to continuously feed you deer. You are hundreds of years old, you can manage, what, once every six months? And! I cannot feed you spiders because I don’t know where to get spiders. And acromantula are dangerous to let loose in a school anyway. Think prey animals.”

“The last successor forbids me from eating spider, you forbid me from eating spider. In my time, all would cast aside the spider! I would be venerated for devouring crispy spiders!”

“I’m not denying you, I just don’t have any spiders!” Harry got up from the table and touched a pillar. It was true the stones were a little chilly. “Warming charm, you want me to make the stones warm?”

The basilisk raised its head and flicked its massive tongue out in what might have been triumph.

“Spoiled. You deserve to get your eyes taken out by a phoenix.” Harry swiped an orb as he passed the table to display Tom’s empty room on the wall, and meandered to the enormous statue.

Harry had been thumbing through a lot of second-hand books on enchantment, and Molly had walked them through generations of household charms when he and Ginny got their flat, so he was pretty familiar with what a big stone room like this would need; a carved array. He pulled at the toenails and hissed a few words, but there was no reaction.

“Serpent, where did the warmth come from?”

The basilisk rolled its head back and forth. “Stone.”

“Yeah, which stone?”

“The stones that rest on the stones.”

“Work! With! Me!” Harry shouted, which when hissing came out as more of a cough.

The snake let out a huff. “All the stones rise tall to support the glory of the Lord.”

Support. The pillars. “Thank you!”

  Harry carefully inspected the pillars, and finding nothing at the base, took out his broom to float higher and check the winding serpents. There, in little coils on each scale. Elder Futhorc. Or if Hermione was to be believed, ancient notations. Harry ran his thumb down the length of the stone snake’s body to find the root designs.

“So I can’t read ancient runes, which means this might take a bit...” Tom could. He really should have renovated the chamber, even if he wasn’t going to disgrace it with interior design. Harry was going to have to do a full raid on the library.

There was a flicker of movement from the corner of his eye.

Harry shoved away from the pillar and drifted to see Tom appear in the projection, sour-faced and stripping with more force than usual. Did he get home only just now? That’s two hours late. Where was he?

“Just in time, Tom. I have essays!” Harry called to the blown-out image of him yanking on clothes.

Wait, why was he putting clothes back on?

Harry steered the broom backwards to get a better look. Tom typically wore a diverse selection of plain black work robes with a thicker high-collared overrobe on top, and Harry had never seen otherwise. Yet there he was, buttoning up a brown vest and pulling on a fine coat. He wasn’t just getting changed, he was dressing up.

“Who are you dressing up for? Where are you going?” Harry leaned back to touch the orb, and at his prodding, the eye followed Tom replacing his hair potion and stepping out the door.  

Where did he think he was going?

Harry’s broom swept him to the cabinet before he even had to think about it, and he pushed through to his Diagon flat. He leaped out of the window and zipped over the rooftops to find Knockturn Alley. Harry’s head didn’t stop buzzing until he saw the tall, orderly stride he’d committed to memory.

Was he already meeting with Hepzibah? He’d never gone out while Harry was watching. Had he been going out while Harry wasn’t watching this entire time? Harry was too busy with work to keep tabs. Should he be grading essays in the Chamber during lunch too?

Tom didn’t meander on his route like he did to and from work, making a beeline for what Harry quickly realized was a tavern, possibly the only tavern in Knockturn Alley that wasn’t layered in a level of grime that rivalled Aberforth’s work.

Finally, Harry relaxed. It was just an outing.

…An outing was interesting. Was he meeting with his Knights of Walpurgis?

Harry touched down to cobblestone and shrunk his broom back into his bag. His heart was still hammering, but it was only the thrill of it. Harry hadn’t actually seen the Knights of Walpurgis beyond when they were what, thirteen, fourteen? So many details about the early Death Eaters was still so vague, mainly because all of them were dead, except one, who miraculously survived by not being a Death Eater. This was the exact kind of information he needed.

…He forgot his hat. And coat. And cabinet.

But Tom was close. Harry retraced his steps back to a second-hand shop sandwiched between the border of Diagon and Knockturn, and picked up a bulky coat and old hat that Tom wouldn’t recognize.

And from his bag, he pulled out the eavesdropping planchette. It was time to put everything he’d purchased from Borgin & Burkes to good use.  

Chapter Text

Nott’s whinging little letter begging Tom to come to drink with the Knights again was impeccable timing. He ignored the cheers that went up on his arrival at the tavern, focused on the task at hand.

“Names,” Tom announced, tossing a list into Nott’s lap.

“...Yep. So they are,” Nott agreed, giving the parchment a nonplussed look.

“Someone had been leaking information about me to Dumbledore, and Evans has been mining that meddling old maniac for information,” Tom snarled back, and he collapsed bodily into an armchair. “Listed there are the names of every little Slytherin in earshot of some very sensitive discussions we were having in fifth year. I want that snitch dead.”

“That’s why the newspaper headlined Evans, he’s got an in,” Nott nodded wisely. “I think I got the floo address of half these families, no problem.”

The diary had been extremely diligent in its task, and outlined not only the names, but all the information it remembered on each of these targets. Its only memories before fifth year were pulled from what was mentioned in the text when it was created, but it could still extrapolate to Tom’s needs.

It was the exact kind of investigation he needed; using the omniscience of a magical memory, the spy was guaranteed to be on that list.

Tom would thus let the diary have the memory of tonight’s meeting with his Death Eaters – the fact it had gone an entire year without a single reference to them would make it a desirable reward.

“Frenzy didn’t get you sick?” Rosier asked brightly as the group convened with their alcohol.

Tom massaged his head. “...Luckily, I am not in such poor health that the slightest bit of bloodlust will keel me over.”

“It’s because he was doing a bunch of rituals at the same time before,” said Mulciber.

“That’s your influence,” Rosier said with an accusing jab at Nott.

“I just like to share. He does the rituals himself,” Nott sniffed. He handed the list to Rosier. “Black is here. Your sister is marrying Cygnus, you get him.”

Rosier scoffed. “What am I supposed to do, playdates? She has a mother, a nanny, and a house elf, where do I fit in?”

“You’re not engaged yet. Pretend to fish.”

Rosier gagged. “Their remaining daughter is twelve. Anyway, you know I’ve been seducing Eden Travers.”

“You’ve been seducing Eden Travers since fourth year. Seduce someone useful. You already look like a paedophile.”

Rosier immediately began to hex Nott with everything he learned in seven years of Duelling club. Tom tuned out their childish squabbling and turned to Lestrange and Avery. “How fares Dolohov?”

Lestrange straightened. “Very well, my lord. Though my father has taken him in. He speaks fluent Russian, you know, and hadn’t had the opportunity to show off until now.”

“Lavrenti keeps having to tell my mum he doesn’t know Russian politics, he was born in Lincolnshire,” Avery offered.

“Ah. It seemed Dolohov has little to offer beyond representing a more interesting place to be,” Tom mused.

Inside, his irritation burned. How nice it must be, to be served unearned accolades on a silver platter for presumed association with the Germanic practice, while Tom’s genius was left to languish because he didn’t have the money to buy their attention spans.

His fingers tapped rhythmically on his armrest. No matter. They can wheedle with him all they want. Dolohov is his man now. All that pedigree and he still knew his place. That’s the thing about starting from the bottom of the families; they innately knew, without the privileges afforded by an heir, that their place was below Tom.

But this led him right back to his anger with Evans, as all his thoughts seemed to do as of late. His mind obsessively circled on just how long Evans had regarded the gala stage with genuine fondness, or his openness with Dumbledore.

Respect. It was respect.

For all his fascination, all his lusty advances, Evans did not respect Tom at all. Tom’s first impressions were impeccable as usual; a shameless playboy preying on someone he saw had been brought low.

Some of Evans’ callousness could be forgiven by way of his obvious sexual deviance, but he clearly had not grappled with what a highly motivated murderer could do in wizarding society, should he feel so inclined. Tom didn’t enjoy killing people, but the fact he was provably capable of it (and getting away with it) should have communicated a range of applicable skills.

He’d squandered any opportunity to attract Tom’s interest by running to Dumbledore instead of coming to Tom – or to Tom’s entourage, who were the ones closest to him. Anyone who actually cared to know Tom personally knew to bother Nott about it. Dolohov had known to bother Nott about it.

What use did Tom have for people who looked to authority figures with starry-eyed veneration? They would make such a great show of their worship of Tom, but the moment the bigger man arrived, he’d be less than dirt, worth only what their true master thought of him.

For it to be Dumbledore…Dumbledore, who took every opportunity to undermine him, ignore him when Tom desired his respect and breathed down his fucking neck when Tom decided to make something of himself. Dumbledore, who pointlessly yanked Rubeus out of his hands the moment he saw an opening, as easily as he’d snatched away his box of treasures. Treasures that he’d earned, though Dumbledore refused to entertain the thought, so convinced he was of Tom’s malevolence.

The only thing worthy of chastisement was the yoyo he had gotten as a peace offering after he managed to magically lock one of the children in a closet. But the thimble, spool, and needle were from a caregiver who’d burnt supper and asked him to blame one of the boys, and he used it to teach himself to hem his own clothes, as the matron couldn’t be fucked and he hated the older girls. The little toy animals he’d received from another miserable dorbel, who gave him one each week he lied for her so she could skive off her shift for a smoke. The mouth-organ he received from the deliveryman so that he could have the opportunity to molest Bettie Atkins, who was one of the only girls with no family at all, and so Tom turned around and offered his services to Bettie Atkins to make something Very Bad happen to him in exchange for her stealing a Tom Tinker toy for him from one of the entitled little Berkeley hunts at the park.

Bettie Atkins had been his first experience having a minion. He’d never given orders before, and he had been feverish the whole day as she did the deed. It shocked him how easy it was; he said what he needed, and so it was done, and if it were to get back to the orphanage it would be only Bettie who would be punished.

But he didn’t want Bettie to be punished, because Tom hated the other children. He got Bettie to do all kinds of things, like steal snacks from the kitchen or procure cigarettes for his chain-smoking caretaker, and he’d share the spoils with her, because he learned well that if someone asks you to do something, you were owed a reward.

Tom was dreaming of his future even then. He imagined himself becoming someone ambiguously important, and Bettie would be his secretary, beautiful and very resourceful and clever from all the tasks Tom would send her on. People would obsess over him (as they should) and not realize that powerful people had powerful underlings too.

She was adopted only a few months later.

He’d gone to her, risked his neck to sneak out and head farther into London than he’d ever been and find her street. He imagined there was so much more he could accomplish now that she had a home with unrestricted access to a telephone.

And Bettie came to her window and told him that her new family were kind to her. They took care of her. They thought she was the most important thing in the world, and if she kept doing the things Tom was having her do, they might get rid of her.

She didn’t need Tom anymore.

The other orphans were disloyal little rats and he could only get them to do anything if he threatened them. They all dangled off Mrs. Cole’s apron strings, eager to tattle on Tom, desperate to get rid of him. The only ones he could trust were the caregivers, but he suspected it was because he had so much blackmail on all of them.

If Hogwarts gave him anything, it was actually loyal followers, people who wanted to follow him because they believed he was worth following. The orphans were all affected by Mrs. Cole’s constant vigilance, but the Slytherins didn’t give a toss about what Dumbledore thought. Slughorn was the Head of House, and he thought Tom was swell, and Tom didn’t have to threaten him at all.

And though they enjoyed wonderful privileges and high-paying jobs while Tom languished in the shadows, they did not abandon him. They understood that they would always need him. Sworn knights that gave their eternal fealty no matter where he was.

Tom’s followers wouldn’t fold for the praise of someone who earned their influence through something as trite as vanquishing a dark lord – a dark lord who probably only lost because he dropped his pants the moment Dumbledore touched down in France.

“Ahhh…Come now, my lord, you’re hardly even drinking,” Nott hissed. Mulciber had restrained Rosier, so Nott was free to tend to the welts that had formed on his face. He looked like he’d had his head stuck in a wasp nest.

“I’m not in the mood for alcohol,” Tom muttered.

“In a mood, ah. Shall I consult the texts on something seriously illegal? Could make whoever put off your mood regret they were born.” He pressed down with his wand, but only managed to reduce the bruising. “Fuck this is nasty, Owen, why didn’t you hit Evans with this?”

“Fuck off,” Rosier spat. “He used hexes not in common parlance and could wordless pair-cast. Which I could have handled if I knew.”

“Duellists,” Mulciber muttered with a click of the tongue.

“Well why don’t you go duel him then, Gareth? Sure you would have done a splendid job, all the sitting on your arse you get up to!”

Nott squinted at him through the eye that wasn’t swollen shut. “Why didn’t you hex him before you started?”

Rosier let out a scandalized little noise. “Where is your pride? Your sportsmanship?”

“Hm. Don’t got any of that, I don’t think. Oh! I think I got it!” Nott’s face finally deflated, and he got a good look at Tom’s expression. “Ahh. Don’t linger on it much, my lord. Malfoy won’t stand for any disrespect to you either, and he won’t be so sportmanlike about it.”

“If I sent you to go nipping at the heels of all my enemies, Orion would be dead and your brother hanging naked by his ankles above the great hall,” Tom snapped, and he took a swig from his mug just to make a point.

“Of course, of course. But this is time to celebrate. You know why I begged you so desperately to come tonight?”

Tom rolled his eyes. “Do I ask why a dog barks, if not for delight in all the world has to offer?” 

“That too. But…” Nott leaned in close and rested his head against Tom’s armchair. “I’ve been such a good boy running your Death Eaters, and through great adversity and Owen throwing a fit—”

“Do you ever know when to shut up?” Rosier snapped.

“—We cracked a vault. Five rivals injured. Think one might die if we’re lucky. And Borgin & Burkes is about to get a beautiful little present tomorrow morning, all thanks to, of course, the fantastic influences of our lord.”

Tom’s frown twitched. That did make him feel better.

“How was the haul?”

“Fantastic. Ancient. Catalogued it all. Bled on some of it, the fight over it got a bit nasty. Say the word, you can pick through whatever you want and I’ll tuck it away at home for you. The rest can go right back into looking impressive for your bosses. Threaten to start your own store with them, see how fast their tune changes.”

…Tom had been neglecting Abraxas as of late; he should pick out a gift from the haul. He sighed and raised an eyebrow at Nott. “…And did you have fun?”

“Oh, how I’ve frolicked, my lord! Be sure to praise me?” He placed his head on the armrest, and Tom gave him a good-natured shove away.

Yes, this is how it should be. Tom above all others.

⎯ ♢♢♢ ⎯

The first thing Harry found truly remarkable about the Knights of Walpurgis is that they appeared to actually be friends with one another.

It wasn’t clear how close they were with Tom Riddle himself, but they were very comfortable as a group. Harry sat in the back of the tavern with his eavesdropping planchette, watching it skitter across the parchment, writing down everything said by the people it was aimed at. The mood at the table wasn’t one of cultists around their Lord, but a group of mates having a drink together.

The second remarkable thing – though he should have guessed from the fact Orion felt so comfortable antagonizing Tom – was that while he knew who these people were, absolutely none of the ‘original Death Eaters’ were among their number.

Lavrenti...Antonin Dolohov was killed during the battle of Hogwarts, and the Dolohovs didn’t implicate themselves otherwise, so Harry had no idea where Lavrenti fit in here. The ages seemed a little off for a father-son relationship.

And Tom’s ‘Knights’…

Donatus Lestrange. Younger brother of Altais Lestrange, the father of Rabastan and Rodolphus Lestrange. Married young, found himself infertile, and faded out from the annals of history when no one could connect him to the Death Eaters. Harry didn’t even know if he died.

Castor Avery. Killed in action in 1972. Somehow related to the Blacks, as many were, named after a great-grandfather, as many were. Father of Ernest Avery, one of the most venomous Slytherins in Snape’s school years – likely because he didn’t have half the security of people like Lucius Malfoy – and showboated with a grotesque desire to harm. Ernest would return to school constantly with ‘well I got something off my dad’, plying their respect with the horrors Castor was willing to commit. It was all a game to him, a way of raising his own star. He knew that violence got you places, even if you yourself were not committing it. His father devastated Britain just by running black market supplies for the Death Eaters, and Ernest was proud to join the family business. All of them were.

Gareth Mulciber. History’s most corrupt auror, dead of dragonpox in 1978. He clung to his job for years, paid off by just about everybody, profiting from allowing heinous criminals to walk free. He was a beloved tool of the Malfoys, corrupt politicians that they were. His son Gilbert Mulciber didn’t land far from the tree; he used the imperius to make Mary Macdonald strip and walk the grounds back to Gryffindor tower in her skivvies. This was a story he repeated with great pride; they all seemed to find it funny she was so upset, when if he really meant her harm he could have just raped her. Gareth Mulciber died right before Gilbert was quietly shuffled to Azkaban without trial. Shame how dragonpox could throw a wrench in things.

Owen Rosier. Father of Evan Rosier, the closest friend to Snape besides Lily (which contributed to the doom spiral of their relationship). The least objectionable overall; Owen kept his hands so clean he was never brought up on trial, and was a noble-hearted Gryffindor. While his Slytherin-dwelling son was callous and self-occupied, he seemed to only hate Lily on grounds of petty jealousy. He was one of the people who pitched the Death Eaters to Snape, and in Snape’s mind, Lily. In an ideal meritocracy, muggleborns could prove their worth to wizarding society and cast off their filthy heritage, the implication unspoken that her parents and sister would get the wall. Maybe if they went out and said it, Snape might have been inclined to see sense.

Finangus Nott was one without a gruesome legacy, but also one Harry just plain didn’t like. Much like Donatus, he was the younger brother of a more esteemed Death Eater, but they were far closer in age. He didn’t hide his association with Voldemort at all, and was brought to trial easily enough, escaping prosecution with a blasé ‘if it’s illegal to go to school with Tom Riddle, I reckon we don’t need to worry much about elder care in the near future’. He’d claimed, in private, that he was the one who taught Voldemort everything he knew; in even more intimate quarters, he elaborated that Tom didn’t have the patience for combing through archaic tomes and would conscript Nott to handle the slush pile of Dark magic theory.

Theadore Nott, a key player in the arrest and prosecution of his own father, swore up and down Finangus Nott was innocent, and that testimony was considered more trustworthy than the slimy second skin of dark rumours the man bore. In the post-trial, Draco drunkenly confided in Harry ‘Uncle Fin’ was a deranged psychopath, but was still the only safe place he and Theo could escape to in the 97~98 period where it really felt like the fall of society was upon them. Finangus’ emaciated relationship with Tom Riddle protected them, and so they returned the favour.

And the missing, Abraxas Malfoy, dead of dragon pox in 1978 – it had been an epidemic that also took Fleamont Potter. Never officially linked to Voldemort, even when he was the one to invite his lord into the homes of every young heir, offering the next generation of nearly every pureblood family on a platter for Voldemort to indulge in. A criminal kingpin, though not one prone to violence; he was tied to the non-lethal poisoning of muggleborn minister Nobby Leach, not a murder.

It wasn’t shocking that he would not be seen with this crew. Harry had stuck to reviewing the histories of those who participated in the second war, and it was only now, seeing the company Tom kept straight out of school, that he realized Tom’s actual level of influence.

Which was none at all.

His only strong social connection was Abraxas. Orion was running across the ballroom for the opportunity to call him a slur, and none of the ‘Knights of Walpurgis’ were heirs. These men were strategically selected investments into their families, backdoors to get at the more desirable connections.

With Lucius becoming a hermit post-war and Abraxas dead before Draco could know him, there was no way of knowing what Tom’s relationship was with the Malfoys. But the fact Abraxas didn’t count himself among the Knights of Walpurgis, that he still rushed to support Tom at the gala, that he was at least two years older...

Harry was sure of it. He knew how Slytherins stratified themselves, and the kind of elitism the Malfoys dealt in that would never normally allow for an heir to be publicly seen swanning to the aid of someone like Tom.  

Tom got close to him by being his pet project. Abraxas Malfoy had invested in a parselmouth in his house, and he was rewarded with Lord Voldemort.  

It was obvious why Dumbledore was so confident in Tom’s lack of kinship with his so-called ‘friends’ when Tom came for that interview. These people were clearly selected for utility, and their absence in his later career only proved Dumbledore’s impression right. When more powerful men came into Tom’s orbit, they were relegated to bit roles, dying in obscurity.

Harry narrowed his eyes at Finangus Nott, who was practically climbing into Tom’s lap and whispering something the planchette couldn’t pick up. Harry thought ‘Uncle Fin’ was absolutely fucking with Draco with all his stories, but the man was very liberal with Tom’s personal space. Was Tom not homophobic after all?

Harry ought to be proud he managed to piss Tom off so much if that were the case. Pure skill.

They weren’t talking about anything evil or menacing, mostly just work and business, a chat lengthened with how much they were taking the piss out of each other. Tom rarely contributed, and when he did, his responses were terse. Based on the Knights’ comments earlier in the conversation, Harry was in fact so skilled at pissing Tom off it had lasted several days.

Harry would normally turn back to the essays by now, but he was so frantic at Tom’s change of schedule he’d left those behind too. He should go back home, or put the eye-spier eyeball over Tom’s desk while he was out. He instead doodled quidditch balls in the corner of his parchment and drank as he watched ordinary men have ordinary conversations, all around the gloomy figure of Tom Riddle.

He didn’t know how much time passed (and mugfuls he drank from) before Mulciber held his wand to his wristwatch.

That’s all for me. Can only show up drunk so many times.

And the group began to disperse, retiring early enough Harry thought he might be able to get to those essays after all. Avery and Lestrange, Rosier and Nott, and Tom.

And Tom.

Harry rose from his seat.

Chapter Text

Tom was being watched.

How hunted has he felt these past few days, that he was so sure it was Evans? 

But of course it would be him. Even now Tom hasn’t done anything to warrant being followed. He could not imagine anyone else being so driven that Tom could feel the brush of eyes on the back of his neck. 

It made his teeth grind. So it was only after he had performed his illicit reconnaissance that Evans bothered to investigate Tom’s relationship with his followers? He must be having fun. Did he and Dumbledore go home together after the gala to gossip about Tom being invited by Nott, or that Rosier was loyal enough to fight for his honour? Did he hope to see Abraxas, to make leading statements about him too, before gargling his twee little professor’s wrinkled old balls?

Tom hated him. He hated Evans and he hated that he could feel the man linger. 

He did not go straight home, but instead headed down a long and secluded walkway beyond a row of nearly condemned housing populated mostly by hags and vampires. With so little cover, he could hear the lout’s dragging footsteps on the loose stones.

When he was sure there was no escape, he spun on his heel and threw a stunning spell at the figure just behind him.

He almost didn’t think it was Evans after all, with the size of the coat and the hat over his face. But the man dodged it effortlessly, and he lifted his hat with the back of his hand to reveal those brilliant eyes, intense and searching. In the moonlight they shone cold.

The thin little strip of cobblestone acted as a duelling ring, and Evans acknowledged this by pulling out his own wand. It was crooked and white, and the bleached wood was impossible to identify. 

“Well that’s not very nice. What would you have done if it were some innocent child gallivanting out after curfew?” His handsome face scrunched up. 

“Who else would be so deluded as to think he would get away with stalking me except you?” Tom snapped.

Evans gave a one-shoulder shrug. “Well I got away with it before.”

And then, before Tom could react, he sent a streak of red right back – no torpidity, an expalliarmus. Tom swiftly pulled up a shield. Evans’ cast was casual, but the protective bubble nearly collapsed from the force. 

“So what is it? Going to lure me into a secluded alley and disappear me? ‘Youngest Hogwarts professor missing’, how’s that for a headline?”

“Who exactly is the predator on the hunt in this situation, I wonder?” Tom cast a few different types of hexes to gauge how Evans reacted. The spells with the most torpidity he shielded, regardless of strength; the curly line of the jelly-legs was more worthy of a shield than the vicious but more direct suffocation curse. Impeccable reaction speed.

“I mean, they do hunt lions in Africa. Whole cottage industry of dangerous game, isn’t there? The fact they could easily kill you is kind of the point,” Evans mused.

Rage squeezed Tom’s heart. “Oh, so I ought to be honoured, then, that you’ve found me worthy to mount on your wall?”

“My flat’s not that impressive, mate, I’m really not sure you’d fit,” he laughed.

Tom didn’t want him to laugh. He wanted to see the expression from the gala, the moment of fragility, of a rabbit that had caught sight of a hunting dog—and yet the image of Evans looking at the stage with such genuine fondness leapt to the forefront of Tom’s mind. He wanted Evans to be consumed by him. Fear or worship, it didn’t matter.

“Surely you can borrow a room. You do seem so anxious to impress Dumbledore,” Tom spat.

The reaction wasn’t as satisfying as he’d like, but it did at least wipe the smile off his face.

“Jealous?” Asked Evans.

“Silencio!” Tom spat, and wordlessly followed it with an impedimentia.

Both spells had no visible feedback beyond the wand’s reaction, and both went at different speeds. Evans jumped out of range of the silencio, but got caught by the impedimentia and stumbled to a halt.

“Expalliarmus!” Tom barked.

Evans’ shield held strong. Tom cast it again, and again, marching closer, until he felt he could do it wordlessly without the furious tremble in his hands distorting the intensity. Yet no matter how hard he struck, Evans continued using the same shield, shining brightly against the battery. Not just reaction speed. The force from his expelliarmus – based on the gala duel, it would be strong enough to throw Tom in the air if it struck – and the integrity of his shield made it clear.

Evans was powerful.

“Stop quailing like some snivelling wretch and fight me, if you’re so bold as to come after me in public!” Tom snarled at him.

“I…” Evans paused as if realizing something, and looked at his own wand speculatively. “Can’t do that.”

“You can’t duel?” Tom could kill him.

“Well, I can duel. Except in certain special cases. And… I can’t tell you what those are. Sorry.” He threw his wand back and forth between his hands. “Do we have to fight? I was only following because I like being around you in general. I thought if you really wanted to chase me off you’d have me jumped. Poisoned. Things of that nature.”

“Oh but of course. I told you how I feel about pigtail-pulling, but I suppose that was nothing but encouragement in your eyes. You clearly want to be driven off, and why not make the hunt just that much more enjoyable?”

“Before I mount you, of course,” Evans nodded.

Tom coughed.

“Rest assured I only make such concessions because I also get something out of this.” Another strike, to the ground under Evans’ feet instead of the shield. His legs buckled trying to fight the impedimentia to avoid it. “I enjoy it when hunters overestimate themselves and get mauled, you see.”

The ground grew teeth. Combat transfiguration, just like Dumbledore did in his fight with Grindelwald, about as difficult as apparating mid-battle.  

Evans’ little frown deepened for a moment. Then he stuffed his hand into his mokeskin pouch and pulled out a broom handle. He’d illegally expanded his bag. 

The broom shot upwards, dragging Evans into the air right before the mouth snapped closed. He dangled limply, looking down at his would-be prison. 

“Oh, it’s a snake head! With the cobblestone it’s like scales, that’s so clever!”

As if Tom was a student who had performed an interesting trick. His blood was boiling. Without even a word in answer, he sent a jagged stunner at Evans, whose broom dragged him out of the way. Evans stretched his wand arm for a moment and then swung himself in a single elegant arc that landed him right on top of the handle. 

Tom was getting too worked up; there was a tension all up his spine and around his throat.

“Of cooourse, I know why you didn’t have me jumped,” Evans said airily as he flew in lazy circles, swaying wildly with the slightest shift in gravity. He somehow managed to jerk out of the way of every single spell shot his way despite moving at a crawl.

“I’m sure you have theories that do wonderfully for your ego.”

“Little bit.” Evans dropped down on the street and deflected Tom’s cutting curse. What the fuck was that? “See, my theory is that you like it.”

Tom rolled his eyes.

“No no. Not me. The hunt in general. You’re toying with me right now! I know all your little secrets, all your little friends, and you’re shooting stunners you know won’t hit! Chasing me around a ballroom to show off to me! It isn’t you, Voldemort.” He spun the handle around his wrist, wobbling back and forth as if he were still being tossed by the movements of the broom. “But we both know why. It’s because I like you so much.”

“As I was saying,” said Tom. His skin prickled.

“I like you so, so much. So obviously I’m not going to report to anyone else!” Evans flung an unexpected expelliarmus. Tom threw up a reflexive shield, and he only just barely remembered the force Evans casted with in time to jump out of the way. It exploded through the meagre barrier like it was tissue paper.

“I know so much about you. I know where you live, how you live, where you work, your friends, your enemies, your stranger personal values…And I know you really, really want to sink your teeth into something. Draw a little blood.” Evans caught the broom and rested it on the ground. “Feel a little more important.”

Tom’s head throbbed with the force of his rage. He felt like he was about to catch fire on the spot. The choking sensation only intensified. Frenzies didn’t usually manifest this way—it must be the urge to scream.

“You like that you’re my whole world.” Was he? “It doesn’t really matter if we’re mortal enemies or star-crossed lovers. All you need is someone that understands you! You got to be a good boy in the orphanage, you got to be a bad boy in the common room…” He frowned at the night sky, as if deep in thought. “A good boy in front of your teachers, a bad boy in front of your employers…God, you know, there’s barely anyone who really understands you, is there? The ones that do despise you.”

“Unlike you, of course,” Tom rasped.

“…Yeah. Unlike me.” Evans had gotten closer as he spoke, heedless of any danger Tom might pose. He was still unsmiling, and his gaze was glassy, his pupils dilated. Was his face flushed? “You shouldn’t be putting yourself in a little box, hiding yourself from the world. Waiting until Lord Voldemort develops like film. But the enormity of you! This enormous force in the world, and you can’t show anyone your face. Waiting pretty and quiet until you become someone different. As if the box itself will transform you. It’s sad!”

The sickening edge of panic returned in force, given more weight by the lack of oxygen. It had to be like before, he had to be guessing, but it felt like a knife slipping between his ribs.

He’d tried. Again and again Tom had reached new heights – power over the other orphans, his rightful place as a Slytherin, the loyalty of his first pureblood follower, the accolades of his teachers, the adoration of his upperclassmen, his escape from the orphanage to find a home of his own, his horcruxes.

Endless successes. Clear proof of his worth. Yet each time he sought to showcase himself, he’d been undermined. That this was observable made him sick.

No. There was no way Evans should know anything about him. There was no way that he could draw such conclusions if his source was Dumbledore.

…His source was Dumbledore.

“As I thought,” Tom said breathlessly, and extended his wand. “Crucio.”

As red and piercing as the expelliarmus, with a searing, hungry white heart. One of the most beautiful spells Tom had ever learned, next to fiendfyre. 

Evans was now too close to dodge, and he hadn’t been shielding against straight casts. Surely…

The spell collided squarely with Evans’ chest.

Yet it did not sink. Vicious red static crackled through the air, and a sharp smell of ozone followed.

Evans did not fall, or scream, or react. He just blinked.

“Oh, why’d it…” 

Showing no signs of pain at all, he slid open his ill-fitting black coat and undid the buttons on the robes underneath. With each freed button, he exposed more warm skin and coarse body hair across a well-toned chest… 

Until, just underneath his heart, he found a circle of badly irritated skin. He pulled his shirt aside to reveal a single dark nipple and a pure white pockmark carved into his rib. 

Evans glanced up at Tom, who’s heart was hammering in his ears. The cruciatus hadn’t worked. Just like the curse scar on his brow, all it left was a vivid white scar in a lace bed of irritated lines. The Unforgivable had bounced off him. 

Evans’ face broke into a slow and lazy smile, like it was only natural to defy the very rules of magic itself. His hand dropped from his shirt, hiding the nipple and the fresh scar, but not the way his broad chest swelled. 

Tom’s own chest was like a vice around his lungs. He felt completely untethered, no direction for his mind to race. There was no theory he could possibly come up with, no precedent. A person would have to be dead for a successfully cast cruciatus to not do anything.

Evans rolled his neck and spread his arms out to showcase himself. He wriggled his fingers playfully in the air.

“Look at that. Power of love, isn’t it?”

The edges of Tom’s vision were going dark. This was not something to frenzy over. This was horrifying. A threat. Evans knew it was a threat, he was smiling because he knew Tom couldn’t hurt him.

He was playing with Tom, just as Tom was experimenting with him. It finally occurred to him that Evans might have good reason to believe he could toy with him. That he might be someone with the skill to match Tom’s. 

He opened his throat to take a breath, but all he could manage was a thin wheeze. What little oxygen he had left was forced out in a violent cough. He was choking. 

Evans’ voice came muffled and wondering. “What are you sick with, anyway?” 

Tom gasped again and again, almost no air at all making it through. The humiliation burned nearly as badly as his lungs. 

He tried casting again, a bombarda, but his focus was too unstable without an incantation and Evans’ shield absorbed the rest. Why hadn’t Tom learned more wordless offense spells? 

He was getting lightheaded, and being rendered unconscious was a bigger problem than Evans knowing his medical information. Tom gritted his teeth and stabbed his wand into his chest.

The respiro inflating his lungs only triggered an even more violent coughing fit. His throat felt shredded by the force of it, all the magic in his body repulsed at once, bringing him to his knees, until his throbbing head felt as if it were splitting open—

“Hang on,” Evans said distantly, and something prodded into Tom’s side. “Stabilis Amnis.”

Tom’s magic went still.

There was no pressure, no revulsion, no constriction.

“Respiro,” Evans cast, and Tom took in a greedy gulp of air.

“What was that,” Tom croaked, squinting up at Evans through watering eyes. His frenzy had never been stopped before. The only treatment was for the aftereffects. “What did you cast?”

“…Standard anaphylactic shock procedure.” Evans had been frightfully intense, but now there was a softness to his expression. Not pity, nor revelling over a hard-won prize.

It was confusion.

“Anaphilic…?”

Evans paused. “…It’s when you’re really, really allergic to something.”

Tom went cold.

He swung his arm around, and using all his control, simply willed his magic to take Evans by the head and throw him against the wall of the nearest house. Evans slammed into the stonework with impressive force, and Tom stumbled to his feet.

Tom was playing. He’d been too careless; he should have killed Evans the moment he knew he was being followed…

Tom looked down at Evans clutching his head, fingertips smearing the blood at his hairline. The yew wood was warm in Tom’s hands. He could burn this man to ash, annihilate him entirely, string him up or disappear him, use him as a lab rat or torture him for months, he could do anything—

And Evans’ cold lakewater eyes looked up to him, and Tom realized that the moment Evans was gone, he would return to the box.

The box did not exist. The box was Evans’ egoistic supposition. He should kill him.

But from the moment Evans had entered his life, Tom had been resurrected. He shouldn’t.

He hadn’t even noticed how lifeless the horcrux sickness had made him. When the diary made him sick he still had the scaffolding of schoolwork and constant proximity to others, but the ring had been devastating. He had withered when left to his own devices, it was hardly an act anymore.  It was pathetic.

Evans asking more of him was like waking up from a deep slumber.

…So Evans should be his.

The revelation finally brought him calm. Evans was far too involved in Tom’s personal matters, but most of the things he knew were things Tom’s childhood cohort knew too. He was aware of most of Tom’s operations and was still desperately fond, which means he would probably be loyal. It would eliminate the threat. It would let Tom feel this rousing clarity in perpetuity.

But Tom was in no state to manipulate anyone after starting a duel in an alley and receiving emergency medical intervention.

“…I suppose I’ll have to hold you to your claim that you won’t report to anyone,” Tom said imperiously, gently brushing the tears from his eyes.

“You suppose,” Evans frowned. He touched his bleeding hairline with a wince and checked his fingers. “Oh, ouch.”

“Careful not to sleep through your classes with that concussion.” Tom cleared his throat roughly – his voice was scratched to nearly nothing – and spun on his heel.

He felt electrified, like any moment Evans might suddenly grab him from behind, and the very thought felt like a hand on his throat. He couldn’t relax until he was already two streets away.

It seemed unthinkable that the person who was stalking him so obsessively might lose interest so easily, but no. He would let up. Just as he stopped flirting until Tom attacked him, just as he was content to ignore Tom until Tom began pursuing him.

He was stalking Tom because Tom was allowing himself to be stalked. He was firing spells at Tom because Tom was firing spells at him.

Evans wanted him to participate.

Evans would only escalate if Tom expressed interest. It wasn’t a hunt – and this filled him with a strange buoyancy – but a competition. Not a worthy target, but a worthy rival. Of course Tom’s condition had improved; he’d always been at his sharpest when he had a proper opponent to shore up. Perfectly natural.

He made it to his flat unscathed. He made himself dinner, and copied out the charms journal he’d picked up earlier that day. Every so often, a small cough would break through.

Tom peeled off his clothes and dropped them on the steadily accumulating pile on the bathroom floor. He set the water to freezing at first, but then decided to not risk the illness, and allowed himself the lukewarm water. He coaxed out the hair product, and with it, his frayed thoughts.

In order to field Evans – and to use him for all the little privileges that becoming a professor would have afforded Tom, had he been allowed the job – Tom needed to thread the needle of their interactions. This was competitive. That meant there was a win condition.

If Tom won.

Their relationship might resemble his dynamic with Nott. Tom would be the focus of his interest, rather than Nott’s seemingly endless parade of women hungry for a casual fling, but the temperature of the dialogue would be similar. Tom knew how to dismiss such comments.

If Tom won, Evans would be an intimate friend. He’d get full access to the Lost and Hidden Room, obviously. Parseltongue could be taught; Tom could teach him how to get into the Chamber of Secrets, seeing as he was so fascinated by it, and thus serve as an alibi when Tom needed the basilisk. Access to the Hogwarts library, reliable eyes to look for the founder’s relics, and Dumbledore—

Yes, he’d ran to Tom to talk all about Dumbledore as soon as he’d gotten the job, hadn’t he? Evans did realize that Tom hated him. He’d only gone to Dumbledore because he knew it would upset Tom, who wasn’t rising to the bait of his obvious stalking. How desperate of him.

But useful. Because that meant he’d gotten on Dumbledore’s good side. If Tom won, he’d finally have a pawn that could slip unnoticed, even with the old man’s newfound glory in defeating dark wizards.

This would be good. Tom liked this.

If Evans won.

The resistance to Unforgivables was worrying. And it was Unforgivables plural – there was only one spell that would end up carving such a clean sowilo on a country bumpkin’s forehead. Just as the cruciatus’ thrusting movement carved a pockmark, the killing curse’s zig-zagging gesture had been viciously burnt into the man’s skin.

What had he said…the power of love? With a calm head, Tom realized that wasn’t flirtation, but a factual statement. Light magic, that unfounded drivel Dumbledore was so in love with. The only thing that could stop Dark magic was the pure intent to protect. Evans hadn’t protected himself, he’d been warded.

That was how he got Dumbledore, of course! Evans was living proof of his crackpot theories, he wouldn’t be able to resist!

Dark spells founded on intent to harm wouldn’t work, then. The resistance to the killing curse was fascinating, a worthy end goal to this disastrous relationship, and one he doubted Evans would give up easily. Tom had been hasty in his plans to switch to wandless magic; he needed something he could duel with. Rosier ought to help with that. A really impressive duel, that would work. Evans liked the transfiguration.

If Evans won.

His challenges were sexual in nature. If Evans won, he’d act on it. How far? If he wanted Tom to participate, it wouldn’t end in rape. Restraint, more likely. Tom would be forced to bear witness to the man’s desire. He liked to be close. He would restrain Tom, and close the space between them. Breathe him in. His hands, calloused from broom riding – did he play quidditch, or was it for travel? – would slip under Tom’s clothes. And Tom would reject him.

Tom coughed.

And Tom would reject him, and Evans would feel frustrated, perhaps needle him, but Tom’s rejection would drain the molestation of all its appeal. But he could never pass up antagonization. Evans’ hands would turn to himself, unbuttoning to reveal the warm colour of his chest, the swirls of hair, the dark nipples, the lightly toned muscles underneath. He’d—pleasure himself with his victory. The first of many, because if Tom wasn’t willing to participate, he’d want another attempt…

How many times could Tom lose before Evans’ patience was exhausted? How important was Tom’s participation? Would he give up on sliding his hands under clothing and switch to tearing his robes off? If Evans grew bored of pleasuring himself, would he force Tom to be pleasured, a firm hand on his prick, jerking it to life with his fingers gripped around Tom’s neck, bringing physicality to the choking sensation he so often induced, or would he rub their erections together in a facsimile of coitus?

The theory of how it might feel had his cock twitching. Tom wasn’t easily aroused. The most he’d masturbated was a particularly hormonal period from 14 to 15. He’d been permanently soft since he made his first horcrux. Evans wouldn’t manage it.

The water felt a little hotter than it should be. His hand moved slowly, as he imagined Evans might, to tease him with the reality of his win, to lure out a response from Tom, which he would not receive. Rubbing their arousal together would be nothing but folly, a small win for Tom as Evans would spill long before Tom would in his lust, grunting in satisfaction, a hitch in breath, a taste of weakness—

How many times would he escalate after that, until Tom was forced to be party to his depravity… One more attempt, one more failure, and perhaps he wouldn’t bother to stop, just to see if Tom would make a fight of that too, removing any boundaries between them, the expanse of his warm skin against Tom’s back, hissing into Tom’s ears, practically begging him to fight back as he forced himself inside, crushing Tom against the earth, revelling in the pain he was inflicting, that Tom couldn’t fight back, clutching his neck and—

Tom couldn’t breathe.

Even as he wheezed, his hand didn’t stop moving, and the faint image, foggy now that he’d been roused by his own suffocation, still played in his mind’s eye. Evans spread out on top of him, begging Tom to fight back, moaning in ecstasy, his gaze unfailingly seeking Tom, thrusting viciously into him, until—

Tom spilled onto the shower wall with a choking rattle.

He stared at the semen sliding down the tile. He was too stunned to reach for his wand and force his lungs open, and with his inaction, the coughing did it for him. He doubled over hacking, leaning on the wall for support, until his body stopped failing him, until he could breathe properly, until the tremble left his hands, until the water turned cool again.

Tom breathed steadily. He forced himself to stop thinking, stop speculating. Occlumency made his thoughts unfocused and scattered. He stared at the semen.

His horcrux sickness had passed. His libido had returned to normal. Physical stimulus would be more than enough.

…Evans could not win.

Chapter Text

It was probably a dire sign in Merrythought’s eyes that Harry spent the entire school day holed up over his desk instead of following her to practical lessons with the older years. It was an equally dire sign he didn’t have the energy to excuse himself.

“I hope you’re not sleeping under there.”

Harry groaned and curled up even more tightly under his cloak. Like if he were exposed to the open air, Merrythought may somehow divine everything wrong he’d ever done.

Starting with getting drunk off his arse and picking a fight with Lord Voldemort in a remote location. He was lucky Tom hadn’t cut his head off the moment they’d started. Harry felt sick thinking of how he might explain a priori incantatum.

Not only that, Harry had almost let himself be tortured. By a budding dark lord. In the middle of a street! He’d stared that yew wand down, it was right in front of his damn eyes, familiar as anything, and he still thought ‘that won’t work anymore’. It had been years since he did something so stupid he wished someone was around to yell at him for it.

But Tom Riddle didn’t have any of Harry’s blood, and apparently his mother’s protective magic was very singular in its subject matter. Now Harry had to worry about what he’d do in a room with multiple Death Eaters. What if Tom told a friend that Harry could deflect a cruciatus, and then Harry would have to explain why his body was immune exclusively to Tom’s murder attempts? After being tortured? While being tortured??

It was pig-headed of him. Harry didn’t want to have a confrontation like that. He’d decided to avoid clashing as much as possible when he – also stupidly – ran with the only excuse he had for his behaviour. He knew better than to bring Tom’s attention onto himself.

It’s just that the idea of Tom knowing that he was being followed, the potential to see that naked terror, validation that what Harry was doing was having an effect, that he was a threat, that he was moving towards something…

Well, he did learn something; Tom got sick at the gala because Harry was giving him an allergic reaction.

It was magical, because Harry obviously didn’t have any allergens on him. He didn’t notice it before, but Tom’s body locked up when the illness came over him – there was no way Voldemort needed to rely on verbal casting, and he’d been extremely wooden on the dancefloor. The stiff, disconnected movement was a classic symptom of magical disruption, werewolves got it before they shifted.

And Voldemort did not have a magic allergy in Harry’s time.

It had to be the time travel. There wasn’t any other trigger. Harry had rode time backwards so forcefully it pushed mountains into the passage of Fate, but it was Tom who’s birth kickstarted the crease. Was there an empty space in Harry’s soul, sitting like a drained cyst, where Tom could seep in? Was Tom’s magic rejecting itself, inheriting Harry’s pseudo-non-existence?

If that were the case…the trigger was probably eye contact. Harry had stared a little too hard at the wet, glassy quality of Tom’s normally flinty black eyes, the same way Tom had stared a little too deep into his while trying to do legilimancy on him. Their magic had touched.

Harry didn’t think this would be a huge help – the clearest facet of Voldemort’s personality in Harry’s mind was that he had a princess-and-the-pea-like obsessive tendency towards minor setbacks or threats, and so the moment he figured out what kind of allergy it was he’d be bumming illicit ingredients off Malfoy to fix it – but it honestly didn’t need to be.

Because even while inebriated, Harry could still see that Tom didn’t want to get rid of him. The ‘amorous maniac’ gambit had actually paid off. Even if Harry was annoying, even if Harry knew too much, the idea of someone obsessively cataloguing Tom’s life story made him feel special, and so long as he was treated as special, he’d be hesitant to chase Harry off.

...And Harry was piss drunk enough to point it out to his face. Fuck’s sake. 

Harry wouldn’t be able to stop moping about it while grading essays, because moping was still better than essays. He emerged from his invisible shelter. “I need to head to the library tonight. Is that alright?”

“Honestly, I’m shocked you hadn’t already. It’s the first thing the teaching assistants head to,” said Merrythought.

 “Yeah. Well. Was a bit busy. Am I getting a teaching assistant, by the way?”

“Armando hires them. You can put in suggestions, but usually he pulls from understudies.”

“...And you have none?”

“About three or so years ago, Grindelwald started making overtures towards Britain. Most wizards understood that he’d bring the war to anyone who didn’t meet his demands. Everyone I ever taught joined the Ministry, and no one who survived it was much in the mood to go right back to teaching a room of loud, unruly children who keep asking how to keep their families from dying.”

Harry didn’t point out the war was over. He was once one of those children. He’d needed to start up a proper duelling club during his repeat year to help his classmates funnel their energy. What was left of them, anyway; half of them didn’t bother finishing their schooling. 

So many of them wondered why the adults failed them. Why they had to fight their war in school hallways. Why the duelling club was originally the domain of rich pampered brats like Blaise Zabini, why you could learn more about how to hex someone from Flitwick’s charms club.

It was terror of inertia. They’d seen what complacency led to and lived in fear of things declining into a total societal collapse. Harry was no different; he fought the war with nothing but the sword and shield of expelliarmus and protego, but the moment it was over he researched hexes like a nervous tic. He hardly even used most of them.

“You’d think Hogwarts would be crawling with applicants, if you had no understudies,” said Harry.

 “We were. Anyone who mentioned how much regard they had for Albus was immediately eliminated, which was all of them.”

Harry raised his eyebrows. It hadn’t even occurred to him, as the post-war of 1940s was practically a utopia compared to the post-war of the 90s, to the point he struggled to remember there was even a war at all; Dumbledore’s fame was a nonentity to him. Harry had been more focused on manipulating Dippet to make up for his total lack of credentials.

What did Dumbledore think when he got cornered by a man who fought in the war he ended, who had the power of love on his brow, who was still happy to chat face-to-face?

“You know, I am doing a lot better than I realized,” said Harry.

“We’ll be sure to eliminate anyone who sucks up to you too, seeing as you’re even less deserving,” Merrythought said with an indulgent smile.

⎯ ♢♢♢ ⎯

Harry had three topics he needed to brush up on — how to make his own spell, how to repair 900-year-old enchantments, and how people handle basilisk husbandry (if at all).

The spellcraft was right out. Harry simply did not learn spells from books. Without Hermione here, he’d sooner pass out in his essays or stalk the quidditch pitch to watch team practice. That was something he’d need to ask Araminta Xu about.

So he looked into enchantments. Enchantments were kind of like recipes, and Harry was an expert at reading recipe books. He still wished that he had someone to lay it out for him, but the only one who could possibly know how to replace the heating system was Tom, and he wasn’t going to run over to show off how little he knew after acting the way he did.

Harry could probably convince him to work on it if he revealed he was a parselmouth, but being a parselmouth was one of those things that couldn’t easily be explained by him being a crazed stalker, which was the only reason he hadn’t needled Tom with it.

He selected a few volumes and thumbed through them to check if their ‘ancient history of enchantments’ were the recipe kind or the cultural context kind. It got him down to two books.

Harry looked towards the back of the library, and the archway to the restricted section that had been roped off.

Well, he was still invisible.

The students didn’t notice Harry pass by, or the rope being unhooked and replaced. He had to use his wand from there—the restricted section had no illumination, as even firelight would affect the condition of some of the volumes.

Dragon husbandry books were pretty easy to find even though raising dragons was illegal, because dragon sanctuaries were always hiring. Basilisk sanctuaries definitely didn’t exist, and taking care of one had to be restricted to hell and back.

He read the placard on each shelf carefully. At least four of them were dedicated to just potions. ‘Fire burn and cauldron bubble’ was an iconic aspect of the history of Dark magic.

In a dismal corner he found the Dark Creature section, contained within a towering bookcase that took advantage of the extra wall support. Creating foul beasts took up a lot of space too, but raising those creations was a little less robust a topic. It took him barely any time at all before he found a thick volume titled ‘Fang to Phial: The Art of Breeding Sinister Creatures’.

…Was he allowed to take books out of the Restricted Section?

Best not risk it. Harry placed his cabinet against the wall and crawled into the Chamber of Secrets from the corner.

He emerged to see that the basilisk had abandoned its usual vigil atop Salazar’s head to wind in a single enormous circle around all the pillars, which had it sliding over the carpet.

“You’re tracking slime everywhere,” Harry complained. “Lift your stomach.”

The basilisk obligingly wound over the pillars again, this time higher up. He cleaned up the carpet, then the underside of the snake, then the areas behind the pillars, and Salazar himself.

Harry dropped the books on the desk, regarded them carefully, and then left the Chamber to vanish as much sludge as he could instead. While he was in the pipes, he remembered where the snake was last, so he carved a clean stripe all the way across the school, and up what he was sure was the space under Gryffindor tower. The pipe exit in the towers was a storm drain that could be pushed open to the outside, so the basilisk would have needed a window to start its reign of terror from here.

The basilisk had decided to use the roof tiles to help with peeling its skin off, and there was a long, thin strip crammed between the tower and the adjacent building. One would have to lean out a window and look straight down to see it, but it made Harry groan in horror.

He landed on the roof and carefully picked across the slanted surface to get close enough to shrink the skin. He kept pulling it closer and making it smaller, and it just kept going. This snake was far larger than it had any right to be.

He could have cried in relief when the tail skin came flying at him, and he wound the last bit of basilisk skin around his arm.

Harry peered up at Gryffindor tower. He knew the view from each of those windows intimately; no one would be able to spot him. Yet he still felt a little hollow looking at the great shadow it cast in the setting sun, almost as if he wanted to be caught, and have an excuse to go up there and explain himself.

Harry flew back down to the Chamber and sat down in front of his books.

Basilisk husbandry first. There were all kinds of animals in Fang to Phial; dementors were an obvious favourite subject, getting two chapters dedicated to just them and a cameo in the lethifold chapter to boot, and then yet another cameo in a loving analysis on how the inhumane conditions of Azkaban contributed to the health of creatures that fed on misery.

Harry knew how to chat up the dementors because Kingsley Shacklebolt told him how it worked, but it seemed like a great way to get his soul eaten at worst and at best assassinated by the government. He’d have to wait until Tom was dealt with.

Harry knew he was getting somewhere when he saw manticores. An acromantula and chimaera later, he at last found the basilisk.

Basilisks were bred by infusing a chicken egg in a specific potion, and some complicated magic was cast, and then a toad suffused by a different potion would brood over it.

Dark wizards and their potions.

Like dragons, their hide was armoured and immune to all magic, and so was the skin they shed. Basilisk leather was part of the uniform for Unspeakables and curse-breakers alike, and was a hot commodity among spellcrafters and experimental potioneers. Harry didn’t know what it meant that his elder wand had somehow shrunk this material.

Conversely, the poison was so potent it could erode magic itself. Only goblin silver – which took on the attributes of what it overcame, thus becoming something like a venom sack – could handle it.

The basilisk was the perfect killing machine. There wasn’t a single part of it that wasn’t completely deadly. According to the book, this was Herpo the Foul’s modus operandi when it came to inventing horrible Dark magic. The man had figured out the innate protective characteristics of Light magic that formed the basis of society also applied to suffering and doing harm, and had gone through every possible manifestation of this concept in chilling detail. He basically invented the concept of magical evildoing. Ekrizdis was a footnote in history for creating Azkaban because he was just iterating on the same lunatic shit Herpo was doing, with less competency, because Herpo didn’t need to breed dementors, he was the one responsible for the existence of lethifolds.

Harry wasted far more time than necessary on just horrible Herpo facts, which was probably why so much of the book was dedicated to him. It was like watching a train wreck in written form.

At the back of the chapter, Harry found instructions on care, which were: it depends.

All the snake attributes were purely potionwork. You needed extract of a venomous snake and a lizard to give it some species traits that made it actually functional as a weapon, such as eyelids, powerful jaws, and a decent lifespan.

And thus, the care of the snake depended on what kind of snake it was bred to imitate.

Herpo’s basilisk was called the great yellow-bellied beast; it was considered unambiguous that he’d used a western taipan, famous for its venom. He’d selected a sheltopusik – a slow worm, Harry intuited from how it was described – as a base, and was all anyone ever used since. Apparently, sheltopusiks got very aggressive when feeding, which explained why the basilisk talked the way it did.

The book described adders at length, because there weren’t any venomous snakes in Britain besides adders. Which meant Harry could feed it just about anything, though it would prefer salamanders. Like Hedwig, they preferred to hunt during the day. Definitely a problem.

…Could Harry shrink the basilisk with the elder wand?

No, even if the spell stuck, that would only work for transport. It would still need a giant basilisk-sized diet.

“Would you like sunlight?” Harry asked it.

“What’s sun,” said the basilisk, which was the saddest thing Harry had ever heard.

Oh well. Adders ate slow. Harry didn’t need to worry about constantly feeding the poor beast, he’d been doing just fine.

Harry skimmed the rest half-heartedly, until an illustration of an adder between a chicken and a toad caught his eye. The inking was delicate and complex, painstakingly capturing the zig-zagging pattern on the snake’s back and the ridges on its boxy little face, which Harry thought was true-to-life.

He looked up at the basilisk. The thick-scaled, bug-eyed, unpatterned green basilisk. The basilisk which was very obviously a boomslang.

“He was getting snake imports. From Africa!” Harry crowed.

“What?” The basilisk swivelled its head towards him.

“You’re green, heinously green. Salazar had to have been trading with the Romans! The Romans got big green snakes from Africa and sold them to Salazar Slytherin! Your master! And all his little followers had no idea, because no one’s ever seen you! No wonder you’re always up on that statue, you’re a tree snake!”

“I am the child of distant lands?”

Harry closed the book, laughing. “Not really, you’re mostly the child of someone’s chicken. And a toad they probably found under a log somewhere.”

“Then I am half of a great creature. Like the successor. Majesty runs through my body, and through the other half is a beast that exists to die.”

Harry paused.

“…Did he talk to you like that? The successor?”

“He allows me to feed! To kill! Though he hungers, he hungers…It is I who is allowed to devour.” The basilisk’s enormous body lifted to stretch out to Salazar’s stony visage. Harry saw the powerful jaw of a lizard now, the thick keeled scales he recognized in Polyjuice potion ingredients, its enormous eyes set in the horned face of a dragon. An amalgam.

“I think you’re beautiful,” Harry said softly.

“I am alluring? I cannot mate.”

“I know. It was in the book.” Harry pulled it closer to him. “I think you should hunt what you were born to hunt. Birds and stags and big slimy things. There’s no need to hunt muggleborns and half-bloods. They’re all still inheriting something great, just like you.”

“Yes, I am. Master is part of a great thing. He makes the world better. I will protect his Hogwarts. No one shall seize it! All his children will grow great and strong!”

Harry watched the snake’s body wind up its stone master, and rest upon his great bald head. Harry thought it looked like a large dog setting down to rest. Its golden eyes flicked back and forth over the bottom of the lake above.

“Do you get lonely?” Harry asked.

The snake rolled its head. “Serpents do not seek companions. That is what makes us so strong and gives me my majesty.”

“Did the successor talk to you about that too?”

“We do not talk long. He lets me hunt the intruders who seize Hogwarts.”

“Yeah. I got that. They’re all gone now.”

Reptiles supposedly didn’t love the way mammals did. Its attitude could just be it being an ordinary snake. And yet…it was still loyal, wasn’t it? There was a deep love for Salazar in its sibilance.

It wasn’t fully reptile. Chickens could be affectionate.

Harry shook his sleeve back to reveal Bowl, alert from all the parseltongue, but not engaged. Harry placed it on the floor, and it slid lazily away from him without needing to be told.

“Engorgio.”

Bowl grew and grew until it was the same size it was in the classroom demonstration. The basilisk raised its head abruptly, its gaze fighting to stay on the ceiling. Harry covered his eyes. “Okay, you can look at it for just three seconds. Look now! One, two, three…Back up.”

Harry felt a tingling wave of numbness across his body for just a moment, and took his hand away when it passed. The great yellow eyes were settled on the ceiling again.

“What is this? It does not turn to stone?”

“It’s already stone. It’s a snake I made.”

“You are like master! You too are a successor!” The basilisk seemed excited. It extended its tail to tap Bowl on the head. “We are great snakes, greater than all snakes, created by magic! We are supreme! How do you kill?”

“Bowl doesn’t kill. Bowl is made to be a friend,” Harry gently explained. “Basilisks like you don’t just talk to parselmouths. You are parselmouths. She can listen to you and be your friend too. You can even look right at her – she doesn’t have eyes.”

“Speak!” The basilisk demanded.

Bowl looked silently up at the basilisk.

“Bowl can’t talk. She’s rocks. Like the snakes on the pillars.”

“Your snake knows my words?” The basilisk asked.

“Yes, she reacts to what we say. She’s still a snake.”

The basilisk sagged down on the statue. Then its head abruptly popped up again. “Come here!”

Bowl slithered across the chamber and up the basilisk’s enormous green hide, a third of its size even after being enlarged. She imitated the basilisk’s dog-like pose on top of the beast’s own head.

“Take Bowl with you if you leave. Bowl, do not let the basilisk endanger anyone or show itself. I’m serious,” Harry pointed sternly up at her.

Bowl only lifted her head enough to nod at him.

“Order me too. I listen!” The basilisk interjected.

“I know you do, mate, but you don’t know enough to follow orders. You didn’t know you shouldn’t be out on the roof. If Bowl stops you, you obey, okay?”

“If your snake does not hunt, does it have no fangs? I want to see how you kill!”

Bowl looked to Harry as if seeking advice. He tightly shook his head. She nestled back into place, the matter of murder resolved in her rudimentary stone head.

“I’m going to go put this book back. You kids stay safe!” Harry waved at the two gigantic serpents and climbed back into the cabinet.

He’d wasted too much time reading up on Herpo the Foul’s legacy of unstrung behaviour. The library was quiet. The only light came from the distant lanterns close to the desk; everything else had been extinguished in preparation for the library closing.

…Harry forgot the books he was going to check out in the chamber, but he honestly didn’t think anyone would notice. It was an esoteric subject matter.

He shrunk the cabinet back into his purse and sought the slot he found Fang to Phial in. He carefully aligned the book, trying to avoid damaging its tightly-packed neighbours…

“…Ah.”

Harry jolted and nearly dropped the volume. Peering at him from the end of the aisle was Albus Dumbledore, who, for once, looked about as surprised to see Harry as Harry was to see him.

“Professor Dumbledore! I was just—” He looked to the bookcase and to Dumbledore again. “Am I not allowed in here?”

“Teacher’s assistants may take out restricted books, so long as they are checked out through proper channels,” Dumbledore said gently. His eyes fixed on the printed black letters on the cover. The fact he wasn’t peering over his spectacles made it worse somehow. Harry’s inner child lived in perpetual fear of the moments where Dumbledore didn’t bother to act mysterious and twee.

“There are…creatures in the forbidden forest. Hidebehinds, you know,” Harry said jerkily.

“You do appear to favour your invisibility cloak. You know, I’ve had my theories on what a hidebehind and thestral hair weave might be able to achieve…” Dumbledore approached him with a forced casualness that made Harry’s stomach churn.

“Yeah, Rubeus said as much – not the, I mean he pointed out my cloak is demiguise fibre, so hidebehinds might be a good alternative. Considering mine’s seen better days,” he held up his cloak to showcase the hole he had to tuck in to stay invisible.

“I heard of the impressive trick you performed with a snake. Galatea was very proud of you,” Albus noted. He took the book from Harry’s hands.

“Yup,” Harry thinly replied. It was obvious that Dumbledore did not actually believe he was looking up hidebehinds, and he would find out about Harry’s involvement in the Chamber, and Harry would be promptly fired, and maybe arrested for negligence considering it was wandering out on the rooftops.

“I think young Rubeus needed the catharsis of sharing what he has gone through. I’ve been anticipating when this time would come…” The pages flipped for Dumbledore without even being touched.

“It’s been. A lot for him.”

“Indeed.” Dumbledore found what he was looking for, and flipped it around for Harry to see, brow furrowed in something like pity.

Acromantula.

“Was this what you were looking for?”

Dumbledore was surprised to see him because he thought the intruder looking up Dark creature husbandry was Hagrid.

Harry blurted the first thing that jumped to mind in his desperation for this unexpected lifeline. “He didn’t mean to tell me so much about Aragog, it’s just that he used to have someone older to help with him and teens shouldn’t be handling these things—”

Dumbledore chuckled. “Rest assured; I am not angry. I had hoped you might recruit Casamir for assistance, but I understand not wanting to implicate a friend.”

“Yeah, I—” Harry rubbed his arm, which felt a little bare without Bowl on it, and remembered—Merrythought’s class, the natural enemy of spiders, and Dumbledore bringing attention to Harry’s choice to make a giant snake in class. “Do you think Bowl will – Bowl is my snake – do you think Bowl will be too much to bring for protection? I mean, she won’t eat him, but I don’t want to upset him.”

“Acromantulas are very dangerous, Harry. They are a human intelligence dedicated to the art of killing.”

“Dedicated to the art of feeding,” Harry said, feeling a little twinge of annoyance on Aragog’s behalf even though Dumbledore was objectively correct; that great big spider saw nothing wrong with killing two twelve-year-olds if it meant his children could fill their stomachs. “If he has human intelligence, he can be reasoned with. And—I mean, he’s got to be young, right?”

Dumbledore drummed his fingers thoughtfully on the book. “Quite young. You believe, then, that he should not be sentenced to death?”

“If I’m going to be honest, sir, I don’t think he’s even done anything to be sentenced to death over.”

Dumbledore’s eyes flashed. There was a ghost of sensation that drew the discussion with Rubeus to the forefront of his mind, but it quickly retreated when Harry struggled against it, much more polite than he’d been during the job interview.

“Any theories?”

“Well, basilisk, obviously, but—”

“Petrification, no shed skin, the speed at which it escapes, no sightings by any of the house elf staff, and it did not eat the victims, despite its aggressive feeding behaviour,” Dumbledore nodded. "Regrettably, Salazar Slytherin possessed a rather inventive mind. If he could fashion a basilisk, he was surely capable of creating other monstrosities of his own design. The only way to uncover what else he conceived is to locate the Chamber."

This was the issue he, Ron, and Hermione had bumped up against when trying to figure this out alone; the only beast that fit Salazar’s history and iconography was the basilisk, the only other serpents that could paralyze on sight were the cockatrice and the gorgons, and two of those three options were abominations of Dark magic that wizards made up. None of them made sense with what they knew, so a Dark wizard could have made up something else.

Which was why Dumbledore didn’t have anything to contribute when it happened again in Harry’s third year. He didn’t know about the secret unused pipe system, he didn’t know Salazar had picked a weird bug-eyed tree snake from Africa and not an adder (who would?), he didn’t know the deeper history of the Chamber because the Gaunts had been quietly picking the school clean of their beloved legacy for centuries, until it was little more than Slytherin oral tradition.

It must have made Tom feel so powerful. Centuries of Gaunts just left Salazar’s sealed beast sleeping there, until a 16-year-old boy thought to tell it that the time had come for it to fulfil its purpose. It didn’t know any better. It was hungry.

Maybe it wasn’t that he was feeling protective over Aragog, but that he was beginning to feel bad for the enormous killer snake and its ill-placed loyalty, and it made him reconsider his feelings on the acromantula, who wasn’t even bred for mass-murder.

“It might be prudent to hold off on your false snake, if you trust Aragog to listen to Rubeus. And I suppose…” Dumbledore approached, and Harry stepped away so he could slide the book back onto the shelf. “I am long overdue to speak to Rubeus’ young spider friend myself. Could you spare some time to come with me to visit the forest tomorrow night?”

“Really? I mean, of course.” Harry had to fight to not sag in relief. He was still just ‘Hagrid’s friend’ in Dumbledore’s eyes. He still had his trust.

“Be sure to eat dinner tonight. The house elves will serve you something if you call,” Dumbledore said lightly, and he strolled off towards the front of the library, just as the lights went out, marking 8 o’clock.

8 o’clock and he hadn’t eaten. Harry should take Dumbledore’s advice to heart.

He headed out into the halls and found a suitable empty classroom, where he knocked on the table and asked, “Does anyone in the kitchen have leftovers from the feast?”

Only seconds later, a hot plate of mashed sweet potatoes, kippers, steamed vegetables, and a yorkshire pudding popped in front of him.

“Thanks,” he said to the silent room.

He brought it into the Chamber using his cabinet. His remaining essays sat accusingly on the table next to his stolen library books. He sat down with a sigh. “I’ll start looking at the heating tomorrow.”

Harry felt a sudden itch all up his side that made his arm feel stiff, which he suspected was the basilisk staring at him. Then it looked away.

Nearly eight o’clock meant Tom was either in bed or about to turn in. Harry swiped the projection sphere.

Tom’s bed was made for once, and looked freshly cleaned. The eye did its usual sweep across the room, and back to the bed. He tucked in his dinner as it moved back and forth, back and forth, flickering light coming from the doorway the only sign Tom was home…

The eye panned back to the doorway, and there stood Tom, stark naked and a towel laid over his head.

Harry choked.

He was chalky white and shivering – the hair cradling his cock was sparse like the hair on his limbs, and just as stark, dusting in a gradient up to just below his belly button – without the underwear, Harry could see the concave stomach, his ribs were sharp cliffs splitting his torso – and at last Harry realized how long Tom’s limbs were in comparison to his waist, giving him strangely chimp-like proportions, which seemed especially unnatural when Harry had only conceived of him as some generically handsome façade to the evil underneath.

Tom rubbed the rest of the dampness from his hair and tossed the towel into a hamper. His hair was longer. What did that mean for Harry’s timeline, that it came down to his ears now, curling lightly to touch his sharp cheekbones? Surely only three more months, then, until it matched Dumbledore’s memory of Hepzibah’s murder?

Harry watched intently as Tom climbed into bed. His cock hung a little with the shift in gravity – Harry inanely noted it was roughly the same size as his, maybe a bit smaller, but that could be the cold – and vanished behind his legs as the white globes of his bare arse pulled into view, pert and round, hairless like his face save for the lightest shadow close to his taint.

It was so strange to see the shape of him. The way the swell of his skin transitioned into narrow legs, the visible vertebrae in his back even when arched to reach for the blankets.

Harry was in the graveyard again, seeing a monster be born. He remembered shoulder blades, cutting dark shadows into his pallid skin the way Tom’s did, but he couldn’t see any vertebrae on his inhuman form, only a crease down the middle, like the ridge along the stomach of a sheltopusik. There was no hair on his false body, and it had a sort of vague shapelessness which made it impossible to even consider whether his arse was round. It was a form that rejected the idea of humanity. Harry had seen a nude Voldemort don his robes, and he never would have called him chimp-like.

Tom’s body vanished underneath his blankets. He was curled up tighter than usual, because he was cold.

Harry could see his toes peeking out. He felt an odd desire to touch them to make them recede into the warmth of his bed, like prodding a clam shell. As if in reaction to his thoughts, they vanished too.

Harry watched the steady rise and fall of the blankets, the sliver of white skin around Tom’s exposed ear.

He imagined him not as a dark lord eschewing his humanity for power, but as a Gaunt. He wondered at the strange distortion underneath Tom Riddle Senior’s overwhelming genetics, and he pictured Tom living in rags, with that aged monkey of a grandfather. Strangely, he fit.

And Harry looked up at the statue of Salazar Slytherin, monkey-like, resemblance to the Gaunts clear. It was hard to tell with the robes, but Harry thought his arms might be a little too long for his torso.

And so Harry thought: did Tom look at that statue, one of the greatest wizards in British history, and think that he fit here too? 

Chapter Text

Tom awoke feeling terribly sick. Again.

He needed to keep a list of what tipped him over the edge. Alcohol combined with frenzy. Not taking his medicine. Letting the filth of this miserable poxy flat accumulate.

He swung his legs over the bed, and puppeted his stiff, uncooperative muscles to his chest of drawers. Being upright made his head pound unpleasantly. He pawed through his things until he found a potion bottle, near-empty. He was already out of the medicine he picked up from the apothecary the last time he became feverish.

Tom dragged his feet to the kitchen and pulled his usual glass jar of yoghurt from the chilling drawer. He dug through the cupboards for the rest of breakfast, and found absolutely nothing but bag upon bag of rolled oats, and an entire drawer dedicated to the tub where he soaked them overnight.

“Am I a fucking horse?” Tom snarled to the open air.

…No. Eating oats was necessary, it was hospital food accessible even to orphans, it was the only reason he was alive to attend Hogwarts. But not a single berry? No nuts? When was the last time he did the groceries? He didn’t remember.

He threw the soaked oats onto a pan and toasted them with some cinnamon and cardamom, but made sure to boil an egg on the side and salt that liberally. Dried berries, that’s what he should buy after work.

The spices and yoghurt made the muesli tolerable, though coming off a frenzy made food bland on his tongue. His head hadn’t stopped throbbing. He emptied two glasses of water to chase away the cloying sensation of illness.

 Washing his face didn’t help. He had to spit three times to get the tooth-cleaning charm to take the rest of the fuzz from his teeth.

Three separate piles of clothes were on the bathroom floor, abandoned after each shower. Why did he have to notice this now? Tom picked them up with his wand and tossed them in the hamper, and after a moment to consider, peeled his bedding free and put that in the hamper too.

Tom returned to the bathroom and brushed his hair back. He grabbed his Sleekeazy tub to lock it into place, but found almost no product left. Ran out of that too. He definitely hadn’t done his shopping when he should have. He had enough to prevent flyaways, but the rest hung loose and wavy. If nothing else, the hair on his nape had grown out a little, so leaving it like this didn’t make him look like a crimped mop.

Dried berries, Sleekeazy’s…

He returned to the diary. Careful to cover the side of his hand in cloth – touching the horcrux might actually kill him in this state – he wrote ‘sick, clothes in hamper, will do the shopping later’. The words disappeared into the pages.

Was he in any state to leave like this?

Probably not. Tom dug through the writing desk until he found a pile of wrinkled wax paper sheets and carefully bound the diary. It was unfortunate that Lord Voldemort was still dependent on a shard of himself to maintain his health, but one must be practical in times of strife.

He brought the hamper out with him into the glowing pink of sunrise in London. The wash-house was mostly empty at this hour, beyond a tired-eyed witch scrubbing bloodstains out of pale fabric.

Tom tossed a block of powder detergent into the tub, conjured a torrent of water, and began abusing his bedding with dozens of scourgifys. The pile of suds were almost as tall as he was. Use of magic felt like he was sucking marrow from his own bones, but he had no memory of when these were last cleaned.

He drained his laundry, dried it, and hauled it back home. He’d lay out the bedding and clean his house a little when he got back from work.

Tom packed the diary in his suitcase and left to start his shift.

Borgin was in the back with a stack of crates when Tom arrived. New purchases. His eyes flew to the receipt pasted to the sides, and he saw Fin’s over-large swooping handwriting.

“For auction?”

“Most of it,” Borgin agreed. “This entire collection is hot. What kind of friends do you have, boy?”

Pride burned hot in Tom’s gut. “Ones passionate about antiques. May I help with the handling?”

Borgin was silent for a long moment. Tom had to fight not to sway in place. 

“You're looking half-dead. Take what I give you,” he decided. 

Tom relished in taking a seat next to Borgin at the table. He devoured the way Borgin would gently lift items using a hovering charm on a secondary object, so neither magic nor skin would touch the subject being inspected. He used countless identification charms – some even Tom didn't recognize – and scrawled his notes in the book that sat between them. It was almost illegible.

JWL ring gbs-a-v mw

Tom had picked this job because scavenging the Lost and Hidden Room required some skill in antiquing. Two cherry wood end tables could have a hundred-sickle price difference depending on how they were constructed, how the wood was treated, and how it had been enchanted.

So he took the ring without touching it with his body or his magic too, because the notation said “goblin silver ring that's absorbed venom, possible history as a murder weapon”. 

It went on like this. Goblin silver that had absorbed all sorts of strange attributes, hexes to keep family members in line and enemies at bay, ancient muggle-baiting toys and long-forgotten heirlooms. His eagerness to learn helped relax his body somewhat, though constantly using a hovering charm made his headache even worse. He'd come down with fever soon.

“Who's hosting the next auction again…?” Tom prompted when they'd sorted an entire box to be sold through private channels.

“Blacks. They buy aggressively and only get rid of their stock during events. Good tidings when the Blacks want to host.”

“Indicator of economic decline,” Tom muttered darkly under his breath. He was being a bit puerile, but Borgin huffed a laugh. 

Tom was soon sent off to put the last round of goods on display. He could process the merchandise for hours, but he did find pleasure in decorating. He couldn't really do it at the flat, for a myriad of reasons. 

New arrivals did not get price tags; the presence of a number was an admission that it was on clearance. Everything was an opportunity to upsell, and unsuccessful upsells could be an opportunity to imply something was on sale with a flat price months later. Tom liked using old unsold product as scaffolding for his displays; a stack of shoddy music boxes collected over the years made for a handsome jewellery stand given the right accessorizing. If a sufficiently bumbling customer knocked over the product, they could be scalped with demands of compensation, so long as the jinx you used to falsify the damage was sufficiently esoteric.

Tom's eyes landed on the massive empty wall where the cabinet used to be. He should have fought harder to keep it, that looked awful.

He spent an embarrassing amount of time redoing half the shop displays and tidying. The cabinet was replaced by hanging rugs that cast a nice gloom over the shelf below that made the counterfeiting harder to make out, not to mention added a vivid and stylish splash of colour. When he returned to see Borgin had finished another box to be put out, he was excited to have more material to work with.

Borgin and Burkes had a high ceiling, to fit the back shelf. Tom took advantage of this by using it to make the ancient clothes at the bottom of the crate dance majestically in slow circles. This shop was deceptively popular with middle-aged women, who would appreciate the romantic atmosphere. Inflating the dress to imply a generous bosom would be for the remaining clientele. 

He was left alone soon enough, and so Tom brought the intake records out to the front to compare it to what he’d just put on display. Intimate knowledge of the sales floor was important. 

There were no customers. Tom felt a little annoyed; he'd like to see all that effort recognized. 

At noon, he retired with a corned beef sandwich. Meat was important during rationing. He picked a book from the back shelves to peruse while he ate, turning pages with his wand to keep from dirtying it. He hadn't ever managed to kick the habit of hiding his food and picking at it; even though he was alone and no greedy hands would take it from him, he dirtied his fingers the moment his attentions wavered.

The book was all about diagnosis charms, the kind you needed an auror license to even know about. He recognized many of them from Borgin’s analysis. Tom couldn't practice them while he was sick, especially without his medicine, and he found himself annoyed. 

He unwrapped the diary to write “death eaters brought product, sorted and decorated the shop”. 

Burke joined him soon after and let out a low whistle when he took the record book. “This is a curse-breaker haul, boy. Here I thought Borgin took you in because you were bumming artifacts off school friends.”

“I'm sorry, does it matter where I got them?” Tom asked hotly. 

“School friends already know where their friend’s artifacts are from. You need the mystery to get the right price.”

Pissant.

Tom brought his book of diagnosis charms to the front and recorded the featured spells in the diary for posterity. 

No customers.

He donned his hat, picked up his mostly useless suitcase, and headed to Diagon Alley. 

The apothecary smelled overwhelmingly of herbs. Tom did his best to breathe through his mouth and found his medicine in the pre-brewed section — a Potion of Meditation. It made him sluggish and tired, but soothed his magic so it could heal the devastation it wreaked during frenzies and prevented him from catching strep. He also found Sleekeazy’s hair potion towards the front. 

The healer at the counter looked over his purchases with a doe-eyed look of speculation, the way most older women did when they knew his circumstances.

“You know…there's this wonderful new potion for anxiety they've been advertising,” she began.

“Oh, I'm not anxious, ma’am. I'm just very ill,” Tom said with his best kicked-puppy look. 

“It’s just such a heavy potion for a chronic illness…”

“It's a heavy illness.” His hair hung in his eyes, and Tom wasn't sure how it looked to her. He hadn’t gone out in public without hair product since he was twelve.

To his satisfaction, the healer blushed and gave him a demure look. “Oh, you poor thing. The kinds of conditions I saw at Saint Mungo’s, the cocktails of potions needed to survive…horrible.”

“I tell myself that I’m lucky that I need only this one. For as long as I can afford it…” He matched her demureness and doubled it, keeping his eyes downturned. 

“Oh, darling. You know what, just this once…let's just say you came for the Sleekeazy. We hardly sell the Meditation potions, they go bad all the time.” 

Tom glanced up, turned just enough to the light that the slightest hint of brown would shine off his obsidian eyes. Fin had assured him the girls wrote poems about that sort of thing. “Would you really…?”

“I saw you here last time, looking like death, you know. And darling, you should make the Sleekeazy’s last and leave your hair down. You look like one of those Renaissance paintings,” she winked. 

Of women, she means. He thought his age had carved some of that androgyny from his face, but apparently not. 

Still, he pretended to blush and took the potions meekly. 

At the cafe, Tom wrote “picked up medicine and hair potion from apothecary”. And though he didn't normally make comments like this when using the diary as memory notation, “leave hair down?”

He took the meditation potion with his tea, and immediately his headache cleared and his muscles released him from their constant tension. The drowsiness surged. This would normally be where Tom treated the illness as resolved, but if he stopped here, he'd go straight home and sleep for fifteen hours. He had chores left to do.

He drained his tea and left for the grocers. There was very little on offer, but he made sure to get plenty of nuts and dried berries to start with. After some consideration, he decided he needed his vegetables. With all the fucking oats he’d accumulated in his house, he could make a good scotch soup, the kind the orphanage served during winter hols. He could make it with as many potatoes and tomatoes as he wanted, instead of the excess fat that stuck to his tongue and wasn’t salted enough to make up for the texture. It was his money that was feeding him now.

And since he had to buy the fat, he bought some fish to fry too.

Tom returned home and put the fat on the stove to melt. He replaced the bedding, put his washed clothes in his drawers, and gently unfolded the diary back onto the desk. Back to the pot for the onions. He scrubbed the bathroom shower out, then the sink. Back to add the pastry flour. Cleaned the table, intermittently adding stock and stirring. A trickle of oats.

“Is it dinner?” A snake called faintly.

Tom glanced at the window planter. “Tell me, when did you eat last?”

“Four suns,” the little snake replied morosely.

Tom frowned. Four days was a lot. “How big was it?”

“You feed me little tiny mouses.”

Not as bad then, but due for a meal. “It’s not the weekend yet, so no big treats.”

“Okay. I am ready to eat.”

“I am ready to eat too,” the other hurriedly added.

Tom toed his tray full of soil from under the kitchen cabinet and brought it to the snakes. He used a hovering charm to select a slug for each. “Enjoy these.”

“…And we will get eggs in more suns?”

“Yes, you spoiled thing,” Tom laughed.

He kicked the soil tray back under the cabinet and added the potatoes. It smelled heavenly.

This kind of personal indulgence was still fresh for him, though he was used to living alone by now. He’d claimed independence unusually early, as the orphanage had been bombed to hell and back while he was at school. There was no one to make sure he actually left for the rural village they’d all evacuated to, and no one to report him missing when the evacuees were spread so thin, so he had become an adult before anyone else. He learned to feed himself, clean himself, clean his house, and pay his own way through the world. Now he had a job.

…Now he had a job.

He checked the time. It wasn’t even four o’clock.

Tom rushed back to the diary and wrote “made scotch soup”. Then he wrapped it up, turned the heat on the pot low, and was out the door again.

He felt fuzzy and distant, but the burn of conviction brought him to the Leaky Cauldron. He tucked himself behind the stairs and roughly transfigured the bottom of his robes into fine muggle trousers, with those neat panelled creases. He smoothed out the cone of his hat to look like an ordinary fedora. The drowsiness only got worse, but he persisted, opening his collar to the linen underneath. It was good enough.

Tom stepped out into muggle London. His beloathed and beloved. The streets he would wander for hours felt unfamiliar under his feet. It seemed that every single year the city became unrecognizable in a new way.

He passed by shuttered buildings and shelled walls that the city didn’t have the resources to repair, as well as what felt like dozens of construction projects. Several old record shops were left empty, years after the Blitz and the economic decline of war.

Finally, after nearly an hour of walking, he reached his destination.

Longland’s Music Shop – phonographs and records.

It looked better than it had during the war. He checked himself in the storefront window, and after some thought, tucked his loose hair into his hat.

The door jingled as he opened it. It was a small shop, with a shelf on each wall and very little walking room with the listening station taking up most of the floor space. It was alright; he wasn’t here to find new music.

The records were all sold alphabetically. He surged ahead, ignoring all the muggles, tense with trepidation, until at last he found it; the final record missing from his collection.

Edith Piaf’s ‘Simple Comme Bonjour’ and ‘Le Vagabond’. He’d tricked Abraxas into getting into muggle music with this record. He turned it in his hands with relish, high off achieving something denied to him. It took some time to turn his eyes to the world again, and when he did, he realized there was a record he didn’t recognize in the gap he left.

Edith Piaf had still been releasing songs.

Strange, that he thought everything related to his interests might freeze along with him. He gently thumbed through the Polydor singles. ‘Il Riait’ and ‘Regarde-Moi Toujours Comme ça’, ‘Coup De Grisou’ and ‘ Le Chasseur De L'Hotel’…

…He had the money. Fin got him the money.

Tom took them all. The clerk beamed in approval at his choice, and he avoided eye contact. He walked the whole hour home with his head buzzing, his feet aching, and his body fighting for sleep. He felt static under his skin.

When Tom returned home to the rich smell of soup, he ignored it and headed straight to his bedroom. Underneath his floorboards, he unearthed his hidden phonograph and all the records he’d squirreled away. His hands shook a little as he pulled the phonograph free. It went on his table, and he gently took out the first record and placed it like he was placing the jewels of Rowena’s circlet.

It crackled to life. He was expecting romantic strings, but the song began with dark, jazzy steps. Even Edith’s voice was weighed down by the mood of the track. He read the casing: ‘Il Riait’. As if to mock his expectations, the music became soft and fluttering to boast her misfortunate beau’s struggles with alcoholism, only to trudge on once more.

He fetched his soup and ate facing the record. The song marched through crushing despair with rising madness, leaving only hollow desperation. The glossy black record spun and spun, and he was overtaken with a strange paranoia that it would shatter from how intent he was; that his mere interest would destroy it.

He eagerly flipped the record over. Regarde-Moi Toujours Comme ça was the exact kind of track he was expecting from her discography, richly romantic, with the movement of her vocals a playful dance. In the wake of the miserable song he just came off of, her crooning about men with beautiful eyes made her sound quite hopeless.

He considered playing the rest of his purchases, but decided the time gap would be too large. He removed the record, closed the phonograph, and tucked it all away in the floorboards.

Tom’s feet throbbed from hours of walking, and hours on the shop floor remaking displays. When he finished his soup and transfigured his clothes back, his head pounded from rousing his magic. He was in an awful state, but the day was conquered. He’d done admirably with the chores, thankless job that it was. Tom returned the diary to the desk.

“You like your snack?” Tom asked the snakes idly.

The snakes made vague noises as they digested their food with a singular wall-eyed focus.

“I should make a shelter for you. Pollen and hungry birds every night…Honestly, we should be allowed to shoot those greedy beasts,” Tom groused. In Hogwarts he’d taken to sitting near a snake den – as chatting with them was a source of endless entertainment for Fin – and the den kept complaining of four particular birds that continuously picked them off.

He examined the protective enchantments on the window frame to see what charm might fit—

The enchantments on the…

Nothing. Plain wood.

All the blood drained from Tom’s face.

He stuck his head out to check for any signs of forced entry. But why would there be, with brooms?

“You two, did anyone come through the window?” Tom demanded.

“We’ll get food if we don’t talk.”

“Said to us that we’ll be quiet. Slug,” the other fought to contribute.  

Said to them…

So had it been Voldemort?

Tom leapt across the flat and practically collided with the door. His wand hissed against the surface of the wood. There were enchantments. Small ones. An alarm, a secondary magic lock.

Tom gaped at it.

“You’re being stalked, you idiot!” He screamed at the door, as if Voldemort could somehow hear him while Tom was out. He might, if he notated the memory for him, but Voldemort would break into the school to get the basilisk venom required to melt him cover-to-cover if he knew what Tom was up to.

…Voldemort must have been interrupted by the process of putting the planter out when he first laid the alarms. He’d been in terrible condition when he first moved in. It’s not like Tom had ever checked his work.

Tom checked the bedroom window, which had the same lock and alarm. Fucking unbelievable. He loaded the window with a devil’s cocktail of hexwork. How on earth was his school trunk better protected than his Knockturn fucking Alley flat! Idiot!

He was unprotected. What if someone got in? Tom’s mind raced as he applied the wards to his door. An enchantment on the whole circumference? Finding someone who knew how to do a Fidelius? Learning how to do a Fidelius himself?

Fuck, the horcruxes.

Tom would be safe, of course. He was only a muggle diary, and a blank one at that. His enchantments would protect him from being tossed; running down the street going ‘accio diary’ would be more than enough to retrieve him.

The ring, however. It was valuable. Where was the ring? Voldemort wasn’t wearing it around his neck anymore.

“Whyyy don’t you tell me these things,” Tom breathed, socked feet sliding across the hardwood back into the bedroom. He tore apart his sock drawer, all the junk he didn’t need on top, under the bed—

There, a little box underneath his chest of drawers. He yanked it out and sucked in a breath of relief that it was the Gaunt ring. He needed to hide it better. Tom shouldn’t have found it so quickly.

Tom darted back into the main room. A hiding place was right out. It had to stay in the house in case he died unexpectedly, but it had to be somewhere that could stay put for decades. If the building survived for decades.

Tom aimed his wand at the ceiling, and it warped until a gaping hole opened. He felt it again, the horrible tension and misalignment of his magic, so heavy and so uncomfortable he was sure his flesh was sloughing off his bones, but he bore it. He had some medicine left. He could call in sick in preparation. It was fine.

He tucked the box into the ceiling and sealed it back up. There. Perfect.

Tom collapsed back onto the desk in a cold sweat and forgot himself in his eagerness to notate the memory. His hand pressed against the leather cover, and the vessel reacted to its contents not being where he was supposed to.

Searing pain – indescribable, white-hot, as if every nerve was on fire – not only his nerves, but some strange second skin, the diary itself seeing his body as a thing to devour, yet also recoiling from his own touch, both consuming and rejecting. His head felt as If it were breaking open, and all that he was, every memory that made his being, would somehow leak out.

Tom fell to the floor in his agony and confusion, could this be what making a horcrux felt like, spat back at him in pure sensation? Wetness slid from his nose to his cheek, dripping red on the floor, he’d made this mistake before, it was how Voldemort first found out about him—

You were going to kill me.

The winter of his sixth year radiated through his body-memory. Pain, like this. Screaming. He’d touched the diary a few times before, and it sort of hurt and usually pushed him back into the pages, but the more of Voldemort he had, the more of the wound into himself he carved. Screaming. On the floor, insensible, doubled-up, he could feel Voldemort screaming with the same throat. Fin’s clammy hands around his, anyone. He called for Abraxas – inanely – Abraxas had graduated already – and it hurt, and he felt such an awful terror – just as he felt when he caught polio – a horrifying certainty he was going to die – to know death’s approach, why did he have to? He’d eaten himself. He’d killed himself. Where did Fin go?

As soon as he’d awoken from the botched possession, Voldemort had emptied his trunk onto the floor of the Chamber of Secrets and systematically destroyed every record, every bauble he had gotten for himself, everything good he ever owned – even things only Voldemort liked – and torched it with fiendfyre for good measure – and this was what it felt like, fiendfyre – and then he gave that memory to Tom, and Tom couldn’t even complain because

You were going to kill me.

Fin’s hands were still clammy holding onto him as he – they – lay on the hospital bed, two of himself, the diary slowly dying out. Stubby fingers fixed on his pulse. Voldemort – he – Tom – had asked him to hold his pulse. He was going to die.

The stinging ebbed. His skull felt like it had been cracked open. It was June of 1946.

Voldemort would find out again.

He’d know Tom had been out again even though he promised not to. It didn’t matter that Tom only came out when he was sick, or that Voldemort had specifically tasked him with managing his condition when he wasn’t well, that would just be an excuse. All he’d care about would be that Tom had almost killed him once before, and by disobeying and breaking his promise, he was implicitly stating Tom was still willing to toy with Voldemort’s life.

And Voldemort was right. What if that careless brush had killed him? Would Voldemort come back like he was supposed to, if Tom was the one to do it?

No. He couldn’t tell him. No excuses.

Tom climbed unsteadily to his feet. He took his quill, and very carefully, this time without touching the paper, notated the memory.

“No protections on windows. Put the ring in the ceiling. Touching it made me sick.”

⎯ ♢♢♢ ⎯

Tom collapsed in the shower.

The day had been a fog. Normally his anger made him feel clear-minded, but his morose attitude had only made him fuzzier. He almost thought he lost time, but no – he remembered the laundry, going to work, his tea, his shopping, and preparing dinner…

 …How had he forgotten to lay enchantments on his own home? Sloppy. It should have been the first thing he did when he was well enough to think. If Evans broke in…

No, if Evans prioritized reciprocity, he’d only escalate to breaking and entering if he saw Tom near his own home. But any number of people could break in. He could wander past Evans’ home by accident. Both of his horcruxes were in one spot, completely unprotected.

His head throbbed painfully. Had he ever touched a horcrux while in this condition? It was bad enough without it…Tom again reached for missing time. He remembered details…The shop setup with the dresses, yes…his day was all accounted for.

He was just a fool.

Tom set the water to freezing until he could barely feel anything, and fought the urge to twist it all the way to hot. He left it shivering uncontrollably, and checked the door six times in a row to be sure it was protected. Then he went to the diary.

What would he tell it? That he’d been so careless, that he was still too sick to touch his own soul, that he forgot to protect his own home, that he’d somehow lured a man into sexual obsession he was no longer sure he could escape?

He’d given it the memory of the Death Eater meeting before he went to sleep. It ought to be in a forgiving mood.

Tom swallowed and wrote in the diary. Hiding the ring in the ceiling. Transfigured it closed. Remember this.

What? Where was it before?

It was findable, which is unforgivable. I’ve updated the enchantments on all entrances too.

Did something happen?

Tom’s vision swum. He was sure if he closed his eyes he’d pass out. It was the potion, he took the potion with his tea, and had still done his chores, he had almost no energy left…

Evans decided to do his stalking openly. He isn’t dangerous for now, but he could be, should he decide to play games with my belongings. He’d be able to identify the ring. He knew about the Gaunts.

What?

And then,

You mean he’d try to use it as leverage?

Yes. To his personal satisfaction.

Vile. Kill him.

If I just killed every influential idiot out to get me there wouldn’t be anyone left alive in the entirety of Hogwarts or the Ministry, Tom carved viciously into the pages.

He felt a sting of horrible energy bubbling up like bile at the thought this would result in another argument, but the response was swift.

Sorry

I’m worried. Please be careful

It was unusually vulnerable coming from any version of Tom, who was quick to bite when pressed. Tom felt abruptly terrible for snapping at it.

It’s okay to be frustrated when the easiest option isn’t possible. I am too. I’ll handle this.

Fine

Tom worked his jaw, but decided he’d made the diary uneasy, and further conversation would undoubtably set it off. He closed it and shoved it aside, and winced as his headache and the horrible sensation of misalignment intensified as his hand brushed against the leather cover. Why was it so much worse now? He barely felt the diary normally, the ring shouldn’t affect him like this…

Tom really didn’t miss any time? The laundry, straight to work, the apothecary…

He climbed into bed nude and still damp, the fabric smelling fresh and crisp in a way that sat easy on his lungs. It must be worse because of the duel he had with Evans. Alcohol, excessive magic use and a frenzy were a terrible combination…

The apothecary…He took his potion with his tea, yes, he remembered that…

Would Evans prefer him with his hair down…?

Tom fell dead asleep.