Chapter Text
‘Why do you do that?’ he asked her one evening sitting in class.
Harry’s eyes shifted away from where she’d been watching her classmates perform their transfigurations so much better than her. Well, most of them anyway. Crabbe and Goyle were rather clueless.
Why do I do what? she thought back absently.
‘Compare yourself to your peers. You think about them like they’re better than you.’
They are. At magic at least.
Tom’s disbelief coiled thick in her mind. He snorted, or something close to it. Without a nose he couldn’t really snort, but he managed to push the feeling across well enough anyway. It surprised Harry a bit he’d do something so… undignified.
‘They absolutely are not. They simply have foundations you don’t. Pureblood children are taught magic from the moment they can hold a wand. The trace doesn’t matter in a magical household, it won’t be picked up. They have years of experience on you. But your potential, your innate ability, it outstrips them by leaps and bounds. You have so much inherent power, it’s frankly unbelievable.’
Harry felt strangely fuzzy at his words. No one had ever really complimented her, especially not over something like that. She tended to be looked over by all her professors, even her own head of house. She scraped by with passing grades, nothing extraordinary, but not low enough to cause concern. Unobtrusive, just like the Dursleys had trained into her. Can’t be better than darling Dudley after all.
She swallowed down her disbelief. Tom wouldn’t lie to her. No more than he’d lie to himself. If there was anyone in this world she could trust, it was him. And Tom was stunningly brilliant, like a sun, like an imploding star. So bright it destroyed your eyes, so hot it melted you down right to the marrow. Powerful and cataclysmic, utterly unstoppable. Harry wanted to be like that.
‘You can. I can teach you,’ he told her, voice soft as sin in her inner ear. ‘You can be magnificent.’
Harry’s breath caught, fingers taunt around her holly wand. The bright red berries bloomed in her chest. Fruiting, spreading. They burst ripe with poison at the base of her throat. Please.
Tom smiled with her mouth. ‘They teach you rules. Limitations. Say this word, flick your wand just right, and magic. That’s just a way to organize your mind, trick yourself into making what you want to happen happen. Magic has no rules. Magic is limitless . And so are you.’
Their hand relaxed on the holly wood. Within the phoenix feather sang to them, it’s magic calling out to the maelstrom of their combined might.
‘The magic will do what you want it to, if you ask it. Most wizards rely on Latin words and showy waving to do the asking, but you don’t need that. There is meaning behind what they do. Why those words are chosen, the shape of the movement. Arithmancy and runes, language and symbolism. It’s like a collective consciousness, generations of magicals writing the laws of magic so their offspring ma use it with understating how. But the magic doesn’t need any of that to tell it what to do. It needs only the intent. Point your wand, feel the magic funnel out. Feel it coiling inside your veins, the stores of it deep in your chest. All of that, is yours to command. It can do anything you want it to. You just have to ask it.’
She could feel the heartbeat of her power inside her. Just like Tom said, she could feel it burning under her skin.
‘With transfiguration its best to focus on what you want to shape, and what you have to change. Not just the form of it, or the color. The material. Living to no living, metal to wood. What must you reform? What must you take away? You are God, and this is your creation. You remake the world in your image, one little miracle at a time. Take the mouse, take its legs, take its heart. Turn its fur to cardboard, turn its bones to matchsticks. Tear apart it’s atoms and rearrange them at your will.’
Harry’s vision tunneled down, focusing only on the little white rodent and Tom’s words in her ears. His hand guided her wand, directing their magic out the tip. It sunk into the mouse’ skin and deep into its little body. Her will grabbed hold of everything the animal was and unmade it. It tore the creature apart bit by bit and reshaped it how she wanted. Blood became pulp, skin became paper, bones reshaped into matches hidden away deep inside the carcass. Little beady black eyes stained out like ink, seeping into the label and spelling out words.
The flow of her magic trickled to a stop, and she had a perfect antique matchbox sitting on the desk before her.
“Very good Miss Potter!”
Harry jumped at McGonagall’s voice coming suddenly behind her. She stopped herself at the last minute from coiling over the matchbox, hide away the freakishness, don’t let it be seen. Her nails dug into the grain of her desk to keep herself from swiping the box off and hiding it in her blouse.
“Very impressive. A perfect transfiguration. Ten points to Slytherin.” McGonagall didn’t even look disappointed to be giving points to the rival house, to be awarding the Girl-Who-Disappointed.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Harry managed between the tightness of her jaw. Tom’s praise was one thing, McGonagall’s was just overwhelming. But there was a small part of her, more Tom than Harry, that basked in it, craved more. I am better, those thorns sang, I deserve this. I deserve more.
Those thorns twisted into her wrist, into the base of her skull. They infested her synapses and Harry wasn’t thinking past the want and the longing when she tapped her wand against the matchbox and unwound the magic she’d poured into it. The mouse twisted back into shape, reforming from inside out until there was a little white scurrying creature on her desk, it’s eyes not quite right. They were too sharp, too knowing for a normal rodent. (playing God had consequences, they would find)
Harry wasn’t looking at the mouse, her attention was solely on McGonagall and her gobsmacked face.
“Well then,” she gasped, wide eyes and focused solely on the white mouse cleaning its face. McGonagall gave a nervous little laugh, cleared her throat and did her best to wipe the shock of her face. “Take another ten points to Slytherin, Miss Potter. And I’d like to see you after class, if you don’t mind. You have the rest of the class free, since you seem to have this transfiguration covered.”
Harry beamed, the glee of McGonagall’s praise curling pleasantly in her chest alongside Tom’s branches. Thank you , she thought toward him, knowing he could taste her smile.
‘That, my dear, was all you,’ Tom said, and there was awe in his voice that made her giddy. ‘You are a marvel Harry.’
“Miss Potter,” McGonagall said from her place behind her desk, eyes sharp and catlike, “your performance in class today was exceptional. What you displayed was high above what’s expected from the second year curriculum.”
Harry shifted on her feet, hands fisting in her outer robes. The high of McGonagall’s praise had long left and all she had now was mounting dread after being reminded to stay behind once the rest of the class left. She had gone too far, too fast. She’d transformed from mediocre to exceptional in a single afternoon, and now McGonagall would want to know why.
‘Shhh,’ Tom whispered against her ear, ‘I’ll be alright, I promise.’ He didn’t sound worried and Harry tried to tell herself neither should she.
“You’ve always done well in my class,” McGonagall continued, “but what you did today…” she shook her head as if at a loss for words. “Miss Potter, do you know where we get the mice and other animals for class?” McGonagall asked suddenly.
Harry jolted at the non sequitur, already off balance at the admission she did well in class (I told you, you’re magnificent, Tom purred against her pulsepoint). “No,” she said, staring down at the iridescent quill laying on McGonagall’s desk, tip stained with red ink. “Ah, no. I have no idea. A pet store?”
McGonagall smiled and shook her head. “We don’t use actual animals until sixth year,” she explained. “Before that, all the animals used in class were transfigured from inanimate objects by myself. The mice we used in class today were not mice at all, but matchboxes turned into mice. They were not living and breathing, though they acted like it. Given enough time, they would turn back into matchboxes. For the first few years, transfiguration teaches to change the appearance of something, not what it actually is.” From behind her desk, McGonagall lifted up a small metal cage and set it down beside the quill. Inside sat one of the white mice quietly grooming itself, tiny eyes watching Harry with more intrigue than a rodent should have.
“This,” McGonagall said, pointing her wand at the mouse, “is no longer a matchbox that looks like a mouse. It is actually alive. You managed to perform a seventh year spell today.”
“Oh,” Harry said softly, eyes wide and staring at the mouse. “Oh.” She felt Tom’s laughter tickle against her throat, her own joy and awe bubble up in the bottle of her chest.
“Where did you learn to do this?” McGonagall asked.
Harry didn’t need Tom to lie for her, she could do it with her own mouth. He’d given her a perfect excuse not even an hour before. “Most of the other students, they grew up with magic,” Harry said, looking just past the professor’s nose, “I didn’t. I was sick of being behind, of all of this being so new. So I’ve been teaching myself theory,” she watched the mouse sitting perched on its hind legs, tiny black eyes staring unblinkingly up at her. “I changed the shape of the mouse into a maxbox. Muscle into cardboard, bones into matchsticks, blood into ink. It was easy to just… switch it back.” She chanced a glance up and saw McGonagall staring down at her in surprise.
“Remarkable,” she muttered. “If you simply reversed the transfiguration, that means that you unconsciously turned the mouse into a living creature in the process of turning it into a matchbox.” McGonagall cleared her throat, eyes full of wonder and excitement. “I’d like to offer private tutoring sessions, if you’re interested, Miss Potter. I would hate for you to stagnate in my class just because you are ahead of your year. We could look into ways to challenge you in class, too, perhaps. Special assignments, maybe,” she said, more to herself than to Harry.
Is that something they usually do? Harry asked inside the privacy of her own mind.
‘No,’ Tom answered, a tone to his voice she couldn’t quite place. ‘No it’s not.’
McGonagall shooed her out of the classroom shortly after, still muttering to herself under her breath, the Scottish accent coming out stronger in the professor’s excitement. Harry hurried away, something strange twisting in her stomach. McGonagall’s beaming smile burned in her mind’s eye, a stark contrast to the way her smile had vanished and whole body went tense when the sorting hat had called out SLYTHERIN . Harry didn’t trust that proud smile, but she wanted more all the same.
What do you think? She asked silently.
Tom was silent a moment, gathering his thoughts. ‘You would be a fool not to take her up on the offer. She was a few years ahead of me in school, but I knew McGonagall. She’s a transfiguration prodigy, even if she is painfully biased toward Gryffindor. You’d learn a lot from her.’
More than from you?
‘Yes, sadly,’ Tom admitted like it pained him, ‘I’m good at transfiguration, but not like Minerva was. Is. She was Dumbledore’s darling.’
Dumbledore taught transfiguration?
Harry felt Tom’s sneer, felt it reflected on her own face. ‘Sadly, yes. It felt like he spent more of his class subtly attacking me then he did real teaching, though.’
Stepping out of the front doors of the castle and into the courtyard, Harry brushed Tom’s soul with understanding. I don’t like him either.
They walked down the trail to the Black Lake, Tom loose and limber inside her limbs. Halfway down, Harry stopped and pulled her shoes and socks off so they could feel the cool grass beneath bare feet.
They sat out on the lakeside together, Tom pressed to the front and settling into Harry’s limbs so that he could feel the warmth of sunlight for the first time in fifty years. He basked in it, the backs of their eyes burning as the warm rays dripped their honey on their skin.
‘I couldn’t feel anything in the diary. But, if there was any way to describe what it was like in there, I think it would be cold. So cold it didn’t feel like cold anymore,’ He told her as they lay out on the grass, sleeves rolled up and their shirt pushed back so that even their stomach could touch the warmth.
Harry absently pulled at the grass beneath them, dirt catching under her nails. I’ll never send you back there, she promised him, I’ll make sure you never have to be cold again.
He kissed the back of her hand with their lips, breath ghosting over the knuckles as their mouth parted in a smile. ‘And I promise you will never be alone again,’ he swore.
“How do we make you real?” she asked aloud. “I want to give you a body, someday. When it’s safe. How do we do that?” She desperately wanted to hold him against her, have something physical and real. She was terrified that he’d leave her, if given form. She knew he wouldn’t, tied too tightly together to ever untangle. She knew he promised her he’d stay (she knew he was a liar). She wanted him real and solid, she wanted him to stay trapped inside her chest forever.
She didn’t know what she wanted.
‘I think… I think I might be able to make a body. Built one from magic. But I’d have to possess someone, and devour their magic, their soul. I don’t think I’d be able to use you, because your soul is part of mine. Even if I were willing to use you, kill you, I couldn’t.’ What went unsaid was he wasn’t willing to kill her, it was out of the question. Even if devouring her would have given him form, he wasn’t willing to made that trade.
“And if you possessed someone else…?” She whispered, words haunting and hesitant, meaning it this time, saying it as more than a joke. She felt his shock at hearing her suggest murder and truly mean it. “If I gave the Diary to someone else, someone no one would miss, and let them write in it? Make them write their soul away and let you consume them?”
He chuckled, the sound warm and soft in her ears. ‘You are a far cry from Dumbledore’s golden girl, aren’t you?’ And wasn’t that the truth? Though, for someone so very concerned with the Dark Lord, she figured Dumbledore would be more invested in the person who defeated him. Instead, the old man liked to pretend she didn’t exist. Privately, Harry wondered if it was because she was sorted into Slytherin. Tom’s curiosity colored hers. He fed off her thought, trailing along where it went and came to the same conclusion. ‘He dismisses you. Maybe because you’re a Slytherin, maybe because you're female, maybe both?’
What does my gender have to do with anything?
‘The magical world is caught in the past, in more ways than one. They look down on those who are different, on those who are born without magic, or without magical parents. Why would their treatment of women be any different? And Dumbledore is old. He likes to pretend otherwise, but he carries the same biases the rest of our world holds.’
Tom sighed, stretching out in Harry’s skin like a comfortable feline. ‘Anyway, Dumbledore’s misogyny aside, it would probably be best if we hold off on committing murder just yet. We have too many eyes on us right now. It would be foolish to jump into this and get caught and killed. Just because we’re horcruxes doesn’t mean we can’t die. You especially. I have no idea how a human horcrux works, but I imagine it’s vastly different from me. You’re too fleshy and soft. It wouldn’t be very hard at all to kill you.’
That, Harry decided, was not a pleasant thought at all. Alright, so if a body is off the table for the moment, how do we go about making me less squishy? You’re still here, which means the older you is too, and last time he and I met, he gave me my scar trying to kill me. I don’t think his plans would have changed much eleven years later.
Tom shrugged with her shoulders. ‘Just tell him you’re a horcrux. He’ll stop trying to kill you then.’
And if I don’t get the chance, because he’s killed me? Or if Dumbledore finds out what we are and tries to kill me? Or literally anyone else, once again, tries to kill me? I’ll be dead and you’ll be back in that diary, and then we’ll have both made liars of ourselves.
A press of ghostly fingers against Harry’s ribcage, Tom hummed in her throat. ‘Hmm, that would be a problem, wouldn’t it? I might be able to bind you to myself, but if you die you’d just end up in the diary with me, which neither of us want. What we really need is a way to keep your body from dying.’
“How on earth do we do that?” she asked aloud. Her mind cast back to a tiny package in a bank vault, Hagrid muttering something about Flimel when asked, and the allure of a little red stone that could make miracles. The mirror and the girl who was not a girl trapped inside holding a red gem in offering, Quirrell who was not Quirrell in the reflection finding her and sending her away. She suddenly wished she had stayed, wished she had stolen the mirror’s offering away with her. (But it hadn’t beenn any of her business, hadn’t concerned her, and Harry learned long ago sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong never ended well.)
‘I would suggest a horcrux of your own, if I didn’t know what it was like to be the trapped soul piece…”
Harry’s confusion curled hot and bright around Tom’s words. How would a horcrux protect my body? Sure it keeps a person from dying, but Voldemort didn’t seem to fare too well when he went to kill me.
‘Whatever happened that Halloween was a freak occasion. A horcrux doesn’t just keep the soul from dying, it keeps it tied to the body, as long as there’s a body left. That night likely wasn’t the first time he died, it was just the first time there was no body to return to. Even then, Voldemort should have been able to make himself a new vessel, even just temporarily. The fact he just disappeared after is bizarre to me. It doesn’t make any sense. Then again, neither do you.’
She startled. What do you mean?
Tom rolled them over onto their stomach to pull at the grass, his voice pensive in her head. ‘A horcrux needs a ritual to be created, a very specific ritual. You can’t just… make a horcrux by accident . It needs intent, and planning, and very specific circumstances. But it makes no sense for him to turn you into a horcrux purposefully, not when he tries to kill you after.’
Harry thought it over, something cold seeping inside her bones. Unless he didn’t actually try to kill me…
Their fingers stilled against the grass, Tom perking to attention. ‘What do we know about that night? What facts do we have?’ he asked, sounding feverish.
Voldemort went after my family on Halloween, 1981. He killed James Potter, and then he killed Lily Potter, and then he tried to kill me. But it didn’t work, I survived and his body was destroyed, even though you said that shouldn’t have been able to happen.
‘Why would he go after the Potters, though? What purpose was there?’ Tom wondered.
Hagrid made it sound like he was winning the war. Why would he go off and try to kill a baby, when he’d practically already won?
Tom stilled, thorns scraping against their esophagus. ‘Hagrid?’
He’s the one who delivered my letter. Took me to Diagon Alley to get my school things and told me all about the magical world. Well, a very biased account of the magical world, but still. He’s nice. He bought me an owl.
‘He’s Dumbledore’s. Owes the man a lot for keeping him out of Azkaban.’
Harry froze at that. What on earth would Hagrid go to Azkaban for?
Tom grinned inside her, sharp and wicked. ‘Oh? Didn’t you know? Hagrid opened the Chamber of Secrets fifty years ago and murdered a girl with his pet monster.’
Rolling onto their back, Harry didn’t bother to hold back her snort. Hagrid? The Heir of Slytherin? And they actually believed it? she asked, disbelieving.
Tom shrugged with her shoulders. ‘I just uncovered the deadly acromantula he’d been keeping in the dungeons. The morons at the Ministry were the ones who decided he must have been behind the Heir of Slytherin business.’
Harry laughed, and it felt like sugar on her tongue. She had so rarely laughed in her life. Tom’s mirth bubbled over hers, and it was even sweeter.
‘Still,’ Tom thought, sobering up, ‘we need to find out what really happened that Halloween. None of this is adding up.’
Yes, but how do we do that when all of the people there were either killed, blown to bits, or too young to remember any of it?
‘That’s the question, isn’t it?’ Tom paused, a feeling like him tweaking her nose making Harry scowl, ‘brat.’
You’re the brat, brat, she shot back, crossing her arms over her chest. Tom’s laughter echoed in her ears, her comeback painfully bad. Still, she couldn’t help the way the corner of her mouth twitched up in a smile. It fell again a moment later, a thought suddenly striking her. Do you think we’re the only ones? Horcruxes, I mean?
Tom’s laughter died in her chest. ‘ I don’t know. I don’t know much of anything that happened between when I went in the diary and when you brought me out again. I never planned on making more than one, before. I only needed one, to survive the bombs.’
Harry jolted. Bombs?
Yew stabbed into her lung, the echo of a long ago panic blooming in her chest and making her breath go short. Tom swallowed with her throat, and it tasted bitter. ‘How much do you know about the second World War?’ he asked, and there was dread in her mouth.
A bit. We didn’t really go into it much in school before I started Hogwarts, but Uncle Vernon liked the documentaries about it.
Tom took a breath, and it ached. ‘I started my second year at Hogwarts the day war was declared on Germany. That summer, I returned to London in the aftermath of the Blitz. That’s what they called it, after the German word for lightning. It was like lightning too, the bombs lighting up the sky, flashes of light and explosions like thunder. A storm with no rain. We could have used the rain, might have made it harder for them to fly, might have put out the fires. They never really stopped bombing, after the Blitz. That was just when the worst of it happened.’ Harry sat up, Tom’s hands clenching in her lap. ‘The horcrux was to make sure I survived the summers, make sure I survived a building falling on me. I never thought the piece of soul I cut off would be conscious, never imagined being trapped in that book.’ He laughed, bitter and spiteful. ‘I just traded one hell for another.’