Chapter Text
~several weeks after school let out~
Staring out the window in her room, Harry watched the burning fields and listened to the screaming of the souls.
“Harriet…your parents are here.”
She jumped off her bed and rushed out of her room and into the living room. James grinned at her and motioned for her to sit down. “How’s my little girl?!”
Lily laughed and floated beside Harriet. “I wish I could hug you, my dear.” Harry smiled at them and then noticed Death leave the room.
They had heard everything from her a few days ago. Harry had told them through tears and apologies about what she had been forced to do. They had forgiven her but warned her that Grindelwald wouldn’t sit idly by in a cell now that his magic was restored.
James crossed his arms. “Young lady, I have been thinking about what you told us, and I realized that this is the first time you’ve told us about this Tom fellow. What’s his family like?”
“Well, he’s an orphan, but he’s from…” She stared at her diehard Gryffindor father and bit her lip. “Erm, he's half Muggle on his father’s side.” James softened and smiled at Lily.
“And his mother?”
“Well, she was of the Gaunt family. Merope Gaunt is her name.” Harry hid her wince, hoping he wouldn’t make the connection.
“Oh! I knew her! She’s in the fields of Oblivion. All the traumatized spirits go there for peace and rest and no memory of what happened in life. The poor girl. I feel sorry for her.” Lily sighed and folded her hands.
James wasn’t to be deterred. “And has Sirius met this boy yet?”
“Er, no, Pettigrew hasn’t been found. I haven’t found out how to free Sirius without the rat. However, he is getting fatter and healthier and stronger, he exercises in his cell now, in his dog form and human. He’s happy, just going a bit stir crazy at the moment, but the dementors are leaving him alone now.” Harry grinned. “We also write letters back and forth, but no, Sirius hasn’t met Tom.” She drew herself upright and tried to stop the blush. “And I don’t think he needs to. Tom isn’t like that. The boy doesn’t care about love. He’s only eleven!”
Lily gave her husband a firm look. “She’s right, James.” James wilted slightly and then huffed.
“Only want to know about this boy who Harry was willing to give magic over for! That’s all. Know practically nothing about him.” He looked at Harry and grinned. “But I’m proud of my daughter. Seeker and winning her first two big matches! Slytherin and Hufflepuff!” He winked and then chuckled in pride. “Chip off the old block.”
“Hopefully she didn’t get your block headed tendencies,” Lily muttered at him drily. James made an affronted face while Harry giggled.
They chattered on until Harry made a slip. “Well, I don’t see Tom unless it’s at mealtimes or classes, you see. He’s in Slytherin after all, so we do study halls together after class. Hermione and he can’t stand each other! You should see them in Potions…Dad?” Her father’s translucent face was darkening.
“SLYTHERIN?!”
“Er…”
“Now I remember Gaunt! I knew the name sounded familiar! Gaunt! They are the direct descendants of Salazar Slytherin! YOU’RE FRIENDS WITH THE SNAKE?!”
“Now James! Honestly!”
“My daughter, the direct descendant of Godric Gryffindor himself, is cavorting with Slytherin’s spawn?!”
“Dad!” Harry stared at him and then jumped up and shook her finger at him. “Thomas Riddle is a powerful wizard and will be great one day! I would rather him an ally than an enemy! Besides, he doesn’t fancy me…much. And I’m eleven! With a Dark Lord to kill! I’m much too busy to be courted.” Harry looked away primly.
Lily laughed and shook her head. “James, sit down. You’re working yourself into evaporation! Look at you!” He was starting to fade because of his agitation.
Huffing, James sat down sulkily. “I’ll sic Sirius on him.”
“OH NO YOU WON’T!” Harry gave her father a look. “I’m eleven years old! Not sixteen! There’s nothing for you to be worried about! Why do I have to defend myself?!” She crossed her arms and sulked.
James looked at his daughter, the spitting image of himself and saw a stubborn young girl who wouldn’t back down. He chuckled tiredly. “I see what you mean.”
“Good!” Harry looked at her mother and smiled.
Lily smiled at her husband and then at her daughter, but she began to frown after a moment. Harry looked at her with concern.
“Mum?”
“You never told us. Who fired the Killing Curse at you? If Quirrell was too weak at the time, and Grindelwald didn’t have his magic…”
Harry pressed her lips into a thin line. “I don’t know how weak Quirrell was at the time. If he was able to pull off a full Killing Curse or not, but if he wasn’t…” She stared at her parents. “Someone else is out there who wants me dead.”
Looking at each other in worry, James and Lily held hands and tried to put on smiles for their daughter and change the subject. There was nothing to be done about it at the time.
~sometime later~
After bidding goodbye to her parents, who still didn’t know about how the Dursleys treated her, Harry swiftly went back to her cupboard. She looked around the house and realized that she was coming back on a day of a party or something.
Slipping up to her aunt, Harry spoke softly. “I’ll go out then, Aunt Petunia. I won’t even be in the house.”
Petunia looked at her closely and then nodded. “Don’t come back until thirty minutes after eleven.”
“Right.” Harry sighed, grabbed her things and slipped out. She wandered the streets. What should I do from four in the afternoon to midnight?
She grinned. “Go shopping!” Grabbing some coins that she had buried in her backyard, Harry held out her wand, hopped onto the Knight Bus, held on for dear life, and then hopped off at Diagon Alley.
She tapped on the wall and went shopping. Looking through the shops and stores, Harry grinned and noticed something. She bought a beautiful shaving set for Sirius’ birthday that was coming up. She also bought him a change of clothes and a set of combs and then, on impulse, traveled to his vault and found his wand. She slipped out quickly before any alarms could be raised in Gringotts.
With a little laugh a smile, she faded away and reappeared at his door. She knocked lightly, keeping an eye out for guards of the human variety. “Sirius? You decent?”
“Harriet?! Yeah, come on in.” Harry slipped through the door and grinned at him. After giving him a hug, she enlarged the items.
“Comb set, shaving set, and another set of clothes. And your wand! I was able to have it repaired from being snapped. Happy birthday!” She clapped her hands happily and grinned at him. “Now, where do you wanna go today? Scotland? Ireland? Nova Scotia? The Maldives? The Bahamas? Thailand? Japan? China? India? Israel? South Africa? South Korea?”
Looking up from his wand, he laughed and thought about it. “Scotland. Just the good old backyard.”
Harry grinned, put his things away in his invisible closet, and then held out her hand. “It’s gonna be like dementors and shadowy and scary. Just to warn you.”
He nodded and held on tighter. She traveled them through the underworld and then opened the veil on the other side. Sirius shivered but shook it off when he transformed into a huge black dog with glossy fur. He barked happily and romped in the grass, sniffing at mysterious piles and chasing butterflies and squirrels.
When Sirius transformed again, they sprawled spread eagle on the grass, staring at the blue sky. For a while, they just pointed out the different pictures that the clouds were formed into.
After a while, Harry called for Harold and asked for an entire picnic basket of lunch, complete with a chocolate cake and a iced pitcher of tea.
When Harold came back, Sirius spread the blanket while she set out the food. She told him everything that happened while he asked questions.
Grindelwald’s return. Tom growing attraction to her. Her father’s reaction to Tom. The Dursley Problem (old news but still a current issue).
Sirius didn’t much like Tom, and he could understand James’ point of view. “You see, Harry. For ten years, he didn’t know anything, and you’re still keeping secrets from them, about Lily’s sister treating you badly.” He raised his hands fast. “I know! I know! You don’t want them to worry or get angry about something they have no control over. I understand, but James was always very smart about these things. He could always tell when someone was keeping a secret from him. It rankled him bad whenever it was someone he cared about. He knows you’re not telling him everything. He thinks it’s about Tom Riddle.” He sighed and pulled out another chicken leg.
Harry sighed and nibbled on a cracker. “Well, what am I going to do? Do I tell him everything? Nothing? There truly isn’t anything going on between me and Tom. Tom and I.” She corrected herself before Sirius could. He was a grammar Nazi.
Sirius shrugged lazily. “Well, you should play it by ear. Personally, I think you should tell them about the Dursleys. True, it will hurt Lily to learn how horrible her sister really is, but they deserve to know about your issue. They’re strong, and they might even know of a way to get the Dursleys to treat you right. You should sit down with them and tell them everything. Maybe not in as much detail as you told me, but enough to get the point across. It’ll kill Lily, but she deserves to know how her own sister is treating her daughter. They deserve to know.”
Harry sighed but nodded. “Sirius?”
He looked up from his tea. “Yes?”
“Do you…was I wrong to give Grindelwald back his magic?” Her eyes were downcast. Her voice wavered.
Sighing, Sirius shook his head. “Another tough question. Listen, Harriet, in this world, everyone’s got an opinion. They think they’re the only ones who are going through something tough. They don’t believe that anyone could ever understand them. Thing is, most people have opinions and do things that can be justified pretty easily. Your actions are justified. You knew that Tom would die if you didn’t do as Grindelwald said.” He set his tea down and rubbed his face tiredly.
“However, if I know you, then I know that you’re beating yourself up about it, thinking ‘what if I had done this, or this, or this’ . Harry,” he stared at her hard, “you made the best decision you could with what you had at the time. What you had included what you thought about. If that was the only thing that came to mind, then that’s what you had. You made your decision. You made your choice. To regret it is to waste time that you could use correcting it. So, what are you going to do to correct your actions?” He watched her closely.
Harry thought about her response carefully and then said, “Take back the magic the first chance I get.”
He smiled and nodded. “That’s my girl.”
They smiled at each other and continued their picnic before packing up, and heading back to Azkaban Hotel.
~rewind back towards the beginning of summer~
Tom stared at the parchment, that had a drop of his blood on it, in his shaking hands. He watched the blood sink into the fibers of the paper and expand into letters and spread across the page into a blood status report. He swallowed as he quickly read it.
Triumph bloomed inside him.
This was his proof. He was Thomas Marvolo Gaunt-Riddle, Heir of Slytherin. Heir!
A smile bloomed on his face as plans started unfolding in his mind.
He had a lot to do.
~present time~
Tom stared out the window of his room. He shared it with Ron. That took some getting used to, but so far, life with the Weasleys was much better than at Wool’s.
“Ugh, wish you hadn’t let it slip to Mum that we had homework!” Ron’s forehead hit the table. Tom smirked over at him.
“Little Lion Lost?” He raised an eyebrow at the redhead. Ron flicked him an irritated look before looking down at his charms essay.
Ron gave him a pleading look. “Come on, Tom. Give me a hand! I’m sorry about calling you a prissy!”
Thinking about it, Tom realized he could listen to Ron’s whining the whole day or help him and not have to listen to it anymore. Sighing, he got up and moved over to Ron’s desk.
“What’s your thesis?”
~sometime later~
When the essay was finally finished, Ron gave a tired cheer of triumph. Tom had to admit that the boy was smart, he just didn’t allow himself to be. Which is curious. Why would anyone strive to be stupid? Is it his idea of rebellion? He stifled a snort and then looked up when Ginny rushed passed, shouting dinner was ready.
“Come on.”
“Great! I’m starved!” Ron grinned and tore out of the room. Tom rolled his eyes. That was another thing he didn’t like about the Weasleys. They had no manners at the table. Talked with their mouths full, elbows on the table, everything.
He and the other children had been trained by Mrs. Wool to have good manners. Good manners attracted good parents, she would always say.
Not that I ever had a chance with her always warning them away from me, the old bitch. He kept his snarl inside him and sat down between Fred and Ron. Percy was saying something about his OWLs and what not. Tom looked at Ginny and asked for the bread rolls. She passed them to him.
The owl- Errol- flew in like he was at Death’s door. Tom snorted when he didn’t quite make it inside and simply flopped over the windowsill. Ron shook his head.
“How humiliating.”
Tom had to agree with him.
Molly Weasley picked up the owl and took the letters before depositing him on the bottom of his perch. She divvied out the letters. Ron frowned.
“Any from Harry?”
Tom looked up. “She hasn’t written to you either?” Ron shook his head, concern in his eyes.
Thinking back on how Harry never really answered his questions about her home life, he couldn’t help the scowl forming on his face. That night, he didn’t undress like usual. Ron frowned at him.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m going to apparate over to Harry’s.” Tom put on his coat.
“No need for that!” George grinned as he walked in.
Fred smirked. “Naw, we’ll just steal Dad’s flying car.” He pulled out the keys. Tom smiled. Ron looked awed.
~meanwhile~
Harry flinched as another stroke of the belt hit her flesh. Biting on her tongue, she stopped herself just short of crying out. She hadn’t even been at the house and yet Vernon blamed her for that strange creature appearing and scaring the shit out of their guests. She hadn’t even been here, and she was still being punished.
Rage flared inside her, licking at her soul. She screamed. “ENOUGH!”
The belt in Vernon’s hands erupted into flames. Turning, Harry pulled her shirt on properly, now sticky with her blood. She clenched her fists and screamed in rage again, “STOP HURTING ME!” She stomped her foot, and every piece of glass shatter in the house. Expressions of terror were on their faces. Good . Harry snarled at them, hatred showing through her eyes.
Petunia straightened. “Enough of this, Harriet! Stop acting like a little monster!”
Giving the woman a dead eyed stare, Harry studied her. “If you keep treating someone like a monster, then you shouldn’t be surprised when they turn into one.” She smiled at them in a broken sort of way. “Unless you want the entire fucking house to go up the way that belt did, then give me Dudley’s spare room, stop beating me, give me three square meals a day, and leave me the fuck ALONE!”
Cold terror crept over them as they saw shadows coming off of Harry. Petunia grabbed all of Harry’s magical things and put them in Dudley’s room of broken toys. Harry gave them all cold looks.
Her magic wouldn’t be registered by the Ministry, considering it wasn’t through a wand, but she still received a letter because of that blasted House Elf. Harry again wondered what the idiot wanted.
She found out later that night.
Grabbing onto the Elf, she traveled with him into the backyard and began her interrogation. When she found out about him keeping her letters, she hit the fucking roof. She was so done with people doing things against her, and then turning around and saying it was for her fucking good.
When she was done screaming at the elf (she had put a wandless silencing charm around them), she grabbed the letters and then summoned Harold. “Make sure Dobby doesn’t bother me at my home again.” She looked at Dobby. “You came to warn me. Thank you for that. I would ask you to stay and have tea, but you have done me a serious wrong by taking something of mine that isn’t yours to take. I’m sorry, Dobby, but because of this, I can’t trust you. Get out.”
The Elf was sobbing and begging for Harriet Potter to forgive Dobby, but Harry wanted to go to bed, and she honestly didn’t want to forgive the stranger for taking something that wasn’t his. It was so huge a no-no that even House Elves (who are, statistically speaking, greatly lacking in common sense) would know not to do it. Besides, her back was still on fire because of Dobby’s idiocy. She wasn’t a girl prone to violence, but she definitely wanted to punt Dobby into the next yard over! A flimsy excuse of a warning in exchange for stolen letters and eighteen lashes that would have been twenty-five had she not stopped it.
Dobby was taken away by her undead House Elf.
Harry spent the rest of the night reading the letters that Dobby had stolen from her. The little, well-meaning, idiotic, fiend.
However, about two hours before sunrise, she jumped when the sound of the front door opened.
“Shh! They’ll hear you, Fred!”
Harry slipped out of her room and out onto the stairs. She stared down at them, before grinning and running down the stairs, mindful of her still healing lashes.
She hugged Tom first, and then Ron, and then the twins. They grabbed her things, and her owl, and slipped out of the house. Harry smirked and wandlessly carved a single sentence into the living room wall, with flaming letters. She charmed it to never burn anything and never stop flaming around the letters. It created a nice dramatic effect.
I’ll be back. ~Harry
That done, she took Tom’s hand and left Little Azkaban for the summer.
Ron looked at her with some concern. “Why didn’t you write to us?! Were they starving you?!”
“No. Someone, a House Elf, was stealing my letters for some reason. Some elf named Dobby.” Harry noticed Tom shift beside her. She quickly scanned his soul and learned that it was the Malfoy elf. She frowned in thought. Why would the House Elf of the Malfoys want to warn me about a possible danger at school? What danger could that be?! Was Lucius Malfoy a follower of Grindelwald?
Tom distracted her when he wrapped his arm around her tender shoulders. Harry was startled and jerked away. Tom saw the blood immediately. His eyes darkened.
“So it was beatings that you were hiding this whole time… They weren’t starving you. They were beating you. Lashes. Am I right?” His mind flashed to how fond Mrs Wool is of the switch. He knew Harry’s pain. When Harry didn’t answer, he took ahold of her chin and forced her to look at him. “Am I right?”
She jerked her face away and gave him a glare. “Yes.”
“You can’t go back.”
Giving vent to a soft but bitter laugh, Harry rested head on his shoulder. “I have to, Tom. Blood wards protect me from Grindelwald. And those monsters are, unfortunately, my only blood relatives.” Harry focused on the view outside the window. Tom was silent and then he pressed his hand against her back gently.
“Episkey.” She blinked in shock as she felt her skin knit together and become soothed.
“Wandless?”
He smirked. “You told me to look into it. I did.”
Even though she knew how powerful he was, she was still surprised by how talented he was. She had been struggling with it for years, and he could do it in months?! Smiling at him pleasantly, like she often did to everyone, Harry pushed down the bitter jealousy in her. Tom seemed to have everything, even a happy house.
The jealousy was a bit harder to push down when she finally saw how homey and nice the Weasley house really was. She swallowed and smiled through her bitterness, knowing eventually, she would have to go back to the Dursleys.
Well, I won’t. I’ll live full time in the Underworld. I won’t go back.
She clenched her fists and cemented her resolve. Tom frowned in her direction, but didn’t bother her. He knew he had to visit Draco and warn him about his elf wandering about the country.
What the devil was he doing around Harry? He couldn’t possibly know about my wanting to find my ancestor’s secret chamber. Draco said once how much Dobby adored Harry. Could he simply be stalking her? Reading her letters? Tom’s hands fisted in rage. That simply cannot be allowed. He knew he had to speak to Draco immediately. Perhaps once we go to Diagon Alley for our supplies, I can speak with him.
He focused back on the task of getting Harry to eat something. She was as pale as Death and as skinny as a skeleton. He frowned in concern, wondering if she had perhaps relapsed during their first part of the summer…
Both Tom and Harry tuned out Molly’s lecture towards her sons about using their father’s car without permission. Harry continued to look around the house. It was her first Magical house.
Tom grinned faintly. “The mirrors talk to you.” She blinked at him. He grinned wider and nodded. “Called me Mr Prim and Proper once.” He winked, and Harry laughed through her jealousy.