Chapter Text
There was something heavy about the diary. Its pages held weight unlike a normal book. Maybe it was the countless words soaked into the parchment over fifty years, maybe it was the enchantment that allowed it to write back.
Maybe it was something else entirely.
Harry felt that heaviness in her hands whenever she held the book. It felt like a heartbeat beneath her fingertips as she messily scratched out words with her quill. She could almost feel the book's hunger as her own as it greedily lapped up her ink, desperate for her words.
So very lonely, just like you.
She wondered what it said about herself, that she felt more connection to a book than to the people around her. Though she supposed it wasn’t just any book. It held the soul of a boy, so very like her.
Good morning Tom. She wrote, watching as the ink sank deep into the pages, vanishing as if it had never been. She sat back on her bed to wait for his reply. She didn’t have to wait long.
Good morning Harry. Did you sleep well?
No, not really. Then again, she rarely ever seemed to sleep well. The curse of being her. Between nightmares and late nights and vicious housemates, she never seemed to get enough sleep. Not something she liked to admit to others, give them a weakness to exploit, but Tom was different. Less like talking to another person and more like speaking to a part of herself.
Not really, no.
The diary swallowed up the ink. Harry wondered if it would devour other liquid. Would it like the taste of blood?
More nightmares?
No false concern, no hollow condolences. Not like he might have given when they first met. Weeks ago he would have said I’m very sorry to hear that. He would have said do you want to talk about it? Would have pretended to care, to get closer to her. To take more from her.
Now, they knew each other’s ugly parts. Now, they had peeled back their lovely little masks to face the ugly underneath. They’d laid each other bare in the most intimate way possible. There was no false concern, no lie. Tom and Harry had moved past such pretenses.
Yes .
He didn’t ask her what she’d dreamed of, didn’t pry. Just as she didn’t not pry into his own weaknesses, of which he liked to pretend he had few but she knew he had many. There was a danger, to being known. Let someone in and they can tear you apart. It gives them the freedom to unmake you.
Harry had never had the temptation to become undone until Tom. She thought she might just let him unravel her, remake her in his own image.
Just as he would let her tear him asunder. Just as she’d rebuild him.
Would that really be so bad?
What plans do you have for today, my dear? He asked her. Always the gentleman. Always so curious. Harry felt the tickle of intrigue in the ink. Always so hungry for the world outside.
Tom only ever wanted to be free. Just like her.
She remembered when she’d first written in the diary, all those weeks ago. Finding it among her second year texts and the confusion of this is not mine . But then looking at it and touching it and feeling the familiar magic beneath and realizing oh but it is. She’d paged through and found each one white and blank, the only hint of ownership the gold initials on the front.
T.M.R.
She’d opened to the first page, thinking to use it for notes, for ideas of spells and curses and creation. Her quill had dripped a drop of ink and the book had swallowed .
This is magic , she realized. This is alive.
And so she had pressed her quill to the page and written hello and everything had changed.
Tom had been shrewd at first. He’d been careful and cautious and oh so charming. He made himself look angelic. Painted himself as the perfect boy, the perfect student. Innocent. I am innocent.
Liar.
The decete hasn’t lasted long. They both lied so very well. Could tangle themselves in the lies. Could hang themselves from the noose of their words. They could have gone on and on and on but then Harry poured out a bit too much, Tom got a little too greedy, and then they understood.
You’re like me.
Horcrux, he’d called it. A piece of a soul, tethered to an object, a little sliver of immortality. But more than that. They had become more.
Tom had never meant to become sentient. He was not supposed to be aware. Harry was never supposed to exist at all, much less fuse with the soul shard inside. Accidents, both of them.
He’d become different after that revelation. Crueler, abrasive, true. For the first time since she’d started writing, he felt real. Harry found she preferred it. You are made of sharp edges and jagged pieces, just like me.
Like they were made for one another.
He’d tried to use her, was still using her, just like she was using him. They were cut from the same cloth. That didn’t mean they couldn’t find companionship in their using. They were both so lonely. Why not be a little less alone?
Harry wrote to Tom, and Tom wrote back, and their magic tangled together and twisted taunt until they sometimes didn’t know where one began and the other ended. They reveled in the closeness, in not being alone.
Tom told her about the diary. Of being trapped in nothingness, of wasting away as a scrap of a soul. I wouldn’t have done it if I knew it would be like this. An empty void. Endless white. So this must be hell.
She told him about the Dursley’s and the cupboard. The disappointment when she stepped into the wizarding world and wasn’t the good little savior they expected.
He was alone, as she was alone. She felt that same aching emptiness that he did. The unbelonging. She pressed herself into him until the loneliness was smothered and there was only them left. It was dangerous. It was foolish. They couldn’t seem to bring themselves to stop. They both had something missing, being only pieces of people. Together they felt more complete.
I want to be whole again, he told her. I want to put myself back together. The soul was never meant to be divided. It wanted by nature to be complete. And what were they now, but bits of soul?
Harry smiled at the diary that was Tom’s prison, and scratched out why don’t you come find out?
She felt his confusion.
You’re a horcrux aren’t you? Possess me.
There was shock. Then there was intrigue. He hadn’t thought of that, or he hadn’t thought she’d offer. But she was.
She tasted his loneliness. She knew the terrible prison the diary made. She wanted him out nearly as much as he did. He was the only person who loved her for her. He was the same as she, two parts of a whole, and they were both selfish creatures. This was a form of self love.
Are you sure?
Yes.
A trickle, at first. The smallest brush against her thoughts. Then stronger, like roots growing behind her mind, reaching into the grey matter. It didn't hurt. Didn’t feel like an invasion.
The roots dug in and bloomed, yew growing inverted down her throat. Thick boughs filling her lungs, needle leaves brushing against her ribcage. Ripe red berries growing in her heart as he snaked his way inside her, a poison viper of temptation. She’d already eaten of that fruit, tasted that sin on her lips. There was no going back, not ever since that first pen stroke. Maybe not since the night her parents died to his wand and he gifted her a piece of his soul.
He sunk into her marrow as if he always belonged there, two becoming one. They laughed and it was with her voice. A crooked smile pulled against her lips and it belonged to him.
They took a shuddering breath, feeling the course bark against their insides. “I can breathe again,” they whispered in wonder. Their hand pressed against their chest, warm wood beneath the skin, thundering like hoof beats. “I have a heartbeat.”
They stumbled to their feet, gangly and uncoordinated, new as a day old fawn. They didn’t care, they had legs, could feel the cold stone beneath their feet.
“I’m alive,” they whispered in awe. “I’m alive .” Wet tears slipped down their cheeks, watering the crops of good and evil inside the garden of their heart.
They tumbled drunk to the toilets, eyes fever bright. The mirror showed back a face that was both theirs and not. A smile crooked and wild and manic with far too many teeth. His smile on her face. Thin fingers twisted in hair that was too long, too curly, but black as them both.
“You have killing curse eyes,” they murmured. Fingers brushed against pale skin, a sharp nose, soft lips.
“I know,” they answered, sad and smiling. “Eyes like an avada . Eyes like death.”
Grasping hands, new and clumsy and strangely gentle. “They’re beautiful,” he whispered with her mouth and meant it.
They pushed away from the sink, their movements coming easier. She guided him through the motions. They were two people in one body, one soul in seven pieces. It was easier than they thought it would be, flowing together like this. Perhaps they shouldn’t have been surprised.
“We need to get dressed,” one of them whispered. “Breakfast begins soon.”
They reached for a toothbrush, their hands still gangly and shaking. They made it on the second try. They marveled at the feel of cool water on their hands, against their face.
“I haven’t felt water in fifty years. I never thought I’d miss it so much.” They drank from the sink, quenching a thirst half a century forgotten. It tasted like being alive.
They stabbed their mouth trying to clean their teeth, made a mess of toothpaste and spittle. They couldn’t stop themselves from laughing.
“You’re making this harder than it needs to be. Step back for a moment,” she chuckled. He was hesitant but pulled away the slightest bit and they became two instead of one.
Harry washed the mess from her face, glad to find Tom could still feel it all even if they were no longer sharing control of her body.
We’ll need to practice sharing control, or else people will be suspicious. We can’t stumble around like we’re possessed in front of Dumbledore.
She felt his laughter in her throat. ‘ Oh, but we are possessed, aren’t we?’ His roots grinned. ‘ But you make a fair point.’
Her mirth tangled with his. She returned to the dorms, forcing the crooked grin off her face when she saw that her dorm mates were up. No need to look suspicious.
Harry ignored them as she stripped out of her night clothes and got dressed in her uniform. She felt no shame baring herself with Tom behind her eyes. A body was a body. What did it matter if he saw?
‘I don’t care, anyway,’ he told her. ‘ I’ve never been interested in that sort of thing .’
A body was a body, and this one was theirs.
We should find you a way to get your own body, she told him. Then you can be in control all the time.
She felt his wistfulness. His excitement. But also his hesitation. ‘ It would be difficult. I think I could make myself corporeal again, but I’d have to consume the life force of a witch or wizard.’
Harry slipped the diary in the breast pocket of her robe, let it rest beside the bearing of her heart. Let Tom feel her living inside and out.
I can think of a few people I wouldn’t mind you eating. She thought, making him laugh.
‘Yes, but I’m afraid doing such a thing at school will draw us unwanted attention. I doubt Dumbledore would appreciate me murdering another student, even if the last one was an accident.’
Last one? She wondered.
‘A girl named Myrtle Warren. Mudblood Ravenclaw. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
Harry could see the girl through Tom’s eyes. Messy hair, round glasses, a sad face. A bathroom she didn’t recognize, a body on the cold tiles. I didn’t mean to, I didn’t mean it and it was an accident, I didn’t know she was there and waste not want not and the diary, I can use the diary, quickly before someone comes, before someone sees.
Harry shouldered her book bag and stepped out of the girl’s dorm. You were born in the girl’s loo? She asked him, teasing.
‘Hush you. I was in a bit of a rush.’
She stepped into the common room, ignoring the early birds milling about. Harry felt their eyes rove over the room, noting the things that struck as familiar, the things that seemed alien. This was his first time seeing his home outside of his memories in fifty years. Harry could feel how much Tom missed it.
We’ll be back. We have the rest of the castle to reminisce about, and food to eat.
Tom’s enthusiasm filled the branches in her throat. It tasted like sunshine. Like winter frost.
She smiled for the both of them and their legs pumped as they raced up the stairs to the great hall.
We have Voldemort to worry about too. He was here, last year. And he didn’t seem to realize what I am. I don’t suppose he’ll be too happy to find out about you.
She was one of the first to arrive, most of the Slytherin table left empty. Harry took a seat at the very end and set to work making them a plate of a little bit of everything.
‘No, I doubt he would. I was only meant to be a stepping stone of the path to immortality. I wasn’t supposed to be sentient ,’ he sighed with Harry’s throat. ‘ It would be wisest to wait on a body. As long as I’m here, I’m unknown. The moment I become physical we have to worry about people finding out.’
Harry let herself step back into his branches, pushing Tom to the front of their mind. He stumbled into control, looking back at her in confusion.
You get to drive for the time being. She told him. This will be the first time you’ve eaten in fifty years. I think you deserve to be in control for that.
Gratitude swirled up in their chest as he picked up a fork with shaky hands and began the slow process of relearning how to eat.
‘This man is a bloody idiot,’ Tom gaped, staring at Lockhart through Harry’s eyes. ‘I’m almost impressed. How is it possible for a person to be this moronic?’
First period Friday morning and Tom was reacting to Lockhart about how she expected, with utter disdain and no small amount of confusion.
I know. He’s horrible, isn’t he?
‘How have you managed to learn anything this year?’ he asked her.
Self study mostly. And you, of course. You’re a surprisingly competent teacher, Tom.
He preened at her praise, ignoring the ‘surprising’ bit. ‘I did always want to teach.’
We’ll need to find someone secluded so we can practice. I know you know all sorts of nasty spells.
His appraisal filled her throat, making her giddy. ‘As you wish, my lady. I believe I know just the place.’
Oh?
‘A surprise. You’ll have to wait until free period,’ he taunted. ‘Now focus on class. This is strangely entertaining.’
Harry had decided, fine, if he was so interested in watching Lockhart fail to teach a class then he could deal with all that entailed. She shoved him into the sleeves of her body, letting him puppeteer them for a bit. She sat herself down comfortably in their subconscious and watched with vicious delight as Lockhart called Tom (Harry) up to help with one of his ‘lessons’.
Tom’s amusement dried up and swiftly became horror as he was bullied into the ridiculous reenactment, Harry pleasantly reminding him he couldn’t act out and blow their cover. He begrudgingly played the part of Lockhart’s monster, seething as Harry laughed.
Tom though, was not the kind of boy who lets such an insult slide. He set off a silent and wandless tripping jinx right as Lockhart got to the end of his victory speech. The strutting peacock tripped over his own feet and landed on his face with a nasty crunch. When he stumbled back to his feet, Lockhart’s face was bloody and his nose was crooked.
Delight filled them, utter joy at using magic again for the first time in fifty years. It was glorious. Tom smiled with Harry’s teeth, savage and self fulfilled. No one seemed to notice, too busy either with vindictive glee as seeing their most hated Professor with a ruined face, or for those still under Lockhart’s thrall, concerned for his well-being.
Class was let out early and Tom slipped away in Harry’s body.
‘Please never do that to me again,’ he pleaded.
What? I thought you liked being in the spotlight, she teased.
‘Not like that, I don’t. That was miserable,’ he grumbled, wandering the halls with Harry’s feet. ‘We should kill him.’
You can’t just go around killing everyone you don’t like, Tom. We really don’t need that kind of attention on us right now.
He hissed, hiking Harry’s bag higher up on their shoulder. ‘Still nice to think about.’ Tom pulled out her wand, twirled it around between their fingers. He funneled a bit of magic through it, watched with sharp eyes as emerald sparks dashed out. ‘Your wand works for me,’ he murmured in awe.
Of course it does. Our wands are twins.
The yew branches in their chest constricted their heart, choking them on melancholy and wistfulness. ‘The holly wand,’ he whispered, staring at the wood between their fingers. ‘Ollivander had me try it, when I was eleven. He had it narrowed down to phoenix feather, but he didn’t know the wood. Handed me this wand and had me give it a wave. I shattered a window.’
They laughed together with one voice, wondering at the odds.
‘He gave me my wand to try next. It was perfect, from the first moment I held it. It was like it was alive. It felt… glad.’
Like it had been waiting just for you, Harry whispered.
‘Yes.’
They held the holly wand in gentle hands. Felt the humming of the wood beneath their fingertips. The wand was happy, its magic curling like steam around their knuckles.
Harry could taste Tom’s sadness in the leaves in her throat. You miss it, don’t you? Your wand.
‘Like missing a limb.’
She held him in her mind, holding his soul to hers. She felt the prickle of leaves where a tree of her own grew beside his pale wood. We’ll find it again. We’ll get it back.
His gratitude twisted around her branches, twining them together. Tom slipped back into the tangled roots, letting Harry step once more into control. She didn’t hide the confusion from him.
‘It’s your body. I’m trying to learn not to be greedy.’
She thought it odd, how willing he was to give things up for her, how kind he was. She knew Tom Riddle was not a kind person.
But he had never had someone know him for him , see him and the darkness inside and decide to stay. Had never been seen so fully and wholly, laid bare and exposed. She could see into him, every last bit and piece that made him the person he was, and stayed despite the rot inside.
Because they were one in the same.
Two lost children, desperate for someone to love them. They had found home in one another, and they were never going to let that go.
“You belong to me,” they whispered, not knowing whose mouth it had come from.
She let him take control of their body during lunch, watched in amusement and no small sadness as he savored every bite. He was far less clumsy in his eating than he was in the morning, getting used to new limbs. She let him keep control once lunch ended, let him use their gangly legs to climb the stairs to the second floor. He took them to a bathroom haunted by the girl with a sad face. Myrtle Warren, he’d called her.
They ignored the girl as he leaned them down over a sink and whispered open . Harry jolted in their shared mind, excited and recognizing.
You can speak the snake language too? She asked.
She felt the surprise curl in his mouth, felt him swallow it down. ‘You’re a parselmouth? Of course you are.’
Just one more thing to make them alike.
The sink opened up like a yawning grave and he stepped through, sliding down the pipe to the belly of the school.
Where are we? She wondered, watching behind her own eyes as they looked around the crypt deep beneath the school. It was wet and dark, littered with animal bones.
‘The Chamber of Secrets,’ he said, using the holly wand to vanish the bones and hair. ‘Salazar Slytherin built it during the creation of Hogwarts. I found it during my fifth year. It’s mine by birthright.’
She curled in their shared mind, plucked at his memories. You’re a descendant of Slytherin, s he said.
He nodded with her head, walking through the tunnels of the chamber. It was beautiful in its own strange way, but completely filthy.
‘It’s been fifty years since I’ve been down here, of course it’s filthy,’ he grumbled, flicking her wand to vanish more of the mess.
This is where you’ll teach me?
‘Yes. But not yet. I want you to meet someone first.’
He brought them deeper into the Chamber, to a large open room with a towering statue of a man in the center. Tom whispered to the statue, parseltongue slipping from their lips like water. The jaws of the statue cracked open and an answering hiss echoed from within.
Tom closed their eyes as something started to come out of the statue. Harry heard the scrape of scales on stone, the sound of a heavy body hitting the ground. The rasp of hungry, hungry, prey.
“Not prey,” Tom hissed back with her voice. Harry felt thorns bloom in their palms as the creature slithered closer. Hot breath wafted over their face. She could smell blood.
Little heir, rasped the ancient, ancient voice. Different body. Your magic is wrong. But you are the little heir.
Tom pulled Harry to the front with him, holly and yew twisting together. “We are,” they spoke as one, blood on their teeth.
You are something dark, little heirs. So lovely, so dark. The basilisk sang. She coiled around them, rough scales scraping against soft skin. So hungry. Yesss, hungry both of us. Hungry all of us. Want to feed. Want to tear.
Sandpaper tongue scraped against their cheek. Their firewood heart burned with fear, with thrill. “We are heir. We are not for food.”
The basilisk flinched back. No, not food. You are horcrux. Dark magic, little heirs, she chuckled. Delicious dark.
“Go to the Forest. Eat your fill there. Eat and eat but harm no students, no wizard or witch. The school must stay open,” they ordered. The coils tightened around them, bruising, before going slack. They felt the stinking breath on their face again, the cress of deadly fang against their cheek. They pressed their eyes tightly closed, body so still it was painful. The basilisk hissed, low and threatening before pulling back completely.
They listened as massive scales scraped over the old stone. Finally the air went still and quiet as the ancient monster slipped out of the Chamber.
Harry let out a shuddering breath. Tom sunk back into their shared mind, leaving her in control once more. Hesitantly Harry opened her eyes to an empty cavern. The basilisk was gone.
“What the fuck was that,” she murmured with a shaking voice. Her hands wouldn’t stop trembling. Harry let herself sink to her knees. Their pulse kept roaring in her ears, filling the quiet of the chamber with echoing noise.
‘I’m sorry. I’d forgotten what she’s like when she first wakes,’ Tom murmured, pressing a gentle hand against the curve of her ribcage.
“Is she always like that?” Harry rasped.
‘She’s more pleasant when she’s been fed, but yes.’
Hysterical laughter bubbled up behind Harry’s teeth. She didn’t bother holding it back. “That was fucking terrifying,” she gasped.
Tom grit her teeth in a feral grin. ‘She grows on you.’
They laid awake twisted in their bedsheets trailing absent fingers over a bare stomach. Sometimes, Harry thought she was ill-fit for her body. She was not meant to be shaped like this. This knobby skinny thing with large green eyes and the beginning of a woman’s chest.
She kept her hair chopped short, hating the long black tangles. She refused to wear the skirts offered as part of the girls uniform. They were constricting and dangerous. Trousers offered so much more freedom. Skirts and dresses felt alien to her. Just as lying awake in the girls' dorm did. This was a place she was not meant to be.
Harry wondered, where did she begin and where did Tom end? How much of her was her and how much was horcrux?
He’d given a piece of himself to her eleven years ago and it has grown into her. She was part of him, just as much as he was her. Now she had Tom hidden away behind her breastbone and the parts that were her bled into him too.
Harry tangled her fingers together and imagined one hand belonged to him. A heartbeat later it did. Tom twisted the fingers of his left hand into the digits of her right, pulling gently. He traced along the bones of her knuckles, felt the skin of her palms. His fingers trailed up and circled around her bird-bone wrist. They flexed against the fragility, testing the iron underneath.
His shared hand pushed against her arm. Gooseflesh rose along her skin as his nails snagged on peach fuzz hairs.
“Why couldn’t you have found me sooner?” they murmured, neither one quite sure who was asking. They’d both been so alone, growing up.
They never had to be alone again.