Chapter Text
Harry loved the Room of Requirement.
When Neville stumbled across it a year ago, Harry had fallen in love with Hogwarts all over again. At the time, it seemed as if the castle itself was looking after them, creating a safe space to do whatever they wanted, far away from the clutches of Umbridge and everyone else.
He loved it even now, standing before the wall that had opened for Draco Malfoy as well. When he’d found out, it felt a little like betrayal. The room was supposed to be their safe haven, not a harbor for Death Eaters.
Pushing the emotion down, Harry closed his eyes and, with all his might, wished for the room to open up and show him the place Malfoy was using. He had already tried this a few days before when he’d caught Malfoy vanishing off the map at this exact spot. By chance, Harry had been nearby and had sprinted there as fast as he could, arriving just in time to see the door vanish out of sight, finally giving Harry the proof he longed for.
But then, when he had tried to open it, the wall hadn’t budged the slightest bit, forcing Harry to return to the common room with empty hands. So, he had resigned himself to try again, this time when Malfoy wasn’t inside the room.
That was today. He’d even skipped History of Magic to make sure Malfoy wasn’t even in remote proximity and now stood there all alone in the corridor.
But it would all be for nothing if the door didn’t appear. Harry leaned forward, pressed his hand against the stone wall, and squeezed his eyes shut, make tiny specks and swirls appear behind his eyelids.
It was impossible to picture an unknown place, like one would normally do with the Room of Requirement, so instead Harry focused on Malfoy. He imagined him walking up to the room and pacing before it three times to open it. He concentrated on all the frustration this thing had given him over the last few months, the anger he’d felt when thinking of Malfoy, the apprehension, and the desire to have him caught.
Nothing happened.
Resigned to the fact that this would be another failed attempt, he slowly lifted his hand from the wall when suddenly the texture beneath his fingers began to change. Harry gasped and tore his eyes open, taking a few surprised steps back. Before his eyes, a pattern spread over the stone wall, black color appearing over it, almost like tipped over ink spreading on a piece of parchment.
A moment later, a door stood there, separating itself from the rest of the wall, and sprung open. It looked different from the one to the Room of Requirement. That door had always looked quite welcoming, with its playful scrolls and bright color. But now, looking at the black, polished surface of the door before him, Harry felt an odd sense of foreboding.
Warily, he crossed its threshold and took a few steps in the gigantic room that lay behind. With a snap, the door fell closed behind him, and Harry jumped away from it, startled by the sound. He glanced around the room, carefully making his way across it.
Everywhere Harry looked, there were objects. There must’ve been thousands in his field of view alone, judging from the stuff strewn all across the room, placed on cupboards, and littered on the ground. He stepped over them as he walked around, making his way past the literal towers of books stacked all the way to the ceiling. Unmoving portraits were leaned against cabinets or strewn on the floor, and hundreds of trophies, clothes, and gems had been stuffed into drawers or placed onto cupboards, filling the entire room.
He walked past an ancient-looking cabinet covered by a dark, soft-looking cloth. Harry suppressed the urge to reach out and trail his hand over it. Furniture and books seemed to be the most common item in the room, judging from all the broken tables, chairs, and cupboards lying around. Had they been broken by gone-wrong pieces of magic and placed in here, or did the room itself break them into pieces?
Various trinkets and foul-looking potions were tucked away in the pantries, and even jewelry could be seen hanging out from the shelves or lying on the floor. Harry wondered himself if all those objects were created by the room, or brought here by other students and why someone would just leave their jewelry lying around in here.
His eyes fell on a beautiful tiara a few steps away from him, lying spread out on a velvet cushion, and Harry reached out towards it. If it was an illusion, would it simply vanish as soon as he picked it up? Or would he be able to take it out of the room?
Harry leaned in, eyes fixed solely on it and its embedded crystals, glimmering in the dim light of the room. It almost seemed to whisper, drawing him in. Just before his fingers touched it, however, Harry stopped himself.
What if this was all an elaborate trap from Malfoy?
He tore his hand back from the object and straightened up. No, he shouldn’t touch anything in here, not until he was certain that it was safe. Who knew what Malfoy could’ve done to this room, trapping the objects with hexes that go off as soon as someone comes too close.
He had to find out what exactly Malfoy was doing in here. He would have to find clues, or yet better, see it himself. But that was probably impossible. Harry had the feeling that no one could enter this room as long as someone else was in here, which was why he hadn't been able to enter it a few days ago.
He stepped back from the tiara and walked away. Before turning to corner behind a large, upright piano, however, he glanced back and gave it one last wistful look.
There seemed to be no end to neither room nor number of objects, Harry thought while walking, ducking under the arm of an enormous white statue that blocked the way. Glancing up at it, he saw it was a witch with her wand thrust out and old-fashioned cape billowing behind her. Harry wondered who it was, though with her head missing, it was impossible to tell. Only the stump of her neck remained there, sitting on her shoulders.
Coming out beneath the arm, Harry nearly bumped into a silver vitrine and Harry stared down with horror at what seemed to be a human skull behind the milky glass, eye sockets fixed on Harry. He gave it a wide berth, an icy shiver running down his spine as he turned his back to it. Glancing back, Harry was very relieved to see that the skull hadn’t moved, its hollow eyes still locked onto the statue.
He kept walking like this for a bit, making random turns and circles behind the clutters of furniture and books, always keeping an eye on the white statue and the far-away wall where the door was, just in case he had to make a sudden exit. He had touched nothing so far, but slowly that seemed to be foolish. Malfoy couldn’t have possibly trapped the entire room, right? If something had happened, it would have been at the entry, not so far back into the room.
So Harry began touching things slowly, cautiously reaching his hand out, ready to snap his hand back if something happened.
He trailed his hand over a beautiful silver harp, its strings flickering in the light. Then, he ran his fingers over the strings, and the sound that came out was crooked and a little weird, but Harry was thrilled by them, nonetheless. A wide, delighted grin spread across his face as he skipped around the room, stroking his hand over the soft quills hanging in a drawer, or the small crystal prisms of a chandelier, the glass splitting light onto Harry's arm.
He ran his fingers over a black sideboard as he passed, hand trailing behind him. He rounded the corner, a smile on his face, and suddenly found himself facing a large, empty mirror frame.
Empty, because Harry could not see his own reflection, and it showed the same surroundings that Harry could see behind the mirror. But even so, something shimmered in the frame, almost as if a thin sheet of silk was stretched inside of it.
Harry stepped closer and curiously touched the golden frame, feeling the ornaments carved into it. A soft light shone out from the inside of the mirror, onto Harry’s hand, reminding him of the crystal prisms from before. Then suddenly, the sheet shook and fluttered, as if swaying in the wind. But there was no wind in the room.
As if in a trance, Harry raised his hand from the frame to poke the silk sheet, but his hand was met with nothing. A strange chill ran over him, instead, and when he reached out further, putting his whole arm into the frame, coldness seemed to envelop it, feeling a bit as if he were touching icy water.
Logically, Harry knew that nothing good would come from this mirror, likely cursing him and his whole family as soon as he stepped foot into it, like many old, mysterious objects did. But, well, it wasn’t like Harry had much of a family left to care about.
So he stepped into it with little thought, giving in to the strange lure the mirror had on him. Immediately, a cold passed through him, enwrapping his whole body, and holding him in between the frame. He shuddered and twisted wildly, reflexively fighting against its hold, and forced his way out. He jumbled out of the frame and down onto the stone floor, his knees hitting the ground. Immediately, warmth returned to him and Harry sat there for a few moments, gasping for air.
He glanced around at the mirror and the sheet now trembled violently, swinging back and forth, ripples running across it. Harry pushed himself up and made his way past the frame, squeezing himself between it and a locker, careful not to touch it again, and headed back in the direction he had come from.
The atmosphere had changed. Harry's delight and giddy curiosity had vanished and was now replaced by a bitter sense of dread. He quickened his steps, rushing past by the vitrine with the skull inside and ducked beneath the statue. Once past it, Harry hastily glanced back and was relieved to find that he could no longer see the mirror.
Then, taking a few more steps back, his eyes swayed up to the statue of the witch and the head sitting there proudly on her shoulders. Her long, curly hair was flopped back in the wind, as was her cape, and she was staring fiercely at something in front of her. Had she always been intact? He could’ve sworn her head had been missing just minutes ago.
Harry shook his hand and forced himself to turn away from the statue, keeping walking. He needed to get out of here, and that as soon as possible.
He made his way across the room, past the endless mountains of objects, eyes fixated on the wall at the end of the room, where the door was. He was lucky it was still visible over the wall of objects, otherwise, he doubted he would’ve found his way back again.
He frowned at himself. Wandering so deeply into an unknown room, without even finding a sign of whatever the hell Malfoy was doing here, was risky even for his standards. Not to mention the whole mirror incident. Hermione would have a meltdown if she knew. But luckily for her, Harry had not the slightest intention of telling her.
Harry rounded the corner of yet another cabinet full of weird trinkets and potions, steps quick and fierce, and crashed face-first into something.
His glasses slipped off his nose onto the floor, and Harry stumbled back a few steps, cursing loudly. Touching into yet another probably cursed item was just the thing he needed right now. He stooped down and picked up his glasses. Setting them onto his face, he glanced up and found himself face to face with Tom Riddle.
His breath left him all at once and a wave of icy dread overcame him, freezing his limbs in place, not unlike the coldness from the mirror before.
Tom Riddle stood there, just a few meters away from Harry, staring at him with a surprised expression on his face. He looked as if plucked straight from Harry's memories, school uniform and all, if not a bit younger. But that couldn’t be.
Nightmares never aged.
Also, Riddle had never looked this surprised in the chamber.
Hundreds of thoughts flashed through Harry's mind as he stood there, staring at the living image of Tom Riddle. Was this the price for stepping through the mirror, cursed to relive his worst nightmares? But why not choose Voldemort then, instead of this kid version of him?
It couldn’t be a boggard either, because Harry knew for a fact that teenage Tom Riddle was far from his worst fear.
He had gone through far worse than that.
Riddle was the first one to move, taking a few steps back. At once, the confusion washed away from his face, as if it had never been there in the first place. Instead, a smile appeared on his face, too gentle to be real. “Who would you be? And how did you find your way into this room?”
Harry gulped. Would he have to speak to the curse the mirror had placed upon him, or could he just stay quiet? He decided not to chance it. “My name’s Harry.” It was strange, giving his name to someone wearing the face of his parent’s murderer.
“Nice to meet you, Harry. Are you a Hogwarts student as well? I’m sorry, but I don’t recall ever meeting you before.”
‘What do you mean, “as well”’, Harry thought and stared at him in confusion, ‘You’ve long since graduated from Hogwarts.’ The silence stretched between them until Harry slowly answered, “You wouldn’t. I don’t think we ever met.”
“But you recall me, yes?” Riddle asked and smiled. Harry didn’t reply, unsure how to tell him that, of course, he’d know the man who’d been hunting him for the past six years. But Riddle was undeterred and went on, “Now, Harry, how did you find this room? I’ve quite believed that I was the only one who knew of it.”
Harry gulped again, “Stumbled across it by accident.”
“Oh, is that so?” Riddle smirked at him, and in contrast to the warm smile from earlier, this one sent a cold shiver down Harry's spine. This was just what his body needed to finally snap into action, and Harry took a few hasty steps back.
“Er, bye then,” he said as a quick farewell, hopefully forever, and darted away. He rushed around a bookshelf, and turned straight towards the exit, not caring if Riddle saw him. He brushed past the mysterious cabinet once more, this time with no cloth covering it. Glancing back, he saw Riddle still standing where Harry left him, staring at him. Harry had nearly reached the wall now, and, taking the last few steps towards it, he grabbed the handle and pushed it down. Hopefully, whatever strange curse had befallen him would end as soon as he left the room.
He leaned back, pulling against the door, but it didn’t budge. He leaned back even further, putting all his weight against it, but it was no use. The door wouldn’t open.
Harry looked back once more and saw that Riddle had left the spot and was walking slowly towards him. Harry turned to pound against the door, sending magic towards it. He tried to will it open just as he had before, focusing with all his might on escaping this room, this nightmare.
But it didn’t open.