Chapter Text
The door shut behind him with a resounding click. He didn’t think twice about it, his attention taken by the row upon row of statues, glittering white marble, witches, wizards, warlocks. Proud and dignified, raised on black plinths so his head was level with the hems of their robes as he walked past them. He lifted his gaze to the walls, turning slowly as he dragged his eyes along the shelves that covered each one. There were easily as many books as in the entire library crammed into the shelves of this room, manuscripts the size of flagstones, great, curling scrolls, and various pieces of clutter shoved in between the gaps.
The room positively thrummed with magic.
It was a low and deadly rhythm, this thrumming, one that whispered harsh words in dark corners and promised great things to the morally unwary.
The boy paid it no heed, simply looked around the room in wonder, picked a book or two off the shelves and cast his eyes over words he couldn’t read. When he bored of his explorations, he returned to the door, leant against the handle, and
The door didn’t open.
It didn’t open the second try, the third, the try where he kicked it, the try where he swore at it or the try where he hissed at it. He drew his wand. His paltry knowledge of magic was no help to him here. The door would not open and the room was sealed. Cold, bedraggled, and exhausted, the boy backed away from the door. No-one knew he was here. There was no reason they would look for him here, it was too well hidden.
He’d just take a rest, and he’d try the door again. It was an old door. Stubborn. He’d get out eventually.
He spent the rest of the night on a pile of cushions pulled off the velvet couches, wrapped in woollen robes dragged from the bottom of a chest.
And the next night.
Without food or water, he feared that he would soon die, but he felt neither hungry nor thirsty. Perhaps he was already dead, or perhaps he was dreaming a long and vivid dream, and he was lying in a hospital bed with his friends around him.
By the end of the fortnight he’d made something approximating a proper bed, and placed it at the foot of a statue of a witch that resembled his mother somewhat, and he’d look at her face as he waited for sleep.
He’d started reading the books, picking through the unfamiliar words one by one. If he focused on them for long enough he felt he knew what they were saying. By the time he finished the first book, he’d lost count of the days. The book told stories, exalted great families, singing the praises of each son and daughter. It whispered of the past, again and again, each telling different to the next. And all throughout, in margins and body, were spells. Simple spells, familiar spells, complex spells, strange and otherworldly spells. Spells of unnecessary and unimaginable cruelty and spells to heal a butterfly’s broken wing.
He learned them all.
As time went past, he forgot about the door and ceased to yearn for the vast open world on the other side of it. The room became his world. He learned the names of the statues, identified the magical artefacts and mastered spells that raised gooseflesh on his arms to even think about. His old robes no longer fit him, and he took to wearing the wool robes he’d used as blankets before.
There were still books to read, and he made his way through them slowly, savouring each word and re-reading old favourites in between. As he re-read the books he’d stumbled through before, he started to notice things he’d missed before, things he hadn’t understood or put together to complete the picture the words were trying to show him.
He knew the way out. He’d known it for a while, a few days perhaps, as it was difficult to tell the passage of time in a room without windows. He knew how to open the door, but he was afraid of what would be on the other side. Years must have passed, and the world outside must have changed without him.
He stood before the door. He’d waited long enough. The memory of sunlight cajoled him, the fresh cool air, leaves of trees rustling in the breeze. Real sunlight, real freshness, real trees.
The way back was dark. The snake was still there, and he left its petrified form coiled at the feet of its master, united in stone. And finally, he was out of the confined and dripping depths and into a corridor, open and dark.
He found a window and pressed his face against the cool glass, his breath steaming up against the stars in the night sky. He pressed his fingers through the glass, pushing though the panes to feel the touch of winter.
So this was what freedom tasted like.
Unable to tear himself away, he pressed himself further through the window, the lead cames crisscrossing through his torso, fingers finding little purchase on the frozen stone wall. He was dizzyingly high. The world opened up before him like a flower with ice-crusted slates for petals. A scattering of clouds passed across the moon, a bright crescent of light so impossibly far away. He laughed, louder with each breath, releasing his grip on the window and letting the glass shatter around him, the lead warp and snap to clatter and clash on the floor. He dragged himself upright to stand on the window ledge, robe billowing around him in the icy wind that snuffed out the wildly flickering candles.
Footsteps approached.
He paused, half-curious as to who would be the first person he’d see after so much time. Someone he knew? What would they look like after so many years?
The wizard who rounded the corner immediately drew his wand upon seeing him. In the moonlight, it was difficult to make out his features but something about his silhouette was deeply familiar.
“Step down from the window and state your name and business here,” a low voice commanded.
The boy grinned. There was no mistaking that voice. He jumped down from the windowsill, raising his hands in a gesture of mock defeat.
“You! I know you! Potions, right?”
The wizard didn’t move. “Your name and business breaking into a school at night, before I hand you over to the aurors.”
“Harry,” Harry said, flicking the bits of window back into place with a stray thought and relighting the candles. “Terribly sorry about the window, I got a little carried away.”
“Harry,” the wizard repeated, “and that would be Harry who, might I-” and then his eyes widened.
“Potter," Harry confirmed. "I’ve been trapped in a room underground for what feels like most of my life. What year is it?”
The wizard’s hand on the wand trembled. “It is 1993. Mr. Potter is supposed to be in his bed in the Gryffindor dormitory. He is not, as far as I am aware, missing.”
Harry dropped his hands and rubbed his fingers against his temples, tucking a stray lock of hair behind his ear. “1993. Winter. Not missing. No time has passed here.” He sighed a great, deep sigh and sank down against the wall. In some ways it was worse than what he’d expected. His friends were still children, he couldn’t talk to Hermione about the books he’d found or show Ron the giant petrified snake. Or he could, but it wouldn’t be the same. He’d be like an irresponsible teacher taking an unsanctioned field trip, not an old friend showing off something cool.
“Fuck.”
He looked up to see the wand was still pointed at him. Ah, yes. This man’s name was Snape.
“I really don’t like you, you know,” he said, as he brushed the dust off the memories from all those years ago. “Real fucking bastard you are.”
Snape made a low, annoyed sound in the back of his throat.
“I was looking for the heir of Slytherin. Didn’t find him. I found the Chamber, though. There’s a giant snake in it. And books.”
Snape slowly withdrew his wand. He stared at Harry for a long few seconds.
“I think, Mr Potter, it is best that the headmaster handles this.”
Harry stared at his own dead body. It was a small thing, dressed in ragged school clothes, a pair of broken round glasses propped up on its bloated face. They’d decided it was easiest to kill him. Make it look good, some battle wounds here and there. Nice and mangled and dumped in the lake to wash up on the shore and traumatise some fifth years. It was amazing what you could do with transfiguration.
Only two people in the whole world knew he was alive. And there was one person who knew that they hadn’t killed him.
The heir must have the same knowledge as Harry, must have been inside the same room. The entrance to the chamber was guarded round the clock, but it was easy enough to phase into one of the passageways hidden in the pipes.
He slept during the days and stood sentry inside the chamber at night, flitting around in his cloak, hidden from the world. Sometimes he’d walk through the wall of his tower and out into the air, fly a lazy circuit around the lake like a ghost.
But in the mornings, the hours before dawn when most everybody was asleep, he trained. Sometimes alone, other times locked in combat with one of the two men who knew of his continued existence. He found that he had much to learn, despite his skill in magics beyond his professors’ knowledge.
Dawn was hours off. He sat in silence surrounded by wards and candles, running his fingers along the dagged edge of page 308 in A Guide to Advanced Transfiguration, the cold air of the chamber seeping through his robes and turning his flesh numb. Come to me, Heir, he thought. Let me show you the splintered carcass of your snake. Let me kill you, in return for the lives you’ve taken.
And let me step out of the shadows a free man.
The night passed in silence. The candles did not flicker, and the wards did not trip. He took the direct route to the dungeon room, through a hundred feet of solid rock.
“There’s been another death,” Snape said on his arrival. “A sixth year. Beheaded. The Ministry still won’t let the school close.”
Harry clenched his fists, letting his nails bite through his palms. “How many obliviated this time?”
“Twelve. And Miss Francis is, of course, merely missing.”
“I’m sick of this. I’m no use if all I do is hide in the shadows. I could be out there, finding that bastard.”
“If the Headmaster is right about the prophecy —”
“Fuck the prophecy.”
“— and if the Heir is Voldemort, and you face him while still unprepared and get yourself killed, then we will never defeat him.”
“That’s a lot of ifs. Four people are dead! And even you admit I’m the best we’ve got against this!”
Snape flicked his wand and Harry’s skittered across the floor. Harry didn’t flinch.
“You know I don’t need it.”
“Then go without. Confringo! ”
He could bring the room crashing down about them, a sudden and brutal victory. If he killed Snape, killed Dumbledore, killed the Heir, killed Voldemort, would he be free? Would he ever be free? And could freedom be bought with blood?
He lost again. Too slow, too clumsy, too easily distracted. He sat slumped against the wall and let the other man smear poultices on his wounds and repair the holes in his burned clothing. The shadows swallowed him up, and he let himself fall through the rock and sleep.
Summer had arrived and the castle was empty but for the three, which was often the two as one was always off somewhere doing something. Harry would say the eleven, as he counted the inhabitants of the morgue. He took it upon himself to take care of them, refresh their stasis charms and read to the younger ones. He read them the tales from his books, translating on the fly as if the language he read to them in mattered. No-one bothered him when he was in the morgue, not even Snape, who tended to bother him a lot.
He’d started winning against Snape, and it was with a vicious glee that he’d pin the man down with the weight of his magic until he begged for mercy. A lie. Snape never outright begged for mercy, but sometimes there was a hint of fear in his eyes and that was more than enough. Dumbledore, though, knew so many complex and arcane spells and knew how to use them with such a precision that Harry rarely won. And when he did win, there was no joy in it. Rather, he’d feel the weight of his responsibility, the endless crushing weight of it.
“Do you drink, Potter?” Snape had asked him that evening.
“What?”
“Wine. Cider. Mead. Hell, even firewhisky. Do you drink?”
Harry shook his head. He supposed he could if he wanted. He had no idea how old he was but one look in the mirror told him he was more than old enough to drink. “Do you?”
“Have to, some days.”
“Are you offering?” Harry asked.
“I find myself drinking alone too often these days.”
“Alright.”
Harry woke the next morning feeling like he’d tried to rematerialise in the middle of a slab of granite and with no memory of the previous night. He transfigured a shallow bath of lukewarm water in the middle of Snape’s living room and rolled into it fully dressed. Once the pain in his head subsided, he fell asleep.
And woke up with Snape hovering over him in a nightgown, steaming mug in hand.
“You made a pond in my floor.”
Harry blinked back up at him. Pond. Ponds should have fish in them. And those wooshy things. Rushes. Fish and rushes. He made his bath into a pond.
“Fucking hell,” Snape muttered and wandered off in the direction of the bedroom. “Too early in the morning for this.”
When Harry woke again, he was dry and back in his own bed. He remembered something about brandy and being nibbled on by goldfish, but didn’t dwell on it. Instead, he spent the afternoon drilling curses in various combinations. He read some of the lighter sections of The Prophet to the children, and pondered the more serious sections in silence.
Wizard involvement in muggle wars. East versus West. Statute of secrecy under review. Nuclear threat. Rise in use of dark arts. Armageddon. Anarchy.
He flipped to the Quidditch. He can barely remember playing Quidditch, it was so long ago. And his friends. They were still alive, somehow, but they had grown so distant to him that the thought of their deaths was no less disturbing than the deaths of the children in the morgue. Friends. It was strange having friends. He wondered if he and Snape were friends, or if they were just two people who enjoyed tormenting each other.
Probably the latter.
The children returned, along with a new security detail of aurors that were somewhat worse than useless. Muggleborns were still being murdered and threatening messages were still being left at the same rate, but a few more students than usual were sent to the headmaster’s office for using magic in the hallways. Harry had taken to patrolling the hallways in his cloak, but he felt as useless as the aurors.
The tenth to die was an auror. Taken from outside the entrance to the chamber and crucified in the middle of the great hall. The shards of the basilisk had been coated in her blood, and a message for Harry was written on the floor. Enemy of The Heir . The Heir was looking for him now, but one thing was clear. The murder of the guard outside the chamber meant that the Heir couldn’t phase through walls like Harry, which was strange, because as far as Harry knew, it was the only way out of the hidden library.
“Maybe he’s senile. He’s an old man who’s been killed at least once.”
Dumbledore stared pensively at the blood-splattered floor. “It could be the case. But it seems to me that the Heir is more juvenile than senile. We might need to change how we’re looking at this.”
Harry frowned. “How so?”
“It could be that we’re looking for a thing, rather than a person. A memory. Perhaps something that could control other people.”
“A creature? An artefact?” Snape interjected.
“Maybe a mix of the two. Something created by dark magic. Severus, do you know what a horcrux is?”
“I can’t say I do.”
“Harry?”
Harry shook his head mutely.
“If I’m right, and I’m fairly sure I am, what we’re looking for is a piece of Tom Riddle’s soul, sealed inside an object. It will be able to communicate, and use magic to some extent.”
Harry closed his eyes.
“Yes. I’ve read about that. A tale about a sorcerer who put his heart in a locked box and turned a city of people to stone.”
“What happened to his heart?” Dumbledore asked.
“It was broken.”
Dumbledore kept looking at him. Harry shrugged.
“It was a tale, there weren’t any specifics.”
“We’ll have to find this thing first. You could have the aurors do a search for dark artefacts.”
“The children are scared enough, Severus. Going through their belongings would only make things worse, and the Horcrux is likely able to outsmart a search.”
“I could look for it. I’ll take the cloak through the sleeping quarters and see if I can feel anything off.”
Dumbledore considered his suggestion.
“I can’t authorise it, but I can’t stop you either. It might work.”
“Tonight, then.”
“Be careful.”
He’d left Gryffindor for last. The tower was just as he remembered it. Sweet wrappers stuffed between the red and yellow cushions of the red and yellow couches. The fireplace, warm and welcoming. He searched room after room of sleeping children, finding nothing. He paused by the bedsides of his friends, watching their faces for a few seconds before moving on.
When he drifted through the floor of the next room, he could sense something was off. A presence emanated throughout, making the very air feel toxic.
“Enemy…” a voice hissed from the shadows.
In their beds, the children began to convulse, their rigid bodies jerking under the blankets. Harry tore his eyes away from them and scanned the room.
“If I can’t see you then it’s only fair that you can’t see me.”
Harry let his magic suffuse the room, reaching out to the sleeping twelve year olds. The magic that held them was cold and slippery, and no matter how he tried, he couldn’t pry away its grip.
“I could kill them so easily. And I will, if you don’t do what I say.”
Harry lit the wall sconces, hoping that light would drive away the darkness. The shadows retreated, but the evil stayed.
“I don’t want to kill them. I’ve already thinned their number. They’re pure stock. But I will.”
He focused on the flavour of the magic, tried to see what it was made of. Some things were familiar, but much of it wasn’t. Dark magic, and a different kind of dark magic to that which could be found in the hidden room. There was a primal edge of cruelty running through it, surrounded by a kind of hollow glee. It disgusted him.
“Bow down to me. Submit, and I will let go of these girls.”
Harry didn’t move.
“Bow.”
Some of the girls had started to froth at the mouth. Others had awoken, their eyes wide in terror. Harry didn’t move.
“Good. Now kneel. Keep your head down.”
Harry crouched down, keeping his head up.
“Know this, Enemy. I will kill you. I will drink your blood and it will make me stronger. I will keep your skull by my side so you can watch me take over the world.”
The darkness burst out, knife-edged, racing towards Harry. Before he could react, he lost consciousness.
The children fell back to their beds asleep, but for one. Redheaded, slight, in a floor length white nightgown, she rose from her bed and tiptoed across the room to open the bottom drawer of a wardrobe. She withdrew a small book and left the room. She returned just before dawn, cautiously stepping over Harry’s cloaked form. She knelt by him, peeled back the cloak to reveal his face and stared at him for a few minutes.
She hesitated, her hand hovering in midair. Then stood on shaking legs, took a few steps back towards her bed, and screamed.
“They’re saying they caught the Heir.”
Harry grunted.
“Incredible work back there, really incredible work.”
He grunted again.
“You’ll be lucky if they don’t send you to Azkaban. I doubt even Dumbledore can get you out of this one.”
“Oh, fuck off, Snape,” Harry muttered. “You know I could leave if I wanted to.”
“But you do want to, don’t you?” Snape continued, rattling his yellowish fingernails against the bars.
“I trust Dumbledore,” Harry said, and left it at that.
Azkaban wasn’t so unpleasant once Harry got used to the dementors. His cell was small, but not too small, and gave a beautiful view of the North sea. Meals were delivered regularly, which was something to appreciate. He could even sleep when the storms drowned out the screams. In the isolation of his cell, he would draw memories from within his chest and let them flow down to entwine around his wrist like a small dragon.
From time to time he would drift through the other cells and watch the inmates from the walls. The wreckages of minds torn apart by dark magic. With some of them, he could have walked into the cell and they wouldn’t even know he was there. Others, however, were aware of his presence even when he remained deep inside the stone walls. He knew their names, some of them. Lestrange, Mulciber, Black. Some would stay where they were, following his presence with their eyes, while others would smash their fists into the wall until they were bruised and bloody.
Sirius Black would just stand, inches away from him, staring into where his eyes would be. There wasn’t a trace of madness on his features, just a benign sort of confusion. Like he was trying to figure out if a stranger across the street was someone he knew.
The killings had stopped. The auror was the last to die, and as the weeks stretched into months, his innocence seemed even more impossible to prove. And Harry was certain, absolutely certain, that if he were to escape, the killings would start again.
He let the months turn into years. He watched Sirius escape, then Bartimeus Crouch, the year after. He kept his ear to the ground, stole newspapers each morning, watched from a distance as the world seemed to tear itself apart. It snapped and shivered like a wild thing, muggle against muggle and wizard against wizard, MAD, they called it, and there were still some willing to let the world end so they could stay hidden, living the same old life as ever before.
It broke in ‘95. Whatever fragile peace had kept things together. Hundreds of missiles were fired into the air, and hundreds disappeared, like an act of God.
World leaders broke their silence, issued secretly composed speeches offering peace and war in equal shares. Muggleborns were hunted by wizard and muggle alike as the war took on a new character. Some among the muggles saw their likeness in the Death Eaters, and Voldemort never turned away new allies.
A silver bird danced into his cell.
It was finally time to leave.
Snape found him in the morning, curled up on his favourite armchair, hair still wet from the shower and mug of steaming tea in hand. He stopped, his eyes on Harry, and stood in silence by the door to his bedroom.
Harry met his gaze. He finished his tea, slowly. It was the first hot drink he’d had in a while and he wanted to savour it. Snape didn’t say anything until Harry set the mug down with a dull clack.
“I wanted to.”
The room was in slight disarray. Small things that would have gone unnoticed by an untrained eye. The bookshelves had lost their careful categorisation. Stacks of scrolls had taken over one of the sideboards. The corner of the rug was upturned.
“To write, to visit, you know,” Snape continued.
“I know.”
“Good, that’s-”
“I wanted to see you too. Before-” The words didn’t come out.
Harry looked away, and something of his pain must have shown on his face. Snape stalked across the room, looming over him like an angry crow, dressing gown clutched tight around his chest.
“Before what? What are you planning?”
“I’m going back. And I’m not going to leave until I have learned everything that room has to offer.”
“I see.”
“The next time we meet, I’ll be a different person again.”
“Of course.”
“I don’t have much time before he notices I’ve escaped.”
“Hours, I would assume.”
“So this is goodbye. I think.”
Snape picked the mug off the cabinet, and held it in his hands, thoughtfully. He pressed his fingers against the glaze, the pads sinking through ceramic like water, like air. He held the cup in his hands, and his hands were in the cup.
“It isn’t. I’m coming with you.”