Chapter Text
In the afternoons, it was the custom of Mr. Harry Potter to unfold his second newspaper. He had two delivered to his little home in Ottery St. Catchpole every morning. The first was the Daily Prophet, which he read quite probably exactly as most of wizarding England did: at breakfast, propped precariously against a juice-glass or teapot or, if one had a delicate enough touch with the wand, levitated conveniently at eye-level with pages turning as directed.
Harry had privately nicknamed this morning read ‘the Daily All-Sorts’ because it really had gone downhill even in the few years he could have been said to be a regular reader. He just about remembered, during his early school years, that the Prophet had been a proper newspaper, but owing to the longterm peace of the wizarding world - what with the almost quarter-century of silence from You-Know-Who - and the need to keep readers interested, it was now mostly non-news items. The latest fashions in robes, celebrity gossip (Celestina Warbeck is dating three people! One of her polycule is a vampire! IS IT CELESTINA HERSELF?? See page 5. And then page 5 would be more of the same), competitions for children and familiars, a thick wedge of all things Quidditch including fantasy league statistics, and complaining letters from witches and wizards disgruntled by nothing in particular. All of that had pretty well managed to shove real news off everything but the front page, or to some obscure corner where it was impossible to find.
Harry wondered if perhaps he was somehow old-fashioned at the ripe old age of twenty-four. He preferred that his newspaper be a newspaper by giving him news.
Hence his second subscription, The Quibbler, which he read more carefully and treated in a way highly unlikely to result in jam being spread on it. He’d have treated it more kindly in any case, as it was run these days by his old friend Luna Scamander (technically Harry had been friends with her husband Rolf first, but over time he had become more Luna’s friend), but while the Quibbler still had its fair share of oddball articles and bizarre interviews, what it also reliably had was news. Its front page was often much the same as the Prophet’s, if rather less sensationally written, but elsewhere it contained regular coverage of Wizengamot cases and decisions, Ministry updates, news of various sales at Diagon and Knockturn Alleys, a thick sports section covering both Quidditch and Muggle sport but only real teams (no fantasy nonsense), and even a daily sort of scholarly article, usually about potions, which Harry enjoyed looking at and consciously deciding not to read.
The Quibbler also contained what could be called ‘vital news’ and it was this that had most likely bumped its subscription numbers up to the level of respectable publication rather than trash rag. Births, marriages, deaths. Harry, like most people who took the Quibbler, always surveyed the vital news. Unlike most people, though, he knew he’d never see anything relevant to him in it.
He had no family of his own, and never had done. People hearing that for the first time generally fluttered and cooed about how sad and what a tragic life but Harry had never much seen the point of that. He’d been left, barely born and wrapped in a blanket with his name pinned to it, outside a Muggle hospital one August night. He’d been taken into care immediately and had led, if not exactly a happy life with various foster families, not an actively miserable one. Receiving his Hogwarts letter at age eleven had changed everything, and what felt like nearly immediately after arriving in a new world he’d also been welcomed into a new family, that of his friend Ron Weasley.
No, Harry would never read any news directly vital to himself in the vital news. It was either very nice or very sad, depending on one’s perspective, and Harry himself went back and forth on that a bit.
His friends who were married were already married, and those that weren’t would tell him personally if the situation changed. He wouldn’t have to read about it. Similarly, he tended to be aware of births in his sphere of acquaintance. Ron and Hermione, for example, would never let him hear about a new baby from the Quibbler first. He also wasn’t old enough to start seeing the names of friends in the death listings. Now, if the death listings listed grandchildren of the deceased, he might have seen something that caused a ding of recollection. Oh, the Creeveys’ nan has passed. I shall have to send them a card. That sort of thing.
In today’s listing of deaths, amidst the R’s, was a name that caught Harry’s eye. Riddle. Riddle? Something stirred. That name was familiar. Riddle. Belford Park, Maidstone. No, he couldn’t recall anyone with that address. No flowers. Tom Riddle. Oh well, an unusual name, very Muggle. Perhaps he’d just heard it somewhere and it’d stuck in his head. Names would do that sometimes, even when there was no earthly reason they should.
Harry laid down the Quibbler, glancing idly through the crossword (a seven-letter word for ‘the most annoying creature in existence’ was probably Weasley rather than Murtlap judging by the clues around it, and Luna would no doubt get some entertainingly shrieky letters about it, maybe even a Howler from Molly Weasley herself) while he tried to remember, again, why the name Riddle was so familiar.
It would come to him.
In the meantime, he levered himself out of his chair and headed into the garden. Technically, according to the parade of Healers that Ron and Hermione kept springing on him, he shouldn’t do anything physically strenuous at all. He was still recuperating, they said. Harry knew better, but had stopped trying to argue with them about it. One never really healed from injuries like his.
To the surprise of no one who’d known him at the time, Harry had accepted a quite lucrative contract to play Quidditch professionally immediately after he’d graduated Hogwarts. Oh, a few people had remarked on his facility for Defense Against the Dark Arts and skill as an amateur duelist and thought he’d go for Auror training, but anyone who actually knew him knew that he didn’t like fighting and didn’t go looking for trouble. That trouble had found him on a distressingly regular basis had never actually been his fault at all.
It wasn’t his fault when it found him on the pitch, either. He’d just started his fourth season with the Chudley Cannons (not the best offer he’d received, but they were Ron’s favourite team, and that had made up for any purely monetary benefit to other contracts) when about an hour into the first away game of the season both Bludgers had decided to go for him exclusively. They’d moved too fast for the Beaters, too fast for even Harry to dodge, and slammed into him over and over and over. They’d even kept beating him after he’d fallen from his broom and hit the ground.
Most of his bones had been shattered. Some key tendons had been torn. He’d been bleeding internally, and had a concussion. As many healers as could be gathered in a hurry, casting spell after spell and pouring potion after potion down his throat, had handled what was thought to be the worst of the damage, but it turned out that the Bludgers had been cursed (of course they had), and one serious injury they’d caused, to his left knee, resisted all attempts to heal it properly.
Ron and Hermione said you’re still healing, give it time even now, three-ish years later. Harry preferred to think that he’d done as much healing as he was going to, and holding on to his old dreams would only poison him. He’d been wise enough to save most of the money the Cannons had paid him, and they’d quite generously paid out the rest of his contract as well, once it was certain he’d never play again. It had been enough to buy his little cottage free and clear, situated close enough to the Burrow that he could reach out to the Weasleys anytime he needed help (which wasn’t often), and managed frugally the remaining proceeds would keep him for the rest of his life.
He wasn’t supposed to get on his knees and garden, but he did. He had quite a nice little patch of herbs and useful flowers, and regularly donated its product to St. Mungo’s for use in their potions. Some of them were really quite pretty too, like that coneflower – a lovely shade of pinky-red, almost like hibiscus but not quite….
Hibiscus. Oh, of course. Mr. Riddle. That trip to the Caribbean the year before, the one Ron and Hermione had all but begged him to take after the entire Weasley clan had clubbed together. St. Honoré, it had been. Ron had said You shouldn’t keep yourself shut away like this, mate, people’ll think you’ve gone funny and Hermione had said Just try not to get mixed up in anything Dark, please, Harry, you know it’s not good for you.
Well, he hadn’t wanted to get involved in anything, but it had happened anyway. Just because an old Auror who told a lot of repetitive boring stories all the time had told exactly the wrong one at exactly the wrong time. (Poor old Mr. Scrimgeour.) Yes, Mr. Riddle and his secretary-companion Miss… Miss Nagini, that was it. She’d spent a fair amount of time as a snake, but hadn’t liked to. Harry hadn’t been entirely sure what her situation really was, except that she had been endlessly loyal to Mr. Riddle and had, it turned out, truly dreadful taste in men otherwise. It all came back.
Well, well, so old Mr. Riddle had died. He’d known he was going to even then. Ave Caesar, morituri te salutamus he’d said to Harry as they’d left the hotel and St. Honoré. He’d probably hung on longer than the Healers had expected. He’d been like that. A strong man, an obstinate man – a very rich man.
Harry continued to weed his garden, hands working automatically to the direction of his eyes, but his mind remained on the late Mr. Riddle and remembering all he could. Now that he recalled, he wondered how he’d ever forgotten the man. He wasn’t easy to forget. So pale as to be genuinely white, bald as an egg, with dark eyes that seemed to burn. A body too-skinny too-frail too-oddly-small, he’d required Nagini’s assistance to get around….
Harry remembered thinking that he’d probably been very handsome indeed as a young man – it had been nearly possible to trace good looks in the ruins if one paid attention, and Harry had paid attention. And such a personality! Secretive, irritable, demanding, shockingly rude sometimes – not that anyone ever minded the rudeness. Wealth at the level Mr. Riddle possessed bought a good deal of tolerance most of the time.
Harry had, during that Caribbean vacation, taken up sketching. Once, Mr. Riddle had fetched up near him and demanded Put that thing away! I cannot abide that Muggle scratching. Harry had almost laughed at him while putting his sketchbook away, not meekly but like someone humouring a fractious child.
Oh, have I offended you?
Not at all, sir. I make allowances.
No flowers, the death notice had said. Not that Harry would have ever dreamed of sending flowers to Mr. Riddle. Had the man wanted flowers, he’d have bought out all the nurseries and greenhouses in England. And they hadn’t been friends, or on any terms of real affection. They’d been allies, for a short and exciting time, and he had been an ally worth having.
Harry had known he would be, which was why he’d pushed his bad knee to run through the Caribbean night to shake the man awake and demand his help. He’d been wearing his pyjamas and some hideous pink fluffy bathrobe thing (Molly Weasley would keep giving him pink things, he had no idea why) and Mr. Riddle had looked at him and laughed, a high, delighted laugh. Harry had used one particular word, and Mr. Riddle had laughed even harder.
He'd stopped laughing in the end and done what Harry asked him to do. They’d solved three murders, prevented a fourth, and then gone their separate ways. Harry had never expected to see him again, and indeed hadn’t ever seen him again. But it had seemed oddly possible now that he came to think about it, like any minute an owl could have arrived with a letter suggesting they meet again.
It was very odd indeed to realise that he’d had some kind of bond with a man upon reading a barebones notice of his death.
It was even odder to realise that he’d been pulling up flowers rather than weeds in his distraction. Rather ugly purple snapdragons that he didn’t remember planting at all. Perhaps whoever had looked after his garden during that Caribbean trip? Harry pulled up another one with a vicious yank. Purple didn’t match. “Sulphur yellow, that’s what I wanted here,” he said out loud to the uprooted plant.
“I beg your pardon?” said a voice from the lane-side of the fence. “You said something?”
“Oh, no, I was just talking to myself.” Harry looked up to see a person he didn’t know.
This was odd, because by now he knew most people in Ottery St. Catchpole by sight, if not personally. This was a thickset woman in plain work trousers, an emerald jumper, an open robe, and sturdy workboots. She had a knitted brown scarf wrapped around her neck and head, not quite containing flyaway dark hair, and a curious expression on her face. “You’ve got a nice garden here.”
“It’ll be nicer once I’ve gotten rid of these purple things,” Harry groused. “I should never let anyone else touch it, I always end up having to fix things.”
“Oh, I understand just how you feel.” The woman grinned at him. “My mum’s had a few professional gardeners and none of’em are worth the sickles they charge. They come and drink tea, and do some light weeding, and plant the most horrendous things because they’re hard-wearing or fine specimens or what have you. I’m quite a keen gardener myself, but Mum’s never let me have a go at hers.”
“No offense, but you’re also not getting a go at mine.” Harry grinned back to hopefully take any sting out of the jibe. He meant to be friendly, but it may not have come out that way. “Are you new to the village?”
“I’m boarding with Mrs. Shoreling down the road a ways.” The woman gestured vaguely along the road. “She’s been trying to get me to mix with the neighborhood, so I think she’s described just about everybody. You’d be Harry Potter, right?”
“That’s me.”
“Seeker for the Chudley Cannons for a minute, yeah?”
“A bit longer than a minute, but yes.”
“Keep up with it at all?”
“Not really, no.” There had been a number of painful weeks, months even, where Harry had wondered what the point of him even was. He didn’t really have any real skills but Quidditch, and that had been taken from him. After that had passed, he’d avoided Quidditch like someone carefully not prodding at an open wound. Now it was just habit.
“Well, look me up if you do want to talk about it. Or flowers or anything really. I’m Bartlett, by the way. Mary Bartlett.” The woman grinned again, showing even white teeth.
Harry wondered whether she was trying to flirt, and if he needed to find a delicate way to inform her that he was in fact gay and thus not interested in her even conceptually. But Miss Bartlett just waved jauntily and bounded off down the road in a decidedly un-ladylike and non-seductive fashion, punctuated by a pretty spectacular near-trip over empty air, so he decided she’d just been trying to be friendly to a new neighbour. Or maybe she’d specifically sought out the one-time Quidditch star to get an eyeful. Either or.
Rather than continue to pull up flowers, Harry pulled himself up and went back inside. Perhaps he’d actually go through the Prophet and see if there was an obituary for the late Mr. Riddle. Harry doubted it. He had been an interesting man, perhaps a kind one at times in his demanding and high-handed way (certainly his treatment of Miss Nagini had been kind on the whole), but he had not been famous or even well-known. He had been rich, but not loudly so. If his death had been anything but quiet, Harry would be very surprised.