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Chapter Text

Jesus can always reject his father

But he cannot escape his mother's blood

He'll scream and try to wash it off of his fingers

But he'll never escape what he's made up of

Ethel Cain

December 1940

Wool’s Orphanage smelled of boiled cabbage and old stone. The sky shuddered with the distant thunder of bombs, but Tom heard it differently: a slow and patient judgement, weighing the world against its own arrogance.

He sat on the edge of his cot, fingers curled around a thin blanket, stained with blood and fluids, and thought of heaven.

It would be, Tom decided, something strict, something exacting. An orderly and bureaucratic place, law written in favours and sex.

Children slept around him. Mrs. Cole would tell them that all their breaths are fragile prayers, and to be beatific in the face of the Germans and death. Whenever they wailed, she would tut harshly and remind them of Father Halloway. So instead, they prayed and trusted in the mercy they would never understand. Tom, alone, watched and catalogued.

(“All suffering is a ledger, Tom, and the world tallies without conscience; don’t be bad, now, because only the vigilant may ever read it. Don’t be bad now, Tommy.”)

He thought of Thomas Abernathy, the boy who had stolen his bread ration from him the second time this week, and the way he shoved it into his stupid pocket. As if survival itself absolved him.

(“All suffering, and don’t you forget it. Don’t you ever forget it.”)

The sirens wailed. A blast rattled a pane of glass. They had shattered last week, and the cold air bit his little feet.

His hands shook. Tom would deny that it was ever fear. His eyes followed the tremor, as if it were a sign, a symbol, carved into the world by a hand not his own. How weak the flesh, how pliant the mind. How fragile the instruments of men. And yet Father Halloway called it sin when the body bends beneath design.

(“… and mercy is a word for the blind; understanding is for the ones who see—”)

Another explosion shook the walls.

(“All suffering brings fire, Tom. There is a covenant in fire.”)

Tom folded his hands in the darkness. It did not matter to him if the world burned or the city wept. It only mattered if his fingers charred and if his feet ached. What else mattered, he thought—the alignment of thought, the precision of understanding, and the recognition of what endures beyond mortal whim. Power.

(“Power is a sinner’s fuel, Tom.”)

Power was not violence, he decided, in that moment, as the Germans wrecked London and as the windows shook with a threat once again.

It was comprehension, the knowledge of where heaven’s measure fell short in men.

Dust drifted in lazy columns as another explosion wracked the walls. He traced patterns in that very dust with his eyes. He could make out a constellation in wilful ignorance. Hydra.

The many-headed serpent. Endless regeneration, impossible to fully destroy. Immortal in its persistence of self.

(“There is a covenant in fire. And only the observant may keep it unbroken. Now be a good boy.”)

He lay back on the cot. He let the faint tremor of the city enter his bones. Tom closed his eyes and let sleep encroach upon his mortal flesh.

July 1996

Harry wasn’t sure he hated any place more than 12 Grimmauld Place. Perhaps Professor Snape’s Potions classroom, but even that seemed a poor contender.

Not even Snape, the dungeon bat he was, could make Harry feel this uneasy. The air clung like wet wool, sour and suffocating, pressing into his lungs from every corner. He could only imagine how Sirius endured living in the house of his dead family.

His godfather had told him many things about the House of Black. About the screeching of Walburga—which Harry learned about all too quickly, from the very moment he stepped into the wretched place; about his little brother Regulus, dead. Harry didn’t know what to make of that. About how he had run away to Euphemia and Fleamont at Harry’s age.

Sirius had told him about James, too. With the way he spoke, Harry could almost believe that Sirius didn’t even know James was dead.

Sometimes, he slipped and called Harry ‘James,’ and Harry could only smile tightly and nod.

He didn’t blame his godfather. Twelve years in Azkaban—Harry could only guess at what that did to a man, let alone a boy barely twenty, already imprisoned.

The War was beginning to become real. It wasn’t like it was before, when he was just twelve, stalking the Basilisk like some gilded knight in the Chamber of Secrets, wielding the Sword of Gryffindor as if destiny had stitched it into his palm, his birthright. It was easy to pretend that way, even if, really, his birthright was to slave away at day, and sleep in a cupboard at night. The destruction of Tom Riddle’s diary wasn’t even enough to shake him awake from his heroic stupor. Not even Uncle Vernon’s hard-fisted punches, or pushes, or the gnawing feeling of starvation.

They all became easy to ignore when he went to Hogwarts, slew the monstrous and the terrible, and became the hero again.

It seemed utterly ridiculous to admit—and he would never dare say it out loud—but not even the deaths of parents he had never known had made the War feel real. James and Lily were always something far away, something for another life, something never meant to be. And though he felt their loss every day, it wasn’t any indication that this War was real. That Harry would have to fight. That Voldemort wouldn’t just get rid of himself.

He was only grateful that he hadn’t lost Sirius too. It was a close thing, with his introspections of Voldemort’s repulsive life getting stronger; Sirius almost died that day, his History of Magic exam. He wasn’t looking forward to seeing his OWL results, no matter how much pestering Hermione seemed to do, because all he would be able to think about was that day. A near loss, had he not used the mirror Sirius had given him.

Harry didn’t want to be far from Sirius after that.

He was meant to go back to the Dursleys this summer. Dumbledore, of course, had insisted—‘the wards, my boy!’—or whatever else he had said. Harry couldn’t care any less. He wanted to stay with his godfather, and he’d be damned if he couldn’t. Merlin, he didn’t think he could handle another one of Dudley’s snotty little pouts when he didn’t get what he wanted there and then.

And so, he didn’t go back. Sirius wouldn’t dare let him.

The first week living in Grimmauld Place had certainly been an adjustment. Sirius wasn’t still all… there, sometimes, but Remus was there to pick him up and put him together when he wasn’t. Harry noticed from his very first day at Grimmauld that they never seemed to be apart. He wasn’t sure when Sirius and Remus became ‘Sirius & Remus,’ but it was a near thing between them; two halves of a whole, Harry was beginning to understand.

Ron and Hermione visited him often. It was nice. They had come over today for dinner. Just them and Molly, and Sirius & Remus, of course. It felt oddly domestic, and Harry couldn’t quite believe that he had a home yet.

Grimmauld Place wasn’t warm like the Burrow. It was a nasty place. But it was Harry’s.

They were all gathered in the drawing room. Harry claimed a ruddy armchair as soon as he walked in, impervious to share his space with anyone else. He had been having odd dreams lately of things he shouldn’t dwell on anymore: of the light that erupted from Tom Riddle’s body, like a serpent coiled in human skin finally torn away, or the hiss of the Basilisk as it slipped from Salazar’s gaping mouth. The feel of the fang in his hand, hot and ready, felt so close to him now—years later.

At first, he had thought they were visions from Voldemort. But after a few nights haunted by the Chamber, he learned to tell them apart. Voldemort’s visions tore at him, bastardising him from the inside out, violating him in a way that felt like utter disgrace.

The Chamber dreams were different. They didn’t attack him. They were a part of him, intimate and inexorable, as if the shadows of that place had seeped into his bones.

Ron and Hermione sat on a couch to his right, bickering over whether Crookshanks could actually understand Parseltongue, a trivial debate that they hadn’t let lie for too long now.

Sirius was by the fireplace. His face was still thin, but his hair was combed and washed, and he looked just that bit more alive than when he had escaped from Azkaban. Remus stood at his back like a looming hound, a heavy hand resting lightly on Sirius’ shoulder; some small, reassuring weight.

Molly bustled about, arranging cups and plates with her tittering maternal efficiency. She handed each of them some tea—Earl Grey, he identified after just a whiff—her voice carrying over the chatter like warm sunlight in a quiet corner.

Harry pulled at the loose tweed threads of his rotting armchair. The summer holiday had only just begun, and he already felt like the world was going to end.

He couldn’t stop thinking about the Chamber, as if it were some nagging itch. He could almost feel a tangible compulsion pulling him there, whispering to him sweetly. The pressure he had felt of his impending grades was negligible now.

Shut up, he told himself, shut up. He forced himself to listen into Hermione and Ron’s argument.

“Well, ‘Mione,” Harry interrupted, “I’m sorry but Ron’s right. Peeves is an absolute nightmare, mate.”

Ron gestured wildly at him. “I swear! Peeves is worse than a Hungarian Horntail on a sugar rush.”

“I suppose,” Hermione sniffed. “At least a Horntail doesn’t throw ink bottles at your head.”

Ron laughed loudly at that, and Harry saw Sirius chuff in agreement as well. Harry felt a small smile creep onto his face.

The room smelled faintly of old wood and candle smoke, but also of dead flesh and festering ghosts. Of things left unattended and memories steeped too long in a pool of lukewarm shadowed water. Even the walls seemed to lean in slightly, exhausted by existence; perhaps they were listening as well.

Sod that. Harry was having a good time. He wouldn’t let some ugly (minutely terrifying) peeling wallpaper and odd odour take that away from him.

He let the warmth of the fire settle into his bones. He felt the sudden urge to have a campfire. A campfire, honestly? He could see it now: Sirius & Remus arguing on a shoddy log, Ron and Hermione pretending not to be flirting with each other, and some fat marshmallows roasting on sticks. Harry would let his burn to a crisp, just to irritate Hermione. He let out a little laugh at the imaginary sight of her annoyed face.

“What?” Ron asked, “Having a laugh without us? What ‘s it? Have I got something on my face?” His nose scrunched up and his eyes crossed slightly as he tried to look at it.

“No,” Harry giggled, “Nothing.”

His eyes met Sirius’ and he smiled. Remus had sat down next to Sirius now, and his eyes were closed as if he were asleep. Harry knew better than to assume he really was.

“Honestly,” Hermione muttered, “why do you insist on arguing about cats and poltergeists when there’s actual homework to be done, Ron? You too Harry. Don’t think I haven’t noticed that suspicious pile of parchment collecting dust under your desk.”

Harry took a noncommittal sip of his tea. He found the ceiling very interesting all of a sudden.

“Because,” Ron said, leaning back smugly, “it’s far more interesting than doing essays on Ancient Runes or whatever. Or, Merlin forbid, charting tea leaves for Trelawney.” He waved a hand at Harry’s pile of books on the coffee table. “Don’t look at us like that, ‘Mione, you enjoy it too. Admit it.”

Hermione couldn’t hide the twitch of a smile. “I do not enjoy it.”

Harry wondered if it was worth putting some warmer socks on.

His feet were dastardly cold, and if he was going to get out of bed, he might as well get out of it properly. He groaned internally.

He woke in the middle of the night to dreams slick with the Chamber again. It was getting a bit insistent. Ridiculous, if he had anything to say about it. But when did anyone ever ask for Harry Potter’s opinion on what he wanted to do anyway?

Harry slipped out of bed and padded about to find his sock drawer. Ron and Hermione decided to bunk together on sleeping bags, like schoolyard children again.

Grimmauld Place never seemed to sleep. A creak wrought its way through the air, and it felt as if the house was shifting on its feeble foundations.

Noble and Most Ancient my arse, Harry thought, couldn’t they afford some more structurally sound infrastructure?

He pulled his socks on and sat still for a moment, listening to the soft snore of Ron on his ghastly blue sleeping bag and Hermione’s faint sigh as she rolled over. They had stayed the night after dinner.

He quickly debated laying down and closing his eyes again or going to Sirius.

Maybe force himself to dream of something else—Quidditch, catching a persistent snitch, or the gnomes in the Burrow—but each time his eyes fluttered shut the Chamber was there.

Harry stood up. He shifted silently across the room, but the floorboards still rasped in protest under his weight as he tip-toed down the corridor and down the rickety stairs.

In the drawing room, the fire had burned to a bed of simmering ash, faintly orange, and the house’s shadows pressed in thickly. He sank into the same armchair he had claimed earlier, pulling his knees up against his chest. He scratched his nose. Rubbed his eyes behind his glasses. He didn’t feel like lighting the lamps, hell, he hadn’t even gotten his wand.

He didn’t mean for his midnight ministrations to carry around the house, but of course it did. Grimmauld Place was terribly rude at times, and it always felt like the house tried to make his business everyone else’s business out of pure spite.

A door shifted upstairs and suddenly Hermione and Ron were on the stairs; her hair a bushy tangle around her shoulders, and Ron stumbling in behind her looking like he had drunk enough beers for six burly men. He hadn’t, of course; Sirius would’ve let him, but Remus would’ve whacked Sirius over the head with an old newspaper, so.

“Harry?” Hermione whispered. “What are you doing?”

“Couldn’t sleep.”

He was distinctly aware that he couldn’t stop sniffing either.

“Figured,” Ron yawned, plopping down onto the couch. “We heard you pacing about.”

Ron took a beat to yawn obnoxiously wide. Harry stifled a tired laugh.

“Thought Kreacher had gone rabid again,” Ron said, “Almost picked up a bat to shoo him away. Wretched thing.”

Hermione shot him a look. She knew better than to lecture him on house-elf rights right now. She came to sit down on the couch next to Ron.

“You’ve been off all week. Don’t say you haven’t been. We’re not that stupid, Harry,” she said.

Harry made a face at that.

“What’s wrong?” Hermione asked softly.

Merlin.

How was he supposed to explain he was dreaming about that silly Chamber for no explicable reason? He’d sound like a complete lunatic.

And how was he supposed to make it sound casual enough that they wouldn’t go running to Sirius?

Harry hesitated for another moment. He felt that familiar prickle of defensiveness rise in his chest, the hard-earned instinct to say nothing, to just tuck it away. But this was Hermione and Ron, and he was so bloody tired of waking up sweating because Tom Riddle decided to implode in a massive spectacle of golden light again.

It wasn’t scary. He wasn’t particularly worried. Just fed up.

Hermione and Ron continued to stare at him expectantly. Ron’s eyes drooped before he shot up, as if he was snapping himself awake.

At last, he said, “It’s the Chamber.”

They both looked at him sharply.

“The Chamber of Secrets?” Ron asked, as though there could be another. “From second year? Harry, what? Are you alright?”

He gave a short laugh. “Yes, Ron. The Chamber of Secrets. I keep dreaming about it. The pipes, the stone, the smell of the place. The Basilisk. Tom Riddle. It’s there every night.”

Harry picked at his sleeve and placed his head on his knees.

“I never thought much about it after second year. It never bothered me. But now—it won’t leave me. I’m sure it isn’t just dreams.”

Hermione frowned, biting her lip. “Are you sure it’s not, you know, You-Know-Who? Trying to get in again?”

“No,” Harry said quickly, “I know what that feels like now. His visions, they almost burn, if I’m focusing on them hard enough. And they don’t repeat. When I saw your dad, Ron, I saw it from Nagini’s perspective, and I saw it just the once. Same with Sirius in the Ministry. I’ve been seeing the Chamber every night, it seems like. It’s almost like—” He stopped, frustrated.

“Like what, mate?”

Hermione jabbed Ron in the ribs. Harry distantly heard his affronted Ow! as he stared at the wall.

Harry stared at the wall, his jaw tight. “I don’t know. That’s the problem. I can’t stop thinking about it, but I don’t know why. It’s not just dreams—it’s…” He pressed a hand against his chest. “It’s here. Like it won’t leave me alone until I go back.”

Hermione looked very interested all of a sudden, studying him.

“Like a compulsion?” she asked.

Harry let out a breath, grateful it’d been said. “Yes. Exactly that. Like it’s pulling me back.”

“Back to what though?” Ron frowned. “The thing’s empty. Dead snake, dried-up puddle, probably all that rubble from the bloomin’ Lockhart thing, bad memories. What’s the point?”

He urged back a groan. “I don’t know. But it’s not going to stop until I go. I just know it. Just trust me, please?”

Hermione’s eyes softened, but she didn’t answer at once. Ron glanced at her uneasily, then back at him.

Harry knew this wouldn’t be easy. But he needed Hermione’s head to get into Hogwarts somehow. And maybe, a hesitant part of him needed his friends at his back, too.

“It’s not that we don’t trust you,” Ron said, “It’s just, well. You start following strange feelings about snakes and basements and the next thing we know you’re flat on the floor again with your scar splitting open.”

“Ron,” Hermione sighed, but she didn’t disagree.

Oh God. Harry pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes. He felt the inkling of a headache coming on.

“Look. I’m not asking you to understand. Just… let me do this. Help me do this? It’s either you lot help me get to the Chamber, just once, or I find a way to do it myself. You know I’m stubborn.”

“If you’re going back to the Chamber,” Hermione’s voice was careful, “then we’re going with you.”

“No,” Harry said sharply. “Absolutely not. I have to go alone, I know it. And you can’t tell Sirius either.”

“Harry!” Hermione admonished.

“I can’t explain it, alright? With all the dreams, the things I’ve seen, I know I need to do this, and I know that I need to do it alone. And I know it won’t be dangerous. The dreams aren’t scary. Nothing threatening. It’s just the empty Chamber, or little things in the Chamber,” Harry said.

“And you can’t tell Sirius,” he continued, “because I don’t want him to wind himself up over something that isn’t important, or dangerous. He’s struggling. He has Remus to help him, and I know if he hears one thing about me doing something stupid like going to the Chamber, not even Remus will be enough.”

Ron folded his arms. “I know, Harry, but reckon you’d do the same for us, mate. You wouldn’t let one of us go alone.”

He couldn’t think of anything to say to that.

Harry opened his mouth, only to shut it again.

Hermione shifted on the couch, and the almost-gone firelight caught on her tangled hair. “Alright,” she said, her voice low. “If this is really what you think you’ve got to do, then we won’t stop you.”

Harry lifted his head so quick he felt a crick in his neck.

“And you won’t tell Sirius?” Harry asked.

Hermione’s eyes locked on his. “And we won’t tell Sirius. But you have to promise you’ll be careful, Harry. Whatever this is, you can’t just shoulder it like some punishment.”

“Thank you.” A knot loosened in Harry’s stomach—one he didn’t know was there—but his headache still pricked at the edges of his skull.

Ron pointed a finger at him, then. “Just don’t make us regret this alright?”

Harry snorted, shaking his head.

“—because if you end up half-dead in a tunnel again, Hermione’s the one explaining it to your scary godfather.”

Hermione huffed, an exasperated smile on her face. For the first time in weeks, Harry felt the restless pull in his chest ease, just that little bit.

“Alright!” Ron clapped his hands.

Harry jumped in his chair. “Ron! Sirius and Remus are still sleeping, mate, put your bloody hands away!”

“Right,” Ron muttered, “well, what I was going to say was, what’s the plan? How are we gonna get Harry here into Hogwarts? I mean, Floo’s out, isn’t it? You’d just tumble into McGonagall’s office like a git, and she’d send you right back here with a Howler nailed to your ear.”

Hermione perked at that. Her face stayed serious. “He’s right. The only Floo you could reasonably get to is monitored. During the summer especially, I’d imagine; every fire call in and out of Hogwarts is warded, checked, and probably logged. Dumbledore would know instantly, even if you managed it.”

He shifted, restless. He already knew Flooing was out, but some part of him hoped it’d be that easy.

“So no Floos.”

Ron scratched his jaw. “Portkey, then. The Order’s got plenty lying about. You could just nick one, set it to the gates—”

“Ron.” Her voice cut in. “That’s Ministry-regulated magic. You’d have to re-enchant it, and do you know how dangerous it would be if it were botched? You’d end up splinched across three continents! And even if it worked, you’d land at the front gates, hitting every ward within half a mile radius. Filch, the Aurors, Dumbledore…”

Ron groaned. “Fine. No Portkeys.”

Harry leaned forward and set his chin on his knees again. “What about flying? At night. I could take my broom, or even Buckbeak…”

“Absolutely not.” Hermione shot up straighter, hair frizzing like a warning. “The castle is layered in wards. After everything with the thestrals, nothing airborne would be able to pass through. Even owls are checked. And Buckbeak?” She gestured wildly. “You might as well announce yourself with a bass brand.”

He bit his lip. He knew all this, somewhere at the back of his mind, but saying the possibilities aloud only made the Chamber feel farther away.

“Are you sure you really, really, really want to go to the Chamber, mate?” Ron tried.

“Shut up.”

“Right,” Ron shifted, “I tried.”

Harry knocked his head against his knees twice. “I just need one way back,” he muttered.

Silence stretched. Ron’s fingers drummed against his knee. Harry had to say that he was doing a pretty good impression of pretending to be deep in thought. Hermione gnawed at her lip.

He should’ve just gone to bed and forgotten about the cursed Chamber.

At last, Hermione spoke. “Alright. No Floo, no Portkeys. no brooms—or Buckbeak. But there has to be something. Some gap no one pays attention to. Hogwarts is massive.” She started to doubt herself, “but… I guess I doubt there’s a gap in the wards. You-Know-Who probably would’ve used that by now if there was one.”

Ron kicked at the hearthrug. “I’ll do you one better. Harry could just hop onto the Knight Bus. Hogsmeade drop-off, short walk, in through the gates. All’s well.”

Harry almost smiled.

Hermione whipped around. “The gates are warded, Ronald. They extend well past Hogsmeade, you know. Anti-Apparition, anti-Portkey, anti-underage entry. You think you can just stroll in with your trunk and a grin? They’d know before you set one toe on the grass.”

Ron grumbled, “Was half-joking anyway.”

“Half,” she replied flatly.

Harry dragged a hand through his hair. “What about the passages?”

Both of them turned to look at him.

“The Marauder’s Map,” Harry went on. “Seven secret tunnels. There’s one under Honeydukes, remember? It goes straight into the castle. That might work.”

Hermione pressed her lips thin. “Do you even have the Map? Last I recall, you left it in your trunk all summer—”

“No, it’s here, at Grimmauld,” Harry cut in. “I think. I’ll have to check.”

“Even if you did,” she continued, “those passages were meant for sneaking into Hogsmeade, not the Chamber. They’ll land you in the main castle. You’d still have to get down to the second floor, to the girls’ bathroom, in the middle of summer with the school sealed.”

Harry hated thinking. “It doesn’t need wands. Doesn’t need spells. Just Parseltongue. I can open it any time.”

“Yes,” Hermione said slowly, “but you’d have to get inside the castle first. And summer wards are tighter I would reckon. No students, no staff but the essentials, Filch prowling like a bloodhound…”

Ron groaned again. “So that’s Floo, Portkeys, brooms, Knight Bus, secret passages, and snake-speech—all rubbish. Bloody wards. Getting tired of the word wards.”

“It’s not rubbish,” Harry said sharply.

He thought for a moment.

“Maybe we need to consider the Chamber itself. It was never exactly part of Hogwarts’ construction, Salazar Slytherin made it himself in secret, obviously. So maybe it’s exempt from the rest of Hogwarts in some way. Because it isn’t just a room, it’s old magic. And in the dreams, it doesn’t feel like Dumbledore’s wards around the school matter. That compulsion you said I feel, ‘Mione, it makes me think I could go straight through the walls if I tried. It’s strong. Really strong.”

She blinked. “Drawn past boundaries?”

“Yeah.”

Her brow furrowed. “If Salazar enchanted the Chamber with Parseltongue to disguise it before the castle’s protections were even laid, then maybe the Chamber isn’t bound by the same protections, you’re right. Think of Hogwarts’ protective wards like layers. It’s an old castle, it must have tens or hundreds of layers, some magicked on centuries later. But if the original enchantments of the Chamber still stand, they might override Hogwarts’, in a way, because they’re older and mutually exclusive.”

“So, snake-basement is exempt from the headmaster’s wards,” Ron said.

“It’s a theory. An alarming one,” Hermione crossed her arms.

“So maybe I don’t need a plan to break in. Maybe the Chamber itself is calling me back. Maybe it is just that simple.”

Neither of them answered at once. The fire crackled, throwing shadows across their faces. Harry didn’t know what to think of it. It was good, in a way, that there might be something about the Chamber that would let him get to it easier.

But what did it mean—that Hogwarts might already be less protected than they thought? Harry couldn’t bear the thought, especially with Dumbledore seemingly ignoring him at every turn for the past year. And, beyond that, there was something beneath the castle that wanted Harry back.

The embers in the hearth finally died out, throwing shadows across all their faces. Harry pulled his knees closer to his chest.

“It’s late,” Hermione sighed. “We’re all tired. Maybe it’s true. But either way, we can’t solve it tonight.”

Ron leaned back with a groan, his head thumping the back of the sofa. “Merlin, you’re right. My brain’s leaking out my ears.”

Harry stayed curled in his armchair, staring out the window.

Hermione rose, tugging Ron with her. “We’ll think it through properly soon. Ron and I are leaving tomorrow, but I’ll do some reading and come back in a few days with an answer. No rash decisions. Agreed?”

He gave a wordless nod.

“Good. And Harry—” she softened, “don’t go sneaking off tonight.”

He didn’t promise. Ron and Hermione went off to bed.

Ron and Hermione had left three days ago. Harry couldn’t stop going back and forth on whether he regretted sharing his dreams with them or not.

He felt some relief. But he mostly felt regret. It felt like a private thing, even though there was nothing really private about any of the dreams.

Remus was in the kitchen, putting the last few dishes in order for dinner, and Sirius lounged on the couch, twirling Remus’ wand between his fingers. Harry sat on the settee opposite him, feeling slightly absurd in his domestic role; he felt as if he should be doing something of use. Scrubbing floors, or batting cobwebs away, or really just strategically avoiding Dudley. There was nothing of the sort to do.

He had spent some time earlier in the day in the Black family library. It had taken an egregious amount of convincing to get Sirius to allow him in, and when he finally conceded, Harry understood the caution as soon as he stepped into the place.

The shelves were lined with books of pureblood rituals with cruelly elitist dogma, along with strange, leathery volumes with no titles, signed by names he didn’t know. Harry had felt very unwelcome in the library. He felt as if the ghost of Walburga was about to snatch him from behind (she had spent a large majority of the morning screaming today), or as if a gaggle of dementors were waiting around the corner of the next shelf.

“Harry, Sirius! Dinner’s ready.”

Harry opened his eyes. He didn’t realise he had even closed them. He looked at his godfather. Sirius grinned mischievously and put a finger to his lips. Harry quirked a brow.

Sirius crept into the kitchen, up behind Remus—who was opening just about every drawer presumably in search of cutlery—and grabbed his ribs from behind.

“Fuck!” Remus screeched, dropping a fork.

“Oi! There are young ears around, Moony,” Sirius laughed.

Remus only rolled his eyes. “Stop being a child, Sirius, now come.”

Harry laughed at that. The three settled into the small table they moved into the kitchen. The intimidating, long one in the real dining room was too dramatic to have dinner at. Sirius had been spending most of his days trying to turn Grimmauld Place into a remotely liveable place. He wasn’t succeeding, really.

Every time he fixed something up, the next morning, it’d be gone. Sirius would always groan in exasperation. The house had recently taken to turning wall trims, doorknobs, and other various things into silver. It probably knew that Remus was staying here and was actively trying to kick him out.

It was a little funny, at least Remus thought so, but it infuriated Sirius so greatly that Harry hadn’t seen him for the entire day after that.

“So,” Sirius said, chewing on a piece of bread, “any plans this week? Fancy a jaunt anywhere? You can go to the Burrow if you’d like, just Floo call Ron or Molly beforehand and let us know. Or maybe a trip to Diagon Alley? I’ve invented a new game as well. It’s called ‘Bully Kreacher.’ You could try it out sometime.”

Harry huffed a laugh at that. “No thanks, Sirius. I’m good.”

“You sure?”

Remus looked between them.

“Yeah,” Harry shrugged, “just being here’s fine.”

“If you’re sure.” Sirius said. “I just feel a bit like an arse. Can’t exactly Apparate you somewhere for fun, take you out. You can always…” he cleared his throat, “you can always stay at the Burrow instead. If you want. I’d understand.”

Harry finally looked up at his plate at that. The expression on his godfather’s face twisted his heart a little.

“No,” he said quickly, “I want to stay here. With you, and with Remus.”

Sirius smiled softly. “Okay.”

Remus hummed, taking a slow bite. The full moon was coming in a few days; he seemed more lethargic than usual, leaning on Sirius more than he normally did.

The conversation drifted. Remus chimed in now and then, usually to shoot a jibe at Sirius. Eventually, Remus collected all the plates and took them back to the kitchen. Harry noticed that he always liked doing menial things. Sirius didn’t.

They moved to the couch, Harry tucking into Sirius’ side. After a few minutes, Sirius broke the silence again.

“I heard you walking around last night again. Couldn’t sleep, huh?”

Harry caught his eyes. “So then, you weren’t asleep either?”

“Don’t try that, kid,” Sirius snorted, “I’ve got Padfoot’s ears. Hear everything.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Wanna talk about it?” Sirius’ hand found Harry’s hair and touched it softly.

He hummed. “Not really. Nothing’s wrong.”

“Alright, fair enough. Just letting you know I’m around if you do want to,” he said.

“Okay, Sirius.”

He went to bed with a colourful quilt pulled up to his nose, the crackling of candles in his ears, and he opened his eyes to hard stone behind his head.

A trickling stream of water, and a rhythmic plop of water to his right in exact intervals. The smell of something rotting, and the sound of wind in his ears.

Harry tried to lift his head, but it felt like something was holding him down. He tried to breathe in, but it felt like something was coiling up inside of him. Okay. Okay.

Breathe slowly, move slowly. Harry’s hands scrabbled around as he tried to understand where he was. He tried to grab for his quilt. He couldn’t. He looked down at his chest; he was wearing his night-clothes, and the quilt was there. He tried to grab it and throw it off, but his hand went through it, and it disappeared.

Okay. Harry closed his eyes. He opened his eyes. Still the high stone ceiling, circular and arched, with intricate patterns and moulding.

He closed his eyes again. 12 Grimmauld Place, 12 Grimmauld Place, the room opposite Regulus’ old room. He opened his eyes again. A high stone ceiling, circular and arched.

Harry closed his eyes for a third time, moaned, and rolled onto his side. Everything hurt. He huffed through his nose and opened his eyes.

A big, dead, rotting Basilisk looked back at him. Harry yelped and finally stood up, shaking his head as he did.

The Basilisk’s jaw stretched in a long and horrid arc. He would’ve been sure that from it came a scream, a very human scream, if he was not also sure that he shoved the Sword of Gryffindor through its maw years ago.

He looked at the top of its head. The wound was still there. It looked eaten away.

“Oh Merlin,” Harry breathed.

This wasn’t like all the other dreams he had about the Chamber.

He could feel the stone under his feet. He dropped to his knees and rubbed his hands over the floor and shoved them up towards him to inspect. They were wet. He had just rubbed the damp, wet floor, and his hands were wet.

This was real, Harry was sure.

All the dreams he had were set in the past. It was him arriving, and Ginny already being dead. It was him arriving, and being swallowed up by the Basilisk, never to be seen again. It was him arriving, and the Heir of Slytherin really was Draco Malfoy, and he was cackling and threatening him with his father. It was him arriving, stabbing Tom Riddle’s diary with the fang, and the memory of Tom Riddle screaming in agony, crying, begging him to stop.

This time, everything was just as he had left it.

There was even a small torn piece of cloth that he knew, with an undying certainty, was cut off from his robe when he tripped.

Oh Merlin. Oh God.

Harry turned around with desperation. This is fine, he thought, he just needed to get out of the Chamber. He didn’t know how he woke up here, nor how much time had passed since he fell asleep—(had it been days? Or had he just woken up here?)—but he knew how to get out.

Harry inhaled deeply and was suddenly bursting with determination. The unsettling smell of the Basilisk and the dampness of the Chamber wasn’t going to deter him from leaving.

He moved down the walkway cautiously, towards the front of the Chamber.

He paused.

That compulsion he had described to Hermione, that insistent and everlasting pull in his chest, told him to turn around.

It thrummed like a second heartbeat beneath his ribs, stronger than anything he had ever felt before. It told him, turn around, look back, abandon your path. His skin prickled, the air thickened, pressing against his body.

This is what he wanted, Harry supposed. To get into the Chamber. He was here, now, and the compulsion was still as strong as it was in Grimmauld Place, so something had to be done here.

He turned his eyes heavenwards. Sorry, Sirius, Remus.

Harry turned back around.

He half-expected the Basilisk to have slithered forwards, but it was still dead, as it had been nigh four years past. It hadn’t moved at all. Harry was filled with a deep satisfaction.

Harry looked around the Chamber as he made to move towards where he had woken up. Nothing seemed out of place, nor did anything seem to call to him.

He looked at the face of Salazar Slytherin at the back. He didn’t feel that urge to go forwards.

“Alright, then,” Harry muttered.

What could he need? He turned his eyes back to the Basilisk. As soon as he did, he was made consciously aware of just how many times he had done that in the past few minutes. Harry blinked.

He stepped forward once, twice, and placed a tentative hand on the Basilisk. Its scales were dry. Harry couldn’t say he really felt bad about that, or about killing it.

His hand slipped from the Basilisk as he looked downward. Something glimmered faintly on the cold stone floor, just beside the large monster’s head. A fang, long and curved, with ink staining its tip.

The one he used to destroy Tom Riddle’s diary. He couldn’t even remember leaving it here. But neither could he remember wanting to take it, and between Ginny, Fawkes, and getting poisoned, it wasn’t exactly a priority.

He huffed a laugh. He looked up and moved to turn away. He stopped.

That pull. That compulsion. It was the fang.

Harry turned around quickly, crouching down next to the fang. In that moment, he wanted nothing more than to pick it up, to hold it in his hands, to feel the piercing tip of the fang against one of his fingers. He wondered if there was any venom left in it, or if all of it had seeped into the pages of the diary.

He nudged the fang lightly with a shoe. Nothing happened.

He really wanted to pick it up. He needed to pick it up.

Harry picked it up.

The fang was heavier than he remembered, and surprisingly warm, like a feverish body. He hummed, turning it around in his hands. It was completely stained with the dark ink.

It made him feel lighter than he had in weeks. Harry let his hand hang by his side; the fang still clutched in his grip and took another deep breath. The compulsion was gone. That heavy, suffocating weight on his chest had fluttered away.

Harry resolved to take the fang back to Grimmauld Place—after he figured out how to leave Hogwarts in the middle of summer, somewhere he wasn’t even supposed to be—and to tell Sirius about this. Or maybe not.

He shuffled down the walkway towards the front of the Chamber again. The fang pulsed in his hand. Pulsed?

“What the hell?”

The fang beat once more in his palm, as though it, too, had its very own heart. A small, mechanical, and unfeeling copper heart, one that beat and pumped like clockwork. A meaningless thing, for a mindless creature.

It beat once more.

Drop it, he thought. He had to drop it. He couldn’t.

Then came the light.

A forceful crack shot down the middle of the fang, like moonlight trying to escape dull stone. Then, with a sudden violence, it split open, radiant and golden, streaming between his fingers.

Drop it. Drop it.

It filled the chamber with brilliance.

Drop it!

Harry staggered, the fang burning hot, too hot to hold, his hand was going to melt, he was going to melt.

It beat, it beat, and Harry’s world erupted into golden light.

Chapter Text

March 1942

Dumbledore’s office smelt of parchment, something sickly sweet, and heavy dust. He didn’t look up from his desk as he carded through Transfiguration papers. Tom sat in one of the chairs across from him, hands folded over his knees.

“Professor Flitwick says you have been experimenting with the east corridor torches again,” Dumbledore said quietly, tapping his quill against the desk. “A curious habit.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Tom replied defensively.

Dumbledore hummed.

“But they needs a proper bit o’—” Tom cleared his throat. “They need some attention. They extinguish without warning, you see.”

The professor looked up at that, an amused twinkle in his eyes.

“They do,” Dumbledore agreed. “Though torches do not ordinarily melt their holders.”

“I can control it.”

Dumbledore’s eyes turned steady. “I am sure you can, Tom. But control is rarely absolute. Even the most careful hand can leave traces.”  

Tom shifted in his seat. His arse hurt. “I am careful.”

“Yes,” Dumbledore said. “I do not doubt that you believe you are, yet we both know belief is not the same as measure.” He returned to the parchment before him. “You were a very special boy, Tom. Perhaps dangerously so.”

“So you reckon I’m already done in?”

“No,” Dumbledore chuckled, “you will be a great wizard. I only mean that—”

“I know.” Tom didn’t think about how rude he sounded. He didn’t want to hear what Dumbledore had to say. He already knew what he was going to say, and he didn’t want to hear about it at all.

He looked down at his lap. Tom wringed his fingers between his thin legs. They had been chafing with the cold all winter, and were finally starting to let up as spring settled in. December was a terrible month. He had been sick for nearly all of it, and it was no concern of Mrs. Cole.

Tom didn’t know what to think of Dumbledore. Even after all these years. He reminded him a little of Father Halloway, at times, with his quiet cruelty.

But he was also bright, and intelligent, and queerer than any of the fellows Tom had met at the orphanage, or even at Hogwarts. He hated him for that too, though. Dumbledore always saw through him.

Thieving was bad, he said, but he didn’t understand why Tom did it. Lying is bad, he said, but he didn’t understand what it meant for a boy like him.

“Have you considered my offer further?” Dumbledore asked.

Tom flicked his eyes upward. Dumbledore had put down his quill at last. The papers had been pushed to the side.

“What?”

“To come to Mould-on-the-Wold this summer.” Dumbledore folded his arms across his chest. “It would serve you well to think about it.”

Tom was uncomfortable. “I did.”

Dumbledore only hummed, tilting his head downwards, eyes peeking out from behind his crescent-moon glasses.

“I can’t,” Tom said.

Dumbledore didn’t look surprised at all.

“So, you have considered it then.” Dumbledore paused. “May I ask why you cannot, Tom?”

“Yes,” Tom said quickly, tone sharp, “I have. And I cannot. It is… ‘s not proper.”

Dumbledore’s eyes lifted. “Not proper?”

Tom looked down at his hands again. He was picking them half to death. He pulled off a piece of loose skin by his thumb, watching the blood well. Not right, not safe. Not for me. But he couldn’t say that.

“It would be inconvenient,” he muttered, voice low.

And it would be inconvenient, too. Tom had things to do. He had death to cheat. Dumbledore wouldn’t do well to get in his way. And Dumbledore wouldn’t do well to pretend to care either.

“Inconvenient or unpleasant?” Dumbledore tilted his head.

His hands clenched. “Inconvenient,” Tom hissed, teeth pressed together. “I ain’t—I’m not ready. I have obligations. I have reasons.”

“And I would suspect that some of them are fear.”

Old bastard; cootish man.

“Not fear,” he snapped. “I’m not afraid of you.”

Dumbledore pressed his lips together. “That is not what I said, my boy.”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m a child.”

“I know you are not a child, Tom.” Dumbledore unfolded his hands. “I offer you the chance to be safe, only.”

Tom huffed. “To be safe, or to watch me?”

The professor didn’t even grace that with an answer. Tom thought he looked vaguely offended. He was sure he looked that way, looked patronised, because Tom saw through him too.

Tom knew Dumbledore had his uses for him. He knew it from the very moment he walked into Wool’s and set his dresser on fire. Tom felt like an admonished magpie in that moment. Thieving is bad, but they weren’t just stolen things.

“Very well then.” Tom sat up abruptly. Dumbledore had risen from his chair and shifted to the bookshelf behind Tom. He didn’t like that the man stood behind him.

“We shall leave it at that. I am always happy for you to reconsider.”

Tom wouldn’t.

He wanted to turn his back to the older man but resisted.

Tom shuffled half-twisted on the chair instead to face Dumbledore properly. The man lifted a tome from the shelf, one hand supporting the front and back, and opened it to a random page. Or rather, that’s what it looked like, but Tom knew better than to truly believe so.

He moved tentatively towards Tom. Against better judgement, he tensed.

Dumbledore showed him the page the book had opened on—intricate diagrams inked along the margins with annotations that looked like the professor’s own handwriting. He began pacing in front of Tom.

“Arcana Accidentalium,” Dumbledore began. “A treatise I acquired this winter. It is an attempt, I would say, to catalogue the phenomenological disruptions of magic from the, ah, disturbances of emotion. The wizard who collected all the pieces of the compendium went mad and died at forty-two, around the thirteenth century…” He moved back to his desk and Tom turned to face him again, sitting upright.

“Each entry is a meditation on instability. How a surge of anger, for instance, might twist a charm beyond expectation, or how grief can bleed through a ward and corrupt its intended protections. How fear, unacknowledged, corrupts the environment around wizards far beyond the ages of accidental magic.”

Dumbledore’s finger traced the wild lines on the yellowed page. Tom felt sick.

“One might say it is as much philosophy as it is practical magic. It is the study of control, yes, and the result is never neutral. The reparation of ‘unprepared casting,’ as I think of it, is an undoing. It hurts the wizard far greater than any preconceived reward. Think of Apparition. To splinch oneself is to suffer bodily harm. But when emotion disturbs casting, the wound is not always visible. It coils inward, incurvatus se—”

“Stop,” said Tom.

The professor looked at him.

“I know what you’re doing.” Tom’s ears were hot, his jaw ached, and his eyes burned.

“And what is it that I am doing, Tom?”

He scoffed. “You can’t be serious.”

Dumbledore hmmed and hawed – Tom wondered what he meant to see in him. What truths he thought he could tease out with careful words.

He’d rather be buried under rubble than be subjected to Dumbledore’s scrutiny for an entire summer.

Bless the Germans, he thought, because maybe with them, he’d be dead before the Hogwarts year began, and he’d never have to speak to Dumbledore in half-riddles again.

“Perhaps you will forgive my insistence,” Dumbledore leaned back, softly placing the book onto the table, “on the book, that is.”

Tom met his eye.

“It requires patience, and, perhaps, detachment. Or at least the willingness to observe oneself with brutal honesty.”

“To what?”

“To truly understand its contents.”

“These accusations aren’t hidden very well under your civility, Professor,” spat Tom.

“They are not accusations,” Dumbledore replied, unbothered. Tom thought he almost saw a smile pull at the corner of his mouth. “If the book speaks harshly, it is because truth often does.”

He wanted to sneer. He wanted to tell Dumbledore that he was wrong. That the book was useless. But his eyes strayed to the opened page; the violent curves, the weathered edges, the something-raw that he didn’t see in ordinary spellcraft.

There was a pulse in it, an ugly sort of life; the kind that Tom was familiar with. But he couldn’t have it, because Dumbledore wanted him to have it, which meant that it would be bad—utterly tragic—should he read it.

He wanted to say all these things.

“You’re mocking me,” Tom said instead.

“To mock you would be to waste both our time,” Dumbledore’s voice carried the faint of amusement of someone who already knew a choice had been made. Damn him. “Take it, if only to prove me wrong.”

The dismissal was sharp and clean. He shouldn’t take it.

It would tell him something disgusting, and that something would cause him problems, and those problems would only be suited for Dumbledore to fix. Then he would be Dumbledore’s. Not his own.

Tom stood. The chair scraped against the floor.

He snatched the dastardly book from where it sat petulantly on Dumbledore’s desk.

“I will return it.”

Now, Tom was sure he saw him smile. Dumbledore only hummed again, picking up his quill absentmindedly.

“I’m sure you will,” he murmured, writing away.

He stood there for just a moment, staring at Dumbledore, considering the consequences of throttling him with a sharp Avada; whether his freedom was worth enough to be spared.

And yet he turned, digging the book’s weight into his side, hating himself for taking it, wishing he was someone else, and quietly left the office to go hide by the Black Lake.

July 1996

Harry groaned. He half-expected to open his eyes and find the stone slick with his blood, his skull split against the bed of poppies.

Instead, there was only the shallow huffs of his breaths, and the raw ache in his ribs. He pushed himself upright, the golden light that had viciously erupted now fading from his eyes, and the Chamber flushed into focus.

The Basilisk’s body was still where it had been before, but in place of the ink-tipped fang near his fist was a blackened and charred fang.

Harry reached out to touch it, thinking it was going to crumble into ashes at the slightest touch, but it had felt just as solid as it did before.

And, just in front of his eyes, a figure lay sprawled across from Harry. Pale against the stone, hair falling untidily across his brow, and some strange soot marring his left cheekbone.

He was in Hogwarts robes, Slytherin, and was oddly curled around himself.

The robes were damaged, tattered as if a wild cat had taken personal offense to them. He might’ve been asleep, drowned, or dead. Harry wished he was dead. Because the last time a pale and gaunt-ish boy had appeared in the Chamber, it was because Voldemort was affixed on him.

Harry’s hand went for his wand without thinking. Surprisingly, it was there—light and solid—and he gripped it. The boy’s fingers twitched.

It almost looked like Riddle.

The boy moved. Harry realised with a start that he was waking. He didn’t wake the way a living child wakes. He came back as if from some long tunnel. A hand flexing, a slow blink, and the sour confusion of someone who had been dropped into wrong weather.

And as his eyes fixed on Harry, they were clear and sharp, and Harry shuddered as he realised that it was Riddle.

That this was the boy, thinner, and a little softer, from his second year; who had set a monster onto Hermione; who had almost killed Ginny Weasley.

Riddle sat up, fingers pressing into the stone for purchase. He looked towards the dead Basilisk, and Harry delighted in seeing a fearful surprise flicker across Riddle’s face.

And then Riddle realised that he was down on the floor, and that there was a boy with a wand trained to his face, and that he was in a strange, cold, damp place, and that, when he scrambled for his own wand, there was nothing there.

“Don’t bother,” said Harry, voice flat.

Riddle stilled. He was standing upright now. Harry thought he looked a bit pathetic with his arms awkwardly hanging, fingers clenching around nothing.

“Who are you?”

“Is that really what you want to do, Riddle?” Harry barked. A laugh escaped him.

“You know who I am.”

“Is that a question?” Harry leered, taking a step towards Riddle. His wand was still aimed at the boy’s chest. To his great satisfaction, Riddle took a step backwards.

“No,” Riddle spat.

“How the fuck are you back?” Harry snapped.

“Who are you?”

Harry paused. Riddle almost looked earnest. He looked offended, ridiculed, and threatened, too, but perhaps—under all of it—confused.

His wand-arm didn’t move. “Are you serious?”

Riddle didn’t say anything.

“I find it hard to believe…” Harry started, “that you don’t know who I am.”

“Well, I don’t,” Riddle snarled, “I bloo’y well don’. Don’t think I’d forget a face like yours, wi’ tha’—with that—” the boy sneered, looking at Harry’s scar, “curse scar on your head.”

“Cockney,” Harry blurted.

Riddle sniffed. He looked so arrogant, so positively arrogant, as if Harry’s very existence pained him.

“What.”

“You’re Cockney.”

His shoulders were taut. Riddle pulled them even tighter, if such a thing were possible. He shifted his weight as the silence grew longer.

“I’m not,” he said finally, voice clipped, furious. “I’m not like them.”

Harry barked another laugh. “Yeah, you are. Surrey’s not far, you know. Grew up ‘round blokes from Mitcham, Croydon, bloody Streatham, too. Half of them sounded just like you when they were angry. You think I can’t tell?” Harry shook his head, “Oh, this is too good.”

“I’m nothing like them,” Riddle snapped. Harry would’ve thought his face almost flushed, if he wasn’t so sickly looking. He could hear him bending his vowels into a rougher shape. “Nothing like some poor, filthy Muggles.”

“That’s funny.” Harry tilted his head, assessing the boy before him. He really did look like the poor boys he knew in Surrey. Just like them, if not a bit thinner, a bit sicker.

Riddle’s jaw worked, lips pressed thin. “You know nothing about me.”

“Don’t I know your name, Tom Riddle? Don’t I know enough?” Harry shot back. “Enough to know you’re no pureblood—”

“Everyone knows that—”

“Enough to know that you’re just another boy from London, same as the rest. Only difference is you’ve convinced yourself you’re better.”

“I am better.”

He advanced upon Riddle, taking another step. This time, Riddle didn’t take a responsive step back.

“Where am I?” said Riddle.

Harry paused. He took a moment to study Riddle’s face. He truly did look afraid. His hand was still messing with his robe at his side. He even looked to be sweating a little. He was down here with him, he was the one with a wand, Riddle was at the disadvantage here—

“The Chamber of Secrets.”

Riddle’s eyes widened comically.

“What? Don’t recognise it after spending all this time looking for it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Riddle looked infuriated.

“Uh-huh.” Harry’s mouth twisted. His eyes drifted down to where Riddle was digging his thumb into his palm at an uncomfortable angle.

“Well? Who the hell are you?”

Harry looked back up at him.

“I don’t think you’re in any place to be asking questions, Riddle, when I’m the one whose got a wand fixed on your stupid face.”

Riddle paused. Then:

“You talk too much.” His mouth twisted into a sneer, boyish and hideous all at once. “You sound like every thick bastard who thinks that shouting makes him clever. You’re just playing for time.”

Harry smirked. “That’s rich, coming from the one who’s been stalling for the past five minutes.”

“I’m not stalling,” Riddle’s voice rose, “you’re the one who refuses to tell me who you are.”

Riddle took a step forward, his chest coming into contact with Harry’s wand. He didn’t lower it. Riddle’s shirt didn’t crease around his wand’s tip, as he would’ve expected it to. Surely, it would leave a puckered mark in his skin if he pressed against it any harder, but it was almost as if his body and clothes were perfectly preserved, never shifting.

“Tell me,” Riddle said, “is it because you’re scared, little mudblood? Is that it? Boy from Surrey with a foul mouth; no manners to speak for him?”

“Half-blood, actually. Just like you.”

For just a second, Harry saw Riddle’s face shift into something raw. His jaw clenched; he looked ready to spit something cruel and personal, but he looked equally frustrated, because he didn’t know Harry—didn’t have anything cruel nor personal to say.

Only vague insults, hand-waving motions: mudblood, Surrey boy, and nothing else.

“Not just like me,” Riddle almost smiled. “I’m different.”

“Different?” Harry shot back. “From whom? The Muggles you can’t stop talking about? Or the Slytherins you’ll never admit wouldn’t have pissed on you if you were on fire?”

“You don’t know a thing about me.” Riddle’s face darkened.

“I know enough. I know you’re standing here when you should be—well, this version of you should be dead. Because I killed him. When I was twelve.”

“Come off it.”

Harry arched a brow, taking a few steps back so Riddle’s chest was no longer pressing into his wand.

“Yeah? You think I’m lying?”

Riddle’s lip curled. “You’re filth. I might not know how we’re here, but I can tell that you don’t either. You’re filth.”

“How did you convince so much of Slytherin to back you?” Harry sneered, “Really, Riddle, how are your knees?”

Harry saw Riddle start at that. Was that too much?

No, he’s Voldemort.

He saw some terrible expression befall Riddle’s face. A cruel, violent-looking expression, and Harry would’ve been intimidated were he anything lesser than.

Then, Riddle took a large, leaping step towards him—

“You bastard!”

Harry didn’t answer. Instead, he shouted, “Stupefy!”

The spell cracked from his wand like a whip. Red light streaked across the little space between them. Riddle’s eyes went wide.

It hit Riddle squarely in the chest—

and sparked out.

Both of them stood in a moment of silent surprise.

But Riddle began to smile, a curling, knife-like thing. “Can’t even cast a Stunner?”

Harry gritted his teeth and fired again.

“Impedimenta! Incarcerous!” Each spell sparked, his wand trembling with the force of the motion. But each died, harmless, as they struck Riddle’s body.

It almost looked as if Riddle’s chest rippled, like a pool of quiet water, as the spells met his chest.

And Riddle, the fucking arse, only looked smug. He tilted his head.

His face showed nothing but disdain. But Harry saw, as each red flash shot from his wand, the way his fingers flexed. So he was rattled. For but a second, before it was gone.

Harry swore he saw a look of contemplation cross Riddle’s face, too, before it settled; as if he had reached a conclusion and was set to test it.

“Your spells are pathetic,” Riddle scoffed.

He didn’t make to move towards Harry as he did before.

“What are you, a Muggle? Did you pick up the first wand you saw, too poor to get anything that works?”

Then he started to move towards Harry. Just a step.

“Then why,” Harry took a step forward too, “did you flinch?”

Harry’s arm shook. He was raised Muggle, after all, and if spells wouldn’t work, then—

He swung.

Harry’s hand was clenched into a tight fist, his knuckles white.

And finally, finally, Riddle jerked backwards, trying to anticipate the hit. But his cockiness placed him too close to Harry—directly in the arch of his swing—

And nothing.

No contact.

His fist cut through Riddle’s face as if it were naught but an illusion.

That sharp sting of flesh meeting flesh, of blood blooming from Riddle’s nose—it never came.

Riddle looked frightened. Genuinely frightened. And Harry couldn’t help but finally falter in his bravery too, Godric be damned.

Riddle raised a hand, it was shaking, Harry saw; he raised it, slow and deliberate, and shoved forward.

Nothing. Not even a nudge.

His palm never touched Harry’s chest. It only passed through him like smoke. Harry didn’t feel anything, didn’t shudder the way Riddle did as his fist flew towards his face.

And as the damning realisation that Riddle couldn’t touch, nor be touched, seeped into the Slytherin’s mind, he stumbled backwards. He curled his arms around his torso, his eyes harsh and pleading.

“What did you do to me?” Riddle whispered, angrily. “What did you do?”

The satisfaction Harry felt had left him entirely.

“I didn’t do anything—”

“Liar!” Riddle screamed, spit flying from his mouth, half-folded over in rage— “I said, wha’ di’ you do to me?”

Harry let out a shout of frustration. He dropped his wand, strutted in a circle, his hands coming up to brush through his hair. Riddle’s eyes jumped to his wand as it clattered onto the floor.

“I didn’t do anything! What are you? Are you an illusion?”

“Fucking—” Riddle grated, “No!”

Oh fucking Merlin.

Harry didn’t realise what was happening until it was over. All he saw was a flurry of robes, Riddle’s messy hair flying through the air, and Riddle grasping for Harry’s wand on the ground.

But his hands met nothing. Each time Riddle’s shaking fingers tried to grasp the wand, they met nothing. Just clenched around air.

Riddle screamed in frustration, bounding back upwards.

“What the fuck did you do to me! Stupid—cursed—” Riddle paced back and forth, “I was in my dorm, then I fel’ like I wa’ dyin’—was dying, and now I’m here—” Riddle’s hands fluttered about uselessly— “and now I’m dead! I’m dead! I’m a ghost!”

Harry stared. He stopped moving in circles like a clueless dog. Riddle’s voice had cracked, thin and desperate. He looked nothing like the Riddle Harry had seen looming over Ginny.

No pretentious smirk, no measured cleverness. He didn’t even look like the Riddle from today, who, somehow, made clambering up from the ground look elegant.

“I’m dead,” Riddle rasped, moving with quick steps, a curl falling over his eye. “I’m bloody dead, aren’t I? All that time, all that work—Father Halloway said—Oh, I can’t just—” Riddle groaned again. “Why the hell are you here, if I’m dead? I don’ know you! Cheat Death, I was gunna. Death ‘imself.”

“What the fuck are you on about, Riddle?”

“I don’t know you!” the boy screamed.

Now Harry was mad again, Riddle’s pseudo-sympathetic display losing all edge.

“Of course you know me. You’re Voldemort. You’re evil. You’re scum. You killed my parents!” Harry spat.

“No I didn’—How? No! No, no!” Riddle’s head shook wildly from left to right. “No!”

“You think I dragged you here for—for fun? I didn’t fucking bring you! I just want to go home! You stupid bastard, I’m stuck here too—” Harry could hardly stand the sight of Riddle, “—this is just some stupid nightmare!”

Riddle’s head snapped up. His tear-bright eyes glistened. His lip curled into a wet and furious snarl.

“You lying little cunt!”

And with a guttural growl, so animalistic he would’ve thought Riddle was an animagus, he lunged at Harry.

Harry had just enough time to flinch, to see the blur of Riddle, before everything went black.

When Harry woke up, the quilt that had reached for in the Chamber was on top of him again. It was a strangely calm rising; usually, whenever he had a nightmare, that is, he always felt as if he had been drowned.

He pushed the quilt down his torso, where it was bunched tight.

No serpentine rot, or a copperish smell of blood, no damp stone, making his hands wet. Just Grimmauld.

Moving upright, the mattress groaned beneath him.

Harry rubbed his eyes and wacked his hand around for his glasses, pulling them on when he heard a soft knock.

Without waiting for Harry’s answer, Sirius’ head appeared from around the doorframe. His hair was in a reckless tangle, but that told Harry nothing about what time it was; Sirius could be happy waking up anywhere from six in the morning to six in the evening.

“You’re up,” said Sirius. He gave Harry a taught smile. “Kreacher still hates me, so it’s oats or nothing. Remus is still asleep, so…”

“Yeah, I wonder why Kreacher hates you…” Harry mumbled, rubbing his eyes again.

His godfather had the decency to not look offended as he rolled his eyes.

“Shut up. Oatmeal?”

Harry blinked before he nodded.

“Yeah, thanks.”

He turned away, expecting Sirius to be gone, but found him still lingering by the doorway. Harry stopped mid-motion. He studied Harry like he half-wanted to press—please don’t—then he shrugged and stepped away.

“I’ll call you down soon,” he muttered, shutting the door behind him.

Harry padded out of bed. That hadn’t been a dream. It couldn’t have been. It must be impossible for a dream to feel that real; dreams didn’t leave behind the feeling of stone still slick under his fingers, or the cold of that place lingering in his chest.

If he tried hard enough, he could probably still smell it: the rot, the damp, the sharp edge of fear.

Riddle’s face, and Riddle’s words. They were so unlike anything he had thought of Riddle before. In fact, he didn’t think about him at all. So if it were a dream, where did he get those ideas from? Riddle being Cockney, looking younger than he had ever seen him, looking malnourished and sick—they certainly weren’t from his own mind.

Harry plopped himself down at his desk, letting his head hit the hard wood with a groan

“It was a dream,” he told himself.

“Oh yeah?”

Harry froze. His head jerked upwards, and he spun around so quick he almost felt ill with the motion.

And there—standing by the rotting window, pale as the moonlight of Remus’ boggart, robes still torn and filthy—was Tom Riddle. From last night.

His eyes sharp and livid, exactly as they had been before he lunged at him.

Harry’s stomach twisted grossly.

“What the fuck have you done to me?” Riddle spat, veering back into that low, furious voice. “Dragged me ‘ere—outta nowhere—an’ now I’m stuck. Stuck with you. You right bastard!”

“You said that already,” Harry said, before he could stop himself.

Riddle growled, and Harry knew he shouldn’t have said that.

“Wait—wait, just listen—”

To his surprise, Riddle paused. He looked angry, yes, and he looked as if he could kill Harry’s parents twice over, yes, but the git didn’t open his mouth.

Then Harry realised how idiotic he was being.

“What am I doing, talking to hallucinations—” Harry rubbed his forehead, “I’m going mad. You aren’t real.”

“I’m real enough,” Riddle snapped, eyes burning “An’ you know it weren’t no dream. It wasn’t a dream, because I know I died, and I know you can see me, and I know that, therefore, it must be your fault. So you’re going to fix this,” Riddle gestured at himself, “so I can leave you and continue living. I’m not meant to die.”

“You will never be immortal.”

Riddle’s fist shook at his sides. “I didn’t say that. I said I’m not meant to die. I’m fifteen.”

His eyes darted to Harry, then stuck themselves to the floor. “I’m not disappearing back into the dark nowhere. You think I’m dream-stuff? I’m real enough,” he repeated, “and I’m stuck here. And you’re going to help me. Because you did this.”

“I didn’t do anything! How’s it my fault that you’re haunting me?”

Riddle furrowed his brow angrily.

“I’m metaphysically torn apart in my dorm by God knows what, and I wake up on the floor of the Chamber of bloody Secrets, and you’re the only other one there. Of course it’s your fault.”

“Oh Merlin,” Harry groaned. “Just fuck off.”

“I can’t! I’m stuck here!”

Harry let out an unamused laugh. “Right. Let’s say that’s true. Let’s say that you’re not a dream at all, and that you really are stuck here. Why the hell should I help you anyway? You can’t hurt me, and you’re Voldemort. Voldemort! Why would I ever tell you anything? And if you’re not a dream, then what are you, huh?”

Riddle’s lips twitched, before he looked away as if he were abashed.

“I don’t know,” he said quietly, like it pained him to admit that—for once, he didn’t know something— “but I want to live. So you’re going to fix this.”

He kept saying that, and Harry wanted to scream. You’re going to fix this.

“We’re really doing this then. Alright, say I believe you. Why should I let you live? Again: you’re Voldemort! You kill Muggleborns, and half-bloods, and anything that moves. And you want to kill me!”

Riddle flinched almost imperceptibly, before asking, “What year is it?”

“Huh?”

“I said,” Riddle growled, “what year is it?”

“1996.”

“Fifty years…” Riddle trailed off, looking slightly lost. Harry shifted from where he was awkwardly sat in his chair.

But then, Riddle lit up. As if he had just realised something great. Harry shuddered, and Riddle’s eyes flicked to the side, sucking in a slightly shaky breath, before he said: “Tell me about him. Tell me about Voldemort.”

“What? Why would I—” Harry trailed off, scowling at Riddle. “You’re him. You are him.”

“Not yet,” Riddle said, voice low and careful. “I’m fifteen. Not yet. This is over fifty years later. And if he’s still alive whilst I’m here, then I’m surely not meant to be here at all, ergo, I’m meant to be alive. Not like this. If he wants to kill you, then you want to get rid of him; and if you want that, I can help you. Because I do become him, don’t I? I know things that nobody else would. I don’t care if he lives or dies, he’s not me. I want to live. I will live,” Riddle paused, “So tell me about Voldemort. And I’ll help you get rid of him; in some capacity, at least. And in return, you help me live again. Properly.”

Harry swallowed, glancing down at the floor. Riddle’s presence pressed against him, weightless but insistent, and he knew it was no accident.

He couldn’t touch Riddle, Riddle couldn’t touch him, and yet here he was, outside of his mind. Harry’s mind had never made things up quite like this before.

Maybe he wasn’t a dream. His identity was made of things Harry would never even think to imagine. And Riddle couldn’t hurt him, not physically, at least, and if Harry did concede that this wasn’t a strange illusion or dream—a fact he thought was becoming more likely by the moment, anyway—then this could help.

This would give him something Voldemort would never think to expect.

But Harry didn’t want Riddle to live. He would just become another Voldemort, wouldn’t he?

But… Riddle didn’t need to know that little part; that Harry wouldn’t help him at all. This could work.

“Fine,” he muttered at last. “Fine. I’ll tell you. We find out what you are. You help me kill Voldemort.”

Riddle’s face contorted into something between blankness, satisfaction, and poorly hidden relief. Harry tried not to throttle him, because he’d just end up flying straight through the boy’s body.

Riddle sat himself on the edge of his bed, legs swinging, and Harry swallowed hard.

“I still don’t know your name,” said Riddle.

The room was quiet except for the occasional chirp of a cricket and the soft, uncanny presence of the boy who was and wasn’t the Dark Lord.

“It’s Harry.”

And somehow, impossibly, that was enough for the moment.