Work Text:
The creaking floorboards made obvious what the subtle dismantling of wards did not: someone was prowling about Wool’s.
From his unseen vantage, Harry watched the hunched figure before him freeze, their quill stopped mid-scratch. He slowly lowered his cloak, revealing himself from head to toe. Deep, dark eyes met his own in the candlelit reflection on the window.
Rain pattered against the pane as they regarded each other.
Riddle slid the chair back quietly, as was necessary at that late hour. An errant hand reached into a cubby on the desk.
“No.” Harry warned, wand raised. Two slender hands slowly went up.
“Alright, Tom, stand and turn slowly towards me.”
“Why should I?” Riddle asked in a high, droll tone.
It sounded wrong.
He took a hesitant step forward. “This wand has no trace, Tom. And I’m a stranger here, so neither do I.”
“Peculiar,” they murmured, in that all-too-wrong voice. “You hardly seem older than me.”
Riddle calmly lifted from her seat, an oversized, cable-knit sweater falling to cover her knees. She brought her arms to her chest and crossed them tightly.
“There’s a Tom on the ground floor, though, he’s no wizard. All the other children here are muggles.” She gave him an appraising look, eyes narrowed. “I set up those wards without a wand. What makes you think I have no other means to kill you where you stand?”
“I don’t doubt you do,” Harry half-whispered, still a little dazed by this strange but familiar girl. “Is that what you’ll do next, Tom? Kill me?”
Annoyance crept into her features. “Who are you, and why do you keep calling me that?”
Harry lowered his wand slightly, and with the other hand, rubbed his chin thoughtfully. It was entirely smooth, where he would have normally felt stubble. When did he start to grow facial hair again? Sixth year?
“I don’t know your name, but I know you well.”
Her lips parted slightly in displeasure. “Doubtful.”
“Have you opened the Chamber of Secrets yet?” Harry felt a certain amount of vindication as her eyes went from annoyed to murderous in the space of seconds.
“Repeat what you just said,” she commanded.
Harry recentered his wand. He had no way of knowing if she’d learned to summon hers, yet.
“You heard me, Riddle. It’s New Year's Eve, 1942. If you haven’t opened it yet, you will soon. By the end of the school year, a student will be dead, and you’ll have torn yourself apart.”
The girl stepped right into his wandtip, practically baring her teeth. “Who are you? How did you find me here?” The light in her dark eyes danced unnaturally.
“Oh, good, you’re already a legilimens. That makes this a lot simpler.” Harry slowly turned his wand handle, offering part of the grip to her. It was perhaps the most suicidal thing he’d ever done, considering how angry she was, but he wagered she was more than a bit curious, too.
“You want me in your head?” She asked incredulously.
Clearly she’d never been invited to one.
“Erhm, yeah.”
She glared at the holly and phoenix in his hand. “That’s your wand. I’ll need my own.”
“This’ll work just fine. Call it a hunch.”
After a heated stretch of silence, she gave him a predatory smile. “Legilimency is…challenging magic, and I am not formally trained. This will hurt you.”
“I came here to show you this. I need you to see this.” He hesitated before continuing. “It wouldn’t be the first time someone like you crawled through my mind.”
A cold hand encircled his own. Together they held his wand, pointing it between his eyes. She took a deep breath, and he could feel it brush by his neck. Her dark, dancing eyes centered on his.
“PETRIFICUS TOTA-”
Harry was faster. He grabbed her wrist with his free hand. The curse leapt from his wand and landed harmlessly against her bed. She gasped in pain as he twisted her arm and pushed her hard against the wall.
“That is not how we’re playing this, RIddle,” he ground out. “Try again.”
She gave him a truly hateful look, and jammed the wand up against his jaw. “Legilimens!” She hissed.
Suddenly, the pressure behind his eyes doubled. Harry felt like all too much was happening at once inside his mind.
The untrained girl cut through his memories like a dull blade, hacking gracelessly at any resistance she came up against. Though surprised by the ferocity, he had laid out a path for her long before this night. At her age, he had been terrible at keeping people out of his mind. But whatever he was now, he was more than proficient enough to coax a teenage girl along.
He gave her almost everything she could want. Memories of Tom Riddle through Dumbledore’s eyes, through his eyes, through what Ginny and Malfoy had confided to him. Visages of the sycophants and monsters she would hold in her iron grip. He gave her the bone-deep terror of facing down Voldemort again and again, and the soul-deep torment of horcruxes as they are ripped from the whole, and summarily destroyed.
He allowed her to hear his mother’s pleading, and screaming.
While she was there, in his head, he could get some sense of her, too. Harry could feel her satisfaction and disgust, pride and shame. They were, as they always had been, drowning together in deep hollows of strange magic and prophecy. She clung to him painfully.
And then, he was free of her.
With a shuddering exhale, she stepped quietly from his grasp. Gracelessly, she sat at the edge of her bed. Her head hung low, now, curtains of coffee brown obscuring her face. The lone candle that lit the room wavered, casting their shadows on the same wall. Harry watched, and waited.
He began to notice little details he hadn’t caught before. A pair of greying Hogwarts stockings covered her feet, perhaps from the first school uniform she’d ever received, by the state of them. The long sweater she wore hung limply at her shoulders, holes and tears obvious against her pale skin. Ink stains peppered the sleeves, where she’d bunched them up her arms.
Her legs were bare, despite the cold.
Harry stepped across the creaking hardwood, settling onto the bed next to her, and casting a silent warming charm. If she noticed, he could not see. She was frozen, deep in thought.
Barely a whisper rose above the rain. “I’ve always despised the inclinations of fate and prophecy.”
“If there’s one thing we agree on, Riddle, it’s that divination is a waste of magic.”
She brought a hand to her brow.
“My sworn nemesis travels through space and time to find me, and he jokes,” she said tiredly. “You should have killed me the second you took you down my wards.”
He leaned back into open palms stretched behind him, wand still in hand. “You think so? It’s not really in my nature.”
“Too noble to curse a woman?” She asked, disdainfully.
Harry's thoughts immediately went to Bellatrix, writhing in pain beneath him. That had felt good, even right, to him. Perhaps he should have given her that memory, too.
“Harry,” she said softly, shoulders drooping slightly. “I may not be your Tom Riddle, but I’m every bit what he was. If you stay here, and stand in my way, I will destroy you.”
“Perhaps,” he said, gently laying his hand on hers. “Maybe just showing what I’ve shown will make a difference. Or maybe not.”
She chuckled softly, swaying back and forth. Her eyes were open, but unfocused, and he realized that she was probably beyond exhausted. He had never tried legilimency, having opted out of that part of his Auror training, but he knew it was draining to the uninitiated.
“I should like it if you stayed in my time, at least a bit longer,” she slurred, laying down sideways onto her pillow. “You still haven’t revealed to me how you got here. Or how old you really are.”
“I may have left out a few key memories,” he admitted, stretching out alongside her, leaving a respectful gap between them.
She turned to face him, eyes half-lidded. “What are you still hiding from me, Harry Potter? What powers do you possess?”
“If you knew, you would do anything to take them from me.”
She nodded slightly. “It’s in my nature.”
She turned back away from him, gently pulling his arm over her shivering form as she went. The distance between them closed, but he was not uncomfortable, as he thought he likely should be. He settled into the calm of the moment, and watched the candle’s dance.
Shadow and flame, moving in tandem.
“I still don’t know your name,” he whispered into the dark.
“Evelyn,” she whispered back.
“How about Eve, for short?” He couldn’t help himself.
With an undignified snort, she tightened her grip. “I’ve changed my mind, Potter. You’ll die in the morning.”