Chapter Text
Romania, Winter, 1978
Morning comes slowly in the mountains.
The sun rises pale and reluctant over the snow-covered peaks, casting long shadows through the skeletal trees. The air is crisp, the kind of cold that bites through layers of clothing and seeps into the bones. But Harry is used to it.
He rises before dawn, as he always does. His bed is warm, the blankets heavy with the kind of comfort he never expected to have. He pushes them aside and stretches out the stiffness in his legs. As he swings his feet to the floor, he notes the cracking in his knees. The wooden boards are cold under his bare feet, a sharp contrast to the warmth underneath his blanket.
The dog—Alba, a stray he found half-dead in the nearby village two winters ago—lifts her head from where she sleeps by the extinguished hearth, long ears twitching. She watches as he moves through his morning routine, but doesn’t rise yet. She knows the rhythm of his mornings as well as he does.
Harry dresses in layers, pulling on a thick sweater over a thin long-sleeved shirt and his old Auror-issued boots. He fills his worn kettle to boil over the stove, then hauls logs into the fireplace, setting them on fire. He steps outside through the back door into the kitchen, inhaling deep, the mountain air burning fresh in his lungs.
The world here is silent.
It isn’t the silence of war—the tense, waiting hush before a battle, the shrill before the drop of a bomb, the kind that coils in the gut and warns of something coming. No, it is peaceful. One that settles into the skin and makes home in the flutter of one’s heart.
Harry grabs a shovel to create paths towards his chicken coop and the barn for his goats, scooping the fresh snow out of the way.
By the time he returns to his cottage, Harry’s fingers are stiff with the cold, and his breath is visible in the warm air. The kettle whistles low and steady on the stove, and Harry pours himself a cup of strong tea.
He doesn’t read the morning paper. He stopped bothering with news from Britain years ago. Instead, he sinks into the worn-out chair by the building fire, Alba trotting over from the bedroom to settle at his feet, and lets the quiet of the morning stretch around him.
That’s been his life for twenty years, now.
Quiet, undisturbed, high up in the Carpathian mountains, a place he has grown to love during his self-imposed exile. Deep in a forest shrouded in primitive, wild magic. In a neutral ground, untouched by war and loss.
The quiet of it was what had drawn him here in the first place (after wandering the world, lost and uncertain, looking for a place to call his own)—the untouched stillness of it all. The nature around him, untamed and wild. Just the steady rhythm of survival, of walking with the dawn and ending the day when the last embers in the fireplace burn out.
It’s a good life. A small life.
And it is his.
Upon finishing his cup of tea, Harry goes about his morning as he always does.
His first task is with the animals. Harry pours dog feed into Alba’s bowl in the kitchen, then warms her water bowl before filling it with water.
He steps outside, walking towards the coop. The chickens cluck sleepily when he steps into their enclosure, boots crunching over frozen dirt. They are hardy things, bred for cold weather, their feathers fluffed against the chill. Harry tosses them a generous amount of feed from the shelf and grabs his haphazardly woven basket to collect the eggs that had been laid over the night. With a quarter-to-full basket, he leaves his chickens and goes towards the barn.
The goats are less patient. They butt against his legs as he hauls a bale of hay into their shelter, their beady eyes sharp and expectant. One of them, an old thing named Basil, after a particularly difficult instructor in his youth, stomps a hoof when he deems Harry too slow at his job.
“Alright, alright,” Harry mutters, shaking his head as he spreads the hay. “Bossy bastard.”
Alba trails behind him as he works, nose pressing into the snow, sniffing for any signs of disturbance. She had been a half-starved thing when Harry found her, ribs poking through patchy white fur, too weak to run when he approached her in the town. Now, she is thick-furred and tough, a mountain dog through and through.
She, the animals, and the times Harry goes to the village for supplies are the only type of company Harry allows himself.
The day passes in small, steady tasks.
The firewood needs splitting once again, so Harry heads back outside, takes his axe from where it is resting by the front door, and sets to work. The motions are familiar—raise, swing, split, repeat. It’s a relatively pleasant task. The physical labor keeps his mind quiet, stretches his muscles in the most pleasant way, and keeps him grounded in the present.
By midday, the sun rises high enough to take the worst of the chill from the air. It’s a beautiful day, and Harry feels the stir of impatient magic beyond his wards. It is a good day, he thinks.
“We’ll go hunting tonight, girl.” He says to Alba, who barks back in enthusiastic agreement.
He takes some bread, cheese, and a bit of smoked rabbit meat outside, sits down to eat lunch with Alba curled at his feet. It’s nothing extravagant, none of his meals ever are, but it’s enough.
The view stretches before him—an endless, white landscape, carved out like a pit inside the mountains. Peaks that rise sharply against the sky, valleys that had been carved deep by time. Magic, invisible to the regular person, curves around the forest, marking where he will start his hunt.
Harry thinks he should feel lonely. Maybe he is.
But loneliness, he has found, is better than the alternative—the before.
When the sun begins its slow descent beyond the jagged peaks and casts long shadows over the valley below, Harry is ready. It’s mid-afternoon—after lunch but before the creeping touch of dusk. Air in the Carpathians carries the weight of snow and pine, damp earth and something older, something humming beneath the surface. Magic lives here, as Harry has come to know, not in spells or incantations, but in the land itself, old as time.
The mountains demand respect.
In the first few years, he had fought against them, not understanding what it meant to be part of the ecosystem. Fought against the cruel winters, the unyielding terrain, the ancient, slumbering magic that watched his every move. But survival taught him patience. It taught him that this land was not to be conquered, not as he had done in his youth. It demanded to be understood, respected.
And so, each month, Harry followed the same ritual.
Not a hunt, or, at least, not in the way he sometimes did it, and not in the way he had once thought it to be. Something tied to the pulsing heartbeat of the land, the everything before humanity. A ritual.
He inhales deeply, standing at the edge of the dense tree line, boots sinking into the frost-bitten ground. Behind him, his wooden cottage is nothing more than a dark smudge against the vast emptiness of the mountain slopes.
Alba trots beside him, her thick fur blending with the snow-dusted undergrowth. She is silent as a shadow, though her ears twitch in anticipation. She knows what’s coming.
The deep woods stretch around them, vast and endless. There are places here where men had never walked, where the bones of the earth jut out like broken teeth, and the silence settles heavy in the spaces between the skeleton trees. Those are the places where the magic is at its strongest.
Harry stops at the base of an ancient oak, exhaling slowly. His fingers flex at his sides, the shift already crawling beneath his skin, thrumming through his bones.
Harry takes one last breath as a man, then lets go.
His transformation, as always, is seamless, practiced, instinctual. The shift of bones, the ripple of skin into fur, is effortless as breathing after years of practice. Within seconds, the man is gone, and in his place stands a massive Eurasian brown bear.
He shakes himself, adjusting to the familiar weight of his form. Everything sharpens. The world is clearer like this—scents carry farther, sound splits into layers, movements slow into precise rhythms. The mountain is alive in a way it never is when he is human.
Alba lets out a low chuff of recognition before she takes off ahead, weaving through the trees with ease. The bear follows, moving through the underbush with a hunter’s patience. Despite his massive size, he is silent. The mountains are his domain.
They move deeper into the forest, the towering firs standing like sentinels, their limbs heavy with snow. The mountain whispers as they pass—the hush of wind through trees, the faint scurry of small creatures retreating from a predator they sense but cannot see.
He runs—not to hunt, not truly, not yet.
The spirits of the land were old, older than any wizard’s magic. They had tolerated him there, but tolerance was not the same as acceptance. If he wanted to live among them, he had to show them that he belonged.
At times, he slowed and prowled through arching boughs of ancient pine, letting out deep, rolling growls.
The bear catches the scent first.
A stag. Old, but not yet past his prime.
Alba catches it moments later, pausing ahead to glance back at him. The bear huffs softly, and she obeys, hanging back. This is his hunt.
He can feel the weight of unseen eyes watching him, measuring, as they always did.
He lowers himself, shifting his weight, and presses forward with deliberate care. A lesser predator would have charged too soon. A bear knows better.
Step by step, he tracks it—moves with the terrain, uses the slopes and shadows to stay downwind. His heartbeat slows, breathing deepens. The earth hums beneath him, magic pulses like a second heartbeat in his bones, pressing him to act.
There.
Through the breaks in the trees, he sees it—a massive red stag, grazing near the river’s edge. It’s a survivor, scarred from seasons of hardship, with thick antlers that curl like ancient branches.
For a moment, the bear hesitates.
He does not need to hunt to survive; besides, when a blizzard comes, his small farm sustains him well enough, but this is something different. This is part of the land, part of the magic that binds him to this place. A bear hunts because it is in its nature.
And yet, it never takes more than what is necessary.
He steps forward, deliberate and slow, muscles tensing beneath thick fur. The stag lifts its head, ears twitching. It senses something.
One more step.
Then—
A shift in the wind.
The stag bolts.
The bear lunges after it.
The world explodes into motion—the thunder of hooves against frozen earth, the rush of blood in his ears, the crack of branches as the chase tears through the forest. The bear is faster than it looks, moving with a fluid power that belies its size. But the stag is swift—built for flight.
Trees blur around them as the bear closes the distance, muscles burning, paws digging into the earth with each bound forward. The stag veers sharply toward the river. A mistake.
The bear leaps.
The impact is brutal—a clash of predator and prey. They crash into the ground together, a tangle of fur and antlers, hooves kicking up dirt and frost. The stag thrashes, fighting for its life, but the bear is already shifting, changing mid-motion.
Fur melts into skin, claws into fingers, until Harry kneels over the stag as a man, breath coming in ragged gasps, fingers pressing against its flank.
The animal stills, chest heaving.
Harry meets its dark eyes, feels the trembling of life beneath his hands. This close, he can feel the thrum of magic in its body, the pulse of something old and wild.
And yet, Harry feels no desire to kill it. He never does.
Instead, he speaks softly, fingers trailing over its side in something like reverence. A murmured spell. A quiet blessing to the scared animal.
The stag, sensing its life is no longer in danger, shudders once and rises to its feet.
For a moment, they simply stare at each other—hunter and prey, but something more than that, too. Then, with a flick of its tail, the stag turns around and disappears into the trees.
Alba pads up beside him, watching it leave. Harry exhales, running a hand through his hair.
“Not today,” he murmurs to the forest.
The wind stirs around him, a hush passing through the trees like a sigh. And then, just as suddenly as it had come, the feeling of being watched is gone.
The land is satisfied.
Alba stands by him, waiting, tail flicking in vague amusement.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Harry rolls his eyes, clutching his coat tighter around himself. “You’re not the one that has to prove anything to them.”
She huffs, clearly unimpressed with his excuses for delaying her favorite pastime, the violent thing that she is.
He stands, rolling his shoulders as he adjusts back into his human form. The air is colder now, the sun dipping lower toward the horizon. It is time to return home.
As he and Alba make their way back, Harry can’t shake the feeling that something is shifting. The land feels different, and not because of the ritual, but with something unspoken, waiting beyond the edge of understanding.
Whatever it is, Harry knows that something is coming.
The cold clings to him like a second skin as Harry crosses the threshold of his home, kicking the door shut behind him. Snow dusts his cloak, melting quickly in the warmth of the room, soaking into the rough wool.
Alba slips in behind him, shaking herself off before settling near the hearth, stretching out with a deep huff. Her fur is damp with quickly drying snow, but she pays it no mind. She has had much worse. The fire is still burning strongly from earlier, the smell of smoldering wood thick in the air.
The wooden cottage is small but sturdy, nestled into the mountainside like it had grown there, as much a part of the land as the towering pines outside. The walls are lined with shelves filled with dried herbs, glass jars of preserved ingredients, and books stacked haphazardly from years of spontaneous collection. Heavy furs cover the wooden floor, worn soft with use.
It is home. The kind of home Harry thought he’d never get to have.
He strips off his damp cloak, hanging it on the hook by the door, then sets about his preparation for the storm.
He had felt it—long before the first gusts of icy wind began snaking through the trees on their way home, long before the skies had darkened. The mountains had whispered their warning after his ritual, the old magic thrumming with urgency in his veins. A law of equivalent exchange.
Harry listens.
He moves with practiced efficiency, pulling dried meat and root vegetables from his storage, settling them near the hearth where the warmth will soften them for a stew later. He gathers more firewood from the stock near the door, which he’d chopped that morning, feeding the flames until they burn hotter, stronger, ready to last through the night and into the next morning.
He casts protective charms around his chickens and goats, and covers his crops in the greenhouse with an additional layer of temperate magic.
The blizzard would not pass quickly, he knows that much. It has weight, a kind of presence that settles around him like a heavy cloak.
Harry frowns.
There is something else, too, something he cannot name yet. An unease that has followed him since the moment he stepped out of the woods. A flicker of something beneath the usual hum of the land’s magic. He pushes the unwelcome thought away, focusing on the task at hand.
From his storage cupboard, away from light and any moisture, he retrieves several glass vials—potions in various shades of green and blue, shimmering faintly in the dim light.
A precaution.
If the storm lasts more than a few days, he won’t be able to get to the town for supplies. Harry lays them out on the table, checking each one carefully, cataloguing if he is going to need any more.
Dreamless Sleep, Calming Draught, Pepper-Up, Blood-Replenishing, and other healing and restoration potions of various degrees.
It is a habit, born from years of Auror work. To always, even now, even here, to be prepared for the worst.
Satisfied, he turns his attention to the cauldron by the fire, where he was preparing a big stew to last him through the blizzard. He crouches beside it, adding a handful of dried herbs to the still-simmering mixture. The scent of rosemary and thyme curls into the air, grounding him to the present.
Outside, the wind howls. This was what he had chosen.
Here, he is just Harry. Just a man with a home, a dog, animals, and some vegetables to take care of, a life built from the quiet things he never thought he would have. Nomad Harry, who goes to the small village on weekends. Who fixes rooftops and always has one pint at the pub before leaving. Helpful Harry, who keeps his last name hidden from the locals, but is not closed off despite it. Who sells eggs and goat’s cheese on farmers’ markets and barely speaks Romanian.
And yet—
Suddenly, his magic bristles, restless beneath his skin. As if something is coming. Something inevitable.
So Harry chops his vegetables, slices his meat, watches how his cauldron boils and he waits, alert.
When the wind had taken hold, howling outside like a wolf left to rot, and Harry could see snow piling his outside his windows, he felt something.
A twinge in his wards, barely recognizable over the noise outside. Like a doorway being burst down from its hinges.
Alba lifts her head from where she lay curled at her duvet near the hearth, ears prickling, her body tensing with unease. She does not growl, but she knows that something is off.
Harry sets down his knife, his half-chopped herbs forgotten. His fingers find his wand on instinct, his pulse steady, slow. No one should be here. No one should make it through the wards, through the treacherous paths leading up the cliffs, through the sheer wrath of the storm beyond. Lest of all break them down after that journey.
And yet—
There it is. A knock at his door.
Unsteady. Weak.
Somebody is at his door.
Harry exhales slowly, falling back into the crouch of a predator. He steps forward, barefoot against the wood, Alba moving beside him like she does when they go on a hunt—silent as a shadow, eyes alight with something Harry can never place.
He shouldn’t open the door. He should pretend that he heard nothing. Raise the wards again, seal the crack, and move on with his evening. After all, he doesn’t want any trouble.
But some old instinct, or perhaps magic, deep and old, one beyond his understanding, pushes him forward.
Harry unlatches the door and braves the weight of the wind, his eyes stinging at the force.
Just as suddenly, his world shifts on its axis.
A man stands in the snow, barely upright, clutching his stomach.
Blood slicks his hair and dark robes, dripping into a red puddle onto the snow. Too much blood. His breathing is labored, rattling against the quiet in the way only a man on the verge of dying can sound.
And even before the wind could blow the hair from his face, before the dim torchlight inside flickered against those sharp, familiar features—Harry knew.
His name burs in Harry’s throat, heavy and bitter with years of silence. Of pain. Of memories left to rot.
Tom.
Tom Riddle.
A part of Harry always knew this day would come. He had spent years waiting for it. Dreading it.
But not like this.
Not with blood staining his mouth, his hands, his chest, snow starting to cling to his clothes. Not with the sheer exhaustion pulling his shoulders into something human, not with the start of wrinkles lining his face.
For the first time since Harry had met him nearly forty years ago, Tom Riddle looks like a man, not a god.
And Harry—Harry doesn’t know what to do with that.
Riddle exhales, something like amusement curling at the edges of his busted lips.
“Going to let me in, Harry?” His voice is hoarse, wrecked. Unfamiliar. With a start, Harry realizes that he had forgotten the sound. But the arrogance is still there. Diminished, but unbroken.
Still the same bastard.
Harry clenches his jaw, hands tightening around his wand.
He should say no and be done with him. Shut the door, let the storm finish the job that someone else had started, and, from the looks of it, almost succeeded at.
Because if Riddle is here—if he is alone, bleeding, battered, barely standing—it means that something had gone wrong for once in his life.
A sharp gust of wind hits the threshold, whipping snow into the house. Riddle sways, closing his eyes. Alba barks in alarm behind him.
Instinct wins.
Harry steps forward, Riddle’s body giving out before he can reach him on the other side. When he falls into the snow, staining everything red, Harry hauls the man up, grunting all the way. He can think later.
Riddle is too light, a hollow version of the man he had once been. His unconscious body trembles with the effort of holding on. The weight of him, the smell of blood and burned magic, the weak, uneven breathing—it is real. He is real.
And Harry should not be doing this.
He should be leaving him in the cold. He should be watching from inside as the storm swallows him whole, erases the last of the boy who had once been his and leaves only the husk of a man that had hurt him and the world.
But he hauls Riddle inside anyway.
Harry curses under his breath, the door slamming shut behind them, sealing the howling storm outside. The warmth of the cottage hits them in a wave, the contrast almost jarring. The firelight flickers against Riddle’s bloodied face, against his closed eyes, frown lines marring his face, and the dark circles beneath his eyes.
Harry should not be doing this. Should not be saving him.
And yet, Harry drags him to the couch.
Move first, think later.
“Maybe,” Harry thinks, “I should go about changing that motto of mine.”