Work Text:
“Care to join me?” A low, silky voice called from beside Harry.
Harry turned, only to be met with an unsettlingly familiar figure. The boy was tall—at least a head taller than Harry—with smooth wavy black hair and sharp cheekbones to match. He was polished, incredibly so, yet Harry couldn’t quite place a name to him.
“Who are you?” Harry all but blurted at the boy.
The boy did something peculiar then, he stilled.
His gaze travelled over Harry slowly, deliberately, as though the boy was searching for an answer.
Then—as if finding what he was looking for—something shifted, an expression of thinly veiled delight settling over his features.
“Why, Harry, I’m almost offended,” the boy said conversationally, not looking offended in the slightest.
Pleased.
The boy was distinctly pleased.
Harry stiffened.
“Do you need a hint?” The boy drawled, eyes alight.
Harry resisted the urge to bristle, instead choosing to scrutinise the boy before him with renewed vigour.
His eyes narrowed and wandered, taking in the boy’s appearance, his sharp self-assured demeanor; some small unsettling awareness beginning to awaken in the back of Harry’s mind before his gaze latched assuredly, firmly, onto the boy’s eyes.
His eyes, which were coloured a deep crimson, reminding him faintly of wine.
They were Piercing. Sharp. And fixed on Harry with an almost expectant gleam to them.
It made Harry’s fingertips curl at his sides.
It took only a moment for pure dawning horror to course through him. He knew those eyes. He knew that boy.
”Riddle,” Harry all but snarled, something in his blood igniting at the recognition.
Tom Riddle.
Tom Riddle was standing before Harry, occupying his dream like it was normal.
“That was quicker than usual,” he said, giving Harry a considering look. He looked, dare Harry say… relaxed?
Before Harry had comprehended what was happening, he was stepping forward, rapidly closing the distance with clenched fingers and a burning fury to match.
Riddle didn’t move.
But before Harry could reach him the landscape shifted, the darkness of the void enclosing upon them within an instant. Harry immediately lost his balance, his hands coming to grasp at the air before him.
The last thing Harry saw before consciousness grasped him was the empty space where Riddle had been standing.
The sight looked… off.
It wasn’t too long before Harry found himself within the odd dream again, although this time he appeared to be in a different setting.
Most notably, Harry was alone this time.
The darkness was present once again, still deeply entrenched within the surrounding dream, however what caught his attention was the tell-tale gleam of rippling water.
Before Harry was a lake.
A cool breeze grazed his cheeks before gently ruffling his hair, yet Harry could barely feel the chill.
The wind seemed to catch on the water and Harry couldn’t help himself but watch as smooth divots parted within the surface. What was curious was the way it gleamed a light silver, almost like frost against the rise of a winter’s morning.
It, oddly, reminded Harry of moonlight. But it couldn’t have been, there was no moon.
”You would usually call this beautiful,” a smooth, now familiar voice spoke from beside him.
Shock seized Harry as he spun to face Riddle, his eyes narrowing as he took in the look of thinly veiled interest he was receiving.
“Why do you speak like you know me?”
“That’s because I do,” the boy said simply, a surety bordering on arrogance glinting from his eyes.
The words should have made Harry alarmed. The certainty and ease at which they were spoken should have sparked a drastic reaction. And yet it… didn't.
It was as though somewhere in the voiceless part of Harry’s subconscious, the statement rang true.
At that moment another current of wind brushed by Harry, making the interaction feel all the more surreal.
“Then what is it I’d find so captivating?” Harry asked after a pause.
The response was near instant.
”The moon,” Riddle answered with an assured type of quality to his voice which made Harry still.
He did not need to check to know there wasn’t a moon in this dreamscape.
What exactly was Riddle playing at?
But the boy took on a contemplative expression then, crimson eyes pinning Harry to the ground below. What surprised him was how the weight of the boy’s attention didn’t feel oppressive and yet Harry’s ribs felt… constricted, like the air itself couldn’t quite be contained within his lungs.
Harry couldn’t dwell however, as it appeared Riddle hadn’t finished.
”I prefer the sun.”
Harry blinked, entirely taken aback.
It was spoken like Riddle had just admitted a secret. But it was the way he said it, soft and layered, as though he were talking about something entirely different that made Harry roll his eyes.
The intensity within Riddle’s gaze never wavered as he extended a hand before Harry.
”Care to join me?”
This question again?
Harry observed the offered hand, confusion overcoming his expression.
”For what?”
The boy didn’t seem surprised by the question, if anything he looked amused, like he had answered this question a hundred times before, like Harry should already know the answer.
“Anything,” he said simply,
However, before Harry could so much as process the statement the air contorted between them and he knew their dream was about to come to a close.
It didn’t quell the words which rose to his tongue.
“I can’t stand you.”
And yet the words sounded softer from his lips, wrong even, like they came from someone else entirely.
The last thing Harry saw before his vision became obscured was the sudden hunger which flickered before Riddle’s eyes.
The air wavered, the ground parting beneath their feet—the dreamscape fracturing into distorted pieces.
Distantly, for a fraction of a moment, Harry could have sworn he’d heard a sound against the roaring of the cosmos. It was soft, faintly reminiscent of a murmur.
It was almost, almost lost to the void.
“And you do so beautifully.”
The next time Harry found himself within the dreamscape he noticed that there had been a new addition above the lake: stars.
They were plentiful, scattered in a manner which contrasted the darkness as much as it complemented it.
What was more notable this time was the fact Harry wasn’t alone.
Riddle stood next to him once again with that polished composure and quiet expectancy which Harry had grown to expect. What surprised him was how quickly he’d grown familiar to him.
The boy, slowly, offered his hand again and Harry was once again struck by the unfamiliarly familiar sight.
Riddle didn’t speak this time.
Red eyes were met by curious green ones.
“Why?” Harry found himself asking.
A pause entailed.
”Why not?” Riddle responded, not answering Harry’s question in the slightest. Another thing Harry had irritatingly come to expect.
Just as Harry was resisting the urge to roll his eyes he caught the first tremors of the lake, the surface fracturing in time with the darkness surrounding it—the dream crumbling around them.
It was then Harry saw it.
Behind the subtle glimmering of stars was a far grander sight.
It was the moon.
The glow framed Tom, its silver catching on his clothes and in the strands of his hair.
And Harry could admit to himself something.
That perhaps Tom did know him.
As that sight was nothing if not otherworldly.
The next dream came quicker and this time Harry was not surprised by the presence beside him.
Looking up at the stars and moon a new question crept up on Harry. It approached him quietly, gently even, like it was a question from long ago that had simply resurfaced in his memory.
“Why do you keep asking?” Harry asked softly.
And for one extended moment, Harry was sure that Riddle—no… Tom—was going to answer in that non-answer way of his, something deflecting or was irritatingly vague.
But instead, Tom’s eyes lit up in that dangerous way they sometimes do. He stepped more firmly into Harry’s space, causing Harry’s traitorous lungs to constrict.
Tom reached out a hand.
Harry slowly, tentatively, took it.
“Why Harry—“Tom trailed a finger along the underside of his hand until his fingers slipped smoothly, perfectly, between Harry’s own. In a fluid motion he was guiding Harry forwards, onwards towards a place he didn’t quite know yet—“You have yet to refuse me.”
And Harry realised, rather suddenly, that he never had.