a/n cover img is temporary i'll change it later when i get it done

consider yourself warned: (a) character(s) who is not tom or harry will die in this short series. take care.

edit: oh shit on me let's pretend i didn't write blond as blonde

Everyone knows the tale of Hogwarts. Four of the greatest magic wielders that the world had ever seen. Four of the greatest who'd each embodied worthy traits. Four of the greatest who had helped create day and night in the Wizarding World. The Four… who had crumbled due to internal turmoil. Even the greatest could succumb to shouting and angry hexes.

Or, at least, that was what a certain Draco Malfoy was trying to convince Professor McGonagall about after he'd tackled Harry to the ground in the corridor and socked him straight in the jaw.

"I do not see other 'great' students abandoning all self-control to their fists." Their professor said, her nostrils flaring. This was not the first time they'd been caught brawling this week. Or the second. Or the bloody third, for that matter. Their houses were probably recoiling with the sheer amount of house points lost. "The two of you! Mr Malfoy, what would your father say?" Harry caught an enraged spark in the blond's eyes, and almost, almost felt pity. But he hated the git too much for that. "And you too, Mr Potter. I'm sure your parents would be displeased. Both of you: detention this Friday, with Hagrid."

Harry let some relief into his shoulders. With Hagrid! Surely it wouldn't be too gruelling then. A sharp look from his professor warned him not to feel too grateful. Another quick dismissal and Malfoy was out of there, leaving Harry alone in an empty classroom with his annoyed Head of House who'd asked 'for a word with him'.

"I am, frankly, disappointed in you, Potter." At the very least, she didn't use his first name... Harry couldn't help but feel guilty anyway. "Seven years. You are in your final year of schooling; you ought to be a role model for the younger children..."

By the time to lecture had finished, Harry felt sufficiently verbally lashed to return to his own seventh year dorms. Hermione and Ron were waiting for him there, and thus Harry received his second lecture for the evening. Ron, well, Ron just sat there looking rather awkward.

Oh, such was a normal day in Hogwarts, safely enclosed in the wards of the Wizarding World.

–––

Harry was no Boy-Who-Lived. He a little special in that he was one of Godric Gryffindor's descendants, but other than that, he was merely a boy with mediocre magic and mediocre grades, an aptitude for Defence, a sort of shimmering beauty if you looked for too long, and a stubbornness that people said was "true to Gryffindor." Said stubbornness was precisely why he stood there in his robes, in the night's cold, and refused the look at one blond git as Hagrid explained their duty for the night. Collecting potion ingredients from the Forbidden Forest. Right.

The Forest wasn't really very dangerous. He and Draco were used to venturing inside (for detentions, what else? The professors knew they ((Harry, at least)) were capable at survival), so he'd say there wasn't much that should terrify them anymore. The Forbidden Forest served a different use. It grew across the Hogwarts grounds, all the way up to the one boundary that determined their world. The wards. The wards that kept the Muggles out, like a dome. But Muggles… Merlin, Muggles were devious. Long ago they'd shadowed the stars. They'd constructed something huge, something up in the sky, that'd blotted out the sun.

Well, lucky they had magic, wasn't it? Harry glanced up at the artificial, magical moon. It was some sort of obscenely powerful and ancient relic. No wonder that the plants here were magical and all. But soon the white orb blinked in and out of view as they stepped beneath the canopy. Dark leaves took its place, rustling and sighing with the same wind that must've stirred all throughout the Wizarding World.

Hagrid and his hound, Fang, split off and Harry was forced to spend his sad hours with bloody Malfoy. The two worked in resolute silence, beneath the mottled moonlight, sticking their hands under trees to grope for mushrooms and the like. Harry wiggled his head under a tree's roots, looking for a telltale glow of a luminous fungus he was seeking, but he pulled out in disappointment. He also noticed, strangely enough, that the forest was suddenly very, very, dark.

Malfoy spoke first. "Potter…?"

"You couldn't have kept your mouth shut the whole night, like you usually do?" Harry grumbled in reply, moving on to another tree. He wasn't in the mood to have to cater to Malfoy's annoying antics.

"...Look up, Potter."

He did. Through the leaves, the dark solemn sky, the stars that weren't really there–

The moon was gone.

Harry stumbled on nothing. "What in the bloody hell, oh what the fuck what the fuck–"

It was just an inky black sky, and he watched as the stars began to fade – no longer powered once the moon was lost. The clouds, too, dissipated, and there was just blackness. Black, the black between the stars, the suffocating black of being alone in a cave and no way out.

He glanced over at Malfoy, who'd dropped whatever mushrooms he'd been carrying. Their glow illuminated his terrified face. Harry heard a point me and then Malfoy's wand was spinning in his hand endlessly. "What in Salazar's-"

"Salazar probably caused this." Harry said dryly, trying to cover up his own instincts that suddenly screamed with the need to get out of the forest. "Running out into the Muggle world and all. Maybe he decided to finally come home and accidentally knock the lights out of the-"

"Oh, just shut up, Potter." Malfoy hissed in reply, gathering the mushrooms into his arms again. At least they provided some light. Harry had a few stuffed into his robes as well, and he took them out to see. "I'm getting out of here. You can stay in this filthy place if you want."

The forest felt very, very, dark. And honestly? Harry couldn't remember which direction they'd come from at all. He couldn't see any lights from the castle, only roots and branches and flickers of the forest's inhabitants. Malfoy started in some random direction, but Harry stopped him.

"Are you sure that's the right way?"

"Of course I'm sure," Malfoy sneered. "I'm not as bloody blind as you. Sometimes I wonder how you even manage to see to see anything at all. Are those glasses of yours for decoration? They must be, considering I've seen you trip enough times over your enormous head to shatter the poor lenses."

Harry let the insult slide, for once. Anger was somehow taking a backseat. Instead, he trailed after Malfoy in his haughty steps. He didn't want to split up because then things could do from bad to worse. Imagine if Malfoy got lost; Harry would get utterly skewered by Professor McGonagall. But now that he did squint, he could see some sort of distant light through the trees.

They walked and they walked and they walked, Harry fixing his eyes on Malfoy's white glistening hair, Malfoy looking ahead at who knew what. Probably the forest floor, or he would've stumbled on his fat feet already. The light was still incredibly far, and Harry didn't quite know what to think as they waded through the darkness. They couldn't have ventured this far from the castle. But then what was the light that they saw?

"Hey, Malfoy. Do you really think you know where you're-"

"Shut up, Potter."

Git. Harry tore his gaze away from the bobbing white mushroomhead only to notice something rather eerie.

"I mean, look at the trees, Malfoy." Malfoy did stop then, fixing his grey eyes on a nearby wooden trunk. The thing was withered and gnarled beyond belief, its branches and leaves looking sickly and mottled, its roots twisted in pain. All the trees they could see looked like this, actually. Harry couldn't see any of the usual wriggling flowers, or even small creatures. It was rather… ominous.

"I should've known you were scared of trees." The blond snorted. "You're hardly worthy of even the pathetic house Gryffindor. Just because we're in a part of the forest at you are unfamiliar with-"

"That means we're going the wrong way, doesn't it?"

Malfoy paused, and then his features twisted into a snarl. "Of course not."

"I'm calling bullshit-"

"If you have objections," Malfoy cut in, "you're perfectly free to go the other way, Potter."

"Watch me." Harry said, instead, and pointed his wand up to send a flare. As the red signal fizzed out in the sky, he saw Malfoy's lip curl. Probably because Harry was actually taking initiative.

A green signal shot up not a moment later, further back the way they came, luminous against the black that'd fallen across the sky. No doubt from Hagrid. Harry had to resist the urge to crow in Malfoy's ugly face, because he had been absolutely right! "Stuff it, Malfoy. Let's go."

Malfoy stewed in sullen silence as they picked their way across the roots, retracing their steps. They were getting out of their detention, really, but surely the fact that the lights of the world had gone out would overshadow their petty detention.

Harry should've known it was too easy. He should've know his night was going to well. Getting one up on Malfoy, getting out of detention… he should've seen Fate's curveball coming right for his face–

He walked straight into something very, very solid.

Malfoy's laughter grated on his ears, and Harry picked himself up off the ground to give him a withering glare. Then he turned around to bring that glare on the offending obstacle, except there was nothing. He had walked into the gap between two trees. He reached out a hand, only to come into contact with something unmistakably solid. White sparks swirled from where his fingers had stopped.

What in the bloody hell…?

Malfoy was no longer laughing, and he'd walked up to examine the invisible wall, too. A sort of suffocating silence had fallen over the two of them. A suffocating, expectant silence.

The white sparks leapt to life under their hands, shooting outwards to weave a huge spiderweb that kept and kept going, connecting in thousands of places at once, and suddenly-

-there was a white wall that seemed to be made of compact, roiling mist; it stretched all the way up into the black sky, subtly curving–it stretched out to every side. Harry could no longer see the forest inside.

The realisation hit like a train. It hit like the force of a tsunami, like falling into a river and being swept away by the currents, smashing on the rocks, only to glimpse a waterfall at the end.

It hit bloody hard.

Malfoy had fallen to his knees beside Harry, his face impossibly pale. Harry was distantly aware that his legs had given way and he was leaning against a foreign, unknown tree. He remembered the green flare that flickered on the other side of the wall. He remembered once when he was younger his parents had taken him to see the wards, their dome, their safe haven. They'd said it was white because white was all the colours combined, and the walls between the Muggle and Magical world were just that powerful.

They were outside the wards.

He looked up at the black sky again, and then turned around where he could see distant lights on the horizon. Lights… from a Muggle society. no matter how hard he stared, he couldn't see the stars, because right now there must've been an enormous platform above the entire Wizarding World. Above their heads.

They were outside the wards.

Malfoy cast something against the white roiling wall and his spell shattered uselessly on the surface. They were outside, they were outside, they were outside-!

Malfoy keeled over and fainted.

–––

They spent their waking hours in a flicker of denial. They slept leaning against the wards. They cast whatever they could at it, and it did not give. They didn't talk… because they didn't want to acknowledge that it was real. The darkness came to pass, light gently streaming through the trees, and... finally, it was too much.

"We're going to have to go." Harry said tiredly, watching Malfoy's head snap up towards him.

"And to where, exactly? Walk straight into Muggle territory where they'll-"

"We need to go." Harry repeated, firmly. "Imagine if the Muggles found us here. They're probably the ones who stole the moon, and they're probably the ones who made the wards lapse in the first place. They'll know that we're wizards if they find us here." They'd be experimented on. They'd be subjected to all sort of cruel things that the history classes said Muggles did. Burnt at stake. Hunted.

"And if the wards falter again? If we can get back, but you're too busy traipsing around with Muggles to see?"

"Then there's a problem because the wards are failing so often." Harry said, feeling something clench in his throat. "We're stuck out here, Malfoy. We might as well find out what the Muggles did while we are. The wards might… might fall eventually, anyway. So let's get moving. Let's actually do something."

He saw Malfoy's face darken, but the boy got to his feet anyway and fell into pace a little behind Harry. Now that he looked, the light in the distance seemed to be brighter. "Do you even know anything about Muggles?"

"Would any well-respecting wizard? So perhaps you would..." Malfoy replied scathingly. Because of course, who would bother learn about Muggles?

"No, I'm too busy topping you in Defence."

"How very like you to brag about the one thing you can do, Potter. It's pitiful."

Harry grinned a little smugly to himself. "You've just chained yourself forever into admitting my Defence is good." He muttered.

After walking for hours (Malfoy complained about his feet far too often), a strange scent invaded Harry's nostrils. The pungence seemed a little like dust and oil. How peculiar.

The mass of trees, Harry also noticed, seemed to come to a point where they simply… stopped. Abruptly, at a very clear line. Casting a small Disillusionment on themselves, they approached this abrupt dropoff. Was it a cliff? Perhaps they were on a mountain? There were mountains in the Wizarding World, where giants liked to hide. There were lakes and streams, forests and plains, and all the space they needed for the magical society to spread out in their miniature countries. Harry thought he'd seen it all – his parents would tell him of the terrains and the lands in their tales – but the sight that met his eyes when they stepped out from the trees, flooded with sunlight, shocked the breath from him.

A gaping hole in the earth. A wound in the land. All this dirt exposed bare, this artery that had been torn right from the planet. Harry got to his knees to peer over the edge. It went down down down, its walls bearing lights, down down down where strange creatures rested. Long necked things sat idly, and he watched as one suddenly roared to life. It shook the very earth as it bellowed, and then it lowered its head to the ground, digging in and biting harshly. The trench did not only stretch down, but also to the left and right, Harry realised.

Those bright yellow beasts were digging a trench around the wards?

Draco jabbed at his shoulder, drawing Harry's attention to a bridge that spanned the trench. It was a flat beam with ropes at its sides, and with Draco clutching his shoulder, Harry crossed the thing. He knew he wouldn't fall. The beam was wide and there were the ropes, but looking at that torches that outlined the drop into darkness, into the Muggle's doing… it caused his stomach to twist and churn. They only breathed once they reached the other grassy side, where there were no trees to be seen.

Harry had been so focused on his feet, on watching his step, on looking down the trench, that he hadn't realised there was yet another wall to face. The most shocking thing was that the wall was recognisable: it was a simple wire fence, and Harry could see on the other side were odd, squat, plain buildings. Was Muggle society close to the Wizarding World?

"Are you really this idiotic?" An unseen Draco hissed into his ear, because apparently Harry had voiced his question. "Of course they're going to have people close. And those people are going to be fucking guards. That bloody trench behind us is a defence mechanism in the making." There was a quaver in Draco's voice that the boy couldn't hide.

That was fine. Harry was also incredibly terrified.

His terror levels leapt up the scale when they approached the simple fence and he realised he could see his hand. He jerked Draco back so quickly that they both fell to the earth, Harry's hand quickly fading from visibility again. "They- They can block our magic." He whispered. Draco let loose a steady stream of curses. "How are we supposed to get out?"

Draco was looking back at the trench. "You don't figure Muggles are huge and yellow, do you?"

"Muggles look like us." Harry paused. "You want us to pretend to be Muggles? We haven't seen any yet! We've got no idea what they look like. They might even be able to sense magic."

Draco sneered. "So then what? We sit here and find a simple, easy, unguarded door?"

Harry pointed his wand at the wire fence. "We haven't tried this yet." He said, mouth dry as he backed away. He felt magic swirling up beneath his veins, and with all the determination he could muster, he muttered: "Confringo." Flames exploded from his wand and streaked towards the fence, singing and searing grass, roaring as it approached. Hot white sparks suddenly erupted across the fence, sputtering and dying. His spell connected. The entire thing blew inwards, sending dirt and wire flying.

A terrible shrieking noise started up. It was an alarm – one that wailed so loudly Harry thought his head was going to burst.

"You didn't think this through." Malfoy was shouting into his ear, gripping his arm. "Which way do we go? Which way?"

"What do you mean, which way? Of course we're going in!" Harry wrenched himself out of Malfoy's hold and stalked towards to hissing hole in the fence.

"They'll have all sorts of dangerous things in there–"

"Then where? Back by the wards? Over the trench? There's nowhere for us to go–"

"I don't know, but we can't bloody go in there–!"

"We can't stay here! They'll come looking. Hurry up Malfoy, fucking hell, I swear if it's your Slytherin cowardice that gets us killed…"

"Gryffindors are idiotically brave; Slytherins just have a sense of self-preservation. Why'd you blow the bloody thing up without even thinking!"

"I'll fucking hex you silent. Get in here before Muggles show up!" Malfoy felt an invisible Harry grab him and drag him through, yowling. "Shut up!"

Harry was so absorbed in dragging and shouting at Malfoy that he didn't realise someone had exited the plain buildings and was leisurely striding across the grass towards the smoking fence. Not until there was a very distinct click that somehow managed to reach Harry's ears over the alarms. Harry turned, very slowly, towards a Muggle who held a strange sort of wand at them. The Muggle did look like them – human, with the greyest eyes – but he was wearing some sort of strange black and white buttoned attire with no robes to be seen.

"I forget, you wouldn't know what guns do." The Muggle said in a pleasant tone above the sirens. Pleasant or no, the threat was there. He pointed the wand at the earth and suddenly with a bang! that made Harry jump a foot into the air, there was a hole in the earth. He turned the wand back at Harry's head, which shouldn't have been possible because Harry was Disillusioned, for Merlin's sake. "Now imagine what this could do to your head. Drop the illusion." He hissed.

Harry did, with no hesitation. The Muggle would've blown their brains out with equal pause, and he seemed to already know where they were. Harry felt awfully vulnerable, standing there against a Muggle ready to kill. Draco was trembling slightly behind him. He still had his wand in his hand, so what he needed was a non-verbal spell.

The Muggle cocked the 'gun'. "Drop your wands," he said, almost casually, as if he threatened people to death everyday. He probably did. The man carried a dangerous aura around him: one that commanded obedience and promised pain otherwise. Harry let his phoenix tail hit the grass and saw Malfoy do the same. The Muggle then raised a hand to his ear and then began to speak. "Malfunction in D11. Yes, we'll need to get the fence replaced. No, no other disturbances." He paused, but the 'gun' was still trained steady and his gaze didn't waver from the two wizards. "Tell Geoff I'm heading home early. I'll be back later. Think of it as an overdue coffee break."

After the seemingly one-sided conversation with no one, the Muggle turned his attentions back to them. "Robes off." He said curtly. The wailing noises stopped, and for that, Harry was grateful.

Draco opened his mouth to protest, and before Harry could even blink, there was another bang! and the dirt by Draco's foot was missing. Harry needed a non-verbal, wandless spell. But it was ridiculous, because all spells were slower than this… than this gun. So if Harry could even cast nonverbally and wandlessly, as soon as the Muggle saw the red light of the Stunner, he would have Harry dead. But maybe Draco would still get out alive.

Harry considered it. He really did. But could Malfoy survive?

"Robes."

Harry unfastened his Hogwarts robes and let them fall to the ground. Why on earth did the Muggle want their robes off? To prevent them from hiding any secret weapons?

Their fallen robes burst into flames. Their wands flew into the Muggle's hand.

Harry felt like someone had punched the breath out of him. He felt like someone had just dropped a letter into his hands that told him his parents had died. The Muggle could do magic. Muggles had mastered magic, too. Draco was looking dangerously close to fainting again. There hadn't even been a wand or word involved. Muggles must've somehow found magic users and experimented on them… The only known wizard that was out in the Muggle world was Salazar Slytherin, and that had been hundreds of years ago. Salazar had apparently insisted on leaving so that he could continue adapting and improving the wards from the outside, specially tuned to withstand the Muggle's advancements. Every Gryffindor had always laughed at the story. Slytherin, with Muggles? Surely not. It was probably a story to cover up an embarrassing death.

While Harry tried to realign the stars and reconsider everything he'd ever known in his life, the Muggle unbuttoned his own blazer and tossed it towards Harry, who caught it in a daze. "Put it on." He ordered. Harry did, pulling it over his button-up shirt. The Muggle looked at them appraisingly. He looked rather like them, now, in his own button-up shirt that was cut rather differently. "That'll do. Follow me. Don't say a word. Don't run. You won't get away." The last statement was a promise.

The Muggle tucked his weapon and their wands onto his belt, into some sort of sheath, and then motioned for the two wizards to follow. Harry and Draco trailed after him in a detached fashion. They were dead. They were here, surrounded by Muggles who could do magic… Muggles who sent one of their number to apprehend the two of them. And that one had done a good job, too. The Muggle had the audacity to turn his back on them and lead without looking back. They approached the plain buildings, the grass replaced by concrete slabs. The place seemed empty. Well, no other Muggles were walking out and about. Harry assumed they all stayed inside the strange buildings.

Harry felt, rather than saw, Draco tense. He knew what Draco was thinking. A physical fight – he and Draco were still rather fit from all that Quidditch, after all – of two against one, with the advantage of surprise. Harry shook his head furiously when he caught the glint in Draco's eye. He had the nagging feeling they had no element of surprise, and the Muggle still had far more weapons than they. The Muggle had said he'd be going 'home', so unless home was a codeword for a wizard killing factory, it would probably be easier to break out of than… here. Draco was being irrational. Attacking here in this secure location was ridiculous.

Draco's black shoe scuffed the concrete as he lunged.

The Muggle whipped around so quickly Harry swore he might've even been faster than the gun, slamming a hand against Draco's head and at the same time bring up a knee to Draco's gut.

Harry's wizard companion slumped, unconscious. The Muggle picked him up with ease and tossed Draco over his shoulder. Harry really, really, did not know what to feel aside from panic. As they walked by the buildings, the Muggle turned towards one of the walls of the buildings and spoke.

"Perks of the job, Geoff." Harry noticed there was an odd black box surrounded by what could only be glass attached to the side of the wall. Was the Muggle speaking to the box? "Lackeys will keep throwing themselves at you."

Then the Muggle continued on as if nothing had happened, leading Harry past identical buildings. Their footsteps seemed to echo. Harry's hands felt sweaty. Was he being led to some sort of torture chamber? A facility for experimenting on wizards? This entire facility looked like it was made for torturing. At one point he caught sight of a huge grey field with giant white beasts resting in it. Were they guard dogs?

So when they finally emerged into another grey field filled with colourful, rectangular contraptions, Harry couldn't help but feel apprehensive. The Muggle walked all the way up to a black tin. He wrapped his hand around a handle on the side of the tin and the tin made a noise that caused Harry to jump. Then the Muggle opened the wall of the tin and tossed Malfoy's unconscious form in. "Get in." The Muggle told Harry, who was eyeing the thing apprehensively. Was it a machine that stole their magic? "For fuck's sake, get in the car. It's not going to hurt you."

Placated, Harry entered the 'car' and found the interior surprisingly soft. If he was still terrified of being tortured to death inside the 'car', the fact that the Muggle also got in relieved him. Then the tin began to vibrate and Harry clutched onto his seat in slight terror. Was the tin going to teleport them? Why use such a large portkey? Suddenly Harry was struck by a strange sense of inertia.

There were glass windows and Harry hurriedly pressed his face against them, realising the view outside was moving. They were moving. They were in a moving tin. He saw the Muggle's hand press something, and then heard a rather familiar sound. Violin strings. He'd never been one for music, and he had no idea where the Muggle suddenly got a violin from, but he was soothed by strings. The Muggle stopped at one point, leaning out the window and talking to another Muggle, but then they continued moving.

Harry was grateful for the violins. Otherwise the 'car' would've been filled with a very heavy silence.

"You're not turning us in." Harry said, suddenly struck by the fact that this was not how test subjects were treated.

"Astute observation." The Muggle replied, dryly. "Any other brilliant comment you'd like to make?" This man was worse than Malfoy, who was still draped, unconscious, across the seats beside Harry. Their captor had his hands on some sort of wheel, and Harry realised he was controlling the movement of the car. There were all sorts of other knobs and buttons that eluded him, though, but the Muggle twisted and turned with ease. He seemed to be a man who knew exactly where he was and exactly what he was doing.

Harry thought for a long moment. This Muggle could use magic. He had said he was 'going home early' and that there were 'no disturbances.' He was protecting and hiding Harry and Draco. He had seen them through their Disillusionment. He must've sensed their magic in the first place.

The implications clicked.

"You're a wizard." Harry said, numbly. "How–"

"My name is Tom Marvolo Riddle." There was a mirror up near the front of the car, and through it was reflected the mysterious man's smirk. "And I am the heir of Slytherin."

a/n everyone knows light= waves=diffraction. harry wasn't exactly incorrect when he said it was dark because there was a huge floating platform over the dome/wards that was still casting them into shadow, but in the day it will be light because light diffracts around the edges

if you have questions about this au and how it came to be, i'll answer questions in author's notes or write a prequel sometime