Disclaimer: I neither own the intellectual property of the Harry Potter universe, nor do profit from this work produced here.
Warnings: cursing.
When Tom awoke the next morning, it was to the intoxicating smell of something frying. His eyes opened, and for several dizzying seconds he couldn't discern where he was or how he'd gotten there. He seemed to be in a rather shabby bunk in a large canvas tent; no, this was certainly not his Hogwarts dormitory…
With a jolt of adrenaline, he remembered what had happened. He was not at Hogwarts. He wasn't even in his proper decade. His experiment had worked, and unfortunately he'd landed himself in the middle of a war with what he assumed to be members the opposition.
Slowly, he sat up, taking in his surroundings with all the wariness of a snake wondering if it ought to come out of its hole. The dark-haired boy– Harry– was asleep in the upper bunk kitty-corner to his. Ronald, the redhead, was just sitting up on the lower bunk, yawning. "Smells good, 'Mione. What is that?"
"Eggs," a voice replied, and he glanced over. Ah, yes, the girl. The one possible ally he had at the moment. He'd have to make sure to remain in her good graces.
"Delicious," he commented, and both the girl and redhead started. Ronald's eyes narrowed.
"Yes, well," Hermione said, a little more stiffly, eyeing him warily, before turning to Ron. "I figured we deserved it, after the shock of last night. Found them in a nearby nest."
"When you were on watch?" Ronald said casually, as if trying not to make an accusation.
"I didn't leave; I saw them on a branch just outside and used a summoning charm. Wake up Harry, would you?"
The redhead nodded and stood up, shaking the other boy's shoulder. The young man jerked upwards, looking around wildly and reaching for his wand. "What? What's happened?"
"Breakfast," Ronald said cheerfully. "'Mione's made us eggs."
"What? Oh." He squinted. "Hand me my glasses?"
"Sure." He did so, and the bespectacled boy blinked several times, looking around. When his eyes settled on Tom, he stiffened. The Slytherin gave a sarcastic little wave.
"Bloody basilisks, I forgot about him," Harry muttered.
"Pun intended?"
"Huh? Oh, er, no. Happy accident." He slid off the bunk and walked towards the small kitchen, shooting Tom a glare. "He didn't pull anything while we were asleep, did he?" he muttered to the girl.
"Except snoring? No."
"I do not snore," Tom objected, annoyed. The girl shrugged and took the pan off the stove. Hoping it wouldn't anger her, he questioned, "I don't suppose you'd let me off the bed?"
The three glanced at each other, and then the witch waved her wand. The other two began to protest as the wall charms vanished with a slight crackle, but before he could move an inch, he felt another spell seal in around him. "What was that?" he demanded.
"Tether charm. You won't be able to move too far from the table," she said calmly. "Would you like some breakfast?"
"What, we're feeding him now, too?" Ronald demanded. "We barely have enough for ourselves!"
"Well what's your suggestion, Ron, let him starve?"
"Yes!"
Tom rolled his eyes; Hermione sent the redhead a scathing look and began dishing out the eggs onto four plates. Harry and Ronald sat down at the table; he sat down opposite the first, ignoring the way they froze and looked at him as if he were about to explode, and cordially thanked the girl as she served him his breakfast. She raised her eyebrows but didn't question it.
"Alright," Hermione said, sitting down to his right and fixing him with a very serious look. "I think it's high time we had a proper discussion about… all of this."
"Fine by me," Tom said coolly. "How's about we start with how you lot got hold of my locket?"
"No, let's start with how you got here," Ronald broke in savagely, glaring at him. "How did you find us? How did you know we were here?"
"Find you? I don't even know you."
"And why should we believe that?" Harry interjected.
"Why would I lie?"
The boy fixed him with a very dubious look, and Tom again got the sense that he was missing something rather important. "Begging your pardon, but you in particular act as if we've met before," he said to Harry, raising an eyebrow. "Don't imagine you'd tell me how we know each other?"
The other wizard gaped, and then looked to his friends as if to ask, How can I possibly respond to that? Tom waited, growing more irritated by the second. "Well?"
"You're enemies," Hermione said frankly, breaking the tension. "Mortal enemies, as it happens."
"What? Him?" He laughed incredulously. "Come off it; you lot can't be much older than I am! Isn't the 'me' in this time at least, oh, seventy years old? What would he care about some scrawny teenager?"
"How about you answer some of our questions?" Ronald countered. "Like, how you found us?"
"I already told you," said Tom, annoyed, "I didn't 'find' you. I haven't the slightest idea of where we are or why this bloke-" He nodded to Harry, "-and I are supposedly mortal enemies."
"How did you get here, then?" Hermione supplied.
He eyed the three of them, suddenly suspicious. "…I time-jumped, obviously," he said coolly. "I was trying an experiment and it worked."
"And you just happened to land here?" Ronald snorted, leaning back in his chair. "I'm not buying it."
"I'm telling the truth. The potion exploded, the world started spinning, and then I fell down in the snow near two blokes stabbing the daylights out of a precious family heirloom." He leaned forward, dark eyes flashing. "I have no idea how I got here. All I want is what's mine, and then I'll go."
But now the girl was eyeing him very curiously. "Tom," she said carefully, "when you were… when the 'world started spinning,' did you see anything else? A cottage, perhaps? Or Slytherin's chamber?"
He stared at her, stunned. "How did you…?"
"You think it was the locket?" Harry interjected.
"I'd bet my wand on it."
"But why here? Why not Godric's Hollow, or the Chamber?"
The girl shook her head. "I don't know. Time travel is tricky business, Harry… and forwards travel is supposed to be impossible…"
"That's true," Tom interjected with a nod, earning himself three identical sets of startled expressions (he was beginning to get used to them). "I didn't think it was going to work, honestly."
"And now we're stuck with the problem of putting him back," Hermione concluded.
"Yeah, well, I still say we save ourselves the trouble and off him right now," Ronald said darkly.
Tom's reaction was immediate and unplanned; he stood up violently and reached for a wand that wasn't there, only to have two twin cries of "Petrificus totalis!" freeze him in place. He toppled backwards and hit the ground with a solid thud, knocking the chair over in the process. Outwardly, he could do nothing but glare; inwardly, he was cursing; he had smacked his elbow hard against the chair on the way down. "See what you did!" the girl snapped at the redhead.
"It's a valid suggestion! Kill him now, and the current 'him' poofs out of existence!"
"That's not how it works, Ron! The whole wizarding world knows who he is and what he's done! We've all been affected! So unless you want to 'poof' all of us out of existence, too–!"
"Alright! Alright! Fine!"
Harry had remained noticeably silent during this whole exchange, looking down at Tom as his friends bickered back and forth. The blazing wrath of the previous night had cooled into an iron hatred, and Tom felt a thrill of fear as he realized that there was nothing holding back the boy in front of him other than the spider-web thin threads of morality.
"We do have a problem, though." Tom managed to force his eyes over to the girl, who was still red with irritation, though thankfully no longer shouting. She, too, was looking at Tom. "We can't kill him, we can't let him go free…"
"We could take him to Hogwarts," Ronald suggested meekly, still cowed by the chastisement he'd received. "The others would know what to do."
"Hogwarts is crawling with Death Eaters, Ron; going there would be as good as handing him over to them." The girl let out a low sigh through her nose, as if making a decision, and declared simply:
"We'll have to take him with us."
Both Harry and Ronald had turned to look as if she were mad. "Take him? With us?" Harry demanded incredulously.
"You want to take You-Know-Who to help hunt for the– ow!" Harry had elbowed Ronald in the ribs, but it was too late; Tom's eyes had widened, little as they were able, in sudden recognition.
The Horcruxes. They were going to destroy the ring and the diary. And the locket, he realized. That must have been why they were attacking it. He wondered how many he'd managed to make. His stomach churned a bit; surely it was only the three. His father, the butler and the maid… yes, that would be right; just the three…
"We could obliviate him," Harry suggested. "Then set him loose."
"Still too dangerous. How would you like You-Know-Who to find him and start asking questions?"
"Why are you so insistent on keeping him here?!" Harry was growing visibly upset; his hands were curled into fists, white-knuckled. "This is insane, Hermione, and you know it!"
"I don't want him here! But I'd rather he were with us instead of out there getting into who-knows-what kind of trouble!"
"Well I don't fancy chumming up to the man who killed my parents, thanks!"
There was a beat of silence. The girl's eyes had filled with tears. "…H-Harry, I…"
"I need some air," the bespectacled wizard said shortly, turning for the exit.
"Um, guys?" Ronald said nervously, as if afraid of inciting a reaction. "He, uh, he can still hear us."
Both the witch and the black-haired wizard paused, and then looked down at Tom. Tom looked back defiantly.
Three wands were drawn.
"Stupefy."
When Tom awoke, it appeared to be several hours later, for he was rather hungry. He found as he sat up that he was confined to the bed again, which was unfortunate, as he soon realized that he had not been to the restroom since late the night before.
He noticed that the witch– Hermione– was working in the kitchen, chopping up something that looked like mushrooms. He cleared his throat, startling her so much she dropped the knife. "Oh. You're awake."
"May I leave the bed?" he asked bluntly.
She raised an eyebrow, obviously suspicious. "Why?"
He mirrored her expression. "To use the facilities. Presuming this heap of rubble has one, that is."
As he'd predicted, she immediately pinked, drew her wand and muttered a series of charms. Tom felt the first confinement charm break, only for another to settle around him. "What was that for?"
"To stop you from leaving the tent. Loo's back that way."
That figures. Tom nodded and stood, heading towards the back of the tent.
Thankfully, it seemed it did have modern plumbing, which was a relief. Once he'd finished and was heading back towards the bed, the door to the tent-flap was pushed open, and Harry and Ronald came in carrying armfuls of wood. Tom caught the former's eye and watched the young man look away, his expression turning sour. He recalled the discussion proceeding his being knocked unconscious and remembered the furious revelation from the night before, that the future 'him' had killed the boy's parents.
An uncomfortable feeling twisted in the pit of his stomach, but Tom pushed it away; why ever he'd done it, it must have been for a good reason. This was apparently wartime, after all; sometimes people had to die, for the greater good, as Grindlewald had stated. That was just the way things had to be.
And your father? a voice whispered in the back of his mind. Was that "for the greater good?"
Tom ignored the voice. His father… his father had deserved what he'd got. He'd been a horrible person, and not just to Tom. His death had been justice.
And the mudblood girl?
An accident. A mistake, nothing more. He wouldn't think about it.
"Tom? Tom."
He started and looked over. The girl was eyeing him sternly, her wand in hand. "Sit back down."
Eyeing the wooden stave warily, he decided to do as told. The confinement charm settled over him again. "You can't just keep me imprisoned here forever, you know," he said, annoyed.
"Watch me," she replied flippantly, returning to chopping mushrooms.
Tom frowned, and then pushed against the barriers around the edges of the bed, trying to dismantle them with his own magic. They refused to budge so much as an inch, and he couldn't help but be impressed. "This is very strong magic," he called. "You must be from a powerful line; what's your family name?"
"Granger," the girl answered coolly, scraping the mushrooms into a pot. For some reason, the boys had started to grin. Tom frowned.
"Granger, you say? I've never heard of them."
"You wouldn't have." She turned up the flame on the stove and turned to look at him, a slightly superior little smile on her face. "They're dentists."
Tom's mouth dropped open; the boys began to snicker, and he felt the blood rush to his face as he fumed, disgusted. A mudblood. He'd been flattering a mudblood. Those foul, magic-stealing muggle thieves… And to think he'd considered her is one ally in this little canvas prison! Furious, he turned and stared at the wall.
Lunch came soon enough, but when the wi– the girl– offered him a bowl of weak mushroom soup, he refused, glowering at her. The mudblood raised both brows this time and said briskly, "Suit yourself; more for us." She poured a third of his bowl into each of theirs, and they continued their conversation as if he weren't even present, aside from speaking in rather vague terms so that eavesdropping was rendered useless. Tom's mind wandered from speculations on time travel to the potions exam he had in a week, to the way the sunlight caught Melinda Burke's hair…
"–We can't stay here forever," the mudblood said, redrawing his attention. Tom cursed inwardly; his three captors were plotting their next move, this was not the time to be thinking of dames. "Especially not with him here."
"Where do we go, then?"
"Hmm… well, we need to tell the– you know– we need to tell them that he's here…"
"Bloody hell, that's going to be hard to explain," Ronald muttered. "Come to think of it, are we sure this was time-travel? Maybe You-Know-Who just got in the way of a bad de-aging charm…"
"De-aging charms don't usually make you lose your memories, do they?" Harry pointed out.
"No…" The mudblood looked thoughtful. "Well, there… there is one way to know for sure…"
She gave Harry a meaningful look; he frowned, confused, and then his eyes went wide. "You mean– you want me to–?"
"It's not like we have many other choices, is it?" Whatever it was they were discussing, the mudblood looked distinctly uncomfortable; she shot a glance to Tom and whispered, "But not in front of him."
"I can still hear you!" the Slytherin exclaimed, finally fed up. "I am literally two feet away!"
The mudblood blushed and snapped, "Fine then!" She nodded to Harry, who, still apparently nervous, stood and left the tent. For a minute or so there was silence; Ronald looked up to the canvas ceiling and began to whistle quietly, only to peter off when the girl gave him an irritated look.
A moment later, Harry walked back in, looking pale and worried. "He's still out there," he declared.
"Bloody hell," Ronald muttered again. "So now we've got two of them to deal with."
"We have to tell– them," the mudblood repeated grimly. "They'll know what to do."
"Will they? I mean, this is sort of insane, 'Mione."
"Well, we can't handle this ourselves. Besides, I don't know enough about time travel to try to fix this; we'll need to talk to McGonagall."
"McGonagall?" Tom piped up. "As in Isobel McGonagall?"
The three looked to him, surprised. "…No," Hermione– the mudblood– said slowly. "Her daughter. Do you… know her?"
"No, but she has an award in the trophy room. She was the Gryffindor Quidditch captain."
"Alright…" She turned back to the others. "Well, we can't just show up with him in tow; people would panic."
"We could send a patronus."
"Too risky; we don't know who else would be there to hear it. Besides, this tent isn't exactly inconspicuous; we don't want to just show up out of nowhere without warning and bring suspicion…"
They eventually came to the conclusion that they would apparate to a forest where the redhead had once gone, apparently on his way to the World Cup. (Tom couldn't help but be envious; he'd never had the money to go see a proper Quidditch game, let alone the Cup.) Then the girl would apparate away to spy on whoever it was they were taking him to, and when she was sure it was safe, she would come back for them.
They packed up the tent and then the mudblood cast another tether charm, essentially tying him within a few feet of herself. Tom, fed up, decided that this wasn't important; he'd deal with her later. The moment he set one foot outside of the tent, he was off and running.
"Aah!"
WHAM!
The shriek alerted him to his mistake two seconds before his face smacked into the rotting autumn foliage of the forest floor. Spitting out leaves (thankfully he didn't taste blood, so his nose mustn't have broken), he sat up with a groan, looking back. The girl was likewise struggling to her knees; he realized, feeling rather stupid, that just because he had decided to run didn't mean she had.
The redhead helped her up, and then stalked over, face red with fury. Tom instinctively shrunk back, but it was no use; Ronald, he'd belatedly noticed, was a lot bigger than he was, and the redhead hauled him to his feet with one hand easily, wand drawn with the other and pointing right between his eyes. "Try that again," the redhead warned, "and I'll hex you from here to the Hebrides. Got it, mate?"
From his tone, Tom felt reasonably certain that the last word was sarcasm. He nodded rapidly.
"Understood. Very clearly understood."
"Brilliant. Let's go."
With a wave of her wand, the mudblood had packed the tent into the tiny beaded bag around her neck, with what he could only assume was a very good expansion charm. Tom was beginning to realize just how messy of a predicament he'd gotten himself into. The mudblood was clearly very powerful, and the redhead looked as if he could knock out the slender Slytherin with one solid punch. Only Harry seemed relatively within his ability to take on single-handedly, and even that would be an unpleasant duel. He couldn't fight his way out of this, Tom decided; he'd have to be cleverer than that. They were bound to mess up sometime… he'd just have to bide his time…
But not at the moment, apparently, for with abrupt swiftness Ronald, who was now holding on to Hermione (who, likewise, was holding Harry), grabbed his arm and turned. There was the horrible sensation of being sucked through a very dark, thin tube, and then the world burst into pale gray sunshine and hard ground against his feet.
Ronald let go of his arm, but something was horribly wrong; Tom felt suddenly very dizzy, the trees were spinning around him. He stumbled and fell sideways.
"Ron, what did you do?!"
"I didn't do anything!"
The spinning was growing faster; his vision had begun to tingle and go gray at the edges. He felt horrible, nauseated; he retched, but nothing came up.
"Guys? I think he's going to–"
And that was the last thing he heard before Tom keeled over, landing on a soft bed of rotted leaves, and the world went black.
A/N: First update for a long while; sorry. :) Hope you enjoyed; please review if you liked it!
