Title: Divergence
Author: TardisIsTheOnlyWaytoTravel
Pairings: None at present
Story Summary: Voldemort is dead, but in his place is an eleven year old Tom Riddle pulled out of time, with no idea what is going on.
Setting: Harry's sixth year. AU. Conforms to books 1-5, pretty much. Borrows some stuff from #6, but mostly ignores HBP canon.
Author notes:
Harry and Tom have lots of decisions to make next chapter, and quite a lot to deal with in different ways.
Last chapter I mentioned Who We Are and its sequels by PersephoneKore and Alan Sauer. They can be found at
www dot sugarquill dot net/read dot php?storyid1091&chapno1
Hopefully FFN will not delete the URL this time.
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DIVERGENCE
CHAPTER TWO
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"Professor Dumbledore!" Tom cried out in astonishment and relief. "You're old!"
Almost immediately he realised that this was not the thing to say.
"Erm – I mean – " Tom broke off in embarrassment and confusion. He decided to just pretend he'd never said anything and flung himself onto his knees by Harry again. "Professor, he passed out! When I came through the Floo I fell on him! I think he needs a healer, but he insisted on coming right here. I don't think he knew what to do with me," he added.
Tom had never particularly liked Dumbledore; the man always seemed far too percipient, especially when Tom was up to something, which he usually was. But he was a professor you could count on doing something in a crisis, and Tom watched in relief as Dumbledore also knelt next to Harry and examined him.
"I believe that Harry needs to see Madam Pomfrey," Dumbledore said at length, and with surprising strength scooped Harry into his arms. His eyes turned to Tom, sternly considering. "I suggest that you accompany me."
Tom was further relieved at this. He didn't want to be left by himself. He followed willingly as Dumbledore went down a revolving staircase and through a door into the castle proper. He continued to follow him through corridor after corridor until suddenly they were outside the hospital wing.
Dumbledore strode in and laid Harry on a bed, calling "Poppy!"
-
"My goodness!" Tom looked up from Harry's unconscious face to see a startled mediwitch standing in the doorway to the matron's office. She was staring at Tom as much as Harry.
Madam Pomfrey pulled herself together and bustled forward, tutting and briskly running her wand over Harry's unconscious form. She tutted some more.
"Hmm, broken arm, nerve damage, I would guess from multiple Cruciatuses, he's got the corresponding strain on the heart, serious lacerations to the right leg, grazing, dehydration." She shook her head at his condition. "He'll need a blood-replenishing potion, several nutrient potions and probably a stamina potion as a restorative. I'll put him on Nervus Nostrum to heal the Cruciatus damage as soon as he's finished on the blood-replenishers. In the meantime, best keep him sedated."
Tom was staring in horror.
"He got here with all that?" Tom couldn't believe the list of injuries. Harry had been walking around, talking normally, with that kind of damage? He must have been in so much pain!
At his outburst Dumbledore's eyes flicked over to him sharply. Something in Tom flinched back at the stare. This was beyond considering; it was calculating. And right now it was calculating exactly how much Tom was worth.
Tom blinked and struggled not to be overwhelmed with the feeling that Dumbledore had a very bad opinion of him indeed. He did his best to push the feeling away and asked in a small but determined voice,
"Sir, what's going on?"
The calculation in the professor's eyes changed instantly to thoughtfulness.
"Perhaps you should explain to me how you came to be with young Mr Potter and I will do my best to fill in the gaps," Dumbledore suggested thoughtfully.
The mediwitch was busily working on Harry, but as she worked she sent Tom little glances out of the corners of her eyes.
-
"Erm," Tom was feeling very uncomfortable now, well-aware that there was some big thing he was ignorant of, "A couple of weeks ago, now, I think, I was lying in bed trying to get to get to sleep, um, it was difficult because Prince kept snoring," Tom found himself rambling nervously. "Er. Yes. And as I was lying there, it was like a big hole opened up beneath me, and I fell through it, and next thing I know I'm lying on the floor of some big old house with a bunch of people in black robes and white masks all around and the scariest man I've ever seen standing in front of me."
Tom couldn't entirely suppress the shudder that came over him at the memory. The warped inhuman features, the red eyes, the cruel, psychopathic smile… He glanced at Dumbledore, but the man was still patiently waiting for more.
"He was all wrong, professor. He was too pale, and didn't have a nose, or hair, or lips, and his eyes were red, and didn't have eyelashes either. I don't think he had any hair anywhere. But it was worse than that, because – well, you could get used to how he looked I think if he'd been a nice person but he wasn't. You could tell just by looking at him that he was the kind of person that likes hurting people. You got the feeling that what you saw on the outside, that was how he was on the inside too. Maybe even worse. Anyway, he went off into some kind of speech about fulfilling some kind of plan and how he'd conquer the world, and all the others cheered. Then he smiled at me and told two of them to put me in the dungeon. The two of them grabbed me and took me downstairs where there were all these cells, and locked me in one."
Tom paused again to rearrange his thoughts.
"Sometimes they'd come in and torment me a bit, calling me names and hexing me, but otherwise they more or less left me alone. It wasn't too bad, wasn't like I was starved or anything. Then after a couple weeks of that I got dragged out again and brought to the one in charge who, uh, uh – " remembered terror prickled over his skin " – said that I was the perfect sacrifice to finally ensure his immortality. Then he did some kind of spell, but I can' remember much of that because it – hurt. A lot." He shrugged helplessly. "Next thing I knew Harry was shaking me awake, and at first I thought he must be one of the followers or something, but he said it was okay and asked me how old I was and after I told him said we needed to get out before the Death Eaters came back. As we were leaving I saw that the other wizard was lying on the floor. He looked pretty dead." Tom swallowed. The perversion of nature had looked even more twisted and unnatural in death than he had alive. Even less human. "Harry summoned this big purple bus and said that we wanted to go to the Ministry, then went to sleep until we got there. We Flooed through to the headmaster's office from there, and Harry went first and when I came through he was passed out on the floor."
-
Tom took a deep breath and looked at Dumbledore. The man seemed to be thinking deeply about what Tom had said.
"Sir, what is going on?"
Dumbledore gazed at him thoughtfully before he finally spoke.
"The 'wizard in charge', as you put it, is an infamous dark lord who goes by the name of Voldemort. His goal in life is – or rather, was – to conquer the wizarding world, exclude muggle-born and halfblood witches and wizards from the wizarding world, and to rule over the muggles. His followers are known as Death Eaters. Both the Death Eaters and Voldemort are well-known for their fondness of torture and the use of the Killing Curse."
"Oh." Tom thought that they sounded even worse than he'd thought. "What did they want with me, though?"
Dumbledore sighed.
"I can only suppose that Voldemort discovered some means by which he could pluck you from the past and pull you into the future," he said. "You are fifty years beyond your time. I do not know precisely the reason why Voldemort wished to use you in particular for his ritual, but I have no doubt that it had something to do with the fact that you are his past self."
The world tipped sideways and Tom clutched wildly as he staggered back, fighting to keep his balance. Dumbledore reached out a hand to steady him, but Tom had wrapped both hands around the end of the bed as though it was his life and stared at the headmaster.
"M-me, sir?"
"I am afraid so, my boy," Dumbledore said gently. "You took a dark and twisted path within a few years of beginning here. By the time you graduated, the darkness had consumed you completely."
Tom tried to grab hold of something as the blackness rushed up, but there was nothing, only Dumbledore's grave face and the matron standing in the background, her almost-frightened expression familiar enough that Tom at last connected her name to the girl in his class at Hogwarts. Pomfrey.
Poppy… and with that last thought Tom passed out completely, the ground rushing up to meet him unseen, already swallowed by the black mist.
oo o0o oo
Harry found himself floating three feet above his bed, gazing at his ceiling. Almost as soon as he realized this, he dropped like a stone.
"Aargh!"
Madam Pomfrey came rushing in at the sound of his fall and his anguished yell. She found Harry sitting on the broken remains of his bed with a bewildered expression.
"I was floating," he told her. "Actually floating above my bed. And then I fell."
Madam Pomfrey sighed. She'd heard stranger things.
"Oh dear," she grumbled, helping Harry up and bundling Harry into the next bed, "side effects, I was afraid of that. Although I haven't heard of anyone flying before."
"Floating," Harry corrected her drowsily, already drifting off to sleep once more.
"Hmph. You shouldn't even have been awake at this point. You're still full of potions."
Harry almost wondered what had woken him up, but was asleep before he could work out that it was the latest in a series of pangs of muted anguish that didn't seem to be his. He slept quietly, dreaming of a small black-haired boy sitting in an empty room and staring with haunted, unseeing eyes at the pages of the book in front of him.
A Chronological and Complete History of the First Rise of the Dark Lord Voldemort.