Her first time meeting the dark lord was interesting for several reasons.

One because it was in what she had come to think of as her own home; Voldemort had taken over the house on the hill and made it his own. When Tom and she had lived there it had merely been dilapidated now every corner reeked of dark magic and blood. It seemed unfamiliar now, with him at its head, and she had the sneaking suspicion that it would not be so easy to get him out now that they had invited him in.

The other reason that it was interesting was because he was Tom and not Tom in the same moment. He looked like an older version of Tom, in his thirties rather than his teens, but there were small differences between them. He had Tom's face, his eyes, but he didn't wear his expressions.

He didn't feel that it was necessary to harbor Tom's secrets.

"Well, if it isn't little Eleanor Potter, my favorite student." He said when she and Tom entered through the wards. Tom had stiffened then, his hand clenching hers a little too tightly. Glancing over at him she could see that this statement had terrified him; as if by those words alone the universe might come crashing down on all their heads.

Eleanor Potter, Tom probably thought she hadn't guessed.

"It's just Ellie now, I have a bit of a memory problem, you understand." She said her eyes narrowing across at the man, and he seemed oddly pleased by this as if he expected nothing less from her.

"Yes, Tom was kind enough to explain your current predicament. Would you two like to come in, the house elf is preparing tea."

She and Tom walked in and sat together on the couch, facing the dark lord, watching the firelight dance across his features and make them seem almost inhuman. Tom said nothing, merely stared across at his counterpart with something resembling hatred in his eyes.

"You've grown up, amnesia suits you." The dark lord commented and then his eyes drifted to Tom's, "I can see why he's so attached."

Tom's hand slammed down on the table, the wood shuddering momentarily, and in spite of their softness his words were filled with venom, "Don't fuck with me."

She turned to stare at him, at the rage burning inside his pale blue eyes, at the steadiness of his hand and the stoniness of his features. Tom didn't talk like that, it was too casual, too blunt, too direct for him. She'd seen him angry, she'd even made him angry some of the time, but she'd never seen him this unhinged with fury. It just made the situation that much more uneasy, as if she had to tread very carefully.

"Tom…" She said and with it he relaxed slightly, removing his hand from the table, and leaning back on the couch to stare at his counterpart with eyes like daggers.

The other, older, Tom was watching this display with his own unreadable expression.

They all seemed willing to sit there in silence, each waiting for the other's move, as if they were in some elaborate duel where there was far too much riding on the outcome. She caught herself staring at both of them, comparing and contrasting, wondering which one was more Tom-like than the other or if either were Tom-like at all.

They sat even when the elf arrived with tea and they sat afterwards none of them breaking eye contact with the other.

It was Lily, the third party, who finally spoke, "So, what now?"

"What now?" The older Tom, Voldemort, asked with raised eyebrows.

"Tom mentioned that you and he had something of an agreement, is it still intact now that you've gotten what you wanted?" Something about the way she said that made Voldemort chuckle, and what a sight it was to see a dark lord chuckle, and the dark aura of anger around Tom to only grow stronger.

"Is that how he phrased it?" He asked looking at Tom with mock affection, "Oh Tom, it seems you haven't lost that particular talent after all."

Voldemort then leaned forward towards her as if to convey a great secret, "You see, I own him. He may talk about sides, about alliances, about agreements if he wishes but deep down he knows that it's just not true."

His eyes flicked towards Tom, almost indifferent to him, to his white knuckles and burning eyes, "Tom here isn't really a person, he's something similar to a memory, he wasn't even supposed to be sentient. He wasn't born, he was made, and the purpose for which he was made was very limited. He just likes to pretend that he's more than…"

The table Voldemort had been leaning over, complete with the tea and dishes, suddenly hurled itself into the fire place.

"That's enough!" Tom was standing then, breathing heavily, his teeth set on edge as he stared at the older version of himself.

"Calm down, boy." Voldemort demanded looking at the younger version of himself with raised eyebrows, "You'll break something important if you aren't careful."

Tom probably had a lot to say, it looked like he had a lot to say, but he didn't instead his magic swirled darkly all around him like an oncoming thunderstorm. Ellie wondered if this older version of Tom knew what he was goading on, he had to, since it was him, but he seemed to be enjoying this moment far too much.

He was toying with Tom; like he was a kneazle with a bit of string.

"You may have taken yourself out of that diary easily enough but remember that I can just as easily stuff you back inside." The dark lord then sighed, like this was all some terrible disappointment.

Tom's eyes widened at this, his face paling slightly, but his anger only became more suffocating.

"Do try to learn your place, Tom Riddle." Voldemort said when it appeared that Tom was just going to stand there silently.

Then just when she'd gotten used to the sight of Tom just standing there he grabbed her hand and pulled her up so that she was standing then immediately began walking out of the room. Voldemort did not object to this, merely watched them go with a strange unreadable smile on his face as the table in the fire place continued to burn.


He took them to one of the guest rooms, a plain room in comparison to the master bedroom where he had originally slept, and when he stared ahead at it his eyes seemed too dull to belong to him.

"We're staying here now." He explained before walking in and collapsing into a chair.

"There's only one bed." She pointed out, and Tom nodded slowly, either ignoring the issue or refusing to see it. Ellie looked between Tom and the bed with a flush rising in her cheeks not quite sure how to phrase her objection or why her heart was beating so fast.

(Somewhere in the back of her head she remembered that she'd always thought Tom was uncommonly pretty.)

But he wasn't saying anything, wasn't even looking at her, was just staring ahead at nothing looking like he had died.

"So he's a bit of a cryptic asshole." Ellie said as she entered the room and took the seat across from Tom. "You also don't seem to like him much."

It said a lot, probably more than Tom wanted her to know, that he didn't argue with her on that point or didn't even glare at her. She hadn't understood half of what that man had said but whatever he had said it hadn't been good.

"He's everything I expected him to be and yet…" Tom trailed off, leaving the end of that thought unspoken.

"So what was he talking about? About you?" She asked and the moment she did she regretted it, Tom's magic crackled, stiffened.

"I am… I am a horcrux." He said shortly before adding, "I anchor him to reality."

She'd never heard of that before, Tom had never mentioned it in his lessons and she hadn't seen anything on it Hogwarts, but whatever it was it sounded very magical and very complicated. It sounded like something Tom would be, not human, a horcrux.

"Is it bad, being a horcrux?" She asked and he smiled slightly shaking his head.

"No, it's… Well perhaps in the opinion of the narrow minded. Most don't understand the concept of being a horcrux, only creating a horcrux. Being a horcrux is… It is neither good nor bad."

"So what's the problem?" She asked when he didn't elaborate and failed to look any happier.

"He's not a horcrux and so he believes he has more of a right to my name, to my house, to this world than I do. And he might be right."

She wasn't sure what she could say to that, since she didn't really know what a horcrux was in the first place, so she said the first thing that came to mind, his own words, "For now."

He turned to look at her in confusion and she explained, "You told me that, in Hogsmede, for now. Not forever, maybe not even for very long, just for now."

"For now…" He repeated dumbly looking somewhat stunned by the words, as if they were completely unfamiliar, which was ridiculous since he was the one who said them. His magic relaxed though and the room no longer seemed to be filled with shadows.

Ellie took it as her opportunity to change topics.

"Harry Potter's somewhere in this house, isn't he?" She asked.

Apparently it was the wrong topic because Tom immediately tensed and his magic returned to crackling around him like electricity. It seemed Harry Potter was a bit of a sore topic for him perhaps as much as being a horcrux.

"I wouldn't go looking for him if I were you."

"Why not?"

Here he only ominously responded, "You might not like what you find."

And between them the image of a broken, bleeding, dead Harry Potter was all too easy to picture. Something inside her shifted at this thought, her heart stuttered, and she tried not to let it show on her face.

"You should have told me that he was my brother."

The anger that had been in the meeting, that he'd lost sight of momentarily, returned in full force, "And what a wonderful brother he was, leaving you friendless and alone to fight the monsters while he played with his friends. Trust me, Ellie, you weren't missing much."

"Isn't that for me to decide?"

For a moment, as she stared across at him, she thought he was going to hit her. She didn't flinch when his hand reached for her and when he only softly cupped her face and moved his hands through her hair returning the locks to their former color.

"You were far too biased to make a reasonable decision. I don't think there was anything in the world you loved more than your brother. But he didn't love you and you suffered for it."

That didn't seem to be true though, Harry was always thinking of the dead Eleanor Potter, was always talking about her. She'd spent a whole year listening to him talk about almost nothing but Ellie Potter.

"He loves me."

And Tom just shook his head.

"He likes to believe he does; but that's not the same thing."


Harry Potter seemed to be everywhere, hanging silently on the edge of every unspoken sentence, in every gesture in every shadow he haunted the house. So that even when she was lying on top of the bed she and Tom shared she could see him staring back at her from the ceiling. At least that was how she felt, in reality Harry Potter was locked somewhere in the basement, alive but only for the moment.

Voldemort was, in his own way, rapidly trying to dispose of him.

It was a lot of effort and caution to take with a fourteen year old boy, she'd told Tom that one night, but he'd just shrugged as if he wasn't entirely sure he understood it either.

"He said there was a prophecy and that was why he originally confronted your family that night. However, when he first tried to avert the prophecy things went a little awry, as you've heard. So he's trying to think outside the box with this."

He'd first sent Wormtail in to kill him, to slit the boy's throat or else cast the killing curse at him, but somehow in spite of being chained like a muggle farm animal for the slaughterhouse Harry had managed to kill Wormtail instead.

He'd tried enchanting the room to destroy him but the wards had failed.

He'd tried poisoning his food but Harry refused to touch it at any rate.

And so now he was trying the long way, starving Harry Potter to death.

Sometimes, if you listened hard enough, you could hear him screaming down in the basement.

They were all walking on eggshells in that place, Tom seemed as if he was always only a few seconds from exploding and burning the house down, Harry Potter always a few seconds from dying, and the dark lord… Well, she didn't know what to think of the dark lord.

He liked her, she got that much, but liking something didn't seem to mean much to him. She had the feeling that he could still like her and stab a knife into her back if he felt it was necessary. He would always watch her when she entered a room, more even than he watched Tom, and whenever he did she always felt he knew more than he should have.

Eleanor Potter, whoever she had been, had let him get far too close for comfort.

Death Eaters came in and out, there were plans to break into Azkaban and round up the remaining troops, plans to take over the ministry and then eventually Hogwarts itself, plans and more plans besides.

There were rituals, meetings, meetings that seemed too much like dark rituals in themselves to really be called meetings, and there was Harry Potter screaming in the basement.

It wasn't very long into this routine that she realized that she couldn't allow Harry Potter to starve to death, no matter the consequences from the dark lord or even Tom. Harry Potter was going to live, he needed to live, because without him there wouldn't be a play to begin with.

At least, that's what she told herself when she descended into the basement with too panicked steps.


Her first action was to shove food into his cell, more than he could probably eat at the moment, but what he needed to live.

In her hand she cast a small light so she could see him better, curled into a corner, already too thin and ill looking. They'd gotten rid of his glasses, and so when he blinked over towards her he looked almost blind.

"You're going to die if you don't eat something." He flinched at the sound of her voice, backing away from her slightly.

She repeated herself and a more aware look entered his eyes but soon enough it was replaced by anger, "Like I'm not going to die if I eat it either."

"It's not poisoned." Ellie tore off a piece of bread and began to eat so that he could see for himself.

He didn't seem persuaded so she started talking again, "If you eat it you might die, that's true, but if you don't eat anything then you are going to die guaranteed. With stakes like that you might as well gamble."

Again he seemed unconvinced but his eyes did narrow in her general direction and he asked, "Who are you? Bellatrix Lestrange?"

He probably picked the first female Death Eater to come to mind; he was lucky she wasn't Bellatrix Lestrange from what she'd heard that woman was quite the deranged piece of work.

"She's still in Azkaban having her soul sucked out by dementors." He seemed put off by that explanation, not quite sure what to think of it.

Finally he asked, "What do you want from me?"

That was a good question, but the fact that he'd even asked it made her feel uncomfortable, despairing even. She didn't want anything from him. It wasn't an act of economics, by all rights if it was about costs and benefits she should have let him starve to death. A Harry who starved to death wouldn't bring a dark lord or Tom down on her head. It wasn't about what it could get her, it was about needing him to live.

And he just didn't get it.

"I don't want anything from you." She said slowly, the words feeling bitterer than they should.

He scoffed at that, "Nobody does anything for free, you want something, what is it?"

"Nothing." She said and he looked away from her, almost sneering, like this place had no room for compassion or acts of kindness.

"I'm not going to tell you anything, if that's what this is about. I don't know anything anyway, being the boy who lived doesn't mean I actually get told things." This was probably true, although he and Dumbledore had staring contests on an almost daily basis Ellie had never seen them exchanging words. Prophesized savior Harry Potter might be but he was still a fourteen year old boy, it would have been a long time before they gave him any real information.

"That's not what this is about."

"Then what is it about?"

She didn't bother to respond, she just looked at him, this defiant dying boy and made her way out of the dungeons leaving him with piles of food and wards to distract whoever might come snooping down to see how their resident boy savior was doing.

Why was talking with Harry Potter always so difficult?


That summer was more of a game than it was a life.

It was a game called "Who Will Call the Bluff First" because everyone knew that everyone else knew that Ellie had decided to keep Harry Potter alive. She'd tried for subtlety, slightly, but it was their house and their souls seemed to be ingrained in it sometimes.

It also was clear when Harry Potter started to be a little less thin in spite of not eating in weeks and was even managing to stand up and spit in his enemies' faces. She wondered if Harry Potter really had almost been sorted into Slytherin, because he certainly wasn't doing a good job of hiding his recovery from certain death.

She started spending a fair amount of time with him, whenever she brought him food, and he always seemed to have something to say to her. Sometimes it was accusatory, untrusting, but gradually as time went on and he kept not being poisoned he started opening up more.

"Why do you work for him, for Voldemort, you know what he is don't you?" He asked at one point, she didn't think he could see her face, he'd never mentioned her looking an awful lot like his sister or his mother and he always sort of squinted in her general direction as if trying to get a clearer view.

"I don't work for him." She'd said and he'd seemed confused by that, like somehow living in the same house meant she had to work for Voldemort. She didn't work for Voldemort though, Tom didn't either, they just sort of existed as satellites orbiting around him.

She supposed it was a bit of a complicated relationship to explain to an impatient and starving Harry Potter.

"If you don't work for him why are you here?"

"You know, I really don't know." She'd been in this house as long as she could remember after all.

"What do you mean, you don't really know?" He asked, Harry could be obnoxiously persistent sometimes. She could let it slide, just shrug it off, but staring across at him she decided to illustrate it with an example near and dear to his heart.

"Tell me, Harry, why are you the boy who lived?" She asked and he blinked at that, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion.

"What does that have to do with anything?" He responded, his eyes attempting to focus on her but as usual probably coming up with to a pale blur.

"Try to answer the question, why are you the boy who lived? Why not Neville Longbottom, Ron Weasley, or hell even Eleanor Potter?" She asked.

She thought for a moment that he might not answer, that Eleanor Potter as an example might be too much, but then he said coldly, "Because Voldemort shot me in the head."

"Voldemort shot lots of people in the head, what made you so special?" She responded before he could be satisfied with his own answer.

"Dumbledore said it was my mum's love…" He started but she cut him off.

"Many children are loved by their mothers, most of them don't live when they're hit with the green light. If that was the case it'd be pretty evident. Besides, that's what Dumbledore said, and he wasn't even there at the time so what does he know? Try again." She said leaving him no room to move.

"Well maybe he messed up somehow, maybe he…"

"He had a lot of practice before getting to you, I don't think he'd mess up point blank killing an infant."

"Then I don't know!" He shouted, the anger finally stopping his train of pseudo logic.

Her eyebrows raised at him and in a tone that was probably a little too satisfied she said, "What do you mean, you don't really know?"

He sulked slightly, his anger leaving but his frustration remaining, and he said, "That's completely different from you living in Voldemort's bloody house."

"Maybe."

For a moment they sat in silence, her listening to him eat, and him staring at her. Finally he said, "We have to get out of here. He's destroying England; maybe the whole world if we don't stop him here."

Ellie highly doubted that, well she didn't really know Voldemort but she knew Tom. Tom may have had his emotional problems and wasn't necessarily a people person but he liked the world; or rather he liked having a world to live in. If Voldemort went off the deep end and tried to raze the country to the ground then Tom would stop him.

"He's a monster." Harry insisted when she didn't respond and in his eyes, so similar to her own, she could almost see the corpses of murdered children.

"Harry, it's not that easy to just get you out." And it wouldn't be, because right now they were in limbo, they were all still alive and waiting for everyone else's move. In an odd way Harry was safe here in the basement where she could look after him, he wasn't untouchable, but there was no immediate reason to kill him either. If he left, if he went outside, then there was no telling what might happen.

He'd seemed frustrated by that answer, by the way she'd said it, because he finally said, "You have to get me out of here. We both have to get out of here, before he finds out what you're doing."

And every time she saw him after that he never failed to try to persuade her to escape with him and she never failed to not tell him that Voldemort was already perfectly aware of the situation. He just didn't really want to do anything about it, after all, if Harry Potter was locked in a basement it wasn't as if he could be doing anything important.

At least, that's what she thought, until Voldemort decided to take it into his own hands once again.


With August panic began to spread concerning Harry Potter's disappearance, his face was pasted one every wall and his face on the cover of every Prophet. The walls of Azkaban came tumbling down, Voldemort's name was once more whispered in the streets, and it seemed the British Wizarding World was doomed.

It was just the sort of end that Harry Potter raved about every time he tried to convince her to escape with him.

The house on the hill though seemed indifferent to the prospect, it remained as it always had, on the verge of collapsing with dark magic oozing from every unchecked corner. And every night she and Voldemort had their little chats over tea, which he seemed to enjoy far too much for anyone's good.

"Of course the ministry has never been the true point of resistance." Voldemort began, it was the usual sort of opening for him. Voldemort wasn't a fan of small talk or pointless pleasantries, he knew her health and the weather so he didn't bother to ask about it, instead he would always start the conversation he wished to have and leave it to her to play along.

Tom was absent as usual, he was never invited to these night time teas, and she thought that half of the reason Voldemort invited her was so that he could rub it in Tom's face. The first time he had summoned her, and not Tom, she'd thought the furniture might catch on fire from Tom's palpable rage. If there was anything that Tom hated more than the house, more than his older self, it was the idea of Voldemort having a heart to heart with Ellie.

"The Order of the Phoenix, Albus Dumbledore, that is where the true power has always been." Voldemort mused and looked over at her and gauged her reaction.

Voldemort liked to play mind games, even more than Tom, he liked to push and prod and find out exactly how she ticked. Like there was a muggle machine named Ellie and he had ripped open its circuits and was fiddling here and there as he pleased regardless of warning lights and whistles.

"You're going to do something about them then?" She asked and he smiled, a winning grin that just seemed too wrong on his face.

"Oh, I already have."

The answer was fairly obvious in hindsight, "You stole Harry Potter right from under Dumbledore's nose."

"Very good, Eleanor Potter." He complimented and she wondered if she had been this uneasy when she'd actually had her memories. Guessing what Eleanor Potter would do usually got her nowhere, so she tried to avoid it, but sometimes she couldn't help herself.

"Thanks." She said, flatly, leaving him to take it for what it was.

There was always a point to Voldemort's conversations, sometimes it was subtle, sometimes it was alarmingly obvious, but there was always a point to the games he liked to play. She just hadn't realized that sometimes he played multiple games at once.

It was Voldemort, on that day in August, months after Harry had been kidnapped and Azkaban had been broken into that he decided to call her bluff. He leaned forward, his eyes suddenly sharp, and in a cold voice said, "I know you've been keeping him alive."

"What?"

"I know you've been keeping him alive, bringing him food and water, and I know that he's been trying to convince you to let him escape; thinking he's found my weak link."

He eyed her speculatively, her heart racing, and all in one moment she felt as if she was some magical creature pinned down for a demonstration in class. She tried to think of some excuse, of something to say, of anything but her mind was too blank.

"You're forcing my hand, Eleanor." He said when she didn't respond, "If you refuse to let me starve him then I will have to be more brutal, because you see he must die."

"It didn't work the last time you tried to kill him." She suddenly blurted and she didn't know what she was expecting with that but it wasn't the sardonic look she received.

"No, Eleanor, it didn't work the last time I tried to kill you. As far as I know he's perfectly mortal."

"What are you talking about?" She asked, because she suddenly had a cold sinking feeling in her stomach that this conversation had nothing to do with Harry Potter.

"I think I should tell you a story, Eleanor Potter. About the boy who lived and how he never existed in the first place…"


"I doubt Tom Riddle has told you this as it doesn't paint him in a particularly favorable light but he's tried to kill you about a thousand times by now. He started with a basilisk, but when you woke up and started to get to your feet he moved to the killing curse. The young, fabricated, Tom Marvolo Riddle then went on to try every curse, every method, everything he could possibly think of but you refused to die.

Each time he slit your throat he would watch as you slowly sat back up and tried to remove the blood from your clothing. He ruined your Hogwarts uniform beyond even the repair of magic.

Eventually, realizing he had just confronted an immovable obstacle, he changed tactics. If I can't kill her, he said to himself, then I'll just change her into something I can use instead. He adapted and so the next spell he pointed at your twelve year old head didn't kill you, at least, from some points of view.

Tell me, Eleanor Potter, is losing every memory of what you were and where you've been akin to dying?

October 31, 1981 I did not kill or attempt to kill your brother. I passed over your parents, stunned them and cast them aside, and I made first to kill the child who wasn't involved in the prophecy; the girl.

There is no boy who lived, he is a creation of Dumbledore's, of a misinterpreted prophecy. There is only Harry James Potter; who has been brought up to believe that one day he might defeat me when he never will manage it.

If Tom Riddle could destroy everything you were in a single instant don't think that I can't.

Tell me, Eleanor Potter, would you be willing to risk your life, your sanity, your very being to spare him a couple days of his wretched existence?"


It wasn't a well-known fact, or one even discussed extensively as far as she could tell, but sometimes people were born just a little off.


Betrayal wasn't like a knife in the back, because the knife in the back was the one you didn't see, no betrayal was when they cut you through the heart. When they did it right in front of you and when you looked in their eyes and asked why they didn't even bother to respond.

"And you, Tom?"

She had a feeling that Tom knew the moment she was told, when everything was put together, because when she opened the door to the bedroom he looked like he had been waiting for her.

Maybe he had, maybe he'd been waiting for her a very long time, maybe he'd been waiting since that moment with the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets.

Either way he was waiting now, staring at the window from the chair in the corner, not even flinching at the sound of her entrance.

He looked positively untouchable.

"You son of a bitch." The words felt dead before they even left her lips, colder than she had ever felt before, and even looking at him was causing something in her to burn far too coldly.

He turned to look at her slowly, his face expressionless, saying nothing.

"How did it feel, each time you did it?" She asked as she stepped in, and then, when she was only a foot or so away from she asked, "Was it any fun?"

There were lows and then there were lows, there was killing, and then there was what Tom had done. A slaughter, over and over and over again, until finally he did the next best thing he could think of. She couldn't remember it but she could feel it, she could picture it so well, because he would do that wouldn't he? He would do whatever he felt was necessary, wouldn't he?

Her magic must have been rattling the windows, seeping into every crevice, but she couldn't seem to feel it.

"A question, Tom, if you don't mind," She leaned over so that her face was inches from his, "Why the show if you only wanted me out of the way; why the charade of Ellie and Tom?"

For a moment they only breathed, there was nothing he could say, nothing he would say. He could only look; something desperate and sharp in his eyes.

"Why, Tom?" She asked slamming her arms on the arm rest, screaming at him, but he didn't move or say a word.

She could kill him, she thought as she looked at him, she could kill him now. He probably expected her to try, if it had been him in her place then he would have tried, and her fingers twitched as she pictured doing it. Killing Tom, the first thing she'd ever seen.

But she'd also made a promise, a year ago she'd made him a promise, and she'd meant it.

She promised she wouldn't leave.

Slowly she stood back up, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, shoving the emotions down deep where they couldn't run rampant. She would make time for them later, when there was time, for now she would bask in apathy and do what needed to be done.

"This is the end, Tom." She said, her words final and non-negotiable.

"I'm breaking him out tonight, Tom, and then I'm going to kill Voldemort and burn this house to the ground. If you want to find me I will be waiting for you at the end." She walked away slowly, not turning back to look at him, but just kept marching out the door.


She didn't say a word to Harry, didn't offer him any explanation, instead she opened his cell and then started sprinting through the house pulling him along as she went. Even as he protested, as he blindly reached for her, she didn't say a word.

Her life no longer revolved around Harry Potter, he was no longer her responsibility, and maybe Harry loved her and maybe he didn't but he'd have to decide that for himself. Sometimes you couldn't go back, you had to recognize when it was time to bow out; sometimes you had to let go and move forward.

She only spared him a parting wordless glance, as she'd dropped him off at the gates of Hogwarts, and she hoped that it had been enough.

As soon as she returned from dropping Harry off she set to lighting the place on fire. It was out of order, she'd planned to kill Voldemort first, but it was close enough and it would certainly get his attention.

Voldemort scrambled out of the house, looking majestic and terrifying but also a little wary, as if he wasn't quite sure what he'd just started. He whipped out his wand when he caught sight of her, too fast for sanity's sake.

"Tom's right, I do love my brother." She started as she watched the flames growing wildly out of control, "He may not love me, he thinks he does, but I do love him. If you hadn't touched Harry, if you hadn't started dragging out is death like a bloody quidditch match, than maybe we wouldn't be having this conversation. I doubt it though, I think it was always coming to this, will always come to this."

"You know Eleanor, I don't even think you realize the irony, but the last two times you killed me you also lit me on fire. Tell me, I came back the last two times you did it, do you think I can't come back a third?" He asked, she gave him no response, because his coming back was irrelevant that wasn't why they were here or why they were doing what they were doing.

So she went on, turning fully to face him, the heat of the flames already past the point of salvaging the house.

"I'm going to kill you, get rid of your body, and then even I don't know; but I'm sure it will be a lot of fun."

"Do you think it will be that easy?" He asked.

No, but then, it wasn't about being easy either. As he'd told her, he'd forced her hand.


It was to the stunned miraculous amazement of the wizarding world that Harry Potter was found before the start of the Hogwarts term. He was thinner, paler than he had been, his glasses were gone, and his Hogwarts uniform was almost soiled beyond repair but he was alive.

A few days after he had returned home, after being taken to Saint Mungos, and after he'd had ample time with his family Albus Dumbledore had come for a visit and he and Harry had discussed what had happened at the Riddle Manor.

"We believe it was the girl, the transfer student, Helen Müller who placed your name into the goblet and set you up to be taken to the graveyard." Dumbledore explained, bringing out a picture of the girl, taken sometime at the beginning of the year and pausing over it.

Harry's fingers brushed it gently, a thin smile that felt more like a grimace appearing on his face, and he asked, "Is she gone then?"

"She disappeared the same day you did, my dear boy. In retrospect perhaps I should have denied her admittance. Her paperwork had been in order, her OWL scores official, her story had seemed plausible, and more I felt that in Hogwarts she could be watched more carefully than if she was outside it. I'm afraid I was terribly mistaken." Albus Dumbledore looked as if he had aged in the months of Harry Potter's absence, his eyes losing some of their familiar twinkle as he looked at the photograph.

The girl had been too young to be working for a dark lord.

"Someone got me out, you know, a girl, I think. I never saw her face, they broke my glasses pretty early but sometimes… Sometimes I thought it was Ellie, that I was going mad and that Ellie was somehow keeping me alive." Harry gave a small laugh at this, shaking his head bitterly as if to dismiss this, "But maybe, she told me she didn't work for the dark lord, that she just happened to live there."

He interrupted before Dumbledore could, "I know, it sounds crazy, but maybe… I don't think Helen put my name in the cup, or if she did then she didn't really want me to win, she never told me how to get past the obstacles or anything. Moody was more help than she was with that, the only thing she told me was that Hagrid had dragons, not how to beat it."

Harry picked up the photograph, taking in the sight of the dazed looking girl, "I think she's always been on my side… I think, if Ellie didn't get me out of that house, then I think Helen did and I just couldn't recognize her face."


"Well, I suppose you weren't lying."

"I don't lie, generally."

The house had long since burned down, only charred wood remaining, somewhere in that mess was Voldemort's body but at this point it was impossible to pin down exactly where. Now it was just her and Tom, sitting on one of the cooling beams, staring at the blackened ruins.

"I will never be Voldemort now, will I?" He asked, a slow sad smile spreading across his lips.

"Probably not."

He looked down at her then, not bothering to say that he'd never had a chance at Voldemort, and that maybe Voldemort had never really been worth much in the first place. There seemed nothing left to say to one another and she wondered how many times they would run into these moments; where words were insufficient.

"I think I know what it means to be a horcrux." She said finally, he looked over at her, confusion etched into his features.

"I'm Harry's horcrux, aren't I? His anchor to reality, I'm what lets him be the boy who lived, something similar to a memory of him. A shadow of him…" She trailed off, unsure how to finish or if he even understood what she meant by the words, that she and Tom were the same after all.

After all of this, after all the lies, all the charades, all the genuine moments they had stolen from each other, after all that they were the same at the end of the day. Somehow, once the smoke died down, she felt that she could find it in herself to forgive him.

For a moment he seemed uncertain and it was slowly that he said, "Ellie, I wanted to tell you that… I do care, I am not without sentiment."

"I know."

They looked up to the stars then, too bright without the house's lights to dull them, and he was the first to ask, "What happens now?"

"Harry and Voldemort face each other again, when he manages to get another body, and we go do something else."

He smiled at her vision of the future, the kind of sentence he would hate to receive in a letter, and she couldn't help but wonder if he hadn't secretly loved those letters. He'd never told her, had never showed them to her, but she had a feeling that he'd kept every one of them.

Then the smile dripped from his lips replaced by dazed regret, "He won't be able to kill Voldemort, as long as I am alive."

Hidden in that sentence, as he stared at her, was the thought that Ellie would have to kill him if she wanted her brother to live.

"Then he'll have to figure something else out." She said and it was remarkable, she thought, how beautiful he managed to look with only relief, gratitude, and perhaps love in his eyes.

They would be fine, they would move forward, she had the feeling someone important had once said something like that to her.

That there was always a train to somewhere.

Still looking at the sky her eyes focused on the waxing moon she commented, "I hear the muggles have been to the moon, you know, wouldn't that be something?"

It was a slow and soft smile that spread across his lips as he stared up with her.

"Yes, I suppose it would."


Author's Note: You guys are far more pessimistic than I am when it comes to Harry Potter's fate, I thought I usually leaned towards the darker side but many of you assumed he was dead after the last chapter.

At any rate thanks to readers and reviewers, reviews are much appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.