07 – The Seventh Floor
Harry opened his eyes. He lay on his back in bed, listening to the soft sound of a breeze brushing against the thin dormitory windows, watching the patters of light slipping above the curtains of his four-poster bed, playing patters on the ceiling above him. In his tired state, he couldn't think what he had dreamt about. He remembered the sight of Tom standing before him... but that was hardly a dream. He knew it wasn't; he remembered every detail. He took some time thinking over Tom's soft tone, the way he had brushed against him... Soon, however, Harry pushed the thought out of his mind, an odd nervous feeling settling upon him like a mist, surrounding him.
He remembered the Restricted Section of the Library and the alarming events that had followed. Why Riddle wanted him to take those books, Harry didn't want to know. He refused to acknowledge the curiousness of everything that had happened; he didn't want to have to work it out... A sudden sense of acting like the Dursleys dawned upon him, but he chose to ignore it. He wasn't in denial, he knew it wouldn't just go away. He was merely in no state to think it over.
Then, quite suddenly, he remembered seeing Draco. He remembered the long, winding path leading to him, the tall shelves stacked with innumerable objects hidden away by those in need of a place to hide items at Hogwarts. Draco had been sweating and stressing over that cupboard. Without reason, he had stood there in near tears, trying magic over and over again. It was quite a horrific image, thinking back. There Draco was, shaking and panicking, alone in that tall place in... the Room of Requirement...
Suddenly Harry sat up in his bed; this movement so abrupt, it may have looked as though someone had attempted to attack him. Wide awake now, he felt his heart racing faster than his alert and wondering mind. Draco was in the Room of Requirement, in a place to hide. He ripped at the curtains of his four-poster bed, leaping out of bed and pulling off his pyjama shirt hurriedly. He threw it aside as he searched for what to wear, intent upon getting changed as fast as possible.
"Morning," Ron's voice said slowly. He was watching Harry from his bed, where he sat with the curtains open, reading a book about Quidditch again. He tossed the book aside, however, and moved to the end of his bed. He was staring at Harry.
Harry pulled a jumper on over his shirt after a vague nod towards Ron, saying nothing.
"Were you going somewhere?" Ron asked.
Harry had finished getting changed. He dug in his trunk to find the Marauder's Map, scanning it with haste when it was in his hands. He turned to stare at Ron. He had no idea how to explain what was going on in his head.
"Are you al-?"
"I found it," Harry breathed.
Ron's look of worry and confusion doubled. "Found what?"
"The room Malfoy's been hidden in," Harry explained, "in the Room of Requirement!"
"You – you're sure?"
"I'm positive. And he's not on the map, he must be there!"
"But you've been asleep all morning, we went to bed at the same time last night."
"I had a dream – not like a normal dream, but one of those other ones."
Ron stared at him, his mouth partially open as if he wanted to interrupt.
"Look, it doesn't matter how I know, what's important is that Malfoy's in the Room of Requirement fixing something. I'll even show you if you want, we just have to hurry!"
"Why're you in a rush?" Ron asked, not moving from the bed. "You haven't even explained how-"
"If you want to follow me, then do. We haven't any time to lose, Malfoy could slip out of there at any moment! C'mon!"
Ron was already dressed, so wasted no more time before following Harry, who was headed for the Common Room. Harry caught a glimpse of him through a mirror on his way out, catching sight of his bewildered, nervous expression.
"Harry, if you'd just -"
Without giving any sign of having heard Ron, Harry headed for the portrait hole. They ran all the way to the seventh floor without pausing to talk, but stopped a few corridors down from the Room of Requirement. Harry pulled the invisibility cloak out of his pocket, urging Ron silently to join him. Ron seemed to understand what he was doing, so he dropped his voice to a whisper.
"Harry, don't you-"
"Shut up. We need to get past Crabbe and Goyle first."
Ron still appeared somewhat unnerved by all of this – by the way Harry was acting in particular. A few moments later they were crouched under the cloak together, being as quiet as they could as they headed down a few more corridors. Without struggle, they passed Crabbe, who was transformed into a short Hufflepuff girl with tangled black hair, clutching a school book that wouldn't have been given to a Second Year, Harry saw.
They reached the stretch of wall opposite the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy trying to teach trolls the ballet. When he was sure no one was around, Harry pulled the cloak off of the two of them. They edged slowly to the blank stretch of wall Harry had spent so much time staring at in frustration. This was it, he thought, this was finally the moment to see what Malfoy was up to...
"He's hiding in there," Harry said in a low voice. "It's where he's been all along..."
"How're you gonna get in?"
"I know what he's doing. He's hiding a cupboard in there, the one from Borgin & Burkes, I think."
"How'd he get that in there?" Ron asked in disbelief.
"Well it looks the same, I dunno if it's the same one or not."
"And you found all this out from a dream?" Ron's eyebrows were raised. "Harry, are you sure you didn't just dream it all?"
"I'm positive, this wasn't the same. I'll prove it..."
Remembering what Tom had said last night about where Malfoy was, Harry began to pace along the corridor. With closed eyes, he smiled a little bit at the prospect of finally being able to prove that Draco was a Death Eater. 'I need a place to hide,' he thought, concentrating hard.
Turning around, he began to pace the other way. 'I need a place to hide...'
Harry was thinking of how Dumbledore would react to the situation, about how Draco's crimes would be stopped now, before they got even worse. He was going to prove everyone wrong, and this would save them from having to see what Draco was up to as a Death Eater, alone, in the Room of Requirement. 'I need a place to hi-'
"Don't."
Tom was standing right in front of him.
Harry nearly shouted in shock; he stumbled backwards in panic, falling and landing on the ground with a loud crash.
"Harry!"
Harry had closed his eyes upon falling, losing track of where Tom was. Ron was heading towards him.
"Are you alright?"
"I-I'm fine," Harry stammered. He pushed himself up off the ground, scanning the corridor shakily. Tom was nowhere to be seen. "Did you just -?"
He was going to ask Ron if he had just seen Tom standing here, but the look on Ron's face made him stop. Ron wasn't scared, as he surely would be if he had just seen a seventeen-year-old Voldemort telling Harry to stop. Ron can't have heard Tom either, for he showed no signs of understanding what Harry was looking for...
"What happened?" Ron asked, helping Harry up.
"Nothing, I just..." Harry had no excuse, so tried to make one up. "I-I don't think it worked."
Ron shot a glance at the stretch of wall beside them. Harry could tell what he was thinking: how could Harry have come up with this theory when he hadn't even looked for the door?
"You sure you're alright?" Ron asked slowly. "If you want to go to the Hospital Wing, I can understand."
"There's nothing wrong with me," Harry assured him. "I'm just tired, that's all."
"You're probably hungry as well," Ron pointed out. "We should go down to breakfast, go see Hermione. She'll set this right..."
His last words seemed to be directed more to himself than to Harry as he turned away. Harry knew he had unnerved Ron. He was in half a mind to tell Ron to go ahead without him, but two things stopped him. He didn't want Ron to go worry with Hermione and he wasn't quite keen upon the idea of standing around here in case Ton should show up again. The idea scared him...
Breakfast was uncomfortable for Harry, who sat eating toast in near silence, pretending not to notice when Ron and Hermione cast each other worrying looks. He knew they were going to talk about him as soon as he wasn't around. The more he thought about it, the more he believed that Hermione had asked Ron to tail him. He thought back to this morning, reflecting now that it wasn't usual of Ron to sit in bed reading on a Saturday morning. He was waiting for him.
To save them the awkwardness of thinking up an excuse to leave him, after breakfast he gave his own excuse, to be on his own for the whole morning. He had given up his attempts to try and convince the two of them that nothing unusual had happened. He had no excuse for trying to find Draco in the Room of Requirement after that dream, and he didn't want to talk about it to them. He felt alone even when he was with them.
Harry returned to his dormitory after breakfast, hoping that Ron wouldn't follow him. Some part of him wanted to spend the day with his two friends, to break the sudden change that caused him to feel so distanced and isolated, but he didn't think it could be fixed. Nothing seemed to sound right in his mind as he attempted to work out what he would say. The truth couldn't be shared and excuses sounded feeble even before he mulled them over properly. He didn't want to have to lie.
The dormitory was flooded with warm sunshine that Harry felt no desire to go outside and greet. Sitting on the edge of his bed, he felt unable to move, as though his thoughts were using up all of his energy. He was thinking about the appearance of Riddle on the seventh floor. Had that even happened? It had been so swift, so unexpected, that Harry was beginning to doubt it. Ron hadn't seen anything, after all. Maybe Harry was just tired...
What would have happened if he had entered the Room of Requirement with Ron to find Draco, he wondered? But how could he have... how could he have possibly explained to Ron, Hermione, and Dumbledore most of all, how he had known where Draco was and why? He could have pulled it off as another vision, perhaps, but they would surely see through this lie. In the past, he had only had visions into Voldemort's mind. There was no pretending that Voldemort had been at Hogwarts, checking up on Draco. Well, not unless you counted Tom...
Except, Harry thought, Tom wasn't real. He shook his head, trying to set his thoughts right. His face was buried in his hands. He didn't even know what Tom was. There was no explanation for why these dreams were happening, now an appearance in waking hours... Harry's chest seemed contorted, he was breathing heavily though clawed hands.
What if none of it was real at all? What if he had imagined the whole thing, like Ron and Hermione basically suggested? They were fearful – they were scared of him, even... Harry stared at the ground though his spread fingers, his breath being held in without his notice. They might have reason to be scared. They might have reason to stay away from him more often, having Ron follow him only to make sure he didn't do something insane – like believe that a dream had informed him of Draco Malfoy's crimes...
Harry let out a noise of frustration, pressing his palms to his closed eyes in a mix of anger and embarrassment. They didn't understand what he was doing, while he didn't understand how to explain himself. What if he was insane? They thought he was while they didn't know half the story. He could be absolutely mad, believing Malfoy was a Death Eater in paranoia. The more he thought about it, the less it made sense that Malfoy was fixing that cupboard. It could have all been a dream, it could have been his wonder for the cupboard in Borgin & Burkes gone mad...
Harry had seen Snape talking to Draco, had witnessed their conversation after Slughorn's Christmas Party, yet no one believed it meant anything. Dumbledore himself had dismissed Harry's theories as if he was acting both ignorant and too eager to prove that Snape and Draco were evil. Harry felt he was making a total fool of himself, suffering the affects of his idiocy already as he was neglected by even his best friends. Nobody trusted a word he said anymore.
Hatred for his own self, his own thoughtlessness, was taking over Harry's whole range of current emotion. Of course he was insane! He was utterly mad to believe that Tom Marvolo Riddle was somehow visiting him at night when we was supposed to be asleep. He was idiotic to believe for a second that Tom was taking him so far away to visit places at random, to have discussions in which Tom told him he had been with him forever, that he had watched him grow up completely unnoticed...
Then there was the fact that Tom somehow wasn't Lord Voldemort, apparently, and he knew Draco Malfoy spent his evenings crying alone in the Room of Requirement over a cupboard... Harry felt like a fool for believing any of it. Ron had suggested they go to the Hospital Wing to get him looked at, there was no doubting that he probably thought Harry had gone mad – he probably knew it. He felt like a fool, a total fool...
Finding himself swiftly wanting to stop his thoughts on the matter, Harry stood up. He didn't want to think at all. He understood, now, how deluded he had been; the idea pained him. Turning towards his trunk, he was going to find the Marauder's Map to work out where Ron and Hermione were. He was in half a mind to explain to them how stupid he felt, whilst another part of him wanted nothing more than to pretend nothing had happened. All Harry knew was that he didn't want to sit in here alone.
Before Harry reached his trunk, however, something caught his eye.
There, resting neatly to the side of his unmade bed, rested something he had certainly never put there. Harry could do nothing but stare. His expression, thoughts, and muscles froze up in fear. Five books piled neatly, one on top of the other, were bound in black and brown leather... They were very large even for books of the Hogwarts' Library. Tom had wanted him to take these books, so here they were, they same ones from last night...
Harry didn't pause to think how on earth they had ended up here. All he cared about was the terrible fear that gripped him as he wondered what on earth people would think if they found the subject of the Dark Arts stolen from the Restricted Section, sitting by the side of his bed.
In panic, the urge to get rid of the books as soon as possible possessed Harry. He began lifting them off the floor, piling them onto his unmade bed as fear shook his limbs in it's power. What was he supposed to do with this? There was no way he could return the books to the library. Even if he did it before Madam Pince met him, there would be suspicions amongst the teachers about who had taken the books, and why.
The first wild plan that crossed Harry's racing mind was that he should sneak into the Restricted Section to return them himself, but he had no idea which part these books had come from. He had a horrible feeling that this particular section would be locked up with tighter security, what was more. The next thing that came to mind was that he should hide them in the Room of Requirement – and this thought crossed his might with a deep sense of dry humour. Perhaps it'd help Draco in his troubles...
Any moment someone could walk in here and see Harry with these distinctly large and aged volumes. If there was an inquiry throughout the school about who had taken these, Harry would be ratted out immediately for having such suspicious items in his possession. Without hesitation, he started to tear at his trunk, pulling out robes and school books to make a clearing big enough to fit books of this size. It was a difficult, awkward fit, especially since he had rushed so much.
He couldn't fit everything back in his trunk; he had to settle with taking out some of his schoolbooks and setting them on the table beside his bed. He hoped no one would find this curious. In a moment of feeling only slightly calmer, he decided he would get rid of the books as soon as he could. There was no way he was keeping them around. There was no way he would allow Tom to force this upon him...
Harry knew, now, just how persistent Tom could be in pursuing his desires.
