Title: The Boys Who Lived
Author: Shara Lunison
Beta: Batsutousai
Rating for this Chapter: K+
Pairings: Harry/Henry (OMC), others
Warnings: SLASH, eventual twincest, slightly manipulative!Dumbledore, grey Harry/Henry, OoC-ness, others as I think of them.
Summary: The Potter twins are attacked by Voldemort and somehow defeat him. Now the Dark Lord has returned and they have to choose between light and dark. SLASH, Twincest, rated M for later chapters.
Disclaim Her: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
A/N: Why is it so much fun to be so mean to my characters?
Chapter Thirteen: Hidden Secrets
Henry scribbled furiously across the page: "When did you go to Hogwarts?"
'Fifty years or so ago, I think. Dumbledore was the Transfiguration professor then.'
"Old fart." Henry smiled as he wrote. He was really starting to like Tom.
'Indeed.' The sarcasm was palpable even without a voice to match it. It was probably close to one in the morning. Henry had taken to writing in the diary after Harry had gone to sleep. He couldn't seem to stay away from the thing, no matter how guilty he felt for keeping it secret from his twin. And after his initial fright of having an object actually answer him back, he found that it was rather like exchanging instant letters with someone. It felt like he was talking to someone that really understood him—it helped that Tom was a Slytherin as well.
"Was everyone biased against Slytherin then as well?"
'I don't know what it's like now, but the Gryffindors have always been deplorable. I was one of the few snakes that the professors seemed to treat fairly. Everyone but Dumbledore, that is. He always suspected me.'
"Suspected you? What happened?"
'Have you ever heard of the Chamber of Secrets?'
Henry frowned at the page, vaguely remembering that it had been mentioned in Hogwarts, A History. Perhaps this had something to do with Mr. Malfoy's plot for the school this year? "I've read mentions of it, but nothing specific."
'When I was in school, Slytherin's heir returned and re-opened the Chamber. Apparently Slytherin created a room under the school in secret from the rest of the Founders and left a monster there that would emerge to attack the mudblood students of the school when his heir called it.'
"What happened?" Henry asked. "And, I hope you don't mind my asking this, but could you not call them mudbloods? One of my best friends is muggleborn."
'My apologies. Well, during my sixth year the monster was released and a student died as a result of the attacks. I caught a boy named Rubeus Hagrid who was keeping a dangerous beast in the castle, and he was tried for releasing the monster from the Chamber.'
"Hagrid?" Henry wrote with shock. "He's the groundskeeper now. He does like his dangerous beasts, but he wouldn't hurt a fly!"
'I assure you, Henry, I only caught him with a monster. It was Headmaster Dippet who had him expelled and sent to Azkaban. As I understand it, Dumbledore later had him freed because there was no proof that Hagrid was responsible. Regardless, after he was caught the attacks stopped completely.'
Henry sat back from the desk to think this over. It was definitely plausible that Lucius Malfoy might want the Chamber of Secrets to be opened again, but there was no way that a diary, that Tom, would be capable of doing it. But he still hadn't found out what Tom had to do with any plans for the coming year. He hesitantly dipped his quill and penned a new line, "Do you know how to open the Chamber?"
It took longer than usual for the ink to reappear. 'Do you know the gift of Slytherin's line?'
Henry scoffed. Every Slytherin learned that their first year. "Of course. They were all parselmouths."
'Then it is most plausible that only a parselmouth would be capable of opening the Chamber. That is why it can only be opened when Slytherin's heir returns.'
The dark-haired boy decided not to mention his own ability with the language. He still wasn't sure where he and Harry had gotten it, but he doubted they were descendents of the Founder. With a large yawn, he wrote his farewell, "I should get some sleep. Harry has been pestering me about why I seem so tired all the time."
'Wait! Will you tell me more about what the world is like right now?'
He sighed, but decided a few more sentences couldn't hurt. But he was soon enthralled by the diary again and related the tale of he and Harry's defeat of the Dark Lord, absently rubbing his twinging scar every once in a while.
-o-0-o-
Harry woke and immediately noticed that Henry was missing. After dressing, he tiptoed from the room and went next door to find his brother sprawled across his desk, the diary of Tom Riddle resting below his cheek.
With a sigh, he considered his options. It was clear that the diary was exerting some sort of control over his brother. He could take it and destroy it, but he did not want to anger Henry. It may be better just to hide it until they could find out more about the previous owner when school started.
He gently lifted his twin's head from the book and pulled it out from under him. The pages were clean, leaving no evidence of their previous conversation. Harry closed it and returned to their room. In the bottom of his trunk he found a dirty sock and stuffed the diary into it, then placed the wrapped book into the almost empty box of chocolate frogs he had received from Hermione at the end of last year. It was not the best hiding place, but it was the best he could do for now.
That done, he decided to leave his brother to his sleep and go for a morning flight at Hogwarts while the bartender slept off the long night of tending the Hog's Head.
-o-0-o-
Henry could feel the uncomfortable sticky feeling of his own drool under his cheek. He way lying on something hard instead of the comfortable bed he was supposed to be sharing with Harry. The memory that he had been writing to the diary until much later than he planned surface and he bolted upright, staring at the surface of his desk where the diary ought to be. It was gone.
Panicking, he bolted from the room and entered the bedroom, instinct driving him to Harry's trunk. A box of chocolate frog cards lying on top immediately caught his eye and he opened it to find a familiar sock-wrapped shape. Harry had taken the diary and tried to hide it from him. A blind rage shot through him for several long moments. The wrappers on the frogs curled around the edges and the chocolates inside melted to their wizard cards. Blinking at his emotional roller coaster, he reminded himself that this was Harry. His little brother was just trying to protect him because he didn't know the diary the way Henry did.
The sound of Harry's voice downstairs as he spoke to someone made him act quickly. He pulled the diary from the sock and picked one of Harry's schoolbooks that was about the same size to replace it. The sock wrapped book was returned to the box, the lid was closed, and the trunk re-latched. Henry decided to secret the diary on his person to keep it safe. One of the large pockets on his robe did the work nicely.
He then returned to bed, recognizing that he was still tired and that confronting Harry just then was probably not the best of ideas. He was asleep again even before Harry made it back up the stairs to put his broom away.
-o-0-o-
September 1st—King's Cross Station, London
Harry greeted Hermione with a grin and a hug, clasping hands with Ron once he had let her go. Abe had been instructed to let them floo to the station so that he and Henry could take the train with their friends. With a frown, he watched as his twin drug his trunk onto the train, completely ignoring their friends.
The morning that he had discovered his brother with the diary, he had returned from flying to find the older boy asleep in bed. Worried that he might have tried to find the book while Harry was gone, he had checked the hiding place in his trunk. The shape was still there in the same place he had left it. He had been relieved at first and tried to get Henry to spend more of their last month of summer together. But despite the disappearance of the diary, Henry grew more and more withdrawn and disappeared for hours at a time into the edge of the forest around Hogsmeade.
His brother had barely spoken to him in weeks.
"What's he being such a git for?" Ron asked, glaring after the Slytherin boy as he disappeared into the train.
Harry just shook his head. He had repacked his trunk the night before and found that the book in the dirty old sock was not, in fact, the diary. Henry had probably been writing in the thing for close to a month now without him knowing about it. "Let me handle it, all right?" he asked them seriously.
Hermione nodded worriedly and Ron frowned darkly but agreed regardless.
The trio spent a few more minutes on the platform to say farewell to their families. Hermione's parents were a brown-haired man and woman who looked distinctly nervous and out of place, but quite kind.
On the train, they found Henry sitting in a compartment alone, a familiar (to Harry) leather-bound book in his hands and a self-inking quill clenched in his fingers. Motioning for Ron and Hermione to step back Harry drew his wand, threw open the door, and yanked the book from his brother's grip, a well aimed incendio striking the book on the floor of the compartment.
"NO!" Henry screamed.
The book smoldered for a few moments before the flames hissed balefully and died, leaving it completely untouched. Henry quickly picked it up and hid it in his robes again. "What did you do that for!?" he yelled at Harry, a murderous glare on his face as he drew his wand on his own flesh and blood.
"Give it to me." Harry held out his hand calmly, used by now to Henry's wild mood swings over the past month.
"Sod off, Potter," he snarled, then shouldered past the three second years standing in the doorway and left for a different area of the train.
Noticing his friends' questioning looks, Harry sighed and motioned them into the compartment, closing the door gently behind them and casting a silencing barrier. "The book is a diary that belonged to someone named Tom Marvolo Riddle. I don't know exactly what it is, but it's exerting some kind of control over Hen. I'm sure you noticed he's not himself."
Hermione shook her head slowly. "If it's just a bit of leather and paper…"
"No." Harry stopped her. "When you write in it, the pages absorb the ink. If you write to it as though it's a real diary, it answers back. That's how we found out who the previous owner was, since the cover only has his initials on it."
Ron blanched. "Dad always says not to trust something that can think for itself when you can't see the mind behind it."
"Harry, we need to get that book away from him. It's probably really dangerous, dark magic," Hermione said.
"I know. But I don't know how. You saw him—he carries it with him everywhere. I thought I had gotten it away from him earlier this summer, but I discovered last night that he had replaced the diary with a book about the same size and shape. He's been writing in it all month."
Ron nibbled his lip thoughtfully. "If you could get it away from him, Hermione and I could hold him back while you ran away and hid it. But you'd have to find a place where he would never find it again."
Harry nodded and tried to think. It would be easier to hide the diary in the castle—there were loads more places to hide something than there had been in the Hog's Head. He just needed a place that no one else would be able to get into…
Hermione noticed when the green eyes lit up and asked, "You've thought of someplace?"
"Where?" asked Ron.
"I won't tell you. It's better if you don't know, since Hen will be really mad when I make a run for it with the book. But I think I know a place where he won't be able to find it. Now, here's what we're going to do…"
They plotted until Draco came to taunt them with Crabbe and Goyle just before they arrived at Hogsmeade Station. Harry thrust a piece of crumpled parchment at him, telling him to keep his poorly written homework to himself. Everyone but Draco's Slytherin cronies understood that it was a letter, though the blond boy did look concerned that Henry was not with them in the compartment.
-o-0-o-
They waited until after the Sorting ceremony and the welcoming feast to strike.
Harry paused until everyone was walking out of the Great Hall, letting his brother walk in front of him. Despite his anger with Harry over the attempted destruction of the diary, Henry had little choice when it came to sharing a dormitory with him.
As they slipped through a group of sixth years loitering just outside the doors, Harry dashed forward and ripped the book from the pocket of Henry's robe and immediately turned to run in the opposite direction. Ron and Hermione filled the gap behind him as his brother roared incoherently and tried to follow him. They just managed to grab an arm each and keep him from leaving the Great Hall.
Harry ran for his life, determined to get the book as far away from his twin as possible. His feet took him unerringly towards the seventh floor and the room of requirement. He paused just long enough beside the tapestry to pace back and forth before opening the opaque glass door that appeared and entering a room with the largest collection of random things he had ever seen. It stretched for as far as he could see—jumbled piles of furniture, teetering piles of books, broken objects, and precious gold and jeweled things. Without a thought, he dashed into the mess, purposefully turning himself around several times to confuse the location. At last he stopped beside a bust of a man's head with an elegant tiara placed on it and tucked the diary around behind.
Job finished, he retraced his path back to the door as well as he could and emerged into the hallway, smiling with satisfaction as the door disappeared.
By the time he returned to the Great Hall, Ron, Hermione, and Henry were being interrogated by Professor Snape. With the second Potter available for questioning, he began to ask why Harry would steal something from his own brother and what he had done with it.
Harry, of course, remained stubbornly silent and gladly took the lost points and detentions even as his heart twinged to see his brother's hateful glare. It was almost curfew by the time they returned to Gryffindor tower, and his brother went to sleep in the extra bed after closing and locking shut the curtains around it.
-o-0-o-
Henry awoke feeling somewhat confused the next morning. For the first time since he had begun writing in the diary, he felt as though he was able to think clearly. The memory of Harry trying to burn the diary surfaced and he winced. His brother was smart—more so than he gave him credit for. And strong too. Much stronger than Henry. He had been completely unable to resist Tom Riddle.
Rolling over, he saw the silhouette of his brother outside the bed curtains, his wand raised as he tried to break the locking charm on the curtains. With a sigh, Henry sat up and removed the spell to allow his brother entrance. Harry stuck his head in with understandable trepidation, a hopeful frown on his lips.
"I'm sorry," Henry whispered, gulping pack the tears he could feel gathering as the full weight of his actions the past month gripped him. Some of the emotion, he could feel, was from Harry. He could feel how alone and hurt his brother had been without him.
Harry crawled onto the mattress and cradled his brother's head against his chest. "Pain shared is pain halved," he murmured into Henry's hair.
The older boy completely broke down as he felt the forgiveness and acceptance through their bond—it was growing stronger. He'd never felt the shared emotions so strongly before, but he couldn't bring himself to care.
A slight rustling was heard from the curtains, and Henry looked up in surprise, wiping the tears from his face. Hermione and Ron were watching the twins with worried eyes, and the bushy-haired girl hesitated momentarily before crawling onto the bed to hug the Slytherin boy as well.
"Well, come on then, Ron." Harry giggled.
The red-haired boy rolled his eyes but joined the party on the bed. Henry found himself enveloped in their warm embrace and couldn't help the laugh that bubbled its way up through his tears.
"Better?" Hermione asked from her position hugging him from behind.
He nodded slightly, and the hug loosened, though Harry continued to hold him close to his chest.
"Thanks," Henry mumbled. "And sorry."
Ron patted him gently on the arm. "It's all right, mate. I mean, that diary had to have been created with some pretty dark magic to have such an effect on you."
"I suppose since you're feeling better, I had better ask…" Harry hesitated, but Hen sent him a wave of reassurance through the bond. "Did you find out any more about the owner, Tom Riddle?"
Henry nodded and wiped the last of his tears away. "He was a student here fifty years ago." Now that he could really think about it, he remembered the conversation about the Chamber of Secrets with a frown. "There were attacks going on at the time, because Slytherin's heir had returned and set loose a monster from a secret chamber under the school. Hagrid got caught with one of his beasts and was expelled and sent to Azkaban, because a student died as a result of the attacks. Tom Riddle was the one who caught him."
Harry tugged his lip thoughtfully.
"I think the Chamber of Secrets has something to do with why Lucius Malfoy wanted the diary here this year. I think we all know that Hagrid was innocent, but when I was talking to Tom about his time here, he said that Dumbledore always suspected him. I didn't really think enough of it at the time to ask why, but I think Tom had more to do with the monster attacking the school than he let on," Henry finished.
"If Tom Riddle was actually the one who opened the Chamber," Hermione said, "then it would be in his best interest after someone was killed to lay the blame on another student. Hagrid's fondness for dangerous creatures worked against him."
Henry nodded sadly. He still couldn't help liking the snarky Slytherin, even though the power of the diary wasn't affecting him. "But the only way to open the Chamber is to be a parselmouth."
Ron frowned. "But aren't you and Harry…?"
The twins hadn't bothered to keep such a secret from their friends the year before. Although Ron had been a bit twitchy about it at first, he eventually accepted it as a part of them, as well as Henry's snake familiar disguised as a cat.
"Yeah, but I think we would know if our dad was a descendent of Slytherin," Harry said. "The way Snape talks about him, there's no way James Potter wouldn't have lorded his ability to speak with snakes over all the Slytherins."
Hermione sighed with frustration. "We need more information on Tom Riddle and Slytherin's line. Come on, let's get down to breakfast and get our schedules. We can look him up in the library later today after classes."
Harry and Ron groaned at the thought of hitting the library on their first day back, but got up to get ready for breakfast regardless.
-o-0-o-
"Here it is!" Hermione called them over. They had finished the morning Potions class and were now into a free period before lunch. They had been perusing various records in the library for over an hour. Ron and the twins gathered around the lone girl of the group and read the newspaper clipping.
Boy Responsible for Death of Myrtle Salix Expelled
By Wanda Wilmore
May 23, 1943—This past Tuesday, Hogwarts Head Boy Tom Riddle succeeded in apprehending the criminal responsible for the death of thirteen-year-old Myrtle Salix. Rubeus Hagrid had been hiding a young acromantula in the school, and it is believed that this monster was the cause of the student's death.
Riddle has been granted an award for special services to the school, and the young orphan will be residing at the school this summer instead of returning to Stockwell Orphanage in London.
Henry stopped reading there and groaned in frustration. "It's no wonder we can't find anything on Slytherin's line—Tom could very well be descended from him, but as he's an orphan there's no way for us to find out!"
"Well, I have a theory," Hermione said, shutting the book of articles with a snap. "You and Harry are both parselmouths, even though you're most likely not a direct descendent. But you were telling me that when Voldemort attacked you, he bound all three of your souls together. So Henry has a piece of Voldemort's soul, you two are soul bound, and most likely the dark lord has a piece of one of your souls."
"What's that got to do with Tom Riddle?" Ron asked.
"Well, people who are soul bound, like Harry and Henry, share special abilities. We know that Voldemort is a parselmouth, he was very well known for it during his rise to power…" She trailed off, waiting for one of them to get it.
"So you're saying that I can speak parseltongue because I have part of Voldemort's soul, and Harry can speak it because he has part of mine?" Henry asked.
"Exactly!" Hermione cried. "And, if Voldemort can speak it then he's probably a legitimate heir of Salazar Slytherin. But he's using an assumed name." She tapped the cover of the book soundly. "Voldemort's real name is Tom Marvolo Riddle, he is the heir of Slytherin, and he did open the Chamber and kill a student fifty years ago. The ghost of Myrtle Salix is still here in Hogwarts—she haunts a bathroom on the second floor."
The three boys gaped at her in amazement for a few moments before they all turned and dashed out the door of the library.
"Wait! Where are you going?" she cried.
Harry turned and ran back to grab her arm, dragging her from the table of books they had been researching. "Well, come on! If we're going to go talk to Myrtle, we're going to need a girl to check that the bathroom is clear!"
"Well, it's not like anyone actually uses that bathroom," she muttered to herself, but followed them up to the second floor anyway.
-o-0-o-
A/N: Tee hee. I'm having so much fun with the events for this year. Also, I'm trying to update every Wednesday, just FYI.
~Shara