Despite being well aware that he was entirely invisible Harry still kept an eye out for Prefects and Professors that might have been out patrolling in the dark. Could he be seen if he came across one? No. Did the invisibility cloak mean that someone would pass through his body as if he were a ghost? Also no, at least according to his dad, so it was best that he avoided getting discovered via trampling.
Harry didn't yet know the castle well enough to maneuver in the dark without looking, so he spent the majority of his time switching between squinting through the heavy pall of blackness which hung in front of him and peering down at the Marauder's Map to ensure no one was in front of him.
It was so, so incredibly dark. So incredibly silent. The raven struggled to keep his footsteps silent, edging along the dungeon halls towards the steps leading up onto the first floor. He could hear his breathing and his heart beast pounding over loud in his ears.
Making it to the top of the stairs he paused, leaned forwards and peered down the hallway which had opened up in front of him. Left. Nothing. Right. Nothing. He checked the Marauder's Map again to ensure he was indeed alone and then struck out towards the library at a clipped pace.
The doors of the library were closed and locked by the time he arrived, but he'd spent enough time around Hermione by now that he'd managed to pick up at least a handful of things. After taking a moment to recall the spell that she'd used while breaking into Tom's compartment on the Hogwarts Express he tapped the lock with his wand.
"Alohomora." The faint click of metal in response was all the confirmation he needed to know he'd done it right. Pushing the doors open with just enough where withal to prevent the hinges they were attached to from creaking Harry stepped into the library and allowed them to swing shut behind him.
After ensuring no one with the authority to assign him a detention was lurking amidst the shelves Harry removed the cloak and draped it over his arm. An old lantern sat on a table a handful of feet away, the bronze that it was made from worn in places and tarnished in others. He picked it up and turned the knob; the small flame which sparked to light shed a wide puddle of soft light around him.
Now to locate his roommate and figure out how exactly he was going to go about freeing him. With any luck, Tom would be able to hear him through the rock and could offer some advice on how best to get him out. He was supposed to be smart, even more so than Hermione, so he'd probably know at least something helpful.
Then again, if that were the case, why wouldn't he have already gotten himself out of the wall? Had they stolen his wand? Maybe he was hurt, or unconscious. Whatever the case was Harry needed to get him out of there and if he had to resort to going to a Professor and reveal his own breach of the rules to do so he would. What did a detention matter if it stopped another person from suffering?
His parents would understand.
The flickering glow of the lantern in his hands shed odd shapes across the shelves and caused the shadows between them to twitch like writhing serpents. The gate to the Restricted Section had been left slightly ajar by the last person to use what was inside it; he pushed the curious desire to investigate aside and continued towards the wall where he'd seen his roommate's name. There'd be plenty of time for him to poke around another night, when he didn't have such a pressing concern on his mind.
The wall should be just ahead, now.
Harry caught sight of it a moment later; in what would be the darkest corner of the library during the day, just behind the Restricted Section, was a stretch of naked stone. The raven sped his pace to almost a run, raising his lantern a bit higher and preparing to call out to his trapped roommate.
Then he caught something odd against the rock and stopped. Slowing. Tilting his head to the side and peering more closely at the wall. An oddly shaped crack, strangely wavy and rounded in shape. Moving the lantern even closer to the wall, scattering the shadows, Harry discovered that it wasn't a crack at all.
It was a snake.
A serpent etched in painstaking detail into the stone of the wall, posed into the same stylized S as the silver ones emblazoned on the emerald banners which hung above their House table in the Great Hall. The serpent of Slytherin, of whom Tom-Harry felt all but certain-was a distant descendant. Perhaps his roommate hadn't been interred against his will by Abraxas and his little army of bullies after all. Perhaps he'd ordered the wall to open and had gone on to examine whatever lay on the other side, be it a secret room or a passage of the sort none of the Marauders had any way of accessing or even knowing about in enough of a capacity to be able to add it to the Marauder's Map. How many were there? Where did they lead to? Why had the ancient Wizard who had helped to find the school make them? What was Tom doing?
All it would take for him to answer at least some of those questions was a single word. 'Abna', the word for 'open' in the tongue of serpents was all it would take and it hung, sharp and potent like beaded venom, on his lips. Bitter on his tongue. Teetering dangerously on the verge of tipping over the edge and voicing the command.
The hiss which escaped instead was not any word at all, but a mere sound of annoyed resignation. Curiosity raged within his chest, eating at the edges of his awareness with acidic fangs, but the little raven knew that he couldn't give in to the selfish impulse to satisfy it. Tom wasn't in danger, didn't need saving from him or anyone else, and wouldn't appreciate him busting in and forcing his presence into a place which as far as the brunet knew was his and his alone.
Not if he wanted a chance to really get to know the other boy. To convince Tom to accept him as a friend. To let him in.
The raven made a sound in the back of his throat which bore a remarkable similarity to a frustrated cat and dropped the lantern onto the shelf beside him. The clatter of tarnished metal rang through the empty library and dissipated into the muffling of dust and darkness. The light, wan and oddly orange in tinge, juttered distressed insect before settling back into a steady circle. Like a giant copper coin. He needed something else to occupy his attention before the temptation of the wall's secret became too much and he gave in despite the knowledge it would damn any chance he had with Tom.
Harry spread the Marauder's Map across his lap, green eyes scanning the display it had to offer. Entertainment. That was what he needed. A Prefect was milling about on the fourth floor. Uninteresting. Peeves was lurking atop the Astronomy Tower. Bad idea. Dumbledore's label pacing back and forth across the stretch of his office.
The Head of Gryffindor hadn't been acting right, in his mind, for months. Had a strange fixation with making the little boy who had already suffered so much endure even more torment. And something about seeing those tiny footprints of black ink bounce from one side of his office to the other made the near invisible hairs along his arms and the back of his neck to stand on end.
The act of valiantly defending his soon to be friend-and they would be friends eventually, Hecate help him, if it was the last bloody thing he did-was just the distraction Harry needed. Turning off the lantern and pulling the invisibility cloak back over his head and shoulders he set a course for the Transfiguration Professor's office.
He was a cat. No, he was a serpent. A black snake with green eyes and a mission, silent and deadly as he crept through the darkness of the castle's hallways. Just another shadow in the night. No one would see him. No one would hear him. And whatever it was that he somehow knew the older Wizard was up to, he wouldn't let him get away with it.
The door to his office was shut firmly but the dim light of the fire burning in the hearth bled from beneath it. Periodically flickering as he passed between the door and the source of the glow like the moon during an eclipse. He was talking, Harry realized, though whether it was to himself or Fawkes the little raven couldn't tell. Not without opening that door and giving himself away.
"Riddle!" The man growled, spitting the name like a curse. "Tom Edward Riddle! But how? What Merope did to the man should have broken him! His mind should be shattered! He should hate the product of his rape, not want to raise the boy! And he shouldn't be like that!"
Rape? 'That'? What did Dumbledore mean, exactly, but 'that'? And Tom Edward Riddle? Harry had thought Tom's middle name was Marvolo. Was the Professor talking about his father? The man he'd first seen tumble from the Knight Bus steps onto Charring Cross Road, his body curled around his son; a cage of muscle and bone meant to protect him from the force of the fall.
"I will not stand for my plans being ruined! Will not be bested by a Muggle! The bow has to go Dark or things can never be changed for the better and if I have to sacrifice the entire Riddle family I will! Three Muggle aristocrats and a half-blood brat shattered for the Greater Good; small price to pay." The phoenix sitting on its perch made an exasperated whistle. "The boy must go back to the orphanage or everything is ruined; he can't know love or it won't work. It may be best to make that matron harder on him just for good measure, and perhaps an enchantment to remind Riddle of precisely how his son came about wouldn't go amiss. To…dissuade him from putting up any sort of fight when I put before the Ministry the concerning precedent set by allowing a Muggle, who knows nothing of our world or how it works, to serve as the Magical Guardian of a Wizarding child." Fawkes ruffled his feathers and clicked his beak. "Not right away, but soon."
It was bad enough that Dumbledore facilitated the other boy's mistreatment by his peers by looking the other way whenever it happened and attempted to dissuade any efforts at offering friendship being made but to plan to separate the son from a father who so clearly loved him, ruin both father and son by using magic for something as wicked as making Riddle Senior hate Tom, all for the sake of returning him to an orphanage where from the sound of it he'd been mistreated? For what? And what did he mean by 'the boy has to go Dark'? Did he want to foster another Grindlewald? Start another war with another Dark Lord? Why?
That question, Harry supposed, didn't need to be answered. Any justification the man might be able to provide wouldn't matter. Whatever 'Greater Good' Dumbledore sought to advance, achieving it through such means was unconscionable and Harry wouldn't allow it to happen unopposed. He was only a first year, Tom only a second year, and if his parents even considered believing him they'd need proof before they'd act and that would take too much time. There wasn't much in his power.
But maybe, if he got a warning to Tom's father in time, that wouldn't matter.
Need for silence almost forgotten Harry bolted back through the halls. Racing towards the library. No longer a serpent but a deer. Prongslet. Fleet hooves were what he needed to make it back to the library in a swift enough time but an adder's tongue was most important. He shouted at the wall to open. The brick made no effort to jump aside but he tumbled through it anyway, careening into a table with the shriek of wood against stone and burying himself beneath an avalanche of musty books. Tom, awoken by the noise, leapt up spitting in alarm. Blue eyes, reduced to inky pinpoints, fell on him.
"You!" Anger made his voice rasp like old parchment. "You're a Parselmouth? How? Why didn't you…what have you-?"
"That's not important!" Harry leapt back to his feet and almost slipped on one of the fallen books.
"I think, Potter, that I should be-!"
"Shut up and listen to me, Riddle!" He'd end up regretting talking to him like that quite soon, he felt sure, but that wasn't of any consequence at the moment. "I overheard Dumbledore in his office! He's planning to do something to your father and get you sent back to the orphanage! We have to warn him!"
A beat of silence passed before Tom lunged across the table, snatching at a parchment and almost toppling the inkwell sitting nearby. His cobalt eyes caught Harry's gaze again, sharp and cold but with a thorn of fear buried deep in the centers. "Talk!"
Harry didn't need encouragement. The words spilled free of him in a rush like the torrent of a river and he was surprised that the other could make sense of it at all yet, somehow, the quill kept pace with him. Words forming across the page in a need but hasty hand.
Tom attempted to bolt out through the wall once he was finished but Harry grabbed his wrist. Hastily tossing the cloak over both of them he towed the brunet along the hall and into a hidden passage which led to the top of the owlry.
"Where's your owl?" the brunet demanded, trying to hide the fact his hands were shaking. "I sent mine with a latter earlier to let him know I got back safely."
"Hedwig!" Harry's green eyes bounced desperately about the eaves, thick with owls, in an effort to locate his familiar but it turned out he didn't have to. The beautiful white owl fluttered down to land on his shoulder and nipped at his ear. "I'm sorry to ask this of you so late but Tom needs to send a letter to his father. It's an emergency."
Hedwig ruffled her feathers and hooted, glaring at the older boy but allowing him to tie the letter to her leg. The smaller raven rushed over to the window and stuck his arm out, feeling the owl's weight lift off of him and into the air. He didn't get the chance to watch her fly away into the night.
Tom's hand came down on the back of his neck and spun him around, pinning him against the stone wall of the owlry. The point of his bone-white wand dug into the skin under his chin.
"Talk or I'll make you sing, Potter!" He snarled. "How do you speak Parseltongue? Why didn't you have the decency to say anything before? And what have you overheard?"
"I was born with it; I don't know how. As far as any of us are aware no one in our family tree has ever had the ability, but the Potter line has relation to the Blacks and the Peverills so maybe it came from one of them?" The pressure on the wand was painful, the point coming dangerously close to breaking the skin. He didn't want Tom to Hex him so he scrambled to tell him everything he could, tripping over his words as a result. "People are afraid of Parseltongue; they think it's a sign of Dark Magic. My parents didn't want me to suffer with that label so…they told me not to tell anyone."
"A fellow Parselmouth wouldn't have been prejudiced against you for that." Tom rasped. "So why didn't you tell me?"
Feeling his face start to burn, Harry stared at the taller boy with large emerald eyes.
"Potter, why does your face look like the bloody Gryffindor banner?"
"I…I…I…" he could have cooked an egg on his face. "I didn't want to say anything because you almost only ever talk to your snakes and not to me and I was worried that, if you knew I could understand, you'd stop. I wasn't eavesdropping on you, I never actually pain attention to what you were saying. I just…"
"You just?"
"…I like your voice." He was scarlet to his ears.
Tom blinked and then lowered his wand, stepping back. "What are those?" he motioned to the map and the cloak as he put his wand away. "And where did you get them?"
"My dad gave them to me; he made the Marauder's Map with my Godfather and some of his friends while they were in school and the invisibility cloak is a family heirloom. They used them to get up to a lot of trouble during their schooldays." He said. "They called themselves the Marauders: Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs. I'm Prongslet and…well, I'm expected to start a new generation of Marauders so maybe…if you'd like to join…?"
"I have better things to do than run around the castle with you at night." Tom snorted and turned away, starting towards the owlry doors. He paused at the last moment on the lip of the first stair. Harry watched him as he stood stalk still for a long moment, the moonlight spilling down from overhead drenching his hair in silver, and then he spoke. "Harrison," reluctance almost dripped from his voice, "thanks." He vanished down the stairs.
Alone in the owlry, Harry smiled.