"Baby Talk'? That's not a saying."
"Oh, but 'baby fish mouth' is sweeping the nation? I hear them talking."
- When Harry Met Sally
December, 1942
Harry had been in the Forbidden Forest more most of the Hogwarts population. Like all things with the word 'forbidden' tacked onto them in scary lettering, Harry somehow always ended up in the very center of it.
She wouldn't say she knew her way around, that she'd volunteer for detention inside of it or ask the centaurs for tea, but it wasn't her first time in here either. She should have been able to recognize it.
Except that as soon as she passed into the tree line and out of sight of the castle it stopped looking like anything familiar. It felt too old. That wasn't to say that the Forbidden Forest felt young, it had always had the feeling that it had existed in some form or another since the Founders, but this forest felt older. No, that wasn't the word for it, it felt as if it was a living breathing thing engaged in the present moment as it had been engaged in all moments for thousands of years. The Forbidden Forest Harry knew was nothing more than this place's shadow.
The floating lights that had lured away Tom Riddle lit her path and guided Harry forward. Each time they moved they tinkled, as if tiny bells and wind chimes were hidden inside them. Otherwise there was no sound in this place, not even from Harry's footsteps or breathing.
Her left hand twitched, feeling ludicrously empty even while the other gripped her wand, like she should have been carrying that sword and bow she'd picked up from Ireland. Even though the wand was by far her greatest and most reliable weapon, she somehow felt like she was walking into this fight empty handed.
She glanced to her left, her patronus stag was walking next to her, solid once again as it nimbly navigated the forest path. Riding on it, looking grim but not necessarily deterred, was the glowing Tom Riddle clutching at his wounded shoulder.
He looked surprisingly natural. She'd have thought, colorless and glowing as he was, with his hair and eyes especially translucent, that it wouldn't be a good look for him. Tom Riddle was practically defined by his dark hair and striking eyes, and yet, even without all that he was just as striking as ever if not more so.
She had no idea what he was thinking.
For the first ten paces, as she'd followed the other Tom out the window, she hadn't worried about that. She couldn't say she'd really been thinking anything except that she was going to rescue him. She didn't think about getting rid of Voldemort, about her own narrow escape last time, about whether he deserved it, or anyone deserved it. There'd somehow been no room for those thoughts.
There still wasn't room for doubt, any true consideration that she should turn back while she still could, but as they'd stepped into the woods, she'd started to wonder just why the other one was following her so easily. Had he wanted her to go the whole time and just put up a token resistance? Had he just given up because he knew he wouldn't get anywhere? He'd sounded like he wanted to leave his younger self to his fate, and though she knew he was probably a great actor, something about the way he said it made her believe it. He'd been… too bitter and amused by the idea, and what he'd said, that Tom Riddle was about to get everything he ever wanted.
Harry had no idea what Tom Riddle or Voldemort had ever truly wanted. Sure, he talked about immortality and power a lot but those were such… vague evil concepts that Harry wasn't quite sure anyone could believe in. When brain Tom had said that… She didn't think he'd say something like that if he just wanted to play her. Except shouldn't Tom Riddle of all people be looking out for Tom Riddle?
And why did it feel like he was more here to keep her out of trouble than to save his former self?
But if she just asked him, he'd never come out and tell her. Well, no, that was the trouble, she had asked, and his answer had been a very understandable if Tom Riddle answer. He helped her because he lived inside her head and didn't want to be homeless and dead. Except they both knew that wasn't the real reason because whatever the real reason was either Harry wouldn't believe it or it was secretly evil.
And if she just kept asking what he was doing this for he'd probably just say the same damn thing. Despite herself she opened her mouth, ready to bite the bullet and just do it.
"What do you think they'll want?" was what came out instead. She winced, wishing she could take the words back, her voice was too loud. She felt like everyone in the world had just heard what she'd said and was hanging on every word.
He looked at her for a moment in appraisal, pale eyebrows raised as if he was silently asking her the same thing, if she really wanted him to blather out his thoughts to the enemy. Finally, he said, "He's a hostage, so I don't think they'll have killed him, and they won't have taken him past the point of no return yet either. As for what they'll do… The fair folk have certain rules they must abide by, often, whatever games they play require your consent. It won't be another hunt unless you agree to it."
Harry didn't know if that was a good thing or not. Besides, he said consent, but she had the feeling he meant to say something else. She felt like consent, for the fair folk, was a very loose concept that meant whatever you thought it did. Like they believed putting a love potion in someone's drink was the same thing as getting 'consent' because the poor fool had gone and swallowed it. Consent was whatever they could trick you into agreeing to without thinking about what it really meant.
That was how they'd got her last time.
She opened her mouth, but he silently put a finger to his lips. He held it there for only a second, then let it fall and rest back on the antlers in front of him and turned his head to stare forward toward their destination. She blanched, wondering if he'd known what she was going to ask somehow, if he knew before she even knew what she was going to say and had decided it was too much information.
She'd always thought she was different from Voldemort. Oh, sure, they had things in common, a shared history and upbringing, but at their hearts they were very different creatures. She thought that when you got down to it just as she would never understand him then he could never truly understand her. They were fundamentally different, they had to be.
She wondered if this one knew how terrifying he was, because he seemed to always know exactly what she was thinking and appeared to think nothing of it. She wondered if he was even aware of it, or if to him, after living inside her brain so long it came as naturally as breathing.
If he betrayed her, would Harry ever really see it coming?
No, focus, Harry had to focus. She could worry about him, certainly would worry about him, after all this was over and they were back in Hogwarts.
The lights all bobbed at once, hidden bells clanging in unison. Harry started, nearly fell over, and watched warily as the lights formed a procession, hopping in unison as they drifted together to form a great sphere of light. Then, when they were all joined, the bright miniature sun floated upwards.
Harry shielded her eyes against it, trying and failing to keep it in sight, and only when it dimmed could she look again. It faded and shrunk until it was the size of an orange then dropped gently into the pale outstretched hand of the faerie king.
"Welcome back, fair traveler."
He was just as beautiful as he'd been when she first saw him, too inhumanly beautiful to be anything pleasant, and not a single hair out of place from the hunt or crossing the sea from Ireland to Scotland.
As if merely seeing him pulled her closer into his world, a throne, carved from oak and decorated in holly, emerged behind him on a raised dais. Below them, hiding under the roots and in the hollows of trees, were thousands of black glittering eyes watching with rapt attention.
However, the one person Harry was looking for was nowhere in sight.
"Where is he?" Harry asked, itching to raise her wand and only just keeping it at her side.
"Where is who?" the man asked, settling into his throne as he surveyed her.
"You know who," Harry spat back, and if it was any other moment, she might be laughing at the irony that for once it was Harry Potter who dared not speak the Dark Lord's name. Never, in her life, had she willingly used that stupid moniker.
"The boy you just took," Harry amended, "What did you do with him?"
The king, if anything, looked bored by her statement, "Don't you mean to ask what you did with him?"
"No," Harry said shortly, "I don't."
The king tilted his head, that birdlike movement where his dark eyes never left her face, "Strange, you appear to have brought him with you. Or, perhaps it is not him at all, but merely an echo of his soul that you've guarded inside that mortal flesh."
The Tom from the scar said nothing, more, his face revealed nothing. As soon as the faerie had revealed himself, he'd stopped showing any emotion at all. Instead he just glowed softly and silently, as if he really was nothing more than a shadow of Tom Riddle's wayward soul.
"You have made him far more than mortal," the king mused, "But, I suppose we're all allowed our mortal paramours."
Paramour? Did Harry know what that even meant? She… No, he couldn't possibly be suggesting what she thought he was suggesting. Harry felt her face flush bright red as she realized that he meant exactly what she thought he meant. He thought that Harry and Tom Riddle, Harry and Voldemort were—because of the scar thing and—oh no.
Harry opened her mouth but only a glance at the glowing Tom's face, at his burning eyes that just dared her to open her mouth and feed information to the enemy, kept her from blabbering away and swearing that it wasn't like that and if it was then it was all his fault for invading her head in the first place.
Harry had to bite her lip to hold it in, breathe in and out, will herself to relax and recover before she could say, "I know what he's doing here! I want to know about the other one!"
"He is in our keeping," the king acknowledged, but he said nothing more than that, waiting instead for Harry to do something with that information.
Except, what was she supposed to do with that? It couldn't just be as easy as asking, could it?
"Then can I have him back?" Harry asked, holding out a hand as if he could push Tom Riddle into it.
"You could, perhaps," the king acknowledged, "But I have no desire to simply hand him over when we went through such trouble to find him."
"Why not?"
"Would you have come back otherwise?"
So, glowing Tom had been right, they'd kidnapped him to get at her. Because, for some reason, they wanted her, and they wanted her badly. The question was, how badly was badly? Was this just a whim for them, some passing fancy? It could be, Slytherin's notes had mentioned that the fair folk were very obsessive like that, but Harry didn't think it was.
They hadn't been waiting for her in Ireland, she didn't think so at least, but when she'd arrived…
They hadn't looked surprised and there'd been no question of simply letting her walk back out either. They'd never intended her to leave and had gone through more than the usual bag of tricks (drinking wine, making bad bargains, etc.) to keep her there.
Perhaps Harry was just feeling lucky again, perhaps she was out of ideas, but Harry was willing to call that bluff.
"You're not thinking about this the right way," Harry said, putting all the confidence and bravado she'd ever had into the words, "I'm not back, not the way you want me back, I'm just here to get what you took from me. And if you don't fork him over then I'm not sure what I'm going to end up doing."
And she meant that, she really didn't know what she was going to do. The only thing that made it feel like a real threat was that whenever Harry didn't know what she was doing it all tended to go downhill. The philosopher's stone, the chamber of secrets, the tournament, the department of mysteries: Harry running around like a chicken with its head cut off causing massive amount of destruction and pain wherever she went. Nobody wanted Harry Potter getting desperate here.
He laughed. He threw his head back and let out that strange bell-like laughter, "You would never find him without us. If you destroy our kingdom, as you have the potential to destroy all things, then you would destroy him with us. He is ours and I'm afraid you cannot simply take him back."
She felt… Suddenly, it was as if she was only eleven again and she was in the final chamber with the Mirror of Erised and Quirrell. She was staring into it, at her own winking reflection shoving the stone into her pocket, lying through her teeth, just as Voldemort's breathy voice gleefully said, "She lies."
In that moment, for a flash, there had been utter terror as Quirrell reached out for her. There had also been rage, blinding all-consuming rage, at the tone of Voldemort's voice. The tone that found her at once pathetic and amusing, that she would dare try to fool the dark lord and keep such a powerful tool out of his possession. The tone that stated more than words ever would that everything Harry fought for and believed in amounted to nothing and that he would strip it from her without any effort at all.
Only this time, instead of Ron, Hermione, and the stone, the king believed he could swat her like a bug, stuff her in a jar, and keep Tom Riddle as his pet.
Her vision narrowed. It grew black around the edges, blurred as if her glasses had fallen off, and began to pulse with the pounding of her heartbeat in her head. Her hands suddenly felt dry and hot, as if she was holding them up to a roaring fire, and all she could hear was the sound of that laughter…
"Then it appears we're at an impasse."
Harry blinked, her vision cleared again, and she watched as the glowing Tom dismounted from the stag to stand beside her. She let out her breath, unaware that she'd been holding it. That had been… That had been a little too close for comfort.
"The boy only got you this far," Tom explained, motioning to the dais, "Without anything else to bargain with, there's nothing in the world that will bind us to the other side."
"Yet," the king said mildly, "You will not depart back for the mortal world without him."
"That's not the same thing as staying," Tom chided with a smile, shaking his head as if he was almost amused, "I'm afraid we can both lose this game."
For a moment the king considered this, considered her and Tom standing together, finally he laced his fingers together and asked, "And what would you propose?"
"Precisely that," Tom said with a grin, "A game."
Oh no.
Did he know what he was doing? She wanted to scream at him, tell him that this was exactly what he'd told her to avoid. Any game they played the king was guaranteed to bend it to his advantage. What did he think he was doing?
If he wanted to stab her in the back, there were easier ways of doing it that she never would have seen coming!
Why would he—
He didn't look at her, he kept his eyes on the king, but for a moment she swore that he had. She felt the aftereffects of him looking at her, if that made sense, as if he'd only just now turned his head back and left the memory of his eyes burning in hers.
They hadn't pleaded for trust, hadn't even asked for it, instead there was an endless confidence and determination in them that left no room for doubt. As if to say whatever path they walked, they'd been walking, they would always walk it together.
For nearly sixteen years he'd been inside her and for better or worse they'd made it this far together.
Harry, for the moment, kept her mouth shut.
"A game?" the king asked, magpie eyes bright as if he knew he had already won.
"A riddle competition," Tom answered, "If we win, we depart with the boy's body and soul and you never seek him or the girl in any form again, if you win then the girl's mortal soul and body are yours for eternity."
"Oh, and what about you?" the king asked, "What happens to you should the pair of you fail?"
"I follow the girl," he said as if it should have been obvious, "Where she goes, I go."
Harry felt as if all the blood had just left her body. A riddle competition, as in, a competition with riddles… What happened to him knowing her inside and out? What happened to being terrified he'd outsmart her because he knew everything about her? Didn't he realize she was pants at riddles?!
Harry let out a wordless, desperate, laugh that felt like it should have been a sob.
She was going to be sold into slavery to a bunch of evil faeries because Tom Riddle was a stupid asshole who hadn't even bothered to ask her opinion.
What about a boulder throwing competition? Or catching shiny objects from midair? Or literally anything that wasn't a battle of wits between Harry "I just failed History of Magic" Potter and a millennia old ancient being?!
"A riddle competition," the king mused, "Yes, the girl and I shall take part, answering one after the other. You shall watch alongside your other half—"
And if there was any chance in hell that Tom Riddle had this in the bag, he'd screwed her over now. God, why did Tom Riddle always screw her over?! Why?!
"Whoever fails to answer first loses the game and all the stakes that come with it," the king said with a grin, "Are the terms agreeable?"
No! No they were not agreeable! No—
"Yes," Tom Riddle said for her.
Oh, she was going to kill him. She was going to find a way to enter her brain with occlumency and murder that son of a bitch. It was too late though, with a snap of his fingers Harry's prize appeared. The other Tom Riddle fell out of thin air, crashed to the ground in a daze.
His eyes were wide and dilated, his cheeks flushed, and it looked like he couldn't even see her. His head lolled backwards, his eyes blinking as he tried and failed to focus on her, as if she were a particularly hard problem whose answer he couldn't quite make out.
He looked drugged out of his mind and anything but Tom Riddle.
"As the challenged party," the king stated, "I will go first."
Great, Harry had been really hoping he'd say that. She'd really been hoping she wouldn't have just one, first, shot at getting out of this mess.
"I run through hills; I veer around mountains. I leap over rivers and crawl through the forests. Step out your door to find me. What am I?"
As his words ended tittering began, the unseen woodland creatures laughing as Harry opened and closed her mouth, as her mind went everywhere and nowhere searching for an answer.
She felt like she was sitting her end of term exams again, and, just like every year, she'd forgotten to study because she was too busy facing down Voldemort. It was just like looking down at the written part of the Potions' exam and realizing she had no idea what half those ingredients even were.
The answer wasn't even just out of reach, it just wasn't there period.
Running through hills, veering around mountains, leaping across rivers: why did that just sound like "The Sound of Music"?
"Well," the king prompted, his grin growing sharper by the second.
Oh god, she needed that answer. Merlin, Jesus, somebody send her a sign!
Harry opened her mouth against her will, her lack of answer being drawn from her, and all she could do was take a breath and—
"Roads"
"Roads," Harry said out loud, watching as the smile fell away, replaced by a puzzled frown.
Harry blinked, where—Where had that come from? It had just popped into her head at the last second. Not like she'd suddenly realized it, or she'd always known it, but just the clear and undeniable vision of dirt road stretching out beyond her front door.
Had she really managed to come up with that?
Right, that meant it was Harry's turn. Harry's turn… Merlin, did she know any riddles? Well, she knew a particularly vexing Riddle by the name of Tom but he didn't count. Did asking him something like, "What did I have for breakfast yesterday?" count or would he tear off her head and announce she was a dirty cheater.
And it had to be something hard enough that he might not—
Just like before Harry found an idea suddenly in her head and the words just tumbling out, "You walk up to a mountain that has two paths. One leads to the other side of the mountain, and the other will get you lost forever. Two twins know the path that leads to the other side. You can only ask them one question. Except, one always lies and one always tell the truth, and you don't know which it is. So, what do you ask?"
That was… How had Harry come up with that one? That wasn't your typical "I'm red, white, and blue all over: what am I?" type of a riddle. That was long, and confusing, and had she even understood what she just said? It was almost as if—
Harry's eyes bulged as she finally caught on. She didn't dare look at him, didn't dare acknowledge what was happening, but she slowly realized that Tom Riddle was feeding her answers.
She felt… it wasn't a brush, it wasn't a physical sensation, but it felt like a cat had just rubbed against her legs in reassurance. A gentle reminder that the glowing Tom Riddle was there, just as he had always been there, and she wasn't alone in this. More, for the first time since she'd found out about him, that was somehow a comforting thought.
This was how Harry was going to win, not by winning herself, but by deflecting attention away from Tom Riddle who could win a game of wits.
The king, however, apparently wasn't as stupid as Harry, "You ask each twin what the brother would say. The liar knows that his brother is honest, he knows his brother would state the correct path, and thus state the other. The honest brother, however, would give that same answer as he knows what his lying brother would state. You therefore take the opposite path."
… Harry wasn't entirely sure she understood that, but she was going to go ahead and say that was the correct answer.
"I have a little house in which I live all alone. It has no doors or windows, and if I want to go out I must break through the wall. What am I?"
This time Harry didn't even bother to think. Instead she tried to remember Snape's occlumency advice, the few times she'd felt she'd almost grasp it. Don't think, don't feel, just sink into yourself and let the wave of your thoughts wash over you like the tide…
She could feel Tom thinking, the wheels of his mind spinning somewhere inside hers, and finally the way they clicked together when he came up with his answer. She said it the same time he thought it, "A chick inside an egg."
By the look on the king's face, Harry, well brain Tom, was on fire.
They needed to end this though. She couldn't quite tell, but she had the feeling that Tom felt these riddles were a little too easy, like the bastard was just toying with her for shits and giggles before he pulled out the stuff even Tom wouldn't be able to answer. Even if she could rely on him, they were fighting a losing game the longer they played.
She could feel brain Tom rummaging inside his head and hers, searching for the riddle that even someone like the king wouldn't know. It wasn't really a pleasant feeling, it felt like her memory kept getting jogged, and she suddenly found herself thinking of all sorts of unrelated things like Dudley, Hermione, and what she had for breakfast that day before the Department of Mysteries fiasco. Merlin, did he have access to everything in there? She hadn't wanted to think about it but she was starting to realize he had things like every memory of her ever in the shower. That was something you didn't want any incarnation of Tom Riddle having.
Still, Tom didn't give up, like he just knew if he looked around long enough, he'd find—
And it was like he suddenly remembered something incredibly obvious, as if he'd just remembered he was holding his wand the entire time he'd been searching for it. The reason he'd picked a riddle competition wasn't just because he was smart or it was in his name, it was because he'd had the perfect riddle.
Once again, Harry didn't understand what he shoved into her head, but she didn't hesitate to say it either, "I am a door never meant to be opened with a warning no one will ever read but was once spoken. I do not die but am only ever referred to as something that lives. I have a name but it's not my name. What am I really?"
For the first time, the king looked truly stunned. At first, he was simply confused, and then his face began to pale as the answer didn't immediately come to him. Harry, of course, was right there along with him and she knew what the answer was supposed to be.
Well, no, even the Tom in her head didn't know the answer, he just knew the right question.
The answer that was almost the answer, but not good enough, was Harry Lily Potter. The door, the girl-who-lived, the girl with the name Harry whose true essence wasn't really Harry was Harry Lily Potter. Except, even if the king knew that name, that wasn't good enough.
It was a question that presumably had an answer, except it also didn't, because the answer was ineffable. Because Harry Lily Potter was something that could not be known.
Except that Harry was bloody Harry and even she didn't understand what the hell Tom was getting at! Hadn't she told him that the girl-who-lived thing was garbage that nobody—
She felt a cold dart of realization flow through her.
That was the point.
Nobody knew what it meant. Not the fair folk, not Tom, not Dumbledore, and not even Harry herself. Whatever it was, whatever the girl-who-lived really was, no one understood it. That's what Tom had been trying to tell her and what he firmly believed.
Maybe it was because he felt so close in her head right then, and maybe it was because he made her say it, but for the first time she finally understood what he'd meant.
Whatever that power was, it had existed long before her, long enough that the fair folk had probably encountered it when it wasn't Harry Potter. And for all their games, all their arrogance and desire, they had never once called it by its name, because they didn't know it either.
Dumbledore could talk about love all he wanted, Tom Riddle could talk about power and destiny, people could spin out conspiracy theories and try to put together what had happened, but they never would even graze the real answer. They never would because the very nature of the girl-who-lived's true power was unknowable.
There were no answers for her here or anywhere else and that was why Tom Riddle had just won the riddle game.
Except, she thought to herself, that she was pretty sure the answer was always going to be "Just Harry". She didn't care about her mysterious powers, if she even really had them, and she didn't care what people expected of her. She always wanted to be, aspired to be, and promised she would be just Harry.
Neither Tom Riddle nor the king though would ever think of that kind of answer though. Which meant, that Harry Potter had just won the riddle game.
"Well?" Harry prompted with her own grin, holding out a hand, "I think this means you have to hand him over."
She didn't even have a second to gloat though. As soon as she finished her sentence the king, the eyes, everything was gone. They floated away as dust on the wind, restoring the Forbidden Forest back to its prior shape, and just as they promised left the human Tom Riddle behind.
It was a gentle, almost soothing, gait. For a while now, he couldn't remember how long, it had not been so soothing. Instead everything had been rough, bright, and jarring as he'd been tossed here and there. It had felt endless, even though he knew it hadn't always been like that, as if he was always going to be battered about by unseen elements.
Now though, it was comfortably dark again, the light a softer bearable glow and he was carried forward by an unseen tide.
And as if from very far away familiar voices drifted to him.
"Why are you still solid anyway?"
"Hm?"
"Well, now that we're back on this side of reality shouldn't you be all wispy again? Not that I even know what reality is anymore, I swear, my life just keeps getting weirder. Remember those good old days where I just went to Hogwarts and tried to pass my exams? Yeah, I remember them too…"
"The solstice isn't over yet."
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"It means that metaphors, things like me, have a little more presence than usual. I'm afraid you may have to put up with me until sunrise."
"What, not midnight?"
"Not everything ends at midnight, Harry."
Yes, he knew both voices, and if he wasn't so tired, he'd be able to place them. The first, the girl's, he knew very well. She sounded tired, but relaxed, as if she had been on edge but had just become at ease with herself. Somehow, this made him feel better.
The man was harder. Something about it made Tom uncomfortable, not enough to open his eyes and break the lull that had come over him, but enough to nag at him. He knew that voice, but it was almost as if he 'almost' knew that voice. Like it was familiar to something he should remember.
"… Is he going to be okay?"
"I don't know," that second voice said, considering, "I think, given that it's him, and given that you're you… He'll likely recover."
"What does that mean?"
A small, fond, laugh, "It means I've learned not to underestimate you."
"No, seriously, what does that even mean?" she insisted.
He paused for a while before answering, "It's probably best not to think about it too much."
"Yeah, I tried that, it worked out great."
"It means… You have great power, Harry. True, it's only brought you trouble, and you never asked for it, but you have it none the less."
"Is that supposed to be comforting?"
"It's supposed to be honest."
Another long pause, to the point where Tom almost forgot there were voices at all, then, "You were going to ask that riddle from the start, weren't you? I can't believe that worked, I never would have fallen for that."
"Oh?"
"The answer was obviously 'Harry"
"The answer is not obviously Harry, Harry. That's the point."
"No, you all seem to think I'm some sort of… I don't know, Female Wizard Action Jesus. And sure, weird things happen to me, and I maybe sometimes can do things others can't, but that doesn't mean—"
"Are we really arguing about this?"
"I'm just saying that you, my glowing friend, got really lucky back there."
"Well, if I hadn't, I'm sure you would have come up with something."
"You mean I would have had to blow up the underground or something."
"Or something."
The tide stopped gently, and with it the sound of their footsteps, "Well, thank you anyway. I mean… I don't know why you did it, and I'm not saying I trust you now, and I don't know if you did it for me or for him but—Thanks, I guess is what I want to say."
"You say that like I'm going somewhere."
"Aren't you?!"
"Sunrise, Harry, I likely have until sunrise."
"Oh…" another long pause, "Are you sure you can't disappear or something? I'm, um, kind of out of things to say."
"Strange, I'm not."
"Oh, great. Can we deal with him first?"
At that Tom felt himself lifted, with none of the prior gentleness, into the air and then dragged across the floor. He moaned discontentedly, grimacing at the sound of her cursing and hitting the door frame. She knocked his head roughly against the wood, causing his eyes to fly open, and cry out, "Would you watch it?!"
She did anything but watch it though as instead she dropped him on the floor and shrieked, "Oh my god he's awake!"
"And you're going to give him a concussion."
Tom glared upwards, forcing himself to focus, and took in two faces. The first, the girl's, he knew. Yes, he knew exactly who that was, that was Harry Evans. He felt a sense of relief at that, as if just seeing her alive and well meant that something had gone alright. The second…
He moved his head, but the other face didn't move like a reflection would. It was… No, it wasn't quite his face, it was a little different, and it was glowing. Except, it looked exactly like his face.
"Why isn't he saying anything?" Harry asked the other Tom desperately.
"Perhaps he's also run out of things to say," the other Tom said to her, and funny, that's exactly what he would have said.
"Are you serious?!" and that was just what Harry would say too, wasn't it, with exactly that expression.
Harry, he'd had something to say to Harry, hadn't he? It was hard to remember, then again, it was hard to remember anything. All of it seemed so terribly unimportant and he was so very tired.
Still, Harry made everything feel important, so he tried to remember even as Harry continued dragging him into the room with the other Tom closing the door behind both him and a glowing white stag.
When had the stag gotten there?
Harry continued dragging him along, either oblivious to or unconcerned by their company, and finally dropped him onto a large and very comfortable bed. That was nice of her.
She was always so strangely thoughtful like that, gracious, even to those who had treated her so poorly. It was part of what he liked so much about her, that she'd come and find him, even though it was him.
He hadn't been worried, earlier, because he'd known she was coming. She wouldn't be able to help herself just as she hadn't after that dreadful party.
"Harry," he said slowly.
Her eyes flew to his, so wide and so green, he reached a hand to touch her face and just as his fingers brushed her cheek he remembered, "Harry, I think you're probably my sister."
Her mouth fell open, her eyes became impossibly wider, "Huh?"
"I figured it out while you were away, you're probably my sister, or at the very least my cousin."
"Huh?!"
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked, feeling a pout form on his lips, "You were always avoiding me, always wary of me, even in the very beginning. It was very rude, you know. You could have just told me."
Her face turned very strange colors, first it became very pale, and then at once extremely red.
"Of course," Tom continued, "I guess maybe you didn't want to tell me for the same reason I didn't want to tell you. You're not supposed to fancy family."
Harry's head slowly turned away from his to look over her shoulder at the other Tom Riddle slowly walking towards them.
"Not that I ever thought I would fancy anybody," Tom continued, trying to draw Harry's attention back to him, "To be honest, I'm not sure I like it, it's a bit exhausting. But I guess there's just no helping it, even with the incest… Maybe the incest makes it more exciting, I've always coveted things that say 'do not touch'."
Before, he'd wondered what that said about him, now he was too tired to care.
Harry grimaced as she looked down at him, looking she was holding back a torrent of angry words, and finally said, "Riddle, Tom, we're not related."
"Of course we're related," Tom said, as if she was being willfully stupid, "You're a parselmouth."
Harry let out a loud and extremely vulgar curse that was impressive even for her.
"He's got you there," the other Tom Riddle said, radiating amusement at Harry's expense. That was very rude of him, Tom thought to himself, he had to know that this had caused Tom days of distress. He should be supporting himself in his time of need.
"How did he even—"
"Chamber of secrets," the other Tom said dully, and that appeared to be enough for Harry to realize the painfully obvious clues she had given.
"Riddle, you're not thinking clearly," Harry said, attempting to be sweet, "You were given fairie roofies."
"I don't even know what that—"
"It means you're going to sleep now and we're going to pretend this whole day never happened."
"But I—"
Unfortunately for him, Harry wasn't given "faerie roofies", and hit him with a sleep spell before he even knew what happened. However, he knew even then, that when he woke up he wouldn't forget any of this.
Harry slumped into a chair as soon as she'd hit the young Tom Riddle with the sleeping charm. She let out an exhausted sigh, closed her eyes, and looked as if she was two seconds from falling asleep right then and there.
It was strange, he thought, she looked as if she belonged in this room. The Slytherin prefect's dorm room held so many memories for him, a beloved retreat and his first true refuge of solitude inside the castle. He'd spent many nights curled up with books by the fire in that very chair. Yet, here Harry Potter was, sitting in a place where Tom Riddle never invited anyone.
He imagined she would stay seated right there until morning and the other Tom Riddle woke up again.
He moved his shoulder, winced instinctively, then looked down at it curiously. The open wound was gone, somehow, in all that excitement it had healed over. Perhaps by winning that riddle competition, by having the king relinquish power over his soul…
"I can't believe he thinks I'm his sister."
Harry had her head buried in her hands, long dark hair obscuring all of her features, but he could just imagine the despair on her face.
"How does he think I'm his sister?!"
Of all the things to happen, of all the truths she'd been forced to confront and tentative alliances she'd had to form, of course she would be focusing on that.
"Because being a parsemlouth is a rare hereditary ability," he said, unable to help his smile, "And given everything he knows, it's really the most obvious answer."
"How is it obvious?!" Harry asked.
Tom decided to take pity on her and sat down across from her, noting, "Harry, only an utter moron could possibly stumble upon the truth. The fact that you're a parselmouth because you are first, from the future, and second, have a small fraction of his soul lodged in your head from a curse you should never have survived in the first place is the dumbest thing I've ever heard."
Harry didn't seem to know quite what to make of that, "I mean, when you put it like that—"
"There's no other way to put it," he said, "Not to mention that no one has ever survived time travel more than twenty-four hours back let alone decades. Of course, he would reasonably conclude that you're closely related."
"No way," Harry said, "That's just the drugs talking. All of this is…"
She trailed off, flushed, likely remembering the other more romantic aspect of Tom Riddle's drugged blathering. That his love was so powerful that not even the taboo of possible incest could turn him away now. Tom never knew that he had been such a romantic.
Tom had to say, he hadn't seen that one coming either.
He knew one thing though; the delirious state might have prompted the blunt honesty but it hadn't prompted the thoughts in and of themselves. Tom Riddle, for whatever unfathomable reason, liked Harry Potter.
And her great power, that he was slowly but surely piecing together, would only be used to justify those feelings. After all, Tom could never like something ordinary, could he?
"I just wish I could forget all of that," Harry said, "How am I supposed to even talk to him tomorrow?"
That, at least, Tom could answer, "Simple, just focus on getting him to teach you the mind arts."
She looked hesitant, almost wary, "Oh, you know about that?"
"Harry, I live in your head, I know—"
"Right, right," Harry cut him off dismissively, "You know everything. Forgive me, I forgot for a moment that I don't have any actual privacy."
She sighed, then looked at him again, as if trying to piece him together, "And you're okay with that?"
What could he possibly say to that? It wasn't quite the 'yes' or 'no' answer she was looking for. However, weighing his answers would get him nowhere with Harry. She appreciated swift and thoughtless honesty, the unvarnished truth of the matter, and he owed her nothing less.
How to say it though?
The truth was, Harry was better at occlumency than she or anyone else knew, as she tended to be at all things. True, she hadn't guarded all her secrets, but then that had never been the point. The one secret Severus Snape had truly been looking for in her mind, Tom Riddle staining it like a corruption, he had never found in all their occlumency lessons.
Instead Harry had sacrificed her unhappy childhood, had counterattacked and wandered Snape's worst moments, and had left him thinking that he'd seen everything she didn't want him to see. And he had, just not all the secrets she really possessed.
However, she could always stand to be better and rely on more than simple, thoughtless, instinct.
"I think it would be a very good idea to become as good at occlumency as you possibly can."
She didn't ask why, what threat exactly he was looking for, and he wondered if he'd let enough slip that she consciously knew. It wasn't just Voldemort she had to be wary of, Dumbledore too, was someone to keep an eye on.
Instead she just sighed again, "Yeah, I guess I can distract him with that. It's… It's still weird though. Except he didn't mean it, I mean, nobody really likes me."
"You're selling yourself short," Tom chided, but she wouldn't believe him.
She scoffed, "No, I'm not. I mean, hell, if he weren't secretly evil and all that he'd be the Cedric Diggory of his year. Girls like me don't end up with guys like him, I learned that the hard way."
"Now you're selling him short," Tom said with a small laugh, "Harry, he's not in it just for how you look."
"Oh, so my charming personality then?"
"I'd imagine so," Tom acknowledged, "As well as the fact that you willingly threw yourself into mortal peril simply to save his life and would be more than willing to do it again."
Tom Riddle might not like it when he realized he'd just played the damsel in distress, in fact he just might die of embarrassment, but he would probably acknowledge that if he were to want anyone in the world it would be a hero like Harry.
Or, perhaps, he'd like her for the same reason that Tom himself had forsaken all hopes and dreams of himself for her. Because Harry Potter was fundamentally and unapologetically good.
That was the trouble though, Tom Riddle, and how much she'd changed him.
"Hey, Riddle?" she asked, breaking him from his thoughts, "I meant it when I said thanks. Honest."
"I know," he said and then fondly, "Get some sleep, Harry, I promise I'll be gone in the morning."
Author's Note: Did this chapter primarily exist to get Tom Riddle drunk enough to blab all his dark and terrible secrets? I leave that to your imagination, readers. Next, both of our heroes in denial about everything and trying to pretend they're normal people leading normal lives.
Thanks to readers and reviewers, reviews are appreciated.
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter
