"It is so nice when you can sit with someone and not have to talk."
- When Harry Met Sally
December, 1942
Harry started with the simple, barely legible, words, "Dear Alphard,"
Harry's quill hung over the parchment, waiting for the rest of the words, the words which didn't come. Instead, three drops of ink fell onto the parchment and created several messy blots.
"Bugger," Harry muttered, swishing her wand and drawing all the ink out of the paper and back into the jar.
She started again, "Dear Alphard,"
This time, being an older and wiser Harry Potter, she immediately set her quill back into the ink jar and stared down at the damningly blank letter in front of her. Harry had figured when she'd left Hogwarts for the term that she wouldn't have to write this letter.
Harry had figured a lot of things.
She'd honestly thought she'd be back to the future by this point, that the fair folk would be cooperative and friendly instead of the creepiest things that ever did walk the face of the earth, and that her biggest concerns would be fighting off Death Eaters in the Department of Mysteries.
Instead she was suffering from Tom Riddle in the head, on a desperate quest to teach herself occlumency before it was too late, had been chased by evil fairies twice, had no future according to Dumbledore unless she raised those Potions scores, and was still suffering from Tom Riddle in the same castle as her.
And she had to write a letter to Alphard Black where she could tell him absolutely none of this.
Well, she didn't have to write the letter.
She'd promised though, hadn't meant it since she thought she wouldn't exist in 1942 by the time a letter even reached him, but now that she was stuck here for the holidays, she felt like she should honor that promise.
Which meant that she should probably write that damn letter because Alfie was the only real friend she had in this bloody place.
The only other person even close enough to be a friend was Tom Riddle, perish the thought.
The trouble was that somehow, possibly due to the fates themselves conspiring against her, it was much easier to be honest with Tom Riddle than it was with Alphard. Well, no, that wasn't exactly true. One Tom Riddle knew everything by virtue of being in her head, was probably laughing over her pitiful attempts to write this letter right now, and the other Tom Riddle…
Well, it wasn't so much that she told him anything or meant to tell him anything, he just somehow kept being in the right place at the right time.
Like with the whole chamber of secrets thing and then this latest him getting kidnapped and drugged by fairies thing…
Yeah, that whole thing. Harry, ever since that awkward morning after, had been desperately trying not to think of that thing.
Upon waking up at sunrise before Riddle, she'd confirmed that glowing Riddle had disappeared with her patronus again, and then booked it out of his room as fast as she could. She'd taken the world's fastest shower, used all of those half-remembered tips from Lavender to make it look like she'd never even seen the woods let alone gone running through them the night before, and then booked it to the Slytherin table to eat a healthy, normal, breakfast.
When Tom had finally stumbled in, looking as if he'd spent all night in a muggle rave, she'd lied to his face and said, "Gee, Tom, thank you so much for your help teaching me occlumency yesterday. That hallucinogenic incense you bought was kind of weird though, not sure I want to partake in that again. In fact, I threw all of it out, so you'll never ever find it and we'll just have to study occlumency like they did before Woodstock. But wow did we take a trip, a pretty radical trip, and did you know you have a little sister fetish? Because I now know you have a little sister fetish and I can never unknow that, Riddle."
Riddle hadn't said anything though. He'd looked at her like she'd sprouted two heads, plopped down in his seat and dumbly reached out for the orange juice, then said, "Harry—"
And then he said nothing.
And Harry had just said, "So, occlumency?"
"Sure," had been his lame response.
If he was overwhelmed by his sexual, taboo, attraction for her then he hadn't said anything about it since. In fact, he hadn't said much of anything in the days since. Christmas Eve was nearly upon them and other than a really awkward meeting she had with Slughorn (where he suddenly expressed interests in her grades, future, position on the Slytherin quidditch team, and cordially reinvited her to January's slug club once term started up) Harry's days were spent sitting across from Riddle in the chamber of secrets, neither talking to him nor looking at him while he neither talked to nor looked at her.
Sometimes he'd look at her face for a few seconds but then he'd suddenly move his eyes to star blankly at the wall. Harry didn't exactly blame him, after you confessed to liking Harry Evans, after you confessed to liking Harry Evans even when you somehow thought you were related, well you couldn't exactly top that.
Harry had had a lot of embarrassing moments in her life: confessing to Cedric Diggory, taking Ron to the Yule Ball, appearing with Dudley in public but that was… Harry, frankly, felt embarrassed for him. Well, maybe not embarrassed, but she felt something that was sweaty, uncomfortable, and… And she didn't know what, except whatever it was she couldn't stare directly at his too perfect face for too long.
Which brought her to this fantastic moment inside the chamber of secret's gloomy library. Where she shoved aside the books Riddle had given her, the books he claimed were somehow better than the ones Harry could pull off the shelf herself, and wrote a letter back to Alphard.
Because god help her, even though she had no idea what to say, it was better than this.
Except, where did she even start? What could she possibly even tell Alphard?
Well, she could always start with the bare facts.
"Well, I ended up in Hogwarts for the holidays after all. Things didn't really work out with my friends—"
Wasn't that the understatement of the century?
"And I ended up back at school since, you know, not exactly on good terms with my relatives."
She'd told him that, right? She knew she'd brought up the Dursleys to Riddle but she must have said something to Alphard? Oh Merlin, she was actually blanking, she had no idea if she'd given Riddle that kind of privileged information but not Alphard.
That felt like a very bad sign of something.
Desperately, she continued.
"Riddle is—"
She immediately stopped.
She set her quill aside, rung out her hands, and looked desperately at her surroundings for inspiration. Her surroundings, other than dusty old books that had never helped Harry with much of anything from time travel to the nastiness of fairies, mostly consisted of Tom Riddle. He wasn't looking at her for once, was instead silently flipping through one of the many books he'd collected on the mind arts.
He was a million miles away from her, further than when she'd taken him back from the fair folk, and Harry knew if she left him to it he wouldn't come back until hours from now when he finally got too hungry to concentrate.
She felt a billion secrets she could never say scramble to her fingertips as if begging to be written.
Riddle thinks I'm secretly closely related to him because he figured out I talk to snakes, have a shitty non-muggle family, don't like him, can apparate through Hogwarts, and have dark hair.
Riddle is dead wrong about all that, but I can't tell him that because the truth could destroy the universe and he'd never believe it anyway. I should just tell him his mother was probed by aliens and I'm the result.
Riddle likes me.
No, seriously, I think Riddle likes me. He said, straight to my face, that he likes me more than he hates the prospect of our deformed inbred children. He was drugged, but I keep seeing it over and over, and oh god I think he meant it.
Riddle likes me.
Riddle's the only boy in any world who's ever liked me like that. Ever. He likes me even when I'm muggle born here, hate his guts, shove my foot into my mouth every time I open it, have less than stellar grades, and don't have the whole girl who lived thing to hide behind. He likes me, Harry Potter, even when he's the prettiest boy I've ever seen in my life who could have anyone he wanted.
Except, Riddle can't like me, because the Riddle I know—knew—was never capable of something like 'liking' anything.
Harry didn't write any of that, instead, she just wrote, "Riddle is weird as hell, as always, but he's good company, I guess. At least, he hasn't tried to throw me out a window to my unfortunate death yet. So, that has to count for something, right?"
Alphard would probably gag at that, maybe he'd laugh, or he'd just ask Harry if she was sure she didn't like Riddle herself and wasn't just trying to deflect attention by claiming she hated his guts. Alphard, of course, was missing crucial information but there wasn't any helping that.
Best to move along.
"I may have apparated—" she stopped. There it was, in black, damning ink, and it felt like something she shouldn't write down. Except, this one he'd definitely hear about. It was starting to dawn on Harry that everyone would hear about this one.
The other students might be giving her wider berth than the staff but they'd seen Harry's dramatic entrance with the rest of them. This time, Harry's adventure wasn't a secret, and whatever they come up with they all knew that Harry had somehow broken through the wards.
Harry didn't know what that meant except she figured that Dumbledore, Dippet, and Slughorn's sudden interest was not the end of it.
"I may have apparated through the Hogwarts wards to get back and that may have caught the staff's attention," Harry wrote swiftly, the words coming easier now that they were just confessed like that, "I'm apparently invited officially to the slug club forever, it'll be a blast. Also, I've been thinking about becoming an auror, and Dumbledore said I need to improve my grades in pretty much everything but Defense so… I don't know, if you have time when you get back, could you help a brother out?"
What else could she say?
She suddenly felt so far from him. It wasn't like Ron and Hermione, where she told them almost everything. She couldn't tell him about the Tom Riddle in her head, who'd disappeared so suddenly he almost felt like a dream, and she couldn't bring up anything else either.
Such as Harry's dawning realization that maybe being the girl who lived wasn't just a weird shtick. Maybe Tom Riddle, the one in her head, was right and there was something more to it. Except, even if there was, it never really would matter. Right?
Harry sighed and decided to wrap it up, "Other than that, it's pretty dull here. Not many people, a bit too cold to be outside, and basically a lot of days of just hanging around with Riddle. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm looking forward to next term. To quidditch, classes, and just catching up with you again."
She smiled as she finished up the letter, "Speaking of, write back and let me know how you've been. How's the family and the holidays been so far? Don't spare any details, please, it's either I get a huge letter for you or I have to spend my time talking to Riddle. And in case I don't get another letter to you in time, Merry Christmas."
With a grin she signed her name with a flourish. Well, tried to, she never really did get a signature down with a quill, but it looked loopy enough to almost be impressive. Unfortunately, the moment she put her quill away the parchment leapt to the other side of the table and into Tom Riddle's patiently waiting hand.
"Hey!" Harry shouted, reaching over, determined to snatch it out of his hands but he just leaned further away.
"Riddle is weird as hell, as always, but he's good company I guess," Tom read drily, he looked up at her over the letter, and for the first time in days it was Harry who had to look away.
"What was I supposed to say?" Harry asked, and god, she could feel her face burning. She wished she could say it was just because of the words, but no, it was the fact that he was looking at her like that.
Tom carefully set down both the letter and then his book. For a moment he stared at her, and even though it was only a second, it felt like an uncomfortably long time.
Finally, he asked, "Do you like Alphard?"
Harry almost fell out of her seat, "What?"
"It's a simple question," Tom said, lacing his hands together.
"I—It's—" Harry spluttered.
Did she like Alphard? Harry had absolutely no bloody idea. As far as Harry could recall, the first and only person she'd really fancied was Cedric Diggory. Even then, she hadn't really known anything about him. He'd just been there, so handsome, and so considerate. When he'd given her the hint about the egg when everyone had spent so much time hating her…
She thought she'd liked him, still did, but if she really thought about it then she wasn't sure. Maybe she'd just found him attractive and maybe simple kindness in a year where Ron barely talked to her had been enough.
She liked Alphard, he was a great friend, and he was very good looking but—
The longer it took Harry to answer the darker Tom's expression became.
Finally, Harry just blurted, "What's it to you?"
"A lot, actually," Riddle said, not even blinking.
Oh dear god, they were doing this. Harry had hoped, when he'd let the subject drop for three days, that he either hadn't remembered what he'd said, gotten over himself, or was just dying internally of shame.
While Harry hadn't exactly gotten over it she'd been grateful that he hadn't brought it up.
Except now he was bringing it up and it was just too soon.
"Hey," Harry said, forcing herself to smile, "We've been wasting a lot of time here and the break isn't going to last forever. Maybe we should get serious about occlumency. And by we, I mean you should tell me how to start going about—"
"Harry," he repeated, and just that word, just her name was enough to stop her rambling nonsense. He reached out to take her hand in his, and Harry was either too slow or too petrified to think about stopping him.
This wasn't happening. Harry was dreaming. Harry should be concerned she was having dreams where Tom Riddle romantically confessed to her in the chamber of secrets.
He squeezed her hand as he searched for the words. Finally, he said, "I know—I think that I told you I like you."
"Are you sure about that?" Harry asked. If Riddle remembered more than a few paltry details he'd also have some very weird memories about Harry chatting with an older glowing version of himself while he was carried around on a patronus. Harry had been hoping he'd just go ahead and brush it off as a dream.
"Well, I'm certainly telling you now," he said with a smile.
That was an unfortunately good point.
"And I think I also told you that—" he squeezed his eyes shut and it looked like he was forcing himself to go ahead and say the words, "That I know we're close relatives."
"We're not," Harry said plainly.
At Tom's dumbfounded look Harry continued, "Look, that one, I know. We are not related, at all. Well, maybe a tiny amount, but we're definitely not siblings or first cousins."
Then she had the first truly brilliant idea she'd had in a long time.
"Do a blood test!" Harry said with a grin.
"What?"
She reached out with her other hand and laid it on top of his, "There's magic for that, right? I'll prove it, we'll do a blood test right here and prove that we're not related."
And if Tom was just an incestuous freak who liked it kept in the family all his romantic interest would disappear. No, all his interest would disappear period, because that had to be the only reason he really cared. Harry was an orphan, she got it, finding family was a huge deal to her and probably to him. She'd be obsessing too if she stumbled on someone, she thought was a secret sibling or something.
He was either really messed up or just mistook that for romantic feeling.
When he found out they weren't actually related, he'd wash his hands of her and everything would return back to normal.
He tried to take his hand from hers, looking suddenly hesitant, "But if we're not related then why were you so edgy around me? More, how did you even get down here? You have to be a parselmouth or—"
"Look, you perform the ritual or spell, and that way you know I haven't done anything to the results," Harry said with a grin. God, why hadn't she thought of this sooner?
He frowned but didn't seem to have anything else to say. Instead, he slowly with drew his hand, and with a flick of his wand placed the books back onto the shelves where they belonged and Harry's letter back into her hands.
Then, he summoned another book, the pages turning by themselves until they fell open onto what clearly was some kind of ritual.
He looked at her for a moment, almost challenging, and then said simply, "Well, I guess we'd best get to work."
Tom's hands didn't shake as he began to slowly but surely drawn the necessary runes with chalk on the floor, but he felt as if they should be.
Harry was unnaturally smug, sitting there and looking as if all her problems had just been solved by her own brilliance. She was even humming to herself as she stuffed that damned letter to Black inside an envelope. He could just see her skipping out of here when this was over and up to the owlery to send it off and wait eagerly for whatever Black had to say in response to "I apparated through Hogwarts wards". He, unlike Harry Evans, would realize what a large deal that was.
Just as Black would know what a large deal this blood test was. Harry didn't seem to realize that what she was asking for was technically dark magic. It was lowkey, there were no sacrifices involved and nothing distasteful, but any magic that dealt with blood was generally considered taboo and if they were caught practicing it they'd get more than a few detentions.
She also didn't seem to realize, that if all her and Tom's prayers were answered, if they weren't related, then that only left more questions.
For days now, all Tom had had were questions.
He remembered… He remembered strange flashes. The woods, bright lights, Harry seated before an otherworldly king, his own face, and then what he'd said to her. He wasn't sure what had happened and what hadn't, how much of it had been nothing more than a dream, but as the days went by and Harry tried to laugh it all away, he was certain that something had.
That was what had convinced him, the fact that Harry, it seemed thought it was anything but a dream.
Now Tom clung to the parts he thought he could make sense of, his ill-timed confessions and morbidly embarrassing ramblings, but that didn't mean he'd forgotten the rest of it either.
They might not be related by blood, if Harry was so damned certain of it, but certainly they were related by something. She knew him long before he knew her, and she seemed to know him intimately. He knew that no matter what she said, and if it wasn't because she knew they were related and hated her own family then it was something else. Something infinitely stranger.
That man who had been with her in that blurry night, the man who must have been the one riding the stag with her and then appeared with her patronus in the quidditch pitch, had been wearing Tom's face.
With each rune Tom grew more and more certain that they somehow, in some impossible way, shared a connection greater than simple blood. Something that, perhaps, had something to do with why Harry was so powerful and so cagey.
Something she knew and refused to tell him.
Funny, even with all the secrets, it didn't change the way he felt at all. If he had put this together in the beginning it may have irritated him, enraged him, that she thought she could dare to keep this from him. Now though, he felt as if he was slowly but surely finding the clues, he needed to finally reach her.
That, and Tom wasn't exactly eager to have a 'sister fetish' either. In fact, he really hoped he didn't have a sister fetish.
He glanced over at her, she was looking a little too happy with that letter, and he remembered that she'd refused to answer him about Black either. It wasn't that he had been expecting Harry to jump in his arms, or say anything back to him, but he'd hoped for some kind of reaction.
As he drew the final runes he asked, "What do you want for Christmas?"
"Huh?!" she spluttered.
He glared over at her, feeling his cheeks burn, and wondered if it would always be this difficult now that he'd admitted he had… feelings, "I can't buy you anything, but I should be able to make something if you give me enough time."
She waived her hands desperately, looking more flustered by the minute, "Oh, Riddle, you don't have to—"
"Shut it, Harry," he spat back, "If I'm going to court you then I'm going to do it right. Which means I have to get you something for this bloody holiday."
He wondered if she knew what this meant for him. Tom had never gotten anyone a gift before. The purebloods in Slytherin had never expected anything and Tom had never been able to afford anything worth their while. They, in turn, had never gotten him anything either. In the orphanage he received a few donated gifts here and there, but they'd never been for him specifically, and Mrs. Cole had always seen to it that he got the worst of them or else nothing at all.
Tom didn't do Christmas, despised the very idea of it, which was why he had the distinct feeling that Harry Evans loved it.
Harry looked as if she wanted to keel over and die right then, "But, um, I don't—"
"Did I ask for a gift?" Tom asked, "It's alright if you don't have anything for me. I didn't exactly give you any forewarning and I know you have even less money than I do."
Harry just gave him this weird look. Finally, she asked, "Is this because you think that, you know, you like me or something?"
"I think that I like you?" Tom asked as he stood up from the floor, wiping his hands on his pants.
"Well, come on Riddle," Harry said with a sly smile, "Let's be honest here. We both know that you just think you like because I'm, you know, mysterious or something."
"Mysterious or something," Tom parroted dully, but Harry just seemed to gain more confidence rather than less with every word she spoke.
"Sure," Harry said with a grin that looked as if it was trying to be cheerful but covering a substantial amount of pain, "And I keep interrupting your life in weird frustrating ways. Like, you know, with the snake. You don't really like me."
"Harry," Tom said slowly, "You're an idiot."
Before she could retort that she wasn't, or at least, not about this he said, "Just get over here and tell me what you want for Christmas."
She stood with a huff, walked over to the runes, and said, "Well, for your information, I don't want anything for Christmas."
"Now, I'm sure that's not true," Tom said, she seemed like the type who'd want something mind-numbingly sentimental for the holidays. True, he doubted she wanted anything he couldn't afford like jewelry or high-end clothing, but he was sure she secretly wanted something.
Maybe he could charm her clothes to be weatherproof or something.
No, that was too drab and practical, and if his suspicions were right and Alphard did get her a small trinket or another Tom's gift would be blown out of the water.
She held out her scarred hand over the runes, waiting for him to make the first move, "Well, are we getting on with it?"
He said nothing, transfigured the chalk into a small knife, and pricked the edge of her finger then did the same to his own. They both watched as small droplets of blood fell from their hands onto the circle.
The runes began to glow a soft blue, signaling that they'd successfully received the blood. According to the text, it'd take a few more seconds for them to process the blood, break it apart, and then signal the result. If the runes dimmed, that meant there was no significant blood relation. If they glowed a dull red, then they were related distantly, the stronger the red light the closer the relation.
That was what was supposed to happen.
Instead, the runes suddenly flared a bright blinding white, causing both Harry and Tom to shield their eyes. When the flare stopped the runes had not only dimmed but burned out, the white chalk now a scorched black.
Harry looked at the runes then at him, "What does that mean?"
He just kept staring down at what was left of the runes as if they might answer her question for him. Finally, he said, "I have no bloody idea."
Harry looked at him then back at the runes again, "You mean you messed it up?"
"No," he said, trying not to curse at her that he did not mess up, and especially not on something this simple. More, it'd reacted the way it was supposed to at the first drop, the runes had worked, something had caused it to overload.
"So, it was supposed to explode," Harry said slowly like she was doubting his sanity.
"No," he said and passed her the book. She swiftly read through it, read through the results they were supposed to have and then said, "Well, it wasn't red, so that must mean—"
"It shorted out," Tom said dully. Which meant they could be related, as he'd initially suspected, or they could be god even knew what. He didn't know if it was Harry's confidence, or the strange results, but he was starting to suspect Harry was right.
Harry wasn't Tom's sister or his cousin. She could be an alien who'd borrowed his magic and blood to take human form.
Harry opened her mouth, closed it, and then said, "We're really not related."
He just looked over at her. His mind was numb, he honestly couldn't think of anything, until finally he spit it out and asked, "Then who the hell are you supposed to be?"
Harry opened her mouth, closed it, and asked, "Why don't we get dinner?"
Harry didn't think it, but to Tom, the days since rescuing Tom Riddle had been a reprieve.
The world had slowed down for a little while, the future term waiting in the distance, and all major decisions waited with it. How Harry would deal with him, what she'd do about the future, everything seemed comfortably out of reach.
As if Harry knew she could reach it, soon, but there was no need to move towards it yet.
Tom, in turn, had allowed himself to fade back into her memories. To drift down into the depths of Harry Potter where no one would ever think to look for him. He let her focus on occlumency, on the young Tom Riddle's turbulent and strange emotions, and allowed himself to appreciate the moment for what it was.
Without Voldemort, without that angry buzzing in the back of their heads as Voldemort demanded entrance to her mind, the future could be full of days like this.
Unfortunately, Harry didn't appreciate that.
The conscious Harry fell into her own mind like a meteor to Earth. A crater formed where she landed, fire spread in every direction, and Tom was left coughing out the debris as she asked in despair, "What the hell do I tell him?!"
Tom just sighed.
It seemed, that when Harry was dreaming and she wanted it, she had an easier means of reaching him than normal. She'd avoided him for a few days but apparently Tom Riddle's little blood ritual gone wrong was enough to send her running for help.
Tom walked over to her, offered a hand to help her to her feet, and said, "You should have just let him think you were his sister."
For all the younger Tom's drunken bravado, Tom didn't think he'd really make a move if he thought they were related. He'd be too embarrassed, too horrified, to move forward. Certainly, Tom could never see himself in that situation. Then again, Tom had never had a time travelling Harry Potter to contend with.
The boy might try to convince her to visit the Gaunts with him over the summer, might invent elaborate histories of the two of them, but that wasn't dangerous. He certainly wouldn't act on any romantic notions he harbored.
At least, not without a pint of liquid courage.
By insisting they weren't related Harry had not only given Tom the green light to chase her affections, but she'd also highlighted that the obvious solution wasn't the correct one. Harry was either a parselmouth or could open the chamber of secrets without the gift. She acted too strangely around Tom Riddle for someone with no connection. Finally, she clearly wasn't muggle born but was desperately attempting to hide her heritage.
It had always been too late for Tom Riddle to turn a blind eye, probably too late since the patronus, but the more Harry protested the more she just fed the mystery.
Give him enough hints and Tom might even, miraculously, be able to put it all together. Though frankly, Tom would eat his hat if the boy did.
"Why would I do that?" Harry asked in horror, then, looking around, asked, "And why am I back here?"
Back here wasn't quite right, they weren't in Number 4 Privet Drive today, but instead on the Hogwarts grounds. However, Harry was right in that she'd fallen down the rabbit hole into her own mind.
"I suspect because you wanted advice," Tom said.
Before she had a chance to interrupt and derail them with questions about Harry's ever changing mental landscape, he continued, "And you should have just let him think you were his sister because it gave him a convenient, logical, explanation that also kept him at arm's length. If you don't want him buying you Christmas presents you shouldn't signal you're available."
"I'm not available," Harry spluttered, flushing a bright, burning, unrealistic red, "Besides, he doesn't really—"
"Yes, I'm afraid he does," Tom interrupted.
She looked so young, so awkward, a half-grown thing inside her own head. However, even here, where she could distort the world and her body to what she thought of it she couldn't quite decide what the young Tom Riddle must see in her. Her eyes, even inside this place, burned so very bright.
She looked as if she dearly wanted to protest his words, was gearing up to do so, but then let out a tired sigh, "I can't believe I'm saying this, but I really am glad to see you and I really do need help."
Tom wished he could help, he really did, unfortunately the only thing he had to say was, "I'm afraid, Harry, that you're doomed."
The Forbidden Forest, which had previously been spared the carnage of Harry's meteoric landing, burst into flames.
Tom dutifully ignored it as he explained, "Tom is, I am, a romantic at heart. I like grand mysteries, a defining sense of purpose, and a larger than life feeling to everything I do. It's why, in part, I became a dark lord and why I would never settle for a simple but happy life. It's also why I, why he, took his rivalry with you, Harry Potter the girl who lived, so seriously in the 1990's."
There was a reason that he had thought of her, a fourteen-year-old girl, as his greatest enemy and had used her blood in the ritual to restore his body. Everything he did, everything he was, was driven by a desperately romantic view of the world.
Tom had never had time for traditional romance, never had interest, but he imagined if he had then he would have wanted the largest, grandest, love that could possibly exist. Nothing less, after all, would do.
He motioned to Harry then, in all her glory, "He's seen glimpses of what you really are, Harry, and if the answer isn't just that you're related then it must be something greater. Tom would be very chuffed at the idea of having a star-crossed lover from fifty years in the future who is prophesied to be his opposite and equal."
Harry's face shifted from a vibrant red into a striking shade of purple.
Tom patted her awkwardly on the shoulder, "The good news is that you can just keep blowing him off until—"
Well, he was about to say until they'd return to the future. That, however, was less and less of a possibility. Somehow, he didn't think ending that sentence with 'forever' was what Harry wanted to hear.
Forever, however, was probably what she'd have to deal with.
"You're a Tom Riddle," Harry said slowly, eyes wide and desperate as they looked up at him, "You must know something to make this all go away."
He wanted to help, and not just because he felt like he was watching some strange soap opera starring Harry and a younger dumber version of himself. She was asking for help, directly asking him for help, and for the first time since they'd officially met, she was asking it without any suspicion or wariness.
If he couldn't do this for her she might never trust him again.
His world was so small, confined to just her really, and while he'd been content being a quiet tenant, he also wanted more than just her grudging permission to remain inside her scar. They could be friends, maybe, in the way that she and the other Tom Riddle were somehow, impossibly, becoming friends.
He wanted that, those quiet days in the chamber of secrets she spent so casually with the other Tom Riddle, desperately.
Unfortunately, he couldn't think of anything.
There was no going back all the way to September, it was much too late for that. It was too late to even return to a few days ago before Tom had worked up the nerve to confess his feelings. Now that it was out there, the boy would do everything in his power to win her heart and would treat it the way he did the far off vision of Voldemort, as something to be chased after with everything he had.
No, somehow, Tom thought his younger self had been doing that long before the break started. Like they'd been heading down this path the moment Harry Evans set foot inside Hogwarts. Tom couldn't say where this would end, couldn't even begin to guess, but there was this feeling of inevitability to it all the same.
Then, suddenly, Tom had an awful idea that just might work.
It could backfire, it could provide Tom all he needed to stumble closer to the truth than even Harry had. However, even if it did Harry had already given the younger Tom more than enough hints. Tom Riddle, after all, had already seen the Tom Riddle that belonged to Harry more than once now.
All it would need was a little preparation, a few weeks, maybe a few months but not too long in the grand scheme of things. Not long compared to just how far and how long a truly determined Tom Riddle would be prepared to go.
"I might have an idea," he said. Harry nearly collapsed in relief, actually wobbling as she nearly fell to the ruined Hogwarts grounds.
"Oh, thank god," she breathed.
"It will take some time," he warned, and even then, it might not work.
That said, he thought it would.
If there was one damning truth to the world it was that teenage boys were stupid.
Oh, they might think they were clever, Tom Riddle especially, but the fact was that teenage boys were unbelievably stupid. The sixteen-year-old Tom Riddle had thought it was a brilliant idea to release a basilisk on the Hogwarts population and only realized after the fact that the school would get shut down if students started dying.
He'd been clever enough to find the chamber of secrets, clever enough to weasel out of getting caught, but stupid enough to open it in the first place.
And that had been without pretty girls in the equation.
Right now, Tom Riddle was unbalanced, flustered, uncertain both of his future and feelings for Harry, and less confident than he'd ever been in his life. The mere idea that Harry was writing a letter to Alphard Black had been enough to shake his foundations and break days' long silence.
The future of Voldemort was hazy, made vague and distant by his own disillusionment with Hogwarts and the purebloods, and for now while he probably thought he'd still become a dark lord he was now more focused on his new found honesty, finding his family, and obtaining Harry Evans.
Tom could use that.
"I don't care if it takes years," Harry said with that dopey, relieved, smile that he was entirely too happy to see aimed at him, "Strike that, I do care, but I'll still take it."
"You'll need to become proficient at occlumency or else legilimancy," he explained, "If you want it to be faster then you'll probably need my help."
Here she did pause, finally gave him that wary look he'd been expecting when she first fell in here, "Why do I need to do that?"
"Because if you want him to back off now, the only thing I can think of is meeting me face to face and letting him see just what you'll turn him into."
Author's Note: Oh Harry.
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Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter