"No one has ever quoted me back to me before."
- When Harry Met Sally
December, 1942
Christmas always held a special place in Harry's heart.
It hadn't always, or at least, when it was just her and the Dursley's it'd always left her with a feeling that was more bitter than it was sweet. Christmas was the time of year that put piles and piles of expectations on your shoulders about how you were supposed to be feeling. It was a time for family, good food, good cheer, and a single-minded wonder at life.
When you lived with a family that loathed you, when you knew that you'd get nothing for Christmas and that your fat cousin would get everything, you just felt the differences between what was supposed to be and what was more keenly.
Harry had heard once that people tended to commit suicide over the holidays. Well, maybe she was making that up, but she could believe it.
Christmas, before Hogwarts, was always the time she keenly missed her parents, the might-have-been if that fateful car wreck had never happened, the most.
Then along came Hogwarts and the Weasleys. Suddenly, Harry was getting actual real live presents. Her father's old invisibility cloak, and that first giant sweater with a large H boldly sown into the front, she still thought it was the best she'd ever received. Since then, aside from the Yule Ball disaster, Christmas was always something wonderful.
Which of course just left her in the weirdest mood on December 25th, 1942.
December 24th came and went like any other day since they'd been on break.
They showed up to breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the great hall and otherwise spent their time in the chamber as Harry read through the books he'd shoved at her (which sadly sounded entirely too much like Snape's old "empty your mind, dunderhead, it shouldn't be hard with so little in there to begin with" mantra for Harry's comfort) and settled into their latest and greatest argument that Harry was sure they'd be having for the rest of the year.
Hermione loved to lecture her and Ron about how their laziness and inability to take school seriously would bite them in the ass one day and that they should be grateful she had any pity for them at all.
Ron loved to go off about how the Chudley Cannons would have a come back one of these days (no matter that they'd never been good enough to ever have any kind of glory to come back to) and how one of these days Harry should see to it that Malfoy the Ferret got what was coming to him.
Now that he was officially out of his drugged up embarrassed daze, Tom Riddle loved to ask after the real reason he and Harry were connected through time and space and he wasn't going to take no for an answer.
Harry would say "I'm sure we're not related" and he'd shoot back "Then how'd you get in the chamber of secrets" and she'd retort, "It's called magic, dumbass" and he'd say in that smarmy and smug way of his "No, that's called bullshit".
And then after about thirty minutes of blessed silence they'd start up all over again.
He was like a bloodhound, Harry realized at lunch, once he caught a scent there was no stopping him or throwing him off the trail. There was no distracting him with thoughts of the coming term, the mind arts, Slughorn's stupid parties, or whatever Harry thought to throw him off his game.
The other Tom's words just kept repeating over and over in her head "I'm afraid you're doomed". Doomed, doomed, doomed: it was like a second heartbeat.
And it was sad that her only hope was that the other Tom knew this Tom well enough that he really could pull through like promised.
Which, Harry couldn't say she was exactly keen on his plan, whatever it was. He'd been a little vague about the details, noting they would sort that out later, but as far as Harry understood the idea was to either invite Tom Riddle into her own head (yikes) or else go trooping into Tom Riddle's head (double yikes). There, Harry would let the Tom in her head work his magic, which he assured her was not going to be telling him the truth about the future, but somehow convincing Tom that Harry getting her hands on him would "lead to his annihilation".
Harry decided it was best not to question any of that. After all, she didn't want to understand how Tom Riddle worked. Better just to be forced into epic battle every May, scream something about friendship and love triumphing over all things, and then go back to school just in time for finals.
Even if he, the one in her head at least, seemed to understand how she worked entirely too well.
Just as he'd promised, the night after she'd begged him to solve all her problems for her, she'd showed up dreaming in her own head again meeting him as he sat down to help her occlumency along. Only, unlike her lessons with Snape, there was no tension, no biting edge and feeling of shame and humiliation.
There probably was something wrong with that.
Then again, unlike Snape, he knew everything already. Harry had nothing to lose to him, at least, not as far as stray memories were concerned.
He knew about the future, the Dursleys, her connection with Voldemort, and more besides. She had no secrets from him, and for once, that wasn't such an awful thing.
They were in the Gryffindor common room this time, well, almost.
The room was empty, as it almost never was in the real world, and it looked like it'd been expanded. The colors were brighter, the chairs just a little comfier, and even though all the doors were in all the right places somehow Harry knew no one would come walking through them and interrupt her privacy.
"You don't think I can learn occlumency on my own?" she asked as she sat down across from him.
"I think you'd find it difficult," he said, which she supposed was his polite way of saying that there was no chance in hell.
Apparently, seeing the mulish glare on her face, he clarified, "The mind arts are notoriously difficult to learn even with personal instruction. To learn on your own requires intense concentration and an innate talent."
"Which I don't have," Harry said for him.
"Well, circumstances being what they are," here he motioned to her surroundings, to himself, "You're going to have a harder time. Clear your mind, Harry, and I'm certainly still here."
They didn't get all that far into it, no more than refreshing on those stupid meditative exercises Snape had kept telling her to perfect. She didn't ask him why he was helping her out with this, if this was some scheme to get even further into her head than he already was, or what he thought the other Tom Riddle was really up to.
Instead, on December 25th, 1942 she found herself woken up at the crack of dawn by persistent knocking on her door. She groaned, trying to put her memories in order and remember where the real world began and ended. She even looked out the window blearily, wondering why the sky was a dark and murky green, before remembering that she was in Slytherin and therefore the basement of the bloody castle and someone had installed windows looking out at the bottom of the lake as a joke.
She staggered to the door, flung it open, and found herself staring at a cheerfully smiling Tom Riddle who looked entirely too put together.
"What?" Harry blurted out.
"Merry Christmas," he said, and it looked like he was about to say something, but then he did a double take at her, "Jesus Christ, what are you wearing?"
Harry didn't even bother to look down at her clothes, a worn undershirt that she was pretty sure was only supposed to be worn by men in this time period, and a pair of soft faded shorts.
"Clothes," Harry said shortly, making to slam the door in his face, but he stuck his foot in and wormed his way into the near empty fifth year girl's dorm room. All the time he kept looking at her, open mouthed, like he couldn't believe what he was seeing.
"You can't be serious," he finally said.
"What?" Harry asked, "It's not like I go wearing this stuff outside."
Even Harry had more tact than that. Sure, she might have grown up wearing Dudley's castoffs (and thus sleeping in Dudley's tattered castoffs), but she'd fixed up her wardrobe when she got to Hogwarts.
She wasn't entirely hopeless.
"Harry," he said slowly, opening his mouth and closing it, and finally asked, "Can you honestly not afford a nightgown?"
She opened her mouth and also closed it. The sad answer was yes. When she'd first arrived, she really couldn't spare the money. She'd splurged almost all of her money just paving a way into Hogwarts. She'd had very little left over to buy her supplies, less to buy blouses, skirts, and trousers, so her sleepwear had been a complete after thought. In fact, as she'd looked around for acceptable pajamas, she'd cringed forking over the money and thought to herself that she could just damn it all and sleep in the nude if that wasn't sure to appall her roommates.
Now, after wasting all the rest of it on that portkey to Dublin, she had even less to spare.
In fact, if she didn't get a job immediately when she left for the summer or else figure out everything by then (including how to return to 1996 even with a Tom Riddle in tow) then she was hosed.
But none of that was actually the point. She motioned down to her clothing, "It's comfortable. And it's not like anyone sees it, you've never seen it before, have you?"
Despite the truly awkward number of times Harry had spent the night in his room it had never been in pajamas. Wait, that sounded terrible, it had always been fully clothed if covered in sweat, dirt, and grime.
Tom just looked at her that way he always dead when she'd said something too Harry even for Harry to handle.
Then a look of determination passed over his features, "I know what I'm getting you for Christmas."
He didn't wait for her to ask what, exactly, he thought he was getting her for Christmas. Instead he strode right back out of the room barking, "Get changed, we have a lot to do today and little time to do it in."
Harry just stared at the door as it slammed shut behind him.
She blinked at it for a few moments, wondering if she should cast a tempus and see what ungodly hour he'd gotten her up at, and wondering if it was all just a dream within a dream and she could go back to sleep.
She also wondered when he started feeling comfortable enough with her to drag her out of her room at god knew what time in the morning. She wondered when she started getting comfortable enough with him that she barely questioned him doing that.
She'd known he'd changed, that something between the two of them had changed, she'd complained as much about it to Alphard last term. Still, staring at the door, she found herself wondering for perhaps the first time how the hell this Tom Riddle was supposed to end up becoming Voldemort.
Her sleep addled brain couldn't give her an answer.
Instead, grumbling, she pulled on her sweater, skirt, and tights that were really better for fall than winter, and wondered just what brilliant plan Riddle had come up with and whether there was even any point wriggling out of it.
In better weather, he probably would have pulled Harry outside.
With all the gold, glitter, wreathes of holly, and festive decorations Hogwarts was getting a little too stuffy for his liking. It somehow felt overcrowded and oppressive even with nearly the entire student population gone until next term. That said, outside it was cold, wet, dark, and miserable. As much as Tom hated Yuletide, he hated the gloom of winter even more.
That, and Harry's clothes barely stood up to fall weather, they'd crumble before the light dusting of snow outside.
Still, that first year he'd arrived in Hogwarts and stayed over the holidays, he'd just about died when he realized that just because the wizarding world avoided religion like the plague they'd thought the whole Christmas thing was a great idea. He liked to think it was because the early Christians had borrowed the timing and festivities from pagans, who were loathe to give up a good celebration, but some part of him suspected it was because the wizards couldn't say no to a great party.
Over time, while Tom had never quite gotten used to the overexuberant celebration of the holiday (Dumbledore's wardrobe getting even more eyewatering than usual during the month of December) he'd at least come to accept it wasn't going away.
It was part of the reason he kept dragging Harry down to the chamber. Locked away as it had been for centuries with Tom as its current keeper there wasn't a hint of any Christmas cheer in sight.
Harry had changed into her usual paltry wardrobe. A drab sweater that might have been navy once but had faded into a dull gray, thin leather shoes, stockings sporting a few holes here and there, and a gray skirt that barely fit.
This was one of perhaps two or three sets of clothing (including her strange travelling get up she'd come back to Hogwarts in) she owned outside her Hogwarts uniform and it was a very sorry sight.
She also looked like she wanted to crawl into a hole and sleep until spring finally arrived.
He hardly blamed her, after a sleepless night wondering about her, about the chamber, about that bastard Alphard he'd decided to damn it all and get her up long before breakfast. That, and he hadn't wanted to give her a chance to open her mail or check for presents that had been delivered to the Slytherin common room.
Tom certainly hadn't received anything, he never did, but all the same he didn't want to see if Alphard really had gotten her anything. More, if he had, then Tom didn't want her opening it first thing as she undoubtedly would.
Which left him to drag her down to the chamber several hours before the traditional Hogwarts Christmas breakfast could start.
"Can I go back to sleep now?" Harry asked dully, head thunking down on the wooden table.
"No," he said shortly, "Your gift's going to take several hours, and I'll be damned if I don't finish it by the end of the day."
"Great," she said dully, completely unenthused by the idea that Tom Riddle was about to spend all day making her something.
He liked to blame that on sleep deprivation, but he had a feeling that Harry found it difficult to be enthused by anything he'd make her.
"You're not even going to ask what it is?"
Harry tilted her head enough so that she could glare at him with a single, sullen, eye, "If it's not a dead body or something equally dreadful then I don't care."
Tom decided not to comment on that.
Instead, looking down at her with a musing expression, he noted, "That's a pity, because I'd think you'd like to give a little input into this."
Interest finally piqued she lifted her head to glare at him head on, "Input into what?"
He pointed to her clothes, "I've decided to make you a new wardrobe. You're welcome."
She looked at him like she had no idea what he just said, slowly, painfully, she asked, "You're making what?"
"A wardrobe," Tom responded calmly, as if she was being purposefully daft, "You seem to own six articles of clothing total, all desperately second hand, all designed for late summer or early fall, and you constantly look like you're freezing."
For a moment, Harry said nothing, just looked across at him and finally said, "To hell with you too, Riddle."
"I'm serious," Tom said, "You don't have any formal wear for Slughorn's parties, you don't even have a jacket, and you can't even manage to procure yourself a night gown."
"I looked just fine at Slughorn's party," Harry said, having a very different memory of that night than Tom did.
There was no point in arguing with her, at least, not like that. Instead he folded his hands together and said, "Well, if you won't be kind enough to indulge me in this then I'm afraid I'm going to jus have to go and get you a dead body for Christmas. How does a rabbit sound to you?"
Harry shuddered, suddenly wide awake, and leaned across the table from him as if he were a viper about to strike, "You wouldn't."
"I don't know," Tom mused, "I've lynched one before."
Ah, poor Billy Stubb's rabbit, that had been a great day. Of course, even though there was no possible way Tom could have done it himself Mrs. Cole had still blamed him and still given him a thrashing, but it still was a marvelous memory.
Harry looked like she would believe it, should believe it, except for the fact that he was admitting it so easily which meant there had to be a trap in there somewhere.
"I could also serenade you in parseltongue," Tom said, "Surely, that will be a gift neither of us will ever forget—"
"How are you even going to make me a bloody wardrobe?!" Harry asked, slamming her hands down on the table, "You don't have the money to go shopping and I don't see you going off to buy fabric either."
"I'm going to transfigure it, obviously," Tom said.
Honestly, sometimes the girl had no imagination.
"Transfigure it?" Harry asked, "But then won't it just turn back into—"
He brushed this off with a wave of his hand, "I can enchant it to last you a few months, until the end of next term at least, and then yes you'll either have to go and buy your own clothes or come whining to me for a summer wardrobe."
He made it sound easy, like just anyone could pull this off, but he likes to think she knows that she couldn't get this from anywhere else. Being able to buy well made, enchanted, clothing at a store was a way to flaunt your wealth and privilege but it wasn't easy to entirely make your own wardrobe either. If it was, tailors in the wizarding world wouldn't be in business.
Tom probably wouldn't even know how to do this himself, if he wasn't so dreadfully poor. Aside from his Hogwarts robes and his secondhand formal wear, most of the clothing he brings to Hogwarts is in some way transfigured or enchanted by his own wand.
She looks at him dubiously, as if she can't see him being interested enough in clothes to bother, and if circumstances were different then he'd probably agree with her. As it is, he confidently holds her stare until she finally relents.
"You said I could have input?" Harry asked, just waiting for him to take his words back and eat them.
"I'm not the one who's going to be wearing this stuff," he acknowledged.
That, and he wanted to see just what ridiculousness she'd come up with. He knew that, whatever it was, would hardly be chique or even normal but he knew he also wouldn't be able to predict it if he tried.
He pushed his notebook, a quill, and an inkwell over towards her. He motioned to an empty page.
Harry looked at it as if it might eat her. She didn't pick up the quill, instead looked across at him like a startled deer.
He sighed, rubbing at his temples, suddenly feeling as exhausted as she looked, "Harry, either start talking or start drawing me something to work with."
"Clothes," she said dumbly, "Right."
He waited in silence for a moment, then asked slowly, "You do have an opinion, don't you?"
She laughed, a forced desperate thing, "Of course I have an opinion on clothes. I mean, I do wear them."
She had no opinion.
That explained a lot.
Harry though was still trying, "I mean, I guess I like red, and gold, and blue, really bright colors and…"
She trailed off dumbly, looking towards him with all the desperation of a drowning man.
He sighed, "I'm not sure I even want to ask, but can you try drawing something?"
Slowly, she dipped the quill in ink, and with a look of intense concentration drew a wobbly stick figure dressed in a sad wobbly triangle.
It took a little longer than a few hours.
They took a break for breakfast, ten minutes before the kitchens closed, barely having a chance to wave to Slughorn and shout "Merry Christmas, Sir" before they were back at it again until they had to take a similar break for lunch.
Rather than rely on Harry's truly pathetic artistic abilities and even more pathetic rambling descriptions of fashion trends (not too much frilly nonsense, no bows except for those bows that sometimes look good, and only the flowers that don't look ridiculous) Tom had decided that the best course of action was to create outfits out of thin air, the latest and greatest of the outfits he'd seen around Hogwarts, and leave them to her inspection.
Except a few hours into that it'd turned into something of a joke for both of them.
They were stuck on formal wear, every dress Tom had ever seen at a Slug Club rising out of the earth on posturing, blank faced, mannequins.
"Bloody hell," Harry said, pointing to something Lucretia had worn last year, "I do not have the cleavage to pull that off."
The dress in question was sleeveless and shorter than most, made of a dark shimmering fabric, the top portion made to hug the woman's frame while also offering support to said cleavage. Tom inspected it then looked over at Harry.
"I don't know, I think it'd look rather fetching."
Harry just scoffed, motioned to her chest, "Look, Riddle, when you're flat as a board there's certain things you just can't get away with. Try wrapping that thing around a plank of wood, it'd give you an idea of how great I'd look."
Per her suggestion, with a swish of his wand, the mannequin wearing the dress transformed into a plank of wood.
They both looked at it for a moment, the way the dress desperately tried to stay on the thin frame of its suddenly lacking occupant.
After a second's pause, he noted, "And it still looks fabulous."
Harry's head fell back in laughter, which, of course, was the point.
When she finally recovered, she motioned with a hand, "Alright, you've got to get rid of half of these. Merlin, anything like that has got to go."
With a swish of his wand all his memories of Lucretia's outfits disappeared from whence they came.
Things continued in much the same vein for the rest of the day, narrowing down her choices for every day clothing, a winter jacket, shoes, night gowns, formal wear, until finally there was a pile of clothes that were deemed acceptable reference material.
By the time dinner hit Tom had not lived up to his promise. The clothes were far from finished. Somehow that didn't seem to matter. It also didn't matter that after dinner, Harry was left to panic, scramble, and send Alphard a response thanking him for the small necklace he'd sent that morning (a pretty enough trinket but certainly nothing his family would admonish him for spending too much money on) and desperately promising to deliver his gift at the next Hogsmeade outing (by which she meant of course that she'd buy a gift at the next Hogsmeade outing and pretend she'd had it ready and waiting the whole damn time).
It also didn't matter that when he asked where his gift was, if Alphard Black was being promised one, she did nothing more than glare and say, "Your gift is my not punching you in the teeth and saving you from certain death, happy holidays!"
Somehow, it was the best Christmas Tom had ever had.
If Tom was a less patient man, if he was a younger version of himself full of desire and rage, then he imagined Harry's flights of teenage fancy would be driving him up the wall. Some part of him could understand just why Severus Snape became as frustrated as he did when attempting to teach her occlumency.
It was always hard to get Harry to focus. Oh, not in the moment, not in a fight for her life, but anything less than that and you had about two seconds to gain her attention before you lost it completely. Her thoughts were like little hummingbird, bright, colorful, whirring little things that had no time to sit still with so many flowers out there in the world.
But while Tom was here to help her along with the occlumency practice it wasn't his only goal in life. He imagined it was a bit like fishing, casting out your line, sitting on the dock, and having the patience to wait for something that may or may not bite.
With a quiet sense of serenity, he accepted that he would not be teaching Harry occlumency that Christmas night.
Instead, she was pacing the recreation Slytherin common room, barely paying any mind to her surroundings as her mind pounced on the latest personal disaster in her life. Those stupid boys hadn't forgotten about Christmas like she had.
The room had made the slow, steady transition from Gryffindor to Slytherin all day. It was a place of comfort, like its Gryffindor counterpart, but also something with a hint of uncertainty and anxiety in the air. Like everything was almost alright, but not quite home, and never quite would be.
Christmas with Tom Riddle had been more enjoyable than she'd expected, hoped for, or even wanted. It'd been too cheerful, too easy, and while it wasn't the same as Christmas with the Weasleys it was a far cry from Christmas with the Dursleys. All day, there was the pervasive thought that one should not have this much fun with Voldemort during the holidays.
But the conscious Harry seemed to have put that particular unease aside, buried it deep down where she didn't have to acknowledge that not only was Tom Riddle changing but her feelings towards him.
Instead, she whirled her feet, the fireplace behind her and gave him an intense look, "How the hell am I supposed to find money to buy all these gifts by the time term starts up?"
He'd remained sitting in a chair the entire time, drinking tea, and the sight of him calmly sitting there seemed to offend her in some way. As if, just because she was panicking, he should as well.
After taking a small sip he noted, "You know, neither of them expect presents."
"They both are aware of your financial circumstances, Harry," he explained, "They know you can't afford to give them anything."
"That didn't stop Riddle," Harry huffed.
"Riddle was showing off," Tom retorted, "He knows you won't be able to return the favor."
It was a pretty bit of magic he'd offered Harry, one that would probably take longer than he was expecting, but it was a surprisingly thoughtful gift that even Harry had to acknowledge no matter how much she wished she didn't have to.
That, of course, was why she was now spending her night worrying over presents.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Harry spluttered but he only had to give her a chiding look, reminding her that he lived in her head and knew exactly where her talents began and ended.
Harry had a wealth of raw power the likes of Tom Riddle and Gellert Grindelwald could only drool after like dogs. When it came to saving the day, surviving all odds, there was no one better to have around.
However, using that power in a refined manner, conjuring items and clothes from nothing. Maybe someday, she'd be capable of that, but for now she'd just never paid enough attention in Transfiguration to bother.
"Besides," Tom said, "If you're going to stoop to getting him a Christmas present you'll probably also have to get him a birthday present and you certainly don't have money for that."
"A birthday present?" Harry asked, "When the hell is his birthday?"
"New Year's Eve," Tom said evenly, "The worst time for a birthday, really, everyone's so done with Christmas that they forget your birthday even exists."
Not that Tom had ever received Christmas or birthday presents. In school, that had been beneath his peers. Afterwards, Voldemort had been too otherworldly for such mundanities. Having a birthday meant acknowledging he was something human enough to have been born in the first place.
Harry tore her hands through her hair, "Ugh, what would they even want?"
"Black, probably a book, nice parchment, nice pens, anything in that line of thought he'd be more than happy with. He always was a bookworm," Tom mused as he let his memories drift back to a young Alphard Black, "As for Riddle, honestly, you could probably give him a used eraser and he'd be happy."
Harry looked at it as if she couldn't believe he'd just said that. He almost couldn't believe he'd just said that.
"It's the thought that counts," he said, trying not to feel embarrassed, "So long as it comes from you, especially if you manage to figure out his birthday without him telling you the date, he'll be more than happy."
Harry finally sat down across form him, "Really, I thought he'd, I don't know, want something useful, really fancy, or just evil black magic stuff."
"Well, he certainly wouldn't say no to that, but I'm sure he'd much rather go out and earn that for himself," Tom said, "The allure of luxury is not wealth in and of itself but the power it represents. You just handing it over to him for a holiday gift makes it cheap."
Harry still looked very confused.
"You know he hates Christmas, don't you?" he asked, watching her shocked reaction.
"He hates Christmas?" Harry asked, "Who hates Christmas?"
"You weren't always so fond of it," he pointed out.
She spluttered, hands moving everywhere as if grasping for Tom Riddle's bizarre hatred of holiday joy, "Yeah, but I didn't hate it. I mean, I wanted to like it, if the Dursleys were less—you know—it would have been great."
"No one really hates Christmas," Harry said, "You know, except the Grinch… You're the Grinch, aren't you?"
"No, Harry, I'm not the Grinch," Tom said, rolling his eyes upwards. Though honestly, sometimes it felt like the whole Voldemort concept, the cult trappings, was so cartoonish he might as well be the Grinch who Stole Christmas.
"Christmas just annoys me," he said, "Everyone demands you be happy and filled with good cheer, everything's loud and crowded and over decorated, the weather's awful, it's always right in the middle of flu season, and I never got anything from anyone."
For a moment Harry sat and blinked at him, finally she said, "That's because you have no friends."
He laughed at that, "I never said I did."
Aside from her, of course, but that was years later and in the kind of circumstances where he couldn't give or receive gifts if he tried.
"But wait, if Christmas annoys you then why would my getting you anything be a good thing?" she asked.
"Because he secretly wants the acknowledgement," Tom said with a dismissive wave of his hand, never quite sure how to feel when he had to sit down explain just what this younger version of Tom Riddle was or wasn't up to, "True, if it was anyone else, it'd probably be a source of amusement or contempt for him. From you though, well, just about anything would make his day."
Harry considered that slowly. She probably wasn't done mulling it, mulling him, over but she didn't say anything more either. Her perception of Tom Riddle, of Voldemort, was slowly growing from something flat and two-dimensional into something she could barely recognize.
Except that, despite her best intentions, it might have the shape of a friend.
Her thoughts must have been moving in that direction as well, the nebulous future that all seemed to hang on Tom Riddle, as she asked, "What do you think will happen to the future? I mean, if I don't make it back."
She wasn't asking if it'd stop existing, if she already had wiped her past from the face of the earth. Truth be told, he wasn't sure what had happened to Harry's 1996 either. He liked to believe that it still existed somewhere out there, as Harry herself still existed and was so clearly shaped by it, but he did imagine that the further the present moment drifted from familiar events then the further out of reach it became.
It wasn't a matter of simply skipping forward in time anymore or waiting out the years. The 1996 of this place would look significantly different than anything she or even he had ever known. Even if Tom Riddle became Voldemort, even if the rest of it happened, small changes would ripple forward just enough to make it unfamiliar.
No, she was asking what a world without Harry Potter would look like. If, hypothetically, time moved past her in that other world, what would happen then?
Well, they'd never really get rid of Voldemort. Oh, they could try, they could probably force him out of a body again if the stars aligned, but he'd never really be gone until Harry destroyed the horcrux living in her own head.
That wasn't the end of the world though.
They could seal him away, as other, ancient, demons had been sealed away from the mortal world. They could simply fend him off whenever he showed his face again. Or, perhaps, he might win himself the country but even so life would still go on in some form or another.
Finally, he said, "You know, Harry, they say that graveyards are filled with indispensable men."
"Huh?" she asked.
"You aren't solely responsible for Voldemort's defeat or the safety of your friends," he continued, "Frankly, you never should have been. That an entire country seems to rely on nothing but a teenage girl to solve a problem that could have been handled with a halfway decent government is patently ridiculous."
That Dumbledore eagerly pushed a young girl into this destiny based on nothing more than a prophecy from a madwoman would have been patently ridiculous if it didn't have so much influence on his own life.
She shifted uncomfortably in her seat, her natural humility at war with her natural teenage narcissism, "I guess, but—"
"More importantly, Harry, they'll get by without you," he said, and then with a smile added, "The wizarding world will still be there without you, moving along as it always does, Voldemort and all."
"But—"
"Your friends, your allies, even that bastard Dumbledore will sure to figure out something in your absence," Tom said, who knew, maybe for the first time in his life Dumbledore would actually be forced to do something for himself.
He almost hoped that Harry's Voldemort, lunatic that he was, wiped the floor with him.
Harry leaned forward, thinking carefully, and finally asked the question that he thought she'd ask him ages ago, "What about this timeline?"
"I mean," Harry expanded, "If it is a different timeline and all, if you're right and I can't—it's not connected to my 1996—then this Tom Riddle doesn't have to become Voldemort, does he?"
"No," Tom said, in fact, it was seeming less and less likely that he would.
True, it had taken Tom decades to really become serious about the whole Voldemort idea, but it'd always been there in the back of his head. He pursued knowledge for years, went abroad, and slowly gathered enough wealth to be convincing all in pursuit of that goal. When he'd returned to Great Britain with no name, only an anagram and a sense of mystery about him, it'd felt almost like coming home.
Like his life, even though he was well past middle age, was just beginning.
He felt like this Tom was distracted from Voldemort though, his faith in its grandeur had been shaken. He had glimpsed what it really meant to play nothing more than a role, the personal price of the groveling servitude of the pure bloods he loathed, and he no longer wanted it. You could see it in his eyes, the wariness, the uncertainty.
For now, Voldemort remained, but what he really seemed to want was Harry Potter and the mystery surrounding her.
Until he solved that, he'd likely keep pushing Voldemort further and further off, like that hobby he always meant to get to but never had time for.
"How," Harry stopped, licked her lips, and then started again, "What, if anything, would have made you not become Voldemort?"
Well, Harry never was one for subtlety.
Fortunately for her, Tom had neither the need nor the inclination to lie to her about such things. That, or, perhaps she'd started to figure that out for herself. He liked the idea of that, hoped that she really was starting to trust him that much.
What would have stopped him from becoming Voldemort?
What a question to ask, a surprisingly difficult one, as looking back it'd seemed like it had all spiraled out of his control. Was it the first horcrux that had been the point of no return? No, he hadn't felt that different afterwards even with half his soul gone. He'd gone mad somewhere along the way, a set of metaphorical blinders put on that let him see nothing but Voldemort and his glory, but he had no idea when that was.
If anyone had confronted him when he was a boy, before the chamber, he would have laughed in their face and then spat in it for good measure.
He'd trusted no one and nothing, had no respect or time for anyone living, and had been itching to go out there and make a name for himself. He'd never had the time, patience, or inclination to question himself and everything he thought he could be.
But then, he'd never had anything like Harry Potter crash land in his life.
Finally, his mind meandered back to his own fifth year, and the events that had carved forth the path in his life. Harry had already taken care of the basilisk, Myrtle's unfortunate death that had had a younger Tom Riddle shrugging his shoulders and saying "waste not want not" as he used her death to carve out his own soul.
Hagrid would keep his wand, likely scrape out good enough scores to graduate, and probably take some awful job in Eastern Europe breeding monsters to his heart's content until one of them finally ate him.
Myrtle too, would live, graduate, and go out into the world.
For all Dumbledore's hatred of Tom Riddle, he wouldn't have the chamber to pin against him. If the boy became Voldemort later Dumbledore probably could still guess at Voldemort's true origins (Tom had damningly announced he was a parselmouth after all) but he might make the man's job a little harder.
As for Tom Riddle, he still had a whole soul (and a little dash of something extra if one were to include the Tom that lingered inside Harry into the mix), and while that did not count for everything it surely must have counted for something.
Which left only a few great turning points in 1942 and early 1943.
The first, Slughorn's helpful tidbit regarding horcruxes, all for purely academic interest mind you. He'd been the one to give Tom the key he needed, the ones the books in Hogwarts' libraries dared not to discuss, to go from thinking about horcruxes to actually creating them. It had been deceptively simple.
There was nothing Harry could do about that.
She could pinch the book before Tom had a chance to get at it but that would involve sneaking into the restricted section, which would undoubtedly garner his interest, which would undoubtedly result in him eventually getting the damned book anyway.
Besides, horcruxes or something equivalently nasty were one of those things that Tom Riddle had been bound to come across one way or another. The path to immortality was a gruesome one that a young Tom Riddle hadn't balked against travelling. The key wasn't that he never heard about horcruxes but that they lost their appeal.
And unless the boy suddenly got over the terror of dying anytime soon then it wasn't worth even trying to stop him.
The second, of course, was the murder of his maternal family and framing Morfin Gaunt.
That, maybe, Harry could do something about.
"Sometime this year, unless you've really gone and distracted him, Tom Riddle will manage to track down his surviving family."
Harry's eyes lit up, she leaned forward, unable to help herself, "You mean—"
Tom didn't give her the chance to get a word in, "He'll pay them a visit as soon as he can this summer. Go with him when he does."
"Huh?" Harry asked.
"He cannot meet the Gaunts or the Riddles on his own."
"What, they turn him into Voldemort?" Harry asked slowly.
Not quite, it was more complicated than that. Maybe it wouldn't make a difference but Tom liked to think that something in him had… solidified with their murders. Myrtle had been an accident, not even by his own hand, and turning her into a horcrux had in some warped way been honoring her sacrifice. The basilisk was just a situation that had gone completely out of control, despite all his threats and bluster, he wasn't sure he'd ever meant to kill anyone.
Certainly, he'd never meant to shut down Hogwarts.
Killing his family though, making the horcrux afterwards, he'd walked out of that house knowing that he was powerful enough not only to kill but to rise above all others without any need of human attachment to bog him down.
In many ways, Voldemort had been born that day.
What he said to Harry was, "It certainly helped him along his way."
"Right," Harry said slowly, looking very confused, clearly wondering why on earth Tom's family being alive would have helped him become Voldemort of all things.
Of course she didn't, for all Harry lived with the Dursleys she still lived in a world where blood was thicker than water. The Dursleys didn't count, they were close relatives but not the closest, she couldn't imagine a world in which her father and mother would have hated her.
Tom had been conceived by a victim of rape and his mother had given birth to him on the floor of a muggle orphanage.
"Anything else?" she asked, eyebrows raised, clearly looking for some concrete defining answer that would somehow wipe away all the evil in Tom Riddle's soul.
Well, he could give her something, "Be very careful if he starts seriously looking into immortality."
Harry sat for a moment, then noted sullenly, "That's not cryptic or anything."
"Life's not full of easy answers," Tom scoffed, "If it was that easy then I wouldn't have become Voldemort in the first place."
"Seriously though," Harry said with a sigh, "Do you really think I can't go back?"
He considered her for a moment and, knowing what Harry preferred, decided to be bluntly honest, "No, I think you've made your path back to that world incredibly difficult if not impossible to traverse. It's probably still out there, neither you nor I have ceased to exist despite everything you've done here, but whether we can get there is a different story."
She frowned, considering, and noted, "But he might still become Voldemort."
"He'll never be your Voldemort," Tom corrected.
For once, she didn't protest. As her subconscious had once told him, Harry had known for months, ever since the patronus, a spell that Tom could not cast but this other version of himself now could.
More, even if fifty years were to go by, he'd certainly recognize her.
"Difficult," she said slowly, "Not impossible."
He gritted his teeth, wishing he could take those words back, "Nearly impossible, it'd… If anyone had the power to do it, it'd be you, and there are objects of great power that might be able to pull something like that off—"
"Like what?" Harry asked.
"Oh, I don't know," Tom said, finally finishing the last of his tea, "There are always legends about some magical artifact or another. I never paid them much mind, most are supposedly lost or sealed away, but supposedly Grindelwald had one."
"Grindelwald?" Harry asked.
"The current dark lord," Tom said with a sigh, "He's off in Europe right now, France I believe, and is a real headache for everybody until Dumbledore goes off and defeats him."
Which, of course, was what had gotten Dumbledore his fame and power in the first place. Before then, he was just an academic, a former apprentice of the great Flamel who had a few insights into the use of dragon's blood.
"I wouldn't recommend it," Tom continued, "Getting the raw power needed is one thing, actually aiming is another. You'd probably end up in a 1996, maybe even one close to what you're looking for, but the exact right one? Forget it."
It was too late though, by the look on her face, Harry was already thinking dangerous thoughts.
For once though, she had some patience. With a grin she clapped her hands together and said, "Right, occlumency then?"
They didn't speak about time travel, Tom Riddle, or Grindelwald again that evening.
Author's Note: If you listen carefully, in the distance, you can hear the sound of Harry planning to do something very stupid.
Thanks to readers and reviewers, reviews are much appreciated.
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter