Tamsin's Universe – September 1991
It was the very last train compartment and, unfortunately, there was someone already in it. One person seemed easier to ignore though than the packed cars Tamsin had already passed, so with a sigh she set down her trunk and took a seat.
The girl, around her age but with green eyes and short black hair, smiled brightly at her and said hello.
She looked like an idiot, smiling like that.
Tamsin took out Hogwarts: A History and pointedly ignored her as she poured over the description of the school again. She had heard all the murmurs and not so whispered slurs about muggleborns while she was in Diagon Alley. It was already a disadvantage and she couldn't risk looking more out of place once they got to Hogwarts.
The girl had eventually given up with a shrug when her questions went unanswered, turning to a brightly colored magazine where people on broomsticks zoomed across the cover.
Halfway through the train ride, the door opened and a blond boy entered, shadowed by two larger boys. Rich boys, Tamsin noted, with tailored clothes and that air of owning everything they saw. Their fancy leather wallets had always been easy enough marks for quick little fingers back in London.
"Potter. Mother wanted me to extend an invitation to sit together, as cousins of House Black," he said with a stiff nod towards the black-haired girl.
He glanced over at Tamsin, "She wouldn't be welcome to come with us. I don't even need to ask her name. A face I don't know and a hand-me-down robe? It must be a mudblood and father –"
The girl -Potter, apparently- was up in an instant, blocking the blond boy's view of Tamsin, her fists clenched.
"SHUT UP, Malfoy! You great big jerk! You can't talk to her like that," Potter yelled.
"You don't want to go making friends with the wrong sort, Potter."
"I think I can tell the wrong sort for myself, thanks. Now get out!"
With a dark look and more muttering on Malfoy's part, all three boys left, the door clanging shut behind them.
"I'm Harry, by the way," said Potter as she bounced back down into her seat.
"Tamsin Riddle," she replied.
"I'm sorry about Malfoy. He used to be alright when we were little, but he's turned into such a right prat. I can't believe he said that to you," Harry said.
Tamsin examined Harry again in a new light. It was a fight that Tamsin would have won, entitled rich kids were all the same after all, but no one had ever stood up for her before. And the girl seemed to already be part of the magic world, full of knowledge that Tamsin had been denied.
"Do you know anything about how we're going to be sorted? I've read all about the houses, but the books don't explain how exactly it's done," she asked, testing what the girl might be willing to share. The question had been bothering her for a while now.
Harry looked at the closed compartment door, eyes full of mischief, before leaning forward and saying in a conspiratorial whisper, "it's supposed to be a big secret, but my Uncle Remus told me. It's just an old hat that you put on and it reads your mind and shouts out whatever house is best for you."
"It reads your mind?" Tamsin asked, concerned. The magical world was both a lot sillier and more dangerous than she expected. What if it told what it saw?
Harry noticed Tamsin's worry and rushed to assure her, the words stumbling out in her haste.
"Don't worry, it's sworn to absolute secrecy. My godfather was all mad that Uncle Remus told me, but he said it's true. He heard it would burst into flames if it ever even tried to break its vow."
That was reassuring at least. But could other things in the magical world read minds? There had to be a way to protect yourself from things like that.
"What house do you think you'll be in?" Harry asked as she leaned back into her seat.
"Slytherin. Based on what I've read in Hogwarts: A History, it's clearly the best choice if you ever want to be anyone important," Tamsin replied with certainty. She knew that a house based on snakes of all things would be the perfect fit and it had by far the highest rate of future Ministers of Magic.
"Oh," Harry said dejectedly, "I really wanted to have a friend in my house. My family always goes to Gryffindor. We'll be rivals."
Tamsin shook her head.
"I'd like to have someone in the same house as well, but I don't think that I could pull off being a Gryffindor. Being brave and bold all the time sounds kind of silly anyway, like the knights in fairy tales that end up cursed by an evil witch into hideous monsters because they didn't think things through," she explained.
Wait a moment. Were fairytales real? Could she learn to do that? Tamsin couldn't wait to look through the school library.
"Having adventures could be fun. Are you the princess then that has to get rescued?" Harry asked.
"No, I'm the evil witch."
"I believe it," she said with an overly solemn nod.
"I could probably get into Ravenclaw though," Tamsin said, thinking about what a magical library must look like and all the textbooks she had re-read every free moment of the summer.
Harry snorted, laughter bubbling out of her.
"Yeah, that's not going to happen for me. Hufflepuff? I could manage that," she said with another smile.
Tamsin frowned. Being kind, helpful, and welcoming for seven whole years? How boring.
"No. It's going to be Slytherin for me," Tamsin said with a sigh and turned back towards her book. It was useless to hope for impossible things. She would succeed and pick up allies in her house, of course, but the idea of having Harry around hadn't seemed too bad.
Harry was quiet for a moment, her legs slowly swinging back and forth as she sat.
"My Grandma Dorea was a Syltherin. My dad can't get too mad about it when his own mum was," she said at last.
Harry's Universe – June 1996
"You're from a parallel universe?" Harry asked. Tamsin hated to repeat herself, but she gave Harry some leeway since the poor girl seemed to be in shock still.
"Yes, I think they're similar though," Tamsin said as she looked around. It looked to be a muggle park. The houses and cars seemed to be normal enough. It didn't look anything like near Godric's Hollow, but to be honest, she was too exhausted to think about it much. The ritual to get here had taken days of meticulous preparation and she felt drained to her core.
"And it was to find me? Why?" Harry asked, a strange wariness entering her voice.
"I missed you," Tamsin said.
"You missed me?" She seemed genuinely shocked at the idea.
"Are you going to repeat everything I say?"
"Sorry. It's just a lot. Like really a lot," Harry replied.
"We'll have all the time to discuss it. I'm not going anywhere," Tamsin promised. There was not a power on Earth that could make her now that she was here.
"Oh no," Harry said worriedly, "I don't know how we can hide you." Her face was all scrunched up in deep thought and Tamsin wanted to kiss the twist of her lips. Baby steps, she reminded herself. They technically just met. The way Harry looked at her like a stranger still burned in her mind and left her in a low simmering rage. She wanted to tear this very universe to shreds at the very wrongness of it.
It would be days before the talisman repowered enough and she could take Harry home to the right universe. It wouldn't do to scare her off unnecessarily. She didn't mind using force if needed to take her through the portal, but it would be such an annoying hassle to deal with an upset Harry afterward.
She settled for reaching out and rubbing her thumb in soothing circles along the rough denim that hid Harry's ankle. Harry twitched involuntarily at the touch, but then seemed to calm herself.
"We will tell your parents that I am a friend from school who needed a place to stay for family reasons," Tamsin said with a wave of her free hand. The Potters would always fall for a sob story, especially one about family problems. Mr. Potter would run his fingers through his black hair with a sad sigh while Mrs. Potter would just look knowingly and ask if Tamsin needed any help getting settled.
"My parents?" Harry asked quietly.
"Oh – are they divorced here?" Tamsin asked, puzzled, but she chalked it up to universe differences. A divorce and then falling on hard times might explain Harry's strange appearance. She had always been rather outrageously causal for someone of her status, but she had never dressed worse than an actual street urchin before. For all its institutional faults and war-time rationing, even Wool's bothered to at least match the donated clothes to children who fit them.
"They died," Harry said in a terribly flat voice, "It happened when I was a baby. I never knew them."
The news was a surprise, but Tamsin felt some of her coiled up worries ease at the thought of it. Kidnapping Harry may be even easier than she planned. Harry may even suggest it herself just to see them. There was also a perverse pleasure in the idea of them being dead in this world. It was nice to have another commonality between them.
They sat together in quiet contemplation. Harry concentrated on the grass blades beneath her fingers, playing with the short stalks and sneaking quick peeks at Tamsin when she hoped the other wasn't looking.
But Tamsin was always looking. She knew it was weird and maybe even uncomfortable feeling, but she couldn't force herself to keep away for long. It was still too much of a marvel to see again a Harry that lived and breathed.
The blank, dead-eyed stare of the Inferius and the terrible feel of its clammy hand in hers had haunted Tamsin for weeks.
Tamsin watched the light play off Harry's glasses. It was so strange. She wondered if there was a vision fixing spell that she or maybe St. Mungo's could use. She would need to research further once they returned. The haircut would need to be fixed as well, but that would be much easier to accomplish.
Every now and then Harry would pipe up with a question about her alternate parents, looking up at Tamsin with a mix of embarrassment and hope. Tamsin answered to the best of her knowledge, filling in such trivial details as what their house looked like or what the experimental charms business was called that Mrs. Potter ran or even how they took their tea. It would have been dull, but every quick little smile that Harry would give her afterward made up for it.
The morning drifted into afternoon.
Although Tamsin swore that the trace wouldn't work on a wand from another universe or set off any alarms for nearby magic, Harry was very stubbornly against using any magic on her relatives.
"You could let me in once everyone's asleep. If you think the front door is too loud, I could climb in through a window," Tamsin said. She would very much prefer not to do such an undignified thing, but she couldn't deny that she hadn't perfected it at the orphanage.
Harry shifted uncomfortably and steadfastly did not look in Tamsin's direction.
"It wouldn't work. There's bars on the window and the Dursleys keep the door to my room bolted."
"Excuse me?" Tamsin asked. She tried hard to keep the danger out of her voice.
Harry just shook her head and mumbled something about them not liking magic much. She still stared off in the distance, refusing to even glance her way.
Tamsin truly looked at Harry now. She tried to put aside all the built in preconceptions that came with years of close familiarity. She looked at this Harry's too skinny wrists and the ankle Tamsin still held. The dark circles under her eyes. The taped together glasses. The roughness and small cuts on hands used to hard work without the protection of gloves. The ragged clothes and the yellowing bruise that peeked out from underneath the left sleeve of Harry's t-shirt. The way Harry instinctively hunched her shoulders while talking about her relatives in order to make herself a smaller target.
One of Tamsin's last acts in this universe would be murder these Dursleys.
For now, she only nodded and said that they would figure out another way.
They finally settled on a surprise attack that hinged on the visiting neighbors seeing a very polite and charming Tamsin asking to visit her dear friend. It was terribly risky and there could be hell to pay with the Dursleys once the doors were closed, but it would get her inside. To accomplish it though, they needed to head over now before the party ended.
Without thought, Tamsin reached out for Harry's hand as they started walking, brushing their fingers together. Harry startled and pulled away, staring at Tamsin wide-eyed.
Baby steps. This was just a temporary setback, but Tamsin's heart ached all the same.
Something of the internal struggle must have shown on her face. Harry held out her hand, tentatively grabbing Tamsin's. She tested out different angles, opening and closing her fingers, before settling on the perfect one.
It was just the same as Tamsin remembered.
They walked down the street, palm to palm.
A/N: