Harry was asleep next to her, the makeshift curtain shifting and rippling as she turned over.
Tamsin lifted the edge slightly and examined her sleep slackened face in the moonlight. It was strange to see it so relaxed. It felt like Harry was constantly in motion. Her expressions were an ever-changing kaleidoscope that Riddle could watch for hours in fascination.
Everything about the woman was outlandish. Her muggle clothes were out of place and Tamsin doubted they could ever have been considered fashionable, no matter the decade. Her too-big glasses made her look like a rather inquisitive bug and meanwhile her hair was like some sort of possessed hedgehog.
She truly was the most ridiculous creature that Tamsin had ever laid eyes on.
And so delightfully easy to fluster.
It had taken Harry over an hour that morning, but she had managed to duplicate the bed and shoved the two as far away as the chain could comfortably allow.
Tamsin had looked on amused, a treatise on Albanian history in hand complete with period accurate dried blood, as Harry hung up a bedsheet between the beds like some makeshift field hospital. She had refused to help ("Oh Harry, am I that frightening?") purely on principle and the more she teased, the pinker Harry's face had turned.
The woman was also clearly lying about everything with an almost gleeful abandon. Her name, who she was, why she was here. It was a curious irony given the words carved deep into her very hand.
No one could possibly believe this story she was spinning. It was so wild. So completely preposterous. A time traveler from 1970 who has heard of Tamsin, in the albeit roundabout way of a newspaper article, and wants to help her? She would have to be born yesterday to fall for a such a story.
And yet…it made a terrible amount of sense.
More importantly, it was finally something interesting.
The Grey Lady's instructions had seemed straight forward enough back in England. The diadem was hidden inside of a hollow tree in the primeval beech forests. A carved stone with the symbol of Ravenclaw would mark the spot.
She had been in the Forbidden Forest frequently during her time at Hogwarts, but it wasn't until she arrived here that she understood the scope of what a true wild forest could be. For all her airs and aspirations, Tamsin was at her heart a girl from London.
If Harry's future knowledge could lead her in the right direction, she wasn't going to question it until after her goal had been accomplished.
It may strengthen her plans even. Horcruxes were stronger the more meaningful the death used to create them, after all.
Myrtle in life had been meaningless to her, but all that her death represented still made Tamsin feel heady at the thought of it. She had claimed her birthright. She had been enraged at grasping, greedy Hepzibah, but that was the extent of it. The cup still held her soul, but it was weaker than the others. It was one of the reasons that she was waiting to make the locket.
Harry would be perfect for the diadem. It had a nice poetic ring to it even. The lovely assistant's sacrifice immortalized forever in the object they found together.
Still, there were no rules that said Tamsin had to make the horcrux right away once they found it.
In the morning, they sat in a half-charred clearing and tried different spells on the chain. Spell after spell ("Was that one to transfigure it into a teacup?" "No, just the saucer," Harry had answered with a shrug) lit up the place like a fireworks display. The clearing was far away enough away from the cabin and trees (they had found that out the hard way) to prevent any serious danger. Or so they hoped, anyway.
"Do you think fiendfyre would work?" Tamsin mused during a lull.
"If you don't kill us right away, then we'd die in the forest fire," Harry said.
"Such pessimism. I'd most likely be able to control it once the chain is melted." It was…most likely true. Although she had never been anywhere desolate enough to practice, she had read the theory behind it. The main requirement was raw power, in both magic and will, and she certainly had those in spades.
"Yeah, let's save that one for last. I'd rather never smell that again."
Oh and wasn't that interesting. Her little puzzle had been near fiendfyre, close enough to smell the very magic of it. Harry truly was the worst at keeping future secrets. For all her worrying and protests about the precious timeline, she was constantly throwing out the wildest tidbits with careless abandon.
The woman in question flopped down next to Tamsin with an "oomph." Dirt and leaves mixed in with her hair as she laid out on her back. It looked rather fetching in the golden light, like a wood nymph's crown in an old masterpiece.
Tamsin did not flop since such things were undignified and therefore below her. She preferred to think of it as a regal lounge.
White clouds drifted lethargically above them.
Harry sat up with a sudden start.
"What if we're going about this all wrong? We're thinking too much like witches!"
"We are witches, in case you haven't noticed."
"But this was made to bind us, bind our magic!" She continued heatedly, picking up and shaking a length of the chain. "It wouldn't make sense to be able to get out of it then with magic. We need to use muggle means."
"That could work," Tamsin said, sitting up and scanning around for a suitable piece of wood to transfigure into an axe.
It wasn't her best work, but the blade looked wicked enough to cut through anything dumb enough to be in its way.
"Hold still. We haven't the means to reattach anything if I miss," she said, shooting Harry a teeth filled grin. If this daft idea actually worked, she could kiss that woman.
Harry looked uneasy, but nodded and held stiller than Tamsin thought a whirlwind like Harry could manage.
She gave a hefty swing.
The axe melted into the chain with a loud clang that vibrated through the whole length of it.
Or rather melted around it. The axe was still intact, but a sharp line cut through to the hilt as the metal shrunk away from ever touching the chain.
"That's...weird," Harry said.
Tamsin examined the axe, turning it this way and that. She flicked at the side of the blade. Still metal and solid. Upon closer inspection, the edges of the cut were lined with small, transformed back wooden splinters. How was this possible? Unless...
"Gamp's law" she breathed. If she wasn't so irritated that it was happening to her, she would be thrilled at the opportunity to study the phenomenon.
"The one about food?" Harry questioned.
"Yes. Something cannot be transfigured out of nothing. Moreover, transfiguring an item does not change its fundamental nature. You could transfigure yourself a daily banquet, but you'll starve to death since it's not actually food. The button is still at its heart a beetle no matter how nice it looks on your coat. Moreover, to enact and keep stable the changes, a transfigured item is coated in magical energy."
"So all we've been doing is feeding this thing," Harry said.
Tamsin nodded absently, still staring intently at the axe. Any other magic means would most likely have a similar result, which meant the solution had to be fully muggle. How obnoxious.
A quick translation spell and an hour's hike later, they were on the outskirts of a small village Tamsin had seen in her search.
Clustered together was a dozen or so one and two-story stone houses with slate shingled roofs and all windows firmly shuttered. Groups of haystacks huddled next to the houses.
A dirt and stone road curled through the village before dipping out of sight behind a bend in the trees. It was quaint looking and would have made for charming postcards if tourists had ever managed to make it that far into the endless forest.
The only inhabitant to be seen was a big fluffy dog that looked up at them, but soon went back to sleeping. The smoking chimneys on a few houses let them know that they weren't truly alone, no matter how empty the place looked.
The two women skulked about the shadows, moving from tree to woodpile to doorway to whatever they could hide behind. Tamsin could cast a notice-me-not over them, but there was a small chance that the residual magic could contaminate the axe once they found it.
Harry peeked into the window of one of the emptier looking houses. With a nod, Tamsin listened at the door. Nothing. Pushing against the door, it gave way with a squeak.
They held their breath. No one yelling yet about their house being broken into.
Inside was tidy and sparse, a small kitchen and sitting area, with a set of wooden stairs off to the side. The first floor came up empty and they crept up to the second floor. Where did rural people even keep their axes? From the search of the loft, it seemed that most likely it was not in their bedrooms.
"Besjana? Why did you leave the door open?" A man's voice called from downstairs.
"Where has she gone off to?" another voice joined in.
"Oh no," Harry whispered next to her.
There was a creak from the floorboards downstairs as heavy footsteps headed towards the stairs. There was nowhere to hide and while they could take one man, two might be an issue.
"Come on, we'll have to jump!" Harry said as she scrambled towards the window, tugging Tamsin along with her.
The shutters slammed open with a bang. The footsteps changed to a pounding run, but Harry was already half out the window before Tamsin could argue with her.
"Aim for the haystack thingies!" Oh bloody hell. She couldn't be serious. Tamsin was certainly going to find a use for the axe even if it didn't work on the chain.
"THIEVES!" behind her a voice bellowed and a beefy hand was grabbing at her arm while a smaller one grabbed her hand and tugged her forward.
It broke their fall, but Tamsin could have done without being covered in hay. Two bearded men were yelling at them from the window they had just left.
The women took off at a run, the chain swinging between them like a jump rope. Around them they heard the rattle and shake of shutters and doors opening at the sound of the commotion.
They darted into a shed, ducking behind the door.
In the dim light, it looked like it might be a workshop. And there, on the table, was a pair of rusty looking bolt cutters. Even better. Tamsin had never imagined that she would find something so industrial to be beautiful, but she was sure that she had never seen anything more so. Harry made a quiet whoop of delight at the sight of it.
She started to cut away at the manacle on her wrist. A few more snips and it was free. Muggles were wonderful. She took back all her plans to subjugate them in a new world order. She moved on to Harry's, freeing her as well before shoving the chain into her pocket. It may be useful later. You never know when you need keep someone prisoner.
Might as well keep the bolt cutters too. She was fond of them after all.
Meanwhile, Harry had her wand out and was transfiguring another pair.
"What are you doing?" she whispered. Had no one in the future ever heard of a quick getaway before or was it only Harry?
"I'm making them a new pair. We can't just steal them. Besides, it won't matter to them any if it's made from magic," Harry whispered back.
"You really are such a Hufflepuff."
"It'll just take a second."
"We don't have a second. I'm not heading back to jail because of you."
"Yes, yes. I'm a terrible influence on your innocent, law-abiding self. Look, already done," Harry rejoined, so casual in the face of danger. Another thing to catalogue away for later when they weren't about to be caught.
"Do you think you can apparate? My magic isn't back enough yet," Harry asked after putting the new bolt cutters back.
"No. It's there, but too sluggish feeling for anything strenuous," she replied. Her magic was curled inside her, but it felt lethargic and heavy like bear waking up from hibernating. She reveled in the feel of it trickling back into awareness, but it was not fast enough. In retrospect, the wiser course would have been to start the muggle village search on a fresh day rather than after a morning already spent trying to break the chain.
"We'll have to leg it then. Don't worry. I haven't lost a Harry Hunt in years," Harry said as she flashed Tamsin a smile and peeked her head around the door.
"Harry Hunt? What –"
"Coast's clear. I think they're still searching the other buildings. There's some brush coverage if we keep low and a woodpile more towards the outskirts that we can get to."
They crawled (crawled! Her Knights will never, ever hear about this) alongside the bushes and hid behind the woodpile, listening to the yells of the searchers. The place was still in an uproar.
There was a small sound from a nearby house. They froze.
A small pebble bounced off the log next to Harry's head. An older woman was standing in the doorway and motioning them inside.
"Girls, quickly!" she whispered.
A/N: Longest chapter yet, but Riddle (as the resident murderous femme-fatale) had so much to monologue about. Hopefully the darker tone is not too jarring! Her internal voice is much more serious than Harry's.