Part 6

When the agony ended, Tom was wheezing and gasping as he rolled onto his side. His face was damp with sweat and tears, his limbs limp and lifeless but twitching and burning with pain, like his nerves had been cauterized.

"Tom?" Harry said worriedly. "Are you alright? Can you hear me?"

Tom made a pitiful sound that grated on his own ears.

"I was about to go shouting for help—"

"N-no," Tom said, injecting strength into the word. "No." His voice was hoarse, ragged. It sounded like someone else was speaking. He shut his eyes and waited for his weakness to pass.

Harry fell silent and waited for Tom to recover. Occasionally, his hand would pass over Tom's forehead in a conciliatory gesture. Tom shivered at the contact but did not pull away.

Time passed. Minutes, or maybe hours. Then, slowly, Tom opened his eyes and sat up. It took a great deal of energy to do so, more than he had been prepared for; his body nearly keeled over in the opposite direction.

"Slow down," Harry chastised. His arms were hovering nearby, as if he could brace Tom with his translucent hands if he only tried hard enough. "You're doing just fine, Tom. I wish I could get you a glass of water."

Tom was too tired to respond. He wiped a bit at his face, then took a deep breath. "I feel better," he said when he was sure his voice would not fail him. It hurt to speak, but it was not so bad compared to everything else.

"Okay." Harry's arms fell away. "Just… don't move for a while. Adjust to sitting up, first."

Tom did that. He waited and waited, then grew frustrated with waiting and tried to stand. He did not fall over because he had the sense to grip the bedpost, but it was a close call.

"Water, Tom."

"I know," Tom snapped back. He did not bother with his wand—instead, he staggered to the bathroom and drank directly from the tap. This way he could grip the porcelain sink and keep himself upright.

Harry came closer. Tom was about to yell at him to go away when Harry spoke again, this time in a meek, contrite voice: "I'm sorry, Tom. I'm so sorry. It was a bad idea and we shouldn't have done it. I didn't think it would cause you so much harm, I—"

"I don't want to hear it," Tom said. Then he had to pause and breathe deeply through his nose to steady himself. His hands were clenched tightly on the rim of the sink. "What's done is done, if you will recall."

"If… if you say so."

"I do." Tom began to brush his teeth, eager to wash out the rancid taste in his mouth. Some of the taste that remained, it reminded him of blood—blood that was likely his own.

He rinsed and spat into the sink. There was nothing but toothpaste foam and water, but the sight of it churned his stomach anyway. Tom shut his eyes for a moment, then nearly fell into the mirror as a sudden sensation of vertigo came over him.

"Hey, hey—" Harry came closer, his hands hovering uselessly next Tom's shoulders. "I think I should get someone to take you to the Hospital Wing."

"No. I'm not going anywhere." Tom straightened and looked into the mirror. He was pale and sweating, but other than that, he looked perfectly fine. "It will pass. If not, it will pass when the day resets."

"That's a morbid way of looking at it."

"Morbidity is the least of your worries, Harry."

"Regardless, we'll take today to rest," Harry decided. "Yes?"

"Yes," Tom agreed.

Harry seemed mollified by this. By the time Tom was finished with his morning routine, he felt a little better. He changed into his school robes and retrieved the extra food he kept in his bag. The same orange, the same dinner rolls. Tom knew their taste and texture very well, so well that the food was bland and flavourless on his tongue.

Still, he ate it all, unwilling to visit the Great Hall or the kitchens for other options. He had no desire for the company of others today. They would not understand what he was going through, and the veneer of normalcy would only anger him.

"Where to?" Harry asked once he was finished.

There was only one place where Tom felt safe, nowadays. "To the Come and Go Room."

Saturday morning, Tom woke up. Harry was pretending to sit on the bed opposite. His legs were swinging back and forth, occasionally phasing through the mattress.

"What is your plan for today?"

Tom sat up and stretched his arms out. "We go back to the room."

Harry cast a doubtful look in his direction. "Alright."

Tom got ready for the day, and then they went to the Come and Go Room. The squashy couch was there; Tom flopped down onto it and propped his head up on one of the soft pillows.

"Are we doing anything?" Harry asked.

"We are not," Tom confirmed.

Harry bit down on his lower lip. It was an expression of disapproval that Tom did not care for.

After a pause, Harry asked, "Are you giving up?" His tone was not demanding; this was a genuine question.

Tom closed his eyes. "What is there to give up?"

"Have you given up on trying to break the loop?"

"Nothing we tried has worked. Repeating the day exactly the same yields no result. If you have any better ideas, you can try them yourself. You will not provoke me into another idiotic attempt to fix things."

"There are plenty of things we haven't tried," Harry protested. "Like, like killing the Basilisk. We haven't tried that! Maybe the loop is tied to it after all, and it just doesn't know—"

"Do you hear yourself?" Tom asked. He sat up and glared, now furious. "Who do you think is going to kill that blasted creature, Harry, because it won't be you! It will be me, and I will suffer the consequences if it goes wrong. Perhaps you've forgotten what it's like to feel pain, but I can assure you, it is painful."

Harry flinched backwards, guilt flickering across his face. "But you can't just give up, Tom."

"I can do what I want. There are better ways for me to spend my time here."

"Better ways than trying to escape?"

"Yes," Tom snapped. He could look into mind healing and try to repair the damage that multiple Horcrux attempts had caused. Though his body and soul were static, surely his mental state could still be altered. But Tom was tired, more tired than he had ever been in his life. If the universe had sought to crush his spirit, it had succeeded. He was prepared to accept his eternal damnation in the form of this time loop.

Harry said nothing more, but Tom could hear him thinking about what to say, and somehow that was just as annoying as if Harry had continued to argue with him.

"I think you should go," Tom said. "I have no plans to do anything today, therefore I have no need for your company."

Harry threw him a flat look. "You're an arse, Tom Riddle. Did you know that?"

Tom would not let Harry's barbs get to him. "If it gets you out the door, I'm anything you want me to be."

"Fine." Harry had a defiant look about him. "I know you'll change your mind eventually. You can come find me when you do." He folded his arms over his chest and drifted out of the room without looking back.

When Tom woke the next morning, he felt like he was floating. Without Harry by his side, the world was distinctly dreamlike. Tom rose from his bed and watched his dormmates go about their morning. They did the same things. They had the same conversations. Orion would turn to look at Tom and ask in the same tone of voice—

"You're up early today, Tom. Are you coming to the Quidditch match?"

Orion blinked, his lips parted in a guileless expression of idiocy. Tom had spoken with him in synchrony, their voices blending together as they asked the same question together.

"When in my life have I ever given a single whit about Quidditch? Do you enjoy asking inane questions for the delight of hearing your own voice aloud?" Tom snapped.

Instantly, the attention of the room fell upon him as the rest of their Slytherin associates paused to take in the scene. When Tom was this angry, good things never followed.

Now, Tom disliked most people on most days. The few he permitted in his inner circle were expected to hold themselves to a higher standard. More recently, that standard had been raised. Tom could not stand to be around anyone who was not Harry.

People were normally irritating. They were more irritating now that he was forced to relive Saturday over and over again.

On this Saturday, a Saturday that followed in the footsteps of the several dozen Saturdays before it, Tom was teetering on the brink of insanity. If he had to make small talk with his housemates one more time, he was going to throw himself off the Astronomy Tower.

The problem was that if did do that, he would once again wake up on Saturday morning. He would wake in his bed, quite possibly in a lot of pain, while his dormmates restarted their miserable morning routines for the umpteenth time.

Abraxas shifted his weight from one foot to the other; he was about to speak. "Don't bother," Tom drawled. "You're going to tell me that everyone needs to let off steam every once in a while. It's only natural, isn't it?" he said mockingly. "And you, Avery, you're going to stay silent like the spineless coward you are because you've never taken a stand on anything in your entire pitiful life."

Tom knew them painfully well. They had spent several years sharing this very room. He had spent an agonizing number of Saturdays wheedling information on time loops out of them. Tom knew what they would say, what they would do. He knew how to tug on their pathetic little puppet strings, how to make them dance the way he wanted.

What was there left to do? What was there left to know? Nothing. Nothing at all.

Tom's yew wand was a heavy weight in his hand. The tension in the air was unbearable, stifling, suffocating, thick enough to drown in. Strangely, Tom was reminded of Wool's, of the ugly, stupid brats that he'd been made to socialize with.

At Wool's, Tom had never faced consequences for his actions. The children feared him and the matron had turned to drink. What little reprimand they could deliver upon him consisted of menial chores or missed meals. Tom could shrug off either if he so desired; everyone at the orphanage knew that bad things happened to those who wronged Tom Riddle.

Life had wronged him. Time itself had wronged him. There were no consequences now. He could do whatever he wanted and it would be swept away by the loop.

Tom raised his wand and began to weave Silencing Charms across the dorm room.

"Tom?" asked Orion. The fear in his voice sent a thrill down Tom's spine.

"You should have kept your mouth shut," Tom spat. "Crucio."

Saturday morning, Tom woke up with memories that were drenched in blood, with screams echoing in his ears. His hands were shaking and he couldn't get them to stop. When he saw his dormmates, he was seeing ghosts. He was seeing their faces contorted in pain. He was hearing their voices crying out in fear. He was falling apart.

A sane Tom Riddle would have never done such a thing, but a sane Tom Riddle would not have been trapped in an endless loop of Saturdays either.

Tom's skin crawled all day. He could hardly stand it. He scratched and rubbed to no avail, trying to settle his restless, turbulent mind, but nothing helped. He stood in the shower, let the hot, scalding run over his face and body. It burned, but it was a good burn compared to his memories of dying. Of almost dying.

Being on his own was worse, he was beginning to realize. Solitude made him paranoid, made him jump at the smallest of sounds. Without Harry to ground him, he could hardly function. Was it because Harry was his Horcrux? Did having a Horcrux around help ground him? Perhaps it was simply the way brains worked. Perhaps brains were not meant to relive the same day over and over without any changes, without an anchor.

Harry was somewhere in the castle, but Tom could not bring himself to seek the other boy out. To do so would admit failure. Would admit vulnerability.

Harry had seen him at his worst in so many ways, but not this one. Tom submitted to no one, needed no one. If he acquiesced, it would expose his dependency. He could not do that. It went against his nature as much as dying did.

Saturday morning, Tom woke up. It was early. He kept the bed curtains shut and laid there all day, ignoring thirst and hunger, ignoring the calls of his dormmates.

Tom put up wards around his bed and closed his eyes and imagined the changing of the seasons, the feel of winter's first frost on his fingertips, the stiff, salty breeze of the ocean. Food that was not the food he kept in his bag or the food provided by the Hogwarts House-Elves.

All these things he had taken for granted. He had grown used to safety and luxury at Hogwarts. Compared to war-torn Muggle London, Hogwarts was a safe haven. A safe haven that Tom had desecrated with his Horcrux creation.

And Harry. He had taken Harry for granted, too.

Tom rolled onto his stomach and buried his face in his pillow. Even sleep brought no reprieve. No matter how long he slept, time would not move on.

Saturday morning, Tom woke up. It was late, well past breakfast time. Tom sat up and pushed his bed curtains aside. His dorm room was empty.

He would not admit it aloud, but he felt lonely.

Tom's pride lasted several days before exhaustion and loneliness won out. Harry was waiting for him, of course, which was irritating but not irritating enough for Tom to forgo swallowing his dignity and accepting the company that Harry provided.

Harry's silent, judgemental gaze followed Tom as he passed into the library and sat in his usual seat at their usual table.

"Harry," Tom greeted, as if they had not spent nearly a week apart from each other.

"Finished taking your anger out on others?" Harry asked in a clipped tone.

Of course, Harry would have noticed Tom's rampage. He would have seen the aftermath of the bloodbath in the Slytherin boy's dormitory.

"What does it matter," Tom said tiredly. "What's done is done. I won't be doing it again, if that helps." He had learned his lesson, so to speak. There was nothing to be gained from fracturing his fragile sanity further by committing more unspeakable acts of torture and murder.

Harry's lips flattened into a line. After a moment, he seemed to draw the conclusion that it was best for them both if he did not push the argument. "Fine. Have you had any luck with your research?"

"I don't know what you mean by luck," Tom said, "but I can assure you that if I had any scrap of it left, it would be utilized."

Harry sighed as if Tom had disappointed him somehow.

"There is nothing left to research for the time loop." Tom frowned. "I meant what I said: there are better ways to spend my time."

"Alright," said Harry. Tom had the feeling that if it were possible, Harry would be drumming his fingertips on the desk. "So what do you plan to do? It is unlike you to do nothing."

"I plan to look into mind healing."

"Mind healing?" Harry repeated. "I've never heard of that."

That was likely because Harry had been dead for two decades, but Tom was not about to say so when they had just gotten back on semi-decent terms. "I'll begin collecting books for us to read."

The action of gathering books was familiar, and so was the activity of reading alongside Harry. Mind healing was a relatively new branch of magic that had only grown in popularity due to increased interest in subjects such as Legilimency and Occlumency. However, there was more to the subject than simply repairing magical damage.

Mind healing could involve any number of treatments. One method was to sever or weaken the associations between traumatic and non-traumatic memories. This had the benefit of leaving the original memory intact while lowering the potential for unexpected, harmful flashbacks.

Tom disliked the idea of tampering with his mind, which was perhaps contradictory of him given what he had done to his soul. Harry seemed to find it interesting, however, and asked Tom to locate more books on the subject for him to read.

Days expanded into weeks as their time together dragged on; Tom noticed that Harry had grown reluctant to turn in for the night, preferring to stay and read instead. The issue was, there was no way for Harry to turn book pages on his own. They had yet to develop a method that would allow book pages to turn without Tom's supervision, which meant that if Tom decided to go to bed, Harry was done reading for the day.

"A shame none of this can work on ghosts," Tom commented. It was an offhand statement delivered without much thought behind it—if Tom wanted to test any of his newfound knowledge on mind healing, he would have to pick a victim out of the student body.

Now, Tom did not expect Harry to respond to his comment. The two of them had, over the course of their struggle to break the time loop, developed a taste for comfortable silences. However, Tom did expect Harry to request for his book pages to be turned, and so after a few minutes, Harry's lack of request drew Tom's attention.

The bespectacled ghost was staring morosely down at the page, eyes misty and distant.

"Harry?"

"Hmm?" Harry did look up, but he was clearly distracted, his attention elsewhere.

"Did you want me to turn the page?"

"Oh." Harry's head dipped momentarily. "No, thank you. I'm not finished with this page."

Tom pondered that. Did Harry wish these methods of mind healing could be used on ghosts? Despite all the time they now spent together, Harry had yet to share the cause of his death, the reason why he had become a ghost. Tom knew so little of Harry's past. It seemed unfair, really, that it remained a mystery.

"Let me know when."

Harry smiled, but it was not convincing. "I will."

Later that evening, Tom stood from the table and stretched his arms out. He was prepared to turn in for the night; he was no longer willing to stay awake longer than he had to.

Harry was still reading, but he nodded once at Tom. "To bed?"

"Yes." Tom did not bother taking his bag or any of the books on the table. Everything would be in its proper place come morning.

Harry followed him to the Slytherin Common Room, to the bathroom, to the dorms. Over the years, Tom had found the routine of winding down for the evening either grounding or irritating. Previously, the act of repetition had been occasionally welcomed, but now he abhorred it. His nightly routine was a means to an end, an act that he clung to out of a desire for normalcy rather than for any practical reason.

By the time Tom was fully dressed in his pyjamas and tucked into bed, he was ready to fall asleep. If his dormmates thought it odd that Harry-the-ghost was trailing after him, they kept their thoughts to themselves because Tom would eviscerate them otherwise. Intimidating his dormmates into submission was also aggravating, however, because it was always the same. The same questions, the same concerned glances.

Tom was going mad from it all. He supposed he ought to be thankful that they were repeating a Saturday rather than a school day—he could not stomach the thought of attending the same classes over and over.

Harry's voice filtered through Tom's heavy thoughts. "Tom?"

Tom was on the verge of passing out, but he forced his eyelids open. The bed curtains were pulled shut, rendering them well and truly alone. No one would be able to hear them through the layers of protection spells Tom had placed all around his bed. "Yes? What is it?"

Harry's expression was timid, cautious. "Are you going to try mind healing on yourself?"

That had generally been the point of all the research. "I might." Tom didn't see why this conversation couldn't wait until tomorrow. "I will test it on others first. Don't worry."

"That's—" Harry cut off and went still, mulling it over. "I suppose that makes sense."

Of course it made sense. There were no consequences if Tom ruined someone's mind. There were no consequences for anyone but him and Harry.

"Until tomorrow?" Tom queried, wanting to know if the conversation was over.

"Until tomorrow. Good night, Tom."

A/N:

i don't have any strong feelings about this chapter sjkldsdgjkls if anything it's closer to apathy at this point, but i AM determined to finish this story regardless of how i feel about it. fingers crossed for that!