Notes: Thank you to Trello for their wonderful beta reading work! All remaining mistakes are mine.

Previously: The shade's tells Harry about what he experienced in Hell. Dreams of his past sins, being a shadow between all the other lost souls, being tortured by the past and his new smokey existence ... and then, came the New Dream.

Of smoke and stone

chapter 6: pale moon

"What was this new dream about? What happened next?" Harry couldn't help but ask, sitting upright in his armchair. He was anxious to know. He was so invested in Tom's tale.

"Harry Potter, so eager," sniggered the shade, who was pretending to be sitting on the carpet in front of Harry. "The new Dream was similar to the other Dreams, in that it was a memory from my lifetime. However, it was also utterly different, in that it was not showing something condemned by moral laws."

The new Dream featured a quite young Voldemort reading a book. It was quiet and peaceful, relaxed , a world apart from the intensity and confusion of the other Dreams. Vision Tom Riddle was lying in a couch of the Slytherin's common room with Secrets of the Darkest Arts , the only book in Hogwarts mentioning horcruxes in detail.

He kept reading the same pages over and over, the ones covering the creation, consequences, destruction and inversion of a horcrux.

In Hell, Voldemort watched this new Dream countless times, feeding on the silence and cosiness of it. After some time, however, he began to wonder about its meaning.

"I think I know why the new dream," Harry gasped. "Did you ... ? Are you ... ? ... Do you know why you had this dream?"

Tom's grey eyes briefly filled with a million stars before turning back empty and faded out.

"It's late, they will come back soon," Tom turned his head towards the portrait hole, cutting their conversation short.

Harry shrugged, refusing to feel anything more than a tiny bit disappointed. He let the comfy blanket fall on the ground and went to bed.

After that night, everything changed. Harry started to wonder for real about the shade's past life. In classes, in bed, in the shower and the hallways, he mumbled questions. People looked at him with discomfort and something even worse, something which seemed like shame.

"Have you ever eaten ice cream?"

"Did you have a favorite book? No dark arts shit please."

"What country would you like to visit? Do you hate-hate Albania or would you be okay going back?"

"Have you ever cooked anything at all? Or baked? I can't imagine Voldemort baking cookies."

"Which part Nagini liked to be petted the best? Was she even nice to you? Did you have secret conversations at night?"

"If you had a job, a real and decent one I mean, what would that be?"

"And what about your Animagus form? I'm pretty sure it would be ridiculous or extra scary. Or just an old classic snake."

New rumors about the Savior's declining mental health ran, of course, but Harry was too busy listening to Tom Riddle's stories to give a shit.

Everything has changed, because Harry was now convinced the shade had achieved true remorse. Wasn't that what the New Dream was about? Giving Voldemort a chance to mend back his soul? Showing him the answer, making him read over and over the lines about the inversion of the process, about salvation?

It wasn't such a crazy idea. After all, apart from its, well, spectral condition, the shade appeared to be an okay, stable, ensouled human being. Someone who could like and be liked in return.

Tom indulged in his questions and, for a few weeks, the two boys kept talking and having fun all day long, enclosed in their private little bubble.

They went flying. Tom pretended he was sitting behind Harry and holding his waist. He even whooped. Twice.

As Tom had never been down in the kitchens, they visited the place multiple times. Once, Harry showed him how to make pancakes and they ate them. Well, Harry ate them and he pretended he was trying to feed some to Tom, who pretended he couldn't eat them because there were gross. Harry made the elves promise they wouldn't say a thing about him having a tea party with an imaginary friend.

Whenever they could, they escaped under the invisibility cloak for a midnight walk. It was their favorite activity. During these precious moments, it was just them in the endless castle and they were, for a few hours, both the same: pure and young souls with no flesh, intangible entities out of time and space, so unlike the living.

"Harry! We were not expecting you!" Seamus cheered up, lifting up his beer as a greeting. "Good to see you, man!"

"Hermione told us you're clean now," added Dean. "And you haven't showed up for a couple weeks, so ..."

"Been busy," Harry grinned, eyeing Tom's shade. "So, where is my beer? What are we watching tonight?"

"Oh, Blaise found the best show. It's about vampires, and a blonde girl who slays them ..."

"It's a Chosen One story, be careful not to identify too much to the badass heroine, Potter," Blaise handed him a three tapes box featuring the six first episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Tom laughed at Blaise's easy teasing. Harry rolled his eyes, huffing. Blaise looked a bit uncomfortable, his eyes slipping to the empty spot where Tom was happily floating.

Harry grabbed a beer and, soon enough, they were all entranced by the booze, the TV show and the joint passing from mouth to mouth.

"That's a bad idea, you know," said Tom when Harry took an umpteenth beer. "You don't want to vomit like last time. I'm not spending another hour waiting for you to empty your stomach. The sounds you make ..."

"Oh, shut up," groaned Harry nastily.

"You shut up and watch the show," protested Seamus, who was not so subtly caressing Dean's leg under the blanket.

"Yeah," groaned - or rather moaned - Dean.

"Listen to the queer boys, Harry," Tom flew closer to them to see what they were doing. "But don't look at them, it's dreadful."

Harry opened his bottle but ended up leaving it by the side a few minutes later. He was too fascinated by the TV show and by the groping session taking place a couple of meters from him to care about cheap beer.

While Blaise was firmly dedicated to Buffy Summers, Tom was shamelessly studying the couple, making some "Oh" and "Ah" at critical moments. Harry was somewhere in-between, neither entirely following the show's plot, neither totally feasting his eyes on his friends.

Very late in the night, the three Gryffindors finally wished Blaise good night and went back to the tower. Dean and Seamus were half walking, half making out, their hands brushing and fondling the other one's flesh. A few feet behind them, Harry was talking to Tom.

"What makes Angel so special? Don't you think it's weird Buffy slays all vampires but him ? Would she still date him if he were ugly? How can she bear with his past crimes?"

"Watch out for the missing step," was Tom's sole answer. Harry tripped off nonetheless. "Oh, I warned you. I won't give you a hand."

Harry got back on his feet easily, without answering Tom's ironic comment. He didn't need any help. Even with Tom's constant company, he was used to fending for himself.

To be continued