Part Three

.

You're in my bones, bones

Oh, I gotta let you go

But I don't know how when you're rooted in my soul

.

— Dream, Tessa Violet.

Harry crashed into the icy curtain of the mirror and hurtled straight through. His limbs crumpled underneath the weight of his body as he slammed against the stone floor.

It hurt. Flesh and bone were not made for smacking against stone. Sharp pains blossomed all over his body, most prominently on the spots where hard bone had made contact with the ground.

Harry pushed himself up, his knees, elbows, and hips protesting as he moved. It was only then that the cause of his pain became clear. He had landed on the floor because Tom had not been there to catch him.

Alarmed, Harry threw a crazed glance around the dusty classroom—empty, empty, empty —then scrambled back to the mirror, nearly laying his hands on it in his haste to refocus, his heart hammering away in his chest.

"No, no," Harry muttered, shifting frantically back and forth, trying to see—

The mirror was empty. It was all empty and he was alone.

Dread swelled in his throat, a heavy lump of slow-rising terror. He knew, somehow, that they had switched places. That Tom had taken his place in the mirror.

"No," Harry repeated numbly, trembling as he took a singular, stumbling step towards the mirror. He raised his hand, afraid of touching the glass. "Tom?"

There was no response.

Harry exhaled, a ragged noise that had the edge of a sob. He was shaking so hard that the room was spinning.

"Give him back," Harry said. "You're supposed to give me what I want," he pleaded. "You're supposed to give me Tom." His Tom, not the other one.

The surface of the mirror shimmered, flashing brilliant shades of silver and white that made Harry's eyes water. His hands were cold, and the cold was seeping through his veins, eradicating the lingering aches from his nasty fall. He needed to get to Tom, but how?

Harry examined his reflection. The whites of his eyes were faintly bloodshot and his dark hair was as disheveled as ever. Tom had told him this mirror was meant to reveal his heart's true desire. If that was true, Harry thought, then right at this moment it should have shown Tom standing by his side.

As Harry stared, his reflection began to change. The backdrop of the classroom vanished from view as smoke flooded the mirror's surface like ink spilled into a glass of water.

Once the mirror had been utterly blacked out, the darkness reversed, receding to the edges of the frame. As visibility slowly returned, Harry was able to distinguish the glow of multiple candles, the flat surface of a writing desk, and—

"Snape?"

Harry's least favourite professor was sitting behind a small stack of textbooks and staring down the length of his hooked nose at a page full of tiny, indecipherable lines of writing. Harry squinted and shuffled closer to the mirror. The writing was gibberish that only looked like words. Why?

After a long stretch of silence, Snape released a growl of frustration and tossed aside his book.

"Trust Potter to be enthralled by the idea of illegible reading material," Snape said, seemingly to the air around him.

"I read," Harry snapped, irritated.

Snape startled and almost upset the pile of books on his desk. "Pot—Harry?"

Harry nearly fell face-first into the glass in his shock. "You can hear me?" he asked.

"Yes, I can hear you," Snape repeated, sounding almost irritable as he cast a look about his empty room. When his gaze finally settled on Harry, he said, "Where are you? Shouldn't you be with him?"

Harry did not doubt the 'him' that Snape referred to was the Other Tom. "I escaped," Harry said flatly. "But the mirror took Tom—my Tom—in my place."

Snape's mouth thinned. "You should be glad you escaped with your soul, then."

His soul. Harry frowned. "What do you mean? What does he want with my soul?"

"What does any creature like him want with a soul?" Snape asked rhetorically. "He wants to ruin it. He will portion your pathetic existence into bite-sized morsels and devour them."

Harry was too worried about Tom to be properly horrified. All he could manage was a bewildered version of his regular dislike. "But you help him! You help him trick people and take their souls!" His hands balled into fists, nails piercing hard enough to sting. "At least the Snape from my world isn't a murderer."

"If you believe I'm here of my own volition," Snape said in a blunt tone, "then you're truly as idiotic as my counterpart claims you are."

Harry bristled. This Snape was just as irate and unhelpful as his Snape, which meant this conversation was useless. What he needed was a way to get to Tom, except the mirror was showing him Snape instead. Was Snape supposed to help him?

"Listen," Harry said. "You have to help me get back through. I have to save Tom."

Snape stood from his desk and paced closer, his eyes narrowing. "You cannot enter unless he or the mirror permits it."

"What the fuck does that even mean?" Harry protested. "Just put your hand on the glass and pull me through! Don't you want to get out of here?"

Snape's mouth twisted. "It wouldn't work."

"Why not?" Harry demanded.

"Because for the mirror to switch us," Snape said impatiently, voice full of bitterness, "I would need to have a soul."

"Oh," Harry said, deflating. Snape's dull answer had knocked the anger right out of him. "Sorry."

Snape sneered at him. "I don't need your pity, Potter."

Harry wanted to know more. "Is that why he can control you? Because he has your soul?"

"Something like that, yes." Snape sighed and settled against the edge of his desk. He stared, eyes unseeing, at some distance to Harry's left. "Would you truly take my place here, simply to save your friend?"

"Of course," Harry said hotly. "Of course I would!"

Snape inhaled an unsteady breath, nostrils flaring. He seemed to be thinking something over. Then he stood, drawing himself to his full height, and nodded once. "Stay here. Do not change the view of the mirror. I will return soon."

Harry nodded—what else could he do?—and watched Snape depart.

The shadows in Snape's private study flickered on and off as the candles on the desk continued to burn down. Harry shivered and wondered if Tom was alright. He had not caught a clear glimpse of Voldemort before passing back into this world, but what he had seen was terrifying enough.

Harry could only pray that he would reach Tom before anything truly awful happened.

Snape announced his return by slamming open the door to his chambers. His sallow face was paler than usual as he swept forward and laid his hand against the surface of the mirror.

"Put your hand on the glass!" Snape demanded impatiently.

Harry obeyed without question, slapping his palm against the cold, smooth surface of the mirror.

Snape pulled, just like Tom had, and sent Harry hurling forward. Ice washed over him before he tumbled to the floor in a heap. Harry scrambled to his feet and whirled around to see Snape standing on the other side of the mirror, eyes wide, as if he, too, could not believe what they had accomplished.

"You're free," Harry said, perplexed. Then it occurred to him what that meant. "You stole it back?" he asked. "Your soul?"

"Voldemort," Snape said, taking care to enunciate the name, "is thankfully too occupied with your friend to notice the theft. I advise you to make haste."

Harry was aware that this Snape had used him to escape, and he could hardly fault the man for it, but he wasn't going to let Snape leave before giving him some answers. "Tell me how to defeat him," Harry said. "At least tell me how to stop him!"

Snape's mouth twisted. "You think it will be easy? A creature such as he has lived for thousands of years, and with good reason." He shook his head. "Voldemort is immortal. You cannot hope to defeat him. At best, you may hope he decides to keep you on as his new whipping boy."

"You must have something!" Harry said, outraged. "You've spent all this time with him, haven't you?" He gestured around the room. "How did you get in here? How did he get in here?"

Snape pinched the bridge of his nose. "This mirror shows your heart's desire," he said flatly. "Voldemort's desire, if I'm not mistaken, was to live forever. The mirror simply granted his wish."

Harry glanced uneasily over his shoulder. "He lives forever, but he's stuck in here?"

"Perhaps you aren't as idiotic as you seem," Snape commented, and it felt so normal, to be insulted by Snape, that Harry snorted in response.

"So he's stuck," Harry said. If Voldemort was stuck, then he would be trying to get out. "Why can't he leave? What's stopping him?"

"His immortality required a permanent sacrifice," Snape said. "To earn eternal life, Voldemort was required to relinquish a piece of his soul. It is trapped here as surely as you are. This is why he cannot leave. So long as he desires immortality above all else, that piece of his soul can never be returned to him."

Harry couldn't see how this would help him rescue Tom. "Is there anything else about him I should know?"

Snape grimaced. "He wanted you, not your friend. Voldemort believes your soul will be able to replace the portion he is missing, thus freeing him from the mirror world once and for all."

"Great," Harry said, pouring as much sarcasm into the word as he could muster. "That's just great. Well, if that's all, I'll be on my bloody way."

Trust Tom to find the one mirror in the entire school with an immortal, all-powerful monster living inside of it.

Snape nodded curtly. "Good luck. I will inform your professors of your absence. Perhaps they will know more than I on how to rescue you from the mirror."

"Thanks." Harry drew his wand from his pocket. "See you soon, I hope."

Snape faded from sight as he stepped away from the mirror. Harry swallowed and turned to the door. Tom was out there. Tom was out there. Harry had to find him.

Harry undid the locks on the door and exited to the hallway. It was dark and quiet, too quiet to be anything like the real Hogwarts.

Now he knew the truth, Harry could tell the difference between this world and his own. The walls around him were not imbued with Hogwarts' familiar magic. These walls would not protect him from harm.

Harry set off towards the mirror room of this world, which was where he'd seen Tom—and Voldemort—last. As he ran, the stone floor stretching on and on beneath his feet, the sections of the hallway that were drenched in darkness wobbled back and forth.

When Harry took a hard left to get to the library, as he always did, he wound up facing a dead end.

For one panic-filled moment, Harry doubted himself. He had taken a wrong turn. He had made a mistake.

Except he had walked these halls for years. They were as familiar to him as Tom was.

But then again, he thought, this was not Hogwarts, just as Voldemort was not Tom. This castle did not protect those within. It trapped them here. This mirror version of Hogwarts had trapped Voldemort in here, and Harry suspected that regardless of how old Voldemort was, this mirror, this world, was even older.

That thought dropped a shiver down his spine. He forced himself to ignore it. Harry spun about and retreated the way he had come, determined not to let this place get the better of him. His steps echoed in the corridor, so loudly that Harry was sure they would give him away.

Several more wrong turns later, Harry was certain he was lost in a maze. All the paths were the same, right down to the half-melted candles sitting in the brass holders pinned to the walls.

Harry's hands clenched into painful fists as he spun about, furious and confused. "You're supposed to give me what I want," he demanded of the empty air, because it had worked the first time. "Give me Tom back!"

He repeated his demand several times, his ire building with each iteration. When nothing changed, he hurled spells at the wall, every curse and hex he knew, but the walls only groaned in response, mocking him.

Harry lowered his wand arm, breathing hard. He swore he could hear distant laughter that sounded like Tom's, but not quite.

Voldemort was behind this. Keeping him and Tom apart.

Harry glared at the walls, willing them to move, to reveal the room he was searching so desperately for.

The room he needed.

Harry froze, struck by a sudden revelation. This Hogwarts was not his Hogwarts, but it had the same rooms, and if those rooms worked the same way, then there was a path that would lead him directly to Tom.

Harry shut his eyes and paced the corridor. With each stride he took, his heart rate increased. I need the room that has Tom. I need the room that has Tom.

On his third pass, Harry sensed a heavy shift in atmosphere that signified the magic of this world taking hold. When he opened his eyes, there was a door in front of him.

Harry seized the cold brass handle and wrenched it open, revealing darkness.

"Lumos." Harry raised his wand and took a cautious step forward.

It was cobblestone from floor to ceiling, cool and damp. Harry shuddered and crept forward, wary and unsure what to expect. As his eyes adjusted to the lack of light, he realized there were metal grates on the floor and metal bars on the walls.

This was a prison.

"Tom?" Harry whispered, his heart twinging painfully in his chest.

For a time, there was no response, and then—

A quiet sob came from the middle of the room. "Harry?"

Tom sounded so soft and plaintive that Harry's lungs constricted, squeezing tight.

"Tom," he whispered, "it's me. It's Harry." Then, because he wasn't sure what Voldemort had done, he added, "I'm the real Harry, I promise."

"Is it you?" Tom asked as Harry approached, his wandlight casting Tom's hunched body in a pale golden glow.

"I promise," Harry said quickly, dropping to his knees by Tom's side.

Tom curled in on himself, his head low and draped in shadows, his arms wrapped tight around his knees and his face buried into the gap.

Harry laid a careful hand on Tom's shoulder. "Are you alright?"

"I'm—" Tom broke off with a shiver so violent that Harry felt the vibration all the way up his own arm.

Harry bit down on his lower lip. Guilt flooded into him at the thought of Tom locked away down here in the cold, alone and afraid. "I'm sorry," he said weakly. "I'm so sorry, Tom. I didn't know that would happen when we both touched the mirror."

Tom only shivered more. Harry shuffled closer and enveloped Tom in a hug.

"I came as soon as I could," Harry said quietly, "but we should go. Leave before he comes back. Can you stand?"

"Y-you came back for me." Tom's voice was so faint that Harry had to strain to hear it.

"Of course I did," Harry said, voice pained. "I would never leave you here on your own." Just like Tom would have never left him here alone.

"I'd do anything for you," Tom whispered, "and you'd do anything for me, wouldn't you?"

"I—of course I would," Harry said. He raised his head and glanced at the door. "Please, Tom, we have to go."

Tom's hand flew up to grip Harry's forearm. His fingers clamped down, hard enough that Harry felt the bones against his flesh like steel bars.

"You left me here to die," Tom accused.

A pang of hurt slid through Harry's chest like a sharp dagger. "I wouldn't," Harry said, confused. "You have to know I wouldn't. If—if he showed you a fake me, that wasn't real. It wasn't the truth."

"Prove it."

Harry stilled. Tom's hand was unbelievably cold and Harry couldn't see most of his face.

"How?" Harry asked. He attempted to extract his wand arm, slowly so the movement seemed natural, but he found that he could not.

Finally, Tom—not Tom—raised his head. His eyes shone deep red and his mouth split into a large, bloody grin that revealed rows of long, pointed teeth.

"By giving me your soul, to begin with," crooned the Other Tom, crooned Voldemort.

The familiar flesh and bone of Tom melted away before Harry's eyes, revealing spiny, chalk-white limbs that were longer than Harry's entire torso. Harry bit back a scream as Voldemort hooked him by the armpits and hoisted him into the air.

Voldemort laughed and laughed, his body unfurling, unwinding, until Harry was completely caged in, his body tightly bound by Voldemort's massive serpentine coils. Harry felt almost laughably small as Voldemort lifted him to eye level.

All of Harry's vision was filled with Voldemort—the sloping, skeletal head that lengthened into a disproportionately angular jaw, the gleaming red eyes with inky-black slits for pupils. The pale, human torso that ended at the waist, morphing into an enormous serpent tail.

"Don't you love me, Harry?" Voldemort asked, his voice a low hiss. As his body shifted, fluid and sinuous, his scales scraped along the exposed skin of Harry's wrists and ankles like dozens of sharp nails.

Harry grit his teeth and thrashed hard. "Let me go!"

"Never," Voldemort promised, and laid his lipless mouth to Harry's forehead in a mockery of a kiss. "You'll be so sweet for me." He dragged a single clawed finger down the line of Harry's throat, scratching a thin line of red into the soft, vulnerable skin. "My sweet soul."

Harry convulsed unwillingly in response, the thick scent of decay and iron—blood—that wafted from Voldemort thoroughly invading his senses. He could feel his limbs twitching within their confines as he craned his head as far back as it could go, fighting against Voldemort's coils with all his might. "Where's Tom?" he demanded. "What did you do to him?"

"But I am Tom," insisted Voldemort. "I am all you want, all you need… I have seen your heart's desire, Harry, and all of it resides within me." Voldemort seized Harry's jaw with his clawed hand and forced their eyes to meet. "All I ask is for you to give me what I desire in return."

"Fat chance," Harry spat in response.

"Is that so?" Voldemort grinned mirthlessly as his grip constricted, squeezing Harry's legs so hard that they began to numb.

Harry's wand slipped from his grasp, clattering onto the floor. He could barely breathe through the sudden terror lodged in his throat. The scaly flesh wrapped around the lower half of his body wound tighter, crushing his waist and ribs. Harry shuddered, skin prickling as the tail curled higher, climbing up his body.

Soon, he thought dazedly, it would reach his throat. It would reach his throat and he would choke to death. Already, his chest felt tight, his vision was swimming with black spots that were hardly distinguishable from the surrounding darkness. From the cavernous shadows of Voldemort's hollowed face and dark red eyes.

"Wait," Harry wheezed, the words dry and rattling as they emerged from his throat, "wait! You want my soul—"

Voldemort halted his slow strangulation and regarded Harry with mild interest. "Yes?"

"But what you really want is your soul," Harry said with a wet, fevered gasp. "You want your soul back so you can leave the mirror."

"I do," Voldemort mused, finally releasing Harry's face. "And yours will serve my purposes very well."

"You don't know," Harry said, his voice so hoarse it was unrecognizable to his own ears. "You don't know if my soul will work. And you can't keep kidnapping people forever. Eventually, people will realize what you're doing. They'll lock the mirror away."

Voldemort's grip loosened enough for Harry to suck in another gulp of air. "That may be true," Voldemort said, "but it provides me with little reason to release you. Or your precious Tom."

"Yes, but—but what if I could find it for you?" Harry asked breathlessly. "Your soul piece. If I find it, then you can leave. And that way you'll know the mirror won't pull you back."

Voldemort tightened his hold once more, rough scales digging painfully into Harry's body even through his school robes. Harry released a cry of pain that morphed into a sob of fear as Voldemort bared his teeth and snarled.

"You lie. I have searched this realm for centuries. I am the most powerful being in all the world, the only true conqueror of death. Wherever my soul shard has been hidden, I, Lord Voldemort, am unable to detect it."

"Not a lie," Harry pleaded, even as sweat rolled down his forehead, the pitiful evidence of his panic and desperation. "You can't find it because the mirror only shows you your heart's desire. You want to be immortal. So long as that's true, you can't find it and you can't leave. But I can find it. If you promise to let Tom and I go, then I'll be able to find it," he reasoned shakily, "because I'll want it more than anything else in the world."

Voldemort's eyes narrowed to blood-red crescents.

"If I find your soul piece," Harry repeated, willing his voice to steady itself, "then you have to let Tom and I go." It was not the best plan he'd ever had—not to mention he had no idea how to get them back through the mirror afterward—but it was something. It was the start of a proper plan.

"I dislike games," Voldemort finally said.

Harry straightened up as much as he could. "If I fail, then you can have my soul. I'll give it up without a fight."

Voldemort dipped his head, his breath fanning hot and damp against Harry's face as he whispered, "If you fail, I will torture your heart's desire every day until the end of magic herself. He will rue the very moment you were ever born."

Anything was preferable to giving up and being tortured anyway. So long as there was a chance he and Tom could escape, Harry would fight off a dozen evil monsters.

"Deal," Harry said in a weak voice. "Now let me go."

Voldemort released him onto the floor. Harry landed sideways, hips and shoulder slamming onto the damp cobblestone. It wasn't so bad, he thought blearily, considering he'd already fallen twice. His bruises could have as many bruises as they wanted if he and Tom got out of this place alive.

"You have until nightfall to return," Voldemort said dismissively. With a wave of his hand, the room flooded with light, floating candles manifesting to guide Harry's way to the door.

The sudden influx of light burned. Harry squinted and lifted a hand to shield his eyes. That was when Voldemort slashed at the stick of wood upon the ground, snatching it up.

"I will keep this," Voldemort said with a smile. "And I shall return it when you return to me, sweet soul."

Harry pulled to his feet, wincing with the motion, and limped to the door without looking back. His legs tingled unpleasantly as the feeling gradually returned to them. Once he was a decent distance away, he slumped against the closest wall and allowed himself to crumple into a ball.

Now all he had to do was find Voldemort's soul.

Harry had no idea where to begin his search, but he had not been so distracted that Voldemort's phrasing—your heart's desire—escaped him. Wherever Tom was, he was what Harry wanted the most. That was the most important part of all this. So long as Harry focused on that, he would win.

A/N:

thank you to Dutch for the help on this chapter!

one more chapter ahahahahahaha. no, that's not my evil laughter. it's my uh-oh laughter at myself for ending up with more than i had originally planned to write.