"What does this song mean? My whole life, I don't know what this song means. I mean, 'Should old acquaintance be forgot'. Does that mean that we should forget old acquaintances? Or does it mean that if we happened to forget them, we should remember them, which is not possible because we already forgot them?"

"Well, maybe it just means that… We should remember that we forgot them, or something. Anyway, it's about old friends."

- When Harry Met Sally

January, 1943

"When I said that I was smarter than you I was not giving you implicit permission to be an idiot."

"No one's asking you to come!" Harry spat back.

After a night of moody sulking, Harry had come to terms with her Tom Riddle shaped fate. Mostly, that is. By come to terms with it, she'd meant that she'd realized she wasn't getting rid of him and that there was no point trying to keep any more secrets as he either wouldn't believe the truth or would do whatever he wanted anyway because he was contrary like that.

If he didn't want to become Voldemort anymore and wanted a first-row seat—

Honestly, it wasn't like her timeline could get any worse with another, underage, untried, Voldemort who wasn't even Voldemort running about.

So, she'd decided to just pretend he wasn't there and go about her business.

Unfortunately, he apparently wasn't going to let her pretend he wasn't there.

"Harry," he said, as if she were being truly stupid, "What part of 'let's pick a place a little less war torn' did you not understand?"

She stared ahead boldly, not even deigning to glance at him.

"Now," he said holding up a hand before she could start in. Which, of course, was utterly ridiculous, as Harry was very busy not staring at him and certainly not interrupting. He was having this entire conversation by himself, and pretending like they were having some kind of lively debate, "I would understand if we were off to France to, oh I don't know, rob Flamel—"

"Why would we do that?!" Harry blurted, even though she knew very well why and had lived through that reality already in her first year of Hogwarts.

However, it seemed he was now the one ignoring her, as he just kept on talking and not even batting an eyelash.

"But we're not going to rob Flamel or search for the Holy Grail or do anything of any importance. Instead, you want to take us to the middle of war-torn Europe, in enemy territory no less, just—because."

"Not just because," Harry let out a sigh and sat back down, hating herself even more for confessing to all of this, "That's where I was before, you know, panic apparating the both of us to this island. I'm going back to Grindelwald's evil lair of doom for—I don't know, clues or something."

"That's much worse," Tom responded.

"Oh, it's fine, I already blew the castle up!" Harry said, throwing her hands in the air, "And, I mean, probably Grindelwald too. And—turned a bunch of maybe aurors or dark wizards into glitter, I don't know, the point is I don't think anyone's going to be there."

She certainly hadn't left much of interest behind.

Just a whole lot of rubble and an aurora borealis.

"What?" Tom asked after a very long pause.

Harry just sighed, rubbing at her forehead, and wondering if it was alright that she was now angry at Riddle for somehow not being on the same page. If he was going to get with the program, then he should get with the program already.

"Alright," Harry forced herself to say calmly, "To catch you up to speed, I did leave Hogwarts to confront Grindelwald because he's—well, he's evil so somebody should probably do it and that someone might as well be me, and he also had a magical whats-it that can potentially get me to the future. Now, that didn't go exactly well, and I kind of had to get us out of there fast. However, I still want that magical whats-it, and if it's just lying around there and I miraculously didn't blow it up… I don't know, it'd be nice."

Tom stared for a moment, then kept staring, his brow furrowed in confusion and mouth slightly open, "I don't follow."

"How can you not follow?" Harry asked, the little control she had over her temper snapping, "I've explained all of this like five times already."

"What?" Tom asked, "No, no you did not."

"Yes—"

"No, what you call explaining is hours of mad rambling tangents about centaurs, house elves, dementors, the time that I apparently made a time capsule of my evil ghost and put it in a diary, mysterious treacherous godfathers who turned out to be innocent all along—"

"Yeah, because that all happened," Harry cut in.

"And it's all quite fascinating, I'm sure," Tom responded with a doubtful laugh, "But you have certainly not said it all to me five times or in anything remotely resembling a coherent manner. So yes, Harry, I think I'm a little entitled to not being able to follow."

Harry just stared at him for a moment.

"I genuinely don't see what you're having trouble with hare," Harry said.

Tom just stared.

He had that look on his face that Hermione would always get when she suspected that Ron and Harry really didn't give a flying gobstone about their O.W.L. scores or that Harry had resigned herself to completely failing the Divination exam and could live with this devastating certainty.

Harry held up a hand and began counting off fingers, "First, Grindelwald is an evil dark lord, okay, got that covered. Second, I learn he has a magical thingy of great power, cool. Third, I decide to confront him to find said thingy and take it from him. Fourth, that didn't go—amazing, but when I get knocked out apparently things explode so—Fifth, things exploded. End of the story."

"Oh, just like that," Tom said, throwing his hands in the air.

"Yeah, mate, just like that," Harry countered.

She sighed again when his only response was to stare at her. It was, in the weirdest way, like an even naggier version of Hermione.

Hermione, usually, you just had to put up with it for ten or twenty minutes before she'd give up. In her worse moments, she might rat you out to a teacher if she thought your firebolt was secretly a bomb, but usually she came around to things and got her head in the game after having gotten in her obligatory "I told you so" or "But we could be expelled!"

Tom Riddle didn't care about being expelled anymore, but this just seemed to take away the one thing that might get him to shut up.

"Look, are you coming, or do I get to dump you back off at Hogwarts?" Harry asked.

He considered her, "Harry, is this all a ploy to see how determined I am to risk my neck for your company? I do have to admit—you're driving a hard bargain."

Honestly.

The ego.

The sheer ego.

Even if that was actually a good plan and maybe she could pretend she absolutely had to go deep diving in a volcano next and if he didn't want to come then too bad for him.

"No," Harry said, "I really, seriously, do have to do this and I genuinely do not care if you're coming or not."

Well, this was a lie, she hoped he left but she was hoping reverse psychology might win the day where everything else had failed.

Though she wasn't hoping for much out of this venture. She hadn't seen anything obvious at the time, and while there was the wand that wouldn't go away and had a propensity to turn things into glitter, she hadn't seen anything else obvious.

And she hadn't seen Grindelwald with anything obvious either but—it might not have been something he'd keep on him at a dinner party.

Maybe there was an evil dungeon she'd missed that would have all the secret artifacts in it. Or, if there wasn't anything, then maybe he'd left around a diary or tome or something that would tell her what the thing was even supposed to be.

"Well, I am coming," Tom said with a sigh, as if this truly was difficult for him, "Though for future reference, I would appreciate not risking my neck at every turn and we're going to have to find out a way to compromise."

How?

This was supposed to be Harry doing whatever Harry was doing and not being able to get rid of him. There wasn't going to be any compromising over destination choices or anything like that.

However, arguing about that would just lead to arguing about it for hours and they'd never leave this island and then Harry really would be stuck with him forever. And if he really was concerned about his own neck and immortality and whatever then he'd quickly vamoose anyway as Harry certainly wasn't going to be staying away from danger.

She held out her hand reluctantly for him to take.

She hated the smug look on his face when he put his hand in hers.

With a deep breath, she took the plunge, and they hurtled through time and space to wind up back at the ruins of what had once been a great castle.

The aurora was gone, the ruins though were not, and so far as she could tell looked undisturbed from when she had left them.

There was no sign of stairs traveling into the mountain, though, no trap doors, no glowing objects, nothing more than a few broken chandeliers and glass scattered amidst the snow.

It took only a second for Harry to realize that there was nothing here.

There were no books, no hints, no clues, nothing at all.

And she wondered, for a moment, why she'd thought there would be.

And then there was the sound of dozens of loud cracks and Harry was confronted with the sight of robed wizards encircling her with wands raised.

"Oh—" Harry never got her curse out as she and Tom immediately had to hit the deck.

Harry hastily erected a shield around them, making sure to use her usual, reliable, wand, and winced at the sight of spell after spell ramming against it.

It wouldn't be able to take too much of this.

"Well done, Harry," Tom said, lying on the ground next to her and hastily reinforcing her shield with a swish of his wand, "Yes, this was a great idea. I'm so glad I let you talk us into this."

"I was coming whether you liked it or not!" Harry shouted back, only to hastily attempt to reinforce her shield.

She wondered, for a moment, if she could somehow sneak past them or defeat them and continue her search but—

Dammit, no, they were going to have to apparate.

Harry grabbed onto Tom, concentrated and… It was almost like the feeling of apparating through Hogwarts. Something was there, in her way, slowing her down just slightly. On her own, she could burst through, but holding to Tom she felt him catch against whatever it was and—

They toppled right back to the ground where Harry in a daze immediately had to cast another shielding spell.

"Anti-apparition wards," he gasped, trying to catch his breath, "Don't do that again."

"Then what are we supposed to do?" Harry asked, if running away was out then—

Then she didn't know what to do!

There was a lot of shouting, something that sounded kind of German or maybe Austrian if Harry could even tell the difference, and a lot of spells that did sound familiar and a lot of them familiarly nasty.

Merlin, was this place just crawling with German Death Eaters or something? Was there a nest nearby?

And oh no, if there was, then that meant more could be coming, didn't it? Which meant they had to get out of here sooner rather than later.

She drew out the other wand, eyeing it in wondrous horror. It was so innocuous, pale and undecorated as it was, looking nothing like her holly wand and like it hadn't come from a wand shop at all.

She didn't have to, did she?

But—

She also didn't have much of a choice.

She closed her eyes shut, begged the wand to do something not lethal or permanent, and swished it.

There was a sudden deathly silence.

"Did it work?" she asked, eyes still squeezed shut.

Tom didn't say anything though.

Hesitantly, she opened her eyes. She found herself looking at the open mountain range again and the ruined castle. There wasn't a single person, cloak, or wand in sight anywhere, looking just the same as when they'd first arrived.

"What did you do?" Tom asked quietly.

Harry didn't want to know, didn't know actually, and didn't want to stick around to find out. She grabbed his arm to apparate again, then remembered her last attempt.

She instead dragged him to his feet and started dragging him down the mountain as fast as possible. Maybe, if they got far enough, whoever would apparate in to check on these blokes wouldn't know where she'd gone. Especially if she was going on foot.

"Harry, what did you do?!" Tom asked, much louder this time.

"Haven't the foggiest," Harry said, not looking back, "Come on, we've got to move, I don't want to run into more wizard Nazis or whoever that was."

"Harry, you just killed—"

"No, I didn't because if they didn't turn into glitter, they could have just been teleported to some nice island somewhere having a grand old time!" Harry hastily interjected, because it was what she wanted to believe, desperately needed to believe.

She'd seen death before, killed before, though—

Oh, never intentionally and not even now, but Quirrell had died.

Quirrell had died and now these men on this mountain kept dying every time she came.

Harry was not a stranger to death or even to murder.

But that didn't mean she wanted to face it here and now.

"Harry," Tom said.

"Shut it!" Harry shouted back.

Her words rang through the mountains and for a moment Tom said nothing.

Quietly, Harry added, "I really don't want to talk about it. Let's just—get out of range of those anti-apparition wards or find a cave or something, alright?"

He was blessedly silent until they did stumble upon a cave. Even the fire, he lit without a word.

Hours later and Harry was still moping.

Perhaps moping wasn't the word for it, it was a cruel one, what she seemed to be was shellshocked.

She hadn't said anything for hours, hadn't even looked at him, and was instead staring with that horrified expression at the wall.

Tom had never killed someone before. Oh, he'd talked big, he'd talked about how he planned to, how he could if he wanted to, and he'd certainly felt proud about Billy Stubb's rabbit but nevertheless he had never killed a person before.

And when he'd seen those people disappear as if it were nothing, as if they'd never even been there, he'd found himself just as shocked as her.

His mind kept waiting for them to reappear, as magic often allowed, because it couldn't really be lethal if the curse wasn't green, could it?

They didn't though and from the way Harry was acting—he suspected she'd seen this before and he suspected they weren't coming back.

For the first time in his life, Tom had watched someone die.

And it had been so anticlimactic, so fast, he hadn't even been able to recognize it.

He'd always thought that there'd be—not necessarily glory, but significance, in death. Even when you died a wretch, even if you were an orphan passing away soundlessly of fever in the night, it was significant. Someone noticed, someone made noise, then there were funeral arrangements and a noticeable absence in someone's life.

You weren't supposed to just be able to exit stage left without anyone noticing.

Without your murderer having even intended your death.

And it reminded Tom that, had Harry not been there, that probably would have been him. She'd had a shield up faster than he could blink and the shield had been unbelievably strong at that. Before he could move to counter curse, she'd already pulled out that other wand.

There'd been so many of them, he didn't think he would have won that fight.

And then he would have been dead, without anyone noticing, and without ever having done anything.

And for all his grand statements of not wanting to be Voldemort at all, of wanting to travel with her, he was terrified.

He was trusting her with his very life, with everything that he was, and he had no idea if it was anything more than a vague sense of honor and duty that had compelled her to keep him alive.

She could have left him, even with those anti-apparition wards, and he had wondered for a terrified second if she had considered doing so.

She hadn't so far, had pulled him into this cave, but she seemed to be on autopilot more than anything else.

And all he could think was that despite all her explanations, the ones of girls-who-lived and ancient nemeses, he had no idea what she was.

And he thought, at the end of the day, she had no idea either.

"Harry," he said.

She flinched.

She then squirmed, looking away from him, "I don't want to talk about it."

"I know," he said in response, then nothing else.

"Harry," he started again, continuing on despite how she didn't look at him, "Where are we going next?"

She shrugged.

"Did you find whatever you were looking for?" he pressed again.

She shrugged again, this motion a little more forced, a little angrier.

"Do we need to go back?"

"I don't know!" Harry shouted, finally looking at him, "I don't know, okay, I—don't think anything is there anyway. You were right, we never should have gone."

He let her stew for a moment before he asked, "Where'd you get the wand."

"I don't know," she said quietly, "There, at the castle, I woke up with it and—no, I don't know, I don't know if it was somebody else's, maybe Grindelwald's, I just had it after everything. It and my own wand, even."

"Can I see it?" he asked.

She hurled it at his head.

It really was so plain. It had a handle, and it was polished, but it was undecorated. The wood was pale, more twig like than most wands, had none of the look that the wands from Ollivanders' always had.

It looked like nothing much, like a wand someone might buy out of sheer desperation, if you didn't even have seven galleons to your name.

Spinning it in his fingers, looking at it in the light, he felt nothing. There was no thrum of power, of recognition, it felt like any other piece of wood to him.

And while Harry could have done what she did wandlessly—

He remembered how she'd tried to throw the wand away only for it to return to her hand and he remembered how she'd used this wand, and not her other, when she'd removed the people on the mountain.

"Do you think that this, maybe, was what you were looking for?" Tom asked.

Her eyes snapped to him, to the wand, she opened her mouth then closed it.

"You think?" she asked, "You think it'd be a wand? This wand?"

Tom shrugged, "I don't know, I'm just wondering."

"Well," she stood and walked over to him, stared over his shoulder at the wand, "I guess it could be, but it doesn't look like much, does it?"

"Not all powerful things do," Tom said quietly.

She said nothing to that, just continued to stare down at the wand, then she looked over at him, "Have you ever heard of it?"

He shook his head, "A wand? No, but I never spent much time looking for powerful wands, I quite like my own."

And to amplify his magic with something like that. He supposed there was some merit to it, but it felt so cheap, as if he were not relying on his own merit but instead some pretty trinket that artificially made him worthier than others.

It would be nothing more than an illusion.

She considered him for a moment, biting her lip, then seemed to reach some internal decision. Drawing out her usual wand, she shouted, "Expecto Patronum!"

Tom watched in confusion as her patronus burst forth into—something that was not a deer.

"Harry," he found himself saying on autopilot, his mind having left his body, perhaps even his soul as he found himself staring at—

"Tom meet Tom," Harry said, motioning from Tom to the replica of himself formed out of blinding silvery light, "Riddle, this is the Tom Riddle that lives in my scar because of the girl-who-lived thing, you know that whole reason I speak parseltongue thing. Uh… other Riddle, this is 1942 Tom Riddle who won't leave."

The other Tom was older than he was, upon inspection, older and wearing decidedly muggle clothing. It wasn't quite looking at his own father but like looking at an older brother who happened to inherit the exact same genetics.

"Harry," the other Tom said, ignoring Tom completely, and, god, did he really sound like that? Was that what his voice sounded like from the outside? He didn't like it.

"Know anything about the wand?" Harry asked, cutting the other Tom off.

The other Tom gave her an unamused look (and was that what that looked like on his face), and pressed his original point, "Harry, are you quite sure you want to be doing this?"

"It's all too late now anyway," Harry said bitterly, looking away from him, "Just—tell me, please?"

The other Tom sighed and took a seat on the ground. Though, really, it was more hovering over the ground. He didn't quite seem able to touch it, being made of floating light. He glanced at the wand still in Tom's hands, "As your Tom here said, such things didn't really interest me. I was too proud and pragmatic for that, if it didn't get me something I couldn't get for myself, I saw no use for it."

"But what about—"

"I could not obtain immortality on my own," he cut in, "At least, not fully, which is why I would seek out items like—"

His eyes caught Tom's and he fell silent, his lips twisted instead into a wry smile, "Nevermind, I'm not sure it's something Tom Riddle has any business knowing about."

"Harry," Tom finally found his voice, "Harry, what?"

"Brain Tom," Harry said, "I told you, he's the reason we're not related. Wait, no, I meant he's the parseltongue reason even though we're not related. I told you about this already."

She had not.

He was certain she had not.

The other Tom, though, had turned his attention back to the wand, "It could be, though, whatever it is, it doesn't seem like the kind of wand anyone of Grindelwald's ilk would keep on hand. Which means that it likely is powerful or else important."

"You mean—" Harry started.

"Yes, it could be," Tom responded, "Whatever it was that near ensured Gellert Grindelwald's victory in Europe, it could be this thing in your hands. The question is, Harry, whether that matters."

"What do you mean?" Harry asked after a beat of silence.

"Do you intend to return to the future?" he asked in turn, "Do you intend to go with Tom Riddle here?"

"I—"

"He'll follow and it's entirely possible that he can," the other Tom said, "He's gone far past the bounds I thought were possible, tied the pair of you irrevocably together, there will be no escaping him now no matter what timeline or dimension you attempt to escape to."

Tom–felt incredibly lost, lost and desperately trying to keep up with the conversation, keep up with everything when it felt he was missing all the important bits of information. He wanted to feel reassured, by whatever–this other him had said, but all he felt was a sense of floundering.

He opened his mouth to say something, anything, but Harry spoke over him.

"But—"

"And Harry," he started, "Something has happened, Harry, your magic has become more powerful than I can describe. Whatever has been happening now, Harry, it may just be the beginning. I don't know what might happen in the future and if you care about the people you're trying to return to then you'll try to figure it out before you go back to them."

"What are you talking about?" Harry asked quietly, seeming to forget Tom was even there, both of them had.

"You kept much of your power sealed," The other Tom said, "Only in extreme circumstances have you ever used even a fraction of what you're capable of. Harry, this time—the seal has been broken and from what I've seen it will not return to the way it was."

Tom turned to look at Harry.

She looked confused but her eyes also were wide, her hands were shaking slightly, and for all she didn't seem to understand she understood enough to be afraid of it.

"You mean, if I go back, and I can't control my magic anymore, if that's what's happening then—what happened to those people just now might happen to my friends."

"I don't know," he said in response, "That's the trouble, I really couldn't say."

"But I can figure it out," Harry said slowly, as if testing the words, "I mean, it's not a bad thing to have more power, especially if I'm going back to fight the other, you know, Voldemort. There are loads of powerful wizards—"

"Not like you," the other Tom interjected.

There was a beat of silence.

"Think about it," he said, then his eyes finally slid to Tom, "Maybe go see the world a bit, try and figure out both that wand and yourself. What's a few weeks more in the grand scheme of things?"

With that, he vanished into specks of light, which flared then disappeared as they drifted to the floor of the cave.

They both stared at where the light had vanished.

Then Tom, feeling the stupid need to break the silence, said, "I've always wanted to see Australia."

Author's Note: Thanks to Vinelle for betaing the chapter. Thanks to readers and reviewers, reviews are much appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter