"I am not a creature that was born. I am a fire that was set."

"Harry! " Death called loudly inside his thoughts.

Harry sat up in a jerky motion. Everything spinned around him. He had a splitting headache. It was night but … why did the black and white tiles of the orphanage glow with an orange hue? Then, as if to reply, the whole building shook because of a roaring detonation.

He tried to get up from his bed… Impossible. His wrists were tied to the frame. Around him, two women from the staff were busy with two other children—they had foggy gazes, unaware of their surroundings. The four of them were in a hurry, leaving Harry behind.

Alone.

Already magically exhausted, Harry hastily dipped into his thin reserves to unbind whatever was holding him down. Once on his feet, Harry struggled to be completely in control of his numb limbs.

"What's happening—?!" Harry shouted, but another explosion covered his voice.

The windows of the infirmary shattered into pieces from the blast. Harry barely had time to protect his face with his arms.

"Air raid. The Blitz—and the war— is starting early! " Harry hated that Death said that as excited as a child talking about Christmas. "Go outside or you'll end up crushed under the rubble. "

Harry's legs sprung into action. At the back of his mind, he heard the air split as Death mowed down souls all around them—fuck, he even heard the other immortal actually panting!

"Focus, friend. You can't save everyone. "

"But here! The children!" Harry roared as he ran against the flow of orphans.

"I'm a little busy right now. Why aren't you out already? Do you want me to come early for you or something? "

Around him, there was only chaos, flames and kids crying; an apocalyptic landscape. On his way to the upper floors, he made sure that every young child was with a partner and knew where to go to be safe for the night.

On the second floor, Harry stormed into his room, but he discovered it empty. Tom was maybe already outside…? With a look inside the shabby wardrobe, Harry found there all the outfits and tiny trinkets stolen by Tom and his magpie tendencies, left as he had planned so as not to arouse suspicion of them running away. Even the bed was still neatly made… Would Tom have managed to escape after the disaster at the church? Another shockwave shook the walls of Wool's orphanage. Not from the burst of a bomb, but from an explosion of raw darkness and magic.

Harry's heart skipped a beat. Tom was still here. Something terribly wrong was happening.

With one last look, something caught his eyes. He pocketed it.

Harry started running again, his magic acting like a Point Me spell; a hunting dog that tracked down the trail of the other magic. It guided him to the top floor. Right to the hatch that went up to the attic, precisely. Chains and large planks of wood nailed to the very ceiling blocked the opening. There was drumming against it: kicks and assaults of raw magic. Nothing seemed to make them move. Harry's blood boiled. They trapped a kid in the attic! They abandoned him with an air raid ongoing!

All tools were scattered, left behind after they achieved the dirty work. Harry grabbed a crowbar and stabbed it fiercely into the boards.

"Step back!" Harry shouted to be heard even with the chaos running wild.

Some planks clattered on the floor, but before Harry could remove more of them, the roar of flame burst around him. A fire was spreading from the floors below, it was already devouring the stairs and rushing towards Harry.

Determined, and with a loud cough and tears in his eyes, Harry propped a hand up toward the hatch. Every pinch of his magic was projected in a blast that sent away the last planks of wood.

The hatch was thrown open.

Before Harry's legs could give out, someone grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and hoisted him into the attic. The burning heat of the fire still licked Harry's back as he laid on the wood floor. Tom's face hovered in his vision. His dark eyes still reflected his deep cold fury at being trapped.

"You're here," Tom said, his voice hoarse, faintly surprised. "That makes things easier…"

He takes the crowbar Harry had kept and rushed into the depths of the attic. Harry got up just in time to see Tom hit the only round window. The glass broke on the first try. Harry approached quickly, his legs shaky. Both were breathless, staring into the void.

"No other choice."

"Why didn't you do that earlier?" Harry asked, not sure if his body could still work after a fall from the roof of the orphanage.

Tom glared at him. "I am wondering about the same thing now. "

Then, before Harry could answer, Tom managed to push him over the window. Maybe he cried out in his fall, but in any case the impact took his breath away. About twenty meters below, the ground was as soft as a sponge, and prevented Harry from ending up smashed like a bug on a windshield. He recognized the faint purple halo of a Softening spell.

He barely straightened when Tom fell beside him. Harry agreed that Tom deserved his victorious smile: the kid easily earned his genius title. Even without having been to Hogwarts, he was performing first-year spells without a wand or knowing the incantation—as if transfiguring the ground was not already enough of a feat.

"You pushed me!" Harry accused suddenly.

"Someone had to try," Tom said, shameless.

"It's the first time you did this?!"

Tom shrugged but his back tensed. "Really? If you didn't notice—"

The roof of the orphanage collapsed, interrupting what Tom was saying. Both boys stayed silent for a bit, watching, entranced as Wool's graveyard orphanage burnt. It was a distant explosion that made them look away. Tom dismissed his magic from the ground, gripped Harry's sleeve, and started to run.

Harry realized the raid had caught everyone by surprise. In the street, British soldiers directed panicked civilians to the nearest Underground entrance.

"The Leaky Cauldron is too far!" Harry screamed between two other explosions. "We'll be a pile of burning limbs before reaching it."

"There, they will find us!" Tom argued as they passed a gate for the tube.

Tom was right about that… Harry didn't want to imagine what would happen if Mrs. Cole caught them again. Maybe she would think that the air raid was their fault?

"It won't stop until morning! We have to take refuge for the rest of the night underground."

Tom took a deep breath, as his eyelid twitched over his suspicious gaze. "All night? … The next station then."

Running in the street full of holes and rubble was tiresome. Many times, Harry steadied Tom so he did not stumble. After a corner they fell to a deeper level of Hell. Beside screams, explosions and roars of fire, there was another new sound: gun shots.

Tom swallowed loudly. "Peverell … don't look down …"

Unfortunately, Harry had already seen. He gripped Tom's wrist more firmly and led the way this time. "You too. We should hurry, we can't stay here."

They were hugging the walls, so soldiers without British uniforms couldn't see them. Several times, they narrowly missed being crushed by falling debris. They survived this thanks to Harry's overdeveloped reflexes and Tom's virtually inexhaustible reserves of magic.

"Is the next station near?" Harry asked in a hasty whisper, after another piece of concrete almost reduced their brains to mush.

"Only a few more streets."

When they rounded another corner, they fell face to face with a group of armed men. They asked something in German, but without any prompt answer they pointed their guns at the boys. At this moment Harry saw the short—really short—compilation of this life.

Time seemed to pause: Harry pushed Tom back and jumped forward, his hands held in front of him radiating with the golden flickers of a Shield Charm. Bullets crashed against the barrier in a deafening sound. Harry's vision swam with white dots.

The shield broke with a last bullet, which pierced Harry's skin. The pain and the impact made him stumble. In his last moment of clarity, he threw a last glance at Tom, still behind him. The other boy's eyes widened when they landed on Harry's bloodied chest. In the dusk of his dark gaze, emotions burst like a supernova in the cosmos. With a howl of wind, terrifying shadows erupted : here to make the night of everyone a nightmare. The darkness in the shape of giant snakes lunged at the throats of the men. Monstrous jaws snapped their necks with large gushes of blood and a dreadful noise of broken bones. Men fell heavily to the ground like puppets whose strings were severed.

Tom gasped, hands on his knees, his face broken into sweats. Harry gripped a wall to not sway, he was almost missing Voldemort and his predictable Unforgivable… Then, he realized that all his confrontations with the past Dark Lord had been just child's play! For fuck's sake his eleven-year-old counterpart had just killed five men without a wand or magical education!

"Tell me they're dead," Tom wheezed, trying to catch his breath.

"Can't be more dead than that..." Harry winced when he contracted his lungs to speak.

Tom hurried to the fallen soldiers and searched their pockets. Well, Harry could add 'corpse robber' to his long list of Tom's qualities. Everything that held any tiny monetary value was kept, but, when Tom found a knife, he used it immediately to cut the soldier's clothes. Now, his hands full of rags, he threw them to Harry.

"Press on your wound to stop the blood flow," he commanded, as he looked one last time at the bodies, to be sure he had already taken every interesting object.

Harry didn't have the strength to protest, so he did what Tom had said. Once the soldiers cleared of all valuables, Tom approached Harry, and brushed away the gory rags. His face grew paler, and his eyes circled between Harry's chest and face several times. They went from wide open to suspiciously squirming.

"Can you walk?" he asked, his voice tense.

"Yeah … fine."

For the first few meters, Harry continued to keep his balance thanks to the walls, but Tom had enough. He flung Harry's arm on his shoulder to speed up the pace.

"… Are you alright?"

Tom's jaw throbbed. "No."

"They were going to shoot us down, we just defended ourselves—"

"I don't care about that bunch of bastards! " Tom hissed with his magic pulsing threateningly around him. "This-You! I—"

The perfectly composed young Tom Riddle struggled to find his words. Harry laughed. A miserable small thing in this riotous chaos, but Harry sensed Tom's grip grow stronger.

"It's okay to be afraid," Harry said humourlessly after a bit.

"Don't push me. I haven't yet abandoned your corpse to rot because I may still need you for my plans."

"If you say so…" Harry mused.

"I mean it." Tom took a deep breath and sighed. "But even if I did that … you wouldn't die, would you?"

Harry frowned. He followed Tom's eyes and held up the rags to look closer at his wound. Suddenly, he realized that something vital was missing inside his body: a drumming beat. The first peek of immortality seen by Tom, or the proof of Harry's abyssal stupidity.

"That…" Harry swallowed—hard. "That doesn't hurt as much as you might think."

Tom stopped walking and began to laugh. It started as a faint chuckle, but it became madder and madder. "And-And… You don't lie! You never lie —"

"Tom! Please, stop!"

His maddened laughter abruptly stopped. "Say it again."

"W-What?!"

"My name. In our tongue." Tom's face hovered near Harry's, a dangerous glint in his dark gaze. Something feral—

"We don't have time! We need to get the hell out of here!"

They shared a breath. Tom was about to reply, but another explosion made both boys rock hard on their feet. They sprinted until the Underground gates emerged in their views. As they went down in the near darkness by the steel stairs of the escalator, Tom whispered, "you will tell me everything."