Author's Notes: Okay, I know book 6 is almost out - and this "AU" fic is almost in honor of it. I've been dying to write something serious for a long time and I haven't had much of a chance to give it a shot. Then inspiration hit me, and I decided to try this one. It's definitely going to be a multiparter, and I'm 100 sure I'll take forever in finishing it, but I hope people will give it a chance. For updates regarding my fanfiction, if you're at all interested in contacting me or seeing anything that might be posted before it's on here, please check my livejournal. My username is adreanne.
Thanks go to Kira, who I'm sure won't read this anyway, since she's anti-Tom (how can anyone not love him?) but always nags me incessantly to write and to Leslie, who promised to beta for me and thus has my eternal gratitude. Also thanks to her for listening to me moan about the lack of Tom fics around, and giving me incentive to actually write one myself. I only hope I do him some justice.
Warnings: Incomplete? It might contain R-rated material later on. Anything more than that will be on my livejournal if it comes to that. Slash, later, not now. Slight AU. Takes place during Harry's sixth year. Some events might coincide with HBP. Some might not. I hereby claim no responsibility if they don't, since it's AU. Pairing is non-existent at this point, but eventually will indeed be TR/HP.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything but the writing itself here. Characters and the ideas aren't mine. I wish they were, but I am not that clever. Don't sue me, please, I have no money, I spend it on games because my friends are all impulse buyers and constantly change games and I just follow them like the loser I am. :(
Home
Beginnings
We're flesh and bone,
Together and alone...
And we're looking for a home.
Delerium - Underwater
Impossible. The old black book had to be a hallucination. He was mistaken - it could be nothing else.
He'd sat for close to ten minutes staring at the contents of his trunk in disbelief, for how could that possibly have been in his possession? And for how long? Harmless as he was sure it was, with its gaping hole in the middle of it, black ink that so resembles blood staining worn yellow pages that had never before contained diary entries. It was a testament to the insanity of his beginning years at Hogwarts, leading up to the chaos that will surely plague his sixth year.
And yet he couldn't bring himself to throw it away. That book, a reminder of all that he's accomplished, is all he has left of the childhood that he'd been robbed of in a dark room hidden inside the Department of Mysteries. A haunting vision that had left him with little more than an empty shell and a hollow feeling, like something had grasped his soul and jerked it out.
He knew he should have taken it straight to Dumbledore to have it disposed of the second he laid eyes on it. And yet, as Harry stared down into his trunk at the back cover of a beaten up old diary, he couldn't summon up the strength to do that, or to mention it to anyone else. In the end, he'd taken it with him up to the library, worn and beaten, nearly destroyed, and kept it in his presence throughout the end of the school year.
But then class ended, social life and school work abandoning him, sending him back to that house he'd lived in for as long as he can remember. For at least a short period of time, he would be robbed of his distractions, and forced to deal with those haunting thoughts and memories that plagued him whenever he closed his eyes. The sounds of laughter and the words, "You have to mean it, Potter!" echoing through his head like a broken record, the screeching of a violin to mourn his lost naivety.
What Harry Potter never expected to find when he returned to the Dursley's that summer between his fifth and sixth year, was that the diary he'd been hiding in his trunk for so long seemed to have repaired itself on its own accord. Nor did he expect to find, when he opened it, a note already waiting for him on the front page.
Hello, Harry Potter. We meet again.