Tom sat up in bed abruptly. It was the middle of the night.
Something had woken him.
A vague noise reached his ears. He stilled his breathing, listening intently. There it was again. It sounded like moaning, or mumbling, coming from across the hall.
Tom slipped out of bed, creeping across the near-black room easily. Amazing how quickly this place obtained the same familiarity he'd only ever felt at Hogwarts. He'd been able to navigate his room at the orphanage in the dark, of course, but he'd never felt any sort of attachment to the place, not like at Hogwarts, not like a home.
Home. It still felt odd to hear Harry refer to it like that, and know he meant that it was home to Tom, too.
He stopped at his door, opened it a crack, and listened.
Muffled thrashing sounds came from Harry's room. The elder boy's door was slightly ajar, giving Tom pause. Harry never slept with his door open. He must haven been very tired to forget to close it. He'd looked exhausted yesterday after the short trip from St. Mungos. Tom knew he really did need at least a few more days of bedrest.
He slipped across the hall and peered in. Harry was twitching on his bed, obviously having a nightmare. Tom shifted his weight nervously.
Indecisive, he wavered a moment more, then stepped away from the door. He shuffled back a step, eying Harry's door as though expecting it to burst open of its own volition. The thrashing from Harry's room stopped. Tom's shoulders relaxed in relief and, thinking nothing more of it, he slipped back into his own room.
Harry woke the next morning and immediately ran himself a bath. Hospital stays always made him feel filthy despite the fact that St. Mungos staff used spells to 'wash' their patients.
He'd had a nightmare last night, the first he could remember since arriving here, but it wasn't too bad. Just a normal bad dream, and those rarely bothered him nowadays. Not nearly enough to spoil his good mood this morning, at least.
In fact, he felt cheerful, ridiculously energized, as though recently cured of an illness he'd had for so long that he'd forgotten what it felt like to be healthy.
His knee still hurt. It obviously hadn't miraculously recovered overnight, but the bath helped ease the ache, and Harry was in too good a mood to care much.
Dressing quickly, he ran his fingers through his hair, rubbing them briefly over the scar that hopefully had split open for the last time, and fetched the cane. It was plain, light in color, completely unlike that black snake-headed thing Lucius Malfoy used to carry around, else Harry would have refused to use it outright.
Making sure there was nothing else he would need today, as he did not plan to use the stairs any more than was absolutely necessary, he closed and locked his bedroom door.
The stairs took longer than normal to get down, which did not surprise him. What did surprise him, though, was the sight of the kitchen table.
Harry paused in the doorway. There was porridge on the table. And toast. And two place settings.
"I made breakfast." Tom seemed unusually uncertain.
"Yeah. I can see that."
Harry limped to his normal place and sat down. Tom set a tea tray on the table and sat as well, handing Harry a cup.
"Er. Thanks."
Tom shrugged. They tucked in.
A few minutes later, there came a tapping on the kitchen window. Harry started to get up, exhaled slowly, and eased himself down again.
"Could you get that please, Tom?"
He wrinkled his nose a bit, but stood and let the owl in without protest. A barn owl alighted on the table, followed closely by an agitated Wolf. Harry sighed when he saw the Hogwarts seal and took the note, opening it to glance at the signature. Sure enough, it was from Dumbledore.
Wolf clicked his beak angrily as Harry gave the visiting owl a scrap of toast. The barn owl fluttered over to the windowsill, obviously waiting for a reply to take back.
Harry held out some toast for his own owl. "I'm sorry we took so long coming back, Wolf. I hope you found plenty of food in the forest?" The owl eyed him reproachfully. He snatched the bread from Harry's hand and flapped up to rest on the back of the chair beside him, sending the other bird a look that must be quite similar to the one mice were treated to just before they became dinner.
Harry ran his fingers over the owl's head with one hand, holding the letter open with the other.
Tom eyed the gesture.
"I still don't see why having a snake would be such a problem. You're a Parselmouth; you can't be afraid of them."
"'Course I'm not afraid of them. You and I both know you wouldn't be happy with some garden snake, and I doubt they'd let you have anything more dangerous at Hogwarts."
"How would you know what kind of snake I want?"
"I've spoken with some of the ones in the pet shop." Discreetly, of course. "Might as well have been talking to a toad. The conversation wouldn't have been any more interesting. I did offer to let you get something else."
"There's no sense in both of us having an owl. And no self-respecting Slytherin would own a cat. Feline's are much too close to Gryfindor's house mascot."
Harry rolled his eyes. "Have it your way, then."
Tom frowned and peered at the letter. Harry tilted it up so he couldn't read it. "It's from Professor Dumbledore."
"Him again?"
"He told me he'd be writing." But this was rather soon. They'd only gotten back yesterday, after all. He scanned the letter. "Hm."
"What's it say?"
"We talked a bit while I was still in the hospital. He wants to meet to finish the conversation."
"Interrogation, you mean."
Harry sent him a sharp glance and absently waved a hand to call a quill.
His magic surged; Harry could almost swear it felt giddy, and then a hole exploded in the kitchen wall.
Wolf shrieked, Tom ducked, Harry jerked his hand back, and the quill embedded itself point first in one of the kitchen's wooden cabinets.
His magic settled as quickly as it had flared.
"Um..."
There was white power in Tom's hair. When he sat up straight, the small hole in the wall disappeared behind him. Good thing he'd ducked, Harry thought dazedly.
Wolf fluttered from the chair to Harry's shoulder, hooting and flapping and ducking his head over and over. Tom was staring at him.
"I didn't mean to do that."
Tom shook his head. A large chunk of plaster slid off his shoulder and fell into his mostly eaten bowl of porridge.
Using his wand this time, Harry carefully summoned the quill again. It pulled itself from the cabinet face and floated obediently to his hand. Trying not to think too hard, he scribbled a reply on the back of the letter and called the Hogwarts owl back over. It settled cautiously on the far corner of the table. Wolf ruffled his feathers. The owl left as soon as the letter was tied to its leg. Harry couldn't really blame it.
A finger tapping on the table, he stared after the owl until it disappeared. He stood with difficulty. Wolf fluttered from his shoulder and started pecking at his leftovers.
"Harry?"
"Thank you for breakfast, Tom."
Harry shooed Wolf away and started to wave his hand, then changed his mind and pulled out his wand, setting the dishes to washing themselves. The charm worked normally, even if the brush seemed to be scrubbing a bit more vigorously than normal.
"When are you going?"
"This afternoon."
Later that day, Harry flooed to the Three Broomsticks. Stumbling on the way out, as per usual, he very nearly tripped over his cane. He was going to get tired of that thing fast.
A wave of his hand cleaned off the soot and nearly knocked him off his feet again. He hadn't realized exactly how much wandless magic he'd begun to use until his magic surged every time he did so.
The walk up to the castle was made a good deal longer by his less than perfect physical condition. He supposed he could have taken a potion for the pain, but he didn't like to unless absolutely necessary. Constant, mild aches were something he was quite accustomed to by now, and he didn't want to use potions too often only to discover they didn't work as well as they should when he really needed them.
At the first sight of the castle, he paused and allowed himself to stare. It would only seem natural, after all.
Hogwarts was as magnificent as ever.
It felt so good to be coming here; from the outside, at least, it had hardly changed. Only the absence of the Whomping Willow reminded him that this was not his Hogwarts.
That, and the brilliantly colored robes of the man opening the front gates.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Potter. It is good to see you back on your feet."
"Afternoon, Professor. Thank you."
"Let's head up to my office, shall we?"
"Alright."
Harry leaned back in his favorite chair at home, a stack of books from Hogwarts' library on the table beside him. Dumbledore had been more than willing to let him borrow them until term started.
He was going to fix those bloody windows if it took him all month.
Tom wandered in.
"How did it go?"
Harry smiled a bit, remembering how wonderful it was to walk down the halls of Hogwarts once again, and how odd for Dumbledore to offer him tea in McGonagall's old office when she was doing the same in his only a few months ago.
Getting to said office was hell, though. That long walk to the castle itself, followed by all those bloody stairs...
"It was fine. He just wanted to talk."
Tom made a frustrated noise. Harry grinned.
"We covered... oh, all sorts of stuff. My involvement in the war..."
Harry scanned the office, picking out the various changes and exchanging pleasantries politely, waiting for Dumbledore to lead up to the real topic. The conversation finally wound around from the war in general to Harry's involvement at Diagon Alley in particular.
"You speak as though you have had special training. As well as you did against some of Grindelwald's best, I very much doubt you would be sitting here with me if what I saw that day was the extent of your abilities. You were not fighting as though you were trained for the situation you found yourself in. To put it shortly, Mr. Potter, you did not fight like an Auror."
That had a simple enough answer. He wasn't. He said so, and explained further.
"Up until about a year ago, most of what I was taught about how to fight came from real life experience. By the time I was getting actual, specific tutelage, there was no time for anything but very specific training. Ron, Hermione and I never went anywhere without each other, so we were mostly taught to fight together, and we practiced together." Essentially, they'd received the official crash course on how to survive an encounter with Death Eaters. Even the dummies he trained against fought like Voldemort's followers did. There just hadn't been time for the Order's Aurors to teach them anything more general.
"I haven't been in an actual fight without Ron and Hermione to back me up in at least a year. Even in that last battle they were right by my side until the very end.
They held off the Death Eaters so I could duel Voldemort without having to worry about being attacked from behind."
"Voldemort?"
"The man who killed my parents. He had a personal grudge against me after that night. Any specific training I got on fighting one on one was focused on defeating him."
In the end, though, it didn't come down to skill, or even power, even though he'd been told he had a fair amount of both. It was the fact that Harry Potter's love of his friends and will to protect them was greater than Voldemort's fear of death.
Harry found it more than a little ironic that he was attempting to teach Tom to recognize the one thing that had allowed Harry to defeat his insane counterpart.
"You make yourself sound very much like an assassin, Mr. Potter."
"I guess you could call it that. I don't like to. It was kill him or be killed by him. The latter wasn't an option. I'd known that much from the start."
"In the battles I was almost never alone. Ron and Hermione were always there. I guess… I've gotten so used to fighting with them… and the men I was fighting in the alley worked so differently than the ones we were up against..."
Death Eaters, Harry decided, may have been crueler than Grindelwald's followers, but they almost never managed to work together in a large scale fight.
"...Why I came to England..."
"Our conversation in the hospital the other day left me to draw a conclusion that I did not want to. I could not be certain at first, as I am not familiar with the specifics of the spell, but further research has discounted any other conclusion. You were describing the attempted creation of a Horcrux, were you not?"
Throat dry, Harry nodded. Dumbledore closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them he looked pained.
"I admit there is little I know about Horcruxes specifically. That you have been exposed to one in such a way is something for which you have my most sincere regret.
"However, there is one thing I am most certain of. With the political climate as it currently is, and my admittedly pronounced role in the war thus far, I have a rather extensive network of political allies. I should have been made aware the moment there was a Dark Wizard with both the power and the will it takes to create such a thing as a Horcrux. Grindelwald would certainly never attempt such a thing, yet I have heard of no other recent Dark Lord's.
"Tell me, Mr. Potter, where are you really from?"
Harry suddenly felt rather sick to his stomach.
"What are you talking about?"
"Your accent is British, which, I will admit, could have been induced by a spell. Indeed, that is likely what most people who know your professed history believe. But it is not perfect enough to be magically induced. It changes with your speech, as a natural accent would and a magically induced one would not.
"Also, while coming down these corridors you did not seem at all phased by many things that are generally startling to a first time visitor. Half the time it seemed more as if you were leading me than I you. Did you know that you skipped a trip step on the way without being told it was there?
"You speak of a war, but it sounds little like the one I have been fighting in. In fact it sounds so radically different that I do not believe we have been speaking of the same war at all.
"I have my suspicions, but will give you the chance to say it first, if you so desire. So I will ask again. Where are you from, Mr. Potter?"
Harry was frozen. "What do you think?" he managed to whisper.
"I believe you are a time traveler, Mr. Potter."
Harry closed his eyes briefly.
"Am I correct?"
Harry nodded, then tilted his head sideways halfway through the gesture, as if to negate the concession. "But it's more than that," he said, speaking to Dumbledore's desk. He forced himself to look up before he continued, to meet the man's eyes. "There are things here that are... different. The Muggle war ended earlier here. For that matter, I think it started sooner, too. And to my knowledge, the Potter line was never broken where I came from."
"An alternate dimension," Dumbledore mused, "There are theories on such things, of course, but thus far no proof of their actual existence."
"Oh, they exist. Either that or I've just gone crazy."
"That, I doubt. And you say you have come through time, as well?"
Harry nodded. "About fifty years."
"My," the elder man breathed.
Harry sat forward earnestly.
"Please don't tell anyone, sir. If it's really not been done before, dimension travel, I mean, then... that'll draw attention from quarters I'd really rather not have it come from. I've had more than enough danger and fame to last a lifetime. I've finally got the chance to be normal here. Please don't make me give that up."
The voice that replied was full of understanding. "I think that can be arranged, Mr. Potter. However, there are a few more things to discuss.
"I do hope that Grindelwald is not still in power in your time. Unfortunately, if he is not, that leads me to believe there will be another Dark Lord arising."
"Yes."
"Might I ask who?"
Harry was shaking his head before the question was even done. "That's something you don't need to know, Professor."
He seemed taken aback, but Harry could see the cogs in his head turning. Dumbledore's eyes widened as he came to the correct conclusion on his own. Let it not be said that the man was slow.
"Mr. Riddle."
Harry's hands tightened around his teacup.
"I see," Dumbledore murmured, his eyes thoughtful. Harry thought he saw his features start to harden. "I see," the man said again.
"Don't you dare," Harry hissed, voice low. He sat up straight. He might have stood, but it would be far too difficult and might distract him from the immediate problem. "I've killed him once. Don't you dare make me do it again! Not when there's other ways to stop it ever happening. And I'll thank you to refer to him as Riddle-Potter, now."
Dumbledore seemed baffled. He set his cup down, fixing Harry with a speculative look, and ran a hand over his red beard. "I was not going to suggest such a thing. I fear what you may have heard of me, if you think I would condone the murdering of a child.
"As well, you have my apology for the slip of his name. Changing entrenched habits can take a bit of time." Raised eyebrows ensured Harry did not miss the other ways that statement could be applied to the current topic of conversation.
"However, this does leave us with a bit of a quandary. Am I correct in assuming that Mr. Riddle-Potter's alternate self was the one who attempted to split his soul?"
"Yes," Harry said wearily. "And he succeeded. Several times. We had to find and destroy all of them before I could take care of him for good."
"...What happened in Diagon Alley." Harry's mouth quirked up. "You."
"This does leave us with another problem, you realize."
There was certainly more than one problem Harry could see with the situation.
"When, precisely, were you taken from your time?"
Harry hadn't given a whole lot of thought to that part of this whole mess, so he focused his memory and came up with a less than startling answer.
"As soon as the connection between us broke. We had a kind of link. I know I felt it snap, right before I... left."
Dumbledore nodded.
"You mentioned that the Horcrux was touching your own soul, but otherwise contained?" Harry nodded.
"Is it possible, Mr. Potter, that the incident which brought you here breached that containment? Such a feat of transportation could not be accomplished on will alone. It would require a great deal of magic, and the the options the Horcrux had- if indeed that is what is responsible for bringing you here in the first place, which I think is highly likely- would have been quite limited."
Horrified realization began twisting in Harry's gut as he anticipated what the man was going to say next.
"It is entirely possible that your trip destroyed whatever it was that was keeping the Horcrux contained and it has been interacting more freely with your magic and soul since you arrived."
Entirely possible? Try bloodly likely.
How could he have forgotten what the diary did to Ginny, the terrible sight of her body lying cold and still on the Chamber floor, the Horcrux draining the life right out of her...
How could he have been so stupid? He'd been frequently tired, yes, but that wasn't surprising. He'd not felt fully rested since... sometime before fifth year, truthfully. Had it really been so long that he'd stopped feeling the difference between constant stress and magical exhaustion?
"It felt like something was tearing. Both times, but it was worse in the alley. It didn't actually knock me unconscious the first time. But then what was it doing?" It wouldn't have been trying to make a new body. Tom Riddle already had one.
"While I do not claim to be an expert on the subject; indeed, it is highly likely you hold more knowledge of Horcruxes than I, it is possible the Horcrux was using your magic simply to sustain itself. If it was not cast correctly in the first place, your attempted ejection of it may have dislodged it enough that it became unstable and needed an outside source of magic to continue existing. It is also possible that it was siphoning your magic off into Mr. Riddle-Potter. As his soul is thus far unsplit, it may have searched for some other way to be of use to him. It is very difficult to tell, especially now that it is mostly gone."
"No," Harry shook his head. "It's gone," he whispered. "Completely. I know. I just know. I can feel it, this time. It's like I finally have energy."
No wonder he felt so much better now. With the Horcrux gone his magic and health were finally getting the chance to recover and restore themselves after the terrible strain of a harsh battle and inter-dimensional travel.
"The healers did find some odd things going on with your magical readings."
"Those're fragments. Nothing substantial. It's gone. I know it."
"Very well," Dumbledore did not push the issue, to Harry's gratitude. "But it is possible there were other side affects. If it is not too impertinent of me, what have your feelings been towards young Tom? Unnatural patience with him, perhaps? Any reluctance to punish? Willingness to sacrifice beyond what you normally would?"
Harry stiffened, insulted.
"I am not attempting to take away from what you did for him," Dumbledore was quick to soothe, "Or that all of your actions towards him are not what you would have done for any other. But it is possible you have been under a compulsion of sorts. The affects would have been very subtle, likely playing up advantageous instincts of your own and suppressing those that it perceived as threatening."
All the wandless charms he'd been casting without thinking... how hard he'd found it to get truly angry with the boy... "But it's gone now. It can't do anything anymore."
A slight incline of the head. "One would hope."
"Me? What about me?"
"My suitability for being your guardian."
Tom's hand jerked abortively. "That never came up before! What changed?"
"It doesn't matter. It's not an issue anymore. We worked it out." Harry paused, speculative. "You're hovering, Tom."
"I am not!" he snapped.
"Uh-huh."
"It sounds like you talked about everything," Tom said sullenly, kicking a little at the floor.
Harry snorted. "Not even remotely. Oh, yeah." He sat up a bit straighter. "I've got a job."
Tom perked up a bit, then deflated again. "Dumbledore got you one."
"Mm-hm."
"At the school?"
"Yeah. Flight instructor. Apparently, the current teacher was thinking about retirement. Wanted to wait until they had a definite replacement lined up."
"How convenient."
Harry ignored that. "And it's part time, so I can study."
"Study for..."
"He's going to set up things so I can take my NEWT's as soon as I'm ready. After that I'll go for a Mastery." Which involved a lot of studying on his own and a very long test at the Ministry.
"A Mastery in what?"
Dumbledore indicated a small box on the corner of his desk. Harry had noticed it only in passing as he came in.
"Could you tell me what defenses are on this box?"
Harry shook out his wand and held it up. At the affirmative nod, he cast a few basic diagnostic spells. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure I could. You want me to...?"
"Please."
"Preservation spells for the box and it's contents... um, it's spelled unbreakable... weatherproofing, almost every locking charm in existence... all keyed to a specific magical signature."
"And can I assume you could get into the box without triggering any of them?"
"Probably, but why bother? You cast all these yourself."
"That I did." He proceeded to flip the lid open and withdrew something small. "Care for a lemon drop?"
"No, thank you."
"Long term magical defense. Wards, basically."
Tom was silent for a moment. "That's expensive."
"Yes, it is."
"You're being awfully generous, here."
"Merely looking out for the well-being of my students. Besides, the world could use more people with your talents in times like these."
Harry shook his head, pulling back. He needed employment, true, and the chance to officially complete his schooling was temping, but... "I don't want to be involved in another war. That's not my responsibility here."
"No, no it is not. You have, however, made it your responsibility to look after Tom. To do that you will need an income."
"He's-" Tom cut himself off.
"Keeping an eye on me? Trying to put me in his debt?"
Tom nodded. Harry shrugged. "I know. It'll be fine." Annoying as it would likely prove to be at times, he couldn't entirely displace the fear that something could still go wrong, could affect his judgment more than it already had been, if Dumbledore's speculations on the Horcrux had any merit. He could put up with a little well-placed paranoia on Dumbledore's part if it meant an outside pair of eyes to make sure his judgment stayed sound.
Harry wasn't taking any chances this time.
"He'll want something in return."
"We made an agreement. I'll do a certain amount of work around the castle when they need it."
"You said the Flight Instructor job is part time?"
"Yeah. I'll be at the school for games, first year flight lessons, major school feasts... otherwise, I'll still be living here."
Tom tilted his head back. "At least you have work now."
"I wasn't planning on being an unemployed layabout forever, you know."
"Are you going to get married?"
"What?" Harry spluttered.
"All the proper Pureblood heirs get married within a few years of leaving school. Are you going to?"
"Well... I'd like to. Eventually. Not for at least few years, though."
Tom nodded, expression hooded. Harry wondered what he was waiting for. He flipped open one of the books. Tom shuffled a bit, frowned, and left the room.
That night, just before he went to bed, Harry reached out a magical hand and unlocked the book still sitting on Tom's desk.
He wondered how long it would take the boy to notice.
End Chapter
One chapter left. There is, however, a very real possibility of a sequel. I wanted to keep this short, at a length I could finish even if it wasn't well received or I just didn't enjoy writing it. Writing it is definitely fun, and there hasn't been any rotten fruit thrown my way yet, so...
Someone asked if I could direct them to similar stories. I'm pretty sure there are some out there where Tom is reborn in the main timeline and Harry takes him under his wing, but I haven't read them and couldn't really tell you where to find them.
Oh, and don't think that this chapter means everything is going to be smooth sailing from here on out for Tom and Harry.
