Harry went to bed before anyone else in his dormitory that night. This was partly because he didn't think he could possibly stand Fred and George singing "His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad", one more time, and partly because he wanted to examine Riddle's diary once more, and knew that Hermione and Ron both thought that he was wasting his time.
Harry sat on his four-poster bed and quickly flicked through the pages, searching them for ink that not one of them had a single trace of. He then pulled out a new bottle of ink, dipped a quill into it, and dropped a blot on the first page of the diary.
The ink shone brightly on the page for a second and then, as though it was being sucked into the page, vanished. Excited, Harry loaded up the quill a second time and wrote, "My name is Harry Potter."
The words shone momentarily on the page and they too sank without trace. Then, at last, something happened.
Oozing back out of the page, in his very own ink, came words Harry had never written.
"Hello, Harry Potter. My name is Tom Riddle. How did you come by my Diary?"
Harry quickly responded. "Someone tried to flush it down a toilet. I found it in a bathroom."
The words soon disappeared, and new words he had not written were oozing back out of the page. "Flush it down a toilet? How … undignified. Lucky for me that I recorded my memories in something more durable than ink."
The soul of the diary was a lot angrier than it seemed. It quickly cut its link off from Ginny Weasley forever, and let the energy it had stolen from her dissipate. She would recover, not that the diary had intended it.
What the diary had intended would soon not matter in the slightest.
The soul fragment continued to write. "I knew there would be those who did not want this Diary read. Those who thought the past should remain buried and obscured. Ink is not any protection at all."
"What do you mean," Harry wrote.
The Diary quickly responded. "Ink is not any protection at all, but magic can be. This Diary holds memories of terrible things, things which happened at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."
Harry was writing almost the instant the Diary stopped. "That's where I am now. Hogwarts. Terrible stuff has been happening. Do you know anything about the Chamber of Secrets?"
If Harry had been more wary, or more aware of the possible danger, he might not have been holding this conversation. He wasn't.
His heart was hammering. Riddle's reply came quickly, his writing becoming untidier, as though he was hurrying to tell all he knew.
"Of course I know about the Chamber of Secrets. In my day, they told us it did not exist. This was a lie. In my fifth year, the Chamber was opened and the monster attacked several students, finally killing one. I caught the person who'd opened the Chamber and he was expelled. But the Headmaster, Professor Dippet, forbade me to tell the truth. They gave me a nice, shiny, engraved trophy for my trouble and warned me to keep my mouth shut."
The diary was being more careful than it might have been, picking its words to appear innocent.
Harry did not know it was doing this. He nearly upset his ink bottle in a hurry to write back. "It's happening again now. There have been three attacks and no one seems to know who's behind them. Who was it last time?" He was writing as fast as he could.
"I can show you", came Riddle's reply. "I can take you inside my memory."
Harry hesitated now. He had no idea how this would work. Of course, he had no idea how this conversation was working either. Still, he hesitated just enough.
He saw fresh words forming.
"Let me show you."
Harry paused for just a second more, and then wrote his acceptance.
The pages of the diary began to blow as though caught in a high wind, stopping halfway through June. Harry saw that the little square for June the thirteenth seemed to have turned into a television screen.
His hands trembling, he raised the book to press his eye against, and before he knew what was happening, he was tilting forwards; the window was widening, and he was pitched head first through the opening in the page.
He felt his feet hit solid ground, and stood, shaking, as blurred shapes around him suddenly came into focus.
This was when metaphorical hell broke loose.
The Polyjuice Potion Harry consumed at Christmas worked on the principle of using part of a whole entity to suggest the whole entity. There was a similar related principle: like calls to like.
The Diary fragment of Tom Riddle's soul felt the sleeping fragment of Voldemort's soul living in Harry's soul. The Diary began to attack the fragment in a blind rush, ejecting Harry from the book. The piece of the grown Voldemort, though much smaller than the Diary piece, was much more versed in magic, particularly Dark magic, and defeated the Diary variant in short order. It had never been able to take over Harry, and after finding it could still not, it went back into dormancy.
Harry did not know any of this. He only knew that he had been struck instantly with a terrifying headache. The pain was such that he passed out.
When he woke and tried writing in the Diary, he found it did not work at all. All the ink remained on the page. More annoyed than anything else, he tossed the Diary in the common room fireplace. He found that it burned very well.
A few weeks later, one day in early March, Harry was exploring alone on the upper floors of the castle. He had been feeling unsettled since that night in ways he could not put words to.
His mind on his strange discomfort, he passed a bare stretch of wall opposite a bizarre tapestry three times.
A door appeared in the bare wall. Startled, but somehow knowing this door was meant for him, he opened it.
Behind the door was a bare room. In the center of the room was a statue of an ugly old warlock. Someone had put a silly-looking wig on the statue's head, and there was a tarnished tiara over the forehead which even more clearly did not belong.
He pulled the tarnished bit of jewelry off the statue.
His brain was not concerned with the principle that like calls to like.
The fragment of Voldemort's soul in the tiara Harry did not know to be Ravenclaw's Diadem felt the recently enhanced, sleeping fragment of Voldemort's soul in Harry's soul. Like calls to like – the fragment inside the diadem attacked in a blind rush.
The fragment of Voldemort's soul that had absorbed the Diary fragment was older and more knowledgeable, and much stronger, than the Diadem fragment. It subsumed the Diadem fragment almost immediately. It still could not take over Harry, and returned to dormancy again.
Harry did not know this was happening. He had collapsed with a blinding headache. The pain was so massive that he again lost consciousness.
When he awoke, he left the strange room, feeling even more unsettled than before.
Professor Lockhart was dismissed with cause in the middle of April after being caught in his office having convinced that year's Head Girl to justify her post's title.
The Mandrake Draught was brewed in late May, reviving the victims at last. As there were no further attacks, the Board of Governors never removed Dumbledore. There were persistent rumors that Harry had been involved in the attacks which had occurred, but there was no direct evidence.
{D-F}
That summer, while staying in the Leaky Cauldron after leaving the Dursleys due to the fat bitch Marge, Harry one day had an interesting conversation with a goblin in Gringotts.
"What happens to vaults when no one is alive to use them?" He asked out of curiosity.
The goblin called Redteeth would not normally have answered, but he could tell the question was not generated by sheer greed. On a whim, he uttered, "Vaults without known heirs go dormant until an heir is found. If one never is, the gold goes unused."
Harry thought about this. "That sounds like a problem."
Redteeth nodded. The human was right, after all. "Unspent gold does not create more gold."
Harry ventured another question. "How are heirs found?" It wasn't his best, he reflected later, but it worked.
Redteeth shook his head in annoyance at the idiotic question. "Blood testing."
Harry felt curious. "Can anyone take a test?"
Redteeth nodded. "For a fee."
Harry was satisfied. "Okay."
Redteeth was startled. "If nothing is found, you'll have wasted your money and my time." This should be a sufficient threat, he felt.
Harry smiled. "But if something is found, no time was wasted because the gold will have an owner again."
Redteeth had to agree that this was the case.
Within the hour, the blood testing was complete.
Harry James Potter
Vault Status: Potter Vault (active, sole user)
Heir to: Black Vault (Sirius Black [godfather])
Potential heir: Lestrange Vault (ESTATE FORFEITURE)
Harry was stunned. "The man who escaped Azkaban is my godfather? Why did no one tell me I had one?"
Redteeth shook his head again, "Probably because he was in prison." Redteeth hated stupid questions, and this was one of the worst.
Harry saw something else to question. "How does this 'estate forfeiture' work?"
Redteeth found the paperwork within minutes. "Bellatrix Lestrange, born as Bellatrix Black, had an obligation to produce heirs for both houses. The stipulated time has passed and she has no children. House Black can demand the forfeiture of the entire Lestrange estate for massive contract breach. Your status as Sirius Black's listed heir means you could seize up to a third now, and should he die you would claim the balance."
Harry could not suppress a grin. "This sounds profitable."
Redteeth had to agree with that. "Enormously."
Harry nodded. "I'll do it then."
Redteeth produced the paperwork which would let Harry seize a third of the Lestrange estate through Sirius Black. "There will be a fee for the movement of the gold and any articles from the vault. It is a pittance compared to what you are claiming."
Within two hours all the gold had been moved out of the newly emptied and closed Lestrange vault. Harry's vault had swelled by at least half on his share. He explored his greatly expanded vault, which he saw now had room for much more (a precaution, he thought), and eventually found shelves of non-money treasures.
One of the treasures was a two-handled golden cup decorated with a badger emblem.
Like calls to like.
Harry left the bank hours later feeling enormously rich but deeply unsettled.
{D-F}
Months and months later, early in the following June, on the night that in canon saw Harry show mercy to Peter Pettigrew, in this universe Harry let Sirius Black and Remus Lupin kill him.
Whoever said that dead men don't tell tales was wrong, where it concerned wizards.
Sirius Black was freed. As the listed godfather, he immediately claimed custody of Harry Potter.
Even with him now known as an innocent man who had unjustly served over a decade in a living hell, this did not please much of the wizarding world.
Sirius Black did not care. Harry Potter cared even less.
{D-F}
Sirius Black had been in prison for more than a decade. Harry Potter had been in what he felt was prison for more than a decade.
In spite of Dumbledore's entreaties, the Dursleys had kicked Harry out the instant they knew he had a place he could legally go live and someone to live with as a minder. Thus, the only place either Sirius or Harry had to live was Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place.
A house filled with strange magical infestations, a hateful old house-elf, portraits of vile and evil people, Sirius' mother not least of them, severed heads of house-elves on plaques on the walls, and many other things that were best avoided.
One of the Things Best Avoided was a heavy gold locket. Harry stumbled on it one day when Sirius was not in the house.
Like calls to like.
The feeling of unsettling discomfort and weight that Harry felt burdened by was growing all the time. He had yet to actually mention it to anyone.
{D-F}
The fragment of Voldemort's soul that had landed in Harry was an unintentional, but nonetheless working, Horcrux. It was the sixth Voldemort had made, the first that was not deliberate.
The diary had been the first. The diadem had been the fifth. The cup had been fourth. The locket had been third.
All of the above were now within Harry, the fragment which had unintentionally landed in him subsuming the ones he had intentionally placed elsewhere.
Because Horcruxes were essentially even splits, nearly three-quarters of Voldemort's soul was now within Harry Potter. This was placing enormous pressure on a magical core that had yet to enter maturity.
The magical core of a potential Sport.
Tom Riddle had been a newly emerged Sport before he started ripping himself into pieces.
The greatly engorged fragment that was not quite sleeping within Harry wanted its last "discarded" piece.
It began to whisper to its host.
Two days before Harry would return to Hogwarts for his fourth year, Sirius Black was again out of Number Twelve for the day.
Not sure where he had gotten the idea from, Harry took the Knight Bus to Little Hangleton.
He found an abandoned cottage surrounded by trees. Moss was growing over the walls. Nettle plants climbed the walls. Many tiles were missing from the roof. The small windows were completely blocked by grime.
A dead snake was nailed to the door.
The enchantments and protections placed by Lord Voldemort felt Lord Voldemort. As much as they could feel anything.
Harry did not know it, but he was now far more Lord Voldemort than Lord Voldemort was.
The hovel was utterly filthy and dark inside.
With brute strength Harry didn't know he had, he ripped up the rotting floorboards. A golden box was found and opened.
There was a clumsily smelted gold ring with a large black stone bearing a curious mark, now in his hands.
Like calls to like.
Harry left the hovel hours later with it burning merrily down behind him. He had never even drawn his wand.
All of Lord Voldemort's Horcruxes had been unmade; all of his stray pieces were now within Harry.
Only one free-floating fragment was left. It floated in a forest of Albania, usually taking snakes as a temporary host, whenever it wished.
Barely a week into Harry's fourth year, the fragment burned out its present host, one that had lasted it barely a month.
It found no anchors.
Like calls to like.
One night in his sleep, Harry fought his own soul for himself, for his existence, his body and his life. Only the blood protection made him win out.
His latent magical core deepened and swelled to accommodate the entirety of Lord Voldemort.
Snakes don't rip or tear their food. They swallow it whole.