The blade sticks out of his chest, bisecting his collarbones, and the pain suddenly registers, piercing the fog in Harry's head.

It's not even the wound itself causing most of the pain; it's the shame of I knew better. It's the shame of Why did you listen? Why didn't you?

Harry watches through blurred eyes as Tom picks his wand up off of the wet ground. In the pale light of the moon, everything has a grey cast, even the crimson blood running in rivulets between the blades of grass, running to join the rest of the ritual circle.

Harry doesn't have the strength to meet Tom's eyes. He doubts Tom cares enough to look at him.

"I think I'll almost miss you, you know," Tom whispers, into the dead silence of the air, thoughtful. He wets his lips absently, tasting Harry's blood once again. "But you're too dangerous a creature to let walk free."

Harry doesn't bother to respond. He watches the children in the distance. He watches the bodies drift in the water.

Tom crouches down, then, tilting Harry's face towards him. Harry looks up at the sky, even as black creeps around the edges. He won't look at the face of his murderer. Tom–– trickster, filthy, lovely Tom––doesn't deserve the claim.

The only reason Harry is dying is Harry himself. He is defective. He is defenseless.

Tom knew it and wrung Harry dry.

"Oh, darling," Tom says. Distantly, Harry feels as Tom swipes a thumb along his cheekbone, but it feels numbed. As if death is slowly sucking Harry's soul from his body, skeletal fingers plucking at his soul, coaxing it from his flesh as a violinist coaxes sound from the strings. He feels less and less attached to himself. He feels like he's hardly anchored.

His vision pops and fizzes with stars as the black consumes him. Harry's whole body feels cold.

In the distance, as if through smoke, he hears, "You were always going to be my sacrificial lamb."

With the last of his will, Harry thinks, The lamb always comes back.


Harry has no idea how he got there.

All he remembers is waking up in a strange room, with knick knacks everywhere, weird spinning trinkets lining the walls, a constant whirring in his ears. All he remembers is a man sitting across from him, asking him if he'll be alright getting to the Slytherin dorms.

Yes, he had said, and he had no idea why he was so sure. I know I'll find my way.

And he had. The next morning he awoke in a green dorm, with the distinct feeling that it should be red. He remembers thinking, You're here. You'll kill.

He can't explain how he knows where to go. He can't explain how he got to be in Hogwarts in the first place. Even worse, he can't explain how he knows these people.

But he does. Oh, he does. He can ramble off random facts and anecdotes about everyone here. But there is someone in particular Harry seems to know down to his bones.

Tom Riddle. Harry knows everything about Tom Riddle.

Oh, he doesn't know his favorite color, or his favorite food. But he knows Riddle has a darkness in him. He knows that Riddle has a smile like a snake's, and a silver tongue to match. He knows that Riddle would eat the world alive if he was given the chance.

Despite sharing a dorm, though, Harry has never gotten more than a passing glance at Riddle. He stays away from him, because when Harry sees him, all the hair on his neck stands up.

Somehow, Harry knows better than to ignore his instincts.

Still, something in Riddle must have recognized something in Harry. Harry would find Riddle's eyes on him at random moments, and notice the boy tailing him at odd intervals.

Harry is wary of him.

It all comes to a head when Harry's feet carry him to somewhere he knows he shouldn't be, but feels he knows in his soul, anyway.


"Harry Potter."

Harry turns, only slightly. Tom Riddle stands, straight and tall and proud, watching him with evaluating eyes.

"Yes?" Harry asks, when the boy says nothing more. Harry can feel all of the hair on his arms stand on end. Beneath that pretty face, those lovely eyes, something is wrong with this boy.

"What were you doing, just now?"

Harry freezes. His grip tightens on the strap of his satchel, knuckles white as he reigns in the panic.

His blackouts are infrequent, and he often doesn't notice them. No one has commented on his behavior, though, and something in him knows better than to go to the matron.

"What did it look like?" he blusters, faking irritation. "And I thought I was blind."

Riddle smiles, slow and cold. "Oh no, Harry. I just have to wonder: do you often stare up at empty walls?"

Harry frowns, brow furrowed. That's it? That's what he does?

Harry feels his shoulders relax, just a bit, out of relief. "I just thought I'd seen a painting there before, that's all. Was just a little confused."

Riddle takes a step closer, and Harry's body screams for him to take a step back. Riddle's smile grows inexplicably wider. Unsettling .

"I understand. Being a new student is hard, no? I could help you, if you'll allow me to."

Riddle takes another step forward, and Harry sharply turns, refusing to keep his back to the other boy; he's too scared he might suddenly find a knife in it. "That's alright," he says, with a voice far stronger than he feels. "The ghosts are helpful enough."

Riddle steps even closer, and this time Harry takes a step back. He's stubborn, but he knows better than to challenge a monster slier than him. "Oh, but I want to, see. You and I haven't properly gotten to know each other since you arrived."

"I'm not too keen on changing that," Harry says, backing up step by step, slowly, even as Riddle approaches at a steady pace.

"Oh?" Riddle stops, not a meter from where Harry stands. He cocks his head, and Harry can almost see an overlay; another man, another time. The eyes line up perfectly. "I hope I have not deterred you in some way."

Harry plants his feet, nails carving crescent moons into the fleshy part of his palm. "You haven't. I just don't think we'd have much in common."

Riddle's smile doesn't slip. "Let me change that." He holds out his hand. "Don't you like a little danger?"

Harry's eyes flit from Riddle's hand to his smile, his teeth too straight, too white, too sharp. He looks like he'd bite through Harry's chest if given the chance.

But who would ever give up the chance to tame a beast for their bidding?

Harry steps forward, his hand slipping into Riddle's, easy as you please. He shakes it, once, and as Riddle's eyes stay unnaturally still upon his face, Harry feels the chill of a knife slip down his back.

"Perfect," Riddle says, and Harry has never seen someone so satisfied.

It worries him.


Their arrangement doesn't change much. Rather than relieve Harry, though, he only feels the tension mounting higher, like a violin string pulled too tight. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Harry doesn't even interact with Riddle until well into (a week?) a week later. Harry finds himself hidden in a secret passage, breathing deeply. The musty smell feels familiar, but Harry remembers breathing fresh air only moments ago.

He's losing more time.

"What a place to find you."

Harry turns, slowly, to see Tom Riddle leaning casually against the wall.

Harry sneers to cover up the way his heart seems to have frozen, a hollow, echoing thump reverberating in his ears. He can feel a cold sweat on his brow. Where is he? How did he get here?

"Do you make it a habit to follow people around? Don't you have anything better to do?"

Riddle raises a brow, lazily pushing himself upright. Harry doesn't flinch at the movement, and the resistance only makes the tension grow ever tighter, his jaw aching under the unrelenting pressure. "You seemed lost, Harry."

"Well I wasn't," Harry snaps. He can't help the way his eyes scan over Riddle, checking for any sign of threat. He expects, perhaps, a wand in the other boy's hand, but what he sees instead freezes his insides, before they jump into action, tying themselves into knots.

"How did you get that?" Harry asks, eyes trained on the empty piece of parchment in the other boy's hand.

Riddle glances down, as if he didn't know what he was holding. But Harry knows it's an act. He knows.

"This old thing?" He lifts it up, examining it in the light of Harry's wand. And when did he cast Lumos? Before this conversation? During?

"Funny thing, that," Riddle says, a finger tracing down the crease as he eyes the paper, greedy, before that ravenous gaze switches to Harry's face. He flips it, holding it out to Harry. A peace offering, maybe, but something in Harry tells him there is a secret meaning lurking under the gesture. "You gave it to me. Don't you remember?"

Harry can feel himself begin to tremble, and he can't hide how his hands shake when he takes the paper back. He feels sick. He feels lost.

"You are lost, aren't you, Harry?" Riddle says, voice quiet, as if trying not to spook an animal. Harry's knees feel weak as the world begins to spin before his eyes.

Not another one. Not so soon.

But his blackouts don't begin like this––they happen between one blink and the next, like a movie scene cut wrong. He doesn't even realize it until he comes back to himself. This––this is––

Harry loses the train of thought, can't follow it, not when the walls are tilting dangerously around him.

He feels a pain lance through his wrist, his fingers curl into stone, and distantly he knows he's hit the floor––

Something cool slides into place under his jaw, hooking into his mouth, just barely grazing his teeth. "Calm down, Harry," a voice coos, low and soothing. "Deep breaths, attaboy."

Something in the command pierces the fog in Harry's head, and he takes in a stuttering breath, before releasing it in a shaky stream. In and out. In… and out.

"There you go." The hand––and it is a hand, Harry realizes––slides from his jaw to the nape of his neck, supporting his head. Another grabs his shoulder, slowly pushing him back, back, back, until his spine hits the wall. "Isn't that better? Don't stop breathing; just listen to me."

Harry does, counting the ins and outs of his breath, growing steadier by the second as he listens to that voice. The hands on him slide away, but Harry, too used to lacking touch, snatches one, pulling it to his chest. Over his heart.

Through his hazy vision he thinks he can see eyes, dark and glinting, watching him closely. After a moment (even after Harry stops denying who, exactly, is kneeling across from him), Riddle asks, "Do you often get sick like this, Harry?"

Harry licks his lips, watching Riddle from down his nose. Bile sits heavy in the back of his throat, as if hoping to stop him from speaking. "Why do you call me Harry?" he croaks out.

Riddle's face doesn't even twitch at the lack of answer. "Why wouldn't I?"

Harry blinks slowly at him, trying to clear the steady pounding from his head. He feels hot and cold, heavy as stone and weightless as air. He feels nothing. He feels everything.

"I don't call you Tom," Harry finally finds the will to respond.

Riddle laughs, a short bark that makes Harry wince. Riddle doesn't even bother to act like he cares. "I can do what I want to you without you having to reciprocate."

Harry knows there's a double meaning there, but he can't parse it. Doesn't even try, not when there's that steady hammering behind his eyes. "Tom Riddle," Harry says, sluggish and weak, but the words don't feel like they fit the shape of his mouth, nor do the syllables seem to fit in his ears.

The corners of Riddle's mouth twitch upward, slightly. An almost smile. As if he thinks it funny, that Harry would call him by that name. As if he relishes in it.

It's odd. Harry thought he hated that name.

After a moment more, Riddle finally stands. Harry thinks he's going to leave him there, but instead, he gently hoists Harry up, fitting an arm under his shoulders, pulling one of Harry's around his neck. Like a fallen soldier, almost.

Harry thinks the comparison apt, but he has no idea why.

They amble off to the dorm, but Harry doesn't remember much past Riddle laying him on his bed. Doesn't remember much past seeing what could be called something like curious wonder sweeping over Tom's features.

He feels the phantom ache of fingers on his scar when he wakes and wonders, reluctantly, if Tom wiped the sweat from his brow.


That marked the beginning of the dizzy spells that are almost a thousand times worse than the blackouts, but also––Harry calling him Tom.

It seems inevitable, somehow, that Harry would begin to get along with him. He feels unsettled, yes, but he knows there's a loneliness in Tom. He knows, somehow, that Tom is just as much an orphan as Harry is.

Harry's never met another orphan before.

They don't interact in front of others. Harry hardly attends meals (doesn't even really know when he eats), and Harry only slips into the dorm late at night. Everyone seems to avoid him, whispering behind their hands when he passes, as if waiting for him to draw a wand or shout curses. He doesn't know why they expect him to be violent, but something about it strikes a familiar chord with him, so he does what feels natural: he avoids.

Tom, however, is persistent. He always seems to be there to bring Harry down from a blackout or the attacks of dizziness and nausea and migraines, growing ever more frequent. Harry doesn't trust him, but reluctantly… Harry has begun to associate him with comfort.

Even as something in his stomach twists and writhes in complete and utter anguish at the idea.


It's on a frigid winter evening that Harry finds himself in front of a door he's never seen before.

He's passed by here countless times. It has always been a blank wall.

Not now, apparently.

"What is it with you and staring at walls?"

Harry's not even surprised to realize that Tom is there with him. He sighs, already tired of this conversation. Underneath that, though, he feels a little warm, knowing he's here. A constant.

Harry feels a flicker of unease, but buries it.

"It's a hobby of mine, didn't you know?" he retorts, before stepping forward, laying a hand on the wood. "You wouldn't happen to know where this goes, would you?"

Tom steps forward, his shoulder warm against Harry's, their robes brushing. Ever since the tunnel, Tom has been intent upon touching Harry. Harry chooses not to think about it too hard, not when it simultaneously makes him feel sick to his core and so complete he might tremble.

Harry feels Tom's gaze upon him, before its weight lifts to look at the door. "The Come and Go Room, I believe."

Harry's breath stutters, because something about that name sounds… wrong. Like a phrase, caught on the tip of his tongue, constantly evading him.

He doesn't wait for Tom. He knows he's following. He always is.

Inside, the room is more a labyrinth than anything else. Piles upon piles of junk line the walls, forming a maze of trinkets and knick-knacks. It's dark, everything suffused in a dull blue glow, as if lit from within.

Harry feels breath upon his neck, a skeleton rattle of sound, like a ghost speaking against his neck. He whips around, stomach lurching, breaths heavy and frantic. But there is nothing. Tom is meters away, inspecting a leaning tower of trash.

Harry's eyes flit back and forth, frantic, like a spooked horse. Tom glances at him, and though his face is impassive, Harry knows that he is staring at him in interest.

Suddenly, it fills Harry with an inexplicable sense of disgust.

He whips out his wand, and maybe it's the paranoia speaking, maybe it's his mind finally giving out, but he feels trapped. The room feels inexplicably warm, as if a fire licks at his back. As if Satan himself is beckoning.

"Don't come any closer to me," Harry says, voice hoarse, as if he hasn't had water in days. As if he would even know. Why is it so warm?

Sweat trickles down his back, like a tongue of flame tracing the length of his spine.

Tom turns to face him fully, then, and Harry stumbles back. He can feel his hair sticking to his brow, and the towers seem to be tilting. No. No, not again––

"It's another episode, isn't it?" Tom says, ignoring Harry's commands, the shaky aim pointed at him. Tom's figure blurs, as if seen through smoke. "Sit down, Harry, before you hurt yourself."

Or you, Harry thinks, desperately, I want to hurt you.

The thought feels right. The thought feels important, but Harry just doesn't know why.

Even in his sorry state, though, the thought is enough. A sizzling orange curse shoots off from his wand. It misses Tom by centimeters.

Tom glances back at it, before his gaze returns to Harry's. Even through his hazy vision, Harry catches how the orange seems to have caught in Tom's eyes as it passed, painting the dark brown a vivid, bloody red.

"So you want to play that game, do you?" Tom whispers, voice low. Dangerous.

Harry backs away, shirt sticking to his skin in the unimaginable heat. Tom is cold. Untouched.

The floor seems to slip and slide beneath him, but Harry only grabs his wand with two hands, doing his best to stand tall with knees that want to crumple beneath him. "No games," he says, licking his lips, trying to suck the moisture out of the air, "Stay away from me."

Tom's wand slips into his hand like it was made to be there. Perhaps it was.

"You started this little dance, Harry, don't try and back out of it now." Tom advances, a predator's grace, perfectly even, even as the floors sway and the wall's give out beneath a bent ceiling.

Harry just barely dodges a curse, so dark it looks almost purple. He slips, feet sweat-slicked in his shoes, around the corner, stumbling his way through the maze like a man drunk. His vision swims, his stomach seemingly trying to climb up his throat, even as his brain pulses like a thousand drums in his skull.

"Oh, don't run, you daft boy. What kind of Gryffindor are you?" Another curse, this one vividly red, zips past his hair.

Harry isn't listening, only running, tripping his way to the center of the maze. He doesn't know how far behind him Tom is, doesn't think he can look without falling on his face.

Even through his twisting, turning vision, Harry can see a wardrobe. Something balks in him at the sight of it, but even so, he shakily tumbles into it, pulling the doors shut, trying to hush the breaths that keep him from throwing up. He doesn't even remember if he has anything in his stomach to expel.

The room goes unbearably silent, and still, the temperature climbs, unbearable. Sweat gathers in the hollow of his collarbone, slipping down his chest.

Black creeps in at the edges of his vision. Harry's never felt so sick. The Cruciatus is nothing compared to this.

Harry feels suspended on a trip wire, waiting for the door to open to another world, waiting for thousands of black figures to pour from the corners of his cage, feels like he is being spun in circles and circles and circles and circles ––

The door is wrenched open, a hand fists in his collar, and Harry bends over, heaves, sick, sick, and sicker still––

Tom drops him in disgust, but Harry hardly notices. He curls on the floor, holds his knees to his chest, and he feels walls pressing in like a cupboard, trapping him, encasing him in his own personal tomb––

And a voice echoes in his ears––

"Bad things happen to wizards who mess with time, Harry."

A hand above him, a dull grey light, and the world goes black.


Harry wakes in a bed that isn't his. The covers are a pale yellow, the floor a clean white marble tile.

It feels like a hangover, and his mouth feels as if it is filled with sand, his lips dry and cracking.

When he finally finds the will to sit up, buried beneath a thousand questions (Where am I? Why did I do that? Where is Tom? What has he done? What did he do to me–– ), he finds a note and a selection of potions on the side table. Harry brings it to his face with shaking hands, fingers trembling as he slides his glasses onto his face.

I put you to sleep. You became uncontrollably violent, but you begged me not to get the matron, so I left you here, in the Room of Requirement. There is Dreamless Sleep, a Pepper-Up Potion, and water on the side table. I told the professors you would be indisposed for the evening.

Sleep. We will speak later.

Tom Riddle

Harry collapses back onto the bed. He chooses not to think.


It only escalates after that. Harry misses entire weeks.

Somehow his grades aren't dropping; he has a feeling Tom is turning his assignments in for him, but he doesn't know how or why. He doesn't care enough to ask, not when his time being lucid is so rare.

And even that, too, is becoming rarer, overtaken with his bouts of sickness.

He's woken, frozen, standing in the Astronomy Tower. He's woken drifting aimlessly in the air, thousands of feet high, up on a broom. He's woken mid-step, making his way to the third floor, a sense of righteous anger he has no business feeling building inside of him.

He feels as if he is going mad.

Maybe he already is.

It's become so frequent even Tom can't seem to constantly keep up with him, though he tries his damnedest.

This time he wakes in water, his lungs full and his breaths useless, only sucking in more murk. He feels water-logged, like a corpse left to drown for weeks on end, his limbs too heavy to try and propel him up, where he can see the dim light drifting lazily to the bottom of the lake.

Harry's tempted to close his eyes.

Something, a strong something, wraps around his bicep, yanking him upwards.

When his head breaks air, Harry gasps, a human reflex he has no control over. He almost misses the lethargic feeling of water filling his lungs.

"What the hell were you doing?" A voice yells, staring at him with wide eyes.

Harry blinks sluggishly. Somehow, miraculously, his glasses remain on his face, but he still can't see through the water streaming down the glass.

He tries to speak, but his throat feels ripped through.

The hand shakes him roughly, and Harry just barely makes out the voice, shouting curses in his ear as they paddle him to shore.

"––You could have died out here, what the bloody hell were you thinking? For god's sake, it's freezing anyway, I don't know why you'd choose this time of year for a bloody dip ––"

Harry is laid on his back on the bank of the lake, the chill from the air sinking into his bones. Before he can even start shivering, though, a cloak is thrown over him. Harry finally takes a moment to look at his rescuer, kneeling beside him.

It's a boy, with long red hair dripping down his back and hazel eyes that scan over him in concern. His face is golden warm, and he feels so familiar and yet not. Harry's heart aches for reasons he can't explain.

The boy sighs, his hands coming up to wipe the water from Harry's face.

"I s'pose I should be asking if you're alright."

Harry chokes out a watery laugh, and it feels as if it was pulled from beneath his organs it hurts so bad.

"Shh, shh, sorry," the boy says, but he's smiling, sheepish, "My mistake."

"Septimus."

All mirth Harry had slips from him like a leech sucked it from his soul. In seconds it is replaced with relief.

Terrible, wonderful relief.

The boy––Septimus––scrambles to his feet, and Harry almost expects him to salute. Or bow, something in him thinks.

The thought makes Harry sick. He pushes it away, focuses instead on the odd taste in the back of his throat, like seaweed, the raw feeling on his neck, as if scraped across glass.

"Riddle," the boy says, pale as a sheet. "I only meant to––"

"Ten points for violating curfew," Tom says, voice cold and emotionless. "Get back to your dorm."

Septimus casts one last look at Harry, something like concern in his eyes, before he turns, presumably to get back to bed. Harry doesn't bother to watch him leave. He keeps his eyes on the stars, trying desperately to suck in air through still-steadying lungs.

Another hand––a colder, more familiar hand––smooths over his face, as if trying to erase Septimus's touch. The hand lingers on his scar, and it feels like nothing but warmth.

"Foolish boy," Tom says, settling down behind his head. He doesn't lean over to see Harry's face up close, but Harry knows he's watching his every move. "Feeling suicidal?"

"Not really," Harry says, and he doesn't even know if it's a lie or not. Doesn't feel like he is himself enough to know if it's the truth.

The hand doesn't leave his face. Harry shifts, slightly, allowing the hand to cover more of his forehead. The stars dance above them, but this time it's not from dizziness.

It's so rare, these moments. No sickness. No nothingness.

Just… warmth.

"What was I doing?" It's come to this, now. No longer does Tom ask Harry what he was doing. Harry is the one forced to suffer the humiliation.

"I saw you dive into the lake from the dock. You weren't under for more than a few seconds, but I suppose Prewett became worried and decided to take matters into his own hands." The palm on Harry's forehead shifts, slightly, fingers lazily tangling in his hair, as if testing the give of it.

"Why was he out here?" Harry asks, for lack of anything else. Why didn't you jump in after me, he doesn't say.

He doesn't think he wants to hear the answer.

"Probably sneaking around to see his little girlfriend, if I had to guess," Tom says, voice devoid of anything meaningful. To Harry, it tastes bitter.

"I remember seeing people," and he doesn't know why he reveals this, but it feels pointless to keep it hidden, "on the dock. A whole crowd. They were cheering. I went to see what they were doing."

Tom hums, his hand leaving Harry's face completely. Harry acts like he doesn't realize, like it doesn't ache, a hook tugging at his chest.

"Curious."

It's all he says. Harry supposes that about sums it up––both his life and their dynamic.

It's strange, how easily they swing from murderous to nearly content.

He closes his eyes and pretends the wind isn't cooler where Tom's hand once rested.


The next time he opens his eyes, he's standing at the top of a dark, gaping hole, a snake's maw, come to swallow him down.

A wand is pressing into his back. A mouth is pressed to his ear.

"Jump."

Harry does, if only because he's been conditioned to follow what Tom says when he's confused like this.

His stomach starts to churn as he descends, and it feels like he's falling straight down, like he's just waiting for his ankles to crack under the pressure. He feels like he can hear the terrified screams of a little boy in his ears, and it makes him think of Septimus in a confusing, dizzying way.

The tunnel spits him out onto a blanket of bones. He slowly rises to his feet. When he turns, Tom is there, waiting for him, resting against the feet of a grand statue.

This is not where he landed.

"You know, you're a curious thing," Tom says, circling, circling, and behind his eyes Harry can see something bigger, longer, circling with him. Harry looks around him, and all he sees is shadows.

"Always confused," Tom continues, stopping, watching him. Always watching. It stops being a comfort in that moment. It starts feeling like that echoing desperation that doom causes.

"Always listening to me," and there's a weird intonation to his words. The shadow of the Basilisk–– the what? ––flickers at the sound. "Always being places you shouldn't, saying things I know you don't want me to hear."

Harry looks at Tom. Doesn't know which one to look at, when there is a pale imitation on his other side, twirling what looks like Harry's wand in his fingers. Harry tightens his grip on his wand.

Tightens his gaze on the Tom approaching him at a steady clip.

It's the wrong one.

Solid hands–– real hands ––grab him from behind, flick a wand, and snakes wrap around his body. He falls to his knees, too messed up, too upside down and right side up and inside out to struggle, not when there is someone that looks like Septimus on the floor, not when there is a Tom whispering unintelligible words at his back, not when there is a Tom in front of him, tilting his jaw up, an echo of that first comfort.

Tom's eyes are dark. Tom's eyes are red.

He strokes his fingers along Harry's tie. His green tie.

"I wonder if you'd miss the red, if you even knew enough to miss it," he says, contemplative, but Harry can see that he's enjoying this. Enjoying how he is taking Harry's perceptions and twisting them in knots, tearing through his reality and building it to his own design. "I think you would. I think I know more about you than you do."

"Let me enlighten you, my dear," he says, and he yanks hard on Harry's tie, whisking him away, phantom memories––memories?–– disappearing in a blur.


Harry registers the briny smell of salt in his nose, the wind that buffets against him, as if urging him to run. He couldn't if he wanted, trapped in a circle of blood and salt and candles.

Tom waits. Harry wonders how long he has waited for this moment.

"When you stood at the Chamber, I knew it was time," Tom begins, as if finishing a sentence.

Harry knows him better, though (But did he ever really know him? Something in him says he does. Something else says never). Tom wants his plans to be heard. Normally that would be a relief, a chance to get away.

Harry doesn't even really know if he is supposed to be running.

"These lapses in memory––they are lapses in perception. You see, Harry, you don't often stare at empty walls when you are like this. No," he says, a smile like a slice of teeth cutting across his face, "you act out a reality only you can see."

Tom glances up at the sky, briefly, as if to ascertain that the moon is still in the sky. Harry feels numb all over. He feels something like realization creeping at the back of his mind.

In the distance, he thinks he can see a small boy leading two other small children away from a larger group.

"At first it was conversations––you mention a Ron and a Hermione quite often, didn't you know?" His lips quirk, as if finding humor in Harry's helplessness.

Harry feels like a tree, rotten from the inside out, burrowed into from every side. He feels like he has a memory made of leaves, gaps rearranging, only to be blown apart by the wind. He wonders how long Tom has been working to cut him down, until he is simply a mass meant to be built into something grander.

Harry has no choice but to watch his own destruction.

"And then you would act it out, like nothing else existed. You traveled to places you had no right to know about, spoke to people that were never there––I told my followers to get you alone when you were like this, but you would seize and your eyes would roll back. Everyone thought you were mad. That, or sick," Tom notes, a sneer twisting his mouth down, and Harry is so confused and so lost and so desperate and still he thinks Tom is lovely, even in his hatred, "like that Septimus boy. They pitied you. And you are a creature to be pitied, aren't you?"

Tom's gaze has something in it. Harry's mind is reeling, doubting everything he sees. Doubting if Tom's eyes are brown or black or red or blue. Doubting if the little children in the background are drowning or not. Doubting if one of them is watching with a serene smile on his face, with eyes that pierce like knives and a smile that cuts like betrayal.

Tom shifts into Harry's line of sight. "You began to speak Parseltongue," like that means anything to Harry anymore, "and spoke to me as if it were natural. As if it were meant to be."

He kneels, then, and it strikes Harry as very wrong. "You called me by my name."

"Voldemort," Harry says. It's all he thinks he can say, because if he says anything else, he fears he might scream and scream and never stop.

Is this what a Kiss feels like? Soul-sucking and all-consuming and devastating as the earth opening up and swallowing a city whole?

Tom's eyes flutter shut, exultant.

His face bleaches white. His nose melts away. His hair slips from his head.

He opens his eyes and he is handsome once more.

Harry wishes the wind would tear him open and apart, so that Harry might finally see the truth of him, laid bare in all its vile glory.

"You're like me, Harry," Tom says, low and guttural, and it sounds greedy. His eyes glint as if looking upon gold. "You are me. My very own horcrux. Or, you once were. Tell me, Harry; do you think you'll remember how death feels?"

Harry feels himself shake. Harry feels himself come apart.

Tom exults in it. Tom revels in watching all the ways Harry's world rips itself apart at the seams.

"You'll create a horcrux once more, precious thing, as a reward for once housing one so well. As recompense for discarding it so carelessly."

Harry doesn't even see the knife coming. He feels it knock him back at the same time as Tom's mouth meets his, though. He feels it like a burning pressure, but he doesn't even know if it's from the kiss or the way Tom yanks the knife straight up to his throat, ripping him open. Right through the heart.

Blood sprays across him like Harry's insides want nothing more than to reach out and hold Tom in their embrace.

Tom's lips are red, the same blood that came to Harry's lips staining his teeth crimson. Tom licks at his lips, reveling, savouring the taste.

"For luck. Though I think I won't need it; you've given me everything I need."

He slices at his own arm. Harry feels his vision dim, his stomach lurch, like his soul is still trying to fight its way to Tom.

With that, he begins chanting, and Harry can only watch as he sees ghosts of faces long past dancing in the corners of his vision.


Harry stares up at Borgin and Burkes, a cloak around his shoulders, a wand in his hand. A stone on his finger.

Harry stares up at Borgin and Burkes, armed with memories and lethal intent and a mission almost forgotten.

Tom drifts around the shop, picking up something rare and undoubtedly precious. He turns, then, and by chance, by fate, his eyes meet Harry's through the window.

The glass shatters when it hits the ground.

Harry smiles.