REBEL REBEL

CHAPTER FIVE: THE FACE OF THE ENEMY

I.

THE HARRY POTTER WHO was not Harry Potter stood across the room from the Tommy Hurst who was not Tommy Hurst. He displayed complete authority – blocking the only door in or out. He was better than me in a fight even if he was just the normal Harry Potter, let alone whoever it was that possessing him. I was ninety-nine per cent sure at this point the possessor was Lord Voldemort himself, which begged the question – how? And when? The why? Was obvious. He was already starting to subvert Gryffindors' expectations, turn them away from the ideals of their house. Going after the kids was an idea that Tom Riddle had tried to use before and had failed. Taking advantage of The Boy Who Lived represented a golden opportunity to set things right. "I'm assuming you've figured it out by now, so it's only fair that you tell me who you are. Really."

"Figured what out?" I played dumb.

"Do I really have to spell it out for you? You're a Ravenclaw, you should know that playing dumb isn't going to work on me," said Harry. "But, if we must play this game, I did set up this little trap for you after all. I do like using letters."

The letters spun around my head and organised themselves, burning in fire, next to Harry. They read four simple words, that he'd used before, that confirmed my fears. I Am Lord Voldemort. "Ironic, isn't it? I used them before. On young Potter then. I should have known not to use a memory. It had to be the real me."

"Riddle."

"So you know my name," said Voldemort. "Curious. Tell me more about who you really are, Hurst. I'm going to kill you of course, one way or another, so please, do. How do you muggles put it? We can do it the easy way… or the hard way."

I used a wand to create a smoke-screen, but Riddle was smarter – he used a force-choke like ability, combined with a force-pull equivalent to put on his best Vader impression and pull me towards him with his wand. I tried to resist but I was choking, gasping for air, the smoke that I had conjured wasn't helping. He disarmed me within seconds and with skill, cast a spell on my wand.

It snapped in half, clean in two, before my very eyes, and I saw the last hope that I had filter out completely. "Did you think you could run from me? That a simple smoke-screen would fool me? Please. I expected more."

"A question for a question, then," I said.

"You are in no positions to make bargains," Voldemort snapped at me. "But fine. I will entertain you. Who are you?"

"Scott…" I wheezed through the force-choke, grasping for air. "Scott Walker."

He let me go, and I gasped for air. "Impressive. That is even more a muggle name than the one you currently have."

"You admit it, then. You admit that you're halfblooded. That you have a muggle name-"

"I do not allow people to bastardise my name and get away with it," said Tom Riddle. "You, on the other hand… Tommy? What kind of atrocity is that? Have you no self-respect?"

"That's three questions right there, and I haven't had any yet," I said. "A question… why? Why go through all this trouble?"

"Because this allows me to do two things," said Riddle. "I realised a long time ago that the best way to parents' hearts was through their children. If I control their children, turn them against their parents, then they will fall in line to protect them. I tried becoming a Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher before, you know. It didn't work."

"And you think impersonating Harry will?"

"A question for a question," reminded Riddle. "How much do you know about what… is happening here?"

"Enough," I said, and didn't give Voldemort anymore. "Now. Now, one more time, for the record, who are you and whose body are you occupying?"

He looked confused, but said it anyway, "You are wasting precious little time that you could have to ask all the wrong questions, but if we must play this game of my own creation, I am Lord Voldemort and I am occupying Harry Potter's body!"

And that, was when I made my move. Unbreakable glass slid up between me and Voldemort, separating the two of us. An invention of the room – I watched it materialise into place before he could react. "And I was just waiting for this to finish charging. Thank you very much. I'm sure it will hold up well when presented to Dumbledore, maybe it'll even convince Umbridge. Hah! I played you, oh my god, I can't believe I just tricked freaking Voldemort."

"What do you mean?" Voldemort looked confused. "You think you are safe behind those walls? I can tear them down here as much as anywhere."

"No you can't. See, you may have visited the room before the lesson to prepare, but I went first," I said. "I had to lure you out into the open to admit your plan and taking the bait was the only way. If you were Voldemort, and if you really were, you'd use the Room of Requirement as a base of operations. All I had to do next was get a confession that would convince the right people, and thank you Fred and George Weasley. Muggle recording devices, designed for pranks but retrofitted into something useful, you my friend have just been the victim of some high tech, 90s wiretapping."

I played the tape back to him. "I am Lord Voldemort and I am occupying Harry Potter's body."

"I love this part," I said.

Voldemort wasn't just mad, he was pissed, and tried to have the walls removed with as much brute force as he could manage. Yet the walls were a creation of the room, a pre-planned structure that I had set-up. Sorry – I couldn't tell you everything that I was doing at Hogwarts this year, for obvious reasons. I had to keep in the dark some things. Forgive me. He tried to use both his wands, even cast forbidden curses at the unbreakable glass, but no matter how much The Dark Lord tried, the power of the room was stronger. All I had to do was play a waiting game now, but unfortunately, he realised that too, seconds before I did, and started laughing, coldly and without emotion.

"You have failed to realise what is so blindingly obvious," Tom Riddle said. "The Room of Requirement is not just beholden to one master; it is beholden to all who wish to use its purpose. It will not just obey you, but also, me. I assume you have told the Room that the glass cannot be shrunken by Harry Potter? Or Tom Riddle, perhaps, to have both bases covered? Clever. For A Ravenclaw, I would expect nothing less. But what you fail to understand, Hurst… or do you prefer being called Walker? No matter. You are in Hurst's body, so I shall call you by his name, is that if I wanted to do anything else to the room, all I have to do… is think. A foreign concept to you, it seems."

I realised what he had planned and my cocky overconfidence faded in a matter of microseconds, turning into pure horror when I realised what he was about to attempt. The room around me, only my side of the room, was beginning to shrink, trapped within the glass. "You will break down the glass," said Voldemort. "You will return the recording to me. And then I will kill you. Students get lost in Hogwarts all the time; one more will not be any different? After all, it is not the first time someone has died at my hands in these walls."

Moaning Myrtle. The Chamber of Secrets. Yikes. Was that what I was going to become, a ghost? Was that what would happen to all people who died on Hogwarts' grounds, doomed to watch over its walls for eternity? "Let me out. Please," I commented, growing desperate. "Please let me go."

"It's your choice. Not mine. You said it yourself. These walls are unbreakable," said Voldemort, watching on. "I could even be crueller. You prefer to torture me by muggle methods, so I will use them too. Let's fill the room up with… I don't know, poisonous gas. You will be tearing apart your own throat within minutes."

Gas began to fill the room as it shrunk. Voldemort was gloating now, showcasing just how out of my depth I truly was. He was in victory mode. He was getting bigger and better. There was no way out. Almost no way out. Until I realised something. "You see, from one Tom to another, you've overlooked something."

"What's that?" Voldemort's eyebrows raised. "Go on. Enlighten me. You do not have much time left before the gas spreads. I wonder, what will happen first. Will you choke to death? Or will you be crushed?"

"Neither," I said. "Because, Tommy McTomothy, you've overlooked something so simple, it's almost pathetic. For a Dark Lord, I expected more. All I had to do was keep you talking so you wouldn't notice."

"Notice what?"

"The massive hole in the ground," I said, and pointed next to me at the, well, there was no other way to describe it but that – a massive hole in the ground, which had silently transformed next to me, creating a bottomless slide into a pit below. The Chamber of Secrets comparisons were evident. The gas around me vanished suddenly, replaced by Voldemort's fury.

"Very well," he said. "If you cannot choke to death, assuming that hole does even lead somewhere at all, you will drown!"

"Well, it looks like we're done here," I said, as the heavens opened. "Thanks for entertaining me, but I really have to get to Dumbledore. In theory, that's where this hole should lead. Dumbledore's Office. I asked for Dumbledore, so there's where it shall go. But before I leave, I just wanted to say one more thing."

"What was that?"

"BYE!" I couldn't resist the temptation to offer up one more gloat. I jumped, and was followed by an endless cascade of water, hoping that the slide would take me to Dumbledore's Office before Riddle got there.

II.

The water must have overtaken me at some point because the next thing I knew I was coughing, soaking wet, recovering from a bout of unconsciousness inside something that was decidedly not the office of Albus Dumbledore, but the interior of a pub's cellar. Smashed glasses were everywhere, and the water was being magicked away by someone who was decidedly not, Albus Dumbledore. What happened to the Room of Requirement always meeting people's requirements? "Who are you?" I said, climbing up, still hazy.

"You're not the one asking questions here, boy, I am, who the hell are you and what have you done to my pub?" The man said, repairing the damaged bottles in the cellar around him, but more annoyed at the inconvenience than anything else.

"Sorry. It wasn't me, it was Voldemort," I apologised hastily, a little too quickly.

"That's what all the kids say."

"Yes, but it actually was Voldemort," I said. "He's possessed Harry Potter! He trapped me in the Room of Requirement and tried to kill me. I only escaped because I wanted to meet with Dumbledore… and you're not Professor Dumbledore."

"No, but I am a Dumbledore," said Aberforth, and I realised where I'd got my calculations wrong, I hadn't been specific about which Dumbledore that I wanted the Room to take me to. "And think very carefully about what you say next, boy, because that is some serious accusations you are making there."

"It's true. Every word, I swear, you got to believe me," I said, reaching into my pocket and pulling out my recording device, only to see that it was decidedly in worse condition before than it was. It was destroyed, and I had no wand to repair it with. "Would you mind?"

"Not at all. Reparo," said Aberforth, but nothing happened. It just stayed exactly the same as it was before. "That must be tough luck, boy. Looks like it's been cursed. Please don't tell me it's your only proof, short of getting Voldemort himself to confess AGAIN?"

I shot a dark look at him. That was my get out clause. My whole plan just evaporated like that. Frak. "Um, kind of."

"You're an idiot. Presumably, you confronted Voldemort head on without thinking?"

"Um, kind of," I said again. Aberforth slapped me, and I recoiled. "What was that for?"

"First rule of confronting Voldemort head on," he said, "Is that you always think. Did you not listen to the warnings? The Bogeyman's Bogeyman. He's scarier than you idiot muggleborns could ever possibly imagine, he's always two steps ahead, every single time. Whatever you do next, he's already thought out a plan to stop it, and three backup plans in case the first one doesn't work. And you thought confronting him alone would work? Especially when… boy, please don't say you didn't play this recorder back to him and tell him all your plans?"

"Ah. I see your point. I may have done that."

Aberforth slapped me again. "You idiot. Now he knows what you're going to do, what your moves are. Good luck trying that trick again on him as he won't be fooled twice. And he knows now who you are, which means, he's going to try and stop you from telling Dumbledore or anyone who would listen who he really is. That is all assuming, you're not lying. Prove to me you're not lying."

"He's been acting differently," I said. "Cruel, even. The Harry Potter I know would never get kids to re-enact a stealth Fight Club remake to find out their strengths and weaknesses. He's more of a Remember the Titans kinda guy. Or, I don't know, Angels in the Outfield-"

"Harry Potter has a mean streak. So what?" he ignored my pop culture references and kept the pressure on.

"He's manipulative."

"Manipulation is pretty much a requirement to be sorted into Slytherin. You're going to do better than that."

"He isn't standing up to the Ministry of Magic when he should be."

"Why should he be? He's a child, not a martyr," said Aberforth. "Standing up to the Ministry gets you killed. Don't take it personally kid, I'm not saying you're not right, but this is just what the defence is going to throw at you. My brother may be suspicious, but he's not likely to throw his Golden Boy under the metaphorical bus anytime soon based on a hunch."

"It's not a hunch. His friends don't think he's Harry Potter anymore," I said, growing desperate. Okay – maybe that was a bit too desperate, it was only Neville who I'd managed to half-convince. But it was my last chance, my last and only ace in the hole.

Aberforth stepped back a minute, and stopped. "That might have just saved you. If you can get confessions from Potter's best friends, before he gets to them completely? Then you might have a case. It's the slimmest of slim cases, but assuming you can convince Hermione Granger and Ronald Weasley – where everyone who knows anyone knows that they are friends of Harry Potter, that Harry Potter is not Harry Potter anymore? It's not over yet."

"Thank you," I breathed a sigh of relief.

"I never said it was going to be easy. But if you're right," Aberforth said. "Then we're all in very big trouble. I need a drink. Go. Get out of my pub. You'll have to walk through the forest, all the buildings here are closed at this time of night so the secret pathways are a no-go."

"Thanks," I said. I knew Aberforth had a way back to the Room of Requirement thanks to the portal but that wasn't opened until the seventh book and I didn't want to risk going back in case Voldemort was still waiting for me. So that meant a lovely run through the forest lay ahead of me.

It was pitch black when I left, the early hours of the following morning (my confrontation with Voldemort had happened at around seven pm, and I was starving hungry, by this point), with only lamp-posts illuminating Hogsmeade. I followed the road, heading towards the Station where I could get to the school through the gate from there and maybe even take one of the thestral carriages if I was lucky, but I didn't get far before I saw movement up ahead, through the fog. Two Aurors had just appeared out of nowhere in front of me, and I realised what they were looking for with growing horror, and that I was almost certainly too late. They confirmed my worst fears seconds later. "Let's spread out. Hurst has to be here somewhere. Remember, he's worth more if we bring him in alive, I have some debts I need to pay…."

I backed up and turned the corner, desperate to get out of there, ran down an alleyway, through the fog, which seemed to be getting thicker and thicker at every turn, and found myself faced to face with a hastily assembled WANTED poster, a picture of my face, the name THOMAS HURST scrawled underneath me, moving, looking younger and innocent, a face that I barely even recognised, having precious little occasions to look at it in the mirror. DEAD OR ALIVE was labelled in the subheadings, and scrawled underneath my picture was the cause that saw my eyes widen. ON TWO ACCOUNTS: 1. FOR TREASON AGAINST THE MINISTRY OF MAGIC, and 2. FOR THE ATTEMPTED MURDER OF THE BOY WHO LIVED!

I was so screwed. Riddle had got to the Ministry first, maybe even Dumbledore, and wrapped every single one of them under his thumb in a way that The Dark Lord only knew how. My situation had just gone from bad, with a capital B, to so, so much worse.

TO BE CONTINUED…