I must once again thank you for your patience with me! I'll never leave this story unfinished and I'm doing my best against my head to focus long enough to update this weekly again. I appreciate each of you that sticks with me. I spent days staring at this blank document and ending up writing HTTYD smut because I can do that blindfolded and this story takes so much more effort that I could not squeeze from my shattered brain.
Nonetheless
On we go.
PS - a lot of borrowing from our queen JK in this chapter, none of it my intellectual property.
-YDHP-
"What exactly are you intending to teach me sir?"
"As much as I can. I feel that knowledge is our best weapon, and so I should arm you with whatever weapons I can."
Harry noticed the new cabinet, glowing and full of things that made his scales tingle. Harry licked his fangs nervously.
"Are those memories sir?"
"Very astute. They are indeed."
"Yours?"
"Some. Several were... acquired from others."
The way Dumbledore stressed the word acquired made Harry wonder if the owners of the memories hadn't wanted to give up their innermost thoughts.
"Ok. Are you going to show me them?"
The headmaster nodded, holding the arm with the cursed hand oddly. Harry wondered if it hurt. He waved the unmarked hand in a broad gesture and Harry caught a glow lighting up the room. It was like looking through sunlit water, ribbons of motion waving their way lazily through the light of some hidden source within the runic, aged stone bowl.
"This is a pensieve Harry. It allows us to watch memories, and to store them. A second look often gives us more than we knew we could see, does it not?"
Vlad sprung to mind; Harry had looked at him dozens of times before he saw him.
"I guess so. How does it work?"
"Select a memory."
Harry stepped up to the glowing cabinet, peeling it open as though he expected the spindly, fragile-looking structure to shatter on impact. One seemed to jump out, almost like he could see a small snake slither within the small glass bottle.
"Bob Ogden."
"Who's Bob Ogden?"
"Ah. Head of Magical Law Enforcement Patrol in this particular memory. A good choice to start. This memory takes place before Voldemort was born."
Harry frowned in thought; what would this teach him?
"Alright. Now what?"
The headmaster took the bottle delicately, tipping it into the pensieve. The rippling ocean inside roiled for a second before calming, a peculiar face ghosting across the surface.
"Now we go in."
Harry copied the headmaster, feeling singularly daft for bending face first into the pensieve. It felt cold and yet insubstantial upon his skin, but then he was being pitched headfirst into a memory. It felt off, his magic acutely aware he didn't belong within this place. The peculiar face belonged to this Bob Ogden fellow according to Dumbledore's mutter. He was clearly not accustomed to dressing in muggle attire; he looked ridiculous.
"How can we see him if this is his memory? Shouldn't it be from his point of view?"
"Ah. The magic of a pensieve."
Not helpful. Harry focused back on Ogden.
"Where are we?"
"Just outside of Little Hangleton" Harry's chest seized up "and this is the Gaunt... home."
Gaunt. He knew that name. Home was a stretch for the dilapidated shack Ogden was walking toward. Harry couldn't help looking for the graveyard he and Vlad would brush with death in, but the edges of the memory-world were fuzzy, incomplete.
There was a dead snake nailed to the front door. Harry felt sick to look at it. Ogden didn't look too happy himself as he raised his wand and rapped at the door neatly; he didn't seem to want to touch the door with his hands. The door flew open in a blur of human, though Harry felt that an anatomical description more than a personal one.
'Morfin Gaunt' as he was named, was holding a knife aloft and spewing non-words. His eyes were rolling faster than any human, acutely reptilian to Harry's knowing mind. The non-words became hisses that he struggled to translate, so fast and primal the tone.
"Morfin! Up! You'll hissssss townsfolk again!"
"Father!" Harry noted a passing resemblance in their asymmetric faces "he comes too close!"
Bob Ogden managed to get upright again while Morfin was distracted by his father, brushing himself down and holding out his wand and a roll of parchment in shaking hands.
"I am Robert Ogden of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and I am here to hand you these summons Morfin Gaunt. You will appear at a hearing on your use of magic upon a Muggle."
Morfin pulled a wand from somewhere in his filthy clothes, cursing a spell somewhere between Parseltongue and English that Harry didn't make out. Yellow goo, thick and sticky burst from Ogdens face, which he attempted to staunch the flow of while Morfin's father tried to restrain his son.
The commotion drew a third out from the shack, a thin and unpleasant looking girl with stringy hair and a deep, hollow sadness in her eyes.
"Merope! Get back inside!"
"But father-"
He struck her, the blow sending her to the ground but there was no reaction. Just acceptance. This wasn't uncommon.
"Get back inside! Clean something would you?"
Ogden spat out some of the yellow mess, then turned to the father.
"Marvolo Gaunt" Harry startled at the mention of Riddles middle name "you are expected to produce your son on the charges of using magic-"
"Do you know who I am?"
Marvolo hissed, English but the parselmouth inflections were clear.
"Marvolo Gaunt, father of Morfin and Merope Gaunt-"
"I'm the direct descendent of Salazar Slytherin! Look!"
Around his neck proved to be an all-too-familiar locket that gave Harry chills. Upon his middle finger resided a ring, one that meant he performed an obscene gesture to display it to the man. The scratches on the blackened ring gem struck Harry as familiar too, tugged at his mind and magic.
"That does not excuse your sons actions Mr Gaunt!"
Bob Ogden was terrified, it was clear and Harry was impressed he'd lasted this long. Before anymore could be said, a carriage trundled up the path looking out of place with its grandeur against such squalor.
Morfin snarled and sneered as the door of the carriage opened, Harry's heart stopping in his chest for a brief second as recognition tore into him like a keen blade.
"Tom Riddle senior."
He barely heard Dumbledore name him, static buzzing in his ears but he could hear the laughter, the taunting from Riddle senior and his lady friend as they taunted the poor from their comfortable carriage and fine clothes. Morfin turned to his father, gesturing with his knife toward the sister who had not yet picked herself up.
"Merope lusts for the Muggle. Would dilute our bloodline with hissss kind."
"She dare not! This cannot hisssss Merope?"
Merope didn't answer, but the lacking answer seemed to serve as confirmation to the quite mad Marvolo. He reached for his daughter, closing his hands around her throat. Riddle and his companion left without so much as a sound of surprise, telling of the attitude they had. Merope barely managed to put up any struggle, face turning quite purple as she began to go limp in her fathers chokehold.
Ogden finally attempted something of a defense, shooting some sort of hex at Marvolo that made him jerk away as though burnt by Merope's skin. She crumpled to the floor choking and spluttering, pale neck already beginning to bruise in thick dark splotches. Marvolo and Morfin both turned on Ogden as one, and the man finally had the good sense to run.
At this, Dumbledore pulled them out somehow. Harry stumbled backward as the world righted itself, falling into cool arms that surrounded his middle. Magic instinctively recognising vampire, he didn't need to turn around to know who it was.
"Vlad?"
"You were scared. Really scared. I couldn't stay away."
Dumbledore looked as surprised as Harry to see him, though now he'd explained Harry knew he ought to have expected his boyfriend.
"Vladimir. How did you get in?"
"Your wards may work on ordinary wizards. I'm not one. What were you doing to him?"
Harry placed a hand on Vlad's arm, which quieted the growls rumbling in his chest.
"We were looking at a memory. It wasn't a pleasant one... but I don't understand. Who were those people? The Gaunts?"
It was Vlad who answered.
"Riddle's Slytherin line. Morfin and Marvolo were imprisoned, and then Merope seduced the Muggle... with magic I assume, since I hear she wasn't a looker."
Harry could only stare at him in shock.
"How?"
"It's amazing what you pick up when around an angry madman. His Legilimency is fantastic, but his Occlumency is lazy. You know Riddle killed for that memory once he heard you visited Ogden right?"
The headmaster nodded gravely.
"Most unfortunate."
Vlad hissed angrily. Fawkes ruffled his feathers.
"Unfortunate? All you had to do was be more careful about who knew you were there."
Harry squeezed at his boyfriends arm, distracting the angry vampire residing within a baby faced exterior. Vlad's eyes turned back to him, turbulent oceans of blue calming to safe lagoons again.
"Yes. I fear you are correct. There is much I could have done better and not enough time for me to atone for them all."
Vlad refused to look at the head again, focusing instead on Harry.
"How did the Gaunts get arrested? They didn't seem very co-operative."
"Ogden returned with back-up. Eventually they were overpowered. The Gaunts were a product of their bloodline long set in its way, sadly beyond help."
"What way?"
Again, Vlad answered.
"Marrying their own cousins. Like the Royal families. Keeping their line pure and their money contained. Only we know that consistently shallow gene pools produce physical and mental difficulties and defects. Riddle was the first in four generations not to be a Gaunt on both sides. Their family tree must look like a badly tied knot."
Harry frowned, thinking of Sorrow and Solace Slytherin. Their bloodline had been twisted long before the Gaunt family ever existed. It was remarkable Solace was as rounded as she had been, given the genetics contributed.
"Indeed. The family money had been squandered generations ago, leaving Marvolo Gaunt with a sense of entitlement and grandeur with naught but squalor to show for it. And they were all quite mad."
Dumbledore added, reminding Harry again of the locket and ring waved around by Marvolo. He knew where the locket was. Riddle had made a horcrux from that heirloom, perhaps they should be seeking other items of such history for the others.
"So that's where his name came from."
Vlad cocked his head, thinking before nodding.
"Tom for his father. Marvolo for hers. Riddle for... anonymity? A protective instinct maybe? She wanted him free of the stained family tree. Nobody would go looking for a Muggle family name."
"I have a memory that will pertain to that should you wish to continue Harry."
Harry chewed on the thought before nodding.
"Vlad should come too. Anything you show me he would find out anyway since we practice Legilimency and Occlumency together."
Both had iron-clad shields on their minds, but Vlad could read him like a book and was almost biologically incapable of lying to Harry. So they shared pretty much all they knew anyway.
"Very well. Though I don't know how a pensieve will respond to a vampire."
Vlad scowled, heading to sit in Harry's vacated seat.
"I'll wait. You're not in any real danger from memories I guess."
As if settling in for the duration, Vlad pulled out a bottle of pumpkin juice and his Arithmancy book. Harry could only smile fondly at the insolent vampire.
"Shall we Harry?"
Dumbledore poured the memory without waiting for an answer, setting off the oceanic glows again. He turned back to look at Vlad, receiving an encouraging smile over the binding of the hardback cover. Then he placed his face in the strange substance again, world tilting anew until they landed in a busy London street.
A man with auburn hair and beard and a violently purple suit was climbing the steps of a building, one that had once been white until time and neglect left it a filthy, aged grey. Harry waited to see the mans face, eyes widening in surprise as the man stretched up to check a faded sign read "Wools Orphanage."
"Is this your memory sir?"
"It is indeed. This is the very first time I met Tom Riddle junior, the future Lord Voldemort."
Harry and current-Dumbledore followed past-Dumbledore up the steps. It was stark and uninviting, looking like an underfunded hospital with its sterile setting of cold and lonely, ungiving. Harry wondered if this was what his childhood would have been had the Dursleys not kept him as a glorified servant.
"Who are you?"
A nasally voice caught past-Dumbledore's attention, a woman in a bleach-white orderly uniform skittering toward him.
"Professor Dumbledore. I believe Mrs Cole is expecting me."
The orderly tsked, clucking as she scuttled off toward a 'STAFF ONLY' door. Past-Dumbledore waited patiently, patience rewarded when a harried looking woman, middle-aged and weary-eyed, bustled out and lay surprised eyes on his eccentric appearance.
"Ah yes. You're here about him. The Riddle boy."
"Quite."
Harry and present-Dumbledore followed past-Dumbledore and Mrs Cole up a winding staircase, nothing about the building growing any more inviting.
"He's never had a visitor. Not one. After that poor young girl rocked up on the steps outside fit to burst. Barely managed to tell us a name before she died, not an hour old he was."
Despite the tragic tale she spun, Harry detected no sympathy in Mrs Cole's voice at all.
"Tragic indeed. What sort of boy is he?"
Past-Dumbledore's voice was clinical, clipped too.
"Well" Mrs Cole hesitated, looking around "there have been... incidents and the like with him and the other children. Nothing we can prove, mind."
"Such as?"
"Well, one of the girls was mean to him, laughing at his middle name or something. Next day, her pet rabbit is hanging from ceiling. No way a nine year old coulda got up there, and nothing to climb. But still..."
Harry listened intently. Was Riddle already controlling his developing magic at such a young age?
"Anything else?"
"He's a loner. Cruel almost. Just... strange. He refuses to see any doctors though. Been thinking maybe it should be beaten out of him."
"I doubt that would help any my dear lady."
"Hmm. This is his room. Just let someone know when you leave."
Harry baulked slightly at how quickly the woman left a near perfect stranger with a young child, following when past-Dumbledore opened the door to find a small boy standing by the window, staring through it's grimy glass as though dreaming to escape. The room was sparse, near empty. A bed. A wardrobe. A desk. A chair. Little more other than a few shiny pebbles arranged by size along the windowsill, a photo of a gloomy mountain on the grimy wall.
"I'm not seeing a doctor."
His voice was cold and devoid even then.
"I'm not a doctor. I'm a professor."
"Same difference. She wants me looked at. Thinks I'm mad."
"Hogwarts is not a place for mad people Tom. Hogwarts is a school. A school of magic."
Harry watched for the reaction, the explanation of never quite feeling right in his world. Riddle barely even blinked.
"I can do things. Things they can't do. I can punish them for being mean to me. I can make them hurt. If I want."
If Harry weren't watching the little boy himself, he would be shocked to know the child speaking was only ten. He was so against the world, cold and cruel and indifferent. And already controlling the bursts of accidental magic that confused many a Muggle born.
"At Hogwarts, you'll be taught not only to use magic, but also to control and respect it. These incidents of yours will have to cease; using magic on your classmates can end in expulsion."
Riddle sneered slightly.
"Prove it."
Past-Dumbledore flicked his wand. Riddle's wardrobe caught fire. It was the first real reaction he had seen from the boy; everything he owned probably resided behind the wooden doors. Harry noticed after a second or two that the flames were harmless to the wood, leaving no smoke or singeing anywhere.
A rattling noise could be heard, emanating from the wardrobe.
"I think something in your wardrobe wants to get out Tom."
The boy approached the blazing inferno, finding it didn't touch him with heat or pain. He opened the doors and pulled out a shoebox, which he emptied onto the bed. They were tiny trinkets; a doll, a harmonica, a toy car.
"Thievery is not tolerated at Hogwarts Tom."
Trophies.
Harry only half-listened as past-Dumbledore started talking about school supplies and term time. He heard Riddle insist he could navigate Diagon Alley himself for school supplies, Harry's mind whirling as he pictured hundreds of people passing this lonely little boy, watching him shop for supplies alone and not knowing who he would become.
Instead he looked at past-Dumbledore, then present-Dumbledore.
"Did you know then sir?"
"That I was talking to perhaps the most evil wizard to ever cast shadow upon the Earth? No. Perhaps if I had known, I might have-"
Whatever he was to say, Harry never knew as he fell silent to let boy Riddle speak.
"I can speak to snakes too. They find me. Whisper to me. Is that normal for someone like me?"
There was no mistaking he saved this revelation for last, for dramatic effect.
"It's uncommon, but certainly not unheard of..."
Blackened water seemed to surround them as they surfaced, and Harry immediately turned to seek out Vlad. His cheeks were oddly tinged bright pink, and Harry could sense he was flustered. It wasn't until he saw Dumbledore just standing up himself that he realised Vlad had basically been presented with the view of Harry bent over for Merlin knew how long.
He offered his boyfriend a wink, which only deepened the flush of his cheeks and Vlad hid behind his book quickly.
"Do we have any more memories to look at tonight sir?"
Harry rather wanted to get Vlad into a bed. He watched Vlad squirm in response to Harry's mood shifting, then got a rather judgemental look from Fawkes. Oops.
"Just the one. This memory was taken from Morfin Gaunt after he left prison, and as such may be a tad hazy in places."
"Ok. Let's go. Sure you can't be tempted Vlad?"
Vlad clamped his mouth shut and Harry knew why - he didn't want to talk temptation in front of the headmaster.
"I'll pass. I'm sure you'll pass on the details."
Harry nodded, enjoying the squirming vampire a minute more before he turned ti watch Dumbledore pour in a third memory. The pensieve never seemed to get any fuller as the silvery, gauze-like memories fell into the liquid surface with barely a ripple.
"Down we go then."
Tipping themselves into the final memory of the evening, Harry gave a thought to Vlad staring at him before the sudden appearance of a painfully familiar face tore his attention away from his boyfriend.
A teenaged Tom Riddle walked along the path - how did Morfin know that for it to be in the memory? Harry shook his head - toward the shack. With Merope long dead and nobody else inhabiting the hovel, the exterior looked to be a rotten mass of wood held together by overgrown ivy and magic alone. Showing his lacking manners, Riddle pushed the blackened, damp wooden door open paying no mind to the decomposed snake there.
Morfin launched himself at the intruder, knife held aloft and guttural hisses escaping from behind a curtain of greasy, matted hair. He obviously thought Riddle was the Tom Riddle snr he had attacked before, who his sister had longed after. The resemblance was truly uncanny.
Riddle kept him at bay with a whispered spell, then the two began to converse in Parseltongue.
"I'm not who you think I am. I came in search of answers only."
"A snake speaker? Oh, the wench only went and did it!"
"Did what?"
"Had the spawn of that filthy Muggle! A direct descendent of Salazar Slytherin and look what she did!"
Harry watched Riddle recoil at the mention of his Muggle father, though it was clear the information wasn't new.
"Tell me about it."
"She musta slipped him something. Always was good at potions. Shit at cooking though."
"Hm."
"Heard she sold our locket too. Family heirloom. All to support a spawn like you no doubt, since your daddy didn't stay."
"Explain yourself!"
"Well Tom senior still lives local. Got a wife and brat. You should visit them, might scare them to death!"
The memory ended after that, all but throwing them to reality again.
"Morfin Gaunt was many things, but he should not have died as he did. Believed guilty by all for the deaths of Tom Riddle, his wife and his son. He never remembered the murders."
"Because he didn't do it."
"No. I firmly believe Voldemort killed them. Used the murder of his father to craft this particular horcrux. Left them with expressions of pure terror... just as Morfin said."
Ducking behind his desk with surprising speed, Dumbledore produced the black ring Marvolo Gaunt had jammed up Bob Ogden's nose. Harry could taste the residual dark magic, saw a thick crack down the centre of the gem that almost obscured an emblem, perhaps a family crest. Unafraid of black magic, Vlad picked it up gingerly.
"That's not a Slytherin crest. Where did he get this?"
"Correct. I believe that on the non Slytherin side of the Gaunt heritage resided the Peverell family."
Harry felt his stomach clench. His family history just kept twining tighter together; Solace Slytherin had been the first magical Peverell, by name if not by blood. Which meant to compound their inter-familial marriages, the Gaunts stemmed from two indivudal branches of a co-mingled Slytherin bloodline.
Without James Potter, Harry's entire line could be traced back to Salazar Slytherin. And there was a Potter in that family too, though far more dilute and had been kept separate from the family that James had. He remembered that particular Potter had been thought killed by Salazar's son.
"The Peverell brothers? The ones from the story?"
"Correct Vladimir. Of course that is just that. A story."
"You're lying. You know one exists. You had James Potter's cloak."
Oh come on!
"The Potter line comes from the Peverell too?"
"The oldest Peverell brothers line died a while back. I believe the middle brother is the Gaunt ancestor, and the youngest would be Potter ancestors."
"Why those?"
"That's who had what. The elder brother had the wand. The middle the stone. The younger the cloak."
Harry's head was spinning. He needed a lie down.
"Harry's had enough for tonight professor. I'm taking him back to Gryffindor tower."
"I'll contact you regarding our next session Harry."
Vlad had pocketed the broken horcrux. Harry could feel it. It was twitching, pulsing almost at him.
"How did you know that story?"
They had left the staircase now, spotted by an auror who could do nothing but continue patrolling as it was clear where they had been.
"It's in a book. Tales of Beedle the Bard was originally written in runes. We translated it in class."
"Oh."
"Take it you'd never read Babbitty Rabbitty?"
"Babbitty what? No, come on. You were raised in the Muggle world."
"Yeah but my dad read me Grimmer Fairy Tales. Vampire and the Princess. The Werewolf Under The Bridge. Vladarella and the Coffin Of Death. You get the picture."
Harry couldn't help chuckling at 'Vladarella'.
"Was that for real?"
"Actually, that one might have been made up by Ingrid. I forget."
Snorting with laughter, Harry sighed in relief at the sight of the portrait guarding their tower.
Except she wasn't in it.
"She could be gone all night."
"We'll give it ten minutes, then if she's not back we can go to Bertrand's old quarters."
Harry nodded in agreement, leaning against the wall. He wanted to tell Vlad all the specifics of the memories, but not where they could be overheard.
The Fat Lady didn't reappear, so they slipped beneath invisibility magic and made for Bertrand's old quarters. It meant waiting for a passing prefect on patrol to round a corner so they wouldn't see the door open, but then they were set. Peckish and thirsty, Harry called for a visitor.
"Bubbles?"
The elf popped up, bowing deeply to Harry and Vlad.
"How can Bubbles help young masters?"
"Tea, pumpkin juice and maybe some sweet things would be great. Vlad?"
"A steak. Rare."
He grit it out but Harry understood, his vampirism fluctuating.
"Steak sounds good. Make that two."
Vlad looked soothed by the reminder Harry ate oddly too, the two settling before the trays laden with tea and juice and cakes and pudding appeared. Then two red hunks of meat, scarcely touched by heat, popped in too and both teens set in ravenously.
Bloodlust satiated, Harry settled against Vlad's chest with a cup of tea and a large iced cauldron cake, beginning to tell him all he had learnt that evening. Just talking it out helped Harry make sense of it all, and Vlad's insight was favourable. When they got to the third memory, Vlad pulled the ring from his pocket again, rolling it beneath his fingers.
"The curse is dead now, but I'd bet my OWLs this is what did that to Dumbledore's hand."
"What is it?"
Vlad let it roll into Harry's outstretched hand, the magic immediately curling out of it to wrap around Harry's hand. It dissipated before he could panic, seeming to flare in recognition.
"What were you saying about a stone earlier?"
"Harry, what do you know of the Deathly Hallows?"
-YDHP-
I figure all your questions about Harry's immortality are somewhat answered by this chapter? The ending at least.
I'm really trying to hit weekly updates again, please forgive me.