There was something eerie about the Riddle House at night – and honestly, it was creepy enough in daylight.
He could feel shadows flitting around him. He felt like he was being watched, too, and figured it must be the Monster – though surprisingly, he couldn't see the creature.
Doors opened before he touched them, and it didn't take long to cross the empty, immaculate rooms until he'd reached the left side of the house.
Initially, there was nothing different here. The house was symmetrically shaped, and it seemed that on first glance the rooms mirrored each other. He had a feeling he knew which room he was going to, by that.
Instead of a door, however, he reached a large portrait.
Like the Riddle and the Nameless, it was a life-sized painting. Like the Riddle and the Nameless, the portrait had the inscription of 'Tom Riddle, Jr.' at the bottom.
Unlike the Riddle and the Nameless, a child stared wide-eyed back at him.
The child looked like a younger version of the Riddle. Except softer – innocent. He was dressed in plain clothes, sitting on a bare floor in a grim, grey room unlike any he'd seen in the manor.
All of the rooms in the Riddle House, despite everything else, were lavish. Rich. He didn't know where this portrait was painted, but it wasn't in the manor. At least, not in the manor as he knew it.
"Hello," Harry said softly, trying for a smile. "Who are you, then?" He could make a guess. The child gave him a tentative smile in response, before it faded to nothing.
"I'm the Past," the boy said solemnly. "Have you come to play with me? Nobody ever comes."
Harry's chest ached. Was this who Riddle used to be before the curse? Before Voldemort came in? And yet, the Nameless had the inscription of 'Tom Riddle' on his portrait too…
"I'm looking for the Prophecy," he said. It gave him another small smile.
"Come on through then, Harry. I'll show you the way."
"I can come through the painting?" Harry's brows raised with surprise.
"Of course," Past replied. "You'll need to. The Riddle and the Nameless, too." It reached its hand out insistently.
Harry paused. He didn't want to doubt a child, but given his circumstances…
"I'll be able to get back out of the paintings again? How did you know my name?"
"I'm the Past," the other repeated. "Of course I know your name. I know all about where you came from. But you'll need to talk to the Prophecy about where you're going to go … so are you coming, or not?" It waggled its fingers impatiently.
"I'll be able to get back out of the paintings afterward?" Harry questioned again, jaw tight. The Past rolled his eyes.
"Yes."
Harry hesitated a moment longer – was this really a good idea?
But he also knew he needed to be back in his room by morning, or he was dead anyway. People had always said he was recklessly brave, and he'd proven it by volunteering. He may as well take the plunge and do so again.
He squeezed his eyes and stepped forward.
The next second, cool fingers were wrapped tight around his hand. His eyes snapped open.
He was in the room in the painting. He turned, sharply, to see the space he'd come from close to the sight of the Monster tearing towards them, mouth open in a silent scream. Then there were just grey walls, and nothing to link him to the Riddle House at all.
His insides lurched uneasily.
"Come on," Past said. "I'll show you the way." It headed out the door as Harry stared at his new surroundings. A bed, primly made. Seven stones on the windowsill.
"Where are we?" he asked, even as the room shifted around him. "Or … where were we?"
"Wool's Orphanage. 1936. Don't talk to any of the ghosts, you might get stuck."
There were so many parts of that comment he wanted to consider, that Harry scarcely knew where to start.
"And now?"
"Now we're going to see the Prophecy."
A graveyard loomed suddenly in front of them. It was the one on the grounds of the Riddle House, he knew. He could see the house towering above him – though it looked different to what he was used to.
The Riddle House that he knew had a faded grandeur. It was surrounded by shadow, always cold, and somehow darker. In this one, the windows were warm with lights.
Harry twisted his head, and he could see the village below. It was like getting hit by a bullet of nostalgia, a wretched homesickness, to see it sprawled cosily at the bottom of the hill.
He could make out the house he'd grown up in, what had been his home until everyone in it was sacrificed to the shadow of the curse one by one.
He swallowed thickly. It took him a minute to realize that they'd stopped. Harry looked around, surprised, and saw that the Past was staring at the headstone in front of them.
Harry felt the inscription in his gut, even before he read the name.
TOM RIDDLE
How exactly was that possible? He looked at the Past, askance. The child had a blank look on his face, all innocence gone.
"Will you play with me, Harry?" the boy asked softly. Harry's throat thickened.
"Play with you?" he repeated. "What would we be playing? Can we play after I've seen the Prophecy? I'm afraid I can't stay too long."
The Past looked at him sharply at that.
"No."
"… No?"
"I want to play now. I never have anyone to play with. You'll stay here with me."
"I can't stay here with you," Harry replied carefully. "I have a curse to break."
The child didn't so much as blink at him.
"You'll play with me, or I'll kill you. Then you'll be stuck with me, in this painting, forever. Then you'll have to be my friend."
This couldn't possibly be happening. Was nobody in this house, not even the children, normal?
He could see the house darkening around him, like it did in the world he knew outside of the painting – shadows seeping into the world like the spread of ink on a page. The garden, too, was starting to creep alive around him. The undergrowth was starting to reach for him, the long uncut grass twisting like ropes, curling around his ankles as he kicked and stomped on it.
Harry tried to think quickly.
Honestly, he'd never had all that much experience with unruly children – let alone one like this. His fists clenched at his sides.
"Friends don't work like that," he replied. "You can't threaten someone to be your friend."
Each seek that which they do not have, in different ways…
"I can. And I will."
Roses, too, thorny and sharp – blooming bloody from the ground and pinning him to the headstone behind him. The headstone of Tom Riddle, and wasn't that a damn irony. They started to squeeze around his throat.
"I am the Offering, you will listen to me and not take what you haven't been offered!" Harry hissed. The thorns stopped just shy of cutting into his throat.
The Past stared at him flatly, fists clenched at its sides. Harry stared back hard, panting for breath.
"Now," he said, "let go of me."
The child's lips thinned petulantly.
"Now, Tom Riddle," Harry said, heart hammering in his chest. Hermione had said to be careful what he named, but …
The reaction was instantaneous. He sprawled hard against the grass once more, as the roses shrank into themselves and the grass returned to normal length.
The thick, living darkness, however, wasn't fading.
He rubbed his throat and shoved himself up onto his knees, starting to get a feeling for the power of names here.
"I don't want a friend anyway," Tom spat back at him. "Friends are useless. Look where caring got you. You're going to die in this house, just like all of the rest of them. They always die."
"C'mere."
The Past looked at him suspiciously, but Harry just waited.
He … well. He knew he was supposed to hate the child, for trying to do this to him. Just like he should hate everybody in this house, with a loathing so fierce that it burned the heart right out of him.
But he couldn't hate a child.
The Monster was aware of its actions, so were the Beast and the Riddle and the Nameless. A child, caught up in a curse, didn't seem to have all that much choice in the matter.
And Harry knew what it was like to be lonely, far too well.
After a moment, the Past took a wary step forward, and Harry dragged him the rest of the way and pressed him close. The child immediately stiffened, but Harry held on, wrapping his arms firmly around the boy.
He was on a tight schedule, and hell knew how time passed in a painting if it wasn't all of eternity frozen at once, but…
I have determined that you must confront each piece in full to adequately break the curse.
Eventually, he let go, hands resting on the boy's shoulders.
"You'll be out of the painting when I break the curse, promise," he said. "You're not a bad kid, Tom. Or at least … you don't have to be. Now, how about you show me where the Prophecy is?"
The Past – quiet once more – led him up to the house. Through the main entrance, now gleaming and bright, with a great diamond chandelier sparkling up above.
Harry imagined this was what the Riddle House must have looked like before the curse. It was beautiful, really.
In the ballroom, he caught snatches of a handsome young Riddle, like the Riddle from the portrait. But they bypassed that hall, and the music emitting from it, as the Past tugged him by the hand back to the left side of the house.
They reached the place where the Past's portrait was, and this time there was just a door. The child was avoiding his eyes now, and wouldn't look at him.
"Thanks," Harry said. When the Past said nothing, Harry reached for the door, opening it. Just as he was about to step forward, that small hand caught hold of his shirt again.
He turned on the spot again, just slightly, to look at the other.
"I can't see your future, Harry Potter," the child said quietly. "I'm tied to the past only."
"… that's okay?" Harry returned, not sure what to make of the statement. The boy's expression was blank, eyes more calculating now than they had been before. But not particularly malicious. Just … considering.
"Things are not as they seem. The future is always informed by the past. You need both, to see clearly."
Then he was gone, and there was just the door in front of him.
Harry stepped through.
He was in a nursery.
Harry hadn't expected a nursery, though given the portrait of the Past guarding the door, maybe he should have expected childhood and childhood things.
But all he could do was stare in horror.
He looked like the Past, but that, of all things, Harry had expected by now. Even if it left a terrible taste in his mouth, to know that the Prophecy was a child too.
And a child like this…
The Prophecy's eyes were closed, and it was chained to the wall by roses – thorny vines so similar to the ones Harry had just been ensnared by, like a machine wired up to the mainframe. In its hands, where it sat cross-legged on a bed, Harry could see a heart. A beating, bloody, human heart which rested in a small glass box with a big lock on the front of it, from which all of the chains originated.
The whole room around them was overgrown too. Harry couldn't help but remember some of the more fanciful myths about the monster in the house, back before he'd met the fragmented pieces.
"Oh my god," he whispered, unable to help himself. He'd thought he couldn't be more horrified by this house.
Its eyes opened. Unlike the Monster's eyes, which were pure black, or the Riddle's which were blue, or even like the Beast's or the Nameless' eyes in hellfire red, these were white.
No pupil. No iris. Just … white.
"Harry Potter."
"You're the Prophecy," he managed.
"You're the Offering. The saviour." Its lip curled slightly.
Saviour? At least that hopefully promised a chance of success? But he also remembered Hermione's warning. Why would she say to beware the Prophecy?
He was a child, just like the Past – and more so, he was chained up. How much damage could he possibly do?
"Whose heart is that?" Harry couldn't help but question. Its smile broadened.
"The Beast's."
Harry's eyes widened. Was that why there was dripping? Didn't one of the myths surrounding the deaths at the Riddle House say that the Beast took hearts to fill the space in his chest?
"Why hasn't he taken it back?"
"He cannot. Nor does he want to. A heart is a hurtful thing, and immortality, by all accounts, is not."
Immortality?
"Tell me what I need to do to fix this."
Harry raced out of the Prophecy room, his heart hammering in his chest.
This time there was no painting, just a normal door to let him back into the rest of the Riddle House. He darted through, only to come face-to-face with the furious expression on the Monster's face.
His eyes widened.
"You promised me safe passage …"
At least it wasn't morning yet.
"I see you're still alive."
"I'd have thought you'd sound more disappointed by that fact," Harry sniped. The Monster took a step closer to him, and Harry could see that the portrait of the Past was once more at his back.
It was almost as if the Monster was dripping shadows, like ink. They seemed to extend and reach towards Harry like tendrils, darkening the room around them until he couldn't even see the hand in front of his face.
"I'm the Offering," he tried again. "You can't take what I don't offer."
"And I am the Monster. I do not follow an Offering's rules," it snarled back at him. "I do not follow anybody's rules. I care not for you, nor for prophecies or kisses cursed."
Harry squared his shoulders, sharp teeth inches away from his face.
"And yet, you offered me safe passage," he breathed. Hands caressed the side of his face, and his heart hammered wildly in his chest.
"You are a fool. You have no idea of the game you are playing."
"Actually," Harry snapped, "I finally do. And I know how to end this. True Love's Kiss. Giving the Beast his heart back. Is that why you tried to take all my kisses away from me in the first place? Well, sorry to disappoint, but you've failed."
It laughed, a horrible sound that sent hair rising on the back of his neck.
"You are a fool, Offering. And you are blind. You do not even see that which is standing right before you. Miss Granger figured it out, but you, stupid boy, have not."
"You killed Hermione," Harry snarled back. "I see that clearly enough. The Beast told me."
Its jaw clenched, and it stared at him with wild eyes. A hand pressed tight into his chest, fingers raking in just as the Beast had on the first night.
"Not the shadow, but the clock. Not the curse, but the lock. Beware the kisses cursed, Offering. The kisses cursed."
"Yeah, I am. Beware of you," Harry said coldly. "And what your kisses can do, when you devour up everything in your path. A Beast cannot be evil, because it cannot know better. But a Monster can, can't it? You're the curse. You always have been."
"What do you think the Prophecy is wired up to?"
"I – what?"
"The Prophecy. What is it wired up to?"
"The Beast's heart."
"And?"
"And … the walls?"
"And the walls," the Monster said, very quietly. "And so the house, and so the board, and so the game. It changes the pictures around, smooth as clockwork. It keeps me out of your room."
"Well then, I have rather a lot to thank it for, don't I?" Harry snapped, chest heaving.
"And what is it? What is the Prophecy?"
"What?" Harry's brow furrowed. The Monster shook its head, laughed again. That awful laugh.
"It's a child."
"If you're trying to tell me something, by all means make it clearer, or step aside and honour your vow," Harry growled. The Monster stared at him a moment longer, expression hard and unforgiving, before finally it just shook its head and stepped aside.
"If I were you, I wouldn't walk the house at night again. You've chosen your side."
Then it vanished in front of him as the first light of dawn hit the floor.
Harry swore.
A/N: Teehee, if all goes to plan, we are now halfway through the story. Next chapter - The Heart of the Beast ;) Hope you are all still enjoying the story! Thanks for your wonderful reviews.