It was a tragic story, really.

Tom Riddle, young and lonely. Tom Riddle, sixteen and arrogant, on the brink of immortality, as he turned his powers to the death of the only man Merope Gaunt had ever loved.

Lord Voldemort, serpent-eyed and more arrogant still, disdainful of redemption. Lord Voldemort, who went so far as to split his own soul, wreak havoc on another world, miles away from the sleepy town of his conception.

Merope Gaunt, the ghost on his shoulder, throbbing upon the black stone on his finger, wanting better for her son.

Merope Gaunt, who even in death made a dreadful pact. Merope Gaunt, who cursed the son who turned out to be so much like the father he loathed, and yet offered the chance of being saved.

Splitting the soul has terrible consequences, and death has a sense of humour when it comes to collecting payment – disliking men who thought themselves above their station.

The only cure for such hate was love. And Merope had hoped – believed – that somewhere, there would be one who could offer such a thing. So she locked the curse, and hid the key. And a selfish, lonely child made a game out of it.

Tom Riddle had been damned the second he went through with the acts to ensure his terrible immortality, but it was his mother who shaped the curse of immortality into something bound to be broken. Who took the shattered pieces of her son's mutilated soul, and sculpted them into the forms they were now.

All this, in the hope that a monster might find love. Love that would restore his soul, make him whole.

Considering the casualties, Harry was finding it difficult to forgive even a mother's care.

Whether he had to love Voldemort enough that the power of his feelings would heal a broken soul and restore a disconnected heart, or whether it was Voldemort who had to find somebody to care about … he didn't know. But he couldn't help but feel pessimistic either way – for the Nameless, at least, still thought him an idiot.

But Hermione had said to confront the pieces…

Harry's head hurt just thinking about it.

Riddle's room, his painting, looked exactly like the room Harry had just left. The same four-poster bed, the same handsome writing desk that Harry now knew must have belonged to the man's father.

The Riddle was still clutching onto his hand, his grip warm now that he had stepped into the portrait's world. Harry found himself under a quiet sort of scrutiny, and swallowed.

He had no idea what to do now.

To find an answer, one must know what to ask,
And only then can you see behind the mask.

The problem was, he had no idea what to ask.

The room was striking in its former glory; the garden outside was the picture of pride and splendour.

Harry was almost blinded by the light of the sun. Bright sunshine, like a heavenly radiance, more brilliant than anything Harry had ever seen before. His eyes squinted shut against the glare. He could feel the impossible warmth on his skin. He hadn't known the sun could look like that.

He swallowed uncertainly.

To find an answer, one must know what to ask,
And only then can you see behind the mask.

It was referring to the Riddle, wasn't it?

"When are we?" he asked quietly. "This must be before the curse began."

He really hoped that it didn't count as a wrong question, something that would 'get him sent back to his loved ones in a matchbox'.

He glanced to the side, to see that the Riddle was studying him.

"It is the day I murdered my father," Riddle said. "The day that the curse began. It repeats every night now – it was nighttime, when I did it, you see."

"Is that why the Beast and the Monster switch by night and day?" They'd said … they'd said that the Monster was a monster because it was abominable, the worst of them all, and Harry had never received an answer on the man's crimes…

Had this been the crime?

Not the first crime; judging by Past's willingness to murder, he could imagine that Tom Riddle had been morally skewed for a very long time now … but the crime that mattered.

The murder of Tom Riddle, Sr.

The Riddle hummed. "Indeed," he murmured.

Harry looked around the beautiful house with more trepidation now. Hadn't there been mention of trials, confrontations? So how exactly did he confront the Riddle?

And he still didn't bloody well know what the all-important question was.

"Come," Riddle continued, offering him an arm. "Walk with me." Harry hesitated a moment, before accepting and letting Riddle guide him out of the room. The rest of the house, too, was more immaculate than Harry had ever seen it. Airy and grand, with the windows thrown open to the world it later shunned.

He glanced behind him as they left, only to pause as his gaze fell upon where the Riddle's portrait would be, if this was in his own room, outside of the painting.

He nearly startled, insides dropping out at –

"You have a painting of me," he said uneasily. Riddle gave him a smile – one that reminded him rather alarmingly of the Monster's, if he was being perfectly honest.

"Of course I do."

He was seemingly standing before the painting, not leaning on the frame or moving like Riddle's painting did – he was frozen, one hand outstretched, as if still reaching to take Riddle's hand and pass through. Frozen, and…

"I have strands of roses and thorns wrapped around my head."

"Yes." The bastard had the audacity to seem amused by his reaction.

"Are you going to explain that one without another maddening riddle?" Harry demanded tightly.

The Riddle considered him for a moment, head tilted to one side. He seemed to be in a peculiarly indulgent mood. Harry wondered if he should be suspicious.

"What have you noticed about the paintings in the house?" Riddle asked.

Harry furrowed his brow. "They change, seem alive … I can go in them …"

"And?"

Harry stared at the Riddle, trying to see what he was getting at. Was he just being really stupid and missing something obvious? He thought hard, eyes drifting back to the painting of him.

"And … and …" He thought of how the Monster was a reflection of the Riddle, distorted. Of how Nameless looked like the Beast, but with his heart still in place. How the Past, too, looked like a normal version of the Prophecy. "You each have counterparts. You look like them, but … without any of the weird stuff."

Riddle snorted.

"Close enough. The paintings show … the truth of things. What we were before, one could say."

"The truth of things?" Harry looked again at the painting of him, at the thin trickle of blood on his cheek from where the thorns had cut into his forehead. He had a feeling that the Prophecy, or someone, had a very sick sense of humour if they were painting him with a crown of rose thorns on his head. "That's not very reassuring."

He half wanted to lift a hand to his hair, just to check that everything was as it should be.

"It's not supposed to be reassuring; it's the way it is," the Riddle replied.

"But this is inverted. That picture of me is not there in my … in the real world."

"The real world." Riddle's lips twisted.

"Yes," Harry snapped. "The real world. Not a painting." He was not going to let Riddle make this even more confusing than it already was with some existential bullshit. "Stop dodging."

Riddle's hand squeezed into his arm where he still clutched it.

"There are many planes to the world, Harry." The name seemed to quiver through his very soul. "This is simply another one of them. If you look normal in 'the real world', as you call it, where the rest of us are strange and distorted … it would stand to reason, through the inversion you have already identified, that this is the you which has the 'weird stuff'.

"This is the effect our curse has on you – the form you are beginning to take. It is a painting of the Offering."

Harry's stomach turned.

"And here was me thinking that there could be one room in this place which wasn't horribly creepy," he muttered, scowling when the Riddle burst out laughing.

"Come along. You'll want to leave this painting before nightfall, lest you inadvertently come to be trespassing on the realm of You-Know-Who."

Harry allowed himself to be towed along, thoughts racing.

"If all the paintings switch during the day and the night … what is the Past? You – well, the Monster and Hermione said that there were six pieces of you." But Hermione had also said that something seemed to be missing, even from the whole. "And what about all the destroyed paintings, in the rest of the house?"

Merope had thrown away the key to the curse. Banished it from the Riddle House, to the outside world. Or was it still here, in the Past's painting? The Past had said that Harry needed both past and future to see clearly; if anything hovered between those, it would be found there, in the painting's nebulous landscapes.

"Eurydice."

"So … there aren't only six of you?" Had the Monster been lying? It hardly seemed fair to add lies to already so bewildering a series of truths.

"Eurydice is not one of us."

"So who's Eurydice?" Hermione had said to beware Eurydice…

"Do you know the story?"

"What?"

Riddle sighed heavily, sounding far too long-suffering considering he wasn't the one trying to figure out this insanity.

"Eurydice and Orpheus. It's a Greek myth. Eurydice was the wife of Orpheus. Long story short, they were madly in love, she died, he went to rescue her from the Underworld. Doesn't this all sound so quaint and familiar?"

It took Harry a few seconds to figure out what Riddle might be referring to, however loosely.

"Is this some obscure comment on how I volunteered to take Gin-her place?" They were all obsessed!

Riddle merely smiled at him. And not exactly a nice smile – but maybe he was too used to seeing the Monster's teeth in that mouth.

"Orpheus was allowed to bring his beloved out of the Underworld, on the stipulation that he not look back at her when he was leaving. If he did – and he did – then the story goes that either she vanished back into the Underworld, or they both turned straight to stone. Trapped and together, forever.

"I personally prefer the second version. So much more … hmm … touching," Riddle pronounced lightly.

"Right," Harry said. "And the reason you have a picture of Eurydice in your house?"

"Do you remember when I told you the rules of the house?"

"Don't … name the nameless, don't disrespect the house or the paintings … don't … look back if I'm given the opportunity to leave." Harry's heart was hammering in his chest. "Will I be given the opportunity to leave?"

"There are many moves of this game you could make," the Riddle said noncommittally. "It is possible that, in certain circumstances, that might be one of them."

For the first time, Harry felt a surge of hope. It deflated quickly.

"… and the catch? You wouldn't just let me leave."

Hermione must have said to beware Eurydice for a reason, after all. Though she had also said to beware the Kisses Cursed, and he was doing just fantastic on that count, wasn't he, considering his deal with the Monster?

"The world is a strange and mysterious place," Riddle said dryly. Harry huffed.

They were in the dining room, and the Riddle paused again, tone more sombre now. "This is where I did it. My father, my grandparents. They were eating dinner at the time."

"Is that why the Beast is so obsessed with me attending dinner?"

"It might have something to do with his fixation on the matter, yes."

"So you killed them at six o'clock."

"No, dinner started at six. The curse started at precisely midnight."

"So … you killed them at midnight?"

"The kill was the catalyst, not the beginning. The kill created the Monster. You might have noticed that you have also met the Beast, and various other 'pieces'."

It was fascinating, it really was. But it still wasn't helping Harry figure out that all-important question.

The dining room looked far too harmless for so horrendous a crime as patricide and splitting one's soul. It made Harry feel a bit nauseous about the fact he'd been sitting there eating every day, actually.

It was bathed in the same warm sunshine as the upstairs bedroom had been. The light brought a certain beauty to the room, faded as it normally was by the hungry darkness that smothered everything as Harry knew it.

They stood in silence, their elbows brushing.

"Why did you do it?"

Riddle glanced at him, seeming absurdly surprised that he even bothered to ask.

"I … You can imagine, from the fact that the Past resides in Wool's Orphanage, that I did not grow up with my parents," the other said. Harry could feel an ache in his chest at the thought of where this was going. Especially considering he now knew Merope Gaunt to be dead as well. "I hated it there. My mother was a witch, as you can no doubt guess from her invocation of this curse."

"And your father?" There was a bad taste in Harry's mouth.

"My father abandoned her, and me, when he found out what she was." The sudden fury in the Riddle's eyes darkened them to almost match the Monster's. "And yet –" Riddle laughed, this time with a scorn that raked like nails along Harry's spine. "She was still foolishly in love with him."

"Is that why the Beast thinks love is foolish?"

"Love is foolish, much as any of us are loathe to agree with each other about anything."

Well, didn't that just make this curse so much easier to break. Really, he was starting to think Merope had been a blind, bleeding optimist, because it seemed inconceivable that anyone could love a beast, let alone a monster.

Death had to be laughing somewhere.

"And you killed him because he abandoned you."

"He deserved it," Riddle stated, grim satisfaction etched on his face. Maybe that was true, but Harry's fists clenched at his sides.

"And what," he began, his own eyes darkening too, "of all the families you have shattered since this curse started?" The Riddle opened his mouth to speak, but Harry cut over him ruthlessly. "What of all the people you condemned to be as lonely and scared as you once were? Did they deserve this?" Had he done something to deserve it? No.

He'd been one when he lost his parents – James first, his mother the year after.

Riddle stared at him, eyes flickering. "None of us chose this."

"You demand your offerings."

"Offerings are the only way of breaking the curse."

"Yeah, but you don't have to bloody well kill them, do you?" Harry spat. Riddle's eyes narrowed, and a shadow seemed to descend across the room, darkness blotting out the sun in a horribly familiar way. He held his ground, because he'd been putting up with this for who knew how long now, and eventually it was bound to burst out.

"No, but it makes it easier," the Riddle replied coldly, taking a step forward, crowding his space until Harry's back was pressed against the dining room table. "The Beast needs hearts to be in anything but utter agony because of the gaping hole in his chest, and to keep the clock from stopping before the requirements of the curse are fulfilled. The Monster needs souls and emotions to be able to manifest any type of physical form at all and to not be tormented by absolute nothingness.

"It's a constant hunger, and once a year really isn't enough. You should be grateful that we don't descend upon your insignificant little village and raze it to the ground."

Harry's breath caught in his chest.

"That doesn't make it right."

But that didn't mean he didn't, regrettably, understand.

Riddle's hands pressed with slow deliberation on either side of him, into the table, caging him to the spot. Harry's shoulders squared, but he refused to recoil, even when the man's mouth hovered inches away from his.

"No," the Riddle agreed. "But this not about wrong and right. It is love, and war. Dark and light. Everything in between."

Harry did note, for the first time in a while, that Tom Riddle had once been very handsome. Not that physical attractiveness mattered now.

"And you?" he dared instead. "How do you kill your offerings?"

He had no doubt that the painting did. The ones that the village got back, mutilated or husked, were common, and he knew them to be the work of the Beast or the Monster. But there were still those who never returned at all.

His mother, who became a doll in Past's painting, for example.

Riddle's thumb caressed the side of his cheek with deceptive tenderness.

"You can guess the pattern, no doubt …"

"The Monster is your counterpart," Harry said hoarsely. That was probably the reason that the Riddle got along with the creature, even when nobody else did.

Riddle's knee braced between his thighs, and Harry seriously considered shoving him, hard. Because for all the similarities in appearance, the Riddle wasn't shadow and smoke like the Monster.

"Quite," Riddle agreed, breath ghosting over his lips.

Harry remembered abruptly that the Past had tried to kill him too. He pressed a hand over Riddle's mouth, just in case. His own felt unbearably dry.

But though the Riddle obviously veered down the emotional path in murder, he didn't do it the same way the Monster did, did he?

If Riddle wanted to speak, he would have to take a step back from where Harry's hand was clamped over his mouth. Harry was not the weak one here; he had his own advantages. He hadn't gone into this to be a victim, and he refused to become one now.

"You're not going to kill me, Tom," he said anyway. To be safe. Riddle raised his brows, but stepped back after a moment.

"Ooh, it gives me shivers when you use my name … like somebody's walked over my grave."

Definitely the Monster's counterpart. Riddle gave him a mocking smile, like he knew what Harry was thinking.

He wondered if this was somehow his test.

It seemed too easy.

But offering be wary, these things come with a fine,
Though kisses exchanged can be done by the time.

Hermione had said there were prices to be paid for every move in this game.

"You already know, as the Monster said, that the two of us don't kill people –"

"Yes, you drain them, which is so much better," Harry snapped.

They watched each other quietly, as the room gradually turned back to sunshine and daylight, as it had been before.

"The death my father received was, ultimately, quick and painless. But I wished then that I could have drained him. Left him empty, picked through his mind to see why he did it. Another part wished that they could have torn him to shreds, to impart even a moment of the pain we felt in return." Riddle's tone was soft again, strangely even.

Well, that explained some things, certainly, on kill choices. And he could now make guesses on what some of the parts, at least, were missing.

The Beast wanted a heart. The Monster wanted a soul. The Past wanted a friend; the Prophecy, a future. He wasn't sure what the Riddle or the Nameless wanted. Unless, of course, the Nameless wanted a name – but he'd been warned all too often against the dangers of that.

As for questions and answers … there were too many riddles in this house for him to be able to easily figure out this one.

He could assume, though, that if he'd stepped into these things in the wrong combination thus far, then he would already be dead. That was something.

Harry swallowed.

"I've been led to believe," he began carefully, "that each of you wants something different from their offering. Hearts … souls … What do you want?"

Riddle's mouth curled.

"Isn't it obvious? I am a being of questions and answers. I want your mind. Your thoughts."

"Well, the lot of you are definitely all I've been thinking of recently, if that counts for anything," Harry tried. The Riddle laughed again, swooping close to him in an instant. He didn't flicker, appearing and disappearing like the Monster did, but he was fast.

"Isn't that how you love someone, Harry?" the damned creature whispered to him. "Mind, body, and soul?"

"I think it depends on the kind of love. I'm no expert." He refused to be fazed, even if it suddenly felt like his pulse might jump right out of his skin. This time, the Riddle's hand pressed into his hip, long fingers curling beneath the material of his shirt, stroking slowly along all the bumps of his ribs. "Though," he added pointedly, "what does feeling me up have anything to do with my mind?"

"The brain is made up of nerves, and reacts to stimuli that are very physical." Riddle held his gaze. "It pertains to your mind when I can see the way the brush of my hands makes your eyes widen and feel the goosebumps rising along your skin. It's fascinating. You have such an expressive face."

He refused to be flustered. He refused to be –

"And now you're blushing." Damn it. Harry snarled and slapped the infernal bastard's hand away from him.

This wasn't helping anything. He wasn't progressing, he was going around in circles. Admittedly, sporadically informative circles, but circles nonetheless.

"You are such a twat." It was utterly ineloquent, but he felt it expressed his sentiments clearly.

"And yet you're blushing."

"I am not blushing!"

"Do you get this flustered when anyone gets close to you, or am I a special case?" The hands didn't reach out to touch again, but they were so close that it felt like they could have been. Harry could feel the warmth of it, smell something sharp like acrylic.

He shot Riddle a glare, breath caught somewhere in his throat. Riddle's fanned over his cheek, as he loomed over him.

Harry jutted his chin up. "Considering the off chance that you might try and kill me any second, I'd say it's less that I'm flustered, and more … self-preservation."

"Because you have so much self-preservation," Riddle scoffed. "You volunteered for this. You complain that you didn't pick this, but you picked this more than I did, Harry."

He hated it when Riddle said his name. He was starting to get why he should be careful with names – because it wasn't just a word anymore, it was like his very soul was being addressed. Quivering, resonating through his bones, like he'd been stripped of all defenses and was instead left bare – exposed to an almost visceral scrutiny.

"I didn't think I was signing myself up for this."

Riddle's eyes were narrowed now.

"No, you thought you were signing yourself up for an expedient stay of execution."

There was no good way to reply to that, or so it seemed. Harry turned his gaze away.

"Should I assume you can't tell me what I need to do to unlock the next step?"

"To find an answer, one must –"

"I know that one already." Harry interrupted the familiar sing-song lilt with a scowl. "Seriously, the lot of you are the most unhelpful beings that I have ever met. One would almost think you didn't want this curse broken at all."

"What do you imagine your next step is, after this?"

"I – what?" Harry blinked.

"Where do you want to get to? Who do you want to unlock, so to speak?"

"Obviously, whoever's next that I'm supposed to."

"And who do you imagine that is?" Riddle raised his brow. "Nameless? Prophecy? You have a brain somewhere in that bird's nest, I'm certain of it."

Harry concentrated on thinking, instead of scowling.

If one is first, then his twin is last – Past had been first, so he could at least establish that the Prophecy was last, considering – by appearance at least – they were paired.

So … Past, then Riddle. Then Prophecy last. That left the Nameless, the Beast, and the Monster. Though he wasn't even sure if the Beast and the Monster counted in the same way, considering they were not paintings and he could talk to them night and day without trouble. It was not talking to them that was the difficult part.

He could feel the Riddle watching him still. It was annoyingly distracting.

Well, if 'to find an answer, one must know what to ask' meant Riddle, then 'only then can you see behind the mask' obviously referred to whoever was next. So who was most like a mask?

The Beast, because he didn't want to be seen? Nameless, whose name was a supposed mystery that couldn't be spoken?

He didn't think it was the Monster. If anything, the Monster was the most direct out of all of them. He definitely wasn't 'seeing behind the mask'. So, Beast or Nameless?

Of course, he could just ask the Monster what he was supposed to do – but he wasn't sure how much he had left to bargain, considering all that he'd already promised, and it probably wouldn't count as beating the Riddle's trial, anyway.

He did have all the things of his past still remaining to him: his first love, the first time he ever saw his parents' faces, the last memory he ever had of Ginny, and whatever else the Monster might be curious about. He just … didn't want to give those things up.

But what question would he ask about the Beast or the Monster? He had more than enough curiosity about both, but if there was some magical question then he didn't know. Surely the question was something that might be about the Riddle? If he was the one he was supposed to be confronting?

Harry had no idea.

He was getting really sick of having no idea. Whoever decided that he was 'the chosen one', or whatever moniker he was supposed to be using nowadays, was clearly delusional.

Him and Tom Riddle? What basis could they possibly have for any meaningful connection, let alone true love? It wasn't like he had time for a chat about life ideologies when he was too busy trying not to damn well die.

Merope Gaunt was insane.

A thought struck him.

"Wait … you said Nameless or Prophecy. Does that mean it's not the Beast or the Monster?"

Riddle gave him a look. Harry grinned.

Nameless.

"What do you call the Nameless?" he murmured softly to himself. "You never did answer that one, Tom."

Riddle smirked.

The Beast did a double take when he saw him.

"What were you thinking?" Voldemort hissed, starting to rise from where he'd been sitting, apparently already waiting for once. Harry suddenly realized he hadn't turned up for breakfast. He'd been so busy with everything else. His stomach was howling out in protest. "Foolish child."

Harry shook his head. "Should I assume this is to do with the Monster?"

It seemed like years ago that he'd made his deal, even if it was only the night before.

Fingers gripped his chin tightly, examining him as he sat down.

God, he was too tired for this. It wasn't enough to be living with one madman, oh no – there had to be bloody six of them. Harry repressed a sigh, especially at the thought that his sleep tonight would probably be minimal, to say the least.

At least he'd made some progress. Or, he would find out tonight if it had been the right question. He'd gotten out of Riddle's painting alive, anyway.

"Of course it's to do with the abomination," Voldemort said. "I know you're not an idiot, though I admit I'm at a loss as to what could possibly compel you to make so stupid a deal with that – that thing!"

"Come now, Voldemort." He helped himself to some chicken. "He's not that bad."

The Beast gave him a dark look. Harry suppressed a vindictive grin. He knew that it did no good for him that all of the pieces were so irrationally possessive of 'their offering', but he couldn't help but play with their obvious dislike for each other. Just sometimes.

"He is the worst person you will ever meet."

"Wow, you really don't like yourself very much," Harry remarked. A knife went hurtling just past his head, and he stiffened, abruptly looking up again.

Apparently that comment had gone too far.

Voldemort's lips were pinched thin. "I do not know what type of endgame you are aiming for here, but I assure you that the Prophecy –"

"Oh, what's he going to do, whine because he lost his toys? So long as nobody unchains him, the rest of us are all fine. Go back to playing babysitter, Beast."

Harry's head whipped around and – and Riddle sauntered in and – how? It – it was definitely Riddle, and not the Monster, and how the hell was this happening and –

But most of all be cautious in closing the door
Everybody knows that roses have thorns.

Oh shit, what had he done?