Disclaimer: This story includes characters and situations that are part of the Harry Potter universe, which is copyright J.K.Rowling, Scholastic, Warner Brothers, Bloomsbury, etc. No copyright infringement is intended and no money is being made in the production of this FANFICTION. Not many outside resources were needed this time, but I (as always) made extensive use of the Harry Potter Lexicon when writing this chapter.
Author's Note: This chapter is dedicated to Mango (I know you're still reading this) in honor of his birthday... which is either today or happened very recently. I'm not posting information like that online. Back to the chapter. It involves lots of angry questions, lots of arguments, and lots of irrational behavior on the part of Harry and Ron. Which makes it... not all that different from any of my other chapters, really.Thanks go to Fantome (simply wonderful to have you back!), Pixie (Hope I didn't keep it too long), Amazing, and EvilExpressions (when you say 'create more reviews' do you mean get friends to review – in which case, almost certainly yes – or come anonymously and repost the same revew multiple times – in which case, erm, no… But I'm glad to get any reviews at all from you so… right. On with the story.)
Expectations of Grandeur: Chapter 23: Veritaserum
The lights flickered back on, or the dark ominous cloud that had filled the school while Voldemort was taunting the students filtered away, as Harry pulled Tom Riddle through the hallways. He didn't bother to look back and see if Ginny was all right, all his thought was bent on gettingRiddle into Gryffindor before anyone noticed. Allowing a Slytherin entrance into their house was certainly not within school regulations and certainly not something he wanted anyone to know he was doing. He reached the Fat Lady and cast Tom a foul glance before shouting the password up at her and pulling Tom through the portrait.
"Where the bloody hell are you taking me?" asked the Slytherin.
"To my dormitory," Harry responded simply.
Tom pulled his hand out of Harry's grip and stopped in the middle of the Gryffindor common room to stare at the other boy. "To your dormitory? And what weapons of torture do you have in there?" he asked laughingly, only partially because the only time he had heard of someone being dragged up the stairs to a Gryffindors dormitory was in his second year, when three seventh year Gryffindors, after a night of drinkingmore than their share of firewhisky, had drugged and had their way with one of their female housemates. The thought of Harry trying to do that to him, with neither a drug nor firewhisky, was laughable.
Harry's gaze was as cold as ice and as deadly as a quick killing curse. "If I were in your position I would not be laughing, Tom," he said angrily. "Unless you're so proud of your little trick back there that you're bloated from the bragging."
Tom blinked. "You think I made that happen, the slamming of the doors and the laughter," he whispered, shocked. That thought had not even entered his mind.
"And what am I supposed to think? I heard you – you cast a spell to make it all begin, some sort of charm just before the doors slammed shut!" Harry had grabbed his hand again and was pulling him up the stairs. Tom didn't fight, he was so shocked. The very thought of doing that – being able to do that, really, with a spell as simple as an Entrancing Enchantment, well, it was tempting to claim that much power to say the least, but Tom decided against that move as it would probably prove fatal to him in the end to egg Harry on like that. Those three boys hadn't even been expelled, Tom remarked to himself – one never knew what Gryffindors were capable of and would get away with.
Harry slammed the door shut and Tom stood in the centre of the room while Harry rummaged through his trunk to find something. "You will tell no one about this, Tom. This is our little secret, and if I find out that you ratted on me, you will not be pleased with the result, I can tell you that much." Harry glanced over his shoulder to confirm what he said, and his eyes held so much hatred that Tom decided it probably was in his best interest after all to comply with Harry's demand.
"Fine," he said shortly.
Harry turned back to rummaging and soon pulled out a vial full of clear, watery liquid. Tom recognised it easily, the Veritaserum, or at least one of the preparations. If it was Harry's, it probably wouldn't work. "I repeat," Harry said, "You will tell no one."
Tom was tired of this. In a fit of frustration he snatched the vial out of Harry's hand and said "I already agreed," before downing it in one gulp. He was tired of having Harry doubt him, he was tired of having everyone hate him, and he was especially tired of Harry repeating himself needlessly. But the sensation of floating nearly took him off his feet, and he found himself stumbling back onto someone's bed before he realised that, should any of the Gryffindors come in, it would perhaps be wise not to be sitting on any of their beds. He then realised that he didn't really care, it didn't really matter anyway, and to hell with all Gryffindors and their beds.
"Who are you?" Harry asked.
That one was simple. "Tom Marvolo Riddle, son of Tom Noel Riddle and Circe Orobourus Marvolo," he said calmly. The potion must have been his – he found he didn't mind the name of his traitorous father sitting beside the name of his mother in a sentence anymore. Or at least, not for the moment.
Harry, however, had no reaction to the statement. "Are you Lord Voldemort?" came the next question swiftly.
Honestly, Tom would have answered that anyway. "No. I hadn't heard of Lord Voldemort until I started writing in that blasted Diary – Ginny's Diary – last year. Or rather, some years ago, but it must have been last year for me, as I remember it. Lord Voldemort might say that he's me - and he might be telling the truth, but I am most adamantly not Lord Voldemort. The Diary stole my identity, or something like that, twisted it or some such. It's all very hard to explain."
Harry nodded slowly, a bit shocked, and paused before his next question. "Why are you here?"
"Here as in the sense of your dormitory? Because you dragged me here to question me under Veritaserum, I imagine, which boils down to your hatred and fear of me, which probably has a lot to do with the fact that I was responsible for Ginny's near death, Hermione's petrifaction, and the rampaging murderer that seems to have been out to kill you from the day you were born, killed your parents, and attempts to overthrow Hogwarts and the rest of the wizarding world every year since you've gotten to school." Harry looked shocked, appalled, and almost sickened, but Tom found he didn't care. "Here as in at Hogwarts? To finish my school training so I can get a job – I've been thinking of becoming an Auror ever since I fought with Voldemort that last time, but before that I wanted to become a lawyer or a politician so I'm not altogether sure – I suppose I'll end up in the latter, I'm really much better suited for something like that. But then again, I'm sure you would have much to say against my becoming an Auror, you have 'Auror-in-training' written all over you and there's certainly no love lost between us, I daresay. But in another way, I've never really left Hogwarts, see, I just slept in the Chamber of Secrets – which is arguably part of Hogwarts – since the end of my fifth year so it's not a question of why am I here, really, but rather why haven't I left, and that really does hinge around the fact that there was that insane future-Diary-thing that called itself Voldemort and tried to kill me at the end of my fifth year, which in turn hinges around the fact that, again, I am responsible for Ginny's near death and Myrtle's demise, a few people's petrifaction, and the unleashing of an inhuman psychopath on the wizards of the world." Here Tom paused to take a breath. He wouldn't have told this to anyone, but it felt surprisingly good to tell Harry, even though he was sure Harry didn't really care and was just waiting for him to say something akin to 'I am here to take over the school' although Harry was certainly going to be disappointed in that respect. He said as much.
Harry looked shell-shocked, and Tom continued talking, as the potion was only just kicking in full force and the flow of the words was really becoming very appealing to Tom. He didn't so much as care who was listening now – bring in Malfoy and Snape and Dumbledore and every last despicable Gryffindor in the school, he didn't care – he was telling the truth, dammit, and that was a huge relief. Not that he had been lying before, but the feeling of release now was so great that he felt like laughing, like running for joy, only in a more sedated and calm way than he ever had run for joy or laughed before. He was talking, he believed, about why he was here, as in existing, and why the entire human race was here, when Harry interrupted him.
"So you don't have any plans to take over the school and kill me, then?"
"No, certainly not," Tom said. "I mean, even if I am responsible for all that that happened your second year, I certainly didn't do it out of malice and to be brutally honest the only reason I dislike you is your stubborn decision to go against the will of Dumbledore and decide that I am evil after all, even though when truth be told I'm quite simply not."
"If you're not evil, how are you responsible for what happened my second year?"
"I started writing to Ginny Weasley in the beginning of my fifth year and by the time I realised what was going on in reality I couldn't stop writing, it was joy, a connection to wizard-kind in the hellish orphanage and a connection to innocence and joy when I was trapped in a prejudiced Slytherin house ready for a new Dark Lord after Grindelwald. It was also nice that someone didn't care about my heritage – I'd never met anyone who didn't hate me because my father was such a cad or because he was a Muggle, in short, to hear someone look at my story with frank pity was enough of an allure that all the enchantments around the Diary to get people to keep writing were unnecessary for me. But I should have stopped writing when I found out what was going on, I should have stopped Ginny from writing, I was the older and wiser of the two of us, being a fifth year, there had to have been something I could have done that would have stopped Voldemort before he began. Or maybe if I had killed him thoroughly at the end of my fifth year, but you don't understand how uncanny it is fighting someone who says he's you – someone who looks like your identical twin, like your reflection in the mirror. I know you know what it's like to fight someone who's more powerful than you, someone who you have no hope of beating – and I know you would probably have fared much better than I did in that fight, but it's so uncanny when defeating your enemy is synonymous with defeating yourself."
They were both silent for a while, then, Tom because no question had been asked, and Harry because he was too shocked with Tom's response to formulate another. It was at that moment that Ron burst in.
"What, in Merlin's name, are you doing on my bed? And what are you doing with my sister?" he shouted when he saw Riddle.
Harry laughed as Riddle answered, quite frankly, "I fell onto your bed because of the potion that Harry gave me – Veritaserum has a way of knocking the wind out of you, you see. It makes your knees all wobbly so I had to sit down. Currently, I am doing nothing with your sister, as she is noticeably not here. I imagine it would be rather difficult for me to be doing anything with your sister. In general, though, I am helping her with her potions and trying to figure out why she doesn't hate me as you do although she undoubtedly thinks I am evil just as you do, deny it as she might. I'm sorry to say that no, I'm not trying to corrupt your darling little sister to the cause of evil, which would be counter to my interests in general as Harry can tell you, nor am I having any sort of sordid affair with her involving sex in the library, although I'm sure you would have found that much more interesting and probably good cause to murder me with your bare hands, which is clearly what you want to do just now regardless of my answer."
Ron looked blankly at a laughing Harry. "You gave him the Veritaserum?" he asked.
Harry nodded. Ron looked about to faint, but instead said, "Get the hell off of my bed, Riddle," before falling into it himself. "What are we going to do with him?" he asked Harry at length.
"I don't know – when does Veritaserum wear off?"
Ron shrugged but Tom answered quickly, "It depends on how much was in that vial – Veritaserum lasts approximately thirty minutes per millilitre when it's brewed correctly, but there was hardly enough time to get a passable mix during class, so it's somewhere between five and ten minutes per millilitre, my best guess. I'm surprised you two don't know that much, it was written in the book."
"How much was in there?" Ron asked Harry, ignoring Tom completely. The Slytherin had been removed to Seamus' bed.
"Not much – couple of mils?"
"That means we have ten or twenty minutes with him," Ron said. "How long ago did you give him the serum?"
"About seven minutes ago by the clock above that bed," Tom answered.
Ron scowled.
"It's clear that he can't stay here for that long," Ron said.
"Why not?" Harry asked.
"Because… someone might come in and he would scare them half to death." Harry continued to stare at his best friend until Ron gave him quite a different answer. "Because Ginny might be back any minute and I don't want her to see him."
Harry just shook his head. "Look, Ron, there's no way around it unless you want him to go blabbing the Gryffindor password and everything that just happened to everyone in the school. He's got to stay here until the potion wears off."
Ron looked very unhappy with this turn of events, but didn't protest further. "What are you going to do about You-Know-Who, Harry," he asked softly.
"I don't know – generally trouble searches me out, I wouldn't know where to start looking, really." He paused. "Well, I suppose that's false. I would check the chamber of secrets first." Quickly he turned to Riddle. "Can you speak parseltoungue?" he asked.
"No," Riddle said simply. "Although I hear that that's a mark of a dark wizard – do you have to speak it to get into the chamber?"
Harry nodded. "Unless there's another way."
"Well, Dumbledore's taken out the sink that was attached to the tunnel, Ginny went down into the chamber her first day back."
Ron looked amazed. "Ginny went into the chamber out of choice? Why?"
"Yes, and to tie up some loose ends, if you trust what she said."
"How do you know?" Harry asked Tom guardedly.
"I saw her, got her out of a lot of trouble too by not telling anyone."
"What were you doing there?"
"I was thinking of doing the same thing myself, honestly. But the cords around the door have a protection spell on them – you can get in but not out – and I went to the library to research the counter-spell. I was just getting back when I saw Ginny leaving, or trying to leave. It's really an amusing sight; the spell tosses you back into the chamber, see, but the door was closed behind her so it just slammed her into the door. She wasn't hurt, don't worry, but it was certainly amusing."
Harry just shook his head but Ron looked ready to kill someone, probably Tom. "How long has it been now, Harry?" he asked after an awkward silence.
"Twelve minutes," Harry answered softly. They looked towards Tom, who was slowly losing the blank and rather dreamy look on his face and turning back to normal, and then they looked back at each other.
Tom pierced them both with an utterly tired look. "Are you satisfied that I'm not evil yet?" he asked at length.
"We'll be changing the Gryffindor house password, you know," Ron said.
"And we still don't really trust you," Harry added.
"But that will do for now," Ron finished.
Tom was ready to explode. "Still don't really trust me? If you find a way to lie under Veritaserum, please tell me, Mr. Potter, because in the thousand years since its development no one has ever been able to do so. And trust me on this, Mr. Weasley, stronger and more powerful wizards than I have been put under its sway. So if there's something you want to tell me that would give credence to your charges then please do elucidate, but as such I do believe that you are being entirely unreasonable in your assessment."
Harry stared him down, and said coldly, "You will be so kind as to leave, Mr. Riddle."
Tom, slowly and proudly, left the sixth year Gryffindor boys' dormitory, but stayed in the common room. If Ron was worried about him seeing Ginny, he was certainly going to do everything in his power to make sure that that came to pass.