I apologize for missing last week's update, but I'm afraid it was unavoidable. So here's another double update to make up for it.
Thanks again to all reviewers!
Chapter 8
Albus Dumbledore sat in his office, utterly shocked at the conversation he had just had with young Harry Potter. He couldn't believe what the boy had just told him. Was it possible the boy had just been exaggerating? No, likely not. Harry was not a child prone to even the slightest exaggeration, in fact, he often understated things. Harry's upbringing had indeed produced a humble child, one who never asked questions and never complained, knowing that these actions would only lead to punishment. What the boy said would have to be true. Given that, he wondered how Harry could have grown up to be such a remarkable, caring soul.
He also thought back to another black haired boy, a boy he had met more than fifty years ago. Was Harry right? Had he, himself, inadvertently pushed Tom further along the path of Darkness? These were troubling thoughts, and he could not push them entirely out of his mind. He sighed. It did not matter now, except to his own conscience. Tom had become what he had become, and the reasons for it were no longer important. Tom had to be stopped, regardless of what it cost.
--
Harry used his Occlumency meditation to put himself into a trance that was near sleep, but not exactly that state. The trance allowed him to clearly view his own mind and magic. He found the link between himself and Tom, a link that glowed a deep green, and focused on following that link. He sent out a questioning thought, much like a mental knock on a door, and received a feeling of acquiescence. Harry smiled, and allowed his body to fall into true sleep. Tom would take care of it from there.
Upon his 'arrival' at Tom's study, he found himself wondering where Tom was actually living. It didn't look like Riddle Manor. He supposed Tom could have renovated his muggle father's home, but the house had a distinctly magical feel to it. He wasn't going to ask, though. What he didn't know, he couldn't give away, a wise precaution when one spent private time with a wizard who excelled in Legilimency.
His musings were interrupted by Tom's greeting. "Good evening, Harry. I sensed that something made you very angry this evening, though you do seem calmer now. Would you care to discuss it?"
Harry sighed. Part of him still couldn't believe how terribly Dumbledore had manipulated him. "I had another meeting with Dumbledore tonight," he said.
"I see. I take it you did not receive a satisfactory answer to the question you brought up at our last meeting."
"He wanted to give my aunt a chance at redemption. He thought that taking care of me would help her to reconcile with her dead sister."
"But instead, she resented you for living, especially at the cost of her sister's life. Yes?"
"Exactly. And if that weren't enough, Dumbledore told me that my fam—no, they don't deserve to be called that—the Dursleys were given money out of my trust fund to take care of me."
"Adding insult to injury indeed. Did you tell him of your treatment at their hands?"
"I did."
"How did he react to that?" Tom was genuinely interested in the answer.
"He actually had the nerve to cry, and say he didn't know."
"He would have known, had he ever actually cared enough to ask," Tom said softly. They both knew Tom wasn't only talking about Harry's childhood.
"I can't believe he cried. I lived through it, and I didn't cry. What makes him think he has the right?"
Tom could sense that Harry was on the verge of shedding tears now, and that made him slightly panicked. He had no idea how to deal with tears. He, like Harry, had stopped crying at a very young age. What was the use? And, of course, he didn't want to deal with the brat's tears. Let him cry on his own time. Now it was time for a new discussion. "Would you like me to kill them for you?"
That brought Harry's focus back to anger, as Tom had predicted it would. All signs of eminent tears disappeared from Harry's face. Tom felt quite relieved at that. There was a pause while Harry thought about Tom's question. "No," Harry said finally. "No, I would not like that."
"Why not?" he asked, expecting some horribly sentimental tripe about those people still being family, no matter what they'd done to him. But his little serpent surprised him again.
"If you do it, they will never understand why. And they will blame me for drawing your attention to them. I want them to know that what happens is their own fault for how they treated me. I want them to see me with all the power. I want them to know that I could do anything to them, anything at all. I want them to feel the fear that I felt as a child. I want them to know what it is to be constantly knocked down by something you can't reason with, and to be punished no matter how hard you try to please. A few rounds of Crucio and a quick killing curse are nothing compared to what they did to me." Harry hesitated a moment before continuing. "And if they are killed, I want it to be me who kills them."
That left Tom completely stunned, though of course he didn't show it. Harry was a lot Darker than most people believed. Even he had accepted the façade of Gryffindor nobility, and never really looked past it. Harry wanted revenge, and not the kind that came in hot-blooded explosions of temper. Harry had obviously been thinking about his desire for revenge, contemplating it in cold blood, and that was not something a Gryffindor typically did. Tom wondered who Harry truly was, underneath the 'boy-who-lived' persona. He liked the snake hiding under the lion's skin, and decided to do whatever he could to bring it out. He wouldn't want to suffer through dealing with imbecilic Gryffindor nobility all the time, after all, especially if it was avoidable.
"Wanting revenge like that…does that make me evil, Tom?"
"There is no good or evil, only power and those too weak to seek it. But I've told you that before, haven't I…§my little serpent§?"
"§If only I'd listened to you then.§"
"But you've come to your senses, and begun to seek power for yourself."
"No."
"What do you mean, no? You're outperforming all your classmates in your school work, and you've started learning things just because you want to. You even went to get the books from the Chamber."
"I'm not seeking power for myself. I'm seeking it for you."
If Tom thought he had been shocked before, that was nothing compared to now. Could this truly be the simple result of the love potion? He didn't really think so. Yes, his little Harry definitely had a darker side to him. It was a side Tom was thrilled to exploit. But—"What do you mean by that?"
"I thought about why you would tell me about the library in the Chamber. For a moment, I couldn't think of any good reason you would do that. Then I realized it was obvious, you want me to fight on your side. Am I right?"
"Yes, you are right, though I must confess I did not expect you to agree quite so readily."
"Dumbledore made it very clear to me that he doesn't really intend to protect me. You ask me to fight on your side as well, but you will actually help me prepare for what you expect of me."
"Yes. And our power together will be the greatest force the world has ever seen."
Harry blushed. "Your power already is. I'm not all that powerful."
"Or so Dumbledore wants you to think," Tom said, smirking.
"What?" Harry blinked.
"Think about it. Dumbledore has already had one student under his care grow into a Dark Lord. He sees your potential, as I do, my little serpent, but he does not want to run the risk of training the next Dark Lord, so he does his best to keep you ignorant."
"How do you know that?" Harry asked. "I mean, not that I don't trust you, I trust you, of course I trust you, it's just that it doesn't seem like something you could possibly know," he back-pedalled quickly.
"I do not know. As you say, I cannot see into Dumbledore's mind. It is merely a guess. I do, however, feel that it is very likely to be true."
"I see. It would explain why he won't really teach me anything, even though he expects me to…you know…do that thing."
"No matter. What he will not teach you, I will."
Harry smiled. "I know. You've proven that to me already. By the way, how did you know that I went to the Chamber tonight?"
Tom's all-knowing smirk returned. "Let's call that a family secret, shall we?"
"There was a voice in the Chamber, a man. He told me about how to get out of the Chamber, and that you were waiting to talk to me."
"So he decided to speak to you then. Very interesting."
"Who is he?"
"If he didn't tell you, he doesn't want you to know just yet. Or he wants you to decipher it for yourself. It's actually fairly obvious."
"Salazar!" Harry gasped.
"Were you expressing surprise, or did you figure it out?"
"I may not be on Dumbledore's side anymore, but I am still a Gryffindor. We lions don't speak the name of the serpent. If I had been expressing surprise, I would have said 'Godric!'" Harry said with an impudent twist to his nose. Tom chuckled. "But why would Salazar talk to me? I'm a Gryffindor and a half-blood."
"You are a Gryffindor only because you and Dumbledore cheated. I happen to know that Dumbledore told the hat to put you in Gryffindor if it was at all possible, and to keep you away from Slytherin. The hat still wanted you in my house, but then you had to go and argue with it too. Whatever Dumbledore might have said to the contrary, you belonged in the Serpent House, and only the fact that you are the direct heir of the Gryffindor line kept you out of it. As for being a half-blood, you know perfectly well that I am one as well. Perhaps Slytherin's prejudices weren't what you thought they were."
"What do you mean? If Slytherin didn't believe that only pure-bloods deserved a magical education, what did he believe?"
"That is a discussion for another night. I know you have been focusing on Occlumency all day, and that your mind is quite tired as a result. In the meantime, read the books you took from the Chamber tonight. Do not hesitate to ask me any questions you may have. Notify me when you have finished those, and I will suggest two more for you to study."
"Should I add this to my timetable as another class? Maybe ask the ministry if I can take a NEWT in Parselmagic?" Harry teased.
"Think of it more as…private tutoring," Tom said, still smirking. "Good night, Harry."
"Good night, Tom."
As Harry returned to true sleep, he had one last thought. "Wait. I'm the direct heir of the Gryffindor line?"