The hallway of 12 Grimmauld Place was quiet, with scarcely a soul in sight.
A few moments pass, and a young girl pokes her head from around the corner on the second level. She checks her surroundings, and sees that the coast is clear. She quickly and quietly heads down the stairs, and tiptoes to the front door. She is being as quiet as she possibly can, for she doesn't want to wake up the painting of Mrs. Black that sits in the entranceway. The whole house would wake up for sure with her yelling and screeching.
She makes it to the front door, but just as she is about to open it, a voice whispers from behind her, "What do you think you are doing, Riddle?" She turns, a little startled but trying still to keep quiet. She sees who has caught her in her attempt at escape.
It was Harry Potter.
Riddle looks down at her plain dark T-shirt. Harry's shirt. They gave it to her as something that she can wear besides the robes that she wears as Voldemort.
"I knew you wanted to escape. I knew that you would try sooner or later. Come with me." He says, as he grabs my elbow and starts pulling me along back up the stairs, still being as quiet as possible.
. . . . .
They are back in Riddle's room. Riddle sitting the bed facing Harry with her feet up hugged very closely to her. Harry just looks at her for a few seconds before simply saying, "Why? Why do you do this?"
Somehow, Riddle knows that Harry is asking more than just why she wants to escape from them, but she plays it off like she hadn't heard the question entirely or that she didn't quite catch the meaning of the question that Harry was really after. "You already know why." She states bitterly.
Harry bites his lip.
"Can I ask one more question?" He asks finally, hoping to distract her from what has just happened.
Riddle nods, but Harry continues on whether he saw her or not. "Why Tom?"
Riddle breathed a sigh of relief, glad at the simple-ness of the question. "My mother was expecting—wanted—a boy. She loved him that much." She finally says a little bitterly.
Harry sees tears start to form in her eyes. "I'm so sorr—." He begins but Riddle cuts him off. "Just forget it." She turns to get off the bed and storms out of the room, leaving Harry alone in the silence of the room. Not too shortly after Harry spots something of Riddle's halfway under the bed on the floor—a little black journal. He picks it up, and stuffs it in his jacket. Then he runs out of the room after her.
. . . . .
Out in the hallway, Harry sees Riddle standing at the foot of the stairs looking down.
"We're not going to play this game again, are we?" Harry asks.
Riddle turns around as Harry walks up to her. She doesn't answer. But instead turns back to face the stairs again.
"Just go back to the room. I promise I won't tell anybody about this one." He says suddenly.
Riddle stops for a moment, thinking. Then she turns back to Harry and says, "Ok."
. . . . .
The next day, Riddle is sitting on her bed criss-cross style. She holds the locket in the middle of her lap. Her eyes are closed as if she is meditating.
The door opens slightly. Harry Potter comes through it.
"Yeah. She's in here." He yells behind him.
Riddle's eyes snap open.
"Hey." He says gently. "You've been up here all day."
She ignores him and goes back to meditating.
"Fine. You can stay up here for as long as you want. As long as we know where you are. We are not letting you out of our sights." He says as he starts for the door.
Suddenly the door flies shut, and Harry turns back to Riddle on the bed. Her eyes are fully opened and her hand is raised as if to strike.
"What was that?" comes a voice just on the other side of the door. "The door won't open. It's not budging. Somebody, come here."
Harry ignores the person's attempt at opening the door, and faces Riddle, bracing himself for anything that she might do.
Finally, she just says, "I don't need to do anything. My Death Eaters already sense that something is wrong. I can feel them trying to summon me every minute of every day that you keep me here. It's getting rather annoying really. Especially since I really have no way of responding. But nevermind all that. Eventually they will figure it out, and they will come for me."
Harry, taken aback for a moment, simply responds, "We know that your precious minions will come to your rescue sooner or later. And I'm fairly certain that we can take them-."
Riddle just laughs, a cold, calculating laugh, cutting off his words. "But you are forgetting that I will be fighting alongside them when they get here, and believe me, I won't be merciful this time."
"Come on. Your always trying to be menacing, to scare us into what exactly? If you haven't noticed, we aren't exactly the kind of people who fear you. We are not afraid to say your name, Voldemort, whereas the rest of the world might be using You-Know-Who or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named." He pauses for a second. "Wait a minute. Why are people calling you He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named if you're a girl?" He asks, whether rhetorically or not, Riddle doesn't answer him.
"You know what. It doesn't matter. Just let me out." He says, then adds, "Maybe we can make some kind of arrangement if that's what you want."
"I want my wand." Riddle suddenly says.
Harry thinks. "Sorry. No can do on that one. You know the rules." That would be too much power on your behalf.
"Please." Riddle says genuinely, tears starting to form in her eyes.
Harry is taken aback at this sight. "I'm sorry. I can't. I wish…" He starts but can't seem to finish.
"I get why you might have a hard time trusting me." Riddle says.
"That's putting it mildly." Harry retorts.
Riddle ignores this as goes on as if she wasn't interrupted, "What if I can prove it to you guys, that I can—that I'm capable of changing?"
"I'm listening." He replies. "How do you plan to do that?"
She looks down at the locket, and thinks for a second. "Remorse." She finally says.
"What?" He asks.
"Try and get some remorse out of me, and then you'll see." She replies. It's just one horcrux. What the worst that can happen? She thinks.
"I don't quite understand what's going on here, but ok. If this will prove something. Where do you want me to start?" Harry says finally.
Riddle looks up into his eyes, with a determined look on her face. "Anywhere you think you might get just a moment of guilt from me."
"Well, considering you are Voldem-." He jokes but cuts off seeing as she's not laughing. "Ok. Um…Well. There are all the people that you murdered." He says matter-of-factly.
"Like they all didn't deserve it." She retorts bitterly.
"Ok, then. Do want me to get you to show remorse for your actions or not?"
"I'm sorry. You're probably going to have to do a lot better than though." She simply says.
"Come on. You can't be this cold to your feelings, can you? Have you never loved someone so much that you thought just a little bit differently about them?" He replies, and then smiles a little bit seeing that he struck something of a nerve in Riddle as her face contorts just a fraction. "That's it, isn't it. The ultimate weapon against you is love. It's the power that you know not."
"Shut up! You don't know that!" She shouts angrily.
This elicits attention from outside the door. "Let us in now, Riddle. Dumbledore is here so don't try anything stupid."
Riddle ignores them, and continues to look at Harry, tears angrily streaming down her face.
The door blasts off its hinges, and a tall man with a white beard enters the room. Harry quickly ducks out, leaving Riddle and Dumbledore together.
"Miss Riddle-." Dumbledore begins, but Riddle just hangs her head not wanting to listen to anybody anymore. "Just go away. Leave me be for once."
Dumbledore just nods even though Riddle doesn't see it. Before he leaves the room, he sets a small package at the foot of the bed. Then he exits the room leaving Riddle in total solitude. The tears that she has holding back now come flowing non-stop.
After a while, Riddle starts to calm herself down. She gets up, off the bed, and walks over to the foot of the bed, and sees the package. She lifts it up, and gently removes the paper. Inside she picks up her wand and holds it between her fingers just staring at it. Why would Dumbledore trust me enough to give this back to me? She thinks.
. . . . .
A few days later, Riddle is standing in her room. She is wearing an old pair of jeans and Harry's shirt. And she is holding her wand close to her. She stands staring down at her empty bed, contemplating her next moves very carefully. I'm going to have to do it. There's no other way. She thinks. It's better this way. It's better if they forget…
. . . . .
Harry, Ron, Hermione, Fred and George, and the rest of the Order of the Phoenix are assembled around the table in the kitchen.
"We need a plan. Voldemort is out there at this very second, planning who knows what. We need to know what we are going to do to try and bring him down." Tonks brings up.
"I'll go." Harry chimes in. Everyone looks at him expectantly. "He has already killed too many. Too many of you. Too many of anybody. I'll meet him someplace and we can end right there and then."
"Don't be silly, Harry." Dumbledore says.
"Yeah, you don't have to do this on your own." Hermione says next to him.
"Yeah, we're here for you, mate." Ron says.
"And, besides, your still way too underprepared to take him on just yet." Lupin says. "You're just a sixth year, there is still much to learn."
"But the prophecy says that I am the one who needs to do it. Neither can live while the other survives. Remember? It always has to be me." He says finally.
. . . . .
After the meeting, out in the hallway, Harry walks up to Dumbledore.
"Professor? Can I ask you a kind of strange question?"
"Of course, Harry. You can always ask me anything. What's on your mind?" He asks.
"Its nothing. I just have this vague sense that Riddle was here. And she—He outnumbered all of us, and he didn't even have his wand. How am I supposed to beat him?" He says after a while.
"In due time, Harry. In due time you will understand everything." Dumbledore just says.
. . . . .
A/N: Thanks again for reading! Reviews are definitely welcome. I really want to know how to write a fan fiction better in the future. I wrote this fanfic as part of a literary course at my college. I wanted to study what kind of literacies are enabled/enacted through writing (or reading) fan fiction. So that's why this particular feels a bit rushed. I need to get this up as soon as possible because the deadline for the paper is coming up soon. So I'll be writing that here real soon. But maybe later I will keep going with this story if either I feel like I want to or it actually becomes a bit popular (probably unlikely though for a first fanfic).