The Lounge, Grimmauld Place.
8:10 p.m.
"Tom came and spoke to me about a couple of things," James told Harry later that night. He motioned at Harry, patted the spot next to him on the couch. "I'm glad he did."
That was good – Harry thought. They were in a small alcove in the lounge room. The paintings in here were mostly still-life pictures of apples and pears, and these only jumped every now and then. The carpet was a rich embroidered mess, imported all the way from Constantinople in the late 1300s or so, and his feet sunk into the threads.
"I think he's right," Harry added straight away. "Parseltongue can't be a purely Slytherin thing if we both have it."
James shook his head. "It doesn't matter."
What?
"You – can't hate parseltongue, just because it's associated with snakes," Harry said, unsure of himself all over again. His t-shirt sleeves were starting to wear a bit, and Harry pulled at the bottom edge. He was going to need new clothes soon.
James ran his hand through his hair, took off his glasses and rubbed at his forehead. Harry watched him do it and it occurred to him that he used the exact same motion with Hermione, when he was anxious. Everyone told him how much he looked like his dad; Harry looked at him and thought 'When I get older, my hair's going to go grey at the temples first, but I won't be balding.'
"That's not what I meant. I meant it doesn't matter because you're my son and any kind of quirk you had would be a gift."
He patted Harry's back. "I didn't know you felt that way. Sure, I was a little bit surprised the first time, but that was you were hissing and grabbing at a snake like it was your friend. It was only an arms-length away from you. Anything could have happened."
Oh.
"Thought I'd make it clear," James said again, lips curling at the corners. "While we're at it, I thought I'd say – you can tell me these things, you know. Moping around the house doesn't solve problems, talking does."
"Great, good talk dad," Harry replied, returning the smile. "So I can go and visit Tom's snake now?"
And just like that, James' smile dripped right off his face. "I know I just said 'parseltongue is okay, flowers and sunshine, yay', but I am still really, really not happy that he brought the snake into the house."
His expression shuttered and then brightened again.
"My good son, how far have you gotten with your summer homework?"
"I was – attacked and moping around the house?" Harry said. His dad didn't look convinced. "I've started it," Harry answered as quick as a fox.
"I notice Lucius's brat says he's almost done."
"Because Professor Snape is right there," Harry said. "Everyone's working through the summer except for Snape who's bumming around the house, waiting for term to start again."
His dad couldn't hide the smirk before Harry saw it. "That's not quite true, I'm sure your professor is doing other important things that we have yet to see."
"Don't tell me I should've asked him for help," Harry replied. "You hypocrite."
James put his hands up into the air. "Fine, fine! Do you see me saying anything? This is me, not saying anything." He put his hands back down.
"You can go and visit the snake, watch it watch grass or whatever it likes to do while it's inactive," James made a face. "On one condition."
"What is it?"
"Tom's finished his last project early, and now he's got a bit of a break before the Ministry processes his next research application. You should go and ask for a bit of summer tutoring."
"No," Harry said, looking absolutely horrified. "No one asks for summer tutoring. He's an Unspeakable, they do things like – witch hunts across all of Europe, dangerous experiments with life and death and realms not our own–"
Harry stood up, as if by doing so he could convey the vast difference between battles with hordes of inferi and talking about one ought to structure an essay in the most Percy-like way.
" –I can't just go and ask him to sit down with me for summer tutoring!"
"Your History of Magic needs a little improvement," his dad remarked gravely. "It's him or Snape."
Harry was speechless.
His dad brightened again. "Great, good talk son," he said, and pushed him in the direction of Bellatrix's room.
:::
Bellatrix's Boudoir, Grimmauld Place.
8:21 p.m.
Bellatrix's room was opulent. A chandelier dangled from the very high ceiling, which was dark green and framed with silver gilding. Almost all the furniture was dark green – the dresser table, the small side-table and chairs for people to sit at, and there was even a dark green chaise lounge.
This was where Riddle was sitting at. He was reading a book while Nagini curled up next to and behind him. The glittering python matched the décor perfectly.
Harry knocked at the door, made of heavy mahogany. It was already open, but it seemed rude to just walk into a bedroom without permission.
"Hi Mr Riddle," he said. "I'm dropping by to see Nagini. You said I could?"
"I did say that," Riddle replied and closed his book. "You should call me Tom. It would be easier."
'Nagini,' he said then, scratching the python under its chin. 'Someone is here to see you.'
She opened one bleary eye and closed it again. 'Tell the pitiful human to leave.'
Harry stared. 'You have some attitude,' he told her in parseltongue. She snapped back at him, teeth glinting in the dim light –
There was a door and behind it was something that he wanted very much. The snake killed the first person she came across, but they saved the second one.
"She doesn't bite," Tom said, breaking the haze Harry was in.
Harry's scar was aching again. His voice was flat when he said, "I don't believe that for a minute."
"Pythons kill their prey through constriction," Tom replied. He looked slightly amused. "Would you like to feed her?"
The man walked to the table to get her food. Harry watched him remove several packages from his bag before taking out a large container. Tom was very tall. He had long legs.
He pushed the container towards Harry. "Go on. Open it."
There was something inside him telling him that he shouldn't take anything from this man. That voice, of course, was unreasonable. After a moment, Harry pulled the container closer. Before he opened it, his eyes flicked back at Tom's. He thought the man was grinning, but when he looked again, Tom only looked encouraging. Slightly bored.
Harry opened the box. Inside were three scraggly lumps of fur. He picked one up, intending on putting it down in front of Nagini. It made a soft mewing sound.
His fingers slipped and it dropped back into the box again. "These aren't mice," Harry said, looking up at Tom.
"No," Tom replied. "They're cats. They can look like mice when they're very young."
"They're still alive," Harry continued.
Tom raised an eyebrow. "You can kill them first if you like? It's easy."
Harry closed his eyes. He bit down on his lips, unsure of what to say. This is a cultural difference. It's like Draco who thinks house elves are slaves and Hermione who wants to free them. He could see it from Tom's point of view – there wasn't much of a difference between cats and mice, and snakes ATE their prey alive in the wild.
Harry couldn't. Their eyes still hadn't opened yet.
"Just kidding!" Tom said, all of a sudden. "They're for you."
What?
"I found them on the street. It looked like someone had abandoned them, and I couldn't just leave them out there – by nightfall they would've died from the cold."
"And I looked at them and thought, 'look at this black one!' It looks a lot like you, doesn't it? And there's a blonde for Draco and a tabby for your sister. It seemed like a perfect gift for all of you."
"Oh," Harry said, stunned for the second time in a row. "That's – really nice of you."
Nagini was still lying across the chaise. If snakes could have facial expressions, Harry would say she was smirking. Harry glanced over at her.
"What about Nagini though? Won't she be hungry?"
"I wasn't going to feed her the kittens," Tom said. The tip of his tongue flicked across his teeth. "I asked Bellatrix and she says that the house elves regularly find mice and doxies in the basement. Kreacher's frozen a few. Do you have a place we can put the cats?"
There was a little corner near the fireplace…
:::
The Floo Room, Grimmauld Place.
8:43 p.m.
Azalea and Nymphadora loved the kittens. They coo-ed over them like they were small, precious things, and Azalea spent the rest of her night stroking the fur on the tabby of her likeness.
Draco looked amused as well, but he took his gift without any drama. He already had several Abraxan ponies, a Pegasus and an army of peacocks in his garden. Another pet to him, was really another creature for the house-elves to take care of.
When Harry's mom saw the animals though, she looked like she wanted to object again, and again, Sirius stopped her. "I really wish you had asked me about this first," Lily told Tom, but since her youngest was already in love with the kittens, there wasn't much to be done for it.
They were back in Bellatrix's room after leaving the cats with the girls, and Harry was watching Tom throw frozen mice to his snake – she watched the animals with dark eyes and she caught them out of the air every single time.
Every now and then, he would pass one to Harry, and Harry would do the same. It was kind of cool watching Nagini spring from stillness into action.
"She is a beautiful snake," Harry admitted after a while. Tom might've smiled for a brief moment, and then it was gone the next.
"Are you thinking of getting married to Bellatrix?" Harry asked, when the silence was getting too long.
"We'll see if we can manage living together first," he said, sounding non-committal.
"You're a step up from the last person."
"Really now?" Tom said, looking sideways. And there was something about that smile that made the Gryffindor duck his head.
Harry noticed his heart was beating faster and got angry at himself. What was it about Tom that was making him feel like this? He was always feeling off-balanced, there was this constant pressure in his chest, in his head, like it was hard to breathe.
Godric, he really hoped Tom hadn't noticed. Get a grip, he told himself.
"My dad also wants me to ask you… if you aren't busy… if you could help me out with some of my work?" Harry hesitated.
There was a reason why he hadn't wanted to ask, and it was because he got the impression he and Tom were on two different levels, in two different worlds. Tom had no business talking to him.
"I meant, you did really well on your NEWTs, and I'll be learning all of that over the next two years."
"I have the time," Tom replied.
Nagini snapped another mouse out of the air. Its little bones crunched under the pressure of her teeth. "Did you want to start now?"
"You mean right now?"
"If you had any burning questions you wanted to ask," Tom said. He threw a doxy this time, to the snake. "As you can see, I'm not doing anything particularly important at the moment."
Harry was going to open his mouth and say, no, he left his History of Magic textbook back in his room, and he didn't really feel like going over Goblin Rebellions when the night was going so well.
"I did have a question," Harry said instead, much to his surprise. He hadn't known he was going to ask until this moment. Tom made a distracted 'go-on' sort of sound.
"Is there any way a person could survive the killing curse?"
There were a lot of reflective surfaces in Bella's bedroom – the mirror, the chandelier, the jewellery studded in the furniture. That was the only explanation Harry had for why he thought – for a moment – that Tom's eyes were red.
:::
:::
:::
A disreputable inn, Diagon Alley, Alternate London.
A few days back.
4:10 p.m.
"That should've done it," Shacklebolt said, watching from a nearby window. Hermione's been wringing her fingers ever since she heard that Ron made contact. If the nightmare was going to end, he would rather not tell her what happened to her friend.
He turned to Snape. "What do we do now?"
Professor Snape looked down at his timepiece. "We wait."
They waited. A minute passed, then two, then ten. Charlie tapped his feet, Neville's tracking the movement of small moths near the ceiling, and Tonks was trying to get Ginny to smile, by changing her nose, then her ears, and then her hair. When none of those tricks work, she resorted to knock-knock jokes.
Hermione ended the silence. "Shouldn't the dream have ended by now?"
"I hoped you wouldn't say that," Neville replied.
"With the dreamer dead," Snape said slowly, "the fabric of this reality should have unravelled, with nothing else to sustain it. Everyone should have passed out of the dream safely."
"Obviously, that hasn't happened." Charlie.
Professor Snape mused. "If we commit suicide, and we do not pass out of the dream; it means only one thing. The dreamer isn't dead."
"Both you and I saw the Avada Kedavra spell aimed at Harry Potter. It impacted, and he responded. He fell over," Shacklebolt was terse. "Are you saying he's impervious to that spell? Should we have used something else?"
Snape shook his head, a small minute movement. "Avada Kedavra would work. Potter isn't anything special."
"Then what does it mean?"
"It means the dreamer isn't dead."
Snape stalked about the room, pacing and running his hands through his hair. He was expecting this to be over by now, Shacklebolt understood. He miscalculated, grievously. We are down another order member; when we finish this mission, the war will begin again and there will be three people walking around with PTSD. Snape's continuing existence as a spy depended on having the right information and on being correct all the time. A miscalculation of this proportion in the real world would've killed him.
I thought this mission was too easy. Shacklebolt relaxed across the table. His eyes were closed. Soon enough, Snape reached a conclusion.
"Harry Potter isn't the only one dreaming. There's someone else in here with us."
:::
