Chapter 119:
Harry wasn't stupid, he knew perfectly well the sheer enormity of what he'd sworn to…and he knew the problems and paradox of it regarding his vow to Dumbledore.
If he didn't manage to prevent Tom from becoming Voldemort, if Voldemort remained as he was, he would either lose his magic or die. If he aided the Headmaster as he'd promised, his magic would be drained from him without hesitation due to his negotiations with Tom, and if he refused to help the Headmaster than he would die.
He had to win.
If he didn't…well, if he didn't, he had plans for that too. Just in case.
He was a Horcrux; if Voldemort was to be destroyed he had to die anyway, and he was already collecting the other pieces of the Dark Lord's soul, all he had to do when the clock hit zero was present those shards to Dumbledore and then he was out of there.
It made no difference.
If he couldn't prevent Voldemort, than he was sure as hell going to destroy him before he took the world apart in hateful insanity.
Tom probably thought he had him completely tied, that he would simply avoid going against his contrasting oath or that he would settle and change his current vow with Dumbledore somehow…but.
Maybe it was manipulative, but it appeared as if Tom was rather fixated on keeping alive, so if Harry made sure the way to that was by his plan succeeding and Tom not being Voldemort, than surely the other would be forced to comply?
He knew the Slytherin Heir thought his schemes were slapdash and reckless, but he'd thought it out more than people gave him credit for.
Get the Horcruxes, including the ring, find a way to get Voldemort to feel remorse/complete the spell to send him back. Confront Voldemort, make him 'Tom' and send Voldemort-Tom back in time to re-live his life, mind altered to know no better.
A never ending time loop, to be finished when the clock hit zero and the time continued, the world staying as it was…with nobody blown out of existence, and Tom free to do as he pleased with life. Ergo, not be Voldemort.
It was a gamble, but was it any less a gamble than Tom's crazy plan was? He didn't think so. Of course, there was a good chance his mind would end up damaged when the Horcrux tore out of it, but he'd get some help to finish what he started, and he was sure Tom would come around to act like the self-serving bastard he was eventually.
It would work out.
It had to.
It was dinner, with all negotiations settled and classes over for the day.
Carrow and Snape had both stared, even more than the other teachers, even more than those who knew of the ultimatum, even more than Dumbledore, and he had to admit if unnerved him was an unreadable stare, but coloured by an intangible feeling of absolute horror which Harry wasn't sure what to make of.
Dumbledore had sharp eyes on their table, and Harry could see the lines of worry engraved on his face like a crinkled sheet of parchment. Tom had clearly noticed the light lord's grave countenance too, and radiated smugness, along with something far more ambiguous.
He could feel the rest of the Slytherin's sneaking both him and the young Dark Lord glances, peeks obviously intended to be more subtle than they actually were…or maybe they were subtle in themselves, and the sheer number and frequency of these glances were what made them so evident.
He mused on this for a moment, noticing Carrow and Snape were offering these, nearly nervous, glances too.
He figured out why when his scar exploded in pain.
Harry suddenly seemed to go rigid, face paling white as snow, as death.
Zevi opened his mouth to call attention to it, only to note Tom had already seen the change, leaning over with a discreet but rapid manner, gaze warning anyone who had caught the shift to be silent.
"Harry?" Tom questioned, demand in his tone, before slipping into a hiss of parseltongue, his grip relentless on the other's shoulders.
Harry blinked, expression barely veiling agony, before he struggled to rise, just as Dumbledore did the same with swift orders to teachers on either side of him.
"All students are to report to their common rooms immediately, the rest of your dinners shall be taken there." There was no mildness in the deceptively pleasant man's voice, and then the Headmaster was striding to their table, Snape at his heel, even as the other teachers and prefects began rounding up the school population to be hustled to dormitories.
Harry was still seated…well, seated was an optimistic term for it, he was more slumped as if the table was the only thing keeping him upright.
He felt sick to see it, because though Harry was many things, he wasn't in the habit of revealing or conceding to any measure of weakness.
Tom's hand snapped to the boy's jaw, which seemed to marginally shake Harry out of it, or at least capture his attention away from the distant place it had reached. More hissing.
"Harry…what is it? Why is he here?" Dumbledore questioned, firmly but not unkindly, though the very act of asking these demands instead of sending the half-Gryffindor, half-Slytherin promptly to the Hospital Wing seemed to be, in his opinion, a cruelty in itself.
He…? The Dark Lord. Tom's future self, or so the evidence suggested, even when he wasn't allowed to go searching for it.
Harry showed his pain, the extent of which was probably still heavily masked from public scrutiny, whenever there had been a Death Eater raid, like on that Halloween Night when he'd woken to blood and screams…therefore, the scar that had famously been given to him by the Dark Lord might act as a link.
"He…" Harry seemed to abruptly jump back to reality, hiding the last of any torture from his features, though his movements remained more careful than normal. "He won't come inside. I just need to go and talk to him. Excuse me."
Before Harry had even taken a step, having freed himself from Tom's grip, that same grip was back tightly on Harry's arm, preventing him from walking further. The boy looked back, eyes dark.
"Tom-" he began, with a hard, frustrated edge to his words.
"-What's going on, hero?"
Ah, hero. That nickname was a bad sign, as it tended to come out when his lord was displeased with Harry for some reason; reasons which normally had to do with careless, self-destructive actions on the younger's part that lead to near death experiences.
"That is what I'd like to know," Sev-Snape stated quietly, in a murmur, echoing his own thoughts, and probably everyone else's too.
The next second a cold voice seemed to whisper from right next to them, high and clear, chilling with its cruelty.
"I do not like waiting. If you are not out here within the next minute I will find some muggle town to slaughter, and you can bide your time trying to clean their blood off your hands because you tried my patience."
Tom's, already intent study of the other, seemed to almost sear Zevi's skin with the heat and dangerous concentration of it, and it wasn't even directed at him.
Harry looked mutinous, but there was a desperate stance to his posture that scarcely held control, and he feared on some level what the boy would do.
As it was, he merely seized Tom's arm back in a ferocious grip, practically hauling him towards the door and not sparing anyone, including Granger and Weasley and his pet Gryffindors who had gathered with concern, a backwards glance.
Feeling shaky all over, not to mention bewildered as to why Voldemort had turned up on Hogwarts ground yet again…and shouldn't there be wards to keep him out?
He concentrating on dragging Tom towards the grounds, knowing he had to take the restriction with him in case Tom decide to tighten said restriction back to ten metres, and wondering as the Slytherin dug his heels on whether or not it would be easier to just stupefy him.
Voldemort's eyes were crimson shards of ice upon his form, when he appeared, wand clutched tightly in the hand not forcing Tom's co-operation.
Once again, he was distantly happy that when Tom wasn't able to cheat, they were quite evenly matched. They always had been, physically, as although Tom was taller than him and had a wiry strength to his seemingly slender fingers and muscles, Harry was a better fighter and was by no means particularly weak either.
There were no Death Eaters present.
"What is it?" he hissed, warily, releasing Tom in favour of keeping his attention solely on the Dark Lord. Voldemort's eyes scanned across Tom, narrow with some frozen emotion in the pupils, long since iced and ruthless from anything resembling sentimentality regardless of what the feeling originally was, before returning back to him.
"If you ask for advice, the appropriate action would be to follow it when its given."
Harry contained his shock before it reached his face, though Voldemort and perhaps Tom most likely picked up on it anyway because of the link.
"I did…" he said, falling into English, confusion bringing back default settings. "Stop pretending."
"Clearly you didn't," Voldemort spat, and Harry was absently aware of Tom's lack of awareness regarding that whole mental conversation. "Or you would have done so."
Harry's brow furrowed, and Tom looked between them, expression more deadly than ever.
"Either of you two care to fill me in?" he demanded, bitingly.
"Not particularly," Harry deadpanned.
"Potter, if you'd have done as I asked, you'd have taken his ultimatum and left." Voldemort hissed. Harry blinked.
"You said stop pretending…"
Voldemort smiled, a horrible imitation of a smile that held none of the warmth of mirth a smile should have held
."Stop pretending that the two of you had any chance of a future."
"Okay, tell me what's going on!" Tom ordered, venomous. Harry didn't look at him, jaw clenched.
"Is that all you came here to tell me?" he questioned coldly. Voldemort took a menacing step forward, and he didn't back away and then - then Tom had stepped between them, practically radiating danger.
"Perhaps you didn't hear me-"
"We heard you," Voldemort stated. "We're just not responding."
Harry snorted despite himself, bringing Voldemort's attention back to him.
The pain in his head became almost overwhelming, and Tom's fingers simultaneously clamped on his arm, dragging him closer, lips near his ear as he spoke.
"Start explaining," he murmured, "or I will tear your mind apart."
"It's nothing," Harry muttered, finding that explanation a bit too embarrassing to share.
Yew and phoenix feather dug into his side, and the next second it was gone, to blazing pain that he could scarcely think through.
He was in Voldemort's hold now, and had to swallow down bile. Tom took a step forward, pausing when the older version of his wand jammed into Harry's jugular.
"You two can…hash your numerous issues over at a later date, for now, child, I would be obliged if you could give us some privacy."
Tom folded his arms, features like stone, unmoving.
"...Unless you find him equally entertaining without his sanity or limbs?"
The younger Dark Lord's expression promised retribution.
"I will rip your lungs out and watch you suffocate if you so much as-"
"-Yes, yes," Voldemort sneered, dismissively. "Now, go play in the sandbox like a good little boy."
Another yew wand was pointed in his direction.
"It's alright, Tom," Harry said quietly. "I'll come find you once we've finished talking…although keep the restriction loosened."
"Oddly enough," Tom's voice was scathing. "I never find these reassuring claims all that reassuring coming from you, especially when they're to do with your own health."
Harry scowled.
"Funny-"
"-I Lord Voldemort, formerly known as Tom Marvelo Riddle, swear upon my magic that I will not cause intentional harm to Harry James Potter Evans within the next twenty four hours," Voldemort snapped, apparently losing patience.
They both went still, just as Voldemort shoved him away lightly, wand withdrawing. Harry raised a brow at Tom.
"Satisfied?"
They stood in silence, Harry feeling more than a little awkward, and in pain frankly due to the connection. Still, he kept his posture straight, not showing any of this, and Voldemort's thoughts appeared completely undecipherable in turn. He refused to be the first to talk; it was Voldemort who had sought this discussion.
"You care about him," the other stated. Him…Tom, obviously.
He wasn't sure what to say in response to that though, the elder didn't mean it as a question. In the end, he just watched and waited to see where this frankly bizarre and surreal situation was going to go.
"So why are you trying to change the past?"
Voldemort had found out about that then, somehow. Harry had been pretty certain that the other hadn't known about their plans and intentions before that, at least not fully.
He could feel a dark, pulsating fury through the connection, but for the life of him couldn't think what was angering the other so much.
Surely this was a weakness the other would exploit?
"Because he could be so much more than you," he replied, coolly. "And I would not see him so cheap a shadow of himself."
Voldemort's face twisted, hideous.
"You are destroying him,"
"And yet you're the one who obliterated him for your own persona," Harry snarled. "You're nothing like him."
"I grew up, perhaps you should do the same. We're not fifteen years old anymore, let it go."
"Then I wish you'd never grown up, because now you're just pathetic.
"The pain in his scar sparked, causing his facades to slip for the smallest second, though he knew Voldemort caught it. Then Harry felt something like wonder, but darker, colder, drifted across to him, seemingly subconsciously.
"I know you've figured it out - the paradox -you'd be nonexistent-"
"I'd rather be nonexistent than let him become you," Harry snarled. Voldemort's fingers flexed around his wand.
"He either becomes me or doesn't exist at all himself, you stupid boy."
Harry froze, not understanding.
"What-"
"The future is destroyed if the past is changed," Voldemort said coldly. "You must know that."
He figured Voldemort would be interrupting him in return, a revenge. Typical.
"Yes, but-"
"-You are part of his past now."
And his heart stopped.
How had he not thought of that? With all the time he'd spent on consideration of the topic?
Tom had already met Harrison Evans, so if Voldemort didn't exist to create the circumstances which led to Harry Potter becoming that exact version of Harrison Evans, the Tom he knew would be destroyed too.
He swallowed. Nausea rolled in his stomach. Voldemort was studying his expression, clinically.
"Your attempts of persuading a change of character in him, that weakening of paradox that you seem so proud of, doesn't help anything. It's not saving him, it's killing him, and the more time he spends with you the more contempt he holds for me…and the more likely it is that you will both go up in smoke."
It changed nothing.
It seemed made his plan even more important, because in his plan the past still all happened by the obliviated hands of the creature before him.
Would Voldemort be willing to go along with his plan where Tom was? Probably not. Tom had said he'd rather they both lose than Harry win alone.
In that, Voldemort was most likely the same. He wouldn't let Tom live at the sake of his own suffering and death, moreover it was evident that there was no fondness between the two variations of the same person. He wouldn't do it, even for Tom's sake.
"So your solution to that is for me is to walk away and…what…make him become you out of spite?" Harry demanded incredulously.
"If you cared about him, as you seem to or at least claim to, you would," Voldemort said. "Then you would stand aside and meet your Fate, not continue this foolish crusade."
Voldemort thought he just wanted to persuade Tom not to become him, he had no idea what Harry's true plan was.
"If that is your conclusion, then what is your theory as to your lack of memories?" he questioned. Voldemort's features shifted minutely, just for a moment, before it was composed again.
"He won't leave you if he remembers this time; he's too attached, too pathetically obsessive."
"He has a Munich band, if I were to go along with this…plan of yours, I wouldn't be able to manipulate his memories like you seem to be suggesting."
"I don't need you to perform the magic, all I require of you is that you'd make it possible for me to deactivate his band without him attacking me…for obvious reasons, I cannot fight him whereas he clearly had no such obligation towards me….he has a level of trust to you."
"I can't betray him, nor will I go against this apparent level of trust."
"Even if it saves his life?"
Bastard. It seemed he was willing to exploit 'care' after all.
"Does Tom know about this…dilemma?" he asked.
If he did, Tom was a raging hypocrite to criticise him for self-destructive tendencies.
"Of course he does, if I can think of it, so can he."
Right. There was another silence, and he could see the congregation of Headmaster, Tom, Hermione, Ron and teachers by the doors of the castle, watching them, arguing amongst themselves.
"Well," Harry said, in a mockingly cheerful tone. "I'd say it's been a pleasure talking t you, but I doubt that will ever be true. Was there anything else? Because I have a schedule and I'm sure you have a Death Eater meeting or something equally lame to attend to."
"Should I take this to mean I don't have your cooperation?"
Harry considered. If he didn't pretend to go along with this, what would be the consequences? Nothing good if the murderous glint on the other's countenance was anything to go by.
"I will do everything in my power to assure no harm comes to Tom," he said finally.
Voldemort appraised him, that odd nuance to his masked emotions present once more, before nodding once.
Harry turned to leave, keeping a strong awareness on Voldemort's movements as he did.
"Harry." He paused at that, unnerved to hear his name said without large amounts of death-threat from the snake-faced man. His tone was by no means warm, it was as cold and cruel as ever, but not over spilling with contempt.
"If you want another piece of advice…ask the old man about the prophecy."
He spun around to see nothing but empty air.
Voldemort had gone.
"What is going on?" Dumbledore and Tom both demanded the second he reached them. Harry took a second to find their identical wording and tone amusing.
"It's nothing," he repeated.
The next second, he found a yew wand pointed in his direction again, in an alarmingly Dark Lord-ish manner.
"You haven't practised Occlumency today yet, have you, sweetheart?"
The statement was low, honeyed, and infinitely lethal. Harry felt a pang of irritation.
"You know your plan?" he asked, sweetly. "How does it work when obliterating this reality obliterates you because changing my past etc means we never meet and so your past changes too?"
Tom's head tilted back slightly. Everyone else looked confused and unsettled by the switch into snake tongue.
"Well, I could tell you, but the more clarity and detail I give you the more you fight against me, so explanations would be counterproductive…as I'm sure Voldemort knew when he informed you of the matter."
"That's because your plan is crap," he deadpanned. "It has nothing to do with his opinion. You should know that."
"Plans?" Dumbledore questioned tersely. Harry rolled his eyes.
"Did you really think I was planning around this situation alone? Everyone's planning. You're planning. Tom's planning. I'm planning. Voldemort's planning. It's simply a race to see who's plan wins…and it will be mine."
Harry turned away, annoyed with the whole topic, only to stop when yew came into contact with his chest.
"What's Voldemort's plan?" Tom asked, eyes intent.
"What do you think his plan is?" Harry returned. "He wants to ensure he exists."
"And he is approaching you with guilt trips regarding my destruction if you prevent that existence," Tom guessed, shrewdly. "Interesting tactic…is it working?"
"Of course not," Harry scoffed, sidestepping the wand. "I hate him more than I like you."
Presumably. Maybe. It was complicated. Tom arched his brows, with a sense of knowing his thoughts which caused Harry to squirm. He looked away.
"You've looked flustered, darling. I hope that's from me and not Voldemort, because that I would find insulting, and he's far too old for you."
He could see the smirk on the other's lips, and shoved him. Dumbledore cut between them, disappearing down the corridor.
Tom's smirk broadened, before vanishing.
"Tell me everything."
A/N: So, Roger my beloved laptop has been fixed, so I actually had time to get you another update before Wednesday. I hope you enjoyed it, I found it horrendously difficult to write. Voldemort is so hard to characterise and write that its ridiculous, and in my head I just can't get him right and any scenes involving him come out as weak in quality etc. I hope that is not true outside of my self-criticism, but I'm not sure…
Thank you so much for all the people who are reviewing, I think I read every review like five times. =) Much appreciation, now, I have an exam on Wednesday to revise for.
PS: Do you guys still like Tom's plan? ;)