Chapter 24:

"Do you miss home?"

Harry glanced up at the question. A week had passed, a week of tensions, and trying to keep his composure, of lessons and lashing out. He just felt...drained. The Dreamless Sleep potion had helped temporarily, so he wasn't dying of sleep deprivation, but that didn't mean it was good, or that he wasn't still exhausted.

He hadn't had the opportunity to talk to Roger yet, he wasn't out of the Hospital Wing yet, and he felt too ashamed to confront Imogen even if that made him a bastard. Not that Im had made any attempt to come near him.

She was terrified.

She should be.

He rubbed his eyes, looking down again, as Tom crossed the room to sit next to him. He'd given up hiding text books by now; Riddle was fully aware that he was studying and trying to improve his duelling skills.

"Of course," he murmured, in answer. "I don't belong here. What's it to you?"
How could he not? Now, more than ever, he wished this had never happened, that even though elements of his life in the future with the rise of Voldemort and the way his friends had hardly responded to his questioning letters was crap, he...it was home.

Here, he felt more alone than ever. He wondered if he'd ever get home, or see them again - the uncertainty of what would happen next.

"Just curious," Tom shrugged elegantly. "Did you belong at 'home' then?"

"I'm getting bloody sick of your curiosity, Riddle," Harry bit out.

The Slytherin heir hummed at that, leaning back a little on the palms of his hands.

"Well, you do realize that all games aside the easiest way to stop is to answer my questions and give me what I want?" the other replied.

Harry scowled.
"That also seems the easiest way to destroy the future, so no thanks."

"Harry-" and maybe it was the use of his real name, not some warped endearment that really grabbed his attention, "-if you were going to change the future, do you not think your very presence would have already done for? Either, the timeline is fixed, or you no longer have a future to go back to and your resistance against assimilation is causing you greater unhappiness here. You don't belong because you won't allow yourself to."

Harry's eyes narrowed a little at Tom's speech, even as he recognized an uncomfortable amount of truth in the words. Maybe that just made it all worse.

"I see no point 'assimilating', as you put it, when I'll be gone soon enough. Not much point putting down roots somewhere you have no intention of staying and even I was stuck here, even if my future was destroyed, I would still never settle my roots with you or yours," he said coldly.

"So, even if you are stuck here, you're going to cling to a memory of crimes yet to be committed, and thus essentially charge an innocent man as guilty," Tom murmured. Harry's jaw clenched, and he wanted to punch the other in frustration at that comment,.

"You're hardly innocent," he returned.

"Perhaps not. But I am not guilty of the murder of your parents. Not yet."

"And yet, if the timeline is inevitable as you seem to believe, you will be, so I'd rather not associate with that. I could give you knowledge and it wouldn't change a thing, in that instance, but I just don't like you so frankly I'd rather refuse you anything that brings you happiness or reprieve," Harry spat.

"And yet, if the timeline is fluid and you really do need to so desperately obliviate me and guard secret knowledge from me, that also simultaneously makes you complicit to my crimes. You defend what I am led to believe is a traumatic and damaging future. You could kill me. Yet you don't, and so despite your belief that you are somehow saving the future you are in fact behaving selfishly so you can go home, and condemning all who I have killed. I mean, you could also be trying to sway me from my path of darkness, but you don't seem very interested in that either."

Harry paused, his insides rolling. Tom was just winding up - he knew Riddle, the bastard, was just winding him up - but that didn't mean it wasn't working or that the words didn't sink like poison into his veins.

"I am not responsible for your actions," he growled.

"You're responsible for not stopping me, however much whether it is your duty to do so or not is debatable," Riddle drawled. "Though, of course, I have yet to do anything to do you harm and so your hatred is still nothing but prejudice."

Harry glared at the Slytherin heir, furiously.
Yes, Tom hadn't literally killed his parents, but - his head felt so jumbled, and he felt so tired and-

"Is this your convoluted way of telling me to get over myself?" he questioned, icily.

"If I need to dumb myself down for you to understand me," Tom smiled, pleasantly. "Yes. Darling."

"Then you have some bloody audacity," Harry said, flatly now. Riddle raised his eyebrows, before his eyes flickered, and realization bloomed on his handsome features.

"Oh..." he said softly.

Harry's fingers twitched for his wand.
"What?" he snapped.

"It must be difficult for you not to have any validation for your hatred," Tom murmured, and Harry loathed the way those dark eyes were fixed on him. "You're like a puppet with its strings cut, moving jerkily through the same jarred patterns and rehearsal because it's what you know and its easier than maybe accepting that you're projecting your worst nightmares on a student far too similar to yourself for your own comfort. It's so much easier to demonize me, isn't it?"

"I don't need to demonize you to know that you're a bully!" Harry's eyes were wild. Maybe there was truth there, but it was far more than that which had him surging to his feet. "Maybe you should stop pretending you understand things you don't have the first clue about!" he hissed.

"And what is it I don't know?"
The calmness in Riddle's voice infuriated him, made him want to lash out and tear and claw and ruin that perfect composure so he wasn't the only one unravelling in a time period that wasn't his own, confronted on every side with no reprieve.

It bothered him what Tom became, of course it did, but even more it bothered him that Tom Riddle was not Lord Voldemort yet and the guilt of inaction crippled him, and the confusion gnawed at his bones and lines of black and white smeared to grey.

"It still happened!" Harry nearly yelled the words, and maybe there was some venom in his voice, different from before, because Riddle almost looked surprise for a moment. "Maybe you haven't done it yet, but it still happened. It's my past, not yours, and I swear you are not invalidating all of that on some game or manipulation. It still matters! And you have some bloody audacity to tell me to get over it when you have no idea what's it like!"

"I grew up in a Muggle Orphanage, hero." There was something brittle and icy to Tom's tone now. "And I don't like limitations so don't you ever dare have the audacity to transpose your preconceptions onto me. I am not some black and white villain in a story book, and your own experiences do not define me either."

Harry stared for several long moments, and it took him a second to realize that there was barely an inch between them as they glared at each other, with trembling fists and rigid shoulders and chests heaving.

"I am never going to apologize to you for what my future self did, because I am not yet him and frankly, I don't actually give a damn about two people who I've never met and will wager were soldiers in a war. They made their choices."

"Shut up," Harry snapped.

"Oh, I'm sorry, the truth is difficult, isn't it?" Riddle mocked. "You know we are the same."

"What the hell do you even want to accomplish from all of this?" Harry demanded. "I can acknowledge that we have similar traits without admiring what you are."

"But you can't be comfortable without clinging onto some delusion of me. You need to be the hero because then maybe, just maybe, it justifies the fact that your parents died for you."Harry's teeth gritted, and he felt like he had been suckerpunched. Tom's eyes remained unforgivingly fixed on him, even as the Slytherin Heir continued. "And every hero needs a villain, don't they?"

Harry could have thrown up at that statement, squeezing his eyes shut, turning away.

Tom's expression seemed to soften, in that fake way, as the other reached over, giving his shoulder a squeeze.

He jerked it away.

"Even if I don't hate you for being Voldemort, doesn't mean I like you," Harry said, quietly. "Why are you doing this? I know you're not desperate for my approval or anything."

"As I said, I dislike limitations."

"There's more than that."
He just wanted to stop arguing for once, to have some reprieve. He wanted to go flying, there were Quidditch Tryouts soon. Whilst he had no desire to play for the Slytherin team, he sincerely missed his broom and the game.

Riddle was silent for a long while, to the point Harry was convinced he wasn't going to answer at all.

"Do you want me to judge you for being the boy who lived?"

Harry turned again, slowly, at that. He couldn't say he wanted that. Anonymity had been the only solace he found here, the freedom without pressure and just his own actions to define him.

Oh.

"Then perhaps you should allow me the same courtesy," Tom finished, walking out.

Quidditch Tryouts couldn't come sooner.

It was clear that Evans was a rather great threat in the future, and Tom received an inordinate amount of pleasure with toying with him, his morals and emotions and expectations.

It was interesting though. Harry knew too much of him to lie so blatantly, he had to carefully select his truths and offer them over to get anything of true value and substance in return. He needed to lure Harry closer.

After all, if he could convert the Boy who Lived to the Dark Side, it would be a massive achievement, and knowledge - no matter the timeline - was power and Harry knew too much to be easily disregarded.

If he couldn't force Harry into telling him more, or trick or con him, perhaps he should try the method of gaining his trust. That required a far more careful game, but he relished the challenge.

Maybe he even liked the thought that someone would, at least a little, understand him.
Harry understood more than most, even if he was blinded to certain facts.

But he was certain he'd given the boy something to mull over.

A/N: More of a turning point chapter. Bit short. Oh well. It's a chapter. Next up, whenever next happens, is Quidditch Tryouts.

In case you hadn't noticed, I'm horribly blocked on SIS. I know what will happen next chapter, just...blah.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed!