It was the night that terrified him, and it was the night that he had to face in solitude. He had no expectations for what kind of time period it would be; he had already been disabused of the false sense of security that it would have to be something he could personally remember. As long as it had been since then, he still had no idea if it was a deliberate trick from Voldemort or just something that happened as he was diving deeper into Legilimency. As it happened, he found himself with Dumbledore and a young Tom Riddle.

"You cannot imagine it," he said simply. Perhaps he wanted to continue, but he only shook his head. "As I have said, though, I can only thank you for bringing such a matter to my attention. You are a credit to your post as Prefect."

The praise was reserved. Unlike with physical tension, there was no stretching sound in the room, but from the way that the two wizards looked at each other, most likely anyone could see it. All of the instruments in the room, the office of the Transfiguration teacher, had fallen to the same stillness, not whirring as magical astrolobes were wont.

"I am not a dark wizard," young Tom said, as if it was a joke, as if he had been saying he was not a singing donkey in a Tibetan theater. "I scarcely want to mention my youth, and yet, you know what I did, and I would think, that in my appointment, you would have recognized that I have since seen the error of my ways."

"Appointments to the post of Prefect are made fairly with regard to the academic achievement and compliance with rules. A student should expect to have earned around a hundred points before being considered in his fifth year. I can assure you that what would have been a crime, as I warned you four years ago, committed before your matriculation would not have any effect on the process, being unprecedented. You are correct in that I did not object to your appointment, and since then I have had no material reason to find fault with our Headmaster's decision. I do not, however, believe that this qualifies you to discuss matters on a grander scale. As much as I applaud any student in his efforts to learn more and study outside of the classroom, I cannot do something as reckless as allow you to accompany me as I question an informant who might know something about how to reach the dark wizard Grindelwald. Impressive as your achievements are-"

"Sir, I exposed a ring of students practicing Unforgiveable Curses, knowingly- they are criminals. They belong in Azkaban. Why can you not see that this is what I want for my life? I can help you- I know how they think. I know what they want. I know how they commit the crimes-"

"These adult dark wizards, fanatics following something far worse, are nothing like the schoolboys that you brought in."

Harry had little doubt from the beginning that Riddle had set someone up; he was not tattling on his own associates. Most likely, he had gotten someone else to trick a group of students to study dark magic, and then reported them. They might not have even thought they were doing anything dark; they might have been related to some enemy of young Tom Riddle; even an adult that he found inconvenient he would have realized he could eliminate by setting up his children.

"Tell me about this dark wizard, then," he said. "You tell me that I cannot imagine. Tell, me, then, and we shall see if I can imagine it."

Dumbledore could only respond with a senescent, tired, sigh. The story of how Grindelwald came to be had to be one that weighed on him, having extensively helped him. Most likely, it was already looking like no one else was going to be able to take care of the problem, as bizarre as that idea was; that a single wizard could cause so much trouble for an entire continent. In Harry's understanding; the problem was fundamentally the same. No one knew how to find him. If he appeared, it was only in the vicinity of those who could not stop him, and then as soon as he was done, he was out of there.

"I suppose I have no reason to tell you of his magical capabilities. Horace tells me you have asked other students for every news clipping to come across the school." If it was a trick to provoke a reaction, it did not work; Tom only stared straight ahead. "Instead, I think a little story should suffice. When we were young, perhaps around thirty, we met for the first time at a conference of higher academics. I suppose that virtually everyone who would become well known around that time was at that conference. There were undercover dark wizards; there were men who opposed the Statute, still, future world leaders, and some who have since been driven insane by their own experiments, though if they only wanted to get into the papers I supposed they might have ended up the most successful of all of us." He shook his head. "I realized not long after that before any true progress can be made in the development of a general theory of magic, or anything of that nature, work had to begin on far younger students, not just to teach them what it was they were trying to accomplish, but how to be responsible and compassionate. Consistently, Tom, some have taken to the wrong lessons, and the majority of them will not end up like Gellert or myself, but like the majority of the wizards at that conference."

"Did he kill them?"

"Not all of them, no. Some joined him and others died due to unrelated reasons. If those who have raised concerns about you are correct, and this is my final chance to give you any kind of warning before you cross the line, then you should be aware that evil cannibalizes itself. Grindelwald has, contrary to the way his ideals sound, done nothing to raise other wizards, and I would think that he would argue he can do nothing until he kills all of those who stand in his way."

"I should hope that the subordinate that has been captured, the one from whom you seek information, was aware of that ahead of time, but perhaps not. Perhaps he was someone less than talented or someone cornered by circumstance and felt he had no other choice but to join the side that seemed to be winning. Make no mistake, Professor; that will not be the position in which I find myself. I have too much the independent spirit to fall for the same trick."

"Perhaps you do. Perhaps, then, it is time to remind you that Grindelwald's time will soon come to an end, and though there are wizards out there more talented than myself, and there will be more in the future, the situation has reached a point where it is my responsibility to defeat him alone."

"That is not what I have been hearing, Sir," Riddle said. "I have heard that there are rallies in the streets of many different countries to make peace with him. Even those who oppose him on ideological grounds argue that they simply cannot stop him."

"There are many who believe it is impossible, and many who have never made the effort. For those who tacitly support him, an argument of inevitability is convenient, though it will do them no favors if he were to succeed at taking over their land."

"If there are that many more people who support him, though, if the magical world were to convene, as it convened before, for the Statute, would there be any consensus on him? Would it be universal?"

"Perhaps not. The will of the majority, however, does not decide the right thing to do."

"Did it not decide our position on Secrecy, though?"

"Perhaps it would be different if Grindelwald had reconvened the magical world through peaceful means. He has, however, proved himself a criminal many times over, and even if the magical world decided to make itself known to the muggles again, there would be no reason to forgive him for what he has already done. The punishment for his actions will be severe and even the cowards who would have knelt to him in fear will be making safeguards to ensure that the same problem does not happen again. They will realize that if indeed they had been right about a strong enough dark wizard being a runaway train, then the only way to solve the problem next time will be before it starts. The wounds on the magical Europe will remain fresh for years, and the rest of the world will not think itself so different as to be immune to the same kind of malady."

Neither of them spoke. Dumbledore had known, for years, perhaps, that Riddle was a bad egg and realistically the only thing that could contain his behavior was fear. He had, however, no concrete evidence against him, not after giving a child a chance to redeem himself. Perhaps he had hoped that if the kid acted out again, maybe at twelve or thirteen, it would be only after he had been warned, and long before he would have gotten smart about it, but it seemed like his whole life so far, he had been a model student, though unlikely to call attention to himself any longer. Most likely, he had not opened the Chamber just yet, but it would not be long. The youngest he could be as a Prefect was fifteen, even if he were a good student with a good reputation.

"We should not expect to see another like him for an age, then," the young wizard said, rising. "A ray of hope for the promise of rebuilding after his defeat."

Harry might have been shocked at the confidence with which the boy spoke if he thought it was at all genuine. Many of his classmates would have been glumly preparing for conquest by waxing progressively in favor of ending the Statute, not by force of course, but perhaps hoping that they would be seen as a friend to whichever side won. Still others would be betting more aggressively in favor of Grindelwald, what with his momentum. When Harry tried to put himself in that time period, it was hard to see why anyone would be terribly confident the juggernaut could be stopped, but as clarity waned for one matter, became frightfully certain why exactly Dumbledore had said that Voldemort was the far greater threat than any who came before him.

The dream continued, taking him from the office to a library where the boy was pretending to study, but a long enough examination of his notes revealed he was writing something in some inscrutable code. The fairly mundane scene of another student, a Hufflepuff from the tie, coming to claim the sheet of parchment in exchange for a piece of silver, was also not going to catch anyone's eye. It was only with Harry's privileged knowledge that he had any idea something suspicious was going on; everyone else in the room quietly focused on his own work; the school's culture had changed a lot in the last fifty years, but that was far from the most important observation to make.

Riddle had probably never even admired Grindelwald.

From the beginning, he seemed to do nothing alike. If he wanted to learn anything from that interrogation, it was probably more mistakes to avoid. Somehow, despite his calm demeanor and his profession as a headmaster rather than a duelist, the strength that lie dormant was clear to the young wizard. Did he have some magical sense that no one else could claim? Was he witness to some rare event that made things clear, or did he simply believe all of Dumbledore's threats, trusting him to be knowledgeable about skill level and honest enough to tell the truth about it?

It was disturbing the way that Voldemort was evil in a way that his followers would probably never understand, not unless they were the same, or in so deep they could never get out. He did not at any point believe the lies that his promoters peddled about their old enemy being a fool or a traitor or a tyrant only taking a back seat and manipulating things from the shadows. By contrast, he knew that Dumbledore was faithful and true, and that his talent was not at all overstated. His confidence in his victory could be taken as fact in light of the reality of his humility, similar to how his guilt explained his reluctance.

"Riddle," Harry said right after he left the room. "I'm right here."

There was no response. If it was an illusion and not a memory, its creator intended to let it play out. As a formless ghost he had no more power to intervene than he would if it were an actual memory. He could only scowl as he followed. If Voldemort intended to paralyze him with these visions, the one he was currently using was his master work. He had been powerless to change anything in the vision of a possible future, but perhaps that premise was limited by the imagination of the Horcrux within him, or unstable because it was inherently speculative, and that was why it eventually ended.

He decided not to say anything as he followed a version of his worst enemy younger than himself. It was possible that the intention was to get information out of him, after all. If his Occlumency was good enough to protect his unconscious mind, then perhaps the goal was to get him to reveal something without even realizing it, else trap him so long he no longer realized he was in a dream. When he looked around, everything was so much clearer than in previous dreams, something that would be quite helpful in keeping him asleep. When Riddle reached a nondescript place outside, away from all the doors and windows, to meet up with an associate, he decided that nothing was going to suddenly happen that would give him a chance to wake up; he was going to have to make that happen.

A curious possibility crossed his mind and he wondered if it was only because his mind was slipping into the infinite possibilities that seemed to exist within the wakeless world, but as he reached a ghostly hand in the direction of his oddly young enemy, it was starting to look like his only chance. There was an inversion as his hand overlapped with the memory of Riddle; he was nearly an adult and trying to take the place that the much older dark wizard had taken in his own younger years. The long series of memories did not surprise him, and he found what he wanted; it was the day that he crossed the line.

"What are you doing?" he asked. The young boy turned to look at him. A muggle child was lying on the ground, and it was unclear what exactly had happened. "What did you do to that boy?"

"Nothing he didn't deserve," an even younger Riddle said after a moment, hardening his expression. "I'm always getting blamed for things. A pot boiled over and everyone decided it was my fault. It's all because I'm different. The snakes are the only ones to ever talk to me like I'm not an enemy."

"There's a whole world of witches and wizards, Tom," Harry said. "You're not where you belong. You were never going to get along with these children."

"I... there are? Are you one as well?"

"Yes, and when I was growing up, I was treated rather unfairly by the nonmagical family where I was placed after my parents were killed."

"You weren't simply dropped off, then."

"Your mother is dead. She had no choice but to leave you in someone else's care. Many of these children here have a similar story. Some of them were abused and taken away, some of them were abandoned."

"If I have magic, she must have. Why could she not keep living?"

"Tom, your mother was kept out of any kind of formal education. Her natural talent was limited and what she had was never nurtured. What you must understand is that it's not true that she must have had magic, though, just because you do. Many of these children here could have been like you, and you never would have known."

"They knew I was different. I couldn't control it."

"Well, when I was a child, I did magic by accident, but the nonmagical kids never realized. I climbed up a wall one time and I thought the wind must have picked me up when I jumped; I was really light in those days." He shook his head. "With them, I was lucky. My aunt and uncle knew I had magic, though; they knew I had two magical parents and outside of some unlikely circumstance, that meant that I would have magic."

"If there are more of us, why don't they all know? Why hasn't anyone said they should be more careful with how they deal with us?"

"I'm not sure. When I was about your age, I heard it was because they would ask us for magical solutions for their problems, but there really are magical solutions for at least some of their problems. It happened during the conquest of the New World, when it looked like they were going to start causing problems for us, and for some people, they might have, but for the most part I think that the wizards decided that the rest of the world had nothing to offer them. They decided they didn't really care that some people would be left behind, orphans like yourself and those born among them."

"How do they hide the others, then?" he asked. "If there are really children born to nonmagical parents-"

"They hear about this sort of thing happening. Most kids aren't as good as you are at hiding it. There's a whole department of the magical government, but they don't find everyone. They try to make it so that the kid doesn't demonstrate accidental magic from then on, and then they erase people's memories."

"Is there any penalty, then?" he asked. "There must be some exception because they were mistreating me, despite being lesser-"

"There could be a penalty for what you've done. It's called muggle baiting. Ignorance isn't always a defense, and neither is your age. It depends on what the magical court decides. At this point all you can do is be honest and say that you got carried away, but they won't believe that you didn't mean to hurt these other children."

"How is that, exactly?" Riddle suddenly looked concerned for his own fate. "What evidence do they have against me?"

"Well, even if I'm not required to tell them what I've seen here, they'll be able to tell you used dark magic. You can't use dark magic without intending to hurt someone. I've tried."

"You've tried? How did you get away with it?"

"It was an act of war. The other side was using dark magic as well." He shook his head. "Look, your chances of getting a light penalty are decent. Accidental magic is a sort of raw need- you can do that without meaning to, and if you don't know what you're doing, it can be easy to pursue anything that promises power. Most likely, and this is something you'll need to remember- you knew you could do magic, and you had a lot of hate inside you because of the way that you were treated. Your untrained mind made a connection... and it was the first solution to present itself. You didn't just randomly think of how to make yourself harder to attack."

"Do the courts understand how dark magic works?" Riddle asked after a moment. "Would they accept that kind of argument?"

"Hardly. You would have to have someone who was experienced in it testify on your behalf."

"Would you, then, testify on my behalf?" the young dark wizard asked. The circumstances had forced him to be clever as they had before, but now they were forcing him to ask for help, which seemed for him even harder than using his words carefully.

"I'm not sure. Are you sorry?"

It looked like it was the strangest question he could have asked.