Nothing is mine.

Harry has another dream (it's not silent though, he can't manage that)

Come in the Speaking Silence of a Dream

He stood upon stone that gleamed like glass and watched blue fire ripple in it like sunlight in water, bouncing back off the curving walls all around him in an endless swathe of waves. There was nothing else in that strange space but the dizzying swirl of light; no sound, no breath of wind, not even the cool touch of stone upon his feet.

Harry reached out one pale long-fingered hand and from those azure flames formed a sleek arch of black stone.

Something waited in the gloom beyond, coiling in it; Harry felt it lurking, a serpent in the shadows. It was a thing of ink and words and whispers, hanging in the silence like a secret still unspoken; if it had fangs, they dripped with that ink, and it was thick and dark and hissed in his ears.

A swell of amusement rose within him at the thought of it, some great snake in the dark, but just ink really, ink and words that would bleed from it like Tom Riddle had bled from the diary and disappeared.

'Still laughing.' Voldemort's voice swept the dark, glass-like stone and that looming doorway away.

Nothing surrounded them now but fog, as thick a cloud of it as had hung over the cauldron in the graveyard and shimmering in just the same eerie way.

'Laughing, even now.' Tom Riddle stood there in the fog, but his eyes burnt red as hot coals and his skin was pale as bone. 'I have seen, Harry Potter. I have died. I have returned.' He spread his arms. 'Somewhere in that place I showed you, there is a prophecy. I heard a part of it, brought to me all those years ago on the lips of my most loyal servant. I will hear the rest; the world will hear the rest and they will know that it is time to rise, to overthrow this Ministry and those whose fingers they dangle from, and set it all to rights.'

Harry pictured Fudge and Umbridge tap-dancing together in shiny sequin-covered dresses as they dangled from the strings of some shadowy figure with a flicker of mirth.

'And still you laugh.' Voldemort's lips curled into a cold grin. 'Speak, Harry. I have done my best to twist this strange happenstance of magic that joins us so you can do more than marvel at my work.'

'I can?' Harry's voice echoed through the mist. 'Oh, I actually can. That's good. I hate it when I'm not allowed to talk, just ask any of my professors, but mostly Snape. Snape loves to badmouth me, I think he's upset because I don't follow his terrible potion recipes. Who dices things for a love potion, honestly. What's loving about dicing things into little cubes?'

Voldemort studied him with slitted crimson eyes. 'Do you want to see it, Harry?'

'See what? Don't say Snape. I see him every day when I'm awake; if I start dreaming about him, I'm checking myself into the insane ward of St Mungo's to save Fudge and Umbridge and all the rest of those idiots the trouble of convincing everyone I'm insane. And I guess I'll ruin all your fun in murdering me and pulling off all my arms and legs or eyes or whatever creepy thing you'll do.'

'I will show you the day I died, Harry.'

The fog drew back, swept aside as if by some invisible hand. In its place stood a small, crooked, cosy cottage of thatch and whitewashed stone walls. Roses climbed either side of its small, stout wooden door and the wonky, worn smooth path leading to it.

'Your parents hid here.'

The cottage blurred, blurred on through a shiver of fierce bright green, screams and shouts, and the shattering and splintering of wood.

'Your father died bravely.' Voldemort's red eyes bored into him. 'And your mother—' a flash of emerald magic tore through the haze '—she chose death rather than step aside from my path. They died well.'

The blur stilled, congealing like blood.

And Harry stared into his own wide green eyes as he stood in his cradle and laughed, giggling as he clutched the little wooden rail with one small, chubby fist and chewed at the other. A jagged zig-zag of blood marked his forehead, bright red upon his skin, and at the sight of it, his scar stung and prickled deep below his skin.

'You must have heard the stories. How you stopped me. How I went to kill your parents and you destroyed me.' Voldemort turned away as the memory faded. 'All lies of one form or another. I went there to die, Harry. I went without fear. To die. And to return. And to do what must be done for our world.'

'Tormenting Muggles, no doubt. Or ruining everyone's education because the school can't keep a Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor for more than a year without them dying or something. It's your fault we have Umbridge; have you seen our textbook? It has tiny cartoon pictures of vampires in it. Vampires. Apparently there aren't even any vampires in Britain.'

A bemused smile spread across Voldemort's face. 'Not since the ICW banished them all from Britain after Myrddin's disappearance many centuries ago.'

'Right. Exactly. No vampires. Not that the textbook would say anything useful about them anyway, it'd probably recommend crucifixes and garlic and pretending not to be a virgin.' Harry considered that. 'I'm guessing you don't have to pretend either, though.' He peered around through the mist. 'So, how did you make this place, can you make seats? Or a bed? Can I sleep in a dream that I'm dreaming and dream again? Does time conveniently and inexplicably slow down more and more each time we do that?'

'Our minds are joined by magic, the exact nature of it I cannot say for sure as it was no choice of mine to do it, but it is high magic, Harry. True power. The sort the parasites in the self-proclaimed Ministry of Magic would see fade from this world forever for fear it might topple them from their precarious pedestal.' Voldemort swept the mist away with a flick of his hand.

They stood before shelves of glowing white glass orbs. Great towering racks of them rose up to some dark distant ceiling, veiled in a thick blanket of dust, glimmering with power of countless quiet words and all the weight of what they knew would one day come to pass.

'The prophecy lying somewhere among these shelves is the sign our world waits for. When it is heard at last, all will know that I knew, that I crossed to the Veiled World and returned without fear, that the time has come. They will flock to me and I will lead them through blood to freedom.'

'Freedom from what? Not being able to do what they want to people they think are inferior to them?' Harry rolled his eyes. 'You're like Malfoy but taller, more vulnerable to sunburn, and admittedly probably slightly better at magic.'

'Freedom from a dying world, Harry,' Voldemort murmured. 'Freedom from stillbirth, from being smothered in the womb of a sick mother so the blind can cling to the false comfort of the dark. I bear you no enmity; I will offer you no cruelty or hate or harm that you do not seek to venture against me. Your part in my becoming is already played; I died before you, a cursed desperate life you later denied me to great gain on my part, and then finally I rose again, reborn with your blood in my veins. We are brothers by the old ways. Bound by it, or so it would seem. Even our wands would not turn on each other.'

'You're way too old to be my brother,' Harry said. 'Also, I saw what you did to Karkaroff, and honestly, it was really creepy. Even Dudley would pass on inviting you to family gatherings when your hobbies include stuff like that and he's not a smart boy. Aunt Petunia could possibly be tempted if you're very good at making coleslaw, though.'

'Fear is the greatest weapon I have, Harry,' Voldemort whispered. 'The only weapon, in truth, that can truly harm those I must oppose. For all my power, I am one wizard, one wand, against an autumn world that fears the first coming of frost. You will see for yourself the truth of which I speak when I retrieve this prophecy from where the Ministry has tried to bury it. Our whole world will.'

'Who cares about prophecies?' Harry asked. 'Trelawney babbles things about death every time she looks into a teacup near me. None of that stuff is real. Well, she did predict you coming back to life, but let's be honest, she was bound to get one right eventually at some point.'

'The Ministry would have you deny them too; they fear what will come to pass.' That cold grin returned. 'But those that know better, and they are not so few as you might hope, Harry, will see the signs and believe.'

Harry opened his eyes. 'Well, I suppose some had better make sure that you don't get to show everyone that prophecy. And that someone is always me when it comes to Voldemort's schemes.' He kicked back the hangings with a yawn.

Mid-morning sun poured through the window into the empty dorm.

'Wow, I slept a lot longer than I thought. Good thing it's October half-term.' He hauled on his clothes and dug out the Marauders' Map. 'I solemnly swear I am up to no good,' Harry murmured, scanning the Common Room and spotting Ron and Lavender by the fire. 'Nope—' he checked again '—where's Hermione?' Harry unfolded it a bit further and found her name alone in the library. 'Inevitably.'

The Common Room thrummed with chatter, punctuated by the bang of exploding snap and bursts of high-pitched laughter from the gaggle of first years in the alcove between the wall and the stairs.

Harry gave Ron a wave and a wink as he passed through.

'Hermione wanted to talk to you, mate.' Ron pointed out along the passage. 'She's in the library again. Basically legged it there after we had breakfast. She's been up every night reading weird old books or something all half-term.'

'Why aren't you having to come to the library?' Harry demanded.

'I objected,' Ron replied. 'Busy teaching Lav how to play chess.'

Lavender beamed at Harry. 'I figured out what all the pieces do now.'

'A perfect student.' He laughed to himself as a slight flush crept up Ron's neck. 'Well, I'll go bear the brunt of Hermione's latest obsession alone, then.'

'Bye, mate. Was nice knowing you.'

Harry ducked out of Gryffindor Tower and strolled toward the library, weaving through the throngs of students hanging about in the absence of the usual weekend clubs or on their way outside to the sunlit gardens. Hermione sat tucked into the furthest corner, barely visible between tall stacks of old books and a scatter of pieces of parchment all covered from top to bottom in her small, cramped handwriting.

'What are you doing?' Harry asked. 'Ron warned me you were up to no good, but that was about all I found out.'

'Because he was too busy staring down Lavender's top,' Hermione grumbled.

'She doesn't seem to mind that much.' He chuckled to himself. 'She knows what all the chess pieces do now, you know.'

'Urgh.' Hermione pursed her lips. 'Can she not have a shred of self-respect? Half her shirt buttons come undone the moment she sees a boy who might give her some attention. I bet she has a terrible relationship with her father.'

'Okay, moving on from what seems like a very jealous rage—'

'I am not jealous.'

'She said, jealously.'

'Harry, I will hex you.'

'With jelly-legs, right?'

Hermione released an exasperated sigh. 'Would you just—' she flapped her hand at all her notes '—shut up and listen to this.'

'What is all this?' Harry squinted at the notes. 'I'm trying to read it, but it looks like it was written by ants.'

'No.' Hermione hooked her foot around the chair next to her and dragged it back. 'Just come over here.'

He dropped into it. 'I'm here.'

'Okay, so…' She glanced around. 'You remember you mentioned the Old Ways and Greengrass calling you a Blood-Traitor?'

'I do. It stung a bit, and then I remembered the old ways were just Muggle-baiting and generally being a dick for no reason.'

'So I hunted through the library looking for any mentions of the Old Ways—'

'And wrote this huge essay?'

'No.' Hermione shook her head. 'No, that's the weird thing. There is nothing in the entire library that mentions them. I went all through the myths and tales sections. They've got Beedle the Bard, every edition of The Quibbler ever written, tons of stuff like that, but nothing on the Old Ways, not a single book.' She put her quill down. 'Only Hogwarts: A History.'

'Why is it always that book?'

'I think it's enchanted,' Hermione said. 'Every time I open it, I find some interesting fact related to something I've been thinking about or looking into.' She dug her copy out of the stack. 'There's a bit in here about the founders, and how—' she glanced at her pages of notes '—the great dispute that split the founders occurred when Slytherin, following the Old Ways, sought to cross between worlds.'

'That's it?'

'That's it.' Hermione pointed at the Restricted Section. 'I've got a pass for in there, for Arithmancy. I have a project about how the magic of numbers has been used throughout magical history — which includes some mentions of darker magic — but I can't take any books out that aren't related to that project, so...'

'So you copied down all the bits and brought them here,' Harry realised. 'What did you find?'

'Next to nothing where I expected,' she whispered. 'There're books on rituals that involve the ceremonial sacrifice of first-born children in there, Harry, but the only book I found that had anything but vague mentions was inside a book in the Divination section. It wasn't even a Divination book either, it was a treatise on the principles of translating prophecies as poems. And it wasn't even part of that book, it was just something stuck in the back cover.'

'What did it say?'

'The divination book referenced some Celtic prophecy as the oldest and most translated poem in the magical world stretching back thousands of years, but I got most of this from half of some seventh year's project on it from about forty years ago that was stuffed into its pages.' Hermione shuffled her notes around. 'A bunch of it was missing, including the actual poem and the seventh year's name, but that doesn't matter. Most of the bit that described the context for the poem was still there.'

'And…? I feel like you're dragging this out, Hermione. If it's something like roses are red, violets are blue, the Dark Lord will return, greater and more terrible than before, then I don't want to know anyway.'

'I'm not, it's just… weird that it was so hard to find when Pure-bloods love this stuff so much; it makes it look really suspicious.' She plucked a sheet out of the spread. 'Found it. So there's a whole bunch of old superstitions it talks about a bit as the Older Ways. There's a Veiled World, where all the fae and the gods and spirits are supposed to dwell, and it's where all the high magic exists, or what I think is the high magic Greengrass mentioned, because they used a different word. And apparently they believe that the real world and this world were once one thing, but they separated because people in the real world stopped believing in high magic. And now even those who do believe can't reach that world because it's separated so much, so true magic is dying and all the wonders of the magical world are disappearing.'

'That's kind of sad,' Harry said. 'Not a very cheerful thing to believe. No wonder they're all so miserable and angry.'

'It's obviously nonsense. The context is for a poem that's been translated like a hundred times across four-thousand years old, Harry; if magic was dying then, it would all be gone now.'

'And it really isn't.'

'Exactly. It's just superstition. People like Voldemort fan the flames of it and use it to try and control people and convince them to follow him.'

'He did mention something about the Veiled World,' Harry mused. 'I wasn't really listening to him, to be honest; I never do when he's monologuing.'

'Well you shouldn't. It's gibberish.' Hermione swept her sheets of notes together. 'These people believe that this prophecy poem they've been translating for thousands of years points to a whole bunch of insane stuff.'

'I mean, they follow Voldemort, obviously they're not very smart.'

'Exactly. And just listen to these quotes from some of the translated poems that're missing, Harry.' She took a deep breath. 'He Who Will Cross Worlds and Return. Those Who Seek to Bar Him From his Path Shall Fall Before Him. He Will Know Not Fear. Those Who Dream in Death Shall Recognise His Coming.'

Harry snorted. 'Bellatrix Lestrange said that last one when Voldemort freed them all from Azkaban. Fell right to her knees and everything.'

'Urgh, it's a cult. It's a creepy, murderous cult.'

'I mean, we kind of already knew that.'

'This stuff is insane, Harry,' she hissed. 'It's like those weirdos who think the world will be destroyed at the end of the millennium or whatever, except it implies that loads of Pure-bloods actually still secretly half-believe this nonsense. They really believe that their Veiled World will die and, I don't know, it doesn't say, but I don't think we'll like what they want for this world, Harry!'

'Shush,' Madam Pince hissed.

'How bad can it be?' Harry asked. 'Daphne said it was about the reverence of life, which, admittedly, I might not quite have understood from the sound of all this.'

'Really bad, Harry,' Hermione snapped. 'If their precious make-belief world is dying, they probably want to kill everyone they blame for it! Extreme religions are really dangerous.'

'It's all the marrying their cousins,' Harry reckoned. 'It just can't be good for you. Does Draco have webbed feet?'

'How would I even know that?'

'Well…' He waggled his eyebrows at her. 'I think we all know the answer to that question, Hermione.'

'Oh for the love of god,' she muttered. 'Just read the notes or do something that doesn't involve you talking while I finish this last bit.'

AN: Follow the linktree to read on (up to twenty chapters ahead) and to find all my original works. Discord has a couple of chapters as well!

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