Tom was usually an early riser. He liked to wake up with the sun or right after if he wasn't working, have tea or coffee, read the paper, and start his day early. He enjoyed a sense of accomplishment in getting most of his checklist done before lunch so he could enjoy his afternoons and evenings doing whatever he'd like guilt-free. He could no longer survive on only a couple hours of sleep as he had in his youth, but he still only needed five or six to feel mostly refreshed. When he taught he very much followed a similar pattern, though he did rise earlier as a result, usually before dawn. He'd take his free periods in the morning to grade and adjust lesson plans as necessary, write to the parents of his Slytherins, so come the afternoon and evening he could do as he pleased, even if he did at least need to be about in his office or by the dorms in case he was needed.
When he woke up the following day in the half-clean guestroom in Grimmauld Place, the sun was already well into the sky and bathed the room in warm light. The heat and humidity from the summer had already seeped into the room, warmed by the direct sunlight, and he let his eyes fall shut for a few minutes longer as he tried to silence the thoughts and stresses from encroaching on him for a few moments longer. But the warmth of the room became too much- he'd need to see if Sirius had thicker curtains than the sheer ones that were currently hung, if only to keep the room from becoming too warm during the day, especially if he was to be here for any length of time.
Finally, he arose, throwing the covers back and rolling inelegantly out of bed. One of his best friends, Tammy, had always commented that she found it ironic how graceful he could be in some moments and then not the next. He looked disheveled as hell- he'd shed his robe and button down and trousers and dumped them with his bag on an armchair that was tucked into the corner beside an armoire. He'd need a shower, but the state of the shared bathroom in the hall made him shelve that desire for later- the bedroom itself was only half clean, and Tom knew he'd need to inquire about the state of the townhouse at some point. Instead, he dressed in his clothes from the day prior, leaving his robe folded on top of his bag on the chair and poked his head out of the room.
He could hear loud voices and music coming from the stairwell that led back down, and he braved the dusty bathroom long enough to find out that the plumbing did work. He splashed some water on his face, trying to freshen up the best he could. The mirror was broken, but he could see he had bags under his eyes, and with no towels handy, he raised his arm and wiped the water away with his sleeve. He had a pressure behind his eyes and in his temples, the threat of a headache that he knew was more likely due to dehydration and stress than anything else.
His wristwatch told him it was nearing noon, which felt dreadfully late. He took a deep breath, steeling himself, and left the confines of the bathroom and headed for the stairs. The commotion was coming from the drawing room on the first floor directly below. Molly, a handkerchief tying her hair up and out of her face, was supervising Harry and Ron as they moved the furniture from the room while Hermione and Ginny were starting the process of scrubbing the room down.
Hands in his pockets, he leaned on the frame of the entryway to the room, watching, not wanting to interrupt, but Molly started when she saw him.
"Oh- sorry, I hadn't noticed you-!" She said, wringing her hands, "Ginny, will you grab Fred and George and tell them to go get started on finishing the bedroom Mr. Riddle is in, and then I'll help them with the bathroom-"
Tom was ready to object, as he could handle it if need be, but Ginny had already fled from the room and down the stairs. "Thank you, but please call me Tom."
"Oh, of course then," she hesitated, seeming flustered and unsure of how to proceed, so Tom saved her the trouble.
"Is there coffee or tea downstairs?" He asked. He doubted any food was still hanging about from breakfast, but a drink would tide him over until food was brought out for lunch. "And has Albus returned?"
"Unless Remus or Sirius made coffee, I think it's just tea. I'd left a pot downstairs in case anyone wanted more," Molly said, nodding her head quickly, less flustered with the olive branch Tom had offered by way of filling the silence. "But the Headmaster hasn't been back yet."
He hadn't explicitly said what time he'd be back the following day, but Albus was in for a rude awakening if he thought Tom would be filling to sit around in the Black Townhouse twiddling his thumbs and… what, preparing his lesson plans for the school year? He knew sometimes Albus could lose track of himself when he lost himself in a project. It was getting worse as he got older, but the school term would be starting in a couple weeks, and they didn't have time to be sitting about.
"Thank you, I'll retrieve some tea and pop back up to offer assistance," Tom said, which Molly quickly insisted was unnecessary. He didn't linger, not intending to argue with the woman about it, and instead took the stairs down to the ground floor. He'd expected said tea was in the kitchen, but as he passed the open dining room he spied a large pot in the center of the formal dining table and cups and saucers out around it. Sirius and Remus were sitting at the table taking a break, sleeves rolled up and sweat stains on their shirts.
"He awakens!" Sirius said, perking as Tom stepped into the dining room. "Ginny popped in and stole the twins to tidy up the bedroom the rest of the way for you, so we figured we'd take a break as well."
"What were you working on then?" Tom asked, as clearly the dining room itself was completed. The wallpaper was in drastic need of updating, the color faded and the edges peeling in some of the corners, but otherwise all of the furniture and the hardwood floors were clean and polished.
"The study," Remus explained, gesturing vaguely with his hand. "Walburga began stuffing as much as she could collect in dark artifacts in there and the library after her husband died."
"Mum was mad," Sirius said in agreement, taking a sip of his tea.
Tom poured himself a cup- it was lukewarm but had been steeped to perfection in the pot, so he added a teaspoon of sugar and sat across from the pair. "Why is the townhouse in such… disrepair?" He asked finally.
"Couldn't exactly keep it up after dear ol' mum died from Azkaban could I?" Sirius said, falsely jovial with a bite to the words.
Tom blinked, setting his tea down. "What?"
"Ah, yeah, so long story short, our mate from Hogwarts, Pettigrew?" Sirius asked, and when Tom nodded his head he continued on, "He joined Voldemort and betrayed James and Lily. Only we'd told everyone that I was their secret keeper. I was half mad with grief, so once I made sure Harry was saf,e I went off and tried to kill the bastard so-"
"That wasn't short," Remus cut in, an unamused smile on his lips. "They put Sirius in Azkaban thinking he was the one who betrayed them to Voldemort."
"Take the fun out of it, why don't you," Sirius grumbled, sipping his tea.
"What about Regulus?" Tom asked, already fearing the answer.
"Killed while I was in Azkaban- I never got the specifics, but he'd joined up with the Death Eaters," Sirius explained, looking down at his tea contemplatively, and Tom remembered how he'd stared at the photo of Regulus with Sophie on his knee. It was also unsettling. He'd always like Regulus, a calm balance to Morgan's chaotic brilliance, akin to a steady rock in a hurricane, but knowing he had the capacity to join up with a group that he could only compare to Nazis was disturbing.
They'd still just been children themselves, from the sounds of it. Tom also looked to his tea, trying to keep all the moving pieces straight in his head. "So you've been released then?"
Sirius let out another bark of a laugh and then stifled it with a sip of his tea, raising his eyebrows as he looked at Remus who was also smirking.
"May I introduce you to Sirius Black, the only man to escape completely unaided from Azkaban," Remus said, raising a hand as if truly presenting the man, and Sirius gave a little fake bow. "Thank you, thank you, you're too kind."
"That is… astounding," Tom conceded, leaning back in his seat, "how did you manage that?"
The men exchanged a glance, and then Sirius shrugged one shoulder, silently communicating something and looked back at him. "James, Peter and I became animagi to help Remus with his transformations while we were at Hogwarts. Unregistered, of course."
"That's also fairly impressive, but how did that help with the escape?' Tom pressed.
"Apparently the dementors have a harder time parsing out animal emotions because they feel so different from a human's," Sirius explained. "I started spending more time in my animagus form until I was strong enough to walk and swim out. No wand, so I couldn't apparate, but once I cleared the grounds, it was easy enough to hunt for myself."
Tom stared at the man, contemplating what question to ask in which order. "So… What happened to Pettigrew?" He finally settled on.
"He's out doing Voldemort's bidding. He was the one who brought him- it- whatever, to the graveyard where they port-keyed Harry to, so I guess he's in tight with the nutter." Sirius said, trying to sound nonchalant but Tom could see the steely glint in his eyes as he spoke.
The biggest problem Tom was seeing was there were all these puzzles pieces floating there, waiting to be connected, and all at once he hated that he felt likely the same compulsion that Albus had the night prior- to get a chalkboard or a piece of parchment and begin getting all of those pieces written down so he could better organize them.
Tom pressed his hands to the table, suddenly enough it made Remus jump. "I need parchment, a quill or pen or whatever is available, and we'll need Harry-" He said, pushing himself to his feet.
"Wait, why?" Remus asked, sounding concerned.
"I need a breakdown of what has happened of note between him and, I am loathe to call him Voldemort but Nazi Wizard is beginning to be less funny the more true it rings to be and I also refuse to call him 'the other me' constantly-" He rambled, "But if he's had multiple encounters, and Albus intends for me to help in exchange for getting me home, then I best get started."
Sirius seemed to take his request to heart and followed him from the room, heading further down the hallway in the direction of the study and library while Tom took the stairs, pausing at the top of the banister to clear his throat loudly, interrupting the cleaning process once more.
"Sorry- I need to steal Harry away to discuss-" he paused, trying to find a short and succinct way to encompass the insanity that he was now undertaking, "-everything."
Harry, who was scrubbing a suspicious-looking stain on the hardwood floor looked to Molly, who nodded her head amicably.
"Oye," Ron snapped, drawing both Tom and Molly's attention, "What about me and Hermione? We were there every time You-Know-Who dragged him off to try and murder him!"
Tom frowned, furrowing his brows and looked to Harry who nodded, looking undisturbed by what his friend had said, "I mean, he's right."
Tom looked back to Molly and she sighed heavily, throwing up her hands in defeat, "Go on then! You helped all morning after all, I'll go start getting lunch together while you lot go and help," she waved her hands dismissively, pulling her wand out and began tidying up the cleaning supplies while the three teenagers followed him back down to the ground floor.
"Here," Sirius said by the doorway of the dining room, rolls of parchment in one hand and a quill, what looked suspiciously like a pen, and a phial of ink in the other. "Figured the dining room would be the best; we'll have the most space."
Tom nodded, taking the supplies and moving back to the chair he'd occupied only moments before, unstoppering the ink. The pen was a fountain pen, the most muggle of writing tools a family like the Blacks would be willing to use, though Regulus had conceded a ballpoint pen was easier to use when Morgan had shown them to him.
"Right, we're going to do what Albus did last night, but in reverse," Tom explained, pondering how to even structure the notes of this and knowing immediately he'd likely have to re-write them into something more cohesive once he had all the thoughts out and on the paper.
"Harry, you said you encountered him five times?" He asked, beginning to jot down numbers and the teens moved in to sit across from him at the table. Sirius also retook his seat, but Remus hadn't moved and seemed overwhelmed by Tom's near frenzied state.
"Well," Harry paused, his fingers twitching as he reviewed things in his head, "Four times that I physically encountered, the fifth was that he sent dementors after me and my cousin this summer, but he wasn't actually there for that."
"Shacklebolt said we didn't know for certain who ordered the dementors to Surrey," Remus said, tilting his head. "It may not have even been him."
"Come off it- There is no way that there could be anyone else behind that," Sirius disputed, shaking his head.
"Moving on, first encounter," Tom said, looking back to Harry, who exchanged a quick glance with his two friends.
"Well, when he tried to kill me when I was a baby, the night he, y'know, killed my parents," Harry said.
"Samhain, nineteen-eighty-one," Sirius said darkly.
"Sow-when?" Harry asked and Tom could feel his nerves already starting to slowly fray.
"Samhain, Halloween, the halfway point between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice, the start of the pagan new year," Tom answered quickly, waving a hand, "One of you explain what happened exactly; was this by chance, or was he actively-"
"Actively," both Remus and Sirius said harshly, and Tom began filling in the dates and information as they were provided. "There was- well," Remus cleared his throat, "James and Lily had gone into hiding, and they had a Fidelius on their home. Peter was, well, we just went over that a bit ago, and then…" He trailed off, and Tom could see his throat working to swallow, his eyes becoming glassy.
"My dad tried to hold him off so my mum would have time to grab me and go." Harry continued on, looking more uncomfortable about Sirius and Remus's grief than his own. "But I guess he, Voldemort I mean, told my mum to step aside and he'd spare her, and she wouldn't. Dumbledore told me that it created a shield when he killed her and rebounded the killing curse."
Tom paused in his writing, thinking hard, not even thoughts but rather fragments of ideas floating just out of reach before he was able to herd them together to make sense. "Sacrificial magic is one of the oldest and strongest forms of magic. I wonder if it was strengthened in any way due to it happening on Samhain," he said quietly, adding a few more notes to the parchment. "So Harry survived the killing curse. What happened to Voldemort?"
"The killing curse rebounded. Everyone always thought it killed him too," Harry said with a shrug.
"Thought it killed him?" Tom repeated back, and all three teenagers nodded their heads. "Why couldn't they confirm, was there no body?"
"No," Sirius said, "I got there pretty much immediately after-" His voice was quiet, he was staring at his almost empty cup of tea, eyes glassy. "Harry was safe in his crib, just… looking at me. The room and most of the top half of the first floor was collapsed like an explosion had gone off. He was gone, I didn't even know how or what had happened, just…" He took a deep breath and covered his face with his hands, leaning forward, elbows resting on the table as he tried to compose himself.
Tom gave them all a moment, but Sirius and Remus were clearly the most affected, having lived through the events. Harry seemed morose, but otherwise more worried for the two traumatized adults in the room than himself.
It didn't make any sense. Tom reread the very first bullet point. Why hadn't there been a body? Even if the killing curse had rebounded because of Lily's sacrificial magic, it didn't make sense that there wouldn't be a body. He tapped his fingers impatiently, hung up on the detail.
"What happened next?" He finally asked, prompting them to continue.
"Nothing," Harry said, taking back over. "Well, not until I got to Hogwarts. Dumbledore left me with my mum's sister. But then in my first year Voldemort was possessing Professor Quirrell, he was the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor that year and was on the back of his head and he wore a turban over it." Harry gestured in a wrapping motion around his head, and Hermione and Ron nodded their heads in agreement.
"He always smelled like onions and chemicals," said Hermione, thoughtfully. "I realized afterwards that he was likely taking a lot of potions trying to stay physically stable."
Tom wrote the information down, connections already beginning to form, jotting down questions on the side of the parchment, but didn't ask as he felt like half of them would be explained as they continued. "Why did he possess Quirrell?"
"He was trying to get the Philosopher's Stone. Albus was holding onto it for the Flamel's. He broke into Gringotts right before the semester started and tried to steal it, but Hagrid had picked it up and brought it back here to Hogwarts," Harry explained.
"And then the madman put it at the end of a series of weird guards and puzzles inside the Mirror of Erised," Ron said. "Dumbledore, I mean."
Tom paused long enough that Ron looked to his lap, but Tom decided against asking because if it had been specifically relevant to Voldemort he was sure Harry would have mentioned it. "And then?"
"Well at the end of my first year the three of us thought Snape was the one trying to steal it for Voldemort, but by the time I got there in the end- Hermione went back to help Ron cause the giant chess pieces and all- it was Quirrell and then when he tried to touch me he began burning. And when he started to win, I grabbed his face." Harry paused, blinking owlishly and then paled. "I just realized I killed someone…"
"Merlin, Harry," Remus whispered, reaching around Hermione to pat Harry's shoulder, but the teenager didn't seem to notice it, staring hard at the table. "You were defending yourself."
"Well, yeah, but like, I never thought about it like that before. Just, I stopped Quirrell, but like, I stopped him by killing him." Harry began to wring one wrist with the other, looking fairly distressed. Tom didn't honestly know if he had the energy to comfort the teen, but luckily Remus was putting the effort in.
"I mean, you killed Voldemort too the first time when you were a baby," Ron finally said, shrugging his shoulders. Hermione hissed at him, reaching around to smack the back of the ginger's head. "What? I'm just saying!"
"Do you want to take a break?" Tom asked, and there was a pause and Harry took a breath, steeling himself and then shook his head.
"So then the next year Lucius Malfoy gave Tom Riddle's old diary while we were at Flourish and Blotts to Ginny-" Harry said, starting to look calmer only to be immediately cut off by Ron.
"Bloody wanker shoved it into my sister's cauldron with all the other books she was carrying so she wouldn't notice," Ron snapped, but Harry just nodded his head in agreement.
"And the diary was possessed with the memory of Voldemort from when he was a student," Hermione said, ignoring the two boys, trying to get them back on track. "She said she started writing in it and then it began writing back and the more she wrote in it the more she began having these periods where she wouldn't remember things. It petrified a few students, then Nearly Headless Nick-"
"Yeah, and you!" Ron snapped and Hermione waved a hand dismissively as if it weren't an issue, "Thank Merlin you're a bloody genius and were holding that bit of scrap paper on basiliks in your hands or we'd never have figured it out."
Hermione blushed a bright red, ducking her head and mumbling a quiet thanks.
"Voldemort possessed Ginny and wrote on the wall some stupid thing about "Her skeleton will remain in the chamber"," Harry said, frowning as he tried to recall the words, "And Ron and I overheard that is was Ginny missing and between everything we grabbed Lockhart- he was our Defense professor that year-"
"Talk about a ponce," Ron muttered.
"But when I opened the chamber he tried to obliviate us, only it backfired on him because Ron had broken his wand that year. It caused a cave-in, and Ron worked on digging us out and I went ahead to get Ginny." Harry said, nodding his head, eyes wandering occasionally as he remembered.
"McGonagall just let you wander down to a Chamber of Secrets?" Remus asked, aghast, and Tom agreed that he might need a discussion with Minerva.
Harry pressed his lips into a thin line, and Ron quickly tried to turn a laugh into a cough. "Well, no, but we had my dad's invisibility cloak, and we couldn't let Ginny die."
"And Dumbledore had been kicked out by the Board of Governors," Ron added.
"You had a host of professors you could have asked, and instead, two second years went into a chamber after someone who had the ability to possess another person?" Tom asked, joining Remus in his astoundment. Sirius looked equal parts mildly amused and concerned by the entire thing.
"Well, to be fair we didn't know he was possessing her at the time," Harry said, raising a hand and running it through his hair. "We thought whoever the Heir of Slytherin was had physically grabbed her."
"Instead, it was the bloody diary," Ron grumbled.
Harry nodded, "Right, so I got down there and Ginny was laying on the ground and was white and cold as ice and I couldn't wake her up when in saunters teenaged Tom Riddle happy as can be and calm as a cucumber with his stupid wavy hair- no offense," Harry said suddenly as if remembering just then who he was telling this story to, blushing, "But he was wearing Slytherin robes and- I didn't explain that I'd written in the diary, shite-"
"Is it relevant?" Tom asked with a sigh, trying to keep up with his notes.
"I mean, a little?" Harry scrunched his nose and sighed, "Ginny had tried to get rid of the diary cause she knew something fishy was going on and when I got it I wrote in it and it wrote back and it was Tom Riddle, but I didn't realize it was like, teenage Voldemort, just a student who enchanted a diary, and he showed me a vision from his time at school where Moaning Myrtle got killed by the basilik when he was at Hogwarts and he accused Hagrid and his spider-"
"Acromantula," Hermione interrupted.
"Yeah, that, he convinced Dippet it was what had killed Myrtle, and Hagrid got expelled," Harry explained.
Tom's stomach turned as he recalled his own memories of dealing with a certain half-giant Gryffindor with an Acromantula while he'd been at Hogwarts, but did not feel the need to bring it up.
"But then Ginny broke into our dorm and stole the diary back, but anyways, when we went into the chamber she was there with the diary and Tom's out of the diary and I asked him to help and he goes on this whole long-winded monologue about how he was using Ginny's lifeforce or whatever to become a person outside of the diary and then calls the basilisk out of the statue of Salazar and it was like, I dunno, fifteen or twenty meters long? About as wide as I was tall as the time."
"I think I'm going to have a heart attack," Sirius complained, pale, leaning forward to look around Ron, eyes wide with concern. "Basilisks are a class five Magical Creature. That's like- well a…" He waved a hand, suddenly looking even more agitated, "Dragon, god, of course you've run afoul of a class five magical beast, you'd only done so every year but your first year."
Harry paused, looking thoughtfully at Ron and then Hermione. "What class is a troll?"
"A what?" Remus demanded, nearly hissing.
"A Class Four, I believe," Tom said, if only to keep himself from throwing the parchment into the air.
"So a Class Four in first year and then a Class Five in second, third, and fourth," Harry said, nodding his head, and on either side of him, Hermione and Ron also nodded their heads in agreement.
Tom looked at Remus and Sirius, who were both looking at each other, all of them clearly dumbfounded by whatever the fuck Harry Potter's life had been. What had Albus been doing during all of this? Sitting around twiddling his thumbs?
"Anyways, Teen Voldemort set the basilisk on me and she wouldn't listen to me but Fawkes, Dumbledore's phoenix, showed up and pecked her eyes out and it became another game of Harry Hunting but with a large basilisk that wanted to kill me in the plumbing system that ran around the Chamber," Harry said, rambling on as he picked at his nails, looking a little self-conscious.
Tom took a very deep breath, trying to ground himself because- again- what the fuck- but Harry continued, undaunted. "Fawkes came and dropped the Sorting Hat off, and I realized there was something in it, and I pulled out this giant sword and was trying to whack it with it, but then-" he paused, scrunching his nose again in thought, "Weird how it all kinda blends together-"
"Adrenaline can do that," Remus said, sounding faint.
"Well, I tried to stab it a few times but its scales were basically like stone and nothing worked and when I was trying to get away from it I started climbing up the status of Salazar and it started trying to eat me and I realized there weren't exactly scales in its mouth so the next time it tried to bite me I just shoved the sword up through the roof of its mouth, but when that happened one of its fangs got me cause one was stuck in my arm."
Harry paused, only because all three men at the table had their heads in their hands in some form or another, staring at the teenager in pure horror. Sirius had his chin tucked into the palm of one hand, his other squeezed into a tight fist tight enough his knuckles had turned white. Remus looked like he'd gone past white to grey, like he might pass out, a hand pressed over his mouth. Tom was twirling the fountain pen agitatedly in one hand, trying to resist the urge to begin shredding the parchment in front of him, his right hand curled into a fist that he had pressed to his mouth, his leg bouncing hard enough it had begun to shake the table.
"Don't mind us," Sirius finally wheezed, sounding as stressed as they all looked. "Then what?"
"Oh, don't worry," Ron said, smiling grimly, leaning back in his seat, "All of the Harry Stories are like this."
"What?" Remus quietly demanded.
Harry looked between all of them, looking guilty, of all things, but obliged. "So I started to get really dizzy and Voldemort was pissed I'd killed the snake and, actually he had both of our wands, he'd taken mine and Ginny's immediately when I got there, but he was monologuing again and I was like, okay well if I'm going to die then I might as well kill this ponce and save Ginny at least, and the diary was right there so I grabbed the fang out of my arm and stabbed it into the book. And I don't know what I was expecting really, I didn't have a plan, obviously, but ink began bursting out of it kind of like blood and Voldemort began to go nuts, so I kept stabbing it until he disappeared."
"What. The. Fuck?" Sirius hissed, and Tom nodded in agreement. Remus had gone from grey to a bit green.
"I'm fine!" Harry insisted, looking between them all, "Ginny woke up just about immediately and then Fawkes was there and cuddled up to me and cried and I remembered that Dumbledore had told me phoenix tears had healing properties and then the wound closed up and the burning stopped and- Sirius I'm fine!" Harry squawked as Sirius lunged, pulling the boy into a tight hug. "I'm fine, look, you're going to have to breathe if you want expect me to tell you about what goes on at Hogwarts, first and second year were pretty easy compared to my third and fourth!"
"Easy, he says," Sirius half sobbed, tears in his eyes, tightening his grip on his godson, "You mad brilliant little shit. At least I already had my absolute panic attacks about this past year, they were just happening via news articles."
"Basilisk venom is a death sentence," Remus said quietly, still looking at Harry in horror. "It can kill you in seconds!"
"He's a parselmouth though," Tom said, and everyone looked over at him.
"What does that have to do with it?" Harry asked, confused, still trying to wriggle free from Sirius.
"I don't know if this applies to the line of Parselmouths that descend from Indian heritage, but the ones from Slytherin's line all have varying levels of immunity to most venoms," Tom explained, setting the pen down just to stop himself from breaking it with his fidgeting. "While it wouldn't keep basilisk venom from killing you, given how lethal it is, it may have slowed it down just enough that it gave you the time you needed that another wouldn't have had."
Harry nodded his head slowly and Sirius finally released him, sinking back into his seat and looking about ten years older than he had before this conversation had begun. Molly chose that moment to wander in, the twins and Ginny trailing close behind her, their arms laden with plates of food- loaves of bread and lunch meat and fruits.
"I'll put another pot on," She said cheerfully, not even noticing the dour mood from the three men in the room, setting the plates down and levitating the tea tray over so she could grab it. "Do you need anything else while I'm down there?"
"No, Molls, thanks, just having an existential crisis over here," Sirius said solemnly, and perhaps it was because it was Sirius who said it, but Molly didn't even bat an eye.
"Ah well, a cuppa will help, get some bread in you at least and I'll be right back." The Weasley matron patted his back and disappeared, and Ginny and the twins dropped themselves into chairs at the end of the table, putting food on their plates.
"Should we continue this conversation later?" Tom asked Harry, tilting his head slightly in the direction of their new guests.
"Nah, they know about all the rest of this for the most part. The Weasleys are like my family," Harry said, folding his arms and leaning forward onto the table, seemingly unbothered, and Tom nodded his head. "So third year didn't really have much to do directly with Voldemort, so we can skip that."
"Remus and I gave him some of the highlights of that already," Sirius said, slowly moving to comply with Molly's request, grabbing a plate and putting some bread on it, picking it apart slowly,
"Just the Class Five Dark Magical Creatures we already discussed," Hermione said, a slight tease to her tone and Tom's eyes narrowed.
"What do you mean?" He asked.
Harry unfolded an arm to take a plate with some rolled lunch meat and fruit on it from Hermione. "The Minister stationed dementors at the school, and I have really bad reactions to them."
"Oh, to be honest, I assumed you were referring to me being there," Remus said, leaning back in his seat and smiling softly.
Harry's nose scrunched again and he sat up so he could eat, looking at the man, "What do you mean?"
"Harry, werewolves are also a Class Five Magical Creature," Hermione explained gently, and Remus nodded his head in agreement.
"Oh- well, two Class Five Magical Creatures in third year then," Harry said, grabbing one of the rolls of meat and nibbling at it.
"Okay, moving on. Fourth year, at the bare minimum I recall something about a portkey, a graveyard, a resurrected snake man-" Tom said, making quick notes towards the bottom of the parchment, "Though I'm sure that's only the beginning."
"More like the end of it," Harry corrected flippantly. The better part of the next hour was…Simply put, Too Much for Tom. Sirius and Remus had both been around for these stories and knew about them and were able to supply additional information, along with four Weasleys, Hermione, and a Partridge in a Pear Tree.
By the time they made it to the part about Harry's actual encounter with Voldemort (because once Harry off-handedly mentioned the Tri-Wizard Tournament Tom had demanded to know what the hell that was about), Molly had returned with fresh tea, and Tom had given up on his notes except for broad strokes bullets. Instead, his leg had resumed bouncing and he was sipping tea to keep from throwing the table in absolute confoundment.
The biggest issue largely was that it was overwhelming, and it was overwhelming because it was simply too much information for him to parse through all at once. There were all these puzzle pieces, but far too many, and to him, as an outsider, many had no connection between the rest. The largest piece he was hung up on, or perhaps it only felt like the largest because he'd encountered it first (that was surely something to think about), was the fact that when Voldemort first died, "killed" by the killing curse that rebounded off of Harry, he had not left behind a body. It felt like that, paired with his uncanny ability to avoid staying dead was likely the most central and connected of the issues, but with all the other information floating around it was difficult to parse out how everything else tied in and what any of it meant.
"You're thinking pretty loud there," Sirius said from his spot. He'd eventually gotten his appetite along with the rest and had finished his sandwich in record time. At some point Molly had slid a plate with a sandwich and some fruit in front of him but he'd yet to touch it.
"Unsurprisingly, really," Tom said dryly, picking up a slice of apple. "There's a lot I'm going to have to think about, how it all interconnects, but the thing I keep coming back to is that Voldemort didn't have a body when the killing curse first hit him." He paused and took the time to eat a couple of the slices. "Who got to the Potters first that evening?"
Sirius blinked, and then looked past him, like he wasn't seeing any of them, his face pale. Recalling memories from a traumatic event like that wasn't east, and Tom didn't envy him for it. "I…No, Hagrid was there- Dumbledore had sent him- he was the one who cast their fidelius charm, so he had to have known it had fallen…" He trailed off, his brows furrowing in thought. "We were going to stay in- it was Samhain, and they weren't going to get trick-or-treaters because of the fidelius, but-" He paused and swallowed heavily and ran a hand over his face.
"Peter forgot to bring the beer and asked me to pop out with him- Thought nothing of it at the time, but obviously the little rat had planned it." Sirius hissed a deep breath in and out. "It was, maybe, an hour. Less. I don't even know how he alerted that bastard we'd left- There was a line at the liquor store, everyone out getting last-minute supplies for parties and rituals, and I was just chatting with some people I recognized, and Peter just went… pale. It was so stupid of me- I should have realized then what it meant, that Peter had betrayed them, but I was just so panicked and worried and the Order had set up Anti-Apparition fields on the street so I couldn't even get there immediately, I had to get back to the bike and then back to the house, and by the time I did…"
He stopped and leaned forward, his elbows on the rest of the table and put his head in his hands. "It was like a bomb went off," Sirius said finally, his voice slightly muffled.
"In what way?" Tom asked, as much as he could see the physical pain that the trauma was causing him. In his mind's eyes he imagined the Potter house in shambles from a duel or fight- furniture overturned and broken, maybe windows smashed.
"Over half of the first floor had been destroyed," Remus said slowly, moving from where he'd been situated to take the empty seat on Sirius's right, reaching a hand out to comfort the other man, grasping his shoulder. Tom blinked, confused, but Remus continued as Sirius leaned into his hand, "A literal bomb, not a figurative one- Dumbledore told me later the rebound of a curse as powerful as the killing curse likely caused it- Lily's magic and Voldemort's taking part of the house down around them."
"How did he figure that?" Tom asked, looking between the pair.
"Hagrid helped me pull the door and some furniture out of the way that was blocking the entryway," Sirius finally said, looking up, "I didn't really want to believe it, any of it, I thought all three could be dead and at the same time I was just hoping they'd escaped and maybe the bastard had torn the place up in anger- but James was there just inside the entryway. He didn't even have his wand on him, it was in the living room." Sirius made a choked sound and ducked his head, and Remus pulled him in for a tight side-hug. "Some of the stairs were collapsed, but when we made it up there, half of Harry's room was just like nothing had happened- nothing broken, no debris, no scorch marks, and he was just sitting in the crib waiting for us." He barked a broken laugh, tears leaking out when his eyes creased. "He started giggling and held his hands up when he saw me and I had to just- step right over Lily, cause she was there, right in front of the crib-" He gasped a breath and Remus grabbed him pulling him tightly to him and Sirius allowed it, burying his face in the other man's neck, sobs racking him.
Tom let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding and saw movement in front of him, drawing his attention away from the men. Molly had stood and also enveloped Harry in a tight hug, patting his head gently, like he was one of her own. He'd half expected a similar reaction from him, but Harry only looked like he'd paled, his eyes dark and distant and his hands clenched tightly.
"I think that's enough for now," Molly said decisively, looking at him with a look he couldn't decipher. Tom agreed, nodding his head slowly.
It was enough for now.
A/N: Several notes for y'all;
1. Listen I do not have my copies of the books handy (storage cause moving house several times and twins and etc) and I am not going to take the time to reference what order and at what times Harry and the gang canon cleaned fucking Grimmauld Place so just give this one to me. I'm assuming they did/have done and had already done the sitting area and dining room downstairs but hadn't gotten to the bathroom or bedroom on the floor that Harry and Ron are on besides their room.
2. I yoinked a fanon map of the house (because god knows I needed it) and made the alterations that Remus is bunking in with Sirius because we ship Wolfstar in this house and that the Master Bedroom is not the attic but the 5th floor and there is an additional floor for the attic. Not shown but I include in my brain space is there is a magically expanded back garden with a greenhouse that can be reached from the basement and the ground floor. There is a door at the end of the hallway on the ground floor that leads to a back patio space with a table and chairs and stairs down to the garden. The back garden is fenced in with a tall brick wall that matches the adjacent houses and the brick wall is lit with mounted lanterns that magically alight in the evening.
3. Despite the house as a whole being a wreck, Kreacher has attended to Walburga's master bedroom (and he has been struggling to do since Sirius shoved Buckbeak in there), the library and the greenhouse, which were Regulus's sanctums/place of retreat, as well as Regulus's bedroom and Kreacher takes good care of them in his memory. The rest of the house is, canonically, in shambles.
4. I know Umbridge ordered the dementors to attack Harry, You know that, Harry does not know that and is working under the assumption, as are the rest, that it's Voldemort's doing.
5. Since a lot of people agree it's better, we're going with the choreography of the fight in the CoS from the movie, not the book, since it was also easier for me to reference and it was more badass in general. I know the sorting hat was brought when Fawkes showed up, both in the movie and the books, but just Harry slightly misremembering because the hat was pretty irrelevant until he got the sword.
6. I subscribe to the Harry is an Idiot Bi Boy. He has a moment of thinking "God that fucking git was so fucking handsome strutting around oh yeah he's sitting right in front of me as an older man now i'd rather not think about this any further lets shut up now brain."
7. I did so much digging trying to find out how anyone found out about the Potters besides word of mouth and apparently nothing fucking exists in cannon, just that somehow Dumbledore knew immediately and then told Hagrid and Sirius showed up so I made my own damn explanation. Tried to tie it together to explain all the canon stories, in which we know (1) Dumbledore had cast the fidelius so might have known immediately something had happened, either because of the damage to the property or what, (2) We know James answered the door without his wand, (3) We know no one was there with the Potters but it was Halloween, arguably Harry's first real halloween where he wasn't just a baby potato, and (4) if Sirius wasn't there with them then how would he have found out so quickly. Let me know if you see any flaws in my narrative because I don't know if I've ever actually read a fanfiction that shows the breakdown of how that timeline went down (But quite honestly, I have not read as much Marauders FF, so that could be my bad).
